San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz told President Trump Tuesday that hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico were “not about politics,” just days after Trump sparred with Cruz over the federal government’s response to the island.

“It’s all about saving lives, it’s not about politics,” Cruz said to Trump as they shook hands following a briefing earlier in the day.

Trump accused Cruz of “poor leadership” and speculated that “Democrats” told her to “be nasty to Trump” in a barrage of tweets over the weekend after the mayor decried a comment by the Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, who said she thought the federal government’s actions in Puerto Rico were “a good news story.”

…Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017

It was originally unclear if Trump and Cruz would meet, but on Tuesday morning Cruz announced that she had been invited to the briefing and had accepted the invite.

“I will use this opportunity to reiterate the primary message: This is about saving lives, not about politics; this is also about giving the people of Puerto Rico the respect we deserve; and recognizing the moral imperative to do both,” Cruz said in a statement prior to the meeting.

Trump touted the response to Hurricane Maria as he attended the briefing on relief efforts, noting that the territory’s officials “can be proud” of the relatively low death toll on the island compared to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Noting that “every death is a horror,” Trump called Katrina “a real catastrophe” given its “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died,” before asking a Puerto Rican official for their “death count.”

“Sixteen people certified,” Trump noted. “Sixteen people versus in the thousands. You can be very proud of all of your people and all of our people working together. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people. You can be very proud.”

After the president left San Juan, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello announced the death toll from Maria rose to 34.

Evan Vucci/AP

Cruz characterized the president as having a “lack of sensibility” in an interview with CNN Tuesday afternoon. She later told the network that she felt the most productive part of the meeting was when she met with White House staffers.

“I truly believe that they finally saw the connection, or the disconnect, between what they were hearing on the one hand and the reality of what is happening on the ground,” the mayor said.

But Cruz denounced Trump’s visit as a public relations stunt and criticized how he handed out supplies at Calvary Chapel.

“His terrible and abominable view of him throwing paper towels and throwing provisions at people, it’s really — it does not embody the spirit of the American nation,” Cruz said in an interview with MSNBC Tuesday night.

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he heard zero criticism during the visit and described the day as “terrific” and “great.”

“They were so thankful for what we’ve done,” he said. “We only heard ‘thank yous’ from the people of Puerto Rico … I enjoyed very much being with them.”

Hurricane Maria carved a path of destruction across Puerto Rico two weeks ago in a storm season that has already seen hurricanes Harvey and Irma create billions of dollars in damage in Texas, Louisiana and Florida.

Trump said Tuesday it would be costly to rebuild the island and restore its infrastructure following the storm.

“I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack,” said Trump, “because we’ve spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico and that’s fine. We saved a lot of lives.”

AFP/Getty Images

The president has repeatedly defended the federal response to Puerto Rico despite facing severe criticism.

“It’s been amazing what’s been done in a very short period of time on Puerto Rico,” the president said in the Oval Office Monday.

The island is still grappling with the damage caused by Hurricane Maria. Only 47 percent of the island’s water customers have access to potable water and 95 percent of Puerto Rico is still without power, according to officials.

These waves would stretch and compress space in orthogonal directions as they went by, the same way that sound waves compress air. They had never been directly seen when Dr. Weiss and, independently, Dr. Drever, then at the University of Glasgow, following work by others, suggested detecting the waves by using lasers to monitor the distance between a pair of mirrors. In 1975, Dr. Weiss and Dr. Thorne, then a well-known gravitational theorist, stayed up all night in a hotel room brainstorming gravitational wave experiments during a meeting in Washington.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Dr. Thorne went home and hired Dr. Drever to help develop and build a laser-based gravitational-wave detector at Caltech. Meanwhile, Dr. Weiss was doing the same thing at M.I.T.

The technological odds were against both of them. The researchers calculated that a typical gravitational wave from out in space would change the distance between the mirrors by an almost imperceptible amount: one part in a billion trillion, less than the diameter of a proton. Dr. Weiss recalled that when he explained the experiment to his potential funders at the National Science Foundation, “everybody thought we were out of our minds.”

The foundation, which would wind up spending $1 billion over the next 40 years on the project, ordered the two groups to merge. The plan that emerged was to build a pair of L-shaped antennas, one in Hanford, Wash., and the other in Livingston, La., with laser light bouncing along 2.5-mile-long arms in the world’s biggest vacuum tunnels to monitor the shape of space.

In 1987, the original three-headed leadership of Drs. Weiss, Drever and Thorne was abandoned for a single director, Rochus Vogt of Caltech. Dr. Drever was subsequently forced out of the detector project. But LIGO still foundered until Dr. Barish, a Caltech professor with a superb pedigree in managing Big Science projects, joined in 1994 and then became director. He reorganized the project so that it would be built in successively more sensitive phases, and he created a worldwide LIGO Scientific Collaboration of astronomers and physicists to study and analyze the data.

“Without him there would have been no discovery,” said Sheldon Glashow, a Nobel Prize-winning theorist now at Boston University.

The most advanced version of LIGO had just started up in September 2015 when the vibrations from a pair of colliding black holes slammed the detectors in Louisiana and Washington with a rising tone, or “chirp,” for a fifth of a second.

It was also the opening bell for a whole new brand of astronomy. Since then LIGO (recently in conjunction with a new European detector, Virgo) has detected at least four more black hole collisions, opening a window on a new, unsuspected class of black holes, and rumors persist of even more exciting events in the sky.

“Many of us really expect to learn about things we didn’t know about,” Dr. Weiss said this morning.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Who are the winners?

Dr. Weiss was born in Berlin in 1932 and came to New York by way of Czechoslovakia in 1939. As a high school student, he became an expert in building high-quality sound systems and entered M.I.T. intending to major in electrical engineering. He inadvertently dropped out when he went to Illinois to pursue a failing romance. After coming back, he went to work in a physics lab and wound up with a Ph.D. from M.I.T.

Dr. Thorne was born and raised in Logan, Utah, receiving a bachelor’s degree from Caltech and then a Ph.D. from Princeton under the tutelage of John Archibald Wheeler, an evangelist for Einstein’s theory who coined the term black holes, and who initiated Dr. Thorne into their mysteries. “He blew my mind,” Dr. Thorne later said. Dr. Thorne’s enthusiasm for black holes is not confined to the scientific journals. Now an emeritus professor at Caltech, he was one of the creators and executive producers of the 2014 movie “Interstellar,” about astronauts who go through a wormhole and encounter a giant black hole in a search for a new home for humanity.

Photo

Dr. Barish was born in Omaha, Neb., was raised in Los Angeles and studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley, getting a doctorate there before joining Caltech. One of the mandarins of Big Science, he had led a team that designed a $1 billion detector for the giant Superconducting Supercollider, which would have been the world’s biggest particle machine had it not been canceled by Congress in 1993, before being asked to take over LIGO.

Subsequently, Dr. Barish led the international effort to design the International Linear Collider, which could be the next big particle accelerator in the world, if it ever gets built.

Reached by telephone by the Nobel committee, Dr. Weiss said that he considered the award as recognition for the work of about a thousand people over “I hate to say it — 40 years.”

He added that when the first chirp came it on Sept. 14, 2015, “many of us didn’t believe it,” thinking it might be a test signal that had been inserted into the data. It took them two months to convince themselves it was real.

The prize was greeted with praise around the world. “Well done Sweden,” said Michael Turner a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, addding about the result, “It took a village and 100 years to do this.”

Janna Levin, a gravitational theorist at Barnard College, who is not part of LIGO but wrote a book, “Black Hole Blues and Other Songs From Outer Space,” about it, said in a text message “We all woke up early in anticipation. I’m thrilled for the entire LIGO collaboration.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

The awarding of a Nobel to Drs. Weiss and Thorne completes a kind of scientific Grand Slam. In the last two years, along with Dr. Drever, they have shared a cavalcade of prestigious and lucrative prizes including the Kavli Prize for Astrophysics, the Gruber Cosmology Prize, the Shaw Prize in Astronomy and a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. It is possible that had he lived, Dr. Drever could have shared in the Nobel as well, but he died last March, and the Nobel is not awarded posthumously.

Who Else Has Won a Nobel This Year?

Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday for discoveries about the molecular mechanisms controlling the body’s circadian rhythm.

Continue reading the main story

Byron Trott, Founder of BDT Capital Partners, in the lobby of the Wrigley BuildingBDT Capital Partners

When Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought 38.6% of the Pilot Flying J truck stop chain on Tuesday, it did so with the help of a firm you’ve probably never heard of: BDT Capital Partners. 

That’s by design. Despite having more than $12 billion in assets under management, the merchant bank doesn’t even have a public-facing website.

It does, however, have more than 150 employees spread out over four offices in Chicago, New York, London, and Frankfurt, who advise extremely wealthy clients with family-owned businesses.

The firm intentionally flies under the radar to court these billionaires — like Buffett, the Waltons, and the Webers, to name a few — who value privacy.

Byron D. Trott, a midwest native who founded BDT, still helms the company from its Chicago headquarters inside the historic Wrigley Building.

Here’s how Trott went from a small-town football player to an investment banker advising billionaires:

Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.

Justice Neil Gorsuch’s influence on the Supreme Court’s deliberations will be evident immediately when oral arguments start Monday.

October brings the first full term on the high court for Gorsuch, and the first two days of oral arguments include a pair of immigration cases scheduled for reargument. The two cases, Sessions v. Dimaya and Jennings v. Rodriguez, were argued before Gorsuch joined the high court, which suggests the justices could be deadlocked and in need of the newest justice’s input.

The two immigration cases provide Gorsuch an opportunity to shape the boundaries of future immigration policy crafted by the president who appointed him, Donald Trump. Sessions v. Dimaya raises the question of whether the Immigration and Nationality Act’s “crime of violence” provision is unconstitutionally vague, and Jennings v. Rodriguez involves whether illegal immigrants, including those with criminal records, are entitled to bond hearings.

Gorsuch is poised to return the high court to its status quo in key upcoming controversies, such as the case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, granted by the high court on Thursday involving a new challenge to public-sector union fees in Illinois.

In 2016, the Supreme Court looked likely to overturn a precedent that said public-sector employees who do not belong to a union can be forced to pay a fee that covers the union’s costs in negotiating the contract that applies to all employees. But the high court split 4-4 in deciding the case soon after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. Gorsuch’s presence may indicate that the justices want another chance to overturn the existing precedent.

Gorsuch’s addition to the high court could return the ideological balance of power to the status quo in cases such as Janus but could create new factions and differing internal dynamics on other cases involving Americans’ fundamental rights. Court-watchers are keeping an eye on how Gorsuch, a former law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy, affects his old boss’ decision-making.

Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, said he expects Gorsuch to have a “better and more influential” relationship with Kennedy than Scalia did, but it remains to be seen. Shapiro pointed to the Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission conflict as one that could reveal how Gorsuch and Kennedy are interacting. In Masterpiece, the high court will look to determine the constitutionality of Colorado’s public accommodations law forcing cake baker Jack Phillips to make a cake for a gay marriage, which would have made Phillips create speech that defies his religious beliefs.

Shapiro said he will be watching closely to see “if indeed Kennedy writes the majority opinion, would Gorsuch sign onto that or would he write separately to talk about a broader conception of speech protection or a broader conception of religious protection or some other theory that he has about these tensions between rights or government regulatory structures?”

Former solicitor general Gregory Garre said this month at George Washington University that one new justice yields an “entirely new court” that often “behaves in weird ways.” Garre wondered if Gorsuch’s presence might push Kennedy to the ideological left this term in a manner similar to how Garre thought Thomas’ appointment moved former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor left.

But Gorsuch’s jurisprudence may affect a different justice’s thinking more than Kennedy: Chief Justice John Roberts.

Any writing Gorsuch does on the outcome of Masterpiece could reveal more about his relationship with Roberts. Shapiro said Roberts would rather Kennedy author the majority opinion in Masterpiece than leave the decision to the high court’s ideological Right.

Gorsuch wrote a concurring opinion in the last term’s hallmark religious liberty controversy, Trinity Lutheran, that bucked Roberts. Gorsuch joined the majority, but he disagreed with a portion of the Roberts-written opinion.

The newest justice also appeared at odds with Roberts last term over an opinion regarding an Arkansas birth certificate law. Gorsuch penned a dissent — joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — from the high court’s per curiam opinion rendering an Arkansas birth certificate law unconstitutional following the justices’ legalization of same-sex marriage. A per curiam opinion means it was delivered on behalf of the entire court rather than signed by an individual justice who wrote the opinion. Since Roberts did not dissent, it’s clear he and Gorsuch shared different views on the case.

Court watchers will be looking to see if the court divides into thirds, with Gorsuch on the ideological right and Kennedy and Roberts vacillating nearer the center, on crucial issues.

The newest justice’s remarks before a conservative group in Washington Thursday revealed he may value the importance of developing bonds with his new colleagues wherever possible. Gorsuch praised Kennedy and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the two justices whose potential exits from the high court generate the most buzz among court-watchers, in his remarks at the Trump Hotel. Gorsuch also spoke favorably of Thomas and Scalia, while preaching a message of civility.

“As Justice Kennedy likes to point out, the word ‘civics’ springs from the Latin word that was also the same root for ‘civility,’ and both civics and civility are essential elements of civilization. Just consider the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, free press, free assembly,” Gorsuch said Thursday. “To be worthy of our First Amendment freedoms, we have to all adopt certain civil habits that enable others to enjoy them as well. When it comes to the First Amendment, that means tolerating those who don’t agree with us or those whose ideas upset us.”

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack several hours later, calling the assailant one of its “soldiers.”

The group’s Amaq news agency said the man had been inspired by calls to carry out attack in Western countries. In 2014, ISIS called on sympathizers to commit violence using any means available, including stabbings, in those countries whose militaries were fighting the terror group in Iraq and Syria.

The group’s claim of responsibility could not be independently verified.

Asked about reports that the attacker yelled “Allahu akbar,” or “God is greatest” in Arabic, at the moment of the attack, Jean-Claude Gaudin, the mayor of Marseille, said that “a certain number” of witnesses had said they heard him do so, but he added that they were still being interviewed by the police for further details.

“We have video images that will enable us to assess the situation,” Mr. Collomb said, referring to security camera footage in the station. “What is strange on the video is that the person starts to commit his crime on a first person, then he runs away, and then he turns back to kill the second person.”

A military patrol that had rushed to the scene after hearing cries of panic and seeing people running fired warning shots at the attacker, Mr. Collomb said, and then shot and killed him when he rushed at them.

Soldiers and armed police officers with protective gear barred access to the train station for much of Sunday afternoon, and the national railway operator urged travelers to avoid the station, but the authorities said later in the day that train service was slowly returning to normal.

France has been on high alert for acts of terrorism since 2015, after a string of attacks that killed more than 230 people. The deadliest attack was an assault in November 2015 by coordinated teams of Islamic State operatives who killed 130 people in and around Paris, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency.

Newsletter Sign Up

Continue reading the main story

Thank you for subscribing.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

View all New York Times newsletters.

• See Sample
• Manage Email Preferences
• Not you?
• Privacy Policy
• Opt out or contact us anytime

The state of emergency, which enables the authorities to raid homes and place people under house arrest without the authorization of a judge, has been renewed several times and will end on Nov. 1.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

But Parliament is expected to vote soon on a bill that would give security forces additional powers, some similar to those in the state of emergency, to monitor suspects, conduct raids and search bags or vehicles. Civil rights groups have criticized the legislation.

In a statement on Sunday evening, Édouard Philippe, the French prime minister, expressed “anger and outrage” after the attack and praised the soldiers who had “neutralized the criminal and stopped his killing spree.”

“We will not drop our guard,” Mr. Philippe added on Twitter.

So far in 2017, there have not been large-scale attacks like the ones that struck Paris in 2015 and Nice in 2016, but France has grown wearily accustomed to smaller, sporadic attacks, especially against police officers and soldiers patrolling sensitive or crowded sites.

In September, a man wielding a knife was arrested after he attacked a military patrol in one of the biggest metro stations in Paris; but no one was injured. In August, a driver plowed into a military patrol in Levallois-Perret, a suburb just north of the capital, injuring six soldiers.

Other attacks have been carried out by mentally ill residents, who sometimes imitate acts of terrorism, according to officials.

In August, a man with a history of psychiatric disorders rammed a vehicle into two bus stops in Marseille, killing one woman, but the authorities said the episode was not related to terrorism.

In September, four American college students traveling through the Saint-Charles station were attacked with acid by a psychologically disturbed woman, officials said.

Continue reading the main story

A gunman firing from a Las Vegas hotel rained a rapid-fire barrage on a huge concert festival outside, sending thousands of people fleeing until SWAT units found and killed him. More than 20 people died and more than 100 others were injured, officials said.

The shooting happened near the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Video posted online showed the country singer Jason Aldean performing outside the hotel at Route 91 Harvest, a country music festival, interrupted by the sound of automatic gunfire. The music stopped, and concertgoers ducked for cover. “Get down,” one shouted. “Stay down,” screamed another.

Video courtesy of Drew Akioshi. He was attending the concert at mandalay bay when shooting started. pic.twitter.com/mbyh9Y387q

—
David Sakach (@davidsakach)
Oct. 2, 2017

Several SWAT teams were sent to the hotel immediately after the first reports of the shooting at 10:08 p.m., and officers reported being pinned down by gunfire, according to emergency radio traffic. Shortly before midnight the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department reported that “one suspect is down,” and soon thereafter the police said they did not believe there were any more active gunmen.

Confirming that one suspect is down. This is an active investigation. Again, please do not head down to the Strip at this time.

—
LVMPD (@LVMPD)
Oct. 2, 2017

At this time we do not believe there are any more shooters. More information to come shortly from @Sheriff_LVMPD.

—
LVMPD (@LVMPD)
Oct. 2, 2017

Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of Clark County told reporters early Monday morning that more than 20 people were killed and “well in excess of 100-plus injured.” He did not identify the dead gunman, but he said the police were seeking “a companion” named Marilou Danley, a woman he described as Asian and 4-foot-11.

Continue reading the main story

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Monty Hall, the genial TV game show host whose long-running “Let’s Make a Deal” traded on love of money and merchandise and the mystery of which door had the car behind it, has died. He was 96.

Hall, who had been in poor health, died Saturday morning of heart failure at his home in Beverly Hills, said his daughter, Sharon Hall of Los Angeles.

“Let’s Make a Deal,” which Hall co-created, debuted as a daytime show on NBC in 1963 and became a TV staple. Through the next four decades, it also aired in prime time, in syndication and, in two brief outings, with hosts other than Hall at the helm.

An episode of “The Odd Couple” featured Felix Unger (Tony Randall) and Oscar Madison (Jack Klugman) as bickering guests on Hall’s program.

Contestants were chosen from the studio audience — outlandishly dressed as animals, clowns or cartoon characters to attract the host’s attention — and would start the game by trading an item of their own for a prize. After that, it was matter of swapping the prize in hand for others hidden behind doors, curtains or in boxes, presided over by the leggy, smiling Carol Merrill.

The query “Do you want Door No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3?” became a popular catch phrase, and the chance of winning a new car a matter of primal urgency. Prizes could be a car or a mink coat or a worthless item dubbed a “zonk.”

The energetic, quick-thinking Hall, a sight himself with his sideburns and colorful sports coats, was deemed the perfect host in Alex McNeil’s reference book, “Total Television.”

“Monty kept the show moving while he treated the outrageously garbed and occasionally greedy contestants courteously; it is hard to imagine anyone else but Hall working the trading area as smoothly,” McNeil wrote.

For Hall, the interaction was easy.

“I’m a people person,” he said on the PBS documentary series “Pioneers of Television.” ‘’And so I don’t care if they jump on me, and I don’t care if they yell and they fainted — those are my people.”

The game show gave rise to an academic exercise in which students are asked to weigh this question: In guessing which of three doors might conceal a prize car, and after one is eliminated as a possibility, should you switch your choice to the one you didn’t pick?

The puzzle sparked heated exchanges in Marilyn vos Savant’s Parade magazine column. (The answer to the Monty Hall Problem, Hall and others said, was yes, take the switch — but only if the contest is set up so the host cannot skew the results by offering some guests the chance to switch doors and not giving others the same option.)

After five years on NBC, “Let’s Make a Deal” moved to ABC in 1968 and aired on the network through 1976, including prime-time stints. It went into syndication in the 1970s and 1980s, returning to NBC in 1990-91 and again in 2003. In 2009 it returned on CBS with host Wayne Brady and is still on the air.

His name and show remain part of the language. Typical is the quotation in a 2006 Daytona Beach (Florida) News-Journal profile of a no-nonsense bail bondswoman who says, “I’m not Monty Hall and this isn’t ‘Let’s Make a Deal.’ ”

Hall also guest-starred in sitcoms and appeared in TV commercials. And with the wealth that the game show brought, he made philanthropy and fundraising his avocation. He spent 200 days a year at it, he said, estimating in the late 1990s that he had coaxed $700 million from donors.

His daughter Sharon estimated that Hall managed to raise nearly $1 billion for charity over his lifetime.

Another daughter, Joanna Gleason, is a longtime Broadway and television actress. She won a Tony in 1988 for best actress in a musical for “Into the Woods” and was nominated for Tonys two other times.

Born Monty Halparin in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada, Hall grew up during the Depression. In 1942, Hall was doing manual labor at the time when a wealthy stranger offered to pay for his college education on condition that he repaid the money, got top grades, kept his benefactor’s name anonymous and agreed to help someone else.

Hall only revealed the name of the late Max Freed about 30 years later.

Hall earned a degree from the University of Manitoba with the goal of becoming a physician. He was denied entry to medical school, Hall later said, because he was Jewish and faced quotas limiting the admission of minority students.

“Every poor kid wants to get into some kind of profession, and in my case I wanted to get into medicine to become a doctor. … My dreams of medicine evaporated,” Hall said in a 2002 interview with The Canadian Press.

Instead, he turned to entertainment. He first tested his skills on radio and, after moving to New York in 1955 and later to Los Angeles, began working on a variety of television shows. Among the programs he hosted were “Cowboy Theater” in 1957, “Keep Talking,” 1958, and “Video Village” in 1960.

He joined with writer-producer Stefan Hatos to create “Let’s Make a Deal.”

The show’s roots could be found in “The Auctioneer,” a game show Hall hosted in Toronto in the 1950s. “The Auctioneer” was a “pretty pedestrian” program until the concluding 10 minutes, when he would barter with audience members, Hall told the Daily Herald of suburban Chicago in 2000.

“It was much more exciting than the first 20 minutes of the show,” he recalled.

Besides Hall, the hosts of “Let’s Make a Deal” were Bob Hilton (1990) and Billy Bush (2003). But it was Hall who was lastingly identified as “TV’s big dealer,” as the show put it, something he found at least mildly disconcerting.

When a People magazine interviewer suggested in 1996 that “Let’s Make a Deal” would be his epitaph, Hall replied, with a wince: “You put that on my tombstone, and I’ll kill you.”

However, Sharon Hall said Hall never refused an autograph and used his fame to help others.

His family’s financial circumstances and a childhood accident stirred that charitable desire, Hall said.

At age 7, he was severely burned by a pot of boiling water and endured a lengthy recovery.

“When you’ve been that sick, spent a year out of school, you identify with people who have these ailments and sicknesses,” he told the Palm Beach (Fla.) Post in a 2003 interview. “And when you grow up poor, you identify with people in need.”

Hall was repeatedly honored for his charity efforts, with awards including the Order of Canada, Order of Manitoba and Variety Clubs International’s Humanitarian Award. Wards were named in his honor at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia and other medical centers.

Hall and his wife, Marilyn Plottel, married in 1947. She died earlier this year.

In addition to his daughters, Hall is survived by his son, Richard; a brother, Robert Hall of Toronto, Canada, and five grandchildren.

___

Associated Press writer Robert Jablon contributed to this report.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump pitched himself as a dealmaker who would look out for the country’s “forgotten people,” “drain the swamp,” unite the country, “immediately repeal and replace Obamacare,” surround himself with “only with the best and most serious people,” and, of course, “win so much.”

But this past week made clear that Trump is falling far short of fulfilling those promises.

He launched a divisive debate with racial undertones about whether professional athletes should stand for the national anthem, lashed out at Puerto Rico’s officials for begging his administration for more help after a devastating hurricane and backed a tax plan that analysts say would greatly benefit the wealthy.

Meanwhile, his chosen candidate in the Alabama Senate race lost big to an insurgent challenger, the latest attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act failed, and his health and human services secretary resigned after using taxpayer dollars to pay for several expensive chartered flights, another major departure from the president’s top staff in the first eight months of his administration.

“He campaigned on the basis of large promises which were, in many cases, disconnected from any concrete program for achieving them,” said William A. Galston, a top policy adviser to President Bill Clinton and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “He entered office having issued a bunch of promissory notes but not having thought through how to redeem them, and that’s a very difficult way to begin an administration.”

Trump’s problems this week mirror those that have dogged his presidency since the first day, but they are becoming more troublesome for the president and his party as they come under increasing pressure to deliver on at least part their agenda.

Galston cautioned against putting too much emphasis on one week and noted that it often takes presidents at least a year or two to install the right staff and learn how Washington operates.

“Thirty-five years of experience in Washington, for better or for worse, has taught me that things change,” Galston said, explaining that Trump could still pass a package of tax cuts, the economy could continue its winning streak and Republicans could retain control of Congress during the midterm elections next year. “At this point in Bill Clinton’s presidency — and I’m not comparing the two — his popularity had fallen very sharply, his health bill was in trouble, he was a year away from a total rout in the 1994 midterm elections, and yet he was reelected president by 8 percentage points.”

[Lost weekend: How Trump’s time at his golf club hurt the response to Maria]

Trump supporters argued that the past week had its upsides.

Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media and a Trump friend, said it was actually “a pretty good week for the president.” Trump is “very much on top” of the crisis in Puerto Rico, earned favor with Hill Republicans by supporting Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), sided with “most Americans” on how to behave during the national anthem and pushed a tax cut that’s “going to be a massive windfall for all Americans,” according to Ruddy.

“His approval numbers have been stable and trending up,” he said Saturday afternoon. “Despite the negative press barrage, he is standing pretty tall in my book.”

Before this past week, Trump’s presidency did appear to be on the upswing as he hit more of a focused stride. His approval rating increased slightly after he worked with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a government shutdown, rising from 35 percent in Gallup polling in mid-August to 38 percent in mid-September, a level around which it has stayed. The administration was widely praised for its initial response to hurricanes that hit Texas, Florida and other Gulf Coast states. His angry, early-morning tweets became less frequent, avoiding the distractions they almost always bring.

But then Trump traveled to northern Alabama on Sept. 22 to rally support for Sen. Luther Strange, the Republican appointed to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s vacated seat. Trump was reluctant to go, and from the stage he aired his reservations about endorsing Strange instead of former state judge Roy Moore, who is popular with Trump’s supporters.

At that Friday night rally, Trump delivered a stream-of-consciousness speech that lasted nearly 90 minutes. He repeatedly cursed, jokingly threatened to fire a Cabinet member, called allegations of Russian interference in the election a “hoax” and repeatedly relived the 2016 race. He seemed angry and dispirited.

[‘I love Alabama — it’s special’: At rally for Sen. Luther Strange, Trump vents frustrations in rambling speech]

Trump told the crowd that he and Strange “are unified by the same great American values” and that they both “respect our flag.” He then launched into an attack on professional football players who kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality. He said such players are a “son of a b—-” and team owners should fire them for disrespecting the American flag.

“If you see it, even if it’s one player, leave the stadium,” Trump said, calling on a boycott of a major American industry. “I guarantee things will stop, things will stop. Just pick up and leave, pick up and leave. Not the same game anymore anyway.”

Starting that Sunday, the number of players who knelt during the anthem greatly increased — and they were joined by coaches and even some owners who stood with them in solidarity. Trump, who once promised to “bring us all together as Americans,” had succeeded in dividing the country over an issue with racial overtones that had previously received little attention outside the sports world. He then escalated the tensions in several morning tweetstorms.

By Monday afternoon, it became clear that Congress’s latest attempt at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act would fail, even though Trump once said he could accomplish the goal in just one day. The president would blame the latest failure on a Republican senator who was “in the hospital” and couldn’t make the vote — even though Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.) was never hospitalized despite undergoing some medical treatment. Regardless, Cochran was not a deciding vote; there were enough votes to kill the legislation with or without him.

[Senate GOP abandons latest effort to unwind the Affordable Care Act]

To explain his lack of legislative success, Trump often blames Republican lawmakers — even though he said in his speech accepting the Republican nomination that “I alone can fix” the country.

On Tuesday, Moore beat Strange in a Republican primary election, and Trump tweeted his support for Moore while deleting from his account some of his past tweets in support of Strange.

Meanwhile, food, water and fuel were running out in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria had decimated much of the island’s roads, airports and ports, as well as its telecommunications infrastructure. Puerto Rico was almost entirely without power, a problem expected to continue for weeks, and about half of residents did not have access to clean water.

As the week progressed, conditions in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands became only more dire. For days, cable news showed endless footage of the destruction and desperation in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands — along with increasingly critical assessments of the Trump administration’s response. Reporters on the ground found that food, water and medicine had arrived to the area on boats but had not been delivered to people in need because of a shortage of truck drivers.

Trump took a much different tone in talking about Puerto Rico than he had with Texas or Florida, tweeting Monday that the island “was already suffering from broken infrastructure massive debt” before the hurricane hit.

He repeatedly praised his administration’s efforts. “Great job,” he said Tuesday. “Very proud,” he said Wednesday. “Tremendous strides,” he said Friday.

On Saturday, the president accused Puerto Rico residents — who are American citizens — of wanting “everything to be done for them.” He lashed out at San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who has harshly criticized his administration’s response and begged for help for her constituents.

“Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help,” Trump tweeted.

The administration has defended its response to the devastation on the island, with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Saturday tweeting a quote from Puerto Rico’s governor saying that every time he has asked for help, “they’ve executed quickly.”

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to represent “the forgotten men and women” and get them better-paying jobs and lower taxes. He said he would lower the national debt by bringing his “common-sense” business attitude to spending. This week, however, he released a tax plan that analysts said would benefit the top 1 percent more than middle-class families (although Trump continues to claim that the opposite is true) while greatly adding to the deficit.

[GOP tax plan would provide major gains for richest 1%, uneven benefits for middle class]

Meanwhile, news broke that some members of Trump’s Cabinet were using taxpayer money to fly private chartered jets along routes where much less expensive commercial flights were available. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price took more than two dozen such flights that cost taxpayers more than $400,000, according to Politico.

Trump made clear that he was “not happy” about this, and Price resigned Friday.

“I certainly don’t like the optics,” the president said as he left the White House on Friday afternoon to spend the weekend at his private golf club in New Jersey. “We renegotiate deals. We’re renegotiating trade deals. . . . I’ve saved hundreds of millions of dollars. So, I don’t like the optics of what you just saw.”

Some Republicans saw a silver lining in Price’s departure.

“I think this is an opportunity for the president to kind of put a freeze on things, re-center, refocus everybody and say, ‘Let’s not get too comfortable in our jobs, because we’re renting these positions that were offered to us by the American people,’ ” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said on Fox News on Friday evening. “So, let’s get back to our core mission.”