Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 113 Shares159 Views

    in Elections

    Rage Against Elon Musk Turns Tesla Into a Target

    Tesla charging stations were set ablaze near Boston on Monday. Shots were fired at a Tesla dealership in Oregon after midnight on Thursday. Arrests were made at a nonviolent protest at a Tesla dealership in Lower Manhattan on Saturday.The electric car company Tesla increasingly found itself in police blotters across the country this week, more than seven weeks after President Trump’s second inauguration swept Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, into the administration as a senior adviser to the president.Mr. Musk, 53, is drawing increasing backlash for his sweeping cuts to federal agencies, a result of the newly formed cost-cutting initiative Mr. Musk has labeled the Department of Government Efficiency.During a demonstration on Saturday at a gleaming Tesla showroom in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan, protesters joined in chants of “Nobody voted for Elon Musk” and “Oligarchs out, democracy in.” One held a sign saying, “Send Musk to Mars Now!!” (Mr. Musk also owns SpaceX.)Shots were fired at the Tesla dealership in Tigard, Ore., this week.Tigard Police DepartmentSeveral hundred protesters remained there for two hours, organizers said, blocking entrances and shutting down the dealership.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

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Elections

    Brush Fires Break Out on Long Island, Prompting Highway Closure

    An official said that dozens of agencies were fighting multiple fires on Saturday. At least one firefighter was injured.Multiple wildfires broke out on Long Island on Saturday amid high-risk fire conditions of low humidity and gusty winds, forcing the closure of sections of a highway in Suffolk County and drawing the response of dozens of agencies.At a news conference on Saturday evening, Ed Romaine, the Suffolk County executive, said that one firefighter was hospitalized with second-degree burns to the face. Two structures also burned in the fire, he said.“We maximized our firefighting capabilities to stop this fire from spreading and then we tried to contain it,” Mr. Romaine said. “But it is not under control as I speak.”Mr. Romaine added that he did not expect the fire to be fully out until Sunday because of the high winds.The fire in the Westhampton area was roughly 50 percent contained by Saturday evening, Rudy Sunderman, the Suffolk County fire coordinator, said at the news conference.Mr. Romaine said in a statement earlier that more than 80 agencies were involved in fighting three fires in eastern Long Island. More

  • 138 Shares99 Views

    in Elections

    Joan Dye Gussow, Pioneer of Eating Locally, Is Dead at 96

    An indefatigable gardener, she was concerned, a colleague said, with “all the things that have to happen for us to get our food.”Joan Dye Gussow, a nutritionist and educator who was often referred to as the matriarch of the “eat locally, think globally” food movement, died on Friday at her home in Piermont, N.Y., in Rockland County. She was 96.Her death, from congestive heart failure, was announced by Pamela A. Koch, an associate professor of nutrition education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where Ms. Gussow, a professor emeritus, had taught for more than half a century.Ms. Gussow was one of the first in her field to emphasize the connections between farming practices and consumers’ health. Her book “The Feeding Web: Issues in Nutritional Ecology” (1978) influenced the thinking of writers including Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver.“Nutrition is thought of as the science of what happens to food once it gets in our bodies — as Joan put it, ‘What happens after the swallow,’” Ms. Koch said in an interview.But Ms. Gussow beamed her gimlet-eyed attention on what happens before the swallow. “Her concern was with all the things that have to happen for us to get our food,” Ms. Koch said. “She was about seeing the big picture of food issues and sustainability.”Ms. Gussow, an indefatigable gardener and a tub-thumper for community gardens, began deploying the phrase “local food” after reviewing the statistics on the declining number of farmers in the United States. (Farm and ranch families made up less than 5 percent of the population in 1970 and less than 2 percent of the population in 2023.)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

  • 138 Shares189 Views

    in Elections

    Trump Pulled $400 million From Columbia. Other Schools Could Be Next.

    The administration has circulated a list that includes nine other campuses, accusing them of failure to address antisemitism.The Trump Administration’s abrupt withdrawal of $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University cast a pall over at least nine other campuses worried they could be next.The schools, a mix that includes both public universities and Ivy League institutions, have been placed on an official administration list of schools the Department of Justice said may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty.Faculty leaders at many of the schools have pushed back strongly against claims that their campuses are hotbeds of antisemitism, noting that while some Jewish students complained that they felt unsafe, the vast majority of protesters were peaceful and many of the protest participants were themselves Jewish. The Trump administration has made targeting higher education a priority. This week, the president threatened in a social media post to punish any school that permits “illegal” protests. On Jan. 30, his 10th day in office, he signed an executive order on combating antisemitism, focusing on what he called anti-Jewish racism at “leftists” universities. Then, on Feb. 3, he announced the creation of a multiagency task force to carry out the mandate.The task force appeared to move into action quickly after a pro-Palestinian sit-in and protest at Barnard College, a partner school to Columbia, led to arrests on Feb. 26. Two days later, the administration released its list of 10 schools under scrutiny, including Columbia, the site of large pro-Palestinian encampments last year.It said it would be paying the schools a visit, part of a review process to consider “whether remedial action is warranted.” Then on Friday, it announced it would be canceling millions in grants and contracts with Columbia.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

  • 138 Shares119 Views

    in Elections

    For Black Women, Adrienne Adams Is More Than Just Another Candidate

    The New York City Council speaker, who officially launched her mayoral campaign on Saturday, would be the first woman to lead City Hall.As Adrienne Adams officially kicked off her mayoral campaign on Saturday, she urged potential voters at a rally in Jamaica, Queens, to view her as an alternative to the city’s two most recognizable candidates, Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.But many of her supporters see her candidacy as something else: an opportunity for Democrats to elect a qualified Black woman to lead the country’s largest city, less than a year after the bruising loss of Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to lead a major party presidential ticket.Wearing a pink pantsuit, Ms. Adams entered to cheers at the Rochdale Village Shopping Center in southeast Queens and danced with supporters as “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross played.“No drama, no scandal, no nonsense, just competence and integrity,” Ms. Adams said at the rally, summing up her candidacy.Ms. Adams, the City Council speaker and a Queens native, faces a tough path to the mayor’s office amid a crowded primary field and her own considerable fund-raising lag. But to the city’s most steadfast Democratic voting bloc, Black women, Ms. Adams’s candidacy represents more than a litany of messaging and policy promises.Ms. Adams presenting the city budget alongside Mayor Eric Adams, left, in 2022.Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesWe 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

  • 150 Shares119 Views

    in Elections

    How to Care for a Loved One With Dementia: 5 Expert Tips

    Gene Hackman was cared for by his wife in his final years. Her unexpected death highlights the essential and challenging job of those who care for Alzheimer’s patients.The details of Gene Hackman’s final days may never be known. But officials in Santa Fe, N.M., said on Friday that it appeared that Mr. Hackman, who had advanced Alzheimer’s as well as heart disease, had spent about a week alone after his wife, who was his caregiver, died at home of a rare viral infection.Mr. Hackman, 95, may have been among the most famous movie stars of the 20th century, but his circumstances point toward a common challenge, according to experts in dementia and family caregiving. Like Mr. Hackman, about seven million Americans have Alzheimer’s, a type of dementia, and their family members, like his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 65, often help care for them as the disease progresses.Laura N. Gitlin, a behavioral scientist at Drexel University who researches ways to support caregivers, said that when a patient is diagnosed with dementia, their loved ones rarely receive all the information they need.“No one really explains to the family what the course of the disease may look like, how to prepare,” she said. “No one checks in on the caregiver.”Knowing how to prepare for this situation can help improve the quality of life for not only patients, as they adjust to life with the disease, but also those who become devoted to their needs. Here are five tips to consider if you become a caregiver for a loved one with dementia.Stay social.People with dementia may feel uncomfortable or anxious around faces they don’t recognize, and stigma can lead some families to retreat from social life. But becoming reclusive can worsen the disease, said Dr. Helen Kales, a geriatric psychiatrist at the University of California, Davis. Isolation can accelerate cognitive decline and even puts caregivers at a higher risk for developing dementia themselves.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

  • 100 Shares129 Views

    in Elections

    Climate United Sues E.P.A. Over Frozen $20 Billion

    In a lawsuit, Climate United claims the E.P.A. is illegally withholding funds that have become a target of the Trump administration.A multibillion dollar dispute between the Environmental Protection Agency and several nonprofit organizations escalated on Saturday when one group sued the E.P.A. and Citibank, seeking access to grant money that has been frozen under President Trump.Climate United, a nonprofit organization, claimed that the E.P.A. and Citibank have illegally withheld a nearly $7 billion award announced last April. Citibank has housed the funds as part of a green financing program to finance projects that address climate change.The funds are part of a larger pot of money, $20 billion, that have been swept up in controversy after Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, called the green financing program a “scheme” that was “purposely designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.”Now, some of the nonprofits say, their bank accounts are frozen and that they are struggling to pay staff.Climate United had planned to loan the money to developers across the country in support of solar power, electric trucks, and energy-efficient affordable housing projects, and said the freeze has meant small businesses and developers are unable to draw down funds they were promised.“We’re not trying to make a political statement here,” said Beth Bafford, chief executive of Climate United. “This is about math for homeowners, for truck drivers, for public schools — we know that accessing clean energy saves them money that they can use on far more important things.”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

  • 125 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    Iran’s Supreme Leader Rebuffs Trump’s Outreach Over Its Nuclear Program

    Iran’s supreme leader decried “bullying governments” and bristled on Saturday at the idea of negotiating over the country’s nuclear program with the United States in an apparent response to a letter sent by President Trump earlier in the week.Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader, indirectly addressed Mr. Trump’s suggestion that Iran negotiate over its rapidly advancing nuclear program or face potential military action, while speaking at a meeting with government and military officials for Ramadan. Though he did not explicitly mention the letter, Mr. Trump or even the United States by name, it was clear he was speaking about Washington’s recent gesture.“Some bullying governments insist on negotiations not to resolve issues but to impose,” Mr. Khamenei said, according to state media. He added that “negotiation is a path for them to make new demands, it’s not just nuclear issues to speak about the nuclear topic, they are making new demands which will definitely not be accepted by Iran.”Speaking on Friday in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump suggested that Iran’s nuclear capabilities — which now include enough near-bomb-grade fuel to produce about six weapons — were reaching a critical point. He said he had offered the country a chance to negotiate or risk losing its program in a military strike.The White House did not provide any specifics about the content of Mr. Trump’s letter, which the president said he sent on Wednesday.Iranian officials are currently at odds over whether the country should negotiate over the program. While the ayatollah denounced Mr. Trump’s offer, other moderate and reformist leaders have spoken in favor of opening negotiations, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, who took office last year. Ultimately however, Mr. Khamenei, who has long said Iran cannot trust the United States, has the final say.The 2015 nuclear accord negotiated by President Barack Obama had been effective, officials say. Iran had shipped nearly all its nuclear fuel stockpile out of the country, and international inspectors said the Iranians were abiding by the sharp restrictions on new production of nuclear fuel.But Mr. Trump, who had repeatedly criticized the accord, withdrew from the nuclear agreement with Iran during his first term and reimposed heavy economic sanctions on the country, gambling that Tehran would respond by pleading for a new deal more advantageous to the United States.Iran did not come back to the table, and now the program has reached a critical juncture, experts say.Mr. Trump has also potentially undermined his proposal by upending two U.S. programs that for decades have worked to expose Iran’s atomic bomb programs. One program has since been restored, but experts worry the disruptions will hurt the worldwide struggle to contain nuclear proliferation.Farnaz Fassihi More