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      Earthquake Rocks Parts of Tennessee and Georgia

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      The quake on Saturday morning had a preliminary magnitude of 4.1, with an epicenter about 30 miles southwest of Knoxville, Tenn. Residents in Atlanta reported feeling it.Residents in Tennessee and Georgia were jolted on Saturday morning by an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.1, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.The earthquake had its epicenter just outside of Greenback, Tenn., a town of about 1,000 people, but was felt as far away as Atlanta.Shortly after the quake, people in the region logged reports with the U.S. Geological Survey about where they felt it. Reports of shaking came from as far away as Nashville and Charlotte, N.C.There were only a few instances of light damage reported around the epicenter, and no reports of moderate or heavy damage, according to those who self-reported to the Geological Survey.The area, known as the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone, extends across Tennessee into northwestern Georgia and northeastern Alabama. Minor earthquakes occur annually, but the zone is not known to have major tremors.As seismologists review available data, they may revise the reported magnitude of Saturday’s earthquake.The last time a strong earthquake was felt in the region was 2018, when a 4.4 magnitude tremor rattled houses but caused little damage.The earthquake was still novel enough to generate aftershocks on social media.People from Asheville, N.C., to Gatlinburg, Tenn., outside of Knoxville, reported feeling the earth shaking as they enjoyed their morning coffee.One user poked fun at the earthquake’s lack of impact, sharing an image of patio furniture with a single chair knocked over, captioned: “I survived the 2025 Knoxville earthquake. We will rebuild.”Another shared a photo of their cat sheltering in a cardboard box with the caption, “Did not handle the East Tennessee earthquake of 2025 well at all.”Jonathan Wolfe More

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      Pope Leo XIV Outlines Path for Catholic Church That Follows in Francis’ Steps

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      The new pope said he would be guided by a key document that his predecessor wrote listing the church’s priorities, including a “loving care for the least and the rejected.”In his first formal address to Roman Catholic cardinals, Pope Leo XIV on Saturday said he would continue the work of Pope Francis in steering the church in a more missionary direction, with greater cooperation among church leaders and a closeness to the marginalized.Leo said he was committed to following a path of modernization that the Church began in the 1960s, and cited a major document that Francis issued in 2013. From that document, Leo highlighted multiple objectives, including “growth in collegiality,” “popular piety,” a “loving care for the least and the rejected,” and “courageous and trusting dialogue with the contemporary world.”“Francis masterfully and concretely set it forth,” Leo said, referring to the document, called Evangelii Gaudium.The new pope also explained the choice of his name. The previous pope with his name, Leo XIII, issued a document called the “Rerum Novarum,” known in English as “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor,” in the late 19th century in which he emphasized the church’s right to make assertions about social issues as they related to moral questions.The document “addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution,” Leo explained.Now, the pope added, another industrial revolution was taking place in the field of artificial intelligence. That, he said, would “pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”The church, he said, “offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response.”The reference to Francis’ document was not the only endorsement that the new pope gave of his predecessor. Francis, Leo noted, was a “humble servant of God and of his brothers and sisters,” who gave an “example of complete dedication to service and to sober simplicity of life.”The cardinals appeared to have noted the message about maintaining the direction set by Francis’ papacy.As he exited the meeting where Leo spoke, Cardinal Baltazar Enrique Porras Cardozo of Venezuela said the pope “spoke about the continuity of the pontificate of Francis and then he asked some questions to us.” Those questions were “mostly about the formation of priests and bishops,” the cardinal added.On his way out of the meeting, Cardinal Sean Brady of Ireland said that Leo was in the process of “greeting everybody now, which is very nice.”Jason Horowitz More

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      ‘Don’t Need a Deal.’ Top Trump Economic Adviser Is All in on His China Hardball

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      In a wide-ranging interview, Stephen Miran, the president of the chair of President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, said “volatility doesn’t necessarily mean anything greater for the long term.”The first 100 days of the second Trump administration have been a whirlwind. And Stephen Miran, the chair of President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, has been at the center of what he calls “the volatility.” Mr. Trump has raised import taxes to levels not seen since the 1930s. And trade talks to roll them back — or not — are in flux, leaving the trajectory of the U.S. economy, consumer prices and global trade in limbo.Miran, a Ph.D. economist trained at Harvard — who is renown for floating the idea of a Mar-a-Lago Accord to “restructure the global trading system” — has been put in the position of explaining the president’s thinking and ultimate goals.On Wednesday, just before the United States and Britain announced a framework for a trade agreement and ahead of trade talks this weekend between the administration and Chinese officials, Miran spoke with The Times’s Talmon Joseph Smith at his office next to the White House. And he stood by the president’s unconventional moves.The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.You’ve said in public remarks that you are not on the negotiating team, but as an economist, do you believe that this country’s economy can sustain what the Treasury secretary has called the “embargo” levels of current tariffs on China?Yeah, so look, the president has acted with historic scope and speed to put American workers on fairer ground vis-à-vis our trading partners. I don’t think anybody could possibly say that the policy adjustment was not historic or extraordinary. And as a result, there’s been volatility in financial markets. There can also be volatility in economic data, but I think it’s important to understand that volatility doesn’t necessarily mean anything greater for the long term.And so is it possible that economic activity gets substituted from one month to another? Yeah. Are firms waiting to find out the outcomes of the negotiations? Yeah. Are they waiting to find out that the tax bill is being passed and that we’re going to avoid the biggest tax hike in history next year because the president’s 2017 tax cuts are not going to expire? Yeah, they’re waiting for that, too.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 Temporarily Blocks Trump Plans for Mass Layoffs and Program Closures

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      An emergency ruling by a federal judge in California amounted to the broadest effort yet to halt the Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal government.A federal judge on Friday called for a two-week pause in the Trump administration’s mass layoff plans, barring two dozen agencies from moving forward with the largest phase of the president’s downsizing efforts, which the judge said was illegal without Congress’s authorization.Of all the lawsuits challenging President Trump’s vision to dramatically scale back the form and function of the federal government, this one is poised to have the broadest effect yet. Most of the agencies have yet to announce their downsizing plans, but employees across the government have been anxiously waiting for announcements that have been expected any day for weeks now.Ruling just hours after an emergency hearing on Friday, Judge Susan Illston of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California ordered the government to pause the mass layoffs as well as efforts to shut down offices and programs.Congress set up a specific process for the federal government to reorganize itself. The unions and organizations behind the lawsuit have argued that the president does not have the authority to make those decisions without the legislative branch.“It is the prerogative of presidents to pursue new policy priorities and to imprint their stamp on the federal government,” Judge Illston wrote in a 42-page order. “But to make large-scale overhauls of federal agencies, any president must enlist the help of his co-equal branch and partner, the Congress.”While unions and other organizations have sued the federal government over other personnel actions, including indiscriminately firing thousands of probationary workers earlier this year, this is the first time such a broad coalition came together to challenge the administration’s actions. The plaintiffs in the ambitious lawsuit included labor unions, nonprofits and six cities and counties — including Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco and Harris County, Texas, home to Houston.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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      Marjorie Taylor Greene Defiantly Rules Out a Senate Run in Georgia

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      In a lengthy Friday night social media screed, the Republican congresswoman savaged her party’s leaders as she declared she would not pursue a Senate run.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said on Friday that she would not run for Senate in 2026.The revelation — a huge relief to Republicans who feared she would challenge Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff and jeopardize their chance at defeating him — came 1,200 words deep into a screed against her party that Ms. Greene posted on social media on Friday night.In her tirade against the forces she blamed for standing in her way, Ms. Greene ripped the National Republican Senatorial Committee, G.O.P. consultants, pollsters, wealthy donors, the institution of the Senate and the Republican lawmakers who serve in it who she said “sabotage Trump’s agenda.”“No, Jon Ossoff isn’t the real problem,” Ms. Greene wrote in a post on X. “He’s just a vote. A pawn. No different than the Uniparty Republicans who skip key votes to attend fundraisers and let our agenda fail.”She added: “Someone once said, ‘The Senate is where good ideas go to die.’ They were right. That’s why I’m not running.”All eyes had tentatively turned to Ms. Greene this week after Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, the top potential recruit for the race, announced he would not run for the seat, a decision he made public at a gathering of wealthy donors in Sea Island, Ga.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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      Google Agrees to Pay $1.4 Billion to Settle 2 Privacy Lawsuits

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      The Texas attorney general brought the cases in 2022 under state laws.Google agreed to pay $1.4 billion to the State of Texas on Friday to settle two lawsuits accusing it of violating the privacy of state residents by tracking their locations and searches, as well as collecting their facial recognition information.The state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, who secured the settlement, brought the suits in 2022 under Texas laws related to data privacy and deceptive trade practices. Less than a year ago, he reached a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, over allegations it had illegally tagged users’ faces on its site.Google’s settlement is the latest legal setback for the tech giant. Over the past two years, Google has lost a string of antitrust cases after being found to have a monopoly over its app store, search engine and advertising technology. It has spent the past three weeks in the search case trying to fend off a U.S. government request to break up its business.“Big Tech is not above the law,” Mr. Paxton said in a statement.José Castañeda, a Google spokesman, said the company had already changed its product policies. “This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere,” he said.Privacy issues have become a major source of tension between tech giants and regulators in recent years. In the absence of a federal privacy law, states such as Texas and Washington have passed laws to curb the collection of facial, voice and other biometric data.Google and Meta have been the highest-profile companies challenged under those laws. Texas’ law, called Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier, requires companies to ask permission before using features like facial or voice recognition technologies. The law allows the state to impose damages of up to $25,000 per violation.The lawsuit filed under that law focused on the Google Photos app, which allowed people to search for photos of a particular person; Google’s Next camera, which could send alerts when it recognized visitors at a door; and Google Assistant, a virtual assistant that could learn up to six users’ voices and answer their questions.Mr. Paxton filed a separate lawsuit that accused Google of misleading Texans by tracking their personal location data, even after they thought they had disabled that feature. He added a complaint to that suit alleging that Google’s private browsing setting, which it called Incognito mode, wasn’t actually private. Those cases were brought under Texas’ Deceptive Trade Practices Act. More

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      A United Front for Pope Leo Among American Cardinals

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      One cardinal who cast his ballot said the pope’s choice of the papal name Leo might signal a particular interest in workers’ rights.American cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church described the historic papal conclave that concluded this week as relatively easy, with no arm-twisting or overt politicking.When their work was done — and as the outside world waited to learn the new pope’s identity — the cardinals inside the Sistine Chapel “went wild,” one recalled on Friday, when the man they had elected privately told them that he would take the name Leo.That name, they said, could be an indication of the pope’s plans.“Leo was the first modern pope, who spoke in defense of workers’ rights and what workers needed to have a just wage, not only to support their family and eke out a living, but also to build a patrimony they could pass on to their children,” said Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, referring Pope Leo XIII.That Pope Leo wrote a landmark papal document called Rerum Novarum in 1891, addressing the needs and dignity of the working class, which helped spark a social justice movement amid the Industrial Revolution.“It wasn’t the defense of the right to property for people to accumulate as much as they want, but for poor people who did not have property as a patrimony to pass on,” Cardinal Cupich said.The issues of workers rights, immigration and bridges across divides appear to be taking shape as the issues that could define the legacy of Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV.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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      Mexican Mayor Implicated in Drug Cartel Ranch Inquiry

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      The mayor of Teuchitlán is the first government official to have been arrested in connection with the case. Prosecutors accuse him of colluding with the cartel.The mayor of a small Mexican town has been accused of colluding with one of the country’s most violent drug cartels to operate a recruitment and training center that was uncovered in March.The mayor, José Asunción Murguía Santiago was charged with organized crime offenses and forced disappearance, prosecutors said at a hearing on Friday.The site of the center, in the western state of Jalisco, gained notoriety after volunteer searchers announced the discovery of hundreds of shoes piled together, heaps of clothing and what seemed to be human bone fragments found in an abandoned ranch surrounded by sugar cane fields in Teuchitlán, a town outside Guadalajara, sending shock waves across the nation. The searchers claimed the ranch was the site of human cremations, but authorities have since said there is no proof of that.The allegations against Mr. Murguía Santiago served as a stinging reminder of Mexican officials’ long history of collusion with organized crime, at a time when President Trump has proposed using American troops to crack down on cartels. Mexico’s president refused.Attorney General Alejandro Gertz said last week that until recently the ranch in Teuchitlán had been used by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel for training and recruiting. Mexican officials have said that the cartel lured new recruits with fake job offers to the ranch.But in a departure from previous comments, Mr. Gertz insisted that there was no proof of cremations carried out there, and said claims that the site had been an “extermination camp” were unfounded. Volunteer groups have disputed the federal findings, insisting that 17 batches of charred human remains, including teeth and bone fragments, have been recovered from the ranch.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