Aurelia Butler

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    Judge Temporarily Halts Mass Firings at Consumer Bureau

    One day after the Trump administration sent layoff notices to the vast majority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s workers, a federal judge temporarily blocked the action and ordered a hearing to determine whether the attempted mass firing violated an injunction she imposed last month.In a brief court session Friday morning, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington pressed Justice Department lawyers for details about layoff notices sent Thursday to nearly 1,500 of the consumer bureau’s 1,700 workers. The messages told workers that they would lose access to their email accounts and work systems on Friday evening.Judge Jackson issued an oral order, followed by a written one, barring the government from carrying out that plan until at least April 28, when she plans to hold an evidentiary hearing on the issue. Her ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the consumer bureau’s staff union and other parties.“Once again, the court is confronted with evidence that gives rise to concerns that there will be no agency standing by the time it gets to consider the merits,” she said in her written order.Russell T. Vought, director of the White House budget office, became the consumer bureau’s acting director in early February and immediately began dismantling the agency — which cannot be closed without congressional action. Judge Jackson issued an injunction last month freezing those actions, saying that she wanted to make sure the agency existed long enough for courts to evaluate whether Mr. Vought’s actions were lawful.One week ago, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit pared back Judge Jackson’s order and said Trump officials could fire workers whom they decided — after a “particularized assessment” — were not needed to fulfill the agency’s legally mandated responsibilities.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 Fireball Near Mexico City Lit Up the Sky and the Internet

    The glowing object was a bolide, fireballs that explode in a bright flash, according to experts. It streaked across Mexico’s predawn skies on Wednesday.The bright object that streaked across the sky is called a bolide.Webcams de Mexico, Associated PressFor a few brief moments on Wednesday, a bright fireball lit up the predawn skies near Mexico City. The display awed residents and online viewers alike as videos of the object quickly spread.The glowing object was a bolide, according to The Associated Press. Bolides are fireballs that explode in a bright flash, often with visible fragmentation, according to the American Meteor Society.Whereas a meteorite is a space rock that reaches the ground, a bolide is “just the luminous phenomenon” associated with the object’s atmospheric entry, said Jérôme Gattacceca, the editor of The Meteoritical Bulletin of the Meteoritical Society, an organization that records all known meteorites.Meteors that are brighter in our sky than Venus are called “fireballs,” Dr. Gattacceca said. While meteors and fireballs are common, bolides are less so — though “still not rare,” he said.This echoes what Guadalupe Cordero Tercero, a researcher at the UNAM Institute of Geophysics and head of the Mexican Meteor Network project, told UNAM Global Magazine.It’s “estimated that every two and a half days an object at least one meter in diameter enters the Earth’s atmosphere,” Dr. Cordero Tercero said, according to the magazine. However most of these objects fall into the ocean or uninhabited areas, so they often go unnoticed.Denton Ebel, a curator of meteorites at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, said that while he had seen only some footage of the fireball and heard stories, “it sounds really exciting.”Meteors are “not as uncommon as many people think,” Dr. Ebel said, but they are being reported more frequently because of fireball networks, which are cameras parked atop buildings that capture the objects as they enter the atmosphere.UNAM Global Magazine also reported that the fireball roared after streaking across the dark sky. A sonic boom is associated with its breaking apart, Dr. Gattacceca said.“This noise is usually a good indicator that the object fragmented at relatively low altitude and that meteorites actually reached the ground,” he added.The rumbling can sound almost like a freight train, Dr. Ebel said.Meteors are all created by space rocks hitting the atmosphere at high speed, Dr. Gattacceca said, and most of these space rocks originate from the asteroid belt.Their high velocity means that small rocks, even the ones as small as a walnut, will “generate a fireball because of its elevated speed,” Dr. Gattacceca said.The object’s dazzling display caught the attention of many of the more than 22 million people who live in Mexico City, who had nothing to fear.“Nobody has ever been killed by a falling meteorite in historical times,” Dr. Gattacceca said, adding, “So, not dangerous.” More

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    Ex-Harvard Medical School Morgue Chief to Plead Guilty in Sale of Body Parts

    Cedric Lodge stole organs from cadavers that had been donated for medical research, prosecutors said. The university fired him in 2023.A former manager of the morgue at Harvard Medical School will plead guilty to stealing body parts that had been donated for research and selling them for thousands of dollars to people who collected them as macabre curiosities, according to court documents.The supervisor, Cedric Lodge, 57, who was fired by the university in 2023, had been entrusted with handling cadavers that were part of the medical school’s Anatomical Gift Program and were supposed to be cremated after the research on them had been completed, prosecutors said.But according to a sweeping federal investigation, Mr. Lodge turned the morgue into a shopping emporium for brains, skin and other body parts, supplying them to collectors in several states as part of a criminal network that involved several people, including his wife. Investigators said he drove the stolen body parts to his home in New Hampshire.The breach went undetected from about 2018 until March 2023, tainting one of the nation’s most prestigious medical schools.In a filing on Wednesday in federal court in Pennsylvania, Mr. Lodge agreed that he would plead guilty to one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. Under the plea deal, he will no longer face a conspiracy charge. Prosecutors recommended that he receive less than the maximum sentence, but a judge will make the final decision.In a statement on Friday, Dr. George Q. Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School, condemned Mr. Lodge’s misconduct.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-Allied Prosecutor Sends Letters to Medical Journals Alleging Bias

    An interim U.S. attorney is demanding information about the selection of research articles and the role of N.I.H. Experts worry this will have a chilling effect on publications.A federal prosecutor has sent letters to at least three medical journals accusing them of political bias and asking a series of probing questions suggesting that the journals mislead readers, suppress opposing viewpoints and are inappropriately swayed by their funders.The letters were signed by Edward Martin Jr., a Republican activist serving as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. He has been criticized for using his office to target opponents of President Trump.Some scientists and doctors said they viewed the letters as a threat from the Trump administration that could have a chilling effect on what journals publish. The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has said he wants to prosecute medical journals, accusing them of lying to the public and colluding with pharmaceutical companies.One of the letters was sent to the journal Chest, published by the American College of Chest Physicians. The New York Times obtained a copy of the letter.The Times confirmed that at least two other publishers had received nearly identically worded letters, but those publishers would not speak publicly because they feared retribution from the Trump administration.In the letter to Chest, dated Monday, Mr. Martin wrote, “It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates.”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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    Wisconsin Supreme Court Says Governor’s 400-Year Edit Was Within Veto Authority

    Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, used his veto power to increase school funding limits for four centuries longer than Republican lawmakers in the state had intended.The sentence, dull but clear, was buried 158 pages into Wisconsin’s budget.“For the limit for the 2023-24 school year and the 2024-25 school year,” the sentence read when it was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, “add $325” to the amount school districts could generate through property taxes for each student.But by the time Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and his veto pen were finished, it said something else entirely: “For the limit for 2023-2425, add $325.”It was clever. Creative. Perhaps even a bit subversive, extending the increase four centuries longer than lawmakers intended. But was it legal?On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said yes. In a 4-to-3 ruling in a lawsuit challenging Mr. Evers’s use of his partial veto authority, the court’s liberal majority said the governor had acted legally. The three conservative justices on the court dissented.“We uphold the 2023 partial vetoes, and in doing so we are acutely aware that a 400-year modification is both significant and attention-grabbing,” Justice Jill J. Karofsky wrote in the majority opinion. “However, our Constitution does not limit the governor’s partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable.”The proposed state budget had outlined two years of revenue limit increases, for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years. By editing out the text in red, Mr. Evers allowed increases until 2425.State of WisconsinWe 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 Hudson, N.Y., Even the Opera Is Locavore

    The director R.B. Schlather gathered the cast of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare” for a quick pep talk before running through the opera last weekend. Not all the costumes were ready, and not everyone in the orchestra could be there, but they were about to see whether the show they had been rehearsing for several weeks even worked.“You’re getting to go through this thing for the first time,” Schlather told them, speaking also to the creative team and crew of his new “Cesare” production, which opens at Hudson Hall in Hudson, N.Y., on Saturday. “Don’t worry. I encourage you today to just go for it.”There was a bit of applause from the balcony: The rehearsal was open to the public, and some locals had shown up to get a taste of the work in progress. Staff of the production and hall left their perches to say hello to people they knew, some of whom were just passing through with their to-go coffees, shopping bags and dogs.Boundaries between artists and audiences aren’t always so porous, but in Hudson, locals are as represented onstage as off. Partly out of necessity, but also because of Schlather’s ethos, opera here is something more like community theater, executed at the level of a major company.R.B. Schlather, center, the director of “Cesare,” talking to musicians, from left, Coleman Itzkoff, Clay Zeller Townson and Elliot Figg.Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesSome of the “Cesare” performers are commuting from a residency at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park nearby; others are just driving in from their houses. When they come together, it’s in a luxurious way that would be unimaginable 120 miles south in New York City. The artists have more freedom and, crucially, more time.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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    Are Easter Baskets Getting Out of Hand?

    Social media feeds are awash in images of lavish baskets overflowing with expensive gifts. Some parents are giving their children bikes. Others are pushing back.“Is it even Easter if you don’t get a new bike?”So asks Judy Newton, a mother of three in Philadelphia, in a recent video on TikTok.In the weeks before Easter this Sunday, social media feeds have been full of videos of parents filling baskets with more than just the usual marshmallow Peeps. Instead, they are packing blankets, stuffed animals, shoes and knickknacks into large wicker baskets, tote bags or plastic buckets. And, yes, they are also giving bikes.“When you see some people post their videos on social media, it looks like Christmas morning,” Ms. Newton said. “Now these kids are getting that for Easter.”Baskets have, of course, long been associated with Easter. But in the age of influencer-driven consumption, Easter has been joined by Halloween (“boo baskets”), Christmas (“brr baskets”), Valentine’s Day and virtually every other holiday (“Leprechaun baskets” for St. Patrick’s Day) as social media encourages people to celebrate by spending lavishly.The Easter Bunny can hardly keep up.

    @kendra.crabtree Easter basket for girls!!! 🫶🏼💕 #easter #easterbasket #easterbasketideas #easter2025 #resurection #jesusisthereason #girlmom #fostermom #girls #spoiled ♬ original sound – KENDRA CRABTREE “Every holiday now, we make baskets,” said Talia Stenson, a mother and social media content creator in Sacramento. “And I think as the years have gone on, people just go above and beyond with these baskets, and now they’re almost a little too overboard.”

    @haileyjoor #easterbasket #easter2025 #boymom #basket #toddlermom #sahm ♬ original sound – mw🎧🧡 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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    ‘Love Island: Beyond the Villa’ Will Follow Season 6 Cast Around Los Angeles

    Trying to capitalize on the success of the sixth season of “Love Island USA,” Peacock announced a series that would follow former islanders around Los Angeles.In its sixth season, “Love Island USA,” an American remake of the popular British dating reality show, found its footing with fans. That season, which aired on Peacock last summer and was hosted by Ariana Madix, a veteran of “Vanderpump Rules,” was the top-rated reality series in the United States for multiple weeks and a hot topic on social media. It also produced some of the franchise’s most memorable couples, many of whom are still together.Given that success, it was not a surprise this week when Peacock announced “Love Island: Beyond the Villa,” a spinoff series featuring some of the islanders from Season 6.Here’s what we know.How is it different from the original show?“Love Island USA” is a reality dating competition that gathers a group of contestants, called islanders, into a luxury villa — Season 6 was set in Fiji — and has them couple up, either out of true love, friendship or simply for survival. Single islanders are kicked out of the villa, and every so often viewers are given the chance to vote out their least favorite couple. The pair voted “most compatible” at the end wins a cash prize.“Love Island: Beyond the Villa” appears to be more of a straightforward reality show, without a competition element. According to Peacock, the show will follow several of the cast members “around Los Angeles as they navigate new careers, evolving friendships, newfound fame and complex relationships outside of the Love Island villa.”Who’s going to be on it?Almost all of the Season 6 favorites are slated to star in the show, including two couples that made it to the finale: JaNa Craig and Kenny Rodriguez, and Leah Kateb and Miguel Harichi. Kendall Washington, who split from his finale partner, Nicole Jacky, will also star in the show alongside Olivia Walker, Connor Newsum and the exes Aaron Evans and Kaylor Martin.Ms. Craig and Mr. Rodriguez, who made it to the Season 6 finale, are both part of the main cast for “Love Island: Beyond the Villa.”Eugene Gologursky/Getty ImagesIn something of a surprise, only half of Season 6’s winning couple was officially announced as being part of the show: Serena Page, who, alongside her partner, Kordell Beckham, took home the grand prize, will appear. But Mr. Beckham — the younger brother of the N.F.L. player Odell Beckham Jr. — is not listed as a main cast member.Ms. Page cleared up the gossip around Mr. Beckham’s absence rather quickly, replying to a fan on Snapchat, “He’s gunna be in it with me!!!” and saying that he could not be announced as part of the main cast because he had booked another role.Also missing from the listed cast was Robert Rausch, a veteran of Seasons 5 and 6 of the show, though Peacock’s announcement said other islanders would appear, so he might be on at some point.What else do we know?Peacock did not release a trailer or announce a release date for the show, but the streamer said it would be coming in summer 2025. More