This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. The White House is trying to have it every way possible in a high-stakes dispute over its speedy deportation of hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador. It is unlikely to end tidily, which may very well have been the point all along. Witness Monday’s White House briefing, where Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had the unenviable task of simultaneously saying the administration was complying with a judge’s orders while arguing the same judge’s oral directives were not binding at all, all while also defending a senior White House aide saying on TV, when asked about those orders, “I don’t care what the judges think.” The whiplash of rhetoric seemed to carry just one commonality: the elasticity of facts and justifications. This Kafkaesque saga began late Friday, when President Donald Trump quietly signed an order availing himself of a wartime authority to carry out the mass deportations. According to the White House, 137 alleged gang members from Venezuela were sent to El Salvador, where military and law enforcement—and videographers—greeted them en route to a mega-prison that has been of major concern for human-rights advocates. Another 124 individuals were also shipped to San Salvador’s airfield under different federal laws. On Saturday, after word of the plan leaked, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg tried to block Trump from deporting the immigrants without hearings and told the administration to turn around planes carrying 261 migrants. When Boasberg told administration lawyers this, the planes were already out of U.S. airspace and, per some in the administration’s thinking, thus out of reach of the U.S. courts. By Sunday, the narrative fell into the predictable pattern of Trump allies arguing the legal merits of the exceptional executive powers remaining unchecked and the fecklessless of judges’ authorities. In the background, the nation’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, reposted a social media message from Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele about the court’s attempts to intervene that boiled-down to raw schadenfreude: “Oopsie… Too late.” Trump lawyers are citing a 1798 law as the basis for booting the migrants from the country without a day in court, although in practice the law has not been used since World War II. Legal experts are divided on whether this is in bounds, but rather than keep the fight in the courts, Trump pals seem more than eager to throw multiple explanations into the ether to see which seems to gain the most traction. At Monday’s public press briefing, Leavitt seemed to be arguing on multiple planes of reality. Any of them may have merits, but cobbled together they came across like a desperate attempt to find justification. “This administration acted within the confines of the law,” Leavitt said. Left unsaid: the arbiter of the law, Boasberg, said those migrants needed to stay in the United States. “All of the planes subject to the written order of this judge departed U.S. soil,” Leavitt said, suggesting that planes traveling internationally were beyond the judge’s reach. Left unsaid: That argument may not fly and, regardless, a judge had signaled those planes should have stayed grounded. “There’s actually questions about whether a verbal order carries the same weight … as a written order, and our lawyers are determined to ask and answer those questions in court,” Leavitt said. Left unsaid: lawyers who ignore a judge seldom fare well. The timeline is a dramatic illustration of just how dynamic the state of play remained around all this. Boasberg, at 5 p.m. on Saturday, asked when the deportations would start. The court went into a recess so government lawyers could find out. The plane took off at 5:45 p.m. At 6:52 p.m., according to a must-clip timeline of the weekend from Just Security, Boasberg ordered the planes back to U.S. runways. The migrants landed at 8:02 p.m. All the while, Trump’s aides and allies are relishing this fight. Over the weekend, Trump’s White House was fairly brazen in boasting about how it outmaneuvered a judge, with even his top policy hand on border issues openly bragging about how the courts can’t stop the administration. “We’re not stopping,” border czar Tom Homan told Fox News. “I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming.” All of which left Washington debating whether the Trump administration started all this Friday evening with the express goal of engineering a court showdown that could ultimately strengthen the executive branch’s power when it comes to immigration policy. It’s a playbook Americans may see repeatedly from this White House in the coming years: charge ahead too quickly for the courts to keep up, and trust that the administration’s lawyers and allies will keep the debate as muddy—and as disjointed—as possible.

There’s no question that the wildly popular injectable weight-loss drugs help people drop pounds, lower heart-disease risk, manage obstructive sleep apnea, and more. But as more people use these drugs, which target hormones including GLP-1, doctors are learning more about the potential downsides, as well. In the latest study published on MedRxiv—a site that hosts early research not yet peer reviewed by experts—scientists in Canada report that using GLP-1 drugs can contribute to a higher risk of hair loss, especially among women. Advertisement Dr. Mohit Sodhi, a resident in emergency medicine at University of British Columbia, and his colleagues analyzed data from just over 1,900 people who were prescribed semaglutide and 1,300 who were prescribed bupropion-naltrexone—an older obesity treatment known as Contrave. Semaglutide is the compound in the drugs Ozempic, which treats diabetes, and Wegovy, which treats obesity. Sodhi focused only on people taking Wegovy to treat overweight or obesity to avoid any potential confounding effects of diabetes on hair loss. He and his team then compared the diagnoses for hair loss in these patients’ medical records and found that those prescribed semaglutide had a 50% higher risk of being diagnosed with a hair-loss condition compared to those prescribed Contrave. That risk was twice as high for women as for men. Read More: The Health Risks and Benefits of Weight-Loss Drugs

Here’s a nightmare scenario: You’re in the emergency room of a busy hospital and victims of accidents, disasters and diseases are streaming in. Nurses and doctors huddle around computer monitors displaying patients’ heart rates and oxygen levels. Suddenly, the screens go dark. Someone is going through the building pulling all the plugs. This is happening now to the monitors tracking the Earth’s vital signs. As Trump administration operatives from what has been called the Department of Government Efficiency race through federal agencies firing staffers, freezing funds and canceling leases on facilities — purportedly to eliminate waste — they are effectively powering off systems that track mounting environmental dangers, from weather balloons to air pollution monitors to radar stations to atmospheric observatories. Their chain-saw-waving approach to cost-cutting will only leave us blind as we head deeper into the 21st-century maelstrom of supercharged hurricanes, extreme heat waves and toxic wildfire smoke. Right now, satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are capturing real-time images of the weather churning across the planet’s surface. The agency’s ocean buoys and radar systems help the Coast Guard perform rescues and fishermen navigate shifting tides and currents. Those instruments need humans to operate them. But over the past three weeks, NOAA has lost about 20 percent of its work force. Layoffs hit the satellite operations division based in Maryland, and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii. Hurricane season is right around the corner, yet staff on NOAA’s famous “Hurricane Hunters” teams, which fly into storms to measure their strength and assess their danger, were let go. The agency’s scientists help build the forecasting models used to predict what the weather will look like next week, and what your children’s climate might look like half a century from now. Farmers use the agency’s weather data to plan their crop planting and harvesting, and urban firefighters rely on it to anticipate high wind events and prepare for downed power lines and evacuations. But staffing reductions at NOAA’s National Weather Service offices have suspended the launch of weather balloons that collect wind, temperature and humidity readings from Alaska to Albany.These cuts threaten your budget, too. Insurance companies rely heavily on data gathered by NOAA and the U.S. Geological Survey to assess wildfire, flood, wind and other risks. Some firms are warning that any interruption in data availability could drive insurance premiums for customers even higher. Other layoffs at the U.S.G.S. could undermine programs that monitor drought and flood conditions, hazardous spills and sewage overflows and the health of salmon fisheries off the Pacific Coast. And then there’s air pollution. On March 4, the State Department announced that it would no longer share data gathered by air quality monitors at more than 80 U.S. embassies and consulates around the world. With that decision, another one of the government’s most effective global monitoring efforts went dark. Since the first air quality monitoring system was installed atop the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in 2008, the initiative has yielded a huge return on a modest investment by simply telling people what they’re breathing. During a particularly severe air pollution episode in November 2010, the Beijing monitor tweeted an automated message that air quality in the city had reached “crazy bad” levels. The programmers had written that message in jest, assuming that it would never be triggered because pollution levels would never get that bad. The tweet prompted news stories around the world, and the intense scrutiny helped compel China’s leaders to act. Fifteen years later, China’s air is much cleaner. From Lagos to Karachi, U.S. Embassy monitors were among the only reliable sources of information about what residents were inhaling every day. One 2022 study found that the air quality readings triggered local policies that substantially reduced particulate matter concentrations, leading to reductions in premature deaths and saving an average of $127 million per city each year. The State Department cited “budget constraints” as the reason for shuttering the program. But the researchers found that the program saved the State Department money — it more than covered its costs by reducing compensation for embassy workers’ pollution exposure. Editors’ Picks His Life Savings Were Mailed to Him by Paper Check. Now, It’s Gone. Is There a Least Bad Alcohol? Rocking Pink and Ready to Party On top of all that, there’s a federal-building fire sale underway. DOGE has begun the process of canceling leases on hundreds of federal properties housing operations for the U.S.G.S., the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and dozens of other agencies. Another property lease DOGE has slated for cancellation is for a NOAA office in Hilo, Hawaii, that operates the Mauna Loa Observatory. This research station records one of the most consequential vital signs of all: rising levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Researchers say it will be difficult to run the observatory without that office’s technical support. Canceling the lease would save $150,692 a year, DOGE claims. That means the administration’s cost-cutters are essentially gambling with people’s futures and lives, unplugging lifesaving equipment to save a bit on electricity. Federal judges recently deemed some of the Trump administration’s mass layoffs unlawful, and ordered that some fired probationary workers be temporarily reinstated across nearly 20 agencies. But the White House is telling agency heads to prepare for another large wave of staffing cuts — touted as the largest yet. Some Republican leaders are making last-minute appeals for programs and facilities to be spared. “I am thrilled to announce that common sense has prevailed,” Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the Republican head of the House Appropriations Committee, wrote on X before intervening a few days later to save the radar facility that NOAA operates in his district, which is squarely in Tornado Alley. Over the weekend, as dust storms and wildfires tore through Oklahoma and dozens of deadly tornadoes struck Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri, that facility issued lifesaving warnings. The storms have killed at least 36 people, but more would surely have perished without the advance alerts provided by the agency’s satellites and staff — a reminder of just how essential these weather centers are. But ad hoc protection of single weather centers is not an efficient way to run a government. In the 21st century, with rising temperatures, rapidly intensifying storms and growing pandemic risks, we’re all in Tornado Alley. Common sense tells us that we need all the sentinels we have, and then some.

Harvard announced on Monday that it plans to offer free tuition for students whose families earn $200,000 and below, making it the latest elite school to expand financial aid after the Supreme Court banned the use of racial preferences in college admissions. The plan with the new income cap will take effect starting this fall. Previously at Harvard, only families with incomes under $85,000 were offered free tuition. The median household income in the United States is about $80,000. In addition to boosting diversity, the move could serve to improve the school’s image as higher education is under assault by the Trump administration and growing unpopular with Americans who have lost confidence in education. The University of Pennsylvania announced last November that it would offer free tuition for students from families making under $200,000. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology also announced a $200,000 cutoff then, similar to a plan offered by Caltech. Other universities have also increased their financial aid limits in the past year, including Dartmouth, the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina. The Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action led to declines in the number of Black and Hispanic students at many schools, including Harvard. Last fall, the proportion of Black first-year students enrolled at Harvard declined to 14 percent from 18 percent the previous year, while Hispanic students’ enrollment increased slightly. The ruling has posed a dilemma for schools that have argued that diversity is important, but that are now under intense scrutiny from the Trump administration, which is seeking to eliminate diversity efforts. Richard Kahlenberg, director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, said that improving financial aid packages makes sense for colleges that are looking to attract more Black and Hispanic students, since race and income are often intertwined. “Now that universities can no longer employ racial preferences, if they want racial diversity, the best path forward is to boost the chances of admissions of nonwealthy and working-class students, a disproportionate share of whom are Black and Hispanic,” Dr. Kahlenberg said in an email. “To get such students to apply, and then to enroll, requires generous financial aid.” In making the financial aid announcement, Alan M. Garber, Harvard’s president, mentioned neither the Supreme Court decision nor the White House’s ongoing assault on elite universities, which has resulted in dramatic funding cuts at many schools that receive federal dollars. But he referred to the value of bringing a cross-section of people together. “Putting Harvard within financial reach for more individuals widens the array of backgrounds, experiences and perspectives that all of our students encounter, fostering their intellectual and personal growth,” Dr. Garber said in the announcement. “By bringing people of outstanding promise together to learn with and from one another, we truly realize the tremendous potential of the university.” The annual cost of attending Harvard, including tuition and housing, was almost $83,000 this school year. In addition to offering free tuition to students with family incomes up to $200,000, Harvard said that students from families that make under $100,000 will pay for practically nothing. For those students, Harvard will cover tuition, fees, food, housing, travel costs between campus and home, event fees and activities, and health insurance, if needed. The university will also pay for “winter gear” to help students brace against harsh winters on Harvard’s Cambridge, Mass., campus, along with a $2,000 “start-up” grant. Harvard’s announcement said that in addition to tuition, students from families making up to $200,000 could be eligible for extra financial aid, depending on their circumstances. The university also said that some students from families making more than $200,000 could be eligible for some forms of financial aid, depending on their family’s situation. Harvard said it spent $275 million on financial aid this year, but did not have an estimate of how much its new plan will cost. Just over half of Harvard’s undergraduates received financial aid, the school said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The push to expand financial aid as schools compete for students comes at a precarious time in higher education. Harvard’s announcement comes within days of the school saying that it would freeze hiring to gird against White House threats of funding cuts and tax increases. Major cuts in international health and agricultural programs funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development have led to hundreds of layoffs at universities around the country, most notably Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Wealthy universities are also wary of various proposals by congressional Republicans to increase the endowment tax on Harvard and other schools. Some have said that could hurt their efforts to offer financial aid. Currently, the annual investment income earned by the endowment is taxed at 1.4 percent. Vice President JD Vance has proposed raising it to as much as 35 percent. (Mr. Vance himself received a generous financial aid package to attend Yale Law School.) The Trump administration also moved to cap overhead reimbursements on National Institutes of Health grants to 15 percent, which could cut hundreds of millions of dollars that schools have come to rely on to cover facilities and staff. That proposal is being challenged in courts. The overhead rates normally vary depending on the grant recipients, but in some cases, they provide up to 60 percent of the grant in additional reimbursements.

The first legal battle for Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia University graduate who was arrested and moved to Louisiana last week, is the fight to keep his case in New York. The issue may seem minor compared with the First Amendment concerns raised by the arrest of Mr. Khalil, a legal permanent resident who was a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the Columbia campus and whom the Trump administration is seeking to deport. But where Mr. Khalil’s case is heard could have profound consequences, not just for him but for anyone else the White House targets for removal from the United States. If Mr. Khalil remains in Louisiana, his case is likely to end up in one of the nation’s most conservative appeals courts, which could determine whether the law the government has cited as the rationale for his detention is allowed to stand. The White House has accused Mr. Khalil of siding with Hamas terrorists during the Columbia protests and spreading antisemitism. That accusation, which Mr. Khalil’s lawyers deny, is not criminal, and in fact, Mr. Khalil has not been charged with any crime. Instead, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, has cited a little-used law to justify the detention. The measure says Mr. Rubio can initiate deportation proceedings against any noncitizen whose presence in the United States he deems a threat to the country’s foreign policy aims. That law, which would seem to grant the Trump administration almost unchecked power in deporting noncitizens, appears not to have been reviewed by an appeals court, which could determine whether it is constitutional. And if Mr. Khalil’s immigration case plays out in Louisiana, it will most likely be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which presides over federal court cases that come from Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi. It is one of the country’s most conservative appeals courts. Most of its judges were nominated by Republican presidents, including six by President Trump during his first term.“The Fifth Circuit is the court I’d least want to be in if I were Khalil,” said Steve Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University’s law school who studies constitutional issues and has written about Mr. Khalil’s case. He added, “It is a court where immigrants in general have a historically poor track record, and it’s a court in which judges are going to be most sympathetic to the government’s ability to point at someone and say, ‘You supported Hamas.’” If judges in that court were to decide against Mr. Khalil, he could appeal to the Supreme Court. But there is no guarantee that the justices in Washington would take his case, and even if they did and found in his favor, the government is likely to continue to revoke green cards in the interim, citing the same statute that informs Mr. Khalil’s case. Other detainees might have little legal basis to fight the government’s accusations. On the other hand, if Mr. Khalil’s immigration case was to play out in New York — where his lawyers first called for his release — any appeal would arrive at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. That court includes more judges appointed by Democratic presidents and is widely considered a less partisan venue. And in the meantime, Mr. Khalil, if he was released, would have access to his family. His wife, Noor Abdalla, is expecting a baby next month. On Monday, Mr. Khalil’s lawyers also sought to stop the Trump administration from detaining and deporting others under the same justification. They asked the New York judge overseeing his case, Jesse Furman, to prohibit the government from enforcing what they called a policy of arresting, detaining and deporting noncitizens who expressed support for Palestinian rights or criticized Israel. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request to comment on that characterization or on the lawyers’ move. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers have sought his release and return to New York from almost the moment he was arrested, on the evening of March 8. The timing of his arrest and transfer to Louisiana is key to understanding their case. Video of the arrest filmed by Ms. Abdalla and released by the American Civil Liberties Union shows that agents from the Department of Homeland Security handcuffed Mr. Khalil in the lobby of his apartment building, which is owned by Columbia. After his wife, holding back tears, repeatedly asked where Mr. Khalil was being taken, the agents responded “26 Federal Plaza,” the address of New York’s downtown immigration court. Amy Greer, one of Mr. Khalil’s lawyers, was told the same thing. Ms. Greer worked through the night on a legal filing known as a habeas petition, a vehicle for challenging unlawful detentions. Occasionally, she checked an online locator to make sure of Mr. Khalil’s location. At 1:35 a.m. on March 9 and again at 4:29 a.m., the locator said that Mr. Khalil was in New York. She filed her petition at 4:40 a.m. in a New York federal court, where it was assigned to Judge Furman. But the government has since said that Mr. Khalil arrived in New Jersey more than an hour before that. He was taken there, they say, because the New York facility does not have beds or overnight medical staff, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy dictates that no detainee should be held in such a facility for longer than 12 hours. Around noon on March 9, Mr. Khalil was brought back into New York, to Kennedy International Airport. He was then flown to Dallas and then to Louisiana, where he has been held since. The following day, Judge Furman ordered the government not to remove Mr. Khalil from the country. There is no indication that the government has ignored the judge as it may have in other recent deportation cases. Mr. Khalil’s first hearing in immigration court is scheduled for March 27. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The arguments in front of Judge Furman have piled up, with Mr. Khalil’s lawyers imploring the judge to return their client to New York and the government insisting that the proper venue for his case is the district in which he is being held. The law that dictates where a case is heard is complex. The government has argued that, particularly since Mr. Khalil’s lawyers did not file their petition in the appropriate court, any detention case should be heard in Louisiana. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers have argued that the government frustrated Ms. Greer’s efforts to file her petition in the right place. Accordingly, they argue, the law says that his case should be heard in New York. Judge Furman could rule as early as Monday. He has insisted that he has no view on the issues at play in the case — which include core concerns about First Amendment rights amid Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown and vow to fight antisemitism — but has acknowledged their importance. If Judge Furman decides the case should not be heard in New York, Mr. Khalil’s lawyers have asked for the opportunity to transfer it to New Jersey. If the case were to play out there, any appeal would be heard in yet another appeals court — the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit — and Mr. Khalil would be closer to his family.

The Department of Homeland Security said on Monday that it had deported a Brown University professor and doctor with a valid visa because they said she attended a Hezbollah leader’s funeral in February during a trip to Lebanon. When questioned by Customs and Border Protection officers upon her return to the United States, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, who is Lebanese, “openly admitted” her support for the leader, Hassan Nasrallah, according to a Homeland Security spokeswoman. Dr. Alawieh was detained at Boston Logan International Airport on Thursday. “A visa is a privilege not a right,” the spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement to The New York Times. “Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is common-sense security.” The department did not say how it knew that Dr. Alawieh had attended the funeral, which was held in a sports stadium and attracted tens of thousands of people. It also did not respond to questions about whether Dr. Alawieh has been accused of a crime or immigration violation. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Stephanie Marzouk, a lawyer representing a member of Dr. Alawieh’s family, did not respond to an interview request on Monday. Late on Sunday, a team of lawyers from the firm of Arnold & Porter, who had been set to represent the family, withdrew from the case, telling the court their decision was made “as a result of further diligence.” The federal judge overseeing the case decided to postpone a hearing in the case on Monday after Ms. Marzouk requested more time to prepare. She represents Dr. Alawieh’s cousin, Yara Chehab, who brought the case first to try to stop the government from deporting Dr. Alawieh, and then to seek her return to the United States. Michael Sady, an assistant United States Attorney, filed a new motion in the case on Monday morning, according to the court docket. That filing and others have been sealed. Dr. Alawieh, 34, is a Lebanese citizen who had traveled to her home country last month. She was detained on Thursday when she returned from that trip to the United States, according to a court complaint filed by Ms. Chehab. The judge in the case, Leo T. Sorokin of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, ordered the government on Friday evening to provide the court with 48 hours’ notice before deporting Dr. Alawieh. But at that time she was apparently already aboard a plane that was sitting on the tarmac in Boston, about to take off for Paris on her way to Lebanon. According to the court docket, the government said on Monday that it was not aware of Judge Sorokin’s order when Dr. Alawieh’s plane took off. But Clare Saunders, one of the lawyers who was initially involved in the case, said in an affidavit filed over the weekend that she was at the airport Friday evening and had informed Customs and Border Protection officers of the judge’s order before the flight departed. Ms. Saunders is with Arnold & Porter, the firm that withdrew from the case on Sunday night. Dr. Alawieh graduated from the American University of Beirut in 2015. Three years later, she came to the United States, where she held medical fellowships at the Ohio State University and the University of Washington, and then worked as a resident at Yale. While she was in Lebanon visiting relatives, the American consulate issued her an H1-B visa, the kind for foreign workers with specialized skills. Before that, she had a J-1 visa, a type used by some foreign students. A spokesman for Brown University, Brian Clark, said, “We continue to seek to learn more about what has happened.” There is a shortage of American doctors working in Dr. Alawieh’s area of specialty, transplant nephrology. Foreign-born physicians play an important role in the field, according to experts. Fear over immigration status could “harm the pipeline even more,” said Dr. George Bayliss, who works in the Brown Medicine kidney transplant program with Dr. Alawieh. Her patients included individuals awaiting transplants and those dealing with the complex conditions that can occur after a transplant, Dr. Bayliss said. He called Dr. Alawieh “a very talented, very thoughtful physician.” He also said he had not discussed politics with her. In a letter on Sunday to members of the university community, Brown’s administration advised foreign students to “consider postponing or delaying personal travel outside the United States until more information is available from the U.S. Department of State.”

Duke University’s men’s basketball success over the years—the national championships, the Final Four appearances, all the NBA players who’ve honed their craft down in Durham—has created a blue-chip brand. It’s also spawned that most uniquely American sports specimen: the Dukie everyone loves to hate. Christian Laettner, the 6-ft. 11-in. sharpshooter with the matinee hair and icy stare, won back-to-back March Madness titles with Duke in 1991 and 1992, but once stomped his foot on a Kentucky player during an Elite Eight game, and was the subject of a documentary called, fittingly, I Hate Christian Laettner. Shooting guard Grayson Allen, now a member of the Phoenix Suns, gained a reputation for tripping people; big man Kyle Filipowski, a rookie for the Utah Jazz, caught flak for the same last season, when he tripped a player from Duke archrival North Carolina, though he said the incident was unintentional. JJ Reddick, the current head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, got under the skin of opponents and fans alike as a Duke All-American in the mid-aughts. Nineties point guard Steve Wojciechowski’s signature move was slapping the floor when getting ready to guard an opponent, to show the world he was rarin’ to go. But as the NCAA men’s tournament tips off on March 18 with the “First Four” play-in games, and the round-of-64 bracket gets going on March 20, basketball fans will have a new Duke star to watch–one they might actually like. Hoping to lead the powerhouse to its first national title in a decade is freshman Cooper Flagg, the 18-year-old Duke phenom who’s the most exciting do-it-all player to compete in college basketball since Kevin Durant spent his freshman year at Texas nearly two decades ago. And unlike some of his predecessors, Flagg, the likely national college player of the year who’s also the consensus top pick in the 2025 NBA Draft—in the very likely case he decides to go pro—seems more inclined to let his talent do the talking. Just take a peek at his March 5 performance against Wake Forest, in what was likely his final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, Duke’s iconic home gym: in Duke’s 93-60 victory, the 6-ft. 9-in. Flagg scored 28 points to go along with 8 rebounds, 7 assists, 3 blocks, and a couple of steals. He displayed his full arsenal: driving in the lane and finishing with his left—or weak—hand, a one-legged mid-range step-back jump-shot, a three-pointer dribbling to his left, a three-pointer moving to his right, spinning and dishing to the open man, a crossover dribble and two-handed slam on a fast break, and more. Flagg had every right to flaunt his superior ability, and taunt his opponent, in one instance earlier this year, when he absolutely posterized Guillermo Diaz Graham, a 7-ft. junior from Pittsburgh, with a one-handed jam at Cameron. He did come face-to-face with Diaz Graham for a brief tick after the dunk—a perfectly human reaction, especially since Diaz Graham also fouled him on the play–but that was more because Diaz Graham was standing in Flagg’s way while he moved toward the adoring crowd. “What I would say about Cooper Flagg is that he has an appropriate ego,” says USA men’s basketball national team director Sean Ford, who watched Flagg dominate a scrimmage against the 2024 U.S. Olympic team in Las Vegas last summer. Flagg hadn’t even turned 18 when he hit a three-pointer in Anthony Davis’ face. “He knows how good he is. But he also doesn’t try to be flamboyant about it,” says Ford. “He plays as hard as he can. He brings everything he has. That’s what makes you want to root for him.” A Duke Blue Devil to cheer for? My word. Flagg’s unlikely trajectory also makes him appealing. He’s from Maine, the only contiguous state to never have a school in the men’s Division 1 NCAA tournament. The last Maine native selected in the NBA Draft was Jeff Turner, 41 years ago, by the New Jersey Nets–and he grew up in Florida. Flagg and his twin brother Ace—a high school senior who has committed to play at the University of Maine next year—were born and raised in Pine Tree State. Their parents, Kelly and Ralph, both played collegiately in Maine: Kelly at the University of Maine, Ralph at Eastern Maine Community College. (Kelly, who had some choice words for North Carolina fans after Duke's 82-69 win over the Tar Heels on March 8, may be the trash-talker of the family.) On the high school travel circuit, Cooper Flagg eschewed the more nationally dominant club teams to suit up, along with his brother and their buddies, for Maine United. The team thrived in front of college coaches during summer showcase tournaments. “There were a lot of doubters, because Maine doesn't have that history of producing NBA players,” says Matt MacKenzie, Flagg’s Maine-based basketball trainer. “It took some time for people to really believe in the hype. Any time that we put an expectation on him, he just continued to blow it out of the water.” Advertisement At Duke, he’s filled the stat sheet all season, averaging 19.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 4.2 assists per game. On the defensive side of the ball, he’s also averaged 1.5 steals per game, with 1.3 blocks. Duke is 28-3, and finished 19-1 in Atlantic Coast Conference play. “He’s going to be a coach’s dream in the league,” says Chris Brickley, a basketball trainer who’s worked out Flagg as well as many prominent NBA stars, such as Durant, LeBron James, Jimmy Butler, Donovan Mitchell, and Carmelo Anthony. That league, of course, is the NBA, which Flagg will almost certainly join this summer. As Flagg was subbed out of the last home game of Duke’s season, the Cameron faithful serenated him with cheers of “One more year! One more year!” Flagg responded by yelling to the crowd, “Run it back!” Flagg has expressed a desire to return to Duke—by all accounts, he’s enjoying the college experience. And now that college athletes can earn lucrative Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deals—Flagg has sponsorship agreements with New Balance, Gatorade, and Fanatics, among others, and reportedly makes a healthy seven figures—a sophomore season at Duke could pay dividends. But he’s bound to make much more in the NBA—his second contract in the league could be worth close to $400 million. Why risk that windfall by returning to college another year and possibly getting hurt? Advertisement “I think he’s going to go and enter the NBA draft,” says MacKenzie, who has continued to work with Flagg during his freshman year at Duke. “Right now his goal is to make a Final Four and win an NCAA championship. He just doesn't want to look too far beyond that.” Flagg sprained his left ankle in the ACC tournament quarterfinal against Georgia Tech on March 13. He missed the next two games, which Duke won. Duke confirmed, however, that he would be ready to play in the first round against Mount St. Mary's on Friday. Hoops is a star-driven sport, and one of the most highly touted NBA prospects ever going on a deep run, for a team like Duke—a draw for both supporters and haters—is sure to brighten up March. Duke’s third-year coach Jon Scheyer, who’s been tasked with the difficult job of succeeding the all-time winningest coach in men’s college basketball history, Mike Krzyzewski, is forging his own path with the likable Flagg.

Earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) head, Lee Zeldin announced 31 actions aimed at rolling back a number of significant environmental regulations—including reconsidering restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, rolling back vehicle emission standards aimed at accelerating the transition to EVs, and pushing to challenge a 2009 “endangerment finding” that determined greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide and methane are a threat to public health. The agency called it the “greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history.” Legal experts say it's a marked departure from the agency’s historic purpose to protect human health and the environment. “It's an all out assault on climate regulation and environmental and public health protections,” says Michael Burger, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. However, the announcement does not mean that the EPA has legal authority to institute the proposed rollbacks, experts say. “It is not within the authority of an agency to take action or to push through decisions that are directly and diametrically opposed to its mandate and the reason it was created,” says Nikki Reisch, director of Climate and Energy at the Center for International Environmental Law. While each administration has flexibility in how they enforce agency regulations, the process of outright repealing regulations is more complicated, Reisch notes. “Merely making these pronouncements from up high does not change the law,” she says. “It doesn't change the statutes that exist to protect clean air and clean water, and to protect the health of people throughout this country.” In order to roll back a rule or regulation, the EPA would have to go through a process defined in the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires federal agencies to publish notices of proposed and final rules, and provide plenty of opportunity for the public to comment on those proposed changes. “One of the signature and most important features of the process is that the agency has to make clear what it intends or proposes to do and why,” says Reisch. “It can't just disregard these and steamroll ahead with what it intended, without explaining how it has considered and addressed those comments and why it is or isn't taking them into account. And that can be a really important opportunity for the public to send a strong signal to an agency that something matters.” As part of the process, the agency would have to back its proposal with scientific evidence. Among the most significant changes the agency has proposed is a reconsideration of a 2009 finding that determined greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to public health—a finding that laid the foundation for much of the work the EPA has been able to do in the last 15 years. Advertisement To undo the finding, the agency would have to show that the scientific evidence is incorrect—disproving a globally accepted fact. Pollutants from greenhouse gasses reduce air quality, which increases individual risk for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. “They have to [prove] the previous determination, that greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change and endanger public health and welfare, was wrong or was not based on sufficient scientific evidence. And there's no basis for that. The science is quite clear, and the consensus is global,” says Burger. Experts say that any attempted rollbacks will likely be litigated, and, given the scientific evidence against the agency’s proposals, courts are not likely to rule in the administration’s favor. But the process could take time. Meanwhile, the door is open for the administration—or corporate allies—to act in their own self interests. Advertisement “It might take some months or even a year or two to get this litigated, and maybe that's what they're counting on,” says Daniel Esty, an environmental law professor at Yale University. “By ignoring [prior regulations] during the time that there's a challenge underway, they can get most of what they want.” Correction, March 17 The original version of this story mischaracterized the power of federal agencies. They are able to roll back rules and regulations, but not statutes.

Deadly severe weather that spawned tornadoes and dust storms across the Midwest and South arrived on the East Coast on Sunday, bringing with it powerful winds and the potential for tornadoes across the Mid-Atlantic and the Southeast. The turbulent weather, which has killed a total of at least 40 people, has caused widespread destruction. It is part of a huge cross-country system that dropped hail — some as large as baseballs — and produced tornadoes Friday and Saturday that killed at least 24 people. The system also caused wildfires driven by hurricane-force winds, and dust storms that led to crashes that killed at least 16 people in Kansas, Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. On Sunday, the threat of tornadoes and thunderstorms shifted east, though at a level much lower than it was on Saturday. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT A complex of storms that was over Alabama, Mississippi and parts of Tennessee on Saturday moved into northern Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and a portion of North Carolina on Sunday morning.The biggest concern for the Mid-Atlantic, from Virginia to New Jersey, was strong, damaging winds, but there was also a risk of a few brief tornadoes. By late Sunday afternoon, parts of Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Virginia and Washington were under tornado watches and wind advisories. The Weather Service also warned of winds up to 55 miles per hour in Central Florida until 4 a.m. on Monday. A ground stop was issued at the airport in Tampa, Fla., on Sunday because of the severe storms, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT According to FlightAware, a company that tracks flights, more than 100 flights were canceled at the Orlando, Fla., airport during the busiest weekend of spring break travel. There were also flight delays at airports in Washington, New York and Philadelphia because of the weather system, according to the F.A.A. Forecasters said there was a slight risk of severe storms and tornadoes from Central Florida to western Pennsylvania. However, a higher enhanced risk was in place for western and central Pennsylvania, where more than 100,000 power outages were reported on Sunday. In central Pennsylvania, Denys Khrulov, a senior meteorology student at Penn State, said that the storm whipped through campus on Sunday afternoon, bringing high winds, pea-sized hail and rain that brought down trees and power lines. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Khrulov and other meteorology students watched the weather from a parking garage. “I think this is definitely the most intense storm I’ve seen here personally,” Mr. Khrulov said.The heaviest rainfall on Sunday was expected along the East Coast from South Carolina up to Massachusetts, with about one to two inches of rain possible. A few locations in this area could record up to five inches, particularly in eastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina. New York City could record one to two inches of rain, depending on where thunderstorms are oriented. This large storm system is expected to move offshore on Monday. Rich Otto, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center, said there was likely to be a break from the extreme and tempestuous weather for “at least a few to several days” but the overall pattern suggests that more storms will move across the country before the end of March. “This is probably not the last time we’ll talk about severe thunderstorms in the next several weeks,” he said.

Columbia University is now the epicenter of the American culture war. The Trump administration is targeting a former Columbia student — and the university itself — as a test case for its new authoritarian regime. The story of Columbia isn’t simply about Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student in international affairs there who was one of the leaders of the pro-Palestinian protests that burst into view almost immediately after the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. But when federal immigration officials showed up at his apartment building last weekend and whisked him away to a facility in Louisiana to begin deportation proceedings, they brought the malice and incompetence of the Trump administration into stark relief. The incompetence was obvious from the start. At the time of Khalil’s arrest, federal officers seem to have believed that he was in the United States on a student visa. But that was incorrect. He’s a green-card holder, a lawful permanent resident of the United States. The malice was plain as well. In spite of his permanent residency, which agents on the scene appear to have learned about soon enough, the government did not permit Khalil to have a privileged conversation with his lawyer until it was ordered to do so by a federal judge. Khalil was taken from his family when his wife, who is an American citizen, was eight months pregnant. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT What was the reason for his arrest, potential deportation and isolation from his own attorneys? According to the Department of Homeland Security’s Notice to Appear that was provided to Khalil, “The secretary of state has determined that your presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” While that statement sounds damning, the reality is that Khalil was detained because of his protest activity and not because he’d provided illegal support for terrorists. As an administration official told The Free Press, “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law.” In an interview with NPR, Troy Edgar, the deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, made it clear that the administration was targeting Khalil’s expression. “We’ve invited and allowed the student to come into the country,” Edgar said, “and he’s put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity. And at this point, like I said, the secretary of state can review his visa process at any point and revoke it.” But there is no visa to review. Khalil is a permanent resident now. Make no mistake, the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil are a direct attack on free speech. While I’m appalled by the administration’s actions, I’m not surprised that the case arose out of what someone was doing at Columbia. The university has been in various degrees of political turmoil for decades. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In fact, the first time I had to walk through metal detectors to give a speech was at Columbia 20 years ago. I was president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (now called the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), and I went to campus to defend the right of Jewish students to speak out against faculty antisemitism in the university’s Middle East and Asian languages and culture department. I will never forget the menacing atmosphere both on campus and at the event itself. People in the audience shouted at me and shouted at one another. Protesters chanted in the halls.But that experience was insignificant compared with what happened on campus following the Hamas terror attacks. Jewish students faced an ordeal at Columbia and on several other elite American campuses. While many pro-Palestinian demonstrators criticized Israel’s military response peacefully and lawfully, the protests often took a dark turn. Supporters of Hamas celebrated the attacks, and protests against Israel spiraled out of control. Protesters occupied large segments of campus grounds for days on end, and at Columbia a faction of protesters took over Hamilton Hall, a central administrative building. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT According to a 234-page complaint filed against Columbia by a coalition of Jewish students and Jewish organizations, “Jewish and Israeli students have been spat at, physically assaulted, threatened and targeted on campus and social media with epithets,” including statements such as “death to Jews,” “Zionist pig” and “baby killer.” While it’s not possible to determine the truth of every allegation of antisemitic discrimination or harassment against Columbia, the situation was sufficiently serious for the Biden administration to start a Title VI investigation against the university in November 2023, even before the lawless protests of 2024 and 2025. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires federally funded educational institutions to protect students from discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin. Both the Biden and the Trump administrations have interpreted Title VI to prohibit antisemitic discrimination and harassment.At the same time, however, protecting students from discrimination isn’t Columbia’s only priority. It should also be highly protective of free speech and academic freedom. Columbia isn’t a public university, so it is not bound by the First Amendment (which only protects against government censorship), but I’m persuaded by the moral force of the Supreme Court’s words in a 1957 case called Sweezy v. New Hampshire: “Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die.” In other words, universities possess a double obligation — to protect students and faculty and staff members from discrimination and harassment, while also protecting free expression on campus. It’s not an easy task. It requires a combination of wisdom and courage.But the Trump administration possesses neither wisdom nor courage, and it is now in the process of using claims of antisemitism on campus as a justification for grave violations of due process and free speech. The Red Scares of 20th-century anti-communism are being replaced by a new frenzy, whipped up against left-wing supporters of the Palestinian cause. I’m hardly the first person to make that comparison, in part because there is a particularly obvious parallel — in both instances censorship had political appeal. Communism is a repugnant ideology, and the unpopularity of communists and communist ideas (especially at the height of the Cold War) made them inviting targets for populists and demagogues. The government could censor communists to thunderous applause. Sympathy for Hamas (much less support for Hamas) is similarly repugnant. And there are a host of people on college campuses who have said truly vile things about Israel, Zionism and Jews. They have called for the destruction of the Jewish state and for violence against Jews. Punishing these voices also draws thunderous applause, especially from parts of President Trump’s base, but not only there. Even so, just as we rightly look back in shame at the excesses of McCarthyism, we will look back in shame at the excesses of this moment — if we permit anger at campus protests to overwhelm our commitment to due process and free speech. Let’s start with free speech. It’s hard to state all the ways in which I disagree with Khalil’s anti-Israel activism. The encampments interfered with the rights of other students on campus. There is also evidence that a pro-Palestinian group Khalil belonged to did, in fact, endorse violent attacks against Israel, including by posting an essay calling the Oct. 7 attacks a “moral, military and political victory.” But my feelings about the substance of these comments are irrelevant to their constitutionality. Indeed, the entire point of the free speech clause of the First Amendment is to protect speech that other citizens seek to suppress. Popular speech doesn’t need legal protection. In addition, it has long been established that the First Amendment doesn’t just protect the rights of American citizens. The Supreme Court held in a 1945 case called Bridges v. Wixon that “Freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.” That doesn’t end the inquiry, however. It turns out that federal statutes muddy the waters and provide authority for federal officials to deport even legal permanent residents if those residents are determined to be a threat to national security or support designated terrorist organizations. These statutes are so rarely invoked that there isn’t sufficient case law to determine exactly how the courts will apply them to Khalil. It’s important to take a brief technical detour to explain. For now, the administration is relying on 8 U.S.C. Section 1227, which states, “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the secretary of state has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.” A different statute, 8 U.S.C. Section 1182, says that any alien who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization” can be blocked from entering the country. Violation of that same statute can be grounds for deportation as well. But invoking those statutes raises additional questions. First, they’re absurdly broad. The idea that a graduate student’s campus protest could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” is almost absurd on its face, and even if Khalil did endorse terrorist attacks on Israel, that is still constitutionally protected speech. The First Amendment permits advocacy of violence, including illegal violence, so long as the speaker isn’t inciting imminent lawless action. This standard protects the campus protesters who chanted “Globalize the Intifada,” and it protects people who call for the forcible removal of Palestinians from Gaza. In both circumstances, protesters are endorsing illegal, violent actions. Yet in both circumstances, the Constitution protects their speech. The attack on due process is just as serious as the attack on free speech. This month, the Trump administration announced that it was canceling roughly $400 million in federal contracts and grants to Columbia. The administration’s statement said the cancellations were “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students” and said “additional cancellations are expected to follow.” At first glance, the action seems lawful. After all, Title VI does require schools to protect students from harassment, and there is ample evidence that Jewish students faced an ordeal on campus. But there’s a problem — federal statutes and regulations permit termination of federal financial assistance only when “compliance cannot be secured by voluntary means” and when “there has been an express finding on the record, after opportunity for hearing, of a failure to comply.” There was no hearing. The administration simply acted. As a rule, our nation does not take the approach of the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland”: “sentence first, verdict afterwards.” At least, we are not supposed to. To make matters worse, on Thursday the Trump administration sent Columbia a letter demanding that the administration make changes in its governance, its admissions processes and its academic programs “as a precondition for formal negotiations” with the administration. Yet the administration doesn’t have the legal or constitutional authority to impose those demands. Columbia is still a private university that possesses its own constitutional rights. The administration says it’s just getting started. On March 10, the Department of Education notified 60 universities that they might face enforcement actions for failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment. And the president himself wrote that detaining Khalil was “the first arrest of many to come.”The chilling effect on free speech here is profound. Even if Khalil’s rights are ultimately vindicated — and even if Columbia can successfully resist the administration’s efforts to cancel grants and contracts and control what gets taught and by whom — very few people or institutions will be willing to confront the administration, if confrontation carries such a substantial cost. As Jelani Cobb, the dean of the Columbia Journalism School, told a gathering of students, many of them from foreign countries, “Nobody can protect you.” The university has reportedly begun scrutinizing speech that would clearly be constitutionally protected at a public university. On March 6 The Associated Press reported that Columbia was investigating a student named Maryam Alwan for discriminatory harassment. One of her alleged offenses? Writing an essay that called for divestment from Israel. The sad irony of our unconstitutional moment is that the perspectives of foreign students can be particularly valuable when foreign affairs dominate American discourse. Why wouldn’t we want to hear from Israelis and Palestinians, who often have firsthand knowledge of the conditions on the ground? Don’t we want them to be able to speak out and speak freely when they do? It’s a dreadful thing to declare to immigrants or foreign students, “Welcome to the land of the free: Now watch what you say.” I mentioned Sweezy v. New Hampshire earlier. That case arose out of a 1951 law passed in New Hampshire that was designed to suppress so-called subversive activities. As the Supreme Court put it: “A loyalty program was instituted to eliminate ‘subversive persons’ among government personnel. All present employees, as well as candidates for elective office in the future, were required to make sworn statements that they were not ‘subversive persons.’” The identity of the “subversive persons” has changed — from communists to pro-Palestinian protesters — but the impulse to censor is still the same. Yet, as the Supreme Court put it in Sweezy, “Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness in our society.” We thought we cured that illness when we made it through the Red Scares and the Cold War with the First Amendment intact. But that illness is returning. Columbia has become Patient Zero in an outbreak of censorship and repression. And unless it’s stopped there, expect more universities to yield to Trump’s control. Expect political repression to spread far beyond the borders of the university. Expect more dissenters to hear a knock on the door and the question, “Are you …?” Once again, American liberty hangs in the balance. Our Constitution has survived previous waves of government repression. There is no guarantee it will survive another.