High school students in Oklahoma would be asked to identify “discrepancies” in the 2020 election as part of U.S. history classes, according to new social studies standards recently approved by the Oklahoma Board of Education. The proposed standards seem to echo President Trump’s false claims about his 2020 defeat. They ask students to examine factors such as “the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states” and “the security risks of mail-in balloting.” They now head to the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, which could take up the issue before its term ends in late May, or punt the issue to the governor’s desk. The standards, supported by the state’s hard-charging Republican superintendent, have already received pushback, including from Gov. Kevin Stitt, also a Republican, whose office characterized the changes as a “distraction.” A spokeswoman said the governor had not yet seen the standards in full and it was not clear if he would support them. The additions related to the 2020 election are among several changes that injected a strong conservative viewpoint to the state’s portrayal of modern American politics and Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump repeatedly denied the results of the 2020 election, a view that has been widely embraced by some Republicans, despite a lack of evidence. An earlier version of the new standards — which were released for public comment in December — simply asked students to examine “issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.” The new changes were made after the public comment period and quietly approved by the Board of Education last month. They were first reported by NonDoc, a nonprofit news outlet in Oklahoma. The state superintendent, Ryan Walters, said that the standards were not meant to “support or negate a specific outcome” and that “a well-rounded student should be able to make their own conclusions using publicly available data and details.” In a statement, he said, “We believe in giving the next generation the ability to think for themselves rather than accepting radical positions on the election outcome as it is reported by the media.”Mr. Walters, a former history teacher and Trump ally, has emerged as a combative culture warrior in education and national politics. His push to put Bibles in every Oklahoma classroom is being battled in court, and he was briefly floated as a candidate for U.S. secretary of education, before Mr. Trump nominated the former pro-wrestling executive Linda McMahon. But within his own state, Mr. Walters has clashed with members of his party, including Governor Stitt, who was once an ally. Most recently, the two went head-to-head over Mr. Walters’s plan to collect the citizenship status of public school children, which Governor Stitt vowed to fight. Amid his feud with Mr. Walters, and after new national test scores showed Oklahoma remaining near the bottom in reading and math, Mr. Stitt last month replaced half of the state’s Board of Education. The board is made up of five governor appointees and Mr. Walters, who was elected. At least one of the new members said he had not been informed of the changes to the social studies standards, which were approved two weeks after the new members joined.A spokeswoman for the governor, Abegail Cave, said the governor’s priority was transforming Oklahoma into “the best state for education.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “He thinks a lot of what has happened over the past few months and past few years has been more of a distraction,” Ms. Cave said. The new social studies standards, she said, “follow the pattern of being a distraction.” Standards for academic subject areas are rewritten every six years in Oklahoma under state law. They include lengthy outlines on what public schools are expected to teach and what students should know at different grade levels. For example, U.S. history students in Oklahoma learn about the civil rights movement, including key court cases, tactics such as the Montgomery bus boycott and violent responses to the movement, including the Birmingham church bombing and the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The changes centered on more recent history. In examining significant events during Mr. Trump’s first term, an earlier version of the standards had asked students to “explain the responses to and impact of the death of George Floyd, including the Black Lives Matter movement.” In the latest version, that standard was removed. Another change involved the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic. Students would be asked to identify the source of the pandemic as coming from a Chinese lab. That theory has long been hotly debated, but is embraced by Republicans and increasingly favored by C.I.A. officials. The earlier version was less pointed: “Evaluate federal and private response to the Covid epidemic, as well as its lasting impact on global health and American society.” Mr. Walters said the various changes “give students the best opportunity to learn about history without leftist activists indoctrinating kids.” His office did not respond to questions about why the edits were made after the period of public review. State Representative John Waldron, a former social studies teacher who is now vice chair of the House Democratic caucus, said he would oppose the changes and accused Mr. Walters of subverting the typical process to insert his own political beliefs. “The state superintendent campaigned to end indoctrination in our schools, but what he is doing instead with these new standards is promoting his own brand of indoctrination,” Mr. Waldron said in an interview. The edits also made more subtle changes to a unit on “the challenges and accomplishments” of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration. They removed bullet points on the country’s economic recovery in the aftermath of the pandemic and on a signature $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Remaining were bullet points on the “the United States-Mexico border crisis” and Mr. Biden’s foreign policies on issues like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war.

The federal government took aim on Friday at a small project that helps students seeking business school degrees, along with 45 graduate programs across the country involved with it, as part of a Trump administration promise to dismantle diversity programs. The target is a program called the Ph.D. Project, and its stated mission is to promote the racial diversity of professors in the nation’s business schools, with the idea of “enriching education for all.” The schools named in the investigation include Ivy League institutions like Yale and Cornell and public universities like Ohio State and Arizona State. After the Department of Education announced its investigation, the Ph.D. project, based in Montvale, N.J., said in a statement on Friday that it had opened its process to anyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, indicating it was complying with the administration’s efforts to eliminate diversity preferences. The statement did not say when that decision was made. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Since the organization started in 1994, the Ph.D. Project has worked to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and Native American students earning doctoral degrees in business. Since then, the total of Ph.D. degrees awarded to people in those groups grew from 294 to 1,700, according to statistics posted on the website of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, one of the project’s founding members. Of those students, 1,303 are currently teaching in institutions of higher learning throughout the country, the association said on its website. The association could not immediately be reached for comment. A recent federal filing by the Ph.D. Project shows its annual revenues are about $2 million. Among the business partners that help finance the organization are the KPMG Foundation and LinkedIn, according to a list on the group’s website. The Trump administration has opposed any program that gives preference or assistance to one racial group over another. It has also indicated that it wants to expand the definition of education programs that are discriminatory, arguing in a recent letter that some programs that appear racially neutral are not. “Students must be assessed according to merit and accomplishment, not prejudged by the color of their skin,” Linda McMahon, the education secretary, said in announcing the investigation of the 45 business school programs. “We will not yield on this commitment.” In addition to those 45 schools, the agency said it was investigating seven other schools for violations it characterized as “race-based scholarships and race-based segregation.” The agency provided no additional information about the focus of that investigation.

A second person who took part in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University has been arrested by U.S. immigration agents, after overstaying a student visa, federal officials said on Friday, the latest turn in the crisis engulfing the Ivy League institution. The person, identified by the authorities as Leqaa Kordia, is Palestinian and from the West Bank. She was arrested in Newark on Thursday, officials said. Her student visa was terminated in January 2022, and she was arrested by the New York City police last April for her role in a campus demonstration, the Homeland Security Department said in a statement. The agency also released a video on Friday that it said showed a Columbia student, identified as Ranjani Srinivasan, preparing to enter Canada after her student visa was revoked. The announcements, by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, reflected an escalation of the Trump administration’s focus on Columbia, where protests over the war in Gaza last year ignited a national debate over free speech and antisemitism, and prompted similar demonstrations at dozens of other campuses. The actions came during a tumultuous week at the university, which has experienced a series of escalating controversies since the arrest by federal immigration agents last weekend of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate and prominent figure in pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations. On Friday, more than 200 students gathered outside Columbia’s main campus gates to protest the university’s handling of Mr. Khalil’s arrest. Demonstrators wore kaffiyehs, waved Palestinian flags and carried banners with slogans like “Free Mahmoud,” “I.C.E. off our campuses” and “Columbia You Can’t Hide.” The protest unfolded less than 24 hours after homeland security agents entered the campus with federal warrants and searched two dorm rooms. No one was detained and nothing was taken, according to the university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong. Social media posts by Ms. Noem on Friday appeared to signal that Columbia continued to be a subject of Trump administration scrutiny. Ms. Noem posted a video on the social media platform X that appeared to show a woman walking through LaGuardia Airport with a small suitcase. Ms. Noem identified the woman as Ms. Srinivasan and said she had used a U.S. Customs and Border Protection app to notify the government of her intention to self-deport. Ms. Srinivasan’s dorm room was one of those searched, according to her lawyer and roommate. “It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America,” Ms. Noem said in a statement. Nathan Yaffe, a member of Ms. Srinivasan’s legal team, confirmed in a statement that federal agents had entered her dorm room on Thursday in an effort to detain her or seek information about her whereabouts. A lawyer for Ms. Kordia could not be immediately identified. The past week has been fraught with crisis on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus. The Trump administration demanded on Thursday that the university make far-reaching changes to its student discipline and admissions policies before any negotiations regarding the cancellation of $400 million in government grants and contracts could begin. Federal officials wrote in a letter that the university had a week to formalize its definition of antisemitism, ban the wearing of masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate” and put the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department under “academic receivership.” The government said the moves were necessary because of what they described as Columbia’s failure to protect Jewish students from harassment. Officials from three government agencies wrote that Columbia “has fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment.” Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said during a speech at the Justice Department on Friday that the administration was investigating whether incidents on campus have violated civil rights protections or federal terrorism laws. “This is long overdue,” Mr. Blanche said. But civil liberties advocates argued that the government’s demands would not only erode free speech and academic freedom at Columbia but would have a chilling effect on universities across the country. Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, said in a statement that the “subjugation of universities to official power is a hallmark of autocracy.” Others were particularly concerned by the demand that the university adopt a definition of antisemitism that could penalize those who are critical of Israel. Tyler Coward, the lead counsel for government affairs at the free speech and legal defense group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, called the letter “a blueprint to supercharge censorship at America’s colleges and universities.” “Colleges across the country are likely reading this letter this morning and thinking they better censor speech — or they’re next,” Mr. Coward said in a statement. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT A university spokeswoman said Thursday evening that Columbia was “reviewing the letter” from the government agencies. “We are committed at all times to advancing our mission, supporting our students, and addressing all forms of discrimination and hatred on our campus,” she said. After the dorm search, Ms. Armstrong said in a note to students and staff members late Thursday that she was “heartbroken” over the development, and that Columbia was making every effort to ensure the safety of its students, faculty and staff. In a separate action on Thursday, Columbia announced a range of disciplinary actions against students who occupied a campus building last spring, including expulsions and suspensions, among the steps that Trump administration officials had called for in their letter. The punishments included “multiyear suspensions, temporary degree revocations and expulsions,” the university said in a statement. It was unclear how many students had been punished. Among those expelled was Grant Miner, a Jewish graduate student who was part of a student coalition that has called for Columbia to divest from companies connected to Israel, according to the student workers’ union at the university, which Mr. Miner leads. The union has accused the university of targeting its members. A Columbia spokeswoman said Friday evening that it was “unfortunate” that the group was trying to “conflate student discipline with employment matters,” and that the accusation was false. Mr. Miner, a doctoral student in the English and comparative literature department, said in a statement that “this is an egregious attempt to break the union and squash the movement against genocide in Palestine.” “We will not be intimidated on either front,” he said.

Louis DeJoy is letting DOGE into the Postal Service. On Thursday, the Postmaster General told congressional leaders that he signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s cost-cutting operation, allowing it to help the USPS save money and remove bureaucratic bottlenecks, according to a copy of the letter obtained by TIME. “This is an effort aligned with our efforts,” DeJoy wrote, “as while we have accomplished a great deal, there is much more to be done.” But America’s most beloved and beleaguered government agency won’t be subject to the same hostile takeover as other federal departments. The Trump Administration has spared the Postal Service, an independent body that funds itself and has roughly 640,000 employees, from DOGE-inflicted pressure to shrink its workforce. Instead, DeJoy essentially sicced the Department of Government Efficiency on Congress. He assigned Musk’s adjutants to review what he describes as structural problems created by legislation passed in the 1970s. Referring to the Postal Reorganization Act, DeJoy said the agency’s retirement assets and workers compensation program were “mismanaged” by other federal departments. He cited unfunded mandates imposed on the USPS that cost between $6 billion and $11 billion annually, such as offering six-day mail delivery and maintaining post offices in remote areas. Perhaps most controversially, he called the Postal Regulatory Commission, which oversees the Postal Service and approves price increases, an "unnecessary agency” that has lost the agency more than $50 billion. “The DOGE team was gracious enough to ask for the big problems that they can help us with,” DeJoy wrote to legislators. There is a certain irony to the DeJoy-DOGE arrangement. Since taking the helm in 2020, DeJoy has embarked on a 10-year plan to make the agency profitable and more efficient. He renegotiated contracts for air and ground transportation, saving the USPS $10 billion annually. He reduced the headquarters workforce by 20 percent, saving more than $200 million annually. He built new processing centers and centralized the delivery network. On Capitol Hill, he collaborated with Democrats and Republicans to rescind a 2006 law that required the USPS to pre-pay the next 50 years of health and retirement benefits for all of its employees—a rule that no other federal agency was forced to follow. Those changes led to the Postal Service making a $144 million profit in the final quarter of 2024, its first profitable period in years. Since then, he has done more to trim the USPS budget. Through a voluntary early retirement program launched in January, the agency is expected to shed 10,000 workers next month. In other words: DeJoy has been doing the purported work of DOGE before DOGE came around. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. The Postal Service still lags with on-time delivery and meeting its own service standards. DeJoy remains a controversial figure on both sides of the aisle; in December, he covered his ears during a House Oversight Committee hearing when a Republican member criticized his leadership of the agency. Read more: Louis DeJoy’s Surprising Second Act While DeJoy once predicted the USPS would break even by 2023, it lost $9.5 billion last year. Postal Service leaders argue they are only halfway through a ten-year plan. DeJoy’s transformations, they say, have put the agency on a path toward profitability, beating out FedEx and UPS, and preserving its ability to reach every American in every corner of the country. But DeJoy won’t be overseeing the effort much longer. Last month, he told the USPS Board of Governors to start looking for a successor, ending a five-year tenure running the agency through the COVID-19 pandemic, three elections that relied heavily on mail voting, and the implementation of a dramatic restructuring. It’s not clear what will come next for one of the only government agencies enshrined in the Constitution. President Donald Trump has floated proposals such as privatization and folding the USPS into the Commerce Department. Musk, for his part, has also called for privatizing the Post Office. “I think logically we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized," he told a conference this month. That remains unlikely. Either of those moves would require congressional authorization, and there’s no indication that majorities in either chamber would support that kind of disruption to a popular government agency that delivers to more than 167 million addresses every day. A collaboration between DeJoy and DOGE could offer an alternative. As a logistics expert and major Trump donor before becoming Postmaster General, DeJoy has credibility with the Musk-led initiative that others don’t. Rather than work against them, he’s working with them. The endgame may be to convince Congress to save the USPS from alternatives that most would rather avoid. “Fixing a broken organization that had experienced close to $100 billion in losses and was projected to lose another $200 billion, without a bankruptcy proceeding, is a daunting task,” DeJoy wrote to lawmakers. “Fixing a heavily legislated and overly regulated organization as massive, important, cherished, misunderstood, and debated as the United States Postal Service, with such a broken business model, is even more difficult.”

President Trump repeated a number of well-trodden falsehoods on Friday in a grievance-fueled speech at the Justice Department, veering from prepared remarks to single out lawyers and prosecutors and assail the criminal investigations into him. His remarks, billed as a policy address, were wide-ranging, touching on immigration, crime and the price of eggs. Here’s a fact-check.His legal troubles What Was Said “They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people.” “They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home Mar-a-Lago and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.” This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump’s claims refer to a wide array of investigations and criminal cases that occurred before, during and after his first term as president. The F.B.I. investigated contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials; Mr. Trump’s deputy attorney general appointed a special counsel that continued that investigation during his first term; after Mr. Trump left office, he was then charged in four state and federal criminal cases — two concerning his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and one related to his retention of classified documents after he left office. Employees, family members and allies of Mr. Trump became entangled in those cases at various points. But the president and his supporters have provided no evidence of a vast, yearslong conspiracy to coordinate these investigations — taking place over nearly a decade across three presidential administrations — as a political weapon against him. While the F.B.I. privately investigated Mr. Trump’s campaign for ties to Russia in 2016, James Comey, the bureau’s director at the time, publicly announced an investigation of Mr. Trump’s presidential rival at the time, Hillary Clinton, in a move that critics said had aided Mr. Trump politically. Officials in the Trump administration later expressed concern about Mr. Trump’s desire to shut down the investigation of his campaign after he took office, and Rod Rosenstein, Mr. Trump’s deputy attorney general, appointed a special counsel to shield the investigation from political pressure and avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest within the government. After Mr. Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, Mr. Trump was indicted in four criminal felony cases. Of the four cases, two were brought by state or local prosecutors, meaning that the Justice Department has no control over them. His two other criminal cases were overseen by a special counsel, appointed to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump’s rival in the 2024 campaign. The 2020 election What Was Said “The elections, which were totally rigged, are a big factor.” False. Though Mr. Trump appeared to refer to multiple elections, he was most likely reprising his lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. A mountain of evidence — recounts, court rulings and audits by elections officials all confirmed Mr. Biden’s electoral victory in 2020. Biden and classified documents What WAS Said “We also terminated the clearances of the Biden crime family and Joe Biden himself. He didn’t deserve it. In fact, he was essentially found guilty. But they said he was incompetent. And therefore, let’s not find him guilty.” False. Mr. Trump was referring to a special counsel investigation into whether Mr. Biden had retained and disclosed classified material after leaving the vice presidency in 2017 — acts that are felony offenses. Robert K. Hur, the special counsel in the case, said in his final report that Mr. Biden had retained and shared sensitive material, but concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted” because the evidence did not “establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” Mr. Hur, in his role as a prosecutor, could not rule that Mr. Biden was guilty before a trial, and the president was never charged with a crime. But Mr. Hur did raise doubts about Mr. Biden’s memory and advanced age based off their interviews, and suggested that had played a role in his decision not to recommend charges. He wrote, “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol What Was Said “I pardoned hundreds of political prisoners who had been grossly mistreated. We removed the senior F.B.I. officials who misdirected resources to send SWAT teams after grandmothers and J6 hostages.” This needs context. Mr. Trump, in one of his first official acts in his second term, pardoned hundreds of people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Many of those included people who had been convicted of violent crimes and weapons charges. Others had threatened law enforcement officials who had investigated the attack. But Mr. Trump has long sought to rewrite the history of the attack, portraying the rioters as martyrs to his political cause. He has also singled out the case of Rebecca Lavrenz, who promoted herself online as the “J6 praying grandma,” for her conviction on misdemeanor charges in connection with the riot. There is no evidence that Ms. Lavrenz was the target of a police SWAT raid. Parents, anti-abortion activists and Catholics What WAS Said The Biden administration “set loose violent criminals while targeting patriotic parents at school board meetings; they drop charges against antifa and Hamas supporters while labeling traditional Catholics as domestic terrorists.” This needs context. Mr. Trump’s claims about the persecution of parents and Catholics stem from F.B.I. efforts to track threats made against school boards, teachers and other officials, as well as a leaked memo prepared by an F.B.I. field office that warned of the potential for extremism for adherents of a “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology. Mr. Trump and other Republicans seized on both efforts as evidence that the Biden administration sought to target parents concerned about education efforts opposed on the right — like inclusive policies toward transgender students and diversity initiatives — and to repress Christian groups. In 2021, the F.B.I. had created a “threat tag” to apply to reports of threats, harassment and violence against school officials, which had risen significantly at the time. Such tags are used by the bureau to track trends and share information across offices, and are commonly used for crimes like drug offenses and human trafficking. House Republicans investigated and criticized those efforts. The memo warning of potential extremism among traditional Catholic groups had distinguished between those radicalized and not radicalized, saying “radical-traditionalist Catholics” who could potentially pose a threat were a small minority. The memo had also suggested gathering information and developing sources within churches to help identify suspicious activity. The memo was later withdrawn after it became public, and the nation’s top law enforcement officials repeatedly denounced it. An internal Justice Department investigation later concluded that the memo had violated professional standards but showed “no evidence of malicious intent.” Experts said at the time that they were unaware of any data to support the idea that Catholics were being widely persecuted by the government for their faith — let alone at record levels. Mr. Biden is a practicing Catholic who often cited his faith for guidance on decisions in office. What WAS Said “They imported illegal alien murderers, drug dealers and child predators from all over the world to come into our country while putting elderly Christians and pro-life activists on trial for singing hymns and for saying prayers.” False. Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to the cases of some anti-abortion activists who were convicted of crimes against civil rights, and whom Mr. Trump pardoned soon after taking office. The protesters were not put on trial for praying, as Mr. Trump claimed, but for conspiring against civil rights and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act — which makes it a crime to threaten, obstruct or injure a person seeking access to a reproductive health clinic or to damage clinic property. The defendants in the case had blockaded an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C., in October 2020. Immigration and crime What WAS Said “Our first full month in office, we achieved the lowest level of illegal border crossings ever recorded … it turned out that we really didn’t need new legislation. All you needed was a new president.” This needs context. Mr. Trump is correct that illegal border crossings have declined drastically since he took office. That is in part because of a series of restrictions he imposed at the border and in part because Mexico, in response to his threat of tariffs, bolstered its migration enforcement. In February, illegal crossings reached a record low of about 8,300. That said, illegal crossings began to decline after the Biden administration over the summer reached a similar agreement with Mexico and the United States imposed new restrictions that sharply curtailed asylum applications. What WAS Said “Under the Biden regime, average monthly homicides increased by 14 percent, property crimes rose tremendously, violent crime went up at least 37 percent that they know of, rapes soared by 42 percent, car theft rose by 48 percent and robbery surged 63 to 100 percent. They don’t even know what the number is.” This lacks evidence. It is unclear what statistics Mr. Trump is referring to in making his comparison, though the general intent is to paint a picture of an America experiencing soaring crime. But in 2024, when Mr. Biden was still in office, murders and crime in general declined in the country. Robberies and rapes were lower than they were before the pandemic. Aggravated assaults were still elevated from the pre-Covid days, but they trended down in 2024. What WAS Said “They didn’t even know why. They imported illegal alien murderers, drug dealers, child predators, from all over the world to come into our country.” False. The Biden administration did not purposely allow criminals into the country, but it did experience a historic level of illegal crossings at the border. Homeland Security secretaries have long said most of the crossings are people fleeing poverty and persecution rather than violent criminals. During the campaign, Mr. Trump effectively highlighted crimes migrants had committed to build support for his immigration policies. But immigrants overall are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States, according to studies of arrest and incarceration rates. Egg prices What WAS Said “By the way, price of eggs is down 35 percent in the last week and half.” This needs context. Signs suggest that wholesale prices, meaning the price retailers pay to procure eggs, have dropped by at least 35 percent since the start the month. That is most likely a relief for consumers, though it remains unclear what exactly it will mean for prices in grocery aisles. Data from the Agriculture Department shows that wholesale egg prices have been falling sharply since the beginning of March after soaring through February, from a national average of over $8 for a dozen large white eggs at the start of the month to under $5 this week. The department cited “no significant outbreaks” of bird flu so far this month and “rapidly improving” supply. (The Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into major egg producers over prices, though producers point to bird flu as the key culprit.) These prices are still well above long-term averages, though, and the extent to which lower wholesale prices are showing up in retail prices remains to be seen. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Wednesday showed that in February, egg prices rose 10.4 percent from the previous month, continuing their climb.

n the Americas alone more than one billion people in 35 countries could bear witness to the total lunar eclipse that played out overhead from late night Thursday to the early hours of Friday. Tens of millions more in New Zealand and parts of Africa, Europe, and Russia could take in the sky show too. The performance was the result of the orbit of the Earth carrying it between the sun and the moon in a perfect alignment that temporarily blocked the sunlight that usually reflects off of the lunar surface, giving it its glow. In its place fell a deep shadow. But the moon did not vanish from the sky entirely. Bright white sunlight contains all of the colors of the visible spectrum—colors that break apart and spill out when the light passes through a prism or through the sky after a storm, producing a dazzling rainbow. During the eclipse, the sunlight the Earth was blocking similarly separated into its constituent colors, with blue wavelengths being scattered through the atmosphere, while longer red wavelengths passed right through and traveled to the moon. The result: The darkened moon glowed a distinct orange-red—a phenomenon popularly called a blood moon. The cosmic dance did not last long; the Earth continued on its orbital path and the moon began to brighten again after just over an hour. That was enough time, however, for countless professional and amateur photographers to capture dramatic pictures of the blood moon—images that are circulating around the world today. The eclipse was a little gift from the heavens to us. Here are some of the best images of that passing loveliness.

Canada’s energy minister is angry. Speaking to me while in Houston for CERAWeek, Jonathan Wilkinson described the phases of Canada’s reaction to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and repeated taunting: shock, then hurt, and now anger. “We are resolute in our need to push back,” he says. Wilkinson says that the anger shouldn’t influence his government’s decision making. But, at the same time, no option is off the table—including restrictions on energy and natural resources. Because of the highly-linked energy systems of the two countries, such a move could wreak significant havoc on the U.S. economy. “We would be foolish to take tools out of the toolbox,” he told me. “In the context where there's no negotiation around trying to find a resolution here, certainly, export tariffs on energy remain in that toolbox.” There are many potential energy and climate change implications of the U.S.-initiated trade dispute. In the short term, Canada’s political conversation has been consumed by trade talks—squeezing out space for resolving some of the country’s thorny energy and climate policy debates. In the longer term, a sustained and intensified U.S.-Canada trade spat could lead to more investment in fossil fuel infrastructure in both countries. And, even under a new U.S. administration, this moment will not be forgotten, making it more difficult to build durable partnerships in areas like critical minerals—a key component of the energy transition. “Under the new Prime Minister, Canada remains committed to the fight against climate change,” says Wilkinson, referring to the newly elected prime minister Mark Carney. But “some elements of the climate plan probably have become a little tougher in the context of working with the Trump Administration.” Trump’s tariffs have shocked executives across the corporate world—and the energy industry is no exception. The sector is highly integrated, especially across the U.S.-Canada border. In the U.S. midwest, oil refineries run on crude that flows from Canada. In much of the northeast U.S., Canadian electricity helps keep the lights on. Meanwhile, Canada imports U.S. oil in its eastern provinces. “The integrated nature of the two economies, and in particular of the energy economies… pulling them apart is almost impossible,” says Wilkinson. And yet, nonetheless, Wilkinson says his country will be looking away from the U.S. “Canadians' confidence in their ability to simply rely on the United States to the exclusion of the rest of the world has been shaken.” A key area that may suffer is potential collaboration between the two countries on the critical minerals that will play an essential role in the energy transition. Canada has rich stores of lithium, cobalt, and nickel, among other resources, and had previously worked with the U.S. government to create a North American supply chain for batteries and other clean energy technologies. While Trump is no fan of the energy transition, he has homed in on critical minerals in his push to annex Greenland given the essential role the minerals play in manufacturing, defense, and advanced electronics. “Critical minerals in particular are a potentially useful tool, if we have to go there, given that the alternative sources of supply typically are going to be China, in some cases Russia,” Wilkinson said on March 12. “We're not there yet, and we prefer not to further escalate this at this point.” Advertisement A prolonged, deepened trade rift could push Canada to look more to Europe, South Korea, and Japan to help finance and purchase the product that comes with developing these resources. That would leave the U.S. at a disadvantage and reshape the centers of power in clean technologies. At CERAWeek, an energy conference that draws the world’s biggest players in the industry, some executives chatted about the possibility that Canada might revive plans to build an oil pipeline from the country’s oil producing west to its eastern cities. This would reduce Canada’s reliance on U.S. oil in the east and make it easier to sell Canadian oil domestically. Wilkinson offered deep skepticism, telling me that such a project would face difficult economics and likely require government subsidy. Nonetheless, he said, it could be worth considering on national security grounds should the situation deteriorate further. Advertisement “Presently, there is no one proposing to build a pipeline,” he says. “You could argue that there is an energy security issue, and that is a legitimate conversation… but we should be looking at all available options.” Like with much else tied to Trump Administration policy, it is hard to assess the exact climate implications of this trade rift. At the very least, it’s a distraction for Canada. When I first met Wilkinson last year, we had extensive conversations about the country’s carbon tax and engagement with the country’s Indigenous First Nations to build energy projects. Progress on those issues now feels miniscule in the scheme of things. But, more broadly, it provides a hint of what world may emerge in the wake of Trump’s wrecking ball: less collaboration and clean technology supply chains that don’t include the U.S.

If you’ve ever avoided a hurricane, ducked a tornado, evacuated ahead of a wildfire, or merely relied on a weather forecast to take an umbrella to work, you likely have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to thank. As America’s—and indeed the world’s—leading weather and climate watchdog and the parent organization of the National Weather Service (NWS), NOAA runs a standing army of personnel and hardware on and off the planet to keep an eye on the Earth’s often stormy temperament. The agency owns or operates 13 weather satellites; manages more than 200 deep-water buoys; and gathers weather and climate information from a storm of data provided by no fewer than 10,600 state, local, and federal governments, as well as universities and private companies nationwide. But NOAA is now threatened. As the Associated Press and others have reported, the agency’s already stretched workforce of 13,000 people is facing a deep cut of more than 1,000 of those employees mandated by the Trump Administration—a move that follows an earlier purge of about 1,300 in late February. The personnel reductions not only imperil NOAA’s ability to carry out its core chore of tracking and warning about upcoming severe weather events, they also hamper its ability to conduct basic research into climate change—carried out to help humanity better prepare for the sweeping environmental upheaval already evident in a steadily warming world. “NOAA does a lot of work with climate,” says Keith Seitter, former executive director of the American Meteorological Society and currently a professor of environmental studies at the College of the Holy Cross. “That's critically important in terms of planning for our future, knowing how to adapt to the changing climate, and understanding what we need to get ready for. In all of those things, NOAA is a really key player.” The current cuts to NOAA were equal parts ill-timed and foreseeable. Project 2025, the conservative manifesto whose policies are increasingly being adopted by the Trump Administration, includes a section on page 674 of the 900-plus page document headed “Break Up NOAA.” On the next page the agency is described as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” But NOAA and others are right to be alarmed. Recent months have seen climate-linked wildfires in Los Angeles and elsewhere; an increase in so-called atmospheric rivers—long, narrow bands of airborne water vapor that lead to local flooding and are growing worse in a warming world; and, in other spots in the U.S. and elsewhere, increasing droughts. Last year was also the first in which the world crossed the threshold of 1.5°C of warming over pre-industrial levels that the Paris Climate Accord declared a benchmark to be avoided, lest the planet tip into irreversible climate catastrophe. Environmentalists warn that the Earth is running a fever and, with the latest NOAA firings, we’ve begun sacking the doctors. Advertisement “These layoffs put us at significant risk,” says Alice Hill, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. “They actually increase the risk to Americans if we consider how best to prepare for the worst extremes that climate change brings about. The first step in resilience or adaptation is early warning.” When it comes to weather and climate, it’s not just NOAA that’s been slashed; NASA is bleeding too. In a March 10 email to reporters, the space agency announced that in response to federal instructions to reduce its workforce, it was shuttering the office of technology, policy, and strategy, and the office of the chief scientist—a move that affects climate studies. “NASA does cutting edge research and science,” says Hill. “It observes sea level rise from space. It's got the best global surface temperature analysis. All of that contributes to our understanding of how climate change is unfolding, and with that understanding, decision-makers can make choices that leave people safer.” Advertisement Some of the NASA cuts could also hit American corporations in the pocketbook. According to Hill, studies show that 74% of Fortune 100 companies “routinely use NASA Earth Science data to support business operations, logistics, and risk management.” Some of those decisions involve grounding airplanes and bringing cargo vessels into safe harbor well ahead of dangerous storms. It’s the cuts to NOAA, however, with the agency’s exclusively earthy portfolio—as opposed to NASA’s literally other-worldly one—that are likely to do the most damage. Seitter cites not just the firehose of climate and weather data that NOAA collects, but the way it’s computed and modeled as one more vital service that could be at risk. “All of that data needs to be quality controlled, verified, and then assimilated into these massive weather prediction models,” he says. “NOAA is responsible for all of that work, and that's not insignificant. It's a huge part of the investments that are made in NOAA every year.” Advertisement Jeopardize those prediction models and you jeopardize both lives and treasure. Hill points to Chamber of Commerce estimates showing that every $1 spent on climate resilience and preparedness saves $13 in damages and cleanup costs. Cuts to NOAA will lead to a domino effect across the agency’s entire org chart. It’s not just the NWS that’s nested within NOAA. The agency oversees five other smaller departments, including the Office of Marine and Aviation operations, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the National Ocean Service. “There is the ocean side of NOAA,” says Seitter, “and those are the folks that monitor fisheries and work with communities to make sure that we have adequate fish reserves for feeding our country. That may be less dramatic compared to severe weather, but those are also really important functions.” NOAA also works with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), another institutional function that could be hurt by staffing cuts. “[FEMA] coordinates with people in the National Weather Service and other folks in NOAA to make sure that they're using their facilities in the best possible way, that they're pre-positioning their assets so that they can take advantage of having the right stuff in the right places before [a] storm hits,” says Hill. Cutting the workforce that makes any of this possible hurts the world beyond the U.S. Most countries don’t have the sweeping satellite and buoy technology that America takes for granted. Which means they must rely on U.S. data and forecasting to brace and prepare for extreme weather events. And, Hill points out, the more sophisticated AI becomes, the more meteorology will rely on it to predict and track storms—one more development that will require American innovation and initiative. “NOAA would be in a great position to be leading the charge for better AI in terms of a public good for weather forecasting,” she says. All of the losses that come with slashing NOAA’s staffing and budget will do precious little to achieve the ostensible goal of the White House and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse. Eliminate NOAA’s entire 13,000-person staff and you have cut just 0.43% of the federal government’s three million-strong workforce. As for pocketbook savings, NOAA’s $6.6 billion annual budget represents just 0.097% of the $6.75 trillion Washington spent in fiscal year 2024. Compare that to the cost of climate change: In 2024 alone the U.S. experienced 27 weather or climate disaster events, each with losses exceeding $1 billion. Predicting extreme weather events, preventing catastrophic losses of life and property, and better understanding the climate trends that pose such a danger to humanity are a whole lot cheaper than cleaning up the mess—and tending to the dead—after a disaster strikes.

President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), former Republican Congressman Dr. Dave Weldon, was set to face questioning by Senators on March 13. But on the morning of the hearing, the White House withdrew Weldon’s nomination, according to Axios, which first reported the news. Weldon was due to appear before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, and members were expected to question him on topics including his past statements expressing vaccine skepticism. In an interview, Weldon told the New York Times that he just learned about the withdrawal of his nomination the night before; a White House official told him he didn’t have the votes to be confirmed for the role. Advertisement “It is a shock, but, you know, in some ways, it’s relief,” he told the Times. “Government jobs demand a lot of you, and if God doesn’t want me in it, I’m fine with that.” Here’s what to know about Weldon. Dave Weldon is a physician, veteran, and former Congressman Weldon, 71, served in the Army, and currently operates a private medical practice in Florida. From 1995 to 2009, he served in Congress, representing Florida. Since then, he’s largely been out of the political spotlight, though he’s run campaigns—he lost the GOP Primary for a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2012, as well as the GOP Primary for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives in 2024. He was the president of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries From 2017 to 2020, Weldon was the president of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, an association of faith-based organizations that claim to offer alternatives to health insurance. The organizations have sparked controversy and criticism from state regulators, who have expressed concern that the groups’ marketing strategies have led to confusion among consumers over whether the ministries would fund medical claims.

Buried in the trove of Executive Orders signed by President Donald Trump in his first weeks in office was a directive linked to last year’s campus protests over the Israel-Gaza war. The order called for the revocation of student visas for individuals suspected of sympathizing with Hamas. “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump said in a White House fact sheet announcing the move. On Saturday night, agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) followed through on Trump's threat, detaining Mahmoud Khalil, an activist and former student of New York City's Columbia University, where pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year became a national lightning rod amid a debate about the Middle East conflict. Khalil, who was raised in Syria and is of Palestinian descent, played a prominent role in the public demonstrations at the university and served as a negotiator between protesters and university officials last spring. He graduated from Columbia with a master’s degree in December. Khalil’s situation immediately drew international attention because of the reason he was detained, and because, according to his lawyer Amy Greer, he holds a green card, which allows individuals to live and work permanently in the United States. In his notice to appear in immigration court, first reported by The Washington Post, the government said Khalil is a citizen of Algeria and that he could be deported under section 237 (a)(4)(C) (i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the Secretary of State the authority to deport non-citizens when they have "reasonable ground to believe that [their] presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” The notice did not mention any crimes that the federal government believes Khalil may have committed. Khalil is currently being held at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, La., roughly 1,300 miles away from his apartment, according to an ICE database. His wife, who is eight months pregnant, is a U.S. citizen and detailed the arrest in a statement shared with TIME, though she has declined to use her name. In the statement, she says the couple were followed and confronted by ICE agents as they were returning from an Iftar dinner. She said an agent threatened to arrest her too if she didn’t go upstairs to their apartment. "We were not shown any warrant and the ICE officers hung up the phone on our lawyer," read her statement. Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center of Constitutional Rights who is on Khalil’s legal team, told reporters Wednesday that Khalil was arrested for his viewpoints, which Azmy warned could set a dangerous precedent. “Mr. Khalil’s detention has nothing to do with security,” he said. “It is only about repression. The United States government has taken the position that it can arrest, detain and seek to deport a lawful permanent resident, exclusively because of his peaceful, constitutionally protected activism, in this case, activism in support of Palestinian human rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza.” In a statement, Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said “Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” and linked his arrest to Trump’s Executive Order. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who ultimately made the decision to try to deport Khalil, told reporters on Wednesday that the case was not about free speech: “This is about people that don't have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card." Khalil’s lawyers said that he felt compelled to speak out about the conflict in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since Israel began a bombing and ground campaign in response to Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack. “He is committed to calling on the rest of the world to protect the rights of Palestinians under international law and to stop enabling violence against Palestinians,” his lawyers said in a court filing Monday. Trump’s immigration officials have not provided evidence to support their accusations against Khalil or other students. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday alleged that Khalil distributed pro-Hamas flyers on Columbia’s campus, a claim that his lawyers rejected. “Whatever flyers the White House spokesperson may have been talking about, that is certainly not in the government's position in court,” said Ramzi Kassem, the founding director of CLEAR, a legal clinic, who is part of Khalil’s legal team. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside New York City’s City Hall and Washington Square Park on Monday and Tuesday decrying his arrest; at least 13 people were arrested in connection to the protests, according to CNN. Additional events demanding Khalil’s release have taken place across the country, including at UCLA and Stanford, with more scheduled this week. Can a green card holder be deported? While green card holders enjoy many of the same rights as U.S. citizens, they can still face deportation under certain conditions, typically for criminal behavior or violations of immigration law, says Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired immigration law professor at Cornell Law School. Foreign nationals can also lose their visas for endorsing or being associated with terrorist groups, but only if the government can provide material evidence. The Trump Administration has not provided any written evidence to support Khalil’s deportation beyond Rubio’s determination under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Khalil’s lawyers have said there is no indication that their client has committed any crime or violated the terms of his residency, and that the Trump Administration appears to be targeting him for his political activism and vocal opposition to Israeli policies. Immigration law experts note that deporting a green card holder solely for their political beliefs would likely violate the First Amendment, which protects free speech and the right to protest. Yale-Loehr pointed to a Ragbir v. Homan, a 2018 decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that held that a non-citizen with a final removal order could not be removed if the removal was only because they were retaliating against their free speech. Revoking a green card is also quite rare, and typically requires a hearing before an immigration judge. The process is generally lengthy and requires clear evidence of wrongdoing, and given the immense backlogs in immigration courts, it could take years before he gets a hearing before an immigration judge. If Khalil’s green card is ultimately revoked as a result of his activism, immigration experts say it would mark a disturbing shift in how the U.S. government interprets the scope of its power over lawful permanent residents. The burden of proof in deportation cases In any deportation case, the burden of proof rests with the government to demonstrate that the individual has violated U.S. immigration laws. Typically, this would involve criminal convictions or other serious legal violations. In Khalil’s case, the government would need to prove that his actions go beyond protected political speech and that his associations or activities pose a genuine national security threat. His legal team maintains that there is no legitimate grounds for revoking his green card or detaining him. “The government would need to prove that he’s done something more than just speaking out, like offering material support to Hamas,” Yale-Loehr says. “That would be a ground of deportability.” “They can't deport only for free speech advocacy,” he adds, “but if they were able to prove that he offered material support to Hamas by donating to their cause or something, then that's obviously concerning.” Tom Homan, the Trump Administration’s border czar, told Fox Business on Monday that federal authorities “absolutely can” deport someone who is in the country legally: “I mean, did he violate the terms of his visa? Did he violate the terms of his residency here, you know, committing crimes, attacking Israeli students, locking down buildings, destroying property? Absolutely, any resident alien who commits a crime is eligible for deportation,” Homan added. On Wednesday, Homan went a step further and called Khalil a “national security threat,” claiming that “free speech has limitations.” "Coming to this country either on a visa or becoming a resident alien is a great privilege, but there are rules associated with that. You might have been able to get away with that stuff in the last administration, but not this administration," Homan said. Trump’s expanding use of executive power The Khalil case is part of a broader trend in which the Trump Administration has sought to expand its use of immigration law to remove individuals deemed to be a threat to the United States. The effort is in line with Trump’s actions from his first term, which included creating a task force to review whether individuals had lied on their immigration forms. In 2020, Trump’s Justice Department also created a new “Denaturalization Section” in its immigration office to identify naturalized immigrants to strip of their citizenship rights. Of the 228 denaturalization cases the DOJ has filed since 2008, about 40% were brought during Trump's four years in office, the New York Times reported at the time. The Khalil case signals that the Trump Administration is willing to employ those powers far more aggressively than it did during Trump's first term, a shift that could have far-reaching implications for civil rights and free speech in America.