Aurelia Butler

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    Katie Porter Will Run for California Governor

    The former congresswoman is the most prominent candidate so far to start a campaign in the 2026 contest. But the race could be upended if former Vice President Kamala Harris decides to run.Katie Porter, the former Democratic congresswoman who rose to prominence by wielding a whiteboard while she grilled corporate executives on Capitol Hill, announced on Tuesday that she would enter the 2026 contest for California governor.Ms. Porter, 51, is the highest-profile Democrat to join the race. But a huge unknown remains: whether former Vice President Kamala Harris will jump in.Gov. Gavin Newsom cannot run for re-election because state law limits governors to two terms. Most of the Democrats who have entered the open race so far are current or former state officials who have experience in the statehouse but are little known to the public. Voters are much more familiar with Ms. Porter, a law professor who served six years in Congress representing Orange County, polls show.Ms. Porter announced her campaign on Tuesday by releasing a video that cast herself as someone who would fight to counter President Trump’s agenda and bring a fresh lens to the State Capitol, where she has never served in an elected office.After losing the presidential election in November, Ms. Harris returned home to Los Angeles and has contemplated a run for California governor. Ms. Porter will drop out of the race if Ms. Harris runs, a spokesman confirmed.Ms. Porter observed in December that Ms. Harris would have “a near field-clearing effect on the Democratic side” of the race.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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    Asian Markets Slide as Global Sell-Off Continues

    Fears over the future health of the global economy are continuing to rattle markets around the world, as investors grapple with the reality of tariffs and fresh signs that consumers are pulling back on spending.After the S&P 500 suffered its worst day of the year on Monday, the sell-off continued into Asia trading on Tuesday.Asian markets opened mostly lower, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 index falling about 2 percent, weighed down by big declines in Japanese technology stocks. Stock markets in South Korea and Taiwan also fell around 2 percent in early trading.Equity markets in China were faring slightly better. Shares in Shanghai and Shenzhen ticked lower, down around 0.2 percent in morning trading. Hong Kong was down less than 1 percent.Investors have become increasingly cautious about the U.S. stock market in recent weeks as President Trump has flip-flopped on tariffs, causing confusion and uncertainty.Growing unease about the inflationary effects of the tariffs, coupled with a broadly darkening mood about the economy, provided the catalyst for a sell-off in a market that investors have long worried was overvalued.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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    The U.S. Is Trying to Deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Legal Resident. Here’s What to Know.

    Mr. Khalil, who helped lead protests at Columbia University against high civilian casualties in Gaza, was arrested by immigration officers and sent to a detention center in Louisiana.The Trump administration invoked an obscure statute over the weekend in moving to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the United States who recently graduated from Columbia University, where he helped lead campus protests against high civilian casualties in Gaza during Israel’s campaign against Hamas.Mr. Khalil was arrested by immigration officers on Saturday and then sent to a detention center in Louisiana. On Monday, a federal judge in New York, Jesse M. Furman, ordered the federal government not to deport Mr. Khalil while he reviewed a petition challenging the legality of the detention.Here’s what to know about the administration’s attempt to deport Mr. Khalil.Who is the Columbia graduate?Mr. Khalil, 30, earned a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December. He has Palestinian heritage and is married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant.At Columbia last spring, Mr. Khali assumed a major role in student-led protests on campus against Israel’s war efforts in Gaza. He described his position as a negotiator and spokesman for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestinian group.What’s the legal basis for his arrest?The Trump administration did not publicly lay out the legal authority for the arrest. But two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio relied on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that gives him sweeping power to expel foreigners.The provision says that any “alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”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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    Judge Orders U.S.A.I.D. and State Dept. to Pay Funds ‘Unlawfully’ Withheld

    A federal judge barred the Trump administration on Monday from “unlawfully impounding congressionally appropriated foreign aid funds” that the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development owed to grant recipients and contractors, requiring it to pay for work completed in the first several weeks of President Trump’s term.The ruling, handed down by Judge Amir H. Ali of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, was the latest step in a winding dispute over foreign aid payments since Mr. Trump has tried to vastly shrink the nation’s foreign assistance. While forcing the administration to pay for work completed before Feb. 13, Judge Ali said the limits of the case prevented him from ordering payments on future work or restoring canceled contracts.But he left no doubt that he believed that the administration had exceeded its authority in trying to block funding, a warning that could echo through a deluge of lawsuits over Mr. Trump’s efforts to unilaterally halt spending.“Here, the executive has unilaterally deemed that funds Congress appropriated for foreign aid will not be spent,” he wrote. “The executive not only claims his constitutional authority to determine how to spend appropriated funds, but usurps Congress’s exclusive authority to dictate whether the funds should be spent in the first place.”The order on Monday prohibited the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. from implementing much of a Jan. 24 memorandum outlining plans to reorient and shrink U.S. foreign aid. It further required them to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars still owed to a constellation of groups for work completed before Feb. 13, as Judge Ali had ordered last month.The order dealt with a broad freeze on foreign aid funding that Mr. Trump put into effect the day he took office. It stopped short of the much more significant step of invalidating the Trump administration’s decision to cancel thousands of contracts through what it described as an expedited line-by-line review, after the lawsuit was already underway. Judge Ali found that the court was restrained to addressing the specific harms laid out in the lawsuit, not “supervision of discrete or ongoing executive decisions.”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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    13 People Injured as School Bus Overturns on Garden State Parkway

    The bus overturned near Montvale, N.J., officials said, closing all lanes in the area. It had been traveling from Lakewood, N.J., to Rockland County, N.Y.A school bus with at least 30 passengers on board overturned on the Garden State Parkway near Montvale, N.J., on Monday evening, injuring 13 people, the authorities said.According to the New Jersey Department of Transportation, the bus overturned on the northbound lanes of the Garden State Parkway north of Exit 171 at around 7:40 p.m. Monday, temporarily closing all lanes near the area.The bus was traveling from Lakewood, N.J., to Rockland County, N.Y., according to officials. The cause of the crash, the ages of the passengers, and what group the bus might have been associated with were not yet known.Mayor Mike Ghassali of Montvale said in a post on social media that 13 people had been injured and taken to to local hospitals. No fatalities were reported, he said.“I’ve been briefed on a crash on the Garden State Parkway earlier tonight near the James Gandolfini Service Area involving an overturned school bus from Lakewood,” Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey said in a post on social media.The New Jersey State Police and the New Jersey Department of Transportation were on the scene, he said, and an investigation into the incident was underway.The Montvale Police Department directed questions to the New Jersey State Police, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Mark Bonamo More

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    NYT Crossword Answers for March 11, 2025

    Jared Cappel sticks the landing in his New York Times Crossword debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — Today’s crossword puzzle left me sore. As in it made me realize how sore my back was. After a week of desk work and slumped sitting, I was grateful for the reminder that I should really do something about the twinge in my shoulder. So I thank Jared Cappel, the constructor of today’s puzzle, for pointing me in the direction of some relief.This is Mr. Cappel’s first crossword for The New York Times, and it makes for a fabulous introduction to his sense of humor. I hope he, ahem, sticks around.Today’s ThemeWhether or not you’ve ever tried the [Traditional Chinese medicine component] at 27D, you can appreciate the ACUPUNCTURE-based wordplay in this puzzle. At 3-, 9- and 18-Down, italicized clues hint at expressions that double as things an acupuncturist may do during a session.To [Grasp a central idea] is to GET THE POINT (3D). To [Betray] is to STAB IN THE BACK (18D) (though if you’re feeling actual stabs in an acupuncture session, you might want to find a new practitioner). And if you [Make noticeable progress], then you MOVE THE NEEDLE (9D).I’ve tried acupuncture and enjoyed it, but it’s unsettling to think that, to the outside observer, I probably looked like a character from “Hellraiser” during my sessions.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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    Gabbard Begins Trip to Visit Japan, Thailand and India

    Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is heading to Asia on a trip that will include an appearance at a security conference in India next week.Ms. Gabbard announced in a social media post on Monday that she was traveling to Japan, Thailand and India and would visit France on the way back to the United States.It is Ms. Gabbard’s second international trip as a top Trump administration official. Immediately after she was confirmed a month ago, she traveled to Germany to attend the Munich Security Conference.On Wednesday, Ms. Gabbard arrived in Hawaii, which hosts a large National Security Agency office as well as the military’s Indo-Pacific Command headquarters, officials said. Ms. Gabbard, who represented the state for eight years in Congress, will meet with military and intelligence officers while in Hawaii, according to her social media post, in which she also said she would watch U.S. troops train.The Asia leg of Ms. Gabbard’s trip will culminate in an address on March 18 at the Rasina conference, a multinational gathering of security officials in New Delhi, to which she was invited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There, Ms. Gabbard will hold bilateral meetings with Indian officials and officials from other countries, a senior Trump administration official said.The Rasina conference is often attended by senior Russian security officials and experts. It is not clear, however, whether Ms. Gabbard will have bilateral meetings with Russian officials on the conference’s sidelines.The Trump administration is pushing for a cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia and has been pressuring the Kyiv government to make concessions to end the war.Trump administration officials’ comments at the Munich conference in February left many European diplomats reeling, particularly Vice President JD Vance’s rebuke of Europe for what he said was abridging conservatives’ free speech.But Ms. Gabbard’s remarks, which focused on counterterrorism cooperation between Europe and America, were well received by European diplomats eager for any sign that U.S. intelligence agencies intend to preserve their partnerships with longstanding allies.The senior administration official said Ms. Gabbard intended to strike similar themes in India and would address counterterrorism, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and intelligence sharing. More

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    How Covid Changed the Lives of These 29 Americans

    Five years ago, Covid took hold and the world transformed almost overnight. As routines and rituals evaporated, often replaced by grief, fear and isolation, many of us wondered: When will things go back to normal? Could they ever? Today, for many, the coronavirus pandemic seems far away and foggy, while for others it’s as visceral […] More