More than 150 House Democrats signed a letter sent to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on April 3, calling for the department to undo the freeze on millions of dollars allocated for family planning services. The letter, shared exclusively with TIME, comes after HHS confirmed this week that it is withholding Title X funds from 16 organizations “pending an evaluation of possible violations” of federal civil rights laws and President Donald Trump’s Executive Order declaring that undocumented immigrants are barred “from obtaining most taxpayer-funded benefits.” Title X is the nation’s only federally funded program dedicated solely to family planning, and each year allocates millions of dollars for clinics that provide birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing, and other health care services for people from low-income households. HHS did not respond to TIME’s questions earlier this week about the details of the “possible violations,” how much money was being withheld from the affected organizations, and which organizations were being hit by the funding freeze. It also did not respond to a further request for comment today, April 3. More than $200 million is allocated for Title X annually. On March 25, the Wall Street Journal reported that HHS was considering freezing $27.5 million of those Title X funds. One of the largest Title X providers, Planned Parenthood, said on March 31 that nine of its affiliates were informed by the federal government that their Title X funding was being withheld as of April 1. The letter sent to Kennedy on April 3 was an effort led by seven House Democrats: Rep. Judy Chu, California; Rep. Diana DeGette, Colorado; Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts; Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, New Mexico; Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, Texas; Rep. Sharice Davids, Kansas; and Rep. Nikema Williams, Georgia. The 162 House Democrats who signed it said in the letter that Title X has been “a cornerstone of safety-net care” for decades. “Championed by then-Congressman George H.W. Bush and signed into law by President Nixon, Title X allows a diverse network of providers to deliver high-quality care to low-income, uninsured, or underinsured individuals confidentially,” the letter said. “These centers offer care to populations that often face severe structural and systemic barriers to accessing quality health care, including individuals with no or insufficient insurance and rural and underserved communities. Freezing funds for this essential program will harm communities that otherwise may not have access to care.” According to the letter, Title X-funded clinics provided services to 2.8 million people in 2023. In 2016, 60% of the women who received birth control from a clinic participating in the Title X program revealed that that was their only source of health care the year before, according to the letter. The letter also cited a report from the Guttmacher Institute, which researches and supports sexual and reproductive health and rights, that found that every dollar spent on Title X services saves $7 in Medicaid-related expenses. Reproductive rights experts have called the freeze “absolutely devastating,” saying that Title X allows many people to access critical health care services they may not otherwise be able to afford. Experts at the Guttmacher Institute estimated that between 600,000 and 1.25 million people could be affected by the freeze annually. In the letter, the signatories also said they were “outraged that reports suggest that this funding is being frozen because of claims that it might support ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’” Essential Access Health, which distributes Title X funds to health care centers in California and Hawaii, said in a press release on April 1 that it was informed that its Title X funds were being temporarily withheld pending “an inquiry regarding compliance with federal policy and practices related to civil rights and Executive Orders focused on DEI activities.” Trump signed an Executive Order on his first day in office that was aimed at dismantling DEI initiatives. “This is another way of saying that this program is used to help people of color access care,” the letter said. “Nearly half of the people served each year by Title X are people of color, the vast majority are people with low-incomes and most Title X users are women. A federal program's ability to provide care to people from historically marginalized and underserved communities does not make it wrong or illegal. To suggest otherwise implies that HHS would determine who is worthy of taxpayer dollars based on the color of their skin.” House Democrats who signed the letter urged Kennedy to restore all the Title X funding to the affected organizations, requesting a “prompt reply to coordinate a meeting on this matter” and offering to introduce Kennedy to providers, community leaders, and patients who can speak to the importance of the federal program. “We hope your agency will not be so reckless as to upend nearly half a century of bipartisan achievement and place Title X on the [Department of Government Efficiency] chopping block without hearing firsthand the consequences of that action,” the letter said.

The Trump Administration is withholding millions of dollars allocated for family planning services from more than a dozen organizations. Enacted in 1970, the federal family planning program known as Title X makes millions of dollars available to clinics that provide health care services like birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing for people from low-income households. On March 31, Planned Parenthood—one of the largest Title X providers—said in a press release that nine of its affiliates received notices from the federal government that their Title X funding would be withheld starting April 1. Advertisement According to Planned Parenthood, more than three-quarters of its affiliates receive Title X funding, and in 2023, there were more than 1.5 million visits to Planned Parenthood health centers that received Title X funding. One of the nine affiliates affected is Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky (PPGNHAIK), which serves those four states as well as Idaho and western Washington. Its CEO, Rebecca Gibron, estimates that, as a result of the freeze, about $3 million a year will now be withheld from five of the six states PPGNHAIK serves: Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Alaska, and Hawaii. Gibron says that over half of PPGNHAIK’s health centers across six states serve more than 40,000 patients a year through Title X. “In our states, we are a safety net provider providing affordable birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing, and treatment,” Gibron says. “These patients rely on Title X for their health care, and without this program, patients may have no access to this care at all.” Planned Parenthood Action Fund President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in a press release that if people aren’t able to access this care, cancers could go undetected, access to birth control could be reduced, and sexually transmitted infections could increase.

More than 150 House Democrats signed a letter sent to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on April 3, calling for the department to undo the freeze on millions of dollars allocated for family planning services. The letter, shared exclusively with TIME, comes after HHS confirmed this week that it is withholding Title X funds from 16 organizations “pending an evaluation of possible violations” of federal civil rights laws and President Donald Trump’s Executive Order declaring that undocumented immigrants are barred “from obtaining most taxpayer-funded benefits.” Title X is the nation’s only federally funded program dedicated solely to family planning, and each year allocates millions of dollars for clinics that provide birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing, and other health care services for people from low-income households. HHS did not respond to TIME’s questions earlier this week about the details of the “possible violations,” how much money was being withheld from the affected organizations, and which organizations were being hit by the funding freeze. It also did not respond to a further request for comment today, April 3. Advertisement More than $200 million is allocated for Title X annually. On March 25, the Wall Street Journal reported that HHS was considering freezing $27.5 million of those Title X funds. One of the largest Title X providers, Planned Parenthood, said on March 31 that nine of its affiliates were informed by the federal government that their Title X funding was being withheld as of April 1. Read More: Trump Administration Freezes Critical Title X Funding for 16 Organizations The letter sent to Kennedy on April 3 was an effort led by seven House Democrats: Rep. Judy Chu, California; Rep. Diana DeGette, Colorado; Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts; Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, New Mexico; Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, Texas; Rep. Sharice Davids, Kansas; and Rep. Nikema Williams, Georgia. The 162 House Democrats who signed it said in the letter that Title X has been “a cornerstone of safety-net care” for decades.

America is at risk of losing a generation of scientists. Amid sweeping cuts to federal research funding by the Trump administration, job opportunities for young scientists are being rescinded, postdoctoral positions eliminated and fellowships folded as labs struggle to afford new researchers. As countless scientific projects come to a halt, the researchers who will suffer the most are those just beginning their careers. Times Opinion has heard from more than 100 readers who have shared stories of how they’ve been affected. Kristen Gram is a 22-year-old graduate student researching the type of materials and hardware that might one day help reduce the enormous amount of energy new computer processing technologies use to function. Her adviser recently warned her that federal funding cuts made it unlikely she’d secure a fellowship she needed to finish her degree. Melanie Reuter is a 29-year-old graduate student whose work focuses on how the gut microbiome shapes human health and chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes. She wants to find more effective ways to treat diseases, with fewer side effects. She hoped to secure federal funding to cover her education and provide a livable stipend so she could concentrate on her research. But her application for a National Institutes of Health grant meant to support diverse candidates was pulled, without explanation, in February, just days before it was scheduled for review. Francesca Walsh, 28, is in the last six months of earning her Ph.D. in neuroscience and behavior. She wants to study how the brain functions when making economic decisions, in an effort to protect economic markets and consumers from financial harm. The postdoctoral jobs she planned to apply for have suddenly disappeared. “I felt the door of an entire sector of jobs, including federal research jobs, slam overnight,” she said. “It’s very disheartening, and sometimes I wish I just became an accountant.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Most American scientists understood a second Trump term was unlikely to be friendly to their kind, but few anticipated such a rapid bulldozing. The N.I.H. — the largest public funder of biomedical and behavioral research in the world — announced it would slash funding to universities for overhead, or indirect, costs, which often covers laboratories’ operational needs. Though legal challenges have stalled enforcement, federal grant money remains withheld in many cases. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency team has also turned its hatchet on the N.I.H. The agency has lost nearly one-fourth of its 18,000 employees because of job cuts, buyouts and some employees’ choosing early retirement, according to reporting by NPR. Many research grants overseen by the N.I.H., the National Science Foundation, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the Department of Veterans Affairs and other agencies are frozen or canceled. When federal money for scientific research disappears, so do the university labs that young scientists rely on as steppingstones of essential training and experience they can later apply toward projects of their own. Those actions could mean America’s demise as the most powerful force for innovation in science, health and technology for the 21st century. Competitors like China will be able to usurp that position, and other countries are already making concerted efforts to recruit American scientists.Many young researchers say they are having to choose between staying in the United States and staying in science. America shouldn’t take scientific progress in medicine, artificial intelligence, energy and more for granted. If the youngest, brightest minds aren’t soon reassured that the United States can support their work — and that scientific inquiry will be protected from political interference — they will walk away. *** American science has been a beacon for aspiring researchers since the end of World War II, when a rivalry with the Soviet Union spurred the United States to make huge investments in science and technology research and recruit the most brilliant thinkers from abroad. Scientists saw the United States as a kind of nationwide laboratory for pursuing work under the best conditions possible — a remarkable combination of positive pressure and competition that pushed them to their best work, paired with support that provided the time, space and resources needed to realize that work’s full potential. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT This American brain trust has resulted in over 400 Nobel laureates, more than any other country in the world. As of 2023, an estimated 1.2 million people around the world held a Ph.D. in science, engineering or health earned at an American institution. The United States accounts for 27 percent of the world’s total research and development activity — the most of any nation — though China, at 22 percent, is closing in. This is still far ahead of the next largest players: Japan (7 percent), Germany (6 percent) and South Korea (4 percent). This investment has been essential to our economy. More than 408,000 jobs are supported by N.I.H. grants. It’s estimated that every dollar of N.I.H. funding produces $2.56 in economic activity. So much of that success is due to the U.S. government’s willingness to support the kind of basic science work that takes years, even generations, before resulting in monumental breakthroughs. Hundreds of millions of federal dollars established the groundwork for key breakthroughs in mRNA technology before the Covid-19 pandemic, which helped set up Operation Warp Speed for success. Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs were inspired in part by N.I.H.-supported research into Gila monster venom in the 1980s; without that work, we might not have had the current weight-loss revolution. Fifty years ago, fewer than 60 percent of children diagnosed with pediatric cancer survived after five years. Now, thanks to treatments funded and spearheaded by the N.I.H., that survival rate is 85 percent. America had also been an attractive destination for science because of its express support for free inquiry — the ability of researchers to study what mattered most to them, even if there wasn’t a straight path to success and profit. That commitment appears to be crumbling. “I mourn a world in which science must defend itself through its end products, rather than its underlying search for truth and beauty,” said Daniel Bauman, a 25-year-old Stanford University graduate student studying evolution. “When efficiency is mandated, current and future careers are lost or abandoned. If science funding is made contingent on immediately beneficial results, who will be left to tell the story of nature? Will anyone even be listening?” Young scientists’ careers are inextricably tied to the grant application cycle. Carole LaBonne, a molecular biologist at Northwestern University, recently told the podcast “Odd Lots” to think of labs as small businesses that run on very tight operating margins. A grant that provides funding for, say, four years would need to be renewed in the third year. And if they can’t do that, people must be let go quickly — which almost always means junior members of the lab. Peter Jacobs, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is unsure whether Department of Energy and National Science Foundation grants that help fund his program will be renewed; he’s not certain he can keep on his three postdocs, all of whom are already looking at other positions, including in Europe or Asia. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT It’s already hard enough to establish oneself as a young scientist. The average age for researchers to receive a first N.I.H. grant has increased since 1995 and is now over 40 years. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds will find it especially challenging to make a career in science work, now that grants meant to help them are being dissolved. At Fort Lewis College in Colorado, where nearly 40 percent of the student population identifies as Native American, one researcher said he and his colleagues were told not to bother submitting a renewal application for an N.I.H.-associated grant that funds increased representation in the biomedical sciences and that has helped at least a dozen Native Americans earn Ph.D.s in the past 15 years. The Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University was expecting $7 million in National Science Foundation funding meant to train scientists and engineers with autism, but those awards have been rejected or are in limbo. “It is heartbreaking having to tell these students — who have persisted through challenges throughout their lives for the opportunity to apply their talents for their own careers but also for their country — that they aren’t so valued after all,” said Keivan Stassun, an astrophysics professor and the center’s founding director. *** “I grow ever more skeptical of a bright future for young scientists,” said Patrick Payne, 28, a data scientist at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine. He recently decided to forgo pursuing an M.D. and a Ph.D. in favor of pursuing a medical degree exclusively. “This loss of a generation and of diversity makes me question research funding overall and has pushed me away from pursuing a permanent career in research.” Of 1,200 U.S. scientists who responded to a poll conducted by the journal Nature, 75 percent said they were considering leaving the country. Countries like France, China and the Netherlands are courting them. Those who are already abroad are considering staying there, like Atticus Cummings, a 24-year-old graduate student in Barcelona who is exploring how to make buildings out of carbon-reducing materials. He’d prefer to return to the United States and build sustainable, affordable housing in his home state, Montana, but wonders if that will be feasible by the time he graduates. “My heart is in the mountains at home,” he said. The Trump administration is squandering what was a real opportunity to improve the system around federally funded science. Critics have long suggested that some labs, particularly at very prestigious institutions, are awarded too much funding that could go elsewhere and that the process behind grant applications and approvals could use more streamlining and scrutiny. But the bulldozer approach of the past several weeks means people are hatching escape plans. Unfreezing the grant process and presenting a more thoughtful plan for improving federal funding for science may assuage young people’s fears that their lives are about to be upended permanently. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Early-career scientists cannot simply migrate to the private sector. Many scientists who work at private labs got their start in academic ones, often supported by federal grants. Private donors are highly unlikely to make up the funding shortfall caused by cuts to federal grants, and the private sector isn’t designed to completely support the kind of basic research that provides young scientists with essential education and training. *** A lot of people perceive scientific research as prestigious — the smartest minds working under pristine conditions with seemingly limitless resources. In reality, it’s grueling work fueled almost entirely by devotion. When I spent a semester working as an undergraduate researcher in an immunology lab at Virginia Tech, I watched the graduate students and postdocs I worked alongside spend up to 70 hours a week toiling on projects. They spent most of the day on their feet, paying meticulous attention to their experiments and trudging from one time-consuming task to another — calibrating delicate instruments to measure faint traces of chemicals, setting up and running bacteria culture experiments governed by rigid safety protocols, cleaning supplies and lugging heavy equipment from location to location, preparing reagents the entire lab needed, analyzing data and simply keeping the laboratory clean and organized. Experiments run into obstacles and failure all the time, and researchers must devote weeks, months or even years trying to troubleshoot what went wrong so they can move to the next step. They build resilience not just against seemingly constant discouragements but also against the pressure testing of their ideas by mentors, peers and outside scientists. Success sometimes feels hardly more likely than winning the lottery. That’s why Mike Gallagher, who has worked as a research scientist for 17 years, compares the work to a blue-collar job. “You roll up your sleeves, try to make or discover something useful and then let the scientific community try to punch holes in your work to make sure that it’s sound,” he said. Young scientists stick it out because they believe deep down that the work they’re doing could make a material difference in the real world if they’re allowed to see it all the way through. And that impulse can be nurtured when they have leadership and processes that provide encouragement in spite of setbacks. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Being an early-career academic scientist does not pay very much, requires a very tough-minded attitude and generally is only worth it for people if they truly just love doing science to better understand the world and improve the quality of life for all people,” said Mr. Gallagher. In mid-February, he traveled to interview for a dream position as a tenure-tracked faculty member at a university where he’d get to lead a lab dedicated to understanding Alzheimer’s disease. When he returned home, however, he learned that amid the current funding turmoil, the hiring process had been put on hold. I couldn’t cut it as a researcher. And that’s precisely what the system is meant to do — weed out the individuals who don’t have the motivation to meet the challenges and keep competing with others. Young scientists are driven by a passion to imagine what is possible, by dreams of turning very idiosyncratic obsessions into something that stands some glimmer of a chance to change the world or, at the very least, contributes to that goal. Though that passion has been fractured, it still lives in America’s young scientists. They want to imagine a better world, and they want to pursue that dream here in the United States. If the country’s leadership continues with its plans, however, we will see the brightest minds of the next generation disappear with their dreams.

he Trump administration threatened on Thursday to withhold federal funding from public schools unless state education officials verified the elimination of all programs that it said unfairly promoted diversity, equity and inclusion. In a memo sent to top public education officials across the country, the Education Department said that funding for schools with high percentages of low-income students, known as Title I funding, was at risk pending compliance with the administration’s directive. The memo included a certification letter that state and local school officials must sign and return to the department within 10 days, even as the administration has struggled to define which programs would violate its interpretation of civil rights laws. The move is the latest in a series of Education Department directives aimed at carrying out President Trump’s political agenda in the nation’s schools. At her confirmation hearing in February, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said schools should be allowed to celebrate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But she was more circumspect when asked whether classes that focused on Black history ran afoul of Mr. Trump’s agenda and should be banned. “I’m not quite certain,” Ms. McMahon said, “and I’d like to look into it further.” More recently, the Education Department said that an “assessment of school policies and programs depends on the facts and circumstances of each case.” Programs aimed at recognizing historical events and contributions and promoting awareness would not violate the law “so long as they do not engage in racial exclusion or discrimination,” the department wrote. “However, schools must consider whether any school programming discourages members of all races from attending, either by excluding or discouraging students of a particular race or races, or by creating hostile environments based on race for students who do participate,” the Education Department said. It also noted that the Justice Department could sue for breach of contract if it found that federal funds were spent while violating civil rights laws. The administration’s view of those laws, including anti-discrimination requirements, was first raised as a potential condition for public school funding in a letter from the department on Feb. 14, two weeks before Ms. McMahon was confirmed. Editors’ Picks His Life Savings Were Mailed to Him by Paper Check. Now, It’s Gone. Timothée Chalamet Is Living a Knicks Fan’s Dream It’s Time to Put Away Your Winter Clothes. Here’s How to Store Them Safely. The letter indicated that the administration plans to enforce a Supreme Court decision in 2023 that declared race-based affirmative action programs were unlawful. That ruling did not address related issues in K-12 schools, but the department made clear in the letter that the administration was interpreting the Supreme Court’s decision “more broadly.” “At its core, the test is simple,” wrote Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department. “If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law.” His letter drew on a lawsuit from the American Federation of Teachers, the American Sociological Association and Democracy Forward, a liberal legal group, that has asked a federal judge to pre-emptively block the administration from withholding funding from schools. The plaintiffs argued that the threats in the letter would violate the academic freedom protected by the First Amendment and was so vague that it would breach the Fifth Amendment’s right to due process. “No one’s life is being made better by these unlawful and unprecedented threats against America’s public education system, its educators and students,” said Skye Perryman, president and chief executive officer of Democracy Forward, said on Thursday of the lawsuit. “Threatening teachers and sowing chaos in schools throughout America is part of Trump’s war on education.” Government-downsizing efforts led by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a top adviser to Mr. Trump, has said that it canceled 70 grants in the Education Department for D.E.I. training programs worth $373 million. In its first 11 weeks, the Trump administration has begun civil rights investigations into Denver Public Schools over an all-gender restroom in one high school, and into the state public education systems in California and Maine over policies aimed at prioritizing the safety of transgender students over requirements from unwanted disclosures to their parents. Simultaneously, Mr. Trump has insisted that the decisions about educating the nation’s schoolchildren are best left to the states. Mr. Trump has signed an executive order to begin dismantling the Education Department, which has drawn multiple lawsuits citing federal law that only Congress can shutter the agency. The federal government accounts for about 8 percent of local school funding, but the amounts vary widely. In Mississippi, for example, about 23 percent of school funding comes from federal sources, while just 7 percent of school funding in New York comes from Washington, according to the Pew Research Center. Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for overhauling the federal government, called for transferring Title I programs to the Department of Health and Human Services and phasing out the federal funding stream over a 10-year period. “Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right,” Mr. Trainor, said in a statement. “When state education commissioners accept federal funds, they agree to abide by federal anti-discrimination requirements.”

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts student detained for pro-Palestinian activity, asked a federal judge in Boston on Thursday to have her case moved to Massachusetts, where she lives and was picked up by federal agents, from Louisiana, where she is being held in an immigration detention facility. Her lawyer, Adriana Lafaille, argued that after detaining Ms. Ozturk, the government deliberately moved her to a location where it could expect a more sympathetic hearing for its case against her. The transfer was so furtive that not even the government’s own lawyers knew where she was, Ms. Lafaille, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the court. Ms. Ozturk, a doctoral candidate, was detained on March 25 near her apartment in Somerville, Mass., by federal agents in plain clothes who surrounded her, cuffed her and drove her away in an unmarked S.U.V. Footage of the encounter, captured by a surveillance camera, was viewed by millions of people, and generated outrage that Ms. Ozturk, a Turkish citizen on a student visa, had been picked up off the street even though there were no charges against her. The government was “secretly whisking her away and making sure that no one would know where she was until she was in Louisiana,” Ms. Lafaille said, adding that she believed the government was “forum shopping” a location for the trial. (Louisiana is home to one of the most conservative appeals courts in the country.) Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT She added that it was “quite unusual that even the government’s own lawyers” were not told where Ms. Ozturk was. A lawyer for the government said that Ms. Ozturk was moved out of state because there was no “bed space” at a detention center in Massachusetts to accommodate a female detainee. Mark Sauter, an assistant U.S. attorney, said she was first driven to Vermont, and then put on a 5 a.m. flight to Louisiana, an arrangement that was decided before she was picked up. “There was no attempt to manipulate jurisdiction,” Mr. Sauter said, adding that Ms. Ozturk’s lawyer learned where she was within 24 hours. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who detained her, were not trying to be deceptive, Mr. Sauter said. Her lawyer not knowing where she was, he said, was “not the same thing as ICE not being forthcoming about her location.”Ms. Ozturk’s lawyer told the judge, Denise Casper, that a case might also be made for moving the jurisdiction to Vermont, since she had first been transferred there. Ms. Ozturk is one of many international students whom the Trump administration has threatened to deport, as part of a crackdown on antisemitism at campuses across the country. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, confirmed that her visa was revoked, saying, “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.” The government has not made clear what evidence it has against her. She is included on a website, Canary Mission, run by an anonymous group that says it is dedicated to fighting antisemitism on campus. Pro-Palestinian activists say the group is harassing them. The website links to an opinion essay written by Ms. Ozturk and others and published in the student newspaper, urging Tufts to divest from Israel and citing “plausible” evidence that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. The president of Tufts, Sunil Kumar, supported Ms. Ozturk in a statement on Wednesday. He said she was a student in good standing whose research focused on how young adults could use social media in a positive way. “The university has no information to support the allegations that she was engaged in activities at Tufts that warrant her arrest and detention,” the statement said, adding that she was a “valued member of the community.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Kumar went on to say that Ms. Ozturk’s opinion piece did not violate any university policies and was consistent with its rules governing freedom of speech. As far as school officials knew, no complaints about it had been lodged inside or outside the university. In other high-profile cases, Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and permanent resident, was picked up by federal agents in his apartment building near the campus and likewise detained in Louisiana. On Tuesday, a New Jersey federal judge ruled that Mr. Khalil’s case would remain in New Jersey, where he was being held when his lawyers filed their habeas corpus petition demanding his release. The government is also seeking to deport Yunseo Chung, a Columbia undergraduate and permanent resident who immigrated from South Korea when she was a child. Human Rights Watch denounced the campaign to deport students on Thursday, saying it was “creating a climate of fear on campuses across the country.”

Almost all the employees of the Wilson Center, a prominent nonpartisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, were placed on leave on Thursday and blocked from their work email accounts as Elon Musk’s task force quickly shut down most of the center. About 130 employees received orders telling them not to return to the office after the end of the day, according to an email reviewed by The New York Times and people with direct knowledge of the actions. The Wilson Center employees are to be paid while on leave but will be fired soon, in line with what has happened at other institutions that Mr. Musk’s workers have dismantled in recent weeks. Only five employees will remain — a president, two federal employees and two researchers on fellowships. Those positions are mandated in the center’s congressional charter. The cuts align with an executive order President Trump signed in March. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Private donations to the center will be returned to the donors, according to a person familiar with the center who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. It was not clear what would be done with the center’s endowment. On Thursday afternoon, dozens of employees carried boxes and bags filled with papers, plants and posters out of the center’s offices in the Ronald Reagan Building, which houses several government agency offices. Tears glistened on the face of one woman as she departed. Workers wheeled out carts full of documents. It was not clear on Thursday how the offices will be used, but the center’s charter requires the space to be part of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial. On Monday, four members of the Musk team entered the center’s offices and began taking over its systems. The next day, the center’s president, Mark Green, resigned.The Trump White House fired the center’s board members in recent weeks, one person briefed on the events said. Mr. Green, a former Republican congressman and ambassador, was told this week he would be fired if he did not resign, another person said. The White House declined to comment. Mr. Musk’s government-overhauling workers have gutted several other institutions in Washington, including the United States Agency for International Development. They have shut down centers that receive federal funding but that have done independent research for decades with the goal of giving nonideological expert assessments to policymakers, lawmakers and people outside government. The Wilson Center, created in 1968 as a working memorial to honor the 28th president, Woodrow Wilson, receives about 30 percent of its funding from Congress; the rest comes from private donations. The center has been run by former Democratic and Republican officials appointed by the board. Before Mr. Green, who led U.S.A.I.D. in the first Trump administration, became president and chief executive of the center in 2021, Jane Harman, a former Democratic congresswoman from California, ran the think tank. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The center has been a gathering place for scholars in all areas of foreign policy over the decades. It houses the personal library of George F. Kennan, the diplomat and policymaker who studied the Soviet Union. On Thursday, the director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, Michael Kimmage, posted photos of the library online and compared it to the library of ancient Alexandria, which “fell victim to political vicissitudes and war,” he wrote. One question is what will happen to those materials and extensive digital archives that the Wilson Center has compiled. Researchers from around the world have used the archives for projects, and scholars especially value the center’s records of documents from the Cold War era. A person familiar with the center said that it also housed historical records from Wilson’s campaign and presidency. The center’s more than 50 fellows were expected to be paid until the end of their program, but those who are foreign citizens expect to have their visas canceled. Two of the fellows are at the center through a program for scholars whose work endangers them in their home countries, according to a person familiar with the center. Each class of fellows is usually made up of academic researchers and one or more journalists working on book projects. Reporters from The New York Times have received fellowships. A Trump administration official said that Natasha Jacome, a senior adviser to Mr. Green, was the center’s new president.

Mallory McMorrow has been considered an up-and-comer in the Democratic Party since 2022, when she went viral after a speech responding to Republican attacks that she was a "groomer" for supporting trans kids. On April 2, the Michigan state senator announced she is launching a campaign for the U.S. Senate seat that will be vacated by the retiring Democratic incumbent Gary Peters. "We need new leaders," McMorrow, 38, says in a video announcing her candidacy. "Because the same people in D.C. who got us into this mess are not going to be the ones to get us out of it." TIME spoke to McMorrow earlier in March, as she was contemplating a Senate run, about her party's messaging mistakes, the story the Democrats should be telling, and how to reclaim the American dream. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. So what went wrong for the Democrats, and how can they fix it? I think people just do not know what Democrats stand for and what Democrats are actually going to do for them. And I don't know if it's PTSD, I don't know if it's just struggling with how to manage this moment, but watching Democrats fall back into talking exclusively about what Donald Trump is doing and what Elon Musk is doing, it does not give the alternative vision or a reason to positively vote for Democrats. I think at this point everybody knows who Donald Trump is. We need to say who we are and what we stand for, and we haven't done that. What do you think is the positive vision? What is the reason to vote for Democrats? Democrats fight for the American dream. The idea that if you work hard, you get a good education— which should be available no matter where you are—you will be able to have a good life, afford to buy a house and raise a family, and in a place like Michigan, maybe have a place up north and go on vacation. We've just lost that universal value. We're the first generation that did worse than our parents. And I think people just are so angry with the idea that, ‘I did everything right, and I still can't afford anything, and I am never going to get to where I want to be.’ Democrats have to show that that is what we stand for, and we will fight for you, at a moment when the Republicans are just once again giving massive tax breaks to billionaires. So how specifically should Democrats do that? You have to do contrast, and that isn't just to say, ‘Donald Trump is bad.’ Something that has been really frustrating for me is watching Democratic messaging talk about things like tax cuts for billionaires as if it is just free money that falls out of the sky. We have to made it abundantly clear: these are our taxpayer dollars as Michiganders that go to Washington, and then the Republicans are turning around... and giving your money to Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. This is reverse Robin Hood at its grossest. And what Democrats want to do—we've been doing this here in Michigan—is we expanded the earned income tax credit. We have vastly expanded childcare. We passed the first permanent funding in the state budget to expand housing units across the state. We are on the path to universal pre-K. We recognize that for a lot of people, the American dream is no longer an option, and we are fighting to make sure that you have good schools, you have enough housing, you have solid infrastructure so that you can realize the American dream again. What do you wish Democrats would stop talking about? I wish Democrats would stop talking about Donald Trump in extremes. Throughout a lot of the 2024 election, the message from Democrats was, ‘Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy, and he is a fascist, and if you vote for him, democracy will end.’ And the perception that people took away is that that means it will end immediately. And then when you turn around and you're attending the State of the Union and maybe you're wearing a pink blazer, but you're still there, and you're treating it like somewhat normal, you are losing trust with people because you are perceived as the boy who cried wolf. The last time the Democrats had a robust internal policy debate, it was about health care during the 2020 election. What issue should be at the core of the Democrats agenda moving forward? Talking exclusively about healthcare was too in the weeds. I really focus on the American dream because it is that aspirational vision that I think people are missing. Healthcare is just one piece of it. Everybody wants to know that they can afford to go to the doctor, or if they have an emergenc they can go to the ER and not end up bankrupt. But there's a lot more to life than that. It feels like Democratic messaging is always about the bare minimum. I constantly get draft mailers in my office that say things like, ‘Democrats are fighting so you could put food on the table.’ That is the bare minimum. That is not aspirational. And I think that has left a massive vacuum where, you may not like Donald Trump or Elon Musk, but there is something aspirational to the idea that if I work hard enough, I want to be rich. And look, they're rich and successful, and maybe we should have them in charge. What's the story that Democrats should be telling? We are dealing with an Administration who for the next few years is going to be robbing from you, taking your hard-earned dollars to give it to the wealthiest. They are robbing you of your American dream. And the reason to change in the next two years, in the next four years, is to get that future back for you. Most people are tired of how chaotic and crazy everything is, and they just want it to be normal. So if you can present a very normal, very American future to people, that's really appealing. I can tell you, based on the reaction on the ground right now, regardless of party, people are anxious and angry, and that's not sustainable. I think that if you look at the results of the 2024 election and how and where Democrats lost, it wasn't just with one group of people. It was small enough numbers of people across every single demographic, across every county, across every state, you know, basically every age bracket, except black women. Which said to me that even if you are somebody who's struggling to put food on the table, your aspiration is still the same as everybody else. Your aspiration is not, 'Well, I just want to pay the bills and put food on the table.' It's, 'I want to be able to work myself out of this situation to where I have a house in a great community and my kid is going to a great school.' We spend too much time just talking about the individual policy pieces that impact the most vulnerable, when really the message is universal and the same. And Democratic messaging too often talks about people's worries. And I think it keeps people in that state of anxiety. People want to be comfortable. You came to national prominence for the floor speech you gave about defending trans kids. Now the landscape around that issue has changed a bit, and some Democrats are questioning whether putting trans equality so close to the center of their priorities has alienated people, or has been a mistake. What do you think about that? I think that that's bull---t, because Democrats did not make these issues the center of our agenda. Republicans made it the center of Democrats' agenda. Donald Trump spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on one ad: 'Kamala Harris is for they/them and Donald Trump is for you,' right? Where I think Democrats go wrong is taking the bait and falling into the trap. I think the right answer in this moment is to say, unequivocally: yes, sports should be fair, but is that an issue that a politician should be deciding? In the same way that a politician should be deciding whether or not you have reproductive rights and what you can do with your own body? No, I think that a local sports governing body is the best place to make those decisions. Where Democrats have fallen short is taking the bait and falling into the trap and debating whether or not trans people have a right to exist and instead of just saying this is not a decision for politicians in Washington. It's just not. Sports should be fair. And the ultimate decider on whether or not a sport is fair is the governing body of that sport, period. The fear that I have, and I say this very candidly as a woman who has a deeper voice, is that [this debate] is opening the door to be very dangerous for girls. That if you don't look a certain way, and if you don't sound a certain way, or you present in a way that somebody deems is not feminine enough, that they're gonna examine your genitals before you can play a sport. I'm sorry, that is terrifying and disgusting to me, and that is the path that this is going down. You know, I have a square jaw and a deep voice, and there are no shortage of people online who've posted pictures of me and they accuse me of being a man. So I'm on the receiving end of a lot of what girls would face if what Republicans are proposing became law and normalized.

The Trump administration has abruptly laid off the entire staff running a $4.1 billion program to help low-income households across the United States pay their heating and cooling bills. The firings threaten to paralyze the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which was created by Congress in 1981 and helps to offset high utility bills for roughly 6.2 million people from Maine to Texas during frigid winters and hot summers. “They fired everybody, there’s nobody left to do anything,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which works with states to secure funding from the program. “Either this was incredibly sloppy, or they intend to kill the program altogether.” The layoffs were part of a broader purge on Monday of approximately 10,000 employees from the Department of Health and Human Services, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. moved to drastically reorganize the agency. Roughly 25 employees had been overseeing the energy assistance program, which is also known as LIHEAP. All had been laid off, Mr. Wolfe said. Congress had approved $4.1 billion for the program for fiscal year 2025, and about 90 percent of that money had already been sent to states in October to help households struggling with high heating costs. There is still about $378 million left to assist with summer cooling as households crank up their air-conditioners. Heat waves in the United States are growing more intense and lasting longer as a result of climate change. Normally, the federal government sends the money to state agencies after allocating the funds using a complicated formula and performing various reviews and audits. Some states, like Maine, use the money to help low-income families to offset the cost of buying fuel oil to heat their homes in the winter. States also use the money to weatherize homes and provide emergency assistance to households at risk of being disconnected from their utility. Now, it’s not clear how the remaining funds could be disbursed to the states, even though Congress has explicitly ordered the federal government to spend the money. “If there’s no staff, how do you allocate the rest of this money?” Mr. Wolfe said. “My fear is that they’ll say we’ve got this funding, but there’s nobody left to administer it, so we can’t send it out.” In an emailed statement, Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the agency “will continue to comply” with federal law “and as a result of the reorganization, will be better positioned to execute on Congress’s statutory intent.” Over the past two months, the Trump administration has repeatedly tried to freeze or withhold spending authorized by Congress. Those moves have triggered a growing number of legal challenges and judicial rulings that say doing so is unconstitutional. The firings at the energy assistance office triggered a furious response from several Democratic lawmakers. “What ‘efficiency’ is achieved by firing everyone in Maine whose job is to help Mainers afford heating oil when it’s cold?,” Representative Jared Golden, a Democrat who represents a largely rural district in Maine that voted for President Trump, wrote in a social media post. Senator Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he would work to try to unlock the program’s funding. “Eliminating the entire federal staff responsible for LIHEAP — a program that millions of households depend on to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer — isn’t reform,” he said in a statement. “It’s sabotage.” The office of Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, issued a statement saying: “Senator Collins has been a longtime advocate for LIHEAP and the critical financial assistance it provides to lower income families to help ensure that they can stay warm during the winter months. It is unclear how, and if, the administration of this program will be affected by the HHS staffing changes.” A study published in The Economic Journal last year found that roughly 17 percent of U.S. households spend more than one-tenth of their income on energy, a threshold that researchers often define as a “severe” energy burden. The study also found a strong relationship between energy affordability and winter mortality. “When home heating is less affordable, more people die each winter,” Seema Jayachandran, an economist at Princeton and one of the authors of the study, wrote on Monday. “That’s what our analysis found for a period when LIHEAP was in place. Without LIHEAP, the effect would presumably much larger.”

Employees of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) knew that mass layoffs would be coming on April 1. But many did not expect the cuts to be so deep—or the implications of the layoffs to be so potentially detrimental to the health and wellbeing of American families. The layoffs came in many formats: in emails at 5 a.m., in person when employees tried to swipe their badges at the workplace and found they were deactivated, in messages while they waited in line to try to get into their offices, according to current and former employees. Advertisement HHS first announced a “dramatic restructuring” on March 27 that would shrink HHS to 62,000 employees from 82,000, including about 10,000 layoffs and about 10,000 people who retired or resigned. In a press release, the department said that it would consolidate 28 divisions into 15 new divisions, calling the reorganization a “Transformation to Make America Healthy Again.” Included in the April 1 layoffs, according to current and former staff interviewed by TIME, were dozens of members of a division of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that oversees the safety of food, including administrative staff, project managers, HR, and communications staff. An entire division of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that oversees the cleanliness of cruise ships was apparently let go, as were staff managing the CDC’s Freedom of Information Act requests. Staff for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps keep on utilities for struggling families, were eliminated. All regional administrators for the Administration for Community Living, which oversees programs supporting older adults and people with disabilities, were relieved of their duties. Staff of five of the 10 regional offices for the Administration for Children and Families—which oversees programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (commonly known as welfare)—were laid off.