Infant mortality and births increased in the majority of states that had abortion bans in the year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, according to two new studies. The studies, which were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Thursday, indicate that these impacts can be especially felt by people with socioeconomic disadvantages. Researchers said that the results “suggest that abortion bans may exacerbate racial disparities and disproportionately affect communities in southern states, where more than half of the U.S. Black population resides and infant mortality was already high.” The investigators analyzed data from birth and death certificates, as well as the U.S. Census Bureau, for all 50 states and Washington, D.C. from January 2012 through December 2023 to compare data from previous years and the 18 months after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. One of the studies estimated that, overall, infant mortality was 5.6% higher than expected in states that enacted near-total abortion bans or bans after six weeks of pregnancy, resulting in about 478 more infant deaths than expected based on data from previous years. The other study estimated that, overall, the birth rate in those states was 1.7% higher than expected, amounting to about 22,000 more births than expected based on previous years’ data. Fourteen states had enacted near-total or six-week abortion bans during the window that the researchers studied. As of mid-February 2025, 16 states have implemented such bans. Grottoes bear the enduring touch of Tang Branded Content Grottoes bear the enduring touch of Tang By China Daily Researchers acknowledged that Texas had an “outsized influence” on the overall findings, which they attributed partly to the state’s large population, greater distances to travel to get an abortion compared with other states that had bans at the time, and the fact that Texas had enacted a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy before the other states did (about nine months before the Dobbs ruling, in September 2021). The authors also found that increases in infant mortality were larger among groups that already had higher than average infant mortality rates, such as Black infants and those living in southern states. For Black infants in states with abortion bans, mortality was 11% higher than would have been expected if there hadn’t been abortion bans, according to one of the studies.

On the day I spoke by phone with André Corrêa do Lago, the newly appointed head of this year's United Nations climate conference, countries worldwide faced a deadline to publish new plans to tackle climate change. By that evening, only 13 had done so. It’s a startling number. The deadline applied to all 195 nations signed up to the Paris climate agreement. And it underscores the uphill challenge facing Corrêa do Lago, a Brazilian diplomat who previously served as the country’s chief climate negotiator. His job: to help foster collaboration and bring about fresh agreement in a world riven by populist nationalists intent on driving climate change down the global priority list. “I naturally believe very much in multilateralism, and we believe that the only way of solving important issues is through cooperation,” Corrêa do Lago told me from Rio de Janeiro, as he prepares to host what will be the thirtieth such meeting—hence the name COP30—in the Amazonian city of Belém this November. “But the international context is quite complex.” Central to the “complex” road ahead for him is the U.S. and the new Trump Administration, which he diplomatically called “challenging.” Back in power in Washington D.C., Trump has once again initiated the process to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, and it remains unclear what presence—if any—the country will have at UN climate talks. “We have to wait a little to see some of the directions that these policies are going to take,” Corrêa do Lago says of the U.S. He does however remain optimistic about preventing further withdrawals from the Paris accord. Unlike traditional treaties, he notes, Paris relies on voluntary commitments rather than enforcement mechanisms. While some critics view this as a weakness, he argues it actually discourages withdrawal: countries gain little by leaving but risk facing trade barriers from climate-conscious partners. He has previously said that Argentina withdrawing from the Paris Agreement would threaten the joint trade deal between the European Union and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Indeed, trade is a key area of contention. Many developing and emerging market countries have expressed concern over the European Union’s measure to charge a carbon fee on certain imports. U.S. tariffs, and the threat of more to come, on longtime allies and rivals have also put a spotlight on the topic. Thus far, trade has played a largely peripheral role in UN climate negotiations, though last year Brazil and others sought to elevate it on the agenda. Corrêa do Lago cited it very early in our conversation as a key point of contention for countries and said that “starting to build some consensus on some of the issues of trade” would be “extremely important.” Underlying such concerns is what for proponents of global action on climate change, such as Corrêa do Lago, is a sobering reality: the costs of climate policy, both real and perceived, have slowed progress in many places as voters turn to populist politicians who oppose multilateral action–and in some cases, outright deny the realities and consequences of a changing climate. To help keep momentum alive, Corrêa do Lago says he wants to refocus attention on not just solving the climate conundrum, but also, in a sense, selling its benefits. “This transition has to be dealt with in a rational way,” he says. “There are challenges for many sectors, and it can even eliminate many jobs… we have to make sure that we can convince people that this can bring very positive impacts.” Convincing people–and convincing companies Part of that involves courting what has become an increasingly important constituency for climate leaders: the private sector. The role of business has become ever more prominent at UN climate conferences in recent years as the focus of climate talks has shifted to implementation. And Corrêa do Lago says there will be a substantial role for the private sector this year, too. “We want to focus on solutions,” he says. “And probably most of the solutions come from the private sector.” The first challenge here will be making the private sector feel welcome–quite literally. Choosing Belém to host the conference—a remote city with limited accommodations and infrastructure—has led some beyond Brazil to ask whether the city will be able to support a big corporate turnout. Corrêa do Lago reassured companies that the hosts would facilitate the presence of industry. “We want the private sector to have an absolutely central role,” he says. “And we will make sure that the private sector will have accommodations and will be very welcome.” Nonetheless, he acknowledged that the location would make the COP different from many of recent predecessors. “The symbolism of doing the COP in the Amazon, President Lula believes and I totally agree, is much more important than the infrastructure difficulties that may arise from it,” he says. The COP president job is a slog. For the next several months, Corrêa do Lago will hit the road traveling around the world to meet with key stakeholders sounding out positions and trying to build consensus. And yet the job has never been more urgent with global temperatures topping the 1.5°C goal laid out by the Paris Agreement and a slew of devastating climate linked events signaling the future we have in store.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has decided to stop enforcing rules designed to prevent flood damage to schools, libraries, fire stations and other public buildings. Experts say the move, which has not been publicly announced, could endanger public safety and may be in violation of federal law. The change in policy was laid out in a Feb. 4 memo by FEMA’s chief counsel, Adrian Sevier, that was viewed by The New York Times. The rule in question, called the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, was one of the Biden administration’s most significant efforts to address the growing costs of disasters. The rule says that when public buildings in a flood zone are damaged or destroyed, those structures must be rebuilt in a way that prevents future flood damage if they are to qualify for FEMA funding. That could include elevating a structure above the expected height of a future flood or relocating it to a safer spot. In some cases, the standards also apply to private homes repaired or rebuilt in a flood plain. The rule has a tortured history. FEMA first proposed it in 2016, in response to an executive order from President Barack Obama. The powerful home-building industry opposed the rule on the grounds that it would increase construction costs. When President Trump first took office in 2017, he revoked Mr. Obama’s order, stopping FEMA’s effort. Soon after taking office in 2021, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed a new executive order calling for a federal flood standard, which culminated in a final rule issued by FEMA last July. The goal wasn’t just to protect people and property, according to Deanne Criswell, the head of FEMA at the time. It was also to save taxpayers’ money as climate change made flooding more frequent, causing buildings in flood plains to be repeatedly damaged and then repeatedly rebuilt with government help. “We are going to be able to put a stop to the cycle of response and recovery, and rinse and repeat,” Ms. Criswell said at the time. Mr. Trump, on his first day back in the White House, again revoked the executive order calling for a federal flood standard. In his memo last week, Mr. Sevier said that while FEMA considers how to amend the rule, the agency will not enforce it. “This pause must be implemented immediately while FEMA takes action to rescind or amend the policies,” Mr. Sevier wrote. In a statement, FEMA said that the flood rule “is under review per the president’s executive order.” But FEMA cannot simply stop enforcing a regulation, according to David A. Super, a visiting law professor at Yale University who specializes in administrative law. If the agency wants to reverse course, it must follow a process clearly laid out by federal law: issuing a public notice, seeking and reviewing public comments and then publishing a new final rule.

Before joining The New York Times last year, I had never covered a wildfire. I knew a lot, though, about a different kind of disaster: hurricanes. My first full-time reporting job was at The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss. I started in 2020, during one of the most active hurricane seasons on record. As the storms approached, I stood in the rain to talk to people filling sandbags. After the worst was over, I wore galoshes to interview residents desperately draining floodwaters from their houses. When driving into an area just hit by a hurricane, there are indications of what lies ahead before you see the devastation: downed trees and power lines, water pooling where it shouldn’t, warped fast-food signs. That’s why, driving into Altadena for the first time last month, I expected some kind of warning before I reached the total destruction wrought by the Eaton fire. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Instead, I looked left to make a turn and suddenly saw black, twisted ruins where a house should have been. Next door and across the street were homes that looked perfectly untouched. Hurricane-force winds had propelled embers at random, sparking house fires that firefighters couldn’t stop. The result was a jarring contrast that only heightened the sense of upheaval. This had been no hurricane. A hurricane may gather strength rapidly or change direction just before landfall, but it typically arrives with days of warning. It follows a path and often weakens with time. The Eaton fire seemed to follow its own windblown path, but it grew faster than many people could prepare for, and then lingered for weeks afterward. Hurricanes are slow, colossal beasts. Wildfires can be colossal beasts, too, but fast and mean. Hurricanes overwhelm structures but often leave them behind; fires consume them. Hurricanes smelled different, too. After Hurricane Helene in the Tampa area last year, I visited families cleaning mud from their homes and laying out photographs to dry in the sun. The air smelled like salt, sewage and traces of mildew. In Altadena, two weeks after the fire, the faint smell of smoke still lingered over the ash and dust. As I spoke with Altadena residents picking through the rubble of their lives, I thought about Trey Camardelle. The house where Mr. Camardelle’s parents lived was destroyed in Hurricane Zeta in 2020. The storm was nowhere near as destructive as the Eaton fire, but it damaged roofs, downed power lines and knocked his parents’ house right off its 18-foot cinder block pilings.The day after the storm hit, Mississippi’s governor met with Mr. Camardelle, and then began a news conference. While the governor spoke to a gathering of reporters, Mr. Camardelle was in the distance, walking around the jumble of wood and insulation, the battered house sitting off-kilter on top. This, he told me, was an “entire life, just gone.” In Altadena, the disaster was different, but the loss was much the same.

The State Department was planning to buy $400 million worth of “Armored Tesla” later this year, according to its 2025 procurement forecast, a document outlining projections of anticipated contracts, which was published in December. But after reports emerged on Wednesday of the potential for conflict of interest given Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s prominent role in the Trump Administration, the document was updated, removing mention of Tesla and changing the line item to “Armored Electric Vehicles” instead. As of late Wednesday, both versions of the 2025 procurement forecast remained available on different State Department webpages. The earlier version that mentions Tesla also lists the planned procurement under NAICS Code 311999, an industry code for miscellaneous food manufacturing, while the newer version, which says it was modified at 9:12 p.m., Feb. 12, lists the revised “Armored Electric Vehicles” procurement under NAICS Code 561613 for “Armored Car Services.” No other changes were made in the document, which contains 319 other line items. The State Department website says it issues annual procurement forecasts pursuant to the Business Opportunity Development Reform Act of 1988, which “requires agencies to compile and make available projections of contracting opportunities small and small disadvantaged firms may be able to perform.” It is meant to give “small businesses, small disadvantaged businesses, women-owned small businesses, HUBZone small businesses, and service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses” opportunities to compete for direct contracts with the government or subcontracting opportunities. In response to questions about the change and whether Tesla remains the intended awardee for a contract that is anticipated, according to the procurement forecast, to be awarded on Sept. 30, a State Department official tells TIME that no government contract has been awarded to Tesla or any other vehicle manufacturer to produce armored electric vehicles for the Department, but the previous administration did ask the Department to explore interest from private companies to produce armored electric vehicles. The Department then did a public Request for Information, the official said, for an armored electric vehicle to solicit interest and received interest from only one company at that time. As a next step in that process, an official solicitation would be sent out to vehicle manufacturers to bid, the official said, but the solicitation is on hold and there are no current plans to issue it. Musk, who leads the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that has begun to wield influence across a number of agencies’ budgets and who also owns and runs multiple companies that have significant interests in federal regulations and government contracts, including Tesla and SpaceX, responded to questions about potential for conflicts of interest on Tuesday during an appearance at the White House, insisting that DOGE is transparent about its actions. “Transparency is what builds trust,” he said, citing DOGE’s account on X. “You can see: Am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not? … I fully expect to be scrutinized.” Trump suggested there would be some oversight of Musk: “If we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest,” he said Tuesday in the Oval Office beside Musk, “we would not let him do that segment or look in that area.” However, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt previously suggested that the President is OK with Musk self-policing, saying: “If Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that DOGE is overseeing, then Elon will excuse himself from those contracts.” Drop Site first reported on Tesla appearing in the State Department’s 2025 procurement forecast, while Bloomberg first reported on the updated forecast.

There’s nothing like the drama of a deadline. But when President Donald Trump told Hamas it had until Saturday afternoon to release all of the Israeli hostages or “all hell is going to break loose,” he escalated the stakes of a fragile truce: Either Hamas can accelerate the terms of the ceasefire agreement—freeing dozens of captives now rather than in stages—or Israel can resume pummeling the Gaza Strip in a conflict that has already claimed more than 47,000 lives. For Trump, it’s a tactic he outlined in his 1987 bestseller The Art of the Deal: Always be willing to walk away. “The strategy is simple,” says a senior White House official. “Hamas made commitments. They're playing games, and the President was very clear that the burden is on them to keep this thing on track. If they don't, then there's repercussions.” Sources close to Trump say that he’s making a calculation: He thinks he can force Hamas into making more concessions by leveling a full-bore threat. If it works, his aides say, the President will be able to claim an early win in his second-term stewardship of U.S. foreign policy. If it doesn’t, critics counter, it could lead to more death and destruction in the already devastated coastal enclave. “We have a Mexican standoff here that could easily end badly,” says Aaron David Miller, a veteran diplomat. Already, Trump’s threat seems to have moved Hamas. On Thursday, the terrorist group said it would return to releasing Israeli hostages “according to the specified timetable.” It’s not clear whether that will satisfy Trump, who has said he wants an end to the drawn out process. Israel has also not yet responded to Hamas’ offer. So far, Hamas has freed 16 of the 33 Israeli hostages slated to be released in the first phase of the deal struck in January. Israel, for its part, has released more than 600 Palestinian prisoners. Roughly 60 more hostages—some of whom are believed to be dead—are scheduled to be released later this spring. But Hamas threatened to blow up the whole arrangement when it announced on Monday that it was indefinitely suspending the release of any more hostages, alleging “Israeli violations” of the pact. The declaration from Hamas, which is slated to release three more hostages this week under the deal, came nearly a week after Trump shocked the world by saying the U.S. planned to take over Gaza and permanently displace two million Palestinians so he could transform it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Shortly after the Hamas communiqué, Trump issued his ultimatum and reiterated his desire to rebuild the territory into an oceanfront tourist destination. “They either have them out by Saturday at 12 p.m. or all bets are off,” he said in the Oval Office, sitting next to a visibly uncomfortable King Abdullah II of Jordan. “We will have Gaza. It’s a war-torn area. We’re going to take it.” Echoing Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued his own warning Tuesday, saying that “intense fighting” would resume in Gaza if the hostages are not returned by Saturday. Yet he notably did not say Hamas had to free every one of the captives. To that end, some analysts suspect the two sides may reach a compromise before the weekend. Miller, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that Hamas has little incentive to accede to Trump’s maximalist demand. “Hamas has one card left, and that's the hostages,” Miller says. “They'll hold as many of them as long as they possibly can. It's their only leverage.” For that reason, the Islamist group may see an off-ramp in releasing nine of the living hostages slated to be released in Phase 1, he adds, rather than the three due on Saturday. “If Hamas releases the nine, bingo, it's a win for everybody,” says Miller. For Trump’s national security team, the images of the three Israelis let free on Saturday only intensified the push to get the rest back quicker; the three male hostages who returned to their homes were emaciated and showed myriad signs of having survived 490 days of torture. “I think the condition that the last three were in exacerbated this,” says a Trump official. The prospect of renewed hostilities in the wake of Trump’s pronouncement has left Netanyahu’s circle with the impression they will be given carte blanche in how they attack Gaza. That would mark a sea change from the pressure exerted by the Biden Administration to scale back Israel’s incursion and limit humanitarian costs. “The big difference today is we don’t have the Americans limiting us. We have a total green light from the American administration,” says an Israeli official. “If we go back to fighting in Gaza, you are going to see very, very tough pictures coming out of there.” Trump’s ultimatum comes as he seeks to radically remake the map of the Middle East: He said last week he wouldn’t deploy American troops to oust Hamas from Gaza, but that the U.S. would enter the coastal strip after Israel completes its military operation to begin a lengthy process of reconstructing the beleaguered strip. He said America would gain an “ownership position” of the land. And he clarified this week that Palestinians would not have the right to return to their homes, predicting Jordan and Egypt would accept most of them. Few Middle East experts see Trump’s proposal as feasible. Arab states recoil at the notion of forcibly displacing Gazans and fear the destabilizing potential of absorbing Palestinian refugees. International humanitarian groups have said it would amount to ethnic cleansing. But for some in Israel, the outlandish idea is picking up steam. “Trump’s plan is so left field, so out of the usual discourse, that even the opposition here is saying okay,” says an Israeli lawmaker outside the Netanyahu coalition. “If Trump wants to try something, let’s try it.” A sign of momentum, they say, was King Abdullah II agreeing to accept two thousand sick Palestinian children after Trump threatened to cut off aid to Jordan and Egypt. “We are already starting to see cracks,” says the Israeli official, who also points to Trump, as President-elect, threatening Hamas similarly before it agreed to the January ceasefire. Others are less optimistic. They see it as Jordan’s way of placating Trump while accepting only a tiny fraction of the millions of civilians trapped in Gaza. At the same time, Egypt’s President, Fattah al-Sisi, postponed a planned visit to the White House out of concern for the optics of appearing alongside Trump as he’s pushing an idea that is anathema to the Egyptian population. But the real test for what unfolds next may be on Saturday—whether Hamas tries to stave off another armed confrontation or risk the fallout. “This weekend is a very simple inflection point for them,” says the White House official. “They can get back on track with the commitments they've made, or face a whole new round of consequences.”

You don't often hear politicians concede their mistakes, but that's the pill I'll swallow today, February 13, as a witness before the same foreign affairs congressional panel under which I was previously a subcommittee chair from 2017-2019. I first came to Congress more than a decade ago to shock the system—a mandate to find and eliminate every possible cent of government excess that failed to deliver value to the economic and national security of the United States. At the very top of my list was foreign aid, which I considered a reckless extravagance that blew precious American tax dollars on vanity projects. I was wrong. It was only after my first foreign congressional delegation trips to Africa and Latin America that I understood that foreign assistance, when structured and deployed correctly, is a uniquely powerful soft diplomacy tool to strengthen the nation's economy and national security. In fact, America’s interests are undermined when aid is poorly contrived and not rigorously evaluated. Through my oversight of international assistance on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and as the Co-Chair of the Aid Effectiveness Caucus, I eventually came to understand that thoughtfully designed and carefully supervised foreign aid advances U.S. interests by projecting American leadership in a sometimes fractured world, broadening and deepening political alliances and bilateral trade, and countering the influence of our adversaries and other malign actors who mean to do us harm. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that all future international assistance must make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous. Most Americans would agree with that commonsense instinct. But as the Trump administration undertakes its foreign aid assessment under its wing, only two questions really matter: Does a program align with U.S. economic, national security, and foreign policy priorities? And can it demonstrate efficient values for American tax dollars? In cases where either answer is no, it’s important to identify more effective stewardship that makes America stronger and safer.

For a long time, Misty Castaneda had terrible credit. Even though she had health insurance, the hair stylist from Colorado owed a hospital around $20,000 for a $200,000 open-heart surgery in 2010 that had been necessary to keep her alive, she says. Castaneda’s credit was so bad that she stayed in a bad relationship for more than a decade, she says, because she knew that without her husband’s credit score, she wouldn’t be able to rent an apartment, buy a car, or take out a credit card. So when she recently heard that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) had finalized a rule that would keep medical debt off personal credit reports, she knew she had to advocate on behalf of it. “It would just open the doors for so many people like me,” says Castaneda, now 47 and divorced. Although the rule keeping medical debt off credit reports was finalized on Jan. 7, it may be on the chopping block as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) turns its sights to the CFPB. It’s not clear what powers the bureau will retain after Musk and his allies in the Trump Administration are through with it. Trump has fired the CFPB’s director. Its acting replacement, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, ordered all employees to stop work earlier this week, effectively suspending much of the bureau’s bread-and-butter activities. In an email, employees were told to not approve or issue rules or guidance and that they should suspend the effective date of rules that had not yet become effective, which includes the medical debt rule. Employees were also told to cease any pending investigations and not issue any public communications of any type. Vought said on X on Feb. 8 that he would be notifying the Federal Reserve that the CFPB would not be taking its next funding draw “because it is not ‘reasonably necessary’ to carry out its duties.” “The CFPB was established to take the side of ordinary people when Wall Street banks and big corporations rip you off, when they tank your credit report, when they push you into foreclosure,” says Lauren Saunders, associate director at the National Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit that works on behalf of low-income consumers. “Getting rid of the CFPB will just let Wall Street banks and corporate predators run amok.” The White House and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment. What the CFPB does The CFPB, which was created in 2010 in the wake of the financial crisis, has three key assignments: it supervises banks and financial institutions, writes rules that protect consumers, and enforces the law. But there are other functions it performs that no other agency can or would do if it were eliminated, consumer advocates say. The CFPB employs bank supervisors around the U.S., who go into financial institutions periodically to check books and prevent problems from occurring. It enforces 18 consumer financial laws that Congress transferred to the agency when it passed the Dodd-Frank Act, which established the bureau. It runs a complaint database, to which consumers can submit reports of problems with certain companies. The agency has received nearly 7 million complaints from consumers since Dec. 2024. The CFP also prosecutes companies that it says fail to protect consumers. In December, it filed a lawsuit against the operator of Zelle and three of the nation’s largest banks for allegedly failing to safeguard consumers from fraud. In January, it sued the credit reporting agency Experian for allegedly failing to investigate consumer disputes. Perhaps most importantly, the CFPB writes rules to help consumers. It recently finalized a rule that would cap overdraft fees from banks, which the bureau said would add up to $5 billion in overdraft fee savings for consumers. In January it finalized the rule that would remove medical debt from people’s credit reports, which it said would remove $49 billion in medical bills from about 15 million Americans’ credit reports. These rules are the product of months or sometimes years of on-the-record discussion, to which anybody can submit comments and try to sway regulators. It’s possible the Trump Administration will try to move the responsibilities of the CFPB to another agency in its efforts to cut government spending. In a November post on X, Musk wrote, “delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.” But the CFPB was created precisely because the old system didn’t work, says Julie Margetta Morgan, the associate director of research, monitoring, and regulations at the CFPB in the Biden Administration. “Many of the responsibilities that CFPB had,” she adds, “came from the fact that these other agencies were not adequately protecting consumers.” How DOGE could neutralize the CFPB Some of the consumers who might be first affected by the Trump Administration’s moves to limit the CFPB’s power are those like Castaneda, who have medical debts ruining their credit scores, or those who say that banks have charged them too much on overdraft fees. That’s because the rules recently finalized by the CFPB are facing lawsuits from trade associations that the agency, under new leadership, may not defend against, says Rust. Instead of fighting the suits, the CFPB has instead asked for a pause in the proceedings and has reportedly instructed its lawyers not to make appearances in the matters. The effective date of the final rule on medical debt has now been postponed from March 7 to June 15. But the CFPB could drop its defense of the case before then. On Feb. 12, a group of nonprofit organizations filed a motion to intervene in the medical debt case so that they could continue to defend the rule. Even some consumers who support DOGE’s cost-cutting attempts are skeptical that the medical debt rule should go. Gloria Austin, a 67-year-old Chicago resident, says her credit score was hit by medical bills from when she contracted shingles—twice—in 2020, when she did not have health insurance. Austin supports efforts to cut back government spending, and says she believes there is a huge amount of fraud and waste that should be eliminated. She’s struggling under the burden of inflation and hopes that cost-cutting in government could lessen her expenses and taxes. But she also says the CFPB’s rule on medical debt would help consumers like her who are saddled with bills they can’t avoid. “It was either keep the lights on and buy groceries or pay my medical bills,” she says. Creditors have continued to hound Austin, she says. When she had to buy a car, the only loan she could get had an interest rate near 30%. “No medical debt should appear on a credit report,” she says. “People are struggling enough already.” In general, consumer advocates say they expect the new Administration to take a much less aggressive approach to holding companies accountable. It could try to drop lawsuits against companies like Experian, or stop looking for new enforcement efforts to bring. “I don’t have a lot of optimism that the CFPB is going to continue to prosecute enforcement actions,” says Saunders, of the NCLC. Already, visitors to the CFPB’s website, consumerfinance.gov, are greeted with a new error message: “404: Page not found.” An email from TIME to the CFPB’s press office was not returned. Not the first attack on the CFPB The CFPB has been under fire before. It was first envisioned by now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren, then a professor at Harvard, and created after President Obama proposed a financial agency to focus on consumer protection in the wake of banks’ role in the financial crisis. Many Republicans opposed the creation of the bureau, insisting it had burdensome regulations that would hamper consumers’ ability to access credit. When the CFPB opened its doors in 2011, it did not have a director because the U.S. Senate would not confirm President Obama’s appointee. (President Obama used a recess appointment to install Richard Cordray as the agency’s chief.) Some Republicans have been trying to get rid of the agency ever since. In 2015, Sen. Ted Cruz introduced a bill to abolish the CFPB. One of the biggest challenges to the agency came in a series of lawsuits opposing its statutory authority and funding structure that ultimately reached the Supreme Court. The CFPB emerged from the challenges intact, with one exception. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that the CFPB’s director could be fired for cause. That allowed Trump to get rid of former director Rohit Chopra on Feb. 1. In 2024, the Supreme Court upheld the CFPB’s funding structure, saying it could draw money from the earnings of the Federal Reserve. But Vought appears disinclined to do so. “This spigot, long contributing to the CFPB’s unaccountability,” he wrote on X, “is now being turned off.”

As President Donald Trump and his second Administration work to implement their promised aggressive shift in immigration policy across the country, sanctuary cities have once again taken center stage. The Executive Orders on immigration signed by Trump in his first few weeks in office include efforts to redefine birthright citizenship, suspend the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, and declare a national emergency at the border. Beyond this, Trump’s actions, and subsequent legal battles, have focused specifically on what are known as “sanctuary cities” or “sanctuary jurisdictions.” In an Executive Order signed by Trump on his first day in office, titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” he asserts that the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security should ensure that sanctuary jurisdictions—which the Executive Order says “seek to interfere with the lawful exercise of Federal law enforcement operations”—do not receive federal funding. Trump tried something similar in 2017. During his first week in office he signed an Executive Order stating jurisdictions that did not comply with federal immigration operations by the Trump Administration would not receive federal funds. Numerous cities and counties then sued, and some courts repeatedly upheld the legality of sanctuary laws. This time, the Executive Order also asserts that jurisdictions and local officials can and should be criminally or civilly investigated, or prosecuted, if they adhere to sanctuary policies and do not assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in their new immigration polices, something San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu says is indicative of Trump “doubling down” and escalating his former attempts. Here’s everything you need to know about sanctuary cities and the battle stewing between some of those places and the Trump Administration. What are sanctuary cities? There is no legal or universal definition of the phrase, but sanctuary cities are commonly regarded as jurisdictions which have policies that limit or define the extent to which a local/state government will share information with federal immigration law officers. Mark Fleming, associate director of the National Immigrant Justice Center’s Federal Litigation Project, says the term “sanctuary cities” is somewhat of a “misnomer,” considering they are in reference to a variety of jurisdictions and states throughout the U.S., with a wide range of laws in place to limit their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. For example, one sanctuary policy of New York City bars city officials from sharing information about immigrants unless it is regarding a criminal matter or there is written permission by an individual immigrant to do so. Democrats have long championed these policies as a way to create safe and welcoming environments for immigrants. Jill Habig, Founder and President of Public Rights Project—a national nonprofit that works with state and local governments to enforce civil rights—is currently working with Portland to fight back against Trump’s legal and political fight with sanctuary cities. She says sanctuary cities have adopted these laws in order to create trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement. “If immigrants fear that their local police are going to turn them over to ICE, then they may not report a crime that's affecting everyone in their neighborhood,” Habig says. “That’s really the principle that cities have been deploying for decades: to say, ‘We want to make sure everyone in the community feels safe and that they feel comfortable, that they can access city services without fear of deportation.’ That actually makes cities safer.” In a 2017 study by the Center for American Progress—conducted during Trump’s first term—the center reported that there were, on average, 35.5 fewer crimes committed per 10,000 people in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties. A 2020 Cambridge University study also found that when local law enforcement works closely with ICE, undocumented immigrants are less likely to report crimes, which “undermines public safety,” one of the researchers said to the Hill. “There's often an assumption that sanctuary city policies are just about an ideological perspective on immigrant rights, but it's also supported just by sound policy around public safety,” Habig says. A January 2025 statement from the California Police Chiefs Association—which “represents all 334 municipal police chiefs in the State of California”—echoes this desire for cooperation between immigrant communities and law enforcement. The association said that local law enforcement should not “shield dangerous individuals or restrict our agencies and officers from investigating and apprehending serious or violent offenders.” However, at the same time, they argue that sanctuary laws in place “to ensure the safeguarding of every undocumented person in need of assistance…must remain in place.” Some Republicans state that these sanctuary policies allow for local law enforcement to work against ICE operations to gain custody of undocumented immigrants. “Sanctuary cities release thousands of criminal aliens out of our prisons and jails and back into our communities,” Trump said in 2018. “They go into those sanctuary cities when they see them; they go there because they feel they’re safe. And in many cases, they are very bad actors.” “Sanctuary jurisdictions aren’t going to stop what we’re going to do,” Thomas Homan, Trump’s former acting director of ICE and new “border czar” said in an interview with NewsNation in December. Fleming and Habig maintain, though, that the crackdowns occurring against large groups , is not the majority of deportations that ICE and Trump will try to complete in his time in office—something he himself has admitted to. “They're trying to do this sleight of hand where they connect all immigration enforcement to the things that the American people broadly support, which is border security and border safety, and the deportation of folks who've been convicted of violent crimes… they’re trying to connect that with deportation of people who've been here for years, if not decades, who have children here, families, businesses, they pay taxes,” Habig says. How is Trump targeting sanctuary cities? Since Trump’s Jan. 20 Executive Order, the fight against sanctuary cities has only escalated, and the Secretaries of several departments have responded in kind. On Feb. 5, Attorney General Pam Bondi released a memo to the Justice Department on “Sanctuary Jurisdiction Directives,” emphasizing Trump’s order and stating that the DOJ will “exercise its own authority to impose any conditions of funding that does not violate applicable constitutional or statutory limitations,” and threatening to prosecute local officials over immigration enforcement. Newly-instated Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, issued a Department of Transportation order in January that threatened to shift federal transportation funding away from local governments that don’t cooperate.. On Feb. 6, the DOJ went a step further and sued the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, accusing the authorities of impeding on Trump’s immigration enforcement policies. Beyond Chicago—Boston, Denver, and New York City also received letters from Republican Representative James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, stating that he is launching an investigation into sanctuary jurisdictions. The mayors of the four cities were invited to testify. “Sanctuary jurisdictions and their misguided and obstructionist policies hinder the ability of federal law enforcement officers to effectuate safe arrests and remove dangerous criminals from American communities, making Americans less safe,” Comer wrote. Habig says that Trump and his Administration’s insistence on targeting sanctuary cities is because of his “aggressive and ambitious” deportation goals, such goals which are already stretching the resource limits of the federal government. Read More: What to Know About the Court Cases Over Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order “The federal government cannot do what it wants to do without the help of local governments,” Habig says. “They do not have enough resources without local police departments to actually find and deport every janitor, nanny, farm worker, or local business owner that they need to deport if they're going to reach the numbers that they want to reach.” There are around 20,000 ICE agents employed across the United States, according to ICE’s website, whereas there are more than 18,000 local police departments in the United States, employing more than one million officers. How are sanctuary cities responding? On Feb. 7, several sanctuary cities, led by San Francisco and including Portland, New Haven, Santa Clara and Kings County, sued the Trump Administration, alleging that they are unlawfully coercing local officials to bend to their will, and calling for the courts to “check this abuse of power.” “We prevailed on these issues during Trump 1.0. We believe that federal judges who adhere to the rule of law will be consistent with the law,” Chiu says, who as City Attorney of San Francisco, is leading the effort. During Trump’s first presidency, the city sued Trump over similar policies, and the Ninth Circuit agreed with them. The Supreme Court then declined to hear the case. “From our perspective, the Trump Administration's actions clearly violate the law, so we're not expecting a difference. What he's doing is as unconstitutional and illegal as it was eight years ago,” Chiu says. Chiu bases the legality of sanctuary cities on the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which separates power between the states and federal government. Chiu says Trump’s actions violate the 10th Amendment, the Separation of Powers Doctrine, the Spending Clause, the Due Process Clause and the Administrative Procedures Act. ICE detainer requests are typically not criminal, since criminal detainers are largely issued only if there are charges pending in another jurisdiction against a person currently serving a criminal sentence. Habig points out that this is why courts have held local governments liable for Fourth Amendment violations in the past when they have honored ICE detailer requests without probable cause. “They’re trying to put local governments in a bind where it's: either you violate the Fourth Amendment and may expose yourself to liability for holding people illegally, or you give up your federal funding, and, you know, face retaliation by the federal government,” Habig says.

Linda McMahon, the sports entertainment mogul whom President Trump has nominated to run the Education Department, told lawmakers on Thursday that she envisioned a vastly diminished role for the agency in the future, and would seek to realize that vision if confirmed. A former executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, Ms. McMahon was tapped to run a department that is in the middle of intense upheaval and whose very reasons for being have been challenged by the president. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he would like to shrink, if not fully eliminate, the department, setting up a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday with few parallels in American history. Ms. McMahon stopped short of embracing calls to shutter the department, which would have amounted to calling for the elimination of the job she has been nominated to take. Instead, she laid out a more roundabout plan to return to the period before the department was established in 1979, during which she said state officials and other federal agencies handled the department’s current responsibilities more effectively. “I’m really all for the president’s mission, which is to return education to the states,” she said. “I believe, as he does, that the best education is closest to the child.” Ms. McMahon walked lawmakers through her qualifications to oversee the health of the country’s schools in the midst of open discussions in the White House about whether to close the department. On Wednesday, less than a day before Ms. McMahon was scheduled to appear for the hearing, Mr. Trump said he wanted to see the department shuttered “immediately,” calling it “a big con job.” She headed off some of the most pressing questions about that rhetoric at the outset by acknowledging that slashing federal funding for schools, which is allocated by Congress, was neither practical legally nor a goal she would pursue. But she repeatedly suggested that many of the duties the department currently handles, including disbursing funds for special education or collecting data and research on students and teaching methods, could be better handled by other agencies. “It is my goal, if I am confirmed, to get in and assess these kinds of programs, because I’m not sure yet what the impact of all of those programs are,” she said. Ms. McMahon spoke about the dismal results documented last month on a national exam, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which showed pervasive learning loss across the country’s public schools since the Covid-19 pandemic. Conservative think tanks and lawmakers have pointed to the results as evidence that the nation’s education system requires deep changes, and as justification for policies aimed at expanding access to private and religious schools. She was introduced at the hearing by Senators Tim Scott of South Carolina and Katie Britt of Alabama, Republicans who each lamented what they described as a long slide in educational standards. They called for a move away from public schools and traditional college programs. In her opening statement, Ms. McMahon picked up that theme, promoting novel ways to train the country’s future work force. She also ticked through the priorities Mr. Trump had already set for the agency through executive orders in recent days. One of the orders focused on school choice, a topic she will most likely highlight. The administration’s other priorities revolve around cultural issues, such as gender, race and sexuality, and combating antisemitism. Recent appointees of Mr. Trump have already taken steps to turn the department into a vehicle to clamp down on schools and organizations perceived as hostile to the president’s agenda. On Wednesday, the department started new investigations into two interscholastic sports associations in Minnesota and California that had signaled they would allow transgender athletes to continue competing on teams corresponding to their gender identity. The president has tasked Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, with downsizing the federal government, and his associates have combed through the Education Department’s data, flagging programs and grants for cancellation. The specter of coming staff reductions and a fundamental reorientation of the agency’s functions have left hundreds of the department’s more than 4,200 workers demoralized and sounding the alarm about the effect on educators. Since last week, more than 70 employees in the department have been put on administrative leave because of their connection to longstanding diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And between Monday and Tuesday, the department canceled dozens of grants underpinning most of its research operations. At least 50 more employees who were on probationary status have been fired this week, according to a union representing federal workers. “It’s always difficult to downsize; it’s always difficult to restructure and reorganize in any department,” Ms. McMahon said about culling the department’s ranks. “I have faced that, you know, in the business world, because you know that you do impact people’s lives.” On Tuesday, Mr. Trump signed an order demanding wide-ranging reductions in the federal work force through “attrition” and issuing severe directives, including that agencies hire “no more than one employee for every four employees that depart.” Like most of Mr. Trump’s nominees, Ms. McMahon is seen as a loyal lieutenant, but one with an unusually long record of supporting the president’s political ambitions and preserving a position within his orbit. During his first term, she served as the head of the Small Business Administration until stepping down in 2019 to run a political action committee supporting Mr. Trump. She then became the chairwoman of the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank heavily staffed by former Trump officials, where she conceived policy ideas in preparation for a second Trump term. Mr. Trump’s relationship with Ms. McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, dates to the 1980s, a period during which Mr. Trump cultivated an interest in their wrestling ventures and success in television. He served as a sponsor for the W.W.E. broadcast WrestleMania when it appeared in Atlantic City, N.J., and even performed several times, including in a scripted feud against Mr. McMahon billed as the “Battle of the Billionaires.” Their relationship has only grown more intertwined, as Ms. McMahon has emerged as a committed megadonor in Mr. Trump’s last three bids for the presidency. Ms. McMahon and her husband, from whom she is separated, were the sixth-largest donors to Mr. Trump during his 2024 bid, funneling more than $20 million into Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and to associated PACs, according to data compiled by Open Secrets, a government transparency group. She personally gave over $360,000 to help support Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign in 2020. Ms. McMahon has also gained standing and influence through her association with the president, taking on senior advisory roles in multiple conservative policy organizations and The Daily Caller, a conservative news site. She also receives an $18,400 quarterly retainer from the Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Mr. Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, and received thousands of shares in the company in compensation for her work with the group. Many who have worked with Ms. McMahon have noted her political acumen and staying power within the president’s inner circle. Mr. Trump praised her as a “superstar” when she stepped down from his cabinet in 2019. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT She has vowed to resign from those positions and divest from Mr. Trump’s business if confirmed. Like Betsy DeVos, the education secretary during Mr. Trump’s first term, Ms. McMahon is exceptionally wealthy, reporting millions in annual income from her holdings in the professional wrestling empire she built, according to a financial disclosure filed ahead of the hearing. But the business empire she created that produced that wealth has also prompted serious questions about Ms. McMahon’s management and oversight of ethical breaches. Under her leadership, various iterations of World Wrestling Entertainment have produced a stream of complaints describing rampant substance abuse and sexual misconduct throughout the business. Ms. McMahon was named as a defendant in a pending lawsuit in Maryland that claims she failed to take action against employees accused of sexually abusing minors working for the organization. Critics have said her relative lack of experience in education amid a tide of conservative resentment directed toward the department leaves her little prepared to navigate the effects that Mr. Trump’s agenda may have on the nation’s schools. She earned a certificate to teach French and served a brief stint on the Connecticut State Board of Education. She has also been a university trustee at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., for many years.