Tag: usnews

In May 1972, the Chicago police raided a high-rise apartment where a group called the Jane Collective was providing abortions. It was the year before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision gave women the constitutional right to decide whether to give birth, and abortion was a criminal offense in Illinois.

Seven women were arrested, including two who had the names and addresses of patients on index cards in their purses. According to a history written by a member of the collective, “The Story of Jane,” the women destroyed the cards in the police van on the way to the station, tearing them into small pieces and eating some of them. They didn’t know what the police might do with the information, so they got rid of it.

Fifty years later, the Supreme Court has overturned the Roe decision. Abortions will be banned or seriously limited in much of the country. But now, thanks to the digital trails left behind in the modern technological age, it will be far harder to hide incriminating data about a decision to end a pregnancy.

When a draft of the court’s decision was first leaked in May, and then when the ruling became official last week, people focused on these digital trails, specifically the information that millions of women share about their menstrual cycles on period tracker apps. The knee-jerk advice was simple and direct: Delete them all. Immediately.

“Delete those fertility apps now,” tweeted Gina Neff, a sociologist and director of the Minderoo Center for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge. In an interview over Zoom, Dr. Neff said the apps contained “powerful information about reproductive choices that’s now a threat.”

These apps allow users to record the dates of their menstrual cycles and get predictions about when they are ovulating and most fertile. The apps can also serve as digital diaries for sexual activity, birth control methods and conception attempts. Some women use the apps when they are trying to get pregnant, others to avoid it and many just to know when their next period is coming.

The exhortations to get rid of them seem to have had the opposite effect. According to Data.ai, which monitors app store activity, the downloads of period tracking apps doubled in the days since Roe was overturned, compared with average weekly downloads in the three previous months.

The biggest gainers were Clue and a little-known astronomy-based period tracker, Stardust, both of which made public commitments to data protection after the Supreme Court’s decision. A spokeswoman for Clue said the company, which is based in Europe, would not comply with requests for users’ health information from U.S. law enforcement.

While period trackers seem like an obvious source of information about reproductive health decisions, experts say other digital information is more likely to put women at risk. Cynthia Conti-Cook, a civil rights lawyer and technology fellow at the Ford Foundation, researched prosecutions of pregnant people accused of feticide or endangering their fetuses, cataloging the digital evidence used against them in an academic paper she published in 2020.

“We should start with the types of data that have already been used to criminalize people,” said Ms. Conti-Cook, who previously worked in a public defenders’ office in New York. “The text to your sister that says, ‘Expletive, I’m pregnant.’ The search history for abortion pills or the visitation of websites that have information about abortion.”

One of the cases Ms. Conti-Cook highlighted was that of Latice Fisher, a Mississippi woman who was charged with second-degree murder after a stillbirth at home in 2017. According to a local report, investigators downloaded the contents of her phone, including her internet search history, and she “admitted to conducting internet searches, including how to induce a miscarriage” and how to buy pregnancy-terminating medicine like mifepristone and misoprostol online. After significant public attention, the case against Ms. Fisher was dropped.

In another case, in Indiana, text messages to a friend about taking abortion pills late in a pregnancy were used to convict Purvi Patel, who successfully appealed and reduced a 20-year sentence for feticide and neglect of a dependent.

“Those text messages, those websites visited, those Google searches are the exact type of intent evidence that prosecutors want to fill their bag of evidence,” Ms. Conti-Cook said.

Investigators could also potentially use smartphone location data if states pass laws forbidding women to travel to areas where abortion is legal. Information about people’s movements, collected via apps on their phones, is regularly sold by data brokers.

When The New York Times investigated the supposedly anonymized data on the market in 2018, it was able to identify a woman who had spent an hour at a Planned Parenthood in Newark. In May, a journalist at Vice was able to buy information from a data broker about phones that had been carried to Planned Parenthoods over the course of a week for just $160. (After Vice’s report, the data broker said it planned to cease selling data about visits to the health provider.)

In the past, anti-abortion activists have “geofenced” Planned Parenthoods, creating a digital border around them and targeting phones that enter the area with ads directing owners to a website meant to dissuade women from ending their pregnancies.

There are similar attempts to capture the attention of people who go online to seek help with abortions. “Pregnancy crisis centers” aim to be at the top of Google search results when people seek information about how to end a pregnancy. When someone clicks through to such a website, it will sometimes try to collect information about the person.

Given the many ways in which people’s movements, communications and internet searches are digitally tracked, the bigger question may be just how zealous law enforcement will be in states with abortion bans. Those advising against the use of period trackers appear to fear the worst: dragnet-style searches for anyone who was pregnant and then ceased to be.

“It’s hard to say what will happen where and how and when, but the possibilities are pretty perilous,” Ms. Conti-Cook said. “It can be very easy to be overwhelmed by all the possibilities, which is why I try to emphasize focusing on what we have seen used against people.”

She added: “Google searches, websites visited, email receipts. That’s what we’ve seen.”

WASHINGTON — She is an American professional basketball star, accused of carrying hashish oil in her luggage.

He is a notorious Russian arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death,” serving a 25-year federal prison sentence for conspiring to sell weapons to people who said they planned to kill Americans.

And the Kremlin appears interested in linking their fates, in a potential deal with the Biden administration that would free both.

The vast disparity between the cases of Brittney Griner and Viktor Bout highlights the extreme difficulty President Biden would face if he sought a prisoner exchange to free Ms. Griner, the detained W.N.B.A. player, from detention in Moscow. The Biden administration, reluctant to create an incentive for the arrest or abduction of Americans abroad, would be hard-pressed to justify the release of a villainous figure like Mr. Bout.

At the same time, Mr. Biden is under pressure to free Ms. Griner, who was arrested at a Moscow-area airport in February and whom the State Department classified in May as “wrongfully detained.” That reflects concern that the Kremlin considers her leverage in the tense confrontation between the United States and Russia over Ukraine. Last week, dozens of groups representing people of color, women and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans sent a letter urging Mr. Biden to “make a deal to get Brittney back home to America immediately and safely.”

Ms. Griner’s trial started on Friday was adjourned until next Thursday.

Mr. Bout, 55, a former Soviet military officer who made a fortune in global arms trafficking before he was caught in a federal sting operation, could be the price for any deal. Russian officials have pressed Mr. Bout’s case for years, and in recent weeks Russian media outlets have directly linked his case to Ms. Griner’s. Some, including the state-owned Tass news service, have even claimed that talks with Washington for a possible exchange are already underway, something that U.S. officials will not confirm.

Mr. Bout’s New York-based lawyer, Steve Zissou, said in an interview that Russian officials are pressing to free Mr. Bout, who was convicted in 2011 of offering to sell weapons, including antiaircraft missiles, to federal agents posing as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Mr. Zissou said that he met with Anatoly I. Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, in June in Washington and that Mr. Antonov told him the release of Mr. Bout was a very high priority for the Russian government.

“It has been communicated to the American side very clearly that they’re going to have to get real on Viktor Bout if they expect any further prisoner exchanges,” Mr. Zissou said. “My sense of this is that no American is going home unless Viktor Bout is sent home with them.”

U.S. officials have declined to substantiate that notion and won’t discuss any potential deal to free Ms. Griner. The State Department as a matter of practice dismisses questions about prisoner exchanges around the world, warning that they set a dangerous precedent.

“Using wrongful detention as a bargaining chip represents a threat to the safety of everyone traveling, working and living abroad,” the department’s spokesman, Ned Price, recently said.

Better Understand the Russia-Ukraine WarHistory and Background: Here’s what to know about Russia and Ukraine’s relationship and the causes of the conflict.How the Battle Is Unfolding: Russian and Ukrainian forces are using a bevy of weapons as a deadly war of attrition grinds on in eastern Ukraine.Russia’s Brutal Strategy: An analysis of more than 1,000 photos found that Russia has used hundreds of weapons in Ukraine that are widely banned by international treaties.Outside Pressures: Governments, sports organizations and businesses are taking steps to punish Russia. Here are some of the sanctions adopted so far and a list of companies that have pulled out of the country.Stay Updated: To receive the latest updates on the war in your inbox, sign up here. The Times has also launched a Telegram channel to make its journalism more accessible around the world.

Mr. Biden did agree to a prisoner exchange in April, in which Russia released Trevor Reed, a former U.S. Marine from Texas who had been held since 2019 on charges of assaulting two police officers. The United States in return freed Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot sentenced in 2011 to 20 years in prison for drug smuggling. But White House officials stressed that Mr. Reed’s failing health made his case exceptional.

Many people have expressed support for Ms. Griner, a star athlete and basketball icon. Less obvious is the Russian government’s solidarity with an organized crime titan linked to terrorists and war criminals. In December, a government building in Moscow exhibited two dozen of Mr. Bout’s pencil sketches and other artwork produced from his cell in a federal penitentiary building near Marion, Ill.

By the time of his arrest in 2008, Mr. Bout (pronounced “boot”) was so known that an arms-trafficking character played by Nicolas Cage in the 2005 film “Lord of War” was based on his life.

Live Updates: Russia-Ukraine WarUpdated July 1, 2022, 9:40 a.m. ETMariupol’s drama company prepares to perform again.Russia becomes India’s top oil supplier.Gray walls, books and a Lenin monument: A look inside the facility where Griner has been detained.

Born in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, he attended a Russian military college and served as a Soviet air force officer.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr. Bout began making money ferrying cargo between continents. U.S. officials say he soon became one of the world’s top arms dealers, transporting weapons from the former Soviet military in Ilyushin transport planes, with a particularly lucrative business in war-torn African countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone. Mr. Bout denies that he knowingly trafficked arms.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the United States and European nations were sure that Mr. Bout’s weapons shipments were not only fueling death and misery but also violating United Nations arms embargoes. They were particularly alarmed by intelligence suggesting he may have done business with the Afghan Taliban and even Al Qaeda, charges he denies.

Eventually, the United States lured Mr. Bout into a trap. In 2008, a pair of Drug Enforcement Administration agents posing as members of Colombia’s leftist FARC rebel group arranged a meeting in Bangkok with Mr. Bout to buy weapons including 30,000 AK-47 rifles, plastic explosives and surface-to-air missiles for use against Colombia’s government and the American military personnel supporting its campaign against the FARC.

“Viktor Bout was ready to sell a weapons arsenal that would be the envy of some small countries,” Preet Bharara, then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said after his conviction. “He aimed to sell those weapons to terrorists for the purpose of killing Americans.”

The FARC’s official status at the time as a foreign terrorist organization meant that Mr. Bout drew a mandatory federal minimum sentence of 25 years.

One former U.S. official familiar with Mr. Bout’s situation said the Russian government’s interest in his freedom appeared to be personal and that he has ties to powerful people close to President Vladimir V. Putin.

Another former American official pointed to a somewhat more principled reason: Mr. Bout was arrested in Thailand and extradited from there to New York. Russian officials have complained about what they call the growing “practice used by the U.S. of actually hunting down our citizens abroad and arresting them in other nations,” as Grigory Lukyantsev, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s commissioner for human rights, said in August, according to the Russian news outlet RT.

The first former U.S. official said it was highly unlikely that, given the magnitude of his crimes, Mr. Bout would be freed in any deal for Ms. Griner — even if, as some have speculated, the trade were to include Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine imprisoned in Moscow since December 2018 on espionage charges. The former official said Russia had sought Mr. Bout’s release in even higher-profile cases in the past and had been firmly rejected.

Both former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss their knowledge of Mr. Bout’s case publicly.

Danielle Gilbert, an assistant professor of military and strategic studies at the U.S. Air Force Academy who specializes in hostage diplomacy, agreed that releasing Mr. Bout would be a difficult political proposition. But she did not rule out the idea. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re at least considering the possibility,” she said, noting that she does not speak for the U.S. government.

Mr. Bout has at least one advocate for his release in the United States: Shira A. Scheindlin, the judge who presided over his case. In an interview, Ms. Scheindlin said that swapping Mr. Bout for Ms. Griner would be inappropriate, given the scale of his offense in relation to her alleged violation.

But she said a deal that also included Mr. Whelan might even the scales. Mr. Bout has already served 11 years in prison, she noted, saying that “he was not a terrorist, in my opinion. He was a businessman.” Although she was required to impose his mandatory 25-year sentence, she added: “I thought it was too high at the time.”

“So, having served as long as he has, I think the United States’ interest in punishing him has been satisfied,” she said, “and it would not be a bad equation to send him back if we get back these people who are important to us.”

Even if the United States were open to such a deal, Mr. Zissou said it would not be imminent. He said he believed that Russia — which insists Ms. Griner faces legitimate charges and is not a political pawn — was determined to complete her trial before negotiating her release. “And that is likely to take a few months,” he said.

ARGYLE, Texas — Two days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a 27-year-old woman delivered her fourth child, a boy she named Cason. Born after his mother fled from domestic abuse and was denied an abortion, he is among the first of many post-Roe babies expected in Texas.

“I love my kids and I feel like I’m a really good mom,” said Cason’s mother, who asked to be identified by her first initial, T. “But due to this pregnancy, I couldn’t provide for them.”

One in 10 people of reproductive age in America lives in Texas, which will soon join half of all the states in outlawing almost all abortions. Texas’s conservative leadership has spent decades narrowing abortion access while cutting social spending and publicly-funded health care. Now, even some anti-abortion adherents say their state is woefully unprepared for a likely surge in births among poor women.

The overturning of Roe “creates the sense of urgency that now will create, hopefully, the resources. But unfortunately, there’s that gap,” said Aubrey Schlackman, founder of Blue Haven Ranch, an anti-abortion nonprofit that is providing housing and other assistance for T.’s family.

“We do want to limit abortions,” Ms. Schlackman continued. “But we personally weren’t ready to handle an influx, and I know so many of the other nonprofits that we work with aren’t ready for that, either.”

Texas is one of the most dangerous states in the nation to have a baby. The state’s maternal mortality rate is one of the worst in the country, with Black women making up a disproportionate share of deaths. The state’s infant mortality rate, at more than five deaths per thousand births in 2020, translates into nearly 2,000 infant deaths annually.

Texas opted not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which helped lead to hospital closures and the formation of rural health care “deserts,” where obstetricians are scarce and prenatal care scarcer still. More than a quarter of women of childbearing age are uninsured, the highest rate in the nation. Medicaid covers low-income women through pregnancy and for two months postpartum, compared with 12 months in most states.

A proposal in the Texas House to expand postpartum coverage to 12 months was cut to six months by the State Senate. Tens of thousands of children born to low-income parents languish on the waiting list for subsidized child care.

In September of last year Texas passed Senate Bill 8, banning abortions for patients with detectable embryonic cardiac activity, which generally begins at about six weeks. A recent Times analysis suggests that Texas’s abortion rate declined by only 10 percent after the bill passed, as more women traveled out of state or ordered medication abortions by mail. But poor patients often lack those options.

From Opinion: The End of Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s decision to end ​​the constitutional right to abortion.Michelle Goldberg: “In the aftermath of the anti-abortion movement’s catastrophic victory, it’s worth asking what we can learn from their tactics.”Maureen Dowd: “The court is out of control. We feel powerless to do anything about it. Clarence Thomas, of all people, has helped lead us to where we are.”Peter Coy: “People on the losing end of Supreme Court decisions increasingly feel that justice is not being served. That’s a scary situation for American democracy.”Jamelle Bouie: “The power to check the Supreme Court is there, in the Constitution. The task now is to seize it.”Michele Goodwin, law professor: “The overturning of Roe v. Wade reveals the Supreme Court’s neglectful reading of the amendments that abolished slavery.”

“Assuming just 10 percent of women aren’t able to to secure an abortion, that’s a massive rise in fertility,” said Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who studies religious liberty, health law and equality.

“There’s no way there are any institutions prepared to meet that demand.”

Three years ago, T. was a bookkeeper for a chain of fitness centers. At $36 an hour, it was the best-paying job she had ever held. She was proud to become her family’s main breadwinner after her partner, whom she has been with since high school, lost his construction job during the pandemic. But early in her pregnancy with Cason, she developed complications that eventually forced her to quit her job.

The family economized, moving into smaller and smaller homes until late last year, when they finally had to move in with the mother of her partner. The couple were unloading their belongings, with their infant daughter in her stroller nearby, when “he snapped on me,” T. said. Her partner choked her, she said, until she lost consciousness. When she was revived by a stranger she had trouble speaking, and a ring of bruises circled her neck. Terrified for her children, she fled the next morning to a shelter for domestic violence victims, she said.

She said she had never sought an abortion before. But the prospect of raising four young children on her own, and of giving birth alone, filled T. with desperation. She agonized about the needs of her three children, and about sacrifices. “If I do this, I will make sure they’re always good, are always taken care of,” she said she recalled thinking.

“It was a very difficult decision, but I felt like it was a smart one for me.”

Her sister drove her to Southwestern Women’s Surgery Center, an abortion provider in Dallas. But Texas had just enacted Senate Bill 8, and the providers told T. that she was about seven weeks pregnant — too far along for an abortion in Texas. Could she travel to New Mexico? In the waiting room, T. sobbed. The trip was impossible. She had no money, and so few child care options that she had brought her baby daughter with her to the appointment. She didn’t know about medication abortion.

T. rejoined her sister, who was waiting in the parking lot. She was sitting in the car, distraught, when an anti-abortion “sidewalk counselor” approached.

“‘You are not alone. If you are pregnant and you need help, we can help you,’” the sidewalk counselor told her, T. recalled.

“I just started crying,’’ T. said, “in a sense of relief.”

The next day the woman T. had met in the parking lot guided her to Birth Choice, an anti-abortion pregnancy resource center located in the same office complex as the abortion provider.

Some anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers have come under scrutiny for misleading or misinforming women seeking abortion care. But in that moment, “They asked me the perfect questions,” T. said of the Birth Choice counselor. “Am I OK? Are my kids doing OK? What did I need?

“Mind you, I had left everything,” she said. “They provided me with everything right there: baby bag, diapers, formula, clothes for me. They even gave me a couple of little clothes for my daughter and a toy,” T. said.

“Then my counselor comes back and says, ‘I found you a place.’”

The place was Blue Haven Ranch, based in Argyle, about 45 minutes from Dallas.

Blue Haven provides housing, help with household bills, job training, and financial and other counseling for a up to a year or more after delivery for pregnant women with existing children. Among Americans who seek abortion care, 60 percent are already mothers, and half have two or more children. Most are in their late 20s, and poor.

Ms. Schlackman, 34, a former dental hygienist, evangelical Christian and mother of two, founded Blue Haven in 2020.

She grew up believing that women seek abortion care for the sake of convenience. “Now I can understand why they would choose it,” she said.

Ms. Schlackman requires women to attend group informational sessions with a strong religious component in a community church on Monday nights. Blue Haven does not seek money from the government or anyone else that might question its religious approach. It takes in donations from abortion rights supporters as well as opponents, Ms. Schlackman said, reading a note from one, who sent $50: “‘I don’t share your beliefs about abortion and Christianity, but I do hope you’ll use your strength to encourage similar initiatives elsewhere.’”

Blue Haven supports five families, and there are 12 on the waiting list. The cost is about $2,500 per family per month for housing and utilities, plus gas and unexpected household expenses. A financier in Boston who read about Blue Haven and offered to help recently negotiated a deal on a used car for a mother with a poor credit score.

Currently there is no ranch; the families live in rented apartments. Ms. Schlackman and her husband Bryan have plans to buy a patch of rolling acreage outside Denton, Tex., and build a compound with small homes, a meeting house and group kitchen, plus open spaces and livestock for “farm therapy.”

Standing in the wheat field where she envisions the houses will stand, Ms. Schlackman estimated that she would need to raise $13 million for the land, construction and three years’ operating funds. After Roe was overturned, Blue Haven received $25,000 in donations in two days.

Its focus on the Bible and emphasis on Christian family ideals make some Blue Haven mothers uncomfortable. But for T., the group offered a lifeline in a time of dwindling options. One recent Monday night she attended a group session while her children played on the church’s pristine playground, supervised by grandparent volunteers. Other volunteers laid out a communal supper.

Blue Haven threw a baby shower for T., and its supporters bought everything on a registry that Ms. Schlackman created. (T. chose a zoo animal theme for her son’s layette, in shades of blue and green.) When Cason was born Ms. Schlackman was there, attending to T. in the spalike birthing center where she had delivered her own sons.

Blue Haven’s assistance will end about a year after Cason’s first birthday.

“The pressure is really on,’’ T. said on a Thursday, four days after she gave birth to Cason. “I have one year to rebuild my life while my body heals, and four kids to take care of at the same time. It’s scary. I try not to think about what will happen when I leave the program. I know I can be a great mom, its just, can I provide for my children, keep the kids healthy and safe and have a roof over our head, and food?”

She is hoping, she said, to get another job as a bookkeeper and eventually move into her own home.

She said she has a message for the Texas Legislature.

“You don’t know what is best for any family, you didn’t protect me or my kids. I protect my kids. Only a mom can know what is best for herself and her family. And if you’re going to force women to have all of these babies that they are not equipped to have, then you need to provide support for women and their children after the babies are born.”

Earlier in the week, just a day and a half after giving birth, T. had something else to say.

“Women, all we really have is our dignity and our voices,’’ she said. “And you’re taking them away.”

Erin Schaff contributed reporting from Argyle, and Margot Sanger-Katz from Washington.

HAILEY, Idaho — Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, flies in a Gulfstream G650. So do Jeff Bezos and Dan Schulman, PayPal’s chief executive. The jets, roughly 470 of which are in operation, retail for about $75 million each.

Most days, those planes are spread out, ferrying captains of industry to meetings around the globe. But for one week in July, some of them converge on a single 100-foot-wide asphalt runway beside the jagged hills of Idaho’s Wood River Valley.

The occasion is the annual Sun Valley conference, a shoulder-rubbing bonanza organized by the secretive investment bank Allen & Company. Known as “summer camp for billionaires,” the conference kicks off this year on Tuesday, and it draws industry titans and their families — some of whom are watched over by local babysitters bound by nondisclosure agreements. In between organized hikes and fly-fishing at past gatherings, there have been sessions on creativity, climate change and immigration reform.

For decades at these secluded gatherings, chief executives and board chairmen have made deals that have shaped the TV we watch, the news we consume and the products we buy. It is where, near the ninth hole of the golf course, the head of General Electric expressed interest in selling NBC to Comcast. It is where Mr. Bezos met with the owner of The Washington Post before agreeing to buy the paper, and where Disney pursued a plan to purchase ABC — with Warren Buffett at the center of the discussions.

It is also the biggest week of the year for Chris Pomeroy, the director of Friedman Memorial Airport and the man responsible for making sure all the moguls come and go smoothly.

In the months before the conference starts, Mr. Pomeroy prepares to play a high-stakes, three-dimensionsional game of Tetris with multimillion-dollar private jets as attendees travel to Sun Valley, a resort town with a year-round population of 1,800.

During a 24-hour period last year as the conference began, more than 300 flights passed through Friedman Memorial Airport in Hailey, a small town near Sun Valley, according to data from Flightradar24, an industry data firm. They ranged from tiny propeller planes to long-wing commercial jets. By comparison, two weeks ago, when Mr. Pomeroy gave me a brief tour of the airport, just 44 flights took off or landed there over 24 hours, according to the data firm.

“This is empty right now,” Mr. Pomeroy said, smoothly steering his white 2014 Ford Explorer (what he calls his “mobile command center”) past a swath of freshly paved asphalt. “But in the summer, and during the event in particular, there’s airplanes parked everywhere up here.”

Much like the activities of the conference, elements of the travel there are shrouded in secrecy. Many jets flying in are registered to obscure owners and limited liability companies, some with only winking references to their passengers. The jet that carried Mr. Kraft last year, for example, is registered under “Airkraft One Trust,” according to records from the Federal Aviation Administration. The plane that Mr. Bezos flew in on is registered to Poplar Glen, a Seattle firm.

Representatives for Mr. Kraft and Mr. Bezos declined to comment. Mr. Bezos is not expected to turn up at Sun Valley this year, according to an advance list of guests that was obtained by The New York Times.

Mr. Pomeroy plans well in advance to deal with the intense air traffic generated by the conference, which he refers to obliquely as “the annual fly-in event.” Without proper organization, flocks of private jets could stack up in the airspace around Friedman, creating delays and diversions while pilots burn precious fuel.

That was the case for the 2016 conference, which coincided with Mr. Pomeroy’s first week on the job. That year, some aircraft circled overhead or sat on the tarmac for more than an hour and a half, waiting for the airspace and runway to clear.

Business & Economy: Latest UpdatesUpdated June 30, 2022, 4:38 p.m. ETA former hedge fund star wins a record $52 million in a defamation case.Regulator in Puerto Rico suspends operations of Euro Pacific Bank.Today in On Tech: Post-Roe, her Facebook group went viral.

“I saw airplanes literally lined up to take off from the north end of the field almost all the way down to the south end of the field,” Mr. Pomeroy said, referring to the 7,550-foot runway. “Tail to nose, all the way up the taxiway.”

After that episode, Mr. Pomeroy enlisted Greg Dyer, a former district manager at the F.A.A., to help unclutter the tarmac. The two coordinated with an F.A.A. hub in Salt Lake City to line up flights, sometimes 300 to 500 miles outside Sun Valley. For some flights, the staging begins before the planes take off.

“Before, it looked like an attack — it was just airplanes coming from all points of the compass, all trying to get here at the same time,” said Mr. Dyer, an airport consultant for Jviation-Woolpert.

Last year, delays were kept to a maximum of 20 minutes, and no commercial travelers missed connecting flights because of air traffic caused by the conference, Mr. Pomeroy said.

When moguls are forced to circle in the air, they often loiter in great style. Buyers willing to shell out tens of millions for a high-end private plane are unlikely to balk at an additional $650,000 to outfit the aircraft with Wi-Fi, said Lee Mindel, one of the founders of SheltonMindel, an architectural firm that has designed the interiors of Gulfstream and Bombardier private jets. Some owners, he said, have opted for bespoke flatware from Muriel Grateau in Paris, V’Soske rugs or other luxe features.

“If you have to ask what it costs, you really can’t afford to do it,” Mr. Mindel said.

During the pandemic, when commercial travel slowed because of restrictions, corporate jaunts increased among a subset of executives who didn’t want to be held back, said David Yermack, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He added that it might be cheaper in the long run to compensate chief executives with jet travel than pay them with cash.

“I think it was Napoleon who said, ‘When I realized people would lay down their lives for little pieces of colored ribbon, I knew I could conquer the world,’” Mr. Yermack said.

The glut of flights certainly raises practical concerns. The residents of Hailey, as well as nearby Ketchum and Sun Valley, have complained in the past about the noise created by the jets zooming into Friedman Memorial Airport.

To deal with the complaints, Mr. Pomeroy and the Friedman Memorial Airport Authority curtailed flights between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. and limited the number of takeoffs and landings from the north, over the little city of Hailey.

Before the conference, Mr. Pomeroy sends a letter to incoming pilots about what to expect, admonishing them to keep the noise to a minimum.

“While the overwhelming majority of users during this event are respectful of our program and community, only a few operators who blatantly disregard our program, or who are negligent in educating themselves about our program, leave a negative impression on all of us,” Mr. Pomeroy wrote this year.

Allen & Company’s stinginess about some conference details extends to the airport. But Mr. Pomeroy and his team get enough information to conclude when the moguls will arrive and are about to leave town.

When the schmoozing is over next week, Mr. Pomeroy will begin the arduous task of ushering the corporate titans out of Idaho. Often that means closing the airport briefly to arrivals while they hustle out departures for an hour.

As the last jets get ready to leave, Mr. Pomeroy said, he and his team breathe a sigh of relief.

“Afterward, I am ready to hit the river for some serious fly fishing for a day or two,” he said.

BALTIMORE — Local news wars have largely gone the way of the phone booth as newspapers have shriveled and reporter jobs have been cut. But one is taking shape in Baltimore, bringing a new kind of rivalry.

The Baltimore Banner, an online news site that started publishing in recent weeks, is trying to go head to head with the 185-year-old Baltimore Sun. The Banner has hired some of The Sun’s best reporters, building a newsroom of more than 40 people so far. And it has had a string of exclusive reporting, including on a feud between the sons of the Baltimore Orioles’ owner over the future of the baseball team.

This wasn’t the original plan of Stewart W. Bainum Jr., the hotel magnate behind The Banner. He tried to buy The Sun last year but lost out to Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that has become the country’s second-largest newspaper operator. Now he’s competing against them, wary of the plans that Alden, which is known for cutting newsroom costs, has for The Sun.

“I kept thinking about local news during Covid, sitting here in Maryland, thinking about the dearth of local news,” Mr. Bainum, a longtime resident of Takoma Park, Md., said in an interview.

“I just think there has to be a way to figure this out,” he added.

The Banner, which charges for a subscription, is already one of the largest in a raft of local news start-ups that are trying to fill the void left by the closing and downsizing of thousands of newspapers around the country since the rise of the internet. More than 360 local newspapers closed between late 2019 and May alone, according to a report released this week by Northwestern University’s journalism school. And Mr. Bainum has plans to build The Banner to a newsroom of more than 100, eclipsing the size of The Sun, and has promised to contribute or raise $50 million over the first four years.

The bold entry is a test of whether a subscription model for digital-only local news can be sustainable beyond the initial philanthropic capital, and whether there’s an appetite for a second large news publication in cities where competition used to be commonplace. There are also several smaller digital news outlets in the region, including Baltimore Fishbowl, Baltimore Brew and Baltimore Witness. Axios plans to expand its local newsletters to the city this year, and Baltimore Beat, a Black-run nonprofit, plans to resume publishing after a hiatus during the pandemic.

“If you’re really going to take on an established media entity in this kind of economic climate, you better go in like a samurai,” said Josh Tyrangiel, a former Bloomberg Media and Vice executive who grew up in Baltimore and provided informal advice to Mr. Bainum.

“Don’t tread softly, go in forcefully, and expect that you’ll have to spend a lot of money on the product and to market the product,” Mr. Tyrangiel said. “The people of Baltimore are now conditioned to expect very little from their newspaper.”

Trif Alatzas, the publisher and editor in chief of The Sun, said in a statement that Baltimore Sun Media, which also encompasses several other local newspapers, was proud to have the largest news-gathering team in the region, with 100 journalists total.

While Mr. Alatzas did not respond to a question about the competition posed by The Banner, he said his paper’s subscriber numbers had increased this year.

“We continue to see growth, and we are looking forward to continuing to provide our readers with Baltimore’s most comprehensive news and information,” Mr. Alatzas said.

Baltimore became a battleground in the local-news crisis over two years ago when Alden revealed that it had taken a 32 percent stake in Tribune Publishing, the parent company of The Sun and newspapers like The Chicago Tribune and The New York Daily News, making it the company’s largest shareholder.

Worried journalists began desperately seeking local owners to take over the newspapers because of the hedge fund’s reputation for eking out profits by gutting newsrooms. In February 2021, Tribune announced that it had reached a deal to give Alden full ownership and sell The Sun and two smaller Maryland publications to Mr. Bainum.

But the deal ran aground. Mr. Bainum then made bids for all of Tribune, including an offer valuing the company at about $650 million in which he would put up $200 million of his own money. In May 2021, shareholders voted to approve the sale of Tribune to Alden for roughly $630 million.

The failed attempt to buy The Sun did not deter Mr. Bainum, who found himself energized by the thought of setting up a nonprofit newsroom to serve the city. Mr. Bainum, the chairman of Choice Hotels International and a former Maryland state legislator, consulted with other nonprofit leaders and executives at major media companies to figure out a model that could work.

He worked with Ted Venetoulis, a former county executive and publisher in Baltimore who had long been trying to buy The Sun. They decided that the best shot was starting with a sizable newsroom with the best talent they could find, instead of building slowly.

Business & Economy: Latest UpdatesUpdated June 30, 2022, 4:38 p.m. ETA former hedge fund star wins a record $52 million in a defamation case.Regulator in Puerto Rico suspends operations of Euro Pacific Bank.Today in On Tech: Post-Roe, her Facebook group went viral.

Running The Banner as a nonprofit would made it easier to finance and to accept contributions, as well as easier to do partnerships with other nonprofits in the community.

Mr. Venetoulis died in October at age 87. The nonprofit organization that runs The Banner was named the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism in his memory.

Mr. Bainum hired Kimi Yoshino, a top editor at The Los Angeles Times, as editor in chief. Ms. Yoshino moved to Baltimore in January. She said the vast majority of the journalists she had hired were from Baltimore or Maryland, or had previously worked there.

Liz Bowie, a longtime education reporter for The Sun who was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting in 2020, is one of the hires.

“I worked at The Sun for 35 years, my husband worked at The Sun, my mother worked at The Sun,” Ms. Bowie said in an interview. “So I was really committed to that institution.”

But, she added, “I sort of emotionally left The Sun” when shareholders voted to sell to Alden. Ms. Bowie joined The Banner this year as one of its first reporters.

“I think we’ll be able to be larger and we’ll cover more of the city because all of the money will go straight back into the journalism,” she said.

In addition to Ms. Bowie, The Banner has hired the reporters Justin Fenton, Tim Prudente and Pamela Wood from The Sun. Mr. Fenton, an award-winning investigative reporter whose book about a corrupt Baltimore police unit, “We Own This City,” was recently turned into an HBO series, had worked at The Sun for 17 years.

He said that he had watched The Sun’s newsroom diminish to a shadow of its former self, when it had foreign bureaus and 300 reporters, and that he was excited by the thought of building something new.

“Now we’re going head to head,” he said. “Can this town sustain two large news organizations?”

Imtiaz Patel, a former Dow Jones executive who is the chief executive of The Banner, said the operating budget for the first year was about $15 million. He said paid subscriptions would be about half the revenue mix, with advertising making up about a quarter and the rest coming from things like events and donations.

Readers can read a certain number of free articles a month before a paid subscription is required. A subscription is $3.99 a week, or $155 for the year.

Mr. Patel said the goal was to get to 100,000 paid subscribers to break even and five million monthly unique views on the website by 2025. He said he wanted to no longer rely on funding from Mr. Bainum after a few years.

Mr. Bainum said the goal was to build a first-rate local news site for Baltimore and to figure out whether it was a business model that would work elsewhere. But he also said he wasn’t going to let the experiment last forever.

“If at four or five years this is just a black hole, then you know there are other places to invest philanthropically,” Mr. Bainum said. “But I’m going to stick with it for four or five years anyway at least.”