Aurelia Butler

The Senate voted along party lines on Thursday to confirm Russell T. Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, putting in place one of the most powerful architects of President Trump’s agenda to upend the federal bureaucracy and slash spending that the administration thinks is wasteful.The 53-to-47 vote returns Mr. Vought to the White House budget office that he also led during Mr. Trump’s first term. During his tenure, he took steps to expand the number of federal employees required to work during a government shutdown, froze military aid for Ukraine and railed against spending on foreign aid.Mr. Vought emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s most contentious nominees, drawing intense backlash from Senate Democrats who described him as a lawless ideologue. They used every legislative tool at their disposal to delay his confirmation vote, commandeering the Senate floor on Wednesday night and into Thursday morning to make the case against him.“We’re going to be speaking all night,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said as his colleagues prepared to burn through the clock. “We want Americans, every hour, whether it’s 8 p.m. or 3 a.m., to hear how bad Russell Vought is and the danger he poses to them in their daily lives.”After leaving the office, Mr. Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank, and was an architect of Project 2025. That document was an effort by conservative groups to develop detailed ideas for policies and executive actions that Mr. Trump could pursue to tear down and rebuild executive government institutions in a way that would enhance presidential power.In speeches, Mr. Vought made clear that he relished the opportunity to overhaul the ranks of career federal workers that Mr. Trump views as part of the “deep state.”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

The jazz legend lived in the five-story building on West 139th Street as a teenager with her mother.A four-alarm fire on Wednesday evening severely damaged a building in Harlem where the jazz legend Billie Holiday once lived.The Fire Department said it received the call at about 9 p.m. and extinguished the fire, which spread through all five floors of the building, shortly before 1 a.m. on Thursday morning. No civilians were injured, though four firefighters sustained minor injuries. The cause of the fire is under investigation.“Due to the structural stability of this building, as it was vacant for many years and the amount of fire, we had to pull our members out of the building and go to an exterior fire attack,” Kevin Woods, the Fire Department’s chief of operations, said in a news conference.A portrait of Billie Holiday at Carnegie Hall in 1946.Heritage Images, via Getty ImagesThe building is owned by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which is responsible for maintaining the quality and affordability of housing, among other duties.“Even before the fire, HPD had been actively working with our partners to plan the complete rehabilitation of this building through our preservation programs, relocating tenants to safer housing as part of that process,” Natasha Kersey, a spokeswoman for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said in an emailed statement to The Times.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

The data, which appeared fleetingly online on Wednesday, confirmed transmission in two households. Scientists called on the agency to release the full report.Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished. The data appear to have been mistakenly posted but includes crucial information about the risks of bird flu to people and pets.In one household, an infected cat might have spread the virus to another cat and to a human adolescent, according to a copy of the data table obtained by The New York Times. The cat died four days after symptoms began. In a second household, an infected dairy farmworker appears to have been the first to show symptoms, and a cat then became ill two days later and died on the third day.The table was the lone mention of bird flu in a scientific report published on Wednesday that was otherwise devoted to air quality and the Los Angeles County wildfires. The table was not present in an embargoed copy of the paper shared with news media on Tuesday, and is not included in the versions currently available online. The table appeared briefly at around 1 p.m., when the paper was first posted, but it is unclear how or why the error might have occurred.The virus, called H5N1, is primarily adapted to birds, but it has been circulating in dairy cattle since early last year. H5N1 has also infected at least 67 Americans but does not yet have the ability to spread readily among people. Only one American, in Louisiana, has died of an H5N1 infection so far.The report was part of the C.D.C.’s prestigious Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which, until two weeks ago, had regularly published every week since the first installment decades ago. But a communications ban on the agency had held the reports back, until the wildfire report was published on Wednesday.Experts said that the finding that cats might have passed the virus to people was not entirely unexpected. But they were alarmed that the finding had not yet been released to the public.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

With the high-energy “I AM,” Brown takes her signature interweaving of African diasporic dance forms to new heights.These days, many people know Camille A. Brown from the worlds of theater and opera, where she has become a frequent collaborator on high-profile projects. (She choreographed two hit shows now on Broadway, “Gypsy” and “Hell’s Kitchen.”) But it’s her work with her company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, that brings us closest to her essence as an artist, showing us who she is, what moves her.That has never been more clearly or piercingly expressed than in her latest dance, “I AM,” which had its New York City premiere at the Joyce Theater on Wednesday. Sweeping the audience into its flow for a joyous 65 minutes, “I AM” is like the exclamation point on the trilogy Brown created from 2012 to 2017 (“Mr. TOL E. RAncE,” “BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play” and “ink”).A program note describes “I AM” as imagining “a creative space for cultural liberation — conjuring new ways of being in this world.” And liberated it is, pulsing with a sense of freedom and possibility that emanates from its outstanding team of 12 dancers and three musicians (Deah Love Harriott on piano, Juliette Jones on violin and Jaylen Petinaud on drums).Brown went to great lengths to contextualize the works in the trilogy, which delved into different facets of African-American identity, like the painful legacies of minstrelsy and the playful rituals of Black girlhood. The first two chapters came with educational resource guides, and Brown regularly led post-show dialogues as extensions of the work.In “I AM,” she continues her signature interweaving of African diasporic dance forms, but with what seems like a greater, bolder openness to letting dance — in deep conversation with music — speak for itself. After Wednesday’s performance, she shared just a brief word of explanation: “I wanted to do something centered around joy.”From left, Brianna Dawkins, Travon Williams and Courtney Ross in “I AM.”Rachel Papo for The New York TimesWe 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

Of all the many forms Donald J. Trump can take, maybe the most perplexing one is Pious Trump.It is a shape he shifted into shortly after 8 o’clock on Thursday morning to deliver a sermon of sorts on Capitol Hill for the annual National Prayer Breakfast. In the grand amphitheater of National Statuary Hall, members of Congress sat before him. There were leaders of the Republican Party, never so in thrall to him as they are now. There were Democrats, never so lost and powerless in their struggle against him as they are now.“Look at each other,” he urged. He said they were a “great group of people” and beseeched them to come together. “We have to make life better for everyone,” he said.President Trump, appealing to the better angels?Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle filled Statuary Hall on Thursday morning.Eric Lee/The New York TimesThis was somewhat amazing, since the various other forms of Mr. Trump happened to be running around with flamethrowers earlier that morning, torching the federal bureaucracy, the global order, the media, the opposition party in the room and even the messaging coming out of his own White House.Just before his arrival at the Capitol to preach unity, he had gone on a fiery posting spree. He demanded that CBS lose its broadcasting license. He trumpeted a baseless conspiracy theory that Democrats had “STOLLEN” billions of dollars from the U.S. Agency for International Development to pay off media outlets for slanted coverage. “DEMOCRATS CAN’T HIDE FROM THIS ONE,” he wrote. “TOO BIG, TOO DIRTY!” In another post a few minutes before that one, he elaborated upon his desire to grab the Gaza Strip, an idea that drew bipartisan condemnation and shocked even his own staff, who tried to clean it up yesterday, evidently to no avail. He described Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, pejoratively as a Palestinian.This was all difficult to square with the version of Mr. Trump who arrived at the Capitol a little over an hour later and had only warm words to say about Mr. Schumer. “Chuck, thank you very much,” Mr. Trump said as he read out a list of names of lawmakers he believed were present, “thank you.” (In fact, Mr. Schumer had skipped the ceremony to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel).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

For the first time in six years, water is gushing through a unique spillway in Lake Berryessa, just north of San Francisco.Footage provided to The New York Times showed Lake Berryessa’s spillway overflowed with water.Jay Cuetara, Solano County WaterBack-to-back atmospheric rivers have dumped buckets of rain across Northern California, filling its rivers to the brim and beyond. The Russian River spilled over its banks in Sonoma County, and in the far reaches of the state, Lake Shasta, a key marker of the state’s overall water levels, has nearly filled up.And just east of Napa Valley, a rare not-fully-natural phenomenon was observed for the first time since 2019: Water began gushing, furiously, through a spillway in Lake Berryessa.The eye-catching event has happened only three other times in the past 20 years, and it has drawn curiosity seekers to the man-made reservoir, 70 miles northeast of San Francisco.“People were taking pictures and videos and just standing in awe,” said Peter Kilkus, the editor of the Lake Berryessa News, who was there Wednesday morning with about two dozen other people.The 72-foot-wide spillway, called a morning glory because its shape mimics the flower, is a unique funnel-shaped cement pipe that sits within the reservoir. (Locals call it the glory hole.)The mechanism is a type of drainage system with water pouring down the pipe and into Putah Creek on the other side of Monticello Dam. The spillway is among a few with that shape in the country; there’s also one at Pleasant Hill Lake in Perrysville, Ohio. More

The producer, who died on Wednesday, built Murder Inc. into one of the most influential record labels of the early 2000s. His career was marred by a federal investigation and trial.Irv Gotti, who founded the record label Murder Inc. and helped shape the sound of hip-hop and R&B in the late 1990s and early 2000s when he shepherded the careers of Ja Rule and Ashanti, died on Wednesday at 54.Here is a brief look at how the rap entrepreneur and record executive worked his way from humble beginnings in Queens, N.Y., to the top of the charts before his momentum was marred by a federal investigation into the label in which he was charged with money laundering and acquitted.A Childhood in Queens, N.Y.Gotti was born Irving Domingo Lorenzo Jr. in Queens, N.Y., in 1970. He was the youngest of eight children, according to “The Murder Inc Story,” a documentary about his life that aired on BET in 2022. His family, which he described as one that didn’t have much money but had plenty of love, recalled him as a “clown” who loved performing, dancing and entertaining, sometimes even for small change.His foray into music began as a preteen, when he played for hours with a turntable and a mixer that his siblings had purchased for him. By the age of 15, he had begun to make a name for himself as a D.J. at local parties.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

Also, New Orleans is rattled but ready for the Super Bowl. Here’s the latest at the end of Thursday.A federal judge in Massachusetts today temporarily barred the Trump administration from offering about two million federal workers the chance to leave their jobs in exchange for seven months of pay. The offer, which had a deadline of midnight tonight, was part of a sweeping effort by President Trump and Elon Musk to drastically cut the size of the federal work force.Judge George O’Toole Jr., a Clinton appointee, paused the deadline until at least Monday, when the court would consider a legal challenge. It is not clear how the delay will affect the more than 40,000 federal employees who had already signed up to resign through the program.The Trump administration has been pressuring workers for the last week to accept the offer, while the biggest government unions have been urging them to decline.The judge’s decision appeared unlikely to end the broader effort by Trump and Musk to sharply reduce the size and cost of the federal government. The administration is planning to reduce the number of workers at the U.S. foreign aid agency from more than 10,000 to about 290 positions. Officials at the agency were also told that about 800 awards and contracts administered by U.S.A.I.D. were being canceled.Already, cuts at U.S.A.I.D. have resulted in the freezing of dozens of clinical trials, leaving people with experimental drugs and medical products in their bodies and cut off from the researchers who were monitoring them.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