VOL. CLXVII . . . No. 57,944 © 2018 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2018

C M Y K Nxxx,2018-04-26,A,001,Bs-4C,E2

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Chinese opera, one of the world’s oldestdramatic art forms, is revered in Thai-land. Bangkok Journal. PAGE A6

INTERNATIONAL A4-11

Holding On to Chinese Opera

The ubiquity of Waffle House, a chain ofmore than 1,800 eateries, invites everykind of story, some chronicled on Insta-gram, others in mug shots. PAGE A19

NATIONAL A12-19

Waffle House Diaries

Meghan Markle may not be a duchessquite yet, but even before her weddingto Prince Harry, she is already royaltyin the world of fashion. PAGE D1

THURSDAY STYLES D1-6

A Duchess of Style

The police in New York routinely useand share sealed arrest records ofpeople cleared of crimes without gettingcourt approval, a lawsuit says. PAGE A23

Sealed Files’ Use Is Challenged

Nicholas Kristof PAGE A27

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27

WASHINGTON — A 15-monthlegal battle over PresidentTrump’s efforts to impose a ban ontravel to the United States fromseveral predominantly Muslimcountries reached a final stage onWednesday at the Supreme Court,with its five-member conserva-tive majority signaling it wasready to approve a revised ver-sion of the president’s plan.

The justices appeared ready todiscount Mr. Trump’s campaignpromises to impose what he re-peatedly described as a “Muslimban,” while giving him the benefitof the doubt traditionally affordedto presidents. Some expressedworry about second-guessing ex-ecutive branch determinationsabout who should be allowed toenter the United States.

Immigrant rights groups hadhoped that Chief Justice John G.Roberts Jr. or Justice Anthony M.Kennedy would join the court’sfour-member liberal wing to op-pose the ban as unconstitutionallydiscriminatory against Muslims.But their questioning was almostuniformly hostile to the ban’s op-ponents.

At one point in the oral argu-ments, Chief Justice Robertsasked whether Mr. Trump will for-ever be unable to address immi-gration in light of his campaignstatements. “Is there a statute oflimitations on that?” the chief jus-tice asked.

Solicitor General Noel J. Fran-cisco, representing the adminis-tration, said the latest travel ban,issued in September as a presi-dential proclamation, was not di-rected at Muslims.

“This is not a so-called Muslimban,” he said. “If it were, it wouldbe the most ineffective Muslimban that one could possibly imag-ine.” It excluded, he said, “the vastmajority of the Muslim world.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. add-ed his own statistics.

“I think there are 50 predomi-nantly Muslim countries in theworld,” he said. “Five predomi-nantly Muslim countries are onthis list. The population of the pre-dominantly Muslim countries onthis list make up about 8 percentof the world’s Muslim population.If you looked at the 10 countrieswith the most Muslims, exactlyone, Iran, would be on that list ofthe top 10.”

Neal K. Katyal, a lawyer for thechallengers, rejected that analy-sis. “If I’m an employer and I have10 African-Americans working forme and I only fire two of them” butretain the other eight, he said, “I

SUPREME COURTSIGNALS SUPPORTFOR A TRAVEL BAN

SKEPTICAL OF CHALLENGE

Deferring to President onJudgment of National

Security Threats

By ADAM LIPTAKand MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Continued on Page A17

N.F.L. owners, players andleague executives, about 30 in all,convened urgently at the league’sheadquarters on Park Avenue inOctober, nearly a month afterPresident Trump began deridingthe league and its players overprotests during the national an-them.

It was an extraordinary summitmeeting; rarely do owners andplayers gather in this manner. Butthe president’s remarks aboutplayers who were kneeling duringthe anthem had catalyzed a levelof public hostility that the N.F.L.had never experienced. In thespirit of partnership at the meet-ing, the owners decided that theyand the players should sit in alter-nating seats around the large ta-ble, which featured an N.F.L. logoin the middle.

“Let’s make sure that we keepthis confidential,” CommissionerRoger Goodell said to begin thesession.

The New York Times has ob-tained an audio recording of theroughly three-hour meeting, andseveral people in the room corrob-orated details of the gathering.The unvarnished conversation re-veals how the leaders of the mostdominant sports league in the

country and several of its mostoutspoken players confronted anunprecedented moment — mostlyby talking past one another.

The players sounded ag-grieved. After discussing a pro-posal to finance nonprofit groupsto address player concerns, theywanted to talk about why ColinKaepernick, the quarterback whostarted the anthem protests tohighlight social injustice and po-lice brutality against African-Americans, was, they believed,being blackballed by the owners.The owners sounded panickedabout their business under attack,and wanted to focus on damagecontrol.

Candid AudioAs N.F.L. Met

Over Protests

Fed-Up Players FacedPanicked Owners

By KEN BELSONand MARK LEIBOVICH

AUDRA MELTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A memorial that gives voice to the targets of American white supremacy is set to open on Thursday in Montgomery, Ala. Page A12.Lynching Victims, Name by Name

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia —Fadi al-Batsh, a well-liked electri-cal engineering lecturer and de-vout family man, always had asmile for his friends and studentsin the seven years since he movedto Malaysia from his native Gaza.

On Saturday, as he walked out-side his apartment building insuburban Kuala Lumpur, he wasgunned down in a hail of at least 14bullets by two men on a motor-cycle.

It was the Palestinian man’s un-dercover job — as what intelli-gence officials described as atechnology expert for the militarywing of the Gaza-based Hamas

movement — that had put him inthe cross hairs.

Malaysian officials said the at-tackers were “most likely born inthe Middle East or in the West”but would not directly say whothey thought was behind thekilling. Mr. Batsh’s family blamedMossad, the Israeli spy agency.

That claim has been confirmedby Middle Eastern intelligence of-

ficials, who said the killing waspart of a broader operation or-dered by the Mossad chief, YossiCohen, to dismantle a Hamasproject that sends Gaza’s mostpromising scientists and engi-neers overseas to gather know-how and weaponry to fight Israel.

Malaysia may seem like an odd

Behind an Assassination in Malaysia, Israeli-Palestinian IntrigueBy HANNAH BEECH

and RONEN BERGMAN

Continued on Page A6

KEYSER, W.Va. — DonBlankenship is running for theUnited States Senate as a proudWest Virginian with Appalachianroots, but his primary residence isa $2.4 million villa with palm treesand an infinity pool near Las Ve-gas.

Mr. Blankenship, a Republicanloyalist of President Trump, isrunning an America First-stylecampaign and calls himself an“American competitionist,” but headmires China’s state-controlledeconomy and has expressed inter-est in gaining Chinese citizenship.

The former coal mining execu-tive is widely known for spendinga year in prison for his role in amining explosion that claimed 29lives. Yet ahead of the May 8 pri-mary election, he is running as achampion of miners and has

bought TV ads that challenge set-tled facts about his role in the dis-aster.

And even as Mr. Blankenshipseeks to join the Republican ma-jority in Washington, a “superPAC” linked to the party establish-ment is attacking him as a “con-victed criminal” and a hypocrite.

No Republican candidate in the2018 midterms embodies so manycontradictions as pointedly as Mr.Blankenship, who was foundguilty of conspiracy to violatemine safety standards in federalcourt and yet has plenty of sup-porters in coal country.

He is one of three leading Re-

publican contenders heading intothe primary, even though he is lug-ging around enough political bag-gage to disqualify a candidatemost anywhere else.

That Mr. Blankenship retains apolitical hope is a consequence ofWest Virginia’s sharp shift to theright, driven by seething hostilityto the Obama presidency, both itssocial changes and its perceived“war” on coal. The emergence of aformer coal boss with a criminalrecord as a potential Senate nomi-nee seems partly an expression ofmany West Virginia voters’ desireto poke a thumb in the eye of theWashington establishment, Re-publicans very much included.

Mr. Blankenship offers no apol-ogy for his many contradictionsand personal and business deci-sions, some of them previouslyundisclosed. Though he lives a ba-ronial lifestyle thanks to a fortune

Coal Country Run for the Senate. No Apologies.By TRIP GABRIEL

and STEPHANIE SAUL

Don Blankenship, a former coal boss, says the size and origins of his wealth are no one’s business.AL DRAGO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Candidate Bears HeftyPolitical Baggage in

West Virginia

Continued on Page A14

WASHINGTON — Dr. Ronny L.Jackson, the White House physi-cian nominated to lead the Veter-ans Affairs Department, providedsuch “a large supply” of Percocet,a prescription opioid, to a WhiteHouse Military Office staff mem-ber that he threw his own medicalstaff “into a panic” when it couldnot account for the missing drugs,according to a summary of ques-tionable deeds compiled by theDemocratic staff of the SenateVeterans’ Affairs Committee.

A nurse on his staff said Dr.Jackson had written himself pre-scriptions, and when caught, hesimply asked a physician assist-ant to provide him with the medi-cation.

And at a Secret Service goingaway party, the doctor got intoxi-cated and “wrecked a governmentvehicle,” according to the summa-ry.

The two-page document, dis-tributed by committee Demo-crats, fleshes out three categoriesof accusations — prescriptiondrug misuse, hostile work envi-ronment and drunkenness — thatthreaten to derail PresidentTrump’s nominee. Committee

Claims MountAgainst Pick

To Lead V.A.

By NICHOLAS FANDOS

Continued on Page A16

SACRAMENTO — It was a rashof sadistic rapes and murders thatspread terror throughout Califor-nia, long before the term was com-monly used. The scores of attacksin the 1970s and 1980s went un-solved for more than three dec-ades. But on Wednesday, law en-forcement officials said they hadfinally arrested the notoriousGolden State Killer in a tidy sub-urb of Sacramento.

Joseph James DeAngelo, 72,who was taken into custody out-side his home on Tuesday andcharged with six counts of murder,had been living undisturbed ahalf-hour drive from where the 12-year rampage began. He was de-

scribed as a former police officer,and his time in uniform partlyoverlapped with many of thecrimes he is accused of commit-ting.

The case was cracked in thepast week, Sheriff Scott Jones ofSacramento County said onWednesday, when investigatorsidentified Mr. DeAngelo and wereable to match his DNA with themurders of Lyman and CharleneSmith in Ventura County in 1980.

“We found the needle in thehaystack and it was right here inSacramento,” said Anne MarieSchubert, the Sacramento districtattorney, who helped organize a

Search for ‘Golden State Killer’Leads to Former Police Officer

By THOMAS FULLER and CHRISTINE HAUSER

Continued on Page A19

E.P.A. STRATEGY Scott Pruitt mayspread blame for his actions whenhe talks to Congress. PAGE A15

TRIPLING RENT The White Housewants to raise rents in federallysubsidized housing. PAGE A15

Colin Kaepernick, who startedthe protests, does not have a job.

TED S. WARREN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Continued on Page A16

The comedian Michelle Wolf is honingher material for the White House Corre-spondents’ dinner. She doesn’t mindthat the president won’t attend. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-8

Lots of Jokes, No TrumpGov. Andrew M. Cuomo suggestedpolitical consequences if State SenatorSimcha Felder, a Democrat, continuedto caucus with Republicans. PAGE A20

NEW YORK A20-23

Pushing a Stray Into the Fold

The Manhattan district attorney hastapped Joan Illuzzi, who helped convictEtan Patz’s killer, to lead the HarveyWeinstein investigation. PAGE A23

New Face of Weinstein Inquiry

Facebook vowed to clean up its net-work. So why are swindlers still imper-sonating its chief executive? PAGE B1

BUSINESS DAY B1-11

Is That Really Mark Messaging?

The cable giant’s $30.7 billion bid for theBritish broadcaster Sky sets up a take-over war with 21st Century Fox. PAGE B6

Comcast Vies for a ‘Jewel’Before Congress, the French leaderchallenged the American stance ontrade and the environment. PAGE A10

Macron Critiques U.S. Policies

Female athletes with high levels of thehormone may face elimination undernew rules in the sport. Above, CasterSemenya of South Africa. PAGE B12

SPORTSTHURSDAY B12-17

Track’s Testosterone Ceiling

Late EditionToday, clouds giving way to somesunshine, milder, high 68. Tonight,increasing clouds, low 52. Tomor-row, some rain from late morningon, high 60. Weather map, Page B16.

$3.00