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      Molly Young on Space and Music

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      A Booker-winning novel; a rocking essay collection.Édouard Manet/Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial CollectionDear readers,Do you know the difference between an astronaut and a cosmonaut? The distinction rests on where the -naut was trained: Cosmonauts hail from Russia and astronauts from the United States, Canada, or Europe. Not China, though: The Chinese version is a taikonaut. If there exists another job with three different names of equally silky mouth-feel, I cannot think of it.The -naut distinction is one of several vocabulary upgrades you might receive from Samantha Harvey’s “Orbital,” which has taken the books desk by storm. Nobody pays us to get obsessed with specific books all at once; it just happens. (If we got paid, you’d know. Our fingers would be heavy with diamonds.)To counteract the expansive dreaminess of “Orbital,” I got down and dirty with Ian Penman’s collection of music essays. If you’re hankering to see the likes of James Brown and Prince (among others) treated with the penetration of an X-ray machine and the besottedness of a poet, Penman is your fella.—Molly“Orbital,” by Samantha HarveyFiction, 2023We 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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      Top FDA Vaccine Official Resigns, Citing Kennedy’s ‘Misinformation and Lies’

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      The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, Dr. Peter Marks, resigned under pressure Friday and said that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s aggressive stance on vaccines was irresponsible and posed a danger to the public.“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Dr. Marks wrote to Sara Brenner, the agency’s acting commissioner. He reiterated the sentiments in an interview, saying: “This man doesn’t care about the truth. He cares about what is making him followers.”Dr. Marks resigned after he was summoned to the Department of Health and Human Services Friday afternoon and told that he could either quit or be fired, according to a person familiar with the matter.Dr. Marks led the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which authorized and monitored the safety of vaccines and a wide array of other treatments, including cell and gene therapies. He was viewed as a steady hand by many during the Covid pandemic but had come under criticism for being overly generous to companies that sought approvals for therapies with mixed evidence of a benefit.His continued oversight of the F.D.A.’s vaccine program clearly put him at odds with the new health secretary. Since Mr. Kennedy was sworn in on Feb. 13, he has issued a series of directives on vaccine policy that have signaled his willingness to unravel decades of vaccine safety policies. He has rattled people who fear he will use his powerful government authority to further his decades-long campaign of claiming that vaccines are singularly harmful, despite vast evidence of their role in saving millions of lives worldwide.“Undermining confidence in well-established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at F.D.A. is irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation’s health, safety and security,” Dr. Marks wrote.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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      Naval Academy Takes Steps to End Diversity Policies in Books and Admissions

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      The Pentagon and U.S. Naval Academy are proceeding with actions in support of the Trump administration’s push to eliminate “woke” initiatives throughout the federal government.The U.S. Naval Academy said it had ended its use of affirmative action in admissions, reversing a policy it previously defended as essential for diversity and national security, according to a federal court filing on Friday. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office has ordered the Naval Academy to identify books related to so-called diversity, equity and inclusion themes that are housed in the school’s Nimitz Library, and to remove them from circulation.This week, according to a defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss policy decisions, Mr. Hegseth’s office became aware that the nation’s military service academies did not believe that President Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order to end “radical indoctrination” in kindergarten through 12th-grade classrooms applied to them, as they are colleges. The defense secretary’s office informed the Naval Academy that Mr. Hegseth’s intent was for the order to apply to the academies, and that the secretary expected compliance.“The U.S. Naval Academy is fully committed to executing and implementing all directives outlined in executive orders issued by the president and is currently reviewing the Nimitz Library collection to ensure compliance,” said Cmdr. Tim Hawkins, a Navy spokesman. “The Navy is carrying out these actions with utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives.”The academy’s library in Annapolis, Md., houses roughly 590,000 print books, 322 databases, and more than 5,000 print journals and magazines, Commander Hawkins said.The court filing on the admissions policy, submitted by the Naval Academy, the Department of Defense, Mr. Hegseth and other officials, states that the Naval Academy changed its admissions policy in February in response to federal directives prohibiting the practice of considering race, ethnicity and sex during the admissions process.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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      Columbia University’s President, Katrina Armstrong, Resigns

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      Katrina Armstrong is leaving the post a week after the university agreed to a list of demands from the White House.The interim president of Columbia University abruptly left her post Friday evening as the school confronted the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding and the Trump administration’s mounting skepticism about its leadership.The move came one week after Columbia bowed to a series of demands from the federal government, which had canceled approximately $400 million in essential federal funding, and it made way for Columbia’s third leader since August. Claire Shipman, who had been the co-chair of the university’s board of trustees, was named the acting president and replaced Dr. Katrina Armstrong.The university, which was deeply shaken by a protest encampment last spring and a volley of accusations that it had become a safe haven for antisemitism, announced the leadership change in an email to the campus Friday night. The letter thanked Dr. Armstrong for her efforts during “a time of great uncertainty for the university” and said that Ms. Shipman has “a clear understanding of the serious challenges facing our community.”Less than a week ago, the Trump administration had signaled that it was satisfied with Dr. Armstrong and the steps she was taking to restore the funding. But in a statement on Friday, its Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism said that Dr. Armstrong’s departure from the presidency was “an important step toward advancing negotiations” between the government and the university.The statement included a cryptic mention of a “concerning revelation” this week, which appeared to refer to comments from Dr. Armstrong at a faculty meeting last weekend. According to a faculty member who attended, Dr. Armstrong and her provost, Angela Olinto, confused some people when they seemed to downplay the effects of the university’s agreement with the government. A transcript of the meeting had been leaked to the news media, as well as to the Trump administration, according to two people familiar with the situation.Ms. Shipman, a journalist with two degrees from Columbia, is taking charge of one of the nation’s pre-eminent universities at an extraordinarily charged moment in American higher education.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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      Leaders of Harvard’s Middle Eastern Studies Center Will Leave

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      Harvard University has been under pressure by the Trump administration to follow directives related to diversity and combating antisemitism.Two of the leaders of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the director and associate director, will be leaving their positions, according to two professors with direct knowledge of the moves.The department had been under criticism from alumni that it had an anti-Israel bias, and the university more broadly has been under intense pressure from the federal government to address accusations of antisemitism on campus.The director, Cemal Kafadar, a professor of Turkish studies, and the associate director, Rosie Bsheer, a historian of the Middle East, did not respond to messages seeking comment on Friday.The news was first reported by The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper. A spokesman for the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, James Chisholm, declined to comment, saying only that the matter was a personnel matter.David Cutler, the interim dean of Social Science, announced in an email on Wednesday obtained by The New York Times that Dr. Kafadar would be stepping down from his post at the end of the academic year.Dr. Cutler did not respond to a message late Friday.Faculty members who have spoken with both professors say each believe they were forced out of their posts.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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      Justice Sonia Sotomayor Says Judges Must Be ‘Fearlessly Independent’

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      Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the senior member of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing, said on Friday that judges must remain “fearlessly independent” if the rule of law is to survive.Her remarks, made in a packed auditorium at Georgetown University Law Center, were at once cautious and forceful. She did not address particular controversies arising from the Trump administration’s actions testing the conventional understanding of presidential power, many of which appear likely to land at the Supreme Court. But she made plain that her observations about the fragility of the justice system addressed current events.She bemoaned, for instance, “the fact that some of our public leaders are lawyers making statements challenging the rule of law.”She was interviewed by the law school’s dean, William M. Treanor, who interspersed his questions with ones that had been submitted by students. He started the conversation by characterizing those questions, alluding to recent efforts by the Trump administration to punish major law firms and its battles with courts over its blitz of executive orders.“As our students prepare to join the legal profession, they are confronting genuine unsettling questions about the durability of that profession and of the law itself,” he said. “The most commonly asked question was the role of courts in safeguarding the rule of law.”Justice Sotomayor answered in general terms, citing reference works and experts. She said she had consulted with Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella, a former member of the Supreme Court of Canada, about judges’ obligations, quoting her response: “They need to remain fearlessly independent, protective of rights and ensure that the state is respectful of both.”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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      Appeals Court Allows Musk to Keep Pushing Steep Cuts at U.S.A.I.D.

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      A federal appeals court on Friday allowed Elon Musk and his team of analysts to resume their work in helping to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, clearing the way for them to continue while the government appeals the earlier ruling.The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit came as the Trump administration was taking its final steps to effectively eliminate the agency after steadily chipping away at its staff and grant programs for weeks.The appeals court panel said that whatever influence Mr. Musk and his team in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency had over the process, it was ultimately agency officials who had signed off on the various moves to gut the agency and reconfigure it as a minor office under the control of the State Department.Earlier this month, Judge Theodore D. Chuang of U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland wrote that Mr. Musk, in his capacity as a special adviser to President Trump who was never confirmed by the Senate, lacked the authority to carry out what Mr. Musk himself described as a campaign to shut down the agency.Judge Chuang pointed to public statements by Mr. Musk in which he described directing the engineers and analysts on his team, known as DOGE, to do away with U.S.A.I.D., previewing his plans and announcing their progress along the way.On X, the social media platform he owns, Mr. Musk wrote in February that it was time for U.S.A.I.D. to “die,” that his team was in the process of shutting the agency down, and at one point that he had “spent the weekend feeding U.S.A.I.D. into the wood chipper.”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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      University of Minnesota Student Detained by Immigration Agents

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      University officials said they had not been informed of the federal agents’ plans and called the situation “deeply concerning.”U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a graduate student attending the University of Minnesota earlier this week, the school said Friday in a statement that called the situation “deeply concerning.”The student was taken into custody on Thursday at an off-campus residence, the school’s president, Rebecca Cunningham, said in the statement.“The university had no prior knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities before it occurred,” the statement said.The university did not identify the student’s name, nationality or visa type. Jake Ricker, a university spokesman, said the student was enrolled in the Carlson School of Management.ICE officials did not immediately respond to a request for information about the case.The arrest follows other incidents in which ICE targeted international students or scholars at American universities. Three involved students at Columbia University. The other individuals ICE detained or sought to arrest attended Brown, Tufts, Cornell and the University of Alabama.Another case that drew consternation among civil liberties advocates involved Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident and recent graduate at Columbia University who had his green card revoked.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