Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Boop! The Musical’ Review: Betty Gets a Broadway Brand Extension

    The It girl with the spit curl looks great for 100, but her Broadway musical, which feels like one big merch grab, is boop-boop-a-don’t.Some shows are “what?” shows, leaving you baffled. Perhaps they involve roller-skating trains or shrouds of Turin.Others are “how?” shows, as in: Dear God, how did that happen?But the most disappointing subgenre of musical, at least in terms of opportunity cost, is the “why?” show: a well-crafted, charmingly performed, highly professional production that nobody asked for. Its intentions are foggy and sometimes suspicious.“Boop! The Musical” — now playing at the Broadhurst Theater, in a production directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell — is a “why?” show par excellence.And excellence it has. As Betty, the flapper of early talkie cartoons, Jasmine Amy Rogers is immensely likable. She sings fabulously, sports a credible perma-smile, nails all the Boop mannerisms and has a fetching way with a tossed-off line. I can’t imagine anyone making more of the exhausting opportunity, let alone in a Broadway debut.She is ably supported by other young talent in featured roles, luxury-cast veterans doing their damnedest and a hard-working ensemble selling Mitchell’s insistent, imaginative, precision-drilled dances. When his pinwheel kick-lines hop in unison, not one foot among 26 is left on the floor.Or make that 27, because Pudgy, Betty’s pug, a marionette with a lolling pink tongue operated by the puppeteer Phillip Huber, sometimes shakes a leg too.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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    Congestion Pricing Will Live On for Several Months After Court Agreement

    State and federal officials agreed to a timeline in their court dispute over the tolling program that is likely to leave it in place until the fall. Other threats to the program still loom.The federal government and New York transit officials have agreed to allow congestion pricing, the tolling program opposed by President Trump, to continue until at least midsummer, and most likely into the fall, according to a new court filing.But it remains unclear whether the federal Department of Transportation, which has raised the specter of defunding mass transit projects in the state, could exert pressure outside the court system to try to force the program to end sooner. Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, has said he wants the toll to end by April 20.The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the program, declined to comment on the letter that detailed the agreement. The document was filed on Friday in federal court in Manhattan as part of a lawsuit by the M.T.A. against the Department of Transportation over the government’s efforts to kill the toll. The letter said that the authority and federal officials would abide by a timeline that would not resolve the dispute until at least late July. It also noted that the federal government does not currently plan to seek an injunction, which could have potentially halted the program in the meantime.The Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The agreement signals another temporary reprieve for the M.T.A. and Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has vowed to keep the tolling cameras on. Congestion pricing, which charges most drivers $9 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street during peak traffic times, began in January, with the goals of reducing traffic and raising $15 billion for critical mass-transit upgrades in the region.Sam Spokony, a spokesman for the governor, declined to comment on the court document, but reiterated Ms. Hochul’s support for the program. “Since congestion pricing took effect three months ago, traffic is down and business is up — and that’s the kind of progress we’re going to keep delivering for New Yorkers,” he said.For months, President Trump has promised to kill congestion pricing, claiming, without offering evidence, that the toll is harmful to the city’s economy.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 Did Wall Street Get Trump So Wrong?

    Donald Trump’s 2024 election sent many finance types into spasms of anticipatory ecstasy as they imagined freedom from regulations, taxes and unfamiliar pronouns. “Bankers and financiers say Trump’s victory has emboldened those who chafed at ‘woke doctrine’ and felt they had to self-censor or change their language to avoid offending younger colleagues, women, minorities or disabled people,” The Financial Times reported a few days before Trump’s inauguration. It quoted one leading banker crowing — anonymously — about finally being able to use slurs like “retard” again. The vibes had shifted; the animal spirits were loose.“We’re stepping into the most pro-growth, pro-business, pro-American administration I’ve perhaps seen in my adult lifetime,” gushed the hedge fund manager Bill Ackman in December.One Wall Street veteran, however, understood the risk an unleashed Trump posed to the economy. After Trump’s victory in November, Peter Berezin, chief global strategist at BCA Research, which provides macroeconomic research to major financial institutions, estimated that the chance of a recession had climbed to 75 percent. “The prospect of an escalation of the trade war is likely to depress corporate investment while lowering real household disposable income,” said a BCA report.The surprising thing isn’t that Berezin saw the Trump tariff crisis coming, but that so many of his peers didn’t. You don’t have to be a sophisticated financial professional, after all, to understand that Trump believes, firmly and ardently, in taxing imports, and he thinks any country that sells more goods to America than it buys must be ripping us off. All you had to do was read the news or listen to Trump’s own words. Yet Berezin was an outlier; most of the people who make a living off their financial acumen had less understanding of Trump’s priorities than a casual viewer of MSNBC.On Monday, as stocks whipsawed on shifting news and rumors about the tariffs, I spoke to Berezin, who is based in Montreal, about how Wall Street had gotten Trump so wrong. He told me that many investors who pride themselves on their savvy are in fact just creatures of the herd. “All these cognitive biases that amateur retail investors are subject to, the Wall Street pros, are, if anything, even more subject to them because they’ve got career risk associated with bucking the trend,” he said.People in finance, said Berezin, are more likely to be punished for being too cautious and pessimistic than for being too hopeful and aggressive. Last year, for instance, a famed strategist named Marko Kolanovic left JPMorgan Chase abruptly when his gloomy predictions about 2023 and 2024 turned out to be wrong, or least premature. Mike Wilson, also known for his bearishness, stepped down from his post as chair of Morgan Stanley’s Global Investment Committee, though he stayed with the company. “You don’t get fired for being bullish, but you do get fired for being bearish on Wall Street,” said Berezin.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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    El discurso de Trump sobre un tercer mandato desafía la Constitución y la democracia

    La 22.ª Enmienda es clara: el presidente de EE. UU. tiene que renunciar a su cargo tras su segundo mandato. Pero la negativa de Trump a aceptarlo sugiere hasta dónde está dispuesto a llegar para mantenerse en el poder.Después de que el presidente Donald Trump dijera el año pasado que quería ser dictador por un día, insistió en que solo estaba bromeando. Ahora dice que podría intentar aferrarse al poder incluso cuando la Constitución estipula que debe renunciar a él, y esta vez, insiste en que no está bromeando.Puede que sí y puede que no. A Trump le gusta alborotar el avispero y sacar de quicio a los críticos. Hablar de un tercer mandato inconstitucional distrae de otras noticias y retrasa el momento en que se le considere como un presidente saliente. Sin duda, algunos en su propio bando lo consideran una broma, mientras los líderes republicanos se ríen de ello y los ayudantes de la Casa Blanca se burlan de los periodistas por tomárselo demasiado en serio.Pero el hecho de que Trump haya introducido la idea en la conversación nacional ilustra la incertidumbre sobre el futuro del sistema constitucional estadounidense, casi 250 años después de que el país obtuviera la independencia. Más que en ningún otro momento en generaciones, se cuestiona el compromiso del presidente con los límites al poder y el Estado de derecho, y sus críticos temen que el país se encamine por una senda oscura.Después de todo, Trump ya intentó una vez aferrarse al poder desafiando la Constitución, cuando trató de anular las elecciones de 2020 a pesar de haber perdido. Más tarde pidió la “rescisión” de la Constitución para volver a la Casa Blanca sin una nueva elección. Y en las 11 semanas transcurridas desde que reasumió el cargo, ha presionado los límites del poder ejecutivo más que ninguno de sus predecesores modernos.“En mi opinión, esto es la culminación de lo que ya ha empezado, que es un esfuerzo metódico por desestabilizar y socavar nuestra democracia para poder asumir un poder mucho mayor”, dijo en una entrevista el representante Daniel Goldman, demócrata por Nueva York y consejero principal durante el primer juicio político a Trump.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 Nutritionist Marion Nestle Meets Her Moment, At 88

    On a dreary February afternoon in Westchester County, N.Y., the cooks, farmers, servers and other staff of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture convened over a roast beef dinner to hear Marion Nestle hold forth on the state of food politics.Dr. Nestle, one of the country’s foremost experts on nutrition policy, was still trying to get her head around the political realignments of the prior months. After his win in November, Donald J. Trump selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run his federal health department. The partnership produced a new take on an old slogan, “Make America Healthy Again.” It also led the McDonald’s-loving Mr. Trump to publicly criticize the “industrial food complex.”The phrasing stood out to Dr. Nestle, a molecular biologist turned nutritionist who has spent decades pushing for stricter regulation of food additives and removing conflicts of interest from government health policy.“He sounds just like me when he talks!” Dr. Nestle, who describes herself as “firmly left-wing,” told the crowd, eliciting laughter. “How is that possible?”Dr. Nestle (pronounced NESS-ul) is not a name on the level of the chef Alice Waters or the food writer Michael Pollan. But among food activists and academics, she is considered one of the most influential framers of the modern food movement. She was among the first, in 2002, to lay the blame for America’s obesity epidemic at the feet of the food industry when she released “Food Politics,” a book of case studies illustrating how the industry manipulates government policy and the scientific establishment to its own ends.Dr. Nestle was 65 when the book came out, and she could have stopped then. Instead, she has been on a run ever since, publishing a dozen more books, globe-trotting to deliver speeches and serving as a go-to source for journalists. But only now, at 88, does she seem to be reaching her peak. For years, Dr. Nestle’s ideas placed her in food policy’s progressive camp. But today, fears about food additives and environmental toxins are rampant, and some of her longest held and most passionate beliefs — about topics like regenerative agriculture, school lunches and additives — are marching toward the bipartisan center.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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    A $4 Billion Sex Abuse Settlement in L.A., After Childhoods of ‘Pure Hell’

    MaryAlice Ashbrook remembers the rain on the night the Los Angeles police retrieved her, the 8-year-old child of a pill-addicted mother, and took her to the MacLaren Children’s Center, the county-run foster home where she was preyed upon. Shirley Bodkin remembers the smell of the staff member there who would put her on his lap and make her hold a Raggedy Ann doll while he hurt her. J.C. Wright remembers the social workers who accused him, at age 7, of “fabricating” when he tried telling them what a doctor there had done to him. Those memories are decades old. Ms. Ashbrook is 65 now, a retired bookkeeper in Yuma, Ariz. Ms. Bodkin is 58, the mother of two grown sons in the Southern California beach town of Dana Point. Mr. Wright is 42, a truck driver and father of four in suburban Los Angeles.Whole chapters of their lives have gone by — marriages, children, careers — yet the memories have never ceased to torment them. Ms. Ashbrook tried electroshock therapy. Ms. Bodkin attempted suicide. Mr. Wright lived on the streets for years, ending up in prison. There was no escaping the nightmares, they said in interviews on Sunday. So they turned to the courts for some measure of relief.Last week, it arrived, for them and nearly 7,000 other plaintiffs who say they were sexually abused as children in Los Angeles County’s juvenile detention and foster care systems, in cases dating to the late 1950s. In a settlement that lawyers say is the largest of its kind in the nation, the county publicly apologized and agreed to pay a record $4 billion, dwarfing previous settlements in child sex abuse cases brought against the Boy Scouts of America and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The wave of claims — so immense that officials had warned before the deal that Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, could be bankrupted by it — came after California gave childhood victims a new window to sue, even though the statute of limitations had expired. The county’s Board of Supervisors is expected to formally approve the payout on April 29.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 Earthquake Relief Is Slow to Reach Myanmar

    Critics say the country’s often-incompetent military government has delayed and restricted the arrival and distribution of crucial aid.Seven days after an earthquake devastated Turkey in 2023, French volunteers used a suitcase-size radar to locate a survivor under the rubble. It was one of many lives the device helped save in the aftermath of the disaster.The group also rushed volunteers to Myanmar after a powerful earthquake last month leveled buildings, bridge and centuries-old temples. But the volunteers were stuck at immigration control at the airport in Yangon for more than a day. They finally entered the country last Wednesday, only to have the authorities declare search and rescue operations ending the next day. The volunteers returned home without finding a single survivor.Myanmar’s military government surprised many observers when it called for international assistance in response to the March 28 earthquake. It also declared a cease-fire against rebels in a civil war that has consumed the nation.But less than two weeks after the calamity hit, aid groups and volunteers said, international relief is not reaching Myanmar’s beleaguered public as fast as it could. They blame the junta for delays and restrictions on distributing aid. Others cite a climate of fear — the military has resumed airstrikes on rebel areas despite the cease-fire and on at least one occasion fired on aid workers.“Nothing was reasonable on the ground,” said Sezer Ozgan, a volunteer with the French nonprofit L’Espoir du peuple A.R.S.I.Already ravaged by war, Myanmar continues to reel from the earthquake, which people have been calling “earth’s anger.” The official death toll has surpassed 3,500 and many more have been injured. But the full extent of the devastation remains hard to assess because of damaged roads and toppled phone towers.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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    Test Yourself on the History of How Books Were Made

    Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about literary culture. This week’s installment tests your knowledge of the global evolution of books themselves. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to further reading on the topic. More