Aurelia Butler

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    A Small Campus in the Redwoods Has the Nation’s Most Entrenched Protest

    Pro-Palestinian protesters have occupied the administration building at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt for the past week and forced a campus closure until May 10.When university administrators across the nation worry about the potential fallout from campus protests, they may have Siemens Hall in mind.The building, at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, includes the campus president’s office and has been occupied for a week by pro-Palestinian protesters who barricaded themselves inside and fought off an early attempt by the police to remove them. Protesters have since tagged walls and renamed it “Intifada Hall” by ripping off most of the signage on the brick exterior.Inside, they painted graffiti messages like “Time 2 Free Gaza,” “Pigs Not Allowed,” and “Land Back,” according to a video posted by the local news site Redheaded Blackbelt. They occupied and defaced the office of the president, Tom Jackson Jr., spraying “Blood On Your Hands” across one framed wall hanging and “I Will Live Free or Die Trying” on his door.The school, more than 275 miles north of San Francisco, among the ancient coastal redwoods dripping with fog mist, is the site of the most entrenched of the campus protests across the country. It has gone well beyond the encampments on student quads elsewhere; at Cal Poly Humboldt, protesters took over the power center of the campus and have rejected increasingly desperate entreaties from officials for them to vacate the premises.The university has shut down the entire campus, first for a couple days, then a week and now through May 10, one day before its scheduled commencement. After the Siemens Hall takeover, protesters set up dozens of tents on patches of grass around the hall, and demonstrators took over a second building to use its bathrooms and hold meetings. University officials estimate the damage to be in the millions of dollars.To those outside Northern California, the show of force at Cal Poly Humboldt, in the college town of Arcata, has been a surprising turn in a region more typically associated with a hippie pacifism and marijuana farms. But beneath the good-vibes image, locals say, a culture of protest and resentment toward authority has percolated at the 6,000-student campus.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    NYT Crossword Answers for April 30, 2024

    Michèle Govier has us dwelling on the details.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — The board game Clue was invented in the 1940s and was intended chiefly as a wartime distraction for Britons experiencing air-raid blackouts. Since then, however, it has developed significant cultural influence: A 1985 film of the same name is a cult classic; tropes of gameplay are the subject of contemporary satire; flashes of the board’s campy dinner-party theatrics have appeared in more recent films such as “Knives Out” and its sequel, “Glass Onion.”It might be said that today’s crossword, constructed by Michèle Govier, contains its own nod to the game. The stakes of this puzzle, by contrast, are thankfully benign, but solving it makes for delightful detective work. We should dive in posthaste, though — I’m so eager to explain the grid that I already have “flames, flames on the side of my face.”Today’s ThemeLooking at the grid, solvers may note that each vertical cluster of circled letters seems to zig and zag ever so slightly. At 62-Across, we’re told that these circles represent a certain expression meaning “Space to maneuver.” I recommend cracking a few entries elsewhere in the grid before returning to this clue since the circled terms we’re looking for are spread among so many entries, both Down and Across.In the bottom left corner, the circles spell PANTRY. Toward the bottom right corner, we answer a handful of clues to get ATTIC. At this point, I became fairly confident that the second word in the revealer was ROOM. And what do these strings of circles do? They WIGGLE. Ha! See if you can uncover the remaining WIGGLE ROOMs (62A) on your own: There’s a PARLOR, LOUNGE and STUDY left to find.Tricky Clues10A. In clues like this one — “Self-care?” — always mind the question mark. It tends to indicate a different interpretation from the one that’s most obvious. Here, the clue refers to a state of caring purely about oneself — i.e., EGO.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Arizona Rancher Accused of Killing Migrant Won’t Be Retried After Mistrial

    George Alan Kelly was accused of murdering Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, an unarmed migrant from Mexico, on his 170-acre ranch in Kino Springs, Ariz., last year.Prosecutors in Arizona said on Monday that they would not retry a rancher who was charged with murdering an unarmed migrant on his property last year after a mistrial was declared last week.Jurors were not able to reach a unanimous verdict in the case against George Kelly, 75, who fatally shot at Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, 48, on his 170-acre ranch in Kino Springs, Ariz., after Mr. Cuen-Buitimea crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in January 2023. Judge Thomas Fink of Santa Cruz County Superior Court declared a mistrial on April 22.The Santa Cruz District Attorney’s Office said in a statement on Monday that “because of the unique circumstances and challenges surrounding” the case, Mr. Kelly would not be retried.“However, our office’s decision in this case should not be construed as a position on future cases of this type,” the office said. “Our office is mandated by statute to prosecute criminal acts, and we take that statutory mandate seriously.”Brenna Larkin, a lawyer for Mr. Kelly, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.Ms. Larkin said last week that there had been a hung jury in the case, and that the final count had been 7-1 in favor of finding Mr. Kelly not guilty.Mr. Cuen-Buitimea was part of a group of undocumented migrants who were crossing the high desert in Kino Springs, Ariz., near the border with Mexico on Jan. 30, 2023, when they were spotted by Border Patrol and fled, according to the authorities. Mr. Cuen-Buitimea and another man, Daniel Ramirez, ran onto Mr. Kelly’s ranch, which is when Mr. Kelly fired an AK-47-style rifle at them, the authorities said.Mr. Cuen-Buitimea was struck in the back and died, law enforcement officials said.Mr. Kelly was charged in February 2023 with one count of second-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.The case emboldened immigration critics and conservative ranchers, who said that Mr. Kelly had been a victim, while others were horrified by the shooting.Ms. Larkin said in court documents that Mr. Kelly had been eating lunch the day of the shooting when he and his wife saw several men armed with rifles near his home.“Mr. Kelly responded by firing several warning shots over the heads of the group,” she wrote in court documents.Michael Jette, a deputy Santa Cruz County attorney, said during closing arguments on April 18 that Mr. Kelly had fired his gun “without verbal warning, without a shout, without any indication,” The Associated Press reported.Before the case went to trial in March, Mr. Kelly rejected a plea agreement that would have reduced the charges to one count of negligent homicide. More

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    Biden y López Obrador prometen una acción conjunta para abordar la migración ilegal

    En una declaración conjunta, los presidentes de EE. UU. y de México se comprometieron a abordar la migración no autorizada, pero no especificaron ninguna acción concreta.El presidente Joe Biden y el mandatario de México, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, prometieron el lunes una acción combinada para prevenir la migración ilegal. Biden se encuentra bajo una intensa presión política desde todos los bandos para enfrentar el impacto del aumento de los cruces fronterizos antes de las elecciones presidenciales de este año.En una declaración conjunta, Biden y López Obrador afirmaron que habían ordenado a sus asesores de seguridad nacional “trabajar juntos para implementar de inmediato medidas concretas para reducir significativamente los cruces fronterizos irregulares y al mismo tiempo proteger los derechos humanos”.La declaración, que se produjo luego de que ambos líderes conversaron telefónicamente el domingo, no especificó ninguna acción concreta. Un alto funcionario gubernamental se negó a dar detalles sobre lo que Estados Unidos y México podrían “implementar inmediatamente”. Pero el funcionario dijo que, entre las posibilidades que se están analizando, hay medidas coercitivas más estrictas para impedir que se utilicen ferrocarriles, autobuses y aeropuertos para el cruce ilegal de fronteras y más vuelos que regresen a los inmigrantes a sus países de origen.Este tema podría ser decisivo para la permanencia de Biden en la Casa Blanca durante otros cuatro años. Las encuestas realizadas en los últimos meses, tanto a republicanos como a demócratas, indican que la situación en la frontera genera gran preocupación. Incluso algunos de los más fervientes partidarios del presidente en ciudades liberales le están exigiendo que haga algo para frenar el flujo de inmigrantes.El más reciente plan del presidente al respecto —con un proyecto de ley de migración muy restrictivo que contaba con cierto apoyo bipartidista— se estancó en los últimos meses tras ser bloqueado por los republicanos en la Cámara de Representantes. Biden había pedido que la legislación se aprobara junto con la ayuda financiera para Israel, Ucrania y Taiwán, pero cuando el Congreso llegó a un acuerdo sobre la financiación a principios de este mes, la legislación fronteriza no estaba incluida.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Election Deniers Are Still Shaping Arizona Politics

    There have been few political consequences for many Republicans accused of helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.Two years ago, a group of election deniers ran for office in Arizona, with Kari Lake’s campaign for governor topping the ticket. When many of them lost, it seemed like a convincing rebuke of the conspiracy theory-steeped Republicans who wanted to control the levers of electoral power in 2024.It turned out, though, that the small matter of losing was not going to keep election deniers out of the spotlight, nor away from key roles in the Arizona Republican Party and beyond.And neither will an indictment, it seems.Last week, the Democratic attorney general of Arizona charged 17 people with counts including conspiracy, fraud and forgery, alleging they made efforts to overturn former President Donald Trump’s narrow loss in the 2020 election that amounted to a crime. Eleven of the people charged cast fake electoral votes in support of Trump.The defendants who got the most attention are the ones who were closest to Trump at the time, like former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York, the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Boris Epshteyn, who is one of Trump’s legal advisers. (While their names were redacted in the indictment, detailed descriptions contained in the charging documents made it easy to tell who they are.)But the trajectory of some of the 11 local and lower-profile defendants is even more revealing. Their story shows how Republicans who sought to challenge the 2020 election results continue to face few political consequences, and how deeply their philosophy is woven into the politics of 2024 in Arizona and elsewhere.“The party has not only not created any distance, it has continued to forcefully embrace” election deniers, said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Phoenix.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Matt Gaetz Faces Last-Minute Challenger in Republican Primary

    Aaron Dimmock, a retired Navy officer and aviator, has entered the Republican primary to challenge Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida — jumping into the race hours before a filing deadline last Friday.Mr. Dimmock’s campaign committee shares a treasurer with American Patriots PAC, a group that was used by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy to support candidates who were aligned with him in the 2022 midterms. Mr. Gaetz led the revolt among House Republicans that ultimately ousted Mr. McCarthy from the speakership.Mr. Dimmock and representatives of American Patriots PAC did not respond to requests for comment. The primary for the First Congressional District, which covers Pensacola and the western Florida Panhandle, will take place on Aug. 20.Mr. Dimmock, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, served as a pilot for the P-3 surveillance plane for the Navy. In an interview with the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association in 2020, Mr. Dimmock said that he had deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo and had completed several tours in the Middle East. He also described flying surveillance missions over New York City in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. He became an instructor pilot, later worked as a recruiting officer and closed out his career as a Navy liaison in the Pentagon. The Navy operates a major air base in Pensacola.Mr. Gaetz quickly attacked Mr. Dimmock on social media, pointing to LinkedIn posts that Mr. Dimmock made as a business consultant in 2020 in support of racial diversity and the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.“Meet Aaron W. Dimmock,” Mr. Gaetz wrote. “The B.L.M. supporting D.E.I. instructor running against me in the Republican Primary. I knew former Representative McCarthy would be getting a puppet of his to run. I didn’t know it would be a Woke Toby Flenderson!” More

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    Trump Is Flirting With Quack Economics

    More than 30 years ago, the economists Rudiger Dornbusch (one of my mentors) and Sebastian Edwards wrote a classic paper on what they called “macroeconomic populism.” Their motivating examples were inflationary outbreaks under left-wing regimes in Latin America, but it seemed clear that the key issue wasn’t left-wing governance per se; it was, instead, what happens when governments engage in magical thinking. Indeed, even at the time they could have included the experience of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, which killed or “disappeared” thousands of leftists but also pursued irresponsible economic policies that led to a balance-of-payments crisis and soaring inflation.Modern examples of the syndrome include leftist governments like that of Venezuela, but also right-wing nationalist governments like that of Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who insisted that he could fight inflation by cutting interest rates.Will the United States be next?I wish people would stop calling Donald Trump a populist. He has, after all, never demonstrated any inclination to help working Americans, and his economic policies really didn’t help — his 2017 tax cut, in particular, was a giveaway to the wealthy. But his behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic showed that he’s as addicted to magical thinking and denial of reality as any petty strongman or dictator, which makes it all too likely that he might preside over the type of problems that result when policies are based on quack economics.Now, destructive economic policy isn’t the thing that alarms me the most about Trump’s potential return to power. Prospects for retaliation against his political opponents, huge detention camps for undocumented immigrants and more loom much larger in my mind. Still, it does seem worth noting that even as Republicans denounce President Biden for the inflation that occurred on his watch, Trump’s advisers have been floating policy ideas that could be far more inflationary than anything that has happened so far.It’s true that inflation surged in 2021 and 2022 before subsiding, and there’s a vigorous debate about how much of a role Biden’s economic policies played. I’m skeptical, among other things because inflation in the United States since the beginning of the Covid pandemic has closely tracked with that of other advanced economies. What’s notable, however, is what the Biden administration didn’t do when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to fight inflation. There was a clear risk that rate hikes would cause a politically disastrous recession, although this hasn’t happened so far. But Biden and company didn’t pressure the Fed to hold off; they respected the Fed’s independence, letting it do what it thought was necessary to bring inflation under control.Does anyone imagine that Trump — who in 2019 insisted that the Fed should cut interest rates to zero or below — would have exercised comparable restraint?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More