Aurelia Butler

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    Courts Force a Window Into Musk’s Secretive Unit

    When President Trump signed an order imbuing the so-called Department of Government Efficiency with even more power over the federal work force, Elon Musk was there, championing the work as an exercise in transparency.“All of our actions are maximally transparent,” Mr. Musk said last week, standing in the Oval Office. “In fact, I don’t think there’s been — I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.”But in case after case, federal judges have begged to differ.The work of Mr. Musk, who Mr. Trump has said is the leader of the operation tasked with making “large scale” reductions across every department, has been largely shrouded in secrecy. Team members have spent weeks burrowing into multiple federal agencies, demanding access to data for undisclosed purposes.Anxious career employees have received little direct information, leaving them reliant on office rumors and news reports for updates. The identities of the members of Mr. Musk’s team, too, have been closely held.Court filings in the torrent of lawsuits challenging the incursions have offered a crucial, though limited, window. As some of the only firsthand accounts of what Mr. Musk’s associates are doing across a number of departments, they paint a picture of a tightly managed process in which small groups of government employees have swept in and out of agencies, grabbing up data in apparent pursuit of larger political projects.The filings have also offered revelations about what information security and ethics trainings those employees have undergone. But many questions remain, frustrating the judges trying the cases.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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    ASAP Rocky Found Not Guilty of Shooting Former Friend in Assault Trial

    The rapper had faced two felony counts of assault with a firearm in connection with a 2021 altercation in Los Angeles.The courtroom broke out into cheers after the jury found the rapper Rakim Mayers, known as ASAP Rocky, not guilty of shooting a former collaborator.Daniel Cole/ReutersASAP Rocky, the Grammy nominated hip-hop artist, was found not guilty on Tuesday of shooting a former collaborator. The jury deliberated for nearly three hours in a case that threatened to derail his career.Rocky, 36, born Rakim Mayers, faced two felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon, stemming from an altercation with his one-time friend, Terell Ephron, known as ASAP Relli, near a Hollywood hotel in 2021.Rocky dived into the gallery to hug family including Rihanna, the singer, businesswoman, and mother of his two young sons, and embraced his lawyer, Joe Tacopina, after the verdict was read.“Thank y’all for saving my life,” he told jurors.The trial hinged on jurors’ assessment of the gun used in the incident, which prosecutors said was a semiautomatic firearm and witnesses for the defense testified was instead a prop gun acquired at the filming of a music video. No gun was presented as evidence in the trial and Rocky did not take the stand in his defense. He faced up to 24 years in prison if convicted of both counts.Rocky faced trial at a time when he had several notable projects in the works. He is scheduled to be one of the headliners of the Los Angeles stop of the Rolling Loud festival in March, and was announced as one of the celebrity chairs for the Met Gala, to be held in May. He also stars alongside Denzel Washington in a Spike Lee-directed movie scheduled to open in summer.John Lewin, a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County, had asked the jury not to be swayed by the court appearances of Rihanna, who was a frequent presence during the 13-day trial and attended the start of closing arguments last week with the pair’s two young sons.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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    DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million.

    The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team appears to include an error.The Department of Government Efficiency, the federal cost-cutting initiative championed by Elon Musk, published on Monday a list of government contracts it has canceled, together amounting to about $16 billion in savings itemized on a new “wall of receipts” on its website.Almost half of those line-item savings could be attributed to a single $8 billion contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But it appears that the DOGE list vastly overstated the actual intended value of that contract. A closer scrutiny of a federal database shows that a recent version of the contract was for $8 million, not $8 billion. A larger total savings number published on the site, $55 billion, lacked specific documentation.The contract, with a company called D&G Support Services, was to provide “program and technical support services” for the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights at ICE. The Trump administration has been purging diversity programs from the federal government.By examining past versions of the contract listed on the Federal Procurement Data System, The Upshot determined that the federal award, approved in September 2022, had initially listed a total value of $8 billion. But on Jan. 22 this year, that figure was updated to $8 million. According to the database, the contract was terminated about a week later. (For context, $8 billion is nearly the size of the entire budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)It’s possible that DOGE or someone else in the Trump administration can claim credit for fixing the error in the contracting database, given that the value was downgraded to $8 million two days after President Trump took office. But it is also clear that the government was not spending $8 billion on the contract. In the two and a half years since it was signed, $2.5 million had been spent; the contract appeared set to expire in 2027.The DOGE website initially included a screenshot from the federal contracting database showing that the contract’s value was $8 million, even as the DOGE site listed $8 billion in savings. On Tuesday night, around the time this article was published, DOGE removed the screenshot that showed the mismatch, but continued to claim $8 billion in savings. It added a link to the original, outdated version of the contract worth $8 billion.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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    Right-Wing Media Praises U.S.-Russia Talks as ‘Breath of Fresh Air’

    Many of President Trump’s media allies were quick to celebrate this week’s negotiations, a contrast to the deep unease expressed by the foreign policy establishment.News that the Trump administration had agreed with Russia to try to negotiate a peace settlement for Ukraine, without including Ukraine in the talks, was a revelation that many believed reversed years of efforts to isolate Moscow.But prominent voices in the right-wing media world interpreted the development this week as cause for celebration.“Every day has kind of felt like Christmas morning, hasn’t it?” Kari Lake, the former TV news anchor who is poised to run Voice of America, said during a podcast interview on Tuesday. “President Trump wants peace for every nation.”Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA and podcast host who has more than 4.6 million followers on the social media platform X, praised the discussions as “a breath of fresh air.”And Jack Posobiec, a die-hard Trump loyalist perhaps best known for spreading the infamous “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, invoked the title of Mr. Trump’s 1987 best-selling book. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said on his podcast, “it’s the art of the peace deal.”Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seated second from left on Tuesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was once a champion of Ukraine.Pool photo by Evelyn HocksteinWe 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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    PGA Tour and LIV Golf Look for Merger Deal Under Trump

    A tie-up involving the tour and LIV Golf was stalled under President Biden. They’re aiming to forge a new agreement under President Trump.The PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund are racing to reshape their plans to combine their rival golf circuits, emboldened by President Donald J. Trump’s eagerness to play peacemaker for a fractured sport, according to four people familiar with the matter.Since the start of secret talks in April 2023, PGA Tour executives and their Saudi counterparts have been weighing how they could somehow blend the premier American golf circuit with the Saudis’ LIV Golf operation. But negotiators have struggled to design a deal that would satisfy regulators along with players, investors and executives.Mr. Trump’s return to Washington has offered a new opening: After an Oval Office meeting this month that ethics experts have said tested the bounds of propriety, the two sides are considering options that might have stalled during Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidency but that the Trump administration’s antitrust enforcers could offer a friendlier glance.The details of any prospective agreement, including LIV’s fate, remain in flux. In general, regulators would see any transaction that led to the dissolution of one of the leagues as anticompetitive; under Mr. Trump, though, antitrust regulators could take a more relaxed view.The two sides are looking beyond a simple cash transaction, though it is unclear how exactly the deal would be structured. The PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, has said they are looking at a “reunification,” but there are many complicating factors, including how to value both ventures.There is also the matter of how to handle any deal alongside a separate $1.5 billion investment in the PGA Tour by a band of American sports magnates.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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    Fiscalía de Brasil imputa a Bolsonaro por intento de golpe de Estado en 2022

    El fiscal general de Brasil, Paulo Gonet Branco, imputó a Bolsonaro y a otras 33 personas por una serie de delitos contra la democracia brasileña.Jair Bolsonaro, expresidente de Brasil, fue acusado el martes de supervisar un vasto plan para intentar socavar la confianza de su país en las elecciones de 2022 y luego anular esa votación incluso después de que sus aliados no pudieron encontrar pruebas de fraude.El fiscal general de Brasil, Paulo Gonet Branco, imputó a Bolsonaro y a otras 33 personas por una serie de delitos contra la democracia brasileña. En esencia, los cargos aceptaban las recomendaciones de la policía federal de Brasil en noviembre.El caso pasará ahora al Supremo Tribunal Federal de Brasil, que analizará los cargos y decidirá si ordena la detención de Bolsonaro y lo somete a juicio.El abogado que representa a Bolsonaro no hizo comentarios de inmediato.Esta es una noticia en desarrollo y será actualizada.Jack Nicas es el jefe de la corresponsalía en Brasil, con sede en Río de Janeiro, desde donde lidera la cobertura de gran parte de América del Sur. Más de Jack Nicas More

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    Alexander Brothers Face More Lawsuits Accusing Them of Sexual Assault

    Tal Alexander and Oren Alexander, once top real estate brokers, and their brother Alon Alexander are currently in jail awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.Eleven more women have filed lawsuits against one or more of the Alexander brothers, the once high-flying trio who are facing multiple accusations of sexual assault in both civil and criminal court.Tal Alexander and his brothers, Oren Alexander and Alon Alexander, who are twins, are now facing at least 17 lawsuits from women who say they were sexually assaulted by one or more of them and, in some instances, drugged. The latest lawsuits, filed in a bundle in New York on Tuesday, include accusations of assault in Miami, Manhattan and even Moscow.The women’s claims are now part of a growing maze of sexual assault allegations against the brothers who were arrested in December in Miami Beach on federal sex-trafficking charges. Currently jailed in New York, they are scheduled to go to trial early next year.All three men have pleaded not guilty.Jenny Wilson and Richard Klugh, lawyers for Oren Alexander, said in an emailed statement that their client “has never raped anyone and he has never drugged anyone.”“These belated allegations should be seen for what they are — a last-ditch money grab barred by state law. Oren will establish his innocence of this concerted attack driven in every instance by financial objectives,” they said.Lawyers for Tal Alexander and Alon Alexander did not immediately respond to requests to comment on Tuesday’s legal filings.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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    Federal Prosecutor Responsible for Overseeing Major Criminal Cases Resigns

    A veteran federal prosecutor in Washington responsible for overseeing major criminal cases in one of the nation’s most important offices abruptly resigned on Monday, according to an email sent to colleagues.Denise Cheung, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, resigned rather than carry out a directive from the office’s Trump-appointed leadership, according to several people with knowledge of her actions who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.Ms. Cheung did not say what precipitated her decision in her email, but she thanked her colleagues for adhering to the highest standards of professional conduct.“This office is a special place,” she wrote. “I took an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution, and I have executed this duty faithfully.”Ms. Cheung, a Harvard Law School graduate, said prosecutors in the office had conducted themselves “with the utmost integrity” by “following the facts and the law and complying with our moral, ethical and legal obligations.”The resignation came less than a day after President Trump nominated Ed Martin, a right-wing activist who sat on a board that raised cash for rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and pushed for their mass reprieve, to run the office permanently.A spokesman for Mr. Martin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Decisions by Mr. Trump’s appointees have roiled the Justice Department. Last week, seven career officials, in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and at department headquarters, resigned rather than signing the dismissal of federal corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, saying the request by the department’s acting No. 2 official was inappropriate and undermined an appropriate investigation. More