Aurelia Butler

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    Appeals Court Allows Trump to Fire Heads of 2 Independent Boards

    A federal appeals court sided on Friday with President Trump’s drive to bring agencies with some independence more directly under his control, ruling that the president was within his rights to fire the heads of two administrative boards that review employment actions and labor disputes.The decision cripples one of the bodies that might stand in Mr. Trump’s way as he slashes and reshapes the government, an agency known as the Merit Systems Protection Board that reviews federal employment disputes, just as it is deluged with cases from the firings of thousands of federal workers.It also effectively paralyzes the other body, the National Labor Relations Board, in another blow to unions the day after Mr. Trump moved to end collective bargaining agreements for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.More broadly, the decision was an endorsement of Mr. Trump’s expansive view of executive powers in a case that many legal observers believe is headed for the Supreme Court. A final ruling there could put agencies across the government that Congress intended to be separate from the White House under the president’s control.By a 2-to-1 vote, the ruling on Friday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed two district court decisions that had reinstated Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne A. Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board while their cases play out. Mr. Trump fired Ms. Wilcox in January and Ms. Harris in February. Both women argued that they had been improperly terminated.“The government contends that the president suffers irreversible harm each day the district courts’ injunctions remain in effect because he is deprived of the constitutional authority vested in him alone. I agree,” Judge Justin Walker wrote in the opinion. Judge Walker was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2020. Judge Karen L. Henderson, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, also sided with the government.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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    What to Know About Food Poisoning When Traveling

    Whether you’re traveling off-the-beaten path or staying at a high-end resort, paying attention to how food is prepared and handled can help keep you safe.Two cases involving possible food poisoning among tourists have raised concerns about what travelers can do to prevent and treat food-borne illnesses — not just during off-the-beaten-path adventures, but in and around resorts.While the cause of the recent death of Miller Gardner, the 14-year-old son of the former New York Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner, has not been confirmed, Miller, along with other members of the Gardner family, is reported to have experienced gastrointestinal distress after eating a meal while on vacation in Costa Rica. And a lawsuit filed this year in Toronto in connection with the food poisoning-related deaths in 2023 of 8-year-old Stephen Gougeon and his mother, April, alleges, among other things, that the Dominican Republic resort where they stayed did not take sufficient care in food handling.In general, gastrointestinal illnesses among tourists — travelers’ diarrhea and food poisoning — is especially likely to occur in countries where the water supply is unsafe. But there are also many cases of food poisoning, and hundreds of deaths, in the United States every year, and these infections can occur anywhere there are lapses in how food is handled. Raw or undercooked meat, fish and shellfish can be contaminated, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s list of high-risk foods includes raw eggs and unpasteurized milk.Travel presents additional concerns. “People may be in places where the tap water is not necessarily safe, and they don’t have control over how food is prepared or handled,” said Dr. Adam Ratner, director of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone in New York. “When you’re home, you have some control, and you have U.S. and local health department standards. It can be harder to assess safety somewhere else.”Ice made with unclean water may cause gastrointestinal problems because freezing, unlike boiling, does not kill most pathogens.Getty Images Parents should be especially vigilant. Babies and young children are vulnerable to dehydration, which is generally the most dangerous aspect of gastrointestinal illnesses; other groups at high risk include pregnant women, older people and anyone who is immunocompromised. But even younger adults and adolescents may not realize how serious the symptoms of food poisoning can be, and when it is important to get medical help.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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    States Will Be Able to Bar Federal Food Benefit Recipients From Buying Soft Drinks, Kennedy Says

    Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Friday that the Trump administration will begin allowing states to bar recipients of federal food assistance from using the money to pay for soft drinks — a core component of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.Mr. Kennedy announced the change to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, in Martinsburg, W.Va., where he appeared with Gov. Patrick Morrissey, who recently signed legislation banning foods containing most artificial food dyes and two preservatives — the first state to do so.The health secretary is talking to 15 other governors about similar moves, according to Calley Means, a health food entrepreneur who recently joined the White House to help carry out Mr. Kennedy’s agenda. Mr. Kennedy told the audience in West Virginia that the food companies had used science to make their products addictive, just as tobacco firms had.“Food is medicine,” Mr. Kennedy told a group of teachers, children and parents in the gymnasium of a local school. He added: “It treats our health. It treats our mental health.”Mr. Kennedy’s appearance, with a Republican governor, speaks to a pronounced cultural change in the politics of food and health, as Republicans join the health secretary’s “make America healthy again” movement. But in a decidedly Republican twist, Mr. Morrissey also announced new “work, training and educational requirements” for SNAP participants.The governor also announced a new statewide exercise initiative, and said he intended to “start shedding a few pounds” himself.Mr. Morrisey announced he would seek the required waiver to bar soft drink purchases using SNAP, along with other initiatives intended to promote exercise and to encourage West Virginians to become healthier. The state has one of the highest obesity rates in the nation. He introduced Mr. Kennedy as one of “the most talked about, vilified men in America” and “a warrior for children.”Mr. Kennedy does not have authority over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which falls under the Agriculture Department. But Mr. Means said that the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, has agreed to grant the waivers. More

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    Search for Missing US Soldiers in Lithuania Continues as Crews Work to Extract Vehicle

    The search in dense, muddy swampland came after the U.S. Army vehicle disappeared in a waterlogged area on Tuesday.The president of Lithuania on Friday visited swampland near his country’s border with Belarus, saying he was “hoping for a miracle” as military and civilian rescue crews worked frantically to extract a heavy United States Army vehicle carrying four American soldiers that disappeared in the waterlogged forest area on Tuesday.The American vehicle, an M88 Hercules, went missing during a military training exercise and was found on Wednesday submerged in a muddy bog. The soldiers have not been found, and efforts to reach the vehicle have been hampered by deep mud and water from a nearby lake.A Lithuanian official involved in the rescue mission who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter said tracks in the ground indicated that the American vehicle had veered off a sandy path toward a small pond and then turned abruptly into a wooded area that ended up being a swamp. It seemed to have sunk quickly, the person said, but it was unclear what happened to the crew.“Although many skeptics would probably say that there is nothing to hope for in these circumstances, I want to hope,” President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania said during a visit to the site on Friday. “I am still hoping for a miracle,” he added.The missing soldiers, from the First Brigade, Third Infantry Division, were training near Pabrade, a city in eastern Lithuania near the border with Belarus, a close ally of Russia and a stalwart supporter of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.The U.S. ambassador to Lithuania, Kara C. McDonald, speaking to the news media next to Lithuania’s president, Gitanas Nauseda, at the site of a rescue operation on Friday.Janis Laizans/ReutersWe 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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    Basic Knife Skills: How to Slice, Cook and Sharpen

    AdvertisementSlicing, dicing, chopping and sharpening: Our ultimate guide tells you everything you need to know to level up your skills.Strong knife skills are part of every great home cook’s knowledge.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBy More

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    Security Breaches Can Be Fixed. People Without Honor Can’t Be Trusted.

    So now it’s clear: The Trump administration has not kept sensitive details of national security secure. Thanks to reporting by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, we have learned that officials at the highest levels, including Vice President JD Vance, discussed military operations via chat on the cellphone app Signal, a medium vulnerable to hostile intelligence services. And they accidentally included Mr. Goldberg in the chat. Which is funny, but also, from an operational security standpoint, not great.As the Trump administration has responded with a mixture of denials, brush-offs, lies and vitriolic attacks on Mr. Goldberg, I’ve found myself worrying less about the leak and more about the character of the people in charge of our nation’s defense. The breach is serious, but security breaches can be plugged. Men and women who have shown themselves to have no character, though, can never be trusted. Not with national security, not with anything.Perhaps it seems old-fashioned to talk of character. We’re cynical modern Americans, after all. When idealism feels exhausted and the old order seems insufficient to meet the challenges of the modern world, candid appeals to raw interest, however amoral, can feel like a breath of fresh air. That’s part of Donald Trump’s appeal.But there remains constant talk of character in the miliary — of integrity and accountability. This is not just for moral reasons but also for practical ones: You cannot ask men and women to go to war in a group bound by nothing stronger than self-interest. How could they trust their comrades and their leaders when their lives are on the line?This is why a military career starts not with training in lethality but with character formation. When I joined the Marine Corps two decades ago, I entered a decidedly archaic, premodern society for which virtue was of paramount importance. At Quantico, Va. — where Mr. Vance traveled on Wednesday to speak with Marines in training — they shaved my head and put me in a uniform, because my individuality was less important than our shared purpose. Before they taught me how to fire a rifle, they taught me about honor, courage and commitment. We weren’t supposed to be hired guns; we were supposed to be the first to fight for right and freedom.There’s a reason essentially every warrior society throughout history has had a code like this — and it’s not that every society has been enlightened. Soldiers don’t need to be saints. But to be good soldiers, to complete their missions and protect their comrades, they do need a bedrock of integrity.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 Actress Candy Clark Captured Some of the Most Famous Faces. Then She Put Them in a Drawer.

    The actress Candy Clark documented her unlikely journey through 1970s Hollywood in a series of Polaroids, now published in a memoir.Jeff Bridges taught her how to drive in his Volkswagen bus. Steven Spielberg refused to flirt with her. She successfully talked the actor Rip Torn out of assaulting the director Nicolas Roeg on a movie set. While lying on a beach in Mexico with the painter Ed Ruscha, she was grazed by a stray bullet on the thigh. Once, she pinched David Bowie’s nipples.In Los Angeles, a city built on oversize lore and swaggering legend, where does one file away stories like these? Revealing but not gossipy. Candid but not lurid. Occasionally surreal but consistently sweet.“It’s a confessional era, right?” said Candy Clark, a former actress who wears a neat blonde bob and Warby Parker glasses, sitting in a booth at the Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood, Calif. It was a recent Sunday afternoon, and Ms. Clark — the one behind the wheel of Mr. Bridges’s van, the starlet who tried to flirt with Mr. Spielberg, the peacemaker, the bullet-wound victim and the nipple-twisting culprit — was nibbling on pita and hummus.Dodging a life of mundane midcentury expectations, she started a modeling career in New York and went on to become a darling of the “New Hollywood” era in the 1970s. During her five decades onscreen, she collected over 80 film and television credits, establishing herself as a ubiquitous face who played mostly free-spirited lovers and burnouts like Debbie Dunham in “American Graffiti,” the part that earned Ms. Clark an Oscar nomination. It was her second-ever acting role.“It was my arrival,” she said, recalling the nomination. “You’re just the center of the universe, and it’s really wonderful.”A young Ms. Clark with the X-70 Polaroid camera she used to take photos of her fellow actors, before many of them became mega-famous.Candy ClarkWe 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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    Is Skipping Really a Good Workout?

    It feels like play. Here’s what fitness experts say about using the activity as a training tool.When kids skip, it rarely looks like work. There’s something playful, almost primitive, about the urge to bound yourself forward through space, your body briefly levitating with each stride. And yet, as adults, many of us quit.But skipping has entered the social media conversation, thanks in part to a recent episode of Andrew Huberman’s podcast, during which the track coach Stuart McMillan touted the activity as an overlooked form of exercise for athletes of all levels.The enthusiasm is deserved, fitness experts told The Times. The movement, which is a form of plyometric training and basically involves a step and a hop on repeat, can help build power, agility and speed, and improve coordination, balance and mobility.Here’s how to make skipping work for you.Can skipping really improve your fitness?When you’re a kid, skipping is a key part of motor development — it helps you develop the power and coordination needed for running, and an awareness of where your body is in space, known as proprioception, said Mary Winfrey-Kovell, a senior lecturer of exercise science at Ball State University.As an adult, you can benefit from going back to these basics, she said. “You’re challenging just about every muscle in your body” when you skip, she added, particularly if you swing your arms — and you’re training your brain to react more quickly.Skipping can also improve balance and stability, since it requires hopping on one leg at a time, said Grayson Wickham, a physical therapist in New York City and the founder of the stretching and mobility app Movement Vault.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