Aurelia Butler

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    Trump’s Encouragement of Stock Investors Draws Scrutiny

    Was the president manipulating the market with his comments, as his critics say, or reassuring Americans, as the White House maintains?President Trump began his Wednesday with some advice for those rattled by his steep tariffs.“BE COOL,” Mr. Trump told his followers on social media after the markets opened. Just a couple of minutes later he wrote, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”Hours after that, Mr. Trump sent the markets soaring when he paused the levies for 90 days. The S&P 500 climbed several percentage points in a matter of minutes and was on its way to its best day since the recovery of the 2008 financial crisis.Soon after Mr. Trump’s pause, Democrats and government ethics experts asked the perhaps obvious question: Did Mr. Trump give the green light to his followers to cash in on a forthcoming rise in stock prices?“How is this not market manipulation?” Representative Mike Levin, Democrat of California, said on social media, referring to action that is potentially illegal. “If you’re a Trump supporter and you did what he said and you bought, then you did great. On the other hand, if you’re a retiree or a senior or somebody in the middle class over the last few days that didn’t have the tolerance for risk and you decided to sell, you got screwed.”The news of Mr. Trump’s pause came as Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, was testifying on Capitol Hill. Representative Steven Horsford, Democrat of Nevada, pressed him on Mr. Trump’s aim.“It’s not market manipulation,” Mr. Greer said. “We’re trying to reset the global trading system.”“How have you achieved any of that?” Mr. Horsford asked. “So if it’s not market manipulation, what is it? Who’s benefiting? What billionaire just got richer?”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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    Stocks Jump in Asia After Trump’s Tariff Reprieve

    Markets in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan soar after the U.S. president pauses punishing tariffs. Gains in mainland China were modest as trade hostilities heat up between Washington and Beijing.Following President Trump’s decision to pause punishing tariffs on dozens of countries, markets in Asia reacted predictably: Stocks soared in the countries that were spared.In early trading on Thursday, benchmark indexes rose more than 9 percent in Taiwan, 8 percent in Japan and 5 percent in South Korea. All three Asian economies were among the U.S. trading partners given a 90-day reprieve from Mr. Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs.While the U.S. allies won’t immediately face the 24 percent to 32 percent tariffs the Trump Administration had previously threatened, they will still be subject to a lower rate of 10 percent. That comes on top of 25 percent tariffs that Mr. Trump has imposed on goods including cars — a particular sore point for big auto exporters Japan and South Korea.In the United States, the reversal by Mr. Trump on Wednesday sparked the biggest one-day rally of the S&P 500 since October 2008, when stocks soared as investors anticipated central bank rate cuts in the wake of the global financial crisis.Huge Gains and Losses in One WeekModest gains or losses are the most common outcomes on S&P 500 trading days. But since last Thursday the index has had two steep drops and one of its biggest gains since 2000. More

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    Inside Trump’s Reversal on Tariffs: From ‘Be Cool!’ to ‘Getting Yippy’

    Economic turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields, caused President Trump to reverse course on the steep levies.For the past week, President Trump has been urging calm in the face of the financial chaos that he created and resisting calls for him to rethink his approach.“I know what the hell I’m doing,” he told Republicans on Tuesday as the massive tariffs he had imposed sent global markets into a tailspin. “BE COOL!” he said in a social media post on Wednesday morning. “Everything is going to work out well.”At 9:37 a.m. Wednesday, the president was still bullish on his policy, posting on Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”But in the end, it was the markets that got him to reverse course.The economic turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields, caused Mr. Trump to blink on Wednesday afternoon and pause his “reciprocal” tariffs for most countries for the next 90 days, according to four people with direct knowledge of the president’s decision.Asked to explain the decision, Mr. Trump told reporters: “Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”Behind the scenes, senior members of Mr. Trump’s team had feared a financial panic that could spiral out of control and potentially devastate the economy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others on the president’s team, including Vice President JD Vance, had been pushing for a more structured approach to the trade conflict that would focus on isolating China as the worst actor while still sending a broader message that Mr. Trump was serious about cracking down on trade imbalances.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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    NYT Crossword Answers for April 10, 2025

    Adam Wagner tells us a small tale.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — I know. The entries seem to have nothing to do with their clues.Take heart: We will figure out this little puzzle by Adam Wagner together, and when we’re done please feel free to slap yourself on the forehead. Not too hard, just a small tap, enough to lightly acknowledge that the raison d’être for Mr. Wagner’s crossword was in front of our eyes all along.This is Mr. Wagner’s 23rd puzzle in The New York Times.Today’s ThemeWhen I am trying to figure out a theme that has me stumped, I employ my stare-at-the-grid-until-the-penny-drops method of solving. If staring woefully at the puzzle doesn’t work, I allow my eyes to travel back and forth between the clue and the entry. Sometimes sighing plaintively is employed.As the penny drops, the palm of my hand strikes my forehead and I bring the ping-ponging of my eyeballs to a rest, lest, as my mother always said, they get stuck like that.You may use this method of solving if you like. It might help you recognize the diminutives at the ends of the first words of the theme clues. Mr. Wagner was even kind enough to leave an extra hint at 8D: The [Diminutive, diminutively] is LIL, the contraction of the word “little.”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 Signs Orders Punishing Those Who Opposed His 2020 Election Lies

    President Trump on Wednesday signed executive orders punishing two officials from his first administration and an elite law firm, continuing a campaign of retribution that he has gleefully carried out since his inauguration.Two executive orders targeted Christopher Krebs, who as a senior cybersecurity official oversaw the securing of the 2020 presidential election, and Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Mr. Trump’s first term and anonymously wrote a high-profile opinion article for The New York Times in 2018. Among other measures, the orders directed Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to investigate the former officials and report their findings to the White House.A third order targeted the law firm Susman Godfrey with many of the same sanctions that Mr. Trump has applied to other law firms that had taken on cases or causes he did not like. In 2023, Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to resolve a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 election. Susman Godfrey represented Dominion, a manufacturer of voting machines that lawyers allied with Mr. Trump attacked with outlandish claims about widespread voting fraud.The executive orders reflected Mr. Trump’s desire for political payback. Mr. Trump has fixated on punishing — among others — elected Republicans and officials in his administration who have defied him or later opposed him.Mr. Trump has also sought to rewrite the history of his defeat in 2020, and has continued to repeat his lie that the election was stolen from him. Mr. Krebs, leading the agency tasked with protecting election machinery from foreign interference, shot down many of Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud, and Mr. Trump fired Mr. Krebs days after his loss. Mr. Trump has continued to harbor deep resentments against the agency.“This guy, Krebs, was saying ‘oh the election was great,’” Mr. Trump said Wednesday as he signed the order. He added, of Mr. Krebs,:“He’s the fraud. He’s a disgrace.”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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    Appeals Court Clears Path for Trump to Resume Firing Probationary Workers

    The Trump administration is once again free to fire probationary employees. For now.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in a 2-to-1 decision, sided with the government on Wednesday to block a lower-court ruling in Maryland that had led to the reinstatement of thousands of federal workers who had been fired in February.The purge of the employees had marked one of the first stages of President Trump’s plan to rapidly downsize the civil service and overhaul or eliminate entire offices and programs. Since then, the status of the workers has been tied up in legal battles over whether the firings had been carried out lawfully.The Wednesday appeals court decision came a day after the Supreme Court blocked a similar ruling in California reining in the government in a separate case. There is now no court order in place to stop the government from firing probationary employees.Both courts ruled on narrow issues of standing: whether the probationary firings harmed the plaintiffs so much that they had the right to sue in district court. In California, nonprofit organizations sued the government over the firings at six agencies because they said they benefited from the services the federal workers provided. In Maryland, 19 states and the District of Columbia sued 20 federal agencies, arguing that the government was obligated to give them notice when personnel actions could abruptly and significantly increase demand for unemployment benefits.It was not immediately clear what the latest decision meant for the thousands of fired probationary employees, nearly all of whom had been recently reinstated as a result of district court orders. The back-and-forth has left the employees in a state of limbo, wondering if they will be fired again after having just been rehired.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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    RFK Jr. Offers Qualified Support for Measles Vaccination

    In an interview with CBS, the health secretary also suggested he wasn’t familiar with massive cuts to state funding for public health.In a rare sit-down interview with CBS News, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, recommended the measles vaccine and said he was “not familiar” with sweeping cuts to state and local public health programs.The conversation was taped shortly after his visit to West Texas, where he attended the funeral of an 8-year-old girl who died after contracting measles. A raging outbreak there has sickened more than 500 people and killed two young children.In clips of the discussion released Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy offered one of his strongest endorsements yet of the measles vaccine. “People should get the measles vaccine, but the government should not be mandating those,” he said.A few moments later, however, he raised safety concerns about the shot, as he has previously: “We don’t know the risks of many of these products because they’re not safety tested,” he said.For months, Mr. Kennedy has faced intense criticism for his handling of the West Texas outbreak from medical experts who believe that his failure to offer a full-throated endorsement of immunization has hampered efforts to contain the virus.Moreover, he has promoted unproven treatments for measles, like cod liver oil. Doctors in Texas believe its use is tied to signs of liver toxicity in some children arriving in local hospitals.Throughout the outbreak, Mr. Kennedy has often paired support for vaccines with discussions of safety concerns about the shots, along with “miraculous” alternative treatments.Over the weekend, he posted on social media that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine was “the most effective way” to prevent the spread of measles — a statement met with relief from infectious disease experts and with fury from his vaccine-hesitant base.That night, he posted again, this time applauding “two extraordinary healers” who he claimed had effectively treated roughly 300 measles-stricken children with budesonide, a steroid, and clarithromycin, an antibiotic.Scientists say there are no cures for a measles infection, and that claiming otherwise undermines the importance of a vaccination.Later in the CBS interview, Mr. Kennedy was pressed on the administration’s recent move to halt more than $12 billion in federal grants to state programs that address infectious disease, mental health and childhood vaccinations, among other efforts.(A judge has temporarily blocked the cuts after a coalition of states sued the Trump administration.)Mr. Kennedy said he wasn’t familiar with the interruptions, then asserted that they were “mainly D.E.I. cuts,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion programs that have been targeted by the Trump administration.Dr. Jonathan LaPook, CBS’s medical correspondent, asked about specific research cuts at universities, including a $750,000 grant to researchers at the University of Michigan to study adolescent diabetes.“I didn’t know that, and that’s something that we’ll look at,” Mr. Kennedy said. “There’s a number of studies that were cut that came to our attention and that did not deserve to be cut, and we reinstated them.” More

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    House Votes to Curb National Injunctions, Targeting Judges Who Thwart Trump

    The House passed legislation on Wednesday that would bar federal district judges from issuing nationwide injunctions, part of an escalating Republican campaign to take aim at judges who have moved to halt some of President Trump’s executive orders.The bill, approved mostly along party lines on a vote of 219 to 213, would largely limit district court judges to issuing narrow orders that pertain to parties involved in a specific lawsuit, rather than broader ones that can block a policy or action from being enforced throughout the country. It would make an exception in cases that were brought by multiple states, which would need to be heard by a three-judge panel.It faces a slim chance of becoming law because of the obstacles it faces in the Senate, where seven Democrats would have to join Republicans to allow it to advance. So far, similar bills have not been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee.House Republicans have framed the legislation, named the No Rogue Rulings Act, as a necessary constitutional check on what they claim is an abuse of power by judges attempting to wield political influence from the bench.Citing an increase in nationwide injunctions since Mr. Trump took office, Republican lawmakers have argued that an unelected federal judge in one district should not be able to block the executive branch from implementing nationwide policies, a duty they say should be left to appeals courts or the Supreme Court.The Supreme Court “must reach a majority in order to make something the law of the land, and yet a single district judge believes that they can make the law of the land,” Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who introduced the bill, said on the House floor on Wednesday.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