Aurelia Butler

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    Trump Administration Cuts Ties With Migrant Shelter Provider After Dropping Child Abuse Lawsuit

    The Trump administration said on Wednesday that it had stopped using the largest U.S. operator of shelters for migrant children over allegations of sexual abuse and harassment of minors at the facilities, and moved to dismiss a Biden-era lawsuit that sought to hold the nonprofit accountable for enabling that abuse.A joint statement issued by the Health and Human Services and Justice Departments on Wednesday cited concerns over allegations detailed in the lawsuit filed last year, namely that employees for the provider, Southwest Key Programs, subjected children to abuse and harassment.The suit accused employees of Southwest Key, which has worked with the federal government for more than two decades, of exploiting “children’s vulnerabilities, language barriers and distance from family and loved ones” from 2015 through at least 2023, including President Trump’s first term.Attorney General Pam Bondi, in the statement, blamed the Biden administration’s immigration policies for enabling the abuses.“Under the border policies of the previous administration, bad actors were incentivized to exploit children and break our laws: this ends now,” Ms. Bondi said, adding, “securing our border and protecting children from abuse are among the most critical missions of the Department of Justice and the Trump administration.”Anais Biera Miracle, a spokeswoman for Southwest Key, maintained the nonprofit denied the claims of abuse. She said it was “pleased” that the Justice Department had dropped the case in its entirety, and that charges cannot be refiled.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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    Putin Visits Kursk to Cheer Russian Troops Trying to Oust Ukraine

    The trip comes as President Trump looks to secure the Russian leader’s support for a 30-day cease-fire.Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, dressed in fatigues, visited a command post near the front in Kursk late Wednesday to cheer on his military’s ejection of Ukrainian forces from much of the territory they had been occupying in the Russian border region.The Russian leader’s pointed visit came a day after a U.S. delegation met in Saudi Arabia with Ukrainian officials, who agreed to a 30-day cease-fire in the war. American officials planned to take the proposal to Mr. Putin, who has previously said he is not interested in a temporary truce.Dressed in a green camouflage uniform, Mr. Putin sat at a desk with maps spread out in front of him, according to photos released by the Kremlin. He appeared with Russia’s top military officer, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov.In video footage released by Russian state media, Mr. Putin praised the Russian military formations that had taken back much of the territory captured by Ukraine in the Kursk region. He called on the troops to seize the territory for good from Ukrainian forces, who have been occupying portions of the Russian border region since last summer. Kyiv had hoped to use the territory as a bargaining chip in peace talks.The Russian leader also demanded that Ukrainian forces taken prisoner in the region be treated and prosecuted as terrorists under Russian law. General Gerasimov said more than 400 Ukrainian troops had been captured in the operations.“People who are on the territory of the Kursk region, committing crimes here against the civilian population and opposing our armed forces, law enforcement agencies and special services, in accordance with the laws of the Russian Federation, are terrorists,” Mr. Putin said.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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    Why Trump’s Tesla Showcase Mattered to Elon Musk

    A lot has changed since former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. snubbed Elon Musk at an event in 2021.It wasn’t so long ago that Elon Musk couldn’t even get an invitation to the White House.The year was 2021, and President Joe Biden was announcing tighter pollution rules and promoting his electric vehicle policies.Behind him on the lawn were gleaming examples — a Ford F-150 Lightning, a Chevrolet Bolt EV, a Jeep Wrangler — as well as the chief executives of the companies that made them. But the nation’s biggest electric vehicle producer was nowhere to be seen.“Seems odd that Tesla wasn’t invited,” Musk tweeted before the event.The Biden White House explained the snub by noting that the automakers that had been invited were the nation’s three largest employers of the United Automobile Workers, a powerful union, and it suggested that the administration would find other ways to partner with Tesla. (Union animus toward electric vehicles later became a problem for Biden.) But today, the moment is seen as a turning point in a feud between Musk and Biden that some Democrats say they have come to regret deeply.“They left Elon out,” said Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who is working to get his party to embrace electric vehicles, “and now he hates ’em.”It was hard not to think about that episode yesterday when Musk and Trump lined up Teslas, including Cybertrucks, on the White House driveway and proceeded to rattle off their benefits like denizens of a suburban showroom.“I love the product,” Trump said.“Try it,” Musk said. “You’ll like it!”Musk now has the White House attention and promotion that he wanted several years ago — and with it, a pile of potential benefits for some of his companies — but it’s come at a price. He donated some $300 million largely through his own super PAC to help Trump get elected. My colleagues Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman reported yesterday that he’s signaled a willingness to put another $100 million into groups controlled by Trump’s political operation.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 Officials Pursue Fraud Case Against Customs Official

    A longtime customs employee has been accused of a scheme to defraud FEMA involving aid from floods in Detroit. She has denied the charges, officials say. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection official in Detroit has been charged in a scheme to defraud the Federal Emergency Management Agency and with making false statements to federal officials, the authorities announced on Wednesday.A criminal complaint against the official, Serina Baker-Hill, was unsealed on Wednesday, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Michigan said in a news release. Ms. Baker-Hill, 55, is a career customs employee and the director of an agency center focused on the automotive and aerospace industries. She was arrested and later released on bond, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office. It is unclear who carried out the arrest, or when.Ms. Baker-Hill applied for FEMA disaster assistance after powerful storms flooded thousands of homes, including her own, in the Detroit area in August 2023, according to the criminal complaint.The complaint said that a FEMA inspector confirmed there had been damage to the basement of the home she shared with her husband, and Ms. Baker-Hill claimed she could not safely live in her home while it underwent repairs.FEMA approved funds for the repairs as well as two months of rental assistance, specifying the money was to be used for rent and essential utility costs while she was in temporary housing, according to the criminal complaint. The complaint said she received about $6,300 from the agency.However, the complaint said investigators discovered that bank records showed none of the funds were used for rent, hotel stays or utilities. And video surveillance and utility records indicated that Ms. Baker-Hill and her husband continued living in their home, officials said in the complaint.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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    Selma Miriam, Founder of the Feminist Restaurant Bloodroot, Dies at 89

    She and Noel Furie had just come out as lesbians when they opened an unusual gathering place for women in Connecticut. Nearly half a century later, it is still thriving.Selma Miriam and Noel Furie were unhappy housewives, as they put it, when they met at a gathering of the National Organization for Women in Connecticut in 1972. Soon after, they divorced their husbands, came out as lesbians and set about creating a place for women to congregate.Ms. Miriam was a talented and adventurous cook, and at first they held dinners at her house, charging $8 for a weekly buffet of lush vegetarian dishes — a culinary choice they made because a friend pointed out that a feminist food enterprise should not contribute to the suffering of animals.In 1977 they opened Bloodroot, a feminist restaurant and bookstore tucked into an industrial building on a dead-end street in Bridgeport. They had no waiters, no printed menu and no cash register, and they did not advertise. Against the odds, the business thrived.Ms. Miriam, center, with Samn Stockwell, left, and Betsey Beaven, two of the original members of the Bloodroot collective, in 1977, the year the restaurant opened.Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times“The people who need us, find us,” Ms. Miriam always said.Selma Miriam died on Feb. 6 at her home in Westport, Conn. She was 89.The cause was pneumonia, her longtime partner, Carolanne Curry, said.“We don’t just want a piece of the pie, we want a whole new recipe,” Ms. Miriam declared in “A Culinary Uprising: The Story of Bloodroot,” a feature-length 2024 documentary about the restaurant. (Another documentary, “Bloodroot,” came out in 2019.)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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    Burned Out, Davey Wreden Tried to Heal by Making the Cozy Wanderstop

    Nothing moves quickly in Wanderstop. To make a single cup of tea in the new video game is a meditative ritual of deliberate steps.The recovering hero, Alta, has to forage for tea leaves, dry out those leaves, plant seeds for fruit to flavor the tea, water those seeds, watch the plant grow, harvest the fruit individually, and then, with a fantastical apparatus the player traverses using rolling ladders, heat up the water, drain it into a brewing pot, throw the ingredients in one by one, go to a shelf of bespoke mugs, select one, place it under a tap and — finally — pour.There is recognition for doing so without spilling a single drop but no punishment if it is not perfect. It is not that kind of game.Davey Wreden, the 36-year-old writer and director of Wanderstop, has not released a stand-alone game in a decade. He burned out after commercial success with The Stanley Parable (2013), an absurd meditation on cubicle life and choice that has been cited as an inspiration for the TV show “Severance,” and artistic acclaim with the game’s follow-up.Wanderstop was supposed to be different from those mind-bending works, a calming experience set at a woodland tea shop.It did not end up that way.“I started out trying to make this game in a way that it wasn’t going to be a complex story about me and my life, and I failed to do that,” Wreden said. “The more that I began having Alta speak the words in my own head, the more compelling it got.”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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    Senator Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Democrat, Won’t Run Again in 2026

    Ms. Shaheen’s retirement will set off a high-stakes fight for an open seat in a state where she has been a leading political figure for decades.Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire will not run for re-election in 2026, bringing an end to a long and singular political career and further complicating Democrats’ efforts to regain a majority in the Senate.Her decision not to seek a fourth term will immediately set off a high-stakes race in a state whose voters are famously fickle. Last fall, New Hampshire voters supported former Vice President Kamala Harris for president and elected Democrats to Congress, but they also voted for a Republican governor and expanded Republican majorities in the state legislature.“It was a difficult decision, made more difficult by the current environment in the country — by President Trump and what he’s doing right now,” Ms. Shaheen, 78, said in an interview with The New York Times. She specifically criticized the president’s focus on political retribution, his drastic cuts to the federal budget and his antagonism toward Ukraine as it defends itself from Russia’s invasion.She announced her decision in a video released on Wednesday morning.Ms. Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was the first woman to be elected governor of New Hampshire and the first woman in the country to serve as both a governor and a U.S. senator. She noted in the interview that she will have served for 30 years in elected office and spent 50 years in politics.“It’s important for New Hampshire and the country to have a new generation of leadership,” she said.Ms. Shaheen, speaking in January with Senators Chris Murphy, left, and James Risch, second from right, is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Eric Lee/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

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    L.A.’s Clear Skies Conceal a ‘Toxic Soup’

    On a Sunday in February, a white Ford van zigzagged through the fire-ravaged neighborhood of Altadena, Calif. Ash piles lined front yards. Charred washing machines sat on bare concrete foundations.“I can’t imagine coming back to this,” said Albert Kyi, a graduate student researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, briefly looking up from his laptop and out the van’s window.He and his colleagues, however, were there to help people learn whether it was safe to do just that. A mast poking out from the van’s roof was sending readings on hundreds of compounds in the air to the laptop. This laboratory on wheels was so sensitive, Mr. Kyi said, that it could detect the chemicals produced by someone peeling an orange outside.The data the team was gathering was part of a newly launched study tracking the health impacts of the Los Angeles wildfires over the next decade. By traversing the 38,000 acres that encompass the two burn zones in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades along with the surrounding region, the researchers hope to fill gaps in the data on air, soil and water quality. Already, they have found cause for concern.More than 16,000 homes and buildings were destroyed, and another 2,000 were damaged during the recent fires. So far, there is only limited information for the tens of thousands of residents returning home to the affected areas about whether or when it might be safe to grow vegetables in their backyards, swim in their pools or go for a morning run, especially as rebuilding efforts stir up potentially toxic ash.On weather apps, the Air Quality Index that day indicated that the air above Altadena posed little risk.The sky was blue, and there was even a cyclist on the streets.But the van’s readings told a different story.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