Aurelia Butler

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    NYT Crossword Answers for June 3, 2025

    Can you solve Boaz Moser’s puzzle with your eyes closed?Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — Some of us are early birds. Others are night owls. We are all birds, for some reason. In any case, I see these contrasting lifestyles as the yin and yang that keep the world in balance, allowing each of us a private corner of the universe. As one of the early risers, I make a point of getting up early because most people aren’t awake yet, so that the day, even briefly, can be mine.I think you’ll enjoy today’s crossword, constructed by Boaz Moser, regardless of your circadian rhythm. It makes no difference whether your puzzle-solving habits involve coffee at sunrise or wine in the witching hours: There’s levity in it for all.Today’s ThemeWhat does it mean to be an [Easily awakened individual … whose bed may feature a 20-, 31- and 41-Across?], otherwise known as a LIGHT SLEEPER (50A)?In the playful mind of Mr. Moser, the expression describes bed linens that are nearly weightless: You’d be tucked under the [Input for a fax machine], a SHEET OF PAPER (20A). Your pillow would be the [Layer that a hovercraft floats on] — an AIR CUSHION (31A). And atop it all, the bedspread would be a mere [Measure of how much sky is visible], as in a CLOUD COVER.I prefer a heavy blanket to something I can’t feel at all, but different sleeps for different peeps.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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    Boulder Attack Suspect Appeared to Live a Low-Key Life in Colorado Springs

    The suspect came to the U.S. in 2022 and lived with his family in a suburban neighborhood. He was a ride share driver, and his daughter was embraced by her school community.Mohamed Sabry Soliman told the police that he had tried to disguise himself as a gardener on Sunday afternoon when he headed toward a group that was walking in downtown Boulder, Colo., to remember the hostages being held in Gaza, the authorities said.Mr. Soliman, a 45-year-old born in Egypt, carried flowers he had bought from a Home Depot store, according to a Boulder police detective. He wore an orange vest. And he had strapped on a backpack sprayer, the kind that gardeners often use to apply fertilizer or pesticide.But the sprayer was full of gasoline.The fiery weekend terror attack that the authorities say Mr. Soliman soon carried out — in a plot he said he had hatched himself — injured 12 people, who were burned by two homemade Molotov cocktails that the authorities say he threw into the crowd. Mr. Soliman yelled “Free Palestine” during the attacks, the authorities said, and later told the police he “wanted them all to die” because he believed the demonstrators were “Zionists” supporting the occupation of Palestine.Before Sunday, Mr. Soliman appeared to have lived a prosaic life in Colorado Springs, where he drove for a ride share service and was raising five children with his wife in a worn stucco apartment amid the dry, windy suburban stretch east of town. He told the police he had assembled his dangerous arsenal of explosives from everyday household goods.But the assault resonated far beyond Boulder. It came roughly two weeks after another supporter of the Palestinian cause killed two Israeli embassy workers in Washington, D.C., sending fresh waves of fear through Jewish communities around the world whose members were left wondering if anywhere was safe for them as Israel’s war in Gaza grinded on.Mr. Soliman was arrested minutes after the attack and was being held on a $10 million bond. Police officers found him on a patch of grass near the Boulder courthouse, shirtless and screaming at the crowd, holding two Molotov cocktails. At least 14 other Molotov cocktails were found near him in a black plastic container.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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    A Trump Official Threatens to Sue California Schools Over Trans Athletes

    A letter from the assistant attorney general for civil rights, Harmeet K. Dhillon, said that allowing trans athletes to compete in high school sports was unconstitutional.The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday threatened legal action against California public schools if they continued to allow trans athletes to compete in high school sports, calling the students’ participation unconstitutional and giving the schools a week to comply.In a letter sent to public school districts in the state, Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said the California Interscholastic Federation’s 2013 bylaw that allowed trans athletes to compete violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and discriminated against athletes on the basis of sex.“Scientific evidence shows that upsetting the historical status quo and forcing girls to compete against males would deprive them of athletic opportunities and benefits because of their sex,” Ms. Dhillon wrote, referring to trans girls as males.Elizabeth Sanders, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Education, said on Monday that the department was preparing to send guidance to the state’s school districts on how to respond, and that it would do so on Tuesday.The Justice Department’s move came two days after a trans girl won championships in two girls’ events at the California state track and field meet, and less than a week after President Trump decried her inclusion in the competition, saying that he would cut federal funding to the state if it let her participate.At the meet, held over two days in Clovis, Calif., the trans girl, AB Hernandez, won the girls’ high jump and triple jump, and also finished second in the long jump for Jurupa Valley High School, in what is arguably the most competitive high school meet in the nation. In a statement provided by the group TransFamily Support Services, her mother, Nereyda Hernandez, said that it was her daughter’s third year of competing in sports.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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    A Stephen Miller Staffer and Tough Talk: Inside Trump’s Latest Attack on Harvard

    The Justice Department opened an investigation into the student-run Harvard Law Review. The startling accusations show how the Trump administration is wielding power in pursuit of its political agenda.The Justice Department quietly approached Harvard University last month with startling claims, even by the extraordinary standards of the Trump administration’s monthslong assault on the elite college.The department signaled that it was reviewing claims of discrimination against white men at The Harvard Law Review, and accused the renowned publication of destroying evidence in an open investigation. The administration demanded that Harvard “cease and desist” from interfering.In a series of letters that have not been previously reported, the government also disclosed that it had a “cooperating witness” inside the student-run journal. That witness now works in the White House under Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s domestic policy agenda, Trump officials confirmed.The Law Review is independent of Harvard University. The allegations nonetheless deepened fears among Harvard officials that the administration appeared eager to escalate one of its civil investigations into a criminal inquiry, underscoring how the university’s problems with President Trump extend far beyond the loss of billions in federal funding.But the aggressive language in the letters from the Justice Department’s two top civil rights lawyers appeared to have overstated the allegations in pursuit of an additional way to punish Harvard. In that way, the episode fits a broader trend in how the administration is wielding federal investigatory powers to impose its political agenda.From reshaping the economy to ramping up deportations to punishing the nation’s elite law firms and universities, Mr. Trump’s government has repeatedly prized speed and shock value over the kind of methodical steps typically taken to build a legal case.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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    The Creativity Challenge: Write Some Poetry

    <!–> [–><!–>Welcome to Day 2 of the Creativity Challenge. Yesterday, we talked about how you can practice being creative, and noted that small, creative tasks are like stretches for your brain.–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>If you think of creativity as a freewheeling and boundless activity, adding rules may seem counterintuitive. But research shows that blank […] More

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    Ukraine Hid Attack Drones in Russia. These Videos Show What Happened Next.

    <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Strategic bombers in at least two airfields, Belaya and Olenya, were destroyed. In total, Ukraine targeted bases in five regions, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defense, which said attacks on three other locations had been repelled. The Times was not able to verify those claims, […] More

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    ‘Eurydice’ Review: Maya Hawke in the Underworld

    The actress stars in Sarah Ruhl’s reimagining of this classic myth, with a focus on a daughter’s reunion with her beloved father after death.The young couple on the beach are coltishly enamored — snuggled up close, their long limbs entangled. When he ties a string around her left ring finger, to remind her of his love, she squeak-squeals with pleasure and agrees to marry him.She is Eurydice and he is Orpheus, legendary musician nonpareil, and the handed-down myth about them says their union will be short. She will die abruptly, he will be bereft, and it will not go well when he descends into the underworld and tries to lead her back to the land of the living.Their relationship does figure in “Eurydice,” Sarah Ruhl’s tear-dappled masterwork, yet the play’s primary grief is Eurydice’s own — for her dead father, a gaping, missing presence on the day she and Orpheus wed. In this poetic, heightened comedy of mourning and oblivion, the surest, most steadying love is between parent and grown child.Les Waters’s marvelously burnished revival, which opened on Monday night at Signature Theater, stars an instantly likable Maya Hawke as a self-possessed Eurydice, cerebral but with a romantic streak, and a beautifully understated Brian d’Arcy James as her mild father, funny here in a dadly way and immensely moving, too. Caleb Eberhardt plays Orpheus, gentle and determined, pouring his misery into music and writing to his dead wife.“I’ll give this letter to a worm,” he tells her, signing off. “I hope he finds you.”Waters’s breathtaking 2006 staging of “Eurydice” was my introduction to Ruhl’s slender play, which she and the composer Matthew Aucoin have more recently adapted into an opera. This Off Broadway revival is similar to that earlier Waters production, yet even more eloquent in execution — the work of a director who by now knows the play’s every ripple and depth.Crucially, he has brought along two members of the crack creative team from that production: Scott Bradley, whose glamorous, slant-walled set is all watery blues and greens, part painted tiles, part forlorn grid of handwritten letters; and Bray Poor, whose often delicately musical sound design evokes the near-omnipresence of water in this very liquid play.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 Amplifies Another Outlandish Conspiracy Theory: Biden Is a Robotic Clone

    President Trump reposted another user’s false claim that the former president had been “executed” in 2020 and replaced by a robotic clone.President Trump shared an outlandish conspiracy theory on social media on Saturday night saying former President Joseph R. Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone, the latest example of the president amplifying dark, false material to his millions of followers.Mr. Trump reposted a fringe rant that another user had made on the president’s social media platform, Truth Social, just after 10 p.m. on Saturday. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the post about Mr. Biden, whom Mr. Trump has targeted for criticism almost daily since the start of his second term.The president has blamed Mr. Biden for all manner of societal ills and assailed his mental acuity, including with the specious theory that Mr. Biden’s aides used an autopen to enact policies and issue pardons without Mr. Biden’s knowledge. (Mr. Trump has acknowledged that his administration uses the autopen system on occasion.)Mr. Trump has long had a penchant for sharing debunked or baseless theories online, but his embrace of conspiracies is not limited to social media. He has also elevated false claims inside the White House and surrounded himself with cabinet officials promoting such theories.Last month, while sitting next to the president of South Africa in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump claimed that white South African farmers were victims of mass killings and displayed an image intended to back up his assertion; the image was actually of the conflict in eastern Congo. Mr. Trump has falsely asserted that white South Africans are victims of genocide, even though police statistics do not show that white people in the nation are any more vulnerable than other groups.Mr. Trump’s first four years in the White House were filled with false or misleading statements — according to one tally, he made 30,573 of them, or 21 a day on average — and he repeatedly shared conspiracy theories in the lead-up to the 2024 election.A New York Times analysis of thousands of Mr. Trump’s social media posts and reposts over a six-month period in 2024 found that at least 330 of them described both a false, secretive plot against Mr. Trump or the American people and a specific entity supposedly responsible for it. They included suggestions that the F.B.I. had ordered his assassination and accusations that government officials had orchestrated the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Trump’s repost of the robot conspiracy theory came a day after Mr. Biden told reporters that he was feeling good after beginning treatment for an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Mr. Trump has suggested that Mr. Biden’s diagnosis last month was not new and had been concealed from the public. More