Aurelia Butler

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    Trump Taps Kevin Hassett to Lead National Economic Council

    President-elect Donald J. Trump selected Kevin Hassett on Tuesday to be the director of the White House National Economic Council, giving an adviser who served as his top economist during his first term a leading role in steering his economic agenda.As the director of the N.E.C., Mr. Hassett will work closely with the Treasury secretary to push forward Mr. Trump’s economic plans, focused on cutting taxes, increasing tariffs and expanding energy production. The role is one of the most expansive in the administration and will put Mr. Hassett at the center of the most pressing policy debates.“He will play an important role in helping American families recover from the Inflation that was unleashed by the Biden Administration,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “Together, we will renew and improve our record Tax Cuts, and ensure that we have Fair Trade with Countries that have taken advantage of the United States in the past.”Mr. Trump has been rounding out his economic team, having last week picked Scott Bessent to run the Treasury Department and Howard Lutnick, the former chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, to lead the Commerce Department. Those positions, unlike the N.E.C. directorship, require Senate confirmation.Mr. Trump also selected Jamieson Greer, a lawyer and former Trump official, to lead the Office of the United States Trade Representative.Mr. Greer is a partner in international trade at the law firm King & Spalding. During Mr. Trump’s first term, he served as chief of staff to Robert E. Lighthizer, the trade representative at the time. He was involved in the Trump administration’s trade negotiations with China, as well as the renegotiation of NAFTA with Canada and Mexico.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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    Car Found in Georgia Pond May Be That of a New York Couple Missing Since 1980

    The Romers, of Scarsdale, N.Y., disappeared from a Georgia hotel. Divers who seek to solve cold cases found a vehicle similar to theirs in a pond. They also found bones.Charles Romer, a retired oil company executive from Scarsdale, N.Y., and his wife, Catherine, were driving back from their winter home in Florida in the spring of 1980 when they stopped at a Holiday Inn in Georgia.Later, the police would find their belongings unpacked in a room at the hotel, along with a half-full bottle of Scotch and some glasses. The bed was turned down. But the couple — and their late-model black Lincoln Continental — were nowhere to be found.For decades, the disappearance was shrouded in mystery, as relatives of the couple searched for answers. The police long suspected that the couple may have been killed in a brutal robbery, as Ms. Romer, a beloved socialite, had a considerable amount of valuable jewelry with her.Last week, the first big break came in the four-decade case, after volunteer divers visited Brunswick, Ga., a coastal town about 75 miles south of Savannah, and found a car similar to that of the Romers at the bottom of a pond near their hotel.The divers — who use sonar equipment to find submerged vehicles as part of an effort to find missing people — had seen the Romer case on a map of unsolved cases involving people who had disappeared with their cars. On Friday, they started scanning every body of water within several miles of the hotel where the couple had disappeared. In a 10-foot-deep pond near a parking lot of what is today the Royal Inn, they said, they found a vehicle with characteristics that matched that of the Romers — and in it human bones.“It came out of the blue,” said Lawton J. Dodd, a spokesman for the Glynn County Police Department in Georgia. “It’s a cold case that is not a cold case any longer,” he said. “The investigation’s reopened.”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’s Tariff Threat Pits Canada Against Mexico

    If President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threat of hefty tariffs on Canada and Mexico was intended as a divide-and-conquer strategy, early signs show that it might be working.After his missive on Monday, in which he said he planned to impose a 25 percent tariff on all imports from both of the United States’ neighbors, Ottawa and Mexico City followed starkly different approaches.Mexico took a tough stance, threatening to retaliate with its own tariffs on U.S. goods. Canada, instead, emphasized that it was much closer aligned to the United States than Mexico.The trade agreement between the three North American nations has been carefully maintained over the past three decades through a delicate balance between the United States and its two key allies.As Mr. Trump prepares to take office, his willingness to tear that up to pressure the two countries on migration could open the door to the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement being replaced by separate bilateral deals with the United States.Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s finance minister, has tried to show that Canada is aligned with Mr. Trump’s hawkish attitude toward China.Blair Gable/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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    Trump Team Signs Transition Agreement but Shuns F.B.I. Clearances

    President-elect Donald J. Trump’s team will have some formal briefings with outgoing staff members, but it has so far refused to allow the F.B.I. to do security clearances for transition members.President-elect Donald J. Trump’s team has signed a transition agreement with the White House that will allow them to begin formal briefings with outgoing staff members in agencies across the government, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff said on Tuesday evening.But Mr. Trump’s team has so far refused to sign an agreement with the Justice Department to allow the F.B.I. to do security clearances for transition members. Without that, Biden administration officials will be unable to share classified information with many of Mr. Trump’s transition aides.The Trump team is also refusing to sign an agreement with the General Services Administration that usually provides secure office space, government email accounts and other support. White House officials said that would make sharing information with Mr. Trump’s officials more difficult over the next two months.In recent decades, incoming presidents have signed agreements with their predecessors to smooth the transition of power. The goal is to ensure that the new administration is ready to take over on Jan. 20 and that its officials adhere to basic ethical standards.Susie Wiles, who will serve as Mr. Trump’s top staff member in the White House, said in a statement that the president-elect had directed that his team sign the traditional memorandum of understanding so that the process of information sharing between the outgoing and incoming administrations could begin.“This engagement allows our intended cabinet nominees to begin critical preparations, including the deployment of landing teams to every department and agency, and complete the orderly transition of power,” Ms. Wiles said in the statement.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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    Are the French Laundry and Per Se Still Worth a Splurge? We Went Back to See.

    From the earliest days of the French Laundry, you knew to expect a very fine meal as soon as you walked through its signature blue door. What you didn’t see coming were the jokes.When Thomas Keller opened the restaurant in 1994, fancy food in America was in transition, moving away from its staid, snooty and stiffly French past, toward a locally focused ethos and a looser vibe. Like so many other diners, I made a pilgrimage to Yountville, Calif., to experience what the New York Times critic Ruth Reichl hailed as “the most exciting place to eat in the United States.”At my first bite of a dish called “oysters and pearls,” I laughed out loud. Who spoons caviar on top of humble tapioca? It was more than daring, it was madness. But it worked — the soft pop of caviar atop bouncy tapioca pearls and plump oysters, all surrounded by sabayon as light and briny as ocean foam. Not only was it one of the most delicious things I’d ever tasted, but its knowing poke at the “haute” in haute cuisine displayed a sense of humor both sophisticated and sly.Mr. Keller’s signature dish, “oysters and pearls,” was groundbreaking when the French Laundry opened in 1994. It’s still on the menu both there and at Pe Se.Colin Clark for The New York TimesAnd that was just the first of nine courses in a meal so exhilarating and fresh that more than 20 years and countless tasting menus later I can still remember every bite. The silky wobble of the truffle custard as I scooped it with a potato chip from a translucent eggshell. The supple snap of the butter-poached lobster with leeks and beets. The delicate crunch of the salmon tartare cornets, like tiny ice cream cones. Culinary wit and edible puns informed dishes from the “tongue in cheek” (braised beef cheeks and veal tongue with horseradish cream) to the trompe l’oeil “coffee” (actually semifreddo) and real doughnuts for dessert.Mr. Keller brought this precision and sense of fun — as well as much of the French Laundry menu — to New York City when he opened Per Se to glowing reviews in 2004. At the entrance was an oversize blue door, a nod to the one at the French Laundry, except that it didn’t open. Well-heeled diners were left tugging at the knob until, magically, glass panels on the side opened to admit them. The wizard will see you now.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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    100 Notable Books of 2024

    If you read Ferris’s original 2017 graphic novel, you can’t forget it: a beguiling, haunted hybrid of personal memoir, murder mystery and 20th-century time portal. This surreal and densely referential follow-up, drawn in Ferris’s signature cross-hatched style, continues to follow 10-year-old Karen Reyes in circa-1968 Chicago as she wrestles with loss, sexual identity and a […] More

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    Has Social Media Advice Affected Your Finances? We Want to Hear From You.

    If you have come across misleading personal finance advice online, tell us. We may include your experiences in an article.Social media and other platforms have helped make information on financial literacy, investing and trading more accessible than ever. Many accounts share information that can help people manage their money. But others are sharing advice that regulators say can be misleading.Some content creators might promote financial products like credit cards along with goods like vitamin supplements and electronics. Others — whether or not they have expertise — might lift the veil on their own financial journeys or share investment strategies. But sorting through the helpful from the deceptive can be a challenging task, especially when it comes to the vast landscape of social media. Financial regulators have warned people to be wary of advice from so-called fin-fluencers.I’m a New York Times reporter who writes about a broad range of topics, including the impact of digital trends on everyday life. I’ve written about sailors trading tips online over orca attacks and how savvy TikTok marketing revived a restaurant’s business. I’d like to hear from people who have lost money after following financial advice from someone online, whether that’s investing in a risky asset, signing up for a service or something else.I will read each submission and may use your contact information to follow up if I’m interested in learning more. I will not publish any details you share without contacting you and verifying your information. More

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    Walmart Pulls Back on D.E.I. Initiatives Amid Conservative Pressure

    The retailer is the largest company to be targeted by the conservative activist Robby Starbuck.Lowe’s. Tractor Supply. Harley-Davidson.Now Walmart.The company, which is the nation’s largest retailer with some two million employees, is pulling back on some of its initiatives for diversity, equity and inclusion, known as D.E.I.Robby Starbuck, an anti-D.E.I. activist and a social media influencer, declared victory on Monday, saying that Walmart, the country’s largest private employer, was taking several actions in response to his threatened conservative consumer boycott before the holiday shopping season. A spokeswoman for Walmart confirmed the changes, some of which were already in motion.The retailer, like many other companies, has been reviewing its practices since the Supreme Court knocked down affirmative action at colleges last year.“We’ve been on a journey and know we aren’t perfect, but every decision comes from a place of wanting to foster a sense of belonging, to open doors to opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers, and to be a Walmart for everyone,” the company said in a statement.As a result of the changes, third-party merchants will no longer be able to sell some L.G.B.T.Q.-themed items on Walmart.com that are marketed to children. The company will also stop funding the Center for Racial Equity, a nonprofit initiative that Walmart has backed with $100 million, when the agreement expires next year. And the company will stop sharing data with the Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit that tracks businesses’ L.G.B.T.Q. policies. It will also stop using the terms D.E.I. and Latinx in official communications.Mr. Starbuck has waged online campaigns against several companies whose policies he deems to be too “woke.” While Mr. Starbuck is benefiting as much from a trend to reverse D.E.I. policy as he is instigating it, companies across the United States have been preparing for the potential of possible attacks by activists. Walmart’s actions underline the risk it may see in a public fight, particularly as the anti-D.E.I. agenda gets a boost after Donald J. Trump’s election.In a post on social media, Mr. Starbuck said he had told executives at the company that he was working on a story about “wokeness” at Walmart, but instead the two sides had “productive conversations.”Mr. Starbuck initially focused on companies with customers whom he thought would most likely be sympathetic to his cause, like Tractor Supply and John Deere. Walmart represents a different kind of company: one with employees and customers on both sides of the political divide.“America just voted, and we voted against ‘wokeness,’” Mr. Starbuck said in a video posted on X, as he announced his next targets: Amazon and Target. More