Heather Cox Richardson
May 10
Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel, who did not have experience in law enforcement when he took the job, has drawn criticism from current and former officials in the FBI and the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, for reducing FBI briefings, traveling frequently on personal matters, and appearing repeatedly at pro sporting events.
Yesterday Patel showed up at a hearing for the Senate Appropriations Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee on the FBI’s spending plan for 2025, but he had not produced the plan, which by law was supposed to have been turned over more than a week ago. When Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) called the absence of the plan “absurd” and asked Patel when they could expect the plan, he answered he did not have a timeline.
Stacey Young, a former DOJ lawyer who co-founded Justice Connection, which supports current and former DOJ employees under pressure from the administration, told NBC’s Ken Dilanian: “There’s a growing sense among the ranks that there’s a leadership void. And that the highest echelons of the bureau are more concerned about currying favor with the president, retribution, and leaks than the actual work.”
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) took Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem even more fully to task. At a meeting of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security yesterday, Murphy told Noem: “[Y]our department is out of control. You are spending like you don’t have a budget,” he said. “You are on the verge of running out of money for the fiscal year…. You're on track to trigger the Anti-Deficiency Act. That means you are going to spend more money than you have been allocated by Congress. This is a rare occurrence, and it is wildly illegal. Your agency will be broke by July, over two months before the end of the fiscal year.”
The obsession with the border, he continued, “has left the country unprotected elsewhere…. To fund the border, you have illegally gutted spending for cybersecurity. As we speak, Russian and Chinese hackers are having a field day attacking our nation. You have withdrawn funds for disaster prevention. Storms are going to kill more people in this country because of your illegal withholding of these funds.”
May 10, 2025
Does Stephan Miller Control Foreign Policy?
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters today that voters elected Trump to “deport the illegals” and that “Marxist” judges frustrating that effort are attacking democracy. In fact, Trump convinced many voters that he would deport only violent criminals, and they are now aghast at the scenes unfolding as masked agents grab women and children from their cars and sweep up U.S. citizens.
In The Bulwark today, Adrian Carrasquillo explained how podcasters, sports YouTubers, and comedians, including Joe Rogan, have brought the rendition of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador onto the radar screen of Trump voters. Americans now disapprove of Trump’s immigration policies by 53% to 46%.
Miller made an even bigger power grab when he said “we’re actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus, a legal change that essentially establishes martial law by permitting the government to arrest people and hold them without charges or a trial. Legal analyst Steve Vladeck explains that Miller’s justification for such a suspension is dead wrong, and suggests Miller’s threat appears to be designed to put more pressure on the courts.
But in this chaotic administration, it seems worth asking who the “we” is in Miller’s statement. In the group chat about striking the Houthis, when administration officials were discussing—without the presence of either the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the president himself—what was the best course of action, it was Miller who ultimately decided to launch a strike simply by announcing what he claimed were Trump’s wishes.
In The Bulwark today, Adrian Carrasquillo explained how podcasters, sports YouTubers, and comedians, including Joe Rogan, have brought the rendition of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador onto the radar screen of Trump voters. Americans now disapprove of Trump’s immigration policies by 53% to 46%.
Miller made an even bigger power grab when he said “we’re actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus, a legal change that essentially establishes martial law by permitting the government to arrest people and hold them without charges or a trial. Legal analyst Steve Vladeck explains that Miller’s justification for such a suspension is dead wrong, and suggests Miller’s threat appears to be designed to put more pressure on the courts.
But in this chaotic administration, it seems worth asking who the “we” is in Miller’s statement. In the group chat about striking the Houthis, when administration officials were discussing—without the presence of either the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the president himself—what was the best course of action, it was Miller who ultimately decided to launch a strike simply by announcing what he claimed were Trump’s wishes.
An American Selected to be Pope
Pope Leo XIV Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times
By Tom Wright-Piersanti
“The idea of an American pope was unimaginable for generations,” Jason Horowitz, our Rome bureau chief, noted yesterday. Why would church leaders pick a pope from a global superpower that shapes world affairs?
Yet the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel chose Robert Francis Prevost, a 69-year-old Chicago native, as the 267th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. He has adopted the papal name Leo XIV. He’s the first American to hold the job.
Prevost has lived outside the U.S. for much of his life, and many in the Vatican view him as a churchman who transcends borders, Jason wrote. Today’s newsletter will guide you through The Times’s coverage of the new pope and his views.
Chicago to Peru
Robert Prevost, newly ordained, greets Pope John Paul II in 1982. St. Mary of the Assumption
Prevost grew up in a suburb just south of Chicago. His father was a school principal. His mother, a librarian, was deeply involved in their local Catholic parish, St. Mary of the Assumption, on the city’s Far South Side. His maternal grandparents were Creole people of color who moved north from New Orleans.
Julie Bosman, our Chicago bureau chief, interviewed Father William Lego, who has known Prevost since high school. “They picked a good man,” he said. “He had a good sense of right and wrong, always working with the poor.”
Prevost earned a degree in math from Villanova University and then a divinity degree at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Not long after, he moved abroad.
He lived for two decades in Peru as a missionary, priest, teacher and eventually a bishop — a role for which he became a naturalized citizen of Peru. Prevost led a diocese in Chiclayo, in a region of the country where flooding is common. He would often deliver food and other supplies to remote areas himself, sometimes carrying bags of rice on his back, one priest told my colleague Genevieve Glatsky.
Father Pedro Vásquez, another priest in Chiclayo, told The Times that he was so excited about the news that “my heart is going to fail me!”
Under Pope Francis, Prevost held one of the most influential Vatican posts, running the office that selects and manages bishops globally. His knowledge of the Vatican’s inner workings made him an attractive choice to the Roman Curia, the powerful bureaucracy that governs the church, our reporters in Vatican City wrote.
But at least one element of Prevost’s American childhood has stuck with him: Those close to him say he’s a baseball fan, and he has been known to explain the rules of the game to his Italian friends. (Prevost’s brother said the new pope roots for the White Sox — and also told WGN, a TV station in Chicago, that he enjoys Wordle.)
The pope’s politics
Francis appointed Prevost as a cardinal in 2023, and the two share some views of the church. Prevost told the Vatican’s official news website last year that bishops were called to “suffer with” the people they served, echoing Francis’ focus on the poor.
But the two may diverge on other points. In 2012, Prevost expressed concerns about what he called the “homosexual lifestyle.” A year later, the newly elected Francis made headlines when he said of gay people, “Who am I to judge?”
More recently, a social media account under Prevost’s name has taken aim at President Trump, according to my colleague Lisa Lerer, who covers politics. In 2018, the account shared a post from Cardinal Blase Cupich that said there was “nothing remotely Christian, American or morally defensible” about the administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents.
And in April, after Vice President JD Vance used a Catholic teaching to defend the Trump administration’s deportation policies, the account posted an article titled “JD Vance is wrong.”
Vance did not seem to hold a grudge. “Congratulations to Leo XIV, the first American Pope, on his election!” he wrote on social media yesterday. “I’m sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his successful work leading the Church.”
The American faithful cheer the new pope. Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times
By Patricia Mazzei
The tens of thousands of faithful who were crammed into St. Peter’s Square exchanged befuddled looks when Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was announced as pope from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. Who? People started searching his name on their phones.
“I think they just elected an American pope,” said Nicole Serena, 21, a student who is in Rome studying marketing.
Wait — an American?
Some faces fell.
“Maybe he’s a good guy?” said Catalina Zaza, 27, an Argentine art student in Rome. “We don’t know.”
A little over an hour earlier, when white smoke billowed from the chimney, some people hugged. Others raised their hands to rejoice in prayer. When the new pontiff was announced as Pope Leo XIV, the crowd began to chant, “Papa Leone!”
Then Leo stepped out. Onlookers shrieked with delight. “Peace be with you,” he said in Italian.
Only once Leo paid homage to Francis did many of those gathered appear to relax. Zaza and her friend Sofía Basanes, 30, also from Argentina, started to nod at the new pope’s calls for peace, justice, dialogue and love. Next to them, a young priest sobbed and an older nun’s eyes glistened with tears.
And when Leo began to speak in Spanish, the crowd broke into enthusiastic applause. “He lived in Peru!” one man yelled in Spanish. “Peruuuu!” Leo did not speak in English or mention the United States.
By the end, Basanes was crying, along with quite a few others around her. “We have so much faith in Pope Francis’ legacy,” she said.
More reactions
Across the U.S., news of Leo’s election was greeted with surprise — and delight. “I never thought it would happen,” said Tom Keane in Boston. “Not in my lifetime.”
On social media, Trump called Leo’s ascent a “Great Honor for our Country.”
Two priests reflected on what it feels like to see an old friend, known to them as Bob, become pope. “The papacy is certainly not something that I could ever see Bob Prevost aspire to,” one said. “I think he was just doing what he felt God was calling him to do.”
See photos from the moment Pope Leo emerged onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square.
Leo XIV celebrated his first mass as pontiff this morning in the Sistine Chapel.
The pope’s choice of the name Leo XIV is a clear reference to the last Leo, who led the church from 1878 to 1903 and helped marshal it into the modern world.
Leo’s priorities for the papacy seem to echo Francis’. He could turn out to be a countervailing voice against America’s newly powerful strain of right-leaning Catholics.
Hunger, Sickness and Crime Stalk Gaza Under Israel’s Blockade
Food is scarce and morale is fading after glimpse of normalcy during this year’s cease-fire was shattered by return to fighting
By Feliz Solomon
May 9, 2025 9:30 am ET
Key Points
Gaza faces a breakdown of law and order due to hunger, collapsed governance and conflict since a ceasefire ended in March.
Israel’s blockade, the war’s longest, is defended as a means to pressure Hamas to release hostages and prevent aid diversion.
Gazans are protesting Hamas and are desperate as restaurants close, food is scarce, and fights over resources increase.
What most. en Israel blockaded the Gaza Strip in early March, banning entry of all aid and other goods, Fady Abed, a dentist who works for a medical nonprofit there, thought it would last a few weeks
Months later, he can’t believe how much things have fallen apart.
In Gaza City, where he lives, community kitchens are closing because they have nothing left to cook. Each day, clinics run by his organization, MedGlobal, are visited by more malnourished children he described as “skin and bones.”
At night, a mix of hungry men and opportunistic gangsters roam the streets looking for places to loot. In the absence of authorities, armed vigilantes chase down and beat up suspected thieves. He worries about break-ins, because he has a bag of flour in his home.
“Things can’t continue like this,” Abed said. “We just won’t survive.”
Since Israel imposed the blockade—now the longest of the war set off by Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel—the territory is descending into a state of chaos. Residents and aid workers say they have seen a breakdown of law and order amid the perfect storm of hunger, collapsed governance and intensifying conflict since March, when a two-month cease-fire fell apart.
“I’ve been doing this kind of work for two decades and I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Claire Manera, an emergency coordinator for the nonprofit Doctors Without Borders, speaking from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. At night, she hears the sounds of gunshots and men shouting outside her compound.
Tents of displaced Palestinians in the Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza. PHOTO: MAHMOUD ISSA/REUTERS
Children wait for food to be distributed in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. PHOTO: DOAA EL-BAZ/ZUMA PRESSIsrael has defended the blockade, saying Hamas reroutes aid to support its operations and that the pressure is needed to convince the militant group to release the roughly two dozen hostages it still holds. It says supplies built up in Gaza during the cease-fire and it is working on a plan to distribute aid with the help of American contractors that it says would circumvent Hamas.
The toll of the war in Gaza has been immense. Most of its two million people have been displaced at least once; swaths of the enclave have been reduced to rubble; there are persistent shortages of medicine and daily necessities; and more than 52,000 have been killed, according to Palestinian authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants.
The return to fighting has been especially hard to bear for a population that got a brief taste of relative normalcy during the cease-fire. With no clear progress in negotiations, the fighting is set to get worse.
May 9, 2025
How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?
May 8, 2025
By Steven LevitskyLucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt
The authors are political scientists who study how democracies come to an end.
Authoritarianism is harder to recognize than it used to be. Most 21st-century autocrats are elected. Rather than violently suppress opposition like Castro or Pinochet, today’s autocrats convert public institutions into political weapons, using law enforcement, tax and regulatory agencies to punish opponents and bully the media and civil society onto the sidelines. We call this competitive authoritarianism — a system in which parties compete in elections but the systematic abuse of an incumbent’s power tilts the playing field against the opposition. It is how autocrats rule in contemporary Hungary, India, Serbia and Turkey and how Hugo Chávez ruled in Venezuela.
The descent into competitive authoritarianism doesn’t always set off alarms. Because governments attack their rivals through nominally legal means like defamation suits, tax audits and politically targeted investigations, citizens are often slow to realize they are succumbing to authoritarian rule. More than a decade into Mr. Chávez’s rule, most Venezuelans still believed they lived in a democracy.
How, then, can we tell whether America has crossed the line into authoritarianism? We propose a simple metric: the cost of opposing the government. In democracies, citizens are not punished for peacefully opposing those in power. They need not worry about publishing critical opinions, supporting opposition candidates or engaging in peaceful protest because they know they will not suffer retribution from the government. In fact, the idea of legitimate opposition — that all citizens have a right to criticize, organize opposition to and seek to remove the government through elections — is a foundational principle of democracy.
Under authoritarianism, by contrast, opposition comes with a price. Citizens and organizations that run afoul of the government become targets of a range of punitive measures: Politicians may be investigated and prosecuted on baseless or petty charges, media outlets may be hit with frivolous defamation suits or adverse regulatory rulings, businesses may face tax audits or be denied critical contracts or licenses, universities and other civic institutions may lose essential funding or tax-exempt status, and journalists, activists and other critics may be harassed, threatened or physically attacked by government supporters.
When citizens must think twice about criticizing or opposing the government because they could credibly face government retribution, they no longer live in a full democracy.
By that measure, America has crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism. The Trump administration’s weaponization of government agencies and flurry of punitive actions against critics has raised the cost of opposition for a wide range of Americans.
The Trump administration has taken (or credibly threatened) punitive action against a strikingly large number of individuals and organizations that it considers its opponents. It has, for example, selectively deployed law enforcement agencies against critics. President Trump directed the Department of Justice to open investigations into Christopher Krebs (who as the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency publicly contradicted Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020) and Miles Taylor (who, when he was a Department of Homeland Security official, anonymously wrote an opinion piece criticizing the president in 2018). The administration has also opened a criminal investigation into Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who filed a lawsuit against Mr. Trump in 2022.
The administration has targeted major law firms for retribution. It effectively prohibited the federal government from hiring Perkins Coie; Paul, Weiss; and other leading law firms it perceived as friendly to the Democratic Party. It also threatened to cancel their clients’ government contracts and suspended their employees’ security clearances, preventing them from working on many cases related to the government.
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Image
Credit...Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Donors to the Democratic Party and other progressive causes also face political retribution. In April, Mr. Trump directed the attorney general to investigate the fund-raising practices of ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s main donor platform, in an apparent effort to weaken his rivals’ fund-raising infrastructure. Major Democratic donors now fear retribution in the form of tax and other investigations. Some have hired additional legal counsel to prepare for tax audits, congressional investigations or lawsuits. Others have moved assets abroad.
Like many autocratic governments, the Trump administration has targeted the media. Mr. Trump has sued ABC News, CBS News, Meta, Simon & Schuster and The Des Moines Register. The lawsuits appear to have weak legal bases, but because media outlets like ABC and CBS are owned by conglomerates with other interests affected by federal government decisions, a prolonged legal battle against a sitting president could be costly.
At the same time, the administration has politicized the Federal Communications Commission and deployed it against independent media. It opened an investigation of fund-raising practices by PBS and NPR, potentially as a prelude to funding cuts. It also reinstated complaints against ABC, CBS and NBC for anti-Trump bias while opting not to reinstate a complaint against Fox News for promoting lies about the 2020 election.
Remarkably, these attacks against opponents and the media have occurred with even greater speed and force than equivalent actions taken by elected autocrats in Hungary, India, Turkey or Venezuela during their first years in office.
Mr. Trump has also followed other autocrats in assaulting universities. The Department of Education opened investigations into at least 52 universities for their participation in diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and it has placed some 60 universities under investigation for antisemitism, threatening them with severe penalties. The administration illegally suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in approved funding to leading schools such as Brown, Columbia, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. It has frozen $2.2 billion in government grants to Harvard, asked the I.R.S. to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status and threatened to revoke its eligibility to host foreign students. As Jonathan Friedman, the managing director of free-expression programs at PEN America, put it, “It feels like any day, any university could step out of line in some way and then have all of their funding pulled.”
Finally, Republican politicians face threats of violence if they oppose Mr. Trump. Fear of violence from his supporters reportedly dissuaded some Republican lawmakers from voting for his impeachment and conviction after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Republican senators were also threatened during confirmation hearings in early 2025. Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, reported that the F.B.I. warned him of “credible death threats” while he was considering opposing Pete Hegseth’s nomination as secretary of defense.
For many American citizens and organizations, then, the cost of opposition has risen markedly. Although these costs are not as high as in dictatorships like Russia — where critics are routinely imprisoned, exiled or killed — America has, with stunning speed, descended into a world in which opponents of the government fear criminal investigations, lawsuits, tax audits and other punitive measures and even Republican politicians are, as one former Trump administration official put it, “scared” out of their minds “about death threats.”
This is not the first time that critics of the U.S. government have been harassed, threatened or punished: Dissidents were targeted during the Red Scares of 1919 and ’20 and the McCarthy era, the F.B.I. harassed civil rights leaders and left-leaning activists for decades, and the Nixon administration attempted to use the I.R.S. and other agencies to attack his rivals. These measures were clearly undemocratic, but they were more limited in scope than those occurring today. And Mr. Nixon’s efforts to politicize the government triggered his resignation, in part, and a set of reforms that helped curtail such abuse after 1974.
The half-century after Watergate was America’s most democratic. Not only did the Trump presidency put an abrupt end to that era, but it is also the first — at least since the Adams administration’s persecution of the Jeffersonian Democrats in the 1790s — to systematically target both the mainstream partisan opposition and a broad sector of civil society.
The administration’s authoritarian offensive has had a clear impact. It has changed how Americans behave, forcing them to think twice about engaging in what should be constitutionally protected opposition. Consequently, many of the politicians and societal organizations that should serve as watchdogs and checks on the executive are silencing themselves or retreating to the sidelines.
For example, fear of retribution has had a chilling effect on donations to Democrats and progressive civic organizations, forcing several of them to scale back operations and lay off employees. In the wake of Mr. Trump’s attacks on leading law firms, opponents of the administration are struggling to find legal representation, as deep-pocketed and reputable firms that once readily engaged in legal battles with the government are lying low to avoid his wrath. Columbia University ceded to the administration’s extortionary demands for greater restrictions on student expression. As Mr. Trump observed, “You see what we’re doing with the colleges, and they’re all bending and saying, ‘Sir, thank you very much.’”
There are troubling signs of media self-censorship. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, which is seeking the Trump administration’s approval for a merger with Skydance Media, recently established additional oversight over “60 Minutes” programming. This move triggered the resignation of the program’s longtime executive producer, Bill Owens, who cited a loss of journalistic independence.
And crucially, Republican lawmakers have abdicated their role as checks on executive power. As Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, put it, “We are all afraid. It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”
Image
Credit...Ash Adams for The New York Times
By Steven LevitskyLucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt
The authors are political scientists who study how democracies come to an end.
Authoritarianism is harder to recognize than it used to be. Most 21st-century autocrats are elected. Rather than violently suppress opposition like Castro or Pinochet, today’s autocrats convert public institutions into political weapons, using law enforcement, tax and regulatory agencies to punish opponents and bully the media and civil society onto the sidelines. We call this competitive authoritarianism — a system in which parties compete in elections but the systematic abuse of an incumbent’s power tilts the playing field against the opposition. It is how autocrats rule in contemporary Hungary, India, Serbia and Turkey and how Hugo Chávez ruled in Venezuela.
The descent into competitive authoritarianism doesn’t always set off alarms. Because governments attack their rivals through nominally legal means like defamation suits, tax audits and politically targeted investigations, citizens are often slow to realize they are succumbing to authoritarian rule. More than a decade into Mr. Chávez’s rule, most Venezuelans still believed they lived in a democracy.
How, then, can we tell whether America has crossed the line into authoritarianism? We propose a simple metric: the cost of opposing the government. In democracies, citizens are not punished for peacefully opposing those in power. They need not worry about publishing critical opinions, supporting opposition candidates or engaging in peaceful protest because they know they will not suffer retribution from the government. In fact, the idea of legitimate opposition — that all citizens have a right to criticize, organize opposition to and seek to remove the government through elections — is a foundational principle of democracy.
Under authoritarianism, by contrast, opposition comes with a price. Citizens and organizations that run afoul of the government become targets of a range of punitive measures: Politicians may be investigated and prosecuted on baseless or petty charges, media outlets may be hit with frivolous defamation suits or adverse regulatory rulings, businesses may face tax audits or be denied critical contracts or licenses, universities and other civic institutions may lose essential funding or tax-exempt status, and journalists, activists and other critics may be harassed, threatened or physically attacked by government supporters.
When citizens must think twice about criticizing or opposing the government because they could credibly face government retribution, they no longer live in a full democracy.
By that measure, America has crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism. The Trump administration’s weaponization of government agencies and flurry of punitive actions against critics has raised the cost of opposition for a wide range of Americans.
The Trump administration has taken (or credibly threatened) punitive action against a strikingly large number of individuals and organizations that it considers its opponents. It has, for example, selectively deployed law enforcement agencies against critics. President Trump directed the Department of Justice to open investigations into Christopher Krebs (who as the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency publicly contradicted Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020) and Miles Taylor (who, when he was a Department of Homeland Security official, anonymously wrote an opinion piece criticizing the president in 2018). The administration has also opened a criminal investigation into Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who filed a lawsuit against Mr. Trump in 2022.
The administration has targeted major law firms for retribution. It effectively prohibited the federal government from hiring Perkins Coie; Paul, Weiss; and other leading law firms it perceived as friendly to the Democratic Party. It also threatened to cancel their clients’ government contracts and suspended their employees’ security clearances, preventing them from working on many cases related to the government.
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Image
Credit...Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDonors to the Democratic Party and other progressive causes also face political retribution. In April, Mr. Trump directed the attorney general to investigate the fund-raising practices of ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s main donor platform, in an apparent effort to weaken his rivals’ fund-raising infrastructure. Major Democratic donors now fear retribution in the form of tax and other investigations. Some have hired additional legal counsel to prepare for tax audits, congressional investigations or lawsuits. Others have moved assets abroad.
Like many autocratic governments, the Trump administration has targeted the media. Mr. Trump has sued ABC News, CBS News, Meta, Simon & Schuster and The Des Moines Register. The lawsuits appear to have weak legal bases, but because media outlets like ABC and CBS are owned by conglomerates with other interests affected by federal government decisions, a prolonged legal battle against a sitting president could be costly.
At the same time, the administration has politicized the Federal Communications Commission and deployed it against independent media. It opened an investigation of fund-raising practices by PBS and NPR, potentially as a prelude to funding cuts. It also reinstated complaints against ABC, CBS and NBC for anti-Trump bias while opting not to reinstate a complaint against Fox News for promoting lies about the 2020 election.
Remarkably, these attacks against opponents and the media have occurred with even greater speed and force than equivalent actions taken by elected autocrats in Hungary, India, Turkey or Venezuela during their first years in office.
Mr. Trump has also followed other autocrats in assaulting universities. The Department of Education opened investigations into at least 52 universities for their participation in diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and it has placed some 60 universities under investigation for antisemitism, threatening them with severe penalties. The administration illegally suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in approved funding to leading schools such as Brown, Columbia, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. It has frozen $2.2 billion in government grants to Harvard, asked the I.R.S. to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status and threatened to revoke its eligibility to host foreign students. As Jonathan Friedman, the managing director of free-expression programs at PEN America, put it, “It feels like any day, any university could step out of line in some way and then have all of their funding pulled.”
Finally, Republican politicians face threats of violence if they oppose Mr. Trump. Fear of violence from his supporters reportedly dissuaded some Republican lawmakers from voting for his impeachment and conviction after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Republican senators were also threatened during confirmation hearings in early 2025. Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, reported that the F.B.I. warned him of “credible death threats” while he was considering opposing Pete Hegseth’s nomination as secretary of defense.
For many American citizens and organizations, then, the cost of opposition has risen markedly. Although these costs are not as high as in dictatorships like Russia — where critics are routinely imprisoned, exiled or killed — America has, with stunning speed, descended into a world in which opponents of the government fear criminal investigations, lawsuits, tax audits and other punitive measures and even Republican politicians are, as one former Trump administration official put it, “scared” out of their minds “about death threats.”
This is not the first time that critics of the U.S. government have been harassed, threatened or punished: Dissidents were targeted during the Red Scares of 1919 and ’20 and the McCarthy era, the F.B.I. harassed civil rights leaders and left-leaning activists for decades, and the Nixon administration attempted to use the I.R.S. and other agencies to attack his rivals. These measures were clearly undemocratic, but they were more limited in scope than those occurring today. And Mr. Nixon’s efforts to politicize the government triggered his resignation, in part, and a set of reforms that helped curtail such abuse after 1974.
The half-century after Watergate was America’s most democratic. Not only did the Trump presidency put an abrupt end to that era, but it is also the first — at least since the Adams administration’s persecution of the Jeffersonian Democrats in the 1790s — to systematically target both the mainstream partisan opposition and a broad sector of civil society.
The administration’s authoritarian offensive has had a clear impact. It has changed how Americans behave, forcing them to think twice about engaging in what should be constitutionally protected opposition. Consequently, many of the politicians and societal organizations that should serve as watchdogs and checks on the executive are silencing themselves or retreating to the sidelines.
For example, fear of retribution has had a chilling effect on donations to Democrats and progressive civic organizations, forcing several of them to scale back operations and lay off employees. In the wake of Mr. Trump’s attacks on leading law firms, opponents of the administration are struggling to find legal representation, as deep-pocketed and reputable firms that once readily engaged in legal battles with the government are lying low to avoid his wrath. Columbia University ceded to the administration’s extortionary demands for greater restrictions on student expression. As Mr. Trump observed, “You see what we’re doing with the colleges, and they’re all bending and saying, ‘Sir, thank you very much.’”
There are troubling signs of media self-censorship. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, which is seeking the Trump administration’s approval for a merger with Skydance Media, recently established additional oversight over “60 Minutes” programming. This move triggered the resignation of the program’s longtime executive producer, Bill Owens, who cited a loss of journalistic independence.
And crucially, Republican lawmakers have abdicated their role as checks on executive power. As Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, put it, “We are all afraid. It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”
Image
Credit...Ash Adams for The New York TimesAmericans are living under a new regime. The question now is whether we will allow it to take root.
So far, American society’s response to this authoritarian offensive has been underwhelming — alarmingly so. Civic leaders confront a difficult collective action problem. A vast majority of American politicians, chief executives, law partners, newspaper editors and university presidents prefer to live in a democracy and want to end this abuse. But as individuals confronting government threats, they have incentives to appease, rather than oppose, the Trump administration.
Civil society leaders seek to protect their organizations from government attacks: Chief executives need to protect shareholders and future business opportunities, media owners must avoid costly defamation suits and adverse regulatory rulings, and university presidents seek to avoid devastating funding cuts. For any individual leader, then, the price of defiance can often appear unbearably steep. Although they acknowledge that everyone would be better off if someone took the lead and defied Mr. Trump, few are willing to pay the price themselves. This logic has led some of America’s most influential figures, including politicians, billionaires, chief executives and university presidents, to stay on the sidelines, hoping that someone else steps forward.
Strategies of self-preservation have led too many civil society leaders to retreat into silence or acquiesce to authoritarian bullying. Small acts of acquiescence, framed as necessary defensive measures, feel like the only reasonable course. But this is the fatal logic of appeasement: the belief that quietly yielding in small, seemingly temporary ways will mitigate long-term harm.
It usually doesn’t. And acts of individual self-preservation have serious collective costs. For one, acquiescence will probably embolden the administration, encouraging it to intensify and broaden its attacks. Autocrats rarely entrench themselves in power through force alone; they are enabled by the accommodation and inaction of those who might have resisted. Appeasement, as Churchill warned, is like feeding a crocodile and hoping to be the last one eaten.
Individual acquiescence also weakens America’s overall democratic defenses. Although the retreat of a single donor or law firm may not matter that much, collective retreat could leave opponents of the Trump administration without adequate funding or legal protection. The cumulative effect on public opinion of every newspaper story not published, every speech or sermon not delivered and every news conference not held can be substantial. When the opposition plays dead, the government usually wins.
The acquiescence of our most prominent civic leaders sends a profoundly demoralizing message to society. It tells Americans that democracy is not worth defending — or that resistance is futile. If America’s most privileged individuals and organizations are unwilling or unable to defend democracy, what are ordinary citizens supposed to do?
The costs of opposition are surmountable. And importantly, the descent into authoritarianism is reversible. Pro-democracy forces have successfully resisted or reversed backsliding in recent years in Brazil, Poland, Slovakia, South Korea and elsewhere.
America’s courts remain independent and will almost certainly block some of the administration’s most abusive measures. But judges — themselves targets of violent threats, government harassment and even arrest — cannot save democracy on their own. Broader societal opposition is essential.
American civil society has the financial and organizational muscle to resist Mr. Trump’s authoritarian offensive. It has several hundred billionaires; dozens of law firms that earn at least a billion dollars a year; more than 1,700 private universities and colleges; a vast infrastructure of churches, labor unions, private foundations and nonprofit organizations; and a well-organized and well-financed opposition party.
But civil society must act collectively. Chief executives, law firms, universities, media outlets and Democratic politicians, as well as more traditional Republicans, have a common interest in preserving our constitutional democracy. When organizations work together and commit to a collective defense of democratic principles, they share the costs of defiance. The government cannot attack everyone all at once. When the costs of defiance are shared, they become easier for individuals to bear.
So far, the most energetic opposition has come not from civic leaders but from everyday citizens, showing up at congressional town hall meetings or participating in Hands Off rallies across the country.America’s slide into authoritarianism is reversible. But no one has ever defeated autocracy from the sidelines.
So far, American society’s response to this authoritarian offensive has been underwhelming — alarmingly so. Civic leaders confront a difficult collective action problem. A vast majority of American politicians, chief executives, law partners, newspaper editors and university presidents prefer to live in a democracy and want to end this abuse. But as individuals confronting government threats, they have incentives to appease, rather than oppose, the Trump administration.
Civil society leaders seek to protect their organizations from government attacks: Chief executives need to protect shareholders and future business opportunities, media owners must avoid costly defamation suits and adverse regulatory rulings, and university presidents seek to avoid devastating funding cuts. For any individual leader, then, the price of defiance can often appear unbearably steep. Although they acknowledge that everyone would be better off if someone took the lead and defied Mr. Trump, few are willing to pay the price themselves. This logic has led some of America’s most influential figures, including politicians, billionaires, chief executives and university presidents, to stay on the sidelines, hoping that someone else steps forward.
Strategies of self-preservation have led too many civil society leaders to retreat into silence or acquiesce to authoritarian bullying. Small acts of acquiescence, framed as necessary defensive measures, feel like the only reasonable course. But this is the fatal logic of appeasement: the belief that quietly yielding in small, seemingly temporary ways will mitigate long-term harm.
It usually doesn’t. And acts of individual self-preservation have serious collective costs. For one, acquiescence will probably embolden the administration, encouraging it to intensify and broaden its attacks. Autocrats rarely entrench themselves in power through force alone; they are enabled by the accommodation and inaction of those who might have resisted. Appeasement, as Churchill warned, is like feeding a crocodile and hoping to be the last one eaten.
Individual acquiescence also weakens America’s overall democratic defenses. Although the retreat of a single donor or law firm may not matter that much, collective retreat could leave opponents of the Trump administration without adequate funding or legal protection. The cumulative effect on public opinion of every newspaper story not published, every speech or sermon not delivered and every news conference not held can be substantial. When the opposition plays dead, the government usually wins.
The acquiescence of our most prominent civic leaders sends a profoundly demoralizing message to society. It tells Americans that democracy is not worth defending — or that resistance is futile. If America’s most privileged individuals and organizations are unwilling or unable to defend democracy, what are ordinary citizens supposed to do?
The costs of opposition are surmountable. And importantly, the descent into authoritarianism is reversible. Pro-democracy forces have successfully resisted or reversed backsliding in recent years in Brazil, Poland, Slovakia, South Korea and elsewhere.
America’s courts remain independent and will almost certainly block some of the administration’s most abusive measures. But judges — themselves targets of violent threats, government harassment and even arrest — cannot save democracy on their own. Broader societal opposition is essential.
American civil society has the financial and organizational muscle to resist Mr. Trump’s authoritarian offensive. It has several hundred billionaires; dozens of law firms that earn at least a billion dollars a year; more than 1,700 private universities and colleges; a vast infrastructure of churches, labor unions, private foundations and nonprofit organizations; and a well-organized and well-financed opposition party.
But civil society must act collectively. Chief executives, law firms, universities, media outlets and Democratic politicians, as well as more traditional Republicans, have a common interest in preserving our constitutional democracy. When organizations work together and commit to a collective defense of democratic principles, they share the costs of defiance. The government cannot attack everyone all at once. When the costs of defiance are shared, they become easier for individuals to bear.
So far, the most energetic opposition has come not from civic leaders but from everyday citizens, showing up at congressional town hall meetings or participating in Hands Off rallies across the country.America’s slide into authoritarianism is reversible. But no one has ever defeated autocracy from the sidelines.
May 8, 2025
Trump Proposes a100 percent tariff on movies made outside America.
Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times
By German Lopez
Hollywood recently got the Trump tariff treatment. On Sunday, the president announced a 100 percent tariff on movies made outside America. Filmmakers said the move would hurt U.S. filmmaking. Shares for Netflix and other entertainment companies fell. The next day, the White House said no tariff would take effect.
We’ve seen this before for other sectors of the economy. But why would President Trump think Hollywood could benefit from more protectionism? Today’s newsletter looks at the headwinds the industry faces.
Hollywood’s problems
When Trump talks tariffs, he typically speaks about manufacturing. He invokes American industries that have fallen from grace — steel, coal, cars — and the physical goods that they once made for the world. He complains that the United States imports more goods than it exports, leading to a trade deficit.
On set in Montana. Janie Osborne for The New York Times
Hollywood doesn’t fit that description. It remains the world’s dominant moviemaking industry. American film exports are three times as high as imports, according to the Motion Picture Association. Movies are also a service; the product is entertainment, not a physical good. And unlike with goods, the United States has a nearly $300 billion trade surplus with services.
Still, Hollywood has problems. For one, fewer movies are made in Los Angeles nowadays. Filming has moved to other states and, increasingly, overseas. Other countries offer cheaper labor and tax credits for filmmakers. This has erased jobs once held by Americans. “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” Trump posted online.
Tariffs, however, are a messy solution to Hollywood’s problems.
A levy on a Chinese-made phone is simply applied to the value of that product. But what would a tariff on movies look like? Would it apply to the production costs? Box office earnings? Would it depend on how much of a movie is filmed and edited abroad? What about movies — think of “James Bond” or “Harry Potter” — that require overseas filming? Would the toll apply to TV shows? Filmmakers say that a 100 percent tariff will force them to halt production altogether.
Tariffs could also backfire. Other countries could put their own levies on U.S. movies. That could hurt global ticket sales. Most studio revenue is now international, Axios noted.
The industry says it prefers a carrot instead of a stick: America could lure back moviemakers with its own tax credits. This is the approach that California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, backed on Monday when he called on Trump to support a $7.5 billion federal tax break for films made in America.
But that would cost money at a time when Congress is already struggling to find ways to pay for tax cuts the president wants. So Trump once again invoked tariffs as his favored fix.
When Trump talks tariffs, he typically speaks about manufacturing. He invokes American industries that have fallen from grace — steel, coal, cars — and the physical goods that they once made for the world. He complains that the United States imports more goods than it exports, leading to a trade deficit.
On set in Montana. Janie Osborne for The New York Times
Hollywood doesn’t fit that description. It remains the world’s dominant moviemaking industry. American film exports are three times as high as imports, according to the Motion Picture Association. Movies are also a service; the product is entertainment, not a physical good. And unlike with goods, the United States has a nearly $300 billion trade surplus with services.
Still, Hollywood has problems. For one, fewer movies are made in Los Angeles nowadays. Filming has moved to other states and, increasingly, overseas. Other countries offer cheaper labor and tax credits for filmmakers. This has erased jobs once held by Americans. “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” Trump posted online.
Tariffs, however, are a messy solution to Hollywood’s problems.
A levy on a Chinese-made phone is simply applied to the value of that product. But what would a tariff on movies look like? Would it apply to the production costs? Box office earnings? Would it depend on how much of a movie is filmed and edited abroad? What about movies — think of “James Bond” or “Harry Potter” — that require overseas filming? Would the toll apply to TV shows? Filmmakers say that a 100 percent tariff will force them to halt production altogether.
Tariffs could also backfire. Other countries could put their own levies on U.S. movies. That could hurt global ticket sales. Most studio revenue is now international, Axios noted.
The industry says it prefers a carrot instead of a stick: America could lure back moviemakers with its own tax credits. This is the approach that California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, backed on Monday when he called on Trump to support a $7.5 billion federal tax break for films made in America.
But that would cost money at a time when Congress is already struggling to find ways to pay for tax cuts the president wants. So Trump once again invoked tariffs as his favored fix.
A Book Points to Biden’s Decline and Democrats’ Cowardice: Takeaways
The book, “Original Sin,” describes how Mr. Biden’s aides quashed concerns about his age. But the anonymous accounts show that many Democrats are still afraid to discuss the issue publicly.The book’s reliance on anonymous sourcing reveals the enduring chill that President Biden’s loyalists have cast over a Democratic Party still afraid to grapple publicly with what many say privately was his waning ability to campaign and serve in office.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
By Reid J. Epstein
Reid J. Epstein covered the Biden campaign for The New York Times.
May 13, 2025
A forthcoming book that promises explosive new details on former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s mental and physical decline while in the White House has revived the subject of how his aides and top Democrats handled his decision to run for re-election.
The book, “Original Sin,” by Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, chronicles how Mr. Biden’s advisers stomped out discussion of his age-related limitations, including internal concerns of aides, external worries of Democratic allies and scrutiny by journalists. Mr. Biden had long been gaffe-prone, but as he forgot familiar names and faces and showed his physical frailty, the authors write, aides wrapped him in a protective political cocoon.
At the same time, the book is so reliant on anonymous sourcing — very few aides or elected officials are quoted by name — that it reveals the enduring chill that Mr. Biden’s loyalists have cast over a Democratic Party still afraid to grapple publicly with what many say privately was his waning ability to campaign and serve in office. Already, Mr. Biden has begun pushing back against reporting on the end of his presidency, re-emerging for interviews to try to shape his legacy.
The book does not contain any astonishing revelation that changes the broad perception of whether Mr. Biden, now 82, was fit to serve as president. Instead, it is a collection of smaller occurrences and observations reflecting his decline. The authors write about a “cover-up,” though their book shows a Biden inner circle that spends more time sticking its collective head in the sand about the president’s diminishing abilities than it does scheming to hide evidence of his shortcomings.
The New York Times obtained a copy of the book, which is set for release next Tuesday. Here are the major takeaways.
Biden forgot names, even of people he had known for years.
During his 2020 campaign and throughout his presidency, Mr. Biden forgot the names of longtime aides and allies, according to the book.
It describes him forgetting the name of Mike Donilon, a loyal aide who had worked for him since the early 1980s, and failing to recognize the actor George Clooney. He also forgot the names of Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser, and Kate Bedingfield, the White House communications director, according to the book, along with Jaime Harrison, whom Mr. Biden had picked to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Read the New York Times review of the book:
The result is a damning, step-by-step account of how the people closest to a stubborn, aging president enabled his quixotic resolve to run for a second term. The authors trace the deluge of trouble that flowed from Biden’s original sin: the sidelining of Vice President Kamala Harris; the attacks on journalists (like Thompson) who deigned to report on worries about Biden’s apparent fatigue and mental state; an American public lacking clear communication from the president and left to twist in the wind. “It was an abomination,” one source told the authors. “He stole an election from the Democratic Party; he stole it from the American people.”
In another instance, Mr. Biden confused his health secretary, Xavier Becerra, with his homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, the authors write. During a meeting about abortion rights, Mr. Biden confused Alabama with Texas, according to the book.
People described as aides and allies told the authors that Mr. Biden appeared frail in meetings and that they had worried he might need a wheelchair in his second term. Cabinet gatherings were largely scripted for him even when journalists were not present, according to the book. In a rare on-the-record account, Representative Mike Quigley, a Democrat from Illinois, described Mr. Biden’s physical abilities during a trip to Ireland as similar to what he saw when his own father was dying of Parkinson’s disease.
People who didn’t see Biden on a daily basis were increasingly taken aback when they finally laid eyes on him. They would remark on how his once booming voice had become a whisper, how his confident stride had become a shuffle.
Mr. Biden’s response to the accounts is not included in the book, nor are on-the-record responses from many of the aides, Democrats and other figures it names. (Indeed, the extensive use of anonymous sources makes it difficult to confirm the accuracy of many of the claims.) Mr. Biden’s spokesman, Chris Meagher, said the former president’s team had not yet seen a copy of the book and had not been consulted in its fact-checking.
“We are not going to respond to every bit of this book,” Mr. Meagher said. “We continue to await anything that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or where national security was threatened or where he was unable to do his job. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite — he was a very effective president.”
Few Biden allies, even now, would speak openly about his decline.
Nearly a year after pressure from Democrats forced Mr. Biden to drop out of the presidential race, the book shows that the party remains unwilling to reckon publicly with its choice to back Mr. Biden as its nominee for as long as it did.
The reluctance of many Democratic leaders and insiders to voice criticism without the cloak of anonymity, even after their devastating defeat, suggests a lasting fear of speaking out. It also points to an awareness that saying now that Mr. Biden should not have run in 2024 could prompt questions about why they said nothing when it mattered.
Some Democrats, especially those who didn’t see the president that often, relied on his surrogates for reassurance about his condition (“He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine”); others were wary of giving ammunition to the Trump campaign, warning that he was an existential threat to the country. Tapper and Thompson are scornful of such rationales: “For those who tried to justify the behavior described here because of the threat of a second Trump term, those fears should have shocked them into reality, not away from it.”
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The people closest to Biden landed on some techniques to handle (or disguise) what was happening: restricting urgent business to the hours between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.; instructing his writers to keep his speeches brief so that he didn’t have to spend too much time on his feet; having him use the short stairs to Air Force One. When making videos, his aides sometimes filmed “in slow motion to blur the reality of how slowly he actually walked.” By late 2023, his staff was pushing as much of his schedule as they could to midday.
Ultimately, the most powerful people in the party either made a colossal misjudgment of the situation or recognized the problem yet declined to press Mr. Biden or the White House about it.“No Democrats in the White House or leaders on Capitol Hill raised any doubts, either privately with the president or publicly, about Biden’s second run,” the book reports.
The authors write that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken did gently ask Mr. Biden if he was ready to take on a re-election bid, but that the president reassured him he would be fine. Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s first chief of staff, also broached the subject of whether the president should run again in conversations with other staff members, according to the book, but it never went anywhere.
Democratic aides are seeking to shift the blame.
It is a long tradition for Washington bigwigs to use books to place the blame squarely on someone else. What’s unusual about this book is that just about all players who agreed to be interviewed — 200, the authors wrote — pointed the finger at Mr. Biden and his small circle of senior aides.
Just how much of this rigmarole was desperate rationalization versus deliberate scheming is never entirely clear. Tapper and Thompson identify two main groups that closed ranks around Biden: his family and a group of close aides known internally as “the Politburo” that included his longtime strategist Mike Donilon and his counselor Steve Ricchetti. The family encouraged Biden’s view of himself as a historic figure. The Politburo was too politically hard-nosed for that. Instead, its members pointed to Biden’s record in office and the competent people around him. The napping, the whispering, the shuffling — all that stuff had merely to do with the “performative” parts of the job.
Tapper and Thompson vehemently disagree. They offer a gracious portrait of Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified materials and in his February 2024 report famously described the president as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden and his team were incensed and tried “to slime Hur as an unprofessional right-wing hack,” but the authors defend his notorious line. They emphasize that it is incumbent upon a special counsel to spell out how the subject of an investigation would probably appear to a jury — and that what Hur wrote about Biden was true.
One of the few people quoted on the record is David Plouffe, the former campaign manager for Barack Obama. The book describes him as coming out of retirement to try to elect Vice President Kamala Harris after Mr. Biden dropped out. “We got so screwed by Biden,” the book quotes Mr. Plouffe as saying, adding a more vulgar choice of words to describe what the president did to the Harris campaign.
But Mr. Plouffe’s assertions absolve him and other prominent Democrats of their responsibility for her defeat.
Outsiders were shocked by Biden’s abilities.
A theme throughout the book is that people who had not seen Mr. Biden in person for a long time were shocked by his appearance when they did.
Former Representative Brian Higgins, a Democrat from New York, is quoted in the book as saying that Mr. Biden’s possible cognitive decline “was evident to most people that watched him.” David Morehouse, a former Democratic campaign aide turned hockey executive, said Mr. Biden “was nothing but bones” after seeing him in a photo line in Philadelphia.
And Mr. Clooney, a prominent Democratic donor, was so upset about his interaction with the president that he wrote a New York Times opinion essay calling on him to drop out.
Other outsiders raised alarms that went unheeded by Mr. Biden’s inner circle. Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood agent whose brother Rahm was Mr. Biden’s ambassador to Japan, wound up in a shouting match in 2023 with Mr. Klain over whether the president’s campaign should continue.
One Democrat quietly pushed for a Biden primary challenge.
One of Democrats’ biggest regrets about last year is their failure to hold a competitive primary contest. But at least one Democrat worked behind the scenes to try to make it happen, according to the book.
In 2023, Bill Daley, who served as White House chief of staff to Mr. Obama, sought to persuade Democratic governors including JB Pritzker of Illinois, Gavin Newsom of California and Andy Beshear of Kentucky to challenge Mr. Biden in the Democratic primary race, the book reports.
He found no takers.
Now, of course, Democrats expect their 2028 nominating contest to be crowded and highly competitive. And with many in the party calling for generational change, some 2028 hopefuls who were stalwart allies of Mr. Biden in 2024 may face new pressure to finally address whether they were wrong about his capacity to be president.
Jill Biden’s protectiveness of her husband grew as he aged.
After Mr. Biden, the book is harshest on his family’s closest aides. Anthony Bernal, the consigliere to Jill Biden, the first lady, draws some of the book’s toughest scrutiny.
The authors write that Mr. Bernal could shut down any conversation about the president’s age and mental acuity by telling fellow White House aides, “Jill isn’t going to like this.”
Dr. Biden is described as a fierce advocate for her husband who did not care to hear any criticism of his abilities or political judgment and grew more involved in his decision-making as he grew older.
When a donor suggested in 2022 that Mr. Biden should not seek re-election, Dr. Biden remained silent — a reaction she regretted and vowed not to repeat, the authors write.
“I can’t believe I didn’t defend Joe,” she is quoted telling aides afterward.
In “Original Sin,” Tapper and Thompson describe him waking up the morning after the 2024 election thinking that if only he had stayed in the race, he would have won. “That’s what the polls suggested, he would say again and again,” the authors write. There was just one problem with his reasoning: “His pollsters told us that no such polls existed.”
May 7, 2025
Alarm rising about DOGE consolidating data about Americans.
Alarm appears to be rising about how the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) is consolidating data about Americans.Hannah Natanson, Joseph Menn, Lisa Rein, and Rachel Siegel wrote in the Washington Post today that DOGE is “racing to build a single centralized database with vast troves of personal information about millions of U.S. citizens and residents.” In the past, that information has been carefully siloed, and there are strict laws about accessing it. But under bilAlarm appears to be rising about how the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) is consolidating data about Americans.lionaire Elon Musk, who appears to direct DOGE although the White House has said he does not, operatives who may not have appropriate security clearances are removing protections and linking data.
There are currently at least eleven lawsuits underway claiming that DOGE has violated the 1974 Privacy Act regulating who can access information about American citizens stored by the federal government.
Musk and President Donald Trump, as well as other administration officials, claim that such consolidation of data is important to combat “waste, fraud, and abuse,” although so far they have not been able to confirm any such savings and their cuts are stripping ordinary Americans of programs they depend on. White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told the Washington Post reporters that DOGE’s processes are protected by “some of the brightest cybersecurity minds in the nation” and that “every action taken is fully compliant with the law.”
Cybersecurity experts outside the administration disagree that a master database is secure or safe, as DOGE is bypassing normal safeguards, including neglecting to record who has accessed or changed database information. The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School explains that data can be altered or manipulated to redirect funds, for example, and that there is substantial risk that data can be hacked or leaked. It can be used to commit fraud or retaliate against individuals.
The Ash Center also explains that U.S. government data is an extraordinarily valuable treasure trove for anyone trying to train artificial intelligence systems. Most of the data currently available is from the internet and is thus messy and unreliable. Government databases are “comprehensive, verified records about the most critical areas of Americans’ lives.” Access to that data gives a company “significant advantages” in training systems and setting business strategies. Americans have not given consent for their data to be used in this way, and it leaves them open to “loss of services, harassment, discrimination, or manipulation by the government, private entities, or foreign powers.”
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggests Musk’s faith in his AI company is at least part of what’s behind the administration’s devastating cuts to biomedical research. Those who believe in a future centered around AI believe that it will be far more effective than human research scientists, so cutting actual research is efficient. At the same time, Marshall suggests, tech oligarchs find the years-long timelines of actual research and the demands of scientists on peer reviews and careful study frustrating, as they want to put their ideas into practice quickly.
There are currently at least eleven lawsuits underway claiming that DOGE has violated the 1974 Privacy Act regulating who can access information about American citizens stored by the federal government.
Musk and President Donald Trump, as well as other administration officials, claim that such consolidation of data is important to combat “waste, fraud, and abuse,” although so far they have not been able to confirm any such savings and their cuts are stripping ordinary Americans of programs they depend on. White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told the Washington Post reporters that DOGE’s processes are protected by “some of the brightest cybersecurity minds in the nation” and that “every action taken is fully compliant with the law.”
Cybersecurity experts outside the administration disagree that a master database is secure or safe, as DOGE is bypassing normal safeguards, including neglecting to record who has accessed or changed database information. The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School explains that data can be altered or manipulated to redirect funds, for example, and that there is substantial risk that data can be hacked or leaked. It can be used to commit fraud or retaliate against individuals.
The Ash Center also explains that U.S. government data is an extraordinarily valuable treasure trove for anyone trying to train artificial intelligence systems. Most of the data currently available is from the internet and is thus messy and unreliable. Government databases are “comprehensive, verified records about the most critical areas of Americans’ lives.” Access to that data gives a company “significant advantages” in training systems and setting business strategies. Americans have not given consent for their data to be used in this way, and it leaves them open to “loss of services, harassment, discrimination, or manipulation by the government, private entities, or foreign powers.”
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggests Musk’s faith in his AI company is at least part of what’s behind the administration’s devastating cuts to biomedical research. Those who believe in a future centered around AI believe that it will be far more effective than human research scientists, so cutting actual research is efficient. At the same time, Marshall suggests, tech oligarchs find the years-long timelines of actual research and the demands of scientists on peer reviews and careful study frustrating, as they want to put their ideas into practice quickly.
May 5, 2025
Biden Aides Decided Against a Cognitive Test in Early 2024, Book Says
His White House advisers considered giving him such a test to prove his fitness for a second term, but they worried it would draw new attention to his age, according to a forthcoming book.
Listen to this article · 4:19 min Learn more
A few weeks before former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s final White House physical exam in early 2024, his aides decided against having him undergo a cognitive test.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times
By Reid J. Epstein
Reporting from Washington
May 4, 2025
Months before President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was forced to abandon his re-election campaign, his top White House aides debated having him undergo a cognitive test to prove his fitness for a second term but ultimately decided against the move, according to a forthcoming book.
The account illustrates the degree to which Mr. Biden’s top aides harbored deep fears about how voters viewed his age and mental acuity. The book, “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” by Tyler Pager of The New York Times, Josh Dawsey of The Wall Street Journal and Isaac Arnsdorf of The Washington Post, is set to be released in July.
Mr. Biden’s aides were confident that he would pass a cognitive test, according to the book, but they worried that the mere fact of his taking one would raise new questions about his mental abilities. At the same time, Mr. Biden’s longtime doctor, Kevin O’Connor, had told aides he would not take the 81-year-old president’s political standing into consideration when treating him.
The discussion took place in February 2024, a few weeks before Mr. Biden’s final White House physical exam and a period preceding some of his most damaging public episodes.
A representative for Mr. Biden declined to comment.
The same month that Biden aides considered the cognitive test, Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents, released a report concluding that the president was “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Mr. Biden held a late-night news conference to deliver an angry response in which he referred to the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico and declared, “My memory is fine.”
By then it was becoming obvious that former President Donald J. Trump would be the Republican nominee. Mr. Trump, three years younger than Mr. Biden, had bragged during his first term about having passed a cognitive test, though details were sketchy. His repetition of a five-word sequence he had been asked to memorize — “person, woman, man, camera, TV” — became a running joke in Washington political circles in 2020.
Throughout Mr. Biden’s presidency and especially during his re-election bid, his aides and advisers often argued that the news media was unfair in how it covered his age, fueling voters’ negative perception of his vigor. Few influential figures in the White House or on his campaign would entertain the idea that he was struggling to perform his presidential duties.
“On the topic of his age, I thought the best answer was going to be performance,” Mike Donilon, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden who had worked for him since the 1980s, told The Harvard Political Review in March. “Every day, I kept seeing him do the job. I still think he’s the best person to be president today.”
But outside Mr. Biden’s tight inner circle, many Democratic politicians and strategists began to worry quietly as his re-election bid took shape. By June 2022, Democrats were talking among themselves about his potential to drag down the 2024 ticket, with many suggesting he should not run again.
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A New York Times article that month included an interview with David Axelrod, the former adviser to President Barack Obama who has become one of the party’s elder statesmen.
Mr. Axelrod said that Mr. Biden “looks his age” — then 79 — and that he was feeding a narrative that he was no longer up to the job of being president.
“The stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue,” Mr. Axelrod said.
That comment prompted an angry call to Mr. Axelrod from Ron Klain, then Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, according to the book. Mr. Klain wanted to know why Mr. Axelrod was fueling doubts about a Democratic president who was on track to begin a re-election campaign.
“There’s no Obama out there, Axe,” Mr. Klain told him, the book recounts. “Who’s going to do it if he doesn’t do it?”
Listen to this article · 4:19 min Learn more
A few weeks before former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s final White House physical exam in early 2024, his aides decided against having him undergo a cognitive test.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York TimesBy Reid J. Epstein
Reporting from Washington
May 4, 2025
Months before President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was forced to abandon his re-election campaign, his top White House aides debated having him undergo a cognitive test to prove his fitness for a second term but ultimately decided against the move, according to a forthcoming book.
The account illustrates the degree to which Mr. Biden’s top aides harbored deep fears about how voters viewed his age and mental acuity. The book, “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” by Tyler Pager of The New York Times, Josh Dawsey of The Wall Street Journal and Isaac Arnsdorf of The Washington Post, is set to be released in July.
Mr. Biden’s aides were confident that he would pass a cognitive test, according to the book, but they worried that the mere fact of his taking one would raise new questions about his mental abilities. At the same time, Mr. Biden’s longtime doctor, Kevin O’Connor, had told aides he would not take the 81-year-old president’s political standing into consideration when treating him.
The discussion took place in February 2024, a few weeks before Mr. Biden’s final White House physical exam and a period preceding some of his most damaging public episodes.
A representative for Mr. Biden declined to comment.
The same month that Biden aides considered the cognitive test, Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents, released a report concluding that the president was “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Mr. Biden held a late-night news conference to deliver an angry response in which he referred to the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico and declared, “My memory is fine.”
By then it was becoming obvious that former President Donald J. Trump would be the Republican nominee. Mr. Trump, three years younger than Mr. Biden, had bragged during his first term about having passed a cognitive test, though details were sketchy. His repetition of a five-word sequence he had been asked to memorize — “person, woman, man, camera, TV” — became a running joke in Washington political circles in 2020.
Throughout Mr. Biden’s presidency and especially during his re-election bid, his aides and advisers often argued that the news media was unfair in how it covered his age, fueling voters’ negative perception of his vigor. Few influential figures in the White House or on his campaign would entertain the idea that he was struggling to perform his presidential duties.
“On the topic of his age, I thought the best answer was going to be performance,” Mike Donilon, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden who had worked for him since the 1980s, told The Harvard Political Review in March. “Every day, I kept seeing him do the job. I still think he’s the best person to be president today.”
But outside Mr. Biden’s tight inner circle, many Democratic politicians and strategists began to worry quietly as his re-election bid took shape. By June 2022, Democrats were talking among themselves about his potential to drag down the 2024 ticket, with many suggesting he should not run again.
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A New York Times article that month included an interview with David Axelrod, the former adviser to President Barack Obama who has become one of the party’s elder statesmen.
Mr. Axelrod said that Mr. Biden “looks his age” — then 79 — and that he was feeding a narrative that he was no longer up to the job of being president.
“The stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue,” Mr. Axelrod said.
That comment prompted an angry call to Mr. Axelrod from Ron Klain, then Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, according to the book. Mr. Klain wanted to know why Mr. Axelrod was fueling doubts about a Democratic president who was on track to begin a re-election campaign.
“There’s no Obama out there, Axe,” Mr. Klain told him, the book recounts. “Who’s going to do it if he doesn’t do it?”
Robert Kennedy Continues to Question the Germ Theory of Disease
Authoritarian governments are based on the idea that some people are better than others. This translates into the idea that some people have special insight based only upon their superiority. They don’t have to listen to experts, who just muddle the clear picture the leader can see. When reality intrudes on that vision, the problem is not the ideology of the leader, it is obstruction by political opponents.
The results of this disdain for expertise shows these days most immediately in the policies of Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. As measles continues to spread across the U.S., a spokesperson for Health and Human Services said Friday that Kennedy will turn the country’s health agencies away from promoting vaccination, which is 97% effective in preventing the disease, and toward exploring new treatments for it, including vitamins.
“It’s not that there’s been a lack of studies,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, told Teddy Rosenbluth of the New York Times. Decades of research have not discovered dramatic treatments, while vaccinations have proven safe and effective at preventing the life-threatening disease.
Rosenbluth noted that “[p]ublic health experts are baffled by Mr. Kennedy’s decision to hunt for new treatments, rather than endorse shots that have decades of safety and efficacy data.” This stance seems to contradict Kennedy’s longstanding focus on preventing disease.
Kennedy has also falsely claimed that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR) contains “aborted fetus debris,” that parents should “do their own research,” and that he will institute testing for new vaccines with placebo-controlled trials, a practice medical experts warn could be unethical as subjects believe they are protected from disease when they are not.
Infectious disease expert Paul Offit told Jessica Glenza of The Guardian: “It’s his goal to even further lessen trust in vaccines and make it onerous enough for manufacturers that they will abandon it.”
At the end of March, Kennedy also vowed to study possible links between vaccines and autism, although repeated scholarly studies have shown no link. Kennedy has tapped David Geier, who does not have a medical degree and was disciplined in Maryland for practicing medicine without a license, to perform the study.
On Thursday, former New York Times global health reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. noted that both Geier and Kennedy have made significant money thanks to their anti-vax stands as they monetize alleged treatments and sue pharmaceutical companies.
In Ars Technica on April 30, microbiologist and senior health reporter Beth Mole explored another angle to understand Kennedy’s policies. She noted that Kennedy, who is neither a doctor nor a public health expert, does not believe in the foundational principle of modern medicine: germ theory.
In a 2021 book, Kennedy argued the idea that microscopic viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi cause disease serves the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare industry that grew around it by “emphasiz[ing] targeting particular germs with specific drugs rather than fortifying the immune system through healthy living, clean water, and good nutrition.” He accused those supporting this system, including Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who was a proponent of the Covid vaccine, of misleading the American public.
While Kennedy appears to believe germs exist, he also claims to believe in the older theory of disease called “miasma theory,” although as Mole points out, he misunderstands that theory—the idea that diseases are caused by poisonous vapors—and really appears to believe in another old idea: “terrain theory.” Terrain theory maintains that diseases are signs that the internal “terrain” of the body is out of whack.
This would explain Kennedy’s assertion—refuted by doctors—that the children who died of measles were malnourished. As medical blogger Kristen Panthagani, MD/PhD, explains: Kennedy’s way of thinking is “the belief that infections don't pose a risk to healthy people who have optimized their immune system.”
While underlying medical conditions certainly affect people’s health, Mole notes that “the evidence against terrain theory is obvious and all around us.” But if you think germs are less important than overall health, things like the pasteurization of milk to kill E. coli, salmonella, and Listeria bacteria—which Kennedy opposes—are unnecessary.
In 1876, German microbiologist Robert Koch discovered that the cause of anthrax was a bacterium. Germ theory challenged established practices In the U.S., where doctors in the 1860s during the Civil War believed the best demonstration of their skill was their bloody aprons and instruments, instruments they kept in a velvet-lined case.
In 1881 the doctor overseeing President James Garfield’s recovery from a gunshot wound repeatedly probed the president’s wound with dirty instruments and his fingers, prompting assassin Charles Guiteau to plead not guilty of the murder by claiming, “The doctors killed Garfield, I just shot him.”
But just four years later, germ theory was so widely accepted that the U.S. Army required medical officers to inspect their posts every month and report the results to the administration, and by 1886, disease rates were dropping. By 1889, the U.S. Army had written manuals for sanitary field hospitals, and the need to combat germs was so commonplace medical officers rarely mentioned it.
And now, in 2025, the top health official in the United States, a man without degrees in either medicine or public health, appears to be rejecting germ theory and reshaping the nation’s medical system around his own dedication to a theory that was outdated well over a century ago.
The results of this disdain for expertise shows these days most immediately in the policies of Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. As measles continues to spread across the U.S., a spokesperson for Health and Human Services said Friday that Kennedy will turn the country’s health agencies away from promoting vaccination, which is 97% effective in preventing the disease, and toward exploring new treatments for it, including vitamins.
“It’s not that there’s been a lack of studies,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, told Teddy Rosenbluth of the New York Times. Decades of research have not discovered dramatic treatments, while vaccinations have proven safe and effective at preventing the life-threatening disease.
Rosenbluth noted that “[p]ublic health experts are baffled by Mr. Kennedy’s decision to hunt for new treatments, rather than endorse shots that have decades of safety and efficacy data.” This stance seems to contradict Kennedy’s longstanding focus on preventing disease.
Kennedy has also falsely claimed that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR) contains “aborted fetus debris,” that parents should “do their own research,” and that he will institute testing for new vaccines with placebo-controlled trials, a practice medical experts warn could be unethical as subjects believe they are protected from disease when they are not.
Infectious disease expert Paul Offit told Jessica Glenza of The Guardian: “It’s his goal to even further lessen trust in vaccines and make it onerous enough for manufacturers that they will abandon it.”
At the end of March, Kennedy also vowed to study possible links between vaccines and autism, although repeated scholarly studies have shown no link. Kennedy has tapped David Geier, who does not have a medical degree and was disciplined in Maryland for practicing medicine without a license, to perform the study.
On Thursday, former New York Times global health reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. noted that both Geier and Kennedy have made significant money thanks to their anti-vax stands as they monetize alleged treatments and sue pharmaceutical companies.
In Ars Technica on April 30, microbiologist and senior health reporter Beth Mole explored another angle to understand Kennedy’s policies. She noted that Kennedy, who is neither a doctor nor a public health expert, does not believe in the foundational principle of modern medicine: germ theory.
In a 2021 book, Kennedy argued the idea that microscopic viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi cause disease serves the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare industry that grew around it by “emphasiz[ing] targeting particular germs with specific drugs rather than fortifying the immune system through healthy living, clean water, and good nutrition.” He accused those supporting this system, including Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who was a proponent of the Covid vaccine, of misleading the American public.
While Kennedy appears to believe germs exist, he also claims to believe in the older theory of disease called “miasma theory,” although as Mole points out, he misunderstands that theory—the idea that diseases are caused by poisonous vapors—and really appears to believe in another old idea: “terrain theory.” Terrain theory maintains that diseases are signs that the internal “terrain” of the body is out of whack.
This would explain Kennedy’s assertion—refuted by doctors—that the children who died of measles were malnourished. As medical blogger Kristen Panthagani, MD/PhD, explains: Kennedy’s way of thinking is “the belief that infections don't pose a risk to healthy people who have optimized their immune system.”
While underlying medical conditions certainly affect people’s health, Mole notes that “the evidence against terrain theory is obvious and all around us.” But if you think germs are less important than overall health, things like the pasteurization of milk to kill E. coli, salmonella, and Listeria bacteria—which Kennedy opposes—are unnecessary.
In 1876, German microbiologist Robert Koch discovered that the cause of anthrax was a bacterium. Germ theory challenged established practices In the U.S., where doctors in the 1860s during the Civil War believed the best demonstration of their skill was their bloody aprons and instruments, instruments they kept in a velvet-lined case.
In 1881 the doctor overseeing President James Garfield’s recovery from a gunshot wound repeatedly probed the president’s wound with dirty instruments and his fingers, prompting assassin Charles Guiteau to plead not guilty of the murder by claiming, “The doctors killed Garfield, I just shot him.”
But just four years later, germ theory was so widely accepted that the U.S. Army required medical officers to inspect their posts every month and report the results to the administration, and by 1886, disease rates were dropping. By 1889, the U.S. Army had written manuals for sanitary field hospitals, and the need to combat germs was so commonplace medical officers rarely mentioned it.
And now, in 2025, the top health official in the United States, a man without degrees in either medicine or public health, appears to be rejecting germ theory and reshaping the nation’s medical system around his own dedication to a theory that was outdated well over a century ago.
Trump Says he didn’t know if everyone is entitled to due process, as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
Conservative judge J. Michael Luttig explained to MSNBC’s Ari Velshi that far-right scholars have argued that the president does not have to follow the Supreme Court if he doesn’t agree with its decisons: he can interpret the Constitution for himself. Luttig called this “constitutional denialism.” He added that “[t]he American people deserve to know if the President does not intend to uphold the Constitution of the United States or if he intends to uphold it only when he agrees with the Supreme Court.”
In an interview aired today on NBC News’s Meet the Press, reporter Kristen Welker asked President Donald J. Trump if he agreed that every person in the United States is entitled to due process.
“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump answered.
The U.S. Constitution guarantees that “no person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Judges across the political spectrum agree that the amendment does not limit due process to citizens. In his decision in the 1993 case Reno v. Flores, conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”
When Welker pointed out that the Constitution guarantees due process, Trump suggested he could ignore it because honoring due process was too slow. “I don’t know,” he said. “It seems—it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said. “We have thousands of people that are—some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.”
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he added.
Welker tried again. “[D]on’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States?”
Trump replied: “I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
In an interview aired today on NBC News’s Meet the Press, reporter Kristen Welker asked President Donald J. Trump if he agreed that every person in the United States is entitled to due process.
“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump answered.
The U.S. Constitution guarantees that “no person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Judges across the political spectrum agree that the amendment does not limit due process to citizens. In his decision in the 1993 case Reno v. Flores, conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”
When Welker pointed out that the Constitution guarantees due process, Trump suggested he could ignore it because honoring due process was too slow. “I don’t know,” he said. “It seems—it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said. “We have thousands of people that are—some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.”
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he added.
Welker tried again. “[D]on’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States?”
Trump replied: “I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
May 4, 2025
Musk Gets Out of DOGE to Oversee Tesla losses.
The “Department of Government Efficiency” and its leader, billionaire Elon Musk, are also running into trouble. Musk vowed to slash $2 trillion from government spending, but that number kept dropping until he said DOGE will save about $150 billion. As David A. Fahrenthold and Jeremy Singer-Vine noted in the New York Times, that number is largely unsubstantiated. The DOGE team’s list of cuts is riddled with errors. In addition, the nonpartisan nonprofit Partnership for Public Service estimates that DOGE cuts have actually cost taxpayers $135 billion this fiscal year, not including lawsuits.
Yesterday Musk told reporters that Congress will have to get to work to make the cuts he began permanent as he pulls back from government work to oversee Tesla. His foray into politics so badly hurt the company’s performance that it saw a 71% drop in profits in the first quarter of 2025. According to Emily Glazer, Becky Peterson, and Dana Mattioli of the Wall Street Journal, Tesla’s board has begun looking for a new chief executive. While both Musk and Tesla’s board deny the report, Musk will move back toward company business. When asked if he needed a successor in the White House, Musk answered: “Is Buddha needed for Buddhism? Was it not stronger after he passed away?”
It’s not clear that Congress will, in fact, embrace the cuts DOGE has made willy-nilly throughout the government. Three days ago, a Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll found that only 35% of Americans approve “of the way Elon Musk is handling his job in the Trump administration,” while 57% disapprove. “The amazing thing is that they haven’t actually done anything constructive whatsoever. Literally all they’ve done is destroy things,” a current federal employee told Nick Robins-Early of The Guardian. “People are going to miss the federal government that they had.”
As the damage it has caused becomes clearer, DOGE seems unlikely ever to become more popular. Yesterday David Gilbert and Vittoria Elliott of Wired reported that the DOGE operative installed at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Christopher Sweet, is an undergraduate with no government experience. He is using artificial intelligence to comb through the agency’s rules and regulations, compare them with the laws authorizing them, identify rules that can be relaxed or removed, and rewrite them.
A source from HUD told Gilbert and Elliott that such work is redundant: officials created the rules only after “a multi-year multi-stakeholder meatgrinder.” Another source told the Wired reporters they were informed that Sweet is refining a model “to be used across the government.”
Yesterday Musk told reporters that Congress will have to get to work to make the cuts he began permanent as he pulls back from government work to oversee Tesla. His foray into politics so badly hurt the company’s performance that it saw a 71% drop in profits in the first quarter of 2025. According to Emily Glazer, Becky Peterson, and Dana Mattioli of the Wall Street Journal, Tesla’s board has begun looking for a new chief executive. While both Musk and Tesla’s board deny the report, Musk will move back toward company business. When asked if he needed a successor in the White House, Musk answered: “Is Buddha needed for Buddhism? Was it not stronger after he passed away?”
It’s not clear that Congress will, in fact, embrace the cuts DOGE has made willy-nilly throughout the government. Three days ago, a Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll found that only 35% of Americans approve “of the way Elon Musk is handling his job in the Trump administration,” while 57% disapprove. “The amazing thing is that they haven’t actually done anything constructive whatsoever. Literally all they’ve done is destroy things,” a current federal employee told Nick Robins-Early of The Guardian. “People are going to miss the federal government that they had.”
As the damage it has caused becomes clearer, DOGE seems unlikely ever to become more popular. Yesterday David Gilbert and Vittoria Elliott of Wired reported that the DOGE operative installed at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Christopher Sweet, is an undergraduate with no government experience. He is using artificial intelligence to comb through the agency’s rules and regulations, compare them with the laws authorizing them, identify rules that can be relaxed or removed, and rewrite them.
A source from HUD told Gilbert and Elliott that such work is redundant: officials created the rules only after “a multi-year multi-stakeholder meatgrinder.” Another source told the Wired reporters they were informed that Sweet is refining a model “to be used across the government.”
May 3, 2025
Demonstrators march in May Day protests denouncing Trump policies
Demonstrators marched in big cities like New York and Chicago, and in smaller communities like Norman, Okla., and Hendersonville, N.C., for May Day protests denouncing the Trump administration.
Annual May Day rallies proclaim the cause of workers in the United States and across the globe. But this year, demonstrations in the United States were supercharged with the breadth of the anti-Trump movement, as outcry continued to grow over the president’s agenda and expansion of executive power.
Workers held up signs and banners scrawled with the acronyms of their respective unions.
Similar scenes unfolded across the country, as the police closed streets for the crowds in major cities including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington.
But protesters also rallied in small communities that voted overwhelmingly for President Trump, including Norman, Okla.; Sauk City, Wis.; and Hendersonville, N.C. Groups held signs in front of municipal buildings and public schools, and some demonstrators wore red to indicate their support for public education.
The Trump administration has sought to quell dissent in corporate America, universities, government agencies and the news media. But in recent weeks, demonstrations opposing the president’s agenda, as well as resistance from some of the institutions targeted by Mr. Trump, have increased in size and frequency.
Prominent politicians also joined demonstrators at some events.
In New York City, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, implored attendees to keep the pressure on G.O.P. lawmakers that was seen through the first 100 days of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
She appeared at Foley Square in Manhattan with news: A vote by House Republicans on the future of Medicaid had been delayed.
“They have stopped and suspended next week’s Medicaid cuts, because they’re getting too scared,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez said. “They see you, New York, they see the gathering.”
Annual May Day rallies proclaim the cause of workers in the United States and across the globe. But this year, demonstrations in the United States were supercharged with the breadth of the anti-Trump movement, as outcry continued to grow over the president’s agenda and expansion of executive power.
Workers held up signs and banners scrawled with the acronyms of their respective unions.
Similar scenes unfolded across the country, as the police closed streets for the crowds in major cities including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington.
But protesters also rallied in small communities that voted overwhelmingly for President Trump, including Norman, Okla.; Sauk City, Wis.; and Hendersonville, N.C. Groups held signs in front of municipal buildings and public schools, and some demonstrators wore red to indicate their support for public education.
The Trump administration has sought to quell dissent in corporate America, universities, government agencies and the news media. But in recent weeks, demonstrations opposing the president’s agenda, as well as resistance from some of the institutions targeted by Mr. Trump, have increased in size and frequency.
Prominent politicians also joined demonstrators at some events.
In New York City, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, implored attendees to keep the pressure on G.O.P. lawmakers that was seen through the first 100 days of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
She appeared at Foley Square in Manhattan with news: A vote by House Republicans on the future of Medicaid had been delayed.
“They have stopped and suspended next week’s Medicaid cuts, because they’re getting too scared,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez said. “They see you, New York, they see the gathering.”
Trump seeks to end federal funding for NPR and PBS.
Trump signed an executive order that seeks to end federal funding for NPR and PBS. He accused them of “left-wing propaganda.”
The outlets receive only a small portion of their funding from Congress, with the rest coming from donors and sponsors.
The immediate impact of the order was unclear. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a taxpayer-backed, private entity created by an act of Congress, is funded two years in advance to protect it from political maneuvering.
Mr. Trump’s executive order is “blatantly unlawful,” Paula Kerger, the president and chief executive of PBS, said in a statement on Friday. “We are currently exploring all options to allow PBS to continue to serve our member stations and all Americans,” she added.
“Eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would have a devastating impact on American communities across the nation that rely on public radio for trusted local and national news, culture, lifesaving emergency alerts and public safety information,” the statement said.
Ms. Kerger, the PBS chief executive, said in an interview that aired this week that about 15 percent of the overall budget for public broadcasters comes from the federal government.
The outlets receive only a small portion of their funding from Congress, with the rest coming from donors and sponsors.
The immediate impact of the order was unclear. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a taxpayer-backed, private entity created by an act of Congress, is funded two years in advance to protect it from political maneuvering.
Mr. Trump’s executive order is “blatantly unlawful,” Paula Kerger, the president and chief executive of PBS, said in a statement on Friday. “We are currently exploring all options to allow PBS to continue to serve our member stations and all Americans,” she added.
“Eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would have a devastating impact on American communities across the nation that rely on public radio for trusted local and national news, culture, lifesaving emergency alerts and public safety information,” the statement said.
Ms. Kerger, the PBS chief executive, said in an interview that aired this week that about 15 percent of the overall budget for public broadcasters comes from the federal government.
Latest News on Immigration
A federal judge, whom Trump appointed, permanently barred the administration from invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans from a Texas district.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to let it remove protections that have allowed hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans to remain in the U.S.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to let it remove protections that have allowed hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans to remain in the U.S.
Tariffs and Trade War: A Long Game
In Guangzhou, China. Qilai Shen for The New York Times
By Ana Swanson
Today, President Trump ended a rule that let cheap Chinese goods bypass U.S. tariffs. The move closes a loophole, the “de minimis” exemption, that many U.S. businesses say gave China an unfair advantage. But it will also raise prices for American consumers on platforms like Amazon, Shein and Temu that took advantage of that provision. Now products on those apps face the same tariffs as other Chinese goods, a minimum of 145 percent.
Trump says he is giving other countries a chance to avoid steep levies by making trade deals. His administration is negotiating with more than a dozen other nations before a self-imposed deadline of July 8. The president styles himself as a consummate dealmaker, but this will test even his abilities. U.S. trade negotiators, already short-handed, are negotiating simultaneously with India, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and others
A long game
Trump imposed, quickly withdrew and then threatened to bring back huge tariffs on dozens of countries. Immediately, they began calling and asking what they could do to stop him. “More than 100 countries have already come to the table looking to offer more favorable terms for America and our people,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said at a briefing with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday. “There has never been a president who has created his own leverage like this president.”
What can Trump get? For starters, some countries are offering to lower their own tariffs on American exports and cut red tape that keeps U.S. businesses out. India said it might lower its tariffs on U.S. farm goods, while Europeans may drop them on cars and machinery if Washington agrees to do the same.
But finalizing granular deals with all these countries is unlikely, given that traditional agreements typically take more than a year to negotiate. Torsten Slok, the chief economist at Apollo Global Management, an investment firm, has calculated that, on average, trade deals signed by the United States take 18 months to negotiate and 45 months to implement. Government officials are chatting each day with a dizzying carousel of foreign governments, in person and in video calls, to solve trade spats that have persisted for decades.
Longstanding trade fights between countries exist for many reasons: Europeans don’t want to import any U.S. meat treated with chlorine or hormones that they ban, for example. Which is why, instead of finalizing new agreements by July 8, the White House may be able to offer only a plan for future negotiations.
And even if talks opened more markets for U.S. exporters, they probably would not solve another problem Trump has fixated on: trade deficits. That’s when one country buys more from another country than it sells to it. The United States has a big overall trade deficit that Trump officials are trying to eliminate, but it’s unlikely that a few limited trade deals will do the trick.
Washington vs. Beijing
The biggest challenge of all is Trump’s standoff with China. Because Beijing retaliated with tariffs of its own, it got no relief when Trump suspended tariffs for everyone else. Thanks to the triple-digit levies, much trade has come to a standstill. Companies that depend on China are careening toward bankruptcy, my colleague Daisuke Wakabayashi reports.
After watching stock markets and companies react badly to the tariffs, Trump officials would clearly like an amicable solution. But they’re reluctant to wind down tariffs without any concessions from Beijing.
China’s position seems to be that this battle makes no sense and that giving way would only invite future blackmail. U.S. tariffs hurt Chinese exporters, but Beijing is also focused on winning a symbolic battle — and expanding its trade relationships with other countries around the world. So for now, the standoff continues, while losses pile up for companies that depend on trade.
Today, President Trump ended a rule that let cheap Chinese goods bypass U.S. tariffs. The move closes a loophole, the “de minimis” exemption, that many U.S. businesses say gave China an unfair advantage. But it will also raise prices for American consumers on platforms like Amazon, Shein and Temu that took advantage of that provision. Now products on those apps face the same tariffs as other Chinese goods, a minimum of 145 percent.
Trump says he is giving other countries a chance to avoid steep levies by making trade deals. His administration is negotiating with more than a dozen other nations before a self-imposed deadline of July 8. The president styles himself as a consummate dealmaker, but this will test even his abilities. U.S. trade negotiators, already short-handed, are negotiating simultaneously with India, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and others
A long game
Trump imposed, quickly withdrew and then threatened to bring back huge tariffs on dozens of countries. Immediately, they began calling and asking what they could do to stop him. “More than 100 countries have already come to the table looking to offer more favorable terms for America and our people,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said at a briefing with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday. “There has never been a president who has created his own leverage like this president.”
What can Trump get? For starters, some countries are offering to lower their own tariffs on American exports and cut red tape that keeps U.S. businesses out. India said it might lower its tariffs on U.S. farm goods, while Europeans may drop them on cars and machinery if Washington agrees to do the same.
But finalizing granular deals with all these countries is unlikely, given that traditional agreements typically take more than a year to negotiate. Torsten Slok, the chief economist at Apollo Global Management, an investment firm, has calculated that, on average, trade deals signed by the United States take 18 months to negotiate and 45 months to implement. Government officials are chatting each day with a dizzying carousel of foreign governments, in person and in video calls, to solve trade spats that have persisted for decades.
Longstanding trade fights between countries exist for many reasons: Europeans don’t want to import any U.S. meat treated with chlorine or hormones that they ban, for example. Which is why, instead of finalizing new agreements by July 8, the White House may be able to offer only a plan for future negotiations.
And even if talks opened more markets for U.S. exporters, they probably would not solve another problem Trump has fixated on: trade deficits. That’s when one country buys more from another country than it sells to it. The United States has a big overall trade deficit that Trump officials are trying to eliminate, but it’s unlikely that a few limited trade deals will do the trick.
Washington vs. Beijing
The biggest challenge of all is Trump’s standoff with China. Because Beijing retaliated with tariffs of its own, it got no relief when Trump suspended tariffs for everyone else. Thanks to the triple-digit levies, much trade has come to a standstill. Companies that depend on China are careening toward bankruptcy, my colleague Daisuke Wakabayashi reports.
After watching stock markets and companies react badly to the tariffs, Trump officials would clearly like an amicable solution. But they’re reluctant to wind down tariffs without any concessions from Beijing.
China’s position seems to be that this battle makes no sense and that giving way would only invite future blackmail. U.S. tariffs hurt Chinese exporters, but Beijing is also focused on winning a symbolic battle — and expanding its trade relationships with other countries around the world. So for now, the standoff continues, while losses pile up for companies that depend on trade.
U.S. Hiring Stayed Strong in April, the Early Days of Tariff Policy
The picture of a steady job market, even if backward looking, reassured investors worried about a trade-induced economic slowdown.
Listen to this article · 10:22 min Learn more
Credit...Karl Russell
By Talmon Joseph Smith
May 2, 2025
The latest message from the data on the U.S. economy is simple: So far, so good, until further notice.
The labor market remained in a healthy state of balance as America entered a global trade war in April. U.S. employers added 177,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. And the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2 percent.
Both numbers were based on surveys taken in the immediate wake of the Trump administration’s move in early April to institute the highest level of tariffs on imports since the 1930s, although some of those levies have been paused for 90 days. The payroll gains extended the streak of U.S. job growth to 52 months.
Data released earlier this week showed that the U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of the year. But that was largely a result of a surge in imports as firms and households bought goods to try to get ahead of the tariffs. The trajectory of trade and consumer spending going forward remains unclear.
The picture of a steady job market, even if slightly backward looking, was reassuring for investors,
Listen to this article · 10:22 min Learn more
Credit...Karl RussellBy Talmon Joseph Smith
May 2, 2025
The latest message from the data on the U.S. economy is simple: So far, so good, until further notice.
The labor market remained in a healthy state of balance as America entered a global trade war in April. U.S. employers added 177,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. And the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2 percent.
Both numbers were based on surveys taken in the immediate wake of the Trump administration’s move in early April to institute the highest level of tariffs on imports since the 1930s, although some of those levies have been paused for 90 days. The payroll gains extended the streak of U.S. job growth to 52 months.
Data released earlier this week showed that the U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of the year. But that was largely a result of a surge in imports as firms and households bought goods to try to get ahead of the tariffs. The trajectory of trade and consumer spending going forward remains unclear.
The picture of a steady job market, even if slightly backward looking, was reassuring for investors,
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