Aurelia Butler

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    Trump Softens on Raising Taxes on the Rich, Saying G.O.P. Probably Shouldn’t

    Days after he privately encouraged Speaker Mike Johnson to increase tax for the wealthy in a bill to fulfill his agenda, he publicly said it could be a bad idea, one that was ‘OK’ with him.President Trump on Friday publicly softened his private push on House Republicans to raise taxes on wealthy people and scrap a tax break that benefits private equity executives as part of a megabill to carry out his agenda.“The problem with even a ‘TINY’ tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, ‘Read my lips,’ the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media website, Truth Social. “Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!”Mr. Trump on Wednesday had privately urged Speaker Mike Johnson to create a higher tax bracket for those making more than $2.5 million a year. He also said he supported closing what is known as the carried interest loophole, which allows hedge fund, private equity and venture capital executives to pay taxes of only about 20 percent on their profits, which is about half the top income tax rate.The request further complicated Republicans’ job as they toil to put together a domestic policy bill they hope to push through Congress this year. Divisions within the party over potential cuts to Medicaid and other popular social programs to pay for it, and which tax reductions to include, have delayed the drafting of the package and threaten to sap support for it. And Mr. Trump’s abrupt and sometimes fleeting demands for the bill have hung over the talks, with G.O.P. lawmakers reluctant to cross him but uncertain of where he will ultimately stand.Mr. Trump is not constitutionally eligible to run for another election, unlike President George H.W. Bush, who was famously accused of breaking his campaign pledge not to impose new taxes.But Republicans are already facing blowback over Mr. Trump’s first four months in office, well ahead of the midterm congressional elections. And many do not want to take a vote that would be used by Democrats as a weapon against them.Mr. Trump did not entirely walk away from his tax demand in the social media post. But he left himself an out should Republicans balk. More

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    Holocaust Museum Board Member Condemns Silence on Trump Firings

    Board members clashed over email after a Biden appointee sent a scathing letter invoking the Holocaust as he denounced the museum’s silence on President Trump’s firings of board members.A member of the board that oversees the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum wrote a blistering letter to the other board members on Friday condemning the institution’s silence after President Trump’s recent firings and invoking the Holocaust as he warned about the dangers of not speaking out.In late April, Mr. Trump fired a number of board members appointed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., including Doug Emhoff, the husband of former Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as other former senior administration officials.The firings were widely criticized as an effort to politicize an organization dedicated to educating the world about one of the worst atrocities in history. But the museum’s statement at the time made no mention of the terminations and instead emphasized an eagerness to work with the Trump administration.Kevin Abel, who was appointed to the museum’s board by Mr. Biden in 2023, wrote in his letter on Friday that Mr. Trump’s “campaign of retribution” had been met with troubling “public silence” by the museum.Mr. Abel wrote that while it was “understandable” that museum leaders might fear speaking out at the risk of losing funding, it was vital to do so.“At this juncture of rising threats and a swirling atmosphere of hatred, it is ever more imperative that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the one institution that can most credibly call out the administration’s attack of its Council for what it is, not choose to remain silent,” Mr. Abel wrote, invoking Martin Niemöller’s words “about the danger of not speaking out,” which he noted were “inscribed on the wall of the Museum’s permanent exhibition.”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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    Eric Adams to Meet With Trump in Washington About NYC ‘Priorities’

    The meeting on Friday between Mayor Eric Adams of New York City and President Trump comes as documents related to his abandoned federal corruption case are set to be released.Mayor Eric Adams of New York City was scheduled to meet with President Trump in Washington on Friday just hours before documents related to his abandoned federal corruption case were set to be released.The mayor’s office announced on Friday morning that Mr. Adams would visit Mr. Trump at 3 p.m. to “discuss New York City priorities.”The timing coincides with the expected release of material related to the shuttered criminal case against Mr. Adams, which the Trump administration dropped earlier this year. The material, which is scheduled to be filed by the Justice Department late Friday afternoon, includes search warrants related to the investigation, as well as affidavits describing the evidence.The material is expected to elucidate the charges against Mr. Adams, which a federal judge, Dale E. Ho, dismissed last month after a request from high-ranking officials in the Justice Department who said it was hindering the mayor’s cooperation with the president’s immigration agenda.Earlier this week, the New York Police Department announced it was investigating why its officers gave investigators from the Department of Homeland Security the sealed arrest record of a New Jersey woman who was detained at a protest as part of their efforts to deport her.The Justice Department’s move to abandon the case against Mr. Adams caused an uproar within the department and led to the resignation of at least eight prosecutors in New York and Washington, including the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle Sassoon.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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    F.D.A. Approves First At-Home Alternative to the Pap Smear

    The tool will allow women to screen for HPV, which causes almost all cases of cervical cancer, without visiting a doctor.The Food and Drug Administration approved the United States’ first at-home cervical cancer screening tool on Friday, a decision that stands to give women an accessible alternative to Pap smears, which many find painful or traumatic.The new test, made by Teal Health, involves swabbing the vagina with a spongelike tool rather than inserting a speculum and scraping cells from the cervix, as doctors do in Pap smears.Similar vaginal tests were approved last year for use in medical offices. But the at-home version could help women who have trouble finding, traveling to or making time for an in-person appointment.The approval is a result of a process that began with the discovery decades ago that the human papillomavirus, commonly known as HPV, causes almost all cervical cancer cases, and that people who don’t have the virus are at virtually no risk.Armed with that information, many doctors started testing Pap smear samples for HPV in addition to analyzing cervical cells under a microscope. Some medical authorities shifted to recommend HPV testing as the primary screening method, which opened the door for vaginal tests, because the virus can be detected in vaginal as well as cervical cells.Cervical cancer experts told The New York Times that the evidence for at-home testing was strong, and studies show it to be about as accurate as Pap smears.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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    Judge Delays Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Jury Selection, Concerned About ‘Cold Feet’

    Judge Arun Subramanian said he feared jurors might grow uneasy over the weekend and drop off the panel before the trial begins on Monday.Jury selection for Sean Combs’s racketeering and sex-trafficking trial was delayed on Friday over worries that some jurors might get “cold feet” before the start of the high-profile case.Judge Arun Subramanian, who is overseeing the case, expressed concern that if jurors were selected before the weekend, they could grow uneasy and drop off the panel before the trial begins on Monday. The decision came after one potential juror sent an email to the court asking to be left off the panel for “issues of personal well-being,” the defense said.Twelve jurors and six alternates will be selected and sworn in on Monday at Federal District Court in Manhattan, ahead of opening statements in the case.The jury will be tasked with deciding whether the music mogul was a “swinger” with unorthodox sexual proclivities, or a predator who used his power to abuse victims in drug-dazed encounters. If convicted, Mr. Combs, who was once a roundly celebrated figure in the music industry, could spend the rest of his life in prison.The jurors will be anonymous, meaning their names will not be disclosed in public court. They will not be sequestered, however, so it is up to them to shield themselves from the media coverage and other chatter about the case.Over three days, dozens of New Yorkers took the witness stand inside the courtroom, where they were asked to describe in detail what they had seen and heard about the case against the artist and executive, who has been the subject of swirling allegations of sexual abuse over the past year and a half.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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    Miuccia Prada Brings a Show to New York

    In an exclusive interview, Miuccia Prada explains it all.Since 2011, Miuccia Prada, the patron saint of smart, messy women everywhere, has been using her Miu Miu line as a platform to commission short films by female filmmakers from around the world, including Janicza Bravo, Mati Diop and Haifaa al-Mansour. For Mrs. Prada, the films, which sometimes air during her fashion shows, serve as a backdrop to her clothes, which have always explored the chaotic lives of mothers, sisters, rebels, poets and punks without ever trying to reconcile their contradictions. That has made Miu Miu the darling of the fashion industry, the rare fashion brand to experience explosive growth at a time when sales in general are slowing.Last year, during Art Basel Paris, Mrs. Prada decided it was time to bring all the films together, and she enlisted the Polish artist Goshka Macuga to help. The result was an immersive performance piece of sorts that involved a cast of 35 characters from the films, brought to life by 105 different actors. It was such an unexpected hit, with 11,000 people visiting the Paris show during its five-day run, that she and Ms. Macuga decided to recreate it this weekend for Frieze New York.The new show, entitled “Tales & Tellers,” is being staged in the Terminal Warehouse, the cavernous late-19th-century building on the Far West Side of Manhattan, latterly home to the Tunnel nightclub. And it is an altogether darker take on the state of women than the Paris event was. (Still, wardrobe by Miu Miu.)“We’re looking at the concept of inside and outside, the idea of individuals coming together in a group,” the artist Goshka Macuga said.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe show takes place in the Terminal Warehouse in Chelsea.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesMrs. Prada and Ms. Macuga Zoomed in to explain. The conversation has been edited and condensed.There hasn’t been a Miu Miu show in New York in decades, but now there is. Sort of. Why this?MIUCCIA PRADA The clothes are an excuse to have the support of the company to create these projects where women are talking about themselves, which is very important. In my work, I have always embraced the complexity of women, the complexity of our lives, how we can succeed in developing our abilities. So it’s fundamental to know what women do, what they think, in different contexts.GOSHKA MACUGA All these different stories represent different social problems for women in different countries. Like, for example, the film which I feel very close to, “Nightwalk” by Małgorzata Szumowska, was filmed in Poland at a time when gender issues were really repressed by our government. It was talking about this idea of liberation within a context that was not sympathetic to difference.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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    See How a Communications Outage Affected Flights at Newark Airport

    <!–> [–><!–>On April 28, shortly before 1:30 p.m., air traffic controllers working the airspace around Newark Liberty International Airport lost communications with planes for roughly 30 seconds.–><!–> –><!–> [!–> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Air traffic data shows that after the outage, multiple planes began circling in the air, awaiting a safe opportunity to land. Starting about 15 […] More

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    Police and Brooklyn College Protesters Clash After Pro-Palestinian Rally

    The police moved in to make arrests after demonstrators left the college grounds and gathered outside. Officers punched some students and slammed others to the ground.Police arrested several people during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Brooklyn College on Thursday.Paul Frangipane for The New York TimesA pro-Palestinian rally at Brooklyn College erupted in chaos on Thursday, with demonstrators and the police engaging in physical altercations, several people being arrested and one officer firing a Taser to subdue a man in the crowd.The unruly scene followed the arrests of 80 people on Wednesday after pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied part of Columbia University’s main library, prompting university officials to quickly call in the police.The swift moves to crack down on the two protests reflect the enormous pressure that colleges across the United States feel from the Trump administration to quell pro-Palestinian campus unrest.The disorder at Brooklyn College began around 6 p.m., as dozens of students and faculty members who had gathered to chant slogans and condemn Israel’s actions in the war in Gaza exited the college’s wrought-iron gates.They had been on campus for several hours by then. Although tensions had grown through the afternoon, as college officials and security guards threatened to have the demonstrators arrested, the rally appeared to be ending peacefully. Two of the four tents someone had set up had been removed at the college’s request.There were some small skirmishes as people went through the gates, and officers made a few arrests. The crowd walked on before pausing in front of the college’s Tanger Hillel House, where someone in the group gave a speech denouncing the building as a “Zionist institution.” Others held signs that said: “Israel has no right to exist” and “save Gaza.”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