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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) 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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2) 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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3) Live Updates: In Speech to Europeans, Vance Signals Support for Far-Right Parties
Vice President JD Vance scolded an audience in Munich, saying Europe was failing to uphold democratic values. He said nothing about President Trump’s talks with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, which have stirred anxiety on the continent.
By Jim Tankersley, Ivan Nechepurenko, Lynsey Chutel and Qasim Nauman, February 14, 2025
Vice President JD Vance speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Friday. Credit...Leah Millis/Reuters
As an anxious Europe sought clarity on President Trump’s approach to Russia and Ukraine, Vice President JD Vance instead used a speech in Munich on Friday to signal support for far-right parties, including Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which Moscow has backed through misinformation campaigns.
Addressing European leaders at the Munich Security Conference, Mr. Vance scolded them for not sufficiently upholding democratic values — an accusation many of them have leveled at the Trump administration — and offered what amounted to White House political backing for Europe’s far right. He urged the Europeans to end their opposition to anti-immigration parties such as the AfD, parts of which have been classified as extremist by German intelligence, and said the effort to marginalize them and their radical ideas amounted to antidemocratic action.
Mr. Vance called the parties a legitimate expression of the will of voters angered by high levels of migration over the last decade. His words would appear to play into the hands of Russia, which researchers say is behind a torrent of disinformation that has flooded Germany ahead of a federal election this month.
Much of that campaign appears aimed at undermining trust in mainstream parties and bolstering the AfD. Elon Musk, Mr. Trump’s most high-profile adviser, has also supported AfD with posts on X, aligning with Russia’s strategic objective to destabilize Western democracies and support for Ukraine.
Mr. Vance did not mention Ukraine in his speech, despite the high tension in Europe over President Trump’s approach to ending the war, and as an explosion at the former nuclear plant at Chernobyl on Friday illustrated the continued dangers of the conflict.
Mr. Vance earlier met with European leaders who have expressed worries about Mr. Trump’s confrontational attitude toward trans-Atlantic allies, including his demand that they spend more on defense. Those fears have multiplied since Mr. Trump’s phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia earlier this week, when he demonstrated an apparent willingness to offer concessions that Ukraine considers unacceptable, including giving up some of its territory.
Here’s what else to know:
· Chernobyl blast: President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said a Russian drone had struck a building at the Chernobyl plant north of Kyiv that sits over its damaged reactor and prevents radiation leaks, and said it was a sign that the Kremlin was not serious about reaching a peace agreement. The Kremlin denied involvement in the blast. The International Atomic Energy Agency said radiation levels outside remained normal.
· U.S. and Europe: After European allies and Mr. Zelensky pushed back against Mr. Trump’s outreach to Mr. Putin — insisting that Ukraine be included in any talks to end the war — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday that the Russian and Ukrainian leaders would be at the table with Mr. Trump, who would lead negotiations.
· Ukraine’s NATO bid: Mr. Hegseth reiterated that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was “unlikely” in any peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia, and that Ukraine joining NATO was not likely to be part of such a deal. Mr. Zelensky, in a town hall discussion with four U.S. senators, said he had never counted on U.S. support for Ukraine entering the alliance, even under previous administrations. “To be very honest, they never saw us in NATO, they just spoke about it,” he said.
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4) Russian Drone Damages Radiation Shield at Chernobyl, Ukraine Says
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called the damage “significant” but said there were no signs of radiation leaks. A Kremlin spokesman denied that Russia had carried out the strike.
By Kim Barker, Andrew E. Kramer and Qasim Nauman, Kim Barker reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 14, 2025
A photograph released by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday showed an impact on the roof of the shelter over Reactor No. 4. Credit...International Atomic Energy Agency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Russia’s military used a drone with a high-explosive warhead to hit the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine overnight, damaging the protective shelter that prevents radiation leaks, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Friday.
In a post on social media, Mr. Zelensky called the damage “significant” but said that there were no signs of increased radiation at the plant, the site of the worst nuclear accident in history. Denys Shmyhal, the Ukrainian prime minister, said Friday morning that emergency crews had extinguished a fire at the site. A Kremlin spokesman denied that Russia had attacked the plant.
The structure that was damaged was designed to seal in vast quantities of radioactive isotopes from the fire and meltdown in 1986 at Chernobyl’s Reactor No. 4, and was intended to last generations.
The strike comes as pressure grows on Ukraine and Russia to sit down at the bargaining table three years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion. It also comes as world leaders are gathered in Munich for an annual security conference where the war in Ukraine — and recent statements by President Trump and his team indicating that they want to pursue a quick peace deal — will probably dominate conversations.
Many attending the Munich conference will remember the radioactive clouds that spread over parts of Europe after the accident at Chernobyl, which happened when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The accident was initially covered up by the Soviet authorities.
“Now the atmosphere is such that everyone is very angry about this news here in Munich,” Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office in Ukraine, posted on social media. “Not ‘concerned,’ as is often the case, but really angry.”
Mr. Yermak noted that the whole world had helped the Kremlin rebuild after Chernobyl. “Then the whole world invested in the shelter, and today these Russian idiots have launched a drone at it,” he added.
The Kremlin denied that Russia’s military had struck the plant. Its spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said, “The Russian military does not do this.”
“Most likely, we are talking about provocation and fraud,” he added.
The structure at Chernobyl that was hit on Friday is a huge arching shelter covering what remains of the crippled reactor. The meltdown spewed radiation into the atmosphere and contaminated an 18-mile zone around the plant that residents were forced to leave.
The protective structure, which resembles an aircraft hangar, was completed in 2016. It covers another structure known as the sarcophagus that was built immediately after the disaster.
The exploding drone breached the outer shield but did not damage the older, interior containment structure, Leontiy Derkach, a radiological engineer at the site, said in a telephone interview.
The explosion sprayed shrapnel into the space between the two structures, damaging both, he said, but did not spread radioactive materials. Emergency crews responded at about 3 a.m., he said, as the fire still burned.
The first people to approach the site were workers with radiation meters, to ascertain if radiation was leaking, he said. “We are not kamikazes to immediately go into the danger zone,” he said.
Air samples determined no radiation was leaking, Mr. Derkach said. Ukrainian military chemists and radiation specialists are still working at the site to gain a fuller picture of the damage. By around noon, he said, crews had not yet entered the outer containment structure for a closer view.
The drone, he said, had hit about 60 yards from where protective plates covered highly radioactive debris from the 1986 accident. Had it hit at that location, he said, the exploding drone could have spread radiation at least inside the outer containment structure.
Emergency crews, Mr. Derkach said, were assessing how to repair the hole. “The Russians caused us great damage,” he said. “The whole world built this shelter and the Russians destroyed it in one second.”
Greenpeace, the conservation group, issued a statement on the strike on the Chernobyl plant, saying it was “a further escalation of the threat to Ukraine’s nuclear power plants and must be condemned and punished.”
Chernobyl was among the first locations targeted in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as the Russian army captured and occupied the decommissioned plant and used the site as a base for attacks on Kyiv, to the south.
Radiation levels rose for several days, most likely from columns of heavy weaponry stirring dust. During the monthlong occupation of the site, Russian soldiers dug trenches in irradiated soil, and electrical power to a cooling pool for nuclear waste was briefly cut, raising alarms.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said that its staff members at the site of the former nuclear plant had heard the explosion overnight.
The strike on Chernobyl, about two hours north of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the recent increase in military activity around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in a Russian-occupied zone “underline persistent nuclear safety risks,” said Rafael Grossi, the agency’s director general.
Ivan Nechepurenko and Maria Varenikova contributed reporting.
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5) With Fighting Stilled, Gazans Face New Trauma: Searching for Their Dead
Thousands of bodies may be unearthed from Gaza’s ruins, the authorities say. Families with missing loved ones face fresh horrors as they search the rubble.
By Erika Solomon, Aaron Boxerman and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Photographs by Saher Alghorra, Feb. 14, 2025
Erika Solomon reported from Berlin, Aaron Boxerman from Jerusalem and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad from Haifa, Israel.
After 15 months of war, Hani al-Dibs, a high-school teacher, thought his greatest wish was to see the bombardment of Gaza come to an end. But the long-awaited cease-fire has brought only bitterness and dread.
Mr. al-Dibs is one of countless Gazans burdened with an agonizing duty: trying to recover the remains of loved ones trapped beneath the swathes of rubble left by Israel’s war against Hamas.
Some families have returned home to find corpses of loved ones so decomposed, they cannot tell them apart. Others cannot even enter the wreckage to dig, so strong is the stench of human decay. And some have searched and searched, only to find nothing at all.
As they prepared to return to their hometown, Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, Mr. al-Dibs’s two surviving children kept asking him whether their mother and little brothers might somehow have survived the blast that had trapped their bodies for three months beneath the rubble of the family home.
“They’d ask: What if they were still sleeping after the explosion, and climbed out later? What if, later on, the Israelis heard them screaming, and got them out?” he said in an interview. “Their questions torment me.”
Gazan health authorities have tallied nearly 48,000 among the dead, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants.
Beyond that is an untold toll: those whose bodies have yet to be found.
Families have reported 9,000 people as missing and presumed dead under rubble. Most of those have yet to be unearthed from Gaza’s ruins, health officials said. Several thousand of these are still not counted among the dead, as the authorities investigate the backlog of requests.
In mid-October, amid heavy clashes with Hamas, Mr. al-Dibs said Israeli forces blew up the building that housed three generations of the Dibs family.
Desperate to seek medical help for family members dug out from the rubble, Mr. al-Dibs was forced into a terrible choice: He had to leave behind his wife, his two youngest children, his mother, his sisters and his nieces — 14 loved ones in all — beneath the ruins. As the Dibs family survivors fled south to safety, he vowed to return for their bodies. It was a pledge that took months to fulfill.
For weeks after he fled, Mr. al-Dibs filed repeated requests to Israel to reach the site, using a process the U.N. set up to try to coordinate with Israel to allow Gazan rescuers access to blast sites. Israel denied all of the Dibs family’s requests, the U.N. said.
COGAT, the Israeli military body that handles coordination with humanitarian organizations in Gaza, did not respond to a written request for comment.
Nearly three months later, as the cease-fire began, Mr. al-Dibs and his children finally set off home on foot, picking their way over mounds of rubble and debris.
What they found was worse than they had imagined. Bombings had leveled buildings, scattering piles of rocks on top of his family’s collapsed home.
Relatives arrived, eager to help. But with Israel’s punishing siege still blocking new equipment from entering the enclave, no one had drills or other power tools to break through the rubble.
“We used what we could find: shovels, picks and our bare hands,” he said.
After hours of digging, they finally reached the flattened floor where his family had lived.
Mr. al-Dibs found parts of a skeleton that he believed belonged to his son Hasib, who was 8. But he could find nothing of his wife and 6-year-old Habib — only a few charred fragments of bone that crumbled as he tried to grasp them between his fingers.
An Al Jazeera television segment filming retrieval efforts in the neighborhood caught on camera Mr. al-Dib’s realization that he would never find their bodies. Trembling with fury, he shook out some white plastic body bags.
“I brought big shrouds! And little shrouds! So I could put their bodies inside! But I found their bodies reduced to ashes!” he screamed.
Then, as his 12-year-old daughter Fatima, in a bright yellow jacket, ran up to the ruins, sobbing and calling out the names of her younger brothers, Mr. al-Dibs gently pulled her away: “Oh Habib! Oh Hasib! Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”
“They were deprived of a last goodbye,” Mr. al-Dibs said.
The family has since buried Hasib’s remains, and now his daughter has new questions.
“She keeps asking, why we can’t have graves for her mother and Habib? Where will she go sit and confide in her mother, without a grave?”
Those who find their loved ones’ bodies face other psychological torments.
Ahmad Shbat, 25, found some of his relatives’ bodies in the northern town of Beit Hanoun completely intact, leaving him agonizing over the question of whether they had died, not from the bombing, but from prolonged suffering as they awaited a rescue that never came.
“The feeling of helplessness,” he said, “is overwhelming.”
Since the cease-fire, medical workers have been called to retrieve dozens of unidentified bodies, said Saleh al-Homs, deputy director of the European Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
They write the location and any identifying details on the body bags, and place inside any belongings they find, he said, then take them to the closest hospital morgue and post descriptions of their findings on social media.
Gaza’s emergency rescue services, the Civil Defense, have pleaded with residents not to attempt retrievals on their own, warning of the potential for bombs or unexploded ordnance beneath the wreckage. It says it cannot conduct major excavation efforts until heavy equipment, such as diggers, are allowed into Gaza— and which Israel says it will not permit.
But few Gazans, like Ramy Nasr, a trader from Jabaliya, have any intention of waiting on anyone for help.
Mr. Nasr, whose family tragedy was recounted in a report by The New York Times last year, returned to the site of the explosion last October that brought down the building where his siblings and their families had been sheltering.
He paid $500 to construction workers to drill a tunnel into the building to retrieve them. The bodies he found were so decomposed, he said, it was hard to tell them apart.
Eventually he was able to sort them into two piles.
The remains of what he believed to be his brother Ammar Adel Nasr, his wife, Imtiyaz, and their two daughters went into one grave. His brother Aref and sister Ola went into another.
Like so many graveyards in Gaza, he said, his family’s graveyard is now so crammed with new bodies, it has become difficult to secure plots.
“Before the war, every person was put into their own grave,” he said. “These days, there isn’t enough room — or time.”
Nader Ibrahim contributed reporting.
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6) Louisiana Health Department Says It Will Stop Promoting ‘Mass Vaccination’
“Vaccines should be treated with nuance, recognizing differences between seasonal vaccines and childhood immunizations,” Dr. Ralph L. Abraham, the state’s surgeon general, wrote in a memo.
By Tim Balk, Published Feb. 13, 2025, Updated Feb. 14, 2025
Dr. Ralph L. Abraham, the Louisiana surgeon general, wrote that health officials should meet “people where they are.” Credit...Melinda Deslatte/Associated Press
Louisiana’s top health official said in an internal memo to the state’s Health Department on Thursday that it would no longer use media campaigns or health fairs to promote vaccination against preventable illnesses.
The official, Dr. Ralph L. Abraham, Louisiana’s surgeon general, wrote in the memo that the state would “encourage each patient to discuss the risks and benefits of vaccination with their provider” but would “no longer promote mass vaccination.”
The letter came on a day when the U.S. Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has raised questions about vaccines, as the new U.S. health secretary. But it was not clear if the memo had come in response to the change in federal leadership.
“Vaccines should be treated with nuance, recognizing differences between seasonal vaccines and childhood immunizations, which are an important part of providing immunity to our children,” wrote Dr. Abraham, a former Republican congressman.
A spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Health did not immediately respond on Thursday night to questions about the scope of the directive and how it might affect the distribution of vaccines.
The Health Department in New Orleans, Louisiana’s largest city, quickly said that it would not follow the state’s lead.
“We will continue to strongly promote childhood and seasonal vaccination, and expand our efforts locally to fill any gaps left by the state’s new direction,” Dr. Jennifer Avegno, the director of the New Orleans Health Department, said in an email.
The city’s Health Department is the only one in the state that operates independently from the Louisiana Department of Health.
In his memo, Dr. Abraham said that the state Health Department would also stop promoting vaccinations through “partnerships” and “parish health units.”
He wrote that state health officials should not instruct “individuals to receive any and all vaccines” but instead should provide data about the reduced health risks associated with receiving vaccinations.
“For many illnesses, vaccines are one tool in the toolbox of ways to combat severe illness,” Dr. Abraham wrote, adding that state health officials should focus on “meeting people where they are.”
During the Covid pandemic, Louisiana had among the nation’s lowest vaccination rates, and health care workers there struggled to combat misinformation about the safety of coronavirus immunizations.
On Thursday, Dr. Abraham also issued a pointed public statement with his deputy surgeon general, Wyche T. Coleman, criticizing how state and federal health authorities had responded to the pandemic.
Dr. Abraham and Dr. Coleman wrote that the implementation of vaccine mandates had been “an offense against personal autonomy that will take years to overcome.”
In June, Dr. Abraham was appointed as Louisiana’s surgeon general by the state’s governor, Jeff Landry, a Republican. Last year, Mr. Landry replaced John Bel Edwards, the Democratic governor who led Louisiana through the pandemic. Mr. Edwards fought state lawmakers and Mr. Landry — then the state’s attorney general — to implement vaccinate mandates.
Dr. Abraham did not mention Covid in his memo on vaccination, which was provided by Dr. Pete Croughan, the department’s deputy secretary.
The Times-Picayune of New Orleans previously reported on the memo.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Thursday night.
Louisiana is experiencing a surge in flu this winter.
Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.
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7) Why Would We Undermine the Marvel of American Science?
By Harold Varmus, Feb. 14, 2025
Dr. Varmus is a professor at Weill Cornell Medicine. He shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in medicine for the discovery of cancer genes and was the director of the National Institutes of Health in the 1990s.
Fortunate Joaquin
I’ve spent over five decades as a scientist in academia and the federal government, including as director of the National Institutes of Health. Never before have I seen my profession so politicized as it is now under the Trump administration.
Historically, Americans of all political persuasions have respected science and celebrated its breakthroughs. In my field, these range from discovering the fundamental mechanisms of cancer to the development of drugs that improve and extend people’s lives.
And yet, for baffling reasons, the executive branch is now waging war on America’s scientific enterprise. This assault includes nominating leaders hostile to science and unqualified for their roles; issuing a barrage of executive orders that disrupt research by restricting meetings, publications, travel and grant making; censoring ideas and even certain words from scientific discourse; and trying to withhold billions of dollars from universities and other research institutions that help pay the costs of research.
Since 1945, when President Franklin Roosevelt’s science adviser, Vannevar Bush, outlined a blueprint for national research, government agencies have funded basic science conducted at universities, research institutions and government laboratories. Companies then turn their results into products that drive economic growth and improve our lives. In this way, the United States has come to lead the world in nearly all fields of science and technology. The rewards have been evident in virtually every aspect of human life, including medicine, agriculture, national defense and manufacturing.
This process has never been free of disagreement. Interested parties have argued over many things: How much funding should each federal science agency receive from Congress? How should the agencies spend that money? How should grant applications be evaluated? Who owns the products of research? What kinds of research should be exempted from federal support?
These questions are routine, and their answers have shifted across administrations. But one thing has remained constant: Regardless of their personal views on contentious topics, members of the executive and legislative branches have long seen themselves as caretakers of a precious commodity — the nation’s scientific and technological communities.
Today is very different. Scientists working within the federal government or at federally funded research institutions are wondering how their work can possibly continue.
Several of the people nominated to lead federal health and science agencies are hostile to the institutions and people they are meant to serve. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the country’s most notorious vaccine critics, is now the health secretary — despite his history of spreading misinformation, his disparagement of the Department of Health and Human Services staff and his bizarre and immature behavior.
Dr. Dave Weldon, a former congressman tapped to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has pushed the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a health economist nominated to direct the N.I.H., the world’s largest supporter of medical research, seems to harbor grievances against critics of his ideas to forgo certain public health measures to curb Covid-19. He is reportedly considering an outlandish plan that would make institutions accused of stifling “academic freedom” less likely to receive N.I.H. funding.
Such nominations seem unsuitable and yet remain consistent with the Trump administration’s other actions to kneecap America’s science and health security. President Trump is withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization and is dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development. Immigration policies are making America an unattractive destination for talented foreign students who have long contributed to our success in science and technology.
Efforts made last week to deprive universities and other research institutions of billions of N.I.H. dollars needed to support scientific infrastructure have been at least temporarily blocked in the courts. But they reveal the extent to which the new administration is willing to go to disable our scientific enterprise.
This is a time to reflect on the marvels of science, in which America has played a leading role. The wonder of unveiling the genetic blueprint of life. The painstaking brilliance behind deciphering how cells respond to their environment and infectious invaders. If the attacks on our scientists and their institutions are allowed to continue, our envisioned future of longer, healthier lives will happen more slowly, in other countries, or not at all.
Perhaps what’s most disheartening is what feels like the absence of widespread opposition to this unraveling. Thankfully, in a few situations, judges have stepped in, but there have not been the kinds of public demonstrations in support of science that occurred, with less provocation, in Mr. Trump’s first term. Industries reliant on new scientific discoveries to maintain their global market share have largely remained quiet. Republican members of Congress, even those who have typically supported federally financed science, have been subservient to party directives.
Preventing this destruction will require at least two actions. Americans who value the spirit of discovery — and eagerly await new ways to confront disease, strengthen our economy and improve the quality of human life — need to issue a strong outcry. And legislators must exercise their constitutional responsibilities to oppose unqualified candidates for important federal positions, constrain damaging actions by the executive branch and give science agencies the resources needed to do their jobs. This is not a fight that our country can afford to lose.
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8) Trump Will Withhold Money From Schools That Require Covid Vaccines
An estimated 15 colleges still required Covid vaccines for students as of late last year. No states require K-12 students to get the shots.
By Benjamin Mueller, Feb. 14, 2025
The executive order signed by President Trump on Friday largely took aim at vaccine mandates implemented in 2021, shortly after Covid shots became available. Credit...Kevin Mohatt for The New York Times
President Trump ordered on Friday that federal funding be withheld from schools and universities that require students to be vaccinated against Covid, White House officials said, another step in the administration’s campaign against coronavirus vaccine requirements.
It was not clear how widely impactful the order would be. No states require K-12 students to be vaccinated against Covid. Only 15 colleges still required Covid vaccines for students as of late last year, according to No College Mandates, an advocacy group.
Riding the same wave of anti-vaccine sentiment, 21 states had already moved to outlaw student Covid vaccine mandates, the National Academy for State Health Policy, a nonpartisan research group, has said. And Republican elected officials across the country have pursued a tide of anti-vaccine measures, including a proposed ban in Montana on administering mRNA vaccines, which include some Covid shots, and a ban on a local health department in Idaho offering any Covid vaccines.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that monitoring has shown that Covid vaccines are safe for children.
Younger people are much less likely to be severely sickened by the coronavirus, but doctors have said that the virus has still harmed many children.
For Mr. Trump, whose first administration accelerated the development and rollout of Covid shots, saving some 140,000 lives in their early months of availability, the latest executive order was a turn toward reining in efforts to promote the vaccines.
Shortly after returning to office last month, Mr. Trump also said he would reinstate more than 8,000 troops who had been dismissed for refusing the Covid vaccine.
The executive order on Friday largely took aim at mandates implemented in 2021, shortly after Covid vaccines became available. Some local school districts, especially in more liberal regions, required the shots for students participating in sports or other extracurricular activities, or for adult visitors to school buildings, including parents.
School-based mandates tend to raise vaccination rates among children, researchers have found. Those vaccinations, in turn, can protect students who might be vulnerable to more serious illness and dampen circulation of the virus, potentially sparing parents or grandparents from being exposed.
But even in more liberal areas, school mandates won only modest support. Some researchers argued they were counterproductive, polarizing communities and damaging trust in scientific institutions. As the pandemic progressed, resistance to mandates mounted. Most of the policies were short-lived.
Covid vaccine mandates at colleges also improved vaccination rates, researchers have found, with health benefits that extended to surrounding communities. In counties whose colleges all mandated vaccines, one study found, fewer residents died from Covid.
Few teachers and school staff members are working under Covid vaccine mandates, either. No state requires them, and the nation’s two largest school districts, New York City and Los Angeles, both lifted teacher Covid vaccine requirements in 2023.
The order applies only to Covid vaccines, leaving untouched state requirements that school children be vaccinated against measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and chickenpox. States excuse children who, for medical reasons, cannot receive vaccines, and many also allow exemptions for religious or other reasons.
At least some medical schools require Covid shots for students. It was not immediately clear if those rules would be affected by the new order.
Dana Goldstein and Tyler Pager contributed reporting.
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9) German Chancellor Rebukes Vance for Supporting Party That Downplays Nazis
At the Munich Security Conference, Olaf Scholz accused the U.S. vice president of unacceptable interference in Germany’s coming elections.
By Jim Tankersley and Andrew E. Kramer, Feb. 15, 2025
Jim Tankersley reported from Munich, and Andrew E. Kramer from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany at the Munich Security Conference, on Saturday. Credit...Matthias Schrader/Associated Press
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on Saturday accused Vice President JD Vance of unacceptably interfering in his country’s imminent elections on behalf of a party that has played down the atrocities committed by the Nazis 80 years ago.
A day after Mr. Vance stunned the Munich Security Conference by telling German leaders to drop their so-called firewall and allow the hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, to enter their federal government, Mr. Scholz accused Mr. Vance of effectively violating a commitment to never again allow Germany to be led by fascists who could repeat the horrors of the Holocaust.
“A commitment to ‘never again’ is not reconcilable with support for the AfD,” Mr. Scholz said at the conference on Saturday morning, in an address opening the gathering’s second day.
Mr. Scholz said the AfD had trivialized Nazi atrocities like the concentration camp at Dachau, which Mr. Vance visited on Friday. The chancellor said Germany “would not accept” suggestions from outsiders about how to run its democracy — or directives to work with such a party.
“That is not done, certainly not among friends and allies,” Mr. Scholz said. “Where our democracy goes from here is for us to decide.”
Attendees at Mr. Vance’s speech had been expecting to hear details of the Trump administration’s plans for Ukraine peace talks and NATO defense policies. On Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine himself put the focus on the Ukraine war in his remarks, starkly laying out the threat from Russia’s battle-hardened military and making an impassioned appeal for Europeans to take their security into their own hands, including by forming an “Army of Europe” that would supplement U.S. power on the continent.
His speech drew standing ovations, in contrast to Mr. Vance’s speech the day before.
Mr. Scholz’s comments underscored a growing unease among Europe’s leaders about their relationship with the United States, and their own domestic politics. They came as leaders scrambled at the summit to formulate a response to President Trump’s sudden shift in Ukraine policy — and the possibility that he could cut the continent out of negotiations.
Just a few days before Mr. Vance’s remarks, Mr. Trump threatened to impose new tariffs on virtually every country the United States trades with. Then he spoke of negotiating an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine directly with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, leaving Europeans, including Ukraine, wondering if they would be included. Poland’s foreign minister said at the summit that President Emmanuel Macron of France had called an emergency meeting of European leaders to discuss Ukraine on Sunday.
At the same time, far-right parties across Europe have gained ground by tapping into unease over immigration, which also helped propel Mr. Trump back to power in the United States. Mr. Vance’s comments suggested that a new kind of American alliance with Europe was forming, one that bypasses the official leadership in favor of movements like Germany’s AfD and France’s National Rally.
Saturday’s sessions of the security conference were dominated by reactions, predominantly negative, to Mr. Vance’s speech — and Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Mr. Scholz was joined in his criticism by Friedrich Merz, his rival as the chancellor candidate for the conservative Christian Democrats, who polls suggest is the favorite to be Germany’s next leader.
Mr. Vance spent much of his speech on Friday scolding Europeans for what he suggested were Soviet-style restrictions on free speech across the continent. On Saturday, Mr. Merz defended Germany’s laws that prohibit particular forms of speech, including hate speech and banned Nazi slogans, including on social media.
He also suggested that Mr. Trump’s administration was suppressing speech in the United States, after it moved on Friday to kick The Associated Press out of reporting pools and off Mr. Trump’s plane because the news agency refuses to go along with Mr. Trump’s directive to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
“We stick to the rules which are given by our democratic institutions,” Mr. Merz said. “Free speech remains free speech and remains part of our open, democratic society. And fake news, hate speech and offenses remain subject to legal restraints and controlled by independent courts.”
“I think I should say,” he added, “that in front of the events which took place in D.C. yesterday — we would never kick out the news agency, out of the press room of our chancellor.”
Mr. Merz also criticized Mr. Trump’s tariff policy, saying that Germany wanted to reduce tariffs, not increase them, and that “we don’t believe in trade conflicts.”
The White House had no immediate comment on the remarks by Mr. Scholz and Mr. Merz.
The comments were the latest in a series of critiques of Mr. Vance’s speech from German politicians before the election next Sunday. Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats are running third or fourth in most polls. The AfD is running second, and its chancellor candidate, Alice Weidel, met Mr. Vance on Friday in Munich.
Parts of the AfD have been classified as extremist by German intelligence. Some of its members have been convicted of violating German law against the use of Nazi slogans. Others have been arrested for trying to overthrow the federal government. So although AfD candidates have been able to win parliamentary seats, no other party has been willing to form a coalition with them to take control of the government.
That collective shunning of the AfD and other extremist parties is known as the firewall. Mr. Vance took aim at it on Friday, saying the AfD and other hard-right parties across Europe represented legitimate voter concerns about high levels of migration into European countries from the Middle East and elsewhere.
“There is no room for firewalls,” Mr. Vance said.
The vice president also called restrictions on free speech a greater threat to Europe than military aggression from Russia or China.
Mr. Scholz chided Mr. Vance for that focus in a question-and-answer session after his speech. He was asked by Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor in chief of The Economist, if Mr. Vance had made any points in his speech worth reflecting on.
“You mean all these very relevant discussions about Ukraine and security in Europe?” Mr. Scholz said, drawing laughter from the audience.
Then he addressed Mr. Vance’s critique of European speech restrictions directly.
“We should be very clear that free speech in Europe means that you are not attacking others in ways that are against legislation and laws we have in our country,” Mr. Scholz said. “And that’s the case. There is no difference between the digital world and the analog world to say it like this. And we have to be very clear that hate and all this, which is so bad for our societies, should be not the reality of public debate.”
Mr. Zelensky, in his remarks, focused on the question of European defense. He reiterated his position that the United States would be pivotal in securing any cease-fire in Ukraine but that it would need Europe to also step up. He pointed to what he said were intelligence warnings of Russian plans to conduct military exercises in Belarus next summer. He noted that Russia had invaded Ukraine after deploying troops to Belarus under the guise of exercises.
“Europe just needs to come together and start acting in a way that no one can say ‘No’ to Europe, boss it around, or treat it like a pushover,” Mr. Zelensky said.
Mr. Trump has said he wanted access to minerals in Ukraine worth half a trillion dollars in exchange for continued military support; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent opened talks on that issue in Kyiv this past week. “We are still talking,” Mr. Zelensky said on Saturday.
In a conversation with the CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour after his speech, Mr. Zelensky also said that Ukraine needed to be at the table at any cease-fire talks, and he asked to meet with Mr. Trump before any meeting that Mr. Trump has with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
“It’s up to them, they can discuss anything they want, but not Ukraine without Ukraine,” he said.
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10) Live Updates: Israel and Hamas Finish 6th Exchange of Hostages for Prisoners
Hamas freed three Israelis who appeared to be in relatively good condition, and Israel released 369 Palestinian prisoners. The exchange will likely sustain a fragile cease-fire, at least for now.
By Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman, February 15, 2025
Hamas freed three Israeli hostages from captivity in Gaza on Saturday, including an American Israeli dual citizen, prolonging a fragile cease-fire with Israel that appeared to be teetering earlier this week.
Israel said it had released 369 Palestinian prisoners in exchange, concluding the sixth such swap under the cease-fire deal.
The Palestinian captors forced the Israelis to mount a stage in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis and give speeches in Hebrew against a backdrop of portraits of Hamas leaders. The Israelis were thinner and paler than when they were abducted, but they appeared to be in better condition than the emaciated captives released by Hamas last week.
Rifle-toting militants affiliated with Hamas and another group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, stood nearby. Some carried Israeli weapons, part of the carefully choreographed theatrics that have also been on display in past releases.
The gunmen did not, however, prod the men into thanking their captors, as happened last week in scenes that shocked Israelis already outraged over their gaunt condition.
The three Israeli civilians were abducted from the Israeli border village of Nir Oz during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited the war in Gaza. They are Sasha Troufanov, 29; Iair Horn, 46; and Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, one of the few American citizens who was still held in Gaza.
Hundreds of people gathered in a Tel Aviv square to watch the televised release, cheering, waving posters with the faces of the hostages and shedding tears of joy.
The Palestinian prisoners who were released included 36 serving life sentences for attacks on Israelis. A first batch of 10 released prisoners arrived in the city of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. As they stepped off the bus, they were handed jackets to cover the sweatshirts that their jailers had made them wear before they were freed. The sweatshirts bore a phrase in Arabic: “We shall neither forget nor forgive.”
The successful exchange is likely to prop up the cease-fire, at least for a time. The truce wobbled this week after Hamas threatened to delay the hostage release. It accused Israel of violating the deal, including by not sending sufficient tents and other aid into Gaza.
Israel threatened to resume the war if Hamas did not relent. By Friday, both sides signaled that the dispute had been resolved for now.
Here’s what else to know:
· Phase 2: Israel and Hamas were supposed to start negotiations on the second part of the deal — including an end to the war and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces — last week. But there has been little indication that they have begun serious talks. The lull has prompted serious worries about the future of the cease-fire, even though the latest impasse was resolved.
· Held in Gaza: The sides have agreed to the release of 33 Israelis who were taken hostage at the beginning of the war before the deal needs to be extended. If the deal collapses at that point, roughly 60 of those still unaccounted for — many of them presumed dead — would remain in Gaza.
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11) Newly released from jail, one Palestinian has no home to return to.
By Fatima AbdulKarim, Reporting from Ramallah in the West Bank, February 15, 2025
When Hassan Oweis stepped off a bus on Saturday in Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, it was a moment of both elation and uncertainty for his waiting family.
Mr. Oweis, 47, was one of 369 Palestinians released from Israeli jails this weekend in exchange for three Israeli hostages. This was the first time that his relatives had seen him outside of prison since his arrest in 2002 — nearly half a lifetime ago. To celebrate, a crowd of well-wishers lifted him onto their shoulders.
“The first time we see him without bars,” said his son Shadi, 25, who was still a toddler when Mr. Oweis was jailed.
“The most precious moment,” said Mr. Oweis’s mother, Mariam.
But the mood also felt “painful and uneasy,” said Ms. Oweis, 75.
The Oweis family lives in Jenin, in the northern West Bank, where the Israeli military is mounting an extensive operation against what it says are militants planning attacks on Israelis. Thousands of Jenin residents have been forced from their homes as the Israeli soldiers battle Palestinian gunmen and demolish scores of buildings.
The Oweis family are among the displaced. Several of them are taking shelter in a farm shed outside the city. Once they return north from Ramallah, via a web of Israeli military checkpoints, they will not be able to return to the home that Mr. Oweis owns with his siblings.
Mr. Oweis, a former a member of the Palestinian security services, is “leaving one prison only to enter another,” said his nephew, Majd, 19.
Mr. Oweis was arrested in a similar Israeli raid on Jenin in April 2002. According to Israeli court records, he was later convicted on several counts of terrorism, including abetting two gunmen who killed two Israeli civilians and wounded scores in northern Israel in November 2001.
Mr. Oweis denied the accusations, according to court records.
In a reminder of those charges, the Israeli prison authorities had dressed Mr. Oweis and his fellow prisoners in sweatshirts emblazoned with a threat in Arabic: “We shall neither forget nor forgive.”
Prison officers had also tied menacing messages around the prisoners’ wrists.
“The eternal nation will not forget,” read the message, an Arabic adaptation of a Hebrew Bible verse. “I pursue my enemies and seize them.”
Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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12) The Barrage of Trump’s Awful Ideas Is Doing Exactly What It’s Supposed To
By M. Gessen, Opinion Columnist, Feb. 15, 2025
Ioulex for The New York Times
The first month of the second Trump presidency has put the lie to the widespread wisdom that Donald Trump has no ideology and no ideas, only an insatiable thirst for power and money. Trump has shown that he has ideas. So many ideas. They are just really bad ideas:
The United States can own, ethnically cleanse and redevelop Gaza as a luxury resort. The U.S. will buy Greenland and take possession of the Panama Canal. The government will become more efficient by cutting the Department of Education, U.S.A.I.D., medical and science research and many many jobs. D.E.I. caused the collision of an Army helicopter and a passenger plane in the air near Washington, D.C. Immigrants and transgender people are an existential threat to Americans. The president can and should rule by decree. These are all ideas, in the sense that they are opinions, beliefs or expressions of a possible course of action.
Some of these ideas would have seemed unthinkable just weeks ago. But now that they have been thought and uttered by the man in possession of the world’s biggest megaphone, all of us are forced to engage with them. Otherwise sane people start debating questions like: Could the U.S. really take over Gaza? Would Egypt or Jordan go along with the ethnic cleansing project? Can trillions of dollars really be cut from the federal budget with a few keystrokes? Is there evidence that D.E.I. caused the crash? Are all immigrants criminals? Do trans people exist? Did the founders intend to check the power of the executive?
Flooding the ether with bad ideas isn’t Trump’s unique know-how — it’s standard autocratic fare. Hannah Arendt used the word “preposterous” to describe the ideas that underpinned 20th-century totalitarian regimes. Bad ideas do a lot of the work of building autocracy. By forcing us to engage with them, they make our conversations, our media and our society dumber. By conjuring the unimaginable — radical changes in the geography of human relationships, the government and the world itself as we have known it — they plunge us into an anxious state in which thinking is difficult. That kind of anxiety is key to totalitarian control.
Life under autocracy can be terrifying, as it already is in the United States for immigrants and trans people. But those of us with experience can tell you that most of the time, for most people, it’s not frightening. It is stultifying. It’s boring. It feels like trying to see and breathe under water — because you are submerged in bad ideas, being discussed badly, being reflected in bad journalism and, eventually, in bad literature and bad movies.
Much has been said about the Democrats’ failure to sound the alarm loudly enough, fast enough or broadly enough as Trump has mounted his campaign of destruction. Some of the criticism is not entirely fair. The American system of checks and balances isn’t designed to move as fast as Trump is moving or to stop a bad-faith individual intent on breaking it. A real problem, though, is that Democrats’ objections to these ideas have been primarily procedural. Trump understands politics as the interplay of power and ideology. His opponents see politics as procedure. The contrast has never been starker — and never has the Democrats’ technocratic, legalistic approach been more detrimental to the cause of democracy. It’s not Trump who doesn’t have ideas; it’s the people who should be fighting to stop Trump’s autocratic breakthrough.
It is not enough to say that Trump and his crony Elon Musk are staging a coup, though they are. Many of the people who voted for Trump want to see him smash what he has successfully framed as a useless, wasteful government. It is not enough to say that Trump is destroying American democracy. Many of the people who voted for him did so because they have long felt that the system as it is constituted doesn’t represent their interests — and both Trump and Musk have argued that they are wresting democracy back from unelected bureaucrats. It is not enough to say that Trump’s actions have caused a constitutional crisis or that his executive orders may violate laws passed by Congress. Many of the people who voted for Trump longed to see their frustrations addressed by decisive, spectacular action, which he is delivering.
Not that defending institutions, norms and laws is wrong. It is essential. Contrary to popular opinion, it is institutions, norms and laws — not elections — that constitute a functioning democracy. The mechanisms Trump is destroying are certainly imperfect, but they are also inspired, sometimes brilliantly devised and almost always beautiful in concept, for they are the mechanisms of self-government, the products of deliberation and collective action, the embodiment of our obligations to one another.
It is hard to imagine an American politician saying something like that today. If one did, he would sound like a lunatic, or a pious academic whom Trump would Marx-bait. The idea that government is fundamentally suspect has been around for so long, has become so widely held — and has had such a dumbing-down effect on public conversation — that a full-throated defense of the ideals and institutions of American government seems cringe-worthy.
Trump’s other bad ideas have the same effect. There is no significant political voice promoting our obligations to asylum seekers, arguing against unconditional support for Israel, making the case for the great responsibility that comes with being a great power or mounting a defense of trans rights not merely because trans people are a tiny and maligned minority but because human reinvention is the lifeblood of progress. Instead, the argument Democrats have advanced against all of Trump’s bad ideas boils down to “You can’t do that.”
Actually, it would appear, he can. Less than a month into his second term, Trump cannot yet govern like the emperor he apparently imagines himself to be, but he is actively promoting the idea that he should be able to. His vice president has cast as lawbreakers judges who have tried to stop Trump’s assault on government, and Trump himself has transparently threatened to go after them. Many polls suggest that a majority of Americans like what they have seen and heard so far.
Admonitions to obey the law will not stop Trump and will not dissuade his supporters. Trump’s bad ideas must be countered with good ones. His attack on the government has to be contrasted with a vision of how the system could work and should work — for the people, not the emperor-in-the-making. This is an extremely difficult kind of resistance to muster because it calls for clear thought and inspired vision just when the onslaught of bad ideas, and the anxiety they engender, make it so difficult to think clearly and envision a future.
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13) The Story You’ve Been Told About Recycling Is a Lie
By Alexander Clapp, Feb. 14, 2025
Mr. Clapp is a journalist and the author of “Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash,” from which this essay is adapted.
DeSean McClinton-Holland for The New York Times
In the closing years of the Cold War, something strange started to happen.
Much of the West’s trash stopped heading to the nearest landfill and instead started crossing national borders and traversing oceans. The stuff people tossed away and probably never thought about again — dirty yogurt cups, old Coke bottles — became some of the most redistributed objects on the planet, typically winding up thousands of miles away. It was a bewildering process, one that began with the export of toxic industrial waste. By the late 1980s, thousands of tons of hazardous chemicals had left the United States and Europe for the ravines of Africa, the beaches of the Caribbean and the swamps of Latin America.
In return for this cascade of toxins, developing countries were offered large sums of cash or promised hospitals and schools. The result everywhere was much the same. Many countries that had broken from Western imperialism in the 1960s found that they were being turned into graveyards for Western industrialization in the 1980s, an injustice that Daniel arap Moi, then the president of Kenya, referred to as “garbage imperialism.” Outraged, dozens of developing nations banded together to end waste export. The resulting treaty — the Basel Convention, entered into force in 1992 and ratified by nearly every nation in the world but not the United States — made it illegal to export toxic waste from developed to developing countries.
If only the story had ended there. Despite that legislative success, the poorer nations of the world have never stopped being receptacles for the West’s ever-proliferating rubbish. The situation now is, in many respects, worse than it was in the 1980s. Then, there was widespread recognition that waste export was immoral. Today, most waste travels under the guise of being recyclable, cloaked in the language of planetary salvation. For the past two years I’ve been traveling the globe — from the plains of Romania to the slums of Tanzania — in an attempt to understand the world trash is making. What I saw was terrifying.
I started in Accra, the capital of Ghana, where millions of faltering electronics have been “donated” by Western companies and universities since the 2000s. There I met communities of “burner boys,” young migrants from the country’s desert fringes who make cents an hour torching American cellphone chargers and television remotes once they stop working. They told me about coughing up blood at night. It’s no surprise: The section of Accra they inhabit, a squalid estuary known as Agbogbloshie, regularly ranks among Earth’s most poisoned places. Anyone who eats an egg in Agbogbloshie, according to the World Health Organization, will absorb 220 times the tolerable daily intake of chlorinated dioxins, a toxic byproduct of electronic waste.
It’s not just your old DVD player getting shipped to West Africa. Today’s waste trade is an opportunistic bonanza, an escape valve of environmental responsibility that profits off routing detritus of every conceivable variety to places that are in no position to take it. Your discarded clothes? They may go to a desert in Chile. The last cruise ship you boarded? Hacked to pieces in Bangladesh. Your depleted car battery? Stacked in a warehouse in Mexico. Is some of it run by organized crime? Of course. “For us,” a Naples mafioso boasted in 2008, “rubbish is gold.” But much of it doesn’t have to be. Waste export remains scandalously underregulated and unmonitored. Practically anyone can give it a go.
Nowhere does today’s waste trade reach more boggling dimensions than with plastic. The time scales alone are dizzying. Bottles or takeaway cartons that you own for moments embark on arduous, monthslong, carbon-spewing journeys from one end of Earth to another. Upon arrival in villages in Vietnam or the Philippines, for example, some of these objects get chemically reduced — an energy-intensive task that unleashes innumerable toxins and microplastics into local ecosystems. The process’s ability to produce new plastic is at best dubious, but the environmental and health cost is cataclysmic. Plastic waste in the developing world — clogging waterways, exacerbating air pollution, infiltrating human brain tissue — is now linked to the death of hundreds of thousands every year.
The fate of much other plastic waste that gets sent to the global south is more rudimentary: It gets incinerated in a cement factory or dumped in a field. In Turkey, I met marine biologists who fly drones along the Mediterranean coast to search for stray piles of European plastic waste, which enters the country at the rate of one dump truck roughly every 15 minutes. In Kenya, a country that outlawed plastic bags in 2017 only for the American petrochemical sector to conspire to turn it into Africa’s next waste frontier, more than half the cattle that wander urban areas have been found to possess plastic in their stomach linings, while a shocking 69 percent of discarded plastic is believed to enter a water system of one form or another.
That still pales in comparison to what I witnessed in Indonesia. Across the country’s 17,000-odd islands, domestically consumed plastic is so mishandled that 365 tons of it are believed to enter the sea every hour. And yet, deep in the highlands of Java, there are hellscapes of imported Western waste — toothpaste tubes from California, shopping bags from the Netherlands, deodorant sticks from Australia — stacked knee-high as far as the eye can see. Too voluminous to even attempt to recycle, it is used as fuel in scores of bakeries that supply Java’s street markets with tofu, a culinary staple. The result is some of the most lethal cuisine imaginable, with poisons from incinerated Western plastic ingested hourly by great numbers of Indonesians.
Can the waste trade ever be legislated into oblivion? As with drug trafficking, it may be that there’s too much money going around to fix the problem. Traveling trash, after all, has many advantages. Rich countries lose a liability, and garbage producers are let off the hook. The need to find a place to put all our rubbish has never been more dire: A recent United Nations study found that one out of every 20 objects moving through global supply chains is now some form of plastic — amounting to a trillion-dollar annual industry worth more than the global arms, timber and wheat trades combined.
Most crucially, it’s hard for Western consumers to recognize the extent of the crisis — that the story they’ve been told about recycling often isn’t true — when it is continually rendered invisible, relocated thousands of miles away. Yeo Bee Yin, the former environmental minister of Malaysia, may have put it to me best: The only way to really stop waste from entering her country, she told me, would be to close Malaysia’s ports entirely.
We might at the very least be honest with ourselves about what we are doing. We ship our waste to the other side of the planet not only because we produce far too much of it but also because we insist on an environment exorcised of our own material footprints. Everything you’ve ever thrown away in your life: There’s a good chance a lot of it is still out there, somewhere, be it headphones torched for their copper wiring in Ghana or a sliver of a Solo Cup bobbing across the Pacific Ocean.
Here the adage doesn’t ring true. Rare is the trash that becomes anyone’s treasure.
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14) Protesters Rally Against Deletion of ‘Transgender’ on Stonewall Website
Hundreds of people gathered at the Greenwich Village site to condemn what they saw as a chilling strike against the symbolic heart of the gay rights movement.
By Liam Stack and Nell Gallogly, Feb. 14, 2025
Jay Walker, center, an organizer of a protest at the Stonewall National Monument site, said he wasn’t sure how long a transgender flag would continue to fly there. Credit...Brittainy Newman for The New York Times
A day after the National Park Service deleted the word “transgender” from prominent spots on its Stonewall National Monument website, hundreds of people rallied at the monument site on Friday to protest the move and what they feared might come next there.
It was unclear whether federal officials planned to make physical alterations to eliminate references to transgender people at Stonewall, the first historic site in the United States devoted to the country’s gay rights movement. The Park Service, which had cited a presidential order as the reason for the website changes, did not respond to a request for comment.
So on Friday, at least, a pink, blue and white flag representing the transgender community continued to fly on the flagpole in Christopher Park in the chilly sunshine, and plaques and photo displays honoring well-known transgender activists continued to hang on a park fence.
Still, Jay Walker, a protest organizer, said he was “not sure how long that would last.”
The sudden elimination of the words “transgender” and “queer” from the Stonewall website on Thursday — part of a larger Trump administration campaign to challenge the legitimacy of transgender identity — struck members of New York City’s L.G.B.T.Q. community and others as a chilling attack on the symbolic heart of the gay rights movement.
“The removal of references to transgender people from federal websites and even from this monument’s history is an act of deliberate erasure,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, told the crowd. “It’s an attack on the truth.”
Chloe Elentári, a transgender woman who lives in Manhattan’s East Village, was among the protesters at the Stonewall site. She said the move was a reminder that the city might be less of a haven than some residents think.
“People say that you know you’re in a safe state, you’re in a blue state, but we’re not,” Ms. Elentári said. “We can’t live under the illusion of thinking that we’re safe just because we’re in New York.”
The Stonewall Inn, a bar on Christopher Street, has been seen as a cradle of the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement since a police raid in June 1969 set off three days of protests and riots on the surrounding Greenwich Village streets.
Today, the riots are commemorated with Pride marches in New York City and around the world, and many gay rights organizations and venues in other countries use “Stonewall” in their names.
President Barack Obama established the 7.7-acre Stonewall monument, which includes the bar, Christopher Park and several other nearby streets and sidewalks, in 2016. Parts of the site have also been designated as a city landmark and a state historical site.
The Park Service said on Thursday that it had removed references to the transgender community to comply with an executive order signed by President Trump on his first day in office that was described as “restoring biological truth to the federal government,” and with a second order signed by the acting secretary of the interior last month.
The website changes also included the virtual elimination of a page listing interpretive flags associated with the L.G.B.T.Q. movement, including the pink, blue and white one representing transgender people, and the times when the flags typically fly in Christopher Park.
That the executive orders would affect even just the monument website was an indication of how the Trump administration’s antipathy toward transgender rights is affecting the L.G.B.T.Q. community in New York, a liberal bastion.
In recent weeks, transgender New Yorkers and health care professionals in the city have faced executive orders that seek to bar hospitals from providing certain kinds of care for transgender youth. The orders have caused fear among transgender people and their families, at least one lawsuit and protests outside hospitals.
On Wednesday, the Stonewall website had included introductory text that said, “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal.”
By Thursday afternoon, the word “transgender” had been removed, along with the letter “T” from the community acronym. By the evening, the word “queer” and “Q+” had also been deleted.
Erik Bottcher, the City Council member who represents the neighborhood that includes the monument, said the removal of some words and letters but not others was an attempt to divide and weaken the community.
“We are here to send a message to Donald Trump,” he said to the protesters. “We will not let you erase the existence of our trans siblings.”
Transgender people played a central role in the Stonewall riots, and two transgender women in particular, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, are celebrated at the site with photo displays and plaques. (As of Friday, biographical pages for Ms. Rivera and Ms. Johnson on the Park Service website still described them as transgender women.)
The displays paying tribute to Ms. Johnson and Ms. Rivera remained in place while the protest proceeded. The two women, and generations of activists like them, were on the minds and the placards of many of those in the crowd.
“The first people that threw the brick at Stonewall, that led the charge at Stonewall, were women of color, trans women of color,” said Eli Shirk, a 19-year-old transgender student at Pace University. “Are we seriously trying to erase, like, entire history?”
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15) Musk Team Seeks Access to I.R.S. System With Taxpayers’ Records
A White House spokesman said that the initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency needed to review data to fix waste within the agency.
By Alan Rappeport, Andrew Duehren and Maggie Haberman, Feb. 17, 2025
The Internal Revenue Service is preparing to give a team member working with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive taxpayer data, people familiar with the matter said.
The systems at the I.R.S. contain the private financial data tied to millions of Americans, including their tax returns, Social Security numbers, addresses, banking details and employment information.
“Waste, fraud and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said. “It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.”
Mr. Fields added: “DOGE will continue to shine a light on the fraud they uncover as the American people deserve to know what their government has been spending their hard-earned tax dollars on.”
The examination of the I.R.S. system represents the latest move by members of Mr. Musk’s team to push the boundaries of access to government data beyond what is typical for political appointees. The Treasury Department has faced questions in recent weeks after lieutenants of Mr. Musk who were assigned to the agency started scrutinizing the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s system, which directs payments across the federal government.
Gavin Kliger, a young software engineer who was brought into the Office of Personnel Management as part of the DOGE effort, worked at I.R.S. headquarters on Thursday, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. He will be assigned to the I.R.S. as a senior adviser to the acting commissioner. The tax agency is still working out the exact terms of his work at the I.R.S., though he is expected to have broad access to its systems, according to the two people.
As of Sunday evening, he had not yet gained access to sensitive I.R.S. data, the two people said.
The Washington Post reported earlier on Sunday that the I.R.S. was considering a memorandum of understanding that would give DOGE staff members broad access to its systems, including the Integrated Data Retrieval System, which contains taxpayer accounts.
Attempts by Mr. Musk’s team to gain access to Treasury Department data have faced legal challenges, and efforts to scrutinize I.R.S. systems could encounter a similar fate.
This month, 19 state attorneys general led by Letitia James of New York sued to block the Trump administration’s policy of allowing political appointees and “special government employees” led by Mr. Musk access to the Treasury Department’s payment systems. On Friday, a judge extended a court order blocking that access and said she would decide soon whether to keep the restrictions in place until a final ruling was made, which could take months.
The I.R.S. is preparing to lay off thousands of employees as soon as this week as part of the administration’s initiative to cut costs across the federal government.
The Biden administration was in the process of a multibillion-dollar overhaul of its systems, but Republicans have been working to rescind much of the agency’s funding.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that he hoped to upgrade the antiquated technology at the I.R.S.
“I have three goals: it’s collections, privacy and customer service,” Mr. Bessent said on Fox Business last week. “And I don’t think there’s anyone, anyone in the country, who thinks that they — that the I.R.S. has achieved its potential in either of those three.”
President Trump has long been a critic of the I.R.S., often complaining that it was overly aggressive in its audits of his finances.
In a fund-raising email on Saturday, Mr. Trump asked recipients whether he should authorize Mr. Musk’s team to audit the tax agency.
“Are you sick of being targeted and harassed by the I.R.S.?” Mr. Trump asked. “Well maybe it’s time that somebody audited them for a change!”
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16) Palestinian Displacement in the West Bank Is Highest Since 1967, Experts Say
The Israeli military launched a wide-scale operation last month against militants in several cities in the West Bank. Now, roughly 40,000 Palestinians have fled their homes — the highest since Israel occupied the territory nearly six decades ago, according to researchers.
By Fatima AbdulKarim and Patrick Kingsley
Fatima AbdulKarim reported from Ramallah, West Bank, and Patrick Kingsley from Jerusalem.
A weekslong Israeli military operation across several West Bank cities has displaced roughly 40,000 Palestinians from their homes, in what historians and researchers say is the biggest displacement of civilians in the territory since the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.
Israeli campaigns against armed Palestinian groups in three parts of the northern West Bank have forced thousands of residents to shelter with friends and relatives, or camp in wedding halls, schools, mosques, municipal buildings and even a farm shed.
The Israeli military says the operation is solely an attempt to stifle rising militancy in Jenin, Tulkarem and near Tubas, targeting gunmen who they say have carried out or are planning terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. Palestinians fear it is a veiled attempt to permanently displace Palestinians from their homes and exert greater control over areas administered by the Palestinian Authority, a semiautonomous body that has also battled the militants in recent months.
Many of the displaced are the descendants of refugees who were expelled or fled from their homes during the wars surrounding the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, a period known in Arabic as the Nakba. The renewed displacement, even if temporary, raises painful memories of the central trauma in Palestinian history.
While roughly 3,000 have returned home, most remain homeless after more than three weeks — a bigger displacement than during a similar Israeli campaign in the West Bank in 2002, according to two Palestinian and two Israeli experts on the history of the West Bank. That year, troops raided several cities at the height of a Palestinian uprising, known as the second intifada, which began with protests before leading to a surge in Palestinian attacks on civilians in Israel.
The current numbers also dwarf the displacement during intra-Palestinian clashes earlier this year, when up to 1,000 residents of Jenin left their homes, according to a residents’ leadership council there.
As in 2002, some of those displaced during this new campaign will have no home to return to. The Israeli military has demolished scores of buildings in the areas it has invaded, ripping up roads, water pipes and power lines to destroy what it says are booby traps set by militants.
The United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said that water and sanitation systems had been destroyed in four dense urban neighborhoods, known as refugee camps because they house people displaced in 1948 and their descendants. It added that some water infrastructure had been contaminated with sewage.
“We’ve reached a point where the refugee camps are out of order,” said Hakeem Abu Safiye, who oversees emergency services in Tulkarem camp. “They are uninhabitable. Even if the army pulls out, we are not sure what will be left to repair.”
The full scale of the damage is unclear because the military is still operating in most of the areas it has invaded, but the United Nations has already recorded severe damage to more than 150 homes in Jenin. By early February, the Israeli military had acknowledged blowing up at least 23 buildings, but it has declined to confirm the latest number of demolished structures.
“The soldiers are taking over one area after another, destroying homes, infrastructure and roads,” said Ramy Abu Siriye, 53, a barber forced to flee his home in Tulkarem on Jan. 27, the first day of the Israeli operation there.
“The Israelis have two objectives — first, to push refugees from the northern West Bank toward the central areas, aiming to erase the refugee camps entirely,” Mr. Abu Siriye said. “The second goal is to eliminate resistance and weaken the Palestinian Authority’s ability to govern,” Mr. Abu Siriye added.
A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said the military’s goal was to root out militant groups, including Hamas, that launch terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.
“The purpose of the operations is to prevent terror from places a few kilometers from Jewish communities and to prevent a repeat of Oct. 7,” Colonel Shoshani said, referring to the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023 that killed up to 1,200 people and led to the abduction of some 250 hostages.
Colonel Shoshani acknowledged that in some cases people had been ordered to leave specific buildings close to what he said were militant hideouts. But more generally, Colonel Shoshani denied any wider policy of “forced evacuation or displacement of Palestinians,” he said. “If people want to move around, they are obviously allowed to,” he added. Roughly 3,000 people have been able to return to al-Faraa camp, near Tubas.
But displaced Palestinians said that in both Jenin and Tulkarem they were instructed to leave by soldiers who used loudspeakers to make general evacuation orders.
“We had to leave the camp — the army threatened to shoot at us,” said Aws Khader, 29, a supermarket owner who fled Tulkarem on Jan. 27. “They used megaphones, ordering people to leave or be shot,” Mr. Khader added.
Asked for comment on this and similar incidents, the military repeated in a statement that no evacuation orders had been issued, but that all those who wished to leave had been provided with safe passage. The statement said that troops operated in Mr. Khader’s neighborhood because they had “uncovered terror infrastructure and weapons that terrorists had hidden in a bookstore.”
Palestinians dismiss the military’s explanations, citing calls by key ministers in Israel’s far-right government to encourage the flight of Palestinians from the West Bank, destroy the Palestinian Authority and annex the territory.
Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 from Jordan, expelling Palestinians from several villages close to Israel and prompting the flight of hundreds of thousands of others into Jordan. Since then, Israel has gradually entrenched its control, building hundreds of settlements, often on private Palestinian land, for hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians, and building a two-tier legal structure that critics have described as an apartheid system. Israel strongly denies the charge.
Efforts to cement Israeli control over the territory accelerated after the current Israeli government entered office in 2022.
Bezalel Smotrich, a settler leader turned finance minister, was given authority over part of an influential military unit that controls Palestinian building projects in most of the territory.
His empowerment heightened suspicions about the government’s intentions: Mr. Smotrich published a lengthy plan in 2017 that proposed permanent Israeli control of the territory. Under the plan, Palestinians would be denied voting rights, at least initially, and those who did not accept Israeli control would be paid to emigrate, or killed if they resorted to violence.
The government has also placed growing restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank; banned UNRWA, the United Nations agency that cares for Palestinian refugees and their descendants; and done little to curb efforts by far-right Israeli activists to force thousands of Palestinian herders from remote but strategic areas of the territory.
“What makes this moment unprecedented is not only the scale of the displacement but also the accompanying discourse, which increasingly normalizes the idea of permanent forced displacement,” said Maha Nassar, a Palestinian American historian at the University of Arizona.
“This represents a significant escalation in the longstanding conflict, one that threatens to fundamentally alter the political and demographic landscape of the region,” she added.
Hiba Yazbek contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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17) Israel Says It Will Keep Troops ‘Temporarily’ in 5 Points in Lebanon
The announcement raised the specter of renewed fighting in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia.
By Patrick Kingsley and Euan Ward, Reporting from Jerusalem and Beirut, Feb. 17, 2025
Israeli soldiers on patrol in southern Lebanon, on Monday. Credit...Rabih Daher/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli military said on Monday that it will keep forces in five locations in southern Lebanon after a deadline for its full withdrawal lapses on Tuesday. The announcement raised fears of a resurgence in violence in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.
After more than a year of war, the two sides reached a cease-fire in late November that was contingent on both Israel and Hezbollah ceding control of southern Lebanon to the Lebanese military by the end of January. Hezbollah had long dominated the region, while Israel had captured large parts of it after invading Lebanon in September.
In late January, mediators announced a three-week extension to that agreement, giving Israel more time to complete its withdrawal. The truce has frequently been punctured by bursts of violence — including an Israeli airstrike on Monday that killed a Hamas leader in southern Lebanon — but neither side has reverted to full-scale war.
Now, the specter of renewed conflict looms once more after the Israeli military announced that it will keep some troops in Lebanon beyond the Feb. 18 deadline, potentially preventing some Lebanese civilians from returning home.
“We will leave small amounts of troops deployed temporarily in five strategic points along the border in Lebanon so we can continue to defend our residents and to make sure there’s no immediate threat,” said Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a military spokesman, in a briefing for reporters on Monday afternoon.
Colonel Shoshani named several locations spread along most of the length of the 75-mile border, including places across the border from Israeli villages that were badly damaged by Hezbollah rocket fire during the war. He said that Hezbollah had not lived up to its own side of the November agreement and still posed a threat to Israeli residents in those areas. He declined to say how long the occupation would last. It is unclear to what extent Hezbollah has a presence in those areas.
Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, vehemently opposed the idea of Israel keeping troops inside Lebanon during a speech on Sunday. But he stopped short of pledging to resume attacks against Israel.
“Israel must withdraw completely on Feb. 18,” Mr. Qassem said. “This is the agreement.”
“Everyone knows how an occupation is dealt with,” he warned, without giving further details.
The war between Hezbollah and Israel broke out after the Lebanese militia started firing on Israeli military positions in solidarity with its ally Hamas, shortly after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023.
The conflict remained largely contained to back-and-forth missile and rocket strikes, displacing thousands on either side of the border, until it erupted into a full frontal war and wide-scale Israeli bombardment of Lebanese cities in the second half of 2024.
Israel killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership in an aerial campaign and invaded large swaths of southern Lebanon, in moves that collectively displaced more than a million people in Lebanon.
Israel said its intention was to prevent Hezbollah from posing a threat to residents of northern Israel, some 60,000 of whom were forced to leave their homes because of Hezbollah rocket fire.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
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18) Refusing to Carry Out Trump’s Flagrantly Dishonest Orders
By The Editorial Board, Feb. 17, 2025
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Trump’s determination to bend the American justice system to his will, combined with his broad tolerance for political corruption and his abhorrence of checks and balances on his power, slammed hard last week into the commitment to duty, honor and the rule of law shared by a group of federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and Washington, D.C. The confrontation between Mr. Trump’s lieutenants at the Justice Department — led by his former personal defense lawyer, Emil Bove III — and Manhattan’s interim U.S. attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, and her colleagues is the clearest example yet of this administration’s efforts to bake quid pro quo deal making, coercive tactics, loyalty tests and other dishonorable practices into American government and warp its long-held principle of equal justice before the law.
Those tactics are being used not just in Washington, but increasingly at the state and city level, too, particularly against local policies that Mr. Trump opposes. In this case, the Justice Department has undermined the ethical and trustworthy governance of New York City by moving to let its mayor, Eric Adams, off the hook for corruption charges brought by Southern District prosecutors, in apparent exchange for Mr. Adams’s acquiescence and support for the Trump administration’s desires, starting with its crackdown on illegal immigration.
This board called on Mr. Adams to resign last September, after the indictment was unsealed; the damage and destabilization now resulting from this devil’s bargain between the mayor and the Justice Department make it only more urgent that Mr. Adams step down. If he does not, he must face an investigation and possible prosecution by state officials. New York City voters will also have an important say in the matter. In the June mayoral primary, they will have to muster the clarity and resolve to stop Mr. Adams if he continues his candidacy for re-election.
What is so alarming about the Trump Justice Department’s actions is that the nation’s top law enforcement officials are bent not just on turning an intentionally blind eye to their peers alleging illegal actions and exploiting the misconduct of a desperate lackey like Mr. Adams for their own purposes, but on corrupting the prosecutors and civil servants in the department itself. That much was clear in letters written by Ms. Sassoon and her Southern District colleague Hagan Scotten outlining the reasons they would not obey the flagrantly dishonest and untenable order to drop the Adams charges from Mr. Bove, the acting deputy attorney general who had served (and lost) as Mr. Trump’s criminal lawyer in his hush money case. The resignation letters by the two prosecutors, both with conservative backgrounds, are compelling declarations of why demands like these from the administration are serious violations of democratic practice, tradition, precedent, decency and legality.
“It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Mr. Adams’s opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment,” Ms. Sassoon wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“No system of ordered liberty can allow the government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives,” followed Mr. Scotten in his own resignation letter.
Mr. Adams became the first sitting mayor in modern New York City history to face a criminal indictment when he was charged last September with five federal counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions and bribery. Since then, Mr. Adams has shamelessly sought to win Mr. Trump’s favor, and the mayor’s lawyers asked for a pardon for him.
In a clear sign that Mr. Trump’s protection comes with expectations, Mr. Adams made a joint appearance with Mr. Trump’s so-called border czar, Thomas Homan, on Fox News, after the deal was reached. They collegially discussed reopening an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at the city’s Rikers Island jail, contrary to New York law. Mr. Homan was unusually forthright during the Fox appearance in saying that the administration expected Mr. Adams to comply with its mass deportation efforts.
“If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City, and we won’t be sitting on the couch — I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’” Mr. Homan said.
Mr. Adams, of course, denies that his intent in courting Mr. Trump was ever to have the federal charges dropped and says that he remains independent. And Mr. Bove and Mr. Adams’s lawyers deny any quid pro quo. But as Ms. Sassoon wrote in her letter, the mayor’s lawyers “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo” to federal prosecutors, offering to assist in the president’s immigration enforcement in exchange for dropping the charges.
And the deal that the mayor offered “is the nature of the bargain laid bare in Mr. Bove’s memo,” she wrote. In it, Mr. Bove wrote that the “pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’s ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violence crime.” It is clear that Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Bove’s claims about the Adams indictment being politicized by prosecutors and the Biden administration are specious. The lawyers installed by Mr. Trump never questioned the validity or seriousness of the charges; their case for dismissal was driven by the mayor’s potential usefulness to the Trump administration.
That follows Mr. Trump’s aggressive use of federal power to squeeze and control officials in realms beyond his reach, from private business to higher education to local government. He has done much the same to federal workers who might demonstrate unwanted independence as they execute their responsibilities or meet their legal and constitutional obligations.
In the case of Mr. Adams, the president and the Justice Department are sending a message that they intend to dispense with the impartiality, precedents, norms and very laws on which the American justice system depends. In seeking dismissal of the charges against Mr. Adams “without prejudice,” the Justice Department is sending the clear message that they can be reinstated, should he stray from the Trump line.
All of this leaves New York City with a mayor plainly unfit for office, whose credible accusations of corruption — let’s remember that five aides or associates of Mr. Adams have been indicted as well, and seven others have left office under pressure — are now joined by the strongest possible disincentive to cross the president in any way. If he is loyal to the great city he was elected to lead, he will resign. Many leading New York political leaders have already demanded that he do so. Some of them have also demanded that Gov. Kathy Hochul take immediate action to use her legal authority to fire him if he continues to refuse to do so.
Ms. Hochul has wisely resisted that path. At a time when Mr. Trump is so brazenly attacking democratic norms through overreaching assertions of executive branch authority, the idea that Ms. Hochul would take the unprecedented step of removing a democratically elected official outside of the traditional electoral process is unwise. Though the situations are quite different — Ms. Hochul actually has the legal authority for such an action, something Mr. Trump has lacked in so many of his early moves — this is not the time for Democratic Party leaders to muddy the waters around respect for democratic norms, especially when they need to make the case against Mr. Trump’s subversion of the rule of law. More appropriately, the City Charter has provisions for a five-member “committee on mayoral inability” to remove him, though the presence of Mr. Adams’s appointees may make this outcome less likely.
In the meantime, Ms. Hochul, other elected officials and leaders in the city, state and Democratic Party — many who have called for his resignation — should press Mr. Adams to resign on his own accord. And it will be important for officials, including state prosecutors, to continue to hold him to account for any illegal or unethical moves. (Many of the actions cited by federal prosecutors would also constitute state crimes, and could be investigated and charged by the Manhattan district attorney.) If it comes to it, New York City voters will have the final say on Mr. Adams’s political future in the Democratic mayoral primary in June, in which he is likely to be a candidate, or in the general election in November.
Appealing to the better instincts of this new Trump administration — with its open disdain for law and morality — has so far proven a losing proposition. And it would be naïve to hope that the public backlash to this abuse of power will give Mr. Trump and Attorney General Bondi real pause about such further abuses in the future. But the efforts of prosecutors, civil servants, elected officials and others to document and decry this injustice, and to stand up and even resign in the face of this administration’s transgressions, matters enormously. The attempt to dismiss the charges against Mr. Adams must still come before the federal district judge assigned to the case, Dale Ho, and he may yet conduct a thorough inquiry on the government’s action.
If so, the investigations Mr. Bove has threatened against Ms. Sassoon, Mr. Scotten and other prosecutors who defied his order, if held in public, will hardly reflect favorably on the Justice Department. Ms. Sassoon and Mr. Scotten could not be credibly denounced by Mr. Trump as woke or radical — she clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, a renowned conservative, and is a member of the conservative Federalist Society; he is a decorated Special Forces veteran who clerked for then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts.
In his first term, Mr. Trump was often restrained from his most dangerous impulses by people who knew better. He has taken great care this time to exclude such people from his entourage, leaving it to brave and truly patriotic civil servants to stand up to him, like the seven Justice Department lawyers who resigned rather than carry out the order to drop the Adams indictment.
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