Aurelia Butler

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    Elon Musk Says ‘Destiny of Humanity’ Rests on Wisconsin Judicial Race

    Elon Musk framed Tuesday’s election for Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court in nothing less than apocalyptic terms, telling a crowd on Sunday night in Green Bay that the vote could ultimately swing control of Congress — meaning it could effectively “affect the entire destiny of humanity.”Mr. Musk revels in provocative, inflammatory rhetoric. But his remarks — and the visit itself, 36 hours before polls open for Election Day — reflected his extraordinary push to bolster Judge Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate for the State Supreme Court. The election, he said, is not “some kind of judicial thing that is not that important.”“What’s happening on Tuesday is a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives. That is why it is so significant,” Mr. Musk said, referring to the key role that judges could play in congressional redistricting. “And whichever party controls the House to a significant degree controls the country, which then steers the course of Western civilization. I feel like this is one of those things that may not seem that it’s going to affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will.”The billionaire Mr. Musk, a close adviser to President Trump, dispensed two giant $1 million checks onstage to Wisconsin voters, following through with a well-worn gimmick despite an unsuccessful, last-minute lawsuit from Democrats that tried to put a stop to it.Mr. Musk and allied groups have spent over $20 million to help the conservative candidate, and he said on Sunday that he considered Judge Schimel an underdog. “We’ve got to pull a rabbit out of the hat — next level. We actually have to have a steady stream of rabbits out of the hat, like it’s an arc of rabbits flying through the air, and then landing in a voting booth.”Mr. Musk took the stage wearing his own headgear — a cheesehead hat popular with Packers fans, before signing it and tossing it into the crowd. More

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    ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 7: Lovers and Fighters

    “The White Lotus” tells us only enough about the characters’ pasts to explain some of the choices they make. Sometimes this works; sometimes it doesn’t.Season 3, Episode 7: ‘Killer Instincts’One unusual quality of “The White Lotus” is that the show’s creator, Mike White, keeps his characters’ back stories to a minimum. He mainly traffics in types: the swaggering North Carolina money-manager, the vain celebrity, and so on.White tells us only enough about their pasts to explain some of the choices they make. We know a lot about Rick’s past, because his tragic childhood led directly to every move he has made this season. But we know very little about the Ratliff kids beyond the personas they project: the cocky older brother, the rebellious lefty sister and whatever the heck Lochlan is supposed to be. As for what made them this way? We can use our imaginations to shade in the finer details.Most of the time, this approach works well enough. There is a wonderfully wry comic moment in this week’s episode, when Piper gets embarrassed while watching Lochlan struggle awkwardly with his monastery dinner. We know just enough about her to guess what she is thinking. She suddenly seems a lot like her mother, concerned less with her brother’s feelings than with how his clumsiness reflects on her. (See also: Piper’s mildly dismayed expression when Lochlan says he wants to spend the year in Thailand with her.)On the other hand, Saxon’s overall blankness becomes a problem in this episode, leading to one of the season’s clumsiest scenes. The moment occurs at Gary’s party, when Saxon watches his father swill down yet another large glass of whiskey. He asks Tim again if something is wrong back at the office, reminding him that, “My career is totally tied to yours.” Saxon has no interests, no hobbies. “I put my whole life into this basket,” he says. “Into your basket.”Given what we have seen of Saxon this season, I am not sure he is the kind of guy who would give such a self-aware speech, saying things like, “If I’m not a success, I’m nothing, and I can’t handle being nothing.” (I can, however, believe that Tim would answer his son’s very real concerns with a mumbled, “Nothing’s up, kid. We’re all good. It’s a party, get out there.”)It’s a tricky balancing act for White, trying to show more than he tells and letting the audience make assumptions. I thought about this also this week during the Bangkok scenes with Rick and Frank. I figured these two were seasoned old pros, skilled at running cons, and that they would know what they were doing when they met up with Sritala and her ailing husband, Jim (Scott Glenn), at the Hollingers’ house. Instead, Rick and Frank are surprisingly — and ridiculously — unprepared. They try to get by on improvisation; Frank in particular is really bad at it.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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    Trump Says He ‘Couldn’t Care Less’ if Auto Tariffs Raise Car Prices in the U.S.

    President Trump has said that “tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented.” For someone who once called himself a “tariff man,” tariffs are the solutions to many economic problems.He has argued that imposing tariffs would protect American factories, spur manufacturing, create new jobs and bend uncooperative governments to his will. Since his inauguration, while imposing and then suspending and then imposing tariffs again, Mr. Trump has upended the global trading system.But over that time Mr. Trump has also begun conceding that tariffs could cause financial discomfort for Americans. That possibility came up in stark terms in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” from Saturday, when Mr. Trump said that he “couldn’t care less” about the prospect of higher car prices.The president repeated the sentiment twice when asked about the 25 percent tariffs on imported cars and auto parts that he has promised will go into effect on Thursday. He told the NBC News host Kristen Welker that the tariffs were permanent, and that he would encourage auto companies and their suppliers to move to the United States.In one exchange, Ms. Welker asked Mr. Trump if he was at all concerned with the effect of tariffs on car prices, which experts have said could go up by thousands of dollars. “No, I couldn’t care less,” he said, “because if the prices on foreign cars go up, they’re going to buy American cars.”After the interview, an aide to the president told NBC that Mr. Trump was referring to the increase in foreign car prices.While the White House sought to emphasize foreign-made vehicles, the tariffs will affect American companies like Ford Motor and General Motors, which build many of their vehicles in Canada and Mexico. Nearly half of the vehicles sold in the United States are imported, according to S&P Global Mobility data, and almost 60 percent of auto parts in cars assembled in the country.A study by the Yale Budget Lab, a nonpartisan research center, forecast that tariffs would cause vehicle prices to increase by an average of 13.5 percent — an additional $6,400 to the price of an average new 2024 car.On Sunday, Shawn Fain, the president of the United Automobile Workers union, said that the tariffs were indeed a “motivator” for carmakers to bring jobs back to the United States. But, he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” they were not an “end-all solution” to help American auto workers. If jobs are being brought back to the United States, Mr. Fain said, they need to be “good paying union jobs that set standards.”Peter Navarro, a senior trade adviser to Mr. Trump, defended the tariffs and said they would raise about $100 billion, which would translate to tax credits for people who buy American cars. He, too, told Americans not to worry about the effects of the tariffs.Instead, he said on Sunday, they should “trust in Trump.” More

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    Fire at New Mexico Republican Party Headquarters Being Investigated as Arson

    The headquarters of the Republican Party of New Mexico in Albuquerque was damaged early Sunday morning in what the party described as a “deliberate act of arson.”Albuquerque Fire Rescue confirmed that it had been dispatched to the party’s headquarters just before 6 a.m. for a report of a structure fire, which was brought under control within five minutes. No injuries to civilians or firefighters were reported.The fire burned the entryway of the headquarters and left smoke damage throughout the building, Lt. Jason Fejer, a spokesman for the fire department, said on Sunday.He confirmed that the department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives were investigating the fire as an act of arson.A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. confirmed that it was investigating but said she could not provide further details because the investigation was ongoing. The A.T.F. did not immediately respond to requests for information on Sunday.The Albuquerque Police Department confirmed that the federal authorities were investigating but did not provide any further information, including whether arrests had been made.In a statement, the Republican Party of New Mexico said the fire was “not an isolated incident” and was accompanied by the spray-painted letters “ICE=KKK.”In recent months, ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has deployed agents across the country to carry out what the Trump administration has characterized as a new and more aggressive effort to target illegal immigration and deliver on a key campaign pledge to carry out mass deportations.The Democratic Party of New Mexico said on Sunday that it condemned “any vandalism at the Republican Party of New Mexico headquarters as strongly as possible.”The Republican Party of New Mexico said the fire was accompanied by the spray-painted letters “ICE=KKK.”Republican Party of New Mexico“We firmly maintain that this sort of act has absolutely no place in our democracy, and that peaceful discourse and organization are the only ways to approach political differences in our country,” the state Democratic Party added. “We hope whoever is responsible is found and held accountable.”Amy Barela, the chairwoman of the Republican Party of New Mexico, said on Sunday that the alarm system at the party’s headquarters had gone off around 1 a.m., about four hours before the fire started.There had been a separate bomb threat and other acts of vandalism at the headquarters in recent years, she said.A former Republican candidate for the New Mexico House of Representatives this month was found guilty of hiring people to shoot at the homes of Democratic officials in Albuquerque in 2022 and 2023.“We completely condemn violence,” Ms. Barela said. “It doesn’t matter where it’s coming from.”The party was “deeply relieved that no one was harmed in what could have been a tragic and deadly attack,” she said. More

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    Museum of Now

    On This Week’s Episode:The present feels like it will go down in American history. “This American Life” takes a tour of the museum of now and finds some unusual artifacts.Matt ChaseNew York Times Audio is home to the “This American Life” archive. Download the app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

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    London Police Arrest Gaza Protest Planners at Quaker House

    Quakers in Britain said the raid, in which six youth activists unaffiliated with the religious group were arrested, “clearly shows what happens when a society criminalizes protest.”Quakers in Britain are reeling from what they say is an unheard-of violation of one of their places of worship by police officers who forced their way into a meeting house in London and arrested activists gathered there to plan Gaza war protests.“No one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory,” Paul Parker, the recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said in a statement issued after the raid.But on Thursday evening, the pacifist group said, more than 20 uniformed police officers, some armed with tasers, forced their way into the meeting house in Westminster, breaking open the front door “without warning or ringing the bell.”The officers searched the building and arrested six women at a gathering of Youth Demand, an unaffiliated activist group that was renting a room to meet in, the Quakers in Britain said.The Metropolitan Police said the arrests followed Youth Demand’s plans to “shut down” London with protests next month, according to British media. The police said that while they recognized the right to protest, “we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality,” British media reported.The arrests raised alarms in England, and came amid a crackdown on Gaza War protesters in the United States, especially on college campuses, where some students have denounced Israel’s prosecution of the war against Hamas.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 March 31, 2025

    Ryan Mathiason makes his New York Times Crossword debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — This is Ryan Mathiason’s first puzzle for The New York Times and, in keeping with today’s theme, I’m already starting to like what I see. Today’s crossword has some wonderfully original fill, but it all jells. Or gels, you might say. In any case, I hope we’ll see more of Mr. Mathiason soon. Shall we comb-over the puzzle together?Today’s ThemeAs soon as I figured out what was going on, I thought to myself, [“I’m starting to like this”… or a hint to the starts of 16-, 24-, 47- and 58-Across, in order] — in other words, “IT’S GROWING ON ME!”Each of today’s themed entries begins with a kind of hairstyle (or lack thereof, in the case of 16A), arranged so as to be “growing” as they move down the grid, from BALD to BUZZ to FADE to AFRO. And while I can never tell whether certain entries are intentional winks on top of the theme, I appreciated the mention of HATS at 1-Across, because that’s what one would use to cover a bad haircut.Tricky Clues13A/14A/15A. I’m bundling the entire second row of this puzzle into one tricky clue, because all three of its entries are proper names, which are generally pure trivia (i.e., you know it or you don’t). It’s lucky that none of these entries cross with other proper names — I’m not counting CHEEZ-Its (8D), mind you — because otherwise we might be looking at a Natick. Here are the row’s answers, from left to right: OPIE (13A), LEAH (14A) and AMON (15A).52A. [U-turn from WSW] gives us a lot of information in relatively few letters. WSW is short for a compass direction, west by southwest. To make a “U-turn” from that direction would mean moving toward its inverse: ENE, or east by northeast.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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    White House Takes Highly Unusual Step of Directly Firing Line Prosecutors

    Two longtime career prosecutors have been suddenly fired by the White House, in what current and former Justice Department officials called an unusual and alarming exercise of presidential power.In recent days, the prosecutors, in Los Angeles and Memphis, were dismissed abruptly, notified by a terse one-sentence email stating no reason for the move other than that it was on behalf of the president himself.The ousters reflected a more aggressive effort by the White House to reach deep inside U.S. attorney offices across the country in a stark departure from decades of practice. While it is commonplace and accepted for senior political appointees at the Justice Department to change from administration to administration, no department veteran could recall any similar removal of assistant U.S. attorneys.A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.Asked about the ousters and whether others had been let go in a similar fashion, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said, “The White House, in coordination with the Department of Justice, has dismissed more than 50 U.S. attorneys and deputies in the past few weeks.”She added, “The American people deserve a judicial branch full of honest arbiters of the law who want to protect democracy, not subvert it,” offering no explanation for how either of the two fired prosecutors might have done that. Prosecutors are part of the executive, not judicial, branch of government.During his campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to drastically reshape the ranks of career Justice Department officials, aggrieved by the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia in his first term and the four criminal indictments between his presidencies.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