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When people turned out to help dogsstained by dye, it was in a tradition ofcaring for “community dogs.” PAGE A8

INTERNATIONAL A4-13

Love for Mumbai’s Blue Dogs

In the sneaker business, the feetof professional athletes are themost valuable billboards in theworld. The company that gets itsshoes on the best basketball play-ers, football players and soccerplayers wins, because those ath-letes’ footwear choices have out-size influence over everyoneelse’s purchasing decisions.

That fundamental truth abouthigh tops and cleats — that gettingtop players in your brand andkeeping them there is good busi-ness — was the subtext of a criti-cal piece of a corruption andbribery network outlined on Tues-day by federal prosecutors, whichswiftly resulted in the demise of aHall of Fame coach’s career.

The University of Louisville an-nounced on Wednesday that it hadabruptly ended the coaching ten-ure of Rick Pitino, winner of two

national championships andamong the most successfulcoaches in college basketball his-tory. The decision was made a dayafter the United States attorneyfor the Southern District of NewYork said in a criminal complaint

that two coaches had been part ofa scheme to funnel money fromthe university’s apparel partner,Adidas, to two high schoolprospects.

The complaint, which accusedan Adidas executive and others ofwire fraud and money laundering,did not disclose the names of any-one at Louisville. Pitino deniedany knowledge or responsibilityfor the accusations. “These alle-

In College Basketball Scandal, Follow the Money (and the Shoes)By MARC TRACY

and REBECCA R. RUIZ

Continued on Page A15

PITINO OUT AT LOUISVILLE

Rick Pitino has been “effectivelyfired” as the Cardinals’ coach in arecruiting scandal. Page B9.

ARENYS DE MUNT, Spain —As Spain’s government tries al-most everything it can to stop anindependence referendum Sun-day in the restive northern regionof Catalonia, the standoff is esca-lating into a constitutional crisisemblematic of the larger forcestearing at European unity.

With the support of the Spanishjudiciary, Madrid has shut downwebsites and advertising cam-paigns that have promoted thevote. It has raided the offices ofcompanies that would print thepaper ballots. It has sent in thou-sands of police officers from out-side the region, threatening toblock polling stations.

Last week, a dozen regionalgovernment officials were de-tained. Spain’s attorney generalhas warned that scores morecould be arrested and prosecuted,including even the leader of Cata-lonia, Carles Puigdemont.

“We are witnessing the worstdemocratic regression since thedeath of Franco,” Mr. Puigdemontsaid in an interview, referring toGen. Francisco Franco, the dicta-tor whose death in 1975 opened theway for Spanish democracy.“What is happening in Catalonia isvery serious.”

Indeed, Catalonia’s standoff hassteadily, if quietly, ratcheted upthis year as world attention large-ly focused elsewhere, with pivotalelections taking place in criticalEuropean Union states, most re-cently this week in Germany.

Those elections presented bigtests of the bloc’s cohesion. The

Spain Steps UpTactics to BlockCataloniaVote

By RAPHAEL MINDER

Continued on Page A12

HILARY SWIFT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Wrecked boats Wednesday in St. John, V.I. The U.S. Virgin Islands are struggling to recover from a pair of hurricanes. Page A21.A One-Two Punch to a Faded Paradise

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Repub-licans are confronting an insur-rection on the right that is angryenough to imperil their grip onCongress, and senior party strat-egists have concluded that theconservative base now loathes itsleaders in Washington the sameway it detested President BarackObama.

The defeat of Senator LutherStrange, Republican of Alabama,in a primary election on Tuesdaynight appears to have ushered in a

season of savage nominationfights and activist-led attacks onparty leaders, especially on Sena-tor Mitch McConnell of Kentucky,the majority leader. Despite en-joying the strong backing of Presi-dent Trump, Mr. Strange lost by awide margin to Roy Moore, a fire-brand religious activist and for-

mer judge, who denounced Mr.Strange as a puppet of the Senateleader.

Mr. Strange’s demise, seniorparty strategists and conserva-tive activists said Wednesday,makes it likelier that Republicanincumbents in the House and Sen-ate will face serious primary chal-lenges in 2018, fueled by anger atthe party’s apparent ineptitude atwielding power in Washington.Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’sformer chief strategist and a vehe-ment antagonist of the party es-tablishment, said on Tuesday

Alabama Revolt Raises Fears of G.O.P. Civil WarBy ALEXANDER BURNSand JONATHAN MARTIN

Continued on Page A18

Defeat of Leaders’ Pickfor Senate PortendsStrife in Midterms

INDIANAPOLIS — PresidentTrump on Wednesday began anambitious push to slash taxes andsalvage what remains of his em-battled legislative agenda in Con-gress this year, proposing a politi-cally challenging array of tax cutsfor individuals and businessesthat would constitute the mostsweeping changes to the federaltax code in decades.

Mr. Trump, smarting from thelatest defeat this week of his ef-forts to dismantle the AffordableCare Act, cast the tax plan as aneconomic imperative and the ful-fillment of a promise to his work-ing-class supporters to deliverbenefits in the form of lower taxes,better jobs and higher wages.

“This is a revolutionary change,and the biggest winners will bethe everyday American workersas jobs start pouring into ourcountry, as companies start com-peting for American labor and aswages start going up at levels thatyou haven’t seen in many years,”Mr. Trump told hundreds of sup-porters in a speech at the IndianaState Fair Grounds.

But the president offered nomeasure of the plan’s cost andscant detail about how workingpeople would benefit from a pro-posal that has explicit and sub-stantial rewards for wealthy peo-ple and corporations, includingthe elimination of taxes on largeinheritances and deep reductionsin the rates paid by businesseslarge and small.

After months of secret talksamong Republicans, the nine-page proposal produced by the so-called Big Six working groupprompts as many questions as itprovides answers. Without moredetails, it is difficult to show howmiddle-income families will see

Sweeping Trump Tax PlanVague on Details and Cost

Continued on Page A15

Urging an OverhaulAfter Health Care

Efforts Falter

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVISand ALAN RAPPEPORT

SAN FRANCISCO — After aweekend when Americans took tosocial media to debate PresidentTrump’s admonishment of N.F.L.players who do not stand for thenational anthem, a network ofTwitter accounts suspected oflinks to Russia seized on bothsides of the issue with hashtagssuch as #boycottnfl, #stand-forouranthem and #takeaknee.

As Twitter prepared to briefstaff members of the Senate andHouse intelligence committees onThursday for their investigationof Russian interference in the 2016election, researchers from a pub-lic policy group have been follow-ing hundreds of accounts to trackthe continuing Russian opera-tions to influence social media dis-course and foment division in theUnited States.

For three weeks, a harsh spot-

light has been trained on Face-book over its disclosure that Rus-sians used fake pages and ads, de-signed to look like the work ofAmerican activists, to spread in-flammatory messages during andsince the presidential campaign.

But there is evidence that Twit-ter may have been used evenmore extensively than Facebookin the Russian influence campaignlast year. In addition to Russia-linked Twitter accounts thatposed as Americans, the platformwas also used for large-scale auto-mated messaging, using “bot” ac-counts to spread false stories andpromote news articles aboutemails from Democratic opera-tives that had been obtained byRussian hackers.

Twitter has struggled for yearsto rein in the fake accounts over-

Twitter Seen as Key BattlefieldIn Russian Influence Campaign

By DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI and SCOTT SHANE

Continued on Page A16

WASHINGTON — The taxplan that the Trump administra-tion outlined on Wednesday is apotentially huge windfall for thewealthiest Americans. It wouldnot directly benefit the bottomthird of the population. As for themiddle class, the benefits appearto be modest.

The administration and itscongressional allies are propos-ing to sharply reduce taxation ofbusiness income, primarily bene-fiting the small share of thepopulation that owns the vastmajority of corporate equity.President Trump said onWednesday that the cuts wouldincrease investment and spurgrowth, creating broader pros-perity. But experts say the up-side is limited, not least becausethe economy is already expand-ing.

The plan would also benefitMr. Trump and other affluentAmericans by eliminating theestate tax, which affects just afew thousand uber-wealthy fam-ilies each year, and the alterna-tive minimum tax, a safety netdesigned to prevent tax avoid-ance.

The precise impact on Mr.Trump cannot be ascertainedbecause the president refuses torelease his tax returns, but thefew snippets of returns that havebecome public show one thingclearly: The alternative min-imum tax has been unkind to Mr.Trump. In 2005, it forced him topay $31 million in additionaltaxes.

Mr. Trump has also pledgedrepeatedly that the plan wouldreduce the taxes paid by middle-class families, but he has notprovided enough details to evalu-ate that claim. While somehouseholds would probably gettax cuts, others could end uppaying more.

The plan would not benefitlower-income households that donot pay federal income taxes.The president is not proposingmeasures like a reduction inpayroll taxes, which are paid bya much larger share of workers,nor an increase in the earned-income tax credit, which wouldexpand wage support for theworking poor.

Indeed, to call the plan “taxreform” seems like a stretch —Mr. Trump himself told conserva-tive and evangelical leaders onMonday that it was more apt to

AL DRAGO/THE NEW YORK TIMES

PRIVATE JETS The cabinet sec-retary Tom Price drew the pres-ident’s disapproval. Page A19.Continued on Page A16

Windfall Would Goto the Wealthiest

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

NEWS ANALYSIS

Jennifer Egan’s novel, about a womanworking at a naval yard, is a page-turner,Dwight Garner says. PAGE C1

Exploring ‘Manhattan Beach’

An attack at a Bronx school left a 15-year-old dead and a 16-year-old in gravecondition. PAGE A23

NEW YORK A23-25

Deadly High School Stabbing

The overturned corruption convictionsof two former New York legislativeleaders may well reverberate in theNew Jersey senator’s case. PAGE A24

Looming Over Menendez Trial

An imposing barrier along the bound-ary with Mexico has existed near SanDiego for nearly two decades. PAGE A14

NATIONAL A14-21

Preview of the Border Wall

An art contest created by a son of BetsyDeVos is drawing politically themedentries, like “Flint,” above. PAGE C5

ARTS C1-8

Political Palettes, Even Yellow

Some fast-food workers are blockedfrom changing jobs by obscure lan-guage in franchise contracts, and econ-omists are taking note. PAGE B1

BUSINESS DAY B1-8

Flipping Burgers, Not Jobs

Seven years after LeBron James joinedhim on the Miami Heat, Dwyane Wadereturned the favor by signing a dealwith the Cleveland Cavaliers. PAGE B9

SPORTSTHURSDAY B9-14

James Reunited With Wade

Gail Collins PAGE A27

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27

In Paris, there seemed to be a bit of adisconnect between a designer’s femi-nist inspiration and how it was ex-pressed, Vanessa Friedman writes.

FASHION A22

Red and ‘Woke’ in France

The Trump administration imposed ahuge tariff on a new aircraft made byBombardier of Montreal. PAGE A12

Trade Actions Against Canada

VINCENT LAFORET/THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Playboy magnate, who styled himself as an ageless sophisticate in silk pajamas and a smokingjacket, built an international empire out of hedonism and sexual liberation. He was 91. Page B16.

HUGH HEFNER, 1926-2017

Late Edition

VOL. CLXVII . . . No. 57,734 + © 2017 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2017

Today, sunshine and clouds, breezy,not as warm, less humid, high 78. To-night, clear and cooler, low 56. To-morrow, sunny, seasonable, high 71.Weather map appears on Page B12.

$2.50