Roxie Theater, San Francisco:
February 19th-27th: Film "No Other Land" |
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Date: Wednesday, 19 February - Thursday, 27 February Tickets: $14 |
Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, has been fighting his community’s mass expulsion by the Israeli occupation since childhood. Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta, as soldiers destroy the homes of families – the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank. He crosses paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, and for over half a decade they fight against the expulsion while growing closer. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free. This film, by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists, was co-created during the darkest, most terrifying times in the region, as an act of creative resistance to Apartheid and a search for a path towards equality and justice. Nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature Film |
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- Do not make any purchases 24 Hrs
- Do not shop online, or in-store
- No Amazon, No Walmart, No Best Buy
- Nowhere!
- Fast Food
- Gas
- Major Retailers
- Do not use Credit or Debit Cards for non essential spending
- Only buy essentials of absolutely necessary
- (Food, Medicine, Emergency Supplies)
- If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses.
- Talk about it, post about it, and document your actions that day!
- Corporations and banks only care about their bottom line.
- If we disrupt the economy for just ONE day, it sends a powerful message.
- If they don’t listen (they wont) we make the next blackout longer (We will)
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Stagnant waters and poverty can be found all around in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.
Haiti Action Committee Condemns Trump’s Decision to End Temporary Protected Status for Haitians
Haiti Action Committee denounces the latest white supremacist attack by the Trump Administration directed at Haitians living in the US. The announcement that the US will end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians puts a target on the back of over 500,000 Haitians.
It is, quite simply, a plan for ethnic cleansing – and it must be opposed.
The US government has granted 17 countries Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which allows undocumented people from those countries to work and live legally in this country, but does not provide a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship. A country is designated for TPS when conditions there are so bad that it’s not safe or economically viable for people to return, for instance in case of hurricanes and other natural disasters or war and political instability. Haiti was granted TPS status after the horrific earthquake of 2010 that killed more than 300,000 people. This was followed by Hurricane Matthew that devastated Haiti’s southern peninsula in 2016 and the disastrous 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti in August 2021. By July of 2024, over 520,000 Haitians had been granted TPS, and they are now in the crosshairs of ICE and Homeland Security.
Many of the Haitians who are impacted by this inhumane ruling have been in the United States for years and have families with children who are US citizens. They own homes and businesses, and pay taxes. Deportations will break up families with the US-born children having the option to remain in the country (assuming birthright citizenship is not overturned), and their undocumented parents forced to return to a country called a “living hell” by those who live there.
The current conditions in Haiti are exactly what TPS was set up to address, and it’s unconscionable for the Trump administration to pretend otherwise. There are now no elected officials in Haiti, the result of years of rule by decree by imposed and illegitimate governments, installed by the US and its so-called Core Group of foreign occupiers in the wake of the coup d’etat that overthrew Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, in 2004. In the last year alone, over 5000 Haitians have been killed by paramilitary death squads, armed with weapons that enter the country illegally, mainly from the US. Over one million Haitians have had to flee their homes. Nearly half the population is facing acute hunger, as roads are blocked and markets attacked. Tens of thousands of children have been unable to attend schools. Gang rapes have become the norm as paramilitaries aligned with government and business elites escalate their attacks on opposition communities. The despised Haitian Army, disbanded by President Aristide in 1995, has been reconstituted, readying itself to commit yet more human rights violations.
Already there are lawsuits and protests to prevent mass deportations of Haitians. Haiti Action Committee will be doing all we can to advocate for ongoing TPS protection for Haitians in this country and for an end to the death squad terror in Haiti that has fueled Haitian migration. Please join us in this fight.
To contact us, please go to: action.haiti@gmail.com
For more information, please go to www.haitisolidarity.net or our facebook page athttps://www.facebook.com/HaitiActionCommittee
To support the vital work of Haiti’s grassroots movement, please donate to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund at www.haitiemergencyrelief.org--Haiti Action CommitteePO Box 2040Berkeley,CA 9470233 years of solidarity with the grassroots struggle for dignity, democracy and self-determination of the Haitian people! We Will Not Forget the Achievements of Lavalas in HaitiPlease donate to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund www.haitiemergencyrelief.org - all donations are tax-deductible and support Haiti's grassroots struggle for democracy
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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) Israel Delays Prisoner Release After Hamas Frees 6 Hostages
Israel was supposed to release 620 Palestinian prisoners soon after the hostages were handed over. Officials gave no reason for the delay.
By Aaron Boxerman and Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 22, 2025
Israel delayed the release of 620 Palestinian prisoners it had pledged to free on Saturday, shortly after Hamas handed over six Israeli hostages, according to an Israeli official and a Palestinian prisoners group. The delay injected a new note of uncertainty over the fragile cease-fire in Gaza that outlined the exchanges.
The Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the release would be delayed until at least 6 p.m. local time, but did not give a reason. Amani Sarahneh, a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, one of the main prisoner advocate groups, said Israel had informed Palestinian officials about the delay.
Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster, reported that a decision on whether to proceed would be made after security consultations this evening.
Hours before the hostage releases began, Hamas handed over the remains of Shiri Bibas, the Israeli mother whose capture with her two young sons during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack became a symbol of Israel’s anguish. Hamas delivered a body on Thursday that it initially said was that of Ms. Bibas. But testing in Israel found that it was not hers, angering Israelis and putting pressure on Hamas to hand over the correct remains.
The mood in Israel swung on Saturday between grief and joy as relatives of the hostages being released expressed their condolences to the Bibas family in live interviews. The Israeli military said forensic evidence showed that the boys’ captors had killed them “with their bare hands”; Hamas has said they were killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Hamas handed over five Jewish Israeli hostages in two performative ceremonies and quietly transferred a sixth hostage, an Arab citizen of Israel, at a separate location without large crowds of onlookers.
The first two freed hostages, Avera Mengistu and Tal Shoham, were turned over to Red Cross officials in the southern city of Rafah. Three more were handed over in Nuseirat in central Gaza: Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert and Eliya Cohen. The three were dressed in khaki outfits resembling military uniforms, though none were in military service when they were abducted.
While those two handover ceremonies were highly orchestrated, with masked gunmen escorting hostages onto stages where they displayed release certificates, the scenes were more subdued than during some of the previous releases, when the atmosphere became chaotic.
A sixth hostage, Hisham al-Sayed, who appeared to be in poor health in a video that Hamas released in 2022, was turned over in Gaza City with no ceremony or live broadcast. Mr. al-Sayed and Mr. Mengistu were both captured by Hamas about 10 years ago, and the rest were taken in the October 2023 attack. All six were returned to Israeli territory.
Israel’s release of more than 600 Palestinian prisoners was set to be the largest group of detainees freed at once since the cease-fire began in late January.
But the two sides have failed to reach an agreement on the next stage of the truce, raising fears that the fighting could soon resume.
Israel and Hamas are nearing the end of the first phase of the six-week truce, which is set to expire in early March.
Under the deal, Hamas committed in the first stage to freeing at least 25 living Israeli hostages and the remains of eight more in exchange for more than 1,500 Palestinians jailed by Israel. The handover of all 25 living hostages was completed with Saturday’s releases.
Despite pressure from the Trump administration and mediators like Egypt and Qatar, Israel and Hamas yet to agree on terms to extend the agreement into a second phase.
That would entail an end to the war and the release of the roughly 30 remaining hostages believed to be alive in Gaza in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were eagerly awaiting the return of their loved ones. The Palestinian prisoners include 50 serving life sentences for involvement in deadly attacks against Israelis. But the list of those to be released also includes more than 400 people detained in Gaza, who have generally been held without formal charges.
The final swap in the six-week truce was set to take place next weekend, when Hamas is expected to return at least four bodies to Israel.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting from Haifa, Israel.
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2) In Syria, Joy at a Dictator’s Demise Turns Into Fear of Israeli Raids
Villagers say they worry that incursions into border areas of Syria by Israel’s military could turn into a prolonged occupation. Israel says the raids are needed to protect the border.
By Raja Abdulrahim, Feb. 22, 2025
Reporting from Suwaisah and Al-Dawayah Al-Kabirah in southwestern Syria
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/world/middleeast/syria-assad-israel-raids.html
Children heading home from school in the Syrian village of Suwaisah, where people fear that Israel’s incursions into their country could become a long-term occupation. Credit...Laura Boushnak for The New York Times
Ruwayda al-Aqaar was sleeping next to her husband and 3-year-old daughter in late December when they were awakened by the sound of approaching tanks and bulldozers. They rushed outside their small house and saw dozens of Israeli soldiers marching into their small farming village, she said.
“I was terrified,” Ms. al-Aqaar said recently in her home in the village of Suwaisah, in southeastern Syria, as her daughter watched “Tom and Jerry” cartoons. “We were afraid of being displaced and forced to leave our homes.”
For weeks, the family and their neighbors feared that Israeli forces would target their village after carrying out similar incursions into towns nearby. Just days after a coalition of Syrian rebels ousted President Bashar al-Assad in early December, Israel invaded border villages in Syria in what it described as temporary measures to protect its own security.
But the Israeli raids continued throughout January and into February, raising fears among Syrians that the incursions could become a prolonged military occupation. The Israeli troops have been targeting villages, particularly ones with military outposts.
In Suwaisah, the Israeli soldiers tore down a small military outpost that had been abandoned by Syrian troops who took their weapons with them after the Assad regime fell. And the Israelis demanded that residents hand over any weapons they may have had. This account of what happened is based on interviews with more than a dozen residents of Suwaisah and Al-Dawayah Al-Kabirah, a nearby village that was also raided, as well as photographs they shared from cellphones.
Suwaisah is a village of mostly one-story homes, its residents mostly farmers and herders. It was a little past 7 a.m. on Dec. 25 when the Israelis entered the village and were met by dozens of adults and children, residents said. Some of the Syrians tore off olive branches from nearby orchards as a symbol of peace, they said, adding that none of the residents who went out to meet the Israelis carried weapons.
“Syria is free, free,” the villagers chanted at the soldiers, who were armed with semiautomatic machine guns, “and Israel out!”
The Israeli military raids have terrified the villagers, who, like other Syrians, had celebrated the ouster of Mr. al-Assad and gathered in the streets, playing revolutionary songs and waving flags. But in this corner of Syria, the celebrations quickly dissipated into fear of an encroaching foreign army.
“They ruined our joy,” Ms. al-Aqaar said.
This part of southeastern Syria abuts the Golan Heights, territory that Israel captured from Syria during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and then annexed. The move is not recognized by most of the world, including the United Nations, which considers the land occupied.
Ms. al-Aqaar, like many Syrians in the region, feared that her village might meet the same fate.
Israel has in recent months seized a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights and territory in southwestern Syria — including Mount Hermon, the country’s highest point. It has also has carried out hundreds of airstrikes, destroying Syrian military assets, including tanks, weapons production facilities and air-defense systems, according to Syrian monitoring groups.
The Israeli military says it is acting “in order to protect the Israeli border.” Israel has long seen the Golan Heights as important to its security because it sits on the edge of Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, offering an important military vantage point. There is now concern in Israel that the fall of the Assad regime may have left a security vacuum in the area.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has signaled that the military would occupy the lands it has taken for the foreseeable future, “until another arrangement is found that guarantees Israel’s security.”
Israeli forces continue to conduct cross-border incursions into Syria with bulldozers and armored vehicles, according to Etana, a Syrian reporting and analysis organization. On Jan. 16, an Israeli airstrike struck a Syrian government convoy, killing at least two people, including a mayor, according to Etana and another Syrian monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
They have raided former Syrian Army bases in the southern provinces of Quneitra and Daraa to demolish property, occupy land and demand residents hand over any weapons, Etana reported.
“This available evidence indicates that Israel may be expanding and entrenching its occupation over areas of Quneitra Province,” the group said in a report in January.
Israel’s recent incursions and taking of the buffer zone in the Golan Heights violates the 1974 agreement between the two countries that followed the end of the 1973 war, according to the United Nations. After that conflict, both sides had agreed that U.N. peacekeepers would monitor a 155-square-mile demilitarized zone between their forces.
The Israeli incursions have been condemned internationally. The United Nations said in January that “Syria’s sovereignty, territorial unity, and integrity must be fully restored.”
And in December, Geir Pedersen, the United Nations special envoy for Syria, called on Israel to halt its “very troubling” military attacks.
Ahmed al-Shara, the leader of Syria’s new government, has criticized Israel for its incursion, saying it was a violation of the 1974 armistice agreement.
Shadi al-Mleihan, a journalist who lives in Suwaisah, said he was among those who confronted the Israeli forces when they entered his village in December.
“We have been in a war for nearly 14 years,” he said. “We don’t want another war.”
In addition to destroying the outposts, the soldiers demanded that residents hand over any weapons in the village, Mr. al-Mleihan and other villagers said.
“They said you need to announce from the mosque speakers that we want all the weapons and if you won’t we have a megaphone,” Badir al-Krayat, Ms. al-Aqaar’s husband, said the soldiers told them. “We said, ‘We don’t have weapons; we are farmers.’”
As villagers confronted some soldiers, other troops were leveling the outpost, some olive trees and a small municipal building, several residents said. Two hours later, the soldiers withdrew toward Al-Dawayah Al-Kabirah, setting their sights on another abandoned Syrian military outpost there, residents said.
There, villagers gathered around the former outpost and sat on top of other structures in an effort to prevent the Israeli forces from destroying them. Then, according to multiple residents and a human rights group, Israeli troops fired on unarmed civilians.
At least five civilians, including a child, were wounded, according to residents and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Israel military said it “does not target its operations against civilians or civilian infrastructures.” In response to questions, the military said it “operated near the village in order to neutralize military infrastructures which posed a threat” to its forces.
“Several groups were observed approaching I.D.F. personnel in the area,” the military said. “After calling on the crowd to stand back and maintain a safe distance, individuals continued to advance towards the forces that responded with warning shots solely aimed at the air.”
Khalid al-Aaqal, 17, a high school senior, said he was among those shot in Al-Dawayah Al-Kabirah in late December. He said he and other villagers went to confront the Israeli troops, “and they started shooting” at the villagers’ feet with semiautomatic machine guns.
“We didn’t think they would shoot at us because we didn’t have any weapons,” Mr. al-Aaqal said.
His cousin was shot in the foot, Mr. al-Aaqal and his mother said, and when Mr. al-Aaqal went to rescue him, Mr. al-Aaqal was hit in both legs.
“They drowned our celebrations with their incursion,” said Alaa al-Aawad, 24, who was shot in the ankle and spoke as he lay on a pile of thin mattresses, his left leg propped up on a pillow.
Villagers in Suwaisah and Al-Dawayah Al-Kabirah said they were anxious about what comes next. The Israeli forces have left, but residents said they could still see them moving on two nearby mountain tops that the soldiers have seized.
“We don’t know what their goal is,” Hassan Muhammad, 32, who was one of the protesters who confronted the soldiers in Al-Dawayah Al-Kabirah, said of Israel. “But we as a people, our goal is to protect our lands. We just got rid of one tyrant and we don’t want another to come here and occupy it.”
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3) In Trump’s Alternate Reality, Lies and Distortions Drive Change
Condoms for Gaza? Ukraine started the war with Russia? The president’s manipulations of the truth lay the groundwork for radical change.
By Peter Baker, Feb. 23, 2025
Peter Baker is covering his sixth presidency and wrote a book about President Trump’s first term. He reported from Washington.
President Trump delivers remarks in the Oval Office on Friday. Credit...Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times
The United States sent $50 million in condoms to Hamas. Diversity programs caused a plane crash. China controls the Panama Canal. Ukraine started the war with Russia.
Except, no. None of that is true. Not that it stops President Trump. In the first month since he returned to power, he has demonstrated once again a brazen willingness to advance distortions, conspiracy theories and outright lies to justify major policy decisions.
Mr. Trump has long been unfettered by truth when it comes to boasting about his record and tearing down his enemies. But what were dubbed “alternative facts” in his first term have quickly become a whole alternative reality in his second to lay the groundwork for radical change as he moves to aggressively reshape America and the world.
If the U.S. Agency for International Development is stupid enough to send prophylactics to a Palestinian terrorist group in Gaza, he claims, then it deserves to be dismantled. If recruiting people other than white men to work in the airline sector compromises safety, such programs should be eliminated. If China controls the strategic passage through the continent, the United States should take it back. If Ukraine is the aggressor, it should make concessions to Moscow.
“One of the biggest presidential powers that Trump has deployed is the ability to shape his own narrative,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a Princeton history professor and editor of a book of essays about Mr. Trump’s first term. “We have seen repeatedly how President Trump creates his own reality to legitimate his actions and simultaneously discredit warnings about his decisions.”
Taking his real-estate hucksterism and reality-show storytelling into politics, Mr. Trump has for years succeeded in selling his version of events. The world according to Mr. Trump is one where he is a master of every challenge and any failure is someone else’s fault.
He claimed to have built the greatest economy in history during his first term so many times that even some of his critics came to accept that it was better than it really was. He dismissed intelligence reports that Russia intervened in the 2016 elections on his behalf so often that many supporters accepted his denial.
Most significantly, Mr. Trump has waged a four-year campaign to persuade Americans that he did not lose the 2020 election when in fact he did, making one false assertion of widespread fraud after another that would all be debunked yet still leave most Republicans convinced it was stolen, according to polls.
At the same time, he has recast the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by supporters trying to stop the transfer of power from a “heinous attack,” as he originally termed it, to a “day of love,” as he now calls it. This revised interpretation helped him rationalize pardoning nearly 1,600 people who were charged, including many who had beaten police officers.
“Trump is a highly skilled narrator and propagandist,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” and a historian at New York University who specializes in fascism and authoritarianism. “Actually he is one of the most skilled propagandists in history.”
Dr. Ben-Ghiat said what made Mr. Trump’s “easily refutable lie” about the 2020 election so remarkable was that he was “working not in a one-party state or authoritarian context with a controlled media, but in a totally open society with a free press.”
But she and other scholars said some of Mr. Trump’s themes resemble those seen in authoritarian states. “The kind of propaganda and disinformation that we see now is not particularly new and not dependent on the internet,” said Benjamin Carter Hett, a historian of World War II at Hunter College. “Exactly the same kind of thing happened in the very diverse and lively German press of the 1920s and 1930s.”
Mr. Trump’s aides have long recognized his penchant for prevarication and either adjusted or eventually broke with him. John F. Kelly, his longest-serving White House chief of staff in his first term, has said that Mr. Trump would tell his press aides to publicly repeat something that he had just made up. When Mr. Kelly would object, saying, “but that’s not true,” Mr. Trump would say, “but it sounds good.”
Stephanie Grisham, who served as a White House press secretary in the first term, once recalled that Mr. Trump would tell aides that “as long as you keep repeating something, it doesn’t matter what you say.” And that trickled down to the staff. “Casual dishonesty filtered through the White House as though it were in the air-conditioning system,” she wrote in her memoir.
Anthony Scaramucci, a former Trump ally who served briefly as his White House communications director, said on Friday that Mr. Trump believes dishonesty works. Mr. Trump, he said, is at “50 years of distorting things and telling lies and he is at 50 years of getting away with it, so why wouldn’t he make the lies bigger and more impactful in this last stretch?”
The exaggerations and falsehoods serve a strategic purpose. While Mr. Trump won a clean victory in November, including in the popular vote, which he lost in 2016, he did not win a majority and his 1.5-percentage-point margin was one of the lowest since the 19th century. But he regularly says that he won a “landslide victory,” which serves not just to stroke his ego but to assert an expansive popular mandate for his agenda.
Mr. Trump, who repeatedly disparaged media fact-checking during last year’s campaign, does not back off after misleading statements and lies are exposed. Instead, he tends to double down, repeating them even after it’s been reported that they are not true.
After reporters determined that the $50 million for condoms story was untrue, Mr. Trump not only repeated it, he increased the supposed total to $100 million. Nor did he back down after falsely claiming that U.S.A.I.D. had provided grants to media organizations as “a ‘payoff’ for creating good stories about the Democrats,” even after learning the money was simply for subscriptions.
Likewise, Mr. Trump made his claim about diversity programs and air safety the day after the midair collision of a passenger jet and Army helicopter in Washington without an ounce of proof, nor did he ever follow up with any. And while a Hong Kong company operates two of five ports adjacent to the Panama Canal, he continues to say the passage is controlled by China when in fact Panama operates it.
And to support his effort to rescind the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, Mr. Trump keeps saying that the United States is “the only country in the world that does this,” even though it has been repeatedly reported that in fact more than 30 countries do.
“Opponents end up arguing about his narratives regardless of how grounded they are in fact,” said Dr. Zelizer. “This has put President Trump in a perpetual position of advantage since he decides the terms of debate rather than anyone seeking to stop him.”
In Mr. Trump’s facts-are-fungible world, conspiracy theories at times are given as much weight as tangible evidence and those who traffic in them are granted access that no other president would give. Just this past week, he talked about going to Fort Knox to see if the nation’s gold really is there, indulging a fringe suspicion that it is somehow missing.
Invited to accompany Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Europe was Jack Posobiec, a far-right influencer who promoted the lie that Democrats were running a pedophile ring out of a Washington pizza parlor, a lie that inspired an armed man to burst in and open fire to save the supposed victims. Mr. Posobiec ended up not going but later accompanied Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Ukraine.
Mr. Trump’s blame-the-victim revisionism over Ukraine in recent days has been among the most striking efforts to translate his alternative reality into policy. Over the course of several recent days, he said that Ukraine “started” the war with Russia in 2022 and called the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a “dictator without elections,” while absolving President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, an actual dictator who had invaded his neighbor. He went even further on Friday, saying, “It’s not Russia’s fault.”
By undercutting public sympathy for Ukraine, Mr. Trump may make it easier for him to strike a peace agreement with Mr. Putin giving Russia much of what it wants even over any objections by Mr. Zelensky or European leaders. Since Mr. Zelensky is a dictator responsible for the war, this reasoning goes, he deserves less consideration.
One of Mr. Trump’s claims about Ukraine offers a case study in his mythmaking. He said that the United States has provided $350 billion in aid to Ukraine, three times as much as Europe, but that much of the money is “missing” and that Mr. Zelensky “admits that half of the money we sent him is missing.”
In fact, the United States has allocated about a third of what Mr. Trump claimed, even less than Europe, and none of it is known to be missing.
The dollar figures cited for U.S. aid to Ukraine can vary depending on how government officials present them, what time period they cover and whether they include humanitarian and economic assistance.
How did Mr. Trump arrive at his claim? The White House did not respond to a request for elaboration. But it appears that Mr. Trump was referring to a recent interview with Mr. Zelensky that the president or his staff either misunderstood or distorted.
In the interview, Mr. Zelensky was asked by The Associated Press about exaggerated numbers and he corrected them. “When it’s said that Ukraine received $200 billion to support the army during the war, that’s not true,” Mr. Zelensky said according to a translation by Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian news outlet. “I don’t know where all that money went.”
Mr. Zelensky was not saying that there was $200 billion and that he did not know where all of it went. He was saying there never was $200 billion in the first place. Even Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, has indicated no concern over missing money, saying that “we have a pretty good accounting of where it’s going.” Indeed, the vast bulk of U.S. aid approved for Ukraine has been in the form of weapons, not cash.
But that does not comport with the official line at the White House. Once Mr. Trump makes an assertion, those who work for him — and want to keep working for him — are compelled to tailor their own versions of reality to match his. Even if it requires them to abandon previous understandings of the facts.
So there was Michael Waltz, the former Republican congressman from Florida now serving as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, pressed last week to reconcile his past comments about who was responsible for the war in Ukraine with his boss’s current position.
A reporter read aloud from an opinion column that Mr. Waltz had written in 2023 stating that “Putin is to blame, certainly, like Al Qaeda was to blame for 9/11.” Mr. Waltz was asked if he still believed that or whether he now shared Mr. Trump’s assessment that Ukraine had started the war.
“Well,” Mr. Waltz said carefully, “it shouldn’t surprise you that I share the president’s assessment on all kinds of issues. What I wrote as a member of Congress was as a former member of Congress.”
And so, Mr. Waltz’s actual reality gave way to Mr. Trump’s alternative version.
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4) Israel and Hamas Trade Accusations of Violating Fragile Cease-Fire
Hamas criticized Israel’s decision to delay the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, amid growing tensions and concerns for the future of the truce in Gaza.
By Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 23, 2025
Israel and Hamas on Sunday accused each other of violating the already fragile Gaza cease-fire deal after Israel delayed the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners who were supposed to be exchanged for hostages.
The office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the prisoners would not be freed until the release of further hostages “has been assured,” and Hamas committed to letting them go without “humiliating ceremonies.”
The growing tensions come after a week of mutual recriminations and strained nerves on both sides. The delay raised more questions about the future of the cease-fire for Gaza, with a temporary, six-week truce set to expire on March 1.
There is no clarity yet about a possible extension, or even whether serious negotiations have begun. Some members of Israel’s right-wing government are pressing for a resumption of the fighting after the initial phase of the cease-fire, which has provided a brief lull in the devastating war set off by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
On Saturday, Hamas released six Israeli hostages, the last living captives set to be freed in the first phase of the cease-fire. Earlier it had handed over the remains of four hostages, including those of Shiri Bibas and her two young children, who were all taken alive during the 2023 assault.
Israel was supposed to release 620 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in return, the largest group of detainees to be let go since the cease-fire in Gaza began last month, but it delayed the move, citing what Mr. Netanyahu’s office described as Hamas’s “cynical exploitation” of the hostages for propaganda purposes.
Late Saturday, dozens of Palestinian families, their faces somber, left a venue in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where some prisoners were supposed to appear, after waiting there for hours in the hope of reuniting with their loved ones. Many families said they had received no official communication regarding the delayed release, relying instead on media reports and word of mouth.
Hamas has been releasing hostages in performative ceremonies aimed at showing that it is still in control of Gaza, a practice that many Israeli officials have condemned. On Saturday, five of the six living hostages were paraded on a stage, flanked by masked gunmen, prompting outrage in Israel. One hostage was seen on a stage kissing the heads of masked gunmen, as if in gratitude. His relatives later said he had been instructed to do so by a Hamas cameraman.
Anger was further inflamed when Hamas published a propaganda video footage on Saturday night showing two other Israeli hostages who had been forced to watch three of their fellow captives being released.
Repeatedly putting their shorn heads in their hands, the pair pleaded on camera for their freedom. Rights groups and international law experts say that a hostage video is, by definition, made under duress, and the statements in it are usually coerced. Israeli officials have called past Hamas videos a form of “psychological warfare,” and experts say their production can constitute a war crime.
In a statement Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu’s office accused Hamas of violating its agreement with Israel and said the prisoner releases would be postponed “until the release of the next hostages has been assured, and without the humiliating ceremonies.” On Thursday, Hamas is supposed to hand over the bodies of four more dead Israelis under the terms of the initial phase of the cease-fire.
Izzat Al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a subsequent statement on Sunday that Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to delay the prisoner releases “reflects a deliberate attempt to disrupt the agreement.” Mr. Al-Rishq also accused Israel of humiliating Palestinian prisoners and detainees during the release process, mistreating them “until the very last moments” and banning their families from holding celebrations.
Dozens of the prisoners slated to be released are serving life sentences for deadly attacks in Israel, while others had not been formally charged.
The recriminations came after an already turbulent week. On Thursday, Hamas returned four bodies it said were those of hostages who had died in captivity, among them that of Ms. Bibas. But forensic testing by Israel determined that the body was not hers. Late Friday, Hamas transferred another set of remains, which Israeli officials confirmed early Saturday as those of Ms. Bibas. The kidnapping and deaths of Ms. Bibas and her young children have become a symbol of Israeli grief and anguish.
Adding to the uproar, the Israeli authorities rejected Hamas’s assertions that Ms. Bibas’s young sons, Ariel, who was 4 when he was abducted, and Kfir, who was not even 9 months old, were killed in Israeli airstrikes, saying that an autopsy had shown that their captors had killed them “with their bare hands” then tried to make it look like they had died in a bombardment.
Dr. Chen Kugel, Israel’s chief pathologist, said on Saturday night that there was no evidence that Ms. Bibas, who was 32, had been killed in a bombing. He did not elaborate or present evidence for the assertion.
Hamas on Saturday accused Israel of lying regarding the fate of the Bibas family, without explaining the discrepancies. Israel’s military has said Ms. Bibas and her sons were held captive by a smaller armed group in Gaza, the Mujahideen Brigades.
About 60 hostages remain in Gaza, about half of them already assumed to be dead, according to the Israeli government.
The Hamas propaganda video of the two captives begging for their release unleashed a maelstrom of emotions in Israel, including a glimmer of hope for their families.
“I saw my son for the first time in 16 months,” Ilan Gilboa-Dalal, the father of Guy Gilboa-Dalal, one of the two hostages in the video, told Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster. “I heard his voice for the first time. For me, that gives me a bit of air, knowing that he’s okay,” he said.
On the other hand, he added, there was “nothing more cruel” than forcing his son and his friend, Evyatar David, the second hostage in the car, to watch the release ceremony.
Galia David, the mother of Evyatar, told Army Radio: “The consolation in that is that Evyatar and Guy are alive. But I could see through his eyes into his soul, and he is agonized.”
The two hostages in the car and the three on the stage were all abducted from a music festival, the Tribe of Nova, near the border with Gaza during the October 2023 attack.
Fatima AbdulKarim contributed reporting from Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel.
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5) For Fearful Immigrants, It’s the Card They All Want Right Now
Distributed by a legal aid group, the “red card” lays out key rights and protections. Demand for them has surged since President Trump returned to office.
By Miriam Jordan, Feb. 23, 2025
Miriam Jordan, the national immigration correspondent, reported from San Jose, Calif., and Los Angeles.
The card was intentionally designed to be red, a color associated with “Stop” and that calls to mind the card that soccer referees use to eject players. Credit...Loren Elliott for The New York Times
It is the size of a credit card, comes in 19 languages and is in the pockets and purses of millions of immigrants.
The red card, as it is known by its bearers, lists a collection of practical tips and legal rights for immigrants who might find themselves targeted by federal agents.
Though the card has been around for almost two decades, interest in it has exploded over the last month amid a wave of anti-immigrant edicts from President Trump during his first days back in the White House. The nonprofit Immigrant Legal Resource Center has received orders from across the country for several million cards, a demand its printing contractor has rushed to meet.
Eliseo, a carpet installer in Northern California, keeps one in his wallet and another in his truck’s glove compartment. His wife, Maria, stores hers in the sleeve on the back of her cellphone. Their 13-year-old son, a U.S. citizen, has distributed them to classmates.
“You show agents the card,” said Eliseo, a father of three who has been in the United States for decades. “It does the talking.”
Like other undocumented immigrants interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition that he be identified by only his first name.
Every person in the United States, regardless of immigration status, is guaranteed certain protections under the Constitution. The card highlights some that are particularly relevant to undocumented immigrants, including the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and the Fourth Amendment right to refuse entry to the home unless an agent has a warrant signed by a judge.
But as fundamental as those rights are, they have created friction in the fight over how the country should address illegal immigration and how the authorities should treat the millions of undocumented people who live and work in the United States.
For many of those immigrants, asserting the rights outlined on the red card could be the difference between being deported and staying in the country. For Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies trying to deliver on the president’s pledge to carry out mass deportations, those same rights are a roadblock.
“They call it ‘Know Your Rights,’” the president’s so-called border czar, Thomas D. Homan, said last month on CNN. “I call it, ‘How to escape arrest.’”
Immigration was a defining issue for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, and he returned to the White House promising a crackdown. In the administration’s early days, ICE highlighted immigration raids and deportation flights, but federal agents have struggled to meet the president’s expectations. Mr. Homan and others have blamed local officials, immigrant-rights groups and the news media for hindering enforcement efforts.
Though deportation actions have yielded fewer arrests than promised, they have nonetheless stirred widespread fear and spurred efforts to ensure immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, understand their legal protections. Organizations have been holding “know-your-rights” sessions to teach immigrants that they can withhold personal information and refuse to sign any documents. The proliferation of the red cards underscores the growing anxiety, and the expanding efforts to counter it.
Since the election, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, which is headquartered in San Francisco, has received orders for about nine million cards, more than in the previous 17 years combined. Most of the orders are from nonprofits that provide them to schools, churches, clinics and food banks, which then distribute them to immigrants.
Caryn Shapiro, a high school teacher in Columbus, Ohio, said that she had handed out cards in nine languages, including Arabic, Chinese, French, Pashto and Ukrainian. “The kids, no matter what their status, are terrified of ICE,” she said.
On a recent day, the printing company contracted to produce the cards was churning them out by the hundreds of thousands. “Our whole staff is working on red cards,” said Troy Jones, who co-owns the company, Printed Union, in San Jose, Calif.
In one room, a printer was spitting out 12,000 sheets per hour, each with 84 cards in Chinese. In another room, boxes of cards labeled “Ukrainian” and “Russian” sat side by side on a rack. Stacks in Arabic, Farsi, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Punjabi and Tigrinya were ready to be packed, and the first batches in Amharic, Khmer and Portuguese would soon be shipped.
A computer generated labels for orders — to both red and blue states. “It’s literally every single state you can imagine we are shipping to,” said Mr. Jones, after taking a call from a nun in Minnesota requesting 250 in Spanish. “People need these as fast as possible.”
Immigrants from Alabama to Alaska have been packing information sessions. TODEC, a legal-aid organization in Southern California, has distributed about 500,000 cards and held a training class this week titled, “The Power of the Red Card,” which drew 300 participants.
“The red card is a very, very powerful tool,” Sandra Reyes, an educational coordinator at TODEC, said at the session.
“You might get nervous if an agent stops you,” she said. “Just take the card out and read it, or hand it over without uttering a word.”
After attending a TODEC event last month, an undocumented construction worker said that he was stopped by agents en route to church on Feb. 2.
When the worker, Luiz, 40, was asked if he had “papers” he handed the agents the red card and said nothing, he recalled. After he was ordered out of his car, the agents pressured him to disclose his immigration status, Luiz said. He said he remained silent and shook his head when asked if he had been in trouble with the law.
Luiz said that after they reviewed his Mexican identification card from his wallet, the agents checked his record and let him go. “The red card saved me,” he said. “I tell all my friends, just show the card and shut up.”
Mark Silverman was a lawyer with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center when he hatched the idea of the card in 2006, after a spate of immigration raids at workplaces fueled fear among immigrants.
The goal was to make the card small enough to slip into a wallet or a pocket. It was intentionally red, a color associated with “Stop” and that calls to mind the card that soccer referees use to eject players.
“I never predicted that the card would have such a long life,” said Mr. Silverman, who retired in 2018, “or ever be in such great demand.”
In California’s Central Valley, a fieldworker named Felipe was driving three co-workers to harvest lettuce on a recent Sunday before sunrise.
When agents pulled them over, Felipe, a 49-year-old immigrant and father of three children born in the United States, grabbed the card from his dashboard.
The agent scrutinized it and looked annoyed, Felipe said.
Another agent pressured the men to divulge their immigration status. Felipe produced only his California driver’s license.
“What do you want from us?” he recalled telling them. “We aren’t criminals. We have rights.”
Soon the men were back on their way to work.
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6) America Loses Its Soul When It Rejects People Fleeing Danger
By Dina Nayeri, Feb. 23, 2025
Ms. Nayeri is the author of “The Ungrateful Refugee” and “Who Gets Believed?”
Oyow
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be “civilized.” It’s not caring for one’s own; animals do that. It’s not making music and art; cave men drew and sang. It is, I believe, to live with a moral standard that takes into account our fellow man, and to ask: What do we owe one another, and what do we owe strangers?
For me, to be civilized boils down to being willing to work against our own lesser interests in order to alleviate greater suffering, no matter the sufferer’s identity or relationship to us. It is a high standard, but it is not heroism, which is putting one’s own life in real danger for another.
After World War II, a large group of lawmakers decided to codify this principle of humanitarian duty into international law. Nonrefoulement (from the French “fouler,” meaning “to trample”) is the idea that vulnerable people, once arrived on safe shores, should never be sent back into danger. Put simply, it is the premise that the least we can do is not knowingly send someone out to die. It is this idea that was challenged by the first Trump administration, with its “Remain in Mexico” policy, which denied responsibility for asylum seekers. Now, in his second term, President Trump has not only reinstated that harmful policy but also suspended thousands of existing asylum cases, and canceled appointments and even flights for refugees already cleared to enter the United States. All of this goes against a contract this country signed 58 years ago.
One hundred and forty-five countries signed the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention (the United States signed on to the bulk of the convention’s requirements in 1967, including those on refoulement), which states: “No contracting state shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
The language in the treaty was designed to be all-encompassing, and to acknowledge that there will always be refugees fleeing persecution. The vaguest protected category, “particular social group,” was added by a Swedish delegate who worried that some people who deserve shelter would not fit into the existing categories. How could anyone when this language was drafted, just six years after the horrors of the Holocaust, foretell whom the next atrocity would target? “Particular social group,” then, was written as a catchall, to make sure everyone who needed refuge would be covered by the legal language.
In 1988, my family fled Iran and landed in the United Arab Emirates. After nearly a year, we were recognized as refugees by the U.N.’s High Commissioner on Refugees and sent to a camp in Italy. There we sat for another six months or so, waiting and submitting to “credible fear” interviews, wherein asylum seekers must prove to an immigration office that the danger back home is real, not imagined. My mother explained to the officers that her Christian conversion was apostasy according to Islamic law, and that before we escaped, she had been imprisoned, interrogated and told she’d be executed. As we told our story, I sensed that our interlocutors’ aim was to save us, not to send us away. Later, too, I saw American neighbors and friends embracing this moral duty, a responsibility and an instinct to protect lives more vulnerable than their own.
But in the United States and in Europe of late, it seems as if government lawyers have treated the Refugee Convention like a checklist of obligations to reinterpret and wriggle out of rather than a sacred principle that bound together a shellshocked world after the savageries of the Holocaust. The spirit of a broad and inclusive refuge has slowly been replaced by a narrowing of those categories to allow as few as possible to qualify. During the first Trump administration, Jeff Sessions, who was then attorney general, argued that women fleeing domestic violence did not qualify for protections as a social group. As ugly as that is, Mr. Trump is once again engaging in mass refoulement, turning away refugees who meet the strict criteria.
The writers of the original treaty tried to articulate something like: We can’t know what evil will come next, but when it does, we peaceful nations will shelter its survivors. Twenty-first-century lawyers have reinterpreted that to mean, essentially: We will shelter survivors, but only from the kinds of evil that we are legally forced to care about.
After receiving asylum in 1989, my mother, brother and I were resettled in Oklahoma. Pastors often asked us to share our story in their churches, and my mother gratefully did the rounds. It felt humiliating, but I liked the language of their sermons: We were “chosen,” our journey a “miracle,” our lives a part of “God’s plan.” I loved these words because they meant we were special. One sweet, grumbly old church man, though, didn’t seem to think we were special at all. When we were at his house, he teased me about my accent, the books I hadn’t yet read, my love of stewed spinach and yogurt. And yet he absolutely believed that bringing us out of Iran was God’s work. Now I understand that this man had a higher-order morality than all those who praised our faith, or our value: He didn’t think we were extraordinary or anointed. He just thought that every life deserved saving.
This standard has eroded in America and across Europe. We’ve become baser, more self-serving, jealously guarding our spaces. These days, so much of our talk about migrants and refugees is about how much they do for our economies, for our communities and for our culture. But what about the sanctity of human life? America, this shining city on a hill, is now sending people back to face torture and death, en masse, despite our obscene resources. Just this month we began shipping the most vulnerable to Panama; including Iranian Christians, facing the same risks my family did 36 years ago. The firmer our door remains shut, the more our language has become about exceptional people, deserving people and merit.
I don’t think, for meritorious people, this is a very difficult promise to keep, for our gatekeepers and for all of us: We don’t send wretched people back into danger. Even if it costs us money. And certainly not for some hypothetical fear for ourselves. We do this because we’re civilized, and born lucky, and life is the minimum we owe to our fellow man.
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7) 5 Takeaways From Germany’s Election
Friedrich Merz and his party won, Elon Musk didn’t seem to move voters, and more lessons from an early German vote with big implications for Europe.
By Christopher F. Schuetze and Jim Tankersley, Reporting from Berlin, Feb. 24, 2025
Germany is getting a new chancellor. Its current leader is heading out of power, but his party probably will stick around in a diminished capacity. And the Trump administration’s efforts to influence the vote don’t seem to have done much.
Sunday’s election, which came months ahead of schedule after the country’s governing coalition crumbled late last year, produced a few surprises and a lot of suspense.
By early Monday morning, the results seemed clear enough to indicate that the center-right Christian Democrats would be able to lead Germany with only one coalition partner, returning the country to the more durable two-party form of government that has led it for most of this century.
Here are five takeaways from the returns.
Merz is the likely new chancellor.
The largest German turnout in decades gave the most votes to the Christian Democrats and their sister party, the Christian Social Union. That almost certainly means the next chancellor will be Friedrich Merz, a businessman who flies his own private plane and has long coveted the top job.
Mr. Merz lost a power struggle to lead the Christian Democrats early in the 2000s, to Angela Merkel, who went on to serve 16 years as chancellor. Voters soured on her legacy, though, including an ill-fated plan to rely more heavily on Russia for natural gas and the decision to keep Germany’s borders open in 2015 and begin welcoming what would be millions of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
After the Christian Democrats fell out of power in 2021, Mr. Merz assumed leadership of the party and drove it to the right on migration and other issues. He was most comfortable campaigning on the economy, promising to peel back regulations and reduce taxes in a bid to reignite economic growth.
Mr. Merz is tall and sometimes stern, with a dry wit. Polls suggest that only about a third of the country believes he will make a good chancellor. Even some of his own voters said on Sunday that they are not enamored of him. But if he can quickly forge a government, he has a chance to step into a leadership vacuum in Europe as it struggles with the strains on its relationship with the United States under President Trump.
Trump and NATO were on the ballot.
When Vice President JD Vance gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference last week chiding the European political establishment for excluding extreme parties, he jolted the once-sleepy election campaign awake. If Mr. Trump’s threats of a trade war and less military protection had already been worrying Germans, the speech and the president’s subsequent U-turn on Ukraine caused a near panic in Germany.
Among German voters, 65 percent are worried that Germany is helpless against President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, according to a poll released on Sunday afternoon.
On Sunday night in a post-election debate between leaders, Mr. Merz quickly brought up the threat that Germany and Europe face because of the new U.S. administration.
“It has become clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this government, is largely indifferent to the fate of Europe,” he said. “I am very curious to see how we approach the NATO summit at the end of June — whether we are still talking about NATO in its current state or whether we need to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly.”
Musk did not seem to sway voters.
The hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, doubled its vote share from four years ago, largely by appealing to voters upset by immigration. In the former East Germany, it finished first, ahead of Mr. Merz’s party.
The AfD’s vote share appeared to fall short of its high-water mark of support in polls from a year ago, however. Many analysts had been expecting a stronger showing, after a sequence of events that elevated the party and its signature issue.
The AfD received public support from Mr. Vance and an endorsement by the billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk. It sought to make political gains out of a series of deadly attacks by migrants in recent months, including in the final days of the campaign.
But that boon never materialized.
The surprise of the night
Reaction to the recent attacks and the support from Trump officials may have even mobilized a late burst of support to Die Linke, the party of Germany’s far left, which campaigned on a pro-immigration platform, some voters suggested in interviews on Sunday.
Two months ago Die Linke was dying. Sahra Wagenknecht, its most popular member, started a new party last year that was more friendly to Russia and tougher on migration. Many followed her, thinking that she was the future. Die Linke languished at 3 percent.
But Die Linke managed to turn things around in just months, thanks to a new pair of charismatic and social-media savvy leaders and the alienation that many young voters feel with mainstream parties. It surged to what appeared to be nearly 9 percent of the vote and more than 60 seats in Parliament.
Its campaign events started attracting so many young people that they became must-see affairs, as much dance party as political rally.
The party leaders became social media stars. Heidi Reichinnek, who is credited for much of the turnaround, told a crowd on Sunday night that they owed their success to the many volunteers who went from door to door talking to people about pocketbook issues. Ms. Reichinnek told supporters they “did everything right.”
Scholz is out, but his party marches on.
Despite polling predicting his third-place finish, Chancellor Olaf Scholz had insisted until the very end that he would somehow retain his job. He was wrong. His Social Democratic Party won a record-low 16 percent, coming in third place. Though Mr. Scholz will continue as a caretaker chancellor until Mr. Merz is sworn in, he is widely expected to step down from active politics.
His party will live on, though. It will very likely slip into the familiar role of junior partner in a government led by the conservatives. The so-called “grand coalition” supported Ms. Merkel through three of her four terms, and it could be Mr. Merz’s best shot for a stable government in a tumultuous time for Germany.
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8) Dr. Oz: How His Millions Collide With Medicare
The TV celebrity and Trump nominee has pledged to divest from most of his financial interests. But they touch nearly every corner of health care, from insurance to blood pressure cuffs and vitamins, leading experts and lawmakers to doubt he could make impartial decisions.
By Reed Abelson and Susanne Craig, Feb. 24, 2025
A screenshot from a YouTube version of one episode from Dr. Oz’s TV shows, in which he promoted private Medicare plans offered by TZ Insurance, a company that paid for promotions akin to infomercials. Credit...via YouTube
Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity TV doctor nominated by President Trump to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, has been a relentless promoter of controversial private insurance plans for older Americans.
“I’d be signing up,” he told viewers, directing them to a call center in an episode that is still available on his YouTube channel.
What Dr. Oz did not tell the audience was that he made money from touting the plans, known as Medicare Advantage. The for-profit company operating the call center, TZ Insurance Solutions, paid to be featured.
Dr. Oz even became a licensed broker for TZ Insurance in almost every state, according to regulatory filings newly unearthed by The New York Times, with the idea that he could sell plans directly to viewers.
He may be one of America’s best-known daytime TV personalities, or “America’s doctor,” as Oprah Winfrey called him. But little is known about exactly how he monetized his fame over the years. All told, his business and family ventures are valued in the neighborhood of roughly $90 million to $335 million.
An examination by The Times of his myriad financial interests revealed not only opaque ties with the industries he may soon regulate but also a coziness with health care companies that lawmakers have already highlighted in questioning his independence.
He has made tens of millions of dollars hawking dietary supplements on his show and on social media, often without any mention of his financial interest. He has been paid by medical device firms and health-related ventures, and his money was invested in a dizzying array of businesses. Many of those companies would be affected by any decisions he would make in the government post and many already benefit from agency funding.
In an attempt to avoid conflicts, Dr. Oz disclosed on Wednesday in ethics filings that he would sell his interests in more than 70 companies and investment funds. Those include as much as $600,000 in stock in UnitedHealth Group, the giant conglomerate that is the nation’s largest provider of private Medicare plans; as much as $5 million in Inception Fertility Holdings, a privately held company that operates a chain of clinics; and as much as $100,000 in HCA Healthcare, the sprawling for-profit hospital chain.
In addition, he indicated that he would sell as much as $26 million invested in Amazon, which has a vast reach that now includes One Medical, a primary care venture for in-person and virtual patient needs; an online pharmacy; and the sale of health-related products and devices through its gargantuan retail platform. (The exact value of Dr. Oz’s various holdings is not known because the disclosure forms allow asset values to be listed under a wide range.)
Dr. Oz also pledged in the filings to resign from paid advisory positions and to sell holdings in a digital stethoscope company, a pharmaceutical research and technology firm and a cardiology practice.
Still, he has several limited liability companies — Oz Works and Oz Property Holdings among them — and the nature of their operations is not known. He has no plans to close them and the filings state that he would remain an official at some. In the ethics agreement, he pledged not to “participate personally and substantially in any particular matter in which I know that I have a financial interest” or seek a waiver.
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in government ethics, said Dr. Oz’s financial filings struck her as “the appearance of disclosure without disclosure.”
“You can sell assets, and if you have a specific contractual agreement you can end it,” she said. “But I can’t even tell from his disclosures what direct or indirect arrangements he has.”
The sheer breadth of his financial entanglements has prompted some ethics experts and lawmakers to express doubts about his independence, particularly over companies from which he received millions of dollars for endorsing their products and services.
Christopher Krepich, a spokesman for Dr. Oz, declined to respond to a detailed list of questions from The Times about Dr. Oz’s business ventures. He would only say that Dr. Oz was cooperating with the Office of Government Ethics, which reviews the finances and interests of presidential nominees, and would comply with the agency’s rules.
If the Senate confirms Dr. Oz, 64, to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, he would wield immense power, overseeing health insurance coverage for nearly half of all Americans and a budget of about $1.5 trillion in annual spending. Given his advocacy of Medicare Advantage, Dr. Oz would have the authority to expand the privatization of the government program as he and many Republicans have urged.
The Senate Finance Committee is expected to soon schedule Dr. Oz’s confirmation hearing.
Government spending toward the private Medicare plans amounts to about $500 billion a year. The plans have been heavily scrutinized, faulted by lawmakers and regulators for systemic overbilling and unjustified denials of payment for patient care. The very agency Dr. Oz would run recently cracked down on overpayments and forced insurers to be more transparent when they refuse to pay for patients’ care.
The insurance industry has heavily lobbied against new rules that regulators have proposed in their efforts to rein in abuses, and insurers frequently challenge the government in court.
For instance, the brokerage industry successfully blocked new Medicare changes that would have imposed tighter caps on overall payments to brokers from companies like TZ Insurance as a way to curb overly aggressive marketing tactics.
Still, Medicare Advantage remains popular with millions of consumers, and Dr. Oz once advocated extending its reach to employer plans. Insurers have already begun pressing the Trump administration to expand funding for Medicare Advantage.
In recent years, supplement companies have captured much of Dr. Oz’s attention. In 2023, he joined iHerb, an online seller of vitamins and supplements, as an adviser and spokesman. In the new financial filing, his investments in iHerb represent one of his largest financial holdings, worth anywhere from $5 million to $25 million.
In the ethics agreement, whether Dr. Oz would extricate his interests from iHerb remains murky: Experts who reviewed it for The Times said the wording held open the possibility that even once he is at the helm of the agency, Dr. Oz might retain some iHerb stock until the company goes public or is bought. Either way, he stands to make significant money from his stake in iHerb.
Like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s new health secretary, Dr. Oz is critical of the nation’s overreliance on drugs and surgery as treatments for chronic illness over diet and fitness. (Mr. Kennedy, 71, disclosed recently that his health insurance was provided by a Medicare Advantage plan.)
“He’s got big ambitions for the health of the country, honestly,” said Andy Slavitt, who served as the acting agency administrator under President Barack Obama. Mr. Slavitt, a former UnitedHealth executive, said that Dr. Oz “very much wants to do the job as a physician and focus on quality.”
A Family’s Financial Ties
Dr. Oz was born in Cleveland to a wealthy Turkish American family. His father, Mustafa, was a thoracic surgeon who died in 2019. He has familial links to one of Turkey’s largest pharmaceutical companies, Atabay, that was founded by his maternal grandfather. It makes ingredients for medications, including opioids, that are currently sold in the United States.
It does not appear that he had an ownership stake in the company, although he has had contact with top health officials in Turkey along with his uncle, who was once Atabay’s chairman.
In 2018, the uncle, Bülent Atabay, owned the lion’s share of the company, while his mother, Suna, owned a much smaller piece, according to a Turkish commercial registry notice, the latest available.
After graduating from Harvard and receiving his medical and business degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz became a successful cardiothoracic surgeon at what was then known as Columbia-Presbyterian in New York. He was famously part of a team that performed a heart transplant in 1996 on the brother of Joe Torre, the former Yankees manager.
He and his wife Lisa of nearly 40 years are fabulously wealthy by almost any measure.
She is among numerous heirs to one of the nation’s largest private companies, Asplundh Tree Expert, which provides tree removal and related services for utilities and municipalities. The couple’s stakes in Asplundh were worth between roughly $11 million to $52 million, according to the latest financial filings.
Dr. Oz parlayed his career as a surgeon into a multi-million-dollar business that catapulted him into Americans’ living rooms and enriched him and his family.
He developed a TV persona, appearing in 2004 on “Oprah.” That morphed into the long-running “Dr. Oz” show, which aired from 2009 until early 2022.
He touted the benefits of healthy living, but also drew sharp criticism for his public support of unfounded claims on a wide range of health and medical topics. In 2014, The BMJ, formerly The British Medical Journal, analyzed 40 episodes of Dr. Oz’s show and concluded that fewer than half the health recommendations were supported by evidence.
That year, a Senate consumer protection panel grilled him about endorsements of certain “magic” weight-loss products. Former Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat, scolded him, saying “the scientific community is almost monolithic against you in terms of the efficacy of a few products that you have called miracles.”
Dr. Oz conceded that his claims often “don’t have the scientific muster to present as fact.”
During the Covid pandemic, Dr. Oz used his high-profile medical persona to espouse a highly questionable treatment. He appeared on Fox News more than two dozen times talking about the benefits of the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as treatments for Covid and was influential in persuading Mr. Trump of their value despite sparse evidence.
He backtracked only after a study showed more patients were dying when treated with the hydroxychloroquine than those who were not taking it. Further studies proved the drug to be ineffective against Covid. Dr. Oz defended his position, saying he put patients first and argued the politics around Covid left many treatments to be “regularly discounted by the medical establishment.”
Over the years, his peers have publicly denounced him for some of his dubious medical claims. “He has made clear that he will put enriching himself above all else, even in instances where people’s health is endangered,” a group of about 150 physicians, “Real Doctors Against Oz,” wrote in opposing his Senate candidacy in 2022.
And at Columbia, where he spent much of his medical career performing heart surgery and teaching, he remains a complicated figure. The university refused to fire him in 2015 after a group of doctors urged it to sever ties, describing Dr. Oz as “guilty of either outrageous conflicts of interest or flawed judgments about what constitutes appropriate medical treatments, or both.”
Dr. Oz responded at the time that he never promoted products for financial gain and argued that those seeking his ouster “have big ties to big industry.”
The Hidden Hand
On his daytime show, Dr. Oz frequently and vaguely referred to companies he promoted as trusted sponsorship partners. Those words might not have registered with millions of his viewers, but they meant that the companies paid to be featured on his show in ways that were akin to an infomercial.
MedicareAdvantage.com, operated by TZ Insurance, was one such trusted partner.
A spokesman for TZ Insurance said it paid Sony Pictures Television for the promotion on his daytime TV show and cut ties with Dr. Oz in 2022, the same year that the television show ended and he was campaigning for the Senate.
The spokesman for TZ said that it had registered Dr. Oz as an insurance broker as part of a marketing strategy for him to speak directly to customers, but that didn’t happen.
Still, Dr. Oz remains licensed as a broker in more than 20 states. Last year Wisconsin pulled his license over failure to pay $996.15 in state taxes on unspecified income, according to public records and a spokeswoman for the state. That has since been paid, state officials said.
Another trusted partner was Omron, a maker of blood pressure monitors. It announced it had “joined forces” with the Dr. Oz show in a 2010 news release though neither the show nor the company have revealed the financial details of their arrangement.
In an episode available on his YouTube channel, Dr. Oz wore scrubs and featured Omron’s device to explain the virtues of taking your blood pressure. He worked with Walmart to get Omron device coupons for consumers and provided them to his audience.
Omron’s foundation has been a generous donor to Dr. Oz’s personal charity, HealthCorps, giving more than $250,000 since 2016, according to tax records reviewed by The Times.
An Omron spokesman said it too paid Sony and the company had “no current ties” to Dr. Oz.
Omron’s business, however, relies partly on Medicare, which pays for its blood pressure monitor in some circumstances, and he would oversee requests for expanded coverage.
But ethics experts say these endorsements may be particularly problematic. “His history is more than just ownership,” said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a watchdog group. Even if Dr. Oz divests his stocks and discontinues financial relationships with these companies, he should recuse himself from issues with the businesses he was paid to advise or promote, he said.
The Business of Wellness
For years Dr. Oz used his show to promote dietary supplements, often making unsubstantiated claims about their effectiveness. He described selenium supplements as the “holy grail of cancer prevention” and hailed green coffee extract as a “magic weight-loss cure.”
At a hearing in 2014, when senators confronted him with his exaggerated statements about weight-loss products, he responded, “My job on the show, I feel, is to be a cheerleader for the audience.”
Dr. Oz was often a paid cheerleader. In 2012, he became a spokesman for Usana Health Sciences, a supplement company in Utah.
Usana also was referred to as a trusted sponsorship partner on his TV show. The company’s products were featured prominently and consumers could buy them through his TV website, according to a regulatory filing. Dr. Oz was also deeply involved in the company, attending Usana corporate events to rally employees.
“Usana’s global effort to seek out health solutions knows no bounds,” Dr. Oz proclaimed in one promotional video.
What money Dr. Oz and his show made from the Usana relationship is unclear; Dr. Oz and the company declined to comment. But in a court filing in 2018, the plaintiff in a trademark infringement case against Usana claimed the supplement company paid more than $50 million in the previous five years for promotion on the Dr. Oz show.
Usana said its relationship with the Dr. Oz show ended in 2022, the year the show went off air. A year later he struck up a relationship with iHerb, whose other big-name pitchman is Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight champion.
There is little public information about iHerb, which is privately held and says it is “a multi-billion-dollar eCommerce platform.”
In the last few years without his daytime show, Dr. Oz has relied heavily on his social media accounts — Instagram, TikTok and X — where he pitched iHerb to millions of followers. He recommended supplements that he said would promote hair growth and smoother skin. Olive oil, which iHerb sells, “might be able to actually help with Alzheimer’s.”
In a letter, Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, urged federal regulators to examine Dr. Oz’s posts, saying he did not always make clear his financial ties to iHerb, and to investigate whether he violated government policy by making “undisclosed endorsements and product advertisements.”
After Mr. Trump picked him in November to lead the Medicare-Medicaid agency, Dr. Oz did not drop his enthusiasm for iHerb. Over Thanksgiving, he promoted the company’s supplements on Instagram as a way to reduce stress.
Under the private Medicare plans, customers are allowed to buy over-the-counter medicines and supplements through debit or prepaid cards, another potential conflict for Dr. Oz because of his history with iHerb and other supplement companies.
And he has not shied from making the most personal of appeals for these products.
In social media posts, Dr. Oz is pictured with his mother, who has Alzheimer’s, and claimed that iHerb supplements he sent her were among the steps that had “probably slowed” the progression of her disease.
Even if he were to recuse himself from agency coverage of products like iHerb’s, his endorsements would continue to linger online.
Teddy Rosenbluth, Safak Timur and Christina Jewett contributed reporting.
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9) Gaza Truce Could End in Days, With No Extension Agreed. What Happens Next?
Less than a week before it expires, Israel and Hamas have failed to agree to extend the cease-fire in Gaza. Here’s how the deal could still continue — and what happens if it doesn’t.
By Patrick Kingsley and Ronen Bergman, Feb. 24, 2025
The reporters have followed the cease-fire negotiations since the opening weeks of the war.
"...according to the agreement, the truce can only formally roll over if both sides agree to end the war. But Israel and Hamas have such differing visions of a postwar Gaza that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been unwilling to even restart talks."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-gaza-ceasefire.html
Palestinians waiting in Ramallah on Sunday after Israel delayed the release of Palestinian prisoners. Credit...Zain Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When Israel and Hamas agreed to a six-week cease-fire in January, there were hopes that it would evolve into a longer and more stable truce.
Now, those hopes are dwindling.
Both sides have accused each other of breaking the terms of the existing deal, which have allowed for the exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. Over the weekend, Israel delayed the release of several hundred prisoners, protesting the humiliating manner in which Hamas had paraded hostages before handing them over.
With just days before the current truce elapses on Sunday, the sides have yet to begin negotiations for an extension.
Steve Witkoff, the Mideast envoy for the Trump administration, said he would return to the region on Wednesday to push for a new truce.
While a brief extension is possible, the likelihood of a long-term arrangement — preventing the revival of fighting — seems remote.
Both sides have preconditions that make it hard to reach a permanent resolution. Israel’s leaders say they will only end the war once Hamas no longer exerts military and political power in Gaza. Hamas has indicated it could give up some civil responsibilities but its leaders have largely dismissed the idea of disarmament, at least in public.
Here’s how we got here, and what could happen next.
What was supposed to happen?
The deal struck in the final days of the Biden administration allowed for an initial six-week truce, which ends on March 1. The sides agreed to use that time to gradually exchange roughly 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for 33 hostages captured by Hamas and its allies during their raid that ignited the war in October 2023.
The two sides were supposed to use the six weeks to negotiate the terms for a permanent truce that would have begun as soon as March 2. Those negotiations were expected to focus on who should govern postwar Gaza, as well as the release of roughly 60 other hostages.
Though punctured by disruptions, most of the exchanges have gone roughly to plan. The negotiations for a second phase have not. They have yet to begin in earnest — even though, under the terms of the January agreement, they were supposed to conclude by this past Sunday.
That failure is partly because, according to the agreement, the truce can only formally roll over if both sides agree to end the war. But Israel and Hamas have such differing visions of a postwar Gaza that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been unwilling to even restart talks.
Do Hamas and Israel want to restart the war?
Weak and isolated, Hamas has avoided explicit calls for a resumption in hostilities, even if the group has made war more likely by refusing to surrender.
By contrast, Mr. Netanyahu directly stated on Sunday that Israel was ready to resume fighting if Hamas would not disarm itself voluntarily. In a speech to soldiers, Mr. Netanyahu said he was only open to negotiations on the terms of Hamas’s surrender.
Many Israelis want the prime minister to agree to an extended truce in order to free the remaining hostages, even if it comes at the expense of keeping Hamas in power. But Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition allies see a defeat of Hamas as a bigger national priority and are pressing him to restart the conflict.
Is Israel getting ready for a new offensive?
The Israeli military has already made extensive preparations for a new and intense campaign in Gaza, according to three defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak more freely.
The officials said the new operations would include the targeting of Hamas officials who siphon off aid supplies meant for civilians, as well as the destruction of buildings and infrastructure used by the Hamas-run civilian government.
While the plan has yet to be approved by the Israeli cabinet, two of the officials said they believed that only President Trump could dissuade Mr. Netanyahu from renewed war.
What does President Trump want?
The president has made several competing demands in recent weeks, variously calling for sustained peace, renewed war, as well as the expulsion of Gaza’s two million residents. The clearest recent signal from his administration was that it was seeking a temporary extension to the truce, perhaps involving a few more hostage-for-prisoner exchanges.
On Sunday, Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Mideast envoy, said in an interview with CNN that he would return to the region on Wednesday to prolong truce’s first phase. He later told CBS that he would spend five days touring Egypt, Israel, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to build momentum toward an extension. Mr. Witkoff also said that he believed it was possible to achieve a longer agreement.
If there’s no extension, will fighting immediately resume?
Not necessarily. The initial deal said that the “temporary cessation of hostilities” could be sustained beyond the March 1 deadline as long as Israel and Hamas were still negotiating over the terms of a permanent cease-fire. That allows for some wiggle room: If the sides do return to negotiations over a formal extension, the truce can technically continue even if the talks are far from a resolution.
Still, there will be fewer guardrails to keep the truce from collapsing. During the initial cease-fire, the sides were motivated to sustain the deal through several crises because every passing week allowed for the exchange of more captives. That arrangement suited both Israel and Hamas — every liberated hostage brought relief to the Israeli population, while Hamas’s prestige was bolstered among Palestinians every time a prisoner was released.
Those swaps are set to end on Thursday, with the release of four more Israelis, most likely captives who have died, for several hundred Palestinians. Unless new exchanges are arranged, both Hamas and Israel will have fewer reasons to keep the truce going.
When is the truce’s biggest stress test?
There is particular concern about what happens after March 8.
In the January deal, Israel agreed to withdraw its forces by that date from the Gaza-Egypt border. But Mr. Netanyahu explicitly said last year that Israel would never pull back from the area, known in Israel as the Philadelphi Corridor, leading to predictions that he would break the terms of the cease-fire.
If those forces do not withdraw, the Israeli defense officials say they expect that Hamas may fire rockets at Israel, giving Israel a pretext to retaliate.
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
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10) Americans Are Expecting Higher Prices. That Could Unnerve the Fed.
More Americans are starting to brace for higher prices as President Trump’s policies begin to take effect.
By Colby Smith and Ben Casselman, Feb. 25, 2025
Economists say that the longer inflation remains elevated, the greater the chances that consumers and businesses will start to readjust their expectations. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Fresh off the worst inflation shock in decades, Americans are once again bracing for higher prices.
Expectations about future inflation have started to move up, according to metrics closely watched by officials at the Federal Reserve. So far, the data, including a consumer survey from the University of Michigan and market-based measures of investors’ expectations, does not suggest that price pressures are perceived to be on the verge of spiraling out of control.
But the recent jump has been significant enough to warrant attention, stoking yet more uncertainty about an economic outlook already clouded by President Trump’s ever-evolving approach to trade, immigration, taxation and other policy areas. On Tuesday, a survey from the Conference Board showed that consumer confidence fell sharply in February and inflation expectations rose as Americans fretted about the surging price of eggs and the potential impact of tariffs.
If those worries persist, it could be a political problem for Mr. Trump, whose promise to control prices was a central part of his message during last year’s campaign. It would also add to the challenge facing policymakers at the Fed, who are already concerned that progress against inflation is stalling out.
“This is the kind of thing that can unnerve a policymaker,” Jonathan Pingle, who used to work at the Fed and is now chief economist at UBS, said about the overarching trend in inflation expectations. “We don’t want inflation expectations moving up so much that it makes the Fed’s job harder to get inflation back to 2 percent.”
Most economists see keeping inflation expectations in check as crucial to controlling inflation itself. That’s because beliefs about where prices are headed can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: If workers expect the cost of living to rise, they will demand raises to compensate; if businesses expect the cost of materials and labor to rise, they will increase their own prices in anticipation. That can make it much harder for the Fed to bring inflation to heel.
That’s what happened in the 1960s and 1970s: Years of high inflation led consumers and businesses to expect prices to keep rising rapidly. Only by raising interest rates to a punishing level and causing a severe recession was the Fed able to bring inflation fully back under control.
When prices began rising rapidly in 2021 and 2022, many forecasters feared a repeat of that scenario. Instead, inflation expectations remained relatively docile — rising only modestly, and falling quickly once inflation began to ease — and the Fed was able to bring down inflation without causing a big increase in unemployment.
“The No. 1 reason why that scenario didn’t play out was that, even though inflation went up quite a bit, expected inflation by most measures only went up a little bit,” said Laurence Ball, an economist at Johns Hopkins University. “That’s the big difference between the 1970s and the 2020s.”
Now, though, there are hints that Americans are anticipating higher inflation in the years ahead. Persistent price pressures driven in part by a surge in the costs of eggs and energy-related expenses coupled with concerns about the impact of tariffs are among the factors to have pushed consumers’ expectations for inflation over the next 12 months to their highest level in more than a year, according to the long-running survey from the University of Michigan.
More concerning to economists, consumers’ expectations for inflation in the longer run — which tend to be more stable over time — experienced their biggest one-month jump since 2021 in February. The increase cut across age and income levels, suggesting inflation fears are widespread.
Expectations in the Michigan survey have risen before, only to fall back in subsequent months. And the recent results have shown a huge partisan split — inflation expectations have risen sharply among Democrats since the election, but have fallen among Republicans — leading some economists to discount the results.
Inflation expectations have also risen among political independents, however — a significant development because their assessment of the economy is typically more stable, said Joanne Hsu, who leads the Michigan survey.
Other measures paint a mixed picture. The Conference Board’s survey showed rising concerns about inflation in both January and February, but another from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in January did not. One closely watched measure of investors’ inflation expectations has been edging up, but another one has not. Both measures are based on yields on U.S. government debt — when investors expect inflation to eat away at the value of their bond holdings, they demand a greater return to make up for it. Surveys of businesses and of professional forecasters have found little if any evidence that inflation expectations are rising.
But economists said that the longer inflation remained elevated, the greater the chances that consumers and businesses would start to readjust their expectations. What central banks fear most is if those expectations become “unanchored,” or move enough to suggest little confidence that over time inflation will return to the 2 percent target. That risk appears more prominent now than it did a few months ago. Progress on inflation has stalled in recent months and President Trump has pursued policies that many economists believe are likely to push prices higher, such as imposing tariffs and restricting immigration.
“The data does show that inflation expectations appear to be well anchored, but if I were at the Fed, I wouldn’t assume that or take that for granted,” said Richard Clarida, a former Fed vice chair who is now at Pimco, an investment firm.
Officials at the central bank have so far downplayed concerns about inflation expectations. Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said the latest survey from the University of Michigan “wasn’t a great number,” but reflected just one month’s worth of data so far.
“You need at least two or three months for that to count,” Mr. Goolsbee, who casts votes on policy decisions this year, said on Sunday.
Alberto Musalem, president of the St. Louis Fed and a voting member, was also emphatic that inflation expectations were under control while talking to reporters last week. Mr. Musalem described the Michigan data as “one metric amongst a variety of metrics that has shown a little uptick.”
Despite this confidence, the Fed has put additional interest rate cuts on hold for the time being. Officials not only want more evidence that inflation is in retreat but have also said a solid economy affords them time to wait and see how Mr. Trump’s plan will impact the trajectory for consumer prices, the labor market and growth more broadly.
Minutes from the most recent policy meeting in January showed that policymakers expected some impact on consumer prices from Mr. Trump’s policies. But how the central bank should respond remains a big point of debate.
Some, like Fed governor Christopher J. Waller, have argued that the central bank can “look through” the economic impact of policies like tariffs. But that stance hinges on a number of factors, most crucially that such levies lead to only a one-off increase in prices and that expectations across businesses and households remain in check.
But according to Charles Evans, who retired as president of the Chicago Fed in 2023, that could be a risky strategy, especially in light of the inflation surge that followed the Covid-era economic shock.
“That’s the same transitory story the Fed and everybody was saying in 2021,” he said. “You would think that policymakers would be a little more reluctant to lean on that.”
Already, Mr. Evans said that seeing inflation expectations move up somewhat made him “a little nervous,” especially in light of his concerns that businesses might be more inclined than in the past to pass along higher prices to their customers. For those reasons, he expects the Fed to stay “cautious” about further interest rate cuts this year.
John Roberts, who most recently served as a top staff member in the division of research and statistics at the Fed before joining Evercore ISI, added that the central bank might be inclined to forgo cuts entirely this year if inflation expectations did not improve from current levels. At this point, he already sees “a little bit of unanchoring here.”
After the release of the latest University of Michigan data on Friday, economists at LHMeyer, a research firm, pushed back their timing for the next Fed cut from June to September.
There is also another risk: If Mr. Trump moves to erode the Fed’s independence, or threatens to do so, that could undermine confidence in the central bank’s ability to bring inflation under control, leading inflation expectations to rise.
Last week, Mr. Trump sought to expand his reach over the Fed as part of a broader effort to wrest greater control of congressionally designated independent agencies. The executive order targeted the central bank’s supervision and regulation of Wall Street and carved out its decisions on monetary policy. But the expansive nature of the order stoked concerns about how much further Mr. Trump’s encroachment on the Fed’s independence could eventually go.
“That’s the most dangerous scenario,” Mr. Ball said, adding that even the threat of political interference could make the Fed’s job more difficult. “The Fed’s ability to control expectations could be impeded not only by the Trump administration taking over, but also by the fear that might happen.”
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11) Government Workers Who Have Lost Their Jobs Worry About Their Housing
The abrupt firings have left federal workers and contractors throughout the country in flux, with many distressed over how they will pay the mortgage or rent.
By Matt Yan, Feb. 25, 2025
Cameron McKenzie is one of many federal workers who was recently fired. Credit...Jonno Rattman for The New York Times
After losing his job at the U.S. Forest Service, Cameron McKenzie was worried about finding a new job. But first, he had a more immediate concern: How was he going to pay the mortgage?
He’s done the math — finding another job in the environmental sector could take months — and keeping up with the nearly $2,700 monthly payment on his three-bedroom home in Blairstown, N.J., will be a challenge, if not impossible. “Even on unemployment,” said Mr. McKenzie, 27, who worked as a community engagement specialist, “I’m not going to be able to make my mortgage payment.”
Mr. McKenzie’s termination was among thousands of federal job cuts, part of a purge of the work force under an executive order signed by President Trump. The abrupt firings have left federal workers and contractors throughout the country in flux, with many distressed over their housing.
The effect of the layoffs has been palpable, especially in the Washington area, where there are more than 300,000 federal government employees. Rumors have swirled that the firings are causing the area’s housing market to crash after videos began circulating on social media.
Lisa Sturtevant, the chief economist at Bright MLS, a multiple listing service, said that it is too soon to tell if the D.C. market has been shaken by the layoffs because “it hasn’t had enough time to filter into the housing market,” she said. In the first two weeks of February, there were 2,829 new listings in the D.C. area, which is “virtually unchanged” from the same time period last year, with 2,820 listings, according to a report by Bright MLS. During the week that ended Feb. 23, the number of new listings was up 12.9 percent over the same period last year, according to another report by Bright MLS.
Workers like Mr. McKenzie are already rethinking their futures in terms of their careers and where they will live.
“I’m going to have to sell my house,” he said.
As a presidential management fellow who started his job in February 2024, Mr. McKenzie was still on probation, and Mr. Trump’s order has been carried out by targeting the most recent hires who do not receive the same protections as more veteran federal employees. An estimated 200,000 workers are considered probationary employees, which typically means they had worked for the federal government for less than a year. As of Feb. 20, at least 19,340 probationary employees had been cut, according to a tally by The New York Times.
Landing a government job has long been viewed as a path to job security, economic stability and upward mobility. As of March 2024, around half of federal workers made between $50,000 and $109,999, according to the Pew Research Center, which relied on data from the Office of Personnel Management. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the median weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary workers in the United States was $1,192, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Shernice Mundell, who was recently fired from the Office of Personnel Management, said her monthly mortgage on her townhouse in Edgewood, Md., is $1,200 and took up about one-third of her biweekly paycheck, she said.
But she thought she had a secure future ahead of her. She was first hired in August 2024 in the disputed claims department and became a health insurance specialist in November 2024, after that position opened up and her supervisor referred her to that job.
“I was on the track to do what I set out to do,” said Ms. Mundell, 47, who is a Local 32 union member of the American Federation of Government Employees. “But now everything is all upside down.”
Her mortgage for this month is already paid for, but she’s still unsure about how to pay it for March. She has filed for unemployment assistance, which she said would cover her mortgage but not other expenses like utilities, her phone bill and HOA fees.
While she waits to hear if her unemployment benefits are granted, she has some funds in savings, as well as friends and family who are willing to help her. “I’m not completely afraid that I’m going to be homeless,” she said.
Still, it’s a jarring turn of events.
She bought her home as a single mother with three children in 2013 for $103,000, which she called “a huge accomplishment.”
She’s currently applying for new jobs and hopes something will pop up soon. She still wants to move. “It’s still my dream,” she said. “This is like the first chapter of my life. The way I see it, I still have another chapter to live.”
Nathan Barrera-Bunch, who was a management analyst at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, worries that he is now farther away from not only renting a nicer apartment, but also owning a home.
He said he and his fiancé currently live in a small basement apartment in Northwest D.C., moving there in 2020 because it was larger than their last place, and the rent was around the same, $2,000 a month, which the two split equally. Buying a home wasn’t an immediate priority, but he was still putting money away to hopefully start a family and buy a home one day.
But Mr. Barrera-Bunch, 36, said losing his job will eat into their savings. “There’s sort of all these dominoes that are starting to fall in an already expensive place to live in,” he said. “And so, this has upended our plans for housing and home and buying and all of that.”
He recalled visiting the nation’s capital for the first time at 18, and hoping to live there one day. He’s lived in Washington full time for just over 10 years now. “This is home now,” he said.
But staying in Washington might not be feasible. It all depends, he said, on whether his fiancé, who still works for the federal government, can keep his job and if Mr. Barrera-Bunch can find a new one. If they move, they could move to Puerto Rico or Florida, where his fiancé has family living.
For now, like many others, the uncertainty lingers, and he will just have to wait and see what happens. Mr. Barrera-Bunch said that he believes he will be OK and will hopefully find a job somewhere, but he is more concerned about people who don’t have other means of support.
“I’m fearful for the stability of the community here in D.C.,” he said. “There’s so many different communities that people are connected to in D.C., and so many of those are just about to be very, very disrupted.”
Mr. McKenzie, who worked at the U.S. Forest Service, said he and his husband are planning to list their New Jersey home — which his husband first purchased in 2022 for $215,000 — in May, when there’s more greenery to make it more attractive to potential buyers.
“It meant a lot for us to have accomplished something that not many people in our age group had accomplished by such an early point in our lives,” he said. “And then now, it kind of feels like we’re walking that accomplishment back a little bit.”
Though they used to split the mortgage payments, Mr. McKenzie took on the task when his husband started law school. He estimated that around half of his $87,000 salary was going toward the payments and a construction loan the couple took out to cover renovations.
They now plan to rent for a year and then figure something out. Mr. McKenzie said he and his husband have enough savings for about two months, but most of it is being put toward getting the house ready to sell. He said his brother-in-law recently moved in with them and pays them rent. Having that help, he said, is “like the only reason I wouldn’t be out on the street.”
As a presidential management fellow at the U.S. Forest Service, Mr. McKenzie was on a two-year probation. He thought he was in the clear with his prestigious position — the agency only hires 12 to 15 fellows per year.
His one-year work anniversary was Feb. 10. He was fired a week later.
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12) How Far Do Trump’s Cuts to Science Reach? To the Ends of the Earth.
The National Science Foundation has fired workers at the office that manages polar research, raising fears about a reduced U.S. presence in two strategic regions.
By Raymond Zhong, Feb. 25, 2025
The Ceremonial South Pole marker near Amundsen-Scott Station, the research base administered by the National Science Foundation. Credit...Jeff Capps/National Science Foundation
Kelly Brunt wasn’t the only federal employee to be laid off this month while traveling for work. But she was almost certainly the only one whose work trip was in Antarctica.
Dr. Brunt was a program director at the National Science Foundation, the $9 billion agency that supports scientific advancement in practically every field apart from medicine. As part of the Trump administration’s campaign to shrink the federal government, roughly 10 percent of the foundation’s 1,450 career employees lost their jobs last week. Officials told staff members that layoffs were just getting started.
Yet the office where Dr. Brunt worked has an importance that goes beyond science.
The Office of Polar Programs coordinates research in the Arctic and Antarctic, where the fragile, fast-changing environments are of growing strategic interest to the world’s superpowers.
By treaty, Antarctica is a scientific preserve. And for decades, U.S. research — plus the three year-round stations, the aircraft and the ships that support it — has been the bedrock of the country’s presence there.
Of late, though, “countries such as Korea and China have been rapidly expanding their presence, while the U.S. has been sort of maintaining the status quo,” said Julia Wellner, a marine scientist at the University of Houston who studies Antarctic glaciers.
The Office of Polar Programs has long been understaffed, said Michael Jackson, who worked as an Antarctic program director for the agency until retiring late last year. Aging planes and facilities, plus flat budgets for science, have snarled the pace of research. “Right now we are capable of doing maybe 60 percent of the science that we were capable of doing” 15 years ago, Dr. Jackson said.
If the Trump administration slashes science funding, American researchers could collaborate more with other nations’ polar institutes, as many already do, Dr. Wellner said. “But those other countries have their own scientists,” she said. “I don’t think South Korea or the U.K. is just going to make room for all of us.”
When asked how the layoffs of polar scientists would Foundation program officers help decide which projects like these are most worthy of federal funding. Often they are seasoned scientists themselves: Dr. Porter is an expert in atmospheric and oceanic science who has worked at Columbia University. representative declined to comment.
When the agency fired Dr. Brunt and other employees last week, she was heading home after spending over a month at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Another program director who was laid off, David Porter, had been supporting scientists embarking from New Zealand on a 10-week expedition in the Southern Ocean. Other teams were gearing up to drill ice cores, take seismic measurements, measure ultraviolet radiation and more.
Foundation program officers help decide which projects like these are most worthy of federal funding. Often they are seasoned scientists themselves: Dr. Porter is an expert in atmospheric and oceanic science who has worked at Columbia University.
Dr. Brunt’s N.S.F. employment was probationary because she became a permanent worker only six months ago, she said. Before that, she spent three years at the agency on temporary assignment from NASA and the University of Maryland. In total, she has 25 years of experience as a glaciologist and 15 Antarctic field seasons under her belt.
“I want to dispel this rumor that this is a bunch of people who are sitting around sucking off the government milk bottle,” Dr. Jackson said. “These are people that had well-established careers in academia, and they decided that they wanted to come to N.S.F. and give something back to the U.S. taxpayers.”
Dr. Jackson also doesn’t buy the idea that eliminating federal workers will root out fraud and abuse. “By removing the program officers at the front lines, you’re actually removing the very thing that you want to have there in place to make sure that no fraud and abuse is happening,” he said.
For scientists in the field, their program officer might also be their first point of contact when issues arise, said Twila Moon, the deputy lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.
“Maybe you’re having trouble with some of the logistics,” Dr. Moon said. “Maybe your instruments aren’t getting to you on time, or there’s been changes in the field flights that you need to think about.” Fewer officers mean more scientists at risk of snags or challenges, she said.
The geopolitical significance of Antarctica might help shield it from the administration’s most severe cost-cutting, said Dawn Sumner, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Davis, who studies microbes in Antarctic lakes. “The only way you can have a presence in Antarctica is through science,” Dr. Sumner said.
Even so, much of that science is motivated by the need to address human-caused global warming, a subject that President Trump and his allies have long denigrated as a nonissue.
Dr. Wellner of the University of Houston finds it “appalling” that Antarctic scientists might someday have to avoid mentioning climate change to receive federal funding. Still, she said, researchers in Texas, Florida and other states long ago figured out how to sidestep official taboos around climate.
“We talk about sea-level rise in Texas all the time,” Dr. Wellner said. “You don’t have to talk about ‘climate.’ It’s just ‘sea-level rise.’”
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13) Draft of Minerals Deal Features Vague Reference to Ukrainian Security
A copy of the agreement obtained by The New York Times says that the United States “supports Ukraine’s effort to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace.”
By Andrew E. Kramer and Constant Méheut, Feb. 26, 2025
Andrew Kramer reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Constant Méheut from Warsaw.
Extracting ilmenite, a titanium ore, in an open-pit mine in the central region of Kirovohrad, Ukraine, this month. Credit...Efrem Lukatsky/Associated Press [Ilmenite is the most important ore of titanium and the main source of titanium dioxide, which is used in paints, printing inks, fabrics, plastics, paper, sunscreen, food and cosmetics.]
A draft of an agreement calling for Ukraine to hand over to the United States revenue from natural resources includes new language referring to security guarantees, a provision Kyiv had pressed for vigorously in negotiations.
But the reference is vague and does not signal any specific American commitment to safeguarding Ukraine’s security.
A copy of the agreement obtained Wednesday by The New York Times included a sentence stating that the United States “supports Ukraine’s effort to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace.” Previous drafts did not have the phrase on security guarantees.
It was not clear whether the draft, dated Tuesday, was a final version.
A Ukrainian official briefed on the draft, and several people in Ukraine with knowledge of the talks, confirmed that wording on security had been included in the document. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
The agreement is seen as opening the door to possible continued backing from the United States under the Trump administration, either as aid for the war effort or as enforcement of any cease-fire. Officials in the United States and Ukraine said on Tuesday that a version had been accepted by both sides.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking to reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday, said that including mention of security guarantees had been a priority for him in negotiations and was necessary for Ukraine to call the deal successful.
“I really wanted the appearance of at least the phrase ‘security guarantee for Ukraine,’” in the document, Mr. Zelensky said. He was pleased, he said, that the deal was not framed as repayment for past assistance. It was important, he said, that in the agreement Ukrainians were not presented as “debtors.”
Mr. Zelensky said a date had not yet been set for a meeting with Mr. Trump in Washington. Mr. Trump had said a meeting could happen on Friday. The draft obtained by The Times showed Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury secretary, and Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s economy minister, as the initial signatories.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, spoke about the new phrase about security guarantees in terms suggesting that the United States had not acceded to the request for its inclusion. Mr. Shmyhal said that neither Mr. Zelensky nor other officials in the Ukrainian government would sign the deal if the phrase were omitted, calling it an “integral element” to the agreement on minerals.
Mr. Zelensky had proposed a deal granting the United States access to mineral wealth last fall as a contingency in case Mr. Trump won the American election. But the Ukrainian leader balked at the terms presented earlier this month after Mr. Trump took office.
Mr. Zelensky had pushed hard that a commitment to Ukraine’s security be detailed in the document. In exchange, Ukraine would contribute half of future natural resource earnings to an American-controlled fund.
The Trump administration resisted that request. Officials in Washington argued that security guarantees were implied in Washington’s holding a financial interest in Ukrainian metal ores, minerals, oil and natural gas, and that such an agreement would provide an incentive to prevent Russian occupation of the resources.
The American national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told Fox News this past week that, for Ukrainians, U.S. involvement in natural resources was “the best security guarantee they could ever hope for, much more than another pallet of ammunition.”
The draft from Tuesday included earlier phrasing that the United States would take “steps to protect mutual investments,” implying an American commitment to safeguard the sites of resource deposits, some of which are close to front lines.
Mr. Trump has called the deal payback for earlier American aid and had asked for $500 billion. That figure, included in earlier drafts, alarmed officials in Kyiv and was dropped from later versions.
The Trump administration negotiators, the Ukrainian official briefed on the draft said, had strenuously tried to exclude the phrase on security guarantees from earlier versions, arguing that the language was beyond the scope of a negotiation over mineral rights. It was added only in drafts late in the negotiations, the official said.
It was unclear if the new phrasing suggested support for American security guarantees or support for Ukraine’s ongoing diplomatic effort to shore up backing for a European peacekeeping mission and other assurances to safeguard a possible cease-fire.
The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, is scheduled to travel to Washington on Wednesday to present to Mr. Trump a European initiative to field a 30,000-strong peacekeeping force. European leaders have said such a force would nonetheless require an American “backstop” of military assistance, such as American satellite surveillance, air defense or air force support.
Other terms in the draft beyond security remained mostly unaltered from a previous draft on Monday. The Ukrainian government agreed to relinquish half of its revenues from the future monetization of natural resources including minerals, oil and gas, as well as earnings from associated infrastructure such as liquefied natural gas terminals and port infrastructure. The fund would not draw on revenue from already existing natural resource business such as mines and oil wells.
Those revenues would fill a fund where the United States would hold a percentage of ownership and degree of control “to the maximum” extent allowed under American law. It is unclear how that would be interpreted.
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14) She Lobbied for a Carcinogen. Now She’s at the E.P.A., Approving New Chemicals.
Lynn Dekleva, who recently took a senior role at the agency, once led an aggressive effort by industry to block regulations on formaldehyde.
By Hiroko Tabuchi, Feb. 26, 2025
The Environmental Protection Agency in Washington. Dr. Dekleva runs an office that has the authority to approve new chemicals for use. Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
Formaldehyde, the chemical of choice for undertakers and embalmers, is also used in products like furniture and clothes. But it can also cause cancer and severe respiratory problems. So, in 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency began a new effort to regulate it.
The chemicals industry fought back with an intensity that astonished even seasoned agency officials. Its campaign was led by Lynn Dekleva, then a lobbyist at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry group that spends millions of dollars on government lobbying.
Dr. Dekleva is now at the E.P.A. in a crucial job: She runs an office that has the authority to approve new chemicals for use. Earlier she spent 32 years at Dupont, the chemical maker, before joining the E.P.A. in the first Trump administration.
Her most recent employer, the chemicals lobbying group, has made reversing the Environmental Protection Agency’s course on formaldehyde a priority and is pushing to abolish a program under which the agency assess the risks of chemicals to human health. In recent weeks it has urged the agency to discard its work on formaldehyde entirely and start from scratch in assessing the risks.
The American Chemistry Council is also seeking to change the agency’s approval process for new chemicals and speed up E.P.A.’s safety reviews. That review process is a key part of Dr. Dekelva’s purview at the agency.
Another former chemistry council lobbyist, Nancy Beck, is back alongside Dr. Dekleva at the E.P.A. in a role regulating existing chemicals. The council’s president, Chris Jahn, told a Senate hearing shortly after the Trump inauguration that his group intended to tackle the “unnecessary regulation” of chemicals in the United States. “A healthy nation, a secure nation, an economically vibrant nation relies on chemistry,” he said.
It is not unusual or unlawful for industry groups to seek to influence public policy in the interest of their member companies. The A.C.C. estimates that products using formaldehyde support more than 1.5 million jobs in the United States.
What has been extraordinary, health and legal experts said, is the extent of the industry’s effort to block the E.P.A.’s scientific work on a chemical long acknowledged as a carcinogen, and how the architect of the effort was back at the agency as a regulator of chemicals. At the same time, the Trump administration has moved to sharply reduce the federal scientific work force.
“They already have a track record of ignoring the science,” said Tracey Woodruff, director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco. “Now, they’re in charge of government agencies that decide the rules.”
While leading the chemistry council’s fight to limit formaldehyde regulation, Dr. Dekleva called for investigations of federal officials for potential bias. The industry group used freedom of information laws to obtain emails of federal employees and criticized them in public statements for what they had written. It submitted dozens of industry-funded research papers to agencies that minimized the risks of formaldehyde.
The A.C.C. also sued both the E.P.A. and the National Academies, which advises the nation on scientific questions, accusing researchers of a lack of scientific integrity.
Allison Edwards, a chemistry council spokeswoman, said officials from the group had regularly met with E.P.A. staff members “to share critical science and to try and ensure an assessment of any chemistry is objective, employs rigorous scientific standards, and is reflective of real-world human exposure.” She said, “We’re asking to be one of many stakeholders at the table.”
Molly Vaseliou, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., said the agency would continue to make sure it “ensures chemicals do not pose an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment.” At the same time, the agency would also work to approve “chemicals that are needed to power American innovation and competitiveness,” she said.
Formaldehyde’s cancer risk
Formaldehyde’s fumes can cause wheezing and a burning sensation in the eyes, especially when they accumulate indoors. That danger was apparent when formaldehyde in plywood used to build temporary trailer homes for victims of Hurricane Katrina sickened dozens of people.
And there are longer-term dangers, namely several types of cancers. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded in 2004 that the chemical is a human carcinogen, and the U.S. Department of Health listed it as a human carcinogen in 2011.
The chemical is restricted in the workplace, in certain composite wood products, and in pesticides. Yet efforts to strengthen overall regulations in the United States have stalled in the face of industry opposition.
President Biden, whose “cancer moonshot” program had made reducing cancer deaths a priority, revived in 2021 an E.P.A. assessment of the health effects of the chemical, and published a draft the following year. That effort, under the agency’s Integrated Risk Information System, was the first step toward regulating formaldehyde.
The chemistry council led a coalition of industry groups, including the Composite Panel Association and Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers, arguing that formaldehyde had already been rigorously studied and that strict industry controls were in place.
In a half-dozen letters to the E.P.A., Dr. Dekleva, on behalf of a formaldehyde panel at the industry group, raised a list of complaints about the way the agency was carrying out its assessment.
She questioned research linking formaldehyde to leukemia, or cancer of the blood, and accused the agency of not relying on the best available science. There was a dose, she said, at which formaldehyde did not cause risk. There was also research, she said, that showed inhaled formaldehyde did not easily travel beyond the nose to cause harm to the body.
In light of these issues, Dr. Dekleva wrote, agency’s draft assessment was “flawed and unreliable without significant revision.”
To bolster its case, the industry group enlisted experts at consulting firms to submit opinions and studies to the E.P.A. minimizing formaldehyde’s risks. The firms included those previously commissioned by tobacco companies to help defend cigarettes.
The A.C.C. also submitted 41 peer-reviewed studies that it said refuted a link between formaldehyde and leukemia. A New York Times review found that the majority of the studies were funded by industry groups, including at least 11 from the Research Foundation for Health and Environmental Effects, an organization established by the American Chemistry Council.
David Michaels, an epidemiologist and professor at George Washington University School of Public Health and assistant secretary of labor under President Barack Obama, said the industry strategy was to create the appearance of disagreement among scientists.
While it’s true, he said, that inconsistencies can always exist in studies on humans, “there’s little disagreement among independent scientists that formaldehyde causes cancer.”
Scientists targeted
For more than 150 years, the National Academies has advised the U.S. government on science. In 2021, it was asked to weigh in on the E.P.A.’s work on formaldehyde.
It became a target of the American Chemistry Council.
The industry group used freedom of information laws to obtain internal emails of members and support staff of a panel assessing the E.P.A.’s formaldehyde review, and it accused one staff of showing “bias in favor of disputed research claiming formaldehyde causes leukemia.”
The staff member, a former Environmental Protection Agency scientist, had for example described as “wonderful” the news that Congress might try to replicate an influential Chinese study that had shown formaldehyde could cause leukemia.
Wendy E. Wagner, professor at the University of Texas School of Law and an expert on the use of science by environmental policymakers, said she did not see how the comment reflected bias. “After all, they don’t know what the results will be, do they?” she said. “I would expect all scientists to be enthusiastic about potential future research.”
Dr. Dekleva called for investigations at both the E.P.A. and the National Academies, and for the removal of potentially biased panel members and staff. That included scientists who had previously accepted federal research grants.
In July 2023, the industry group sued the E.P.A., as well as the National Academies, accusing researchers of a lack of scientific integrity. The chemistry council said that lack of integrity made the use of the National Academies research in regulating formaldehyde “arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful.”
“It was relentless, and beyond the pale,” said Maria Doa, a scientist at the E.P.A. for 30 years who is now senior director of chemicals policy at the Environmental Defense Fund. “They really ratcheted up their attacks on federal employees.”
The National Academies stood its ground, issuing a report the following month affirming the E.P.A.’s Integrated Risk Information System findings that formaldehyde is carcinogenic and increases leukemia risk.
Those conclusions are shared by other global health authorities.
Mary Schubauer-Berigan, the evidence-synthesis head at the World Health Organization’s Agency for Research on Cancer, said there was “sufficient evidence in humans” that formaldehyde causes leukemia as and nasopharynx cancer. Mikko Vaananen, a spokesman for the European Chemicals Agency, said that while some questions around specific links to leukemia remained unanswered, evidence was sufficient to classify formaldehyde as a carcinogen. Formaldehyde “cannot in principle be placed on the E.U. market,” he said.
In March 2024, a federal judge dismissed the chemistry council’s lawsuit. And early this year, near the end of the Biden administration, the E.P.A. issued a final risk determination, under the Toxic Substances Control Act: Formaldehyde “presents an unreasonable risk of injury to human health.”
Mary A. Fox, an expert in chemical risk assessment at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and a member of a committee that reviewed the E.P.A.’s research on formaldehyde, said agency scientists had accurately reflected the uncertainties around the links between formaldehyde and leukemia. But they had documented many other streams of evidence that indicated that link, Dr. Fox said.
“It’s an inevitable progress of science, that as we learn more over time, we generally learn that health effects appear at lower concentrations than we had thought,” she said.
Following Mr. Trump’s re-election, the American Chemistry Council signed onto a letter from a range of industry groups calling for broad changes to policy, specifically citing formaldehyde. “We urge your administration to pause and reconsider” the E.P.A. findings on formaldehyde, the Dec. 5 letter said.
The E.P.A. “should go back to the scientific drawing board,” chemistry council said in January. The group was particularly concerned about the workplace limits the agency was suggesting, which it said ignored steps companies were already taking to protect workers, like the use of personal protective equipment.
The A.C.C. is also supporting a bill from Republican members of Congress that would end the Integrated Risk Information System.
Soon after, Trump transition officials said Dr. Dekleva would be returning to the E.P.A. to run a program assessing chemicals for approval. The chemistry council, which has long complained of a backlog, is pushing the agency to speed up approvals.
During the first Trump administration, agency whistle-blowers described in an inspector general’s investigation how they had faced “intense” pressure to eliminate the backlog, sometimes at the expense of safety. Shortly after the inauguration, the Trump administration fired the inspector-general who carried out the investigation.
On Jan. 20, the A.C.C. welcomed President Trump. “Americans want a stronger, more affordable country,” said Mr. Jahn, the group’s president. “America’s chemical manufacturers can help.”
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15) As Poverty Rises in New York City, 1 in 4 Can’t Afford Essentials
The share of New Yorkers in poverty is nearly double the national average, according to a report from Columbia University and an anti-poverty group.
By Benjamin Oreskes, Benjamin Oreskes reported from Albany, N.Y., Feb. 26, 2025
A new report found that more than half of New Yorkers live in families with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty line. Credit...Spencer Platt/Getty Images
A quarter of New York City residents don’t have enough money for staples like housing and food, and many say they cannot afford to go to the doctor, according to a report that underscores the urgency of an affordability crisis elected officials are struggling to confront.
The report, by a research group at Columbia University and Robin Hood, an anti-poverty group, found that the share of New Yorkers in poverty was nearly double the national average in 2023 and had increased by seven percentage points in just two years.
The spike is in part due to the expiration of government aid that was expanded during the pandemic.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams, appearing to recognize that discontent about the high cost of living could imperil their political futures, have focused their agendas and re-election hopes partly on conveying to voters that they are trying to make New York more affordable. It is a formidable task, said Richard Buery Jr., the chief executive of Robin Hood.
The city “has so much wealth but also so much need,” he said. He added, “These are entirely human-made problems.”
The report is part of a roughly 13-year-study that surveys a representative sample of more about 3,000 households in New York City. Researchers use a different metric than the federal government to measure poverty, taking into account income, noncash support like tax credits and the local cost of living.
Under that metric, the poverty threshold for a couple with two children in a rental household in New York City is now $47,190. The study found that 58 percent of New Yorkers, or more than 4.8 million people, were in families with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty line — about $94,000 for a couple with two children or $44,000 for a single adult. Poverty rates among Black, Latino and Asian residents were about twice as high as the rate for white residents, according to the report.
Mr. Buery applauded several of the policy proposals in Ms. Hochul’s executive budget as a good start to addressing this crisis. The governor has proposed slashing the state’s income tax for most residents, and she wants to give expectant mothers on public assistance a $100 monthly benefit during pregnancy, plus $1,200 for those mothers when their child is born.
The report found 26 percent of children in New York City, or 420,000 children, live in poverty.
The most sweeping proposal would give eligible families a tax break of up to $1,000 per child under the age of 4 or up to $500 for each child aged 4 to 16. Researchers at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University estimated that the tax cut and several other earlier proposals Ms. Hochul supported could reduce child poverty in New York City by about 17 percent.
“It pains me as a mom to think of little kids’ stomachs growling while they’re in school while they’re supposed to be learning,” Ms. Hochul said in her State of the State address last month.
Avi Small, a spokesman for Ms. Hochul, pointed to cuts to programs like Medicaid that Republicans in Washington want to enact as another threat to poor New Yorkers.
“The governor is tackling the high cost of living with tax cuts, credits and refunds while expanding social services for those who need it most,” he said.
Late last year, Mr. Adams proposed eliminating New York City income taxes for more than 400,000 of the lowest-wage earners. The City Council also passed a major housing plan he championed known as “City of Yes.” The plan includes billions for the construction of affordable housing and zoning incentives that allow developers to construct larger buildings so long as they include cheaper units.
“Mayor Adams has been using every tool in our administration’s toolbox to put money back in the pockets of New Yorkers and make New York City more affordable so that families can thrive,” Amaris Cockfield, a spokeswoman for Mr. Adams, said in a statement.
The Robin Hood report highlighted a scarcity of housing and its rising cost as main drivers in the growing number of people living in poverty. Most people surveyed were either working or looking for a job. And yet many reported falling behind on rent or struggling to pay for food.
“There is a lack of political will to actually invest in services for the lowest-income people,” said Chris Mann, an assistant vice president for Women In Need, which runs shelters in New York City.
Peter Nabozny, director of policy for the Children’s Agenda, and Mr. Buery served on a state task force that offered policy recommendations for cutting child poverty in half by 2032. Ms. Hochul spurned their suggestions of a larger child tax credit and a new housing voucher.
Mr. Nabozny said some recent government anti-poverty efforts have been positive but “are not large enough to achieve what we could achieve if we really set our mind to it as a state.”
One affordability proposal from Ms. Hochul that some legislators have opposed is giving millions of New Yorkers tax rebates of up to $500 depending on their income. This is slated to cost $3 billion, the same amount as last fiscal year’s budgetary surplus.
State Senator James Skoufis, a Democrat, said that a large portion of this funding could, for example, instead be used to expand a program that reduces the property tax burden on older people.
[I.e., pitting poor families against the elderly. —Bonnie Weinstein]
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16) Israel and Hamas Will Move Forward With Another Swap
The remains of four Israelis will be turned over in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, which had been delayed.
By Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 26, 2025
Israel and Hamas have agreed to exchange the remains of four Israelis on Wednesday night for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, the Israeli government said, resolving an impasse that had injected added uncertainty around the future of the cease-fire in Gaza.
The agreement comes as the first phase of the fragile truce draws to a close in the coming days. Negotiators have yet to reach terms to extend the deal into a more comprehensive resolution to the conflict, raising concerns that the fighting in Gaza could resume.
During the first phase of the cease-fire, Hamas agreed to free 25 Israeli hostages and hand over the bodies of eight others in exchange for more than 1,500 Palestinians jailed by Israel. On Saturday, Hamas released the last living captives set to be freed in the first phase, and Israel was supposed to release about 620 Palestinian prisoners in return.
But Israel delayed the release, saying the prisoners would not be freed until Hamas committed to stop staging “humiliating ceremonies” during the handoffs. The snag raised more questions about how long the truce would hold.
Hamas has been releasing hostages in performative ceremonies aimed at showing that it is still in control of Gaza. Israeli officials have condemned the ceremonies.
Late on Tuesday night, Hamas announced that a deal had been reached for the simultaneous release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the remains of the four Israelis, who were taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023. The Israeli prime minister’s office said mediators had guaranteed that Hamas would hand over the coffins without another release ceremony.
On Wednesday afternoon, Hamas’s military wing named the four dead Israelis to be returned as Ohad Yahalomi, Itzhak Elgarat, Shlomo Mansour and Tsachi Idan. Israel did not immediately comment on the names.
Some of the Palestinian prisoners listed for release were convicted of deadly attacks against Israelis. Others — including minors — were arrested without formal charges after Israeli forces swept through Gaza during their ground invasion.
The impending exchange may be the last in the first phase of the cease-fire, leaving both Israelis and Palestinians in limbo. About 25 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others are still in Gaza, according to the Israeli government.
It is unclear whether serious negotiations on the second phase of the agreement have even begun. Israel and Hamas were supposed to start talks during the second week of the cease-fire. But there has been little evidence of progress despite pressure from mediators.
Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy, was expected in the Middle East on Wednesday in an attempt to move the talks forward. But Mr. Witkoff’s trip has been delayed, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss his schedule.
Still, neither Israel nor Hamas seem eager to immediately return to war. Hamas most likely wants to maintain the truce to rebuild its power in devastated Gaza. For Israel, the return of the remaining captives and bodies held by Hamas is a priority.
The Israeli military has already made extensive preparations for a new and intense campaign in Gaza, according to three defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak more freely. On Sunday, the Israeli military announced that it had increased “operational readiness in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip.”
The first phase of the cease-fire has been plagued by repeated allegations of violations on both sides.
Israel has repeatedly fired on Palestinians in Gaza who it said were violating the truce by approaching forbidden areas, killing some and wounding others, according to local health officials. The Israeli military has also said that it has struck areas from where rockets have been launched in Gaza; none of those projectiles crossed the border into Israeli territory.
And days before the release of the prisoners was delayed, Hamas’s initial failure to return the body of Shiri Bibas as promised provoked outrage in Israel. Hamas militants had handed over what it said was her body alongside her children’s remains in a televised ceremony.
Israeli forensic analysts later determined that the remains did not belong to her. Hamas later acknowledged the possibility of a mistake and handed over the correct remains late on Friday night.
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17) Who Gets to Own Scotland?
A new land-reform bill aims to unwind a long history of inequality. But centuries of feudalism are difficult to shake.
By Jillian Rayfield, Photographs by Robert Ormerod, Feb. 26, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/realestate/scotland-land-reform.html
Taymouth Castle, a neo-Gothic estate in the Scottish Highlands, is being converted into a luxury golf club by an American developer.
Taymouth Castle, a neo-Gothic estate in the Scottish Highlands, is being converted into a luxury golf club by an American developer.
The Loch Tay area of the Scottish Highlands has long attracted visitors in search of stunning scenery, outdoor adventure and a glimpse of Taymouth Castle, a lavish neo-Gothic estate that sits in the shadows of the green Grampian Mountains.
Built in the early 1800s by the once-powerful Campbell clan, Taymouth Castle has had a bit of a bumpy road. After the Campbells sold it in 1922 to pay off gambling debts, it served as a hotel, a World War II hospital, a training site for nuclear war preparations and a drama school.
In more recent decades, a string of private buyers tried and failed to restore the estate, usually running out of money and leaving it to fall further into decay. But locals and visitors were still free to walk its idyllic grounds, thanks largely to a 2003 land-reform law that enshrined the public’s “right to roam” Scotland’s majestic landscapes without interference from private landowners. The tourism dollars they brought were good for the village of Kenmore, a short walk from the castle.
So there was some worry when an American real estate developer, Discovery Land Company, began acquiring the Taymouth estate in 2018 with a plan to restore the castle and develop the land into a luxury residential community and golf club that it says will encompass 7,775 acres, or about 12 square miles.
The plans, estimated at around $380 million, sparked an outcry, especially when the developer bought several local businesses, including the Kenmore Hotel and the village shop. There were fears about the potential impact on the environment and on local housing costs, not to mention the possibility that the new owners would cut off public access to the land. A petition launched by a group called Protect Loch Tay urging Scots to sign before “we have lost our stunning natural heritage in this area forever” drew more than 160,000 signatures.
In a country known for its majestic scenery, there are conflicting ideas — as well as a new land-reform bill making its way through Scotland’s parliament — concerning what, if anything, should be done to stop wealthy buyers from engulfing the countryside.
“There’s a feeling that much of the local assets are getting sucked into this vision that the developer has,” said Mark Ruskell, a member of Scotland’s parliament whose region includes the Loch Tay area. “And that doesn’t necessarily work for the long-term sustainability of the community.”
The Taymouth Castle website promises that the new stewards “are fully committed to the letter and spirit of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003,” and will protect not just public access, but the landscape, the wildlife and the surrounding community, creating more than 200 jobs in and around Kenmore. Much of the castle restoration was completed last year, including ornate details like stained-glass windows and a gold-leaf ceiling. Work is ongoing to refurbish the golf course, and 145 luxury homes have yet to be built.
All the commotion has highlighted an age-old question in Scotland: How much land is too much? According to the government, parcels of more than 1,000 hectares (roughly 2,500 acres) represent over half of Scotland’s land, while about 11 percent is publicly owned or managed by the Scottish Crown Estate.
“It’s probably one of the most concentrated patterns of private land ownership anywhere in the world,” said Andy Wightman, a former parliament member who now tracks the country’s land ownership. According to his data, half of all the privately owned rural land in Scotland is controlled by 421 landowners.
“We don’t have proper oversight over who buys land in Scotland, or what they’re doing with it,” said Josh Doble, the policy manager for Community Land Scotland, which represents community landowners and wants to put more rural land in their control. “There’s no limit on how much land a person can own, there’s no kind of public interest considerations.”
Between 2020 and 2022, the value of rural land jumped by as much as 58 percent in some areas, driven mostly by foreign investors buying up forests and damaged peatlands in pursuit of carbon credits (the carbon emitted when peat dries out contributes to climate change). One of them, the Danish billionaire Anders Povlsen, is now Scotland’s largest private landowner, with more than 200,000 acres.
But the issue goes back centuries. During a period that began in the 1700s known as the Highland Clearances, wealthy landlords with huge estates evicted and relocated thousands of tenant farmers living on the land, hollowing out working communities. Though some reforms were made over the years, Scotland only abolished its feudal system of land tenure in 2000, and the dynamic has been hard to shake.
“We never had the sort of revolutionary moment that the French or the Irish had, which led to huge change,” said Malcolm Combe, a senior lecturer in law at the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, adding: “Until now. We’re trying to do land reform in a kind of modern setting.”
Today, concentrated land ownership “appears to be causing significant and long term damage to the communities affected,” according to government analysis, including a surge in land prices, declining population and sagging income levels among some rural residents.
The new bill in parliament aims to claw back some of that land by expanding community ownership and giving more power to tenant farmers and smaller landholders. The law would give elected officials the ability to break up parcels of more than 1,000 hectares when they come up for sale, allowing more communities, farmers and small businesses the chance to buy at affordable prices. It would also force some landowners to engage local communities in their plans for the terrain.
Mr. Ruskell, the Scottish member, said that the current landholding system in some ways echoes the 19th-century model, just with corporations in place of feudal landlords. “As a result, you have communities where there’s a huge housing crisis, where it’s difficult for young people to stay in these local communities,” he said.
Chris Heasman, a writer and activist who lives just outside of Kenmore, partly blames the vestiges of feudalism for the housing issues in the area, where finding a home can be a “nightmare.”
In some cases, he said, the Taymouth estate plans have “jeopardized housing further.” He pointed to one proposal to build a golf maintenance hub on land that had been carved out for affordable housing. (It was eventually withdrawn.)
“All these issues that have arisen, I’m not convinced that they are an acceptable price to pay for the castle being restored inside,” Mr. Heasman said. “Especially when the vast majority of people are not going to be able to actually enjoy the castle, or even see it.”
But others are convinced that the redevelopment of neglected treasures like Taymouth Castle, and the accompanying investment in surrounding areas, is what’s best for the local communities.
“What would you rather have: A great big blot on the landscape falling to bits, or would you like someone to do something about it?” said Shirley Shearer, a local business owner and vice chair of the Kenmore & District Community Council, a group run by elected locals.
“In general, everything is looking much more affluent,” she said, adding that there’s more life in the community and a “renewed optimism” about its future.
Discovery Land Company declined to make its leadership available for interviews, but David O’Donoghue, the hospitality and real estate development leader of Taymouth Castle, said in an email statement that the company intends to protect Kenmore, land-access rights and the local environment. It also has touted its intention to “identify and revitalize unsustainable hospitality units” and “regionally expand work force housing over the next several years.”
“We have taken meaningful steps to expand the stock of affordable housing in the region and will continue to seek opportunities to do so,” Mr. O’Donoghue wrote. “This is not only a commitment we have made to the community, it is also essential to the operations of the Estate.”
Opponents of the land-reform bill argue that it will only hurt large-scale farmers and others who tend the land, discouraging new investment in those communities. Sarah-Jane Laing, the chief executive of Scottish Land & Estates, which represents rural landowners, said the government has an “overfocus” on concentrated land ownership that’s based on history and ideology. “In reality, it doesn’t matter who owns the land,” she said. “It’s about what they do with it.”
The landscapes beloved by Scots and tourists are “not unmanaged wilderness,” she added. “There are people whose investment and time and passion is going into maintaining those landscapes or improving them.”
Colin Morton, a retired Kenmore resident and a member of the community council, touted Discovery’s renovations in the village. Opposition to the development has “nothing to do with what’s best for the area here or the community here,” he said. “It’s all about political point scoring.”
Supporters of land reform, on the other hand, argue that making land more affordable and attainable is crucial for unwinding the power imbalance separating large-scale landowners from the communities that sit on their holdings. One way is with community right-to-buy policies, which theoretically make it easier for locals to collectively purchase the land where they live. Similar measures have been part of two land-reform bills passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2003 and 2016. Yet today, less than 3 percent of rural land is community-owned, according to Mr. Wightman’s analysis.
That leaves him skeptical about anything this new bill might accomplish — its proposals apply only to land that’s been put on the market, and then are too conservative. “The bottom line is they’ve introduced a bill that’s going to make no meaningful impact on the pattern of land ownership,” he said.
Whatever happens with the bill, said Mr. Ruskell, “we’ll need another land reform bill probably in 10 years time to take the next step. It’s probably going to take a generation to really start to unpick things.”
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18) Unvaccinated Child Dies of Measles in Texas, Officials Say
At least 124 cases of measles have been identified in Texas since late January, mostly among children and teenagers who are either unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, officials say.
By Michael Levenson, Feb. 26, 2025
The South Plains region of Texas, where a measles outbreak has been spreading, has vaccination rates that lag significantly behind federal targets. Credit...Sebastian Rocandio/Reuters
A child has died of measles in West Texas, the first known death from an outbreak of the disease that is spreading in the state and in neighboring New Mexico, officials said on Wednesday.
Health officials in Lubbock and the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement that the patient was an unvaccinated school-age child who had died in the previous 24 hours.
The officials did not release further information, but said that a news conference was planned for Wednesday afternoon at the Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock.
At least 124 cases of measles have been identified in Texas since late January, mostly among children and teenagers who are either unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown, Texas health officials say. Eighteen have been hospitalized.
Measles is a highly contagious respiratory illness that can be life-threatening to anyone who is not protected against the virus.
Doctors say the best way to protect against the disease is with two doses of a vaccine, which is usually administered to children as a combination measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR, vaccine. Two doses of the MMR vaccine prevent more than 97 percent of measles infections, according to Texas health officials.
The South Plains region of Texas, where the outbreak has been spreading, has vaccination rates that lag significantly behind federal targets.
New Mexico has also reported an outbreak, with nine cases in Lea County, in the southeastern part of the state, on the Texas border. Four of those cases are children under the age of 18, all of whom are unvaccinated, according to Robert Nott, a spokesman for the New Mexico Department of Health. None of the cases in New Mexico have led to hospitalizations, he said.
The outbreak comes amid growing concerns among public health experts about declining vaccination rates and the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic, as the nation’s health secretary.
Measles can be transmitted when an infected person breathes, coughs or sneezes. People who are infected will begin to have symptoms within a week or two after being exposed. Early symptoms include high fever, cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes. Within a few days, a telltale rash breaks out as flat, red spots on the face and then spreads down the neck and trunk to the rest of the body.
Texas health officials have been holding vaccination clinics and encouraging people to get the MMR vaccine.
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19) Unknown Deadly Illness Strikes Western Congo
The outbreak has been traced, tentatively, to three children who ate a bat, the W.H.O. said, and known threats like Ebola and Marburg have been ruled out.
By Eve Sampson, Feb. 25, 2025
In Équateur Province, Democratic Republic of Congo, last year. Credit...Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times
An unidentified illness has killed scores of people and infected hundreds in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization has reported, with preliminary investigations tracing the outbreak to three children who in January ate a bat and died.
Fifty-three people in the country’s northwest had died from the disease, out of 431 reported cases as of Feb. 15, and “with nearly half of the deaths occurring within 48 hours of symptom onset” in one of two identified clusters, according to a weekly bulletin published by the W.H.O.’s Africa office.
“The outbreak, which has seen cases rise rapidly within days, poses a significant public health threat,” the report said, and “the exact cause remains unknown.”
Victims’ symptoms have included fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and body aches, among others. The children who perished from the illness also had bled from the nose and vomited blood.
The link to a bat may be significant, because viruses in bats are known to cause a number of other diseases in humans. Bats are thought to be natural reservoirs for Marburg and Ebola viruses, two hemorrhagic fevers that are the source of ongoing outbreaks in the region, and a bat virus appears to have been a precursor to the Covid-19 virus.
The disease, which has infected people in Congo’s Équateur Province, has been fatal in over 12 percent of cases. Investigators identified an initial outbreak in Boloko Village that spread to nearby Danda Village, the W.H.O. said. A second, larger outbreak occurred in Bomate Village and has infected over 400 people.
The investigators sent 18 samples to Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, for testing, ruling out Ebola and Marburg viruses.
Last year, an unknown flulike illness infected hundreds of people in the southwestern part of the country. It was later found to likely be respiratory infections complicated by malaria.
The unknown outbreak in northwestern Équateur Province is several hundred miles removed from the war and deepening humanitarian crisis tearing apart eastern Congo. M23 rebels backed by Rwanda have been fighting the Congolese Army there and gaining ground.
Équateur covers an area the size of Kentucky straddling the Congo River, much of it sparsely populated farmland and rainforest.
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