<!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> –><!–> –>Landing<!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Several companies and countries have aimed to land on the moon in recent years. The map below shows the crewed Apollo moon landing sites, as well as more recent robotic landings from China, […] More
A hearing has been set for Friday afternoon to debate whether a federal judge in Washington acted correctly when he temporarily stopped the Trump administration last weekend from summarily deporting scores of Venezuelan immigrants under a powerful but rarely invoked wartime statute.The hearing, scheduled for 2:30 p.m. in Federal District Court in Washington, could also include some discussion about the Justice Department’s repeated recalcitrance in responding to the judge’s demands. He has been requesting information about two deportation flights in particular, which officials say carried members of a Venezuelan street gang, Tren de Aragua, to El Salvador.The judge, James E. Boasberg, scolded the department in a stern order on Thursday for having “evaded its obligations” to provide him with data about the flights. He wants that information as he seeks to determine whether the Trump administration violated his initial instructions to turn the planes around after they left the United States on Saturday evening.Most of the courtroom conversation, however, is likely to concern Judge Boasberg’s underlying decision to stop the White House for now from using the wartime law, known as the Alien Enemies Act, to pursue its immigration agenda. The statute, passed in 1798, gives the government expansive powers during an invasion or a declared war to round up and summarily remove any subjects of a “hostile nation” over the age of 14 as “alien enemies.”Almost from the moment Judge Boasberg entered his provisional decision barring President Trump from using the law, the White House and the Justice Department have accused him of overstepping his authority by improperly inserting himself into the president’s ability to conduct foreign affairs.But Judge Boasberg imposed the order in the first place to give himself time to figure out whether Mr. Trump himself overstepped by stretching or even ignoring several of the statute’s provisions, which place checks on how and when it can be used.The administration has repeatedly claimed, for instance, that members of Tren de Aragua should be considered subjects of a hostile nation because they are closely aligned with the Venezuelan government. The White House, echoing a position that Mr. Trump pushed during his campaign, has also insisted that the arrival to the United States of dozens of members of the gang constitutes an invasion.But lawyers for some of the deported Venezuelans dispute those claims, saying that their clients are not gang members and should have the opportunity to prove it. The lawyers also say that while Tren de Aragua may be a dangerous criminal organization, which was recently designated as a terrorist organization, it is not a nation state.Moreover, they have argued that even if the members of the group have come to the United States en masse, that does not fit the traditional definition of an invasion. More
Our new arrivals smell something sizzling in the woods. Here comes a meal with all the fixin’s.Season 3, Episode 7: ‘Croak’R.I.P. Edwin. We hardly knew you.The timid herpetologist (Nelson Franklin) who finds the Yellowjackets dancing by the fire in their cannibalistic ritual meets a quick end this week.Almost immediately after his cheery greeting — followed by his revulsion upon discovering Ben’s decapitated noggin — Lottie creeps up behind him and whacks him in the back of the head with a hatchet. That’s what the Wilderness wants, she declares. All the other Yellowjackets are rightfully upset. Finally, they have contact with the outside world, and she immediately goes and murders someone? What gives?But Edwin wasn’t the only visitor to the Yellowjackets camp. He arrived with two other souls who end up in the Yellowjackets’ custody: His girlfriend and fellow scientist, Hannah (Ashley Sutton), and their guide, the mysterious loner Kodiak (Joel McHale, even more sardonic and surly than usual). If the end of Episode 6 was a thrilling tease, Episode 7 is the confirmation that “Yellowjackets” is moving its plot forward both in the past and the present.All of that revolves around the arrival of these new figures, whom we’re introduced to in a prologue of sorts that begins three days before they meet our deranged soccer team. Edwin and Hannah are deep in the woods studying the mating habits of “Arctic banshee frogs.” The hilariously-named Kodiak is their guide.Hannah is intrigued and somewhat aroused by Kodiak. Edwin is deeply suspicious of him. One night, after smelling what he thinks is “barbecue,” Edwin goes wandering off looking for other souls in this forest. He finds the Yellowjackets.He instantly dies thanks to Lottie. Kodiak shoots Melissa with one of his arrows and he and Hannah start running, pursued by our girls and Travis with torches. Their hunt for Kodiak and Hannah has a double purpose. On one hand, they can’t leave any witnesses behind; on the other, they need people to get back to civilization.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
This year, the fair features the work of more than 30 filmmakers. The centerpiece is “Vampires in Space,” a mix of sci-fi and social commentary.The phrase “attention economy” has gained currency in an ever more distracted world.An art fair like Art Basel Hong Kong next week offers thousands of ways to spend attention, usually in short bursts as visitors make the rounds and land their eyes on a work of interest briefly, over and over.The film section at the fair requires slowing down, given that the medium is, in art world parlance, time-based, a term used for any work that has duration as a dimension.Art Basel — established in 1970 in Switzerland — first offered a film section in 1999 when the organization had just one fair.Hong Kong has had a film section since its second edition, in 2014. In the past decade, more than 300 films have been shown there, including those by well-known makers such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Lou Ye, Cheng Ran, Lu Yang, Marina Abramovic, John Akomfrah, William Kentridge and Takashi Murakami.“The film sector is very well received in our Hong Kong show,” said Angelle Siyang-Le, the fair’s director. “The younger generation responds to the material well, and they’re more open to the moving image.”Most screenings take place in an auditorium inside the fair’s venue, the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, that has around 100 seats, and the program usually draws a “full house,” Siyang-Le said.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
The department employed a maneuver that could protect the president from legal and financial consequences in a series of civil suits.The Justice Department made an unusual effort on Thursday to short-circuit a series of civil lawsuits seeking to hold President Trump accountable for his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Department lawyers argued in court papers filed to the judge overseeing the cases that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president on Jan. 6 and so the federal government itself should take his place as the defendant. That move, if successful, could protect Mr. Trump from having to face judgment for his role in the Capitol attack and from having to pay financial damages if he were found liable.The legal maneuver appeared to be Mr. Trump’s latest effort to use the powers of the Justice Department to his advantage by effectively having himself removed from the lawsuits, which were brought against him by groups of Capitol Police officers and lawmakers who claim they were injured when the mob stormed the building.The suits are the last remaining effort to hold Mr. Trump responsible for his role in the Capitol attack after two Jan. 6-related criminal cases against him collapsed last year.The department’s attempt to place the federal government itself in the lawsuits’ line of fire instead of Mr. Trump hinges on whether lawyers can persuade the federal judge overseeing the suits, Amit P. Mehta, that Mr. Trump was in fact acting in his official capacity as president on Jan. 6.The department has argued that under the law federal officials acting within the scope of their office or employment cannot be sued personally, and that in such instances the government is the only entity that can be targeted.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
The Pentagon is scheduled on Friday to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China, two U.S. officials said on Thursday.Another official said the briefing will be China focused, without providing additional details. A fourth official confirmed Mr. Musk was to be at the Pentagon on Friday, but offered no details.Providing Mr. Musk access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded military secrets would be a dramatic expansion of his already extensive role as an adviser to President Trump and leader of his effort to slash spending and purge the government of people and policies they oppose.It would also bring into sharp relief the questions about Mr. Musk’s conflicts of interest as he ranges widely across the federal bureaucracy while continuing to run businesses that are major government contractors. In this case, Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of both SpaceX and Tesla, is a leading supplier to the Pentagon and has extensive financial interests in China.Pentagon war plans, known in military jargon as O-plans or operational plans, are among the military’s most closely guarded secrets. If a foreign country were to learn how the United States planned to fight a war against them, it could reinforce its defenses and address its weaknesses, making the plans far less likely to succeed.The top-secret briefing for the China war plan has about 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight such a conflict. It covers the plan beginning with the indications and warning of a threat from China to various options on what Chinese targets to hit, over what time period, that would be presented to Mr. Trump for decisions, according to officials with knowledge of the plan.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
By offering cash to voters who sign a petition opposing “activist judges,” Elon Musk’s super PAC can help identify conservative voters in a race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.Elon Musk is bringing back his most controversial gambit from the 2024 presidential election: paying voters as part of a plan to identify and turn out conservative-leaning ones.The super PAC that Mr. Musk founded to funnel his fortune into Republican causes, America PAC, said on Thursday that it was offering $100 to registered voters in Wisconsin who sign a petition “in opposition to activist judges” or refer others to sign it. Mr. Musk has been using the group to spend millions of dollars to elect a conservative candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an April 1 election.The petition reads: “Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas. By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role — interpreting, not legislating.”The purpose of the petition is multifaceted: Drive attention from the news media, increase awareness and voter registration among conservative voters, and help America PAC collect data on the most energized Wisconsinites who are likely to turn out for the conservative candidate, Brad Schimel. Mr. Musk carried out a nearly identical maneuver in battleground states before the November election, generating significant legal and political debate.The Philadelphia district attorney sued to stop the distribution of those lottery-style payouts, which went up to $1 million to voters who signed a document in support of the First Amendment. But the day before Election Day, a Pennsylvania judge declined to halt the sweepstakes.America PAC’s revival of the use of petitions, and the wording of its new document in Wisconsin, reveal two of Mr. Musk’s priorities as he wields wide power in Washington.The first is his focus on the court election in Wisconsin, which could swing control of the state’s top judicial body back to conservatives after liberals won a major victory there in 2023. Mr. Musk’s super PAC and an allied nonprofit group have spent over $11 million to try to elect Judge Schimel, which would again push the battleground state rightward on issues like redistricting and abortion rights.Mr. Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, has also sued Wisconsin to challenge a state law prohibiting manufacturers from owning dealerships. In January, eight days after Tesla filed the suit, Mr. Musk wrote on X, “Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud.”The second is Mr. Musk’s budding obsession with removing judges he sees as thwarting President Trump’s agenda. He posts daily on X about his frustrations with the federal judiciary, and the refreshed language of the new petition points to that focus.But despite the petition from Mr. Musk’s group denouncing judges who are openly political, there are few doubts about where the loyalties of his preferred candidate in Wisconsin lie: Judge Schimel is a longtime defender of Mr. Trump who dressed up as the president last Halloween. More
Food banks across the country are scrambling to make up a $500 million budget shortfall after the Trump administration froze funds for hundreds of shipments of produce, poultry and other items that states had planned to distribute to needy residents.The Biden administration had slated the aid for distribution to food banks during the 2025 fiscal year through the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which is run by the Agriculture Department and backed by a federal fund known as the Commodity Credit Corporation. But in recent weeks, many food banks learned that the shipments they had expected to receive this spring had been suspended.Vince Hall, chief of government relations for Feeding America, a nationwide network of over 60,000 food pantries and other distributors, said that when he asked U.S.D.A. officials about the suspended shipments, he was told that the department was reviewing the food aid programs funded through the Commodity Credit Corporation.It was unclear whether the review was related to the activities of Elon Musk’s DOGE team, which has sought to curtail spending across the government.The halt to the funds, which was first reported by Politico, comes in addition to other recent cuts to federal food assistance. Earlier this month, the Agriculture Department halted two other programs that distributed food to banks and schools. Lawmakers are also mulling cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, which were used by about 42 million people in the 2023 fiscal year.Food bank directors fear that an across-the-board contraction to federal food assistance could drive more people to food banks just as they are losing access to critical supplementary funds.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
