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      ‘Chaos: The Manson Murders’ Review: All You Ever Knew is Suspect

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      Errol Morris returns to his main obsessions — evil and delusion — in a new Netflix documentary about the famous murders.Two recurring inquiries — scary ones, entwined — characterize Errol Morris’s decades-long directing career, which includes landmark documentaries like “The Thin Blue Line,” “Mr. Death,” “The Fog of War” and “Standard Operating Procedure.” The first question regards the nature of evil: what it is, where it comes from, whether it’s invited into a man’s heart or chooses to takes up residence there. The other is the fine membrane between truth and fiction, which dictates how we become deluded, by others and by self, and how those delusions come to rule the world.In Morris’s more recent work, those themes are brought together most sharply in “American Dharma,” a 2019 chiller in which Morris feeds ample rope to the Trump adviser Steve Bannon to explain his vision of the world and, in so doing, expose a kind of cruelly pompous vapidity. But other contemporary works by Morris — “Separated,” about policies that tear migrant children from their parents; “The Pigeon Tunnel,” about what the spy novelist John le Carré never really revealed about himself — are also held together mostly by these questions. At their heart is some primal fear: that evil, or evil people, can control us without our even realizing it. And for Morris, this is not a religious question so much as an existential and political one.Little surprise that his latest project, the Netflix documentary “Chaos: The Manson Murders,” returns to the same arena. Based, sort of, on the hair-raising book by the journalist Tom O’Neill, the film winnows its central question to one recurring baffler: Why are we, as a culture drenched in true crime narratives, so obsessed with this particular set of murders, which occurred over 55 years ago?Most likely you know the outline of the case: Charles Manson, the failed musician and wild-eyed hippie, ordered his “family” — drug-addled runaways, mostly, who had been living with him at a ranch full of old movie sets — to carry out a series of gruesome murders on the evenings of Aug. 8 and 9, 1969. Among the victims was the actress Sharon Tate, then eight and a half months pregnant with her first child. Her husband, the director Roman Polanski, was out of town at the time.The story includes all kinds of weird spiky bits, well-documented, from accidents and coincidences (who was there that night, who wasn’t) to Manson’s connections to Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys and his worship of the Beatles to the bizarre behavior he and his acolytes exhibited during the sensationalized trial. O’Neill, in his book, goes deeper, raising the specter of various conspiracy theories about potential covert government operations that seem, with the space of time and some well-placed Freedom of Information Act requests, to at least have the potential of maybe being linked to the case.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 Signs Order to Create a ‘Crypto Reserve,’ Adviser Says

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      President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to create a national stockpile of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, an adviser said, an audacious idea that has been widely criticized as a scheme to enrich crypto investors.The basis of the stockpile will be a stash of Bitcoin, estimated to be worth as much as $17 billion, that the United States has seized in legal cases over the years, according to a summary of the order posted on social media by David Sacks, the White House’s crypto and A.I. policy czar.The order also calls for federal agencies to develop “budget-neutral strategies” to buy more Bitcoin, the most popular digital currency, as long as those purchases do not generate extra costs for taxpayers.“This Executive Order underscores President Trump’s commitment to making the U.S. the ‘crypto capital of the world,’” Mr. Sacks wrote in his post. He said the United States would not sell any Bitcoin in the reserve, which he likened to “a digital Fort Knox.”Since Mr. Trump took office in January, his administration has moved rapidly to elevate the crypto industry, a volatile sector that had battled with federal regulators for years. The Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped lawsuits against two of the biggest U.S. crypto companies and halted investigations into several others. And on Friday, Mr. Trump is scheduled to host crypto executives at the White House for a first-of-its-kind “crypto summit.”Mr. Trump has a personal stake in the success of the crypto industry, creating conflicts of interests that have raised alarms with government ethics experts. Last year, he started a business, World Liberty Financial, that offers a cryptocurrency called WLFI. Just days before his inauguration, he also began selling a so-called memecoin — a type of cryptocurrency tied to an online joke or a celebrity figure.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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      Why Do Republicans Want to Dismantle the Education Department?

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      President Trump’s fixation reinvigorated the debate over the role of the federal government in education, and created a powerful point of unity between the factions of his party.Two months after the Education Department officially opened its doors in 1980, Republicans approved a policy platform calling on Congress to shut it down.Now, more than four decades later, President Trump may come closer than any other Republican president to making that dream a reality.Though doing away with the agency would require an act of Congress, Mr. Trump has devoted himself to the goal, and is said to be preparing an executive order with the aim of dismantling it.Mr. Trump’s fixation has reinvigorated the debate over the role of the federal government in education, creating a powerful point of unity between the ideological factions of his party: traditional establishment Republicans and die-hard adherents of his Make America Great Again movement.“This is a counterrevolution against a hostile and nihilistic bureaucracy,” said Christopher F. Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank and a trustee of New College of Florida.Here is how the party got to this moment.Conservatives make their argument.During his 1982 State of the Union address, President Ronald Reagan called on Congress to eliminate both the Energy Department and the Education Department.Bettmann, via Getty ImagesWe 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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      Elon Musk Proposes Privatizing Amtrak, Calling Rail Service ‘Sad’

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      Almost since Amtrak’s creation in 1971, the 21,000-mile U.S. intercity passenger rail service has been fighting calls that it should be privatized.Now it may have met one of its most aggressive and powerful skeptics yet.Speaking at a tech conference on Wednesday, Elon Musk added Amtrak to the list of government-funded services on his chopping board, calling the federally owned railroad “embarrassing” and saying that privatization was the only way to fix it.“If you go to China, you get epic bullet train rides,” said Mr. Musk, the billionaire who is working to dismantle the federal bureaucracy under the Trump administration. “They’re amazing.”China’s trains, which are subsidized by the communist government and have produced large public debts, link every large Chinese city and run at speeds of at least 186 miles per hour. Amtrak’s northeastern Acela, the fastest American passenger train, tops out at about 150 m.p.h.“And you come back to America, and you’re like, ‘Amtrak is a sad situation,’” Mr. Musk said at the conference, which was organized by the bank Morgan Stanley. “If you’re coming from another country, please don’t use our national rail. It’s going to leave you with a very bad impression of America.”Mr. Musk, who has criticized an ambitious effort to build a high-speed rail system in California, has also called for the privatization of the U.S. Postal Service, a concept that President Trump has floated. The president has not called for privatizing Amtrak, and the White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Thursday.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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      ‘I’m Freaking Out’: New Texts Detail Key Minutes of Idaho Murders

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      Newly released messages reveal that two roommates in the home where four college students were murdered were alarmed by a masked person in the house that night.On the night that four University of Idaho students were fatally stabbed in a house near the campus, two roommates began urgently texting each other after one of them saw a masked man moving through the house.“What’s going on,” one of the residents, Dylan Mortensen, texted to one of her friends upstairs, according to new court documents released on Thursday. The friend did not answer, but she was able to make contact with a downstairs roommate, Bethany Funke. “I’m freaking out,” she texted.Ms. Mortensen and Ms. Funke — who ultimately were the only survivors of the stabbing spree — began texting back and forth shortly before 4:30 a.m., soon after Ms. Mortensen had seen a masked man walking in the hallway outside her bedroom door.The texts on the night of Nov. 13, 2022, give new insight into the confusion and fright of the two surviving roommates, who appear to have hunkered down in Ms. Funke’s room until later that morning. Ms. Mortensen called or texted each of the stabbing victims around 4:30 a.m., but received no response. No one called 911 until more than seven hours later.Ms. Mortensen, who had seen the masked figure in the house, told Ms. Funke by text that “no one is answering” the other roommates’ phones, and she described seeing someone wearing something like a “ski mask almost.” Ms. Funke told her to “run” downstairs to her bedroom so they could be together.“It’s better than being alone,” she texted.Ethan Chapin, left, and Xana Kernodle. Kaylee Goncalves, left, and Madison Mogen. 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 Blocks Trump’s Funding Freeze, Saying White House Put Itself ‘Above Congress’

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      A federal judge on Thursday continued to bar the Trump administration from withholding billions in congressionally approved funds to 22 states and the District of Columbia.The ruling, which builds on the judge’s temporary order instructing the government to keep the money flowing, sets up a broader clash between Democratic states’ attorneys general over the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul spending to align with the president’s agenda.In an opinion handed down on Thursday morning, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the Federal District Court for the District of Rhode Island said the lawsuit came down to a case of executive overreach, in which top administration officials had required agencies to withhold funds authorized by Congress.A memo from the White House budget office had demanded a pause on billions in grants until the administration could determine that the funding complied with Mr. Trump’s priorities, setting off days of confusion and alarm.Judge McConnell wrote that without the injunction, “the funding that the states are due and owed creates an indefinite limbo.”“Here, the executive put itself above Congress,” he wrote. “It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’s authority to control spending.”The coalition of states had sued over the suspension of funding available from several agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which they said put them in danger.The states suing filed a second motion last week to enforce the previous order, noting “significant obstacles to accessing federal funds” even after Judge McConnell had ordered agencies to let funding flow.“Moreover, the delays prompted by FEMA’s manual review process are significant and indefinite,” the states wrote, noting that some had requested disbursements since Feb. 7.In his order on Thursday, Judge McConnell appeared to agree that the prospect of states not having access in a disaster to emergency funds paused by the Trump administration was salient.“In an evident and acute harm, with floods and fires wreaking havoc across the country, federal funding for emergency management and preparedness would be impacted,” he wrote.The judge ordered that FEMA detail steps it had taken to unfreeze funds by March 14. More

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      FIFA to Consider Expanding World Cup to 64 Teams

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      Soccer’s governing body will look into another expansion of its marquee event, the most lucrative in sports, after a request by one of its 2030 co-hosts.FIFA, the governing body for global soccer, is considering a plan that would increase the number of teams in the 2030 World Cup to 64 for a one-off expansion to mark the centenary of the event, the organization said on Thursday.The proposal, which was made toward the end of a FIFA board meeting on Wednesday, would upend a tournament that already figures to be unwieldy and complicated because it will be played across three continents for the first time in its history.The World Cup is the most lucrative and most watched event in sports, bringing in billions for FIFA, but the coveted nature of the competition has led to battles among nations to host it, as well as widespread allegations in the past of corruption.The decision to award the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia was criticized by good governance organizations, after FIFA changed its own rules to allow the country to effectively secure rights without facing any competition.The FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, has already overseen the expansion of the World Cup once during his nine-year tenure, bringing the number of teams up to 48 from 32 at the next edition in 2026, which will be mostly played in the United States but also include matches in Mexico and Canada.According to four people with direct knowledge of the discussions, the proposal for a 64-team tournament came as the meeting that was drawing to a close and had reached the section of the agenda earmarked for “miscellaneous” issues.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 Shifts From Lifting Up America’s Neighbors to Hurting Them

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      When the United States signed a free-trade agreement with Canada and Mexico more than 30 years ago, the premise was that partnering with two other thriving economies would also benefit America.This week, President Trump abruptly scrapped that idea. He imposed a sweeping 25 percent tariff on the roughly $1 trillion of imports that Mexico and Canada send into the United States each year as part of that North American trade pact. Those tariffs are expected to significantly raise costs for Canadian and Mexican exports, undermining their economies and likely tipping them into recession.Mr. Trump’s decision to unwind decades of economic integration raises big questions about the future of North America and the industries that have been built around the idea of an economically integrated continent. While some factories in Canada and Mexico might move to the United States to avoid tariffs, the levies will also raise costs for American consumers and manufacturers that have come to depend on materials from their North American neighbors.“This is a day where the United States stopped seeing trade as force for mutual benefit, and began seeing it as a tool of economic warfare,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He added that the levies were “a fundamental attack on the economic well being of our closest neighbors.”Mr. Trump suggested on Wednesday that this arrangement could be long-lived, as he gave automakers who were abiding by the terms of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or U.S.M.C.A., only a one month reprieve to prepare for the tariffs. Trump officials said that the president expected to issue more tariffs on Canada and Mexico next month, when he announces what he is calling “reciprocal” tariff measures.Howard Lutnick at Mr. Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress.Eric Lee/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