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      Trump Names Interim U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, Bypassing Schumer

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      Senator Chuck Schumer had said he would block the permanent appointment of Jay Clayton, the president’s choice to head one of the nation’s most prestigious prosecutor’s offices.President Trump has appointed Jay Clayton, who served as the top Wall Street enforcer during Mr. Trump’s first term, to be the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the president said in a social media post on Wednesday.The action came after Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and minority leader, said he would block Mr. Trump’s nomination of Mr. Clayton, 58, for the U.S. attorney post, using a prerogative given to home-state senators. Mr. Schumer made his move after weeks in which some liberal Democrats had made scathing attacks on him for doing too little to resist Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump said in his Truth Social post that he would continue to pursue Mr. Clayton’s Senate confirmation. Mr. Clayton, a lawyer at the firm Sullivan & Cromwell who has never been a prosecutor, served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 2017 to 2020.“During my first term, Jay served with great distinction as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and earned the respect of everyone,” Mr. Trump said in the post.The Southern District, which is based in Manhattan, has long been considered one of the most prestigious federal prosecutor’s offices in the country. It is known for handling high-profile cases involving public corruption, national security, international terrorism, fraud on Wall Street and other white-collar crime and sex trafficking.The district, which includes Manhattan, the Bronx and several upstate counties, has long been referred to jokingly as the Sovereign District, a nod to its prized past independence. Its alumni have included former U.S. attorneys general, F.B.I. directors and countless judges.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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      Mother of Woman Killed by Immigrant Speaks at White House Briefing

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      Just hours after a federal judge threatened a contempt-of-court investigation over the Trump administration’s deportation flights, the White House sought to freeze the legal debate by reminding Americans of a heartbreaking case of a mother killed by an unauthorized immigrant.White House officials called a special briefing on Wednesday in the press room to bring Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, who was killed while jogging on a trail in Maryland in 2023, to the podium. She recounted in detail how her daughter, a 37-year-old mother of five, was seized, raped and bashed in the head with rocks and ultimately strangled. Members of her family also appeared at the Republican National Convention last July.An immigrant from El Salvador, Victor Martinez-Hernandez, was convicted in the case this week.The story was a tragic one, and it has fueled Mr. Trump’s arguments about dangers posed by migrants and a debate about capital punishment. Nonetheless, the invitation of Ms. Morin seemed a somewhat transparent effort to suspend the arguments about whether the administration could lawfully send migrants to El Salvador with no due process, and whether it can defy the orders of district judges who order the flights halted.Statistics show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes on American soil than American citizens, and Mr. Trump’s claims of a wave of violent crime committed by immigrants have not been supported by police or court data. But it is a popular talking point among Mr. Trump’s base of supporters, and he often brought out family members of victims during his presidential campaign.By conflating different incidents, the Trump administration appeared to be diverting the conversation from whether his administration could defy the courts, or deny due process to those arrested and shipped out of the country to a prison the United States is paying for.Before Ms. Morin spoke, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, criticized Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, for traveling to El Salvador to press for the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was seized and sent to a notorious terrorist prison in El Salvador in what the government admitted was an “administrative error.”Ms. Leavitt accused him again of being a member of the MS-13 gang, a terrorist, and, in a new claim, a perpetrator of spousal abuse. She called him a “woman beater” and waved a court filing, one that sought an order of protection against him.After the briefing, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, acknowledged that she had filed the papers. But she said she had not pressed the case.“Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process,” she said. “We were able to work through this situation privately as a family.”Chris Cameron More

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      A Harvard Scientist’s Tuberculosis Research Is Threatened by Trump’s Cuts

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      Researchers who have lost funds warned of long-term repercussions, but several said their school should still refuse to comply with the federal government.Dr. Sarah Fortune, an immunologist who spends a lot of time in her laboratory at Harvard, never expected to be caught in a battle with the White House.But early Tuesday morning, she received an official notice to “stop work” on her lab’s federally funded research on tuberculosis, an infectious disease that kills more than a million people a year worldwide.Just hours earlier, the Trump administration had vowed to freeze $2.2 billion in research funding at Harvard. If fully executed, it will be the deepest cut yet in a White House campaign against elite universities that began shortly after President Trump took office in January. Other universities, including Princeton, Cornell and Columbia, have also seen deep cuts to research funding.Dr. Fortune’s contract, a $60 million National Institutes of Health agreement involving Harvard and other universities across the country, appeared to be one of the first projects affected. Stop-work notices also began arriving this week at an obscure Harvard office called “sponsored programs” that coordinates federal research funding.One Harvard professor, David R. Walt, received a notice that his research toward a diagnostic tool for Lou Gehrig’s disease, or A.L.S., must stop immediately. Two other orders will affect research on space travel and radiation sickness, just weeks after the scientist, Dr. Donald E. Ingber, who engineers fake organs that are useful in studies of human illnesses, was approached by the government to expand his work.David R. Walt at his lab at Harvard Medical School, where he does research searching for a diagnostic tool for Lou Gehrig’s disease, or A.L.S.Cody O’Loughlin 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

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      3 Drown After Boat Crash During Fishing Tournament in Alabama

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      The men were thrown overboard when two boats collided in Lewis Smith Lake on Wednesday morning, the authorities said.Three people were killed and multiple others were injured Wednesday morning when two fishing boats collided in a lake in northwest Alabama during a fishing competition, the authorities said.At around 7 a.m., Joey M. Broom, 58, of Altoona, Ala., John K. Clark, 44, of Cullman, Ala., and Jeffrey C. Little, 62, of Brandon, Miss., were on a center console boat in Lewis Smith Lake in Cullman County when it collided with a bass boat, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said.The three men were thrown overboard and drowned, the law enforcement agency said. Their bodies were found in the Miller Flats area on the eastern side of the lake — a sprawling reservoir with long fingers and jagged inlets about an hour north of Birmingham.The number of injuries and their severity was not known. The coroner for Cullman County did not immediately respond to an email seeking additional information about the causes of death.The crash occurred at the beginning of the second day of the Tackle Warehouse Invitational, a competition promoted by the organization Major League Fishing. It also involved Flint Davis, a competing angler from Leesburg, Ga., the organization said. His condition was not known.The final day of the tournament, which had been scheduled for Thursday, was canceled, Major League Fishing announced.Competitors in the Tackle Warehouse Invitational try to catch the biggest bass. They are vying for a top prize of up to $115,000 as well as points to qualify for the championship invitational in September, Major League Fishing said. More

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      What Is Happening With Fyre Festival 2?

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      After weeks of confusion, the organizers of the event have scrapped its location once again.Fyre Festival 2 is back up in the air, after the organizers of the event said they would be sending a message to ticket holders on Wednesday announcing that the festival would no longer take place in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.In the update, which was shared with The New York Times, the organizers assured would-be festivalgoers that it was vetting new locations and that the event was “still on”: “We are vetting new locations and will announce our host destination soon. Our priorities remain unchanged: delivering an unforgettable, safe, and transparent experience,” the message read.But it was already the second time in three months that the festival, a sequel to the ill-fated concert event in 2017, had been moved to a new location. And uncertainty surrounding performers, ticket availability and accommodations in the last few weeks has led many to wonder if the event would happen at all, or if it was another epic disaster waiting to happen, much like the one that had sent its organizer, Billy McFarland, to prison after he entered a guilty plea to charges that included wire fraud.On Wednesday, the event’s organizers blamed the local authorities in Playa del Carmen for the latest hitch in their plans, accusing the government of robbing Fyre Fest without offering any evidence. (Calls to city officials from Playa del Carmen seeking comment went to voice mail.)Fyre Fest 2, which had been slated to take place next month, might have served as a redemption tour for Mr. McFarland, who was released in 2022 after close to four years in prison and another six months of confinement.In February, Mr. McFarland, 33, announced that the sequel event would be held at the end of May on Isla Mujeres, a Mexican island and vacation hot spot off the coast of Cancun.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 Administration Halts Building of Giant Wind Farm Off N.Y. Coast

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul quickly responded that she would “fight this decision every step of the way.”Just as construction was starting on a massive wind farm off the coast of Long Island, the Trump administration ordered an immediate halt on Wednesday that could spell a serious setback for hopes of powering New York City with offshore wind.Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, called for the cessation of “all construction activities” on the Empire Wind project, which was designed to provide enough electricity to power about 500,000 homes in New York.On the first day of his new term in office, President Trump signed an executive order that limited the approval of offshore wind farms. But Empire Wind had already received all of the permits it needed to get underway.In a social media post on Wednesday, Mr. Burgum said the halt would allow for “further review of information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.”New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, quickly responded that she would “fight this decision every step of the way.” She called the secretary’s move a “federal overreach” that she would not allow to stand.The order came two weeks after Representative Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, asked Mr. Burgum in a letter to “do everything in your power” to stop what he called an “underhanded rush” to build the wind farm. Another Republican representative from New Jersey, Jeff Van Drew, has pressed Mr. Trump to put a stop to other wind farms that were planned in the Atlantic Ocean to provide renewable power to New Jersey.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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      W.T.O. Projects Sharp Pullback in Global Trade, Citing Trump’s Tariffs

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      The World Trade Organization forecast on Wednesday that President Trump’s trade policies would shave nearly three percentage points off the volume of global trade in goods this year, as tariffs raise the price of U.S. imports, invite retaliation and slow economic activity.At the start of the year, the W.T.O. expected goods trading to continue growing roughly in line with the global economy, expanding by 2.7 percent. Now it expects it to contract by 0.2 percent instead. That’s a sharp drop from last year, when goods trade grew by 2.9 percent.Mr. Trump has introduced a suite of tariffs, including a 10 percent tariff on most of the world, a minimum tariff of 145 percent on U.S. imports from China, levies on goods from Canada and Mexico and sector-specific tariffs targeting steel, aluminum and vehicles. The Trump administration says this will help bring manufacturing back to the United States and boost the economy, though many economists have predicted the tariffs will instead be a drag on economic activity.The W.T.O., a Geneva-based group that monitors patterns in global trade and coordinates trade negotiations and disputes among its members, said that the estimates were based on the tariff situation as of Monday, and that trade could shrink further “if the situation deteriorates.”The tariffs will have the biggest impact on trade in North America, the group said, where it expects exports will plummet 12.6 percent and imports will drop 9.6 percent in 2025. Asia will be the next most affected, but Asia and Europe will still post modest growth in both exports and imports, the group forecasts.The group said global trade was particularly at risk from the potential return of Mr. Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs.” The president paused those tariffs last week for 90 days, and the Trump administration is now trying to negotiate trade deals with individual countries.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 Concert Cold War in a Quiet Enclave

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      When Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. designed Forest Hills Gardens, he was trying to bring the respite of an English village into the bustle of New York City.A landscape architect and city planner like his father, one of Central Park’s designers, Mr. Olmsted laid out tree-lined alphabetical streets and open spaces in a pocket of Queens about nine miles east of Times Square. In 1909, these were not mere aesthetic choices: Forest Hills Gardens was an import of the English garden city, a turn-of-the-century movement in urban planning rooted in a utopian ethic.Mr. Olmsted planned for the Tudor-style houses to thoughtfully integrate with their manicured landscapes, for winding pathways to promote leisurely strolls and for curved residential streets to discourage vehicles from passing through.He did not plan, however, for the Australian rock band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Or for the sold-out shows by the Irish singer Hozier. Or really for anything about the concert venue that was once a storied tennis stadium and is now rattling both windows and nerves in the neighborhood.“It does disrupt the calm,” Mitch Palminteri, a Forest Hills Gardens resident, said at a recent community board meeting. “I don’t want to close my window on a summer night.”Others like what the concerts represent.“Music is about community,” said Joseph Cooney, who lives in adjacent Forest Hills. “We have it in spades in this neighborhood. How can we ever let that go away?”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