Aurelia Butler

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    ‘A Really Easy Mark for Trump’: Three Columnists on the Threats to Elite Colleges

    Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists M. Gessen, Tressie McMillan Cottom and Bret Stephens about Donald Trump’s attacks on Columbia University and other elite colleges and how they became vulnerable to a political and ideological reckoning.Patrick Healy: Bret, Tressie, Masha, I spoke on Thursday to a university president who told me he was just advised to hire a bodyguard. He said he’d never seen so much fear in the world of higher education — that many college presidents are “scared to death” about the Trump administration cutting their funding, Elon Musk unleashing Twitter mobs on them, ICE agents coming on campus, angry email flooding their inboxes, student protests over Gaza and Israel, and worries about being targeted for violence. I was a higher education reporter two decades ago, when universities were widely admired in America, and so I asked this president — what went wrong?He said presidents and professors had taken too many things for granted — they thought they’d always be seen as a “public good” benefiting society, but came to be seen as elitist and condescending toward regular Americans. And Americans hate a lot of things, but they really hate elites condescending to them. Now we are seeing a big reckoning for higher education — ideological, cultural, financial — driven by Donald Trump and the right.So I want to start by asking you the question I asked the university president — what went wrong for higher ed? How did colleges become easy pickings?Bret Stephens: Big question; lots of answers.The moment I realized something had gone terribly, maybe irreversibly, wrong in higher ed came in 2015, when Nicholas Christakis, a distinguished sociobiologist at Yale, was surrounded, hounded, lectured and yelled at by students furious that his wife, Erika, had suggested in an email that perhaps students could be entrusted to make their own Halloween costume decisions. The incident encapsulated the entitlement, the arrogance and the unbearably petty grievances of a generation who seemed to find their voice and power in the taking of offense. I was left asking: Who admitted these students? Who taught them to think this way? And why weren’t they immediately suspended or expelled?Healy: I remember that moment. A Harvard friend texted me and said, Glad you didn’t go to Yale? Then she backtracked with there-by-the-grace-of-God-goes-Harvard humility.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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    Home Sellers and Buyers Accuse Realtors of Blocking Lower Fees

    A year after a landmark settlement called for a disruption in how real estate agents are paid, people say they still feel forced to pay them excessive commissions.When Mike Chambers was ready to sell his house in Boulder, Colo., last month, he interviewed a handful of real estate agents who promised he could fetch $2.75 million or more if he listed with them. But the promise would come at a cost: Each agent wanted him to pay a commission of at least 5 percent, or $137,500. Frustrated that not a single agent was willing to budge on the rate, Mr. Chambers, 39, decided to sell his house on his own, and he took to social media with the handle @realtorshateme to chronicle the process. His reels drew 50,000 views or more.Within days, local agents were making their own social media posts that countered his points — an action that Mr. Chambers described as an aggressive campaign aimed at preventing him from making a sale on his own. Realtors told Mr. Chamber he could get at least $2.75 million for his house. But he didn’t want to pay 5 percent commission, and none of the agents he met would negotiate.Chet Strange for The New York TimesCall it the Realtor recoil. One year after the National Association of Realtors agreed, as part of a legal settlement, to change a key rule on real estate commissions — a rule that had long upheld a tradition of commissions between 5 and 6 percent, little has changed.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 Thom Tillis’s Surrender to Trump Says About the Trump G.O.P.

    Few Republican senators give a better floor speech than Thom Tillis of North Carolina does. He’s the Daniel Day-Lewis of moral outrage. He delivered a doozy last month, challenging President Trump’s revisionist history of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and calling Vladimir Putin “a liar, a murderer” and “the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”But Tulsi Gabbard is apparently no threat at all. Although she has been something of a Putin apologist, Tillis fell in line with 51 of his Republican colleagues in the Senate and voted to confirm her as director of national intelligence. Afterward, on Facebook, he proclaimed his pride in supporting her.He made impassioned remarks in the Senate about his disagreement with Trump’s pardons of Jan. 6 rioters who bloodied law enforcement officers.But the following month, he voted to confirm Kash Patel, who has peddled the kinds of fictions that fueled that violence, as director of the F.B.I.Courage, capitulation — Tillis pinballs dizzyingly between the two. As he gears up for a 2026 campaign for a third term in the Senate, he seems to be at war with himself. And perhaps more poignantly than any other Republican on Capitol Hill, Tillis, 64, illustrates how hard it is to be principled, independent or any of those other bygone adjectives in Trump’s Republican Party.That’s a compliment. For most Republicans in Congress, there’s no battle between conscience and supplication. They dropped to their knees years ago. There’s no tension between what they say and what they do. They praise Trump with their every word, including the conjunctions.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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    Arlington Cemetery Website Loses Pages on Black Soldiers, Women in Military and Civil War

    Materials on the Arlington National Cemetery website highlighting the graves of Black and female service members have vanished as the Trump administration purges government websites of references to diversity and inclusion.Among the obscured pages are cemetery guides focused on Black soldiers, women’s military service and Civil War veterans. Some of the materials were still online Friday, but they were no longer easily accessible through the cemetery’s website.A part of the site devoted to segregation and civil rights was largely scrubbed. That section once included a walking tour focused on Black soldiers and a lesson plan on reconstruction.The cemetery, which is operated by the Army, said in a statement on Friday that it remained committed to “sharing the stories of military service and sacrifice to the nation with transparency and professionalism” and that it was working to restore links to the content.“We are hopeful to begin republishing content next week,” Kerry Meeker, a cemetery spokeswoman, said in an email on Friday.On Friday, the cemetery’s website still had an active page describing Section 27, which includes the graves of thousands of African Americans freed from slavery. Another active page listed prominent African Americans — including Medgar Evers, Thurgood Marshall and Colin L. Powell — buried on the grounds.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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    Forecasters Issue Highest Risk Alert for Tornadoes in the South

    A rare outlook for potentially violent tornadoes is being forecast Saturday.Forecasters believe that particularly intense, long-lasting severe storms at a level typically experienced only once or twice in a lifetime could sweep through this region of the South.Saturday might be one of those lifetime events for someone in that zone. The Weather Service has issued the highest risk for tornadoes today and began issuing tornado warnings for swaths of the Midwest on Friday night.“Flying debris will be dangerous to those caught without shelter,” the Weather Service warned residents in parts of Western Illinois. “Damage to roofs, windows, and vehicles will occur.”An “extremely dangerous” tornado moving at 55 miles per hour was confirmed in Eastern Missouri, according to the Weather Service.These storms are all connected to the intense storm system reeking havoc across the Central U.S. which within the last day has brought damaging strong winds, tornadoes across the Midwest and dust storms and wildfires sweeping across the Plains. Saturday’s storms will be moving extremely fast, and may catch people off guard. They have the potential to form numerous significant tornadoes, some of which could be potentially violent, damaging hurricane-force (greater than 74 miles per hour) and golf ball or even baseball size hail.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 Expands Attacks on Law Firms, Singling Out Paul, Weiss

    President Trump on Friday opened a third attack against a private law firm, restricting the business activities of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison just days after a federal judge ruled such measures appeared to violate the Constitution.White House officials said the president signed an executive order to suspend security clearances held by people at the firm, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest. The order also seeks to sharply limit Paul, Weiss employees from entering government buildings, getting government jobs or receiving any money from federal contracts, according to a fact sheet provided by the Trump administration.The text of the order was not immediately available, but a White House fact sheet said the order intended to punish the firm generally, and one of its former lawyers specifically, Mark F. Pomerantz.Mr. Trump mentioned Mr. Pomerantz by name in an angry speech Friday at the Justice Department, where he complained about prosecutors and private lawyers who pursued cases against him, calling them “really bad people.” Mr. Trump, in the same speech, claimed he was ending the “weaponization” of the Justice Department, though his move against the firm showed he will continue using his power to exact retribution on his opponents.Mr. Pomerantz had tried to build a criminal case against Mr. Trump several years ago when he worked at the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The White House announcement called Mr. Pomerantz “an unethical lawyer” who tried to “manufacture a prosecution against President Trump.”A spokesperson for the firm said in a written statement that Mr. Pomerantz retired from the firm in 2012 and had not been affiliated with it for years.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 Rejects Attempts to Temporarily Stop Migrant Detention at Guantánamo

    A federal judge on Friday rejected for now efforts to block the Trump administration from sending migrants to the American military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, declaring that because the government had emptied the wartime prison of those detainees, the petitions were moot.Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia expressed doubts toward those bringing challenges on behalf of the migrants, a potentially favorable sign for the administration as it seeks to use the base in President Trump’s deportation campaign.Mr. Trump has said he wants to use Guantánamo’s 30,000 beds “to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.” He issued an executive order in January to expand the Migrant Operations Center there “to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens.” The administration has sent two groups of migrants to Guantánamo, but it is not clear how many were considered dangerous criminals.Days before the hearing on Friday, the Trump administration abruptly returned a group of migrants it had sent to Guantánamo to the United States, without indicating why. It was the second time federal officials had suddenly cleared the base of migrants who had been flown there. In late February, the government repatriated all but one of 178 detained migrants to Venezuela after they spent just a few weeks at the facility. One migrant was brought back to the United States.Judge Nichols on Friday considered two challenges brought by migrants and advocacy groups on their behalf. Less than 30 minutes after the lawyers finished their arguments, he said the plaintiffs had “failed to established they are suffering irreparable harm” that warranted a temporary order to halt the administration’s policies.Judge Nichols said that if the government sent any of the migrants in question to Guantánamo, he would be prepared to consider issuing an emergency order. Lawyers for the Trump administration said they would notify the judge if any plaintiffs were sent there, and were instructed to inform the court by Wednesday of how early in the relocation process they would do so.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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    Fact-Checking Trump’s Justice Dept. Speech on Crime, Immigration and His Cases

    President Trump repeated a number of well-trodden falsehoods on Friday in a grievance-fueled speech at the Justice Department, veering from prepared remarks to single out lawyers and prosecutors and assail the criminal investigations into him.His remarks, billed as a policy address, were wide-ranging, touching on immigration, crime and the price of eggs.Here’s a fact-check.Mr. Trump’s misleading claims touched on:His legal troublesThe 2020 electionBiden and classified documentsThe Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the CapitolParents, anti-abortion activists and CatholicsImmigration and crimeEgg pricesHis legal troublesWhat Was Said“They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people.”“They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home Mar-a-Lago and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.”This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump’s claims refer to a wide array of investigations and criminal cases that occurred before, during and after his first term as president.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