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URGENT STEP ONE:
Demand EMERGENCY MEDICAL TRANSFER & TREATMENT
FOR IMAM JAMIL
The Bureau of Prisons is denying medical treatment to Imam
Jamil Al-Amin, 81 years old, formerly known as H. Rap Brown.
He has a potentially life-threatening growth on his face, on
top of his multiple myeloma (cancer) & other significant
medical issues.
A civil and human rights leader, wrongfully imprisoned for
the past 24 years, he needs Your Help to avoid his
Death By Medical Neglect
CALL TUCSON COMPLEX 520-663-5000
EMAIL WARDEN Mark Gutierrez, mggutierrez@bop.gov
Give Name & Inmate Number: Jamil Al-Amin, #99974-555
Demand they grant Imam Jamil an EMERGENCY MEDICAL TRANSFER from United States Penitentiary (USP) Tucson to Federal Medical Center (FMC) Butner for his Immediate Medical Treatment NOW!!
***Deputy Director of BOP [Bureau of Prisons], (202) 307-3198
URGENT STEP TWO:
Tell his Congressional Delegation of his condition, Urge them to use their offices to inquire the BOP & demand that their constituent (Imam Jamil, West End Community Masjid, 547 West End Pl., SW, Atlanta) receive the emergency medical transfer, diagnosis & treatment.
- Email GA Cong. Nikema Williams PressGA05@mail.house.gov
- Email US Sen. Rafael Warnock press@warnock.senate.gov
- Email US Sen. Jon Ossoff press@ossoff.senate.gov
- Email Atlanta City Councilman Jason Dozier jdozier@atlantaga.gov
- Email GA State Rep Park Cannon park.cannon@house.ga.gov
- Email GA State Sen. Sonya Halpern sonya.halpern@senate.ga.gov
This is most urgent step before Step Three: campaigning for Medical Reprieve by the GA Bd. Of pardons & Parole, THE entity standing in the way of freeing Imam from his unjust conviction by granting a Medical Reprieve.
IMAM JAMIL ACTION NETWORK.ORG
216.296.4617
NATIONAL
347.731.1886
MEDIA
252.907.4443
SOUTHERN
347.731.1886
NJ/NY
202.520.9997
WASH., DC
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We need a united, independent, democratically organized mass movement for peace, justice and equality in solidarity with similar movements worldwide if we are to survive the death agony of capitalism and its inevitable descent into fascism and barbarism before it destroys the world altogether!
—Bonnie Weinstein
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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 Kagarlitsky
We, 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 authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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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.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
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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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
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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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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1) Jordan’s King Faces a Bind as He Meets With Trump
King Abdullah II, a close U.S. ally dependent on aid from Washington, is confronting the president’s demands that he take in Palestinians from Gaza, a step the king’s domestic politics will not allow.
By Mark Mazzetti, Reporting from Washington, Feb. 11, 2025
King Abdullah II of Jordan, right, and President Trump at the White House in 2018. Mr. Trump has said he would pressure Jordan and Egypt to take in the estimated 1.9 million Palestinians he would expel from the Gaza Strip as part of his plan for the United States to “own” the territory. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
In July 2021, the first time that King Abdullah II of Jordan met with President Joseph R. Biden Jr., he was greeted warmly as a reliable American partner whose country is a bulwark for security in the Middle East.
“You live in a tough neighborhood,” Mr. Biden said as they sat in the Oval Office.
The king, who will meet with President Trump on Tuesday, may find Washington to be the tougher neighborhood this time around.
Mr. Trump has reiterated his intention to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip as part of his plan for the United States to “own” the territory, and on Monday he suggested he could consider slashing aid to Jordan and Egypt if their governments refused to take in an estimated 1.9 million Palestinians from Gaza.
Both Jordan and Egypt flatly rejected the idea when Mr. Trump first raised it last week, putting King Abdullah in a bind as he prepares to meet with the president.
Rebuffing Mr. Trump’s demands could imperil the more than $1.5 billion in foreign aid that Jordan receives each year from the United States. A separate, classified stream of American money flows to Jordan’s intelligence services.
At the same time, more than half of King Abdullah’s approximately 12 million subjects are of Palestinian descent, and Middle East experts say that the survival of his family’s rule depends on him digging in against Mr. Trump’s plan.
“King Abdullah cannot go along with it,” said Paul Salem, the vice president for international engagement at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “He cannot survive the idea that he’s colluding on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
“It’s existential for him and his government.”
King Abdullah is also expected to use his meeting with Mr. Trump to push against any attempts by Israel to annex part or all of the West Bank, which far-right members of Israel’s government speak openly about and some of Mr. Trump’s appointees have long advocated. The West Bank sits directly on Jordan’s border, and an Israeli move to take more Palestinian land could lead to violence and unrest that could spill into Jordan.
Jordan is already home to approximately 700,000 refugees, most of them Syrians who fled from that country’s civil war.
Unlike some of its Middle Eastern neighbors that are drowning in oil wealth, Jordan is heavily reliant on American aid. King Abdullah works hard to cultivate close ties across the U.S. government, and makes it a point to be the first Arab leader to meet with every new president.
Jordan allows U.S. troops access to its military bases, and for decades has received millions of dollars from the C.I.A. to support its intelligence services — secret payments that began during the reign of the current king’s father, King Hussein.
American aid to Jordan, including military aid, is currently frozen as part of the Trump administration’s blanket halt to foreign assistance. The U.S.A.I.D. office in the country is being shuttered.
King Abdullah, who assumed the throne in 1999, is the longest currently serving leader in the Middle East. Bruce Riedel, a former top Middle East analyst at the C.I.A., said that the king is likely to use his strong relationships with the Pentagon, the C.I.A. and Congress to try to advise the president that a U.S. takeover of the Gaza Strip and the expulsion of Palestinians is “a bad idea.”
The king met on Sunday with Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, and Mr. Riedel says that Jordan “has a lot of supporters on the Hill, including a lot of Republican supporters.”
Still, King Abdullah might need to find new patrons if Mr. Trump decides to cut funding to Jordan over its refusal to go along with his plan for Gaza. If this happens, he might find willing donors in the governments of wealthy gulf countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have also strongly opposed Mr. Trump’s plan for an American takeover of Gaza and expulsion of Palestinians from their land.
Mr. Salem believes that Mr. Trump’s biggest goal in the Middle East is still a grand deal that would involve Saudi Arabia officially recognizing Israel, something it would be extremely unlikely to agree to if Mr. Trump follows through on his plans for Gaza.
The Saudi government has said that there must be concrete steps toward an independent Palestinian state before the kingdom considers normalizing diplomatic relations with Israel
For this reason, King Abdullah could have a bit of leverage. He could try to convince a mercurial American president to keep his eyes on the larger prize, and convince him that Jordan is essential to helping him attain it.
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2) Israel’s Security Cabinet Meets as Pressure on Cease-Fire Rises
After Hamas said it would postpone the next release of Israeli hostages, President Trump demanded that all hostages be released Saturday or “all hell is going to break out.”
By Lara Jakes, Reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 11, 2025
Relatives of hostages held in Gaza block a highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Tuesday. Credit...Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel held an emergency cabinet meeting on Tuesday after Hamas said it was postponing the next release of Israeli hostages from the Gaza Strip, increasing the pressure on an already fragile three-week cease-fire.
The security cabinet was set to consider how — or whether — to move forward with ongoing negotiations to secure the safe release of all hostages this spring. The meeting began shortly after midday in Jerusalem, according to three Israeli officials.
Ahead of the meeting, relatives of the hostages blocked Israel’s main highway Tuesday morning with protest signs and orange smoke bombs. Even as one family rejoiced in receiving a proof-of-life message about 27-year-old twins Gali and Ziv Berman, another was told that Shlomo Mantzur, the oldest hostage at 86, had been killed.
Mr. Netanyahu moved up Tuesday’s meeting after Hamas said on Monday it would indefinitely postpone the release of several more hostages who had been expected to be freed on Saturday. Hamas accused Israel of violating parts of the cease-fire agreement.
Later on Monday night, President Trump threw down a gauntlet of his own, demanding that all of the remaining hostages be released by 12 o’clock on Saturday or “all hell is going to break out.”
Only a handful of Israeli hostages have been released each week since the cease-fire began, coinciding with the freeing of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails as required under the first stage of the negotiated deal.
Sixteen of 33 Israeli hostages have been released so far as required in the initial part of the deal that is set to expire in early March. About 60 other hostages, some of whom are believed to be dead, would be released in a second phase intended to last six weeks.
But some Israeli officials have resisted a second stage of the deal that would include talks on how to fully end the 15-month war, urging instead to continue fighting Hamas and, potentially, rescue the hostages sooner.
“Trump is right! Go back and destroy now!” the far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir said in a social media post on Tuesday morning.
Others want the negotiations, which have been held in Doha with the United States, Egypt and Qatar serving as intermediaries, to continue as the only way to ensure the hostages’ safety and usher in a lasting peace.
“The sign of life from twins Gali and Ziv Berman is a wake-up call this morning to the Israeli government,” the opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on social media. “Netanyahu, go to Doha. Bring everyone home. Time is running out.”
Hamas’s announcement of a delay in the next hostages-for-prisoners exchange was issued after Mr. Trump repeatedly said that Palestinians should be removed from Gaza and relocated to Jordan and Egypt. The forced deportation of a civilian population is a war crime under international law.
In an interview on Fox News that aired Monday night, Mr. Trump said the roughly two million Palestinians in Gaza would not have the right to eventually return to their homeland, “because they're going to have much better housing — in other words, I’m talking about building a permanent place for them.”
On Tuesday, Hamas appeared undeterred by Mr. Trump’s most recent comments. “Trump should remember that there is an agreement that must be respected by both sides, and this is the only path for the hostages’ return,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
Palestinians, Arab states and even some American allies in Europe have roundly rejected his proposal to force Gazans from their homes.
King Abdullah II of Jordan was to meet with Mr. Trump in Washington on Tuesday. But plans for an upcoming visit by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt appear to have been scrapped, Arab media reported.
Mr. Sisi spoke Tuesday with Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, and the two agreed that negotiations to allow the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners and more humanitarian aid should continue, according to a statement released after the phone call by the Egyptian president’s office.
“They also underscored the imperative to begin the reconstruction of Gaza to make it livable again, without displacing its Palestinian population, safeguarding their rights and ability to live on their land,” the statement noted pointedly.
The specter of the cease-fire falling apart rattled other world leaders.
“We must avoid at all costs resumption of hostilities in Gaza that would lead to immense tragedy,” António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, wrote on social media. “I appeal to Hamas to proceed with the planned liberation of hostages. Both sides must fully abide by their commitments in the cease-fire agreement & resume serious negotiations.”
Gabby Sobelman, Natan Odenheimer and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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3) Trump Orders Plans for ‘Large Scale’ Work Force Cuts and Expands Musk’s Power
The latest executive order by the president made clear that the billionaire’s cost-cutting team will have continuing oversight of the Civil Service.
By Theodore Schleifer and Madeleine Ngo, Reporting from Washington, Published Feb. 11, 2025, Updated Feb. 12, 2025
President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday directing agency officials to draw up plans for “large scale” cuts to the federal work force and further empowered the billionaire Elon Musk and his team to approve which career officials are hired in the future.
The order gives the so-called Department of Government Efficiency vast reach over the shape of the Civil Service as the Trump administration tries to sharply cut the number of employees working for the federal government. It states that, aside from agencies involved in functions like law enforcement and immigration enforcement, executive branch departments will need hiring approval from an official working with Mr. Musk’s team.
Each federal agency, with some exceptions, will be allowed to “hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart” after a hiring freeze is lifted, according to Mr. Trump’s order. New career hires would have to be made in consultation with a “DOGE Team Lead,” the order stated. It also said that agencies should not fill career positions that Mr. Musk’s team deems unnecessary, unless an agency head — not a member of Mr. Musk’s initiative — decides that those positions should be filled.
The “work force optimization initiative” was signed by Mr. Trump shortly before he and Mr. Musk spent roughly 30 minutes defending the drastic overhaul in front of reporters in the Oval Office. Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person, has moved rapidly to force change in Washington, an effort he asserted on Tuesday would benefit the public.
In the first three weeks of the new Trump administration, Mr. Musk’s team has inserted itself into at least 19 agencies, according to a tally by The New York Times, where it has begun identifying programs to cut.
The president’s new order instructed federal agencies to start initiating plans for “large scale” reductions in staffing. In the past few weeks, some agency leaders have already warned about impending cuts and urged federal employees to seriously consider the Trump administration’s offer to resign and be placed on paid administrative leave through the end of September. Although the offer was originally set to expire last week, the resignation program is now on pause until a federal judge in Massachusetts rules on its legality.
The order is the latest move by Mr. Trump to bolster the authority of Mr. Musk’s effort. On Inauguration Day, Mr. Trump signed an order that officially created the Department of Government Efficiency and gave the group the authority to install employees across federal agencies. He also signed another order empowering Mr. Musk’s team to work on a plan to slash the size of the federal work force through “efficiency improvements and attrition.”
Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget whom Mr. Musk pushed to fill that role, said Tuesday’s executive order was the “next step” in changing the work force, insisting it was within Mr. Trump’s authority.
“Again, this is more action and activities that we can do,” Mr. Vought told Fox Business soon after the order was signed. “The president can move forward unilaterally using the laws that are on the books to have reductions in force.”
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
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4) In Trump’s Cross Hairs Over Taking Gazans, Egypt and Jordan Try Diversion
The U.S. president has repeatedly asked the two Mideast allies to take in two million Palestinians from Gaza. Both Egypt and Jordan have been trying to offer Mr. Trump help in other ways.
By Vivian Yee and Alissa J. Rubin, Feb. 12, 2025
Trucks carrying humanitarian aid enter Gaza from Egypt on Wednesday. Credit...Abdel Kareem Hana/Associated Press
Finding themselves in the fickle cross hairs of President Trump, Jordan and Egypt are moving with speed — and uncertain prospects of success — to dissuade, distract and divert him from forcing them to take in Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
For the two Arab governments, who view Mr. Trump’s proposal that they take in two million Palestinians as an existential threat, the strategy appears to be to placate the U.S. president with offers to work together to rebuild Gaza, bring peace to the region and expand humanitarian aid efforts. That could help them buy time, analysts say — perhaps enough for Mr. Trump to discard the idea as too complicated, or to recognize the strategic and security drawbacks of destabilizing two of the closest allies of the United States in the region.
Jordan’s King Abdullah employed a conciliatory tone in his meeting with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday, telling the U.S. president that his country would take in 2,000 Palestinian children with cancer and other illnesses from Gaza. Still, he otherwise gave no ground on the question of resettling more Gazans, and later repeated Jordan’s rejection of the plan in a statement on social media.
Jordan has been treating some cancer patients from Gaza for months already, making the offer more of a token than a real concession. But Mr. Trump called it a “beautiful gesture.”
Other world leaders have found that flattering Mr. Trump tends to help them get their way. King Abdullah seemed to be following their example on Tuesday, heaping praise on the president as “somebody that can take us across the finish line to bring stability, peace and prosperity” to the Middle East.
Even as the king pushed back against Mr. Trump in the post to make clear he was rejecting the mass displacement of Palestinians, he noted that the United States had a key role to play. “Achieving just peace on the basis of the two-state solution is the way to ensure regional stability,” he said in the post. “This requires U.S. leadership.”
Egypt, too, said it wanted to work with Mr. Trump to “achieve a comprehensive and just peace in the region by reaching a just settlement of the Palestinian cause,” according to an Egyptian statement released later Tuesday.
But the statement made no mention of participating in Mr. Trump’s proposal, and reiterated Egypt’s position that peace could be achieved only by giving the Palestinians statehood. Palestinians and many other Arabs have rejected Mr. Trump’s proposed forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza not only as ethnic cleansing, a war crime that flies in the face of international law, but also as the death knell for their long-held dream of a Palestinian state.
Egypt sought instead to serve up an alternative plan for Mr. Trump, saying in the statement that it would “present a comprehensive vision for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip in a manner that ensures the Palestinian people remain in their homeland.” The Palestinian Authority joined in with its own plan for helping Gaza recover from the war on Wednesday.
In recent days, as alarm over the president’s idea has mounted in Cairo, Egyptian officials have emphasized that Egypt stands ready to help rebuild Gaza, with which it shares a vital border crossing, as it did after previous conflicts there.
An Egyptian real estate tycoon, Hisham Talaat Moustafa, who like Mr. Trump has developed a chain of residential properties and hotels, went on an evening news show on Sunday to outline a $20 billion proposal for building 200,000 housing units in Gaza, as if trying to talk to Mr. Trump developer to developer.
But Mr. Moustafa, who is closely linked to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, said he envisioned reconstructing Gaza without moving any Palestinians out of the strip.
During the Tuesday meeting, King Abdullah also alluded several times to the need for consultations with Egypt and other Arab countries before responding to Mr. Trump’s proposal, mentioning an upcoming meeting in Riyadh with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. Egypt has also called for a summit of Arab leaders to discuss the issue in Cairo on Feb. 27.
Despite the pushback from Egypt and Jordan, Mr. Trump seems to be sticking to the core of his out-of-left-field proposal for the United States to “own” Gaza and redevelop it into a “Riviera” for tourism and jobs. During the Tuesday meeting with King Abdullah and his son, Crown Prince Hussein, he said that “we will have Gaza” and “we’re going to take it.”
But he appeared to soften his previous threat to cut funding to Jordan and Egypt, two of the top recipients of U.S. aid, if they did not accept Gaza’s Palestinians, saying, “We’re above that.”
Mr. Trump also suggested that he was looking at a broader group of countries that could receive Gazans. “We have other countries that want to get involved,” he said, and when a journalist asked whether two of those countries could be Albania and Indonesia, he responded, “Yeah, sure.” (The leaders of both countries have dismissed any such possibility.)
Middle East experts say Mr. Trump appears to be ignoring previous U.S. calculations about the importance of stability in Egypt and Jordan, Arab neighbors of Israel who both made peace with Israel years ago and cooperate closely with the United States on security matters.
“The way that he talks about these relationships, it is as if these countries are takers, and that we get very little out of them,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute who focuses on Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians.
In fact, many human rights advocates and critics of Egypt have questioned how wise the U.S. investment in Egypt is, arguing that it props up a repressive regime that often goes against U.S. interests. But analysts say the cooperation of Egypt and especially Jordan on regional security has been valuable to the United States.
Egypt, which receives $1.3 billion a year in U.S. military assistance to buy weapons, making it the second-largest recipient of such financing after Israel, has worked with the United States on counterterrorism efforts.
Jordan has been the United States’ gateway to the Middle East for decades, hosting a U.S. military base and a large Central Intelligence Agency station and acting as a diplomatic hub. Like Egypt, the Jordanian monarchy shares the U.S. view of militant Islam as a major threat and has supported the United States in its fight against Al Qaeda and then the Islamic State, among other common enemies.
When Iran targeted Israel with missiles and drones last year, Jordan also helped to shoot some of them down.
Jordan has “been with us lock step,” Mr. Katulis said.
Egypt and Jordan both accepted Palestinian refugees after they were displaced during the 1948 war surrounding the creation of the state of Israel, and Egypt has now taken in at least 100,000 Palestinian medical evacuees and other people who fled Gaza.
But analysts say both countries would rather risk losing U.S. aid than alienating their populations by appearing complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
For Jordan, taking in large numbers of Palestinians forced out of Gaza is unacceptable because it could widen an existing rift between citizens who are of Palestinian descent and those who are not, destabilizing the monarchy, analysts say. More than half of King Abdullah’s 12 million subjects are of Palestinian descent.
Jordan already hosts about 700,000 refugees, including Syrians and Iraqis as well as Palestinians. That largely impoverished population has all but overwhelmed the small country’s limited resources.
Mr. Trump’s proposal also inflames fears that Israel will next drive Palestinians out of the occupied West Bank into Jordan, a long-held ambition of far-right Israelis.
The secretary general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, alluded to such fears on Wednesday, saying, “Today the focus is on Gaza and tomorrow it will shift to the West Bank, with the objective of emptying historic Palestine of its indigenous people, something that is unacceptable.”
Egypt also sees the possibility of Palestinians resettling in Egypt as a serious security threat. Forcibly displaced Palestinians could launch attacks on Israel from Egyptian soil, officials say, inviting Israeli military retaliation.
Rania Khaled contributed reporting from Cairo.
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5) New Hampshire High School Trans Athletes Take Their Fight to Trump
A lawsuit appears to be the first challenge to the constitutionality of an executive order barring trans athletes from girls’ and women’s sports teams.
By Amy Harmon and Juliet Macur, Feb. 12, 2025
Parker Tirrell, third from left, and Iris Turmelle, sixth from left, with their families and attorneys in Concord, N.H., in August 2024. Credit...Holly Ramer/Associated Press
Two transgender public high school students in New Hampshire are challenging President Trump’s executive order that seeks to bar trans girls and women from competing on women’s sports teams, according to documents filed in federal court on Wednesday.
The teenagers asked the court on Wednesday to add Mr. Trump and members of his administration as defendants in a lawsuit the students filed last summer regarding their eligibility to play girls’ sports at school. The state had enacted a law in August barring transgender girls in grades 5 through 12 from participating in girls’ sports, and the two students initially sued their schools and state education officials, asking the court to rule that they could compete on teams that aligned with their gender identity.
Their court filing on Wednesday appears to be the first time that the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s executive order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” has been challenged in court.
The order, signed last week, effectively bars the participation of trans athletes on girls’ and women’s teams, directing the Department of Education to investigate schools that do not comply and to withdraw the schools’ federal funding. It is one of several orders in which Mr. Trump has sought to roll back government recognition of transgender Americans.
In the lawsuit, the two teenagers call Mr. Trump’s actions “a broad intention to deny transgender people legal protections and to purge transgender people from society.”
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in September allowing the two athletes, Parker Tirrell, 16, and Iris Turmelle, 15, to play on girls’ sports teams while their lawsuit was pending. Mr. Trump’s directive puts that ability at new risk, the filing states.
“I played soccer — nothing bad happened.,” Parker, a sophomore at Plymouth Regional High School, said in an interview this week. “Not everyone was happy about it, but it seemed like the people I was playing against weren’t overly concerned.” But when she got home from school last Wednesday, she said, “my mom told me that Trump had signed an executive order banning trans girls from playing sports.”
She added, “The amount of effort he’s going through to stop me from playing sports seems extraordinarily high, for not a very good reason.”
Iris, a freshman at Pembroke Academy, a public high school in Pembroke, N.H., once said of a middle-school program called Girls on the Run that she loved everything about it “except the running,” said her mother, Amy Manzelli. Even so, the teenager said in an interview this week that she wanted to preserve her chance to play any sport she chooses:
“Other girls have that,” she said. “Why shouldn’t I?” She said she hoped to try out for her school’s tennis and track teams.
The teenagers are also challenging another executive order that directs federal agencies to end funding for programs that foster “gender ideology,” which the order defined as the idea that a person’s gender identity, rather than the sex on their original birth certificate, should determine whether they participate in men’s or women’s sports, or use male or female bathrooms, or are called by their chosen pronouns.
Mr. Trump’s two directives, the court filing argues, violate constitutional protections against sex discrimination and conflict with Title IX, the 1972 civil rights statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs that receive federal funding.
“Our plaintiffs and many other transgender girls and women across the country are being deprived of opportunities in education and beyond, simply because they’re transgender,” said Chris Erchull, a senior staff attorney with GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, which represents the girls and their families. “It’s unconstitutional and it’s wrong, and we’re standing up against it.”
Like several other challenges to Mr. Trump’s executive orders, the lawsuit also argues that the president exceeded his authority by directing the federal agencies to withhold funds appropriated by Congress.
In states where Democrats control the legislatures, transgender student athletes in elementary and secondary schools typically are able to compete on teams that align with their gender identity, leaving federal agencies with numerous enforcement targets for Mr. Trump’s orders. Mr. Erchull said the publicity surrounding his clients’ case might put their schools high on the list. Last week, the Education Department said it had begun investigating two colleges and a state athletic association that had drawn public attention for allowing transgender athletes to compete on women’s teams.
Some players on one of the opposing teams that Parker’s soccer team faced in the fall refused to play because she is trans, according to Parker’s parents. The game was played with other players participating.
At another game, some parents protested by wearing pink wristbands marked “XX,” to represent the typical chromosomal pattern for females. That incident attracted media coverage and sparked a lawsuit on free-speech grounds after the Bow School District responded by prohibiting such protests.
Mr. Trump’s order states that allowing transgender girls and women to compete in categories designated for female athletes is unfair and “results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls.” Nearly 80 percent of Americans do not believe transgender female athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, according to a recent New York Times and Ipsos poll.
The day after Mr. Trump issued his order concerning trans athletes, the National Collegiate Athletic Association fell into line, announcing a sweeping ban on transgender athletes competing at its member institutions. “President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard,” Charlie Baker, the president of the N.C.A.A., said in a statement.
Mr. Baker told Congress in testimony last year that he was aware of fewer than 10 transgender athletes among the more than 500,000 students who play N.C.A.A. sports. Yet they remain at the center of a heated cultural debate, especially when they win.
In 2022, Lia Thomas, a swimmer, competed on the University of Pennsylvania women’s team after taking testosterone blockers and estrogen, and became the first openly transgender woman to win an N.C.A.A. Division I title. The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it wants the N.C.A.A. to strip her and other trans athletes of their titles.
In temporarily shielding Parker and Iris from enforcement of New Hampshire’s law, U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty found last summer that the state had not demonstrated that concerns about fairness and safety were more than a “hypothesized problem’' in their particular cases. Both Parker and Iris said they knew they were girls at an early age, were diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and began taking puberty-suppressing medication before the hormonal changes that, according to the opinion, underpin the divergence in average athletic performance between boys and girls.
“Parker’s soccer team had a winless season last year, and Iris did not make the cut for middle-school softball,’’ wrote the judge, an appointee of President Barack Obama.
The potential consequences for not complying with Mr. Trump’s orders have reverberated through the country. A school district in another part of New Hampshire that once defied the statewide ban on trans girls playing girls’ sports felt that it had no choice but to obey Mr. Trump’s orders, for fear of losing federal funding.
Before Mr. Trump took office, the district, the Kearsarge Regional School District, decided to keep its girls’ sports open to any trans girl who wanted to play on them, despite the state ban, because it wanted to remain in compliance with Title IX. It had one trans girl competing in girls’ sports.
But Mr. Trump’s recent executive orders changed — and upended — everything, John Fortney, the district’s superintendent of schools, said in an interview on Tuesday.
The new administration’s interpretation of Title IX is that in that law, “sex” refers to whether someone is male or female at birth, and not the person’s gender identity. Defining it that way meant that the school district was suddenly out of compliance with Title IX, Mr. Fortney said, compelling the district to bar trans girls from its girls’ teams and change “our internal processes and internal expectations.”
“It’s like speeding,” he said. “You say you’re going to drive the speed limit, and then the speed limit goes from 70 to 55, so you’re going to follow it. You may not like it, but you’re going to follow it.”
Mr. Fortney said he hoped the trans athlete in the district could continue to participate in sports with some level of comfort by joining her school’s track and field team in the spring; that team is coed.
“When you look at how the teenagers learn to handle defeat and victory, and how to work hard for a goal, you know, athletics provides a very concentrated bit of that kind of medicine that I think everybody needs access to,” he said. “You want a kid to have the most complete experience that they can.”
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6) The N.E.A.’s New Gender and Diversity Edicts Worry Arts Groups
As the National Endowment for the Arts adjusts to comply with President Trump’s executive orders, “gender ideology” is out and works that “honor the nation’s rich artistic heritage” are in.
By Michael Paulson, Feb. 12, 2025
The National Endowment for the Arts is changing ts requirements to comply with President Trump’s executive orders. Credit...Graeme Sloan/Sipa via Associated Press
The National Endowment for the Arts is telling arts groups not to use federal funds to promote “diversity, equity and inclusion” or “gender ideology” in ways that run afoul of President Trump’s executive orders — causing confusion and concern.
Black Girls Dance, a Chicago-based nonprofit that trains and mentors young dancers, was recently approved for a $10,000 grant to help finance an annual holiday show called “Mary.” Now the small company is wondering if it still qualifies for the money.
It was the company’s first grant from the N.E.A., and Erin Barnett, the nonprofit’s founder and executive director, said that receiving it had been “a step of validation — like ‘We see you and we support the work that you’re doing.’” But she said that if the grant were canceled for running afoul of the new requirements, she would persist. “I serve a God that sits on the highest throne of all, and he’s not going to stop this show,” she said.
It is unclear what the new rules will mean for groups seeking grants, or for those that already have them in the pipeline. Many arts organizations have pledged to support diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and several groups that have received funding in the past have presented works about transgender and nonbinary people.
The new N.E.A. rules require applicants to agree not to operate diversity programs “that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws” and call on grant applicants to pledge not to use federal funds to “promote gender ideology.” They refer to an executive order Mr. Trump signed that declares that the United States recognizes only “two sexes, male and female.”
The N.E.A. did not answer questions about whether organizations that have already been told they would receive grant money would be affected.
“It is a longstanding legal requirement that all recipients of federal funds comply with applicable federal anti-discrimination laws, regulations and executive orders,” the endowment’s spokeswoman, Elizabeth Auclair, said in an email. “The N.E.A. is continuing to review the recent executive orders and related documents to ensure compliance and provide the required reporting.”
During Mr. Trump’s first term, he called for the elimination of the arts endowment. (It survived, thanks to bipartisan support in Congress, and has a current budget of roughly $200 million a year.) It is not clear what its outlook is now.
The endowment is currently without a full-time leader because its chair since 2021, Maria Rosario Jackson, left the day of Mr. Trump’s inauguration. It is currently being overseen by Mary Anne Carter, who led the agency during the first Trump administration, and who is now serving with the title of “senior advisor.” Agency observers and grant recipients were generally positive about Ms. Carter, saying that things had run smoothly when she previously led the agency.
Last week, the N.E.A. said that it was eliminating its “Challenge America” program, a small grant program supporting projects for underserved groups and communities, and that its general grant program would give priority to projects that “celebrate and honor the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity” during the lead-up to the 250th anniversary of American independence in July 2026.
Latinitas, which offers educational programming for girls in central Texas, received a $10,000 award under that program last month to go toward a $30,000 project to install mosaics that honor inspiring women from East Austin.
“I emailed the N.E.A. today to check in our status, and the response was rather vague,” said Gabriela Kane Guardia, the organization’s executive director. “We’re very concerned because we were absolutely counting on those funds to make this project possible.”
Many groups are unsure whether they can count on funds they were expecting. Elz Cuya Jones, the executive director of the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, a nonprofit that won a special Tony Award in 2020 for its work combating racism, is not sure if the $20,000 grant she was counting on from the endowment will arrive. “The new N.E.A. guidelines are solving for a problem that does not exist,” she said.
Some arts makers are circulating a petition, asking the NEA to drop its new rules.
Steve Cosson, the artistic director of the Civilians, a New York based theater company that has received multiple grants from the endowment, said he did not expect to submit the organization’s next grant application if the compliance rules remained in place.
“To apply for a grant now is to agree to a very big and sweeping set of guidelines that have all sorts of problematic ramifications,” he said.
While the endowment’s grants are not large, they can play a crucial role for small organizations, many of which are still struggling after the coronavirus pandemic.
“Having even a one-month hiccup in funding, or pauses, can be devastating to the threadbare entities out there that are just barely getting by,” said Doug Noonan, a director of the Center for Cultural Affairs at Indiana University.
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7) Trump’s W.H.O. Exit Throws Smallpox Defenses Into Upheaval
Health experts see his retreat from international cooperation as disrupting the safe-keepers of one of the world’s deadliest pathogens.
By William J. Broad, Feb. 12, 2025
In 1999, William J. Broad and two colleagues wrote a comprehensive article on the past, present and future of the smallpox virus.
A colorized transmission electron micrograph of smallpox viruses. Credit...Elena Ryabchikova/Voisin/Science Source
President Trump’s order that the United States exit the World Health Organization could undo programs meant to ensure the safety, security and study of a deadly virus that once took half a billion lives, experts warn. His retreat, they add, could end decades in which the agency directed the management of smallpox virus remnants in an American-held cache.
Health experts say discontinuation of the W.H.O.’s oversight threatens to damage precautions against the virus leaking into the world, and to disrupt research on countermeasures against the lethal disease. They add that it could also raise fears among allies and adversaries that the United States, under a veil of secrecy, might weaponize the smallpox virus.
“I’ve been in that lab,” said Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, where the American cache resides. “Imagine a submarine inside a building and the people walking around in spacesuits. It looks like something out of a movie.” To reduce smallpox risks and misperceptions, Dr. Frieden added, “we need to open ourselves up to inspection.”
On Monday, Daniel R. Lucey, a Dartmouth medical professor, posted an article on the blog of the Infectious Diseases Society of America warning that Mr. Trump’s W.H.O. exit could imperil “smallpox virus storage, experiments, reporting and inspections.”
A half century ago, the W.H.O. purged the smallpox virus from human populations after the scourge had killed people for thousands of years. Dr. Frieden called it “one of the greatest accomplishments not just of medical science but global collaboration.”
While the germ was eradicated in people, two repositories were preserved to allow study of the virus should it re-emerge: one in Atlanta, the other in Russia. To curb leaks, both caches are stored in special labs classified as Biosafety Level 4, the highest tier of protection.
In recent years, the W.H.O., based in Geneva, has ruled on the safety and scientific merit of proposed studies of smallpox by both the C.D.C. and its Russian counterpart. It has the authority to grant or refuse permission despite its role being described publicly as advisory. The agency also regularly inspects the smallpox labs for safety lapses.
Health experts warn that Mr. Trump’s exit from international oversight could end Washington’s ability to scrutinize Moscow’s smallpox cache. “If we want to inspect the Russian lab,” Dr. Frieden said, “we need to be part of W.H.O.”
Russia probably hides some smallpox virus for military use, according to a federal intelligence assessment. Health experts also warn that the American exit from the W.H.O. could prompt fears that the United States might weaponize the lethal virus.
In his first term as president, Mr. Trump lashed out at the W.H.O. over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and, in July 2020, ordered a withdrawal. But six months later, before the separation could be completed, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. reversed Mr. Trump’s decision on his first day in office.
This time around, Mr. Trump came on stronger, issuing an executive order within hours of taking office that gave notice of the U.S. withdrawal. He also told his administration to identify U.S. and global partners that could “assume necessary activities” that the W.H.O. had previously carried out.
A week later, the C.D.C. was ordered to end all collaboration with the W.H.O.
It is not clear if the W.H.O. and the C.D.C. have completely ended their smallpox cooperation. Their replies to email queries seemed contradictory, and the White House did not respond.
Christian Lindmeier, a W.H.O. spokesman, said officials at the agency were still seeking to clarify the implications of Mr. Trump’s order. The agency, he added, “is ready to work with the new U.S. Administration to sustain our vital collaboration.” The next smallpox inspection, Mr. Lindmeier added, is scheduled for May 2026.
The C.D.C. is part of the department of Health and Human Services, whose communications director, Andrew G. Nixon, said only that it was complying with Mr. Trump’s order for the U.S. to withdraw from the W.H.O.
Unlike most viruses, smallpox, known as variola, is highly stable outside its host. It can long retain its power to infect, aiding its spread. Victims develop high fevers, deep rashes and oozing pustules. About a third die. In the 20th century alone, the virus is estimated to have taken more lives than all wars and other epidemics put together.
In 1959, the W.H.O. resolved to eradicate the killer in a blitz of global vaccinations and quarantines. Little was achieved until Washington and Moscow in 1966 proposed a stronger effort. That year alone, the disease killed two million people. By 1977, the W.H.O. recorded its last case, defeating the deadly scourge.
Today, the American W.H.O. exit may raise the risk of the smallpox virus escaping confinement and reinfecting the world, some health experts say. They see that threat as implicit in how past W.H.O. inspections of the C.D.C. smallpox labs made scores of recommendations for safety and security upgrades.
The proposals included better security systems, training, risk assessments, inspections of pressure suits, accident investigations and monitoring of staff competency.
David H. Evans, a virologist at the University of Alberta, has twice inspected the C.D.C. virus area and been a member of the W.H.O.’s smallpox scientific advisory panel.
While withdrawing from the W.H.O. may not increase the risk of a leak, he said, collaboration between the U.S. and the W.H.O. works quite effectively at improving research and lowering suspicions of illicit work.
“It keeps people talking to each other,” Dr. Evans said. “It gets back to the idea of transparency. It gives you some idea of what’s going on.”
Last year, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences described the cooperative smallpox research of the C.D.C. and the W.H.O. as “urgently needed.” Looking beyond vaccines, the panel called for a new generation of antiviral drugs that would better fight smallpox in individuals already infected with the pathogen.
The W.H.O. research has had practical payoffs. Antiviral drugs developed by its smallpox program have been deployed to fight Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, which is spreading quickly in parts of Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In 1996, W.H.O. members agreed on a plan to destroy the two remaining stocks of the smallpox virus. Now, increasingly, it aims to prepare for potential outbreaks rather than permanently extinguishing the virus.
But those heightened levels of defensive planning could be undone by the American withdrawal, health experts warn. They fear more countries may leave the W.H.O., spurring new outbreaks.
Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, noted that Argentina, echoing Mr. Trump, withdrew from the W.H.O. early this month, and that Hungary and Russia have also explored the idea.
“Global health safety is effective only if we have global representation,” Dr. Osterholm said. “W.H.O. will do what it can. But at some point, we’re going to have a real challenge.”
Dr. Frieden, the former C.D.C. director, agreed.
“Health is not a zero-sum game,” he said. “When one country is healthy, it helps not only them, but their neighbors and the world.” He cited the purge of the smallpox virus from human populations as a remarkable case study in the benefits of global teamwork.
“There’s no doubt that W.H.O. could be more effective,” Dr. Frieden added. “But there’s also no doubt that it’s indispensable.”
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8) Trump’s War on D.E.I. Is Really a War on Civil Rights
By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, Feb. 12, 2025
Paola Chapdelaine for The New York Times
The genius of the right-wing crusade against “diversity, equity and inclusion” is that the term is amorphous enough that it can mean many different things to many different people.
To a certain set of well-meaning cultural liberals, D.E.I. refers mainly to H.R. mandates and ineffectual diversity training. If those people work in progressive nonprofits or any other space that attracts young, left-leaning people, D.E.I. might also mean the aggravating use of clumsy acronyms like “BIPOC” or linguistic inventions like “Latinx.”
For people of a more moderate or conservative persuasion, D.E.I. might mean affirmative action and the elevation of unqualified people to sensitive and high-status positions. (Although how one knows they are unqualified is often left unsaid.) It might also mean public adherence to liberal shibboleths about diversity — “virtue signaling” by “woke elites” in academia and the corporate world.
There is also a related (and not altogether incorrect) view from the political left that D.E.I. is just a smoke screen for capital and its servants — a multicultural gloss on the neoliberal agendas of the managerial classes, whether corporate bean counters or university administrators.
The upshot of the many meanings of D.E.I. is that when President Trump announced, at the start of his term, that he wanted to uproot D.E.I. from the federal government, there was some sympathy — and even agreement — from those who are otherwise opposed to the administration and its overall program. If nothing else, effectively ending the battle over D.E.I. might clear the space for a different kind of politics, less focused on diversity and inclusion than more material concerns.
But then we have to remember that D.E.I. also means something to people on the political right, from the reactionaries who lead the White House to the propagandists who carry their message to the masses. For them, D.E.I. is less “white fragility” and silly posters about “white supremacy culture” than it is the mere presence of a woman or nonwhite person or disabled or transgender person in any high-skilled, high-status position. And their alternative isn’t some heretofore unknown standard of merit; it is the reintroduction of something like segregation.
Consider the ways the administration has tried to carry out the president’s executive encyclical against D.E.I., which called for federal agencies to “relentlessly combat private sector discrimination” and “faithfully” advance “the Constitution’s promise of colorblind equality before the law.”
At the National Security Agency, it has meant an effort to purge all N.S.A. websites and internal networks of banned words such as diversity, diverse, inclusive, racism and racial identity. Over at the Department of Defense, led by Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, it has meant the end of official recognition of Black History Month, the disbanding of affinity groups at service academies and a move to curb military outreach to Black professionals in engineering and the sciences. Diversity, Hegseth says, is “not our strength.” At the National Institutes of Health, displays honoring women and scientists of color have been removed, and at the National Science Foundation, program officers have reportedly been directed to reject grant applications that mention anything related to diversity, equity, inclusion or accessibility.
There’s more. In addition to purging the Department of Justice of anything that smacks of D.E.I., Attorney General Pam Bondi has instructed the agency to target private-sector diversity programs for potential “criminal investigation.” A company that wants to increase its proportion of female employees or place more Black Americans in corporate leadership may find itself in the cross hairs of the federal government.
You’ll find the surest evidence of the real meaning of the president’s anti-D.E.I. order in the fact that he also dismantled a decades-old requirement, originally promulgated by President Lyndon Johnson, that federal contractors try to employ more women, Black Americans and, in the years since, other people of color. One imagines that Johnson’s opponents, like the segregationist senators James Eastland and Strom Thurmond, would have been pleased to see his handiwork — and that of a generation of civil rights lawyers — tossed aside with the stroke of a pen.
The segregationist intent of the president’s policy is even more apparent when you turn your attention to some of the people he has chosen to place in his administration. For example, not long after Trump pledged to root out every federal worker involved in diversity efforts, he appointed Darren Beattie to serve as acting under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department. Beattie was previously known for being fired from his job as a Trump speechwriter in 2018 for appearing at a conference attended by white nationalists in 2016.
His views haven’t changed. “Competent white men,” Beattie wrote last October, “must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”
“Competent white men must be in charge” is as close to a rallying cry as I can imagine for the Trump administration, although, of course, it strains credulity to say that either Trump or his subordinates count as competent.
The president, for his part, has voiced similar sentiments since taking office. In the wake of a deadly air crash, he blamed diversity efforts in hiring for the accident. He has also, as my newsroom colleague Erica L. Green notes, aligned himself with “those who are brandishing the term D.E.I. as a catchall for discrimination against white people, and using it as a pejorative to attack nonwhite and female leaders as unqualified for their positions.”
The administration’s war on D.E.I. is of a piece with a broader effort to turn the nation’s civil rights laws upside down, taking weapons forged to fight racial subordination and wielding them, instead, against any effort, public or private, to ameliorate racial inequality and end invidious racial discrimination. A modest effort on the part of Black female venture capitalists to support Black female entrepreneurs becomes, to conservative legal activists, unconstitutional discrimination against white men (who continue to receive and manage a vast majority of venture capitalist dollars). And in a perverse inversion of disparate impact, a recent lawsuit against the University of California system seems to treat the presence of Black and Hispanic students as evidence itself of “racial discrimination.”
We are three weeks into President Trump’s second term. He won the election, in the main, on a promise to lower the cost of living for millions of Americans. His mandate, if he has one, is to lower the price of goods, services and housing for most families. But Trump, you may have noticed, isn’t really that focused on the economy, other than finding ways to impose his beloved tariffs without too much damage to the stock market. His economic agenda, such that he has one, has been subordinated to his broad — and radical — racial agenda.
His attack on D.E.I. isn’t about increasing merit or fighting wrongful discrimination; it is about reimposing hierarchies of race and gender (among other categories) onto American society. And following the goals of its intellectual architects — one of whom is infamous for his supremacist views — Trump’s war on D.E.I. is a war on the civil rights era itself, an attempt to turn back the clock on equal rights. Working under the guise of fairness and meritocracy, Trump and his allies want to restore a world where the first and most important qualification for any job of note was whether you were white and male, where merit is a product of your identity and not of your ability. As is true in so many other areas, the right’s accusation that diversity means unfair preferences masks a confession of its own intentions.
There is no question that corporate D.E.I. policies are more about legal compliance than they are about some vision of justice or equality. But one does not have to be a fan of the D.E.I. paradigm to understand the actual stakes of this conflict. To concede that this administration has a point about D.E.I., as some of Trump’s opponents have, is not to concede that they have a point about corporate personnel management but to concede that they have a point about rolling back the latter half of the 20th century and extirpating 60 years of civil rights law.
There is no silver lining here. A world in which the White House and its allies have successfully arrested and reversed the march toward greater inclusion is a world in which they have reinscribed old patterns of privilege and subordination. They will have revitalized the worst hierarchies our society has produced, and those hierarchies will shape how ordinary people view their own position and potential allegiances. We should remember that it was not all that easy to build solidarity under Jim Crow.
Most Americans, even those who voted for Trump to serve a second term, do not want this. The question is whether the silent majority in favor of a more inclusive society will stand up and say so.
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9) U.S. Deports Migrants From Asia to Panama
The move could herald a new front in the Trump administration’s plans for mass deportations, one that allows for more rapid removal of migrants whose home countries are reluctant to accept them.
By Hamed Aleaziz, Annie Correal, Maria Abi-Habib and Julie Turkewitz, Feb. 13, 2025
After meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio this month, President José Raúl Mulino of Panama indicated that he was open to receiving deportees from other countries. Credit...Nathalia Angarita for The New York Times
The Trump administration deported migrants from several Asian nations to Panama on Wednesday night, Panamanian and U.S. officials said, in a move that could signal much faster removals of immigrants who have remained in the United States because their countries have made it difficult to return them.
The flight carrying the migrants, a military plane that took off from California, appears to be the first of its kind during the Trump administration. It came on the heels of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit last week to Panama, which has been under tremendous pressure from President Trump over how it runs the Panama Canal.
The more than 100 migrants on the flight, including families, had entered the United States illegally from countries such as Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. It is often difficult for the United States to return migrants to those nations.
President José Raúl Mulino of Panama, speaking at a news conference on Thursday morning, said 119 people of “the most diverse nationalities in the world” had arrived the night before on a U.S. Air Force flight at an airport outside Panama City.
Mr. Mulino said they were being housed in a local hotel and would be moved to a shelter in Darién, a province in Panama’s east, a process managed by the International Organization for Migration. From there, he said, they would be repatriated.
“We hope to get them out of there as soon as possible on flights from the United States,” Mr. Mulino said, adding, “This is another contribution Panama is making on the migration issue.”
The flight could herald a new front in Mr. Trump’s efforts to conduct a mass removal of unauthorized immigrants, and it shows the willingness of at least some Latin American countries, under intense diplomatic pressure, to assist him. But it also raises questions about what will happen to migrants as they are shunted to another country where they may be unfamiliar with the language or culture.
The Panamanian government announced a proposal this week to send some newly arrived migrants to a small town at the end of the Darién Gap, a dangerous jungle in southern Panama, and then repatriate them “by air or sea to their countries of origin.”
Responding to reporters’ questions on Thursday, Mr. Mulino said two more U.S. Air Force flights were expected to bring a total of about 360 deported migrants to Panama. He said he expected they would quickly be flown to their countries of origin from Darién in an effort that would be paid for entirely by the United States. Mr. Mulino did not give a timeline for when the other flights were scheduled to arrive.
Migration at the southern U.S. border has shifted in recent years to include not just people coming from Mexico and Central America but also those from a wider range of countries, including ones that either do not accept deportation flights or take them sparingly.
The Trump administration has already received promises from El Salvador and Guatemala to accept migrants of other nationalities. Administration officials have indicated they are discussing similar deals with other countries.
But critics have noted that the United States could be sending migrants into more dangerous conditions. El Salvador, for example, has been accused of widespread human rights violations in its detentions, and Guatemala has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world.
After meeting with Mr. Rubio this month, Mr. Mulino had also indicated a willingness to receive deportees from other countries. (Panama does not send large numbers of migrants to the United States, as Mr. Mulino noted.)
“We are completely certain that reverse immigrants will come at some point — that is, they will be sent back either along the same route or because the United States will bring them back to deport them from here,” Mr. Mulino said.
The government in Panama has been under greater pressure than other Latin American countries to show it is on board with Mr. Trump’s priorities for the region, including curbing China’s influence and controlling illegal migration. Mr. Trump has focused on what he sees as China’s role in the Panama Canal and threatened that the United States would retake control of it.
Mr. Mulino, who has sought to align himself with Mr. Trump on migration, made assurances that he would address the role of China in Panama. He also emphasized a 94 percent reduction over the past year in migration at the Darién Gap, where hundreds of thousands of migrants had been entering the country from Colombia on their way north to the U.S. border.
Federico Rios contributed reporting.
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10) Some Migrants Sent by Trump to Guantánamo Are Being Held by Military Guards
The Times has obtained a list of 53 Venezuelan men the Trump administration has put in a wartime prison built to hold Al Qaeda suspects.
By Carol Rosenberg and Charlie Savage, Published Feb. 12, 2025, Updated Feb. 13, 2025
Carol Rosenberg and Charlie Savage have each been writing about detention at Guantánamo for more than two decades. Rosenberg reported from Miami and Savage from Washington.
A communal space for detainees at the 176-cell prison called Camp 6 at Guantánamo Bay in 2019. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Dozens of Venezuelan migrants sent by the Trump administration to the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are being guarded by troops rather than civilian immigration officers, according to people familiar with the operation.
While the Trump administration has portrayed the detainees as legally in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, military guards and medics are doing the work, the people said.
The Trump administration has not released the migrants’ names, although at least two have been identified by their relatives through pictures released of the first flight.
By not disclosing the migrants’ identities, the government has prevented their relatives from learning where they are being held and complicated lawyers’ efforts to challenge their detention.
Spokespeople for the Homeland Security and Defense Departments have been unwilling or unable to answer detailed questions about what is happening to the migrants at the base.
But The New York Times has obtained the names of 53 men who are being held in Camp 6, a prison building where until recently the military held Al Qaeda suspects. The Times has published the list.
A week after the first 10 men arrived from detention in Texas, the specifics of their status remains unknown. Officials for the Defense and Homeland Security Departments have said little about them other than their nationality. They’ve also described some as gang members, without offering evidence.
On Wednesday, Tricia McLaughlin, a homeland security spokeswoman, said that the agency had sent nearly 100 people to Guantánamo Bay, and that each had final deportation orders. All of them were considered to have “committed a crime by entering the United States illegally,” and the group included “violent gang members and other high-threat illegal aliens,” she said.
Not all migrants in ICE detention entered the United States illegally. Some, for example, requested asylum at the border, but were eventually rejected. The government did not offer evidence that all of the men taken to Guantánamo had sneaked across the border.
The government has periodically taken migrants picked up at sea to Guantánamo to be processed. But it has not previously taken people who were already detained on American soil — and therefore have constitutional rights, even if they were in the country unlawfully — to a U.S. detention facility abroad.
Nonetheless, a picture of the Guantánamo operation is emerging as military guards and medics scramble to figure out how to hold dozens of migrants. Troops had previously helped handle the base’s detainees in the war against terrorism, whose numbers are now down to 15 after transfers late in the Biden administration.
Eight people described the migrant operations at Guantánamo. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing sensitive information about ongoing security operations in a military zone.
One person familiar with the operation said that Camp 6 is in disrepair, with broken showers and doors and other faulty equipment that make parts of it unusable. This person also said that only two ICE officials were working inside Camp 6.
The Trump administration has told congressional staff members that only six ICE officials are working on the migrant detention operation, according to multiple people familiar with a briefing.
The congressional staff members were told that the prison building has 176 cells, but capacity for only 144 men. It was not clear if that meant 144 cells are in working condition, or if this was a reference to consideration of holding two men in each of 72 cells, using cots.
Two people with knowledge of prison operations said the detainees are being fed prepackaged military rations known as MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat.
The criteria for transfer to Guantánamo is currently Venezuelans in ICE custody, the congressional staffers were told. People in that category have been difficult to deport in recent years because of a breakdown in diplomatic relations, although Venezuela sent two flights to pick up some of its citizens who were being deported this week.
As of Tuesday, ICE had sent a total of 98 men to Guantánamo, according to several people keeping track of flights from El Paso to the Navy base in southeast Cuba. Of those, 53 were being held in Camp 6 and being guarded by the military.
President Trump has called the would-be deportees “criminal aliens” and administration officials have portrayed them as associates of the Tren de Aragua gang. But officials have not said what that accusation is based on for each man, and The Times could not independently verify the claims.
As of Tuesday, the other 45 migrants were being held in a lower-security building on the other side of the base. Their guards are members of the Coast Guard, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, Ms. McLaughlin said. The names of these migrants were not on the list obtained by The Times.
The U.S. Southern Command, which operates the terrorism prison, has been streaming staff and support personnel to the base since Mr. Trump’s order on Jan. 29 for the military and homeland security to prepare to expand a migrant operations center at Guantánamo Bay “for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”
It is not known if, or when, the guards at Camp 6 would be replaced by or augmented with security personnel from homeland security. Meantime, the Pentagon’s prison operation, which has Arabic language linguists on staff for the detainees in the war on terrorism, put out a rush announcement called a “hot fill,” seeking a Spanish-language interpreter in the Navy to do a 182-day stint at the prison.
On Wednesday, a group of legal aid organizations sued the Trump administration, asking that migrants who had been taken to Guantánamo Bay be given access to lawyers to see if they want legal representation to challenge their detention there. The plaintiffs also included relatives of three detainees at the base who said they had lost contact with the men and were deeply worried about them.
Two of the migrants named in the suit, Luis Alberto Castillo Rivera and Tilso Ramon Gomez Lugo, were on the list of 53 who were being held in Camp 6. Their relatives said they recognized them from pictures released during the government transfer operations.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the government has lawful authority to hold Al Qaeda suspects in indefinite wartime detention at Guantánamo, under a law passed by Congress that authorizes the use of military force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.
But it is not clear what legal authority the Trump administration has to to hold people arrested in the United States at Guantánamo for immigration detention purposes.
“When detained within the United States, immigrant detainees have the right to access counsel,” a request for a court order accompanying the lawsuit said. It added, “The government cannot eviscerate those rights simply by creating a legal black hole on an island in Cuba.”
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11) Hamas Signals Progress Toward Resumed Hostage Releases
The group said that mediators were working “to remove obstacles and close gaps” after the cease-fire deal with Israel hit a roadblock.
By Lara Jakes and Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 13, 2025
Aid deliveries in Rafah, southern Gaza, on Thursday. Credit...Hussam Al-Masri/Reuters
Hamas said on Thursday that it was still committed to upholding the cease-fire deal with Israel, including releasing more hostages this weekend, a sign of diplomatic progress amid widespread concern about the future of the precarious truce with Israel.
Mediators between the two sides were following up “to remove obstacles and close gaps” after “positive” talks with senior officials from Egypt and Qatar, Hamas said in a statement. Along with the United States, Egypt and Qatar have been brokering the cease-fire, which began with a six-week truce in late January.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on Hamas’s latest statement. Hamas has consistently said that resuming the hostage releases would depend on Israel’s upholding its end of the deal to the group’s satisfaction.
Basem Naim, a Hamas spokesman, said he believed that the releases would go ahead on Saturday but declined to clarify Hamas’s statement or to definitively confirm that plan.
In late January, both sides agreed to stop the devastating fighting in Gaza, with Hamas agreeing to release at least 33 hostages in exchange for more than 1,500 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. But over the past few days, officials across the region expressed fear that the truce was at risk amid claims of cease-fire violations between the two sides.
Even if the current roadblock is surmounted, the future of the cease-fire is in question: Israel and Hamas have yet to agree on terms to extend the agreement after the initial six weeks.
Earlier this week, Hamas said that Israel was not upholding its end of the deal, mainly by failing to allow enough tents and other aid into Gaza, and suspended the release of the next few hostages in protest. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, then threatened that unless hostages were released by Saturday afternoon, Israel would resume its campaign “until Hamas is conclusively defeated.”
President Trump added a further complication by demanding that all the remaining hostages should be freed by Saturday or “all hell is going to break out.” That message appeared to contradict the cease-fire deal that Mr. Trump’s own envoys had helped to broker, which stipulates a graduated release of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s chief negotiator, recently led a delegation to Egypt for meetings with senior officials in an attempt to resolve the impasse, the group said on Thursday. The talks focused on allowing in heavy equipment for construction and clearing rubble, tents for the hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans and prefabricated homes, Hamas said, as per the terms laid out by the deal.
Although the United Nations and other aid organizations have reported a major rise in aid overall, Hamas says Israel is allowing in not enough tents and no prefabricated shelters at all.
Omer Dostri, Mr. Netanyahu’s spokesman, confirmed on Thursday that Israel was not allowing any prefabricated homes or heavy machinery into Gaza. He did not explain the rationale or say whether that might change in the future. Israel has at times barred some “dual use” materials from entering Gaza, saying that they could be exploited by Hamas for military purposes.
Three Israeli officials and two mediators, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said earlier this week that Hamas’s claims about not receiving enough tents were accurate. But COGAT, the Israeli military unit that oversees aid deliveries, said in a written response that Hamas’s accusations were “completely false.”
Despite the standoff, the fragile cease-fire was still holding and some tents and other humanitarian aid have been entering Gaza. The United Nations’ relief agency said in a statement on Wednesday that 801 trucks of humanitarian aid entered Gaza that day alone to “seize every opportunity afforded by the cease-fire to scale up” assistance.
But the emergency coordinator in Gaza for the aid agency Doctors Without Borders warned that humanitarian deliveries were not happening quickly enough and that “people are still lacking basic items.”
“We are still not seeing the massive scale-up of humanitarian aid needed in northern Gaza,” the emergency coordinator, Caroline Seguin, wrote in a dispatch from the territory that the agency posted online on Wednesday.
Mr. Trump’s recent interventions in the Middle East have reverberated around the region. Over the past week, he has repeatedly said that the United States should take over Gaza, turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” and not allow displaced Palestinians to return to the territory once it has been rebuilt.
Palestinians, other Arabs and many experts in the field have rejected Mr. Trump’s proposal as ethnic cleansing and a war crime, and any such move to empty Gaza would most likely preclude any future chance of a Palestinian state.
Hamas on Thursday called for mass street demonstrations across the Middle East and in Muslim communities elsewhere to protest any plans to force Palestinians from Gaza.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
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12) After Abortion Bans, Infant Mortality and Births Increased, Research Finds
The findings showed the highest mortality occurred among infants who were Black, lived in Southern states or had fetal birth defects.
By Pam Belluck, Feb. 13, 2025
Anti-abortion activists rally in front of the Supreme Court in 2022. Credit...Shawn Thew/EPA, via Shutterstock
Infant mortality increased along with births in most states with abortion bans in the first 18 months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to new research.
The findings, in two studies published Thursday in the journal JAMA, also suggest that abortion bans can have the most significant effects on people who are struggling economically or who are in other types of challenging circumstances, health policy experts said.
“The groups that are most likely to have children as a result of abortion bans are also individuals who are most likely, for a number of different reasons, to have higher rates of infant mortality,” said Alyssa Bilinski, a professor of health policy at Brown University, who was not involved in the research.
Overall, infant mortality was 6 percent higher than expected in states that implemented abortion bans, said Alison Gemmill, one of the researchers, who is a demographer and perinatal epidemiologist in the department of population, family and reproductive health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. That number reflected increases in nine states, decreases in four and no change in one.
Dr. Gemmill said that among non-Hispanic Black infants, mortality was 11 percent higher after abortion bans were implemented than would have been expected. Also, there were more babies born with congenital birth defects, situations in which women have been able to terminate their pregnancies if not for abortion bans.
Overall, the researchers found that in the states that implemented near-total abortion bans or bans after six weeks’ gestation during that period, there were 478 more deaths of babies in their first year of life after the bans were implemented than would have been expected based on previous years’ data.
Birthrate increases were higher among communities with socioeconomic disadvantages and in states that have the worst maternal and child health outcomes.
“What happens when you ban abortion is that you create enormous inequality in access to abortion,” said Caitlin Myers of Middlebury College, who studies similar abortion data but was not involved in the new research.
The studies evaluated data from birth and death certificates and census records for all 50 states from January 2012 through December 2023. That time frame allowed researchers to compare trends in births and infant mortality in the years before the Supreme Court overturned the national right to abortion in June 2022 with data in the 18 months afterward.
At the time, 14 states had implemented near-total abortion bans or bans after six weeks’ gestation during that period. Now 16 have.
While national data has shown that, because of factors like telemedicine and out-of-state travel, overall abortion rates have actually increased since the Supreme Court’s ruling, that does not mean that everyone who needed or sought an abortion could obtain one, Dr. Myers said.
She said the research showed that two dynamics were behind the increase in infant mortality. One aspect is that when women are not allowed to end pregnancies of fetuses with congenital anomalies, the babies often die within days or weeks after birth.
The other aspect is that women who cannot obtain abortions by traveling to other states or by ordering pills by mail are “more likely to be poor, more likely to be women of color, and those populations have higher rates of maternal morbidity and mortality, infant complications, infant mortality,” Dr. Myers said.
Much of the overall increase was driven by data from Texas, said Suzanne Bell, a co-author of the studies and a professor in the same department at Johns Hopkins as Dr. Gemmill. Dr. Bell said all but 94 of the additional 478 infant deaths were in Texas, which has a much larger population than any of the other states with bans.
Infant mortality in Texas was 9.4 percent higher after abortion bans were implemented than would have been expected, the research found. In the eight other states with bans that showed increases, that rate ranged from a 1.3 percent increase in Mississippi to a 8.6 percent increase in Kentucky.
The researchers attributed the dominant influence of Texas on the data partly to the fact that in September 2021, about nine months before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, Texas implemented a strict ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Another factor, Dr. Bell said, was that before that time, a relatively high proportion of Texas women seeking abortions were able to obtain them from health care providers there, but after the bans, clinics and other abortion services closed, forcing women to travel long distances across that sprawling state.
In many of the other states, Dr. Bell said, there were already very few abortion providers before the bans, so women “were already traveling out of state or were already unable to obtain abortion.”
Five states with bans did not show higher infant mortality than expected. In Louisiana, the rate did not change. In Idaho, Missouri, West Virginia and Wisconsin, the rate decreased. The researchers said that was most likely because neighboring states, including Illinois, Washington State and Maryland, were providing expanded access to abortion.
In addition, they said, the demographics and relatively low socioeconomic status of residents in most of the Southern states contributed to higher infant mortality and higher birthrates after abortion bans were imposed.
“There are just very longstanding disparities in these outcomes that are shaped by state policies,” Dr. Gemmill said.
Abortion opponents said they had a different interpretation of the data.
“All of these ‘excess’ children who were born would have been killed in induced abortions,” said Dr. Donna Harrison, who is director of research at American Association of Pro-Life Obstetrician and Gynecologists. “This means that anyone lamenting the results of this study isn’t really concerned that these babies died; rather, they wish they would have been killed earlier: in the womb.”
The analysis of birth data found that in the states with abortion bans, the rate of births per 1,000 women of reproductive age increased by 1.7 percent more than would be expected from previous years’ data.
“It might seem like a 1.7 percent change in the fertility rate isn’t a big deal, but it’s actually a very big deal,” Dr. Gemmill said. She said that demographers considered such an increase very significant and noted that it was higher than the 1.4 percent increase in birthrates related to the Covid pandemic.
In states with abortion bans, that increase translated to 22,180 more births than expected, the researchers said.
Dr. Bilinski, who wrote an editorial accompanying the studies, said that the findings presented an opportunity to galvanize efforts to improve support systems and funding for pregnant women and infants — regardless of one’s views on abortion.
“These papers are not going to resolve disagreements about abortion in this country,” she said. “People are going to look at these papers, and particularly the results about birthrates, and I think have very different reactions.”
But nobody is in favor of infants dying. “We should want to prevent infant mortality, and in many cases infant mortality is preventable,” she said. She added, “If we are in a world where more people who perhaps didn’t plan to and didn’t feel prepared to become parents are becoming parents, we should think about what it means to be supporting those families in a real, intangible way.”
Dr. Bilinski said the study results underscored the need for policies and programs like Medicaid, the child tax credit, parental leave and affordable child care.
“I would hope that as a country, looking at these results,” she said, “we can all kind of agree that those children and families should have an opportunity to thrive.”
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