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    Trump Floats Chinese Tariff Cuts in Exchange for TikTok Deal

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    President Trump on Wednesday raised the possibility that he could relax steep upcoming tariffs on China in exchange for the country’s support on a deal to sell TikTok to a new owner supported by the United States.Acknowledging that Beijing is “going to have to play a role” in any transaction, Mr. Trump signaled to reporters at the White House that he could be open to negotiation. “Maybe I’ll give them a little reduction in tariffs or something to get it done,” he said.Under a law enacted before Mr. Trump took office, the Chinese-based parent company of TikTok must either sell the social media app’s U.S. operations or face what essentially amounts to a domestic ban. Lawmakers adopted that policy in response to growing, bipartisan concerns that the app posed threats to U.S. national security, which TikTok denies.Congress originally set a January deadline for its ultimatum. But no sale occurred, prompting Mr. Trump — as one of his first executive actions — to delay enforcement of the law for 75 days in the hopes of securing a buyer.The new deadline arrives on April 5, just three days after Mr. Trump separately plans to announce what he has described as “reciprocal” tariffs, imposing new duties on foreign nations based on the trade barriers that they erect to U.S. imports. The president has already subjected Chinese goods to a 20 percent tariff, on top of those he enacted during his first term in office.“Every point in tariffs is worth more than TikTok,” Mr. Trump said about the prospects of a negotiation, adding: “Sounds like something I’d do.”Mr. Trump on Wednesday said he could issue another order that grants the government additional time to find a buyer for TikTok, stressing the goal is an outcome “that’s best for our country.” The president has raised the possibility that the U.S. government could acquire a stake in the app.”If it’s not finished, it’s not a big deal. We’ll extend it,” Mr. Trump said.Chinese officials, for their part, maintain that any sale or divestiture must comply with local export laws, potentially giving Beijing power over any arrangement brokered by Mr. Trump. More

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      NYT Crossword Answers for March 27, 2025

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      Psst: Brad Lively is playing Ping-Pong with parts of the theme entries. Pass it on.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — Brad Lively, an aerospace engineer who lives in Connecticut, makes his New York Times Crossword debut today with a nod to a game some of us played in childhood.Today’s ThemeThe first thing I’d like to say about this theme is that I think it’s very clever. The second thing I’d like to say is that my brain apparently works backward, and this puzzle proves it.We are passing the word IT back and forth throughout Mr. Lively’s theme, hence the direction at the end of the theme clues: Each one concludes with either “pass it on” or “pass it back.” Our job is to figure out where the IT goes.There are two reasons not to worry about this. First, the passing is done within the same row, so you don’t have to search the whole puzzle for a place to leave the IT. And second, you will figure out pretty quickly that something needs to be done about the entries that don’t match their clues. Once the theme crystallizes for you, the rest is smooth sailing.Let’s look at 17A and 19A as an example. The clue at 19A — [Minty Cuban cocktail … Pass it back] — asks us to “pass it back.” When read another way, the instruction is “pass the letters I and T back.” The answers as we need to write them in the grid are CIRCUITS for 17A and MOJO for 19A.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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      LeShon Johnson, Ex-N.F.L. Running Back, Ran Major Dogfighting Kennel, U.S. Says

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      Federal investigators say that they seized 190 pit-bull-type dogs from the former player, who previously pleaded guilty to state dogfighting charges in 2004.The federal authorities said this week that they had broken up a major dogfighting kennel in Oklahoma led by the former National Football League running back LeShon Johnson, seizing 190 pit-bull-type dogs in what they described as the most ever taken from a single person in a federal case.In a news release, the Justice Department said on Tuesday that a 21-count indictment against Mr. Johnson, 54, had recently been unsealed in federal court in Muskogee, Okla. He was arrested on March 20 and arraigned the same day before being released, according to court documents.Mr. Johnson, who played for the Green Bay Packers, the Arizona Cardinals and the New York Giants in the 1990s, is facing felony charges of possessing and trafficking dogs for use in an animal fighting venture. If convicted, he could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count.He previously pleaded guilty to state dogfighting charges in 2004 and received a five-year deferred sentence.“The F.B.I. will not tolerate criminals that harm innocent animals for their twisted form of entertainment,” Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, said in a statement. “The F.B.I. views animal cruelty investigations as a precursor to larger, organized crime efforts, similar to trafficking and homicides.”Courtney R. Jordan, a lawyer for Mr. Johnson, declined to comment on Wednesday.Investigators say that Mr. Johnson “selectively bred ‘champion’ and ‘grand champion’ fighting dogs — dogs that have respectively won three or five fights” as part of his criminal enterprise, which was known as Mal Kant Kennels and was based in Broken Arrow, Okla., and Haskell, Okla.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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      Un tribunal de apelaciones mantiene el bloqueo de las deportaciones que invocan la Ley de Enemigos Extranjeros

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      El tribunal dijo que, aunque se necesitaban más argumentos, los abogados de los migrantes probablemente tendrían éxito en sus alegaciones de que a los venezolanos se les había denegado el debido proceso.Un tribunal federal de apelaciones de Washington mantuvo el miércoles, por el momento, el bloqueo del uso por parte del gobierno de Donald Trump de una ley invocada de manera inusual para tiempos de guerra para deportar sumariamente a migrantes venezolanos acusados de pertenecer a una violenta banda.En una votación de 2 a 1, un panel del Tribunal de Apelaciones de Estados Unidos para el Circuito del Distrito de Columbia dijo que era probable que los migrantes venezolanos tuvieran éxito en sus alegaciones de que el gobierno no puede utilizar la ley de guerra, la Ley de Enemigos Extranjeros, para trasladarlos sumariamente a una prisión en El Salvador sin una audiencia.“El plan de expulsión del gobierno niega a los demandantes siquiera un hilo del debido proceso, aunque el gobierno reconozca su derecho a la revisión judicial de su expulsión”, escribió la jueza Patricia A. Millett.La decisión asestó un duro golpe a los esfuerzos del gobierno de Trump por impulsar su programa de migración mediante la ley de guerra, pero la orden subyacente expirará de todos modos dentro de unos días. Es probable que el juez James E. Boasberg, presidente del Tribunal Federal de Distrito de Washington, vuelva a pronunciarse sobre la conveniencia de dictar una orden judicial de mayor duración.A mediados de marzo, Boasberg dictó una orden de restricción que prohibía al gobierno de Trump utilizar la Ley de Enemigos Extranjeros para expulsar sumariamente a los venezolanos que, según él, pertenecen a la banda Tren de Aragua. Su orden no prohíbe al gobierno detener a esos hombres ni deportarlos tras las audiencias previstas en la ley de migración usual.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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      Consumer Bureau Seeks to Undo Settlement and Repay Mortgage Lender

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      The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to return a $105,000 penalty it collected last fall when it resolved a discrimination lawsuit.Under President Trump, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has dropped nearly a dozen enforcement cases brought during the Biden administration, ending lawsuits against banks and lenders for a variety of financial practices that the watchdog agency no longer considers illegal.But on Wednesday, the bureau went a step further: It is seeking to give back $105,000 that a mortgage lender paid to settle racial discrimination claims last fall.In an especially strange twist, the case — against Townstone Financial, a small Chicago-based lender — was brought during Mr. Trump’s first term by Kathleen Kraninger, the director he appointed to run the consumer bureau.Russell Vought, who became the agency’s acting director last month, said it had “used radical ‘equity’ arguments to tag Townstone as racist with zero evidence, and spent years persecuting and extorting them.”In its filing asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to set aside the settlement it approved in November, the bureau said it had found “significant undisclosed problems” in its handling of the lawsuit, which the new leadership called an “unmerited” complaint that violated the defendants’ First Amendment free-speech rights.The case began in 2020 when the consumer bureau accused Townstone of redlining and breaking fair-lending laws by discouraging residents living in majority-Black neighborhoods from applying for its housing loans. It homed in on comments made during the company’s radio show and podcast, “The Townstone Financial Show,” saying they were intended to rebuff Black borrowers or those seeking to buy homes in certain neighborhoods.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 Loses Bid to Pause Ruling on Federal Funding Freeze

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      The ruling let stand a district court judge’s order that had blocked agencies from categorically pausing federal funds based on guidance from the Office of Management and Budget.A federal appeals court on Wednesday left in place a lower court’s ruling that blocked the Office of Management and Budget from enacting a sweeping freeze on federal funding to states, writing that it posed an obvious risk to states that depend on the money.The decision denied a request from the Trump administration to stay a ruling by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the Federal District Court for the District of Rhode Island this month. Judge McConnell found that the administration had effectively subverted Congress in choking off funds in ways that jeopardized state governments and the services they provide their residents.A coalition of nearly two dozen attorneys general from Democratic-led states had sued in January to halt the freeze. They argued that the funding, including critical disaster relief disbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and early childhood education support provided through Head Start, had all been thrown into doubt.In their opinion, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit wrote that the freeze would cause the states an array of irreparable harms, including forced taking on of debt, “impediments to planning, hiring and operations,” and disruptions to research projects underway at state universities.In its original guidance at issue in the lawsuit, the Office of Management and Budget had advised agencies that the pause pertained only to funding streams that were affected by some of President Trump’s early executive orders, such as those aimed at ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and climate change funds.The states behind the lawsuit, however, argued that the pause had been conducted chaotically and had caused significant upheaval, preventing them from gaining access to federal grants that seemed to fall outside those orders.As an example, in a filing on Wednesday night, an assistant attorney general from Illinois said that the state was still unable to attain money through the Earthquake State Assistance grant program.In their opinion declining to stay Judge McConnell’s preliminary injunction, the judges wrote that the states had documented numerous cases of “pauses, freezes, and sudden terminations of obligated funds” suggesting that the freeze on federal funds was often indiscriminate. The arbitrary nature of the freeze, they wrote, further suggested that the coalition of states was likely to prevail in the lawsuit. More

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      ICE Agents Detain University of Alabama Doctoral Student

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      A spokeswoman for the school said the detainment occurred off campus, but it was not immediately clear why the student had been targeted.A doctoral student at the University of Alabama was detained by federal immigration authorities, the university said in a statement on Wednesday, one of more than half a dozen students who have been targeted by the Trump administration in recent weeks.The student was not named by the school, but online records from Immigration and Customs Enforcement indicate that Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian citizen, was detained by the agency. Alex House, a spokeswoman with the University of Alabama, which is in Tuscaloosa, Ala., said that the student was detained off campus. It was not clear why the student was targeted, and U.S. immigration officials did not immediately respond to questions on Wednesday evening.Earlier this month, Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and leader of pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations who has permanent U.S. residency, was arrested by federal immigration officers in New York. Though he has not been charged with any crime, the Trump administration has described comments made by Mr. Khalil as antisemitic and argued that he should be deported.And on Tuesday, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University in Massachusetts who had a student visa, was taken into federal custody. Sunil Kumar, the president of Tufts University, wrote in an email to students, staff and faculty members on Tuesday night that Tufts administrators had been told the student’s visa had been terminated.The Crimson White, a student-run newspaper at the University of Alabama, first reported on the detainment of Mr. Doroudi on Wednesday afternoon.According to a LinkedIn page listed as belonging to Mr. Doroudi, he studied mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama and specialized in metallurgical engineering, which focuses on metals used to produce industrial products. Last year, he wrote on LinkedIn that he was “thrilled to share” his first published paper as a Ph.D. researcher. More

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      Trump Administration Deflects Blame for Leak at Every Turn

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      It was a hoax. The information wasn’t classified. Somehow the journalist got “sucked into” the Signal chat, either deliberately or through some kind of technical glitch.In the days since the editor in chief of The Atlantic revealed he had been inadvertently included in a group chat of top U.S. officials planning a military strike on Houthi militants in Yemen, senior members of the Trump administration have offered a series of shifting, sometimes contradictory and often implausible explanations for how the episode occurred — and why, they say, it just wasn’t that big a deal.Taken together, the statements for the most part sidestep or seek to divert attention from the fundamental fact of what happened: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used Signal, an unclassified commercial app, to share sensitive details about an imminent attack in an extraordinary breach of national security.Here’s a look at the main players and what they’ve said about what happened, and how much their reasoning matches up with what transpired.President Trump said the Atlantic’s article was a “witch hunt” and called the journalist a “total sleazebag.”President Trump told reporters on Wednesday that the fervor over the Atlantic’s article was “all a witch hunt,” suggesting that perhaps Signal was faulty, and blaming former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for not having carried out the strike on Yemen during his administration.“I think Signal could be defective, to be honest with you,” he said, after complaining that “Joe Biden should have done this attack on Yemen.” The fact that he didn’t, Mr. Trump added, had “caused this world a lot of damage and a lot of problems.” While the Trump administration has criticized Mr. Biden for not being aggressive enough against the Houthis, his administration led allied nations in several attacks on Houthi sites in Yemen in 2024.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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      Judge Extends Pause on Firings of Probationary Workers for 5 Days

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      The judge said he needed more time to determine whether a longer-term halt should apply to the entire country or be restricted to certain states while the case proceeds.A federal judge in Maryland on Wednesday extended a temporary pause in the Trump administration’s efforts to fire probationary workers at more than a dozen federal agencies by five days.The judge, James K. Bredar of the Federal District Court in Maryland, said he needed more time to determine whether a longer-term halt to the government’s firing of probationary employees should apply to the entire country or be restricted to certain states while the case proceeds.Nineteen states and the District of Columbia sued the federal government, arguing they were irreparably harmed when the government fired thousands of probationary employees en masse in February, leaving states to face unemployment spikes without warning. Judge Bredar’s order earlier this month called for the workers’ reinstatement.During a hearing on Wednesday, Judge Bredar said he was wary of issuing a longer halt to the government’s firings that would apply to the entire country when 31 states have decided not to participate in the case. He cited recent criticism that district courts had exceeded their authority in ordering nationwide halts to Trump administration programs. Of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, all of the attorneys general are Democrats.Lawyers for the states and Washington, D.C., say that when the administration conducts mass firings, as it did in February, the harm can spill over to other states, even if they are not joining this lawsuit. This is why a preliminary injunction needs to apply to more than just the participants, one of the lawyers, Virginia Anne Williamson with the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, said on Wednesday.For example, if a preliminary injunction were restricted to the states that brought the lawsuit, the federal government could resume firing probationary employees in Virginia, which is not part of the suit. But in the case of an employee who works in Virginia and lives in Maryland, which is a party in the lawsuit, Maryland suffers from the firings, the suit argues, because it could have to provide support services for its unemployed resident.“This is murky,” Judge Bredar said on Wednesday, adding that the court “has to wade into the swamp here and figure out if it can’t draft something more restrictive than across the country.”Judge Bredar’s reinstatement order, issued on March 13, overlaps with court-mandated reinstatements of probationary employees in two other cases.Many of the agencies have reinstated employees and issued back pay for the time between their firings and the court orders. Most agencies are placing the reinstated employees on administrative leave, which the Trump administration has told the court is part of the process of returning them to their jobs.The Department of Housing and Urban Development, however, is not providing back pay to the fired workers, said Ashaki Robinson, president of the local American Federation of Government Employees union representing workers at that agency. Ms. Robinson said that could change if Judge Bredar made back pay part of a future order. More