Saturday, March 28
11:30 A.M. – 3:00 P.M.
Embarcadero Plaza
Market and Steuart Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
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Veterans For Peace Condemns
U.S. Attack on Iran
Military Members and Civilians:
Resist Illegal Wars!
Veterans For Peace condemns the U.S./Israeli attack on Iran in the strongest possible terms. We call on our members, friends, and allies to resist this dangerous and illegal war. We offer our support to members of the military who decide to refuse illegal orders and resist an illegal war.
A War Based on Lies
The Trump administration’s ever-changing rationales for going to war against Iran are lies. Iran posed no threat to the United States. This military operation is not a defensive war, but rather a war of choice by Israel and the U.S., a war of aggression, a war for regime change – very much like the disastrous U.S. wars that killed millions of people in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan – wars that many veterans remember with horror and regret.
Contrary to President Trump’s oft-repeated lie, Iran has repeatedly stated that it has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons. Rather, the United States, the only country to attack another nation with nuclear weapons, has unilaterally abrogated multiple arms control treaties, and is investing Two Trillion Dollars in a new generation of nuclear weapons. It was the U.S., not Iran, that violated and withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. Israel also has nuclear weapons – undeclared and uninspected. Two nuclear powers attacking Iran, claiming to stop it from pursuing a nuclear program, is the height of hypocrisy.
The aggression against Iran follows by less than two months the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the unlawful abduction of its president and wife. It comes amid the ongoing war threats and oil blockade of Cuba. This complete disregard and abuse of the process of negotiations only encourages nuclear proliferation around the world.
Illegal and Unconstitutional
The U.S. war on Iran is illegal in multiple ways. It is a violation of the UN Charter, a treaty which is the “supreme law of the land” under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter states, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
The unilateral war of aggression against Iran is a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly grants Congress the sole authority to declare war. This power was intentionally given to the legislative branch to prevent unilateral military action by a single executive.
These legal and constitutional issues may seem quaint to those of us who have seen them routinely violated by president after president with the complicity of a supine Congress. Nonetheless, they constitute both international and domestic law. They are the legal codification of a moral framework for international peace and cooperation. Peace-loving people must struggle to ensure that these laws are followed. We must hold our government officials accountable when they are not.
Refuse Illegal Orders – Resist Illegal Wars
Veterans For Peace reminds our sisters and brothers, children, and grandchildren in the U.S. military that an order to participate in an illegal war is, by extension, an illegal order. You have the right and even the duty to refuse illegal orders. Veterans For Peace and many others will stand with you when you do, and provide helpful information and resources. Whatever legal consequences you may endure pale compared to risking your life in an illegal war or living with Post Traumatic Stress and Moral Injury.
Veterans and civilians also have the right and the responsibility to resist the illegal actions of our government at home and abroad. This attack is a very critical moment in the history of the United States and the world. We must be in the streets protesting. We must be on our phones telling our representatives to Vote Yes on the Iran War Powers resolution. We must be on our keyboards, writing letters to the editors. Tell them to:
IMMEDIATELY HALT U.S. MILITARY ATTACKS ON IRAN!
· End U.S. Support for Israel and Genocide in Palestine!
· End Economic Warfare against Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba!
· End ICE and Authoritarian Repression in U.S. Cities!
· Abolish Nuclear Weapons and War!
PEACE AT HOME, PEACE ABROAD!
https://prod.cdn.everyaction.com/emails/van/EA/EA015/1/94223/Alqa3p0mdFGQOfwCaEOYO6dpWCJEn2qC1GPoEaid_7O_archive?emci=6196a802-9415-f111-a69a-000d3a57593f&emdi=d3c0d4a7-a515-f111-a69a-000d3a57593f&ceid=10474381
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) Quartz Cutters Are Falling Ill. Countertop Makers Want Protection From Congress.
By Rebecca Davis O’Brien, March 16, 2026
Jeff Rose, a part owner of a countertop fabrication shop in Nicholasville, Ky., is among the hundreds, if not thousands, of workers who have been diagnosed with silicosis, a lethal lung disease caused by inhaling silica dust. Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
Jeff Rose, a 55-year-old grandfather in Georgetown, Ky., contracted a lethal lung disease doing a job he loves: carving kitchen countertops from slabs of quartz, a man-made product that has surged in popularity as an alternative to marble and granite.
Mr. Rose’s 30-year-old son, Skyler, followed his father into the stone-fabrication business and, like him, inhaled the tiny particles of silica that are released when quartz is cut. He contracted silicosis, too.
“It really hurts knowing I’m sick like this,” said Mr. Rose, who used to chop down the family Christmas tree but now loses his breath climbing a flight of stairs. “I love being creative with my hands. I’m not able to do that anymore.”
The Roses are among hundreds of stone-fabrication workers who have been diagnosed with silicosis, a disease long associated with industrial toil that is afflicting more of the workers who help build American kitchens. The industry, confronting mounting litigation, is seeking legal immunity from Congress.
Representatives for manufacturers and distributors — many of them small businesses — say fabricated quartz, also known as engineered stone is, safe, and blame fabrication workshops further down the chain of production, where the slabs are cut to spec with improper equipment or precautions, for the surge in silicosis cases.
“The problem is the process, not the product,” said Rebecca Shult, the chief legal officer at Cambria, the largest engineered stone manufacturer in the United States, in testimony before a House subcommittee in January. Republican lawmakers expressed concern that the litigation might gut a $30 billion industry or drive business overseas.
The hearing concerned a bill that would put quartz in the same category as vaccines and firearms, products whose manufacturers are shielded by federal law from injury lawsuits. A similar push has sought to shield companies, including Bayer, from liability over health claims related to Roundup, a weedkiller used on crops.
The workers who cut the slabs, along with their lawyers, doctors and occupational health experts, said there was no safe way to cut quartz, which they describe as extremely toxic. They said the lawsuits would pay for victims’ medical care and reform the industry.
“This is something that I’m afraid is really going to get out of control quickly,” Mr. Rose said.
Made Stone
Engineered stone is sold widely as “quartz,” a commercially appealing name that reflects its primary component: finely crushed quartz, an abundant mineral made of silicon and oxygen. Resins and pigments are added before the product is treated at high heat and formed into large rectangular slabs.
Most quartz slabs sold in the United States come from manufacturers in China, Israel and Spain. They reach American homes from a network of big-box stores and smaller distributors, passing through fabrication shops where they are cut for sinks, corners and faucets.
When engineered stone is cut, it lets off tiny particles of silica. The dust lodges in the lungs, where the body identifies it as foreign and mounts an aggressive immune response. Over time, scar tissue forms and spreads, slowly killing the lung.
When Wade Hanicker started cutting stone countertops in Tampa, Fla., 15 years ago, many of the local shops were family businesses in people’s backyards.
The work earned Mr. Hanicker a stable living, and he was good at it. “You’re sculpting countertops, you’re putting shapes on them, arches, curves,” said Mr. Hanicker, 39. “To me it felt more like artwork.”
He said those early shops were pretty dusty. They often “cut dry,” he said, without soaking the slab with running water to tamp down dust.
Industry leaders say wet processing is critical to mitigate airborne dust. California in 2024 made it illegal to cut quartz dry.
Workers and doctors said wet processing is insufficient because the resulting wastewater eventually dries into dust. Other protective measures, including robotic cutting, ventilation and protective gear, are too expensive for many shops, they said.
Mr. Hanicker said his first safety concerns were about the blades and the heavy slabs. He sometimes wore an N-95 mask to inhale less dust. He could tell when he was cutting quartz, rather than marble or granite, because of the smell: It reminded him of burning plastic or rotten eggs.
Nobody talked about the risk of silicosis.
“Never once did I think that the dust that we were creating was going to do this type of harm to me,” he said.
Around 2022, Mr. Hanicker experienced back pain, which he treated with large doses of ibuprofen. Soon, the pain crept around to his chest. Months of doctors visits later, he was diagnosed with silicosis. He has experienced autoimmune disease, hip failure and loss of strength since his diagnosis; he is not on a list for a lung transplant, but the disease is progressing.
He still works in the industry, but can no longer do the heavy manual labor. Last year, he filed a lawsuit against about two dozen entities, including distributors and manufacturers. He also sued Cambria.
“What hurts me the most is, the things that a dad expects to do with their kids, being able to play with them — that’s being robbed from me,” said Mr. Hanicker, who has two young children.
Cases Mount
Dr. Jane C. Fazio, a pulmonologist at Olive View-U.C.L.A. Medical Center, saw her first case of silicosis in 2021: a man in his 60s who needed a lung transplant. Other patients soon arrived in the emergency room — middle-aged working men, mostly undocumented immigrants. She asked about their work.
“Everyone had the same answer,” she said. “They work in countertops.”
California has confirmed 512 silicosis cases from engineered stone and 29 deaths since 2019, according to the state’s public health department.
Dr. Fazio has visited fabrication workshops in the neighborhoods around the hospital, where she has observed varying levels of protection — and sometimes none at all — on “people covered in white powder.”
It takes years of exposure to contract silicosis, and even longer before symptoms appear. This, doctors say, is why silicosis among fabricators didn’t really emerge until about five years ago, more than a decade after manufactured stone hit the market. They expect cases to rise.
“It’s extremely debilitating when it progresses,” Dr. Fazio said. “It always progresses. And there is no real treatment.”
In 2022, Dr. Fazio diagnosed a 48-year-old undocumented man from El Salvador with silicosis. After 15 years cutting slabs, he arrived at the hospital in such pain that he couldn’t work. In an interview, the man said he had always worn a mask and cut with water.
“Nobody told us that this dust would cause silicosis,” he said, requesting anonymity because of his immigration status.
In February 2025, he received a double lung transplant. But even this is a short-term fix. In a matter of years, lung transplant patients often slowly develop chronic organ rejection or other complications.
Legal Challenges
As cases mounted, lawsuits followed.
In 2024, a jury in Los Angeles awarded $52.4 million to a former stone fabricator in a lawsuit brought against manufacturers and distributors of engineered stone, including Cambria.
Cambria, a family-owned company in Minnesota, has fought the litigation. Cambria said employees at its shops had cut “over 650,000 Cambria slabs without a single reported case of silicosis.” The company said it had been targeted in lawsuits “over workplace practices entirely outside our control.”
Cambria has taken its fight to Washington, where last year it spent $250,000 on lobbyists. In September, Representatives Tom McClintock of California and Andy Biggs of Arizona, both Republicans, introduced a bill that would bar lawsuits against manufacturers or sellers of engineered stone for injuries that resulted from cutting the product in third-party facilities.
The bill places the burden for assuring safety on fabrication shops and workplace regulators.
In January, at a House subcommittee hearing on the bill, Representative Darrell Issa of California, the Republican chairman of the subcommittee, called the plaintiffs opportunistic and their lawsuits abusive.
Democrats on the committee noted that Marty Davis, Cambria’s chief executive, was a big donor to President Trump. Members of the Davis family gave more than $340,000 to committees supporting Mr. Trump in the 2024 election, campaign finance records show.
Mr. Davis also supported Mr. Trump’s 2020 bid, and encouraged him to fight the election results. He also gave Trump Media & Technology Group a $5 million loan through a limited liability company, so the fledgling social media company could stay afloat before going public, The New York Times reported in 2024.
In her testimony, Ms. Shult, Cambria’s top lawyer, cast the blame for the silicosis outbreak on the fabrication shops in California.
Gary Talwar, the vice president of a family-owned stone distributor in Anaheim, told lawmakers that he was facing higher insurance premiums and mounting litigation costs, with 65 pending lawsuits.
Dr. David Michaels, an epidemiologist who ran the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 2009 to 2017, also testified at the hearing.
During his tenure, OSHA updated standards for silica dust exposure. They may already be outdated, he told Congress, and it is not enough to protect workers from the dust given off by cutting engineered stone. He suggested that the industry look for safer substitutes, such as slabs made from recycled glass.
Mr. Rose said wryly that he was “caught between a rock and a hard place.” He is sick, and wants the industry to improve the safety of its product. But as the part owner of his company, he worries about the repercussions of the litigation.
“What I’m aiming for is to be a leader in this industry, to do things right,” he said.
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2) I Predicted the 2008 Financial Crisis. What Is Coming May Be Worse.
By Richard Bookstaber, March 16, 2026
Mr. Bookstaber is the author of “A Demon of Our Own Design,” which in 2007 warned of the coming financial crisis.
Liana Finck
At the start of the 2008 financial crisis, I was at a hedge fund. By its end, I was at the U.S. Treasury. At both, I worked with people only a few years out of college. The drama of 2008 was all they knew about financial markets. “Remember what’s happening,” I told them. “You’ll never see anything like this again.”
Now I’m not so sure. Maybe they’ll see worse.
We have returned to a period of risk, one rife with the sort of pressures that have led to major financial crises. This time, the risks are spread across industries, markets and nations: artificial intelligence, the roughly $2 trillion private credit industry, stock markets, Taiwan and now Iran. These risks are analyzed one by one, news article by news article. We understand them in isolation. Yet they are different entry points into the same underlying structure — a complex and tightly coupled system where the specific source of stress matters less than how quickly that stress can spread.
Signs of systemic strain are emerging.
Let’s start with private credit, which is already showing worrisome signs. Over the past two decades, the retreat of traditional banks after the financial crisis has left many companies increasingly reliant on borrowing from institutional investors. But these loans rarely exchange hands, leaving investors uncertain about what these instruments are really worth or how easily they could be sold if conditions deteriorate.
Now clouding the picture is the fact that many of the borrowers underpinning the lending industry are software and technology companies — the kinds of businesses whose services could be replaced by A.I.
That vulnerability is starting to worry investors. Already uneasy about the way higher interest rates are raising borrowing costs, some have begun withdrawing their money from the private credit funds of well-known companies like Blue Owl, BlackRock and Blackstone. Shares in Blue Owl have fallen sharply. And because the market has no organized exchange and information is inaccessible, investor withdrawals can trigger the kind of wholesale run that in the past turned financial stresses into full-blown crises.
Simultaneously, the A.I. boom is driving extraordinary investment into a small group of dominant technology companies, inflating their valuations to the point that 10 stocks now account for more than a third of the S&P 500’s value. That level of concentration is unprecedented — and dangerous, because it means a shock to any one of these companies can ripple across the entire market rather than be absorbed by it.
What appear to be separate developments — a new kind of lending market and technological dislocation on one hand, stock market exuberance on the other — are in fact the same network of money and expectations, approached from different directions.
Of course, private credit isn’t only financing those companies vulnerable to A.I. It is also a critical source of financing for the infrastructure that drives A.I. — the data centers and semiconductor chips. This infrastructure is largely being built by the handful of companies like Google and Microsoft that dominate our stock market. In this tightly connected system, the weakening of private credit strains the A.I. investments of the tech Goliaths, which in turn threatens the stock portfolios, the retirements and the pensions of tens of millions of people.
In addition, the A.I. boom is placing new strains on the physical infrastructure it depends on. It drives enormous electricity consumption and has a ravenous appetite for advanced semiconductors. These carry geopolitical weight.
Take Iran. An energy shock from the conflict that raises the cost of power or constrains its supply directly affects data centers and A.I. production, raising costs for the A.I. Goliaths, which then transfer those pressures to our private credit and stock markets.
Then there’s Taiwan. If China were to invade or blockade it, America’s access to semiconductors would be severely limited. That would immediately slow deployment of A.I., weakening the companies driving the A.I. boom, with the inevitable knock-on effects.
Our current financial system fails not because any one thing goes wrong. It fails because different shocks propagate through the same structure and in ways that are hard to anticipate. When something eventually goes wrong, it spreads faster than it can be contained.
It is critical that our policymakers realize that private credit is not just a parallel risk sitting alongside the A.I. boom. A.I.’s data centers, chips and infrastructure have been built largely on private loans. Investors in those loans cannot easily sell their positions. So if there is any quake in the system and they find they need to raise cash, they will do what investors do when they can’t sell what they want to sell: They sell what they can. And what they can sell easily are the large, publicly traded technology stocks that dominate the major indexes.
This is not the first time we have built a system like this. The crisis of 2008 is often remembered as a story of homeowners gorging on excessive debt, a housing bubble fueled by speculation and millions of mortgages going bad. But the housing bubble itself was not the reason the crunch became so destructive. The accelerant that pushed the crisis to such depths was the financial system that had been constructed around the housing market. Novel and complex financial instruments obscured the risk, intertwined balance sheets across the financial system and eliminated the buffers that once absorbed shocks. When the housing market tanked, these instruments nearly took our entire financial system down with it.
This time, the danger isn’t financial engineering. It’s that our financial system has attached itself to the vulnerabilities of our physical world — power grids, water, land, supply chains — and created hazards that markets have no framework to analyze. Our models for detecting risk look at prices, volatility and correlations. They have no instruments for reading a grid failure, a drought or a severed supply chain. By the time warning signs show up in market data, the damage will already have been done.
The physical risks of Iran, Taiwan and the A.I. boom are supplanting the types of financial risks that preceded 2008. I’d take financial risk any day. Financial risk moves just prices. Physical risk moves the world.
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3) Professors Are Changing What They Teach, Even Far from Trump’s Gaze
Harvard is the White House’s biggest target, but professors all over the country have been censoring themselves, avoiding provocative topics and rewriting grants.
By Alan Blinder, March 16, 2026
Schools in more liberal places, including Northwestern in Illinois and Brown in Rhode Island, have sometimes acceded to some of the federal government’s demands. Tony Luong for The New York Times
Rewritten syllabuses. Self-censored lectures. Stilted classroom discussions. Grant applications stripped of words that might infuriate President Trump and his allies, if they are submitted at all.
Many of the nation’s professors are changing how they teach and research as Mr. Trump pursues a seismic reimagining of American higher education.
Although the Trump administration has focused much of its ire on elite institutions, the government’s tactics have unnerved people throughout academia. The consequences are trickling to campuses large and small, public and private.
The White House insists that its campaign is essential to stamp out bigotry and rebuild eroded public confidence in an academic system that conservatives say is tilted against them. The quest to impose Mr. Trump’s ideas, though, has been so rigid that some critics have likened it to how authoritarian leaders suppress free thought and dissent.
Conservative states like Texas and Florida have rushed to follow Mr. Trump. Schools in more liberal places, including Northwestern in Illinois and Brown in Rhode Island, have sometimes acceded to federal demands.
Faculty members who had fretted that academic culture had become too cloistered and political have sometimes welcomed the shifts. But in interviews in recent months, and in written submissions to The New York Times, dozens of others described feeling stifled. Many of them spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The cadence of the federal attacks has outwardly slowed in recent months, with fewer abrupt crusades against specific universities or funding cuts that schools learned about through social media.
Still, professors said they worry about administrators capitulating to Trump demands, as well as things like doxing and students recording their comments in class.
“You feel like an attack can kind of come from anywhere, right?” said Marin Pilloud, an anthropology professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, a school that Mr. Trump has not overtly targeted. “That you can be a target from anyone.”
How classes have changed
For the most part, colleges are still offering the same courses they were before Mr. Trump’s election. But some professors say that classes have changed even if course names and numbers have remained intact.
Christopher Kutz, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said he is self-censoring to protect students, particularly those in the United States on visas. He said he worried that they might write or say something that could end up being turned against them.
“I’m not going to change what I say, but I will try to make sure the assignments don’t invite students into making statements that could get them in trouble,” said Professor Kutz, whose school has been a particular focus of the Trump administration.
“I have to think very hard about whether it’s worth talking about something that’s obviously clearly relevant to the course.”
Christopher Kutz, a law professor at University of California, Berkeley
Loyola University Chicago has not been targeted by Mr. Trump. But Norberto Grzywacz, a neuroscientist and a former provost there, said he is worried about international students on his campus. They appear to be “afraid of openly saying things,” he said.
Avoiding ‘disapproved subjects’
Professor Kutz has weighed how much to discuss sensitive topics, like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in courses about subjects like the ethics of war. In a declaration to a federal court last year, he cited what he thought the Trump administration viewed as “disapproved subjects,” including affirmative action, immigration and transgender rights.
“It’s a subjective sensation that I’ve never had before: I have to think very hard about whether it’s worth talking about something that’s obviously clearly relevant to the course,” he said in an interview.
Dr. Pilloud said that she felt like she had to present ideas that were not scientifically sound — such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new, and widely disputed, guidance about vaccines — so that she could say she had taught a broader array of viewpoints.
“My goal in class is to encourage intellectual debate, to develop the critical thinking skills,” she said. Instead, she suggested, classes have become more superficial.
“I spend a little less time on interpretation, and I kind of present more of both sides and the state of the topic,” she said.
Decaying trust in the classroom
Some professors described a fraying of the customary trust between teachers and students.
Kylie Smith, who until recently taught at Emory University about the history of health care, said her area of expertise was inherently political. She came to fear how a student at Emory, which has sought to avoid the Trump administration’s wrath, might weaponize her words.
“You just don’t know whether they are going to report you to someone, or are they recording you,” said Dr. Smith, who added that she felt she had to “change the way I relate to my students.”
“I value integrity and my authenticity and my openness and my honesty, and I feel myself not being that way with them, which I hate because that is what students value: a professor they can ask the hard questions of,” she said.
One part of her calculation last year, Dr. Smith said, was her status as a permanent resident, not a citizen, of the United States.
“There have been times in class where they have asked me hard questions, and I would normally get up on my soapbox, and I’ve had to say, ‘Well, I think we’re not going to talk about that today.”
Kylie Smith, history professor at Emory University
Professor Grzywacz is a naturalized citizen and hopes that makes him “a little immune” from scrutiny. But, he said, he knows other faculty members born outside of the United States who worry about running afoul of federal officials who have proved willing to try to deport people over speech the Trump administration does not like.
“The environment is harder,” he said. “People are afraid, that’s for sure.”
Fewer constraints on conservative speech
Some professors have welcomed how the Trump administration targeted diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and the academic cultures they fostered. Jessica Trisko Darden, an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, said she saw fewer students and faculty members announcing their personal pronouns or identity groups during discussions.
“I think that was really limiting for discourse, but also for the ability for students to see the world in complex ways,” said Dr. Trisko Darden, who said she had felt “constrained” during former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s term.
Terms like menstruating persons “made it way too complicated for folks who are not heavily invested in those internecine definitional wars to be able to identify with.”
Jessica Trisko Darden, political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University
She no longer feels that way with Mr. Trump in power. She said she perceived less pressure to use terms like “menstruating persons” and that she sensed many students felt the same. The result, she said, was an ebbing of “identity tribes” among students and more open discussion.
“My students are no longer circumscribed in their beliefs, opinions, analyses by identity categories that people are ascribing to them,” Dr. Trisko Darden said.
How research has changed
The Trump administration has explicitly targeted federal research funding, a cornerstone of American academia’s economic model for generations, with the most punitive cuts directed at a handful of schools.
But the administration’s approaches to D.E.I., abortion rights, gender transition care and climate change, among other issues, are leading professors to narrow or recast their research ambitions, if they pursue them at all.
Amander Clark, a professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said she had decided to “rewrite my grants so that I would remove any language that would potentially compromise the funding of my work.”
Giving up on grants
A federal judge in San Francisco tried last year to limit research funding threats to the University of California system. But in an interview in December, after the judge's ruling, Dr. Clark, a reproductive scientist who said she had often tried to speak about her work in “an inclusive way,” said the environment remained “stressful.”
Faculty members are anxious that a stray or misinterpreted remark could make them or their schools targets of the White House.
"I feel a little frozen."
Marin Pilloud, anthropology professor at University of Nevada, Reno
In Nevada, Dr. Pilloud said the climate was “impacting the type of research that I think I can do and that I can get funding for.” She has not kept certain words out of grant applications.
“I just haven’t even applied for any grants because I feel stuck,” she said, noting that it was only recently that agencies were pushing researchers to include diversity and inclusion and to describe how their research would help marginalized populations.
A generational divide
Dr. Pilloud said she is lucky compared to the students coming up behind her. As a full professor, she said, she has years of data that she can draw on for papers. Younger researchers do not.
“I definitely see it having a long-tail impact on early-career academics,” she said.
At some schools, the customary pathways to doing research have been cut off to young people entirely. From Michigan State to Harvard, some graduate programs have suspended or limited admissions because of uncertainties about federal funding.
The changes could have lasting consequences on American research.
Dr. Smith, who came to Emory in 2015, has already done substantial work for a project about children with disabilities who are in juvenile detention. But she figured she would not get funding for it, and she was resistant to tailoring any applications to satisfy government officials she saw as ideologues.
“I really, really resented the idea that you should change the words so that you could get the funding,” she said, adding, “To me, that is compliance with fascism, and I’m not going to do it.”
Earlier this year, she moved to Australia.
“Censorship,” she said, “has never been an issue there.”
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4) Trump Says He Will Have the ‘Honor’ of ‘Taking Cuba’
President Trump’s words came amid a nationwide blackout and as a top Cuban official said his country would move to open the economy to foreign investors.
By Annie Correal, Jack Nicas and Frances Robles, Reporting from Mexico City and Florida., March 16, 2026
President Trump raised the possibility of the United States “taking” Cuba on Monday, telling reporters at the White House, “I do believe I will be having the honor of taking Cuba.”
“Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it,” he said. “They’re a very weakened nation right now.”
The president’s words came on the same day as Cuba experienced a nationwide blackout, amid diminishing fuel supplies. On Monday evening, Cuban officials had also planned to announce that the country’s Communist government would open itself to foreign investment, including from the United States, Cuba’s deputy prime minister, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, told NBC News.
“Cuba is open to having a fluid commercial relationship with U.S. companies, also with Cubans residing in the United States and their descendants,” the deputy prime minister said in a clip of an interview posted by the network on Monday morning.
It is unclear how widely Cuba intends to open its economy, or how the moves compare with those made a decade ago under President Barack Obama. But the scheduled announcement coincides with a severe humanitarian and energy crisis, with some experts saying the island could run out of fuel within weeks because of a de facto blockade by the Trump administration.
For the past three months, the United States has choked off Cuba’s access to foreign oil, blocking shipments from Venezuela and elsewhere. Frequent blackouts have followed — including the broad power outage on Monday — and hospitals have had to postpone some procedures, deepening a humanitarian crisis that has also involved food shortages and has led to rare protests on the island.
Officials had planned to announce the economic changes on an evening television program, Mesa Redonda, or Round Table. The program was not broadcast at the scheduled hour. It was not immediately clear if that was the result of power outages.
The Obama administration had opened up business opportunities for American investors in the Cuban private sector, but the Cuban bureaucracy was unable to rapidly adapt and the Trump administration rescinded Mr. Obama’s measures.
Mr. Pérez-Oliva Fraga, who also serves as Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment, also said the Cuban government would open the economy to investments beyond the private sector. “This goes beyond the commercial realm,” he said. “It also applies to investments, not only to small ones, but also to large ones, especially in infrastructure.”
But because of the decades-long U.S. embargo, Cuba is not easily able to attract American capital, Mr. Pérez-Oliva Fraga said.
A person close to the recent negotiations said that the Trump administration was waiting to see whether the changes to be announced on Monday would be truly structural and meaningful — not simply cosmetic — before deciding whether to issue licenses that would allow such investments. The person asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly about sensitive diplomatic matters.
Carlos A Giménez, a Republican congressman from Florida who is Cuban American, said on X on Friday, in Spanish, “There will be ZERO investment from the US unless there is MAJOR political change on the island.”
As U.S. and Cuban officials negotiate over the future of the Communist-ruled island, the Trump administration is said to be seeking to push President Miguel DÃaz-Canel from power, The New York Times reported on Monday.
The Trump administration has warned that if Cuba does not cooperate, it could face a fate similar to that of Venezuela. In January, the U.S. military captured the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, after he refused to step down.
Last week, President DÃaz-Canel acknowledged in a televised appearance that his government was engaged in talks with Trump administration officials to resolve the standoff.
In his 90-minute appearance, Mr. DÃaz-Canel said that a decision to be announced on Monday would “greatly facilitate” the participation of Cubans abroad in the island’s “economic and social development program.”
Demographers estimate that more than two million Cubans have left the country in the past five years. In his remarks, Mr. DÃaz-Canel said, “It is our responsibility as the government to embrace them, listen to them, tend to them and offer them a space to participate in the economic and social development.”
Some Cuban exiles in Florida and elsewhere have for years pushed for the Cuban government to allow Cubans overseas to invest in the nation’s economy.
Cuban officials have signaled to some Cuban Americans that Monday’s announcement will involve allowing exiles to return to the island freely and to run a type of enterprise that was legally recognized by the government in 2021. Those entities are allowed to import goods, provide services, and create jobs, and they have quickly become critical to the Cuban economy. Private supermarkets, for instance, have higher prices than state-run stores but carry a far broader selection of food.
For more outsiders to enter and run businesses in Cuba, the U.S. government would have to ease restrictions on traveling and doing business on the island.
Hugo Cancio, a Cuban American in Miami, has been running perhaps the most visible U.S.-owned business in Cuba for years. His e-commerce platform, Katapulk, has become a sort of Cuban Amazon, allowing Cubans abroad to order and ship goods to their friends and relatives still in Cuba.
Mr. Cancio built Katapulk as a U.S.-based entity with a special license to form partnerships with businesses in Cuba, which deliver the goods on the ground. But that structure has been complicated, and U.S. government restrictions have at times hamstrung operations, he said.
If the Cuban government allows Cuban Americans to own businesses in Cuba, they could function as a bridge to Washington, Mr. Cancio said.
“As the Cuban authorities recognize our rights to be part of the Cuban nation, to participate in the economic transformation and the potential political reforms of the future, we will be the ones that will change Washington,” he said. Exiles, he said, could push Congress and Trump administration officials to lift sanctions.
“We will be the ones that will talk to Washington and say, ‘Our country now recognizes us, and we want to be part of that transformation,’” Mr. Cancio said.
David C. Adams, David E. Sanger, Emiliano RodrÃguez Mega and Ed Augustin contributed reporting.
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5) Admiral’s Comments Undercut Pentagon’s Cluster Munition Policy
The first Trump administration defended cluster munitions as “legitimate,” but on Monday, Adm. Brad Cooper condemned them as “inherently indiscriminate.”
By John Ismay, Reporting from Washington, March 17, 2026
In a video posted on social media on Monday, Adm. Brad Cooper, the leader of U.S. Central Command, condemned a recent Iranian cluster munition attack on Israel.
Calling them “an inherently indiscriminate type of munition,” Admiral Cooper said the “Iranian regime” had launched “a reckless attack against civilian neighborhoods in Tel Aviv.” A video showed dots of light streaking through the night sky from an incoming missile.
“We join countries across the region in condemning this aggression,” he added.
The first Trump administration, however, defended the use of cluster munitions in a policy that remains in effect today.
Cluster munitions are a class of military ordnance that breaks apart in midair and scatters smaller explosive or incendiary weapons, often called bomblets, over a large area. About 20 percent of those bomblets fail to explode on impact but can still explode if discovered even decades later.
In November 2017, Patrick M. Shanahan, who was serving as the deputy secretary of defense at the time, signed a memo calling cluster munitions “legitimate weapons with clear military utility.”
His memo reversed an earlier Pentagon decision to ban the use of its existing arsenal of cluster weapons by 2019 because of the harm they pose to civilians.
In 2008, the defense secretary at the time, Robert M. Gates, signed a policy giving the Pentagon 10 years to seek alternatives to its cluster weapons, which were prone to failure and posed a hazard to civilians in conflict areas. That memo said newer cluster munitions must be designed so that less than 1 percent of the dozens or hundreds of bomblets they release remain on the ground as hazardous duds that could still explode.
Mr. Gates said that for the next decade, only the four-star combatant commanders who direct military operations over specific parts of the globe could authorize the use of older cluster munitions. After that time, the use of older cluster weapons would have been permanently banned without exception.
Mr. Shanahan’s memo upended those deadlines, making the munitions available to commanders indefinitely. Almost a year later, he cited the threat of North Korea as a reason for keeping them in service.
The office of the secretary of defense did not respond to a request for comment about the admiral’s remarks on Monday.
The Convention on Cluster Munitions, which took effect in 2010, bans their use because of the harm they pose to noncombatants. More than 100 countries have signed that treaty, though not the United States, Russia, Israel or Iran.
According to government records, the last known instance of U.S. forces using cluster weapons was in December 2009, when Navy warships launched Tomahawk cruise missiles carrying explosive bomblets at suspected Qaeda camps in Yemen.
The Biden administration made no public effort to reverse Mr. Shanahan’s 2017 decision, ultimately transferring large numbers of cluster munitions to Ukraine for use in its war with Russia. Russian forces have used the weapons extensively in Ukraine.
In July 2023, the White House ordered the transfer of “dual-purpose improved conventional munition” artillery shells to Ukraine, each containing 88 grenades. A second shipment was sent in March 2024.
In November 2024, the Pentagon acknowledged sending Ukraine two separate shipments of cluster munition artillery shells that each dispense 36 small antipersonnel land mines.
By December 2024, the Biden administration had provided Kyiv with more than 100,000 155-millimeter shells that each contained nine small antitank mines.
Iran launched a similar attack with cluster munitions against Israel in June.
The most recent congressional effort to ban the Pentagon from using cluster munitions failed in the House in June 2024 by a vote of 129 to 284.
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6) Americans Are Stuck in Dead-End, Exploitative Part-Time Jobs
By Adelle Waldman and Matt Bruenig, March 18, 2026
Ms. Waldman is the author of “Help Wanted,” a novel about hourly workers at a big-box store. Mr. Bruenig is a labor lawyer and the founder of People’s Policy Project.
Illustration by The New York Times; Photograph by Nitat Termmee/Getty Images
What comes to mind when you think about working part time? For Americans who work salaried jobs, part-time work tends to be seen as a choice, even a luxury, something those who can afford it might pursue to spend more time with children, pursue education or simply enjoy more leisure time. But for millions of workers, part-time employment has become a trap.
Across the country, more than 6.7 million Americans tell surveytakers that they work part-time jobs, not because they want to, but because they cannot get full-time hours. For many workers, not getting enough hours causes more hardship than the hourly wage. It’s telling that the platform for Target Workers Unite, a group of rank-and-file Target workers pushing for better working conditions, lists as its first demand not higher pay but more hours. Its second demand? More stable schedules.
A shift from full-time to part-time work across many major American companies over the past 20 years stems in large part from the rise of what’s known as just-in-time scheduling. Instead of guaranteeing the bulk of their staffs 40 hours a week, many big employers largely reliant on low-wage workers make a majority of them part time and then schedule only the bare minimum number that they expect to need. If customer traffic turns out to be busier than anticipated, those companies have a large pool of part-time workers to call in for last-minute shifts.
Workers might get four hours one week and 30 hours the next. The resulting irregular pay can make it harder to progress in other parts of life, like getting approved for apartment leases and auto loans. It also makes working second-jobs more difficult, as part-time workers need to be available to maximize hours at their first job. Turning down a shift can mean being offered fewer shifts in the future. According to the Federal Reserve, adults who work part time because they can’t find full-time work are much more likely to say that they struggle to pay bills or do not have enough to eat.
What all this amounts to is a transfer of risk from business owners and corporate shareholders to the nation’s lowest-paid workers.
For decades, policymakers and activists have devoted far more attention to raising the hourly wage than to the question of how many hours employees are working. For example, New York City lawmakers, echoing a campaign promise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, recently introduced legislation to increase the minimum hourly wage paid by employers of over 500 workers from $17 now to $30 in 2030. This is well intended, but because income depends on both the hourly wage and the number of hours worked, improving workers’ lives requires addressing both. One of us worked in a big-box store as part of research for a novel about low-wage work and saw this firsthand. Even an increase of $2 or $3 an hour doesn’t do much if some weeks you’re scheduled only for a single four-hour shift.
That is why we — a novelist and a labor lawyer and policy analyst — have come up with a solution to mandate a federal right to full-time work for many employees currently shunted into undesirable part-time work because that’s all they can find.
Specifically, we propose that part-time employees who work at companies with more than 50 full-time-equivalent employees be given the option to work full time after three months of employment. When a qualifying worker makes such a request, an employer would be required to grant it, provided that doing so would not create an undue burden on the employer (a common standard in employment law).
Such a right would be in keeping with U.S. labor policy since the New Deal. The 40-hour workweek, the federal minimum wage and the right to overtime pay all derive from the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The law was designed to combat the problem of overwork. Employers at that time were demanding 70- or 80-hour or even longer workweeks from employees, without paying them more. The law was so successful that by now most of us have come to treat the 40-hour workweek as the standard. Now underwork has become as much of a problem as overwork once was.
Our proposal is not as radical as it may seem. Our labor system has long accepted that employers should balance their profit interests with accommodations that provide stability and security for workers. Several laws — the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act and state workers' compensation programs — guarantee employees the right to shift to part-time work or to take time off in the case of disability, illness or a medical crisis in the family. These laws also require employers to accommodate requests to return to full-time work once the need for leave or a reduced schedule has passed.
Employers have justified their use of part-time workers by insisting that their employees prefer the flexibility of part-time work. If this is so, nothing would change, as the obligation to provide full-time hours would kick in only when a person made a full-time request. Moreover, because this policy would affect all large employers, it would create an even playing field, meaning that those companies that treat their employees decently would no longer need to fear losing out to more ruthless competitors.
This effort could be politically attractive. American politicians who have been reluctant to increase taxes and spending to reduce inequality and hardship tend to be much more willing to use labor regulations like the one we propose to help achieve those goals.
Americans have long taken pride in the belief that we are a country where those who are willing to work hard can live decently. Establishing a right to full-time work would help millions of Americans achieve that ideal.
It’s healthcare. Healthcare is the cause of and solution to so many of our problems.Most of us are stuck and vulnerable because without a full time job, health insurance is out of reach financially. Until we have universal healthcare, none of these fixes around the edges will matter or make much difference in the lives of those of us not in the 1%.
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7) ‘We’re Just Seen as Sex Objects’: Dolores Huerta’s Years in the U.F.W.
The co-founder of the United Farm Workers talked about her relationship with Cesar Chavez, and the night he raped her.
By Sarah Hurtes and Manny Fernandez, Reporting from Bakersfield, Calif., March 19, 2026
Dolores Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez. Cathy Murphy/Getty Images
In the days after Thanksgiving in 1986, Dolores Huerta was ready to celebrate. As one of the co-leaders of the United Farm Workers union, she had spent four months in Washington lobbying lawmakers to pass the Immigration Reform and Control Act, landmark legislation that granted amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants.
A news conference was scheduled to celebrate the victory, but Ms. Huerta said she was not made aware of the event. Instead, she said, her fellow U.F.W. leader, Cesar Chavez, told her there was a crisis in Florida that required her immediate attention. Ms. Huerta flew to Florida, only to realize that the emergency was nonexistent and no one was expecting her. She spent the next few days speaking at senior centers.
“I realized afterward they just wanted to get me out of the way so they could take credit for the work,” she said of her male co-workers in an interview last week. “Straight male-chauvinist trick, and I was really upset about that.”
In the interview, Ms. Huerta talked about the challenges she had faced as a woman in the machismo culture of the movement, which Mr. Chavez had come to dominate with the sheer force of his personality.
And in a stunning disclosure, she said that Mr. Chavez had sexually assaulted her on one occasion and manipulated her into sex on another, encounters that produced two children. A New York Times investigation detailed strong evidence that Mr. Chavez had sexually assaulted several women in the farmworkers’ movement, including two young teenagers.
Ms. Huerta and Mr. Chavez, standing together with raised fists at rallies and marches, were the public face of the Latino-led union organizing movement that swept through American farm fields in the 1960s.
Now 95, Ms. Huerta is often referred to as Grandmother of the Resistance. Her portrait hangs in some American embassies. She fought for years for better wages, maternity protections and basic safety measures for women doing the backbreaking work of planting and harvesting crops.
But in the interview, Ms. Huerta described a culture in U.F.W. under Mr. Chavez that forced her to struggle to be heard and to suppress any negative feelings she felt about him and his leadership — including the trauma of rape.
Ms. Huerta said the assault occurred in the winter of 1966, when she was at the People’s Bar and Cafe in Delano, Calif. — a well-known hangout for farmworker organizers. She was having a beer when Mr. Chavez stormed in, tapped her shoulder and asked for a word.
Assuming that the matter concerned an upcoming strike, she said, she followed him outside. It was common for them to have meetings in the car — Mr. Chavez worried that his office was bugged. He drove her to a secluded grape field on the outskirts of town, she said, and assaulted her.
She also described an earlier episode in 1960 — five years after first meeting Mr. Chavez — in which she felt pressured and manipulated into having sex with him in a hotel room during a work trip in San Juan Capistrano, in Southern California.
After the assault in 1966, she was left in a numb, shocked state, she said, but told no one. Not her friends, not her family, not even her daughter born from the assault.
She said she believed that the work of advancing rights for farmworkers was more important, and worried that publicly criticizing Mr. Chavez would tarnish the movement’s legacy and be exploited by political opponents.
“I saw him, again, as my boss, as my hero, as, you know, somebody that would do the impossible,” she said. “I never talked about it to anybody and the reason I didn’t is because I just didn’t want to hurt the movement.”
Ms. Huerta said she viewed Mr. Chavez as a contradictory figure when it came to women. He believed in promoting them, she said, but only so far.
Women ran the credit union, the clinic, the field offices. They were trusted with the operational machinery of the movement. But making the decisions that shaped the union’s direction, she said, remained out of reach. “Cesar believed in promoting women as leadership, not at the policy level, but at the work level,” she said.
It was, she suggested, a reflection of something deeper. “Women are not seen as human beings. We’re just seen as sex objects. I think it’s an illness.”
While several people interviewed by The Times described the relationship between Mr. Chavez and Ms. Huerta in those years as a high-stakes sibling rivalry, others described the dynamic as painful to watch and rooted in a culture that favored men.
“He was very disrespectful toward Dolores,” said Cynthia Bell, a longtime union staff member, observing that Mr. Chavez and other male U.F.W. leaders would frequently pick on Ms. Huerta in front of the entire staff.
“Don’t say nothing, dilapidated bitch,” one male union board member could be heard telling her during a meeting in April 1978, a recording of which was reviewed by The Times. He then told her to “shut up” as Mr. Chavez berated her with even worse invective.
Ms. Huerta said that she often suppressed these memories as a survival mechanism. “I kind of block those things out of my mind, but I know at the time that it was very painful,” she said.
She recalled an instance involving Father David Duran, a priest and bookkeeper who worked with the union. After witnessing a meeting in which Mr. Chavez relentlessly berated Ms. Huerta, Father Duran pulled her aside. “He came up to me and said, ‘You don’t have to take that, you know? You don’t have to take that from him,’” she remembered.
But Ms. Huerta was not afraid to push back. After one especially brutal meeting where she was insulted, she said, she left the U.F.W. headquarters and returned to her home in Stockton, Calif., for several weeks.
When she eventually returned, she did so with a renewed sense of purpose. At the next meeting, when she took a spot at the back of the room, she said, Mr. Chavez approached her and told her she didn’t belong there.
“I want to see you sitting up in front. You need to be up in the front,” she said he told her.
Years later, in the spring of 1993, Ms. Huerta recalled sitting with Mr. Chavez in Yuma, Ariz., as the song “Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week” played on the radio.
She said Mr. Chavez confessed to her during their conversation that he realized he had treated her and another female board member differently than their male colleagues. She met his admission head-on. “Yes,” she said she told him, “it’s called machismo — it’s called male chauvinism.”
She saw it as his way of offering an apology.
Several days later, Mr. Chavez died at the age of 66 while going over a legal case. Ms. Huerta said he had been found with his glasses still on and a brochure in his hand, appearing as if he had simply fallen into a peaceful sleep.
“That took him out before he would have to face his wrongdoings,” she said.
When asked if she had forgiven him, Ms. Huerta said the judgment was not hers to make. “Well, I’m not God,” she said. “You know, I think it’s up to God.”
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8) ‘Go Big and Go Loud’: Inside the Justice Dept.’s Push to Prosecute Protesters
Prosecutors have struggled to prove in court what the president and his aides have repeatedly said in public: that a network of leftist activists presents a serious threat to national security.
By Alan Feuer, Alexandra Berzon and Ernesto Londoño, March 19, 2026
Just days after Minneapolis erupted into protest over the second killing of a resident demonstrating against immigration agents, a top Justice Department official delivered a hardball message to federal prosecutors.
Go after the protesters with everything you have.
In a conference call in late January, the official, Aakash Singh, laid out the department’s basis for prosecuting demonstrators: National Security Presidential Memo 7, a sweeping directive issued by President Trump last September. It expanded the definition of domestic terrorism to include not only violent crimes like assault, but also relatively minor ones, like revealing the personal details of agents or getting in the way of immigration enforcement.
Mr. Singh said that “coordinators” in U.S. attorneys’ offices responsible for charging protesters under NSPM-7 should be “hounding” federal agents to make cases, according to people familiar with his remarks. He also suggested that the department wanted headlines along with indictments, promising that officials in Washington would be “blasting out” prosecutors’ work.
“Go big,” Mr. Singh said, “and go loud.”
Time and again, in cities that have borne the brunt of the administration’s immigration crackdown, agents have gone after demonstrators with an aggressive array of tactics. They have seized cellphones and taken cheek swabs without warrants, court papers say; used license plate readers and facial recognition programs to identify protesters; and subpoenaed tech companies for information about social media accounts that track or criticize immigration agents.
But even though the Trump administration has portrayed protesters as left-wing terrorists and pushed for serious charges to be filed, often over actions that defense lawyers say are protected by the First Amendment, the efforts have failed so far to reveal a pervasive web of leftist groups working together. Indeed, the conspiracy cases the Justice Department has filed against demonstrators it has cast as left-wing activists have had limited success, for now.
Last week, the department secured the convictions on terrorism charges of a group of young people accused of being members of antifa, the radical left-wing movement, after they shot and wounded a police officer during an attack on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Alvarado, Texas, last summer. But the victory was undercut by the government’s own cooperating witnesses, five of whom denied under oath that they or the defendants actually belonged to antifa.
Around the same time, prosecutors in Chicago abruptly dropped all charges against two of six protesters accused of obstructing an immigration agent in his vehicle outside an ICE facility in Broadview, Ill., after videos showed the agent himself had turned the vehicle into a crowd of demonstrators.
While the case remains against the other four defendants — all Democrats who have vocally criticized the Trump administration — prosecutors recently admitted there was no “advanced planning” or “preexisting agreement” by the group. Instead, prosecutors say its members entered into a “spontaneous conspiracy” that began the moment their protest did — a theory the defense has derided as “tenuous.”
As Justice Department leaders have pressed top prosecutors to bring cases against protesters, at least one has quit rather than file charges. Last summer, in a little-noticed move, Richard R. Barker, the acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Washington, resigned instead of signing an indictment against nine protesters who were later charged with impeding federal agents driving immigrants to a court hearing in Tacoma.
Mr. Barker’s qualms about the case were validated by his successor, who let most of the defendants plead guilty this winter to a sweetheart deal in which their felony charges would be dropped to misdemeanors if they stayed out of trouble for 18 months.
“I knew there was no place for me in the Justice Department if I was being asked to bring felony charges against these protesters in a way that would compromise my integrity,” Mr. Barker said in a recent interview. “This was not an organized conspiracy. It was a protest where people were exercising their free-speech rights.”
In a statement on Wednesday, Chad Gilmartin, a Justice Department spokesman, defended the cases against protesters, noting they were filed in response to “an unprecedented spike in obstruction of federal law enforcement actions and assaults on federal officers.”
“Antifa is an existential threat to our nation and the rule of law,” Mr. Gilmartin wrote.
Mr. Trump’s desire to crack down on antifa and other left-wing movements has only intensified since he returned to office, accelerated by protests against his immigration policies and by the killing of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Shortly after Mr. Kirk was fatally shot last September, Stephen Miller, the president’s top domestic policy adviser, blamed leftist groups for the killing and declared that the administration would go after them using “every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government.”
Two weeks later, Mr. Trump issued NSPM-7, which cited Mr. Kirk’s murder and the purported threat from antifa as justification for a new strategy to “disband and uproot networks, entities and organizations that promote organized violence.” The memo ordered a whole-of-government approach to investigating not just violent crimes, but also actions based on purely ideological beliefs, including anticapitalism, anti-Christianity and even hostility toward “American views on family, religion and morality.”
After the publication of NSPM-7, the Justice Department began establishing an internal architecture to prosecute protesters with left-leaning views.
Mr. Singh issued a memo instructing some U.S. attorneys’ offices to draft plans to investigate a group funded by George Soros, the billionaire donor who has often supported left-wing causes. He also installed coordinators in many offices to encourage NSPM-7 cases. The F.B.I. set up its own NSPM-7 mission center in Washington to oversee investigations into left-wing movements, according to people familiar with the move.
Under another NSPM-7 initiative, the bureau is close to reaching an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service to investigate nonprofit organizations known as 501(c)(3)s, according to people familiar with the discussions. The term refers to groups that have tax-exempt status because they engage in charitable, educational, religious, or scientific work.
In a second conference call on Wednesday, Mr. Singh highlighted this effort to federal prosecutors across the country, according to people familiar with his remarks. He said that federal law enforcement was not doing enough “to attack the funding of these groups,” the people said.
Some protesters caught up in investigations have described being detained for hours without charges and being asked to relinquish their cellphones — even swabs of DNA — without warrants.
When McKenna Walker, 27, was arrested at an ICE protest on Jan. 17 in Minneapolis, she said she was baffled after immigration agents seized her phone without a court order and tried to take a cheek swab from her. She refused; they backed down.
“What they were trying to do was totally wild,” she recalled.
Agents on a team of Department of Homeland Security investigators, known as Homeland Security Task Force Group 4, have also been assigned to scrutinize “organizations involved in illegal activities during protests,” according to court papers in a recent criminal case in California. It is unusual for agents to investigate particular groups or people rather than specific crimes.
The case centers on VC Defensa, an immigrant advocacy group in Ventura County that is outspoken in its opposition to ICE. It runs a rapid response network of activists who track and follow agents, helps organize protests against ICE and offers assistance to undocumented immigrants.
It helped spread word last year of a large-scale immigration raid at a cannabis farm in Ventura County, which attracted protests that became volatile as federal officers threw crowd control munitions. Federal agents contend that some of the protesters threw rocks and engaged in other forms of violence; protesters and observers have testified that they saw peaceful protests.
Months after the raid, Virginia Reyes, a VC Defensa volunteer who was active in trailing ICE agents, was arrested along with her brother, Isai Carrillo. They were charged with the same crime many ICE protesters have recently faced: a conspiracy to impede federal agents.
Prosecutors say that during the operation, Ms. Reyes used her vehicle to block federal officers from leaving the property while Mr. Carrillo and others threw rocks at them, injuring a federal contractor. Both have contested the charges. In a charging document, a Department of Homeland Security agent noted Ms. Reyes’ ties to VC Defensa and messages on her phone opposing ICE, citing her statements and the group’s desire to stop immigration enforcement as evidence of wrongdoing.
Leo Martinez, one of VC Defensa’s main organizers, said the group is brazen about its opposition to ICE, but acts within the bounds of the law. A lawyer for Mr. Carrillo echoed those remarks last October, acknowledging in court that VC Defensa monitored ICE movements. But, she asserted, “that’s very different than a criminal organization seeking to agitate.”
Some experts have cautioned that when elected officials seek to frame political dissent as a security threat, as Mr. Trump has done in his executive actions, law enforcement agencies can face pressure to bring cases even when the evidence is weak.
“Read narrowly, these directives target genuine criminal conduct — assaults on federal officers, conspiracies to commit violence,” Thomas E. Brzozowski, the former chief legal adviser for domestic terrorism cases at the Justice Department, wrote in a recent analysis of Mr. Trump’s presidential memos. “Read broadly, they invite investigations that begin with ideology and work backward to find crimes.”
In his conference call in January, Mr. Singh referred to another high-profile action by the Justice Department against immigration protesters: a conspiracy case in St. Paul, Minn., in which 39 people — including the former CNN anchor Don Lemon — have been charged in connection with a demonstration at a local church where a pastor also worked as an ICE employee.
Mr. Singh referred to the protest as among the worst attacks on a house of worship in American history, resulting in the defendants being accused of plotting to deprive the congregants of their rights and of interfering with religious freedoms. And yet no career prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota are litigating the case, which is unusual. It is being handled instead by lawyers from the Justice Department’s civil rights division in Washington.
Defense lawyers have argued that the protest was a political act and that prosecutors will not be able to prove that the defendants intended to interfere with religious activity. They have also claimed that while the protesters sang, chanted and engaged in “verbal confrontations” with congregants, there is little evidence that they used force.
Lawyers for Mr. Lemon and Georgia Fort, another journalist who was covering the church demonstration, have in particular claimed that their clients were not involved in political activism, yet were prosecuted anyhow.
The lawyers noted that a federal judge in Minneapolis initially declined to issue arrest warrants for either Mr. Lemon or Ms. Fort, finding there was no evidence they had committed crimes. But the Justice Department still sought their indictment after Mr. Trump and top department leaders publicly called for them to be charged.
“In the United States of America, we do not prosecute journalists for doing their job,” the lawyers wrote. “That happens in Russia, China, Iran and other authoritarian regimes. And yet the government sold this unconstitutional mess to the grand jury.”
Hamed Aleaziz, Devlin Barrett and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting, and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
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9) Trump Vowed to Crack Down on Fraudsters, but He’s Pardoned Dozens
Across both of his terms, President Trump has granted clemency to more than 70 allies, donors and others convicted in fraud cases.
By Matthew Purdy and Luke Broadwater, March 19, 2026
Salomon Melgen was granted clemency by Mr. Trump after being sentenced to 17 years in jail for Medicare fraud. Lannis Waters/Palm Beach Post, via Associated Press
Salomon Melgen was an immigrant who came to the United States and wound up committing fraud, ripping off the American taxpayers by $42 million. “Melgen devised a scheme to enrich himself by defrauding Medicare to the tune of tens of millions of dollars,” an F.B.I. official said when Mr. Melgen was sentenced to 17 years in jail during President Trump’s first term.
Given the high-profile “war on fraud” in government programs that Mr. Trump announced on Monday, pointing to scams allegedly carried out by Somali and other immigrants, Mr. Melgen might have a prominent place in the president’s rogue’s gallery of fraudsters.
But Mr. Melgen is actually prominent in another presidential lineup, the gallery of criminals convicted of fraud who have been granted clemency by Mr. Trump.
That second gallery is not small.
Across both of his terms, Mr. Trump has granted clemency to more than 70 allies, donors and others convicted in fraud cases. In his second term, Mr. Trump’s pace of pardoning those convicted of fraud has increased. In the first year of his second term, he handed out nearly three dozen pardons and commutations for people accused of fraud.
Mr. Trump is unabashed about using the government to reward friends and supporters and punish foes. Still, his handling of fraud cases stands out. Not only are there striking similarities between some of the crimes that were prosecuted and those that were pardoned, but the president also has excused some of those who have stolen the most.
Exhibit A is Philip Esformes. The South Florida owner of nursing and assisted-living facilities was arrested in 2016 in what the F.B.I. called “the largest-ever criminal health care fraud case brought against individuals.” The fraudulent billing scheme stole $1.3 billion from Medicare and Medicaid — the same type of public entitlement programs the president says he is protecting with his crackdown on fraud in Minnesota and elsewhere.
But Mr. Trump commuted Mr. Esformes’s 20-year-sentence in 2020, after a lobbying campaign by well-connected lawyers and public figures. In announcing the commutation, which left in place $5.5 million in restitution, a statement from the White House said Mr. Esformes had devoted his time in prison “to prayer and repentance.”
“The war on fraud seems like a war on specific fraud committed by a specific kind of people,” said Elizabeth G. Oyer, who was fired as the Justice Department’s pardon attorney after she said she opposed restoring the gun rights of Mel Gibson, the actor and prominent supporter of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump himself was found liable in a civil fraud case related to his businesses, and he has railed against what he views as politically motivated cases targeting him and his allies. The president, Ms. Oyer said, is partial to “fraud committed by people in whom he sees something of himself. He sees a wealthy and successful businessman and he sees something of himself in him.”
In Minnesota, the Justice Department, beginning in the Biden administration, has charged nearly 100 people with defrauding a variety of government programs, including stealing hundreds of millions of dollars intended for a child nutrition program during the coronavirus pandemic, a period marked by a wave of scams involving federal money.
A recent assessment by federal prosecutors suggested that since 2018, more than half of the $18 billion in taxpayer funds spent on 14 state programs in Minnesota was most likely stolen. The vast majority of people who have been charged are of Somali descent, which Mr. Trump has cited as a justification for his immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said, “President Trump is launching a historic war on fraud to deliver justice for countless American taxpayers that have been ripped off by fraudsters, illegal aliens and career criminals.” She said that Mr. Trump also wants to “pardon victims of political prosecution or over-prosecution by a weaponized Biden D.O.J.” and that “this comparison from The New York Times is a false equivalence.”
Still, some of the fraud cases in Minnesota seem strikingly similar to those for which Mr. Trump has granted clemency.
Take, for instance, the case of Aimee Bock and Salim Said, who were charged as part of the $250 million theft from the federally funded child nutrition program in Minnesota. Federal prosecutors say they used the money “to fund their lavish lifestyles,” adding that the verdict against them “sends a message to the community that fraud against the government will not be tolerated.”
Compare that with the case of Lawrence Duran, the owner of a Florida mental health care company, who pleaded guilty along with co-defendants in 2011 to orchestrating a $205 million Medicare fraud scheme. Prosecutors say Mr. Duran “billed Medicare for hundreds of millions of dollars in mental health services that were not necessary or never provided,” adding that the government “will not allow our scarce Medicare dollars to be diverted from the sick and the elderly into the pockets of greedy fraudsters.”
The main difference between the two cases? Mr. Trump commuted Mr. Duran’s 50-year sentence last year, while Ms. Bloch and Mr. Said are facing possibly decades in prison.
Fraud charges are brought in a wide swath of financial crime cases, and Mr. Trump has used his clemency power in many types of fraud cases and for many reasons.
Some clemency went to people who are politically aligned with the president.
Mr. Trump pardoned Devon Archer, whose testimony helped fuel a Republican-led investigation into the Biden family, forgiving Mr. Archer’s conviction for defrauding investors and a Native American tribal entity of tens of millions of dollars. And he commuted the lengthy fraud sentence of Jason Galanis, a former business associate of Hunter Biden’s who also assisted in the investigation.
Mr. Trump has granted pardons to politicians from both parties whom he views as loyal, including former Representative George Santos, the New York Republican and serial fabulist who was convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Other pardons or commutations went to political donors or their relatives, although the White House has denied a connection between clemency and cash.
Last March, Mr. Trump pardoned Trevor Milton, the founder of electric vehicle start-up Nikola, who had been sentenced to four years in prison on allegations he had defrauded his investors. Before Mr. Trump granted the pardon, his campaign received donations from Mr. Milton and his wife totaling more than $1.8 million.
Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker, and two others, including the former governor of Puerto Rico, were charged in 2022 with wire fraud among other crimes in a bribery scheme. Mr. Herrera and the others pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, but Mr. Trump pardoned them before sentencing. The clemency grants came after Mr. Herrera’s daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million in 2024 — and then another $1 million in 2025 — to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.
Grants of clemency in fraud cases often go to those with the connections to get their pleadings in front of the president. But pardons are not always predictors that the well-connected will behave themselves.
On his way out of office after his first term, Mr. Trump commuted the sentence of Eliyahu Weinstein, who had been convicted twice of defrauding private investors. His case was supported by an Orthodox Jewish organization that works with prisoners and numerous others who are also influential with the White House, including the lawyer Alan Dershowitz. In explaining the grant of clemency, the White House said Mr. Weinstein had “maintained an exemplary prison history” and that after his release he would “have strong support from his community and members of his faith.”
Four years later, he and co-conspirators were convicted of defrauding investors of millions of dollars in what prosecutors described as a Ponzi scheme, and was sentenced to 37 years in jail.
Mr. Weinstein has not been as fortunate as Adriana Camberos. In 2021, Mr. Trump commuted the sentence she was serving for a fraud scheme involving fake energy drinks. A lawyer who had worked in the Trump White House assisted her with her case. Three years later, Ms. Camberos was convicted with her brother of defrauding food wholesalers. In January, Mr. Trump pardoned them both, with no explanation.
In the Oval Office on Monday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order, “Establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud,” put Vice President JD Vance in charge and gave him the nickname “Fraud Czar.”
“As the president said,” Mr. Vance explained, “this is a problem that has festered in this country for far too long, and far too few people have actually wanted to do anything about it. That’s what makes this administration different.”
In summarizing the executive order, Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, said the task force could return “potentially billions or tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars to the American taxpayer.”
Left unstated was Mr. Trump’s record of pardons and commutations for fraud convictions and the more than $700 million in restitution and fines connected to those cases, according to a review of Justice Department documents.
Mr. Trump said the administration would pursue fraud wherever it existed, but mentioned only Minnesota and California. He described the suspected fraud in Minnesota as totaling $19 billion — federal prosecutors estimate it is half that amount — and said it could be 10 times that in California.
Mark Osler, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis who studies clemency, said while “the fraud is real” in Minnesota, he questioned the prosecutorial zeal in rooting it out, given recent events.
In January, the federal prosecutor overseeing the sprawling fraud investigation in Minneapolis resigned along with other prosecutors after Justice Department officials displayed reluctance to investigate the killing of Renee Good by an immigration agent, but pressed for an inquiry into her widow.
Overall, he said, there is “certainly a deep contradiction” in the administration’s approach to fighting fraud.
“The message they want to send about fraud is that blue states have been suckers about fraud and the other message is that the government has been too tough on people who commit fraud in other contexts,” Mr. Osler said.
He said that historically, “presidents favor for clemency people they feel sympathy for.” Given Mr. Trump’s personal experience with civil fraud allegations, “it shouldn’t surprise us that he has the most empathy for the people who have faced the charges he faced.”
Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting.
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10) A Peek Into Trump’s Planning of America’s 250th Suggests a Religious Focus
A closed-door White House event included news about the National Garden of American Heroes and an emphasis on the role of religion in the founding.
By Jennifer Schuessler and Zachary Small, Published March 18, 2026, Updated March 19, 2026
The gathering, which was held in the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, was billed as an “Arts and Culture Summit for America’s 250th Anniversary.” Johan Andersson
A closed-door White House cultural event last month began with the Tony-nominated Broadway star Laura Osnes singing “America the Beautiful.” A few minutes earlier, a painter named Johan Andersson had placed an enormous portrait of the first lady, Melania Trump, on an easel at the front of the room.
It might have seemed like another afternoon at the Trump White House. But it was also a window onto the ideas driving the administration’s approach to this year’s 250th anniversary of American independence — including a strong emphasis on the religious roots of the nation’s founding.
The private event, held on Feb. 27 in the ornate Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, was billed as an “Arts and Culture Summit for America’s 250th Anniversary.” It featured nearly two dozen panelists drawn mostly from Trump-friendly corners of entertainment, the arts and academia, along with roughly 100 guests, according to accounts from attendees and a schedule of events reviewed by The New York Times.
The gathering was hosted by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Task Force 250, a group Mr. Trump created shortly after returning to office to support his call for “an extraordinary celebration” of the nation’s birthday. Several speakers had recently received funding from the humanities endowment, which, after canceling all previous grants last year, has pivoted to supporting Mr. Trump’s “America First” agenda.
The event’s goal, a White House spokesman, Davis Ingle, said, was to “share the task force’s vision and plan for America’s 250th birthday,” as well as to inspire others to create their own initiatives and to collaborate on aligned projects.
The program included the news that Michael Franck, an architect and a founding director of the National Civic Art Society, will be an adviser to the National Garden of American Heroes, Mr. Trump’s planned patriotic sculpture garden. The nonprofit art society has influenced the White House’s views on classical architecture and on projects like the East Wing ballroom.
Mr. Franck, who spoke on a panel dedicated to the arts — the first of four panels at the event — offered few details about the garden, whose location has not been announced.
The three other panels — dedicated to film, religion and public history projects — included a heavy focus on the religious dimensions of American history and the importance of “awakening America’s virtuous character through patriotic storytelling,” as the title of the film panel put it. A majority of the speakers from outside the administration were connected with religious colleges, faith organizations and “values-based” entertainment companies.
The panel on history included the best-selling evangelical writer and radio host Eric Metaxas, who has endorsed Mr. Trump’s baseless claims of 2020 election fraud and who calls the country’s 250th anniversary a “SuperCentennial” during which the nation should renew its spiritual foundations.
The film panel included the actor Zachary Levi, cited on the program for his work on “American-driven content,” who warned of the threat of artificial intelligence to the movie industry and the need for tax breaks to encourage productions to film in the United States.
There was also a teaser of “Young Washington,” a biopic of George Washington’s experiences in the French and Indian War that Angel Studios, a Utah-based distributor of “values-based” productions, will release on July 3.
Angel Studios, which scored a surprise box office hit in 2023 with “Sound of Freedom,” about a Homeland Security agent battling child trafficking, recently collaborated with Freedom 250, a Trump-backed group supporting the 250th celebration, on an advertisement that aired during the Super Bowl last month, as a cross-promotion for “Young Washington.”
But David Shane, a spokesman for Angel, who attended the event, said the invitation was “a matter of history, not politics.”
“The film celebrates the coming-of-age of the first president of the United States on this country’s 250th anniversary,” he said. “It would be inappropriate not to show a clip.”
The proceedings were introduced by Vince Haley, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council who is overseeing Task Force 250, and Brittany Baldwin, a senior adviser to the task force. Keith Krach, the chief executive of Freedom 250, created last December to support Mr. Trump’s signature projects, also spoke.
Freedom 250’s religious programming was teased last month, when Mr. Trump announced plans for Rededicate 250, a “national jubilee of prayer, praise and thanksgiving” to be held on May 17. It will include what the White House has described as a “large-scale revival” on the National Mall in Washington.
The panel on historical projects focused on “making American history relevant” through books, exhibitions and digital projects.
One slot went to Mr. Metaxas, whose forthcoming book, “Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World,” argues that there would have been no war of independence and no United States without the faith of the founders.
Another went to Matthew Spalding, a constitutional scholar at Hillsdale College, a Christian institution. Mr. Spalding was involved with Mr. Trump’s 1776 Commission, whose final report in January 2021 emphasized the centrality of religion to the founding. At the gathering, he spoke about helping create the “Freedom Trucks,” a fleet of federally funded mobile history museums that include discussion of the nation’s roots in “Western and Judeo-Christian values.”
The panel on religion, titled “Recovering a Freedom Like No Other — the Roots of the American Republic,” was moderated by Carlos Campo, the president and chief executive of the Museum of the Bible, where last fall Mr. Trump announced an initiative called “America Prays.”
Speakers on the panel included Os Guinness, a British-born Christian theologian; Eric Cohen, the chief executive of Tikvah, a conservative Jewish educational organization; and Rabbi Stuart Halpern, the deputy director of a center for Torah and Western thought at Yeshiva University in New York.
In September, many in the scholarly world were surprised when Tikvah, which had never previously received a federal grant, was handpicked for a special $10.4 million grant from the humanities endowment — the largest in the agency’s history — to support a broad project promoting the study of Jewish civilization, including its connections with the American founding.
Mr. Halpern also recently won a $30,000 grant, for a forthcoming book called “Two Nations Under God: How (Biblical) Israel Inspires the United States.”
In an email, Mr. Halpern said his panel “looked at how the Bible has shaped the American story, including by providing the country with many of its core values, including the inherent equality of humans who are created in the image of God.”
Mr. Halpern said his own comments focused on how the story of Queen Esther had inspired a diverse group of Americans, including the theologian John Witherspoon (a signer of the Declaration of Independence), Abraham Lincoln and the abolitionist Sojourner Truth.
R. Scott Stephenson, the chief executive of the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, who spoke on the history panel, noted that his museum, a private nonprofit, emphasizes the complexity and diversity of the revolution, including its darker aspects. In an interview, he said the audience had seemed receptive, and called the event a valuable experience.
“Coming from an institution that is very committed to broad, inclusive storytelling about the founding, it was wonderful for me to get a better handle on the breadth of organizations that are exploring their own ways to reflect on the significance of the American founding,” he said.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Andersson, the artist behind the portrait of the first lady, also spoke positively of the conference, saying it included “some great talks about the virtues of America.”
He said Julie Carmean, a senior officer for 250th programs at the humanities endowment, had invited him to the conference. After the event, he gave his painting, which he said he had created from photographs found online, to the White House.
“Her gaze is quite interesting,” Mr. Andersson said, referring to his rendering of Mrs. Trump. “It is very ambiguous as to what she is feeling, and her eyes follow you around. It felt like I was capturing her fearless beauty and the soul of America itself.”
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11) Cuba Is Going Dark
By Pablo Robles, Simon Romero and Tim Wallace, March 19, 2026
Cuba is facing what may be its worst electricity crisis since Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries swept to power 67 years ago. Following weeks of frequent blackouts, the national grid suffered a “complete disconnection” on Monday, according to the energy ministry.
Blackouts are getting worse, and on some days the entire island is plunged into near total darkness.
Cuba is facing what may be its worst electricity crisis since Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries swept to power 67 years ago. Following weeks of frequent blackouts, the national grid suffered a “complete disconnection” on Monday, according to the energy ministry.
Blackouts are getting worse, and on some days the entire island is plunged into near total darkness.
Cuba generates most of its electricity from oil, and for nearly three decades, Venezuelan oil has been the island nation’s energy lifeline.
The Trump administration ordered Venezuela to halt supplying oil to Cuba after it captured the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in January. Mexico was soon pressured by the U.S. to stop shipments as well. No other country has come to Cuba’s rescue with oil supplies.
U.S. officials are now using the energy crisis to exert leverage over Cuba’s leaders, even as some in Cuba warn that the repeated blackouts could make it harder for Cubans to get food, running water and medical care.
Cuba’s president, Miguel DÃaz-Canel, has publicly acknowledged this month that his government has been holding talks with Washington in an effort to find solutions to Cuba’s standoff with the United States.
Mounting Crisis in the Capital
The capital, Havana, is usually a priority in electricity generation because it is the seat of government. But as the energy crisis grows, it is also not shielded from going dark.
The whole city is feeling the ripple effects.
Trash is piling up as garbage trucks are idled due to a lack of fuel. Without refrigeration, meat and dairy in homes and food markets are spoiling.
Because Havana’s water system depends on electric pumps, running water has been cut off for many residents, who now line up with jugs at gravity-fed community cisterns, according to Jorge R. Piñon, a University of Texas oil expert who tracks Cuba’s energy industry. Public health officials have postponed tens of thousands of surgeries, and cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy have seen their treatments disrupted by power outages and a lack of refrigerated medicine.
The “Luxury Bubbles”
Lights largely remain on in resort areas like Varadero, Cayo Coco and Cayo Santa Maria, home to strings of beach hotels and spa complexes. Unlike residential areas that depend on the failing national grid, hotels in these places have their own generators, and fuel for these locations is a top priority, alongside hospitals.
That’s because tourism remains a crucial source of hard currency for Cuba’s government, even after some airlines suspended flights to Cuba because of a shortage of jet fuel at major airports caused by the U.S. blockade.
The energy crisis has created a bizarre reality in these areas.
They are some of the primary beneficiaries of recent efforts to create a decentralized network of small solar arrays using Chinese technology. That means workers at these resorts commute from places with little electricity, a lack of running water and rotting food to “luxury bubbles” where tourists enjoy air-conditioned rooms and refrigerated buffets. Military checkpoints strictly control access to these locations.
Unrest Flares Up in the Provinces
The rest of Cuba, far from the seat of power and the beach resorts, is hit hardest by the crisis.
After weeks of blackouts, hundreds of people in Morón, a city of 70,000 in central Cuba, took to the streets. On March 13, they ransacked the local office of the Communist Party, dragging furniture, computers and documents into the street to set them on fire.
In eastern Cuba, the provincial electricity company for the city of HolguÃn is providing electricity for residential neighborhoods for only about three hours a day. Major economic drivers, like nickel processing plants, have had to scale back operations, cutting the country’s exports.
Santiago, Cuba’s second-largest city, is suffering from severe disruptions to both electricity and running water. People there have started nighttime protests known as cacerolazos, in which they bang on pots and pans to express their anger.
An Outdated Energy System
For Cuba, the crisis has laid bare the risks of depending so heavily on foreign oil while trying to maintain a centrally planned socialist economic system.
While countries around the world are using diverse methods to produce electricity, such as natural gas, wind or battery storage, Cuba is still locked into a 20th-century model exceptionally dependent on oil. That makes the island nation extremely vulnerable to oil shocks.
The last confirmed arrival of a significant oil tanker was the Ocean Mariner, which docked in Havana on Jan. 9 with about 86,000 barrels of fuel from Mexico. Since then, Cuba has had to rely on its own meager production of extra-heavy crude oil, which covers only about 40 percent of energy demand.
That shortfall could bring Cuba’s whole economic system, not just its electricity grid, to the breaking point.
About the data
The nighttime lights analysis compares light intensity in Cuba from March 6 to 12, 2026, with the same period in 2025, using satellite imagery. The light intensity shown is the average of the seven-day period based on available data. There may be small gaps in the data where the satellite did not capture coverage. These gaps tend to occur in areas that were dimly lit in previous years.
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12) Home Health Care Aides Say It’s Time to End ‘Inhumane’ 24-Hour Shifts
The aides want the New York City Council to pass a law that would limit their shifts to 12 hours, except in the case of emergencies.
By Wesley Parnell, March 19, 2026
Home health workers demonstrated on Wednesday at City Hall, calling for better working conditions. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
For 10 years, Xue Zhen, a home health aide, has taken care of the same older man in Downtown Brooklyn, working 24-hour shifts for three consecutive days each week. She said that she has developed neck and back pain from lifting him, not to mention insomnia and chronic stomach issues from the long and irregular hours.
But on Wednesday, Ms. Zhen, 62, who would normally use her days off to recover and spend time with her family, sat in freezing temperatures outside City Hall alongside dozens of other home care workers.
They marched, sang and eventually began a daily four-hour sit-in that they expect to stretch into next week. Home care workers and their advocates are pressuring the City Council to pass a law that would all but end the grueling 24-hour shifts that home aide workers have long complained come at cost, physically and economically, because they typically are paid for only 13 hours of the shift.
The bill would limit their shifts to 12 hours, except in case of emergencies. The Council may vote on it later this spring.
“It is inhumane and takes advantage of us and our wages,” Ms Zhen said through an interpreter. “If you are doing your job properly, you are not sleeping, you are waking up in the night to check on your patient, making sure they are OK.”
Home care aides in New York City have been allowed to work 24-hour shifts because of a longstanding interpretation of state law that assumes that the aides work on average for 13 hours of their shift and sleep and take meal breaks during the other 11 hours.
But the aides said that they are rarely able to take breaks and are often pressured to not complain or risk losing work.
As New York City’s baby boomer population continues to leave the work force, the need for these workers is expected to grow. While New York State’s population overall is expected to increase by 3 percent between 2021 and 2040, the number of people 65 and older is projected to grow 25 percent, and the 85-and-older population could jump nearly 75 percent, according to a City University of New York study.
The movement to rein in their long days has been a decade-long battle for the nearly 130,000 home health workers within the five boroughs. Outside City Hall, the demonstrators, almost all of them women and immigrants, chanted, “no more to 24 hours” and held signs displaying Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s face, inscribed with the words, “Mamdani, you promised!”
Advocacy groups say that making the job less strenuous will draw more people into the field, helping meet the booming demand for their services.
Advocates had been hopeful that Mr. Mamdani, who spoke at a rally for home health care workers in December 2024, would provide momentum for reforms.
“Mayor Mamdani has always stood with home care workers in the fight for dignity on the job: fair wages, reliable hours and respect owed to those who make it possible for so many New Yorkers to live safely at home,” Dora Pekec, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said.
“The mayor is committed to working alongside home care workers, the Council and state government to pass stronger protections that improve working conditions for caregivers and ensure they can provide the high-quality care their patients deserve,” Ms. Pekec said.
The bill’s sponsor, Council Member Christopher Marte, said that he was optimistic about the measure, and said that the Mamdani administration had been providing feedback, ironing out legal questions and policy differences.
When Mr. Marte previously introduced the bill, a handful of industry organizations and politicians had opposed it, arguing that it would raise Medicaid costs because workers would be paid for every hour they are present in a client’s home. The State Capitol in Albany is a better venue to consider such a measure because the state regulates Medicaid contracts, industry representatives and some politicians have said.
Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, a powerful union that represents health care workers, said that while it agrees with the intention of the measure, it was important to recognize that it would require $460 million in Medicaid funding. Without coordinating the cost with the Legislature, patients could be left in the lurch, they said.
“The City Council should recognize that the state Medicaid program will need to fund an additional 11 hours per day for every 24‐hour case,” Helen Schaub, political director of 1199 SEIU, said in a statement.
The Legal Aid Society, which has filed lawsuits trying to restore back pay or lost wages for home health attendants, echoed similar concerns.
“People who rely on 24-hour live-in care are not authorized for two 12-hour shifts, so coverage cannot simply be split without changes to state law and reimbursement — risking immediate gaps in care for seniors and people with disabilities,” said Belkys Garcia, staff attorney in the Civil Law Reform Unit at the Legal Aid Society.
Shirley Ranz attended the rally on Wednesday after her family’s experience with home care, she said. Her father qualified for 24-hour care after he fell ill in 2018. But Ms. Ranz, who chairs the domestic worker task force for the National Organization for Women, was appalled by the working hours. Her father had to be rolled over in the middle of the night because of bed sores. She appealed the coverage and tried to set up separate 12-hour shifts.
“It was a danger for my father, and it was dangerous for the worker,” Ms. Ranz said.
Her appeal was approved in 2020, she said, the day before her father passed away.
“Ultimately, it was a Pyrrhic victory,” Ms. Ranz said.
Emma Goldberg contributed reporting.
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13) The U.S. Economy Is Insulated From High Oil Prices. Americans Aren’t.
The overall economy has proved resilient in recent years, even as many households have struggled. The war with Iran is following the same pattern.
By Ben Casselman, March 20, 2026
Debris from an intercepted Iranian drone struck an oil site in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, on Saturday. The U.S.-led war with Iran is threatening to deliver another inflationary blow to American consumers. Altaf Qadri/Associated Press
The defining narrative for the U.S. economy over the past several years has been one of remarkable resilience in the face of inflation, tariffs and all manner of uncertainty. For individual Americans, however, the same period has often been defined by frustration, insecurity and, in many cases, real hardship.
The war with Iran looks set to repeat that pattern.
The jump in oil prices to over $100 a barrel in recent weeks will push nearly every major economic variable in the wrong direction. Inflation will be faster. Growth will be slower. Unemployment will most likely be higher. If the war were to last longer than expected, or energy prices were to go higher — as they have in recent days — the damage would grow.
Still, unless the situation takes a significant turn for the worse, the impact will most likely be modest, measured in tenths of a percentage point of economic growth. Federal Reserve policymakers, at their first meeting since the war began, made only small adjustments to their economic forecasts for the year and left interest rates unchanged.
In a news conference after this week’s meeting, Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said it was too soon to predict how the war would affect the economy. But he noted that the economy had repeatedly exceeded expectations in recent years, including by defying the near-consensus view among forecasters that the Fed’s efforts to control inflation would lead to a recession.
“The U.S. economy has really been just doing pretty well through a lot of significant challenges over the past few years,” Mr. Powell said. “It’s just been amazing to see.”
Few Americans have shared that sense of amazement. Measures of consumer sentiment have been persistently weak as inflation and high interest rates have taken a toll on household finances. President Trump won back the White House partly by promising to control inflation, then proceeded to impose tariffs that drove up the price of imported goods, according to nearly all independent analyses.
Now the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran is threatening to deliver another inflationary blow just as the effects of tariffs were beginning to fade.
The cost of gasoline has jumped by about a dollar a gallon nationally since the war began and is all but certain to head higher. The prices of food and electricity — already pain points for many households — could be close behind. Even housing is set to become less affordable: Concerns about inflation have pushed mortgage rates to their highest level in three months, just weeks after they fell below 6 percent for the first time since 2022.
Those higher costs are hitting at a time when many families are struggling with mounting debt and dwindling savings, and when a weakening labor market has sapped workers’ bargaining power and made them nervous about their job security.
“These price increases are very pervasive,” said Maurice Obstfeld, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. “If you’re already struggling to pay your bills, it could be a very significant setback for you.”
Ripple Effects
Neither consumers nor the overall economy are as vulnerable to high oil prices as they were in the 1970s, when a succession of oil shocks contributed to the combination of rising prices and high unemployment that came to be known as “stagflation.” Cars have become more fuel efficient, partly because of reforms enacted after those crises. Energy-intensive industries account for a smaller share of economic output. And a surge in domestic production has turned the United States from a large importer of oil into a net exporter.
Wall Street forecasters estimate that the rise in energy prices will reduce U.S. gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, by less than half a percentage point in the second quarter. For comparison, that is a more modest hit to growth than last fall’s six-week government shutdown. A prolonged disruption to global oil supplies would have more significant consequences. But unless oil prices hit $200 a barrel for a sustained period — a scenario that energy experts say is plausible but relatively unlikely — most forecasters do not think the shock will be enough to cause a recession.
Because the United States is both the world’s largest producer of oil and its largest consumer, the economic consequences of higher prices are complex. Rising costs mean bigger profits for oil companies and their investors, and perhaps also more jobs for workers in Texas, North Dakota and other energy-rich states.
But for the businesses that rely on oil to produce and ship their goods, higher prices are a cost that they must either pass on to their customers or swallow in the form of lower profits. Diesel fuel has already crossed $5 a gallon, and the price of jet fuel is up more than 50 percent since the war began.
The effects of the war go beyond oil: Natural gas prices have soared globally, as has the cost of nitrogen-based fertilizer. That could push up food prices, and further strain the already battered agricultural sector. In a letter to Mr. Trump on Thursday, a coalition of farming groups asked for federal help dealing with the increased costs. Supplies of aluminum and helium, key industrial inputs that are produced in the Gulf region, have also been disrupted.
“This is not just an energy shock,” said Aditya Bhave, chief U.S. economist for Bank of America. “It’s difficult to sit here and figure out exactly how that is going play out through global supply chains.”
The most immediate impact, however, will be on consumers. Gasoline makes up a relatively small share of consumer spending, only about 3 percent for the average household, but it is an expense most Americans have little choice but to pay. People may be able to put off road trips or weekend excursions, but they mostly cannot avoid driving to work or school.
“It is a fixed cost,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy for the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive group. “You’re not going to not go to work because the price of gas is up, so you’re going to cut back somewhere else.”
A recent analysis by economists at Stanford found that the increase in gas prices could be enough to wipe out the benefits of the higher tax refunds that resulted from the tax cuts that Mr. Trump signed last year. The impact will be particularly hard on low-income families, who typically dedicate more of their budget to energy and have less room to cut back spending elsewhere.
“I doubt we’ll see a big recession coming for the U.S. economy — in that sense it may not look like that big an impact,” said Matthias Kehrig, a Duke University economist who has studied the effects of high oil prices. “But in terms of pain for low-income people, it is a big recession.”
Even for households that can afford to pay more, gas prices are a uniquely visible reminder of the rising cost of living. Shoppers may notice when they have to pay more for eggs or beef, but only gas prices are posted in giant numbers alongside every highway in America.
Measures of consumer sentiment dropped sharply in the early days of the war, as surveys showed that Americans were anticipating not just higher prices at the pump but also a broader pickup in inflation over the next year. And unlike many consumer attitudes in a polarized era, concern about rising gas prices cut across partisan and ideological lines, said Joanne Hsu, the director of the University of Michigan’s long-running consumer survey.
“This isn’t ‘I don’t like this foreign policy and I’m going to tell you I hate the economy as a result,’” Ms. Hsu said. “People aren’t even specifically mentioning the word ‘Iran.’ They’re really reacting to the economic reality that they’re seeing with gas prices going up.”
Americans’ last experience with high gas prices came in 2022, when they hit a record $5.55 a gallon nationally after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That price spike occurred in a very different economic context. Inflation was much higher then, but it was also a newer phenomenon — Americans had not yet been battered by years of high prices. And the labor market was much stronger, with employers competing with one another for workers as they tried to staff up in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. That gave workers leverage to demand raises that helped them offset the pain of higher prices.
Today, job growth has slowed to a crawl, and while the unemployment rate is still relatively low, it has crept up. Workers report feeling less confident about their ability to find a new job if they were to need one. As a result, wage growth has slowed, particularly for low-wage workers, making higher gas prices harder to absorb.
“This time, all the bargaining power really seems to lie with employers,” said Kayla Bruun, lead economist for Morning Consult, a polling firm.
In data released this week, Morning Consult found that consumers were already responding to higher gas prices by cutting back spending on discretionary expenses, such as plane tickets and restaurant meals, and on frequently purchased items like groceries, where they had the option to buy less.
Even before the war began, Ms. Bruun said, surveys were showing some erosion of sentiment among consumers as the labor market softened. Today, oil prices are adding a new source of concern.
“We’ve had this slow-moving story, and then now we have this fast-moving story,” Ms. Bruun said. “The slow-moving story has been this kind of gradual weakening that’s a little bit been undermining sentiment.”
Now, she said, “with this shock of gas prices, this thing that consumers have no choice really but to absorb, that’s putting pressure on budgets.”
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14) Pregnant in ICE Detention: Handcuffs and Pleas for Medical Care
Women describe conditions that violate longstanding agency guidelines for how pregnant detainees should be treated.
By Caroline Kitchener, Charo HenrÃquez and Hamed Aleaziz, March 20, 2026
The reporters interviewed women who have been held in detention as well as their family members and lawyers, and reviewed court filings, government documents and medical records.
Candy Castillo Collantes was six months pregnant when she stepped inside the giant tent where she would live for the next 47 days.
Her enclosure at the South Texas detention center held dozens of bunk beds, she said, with one tiny slit for a window. Women wailed late into the night for their husbands and children. When Ms. Collantes experienced vaginal bleeding and asked for medical care at the facility, she and her lawyer said, she was offered only water, prenatal vitamins and a temperature check.
“It’s not a center that we know has a doctor,” Ms. Collantes, a 38-year-old Venezuelan who obtained temporary legal status under the Biden administration, said in an interview from the facility in late February. “The people here can’t tell you that everything is fine.”
Ms. Collantes had heard from other detainees about a woman who had gone into labor at their detention center months earlier.
She was terrified that she could be next.
Pregnant women who have been swept up in President Trump’s immigration crackdown have been held in detention centers as late as eight months into their pregnancies without adequate food or medical care, according to a New York Times examination of 10 cases. The Times review found that, in those cases, the Department of Homeland Security violated longstanding agency guidelines for how to treat pregnant women in detention, subjecting them to conditions that medical experts say can jeopardize the health of mothers and their babies.
Pregnant women said they were served food covered in cockroaches and water that tasted like bleach. They described how Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shackled their hands and feet, refusing to believe that they were pregnant until a bump appeared. One woman said ICE agents ignored her as she lay on the floor screaming in pain, and took her to the emergency room only after her fellow inmates began banging on the door for help.
This account is based on interviews with pregnant women either currently detained or recently released, as well as an analysis of court filings, government documents and medical records.
The Biden administration instituted a policy under which pregnant women could only be detained in “exceptional circumstances,” such as when a person poses a national security threat or an “imminent risk of death, violence, or physical harm” to someone. While Trump administration officials have offered conflicting opinions in court on whether that policy remains in effect, Lauren Bis, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in a statement to The Times that it still stands.
Ms. Bis also said that pregnancy in ICE detention is “exceedingly rare,” comprising 0.18 percent of all undocumented immigrants in custody. That comes out to about 126 women, according to recent estimates of the number of people in detention. Ms. Bis added that no women had given birth in ICE custody under the Trump administration and that the medical care provided to women in detention was “the best health care many of these individuals have received in their entire lives.” She said that clean and bottled water was provided for detainees.
“Pregnant women receive regular prenatal visits, mental health services, nutritional support and accommodations aligned with community standards of care,” Ms. Bis said in a statement.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said that ICE detention facilities were “safe” and “clean,” and had the “highest standards.”
The issue of pregnant women in detention has galvanized an unlikely coalition of advocates, including antiabortion leaders eager to protect undocumented pregnant women and their babies.
“I don’t think we should have the detaining of pregnant women, period,” said Lila Rose, the founder and president of the national antiabortion group Live Action. Ms. Rose recently signed an open letter to Mr. Trump urging the administration to enforce the Biden-era guidance. “It’s only putting lives that are already vulnerable in a more vulnerable position,” she added.
Of the cases examined by The Times, some pregnant women were deported, while others were temporarily released in the United States before they delivered their babies. Some remain in detention.
“It is alarming to hear how these women are being treated,” said Eunice Cho, a former senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union who coauthored a report last October that documented over a dozen cases of pregnant women in detention, none of which overlapped with the cases examined by The Times. “When people inform agents that they are pregnant, it’s not really being taken into consideration.”
In Texas, Ms. Collantes was detained at Camp East Montana, a makeshift 5,000-bed tent facility opened over the summer to accommodate the surge of immigrants under arrest. A group of congressional Democrats last month called for the site’s permanent closure, citing “inadequate medical care” amid an outbreak of measles there.
Ms. Bis, the Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said Ms. Collantes underwent a medical evaluation immediately upon arriving at the detention center, and never reported any bleeding to medical staff members.
Ms. Collantes said she felt isolated and terrified, unable to access the care she felt she needed.
“If you feel unwell, they say, ‘Well, it’s normal because you’re pregnant,” Ms. Collantes said in late February, fearful that she might go into early labor while living in a tent. “‘If you feel unwell, drink water.’”
Four days later, Ms. Collantes was rushed to the hospital.
Months Spent Waiting for Medical Care
From the moment they were arrested, women interviewed by The Times said, ICE agents appeared unconcerned with the fact that they were pregnant.
In five cases identified by The Times, ICE agents cuffed a pregnant woman’s hands and ankles, even after learning about their pregnancies, according to the women, their lawyers, their family members and legal briefs. Two said the agents wrapped chains around their bellies, refusing to remove them even after one woman began bleeding on the airplane bound for a detention center.
When ICE agents arrested Djeniffer Benvinda Semedo, 22, in the Boston area last month, she said they put her in handcuffs and chains and pushed her into a van, without providing a warrant or telling her where she was going.
“I told them, ‘You don’t have to do this. I’m pregnant and it hurts. My belly is big,’” said Ms. Semedo, who was between five and six months pregnant at the time. “They just said, ‘We have to do this.’”
Pregnant women are supposed to receive special care in ICE detention, according to national detention standards published by the Department of Homeland Security, robust guidance that dates back to the early 2000s.
The standards prohibit the use of handcuffs or other restraints on pregnant women “absent truly extraordinary circumstances that render restraints absolutely necessary.” In its written statement, D.H.S. maintained that ICE complied with these standards, saying that a pregnant detainee would only be restrained “in the exceedingly rare situation where doing so would protect the life and safety of the detainee.”
The national Department of Homeland Security standards also require pregnant women to receive “close medical supervision” and “access to prenatal and specialized care.”
Most women interviewed for this article said that while in ICE detention, they received little or no prenatal care — a regimen to facilitate a healthy pregnancy that is supposed to include regular medical checkups, tests and ultrasounds.
While ICE is responsible for overseeing the medical care provided at all of its detention centers, many are operated by private contractors, which sometimes hire other companies to handle medical services. Acquisition Logistics, a small Virginia-based company, received roughly $1.2 billion from the federal government last year to operate Camp East Montana, where Ms. Collantes was detained. (Acquisition Logistics did not respond to a request for comment.)
Women interviewed for this article who did see a doctor while in detention either received that care at a hospital during a medical emergency, or reported waiting months for detention personnel to arrange an appointment.
Amanda Fanego Cardoso, 22, was several months pregnant when she was detained by ICE in Florida last fall following a shoplifting arrest. When Ms. Cardoso asked to see a doctor immediately upon arriving at the Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico, she said, detention center staff members promised that they would soon make her an appointment. But then another month passed, and another.
When she finally saw a doctor last December — almost six months pregnant — she said she learned that she had gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia, both serious health conditions that classify a pregnancy as high risk. After that initial visit, Ms. Cardoso said, she was taken to a medical facility for a checkup every few weeks.
“I was scared,” said Ms. Cardoso, who was granted temporary parole after coming into the United States from Cuba in 2023. “I thought I was going to have some kind of problem because of so many months without attention. You just don’t know what’s going on.”
Ms. Cardoso was released in February, at 33 weeks pregnant. Her lawyer, Sam Badawi, had by that point filed several emergency motions citing the “grave physical and emotional harm” that would result from continued detention in the final stages of her pregnancy.
Ms. Bis at the Department of Homeland Security said Ms. Cardoso was “prescribed a daily prenatal vitamin and referred to an off-site OB/GYN, who saw and treated her regularly until she was released.”
Some women said they struggled to get the attention of ICE agents even in acute medical emergencies.
Last spring, Iris Dayana Monterroso Lémus had a miscarriage almost six months into her pregnancy while detained at the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, La., records show. Ms. Monterroso Lémus, whose miscarriage received widespread media attention at the time, came into the United States illegally from Guatemala in 2018 and had been arrested on charges of child abuse, neglect or endangerment in Tennessee. She also had a warrant for homicide in Guatemala, which, according to a document surfaced by The Daily Beast, was dismissed last May.
Government documents reviewed by The Times show that Ms. Monterroso Lémus raised alarms about her health almost one month before her miscarriage. She reported what felt like contractions, stomach pain and 21 pounds of weight loss, and asked for an ultrasound to check on her baby, according to the documents.
There is no indication in the records reviewed by The Times that Ms. Monterroso Lémus received medical services between the time she made that report and when she was taken to a nearby hospital to receive treatment for the miscarriage. In the records from the hospital, a doctor noted that Ms. Monterroso Lémus told detention center staff members that her pregnancy “didn’t feel right” for a few days before she arrived at the hospital, but that “nothing was done.”
Also around six months pregnant, Ms. Semedo spent three days last month in a holding cell with no beds at an ICE office in Burlington, Mass. At 2 a.m. on her third night in the facility, Ms. Semedo said she felt abdominal pain so intense that she started screaming and crying on the holding room floor.
The ICE agents, she said, “were sitting right there, watching TV” for about 10 minutes before they came to check on her. When an officer eventually appeared, she said, he surveyed the room and asked, “Which one of you needs help?”
“He could see me. I was literally lying down on the floor in front of him,” said Ms. Semedo. “It was just terrifying.”
Ms. Bis at the Department of Homeland Security said that ICE officers took Ms. Semedo to the hospital “immediately after she complained of upper abdominal pain.”
Ms. Semedo came into the country at age 13 from Cape Verde with her mother as a conditional permanent resident, according to her lawyer. By the time Ms. Semedo was arrested for not appearing in court for a domestic violence charge, her status as a permanent resident had been terminated without her knowledge, Ms. Semedo said.
While still in detention, Ms. Semedo was hospitalized for several days with gallstones and a possible obstruction in her bile duct that could have increased her risk of infection, according to a legal brief prepared by Blair Johnson Wylie, the chair of the Obstetrics and Gynecology department at the hospital where Ms. Semedo was treated. She also had electrolyte deficiencies, Dr. Wylie said, which could have been caused by her diet in detention, where Ms. Semedo said she was offered only microwavable macaroni and cheese for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Ms. Semedo’s detention at an ICE facility put her “at higher risk of preterm labor,” Dr. Wylie wrote.
“Prenatal care is critical throughout pregnancy,” the doctor added, “and specifically when a patient experiences complications.”
‘What Will Become Of Me?’
Several months after she arrived at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center last December, 29-year-old Ely Yohana Lopera learned that she could be deported to Ecuador — a country she had never been to — months before she was due to give birth.
“We don't know Ecuador, nor do we know anyone in Ecuador,” said Ms. Lopera’s husband, Robinson Carvajal. His wife had sought asylum four years ago when she came to the United States from Colombia.
“She has no idea what would happen there — with the baby, or with her,” he said.
Ms. Bis at D.H.S. said Ms. Lopera had received regular medical checkups and that “she has not made any complaints or concerns regarding the pregnancy.”
Ms. Cardoso was also informed while in detention in New Mexico that she would be deported to Ecuador.
“I thought, I have no one there. I have nothing,” said Ms. Cardoso, who has been temporarily released from detention but could still be deported. “If I have my baby in Ecuador, what will become of me? Where am I going to live? Where are they going to leave me? What am I going to do? How am I going to get medical care?”
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that “no pregnant women have been threatened with removal to a third country,” and that “any illegal alien is subject to third-country removal if they cannot be removed to their home country.”
Women in ICE detention have been deported well into their third trimesters. In one case last spring, ICE agents tried to deport a Mexican woman with a high-risk pregnancy on an ICE plane when she was about eight months pregnant, according to the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution from the U.S. government.
When officials on that flight turned her away, saying she was too far into her pregnancy to fly, ICE agents returned her to the detention facility, she and her lawyer, Helen Vargas-Crebas, said.
The woman was “in the final stages of a high-risk pregnancy,” Ms. Vargas-Crebas wrote in an email to several ICE officials on May 19, 2025, asking for her client to be released from ICE custody. “We are gravely concerned that she may give birth while in detention, which poses significant risks to both her health and that of her unborn child.”
The woman, who Ms. Vargas-Crebas said had an order of removal at the time, said ICE agents pressured her to sign a release that would have allowed her to board a commercial flight at such a late stage in her pregnancy.
Terrified, she said, she decided to sign the release and board the plane — arriving in Mexico before she gave birth.
In South Texas, Ms. Collantes, the woman who feared giving birth in detention, left Camp East Montana on Feb. 25, bound for a nearby hospital.
Officials at the detention center had agreed to take her in, she said, after she spent the day vomiting, with a high fever. By the time she got to the hospital, she said, she was one centimeter dilated, a possible sign she could be starting to progress toward preterm labor.
Ms. Collantes did not have her baby that day. Amid her pregnancy complications, immigration agents agreed to release her, said one of her lawyers, Iris Ramos.
Around the time she is due to give birth, Ms. Collantes is scheduled to return to court for a hearing on her immigration status. The judge could grant her application for asylum, Ms. Ramos said — or order her to be deported.
“She is still in removal proceedings,” Ms. Ramos said. “Being released doesn’t mean she is out of the woods.”
Miriam Castillo, Campbell Robertson and Brent McDonald contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett and Julie Tate contributed research.
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15) The Middle-Class Suburbanites Who Sell Their Blood Plasma to Get By
Across the United States, plasma centers are opening in wealthier areas as more people struggle with the high cost of housing, groceries and health care.
By Kurtis Lee and Robert Gebeloff, March 20, 2026
Kurtis Lee reported from the Houston suburbs. Robert Gebeloff analyzed plasma donation center data.
Centers like this one in Webster, Texas, pay people for their blood plasma, which is used to make medical therapies. The United States provides around 70 percent of the world’s blood plasma. Christopher Lee for The New York Times
Joseph Briseño arrived at CSL Plasma around 8 a.m., just as the morning rush of donors was thinning out. He took a few small sips from his water bottle, preparing for what he ruefully described as his second job.
Four days a week, Mr. Briseño, who lives in the Houston suburbs, works long shifts seated at the controls of a crane at a local waste disposal company, where he is a supervisor. It’s his full-time job, and he earns around $50,000 a year. On two of his days off, he sits in a cushioned recliner for an hour with a needle in his left arm, donating blood plasma to be used in making certain medical therapies. Donating is a misnomer. He earns an average of $70 for each visit.
“That can be gas money, grocery money, money put into savings for emergencies,” said Mr. Briseño, who started going to this plasma collection center a year ago after struggling to find a part-time job that didn’t conflict with his work schedule. He needed to do something to offset the increased costs of living.
“In this economy, it’s expensive,” he said, “and donating helps.”
Every day, an estimated 215,000 people donate plasma, the yellowish liquid component of blood. Mr. Briseño is among them. He is not jobless or facing eviction, but, like many in the American middle class, he is caught in the vise of rising expenses and wages that aren’t growing fast enough to cover them. So he is turning to a method more commonly associated with the lowest-income Americans. For people like him, an extra $600 or so a month can mean making a mortgage payment or covering increased health-insurance costs.
While no one publishes statistics on the exact incomes of people who sell their blood plasma, the location of the centers suggests a shift toward a less financially desperate clientele. A recent study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Colorado, Boulder, observed that while older plasma centers are clustered in low-income areas, newer centers were increasingly likely to open in middle-class neighborhoods. A New York Times analysis shows the trend has continued: Centers have sprung up in more than 100 such neighborhoods, in suburbs and wealthier sections of cities, since researchers finished collecting their data in 2021.
In the Houston suburb of Webster, Texas, a short drive from the Johnson Space Center, two sites opened in 2022 along a stretch that perfectly embodies a certain slice of suburbia. The CSL Plasma location, where Mr. Briseño goes, is in a strip mall a few doors down from an Orangetheory Fitness. And BioLife Plasma Services, a little more than a mile away, is in a stand-alone building next to a man-made pond and a Charles Schwab branch.
On recent mornings, people waited in long lines outside both locations. Many described themselves as middle class, and said that even a few years ago they would not have imagined exchanging their plasma for cash. There was a 30-something tech worker trying to save for a house, a sixth-grade special education teacher looking to cover rising health care costs, a night-shift nurse struggling to pay child care fees.
Most of them donate twice a week — the maximum allowed under Food and Drug Administration regulations — and earn an average of $70 per visit, although pay can vary depending on things like the collection amount and incentives.
“If people need to do this to supplement their incomes, then there are a lot of jobs out there just not paying high enough wages for people to live on,” said Emily Gallagher, a professor of finance at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and one of the authors of the study of the plasma industry.
Mr. Briseño, 59, scrolled his phone as he donated plasma at CSL on a recent morning. There were many other places he would rather have been — at home with his wife, clocking overtime at his job, taking a vacation, which he had not done in years.
“It would be great to not have to do this for extra money,” he said.
‘A Shadow Safety Net’
The United States provides around 70 percent of the world’s blood plasma. Because it is one of around a dozen countries that allow payment for plasma — a practice discouraged by the World Health Organization — the industry has established itself here.
It has become a multibillion-dollar business.
In 2024, the United States exported $6.2 billion worth of plasma. For companies like CSL Limited and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, which own the centers in Webster, plasma is the raw material necessary to make some of their medical products — therapies for patients with immunodeficiencies, liver disease and bleeding disorders, as well as burn victims.
Between 2014 and 2021, the number of plasma centers in America more than doubled, according to the study. Today, there are around 1,200. The practice is considered safe, although there is little research on the long-term health effects, and serious adverse events and deaths are rare. (In Canada, however, officials recently began investigating two deaths possibly tied to plasma centers owned by the company Grifols.)
Last year, donors in the United States produced 62.5 million liters of plasma, the highest volume ever collected and an 8 percent increase from the year before, said Peter Jaworski, a professor at Georgetown University who studies the economics and ethics of the global blood plasma industry.
Mr. Jaworski said that, more than in the past, plasma centers were looking for reliable donors — “people who will show up at 3 p.m. if they reserved a donation time at 3 p.m.” — and could be finding them in more suburban areas.
“They want people who will come back and become repeat donors,” he said.
(CSL said in a statement that it chose locations based on population density, along with factors like access to parking or public transportation.)
For decades, plasma centers have been concentrated largely in impoverished and under-resourced neighborhoods and faced charges of exploitation. In her 2023 book, “Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America’s Blood Industry,” Kathleen McLaughlin explored how plasma centers targeted, among others, laid-off autoworkers in the Rust Belt and communities along the U.S-Mexican border.
“There isn’t anyone really that you’ll find who’s doing this for purely altruistic reasons,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “A lot of people like it because they get paid and they do something that they feel is giving back to society. But the primary motivation is always financial.”
The presence of these centers, however, might be offering people an alternative to predatory loans. When a plasma center opens in an area, the study found, demand for high-interest payday loans among younger borrowers declined nearly 20 percent within the first three years.
Plasma donation centers function like “a shadow safety net,” said Mr. Jaworski, who has at times served as a paid consultant in the plasma industry. “We have Lyft and Uber and different side gigs, and here is yet one more option.”
That was the reality that drew Mr. Briseño to donate.
Even with careful budgeting, his savings account was stagnant. He and his wife have lived with their daughter, son-in-law and young grandsons in a two-story brick home in a sprawling subdivision for three years. It’s the kind of place with lush lawns and homeowners’ association rules. Mr. Briseño, who has not received a raise in several years, helps pay part of the mortgage. He purchases groceries for the family. His health-insurance co-pays kept rising.
“I was starting to pull from my savings because prices have been going up,” he said.
He was reluctant when a friend and neighbor encouraged him to donate for additional cash, but he needed the money.
“For me personally, this is not something I am the most proud of,” he said. “But it’s quick and effortless and offers consistent pay.”
When Social Security Isn’t Enough
The line outside CSL Plasma had grown to nearly two dozen people. It was after 8 a.m., and the center should have opened an hour earlier.
“A nurse is running late,” one woman, a regular, reassured each new arrival.
People stood with blankets that would keep them warm inside the air-conditioned center; others scrolled phones or listened to podcasts through earbuds.
Arnold Williams arrived after driving 45 minutes to and from downtown Houston, where he had dropped off his wife at her administrative job.
Mr. Williams, 66, who served in the Air Force and later worked in management at food distribution centers around the South, has donated plasma for the past year. He and his wife rent a two-bedroom apartment for $2,100. Despite the income from her job and his $1,800 monthly benefits from Social Security, things are tight. He found himself using credit cards more and more to cover bills until his benefit checks arrived.
“It’s in those in-between times where this is beneficial,” said Mr. Williams, who donates on Monday and Thursday mornings.
Each visit begins with a screening questionnaire that asks about everything from sexual history to medications. It then includes a brief check of vitals and a finger prick to measure the amount of red blood cells and protein levels. The hourlong donation process for Mr. Williams then begins, and he has about a liter of plasma collected. Sixty dollars was loaded onto a prepaid card. Donors can receive bonuses for returning frequently or referring others.
Often, after Mr. Williams is done, he goes home to rest because donations sometimes leave him fatigued, before driving in the evening to pick up his wife from work.
“Do I want to be doing this forever?” he pondered after the recent morning session. “No, but right now it’s working to my benefit.”
Wendy Baker started donating plasma twice a week in December after seeing an advertisement on Facebook that promised $500 for first-time donors. Ms. Baker, 54, who has a college degree, left her job in biosciences about two years ago to deal with a personal matter. She and her husband and their two teenage daughters live comfortably on her husband’s salary, but she was intrigued by the Facebook posting.
Her family’s health insurance premiums had been going up, and they had stopped eating out quite as much. It would be nice, she thought, to have a little extra money to put toward Christmas gifts.
“Why not?” she thought.
When Ms. McLaughlin researched her book on the plasma industry, she found that many people saw donating as a bit taboo and did not tell anyone outside their small circle.
Some people still feel that stigma. In nearly two dozen interviews outside the Houston-area locations, many people would speak only anonymously, saying they felt a sense of shame having to donate to make ends meet. But that may be changing. Several others, like Ms. Baker, said they felt proud that their plasma would ultimately help someone in need.
Anita Brikman, president and chief executive of the Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association, which represents plasma collection centers, said that “plasma-derived medicines are indispensable for patients with rare and chronic diseases, many of whom have no alternative treatment options.” A secure and reliable plasma supply, she said, is critical.
Even so, plasma companies are looking for ways to bring down costs. Improved plasmapheresis machines are now being used to increase volume.
Other efforts could trickle down to donors. Last year, CSL announced that it would be closing 22, or 7 percent, of its less productive centers in the United States. And in an analyst call, the company said it would maintain profit margins “with improved efficiencies and a gradual decline in donor fees.”
For now, though, it works for Ms. Baker.
Recently, she noticed that the other collection center nearby was offering a higher introductory pay meant to entice first-time donors. She had to decide if she would donate there.
Methodology
To assess demographic patterns of blood plasma center locations, The Times obtained facility information from the Food and Drug Administration website and connected their locations with neighborhood income data obtained from the Census Bureau.
The current locations were compared with a similar data set provided by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Colorado, Boulder, who documented the location of facilities as of September 2021.
This allowed The Times to identify the neighborhoods where centers operate today, and determine whether they already had a facility in 2021, or whether the industry is new to the local area.
Income classifications are based on per capita income by census tract. For each metropolitan area, tracts were divided into deciles, and the bottom 10 percent are considered poor, and other tracts that are below the 50th percentile are labeled working class. Middle-class neighborhoods are those with above-average income levels, except for tracts above the 90th percentile, which are labeled upper income.
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16) Record Number of Student Loan Borrowers Are in Delinquency and Default
Recently released data from the Education Department showed that by the end of last year, 7.7 million borrowers had defaulted on $181 billion in federal student loans.
By Stacy Cowley, March 20, 2026
Roughly a quarter of the 43 million recipients of federal student loans are significantly behind in their payments. Credit...Tony Luong for The New York Times
A record number of borrowers have fallen far behind on their federal student loan payments, another pressure point among millions of increasingly stretched American consumers.
Recently released Education Department data showed that by the end of last year, 7.7 million borrowers had defaulted on $181 billion in federal student loans. Three million other loan recipients were at least three months late on their payments.
That’s the highest combined rate of serious delinquency and default since the government began its data reporting system nearly a decade ago. Of the nearly 43 million recipients with federal student loans, roughly a quarter are significantly behind.
And the problem is likely to grow. Last week, after years of legal limbo, a federal appeals court ordered the end of a generous Biden-era repayment plan known as SAVE. That decision will soon force nearly seven million borrowers to begin paying loan bills — with interest still accrued for the last seven months — that had been suspended while the litigation played out.
The stark delinquency data is the latest sign of distress from those on the downside of what economists call a “K-shaped economy”: one in which the richer get richer, while the financial health of many lower-income households declines. Unemployment is increasing, gas prices have spiked and people are stretching to manage higher costs for food, medical care, housing and other essentials.
That has led to more unpaid debts. The rates of serious delinquencies are climbing on credit cards, mortgages and auto loans, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest analysis of household debt.
Delinquent debts affect credit scores, which have declined — especially for younger Americans — in part because of missed student loan payments. Those lower scores can affect consumers’ ability to rent a home or obtain auto and mortgage loans.
People who are maxed out “face scary choices,” said Winston Berkman-Breen, the legal director of Protect Borrowers, a consumer advocacy group. “Maybe you either stop paying other debts that don’t have such draconian collections, or you change your family’s grocery budget, or stop saving for the future. That can have quiet intergenerational wealth concerns, like the ability to save for a home.”
The government has aggressive ways to collect on defaulted student loans, including garnishing wages and seizing tax refunds, but it’s holding off on those — for now. In January, the Education Department reversed its plan to send out garnishment notices.
Involuntary collections will be paused, for an unspecified length of time, while the Trump administration “implements significant improvements to our broken student loan system,” said Nicholas Kent, the department’s under secretary.
On Thursday, the Trump administration announced plans to move management of the $1.7 trillion federal student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department. The Education Department was “never intended to operate what would be the fifth-largest commercial bank in the United States,” the two agencies said in a joint announcement.
The plan is likely to face legal challenges. “The last thing student loan borrowers need is more chaos from the federal government,” said Kyra Taylor, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.
The federal report on the high number of borrowers who are struggling with their payments confirmed what economists and student loan experts had long predicted: After the government lifted its pandemic-era student loan collection freeze in 2023 and resumed sending borrowers monthly bills, many people didn’t start paying again.
Today, the total tally of borrowers in default is roughly the same as it was in December 2019, shortly before the collection moratorium began, the Education Department noted in an online post about the data.
But the number of people teetering on the edge, or making no payments because their loans are still paused, is much larger than it was six years ago.
In late 2019, three million borrowers were a month or more delinquent on their loan payments, and just over six million had loans in deferment or forbearance, which temporarily halts collection. At the end of last year, more than four million people were a month or more behind, and 12 million — mostly those on the SAVE plan — had loans that were deferred or in forbearance.
Officials had warned that getting borrowers to resume payments after such a long timeout would be complex, but a turbulent legal and logistical landscape made the anticipated problems even worse.
Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. tried to ease borrowers’ burdens with a mass debt forgiveness plan that would have wiped out $400 billion in loans. The Supreme Court killed that effort, ruling that the president had exceeded his authority.
He then introduced SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education), an income-linked payment plan that cut many borrowers’ monthly bills in half and would forgive any remaining balance after 20 to 25 years of payment. But court challenges from Republican-led states doomed that effort, too.
Last week, four borrowers sued the Education Department in a last-ditch effort to preserve SAVE. Elizabeth Robeson, one of the plaintiffs, said the government’s ever-shifting repayment rules “forced millions of working Americans like me to live in a labyrinth with no clear exit.”
Ms. Robeson borrowed $12,000 in 1987 to pursue a graduate degree from the University of Mississippi. Because of interest and fees, that balance has ballooned to more than $90,000.
Under both SAVE and one of its predecessor repayment plans, low-income people like her could qualify for monthly payments as low as $0. Following those rules, she made more than 325 payments on her loans — far more than the 216 required to be eliminated through SAVE. The plan’s termination has jeopardized that relief.
Adding to borrowers’ woes is a troubled loan servicing system that relies on contractors to handle borrowers’ questions and collect payments. For many years, across multiple presidential administrations, government auditors have focused on glaring problems with those companies’ operations and oversight.
President Trump has tried to dismantle the Education Department, and the number of people working at the agency’s Federal Student Aid office plunged 45 percent last year, from more than 1,400 employees in January 2025 to fewer than 800 by December.
Citing “lack of staff capacity,” the agency stopped auditing the accuracy of its loan servicers’ borrower records and the quality of their customer service calls, according to a Government Accountability Office report released this month. Before the agency halted those audits, four of its five loan servicing contractors were failing to meet the department’s performance standards.
In a written response to the accountability office’s report, the Education Department said measuring loan servicers’ compliance “would not improve the financial health of the federal student loan portfolio.”
Millions of people enrolled in SAVE will now need to shift to other payment plans. Mr. Kent, the department’s under secretary, said the agency would provide guidance for that transition “in the coming weeks.”
Starting in July, new borrowers will have only two choices for repayment: fully repaying their loans on a fixed term of up to 25 years, or using a new income-linked plan called RAP (Repayment Assistance Program) that can stretch up to 30 years.
Most borrowers with existing loans will be able select one of those two plans or a Income-Based Repayment plan, which lets many borrowers shed their debts after 20 years.
Loan servicers are bracing for a fresh deluge of questions from confused borrowers.
“The resumption of payments after five years was always going to be a very, very bumpy ride,” said Scott Buchanan, the executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, an industry trade group. “And it has been.”
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