Trump administration officials began releasing significant amounts of water from two dams in California’s Central Valley on Friday in a move that seemed intended to make a political point as President Trump continued to falsely blame the Los Angeles wildfires on water policies in the Democratic-run state. The releases, as ordered, have sent water toward…

More than three weeks after the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires broke out in Southern California, state officials on Friday evening said that firefighters had fully contained both fires, meaning that the perimeters of the fires were completely under control. Evacuation orders had already been lifted, and for more than a week the fires have…

Decades of trade integration across North America are on the precipice of major disruption by tariffs that President Trump said he wants to impose on Canada and Mexico, the United States’ top trading partners, as soon as Saturday. And while tariffs are predicted to inflict pain on all three nations, they would cause more damage…

Justin Peck’s newest work for New York City Ballet, his 25th, is called “Mystic Familiar,” a title that turns out to be telling. Those two words encapsulate the rise and fall of its aspirations and limitations. It’s a dance that tries to be mystic, but mostly it’s just familiar. The title is borrowed from an…

Bun Lai, a chef who has advocated for invasive-crab consumption for more than 20 years, stood in a food-preparation zone that he calls his “lab,” checking on small crabs in a dehydrator. A print of Picasso’s “Don Quixote” hung on a wall. Lai’s lab is one part of Miya’s in the Woods, a private embassy…

Israel has resisted the notion that the Palestinian Authority would control postwar Gaza, despite the urging of the Biden administration. President Trump’s vision for who might rule the enclave after the conflict remains unclear. The office of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said that the “practical involvement of the Palestinian Authority” would be only…

When President Trump said on Wednesday that his order to freeze federal spending was about “scams, dishonesty, waste and abuse,” he was echoing promises made by his predecessors in both parties. Yes, the memo was a sweeping attempt to remake what he calls a “woke” government in his image. Yes, it was part of his…

Chuck Todd, the former “Meet the Press” moderator and a longtime fixture of NBC’s political coverage, told colleagues on Friday that he was leaving the network. A nearly two-decade veteran of NBC, Mr. Todd said that Friday would be his last day at NBC. “There’s never a perfect time to leave a place that’s been…

CBS News plans to comply with a request from the Federal Communications Commission for the unedited transcript of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris that aired last year and became the subject of a lawsuit brought against the network by President Trump. The network’s news division received a letter of inquiry from the F.C.C.,…

Judge McConnell’s Friday order does not block the Trump administration from continuing its review, only from defunding those programs that fail its tests in the states that sued — New York, California, Illinois, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Washington…