Aurelia Butler

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    Trump Asks Congress to Claw Back $9 Billion for Foreign Aid, NPR and PBS

    The request seeks to codify spending cuts advanced by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.The White House formally asked Congress on Tuesday to claw back more than $9 billion in federal funds that lawmakers had already approved for foreign aid and public broadcasting, seeking to codify spending cuts put forward by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. In a package compiled by the Office of Management and Budget, officials outlined 22 programs targeted by President Trump in executive orders and by DOGE. The bulk of the rollbacks — $8.3 billion — are aimed at foreign aid spending. The rest — $1.1 billion — would rescind funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS. The proposal comes as the White House has aggressively challenged Congress’s power of the purse and made clear it is willing to steer around the legislative branch to unilaterally control federal spending.In this case, though, the administration is going through normal channels and asking Congress to go along with its efforts to redirect federal money. Lawmakers can approve such a measure by a simple majority vote in both chambers. Republican lawmakers have argued that it is important for Congress to codify spending cuts that were already enacted by the Trump administration by executive order. “This rescissions package reflects many of DOGE’s findings and is one of the many legislative tools Republicans are using to restore fiscal sanity,” Speaker Mike Johnson said on Tuesday. “Congress will continue working closely with the White House to codify these recommendations, and the House will bring the package to the floor as quickly as possible.”The last time the Trump administration asked lawmakers to pull back federal funds they had already approved, during Mr. Trump’s first term, the effort failed after two Republican senators joined Democrats to defeat what had been a largely symbolic effort.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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    New Jersey Turnpike to Replace Tesla Chargers After Contract Expires

    The agency that runs the highway said it was switching to another company to provide chargers that work for electrical vehicles other than just Teslas.The agency that runs the New Jersey Turnpike is replacing the more than 60 superchargers for Tesla vehicles along the highway after the state did not renew its contract with the electric-car maker.New Jersey officials said in a statement on Friday that the state would shift to another company that would provide universal charging stations. The change, already underway, will almost triple the number of charging stations along the turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, a second major toll road, where chargers are being added for the first time.The decision drew an apparently irked response from the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk. “Sounds like corruption,” he wrote on his social media platform, X, on Friday night, without providing any evidence. Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.Thomas Feeney, a spokesman for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which operates the highways, said that the decision was both about increasing the number of stations and providing chargers that were compatible with more than just Tesla vehicles. “Our goal is to serve as many E.V. owners as possible across all our service areas,” he said.The state has amended its agreement with Applegreen, an Irish company that already manages restaurants and stores in the turnpike’s service areas, to include its new line of fast charging stations to replace the Tesla equipment and build new stations elsewhere.In a message posted to X on Friday, Tesla said it would continue to offer its superchargers in New Jersey. “We have been preparing for 3 years for this potential outcome by building 116 stalls off the New Jersey Turnpike, ensuring no interruption for our customers,” said the post, which included a map of the charging stations.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 Rescinds Biden Policy Requiring Hospitals to Provide Emergency Abortions

    At issue is how to interpret a federal law barring hospitals from turning away poor or uninsured patients.The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it had revoked a Biden administration requirement that hospitals provide emergency abortions to women whose health is in peril, including in states where abortion is restricted or banned.The move by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the department led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was not a surprise. But it added to growing confusion around emergency care and abortions since June 2022, when the Supreme Court rescinded the national right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade.“It basically gives a bright green light to hospitals in red states to turn away pregnant women who are in peril,” Lawrence O. Gostin, a health law expert at Georgetown University, said of the Trump administration’s move.The administration did not explicitly tell hospitals that they were free to turn away women seeking abortions in medical emergencies. Its policy statement said hospitals would still be subject to a federal law requiring them to provide reproductive health care in emergency situations. But it did not explain exactly what that meant.Mr. Gostin and other experts said the murky policy could have dire consequences for pregnant women by discouraging doctors from performing emergency abortions in states where abortions are banned or restricted.“We’ve already seen since the overturn of Roe that uncertainty and confusion tends to mean physicians are unwilling to intervene, and the more unwilling physicians are to intervene, the more risk there is in pregnancy,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California-Davis and a historian of the American abortion debate.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 N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race, Mamdani Responds to a Call for His Deportation

    Vickie Paladino, a councilwoman from Queens, called Zohran Mamdani a “radical leftist” who hates America, and warned against “future Zohrans.”In his surprising rise to New York City’s top tier of mayoral hopefuls, Zohran Mamdani has battled opponents’ attacks on his inexperience, his leftward politics and his criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza.But this week, Mr. Mamdani found himself facing a new attack that was both pointed and illogical, when a Republican city councilwoman from Queens called for him to be deported. (Mr. Mamdani is a U.S. citizen.)The remark by the councilwoman, Vickie Paladino, who is known for her incendiary social media posts, quickly became a talking point in the Democratic mayoral primary race, just a day before the candidates were to face off in their first debate.Ms. Paladino recirculated a 2019 social media post from Mr. Mamdani in which he said he couldn’t vote for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for president in 2016 because he was not a citizen at the time. She was incredulous that Mr. Mamdani was being treated seriously as a mayoral candidate.“Let’s just talk about how insane it is to elect someone to any major office who hasn’t even been a U.S. citizen for 10 years — much less a radical leftist who actually hates everything about the country and is here specifically to undermine everything we’ve ever been about,” Ms. Paladino wrote on X late Monday evening. “Deport.”Mr. Mamdani, who is polling second behind former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the June 24 primary, soon responded.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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    Justice Dept. Drops Biden-Era Push to Obtain Peter Navarro’s Emails

    The department’s move is one of many recent actions taken to dismiss criminal and civil actions against Trump allies such as Mr. Navarro, the president’s trade adviser.The Justice Department has abruptly dropped its effort to force Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, to turn over hundreds of his emails dating to the first Trump administration to the National Archives, according to a court filing on Tuesday.The decision to drop the civil lawsuit was disclosed in a one-page notice filed in Federal District Court in the District of Columbia. The department offered no explanation for the move, but it is one of many recent actions it has taken to dismiss criminal and civil actions taken against Trump allies.Mr. Navarro, 75, had long resisted the government’s request that he give the archives emails from his personal ProtonMail account relating to his role as a White House adviser, as required by the Presidential Records Act.Defiance is Mr. Navarro’s default. He served about four months in the geriatric unit of a federal prison in Miami after refusing to comply with a subpoena to appear before a congressional committee investigating his false claims about the 2020 election.In 2022, the Biden Justice Department sued Mr. Navarro, one of the main architects of Mr. Trump’s second-term tariff policy, to retrieve the communications. The lawsuit charged him with “wrongfully retaining presidential records that are the property of the United States, and which constitute part of the permanent historical record of the prior administration.”The lawsuit accused Mr. Navarro of using his private email account to conduct public work, including an effort to influence the White House response to the pandemic. Those emails were needed to preserve the historical record, officials at the archives said.Mr. Navarro unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court to dismiss the suit last year.A federal magistrate judge earlier reviewed about 900 messages, determining that more than 500 were not presidential records. He ordered additional hearings to decide how many of the remaining 350-plus emails needed to be turned over to the government.Mr. Navarro’s lawyer did not immediately return a request for comment.Stanley Woodward, who represented Mr. Navarro in both his civil and criminal cases, recused himself after Mr. Trump appointed him in April to serve as associate attorney general. More

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    As Trump Says He’s Stamping Out Antisemitism, He Advances Similar Tropes

    President Trump’s effort to punish Harvard over antisemitism is complicated by his own extensive history of amplifying white supremacist figures and symbols.In the Oval Office one day last week, President Trump renewed his no-holds-barred attack on the nation’s oldest university. “They’re totally antisemitic at Harvard,” he declared.Just 10 hours later, he posted an image of himself striding down a street with the caption, “He’s on a mission from God and nothing can stop what is coming.” Shown in the shadows, watching with approval, was a cartoon figure commonly seen as an antisemitic symbol.The appearance of the figure, the alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog, was the latest example of Mr. Trump’s extensive history of amplifying white supremacist figures and symbols, even as he now presents himself as a champion for Jewish students oppressed by what he says is a wave of hatred on American college campuses.As a younger man, Mr. Trump kept a book of Adolf Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet by his bed, according to his first wife. During his first term as president, he expressed admiration for some aspects of the Nazi Führer’s leadership, according to his chief White House aide at the time. In the past few years, he has dined at his Florida estate with a Holocaust denier while his New Jersey golf club has hosted events at which a Nazi sympathizer spoke.Since reclaiming the White House, Mr. Trump has brought into his orbit and his administration people with records of advancing antisemitic tropes, including a spokeswoman at the Pentagon. His vice president, secretary of state and top financial backer have offered support to a far-right German political party that has played down atrocities committed by the Nazis. And just last week, Mr. Trump picked a former right-wing podcaster who has defended a prominent white supremacist to head the Office of Special Counsel.Even some prominent critics of Harvard’s handling of antisemitism on its campus find Mr. Trump to be an unpalatable and unconvincing ally. In their view, his real motivations in using the power of the federal government to crush Harvard, seen by the political right as a bastion of America’s liberal, multicultural order, have little to do with concern about a hostile environment for Jewish students.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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    Newark’s Mayor Sues a Top Trump Lawyer, Claiming Malicious Prosecution

    The mayor, Ras Baraka, is suing Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, who dropped charges against him soon after his arrest near an immigration jail.Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark, a Democratic candidate for governor who was arrested last month outside an immigration detention center, filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, that argues that his arrest was motivated by political malice, not justice.The lawsuit also names Ricky Patel, a supervising agent with Homeland Security Investigations who led the arrest of Mr. Baraka on May 9 outside a 1,000-bed detention center near Newark Liberty International Airport that has become a flashpoint in President Trump’s immigration crackdown.Mr. Baraka’s lawsuit accuses the federal authorities of false arrest and malicious prosecution. It also accuses Ms. Habba of defamation.The suit comes as polling locations opened Tuesday for six days of early voting ahead of a June 10 primary that has pitted Mr. Baraka against five other Democrats.Last month, Ms. Habba, who was appointed by Mr. Trump to be the state’s top federal prosecutor, abruptly announced that she was dropping a trespassing charge against Mr. Baraka — a development that prompted a federal judge to publicly question the validity of the “hasty arrest” in the first place.“Your role is not to secure convictions at all costs, nor to satisfy public clamor, nor to advance political agendas,” the judge, André M. Espinosa, said in a rare and harshly worded rebuke of the U.S. attorney’s office that Ms. Habba leads and where he once worked as a prosecutor.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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    Is Peeing ‘Just in Case’ Bad for Your Bladder Health?

    Q: A urologist recently told me I shouldn’t go to the bathroom “just in case.” Is that true?As children, many of us were encouraged to pee before we left the house or whenever a bathroom was nearby. There was a good reason: using the bathroom “just in case” can help prevent accidents among children prone to “holding it.”Urologists call this practice “convenience” or “proactive” voiding, and people of all ages do it, often before heading out the door or going to sleep.An occasional “just in case” bathroom break won’t do much harm, said Dr. Ariana Smith, a professor of urology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. But doing it several times a day, she said, can increase the likelihood of bladder issues by disrupting the natural feedback loop between your bladder and your brain.How does peeing ‘just in case’ affect bladder health?To understand why proactive voiding can be harmful, it helps to know how the bladder works. As your kidneys filter blood to remove waste, they produce urine, which is carried to your bladder. Women can typically hold up to 500 milliliters of urine, or around two cups, in their bladders; men can store 700 milliliters, or nearly three cups.We generally feel the urge to use the bathroom well before we hit that limit, when our bladder contains between 150 and 250 milliliters of liquid. As the bladder fills up, it sends nerve signals to the brain, letting us know it’s time to go.The experts we spoke with said that when you pee “just in case,” your bladder starts alerting your brain too early, before having the standard amount of urine. This disruption can reduce “the volume your bladder can hold over time,” said Siobhan Sutcliffe, an epidemiologist and professor of surgery at Washington University.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