At a rally in Michigan on Tuesday, April 29, held to mark the first 100 days of his second term, President Donald Trump smiled as the crowd chanted “three,” a call for the President to serve a third term. In response, Trump said: “Well, we actually already served three, if you count. But remember, I like the victories, I like the three victories which we absolutely had. I just don't like the results of the middle term.” Trump, who won his first election in 2016 but then lost to former President Joe Biden in 2020, appeared to once again be denying the results of the 2020 election. In actual fact, 2020 saw Trump fall short in key battleground states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, where he was on Tuesday. During his rally, he also incorrectly stated that he won Michigan three times. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he won the 2020 election, arguing that voter fraud occurred. Two days after election day, whilst vote counting was still ongoing, he posted on social media “STOP THE COUNT!” And once major news outlets had confirmed Biden as the 46th President, Trump again remarked: "This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election." Amid this election denial, the riots of Jan. 6, 2021, occurred. Meanwhile, Trump’s comments at the rally come after much discussion and teasing of a possible third term, only strengthened by the fact the Trump Store is now selling “Trump 2028” merchandise. Due to the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. constitution, this is the second—and final—term that Trump can serve. But this has not stopped him and his Administration from talking about a third. In an interview with TIME on April 22, marking his first 100 days back in office, Trump was asked about the possibility of seeking a third term and how he had recently said he was “not joking” about pursuing that avenue. He said: “I'd rather not discuss that now, but as you know, there are some loopholes that have been discussed that are well known. But I don't believe in loopholes. I don't believe in using loopholes.” It echoed what he told NBC in an interview at the end of March, in which he said there are methods available to do it, something he emphasized he was not joking about. But in an interview with the Atlantic, published on April 28, Trump said that running for a third term in 2028 is not something he is looking into. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also recently shared a similar message, saying that Trump running for a third time “is not something that he is thinking of,” whilst joking that Trump 2028 hats are “flying off the shelves.”

This week marks 100 days since President Donald Trump took office for a second term. In that time, Trump has made several moves that affect abortion and reproductive health care access across the country. Within his first month in office, Trump acted quickly on a number of issues related to reproductive health. He pardoned several anti-abortion protesters convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a law intended to protect abortion clinics and patients by barring people from physically blocking or threatening patients. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said it would be curtailing prosecutions against people accused of violating the FACE Act. The Department of Defense rescinded a Biden-era policy that helped facilitate travel for active service members and their families to obtain certain reproductive health care services, including abortion. Internationally, the Trump Administration’s freeze on foreign aid halted reproductive health care services for millions of people. Trump also reinstated what’s known as the Mexico City Policy or the Global Gag Rule, a policy often implemented by Republican presidents that prohibits foreign organizations receiving U.S. aid from providing or discussing abortion care. Since February, the Trump Administration has taken additional actions that have limited or threatened access to reproductive health care. Here’s what else Trump has done on reproductive health care in his first 100 days—and what reproductive rights advocates fear could happen next. The Administration dropped a Biden-era lawsuit seeking to protect access to emergency abortions In March, the DOJ filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit it had inherited from the Biden Administration. The original lawsuit was about a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires emergency rooms that receive Medicare dollars to stabilize patients experiencing medical emergencies before discharging or transferring them, whether or not the patient is able to pay. The Biden Administration had argued that emergency abortion care is required because of EMTALA, and that Idaho’s near-total abortion ban conflicted with the federal law. The state of Idaho has rejected that claim. The Trump Administration dropping the lawsuit would have allowed Idaho to fully enforce its near-total abortion ban, even in medical emergencies. But the state’s largest health care provider, St. Luke’s Health System, had filed its own lawsuit a few months earlier in anticipation of the Trump Administration dropping the case, and a judge temporarily blocked Idaho from fully carrying out its ban. Abortion rights advocates condemned the Trump Administration's decision to drop the lawsuit. Amy Friedrich-Karnik—director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute, which researches and supports sexual and reproductive health—says the case was, at its core, about protecting people’s access to “life-saving care” in the most urgent situations. The Administration froze Title X funding for 16 organizations On April 1, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) began withholding Title X funding from 16 organizations. Enacted in 1970, Title X is the country’s sole federally funded family planning program. The program, which does not fund abortion services, allocates more than $200 million a year for clinics that provide birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing, and other health care services for people from low-income households. HHS said it was withholding funds from the organizations in the Title X program “pending an evaluation of possible violations” of federal civil rights laws, and the President’s Executive Order that said undocumented immigrants are prohibited “from obtaining most taxpayer-funded benefits.” The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), a membership organization for family planning providers, and the American Civil Liberties Union have sued the Trump Administration over the freeze. According to NFPRHA, the freeze is threatening about $65.8 million in Title X funds, potentially affecting more than 840,000 patients. Reproductive rights advocates have said the freeze would prevent some of the most vulnerable community members from accessing a range of health care services. “When you go after Title X for contraceptive access, there’s a ripple effect across all types of reproductive health care,” Friedrich-Karnik says. Mass layoffs at HHS On March 27, HHS announced that it would reduce its staff from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees—about 10,000 from layoffs and an additional 10,000 from staffers who retired or resigned. Included in those cuts was eliminating “the majority of employees” in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) reproductive health division, according to the legal advocacy group Center for Reproductive Rights. A team at the CDC focused on compiling data on abortion access—including the number of people getting abortions and what methods they choose—has been eliminated, according to Shannon Russell, federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “It really stymies efforts to understand the impact of state abortion bans in the aftermath of [Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization],” Russell said during a press briefing. The staff working on the CDC’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), which collected data on maternal and infant health, was cut. The team working on the National Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance System, which provided patients with information about options such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), was also eliminated. “This is really hampering HHS’s efforts to ensure that people are getting quality, essential reproductive health care and that they know their options,” Russell said. What experts anticipate could happen next Experts are waiting to see what actions the Trump Administration will take on mifepristone, a drug that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved for abortion use more than two decades ago. Years of research have proven that the drug is safe, but anti-abortion groups have tried—so far unsuccessfully—to challenge it in court, and during his confirmation hearing, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Trump has expressed an interest in launching further research into mifepristone. Russell said the Center for Reproductive Rights also anticipates that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will seek to limit abortion care. In March, the VA submitted for review an interim final rule regarding reproductive health services; the details of the rule have not been publicized, but abortion rights advocates fear that the rule will reinstate the VA’s previous abortion ban, repealing a Biden-era policy that had allowed VA medical facilities to offer abortion counseling and abortion care to veterans and their beneficiaries in certain situations. Friedrich-Karnik says the Trump Administration could withhold additional Title X funds or place restrictions on grant recipients, as the Administration did during Trump’s first term. She adds that the DOJ may continue to take an anti-abortion stance in various cases, such as declining to prosecute protesters accused of violating the FACE Act. Trump’s actions on reproductive rights have drawn support from anti-abortion activists. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement that Trump “set the bar for a pro-life president” in his first term, and applauded the actions he’s taken within the first 100 days of his second term. In March, Trump said that he would be known as the “fertilization president,” and the New York Times reported last week that the White House has been evaluating ways to convince women to have children. But Russell criticized the Trump Administration for offering what she called “sweepstakes style incentives” to encourage people to have children without implementing policies to ensure that people have the support and resources they need to do so, while curtailing access to reproductive health care. “They have made it more dangerous to be pregnant,” Russell said, “and they've done nothing to ensure that people who want to grow or build their families are able to do so more affordably and more accessibly.”

Britons have basked in a burst of summerlike weather this week as temperatures have surged beyond the seasonal average — and they may soon break records. Forecasters say Thursday may be Britain’s warmest May 1, with highs expected to reach 84.2 degrees Fahrenheit (29 Celsius). The heat has been driven by two key factors: a large area of high pressure that has settled over Britain, causing descending air that warms as it sinks, and continuous sunshine, fueling daytime heating. Aidan McGivern, a meteorologist at the Met Office, the nation’s weather service, explained that this has been a familiar pattern over the last few months. “The sun this time of the year is as strong as it is in August,” he said. “We’re not importing this air from anywhere else — this is homegrown warmth.” London recorded Britain’s highest temperature of the year on Monday, only for that to be beaten on Tuesday. The mercury is expected to rise further on Wednesday and Thursday. Overnight temperatures have been above average too, with parts of Scotland experiencing their warmest April night on record. The peak of the heat is expected on Thursday, just as voters in England head to the polls for local elections. Temperatures in southern England could reach 84.2 Fahrenheit, which would be a record for May 1. The current record was set in 1990 in Lossiemouth, Scotland, which hit 81.3 Fahrenheit (27.4 Celsius). If temperatures rise a bit higher, it could also become the earliest date in the year that Britain has hit 86 Fahrenheit (30 Celsius), based on Met Office data going back to 1860. “The most likely temperature we’re expecting is 29 Celsius,” Mr. McGivern said. “But there’s a possibility — a smaller chance of 10 to 20 percent — of 30 Celsius.” Typical highs for Britain in late April are around 54 Fahrenheit in northern areas and 61 in the south. But despite the stretch of warm days, this may not officially count as a heat wave. To qualify as a heat wave in Britain, temperatures must meet or exceed a specific threshold for at least three consecutive days. This threshold varies by region, from 77 Fahrenheit (25 Celsius) in Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of northern and western England, to 82.4 Fahrenheit (28 Celsius) in southeast England. While many will enjoy the summerlike weather, it’s also bringing risks. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the Scottish Wildfire Forum have issued warnings of a very high to extreme wildfire risk across parts of Scotland. “There are currently vast areas that are tinder-dry and vulnerable, which provides all the ingredients for fire to take hold and spread,” said Michael Humphreys, an area commander with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. Although spring wildfires are not unusual in Britain, 2025 has already been a record-breaking year for them. More than 29,200 hectares, or 72,000 acres, have burned so far this year, according to the Global Wildfire Information System, surpassing the previous record of 28,100 hectares in all of 2019. Looking ahead, temperatures are expected to ease slightly starting on Friday, with highs likely dipping to around 77 Fahrenheit (25 Celsius), though the warm conditions could continue in the southeast of England. There’s also a growing chance of thunderstorms, particularly in the south and southwest, late Thursday and into the night. Over the weekend cooler conditions are likely to filter in from the north, bringing temperatures closer to normal.

At least four people were killed in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and hundreds of thousands of customers were without power after severe weather that had torn across the High Plains and Upper Midwest earlier this week pushed into the Northeast and Canada. David Lepinsky, 59, was killed after being electrocuted by live wires, according to the Pittsburgh Public Safety Department. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Another resident, Raymond Gordon, 67, was returning to his home when he was fatally hit by a tree after it blew over, according to the Ross Township Police Department near Pittsburgh. In Centre County, Pa., a 22-year-old man was also killed after being electrocuted while trying to put out a mulch fire during the severe weather, the State College Police Department said in a statement. In Greene County, Pa., a passenger in a car was killed when a tree fell on top of it, the Pennsylvania State Police said in its statement about weather-related calls. The passenger, Andrew Celaschi, was struck by a falling tree that was blown over by high winds, the authorities said. The storm “was tough on our city,’’ Mayor Ed Gainey of Pittsburgh said at a news conference on Wednesday. The National Weather Service office in Pittsburgh said on Wednesday that it had crews in Wilkinsburg, a borough in Allegheny County, Pa., looking for potential tornado damage from Tuesday’s severe weather. The service reported that “a large swath of destructive wind damage” was seen across the area as storms rolled through on Tuesday evening, with gusts as high as 90 mile per hour. The service added that the storms were “stronger than many of the smaller” tornadoes that the meteorologists “typically see in this region, but for a much, much wider area.” More than 400,000 customers in Pennsylvania were without power as of Wednesday afternoon, according to poweroutage.com, which tracks outages nationwide. Duquesne Light Company said that it was working to restore power to customers without service and that some customers could be without service for about five to seven days. The company was requesting assistance from utility partners. The company said that the heavy winds had knocked down trees, broken utility poles and prompted more than 20,000 separate reports of hazards. Officials in Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, encouraged residents to stay home as crews with chain saws worked to remove downed trees and clear debris from roads on Wednesday. About 180 trees were knocked down in Pittsburgh, officials said. “Stay in,” Mayor Gainey urged. “Safety is our number one priority.” The same system also rolled through southern Quebec in Canada on Tuesday evening, where a teenage boy was in critical condition in Montreal after a tree toppled and pinned him, according to CBC.com In Quebec, about 49,000 customers were without power on Wednesday afternoon, according to poweroutage.com The outages came amid severe weather with thunderstorms that whipped up winds and unleashed hail as large as Ping Pong balls. As of Wednesday, a total of 14 tornadoes had been confirmed in a handful of states, with most of those occurring in Wisconsin on Monday, and others reported in Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma and Utah. “In terms of the overall coverage of tornadoes, it was certainly not as many as it could have been,” said Nathan Wendt, a meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Center at the Weather Service. By Wednesday afternoon, the storm activity had pushed offshore. “It should be quiet in the Northeast today,” Mr. Wendt said.

It’s hard to think of four words more smug—and infuriating—than “I told you so.” “It feels like you’re delighting in the other person's misfortune,” says Jordan Conrad, founder and clinical director at Madison Park Psychotherapy in New York. “It feels equivalent to saying 'I would never be in your position because I'm smarter than you,' or 'If you only just let me run your life for you, you would be better off.’ Those are pretty unpleasant messages to send.” Advertisement Yet sometimes, it’s helpful to drive home the idea that a little foresight could have predicted the outcome—albeit in a kinder, more effective way. First, though, consider your relationship with the person and what you're trying to get out of the interaction, Conrad advises: Is it just to boost your own ego and knock them down a notch? Or do you genuinely believe it’s a learning opportunity that could make them happier and more successful in the future? If you work alongside someone who could benefit from reflecting on their decision-making, for example, you might be doing them a favor by having a kind conversation. The same goes for teens—but only if they’re receptive to it, he cautions. We asked experts for their favorite alternatives to telling someone you told them so. “I was worried it might turn out this way. I’m sorry that it did.” This framing makes it clear that the situation could have gone another way—while allowing the other person to save face. “It names your concern, while empathizing with them about the outcome,” says Dana Caspersen, a conflict engagement specialist and author of books including Changing the Conversation: The 17 Principles of Conflict Resolution. “We’re all fallible, and all of our actions are in some sense experiments.” She recommends adding: “You gave it a shot, and now we know.” That demonstrates appreciation for your friend’s efforts while keeping the door open for better results in the future.

Klein is a contributor for TIME. Nearly a third of American adults have some kind of allergy. If you’re one of them, you’re probably eager to find a solution. Allergy shots can provide long-lasting relief for certain non-food allergies, but there are some downsides. Is the time commitment, discomfort, and cost worth it? To help make that decision, here’s the latest science behind allergy immunotherapy, how long the effects of the shots last, and what the future of allergy shots may hold. Advertisement How do allergy shots work? Allergy shots have been around in one form or another since the 1910s. The idea is to desensitize an allergic person to a specific allergen, like pollen or cat dander. Your allergist will determine exactly what you’re allergic to and then “they make a specialized cocktail of allergens for that person,” says Dr. David Morris, chief of allergy and immunology at Dayton Children's Hospital. This cocktail contains very small, diluted amounts of those allergens and is then injected under your skin. “This stimulates the immune system to feel like these things are normal and not foreign,” says allergist Dr. J. Allen Meadows, executive director of advocacy and governmental affairs at the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (ACAAI) and a pediatric allergist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. After your shot, you’ll be observed for about 30 minutes. “This is because you do have the potential to have a reaction; we're giving you something injectable that you're allergic to,” Morris says. Serious reactions are rare but can be life-threatening, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI).

This week marks 100 days since President Donald Trump took office for a second term. In that time, Trump has made several moves that affect abortion and reproductive health care access across the country. Within his first month in office, Trump acted quickly on a number of issues related to reproductive health. He pardoned several anti-abortion protesters convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a law intended to protect abortion clinics and patients by barring people from physically blocking or threatening patients. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said it would be curtailing prosecutions against people accused of violating the FACE Act. The Department of Defense rescinded a Biden-era policy that helped facilitate travel for active service members and their families to obtain certain reproductive health care services, including abortion. Internationally, the Trump Administration’s freeze on foreign aid halted reproductive health care services for millions of people. Trump also reinstated what’s known as the Mexico City Policy or the Global Gag Rule, a policy often implemented by Republican presidents that prohibits foreign organizations receiving U.S. aid from providing or discussing abortion care. Advertisement Since February, the Trump Administration has taken additional actions that have limited or threatened access to reproductive health care. Here’s what else Trump has done on reproductive health care in his first 100 days—and what reproductive rights advocates fear could happen next. The Administration dropped a Biden-era lawsuit seeking to protect access to emergency abortions In March, the DOJ filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit it had inherited from the Biden Administration. The original lawsuit was about a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires emergency rooms that receive Medicare dollars to stabilize patients experiencing medical emergencies before discharging or transferring them, whether or not the patient is able to pay. The Biden Administration had argued that emergency abortion care is required because of EMTALA, and that Idaho’s near-total abortion ban conflicted with the federal law. The state of Idaho has rejected that claim.

ave you ever been so exhausted you’ve skipped your skin-care routine and went straight to bed? Now imagine doing that every night. For most people, the idea might trigger fears of buildup, bacteria, oily skin, and breakouts. But a backlash is brewing to 10-step skin-care rituals: doing absolutely nothing. No cleansers, no exfoliants, no moisturizers—no water, even. Known as the “caveman method,” the counterintuitive way of “taking care” of your skin by ignoring it is gaining traction on social media. One woman on TikTok recently went viral after saying she gave up washing her face in order to repair her skin barrier, even though the process has caused her skin to become flaky with dead skin cells. Advertisement What actually happens when you stop washing your face? Is it even safe? We asked dermatologists. Is the “caveman method” good for your skin? The theory behind the method is that many skin-care products can strip the skin of its natural oils, disrupt its pH balance, and alter its natural microbiome. Forgoing all that, the caveman theory goes, restores your skin to its “natural” healthy state. However, whether this method is good for your skin, or anyone's skin, is a complicated question, says Dr. Nicole M. Golbari, a dermatologist at NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine. “Each face has its own unique and diverse microbiome,” she says. “We all have bacteria, fungus, and even tiny microscopic mites on our faces. While that may sound alarming, these microbes are part of our normal skin, and in order for our skin to function well, the skin microbiome needs the right balance of good microbes.”

On April 28, the House of Representatives passed the first major law tackling AI-induced harm: the Take It Down Act. The bipartisan bill, which also passed the Senate and which President Trump is expected to sign, criminalizes non-consensual deepfake porn and requires platforms to take down such material within 48 hours of being served notice. The bill 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. While some civil society groups have raised concerns about the bill, it has received wide support from leaders on both sides of the aisle, from the conservative think tank American Principles Project to the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen. It passed both chambers easily, clearing the House with an overwhelming 409-2 vote. To some advocates, the bill is a textbook example of how Congress should work: of lawmakers fielding concerns from impacted constituents, then coming together in an attempt to reduce further harm. "This victory belongs first and foremost to the heroic survivors who shared their stories and the advocates who never gave up," Senator Ted Cruz, who spearheaded the bill in the Senate, wrote in a statement to TIME. "By requiring social media companies to take down this abusive content quickly, we are sparing victims from repeated trauma and holding predators accountable." Here’s what the bill aims to achieve, and how it crossed many hurdles en route to becoming law. Victimized teens The Take It Down Act was borne out of the suffering—and then activism—of a handful of teenagers. In October 2023, 14-year-old Elliston Berry of Texas and 15-year-old Francesca Mani of New Jersey each learned that classmates had used AI software to fabricate nude images of them and female classmates. The tools that had been used to humiliate them were relatively new: products of the generative AI boom in which virtually any image could be created with the click of a button. Pornographic and sometimes violent deepfake images of Taylor Swift and others soon spread across the internet. When Berry and Mani each sought to remove the images and seek punishment for those that had created them, they found that both social media platforms and their school boards reacted with silence or indifference. “They just didn’t know what to do: they were like, this is all new territory,” says Berry’s mother, Anna Berry. Anna Berry then reached out to Senator Ted Cruz’s office, which took up the cause and drafted legislation that became the Take It Down Act. Cruz, who has two teenage daughters, threw his political muscle behind the bill, including organizing a Senate field hearing with testimony from both Elliston Berry and Mani in Texas. Mani, who had spoken out about her experiences in New Jersey before connecting with Cruz’s office during its national push for legislation, says that Cruz spoke with her several times directly—and personally put in a call to a Snapchat executive asking them to remove her deepfakes from the platform. Mani and Berry both spent hours talking with congressional offices and news outlets to spread awareness. Bipartisan support soon spread, including the sign-on of Democratic co-sponsors like Amy Klobuchar and Richard Blumenthal. Representatives Maria Salazar and Madeleine Dean led the House version of the bill. Political wrangling Very few lawmakers disagreed with implementing protections around AI-created deepfake nudes. But translating that into law proved much harder, especially in a divided, contentious Congress. In December, lawmakers tried to slip the Take It Down Act into a bipartisan spending deal. But the larger deal was killed after Elon Musk and Donald Trump urged lawmakers to reject it. In the Biden era, it seemed that the piece of deepfake legislation that stood the best chance of passing was the DEFIANCE Act, led by Democrats Dick Durbin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In January, however, Cruz was promoted to become the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, giving him a major position of power to set agendas. His office rallied the support for Take it Down from a slew of different public interest groups. They also helped persuade tech companies to support the bill, which worked: Snapchat and Meta got behind it. “Cruz put an unbelievable amount of muscle into this bill,” says Sunny Gandhi, vice president of political affairs at Encode, an AI-focused advocacy group that supported the bill. “They spent a lot of effort wrangling a lot of the companies to make sure that they wouldn't be opposed, and getting leadership interested.” Gandhi says that one of the key reasons why tech companies supported the bill was because it did not involve Section 230 of the Communications Act, an endlessly-debated law that protects platforms from civil liability for what is posted on them. The Take It Down Act, instead, draws its enforcement power from the “deceptive and unfair trade practices” mandate of the Federal Trade Commission. “With anything involving Section 230, there's a worry on the tech company side that you are slowly going to chip away at their protections,” Gandhi says. “Going through the FTC instead was a very novel approach that I think a lot of companies were okay with.” The Senate version of the Take It Down Act passed unanimously in February. A few weeks later, Melania Trump threw her weight behind the bill, staging a press conference in D.C., with Berry, Mani, and other deepfake victims, marking Trump’s first solo public appearance since she resumed the role of First Lady. The campaign fit in with her main initiative from the first Trump administration: “Be Best,” which included a focus on online safety. A Cruz spokesperson told TIME that Trump’s support was crucial towards the bill getting expedited in the House. “The biggest challenge with a lot of these bills is trying to secure priority and floor time,” they said. “It’s essential to have a push to focus priorities—and it happened quickly because of her.” "Today's bipartisan passage of the Take It Down Act is a powerful statement that we stand united in protecting the dignity, privacy, and safety of our children," Melania Trump said Monday. "I am thankful to the Members of Congress — both in the House and Senate — who voted to protect the well-being of our youth." Support is broad, but concerns persist While the bill passed both chambers easily and with bipartisan support, it weathered plenty of criticism on the way. Critics say that the bill is sloppily written, and that bad faith actors could flag almost anything as nonconsensual illicit imagery in order to get it scrubbed from the internet. They also say that Donald Trump could use it as a weapon, leaning on his power over the FTC to threaten critics. In February, 12 organizations including the Center for Democracy & Technology penned a letter to the Senate warning that the bill could lead to the “suppression of lawful speech.” Critics question the bill’s effectiveness especially because it puts the FTC in charge of enforcement—and the federal agency has been severely weakened by the Trump administration. At a House markup in April, Democrats warned that a weakened FTC could struggle to keep up with take-down requests, rendering the bill toothless. Regardless, Gandhi hopes that Congress will build upon Take It Down to create more safeguards for children online. The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a hearing on the subject, signaling increased interest. “There's a giant movement in Congress and at the state level around kids' safety that is only picking up momentum,” Gandhi says. “People don't want this to be the next big harm that we wait five or 10 years before we do something about it.” For Mani and Berry, the passage of Take It Down represents a major political, legal, and emotional victory. “For those of us who've been hurt, it's a chance to take back our dignity,” Mani says.

On April 1, the Trump administration’s effort to slash government funding arrived in Morgantown, W.Va., where federal scientists spent their days studying health and safety threats to American workers. That morning, hundreds of employees at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health were notified that they were being terminated and would lose access to the building. Left behind were more than 900 lab animals. The institute ultimately managed to relocate about two-thirds of them — primarily mice, as well as a handful of rats — sending them to university labs, according to two facility employees who were recently terminated. The remaining 300 animals, however, were euthanized last week. Over the last few months, the Trump administration has taken aim at the American research enterprise, firing scores of federal scientists, rescinding active research grants and proposing drastic cuts to the funding that helps labs keep their lights on. These moves, which have left many of scientists out of work and disrupted clinical research, have profound ramifications for the lab animals that serve as the basis for much of the nation’s biomedical research. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “There are going to be a lot of animals that are going to end up being sacrificed — killed,” said Paul Locke, an expert in laboratory animal law and the use of non-animal alternatives in research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The ultimate toll is difficult to predict, experts said, in part because many of the administration’s actions are embroiled in legal battles. Animal research is also shrouded in secrecy; there are no definitive numbers on how many animals live in U.S. laboratories. Many scientists were reluctant to speak openly about what might become of their lab animals, fearing backlash from animal rights activists or retaliation from their employers or the Trump administration. Dozens of interview requests to animal research facilities and researchers went unanswered. “I think they’re not talking about it because it’s a situation that, for them, is just a parade of horribles,” Dr. Locke said. “If they are going to keep the animals up, it’s going to be massively expensive. If they’re going to sacrifice the animals, it’s going to cause public outrage.” Some animal rights activists are cheering the disruption, even if it means euthanizing animals. But many researchers said they were devastated by what they considered to be the worst of both worlds: the deaths of a lot of animals without any gain in scientific knowledge.“We don’t take using animals lightly,” said Kyle Mandler, a pulmonary toxicologist who was among the scientists recently terminated from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the time, he was in the middle of a study on the hazardous dusts produced in the manufacturing of certain construction materials. About two dozen of his mice were euthanized last week — the study unfinished, the data uncollected. “The fact that their lives and sacrifice will just be a complete waste is equal parts depressing and infuriating,” he said. The Department of Health and Human Services did not directly answer questions about the fate of the Morgantown animals. But in an emailed statement, an unnamed H.H.S. official said that the changes at NIOSH were part of a “broader realignment,” in which multiple programs were being consolidated into the new Administration for a Healthy America. “Staffing and operational adjustments are occurring in phases,” the statement said. “Animal care operations remain active, and H.H.S. is committed to maintaining compliance with all federal animal welfare standards throughout this transition.”Sudden stops In recent years, many countries, including the United States, have begun to move away from animal research, which is expensive, ethically fraught and not always a good predictor of what might happen in humans. This month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it planned to “phase out” animal testing for certain kinds of drugs and promote the use of alternatives, such as organoids or “organs on chips,” three-dimensional models of human organs made from lab-grown cells. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Experts agree that these emerging technologies hold enormous promise. But some say that, for now at least, lab animals remain a critical part of biomedical research and that certain kinds of data can’t be gathered any other way. “We want to drive ourselves out of this work,” said Naomi Charalambakis, the director of science policy and communications at Americans for Medical Progress, a nonprofit that advocates the continued use of animals in biomedical research. “But we’re not quite there yet.” Lab animal research, which often takes years to plan and conduct, requires steady, predictable funding and experienced veterinarians and technicians to provide day-to-day care. Moves by the Trump administration have thrown all of that into question. At the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Morgantown facility, for instance, the abrupt terminations initially included the animal care staff. “But they fought back and said they were not leaving while animals were in the facility,” said a former lab technician, who asked not to be identified to preserve future employment options. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT After the Trump administration began freezing funding to Harvard this month, researchers developing a new tuberculosis vaccine faced the prospect of having to euthanize their rhesus macaques. The study, and the monkeys, were spared only after a private donor stepped in to provide funding. Some animals on shuttered projects could be moved to other labs or institutions, but others may have already received experimental treatments or been exposed to pathogens or toxins. Lab animals, many of which are bred to display certain behaviors or health vulnerabilities, are not wild and cannot simply be released. And the sudden surge of surplus lab animals may be more than the nation’s animal sanctuaries can absorb, experts said. Ann Linder, an associate director at the animal law and policy program at Harvard Law School, worries that the fate of many lab animals will come down to the “whims and temperaments” of individual researchers and lab employees. “Without oversight, some of those decisions will be poor ones, and many will be made out of callous necessity, without regard for the welfare of the animals in question,” she said in an email.Cost cutting Many researchers said that they also worried about the National Institutes of Health’s effort to sharply limit funding for “indirect costs” associated with scientific research, including those related to maintaining animal care facilities. A federal judge has barred the N.I.H. from putting these funding caps into place, but the agency has appealed. If the policy goes through, it could be devastating for institutions that do research with nonhuman primates, which are long-lived and expensive to care for. The Washington National Primate Research Center, based at the University of Washington, has more than 800 nonhuman primates. A cap on indirect funding would cost the center roughly $5 million a year, forcing it to downsize its colony, said Deborah Fuller, the center’s director. It “could destroy the entire infrastructure that we have built,” she said. If that happened, the center would make every effort to find new homes for its animals, she added. But other research centers would be facing the same challenges, and primate sanctuaries may not be able to absorb the influx. As a last resort, primates may need to be euthanized. “It’s a worst-case scenario,” said Sally Thompson-Iritani, an assistant vice provost at the university’s office of research. “Even though none of us likes to think about it or have to talk about it, it could happen.” For some animal rights activists, downsizing the federal animal research enterprise is something to celebrate. “For a lot of these animals, being euthanized before being experimented on is probably a best-case scenario,” said Justin Goodman, a senior vice president at the White Coat Waste Project, a nonprofit that advocates the end of federally funded animal research. (The organization would prefer to see lab animals placed in new homes, he noted.) Delcianna Winders, who directs the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said she hoped these cuts would spell the end of the national primate centers. But she said she was concerned that cuts and layoffs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which enforces the federal Animal Welfare Act, would weaken the nation’s “already extremely lax oversight” of lab animal welfare. Dr. Locke hopes that this crisis might be a “wake up call” for the nation to move further toward alternatives to animal research. But that transition should happen in a thoughtful way, he said. “I don’t think it’s OK to cull millions of animals from research,” Dr. Locke said. “I don’t think that’s societally acceptable. I don’t think it’s scientifically acceptable, and I think we need to recognize that that is a likely outcome.”