Aurelia Butler

Almost all the employees of the Wilson Center, a prominent nonpartisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, were placed on leave on Thursday and blocked from their work email accounts as Elon Musk’s task force quickly shut down most of the center.About 130 employees received orders telling them not to return to the office after the end of the day, according to an email reviewed by The New York Times and people with direct knowledge of the actions.The Wilson Center employees are to be paid while on leave but will be fired soon, in line with what has happened at other institutions that Mr. Musk’s workers have dismantled in recent weeks.Only five employees will remain — a president, two federal employees and two researchers on fellowships. Those positions are mandated in the center’s congressional charter. The cuts align with an executive order President Trump signed in March.Private donations to the center will be returned to the donors, according to a person familiar with the center who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. It was not clear what would be done with the center’s endowment.On Thursday afternoon, dozens of employees carried boxes and bags filled with papers, plants and posters out of the center’s offices in the Ronald Reagan Building, which houses several government agency offices.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

After hail, heavy rains and more than 30 tornadoes drenched the region, officials warned that a “generational flooding” disaster was possible.At least seven people have been killed in Tennessee, Missouri and Indiana, officials said on Thursday, after more than 30 tornadoes, combined with hail and heavy rains, swept through the South and Midwest, flooding streets, snapping power lines and flattening homes and businesses.The flooding was expected to worsen as the storm stalls over the region, putting millions under severe weather advisories over the next few days. Officials warned that a “generational flooding” disaster was possible as more than a foot of rain could fall, pushing swollen rivers and creeks over their banks.Cities and counties across the Midwest and South were ramping up efforts to prepare for the severe flooding that was predicted for the days ahead. Officials said that schools in some districts in Tennessee and Kentucky would be closed on Friday.The Army Corps of Engineers said it had filled about 1,500 sandbags to reinforce a levee near Poplar Bluff, Mo., where the Black River was expected to surge to near-record flood levels over the weekend. An urban search-and-rescue team was also deploying to the area.Gov. Mike Braun of Indiana said he was activating the National Guard to help with the storm response.As much as 10 to 15 inches of rain could fall through the weekend, the National Weather Service said. The most intense rain was expected in Arkansas and Tennessee, where floodwaters were rising in parts of Nashville and rescues were underway.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

Ford Motor said on Thursday that it was lowering prices on most of its vehicles to the same levels it charges employees in a bid to boost sales as President Trump’s tariffs on imported cars took effect.The tariffs began on Thursday on vehicles imported from Mexico, Canada, Japan, Germany and other countries. The duties — 25 percent of the value of the vehicle in most cases — are expected to increase prices of new cars and trucks and dampen demand.About half the vehicles sold in the United States each year are produced in other countries. Mexico is the top source of those cars and Canada is among the largest. For three decades, the United States, Canada and Mexico have had a free-trade zone, and automakers have moved parts and vehicles freely among the three countries.Ford’s new program, which the company is calling “From America, for America,” could help reduce a large inventory of unsold cars. In February, Ford had more cars in inventory as measured by how many days it would take to sell them all than all but three other brands — Jaguar, Mimi and Dodge — according to Cox Automotive, a research firm.Ford’s new discounts apply to all new 2024 and 2025 vehicles, except for specialty versions of the Bronco sport-utility vehicle; the Mustang sports car; Super Duty versions of F-Series pickups; and a few other models.“Consumers will pay what we pay,” Rob Kaffl, Ford’s director of U.S. sales and dealer relations, said in a statement.The automaker also said it was extending another incentive program in which buyers of new electric models get a home charger for free, along with the cost of installation. That offer is now valid until June 30.Ford had more than 568,000 vehicles in inventory at the end of March, up about 8 percent from a year ago. More

Apple led a sell-off of tech stocks on Thursday, falling about 9 percent. Its drop was one of its steepest intraday declines since early 2019, when the company plunged 10 percent after it warned that iPhone sales in China would fall short of its expectations at the time.Wall Street analysts who follow the company have been looking for signs that Apple will be granted a tariff exemption by the White House, as it did when the Trump administration began its previous round of tariffs in 2018. But after President Trump’s news conference yesterday, there was no indication that Apple would receive any relief.As a result, many analysts were scrambling to update their forecasts on Apple’s profits. The company counts on the sale of devices for three-quarters of its nearly $400 billion in annual revenue, and it makes almost all of its iPhones, iPads and Macs overseas.The investment bank TD Cowen estimates that every 10 percent of tariffs on a product imported from China, India or Vietnam — where Apple does most of its manufacturing — would reduce the company’s profit by more than 3.5 percent. The Wall Street advisory said Apple could offset that profit decline with a 6 percent price increase for every 10 percent of tariff. Given that China is being hit with 54 percent tariffs and that it makes 90 percent of the world’s iPhones, the price of most $1,000 iPhones would jump to about $1,300. More

President Trump says the rest of the world is cheating the United States. He says he’s charging tariffs on imports from other countries and the biggest tariffs will be on the worst cheaters.Which country tops Trump’s cheating chart? Well, it turns out to be the tiny, landlocked southern African kingdom of Lesotho.In 2023, Lesotho exported about $228 million worth of goods and services to the United States and imported just $7.33 million worth from the United States. To rectify this imbalance, which the Trump administration regards as an intolerable abuse of the American people, the president is imposing a 50 percent tax on future imports from Lesotho — the highest rate on any country.It is a decision that illustrates the stupidity and cruelty of Trump’s new trade policy even by comparison with its stated purpose.Lesotho is one of the poorest countries on Earth. Its 2.3 million citizens spend an average of only $3 on American goods and services each year not because they’re trying to cheat the United States but because they have very little money.And what of the stuff that Americans buy from Lesotho? Diamonds top the list. We could improve our trade balance with Lesotho by purchasing fewer diamonds, but we can’t mine our own. There are no commercial diamond mines in this country.Lesotho is an extreme example, of course. But it is a valuable one all the same. It underscores that the president is lying to the American people.Trump said repeatedly on Wednesday that the tariffs are “reciprocal,” but that’s not true. The tariff rates announced by the Trump administration are not related to the tariff rates charged by other countries. They were calculated using a childish formula based on trade imbalances.The White House later said imbalances are a measure of all the ways that other countries cheat the United States. But as Lesotho illustrates, imbalances are a bad measuring stick. Other countries engage in unfair trade practices. So do we. Instead of doing the work to identify and target those problems, the Trump administration has decided to carpet-bomb the global economy.The president — with apologies to F. Scott Fitzgerald — is a careless person, smashing up things and creatures and leaving others, eventually, to clean up the mess that he has made. More

<!–> [–><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Many of the worst-hit countries are close American allies and partners. In Southeast Asia, countries like Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia have for years worked to turn themselves into alternatives to China for factories making the bags, electronics, shoes and auto parts that eventually end up in the United States. Now, […] More

She used her wealth strategically to expand opportunities for women, underwriting the development of the pill and supporting the suffrage movement.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.Katharine Dexter McCormick, who was born to a life of wealth, which she compounded through marriage, could have sat back and simply enjoyed the many advantages that flowed her way. Instead, she put her considerable fortune — matched by her considerable willfulness — into making life better for women.An activist, philanthropist and benefactor, McCormick used her wealth strategically, most notably to underwrite the basic research that led to the development of the birth control pill in the late 1950s.Before then, contraception in the United States was extremely limited, with bans on diaphragms and condoms. The advent of the pill made it easier for women to plan when and whether to have children, and it fueled the explosive sexual revolution of the 1960s. Today, the pill, despite some side effects, is the most widely used form of reversible contraception in the United States.McCormick’s interest in birth control began in the 1910s, when she learned of Margaret Sanger, the feminist leader who had been jailed for opening the nation’s first birth control clinic. She shared Sanger’s fervent belief that women should be able to chart their own biological destinies.The two met in 1917 and soon hatched an elaborate scheme to smuggle diaphragms into the United States.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

President Trump, as he announced sweeping tariffs, batted away “very tired predictions” from critics of his economic agenda by citing a large decline in the price of eggs.“The price of eggs dropped now 59 percent, and they’re going down more and the availability is fantastic,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday.The wholesale price of eggs has indeed fallen by more than half since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, but that drastic decline is not yet reflected in the retail price, which consumers pay at the grocery store.According to the Agriculture Department’s weekly data release, the national wholesale average has fallen from $6.55 a dozen on Jan. 24 to $3 on March 28, a 54 percent decline. But the agency, in its latest release, noted that it could take up to three weeks for retail prices to catch up to wholesale prices and that “consumers are only now starting to see shelf prices slowly decline.”The average price of a dozen eggs in grocery stores was $5.90 in February, the month with the latest available data, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was almost a dollar more than the average in January.The wholesale prices of eggs remains much higher now than at this point at the end of March 2024, when the national average was $1.70 a dozen.The Agriculture Department predicted in its latest food price outlook that egg prices will increase by 57.6 percent in 2025 compared with the previous year. More