The police in Baton Rouge, La., on Friday announced the first of a series of expected arrests in the fraternity hazing death of Caleb Wilson, a 20-year-old Southern University student who they said was repeatedly punched with boxing gloves at a warehouse last week and was unresponsive when he was dropped off at an emergency room. Caleb McCray, 23, a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, was charged with manslaughter and felony criminal hazing, according to court records. The authorities said at a news conference on Friday that two other suspects could soon be arrested. Mr. McCray was identified by witnesses as the person who punched Mr. Wilson, the arrest warrant affidavit said. He turned himself in to the authorities on Thursday and was booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, the police said. The people who brought Mr. Wilson to Baton Rouge General Medical Center told employees on the night of his death that he had collapsed after being struck in the chest while playing basketball before they fled the hospital, the authorities said. But investigators said that they had learned that was not true. As part of a hazing ritual for the Beta Sigma chapter of Omega Psi Phi, Mr. Wilson and several other pledges were lined up and hit four times each with boxing gloves in their chests, the authorities said. The repeated blows caused him to collapse to the floor and suffer what had appeared to be a seizure, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. “Caleb Wilson died as a direct result of a hazing incident where he was punched in the chest multiple times while pledging to Omega Psi Phi fraternity,” Thomas S. Morse Jr., the Baton Rouge police chief, said at the news conference. On Thursday, the university, a historically Black institution, ordered the fraternity chapter to cease all activities and suspended pledging for all Greek organizations for the rest of the academic year. “The university will continue to fully and actively cooperate with law enforcement as this case moves forward,” Dennis J. Shields, the president of the Southern University System, said during the joint briefing on the case. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The fraternity could face civil penalties under a Louisiana anti-hazing law. Dallas Thompson, a representative for Omega Psi Phi said in a statement on Friday that the organization was “saddened by the tragic situation at Southern University” and was “committed to cooperating with, and supporting, all ongoing investigations to uncover the truth.” If convicted of manslaughter, Mr. McCray could face up to 40 years in prison. Hazing can rise to a felony charge in Louisiana under the Max Gruver Act, which is named after a Louisiana State University student who died of alcohol poisoning as part of a fraternity ritual in 2017. It can result in a prison sentence of up to five years in cases of bodily harm, death or if a victim’s blood alcohol level is .30 percent or higher, which is more than three times the legal limit to operate a motor vehicle. In a statement, Phillip M. Robinson, a lawyer for Mr. McCray, urged the public not to prejudge his client. “At this time, I have not been presented with any evidence to support such serious accusations,” he said. “I maintain my client’s innocence and urge the public to withhold rushing to judgment until all the evidence is heard.” None of the evidence collected suggested that Mr. McCray had intended to “cause death or great bodily harm to any of the pledges,” the arrest warrant affidavit said. Investigators said that Mr. Wilson and the other pledges wore gray sweatsuits during the hazing ritual, but that his clothes were changed before he was driven to the hospital in the passenger seat of a Dodge Challenger that was seen in security camera footage. “At no time did anyone call 911,” Chief Morse said. The death of Mr. Wilson, a junior who was studying engineering and was a member of the university’s “Human Jukebox” Marching Band, has drawn an outpouring of grief and tributes. “I encourage all the young people out there to make better decisions,” Sid Edwards, the Baton Rouge mayor, said at the news conference. “We’ve got to do better, Baton Rouge.”

For three decades, “college for all” was an American rallying cry. The goal inspired a generation of educators, offered a north star to students and united political figures from George W. Bush to Bernie Sanders. Thousands of new K-12 schools were founded to achieve this ambitious vision, often focused on guiding low-income students toward bachelor’s degrees. Even after decades of bipartisan effort and billions of dollars spent, about 40 percent of students who start college never finish, often leaving with life-altering debt. Across the political spectrum, higher education institutions are less respected and trusted by the public, whether because of sticker shock, perceived left-wing bias or doubts about their ability to prepare students for the job market. In response, some high schools that once pushed nearly all students toward four-year colleges are now guiding teenagers toward a wider range of choices, including trade schools, apprenticeships, two-year degrees or the military. Among them are schools that are part of KIPP, the nation’s largest charter school network. For many years after KIPP’s founding in 1994, the network was known for its single-minded focus on getting low-income Black and Hispanic teenagers to and through four-year colleges. “College starts in kindergarten” was a KIPP mantra. Classrooms were named after the colleges their teachers attended. On senior “signing days,” students proudly marched across auditorium stages, waving the banners of their future alma maters. But over the past five years, KIPP has been part of a national rethinking of college for all. KIPP is “broadening the celebration” of what students can do and achieve after high school, said Shavar Jeffries, chief executive of the KIPP Foundation, which supports 278 KIPP public schools across the country. And KIPP is not the only college-focused education player newly experimenting with career-centered learning.Ten years ago, the Geneva-based International Baccalaureate Organization started a “career program” as an alternative to its traditional “diploma program,” which is well-known as a pathway to elite college admissions. The I.B. career option, while still small, has grown exponentially over the past five years, and now serves more than 8,000 American students. The shifts can bring more than a little bit of discomfort for many highly educated educators, who are unlikely to forget the doors that their own college and graduate degrees opened. Mr. Jeffries of KIPP, for example, is a graduate of Duke and Columbia Law School. And young Americans with a bachelor’s degree earned a median salary of $60,000 last year, compared with $40,000 for those with just a high school diploma. Mr. Jeffries acknowledged that some of KIPP’s moves have been influenced by trends in philanthropy and politics. Business leaders have shown a strong enthusiasm in recent years for alternatives to traditional college. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Many politicians and wealthy donors to education causes like KIPP are concerned about student dropout rates and ballooning debt. They have also been influenced by famous tech executive dropouts, by their own personal distaste for campus left-wing activism and by the anti-college populism of the Trump movement.Mr. Jeffries said schools like KIPP’s are trying to walk a line between encouraging students to strive for a four-year degree and also introducing them to alternatives. “We have to be very, very careful, particularly for younger people of color,” Mr. Jeffries said, noting that many apprenticeship and job-training programs are expensive, and may not have a proven track record of placing students in well-paid jobs. While KIPP is enthusiastic about directing students toward what Mr. Jeffries called “credible” job-training programs, “the data is clear,” he said. “A college degree opens up more opportunities.” At KIPP Academy Lynn, in a working-class corner of coastal Massachusetts, almost all students still consider four-year colleges, and about three-quarters enroll. But now, the conversation does not end there. In the fall of her senior year, Moriah Berry, 18, realized that her biggest fear, she said, was “being broke.”To avoid that fate, Moriah has been working with her teachers and counselors to create plans — and backup plans — for life after she graduates from high school. Her big goal is an undergraduate degree in biochemistry or physics. But Moriah is also considering an accelerated, three-year bachelor’s degree from a private trade school, which would qualify her to work as a radiology technician. And because the $56,000 annual tuition there could turn out to be prohibitive, even with aid, she is also looking at two-year programs that offer certification in the same field. “I don’t want to have an outrageous amount of loans,” said Moriah, who lives with her mother, a nurse. “I want to be really realistic.” This school year, for the first time, all KIPP juniors and seniors across the country are enrolled in a two-year seminar called College Knowledge and Career Success. At KIPP Academy Lynn, juniors research career paths — orthodontist, C.I.A. agent, software engineer. Teachers also work to demystify the college application and financial aid process, explaining basics like the difference between a grant and a loan. Students look critically at specific college and training programs, examining their graduation and job-placement rates.During their senior year, students fill out applications, and then do financial planning for the years ahead. The work is pragmatic. KIPP students are overwhelmingly from low-income households, and often the first in their families who might go to college. They earn bachelor’s degrees at about double the rate of other low-income students nationally, according to a 2023 Mathematica study. While more than three quarters of students who attended KIPP for middle and high school enrolled in college, only 40 percent graduated within five years. KIPP Massachusetts has tried to adjust to that reality, renaming its “college counseling” team as “match counseling.” It also removed the requirement for a college degree from job listings for “persistence advisers,” counselors who work with recent graduates to troubleshoot college, career, mental health and financial challenges. Similarly, the Bronx Early College Academy, which offers International Baccalaureate’s diploma program, is also shifting away from pushing all of its students, who are largely from low-income families, into four-year colleges. The I.B. program is well-known for its focus on liberal arts rigor and philosophical thinking. Its most famous course, called “theory of knowledge,” focuses on epistemological questions in politics, culture and the arts. But 18 months after graduation, about a fifth of B.E.C.A. alumni were not enrolled in any sort of college, according to data from 2021 to 2024. “We didn’t have the construct to talk to kids about anything other than college,” said Yvette Rivera, the school’s principal. “But we don’t want to waste kids’ time. We don’t have a lot of time, especially in communities like ours.” Five years ago, Ms. Rivera embraced I.B.’s newer career track as an additional option. The signature course is called “personal and professional skills.” Students take on big ethical questions, a hallmark of the I.B. approach, but also focus on professional writing, public speaking and disagreeing respectfully. Learning about careers is a central part of the program. This fall, Danessa Ayala, a 17-year-old senior, was considering three disparate paths with vastly different educational requirements: automotive mechanics, real estate or becoming a detective. Her parents, a security guard and office administrator, said they would support whatever their daughter chose, but otherwise had not offered much detailed guidance. After Danessa was assigned at school to research her career interests, she realized that it could take many years for a police officer to rise to detective. She began to focus in on real estate, construction and home renovation. This winter, Danessa worked a paid externship for a local arts nonprofit, earning $16 an hour. She gained some familiarity with woodworking, which she knows can be a big part of home renovation projects. She is now applying to local public colleges and planning to take accounting and other business courses that can be helpful in the real estate industry. She plans to keep living at home to save money.Brittney Date, an adviser at B.E.C.A. to students with disabilities, once talked with families mostly about their children reaching high school graduation. She now has much broader conversations with students and parents about skills, dreams and budgets. “The focus has shifted to understanding what students want to do,” she said. “College? Cosmetology?” At KIPP Academy Lynn, Nicholas Pinho, an 18-year-old senior, is also weighing whether a four-year college is worth it. He might go for a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, but he is also thinking about a trade program to become an electrician. Either way, he wants to stay nearby his Brazilian American family in Salem, Mass., he said, where he could work for his family’s kitchen installation business. He was once interested in law school. But during the Covid-19 school closures, when he was chained to a laptop for remote learning, he had trouble focusing. That experience, he said, made him realize “I like to do more hands-on work.”

In the early weeks of the Trump administration’s push to slash funding that colleges and universities rely on, grants and contracts had been cut and, in a few cases, researchers had been laid off. In recent days, the fiscal pain has come to students. At the University of Pennsylvania, administrators have asked departments in the School of Arts & Sciences, the university’s largest school, to cut incoming Ph.D. students. In some cases, that meant reneging on informal offers, according to Wendy Roth, a professor of sociology. Her department had to decide which of the students would be “unaccepted.” Dr. Roth, chair of graduate education, was chosen to explain those decisions to them. “Two of them, I would say, were extremely upset. One person was in tears,” she said. “It’s just the most terrible thing to get that kind of news when your plans are made.” Since taking office, the Trump administration has issued orders that threaten to broadly undercut the financial foundation of university based research, including deep reductions in overhead cost reimbursements through the National Institutes of Health. Court challenges have paused some of the cuts, but universities are bracing for uncertainty. The University of Pennsylvania could face a $250 million hit in N.I.H. funding alone. Members of the administration have cast the cuts as a way to reduce wasteful government spending, sometimes in political terms. Last month, Katie Miller, who is working with Elon Musk’s team to trim federal spending, said the cuts would end “liberal D.E.I. deans’ slush fund.” In some cases, schools are pre-emptively cutting their expenses as a precautionary measure. North Carolina State University announced on Feb. 14 that it was freezing most hiring. Stanford University announced on Feb. 26 that it was freezing staff hiring, citing “very significant risks” to the community. At the University of Louisville in Kentucky, President Kim Schatzel announced an “immediate pause” on faculty and staff hiring until July. She cited the potential loss of $20 to $23 million in N.I.H. research funding. Dozens of other schools have announced hiring freezes or “chills.” Many of the cuts are now hitting graduate education, too, which is highly dependent on research grants, leaving students who had dreams of pursuing Ph.D.s with nowhere to go. A graduate program in biological sciences at the University of California, San Diego, usually enrolls 25 new graduate students a year. This year, the number will be 17. The reduction may seem small, but Kimberly Cooper, a biology professor, said the Trump cuts would ricochet through the university. “I hate to sound fatalistic,” said Dr. Cooper, who specializes in the study of limb development. “But at this point I think they’re trying to break the academic enterprise. And cutting academic science has impacts on the educational mission of the entire university.” At Penn, cuts to graduate programs were made across the board in the school’s 32 programs, professors said. The history department, for example, was asked to offer Ph.D. slots to only seven students, not the usual 17. In English, the normal cohort of 9 to 12 incoming students will be reduced to a maximum of six. A letter signed by professors in 22 departments at Penn warned that the school’s decision would cause reputational damage. Asked to comment, the university pointed to a statement signed by J. Larry Jameson, Penn’s interim president, posted on the school’s website, which noted that the cuts “represent an existential threat across our university and American higher education.” Dr. Jameson said the school was pursuing “cost containment measures and new sources of revenue.” He added: “We will remain judicious, measured, deliberate and focused on sustaining our mission when determining any action.” As the Trump administration vows to target schools over antisemitism and diversity initiatives, other programs that directly touch undergraduates, such as scholarships, could be affected, too, if the administration clears legal hurdles. David Kazanjian, graduate chair of comparative literature at Penn, said the cuts to graduate students would reduce opportunities for undergraduates. With fewer graduate student teachers, class sizes may increase, for example. The cost-cutting measures are taking effect across a variety of schools, from the Ivy League and large public research universities to smaller public schools. The administration’s decision to cap overhead reimbursements on National Institutes of Health grants to 15 percent could cut millions that schools have come to rely on to cover facilities and staff. The overhead rates normally vary depending on the grant recipients, but in some cases provide up to 60 percent of the grant in additional reimbursements. Columbia University, which receives about $1.3 billion a year in N.I.H. funding, could lose up to $200 million a year from the formula change, according to one analysis by a group of university faculty and staff members and alumni called the Stand Columbia Society. A graduate-student union at Columbia reported in a news release last month that university officials had proposed even more draconian cuts than Penn: eliminating up to 65 percent of incoming Ph.D. students in the School of Arts & Sciences. Following criticism, the cuts at Columbia were ultimately scaled back, and no firm numbers have been released. The graduate workers at Columbia argued that there was no need for funding cuts, citing the university’s endowment, which grew to $14.9 billion at the close of 2024 from $13.6 billion in 2023. Yale, for example, one of the largest recipients of N.I.H. dollars, has announced that it would provide temporary funding from its own coffers for scholars. A Columbia University official said that university endowments are generally restricted by purpose and in many cases could not be used to support Ph.D’s. But this week, the Education Department said it would review all of Columbia’s federal contracts and grants, accusing the school of not doing enough to curb antisemitism on campus. The administration identified $51.4 million in contracts between Columbia and the federal government that could be subject to stop-work orders. Schools with large endowments may also be a target of increased taxation. Endowments, generally accumulated with donor funds invested over decades, had largely been considered off limits for taxes because the universities operate as nonprofits. But in 2017, during Mr. Trump’s first term, Republicans led a charge to impose a 1.4 percent excise tax on the investment income of large private university endowments. Now there are discussions of raising it to 14 percent, or even 21 percent. The threatened N.I.H. cuts and the endowment tax comes on the heels of other major cutbacks at public land grant universities. Among the Trump administration’s first targets was a U.S. Agency for International Development program called “Feed the Future,” which funded 19 agricultural labs in 17 states. Many of those laboratories are now being shut down. At U.C. San Diego, which was already facing state budget cuts, Dr. Cooper, the biology professor, said the fallout would have repercussions beyond universities if fewer students passed through their programs, and could affect entire sectors of the economy. “The bigger issue in all this is that, this is our future biomedical work force,” she said.

On Feb. 8, Colette Delawalla, a graduate student in psychology at Emory University, nervously announced to the online world that she was planning a national protest in defense of science. “I’ve never done this before, but we gotta be the change we want to see in the world,” she wrote in a post on Bluesky, a social media platform. A team of scientists quickly coalesced around her and formed a plan: a rally on the National Mall, satellite protests across the country, March 7. They threw together a website so rudimentary, initially, that visitors had to type the “www” manually, or else the web address raised an error. Within days, the (improved) site received so much traffic that it crashed. The event, dubbed Stand Up For Science, is something of a revitalization of the March for Science that took place in cities around the world in April 2017, not long into President Trump’s first term. But this time, in a greatly sharpened political climate and a post-Covid world, the protests are being organized by a completely different team, and with a distinct vision. “The spirit of it is the same,” Ms. Delawalla said. But, she added, “now we are in a position of being on defense as opposed to offense.”Many of the threats that mobilized scientists during the first Trump administration, such as the widespread deletion of federal databases and deep slashes to the science budget, never came to pass. But this time, within weeks of the presidential inauguration, Mr. Trump has already reshaped much of the federal scientific enterprise, which funds a significant chunk of academic research. Often through executive orders, his administration has terminated funding for global health programs, fired disease screeners at the nation’s borders, gutted climate policy and attempted to suspend funding for nuclear protection. More than a thousand workers across federal science agencies, including the National Park Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, have been laid off. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., widely seen as a vaccine skeptic, is now the health secretary. Some scientific associations applauded Mr. Trump’s swift appointment of Michael Kratsios, an expert in technology policy, to the position of science adviser, rather than leaving the position vacant for more than a year, as he did during his first term. Still, the barrage of changes landed as “gut punches,” Ms. Delawalla said. On that Saturday morning in February — her coffee growing cold as she doomscrolled on her phone — Ms. Delawalla was drawn to her bathroom mirror, where she contemplated her reflection with resolve. “Are you somebody who lives by your values?” she asked herself. “If I really believe as a scientist that science is important for America, what am I going to do about it?” Marching for Science The tradition of science activism stretches back through the environmental movement of the 1960s to the antinuclear protests at the end of World War II. “Historically, when scientists’ interests and livelihoods are threatened, they mobilize,” said Scott Frickel, a sociologist at Brown University who studies the relationship between science and society. But the March for Science in 2017, which attracted an estimated one million people to protests in cities around the world, was distinct from past movements, Dr. Frickel said, because it was in reaction to a specific presidential administration, not to U.S. policy.Some scientists worried that taking that step would heighten the perception of science as partisan. In 2017, Robert Young, a geologist at Western Carolina University, published an essay in The Times expressing concerns about the march. “Those who want to characterize scientists as just another political interest group will use that as evidence for that case,” he said recently. A growing body of evidence suggests that scientists and scientific institutions engaging in political action does affect the way they are perceived by the public. One study found that trust in scientists among supporters of Mr. Trump declined after Nature, a prominent scientific journal, endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020. Another concluded that conservative attitudes toward scientists became more negative, and liberal attitudes more positive, as a direct consequence of the March for Science. The organization held additional marches in 2018 and 2019, but they drew much smaller crowds. The movement ultimately fizzled, in part because of competing perspectives among a diffuse set of leaders about what structure the organization should take, what goals it should tackle next and the politicization of science.Eight years later, Jonathan Berman, one of the leaders of the March for Science in 2017, said that the Trump administration had “moved from the theoretical to the experimental in terms of direct attacks on science.” Dr. Berman also expressed mixed feelings about the legacy of the movement that took place during Mr. Trump’s first term. “There are some things I wish I had done differently,” he said, like leading with an explicit mission and policy goals, meeting with members of Congress and a having clearer message about the political nature of science. “I would have more regrets if they hadn’t started organizing this,” Dr. Berman said, referring to the new movement. “They’ve indicated to me that it opened the door for a way of seeing the ‘scientist-activist’ as a kind of scientist you can be.” ‘Everything Is Political’ One of Mr. Trump’s executive orders in particular struck a chord for Ms. Delawalla: the removal of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs across the government, many of which supported the work of scientists from historically underrepresented backgrounds. That mandate led the National Science Foundation to review currently awarded grants that contained certain words commonly associated with those programs. “‘Woman’ and ‘female’ were on that list,” she said. “They were my words. I’m a woman. I’m female.”Ms. Delawalla had little experience in political activism. Through Bluesky, she connected with four other researchers, and together they formed Stand Up for Science. Those scientists were Sam Goldstein, a graduate student studying women’s health at the University of Florida; Emma Courtney, a graduate student studying disease at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York; Leslie Berntsen, a psychologist based in Los Angeles; and JP Flores, a Ph.D. student in bioinformatics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who had already been gathering organizing tips from the 2017 march leaders. Stand Up for Science is distinct from its 2017 inspiration. The team is small, and the members share a consistent vision, with similar views about how to achieve it. The website lays out a clear set of policy demands, including the expansion of science funding, the restoration of public access to scientific information and the reinstatement of dismissed federal scientists. They chose to protest on a Friday when the U.S. Senate is in session, because they have a clearly defined target audience: American policymakers. And there is no question among the organizers about the political nature of science. “Everything is political,” Dr. Berntsen said. “We did not get to the current moment by accident.” But in their movement’s tagline, the group also emphasizes that the benefits of science extend across the political aisle: “Science is for everyone.” “The law of gravity works for you, regardless of who you voted for,” Ms. Delawalla said. If you used your cellphone today, or knew the name of a bird outside your window or brushed your teeth last night, she added, “it’s because of a scientist.”Since Feb. 8, Stand Up For Science has amassed more than 50,000 followers on Bluesky, has been endorsed by Hank Green, the popular science YouTuber, and recognized by Mark Cuban. Volunteers have organized satellite protests in more than 30 cities. The organizing team filed a protest permit in Washington for a crowd of up to 10,000 on Friday afternoon, although they aren’t sure how many people will show up. That event has attracted speakers such as Bill Nye the Science Guy; Gretchen Goldman, the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists; and Francis Collins, the recently retired leader of the National Institutes of Health. “We are standing up for science because we feel like our backs are against the wall,” Mr. Flores said. “March 7 is not the end goal for us. It’s the beginning.”

L. Clifford Davis, a civil rights lawyer who led efforts to desegregate high schools in Texas, sometimes in the face of mob violence, hostility from state politicians and threats on his life, died on Feb. 15 in Fort Worth. He was 100. His daughter Karen Davis confirmed the death, in a nursing facility. Although the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed public school segregation in 1954 in its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka — a case on which Mr. Davis had worked alongside Thurgood Marshall in its early stages — many cities and states across the South initially defied the ruling. It was left to lawyers like Mr. Davis to hold those local districts to account. He began with Mansfield, Texas. The town’s only high school was whites only, and Black students had to find their own way to a Black high school, traveling 20 miles to Fort Worth. On behalf of five students, Mr. Davis sued the Mansfield school district in 1955, and a year later a federal appeals court ruled in their favor. But when Black students arrived for the first day of school in September 1956, they were met by hundreds of angry white people, some holding nooses. Burning crosses were on display. Mr. Davis appealed to the U.S. attorney general, Herbert Brownell Jr., for help, but he refused. Mr. Davis then wrote to Gov. Allan Shivers of Texas. “These Negro students are exercising a constitutional right,” Mr. Davis wrote. “I call upon you as Governor to cause to be dispatched additional law enforcement officers to Mansfield to assure that law and order will be maintained.” Governor Shivers deployed the Texas Rangers — but only to keep the peace. He made it clear that he would do nothing to enforce the integration ruling. At one point, a friend of Mr. Davis’s offered him a handgun for protection, warning him about white vigilantes. He took the weapon but never used it. He did, however, receive death threats in the mail, though he shrugged them off. As tensions rose, Mr. Davis decided that the risk to the students was too great, and he pulled back his efforts to bus them to white schools. But he continued to press the cause. In 1959, he brought a class-action suit against the Fort Worth school system, which remained segregated. He won, and this time the system agreed to a plan to integrate its schools. Such work, he later reflected, was the epitome of what lawyers should aspire to do.“The philosophy that was instilled in us in those days was that lawyers were social engineers,” he said in a 2014 oral history interview for the University of North Texas. “It was our job to try to use the principles of law to help bring about equality and opportunity for all people, not just Black people.” L. Clifford Davis (the initial L did not stand for a name) was born on Oct. 12, 1924, in Wilton, in southwestern Arkansas, where his parents, Augustus and Dora (Duckett) Davis, were sharecroppers. Wilton was deeply segregated, and the local Black school system stopped at the eighth grade. Clifford’s parents rented a house in Little Rock, the state capital, where he and five of his six siblings lived while attending high school and college. He graduated from Philander Smith College (now Philander Smith University), a historically Black institution, in 1945 with a degree in business administration. Mr. Davis wanted to go to law school, but there were none in Arkansas that would accept Black applicants, so he moved to Washington to attend Howard University. But finding the cost of living in Washington too high, and feeling that the time was ripe to attempt to desegregate the law school at the University of Arkansas, he applied for admission there in 1947. The school, in Fayetteville, offered him a spot, but with a big caveat: He would have no contact with white students and would have to pay his tuition in advance. Mr. Davis declined and remained at Howard, graduating in 1949. But his efforts did not go to waste. In 1948, Silas Hunt, taking the same offer, became the first Black student at Arkansas’s law school. Mr. Davis initially practiced law in Pine Bluff, south of Little Rock. He moved to Texas in 1952 and settled in Fort Worth, where he became the city’s first Black lawyer to open a practice. He worked with the N.A.A.C.P. and other civil rights groups, participating in the early phases of the case that became Brown v. Board of Education, led by Thurgood Marshall, the future associate justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Davis was named a criminal district court judge in 1983, and the next year he won election to the post. He lost re-election in 1988 but remained a visiting judge until retiring in 2004. Along with his daughter Karen, he is survived by another daughter, Avis Davis. His wife, Ethel (Weaver) Davis, died in 2015.Judge Davis was not one to seek the spotlight, but in time it found him. In 2012, the Fort Worth Black Bar Association, which he helped found in 1977, renamed itself the L. Clifford Davis Legal Association in his honor. And in 2017, the law school at the University of Arkansas awarded him an honorary degree. “It never crossed my mind that this would happen,” he told The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “I applied 71 years ago to earn a degree. Now they’re going to give me one.”

Two months after the Education Department officially opened its doors in 1980, Republicans approved a policy platform calling on Congress to shut it down. Now, more than four decades later, President Trump may come closer than any other Republican president to making that dream a reality. His administration has slashed the agency’s work force, eliminating 47 percent of the department’s 4,133 employees in the first 50 days of Mr. Trump’s return to the website. Though doing away with the agency would require an act of Congress, Mr. Trump has devoted himself to the goal, and is said to be preparing an executive order with the aim of dismantling it. Mr. Trump’s fixation has reinvigorated the debate over the role of the federal government in education, creating a powerful point of unity between the ideological factions of his party: traditional establishment Republicans and die-hard adherents of his Make America Great Again movement. “This is a counterrevolution against a hostile and nihilistic bureaucracy,” said Christopher F. Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank and a trustee of New College of Florida. Here is how the party got to this moment.Right from the start, Republicans opposed President Jimmy Carter’s signature on a 1979 law creating the department, citing beliefs in limited government control, fiscal responsibility and local autonomy. They argued that education should be primarily managed at the state and local levels rather than through federal mandates.A year later, Ronald Reagan won the White House, his third attempt at the presidency, thanks to a promise that he would rein in a federal government that he said had overstepped its bounds on myriad issues, including education. In 1982, Mr. Reagan used his State of the Union address to call on Congress to eliminate two agencies: the Energy Department and the Education Department. “We must cut out more nonessential government spending and root out more waste, and we will continue our efforts to reduce the number of employees in the federal work force,” Mr. Reagan said. He was unable to persuade Democrats in control of the House to go along with his plan, and the issue started to fade as a top priority for Republicans — but never quite disappeared. Newt Gingrich, then the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, called for the abolition of the agency in the mid-1990s. In the 2008 Republican presidential primary, both Representative Ron Paul and former Gov. Mitt Romney supported either terminating the Education Department or drastically reducing its size.Last year, a proposal to eliminate the agency was voted down in the Republican-controlled House despite a strong majority within the party, as 161 Republicans supported the measure while 60 opposed it. The Education Department’s primary role has been sending federal money to public schools, administering college financial aid and managing federal student loans. The agency enforces civil rights laws in schools and supports programs for students with disabilities. “The history of the Education Department is as a civil rights agency, the place that ensures that students with disabilities get the services they need, that English-learners get the help they need,” John B. King Jr., who served as education secretary during the Obama administration and is now chancellor of the State University of New York, told reporters on Thursday. “Taking that away harms students and families.”Mr. Trump rarely mentioned education during his first presidential campaign in 2016, other than to criticize Common Core standards, which aimed to create some consistency across states. He did occasionally call for eliminating the Education Department, though his administration did not make it a focus. But Mr. Trump is adept at seizing on issues that resonate with his conservative base. During his 2024 campaign, that meant adopting the concerns of the parents’ rights movement that grew out of the backlash to school shutdowns and other restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT That movement gained steam by organizing around opposition to progressive agendas that promoted mandating certain education standards and inclusive policies for L.G.B.T.Q. students. Activists contended that these policies undermined parental rights and values. In that way, Mr. Trump’s desire to eliminate the Education Department became intertwined with his focus on eradicating diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the federal government, a dynamic that has played out vividly through his purge of personnel and policies at the agency in the weeks since his return to office. In a draft of an executive order aimed at dismantling the department that circulated in Washington this week, Mr. Trump’s only specific instructions for Education Secretary Linda McMahon were to terminate any remaining diversity, equity and inclusion programs. On Mr. Trump’s campaign website, he criticizes gender or transgender issues eight times in his list of 10 principles for “great schools.” “One reason this issue has so much momentum was definitely the pandemic and the populist frustration that Washington was not on the side of parents,” said Frederick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “The Department of Education really became emblematic of a lot of what was going on that was wrong.” Project 2025 called for dismantling the department, too. A multitude of Mr. Trump’s actions during his first six weeks in office were hinted at in Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for overhauling the federal government. This includes an excoriation of the Education Department, which is pilloried in the foreword of the 992-page document for being staffed by workers who “inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms.” The document maintains that schools should be responsive to parents rather than “leftist advocates intent on indoctrination,” and that student test scores have not improved despite 45 years of federal spending. But it does not explain how that might change by giving more power to state and local school districts, which have spent exponentially more on education during that same time. “This department is an example of federal intrusion into a traditionally state and local realm,” the Project 2025 blueprint reads. “For the sake of American children, Congress should shutter it and return control of education to the states.”

President Donald Trump on Tuesday delivered his first joint address to Congress since returning to power, telling lawmakers that “America is back” and touting the flurry of actions he has taken over the first six weeks of his second term, including the deportations of migrants and imposing tariffs against major trading partners. Throughout the 100-minute speech, the longest in at least 60 years, Trump repeatedly assailed the Biden Administration and blamed his predecessor for high prices and illegal border crossings. He also praised the work of billionaire Elon Musk, who was tapped to slash federal spending with his Department of Government Efficiency and was in attendance at the Capitol. But Trump’s speech will perhaps best be remembered for the numerous disruptions that underscored the deep partisan tensions in the chamber, as Democratic lawmakers vocally protested, some ultimately being removed or walking out in defiance. Shortly after Trump began, he was interrupted by Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas, who was sitting only a few rows in front of the dais. Green shouted: “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid,” a reference to a budget resolution adopted by House Republicans and endorsed by Trump that could jeopardize the health insurance coverage of millions who rely on the program. House Speaker Mike Johnson asked the sergeant at arms to eject Green from the floor. Trump’s speech largely covered the same themes of his campaign: economic revitalization, a crackdown on illegal immigration, and a shift in America’s foreign policy posture. The speech was a moment for Trump to solidify his agenda and push back against any potential resistance within his party. With Republicans holding slim majorities in the House and Senate, Trump framed the speech as an opportunity to rally his party behind his policies, even as tensions simmered within GOP ranks over recent moves on trade and foreign aid. “My fellow Americans, get ready for an incredible future, because the golden age of America has only just begun. It will be like nothing that has ever been seen before,” he vowed, repeating a line that was also a common theme of his inaugural address. These are the key moments from Trump’s 2025 Joint Address to Congress. Trump points the finger at Biden Trump repeatedly name-checked former President Joe Biden, calling him “the worst president in American history” and claiming that Biden used his office to “viciously” prosecute him. Rarely do Presidents mention their political opponents by name during joint sessions of Congress. He went on to blame his predecessor for the uptick in prices of everyday goods, which Trump promised to lower on his first day in office. “Joe Biden especially let the prices of eggs get out of control,” he said, prompting boos from Democrats. “The egg prices are out of control and we’re working hard to get it down. Secretary [Brooke Rollins], do a good job on that.” Trump’s assertion was clearly aimed at exploiting the frustration many voters feel about rising prices. Inflation accelerated last month as the cost of groceries, gasoline and rents rose, and polling shows inflation and high prices remain the top issue for voters. A recent Reuters-Ipsos poll found that 52% of respondents don’t think Trump is doing enough to bring down prices. Trump also blamed Biden for illegal border crossings and violent incidents involving migrants, including the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old student from Georgia who was killed by a Venezuelan immigrant who was unlawfully in the U.S. and had been previously apprehended and released by authorities. “Laken was stolen from us by a savage illegal alien gang member who was arrested while trespassing across Biden’s open southern border and then set loose into the United States under the heartless policies of that failed administration,” Trump said. Trump also railed against the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, a sweeping Biden Administration-era law that sought to boost domestic semiconductor production. “Your CHIPS Act is a horrible, horrible thing,” Trump said before many of the lawmakers who passed it. “We give hundreds of billions of dollars (to semiconductor manufacturers) and it doesn’t mean a thing. They take our money and they don’t spend it,” he said, claiming that overseas chip manufacturers didn’t want to pay tariffs. “You should get rid of the CHIPS Act and whatever is left over, Mr. Speaker, you should use it to reduce debt or any other reason you want to,” Trump added. Democrats shout, walk out, hold signs More than a half dozen Democrats walked out of Trump’s speech, while others held up signs and wore t-shirts in protest of his aggressive actions since returning to power. When Trump called Biden the “worst president in American history,” Democrats made a flurry of audible comments: “Lie after lie after lie after lie,” one said. “Tell the truth,” another shouted. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, held up a whiteboard that she wrote messages on throughout the speech. At one point, it read “No King!” Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Florida Democrat, walked off the floor after he stood up in a black t-shirt that said, “No Kings Live Here.” During one viral moment, Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas shouted that Trump has “no mandate” to cut Medicaid, before he was expelled from the floor. Green told the White House press pool afterwards that he doesn’t know whether he will face any formal punishment. “It’s worth it to let people know that there are some people who are going to stand up” to Trump, he said. Prior to the speech, the House Freedom Caucus, a group of far-right Republicans, said it would censure any Democrats who disrupted Trump’s remarks. “Our colleagues are on notice that the heckler’s veto will not be tolerated. You will be censured,” the group posted on X, a sharp reversal after some Republicans repeatedly heckled Biden during his State of the Union addresses. It was unclear how Democrats would respond to Trump’s address. Several Democratic congresswomen were dressed in pink to protest Trump’s policies that “are negatively impacting women and families,” as TIME first reported. Others wore blue and yellow, the colors of Ukraine’s flag. But the interruptions and pointed displays of discontent signaled a broader, if fragmented, resistance to Trump’s rhetoric and policies among Democrats. Several Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a handful of Senators, chose not to attend the speech. Trump later addressed his detractors head on: “I look at the Democrats in front of me, and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud, nothing I can do,” Trump said. “These people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements.” Trump pushes for more border security funding Trump once again painted a grim picture of the state of the U.S. border, blaming the Biden Administration for what he described as “less safe” immigration policy. He called on Congress to increase border security funding, particularly for his mass deportations agenda—a campaign promise that remains at the forefront of his policy goals. “I have sent Congress a detailed funding request laying out exactly how we will eliminate these threats, protect our Homeland, and complete the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than current record holder President Dwight D. Eisenhower—a moderate man but someone who believed very strongly in borders,” Trump said. In attendance in the chamber as guests of the First Lady were the families of two young women who were murdered by Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S. unlawfully that had been previously apprehended and released by authorities. Trump defends his tariffs amid trade war Trump vowed to impose reciprocal tariffs on the nation’s trading partners, arguing that countries such as China, India, and South Korea have long imposed unfair trade barriers on American goods. He said the new levies—set to take effect on April 2—would match the tariffs and trade restrictions other nations place on U.S. exports, marking a sharp escalation in his protectionist trade agenda. “Other countries have used tariffs against us for decades, and now it’s our turn,” he declared. “Whatever they tariff us, we tariff them,” he added. “Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it’s happening, and it will happen rather quickly. There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re okay with that. It won’t be much.” The announcement follows a directive Trump issued last month ordering federal agencies to study the feasibility of the plan. It also comes after Trump imposed controversial tariffs against three of the nation’s biggest trading partners, which amounted to 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports and 20% on Chinese products. The measure launched a trade war as China retaliated with tariffs of up to 15% on U.S. farm exports and Canada announced it would plaster tariffs on more than $100 billion of American goods in the next three weeks. Elon Musk gets a warm welcome from Republicans During his speech, Trump singled out the billionaire SpaceX founder who has become a central figure in the Administration’s effort to reshape the federal government. “DOGE—perhaps you've heard of it,” Trump said as he touted the Department of Government Efficiency. “Thank you, Elon. You’re working very hard. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need this. We appreciate it,” the President added. He then gestured to the Democratic side of the chamber and said: “Everybody here, even this side, appreciates it, I believe. They just don’t want to admit that.” Musk had a prominent seat in the House gallery near the First Lady, even as some Democratic lawmakers brought guests who were directly impacted by his DOGE initiatives, including fired federal workers and others who have felt the effects of a government funding freeze. Several Democrats held up signs that read “Elon Steals.” Trump referencing Musk during the first high-profile speech of his second term underscored the billionaire’s outsize influence in the Administration, despite conflicting statements about his official role. While the White House has maintained that Amy Gleason is the acting administrator of DOGE, Trump appeared to suggest otherwise, telling lawmakers it is “headed by Elon Musk.” Trump warns federal workers who resist ‘will be removed’ Trump delivered a warning to federal workers: those who resist his administration’s policies will be removed immediately. Framing his second term as a mandate for sweeping reform, Trump railed against bureaucratic delays and regulatory hurdles, defending the work of DOGE, which has rapidly slashed spending and cut staff at federal agencies. Trump also took aim at what he called widespread absenteeism in the federal workforce, claiming that “hundreds of thousands” of employees have failed to return to the office following the rollback of pandemic-era remote work policies. His push to bring workers back has been fraught with logistical challenges, with reports of agencies struggling to accommodate the shift. Nevertheless, Trump signaled his intent to press forward, declaring that his administration would reclaim power from what he described as an unaccountable bureaucracy. “The days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over,” he proclaimed, as Democrats scoffed and pointed to Musk. Trump criticizes transgender athletes The President used part of his speech to spotlight Payton McNabb, a former high school volleyball player whose athletic career was derailed after sustaining a traumatic brain injury in a match against a team that included a transgender woman. Invited as a guest of First Lady Melania Trump, McNabb’s presence underscored one of Trump’s key policy initiatives—his recent executive action banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports. “It’s demeaning for women and it’s very bad for our country,” Trump said of transgender athletes, reiterated his longstanding promise to “get men out of women’s sports”, a message that resonated strongly with his base. The issue, a staple of Trump’s campaign rhetoric, drew some of the night’s loudest applause. Trump makes 13-year old with brain cancer an honorary Secret Service agent In a heartwarming moment, Trump introduced 13-year-old DJ Daniel, who was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018 and given only five months to live. Despite the grim prognosis, DJ defied the odds and, over six years later, is still fighting. Trump shared DJ’s dream of becoming a police officer and revealed that, in honor of his perseverance, DJ had been sworn in as an honorary law enforcement officer. Trump then directed the newly appointed director of the U.S. Secret Service, Sean Curran, to officially make DJ an agent. The chamber erupted in cheers as DJ was handed his badge, and lawmakers chanted “DJ! DJ!” in celebration. Later, Trump highlighted the story of Jason Hartley, a high school senior who wants to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point like his father. Trump revealed that Hartley’s application has been accepted and he will be joining the corps of cadets. Trump defends approach to Ukraine After a heated Oval Office confrontation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week, Trump signaled that he is “working tirelessly to end the savage conflict” between Ukraine and Russia. “Millions of Ukrainians and Russians have been needlessly killed or wounded in this horrific and brutal conflict, with no end in sight,” Trump said. “The United States has sent hundreds of billions of dollars to support Ukraine’s defense, with no security, with no anything.” He added: “When [Russian President Vladimir] Putin saw what happened, I guess he said, ‘Well, maybe this is my chance.’ That’s how bad it was. Should have never happened. Grossly incompetent people,” Trump said of the Biden Administration. As a result, Trump recently paused aid to Ukraine, which has sparked a fierce debate in Congress. Some conservatives who were formerly staunch supporters of aid to Ukraine began praising Trump’s more isolationist stance after the meeting last week. During that meeting, Trump told Zelensky that “you don’t have the cards right now” while Vice President J.D. Vance insisted Ukraine should express more gratitude for U.S. support and agree to a ceasefire with Russia, even without clear security guarantees from the U.S. Trump suggested that the minerals deal between the two countries is still a possibility, despite the fallout between the two leaders. Trump said he got a letter from Zelensky that said Ukraine was ready to sign a minerals deal with the U.S. and come to the negotiating table. “I appreciate that he sent this letter—just got it a little while ago,” Trump said. “We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence. Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it at any time that is convenient for you,” he said Zelensky wrote. Read More: In Speech to Congress, Trump Defends His Handling of Ukraine and Russia Trump still wants Greenland Trump reiterated his desire to take control of Greenland and escalated his rhetoric towards the self-governing Danish territory. “One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Trump declared. “We will keep you safe. We will make you rich. And together, we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before.” Trump has long been fixated on the glacier, viewing it as strategically important for national security. Officials in Denmark and Greenland have said that the island is not for sale. However, Trump added that it would be Greenland’s choice: “We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. We need Greenland for national security and even international security, and we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it, but we need it really for international world security, and I think we’re going to get it,” Trump said. Trump makes Abbey Gate announcement Trump announced that the U.S. has apprehended a key figure involved in the 2021 bombing at Kabul’s Abbey Gate, which claimed the lives of 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghan civilians during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan under the Biden Administration. The individual, identified as Mohammad Sharifullah, is facing charges of providing material support for terrorism, including his role in the deadly attack during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to Trump, Sharifullah was a member of ISIS-K, a branch of the terrorist group ISIS, and he had been involved in planning and executing multiple lethal attacks for the organization.

The last snowfall in New York City is fading from memory. It didn’t amount to much — less than half an inch — and didn’t stick around for long. What did linger was the 28 million pounds of salt that was dumped on the streets that day, causing some people to speculate that there was more salt being spread than usual. Caroline Ourso, a photographer from the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, recalled being hit in the face with windblown salt as she walked on the Upper East Side. “It was gross,” she said. “You’re over-salting!” said Cindy Sbiel, who lives in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, adding: “The snow is not coming yet! Just chill. When the snow comes, then put down salt.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Ms. Sbiel, 30, said that this winter she had felt that street salt was everywhere — in her 6-year-old daughter’s shoes, inside her first-floor home, in her wig. Ms. Sbiel’s friend, Lily Roth, said she’d noticed the clothes of her 8-year-old and 5-year-old children sprouting splotches of white. “I see the salt on their coats, stained,” Ms. Roth said. “And all over their shoes — it has damaged their shoes.” Despite the splotching and the glazing, the city says it has not changed its approach to salting in recent years. The impression that it has might come from a newish method of preparing the city’s streets for snowfall and a shortage of precipitation to wash the salt away. What is true is that the salty residue has played havoc with thousands of miles of electrical cables buried beneath the pavement, causing dramatic scenes sometimes caught on video.Smoke and flames shoot out of manholes as the briny runoff causes short circuits that briefly knock out power in pockets of the city. “Snow doesn’t cause the problems,” said Patrick McHugh, an executive at the Consolidated Edison utility. “It’s the salting effect and how much the city salts,” he said, describing what happens to the company’s cables when rock salt eats through their outer layers, freeing electrons to run wild underground. For as long as a week after the salt washes off the pavement, Con Edison crews, working 12-hour shifts, must contend with a surge in the number of cables they have to repair or replace, Mr. McHugh said. The tally of those “jobs” can run to several hundred, compared with 25 to 50 in a typical week, he said. In one example, an electrical cable caught fire beneath the street near Prospect Park in Brooklyn on Feb. 21, sending flames bursting through a crosswalk. Power was out for most of the day for some residents of the area while Con Edison replaced the damaged cables, a company spokesman said. That happened a day after the city received a light snowfall and the Department of Sanitation spread those 28 million pounds (or 14,000 tons) of rock salt to melt it. 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? Before the flakes started to fall, the department sent out its fleet of trucks that spread brine — salt mixed with water — on the pavement. Brining the streets — that’s the official terminology — is a relatively new practice in the city. A few years ago, the Sanitation Department started pouring the mixture onto the busiest streets if they were dry in the hours before snow was forecast, said Joshua Goodman, a spokesman for the department. Once the flakes start to fly, the city begins to lay down dry salt. The brine causes snow to melt as soon as it lands, Mr. Goodman said. It also remains on the pavement, visible as a white sheen, until snow or rain washes it off, he said. But if there are no flakes or drops, the brine sticks around. The department did not apply brine in anticipation of a Jan. 22 snowfall because the brine it had applied the previous week had not washed away, he said.

President Donald Trump struck a conciliatory tone toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during his speech to Congress on Tuesday night and—despite a shouting match in the Oval Office just days before—seemed open to restarting talks over access to Ukraine’s minerals in exchange for continued U.S. security assistance. In the House chamber, Trump read from a letter Zelensky had recently sent him saying Ukraine is ready to sign the minerals agreement and work with Trump toward peace. “I appreciate that he sent this letter,” Trump said The shift in tone came nearly a week after Trump cut short his meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and kicked him out of the White House, canceling a lunch and a planned joint press conference. In a tense scene that unfolded as cameras rolled, Zelensky appeared to irk Trump by not showing as much gratitude for U.S. assistance as Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance wanted to hear and for refusing to accept Trump’s premise that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be trusted to uphold Russia’s end of a ceasefire. Trump also bristled that Zelensky refused to wear a suit for the meeting instead of his wartime black sweater and cargo pants. Over the weekend, Zelensky told reporters over the weekend that the end of the war is still “very, very far away.” Trump on Monday described Zelensky’s response on Truth Social as “the worst statement” and said the U.S. would “not put up with it for much longer.” Later that day, things got worse for Ukraine and Zelensky as Trump froze U.S. military aid, just as Ukrainian forces are entering their fourth year of fighting back Russian military efforts to seize their territory. Trump’s rocky relationship with Zelensky goes back five years—to when Trump first held up military assistance Congress had authorized for Ukraine to coerce Zelensky into investigating his political rival Joe Biden. That phone conversation led to Trump’s first impeachment. Speaking to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, Trump said his administration has continued to talk to Russia about ending the war. “We’ve had serious discussions with Russia and have received strong signals that they are ready for peace. Wouldn’t that be beautiful?” Trump explained his willingness to talk to Putin by saying, “If you want to end wars, you have to talk to both sides.” Trump added: “It’s time to stop this madness.” As he described his approach to the conflict, Trump inflated how much the U.S. has given Ukraine. Trump said the U.S. has spent “hundreds of billions of dollars to support Ukraine’s defense.” Congress has appropriated $174 billion in assistance to Ukraine since 2022, according to the Congressional Research Service. Going off script, Trump asked, “Do you want to keep it going for another 5 years?” He looked at Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in the audience, who was clapping for Ukraine. “Pocahontas says ‘yes,’” Trump said, using an epithet he gave Warren during the 2016 campaign. “Two thousand people are being killed every single week. They’re Russian young people, they’re Ukrainian young people. They’re not Americans. I want it to stop,” Trump said.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has been implementing a slew of actions and executive orders that stand to have wide-reaching impacts on climate policies. During Trump’s first term, the administration put climate on the back burner—rolling back more than 125 environmental rules and policies. When former-President Joe Biden took office, he led the U.S. forward on climate action, signing the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest federal climate change investment in American history. Now, the Trump administration stands to dismantle much of the momentum it has inherited—curbing progress to reduce fossil fuel emissions, the largest contributor to climate change, just as the world surpassed 1.5°C of warming in 2024—the hottest year on record. Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law’s “Climate Backtracker,” has logged nearly 100 efforts to scale back or eliminate federal climate mitigation and adaptation measures since the administration took office at the end of January—ranging from boosting fossil-fuel production to withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords. Here are some of the major ways the Trump Administration is undoing climate action. Fast-Tracking Deep-Sea Mining On April 24, the Trump Administration moved forward with an executive order aimed at boosting the highly controversial practice of deep-sea mining. The order side-steps ongoing international efforts to regulate the practice, and would allow companies to approve licenses in the high seas, an area typically overseen by an intergovernmental agency, the International Seabed Agency (ISA). The U.S. never signed a U.N. treaty, overseen by the ISA, that governs the seabed, though has in the past respected it. There are currently no approved commercial-scale deep-sea mining projects anywhere in the world, and many countries have called for a moratorium until the environmental impact is better understood. Blocking State Climate Laws In addition to rolling back federal climate action, the Trump Administration has taken action to block the enforcement of state level climate measures. In an April 8 Executive Order, the White House directed the Attorney General to identify all state and local laws on addressing climate change, ESG initiatives (short for environmental, social, and governance), environmental justice, and carbon emissions—and make moves to block them. Many state leaders have reaffirmed their commitment to addressing climate change in the wake of the Trump Administration’s regressions. New York governor Kathy Hochul and New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, who co-chair the U.S. Climate Alliance, have said they will not be deterred. "We will keep advancing solutions to the climate crisis that safeguard Americans' fundamental right to clean air and water, create good-paying jobs, grow the clean energy economy, and make our future healthier and safer,” they said in a joint statement. Ramping up Oil and Gas Production On Feb. 14, Trump signed an executive order to create a new “National Energy Dominance Council,” aimed at increasing the country’s oil and gas production. Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” approach is meant to lower energy prices and increase supply of fossil fuels. The country’s oil and gas production, however, already reached record highs under the Biden administration, according to the Center for American Progress. And some experts have warned the moves may actually harm some refineries and raise gas prices. In response to Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency, the Department of Interior said on April 23 that it would implement emergency permitting processes to accelerate approval times for energy and mining projects on federal lands. EPA Deregulation On March 12, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced 31 actions aimed at rolling back a number of significant environmental regulations, in what the agency called "the most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history." The list of targets includes reconsidering restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, rolling back vehicle emission standards meant to accelerate a transition to EVs, and pushing to challenge a 2009 finding that greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide and methane are a threat to public health. In a video announcing the actions, Zeldin refashioned the goals of the EPA, saying the agency’s actions would help lower costs and make purchasing cars or heating homes more affordable to Americans. “Today the green new scam ends as the EPA does its part to usher in the golden age of American success,” he said. More Logging in National Forests On March 1, the President signed an executive order to increase timber production across 280 acres of national forests and federal land. In the executive order, Trump said that “heavy-handed Federal policies” have “prevented full utilization” of the country’s timber resources. The move appeared to be an attempt to boost domestic production ahead of imposing tariffs on foreign countries. (In 2023, the U.S. was the largest importer of wood products in the world, importing $24.8 billion worth from Canada, China, Brazil, and others.) Logging drastically impacts a region’s biodiversity—causing wildlife to lose their habitat and food sources and produces harmful greenhouse gas emissions. The order also directed federal agencies to look for ways to bypass endangered species protections and other environmental regulations, putting the fate of many of the nation’s long protected ecosystems at risk. NOAA Staff Cuts More than 600 workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, were laid off on Feb. 27 as part of the Trump Administration’s efforts to cull the federal workforce. The move stands to have profound impacts on the country’s ability to protect public safety during extreme weather events that are only increasing in frequency as the planet warms. NOAA is a vital data resource on everything from hurricanes to drought, which weather forecasters, local authorities, farmers, and others around the country rely on. The agency’s weather alerts are also an essential warning system allowing communities to protect themselves from extreme weather. Last year, NOAA recorded 27 weather and climate disasters with at least $1 billion in damages, the second highest number since the agency began tracking the numbers in 1980. In mid-March, NOAA announced it would lay off an additional 1,000 workers or more, less than a month after its first round of cuts as part of the Trump Administration’s efforts to cull the federal workforce. Withdrawing From Paris Accords One of the administration’s first moves on the first day of Trump’s presidency, was to begin the process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement. The pact, which was signed by nearly 200 countries in 2015, aimed to curb long-term global warming to 2.7°F (2°C) above pre-industrial levels or keep temperatures below 3.6°F (1.5°C) above pre-industrial levels. The move did not come as a surprise—during his first administration, Trump also withdrew the U.S. from the agreement, though Biden rejoined upon taking office. “In recent years, the United States has purported to join international agreements and initiatives that do not reflect our country’s values or our contributions to the pursuit of economic and environmental objectives,” President Trump said in an executive order. “Moreover, these agreements steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people.” The move weakens the U.S. position and reliability when it comes to international climate negotiations. In a November interview with the Guardian, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres likened a potential U.S. withdrawal to losing a limb or organ. “The Paris Agreement can survive, but people sometimes can lose important organs or lose the legs and survive. But we don’t want a crippled Paris Agreement. We want a real Paris Agreement,” he said. In early March, the U.S. also withdrew from the International Partners Group, an agreement which had rich countries allocate money to the green energy transition in South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Senegal, as well as the board of the Loss and Damage Fund, which is dedicated to helping developing countries weather climate disasters. Evaluating FEMA The president signed an executive order on Jan. 24 calling for an assessment of the effectiveness of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the nation’s main arm for disaster recovery. While visiting Hurricane Helene victims in North Carolina on Jan. 24, he proposed “getting rid” of FEMA, a move that could impact the country’s ability to recover from extreme weather events that are becoming more intense and frequent due to climate change. The appointed council, which will include the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Defense, will have one year to evaluate “the existing ability of FEMA to capably and impartially address disasters occurring within the United States.” The Trump Administration and its newly created Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) proposed sweeping cuts to many federal agencies, including the EPA. At the beginning of February, the agency told more than 1,000 “probationary” employees, those who had been working for the agency for less than a year, that they could be fired immediately, according to NBC News. The agency has since “terminated” nearly 400 employees, according to The Hill. The reduction of staff could impact the organization's speed and ability to respond to crises—like tackling environmental health risks or implementing regulations. Banning Paper Straws Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 10 ending the use of paper straws by the federal government, calling them “nonfunctional” and urging the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and “relevant agencies” to “issue a national strategy to end the use of paper straws” within 45 days. The move, while considered largely symbolic, undoes part of a Biden Administration initiative aimed at phasing out the use of single-use plastics, such as plastic straws and water bottles, from all federal operations by 2035. Pausing Electric Vehicle Adoption In 2021, the Biden Administration set a goal to have EVs make up half of all new cars sold by 2030, a move which President Trump revoked upon returning to power. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) also released a memo on Feb. 6 saying that the Department of Transportation was reviewing the implementation of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program. The move froze roughly $3 billion dollars in funding that was allocated to expand the network of electric vehicle charging stations across the country, according to Atlas Public Policy. According to the most recent EPA data, in 2022 transportation was the largest source (28%) of emissions in the U.S. Decarbonizing this sector would go a long way to reducing the country’s carbon footprint.