Aurelia Butler

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    How to Pay Off Credit Card Debt

    A new report finds that people are spending more on their cards and paying down less. Financial experts offer tips for reducing that debt, starting with looking at your spending habits.Credit card debt is weighing on many Americans.The share of credit card holders making just the minimum monthly payment is at a 12-year high, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reported last month. People are spending more on their cards but paying off less, increasing the amount of debt carried month to month and paying more in interest. And more people are late in paying their monthly card bill.“Credit card performance is showing signs of consumer stress,” the bank’s report said.Adding to the stress is the fact that interest rates on credit cards have risen in recent years. The average rate was more than 21 percent at the end of last year, the Federal Reserve said, compared with about 15 percent in 2019.So whether you observe “frugal” February or try a “no spend” challenge, now is a good time to make a plan to chip away at your balances.Right after the new year, “people have so many things on their mind,” said Charlestien Harris, a financial counselor in Clarksdale, Miss., with Southern Bancorp Community Partners. “By February, a person has a chance to settle down. You can begin to focus more and name a goal or two.”If you’re worried about your card debt, there are options that can help you get it under control — such as transferring your balance to a lower-rate credit card, if you qualify. But the first step is to get a clear picture of your spending habits, said Daniel Yerger, a fee-only financial planner in Longmont, Colo.“Before you consolidate or refinance the debt, you have to address the ‘why’ of what’s happening,” Mr. Yerger said. If you are consistently spending beyond your means, moving the debt to a new card isn’t likely to help in the long run. “We can shuffle it around,” he said, “but you want to get ahead of 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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    ‘Paint Me a Road Out of Here’: Faith Ringgold’s Gift to Prisoners

    In this documentary, the artist depicts what a more just and beautiful world might look like.In 1971, the artist Faith Ringgold received a grant to make a painting for a public institution in New York City. She decided to ask the prisoners in the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island what they wanted to see in a painting. “I want to see a road leading out of here,” one incarcerated woman told her.Ringgold took that idea and ran with it. She didn’t paint a literal road. Instead, her canvas — entitled “For the Women’s House” and installed at the prison in January 1972 — is divided into eight sections. In each, women are depicted performing jobs traditionally held by men at the time: bus driver, construction worker, basketball player, president. The road is implied: Seeing women in positions and roles they don’t always occupy can open up the viewer’s world. She might be in a prison for now, but there’s a place for her worth aspiring to beyond these walls.This was Ringgold’s imagination at work, always depicting what a more just and beautiful world might look like, particularly for the people whom the powerful prefer to ignore. Ringgold and “For the Women’s House” both appear in the documentary “Paint Me a Road Out of Here” (in theaters), directed by Catherine Gund, and hearing and seeing her talk is reason enough to see the film. Ringgold died in 2024 at 93, and is widely considered one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, a native New Yorker who was unflagging in her activism and commitments to dismantle racism wherever it surfaced. As a Black woman and an artist, she insisted on coupling political meaning with her work, which is suffused with curiosity and joy.“Paint Me a Road Out Of Here” is not a biographical film about Ringgold, even though you’ll learn a lot about her biography from it. The film has bigger aspirations, connecting art, prisons, activism and an expansive life. One major subject in the film is the artist Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, an executive producer of the film whose prison reform work often draws on her own experiences while incarcerated. Shortly after her own arrest, for example, Baxter went into labor — 43 hours while shackled to a bed.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 Feb. 7, 2025

    Kelly Morenus opens our solving weekend.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — This is Kelly Morenus’s second puzzle in The New York Times (with more to come!), and it’s high time we got to know her.Ms. Morenus is a middle school social studies teacher on Long Island who conducts her classes in Spanish as part of an immersion program. When she’s not making puzzles, she likes to read, binge Britbox shows, sew, travel (often solo) and hang out with her two dogs, Eli and Lucy.“I love the challenge of making a puzzle with fun entries and clean fill,” Ms. Morenus said in an email. “I’d love to craft a themed puzzle, but, alas, all of my themes have been rejected so far. Hopefully one of these days I will land on a worthy theme!“I’m also looking forward to attending the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament for the first time this year,” she continued. “I don’t consider myself a speedy solver, but I think it will be fun to attend and meet other puzzle people. If you’re there, I’d love to say hello!”It’s interesting to note that her grid design is nearly identical to the layout she used last time. There’s nothing wrong with that, mind you. Some constructors find certain grid designs easier to fill than others, and the ones Ms. Morenus chose are amusing to look at and to solve. They have room for those long, luxurious stair-step entries at the top and the bottom, as well as the fun diagonal slide to the center of the grid.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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    Federal Election Commission Chair Says Trump Has Moved to Fire Her

    Ellen L. Weintraub, the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, said on Thursday that President Trump had moved to fire her.Ms. Weintraub, who has served as a Democratic commissioner on the bipartisan panel since 2002, posted a short letter signed by Mr. Trump on social media that said she was “hereby removed” from the commission effective immediately. She said in an interview that she did not see the president’s move as legally valid, and that she was considering her options on how to respond.“There’s a perfectly legal way for him to replace me,” Ms. Weintraub said on Thursday evening. “But just flat-out firing me, that is not it.”The F.E.C., the nation’s top campaign watchdog agency, is made up of six commissioners, three aligned with Democrats and three with Republicans. That structure has contributed to repeated partisan deadlocks over elections investigations that scrutinize one party or another. Ms. Weintraub’s term as commissioner expired in 2007, but she has continued to serve on the board. The position of chair rotates every year. Ms. Weintraub took up the post again in January.A commissioner is removed only after a replacement is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and Ms. Weintraub said that the president did not have the power to force her off the commission before that. Mr. Trump did not name a successor to Ms. Weintraub in his letter, and it would take weeks at least for his choice for commissioner to be approved by the Senate.Trevor Potter, a former commissioner and chairman of the commission nominated by President George H.W. Bush, denounced the move to fire Ms. Weintraub in a statement, saying that doing so would violate constitutional separation of powers.“Congress explicitly, and intentionally, created the F.E.C. to be an independent, bipartisan federal agency whose commissioners are confirmed by Congress,” said Mr. Potter, who is now the president of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan campaign watchdog. He added: “As the only agency that regulates the president, Congress intentionally did not grant the president the power to fire F.E.C. commissioners.”The White House did not respond to requests for comment.Ms. Weintraub was the chief architect of a novel strategy to further paralyze the commission in partisan deadlocks in order to compel enforcement of the nation’s election laws through the courts. She previously described it as a last resort after years of enforcement efforts being stymied by the three Republicans on the commission.Ms. Weintraub on Thursday also pointed to her public statements about F.E.C. complaints focused on Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns as one reason she may have earned the president’s ire.“There have been dozens of complaints filed against the president,” Ms. Weintraub said, noting that the commission has not been able to pursue them because of the 3-to-3 partisan deadlock.She added, “I have pointed that out. I’ve written about this. So I’m not really surprised that I am on their radar.” More

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    Trump Imposes Sanctions on the ICC, Accusing It of Targeting the U.S. and Israel

    President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday placing sanctions on the International Criminal Court, saying that his administration would “impose tangible and significant consequences” on people who work on investigations that threaten the national security of the United States and its allies, including Israel.The court faced backlash from the U.S. and Israel in November over its decision to issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the course of its conflict with Hamas in Gaza.Mr. Trump’s order said that the court’s actions against Israel and its preliminary investigations concerning the United States “set a dangerous precedent, directly endangering current and former United States personnel” by exposing them to harassment and the risk of international criminal prosecution.“The I.C.C. has, without a legitimate basis, asserted jurisdiction over and opened preliminary investigations concerning personnel of the United States and certain of its allies, including Israel, and has further abused its power” in issuing the warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant, the order said.The order said the sanctions could include the blocking of purchases of property and assets, and barring I.C.C. officials and their immediate family members from entering the United States.Neither the United States nor Israel recognizes the I.C.C.’s jurisdiction, but the court accepted Palestine as a member in 2015, giving it jurisdiction over international crimes that take place in 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

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    California Asks Insurers to Spare Wildfire Victims ‘the List’

    The state’s regulator wants insurance carriers to pay full policy limits without requiring victims to itemize every object in their destroyed homes.California’s top insurance regulator urged insurance carriers on Thursday to pay policyholders the full amount of the belongings in their coverage without requiring them to itemize every object lost — an undertaking that has burdened thousands of residents whose homes were destroyed by wildfires last month.In a notice that said policyholders are “overwhelmed,” Ricardo Lara, California’s insurance commissioner, gave insurance companies a deadline of Feb. 28 to inform the state agency on whether they would comply.Consumer advocates have long criticized the demand by many insurance carriers that homeowners to make detailed lists if they hope to get their full coverage amount.The stress is compounded in places like California’s burn zone, where many families are scrambling to find new places to live and new schools for their children. The monumental task of remembering all items inside a home that no longer exists is adding unbearable strain, said Michael Soller, the deputy insurance commissioner, in an interview.Mr. Soller said he and his colleagues continue to hear from homeowners about “the agony of having to go through the process of filling out an inventory after you just lost everything.”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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    In Fight Over San Francisco Building, Bitcoin Pioneer Is Rejected by Democratic Elite

    A Bitcoin pioneer’s apartment purchase was rejected by the building’s residents after he was in escrow. The sellers — including a powerful Democrat — say they don’t care about his politics.In San Francisco, it is informally called “Susie’s Building” in deference to the owner of the 12th-floor penthouse with wraparound views of the bay. Susie Tompkins Buell, a power broker in Democratic politics, is known for throwing lavish fund-raising parties and writing checks so large they can start a campaign.A who’s who of the Democratic Party has made a point of stopping by over the years. Bill and Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama. Kamala Harris. Nancy Pelosi. The political elite in San Francisco still recall the time Mr. Clinton’s Secret Service agents got trapped in Ms. Tompkins Buell’s elevator and had to be rescued by firefighters.In other words, the Pacific Heights tower built in the 1920s is not the sort of place where you would expect to find an acerbic, conservative cryptocurrency executive with a fondness for President Trump and Elon Musk.Nonetheless, Jesse Powell wanted in.Mr. Powell, an early Bitcoin proponent and the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, had his heart set on unit No. 9 and its sprawling 3,500 square feet three levels below Ms. Tompkins Buell’s penthouse. The living room’s picture windows offer stunning views of the sparkling bay, the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island.He could have figured there would be problems, given his conservative politics and his past. But what would unfold wasn’t just a feud between a co-op board and a buyer whose reputation preceded him. The dispute in Susie’s Building would lead to a lawsuit this week and would become the latest political skirmish in a polarized nation.Jesse Powell, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, said he believed residents of a San Francisco co-op rejected his purchase of a unit in their building because of his political views.David Paul Morris/BloombergWe 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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    How Each Senator Voted to Confirm Russell T. Vought as Budget Chief

    The Senate voted along party lines, 53 to 47, to confirm Russell T. Vought — an architect of the ultraconservative Project 2025 policy agenda — to lead the White House budget office. Thursday’s vote Total 53 0 53 0 47 45 0 2 Mr. Vought led the White House Office of Management and Budget during […] More