Aurelia Butler

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    Elon Musk and the Tech Billionaires Steering Trump’s Transition Team

    The involvement of wealthy investors has made this presidential transition one of the most potentially conflict-ridden in modern history.The week after the November election, President-elect Donald J. Trump gathered his top advisers in the tearoom at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, to plan the transition to his second-term government.Mr. Trump had brought two of his most valued houseguests to the meeting: the billionaire Tesla boss Elon Musk and the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison. The president-elect looked around the conference table and issued a joking-not-joking challenge.“I brought the two richest people in the world today,” Mr. Trump told his advisers, according to a person who was in the room. “What did you bring?”Mr. Trump has delighted in a critical addition to his transition team: the Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires who have been all over the transition, shaping hiring decisions and even conducting interviews for senior-level jobs. Many of those who are not formally involved, like Mr. Ellison, have been happy to sit in on the meetings.Their involvement, to a degree far deeper than previously reported, has made this one of the most potentially conflict-ridden presidential transitions in modern history. It also carries what could be vast implications for the Trump administration’s policies on issues including taxes and the regulation of artificial intelligence, not to mention clashing mightily with the notion that Mr. Trump’s brand of populism is all about helping the working man.The presence of the Silicon Valley crew during critical moments also reflects something larger. Silicon Valley was once seen as a Democratic stronghold, but the new generation of tech leaders — epitomized by Mr. Musk — often has a right-wing ideology and a sense that they have an opportunity now to shift the balance of power in favor of less-fettered entrepreneurship.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 Kennedy Center’s Chairman Won’t Depart After All

    As the nation’s capital prepares for a second Trump administration, the performing arts center announced that its chairman would not step down in January as planned.The White House was not the only Washington institution planning to welcome new leadership in January. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts had announced that its longtime board chairman, David M. Rubenstein, would step down in January and had appointed a search committee to find a successor.But last month, shortly after the presidential election, the Kennedy Center announced that Mr. Rubenstein, a private equity titan who has led its board of 14 years, would stay on in the position until September 2026.The decision ensures continuity at a moment when the Kennedy Center, like much of Washington, is preparing for a second Trump administration. (On Sunday, President Biden is expected to attend the Kennedy Center Honors as it celebrates Francis Ford Coppola, the Grateful Dead and Bonnie Raitt; President-elect Donald J. Trump did not attend the ceremonies during his first term.) But it also raises questions about why the center failed to find a new chair.Deborah F. Rutter, the center’s president, said that on Nov. 15 the board’s search committee decided to keep Mr. Rubenstein on in part because the center is in the quiet phase of an endowment campaign, making a leadership transition “really tough.”“We looked at the needs of the Kennedy Center in a variety of different ways moving forward,” she said in an interview. “It is important for us to have somebody who knows the center and who knows and can play the leadership role that we need.”Mr. Rubenstein, a co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, has given the center $111 million over the years. He was initially appointed by former President George W. Bush. 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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    Canada Moves to Protect Arctic From Threats by Russia and China

    Ottawa says its focus on the Arctic comes after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has shaken the foundations” of international cooperation in the northern region.Citing growing interest by China and Russia in the Arctic as global warming makes the region more accessible, Canada on Friday said it would focus on building stronger alliances with other nations in the region, particularly the United States.“For many years, Canada has aimed to manage the Arctic and northern regions cooperatively with other states as a zone of low tension,” according to a statement by the Canadian government.But more recent developments, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, had “shaken the foundations of international cooperation in the Arctic,” the statement said.Canada has long debated how best to assert control over its vast but very sparsely populated Arctic.The policy statement calls climate change “the overarching threat” to that control. Warmer temperatures and thinning ice make it increasingly likely that it will soon be possible in the summers for ships to regularly travel from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean by way of an Arctic route known as the Northwest Passage.Canada’s government said the country was committed to increasing military spending in the Arctic, including a 5 billion Canadian dollar, or $3.6 billion, upgrade of defense systems used by the North American Aerospace Defense Command — a joint operation of the two countries.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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    Nobel Laureate: Remember Political Prisoners

    No mission is more important than preserving the lives of those who have been jailed for their principles.This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.Turning Point: On Aug. 1, 24 people were released in a multicountry prisoner swap — the largest exchange of prisoners between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War.I experienced a moment of happiness earlier this year when Evan Gershkovich returned to his parents and Lilia Chanysheva to her husband, when Vladimir Kara-Murza saw daylight after 11 months in solitary confinement and Ilya Yashin and Sasha Skochilenko regained their freedom. But I fear for those political prisoners who remain in Russian jails. If there are no Americans, Germans or Britons among their ranks, will anyone stand up for them?During World War II, it was necessary to open a second front to defeat fascism. In the present fight against creeping authoritarianism, democratic states so far have put all their efforts into standing up for political principles, but there is an urgent need to open a “second front” to stand up for the value of human life, centered on a call for the rights of political prisoners to be observed.Thanks to YouTube and social media, we were able to keep track of the fate of the prisoners freed earlier this year. From now on, however, we will know little about the suffering of those still behind bars because the Russian government has blocked these channels. Only the remnants of free speech still being exercised inside the country allow us to be aware of the circumstances facing those who are held in terrible conditions in Russia’s prisons.Among those who remain incarcerated is the boiler mechanic Vladimir Rumyantsev, who declared war on censorship and opened his own personal radio station in the northern Russian city of Vologda. In Siberia, Mikhail Afanasyev, the editor of the online magazine Novy Fokus, is serving a five-and-a-half-year sentence for his reporting on 11 military servicemen who refused to go to Ukraine. A court in the city of Akaban convicted him for spreading false information about the “special military operation,” as the war in Ukraine is called in Russia. The director Yevgeniya Berkovich and the playwright Svetlana Petriychuk were thrown into jail and accused of condoning terrorism after Berkovich staged Petriychuk’s play “Finist the Brave Falcon,” which tells the story of women who were persuaded to become the wives of militants in Syria.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 Defends His Imperiled Pick for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth

    President-elect Donald J. Trump gave a public show of support to his embattled choice for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, on Friday morning, saying in a social media post that he will be “fantastic” in the job and that he has a “military state of mind.”Mr. Hegseth has spent the last two days fighting to stay as Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon amid mounting news reports alleging troubling behaviors over time including rape, sexual assault, financial mismanagement and drunken behavior, which he denies.Mr. Trump’s post on Truth Social amounted to a public dare to Republican senators, a number of whom have expressed private concerns about Mr. Hegseth, to vote against his wishes. The president-elect until now has put relatively little of his own capital on the line for Mr. Hegseth and has even floated alternative candidates, such as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, for the job.But on Friday, Mr. Trump doubled down publicly on his initial choice.“Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep, much more so than the Fake News would have you believe,” Mr. Trump wrote. “He was a great student — Princeton/Harvard educated — with a Military state of mind. He will be a fantastic, high energy, Secretary of Defense Defense, one who leads with charisma and skill. Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!”A string of damning news articles have reported problematic behavior. One woman filed a police report in 2017 accusing him of rape, which he denied and said was a consensual encounter. He entered into a settlement agreement with her that included a payment of money years later. The New York Times reported that Mr. Hegseth’s mother sent him an email in 2018 during a contentious divorce saying he had “abused” many women in different ways over the years. NBC News reported about concerns about Mr. Hegseth’s drinking, and The New Yorker reported that he had been accused of mismanagement of groups he had previously led.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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    Romanian Court Annuls Presidential Election

    The decision came days after the government asserted it had found an online campaign that promoted a little-known ultranationalist candidate, who emerged as a front-runner in the vote.Romania’s Constitutional Court on Friday canceled the final round of a pivotal presidential election with only two days before the vote, saying it needed to ensure the “correctness of the electoral process.” The surprise decision was the latest in a series of political upheavals across Europe, where right wing movements across the European Union are in the ascendancy. The front-runner in Sunday’s now canceled election had been Calin Georgescu, an ultranationalist whose victory in a first-round vote late last month stunned Romania’s political establishment.George Simion, a far-right leader who had endorsed Mr. Georgescu, denounced the court ruling, saying “a coup is underway,” but he urged supporters not to take to the street in protest. “The system must fall democratically,” Mr. Simion said.The court gave no explanation for its decision, and it was not clear when a new first round would take place. “The electoral process for the president of Romania will be entirely redone,” it said in a statement.The move set off angry reaction among right-wing groups on social media but was welcomed by the prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu, the leader of the governing Social Democrats and a losing candidate in the opening round of the presidential vote.The decision to annul the vote, he said, was the “only correct solution” following the declassification of security council documents that indicated Russian meddling in the election.Not long after the first round last month, The Supreme Council of National Defense, which oversees national security, announced that there had been “cyberattacks” meant to undermine the vote and social cohesion. Mr. Georgescu benefited from the campaign, according to Romanian intelligence documents declassified by the president this week.“Romania, along with other states on NATO’s Eastern Flank, has become a priority for the hostile actions of some state and nonstate actors,” the statement said, singling out Russia.The council, which is led by President Klaus Iohannis and includes other senior officials, also criticized TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company, saying the platform had violated electoral laws because it had not identified Mr. Georgescu as a candidate.One of the race’s presidential candidates also made allegations of irregularities in the vote, and the Constitutional Court took up the case, soon ordering a recount. More

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    Why Wouldn’t ChatGPT Say ‘David Mayer’?

    A bizarre saga in which users noticed the chatbot refused to say “David Mayer” raised questions about privacy and A.I., with few clear answers.Across the final years of his life, David Mayer, a theater professor living in Manchester, England, faced the cascading consequences an unfortunate coincidence: A dead Chechen rebel on a terror watch list had once used Mr. Mayer’s name as an alias.The real Mr. Mayer had travel plans thwarted, financial transactions frozen and crucial academic correspondence blocked, his family said. The frustrations plagued him until his death in 2023, at age 94.But this month, his fight for his identity edged back into the spotlight when eagle-eyed users noticed one particular name was sending OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot into shutdown.David Mayer.Users’ efforts to prompt the bot to say “David Mayer” in a variety of ways were instead resulting in error messages, or the bot would simply refuse to respond. It’s unclear why the name was kryptonite for the bot service, and OpenAI would not say whether the professor’s plight was related to ChatGPT’s issue with the name.But the saga underscores some of the prickliest questions about generative A.I. and the chatbots it powers: Why did that name knock the chatbot out? Who, or what, is making those decisions? And who is responsible for the mistakes?“This was something that he would’ve almost enjoyed, because it would have vindicated the effort he put in to trying to deal with it,” Mr. Mayer’s daughter, Catherine, said of the debacle in an interview.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