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    As Energy Costs Surge, Eastern Governors Blame a Grid Manager

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    For decades, a little-known nonprofit organization has played a central role in keeping the lights on for 65 million people in the Eastern United States.Even some governors and lawmakers acknowledge that they were not fully aware of how much influence the organization, PJM, has on the cost and reliability of energy in 13 states. The electrical grid it manages is the largest in the United States.But now some elected leaders have concluded that decisions made by PJM are one of the main reasons utility bills have soared in recent years. They said the organization had been slow to add new solar, wind and battery projects that could help lower the cost of electricity. And they say the grid manager is paying existing power plants too much to supply electricity to their states.Some governors have been so incensed that they have sued PJM, drafted or signed laws to force changes at the organization, or threatened to pull their states out of the regional electric grid.The Democratic governors of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania sharply criticized the organization in recent interviews with The New York Times and in written statements. And the Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, called on the organization to fire its chief executive in a letter obtained by The Times.“PJM has lost the plot,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said in an interview. In another interview, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said about PJM, “I am angry.”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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      Ready for Their Reboot: How Galleries Plumb Art History’s Forgotten Talent

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      Saara Pritchard, an art adviser, was visiting a friend in Miami when a painting in the bedroom caught her eye. Bordered in silver leaf, it was a close-cropped, black-and-white image of John F. Kennedy, eyes skyward and mouth slightly agape. The haunting image resembled a death mask — as if made by the love child of Andy Warhol and the Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico. Who, Pritchard wondered, had painted it?The answer was Marcia Marcus, a popular artist in the downtown New York scene in the 1960s and ’70s who had since faded from view. Pritchard, 40, set out to learn everything she could about Marcus. Within a year she was standing in the home of one of the artist’s daughters, Jane Barrell Yadav, in Yonkers, N.Y., who had more than 200 of her mother’s canvases. The paintings were packed tightly in closets and makeshift storage racks in the living room.Marcia Marcus from “The Human Situation.” Left, “Tyna, Alvin, Baby,” 1970-71; right, “Family II,” 1970. The two girls are modeled on her daughters Kate, left, and Jane, with their father. via Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York; Photo by Elisabeth BernsteinThrough June 21, many of those artworks are on view at Lévy Gorvy Dayan, a stately Upper East Side gallery, as part of “The Human Situation,” an exhibition conceived by Pritchard that put Marcus’s work in dialogue with two better-known female painters from the era, Alice Neel and Sylvia Sleigh. Over the past two and a half years, Pritchard has worked alongside Barrell Yadav and her sister Kate Prendergast to piece together Marcus’s story in the hope of turning her from an art-historical footnote into a blue-chip star.Marcus is among a growing group of artists who have benefited from what could be called “the rediscovery industrial complex”: a cottage industry within the art market that looks to the past to find figures — often women and artists of color — neglected by the establishment. By repackaging them for a contemporary audience, savvy dealers hope to enrich the art-historical canon even as they make a healthy profit.The upside can be considerable. Consider the case of the painter Lynne Drexler, who lived on a remote island in Maine. Before she died in 1999, she sold her work to tourists for as little as $50. In recent years, her lyrical landscapes have sold for more than $1 million at auction.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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      Tesla Protesters Claim a Victory as Elon Musk Leaves Trump’s Side

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      The activists behind the Tesla Takedown campaign say they intend to expand beyond protests at the company’s showrooms.Elon Musk left the Trump administration with a White House send-off on Friday. That was a victory of sorts for a group of activists who have spent much of the last four months organizing protests against Mr. Musk’s right-wing politics by targeting his electric car company, Tesla.A day later, on Saturday, hundreds of people showed up at more than 50 Tesla showrooms and other company locations to continue their protests.The campaign at Tesla sites began in February after Joan Donovan, a sociology professor at Boston University, gathered friends to hold a demonstration at a Tesla showroom in Boston, and posted a notice about her plan on Bluesky using the hashtag #TeslaTakedown. She said she had been inspired by a small protest at Tesla’s electric vehicle chargers in Maine soon after President Trump’s inauguration.“That first one on Feb. 15 was me and like 50 people,” Ms. Donovan said. “And then the next week it was a hundred more people, and then a hundred more after that, and it’s just grown.”Tesla Takedown has since expanded into an international movement, staging demonstrations at Tesla factories, showrooms and other locations in countries including Australia, Britain, France and Germany as well as across the United States. The campaign’s U.S. growth has been fueled in large part by anger over Mr. Musk’s leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency, which has slashed government spending and dismissed tens of thousands of federal workers while gaining access to sensitive personal data.Mr. Musk departed the administration after his involvement in politics hurt his companies, especially Tesla. Sales of the company’s cars have tumbled since Mr. Trump took office and the start of protests against the company.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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      U.S. Oil Companies Are ‘Battening Down the Hatches’

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      The industry is bracing for the OPEC Plus oil cartel’s meeting on Saturday, which is widely expected to further increase oil production despite weak demand.U.S. oil companies are pulling back as lower commodity prices take a toll.After two months of crude oil prices hovering around $60 a barrel, companies are shutting down drilling rigs and laying off workers as they pare spending. It now appears very likely that U.S. oil production will not grow much this year, if at all.There are two main reasons for low oil prices. President Trump’s trade war is likely to slow the global economy, hurting demand for fuel. And OPEC Plus, an oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia, is increasing production of oil as demand is softening.On Saturday, eight members of the cartel are widely expected to announce plans to bring even more oil to market this summer, which could send prices lower still.American oil companies are not waiting to find out.While the oil giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron are maintaining their spending plans, smaller companies are pulling back. Those focused on drilling for oil now plan to spend around 3.5 percent less this year than previously planned, according to a BloombergNEF analysis of a dozen publicly traded companies. All things equal, more drilling tends to drive oil prices down and less drilling generally props them up.“We can’t run our program on hope,” Tom Jorden, chief executive of the oil and gas producer Coterra Energy, told analysts during an earnings call this month. “So we are battening down the hatches, expecting this to last for a while.”The Houston-based company said it would drill less in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, the top U.S. oil field, and more in the Northeast, which is rich in natural gas. Prices for that fuel, used in power plants and for heating, have been much more resilient.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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      Data Centers’ Hunger for Energy Could Raise All Electric Bills

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      Individuals and small businesses may end up bearing some of the cost of grid upgrades needed for large electricity users, a new report found.Individuals and small business have been paying more for power in recent years, and their electricity rates may climb higher still.That’s because the cost of the power plants, transmission lines and other equipment that utilities need to serve data centers, factories and other large users of electricity is likely to be spread to everybody who uses electricity, according to a new report.The report by Wood MacKenzie, an energy research firm, examined 20 large power users. In almost all of those cases, the firm found, the money that large energy users paid to electric utilities would not be enough to cover the cost of the equipment needed to serve them. The rest of the costs would be borne by other utility customers or the utility itself.The utilities “either need to socialize the cost to other ratepayers or absorb that cost — essentially, their shareholders would take the hit,” said Ben Hertz-Shargel, who is the global head of grid edge research for Wood MacKenzie.This is not a theoretical dilemma for utilities and the state officials who oversee their operations and approve or reject their rates. Electricity demand is expected to grow substantially over the next several decades as technology companies build large data centers for their artificial intelligence businesses. Electricity demand in some parts of the United States is expected to increase as much as 15 percent over just the next four years after several decades of little or no growth.The rapid increase in data centers, which use electricity to power computer servers and keep them cool, has strained many utilities. Demand is also growing because of new factories and the greater use of electric cars and electric heating and cooling.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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      How Much Does It Cost to See Beyoncé? It Depends.

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      Some fans who paid top dollar for the star’s Cowboy Carter Tour are feeling miffed as prices drop. Other procrastinators are reaping the benefits.Tanaka Paschal, 43, was thrilled to be taking her son to Beyoncé’s final Southern California show on her Cowboy Carter Tour this month. They had missed the Renaissance World Tour two summers ago; tickets had sold out so fast, some fans ventured overseas to catch a gig.“I thought I was not going to be able to see her, so I jumped on it,” she said.Paschal bought a pair of floor seats for about $900 total, but like many others, she soon had a bit of buyers’ remorse. In the weeks that followed, she saw the price for similar seats drop by hundreds of dollars, then increase, then drop again.“It’s frustrating,” she said. “The next time, I’m going to wait until the day of.”When tickets for big summer tours by acts like Lady Gaga, the Weeknd and Kendrick Lamar and SZA go on sale, the prevailing wisdom is you have to move fast during one of the presales offered by artists and credit card companies or you’ll be shut out.Most, if not all, tickets are usually snatched up immediately, with prime seats popping up on resale platforms like StubHub or Ticketmaster’s own secondary market at inflated prices. (Fans hoping to see Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour famously didn’t even get a shot at the general on-sale: All the tickets were long gone.)Kendrick Lamar is also on a stadium tour this year, supporting his recent album, “GNX” and a big year.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesBut things have been different for Beyoncé’s tour this time supporting her Grammy album of the year-winning “Cowboy Carter”; tickets moved during the presales, but a glance at the seat maps on Ticketmaster’s pages later revealed not only a lot of pink dots indicating resale tickets, but plenty of blue dots representing available seats that had gone unpurchased, too. And those prices were notably changing.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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      California Approves 17 Percent Rate Increase for State Farm

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      Homeowners reeling from the wildfires in January say that State Farm’s increased rates are unfair and unfounded.State Farm will be allowed to temporarily charge an extra 17 percent for homeowners’ insurance policies in California, after the state gave the company permission, in the wake of the catastrophic fires. The insurer will be allowed to charge the higher rate at least until a hearing later this year, the state announced on Tuesday.The insurance giant already received a 20 percent rate increase last year, a move that a consumer watchdog group, as well as homeowners struggling to be paid after their homes were destroyed in January in the Los Angeles fires, criticized as unfair and unfounded.State Farm requested the emergency rate increase in February, the month after fires ripped through the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods of Los Angeles, razing over 16,000 homes and structures. The company — which insures one out of every five homes in California or roughly 1 million homeowner customers — had requested even more: a nearly 22 percent rate increase on homeowners’ policies, citing a “dire situation.”California, like other states hit by natural disasters, has faced threats from major insurers: Raise rates, or we leave the state, said Carmen Balber, the executive director of Consumer Watchdog, which led the effort to oppose the rate increase in hearings this spring.“The commissioner has shown a tendency to roll over in the face of insurer threats to leave,” Ms. Balber said. The increase “adds insult to injury” at a time when many homeowners insured by State Farm have reported delays or attempts by State Farm to lowball claims following the fires earlier this year, she added.In a statement, Ricardo Lara, the state’s insurance commissioner, presented the rate increase as a difficult compromise for consumers. “Let me be clear: We are in a statewide insurance crisis affecting millions of Californians,” he said. “Taking this on requires tough decisions.”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

    • 125 Shares169 Views

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      Just About Everything That’s Changed Since Congestion Pricing Took Effect

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      <!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Almost immediately after the tolls went into effect Jan. 5 — charging most vehicles $9 to enter Manhattan from 60th Street south to the Battery — they began to alter traffic patterns, commuter behavior, transit service, even the sound of gridlock and the on-time arrival of school buses.–><!–> –><!–> [!–> […] More

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      Trump Plan Would Tie Some Drug Prices to What Peer Nations Pay

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      The president announced an executive order aimed at lowering U.S. drug costs, revisiting an idea that was blocked in court during his first term.President Trump will sign an executive order on Monday aimed at lowering some drug prices in the United States by aligning them with what other wealthy countries pay, he said on Truth Social on Sunday evening.The proposal he described, which alone cannot shift federal policy, is what he calls a “most favored nation” pricing model. Mr. Trump did not provide details about which type of insurance the plan would apply to or how many drugs it would target, but he indicated that the United States should pay the lowest price among its peer countries.“Our Country will finally be treated fairly, and our citizens Healthcare Costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before,” he wrote in his social media post.Any such plan will most likely be subject to challenges in court, and it is not clear whether it will pass legal muster, especially without action by Congress.In his first term, Mr. Trump tried unsuccessfully to enact a version of this idea for Medicare, the health insurance program that covers 68 million Americans who are over 65 or have disabilities. That plan would have applied only to 50 drugs, administered at clinics and hospitals, that are paid for by Medicare. A federal court blocked it, ruling that the administration had skipped steps in the policymaking process.The pharmaceutical industry bitterly opposes the idea, which would almost certainly cut into its profits, and has been lobbying against it as discussions of the policy have regained steam in Washington in recent weeks. Companies have warned that such a policy would lead them to spend less on research, depriving patients of new medicines.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