Aurelia Butler

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    NYT Crossword Answers for April 21, 2025

    Thomas van Geel’s second crossword is set in the ol’ factory.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — I don’t know what it was that inspired Thomas van Geel to come up with the theme of today’s crossword, but I want what he’s having. Solving this puzzle has me smiling from ear to ear with the kind of delight you wish you could bottle for darker days. I hope you’ll give it a try — and let me know whether you need a tissue afterward.Today’s ThemeUnlike themes that take shape within a couple of entries, identifying the [Polite response to the ends of 17-, 25-, 34- and 48-Across] requires solving all of the entries in question.17A’s [Coming-of-age ceremony] is a BAR MITZVAH. The [Place “rocked” in a Clash song] at 25A is THE CASBAH. An [Animal that can go 0-60 in three seconds] is a CHEETAH, at 34A. Let’s pause here to note the common ending of these entries, which is -AH. Will the same be true of 48A’s [Famed shoe designer]? Nope, it’s JIMMY CHOO.Now read the ends of these entries in order: AH … AH … AH … CHOO! The [Polite response] to this sequence at 56A is, of course, GESUNDHEIT.Tricky Clues14A. Top stories in the newspaper are found on the first page, called A1. But what’s [always the top story] of a house? Why, that’s the ATTIC.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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    Bunnies, Bonnets, Brights and Blooms at New York’s Easter Parade

    The hats were back out at the Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival in New York City on Sunday. Up and down Fifth Avenue in Midtown, spectators and Easter revelers alike were treated to a crowd wearing the most colorful costumes, and Sunday best, imaginable. The notable looks were plenty, from many variations of bunny to botanical confections and great sartorial tailoring harking back to the Jazz Age. And though there were also some elements of steam punk here and there, this year’s edition of the parade was light on genre concepts such as science fiction and fantasy. Overall, the day was a perfect bookend to a weekend of some incredible weather and summerlike vibes that permeated throughout the city.Bunny, in pink, with provisions.Beads and a bowtie to accompany blossoms.Bonnet, basket, shades, stripes — all set for the season.Butterflies made an appearance too.Not every blossom was strictly botanical.Lace and full-length florals.Riding high for the festivities.Mushrooms, moss and a big smile.Easter fashion on display in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.Have hats, and a takeout container, will travelClassy blues for all ages.Amid a sea of bright colors, a neutral moment.Even unadorned headwear made a statement.The perfect occasion for boutonniere-and-pocket-square coordination.Ready for an Easter fairy tale.The milliners guild, representing.Quite a floral trio.A bonnet dream house.A perfect day for peacocking.A flock of feathered friends.Polka dots, creating a perpetual confetti effect.Eggs abound, of both the deviled and golden variety.Who can say no to macaroni?An ode to New York City.A bunny and spring greens for the wrist.When the parade ends, these two know what time it is. More

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    After Meeting Wrongly Deported Man, Van Hollen Accuses Trump of Defying Courts

    Senator Chris Van Hollen on Sunday accused the Trump administration of “outright defying” court orders to return a wrongly deported Maryland man whom Mr. Van Hollen met with in El Salvador last week, and he urged the administration to stop releasing unfavorable records about the man.“They are flouting the courts as we speak,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Facilitating his return means something more than doing nothing, and they are doing nothing.”Mr. Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, traveled to El Salvador last week to press for the release of the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was deported to a notorious Salvadoran prison in March in what an administration lawyer described as an “administrative error.”A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to take a more active role in bringing back Mr. Abrego Garcia, a few days after the Supreme Court ruled that the government should “facilitate” his return from El Salvador.Instead, the White House has publicized an allegation of domestic abuse from Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife from 2021, when she sought a protective order. Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife said last week that the two “were able to work through this situation privately.”The administration also cited a police filing from a Tennessee trooper who stopped Mr. Abrego Garcia on a highway in 2022 and raised suspicion of human trafficking. Federal law enforcement officials instructed the trooper not to detain him, and Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife has said he routinely drove workers to their jobs.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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    Mozart’s ‘Figaro’ and ‘Magic Flute’ at the Metropolitan Opera

    Joana Mallwitz is in calm, stylish command making her debut with Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” running in repertory with “The Magic Flute.”The size of the Metropolitan Opera can daunt even experienced artists. From the podium to the stage feels like a mile, and the proscenium is of yawning width and height. No opera benefits from chaos, but some pieces need especially precise discipline to make their impact — so they need conductors who can corral big forces across those sprawling distances.It’s impressive when a veteran baton makes it all work. More so when it’s a newcomer like Joana Mallwitz, who made her Met debut this month leading Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” the kind of farcical comedy that quickly goes off the rails without a firm hand on the reins.On Friday, midway through this season’s long run — lasting, with cast changes, through May 17 — Mallwitz was in calm, stylish command from the brisk overture on. Throughout the evening, she kept the orchestra sounding light and silky, allowing it to blend (instead of compete) with the charming singers.The yearning winds that play during Cherubino’s aria “Non so più” are the echo of the character’s teenage longing, and Mallwitz guided those winds to soar more than usual, bringing out true sweetness and a hint of ache. Cherubino’s second big number, “Voi che sapete,” was accompanied with elegant clarity, each plucked pizzicato note in the strings present and unified without being overemphasized.There was spirit and forward motion in this “Figaro.” But Mallwitz didn’t fall into the classic young conductor trap of shoving the performance toward extremes of tempo and dynamics (loud and fast, mostly) to convey intensity. In the long, zany, ebbing-and-flowing finale of the second act, she patiently paced the action, releasing tension then building it again, for an overall effect far zestier than if she’d merely kept her foot on the gas.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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    Pope Meets With JD Vance After Criticism of Trump Administration

    Vice President JD Vance met with Pope Francis at the pontiff’s residence in Rome on Sunday, the Vatican said, in a previously unannounced visit during Easter celebrations.The Vatican said the meeting was a “brief” exchange of Easter wishes that lasted “a few minutes.” In a photograph released by the Vatican, the pope is seated in a wheelchair opposite Mr. Vance as the pair talk.The meeting came after the pope criticized the Trump administration’s deportation policies and urged Catholics to reject anti-immigrant narratives, in an unusually direct attack on the American government.The rebuke came in the form of an open letter to American bishops in February, with some of the pope’s criticisms apparently leveled directly at statements made by Mr. Vance.Mr. Vance, who was baptized as a Catholic six years ago, has been spending Holy Week in Rome with his family. He attended the Good Friday service in St. Peter’s Basilica. On Saturday, Mr. Vance met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, and with Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister.Mr. Vance had not been expected to meet the pope, who only recently left the hospital after spending five weeks there in serious condition. The pope has made unannounced appearances since his hospital stay, but his health tightly restricts his planned engagements.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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    Israel’s Military Cites ‘Professional Failures’ in Killings of Gaza Medics

    In a statement summarizing its investigation into the deadly episode, the military said a deputy commander would be dismissed.The Israeli military said Sunday that an investigation into its soldiers’ deadly attack on medics in Gaza last month had identified “several professional failures” and that a commander would be dismissed.The military had previously acknowledged carrying out the attack in Rafah, southern Gaza, that killed 14 rescue workers and a United Nations employee who drove by after the others were shot. But it had offered shifting explanations for why its troops fired on the emergency vehicles and said it was investigating the episode, one that prompted international condemnation and that experts described as a war crime.On Sunday — nearly a month after the attack — the military released a statement summarizing its investigation.“The examination identified several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident,” it said.The deadly shootings of the rescue workers resulted from “an operational misunderstanding” by troops on the ground “who believed they faced a tangible threat from enemy forces.” Firing on a U.N. vehicle, the statement added, involved “a breach of orders” in a combat setting.Israeli troops fired on ambulances and a fire truck sent by the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Civil Defense, as well as the United Nations vehicle that passed by separately, according to witness accounts, video and audio of the attack.The military said on Sunday that “due to poor night visibility,” the deputy commander on the ground “did not initially recognize the vehicles as ambulances.”Palestinians in Khan Younis, Gaza, mourned medics on March 31 who were killed by Israeli fire while on a rescue mission.Hatem Khaled/ReutersTwo weeks ago, the Israeli military acknowledged that some of its early assertions, based on accounts from troops involved in the killing, were partly mistaken.Military officials had initially asserted, repeatedly and erroneously, that the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” toward the troops “without headlights or emergency signals.”The military backtracked on that assertion a day after The New York Times published a video, discovered on the cellphone of one of the dead paramedics, that showed the clearly marked vehicles flashing their lights and coming to a halt before the attack.Israeli soldiers later buried most of the bodies in a mass grave, crushed the ambulances, fire truck and a U.N. vehicle, and buried those as well.In the statement on Sunday, the Israeli military said that “removing the bodies was reasonable under the circumstances, but the decision to crush the vehicles was wrong.”The commander of the brigade involved will receive a reprimand “for his overall responsibility for the incident,” it said, while the battalion’s deputy commander will be dismissed because of his responsibilities “and for providing an incomplete and inaccurate report during the debrief.”Bilal Shbair More

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    Alito Releases Dissent in Supreme Court Decision Blocking Deportations

    Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented in the Supreme Court’s decision on Saturday to block the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members under a rarely invoked 18th century wartime law, calling the court’s order “hastily and prematurely granted.”In his five-page dissent released on Saturday shortly before midnight, Justice Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that in his view, the court’s decision to intervene overnight was not “necessary or appropriate.”The court’s unsigned, one-paragraph order came after a fast-moving legal battle late Friday. The American Civil Liberties Union had rushed to several lower courts, then to the Supreme Court, claiming that the Trump administration was planning to deport more Venezuelan migrants, presumably to El Salvador, with little to no due process under the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act.The Supreme Court’s decision ordered a pause on the deportations of the detainees while it considers the emergency application.Read Justice Alito’s DissentJustice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision to block the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelan migrants under a wartime law was premature.Read Document 5 pagesThe order suggested a deep skepticism on the court about whether the Trump administration could be trusted to live up to the key part of an earlier ruling that said detainees were entitled to be notified if the government intended to deport them under the law, “within a reasonable time,” and in a way that would allow the deportees to challenge the move.“In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief,” Justice Alito wrote in his dissent, “without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order.”Justice Alito said that he had refused to join the court’s order because “we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate.” More

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    Read Justice Samuel Alito’s Dissent in the Alien Enemies Act Case

    4
    A.A.R.P. v. TRUMP
    ALITO, J., dissenting
    with 24 hours to respond, and was poised to rule ex-
    peditiously. See ECF Doc. 41, at 3-4. But the Dis-
    trict Court dissolved the Government’s obligation to
    respond after counsel for applicants filed their hasty
    appeal which, in the District Court’s view, deprived
    it of jurisdiction to rule. Id., at 4-5.
    • The papers before us, while alleging that the appli-
    cants were in imminent danger of removal, provided
    little concrete support for that allegation. Members
    of this Court have repeatedly insisted that an All
    Writs Act injunction pending appeal may only be
    granted when, among other things, “the legal rights
    at issue are indisputably clear and, even then, spar-
    ingly and only in the most critical and exigent cir-
    cumstances.” South Bay United Pentecostal Church
    v. Newsom, 590 U. S.
    (2020) (ROBERTS, C. J.,
    concurring in denial of application for injunctive re-
    lief) (slip op., at 2) (internal quotation marks omit-
    ted) (quoting S. Shapiro, K. Geller, T. Bishop, E.
    Hartnett, D. Himmelfarb, Supreme Court Practice
    §17.4, p. 17-9 (11th ed. 2019)); see also Hobby Lobby
    Stores, Inc. v. Sebelius, 568 U. S. 1401, 1403 (2012)
    (SOTOMAYOR, J., in chambers); Lux v. Rodrigues,
    561 U. S. 1306, 1307 (2010) (ROBERTS, C. J., in
    chambers).
    -”
    • Although this Court did not hear directly from the
    Government regarding any planned deportations
    under the Alien Enemies Act in this matter, an at-
    torney representing the Government in a different
    matter, J. G. G. v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-766 (DC), in-
    formed the District Court in that case during a hear-
    ing yesterday evening that no such deportations
    were then planned to occur either yesterday, April
    18, or today, April 19.
    •
    Although the Court provided class-wide relief, the More