April Flakne, a philosophy professor at New College in Sarasota, Fla., on Dec. 6, 2025. Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies vowed to turn New College, the tiny public university in Sarasota, into a bastion of conservatism. (Michael Adno/The New York Times) By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS April Flakne strides into the classroom to teach a course on “The Odyssey,” a new requirement at New College of Florida. She has taught philosophy at the small state college for 25 years, but this class

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in her office at the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, Dec. 18, 2025. “We feel bad, actually, for the president,” Omar said of herself and other members of the Somali-American community. “We also know we’re not garbage. We have not been broken by the life experiences that we’ve gone through. Words are not really that hurtful when you’ve survived war.” (Eric Lee/The New York Times) By ANNIE KARNI When Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., became an A

The community gathered at the Taino Towers Crystal Room for the annual “Coquito Masters” competition in New York, Dec. 20, 2025. The Puerto Rican rum and coconut drink used to be passed down within families, but now it has become a holiday party staple beyond the community. (Natalie Keyssar/The New York Times) By TAYLOR ROBINSON Milly Rodríguez’s recipe came from her grandmother, who she said patented it in Puerto Rico in the 1940s. Minerva Minaya is known for a blend she has

By ALAN FEUER A federal judge in Washington ruled earlier this week that the Trump administration had to either help bring back to the United States a group of Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador in March and subsequently sent back to their homeland or give them a chance to contest their expulsions in the U.S. courts. The ruling by the judge, James Boasberg, was the latest twist in the long-running saga of the Venezuelan men who were expelled from the count

Flowers are left at a memorial for the victims of the shooting at Brown University, outside the campus gates in Providence, R.I., Dec. 19, 2025. The Department of Education said Monday, Dec. 22, that it would investigate whether Brown University violated the law by failing to provide proper campus safety before and immediately after a fatal shooting killed two students earlier this month. (Christopher Capozziello/The New York Times) By MARK ARSENAULT The Department of Educati

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, during a meeting in the White House in Washington, Oct. 28, 2025. Miller is stressing an argument that immigrants bring problems to the United States that extend through generations. The data shows otherwise. (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times) By HAMED ALEAZIZ When Stephen Miller, one of President Donald Trump’s top advisers, makes the case for the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, he is focused not only on

Police officers and a SWAT team at the scene where the suspect in a bow-and-arrow killing was hiding in Kearny, N.J., on Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025. A man was arrested on Sunday after a bizarre killing with a bow and arrow, an hourslong standoff and an early-morning fire that shut down a street in a New Jersey suburb. (Dakota Santiago/The New York Times) By BENJAMIN ORESKES A man was arrested Sunday after a bizarre killing with a bow and arrow, an hourslong standoff and an early-m

A credenza covered in photographs in a home of Jeffrey Epstein in an undated photo released by the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. More than a dozen photos — including one featuring President Donald Trump — were removed without explanation from the large collection of files connected to the investigations of Epstein that the Justice Department released on Friday.(U.S. Dept. of Justice via The New York Times) By ALAN FEUER and DEVLIN BARRETT The Justice De

By ALESSANDRO MARAZZI SASSOON Power was restored for tens of thousands of electricity customers in San Francisco late Saturday, after an hourslong outage affecting nearly a third of the city left many neighborhoods in darkness by nightfall. About 24,000 of the city’s 414,000 customers were without power as of 1:30 a.m. Sunday, down from about 124,000 early Saturday evening, according to the site PowerOutage.com. Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility serving the city, said on so

Hannah Chen, a junior at Brown University, leaves flowers at the Van Wickle Gates at the Brown University campus in Providence, R.I., on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (Christopher Capozziello/The New York Times) By MARK ARSENAULT, NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROUGHS and THOMAS GIBBONS-NEFF The first police officers arrived just after 4 p.m. on Saturday Dec. 13 after reports of an active shooter at Brown University. They found a lecture room full of gunshot victims in one of the science buildin