New York
Presidency Doesn’t Shield Trump From Carroll’s Suit, Justice Dept. Says

The Justice Department said Tuesday that it would no longer argue that President Donald J. Trump’s derogatory statements about E. Jean Carroll in 2019 were made as part of his official duties as president — a reversal that gives new momentum to her case.
Ms. Carroll, 79, who won $5 million in damages in a trial accusing Mr. Trump of sexual abuse in the 1990s and defamation after he left the White House in January 2021, now is trying to push forward a separate lawsuit over comments that he made while president. That case has been mired in appeals. If a judge ultimately finds that those earlier comments were part of Mr. Trump’s official duties, that case would likely be dismissed.
The Justice Department had taken the position, first during the Trump administration and later under President Biden, that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity when he called Ms. Carroll a liar and denied her accusation that he had raped her nearly 30 years ago in a Manhattan department store dressing room.
But the department said in a court filing Tuesday that new evidence had surfaced since Mr. Trump, 77, left office — including in the recent civil trial in which a Manhattan jury found Mr. Trump liable for sexually assaulting Ms. Carroll decades ago.
The fresh set of facts suggests “that Mr. Trump was motivated by a ‘personal grievance’ stemming from events that occurred many years prior to Mr. Trump’s presidency,” department lawyers said in the filing.
The lawyers noted that Mr. Trump’s 2019 statements about Ms. Carroll were made through official channels that presidents often use to communicate with the news media. But, they said, “Although the statements themselves were made in a work context, the allegations that prompted the statements related to a purely personal incident: an alleged sexual assault that occurred decades prior to Mr. Trump’s presidency.”
A lawyer for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, said in a statement: “We are grateful that the Department of Justice has reconsidered its position. We have always believed that Donald Trump made his defamatory statements about our client in June 2019 out of personal animus, ill will, and spite, and not as president of the United States.”
Ms. Carroll’s pending defamation lawsuit stems from Mr. Trump’s words in 2019 after she first publicly accused him of pushing her up against a dressing room wall in the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s, pulling down her tights, opening his pants and forcing himself upon her. Ms. Carroll made her accusation in a book excerpt in New York magazine.
Mr. Trump at the time called Ms. Carroll’s accusation “totally false,” said he had never met her and that he could not have raped her because she was not his “type.”
After Ms. Carroll sued, the Justice Department, then led by the attorney general, William P. Barr, intervened under a law that substitutes the government as the defendant when a federal official is sued for official acts, which would lead to the case’s dismissal.
The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of U.S. District Court, rejected the department’s move, ruling that Mr. Trump’s comments had “no relationship to the official business of the United States.”
A protracted appeal followed, with the case ultimately being returned to Judge Kaplan.
The judge asked the department to weigh in for a second time after Ms. Carroll’s lawyers revised her lawsuit to include yet another round of disparaging remarks that Mr. Trump made, this time on CNN on May 10, one day after the verdict in the trial.
Mr. Trump, in response to questions from the CNN moderator, called Ms. Carroll a “wack job” and said that her assault claim was “fake” and a “made-up story” and that her civil trial was “a rigged deal.”
In their letter Tuesday, the department lawyers said the new evidence they considered in reaching their decision included the recent jury verdict, the new allegations in Ms. Carroll’s revised complaint and a review of a deposition given by Mr. Trump in connection with Ms. Carroll’s case.
“There is no longer a sufficient basis to conclude that the former president was motivated by ‘more than an insignificant’ desire to serve the United States government,” the lawyers wrote.

New York
Are You Smarter Than a Billionaire?

Over the course of one week, some of the richest people in the world descended on New York’s auction houses to purchase over $1 billion of art. It might have played out a little differently than you would have expected.
Can you guess which of these works sold for more?
Note: Listed sale prices include auction fees.
Image credits: “Untitled,” via Phillips; “Baby Boom,” via Christie’s Images LTD; “Hazy Sun,” With permission of the Renate, Hans & Maria Hofmann Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via Christie’s Images LTD; “Petit Matin,” via Christie’s Images LTD; “Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio,” Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome; via Sotheby’s; “Baroque Egg with Bow (Orange/Magenta),” via Sotheby’s; “The Last Supper,” The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via Christie’s Images LTD; “Campbell’s Soup I,” The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via Christie’s Images LTD; “Miss January,” via Christie’s Images LTD; “Fingermalerei – Akt,” via Sotheby’s; “Grande tête mince (Grande tête de Diego),” Succession Alberto Giacometti/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY; via Sotheby’s; “Tête au long cou,” Succession Alberto Giacometti/ARS, NY/Photos: ADAGP Images/Paris 2025; via Christie’s Images LTD; “Revelacion,” Remedios Varo, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VEGAP, Madrid; via Christie’s Images LTD; “Le jardin nocturne,” Foundation Paul Delvaux, Sint-Idesbald – ARS/SABAM Belgium; via Christie’s Images LTD.
Produced by Daniel Simmons-Ritchie.
New York
Video: How a Mexican Navy Ship Crashed Into the Brooklyn Bridge

On Saturday, a Mexican Navy ship on a good will tour left a New York City pier bound for Iceland. Four minutes later, it crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge. [Spanish] “It’s falling!” [English] “No way!” Here’s what happened. The Cuauhtémoc had been docked on the Lower East Side of Manhattan for four days, open to visitors looking for a cultural experience. As the ship prepared to leave on Saturday night, a tugboat arrived to escort it out of its pier at 8:20 p.m. The ship’s bow, the front of the vessel, faced Manhattan, meaning it would need to back out of its berth into the East River. As the Cuauhtémoc pulled away from shore, the tugboat appeared to push the side of the ship, helping to pivot the bow south toward its intended route. The river was flowing northeast toward the Brooklyn Bridge and the wind was blowing in roughly the same direction, potentially pushing the ship toward a collision. Photos and videos suggest the tugboat was not tied to the ship, limiting its ability to pull the ship away from the bridge. The Cuauhtémoc began to drift north, back first, up the river. Dr. Salvatore Mercogliano, who’s an adjunct professor at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, told The Times that the ship appeared to be giving off a wake. This suggests its propellers may have been running in reverse, pushing it faster toward the bridge. The tugboat sped alongside the ship as it headed north, possibly trying to get in front of it and help the ship maneuver the other way. But it was unable to cut the ship off or reverse its course. All three masts crashed into the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge at approximately 8:24 p.m., four minutes after the ship had left the pier, causing the top sails to collapse. Crew members standing on the masts during the collision were thrown off entirely. Others remained hanging from their harnesses. A New York City patrol boat arrived about eight minutes after the collision, followed quickly by a fire department boat. Additional law enforcement and emergency medical services removed the wounded for treatment. According to the Mexican Navy, two of the 227 people aboard the ship were killed and 22 others were injured.
New York
Audio Data Shows Newark Outage Problems Persisted Longer Than Officials Said

On April 28, controllers at a Philadelphia facility managing air traffic for Newark Liberty International Airport and smaller regional airports in New Jersey suddenly lost radar and radio contact with planes in one of the busiest airspaces in the country.
On Monday, two weeks after the episode, Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, said that the radio returned “almost immediately,” while the radar took up to 90 seconds before it was operational.
A Times analysis of flight traffic data and air traffic control feed, however, reveals that controllers were struggling with communication issues for several minutes after transmissions first blacked out.
The episode resulted in multiple air traffic controllers requesting trauma leave, triggering severe flight delays at Newark that have continued for more than two weeks.
Several exchanges between pilots and controllers show how the outage played out.
Outage Begins
Air traffic recordings show that controllers at the Philadelphia facility first lost radio and radar communications for about a minute starting just before 1:27 p.m., after a controller called out to United Flight 1951, inbound from Phoenix.
The pilot of United 1951 replied to the controller’s call, but there was no answer for over a minute.
1:26:41 PM
Controller
OK, United 1951.
1:26:45 PM
Pilot
Go ahead.
1:27:18 PM
Pilot
Do you hear us?
1:27:51 PM
Controller
How do you hear me?
1:27:53 PM
Pilot
I got you loud and clear now.
Two other planes reached out during the same period as United 1951 — a Boeing 777 inbound from Austria and headed to Newark, and a plane whose pilot called out to a controller, “Approach, are you there?” Their calls went unanswered as well.
Radio Resumes, With Unreliable Radar
From 1:27 to 1:28 p.m., radio communications between pilots and controllers resumed. But soon after, a controller was heard telling multiple aircraft about an ongoing radar outage that was preventing controllers from seeing aircraft on their radarscopes.
One of the planes affected by the radar issues was United Flight 674, a commercial passenger jet headed from Charleston to Newark.
1:27:32 PM
Pilot
United 674, approach.
1:27:36 PM
Controller
Radar contact lost, we lost our radar.
1:30:34 PM
Controller
Turn left 30 degrees.
1:31:03 PM
Pilot
All right, we’re on a heading of 356. …
1:31:44 PM
Controller
I see the turn. I think our radar might be a couple seconds behind.
Once the radio started operating again, some controllers switched from directing flights along their planned paths to instead providing contingency flight instructions.
At 1:28 p.m., the pilot of Flight N16NF, a high-end private jet, was called by a controller who said, “radar contact lost.” The pilot was then told to contact a different controller on another radio frequency.
About two and a half minutes later, the new controller, whose radar did appear to be functioning, instructed the pilot to steer towards a location that would be clear of other aircraft in case the radio communications dropped again.
Flight N426CB, a small private jet flying from Florida to New Jersey, was told to call a different radio frequency at Essex County Airport, known as Caldwell Airport, in northern New Jersey for navigational aid. That was in case the controllers in Philadelphia lost radio communications again.
1:27:57 PM
Controller
If for whatever reason, you don’t hear anything from me further, you can expect to enter right downwind and call Caldwell Tower.
1:29:19 PM
Controller
You just continue on towards the field. They’re going to help navigate you in.
This is in case we are losing our frequencies.
1:29:32 PM
Pilot
OK, I’m going over to Caldwell. Talk to you. Have a good afternoon.
Minutes Later, Radar Issues Persist
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, aircraft reappeared on radarscopes within 90 seconds of the outage’s start, but analysis of air traffic control recordings suggest that the radar remained unreliable for at least some radio frequencies for several minutes after the outage began around 1:27 p.m.
At 1:32 p.m., six minutes after the radio went quiet, Flight N824TP, a small private plane, contacted the controller to request clearance to enter “Class B” airspace — the type around the busiest airports in the country. The request was denied, and the pilot was asked to contact a different radio frequency.
1:32:43 PM
Pilot
Do I have Bravo clearance?
1:32:48 PM
Controller
You do not have a Bravo clearance. We lost our radar, and it’s not working correctly. …
If you want a Bravo clearance, you can just call the tower when you get closer.
1:32:59 PM
Pilot
I’ll wait for that frequency from you, OK?
1:33:03 PM
Controller
Look up the tower frequencies, and we don’t have a radar, so I don’t know where you are.
The last flight to land at Newark was at 1:44 p.m., but about half an hour after the outage began, a controller was still reporting communication problems.
“You’ll have to do that on your own navigation. Our radar and radios are unreliable at the moment,” a Philadelphia controller said to a small aircraft flying from Long Island around 1:54 p.m.
Since April 28, there has been an additional radar outage on May 9, which the F.A.A. also characterized as lasting about 90 seconds. Secretary Duffy has proposed a plan to modernize equipment in the coming months, but the shortage of trained staff members is likely to persist into next year.
-
Culture1 week ago
Book Review: ‘Original Sin,’ by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson
-
News1 week ago
As Harvard Battles Trump, Its President Will Take a 25% Pay Cut
-
Education1 week ago
Video: Opinion | We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the U.S.
-
Technology1 week ago
Love, Death, and Robots keeps a good thing going in volume 4
-
News1 week ago
Menendez Brothers Resentenced to Life With Parole, Paving Way for Freedom
-
Education1 week ago
A $5 Billion Federal School Voucher Proposal Advances in Congress
-
Technology1 week ago
Meta’s beef with the press flares at its antitrust trial
-
Politics1 week ago
Republicans say they're 'out of the loop' on Trump's $400M Qatari plane deal