On This Week’s Episode:The present feels like it will go down in American history. “This American Life” takes a tour of the museum of now and finds some unusual artifacts.Matt ChaseNew York Times Audio is home to the “This American Life” archive. Download the app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More
Quakers in Britain said the raid, in which six youth activists unaffiliated with the religious group were arrested, “clearly shows what happens when a society criminalizes protest.”Quakers in Britain are reeling from what they say is an unheard-of violation of one of their places of worship by police officers who forced their way into a meeting house in London and arrested activists gathered there to plan Gaza war protests.“No one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory,” Paul Parker, the recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said in a statement issued after the raid.But on Thursday evening, the pacifist group said, more than 20 uniformed police officers, some armed with tasers, forced their way into the meeting house in Westminster, breaking open the front door “without warning or ringing the bell.”The officers searched the building and arrested six women at a gathering of Youth Demand, an unaffiliated activist group that was renting a room to meet in, the Quakers in Britain said.The Metropolitan Police said the arrests followed Youth Demand’s plans to “shut down” London with protests next month, according to British media. The police said that while they recognized the right to protest, “we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality,” British media reported.The arrests raised alarms in England, and came amid a crackdown on Gaza War protesters in the United States, especially on college campuses, where some students have denounced Israel’s prosecution of the war against Hamas.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
Ryan Mathiason makes his New York Times Crossword debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — This is Ryan Mathiason’s first puzzle for The New York Times and, in keeping with today’s theme, I’m already starting to like what I see. Today’s crossword has some wonderfully original fill, but it all jells. Or gels, you might say. In any case, I hope we’ll see more of Mr. Mathiason soon. Shall we comb-over the puzzle together?Today’s ThemeAs soon as I figured out what was going on, I thought to myself, [“I’m starting to like this”… or a hint to the starts of 16-, 24-, 47- and 58-Across, in order] — in other words, “IT’S GROWING ON ME!”Each of today’s themed entries begins with a kind of hairstyle (or lack thereof, in the case of 16A), arranged so as to be “growing” as they move down the grid, from BALD to BUZZ to FADE to AFRO. And while I can never tell whether certain entries are intentional winks on top of the theme, I appreciated the mention of HATS at 1-Across, because that’s what one would use to cover a bad haircut.Tricky Clues13A/14A/15A. I’m bundling the entire second row of this puzzle into one tricky clue, because all three of its entries are proper names, which are generally pure trivia (i.e., you know it or you don’t). It’s lucky that none of these entries cross with other proper names — I’m not counting CHEEZ-Its (8D), mind you — because otherwise we might be looking at a Natick. Here are the row’s answers, from left to right: OPIE (13A), LEAH (14A) and AMON (15A).52A. [U-turn from WSW] gives us a lot of information in relatively few letters. WSW is short for a compass direction, west by southwest. To make a “U-turn” from that direction would mean moving toward its inverse: ENE, or east by northeast.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
Two longtime career prosecutors have been suddenly fired by the White House, in what current and former Justice Department officials called an unusual and alarming exercise of presidential power.In recent days, the prosecutors, in Los Angeles and Memphis, were dismissed abruptly, notified by a terse one-sentence email stating no reason for the move other than that it was on behalf of the president himself.The ousters reflected a more aggressive effort by the White House to reach deep inside U.S. attorney offices across the country in a stark departure from decades of practice. While it is commonplace and accepted for senior political appointees at the Justice Department to change from administration to administration, no department veteran could recall any similar removal of assistant U.S. attorneys.A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.Asked about the ousters and whether others had been let go in a similar fashion, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said, “The White House, in coordination with the Department of Justice, has dismissed more than 50 U.S. attorneys and deputies in the past few weeks.”She added, “The American people deserve a judicial branch full of honest arbiters of the law who want to protect democracy, not subvert it,” offering no explanation for how either of the two fired prosecutors might have done that. Prosecutors are part of the executive, not judicial, branch of government.During his campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to drastically reshape the ranks of career Justice Department officials, aggrieved by the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia in his first term and the four criminal indictments between his presidencies.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
Both old school and Old World and married to a celebrated fashion designer, he helped define Manhattan’s high life for many years.Reinaldo Herrera, a dapper Venezuelan aristocrat, married to the fashion designer Carolina Herrera, whose social connections made him an indispensable story wrangler and all-around fixer for Vanity Fair magazine, where he served as a contributing editor for more than three decades, died on March 18 in Manhattan. He was 91.His daughter Patricia Lansing confirmed the death.Mr. Herrera was born into South American nobility and grew up between Caracas, Paris and New York. After attending Harvard and Georgetown Universities and working as a television presenter for a morning show in Venezuela, he joined Europe’s emerging jet set, mingling with Rothchilds and Agnellis, Italian nobles and British royals.Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II’s sister, was a pal. He dated Ava Gardner and Tina Onassis, the first wife of the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle, and in 1968 he married his younger sister’s best friend, Maria Carolina Josefina Pacanins.He was old school and Old World. He wore bespoke suits with immaculate pocket squares; his jeans were always crisply pressed. His manners were impeccable. He spoke classical French without an accent. Graydon Carter, a former editor of Vanity Fair, described his voice as a combination of Charles Boyer, the suave French actor, and Count von Count, the numbers-obsessed Muppet.Mr. Herrera with his wife, the fashion designer Carolina Herrera, in 1983.Cathy Blaivas/WWD — Penske Media, via Getty ImagesBy the late 1970s, the Herreras were part of the frothy mix that defined Manhattan society at the time — the socialites, financiers, walkers and rock stars, along with a smattering of politicians, authors and artists, who dined on and off Park Avenue and danced at Studio 54. (Steve Rubell, the club’s rambunctious co-owner, used to slip quaaludes into Mr. Herrera’s jacket pockets; Mr. Herrera, who loved a party but not those disco enhancements, would throw them out when he got home.) Robert Mapplethorpe photographed the couple for Interview magazine, Andy Warhol’s monthly chronicle of that world.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
Hamas said it had accepted a proposal for a new cease-fire, which would see some hostages released from captivity in Gaza. But details were elusive.Israel and Hamas both signaled over the weekend that efforts for a renewed cease-fire in Gaza were underway, less than two weeks after the breakdown of a temporary truce and the resumption of Israel’s air and ground campaign against the militant group in the enclave.Hamas said on Saturday that it had accepted a proposal for a new cease-fire, which would see some hostages released from captivity in Gaza. Israel said it, too, had received a proposal via third-party mediators and had responded with a counterproposal in coordination with the United States.“The military pressure is working,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Sunday in remarks at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting, adding that Israel was “suddenly seeing cracks” in Hamas’s position.Neither side published details of the proposal or the counterproposal, but an official briefed on the talks suggested that they broadly echoed previous proposals floated in recent weeks. While there was no indication that a breakthrough was imminent, the public statements suggested that after weeks of fruitless negotiations, contacts over a deal were proceeding even as the war continued.On Sunday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said it had recovered the bodies of eight emergency medical technicians, five Civil Defense personnel and a United Nations employee in Rafah in southern Gaza. The medical organization said it had lost contact with nine of its crew members more than a week ago after they were directly fired upon by Israeli forces. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.What did Hamas say?Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official and negotiator, said in a speech on Saturday that his group had received a proposal two days earlier from Egyptian and Qatari mediators for a renewed cease-fire, adding that Hamas had “responded positively and approved it.”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
A verdict Monday in an embezzlement trial is seen as a test of the country’s democracy — and the rule of law.Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, has tried and failed three times to become president. Now, even as her popularity rises, she may be barred from taking part in an election to lead France if she is found guilty of embezzlement on Monday.Such a verdict, far from certain, has been equated by Ms. Le Pen with a “political death” sentence and a “very violent attack on the will of the people.” It would ignite a major political storm at a time when the French Fifth Republic has appeared increasingly dysfunctional.On the one hand stands the principle, as Nicolas Barret, one of the prosecutors, put it in closing arguments last year, that “We are not here in a political arena but a legal one, and the law applies to all.”On the other hand lies the fear, expressed by some leading politicians, that a ban would undermine French democracy by feeding a suspicion that it is skewed against the growing forces of the hard right.“Madame Le Pen must be fought at the ballot box, not elsewhere,” Gérald Darmanin, a former center-right interior minister, wrote on X in November. He is now the justice minister.Ms. Le Pen. 56, has in recent years steered her anti-immigrant party from its antisemitic roots toward the political mainstream. The party, whose name she changed from the National Front to the National Rally, is now the largest single party in the National Assembly with 123 seats.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
More from our inbox:The Cruelties of Cash BailThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “It’s About Ideology, Not Oligarchy,” by Ross Douthat (column, March 23):Ross Douthat asks the right questions in this column: Why have Elon Musk and the other Silicon Valley hotshots swung hard behind President Trump? Why are they pouring money and energy into the MAGA movement? And why is Mr. Trump giving them free rein? But Mr. Douthat provides the wrong answer. It is not credible to think, as he suggests, that Mr. Musk has suddenly committed his life to lowering the deficit or shrinking the government.We know quite well what Mr. Musk and his tech-bro pals want: to translate their tremendous wealth into power, and use that power to remake the United States into a vehicle for the endless growth of technology and, not incidentally, of their own wealth and glory. There is ideology here, an Ayn Randian glorification of the noble creators. It is an ideology that amounts to oligarchy.Mr. Trump is seen as the vehicle for this transformation. His interests and those of the tech elite overlap, for now. Both want to fatally weaken the government and leave it open to a takeover. Mr. Trump sees himself as the new owner, while Mr. Musk and others want it run by the enlightened few. They will clash, but whoever wins, the American people will be the losers.Adam WassermanSanta Fe, N.M.To the Editor:Ross Douthat should take his cue on oligarchy from countries where it thrives. The central characteristic of these governments is rule of (a few) men rather than rule of law. The concentration of political and economic power is typically maintained not by a coherent ideology or by policies that explicitly favor the superrich, but by identity politics that divide people into “us” and “them.”In parts of Eastern Europe, oligarchs rely on a mixture of jingoism and ethnic nationalism fueled by external grievances and anti-immigrant and anti-L.G.B.T.Q. sentiment. These narratives justify the power of the oligarchs and maintain the system.Across the board, the rule of law unravels because it constrains the power of the oligarchs. Is America headed in that direction?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
