Where is Representative Thomas Kean Jr.?

Lately, curious political watchers have noted where Mr. Kean is not. He seems to be absent on Capitol Hill, where he represents the people of New Jersey’s Seventh District but hasn’t cast a vote in more than two months. Mr. Kean, a Republican, has not been seen on the campaign trail as he runs for re-election in a competitive midterm race.

He has not appeared in pixel form, either: No candid photos have emerged of the incumbent to allay the worries of donors and constituents. Two weeks ago his office released a written statement, attributed to Mr. Kean, explaining that he was dealing with a “medical issue” and would be back “very soon.”

Since then? No reported sightings.

Mr. Kean’s social media accounts have remained active in his prolonged absence. The posts are often written in the first person, but paired with older photos.

“What we are being assured is that his team is carrying the torch,” Tina Shah, who is vying for the chance to unseat Mr. Kean, said on Tuesday at a debate with three other Democrats. “But we elected Tom Kean Jr., not his team.”

Members of Mr. Kean’s team were seated conspicuously in the third row, watching as the Democrats took turns weighing in on their boss’s mysterious absence. Afterward, his chief of staff, Dan Scharfenberger, reiterated a now familiar explanation.

“He’s dealing with a personal health condition, and he’ll be back soon,” Mr. Scharfenberger said in an interview.

When pressed on the nature of the health condition and why Mr. Kean had not been seen in New Jersey or in Washington, Mr. Scharfenberger said, “There’s no cameras where Tom is.”

He declined to elaborate.

National Democratic officials see Mr. Kean’s district — a largely affluent and suburban region that stretches like a girdle across North Jersey from its eastern shoreline to its western border with Pennsylvania — as one of the party’s best pickup opportunities in November. And Democrats had been aggressively targeting his seat well before Mr. Kean began missing votes.

“He’s going to be totally fine, and he’ll be back to a full schedule soon,” Harrison Neely, Mr. Kean’s spokesman, said on Tuesday.

Soon may not be imminent. The Morris County Chamber of Commerce has amended the program for a May 28 breakfast meeting focused on Washington policies, saying that Mr. Kean will no longer be speaking at the event.

“As you no doubt have heard, Congressman Kean will be unable to appear due to his ongoing health concerns,” a notice posted on the chamber’s website states. “We wish him well.”

Mr. Neely had no immediate response on whether the congressman had canceled other similar events.

Democrats vying for the Seventh District seat have seemed cautious about attacking Mr. Kean, perhaps aware of the political risk of going after a man whose condition is not known. But at Tuesday’s debate, a few of them offered some measured criticism about the Republican’s lack of transparency.

“Look, at the end of the day you’re a public servant,” said Brian Varela, who owns child care centers and is campaigning to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. “And while I don’t think you need to be putting your own personal medical history out there, you at the very least have a responsibility to be communicating with your constituents and with your district.”

Michael Roth, who helped to lead the Small Business Administration during the Biden administration, said most workers would be required to be more transparent with their employers if they needed to take two months off.

“If you were missing work, you would tell your boss,” he said. “And Tom Kean Jr.’s boss is the people.”

Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot who has worked as a strategist for health care companies, avoided discussing Mr. Kean’s absence and instead said the election was about the job Mr. Kean had been doing before he disappeared from public view.

Mr. Kean is the only Republican on the June 2 primary ballot. If he had exited the race at least 62 days before the primary, a three-person team of campaign advisers would have filled the vacancy. Republican leaders from the district’s six counties would select a nominee if he were to drop out after the primary. His aides maintain that the congressman has no plans to bow out.

Leonard Lance, a moderate Republican who lost re-election in the Seventh District in 2018 after five terms in Congress, said the loss of any of the state’s three G.O.P. House members would be a blow to New Jersey’s historically centrist core. But he said he believed Mr. Kean was still the best candidate “by far” to fend off what is likely to be a fierce Democratic challenge.

“I take at face value the statement of his office that he will be back at 100 percent,” Mr. Lance said.

There were no reported sightings of Mr. Kean on Wednesday, the day after the debate. However, the congressman’s X account did post an update on his activities.

“I’m pleased to join the Congressional Crypto Caucus,” the post said. “The United States must lead on digital assets — driving innovation, delivering regulatory clarity and protecting consumers. I look forward to working with this bipartisan group of colleagues to advance that agenda.”

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

A flag displaying two swastikas and a Star of David appeared on top of a building on the New York University campus on Wednesday, the Police Department confirmed on Thursday.

The flag, which appeared near Washington Square Park, resembled the many purple N.Y.U. flags flying on campus buildings but was emblazoned with two swastikas surrounding a Star of David. According to the student newspaper, Washington Square News, the flag appeared about 5 p.m. and was removed roughly 15 minutes later.

The Police Department received a 911 call at 5:21 p.m. reporting harassment. When officers arrived, a man told them that a flag had been tampered with to display swastikas. An investigation remains ongoing, a Police Department spokeswoman said, and no arrests have been made.

“We are shocked and deeply troubled that this hateful symbol expressing antisemitism was raised on a flagpole overlooking Washington Square Park,” Wiley Norvell, an N.Y.U. spokesman, said in a statement. “Campus safety responded immediately to remove it, and we are working closely with the N.Y.P.D. to identify whoever is responsible.”

The flag appeared during a graduation week event known as Grad Alley, a block party where soon-to-be graduates and their families take in live music, dance performances and play carnival games. During the event, some people noticed the flag waving on top of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, on a corner overlooking the park, according to the student newspaper.

The Steinhardt School was named for Michael and Judy Steinhardt after they donated $10 million to N.Y.U. to support “faculty development, doctoral fellowships and research.”

Mr. Steinhardt, a billionaire, made his money on Wall Street before becoming a major donor to N.Y.U. as well as to Jewish philanthropies. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden includes a Steinhardt conservatory, and the Steinhardt Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is also named for him. Mr. Steinhardt is one of the founders of Birthright Israel, which sends young Jewish people on free trips to Israel to bolster their connection to the country and support their Jewish identity.

The incident during the Grad Alley event followed objections to N.Y.U.’s choice of a commencement speaker. Student government leaders objected to Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and author, being selected to speak at the graduation ceremony and sent a letter to university officials asking them to reconsider their choice. The student leaders cited Dr. Haidt’s criticism of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

A man accused of running a secret police station in Manhattan at the direction of the Chinese government, using it to report to Beijing on political dissidents, was convicted of illegally working as a foreign agent on Wednesday.

Lu Jianwang, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said, opened the station with the goal of helping Chinese citizens renew their driver’s licenses while living in America. But a far more sinister aim, they said, was running the outpost as a hub to monitor outspoken critics of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr. Lu, an American citizen also known as Harry, was accused of aiding China’s campaign of transnational repression by opening an illegal police station in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood.

Mr. Lu, 64, who wore an American flag pin on his suit during the trial, did not react as the verdict was read aloud. He was supported by dozens of members of a group linked to his hometown in China.

He was “in lock-step with what the Chinese government asked him to do,” Antoinette N. Rangel, a federal prosecutor, said during her closing argument on Tuesday.

After a full day of deliberations, a jury found Mr. Lu guilty on one count of acting as a foreign agent and another of obstructing justice. He was acquitted of conspiring to act as an agent of China.

Dozens of Mr. Lu’s supporters from his church and his Chinese community organization packed the courtroom. One supporter pumped her first as the verdict on the first charge, not guilty, was read aloud, but struck a somber tone after the guilty verdicts. Mr. Lu did not change his expression.

Mr. Lu had been “held accountable for blatantly disregarding the law and our country’s sovereignty,” Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said in a statement. He added that his office would protect the rights of those “seeking freedom from repression and speaking out to bring democracy, reform and human rights to China.”

Mr. Lu, along with Chen Jinping, was arrested in April 2023. Mr. Chen pleaded guilty to working as an unauthorized agent of China in December 2024.

Mr. Lu was the president of the American Changle Association, a Chinese community organization and social club for people from the city of Fuzhou, like Mr. Lu. Such groups have attracted scrutiny for their persistent efforts to influence New York politics, through methods such as harassing and threatening candidates with platforms seen as harmful by the Chinese government, at the behest of the Chinese Consulate.

Mr. Lu’s brother, Jimmy, had made donations to former New York Mayor Eric Adams, who spoke at the club during an event in September 2022, days before it was raided by federal agents. In July 2022, Jimmy Li, a congressional candidate with roots in Fujian Province, which includes Fuzhou, visited the clubhouse and was endorsed by a number of the group’s leaders.

The weeklong trial showcased the Justice Department’s long-running crackdown on what it calls a global campaign by China to harass, intimidate and repatriate its political dissidents. Prosecutors depicted Mr. Lu as a willing operative of the Chinese government, eager to deepen his longstanding ties with party officials.

They presented the jury photos of Mr. Lu mingling with government officials in China, text messages in which a Chinese security official asked him for information on a prominent pro-democracy activist, and expert testimony about China’s global efforts to quell dissidents.

But Mr. Lu’s lawyer, John Carman, described the case as overreach by federal prosecutors. During his closing statement on Tuesday, he said Mr. Lu had merely been trying to help his fellow community members, Chinese Americans of Fujianese heritage.

“This isn’t spy time,” Mr. Carman said. “This isn’t international espionage. This is license renewal.”

In January 2022, Mr. Lu began working with Liu Rangyan, an official at the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, who became his official handler, prosecutors said. They met and were photographed at the global rollout ceremony in China for the overseas police stations.

Ms. Liu, prosecutors said, had directed “every detail” of the Manhattan station, down to the type size, logo and spacing of a banner inside the station. She wanted Mr. Lu to track down an outspoken critic of Beijing who was living in California and had taken part in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

“Just help me verify if this person exists,” Ms. Liu wrote, referring to the dissident.

On the second day of the trial, two F.B.I. agents dramatically unfurled the banner in front of jurors. It read “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, New York, U.S.A.”

Prosecutors said Mr. Lu had aided the Chinese authorities beyond his work setting up the station. In 2018, he sent photos to another Chinese official of two members of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that is banned in China.

Just as the F.B.I. searched the organization’s headquarters in 2022, prosecutors said, he deleted messages from the social messaging app WeChat from his phone, which amounted to obstructing justice.

Ms. Rangel said the station was “stopped early in its tracks.” Though Mr. Lu was not financially compensated for his work, he received “continued bona fides from the Chinese government,” said Carrie Crossmore, an F.B.I. agent who interviewed Mr. Lu.

But supporters of Mr. Lu said they thought he was being punished for work that was ultimately benign.

“Harry’s motives were pure,” Mr. Carman said outside the courthouse, standing alongside Mr. Lu. “His support was there because he’s helped a lot of people in his 45 years in America.”

Baimadajie Angwang, a former New York City police officer who was cleared of accusations that he had spied for China, sat with Mr. Lu’s legal team throughout the trial. Like Mr. Lu, Mr. Angwang said he was wearing an American flag pin on his suit to quell any notion that he was disloyal to America.

“We have to do things like this to prevent people from coming after us,” said Mr. Angwang, who also served in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Michael Forsythe contributed reporting.