Federal aviation authorities announced a rare nationwide ground stop just before 4 p.m. Eastern, immediately halting all departing flights at airports across the U.S. Follow here for the latest updates.
Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, said the cause of the outage was “a communication issue” affecting all air traffic control systems. Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of homeland security, said the government did not suspect foul play, though they were not ruling out any cause. “This isn’t another 9/11,” he said. “This is a telecommunication outage.”
There were several thousand flights scheduled for the remainder of the day, according to flight tracking websites. Some planes deboarded; some passengers were told to go home. Officials said that inbound flights were being managed on a case-by-case basis.
The longer the ground stop lasts, the more widespread its effects will be. Delays could soon turn into cancellations, which could cascade throughout the weekend.
Today’s ground stop is only the third nationwide in decades. The most recent one was in 2023, when contractors unintentionally deleted files related to an alert system. Before that, the last ground stop was on Sept. 11, 2001, after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Treasury secretary blames the Commerce Dept.
Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said today that the Commerce Department was responsible for the decision not to place sanctions on Megaspeed, the Nvidia customer led by a suspected Chinese spy. Bessent said his department and others had been pushing for months to blacklist the firm. Ana Swanson has details on how frustration is boiling over in Washington about Megaspeed.
The firm and its leader, Alice Huang, are at the center of a scandal that is upending one of the world’s most influential companies, Nvidia. One important consequence: some tech start-ups are worried that Nvidia may become more restrained with its funding.
The Supreme Court will review Trump’s asylum policy
On the first day of President Trump’s second term, he effectively shut down avenues for people fleeing persecution or torture to apply for asylum at the southern border and remain in the U.S. Lower courts have ruled against him, but Trump has continued to categorically deny asylum claims under a temporary court order.
Today, the Supreme Court announced that it would review the legality of the policy. The central question in the case is whether the president can override immigration law set by Congress.
Related: Border crossings have plummeted, but Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief of staff, still frequently rails on calls with staff about the number.
Russia lays out its hard-line demands
In closed-door negotiations with U.S. envoys this week, a document circulated by Russian officials indicated just how little President Vladimir Putin’s demands have changed after five years of war in Ukraine. The document, which The Times confirmed the authenticity of, calls for NATO to pull its troops back further from Russia’s borders, to positions it held in 1997.
That stance is the same — in some cases word for word — as the proposal Moscow offered in 2022. The Russians laid out their position just a week before Putin is set to sit down with President Trump in Shenzhen, China.
Related: European leaders were asked to pick one official to discuss to join the negotiations. They picked six.
Franciscana dolphins are one of the most elusive dolphin species in the world, so finding a pod that could be monitored by drone was a surprise. Even more astonishing was their behavior: the male dolphins babysat their young. Here’s what it looked like.
Related: A humpback whale was spotted in New York City, feeding and breaching in the Hudson River.
Julia Garner likes a challenge
Julia Garner has portrayed a dirty-mouthed criminal matriarch, a jittery elementary-school teacher and the faux socialite Anna Sorokin. None of the roles remotely resembled the Garner that our culture reporter Alexis Soloski recently met up with in Manhattan — and that’s by choice. “If I read something and I’m not scared to do it, I just don’t do it,” she told Alexis.
Garner’s latest transformation is in “The Altruists,” a series in which she plays Caroline Ellison, the business and sometimes romantic partner of the now-jailed crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Embodying Ellison required studying her walk (gawky), her laugh (gasping) and two hours a day in the makeup trailer for facial prosthetics and a system of wigs.
Meet the crew that restores New York’s vintage buses
In 1918, New York City started hauling passengers up and down Fifth Avenue in a green, double-decker bus with solid rubber tires, intricate wood paneling and a hand-cranked engine. One of those buses — called model 303, or the Queen — is back up and running today, thanks to three years of painstaking restoration work by the Vintage Fleet Services team at a bus maintenance center in the Bronx.
That crew opts for hand tools and other traditional techniques, one restoration at a time. They have revived bus 2969 from 1948, and model 9098, with its two-toned green exterior. But their crown jewel is the Queen. Check them out.
Have a classic weekend. — Matthew
We welcome your feedback. Reach us at evening@nytimes.com. I’ll be back on Monday.
Jill Foley was our photo editor.
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