Aurelia Butler

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    NYT Crossword Answers for May 21, 2025

    Ilana Levene and Scott Hogan are here to make friends.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — During a recent cleaning-out of my inbox, I noticed that I tend to address groups of friends via email almost exclusively as “pals.” I wonder now whether that seems unusual to those reading. Should I be rotating in words like “gang,” “team” or “folks”? What other options are out there, really?Today’s crossword, constructed by Ilana Levene and Scott Hogan, has a few creative ideas. This is the first collaboration between Ms. Levene and Mr. Hogan for the New York Times Crossword, as well as Ms. Levene’s debut. Constructing a puzzle with another person is no small undertaking, so I certainly hope they became pals — or friends, or buddies, or chums — in the process.Today’s ThemeIn her constructor notes, Ms. Levene says that this theme makes her laugh to think about. That makes two of us — it’s goofy, but I’m grinning.Each of today’s themed entries is a common term or name, with a witty alternative interpretation suggested by the clue. [“Smile for the photo, dude!”] is CHEESE, DOG (17A). I would have preferred “dawg” for elegance, but I’ll accept this spelling for the pun. [“Work on your enunciation, bro!”] can be expressed as DELIVERY, MAN (24A). My favorite is at 33A: [“That is messed up, girl!”] means TWISTED, SISTER.The pattern, in case you missed it, involves terms of address: dog, man, sister, buster and honey. Also, I couldn’t have told you what a cheese dog was without my colleague’s assistance. But after looking at a picture of one, I wish I’d stayed in the dark. 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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    Senate Democrats Grill Defiant Rubio on Trump Policies

    There was shouting and gavel banging as Marco Rubio and his former Senate Democratic colleagues clashed over U.S. foreign aid.A defiant Secretary of State Marco Rubio clashed in sometimes personal terms with his former Senate Democratic colleagues on Tuesday, calling their criticism evidence of his success.At a hearing on the State Department budget, several Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee said that they were deeply disappointed in Mr. Rubio and regretted voting for his confirmation.The contentious scene reflected Democratic fury over President Trump’s policies, such as the evisceration of U.S. foreign aid programs, which they said benefited rivals like China. Mr. Rubio, they argued, had betrayed his principles while serving Mr. Trump.“I have to tell you, directly and personally, that I regret voting for you for secretary of state,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, told Mr. Rubio after castigating him for approving huge cuts to aid programs promoting human rights, public health, food assistance and democracy.“First of all, your regret for voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job,” Mr. Rubio retorted, launching into an unapologetic response that produced shouting and gavel banging as Mr. Van Hollen called portions of Mr. Rubio’s answer “flippant” and “pathetic.”In January, the Senate confirmed Mr. Rubio, who served on the Foreign Relations Committee before joining Mr. Trump’s cabinet, by a 99-to-0 vote. Many Democrats said he had promised to be a responsible steward of the State Department. And they privately hoped Mr. Rubio would check Mr. Trump’s disruptive impulses.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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    Review: How Music Came Down to Earth, in ‘Goddess’

    Amber Iman lives up to the title of a musical about the divine gift of song.If you’re going to call your show “Goddess,” you’d better have one handy. Luckily, the musical with that name that opened on Tuesday at the Public Theater stars Amber Iman, who fully fits the bill. Whether scatting or belting or just standing tall in gold eye shadow and regal gowns, she conveys the combination of power and ease that inevitably elicits words like “otherworldly.”When Saheem Ali, the director of “Goddess,” gives Iman and the rest of the talented cast a chance to display that otherworldliness, mostly while performing the songs by Michael Thurber and dances by Darrell Grand Moultrie, the show makes a strong case for live performance as a central expression of our divided nature. “What is human? What is divine?” goes one of Thurber’s better lyrics. “Do either exist until they intertwine?”But when merely talking, “Goddess” descends. The book by Ali, with additional material by James Ijames, is labored, with a conventional plot about a young Kenyan man torn between furthering his family’s political dynasty and baring his artistic soul. (He plays saxophone.) It doesn’t take long to get bogged down in banalities of both the domestic and the folkloric variety.Because yes, the goddess of the title is literal. Iman plays Marimba, a mythic East African queen who, we learn in a flashback, taught humans to sing and gave them their first instruments. But like Omari, the saxophonist, Marimba has parent problems. Her mother wants her to go into the family business, which to judge from Julian Crouch’s amazing puppets and masks is evidently Evil Incarnate. But Marimba, refusing to accept the mantle of war goddess, instead escapes to Mombasa to live under a new name, Nadira, in an underground nightclub called Moto Moto.Arica Jackson, left, plays a spunky nightclub owner and Nick Rashad Burroughs, seated in the chair, is its exuberant emcee.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt is there that Nadira becomes a queen in the secular sense: a star. Singing Thurber’s mélange of music, which encompasses smooth jazz, R&B, theatrical pop and an aura of Afrobeat, she draws an audience that is similarly diverse. Moto Moto, run by the spunky Rashida (Arica Jackson) and emceed by the exuberant Ahmed (Nick Rashad Burroughs) becomes a hotbed of heterogeneity (there’s even a shaman) in a culture that is otherwise intolerant of mixing.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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    RFK Jr.’s War on Pesticides Riles Farmers and a Republican Senator

    A health report commissioned by President Trump has been causing angst within the agriculture industry who fear the chemicals will be identified as a driver of childhood disease.Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long-running crusade against agricultural chemicals ran into pushback on Tuesday from the agriculture industry and a Republican senator, who pointedly instructed Mr. Kennedy not to interfere with the livelihood of American farmers by suggesting certain pesticides are unsafe.The admonition from the senator, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, came as President Trump was preparing to release a report on Thursday from a commission, led by Mr. Kennedy and named for his movement, to examine the causes of childhood chronic disease.Mr. Trump established the panel to look at a range of potential factors, including chemicals, which Mr. Kennedy has said “pollute our bodies the same way that they pollute the soil.” Mr. Kennedy and his followers in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement have previously singled out the agricultural chemical glyphosate, originally made by Monsanto, which is now owned by Bayer, the German chemical and pharmaceutical giant.The key ingredient in Roundup, the chemical has long been a target of environmental groups. In 2020, Bayer paid more than $10 billion to settle tens of thousands of claims alleging Roundup causes cancer. In 2018, when he was an environmental lawyer, Mr. Kennedy helped win a $289 million judgment against Monsanto, in a case brought by a man who said the company’s weedkillers, including Roundup, caused his cancer.As Mr. Kennedy was testifying Tuesday before members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Ms. Hyde-Smith asserted that “1,500 studies and 50-plus years of review” of glyphosate by the Environmental Protection Agency and “other global health authorities have affirmed its safety when used as directed.” She also suggested in no uncertain terms that the commission had better get its facts straight.“Mr. Secretary, we have to get this right; you have to be 100 percent certain,” Ms. Hyde-Smith said, adding, “Before you start suggesting an initial assessment that the methods in which the farmers provide our food is unsafe, I trust your report will be described as an initial assessment of things to be considered but yet to be determined.”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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    What Helped Clean Up Oklahoma Waters? Getting Cows to Use a Different Washroom.

    50 States, 50 FixesWhat Helped Clean Up Oklahoma Waters? Getting Cows to Use a Different Washroom.Oklahoma has been exemplary at cleaning up its streams. By some measures, more than any other state.A big part of the solution was simple: Give cows clean drinking water and keep them out of the streams.When one farmer tried it, he quickly saw results. His veterinarian bills went down and wildlife returned to the area.Grant Victor wasn’t sure what to expect when he decided to fence his cattle off from Horse Creek, which wends through northeast Oklahoma, bisecting his family’s pastures and cropland.The original plot of land has been in his family since the 1890s, and they added to it over the years. But a century’s worth of bovine traffic had left the creek’s banks muddy and bare, and its waters thick with kicked-up sediment and animal waste.In 2016, Mr. Victor resolved to change that. Working with a conservation program, he installed fencing around Horse Creek, creating a protective riparian buffer, even though it meant keeping his animals off 220 acres, about 6 percent of his family’s land.50 States, 50 Fixes is a series about local solutions to environmental problems. More to come this year.Today, Horse Creek is no longer on the state’s list of most contaminated waterways. And, thanks to practices such as the ones enacted by Mr. Victor, about 100 Oklahoman streams once polluted by runoff predominantly from farmland have been restored to health. That’s more than in any other state, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.Tell Us About Solutions Where You Live More

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    Minnesota’s Green Crew Is Helping Teens Fight Climate Anxiety

    Early on a Saturday morning in Minnesota, a group of teenagers gathered at the edge of six acres of wooded, hilly land. Most were quiet, some blinking against the sun. They were robotics enthusiasts, aspiring marine scientists, artists, athletes and Scouts.What they shared was a desire for hands-on conservation work, a meaningful response for many of them to their worries about climate change.“Cool,” said Sophia Peterson, the group’s 18-year-old leader, who faced the crowd with a grin. “Let’s get started.”50 States, 50 Fixes is a series about local solutions to environmental problems. More to come this year.The students were organized by the Green Crew, an environmental group founded by a teenager in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metro area. The organization seeks to help a generation that has grown up under the threat of climate change channel their fears into concrete action.Tell Us About Solutions Where You Live More

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    Virginia Farmers Are Reviving a Tradition of Harvesting Herbs

    The forest behind Ryan Huish’s home doesn’t look like a traditional farm, but beneath the bright green canopy in southwest Virginia, he’s nurturing a thriving garden of medicinal herbs.On a warm afternoon in April, Dr. Huish, a biology professor at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, led a troop of students along a footpath that wove through part of his family’s 60-acre property near Duffield. He encouraged students to pick edible plants like ramps (hints of garlic, they reported), pluck the leaves of trout lilies (sort of like kiwi) and dig up roots like Appalachian wasabi (yes, spicy).For centuries, these forest plants have been a part of Appalachian cultural heritage, used by local people for food, traditional medicine and extra income. But the market has long been poorly regulated, which has led to low prices and overharvesting.50 States, 50 Fixes is a series about local solutions to environmental problems. More to come this year.“The trade of forest botanicals has been going on for the past 300 years in the Appalachian Mountains,” said Katie Commender, director of the agroforestry program at a local nonprofit organization called the Appalachian Harvest Herb Hub. “When we talk to ginseng dealers and root buyers, a lot of the concern we hear is that tradition is dying out and not necessarily being passed on to the next generation.”Tell Us About Solutions Where You Live More

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    From Oregon, a Chocolate Cake That Changes Hearts and Minds

    In Oregon, there’s a through line from 19th century saints to 21st century sinners. They both sought salvation, of a sort, by eschewing meat.It was in Portland, in the 1890s, that Seventh-day Adventists opened one of the first vegetarian restaurants in the country, in line with their belief that a Godly diet was one of fruit, vegetables, legumes and grains.It was also in Portland, more than hundred years later, that Johnny Diablo Zukle opened a vegan strip club, now in its 18th year.50 States, 50 Fixes is a series about local solutions to environmental problems. More to come this year.Portland, highly praised for its food scene, is a hot spot for vegans, who don’t eat dairy or meat. The maker of Tofurky, the vegan holiday roast, is headquartered nearby, as is Bob’s Red Mill, global purveyor of artisanal whole grains.Tell Us About Solutions Where You Live More