But Trump has offered little explanation about how his plans would lower prices. And several of his policies — whatever their merits on other grounds — would instead put new upward pressure on prices, according to interviews with half a dozen economists.

Trump says he plans the “largest domestic deportation in American history,” which would most likely increase the cost of labor. He intends to impose a new tariff on nearly all imported goods, which would probably raise their prices and those of any domestically made competitors.

And he not only wants to make permanent the entire deficit-financed tax cut law he and congressional Republicans enacted in 2017 but also wants to add some kind of new “big tax cut” for individuals and businesses, which would stimulate an economy already at full employment.

As a matter of textbook economics, each of those three signature Trump policy plans would be likely to raise prices. Some could even cause continued, rather than one-time, price increases — adding to the possibility of inflation.

“I think we can say with a lot of confidence that President Trump’s trade policies and immigration policies would result in price spikes,” said Michael Strain, the director of economic policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

The post-pandemic inflation wave has subsided, but unhappiness over the elevated cost of living it left behind is dragging down assessments of the economy and of Biden’s performance.

Inflation surged globally as the pandemic receded, not just in the United States. But many economists believe the Biden administration’s March 2021 stimulus package was too big, and while it may have contributed to a faster recovery in growth than comparable countries have experienced, it also added fuel to the domestic version of the inflation problem.

In response to questions, the Trump campaign’s policy director, Vince Haley, disputed the notion that Trump’s second-term policy plans could raise prices further or even restoke inflation, saying that Trump would also increase energy production, cut regulations and reduce federal spending.

“The sad fact,” Haley added, “is that Joe Biden doesn’t have a plan to reduce inflation; he has a plan to continue his inflationary policies, laying waste to the wallets and pocketbooks of hardworking Americans all while blaming the size of Snickers bars.”

Getting energy prices ‘down so low’

Trump has not released a detailed economic plan, so it is impossible to model the overall effects of what he might do.

But to the extent that Trump offers any specifics when railing about inflation, his primary pitch is to denounce Biden administration policies aimed at curbing climate change by expanding renewable energy. Trump says he would instead promote more fossil fuel extraction to make gasoline and electricity cheaper.

“We’re going to get your energy prices down so low, and that’s going to knock the hell out of the inflation,” he declared in remarks at a rally in Iowa in December.

Trump has also repeatedly — and falsely — claimed that the United States has “ended oil exploration and production.” While Biden did expand limits on new drilling in the Alaskan wilderness, his administration issued thousands of new permits to drill on other federal lands — outpacing Trump’s record. The United States is producing oil and natural gas at record highs.

Extracting even more oil from domestic soil would put some downward pressure on energy prices, said N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard University professor who served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during George W. Bush’s presidency. But, he added, “since it’s a global market for oil, that effect would be fairly muted.”

Haley said if Trump returned to office, he would revive and expand his first-term deregulatory efforts and roll back new environmental rules imposed by the Biden administration. That, he argued, would also push prices down.

Economists agree that whatever the other benefits to society government rules may bring, complying with regulations usually increases businesses’ production costs.

And, Haley said, Trump would be “working with a Republican Congress to rein in federal spending.” Another way Trump plans to cut back on spending, he added, is through impoundment, the Richard Nixon-era tactic of a president refusing to spend money Congress appropriated for programs he does not like.

Economists also say that cutting back on federal spending would reduce overall demand for goods and services, which could help keep prices down.

But while Republicans often decry spending and budget deficits when Democrats are in charge, they tend to behave differently when they control the government. Trump already worked as president with a Republican Congress in 2017 and 2018, and federal spending and budget deficits rose both of those years. During Trump’s four years in office, the national debt grew by around $8 trillion despite his 2016 campaign promise to eliminate the entire national debt within eight years by renegotiating trade deals and promoting economic growth.

And it is far from clear that Trump would succeed in his goal of reviving impoundment. Congress outlawed that tactic in 1974.

Disruptions and shortages

Inflation — a decrease in the purchasing power of money — increases when too much money is chasing too few goods and services. Prices are almost always rising a little, and deflation is associated with economic calamity. But during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, prices rose much faster.

With people hunkering down at home and huge numbers of workers laid off, governments and central banks tried to mitigate the devastation with both fiscal and monetary stimulus — including by directly spending more and by slashing interest rates to encourage borrowing. Then, as vaccines became available, people started spending the money they had saved by not traveling and going out. The job market rapidly recovered.

This surge in economic activity, along with supply chain disruptions, led to shortages of goods. Around the world, prices for available goods started to rise more quickly in mid-2021, as did energy prices that had been severely depressed when few were going out. Then, in early 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, causing global oil and food prices to surge further. An outbreak of bird flu caused a shortage of eggs, the price of which soared.

In the United States, inflation peaked in June 2022, at 9.1% — a level not seen since the early 1980s. But the Federal Reserve lifted interest rates, supply chain problems were fixed, and the inflation rate fell. In April, prices were 3.4% higher than they were a year earlier — still higher than the Fed’s ideal rate of price growth, but closer to normal.

Inflation on groceries has dropped particularly steeply: Prices at the supermarket rose only 1.1% between April 2023 and April 2024. And wage growth for workers has outpaced price increases over the past year.

But the inflation surge left behind higher prices — and lingering discontent. And while inflation plagued economies around the world, and many of its contributing factors were outside the control of U.S. policymakers, leaders also made choices.

Congress passed emergency spending bills in March 2020 and December 2020 under Trump and in March 2021 under Biden. The Federal Reserve, under Jerome Powell — who was appointed its chair by Trump and then was reappointed by Biden — bought up bonds and kept interest rates low to boost growth.

Many economists now think Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill in March 2021 was too big for an economy that was already starting to recover, and that the Fed kept interest rates low for too long, Mankiw said.

Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor and possible chair nominee if Trump wins the election, echoed Mankiw’s criticisms of the Fed under Powell. He also argued that Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen shared blame for the inflation wave, citing the administration’s regulations and “massive new government spending at full employment.”

But Jared Bernstein, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under Biden, defended the administration’s performance. He pointed to data showing that inflation spiked all around the world amid the pandemic supply shocks before sharply decelerating, but economic growth and jobs have recovered faster in the United States than in other advanced economies.

“And part of that,” he said, “has to do with precisely the policies that they are criticizing.”

Still, many Americans remain anxious about high prices, and polls indicate that many people likely to vote in November are penalizing Biden for higher prices.

Mass deportations

One of Trump’s most concrete policy plans is a massive crackdown on illegal immigration. Where the government in recent administrations has generally deported a few hundred thousand unauthorized people per year, Trump is aiming for a tenfold increase in that rate.

The deportation of millions of people would reduce demand for the goods and services they currently consume and could bring down prices for rental housing as their removal frees up supply. But mass deportations would cause a severe supply shock to the labor market, which could increase the overall cost of living, Strain said.

There would be an accelerating shortage of workers for the low-wage jobs that are often performed by immigrants living in the country without legal permission — from picking crops and working construction jobs to washing dishes in restaurants and cleaning houses and hotel rooms. In many cases, such workers make less than minimum wage with no benefits.

Employers would try to find replacement workers, but it would not be easy. Because the job market is already strong — the unemployment rate is below 4% — there are not large numbers of Americans in search of low-wage jobs.

Basic economics say the result would be higher prices as production falls and labor costs go up. For example, if farmers could not find enough workers to pick all their crops, there would be a smaller supply of produce, and it would get more expensive. And businesses would be forced to offer higher wages to attract or retain workers — passing on some of their higher costs to consumers.

Indeed, Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration policy adviser, told The New York Times last year that “mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers, who will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs.”

High tariffs

Trump, who as president imposed targeted tariffs on certain products like steel and washing machines, is planning to greatly expand such duties if he returns to the White House. He has floated imposing a 10% across-the-board import tax for most products made abroad — the source of many of the goods lining the shelves of stores like Target and Walmart, including electronics, machinery, clothes and toys.

He plans to impose particularly high tariffs on products manufactured in China, with which he started a trade war when president. There is bipartisan support for erecting some barriers to trade with China; Biden kept Trump’s tariffs in place and added a few more on targeted industries, such as electric cars and semiconductors.

Trump typically denies that import taxes raise prices. But R. Glenn Hubbard, a Columbia University economist who also served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush, said multiple studies using different methodologies had confirmed that the tariffs Trump imposed were “completely passed on to consumers.”

When the government taxes foreign-made goods, importing businesses raise the prices at which they are willing to sell them to consumers — helping domestic producers of rival goods by allowing them to raise their prices, too.

Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s top trade policy adviser, told the Times for an article about Trump’s tariff plans that the priority should not be cheaper goods but fostering manufacturing jobs for Americans, saying, “You should be willing to pay a price for that.”

Deep tax cuts

A third major policy proposed by Trump that could have implications for inflation and prices involves taxes.

The individual and estate tax cuts from Trump’s 2017 tax law are set to expire after 2025. While Biden wants to extend the cuts for lower- and middle-income people, he wants to let them expire for higher levels of income and for large inheritances. By contrast, Trump wants to extend the law in its entirety. He has also vaguely indicated that he wants to go further with some kind of additional tax cut.

When Trump and congressional Republicans enacted the 2017 tax cut law, they made up the resulting gap in revenue by adding to the national debt. If they repeated that move, extending the expiring tax cuts would amount to fiscal stimulus, with more spending money in the pockets of especially wealthier consumers than would otherwise be the case.

More spending would mean higher demand for goods and services, straining prices when compared with a world in which the tax cuts expired as scheduled, Mankiw said.

He also said the potential inflationary aspects of Trump’s policies could be offset if the Federal Reserve were to further raise interest rates.

But such a move would be anathema to Trump, who loved low interest rates as a real estate mogul, openly demanded them as president and has promised that his reelection would restore them.

How the Fed would operate in a second Trump term would depend in part on whom he chose to replace Powell, whose term ends in May 2026. It would also depend on whether the Fed retained its independence in setting monetary policy without interference by Trump.

Congress established the Federal Reserve as an independent agency, run by a board whose members cannot be fired by presidents without cause. But the conservative legal movement has pushed a theory by which such arrangements are seen as unconstitutional, and Trump has vowed to bring independent agencies under presidential control.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Each and every one of them, though, is a very good dog.

Some 2,500 top-ranked dogs were in New York City to compete in this year’s Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Breed judging, the marquee event, began May 13, while several hundred other dogs battled it out in events testing agility, obedience and the ability to dive the farthest off a dock. Sage, a miniature poodle, ended up being named best in show.

But even getting into the competition takes years of training and effort. And getting to the show requires extensive organizing by owners and handlers, who plan hours- or dayslong road or plane trips, pack thousands of dollars worth of gear — grooming tables, industrial-strength hair dryers, leashes, collars, toys, kibble and more — and pray that neither delays nor cancellations disrupt their itineraries. Treats are nonnegotiable.

“I try to stock up on healthy, single-ingredient treats such as freeze-dried duck or freeze-dried liver,” said Shell Lewis, 71, who came to New York with a Russell terrier and a cairn terrier. On show days, however, her dogs receive “something special and high value.”

“It involves a drive-thru McDonald’s to pick up two sausage biscuits — I eat the biscuits, they get the sausage,” she said.

Sage, an extravagantly coifed miniature poodle with a winsome mystery about her, was the winner of the 148th annual show.

But here’s how a few of the many show dogs, and their entourages, traveled to Westminster.

Taking to the Road

In the United States, accumulating titles at local, regional and national dog competitions requires constant driving, with long journeys the norm. Most dogs, their trainers say, are used to the road.

Lewis drove 14 hours from Geneva, Illinois, for Spangle, her 2-year-old Russell terrier, to compete in the agility event. (Alas, Spangle was knocked out in the preliminaries.) Lewis also brought along Nora, her 7-year-old cairn terrier.

“They haven’t learned to drive yet,” said Lewis, “but they are excellent travelers.”

Krysthel Moore and Quinnzel, her border collie, who with a 15-foot jump made it to the finals in dock diving, drove eight hours from their home in Quebec. Quinnzel snoozed through most of it, said Moore, 40.

Quinnzel barely notices a change in surroundings, Moore added. “She doesn’t care where we are; she just likes to be close with me.”

Some attendees carpooled to the show. Jenni Nieft and Kris Dunlap, who met at a dog show three years ago, drove from Wyoming for more than two days with Rowan, an 85-pound bracco Italiano, and 52-pound Keeva, a Weimaraner. Both dogs competed in breed judging.

“They start young, they’re crate-trained, they just get used to it,” said Nieft, 53, who added that on road trips, exercise and bathroom breaks are crucial. “We gear the trip around their comfort.”

Driving was their only transit option: Some dogs, like Rowan, are too big to fly, as commercial airlines have limits on weight and carrier size.

The dogs don’t travel light, as Jamie Goodrich, 41, elaborated. Traveling from Central Square, New York, north of Syracuse, she packed her 2019 Dodge Grand Caravan with two crates, two folding chairs, 3 gallons of water, emergency kits for both dogs and humans, two suitcases of human clothes, three leashes, days of kibble, grooming equipment — various brushes, clippers, a water mister, a table, scissors — and an electric fan.

“Oh, and the dog,” she said of Aero, her Akita who will competed in breed judging. (The fan keeps Aero from overheating backstage.)

Traveling by Plane

Other dogs flew to New York, which required compiling myriad documents, getting vaccination shots in order, and fielding a minefield of varying airline policies and restrictions on breed and weight.

Janice Hayes, a 42-year-old professional handler from Palm Springs, California, flies regularly to show dogs. Buddy Holly, a petit basset griffon Vendéen, won the top prize at last year’s Westminster. “He has more miles than all of us,” Hayes said.

Buddy Holly is now retired, but made the trip again this year to bask in his final moments as reigning champion and to accompany three other show dogs. Britney and Spotify, also petit basset griffon Vendéens, were being shown, as was Hayden, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel.

Because of their sizes, the three petit basset griffon Vendéens fly in crates and in the luggage hold. Hayden flew in the cabin.

Getting to the airport hours in advance is one of Hayes’ travel strategies, as is booking a seat on the side of the plane overlooking the plane’s hold — watching the dogs being loaded offers welcome reassurance that the dogs too are en route.

Dozens of dogs traveled from abroad to compete in this year’s show. Anel Vazquez Franchini and her dog Khaleesi, a 5-year-old bearded collie, flew from Mexico City.

“We don’t have a lot of bearded collies here. It’s easy to win when you don’t have competition,” Vasquez Franchini said of Mexico’s dog shows. The Westminster show, she said, is a coveted chance for Khaleesi — or Kaly, for short — to really prove herself.

The requirements for animals to travel internationally differ by country and can change frequently. Beginning in August, dogs entering the United States must be microchipped and be vaccinated against rabies.

Dogs living within the European Union who wish to travel internationally — or whose humans make that decision for them — must have their own pet passport.

This document, issued by veterinarians, contains microchip registration, vaccine history and ownership information. It is mandatory for reentry into the EU.

Vitellozzo, a 2-year-old French bulldog living in Croatia with his handler, Valentina Zupan, has such a passport. He’s a seasoned international traveler — this was his second time in the United States. While flying, Vitellozzo doesn’t need tranquilizers or other medication, said Zupan, 32. His crate fits under the airplane seat and he slept for most of their journey, which included driving to Budapest, Hungary, flying to Warsaw, Poland, then to Chicago for another show, and then driving to New York.

Hosting the dogs and their humans overnight are the hotels closest to the show venue, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

“Big dogs, small dogs, fancy dogs, regular dogs, it’s a lot,” said Raquan Williams, a front-desk clerk at the sold-out Four Points by Sheraton in Flushing. “We love it.”

In addition to nightly rates over $200, hotels generally charge a one-time pet fee that can run more than $100. Most Westminster handlers and owners share rooms with their dogs.

And beds.

“My dogs take up a whole bed. I am lucky if I get to sleep at the top,” said Patty Berkovitz, 69, who with her partner Jack Florek, and two Irish wolfhounds, Rowan and Brody, is staying at Hilton Garden Inn in Long Island City.

Rowan and Brody will compete — against each other — in breed judging.

All four creatures are in one room, and each dog weighs more than 160 pounds.

With such large bedfellows, Florek, 71, joked that the key strategy was getting into bed before the dogs, something he neglected to do Friday night.

“I was the little spoon,” he said.

The first debate will take place much earlier than has been typical, and so far, neither will involve the commission that has been hosting presidential debates since 1988.

Here’s what to know:

When will the debates be held?

The two candidates agreed to a June 27 date for the first debate, which CNN will host in its Atlanta studios.

By then, Biden will have returned from the Group of 7 summit in Italy, and Trump’s hush-money trial in New York should be over.

Both rivals also committed to a Sept. 10 debate hosted by ABC News.

Biden’s team is seeking to wrap up the debates around the beginning of September when early voting begins, a departure from the long-standing debate calendar that had major-party candidates facing each other in late September and October.

His campaign suggested that holding debates earlier would give voters the chance to size up the candidates before early ballots are cast, and allow the nominees to focus on campaigning in the final weeks of the race.

How will the debates differ from previous ones?

The Commission on Presidential Debates has organized debates for nearly 40 years, but Trump and Biden have both voiced grievances over the process and the organization. Neither of the debates they agreed to involve the commission, which had set its debates for Sept. 16, Oct. 1 and Oct. 9.

And the first debate they agreed to, set for June, will happen much earlier than normal — both men will still be only the presumptive nominees when they face each other then.

While both Biden and Trump clinched their party’s nominations in March, Trump is not scheduled to accept the Republican nomination formally until the party holds its convention in July in Milwaukee. Biden will formally accept the Democratic nomination during the party’s convention in August in Chicago.

The expedited debate timetable is a sharp deviation from the modern cycle in U.S. politics, when presidential debates have typically been held after Labor Day, following both major-party conventions.

What are the debates’ terms and who will moderate them?

For the most part, how the debates will be structured is still being worked out.

CNN said its debate, in June, would take place without an audience. That meets one of the demands from Biden’s team, which wants to avoid an in-person audience that could cheer, boo and derail the conversation.

Trump, who feeds off the reaction of his supporters, indicated that he wanted an audience, and he accused Biden of being “afraid of crowds.”

The president’s team has insisted that the debate stage be limited to Biden and Trump: It wants to exclude Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent candidate who has been polling in the teens and appears to be siphoning support from both major-party candidates.

Its terms also called for the network hosting the debate to cut off the candidates’ microphones when they use up their allotted time.

During a presidential debate in 2020, Biden uttered one of the more memorable lines when Trump repeatedly interrupted him. “Will you shut up, man?” he said.

Jake Tapper and Dana Bash have been announced as the moderators of the CNN debate. ABC News has announced that David Muir and Linsey Davis will moderate its debate.

Will the debates actually happen?

Trump and Biden appeared to throw down the gauntlet when they committed to the two debates.

But a cancellation of a presidential debate would not be a novelty.

In 2020, the second of three debates had to be scrapped after Trump rejected having him and Biden participate virtually, which was proposed by the debate commission because of the coronavirus pandemic.

And in this election cycle, Trump bypassed the Republican primary debates, at times organizing counterprogramming of his own through televised town halls.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

It is, in other words, a golden age for product-origin-story movies.

The latest is “Unfrosted: The Pop-Tarts Story,” a satirical history that Jerry Seinfeld has expanded from his stand-up act. The film, which he directed and stars in alongside Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grant and Amy Schumer, arrived May 3 on Netflix. Unlike its predecessors, it’s not really concerned with actual events. Here’s what to know about the true history of the Pop-Tart — and what the movie gets right and wrong.

But first, how did Kellogg’s and Post both end up with headquarters in Battle Creek, Michigan?

You would think ground zero in the Breakfast Wars of the 1960s might be somewhere most people could locate on a map. But Battle Creek was home to the Battle Creek Sanitarium, known for its water and fresh air treatments, and managed by Will Keith Kellogg and his brother, John Harvey Kellogg. W.K. Kellogg developed a method of creating crunchy pieces of processed grain for his patients (read: Corn Flakes), and one of those patients, C.W. Post, would go on to start his own company in 1895 selling several foods that were veeeery similar to those at the sanitarium.

W.K. Kellogg noticed Post profiting from his recipes and established his own firm in 1906, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Co. Within three years, it was cranking out more than 100,000 boxes of Corn Flakes a day, and, thanks to the success of Kellogg, Post and many other cereal companies, Battle Creek became known as the Cereal City.

Who were the real Edsel Kellogg III and Marjorie Merriweather Post?

The bumbling CEO of Kellogg’s, played by Gaffigan, is fictional (thank goodness). On the other hand, Marjorie Merriweather Post — the General Foods owner whom Schumer portrays as a turban-wearing caricature — was one of the first female CEOs and, for most of her life, considered the wealthiest woman in America. (Today she may be best known for building Mar-a-Lago, now Donald Trump’s base.)

Did Post really come up with a toaster-prepared breakfast pastry first?

Yes. In the 1960s, Post, then the biggest competitor to Kellogg’s, invented a process of partly dehydrating food and wrapping it in foil to keep it fresh; no refrigeration required. The process was initially used for dog food, but it also allowed fruit filling in, say, a toaster-prepared breakfast pastry to stay both moist and bacteria-free. (And yes, it was actually Post’s idea, not one ripped off from a Kellogg’s employee via a hidden vacuum cam.)

Was the Post product really called Country Squares?

Unfortunately, yes. The name was later changed to its current Toast’em Pop Ups, but is that really much better?

How did Country Squares and Pop-Tarts end up hitting shelves the same year?

Post jumped the gun and unveiled Country Squares to the press in February 1964, four months before they were ready to sell, allowing Kellogg’s time to frantically rustle up its own, much-better-named version.

Did Bob Cabana really create the Pop-Tart?

Nope, the “Unfrosted” flack (played by Seinfeld) is fictional. The man who helped create Pop-Tarts was a manager named William Post (yes, really), who died in February at 96.

What was an actual rejected name for the Pop-Tart?

The ones in the film — Fruit-Magoos, Heat ’Em Up and Eat ’Em Ups, Oblong Nibblers, Trat Pops — are made up. But the real rejected name — Fruit Scones — wasn’t much catchier. The final name, coined by a Kellogg’s executive, William LaMothe, was inspired by pop art, the contemporary cultural movement.

Were Pop-Tarts really an overnight hit?

Yes, but the first shipment to stores sold out in two weeks, not 60 seconds, as in “Unfrosted.” Kellogg’s apologized, in advertisements, but this only increased demand. (They were restocked before long.)

Were the first flavors really unfrosted?

Yes. The original flavors — all unfrosted — were Apple Currant Jelly, Strawberry, Blueberry and Brown Sugar-Cinnamon. The first frosted ones — Dutch Apple, Concord Grape, Raspberry and Brown Sugar-Cinnamon — didn’t hit the market until 1967. (William Post came up with the idea, disproving skeptics who believed the icing would melt in the toaster.) The next year, sprinkles were added to some of the frosted ones.

Did Kellogg’s really advertise Pop-Tarts without a mascot?

It did, though the decision didn’t set off a Hugh Grant-led mascot rebellion, as in “Unfrosted.” Kellogg’s rectified the omission in 1971, introducing Milton the Toaster. (The little guy didn’t make it out of the 1970s.)

Which of these flavors are real?

The past few decades have been a smorgasbord of Pop-Tart flavors, some very short-lived. Can you spot the four real flavors here?

Chocolate Peppermint

Froot Loops

Guava Mango

Harry Potter Special Edition: Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, Popcorn

Maple Bacon

Twizzlers

Answer: Chocolate Peppermint, Froot Loops, Guava Mango and Maple Bacon Pop-Tarts have all been on shelves at some point. The Harry Potter Bertie Bott’s Popcorn and Twizzlers flavors remain the stuff of our fever dreams.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Several doctors noticed a dark spot on the younger Kennedy’s brain scans and concluded that he had a tumor, he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The New York Times. Kennedy was immediately scheduled for a procedure at Duke University Medical Center by the same surgeon who had operated on his uncle, he said.

While packing for the trip, he said, he received a call from a doctor at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital who had a different opinion: Kennedy, he believed, had a dead parasite in his head.

The doctor believed that the abnormality seen on his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Kennedy said in the deposition.

Now an independent presidential candidate, the 70-year-old Kennedy has portrayed his athleticism and relative youth as an advantage over the two oldest people to ever seek the White House: President Joe Biden, 81, and former President Donald Trump, 77. Kennedy has secured a place on the ballots in Utah, Michigan, Hawaii and, his campaign says, California and Delaware. His intensive efforts to gain access in more states could put him in a position to tip the election.

He has gone to lengths to appear hale, skiing with a professional snowboarder and with an Olympic gold medalist who called him a “ripper” as they raced down the mountain. A camera crew was at his side while he lifted weights, shirtless, at an outdoor gym in Venice Beach in Los Angeles.

Still, over the years, he has faced serious health issues, some previously undisclosed, including the apparent parasite.

For decades, Kennedy suffered from atrial fibrillation, a common heartbeat abnormality that increases the risk of stroke or heart failure. He has been hospitalized at least four times for episodes, although in an interview with the Times this winter, he said he had not had an incident in more than a decade and believed the condition had disappeared.

About the same time he learned of the parasite, he said, he was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, most likely from ingesting too much fish containing the dangerous heavy metal, which can cause serious neurological issues.

“I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said in the 2012 deposition. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”

In the interview with the Times, he said he had recovered from the memory loss and fogginess and had no aftereffects from the parasite, which he said had not required treatment. Asked last week if any of Kennedy’s health issues could compromise his fitness for the presidency, Stefanie Spear, a spokesperson for the Kennedy campaign, told the Times, “That is a hilarious suggestion, given the competition.”

The campaign declined to provide his medical records to the Times. Neither Biden nor Trump has released medical records in this election cycle.

Doctors who have treated parasitic infections and mercury poisoning said both conditions can sometimes permanently damage brain function, but patients also can have temporary symptoms and mount a full recovery.

Some of Kennedy’s health issues were revealed in the 2012 deposition, which he gave during divorce proceedings from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. At the time, he was arguing that his earning power had been diminished by his cognitive struggles.

Kennedy provided more details, including about the apparent parasite, in the phone interview with the Times, conducted when he was on the cusp of getting on his first state ballot. His campaign declined to answer follow-up questions.

In the days after the 2010 call from NewYork-Presbyterian, Kennedy said in the interview, he underwent a battery of tests. Scans over many weeks showed no change in the spot on his brain, he said.

Doctors ultimately concluded that the cyst they saw on scans contained the remains of a parasite. Kennedy said he did not know the type of parasite or where he might have contracted it, though he suspected it might have been during a trip through South Asia.

Several infectious disease experts and neurosurgeons said in separate interviews with the Times that, based on what Kennedy described, they believed it was likely a pork tapeworm larva. The doctors have not treated Kennedy and were speaking generally.

Dr. Clinton White, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said microscopic tapeworm eggs are sticky and easily transferred from one person to another. Once hatched, the larvae can travel in the bloodstream, he said, “and end up in all kinds of tissues.”

Though it is impossible to know, he added that it is unlikely that a parasite would eat a part of the brain, as Kennedy described. Rather, White said, it survives on nutrients from the body. Unlike tapeworm larvae in the intestines, those in the brain remain relatively small, about a third of an inch.

Some tapeworm larvae can live in a human brain for years without causing problems. Others can wreak havoc, often when they start to die, which causes inflammation. The most common symptoms are seizures, headaches and dizziness.

There are roughly 2,000 hospitalizations for the condition, known as neurocysticercosis, each year in the United States, according to the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Scott Gardner, curator of the Manter Laboratory for Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said once any worm is in a brain, cells calcify around it. “And you’re going to basically have almost like a tumor that’s there forever. It’s not going to go anywhere.”

Gardner said it was possible a worm would cause memory loss. However, severe memory loss is more often associated with another health scare Kennedy said he had at the time: mercury poisoning.

Kennedy said he was then subsisting on a diet heavy on predatory fish, notably tuna and perch, both known to have elevated mercury levels. In the interview with the Times, he said he had experienced “severe brain fog” and had trouble retrieving words. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has railed against the dangers of mercury contamination in fish from coal-fired power plants, had his blood tested.

He said the tests showed his mercury levels were 10 times what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.

At the time, Kennedy also was a few years into his crusade against thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines. He is a longtime vaccine skeptic who has falsely linked childhood inoculations to a rise in autism, as well as to other medical conditions.

In the interview, Kennedy said he was certain his diet had caused the poisoning. “I loved tuna fish sandwiches. I ate them all the time,” he said.

The Times described Kennedy’s symptoms to Elsie Sunderland, an environmental chemist at Harvard University who has not spoken to Kennedy and responded generally about the condition.

She said the mercury levels that Kennedy described were high, but not surprising for someone consuming that quantity and type of seafood.

Kennedy said he made changes after these two health scares, including getting more sleep, traveling less and reducing his fish intake.

He also underwent chelation therapy, a treatment that binds to metals in the body so they can be expelled. It is generally given to people contaminated by metals, such as lead and zinc, in industrial accidents. Sunderland said that when mercury poisoning is clearly diet-related, she would simply recommend that the person stop eating fish. But another doctor who spoke to the Times said she would advise chelation therapy for the levels Kennedy said he had.

Kennedy’s heart issue began in college, he said, when it started beating out of sync.

In 2001 he was admitted to a hospital in Seattle while in town to give a speech, according to news reports. He was treated, and released the next day. He was hospitalized at least three additional times between September 2011 and early 2012, including once in Los Angeles, he said in the deposition. On that visit, he said, doctors used a defibrillator to shock his heart to reset the rhythm.

He said in the deposition that stress, caffeine and a lack of sleep triggered the condition. “It feels like there’s a bag of worms in my chest. I can feel immediately when it goes out,” he said.

He also said in the deposition and the interview that he had contracted hepatitis C through intravenous drug use in his youth. He said he had been treated and had no lingering effects from the infection.

Kennedy has spoken publicly about one other major health condition — spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that causes his vocal cords to squeeze too close together and explains his hoarse, sometimes strained voice.

He first noticed it when he was 42, he said in the deposition. Kennedy for years made a significant amount of money giving speeches, and that business fell off as the condition worsened, he said.

He told an interviewer last year that he had recently undergone a procedure available in Japan to implant titanium between his vocal cords to keep them from involuntarily constricting.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Most relentless was Lamar, a Pulitzer Prize winner from Compton, California, who tends toward the isolated and considered but has now released four verbose and conceptual dis tracks — totaling more than 20 minutes of new music — targeting Drake in the last week, including three since Friday.

Each racked up millions of streams, and the three that were made available commercially — “Euphoria,” “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us” — are expected to land near the top of next week’s Billboard singles chart, while seeming to, at least momentarily, shift the public perception of Drake, long a maestro of the online public arena and meme ecosystem.

In between, on Friday night, Drake released his own broadside against Lamar — plus a smattering of other recent challengers — in a teasing Instagram interlude plus a three-part track and elaborate music video titled “Family Matters,” in which he referred to his rival as a fake activist and attempted to expose friction and alleged abuse in Lamar’s romantic relationship.

But that song was followed within half an hour by Lamar’s “Meet the Grahams,” an ominous extended address to the parents and young son of Drake, born Aubrey Graham, in which Lamar refers to his rival rapper as a liar and “pervert” who “should die” in order to make the world safer for women.

Lamar also seemed to assert that Drake had more than a decade ago fathered a secret daughter — echoing the big reveal of his son from Drake’s last headline rap beef — a claim Drake quickly denied on Instagram before hitting back in another song Sunday. (Neither man has addressed the full array of rapped allegations directly.)

How did two of the most famous artists in the world decide to take the gloves off and bring real-life venom into an extended sparring match for rap supremacy? It was weeks, months and years in the making, with a sudden, breakneck escalation into hip-hop infamy. Here’s a breakdown.

Why now?

Since late March, the much-anticipated head-to-head seemed inevitable. Following years of “will they or won’t they?” lyrical feints, Lamar hit directly on record first this year during a surprise appearance on the song “Like That” by Atlanta rapper Future and producer Metro Boomin, both formerly frequent Drake collaborators.

With audible disgust, Lamar invoked the track “First Person Shooter” from last year’s Drake album, “For All the Dogs,” in which a guest verse from J. Cole referred to himself, Drake and Lamar as “the big three” of modern MCs.

Lamar took exception to the grouping, declaring that there was no big three, “just big me.” He also called himself the Prince to Drake’s Michael Jackson — a deeper, more complex artist versus a troubled, pop-oriented hitmaker.

“Like That” spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, as Future and Metro Boomin released two chart-topping albums — “We Don’t Trust You” and “We Still Don’t Trust You” — that were anchored by a parade of Drake’s past associates, each of whom seemed to share a simmering distaste toward the rapper, who later called the ambush a “20 v. 1” fight.

In early April, J. Cole fought back momentarily, releasing the song “7 Minute Drill,” in which he called Lamar overrated, before backtracking, apologizing and having the song removed from streaming services. But Drake soon picked up the baton, releasing a wide-ranging dis track called “Push Ups” less than a week later that addressed the field, with a special focus on Lamar’s height, shoe size and supposedly disadvantageous business dealings.

Less than a week later, Drake mocked Lamar’s lack of a response on “Taylor Made Freestyle,” a track released only on social media. It featured Drake taunting Lamar for being scared to release music at the same time as Taylor Swift and using artificial intelligence voice filters to mimic Tupac and Snoop Dogg imploring Lamar to battle for the good of the West Coast.

“Since ‘Like That,’ your tone changed a little, you not as enthused,” Drake rapped in an abbreviated third verse, as himself. “How are you not in the booth? It feel like you kinda removed.” (“Taylor Made Freestyle” was later removed from the internet at the request of the Tupac estate.)

But it was a seemingly tossed-off line from the earlier “Push Ups” that included the name of Lamar’s longtime romantic partner — “I be with some bodyguards like Whitney” — that Lamar would later allude to as a red line crossed, making all subject matter fair game in the songs to come. (It was this same alleged faux pas that may have triggered an intensification of Drake’s beef with Pusha T in 2018.)

How we got here

Even with Drake-dissing cameos from Future, Ye (formerly Kanye West), Rick Ross, the Weeknd and ASAP Rocky, the main event was always going to be between Drake, 37, and Lamar, 36, who have spent more than a decade subtly antagonizing one another in songs while maintaining an icy frenemy rapport in public.

In 2011, when Drake introduced Lamar to mainstream audiences with a dedicated showcase on his second album, “Take Care,” and an opening slot on the subsequent arena tour, the tone was one of side-eying competition. “He said that he was the same age as myself/and it didn’t help ’cause it made me even more rude and impatient,” Lamar rapped on “Buried Alive Interlude” of his earliest encounter with a more-famous Drake. (On his Instagram on Friday, Drake released a parody of the track, citing Lamar’s jealousy since then.)

The pair went on to appear together on “Poetic Justice,” a single from Lamar’s debut album, “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City,” in 2012, as well as “___ Problems” by ASAP Rocky the same year.

But their collaborations ceased as Drake became his generation’s premier hitmaker across styles in hip-hop and beyond, while Lamar burrowed deeper into his own psyche on knotty concept albums that brought wide critical acclaim alongside less constant commercial success.

When asked, the two rappers tended to profess admiration for one another’s skill but seemed to trade subtle digs in verses over the years, always with plausible deniability and in the spirit of competition, leading to something of a hip-hop cold war.

The week it went nuclear

Lamar’s first targeted response, “Euphoria,” was more than six minutes long and released Tuesday morning. In three sections that raised the temperature as they built, he warned Drake about proceeding and insisted, somewhat facetiously, that things were still friendly. “Know you a master manipulator and habitual liar too,” Lamar rapped. “But don’t tell no lie about me and I won’t tell truths ’bout you.”

He accused the biracial Drake, who was born and raised in Toronto, of imitating Black American heritage and insulting him subliminally. “I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress,” Lamar said. “I hate the way that you sneak dis, if I catch flight, it’s gon’ be direct.” And he called Drake’s standing as a father into question: “Teachin’ him morals, integrity, discipline/listen, man, you don’t know nothin’ ’bout that.”

Days later, Lamar doubled down with an Instagram-only track called “6:16 in LA,” borrowing both Drake’s “Back to Back” dis tactic from his 2015 beef with Meek Mill and a song title structure lifted from what is known as Drake’s time-stamp series of raps. Opting for psychological warfare on a beat produced in part by Jack Antonoff, Swift’s chief collaborator, Lamar hinted that he had a mole in Drake’s operation and was aware of his opponent’s opposition research.

“Fake bully, I hate bullies, you must be a terrible person,” he rapped. “Everyone inside your team is whispering that you deserve it.”

That night, Drake’s “Family Matters” started with its own justification for getting personal — “You mentioned my seed, now deal with his dad/I gotta go bad, I gotta go bad” — before taking on Lamar’s fatherhood and standing as a man in excruciating detail. “They hired a crisis management team to clean up the fact that you beat on your queen,” Drake rapped. “The picture you painted ain’t what it seem/you’re dead.”

Yet in a chess move that seemed to anticipate Drake’s familial line of attack, Lamar’s “Meet the Grahams” was released almost immediately. “This supposed to be a good exhibition within the game,” Lamar said, noting that Drake had erred “the moment you called out my family’s name.” Instead of a rap battle, Lamar concluded after another six minutes of psychological dissection, “this a long life battle with yourself.”

He wasn’t done yet. Dispensing with subtlety, Lamar followed up again less than 24 hours later with “Not Like Us,” a bouncy club record in a Los Angeles style that delighted in more traditional rap beef territory, like juvenile insults, proudly unsubstantiated claims of sexual preferences and threats of violence.

Lamar, however, didn’t leave it at that, throwing one more shot at Drake’s authenticity as a rapper, calling him a greedy and artificial user as a collaborator — “not a colleague,” but a “colonizer.”

On Sunday evening, Drake responded yet again. On “The Heart Part 6,” a title taken from Lamar’s career-spanning series, Drake denied the accusation that he preyed on young women, indicated that he had planted the bad information about his fake daughter and seemed to sigh away the fight as “some good exercise.”

“It’s good to get out, get the pen working,” Drake said in an exhausted outro. “You would be a worthy competitor if I was really a predator.” He added, “You know, at least your fans are getting some raps out of you. I’m happy I could motivate you.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

He did not resist. He couldn’t. He was so gravely dehydrated he would be dead by their next shift change.

“I didn’t do anything,” Johnson moaned as they pressed a shield between his shoulders.

It was 1:19 p.m. on Sept. 6, 2019, in the Danville Correctional Center, a medium-security prison a few hours south of Chicago. Johnson, 21 and serving a short sentence for gun possession, was in the throes of a mental collapse that had gone largely untreated, but hardly unwatched.

He had entered in good health, with hopes of using the time to gain work skills. But for the previous three weeks, Johnson, who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, had refused to eat or take his medication. Most dangerous of all, he had stealthily stopped drinking water, hastening the physical collapse that often accompanies full-scale mental crises.

Johnson’s horrific downward spiral, which has not been previously reported, represents the larger failures of the nation’s prisons to care for the mentally ill. Many seriously ill people receive no treatment. For those who do, the outcome is often determined by the vigilance and commitment of individual supervisors and front-line staff, which vary greatly from system to system, prison to prison, and even shift to shift.

The country’s jails and prisons have become its largest provider of inpatient mental health treatment, with 10 times as many seriously mentally ill people now held behind bars as in hospitals. Estimating the population of incarcerated people with major psychological problems is difficult, but the number is likely 200,000 to 300,000, experts say.

Johnson’s mother has filed a wrongful-death suit against the state and Wexford Health Sources, a for-profit health care contractor in Illinois prisons. The New York Times reviewed more than 1,500 pages of reports, along with depositions taken from those involved. Together, they reveal a cascade of missteps, missed opportunities, potential breaches of protocol and, at times, lapses in common sense.

Prison officials and Wexford staff took few steps to intervene even after it became clear that Johnson, who had been hospitalized repeatedly for similar episodes and recovered, had refused to take medication. Most notably, they did not transfer him to a state prison facility that provides more intensive mental health treatment than is available at regular prisons, records show.

The quality of medical care was also questionable, said Johnson’s lawyers, Sarah Grady and Howard Kaplan, a married legal team in Chicago. Johnson lost 50 to 60 pounds during three weeks in solitary confinement, but officials did not initiate interventions like intravenous feedings or transfer him to a nonprison hospital.

And they did not take the most basic step — dialing 911 — until it was too late.

Markus Mison Johnson was born March 1, 1998, to a mother who believed she was not capable of caring for him.

Days after his birth, he was taken in by Lisa Barker Johnson, a foster mother in her 30s who lived in Zion, Illinois, a working-class city halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. Markus eventually became one of four children she adopted.

From the start, her bond with Markus was particularly powerful, in part because the two looked so much alike, with distinctive dimpled smiles. Many neighbors assumed he was her biological son. The middle name she chose for him was intended to convey that message.

“Mison is short for ‘my son,’” she said standing over his footstone grave last summer.

He was happy at home. School was different. His grades were good, but he was intensely shy and was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in elementary school.

He was hospitalized for the first time at 16, and given medications that stabilized him for stretches of time. But the crises would strike every six months or so, often triggered by his decision to stop taking his medication.

Family members say Markus wanted desperately to prove he was tough, and emulated his younger, reckless group of friends.

Like many of them, he obtained a pistol. He used it to hold up a convenience store clerk for $425 in January 2017, according to police records. He cut a plea deal for two years of probation.

In late July 2018, he was arrested in a neighbor’s garage with a handgun he later admitted was his. He was still on probation for the robbery, and his public defender negotiated a plea deal that would send him to state prison until January 2020.

Johnson saw prison as an opportunity to learn a trade so he could start a family when he got out.

On Dec. 18, 2018, he arrived at a processing center in Joliet, where he sat for an intake interview. He was coherent and cooperative, well-groomed and maintained eye contact. He was taking his medication, not suicidal and had a hearty appetite. He was listed as 5 feet, 6 inches tall and 256 pounds.

Johnson described his mood as “go with the flow.”

A few days later, after arriving in Danville, he offered a less settled assessment during a telehealth visit with a Wexford psychiatrist, Dr. Nitin Thapar. Johnson admitted to being plagued by feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness and “constant uncontrollable worrying” that affected his sleep.

At the time he was incarcerated, the basic options for mentally ill people in Illinois prisons included placement in the general population or transfer to a special residential treatment program at the Dixon Correctional Center, west of Chicago. Johnson seemed out of immediate danger, so he was assigned to a standard two-man cell in the prison’s general population, with regular mental health counseling and medication.

Then, in the spring of 2019, his grandmother died, sending him into a deep hole.

Johnson spent more time in bed, and became more surly.

By early August, he was telling guards he had stopped eating.

At some point, no one knows when, he had intermittently stopped drinking fluids.

Then came the crash.

On Aug. 12, Johnson got into a fight with his older cellmate.

He was taken to a one-man disciplinary cell. A few hours later, Wexford’s on-site mental health counselor, Melanie Easton, was shocked by his disoriented condition.

He was so unresponsive to her questions she could not finish the evaluation.

Easton ordered that he be moved to a 9-foot by 8-foot crisis cell — solitary confinement with enhanced monitoring. At this moment, a supervisor could have ticked the box for “residential treatment” on a form to transfer him to Dixon. That did not happen, according to records and depositions.

By mid-August, he said he was visualizing “people that were not there,” according to case notes. At first, he was acting more aggressively. But his energy ebbed, and he gradually migrated downward — from standing to bunk to floor.

Lt. Matthew Morrison, one of the few people at Danville to take a personal interest in Johnson, reported seeing a white rind around his mouth in early September.

On Sept. 5, they moved Johnson to one of six cells adjacent to the prison’s small, bare-bones infirmary. Prison officials placed him on the official hunger strike protocol.

Morrison, in his deposition, said he was troubled by the inaction of the Wexford staff, and the lack of urgency exhibited by the medical director, Dr. Justin Young.

On Sept. 5, Morrison approached Young to express his concerns, and the doctor agreed to order blood and urine tests. But Young lived in Chicago, and was on site at the prison about four times a week, according to Kaplan. Friday, Sept. 6, 2019, was not one of those days.

Morrison arrived at work that morning, expecting to find Johnson’s testing underway. A Wexford nurse told him Young believed the tests could wait.

Morrison, stunned, asked her to call Young.

“He’s good till Monday,” Young responded, according to Morrison.

“Come on, come on, look at this guy! You tell me this is OK!” the officer responded.

Eventually, Justin Duprey, a licensed nurse practitioner and the most senior Wexford employee on duty that day, authorized the test himself.

Morrison, thinking he had averted a disaster, entered the cell and implored Johnson into taking the tests. He refused.

So prison officials obtained approval to remove him forcibly from his cell.

What happened next is documented in video taken from cameras held by officers on the extraction team and obtained by the Times through a court order.

Johnson is scarcely recognizable as the neatly groomed 21-year-old captured in a cellphone picture a few months earlier. His skin is ashen, eyes fixed on the middle distance. He might be 40. Or 60.

Then they move him, half-conscious and limp, onto a wheelchair for the blood draw.

For the next 20 minutes, the Wexford nurse performing the procedure, Angelica Wachtor, jabs hands and arms to find a vessel that will hold shape.

She did not request assistance or discuss calling 911, records indicate.

Soon after, a member of the tactical team reminds Wachtor to take Johnson’s vitals before taking him back to his cell. She would later tell Young she had been unable to able to obtain his blood pressure.

Duprey, the nurse practitioner, had been sitting inside his office after corrections staff ordered him to shelter for his own protection, he said. When he emerged, he was let into Johnson’s cell. Finding no pulse, Duprey asked a prison employee to call 911.

The Wexford staff initiated CPR. It did not work.

At 3:38 p.m., the paramedics declared Markus Mison Johnson dead.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

El acuerdo podría anunciarse este mismo mes, según tres personas familiarizadas con el asunto, quienes no estaban autorizadas a hablar públicamente del acuerdo porque este aún no se ha confirmado de manera oficial. El acuerdo llega después de varios intentos fallidos para organizar una competencia que ha promovido el presidente de la FIFA, Gianni Infantino. Los planes de celebrarla en China en 2021 se hundieron a causa de la pandemia.

El valor del acuerdo podría ser tan bajo como una cuarta parte de los 4000 millones de dólares que la FIFA había estimado en un inicio, afirmaron las personas. No está claro si el acuerdo con Apple incluirá algún derecho de transmisión en señal abierta, es decir que todo el evento podría estar disponible tan solo para los suscriptores de Apple TV +, un factor por el que altos ejecutivos de la FIFA han expresado su preocupación.

Si se cierra el acuerdo, sería la primera vez que la FIFA, la cual organizará el primer Mundial varonil expandido de 48 equipos en Estados Unidos en 2026, acepta un único contrato mundial. También representaría la incursión más reciente de Apple en el fútbol, tras la firma en 2022 de un acuerdo de 10 años y 2500 millones de dólares por los derechos de emisión en continuo a nivel mundial de la Major League Soccer.

Los servicios de emisión en continuo se han interesado cada vez más en los deportes en directo, pues buscan atraer más suscriptores. Peacock transmitió un partido eliminatorio de la Liga Nacional de Fútbol Americano (NFL, por su sigla en inglés) la temporada pasada y Amazon Prime ha transmitido los partidos de los jueves por la noche de la NFL desde 2022.

Apple también tiene un acuerdo para transmitir partidos de las Grandes Ligas. Netflix se centra más en documentales deportivos, aunque hace poco incursionó en la “programación deportiva adyacente” en directo, incluido un acuerdo multimillonario para transmitir el programa semanal insignia de lucha libre de World Wrestling Entertainment, “Raw”. También anunció que en julio iba a transmitir una pelea de boxeo entre el excampeón de los pesos pesados Mike Tyson y el influente de redes sociales Jake Paul.

La FIFA esperaba que el torneo, el cual contará con una mezcla de equipos exitosos de todo el mundo, incluidos doce de Europa, donde juega la mayoría de los mejores talentos del mundo, creara una enorme demanda de las cadenas de televisión y los socios comerciales. Sin embargo, una combinación de mala planificación y retrasos provocaron que las cadenas rechazaran las cifras que buscaba la FIFA. Hasta ahora, los patrocinadores también han sido reacios a comprometerse con los 150 millones de dólares que la organización busca para paquetes de patrocinio, según las personas.

Un acuerdo global con una gran empresa como Apple puede darle al torneo, el cual se jugará cada cuatro años, el chapado de alta calidad que Infantino ha estado intentado asegurar. Tom Neumayr, vocero de Apple, se rehusó a ofrecer comentarios. “Como práctica general, la FIFA no confirma ni desmiente las discusiones comerciales”, mencionó la FIFA en un comunicado.

Del 15 de junio al 13 de julio de 2025, es el momento que la FIFA apartó para que se dispute el torneo. Esas fechas llegan después de la larga temporada europea y durante mucho tiempo ha sido una época en la que no se celebran grandes eventos para permitirles descansar a los jugadores entre temporadas un año antes del Mundial. Los sindicatos de jugadores han criticado a la FIFA por no consultarles antes de anunciar el evento.

La FIFA también enfrenta costos significativos al celebrar el evento en Estados Unidos, donde servirá de calentamiento para la Copa del Mundo. Algunos partidos se disputarán en grandes estadios, incluidos los de la NFL, que se deben rentar. La FIFA esperaba conseguir patrocinadores importantes que estuvieran dispuestos a pagar los 100 millones de dólares que desembolsan por cada ciclo los patrocinadores de la Copa del Mundo, pero a falta de poco más de un año, no se ha anunciado ningún patrocinador principal para el evento.

El acuerdo debe cerrarse pronto para que se pueda anunciar antes de las reuniones publicitarias a realizarse a finales del mes que viene, durante las cuales las empresas de entretenimiento intentan atraer a los anunciantes con el tema de la programación futura.

Los clubes europeos han presionado durante meses a la FIFA para obtener detalles concretos del evento, incluidas las ciudades donde se celebrará e incluso el nombre del mismo. La FIFA había dicho que el evento se iba a llamar Mundial de Clubes FIFA, pero ahora se les comunicó a los equipos que se está revisando el nombre.

“People who have never seen it before, the first words out of their mouth after the totality ends is ‘I’ve got to see another one, this is incredible, this is unbelievable.’ That is when you become addicted to these things and end up traveling no matter where the next one is,” said Joseph Rao, an eclipse chaser and guest lecturer at the Hayden Planetarium in New York.

So, if like Rao, you’ve developed a raging case of umbraphilia — the love of eclipses — you’ll have three chances over the next four years to see the moon blot out the sun. The first, on Aug. 12, 2026, will start above Greenland, then strafe the west coast of Iceland and move along the Atlantic Ocean and over Spain. Almost a year later, on Aug. 2, 2027, another will skirt the Mediterranean coast of North Africa then cross Egypt and part of the Arabian Peninsula. The third, on July 22, 2028, will cut across Australia and the southern tip of New Zealand.

Last week, as Victoria Sahami, the owner of Sirius Travel, was preparing to guide a group of tourists in Mazatlán, Mexico, for April’s big event, she was also planning for these other upcoming eclipses. Sahami joined the ranks of the eclipse-obsessed when she witnessed one in Venezuela in the 1990s. “Like many people, I was hooked. There was no going back,” she said.

Total solar eclipses happen fairly regularly — about every one to two years — in locations scattered around the world. “That’s the great thing about them: You wind up in places that you don’t normally go,” Sahami said.

A major spoiler is weather, which will be a big variable in the 2026 eclipse — one Greenland, Iceland and Spain will see.

“Iceland normally has a lot of cloud during that time of year,” said Paul Maley, who runs Ring of Fire Expeditions. “The data shows Spain to have the higher good-weather prospects of all three. However, the sun is low in the sky and the eclipse ends as the sun hits the horizon at sunset.”

Because of Iceland’s mercurial meteorology, Ring of Fire Expeditions is going all in on Spain, with a 10-day excursion on the mainland. Sirius Travel is offering not only a five-day trip to Majorca but also an eight-day tour around Iceland. It will be based in Reykjavik, and the itinerary will remain flexible on the day of the eclipse so the tour can easily pivot toward the location with the least cloud cover. Sahami recommends the trip for those who already have a few eclipses under their belt and would be happy just to take in the sights of Iceland if the weather doesn’t cooperate.

The 2027 eclipse, on the other hand, promises to be truly stellar: Luxor, Egypt — the site of numerous ancient temples as well as the Valleys of the Kings and Queens — sits right in the middle of the path of totality and will be bathed in darkness for a full 6 minutes 23 seconds. Weather-wise, it is what Sahami called “a slam dunk.” “You know you’re going to see it. You know that you’re not going to get any clouds,” she said.

But for all its potential, those considering Egypt should be aware that the State Department has a Level 3 “Reconsider Travel” warning for the country because of the risk of terrorism.

The 2028 eclipse will darken the skies over Sydney, Australia, for 3 minutes 49 seconds. It will be the first time the city has experienced a total solar eclipse since 1857. Sahami has her eyes on a trip based out of there, while Maley has chartered a cruise ship off the northwest coast of Australia. It will be winter there, he said, but that isn’t likely to mean bad eclipse-viewing weather.

If you want to see any (or all) of these eclipses, you should get started on planning and booking now, particularly if you want to sign up for a trip organized by a tour company. One of Sirius Travel’s excursions to Luxor is already full.

Scrutinize refund policies and look into insuring your trip. Several companies will fully refund your deposit if you cancel a year in advance. A lot can happen, Sahami said, “but if you think you’re going to go, why not?”

As the war in the Gaza Strip has escalated, universities have been caught in an often vitriolic debate over how to handle the protests, which many Jewish students and alumni say have often veered into antisemitism and instilled fear on campus. University leaders have also faced pressure from Republican lawmakers demanding they do more to quash speech that they say encourages violence against Jews.

Demonstrators and their faculty supporters say that these demands are intended to suppress their political speech and support for the Palestinian cause.

Several institutions have cracked down on pro-Palestinian protests and encampments. On April 18, Columbia University’s president called the police to clear out the encampment on its New York City campus, just a day after she vowed to members of Congress that the university would discipline some protesters. Over 100 protesters were arrested that night.

That move backfired. Students across the country protested and started their own encampments in solidarity with the arrested students. And at Columbia, student protesters simply reestablished the encampment, with dozens of tents lined up on the campus lawn.

At nearly 20 universities, police moved in and detained protesters, leading to more than 800 arrests so far. Scores of students have been suspended or threatened with disciplinary action. And yet, many protests have continued.

Here’s what to know about the protests sprawling across American college campuses.

Why are students protesting?

Most immediately, protesters are demanding an end to Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians.

Students are also calling on their colleges and universities to divest from, or cut financial ties with, Israel or companies profiting from its invasion of Gaza. The means and scope differ, however. Some students at Yale and Cornell are demanding their schools to stop investing in weapons manufacturers.

Students at Columbia want their school to sell holdings in Google, which has a large contract with the Israeli government, and Airbnb, which allows listings in Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank.

Students have drawn parallels between the current movement and activism in the 1980s, when protesters targeted companies that did business with South Africa while it was under apartheid rule. Columbia made headlines then, too, when it sold $39 million of stock it held in companies including Coca-Cola, Ford Motor and Mobil Oil following weeks of sit-in protests from students on its campus.

Where are the protests happening?

The new wave of protests has taken hold coast to coast, including at Yale, the University of Southern California, Emory University, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Minnesota.

On many campuses — including Brown, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, Virginia Tech and Emerson College — students set up encampments similar to the one at Columbia, and called them “Gaza solidarity encampment” or “Liberated zone.”

How have schools reacted to the protests?

Many protests have been peaceful, and most university leaders have allowed the protests to play out.

But pro-Israel students have said the encampments are fueling antisemitism, and that their universities are not doing enough to protect their safety on campus.

Since Columbia’s crackdown, there have been arrests at schools including Washington University in St. Louis, Northeastern University in Boston and Arizona State University in Tempe.

Most arrests have occurred without much resistance. But some clashes between police and protesters have grown more intense, and there were some reports of injuries. At Emory University, for instance, police used a “chemical irritant” to disperse the demonstrators and ultimately arrested 28 people.

Schools like Harvard and Cornell have tried other approaches to clear out protests. At Harvard, access to Harvard Yard was restricted to those with a university ID. Harvard also suspended a pro-Palestinian group, saying that it had held an unauthorized demonstration. Nonetheless, some protesters have set up encampments, which are still standing after several days, despite warnings from officials.

Cornell said it had suspended some students connected with the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus but declined to provide a number.

And last week, the University of Southern California canceled its main stage graduation ceremony, citing security risks. The school had arrested more than 93 protesters and canceled its plans for a graduation speech by this year’s valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, who is Muslim.

How have the students responded?

Many student activists have remained defiant, even as colleges try to restrict their demonstrations.

In several cases, students have brought back encampments that were cleared out earlier in the week — or even earlier this year, in Stanford’s case. An encampment there was taken down in February, but recent protests inspired students to resurrect it in late April.

College newspapers’ editorial boards have also objected to the response by university officials and defended the rights of students to speak out. They have been particularly vocal about the threats of harassment and doxxing, which they say are stifling free speech.

At Columbia, some Jewish students said they felt targeted and unsafe after encountering separate protests outside of the campus gates by loud, aggressive demonstrators who seemed to be unaffiliated with the university. Antisemitic chanting has been captured in video and pictures, both inside and outside the campus, and the students called on the administration to do more to curb such acts.

Last week, Columbia barred from campus Khymani James, a leader of the pro-Palestinian encampment, after a January video of his saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live” resurfaced. The university did not make clear if he had been suspended or expelled.