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      Supreme Court Curbs Scope of Environmental Reviews

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      The question for the justices was whether an agency had complied with a federal law by issuing a 3,600-page report on the impact of a proposed railway in Utah.The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday that a federal agency had done enough to consider the environmental impact of a proposed 88-mile railway in Utah. The ruling limits the scope of environmental reviews required by federal law in all sorts of settings.The proposed railway would connect oil fields in the Uinta Basin in northeast Utah to a national rail network that runs next to the Colorado River and then to refineries on the Gulf Coast.“An agency may weigh environmental consequences as the agency reasonably sees fit,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for five justices. The court’s three liberal members agreed with the decision’s bottom line but on narrower grounds. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch was recused.The Surface Transportation Board, a federal agency that regulates rail transportation, approved the Utah project in 2021 after conducting a review that yielded a 3,600-page report. Environmental groups and a Colorado county sued, saying the report had not taken account of some ways in which the railway could do harm to the environment.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled for the challengers.The environmental impact statements required by a 1970 federal law, the National Environmental Policy Act, can be quite elaborate. Paul D. Clement, a lawyer representing seven Utah counties that support the project, told the justices when the case was argued in December that the law was “the single most litigated environmental statute.”He added that the board had acted responsibly.“It consulted with dozens of agencies, considered every proximate effect and ordered 91 mitigation measures,” he said, referring to measures intended to, among other things, dampen noise pollution and protect wildlife. “Eighty-eight miles of track should not require more than 3,600 pages of environmental analysis.”William M. Jay, a lawyer for the challengers, said at the argument that the report did not consider all the reasonably foreseeable results of the project, like oil spills and sparks that can cause wildfires, as required by the federal law.The case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colo., No. 23-975, was argued before an eight-member court after Justice Gorsuch recused himself, apparently over concerns that his ties to Philip F. Anschutz gave rise to a conflict of interest. Neither Mr. Anschutz, a billionaire and Republican donor, nor his companies are parties to the case, and the letter announcing Justice Gorsuch’s recusal gave no reasons.But the proposed railway could benefit companies in which Mr. Anschutz has an interest. Justice Gorsuch represented Mr. Anschutz and his companies as a lawyer, benefited from his support when he was being considered for a seat on an appeals court and once served as a keynote speaker at an annual party at his ranch. More

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      Court Tariffs Ruling Upends Trump’s Trade Strategy

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      The administration immediately petitioned a court to allow the United States to continue imposing stiff tariffs.One day after a federal court declared many of his tariffs to be illegal, President Trump and his top aides on Thursday rushed to resuscitate the centerpiece of the administration’s trade agenda, seeking to restore their ability to use the threat of eye-watering import taxes to force other nations into submission.Shortly after the ruling, the administration petitioned a court to allow it to continue imposing its tariffs, reflecting a persistent fear throughout the White House that a defeat could severely undercut its capacity to wage a global trade war.Since taking office, Mr. Trump had relied on a federal emergency powers law as a form of political leverage, hoping to use sky-high duties — or just the mere threat of them — to force other governments to make trade concessions to the United States.But the little-known and highly specialized U.S. Court of International Trade dealt an early yet significant blow to that strategy late Wednesday. The bipartisan panel of judges, one of whom had been appointed by Mr. Trump, ruled that the law did not grant the president “unbounded authority” to impose tariffs on nearly every country, as Mr. Trump had sought.The Trump administration quickly petitioned the court to pause any enforcement of its order as it pursues an appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. If judges ultimately grant the requested stay, Mr. Trump could, for now, maintain many of the tariffs he has imposed on China, Canada and Mexico and preserve the threat of “reciprocal” rates, which he announced on most nations and then suspended in early April.“I’m sure, when we appeal, this decision will be overturned,” Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said in an appearance Thursday on Fox Business.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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      Victoria’s Secret Takes Down Website After Security Breach

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      The cyberattack disrupted online sales for days and sent the lingerie company’s share price lower.Victoria’s Secret’s website remained offline on Thursday, days after the lingerie company was hit by a cyberattack that has disrupted its online sales and sent its stock price lower.The company said that it had taken its website and some in-store services down as a precaution, with teams working around the clock to restore operations. Its physical stores remained open.As of Thursday morning, Victoria’s Secret’s share price had fallen 8 percent since Tuesday. The company did not confirm when the security incident took place, but shoppers reported seeing effects of the outage on social media earlier this week. It was unclear who perpetrated the attack on Victoria’s Secret, which is based in Reynoldsburg, Ohio.The cyberattack was the latest example of a high-profile digital breach at a major retailer, raising questions about companies’ preparedness and the security of customer data.Earlier this month, Marks & Spencer, the large British retailer, was hit by a cyberattack that left the company unable to process online orders for weeks. The company told customers that some personal customer data had been taken, though not usable card or payment details or account passwords. It said there was no evidence that the data had been shared, but said it was prompting customers to change their passwords regardless.Also in late April, Harrods, the luxury department store based in Britain, experienced brief disruptions, restricting internet access at its sites as a security measure.Ransomware attacks, which can disrupt services in addition to stealing customer data, have increased in recent years. Organizations across sectors have been targeted, including hospitals.Cody Barrow, the chief executive of Eclectic IQ, a cybersecurity services company, said the attack on Victoria’s Secret could underscore the vulnerability of retailers, many of whom rely on third party systems, such as payment providers.“To me what it says is that retailers are still not segmenting systems well enough to contain incidents,” Mr. Barrow said. “Third parties are the biggest blind spot right now, especially for retailers.” More

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      U.S. Will ‘Aggressively’ Revoke Visas of Chinese Students, Rubio Says

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      Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the students who will have their visas canceled include people with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and those studying in “critical fields.”Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday evening that the Trump administration would work to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in “critical fields.”He added that the State Department was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.The move was certain to send ripples of anxiety across university campuses in the United States and was likely to lead to reprisal from China, the country of origin for the second-largest group of international students in the United States.Mr. Rubio’s brief statement announcing the visa crackdown did not define “critical fields” of study, but the phrase most likely refers to research in the physical sciences. In recent years, American officials have expressed concerns about the Chinese government recruiting U.S.-trained scientists, though there is no evidence of such scientists working for China in large numbers.Similarly, it is unclear how U.S. officials will determine which students have ties to the Communist Party. The lack of detail on the scope of the directive will no doubt fuel worries among the roughly 275,000 Chinese students in the United States, as well as professors and university administrators who depend on their research skills and financial support.American universities and research laboratories have benefited over many decades by drawing some of the most talented students from China and other countries, and many universities rely on international students paying full tuition for a substantial part of their annual revenue.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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      F.B.I. Memo on Sheds Light on Dispute Over Venezuelan Gang

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      The remaining intelligence agencies disagree with the F.B.I.’s analysis tying the gang, Tren de Aragua, to Venezuela’s government.An F.B.I. intelligence memo unsealed on Wednesday offers new details on why the bureau concluded that some Venezuelan government officials were likely to have had some responsibility for a criminal gang’s actions in the United States, pitting it against other intelligence agencies in a heated dispute over President Trump’s use of a wartime law.The memo, whose conclusions the remaining intelligence agencies have rejected, was submitted by the administration to a federal judge in Texas before a hearing on Thursday. It is part of a proliferating array of lawsuits over Mr. Trump’s use of the law, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport people accused of being members of that gang, Tren de Aragua, to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process.“The F.B.I. assesses some Venezuelan government officials likely facilitate the migration of TdA members from Venezuela to the United States to advance the Maduro regime’s objective of undermining public safety in the United States,” the memo said, using an abbreviation for the gang.It added that the bureau also thinks some officials in the administration of Venezeula’s president, Nicolas Maduro, “likely use TdA members as proxies.”The submission of the memo opens the door to greater judicial scrutiny of a key basis for Mr. Trump’s assertion that he can invoke the rarely used law to summarily deport people accused of being members of the gang. It also offers a glimpse of the claims put forth by several detained migrants that formed the basis for the F.B.I.’s assessment.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 Shutdown of Biden-Era Migrant Entry Programs

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      The sweeping order applied to hundreds of thousands of people legally in the country through programs put in place for Ukrainians, Afghans and others.A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from pulling legal protections from hundreds of thousands of people who entered the United States through Biden-era programs, ordering the government to restart processing applications for migrants who are renewing their status.In a sweeping order that extended to Ukrainians and Afghans, as well as military members and their relatives, the judge, Indira Talwani of Federal District Court in Massachusetts, wrote that the Trump administration’s categorical termination of legal pathways for those groups was probably unlawful and had the potential to sow discord across the country.The decision is a major victory for civil and immigrant rights groups that had sued to stop the administration amid a wider campaign by President Trump to strip legal status from a variety of groups living, working and studying in the country on a temporary basis.Judge Talwani wrote that the overarching campaign to strip the protections from those who had already been granted them represented a major escalation by the Trump administration that would cause chaos once the programs were wound down.In April, she had issued a similar order that applied more narrowly to hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans with temporary legal status through another program. The government is seeking a reversal of that decision before the Supreme Court.“This court emphasizes, as it did in its prior order, that it is not in the public interest to manufacture a circumstance in which hundreds of thousands of individuals will, over the course of several months, become unlawfully present in the country, such that these individuals cannot legally work in their communities or provide for themselves and their families,” Judge Talwani wrote. “Nor is it in the public interest for individuals who enlisted and are currently serving in the United States military to face family separation, particularly where some of these individuals joined the military in part to help their loved ones obtain lawful status.”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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      NYT Crossword Answers for May 29, 2025

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      John Kugelman lifts our spirits and a few other things with today’s clever Thursday puzzle.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — John Kugelman’s puzzles have primarily been Sunday grids in The New York Times. This is his 11th crossword here, yet it’s only his second weekday puzzle.He seems to have a good grip on the tricky Thursday shtick: A nice tug of war between the constructor and the solvers. We’ve seen a theme like today’s before, but for those of you who are beginning to solve Thursday puzzles and are wondering what just happened to you, remember: On Thursdays, anything can happen. Keep your mind open, and you’ll enjoy this puzzle much more.Oh, and take another look at your grid when you are finished. Mr. Kugelman set a certain constraint for himself when making this puzzle, and it transforms the crossword into something really elegant. You can read more about it in his notes.Today’s ThemeMr. Kugelman offers three theme entries whose clues seem to be asking the wrong questions. How could the answer to the clue [Mensa, for one] at 19A be CONS? I mean, there could be something funky going on at this organization for Very Smart People, not that I want to start any rumors, but I doubt that this clue is about that.I realized what was going on when I wrote in FLA for 36A’s [One with a minority opinion about the shape of the world]. The answer was most likely FLAT EARTHER, but where was the rest of it? Like most crossword themes, it turns out that the answer was right under my nose. When the entire eighth line of the grid is read from left to right, we get FLA EAR HER. That’s pretty close to the correct answer, but who stole my Ts?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 Commutes Sentence of Imaad Zuberi, Major Donor to 2017 Inauguration

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      Imaad Zuberi had been a major donor to Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, before shifting his support to Mr. Trump after his 2016 victory.President Trump on Wednesday commuted the sentence of a California venture capitalist and major political donor who had been sentenced to 12 years in prison for violating lobbying, campaign finance and tax laws, and obstructing an investigation into Mr. Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee.The donor, Imaad Zuberi, 54, had been a major supporter of Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, before shifting his support to Mr. Trump after his 2016 victory.In the three months after the 2016 presidential election, Mr. Zuberi donated more than $1.1 million to committees associated with Mr. Trump and the Republican Party, scoring coveted invitations to a pair of black-tie dinners celebrating Mr. Trump’s inauguration. In the process, he posted photos of himself with the president, as well as Mr. Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus and various cabinet nominees.In 2020, Mr. Zuberi pleaded guilty to obstructing a federal investigation into the source of a $900,000 donation he made through his company to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee in late December 2016.In 2019, Mr. Zuberi pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign donations during the Obama administration, including some funded by foreign sources, as part of a scheme to gain access to American politicians for foreign clients.He also pleaded guilty to falsifying records filed with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act to conceal his lobbying work on behalf of Sri Lanka to help burnish the country’s reputation in Washington amid human rights concerns. And he pleaded guilty to failing to report and pay taxes on $5.65 million he was paid for the Sri Lankan lobbying campaign, much of which, prosecutors say, he diverted for personal use.During some of the criminal proceedings, Mr. Zuberi was represented by David Warrington, who is now Mr. Trump’s White House counsel.A senior White House official said Mr. Warrington recused himself from deliberations about the commutation.Part of Mr. Zuberi’s defense involved arguing that some of the activity with which he was charged stemmed from his work as a longtime intelligence source for the Central Intelligence Agency.Mr. Zuberi was sentenced in 2021. In addition to the prison term, he was ordered to pay nearly $16 million in restitution and $1.75 million in fines. He had been held at a low-security federal correctional institution in California and was scheduled to be released in 2030, according to the Bureau of Prisons website. More