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A Trial Date Is Set on August 26 for Alejandro Orellana, Join the Call for National Protests to Drop the Charges!
https://stopfbi.org/news/a-trial-date-is-set-on-august-26-for-alejandro-orellana-join-the-call-for-national-protests-to-drop-the-charges/
A trial date of August 26 was set for immigrant rights activist Alejandro Orellana at his July 3 court appearance in front of a room packed with supporters. Orellana was arrested by the FBI on June 12 for protesting against ICE in Los Angeles. He faces up to 5 years in prison for two bogus federal charges: conspiracy to commit civil disorder, and aiding and abetting civil disorder.
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression is calling for a national day of protests on the first day of Orellana's trial, August 26th, to demand that the charges be dropped. To everyone who believes in the right to free speech, to protest ICE, and to say no to deportations, we urge you to organize a local protest on that day at the nearest federal courthouse.
Orellana has spent much of his adult life fighting for justice for Chicanos, Latinos, and many others. He has opposed the killings of Chicanos and Latinos by the LAPD, such as 14-year-old Jesse Romero, stood against US wars, protested in defense of others targeted by political repression, and has been a longtime member of the activist group, Centro CSO, based out of East LA. His life is full of examples of courage, integrity, and a dedication to justice.
In contrast, the US Attorney who charged him, Bilal Essayli, believes in Trump's racist MAGA vision and does a lot to carry it out. He defended Trump's decision to defy the state of California and deploy the California National Guard to put down anti-ICE protests. Essayli has charged other protesters, including David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California, who was held on a $50,000 bond.
Another Centro CSO immigrants rights activist, Verita Topete, was ambushed by the FBI on June 26. They served her a warrant and seized her phone. Orellana and his fellow organizers like Topete stand for the community that protested Trump last month. Essayli represents Trump’s attempts to crush that movement.
This case against Orellana is political repression, meant to stop the growth of the national immigrants rights movement. The basis for his arrest was the claim that he drove a truck carrying face shields for protesters, as police geared up to put down protests with rubber bullets. People of conscience are standing with Orellana. because nothing he did or is accused of doing is wrong. There is no crime in protesting Trump, deportations, and ICE. To protest is his - and our - First Amendment right. It’s up to us to make sure that Essayli and Trump fail to repress this movement and silence Orellana's supporters.
Just as he stood up for immigrants last month, we call on everyone to stand up for Orellana on August 26 and demand the charges be dropped. On the June 27 National Day of Action for Alejandro Orellana, at least 16 cities held protests or press conferences in front of their federal courthouses. We’ll make sure there are even more on August 26. In addition to planning local protests, we ask that organizations submit statements of support and to join in the call to drop the charges.
You can find protest organizing materials on our website, stopfbi.org. Please send information about your local protests and any statements of support to stopfbi@gmail.com. We will see you in the streets!
On August 26, Protest at Your Federal Courthouse for Alejandro Orellana!
Drop the Charges Now!
Protesting ICE Is Not a Crime!
Copyright © 2025 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
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Dear Organization Coordinator
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to invite your organization to consider co-sponsoring a regional proposal to implement Free Public Transit throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
This initiative directly supports low-income families, working people, seniors, youth, and others who rely on public transportation. It would eliminate fare barriers while helping to address climate justice, congestion, and air pollution—issues that disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
We believe your organization’s mission and values align strongly with this proposal. We are seeking endorsements, co-sponsorship, and coalition-building with groups that advocate for economic and racial equity.
I would love the opportunity to share a brief proposal or speak further if you're interested. Please let me know if there’s a staff member or program director I should connect with.
A description of our proposal is below:
sharethemoneyinstitute@gmail.com
Opinion: San Francisco Bay Area Should Provide Free Public Transportation
The San Francisco Bay Area is beautiful, with fantastic weather, food, diversity and culture. We’re also internationally famous for our progressiveness, creativity, and innovation.
I believe the next amazing world-leading feature we can add to our cornucopia of attractions is Free Public Transportation. Imagine how wonderful it would be if Muni, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, SF Bay Ferries, and all the other transportation services were absolutely free?
Providing this convenience would deliver enormous, varied benefits to the 7.6 million SF Bay Area residents, and would make us a lovable destination for tourists.
This goal - Free Public Transportation - is ambitious, but it isn’t impossible, or even original. Truth is, many people world-wide already enjoy free rides in their smart municipalities.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is promoting free transit, with a plan that’s gained the endorsement of economists from Chile, United Kingdom, Greece, and the USA.
The entire nation of Luxembourg has offered free public transportation to both its citizens and visitors since 2020. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has given free transit to its residents since 2013. In France, thirty-five cities provide free public transportation. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, offers free rides to seniors, disabled, and students. In Maricá (Brazil) – the entire municipal bus system is free. Delhi (India) – offers free metro and bus travel for women. Madrid & Barcelona (Spain) offer free (or heavily discounted) passes to youth and seniors.
Even in the USA, free public transit is already here. Kansas City, Missouri, has enjoyed a free bus system free since 2020. Olympia, Washington, has fully fare-free intercity transit. Missoula, Montana, is free for all riders. Columbia, South Carolina, has free buses, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has enjoyed free transit for over a decade. Ithaca, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, offer free transit to students.
But if the San Francisco Bay Area offered free transit, we’d be the LARGEST municipality in the world to offer universal Free Transit to everyone, resident and visitor alike. (Population of Luxembourg is 666,430. Kansas City 510,704. Population of San Francisco Bay Area is 7.6 million in the nine-county area)
Providing free transit would be tremendously beneficial to millions of people, for three major reasons:
1. Combat Climate Change - increased public ridership would reduce harmful CO2 fossil fuel emissions. Estimates from Kansas City and Tallinn Estonia’s suggest an increase in ridership of 15 percent. Another estimate from a pilot project in New York City suggests a ridership increase of 30 percent. These increases in people taking public transportation instead of driving their own cars indicates a total reduction of 5.4 - 10.8 tons of emissions would be eliminated, leading to better air quality, improved public health, and long-term climate gains.
2. Reduce Traffic Congestion & Parking Difficulty - Estimates suggest public transit would decrease traffic congestion in dense urban areas and choke points like the Bay Bridge by up to 15 percent. Car ownership would also be reduced. Traffic in San Francisco is the second-slowest in the USA (NYC is #1) and getting worse every year. Parking costs in San Francisco are also the second-worst in the USA (NYC #1), and again, it is continually getting worse.
3. Promote Social Equity - Free transit removes a financial cost that hits low-income residents hard. Transportation is the second-biggest expense after housing for many Americans. In the Bay Area, a monthly Clipper pass can cost $86–$98 per system, and much more for multi-agency commuters. For people living paycheck-to-paycheck, this is a significant cost. People of color, immigrants, youth, seniors, and people with disabilities rely more heavily on public transit. 55–70% of frequent transit riders in the Bay Area are from low-to moderate-income households, but these riders usually pay more per mile of transit than wealthy drivers. Free fares equalize access regardless of income or geography.
Free transit would help people 1) take jobs they couldn’t otherwise afford to commute to, thus improving the economy, 2) Stay in school without worrying about bus fare, 3) Get to appointments, child care, or grocery stores without skipping meals to afford transit.
To conclude: Free Public Transit should be seen as a civil rights and economic justice intervention.
The Cost? How can San Francisco Bay Area pay for Free Transit throughout our large region?
ShareTheMoney.Institute estimates the cost as $1.5 billion annually. This sum can acquired via multiple strategies. Corvallis, Oregon, has had free public bus service since 2011, paid for by a $3.63 monthly fee added to each utility bill. Missoula, Montana, funds their fare-free Mountain Line transit system, via a property tax mill levy. Madison, Wisconsin’s transit is supported by general fund revenues, state and federal grants, and partnerships/sponsorships from local businesses and organizations.
Ideally, we’d like the funds to be obtained from the 37 local billionaires who, combined, have an approximate wealth of $885 billion. The $1.5 billion for free transit is only 0.17% of the local billionaire's wealth. Sponsorship from the ultra-wealthy would be ideal. Billionaires can view the “fair transit donation” they are asked to contribute not as punishment or an “envy tax”, but as their investment to create a municipality that is better for everyone, themselves included. They can pride themselves on instigating a world-leading, legacy-defining reform that will etch their names in history as leaders of a bold utopian reform.
Our motto: “we want to move freely around our beautiful bay”
——
Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
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Following FBI Raid in San Jose, We Say Anti-War Activism Is Not a Crime! Sign Onto the Call Now
>>> Sign onto the statement here: tinyurl.com/handsoffantiwar
In April 2025, San Jose anti-war activist Alex Dillard was subjected to the execution of a federal search warrant. FBI agents raided his home and seized his personal electronic devices, seeking evidence of alleged ties to Russia and implying that he may have been acting as a foreign agent.
We, as the broad progressive people's movements in the U.S. and around the world, as well as members of the San Jose community, stand in solidarity with Alex against these attacks. We assert that these accusations are entirely baseless. They constitute a clear act of political retaliation against Alex's First Amendment-protected beliefs, activities, and associations.
This incident is not isolated. It reflects a broader pattern of repression by federal agencies against activists, journalists, and organizers who speak out against U.S. imperialism, war, and systemic injustice. From the surveillance and harassment of the Black liberation movement to the targeting of Palestinian solidarity organizers, the U.S. government has repeatedly sought to silence dissent through intimidation and legal persecution.
We condemn this latest act of FBI repression in the strongest terms. Such tactics are designed to instill fear, disrupt organizing efforts, and criminalize activism. But we refuse to be intimidated. Our community stands united in defense of the right to dissent and to challenge U.S. militarism, corporate greed, and state violence—no matter how aggressively the government attempts to suppress these voices.
We call on all allies, activists, and organizations committed to justice to sign onto this solidarity statement and to remain vigilant and to push back against these escalating attacks. The government’s efforts to conflate activism with "foreign influence" are a transparent attempt to justify repression—but we will not allow these tactics to silence us. We will continue to speak out, organize, and resist. Solidarity, not silence, is our answer to repression.
Activism is not a crime. Opposing war and genocide is not a crime. Hands off our movements!
Sign onto the statement here: tinyurl.com/handsoffantiwar
Copyright © 2025 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
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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) Trump and Netanyahu Meet Amid Gaza Cease-Fire Negotiations
The two confronted an array of high-stakes Middle East issues. But first they took a victory lap, including the Israeli leader telling President Trump he had nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.
By Luke Broadwater and Maggie Haberman, Reporting from Washington, Published July 7, 2025, Updated July 8, 2025
During the dinner, the two leaders discussed Gaza and Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu surprised Trump with the nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. CreditCredit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confronted several high-stakes issues when they met for dinner on Monday night, including the long-term future of Gaza and the prospect of Israel normalizing relations with its Persian Gulf neighbors.
But first, they indulged in some self-congratulation.
The two celebrated the U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and Mr. Netanyahu used the occasion to further ingratiate himself to the American president by telling Mr. Trump he had nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.
“He’s forging peace, as we speak, in one country in the region after another,” Mr. Netanyahu said, lavishing praise on Mr. Trump, who has long made known his desire for a Nobel Prize.
Mr. Trump, for his part, compared his decision to authorize airstrikes on Iran to President Harry S. Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan during World War II.
“That stopped a lot of fighting, and this stopped a lot of fighting,” he said.
The men spoke to reporters while seated at a long table in the Blue Room, surrounded by top White House aides. The Israeli prime minister plans to stay in Washington through Thursday and has meetings planned with Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary.
He has an array of daunting issues before him during his trip. Mr. Trump has expressed urgency to secure an Israel-Hamas cease-fire and hostage release deal, the subject of talks underway in Qatar.
The discussion agenda also included the recent U.S. airstrikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran, a surgical effort amid a broader Israeli war on the country, as part of a broader conversation about reducing instability in the region, according to two people with knowledge of the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the private meeting publicly.
Mr. Netanyahu, who arrived in Washington a little after 1 a.m. Monday, met first with Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, before having dinner with Mr. Trump.
It is Mr. Netanyahu’s third visit to the White House since Mr. Trump took office for a second time in January, a number that surpasses any other foreign leader. The two men are not personally close — and in fact have long harbored mutual suspicion — but have forged a working relationship out of necessity, allies of both say.
“The utmost priority for the president right now in the Middle East is to end the war in Gaza and to return all of the hostages,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Monday afternoon. “There was a cease-fire proposal that Israel supports that was sent to Hamas, and we hope that they will agree to this proposal. We want to see all of the hostages released.”
Ms. Leavitt called the cease-fire proposal “agreeable and appropriate.” She added that Mr. Witkoff intended to travel this week to Doha, the capital of Qatar, where he will engage in discussions that include representatives of Qatar and Egypt in trying to negotiate an end to the conflict.
“I think we’re close to a deal on Gaza. Could have it this week,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday, adding, “I think there’s a good chance we have a deal with Hamas during the week.”
Mr. Trump discussed the future of Gaza beyond a short-term cease-fire. In February, during Mr. Netanyahu’s first visit to Washington this year, Mr. Trump made a surprise announcement of his vision that some two million Palestinians be permanently relocated from the Gaza Strip to nearby countries so the United States could take over the territory and develop it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” He later walked back that suggestion.
Arab countries have countered Mr. Trump’s proposal with their own vision, endorsing a plan to keep the population there, rebuild the territory and turn it into part of a future Palestinian state, without Hamas in government.
In response to a question about Mr. Trump’s suggestion that Palestinians be relocated from Gaza, part of a broader proposal that has included essentially razing the territory and turning it into a luxury waterfront development, Mr. Netanyahu of Israel said Mr. Trump had a “brilliant vision.”
The prime minister said Gazans should be able to leave the territory at will. “It’s called free choice,” he said. “You know, if people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s second visit, in early April, came as the prime minister was pressing a case for striking Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Mr. Trump was not interested in having the United States take part as he was trying to negotiate a nuclear containment deal with Iran, but it became clear heading into June that Israel planned to strike with or without U.S. military help.
Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday that his administration was “working on a lot of things,” including what he called “probably a permanent deal with Iran.”
“They have to give up all of the things that you know so well,” he said, adding that U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities resulted in “complete and total obliteration” — an assessment intelligence reports have contradicted — and that Iran would “have to start all over again at a different location.”
The president and Mr. Netanyahu also discussed Israel’s relationship with Syria. Mr. Trump is hoping to expand the Abraham Accords, an agreement that normalized relations between Israel and other countries in the region that his administration negotiated during his first term.
Mr. Trump has signed an executive order aimed at ending decades of U.S. sanctions on Syria, where the fledgling government of the new president, Ahmed al-Shara, is trying to rebuild the country after a 13-year civil war.
Syria and Israel are engaged in “meaningful” talks through the United States that aim to restore calm along their border, according to the United States.
Mr. Netanyahu said on Sunday before his departure that “the opportunity to expand the circle of peace” was “far beyond what we could have imagined before.”
“I think that everyone understands that the situation has changed,” Mr. Netanyahu said on Monday. “Before that, Iran was essentially running Syria, directly through Hezbollah. Hezbollah has been brought to its knees. Iran is out of the picture. So I think this presents opportunities for stability, for security and eventually for peace.”
Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said more intractable problems lay ahead regarding Gaza and Iran.
“The question really is: How much progress can be made on each of these?” Mr. Abrams said.
“I think there can be a Gaza deal here that begins to free more hostages and includes more food getting in,” he said. “The great complication comes in when you try to extend that and make it a long-term, permanent agreement over the future of the West Bank and Palestinian statehood.”
Rachel Brandenburg, the Washington managing director at the Israel Policy Forum, which works toward a negotiated two-state outcome for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu “probably have different expectations of what should come out of” their meeting.
“President Trump would like to secure the terms of a cease-fire and some amount of agreement that Israel doesn’t strike Iran again,” she said, “but Prime Minister Netanyahu probably just wants to take a victory lap and not have to agree on anything that risks his own political standing.”
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2) Israel Launches New Ground Operations in Lebanon Despite Truce
For months, Israel has conducted near-daily strikes against what it says are Hezbollah targets. Hezbollah has not responded militarily since a November truce.
By Euan Ward, Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon., July 9, 2025
An Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon last week. Israel has conducted near-daily strikes in southern Lebanon since it agreed to a cease-fire in November. Credit...Rabih Daher/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israel’s military launched its first ground incursions in months into parts of southern Lebanon, saying on Wednesday that they were “targeted operations” to dismantle military infrastructure belonging to the militant group Hezbollah.
The military did not say when the operations took place. But the announcement came amid rising tensions over Hezbollah’s disarmament, a core requirement of an increasingly shaky cease-fire agreement signed in November, which ended the deadliest conflict between the two sides in decades.
Under the terms of the truce, Israel was expected to withdraw from southern Lebanon, which it had invaded during the war. But it has held onto five positions along the border, accusing Hezbollah of violating the agreement by maintaining an armed presence in the area.
Israel has also conducted near-daily strikes against what it says are Hezbollah targets, intensifying those attacks in recent weeks. Battered by the recent war and struggling to recuperate, Hezbollah has yet to respond militarily to any of the Israeli attacks since the November truce.
The Israeli military statement on Wednesday said it had located and destroyed weapons depots and firing positions, releasing footage showing soldiers conducting nighttime operations inside Lebanese territory.
Hezbollah has said that it withdrew its fighters from southern Lebanon, and Lebanon’s government has since dismantled hundreds of military sites and weapons caches in the area. However, the broader issue of Hezbollah’s full disarmament remains contentious and has raised fears of a renewed war with Israel.
Lebanon’s new government has yet to set a definitive timeline for full disarmament, and Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, said in a speech on Sunday that his group’s fighters would not lay down their weapons until Israel stopped its repeated attacks amid the cease-fire.
But those attacks have only intensified in recent weeks, and Israel carried out what it said was a targeted strike on Tuesday against a Hamas official near the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli — an area largely spared during the war — killing three people and wounding more than a dozen, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Roughly 250 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon since the cease-fire began, according to the health ministry, which does not distinguish between armed combatants and civilians.
The announcement of renewed Israeli ground operations came shortly after a U.S. envoy, Thomas J. Barrack Jr., arrived in Beirut on Monday, where he received Lebanon’s official response to a U.S. road map on Hezbollah’s disarmament.
Speaking to reporters after meeting with Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, Mr. Barrack said that he was “satisfied” with the government’s response, without providing any details on what the seven-page document included.
In an interview with The New York Times last week, Mr. Barrack said that the cease-fire had been “a total failure” because Israel was still bombing Lebanon and because Hezbollah was violating the agreement’s terms.
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3) Pregnancy Is Going to Be Even More Dangerous in America
By Jessica Grose, Opinion Writer, July 9, 2025
Eleanor Davis
Dr. Mimi Choate is a family doctor treating pregnant women who struggle with drug addiction. She works at the Oasis Center of the Rogue Valley, a clinic in southwestern Oregon that provides integrated mental health care, social services, addiction counseling and prenatal and postpartum care. I asked her to describe what it looks like when a pregnant woman walks into her clinic for the first time.
“Many of my patients are homeless,” she said. “They may be living on someone’s couch. They may bouncing between motels. Many of them are camping or living outside. So this is a person who doesn’t have an address, often does not have a working cellphone or any cellphone.” They tend to be addicted to either fentanyl or methamphetamine, and they often don’t have insurance, but if they do, it’s Medicaid.
Choate works in a semirural region that’s “among the most reliant on Medicaid” of any U.S. congressional district, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Oregon also has some of the highest rates of drug addiction and overdoses in the country. Dr. Choate predicts that the Medicaid provisions in the enormous bill that President Trump just signed into law, which cuts more than $1 trillion in health care spending over the next decade, will be devastating for the Oasis Center and its clients.
A lot will depend on how individual states execute the law. Changes to Medicaid financing and programs vary by state and won’t take effect immediately. But considering how drastic the cuts are, it’s possible that even women who have private health insurance will be affected.
Medicaid covers over 40 percent of births in the United States, and an even higher percentage in rural areas. According to an analysis from the National Partnership for Women & Families, a nonprofit advocacy organization, “144 rural hospitals across the country with labor and delivery units are at risk of closure or severe service cutbacks” based on the Medicaid cuts outlined in the bill. That’s in addition to the over 100 rural labor and delivery units that have closed or plan to close since 2020.
For Choate, it is imperative that her patients are seen right away, she told me, because if they aren’t, they might change their minds about getting help. “Even just stepping in the door of a health care facility is a big deal,” she said. “And it’s scary and it feels foreign or it feels like a place where you’ve been judged before or you felt like you didn’t fit in or it wasn’t meant for you.”
If you don’t have a fixed address or a phone, keeping up with paperwork to prove that you are eligible, which the bill requires, is nearly impossible.
The reimbursement rates for providers who accept Medicaid, as Choate does, are already low and are likely to get lower. “Our ability to keep our doors open relies on reasonable reimbursement,” Choate told me, adding, “At least some of our ancillary services are covered by federal grants which have been at risk since Inauguration Day.”
Cuts to Medicaid will have an impact on women across the country regardless of which community they live in. City maternity wards have also been closing, because labor, delivery and infant care are expensive. “Urban hospitals had the highest number of labor and delivery unit closures — 299 — between 2010 and 2022,” my newsroom colleague Sarah Kliff wrote in December.
The United States already has some of the worst health outcomes for mothers and infants in the developed world; it’s only going to get worse as fewer women are able to receive adequate prenatal and postpartum care in a timely fashion.
Sarah Gordon, who is a co-director of the Boston University Medicaid Policy Lab, said that one of her biggest worries is that a lot of lower-income pregnant women will fall through the cracks. “Medicaid programs do not know who is pregnant,” she told me, and often contacting your Medicaid office is “the last thing on most people’s minds.”
If these women are uninsured to begin with, they may not be aware that they’re eligible for Medicaid, and even if they do try to get coverage, “with the punishing amount of administrative burden that’s on state Medicaid agencies, it could take three, four months to sort that out,” Gordon said. With such a short window of time to get prenatal coverage, it could be too late for women to even receive the services they’re entitled to.
Dr. Katharine White, the chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston Medical Center, told me she’s also worried that even if her patients remain covered by Medicaid, the increased copays for some of them may keep them from getting that care. “A $35 copay may not sound like a lot to many people, but for the patients I care for, that co-payment could represent half of their utility bill. And a mother is always going to put the needs of their children before their own,” White said.
And these cuts come just as Medicaid was serving more women. Until 2021, Medicaid covered women only until 60 days postpartum. Since then, 48 states and Washington, D.C., have adopted a Medicaid expansion that covers women up until a year after giving birth. According to the Commonwealth Fund, around 30 percent of maternal deaths happen between 43 and 365 days postpartum. If postpartum coverage is dropped — which Gordon thinks is likely — I don’t think it’s a leap to say that more women will die from a lack of preventative care.
Which brings me back to the patients Choate works with. Part of the Trump administration’s health care promise has been that it will “focus on reversing chronic disease.” An executive order issued in February maintains that chronic disease in childhood, specifically, is a “crisis.”
But the planned gutting of Medicaid will imperil the long-term prospects of clinics like the Oasis Center, which offer mental health and substance abuse treatment to pregnant women. This will make babies less healthy from the very beginning. Even some of the people who ended up voting for this bill know how devastating it is going to be. What a preventable tragedy. What a pathetic shame.
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4) Judge Blocks Birthright Citizenship Executive Order Nationwide
By Zach Montague and Pat Grossmith, Zach Montague covers lawsuits against the Trump administration and reported from Washington. Pat Grossmith reported from the courtroom in New Hampshire, July 10, 2025
A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a contentious executive order ending birthright citizenship, reigniting a legal standoff that has been underway since the beginning of President Trump’s second term.
Ruling from the bench, Judge Joseph N. Laplante of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire also allowed the case to proceed as a class action, applying his order nationwide to babies born to undocumented parents. After a recent Supreme Court decision limiting nationwide injunctions, lawsuits structured as class actions are effectively the only ones that can halt the president’s policies across broad sections of the country.
The Trump administration has fought to end the longstanding custom that people born in the United States are automatically citizens, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. Judge Laplante’s order ensures a new round of litigation and appeals.
The judge, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said he would issue a written order later in the day. He also stayed his order for seven days, allowing time for an appeal.
The lawsuit, brought by the A.C.L.U., was filed just hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling last month, testing what appeared to be the only remaining practical and efficient way for district court judges to freeze the implementation of policies they found unlawful.
The Supreme Court’s decision on birthright citizenship did not address the core dispute surrounding the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s executive action, but it paved the way for a majority of states to begin enforcing it. However, the court’s majority said the executive order could not be carried out for 30 days, allowing time for lawsuits to be filed.
The A.C.L.U.’s lawsuit proposed that all children born in the United States after Feb. 20 and their parents constituted a class. It warned that under the terms of Mr. Trump’s order, people born to parents in the country unlawfully risked being rendered “effectively stateless.”
“For families across America today, birthright citizenship represents the promise that their children can achieve their full potential as Americans,” the lawsuit said. “It means children born here can dream of becoming doctors, lawyers, teachers, entrepreneurs or even president — dreams that would be foreclosed if their citizenship were stripped away based on their parents’ status.”
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5) How El Salvador Is Reaping Rewards From Trump’s Deportation Agenda
In exchange for jailing more than 200 deportees, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has become a favorite of the Trump administration.
By Annie Correal and Pranav Baskar, July 10, 2025
President Donald Trump and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador holding a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office in April. Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
For the U.S. government, sending deportees accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador fits with President Trump’s promise to aggressively deport undocumented migrants and to crack down on crime.
For El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, the rewards appear to have included, among other things, a White House visit and stamp of approval, despite widespread concerns over Mr. Bukele’s crackdown on civil liberties.
While the exact terms of the agreement have not been made public, leaders around the world may be watching, experts and immigration lawyers say, especially as the Trump administration searches for countries willing to take expelled migrants of other nationalities.
“Other leaders and countries are trying to emulate the Bukele arrangement,” said Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, a director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based group that has represented immigrants in lawsuits against the Trump administration. Countries are increasingly “raising their hand to volunteer their incarceration facilities and to facilitate the deportation of people,” he added.
A White House spokeswoman has said the administration is “grateful for President Bukele’s partnership” and for the use of his maximum-security prison, adding, “There is no better place for these sick, illegal criminals.”
MS-13 Gang Leaders Returned
An investigation by The New York Times found the U.S. government not only paid Mr. Bukele’s government around $5 million to incarcerate more than 200 Venezuelan deportees, but added a bonus at his request: the return to El Salvador of several top MS-13 leaders in American custody, some thought to have knowledge of Mr. Bukele’s ties to the gang.
American authorities have found substantial evidence of secret negotiations between Mr. Bukele’s government and MS-13 leaders, and some experts say Mr. Bukele may want to bury that evidence. He has denied having any pact with the gang; his administration did not respond to a request for comment.
A Boost for Tourism
In April, the State Department upgraded El Salvador’s travel advisory to its highest rating, citing a “drop in violent crimes and murders.”
While crime has improved, El Salvador jumped to the United States’ safest level, ahead of countries like France or Spain, whose rates of violent crime are the same or lower.
The improved rating reflects a dramatic turnaround for a country that once had a soaring homicide rate and “significant human rights issues,” according to the State Department in 2023.
Since Mr. Bukele ordered mass arrests in 2022, El Salvador has become one of the safest countries in the region, earning him broad support from Salvadorans in a landslide re-election last year.
But the timing of the U.S. upgrade raised questions among critics, as it came soon after El Salvador received deportees, and after Mr. Bukele met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Canada and Britain are among the countries that still warn travelers to exercise increased caution when visiting El Salvador.
Ahilan Arulanantham, of the U.C.L.A. Center for Immigration Law and Policy, said there was “no question” that Mr. Bukele would want the upgrade. Any government, he said, would “prefer a rating saying it’s safe to travel to.”
Mr. Bukele, who hopes tourism will boost the economy, trumpeted the news and promoted a new surfing destination.
“Just got the U.S. State Department’s travel gold star: Level 1: safest it gets,” he said.
Temporary Protected Status
The Trump administration recently ended deportation protections for immigrants from countries including Haiti, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Honduras and Nicaragua.
But Salvadoran immigrants still have Temporary Protected Status, which shields some 200,000 people from deportation and allows them to legally work in the United States. The privileges last until early September.
Experts say that status earns Mr. Bukele political points at home, where remittances from U.S.-based relatives are vital to the economy.
Muted Criticism
In recent months, Mr. Bukele’s government has cracked down further on civil liberties, targeting civil society groups, arresting critics and pushing some prominent journalists to flee.
And while the European Union condemned a new law giving his government broad powers to silence dissidents, the U.S. government stayed quiet.
Instead, the State Department certified in April that El Salvador was protecting press freedom and strengthening the rule of law.
Attention and Access
After the deportees arrived in El Salvador, Mr. Trump hosted Mr. Bukele in the Oval Office, flattering him as “President B.”
Mr. Bukele’s cooperation — and his highly stylized images of shackled deportees entering a prison built for terrorists — also generated buzz, which the Salvadoran president has exploited.
Recently, he sparred online with a fashion designer whose Paris show featured models in outfits resembling those worn by the deportees.
Mr. Bukele has also emerged as an example for other governments, generating at least one agreement, between El Salvador and Costa Rica, to replicate his high-security prison there.
International Scrutiny
The agreement to jail deportees from the United States has invited scrutiny of Mr. Bukele, according to Douglas Farah, an El Salvador expert who advised a Justice Department task force targeting MS-13.
Family members have called for the release of many of the Venezuelan deportees, saying their relatives have no criminal records. Democratic lawmakers have demanded answers about the deal. One returned deportee has said he was mistreated in Salvadoran custody.
Mr. Bukele has denied those allegations. “I don’t care if they call me a dictator,” he said recently. “I would rather be called ‘dictator’ than watch them kill Salvadorans in the streets.”
Mr. Farah said the deal has created tension. “Bukele hadn’t thought about what this would look like to the outside world and to his own people,” he said. For the first time, he added, Mr. Bukele’s image as his nation’s savior is facing “counterpressure.”
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6) L.A. Area Bishop Excuses Faithful From Mass Over Fear of Immigration Raids
San Bernardino Bishop Alberto Rojas lifted the obligation for members of the diocese to celebrate Mass if they had a “genuine fear of immigration enforcement actions.”
By Claire Moses, July 10, 2025
Bishop Alberto Rojas leading mass at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Chino Hills, Calif., in 2023. Federal agents have arrested about 2,000 immigrants in the Los Angeles area since June 6. Credit...Will Lester/MediaNews Group/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, via Getty
The Diocese of San Bernardino has told its parishioners that they do not have to attend Mass for fear of federal immigration raids.
Bishop Alberto Rojas, the leader of the Roman Catholic community of about 1.6 million worshipers in Southern California, said in a letter on Tuesday that members who face a “genuine fear of immigration enforcement actions” if they attend Mass on Sundays or holidays are “dispensed from this obligation.”
The lifting of the obligation for Catholics is a rare step usually reserved for extenuating circumstances such as the Covid pandemic.
The diocese in San Bernardino, 60 miles east of Los Angeles, is at least the second to excuse its members from Mass as the Trump administration escalates Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids nationwide.
ICE agents, who are often masked, have detained people in shopping center parking lots and at carwashes, bus stops and other public places. In May, armed men in face coverings detained a Latino man outside a church in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, in what pastors believed was an immigration raid.
In May, after immigration raids in Nashville, that city’s diocese said in a statement that “no Catholic is obligated to attend Mass on Sunday if doing so puts their safety at risk.”
Federal agents arrested about 2,000 immigrants in the Los Angeles area from June 6 through June 30, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The raids have instilled fear and anxiety in Californians, leaving some afraid to go to work. Multiple communities in the state canceled Fourth of July celebrations, citing fears of raids.
Mr. Rojas encouraged members of his diocese who do not attend Mass to “maintain their spiritual communion with Christ and His Church through acts of personal prayer, reading of Sacred Scripture, or participation in devotions such as the Rosary or the Divine Mercy Chaplet.”
If possible, people could participate in televised or online Mass, he said.
Last month, he wrote a letter to the diocese in which he expressed worry over the raids and said, without elaborating, that ICE agents had seized several people from a parish property.
“Authorities are now seizing brothers and sisters indiscriminately, without respect for their right to due process and their dignity as children of God,” Mr. Rojas wrote in the letter.
The ICE raids have led to protests and tension in California in recent weeks. President Trump deployed thousands of National Guard troops and Marines to the state in early June as demonstrations swelled, a decision that Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has often clashed with the president, called “unlawful.”
In San Francisco this week, tensions over immigration enforcement flared when demonstrators clashed with federal agents who appeared to detain a man outside a courthouse.
In Los Angeles, dozens of armed federal agents marched through a park this week in a neighborhood with a large immigrant population. Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference that the park “looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation.”
Mr. Rojas’s decree will be in effect until further notice, he said. “Please continue to pray for our immigrant brothers and sisters,” the Diocese of San Bernardino said on its Facebook page.
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7) Trump Seeks to Cut Basic Scientific Research by Roughly One-Third, Report Shows
An analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science shows the impact of the administration’s budget plan on the kind of studies that produce the most breakthroughs.
By William J. Broad, July 10, 2025
The National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. In May, the Trump administration outlined a budget reduction of the foundation, which sponsors basic research, to $3.9 billion from $8.8 billion. Credit...Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Trump’s budget plan guts federal science funding for the next fiscal year, according to an overview published by an external group. Particularly at risk is the category of basic research — the blue-sky variety meant to push back the frontiers of human knowledge and sow practical spinoffs and breakthroughs in such everyday fields as health care and artificial intelligence.
The group says it would fall by more than one-third.
The new analysis, made public Wednesday by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a general scientific society based in Washington, D.C., added up cuts to the budgets of hundreds of federal agencies and programs that do scientific research or provide grants to universities and research bodies. It then compared the funding appropriated for the current fiscal year with the administration’s proposals for fiscal year 2026.
For basic science research, the association reported that the overall budget would fall to $30 billion from $45 billion, a drop of roughly 34 percent. For science funding overall — which includes money for basic, applied and developmental work, as well as for facilities for research and development — the analysis found that the federal budget would fall to $154 billion from $198 billion, a drop of 22 percent.
The new analysis shows that the Trump administration’s budget plan, if adopted, “would essentially end America’s longstanding role as the world leader in science and innovation,” said Toby Smith, senior vice president for government relations and public policy at the Association of American Universities.
His group, Mr. Smith added, is working with Congress to develop “a funding plan for strategic investment that would help to sustain continued American scientific leadership rather than destroying it.”
Mary Woolley, president of Research America, a nonprofit group that promotes science, said the new analysis showed that the budget plan “is threatening not only science but the American public. If approved by Congress, it will make the public less safe, poorer and sicker.”
Victoria LaCivita, a spokeswoman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, did not reply to a request for comment on the new analysis.
In early May, the White House unveiled a budget blueprint that listed proposed cuts to a handful of science agencies. For instance, it sought a reduction in the budget of the National Science Foundation, which sponsors much basic research, to $3.9 billion from $8.8 billion, a drop of 55.8 percent.
Alessandra Zimmermann, a budget analyst at the science association, said in an interview that the comprehensive analysis drew on several hundred proposed budgets from federal science agencies and programs, as well as figures supplied by the White House Office of Management and Budget. In May, the budget office made public the rough sketch of the administration’s overall proposal for next year but included only a small number of science agencies and figures.
Ms. Zimmermann added that the association’s new compilations would be updated as new budget data from federal agencies and programs became available. However, she said, the group’s estimates of cuts to federal basic research are “not going to be undone by a minor number change.”
The science group has long recorded the ups and downs of the federal government’s annual spending on science. Taking inflation into account, Ms. Zimmermann said the administration’s proposed cut of $44 billion would, if approved, make the $154 billion figure the smallest amount that the federal government has spent on science in this century.
Federal funding allocated for basic research is often seen as a measure for the likelihood of breakthroughs in esoteric fields like artificial intelligence and quantum computing, areas the Trump administration has prioritized. According to the White House budget office, the administration has maintained funding in these areas “to ensure the United States remains on the cutting edge of these critical technologies’ development and responsible use.”
Each year, the president submits a budget request to Congress in advance of the annual appropriations process. Only Congress has the power to fund federal programs. That budget request thus carries no legal weight, but it does offer an opportunity for an administration to signal its priorities.
In May, science appeared to be high on the list for significant funding cuts, while large increases were proposed for the Pentagon and Homeland Security. Until the science association updated its reports on the proposed presidential budget for fiscal year 2026, however, the public had no clear indication of the overall size of the federal cuts.
The proposed drop in federal funding for science research, if approved by Congress, could let China match or take the lead in global science investments, Ms. Zimmermann said.
In April, the science group published figures showing that China had greatly increased support for its scientific enterprise in the past two decades. As of 2023 — the most recent year available for comparisons — China’s investment was close to equaling that of the United States.
Experts say it could take years of data gathering to know if China is pulling into the lead.
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8) A Lethal Israeli Airstrike Hits Near a Gaza Aid Clinic
The attack struck near a facility run by an American aid organization as negotiators from Hamas and Israel wrangle over a potential new cease-fire agreement.
By Adam Rasgon and Natan Odenheimer, Reporting from Jerusalem, July 10, 2025
A screen grab from a video shows a wounded child being treated in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza on Thursday. Credit...via Reuters
An Israeli airstrike near a health clinic run by an American aid group killed more than a dozen people in Gaza on Thursday, according to the hospital that received many of the dead.
The strike hit near a clinic operated by Project HOPE, an American aid organization, in the central town of Deir al-Balah, according to Natia Deisadze, its regional director. Civilians, including children, were gathering outside the clinic at the time of the attack “to receive essential nutrition support,” she said.
The Israeli military said that it had struck a Hamas fighter who participated in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which ignited the Gaza war. It added that it was still reviewing the strike and regretted any “harm to uninvolved individuals” in the strike in Deir al-Balah.
The Israeli military has said its bombing campaign in Gaza has targeted militants and their weapons infrastructure while seeking to minimize harm to civilians. The military has frequently carried out strikes on densely populated areas, killing many civilians but Israeli officials have accused militant groups of operating in civilian areas.
Intensive Israel-Hamas negotiations this week over a new U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal have raised hopes for a truce soon. But there was no sign that Israel was easing up on its attacks in Gaza that it says are aimed at incapacitating Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that has long ruled the enclave.
More than 55,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in the war, including more than 7,000 in the roughly four months since a cease-fire collapsed in March, according to the Gaza health ministry.
The war has created a dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where hunger is rampant and Palestinians are struggling to find food and shelter.
The bodies of 18 people, including children, were brought to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah after the Israel airstrike, said Dr. Khalil al-Daqran, a hospital spokesman. Dr. al-Daqran is an employee of the Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in casualty counts.
A CCTV video from the moment of the strike, verified by The New York Times, shows two men walking down a street with a group of about a dozen women and children sitting on a pavement close by. Suddenly, the two men are hit and a cloud of dust fills the screen.
Videos vetted by The Times from the aftermath of the strike showed at least nine women and children lying injured as onlookers scream. One woman was bleeding from a head wound and the twisted body of a child was nearby.
“There was a loud explosion,” said Doaa al-Harazin, 28, who witnessed the strike. “I saw children torn apart while women nearby screamed in anguish.”
Ameera Harouda, Malachy Browne, Abu Bakr Bashir, Nader Ibrahim and Sanjana Varghese contributed reporting to this article.
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9) U.S. Imposes Sanctions on U.N. Expert Who Has Criticized Israel’s War in Gaza
Secretary of State Marco Rubio denounced Francesca Albanese, a special rapporteur, for investigating Americans and Israelis over the war in the enclave.
By Francesca Regalado, July 10, 2025
Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, in Copenhagen in February. Credit...Ida Marie Odgaard/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that the United States would impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, for her work with the International Criminal Court to investigate Americans and Israelis.
Ms. Albanese, an Italian legal scholar, has been an outspoken critic of Israeli military actions in Gaza, and the Trump administration has been on a campaign to punish people who criticize Israel’s war in Gaza.
An executive order signed by President Trump in February imposed sanctions that could bar people associated with the International Criminal Court from entering the United States and from purchasing property and assets in the country.
The United States is not a party to a 1998 treaty that established the court to investigate and prosecute people accused of war crimes, genocide and other offenses.
The Trump administration acted last month against four judges on the International Criminal Court for issuing arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and members of his war cabinet. The United States imposed sanctions on the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, in February after he brought a case against Israel over the war.
Last week, in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council Ms. Albanese said that Israel was “responsible for one of the cruelest genocides in modern history.”
In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Rubio criticized her for recommending that the International Criminal Court investigate and prosecute American companies and executives as part of its investigation of war crimes and human rights violations in Gaza.
“We will not tolerate these campaigns of political and economic warfare, which threaten our national interests and sovereignty,” he said.
Special rapporteurs are unpaid independent experts who monitor human rights issues.
Mr. Rubio accused Ms. Albanese of bias that he said made her unfit to serve as special rapporteur, a position she has held since 2022. Israel’s government has banned Ms. Albanese from entering the country since December.
Shortly after Mr. Rubio announced the sanctions, Ms. Albanese wrote on social media, “I stand firmly and convincingly on the side of justice, as I have always done.”
Ms. Albanese did not immediately respond to to a request for comment.
Ms. Albanese wrote a report in late June to the U.N. Human Rights Council detailing the profit derived by corporations — including arms manufacturers, banks and large asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard — from a large increase in Israel’s military budget since the start of its campaign in Gaza in October 2023.
The war began in response to a Hamas-led attack on Israel that month in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed and roughly 250 others were taken hostage. The war has devastated Gaza, and at least 57,000 people have died there, according to the Palestinian health authorities.
In her June report, Ms. Albanese called on U.N. member states to impose sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel. She also called on countries to suspend trade and investment relations with Israel, and to hold companies involved in violations of international law in the occupied Palestinian territories accountable.
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10) A British Surgeon on What She Saw in Gaza’s Hospitals
Dr. Victoria Rose spent 21 days in the territory, treating people who were shot trying to get food and children with life-changing injuries from Israeli bombs.
By Lizzie Dearden, Reporting from London, Published July 9, 2025, Updated July 10, 2025
Dr. Victoria Rose at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza in May, in a picture distributed by Anadolu Agency, a Turkish state news outlet. “I’ve not seen this volume and this intensity before,” she said of the traumatic injuries she treated. Credit...Alaa Y. M. Abumohsen/Anadolu, via Getty Images
On the morning of June 1, Dr. Victoria Rose was nearing the end of her 21-day stint as a volunteer in Gaza when she saw news of a mass shooting of Palestinians near a food distribution point.
A senior plastic surgeon in London, Dr. Rose, 53, had come to the enclave with a small British charity that has sent medical workers to humanitarian crises in countries including Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sri Lanka.
Dr. Rose went straight to the emergency room at Nasser Hospital where she was based, arriving around 8 a.m. It is the last major hospital still functioning in southern Gaza.
“There were ambulances coming in, just bringing dead people, and then there were donkey-drawn carts bringing dead people,” she recalled in an interview in London. “By about 10 o’clock, we had 20 or so dead bodies, and then easily a hundred or so gunshot wounds.”
In her three weeks at Nasser, Dr. Rose said she saw a health system under extreme pressure from an unrelenting stream of people with traumatic injuries. Compared with her previous two trips during the war, she said, many more patients have suffered “unsurvivable” burns or severe blast injuries from Israeli bombs.
“They weren’t shrapnel wounds anymore — bits of them had been blown off,” she said. “Children were coming in with knees missing and feet missing and hands missing.”
For 21 months, Gazan civilians have suffered as Israel has unleashed one of the most intense bombardments in modern warfare in its campaign against Hamas. And since June 1, more than 700 Palestinians have been reported killed, and about 5,000 injured, in almost daily shootings near food distribution sites run under a new aid system backed by Israel and the United States, according to the Gaza health ministry.
The mass casualties have deeply tarnished the aid initiative, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or G.H.F., which employs mostly American private security contractors, supported by Israeli troops stationed nearby. Dozens of aid groups have called for it to be shut down.
Officials from Israel and G.H.F. have said the casualty figures provided by the health ministry are inaccurate, without providing an alternate toll or addressing other figures. This week, the International Red Cross said its Rafah field hospital had treated over 2,200 weapon-wounded patients, most of them injured in 21 mass casualty events, and had logged 200 deaths since the new aid system began, adding that “the scale and frequency of these incidents are without precedent.”
Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering Gaza since the war began, except on controlled military embeds. As a result, medical workers for charities like Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross and Ideals, which Dr. Rose volunteered for, are among the few international observers who can give firsthand accounts of the aftermath of these shootings and about the condition of Gaza’s few remaining hospitals.
All the patients Dr. Rose treated on June 1 said they had been shot by people guarding the food distribution point. Several people, she said, told her they were shot by “crowd control” while running away, although it is not clear what that phrase referred to. Their accounts were consistent with bullet wounds she treated to the back of people’s legs, she said, as well as to the torso and abdomen.
“We’re in that point where people have been reduced to such a level of deprivation that they’re prepared to die for a bagful of rice and a bit of pasta,” she said.
The Israeli military said on June 3 that its forces had fired near “a few” people who strayed from the designated route to the site and who did not respond to warning shots. Then, on June 27, the military said it was investigating “recent reports of incidents of harm” to civilians approaching aid distribution points, including that on June 1, adding that “any allegation of a deviation from the law or I.D.F. directives will be thoroughly examined.”
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said in a statement that it disagreed that an incident took place “at or in the immediate vicinity of a G.H.F. distribution site” on June 1. It also denied any injuries or fatalities during its operations since the initiative kicked off on May 26. It added, “Gaza is an active war zone, and G.H.F. doesn’t control the area outside of our distribution sites.”
Dr. Rose usually works as a senior plastic surgeon at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. Her specialty is breast reconstruction for cancer patients, but in her 30-year career she has also treated traumatic injuries from road accidents and shootings. That did not prepare her, she said, for the scale of suffering she encountered on three trips to Gaza in the past 14 months. “I’ve not seen this volume and this intensity before,” she said.
The youngest patient she treated was a 3-month-old baby in May, she said, whose abdomen and leg had been badly burned in a bomb blast.
Dr. Rose posted regular videos on Instagram showing her work in the hospital. While a few are lighter in tone — in one, titled “Breakfast of surgeons,” she drizzles peanut butter onto a cracker — others are graphic and distressing, showing patients with severe wounds. “I just thought people needed to see what I was seeing,” she said. In a post on May 23, she introduces a 3-year-old, Hatem. He is almost entirely wrapped in bandages. “He has a 35 percent burn,” she says in the video. “That’s a massive burn for a little guy.”
Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, more than 57,000 people have been killed as a result of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry. That number does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it includes thousands of children.
Israeli officials have blamed Hamas for the deadly toll, arguing that the group deliberately embeds its fighters in areas full of civilians. An investigation by The New York Times last year found that Israel significantly loosened safeguards meant to protect noncombatants during the conflict; on a few occasions, Israeli commanders signed off on attacks they knew would endanger more than 100 civilians.
Dr. Rose first worked in Gaza in 2019. As the lead surgeon for plastic surgery trauma at King’s College Hospital in London, she met Dr. Graeme Groom, a British orthopedic trauma surgeon. He inspired her to volunteer for the charity Ideals, which trains surgeons in the territory. When Israel’s bombing campaign started after the Oct. 7 attacks, she was still in touch with one doctor she helped train, Ahmed El Mokhallalati.
Dr. El Mokhallalati usually texted for advice about cancer patients, she said, but he started sending “picture after picture of children with half their leg missing,” asking whether he should amputate or try to save their limbs.
Dr. Rose recalled saying to her partner, “Look, I think I need to go and give him a hand, because he’s dealing with a lot right now, and he’s only just finished his training.”
She traveled to Gaza in March 2024, again in August and most recently this May. On average, she treated 10 patients a day on her last trip, and she estimated that about 60 percent of those were under the age of 15.
Poor sanitation and widespread malnutrition worsened their survival rates, she said. The United Nations warned of “a growing likelihood of famine” in June, after Israel’s two-month blockade on aid, which ended when the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operating. Israeli officials said the blockade was necessary to pressure Hamas to compromise in negotiations.
Malnutrition leaves the body less able to repair wounds and weakens the immune system, Dr. Rose said, adding that antibiotic shortages in Gaza meant that doctors were “unable to prevent infection, and then unable to treat infection.”
She left the enclave on June 3. Asked how it felt to be back in London, she said, “I am a little bit — ” and paused. “Not shellshocked. I’m sort of still in it, though.”
Officials from Israel and Hamas have been holding talks in Doha, Qatar, to end the war but they have been wrangling over the terms of a deal that would see the release of hostages held in Gaza in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners.
On June 20, Dr. Rose shared a small piece of good news. Hatem, the 3-year-old burn victim, has been evacuated to Abu Dhabi, where his treatment can continue in safety.
But she still thinks about the children she treated who did not survive, she said, and her Palestinian colleagues, who are still in Gaza trying to save lives. “What a Team! … wonderful people who work all the hours to help those in need,” she wrote in one of her last posts from Nasser. “They are the heroes.”
Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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11) Federal Agents Clash With Protesters During Immigration Raid at California Farm
Officers appeared to use crowd control munitions and tear gas against protesters. The F.B.I. said it was searching for a person who appeared to fire a pistol at officers.
By Livia Albeck-Ripka, July 11, 2025
Federal agents deployed tear gas to disperse protesters near a raid on an agricultural facility in Camarillo, Calif. Michael Owen Baker/Associated Press
Federal agents raided a large cannabis farm in Southern California on Thursday, clashing with protesters and arresting multiple people, the latest confrontation in a state that has become a flashpoint for President Trump’s immigration agenda.
Footage taken by local news media from helicopters showed the agents firing tear gas and crowd control munitions during the operation in Camarillo, Calif. The agents were “executing criminal search warrants,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said on social media.
Rodney Scott, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said on social media that “10 juveniles,” eight of them unaccompanied, were found at one of the facilities raided on Thursday, and that all of them were in the country illegally.
The federal operation on Thursday was the latest in a series of immigration raids that have triggered demonstrations and caused panic in Latino communities across California, and prompted a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop them. Some Republican lawmakers have also pleaded with President Trump to focus enforcement efforts on immigrants with criminal backgrounds.
Federal agents went to multiple cannabis cultivation facilities owned by Glass House Farms on Thursday. In addition to the facility in Camarillo, which is spread across 5.5 million square feet in Ventura County, there was also a raid around 35 miles away at the company’s farm in Carpinteria, Calif., local media and immigrant rights groups said.
The company said on social media that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials came to its facilities and that it complied with the search warrants. It is legal for licensed companies to grow cannabis in California.
It was not immediately clear how many federal agencies were involved in the operation, and if they were assisted by National Guard troops. Some footage aired by local media showed armored military-style vehicles at the farms. The Ventura County Fire Department said it deployed to the Camarillo area only to provide medical aid and was not involved in any immigration action.
During the clash near Camarillo, a person appeared to fire a pistol at law enforcement officers, the F.B.I. said, offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to that individual’s conviction.
Bill Essayli, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said that multiple individuals were arrested for “impeding” the operation, warning in a social media post that those interfering would be arrested and charged with a federal offense.
ICE and the Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to requests for information made outside business hours.
Thursday’s raids were sharply criticized by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, as well as Representative Salud Carbajal, a Democrat, who said that he tried to enter the area in Carpinteria where ICE was operating but was denied entry.
“This was completely unacceptable,” Mr. Carbajal said in a statement, criticizing what he described as a “troubling lack of transparency.”
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12) Trump’s Purge of Foreign Workers Arrives at Amazon’s Warehouses
The tech giant has quietly shed warehouse employees whose work authorizations were revoked after the Trump administration ended a Biden-era immigration program.
By Miriam Jordan and Karen Weise, July 11, 2025
Miriam Jordan reports on immigration, and Karen Weise covers Amazon.
Amazon’s warehouse in West Jefferson, Ohio, where hundreds of workers were recently dismissed. Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
Frantzdy Jerome, a Haitian immigrant in central Ohio, received shout-out after shout-out for his work at an Amazon warehouse he joined last year.
In March, his manager commended him in a message for his “reliability, hard work and dedication to our team.”
“Thank you for your flexibility and picking up the extra shifts,” read another message, on June 7.
Two weeks later, Mr. Jerome, 35, lost his job. His work authorization was revoked in late June after the Trump administration ended a Biden-era program that allowed him to live and work legally in the United States. Hundreds of others at the same Amazon building in West Jefferson, which employs more than 3,700 people, also lost their jobs.
They are among thousands of foreign workers across the country who have been swept up in a quiet purge, pushed out of jobs in places where their labor was in high demand and at times won high praise. While raids to nab undocumented workers in fields and Home Depot parking lots have grabbed attention, the job dismissals at the Amazon warehouse are part of the Trump administration’s effort to thin the ranks of immigrants who had legal authorization to work.
“This is not unique to Amazon,” said Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian community leader in nearby Springfield. He is aware of more than 100 Haitians with work authorizations who are now out of work in the area, he said, with the terminations reducing work forces in warehouses, auto-parts plants and stores.
Such dismissals are happening at many of Amazon’s more than 1,000 facilities around the country, including in Massachusetts and the warehouse in Staten Island that fills orders for millions of New Yorkers. At one fulfillment center in Florida, hundreds were let go, a person familiar with the site said.
The timing of the dismissals is tricky for Amazon, just before its Prime Day deals, an event that now stretches over four days in July. The deals typically drive a spike in customer orders — and overtime demands — rivaled only by the holiday shopping season.
During that rush before Christmas, Haitians would emerge in threes and fours from cars that filed into the huge lot outside the West Jefferson fulfillment center to start their shifts. But “if you go to the parking lot now,” said Sadrac Delva, a Haitian asylum seeker who continues to work at the center, “you will notice a huge difference.”
Amazon said it had prepared for the policy change, adjusting staffing plans and awaiting formal guidance from the government, which finally came last month.
“We’re supporting employees impacted by the government’s recent changes in immigration policy,” Richard Rocha, an Amazon spokesman, said in a statement. The company has pointed workers to various resources, including outside free or low-cost legal services.
Amazon opened the West Jefferson facility in early 2020, just before the pandemic supercharged demand for deliveries and sent the company on a hiring spree with little precedent. To fuel its march to becoming the country’s second-largest private employer, behind Walmart, Amazon tapped into the family and cultural networks of immigrant communities. In some warehouses, it provides information in multiple languages, including Spanish, Vietnamese and Haitian Creole.
In Madison County, Ohio, where the hulking West Jefferson warehouse sits, the unemployment rate has hovered around 4 percent for much of the past decade. David Kell, the county’s director of economic development, said in an interview last year that companies once starved of workers had come to rely on Haitians and other foreigners.
Refugees from Afghanistan, Bhutan and Somalia who have been resettled in the area also work at the warehouse. But Haitians are the biggest share of foreign workers, and possibly outnumber Americans, according to workers and local officials.
The dismissals came with remarkable speed. On May 30, the Supreme Court granted temporary approval for the Trump administration to revoke a program known as “humanitarian parole,” which had allowed more than 500,000 migrants feeling political turmoil in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to quickly get work permits if they had a fiscal sponsor.
The move to terminate the parole status was part of the Trump administration’s effort to roll back discretionary immigration programs established by the Biden administration and to fulfill Mr. Trump’s aim of mass deportations.
On June 12, the Department of Homeland Security said it had begun notifying enrollees that the program was ending, saying the immigrants had been poorly vetted and undercut American workers.
Ending the program “will be a necessary return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety and a return to America First,” a department spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, said in statement announcing the change.
On June 22, Amazon told managers around the country in an email, which was obtained by The New York Times, that it had “received the first list from D.H.S. identifying impacted Amazon employees” from the parole program, as well as “some employees outside of this specific program whose work authorization is similarly affected.”
Amazon let the managers know that the next day, the affected workers would receive push notifications in the employee app about the change. Unless the workers could provide alternate work authorization documents in the next five days, they would be suspended without pay and ultimately dismissed.
The notification began popping up on the mobile phones of employees, including Mr. Jerome. “The Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.) has informed us that the work authorization that you had submitted is no longer valid,” it read.
Workers began posting questions on social media and internal message boards at Amazon warehouses across the country.
“Change is never easy, and I know this news may be difficult for many of you,” Amazon’s internal talking points advised managers to tell their workers at the start of the next shifts.
This result is precisely what Mr. Jerome had feared. He came to the United States with his partner and young daughter last year, and quickly obtained a work permit. He told The Times in December that he had sleepless nights worrying what the new administration would bring.
The family had made its way to Ohio, drawn by plentiful jobs and affordable living. In recent years, thousands of Haitians had settled in towns like Springfield, filling openings that helped boost the local economy.
Amazon has been a life raft for many immigrants with work authorization. It hires regularly, in part to replenish its ranks because of high turnover. It has solid benefits, and the pay — about $22 an hour in West Jefferson — is promising for migrants with limited English.
Within weeks of arriving in Ohio, Mr. Jerome was hired at Amazon, packing and stowing boxes on the overnight shift. His partner eventually began working days there. Their combined income covered the $953 in monthly rent, plus bills and food — and left enough to send money to family in Haiti.
Mr. Jerome took every overtime shift he could get, even when it was not mandatory, to make extra money.
“My manager liked me because I am a fast, good worker,” he said.
He said he felt fortunate to work at Amazon and had learned new skills. Three months ago, he started repairing robots. He planned to take advantage of a program that covers tuition for employees in good standing, training as an electrician at a vocational school.
Mr. Jerome had hoped to be spared from being cut, since he has applied for asylum. Under current rules, those with an active claim are eligible for a work permit 150 days after filing. He is about to hit the 150-day mark, but is unclear whether he will receive one, given that the Trump administration has slowed down issuing the permits.
“I am very, very worried,” said Mr. Jerome, who supports 10 people, including parents, siblings and nephews in Haiti. “This morning my dad told me they don’t have enough to eat.”
His partner remains employed by Amazon, thanks to a different program known as Temporary Protected Status. But the Trump administration has announced that it will end that program for Haitians, too, though a federal court has temporarily blocked the move.
“We don’t know what awaits us,” Mr. Jerome said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
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