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How Trump Got Rich
It had nothing to do with brains!
President Trump’s executive order sent a signal to Republicans that the administration was serious about winding down the Education Department. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesSome excerpts from Wikipedia:
Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in the New York City borough of Queens, the fourth child of Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. He is of German and Scottish descent. He grew up with his older siblings, Maryanne, Fred Jr., and Elizabeth, and his younger brother, Robert, in a mansion in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens. Fred Trump paid his children each about $20,000 a year, equivalent to $265,000 a year in 2024. Trump was a millionaire at age eight by contemporary standards. Trump attended the private Kew-Forest School through seventh grade.
He was a difficult child and showed an early interest in his father’s business. His father enrolled him in New York Military Academy, a private boarding school, to complete secondary school. Trump considered a show business career but instead in 1964 enrolled at Fordham University. Two years later, he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1968 with a Bachelor of Science in economics.
He was exempted from the draft during the Vietnam War due to a claim of bone spurs in his heels. …Starting in 1968, Trump was employed at his father’s real estate company, Trump Management, which owned racially segregated middle-class rental housing in New York City’s outer boroughs.
In 1971, his father made him president of the company and he began using the Trump Organization as an umbrella brand. Roy Cohn was Trump’s fixer, lawyer, and mentor for 13 years in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1973, Cohn helped Trump countersue the U.S. government for $100 million (equivalent to $708 million in 2024) over its charges that Trump’s properties had racially discriminatory practices. Trump’s counterclaims were dismissed, and the government’s case was settled with the Trumps signing a consent decree agreeing to desegregate; four years later, Trumps again faced the courts when they were found in contempt of the decree.
Before age thirty, he showed his propensity for litigation, no matter the outcome and cost; even when he lost, he described the case as a win. Helping Trump projects, Cohn was a consigliere whose Mafia connections controlled construction unions. Cohn introduced political consultant Roger Stone to Trump, who enlisted Stone’s services to deal with the federal government.
Between 1991 and 2009, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for six of his businesses: the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, the casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts company.
In 1992, Trump, his siblings Maryanne, Elizabeth, and Robert, and his cousin John W. Walter, each with a 20 percent share, formed All County Building Supply & Maintenance Corp. The company had no offices and is alleged to have been a shell company for paying the vendors providing services and supplies for Trump’s rental units, then billing those services and supplies to Trump Management with markups of 20–50 percent and more.
The owners shared the proceeds generated by the markups. The increased costs were used to get state approval for increasing the rents of his rent-stabilized units. …Trump has said he began his career with “a small loan of a million dollars” from his father and that he had to pay it back with interest.
He borrowed at least $60 million from his father, largely did not repay the loans, and received another $413 million (2018 equivalent, adjusted for inflation) from his father’s company.
Posing as a Trump Organization official named “John Barron,” Trump called journalist Jonathan Greenberg in 1984, trying to get a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans. Trump self-reported his net worth over a wide range: from a low of minus $900 million in 1990, to a high of $10 billion in 2015. In 2024, Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.3 billion and ranked him the 1,438th wealthiest person in the world.
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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) Mass Protests Across the Country Show Resistance to Trump
Demonstrators packed the streets in cities and towns to rail against government cutbacks, financial turmoil and what they viewed as attacks on democracy.
By Shaila Dewan, Minho Kim and Katie Benner, April 5, 2025
The crowds stretched for nearly 20 blocks in Manhattan. Credit...Adam Gray for The New York Times
They came out in defense of national parks and small businesses, public education and health care for veterans, abortion rights and fair elections. They marched against tariffs and oligarchs, dark money and fascism, the deportation of legal immigrants and the Department of Government Efficiency.
Demonstrators had no shortage of causes as they gathered in towns and cities across the country on Saturday to protest President Trump’s agenda. Rallies were planned in all 50 states, and images posted on social media showed dense crowds in places as diverse as St. Augustine, Fla.; Salt Lake City and rainy Frankfort, Ky.
“Pouring rain, 43 degrees, biting wind, and people are still here in Albany in the thousands,” said Ron Marz, a comic book writer who posted a photo of the crowd at the New York State Capitol on X.
While crowd sizes are difficult to estimate, organizers said that more than 600,000 people had signed up to participate and that events also took place in U.S. territories and a dozen locations across the globe.
On Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the protest stretched for nearly 20 blocks. In Chicago, thousands flooded Daley Plaza and adjacent streets, while, in the nation’s capital, tens of thousands surrounded the Washington Monument. In Atlanta, the police estimated the crowd marching to the gold-domed statehouse at over 20,000.
Mr. Trump, who was playing golf in Florida on Saturday, appeared to be largely ignoring the protests. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some of the demonstrators waved American flags, occasionally turned upside down to signal distress. Many, especially federal workers and college students, did not want to speak on the record for fear of retaliation. Right-wing slogans like “Stop the Steal” were co-opted in defense of Social Security, medical care and cancer research.
“I’m tariffied. Are you?” one placard read. Global financial markets tumbled this week at Mr. Trump’s announcement of tariff increases, which many economists warned would raise prices for U.S. consumers. Republicans in Congress wrestled over budget proposals that included cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food benefits.
Rob Ahlrichs, a Baltimore resident who attended the protest in Washington with his two sons and his wife, Katherine Sterner, put out a sign with a graph depicting stock market indexes plummeting that read, “Did you vote for this?”
In Chicago, Marilyn Finner, 65, who works in customer service, said she had never attended a protest but that she felt compelled to take part on Saturday because she was concerned about threats to retirement benefits.
“Eventually I want to receive my Social Security that I paid for,” she said. “I’ve been working since I was 13 years old. I’m fighting for my Social Security and everybody else’s.”
The mass action, with the deliberately open-ended name “Hands Off!,” was planned at a time when many Democrats have bemoaned what they see as a lack of strong resistance to Mr. Trump. The president has moved aggressively to punish people and institutions that he views as out of step with his ideology.
Don Westhoff, a 59-year-old accountant, was another first-time protester. He voiced outrage at the administration but had words for Democrats as well, saying they needed an infusion of younger leaders to oppose the president.
“We want to let the elected Democratic officials know that good is no longer good enough,” he said. “They need to fight.”
Multiple concerns prompted Katrin Hinrichsen to drive six hours from her home in Tolland, Conn., to Washington to attend. She held a sign with names of legal residents with foreign passports whom the Trump administration has moved to deport for allegations of antisemitic speech and gang activities.
Her 18-year-old son is transgender, she said, and she feared his losing access to gender transition care. “Now suddenly he’s a hate object, just because that’s politically convenient,” she said. “I’m just furious.”
The rallies were organized by Indivisible, MoveOn and several other groups that led protests about abortion rights, gun violence and racial justice during the first Trump administration. Organizers said they hoped to shift the emphasis to pocketbook issues like health care and Social Security, with the message that Mr. Trump is making life harder for the average American while benefiting his richest allies.
They also moved away from focusing on massive demonstrations, like the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, to instead plan hundreds of local gatherings in communities large and small.
Concerns varied by location. In Ketchum, Idaho — population 3,555 — cuts to the Forest Service generated deep concern, said Fiona Smythe, 56, a resident who attended a protest that she said drew more than 500 people. One sign showed Smokey Bear and read, “Only you can prevent forest fires. Seriously. We’ve been defunded. It’s just you now.”
Some demonstrators had specific issues, while others opposed the Trump administration and MAGA movement in general. “Hands off my money, rights, democracy,” one sign proclaimed. “Make lying wrong again,” said another. Elon Musk, the billionaire heading Mr. Trump’s slash-and-burn attack on the federal bureaucracy, was a popular target.
“I feel like the MAGA people have corrupted and co-opted the American flag and the idea of patriotism,” said Barbara Santarelli, 77, a retired health care worker draped in a flag who participated in the New York City rally. She described herself as a Jewish centrist who was concerned about her retirement benefits, attacks on universities and freedom of speech, the war in Gaza, and due process rights.
Before the event, she recounted, her daughter expressed concern for her safety. But she said attending the protest was something she had to do. “The soldiers, they go to war to defend democracy,” she recalled saying. “At my age, this is how I go to war to defend democracy.’”
In Chicago, Glynn Tipton, a 45-year-old pharmaceutical professional, said he was attending to make friends feel safer.
“I’m a generic white guy, so they aren’t coming for me,” he said. “There’s a lot of my friends who are Jewish, trans, in the military or sick, and they’re not doing OK. It’s OK for me to stand out here, so I should for the ones who are afraid.”
Many protesters said they had been directly affected by cuts to federal jobs and grants. In Atlanta, Johnny Johnson, 34, said he had been hired by the Internal Revenue Service, moved, fired and rehired in a matter of months.
“I dipped into my 401(k) because I didn’t know what was going to happen,” he said.
In Denver, veteran Trump protesters said there was a noticeably smaller Latino presence on Saturday than there had been at demonstrations during the first Trump term. “You notice there’s not a lot of Chicano people out here? It’s because people are scared,” said Brian Loma, 49, an environmental organizer who set up a tent in the snow selling hot chocolate. The government seemed to be “ripping up green cards,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
Among the demonstrators in New York City was Melissa Jackson, 41, a former special education teacher and the mother of a 3-year-old on a specialized learning plan for students with disabilities.
“I think it’s ridiculous. New York, the United States, is the melting pot. Like, what do we want? Like, not diversity, not inclusion?” she said, adding that she was also concerned about cuts to public education. “We’ve come too far to take so many steps back.”
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2) A Different Kind of Anti-Trump Resistance Is Brewing
By Micah L. Sifry, April 5, 2025
Mr. Sifry writes a newsletter about democracy, organizing and tech.
Tara Booth
Ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House and turned Elon Musk’s chain saw on longstanding federal programs and agencies, Democratic voters have been asking: Where is the opposition?
Democrats are still furious at Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, for helping Mr. Trump keep the government open; many find the public style of Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader in the House, too buttoned-up to meet the moment. And while more Democratic politicians are jetting to town hall meetings and rallies, list-building and maneuvering to run for president in 2028 aren’t the same thing as organizing. Even Senator Cory Booker, who took to the Senate floor this week with a 25-hour speech, capped his heroic effort with a volley of texts and emails asking for money. That’s not how you build a movement.
Democrats have been looking for the next resistance in all the wrong places. Instead of waiting for some politician to say the right words and catch fire, they should look to the people who are already on fire: federal workers.
America’s 2.4 million civilian federal workers are, by their nature, generally patriotic and politically moderate. Nearly 30 percent of them are veterans. They all take an oath to defend the Constitution. Also, unlike many politicians from both parties who went to elite schools, are worth millions and have to talk about their parents’ or grandparents’ humble beginnings to claim a connection to their constituents, most federal workers are just like the people they serve: working and middle class.
All this makes them uniquely well positioned to lead a new kind of resistance — more mainstream and grounded than the last one, and powerful enough to mobilize millions of Americans under its banner.
It’s a truism that Americans do not realize how much good the federal government does in their lives. But now there’s an army spreading out to remind them. In March, off-duty park rangers led demonstrations in more than 100 locations, from Abraham Lincoln’s home to Zion National Park. Postal employees, who work for an independent federal agency and number about 635,000 nationwide, held similar rallies in more than 200 places.
Federal workers are also protesting inside the U.S. Capitol, testifying at community impact hearings and speaking up at town halls. On Saturday, groups such as Indivisible and MoveOn, which helped lead the resistance to Mr. Trump during his first term, are staging their first big national demonstration in Washington, and federal workers and their unions have a significant role. Satellite rallies are happening in more than 1,000 locations around the country.
Why is this new defiance emerging from this corner of the political landscape? Many Democrats accepted Mr. Trump’s re-election with a kind of stunned resignation — it’s hard to argue with a popular and electoral vote victory. But hardly anyone expected Mr. Musk’s rampage through the heart of the federal government with his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
The authors of Project 2025, a blueprint prepared for Mr. Trump’s new term, called for tightening government hiring and retention standards, and for making it easier to fire low-performing civil servants. They did not recommend giving an unelected mega-billionaire super-bureaucrat the power to demolish whole government agencies and programs overnight by deleting their budgets, firing many of their employees without cause or due process and badgering the rest with mass emails demanding they prove their value on a weekly basis.
Human beings also don’t like being told that their life’s work is being fed “into the wood chipper,” as Mr. Musk gleefully described DOGE’s destruction of agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
It’s still early days. Many government workers are keeping their heads down, hoping to avoid attention and keep their jobs. Some are doing what they can to throw sand in the gears, by leaking damning news to reporters. Many of their unions — who just had their longstanding contracts canceled by Mr. Trump — are fighting back in the courts. And every week, more of the rank and file are speaking out, sharing their stories and organizing.
Rosa Lafer-Sousa and Matt Brown are postdoctoral research fellows at the National Institutes of Health, doing cutting-edge work in neuroscience. They’re both officers in the fledgling union of N.I.H. fellows. Despite their prestigious jobs, most of the fellows live paycheck to paycheck, Dr. Brown said. After 10 years of academic study, he makes less than $70,000 a year.
DOGE’s firing spree is breeding a heightened political awareness in them. “I spend a lot of time on TikTok,” Dr. Lafer-Sousa said. “Very early on, seeing videos in my feed of veterans who had just been illegally terminated, seeing scientists who had just been illegally terminated, seeing park rangers,” she said, she realized that “this is our coalition. We are now all experiencing the same cruel treatment, and we can work together to fight back against this.”
“What unites us is we all took an oath,” she added. “We all chose, at least within the federal sector, to serve our country.”
An Army Corps of Engineers worker said something similar when we met in March at a weekly picket outside the office of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Lower Manhattan. He described how the day he was hired, he stood by a flag, put his hand on a Bible and took an oath to defend the Constitution. He had come out on his lunch break to support fired bureau workers. “They keep Wall Street in line,” he explained. “This is all crucial to the way we live our lives, the way we protect our homes and the way the American system has worked.”
As we talked, protesters of all races and ages marched in circles, waving American flags and chanting things like “2-4-6-8, Dodd-Frank is pretty great!” One woman held a sign that read, “Credit card late fees? Hidden charges on auto loans? Mortgage lender ‘loses’ your payment? THE C.F.P.B. HELPS YOU.”
Since Mr. Trump returned to office, dozens of clinical drug trials have been halted, cancer research programs have been shut down, commercial fishers in the midst of updating their boats have lost thousands of dollars, food banks have gone into panic mode, veterans have lost mental health counselors, parents of kids with special needs have been told to expect fewer school aides, and the Social Security website crashed four times in 10 days.
As the blast radius of Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk’s cuts and chaos spreads, federal workers and their message will only resonate further. It’s like the Joni Mitchell lyric: “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” The health workers, scientists, park rangers, veterans care providers, letter carriers, air traffic controllers and many others who are speaking out aren’t just trying to save their jobs — they’re trying to save programs and investments that were providing irreplaceable services to regular Americans. By going after the federal work force, Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk are radicalizing the very people who can best explain how the government does so much good for so many.
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3) Sudanese Refugees Flee to Chad Amid Deadly Airstrikes
As a civil war enters its third year, it only seems to be getting worse.
By Alex Pena, April 6, 2025
The first stop for many Sudanese refugees fleeing deadly ground attacks and airstrikes in Sudan is a remote mobile medical clinic along the border with Chad, operated by Doctors Without Borders. Sudan’s civil war is entering its third year, and increasing airstrikes have been a driving factor for many refugees now fleeing the country for safety in neighboring Chad.
“I’m always afraid of the planes,” said Kubrah Abdullah Dawood, 25, a Sudanese refugee who had just crossed the border alone with her 11-month-old daughter. Doctors Without Borders staff members quickly ushered her into a makeshift tented clinic just steps from the border, where she told them that she fled Darfur’s capital, El Fasher, after an airstrike killed her brother. She said it had been a drone attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the R.S.F.
“As the Sudanese Armed Forces have made progress in Khartoum, we’ve seen more [R.S.F.] moving towards Darfur,” said Kate Hixon, advocacy director for Sub-Saharan Africa Amnesty USA. “Wherever the R.S.F. is, we’ve seen burning of villages, blocking of aid, conflict related sexual violence, and we expect an increase in that in the coming weeks.”
While Ms. Hixon notes an expected increase in ground attacks as the R.S.F. regroups in its Darfur stronghold, she said airstrikes from both sides of the war had been a driving factor of recent displacement.
In recent months, the influx of refugees to the region prompted Doctors Without Borders to scale up its services along the more rural northern border regions of Chad. Survivors who recently fled the Darfur region described to The New York Times how airstrikes by Sudan’s military would follow shortly after R.S.F. fighters infiltrated their villages or marketplaces.
“The R.S.F. would raid the village, [and then] the [Sudanese military] would strike,” said Fayza Adam Yagub, 38, from Saraf Omra, at a refugee camp in Adré, Chad. “But the R.S.F. would manage to escape, and the poor people were the ones getting hit.”
As recently as March 25, a Sudanese military airstrike in the small village of Toura in North Darfur killed at least 54 people and wounded dozens more, according to local monitoring groups, which called the attack a war crime — an accusation the army has denied. The R.S.F. fighters, and their allied militias, have also been accused of targeting civilians.
Sudan’s military and the R.S.F. have been embroiled in a brutal civil war that has killed nearly 20,000 civilians and displaced over 12 million people, according to the United Nations, which noted that the situation was only getting worse.
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4) ‘0 to 1939 in 3 seconds’: Why Anti-Elon Musk Satire Is Flourishing in Britain
Humor and art have been used to mock the powerful in Britain for centuries. Now Elon Musk is on the receiving end.
By Michael D. Shear, Reporting from London, April 6, 2025
A fake advertisement on a bus stop in London last month. Credit...Leon Neal/Getty Images
The mischievous posters began appearing all over London in the past two months.
On the side of an East London bus stop, one of them shows Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, emerging from a Tesla’s roof with his hand pointing upward in a straight-armed salute. “Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds,” the ad reads. “Tesla. The Swasticar.”
Another mock ad shows Mr. Musk and President Trump in front of a red Tesla with the words: “Now With White Power Steering.” In North London, a fake movie billboard blares: “The Fast and the Führer,” with a picture of Mr. Musk saluting beside a Tesla with a DOGE license plate, a reference to the budget-slashing federal agency he currently leads on behalf of Mr. Trump.
“Parental Guidance,” warns the billboard, put up by a group calling itself Overthrow Musk. “Tesla’s CEO is a far-right activist. Don’t give him your money.”
Across the British capital and in several European cities, Mr. Musk’s signature business has become the target of the same kind of political anger that has fueled vandalism of Tesla cars in the United States and sometimes violent protests at his dealerships.
There have been some instances of unruly protests and vandalism in Europe. But much of the anti-Musk sentiment has taken the form of political satire, of the kind that has flourished in Britain since at least the 18th century.
Just outside Berlin, a group called the Center for Political Beauty used high-power lights to project the word “Heil” onto the side of a Tesla factory so that it read “Heil Tesla,” along with a picture of Mr. Musk saluting during a speech in Washington. In Italy, street art depicts Elon Musk taking off a mask to show Adolf Hitler’s face underneath. The words “Elon Mask” appear above the picture.
“There’s never been a target exactly like this,” said John Gorenfeld, a software engineer who helped start a London-based group called “Takedown Tesla.” The group has organized protests of several dozen people for the past several weeks. They hold posters along freeways that say “Honk if you hate Elon.” And they have printed bumper stickers for Tesla owners with phrases like “Don’t make the same mistake” and “Pre-2020 Model.”
“Nobody who is that rich and powerful has behaved that outrageously,” Mr. Gorenfeld said. “There’s something campy and ridiculous about Musk’s brand of toxicity. And it opens up a real space to ridicule.”
In Europe, Mr. Musk is not just a faraway example of American wealth and power. Over the last year, he has become a frequent political meddler, often weighing in on behalf of far-right causes on X, his social media platform, where he has 218 million followers.
In Britain, Mr. Musk is known for sharing misinformation about a child rape scandal and calling for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to be jailed. He has called for the release of Tommy Robinson, a far-right, anti-immigrant agitator who is in prison for contempt of court. And he criticized the seven-year sentence of a neo-Nazi who incited and took part in anti-immigrant riots last summer.
The small anti-Musk groups that have popped up around Europe have the same basic goal: Tank Tesla’s stock price and sales as a way of sending a message to Mr. Musk and other super-wealthy people who are thinking of promoting far-right politics around the world. Some groups declined to be interviewed about their actions, citing concern about becoming a target of Mr. Musk’s ire on social media. But others were more open about their aims.
“The point of this is to show Musk and other billionaires that they are vulnerable and can’t act with impunity,” said Ben Stewart, a founder of a British satirical activist group called Led by Donkeys, which worked with the Center for Political Beauty to project Mr. Musk’s image on the Berlin factory. “We have to harness global public opinion to push back.”
Organizers think it’s working. Tesla’s stock price has almost halved since its high in December, around the same time that Mr. Musk began his high-profile role overseeing the firing of government workers and slashing federal agency budgets. This week, Tesla reported a 13 percent drop in sales compared with a year ago.
“What they’re trying to do is put massive pressure on me, and Tesla I guess, to you know, I don’t know, stop doing this,” Mr. Musk said last week in Wisconsin where he was campaigning for a state supreme court candidate.
And yet, he added with a shrug, “Long term, I think Tesla stock’s going to do fine, so maybe it’s a buying opportunity.”
The protesters who spoke about their aims said they wanted to challenge Mr. Musk’s influence without resorting to the vandalism that the billionaire has called out in the United States as “coordinated violence against a peaceful company.”
Theodora Sutcliffe, a London resident who helped organize Tesla Takedown, said none of the people she works with are participating in violence. Instead, they have sought to find other ways to capture public attention.
At one of their protests, a wavy, 20-foot balloon man who vaguely resembled Mr. Musk saluted into the air. At other times, Ms. Sutcliffe and her fellow protesters have left fliers on the windshields of Tesla cars.
“Once upon a time, Teslas were cool,” one flier says. “Now, sadly, that’s not the case. Driving a Tesla and using Tesla chargers means you’re propping up Elon Musk, a man who promotes climate deniers and fossil-fuel junkies.”
“If you want to go viral in the U.K., you have to be smart, I think,” Ms. Sutcliffe said. “That’s our sense of humor normally.”
The anti-Musk efforts in Berlin were led by Philipp Ruch, the artistic director for the Center for Political Beauty, a German activist group. In an interview, he said that much of the anger at Mr. Musk in Germany stems from the billionaire’s support for the country’s far-right party, the Alternative for Germany.
“The first day that the administration comes in, he does the Hitler salute,” Mr. Ruch said. “This is something we couldn’t tolerate, politically and artistically.”
Mr. Ruch performs many of his protests by “overwriting” one image with another. At the Tesla dealership, he used lights to superimpose his words and images of Mr. Musk to create a new artistic creation. (He said the police are now investigating his efforts, which were visible for about an hour.) Pictures of the building were spread widely on social media.
Other efforts have gone viral, too.
There are mock car air fresheners called “Musk-B-Gone” that promise to cover “the stench of fascism.” And cardboard cutouts of Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump, thanking Tesla owners for their support when they top up their cars at the company’s supercharger lots.
“There are some people who are coming at Musk as though he’s some sort of passive agent of Trump and that really, this is just another way of getting to Trump,” said Ms. Sutcliffe. “There’s other people who perceive Musk as somebody who’s a unique type of threat that we really haven’t seen before in terms of his economic control and control of the information space.”
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5) Trump and Netanyahu are using similar playbooks as they face turmoil.
Luke Broadwater, Reporting from Washington, April 7, 2025
Before President Barack Obama was sworn into office in 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu called the Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas out of the blue and asked for a lesson in what was essentially a foreign tongue: the language of Democrats.
“I speak Republican and you speak Democratic, and I need the intermediary,” said Mr. Netanyahu, who was about to become prime minister of Israel, according to Mr. Pinkas. He added: “Netanyahu always thought of himself as some pedigree neocon that belongs in the right wing of the Republican Party.”
Mr. Netanyahu, who will meet with President Trump at the White House on Monday, is once again conversing with his preferred party, and the difference has been stark.
Where former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had sought to put some restrictions on Mr. Netanyahu’s military campaign in Gaza, the Trump administration has made no such demand. Where Mr. Biden criticized Mr. Netanyahu’s attempted overhaul of Israel’s courts, Mr. Trump has made attacks of his own against American judges.
“They are unshackled,” said Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy and a senior fellow in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution. “A lot of concerns that the previous White House kept making about humanitarian aid, about limiting civilian casualties, these concerns are just not voiced anymore.”
Looming over the meeting this week is a point of tension: Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which did not spare Israel. Mr. Netanyahu’s office said the two men plan to discuss the tariff issue, the war in Gaza, Israel-Turkey relations, Iran and the International Criminal Court.
“I can tell you that I am the first international leader, the first foreign leader, who will meet with President Trump on the issue, which is so important to the Israeli economy,” Mr. Netanyahu said of the tariffs. “There is a long line of leaders who want this regarding their economies. I think that it reflects the special personal link, as well as the special ties between the U.S. and Israel.”
All recent American administrations have allied themselves, to varying degrees, with Israel, although Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu had a long and complicated history. Mr. Biden referred to the Israeli leader as a “close, personal friend of over 33 years,” and Mr. Netanyahu referred to Mr. Biden as an “Irish American Zionist.”
Mr. Biden also grew frustrated with Mr. Netanyahu’s conduct in office, criticizing his overhaul of Israel’s judiciary. And the American president used profanities over how Israel carried out the war in Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas.
“You know the perception of Israel around the world increasingly is that you’re a rogue state, a rogue actor,” Mr. Biden told Mr. Netanyahu, after an airstrike in Iran.
There was a different reaction when Israel consulted the White House recently about aerial attacks across the Gaza Strip. The response from the Trump administration? Give ’em hell.
“The Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Fox News, adding: “All those who seek to terrorize, not just Israel, but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay. All hell will break loose.”
The Israeli airstrikes ended a temporary cease-fire with Hamas that began in January and raised the prospect of a return to all-out war. More than 400 people, including children, were killed in the first hours of the strikes, Gaza’s health ministry said.
Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Trump have also found common cause in their criticism of their countries’ judges. Mr. Trump has railed against judges who have blocked some of his administration’s actions, including his invoking of wartime powers to speed up deportations. He has called for one judge in particular to be impeached, as Mr. Netanyahu cheered him on.
“In America and in Israel, when a strong right wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will,” Mr. Netanyahu wrote on social media. “They won’t win in either place! We stand strong together.”
Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said there was simply “much more trust on the part of the Israelis in the Trump administration.”
“The vice president, the secretary of state, secretary of defense, national security adviser, they’re all viewed as very pro-Israel,” said Mr. Abrams, who worked in foreign policy positions for three Republican presidents, including Mr. Trump. “And that was not true of the Biden administration, which was viewed as sympathetic, but leaning toward restraining Israel.”
To be sure, Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu have had their ups and downs.
In Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Netanyahu angered Mr. Trump with the rather innocuous act of congratulating his successor, Mr. Biden, after the presidential election in 2020.
But in Mr. Netanyahu’s view, the first Trump presidency was a boon for Israel. The American president moved the United States Embassy to Jerusalem and paid little attention to the Palestinians while siding with Israel on its claims over Palestinian territory in the West Bank.
Then, soon after retaking office, Mr. Trump proposed that the United States should seize control of Gaza and permanently displace the entire Palestinian population of the devastated seaside enclave, one of the most brazen ideas that any American leader has advanced about the region. He has since made some distance from that proposal.
But his musing about the mass removal of the Palestinians came during a meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, who smiled throughout Mr. Trump’s remarks and later heaped praise on him.
“You cut to the chase,” Mr. Netanyahu told Mr. Trump. “You see things others refuse to see. You say things others refuse to say, and after the jaws dropped, people scratch their heads and they say, ‘You know, he’s right.’”
Many condemned Mr. Trump’s suggestion as immoral and illegal. But polls showed right-wing Israelis who make up Mr. Netanyahu’s base widely supported the idea, and the American president has been popular in Israel.
The fact that Mr. Netanyahu’s base backs Mr. Trump gives him unique power in the country as Israel and Hamas negotiate the release of hostages and a cease-fire, Mr. Sachs said.
“They fear Trump more, and they do think he’s unpredictable,” Mr. Sachs said. “The direct talks with Hamas, this was done without Israeli knowledge. It’s something that a more iconoclastic president like Trump is willing to do, and Israel is loath to cross him. He has a better chance to more forcefully get whatever direction he wants.”
Steven Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, has been in negotiations about seeking a new cease-fire agreement. Mr. Netanyahu has selected Ron Dermer, a former Republican activist with close ties to Mr. Trump, to participate in cease-fire talks.
Mr. Witkoff sent a clear message to Hamas before the airstrikes began: “President Trump has made it clear that Hamas will either release hostages immediately, or pay a severe price.”
But as the war once again ramps up with Mr. Trump’s blessing, the Trump administration will also begin to assume ownership of the war, said Ned Lazarus, an associate professor of international affairs at George Washington University’s Elliott School.
“Netanyahu has had conflict with every one of the multiple U.S. presidents, but he is obviously on much friendlier terms with Trump. He listens to what Trump says,” he said. “This is a renewal of the war. This is Trump’s war.”
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6) Kennedy promotes a fight against chronic illness as funding to address it is eliminated.
By Gina Kolata, April 7, 2025
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken of an “existential threat” that he said can destroy the nation.
“We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world,” Mr. Kennedy said at a hearing in January before the Senate confirmed him as the secretary of Health and Human Services.
And on Monday he is starting a tour in the Southwest to promote a program to combat chronic illness, emphasizing nutrition and lifestyle.
But since Mr. Kennedy assumed his post, key grants and contracts that directly address these diseases, including obesity, diabetes and dementia, which experts agree are among the nation’s leading health problems, are being eliminated.
These programs range in scale and expense. Researchers warn that their demise could mean lost opportunities to address an aspect of public health that Mr. Kennedy has said is his priority.
“This is a huge mistake,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
Decades of Diabetes Research Discontinued
Ever since its start in 1996, the Diabetes Prevention Program has helped doctors understand this deadly chronic disease. The condition is the nation’s most expensive, affecting 38 million Americans and incurring $306 billion in one recent year in direct costs. With about 400,000 deaths in 2021, it was the eighth leading cause of death.
The program has been terminated, and the reason has little to do with its merits. Instead, it seems to be a matter of a lead researcher’s working in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The program began when doctors at 27 medical centers received funding from the National Institutes of Health for a study asking whether Type 2 diabetes could be prevented. The 3,234 participants had high risk of the disease.
The results were a huge victory. Those assigned to follow a healthy diet and exercise routine regularly reduced their chances of developing diabetes by 58 percent. Those who took metformin, a drug that lowers blood sugar, decreased their risk by 31 percent.
The program entered a new phase, led by Dr. David M. Nathan, a diabetes expert at Harvard Medical School. Researchers followed the participants to see how they fared without the constant attention and support of a clinical trial. The researchers also examined their genetics and metabolism and looked at measures of frailty and cognitive function.
Several years ago, the investigators had an idea. Some studies suggested that people with diabetes had a higher risk of dementia. But scientists didn’t know if it was vascular dementia or Alzheimer’s or what the precise risk factors were. The diabetes program could renew its focus on investigating this with its 1,700 aging participants.
The group added a new principal investigator, the dementia expert Dr. Jose A. Luchsinger. For administrative reasons, including the newfound focus on dementia, the program decided its money should flow through Dr. Luchsinger’s home institution, Columbia University, rather than through Harvard or George Washington University, where a third principal investigator works.
On March 7, the Trump administration cut $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia, saying Jewish students were not protected from harassment during protests over the war in Gaza. The diabetes grant was among those terminated: $16 million a year that Columbia shared across 30 medical centers. The study ended abruptly.
Asked about the termination, Andrew G. Nixon, director of communications at Health and Human Services, provided a statement from the agency’s acting general counsel saying that “anti-Semitism is clearly inconsistent with the fundamental values that should inform liberal education” and that “Columbia University’s complacency is unacceptable.”
At the time their grant ended, the researchers had started advanced cognitive testing for evidence of dementia in patients, followed by brain imaging to look for amyloid, the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. They planned to complete the tests during the next two years.
Then, Dr. Luchsinger said, the group was going to look at blood biomarkers of amyloid and other signs of dementia, including brain inflammation. For comparison, they planned to perform the same tests on participants’ blood samples from 7 and 15 years ago.
“Very few studies have blood collected and stored going that far back,” Dr. Luchsinger said.
Now much of the work cannot begin, and the part that had started remains incomplete.
Another troubling question the researchers hoped to answer was whether metformin increases, decreases or has no effect on the risk of dementia.
“This is the largest and longest study of metformin ever,” Dr. Luchsinger said. Participants assigned to take the drug in the 1990s took it for more than 20 years.
“We thought we had the potential to put to rest this question about metformin,” Dr. Luchsinger said.
The only ways to save the program, Dr. Nathan said, are for Mr. Kennedy to agree to restore the funding at Columbia or to transfer the grant to a principal investigator at another medical center.
The study investigators are appealing to the diabetes caucus in Congress, hoping it can help make their case to the Health and Human Services.
“We hope the congressmen and senators might prevail and say: ‘This is crazy. This is chronic disease. This is what you wanted to study,’” Dr. Nathan said.
So far, there has been no change.
Include Diversity. Actually, That’s Too Much Diversity.
Compared with the Diabetes Prevention Program, a program to train pediatricians to become scientists is tiny. But pediatric researchers say that the Pediatric Scientist Development Program helps ensure that chronic childhood diseases are included in medical research.
It began 40 years ago when chairs of pediatric departments called for the creation of the program, which has been continually funded ever since by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Participants are clinicians who were trained in subspecialties like endocrinology and nephrology, practiced as clinicians and were inspired to go into research to help young patients with the diseases they had seen firsthand.
The highly competitive program pays for seven to eight pediatricians to train at university medical centers for a year, pairing them with mentors and giving them time away from the clinic to research conditions including obesity, asthma and chronic kidney disease.
In retrospect, the program’s fate was sealed in 2021 when its leaders applied for a renewal of their grant. It seemed pro forma. This was its eighth renewal.
This time, though, an external committee of grant reviewers told the investigators their proposal’s biggest weakness was a lack of diversity. The program needed to seek pediatricians who represented diverse ethnicities, economic backgrounds, states, types of research and pediatric specialties.
The critique said, for example, that “attention must be given to recruiting applicants from diverse backgrounds, including from groups that have been shown to be nationally underrepresented in the biomedical, behavioral, clinical and social sciences.”
So the program’s leaders sprinkled diversity liberally through a rewritten grant application.
“Diversity, in its broadest sense, was all over the grant,” said Dr. Sallie Permar, professor and chairwoman of pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of the program. “It was exactly what the reviewers appreciated when we resubmitted.”
The grant was renewed in 2023. Now it is terminated. The reason? Diversity.
The termination letter, from officials in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said there was no point in trying to rewrite the grant request. The inclusion of diversity made the application so out of line that “no modification of the project could align the project with agency priorities.”
Mr. Nixon, the health department spokesman, did not reply to queries about the pediatric program’s cancellation.
Participants in the program are distraught.
Dr. Sean Michael Cullen had been studying childhood obesity at Weill Cornell in New York. He has investigated why male mice fed a high-fat diet produced offspring that became fat, even when those offspring were fed a standard diet.
He hoped his findings would help predict in humans which children were at risk of obesity so pediatricians could try to intervene.
Now the funds are gone. He may seek private or philanthropic funding, but he doesn’t have any clear prospects.
Dr. Evan Rajadhyaksha is in a similar situation. He’s a childhood kidney disease specialist at Indiana University. When he was a resident, he cared for a little girl who developed kidney disease because of a condition in which some urine washes up from the bladder into the kidneys.
Dr. Rajadhyaksha has a hypothesis that vitamin D supplementation could protect children with this condition.
Now, that work has to stop. Without funding, he expects to leave research and return to clinical work.
Dr. Permar said she hadn’t given up. The program costs only $1.5 million each year, so she and her colleagues are looking for other support.
“We are asking foundations,” she said. “We are starting to ask industry — we haven’t had industry funding before. We are asking department chairs and children’s hospitals, are they willing to fund-raise?”
“We are literally looking under every couch cushion,” Dr. Permar said.
“But,” she said, federal support for the program “has been the foundation and cannot be supplanted.”
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8) Supreme Court Clears Way for Venezuelan Deportations to Resume, for Now
A majority of the justices concluded that the Venezuelan migrants had brought their cases in the wrong court but that they were entitled to an opportunity to challenge their removal.
By Abbie VanSickle, Reporting from Washington, April 7, 2025
The Trump administration sought to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport more than 100 Venezuelans to the Terrorist Confinement Center prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador, last month, prompting a legal challenge. Credit...Pool photo by Alex Brandon
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday night that the Trump administration could continue to deport Venezuelan migrants using a wartime powers act for now, overturning a lower court that had put a temporary stop to the deportations.
The decision marks a victory for the Trump administration, although the ruling did not address the constitutionality of using the Alien Enemies Act to send the migrants to a prison in El Salvador. The justices instead issued a narrow procedural ruling, saying that the migrants’ lawyers had filed their lawsuit in the wrong court.
The justices said it should have been filed in Texas, where the Venezuelans are being held, rather than a court in Washington.
All nine justices agreed that the Venezuelan migrants detained in the United States must receive advance notice and the opportunity to challenge their deportation before they could be removed, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrence.
The split among the court was over where — and how — that should happen.
“The detainees are confined in Texas, so venue is improper in the District of Columbia,” according to the court’s order, which was brief and unsigned, as is typical in such emergency applications.
The justices ordered that the Venezuelan migrants must be told that they were subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act “within a reasonable time” for them to challenge their removal before they are deported. That finding could impose significant new restrictions on how the Trump administration might attempt to use the act in the future.
President Trump wrote on social media that he viewed the decision as a victory.
“The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself,” Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social account. “A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE IN AMERICA!”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the majority’s legal conclusion was “suspect,” adding that the court had intervened to grant the administration “extraordinary relief” without mentioning “the grave harm” that the migrants would face if they were “erroneously removed to El Salvador.”
“The court should not reward the government’s efforts to erode the rule of law,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.
She was joined in dissent by the court’s two other liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined in part.
In a separate dissent, Justice Jackson sharply criticized the court’s decision to act on the emergency docket, where cases are typically heard quickly and without oral argument and full briefing.
“At least when the court went off base in the past, it left a record so posterity could see how it went wrong,” Justice Jackson wrote, citing Korematsu v. United States, a notorious 1944 decision by the court upholding the forcible internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
“With more and more of our most significant rulings taking place in the shadows of our emergency docket, today’s court leaves less and less of a trace,” Justice Jackson wrote. “But make no mistake: We are just as wrong now as we have been in the past, with similarly devastating consequences.”
Lawyers for the migrants challenging their deportations were “disappointed” that they would “need to start the court process over again” in a different court, but counted the ruling as a win, said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Mr. Gelernt said that “the critical point is that the Supreme Court rejected the government’s position that it does not even have to give individuals meaningful advance notice so they can challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act.”
He added, “That is a huge victory.”
The case is perhaps the most high-profile of the nine emergency applications the Trump administration has filed with the Supreme Court so far, and it presents a direct collision between the judicial and executive branches.
The administration had asked the justices to weigh in on its effort to use the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law, to deport more than 100 Venezuelans it claims are members of Tren de Aragua, a violent street gang rooted in Venezuela. The administration argues that their removals are allowed under the act, which grants the president authority to detain or deport citizens of enemy nations. The president may invoke the law in times of “declared war” or when a foreign government invades the United States.
On March 14, Mr. Trump signed a proclamation that targeted members of Tren de Aragua, claiming that there was an “invasion” and a “predatory incursion” underway. In the proclamation, Mr. Trump claimed that the gang was “undertaking hostile actions” against the United States “at the direction, clandestine or otherwise” of the Venezuelan government.
Lawyers representing some of those targeted challenged the order in federal court in Washington.
That same day, planeloads of the deportees were sent to El Salvador, which had entered an agreement with the Trump administration to take the Venezuelans and detain them.
A federal judge, James E. Boasberg, directed the administration to stop the flights. He subsequently issued a written order temporarily pausing the administration’s plan while the court case proceeded.
The administration appealed Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order, and a divided panel of three appellate court judges in Washington sided with the migrants, keeping the pause in place. One judge wrote that the government’s deportation plan had denied the Venezuelans “even a gossamer thread of due process.”
At that point, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, arguing in its application that the case presented “fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country.”
Lawyers for the migrants responded sharply, arguing that the temporary pause by Judge Boasberg was “the only thing” standing in the way of the government sending migrants “to a prison in El Salvador, perhaps never to be seen again, without any kind of procedural protection, much less judicial review.”
The American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward, the groups representing the Venezuelan migrants, said the president had bent the law in an “effort to shoehorn a criminal gang” into the wartime law in a manner that was “completely at odds with the limited delegation of wartime authority Congress chose to give him through the statute.”
Lawyers for the migrants said the deportees sent to El Salvador “have been confined, incommunicado, in one of most brutal prisons in the world, where torture and other human rights abuses are rampant.”
The Trump administration replied on Wednesday in a brief that contended that the government was not denying that the Venezuelan migrants should receive “judicial review.”
“They obviously do,” the acting solicitor general, Sarah M. Harris, wrote.
Rather, the government argued, that “the pressing issues right now are ‘procedural issues’ about where and how detainees should challenge their designations as enemy aliens.” Ms. Harris argued that the migrants should have filed their legal challenge in Texas, where they had been detained before the deportation flights, rather than in Washington.
She asked the justices to lift the temporary block on Mr. Trump’s order, calling the pause “an intolerably long time for a court to block the executive’s conduct of foreign-policy and national-security operations.”
Ms. Harris claimed that the migrants’ lawyers had offered a “sensationalized” narrative.
She added that the government denied that the migrants might face torture in El Salvador, writing that the government’s position is “to abhor torture, not to invite brutalization.”
Alan Feuer contributed reporting.
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9) Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Order Requiring Return of Wrongly Deported Migrant
The chief justice, acting on his own, issued an “administrative stay,” a brief pause meant to give the court time to consider the matter. The justices are expected to act in the coming days.
By Adam Liptak, Reporting from Washington, April 7, 2025
An appellate court panel likened Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s inadvertent deportation to an act of official kidnapping. Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Monday temporarily blocked a trial judge’s order directing the United States to return a Salvadoran migrant it had inadvertently deported.
The chief justice, acting on his own, issued an “administrative stay,” an interim measure meant to give the justices some breathing room while the full court considers the matter.
The order came just hours after the administration asked the court to block the trial judge’s order instructing the government to return the migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, by 11:59 p.m. on Monday.
Judge Paula Xinis of the Federal District Court in Maryland had said the administration committed a “grievous error” that “shocks the conscience” by sending Mr. Abrego Garcia, to a notorious prison in El Salvador last month.
In the administration’s emergency application, D. John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general, said Judge Xinis had exceeded her authority by engaging in “district-court diplomacy,” because it would require working with the government of El Salvador to secure his release.
“If this precedent stands,” he wrote, “other district courts could order the United States to successfully negotiate the return of other removed aliens anywhere in the world by close of business,” he wrote. “Under that logic, district courts would effectively have extraterritorial jurisdiction over the United States’ diplomatic relations with the whole world.”
In a response to the court, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said their client “sits in a foreign prison solely at the behest of the United States, as the product of a Kafka-esque mistake.”
They added: “The district court’s order instructing the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return is routine. It does not implicate foreign policy or even domestic immigration policy in any case.”
Mr. Sauer, the administration’s lawyer, said it did not matter that an immigration judge had previously prohibited Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador.
“While the United States concedes that removal to El Salvador was an administrative error,” Mr. Sauer wrote, “that does not license district courts to seize control over foreign relations, treat the executive branch as a subordinate diplomat and demand that the United States let a member of a foreign terrorist organization into America tonight.”
The administration contends that Mr. Abrego Garcia, 29, is a member of a violent transnational street gang, MS-13, which officials recently designated as a terrorist organization.
Judge Xinis, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, said those claims were being based on “a singular unsubstantiated allegation.”
“The ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie,” she wrote, “and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York — a place he has never lived.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said there was no evidence that he posed a risk.
“Abrego Garcia has lived freely in the United States for years, yet has never been charged for a crime,” they wrote. “The government’s contention that he has suddenly morphed into a dangerous threat to the republic is not credible.”
Just before the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit unanimously rejected the department’s attempt to pause Judge Xinis’s ruling.
In a sharply worded order, two judges likened Mr. Abrego Garcia’s inadvertent deportation to an act of official kidnapping.
“The United States government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process,” wrote Judge Stephanie D. Thacker, who was appointed by Mr. Obama. “The government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.”
Judge Thacker wrote that Judge Xinis’s order “requires only that the United States government exercise the authority and control it must have retained over the detainees it is temporarily housing in El Salvador,” adding that “requiring that the government effectuate and facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return is not a novel order.”
Judge Robert B. King, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, joined Judge Thacker’s opinion.
A third member of the panel, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, issued a concurring opinion agreeing that no stay was warranted but stopping short of the majority’s position that Judge Xinis had the power to tell the government to demand Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return.
“There is no question that the government screwed up here,” Judge Wilkinson wrote. But he drew a distinction.
“It is fair to read the district court’s order as one requiring that the government facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release, rather than demand it,” wrote Judge Wilkinson, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan. “The former seems within the trial court’s lawful powers in this circumstance; the latter would be an intrusion on core executive powers that goes too far.”
Mr. Sauer said Judge Xinis’s order was one in a series of rulings from courts exceeding their constitutional authority.
“It is the latest in a litany of injunctions or temporary restraining orders from the same handful of district courts that demand immediate or near-immediate compliance, on absurdly short deadlines,” he wrote.
In a separate emergency application, the administration has asked the justices to weigh in on its effort to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants to the prison in El Salvador. The court has not yet acted on that application.
In filings to the court, the administration claimed that the migrants are members of Tren de Aragua, a violent street gang rooted in Venezuela, and that their removals are allowed under the act, which grants the president authority to detain or deport citizens of enemy nations.
The president may invoke the law in times of “declared war” or when a foreign government invades the United States. On March 14, President Trump signed a proclamation that targeted members of Tren de Aragua, claiming that there was an “invasion” and a “predatory incursion” underway as he invoked the wartime law.
In the proclamation, Mr. Trump claimed that the gang was “undertaking hostile actions” against the United States “at the direction, clandestine or otherwise” of the Venezuelan government.
Alan Feuer and Abbie VanSickle contributed reporting.
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10) With Trump’s Return, Netanyahu Faces Fewer Restraints On Gaza Than Ever
On the war, President Trump is more aligned than his predecessor with the aims of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his right-wing coalition.
By Michael D. Shear and Aaron Boxerman, April 8, 2025
Michael Shear and Aaron Boxerman reported from London
There was a time, not long ago, when Israel’s resumption of the war in the Gaza Strip three weeks ago — a renewed offensive that has already claimed more than a thousand casualties — would have unleashed fierce Western pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s prime minister.
The condemnations would have been swift, in public and in backroom conversations. The demands for restraint would have come from Europe and the White House, where during four years, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. sometimes tried, and often failed, to contain Mr. Netanyahu’s impulses.
Now Mr. Biden is gone, and President Trump has made it clear that he has no intention of continuing the finger-wagging of his predecessor. Europe is distracted by Mr. Trump’s trade war, and Mr. Netanyahu has consolidated his coalition’s majority in Israel’s Parliament, giving him more political space to act.
On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu sat next to Mr. Trump in the Oval Office as the president lauded him as “a great leader.” The prime minister did not get relief from the 17 percent tariffs Mr. Trump said will be levied on Israel — one of the key objectives of his trip — nor did he get immediate U.S. backing for military action on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And at times he appeared nonplused as Mr. Trump spoke at length about trade, immigration and the U.S. economy.
But on the overriding question of Israel’s renewed military campaign in Gaza, Mr. Trump was largely quiet. He made no mention of the Israeli attack on ambulances and a fire truck that came to light last week, and that killed 15 emergency workers, or the April 3 strike that killed dozens of people, including children, in a school-turned-shelter.
“I definitely think Netanyahu is trying to take advantage of what he thinks is increased room to maneuver,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House. She said the prime minister appeared emboldened by Mr. Trump’s silence in the face of the escalating Israeli attacks inside Gaza after a cease-fire that lasted just two months.
The result, say observers inside and outside of Israel, is a prime minister unleashed, with fewer guardrails to constrain his actions in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. It means that Mr. Netanyahu is free to resume his overhaul of his country’s judicial system without denunciations from Washington. And it means a changed dynamic in a region that has been battered by 18 months of armed conflict.
Israel has now barred aid from entering Gaza for over a month. Israeli forces patrol parts of southern Lebanon and Syria, where Israeli leaders say they will remain indefinitely. One enemy, the powerful Lebanese militia Hezbollah, was badly weakened in war with Israel; another, the Assad regime in Syria, was toppled by rebels.
Critics of Mr. Netanyahu note that he has resisted global opinion for years, hawking himself to the Israeli public as a leader who would defy the world to protect the country. He shrugged off American and global criticism over the intensity of Israel’s response after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, in a military campaign that has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry.
“What little pressure there was could be dismissed and was dismissed,” said Daniel Levy, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project, a group based in London and New York.
Still, the difference between then and now is striking, they say.
On Gaza, Mr. Biden repeatedly expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself, prompting some in the United States to accuse him of not putting enough pressure on Israel to stop the deaths of civilians. But Mr. Biden did criticize the massive airstrikes during Israel’s military campaign, at one point calling it “over the top” and saying that the suffering of innocents has “got to stop.”
Last June, he accused Mr. Netanyahu of seeking to prolong the war for domestic political reasons. And while he never cut off the flow of weapons to Israel, Mr. Biden did delay the delivery of America’s largest bombs. Before the war, Mr. Biden also pressured the Israeli prime minister to temper his efforts to overhaul his country’s judicial system, a plan that critics called a blatant power grab and an existential threat to Israel’s liberal democracy.
“They cannot continue down this road — I’ve sort of made that clear,” Mr. Biden said, in a remarkably direct rebuke to one of America’s closest allies.
Now, that pressure has evaporated.
Mr. Trump has not challenged Mr. Netanyahu on the judicial plan. And the president's own actions — attacking judges and law firms that have displeased him — may be seen by Mr. Netanyahu as a kind of permission slip for his own efforts, analysts say.
One former senior U.S. official said Mr. Netanyahu sees Mr. Trump as a “fellow traveler” when it comes to his efforts to reshape the judiciary to his liking.
Nadav Shtrauchler, a former adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, said that the prime minister had experienced “a complete reversal” under the Trump administration that allowed him “much more room to operate.”
Mr. Netanyahu has even begun to echo Mr. Trump’s own rhetorical flourishes, repeatedly attacking his opponents as members of a “deep state” dedicated to persecuting him. “I haven’t heard any concerns from the Trump administration about ‘Israeli democracy’ or pressure on Netanyahu,” said Mr. Shtrauchler. “Just the opposite.”
At home, Mr. Netanyahu has stabilized his political position by removing almost every threat to his hard-right governing coalition, said Mr. Shtrauchler. And while his critics might consider the moves autocratic, he added, Mr. Netanyahu’s constituency remains resolutely behind him, giving him a free hand.
Defying his detractors, since the Oct. 7 attacks, the worst security failure in Israeli history, the prime minister has clawed himself back to a position of strength. Last month, he moved to fire his intelligence chief and his attorney general, actions seen as part of an effort to consolidate power and eliminate rivals.
In Europe, leaders who once spoke out forcefully about Mr. Netanyahu’s actions are distracted by Mr. Trump’s tariffs and the scramble to head off a global financial crisis. And the continent is still shaken by Mr. Trump’s pivot away from decades-long trans-Atlantic alliances and his outreach toward Russia.
Mr. Netanyahu appears increasingly unconcerned with what Europe thinks.
In recent days, his government blocked two British members of Parliament from entering Israel on a fact-finding mission, prompting David Lammy, the foreign secretary, to issue an angry statement calling it “unacceptable, counterproductive, and deeply concerning.”
In February, Mr. Netanyahu joined with Russia and Mr. Trump to oppose a European effort at the United Nations to express support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. And last week, Mr. Netanyahu received red-carpet treatment in Hungary from Viktor Orban, the country’s authoritarian leader, who is close with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. Netanyahu thanked Mr. Orban for withdrawing his country from the International Criminal Court, which in November issued arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and his former defense minister, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
But Mr. Netanyahu’s latest actions in Gaza have been the most striking.
Opposition to his decision to restart the fighting has been fairly muted in Israel, though public polls suggest that most people want a deal to end the fighting and free the hostages held in Gaza, and that majorities of voters do not support the prime minister and his coalition. And Mr. Trump’s comments about Gaza’s future have changed the way Mr. Netanyahu talks about the region’s fate.
The president declared in February that he would support a mass deportation of Palestinians, to create a “Riviera” on the Gaza Strip, a proposal that would be a severe violation of international law. Since then, Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians have more openly talked about a future in which Israel controls the area indefinitely. On Tuesday, after Mr. Trump repeated the idea, Mr. Netanyahu praised it as a benefit to the people of Gaza.
“They’re locked in. And what is wrong with giving people a choice?” Mr. Netanyahu said, while also insisting falsely that Israel had not kept people inside Gaza from leaving for years. The prime minister said that he and the president had talked over lunch about countries which he claimed were willing to take in Palestinians who wanted to leave Gaza. Egypt and Jordan have repeatedly refused to do so.
“The president has a vision,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Countries are responding to that vision. We’re working on it.”
In Israel, the idea that Palestinians would be deported from Gaza was once the province of a far-right fringe. It is now endorsed by the U.S. president and repeated by Mr. Netanyahu, and Israel’s defense minister has established an office to oversee the policy.
“The encouragement, the boost it has given is to a camp in Israel which is very extreme, very zero-sum and was gaining power but is now really feeling it can operationalize things,“ Mr. Levy said.
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11) NOAA Staffing Cuts Threaten Years of Salmon Harvests
In Washington, where salmon is a multibillion dollar industry, government staff terminations and budget freezes may put salmon production at risk
By Austyn Gaffney, April 9, 2025
Salmon caught on the opening day of the spring Chinook salmon run in Washougal, Wash., in 2020. Credit...Grant Hindsley for The New York Times
In Washington State, April is when millions of young Chinook salmon are released from hatcheries, where they started as tiny, pink globes, to swim downstream and rebuild the salmon population. They are part of an ecosystem that affects tribal, commercial, and recreational fishing and are a main source of food for endangered killer whales.
But this year, almost a dozen hatcheries in the Puget Sound region are in limbo because a single employee from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was terminated in February, a casualty of cuts made by billionaire Elon Musk’s advisory group known as the Department of Government Efficiency.
That employee was Krista Finlay and her job at NOAA was to ensure hatcheries complied with the Endangered Species Act before the fish were released into Puget Sound. She was among tens of thousands of federal employees with probationary status who lost their jobs in February. Ms. Finlay, who had worked at NOAA since March 2024 after more than two years as an intern and then fellow, said she feared for the salmon run.
“If I don’t release millions and millions of salmon, there’s less this year and years going forward,” Ms. Finlay said. “If we don’t have salmon returning in 2027 and 2028, we don’t have offspring to release the following year, so it will take many, many years to repair this, if it’s even possible.”
Since January, the Trump administration has cut more than 56,000 employees across dozens of federal agencies — ranging from workers who fight wildfires on federal land to those who research vaccines to prevent the next pandemic. Some employees have been reinstated while many others are still on administrative leave and unable to do their work.
In response to a request for comment, Rachel Hager, a public affairs officer with NOAA Fisheries, wrote in an email that “Per long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters.”
In the Pacific Northwest, salmon are deeply interwoven into the economic and cultural fabric. Over the last century, there’s been a well-documented decline in the number of salmon returning to Washington’s rivers, a shrinkage driven by habit degradation, climate change and over harvesting.
Under NOAA, hatcheries have become vital to keeping salmon in some rivers, according to Daniel Schindler, an ecology professor at the University of Washington who studies fisheries.
“It’s safe to say that one of the critical roles that NOAA plays is to ensure that hatcheries are operated in a way to minimize impact on wild fish, particularly endangered stocks,” Dr. Schindler said. “Reducing those hatchery releases impacts everything from providing food for marine mammals to supporting tribal and sport fisheries.”
Ms. Finlay and most other reinstated NOAA employees have not regained access to their work accounts. Many also haven’t received official notices of termination that would allow them to more easily apply for unemployment or transfer insurance benefits for their families.
Mark Baltzell was also terminated in February from his government position as a fishery management specialist following decades doing similar work with Washington State’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. He said there are only a few people in NOAA who understand how the complicated management agencies for fisheries fit together.
“The more you diminish that capacity and the people involved in that work, it’s like the domino effect,” Mr. Baltzell said. “You start having a ripple effect on other parts of management or recovery of these populations.”
About 12 million Chinook salmon that are usually released each year could be affected, said Adrian Spidle, a fishery geneticist with the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, an agency representing 20 tribes.
The Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission has helped forecast the return of salmon populations since the 1970s, and used those models to estimate how to sustain a healthy fish population and harvest. The responsibility for managing the fisheries and the salmon harvest is shared by the tribes and Washington State, and overseen by NOAA.
“NOAA either has to replace that person or give that person’s work to somebody,” Mr. Spidle said. “The thing about NOAA cutting people is that they can cut people but it doesn’t cut their obligations.”
Since the federal workers were terminated, communication with NOAA has been challenging for Mr. Spidle and others who work on the salmon program.
“Right now it goes back and forth whether we can even talk to NOAA people,” he said.
“It’s more complicated than the loss of one person,” he added, “it impacts all of us.”
David Troutt, the natural resources director for the Nisqually Indian Tribe said the loss of NOAA staff members who have dedicated careers to this work are hard to replace. “Even if the funding were restored, or NOAA was able to hire additional staff, they’re likely going to hire folks with less experience and understanding of the issues,” Mr. Troutt said. “I don’t know what the long term consequences of this might be.”
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12) ‘Where’s Alex?’ A Beloved Caregiver Is Swept Up in Trump’s Green Card Crackdown
An autistic young man loses his caretaker as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown expands to permanent U.S. residents convicted of minor crimes years ago.
By Miriam Jordan, Photographs by Caroline Gutman, April 9, 2025
Luke Ferris, right, and Alfredo Orellana, his caretaker.
Alfredo Orellana, 31, was not just a caregiver for Luke Ferris, a 28-year-old with severe autism. The pair worked out at the gym, got tacos and played video games together. They exchanged elbow bumps.
“It’s like Luke got a bro to hang out with,” said Mr. Ferris’s mother, Lena, from their home in Falls Church, Va.
Then suddenly, after four years, Mr. Orellana, who goes by Alex, was gone, locked up in an immigration detention center nearly 2,000 miles away.
A permanent U.S. resident, or green card holder, Mr. Orellana is facing deportation for trying to swindle a store out of $200 eight years ago when, his wife said, he was struggling with substance abuse.
The detention of Mr. Orellana and other green card holders is the latest sign that the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration is expanding far beyond people who are in the country illegally. Tasked with fulfilling President Trump’s campaign promise to carry out mass deportations, federal agents have been detaining permanent U.S. residents convicted of years-old minor offenses and moving to deport them.
Their families are reeling, as are some of the people they work for, like the Ferrises, who had come to rely on, and even cherish, Mr. Orellana’s care for Luke.
Ms. Ferris recently flew to Texas to visit Mr. Orellana, who is being held at the El Valle detention center there.
“How could anyone support getting rid of an amazing person providing a vital service to an American?” asked Ms. Ferris, who noted that her son’s care — and thus Mr. Orellana’s salary — is covered by Medicaid.
A labor shortage looms over the fast-growing industry that provides care to senior and disabled Americans, and immigrants like Mr. Orellana have been a key source of workers.
But under Mr. Trump, the Department of Homeland Security has taken a sprawling view of who should be targeted for deportation. A D.H.S. document reviewed by The New York Times said that Mr. Orellana was subject to removal from the United States for obtaining $200 “by false pretenses.”
Under immigration law, that constitutes a crime involving “moral turpitude” that can place a green card holder at risk of deportation, especially on re-entering the United States.
At the time of his trouble with the law, Mr. Orellana was in his early 20s and abusing drugs. After being convicted, he went to rehab. He became a peer supporter to others in recovery and found a calling caring for developmentally disabled people, according to his wife and employer.
Green card holders convicted of certain crimes can be deported. But the government has usually opted not to target those people unless they have committed particularly serious crimes, according to legal experts.
Mr. Orellana’s lawyer, Ben Osorio, compared arresting green card holders like his client to ticketing people for driving five miles over the speed limit, and fining everyone who jaywalks.
“We are living in an era of maximum enforcement,” he said.
Having a green card is a necessary step toward citizenship. As of 2023, there were 13 million green card holders in the United States. About nine million of them were eligible to become citizens, because they had been permanent residents for at least five years or had been married to a citizen for three years.
But many green card holders opt not to pursue citizenship. The application is expensive and the process is bureaucratic, requiring interviews with federal officials, extensive paperwork and a civics exam. Now, though, the difference between legal “permanent” residency and citizenship has become strikingly clear to many green card holders.
“It is an erroneous expectation that you are guaranteed to be here indefinitely when you have a green card,” said Gerald L. Neuman, an immigration scholar at Harvard Law School.
Green card holders concerned about being ensnared in the same dragnet as Mr. Orellana and others have flooded lawyers with queries. Several lawyers said they had been advising those with even minor offenses on their record to avoid international trips. Many of those people had traveled abroad without any problem before Mr. Trump took office, the lawyers said.
Erlin Richards, a green card holder since 1992, was returning from a vacation in the Dominican Republic last month when he was detained at Kennedy Airport in New York, based on a 2006 conviction for marijuana possession in Texas. He had paid a fine and never spent a day behind bars, said his lawyer, Michael Z. Goldman.
In the two decades since he was convicted, Mr. Richards, 43, an electrician from the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent who has three U.S.-born children, said that he had been to Canada and his home country. But that was before Mr. Trump entered office.
In a phone interview from immigration detention in Elizabeth, N.J., he said that a federal officer at J.F.K. suggested that he had no discretion to let him go. “Haven’t you been watching the news? Trump is president now. We have to detain you,” Mr. Richards recalled being told.
His lawyer, Mr. Goldman, pointed out that “he’s locked up for carrying a substance that is legal in many states, including his home state of New York.”
Mr. Orellana, the caregiver, had traveled to South America to visit family, and last year he vacationed in Costa Rica with his wife, Anita, who is American. He cleared passport inspection on his return to the United States, where he has lived since age 4, and resumed caring for Mr. Ferris 40 hours a week.
In January, the couple flew to El Salvador to visit Ms. Orellana’s relatives. By the time they landed at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, Mr. Trump was in the White House.
At passport control, Mr. Orellana was taken aside by the authorities. He was kept for 12 hours in a room with his wife, she said, and instructed to return on Feb. 20 with official court documents.
The couple returned to Dulles with the documents, expecting that the matter would be settled. Instead, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement took Mr. Orellana into custody.
“We were so shocked. We just could not believe it. We were both sobbing,” recalled his wife, an administrator at a clinic who is six months pregnant.
Mr. Orellana was detained for two weeks in Virginia before being roused at 3 a.m. to board a bus to Pennsylvania. From there he was flown, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, to Louisiana, his wife said. Then he was transferred to Raymondville, Texas, some 240 miles southeast of San Antonio near the U.S.-Mexico border, where he remains.
Ms. Orellana said that she was trying to “push through” in spite of the toll that the ordeal had taken on her. They have a mortgage and car payments to keep up with.
The Ferris family canceled the baby shower that they had planned for the couple. Their hope is that Mr. Orellana will win his case in immigration court on April 25 and arrive home before his daughter’s due date, July 4.
Back in Virginia, Luke Ferris has three sisters he adores, but his relationship with Mr. Orellana is unique.
“Luke never had a person his age spend that much time with him,” Ms. Ferris said. “Alex taught him what it is to be and have a friend,” she said.
Luke longs for Mr. Orellana, and repeatedly asks, “Where’s Alex? Where’s Alex?” His parents have decided to tell him that his pal was visiting his ailing grandfather.
As the confinement dragged on, Ms. Ferris started writing her son letters, pretending to be Mr. Orellana. Luke receives them with glee and hangs them on the lime-green wall by his desk.
“I’m sorry my phone is broken,” said one recent letter, in which “Mr. Orellana” justified not calling. “I should be home in late April or May. Please start up my car and visit the cats.”
Luke Ferris visits Mr. Orellana’s house weekly to complete the tasks.
And every day, he wonders aloud whether another letter has arrived.
“Mailman?”
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13) Netanyahu Sticks By Trump’s Brazen Proposal for Gazans to Leave
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said his government was serious about “voluntary” migration, after an Oval Office meeting where President Trump appeared to have lost interest.
By Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, April 9, 2025
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel visited the White House two months ago, President Trump sold him a brazen dream: The United States would take control of the Gaza Strip, move out the Palestinian population of about two million souls and turn the devastated seaside enclave into a glittering “riviera.”
This week, as the two leaders faced reporters again after meeting in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump appeared to have moved on, holding forth instead on U.S. border policy, his new tariffs, the plight of the hostages held in Gaza and the latest showstopper for Middle East policy — the opening of talks with Iran to curb its nuclear weapons program.
But Mr. Netanyahu did not let the Gaza idea — however unfeasible or potentially illegal — fade like a mirage. He raised it himself, saying that he and Mr. Trump had discussed the vision, including which countries might agree to accept Gazans.
Mr. Netanyahu and his government say they are serious about the idea but emphasize that they are speaking about facilitating the “voluntary” migration of Palestinians, in an apparent attempt to avoid any suggestion of ethnic cleansing. Critics say that it would hardly be voluntary if Gazans left, regardless, given that so many of their homes have been smashed to rubble.
Days after Mr. Trump’s original announcement, the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, said he was establishing a special administration within the ministry focused on voluntary migration from Gaza. In late March, he appointed a senior ministry official, Yaakov Blitshtein, to head it.
Mr. Netanyahu told the reporters on Monday at the Oval Office that Gaza was the only war zone where civilians were “locked in,” unable to leave.
“We didn’t lock them in,” he said, without acknowledging years of severe Israeli restrictions on movement in and out of the enclave for what the country says are security reasons, a longstanding Israeli naval blockade of the territory and Israel’s refusal to allow Gazans to live within its borders. Egypt also strictly controls its border with the enclave.
“It’s going to take years to rebuild Gaza,” Mr. Netanyahu said, referring to the vast destruction wrought by Israel’s 18-month campaign, which was ignited by the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel. “In the meantime, people can have an option. The president has a vision. Countries are responding to that vision,” he added.
Israeli officials would not say which third countries they were talking to about taking in Palestinians. Mr. Trump had suggested regional neighbors like Jordan and Egypt. But he already appeared to be backing off from his relocation idea barely two weeks after proposing it, after those two countries flatly rejected the notion and said that peace could be achieved only by giving the Palestinians statehood.
Egypt has refused to take in large numbers of Palestinians during the war, fearing that their arrival would have a destabilizing effect and that ultimately they would not be allowed back into Gaza.
Mass displacement has fraught connotations in the region. About two-thirds of Gaza’s population is made up of Palestinian refugees who lost their homes during hostilities surrounding the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and their descendants. At that time, about 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from what is now Israel in what is known by Palestinians as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.”
Some alternative names of potential hosts have been floated by Israelis, such as Somaliland, a self-declared breakaway republic in northwestern Somalia in the Horn of Africa, but they may appear less appealing than remaining in Gaza.
Still, several countries have agreed to take in limited numbers of Gazans for humanitarian reasons, including Romania and Italy, which have treated children with medical conditions. And on Wednesday, President Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia said his country was ready to offer temporary shelter to a first wave of around 1,000 medical evacuees from Gaza and children orphaned by the war there.
“We are ready to evacuate those who are injured or traumatized, and orphans,” he said as he was about to depart for a trip to the Middle East and Turkey. “We are ready to send planes to transport them,” he said, adding that the move was not meant for permanent resettlement.
When a reporter asked Mr. Trump on Monday if his Gaza emigration proposal was still on the table, he replied vaguely that it was “a concept that I had” and that people seemed to like, before passing the question over to Mr. Netanyahu.
Mr. Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said in a statement last month that Israel was “determined to realize the vision of U.S. President Donald Trump.” He said that checks by his ministry suggested that “at least 40 percent of Gaza’s residents are interested in migrating to other places.”
The administration, according to the statement, is supposed to ease exit routes by land, air and sea. But details remain scarce. The defense ministry declined requests for comment or information, as did the military’s department responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs and Israel’s population and borders authority.
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14) Death of Palestinian American Boy in West Bank Sparks Outcry
Amer Rabee, 14, was fatally shot by Israeli forces in the West Bank, according to his family. Community leaders gathered in New Jersey to demand justice.
By Shayla Colon, Published April 8, 2025, Updated April 9, 2025
“We cannot let this horrific crime be swept under the rug,” Rania Mustafa, the executive director of the Palestinian American Community Center, said at a news conference on Tuesday. Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times
Members of northern New Jersey’s Palestinian community gathered on Tuesday to condemn the recent killing of a Palestinian American boy by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.
The boy, Amer Rabee, 14, was shot and killed in the town of Turmus Aya on Sunday, his family said. Two other Palestinian American teenagers who were with Amer at the time were shot and injured by the soldiers, the family said.
Amer, who was originally from Saddle Brook, N.J., moved with his family to the West Bank around 2013. The family said that since then, it had divided its time between the West Bank and New Jersey.
At a news conference on Tuesday, community leaders stood at a small wooden lectern at the Palestinian American Community Center in Clifton, N.J., to decry Amer’s death and call on the U.S. government to investigate the shooting. They were joined by Rami Jbara, an uncle of Amer’s, and by Amer’s father, Mohammed Rabee, who called in remotely from the West Bank.
“We cannot let this horrific crime be swept under the rug,” said Rania Mustafa, the center’s executive director.
“Our stories are consistently ignored,” she added. “Our people are consistently dehumanized. Our deaths are repeatedly ignored.”
The outcry over Amer’s death comes weeks after Israel launched a series of attacks on Gaza, breaking a cease-fire agreement in its war against Hamas. Just over 900 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank since Hamas’s attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the United Nations. Roughly 30 Israelis have been killed in the West Bank during the same period.
When asked on Tuesday about Amer’s death, Israel’s military did not acknowledge him by name.
“During a counterterrorism activity in the area of Turmus Aya, I.D.F. soldiers identified three terrorists who hurled rocks toward the highway, thus endangering civilians driving,” the military said in a statement, using its initials. “The soldiers opened fire toward the terrorists who were endangering civilians, eliminating one terrorist and hitting two additional terrorists.”
At the news conference, Mr. Rabee recounted the events surrounding his son’s death. He said he had been at home taking a nap on Sunday when Amer left to pick almonds. Mr. Rabee said he later woke to a phone call in which he learned that his son had been wounded.
Mr. Rabee said he had called the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem seeking medical help, but that the aid did not arrive in time. He said he learned an hour later that his son was dead and that his body had been taken to an Israeli military camp. It was there, several hours later, that he found his son’s body in a bag, Mr. Rabee said.
Ayoub Ijbara, one of the teenagers with Amer on Sunday, was shot three times, but managed to flee and find help, according a statement from the community center, whose members spoke to Ayoub’s family. Surveillance footage showed that the soldiers fired 47 shots at the three boys while they were picking almonds, according to the statement.
“Amer was shot in the chest and fell backward to the ground,” the statement said. “The other two boys went to help him, but too many shots were fired and so they began to retreat.”
Ayoub, 15, had a six-hour surgery on Monday and is scheduled to have another procedure on Wednesday, according to the statement. The boy was born in Little Ferry, N.J., the community center said, and moved to Tennessee before he and his family relocated to Turmus Aya.
Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey called Amer’s death an “atrocity” in a social media post on Monday. The state’s governor, Philip D. Murphy, demanded in a statement that the Israeli government provide answers about why Amer had been killed, lamenting the “tragic loss of life.”
Asked about the shootings during a briefing on Tuesday in Washington, a State Department spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, said that U.S. officials were “certainly aware of that dynamic,” but stopped short of criticizing the Israeli government, citing an ongoing investigation.
“We send condolences to the families involved. These were teenagers,” Ms. Bruce said. She noted reports that the Israeli military believed it was stopping an act of terrorism, adding: “We need to learn more about the nature of what happened on the ground.”
The Israeli military sent a black-and-white video with its statement on Tuesday that it said showed Amer and the two other teenagers throwing rocks.
Mr. Rabee said he had seen the video and that there was no way to tell if Amer was one of the three people. Even if he was, Mr. Rabee said, Amer did not deserve to die.
“This land is called holy land,” Mr. Rabee said. “There’s supposed to be peace in this land, not war.”
Lara Jakes contributed reporting.
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