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ISTANBUL — Turkey’s presi-dent, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,strode onto a stage a month agolooking down upon a sea of a mil-lion fans waving red Turkish flags.They were celebrating the 15th-century conquest of Istanbul bythe Ottoman sultan Mehmed II,the golden moment of Turkey’sMuslim ancestors triumphingover the Christian West.

“The conquest means going be-yond the walls that the Westthought were impervious,” Mr. Er-dogan said as the crowd roared.“The conquest means a 21-year-old sultan bringing Byzantium toheel.”

The spectacle, complete with afighter-jet sky show and a re-en-actment of the conquest with fire-works and strobe lights, projectedan image of unity and command,of a nation marching together to-ward greatness, drawing on theachievements of a glorious past.But that soaring vision is beinggrounded by sobering realities.

Mr. Erdogan, who long pro-fessed a foreign policy of “zeroproblems with neighbors,” nowseems to be mired in disputes withjust about everybody and justabout everywhere. Kurdish andIslamic State militants havestruck Turkey 14 times in the pastyear, killing 280 people and sow-ing new fears. The economy hassuffered, too, as the violencefrightens away tourists.

At the same time, Mr. Erdoganhas become increasingly isolated,frustrating old allies like theUnited States by refusing foryears to take firm measuresagainst the Islamic State. He hasrecently gotten serious about themilitant group, but that appears tohave brought new problems:Turkish officials say they believethat the Islamic State was respon-sible for the suicide attack thatkilled 44 people on Tuesday in Is-tanbul’s main airport, a major ar-tery of Turkey’s strained econ-omy.

He has helped reignite war withKurdish separatists in Turkey’ssoutheast, and hundreds ofcivilians have died in the fighting,which began last summer. Healienated Moscow last fall whenTurkish forces shot down a fighter

TURKISH LEADERMAKES NEW FOESAND VEXES ALLIES

ISOLATED AND CORNERED

As Attacks by Militants

Grow, Erdogan Faces

Sobering Realities

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Continued on Page A7

ANAHEIM, Calif. — At VidCon,a sprawling conference here forthe young stars of online video,success has a particular sound: asudden, earsplitting shriek, sig-naling that a legion of tween-agefans have spotted one of their idolsand are making a frantic selfierun.

Hailey Knox, a 17-year-old sing-er from Carmel, N.Y., who was vis-iting VidCon late last month topromote her debut EP, “A Little

Awkward,” has not cracked theshriek level of fame. But the teamof music and technology execu-tives behind her are betting that,based on her budding popularityonline, she could soon be enjoyinga screamfest of her own.

Ms. Knox is one of the stars ofYouNow, a live-streaming mobileapp on which she broadcasts a fewtimes a week, usually from herbedroom. She plays quirky cover

Chasing Squeals of Stardom,

Not in the Clubs but via Apps

By BEN SISARIO

Hailey Knox and Zach Clayton, known as BruhitsZach, broad-casting live from the YouNow app booth at VidCon in June.

EMILY BERL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page B2

BURKEVILLE, Va. — LennySingleton is the first to admit thathe deserved an extended stay be-hind bars. To fuel his crack habitback in 1995, he walked into 13stores over eight days and eitherdistracted a clerk or pretended tohave a concealed gun before steal-ing from the cash register. Onetime, he was armed with a knifewith a six-inch blade that he hadbrought from his kitchen.

Mr. Singleton, 28 at the time,was charged with robbery and ac-cepted a plea deal, fully expectingto receive a long jail sentence. Buta confluence of factors workedagainst him, including the particu-larly hard-nosed judge who sen-tenced him and the zero-toleranceethos of the time against users ofcrack cocaine. His sentence wasvery long: two life sentences. Andanother 100 years. And no possi-bility for parole.

There is a growing consensusthat the criminal justice systemhas incarcerated too many Ameri-cans for too many years, with lib-erals and conservatives alike de-nouncing the economic and socialcosts of holding 2.2 million peoplein the nation’s prisons and jails.And Congress is currently debat-ing a criminal justice bill that,among other provisions, would re-duce mandatory minimum sen-tences for nonviolent offenders.

But a divide has opened withinthe reform movement over how toaddress prisoners who have beenconvicted of violent crimes, in-cluding people like Mr. Singleton,who threatened shop owners butdid not harm anyone. Groups likethe American Civil Liberties Un-ion favor a swift 50 percent reduc-tion in prison populations, whileconservative prison reform orga-nizations like Right on Crime pri-oritize the release of nonviolentoffenders and worry that releas-ing others could backfire and re-duce public support.

Nonviolent drug offendersmake up only about 17 percent ofall state prison inmates aroundthe nation, while violent offendersmake up more than 50 percent, ac-cording to federal data.

As the prison population has in-creased sharply over the past 30years, so too has the number ofthose sentenced to life. Mr. Single-ton is among nearly 160,000prisoners serving life sentences— roughly the population of Eu-gene, Ore. The number of such in-mates has more than quadrupledsince 1984, and now about one in

A ’90s LegacyThat Is Filling Prisons Today

Push for Reform Snags

on Violent Offenses

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

Lenny Singleton and his wife,Vandy, on their wedding daylast year at a Virginia prison.

VIA VANDY SINGLETON

Continued on Page A11

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

An Iraqi in a building destroyed in a weekend terror attack. As the death toll passed 150, Iraq’s leader faced calls to resign. Page A6.

Grief and Anger in Baghdad

International diplomacy is aworld of careful rituals, hierarchyand credentials. But when the Is-raeli ambassador to the UnitedStates, Ron Dermer, wanted tocommunicate with Donald J.Trump, he ended up on two occa-sions in the Manhattan office of ayoung man with no governmentexperience, no political back-ground and no official title in theTrump campaign: Jared Kushner.

Mr. Kushner held court atlength with Mr. Dermer, doing hisbest to engage in the same sort ofhigh-level conversation that theambassador conducted with ca-reer diplomats and policy expertsfrom Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

A 35-year-old real estate devel-oper, investor and newspaperpublisher, Mr. Kushner derives hisauthority in the campaign notfrom a traditional résumé butfrom a marital vow. He is Mr.Trump’s son-in-law.

Yet in a gradual but unmistak-able fashion, Mr. Kushner has be-come involved in virtually everyfacet of the Trump presidential op-eration, so much so that many in-side and out of it increasingly seehim as a de facto campaign man-ager. Mr. Kushner, who is marriedto Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka,helped recruit a sorely needed di-rector of communications, over-saw the creation of an online fund-raising system and has had a handin drafting Mr. Trump’s few policyspeeches. And now that Mr.Trump has secured the Republi-can nomination, Mr. Kushner iscounseling his father-in-law onthe selection of a running mate.

It is a new and unlikely role forMr. Kushner, a conspicuously po-lite Harvard graduate whoseprominent New Jersey familybankrolled Democrats fordecades and whose father’s repu-tation was destroyed, in a highlypublic and humiliating manner, byhis involvement in electoral poli-

A Son-in-LawWields PowerIn Trump’s Bid

By MICHAEL BARBAROand JONATHAN MAHLER

Continued on Page A15

DE KALB, Miss. — The fortressof steel and concrete toweringabove the pine forest here is afirst-of-its-kind power plant thatwas supposed to prove that “cleancoal” was not an oxymoron — thatit was possible to produce elec-tricity from coal in a way thatemits far less pollution, and toturn a profit while doing so.

The plant was not only a centralpiece of the Obama administra-tion’s climate plan, it was also sup-posed to be a model for futurepower plants to help slow the dan-gerous effects of global warming.The project was hailed as a way tobring thousands of jobs to Missis-sippi, the nation’s poorest state,and to extend a lifeline to the dy-ing coal industry.

The sense of hope is fading fast,however. The Kemper coal plant ismore than two years behindschedule and more than $4 billionover its initial budget, $2.4 billion,and it is still not operational.

The plant and its owner, South-ern Company, are the focus of aSecurities and Exchange Com-mission investigation, andratepayers, alleging fraud, are su-ing the company. Members of

Congress have described theproject as more boondoggle thanboon. The mismanagement is par-ticularly egregious, they say, giv-en the urgent need to rein in thelargest source of dangerous emis-sions around the world: coalplants.

The plant’s backers, includingfederal energy officials, have de-fended their work in recent years

by saying that delays and costoverruns are inevitable with inno-vative projects of this scale. In thiscase, they say, the difficulties stemlargely from unforeseen factors —or “unknown unknowns,” as TomFanning, the chief executive ofSouthern Company, has oftencalled them — like bad weather, la-bor shortages and design uncer-

A Model for ‘Clean Coal’ Goes Awry

Amid Allegations of Fraud, a $4 Billion Cost Overrun

The Kemper power plant, being built in Mississippi, was pro-moted by the Obama administration as part of its climate plan.

JOSH HANER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A12

By IAN URBINA

Nigel Farage, who probably did morethan anyone to force the vote on Britishmembership in the European Union,resigned as leader of the right-wingU.K. Independence Party. PAGE A9

INTERNATIONAL A4-9

‘Brexit’ Champion Resigns

As poaching thins out the ranks ofelephant matriarchs, their daughtersare forced to take over as leaders oftheir social groups. PAGE D1

SCIENCE TIMES D1-6

Following in Huge FootstepsLibraries in New York and elsewhereare staging a renaissance, reinventingthemselves as community centers withsomething for everyone. PAGE A19

NEW YORK A19-21

Libraries in the Digital Age

Kevin Durant announced that he wouldleave the Oklahoma City Thunder tosign with the talent-rich Warriors,creating a virtual dream team. PAGE B7

SPORTSTUESDAY B7-11

Durant to Join Golden State

Every election brings a wave of politicalbooks from reporters, pundits and thecandidates themselves, but this year is

already excep-tional in terms ofhow many focuson Donald J.Trump. Left,“Yuge!: 30 Yearsof Doonesbury onTrump.” PAGE B1

BUSINESS DAY B1-5

Trump, the Bookseller

David Brooks PAGE A23

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23

After a five-year journey that covered1.7 billion miles, the NASA spacecraftJuno entered the planet’s orbit as partof a mission to search for possible cluesto the solar system’s origins. PAGE A16

NATIONAL A10-16

NASA’s Juno Reaches Jupiter“Soundwalk 9:09” was written to belistened to on a cellphone while walkingfrom the Metropolitan Museum of Artto the Met Breuer in nine minutes andnine seconds. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-6

Urban Noise Makes Music

Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane in thetelevision series “Adventures of Super-man” in the 1950s, was 95. PAGE A17

OBITUARIES A17-18

An Early Lois Lane

VOL. CLXV . . . No. 57,284 © 2016 The New York Times NEW YORK, TUESDAY, JULY 5, 2016

Late Edition

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Today, rain early, more humid,clouds breaking, high 85. Tonight,clear, humid, low 73. Tomorrow, hot,humid, clouds and sun, high 92.Weather map is on Page A14.