An intense cold front is sweeping into the Mediterranean this week, bringing a sharp temperature drop and snow. The weather system, named Coral by the Greek National Weather Service, is expected to unleash two waves of wintry conditions that are expected to last from Wednesday through next Monday. The weather service issued an emergency weather alert on Tuesday warning residents to take precautions as daily activities, especially those done outdoors, could be affected. “The drop in temperature will be gradual,” the weather service said, with forecasters expecting temperatures to fall below typical levels by nearly 20 degrees Fahrenheit in northern and eastern Greece. The lowest temperatures are expected by the weekend, as cold northerly winds surge to the south. By Friday, ahead of a second wave of cold, Macedonia, Thrace and the islands of the northern Aegean are forecast to experience temperatures ranging between 19 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 7 to 7 degrees Celsius), while Thessaly, central and eastern Sterea, eastern Peloponnese and the island of Euboea will range between 28 and 48 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 2 and 9 degrees Celsius). Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The mean February temperature for Greece is between 45 and 54 degrees Fahrenheit (7 and 12 degrees Celsius), according to weather service climate data. The cold air will affect other areas in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East as well, including Turkey and Syria, where temperatures are also forecast to drop significantly below their seasonal average by the weekend. Snow is also forecast to come in from the north, mostly from over the mountains of Greece, but also reaching some lower elevations, and forecasters are closely monitoring whether snowfall will reach Athens and Attica. Parts of Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria are also expected to receive snow. The snow is being generated as brisk northerly winds pick up moisture while sweeping over the warm Black Sea. As these moisture-laden winds reach land on the other side, they release the snow, much like lake-effect snow. In addition to the snow, strong northerly winds reaching gale force (eight on the Beaufort scale) will batter the Aegean, where marine warnings have been issued. The Beaufort scale, which measures wind intensity from zero to 12, categorizes 12 as hurricane-force winds.In response to the cold weather, the Ministry for Climate Crisis and Civil Protection in Greece has ramped up emergency preparedness, with local authorities being put on high alert. Additional resources are being allocated to assist those in need. The Municipality of Athens has also placed critical services on 24-hour operations “for as long as necessary” starting Wednesday, providing accommodations, food and other essential care to homeless citizens to protect them from the low temperatures.

The New York University chapter president of the College Republicans resigned this week, yielding to pressure from the national organization after she was prominently quoted in a Vanity Fair profile saying that Barron Trump, President Trump’s youngest son, was “sort of like an oddity on campus.” In the profile, published on Feb. 12, Kaya Walker, the chapter’s president, suggested that the president’s son, an 18-year-old freshman at N.Y.U., did not appear to be assimilating into campus life and was reclusive. “He goes to class, he goes home,” she told the magazine. In the interview, Ms. Walker questioned whether the university, a liberal bastion in Greenwich Village with many famous Hollywood graduates, was the right fit for Mr. Trump’s son. And, according to the magazine, she recalled how a professor had joked about his presence at N.Y.U. — “he doesn’t really belong here.” Will Donahue, the president of the College Republicans of America, said in a statement on Tuesday that Ms. Walker had not obtained prior authorization from the national organization before speaking to Vanity Fair. Chapter presidents, he said, must get clearance before “engaging with media outlets known for editorial biases against conservative voices.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “During the conversation, she was presented with a narrative about Barron Trump that was clearly framed in a partisan manner,” the statement said. “Rather than redirecting the inquiry to our communications team or refuting the premise, she used language that did not align with C.R.A.’s standards of professionalism and responsibility, inadvertently contributing to a misleading and negative portrayal.” The College Republicans recommended on Sunday that Ms. Walker step down, and she did, according to the group, which also said that it was inviting Barron Trump to become a member. Ms. Walker, 21, did not immediately respond on Tuesday to requests for comment. A student profile for her on the university’s website lists her as a senior who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in international relations and French. It said that she had recently completed an internship in the Bronx District Attorney’s Office. Condé Nast, the parent company of Vanity Fair, did not immediately respond on Tuesday to a request for comment. Since his enrollment in 2024 at N.Y.U., where he is a first-year student at the Stern School of Business, Barron Trump has been a focus of intense fascination. In contrast with some of his half siblings, he is not active on social media and rarely makes public statements. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The White House and a spokesman for Melania Trump, the first lady, who has been fiercely protective of her son’s privacy, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. During an appearance on “Fox & Friends” in December, her first interview since the election, Mrs. Trump described her son as playing a pivotal role in her husband’s victory. She credited him with advising his father to appear with media personalities popular with younger voters. Mr. Donahue, the leader of the College Republicans of America, said on Tuesday that the group would welcome Barron Trump into its leadership ranks. He said that the group had long served as a launchpad for conservative leaders who had gone on to become members of Congress and key figures in the political landscape. “While we have not yet had direct communication with him, we would be honored to provide him with a platform to begin his political career should he choose to do so,” he said. “However, we fully respect Barron’s privacy and personal decisions regarding his future involvement in politics.”

For a moment, it looked like New York City Mayor Eric Adams might walk away scot free. But as pressure mounts amid concerns that his ability to govern is compromised, Governor Kathy Hochul said Monday she would weigh whether to remove the Democratic mayor from his office in what would be an unprecedented action in New York State history. On Feb. 10, the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against Adams on the basis that the case “unduly restricted” Adams’ ability to execute President Donald Trump’s agenda to crack down on illegal immigration. The news was followed by a series of resignations from high-ranking Justice Department officials as well as the city’s four deputy mayors. Now, more and more Democratic politicians are joining calls for Adams to resign—or for Hochul to remove him if he doesn’t. Here’s what to know about how that would work—and what might come next. How could Adams be removed from office? The governor of New York is empowered to remove the New York City mayor from office by both state law and the City Charter. In accordance with the City Charter, Hochul can remove Adams from office after providing him with a “copy of the charges and an opportunity to be heard in his defense.” In that case, Adams would be suspended from his post for up to 30 days, during which Adams would need to present his defense. Once Adams has had a chance to make a case for himself, the governor could either restore him to his office or permanently remove him as mayor. What these proceedings might look like isn’t entirely clear, primarily because this has never happened before. Adams is the first New York City mayor to face criminal charges while in office, and if Hochul discharges him of his duties, he would be the first to be removed from office. Two former mayors—Jimmy Walker in 1932 and William O’Dwyer in 1950—resigned. There’s also another path to removing Adams: the City Charter says that an “Inability Committee”—consisting of the corporation counsel, the comptroller, the City Council speaker, a deputy mayor designated by the mayor, and the borough president who has served for the longest consecutive period of time—could convene to vote on whether the mayor is temporarily or permanently unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. If four of five members of the committee declare that the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, then a panel consisting of the 51-member City Council will have 21 days to vote on whether or not to remove the mayor, which requires a two-thirds majority. Until that vote, the mayor can remain in office if he declares within 48 hours of the five-member committee’s declaration of his inability that he believes he is able to carry out his duties. The provision for the “Inability Committee” was established in 1987 after former Mayor Ed Koch had a stroke. But in the wake of Adams’ indictment last September, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said she believed the removal process wouldn’t apply in Adams’ case because precedent suggested it was reserved for physical inability. Who would replace Adams? If Adams is removed from office, or if he resigns, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, the official next in line of succession, would become acting mayor. Williams has already indicated that he is prepared to serve. The office, however, would officially be vacant, and Williams would need to call a special election within 80 days to elect a new mayor for the rest of Adams’ term, which runs through the end of the calendar year. Such a scenario would not logistically impact the mayoral election in November to elect Adams’ successor for a new four-year term. Eight Democrats have already launched bids to challenge Adams in the June 24 Democratic primary: New York City comptroller Brad Lander; Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie, the state senators representing Queens and Brooklyn respectively; Zohran Mamdani, a state assembly member representing Queens; Scott Stringer, a consultant and former comptroller; Michael Blake, the founder and CEO of Kairos Democracy Project; lawyer Jim Walden; and investor Whitney Tilson.Anticipation is also building around whether or not former Governor Andrew Cuomo will throw his hat in the ring, after former state comptroller Carl McCall penned an open letter on Feb. 15 backing him to be Adams’ replacement. Cuomo released a statement thanking McCall, but as of Feb. 18 has not yet announced a mayoral bid.

The nation’s top aviation regulator was thrust back into the spotlight this weekend as the Trump Administration fired hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, just weeks after the midair collision over Washington, D.C. that killed 67 people. The firings, which primarily targeted probationary employees, are part of a broader push spearheaded by the newly-established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative associated with billionaire Elon Musk to streamline government operations. While no air traffic controllers were let go, the firings have raised concerns about the agency’s ability to maintain essential functions at a time when it’s already facing staffing shortages and increasing pressure from a recent string of incidents. On Monday, at least 18 people were injured after a Delta Air Lines passenger jet from Minneapolis made a crash landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport, flipping upside down on the tarmac. Aviation safety experts and union representatives are warning that the cuts could further strain an agency that has long been under pressure to improve its safety record and address gaps in its workforce. The union representing some of the employees called the firings a “hastily made decision” that would “increase the workload and place new responsibilities on a workforce that is already stretched thin.” The union’s statement added that “it is especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month.” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy responded Monday night in a post to X that "the FAA alone has a staggering 45,000 employees. Less than 400 were let go, and they were all probationary, meaning they had been hired less than a year ago. Zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go.” Here’s what to know about the FAA. What is the FAA and what does it do? The FAA is the nation’s primary authority for maintaining aviation safety. It’s an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation tasked with regulating civil aviation and overseeing air traffic control, airport management, and the certification of aircraft. The agency was established by Congress shortly after a military jet from Nellis Air Force Base collided with a passenger plane 21,000 feet over Las Vegas in 1958. Beyond overseeing day-to-day air traffic, the FAA also plays a lesser-known role in national security. The agency helps defend U.S. airspace against potential threats through programs like the National Airspace System Defense Program, which manages radar systems designed to detect missile threats or unauthorized aircraft activity. It is also responsible for regulating the operation of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), commonly known as drones, within U.S. airspace. In December, the agency temporarily banned drones in the New Jersey area in the wake of complaints about unexplained, brightly colored flying objects. The FAA also regulates rocket launches, including those by Musk’s aeronautics company SpaceX. Last year, the agency proposed civil penalties against SpaceX for allegedly failing to follow license requirements. Musk threatened to sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach.” According to a report last year from the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog, the FAA has struggled with workforce shortages and outdated technology for years. The report found that more than a third of the FAA’s systems were “unsustainable,” either due to being outdated or a shortage of spare parts. The GAO noted that the agency has been slow to modernize and, in some cases, lacked clear plans to address certain critical systems. The impact of recent firings Department of Transportation officials were quick to downplay the significance of the latest cuts, stating that they primarily affected probationary workers and did not include air traffic controllers. Yet they come as the agency has faced criticism from President Donald Trump and others about its ability to function effectively. Union representatives say the layoffs disproportionately impacted staff in technical positions, including those involved in radar maintenance and other key infrastructure roles. “This decision did not consider the staffing needs of the FAA, which is already challenged by understaffing," David Spero, the national president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, AFL-CIO, said in a statement. “Staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency’s mission-critical needs. To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety. And it is especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month.” The FAA employees laid off over the weekend were among thousands of federal workers across the country hit with layoffs that began on Thursday with little prior notice, targeting probationary workers—those who have been employed in their current positions for less than one or two years and are easier to fire. The Trump Administration has ordered most agencies to let go of nearly all probationary employees who haven’t yet gained civil service protection. One of the individuals let go, Charles Spitzer-Stadtlander, worked for the FAA National Defense Program. In a post on LinkedIn, he said his program was “tasked with protecting the National Air Space from threats such as missiles, enemy drones, aircraft used as weapons (think 9-11), and so forth.” “FAA NDP is a small, yet critical part of protecting the American public and many of our border states that are at risk of attack from our foreign adversaries such as China and Russia,” he said. Musk allies reviewing air traffic control system Duffy, the Transportation Secretary, said that he intends to overhaul the air traffic control system with help from a team of engineers from Musk’s aeronautics company, SpaceX, whose rocket launches are regulated by the FAA and which currently faces proposed civil penalties by the agency. On Monday, the team visited the FAA's command center in Virginia “to get a firsthand look at the current system, learn what air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current tools, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system,” according to Duffy. It was not immediately clear what expertise the SpaceX engineers could bring to the FAA. Trump’s criticism of the FAA President Donald Trump made clear his dissatisfaction with the FAA after the D.C.-area crash in late January, which Trump blamed on diversity efforts despite no evidence to suggest any such connection. “Brilliant people have to be in those positions,” the President said, claiming that the agency changed its standards under former President Joe Biden and was “actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities and psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under diversity and inclusion hiring initiatives.” Trump’s comments have been widely criticized, as opponents say the President is overlooking the critical, technical work done by FAA employees across various departments, and that the air controller diversity program he criticized was launched during his first term. Trump has also faced backlash for eliminating all the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, a panel mandated by Congress after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing to advise the Department of Homeland Security on aviation safety. While the committee technically remains in existence, it has no members to carry out its work of reviewing safety concerns and offering recommendations to improve airport and airline security.

Pluto will mark a birthday of sorts on March 23, 2178. No one is likely to be there to celebrate it, of course. Even if humanity is a multi-planet species by then, it would be a decided challenge to visit the tiny, distant world, which measures just 1,477 miles in diameter—or little more than half the coast-to-coast distance of the continental U.S.—lies up to 4.67 billion miles from Earth, and features a surface temperature as low as -400°F. Still that date will be one to circle on cosmic calendars. It takes Pluto slightly over 248 Earth years to orbit the sun, which means that on March 23, 2178, one Plutonian year will have elapsed since the dwarf planet was first spotted, on Feb. 18, 1930. “NINTH PLANET DISCOVERED ON EDGE OF SOLAR SYSTEM; FIRST FOUND IN 84 YEARS,” the New York Times announced in a front-page, all-caps headline in its March 14, 1930 edition, the day after the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., announced its big find. “In the little cluster of orbs which scampers across the sidereal abyss under the name of the solar system,” the Times went on, “there are, be it known, nine, instead of a mere eight worlds.” This Feb. 18 marks 95 years since the Lowell Observatory hit paydirt, an achievement made not by one of the observatory’s professional astronomers, but by amateur Clyde Tombaugh, who at the time was just 24 years old. Not long before coming to work at the observatory, Tombaugh had built his own telescope with which he had conducted observations of Mars and Jupiter. He made drawings of the two planets—drawings he sent to the Lowell Observatory, hoping the astronomers there would offer comment and critique. Vesto Slipher, the director of the observatory, did Tombaugh one better, offering the eager stargazer a job. His assignment would be equal parts tedious and transformative: scanning hundreds upon hundreds of images of the skies, looking for the elusive world known at that point only as Planet X. Percival Lowell, the astronomer and businessman who built the observatory, had long theorized that a ninth planet existed somewhere out in the cosmic void, reckoning that it accounted for wobbles that astronomers had observed in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. He searched for Planet X from 1905 until his death in 1916, without luck. It would take another generation before the observatory, aided by the patient Tombaugh, would at last have success. The 95 years since then have been ones of changing fortune for little Pluto. For decades after the first eight planets were barnstormed, orbited, and landed upon by spacecraft from Earth, Pluto remained the only one of the solar system’s major worlds that never received a visit—a slight that was not rectified until the New Horizons spacecraft flew by it in 2015. In 2006, after New Horizons was launched but before it could complete its nine-plus year journey, Pluto suffered the indignity of being demoted from planet to dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). And it’s as a dwarf planet that Pluto is taught to students today. But Pluto has in many ways only grown in astronomers’ estimations. It is now known to be part of an entire system of objects, gravitationally anchoring a cluster of five moons; it has a surface marked by mountains and craters and valleys and plains; it is home to abundant quantities of water ice and may even harbor a liquid ocean beneath its surface, making it an improbable—but not impossible—home for extraterrestrial life. “New Horizons shattered a major paradigm of planetary science,” says Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator. “Pluto turns out to have as much complexity as Mars or Earth, so much so that I know planetary scientists who call Pluto ‘the other Red Planet.’” None of the new discoveries about Pluto would have been made, of course, had the little world not been spotted in the first place—an achievement that took sublime attention to detail. Tombaugh performed his cosmic sleuthing thanks to a telescope with a 13-in. mirror. He used it to gather images of parts of the night sky about as large as a fist held at arm’s length, all in a large area in which the late Lowell had predicted Planet X would be found. Tombaugh captured two images of each spot of sky on photographic plates. The second image of every pair was typically taken several days after the first. Over that relatively short period, background stars would not have moved at all, but a foreground object like a planet would have detectably shifted its position. During the days, when stargazing was impossible, Tombaugh would analyze the photographic plates with an optical device known as a blink comparator. Beams of light from two microscopes in the instrument would shine through both plates in each pair, and Tombaugh would turn a dial, flipping the focus of the comparator first to one plate and then to the other, looking for a single point from among the spangle of points on each image that had moved. He discovered multiple objects this way—but they were too small and moved too fast to be a planet, and instead had to be asteroids. Finally, on two plates taken on Jan. 23 and Jan. 30, 1930, he found the right-sized point in the right patch of sky moving the right amount for a distant planet. The point shifted its position by just 3 millimeters on the plates, which factored out to a world approximately 43 times farther from the sun than the Earth is. Pluto had been found. “All observations indicate the object to be the one which Lowell saw mathematically,” said the observatory in a statement. The new world got its name not long after, thanks to 11-year-old Venetia Burney, of Oxford, England. Over breakfast on the day after the announcement was made, Venetia’s grandfather was reading the account of the new planet aloud from the paper and the young girl straightaway recommended the name Pluto, the ruler of the underworld. Her grandfather mentioned the idea to an astronomer he knew who in turn cabled it to the Lowell Observatory, where it was quickly approved. “I don’t quite know why I suggested it,” Venetia said in a 2006 interview with NASA. “My grandfather read out at breakfast the great news and said he wondered what it would be called. For some reason, after a short pause, I said, ‘Why not call it Pluto?’ I did know, I was fairly familiar with Greek and Roman legends from various children’s books that I had read, and of course, I did know about the solar system and the names the other planets have. And so I suppose I just thought that this was a name that hadn’t been used. And there it was. The rest was entirely my grandfather’s work.” Lonely Pluto would eventually turn out to be not so lonely after all. In 1978, astronomers at the U.S. Naval Observatory discovered a bulge in their images of Pluto—one that moved around the planet once every 6.4 days. The 1,477-mile wide world had a 751-mile wide moon—the largest moon relative to the size of its parent body in the solar system. The newly discovered satellite was dubbed Charon, and astronomers would ultimately find that the two bodies were gravitational co-equals, with Charon not orbiting a stationary Pluto, but with both worlds orbiting each other in a loop-de-loop pas de deux. From 2005 to 2012, the Hubble Space Telescope would ultimately discover four more smaller moons—dubbed Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx. The complexity of the Plutonian system is reflected in the complexity of Pluto itself. New Horizons discovered that Pluto is home to the largest glacier in the solar system, one measuring more than 386,000 square miles, or larger than Texas and Oklahoma combined. What’s more, the glacier is pristine, with no craters, meaning that it is regularly being resurfaced. “The glacier was born yesterday, geologically,” says Stern. “We find examples all over the planet of young terrains, middle-aged terrains, and ancient terrains. Pluto has been active for four and a half billion years.” The secret to all of that activity is Pluto’s probable underground ocean. The water ice on the surface of the world suggests that there should be more water hidden below ground. Over the course of the past 4.5 billion years, that water has been slowly freezing, a process that is likely still underway. That provides the world with energy. “It’s physics 101 that as water freezes it releases latent heat,” says Stern. “That is probably a part of the energy source that’s powering Pluto’s geology. The ocean will continue to freeze for the next one or two billion years, and Pluto will continue to be active.” The question for planetary scientists and exobiologists is whether Pluto’s ancient ocean may have been able to cook up life. The solar system’s 293 moons include several believed to harbor oceans, including Saturn’s Enceladus, Jupiter’s Europa, and Neptune’s Triton. Enceladus regularly emits frosty water geysers, produced when the gravity of Saturn flexes the much smaller moon. The Cassini spacecraft flew through the plumes in 2015 and detected organic compounds that could be precursors of life. “I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say we might find biology in some of these ocean worlds,” says Stern. “And who knows? Pluto could be one of them.” For all of this promise, Pluto struggles for respect, with the “dwarf planet” label continuing to rankle Pluto partisans. The IAU defends the definition based on Pluto’s orbit. Unlike other planets that have a more or less circular, equatorial orbit around the sun, Pluto’s is sharply inclined and highly elliptical, with a perihelion, or close approach to the sun, of roughly 2.7 billion miles, and an apehelion, or furthest remove from the sun, of 4.67 billion miles. That, plus Pluto’s small size—smaller than our moon—suggested that the world did not accrete in its current orbit from the primordial gas and dust that gave rise to the sun and the planets, but rather formed farther out, in the Kuiper Belt, a vast band of icy, rocky bodies that surrounds the solar system. From there, it broke free and entered its screwy orbit. Allow little Pluto to keep its planetary status and you would have to confer the same honor on Eris, a Kuiper Belt object of about the same size, as well as any other, similar worlds that might be discovered—raising the prospect of a solar system with an uncounted number of planets. Stern thinks the dwarf planet distinction is nonsensical—an arbitrary parsing of cosmic definitions. “Small planets are planets too,” he says. “Just because the sun is a small star we don’t call it a dwarf star. We’re not afraid of large numbers of planets; we’re not afraid of schoolchildren having to learn all their names. After all, kids don’t have to memorize every element in the periodic table.” Further exploration of Pluto is not likely anytime soon. New Horizons has long since soared billions of miles into deep space and no other Plutonian missions are currently planned. Still, the oddball world at the edge of our solar system will continue to intrigue astronomers. “My little saying in public talks is that Pluto defies all of the textbooks,” says Stern. “What that proves is that Pluto doesn’t read the textbooks.”

Within the walls of a hospital, privacy is sacred—the intimate details of someone’s body and illness are meant to be as carefully guarded, as quietly delivered, as a sacramental confession. But days into my first year as a doctor, I delivered my first diagnosis of cancer in front of two armed correctional officers, to a man shackled to his bed in a hospital room that felt more like a prison cell. I was unsure where the rules of a prison ended and the rights of a patient began when someone entered our hospital in shackles. It never occurred to me to ask my patient whether he wanted the guards to hear his diagnosis, or even that I might have the authority to tell them to leave the room. In the decade since I delivered that first diagnosis, the population of our prison system has dramatically aged, and its healthcare needs have exploded. Now, with the Trump administration newly promising to radically accelerate mass incarceration through harsh measures like aggressive policing, reincarceration of people currently on home confinement, and extreme prison sentences, the question of how to ethically care for incarcerated patients within the walls of a hospital has become an even more urgent one. Read More: Trump Declared Himself the ‘President of Law and Order.’ Here’s What People Get Wrong About the Origins of That Idea In a moment when the dignity and humanity of these patients and other marginalized communities are increasingly being threatened, it’s also one we can’t afford to get wrong. For the more than 2 million incarcerated people awaiting trial in jails or serving sentences in prisons in the United States, imprisonment is a major determinant of health: a person’s life expectancy declines by two years for each year they serve in prison. And the effects of imprisonment on health are felt far beyond the walls of a jail or prison—people who have been incarcerated continue to suffer poor health outcomes and high mortality long after they are freed, and although few studies have focused on the partners and children of incarcerated people, the little data we do have suggests that their health is also at risk. Hospitals that fail to consider the rights and needs of incarcerated patients risk being complicit in an unjust system that values the health of some communities—and not others. Although the guards and shackles imply that health care workers are vulnerable when caring for incarcerated patients, the literature shows that, in fact, incarcerated people are the ones who are uniquely vulnerable when they need medical care. Health information and records are routinely lost during transitions between jails, prisons, hospitals, and the community, leading to fragmented care and diagnostic delays. Incarcerated people are less likely to receive routine screening tests like colonoscopies and mammograms than their nonincarcerated counterparts. Within hospital walls, the presence of shackles can keep doctors from fully examining their patients, the presence of guards can prevent patients from sharing important medical information or critical symptoms with their doctors, and doctors and nurses—influenced by their own implicit biases—may be inclined to disbelieve or distrust the symptoms or experiences of their incarcerated patients. And because the medical needs of an incarcerated patient must be filtered through the bureaucracy of a jail or prison, it may take much longer for someone to reach the hospital from a jail or a community, which means that they may be much sicker by the time they arrive. My patient’s path from prison to hospital, for instance, had been long and circuitous. In the gym and during brief walks outside, his cellmates noticed that he was staggering, falling against the walls as if he were balancing on the deck of a ship in stormy waters. Months after he first fell, he was seen in the hospital infirmary at their insistence. In the infirmary, he was barely examined—the scrawled, handwritten note that arrived at the hospital of his examination only said that he was “unsteady”—and sent back to his cell with no resolution. He returned to the infirmary several times before he was sent to a local hospital, where he spent six hours in the emergency department before he returned to the prison with a diagnosis of “malingering”—the doctor there had concluded that he was faking his falls to avoid incarceration without ever removing his shackles to determine whether his legs were weak. Weeks would pass before he was transported to our larger hospital. By then, he wasn’t walking at all. His cancer had begun in his lungs, a jagged mass of fecund, immortal cells that had slipped into his lymph nodes before finally reaching his brain, where they robbed him of first his balance and then his strength. Two weeks into his hospital stay, the tumor in his brain began to bleed, wrenching his body into the violent convulsions of a brief seizure. His limbs were still shackled to his bed, and I worried that if he seized again, the unyielding metal of the shackles would break his bones. Still, the shackles remained. I asked whether they were truly necessary, whether a man who could not walk needed to be restrained, and the officers shrugged. “It’s our policy,” they said. I didn’t argue, never said that the man was my patient and that the shackles were compromising his health. When it became clear that my patient would soon die of his cancer, I asked him who he wanted me to call. Before he could answer, one of the officers interrupted: Incarcerated patients in the hospital weren’t allowed visitors; family members weren’t even allowed to know that their loved ones were hospitalized. If a medical decision was needed and my patient could no longer speak for himself, the prison physician would act as his health care proxy. I asked for a compassionate exemption to the visitor restrictions and filled out the paperwork, but by the time it was granted, it was too late; my patient died of his cancer with only the correctional officers by his bedside, his limbs finally unshackled less than a day before he died. The prison would notify his family, I was told. Since caring for that patient, I’ve finished my internship, residency, and fellowship training. I’m now a professor at a safety-net hospital where I often care for incarcerated patients, and I’m ashamed to say that I am still murky on the rules. I’m not alone. While incarceration is far more common than many of the rare diseases taught in medical schools, most medical students are never trained on the rights and needs of the incarcerated patients they are likely to someday care for, and most doctors and nurses report that they don’t know what their hospital’s policies are on shackling, privacy, and surrogate decision-makers for incarcerated patients. As a result, those same doctors and nurses rarely unshackle patients or ask correctional officers to leave the bedside when they deliver sensitive information, even though most doctors and nurses I’ve spoken to also believe their incarcerated patients should receive the same medical care as other hospitalized patients. Often, there is no policy governing the care we provide for detained patients, some of whom may not yet have been tried and convicted despite the optics of their shackles. What we do have, though, are both ethics and policies governing how doctors should care for human beings within the walls of a hospital. There are no federal regulations that govern the use of shackles on hospitalized patients—with the exception of labor and delivery, in which case shackles are prohibited by the federal prison system and many states. (Though a horrifying 10 states still have no restrictions on shackling pregnant people.) But we do have federal regulations that govern how we use medical “restraints”—soft cuffs on the wrists or ankles of agitated patients—which begin with the premise that no hospitalized patient should be restrained unless a proven need arises. Instead of beginning with the assumption that every incarcerated person in a hospital should be indefinitely shackled, we should begin with the assumption that hospitalized patients should remain unchained unless there is a proven need. By the same token, we should assume that detained patients have the same federally protected rights to privacy, to consent to or refuse treatment, and to name a surrogate decision-maker as their nonincarcerated neighbors unless a proven need arises. We should insist that correctional officers leave the room when we learn our patient’s stories or share private information about their bodies or illnesses. And when illness robs our patients of their ability to speak for themselves, our patients—not their jailers—should choose who speaks on their behalf. The unequal toll of COVID-19 kindled a national conversation about health disparities. As the specter of mass incarceration haunts some communities—some bodies—more than others, and the racial chasm in policing and enforcement continues to widen, we cannot exclude incarcerated patients from that call to action. In a moment when hospitals are being made to feel less like places of healing than hunting grounds, honoring the rights of all our patients within hospital walls is more essential than ever.

It’s around this time of year that Jill Tacon’s nose begins to twitch. Having lived in the Mount Eliza neighborhood south of Melbourne for over 50 years, the retiree is all too familiar with the early signs of approaching wildfires, known as “bushfires” locally. “My nose is super alert in summer,” she tells TIME. “I really look for the smell of burning. I also look at the sky to see if there is any smoke in the vicinity.” That diligence paid dividends just three weeks ago when Tacon, 77, was out walking her Australian Kelpie and stumbled upon a fire by a nearby creek. She backed up, warned her neighbors, and Victoria state’s Country Fire Authority (CFA), which was fortunately holding a training session nearby, sent two trucks to put out the blaze before it could spread. “They think perhaps it was a spark from a power line,” Tacon says of the fire’s cause. “We don’t really know. But it just reminded us that we are now in a very dry period of summer and we should rehearse in our minds what we need to do if there is a fire.” It’s something plenty of Americans are also mulling following the firestorm that swept through Los Angeles County’s Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods last month, razing more than 16,000 buildings, generating 4.5 million tons of debris, and causing some $275 billion of damage. As the complex cleanup and recovery process gets underway, the debate about how to instill resilience and preparedness to fend off future catastrophes is heating up. Australia’s experience battling bushfires offers invaluable context for the Golden State—and the wider U.S.—as rising global temperatures render increased fire risk the new normal. Even against the background of the L.A. carnage, Australia’s experience is undeniably more acute. Back in 2019, wildfires torched 83 million acres of Australia, an area twice the size of Florida. Before the recent L.A. blazes started, the Grampians National Park just west of Melbourne—a vast expanse of sandstone mountains teeming with echidnas and wallabies—was already ablaze, and it continues to burn today, with at least 271,000 acres lost to the flames. (By comparison, wildfires across the U.S., including in L.A. County, have burned 77,224 acres so far in 2025.) Moreover, the Grampians blaze is just one of 10 bushfires currently raging in the state of Victoria, out of more than 40 across the antipodean nation of 27 million. The threat is severe and constant; on Jan. 27, a dry lightning strike sparked a bushfire in Victoria that, fueled by strong winds, devoured 170,000 acres in just six hours. “It’s a pretty busy fire season,” CFA Victoria Deputy Chief Officer Alen Slijepcevic says with a shrug in his new Melbourne offices. Why the L.A. wildfires were so destructive has also become a political football in the U.S. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said a warming planet was a contributing factor, while President Donald Trump—who has previously called climate change “an expensive hoax”—has blamed “gross incompetence” regarding state water and forestry mismanagement. When it comes to the climate change debate, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is in no doubt, pointing to how parts of Australia’s eastern state of New South Wales that were “essentially rainforest” burned this year for the first time in centuries. “You can’t say that every event is because of climate change,” Albanese tells TIME. “But what the science told us was that there would be more events, more frequent, and more intense. And that’s what’s playing out.” Still, there is plenty that people can do. Wildfires need four elements to spread: sufficient plant biomass to act as fuel; dry enough conditions to allow that fuel to ignite; wind or a slope to spread the fire; and lastly some form of ignition, whether a spark, discarded glass bottle focusing sunlight, lightning strike, or myriad other causes. What’s changed over the last few decades as the planet heats up is the availability of dry fuel, with parched winters meaning that burning season in Victoria now begins roughly a month earlier than the mid-1990s, and it also stretches farther into the autumn. “Ignitions aren’t necessarily linked to climate change, but fuel availability definitely is,” says CFA senior researcher Nick McCarthy. “If we’ve got 25-50% more time when that fuel is available, then we are going to have more fires.” A longer burning season also curtails the time available for prevention work. In the winter, the CFA conducts prescribed burning to clear high-risk areas before they have the chance to ignite naturally and threaten communities. It’s a technique also used in northern Californian forests, though, critically, not often in the state’s south due to a prevalence of protected chaparral scrub—low trees and bushes that thrive in hot, dry conditions—as well as dense residential areas. In addition, vegetation dries first in California’s inland valleys, which may already suffer from wildfires—occupying limited firefighting resources—by the time wetter coastal areas are even ready for prescribed burning. However, less time to prepare terrain means efforts must instead focus on mitigation and adaptation. “The world’s left it too late not to worry about adaptation,” Australian Climate Minister Chris Bowen tells TIME in his parliamentary office in Canberra. “It is now the case that every type of natural disaster is more frequent and severe because of climate change, and these natural disasters are increasingly unnatural because they’re being caused by human activity.” Much like in the U.S., if someone does spot a bushfire, the usual response is to dial 000, Australia’s equivalent to 911. The CFA then dispatches resources depending on the reported size, location, nature, and assets around—human habitations, livestock, as well as protected flora and fauna. Typically, a computer simulation is run to predict the spread over six hours if minimal suppression occurs. Problems arise if there are multiple contingencies that all require attention at once. “Then it becomes a numbers game,” says Slijepcevic. When a big blaze occurs, multiple assets are dispatched, including trucks, bulldozers, and aircraft to douse the flames. In extremely inaccessible areas, helicopters may drop firefighters with dry tools like rakes to impede the fire’s spread. Of course, tackling blazes early and efficiently is key and relies on the diligence of the local community—a trait baked into Australian life and that will now likely become more prevalent in the U.S. The availability of firefighting equipment also became politically charged in the wake of the L.A. fires. But Slijepcevic insists that no number of aircraft could have helped given the ferocity of California’s Santa Ana winds. “When you have 140 kph [87 mph] winds, nothing will fly,” he says. “Even if they can fly, they will never hit the targets, because the [water] will go sideways.” Still, there are ways to be better prepared. Whereas across the U.S. there are 29,452 individual fire departments which recruit, train, and dispatch firefighters, the CFA has an army of 30,000 volunteers across Victoria who all undergo standardized training and can be assigned centrally to enhance coordination and reduce deployment times. “That means our ability to scale is really significant,” says McCarthy. Education and awareness are also key. Every year, the CFA holds regular outreach events with schools and the community to familiarize regular folk with the telltale signs of impending fires, how to get relevant information from official sources, and the appropriate risk mitigation tactics. (California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has for decades provided regularly updated and enhanced wildfire reporting and information resources via fire.ca.gov, whose traffic according to Similarweb soared by over 3,500% from December to January.) For homeowners, advice includes ensuring lawns are cut short, overhanging branches are trimmed back, and gutters are cleared of leaves. Something as innocent as spreading woodchips on flowerbeds or piling firewood by a back wall can be calamitous when burning leaves and bark are floating overhead. (Tacon says she also swapped out her old thin windows for thicker glass which can withstand higher temperatures.) Ultimately, any structure just needs one weak link for fire to spread. “It could just be a doormat that catches an ember,” says Slijepcevic. Still, apart from adaptation, Slijepcevic says that urban planning “is the only proactive lever that we have.” The impetus for Los Angeles County now is to ensure that fire-proof materials are used in construction, meaning no wood shingle roofs, installing sprinkler systems linked to independent water sources, and only planting fire-resistant trees. (In Australia, oil-rich native eucalyptus are fantastic for wildlife including Koalas but disastrous for fires.) Adequate setbacks must be enforced both between buildings and vegetation as well as between buildings themselves. The fact that the L.A. County fires predominantly spread house-to-house is evidence that building codes were sorely inadequate. “Most of the risks that we’re dealing with now are land use planning decisions over the last 200 years,” says Slijepcevic. “So there are obviously things that can be done now to rebuild California to different standards.” It’s also notable that Australia has changed its advice for at-risk residents. Following the apocalyptic Ash Wednesday bushfires that swept southern and western Australia in 1983, investigators realized that most of the 75 fatalities perished in late-stage evacuations. Thereafter, they developed a “prepare, stay and defend, or leave early” protocol. But then came the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, which remain the nation’s deadliest. Many of the 173 fatalities died trying to protect their homes. Ever since, the advice has changed to simply “leave early.” (In California, current advice similarly focuses on instilling resilience into homes before wildfire season but escaping early if a blaze does approach.) The reason is clear. “Nobody knows how they will react when the fire arrives,” says Slijepcevic. “It’s really frightening, it sounds like a jet flying next to your ear, there’s confusion, no visibility. Even experienced firefighters have different reactions when it comes to something like that.” Similarly, most of the L.A. wildfire victims died either at home or attempting to flee too late. (Albeit some were physically impaired and sadly unable to leave.) Of course, the instinct to stay and defend one’s home and life’s possessions is very natural, though Slijepcevic—who like McCarthy spent last summer seconded to fire departments across North America—notes that in his experience people in the U.S. “actually leave earlier and quicker than they necessarily do in Australia.” Still, the question both in Australia and the U.S. is whether the rising cost of insurance and growing band with uninsured or uninsurable homes will shift value judgements. After all, losing your home to rebuild again is a vastly different proposition to losing everything period. “The events of California will definitely ripple across the insurance industry around the world,” says Slijepcevic. “The cost of insurance will go up here and then potentially the actions that people undertake [in the event of a fire].” Tacon, for one, has already seen her insurance premium jump by around $600 last year to almost $2,000 annually. Still, she is under no illusions about the correct course of action should the worst occur. Whereas before 2009 she and her husband would fill buckets and bathtubs with water upon reports of a nearby bushfire, today they have a box packed ready with all important family papers and a few mementos. She regularly checks the state emergency app for any fires within a 25 km (15 mi) radius and has mapped out the best route to a designated safe assembly ground at a nearby football field. Of course, L.A. has advised residents to pack “go bags” and make escape plans in the event of fires for many years. Climate change means that Californians may have to follow Australia’s lead and take such steps much more seriously. “You just accept that if a fire comes through that you’re going to lose a lot of memories,” Tacon says. “But you don’t want to lose your life.”

Anxiety about flying is common during the best of times: Research suggests up to 40% of people worldwide have some degree of aerophobia. Add a string of recent plane crashes and other horrifying incidents to the mix, and feeling jittery about boarding a plane seems perfectly reasonable. “I’m hearing about it a lot from patients, and we talk about it within the psychiatry department, too,” says Dr. Nathan Carroll, chief resident of psychiatry at Jersey Shore University Medical Center, who’s scheduled to take a flight in two weeks. “People are like, ‘Ehhh, maybe I’ll drive instead.’” Such anxiety is natural—but, he stresses, shouldn’t overshadow the fact that flying is still safe in the U.S. “Despite it being in the news so frequently, we know it's really safe,” he says. “There are thousands and thousands of flights every day that don't crash. If we compare it to cars, it's still way safer.” According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), about 45,000 commercial and private flights take off each day in the U.S., carrying 2.9 million passengers, and the odds of dying in an air disaster are astronomically small: about 1 in 13.7 million. (That’s compared to 1 in 95 odds of dying in a car accident.) Here’s what to do if you’re anxious about flying right now. Grottoes bear the enduring touch of Tang Branded Content Grottoes bear the enduring touch of Tang By China Daily Accept your anxiety Martin Seif, a psychologist who co-founded the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, has treated thousands of people with aerophobia. He says the recent aviation disasters haven’t impacted his clients as much as you might think: They're already so anxious about flying that many avoid it altogether, so the news events are almost irrelevant to them. The most profound impact, he says, has been on reluctant flyers who have traditionally still managed to board the plane, though they don't relish the experience. “What’s happened is that the normally nervous people who go on airplanes—who don’t like thinking about it too much but say, ‘OK, I have to get there’—are having an uptick in their concerns and fear of flying,” Seif says. "Specifically, they’re having an uptick in anticipatory anxiety,” or excessive worry or fear about a future event. Read More: 8 Symptoms Doctors Often Dismiss As Anxiety If you have a flight booked and are feeling anxious about it, Seif recommends telling yourself: “I’m committed to going on this flight. I’m going no matter what.” That helps tamp down anticipatory anxiety, he says, because it reduces the amount of debating you’ll do with yourself about whether you should still go or not. “The first thing I tell people is to expect anxiety, accept it, and allow it,” he says. “Anxiety is very, very strange. The more you fight it, the greater it gets.” Instead of obsessing about trying to calm down—and giving your anxiety more oxygen—simply stand by your decision to fly and “learn to let the time pass,” he says. Focus on the perks of air travel If you’re nervous about flying, spend time thinking about the ways it enriches your life and allows you to meet your goals, says Madeline Marks, a practicing psychologist with the University of Maryland Medical Center. She suggests asking yourself why you bought a plane ticket in the first place, and listing the ways that flying serves you. “Flying might allow you to visit your loved ones, because one of your core values is your family, and spending time with friends celebrating milestones,” she says. “Maybe one of your big values is appreciating other cultures and food, so seeing the world is important to you.” Or, jetting across the country to attend a work-related conference might allow you to network and advance in your field. Remind yourself that “airline travel has allowed us to be more globally connected,” Marks says, “and to connect more with these activities that give our life meaning.” Cut off your news consumption It might feel impossible to escape headlines about what caused American Eagle Flight 5342 to crash in Washington, D.C., or videos from inside the Delta plane that flipped on its roof during a landing in Toronto. But Carroll advises looking away from aviation-related news—including speculation about how firings of FAA staff could potentially impact safety. We don't yet know how things will play out, he says, and worrying isn’t going to help ensure your flight goes smoothly. If possible, start tuning out the news at least two weeks before your flight. “It might sound like a long period of time for someone who really is a news junkie,” he says. “You don’t have to go cold turkey, but gradually decreasing the amount of news you consume will make you calmer in general.” Start calming yourself down well before you get on the plane Aim to be as relaxed as possible on your travel day—which might mean starting to get ready for your trip early, rather than jamming all your errands, chores, and packing into the day before you leave. If the airport isn't close to home, it can even be helpful to book a hotel nearby, Carroll says, so you don't have the added stress of a long drive. Read More: Do You Really Store Stress in Your Body? Throughout your travels, practice progressive muscle relaxation or deep-breathing exercises, which can, for example, be helpful as you wait in the security line. Once you’re on the plane, you could even put the dreaded barf bag into use: Breathing into a paper bag can help curb anxiety attacks, allowing people to resume normal breathing patterns. “Your neighbors might get a little nervous,” Carroll says. “But it actually works.” Take comfort in your past flying experiences Anxious flyers can think themselves out of their fear, Carroll says. The key is identifying and challenging negative thought patterns, instead reframing them so they're more realistic and productive. You might tell yourself, for example, that you’ve gone on dozens of flights before, and every single one has landed safely. Or you could remind yourself that the pilots in the cockpit have spent hundreds of hours training for this very flight. “You’re using the rational and logical part of your brain to confront the emotion-driven limbic part of your brain,” he says. “It’s very effective.” Avoid triggers Avoid anything that might exacerbate your anxiety on flight day. That includes caffeine, alcohol, and illicit drugs, says Dr. Lokesh Shahani, a psychiatrist with UTHealth Houston. “We know that caffeine makes people anxious, so avoiding coffee the morning of flying is an important thing you could do,” he says. Similarly, while you might be inclined to order an in-flight cocktail to dull your nerves, opt for a soda or juice instead: “Alcohol could actually worsen your anxiety,” he says.

The Education Department warned schools in a letter on Friday that they risked losing federal funding if they continued to take race into account when making scholarship or hiring decisions, or so much as nodded to race in “all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.” The announcement gave institutions 14 days to comply. It built on a major Supreme Court ruling in 2023 that found that the use of race-conscious admissions practices at colleges and universities was unlawful. But it went far beyond the scope of that decision by informing schools that considering race at all when making staffing decisions or offering services to subsets of students would be grounds for punishment. The letter was the latest step in the Trump administration’s push to recast programs intended to level the playing field for historically underserved populations as a form of racial discrimination. It also appeared to be an extension of the broadsides President Trump has delivered to purge diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from the federal government, which critics have assailed as veiled racism. Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said related programs and scholarships, many of which have historically sought to help Black and Latino students attain college degrees or find community, had come at the expense of “white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds.” “At its core, the test is simple: If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law,” Mr. Trainor wrote. Sign up for the Race/Related Newsletter Join a deep and provocative exploration of race, identity and society with New York Times journalists. Get it sent to your inbox. “Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race,” he said. On Monday, the department said it had also canceled $600 million in grants focused on training teachers in “inappropriate and unnecessary topics” such as critical race theory, social justice activism, antiracism and “instruction on white privilege.” The warning in the letter applies to any institution that receives federal funding, including K-12 schools. But it could fall harder on higher-education institutions. The sweeping guidance caused alarm in academic circles and raised pressing questions about how much it would disrupt campuses. Many colleges offer scholarships and grants specifically for students of certain ethnic backgrounds or maintain program houses, professional societies and fraternities and sororities on campus tailored to students of specific ethnic heritages or races. In some cases, the decision to fund those programs is not necessarily made by the university, but by student governments or outside organizations. But the guidance appeared to touch all of those areas and more, barring schools from “using race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies and all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.” Some colleges have already preemptively taken steps to bar any clubs or student organizations that could run afoul of the department’s interpretation of civil rights law. This month, West Point moved to immediately disband 12 affinity groups, including the National Society of Black Engineers Club, the Asian-Pacific Forum Club and the Vietnamese-American Cadet Association. Other colleges suspended a ceremony marking the Lunar New Year, canceled a forum on race and ended degree requirements for students to take classes touching on D.E.I. to graduate. The letter on Friday specified that even graduation ceremonies that honored Black students separately from larger commencement ceremonies, for example, could be considered discriminatory. “In a shameful echo of a darker period in this country’s history,” Mr. Trainor wrote, “many American schools and universities even encourage segregation by race at graduation ceremonies and in dormitories and other facilities.” Adding to confusion for schools, legal experts have pointed out that despite the sweeping nature of the Education Department’s threat, it did not touch on a number of areas like college recruitment or retention programs that target certain demographics that may transfer or drop out at higher rates than others. Other aspects of the letter appeared certain to run into legal challenges, particularly the guidance on changing hiring practices, which were not at issue in the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action. Jeff Weimer, a partner in the higher education practice at the law firm Reed Smith, said the letter raised more questions for schools than it was immediately possible to untangle under the current understanding of civil rights laws. “Well, what if it’s an affinity group, for example, for Asian students, that promotes Asian culture and has events that are centered around holidays that are important for various Asian cultures and so forth — but the organization is open to all students, regardless of your race or ethnicity?” Mr. Weimer asked. “Is that prohibited or permitted under this administration’s interpretation of the Supreme Court decision and Title VI and otherwise?” “There’s no clear answer to that question, or to any number of different variations on the same question,” he said. A correction was made on Feb. 18, 2025: An earlier version of this article and an accompanying picture caption incorrectly described an alternative graduation ceremony featuring speeches by pro-Palestinian activists and writers. The event was organized by Columbia University faculty and staff members, not the university itself.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul is considering removing New York City mayor Eric Adams from office after four of his top aides resigned on Monday. Hochul said in a statement that she plans to meet with key leaders in Manhattan on Tuesday to discuss “the path forward,” and that the resignations of four deputy mayors raises “serious questions about the long-term future” of his administration. It’s the latest update in what for Adams has been a succession of overlapping scandals that has left a power vacuum in the city’s government. The news comes after the Justice Department on Feb. 10 ordered federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against Adams, stating that the case was interfering with the Democratic mayor’s ability to follow through with the President’s agenda to crack down on illegal immigration. The dismissal “without prejudice,” however, means that the charges could be revived should the Justice Department choose to do so, worrying constituents and other politicians that it gives the Trump Administration leverage over Adams’ administration. “I refuse to go back to the days where our constituents are caught in the crossfire of political turf wars,” Hochul said in her statement. First deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer as well as deputy mayors Meera Joshi, Anne Williams-Isom, and Chauncey Parker resigned Monday as calls for Gov. Kathy Hochul to remove Adams—or for Adams himself to step down—have grown. Their actions follow the resignations of U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon and five high-ranking Justice Department officials last week after Sassoon refused to drop the charges against Adams. In a statement to NBC New York, the mayor’s office confirmed the latest resignations, stating that the deputy mayors were “extraordinary public servants who have been vital to our work reshaping New York City.” The statement continued: “Together, we’ve broken housing records, created the most jobs in the city’s history, provided for hundreds of thousands of longtime New Yorkers and migrants, built unprecedented public spaces, and made our city safer at every level. New Yorkers owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for their service to our city.” NBC also reported that Adams attempted to convince the aides to stay via a Zoom call over the weekend, though they ultimately decided to follow through with their resignations. Joshi, who worked as deputy mayor of operations, reportedly sent a joint statement on behalf of the deputies in an email to agency commissioners. “Due to the extraordinary events of the last few weeks and to stay faithful to the oaths we swore to New Yorkers and our families, we have come to the difficult decision to step down from our roles,” the statement read. Hochul, a Democrat like Adams, has the power to remove the New York City mayor from office but previously opted not to at the time he was initially charged. In her latest statement, however, she said: “In the 235 years of New York State history, these powers have never been utilized to remove a duly-elected mayor; overturning the will of the voters is a serious step that should not be taken lightly. That said, the alleged conduct at City Hall that has been reported over the past two weeks is troubling and cannot be ignored.” Hochul’s consideration of taking what would be an unprecedented action comes at a time of mounting pressure from Democrats to remove Adams if he himself doesn’t resign. New York Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado called for Adams’ resignation, as did Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, adding that “If Adams won’t resign, he must be removed.” And while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries did not go so far as to call for a resignation, he expressed concerns about the Adams administration’s future. If Hochul removes Adams from office—or if Adams resigns—Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who has indicated that he is prepared to serve, would become acting mayor. Within 80 days, Williams would need to call a special election to elect a new mayor for the rest of Adams’ term, which runs until Dec. 31. The mayoral election in November to succeed Adams for a new four-year-term would still take place as planned. Former state comptroller Carl McCall released an open letter on Feb. 15 endorsing former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to be Adams’ replacement. “Donald Trump wants us to fail as a community. For that reason, the leadership of New York City has rarely, if ever, been as vital as it is today,” McCall wrote. “The people of New York cannot be represented by someone whose loyalty to the city is compromised—we deserve a Mayor of New York to be for New York.” Cuomo responded in a statement that he and McCall had a “special bond” and that McCall’s voice is “needed more than ever—for his is one of moral clarity, experience and guided by what is right for the people above all else.” Adams, meanwhile, insists that his leadership is not compromised by the Trump Administration’s dropping of his charges. In a Feb. 14 statement, he wrote, “I want to be crystal clear with New Yorkers: I never offered—nor did anyone offer on my behalf—any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never.”