- 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) 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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2) 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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3) 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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4) 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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5) 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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6) 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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7) 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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8) 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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9) 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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10) West Bank Operation Tests Palestinian Leaders’ Ability to Root Out Militants
The Palestinian Authority wants to prove it can handle security in Gaza, even if it means working in parallel with a destructive Israeli campaign that has displaced tens of thousands.
By Adam Rasgon and Fatima AbdulKarim, Feb. 28, 2025
Adam Rasgon and Fatima AbdulKarim interviewed more than 25 officials, residents and analysts.
Security forces from the Palestinian Authority deploying in the Jenin camp neighborhood of the West Bank in January. Credit...Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Palestinian Authority was carrying out one of the most extensive security operations in its history, pursuing armed militants in the West Bank city of Jenin. For weeks, the authority’s forces slowly advanced on the militants’ densely populated stronghold, Palestinian officials said.
When the Israeli military launched its own wide-scale raid there in January, the authority was expected to abandon its operation.
But it did not.
Instead, when dozens of militants fled to nearby villages, Palestinian security forces swooped in to arrest them, officials said. “We made very important progress in reinforcing law and order,” Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab, the spokesman for the authority’s security forces, said in a phone interview.
The authority, which has limited governing powers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, had for years largely ceded the fight against militants to Israel. But as questions swirl over whether it can take on governance and security in Gaza, the group’s leaders appear eager to demonstrate that they will not shy away from fighting — even if it means angering Palestinians who say the authority is abetting an operation that is destroying large parts of the West Bank and displacing tens of thousands.
Jenin, and in particular the Jenin camp, a sprawling neighborhood built for refugees in the aftermath of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, had become a haven for Iran-backed armed fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Over the years, they have grown more sophisticated in their ability to develop explosives and obtain advanced weaponry, like M16 rifles smuggled from Israel.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas led an attack on Israel that started the war in Gaza, Israel has carried out scores of raids in the West Bank, including with airstrikes, killing many civilians. Israel says it carries out these raids in accordance with international law. The authority mostly avoided a direct confrontation with the militants, trying to encourage them to turn themselves in.
But in December, the authority decided to take more forceful action. Security forces had arrested an Islamic Jihad operative while he was picking up tens of thousands of dollars smuggled into the West Bank, according to Palestinian officials.
The New York Times spoke to more than a dozen Palestinian officials about the operations in Jenin. They all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations and operational plans.
The militants responded by hijacking two government trucks and parading through the city, in a scene caught on video and widely shared on social media. The episode was a stark representation of the authority’s weakness: It was broad daylight and the trucks were draped in the flags of Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
The authority’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, was so enraged that he felt he had to act immediately after he saw the video, according to Palestinian officials.
The authority deployed elite forces and armored vehicles; it set up checkpoints and engaged in daily gun battles with militants in the camp. More than a dozen people were killed, including six security officers, a journalist, a woman and three teenage boys. It also led to the displacement of thousands and widespread losses of water and power.
Hundreds of people were arrested, Gen. Rajab said at a news conference in January, though it was unclear how many were gunmen.
The authority was cautious about making hasty moves on the militants, wary that could lead to a large number of civilian deaths, according to officials. After weeks in which the authority struggled to make progress in its operation, Israel raided Jenin.
It was widely assumed that the authority’s operation would end, but Palestinian security chiefs stayed in Jenin, directing intelligence-based arrest operations in nearby villages, some of the Palestinian officials said. The chiefs recently pulled back to Ramallah, the administrative headquarters for the authority, but arrest operations continue around Jenin, the officials said.
In the days after Israel raided the city, the authority’s security forces arrested 120 gunmen who had left the camp, General Rajab said on Wednesday.
The extent to which the authority and Israel have been coordinating on this operation is unclear. Both sides have long shared information and worked to avoid running into each other, several Palestinian officials said, a policy that many Palestinians have criticized.
General Rajab would only say that the authority was doing “what it needed to do” in Jenin. In the face of criticism from Palestinians, the authority has said that many of the militants have criminal backgrounds.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said at a news briefing in January that Israel and the authority maintained de-confliction protocols “to make sure we don’t get in each other’s way,” but he did not go into detail about how that has worked in Jenin.
Israel’s recent operation has inflicted some of the most severe damage in years, ripping up roads, demolishing dozens of buildings and killing more than 25 people in the broader Jenin area, according to the authority’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, has vowed that the military will remain there long term, raising alarm among authority officials.
Israel’s military has said it killed dozens of militants across several cities in the northern West Bank.
The authority has refused to step away from its operation in Jenin, arguing that it must seize every opportunity to subdue the militants, whom it has accused of giving Israel pretext to destroy the city.
That has hardly raised its standing among residents of the West Bank, who broadly see it as a corrupt entity that colludes with Israel. Many Palestinians also see the armed groups in Jenin as fighting for them against forces occupying the West Bank.
“They are two sides of the same coin,” said Shadi Abu Samen, 47, a resident of the Jenin camp, referring to Israel and the authority.
In phone interviews with The New York Times, militants in the Jenin Brigade of Islamic Jihad said they had taken up weapons to confront Israeli soldiers raiding their neighborhood. Abu Mohammed, a member of the brigade, said he believed the authority and Israel were pursuing a similar goal: “Eradicate the resistance and its spirit.”
“They want us to surrender but we won’t accept that,” said Abu Mohammed, 33, using his nom de guerre.
The Times spoke to Abu Mohammed before Israel’s latest operation in Jenin and has since been unable to reach him.
Some Palestinian analysts said that the focus on security wouldn’t be enough if neither Israel nor the authority made any attempt to improve living conditions as well.
“We’re talking about a place that lacks so many basic resources,” said Ibrahim Dalalsha, the director of the Horizon Center, a Palestinian research group in Ramallah. “Any security operation needs to be accompanied by a social, economic, development operation.”
Civilians have paid a clear price for the operations. Almost all of the residents of the Jenin camp have been displaced over the past two months, according to the United Nations.
“We’re living through a violent storm,” said Hilal Jalamneh, 50, a resident of the camp. “The last bit of hope we were holding on to is now gone.”
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11) What’s Next for the Gaza Truce? Look at the Border With Egypt.
Israeli forces are supposed to begin withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor, a sensitive border zone between Gaza and Egypt, this weekend.
By Aaron Boxerman, Feb. 28, 2025
As the first phase of the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas winds down this weekend, the future of the truce remains murky. What happens in a key strip of land along the border between Egypt and Gaza in the coming week could provide an indication of how things will move forward.
Israel is supposed to begin withdrawing troops on Sunday from the border area, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and leave it completely by the following weekend. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has long said that Israeli control there is a core security national interest, injecting uncertainty over this step.
What is the Philadelphi Corridor?
An eight-mile strip of land that divides Gaza from Egypt, the Philadelphi Corridor emerged as a major sticking point in cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas. The border, which divides the city of Rafah, was set up under the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979.
After Hamas seized full control of Gaza in 2007, its fighters and officials oversaw the enclave’s border with Egypt and the Rafah crossing, the only exit from Gaza to the outside world not directly overseen by Israel.
Israeli officials have argued that Hamas smuggled in arms and materiel for its fighters from across the Egyptian border. In September, Mr. Netanyahu called the Philadelphi Corridor “Hamas’s oxygen valve.”
In May, Israeli troops advanced along the corridor as part of the military’s assault on Rafah. For months afterward, Mr. Netanyahu argued that leaving the area would endanger Israeli security by allowing Hamas to rearm.
But at the same time, Mr. Netanyahu committed to withdrawing from the border area as part of the cease-fire.
What is supposed to happen this week?
Israeli negotiators are in Cairo for meetings with Egyptian and Qatari mediators to discuss the next steps in the truce. Hamas officials visited the Egyptian capital last week for their own deliberations.
According to the three-part cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, Israeli forces are set to begin withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor six weeks into the truce, coinciding with the end of the first phase of the agreement, would expire on Saturday night.
The two sides concluded the final hostage-for-prisoner swaps in the first phase of the agreement on Thursday. They have yet to negotiate the next steps, which would include a permanent end to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory.
Israel is supposed to leave the corridor by the end of next week, according to the cease-fire deal. The vacuum could be filled by Hamas, which has been reasserting its power in Gaza since the truce went into effect in mid-January.
Will Israel actually withdraw?
Israel agreed to leave the border area by the 50th day of the truce, which would be in early March. Refusing to abide by that commitment would be seen as a major violation and add even more uncertainty to the already precarious truce.
But if the withdrawal goes ahead on schedule, that could add momentum to efforts by mediators to secure the next steps in the cease-fire.
Both Israel and Hamas have reasons to avoid another round of fighting, at least for now. Hamas wants to give its forces a chance to recuperate, while Israel wants to bring home the remaining hostages.
But the prospect of a comprehensive agreement between Israel and Hamas still seems remote.
Israel has conditioned a comprehensive agreement on the end of Hamas’s control in Gaza and the demilitarization of the enclave, both of which Hamas has largely rejected. Israel’s leaders vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, but failed to eliminate the group in Gaza despite 15 months of relentless fighting that devastated the territory and killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
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12) As Ramadan Nears, Syrians Feel the Pinch of a Cash Shortage
The Assad dictatorship is out, but Syria’s economy is in chaos after a civil war and recent policy shifts. The situation is putting a damper on a typically festive season.
By Raja Abdulrahim, Photographs by Kiana Hayeri, Reporting from Damascus, Syria, Feb. 28, 2025
Days before the start of Ramadan, lines of people snaked down the stairs outside a bank in Syria’s capital, Damascus, waiting for hours to withdraw the equivalent of about $15 for the requisite holiday shopping.
The new government has imposed severe daily withdrawal limits of about that amount at Syrian banks, dampening what would usually be a festive time as many struggle to buy even the basics for the holy fasting month.
“That can buy maybe a kilo and a half of meat,” said Sleiman Dawoud, a 56-year-old civil engineer among those waiting in the A.T.M. line to withdraw that $15 — 200,000 in Syrian pounds. “But what about the bread, and vegetables and fruits? Ramadan is coming, and we need to spend.”
Ra’if Ghnaim, 75, a retired civil servant, fretted about how he would afford the tradition of giving children small amounts of money at the end of Ramadan as he waited to take out some cash.
This year, Ramadan falls three months after the ouster of the Assad dictatorship that ruled Syria with an iron first for more than five decades. The rebel coalition that has taken over the government in Damascus has instituted several economic changes.
It opened the market to imported products. It eliminated bread subsidies — making the staple food 10 times more expensive. It laid off thousands of public-sector employees. And it capped cash withdrawals at A.T.M.s.
The prices of many goods other than bread have fallen since the new government took over, but many Syrians still can’t buy them because of the withdrawal limits in a cash-based economy where the widespread use of credit cards and e-payments has never taken hold.
Getting cash out has become a part-time job of sorts as Syrians spend hours or even days trying to withdraw enough cash to live, much less splurge during a time of large family gatherings and feasts.
As Syrian pounds have dried up and the government has started shifting economic policy, the currency has begun to strengthen after more than a decade of weakening.
Before the Syrian civil war began in 2011, the exchange rate was about 50 Syrian pounds to the U.S. dollar. When the government was overthrown in December, it was about 15,000, but has since fallen.
The Syrian Central Bank, Economy Ministry and Interior Ministry did not respond to questions.
The Central Bank alluded to the withdrawal limits in a December statement, saying the measures would be temporary. But they have now lasted for months.
This month, a planeload of newly minted Syrian pounds arrived from Russia, where they are printed, according to the state news media. The amount was not made public.
“They indeed do not have enough bank notes. They have a liquidity crisis,” said Karam Shaar, a political economist and senior fellow at the New Lines Institute, a Washington-based think tank, who has been meeting with Syrian officials.
“The current monetary policy that the Central Bank is considering is not finalized, and it doesn’t seem to be coherent” he added.
More than 90 percent of Syrians live in poverty, and one in four is unemployed, according to the United Nations. And on the ground, and in long bank lines across the country, many are suffering.
“We’ll have to cancel the suhoor,” Mahmoud Embarak, a 60-year-old retired military officer, said of the pre-dawn meal that Muslims eat before the start of the daily fast.
He said that the new government had recently cut his pension and that his family was now living off his wife’s nursing pension.
“It won’t be as happy of a time as it has been in the past,” Mr. Embarak added.
Ahlam Kasem, 45, cringed at the mention of Ramadan.
She was waiting in the bank line to withdraw 200,000 Syrian pounds (about $15) from her monthly salary of 380,000 (about $28) as a civil engineer with the agriculture ministry.
“They told us the government doesn’t have any money, the Central Bank doesn’t have, the banks don’t have,” she said. “We have so many questions and there are no answers.”
So, along with her husband, she took a minibus from their town of Saboora, about 10 miles away, and paid 10,000 Syrian pounds each to get to an A.T.M. at the Damascus bank.
She will have to make another trip on another day to withdraw the rest of her salary.
That still won’t buy much for her family of five — much less for the large gatherings to break the fast characteristic of Ramadan.
“There won’t be dinner parties or anything” said Ms. Kasem, who is among the many civil servants who have been laid off with a severance of three months’ salary.
As she spoke, a man rapped on the bank’s metal door, trying to get the attention of an employee inside. No one came.
“We have now gotten to point in Syria where even a cup of coffee may be too much of a hardship for someone to offer you,” she said. “We’re a very social people, but we’ve gotten to the point where we don’t want to visit anyone so as not to put any pressure on them for even a cup of coffee, much less lunch or dinner.”
Those concerns were top of mind at the Bab Sraijeh market, a bustling cluster of shops and street vendors along a cobblestone street in the old city of Damascus. The sound of motorcycles driving through occasionally drowned out the competing offers that sellers were yelling out.
“Ten, ten, practically free,” a young man hollered repeatedly, offering a kilogram of olives for 10,000 pounds, less than one dollar.
At a small shop selling Ramadan decorations — wooden crescent moons, colorful lanterns and string lights — it was mostly quiet. Occasionally, someone would inquire about the price of an ornament and then walk off without buying anything.
“People don’t have money,” said Nour al-Hamwi, 37, who was helping her husband at the shop. “The banks don’t have money, Syria doesn’t have money.”
Last year, the items were flying off the shelves, her husband said. Now, people are buying only necessities.
“The Ramadan atmosphere will be weaker this year,” Anwar Hamid said.
Fatima Hussain Ali, 56, and her husband, Ha’il Ali Jasser, 59, were each carrying several stuffed grocery bags of spices, cheese and flour as they made their way through the market.
The staples of Ramadan — olive leaves, oil, rice, bulgur wheat — are cheaper than before the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad. But the couple, who have eight children, were still buying much less than in previous Ramadans.
“Prices are cheaper, but there isn’t money,” she said.
Except for bread, which has gone from 400 pounds to 4,000 pounds.
She doubted they would host any dinner parties this year. If they did, she joked, they might have to ask their guests to B.Y.O.B.: bring your own bread.
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13) Iowa Lawmakers Pass Bill to Eliminate Transgender Civil Rights Protections
If signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds, the Republican-backed measure would eliminate state civil rights protections for transgender Iowans.
By Mitch Smith, Feb. 27, 2025
In 2022, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill barring transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports. Credit...Nick Rohlman/The Gazette, via Associated Press
Iowa lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill on Thursday that would end state civil rights protections for transgender people. Advocates for L.G.B.T.Q. rights said that Iowa would become the first state to remove such broad and explicit protections for trans people if the Republican-backed measure was signed into law.
The bill, which now goes to the desk of the Republican governor, passed 18 years after the state, then led by Democrats, enshrined those discrimination protections into Iowa code.
The debate this week in Des Moines, where protesters and Democrats tried without success this week to persuade Republican lawmakers to reconsider, reflected how much the discourse over transgender issues has shifted in the country, and how much Iowa has changed.
“The purpose of this bill, the purpose of every anti-trans bill, is to further erase us from public life and to stigmatize our existence,” said State Representative Aime Wichtendahl, a Democrat who is transgender.
But Republicans said they were concerned that maintaining civil rights protections for gender identity would make other state laws — like those restricting gender-transition treatments for minors and sports participation by transgender women — vulnerable to legal challenges.
“All of these common-sense policies are at risk so long as gender identity remains in the Iowa civil rights code,” State Representative Steven Holt, a Republican supporter of the bill, said on the House floor.
The passage of the Iowa legislation comes as the Trump administration has tried to limit official recognition of transgender identity.
The administration has sought to end funding for hospitals that provide gender-transition treatments to minors, to bar transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports, to bar openly transgender people from serving in the military, to house transgender women in federal prisons with men, and to no longer reflect the gender identities of transgender people on passports.
The bill in Iowa defines sex based on a person’s anatomy at birth and removes gender identity from a list of protected groups that employers, businesses and landlords may not discriminate against. The bill leaves in place discrimination protections for gay and lesbian people, which were passed as part of the same measure as the protections for gender identity.
In testimony at the Capitol on Thursday, opponents of the legislation told lawmakers that they feared transgender people would face widespread discrimination and harassment if the civil rights protections were removed. Many supporters of the bill said they believed that sex was determined at birth and that they worried about transgender women using women’s restrooms. Several speakers on both sides of the issue cited their Christian faith.
“I’m outraged that biological males have a legal right in Iowa to force themselves into my wife’s, daughters’ and granddaughters’ private spaces,” Chuck Hurley of The FAMiLY Leader, a group based in Iowa that describes itself as a Christian ministry to government, told a legislative committee on Thursday.
Minutes later, the Rev. Debbie Griffin, who pastors a church in Des Moines, urged lawmakers to reject the bill, warning that it “would endanger people who are already vulnerable to bullying and discrimination.”
On the federal level, the Supreme Court ruled several years ago that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination. Efforts by Democrats in Congress to expand the scope of those protections beyond the workplace have failed.
More than 20 states, most of them led by Democrats, have explicit employment discrimination protections for transgender people, according to information compiled by the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank that supports L.G.B.T.Q. rights.
A spokesman for Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican did not immediately respond to questions on Thursday about whether she had a position on the legislation or planned to sign it. She has previously signed laws that banned gender-transition treatments for minors and that kept transgender girls and women from competing in women’s sports.
Those measures have been part of a broader push by Iowa Republicans into social issues that voters have so far rewarded at the ballot box. In recent years, Ms. Reynolds and legislative Republicans have passed laws to restrict abortion, ban school library books deemed sexually explicit and allow for state-level immigration enforcement.
Democrats have struggled to push back. Former President Barack Obama carried Iowa twice, but Republicans have seen their support surge since President Trump became the party’s leader. Mr. Trump carried Iowa last year by about 13 percentage points, winning 94 of its 99 counties, and Republicans retained large state legislative majorities. A surprise win by a Democrat in a special legislative election last month was a rare bright spot for that party.
Amy Harmon contributed reporting.
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14) U.S. Terminates Funding for Polio, H.I.V., Malaria and Nutrition Programs Around the World
Here are some of the 5,800 contracts the Trump administration formally canceled this week in a wave of terse emails.
By Stephanie Nolen, Stephanie Nolen covers global health., Published Feb. 27, 2025, Updated Feb. 28, 2025
Women listen to a public health educator during an mpox awareness campaign at the Muja camp for the internally displaced near Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo last year. Credit...Arlette Bashizi/Reuters
Starting Wednesday afternoon, a wave of emails went out from the State Department in Washington around the world, landing in inboxes for refugee camps, tuberculosis clinics, polio vaccination projects and thousands of other organizations that received crucial funding from the United States for lifesaving work.
“This award is being terminated for convenience and the interest of the U.S. government,” they began.
The terse notes ended funding for some 5,800 projects that had been financed by the United States Agency for International Development, indicating that a tumultuous period when the Trump administration said it was freezing projects for ostensible review was over, and that any faint hope American assistance might continue had ended.
Many were projects that had received a waiver from the freeze because the State Department previously identified its work as essential and lifesaving.
“People will die,” said Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, “but we will never know, because even the programs to count the dead are cut.”
The projects terminated include H.I.V. treatment programs that had served millions of people, the main malaria control programs in the worst-affected African countries and global efforts to wipe out polio.
Here are some of the projects that The New York Times has confirmed have been canceled:
· A $131 million grant to UNICEF’s polio immunization program, which paid for planning, logistics and delivery of vaccines to millions of children.
· A $90 million contract with the company Chemonics for bed nets, malaria tests and treatments that would have protected 53 million people.
· A project in the Democratic Republic of Congo that operates the only source of water for 250,000 people in camps for displaced people located in the center of the violent conflict in the east of the country.
· All of the operating costs and 10 percent of the drug budget of the Global Drug Facility, the main supply channel for tuberculosis medications, which last year provided tuberculosis treatment to nearly three million people, including 300,000 children.
· H.I.V. care and treatment projects run by the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation that were providing lifesaving medication to 350,000 people in Lesotho, Tanzania and Eswatini, including 10,000 children and 10,000 pregnant women who were receiving care so that they would not transmit the virus to their babies at birth.
· A project in Uganda to trace contacts of people with Ebola, conduct surveillance and bury those who died from the virus.
· A contract to manage and distribute $34 million worth of medical supplies in Kenya, including 2.5 million monthlong H.I.V. treatments, 750,000 H.I.V. tests, 500,000 malaria treatments, 6.5 million malaria tests and 315,000 antimalaria bed nets.
· Eighty-seven shelters that took care of 33,000 women who were victims of rape and domestic violence in South Africa.
· A project run by FHI 360 that supported community health workers’ efforts to go door-to-door seeking malnourished children in Yemen. It recently found that one in five children was critically underweight because of the country’s civil war.
· Pre- and postnatal health services for 3.9 million children and 5.7 million women in Nepal.
· A project run by Helen Keller Intl in six countries in West Africa that last year provided more than 35 million people with the medicine to prevent and treat neglected tropical diseases, such as trachoma, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis and onchocerciasis.
· A project in Nigeria providing 5.6 million children and 1.7 million women with treatment for severe and acute malnutrition. The termination means 77 health facilities have completely stopped treating children with severe acute malnutrition, putting 60,000 children under the age of 5 at immediate risk of death.
· A project in Sudan that runs the only operational health clinics in one of the biggest areas of the Kordofan region, cutting off all health services.
· A project serving more than 144,000 people in Bangladesh that provided food for malnourished pregnant women and vitamin A to children.
· A program run by the aid agency PATH, called REACH Malaria, which protected more than 20 million people in 10 countries in Africa from the disease. It provided malaria drugs to children at the start of the rainy season.
· A project run by Plan International that provided drugs and other medical supplies, health care, treatment of malnutrition programming, and water and sanitation for 115,000 displaced or affected by the conflict in northern Ethiopia.
· More than $80 million for UNAIDS, the United Nations agency, which funded work to help countries improve H.I.V. treatment, including data collection and watchdog programs for service delivery.
· The President’s Malaria Initiative program called Evolve, which did mosquito control in 21 countries by methods that include spraying insecticide inside homes (protecting 12.5 million people last year) and treating breeding sites to kill larvae.
· A project providing H.I.V. and tuberculosis treatment to 46,000 people in Uganda, run by the Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation, Uganda.
· Smart4TB, the main research consortium working on prevention, diagnostics and treatment for tuberculosis.
· The Demographic and Health Surveys, a data collection project in 90 countries that were crucial and sometimes the only sources of information on maternal and child health and mortality, nutrition, reproductive health and H.I.V. infections, among many other health indicators. The project was also the bedrock of budgets and planning.
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15) The Texas Measles Outbreak Is Even Scarier Than It Looks
By Zeynep Tufekci, Opinion Columnist, Feb. 28, 2025
Desiree Rios for The New York Times
The news that an outbreak in Texas has caused the nation’s first confirmed measles death in a decade — an unvaccinated child — is as unsurprising as it is tragic. Spreading largely in rural Mennonite communities that typically have low vaccination rates, the outbreak has already grown to at least 146 cases since late January. Almost all of them are children.
Parents whose children got infected but survived are no doubt grateful that their family was spared. But startling research about the virus unfortunately tells a new and very different story, recasting what was previously known about how measles works and making clear why the Trump administration’s approach to vaccines is nowhere even close to meeting the moment.
That research, conducted over the past decade by the immunologist and medical doctor Michael Mina and others, revealed that measles destroys immune cells. Even people who recover from the virus lose much of their immune memory, and therefore the protection they had acquired from prior infections or vaccines to all the other childhood illnesses. This leaves survivors more vulnerable to many other diseases for years afterward. Worse, these victims may now face those childhood diseases, to which they lost immune protections, as older children, which puts them more at risk for complications.
Before vaccines were introduced, Mina told me, earlier measles infections may have been implicated in as many as half of all childhood deaths from all infectious diseases. Which, given these findings, would mean the true harm of measles is far greater than its death toll, and the legacy of this outbreak may still be felt years after it’s officially contained.
It’s not just those families that opt out of vaccinations who are at risk. Measles is one of the most transmissible diseases known to humanity. Children don’t get their first vaccine dose until after 12 months, and full protection doesn’t kick in until they get their booster, usually when they’re between 4 and 6. Like other vaccines, it is less effective for elderly people whose immune systems aren’t as robust, and aren’t as helpful or even a possibility for people who are immunosuppressed because of other factors such as cancer treatments.
Overall, the vaccine is highly effective and the rare breakthrough cases — a few in a thousand exposures — tend to be mild. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns, however, that those cases can be vectors for the illness.
The only guaranteed way to protect people from this deadly disease is to keep it from circulating in the first place. But nationwide, vaccination rates have been trending downward, producing such large pockets of vulnerable people that outbreaks in one community can now bleed over to another, the way pockets of dry kindling in a forest can help start a conflagration that consumes it all.
Already, there are cases across the border from Texas in New Mexico that may turn out to be related. If the disease starts circulating more widely, a great many people will be at risk — regardless of their or their communities’ beliefs about vaccines.
A newly circulating virus would mean some unvaccinated people would encounter measles for the first time in adulthood, when the danger it poses is much higher. This effect was evident in World War I, when healthy young conscripts from rural areas had their first exposure to the disease in Army training camps. The result was the worst outbreak the military had seen in almost a century. Thousands of soldiers died.
During Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings for health secretary, Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, practically begged him to acknowledge, however grudgingly, that vaccines don’t cause autism. It was the easiest layup ever, but Kennedy just wouldn’t go there. Maybe not so surprising, given that he had previously told a podcaster that he considers it his duty to tell random strangers that they shouldn’t vaccinate their babies. Cassidy, a medical doctor by training, voted to confirm him anyway.
Since then, Kennedy has had a lot to say about the need to investigate the childhood vaccinations schedule (“nothing is going to be off limits”), claiming that despite decades of widespread use and study it had somehow been “insufficiently scrutinized.” He stopped a sensible public awareness campaign during one of the most severe flu seasons ever, and canceled a key vaccine committee meeting, which may endanger the availability of flu vaccines next year. And he talked about instituting an “informed consent” model for parents that emphasizes vaccines’ possible side effects and no doubt would discourage the vaccinations that have protected Americans from the ravages of infectious disease that in earlier centuries were just a standard part of life.
I might run out of not just column space but an entire newspaper if I tried to list all the false and misleading claims Kennedy made about vaccines in his many speeches and books. Even so, I was shocked this week as I watched him brush off the Texas outbreak as no big deal. The situation there is “not unusual,” he said, even as he doubled the known death toll without explanation. About 20 people have been hospitalized, he said, “mainly for quarantine,” a fact that the chief medical officer of the Lubbock hospital where the child died quickly refuted. “We’re watching it,” Kennedy said, with a casual wave of the hand.
You can probably guess which word he didn’t say.
During a deadly outbreak, we’d ordinarily hope for a clear, direct call for parents to vaccinate their children. But this is the man who, during a 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people (79 of them children), actively worked to undermine public trust in the one thing that would have helped most. America, brace yourself.
Right now, the United States has an official verification from the World Health Organization as a measles-free country, which makes it easier for its residents to travel abroad. If these outbreaks continue we may lose that designation, and other countries may begin to require proof of measles vaccination before letting Americans enter. That choice would be hard to argue with.
The situation in Texas may be the wake-up call that gets some holdouts to bring their children to the doctor and request the protection they need and deserve. In 2015, when an unvaccinated 6-year-old died a horrible, prolonged death from the “strangulation disease” of diphtheria, the distraught parents vaccinated their surviving child, while lamenting they’d been conned by anti-vaxxers.
We should do what we can to spare other families from having to learn such a brutal lesson.
All governors should be launching campaigns to increase measles vaccination coverage, but some states are led by people who promote falsehoods. And some Americans live deep in echo chambers where most of what they hear about vaccines are lies and disdain. It won’t be possible to reverse all this quickly. Perhaps the best we can do is inform parents skeptical of vaccines what they’re risking, before it’s too late.
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