This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. It’s been a week of searing reversals coming out of the White House, making it difficult to take anything it says at face value. The most conspicuous example of this was the nebulous state of President Donald Trump's tariffs with Canada and Mexico, which seesawed over a matter of days from being unequivocally on, to mostly off, and then maybe, sort of, on again. Amid all that, the President boasted of Elon Musk's free hand to fire thousands of government workers in a speech to Congress that was rife with obfuscations and fabrications. Two days later, after a hastily called Cabinet meeting, Trump announced some new restraints on his fellow billionaire. But even in a truly head-spinning week in this new era in Washington, one Trump remark stands out in how utterly unbelievable it was. “I’m not even looking at the market,” the President said Thursday in a fib that left even his defenders with little response. One top aide in Republican Leadership perhaps summed up all of D.C.’s reaction best when he messaged me back on an encrypted app with an eye-roll emoji. A second Republican who worked in Trump’s first administration suggested we had perhaps fallen into a parallel universe: “We are on Earth 10,000.” This is, after all, a President who spent most of his first term using Wall Street as a proxy for not only the economy’s health, but his overall success as the nation’s leader. “That big Stock Market increase must be credited to me,” Trump insisted in what was then called a tweet in 2019. “If Hillary won - a Big Crash!” So despite what Trump claimed on Thursday when asked about the impact of his confusing tariff policies, this is an administration that lives by the markets and dies by them, and right now that barometer is falling fast. Friday’s jobs report had been expected to help Wall Street recover, after its gains since Trump’s election in November evaporated in short order. Since reaching a peak on Dec. 16, the tech-heavy Nasdaq is now down 10% from its high-record mark that Trump once promoted. The broader Dow is down more than 5%. A panicked investor-class selloff put the markets on pace for the worst week since September. As one political adviser to the financial services sector, here in town for a conference of credit union execs, told me in an exasperated clip: “We are exhausted, and it’s still Q1.” The news in Friday’s jobs report was seen as a decidedly mixed bag. The U.S. economy added 151,000 jobs but unemployment ticked up to 4.1%. The numbers were slightly below expectations, but the real fear came in what wasn’t counted: the bulk of mass firings and downsizing of federal workers that had not yet shown up on the ledger. And the report wasn’t strong enough to mitigate all the tariff turmoil, which is zapping confidence that investments today will be worth more down the line. It’s not especially clever, but it is nonetheless accurate: the so-called “Trump Bump” after he won a second, non-consecutive term in power has become a “Trump Slump.” A whopping $3 trillion in wealth created since Election Day disappeared just this week. The length of that slump is an open question. Friday’s jobs report was just the latest brick in a monument to Trump’s second-term economic record. Whether it’s a dour subbasement or a glass-and-steel office tower is still T.B.D. But investors are losing patience with the ways in which no one in Trump’s orbit can be counted on to know what they’re talking about. Billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a business broadcast that the tariffs would stick, only to be humiliated days later by his boss, who said they were going to be booted down the calendar. Then, on Friday, Trump resurrected the tariffs and threatened a 250% tariff on Canadian dairy and timber. Undergirding much of this market turmoil is Trump’s capricious nature, and those he has empowered like Musk. It’s why so many government contractors are spending their days refreshing Musk’s DOGE account to see if they will be paid for work already approved and completed. More to the point, Washington may be slowly adjusting to the on-again-off-again nature of so many things emanating from this White House, but Wall Street is decidedly not. It truly has become an hour-to-hour crisis; market-moving decisions can come between phone calls, and then revert back soon after. And we haven’t yet seen an official jobs report that reflects the cutting across federal agencies, or the way in which the potential degradation of services like food safety inspections or weather forecasting might ripple across the U.S. or world economy. We are all on this merry-go-round watching as the mechanics who keep it lubricated are evicted.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. There is one person aside from Donald Trump who could definitely put an end to this economic chaos. His name is Mike Johnson. And the House Speaker would really, really like it if you could keep his name out your mouth. As the President continues to goad a global meltdown unseen in decades, Speaker Johnson is trying to keep the MAGA meltdown away from his fellow House Republicans. Trump has triggered an utter circus that may haunt GOP lawmakers for a generation and retirees into their graves. Even Trump allies like Sens. Rand Paul and Chuck Grassley—for different reasons, sure—are sounding an alarm about the repercussions of these add-ons. Rep. Don Bacon, an Omaha Republican, has legislation teed up in the House to make a move against Trump’s unilateral emergency tariffs. His bill lacks sufficient public support from GOP colleagues for now, but the private frustrations among lawmakers are starting to pile up. For now, most are not willing to defy the President. A similar bill in the Senate has bipartisan backing, and would almost certainly draw more Republicans if they could be sure they weren’t walking the plank only to see Johnson toss it in a desk drawer to die. If Johnson were to give the green light to a measure reasserting Congress’ authority over tariffs, things would change really quickly on Capitol Hill. There would likely be majorities in both chambers for such legislation—perhaps even large enough to override the veto Trump promised on Monday to issue if such a bill reached his desk. But such a bold move could very well lead to Johnson getting a pink slip from his caucus, as his Speakership barely happened, and only then with Trump’s intervention.

The chemistry professor’s nightmare seemed to finally be over. Five years had passed since Feng Tao, also known as Franklin, was led by F.B.I. agents out of his home in Lawrence, Kansas. The first professor to be arrested under a Trump-era program aimed at fighting Chinese economic espionage, Dr. Tao was accused of hiding his ties to a Chinese university while conducting federally funded research at the University of Kansas, where he was tenured. In July, he won his legal fight. A federal appeals court overturned the final conviction in his case. His wife, Hong Peng, recalled in an interview that she thought her husband could finally return to his lab, and their family could perhaps recover some semblance of a normal life. But the University of Kansas has not reinstated him. Dr. Tao, a Chinese citizen and permanent U.S. resident, is now suing his former employer for wrongful termination. He has accused the university of unlawfully surveilling him on behalf of federal investigators and of violating its own faculty disciplinary policies by terminating him before his criminal proceeding concluded. “The university allowed itself to join in fearmongering and racist witch hunting,” read a complaint filed by Dr. Tao’s lawyers in January in a federal court in Kansas. The University of Kansas did not respond to requests for comment.Dr. Tao’s experience underscores how, more than three years after the Justice Department officially ended the Trump-era program, known as the China Initiative, its impact is still reverberating among professors and researchers of Chinese descent. The F.B.I. brought at least a dozen prosecutions at universities or research institutions over the three years the initiative was in effect, mostly against scholars of Chinese descent. None involved charges of economic espionage or theft of trade secrets or intellectual property. Critics argued that the program had singled out scientists based on their ethnicity and overreached by blurring the line between violations of disclosure policies and more serious crimes like espionage. Many of the prosecutions against academics of Chinese descent eventually collapsed. Yet there are growing concerns that the China Initiative could be revived under a second Trump administration. Congress is currently considering an appropriations bill that would allocate funding for a Justice Department program focused on rooting out Chinese espionage, including in academia. And about a week ago, Republican lawmakers reintroduced legislation to protect against Chinese espionage by establishing a “CCP Initiative” — referring to the Chinese Communist Party — under the Justice Department. “President Joe Biden recklessly ended the China Initiative that President Trump established during his first term,” Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the bill’s co-sponsor, said in a statement. “Now, President Trump is back in action to hold Communist China fully accountable for its exploitation of the United States.” There is broad agreement that the Chinese government has tried to steal American technology, including through the recruitment of overseas scientists. Chinese partnerships with U.S.-funded researchers and universities have also helped propel Beijing’s advancements in fields like hypersonics and nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and semiconductors, according to a report put out last fall by a House committee focused on threats from China. American universities disputed parts of that report, but they have also begun shuttering collaborations with Chinese institutions. In January, the University of Michigan ended its joint partnership with a Chinese university. Lawmakers have also raised concerns about the large number of Chinese students studying science and engineering on American campuses — sometimes using rhetoric that has been criticized as fearmongering.“The difference is, Chinese students here in the U.S. are not studying ancient Greek history — they’re here studying STEM and national security issues,” Senator James Risch, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in January. “And each one of them, whether they like it or not, is an agent of the Chinese Communist Party.” Critics say resources could be better directed at rooting out actual Chinese espionage threats. Such programs could also backfire on U.S. national security by helping accelerate an outflow of talent that is key to maintaining a scientific and technological edge against China.“There are real, genuine threats that need to be addressed, but we should not be using a sledgehammer on the issue — we should be using a scalpel,” said Gisela Perez Kusakawa, executive director of the Asian American Scholar Forum, an advocacy group based in New York. A 2022 survey of scholars of Chinese descent found that 45 percent of respondents who had previously obtained federal grants said they would avoid doing so in the future. In interviews, many cited concerns that it could subject themselves to unnecessary racial profiling. The number of academic collaborations between researchers in the United States and China has also declined since 2017. And there are concerns that blanket restrictions on future research collaborations, such as the ones House Republicans recommended in their fall report, could cut American scientists off from areas where China is already ahead, such as materials science, hypersonics and nanotechnology. Caroline Wagner, a professor of public policy at the Ohio State University who advises the government on research security, said that given the open nature of scientific research, efforts to blunt China from getting certain technologies could ultimately prove “shortsighted.” Federal funding agencies and universities have recently taken steps to clarify which ties academics need to disclose, which Dr. Wagner said was a step in the right direction. “I’m not sure there would be a need for the China Initiative now given all of the infrastructure that’s being put in place,” she said. Critics say that Dr. Tao is a case study of how issues of integrity in academic research have been leveraged to support accusations of espionage. Raised in a village in southwest China, Dr. Tao moved to the United States in 2002 to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry at Princeton University. After working at several different universities, he was recruited by the University of Kansas in 2014 to a tenured faculty position. Known among colleagues for his intense work ethic, Dr. Tao continued to work after the allegations came out even while suspended without pay, publishing dozens of papers. But he has also accumulated millions of dollars in legal bills. According to his lawsuit against the university, the F.B.I. began its investigation after a disgruntled visiting scholar falsely accused Dr. Tao of being a spy. During the investigation, authorities discovered a job offer from Fuzhou University in southern China that Dr. Tao had failed to disclose to the university. Dr. Tao did travel to China while telling University of Kansas officials that he was in Germany. While prosecutors argued that he went to set up a laboratory and recruit staff for the Chinese University, Mrs. Tao denied this and testified that her husband went to China to visit his ailing mother. In court, Dr. Tao argued that he had no disclosure obligations because he never received money or signed an employment contract with Fuzhou University. Still, prosecutors said that Dr. Tao had committed fraud by hiding the offer and his work with the Chinese institution from his university and two funding agencies, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. A jury found him guilty on three counts of wire fraud and one count of making a false statement. But in 2022, a federal judge threw out the fraud convictions, citing insufficient evidence that Dr. Tao had received any money for his work in China. “This is not an espionage case,” said U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson. “If it was, they presented absolutely no evidence that was going on.” And in 2024, a federal appeals court voided the last count of making a false statement, arguing that Dr. Tao’s failure to disclose had not influenced an actual funding decision. In his lawsuit to get his job back, Dr. Tao accused the university of discrimination based on race, saying that other professors who were not of Chinese descent did not face termination even though they had similar undisclosed interactions with foreign universities. The university, the lawsuit said, violated its own policies by failing to hold a hearing on his employment status. In addition to reinstatement, Dr. Tao is seeking payment for lost wages, lawyers’ fees and damages for emotional distress and injury to his reputation. “We can’t choose the country where we were born, where we came from,” said Dr. Tao’s wife, an American citizen. “What we have experienced, this is completely racial profiling.”

On Wednesday, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced that the country would be investing in major renewable energy projects—developing new offshore wind farms and large scale clean energy bases that combine solar and wind farms. It’s the latest move by the country, both a leader in renewable energy and the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, to make inroads in the green energy transition. China’s renewable energy dominance has been a long time coming, experts say. “Several of the clean energy industries were identified by the government several decades ago as strategic industries, where they really wanted to invest and position themselves as the global leader,” says Joanna Lewis, director of the science, technology, and international affairs program at Georgetown University. “This has really been a long-term strategic effort on behalf of the government to both put in place policies that would promote the deployment of renewables domestically within China, but also build up the industrial capacity to allow them to actually manufacture the technologies as well.” What is China's climate target? In 2020, China announced that the country would reach peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. Since then, the country has been making strides towards adopting clean energy. That same year, the Chinese government pledged to double its renewable energy capacity by 2030—only to reach that goal six years ahead of schedule. And in 2024, the country led the world in energy transition investment, accounting for two-thirds of the $2.1 trillion spent globally last year on everything from power grids to electric transport, according to BloombergNEF. China currently produces 31% of its electricity from renewable sources including wind, solar, hydroelectricity, and geothermal. While the country is still heavily reliant on coal, estimates predict that by 2026 solar will overtake the fossil fuel as China’s leading energy source. The country is also expanding its reach and helping boost green energy adoption in other countries—most notably by shifting its Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure development project, in developing nations to focus on clean energy and green infrastructure. “China wants to supply green energy goods for the world,” says Samantha Gross, director of the energy security and climate initiative at the Brookings Institution. “The push from the Chinese government to subsidize and really nurture its green energy industries wasn't just to serve the domestic market, it's to serve the global market.” China's renewable product exports grew by 35% from 2019 to 2023, and the country’s EV battery makers had a global market share of 60% in 2023 alone. Why is China still building new coal plants? Despite the country’s green transition, China is still heavily reliant on coal—the world’s biggest single source of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy. Alongside last year’s record green energy investments, China’s coal power construction hit a 10-year high in 2024—approving 66.7 GW of new coal-fired power capacity. (One gigawatt alone is the equivalent of a large coal power plant.) “China uses coal for a lot of its electricity generation because that's what they have,” says Gross, who notes that the fossil fuel helps ensure the country’s energy security amid increasing demand. The coal industry is also a major economic hub in many Chinese provinces, presenting a sore spot for the country’s environmental goals. “There is this inherent conflict where China has some looming climate targets that it's going to need to meet in the next few years,” says Lewis. “And in order to meet those targets, you're going to need to see growth in renewables not only outpace growth in fossil fuels, but you're going to need to see a decline in the role that fossil fuels are playing in China's energy system.” Advertisement Earlier this year, the E.U. ambassador to China called for the country to stop building coal powered plants, but whether China is able to make the shift remains to be seen. Despite massive clean energy investments, the country’s emissions saw a 0.8% increase in 2024. How does China’s climate actions compare to other countries? In the U.S., China’s green energy push helped shape the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a nearly $400 billion green industrial policy that aims to ramp up U.S. clean energy production. “[China] has spent a lot of money subsidizing and helping their electric vehicle industry, battery, solar panel, and they are world leaders in those industries as a result,” says Gross. “The Inflation Reduction Act was an attempt by Congress and the Biden Administration to to compete with that.” (The future of the IRA is currently up in the air, after President Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office freezing the program’s funding.) Advertisement While China is outpacing every other country in green energy investment, its continued reliance and investment in coal means that its not yet translating to reduced emissions. While China’s Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Accords—which lays out a country’s plan for how it will help meet the Paris goals—says that the country will “peak” emissions by 2030, it doesn’t specify a cap. In comparison, some countries, including the majority of the E.U. nations are beginning to see their emissions decrease. “Peak implies that emissions will stop going up, but it doesn't say at what level they'll stop going up,” says Lewis. Given that China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses, a firm commitment from the country to stabilize and then reduce emissions is the only way the world will be able to meet global climate goals. “If the peak is very high, it's going to make it very difficult for the world to limit emissions to a level that would hold warming at 1.5 degrees or even 2 degrees,” says Lewis. “We are not seeing enough signs—even with the really impressive build out of renewables—that China is getting on that path quickly enough.”

Eight road construction workers died after becoming trapped under an avalanche in northern India, the Indian Army said on Sunday. Rescuers operating in several feet of snow evacuated 46 other workers. The workers were buried by the snow early on Friday in the village of Mana, in the state of Uttarakhand, as the avalanche hit their camp site. Disaster response teams coordinated the rescue efforts under extreme weather conditions, and the work was halted several times because of incessant snowfall and rain. GPS, sniffer dogs and thermal imaging cameras were used to find the workers. India’s Meteorological Department warned of the possibility of further avalanches in the area, which is known as a gateway for Himalayan mountain trekking. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The rescued workers, many in critical condition, were taken by helicopters to hospitals in neighboring Joshimath. The workers belong to the Border Roads Organization, a division of the Indian armed forces that develops and maintains road networks in India’s border areas. Mana sits at an altitude of 3,200 meters, or more than 10,000 feet, and is about 15 miles from the Tibetan border. During the winter months, the village’s entire population migrates to lower elevations to escape the snowfall. Uttarakhand is prone to avalanches and floods. One of the country’s worst natural disasters took place there in 2013, when flooding killed more than 1,000 people. In 2021, 11 people died when an avalanche hit a Border Roads Organization camp in the district that includes Mana.As the Uttarakhand rescue efforts were completed, an operation to reach eight workers trapped in a tunnel in southern India were still underway, more than a week after the tunnel’s ceiling collapsed. Officials have said that the workers’ chances of survival are very remote.

We’re six weeks into the wildest presidential administration certainly of my lifetime and likely in modern U.S. history. From day one, energy has been a top theme. And, yet, the new Trump Administration hasn’t been the primary focus of my writing. There are several reasons for that. For one, I think it’s important to highlight that things are happening in spite of Trump. The global picture, while complicated, is far more promising than the domestic one. And, in the private sector, many companies are continuing their decarbonization initiatives. Advertisement 00:09 03:00 Read More But there’s perhaps another more fundamental reason: it’s really hard to speak definitively about what’s happening in Washington and what the implications will be for the future of climate. President Trump entered office with bold declarations. Many of those statements and policy moves will have concrete, devastating consequences for climate efforts; others are exaggerated or even meaningless. On the heels of his address to Congress this week, where he once again declared energy a top priority, I figured it’s the right time to take a first stab at identifying the signal in the noise. A month and a half into Trump’s second term, there is no question that this administration will dramatically set back efforts to decarbonize the global economy, but dire warnings that clean energy is over and fossil fuels now reign supreme overstate reality. Politics and policy shape energy markets, but they do not control them. To dismiss the energy transition because Trump does would be to make a severe miscalculation. One of the biggest gaps between rhetoric and reality comes with Trump’s “drill baby drill” promise. Trump has promised to expand the country’s oil and gas production with an eye to economic growth and lower prices. To do that, he’s said the federal government will open wide swathes of land to drilling and promised to expedite approvals for fossil fuel infrastructure. There are a few key challenges to such a vision. Most importantly, even as Trump puts his finger on the scale, the market and simple economic questions will determine the appetite for new oil and gas drilling. In recent years, companies have been reluctant to make big, risky investments in new drilling, and it’s hard to imagine what Trump could do to change that. A core piece of his fossil agenda is his day one executive order declaring what he calls an “energy emergency.” The order promises to accelerate federal approvals for energy projects across the country—excluding wind and solar. But many questions remain. For one, the order is likely to be litigated at every turn in its implementation. “There are obstacles built into the system that only Congress can really remove,” said Michael Catanzaro, who served as an energy and environmental policy advisor at the first Trump White House and is now CEO of public affairs firm CGCN Group, at a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) discussion I moderated this week. Advertisement And many analysts have said that whatever authorities are ultimately activated are likely to be used to improve the country’s electric grid and accelerate transmission—something that’s actually helpful for the energy transition because renewable energy is often located in remote places requiring long-distance wires to get to the grid. Let’s be clear. While some of Trump’s claims are often overstated or murky, there are other moves that will represent decisive setbacks to climate and clean energy efforts. The offshore wind sector comes to mind. That’s not only because Trump has a particular hatred for the electricity source but also because in general offshore wind farms require a greater number of and more complex federal permits than those needed for many other renewable energy projects. Attacks on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) threaten to undermine critical weather and climate data that companies use to make essential business decisions. Efforts to address environmental justice have been wrapped together with the much-maligned DEI, and it’s safe to say that such issues are no longer a concern of the federal government. And the administration is reportedly planning to target the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding,” a scientific document that provides the legal basis for the agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. If Trump succeeds in nixing it, the move would eliminate the foundation of much of the U.S. regulatory regime around climate change. And, of course, a big test will come with the fate of the clean energy tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. The list could go on and on. Advertisement So how do all of these variables shake out for the U.S. emissions trajectory? At this stage, it’s hard to know. A climate modeler faces the same challenges I do when trying to paint an accurate picture, only multiplied. But the truth is that factors outside of Washington are likely to play a significant role shaping the near-term future of U.S. emissions, most importantly the country’s rapidly growing electricity demand that is coming in large part as a result of data center expansion. Developers of these projects are racing to get electricity—often zero-emission but increasingly gas powered because it’s easier to get. “We are going to see a continuation across the board in the development of energy,” former Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz said at an American Council on Renewable Energy event last week. “It's a reality that most of the new capacity added has been renewables, second natural gas. I don’t see how that’s going to change.” Advertisement And then there are the knock-on effects around the rest of the world. Trump’s moves will inevitably inspire other like-minded countries to do the same. “There are lots of changes taking place, hard to keep up for everyone,” says Alice Hill, senior fellow for energy and the environment at CFR. “But I think it's clear that the world, as a result of President Trump's [decisions], is taking a step back on cutting its emissions.” We’ve already seen pullback in places like Argentina and Indonesia. But there’s another way to think about the implications of Trump’s rollbacks in a global context. The U.S. represents about 12% of global emissions—the second highest share after China. That’s significant, but the U.S. is just a small piece of the puzzle. Whether other countries can find a way to put the puzzle together without the U.S. is another question entirely.

President Trump signed an executive order instructing administration officials to alter a student loan forgiveness program for public servants to exclude nonprofit organizations that engage in activities that have what he called a “substantial illegal purpose.” His order to restrict the program appears to target groups supporting undocumented immigrants, diversity initiatives or gender-affirming care for children, among others, as the Trump administration has sought to eliminate federal support for efforts that have drawn right-wing ire. The order, made public on Friday, is the latest of many attempts to overhaul the loan forgiveness program, which has often whipsawed borrowers with rule changes and bureaucratic obstacles. The program, known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, was created by Congress in 2007 and cannot be eliminated without congressional action, but the Education Department has some leeway to determine how it operates. Mr. Trump’s executive order directed the secretaries of education and the Treasury to amend the program to exclude workers for organizations supporting illegal actions, listing several categories of examples, including “aiding or abetting” violations of federal immigration law. The Trump administration has taken a broad view of what it considers to be support of illegal activities. The order cited as examples organizations that support “illegal discrimination,” which the administration has previously said includes diversity and inclusion initiatives. The order appeared to target groups supporting gender-affirming care. It said it would exclude from the loan forgiveness program any organization supporting “child abuse, including the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children.” Mr. Trump’s order also singles out organizations that engage in a “pattern” of breaking state laws against “trespassing, disorderly conduct, public nuisance, vandalism and obstruction of highways,” language that could be used against groups that have supported political protests. Another provision targets those supporting “terrorism,” a label that Trump officials have used to describe anti-Israel protests. Such changes must typically go through a formal rule-making process, which often takes months or years to complete and includes a period for public comment. But the Trump administration has frequently acted in defiance of apparent legal limits — which is likely to set off waves of anxiety for those relying on the complex program. President George W. Bush’s administration enacted the loan program, which aims to encourage people to work in government and at qualifying nonprofits by easing their college debt burden. After making 120 monthly loan payments — which requires at least 10 years of service in qualifying jobs — borrowers become eligible to have their remaining federal student loan debt wiped out. The program became a notorious quagmire, with bureaucratic tripwires and loan-servicing issues leading to a rejection rate as high as 99 percent for those who sought forgiveness. President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration used waivers and exceptions to eliminate barriers, allowing more than one million people to use the program to eliminate debts totaling $79 billion. An estimated two million people have made payments that count toward their obligation to be eligible for relief through the program. Those borrowers often anxiously count down the months until they reach the required 120 payments. The program is open to borrowers who work in government jobs — at the federal, state or local level — and those who work at nonprofits that are tax-exempt under the Internal Revenue Service’s 501(c)(3) statute. Some other nonprofits are also eligible, but many are exempt, including labor unions and partisan political organizations. At various points in the history of the loan program, there has been confusion over what constituted “public service.” In 2019, three lawyers won favorable rulings after having been deemed ineligible. Mr. Trump’s order seems to take aim at disfavored organizations in a way that echoes a bill passed last year in the House that would allow the government revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofit groups it accused of supporting terrorist entities. Democrats feared the bill could be exploited by Mr. Trump to target his political enemies. The bill stalled in the Senate.

After a blistering February heat wave in South Sudan’s capital caused dozens of students to collapse from heat stroke, officials closed schools for two weeks. It was the second time in less than a year that the country’s schools closed to protect young people from the deadly effects of extreme heat. Climate change, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels in rich nations, made at least one week of that heat wave 10 times as likely, and 2 degrees Celsius hotter, according to a new study by World Weather Attribution. Temperatures in some parts of the region soared above 42 degrees Celsius, or 107 degrees Fahrenheit, in the last week of February. The analysis used weather data, observations and climate models to get the results, which have not been peer reviewed but are based on standardized methods. South Sudan, in the tropical band of East Africa, was torn apart by a civil war that led to independence from Sudan in 2011. It’s also one of the countries least responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating up the globe. “The continent has contributed a tiny fraction of global emissions, but is bearing the brunt of climate change,” said Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at the Center for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Heat waves are one of the deadliest extreme weather events and have become more frequent and more severe on a warming planet. But analysis methods connecting heat to mortality vary between and within countries, and death tolls can be underreported and are often unknown for months after an event. Prolonged heat is particularly dangerous for children, older adults and pregnant women. For the last three weeks, extreme heat has settled over a large region of continental Eastern Africa, including parts of Kenya and Uganda. Residents have been told to stay indoors and drink water, a difficult directive for countries where many people work outdoors, electricity is sporadic, access to clean water is difficult and modest housing means there are few cooling systems. In Juba, South Sudan’s capital and largest city, only 1 percent of the city has green space to help cool residents who cannot get relief at home, according to the study. But there are adaptations that could be made. “Improving ventilation, planting trees and painting schools lighter colors can help reduce temperatures in classrooms, while adapting the school calendar and class schedules can help avoid severe disruptions to education,” said Kiswendsida Guigma, a climate scientist at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, a research group in Burkina Faso in a news release. South Sudan is particularly vulnerable after years of war and food insecurity. In 2018 a peace deal ended a civil war that killed more than 400,000, but tensions remain within the country and political arrests were reported this week. Editors’ Picks His Life Savings Were Mailed to Him by Paper Check. Now, It’s Gone. Is There a Least Bad Alcohol? Help! How Do I Make Sense of All These Trends? “Climate change is clearly making life even harder in South Sudan, a country already facing economic challenges and periods of instability, where very few children finish primary education,” Dr. Guigma said. As global temperatures continue to rise, similar extreme heat waves in February could occur once every 10 years, according to the study. And if warming doubles by the end of the century, similar heat waves could occur annually. High temperatures are forecast to continue in the region through March.

You could be forgiven for not noticing that last month was the planet's third warmest February on record. That’s because local temperatures plunged during the third week of February 2025, shattering records across the plains, the Gulf of Mexico, and the East Coast. Baker, Mont., saw a low of -22°F, its coldest day since 2009. Bismarck, N.D., fell to -39°F, six degrees from its all-time coldest day. The cause of the week-long deep freeze? A polar vortex collapse. Now, meteorologists are calling for another collapse in the middle of March, one that could plunge the U.S., Canada, and parts of Europe into a bitterly cold spell just days before the official arrival of spring. So what is a polar vortex collapse and why does it affect weather so dramatically? As the National Weather Service explains, the polar vortex is an area of low pressure and cold air that exists over both of Earth’s poles 10 to 30 miles above the surface. The term vortex is used to indicate that the air flows in a counterclockwise direction. Both polar vortexes are present year-round, but they weaken in the summer and strengthen in the winter, governed by rising and falling seasonal temperatures. South of the Arctic’s polar vortex is the jet stream, a river of west to east air that flows five to nine miles above ground, and helps keep the pole’s cold air confined to the Arctic. When the vortex weakens—which it does on occasion—the jet stream becomes wavy, bulging south and allowing Arctic air to flow down across North America and Eurasia, causing temperatures to plummet across the affected areas. More dramatic than a weakened vortex is a collapsing vortex. That occurs when a layer of Arctic air 10 to 30 miles above the surface warms by 50°F or more over a period of just two days, a phenomenon known as a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW). The SSW more powerfully weakens the polar vortex, slowing the spin that keeps frigid air at home in the Arctic and allowing it to spill southward. An SSW led to the bitter, snowy conditions in February, and weather models predict that another one is already forming and could result in a collapse as early as next week and as late as early April. Whether climate change is playing a role in the twin collapses—with increasing global temperatures leading to rising stratospheric temperatures—is unclear. Meteorological records of stratospheric temperatures reach back only to the 1950s, making for a spotty dataset. How long the coming collapse will last is uncertain, depending entirely on how strong and enduring the SSW is. The atmospheric warming may cause the vortex to become stretched or displaced off of its pole-centric position. But on occasion it can cause the vortex to split entirely in two. That, meteorologists warn, could lead to a cold spell that lasts weeks. “The polar vortex has been particularly strong and stable the past few weeks. That has kept the coldest of Arctic air largely confined to the North Pole,” says Mike Bettes, meteorologist with the Weather Channel. “Longer range models indicate there may be a rapid weakening of the polar vortex beginning in mid-March. Because there is typically a lag in how the near-surface atmosphere responds to the polar vortex, this would mean unusually cold temperatures affecting parts of North America and Eurasia at the end of March and beginning of April.”

Two days after Frida Larios, a senior at California State University, Los Angeles, landed in Seoul for a study-abroad scholarship, she received an email stating that her money was in limbo. The State Department enacted a funding pause on grants in mid-February, affecting the longstanding international exchange and study-abroad programs that connect Americans to the world, including the Fulbright-Hays and Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship programs, according to several groups that support international education. But no one has turned the funding tap back on, leaving thousands of students and others involved in the programs worried they will be stuck abroad without money or may not get to go on scheduled trips at all. The State Department, which funds the programs but does not administer them directly, did not comment.Ms. Larios went to Seoul on a Gilman scholarship, which is meant for students with limited financial means. She was expected to receive about $3,000 from the program, which would have contributed to her living expenses for her trip. “The scholarship is the only reason I was able to come abroad because I’m a Pell grant recipient,” Ms. Larios said. “I was shocked, yes, but at the same time, I could feel it coming.” The confusion over the international programs is a small piece of the chaos unleashed as the Trump administration takes an ax to federal government spending. The administration has argued it is ending wasteful spending and identifying programs driven by left-leaning ideologies. Critics have said the cuts and uncertainty are diminishing America’s influence in the world. Melissa Torres, president of the Forum on Education Abroad, said that even the temporary pause in the funding could “cripple our field’s ability to implement the programs.” “We’re being asked by students and their families, ‘What’s going on? Are we able to go abroad? What are you doing to assist my student who’s abroad right now?’” she added. “Unfortunately, the answer is: ‘We don’t know.’” Grant recipients like Ms. Larios received only a terse, vague email from the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit that administers the Gilman and Fulbright scholarships. “I.I.E.’s funding for the Gilman program comes from a U.S. Department of State award,” the email said. “I.I.E. has not received scheduled cash reimbursements. We have no further information at this time.” The institute did not respond to messages on Friday. Hannah Ferreira, a psychology and political science double major at Middle Tennessee State University, plans to study in Austria over the summer — which would be her first trip to Europe — as part of the Gilman program. But now she doesn’t know where her trip stands. “This is the first time that a presidential action has impacted me like this,” Ms. Ferreira said. Ms. Larios said she feels stranded in Seoul. She said she reached out to everyone she thought could help at her university. She was offered student loans, which she was trying to avoid. “Ever since I received that email, I’ve been stressed out about my finances,” Ms. Larios said. “I’ve been trying to spend as little money as possible. I’m literally living off of ramen.”