The conversation between two Rutgers University professors that lit a fire in U.S. higher education circles lasted only about 10 minutes. The professors — one teaches chemistry in Camden, N.J., the other psychology in Newark — said they were frustrated by the Trump administration’s abrupt cuts to research funding and its efforts to dictate policy on some campuses. They were also troubled by the lack of a unified response by university leaders. “We needed to write something that had some meat,” said David Salas-de la Cruz, who directs the chemistry graduate program at Rutgers University-Camden. He likened the effort to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, a military alliance of 32 countries. “This is not just about money,” he said. “This is about the essence of education.” So late last month, Professor Salas-de la Cruz and Paul Boxer, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University-Newark, drafted a one-page “mutual defense compact.” It was a one-for-all, all-for-one statement of solidarity among schools in the Big Ten athletic and academic conference — 18 large, predominantly public universities that together enroll roughly 600,000 students each year. “An infringement against one member university,” they wrote, “shall be considered an infringement against all.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Participating schools would be asked to commit to making a “unified and vigorous response” when member universities were “under direct political or legal infringement.” Faculty members might, for example, be asked to provide legal services, strategic communication or expert testimony. The compact, now approved by faculty at more than a dozen universities, does not come with a commitment by school administrators to provide financial backing for a joint defense fund, and detractors have criticized the initiative as largely toothless. Still, the Rutgers resolution, and the professors’ effort to galvanize a collective response, reflected a shift in strategy. “Higher education, as an entity, is definitely worth fighting for,” Professor Boxer said. “The idea of a country where generative research gets cut down to the point where it’s under the thumb of the federal government,” he added, “is contrary to everything I believe in.”Throughout March, elite universities had been targeted, one by one, for large funding cuts as the Trump administration opened investigations into diversity policies and whether administrators were doing enough to protect Jewish students from harassment. Federal immigration agents began making a show of moving to deport international students who had spoken out against Israel’s war in Gaza. Under President Trump, the National Science Foundation has canceled more than 400 awards that commonly fuel university research. And the National Institutes of Health, a major source of biomedical research funding in the United States, terminated roughly 780 grants, according to an analysis by KFF Health News. Rutgers itself was among 60 colleges and universities to receive a warning in March that federal officials had begun an inquiry into whether it had violated Jewish students’ civil rights by failing to safeguard them from discrimination. Schools were struggling to navigate the broadside when Columbia University, in a remarkable concession to Mr. Trump, agreed to overhaul its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department as it sought to avoid a $400 million federal funding cut. It was against this backdrop that the faculty senate at Rutgers, New Jersey’s flagship state university, came together to vote on the professors’ hastily drafted resolution. No member of the Rutgers senate criticized the compact publicly before it was approved on March 28, by a vote of 62 to 17, Professor Boxer said. But in emails, some employees expressed concern that it risked making Rutgers an even bigger target for the Trump administration. “We had to accept,” Professor Boxer said, “that somebody had to be first.” Since then, nine additional Big Ten schools, including the University of Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and the University of Washington, have passed resolutions nearly identical to the one Rutgers adopted. Outside the Big Ten, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the State University of New York, and at least three City University of New York schools — Hunter, Hostos and City College — have also adopted similar statements of solidarity. Faculty senates at several other colleges are expected to vote in the coming weeks. Some faculty members are skeptical that the resolutions will make much of a difference. “At most universities, faculty senates have very little power, if any,” said Keith Riles, a physics professor who was one of 214 employees at the University of Michigan who voted against that school’s compact. “I do not expect these motions to have much effect on what administrations choose to do.” And, he said, he does not believe that President Trump’s critique of higher education is completely misguided. Professor Riles said he had long opposed university hiring policies that were based on diversity, equity and inclusion goals, which he believes are illegal and discriminate against white and Asian men. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Choose your battles and your allies wisely,” he urged colleagues before Michigan’s faculty vote began on April 17, according to a written summary of his comments. “It is not a very sound strategy to die on a D.E.I. hill in a legal, mutual suicide pact.” About 2,760 of his colleagues disagreed, and the resolution passed with 93 percent support. Rutgers’s president, Jonathan Holloway, has said that while he supports the “ethos” of the initiative, he could not provide additional support because he was stepping down at the end of the academic year, according to the Rutgers student news outlet. In a statement this week, a university spokeswoman reiterated Dr. Holloway’s “appreciation for the resolution” and said Rutgers would continue to support efforts to “reverse federal actions that are detrimental to our mission.” Even without overt buy-in from administrators, supporters said the clear goals first laid out by the Rutgers faculty had already been instrumental in helping to shift the tone of the national debate. Last week, Harvard University sued the Trump administration over billions of dollars in proposed cuts rather than accede to the president’s demands. And after months of silence, more than 500 university administrators have now signed a statement opposing “government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” John Verzani, chairman of CUNY’s faculty senate, credited Rutgers with having an “enormous” role in the evolving narrative. “It definitely set off a rush within faculty senates to create this sort of alliance,” Professor Verzani said.Todd Wolfson, a journalism professor, leads Rutgers’s faculty union. He is also president of the American Association of University Professors, a national organization. He said he considered the effort to protect academic freedom and the independence of research institutions an existential battle. “As goes higher ed,” Professor Wolfson said, “so goes the U.S.” Michael Yarbrough, who contributes to a website called We Are Higher Ed, which has been tracking university responses to the Trump administration, noted that officials from community colleges, large research universities and Ivy League schools are now sharing information in a 60-person group chat. Professor Yarbrough, who teaches about law and society at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, likened the value of the group chat, and the networks now forming among faculty members at far-flung schools with mutual defense compacts in place, to a sociology theory known as the “strength of weak ties.” “It’s understandable that some people may be fearful,” Professor Yarbrough said. “But what we’ve done is to focus on something that’s within our control: to ally with each other.”
Thousands of people took the new California bar exam in February, ready to the join the ranks of the state’s 195,000 lawyers. But a series of missteps by the institution responsible for licensing lawyers has thrown thousands of nascent legal careers into a frustrating limbo. First, there was the faulty testing software used during the exam. Test takers had trouble logging in. The software often crashed or was missing critical functions like copy and paste, leaving many unable to complete the exam. The organization that administers the test, the State Bar of California, had to offer adjustments of test-takers’ scores and other remedies. Then came the news that at least a handful of the multiple-choice questions had been developed with the help of artificial intelligence. To many of those who took the exam, it was hardly shocking — they already had suspicions that A.I. had been used, based on a few questions that they said had struck them as bizarrely worded or legally unsound. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT And now, California’s future lawyers are likely to have to wait a little longer to find out if they made the cut. The state bar said it would need more time to obtain approval from the Supreme Court of California to adjust test scores in light of the problems. The results of the February exam had been slated to be released on Friday, but that is likely to be delayed. “I just wanted a fair chance to be an attorney,” Edward Brickell, a 32-year-old graduate of Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles who took the test, said in an interview. “And it just feels like every week there’s another thing that comes out and says, like, ‘We didn’t give you a fair chance.’” Mr. Brickell and others who took the test have flooded Reddit and other social media sites with horror stories and with plans to organize protests and demand accountability. On Tuesday at a state bar committee meeting, a handful of test-takers used the public-comment period to voice their displeasure and frustration. “You guys are the body that is determining if we are competent to earn a living,” one test-taker, Dan Molina, told the state bar’s contracts committee at the virtual meeting. “Finances are being destroyed. Lives are being destroyed, and are about to be destroyed even more.” With a high threshold for passage, California’s bar exam had long been considered one of the hardest in the nation. That threshold had been lowered in recent years. In October, the state bar obtained approval from the California Supreme Court to introduce a reworked exam, with questions developed by a new contractor and the option to allow the test to be taken remotely. The state bar made the change to save money. The state bar had previously used exams developed and prepared by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the organization behind the exams used by most states that are considered the gold standard in the field. The N.C.B.E. does not allow remote testing.Test takers in California were told that the new exam would not require any substantive changes in preparation, so many of them prepared the same way they would have for the N.C.B.E. version of the test. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In November, the state bar administered an experimental exam that functioned as a test run. Those who took it reported technical difficulties. Then, test-takers said a study guide was rife with errors. That guide was quietly corrected and rereleased in the weeks before the exam in February. Kaplan, the new contractor for exam development, disputed that the study guide contained a significant number of errors. In a sign that the state bar had anticipated some difficulties, it offered more than 5,000 registered test-takers the option to defer taking the exam until July, the next test date. After the February exam, the state bar acknowledged the widespread technical failures. “We know and have stated that these issues were, and continue to be for those still testing, unacceptable in their range and severity,” the State Bar of California said in a statement. “We apologize again, and we make no excuses for the failures that have occurred.” The state bar added that it would evaluate whether Meazure Learning, the vendor that provided the technology and proctoring services to administer the exam, had failed to meet its contractual obligations. It also said it would enlist a psychometrician — a specialist who focuses on measuring intangible qualities such as knowledge or intelligence — to come up with score adjustments for test-takers who had experienced difficulties. The state bar’s proposed test score adjustment was announced last week. The proposal lowered the raw passing score considerably. That recommendation was filed with a request for approval from the State Supreme Court on Tuesday — three days before the results were set to be released. Given the late filing, the state bar told test-takers that the release of the exam results could be delayed, prolonging a dizzying stretch of uncertainty for many. Buried deep in the announcement about the scoring adjustment was the new development: Some of the multiple-choice exam questions were developed not by Kaplan but by the state bar’s psychometrics provider, ACS Ventures, with the assistance of artificial intelligence. ACS Ventures did not respond to a request for comment. The state bar said that its Committee of Bar Examiners, the body that oversees the exam, had not previously been made aware of the use of A.I. The committee had been instructed by the State Supreme Court last year to explore changes to make the exam less expensive to administer, including the potential use of A.I. “But the court has not endorsed, nor authorized, the broader use of A.I.,” Alex Chan, the chairman of the Committee of Bar Examiners, said in a statement. “While A.I. may eventually play a role in the future of exam development, absent specific judicial guidance, the Committee has neither considered nor approved its use to date.” The Supreme Court said it had not been aware that the technology was used in the development of the exam and called for an investigation. In a petition filed to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the state bar said ACS Ventures fed prompts to an A.I. chatbot to produce multiple-choice questions. ACS Ventures did not check the questions generated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT for accuracy. But those and other questions were sent to a state bar panel for review.For Mr. Brickell and others, the disclosure that A.I. was used at all seemed to offer an explanation for some of their confusion. Some questions, he and others who took the test said, did not read as though they had been drafted by a human and listed only incorrect multiple-choice answers. Ceren Aytekin, an aspiring entertainment lawyer, said she had also noticed peculiarities in some of the questions, but she at first refused to believe A.I. had been used. “I initially thought, ‘Maybe I’m the wrong one,’” Ms. Aytekin said. “Maybe I’m putting blame on a organization that would never do this to their examinees.” She added: “All the issues I spotted make so much sense with A.I. being involved. We just didn’t want to believe it.” Two other large state bar associations, in New York and Illinois, said they had never used A.I. to develop questions on their exams. The N.C.B.E., which prepares the exams for New York, Illinois and most other states, said it had never used A.I. for that purpose. April Dawson, an associate dean at the Technology Law and Policy Center at the North Carolina Central University School of Law, said the use of A.I. in developing test questions was not an issue on its own. She said the problem was in the fact that it had been done without transparency. “That you would have a licensing body engage in such irresponsible conduct, it really is kind of baffling,” she said. If he doesn’t pass, Mr. Brickell is likely to take the exam in July. Those who fail the February exam will be able to take it then for free. The state bar has said it will not use any questions that have been developed with A.I. on the July exam. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Had the exam not been offered for free in July, Mr. Brickell had contemplated taking it in another state. “I don’t want to give them my bar dues as an attorney for the rest of my life,” Mr. Brickell said of California’s state bar. “This has soured me so much.”
President Donald Trump has some thoughts on who should be the next Pope—that is, if it can’t be himself. “I’d like to be Pope. That would be my number one choice,” he joked to reporters on Tuesday, a prospect that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Sc) posted (hopefully facetiously) would have “many upsides.” It would certainly be a dramatic shift from the world’s first Latin American and first Jesuit Pope, who often sparred with Trump on issues of immigration, climate change and religion, to the first American, billionaire, and, critically, non-Catholic to serve as Pope—and concurrently with being President at that. But Trump did plug another dark-horse candidate who would also make history as the first American Pope. While he said he has no preference for who should replace the late Francis, he added, “I must say we have a cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York who’s very good, so we’ll see what happens.” That cardinal is Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York. The 75-year-old is not on most lists of papabili—most likely to be elected Pope at the conclave that begins next week—although, as history has shown, the next Pope isn’t always who the media and the public expects. Read More: How a New Pope Is Chosen—and Who It Could Be Ordained as a priest in 1976, Dolan was appointed as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Louis by Pope John Paul II, then as Archbishop of Milwaukee in 2002. In Milwaukee, he took on the role of rebuilding trust after a decades-long sexual abuse scandal wracked the church. He removed several accused priests and informed the Vatican of cases of abuse in 2003 to which the Vatican was slow to respond. But he was also found through bankruptcy filings in 2012 to have overseen payments of up to $20,000 to accused priests to incentivize them to agree to being laicized (the process of having their priestly status and powers removed), relocated some accused priests rather than removing them, and requested to transfer millions of dollars into a cemetery trust to shield church funds from lawsuits brought by victims. He nevertheless rose the ecclesiastical ranks to become Archbishop of New York in 2009, overseeing roughly 2.5 million Catholics—the second-largest diocese in the U.S.—and was made a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. Still, experts say it’s unlikely that Trump’s backing will carry much weight. “The short answer is that it doesn’t seem very likely that Timothy Dolan will be elected pope,” Miles Pattenden, a historian of the Catholic Church at Oxford University, tells TIME. “It’s very doubtful that any cardinals will view President Trump’s endorsement favourably.” Dolan has come to be known as a “favorite cardinal” of Trump, delivering the traditional prayer at both the President’s first-term and second-term inaugurations. Dolan was part of an April 2020 conference call with Trump and other Catholic leaders, in which Trump called Dolan a “great gentleman” and “a great friend of mine,” to which Dolan responded that it was “mutual.” That year, Dolan said of Trump, “I really salute his leadership” during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that Trump is “particularly sensitive to the, what shall I say, to the feelings of the religious community.” These comments drew criticism from other faith leaders. John Gehring, Catholic program director for Faith in Public Life, said: “There is a difference between dialogue and a kind of deferential coziness with a president who, frankly, has used cruelty as a political weapon and who abuses power. That’s what the concern was here. It was not that there was an engagement with this president.” More than 1,500 faith leaders signed onto an open letter to Dolan, calling on him to “Please speak truth to power and refrain from giving even the appearance that bishops have their hands on the scales in this [2020] election.” Earlier this year, Dolan said that Trump “takes his Christian faith seriously.” He’s also criticized the Democratic Party’s support for abortion rights. “I’m a pastor, not a politician, and I’ve certainly had spats and disappointments with politicians from both of America’s leading parties,” Dolan wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed slamming Democrats in 2018. “But it saddens me, and weakens the democracy millions of Americans cherish, when the party that once embraced Catholics now slams the door on us.” Still, Dolan has at times also criticized the anti-immigration rhetoric from both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, claimed in January that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to the White House’s mass deportation policy was motivated by financial interests as USCCB receives public funding through federal partnerships to provide services to asylum seekers—funding that was cut by the Trump Administration. Dolan called Vance’s comments “vulgar” and “very mean.” While generally considered orthodox, some of Dolan’s more controversial actions have departed from traditional conservatism. He said in 2018 that he “didn’t see anything really sacrilegious” about that year’s Met Gala theme, ‘Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,’ and joked that he lent Rihanna a bejeweled mitre for her outfit. He also congratulated football player Michael Sam for coming out as gay in 2014, saying “Bravo,” “God bless ya,” and “good for him,” adding that the Bible teaches us “not to judge people.” Last year, however, following the funeral service for trans activist Cecilia Gentili at his cathedral, St. Patrick’s in Midtown Manhattan, Dolan said the priests “knew nothing” about Gentili’s background, and praised officiants for cutting it short. Some have insinuated that the next Pope is likely to be someone who shared Francis’ progressive values, because of the large number of cardinals that he appointed during his papacy—around 80% of the voting cardinals. Pattenden previously told TIME that that’s a misreading of Vatican politics: “It’s very simplistic to say cardinals just vote along ideological lines as though they’re part of political parties.” What does make this conclave different from previous ones, though, is that it will be the most geographically diverse in the church’s history—something Francis made a point of when appointing cardinals. That is likely to diminish the chances of an American Pope, particularly as there’s already reportedly concern that doing so would upset the global balance of power. “The general opinion within the upper ranks of the Catholic Church over the past 50 years has also been that America is powerful enough anyway without the Americans also winning the papacy,” Pattenden says. But, Pattenden adds, “there might be some advantages to an American pope which the cardinals may consider.” Specifically, that an American Pope can communicate well in English, “the global language,” which Francis could not. Ultimately, experts say cardinals aren’t typically overly influenced by public sentiment, whether that’s from Trump or social media posts of people’s favorite picks. “The College of Cardinals will not pay much attention—if any—to what he or any other head of state suggests,” says Carlos Eire, a professor of history and religious studies at Yale University, of Trump’s promotion of Dolan. “The church is their main concern, and they tend to view the election from that perspective. World politics might concern them to some extent, but not the opinions of lay people, much less the opinions of lay people who aren’t Catholic.”
The very identity of the nation’s 8,100 charter schools is on the line on Wednesday, as the Supreme Court considers whether they are fundamentally public or private institutions. If they are public, there is little room for religious instruction, as proposed by the school at the center of the case, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which seeks to open in Oklahoma as the nation’s first religious charter school. But if they are private, as St. Isidore’s lawyers will argue, banning a religious group from operating a charter school when other nonprofits are free to do so would be religious discrimination. If the Supreme Court decides charter schools are private, it would most likely allow St. Isidore to open, and potentially pave the way for religious charter schools in other states. Charter schools, which were created in the 1990s to give families more options, have long occupied a hybrid space in education. They are like traditional public schools in many ways because they are paid for by taxpayers and free to attend. But charter schools are also run by private entities, often nonprofits, and are not zoned, allowing students to attend regardless of their ZIP codes. And unlike at many public schools, their teachers typically are not unionized. Today, about 3.7 million students attend charter schools, in 44 states and Washington, D.C., representing about 7 percent of the public school sector. But in some cities, like Detroit and Philadelphia, enrollment is far greater, representing a third to half of all students. Whether they should be classified as public or private may hinge on the specifics of Oklahoma state law.Justices will most likely consider technical issues, like how charter schools are created. In Oklahoma, a state board must approve new charter schools, a fact that many in the mainstream charter school movement argue places them firmly in the public realm. “A charter school doesn’t exist unless the government gives it reason to open,” said Starlee Coleman, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which opposes allowing religious institutions to operate charter schools. Lawyers for St. Isidore say that it was created by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa and that it is operated by a board of private citizens. They will argue that St. Isidore is a private school with a government contract. Any ruling in favor of St. Isidore could have broad implications. Twelve Republican-leaning states filed an amicus brief in support of St. Isidore’s petition, while 18 states, mostly Democratic-leaning, opposed.
Prime Minister Mark Carney clinched a narrow win against Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party in Canada’s historic election on Monday night, securing a fourth term for the Liberal Party. The election was framed as a fight against U.S. President Donald Trump and his threats against the country—with all other issues falling by the wayside. Even Carney’s climate background wasn’t enough to put climate action on center stage—one recent poll found that climate change wasn’t among the top 10 priorities for Canadian voters. It’s a big shift from previous elections. “It doesn't really seem like this election was a climate change election,” says Jennifer Winter, professor at the school of public policy at the University of Calgary whose research focuses on climate policies. “The two overriding narratives, have been Trump and U.S. tariffs and its effect on Canada, and then the other predominant narrative is cost of living.” But the Liberal Party’s win means that Canada will likely stay the course on many existing environmental policies—including a zero-emission vehicle sales mandate along with clean electricity and fuel regulations. “In most respects, it is a continuation of a slate of policies that were put in place by the Liberal government under Justin Trudeau,” says Kathryn Harrison, professor of political science at the University of British Columbia. Carney’s career has often straddled the line between the private sector and the climate fight. He became a U.N. Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance in 2019, and in 2021 launched the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, an initiative aimed at bringing together financial institutions to support the transition to a net-zero economy. His experiences were reflected in many of the Liberal’s campaign proposals, Harrison says. “A couple of the items you see in the platform, [like] that commitment to sustainable investment guidelines, is very consistent with Carney's work as a special envoy,” she says. Carney, however, has vowed to make Canada “an energy superpower”—both in clean energy, as well as oil and gas. Harrison says the shift comes as Canada is looking to distance itself from importing natural resources from the U.S. “He seemed to be envisioning a pipeline that would serve Canada's own oil demand, rather than proposing new pipelines to get more of Canada's oil to the coast or to export it to [other] markets.” And after first taking office when former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped down in March, one of Carney’s first moves was to scrap the country’s carbon tax, a divisive climate policy that placed an added fee on consumers using fossil fuels. The initiative was often blamed for rising costs of living in the country—even though 80% of families received more money in rebates than they paid in the tax. An essential next step for Carney, experts say, will be to find a replacement for the carbon tax. “It opens up the question of if Canada is still going to meet its emissions reduction goals without consumer emissions pricing, and what would replace it,” says Green. “I think this is one of the key things that will be answered in the coming weeks and months after the election.” Some, meanwhile, believe the government needs to think bigger. Canada wasn’t on track to meet emission reduction standards even with the carbon tax, says Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute, who notes that the new leadership could provide momentum for Canada to embrace more ambitious policies. “There's a number of policies that need to be improved, that need to be added to the table to get the country back on track for the scale of emission reductions that we committed to under the powers agreement,” says Smith. While much debate has focused on the future of the consumer carbon tax, he recommends Canada instead focuses on solutions with greater potential for reducing emissions, like accelerated methane reduction policies or the creation of a national carbon market. “The question needs to be broadened.”
President Donald Trump and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos are feuding again. The White House lashed out at Amazon on Tuesday for reportedly planning to display how much of a product’s cost comes from Trump’s tariffs. Doing so would emphasize to consumers that U.S. tariffs are not paid by overseas companies, but by the American companies importing the goods, and then largely passed on to customers. “This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday at a briefing focused on the economy and Trump’s 100th day in office. She said she had just talked to Trump on the phone about Amazon’s plan, citing a report from Punchbowl News. “Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?” Leavitt said. Amazon soon disputed the report, with a spokesperson initially telling The Washington Post that the company was only thinking about listing tariff costs on some products on a lower-cost section of the site called Amazon Haul. Then the company walked back the idea entirely. "The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products," spokesman Tim Doyle said in a statement. "This was never approved and is not going to happen.“ Bezos had clashed publicly with Trump for years. When Trump was running for president in 2016, he said Trump’s calls to “lock up” his political rival Hillary Clinton “erodes our democracy.” Trump has called him “Jeff Bozo.” But Bezos extended an olive branch last summer after Trump was shot in the ear at a rally in Butler, Pa., writing on X that Trump had shown “tremendous grace and courage.” After the Bezos-owned Washington Post decided not to endorse a presidential candidate in 2024, Bezos defended the decision, saying presidential endorsements “create a perception of bias.” When Trump won a second term, Bezos praised Trump’s “extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory” and said at a New York Times event that he wanted to work with Trump to reduce regulation and was “actually very optimistic” about Trump’s return to office. That outlook may have changed over the past 100 days, as Trump launched a trade war that included 10% across-the-board tariffs on all goods brought into the U.S. and a 145% tariff on goods from China. Trump paused a raft of even higher tariffs on dozens of countries for 90 days to allow time for countries to petition his Administration directly for relief. The higher tariffs are scheduled to snap into place in July. Trump officials say they are negotiating trade deals with 17 countries, but the trade negotiations with China are stalled. The on-again-off-again tariff announcements have rattled investors, wiping out trillions in value from stock markets and frustrating business leaders who are struggling to make business decisions without knowing how much goods will cost in the long run. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who appeared with Leavitt in the press briefing room on Tuesday, said Trump’s erratic tariff actions were part of the President’s negotiating strategy to achieve better trade deals and encourage more companies to open factories in the U.S. “President Trump creates what I call strategic uncertainty in the negotiations,” Bessent said. Bessent acknowledged that some business leaders have pulled back from launching new projects in recent weeks. He said that Trump’s work stripping away federal regulations and a tax bill Republicans hope to pass this summer may include incentives for businesses to buy equipment and build new factories. “Business leaders, they’ve gone into a pause, and I think we are going to give them great certainty on this tax bill,” Bessent said. Congressional Republicans are hoping to include a raft of tax breaks in the bill they hope to finish by early July. On the campaign trail, Trump promised he would end taxes on tips, overtime, Social Security payments, and auto payments for cars made in the U.S. Bessent said Trump is pushing for companies to be able to deduct the cost of new equipment and factory buildings to encourage more manufacturing in the U.S. Americans have become more skeptical of Trump’s economic decisions since he took office. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in mid-April found that 37% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, down from 42% in late January.
After an election in which Donald Trump won back the presidency and his party held the House and won the Senate, congressional leaders were quick to fantasize of all the legislation they would be able to pass. They envisioned a flurry of bills rewriting immigration law, slashing regulations, and delivering on Trump’s bold campaign promises. But the first 100 days of Trump’s second term paints a more complicated picture. Instead of relying on the Republican-led Congress, Trump has leaned heavily on executive action to carry out his agenda, issuing an unprecedented 135 executive orders since he took office in January. In doing so, Trump has largely bypassed Congress at the outset of his Administration, a sharp break from his first term. So far, Congress has only passed six bills—five of which have been signed into law—the fewest of any president in the first 100 days of an administration in the last seven decades, according to a TIME analysis of congressional records. At this point in his first term, Trump had already signed 30 bills into law—a high watermark for Presidents this century. Former President Joe Biden signed 10 bills by his 100th day in 2021, compared to 14 by Barack Obama in 2009 and seven by George W. Bush in 2001. Some earlier presidents—including Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter—signed 20 or more pieces of legislation within their first 100 days. Trump's second-term tally—just five bills signed—underscores a dramatic shift toward consolidating presidential power. The bills that have passed Congress so far have been relatively modest: three of the six bills were measures undoing regulations established by the Biden Administration, such as eliminating rules on environmental protections and cryptocurrency taxation, which were passed under the Congressional Review Act. Another was a stopgap funding bill to keep the government open. The other bills were the Laken Riley Act, an immigration detention measure, and the Take It Down Act, which Trump is expected to soon sign after it overwhelmingly passed the House on Monday. The bill criminalizes non-consensual deepfake porn and requires platforms to take down such material within 48 hours of being served notice. While Congress has largely been relegated to the sidelines under Trump’s second Administration, most Republicans on Capitol Hill have supported his unfettered use of executive power. Trump has often drawn on rarely-used laws to advance his agenda, such as invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to carry out mass deportations and declaring a national emergency to enact sweeping tariffs on countries around the world. “The executive always wants to control more things, but in the past, members—whether it's a Democratic president or Republican president— have always resisted that,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters in March. “It didn't happen this year for the first time. They just bowed down to the President, and they're surrendering their power.” Trump is now calling on Republicans in Congress to pass what many are calling his "one big, beautiful bill"—a massive legislative package designed to cement many of his campaign promises into law. The bill aims to extend the 2017 tax cuts, expand domestic energy production, fund immigration enforcement, and boost military spending. In the meantime, Trump’s reliance on executive orders to push his agenda—often bypassing Congress altogether—has become a defining feature of his presidency. Constitutional scholars and political analysts have warned that the sheer volume of executive actions is testing the limits of presidential power, raising concerns about the potential erosion of the rule of law. Here’s what Congress has accomplished—and what Republicans are still hoping to achieve—as Trump’s second presidency reached the 100-day mark. Laken Riley Act The most high-profile measure to pass Congress was the Laken Riley Act, named after a nursing student who was murdered last year by a Venezuelan immigrant who was in the country unlawfully and had been previously apprehended by Border Patrol and released. The bill, signed into law by Trump nine days into his presidency, changes how the federal government handles immigrants who are in the country unlawfully and mandates that those charged with theft, burglary, or other serious crimes be detained until their cases are resolved. The bill requires the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security “to take into custody aliens who have been charged in the United States with theft, and for other purposes,” meaning immigration officers would be required to arrest and detain those people. Before, immigration officials would use their discretion to first detain people with violent criminal records. The bill ultimately passed the House with unanimous support from Republicans, and the backing of 46 of 215 Democrats. In the Senate, 12 Democrats joined all Senate Republicans to move the bill forward. Avoided a government shutdown Congress managed to avert a government shutdown in late March, passing a stopgap funding bill to keep federal agencies running through the end of the fiscal year. The effort required careful maneuvering by GOP leaders—and a surprising degree of cooperation from ten Senate Democrats who voted alongside Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was criticized by many in his party for voting in favor of the legislation, which critics said stripped away numerous funding directives and gave Trump unprecedented power to reallocate money as he saw fit without fear of judicial intervention. Rolled back Biden Administration regulations One area where Trump and congressional Republicans have been unusually productive is in using the Congressional Review Act—a powerful but little-used law that allows Congress to repeal recent federal regulations with a simple majority vote, bypassing the Senate filibuster. Of the five bills Trump has signed, three were CRA resolutions aimed at dismantling Biden-era rules. In March, Trump signed a resolution overturning the Waste Emissions Charge, an environmental regulation finalized near the end of Biden’s presidency. Although parts of Biden’s broader climate agenda remain in place, Republicans succeeded in nullifying this specific fee on methane emissions. That same month, Trump also signed a CRA resolution blocking a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management rule that had required oil and gas companies operating offshore to submit detailed archaeological surveys. Republicans argued the rule created unnecessary compliance costs for energy producers. And in April, Trump signed into law a bill to overturn a revised rule from the Internal Revenue Service that expanded the definition of a broker to include decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges. Take It Down Act A bipartisan bill that criminalizes non-consensual deepfake porn is expected to soon become law, after it was sent to Trump’s desk on Monday. The measure, which had the backing of First Lady Melania Trump, aims to stop the scourge of AI-created illicit imagery that has exploded in the last few years along with the rapid improvement of AI tools by making it a federal crime to knowingly post or threaten to publish computer-generated pornographic images and videos of real people. Trump has said he would sign the bill into law: “I’m going to use that bill for myself too if you don’t mind because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody,” he told a joint session of Congress in early March. A few days earlier, Melania Trump staged a press conference with deepfake victims—her first solo public appearance since she resumed the role of First Lady. Up next: Trump’s "big, beautiful bill" Now, attention is shifting to what Republicans hope will be their crowning legislative achievement: an enormous package that seeks to extend the 2017 tax cuts, implement additional tax relief, ramp up border defenses, expand energy production, and slash federal spending by at least $1.5 trillion. “Republicans, it is more important now, than ever, that we pass THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL,” Trump posted on Truth Social in April. “The USA will Soar like never before!!!” The House and Senate passed a budget resolution earlier this month to begin a process known as reconciliation that they hope will allow them to pass the measure without Democratic support. Yet significant divisions within the GOP caucus remain. Senate Republicans set a relatively modest $4 billion target for cuts, while House Republicans are under orders to find at least $1.5 trillion in savings, a gap that will be difficult to bridge. Disagreements have already surfaced over proposed cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, and clean energy initiatives. Moderate Republicans from swing districts are balking at deep cuts to social safety net programs, even as hardliners demand more aggressive reductions. Adding to the pressure is the looming threat of a government default. The bill is expected to include a provision raising the federal debt ceiling by as much as $5 trillion, which the Treasury Department warns must happen by late summer to avoid an unprecedented financial crisis. Economists across the political spectrum have warned that extending the Trump tax cuts without equivalent new revenue or significant changes to entitlement programs like Social Security could balloon the federal deficit to record levels.
The White House has announced measures aimed at reducing the cost of cars for U.S. consumers, easing the effect of tariffs on imported cars imposed by the Trump Administration. "It's a little bit of help," President Trump, who will mark his first 100 days in office during a rally in Michigan, told reporters Tuesday. "We just wanted to help them enjoy this little transition, short-term." In late March, Trump announced a 25% tariff on all imported automotive goods into the U.S. which went into effect on April 3. Trump had also declared tariffs on steel and aluminum, which are key materials for auto production. The measures announced on Tuesday mean that these tariffs will not be additional to the 25% rate on cars, a White House spokesperson said, easing potential production costs for U.S. manufacturers. A further 25% tariff on imported car parts is still set to go into effect on May 3, but there are expected to be some reimbursements to reduce the impact for consumers. In a statement to Reuters, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said: "This deal is a major victory for the President's trade policy by rewarding companies who manufacture domestically." Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the President will later be signing an executive order in relation to these expected measures. Without further details not yet outlined, it will likely focus on encouraging manufacturers to move operations to the U.S. in order to avoid tariff costs. What will this mean for consumers? Car dealerships in the United States have warned about the potential impact of auto tariffs on their businesses, and the need of passing costs on to the consumer. For a number of international car manufacturers, the U.S. market makes up a large portion of their global sales. In 2024, 39% of international sales for Honda were in the U.S. For Nissan, Porsche and Kia, the U.S. made up 28% of their international sales. With such large portions of the consumer market being U.S. based, the impact of automakers passing on the cost of tariffs could hit American buyers significantly. Economist Arthur Laffer estimated that a 25% tariff on autoparts could add an average $4,711 to the cost of a car in the U.S. How are U.S. car makers responding? For automakers based in the United States, the White House announcement signals optimism. The Trump Administration has put the goal of increasing U.S. production at the center of its reasoning behind tariffs, but domestic companies are likely to still feel the hit of tariffs. Manufacturers including Ford, General Motors and Stellantis will see this as potential respite on higher production costs. An industry report from the Center for Automotive Research estimated that tariffs could cost these three manufacturers $42 billion. In a statement, Stellantis Chairman Elkann said: “While we further assess the impact of the tariff policies on our North American operations, we look forward to our continued collaboration with the U.S. Administration to strengthen a competitive American auto industry and stimulate exports,” General Motors CEO Mary Barra also welcomed the measures from the Trump Administration. She said in a statement: “We believe the President’s leadership is helping level the playing field for companies like GM and allowing us to invest even more in the U.S. economy.”
President Donald Trump has some thoughts on who should be the next Pope—that is, if it can’t be himself. “I’d like to be Pope. That would be my number one choice,” he joked to reporters on Tuesday, a prospect that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Sc) posted (hopefully facetiously) would have “many upsides.” It would certainly be a dramatic shift from the world’s first Latin American and first Jesuit Pope, who often sparred with Trump on issues of immigration, climate change and religion, to the first American, billionaire, and, critically, non-Catholic to serve as Pope—and concurrently with being President at that. But Trump did plug another dark-horse candidate who would also make history as the first American Pope. While he said he has no preference for who should replace the late Francis, he added, “I must say we have a cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York who’s very good, so we’ll see what happens.” That cardinal is Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York. The 75-year-old is not on most lists of papabili—most likely to be elected Pope at the conclave that begins next week—although, as history has shown, the next Pope isn’t always who the media and the public expects. Ordained as a priest in 1976, Dolan was appointed as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Louis by Pope John Paul II, then as Archbishop of Milwaukee in 2002. In Milwaukee, he took on the role of rebuilding trust after a decades-long sexual abuse scandal wracked the church. He removed several accused priests and informed the Vatican of cases of abuse in 2003 to which the Vatican was slow to respond. But he was also found through bankruptcy filings in 2012 to have overseen payments of up to $20,000 to accused priests to incentivize them to agree to being laicized (the process of having their priestly status and powers removed), relocated some accused priests rather than removing them, and requested to transfer millions of dollars into a cemetery trust to shield church funds from lawsuits brought by victims. Still, experts say it’s unlikely that Trump’s backing will carry much weight. “The short answer is that it doesn’t seem very likely that Timothy Dolan will be elected pope,” Miles Pattenden, a historian of the Catholic Church at Oxford University, tells TIME. “It’s very doubtful that any cardinals will view President Trump’s endorsement favourably.” Dolan has come to be known as a “favorite cardinal” of Trump, delivering the traditional prayer at both the President’s first-term and second-term inaugurations. Dolan was part of an April 2020 conference call with Trump and other Catholic leaders, in which Trump called Dolan a “great gentleman” and “a great friend of mine,” to which Dolan responded that it was “mutual.” That year, Dolan said of Trump, “I really salute his leadership” during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that Trump is “particularly sensitive to the, what shall I say, to the feelings of the religious community.” These comments drew criticism from other faith leaders. John Gehring, Catholic program director for Faith in Public Life, said: “There is a difference between dialogue and a kind of deferential coziness with a president who, frankly, has used cruelty as a political weapon and who abuses power. That’s what the concern was here. It was not that there was an engagement with this president.” More than 1,500 faith leaders signed onto an open letter to Dolan, calling on him to “Please speak truth to power and refrain from giving even the appearance that bishops have their hands on the scales in this [2020] election.” Earlier this year, Dolan said that Trump “takes his Christian faith seriously.” He’s also criticized the Democratic Party’s support for abortion rights. “I’m a pastor, not a politician, and I’ve certainly had spats and disappointments with politicians from both of America’s leading parties,” Dolan wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed slamming Democrats in 2018. “But it saddens me, and weakens the democracy millions of Americans cherish, when the party that once embraced Catholics now slams the door on us.” Still, Dolan has at times also criticized the anti-immigration rhetoric from both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, claimed in January that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to the White House’s mass deportation policy was motivated by financial interests as USCCB receives public funding through federal partnerships to provide services to asylum seekers—funding that was cut by the Trump Administration. Dolan called Vance’s comments “vulgar” and “very mean.” While generally considered orthodox, some of Dolan’s more controversial actions have departed from traditional conservatism. He said in 2018 that he “didn’t see anything really sacrilegious” about that year’s Met Gala theme, ‘Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,’ and joked that he lent Rihanna a bejeweled mitre for her outfit. He also congratulated football player Michael Sam for coming out as gay in 2014, saying “Bravo,” “God bless ya,” and “good for him,” adding that the Bible teaches us “not to judge people.” Last year, however, following the funeral service for trans activist Cecilia Gentili at his cathedral, St. Patrick’s in Midtown Manhattan, Dolan said the priests “knew nothing” about Gentili’s background, and praised officiants for cutting it short. Some have insinuated that the next Pope is likely to be someone who shared Francis’ progressive values, because of the large number of cardinals that he appointed during his papacy—around 80% of the voting cardinals. Pattenden previously told TIME that that’s a misreading of Vatican politics: “It’s very simplistic to say cardinals just vote along ideological lines as though they’re part of political parties.” What does make this conclave different from previous ones, though, is that it will be the most geographically diverse in the church’s history—something Francis made a point of when appointing cardinals. That is likely to diminish the chances of an American Pope, particularly as there’s already reportedly concern that doing so would upset the global balance of power. “The general opinion within the upper ranks of the Catholic Church over the past 50 years has also been that America is powerful enough anyway without the Americans also winning the papacy,” Pattenden says. But, Pattenden adds, “there might be some advantages to an American pope which the cardinals may consider.” Specifically, that an American Pope can communicate well in English, “the global language,” which Francis could not. Ultimately, experts say cardinals aren’t typically overly influenced by public sentiment, whether that’s from Trump or social media posts of people’s favorite picks. “The College of Cardinals will not pay much attention—if any—to what he or any other head of state suggests,” says Carlos Eire, a professor of history and religious studies at Yale University, of Trump’s promotion of Dolan. “The church is their main concern, and they tend to view the election from that perspective. World politics might concern them to some extent, but not the opinions of lay people, much less the opinions of lay people who aren’t Catholic.”
