Social Responsibility

It was January 2018, and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey had just won a huge legal victory. His trial on federal bribery charges had ended in a hung jury, and the U.S. Justice Department had announced that it would not seek a new trial. He was free to walk with no criminal conviction, ready to take on another campaign for re-election.Weeks later, he started dating Nadine Arslanian.Ms. Arslanian, who would eventually marry Mr. Menendez, quickly introduced him to one of her longtime friends: Wael Hana, an Egyptian American businessman in New Jersey. The future Ms. Menendez was eager to…

Jon Hetherington was ready for Beyoncé. He had been ready for 25 years.He had his outfit — black pants and a gray T-shirt with an image of the superstar and a cobalt-blue graphic for her song “Heated” emblazoned on the back. He arranged a ride to take him to the airport in Eugene, Ore. And most importantly, he had a highly coveted ticket to the Renaissance World Tour in Seattle, purchased after painstakingly navigating a competitive ticket sale process.But when Mr. Hetherington got to his gate at the airport last Thursday, that plan quickly fell apart.The airline could not accommodate…

Two died and dozens of others were injured, at least five critically, after a bus carrying a high school marching band from Long Island crashed on a New York highway and went down an embankment on Thursday afternoon, the authorities said. None of the students were among the dead.The bus, carrying 40 students, mostly high school freshmen, and four adults from Farmingdale High School was one of six coach buses traveling to an annual marching band camp in Pennsylvania, according to a spokeswoman for the Farmingdale School District.The bus went off the road on a section of Interstate 84 in…

In Wolff’s telling, Murdoch is a sort of hapless Frankenstein, abominating the monster he set loose on the world but unsure how to fight him. This waffling, however, is a product of the same venality that has always undergirded Murdoch’s old-fashioned right-wing politics. In his farewell letter, Murdoch, the Oxford-educated son of a wealthy Australian media executive, poses as a populist, decrying a media that’s in “cahoots” with elites, “peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.” This is pure projection: Fox exists to peddle self-serving political narratives, deceiving its audience under the guise of respecting it. In “The Fall”…

The Biden administration said late Wednesday that it would allow hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans already in the United States to live and work legally in the country for 18 months.The decision followed intense advocacy by top New York Democrats, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and party leaders in Congress. It will affect about 472,000 Venezuelans who arrived in the country before July 31, temporarily protecting them from removal and waiving a monthslong waiting period for them to seek employment authorization.In an unusual break with a president of their party, the New York Democrats had argued that the…

Twenty years ago, the Republican Party started what may have been the most lifesaving government initiative in modern history. It turned the tide of AIDS around the world and has saved 25 million lives so far — equivalent to the entire population of Australia.So it’s a reflection of the madness that has infected the Republican Party that today some conservatives are repudiating perhaps the best thing they ever did and battling the reauthorization of this program.PEPFAR, which stands for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, has a legislative authorization that expires at the end of this month. And Republicans…

When I first heard that The New Yorker had published an exposé on the veracity of the stand-up comedy of Hasan Minhaj, I rolled my eyes.We’re fact-checking jokes now? Come on. Comedy is an art, not an op-ed. And honesty has always struck me as the most overrated virtue in comedy. But Clare Malone’s reporting in the piece is scrupulous and fair, if a little prosecutorial in its focus. It presents more questions than answers and should inspire some rethinking of the muddy relationship between comedy and truth.Digging into his last two specials, Malone reveals Hasan Minhaj as a comic…

The Senate confirmed Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. of the Air Force on Wednesday as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, circumventing Senator Tommy Tuberville’s blockade of Pentagon promotions.The vote was 83 to 11, and was expected to be followed by confirmations of the Marine Corps and Army chiefs, which also have been held up for months by Mr. Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, over the Defense Department’s abortion-access policies.General Brown is set to succeed Army Gen. Mark A. Milley when he steps down as Joint Chiefs chairman at the end of the month.The Democratic majority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer…

This is the shortest column I’ve ever written — because it doesn’t take long to get things in focus:President Biden, you are meeting Wednesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, for the first time since he returned to office in December. He’s formed the most extreme government in Israel’s history and yet your administration is considering forging a complex partnership with his coalition and Saudi Arabia. There are enormous potential benefits and risks for the United States. I hope you won’t proceed without getting satisfactory answers from Netanyahu on three key questions — so we know just what Israel,…