Aurelia Butler

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    Trump Administration Tied Migrants to Gang Based Largely on Clothes or Tattoos, Papers Show

    The Trump administration has granted itself the authority to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants accused of being members of a violent street gang on the basis of little more than whether they have tattoos or have worn clothing associated with the criminal organization, new court papers show.The papers suggest that the administration has set a low bar for seeking the removal of migrants whom officials have described as belonging to the street gang, Tren de Aragua. This month, the White House ordered the deportation of more than 100 people suspected of being members of the gang under a powerful wartime statute, the Alien Enemies Act, and have denied them any due process to challenge the allegations against them.In the court papers, submitted over the weekend, lawyers for the Venezuelan migrants produced a government document, titled “Alien Enemy Validation Guide,” that laid out a series of criteria administration officials are required to meet to designate the men as members of Tren de Aragua.The document established a scoring system for deciding whether the migrants were in fact members of the gang, which is often referred to as TdA, asserting that eight points were required for any individual to be identified as a member.According to the document, any migrant who admitted to being a member of the gang was assigned 10 points, meaning that they were automatically deemed to belong to the group and were subject to immediate deportation under the Alien Enemies Act.But the document also asserts that officials can assign four points to a migrant simply for having “tattoos denoting membership/loyalty to TDA” and another four points if law enforcement agents decide that the person in question “displays insignia, logos, notations, drawings, or dress known to indicate allegiance to TDA.”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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    Democrats Sue Trump Over Executive Order on Elections

    Nearly every arm of the Democratic Party united in filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday night, arguing that a recent executive order signed by the president seeking to require documentary proof of citizenship and other voting reforms is unconstitutional.The 70-page lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., accuses the president of vastly overstepping his authority to “upturn the electoral playing field in his favor and against his political rivals.” It lists President Trump and multiple members of his administration as defendants.“Although the order extensively reflects the president’s personal grievances, conspiratorial beliefs and election denialism, nowhere does it (nor could it) identify any legal authority he possesses to impose such sweeping changes upon how Americans vote,” the lawsuit says. “The reason why is clear: The president possesses no such authority.”The lawsuit repeatedly argues that the Constitution gives the president no explicit authority to regulate elections, noting that the Elections Clause of the Constitution “is at the core of this action.” That clause says that states set the “times, places and manner” of elections, leaving them to decide the rules, oversee voting and try to prevent fraud. Congress may also pass federal voting laws.As Democrats debate how best to challenge the Trump administration’s rapid expansion of executive power, the lawsuit represents one of the first moments where seemingly every arm of the party is pushing back with one voice.Such unity is further evidence that Democrats still view the issue of democracy as core to their political brand, as well as a key issue that can help them claw back support with voters as they aim to build a new coalition ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. In February, Democrats sued the Trump administration over attempts to control the Federal Election Commission. Weeks earlier, the D.N.C. joined a lawsuit over new voting laws in Georgia.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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    New Columbia President Attacked by Stefanik Over 2023 Text Message

    Elise Stefanik, a prominent Republican, questioned Claire Shipman’s commitment to protecting Jewish students. Ms. Shipman pledged “to build on the significant progress we’ve made.”Claire Shipman is only days into her job as acting president of Columbia University but is already being targeted by a prominent House Republican who questions her commitment to fighting antisemitism on campus.Ms. Shipman, in a private text message in December 2023 to Nemat Shafik, who was then Columbia’s president, referred to congressional hearings into campus antisemitism as “capital hill nonsense,” according to a transcript of the exchange released by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce as part of an investigative report last year.The comment is coming back to haunt Ms. Shipman. Representative Elise Stefanik, who is remaining in the House after President Trump withdrew her nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, seized on the remark during a television interview Sunday, predicting that Ms. Shipman will not last long in her new position.“It’s already come out that she has criticized and belittled the House investigation and the accountability measures and has failed to protect Jewish students,” Ms. Stefanik said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”“It’s untenable for her to be in this position, and I think it is only going to be a matter of weeks before she’s forced to step down as well,” she added.On X, Ms. Stefanik, whose pointed questioning of Ivy League presidents about antisemitism during the committee hearings sparked the departures of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, gave other details.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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    Crucial Week for Trump: New Tariffs and Elections Will Test His Momentum

    Down-ballot races in Florida and Wisconsin are seen as a referendum on the White House, while the president’s to-be-announced reciprocal tariff plan is increasingly worrying investors and consumers.President Trump’s political momentum will face a major test this week as Democrats try to turn various down-ballot races into a referendum on the White House, and Mr. Trump’s long-promised tariffs risk rattling allies and consumers alike.A State Supreme Court election in Wisconsin on Tuesday is seen as an indicator of support for Mr. Trump, particularly after Elon Musk and groups he funds spent more than $20 million to bolster Mr. Trump’s preferred candidate. White House officials have also been increasingly concerned with the unusually competitive race on Tuesday for a deep-red House seat in Florida left vacant after Representative Michael Waltz stepped down to serve as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser.The White House is hoping victories in those races will tighten Mr. Trump’s grip on the Republican Party as his team seeks to overcome the backlash from its inadvertent sharing of military plans on a commercial app with a journalist.The Florida election is critical for Republicans, who hold a narrow majority in the House as they try to pass the president’s agenda. The outcome of the Wisconsin race, in a battleground state that Mr. Trump narrowly won last year, could be a reflection of voters’ views on the president’s gutting of the federal work force, his crackdown on illegal immigration and his moves to purge diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.“It’s a big race,” Mr. Trump said of the Wisconsin judicial contest on Monday while signing executive orders in the Oval Office. “Wisconsin is a big state politically, and the Supreme Court has a lot to do with elections in Wisconsin.”Mr. Trump is also expected to reveal the details of his reciprocal tariff plan on Wednesday. He has labeled it “Liberation Day,” saying the nation will finally break free of past trade relationships that he argues have cheated the United States. Investors, however, are growing more concerned that the tariffs could fuel inflation and slow consumer spending, potentially driving up economic anxieties among voters.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’s at Stake in Wisconsin

    Elon Musk sees the state’s Supreme Court race as a way of preserving Republicans’ power in Washington.About nine minutes into his time onstage in Green Bay last night, Elon Musk neatly explained why he — a billionaire technologist who is already distracted by a little project in Washington — had poured $20 million and hours of his time into a Wisconsin Supreme Court election.“What’s happening on Tuesday is a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives,” he said.The party that controls the chamber, he added, “controls the country, which then steers the course of Western civilization.”Anybody not currently serving in the House might consider that last part to be hyperbole. But Musk’s words revealed his stated motivation behind his involvement on behalf of the conservative candidate, Judge Brad Schimel: He sees it as a way of preserving Republicans’ power well beyond Wisconsin.He has a point. Democrats don’t talk about it in quite such existential terms, but they are widely expected to challenge the narrowly divided state’s congressional maps, which currently favor Republicans, if voters maintain a liberal majority on the Supreme Court.With Republicans holding a thin majority in the House now, any changes that make it easier for Democrats to win seats could have major consequences in midterm elections next year.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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    How to Make Pommes Anna

    AdvertisementLet Melissa Clark shows you how to make this simple showstopper easily and beautifully.Francesco Tonelli for The New York TimesBy More

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    Trump Administration Has Begun a War on Science, Researchers Say

    Nearly 2,000 scientists urged that Congress restore funding to federal agencies decimated by recent cuts.Some 1,900 leading researchers accused the Trump administration in an open letter on Monday of conducting a “wholesale assault on U.S. science” that could set back research by decades and that threatens the health and safety of Americans.The letter’s signatories, all of them elected members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, warned of the damage being done by layoffs at health and science agencies and cuts and delays to funding that has historically supported research inside the government and across American universities.“For over 80 years, wise investments by the U.S. government have built up the nation’s research enterprise, making it the envy of the world,” the letter said. “Astoundingly, the Trump administration is destabilizing this enterprise by gutting funding for research, firing thousands of scientists, removing public access to scientific data and pressuring researchers to alter or abandon their work on ideological grounds.”Read the LetterResearchers at academic institutions nationwide say that U.S. science is being dismantled.Read Document 75 pagesThe letter said that many universities and research institutions had so far “kept silent to avoid antagonizing the administration and jeopardizing their funding.” But, it said, “the nation’s scientific enterprise is being decimated.”The signatories called on Americans to appeal to Congress to protect scientific funding.With Elon Musk’s efforts to cut spending and President Trump’s crackdown on institutions he sees as ideological enemies, the administration has sought to dismantle parts of the federal government’s scientific funding apparatus.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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    Read the Letter

    Pamela C. Ronald, PhD
    Distinguished Professor in the Department of
    Plant Pathology and the Genome Center
    University of California, Davis
    Michael Rosbash, PhD
    Peter Gruber Professor of Neuroscience
    Brandeis University
    Sara Rosenbaum, JD
    Professor Emerita Health Law and Policy
    George Washington University
    Irwin Rosenberg, MD
    University Professor Emeritus in Medicine and
    Nutrition
    Tufts University
    Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD
    Chief, Surgery Branch
    National Cancer Institute
    Mendel Rosenblum, PhD
    Cheriton Family Professor of Engineering
    Stanford University
    Linda Rosenstock, MD, MPH
    Dean Emeritus and Professor
    University of California, Los Angeles
    Linda Rosenstock, MD, MPH
    Dean Emeritus and Professor
    UCLA
    Meredith Rosenthal, PhD
    Professor of Health Economics and Policy
    Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
    David K. Rosner, PhD
    Ronald Lauterstein Professor
    Columbia University
    Lainie Friedman Ross, MD, PhD
    Dean’s Professor and Chair, Department of
    Health Humanities and Bioethics, Director,
    Paul M Schyve MD Center for Bioethics
    University of Rochester
    Cornelius Rosse, MD, DSC
    Professor Emeritus
    University of Washington, School of Medicine
    Peter J. Rossky, PhD
    Professor
    Rice University
    Alvin E. Roth, PhD
    Professor
    Stanford University
    James A. Roth, DVM, PhD
    Distinguished Professor
    Iowa State University
    Lucia B. Rothman-Denes, PhD
    Haig P. Papazian Distinguished Service
    Professor, Department of Molecular Genetics
    and Cell Biology
    University of Chicago
    Martine F Roussel, PhD
    Professor
    St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
    Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, MD, MPH, PhD
    Professor
    University of Washington
    Diane Rowland, ScD
    Executive Vice President Emerita
    Kaiser Family Foundation
    John L. Rubenstein, MD, PhD
    Professor of Psychiatry
    University of California, San Francisco
    Ronitt A. Rubinfeld, PhD
    Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical
    Engineering and Computer Science
    MIT
    David R. Rubinow, MD
    Chair Emeritus and Professor
    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
    Alexander Rudensky, PhD
    Chairman, Immunology Program, Lloyd Old
    Chair in Clinical Investigation, Investigator,
    Howard Hughes Medical Institute
    Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
    Joan V. Ruderman, PhD
    Nelson Professor of Cell Biology (Emeritus)
    Harvard Medical School
    Roberta L. Rudnick, PhD
    Distinguished Professor
    University of California, Santa Barbara
    David W. Russell, PhD
    Emeritus Professor of Molecular Genetics
    University of Texas Southwestern Medical
    Center
    58 More