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      Secret Service Shoots Armed Man Near the White House

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      President Trump was in Florida at the time of the episode, during which a man held a gun and a confrontation ensued, the agency said.The Secret Service shot a man near the White House early Sunday after an “armed confrontation” with law enforcement officers, the agency said in a statement.President Trump was not at the White House at the time. He is spending the weekend in Florida at his Mar-a-Lago Club.Earlier on Saturday, the local police shared information with the Secret Service about a suicidal person who may have been traveling to Washington from Indiana. Around midnight, members of the Secret Service encountered the person’s parked vehicle near 17th and F Streets, about a block from the White House. A man was outside of the vehicle, the agency said.As officers approached, they saw that the man had a gun and then a confrontation ensued, during which the Secret Service shot the man, the agency said.He was transported to a hospital, and his condition was unknown, the Secret Service said. There were no reported injuries to anyone with the Secret Service.The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington is investigating the shooting. More

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      Are Liberal Democrats Really ‘Bewildered’?

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      To the Editor:Re “Join My Bewildered Liberals Book Club,” by Nicholas Kristof (column, Feb. 23):I had previously read the books recommended by Mr. Kristof in his column. I take from them many of the same lessons he reiterates. I did find, though, his “bewildered liberals” characterization insulting. Many of us are frustrated, certainly, but not bewildered.As someone who graduated from college, but also worked for three different unions over a 40-year career, I have had firsthand experience with the travails of working men and women. But I part company with Mr. Kristof in laying so much of the blame for President Trump’s rise on misguided, liberal “elites,” who supposedly disdain or dismiss working people.Working men and women abandoned the labor movement in large numbers over the last four decades in part because their U.S.-based unions were ill equipped to deal with cheap, foreign competition that eliminated so many of their jobs.That competition was fostered by offshoring promoted by U.S. corporate and political elites from both sides of the aisle. But workers disarmed themselves politically and economically by too often blaming and abandoning unions in the face of that competition, instead of using the leverage that organizing provides to elect and influence more local, state and congressional allies.Elections have consequences, and until working people vote in their own interests again, aspiring despots like President Trump and Vice President JD Vance will win elections and workers will lose them.Doug AllenTruckee, Calif.To the Editor:I would add to Nicholas Kristof’s “Bewildered Liberals Book Club” list the sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s two excellent books about why low-income white people feel shamed and abused by liberals: “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right” (2016), based in rural Louisiana, and “Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right” (2024), focused on Pikeville, Ky.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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      Musk’s Tweet-Fueled Bubble May Be About to Burst

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      Elon Musk’s business empire may be starting to wobble.Over the past six weeks, the value of Tesla’s shares has plunged about 40 percent, wiping out virtually all they had gained after the 2024 election. This reversal reveals Mr. Musk’s soft underbelly: His fortune depends heavily on the inflated expectations of his rabid following. As those expectations deflate so will his power, demonstrating that financial markets are an underappreciated guardrail against both Mr. Musk’s and President Trump’s agendas.It is tempting to compare Mr. Musk to the true business titans of the past quarter century such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. But those individuals created genuinely huge businesses that eclipse anything Mr. Musk has built by any possible metric. While Mr. Musk has built a car company from the ground up — no easy feat — his wealth is largely thanks to a financial cult, one in which legions of dazzled investor-followers have enabled him to launch an ever-growing list of disparate initiatives and provided immunity from critics who question his operational decision-making, his corporate governance, his obscene pay packages, and now his migration into the political sphere.The high-wire act goes something like this: Dream up a business so ambitious that any setback is trivial and every accomplishment heroic. Identify yourself as the manic genius behind this ambitious business in order to personally capitalize on outsize returns from excited investors. Enlist social media to cement your iconic status, keeping your believers so enthusiastic that their fervor beats back any skeptics who dare to bet against your ventures, even as you pitch more and more fantastical ideas. At this point you hit the flywheel: Other investors, searching for outsize returns, flock to the shares of your other companies, pushing their valuations ever higher, thus fortifying your wealth and burnishing your reputation as a business mastermind.If you’re lucky, this happens when investors are dreaming of alternatives to the poor returns available when interest rates are ridiculously low; magical thinking about the power of technology suppresses any worry about the risks of problems down the line; and retail markets are turning stock trading into something more akin to online gambling.Understanding this cult requires one to rethink what one knows about finance. Financial purists like to think of financial markets as neutral arbiters that merely record the value-creating activities of entrepreneurs. Financial pragmatists understand that prices need not always reflect value, as behavioral finance has demonstrated. But what if entrepreneurs can capitalize on these dynamics to manufacture fortunes and political power?This trick is precisely what Mr. Musk has mastered. His messianic status, which was birthed in the explosion of social media, created a powerful cycle of outsize returns on ventures that lead to investors providing him with more and cheaper capital to diversify his empire that, in turn, attracts yet more investors fearful of missing out. Skyrocketing Tesla shares have made fans and investors so devoted that all he has to do is mention a new ambition to goad them into buying even more. And the larger the stated ambition, the more wealth and power they hand him. So why not try for Mars? The final step in this process is to consolidate power in the political sphere to ensure that the outsize ambitions can be nourished forever. If Mr. Musk had played it well, his empire may have been impregnable.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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      Rage Against Elon Musk Turns Tesla Into a Target

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      Tesla charging stations were set ablaze near Boston on Monday. Shots were fired at a Tesla dealership in Oregon after midnight on Thursday. Arrests were made at a nonviolent protest at a Tesla dealership in Lower Manhattan on Saturday.The electric car company Tesla increasingly found itself in police blotters across the country this week, more than seven weeks after President Trump’s second inauguration swept Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, into the administration as a senior adviser to the president.Mr. Musk, 53, is drawing increasing backlash for his sweeping cuts to federal agencies, a result of the newly formed cost-cutting initiative Mr. Musk has labeled the Department of Government Efficiency.During a demonstration on Saturday at a gleaming Tesla showroom in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan, protesters joined in chants of “Nobody voted for Elon Musk” and “Oligarchs out, democracy in.” One held a sign saying, “Send Musk to Mars Now!!” (Mr. Musk also owns SpaceX.)Shots were fired at the Tesla dealership in Tigard, Ore., this week.Tigard Police DepartmentSeveral hundred protesters remained there for two hours, organizers said, blocking entrances and shutting down the dealership.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 Pulled $400 million From Columbia. Other Schools Could Be Next.

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      The administration has circulated a list that includes nine other campuses, accusing them of failure to address antisemitism.The Trump Administration’s abrupt withdrawal of $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University cast a pall over at least nine other campuses worried they could be next.The schools, a mix that includes both public universities and Ivy League institutions, have been placed on an official administration list of schools the Department of Justice said may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty.Faculty leaders at many of the schools have pushed back strongly against claims that their campuses are hotbeds of antisemitism, noting that while some Jewish students complained that they felt unsafe, the vast majority of protesters were peaceful and many of the protest participants were themselves Jewish. The Trump administration has made targeting higher education a priority. This week, the president threatened in a social media post to punish any school that permits “illegal” protests. On Jan. 30, his 10th day in office, he signed an executive order on combating antisemitism, focusing on what he called anti-Jewish racism at “leftists” universities. Then, on Feb. 3, he announced the creation of a multiagency task force to carry out the mandate.The task force appeared to move into action quickly after a pro-Palestinian sit-in and protest at Barnard College, a partner school to Columbia, led to arrests on Feb. 26. Two days later, the administration released its list of 10 schools under scrutiny, including Columbia, the site of large pro-Palestinian encampments last year.It said it would be paying the schools a visit, part of a review process to consider “whether remedial action is warranted.” Then on Friday, it announced it would be canceling millions in grants and contracts with Columbia.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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      Climate United Sues E.P.A. Over Frozen $20 Billion

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      In a lawsuit, Climate United claims the E.P.A. is illegally withholding funds that have become a target of the Trump administration.A multibillion dollar dispute between the Environmental Protection Agency and several nonprofit organizations escalated on Saturday when one group sued the E.P.A. and Citibank, seeking access to grant money that has been frozen under President Trump.Climate United, a nonprofit organization, claimed that the E.P.A. and Citibank have illegally withheld a nearly $7 billion award announced last April. Citibank has housed the funds as part of a green financing program to finance projects that address climate change.The funds are part of a larger pot of money, $20 billion, that have been swept up in controversy after Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, called the green financing program a “scheme” that was “purposely designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.”Now, some of the nonprofits say, their bank accounts are frozen and that they are struggling to pay staff.Climate United had planned to loan the money to developers across the country in support of solar power, electric trucks, and energy-efficient affordable housing projects, and said the freeze has meant small businesses and developers are unable to draw down funds they were promised.“We’re not trying to make a political statement here,” said Beth Bafford, chief executive of Climate United. “This is about math for homeowners, for truck drivers, for public schools — we know that accessing clean energy saves them money that they can use on far more important things.”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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      House Republicans Unveil Spending Bill to Avert Government Shutdown

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      House Republicans on Saturday unveiled a measure to fund the government through Sept. 30, boosting spending on the military and daring Democrats to oppose it and risk being blamed for a government shutdown that would begin after midnight Friday.The 99-page legislation would slightly decrease spending overall from last year’s funding levels, but would increase spending for the military by $6 billion, in a nod to the concerns of G.O.P. defense hawks that stopgap measures would hamstring the Pentagon. It would not include any funds for any earmarks for projects in lawmakers’ districts or states, saving roughly $13 billion, according to congressional aides.The bill provides a slight funding boost for Immigration and Customs Enforcement — an additional $485 million — but gives the administration more flexibility on how the agency can spend it. It also increases funding for the federal program that provides free groceries to millions of low-income women and children, known as W.I.C., by about $500 million.Speaker Mike Johnson in the Capitol this week. If Democrats are unanimously opposed to the Republicans’ spending bill, Mr. Johnson will have just a vote or two to spare to get the bill through the House next week.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIt was unclear whether the legislation could pass the Republican-controlled Congress. Speaker Mike Johnson will need to navigate the bill through his extremely narrow House majority as early as Tuesday and has just a vote or two to spare if Democrats are unanimously opposed. The pressure would shift quickly to the Senate if House Republicans can pass the legislation, raising the question of whether Democrats would mount a filibuster against the bill and trigger a shutdown.While conservative House Republicans have in the past dug in and opposed such spending bills, forcing Mr. Johnson to rely on Democrats to keep the government open, President Trump called on Republicans to unite and push this measure through so he and Republicans on Capitol Hill could focus on their new budgetary and tax-cutting plans.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 Wants to Kill Carried Interest. Wall Street Will Fight to Keep It.

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      President Trump has been trying to eliminate the tax loophole, which benefits Wall Street, but Congressional Republicans may stand in the way.Nearly a month has passed since President Trump last spoke publicly of his desire to kill the carried interest loophole. (Yes, we know, some of you don’t consider it a “loophole.”) And yet the private equity industry, which stands to lose big if the president upends the tax break, is still bracing for a fight.This is the biggest challenge to the provision since it was nearly neutered three years ago under former President Joe Biden, Grady McGregor writes for DealBook.A reminder: the carried interest rule means that executives at hedge funds and P.E. and venture capital firms pay roughly 20 percent tax on their profits, a rate that’s so low it’s drawn criticism from Warren Buffett and from progressive senators like Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts.One Washington lawyer described the lobbying effort to DealBook as “significant,” a sign of the escalating stakes.Consider what’s happened in the past month: The American Investment Council, the private equity lobbying group, is reportedly circulating memos on Capitol Hill reminding lawmakers that private equity is a jobs creator. Venture capitalists, seemingly omnipresent in Trump’s Washington, grumble that they have to keep returning to Congress to “educate lawmakers” about the rule’s benefits. So-called free market groups, meanwhile, have banded together to ask Congress to maintain the status quo.“They’ll fight tooth-and-nail on any sort of change,” said Jessica Millett, a tax partner at Hogan Lovells.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