Surviving State Violence:
The Case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui
and Incarceration in Women’s Prisons
Monday March 24, 2025
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM EDT
Online, YouTube
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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) Houthis Vow Retaliation Against U.S., Saying Yemen Strikes Killed at Least 31
The Iran-backed rebels, who have targeted Israel and shipping in the Red Sea, said children were among those killed in the strikes ordered by President Trump.
By Ismaeel Naar and Saeed Al-Batati, March 16, 2025
Ismaeel Naar reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Saeed Al-Batati from Al Mukalla, Yemen.
A damaged building in Saada, Yemen, on Sunday after U.S. strikes. Credit...Naif Rahma/Reuters
The Houthi militia in Yemen has vowed to retaliate after President Trump ordered large-scale military strikes on targets controlled by the group that it says killed at least 31 people.
The group, which is backed by Iran, said that women and children were among those killed in the strikes on Saturday, the most significant U.S. military action in the Middle East since Mr. Trump took office in January.
For more than a year, the Houthis have launched attacks against Israel and threatened commercial shipping in the Red Sea in solidarity with their ally Hamas, which led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that set off the war in Gaza. The Houthis suspended the campaign in January after a cease-fire was reached in Gaza, but have vowed to step up attacks again after Israel instituted a blockade on aid to the enclave this month.
The U.S. airstrikes targeted Houthi-controlled areas across Yemen, including the capital, Sana, as well as Saada, al-Bayda, Hajjah and Dhamar Provinces, according to reports from Houthi-run media channels. The strikes killed at least 31 people and wounded 101, “most of whom were children and women,” Anis al-Asbahi, a spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry, said late Saturday.
The casualty figures could not be independently verified, and the United States has not given any estimates for the number of people killed or wounded in the strikes.
On Sunday, Michael Waltz, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, described the U.S. weekend attacks on Yemen as both successful and effective. “We hit the Houthi leadership, killing several of their key leaders last night, their infrastructure, the missiles,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” He cast the Houthis as “essentially Al Qaeda with sophisticated Iranian-backed air defenses and anti-ship cruise missiles and drones” that have attacked the entire global economy.
The U.S. Central Command, which posted a video of a bomb leveling a building compound in Yemen, said that Washington had employed precision strikes to “defend American interests, deter enemies and restore freedom of navigation.”
U.S. airstrikes also targeted a power facility in the northwestern town of Dahyan, causing a nightlong electricity blackout, residents said.
The Houthi-run Al-Masirah television channel reported that 13 people were killed and nine others wounded in airstrikes on al-Jeraf, a district in Sana that is considered a stronghold of the group. In Saada Province, in the northwest, 10 people, including four children, were killed when airstrikes hit two buildings, the report said.
Residents in Sana shared images and videos on social media showing shattered windows and fireballs rising from sites that were struck. Others posted anguished messages as the airstrikes hit.
Abdul Rahman al-Nuerah, a resident of Sana, said the blasts had shattered the windows of his home and terrified his four children. “I instantly embraced and comforted them,” Mr. al-Nuerah said by telephone. “Children and mothers are afraid and still in shock.”
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi leader, vowed retaliation against the United States, calling the strikes unjustified. “We shall respond to the escalation by escalating,” he wrote on X.
The Houthi rebels, who control most of northern Yemen, had temporarily halted attacks in the Red Sea when a cease-fire took effect in Gaza in January. But last week, they said they would target any Israeli ships violating their ban on Israeli vessels passing through the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden.
The Bab el-Mandeb is a strait between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, which opens into the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Mr. Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social platform that the strikes were also intended as a warning to Iran, the Houthis’ main backer.
“Support for the Houthi terrorists must end IMMEDIATELY!” he wrote. He also warned Iran against threatening the United States, saying, “America will hold you fully accountable, and we won’t be nice about it!”
Some military analysts and former American commanders said on Sunday that a more aggressive campaign against the Houthis, particularly against Houthi leadership, was necessary to degrade the group’s ability to threaten international shipping. “This is long, long overdue,” Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., a retired head of the Pentagon’s Central Command, said in a telephone interview on Sunday.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Sunday that the United States would conduct an “unrelenting” campaign of strikes against the Houthis until the militant group ceased its actions in the Red Sea.
“This isn’t a one-night thing. This will continue until you say, ‘We’re done shooting at ships. We’re done shooting at assets,’” Mr. Hegseth told Fox News on Sunday. “This campaign is about freedom of navigation and restoring deterrence.”
Iran strongly condemned the strikes.
Esmaeil Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, called them a violation of international law regarding the use of force and respect for national sovereignty.
And Hossein Salami, the commander in chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards force, denied on Sunday that his country was making policy decisions for the rebels in Yemen. The Houthi militia “makes its own strategic decisions” and Tehran plays “no role in setting the national or operational policies” of the group, he was quoted as saying by Iranian state news agencies.
Days after taking office, Mr. Trump issued an executive order to redesignate the Houthis a “foreign terrorist organization,” calling the group a threat to regional security.
The order restored a designation given to the group late in the first Trump administration. The Biden administration lifted the designation shortly after taking office, partly to facilitate peace talks in Yemen’s civil war.
Last year, the Biden administration labeled the Houthis a “specially designated global terrorist” group — a less severe category — in response to attacks against vessels in the Red Sea.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, on Saturday told Secretary of State Marco Rubio that all sides should cease from the “use of force” in Yemen and enter a “political dialogue,” according to the Russian foreign ministry. Moscow has condemned past U.S. and British strikes on Yemen.
Hezbollah, another armed proxy for Iran in the region, voiced its condemnation of the U.S. strikes on Yemen and described it as a “war crime,” according to a statement on Sunday.
Carol Rosenberg, Eric Schmitt and Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.
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2) Black Lives Matter Plaza Is Gone. Its Erasure Feels Symbolic.
The movement that prompted “Black Lives Matter” to be painted in bold yellow near the White House is in retreat. Its leaders are asking what comes next for social justice.
By Clyde McGrady and Tim Arango, March 16, 2025
Reporting from Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles
This week, government workers near the White House, on two blocks lined with luxury hotels and union headquarters, used a jackhammer and a pickax to tear up a mural that read “Black Lives Matter,” painted on the road during the long hot summer of 2020.
The symbolism was potent.
The erasure of the bold yellow letters of Black Lives Matter Plaza, installed on 16th Street after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, was a concession from Washington’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, who faced threats from congressional Republicans to cut off federal funds to the capital city if the words were not removed. But to Black Americans grappling with a fierce resurgence of forces that they believe are beating back the causes of social justice and civil rights, it felt like much more.
That plaza was “spiritual,” said Selwyn Jones, an uncle of Mr. Floyd. “But them taking the time to destroy it, that’s making a statement, man. That’s making a statement, like we don’t care.”
Even those who did not put much faith in the mural to begin with were taken aback.
“Bowser caving immediately to the faintest hint of pressure on the name of the plaza is somehow even more cynical than the move to name it Black Lives Matter Plaza in the first place,” said Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, a Black associate professor of philosophy at Georgetown.
A movement that once crested with a former Republican senator, Mitt Romney, marching in the streets has now waned. After a brief window of conversation about the ways racism had impeded the progress of Black citizens, the country in November chose to return President Trump to the White House, after he called the words “Black Lives Matter” a “symbol of hate” and Black-centered history “toxic propaganda” at the end of his first term.
“We saw the largest protest movement in our nation’s history, a unique and powerful moment where it seemed anything was possible, and you had the numbers to do anything,” lamented Samuel Sinyangwe, executive director of the nonprofit Mapping Police Violence, without exaggeration.
The millions of dollars that flowed to groups with “Black Lives Matter” in their titles have slowed to a trickle, forcing some to retrench, others to close shop. The Black Lives Matter Foundation Inc., for instance, raised a staggering $79.6 million in fiscal year 2021. The next year, that figure was down to almost $8.5 million. By 2023, it was about $4.7 million, with expenses of $10.8 million, according to records tracked by the nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica.
As it recedes, Mr. Trump has sought to bury it. In two short months, his administration has moved to end diversity, equity and inclusion as goals of the federal government and pressured private industry to do the same. It shut down the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, which tracked the misconduct records of federal law enforcement officers.
Words with even a hint of racial, ethnic or gender sensitivities are being struck from federal websites and documents. Just this week, the Environmental Protection Agency moved to eliminate offices responsible for addressing the disproportionately high levels of pollution facing poor communities, often with predominantly minority residents.
The billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk has even said pardoning George Floyd’s killer was “something to think about.”
Beyond Washington, journalists and academics who vaulted to stardom a half decade ago on their reinterpretations of history, their views on racism and their valorizing of the African American experience find themselves sometimes marginalized, and often under attack.
“I feel we are going backwards,” Mr. Jones said.
Given the swift change of circumstances, some in the Black Lives Matter movement say they must answer an existential question: How do they pursue racial justice amid so fierce a backlash?
Veterans of the movement say they must broaden the activist coalition to be more multiracial, working class, economic and inclusive in its messaging. Although Mr. Trump made gains among voters of color in November, even bragging that he had support of some in the Black Lives Matter movement, they insist his base of support still stems from bigotry.
“Folks got sold a bag of goods under this idea of racism and xenophobia,” said Addys Castillo, a social justice organizer and law student in Connecticut.
But, she said, the administration’s policies will hurt all those who aren’t wealthy, “so if there was ever a time to have a multiracial, cross cultural movement, this would be the time.”
James Forman Jr., a former public defender, an author and a fierce critic of the criminal justice system and its effects on people of color, said persuading all Americans that a system that has harmed Black Americans has harmed them too is difficult — but crucial.
“It’s always been hard to be able to get people to see two things at the same time: the ways in which these institutions disproportionately harm Black people, and the way that these institutions harm all people,” he said.
Ms. Bowser, who is Black, told laid-off federal workers earlier this month that the mural was a significant part of the city’s history, but circumstances have changed. “Now our focus is on making sure our residents and our economy survive,” she said.
Observers say the racial justice movement that crescendoed after Mr. Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020 had some successes, at least in raising public awareness about structural racism and police violence.
Protesters and Black activists pressed people to evolve from support for civil rights as “mere etiquette” to “an understanding that actual institutions, political institutions, criminal justice institutions had to be challenged to work differently,” Mr. Táíwò said.
But the movement must mature, said Representative Wesley Bell, a Missouri Democrat who rose to prominence after the police shooting of a Black teenager, Michael Brown, in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. Mr. Bell, who is Black, defeated one of the most demonstrative Black progressives in the House, Cori Bush, in a heated primary last year, promising voters to bring Greater St. Louis a more sober, effective leadership.
“Some folks think it’s just about getting out and protesting,” said Mr. Bell, who advocates moving the social justice cause from the streets to the corridors of power. “The best protesters do not make the best politicians, and the best politicians don’t make the best protesters.”
Black Lives Matter began as an online hashtag after the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager. But the phrase coalesced into a movement after the killing of Michael Brown the following year.
From the beginning the phrase drew attacks.
“When you say ‘Black lives matter,’ that’s inherently racist,” the former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said in 2016. “Black lives matter. White lives matter. Asian lives matter. Hispanic lives matter.”
Four years later, as he campaigned unsuccessfully for re-election, Mr. Trump accused supporters of Black Lives Matter of “spreading violence in our cities” and “hurting the Black community.”
But in the summer of 2020, millions of Americans took to the streets from all walks of life. Conservative voices, like the president of the Heritage Foundation and Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, lamented Mr. Floyd’s murder.
Some of the protests turned violent. A Minneapolis police station was burned to the ground. The calls for incremental police reform became drowned by the rallying cry, “defund the police.”
And that gave Mr. Trump his most potent line of attack against the movement. He reframed a cause that hoped to protect Black lives as a lawless assault on police officers. In his telling, the leaders of the movement were avatars for every left-wing cause in his sights.
Because of the Black Lives Matter movement’s decentralized structure, many groups were lumped together and faced intense scrutiny, often with negative consequences for the movement as a whole.
“Any strategic or tactical misstep for the movement is going to produce more severe and swift negative consequences,” Mr. Forman said.
The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, for instance, faced criticism that it misused funds, including the purchase of a $6 million California home.
“I’m not particularly happy with the organization Black Lives Matter, because of their shenanigans,” said Mr. Jones.
“Black Lives Matter, they are not a perfect organization,” said Angela Harrison, an aunt of Mr. Floyd. “They probably made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. But their intention was for the good.”
But mistakes added up. The movement to examine historical ways racism has shaped current disparities in areas such as housing and wealth creation gave way to the opposite. Conservative activists successfully pushed state governments to ban teachings that they said made people feel inherently responsible for actions committed in the past.
Corporations that once made a show of racial, ethnic and gender sensitivities have begun rolling back their diversity initiatives, seemingly more afraid of the conservative activists fighting them than the social justice activists who had supported them, said Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
That, he said, “could certainly suggest that maybe the belief isn’t strongly held, but also more of a sense of resignation.”
Mr. Sinyangwe is taking a long view and sees parallels and patterns with many historical movements for social justice.
“This movement has followed the trajectory that freedom struggles in the United States have always tended to follow,” he said.
A marginalized community pushes back against injustice. Some of its demands are met, but others don’t materialize. So they push for more transformative changes only to be met with backlash. “And that’s sort of how America does business,” he said. “That’s not the fault of anyone’s slogan.”
In June 2020, after Mr. Trump marshaled federal law enforcement and the military to violently confront protesters outside the White House, Ms. Bowser announced that she was renaming a street just off the protest site “Black Lives Matter Plaza,” complete with 48-foot letters on the pavement.
The mayor’s decision to remove the letters with Mr. Trump’s return to power has been met with ambivalence. Some agree that Ms. Bowser has more pressing concerns, such as budget cuts and the slashing of the federal work force in her city.
“The painting ain’t saving any of us,” said Ms. Castillo.
Others are gearing up for a fight that will outlive any one presidency.
“I don’t believe we’ll ever be in a place where there won’t be a fight,” Mr. Bell said. “But I will say this — I don’t think that President Trump can stop progress either.”
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3) Social Security Employees Warn of Damage From DOGE
Current and former employees, both Republican and Democratic, are raising alarms about the damage cost-cutting efforts could do to the agency’s ability to serve the public.
By Tara Siegel Bernard, March 17, 2025
When Eleanor H., 66, called the Social Security Administration last month seeking details about her retirement benefits, she didn’t expect to comfort the representative who answered. The woman started sobbing.
“I asked her what was wrong, and she said she and her co-workers were informed by email to accept a taxable $20,000 payout or risk termination,” said Eleanor, who lives in New Jersey (she asked to use only her first name out of privacy concerns).
The rep still answered all of Eleanor’s questions. “Through her tears she said, ‘What am I going to do?’”
The Social Security Administration, which sends retirement, survivor and disability payments to 73 million people each month, has long been called the “third rail” of politics — largely untouchable given its widespread popularity and role as one of the country’s remaining safety nets.
But in recent weeks, the Trump administration, led by Elon Musk’s crew of cost cutters at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has taken its chain saw to the agency’s operations. The agency has announced plans to cut up to 12 percent of its work force, at a time its staffing is at a 50-year low. It has also offered early retirement and other incentives, including payments up to $25,000, to the entire staff.
Many current and former Social Security officials fear the cuts could create gaping holes in the agency’s infrastructure, destabilizing the program, which keeps millions of people out of poverty and large percentages of retirees rely on for the bulk of their income.
The actions have caused Social Security employees and former commissioners and executives of both parties to sound alarm bells, saying it would be difficult to repair the damage, which could threaten access to benefits.
“Everything they have done so far is breaking the agency’s ability to serve the public,” said Martin O’Malley, the most recent former Social Security commissioner under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. He said he feared that Mr. Musk’s team had taken most of the actions necessary to create a total system collapse, whether in skyrocketing wait times for customer service, system interruptions or a timely payment of benefits.
In a statement to The New York Times, the Social Security Administration said that it was “identifying efficiencies and reducing costs, with a renewed focus on mission critical work,” including streamlining redundant layers of management, and is “committed to ensuring Americans get the help they need.”
Social Security benefits cannot be changed without legislation passed by Congress. But the delivery of those paychecks — and enabling new people to enroll or make changes — rests upon a complex set of systems that are powered using programming languages developed in the 1970s.
The people who can most deftly operate the agency’s old systems are, perhaps not surprisingly, nearing or already eligible for retirement. At least 30 percent of the technical staff in the office of the chief information officer fits in those categories, former executives estimated.
“We are looking at a degradation of the system as a whole because we have a whole line of expertise walking out the door,” said Shelley Washington, executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1923, a unit of the federal workers’ union. “They are firing first and aiming later.”
He said the delivery of checks for people already enrolled in the system shouldn’t be affected, for now — but it’s becoming increasingly uncertain who will be around to quickly fix issues when they arise.
Michael Astrue, a former agency commissioner appointed by President George W. Bush, said it appeared that Mr. Musk has imported the strategy he used when he bought Twitter, “where you go into some place established, level it and then figure you’re going to improvise your way out,” he said, speaking at a briefing on Thursday held by the National Academy of Social Insurance. “It’s extremely destructive.”
Jason Fichtner, who held several positions at the agency, including deputy commissioner and chief economist, put it even more bluntly at the briefing. “It’s more like a drunk operating a wrecking ball,” he said.
The White House issued a statement on Tuesday, reiterating that President Trump would not cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits.
Few dispute that the aging technology needs a reboot. The system hasn’t undergone a major overhaul because Congress hasn’t allocated money for it. It’s also an enormous undertaking, and a lack of continuity in leadership makes it difficult to carry out, current and former technology staff and executives said. It would take an estimated five to seven years and cost more than $2 billion, according to one former technology executive, who didn’t want to be named because the analysis had not been completed.
Though experts familiar with the agency’s operations acknowledged there was room to improve efficiency, they said it was already run leanly. The agency functions on a budget of less than 1 percent of its annual benefit payments, which provide retirement, survivor and disability payments.
“This is extremely low,” Mr. O’Malley said, noting that it’s far lower than the administrative costs of private insurers.
Confidentiality concerns
That hasn’t stopped Mr. Musk’s team. Even without a permanent commissioner, the agency is making big decisions: It has already said it would eliminate 7,000 of its 57,000-person work force, and will close six of its 10 regional offices, which coordinate and provide support to employees.
Of its 1,200 field offices that directly serve the public, more than 40 are to be closed, according to Social Security Works, an advocacy group. The group is trying to track the changes, but said that its data was based on an unreliable list released by DOGE. (The Social Security headquarters itself was also on a closings list, then later dropped.)
Two dozen senior staff members have announced their departures, including the agency’s top three cybersecurity executives, according to a memo issued on Feb. 28 from Leland C. Dudek, the Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner. He took the reins when Michelle King, the previous acting commissioner, left abruptly after refusing to give DOGE representatives access to private data.
Tiffany Flick, the agency’s former acting chief of staff with 30 years of service at Social Security, recently recounted the events around that episode, which also led to her retirement. She expressed deep concerns about the safety of the confidential data and the program overall, according to her sworn testimony on March 6 in a federal lawsuit. The data, she said, has already been misinterpreted and used to spread misinformation.
Mike Russo, the new chief information officer, “seemed completely focused on questions from DOGE officials based on the general myth of supposed widespread Social Security fraud, rather than facts,” Ms. Flick said.
The “disregard for critical processes” and the “significant loss of expertise” have left her seriously concerned the programs will not continue to operate without disruption.
“That could result in benefit payments not being paid out or delays in payments,” she said.
Angela Digeronimo, a claims specialist and a union leader in New Jersey who has been with Social Security for 28 years, said she believed she was witnessing a dismantling of the agency.
“It will affect the public in a very tangible way,” she said, speaking in her capacity as a union official, noting that it already takes about eight months for applicants to the disability program to learn if they’re eligible. “I hate to say this, but more and more people will die while waiting for a medical determination on their disability claim.”
Customer service concerns
Nicole Francis, a financial planner in New York, called the agency last month on behalf of a 100-year-old client who wanted to change the bank into which her benefits were deposited. Ms. Francis knew there would be a wait, but she didn’t expect it to be more than two hours.
Instead of holding, she visited her client at home and helped her make the change with a new online account.
“Not all senior Americans have a trusted representative and should have the option of telephone customer service,” she said.
Last week, in an effort to combat fraud, the agency said it would no longer allow beneficiaries to change bank information over the phone — only online or in person.
Mr. Musk has said that he wants to cut waste, fraud and abuse at the agency, but he and President Trump have continued to repeat false claims that millions of dead people are collecting benefits.
In fact, the Social Security Office of the Inspector General, which is charged with uncovering fraud and inefficiencies, published a report in 2023 that explains why these people don’t have recorded deaths, but also do not collect checks.
“Both Musk and Trump are grossly mischaracterizing the death data,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and a former agency adviser. (Mr. Trump also fired the acting inspector general.)
Last week, Mr. Musk, who has called Social Security a Ponzi scheme, claimed that programs like it are used to attract illegal immigrants. The agency has said it collects more than $20 billion in payroll taxes annually from unauthorized workers, most of whom never collect benefits.
“Mixing up these allegations of fraud with these partisan attacks, I think, kind of confuses the public,” said Jack Smalligan, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and a former deputy associate director at the Office of Management and Budget.
The administration’s aggressive cost-cutting has begun to worry retirees like Eleanor H., who reached the distressed Social Security representative.
She said she won’t be able to survive in retirement without her Social Security check, but has become so concerned about the administration’s actions that she called to see how much she would receive if she filed for benefits early, a few months before her full retirement age. Healthy retirees are often advised against claiming early because waiting longer locks in a higher benefit.
The representative assured Eleanor that she thought her retirement benefits would be safe.
“They will be busy coming for us,” she told her.
Susan C. Beachy and Jack Begg contributed research.
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4) DOGE Cuts Reach Key Nuclear Scientists, Bomb Engineers and Safety Experts
Firings and buyouts hit the top-secret National Nuclear Security Administration amid a major effort to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal. Critics say it shows the consequences of heedlessly cutting the federal work force.
By Sharon LaFraniere, Minho Kim and Julie Tate, March 17, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/politics/federal-job-cuts-nuclear-bomb-engineers-scientists.html
Workers at the Los Alamos nuclear site preparing to clean up a demolished building in 2009. Credit...Mark Holm for The New York Times
They handled the secure transport of nuclear materials — dangerous, demanding work that requires rigorous training. Four of them took the Trump administration’s offer of a buyout and left the National Nuclear Security Administration.
A half-dozen staff members left a unit in the agency that builds reactors for nuclear submarines.
And a biochemist and engineer who had recently joined the agency as head of the team that enforces safety and environmental standards at a Texas plant that assembles nuclear warheads was fired.
In the past six weeks, the agency, just one relatively small outpost in a federal work force that President Trump and his top adviser Elon Musk aim to drastically pare down, has lost a huge cadre of scientists, engineers, safety experts, project officers, accountants and lawyers — all in the midst of its most ambitious endeavors in a generation.
The nuclear agency, chronically understaffed but critically important, is the busiest it has been since the Cold War. It not only manages the nation’s 3,748 nuclear bombs and warheads, it is modernizing that arsenal — a $20-billion-a-year effort that will arm a new fleet of nuclear submarines, bomber jets and land-based missiles.
Since the last year of the first Trump administration, the agency has been desperately trying to build up its staff to handle the added workload. Though it was still hundreds of employees short of what it had said it needed, it had edged up to about 2,000 workers by January.
Now, with the Trump administration’s buyouts and firings, the agency’s trajectory has gone from one of painstaking growth to retraction.
More than 130 employees took the government’s offer of a payout to resign, according to internal agency documents obtained by The New York Times that have not previously been reported. Those departures, together with those of about 27 workers who were caught up in a mass firing and not rehired, wiped out most of the recent staffing gains.
Engaged in top-secret work, tucked away in the Energy Department, the agency typically stays below the public radar. But it has emerged as a headline example of how the Trump administration’s cuts, touted as a cure-all for supposed government extravagance and corruption, are threatening the muscle and bone of operations that involve national security or other missions at the very heart of the federal government’s responsibilities.
Risking Taxpayer Dollars
The exodus “is going to make the job more difficult because what you lost were some of your most valuable leaders,” said Scott Roecker, the vice president of the nuclear materials security program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit organization. “These were very accomplished, very successful, very well-trained people who were performing complex, niche jobs.”
Among the departures: At least 27 engineers, 13 program or project analysts, 12 program or project managers, six budget analysts or accountants, five physicists or scientists, as well as attorneys, compliance officers and technologists, according to internal lists.
The agency lost not only officials deeply steeped in the weapons modernization program, but also a noted arms control expert at a time when President Trump has said he hopes to restart talks with Russia and China about limiting nuclear arsenals.
“Here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons, “ Mr. Trump said in the Oval Office last month. “We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things.”
Ben Dietderich, the Department of Energy’s chief spokesman said, “Contrary to news reports, the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons production plants and nuclear laboratories are operated by federal contractors and have been exempt” from cuts.
But multiple current and former officials of the agency said the loss of staff would hobble the agency’s ability to monitor the more than 60,000 contract employees who carry out much of the agency’s work. That could encourage fraud or misuse of taxpayer dollars, rather than limit it, as Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have vowed the new Department of Government Efficiency initiative will do.
“The federal oversight is vital,” said Corey Hinderstein, the agency’s deputy administrator for nonproliferation under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “Do you have any construction projects at your house? You wouldn’t just say to the contractor: ‘I want something like this room. Have fun.’”
Andrea Woods, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department said in a statement, “N.N.S.A is committed to continuing its critical national security mission through the development, modernization and stewardship of America’s nuclear deterrent and nonproliferation and counterterrorism efforts.”
The department has said that most of the fired employees handled administrative and clerical tasks that were not critical to the agency’s operation. But an analysis of the internal documents by The Times, coupled with interviews with 18 current and former agency officials, shows that is not true for the bulk of people who took the buyout.
Many who left held a top-secret security clearance, called Q, that gave them access to information about how nuclear weapons are designed, produced and used, officials said. The offer allowed them to go on administrative leave with pay through September, then resign.
An Exodus of ‘Star Performers’
Governmentwide, a disproportionate number of the roughly 75,000 federal workers who have taken the buyouts so far are those whose skills are in demand in the private sector and will be hard to replace, according to Max Stier, the president and chief executive of Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that studies governance.
Ernest J. Moniz, who served as energy secretary under President Barack Obama, said, “It’s going to be the star performers who have the best opportunity to leave and go to the private sector.”
The agency’s office of defense programs, which is in charge of the modernization effort, lost Ian Dinesen, its chief of staff. He took the buyout. So did Charles P. Kosak, a senior adviser who had served as deputy assistant secretary at both the Defense and Energy Departments.
Kyle Fowler, director of the program to enrich uranium, which is used in nuclear warheads and reactors on naval submarines, took a job with NATO. Also gone is Linda Cordero, a director with the program to modernize production of spheres of radioactive plutonium, called pits, that are fitted into warheads.
The field office that oversees the agency’s laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., where plutonium pits are made, lost nine staff members, according to the documents reviewed by The Times. Budgeted for 97 employees in the fiscal year ending last September, it is now operating with 76. Among those who left was the deputy facility operations manager, a top job.
Terry C. Wallace Jr., who ran the laboratory in 2018, said that it carried out some of the agency’s most high-risk operations. The government is ultimately responsible both for ensuring the public’s safety and for authorizing work to proceed, he said. He is “quite certain” that fewer government staff members “will have a negative impact on the operation,” he added.
Y-12, a plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where the uranium for the next generation of nuclear weapons will be processed, is undergoing a huge overhaul that is already $4 billion over budget. That field office lost four employees, and now operates with 84 of the 92 staff members it was budgeted for.
Another five staff members left the agency field office in Las Vegas that oversees a site nearly as large as Rhode Island where scientists conduct nuclear experiments that help determine the safety and viability of what’s in the nuclear stockpile, among other matters. One held the senior role of facility representative for 14 years, according to his LinkedIn profile. Budgeted for 82 staff members, the field office now has 67.
“Those are such hard jobs to fill, because people could make as much or more money working for the plant or laboratory itself,” said Jill Hruby, who led the National Nuclear Security Administration during the Biden administration.
Hurried Firings
Agency officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of job repercussions, say even if they could find the right people for the vacancies, they don’t expect to be allowed to hire them.
And more cuts could be coming. Government agencies were ordered to come up with a plan for further reductions in force and submit it to the Office of Personnel Management by last Thursday.
Some of the agency’s workers who left were on the verge of retirement anyway. But because the offer to leave came so suddenly, several former officials said, those employees did not get the chance to properly prepare their replacements. Even a junior employee at the agency can take a year to train, officials said.
“Who’s going to teach those new people?” said one senior official who took the buyout and spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing the departure agreement. “Who’s going to mentor them, and who’s going to bring them up to speed?”
The situation could have been worse.
In mid-February, more than 300 probationary employees at the agency were informed that they would be fired — about one-seventh of the staff. After members of Congress complained to Chris Wright, the new energy secretary, all but about 27 of those firings were rescinded.
Among those who protested were Senator Deb Fischer, Republican of Nebraska, and Senator Angus King, Independent of Maine, according to Trump administration officials. Both serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. King, who discussed the firings with Mr. Wright repeatedly, said he questioned how much Mr. Wright was even involved in the firing decision. Mr. Wright has said he moved too quickly in authorizing the firings.
“This whole process of trying to downsize the government is being handled in the sloppiest, most irresponsible kind of way that one could imagine,” Mr. King said.
Officials had initially expected that the nuclear agency’s national security mission would protect it from layoffs. More than 100,000 federal employees have been fired or accepted buyouts so far, but a majority of cuts have been at agencies that are not directly tied to national security.
The nuclear agency has struggled for years with understaffing, according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency. In a 2022 report, the nuclear agency said it faced “tremendous work-force attraction and retention problems.” One problem is that the agency is competing with the private sector over workers, including the agency’s own contractors. Another is finding people for such highly specialized work.
Officials were so worried about the loss of employees who transport nuclear materials that they denied the buyout to more than half of workers who signed up for it, according to agency documents.
“We were already understaffed there,” said Ms. Hinderstein, the agency’s former deputy. “Because how do you get people with extremely advanced security skills to be able to defend a nuclear weapon on the road and are willing to be long-haul truckers?”
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5) Trump Administration Revives Detention of Immigrant Families
Two facilities in South Texas are being readied for undocumented parents and their children. One site began receiving them earlier this month.
By Jazmine Ulloa and Miriam Jordan, March 17, 2025
Jazmine Ulloa reported from Washington, and Miriam Jordan reported from Los Angeles.
A facility in Dilley, Texas, shown in 2019, is one of two sites where U.S. immigration authorities will be detaining undocumented immigrant families. Credit...Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
For decades, detaining undocumented immigrant families has been a contentious enforcement tactic. Critics of “family detention” have said young children suffer in confinement. Proponents say that locking families up while they await likely deportation sends a stark message about the consequences of entering the United States illegally.
Now, after falling out of use under the Biden administration, family detention is being resurrected by President Trump, as his administration marches forward on its promise to crackdown on immigrants.
Families have begun to arrive in recent days at a detention facility in South Texas, and immigration lawyers are expecting more to be brought in the coming days. A second detention center, also in South Texas, is being readied for families.
Each of the facilities is being set up to hold thousands of people. At one site, lawyers say, multiple families are being detained in rooms with four to eight bunk beds and shared bathroom facilities.
Family detention was used during the previous Trump administration and during the Obama administration, and children were provided some medical care and some educational instruction. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the same services would be offered at the reopened facilities.
Most of those families previously detained were Central Americans who had recently crossed the southern border, and many were expected to be swiftly deported, unless they sought asylum and expressed credible fear of returning to their home countries.
With the border now quiet and illegal crossings notably low, immigration enforcement has shifted to the interior of the country to make good on the Trump administration’s pledge to carry out mass deportations.
That has led to arrests of people with established ties to communities, who had been working or going to school before their families were taken into federal custody. And some of them are bound for the newly reopened detention center in Karnes, Texas, and the soon-to-be-reopened detention center in Dilley, Texas, both south of San Antonio.
Families crossing illegally into the United States with young children have long presented particularly thorny legal and political challenges for the White House and the federal government because minors are guaranteed special protections.
When he first took office in 2017, Mr. Trump moved quickly and aggressively to try to curb border crossings, and many arrivals were families. But after his administration began separating migrant children from their parents, the public outcry was so loud that the White House ultimately halted the practice.
Now, back for another term, Mr. Trump and his advisers have made clear that they plan to make family migration a key target, and resuming detentions is an effort to discourage families from seeking to enter the United States.
Thomas D. Homan, the border czar, has said that family detention must be reinstated. He has also indicated that the administration would go to court to challenge a longstanding accord that limits how long migrant children can be detained.
Asked if she was personally comfortable with the practice of family detention, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, suggested families had the option to return home to their countries if they did not want to be detained. “We’ve set up a system and a website where people who are here illegally right now can register, and they can choose to go home on their own and keep their families united,” she told CBS News this month.
Many human rights organizations and religious groups see family detention as inhumane and ineffective. Immigration lawyers point to a lengthy history of litigation over due process violations, insufficient medical care and sexual abuse allegations at the facilities. Officials have said that in many cases families were detained for less than two weeks at the facilities when they were last open; immigration lawyers say the lengths of detention varied, and some families were held for months.
Leecia Welch, a children’s rights lawyer, has visited detention centers for years to ensure that the government is complying with its legal obligation to properly care for children.
“I have talked to hundreds of children in detention, and their stories still haunt me,” said Ms. Welch. “They have shared that they rarely go outside and see the sun, that they’re cold, don’t have toys and are left in filthy clothing.”
The two family detention centers in Texas are being run by private prison companies that contracted with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement. The site in Dilley, which is operated by CoreCivic, can hold up 2,400 people. The other, a 1,328-bed facility in Karnes, is managed by the GEO Group.
The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or Raices, an organization based in Texas, said its lawyers found more than a dozen families at the Karnes facility, including both recent border crossers and people swept up in enforcement operations in U.S. cities. The immigrants had been in the United States anywhere from three weeks to 10 years and were from several countries, including Angola, Brazil, Colombia, Iran, Romania and Russia, according to Raices.
A Venezuelan family with two children, 6 and 8, were among the first sent to Karnes after it opened earlier this month. After living in Ohio for nearly two years, they had decided to emigrate to Canada when Mr. Trump returned to office, said their lawyer, Laura Flores-Dixit, managing attorney at American Gateways, a legal advocacy group.
On crossing the northern border, the family was intercepted by Canadian officials and returned to the United States. They were held for 20 days at a border facility in Buffalo, she said, before being transferred to the detention center in Texas.
Ms. Flores-Dixit said that it was unconscionable that a family trying to leave the United States was being subjected to lengthy detention with young children. “Detaining children is never a humane solution,” she said.
Family detention has faced legal obstacles under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The University of Texas at Austin School of Law and the American Civil Liberties Union filed some of the earliest lawsuits against the practice after former President George W. Bush, a Republican, in 2006 opened a family detention center in Hutto, Texas, northeast of Austin.
Former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, then restarted the practice in the fall of 2014 on a much larger scale, amid a surge in families crossing the border after fleeing gang violence. He opened the facilities in Karnes and Dilley and another in Artesia, N.M. Within months, as a result of widespread backlash and criticism over due process delays, federal immigration officials closed the facility in Artesia. All three were used under the Trump administration, though legal challenges limited the time that families were confined.
After President Biden took office in 2021, promising a humane approach to immigration, his administration began releasing families from detention facilities. But as officials grappled with a rise in migrant families fleeing authoritarian governments and poverty, the Biden administration weighed reinstating the practice in 2023. That drew sharp criticism and was ultimately not carried out.
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
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6) Brown University Professor Is Deported Despite a Judge’s Order
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist and Brown University professor who had a valid visa, was expelled in apparent defiance of a court order.
By Dana Goldstein, March 16, 2025
The Brown University campus in Providence, R.I. Credit...Ian MacLellan for The New York Times
A kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported from the United States, even though she had a valid visa and a court order temporarily blocking her expulsion, according to her lawyer and court papers.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, is a Lebanese citizen who had traveled to her home country last month to visit relatives. She was detained on Thursday when she returned from that trip to the United States, according to a court complaint filed by her cousin Yara Chehab.
Judge Leo T. Sorokin of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts ordered the government on Friday evening to provide the court with 48 hours’ notice before deporting Dr. Alawieh. But she was put on a flight to Paris, presumably on her way to Lebanon.
In a second order filed Sunday morning, the judge said there was reason to believe U.S. Customs and Border Protection had willfully disobeyed his previous order to give the court notice before expelling the doctor. He said he had followed “common practice in this district as it has been for years,” and ordered the federal agency to respond to what he called “serious allegations.”
Customs and Border Protection did not respond on Sunday to questions from The New York Times about why Dr. Alawieh had been detained and deported. Lebanon is not included on a draft list of nations from which the Trump administration is considering banning entry to the United States.
A hearing in Dr. Alawieh’s case is scheduled for Monday.
Court documents related to the case were provided to The New York Times by Clare Saunders, a member of the legal team representing Ms. Chehab, who filed petitions to prevent her cousin’s deportation, and then to request that her cousin be allowed to return to the United States.
Ms. Chehab’s petitions name several members of the Trump administration as defendants, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Peter Flores.
Thomas Brown, a lawyer representing Dr. Alawieh and her employer, Brown Medicine, said that while the doctor was in Lebanon, the U.S. Consulate issued her an H-1B visa, which allows highly skilled foreign citizens to live and work in the United States. Brown Medicine, a nonprofit medical practice, had sponsored her application for the visa.
According to Ms. Chehab’s complaint, when Dr. Alawieh landed at Boston Logan International Airport on Thursday, she was detained by Customs and Border Protection officers and held at the airport for 36 hours, for reasons that are unclear.
Ms. Saunders, the lawyer, said in an affidavit that she went to the airport Friday and notified Customs and Border Protection officials there — before the flight to Paris was scheduled to depart — that there was a court order barring the doctor’s expulsion. She said that the officers took no action and gave her no information until after the plane had taken off.
Dr. Alawieh graduated from the American University of Beirut in 2015. Three years later, she came to the United States, where she held medical fellowships at the Ohio State University and the University of Washington, and then worked as a resident at Yale.
Before the new visa was issued, she held a J-1 visa, a type commonly used by foreign students.
There is a shortage of American doctors working in Dr. Alawieh’s area of specialty, transplant nephrology. Foreign-born physicians play an important role in the field, according to experts.
Fear over immigration status could “harm the pipeline even more,” said Dr. George Bayliss, who works in the Brown Medicine kidney transplant program with Dr. Alawieh.
Her patients included individuals awaiting transplants and those dealing with the complex conditions that can occur after a transplant, Dr. Bayliss said. He called Dr. Alawieh “a very talented, very thoughtful physician.”
“We are all outraged,” he added, “and none of us know why this happened.”
In a Sunday letter to members of the university community, Brown’s administration advised foreign students, ahead of spring break, to “consider postponing or delaying personal travel outside the United States until more information is available from the U.S. Department of State.”
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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7) Harvard Will Make Tuition Free for More Students
Harvard is the latest elite school to announce that families with incomes of $200,000 and under will not pay tuition as a way to bolster diversity.
By Stephanie Saul, March 17, 2025
Harvard University previously offered free tuition to students from families with incomes under $85,000. Credit...Sophie Park for The New York Times
Harvard announced on Monday that it plans to offer free tuition for students whose families earn $200,000 and below, making it the latest elite school to expand financial aid after the Supreme Court banned the use of racial preferences in college admissions.
The plan with the new income cap will take effect starting this fall. Previously at Harvard, only families with incomes under $85,000 were offered free tuition. The median household income in the United States is about $80,000.
In addition to boosting diversity, the move could serve to improve the school’s image as higher education is under assault by the Trump administration and growing unpopular with Americans who have lost confidence in education.
The University of Pennsylvania announced last November that it would offer free tuition for students from families making under $200,000. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology also announced a $200,000 cutoff then, similar to a plan offered by Caltech. Other universities have also increased their financial aid limits in the past year, including Dartmouth, the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina.
The Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action led to declines in the number of Black and Hispanic students at many schools, including Harvard. Last fall, the proportion of Black first-year students enrolled at Harvard declined to 14 percent from 18 percent the previous year, while Hispanic students’ enrollment increased slightly.
The ruling has posed a dilemma for schools that have argued that diversity is important, but that are now under intense scrutiny from the Trump administration, which is seeking to eliminate diversity efforts.
Richard Kahlenberg, director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, said that improving financial aid packages makes sense for colleges that are looking to attract more Black and Hispanic students, since race and income are often intertwined.
“Now that universities can no longer employ racial preferences, if they want racial diversity, the best path forward is to boost the chances of admissions of nonwealthy and working-class students, a disproportionate share of whom are Black and Hispanic,” Dr. Kahlenberg said in an email. “To get such students to apply, and then to enroll, requires generous financial aid.”
In making the financial aid announcement, Alan M. Garber, Harvard’s president, mentioned neither the Supreme Court decision nor the White House’s ongoing assault on elite universities, which has resulted in dramatic funding cuts at many schools that receive federal dollars.
But he referred to the value of bringing a cross-section of people together.
“Putting Harvard within financial reach for more individuals widens the array of backgrounds, experiences and perspectives that all of our students encounter, fostering their intellectual and personal growth,” Dr. Garber said in the announcement. “By bringing people of outstanding promise together to learn with and from one another, we truly realize the tremendous potential of the university.”
The annual cost of attending Harvard, including tuition and housing, was almost $83,000 this school year. In addition to offering free tuition to students with family incomes up to $200,000, Harvard said that students from families that make under $100,000 will pay for practically nothing.
For those students, Harvard will cover tuition, fees, food, housing, travel costs between campus and home, event fees and activities, and health insurance, if needed. The university will also pay for “winter gear” to help students brace against harsh winters on Harvard’s Cambridge, Mass., campus, along with a $2,000 “start-up” grant.
Harvard’s announcement said that in addition to tuition, students from families making up to $200,000 could be eligible for extra financial aid, depending on their circumstances. The university also said that some students from families making more than $200,000 could be eligible for some forms of financial aid, depending on their family’s situation.
Harvard said it spent $275 million on financial aid this year, but did not have an estimate of how much its new plan will cost. Just over half of Harvard’s undergraduates received financial aid, the school said.
The push to expand financial aid as schools compete for students comes at a precarious time in higher education. Harvard’s announcement comes within days of the school saying that it would freeze hiring to gird against White House threats of funding cuts and tax increases.
Major cuts in international health and agricultural programs funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development have led to hundreds of layoffs at universities around the country, most notably Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Wealthy universities are also wary of various proposals by congressional Republicans to increase the endowment tax on Harvard and other schools. Some have said that could hurt their efforts to offer financial aid.
Currently, the annual investment income earned by the endowment is taxed at 1.4 percent. Vice President JD Vance has proposed raising it to as much as 35 percent. (Mr. Vance himself received a generous financial aid package to attend Yale Law School.)
The Trump administration also moved to cap overhead reimbursements on National Institutes of Health grants to 15 percent, which could cut hundreds of millions of dollars that schools have come to rely on to cover facilities and staff. That proposal is being challenged in courts.
The overhead rates normally vary depending on the grant recipients, but in some cases, they provide up to 60 percent of the grant in additional reimbursements.
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8) Legal Experts Question Trump’s Authority to Cancel Columbia’s Funding
The government has demanded drastic changes to the university before it will consider reinstating $400 million. Lee C. Bollinger, the school’s former president, calls it an “existential threat.”
By Katherine Rosman, March 17, 2025
When President Trump issued an ultimatum to Columbia University — canceling $400 million in funding and demanding an overhaul of its admissions and disciplinary rules — it launched the institution into an extraordinary crisis.
According to legal scholars, it may have also violated the law and the Constitution.
“Never has the government brought such leverage against an institution of higher education,” said Lee C. Bollinger, the former president of Columbia University, who stepped down in 2023 after a 21-year tenure. “The university is in an incredibly unprecedented and dangerous situation. It is an existential threat.”
The Trump administration has accused Columbia of failing to protect students and faculty from “antisemitic violence and harassment,” particularly in the months since the war in Gaza ignited a pro-Palestinian protest movement on campus, which then spread across the country. The government has said its demands are intended to protect Jewish students from discrimination.
Columbia thus far has publicly responded with caution and deference. The university is “committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns,” Columbia’s interim president, Dr. Katrina Armstrong, wrote in a letter to the university community.
The response has concerned some legal scholars because they believe the government has drastically overstepped its authority.
“It is puzzling that they have not filed a lawsuit that they would be extremely likely to prevail in,” said Leah Litman, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
Genevieve Lakier, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, said Columbia might be worried about escalating a battle with the Trump administration. “The institution is staffed with very intelligent lawyers,” she said. “I have to assume that they are concerned that the other shoes that could drop are worse.”
Some free expression experts said that the administration’s tactics violate the protections of the First Amendment. “The Supreme Court has imposed a very high burden on the government if it seeks to intrude into the core decisions of academic freedom,” Professor Bollinger said.
Other legal scholars said that the government is not adhering to the procedure and restrictions explicitly laid out in the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was written with safeguards to prevent governments from leveraging federal funds in a malicious manner.
In a statement Sunday evening, the Trump administration said it had acted properly. The government “followed all applicable law in holding Columbia University to account for the lawless antisemitism that it allowed to occur on its campus,” said Madi Biedermann, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education.
The government’s threat is just one front in an ongoing crisis at Columbia stemming from pro-Palestinian protests. Two demonstrators were arrested by U.S. immigration officials this month. And Dr. Armstrong confirmed last week that Homeland Security agents had entered the campus with federal warrants and searched two dorm rooms.
It is also part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration targeting institutions of higher education. Shortly after taking office, Mr. Trump announced the creation of a federal task force to combat antisemitism, particularly on college campuses. And after announcing its plan to cancel grants and contracts with Columbia, the government warned 59 other universities that a similar fate could await them. Among the schools listed were Harvard, Cornell and Johns Hopkins, as well as state schools including Arizona State University and the University of Tennessee.
To some students, parents and faculty, Columbia University has often failed to find a balance between respecting the rights of protesters and providing a sense of safety to Jewish people.
Last spring, protesters encamped on a lawn at the center of campus, using language that some characterized as critical of the Israeli government and that others believe was antisemitic. Some Jewish students described feeling afraid to walk freely on campus. After nearly two weeks, protesters seized control of an academic building before the university called in the city’s Police Department, which arrested more than 100 people.
Since President Trump’s return to office, the unrest has escalated after a period of relative quiet. A day after his inauguration, student protesters disrupted an Israeli history class and distributed fliers with incendiary messages. Two students at Barnard College, affiliated with Columbia, were expelled. In February, students protested the expulsions.
Then, earlier this month, the Trump administration announced that it was considering stop-work orders for $51.4 million in contracts between Columbia and the federal government.
“Antisemitism — like racism — is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services secretary, said in the administration’s announcement. “In recent years, the censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses for this deadly and virulent pestilence.”
The government’s antisemitism task force would also conduct a “comprehensive review” of substantial federal grant commitments to Columbia University to ensure the university was complying with “its civil rights responsibilities,” the announcement said.
The scrutiny intensified quickly. Just four days later, the administration announced the “immediate cancellation” of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia.
And a few days after that, the government sent a far-reaching list of demands that it said Columbia must meet before it would consider negotiating for the reinstatement of the money. It called for the university to formalize its definition of antisemitism, to ban the wearing of masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate” and to place the school’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under “academic receivership.”
The Trump administration has specifically cited provisions of the civil rights act in criticizing Columbia. The relevant section of the law, Title VI, prohibits discrimination by institutions that receive public money and requires federal agencies that believe an institution to be in violation to work with it before seeking to remove funding.
But some experts believe the Trump administration has skipped the onerous process civil rights law mandates must take place before funds can be revoked.
If the government wants to claim an institution has not complied with anti-discrimination law — after exhausting all attempts to obtain voluntary compliance — it must call a hearing and provide evidence, according to federal statute. Then it is tasked with alerting relevant congressional committees that it is about to terminate funds, allowing legislators 30 days to intervene and seek a remedy.
Then, only funds that can be cut are those directly connected to the source of the civil rights violation.
“All of these things recognized how drastic these funding issues are and how much they can affect a university,” said Professor Litman. “The process creates opportunities to bring the school into compliance.”
Usually, “it takes years to get any recognition or resolution of a complaint,” said Janel George, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s law school.
The speed with which the Columbia situation has been handled, and the outcome, is surprising, Professor George said, adding that the process is designed deliberately to be slow because the goal is not to punish, but to bring an organization into compliance. “Termination of funds is considered a very last resort,” she said. “It is very, very rare.”
On Sunday, the Department of Education spokeswoman did not respond to a question about whether the government had specifically followed that process.
Additionally, the remedies demanded by the Trump administration appear to go far beyond what the law allows, said Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. He cited putting an academic department in receivership and demanding changes to the process of student discipline. “There is no question but that this goes far beyond of the scope of the law,” he said. The internal workings of an academic institution are “not something that should be within the government’s control.”
Though the Trump administration specifically cites Title VI in its news announcements, it has not stated definitely that it is terminating funds under that law, resulting in a lack of clarity among legal scholars. “It feels so lawless,” said Professor Lakier, “and it makes it worse that the administration won’t clearly state what law it is relying on.”
She said that, in any case, she believes the government’s actions violate the First Amendment.
For Professor Bollinger — who dedicated his academic career to championing the First Amendment, and his administrative career to furthering the reach of Columbia University — the Trump administrations’s actions are deeply troubling.
“Anyone who cares about universities should be shocked by the seemingly obvious effort of the government to intrude into academic decision-making,” he said.
“There are moments when the rights we value only survive if everyone joins the effort to save them,” Professor Bollinger added. “This is not just about Columbia, and Columbia can’t do this on its own.”
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9) Netanyahu’s Move to Fire Shin Bet Chief Reflects Wider Push for Control
The effort is part of a dispute between Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing alliance and its opponents about the nature and future of the Israeli state.
By Patrick Kingsley, Reporting from Jerusalem, March 17, 2025
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to remove Israel’s domestic intelligence is raising concerns about whether he was seeking to undermine the agency’s independence. Credit...Pool photo by Yair Sagi
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sudden attempt to remove the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency is the latest salvo in a two-year campaign by the Israeli government to exert more control over different branches of the state.
The move prompted calls on Monday for mass protests and led to criticism from business leaders and the attorney general, summoning memories of the social upheaval in 2023 that was set off by an earlier push to reduce the power of state watchdogs.
Mr. Netanyahu’s plan to hold a cabinet vote on the future of Ronen Bar, the head of the agency known as the Shin Bet, was announced less than a month after his government announced a similar intention to dismiss Gali Baharav-Miara, the Israeli attorney general. It also came amid a renewed push in Parliament by Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition to give politicians greater control over the selection of Supreme Court justices.
These moves mark a return to Mr. Netanyahu’s failed efforts in 2023 to reduce the power of institutions that had acted as a check on his government’s power, including the Supreme Court and the attorney general.
That program — often described as a judicial overhaul — proved deeply divisive, setting off months of mass protests and widening rifts in Israeli society. The campaign was suspended only after the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023 revived a sense of national unity.
Now, amid a shaky cease-fire in Gaza, the easing of tension appears to have ended.
“The removal of the head of the Shin Bet should not be seen in isolation,” said Amichai Cohen, a law professor and fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based research group. “It’s part of the general trend of taking on these independent agencies and increasing the power of the executive.”
“The judicial overhaul is back,” Professor Cohen added.
The attempt to fire Mr. Bar prompted calls on Monday from opposition leaders and grass-roots activists for Israelis to demonstrate outside the government headquarters in Jerusalem on Wednesday, when the cabinet is set to vote on Mr. Bar’s future. A coalition of 300 major business leaders also issued a rare statement, criticizing Mr. Bar’s dismissal.
Ms. Baharav-Miara, the attorney general, issued a statement saying that Mr. Netanyahu could not begin the process of firing Mr. Bar until it was determined whether it would be lawful to do so. She said there were concerns that it would be a conflict of interest for Mr. Netanyahu — raising the prospect of a constitutional crisis if the prime minister ignored her warning.
Those developments evoked similar moves in 2023, when hundreds of thousands held weekly protests against the overhaul and the business leaders joined labor unions to hold a national strike.
The immediate context to the attempt to fire Mr. Bar was a personal dispute between the security chief and the prime minister. For months, Mr. Bar had angered Mr. Netanyahu by investigating officials in the prime minister’s office over claims that they had leaked secret documents and also worked for people connected to Qatar, an Arab state close to Hamas. Mr. Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing; the Qatari government did not respond to requests for comment.
The final straw for Mr. Netanyahu, analysts said, was most likely a rare public intervention last week from Mr. Bar’s predecessor, Nadav Argaman. In a television interview, Mr. Argaman said he might reveal further accusations of wrongdoing by the prime minister if he believed that Mr. Netanyahu was about to break the law.
Such comments from a close ally of Mr. Bar were “too much” for Mr. Netanyahu, said Nadav Shtrauchler, a former adviser to the prime minister. “He saw it as a direct threat,” Mr. Shtrauchler said. “In his eyes, he didn’t have a choice.”
But the broader context, analysts said, is a much wider dispute between Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing alliance and its opponents about the nature and future of the Israeli state.
Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition is formed from parties that variously represent ultrareligious Jews seeking to preserve their privileges; and settler activists aiming to deepen Israel’s control over the West Bank and further curb Palestinian rights.
For years, these groups have resented the independence of watchdogs like the judiciary, the attorney general and the security services, which have variously moved to limit some privileges for the ultra-Orthodox; block certain moves by the settler movement; and prosecute Mr. Netanyahu for corruption. He is standing trial on charges that he denies.
The government and its supporters say that reining in the judiciary and other gatekeepers like the Shin Bet actually enhances democracy by making lawmakers freer to enact what voters elected them to do. They also say that Mr. Bar should resign for failing to prevent the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war in Gaza.
The Shin Bet has “poked their noses into matters of governance, control, values, social cohesion and, of course, democracy,” Eithan Orkibi wrote in column on Monday for Israel Hayom, a right-wing daily newspaper. After Mr. Bar’s dismissal, Mr. Orkibi continued, the Shin Bet will “slowly be returned to their natural professional territory.”
But the opposition says such moves would damage democracy by removing a key check on government overreach, allowing Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition — the most conservative and nationalist in Israel’s history — to create a less pluralist and more authoritarian society. The opposition argues that Mr. Netanyahu should also take responsibility for the Oct. 7 attack, not just Mr. Bar.
“With a submissive coalition of yes men, Netanyahu is on his way to dismantling all of Israel’s gatekeepers,” Barak Seri wrote in a column for Maariv, a center-right daily. “To dismantling everything that is protecting Israel as we have known it since its establishment.”
In a separate development, the Israeli military said it had conducted strikes in central and southern Gaza against people trying to bury explosives in the ground. While Israel and Hamas are formally observing a cease-fire, negotiations to formalize the truce have stalled and Israel is conducting regular strikes on what it says are militant targets. Hamas has said the strikes have killed more than 150 people, some of them civilians. It did not immediately comment on the Monday strikes.
Myra Noveck contributed reporting.
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10) Israel Carries Out Deadly Strikes in Gaza and Warns of Intensified Attacks
The assaults targeting Hamas killed more than 400 people, local officials said, and were the first major strikes in Gaza since both sides agreed to a truce in January.
By Yan Zhuang, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman, March 18, 2025
Israeli forces launched large aerial attacks across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning, killing more than 400 people, Gaza’s health ministry said. The attacks, the first major strikes on the territory since Israel and Hamas agreed to a temporary cease-fire in January, raised the prospect of a return to all-out war.
The office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said that he had ordered the military operation following the “repeated refusal” by Hamas to release the hostages remaining in Gaza. “From now on, Israel will act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” the statement warned.
The attacks followed weeks of fruitless negotiations aimed at extending the fragile cease-fire, which paused 15 months of devastating fighting in the territory.
Daniel B. Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said on Tuesday, “Hamas’s insistence on holding on to hostages as leverage, and Netanyahu’s politically driven refusal to proceed with Phase 2 of the cease-fire, which called for an end to the war and the release of all living hostages, led to this escalation.”
The Israeli military announced just before 2:30 a.m. local time that it was conducting “extensive strikes” on Hamas targets. Hundreds of Palestinians, including children, were killed, according to the Gazan health ministry, whose figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Hamas accused Israel of deciding to “overturn the cease-fire agreement, exposing the prisoners in Gaza to an unknown fate,” referring to the remaining hostages. The group, however, did not immediately respond militarily to the attacks, leaving Israelis and Palestinians waiting to see whether the Palestinian group would escalate or head to the negotiating table.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Israel had consulted the White House before launching the strikes. The United States recently began a wave of attacks in Yemen against the Houthi militant group, which, like Hamas, is backed by Iran. The Houthis had fired missiles and drones at Israel for more than a year in solidarity with Hamas.
“As President Trump has made clear, Hamas, the Houthis, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay,” Ms. Leavitt told Fox News on Monday night. “All hell will break loose.”
Before the Israeli assault, which took place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israel and Hamas had been negotiating the next steps in the truce. The next phase was supposed to free more hostages taken during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the war. Mediators had hoped the talks would lead to an end to the conflict. But Israeli leaders said they were unwilling to stop the fighting until the end of Hamas’s rule in the territory.
“Israel’s takeaway from its campaign after October 7 until the recent cease-fire is that military pressure works,” said Dana Stroul, the Pentagon’s former top Middle East policy official.
Here’s what else to know:
· Militants killed: Hamas announced the deaths of at least five senior officials among the group’s Gaza leadership. Two, like Yasser Harb, were officials in the group’s political bureau. Others, including Bahjat Abu Sultan — director of Hamas’s feared internal security agency — held senior security roles. Another militant group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also said the spokesman for its military wing, who was known as Abu Hamza, had been killed in the Israeli strikes.
· Fate of hostages: Fewer than half of the 59 hostages remaining in Gaza are thought to be alive, according to the Israeli government. Hamas views them as bargaining chips.
· Fear and frustration: After two months of relative quiet, the strikes left Gazans with an unmistakable message: The war had returned, at least for now.
· Evacuation orders: The Israeli military ordered Palestinians living in parts of Gaza close to the border with Israel to leave their homes, labeling the areas “dangerous combat zones.”
· Aid halted: This month, Israel stopped allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, another effort to pressure Hamas at the negotiating table.
Raja Abdulrahim, Eric Schmitt and Ephrat Livni contributed reporting.
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11) Texas Arrests Midwife and Associate on Charges of Providing Abortions
The two arrests in greater Houston appear to be the first time health care providers have been charged with violating abortion bans in their state since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
By J. David Goodman, Reporting from Houston, Published March 17, 2025, Updated March 18, 2025
Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement that a midwife had been “charged with the illegal performance of an abortion, a second-degree felony, as well as practicing medicine without a license.” Credit...Anna Watts for The New York Times
A midwife and an associate have been arrested and charged with illegally performing abortions in greater Houston, according to court records and the Texas attorney general, apparently the first criminal arrests of abortion providers since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Ken Paxton, the attorney general in Texas, said in a statement that the midwife, Maria Margarita Rojas, operated clinics in several towns around Houston, including two in Harris County, the state’s most populous county, and one in Waller County, a more rural and conservative jurisdiction where the charges were brought.
The statement said that she had been “charged with the illegal performance of an abortion,” which has been a second-degree felony since the state’s near-total abortion ban took effect in 2022. She was also charged with practicing medicine without a license.
Court records released late Monday indicated that a person who worked with Ms. Rojas, Jose Ley, 29, was also arrested and charged with the same offenses. The records showed Ms. Rojas and Mr. Ley were being held on $500,000 bond in Waller County, west of Houston, where the charges were brought.
Lawyers for Ms. Rojas and Mr. Ley could not immediately be reached. But a friend said that Ms. Rojas had been arrested earlier this month while driving to one of her clinics.
“She was on her way to the clinic and got pulled over by the police at gunpoint and handcuffed,” said the friend, a fellow midwife, Holly Shearman, who said she had spoken with Ms. Rojas by phone last week. “She said they wouldn’t tell her what was happening. She said they took her to Austin.”
Ms. Shearman recalled that Ms. Rojas had told her that others from the clinic, possibly someone who worked at the front desk, had also been arrested.
The bans on abortions around the country have largely relied on the threat of prosecution, with few instances in which criminal cases have actually been filed. Abortion providers in Texas and other states with abortion bans ceased operations after the decision. Women seeking abortions have instead traveled to states where the procedure remains legal or have received abortion medication through the mail.
“This is, as far as I know, the first allegation that someone in a ban state is providing an abortion in direct violation of abortion laws,” said Marc Hearron of the Center for Reproductive Rights, referring to the period since the right to an abortion was overturned.
In a handful of cases, charges have been brought against people who provided abortion pills to relatives, either with their knowledge or without.
The state of Louisiana indicted a New York doctor on criminal charges earlier this year for mailing abortion medications to a Louisiana woman in violation of the state’s ban. New York has resisted requests to extradite the doctor under the state’s shield law, which protects providers from prosecution in states with abortion bans.
Texas brought a civil case against the same doctor, Margaret Carpenter, for sending pills to Texas residents. She did not defend herself in that case, and a judge last month ordered her to pay more than $100,000.
But the arrest of the midwife in the Houston area went further.
“In Texas, life is sacred,” Mr. Paxton said in a statement. “I will always do everything in my power to protect the unborn, defend our state’s pro-life laws and work to ensure that unlicensed individuals endangering the lives of women by performing illegal abortions are fully prosecuted.”
Ms. Shearman said Ms. Rojas had been held overnight and then released after her initial arrest. Court records in Waller County, where the charges were filed, indicate she was held in early March on the charge of practicing without a license.
The county’s records did not show any new charges for performing an abortion as of late Monday, and the district clerk’s office said it had not yet received any updated records in the case. A deputy at the Waller County sheriff’s office said Ms. Rojas had been brought to the jail on Monday.
After her arrest on felony charges of practicing medicine without a license, she was held on a $10,000 bond. The new charges of providing abortions were added on Monday.
But Ms. Rojas was not charged with the highest degree of the charge, which occurs when the abortion results in termination of the pregnancy. It was not clear why she had been charged that way. A spokesman for Mr. Paxton did not respond to requests for comment.
But in court documents, Ms. Rojas was accused of having “attempted an abortion on” a woman identified as E.G. on two separate occasions in March and that she was “known by law enforcement to have performed an abortion” on another individual earlier this year.
Mr. Paxton said his office had also filed for a temporary restraining order to shut down Ms. Rojas’s network of clinics “to prevent further illegal activity.”
The latest case, in the Houston area, originated with an investigation conducted in Mr. Paxton’s office, according to the Waller County district attorney, Sean Whittmore, who formerly worked in Mr. Paxton’s office.
The attorney general does not have the power to enforce criminal laws on his own but can do so at the request of local district attorneys, essentially becoming a partner to them in a case. That’s what took place here, Mr. Whittmore said.
According to the website for one of her clinics, Ms. Rojas, 49, was born in Peru, has been a certified midwife in Texas since 2018 and has “attended over 700 births in community based and hospital settings.”
Court records indicate that Ms. Rojas is a U.S. citizen but that Mr. Ley, who was also arrested, was a citizen of Cuba.
Ms. Shearman said that Ms. Rojas had been an obstetrician in Peru before moving the United States. She had been shocked to hear the allegation that Ms. Rojas had performed illegal abortions.
“They’re saying that she did abortions or something?” said Ms. Shearman, who described herself as conservative. “She never ever talked about anything like that, and she’s very Catholic. I just don’t believe the charges.”
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
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12) What Is This Continued Carnage in Gaza Achieving?
By Nicholas Kristof, Opinion Columnist, March 18, 2025
For now, at least, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has returned to war in Gaza. Massive Israeli airstrikes across Gaza have claimed more than 400 lives, including those of children, according to Gaza’s health authorities, and it seems more clear than ever that Netanyahu doesn’t have a plausible day-after plan for Gaza.
The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas was already on life support, and I’m afraid we’re now tumbling back into the savagery of a particularly brutal war that has left Gaza with the highest population of child amputees per capita in the world.
Negotiations on continuing the cease-fire were stalled, and Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said that his country had “no alternative but to give the order to reopen fire.” But of course Israel had alternatives, as the main advocacy group for family members of Israeli hostages in Gaza noted, albeit alternatives that were not particularly palatable to Israel’s leaders. The hostage families group denounced the airstrikes, saying, “We are shocked, outraged and deeply concerned by the deliberate destruction of the process to bring back our loved ones.”
Ever since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, Netanyahu has brilliantly advanced his own interests while proceeding without any obvious strategy that would advantage Israel. At this point, Israel has leveled much of Gaza, killing some 47,000 Palestinians, including 13,000 children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Some think those numbers are inflated, others an undercount: The medical journal The Lancet estimated 64,000 dead.
What has all this carnage achieved? Hamas’s fighting capacity is badly degraded, the planners of the Oct. 7 attacks have been killed and Israel has reestablished a measure of deterrence: One senior Hamas official said recently that he would have opposed the attack if he had known of the consequences for the territory. On the other hand, neither of Israel’s two fundamental aims of the war — freeing all its hostages and destroying Hamas — has been achieved.
The United States has assessed that Hamas has recruited almost as many militants as it has lost, and the group remains in control of Gaza and appears more popular in the West Bank and around the world. Meanwhile, much of global opinion that was sympathetic to Israel in 2023 has turned decisively against it, and fairly or not, the word “genocide” is often associated with it. And the lives of the remaining Israeli hostages are again in peril.
The United States bears special responsibility for the tragedy unfolding in Gaza, because it is American 2,000-pound bombs that have destroyed entire neighborhoods; such monstrous munitions cannot distinguish between militants and infants. President Joe Biden refused to use his leverage to press for an end to the war during his term, and President Trump has already shipped another 1,800 of the 2,000-pound bombs to Israel and blithely proposed clearing Gaza of Gazans in what would amount to ethnic cleansing.
With Netanyahu concerned only with his own career, with the United States adding fuel to the fire, with neither Washington nor Jerusalem showing much concern for what civilians are enduring in Gaza, I’m afraid we should brace ourselves for continued bloodshed and suffering that serves no strategic purpose.
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