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“President Trump named Bill Pulte, a home-building heir, as acting director of national intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard. This appointment is expected to face criticism due to Pulte’s lack of national security experience.
Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, at a hearing in Washington last year.Eric Lee/The New York Times
What We’re Covering Today
National Intelligence: President Trump announced on Tuesday that he was naming Bill Pulte, a home-building heir who runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to be the acting director of national intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard. The move is almost certain to draw criticism as Mr. Pulte has no known experience for a national security role. Read more ›
State Department: Secretary of State Marco Rubio will testify before the U.S. Senate on Tuesday morning in a budget session that is also sure to cover pressing national security issues, such as President Trump’s negotiations to end the war with Iran and an intensifying U.S. pressure campaign against Cuba’s government.”
“The American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), a charitable affiliate of the pro-Israel lobby Aipac, has funded lavish trips to Israel for dozens of Congress members and their staff since October 7, 2023. Despite declining support for Israel among American voters, these trips, which include briefings from Israeli officials and visits to settlements, continue to be a fixture of foreign policy education for lawmakers. The Guardian’s analysis reveals that AIEF spent over $4.2 million on these trips, with some members, like Steny Hoyer and Brad Schneider, attending multiple times.
Revealed: AIEF, a charitable affiliate of pro-Israel lobby Aipac, has spent millions on travel for lawmakers from both parties, even as voters’ support for Israel plummets
Since 7 October 2023, at least 26 Democratic and 52 Republican representatives have attended AIEF trips in at least 15 delegations for members of Congress and their staff. Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty Images
Dozens of members of Congress and Capitol Hill staffers have enjoyed lavish gifted travel to Israel funded by an Aipacaffiliate since 7 October 2023, amid Israel’s expanding wars on its neighbors and despite plummeting levels of support among Americans for the country’s policies, a Guardian analysis has found.
Congressional ethics filings and other public records show the trips, led by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), revolved around one-sided briefings on Middle East politics and Israeli domestic and foreign policy. Lawmakers and their staffers from both parties met Israeli officials, military contractors and civil society figures, including Benjamin Netanyahu and advocates for the annexation of the West Bank and the displacement of Palestinians from Jerusalem.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and other pro-Israel groups have sponsored such trips for years, and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have joined. But the continuedparticipation of Democratic lawmakers and their staff on recent trips is particularly noteworthy given how much sympathy for Israel has ebbed among Democratic voters, and the pains that someDemocratic politicians have recently taken to distance themselves from the lobby group.
A recent poll found that eight in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have an unfavorable view of Israel, along with six in 10 Americans broadly.
The congressional ethics filingsshow that members of Congress and their staffers were hosted at luxurious hotels, dined at top-tier restaurants and received briefings in at least one West Bank settlement. While one of the trips referenced in this story has previously been reported in broad terms, the Guardian is revealing details relating to itineraries, costs and other trips for the first time.
Since 7 October 2023, at least 26 Democratic and 52 Republican representatives have attended AIEF trips in at least 15 delegations for members of Congress and their staff. The Guardian analysis found that the group paid more than $4.2m for those delegations – an average of over $26,600 per member. A few members – including Democrats Steny Hoyer, Greg Landsman and Brad Schneider – took multiple AIEF-funded trips during this period.
“These trips have been a standard tool for building support for Israel on Capitol Hill,” said Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard’s Kennedy School who has written widely about the pro-Israel lobby. “Agreeing to go on one of these trips is also a litmus test for politicians who want to signal a pro-Israel position to Aipac and to important donors.”
US representative Steny Hoyer speaks during the Aipac policy conference in Washington DC in 2019.Photograph: SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
AIEF is a charitable affiliate of Aipac, and enjoys non-profit status that allows Aipac to skirt federal prohibitions on lobbying organizations funding overseas travel for US officials. AIEF, incorporated in 1988, is the vehicle through which Aipac funds the week-long Israel trips that have become a fixture of foreign policy education for new members of Congress and their senior aides.
Though legally distinct, AIEF relies on Aipac infrastructure, including office space. In 2019 alone, the Intercept reported, the foundation sponsored 129 trips totalling $2.32m, bankrolled by a small number of Jewish philanthropic foundations including those of Paul Singer, a Republican mega-donor.
No members of Congress or their staffers responded to requests for comment on this reporting.
The AIEF, however, via spokesperson Deryn Sousa, replied in an email: “AIEF missions are designed to educate participants about the US-Israel relationship, the security concerns confronting our closest ally in the Middle East, and the geo-strategic challenges and opportunities in the region.”
Sousa added: “Participants visit historical and religious sites throughout the country and meet with Israeli officials and civilians from across the political spectrum who offer a diverse range of perspectives and opinions, offering well-rounded insights and full transparency into the complex culture, geography, politics and prospects for peace.”
‘Continuity more than change’
AIEF-funded congressional travel to Israel paused for several months following the 7 October attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, before resuming again in March 2024 when eight Democratic members and one staff member traveled on an itinerary that included a visit to military installations on the Lebanese border and an Israeli military cemetery.
Travel costs for members varied: as in other delegations, members were able to bring family members, and the attendance of Schneider’s wife meant that his travel costs came to over $44,200, according to the filings.
AIEF is not the only group sponsoring lawmakers’ travel to Israel, with liberal Zionist organization J Street funding trips mostly for Democrats, and other groups – such as the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and the Atlantic Council national security thinktank – funding trips for members of both parties. But AIEF stands out for its generosity in funding Israel travel. The pace of trips since 2024 has largely held steady, even amid a broadening consensus among human rights workers, internationalorganizations and scholars that Israel’s conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide.
The documents show that an AIEF trip from 6-14 August 2025 brought at least 15Democrats to Israel, including Wesley Bell (Missouri), George Latimer (New York), Eugene Vindman (Virginia) and Gil Cisneros (California). Earlier the same month, 20 GOP House members, including Randy Fine, the vociferous pro-Israel representative from Florida, enjoyed an AIEF-sponsored trip with a similar itinerary.
Bell and Latimer were both elected with the help of millions of dollars from Aipac’s Super Pac, deployed to defeat incumbents Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.
Bell has defended Aipac’s role in US politics, including at a St Louis town hall in December, where he faced down protesters who demanded that Missouri politicians stop taking contributions from the organization. Latimer, meanwhile, has faced criticism from progressive groups and his former primary opponent Bowman in recent weeks over chummy public appearanceswith Mike Lawler, the pro-Israel New York Republican whose seat is in Democrats’ firing line in November.
Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Mike Lawler, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and Michael McCaul on 26 May 2025. Photograph: Michael McCaul’s 0ffice
The August 2025 trip’s opening keynote, titled Overcoming Obstacles to Peace, was scheduled to be delivered by Tal Becker, a former senior legal adviser to Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs. Becker is the lead legal counselrepresenting Israel at the international court of justice in the genocide casebrought by South Africa.
Members were also scheduled for a late-night visit to the City of Davidarcheological site in occupied East Jerusalem, which is operated by the Elad Foundation, a settler organization that has acquired Palestinian properties in the adjacent neighbourhood of Silwan and uses biblical-period archaeology as a vehicle for Jewish settlement expansion in East Jerusalem.
They also visited a Rafael Advanced Defense Systems facility in Haifa for a session billed as “US-Israel Defense Cooperation” and had meetings with Netanyahu, Yair Lapid and US ambassador Mike Huckabee. They stayed at the luxurious King David hotel in Jerusalem and the upscale Magdala hotel in Galilee.
On the delegation’s third day in Israel, the country’s security cabinet approveda full military reoccupation of Gaza City. The trip ended eight days before the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system confirmedfamine in Gaza for the first time.
AIEF declared per-traveller costs ranging from roughly $16,000 for single members to more than $37,000 for those travelling with a sponsored family member. The total declared value of the trip’s gifted travel to Democratic members alone reached about $400,000.
An earlier AIEF “senior congressional staff” trip, in February 2025, was slated to bring 13 senior House aides to Israel – five Democratic staffers and eight Republicans.
On that trip, the delegation met at the Knesset with Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionism party. Rothman is the legislative architect of Netanyahu’s 2023 judicial overhaul, the constitutional crisis sparking the nationwide protests that paralysed Israel in the months before 7 October.
On the trip’s final full day, the delegation received a briefing at Alfei Menashe in the occupied West Bank. Alfei Menashe is an illegal Israeli settlement east of the green line, around which Israel’s separation barrier was diverted to enclose the settlement and a number of Palestinian villages on the Israeli side.
AIEF hospitality continued into 2026, up to the eve of Israel and the US’s war on Iran.
An AIEF trip scheduled for February this year – which concluded less than a week before the initial attacks – included five Democratic staffers and seven Republicans.
On that trip, travelers heard from Ohad Tal, an MK with the Religious Zionist party, which is chaired by Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister. Tal has publicly argued for the full annexation of the occupied territories, in alignment with Smotrich’s settlement-expansion and Palestinian-displacement programme.
AIEF paid just under $17,000 for each staffer, according to the filings; they stayed at four-and-a-half-star hotels in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Tiberias.
Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, met with delegations from Republicans and Democrats from US Congress who came to Israel with Aipac on 11 August 2025. Photograph: President of Israel Office
An AIEF trip from 16-24 August 2025 brought staffers for House Democrats to Israel as Israeli forces were carrying out ground operations in Gaza City. The offices represented were those of John Larson (Connecticut), Kathy Castor (Florida), Luz Rivas (California), Cleo Fields (Louisiana), Yassamin Ansari (Arizona), former member Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (Florida) and the late David Scott (Georgia).
While Aipac and its big-spending allies were credited this month with tipping the balance against Republican Thomas Massie in Kentucky, recent Democratic primary results suggest that its influence is diminishing in the party, with many Democrats now seeking to distance themselves as the standing of Israel and its US advocates continues to erode.
“I think these recent trips represent continuity more than change,” said Walt, the international relations professor, in an email. However, he added: “Winning people over is getting harder to do given the situation in Gaza and the West Bank and the rightward shift within Israeli politics itself.”
“President Trump, despite being deeply engaged in the Iran conflict for three months, now finds the negotiations “very boring” and claims indifference to their outcome. This is surprising given the potential political consequences, including rising gasoline prices and unpopularity with constituents. Trump’s recent actions, such as toughening requirements for a preliminary accord, suggest he is still invested in the negotiations.
President Trump told CNBC that he “couldn’t care less” if the negotiations with Iran break down.
President Trump at the White House in Washington in May.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
For three months, President Trump has been deeply engaged in the Iran conflict, planning the 38 days of attack, struggling to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and proclaiming “a whole civilization will die tonight,” then backing away to declare a cease-fire and a naval blockage of Iranian ports.
But on Monday, after days of haggling with Iranian officials through intermediaries on a preliminary agreement, Mr. Trump declared it was starting “to get very boring.”
“I don’t care if they’re over, honestly,” he told Eamon Javers of CNBC when asked about reports that the Iranians, angry at continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon and low-level conflict with the United States in the Persian Gulf, were threatening to stop negotiating. “I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less. If they’re over, they’re over.”
There are reasons to doubt that Mr. Trump is truly so unconcerned: Gasoline prices have soared since the war began, with a senior Exxon-Mobil official predicting recently that prices could go far higher, and Republicans are taking note of how deeply unpopular the war with Iran is with their constituents. In recent weeks he has professed indifference about a range of issues that carry deep political consequences for him, including the midterm elections and the financial situation that Americans are facing.
But even for Mr. Trump, who has veered from threatening the Iranians with annihilation to declaring that they had already agreed to American terms to fuming that they have not, it seemed strange that he thought the whole conflict was becoming a bore.
After all, just hours before he had written in a social media post that negotiations were “continuing, at a rapid pace, with the Islamic Republic of Iran.” There were widespread reports that on Friday he toughened the requirements on a preliminary accord with Iran — one that would just set up another, deeper negotiation — because he was concerned about provisions for returning frozen funds to the Iranian government and over who would handle the recovery of Iran’s highly-enriched uranium.
These were details, but vitally important.
Back in March, Mr. Trump confidently predicted the conflict would be over in a few weeks, saying it was not possible to suffer from boredom while facing off against a longtime American adversary: “Somebody said today, they said, ‘oh, well, the president wants to do it really quickly. After that, he’ll get bored.’”
“There’s nothing boring about this,” he added.
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.“
“Doctors nationwide are seeing a resurgence of serious, vaccine-preventable illnesses like whooping cough, bacterial infections, and rotavirus. This increase is attributed to declining vaccination rates, fueled by distrust during the Covid-19 pandemic and amplified by public figures. The situation is overwhelming for doctors, who are facing more cases of preventable illnesses and navigating increasing medical misinformation from patients.
Doctors nationwide are encountering more children with whooping cough, bacterial infections and other serious illnesses, as well as more adults refusing tetanus shots.
Deanna Donegan/The New York Times; Photographs by Getty
Doctors around the country say they are seeing more cases of serious, sometimes life-threatening illnesses that vaccines have long kept at bay, including whooping cough and bacterial infections that can cause pneumonia or meningitis.
The concern among doctors comes on the heels of a resurgence of measles nationwide, fueled by distrust in vaccines that grew during the Covid-19 pandemic, and that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Trump have amplified. Public health experts have long seen measles as a harbinger: Because it is so exceptionally contagious, it can be the first disease to spike as vaccination rates broadly decline, and a sign of more to come.
For some of these diseases, national data show clear and substantial increases in recent years; for others, the increases are small, or there are anecdotal indications from doctors on the ground of increases that public statistics don’t currently confirm.
While most children recover, these diseases aren’t benign. Many children endure extended hospitalizations. Some infections can be fatal.
Dr. Meghan Hofto, a pediatric hospitalist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is one of the doctors who said she is seeing more illnesses that she used to encounter only rarely. This year, she and her colleagues have treated more children than usual with persistent diarrhea. A child with a run-of-the-mill stomach virus might need a day or so of IV fluids, but these patients were being hospitalized for three or four days.
The culprit: Rotavirus, which once caused tens of thousands of hospitalizations a year in the United States but was largely swept away by vaccines introduced 20 years ago. These vaccines were so effective that Dr. Hofto could recall treating only four or five children with rotavirus in the past decade. Now, she said she had treated about that many already this year, and none of them were vaccinated.
Dr. Jessica Kirk, a pediatric hospitalist in Fairhope, Ala., recently treated an unvaccinated toddler who was hospitalized with pneumonia from two simultaneous infections, Haemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Routine childhood vaccines can protect against both S. pneumoniae and a common form of H. influenzae, but vaccinations against both illnesses have declined in recent years.
The child that Dr. Kirk treated for both infections needed antibiotics and oxygen to get through the illness.
Some of these conditions can lead to serious complications. H. influenzae and S. pneumoniae infections can cause sepsis, meningitis and pneumonia. Dr. Hofto said she had treated 4- to 6-week-old infants with whooping cough, or pertussis, who seemed fine at times but then stopped breathing after a coughing fit. “It’s hard to know when they’re safe to go home,” she said.
Many children with whooping cough don’t have anti-vaccine parents, she said. They are just too young to have been vaccinated yet, and the disease has been circulating more in recent years as overall vaccination rates have declined. There were more than 28,000 cases reported last year, compared with around 7,000 in 2023.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an emailed statement, “We reject the premise that providing Americans with transparent information about the benefits and risks of medical products undermines public health.”
Even when the worst doesn’t happen, emergency room doctors are having to subject some unvaccinated children with high fevers to more invasive testing, including spinal taps, to rule out life-threatening infections that vaccinated children are protected from. Infections like H. influenzae and S. pneumoniae can be hard to recognize because they can resemble less serious illnesses before rapidly leading to complications. And because near-universal vaccination prevented them for so long, many doctors have little experience diagnosing them.
The alternative to invasive testing, in some cases, is to start unvaccinated children on stronger antibiotics than doctors might otherwise use, which can have more side effects, said Dr. Robin Harrison and Dr. Taylor Rosenbaum, pediatric hospitalists in Miami.
Several doctors also said they had seen a growing number of adults refuse tetanus shots for themselves, and parents refuse them for their children, after injuries such as dog bites or lacerations from dirty objects. Roughly 1 in 10people infected with tetanus die; a full course of vaccination is very effective at preventing infection.
Dr. Sonali Meyer, an emergency medicine physician in Minnesota, said she had treated a patient last year who refused a tetanus shot after slicing his hand open.
“Big pharma doesn’t need my money,” she recalled the patient telling her. She said another patient refused a tetanus shot by saying, “I know you get paid more the more shots you give, but no thanks.”
With each passing year, doctors said, the hesitation around vaccines seems to expand to new frontiers.
Two anesthesiologists said that, starting around 2022 or 2023, they had occasionally seen patients who refused to consent to blood transfusions before surgery because they didn’t want blood from vaccinated donors. And a growing number of parents are refusing to allow their newborns to receive vitamin K injections, which help prevent bleeding. Until recently, neonatologists said, these shots were accepted even by many families that rejected vaccines.
Five doctors said they had seen brain or abdominal hemorrhages in infants whose parents had turned down vitamin K, including one who died and another who was partly paralyzed.
The onslaught of preventable illness and other health risks can feel overwhelming, doctors said. So can navigating the medical misinformationsome patients recite.
“It just feels like you’re a tiny little boat with a giant tidal wave coming at you,” said Dr. Erin Charles, a regional pediatric hospitalist at Seattle Children’s Hospital. “And you might convince one family here and there.”
Many parents continue to refuse vaccines even after their child has been hospitalized with a vaccine-preventable illness, doctors said. Dr. Kirk said she had never had a parent in that situation tell her they had changed their mind and would have their child vaccinated on the standard schedule. Dr. Hofto said she could sometimes persuade families, but often not.
Some “may view the illness as an isolated experience, especially if their child ultimately recovers,” Dr. Hofto said.
Doctors said they feared that, as vaccination rates decline more, illnesses now popping up sporadically would become more common.
Dr. Rosenbaum said she had been telling the medical residents training under her that they might have to learn together how to treat illnesses she’d never encountered during her own training because of vaccines.
For many such illnesses, “it’s going to be probably a low uptick,” she said. “Until it’s very fast.”
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Maggie Astor covers women’s health and the health effects of government policies for The Times.
“President Trump is reportedly backing off his plan for a $1.8 billion fund to compensate individuals claiming unfair prosecution by the government. The plan faced backlash from both Democrats and Republicans, with concerns it would reward Trump’s political allies. The Justice Department stated it would abide by a court order halting the fund’s disbursement, which some senators interpreted as a clear acknowledgment of the fund’s unworkability.
President Trump at the White House last week.Doug Mills/The New York Times
What We’re Covering Today
Payout Fund: President Trump is backing off his plan for a $1.8 billion fund to pay people he says have been victimized by the federal government, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Mr. Trump has not abandoned his immunity from audits, which also emerged as part of a deal with the I.R.S. to drop his lawsuit against the agency. It was not clear whether word that he planned to drop the plan would satisfy skeptical lawmakers, including many Republicans, who had revolted over the fund, imperiling the passage of a bill to fund the president’s immigration crackdown. Read more ›
U.S. Military: Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, recently blocked the promotions of at least seven Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior admirals to rise to one-star admiral rank. His actions appeared to violate promotion system rules and disproportionally affected women and minority officers. Read more ›
Beyond the legal challenges, President Trump has also faced increasing pressure from both parties on Capitol Hill to torpedo the fund.Allison Robbert for The New York Times
President Trump is backing off his plan to establish a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they were victims of unfair prosecution by the government, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday.
The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the president’s thinking, said he had been leaning for days toward scrapping the fund, which critics have characterized as a scheme to reward Mr. Trump’s political allies with public benefits.
June 1, 2026, 6:22 p.m. ET1 hour ago
Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, said that “it is not enough for me to have the courts pushback” on the weaponization fund and echoed what many of his colleagues have said, that the statement from the Department of Justice did not satisfy all of his concerns. “I have a lot of unanswered questions,” he said adding that he would support “pretty robust” guardrails on any future effort to move ahead with the fund.
June 1, 2026, 6:04 p.m. ET1 hour ago
Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, told reporters on Monday that the Trump administration should clearly state that it is giving up on the $1.8 billion fund that stands to benefit President Trump’s allies if it had changed its position. Earlier today, the Justice Department said in a statement that it was abiding by the court order stopping disbursement of funds for now, but said it disagreed with the court’s decision. “I appreciate them saying that, but they don’t have a choice,” Kennedy told reporters. “They have to abide by “the federal district court order.”
June 1, 2026, 5:19 p.m. ET2 hours ago
On Capitol Hill, a Republican leadership aide said Republican senators interpreted the Justice Department’s statement, which said that it would abide by a federal judge’s temporary order not to proceed with any steps to activate the fund until at least June 12, as a clear walk back and a clear acknowledgement that the fund was unworkable. The aide said that this move was what members have been asking for, although it was not clear whether the statement alone would unlock the votes needed to move ahead with a narrow reconciliation bill.
June 1, 2026, 5:12 p.m. ET2 hours ago
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas who just lost his primary to a Trump-backed candidate last week, said that he was satisfied with the Justice Department statement on the fund, which threatened to hold up passage of a reconciliation bill. “It makes it moot,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll get the reconciliation bill done. They said they’ll accept the ruling of the judge, that makes it moot.”
June 1, 2026, 4:40 p.m. ET3 hours ago
Trump is backing off of his plan to establish a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they were victims of government “weaponization” by Democrats, according to two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
His move, which he not commented on publicly, came as the fund drew widespread backlash from Democrats and Republican senators.
The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean observation system that was put in place a decade ago to monitor coastal environments, marine ecosystems and powerful currents that affect the global climate.
The National Science Foundation said it would send ships in June to begin removing more than 900 deep-sea instruments anchored off Oregon, Washington State, Alaska, North Carolina, and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea.
A federal judge in Washington ruled on Monday that protesters criticizing President Trump near the Capitol could not be forced to take down a flag reading “8647,” finding no indication that the message could be taken as a true threat against the president’s life.
Judge Randolph D. Moss wrote that despite efforts by police to compel the group, an advocacy organization called Accountability Now USA, to remove the flag and other signage over the course of several months, he concluded it was clear that the flag and its message were protected speech. The dispute in some ways mirrored the criminal case against James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, who was indicted on a charge of making a threat against the president over a photograph posted to Instagram that depicted seashells on a beach arranged into the same numbers.
The Defense Department has designated its press office as a classified space, off limits to journalists, further restricting interactions between its public-facing representatives and the reporters assigned to cover the military.
The move, confirmed by the department’s acting press secretary, follows a change in policy from earlier this year that required journalists to have an official escort at all times when visiting the Pentagon.
A divided federal appeals court on Monday blocked the Trump administration from removing more than two dozen transgender service members from the military while a lawsuit fighting their dismissal is decided.
The 2-to-1 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is the latest legal salvo over a divisive policy that has forced out thousands of troops and left thousands of others in limbo for more than a year.
June 1, 2026, 4:56 p.m. ET2 hours ago
A federal judge on Monday blocked Trump administration efforts to strip the the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a Colorado-based climate research laboratory, of its oversight of a key computing center in Wyoming. The administration’s plan to transfer stewardship of the facility, announced in February, has already caused a “flood of resignations” by scientists and threatens the future of the lab, wrote R. Brooke Jackson, a senior U.S. district judge in Colorado, in a preliminary injunction against the National Science Foundation.
There is evidence the decision may have been driven by political retribution against Colorado leaders, and it may have violated federal law on administrative procedures, Judge Jackson said. N.S.F. officials declined to comment.
The center, known as NCAR, has managed the supercomputing center — used by more than 4,000 climate and weather scientists to model atmospheric conditions and study air pollution, wildfires, hurricanes and solar storms — since the facility opened in 2012. The Trump administration said it was transferring oversight of the facility to an unspecified third party.
The guidance, which took effect on Friday, would prevent states from offering rebates to people who buy an electric stove to replace a gas range. It would also end rebates for similar swaps of ovens, dryers, heat pumps and water heaters.
In a move that disproportionately targets women and minority officers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of nine Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior Navy admirals.
The net result of Mr. Hegseth’s intervention is a slate of 22 nominees to be one-star admirals that bears little resemblance to the broader force these officers will help lead.
In late April, a lawyer for the Justice Department told a federal judge that her colleagues had been in the midst of negotiations with a Rhode Island hospital about turning over gender-transition treatment health records, only for the hospital’s lawyers to stop responding.
But Judge Mary S. McElroy of Federal District Court in Rhode Island concluded that was not true. While the government claimed it had not heard from the hospital since February, emails showed the hospital’s lawyers had stayed in close touch.
Former F.B.I. officials are starting a group to help embattled bureau employees grapple with the Trump administration’s rapid efforts to reshape its agency, saying that the work force is under incredible strain under its director, Kash Patel.
The group, called the F.B.I. Support Network, is an offshoot of the Justice Connection organization, made up of former Justice Department employees who offer legal, mental health or job search services to current agency employees.
More than 200 people have now been killed in a bombing campaign by the U.S. military against people it has accused of smuggling drugs in the waters off South America, after a string of deadly attacks over the last week.
The military said on Saturday that three men had been killed in the eastern Pacific during a strike ordered by Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the head of the Southern Command, against a boat that was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations.” Their deaths bring the total killed to at least 202, in more than 60 strikes“
