A group of Native American tribes and students is suing the Trump administration to reverse its recent firing of federal workers at Native schools that they said has severely lowered their quality of education. The firings, part of the series of layoffs led by the Department of Government Efficiency that have cut thousands of federal jobs since January, included nearly one quarter of the staff members at the only two federally run colleges for Native people in the country: Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque. Instructors, a basketball coach, and security and maintenance workers were among those who were fired or forced to resign in February. Although the total number of layoffs was not clear on Sunday, the reductions also included employees at the central and regional offices of the Bureau of Indian Education, a federal agency. Some staff members, but not all, have been rehired, according to a statement from the Native American Rights Fund, which filed the suit on Friday in federal court in Washington. About 45,000 children are enrolled in bureau-funded schools in 23 states. As a result of the cuts, dozens of courses at the two colleges lost instructors, according to the lawsuit. And because of the loss of support staff and maintenance workers, school dorms were quickly overrun with garbage, students reported undrinkable brown water, dining halls failed to adequately feed students, and widespread power outages hampered students’ ability to study. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Unfortunately, these firings were done without preparation and without regard to the health and safety of the students, and that is a continuation of a history of neglect and disrespect,” Jacqueline De León, a lawyer for the tribes and students, said. “We are here to fight to make sure that it doesn’t continue.” Lawyers with the Native American Rights Fund filed the suit against the heads of the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Office of Indian Education Programs. Plaintiffs included the tribal nations of the Pueblo of Isleta; the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation; and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. Five students from the two colleges are also among the plaintiffs.

For International Women’s Day, which falls annually on March 8, people across the world are celebrating with a variety of tones. Some festivities are commemorating the achievements of women, others are protesting in an effort to end gender inequalities and gender-based violence. In Bangkok, women took to the streets and marched, equipped with banners, as did activists in Berlin. Meanwhile, across the U.K., some women marked the day by participating in sunrise swims. Across the U.S., Women’s March—a network born out of Trump’s first presidency and dedicated to building a base of feminist activism—and affiliates organized marches to mobilize and celebrate their “Unite and Resist” call to action. According to Women’s March executive director Rachel O’Leary Carmona, the goal of the day is to help people “build community” and “practice democracy,” particularly at a time when democratic resistance to President Donald Trump's Administration presents as fractured. This was seen most plainly at Trump’s congressional address on Tuesday, during which varying responses from Democrats—including some congresswomen who were dressed in pink to denote their disapproval with how Trump’s policies affect women and families, other members of Congress wearing blue and yellow in solidarity with Ukraine, and some lawmakers who walked out of the speech in protest—showed a fragmented and broad messaging from the left. Carmona says that just because the left has different priorities and goals, does not mean they cannot be united in their “fight against” what she describes as “authoritarianism.” And Carmona sees these International Women’s Day actions as a moment to practice this unity. “Just because different folks are building different things, does not mean that everyone is not running in the same direction,” Carmona says. “I think the country is fragmented across the board… some people are focused on feminism, some are focused on immigration rights. But when [people] just say, ‘Oh, the left is fractured.’ I think that is how they stop people from building power.” Women’s March—which held a worldwide protest the day after Trump’s first Inauguration Day in 2017—was seen as a heavily unifying force during Trump's initial term, bringing an estimated 500,000 marchers to Washington, D.C. and over 4 million throughout the United States. Carmona calls the first march “historic” and “the tip of the spear” of resistance. The iconography of the original march and its message lives on. However, these are different times. “We are eight years later. Two presidential terms later. We're post-COVID, post-Jan. 6, [2021], post-Dobbs,” she says. “[We have] struggled to meet the moment, as so much of the moment has changed.” Women’s March has worked to rebrand along with the times. In the years after 2017, the network faced internal fractures with concerns that participants were “overwhelmingly white” and accusations of anti-semitism. Now, Women’s March is keen to revive its unifying X-factor amid Trump’s second term, attempting to meet the moment with multi-racial, intersectional, and multifaceted activism. This means welcoming back previous activists and participants, but also breathing life into the cause with new voices. Ashley Parys and Kailani Rodriguez are two first-time organizers who spearheaded International Women’s Day 2025 events in their respective cities. For Parys, organizing in the Boston area has been a whirlwind, but she says that women who have led marches in the past have helped her find her footing. She says she’s grown from a “baby activist” to someone who will continue to show up for Women’s March in the future. Ahead of the big day, the Women’s March Boston action website page logged close to 1,500 RSVPs. “People [emailed me] saying they’re going to bring buses of women of all ages to the protest,” Parys says. Rodriguez, 19, graduated high school in 2023 and organized a debut Women’s March in her small town of Port Angeles in Washington State. When she looked for Women’s Day actions to participate in, the closest one she could find was in Seattle, which is a few hours away. She began organizing a more local action only a few days ahead of the big day, and ended up receiving hundreds of messages from prospective attendees and others hosting similar activism sessions. “I wasn’t expecting this to happen. I wasn’t expecting to be the one in charge of it…it just fell into my lap,” Rodriguez says, noting that she has received a lot of support from older generations. For Carmona, International Women’s Day 2025 is about people like Rodriguez and Parys helping their community practice democracy, and in doing so, practicing democracy themselves. “What we're trying to do is help folks build community. Give folks a chance to organize something in their communities at a time that’s not a trigger moment, because things get very heightened inside of a moment of a Supreme Court decision that doesn't go our way, or a right that's been stripped,” she says. “We want to build relationships [now] so that when the time comes, we're able to be with each other in principled struggle.”

President Donald Trump appeared on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with host Maria Bartiromo, in which he discussed a variety of issues from his first few weeks back in the White House. Key talking points included his tariffs, which have resulted in a trade war, mounting fears that the U.S. may be heading into a recession, and foreign relations—specifically that with Ukraine, after Trump clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on Feb. 28. Bartiromo, who Trump just appointed to the Kennedy Center Board, sat down with the President for the interview that aired on March 9 and was filmed during the past week. Here are some of the key topics Trump shared his views on: Recession fears Consumers and experts alike have shown concern about a possible recession, particularly amid the Trump Administration’s proposed reciprocal tariffs and the mass layoffs largely triggered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Elon Musk. The Atlanta Federal Reserve model suggested that economic growth might be negative in Q1 2025. Trump did not rule out the possibility of economic hardship, arguing that the economy and the U.S. population will have to adjust to the changes being made. “I hate to predict things like that,” Trump said, when asked if he is expecting a recession this year. “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. There are always periods of… it takes a little time. It takes a little time. But I think it should be great for us.” What is happening with Trump’s tariffs Bartiromo pushed for more detail on tariffs, stating that businesses want “clarity” and predictability for shareholder purposes amid Trump’s proposed tariffs and, more specifically, his decision to delay some of those tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Trump said that businesses will have clarity after April 2, when his reciprocal tariffs are set to be put in place. But he also said that the tariffs may well rise over time. “The tariffs could go up as time goes by, they may go up…” he said. “This country has been ripped off from every nation in the world, every company in the world. We've been ripped off at levels never seen before, and what we're going to do is get it back.” Trump went on to reaffirm his belief that more business and production should be carried out on American soil. “Build it here, there’s no tariff,” he said. Where U.S. and Ukraine relations stand after the Zelensky Oval Office confrontation When asked by Bartiromo about the Oval Office exchange between himself and Zelensky, Trump said that Zelensky is a “smart and tough guy” and likened him getting U.S. aid from the Biden Administration after Russia invaded Ukraine to taking “candy from a baby.” “He [Zelensky] took money out of this country under Biden like taking candy from a baby. It was so easy,” Trump said, adding: “I just don’t think he’s grateful.” Trump went on to say if he had been President at the time, Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine. He also said that other global events—such as Hamas’ assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023— wouldn’t have happened if he was in the White House. When asked about the U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal—the original intended focus of Trump and Zelensky’s Oval Office meeting—and whether it will still go ahead, Trump said he “thinks so.” If there are plans to cut defense spending Trump was asked about the Administration's plan to shrink the size of the federal government, a charge spearheaded by DOGE under the watchful eye of Musk. These cuts, though, will not affect defense spending for the time being. Trump said he would “love” to cut defense spending, but will not do so “now.” “You have China, you have Russia, you have a lot of problems out there,” he said, rueful that the government has to spend so much on nuclear weapons. He also reiterated his message that social security and Medicaid will not be affected by the DOGE spending cuts. Trump’s proposed “gold card” route to U.S. citizenship Trump addressed his recent proposal of a “gold card” route to citizenship, putting a $5 million price tag on a card that would allow foreign-born potential immigrants a pathway into the United States. Championing his idea, Trump told Bartiromo that major companies have reached out to him about how hard it is to hire talent from good schools when immigrants must leave the country after their education ends. “You graduate number one at the Wharton School of Finance, or Harvard, or Stanford, and you get thrown out of the country,” Trump said. “And [businesses] want to hire these people. Now, they can buy a gold card and they can take that gold card and make it a part of their deal to get these top students—no different than an athlete.” Read More: What Is Trump’s ‘Gold Card’ Route to Citizenship and How Might It Work? The future of education in the U.S. Trump spoke out about his thoughts on America’s education system amid the news that he wishes to dismantle the Department of Education. “We want to bring the schools back to the States, because we have the worst, literally, we have the worst Education Department and education in the world,” Trump claimed. “We're ranked at the bottom of the list, and yet we're number one when it comes to cost per pupil.” In defense of Elon Musk and DOGE Amid mounting concerns about the oversight Musk and DOGE have been given to cut spending at the federal level—from firing the federal workforce in droves to terminating thousands of government contracts—Trump defended the Tesla and X owner. “What he’s done is unbelievable,” Trump said of Musk, referring to him as a “patriot” and championing his ability to spot financial waste. “This is something that’s really not good for him, and yet he’s doing it. But, he’s opened a lot of eyes.” Trump’s defense of Musk lands amid reports that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Musk have clashed over DOGE’s actions. Trump addressed the reports via his social media platform, Truth Social, on Saturday evening, stating that the two cabinet members have a “great relationship,” and any statement otherwise is “fake news.” Negotiations with Iran Trump addressed the news that he recently sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei over the country’s advancing nuclear program. There are two ways to “deal” with Iran, Trump said: with the military or with a deal. “I would prefer to make a deal, because I'm not looking to hurt Iran. They're great people,” Trump said. “I've written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you're going to negotiate,’ because if we have to go in militarily, it's going to be a terrible thing for them.” Trump’s comments about Iran initially aired on Friday, seemingly prompting a response from the country’s Supreme Leader the following day. Khamenei reportedly said Iran would not negotiate with “bullying governments” insisting on discussions.

Last week, after President Donald Trump’s introduction of his “Liberation Day” tariffs, the global and U.S. stock markets took a major hit, as Wall Street slumped and the U.S. dollar dipped. As Trump introduced a blanket 10% tariffs on all imported goods, and additional import taxes placed on 60 other countries, last week saw the worst week for U.S. stocks since the markets crashed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Dow Jones average closed on Friday, April 4, 2,000 points down, the S&P Index plunged 6%, and Nasdaq dipped almost 6%. Experts and consumers alike fear a recession as a result of the tariffs—and uncertainty and volatility in the markets have left homebuyers wondering how this will affect mortgage rates. Throughout his campaign, Trump ran on a promise of affordability. Homebuyers' concerns loomed large over the 2024 election as the housing crisis affected voters across the country, with high mortgage rates playing a central role in purchasing power. Here’s what you need to know about what Trump’s tariffs mean for mortgage rates. How have tariffs affected mortgage rates so far? With concerns about economic growth and the stock market, investors are seeking the relative safety of the Treasury market, driving equities lower and bond prices higher. As a result, the first week following Trump’s tariff news pushed interest rates down—as of April 3, one day after the president's announcement, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.64%, down 0.01 percentage points from a week earlier and 0.18 percentage points from a year earlier, according to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. And according to data released Wednesday by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), mortgage applications last week jumped 20% from the prior week and reached the highest level since September 2024. At the start of this week, though, mortgage rates began to climb on Monday and Tuesday as uncertainty continues to rock the economy on multiple sides. How do experts expect tariffs to affect mortgage rates in the future? Laurence Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston University, believes that the uncertainty in the market—and subsequently the risk of recession—will continue to hike up mortgage rates. If people are looking to buy soon, he says now may be the lowest the mortgage rates will be for some time. “We could see 10% mortgage rates with what's going on here,” Kotlikoff told TIME. “Initial mortgages with their adjustable rates might have been lower for a few days last week, but the longer term picture here is that we just had five years of cumulative 25% inflation. Mortgage rates are high because of that, and if inflation tends to head up, I think you can see mortgage rates at 10% because there’s just extra risk.” This is Kotlikoff’s prediction, but experts also say that the rise and fall of mortgage rates over the past week shows the volatility of the markets right now. What happens with mortgages is likely dependent on whether or not the U.S. goes into a recession, or whether there is massive inflation in consumer prices. A rise in inflation is likely to prevent the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates significantly, a move that many have been counting on to improve affordability in the U.S. housing market. “Slower growth and heightened uncertainty are likely to drag on housing market activity,” MBA commentators Mike Fratantoni and Joel Kan said in a March forecast on MBA’s website. At the time, they cited mortgage rates declining from over 7% in January to as low as 6.5% in February—marking the “lowest levels thus far in 2025.” “Net impact on the mortgage market will be mixed,” they concluded, “revealing itself only through the weekly and monthly data.” Given the tumultuous economic situation, “flexibility is key” from homebuyers, says Bruce Maginn, financial advisor at Solomon Financial. They must be able to financially respond to either potential inflation or large-scale retaliation in a trade war that could end in a U.S. recession. What has Trump said about mortgage rates? Trump has stood steadfast beside his tariff decisions. He previously said that lowering interest rates for affordability purposes will be possible with tariffs. "Interest Rates should be lowered, something which would go hand in hand with upcoming Tariffs!!!" Trump wrote in a post on Feb. 12 on Truth Social. On April 7, as the market continued to handle hits, Trump also posted about mortgage rates, stating that “the slow moving Fed should cut rates”—something he has called for multiple times since he entered office. “This would be a perfect time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut Interest Rates. He is always ‘late,’ but he could now change his image, and quickly,” Trump posted on Truth Social on April 4. “Cut interest rates, Jerome, and stop playing politics!” That same day, Powell told journalists that the tariffs introduced by Trump were “significantly larger than expected,” and that the Fed was “well positioned to wait for greater clarity before considering any adjustments to our policy stance.”

he Trump Administration dropped a high-profile lawsuit over the right to emergency abortions in Idaho on March 5—a stark reversal from the Biden Administration, and a move that reproductive rights advocates, providers, patients, and legislators have called “devastating” and “troubling.” “Unfortunately, it was not a surprise at all. We have been nervous but ready for this decision to come down. I think the Trump Administration has abandoned pregnant women in medical crises by abandoning [this case],” says Idaho State Sen. Melissa Wintrow, a Democrat. “They dropped that case, which was only holding onto the sliver of protection in a crisis, and they can’t even allow that. Think about that: they can’t even allow a pregnant woman to go to the emergency room, and if her life and health are in jeopardy, to get medical treatment that could save it or preserve her health. That speaks volumes.” Advertisement On March 5, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which had initially been brought by the Biden Administration. Doing so would have permitted Idaho to fully enforce its near-total ban on abortion, even in medical emergencies, but Idaho U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill blocked that move by granting a temporary restraining order at the request of the state’s largest health care provider, St. Luke’s Health System, which had filed its own lawsuit on the issue in January, in anticipation of the Trump Administration dropping the case. Read More: Women Denied Abortions in Idaho Take on the State’s Near-Total Ban The initial case was one of the Biden Administration’s efforts to protect reproductive rights in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. At the heart of the lawsuit is a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires emergency rooms receiving Medicare funding to stabilize patients experiencing medical emergencies before discharging or transferring them, regardless of the patients’ ability to pay. The Biden Administration argued that emergency abortion care is required under EMTALA, and that Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion prevents doctors from providing that care in medical emergencies. The state of Idaho has insisted that the state’s ban doesn’t conflict with federal law.

Shortly before noon on Friday, Dr. Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, stood on the steps below the Lincoln Memorial tuning his acoustic guitar — a “very sweet” Huss & Dalton, he said, with a double-helix of DNA winding down the neck in pearl inlay. The nation’s anxious scientists could use a song. Dr. Collins, a biomedical researcher renowned for leading the Human Genome Project in the 1990s, had steered the N.I.H. through three presidencies, into 2021, and continued working at the agency until his abrupt retirement a week ago. Now he was a headline speaker for Stand Up for Science, a rally to protest the Trump administration’s drastic cuts to the federal work force and to federally funded science. The organizers weren’t sure how many people would show up — they later estimated that the crowd had peaked at 5,000 — nor quite what to expect. In 2017, tens of thousands gathered on the Washington Mall for the March for Science. The collective mood then was as much perplexity as defiance at Mr. Trump’s suggestions that America could be made greater by greatly reducing the Environmental Protection Agency and perhaps never mentioning climate change ever again. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT This year’s crowd was met by Lincoln, over-large and stone-faced in his chair. The organizers had chosen the site for its postcard view of Capitol Hill, perhaps less aware that the 16th president was a champion of science. He established the National Academy of Sciences in 1863 and, an avid astronomer, often visited the Naval Observatory. Early in his career, Lincoln often carried a volume of Euclid under his arm; he studied the mathematician’s argumentative logic to hone his own as a lawyer.Friday’s protesters made their feelings known with a diversity of placards, some pointed (“Fund Science, Defund DOGE”); some catchy (“Make America Think Again,” “No Brains, No Gains”); some clever (“In Evidence We Trust”); some resigned (“I Can’t Believe I’m Marching for Facts”), some too explicit to repeat here. Several read, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun-ding for Science.” Meghan Bullard, a fourth-year doctoral student in neuroimmunology at Georgetown University, sat on the steps below the speakers’ area, sharing Lincoln’s gaze down the length of the pool to the distant Capitol Building. Her sign read, “Literally Just Trying to Cure Multiple Sclerosis.” Her dissertation involved a novel cure for M.S., she said: “We’re currently funded on an N.I.H. research grant. They’re telling us that we need to prepare in case it’s not funded next year.” Dr. Collins, now at the microphone in the sunshine, enjoined the crowd “to celebrate the achievements of science over decades in bettering the human condition, and to advocate for strong public support at a time when serious threats of harm are occurring.” He invoked the Gettysburg Address — “of the people, by the people, for the people” — and noted that it applied to taxpayer-funded science, too. “We need to sing about this,” he said finally, and offered a reworked folk song, which involved everyone singing the chorus: “We're joined together by this noble dream.” Several dozen Stand Up for Science rallies were held on Friday in cities around the country and the world. A thousand people attended in Berkeley, Calif. In Chicago, protesters in winter coats, some holding umbrellas against the sideways-falling snow, gathered at Federal Plaza to hear Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and other speakers. Signs not shielded in clear plastic were soon reduced to soggy cardboard and blurs of marker ink.At Montana State University, one of five rallies happening across the state, organizers struggled to confirm speakers. “There are no speakers except me at the moment,” said Roland Hatzenpichler, a biologist at Montana State University, on Thursday evening. Several invitees declined for fear of repercussion from the state or federal government or their tenure committees, Dr. Hatzenpichler said. Many international students, he added, were afraid to attend after recent social media posts by Mr. Trump about cutting funding for universities allowing “illegal protests.” In Washington, many protesters declined to share their names publicly, for similar reasons. One woman, who wore a surgical mask and a long, white lab coat with the words “Mad Scientist” on the back in red lettering, described herself only as a federally funded researcher “who’s trying to keep things moving forward in these challenging times.” Her field was planetary science, hence her sign: “Good luck getting to Mars without science.” Elsewhere, three young women, all students, stood together with a sign that read “Science is Apolitical.” One said, “I didn’t tell my parents I’m here,” and they all laughed. She added, “I should be at home doing my research. But I can’t, because we might get defunded. It shouldn’t be political, but because they’re making it that way, we don’t have a choice.” The speechifying continued through the afternoon. Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Fred Upton, a former Republican representative from Michigan. Representative Bill Foster, Democrat of Illinois and the only Ph.D. physicist in Congress. (“It’s not just science that’s under attack, it’s facts,” he said offstage.) Dr. Allison Agwu, infectious-disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University. Denali Kincaid, a doctoral student in geochemistry and a TikTok communicator. They reminded the audience (unnecessarily, they conceded) of the value of scientific expertise: to make vaccines, accurate weather forecasts, agricultural breakthroughs; to monitor the 150-plus active volcanic systems in the United States alone. From the sidelines, Mary Doyle, a retired public-health researcher, lamented the depth and seemingly indiscriminate nature of the job and funding cuts. Entire university departments “are going to be gone, because they’re so heavily dependent on federal funding,” she said. Her husband, Scott Nainis, an engineer, said: “We saw a sign that said, ‘Science is best done with scalpels and microscopes, not chainsaws.’” Both had attended the 2017 march; this one felt different. “It’s a darker mood,” Ms. Doyle said.“This is a lot sadder,” their friend Jackie Agnew said. “The other rally felt like a rally, you know? It actually felt like you could have impact. There's sort of a defeated feeling here.” Late in the afternoon, Colette Delawalla, a graduate student in psychology at Emory University and one of the organizers, was feeling elated, if tired. “My expectations were pretty low,” she said. “I’d have been pretty excited if 500 people came out.” One thing her team had learned from the March for Science “was that one protest isn’t enough,” she said. The previous day they had been on Capitol Hill to meet with congressmen, lay out some legislative goals and “ring the bell.” “I did this because, at the end of the day, I just want to do my research,” Ms. Delawalla said. “I never thought of myself as an activist — that’s never been part of my identity. And I’m reckoning with that.” The crowd had dwindled to hundreds when the last speaker, Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, took the microphone around 4:15 p.m. He too invoked Lincoln, as a “champion of liberty and union,” and gave a fiery short course on the Constitution and on science as a First Amendment endeavor. (“‘Diversity’ is not an illegal word.”) He noted that it was the president’s sole task to “take care that the laws are faithfully executed: Do your job, Donald Trump!” Briefly, the crowd chanted, “Do your job!” The 16th president did not speak, or maybe he did. In 1860, while passing through Norwich, Conn., Lincoln was a approached by the Reverend J.P. Gulliver, who was writing for The New York Independent. The two men bonded over their mutual admiration for Euclid. “Euclid, well studied, would free the world of half its calamities, by banishing half the nonsense which now deludes and curses it,” Gulliver said. Lincoln laughed and replied, “I vote for Euclid.”

The Trump Administration’s abrupt withdrawal of $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University cast a pall over at least nine other campuses worried they could be next. The schools, a mix that includes both public universities and Ivy League institutions, have been placed on an official administration list of schools the Department of Justice said may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty. Faculty leaders at many of the schools have pushed back strongly against claims that their campuses are hotbeds of antisemitism, noting that while some Jewish students complained that they felt unsafe, the vast majority of protesters were peaceful and many of the protest participants were themselves Jewish. The Trump administration has made targeting higher education a priority. This week, the president threatened in a social media post to punish any school that permits “illegal” protests. On Jan. 30, his 10th day in office, he signed an executive order on combating antisemitism, focusing on what he called anti-Jewish racism at “leftists” universities. Then, on Feb. 3, he announced the creation of a multiagency task force to carry out the mandate. The task force appeared to move into action quickly after a pro-Palestinian sit-in and protest at Barnard College, a partner school to Columbia, on Feb. 26. Two days later, the administration released its list of 10 schools under scrutiny, including Columbia, the site of large pro-Palestinian encampments last year. It said it would be paying the schools a visit, part of a review process to consider “whether remedial action is warranted.” Then on Friday, it announced it would be canceling millions in grants and contracts with Columbia. Harvard University, whose former president Claudine Gay resigned last year following a bruising appearance before a House committee, is also on the list. So are George Washington University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California. The Trump administration’s moves to hobble university funding and target schools over claims that they tolerated antisemitism had already caused internal recalibration at schools across the country. Some have stepped up lobbying efforts, including hiring lobbyists with connections to Mr. Trump. Many campuses had already cracked down on students over protest activity. More are dialing back or renaming efforts related to diversity, an effort to avoid the ire of Trump officials who have vowed to end such programs And a number have paused hiring and reduced the number of doctoral students admitted in response to the financial uncertainty. Some school officials have said they face an “existential threat.” Still, many presidents have been silent or muted in their public statements about Mr. Trump’s moves against the sector, appearing to retreat in fear of the new administration. In a statement Saturday, Harvard said it was “committed to ensuring our Jewish community is embraced, respected, and can thrive at Harvard, and to our efforts to confront antisemitism and all forms of hate.” Several days after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the president, Dr. Alan M. Garber, posted a message to the university cowritten with other administration leaders. “In these challenging times,” they wrote, “our efforts will be guided by our values and commitments: supporting academic excellence and the pursuit of knowledge; championing open inquiry, constructive dialogue, and academic freedom.” The selection criteria for being on the list for visits is nebulous, but a number of the schools had been included in a report last October by the House Committee on Education and the Work Force, which claimed they had allowed antisemitic behavior by students and faculty. The report criticized Harvard leaders, citing their initial failure to condemn the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023. Northwestern and its president, Michael Schill, also had been under attack by the House committee, then led by Representative Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina. The committee report criticized the university for placing “radical anti-Israel faculty” in charge of negotiations with protesters. The University of California, Berkeley, was identified in the House report for not disciplining students who took part in an encampment or disrupted a talk by an Israeli speaker.Berkeley issued a statement on Saturday saying, “We are confident we have the right processes in place now to respond to any antisemitic incidents.” The statement cited an advisory committee the chancellor formed on Jewish student life and campus antisemitism. While several of the schools have been focal points for campus protests, others are more of a surprise. Richard Painter, a professor of law at Minnesota, was among those who filed a complaint about antisemitism at the university. He had chafed at incidents on campus, including anti-Israeli statements posted by faculty on official department websites. Even so, Mr. Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, wondered if the school was targeted partly because it sits in the congressional district of Representative Ilhan Omar, a vocal critic of both Israel and Mr. Trump, and in the home state of Gov. Tim Walz, who ran on the ticket with former Vice President Kamala Harris. “Part of it is political,” he said in an interview Saturday. Officials at the University of Minnesota could not be reached for comment, but efforts are already underway to address the complaints. The Board of Regents is expected to vote next Friday on a resolution prohibiting individual departments from making political statements on issues of the day. There was evidence suggesting that the administration’s action against Columbia was accelerated by last month’s sit-in at Barnard, which led to additional protests last week. The protests were sparked by Barnard’s decision to expel two students who interrupted a class on Israel. On March 3, six days after the initial Barnard disturbance, the government sent a notice to Columbia that it would review $51 million in federal contracts, citing harassment of Jewish students. The next day, Mr. Trump released a statement on Truth Social saying, in part: “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.” In a news release Friday announcing the cancellation of $400 million in grants and contracts, the task force also accused Columbia of failing to respond to the earlier notice while antisemitic harassment continued on or near campus. On Friday, Columbia said it was reviewing the administration’s announcement and that it pledged to work with the government. Also on Friday, Linda McMahon, the newly installed secretary of education, met with Columbia’s interim president, Dr. Katrina Armstrong. Ms. McMahon issued a statement saying that schools “must comply with all federal anti-discrimination laws” to receive federal funding. The task force’s list was released in late February amid a flurry of executive orders from the White House. Members of the task force include Leo Terrell, a senior Justice Department lawyer. Efforts to reach Mr. Terrell were not successful on Saturday. It was also unclear if any of the campus visits had been scheduled.

One person was dead and hundreds of thousands of customers were without power in eastern Australia as the weakened storm formerly known as Tropical Cyclone Alfred made landfall north of Brisbane late Saturday. Communities were at risk of major flooding, and officials warned that the storm could bring heavy rains and dangerous winds. One man died near the small town of Dorrigo, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement on Saturday. The police said that a body found on Saturday was believed to be the remains of a man who had been reported missing in flooding in the town, which was pummeled with more than 10 inches of rain overnight after days of heavy downpour. The man had been driving a car that was swept away, according to the police. He managed to get out of the car and onto a tree but was again overtaken by floodwaters before emergency workers were able to get to him. “This emergency is not over,” said Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales. “The rivers are full, the rain is continuing and expected to keep falling in the days ahead, and wind conditions are very high and extreme.” More than 333,000 customers in areas affected by the storm were without power Saturday, according to the electricity company Energex. Emergency responders in New South Wales said they had carried out 30 flood rescues in the previous 24 hours, mostly of people in cars who had tried to drive through inundated streets. Thirteen army personnel were injured when two military vehicles crashed on Saturday near Lismore, a small city about eight hours north of Sydney, according to the Australian Defense Force. Emergency responders said earlier that 36 had been injured in the crash. The officers were in the region to assist residents with the effects of the storm, according to a statement. Matt Keogh, minister for defense personnel and veterans affairs, said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that there would be an investigation into the crash. Dozens of communities remained under evacuation orders in an area known as the Northern Rivers region, which includes parts of Lismore. The city was inundated in a devastating flood in 2022 that killed 22 people, with waters rising about 47 feet. Forecasters said Saturday afternoon that there was a danger that heavy rainfall would lead to floodwaters overtopping levees in the city. Mr. Minns said officials were aiming for a swift recovery in the storm’s aftermath, naming a point person to coordinate the efforts. In the 2022 floods, the authorities’ response was criticized by residents as inadequate and delayed, leaving people to take rescues and recovery into their own hands.

The U.S. decision to suspend the flow of military intelligence to Ukraine this week has aided the Russian advance along a critical part of the front, weakening the negotiating position of President Volodymyr Zelensky and killing many Ukrainian soldiers in recent days, according to five senior Western and Ukrainian officials and military officers familiar with the situation. “As a result of this pause, there are hundreds of dead Ukrainians,” one of the officers told TIME in an interview on Friday in Kyiv, asking not to be named when discussing sensitive military operations. “The biggest problem is morale,” he added, as the armed forces of Ukraine are being left to fight without some of their best weapons systems, not as a result of Russian attacks but American pull backs. “It’s really causing an advantage for the enemy on the front line.” The U.S. stopped providing intelligence to Ukraine shortly after the Presidents of both counties, Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, clashed in the Oval Office on Feb. 28. During the meeting, Zelensky questioned whether the Russians could be trusted to abide by any ceasefire. President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance responded by berating the Ukrainian leader on camera. “You don’t have the cards," Trump said. "You’re gambling with World War III.” In the days that followed, the U.S. suspended military aid to Ukraine, including intelligence sharing. Questioned about that decision on Thursday, President Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg, said the Ukrainians had “brought it on themselves.” The U.S. response to Zelensky’s position was “sort of like hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose," Kellogg said. "Got their attention." The impact for the Ukrainians has been most acute in the Russian region of Kursk, where the Ukrainian armed forces are struggling to hold a swath of territory that they seized in a shock offensive last August. That assault marked the first foreign invasion of Russian land since World War II, humiliating the Kremlin and drawing thousands of North Korean troops into the war to help Russia regain control of the area. President Zelensky sees that region as a critical source of leverage in any future peace talks with the Russians. His aim is to trade parts of the Kursk area for Ukrainian land that Russia has occupied. “We will swap one territory for another,” Zelensky told the Guardian last month. Since the U.S. halted intelligence sharing, however, the Russians have made swift advances in Kursk, aiming to cut off Ukrainian supply lines into the region, according to military officers and fresh maps of the battlefield produced by Deep State, an open-source intelligence organization. “If we do nothing, there will be huge consequences,” the co-founder of Deep State, Roman Pogorily, told local media on Tuesday. The main supply line for Ukrainian troops operating in Kursk is now “under constant attack,” he added. “It is impossible to move normally along it.” Advertisement A source in the Zelensky government confirmed that operations in the region of Kursk have been worst affected by the loss of access to U.S. intelligence. “Not only Kursk, in all Russian territory there are problems now,” he says. The Ukrainians have lost the ability to detect the approach of Russian bombers and other warplanes as they take off inside Russia. As a result, Ukraine has less time to warn civilians and military personnel about the risk of an approaching airstrike or missile. “It’s very dangerous for our people,” the government source says. “It has to be immediately changed.” These capabilities have now been crippled without access to information from U.S. satellites. Even Maxar Technologies, a private space technology company headquartered in Colorado, has stopped sending Ukraine images from its satellites, according to two Ukrainian military officers familiar with the situation. Ukrainian forces have often used satellite images from Maxar to plan long-range strikes against Russia. In an emailed statement to TIME on Friday, Maxar Technologies confirmed the disruption to service in Ukraine. “The U.S. government has decided to temporarily suspend Ukrainian accounts” in the system that the government uses to provide access to commercial satellite imagery. “Maxar has contracts with the U.S. government and dozens of allied and partner nations around the world to provide satellite imagery and other geospatial data,” it said. “Each customer makes their own decisions on how they use and share that data.” Adding to the Ukrainian sense of abandonment, the group of Western “partners” who helped receive and process satellite intelligence at the military headquarters in Kyiv have departed, says the source close to Ukraine’s general staff. “There’s no one left,” he says, declining to be more specific in identifying what “partners” he meant. Some European intelligence agencies have rushed to help fill the gap left by the Trump Administration. But it will take time for them to deploy, and they are not likely to make up for U.S. intelligence capabilities any time soon, two of the Ukrainian officers say. “We are really thankful to European partners,” one of them says. “This is the only one solid point that gives us any hope, because without this support, we cannot survive.”

The Trump Administration dropped a high-profile lawsuit over the right to emergency abortions in Idaho on March 5—a stark reversal from the Biden Administration, and a move that reproductive rights advocates, providers, patients, and legislators have called “devastating” and “troubling.” “Unfortunately, it was not a surprise at all. We have been nervous but ready for this decision to come down. I think the Trump Administration has abandoned pregnant women in medical crises by abandoning [this case],” says Idaho State Sen. Melissa Wintrow, a Democrat. “They dropped that case, which was only holding onto the sliver of protection in a crisis, and they can’t even allow that. Think about that: they can’t even allow a pregnant woman to go to the emergency room, and if her life and health are in jeopardy, to get medical treatment that could save it or preserve her health. That speaks volumes.” On March 5, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which had initially been brought by the Biden Administration. Doing so would have permitted Idaho to fully enforce its near-total ban on abortion, even in medical emergencies, but Idaho U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill blocked that move by granting a temporary restraining order at the request of the state’s largest health care provider, St. Luke’s Health System, which had filed its own lawsuit on the issue in January, in anticipation of the Trump Administration dropping the case. The initial case was one of the Biden Administration’s efforts to protect reproductive rights in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. At the heart of the lawsuit is a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires emergency rooms receiving Medicare funding to stabilize patients experiencing medical emergencies before discharging or transferring them, regardless of the patients’ ability to pay. The Biden Administration argued that emergency abortion care is required under EMTALA, and that Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion prevents doctors from providing that care in medical emergencies. The state of Idaho has insisted that the state’s ban doesn’t conflict with federal law. On March 5, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which had initially been brought by the Biden Administration. Doing so would have permitted Idaho to fully enforce its near-total ban on abortion, even in medical emergencies, but Idaho U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill blocked that move by granting a temporary restraining order at the request of the state’s largest health care provider, St. Luke’s Health System, which had filed its own lawsuit on the issue in January, in anticipation of the Trump Administration dropping the case. The initial case was one of the Biden Administration’s efforts to protect reproductive rights in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. At the heart of the lawsuit is a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires emergency rooms receiving Medicare funding to stabilize patients experiencing medical emergencies before discharging or transferring them, regardless of the patients’ ability to pay. The Biden Administration argued that emergency abortion care is required under EMTALA, and that Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion prevents doctors from providing that care in medical emergencies. The state of Idaho has insisted that the state’s ban doesn’t conflict with federal law. “EMTALA was never enough anyway, but it did add a little layer of a legal safeguard for necessary abortions and [health] care when it was a health emergency,” Wintrow says. “It was the last shred, the bare minimum protection for women in Idaho.” The case filed by the Biden Administration eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in June 2024 that Idaho hospitals receiving federal dollars were temporarily permitted to provide emergency abortions in situations where patients are facing serious health risks. But the court declined to rule on whether the state’s ban conflicts with EMTALA, throwing the case back down to lower court judges on procedural grounds. Since Winmill granted St. Luke’s the temporary restraining order, doctors in Idaho are allowed to provide abortions in emergency situations for now, as the court reviews the case. The judge’s ruling prohibits the Idaho Attorney General’s Office from prosecuting doctors providing that care. The state Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on the pending litigation filed by St. Luke’s, but released a statement reacting to the news that the Trump Administration had dropped the lawsuit brought in during former President Joe Biden’s term. “It has been our position from the beginning that there is no conflict between EMTALA and Idaho’s Defense of Life Act,” Attorney General Raúl Labrador said in the press release. “We are grateful that meddlesome DOJ litigation on this issue will no longer be an obstacle to Idaho enforcing its laws.” The Justice Department and White House did not respond to a request for comment on the decision to dismiss the case. In a January press release (reviewed by TIME) announcing its own lawsuit, St. Luke’s chief physician executive Dr. Jim Souza said the conflict between the state’s near-total abortion ban and EMTALA “makes it impossible to provide the highest standard of care in some of the most heartbreaking situations.” Carrie Flaxman, a senior legal advisor for the national legal organization Democracy Forward and a reproductive rights law expert, says that the Trump Administration’s decision to drop the lawsuit is in line with Project 2025, which claimed that “EMTALA requires no abortions” and encouraged the incoming presidential Administration to reverse what it called “distorted pro-abortion ‘interpretations’ added to” the federal law. (Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 during the 2024 election cycle, but some of his closest advisers were involved in drafting the handbook). Flaxman says the change in the presidential Administration’s stance on the issue “is only going to sow confusion among doctors about how to comply with the law,” adding that “it is patients that end up suffering” amid such confusion. Doctors in Idaho have said that the full enforcement of the state’s near-total ban would prevent them from providing standard care in urgent situations. St. Luke’s lawyers said in their complaint that, when Idaho fully enforced its near-total ban on abortion for a few months in 2024, the health system was forced to airlift six patients experiencing medical emergencies out of the state to help them access care. “The St. Luke’s medical providers treating these six patients when the law was fully in effect faced a terrible choice: they could either wait until the risks to the patient’s health became life-threatening or transfer the patient out of state,” St. Luke’s lawyers said in the complaint. “The first option was medically unsound and dangerous because these patients’ conditions could cause serious health complications if untreated, including systemic bleeding, liver hemorrhage and failure, kidney failure, stroke, seizure, and pulmonary edema. Moreover, watching a patient suffer and deteriorate until death is imminent is intolerable to most medical professionals.” At the same time, airlifting patients also puts patients at risk because it can lead to “significant delays in care,” St. Luke’s lawyers pointed out. Dr. Caitlin Gustafson—a family physician, abortion provider, and president of the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare Foundation—says the state’s near-total ban leaves doctors struggling to parse through the laws when they’re trying to provide critical care to patients. When a patient experiences a medical emergency, delays in care can be dangerous and lead to other complications, Gustafson says. For instance, if a pregnant patient is hemorrhaging, and their health deteriorates, the patient’s condition could worsen to a point where their future fertility is at risk. “Without EMTALA, we are forced into a situation where we have to wait. ‘Are they sick enough?’ The law in Idaho says we may intervene with abortion care if it is to prevent the death. Well, that is a continuum, right? There is not a moment in which a patient holds up a sign and says, ‘Now is the moment where this is life-threatening,’” Gustafson says. (Gustafson is a St. Luke’s employee, but gave this interview as a representative of the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare Foundation.) Kayla Smith’s experience with Idaho’s near-total abortion ban was part of the reason she and her family moved out of Idaho to Washington State. In 2022, when Smith was around 18-19 weeks pregnant with her second baby, her ultrasound revealed that her baby had several serious fetal anomalies. Doctors said her baby likely wouldn’t survive birth. They were also concerned that continuing the pregnancy would be dangerous for Smith and put her at risk of developing preeclampsia, since she had experienced the condition while pregnant with her first child. But because Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion had just gone into effect, Smith was forced to travel out of state to Washington to receive abortion care. Smith remembers asking her doctor a series of “what if” questions. What if she carried to term? What would that look like? What if she did develop preeclampsia? “The deciding point for me was during that appointment. I wanted to do the most humane thing for [my baby], but also [I realized] that my life was at risk because [the doctor] looked at me and was like, ‘I don’t know how sick you have to be with preeclampsia before we can induce you,’” Smith says. Smith, who is a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit against Idaho requesting that the court clarify and expand the medical emergency exceptions under the state’s abortion ban, says she knows she was privileged to be able to travel out of state to obtain the care she needed, as that option is not available to others. For Smith—who has since become an advocate for the reproductive rights advocacy nonprofit Free & Just—the reality of the Trump Administration dropping the EMTALA lawsuit is “devastating.” “I’m really afraid for women right now,” she says. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.” Smith, Gustafson, and Wintrow say they are all grateful to St. Luke’s for taking over the case. Wintrow says “it took great courage to do so,” adding that the health system “saw the writing on the wall” with the new Administration and preemptively filed its lawsuit to try and protect pregnant people’s access to emergency abortion care in Idaho. Smith says that if the courts side against St. Luke’s, “women are going to die.” She and Wintrow also say that the Trump Administration dropping the lawsuit has implications beyond Idaho, and fear that it might embolden other states to restrict emergency abortion care. “This is not just going to affect Idaho,” Smith says. “I really feel like this has given the green light to those other red states who have abortion bans to also just dismiss EMTALA completely.”