President Donald Trump is ramping up his pressure campaign to make Greenland part of the U.S., even as Greenland's leaders insist that they are not interested and that the Danish territory is not for sale. This week, the Administration plans to send three members of Trump’s inner circle to visit the island: Second Lady Usha Vance, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Their visit is being viewed by Greenland officials as an escalation in the Trump Administration’s ongoing push to assert control over Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. In a video shared Sunday on Instagram, the Second Lady said she’s looking forward to visiting Greenland with one of her sons “to celebrate the long history of mutual respect and cooperation between our nations” and “to express hope that our relationship will only grow stronger in the coming years.” Greenland's outgoing Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede called the planned visit “highly aggressive” and accused the Trump Administration of using diplomatic engagements as a smokescreen for its ultimate goal: bringing Greenland under U.S. control. “Greenlanders have tried to be diplomatic, but it simply bounces off Donald Trump and his Administration in their mission to own and control Greenland,” he told the Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq on Sunday. The White House said that Usha Vance is scheduled to attend Greenland’s national dog-sled race and visit other culturally significant sites. In addition to the growing concerns surrounding the visit, the timing of the delegation’s trip is causing further unease. Greenland just completed a highly contested parliamentary election. The country is in the process of forming a new government and grappling with potential paths toward greater autonomy from Denmark, which is a NATO ally of the United States. Here’s what to know about the Trump Administration’s upcoming visit to Greenland and why Trump wants the island. Why Trump wants Greenland A semiautonomous Danish territory, Greenland has long been viewed as a strategic gem in the Arctic: it’s home to the U.S. Pituffik Space Base, which provides missile warning and space surveillance capabilities, and is situated along vital air and sea routes in the North Atlantic that could be beneficial for shipping and trade. The Trump Administration has framed a potential acquisition of Greenland as a matter of national security, arguing that American control would counter growing Russian and Chinese influence in the Arctic. “We need Greenland for national security and even international security,” Trump said earlier this month during a joint session of Congress. “And I think we’re going to get it one way or the other.” However, security concerns are not the only factor. Greenland possesses vast deposits of rare-earth minerals critical for advanced technology, including electric vehicle batteries, medical imaging equipment, and military applications. It also contains billions of untapped barrels of oil and a vast supply of natural gas—though mining the island has proven notoriously difficult. The President previously sent his son, Donald Trump Jr., to the Arctic territory’s capital in January. “This is a deal that must happen,” Trump wrote on social media at the time. “MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!” Trump’s push to acquire Greenland has also coincided with his vow to make Canada the 51st state and reclaim control of the Panama Canal. As officials in Denmark and Greenland have rejected Trump’s advances, U.S. officials have escalated their rhetoric. On Sunday, Vice President J.D. Vance blasted Denmark during an interview on Fox News, saying that the country is “not doing its job” and “not being a good ally.” “So you have to ask yourself: How are we going to solve that problem, solve our own national security?” Vance said. “If that means that we need to take more territorial interest in Greenland, that is what President Trump is going to do, because he doesn’t care about what the Europeans scream at us.” Usha Vance: Second Lady or diplomatic envoy? The inclusion of Usha Vance in the delegation has raised some eyebrows, as it will be her most high-profile moment thus far in the new Administration, one that was quickly viewed as a deliberate attempt at “soft power” diplomacy. The White House insists that her visit is for purely cultural purposes, aimed at fostering goodwill. In her video on Instagram, Vance emphasized her excitement about Greenland’s traditions. “I’ve been reading all about it with my children, and I’m amazed by the incredible skill and teamwork that it takes to participate in this race,” she said, referencing the Avannaata Qimussersu, Greenland’s national dog-sled race. Yet, Greenlandic leaders are unconvinced. “We are now at a point where it can no longer be described as an innocent visit from a politician’s spouse,” outgoing Prime Minister Egede told Sermitsiaq. “The international community must now react.” Despite Trump’s repeated assertions that Greenland is vital to U.S. interests, Danish and Greenlandic officials have consistently rejected any suggestion that the territory is available for purchase or annexation. “We are not for sale and cannot simply be taken,” Egede said on March 5 in response to Trump’s comments to Congress. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen echoed his stance, emphasizing that Greenland’s sovereignty is not negotiable. Greenland’s political transition following recent elections has further complicated the situation. Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the leader of the pro-business Demokraatit party, which emerged victorious in the elections, sought to calm fears while maintaining Greenland’s independence. In a post on Facebook on Sunday, he wrote: “There is no reason to panic. But there is good reason to stand together and to demand respect. I do. And I will continue to do so.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti liked automobiles, particularly his four-cylinder Fiat sports car. For him, the car represented innovation and vitality, even violence. Most of all, it signified the future. An Italian poet, performer, and pamphleteer, Marinetti was a reactionary; he loathed egalitarianism and democracy. He also wasn’t a conservative in any traditional sense, for there was little that he, and others in the Futurist art movement that he founded, wished to conserve. In his 1909 treatise, Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, he wrote, “We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind.” A precursor to the fascism that would envelop Europe, Marinetti was an influence on Benito Mussolini, and that ideology, which would soon fulfill that dark promise of destroying Europe’s museums, libraries, and academies. Marinetti’s stronghold over Mussolini has striking parallels to America today—particularly with the rise of the “Dark Enlightenment” movement and its most vocal steward: software engineer and blogger Curtis Yarvin. Largely ignored by academic philosophers, the “Dark Enlightenment” movement and Yarvin have curried favor and influence with tech executives in recent years. A software engineer by training, Yarvin has become a kind of official philosopher for tech leaders like PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel and Mosaic founder Marc Andreessen. Not unlike the Futurists, Yarvin advocates for replacing democracy with a kind of techno-feudal state—for the government to be run like a corporation, with the president as its “CEO.” This new system is elitist—“humans fit into dominance-submission structures” Yarvin wrote in 2008; and it’s authoritarian—“If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia,” he said in 2012. There are shades of Yarvin’s philosophy in Thiel’s 2009 essay for the Cato Institute, where he wrote “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” And Thiel, through his venture capital firm, Founders Fund, was an early investor in the blogger’s startup company Urbit. As for Yarvin’s controversial opinions and whether or not Thiel holds them, Yarvin has said that his patron is “fully enlightened,” as he had been “coaching Thiel.” What’s more, in a recent interview with the Hoover Institution, Andreessen quoted Yarvin and called him a “friend.” What’s even more alarming is that Yarvin’s outsize influence on tech executives has now made its way to Washington. The signs are everywhere: Yarvin was a feted guest at Trump’s so-called “Coronation Ball” in January 2025. Vice President J.D. Vance, a protegee of Thiel’s, spoke admiringly of the blogger’s influence on his thinking when interviewed on a podcast in July 2024. And while Andreessen’s role in the Trump White House is unofficial, The Washington Post reported in January 2025 that the executive “has been quietly and successfully recruiting candidates for positions across Trump’s Washington.” Meanwhile, Elon Musk, though not outwardly tipping his hat to Yarvin, seemingly has a similar philosophy: In 2020, Musk told the Wall Street Journal that the “government is simply the largest corporation.” Five years later, Musk has been using his position as an unofficial advisor to the second Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to operationalize what Yarvin has called “a hard reboot” of the government. As such, it behooves us to be more familiar with Yarvin and other associated figureheads of this far-right philosophy. Understanding their motivations is essential to understanding what the stakes currently are—and how history can repeat itself. Much can be gleaned about the attractions of this ideology to many of those in power from simply parsing the name of the movement. “Dark Enlightenment” portends the upending of the liberal order that has defined democratic aspirations for nearly three centuries. Where the Enlightenment promised liberty, emancipation, equality, and solidarity, “Dark Enlightenment” offers servitude, hierarchy, bondage, and ruthlessness. The movement is most often associated with the British philosopher Nick Land. Land was a founder of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom until 1995 when his own increasingly erratic behavior had him expelled. Land is actively anti-democratic, desiring a system where great men (guided by algorithms and artificial intelligence) steer the ship of state. This is an explicitly nihilistic vision—“Nothing human makes it out of the near-future,” wrote Land in 1994—an ideology combining technological utopianism with deep misanthropy, a variant of what the historian Jeffrey Herf described as “reactionary modernism,” but which we might as well call cybernetic authoritarianism or technological fascism. This leads us to Yarvin. A polemical blogger, Yarvin wrote for years under the goofy name “Mencius Moldbug” where he advocated for his own form of techno-authoritarianism in opposition to democracy. Like Marinetti, Yarvin expressed disdain for those symbols of American culture that he sees as oppositional to “Dark Enlightenment”—from free voting to free inquiry, a vibrant media to the open university. Yarvin, writing in 2021, posited (with significantly less poetry than the Futurists), “Because the university is the heart of the old regime, it is absolutely essential to the success of any regime change that all accredited universities be both physically and economically liquidated.” Yarvin speaks disparagingly of something that he calls “The Cathedral,” a nexus of educational, media, and nonprofit organizations that he believes sets the tenor for discourse, but that also impedes the liberty of executives to do what they will. Rather his aspiration is, as he wrote in 2007, that “the state is simply a real estate business on a very large scale.” Using a variety of mixed metaphors, Yarvin advocates for a “Butterfly Revolution,” a “full power start” to the U.S. government accomplished by “giving absolute sovereignty to a single organization." This is imagined as an internal coup meant to privatize the government and replace democracy with complete executive authority. Two years ago, Yarvin laid out his strategic program with the acronym “RAGE,” or “Retire all government employees.” Yarvin argued that a hypothetical future Trump administration should terminate all nonpolitical federal workers to have them be replaced by loyalists. The government’s coffers must then be impounded and redirected, according to the blogger. When courts prevent unconstitutional orders, Yarvin says that they should just be ignored. After that, the free press and universities must be curtailed, as well—Yarvin said no later than April after the inauguration. That so much of this seems to mirror the actions of the Trump administration and DOGE may not be a coincidence. So far, some 30,000 federal employees—across departments as varied as the FDA, the National Park Service, and the FAA—have been fired by DOGE in the name of government efficiency. Yarvin’s musings in 2009 that the “definition of a sovereign is that a sovereign is above the law,” hold a mirror to Trump’s February tweet that “He who save his country, violates no law.” Yarvin’s claim that “No brand or building can survive” is perfectly congruent with the tech industry’s notorious ethos to “Move fast and break things.” But what’s also being seemingly witnessed is a harbinger of the “monarchism” that Yarvin desires. On February 19, Trump posted a doctored image of himself in a crown with the caption “Long Live the King!” on his social media app Truth Social. As is so often the case with Trump, pundits have a tendency to assume a lack of seriousness or intention with what the president says. The same dismissiveness sometimes accompanied the Futurists, and Mussolini’s fascists for that matter, when they were ascendant. Now, as Trump threatens longtime American allies from Panama to Mexico, Canada to Denmark, a belief of the Futurists even more disturbing than their worship of technology should be remembered: Marinetti’s claim that “War is the hygiene of the world.”

On the night of Saturday, March 15, three planes touched down in El Salvador, carrying 261 men deported from the United States. A few dozen were Salvadoran, but most of the men were Venezuelans the Trump Administration had designated as gang members and deported, with little or no due process. I was there to document their arrival. For more than a year, I have been embedded throughout El Salvador’s society, working on a book chronicling the country’s transformation. From the huts of remote island fishermen to the desk of the President, from elite homicide detective units to elementary school classrooms, I have interviewed government officials and everyday people, collecting stories that would shock Stephen King. I’ve stood in classrooms full of happy students which not long ago were empty, because children here once learned early that schools were places to be raped or recruited. I’ve interviewed killers in prison and sat with them face-to-face. As I stood on the tarmac, an agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's ICE Special Response Team told me that some of the Venezuelans had weakly attempted to take over their plane upon landing. It wasn’t unusual for detainees to try to make a last stand, the agent said, guarding the doorway to the plane at the top of the gangway stairs. “They began to try to organize to overthrow the plane by screaming for everyone to stand up and fight. But not everyone was on board,” the agent said, cautioning me to be careful because some of the Venezuelans would fight once they were offloaded. Even if not fighting, almost all the detainees came to the door of the plane with angry, defiant faces. It was their faces that grabbed me, because within a few hours those faces would completely transform. The Venezuelans emerging from their plane were not in prison clothes, but in designer jeans and branded tracksuits. Their faces were the faces of guys who in no way expected what they first saw—an ocean of soldiers and police, an entire army assembled to apprehend them. One of the alleged organizers of the attempted overthrow fought the U.S. agents on the plane, cursing the Americans, the Salvadorans, President Nayib Bukele himself. El Salvador’s Minister of Defense, René Merino, who had been standing on the tarmac at the bottom of the gangway, rushed aboard, dragged the guy to the gangway himself, and flung him into the waiting hands of black-masked guards. The transfer from the plane to the buses that would carry them to prison was rapid, yet it might as well have been the crossing of an ancient continent. I felt the detainees’ fear as they marched through a gauntlet of black-clad guards, guns raised like the spears of some terrible tribe. I walked the line of buses waiting to depart, photographing faces. A guard noticed one of the detainees turned toward the window and wrenched his head back down into his chest. Around 2 a.m., the convoy of 22 buses, flanked by armored vehicles and police, moved out of the airport. Soldiers and police lined the 25-mile route to the prison, with thick patrols at every bridge and intersection. For the few Salvadorans, it was a familiar landscape. But for a Venezuelan plucked from America, it must have appeared dystopian—police and soldiers for miles and miles in woodland darkness. The Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious maximum-security prison known as CECOT, sits in an old farm field at the foot of an ancient volcano, brightly lit against the night sky. I’ve spent considerable time there and know the place intimately. As we entered the intake yard, the head of prisons was giving orders to an assembly of hundreds of guards. He told them the Venezuelans had tried to overthrow their plane, so the guards must be extremely vigilant. He told them plainly: Show them they are not in control. The intake began with slaps. One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.” I believed him. But maybe it’s only because he didn’t look like what I had expected—he wasn’t a tattooed monster. The men were pulled from the buses so fast the guards couldn’t keep pace. Chained at their ankles and wrists, they stumbled and fell, some guards falling to the ground with them. With each fall came a kick, a slap, a shove. The guards grabbed necks and pushed bodies into the sides of the buses as they forced the detainees forward. There was no blood, but the violence had rhythm, like a theater of fear.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Rep. Jake Auchincloss's Massachusetts district is so safe he didn't even face a Republican opponent in 2024. So while some of his Democratic colleagues are focused on the careful messaging needed to appease swing voters or keep their purple seats, Auchincloss, 37, is fixated on the broader question facing his party: what are the big ideas that Democrats can offer the American people? TIME spoke to the rising House Democrat about owning up to the party's COVID-era mistakes, getting tough on social-media companies, building new cities, and what the Democratic vision of the future should be. What went wrong for Democrats, and how can it be fixed? It's encapsulated in the school closures. The school closures were a catastrophe. Those are elementary school kids who didn't learn reading and writing because it was on Zoom. That's high school kids who missed out on baseball practice. That's college kids who didn't get to enjoy the college experience. And what defined those school closures was a condescension, it was an inflexibility, and it was a resistance to feedback about the effects of our government’s decisions. It was this toxic confluence of smugness with inflexibility, and frankly, poor governance. Democrats need to acknowledge that we were wrong as a party on our stance on school closures. It's not enough to say we were wrong on this. We also have to have a plan of action for how we're gonna remediate it. I think it's twofold. One is we should make a commitment of one-on-one, high-dosage tutoring for every kid who's behind grade level in this country. We know it's one of the few educational interventions that are rigorously tested for efficacy. It's scalable, it's complimentary to the work that teachers are already doing, and we should be saying as a matter of party principle: every single kid who's behind grade level, Democrats are here to ensure that they get one-on-one, high-dosage tutoring. The second thing we should do is hold the social-media corporations to account for their generational attention fracking of our youth. I have legislation that's bipartisan to revoke Section 230, and make social-media corporations accountable to a duty of care for things like deepfake pornography that target young women. But we gotta go even further, and tax the daylights out of these social-media corporations. A 50% tax rate on all digital advertising that they accrue on the revenues. And use it to fund initiatives like local journalism and education. Does the party need a new direction? What should that direction be? That's the core challenge we have. It's that we are bereft of big ideas. And that's what I'm worried about. Everyone's focused on ‘we need a new message frame’ or ‘we need we need a new angle’ or ‘we need new leaders to emerge.’ I can assure you there is no shortage of ambition out there, candidates will emerge. There's a shortage of ideas. It's all kind of hand waving unless you actually have some big ideas. Let's put the big ideas out there. Let's talk about them. Let's see what people will get excited about. And then organically, I think a narrative starts to emerge from that. And this is to a certain extent what MAGA did and Donald Trump did. He came out talking about 'build the wall,' right? We forget, ‘build the wall’ was the foundation of MAGA, which has since engendered many other ideas and narratives. But you can see why it's kind of the intellectual genesis of that movement. So what should be the Democrats’ next big ideas? Let me put a few more out there. We have got to stop focusing on expanding health-care coverage and focus instead on lowering health-care costs. Community health clinics account for about,1% of U.S. health care spending, but they treat 10% of Americans. They are primary and preventative care and if they could team up with hospitals in particular, they can be incredibly effective stewards of health care dollars. We have to start subsidizing them directly, as opposed to what we currently do, which is subsidize the health-insurance companies. For 15 years we’ve been subsidizing health-insurance companies, and they keep on telling us everyone's going to get healthier, and all I see is that they get richer. How do we subsidize these community health centers? How about a value-added tax on junk food, in the way that the Navajo Nation has. The Navajo Nation put a tax on junk food. It's modest, but they've used it to fund wellness initiatives. We could do that nationally. So in the same way that we tie the attention tax to fund journalism and education, we tie the tax on junk food towards radically expanding funding to community health centers. So that everybody under 300% of the federal poverty rate has access to primary and preventative care. What should be at the core of Democrats’ economic agenda? Cost Disease needs to be the centerpiece. Our Democratic economic agenda really could be seven words: "treat cost disease and protect Social Security." What is cost disease? Can you explain it to me like I’m five? Let’s use two examples to explain it. The average family spends relatively less on TVs and electronics and relatively more on health care than they did 50 years ago. Why did that happen? The reason is that in sectors where they are able to do at-scale product manufacturing, the cost goes way down. In sectors that are very labor intensive, costs tend to go up over time. TVs got really cheap to make, and so a relative share of your budget they went down. Health care is very labor intensive, child care is very labor intensive, and so they, as a relative share of your budget, go up. The goal then, if we're serious about treating cost disease in housing and health care, which are the two sectors that are most affected by it, is: how do you turn a service into a product and then how do you mass produce that product? What does that mean for housing? We totally have to do land-use reform. We gotta make it easier to build. I'm here in Massachusetts, and it’s impossible to build in this state with our zoning code. But we also have to figure out how to turn housing construction from a very service-intensive endeavor into a product. And we actually know how to do that: offsite construction. One way to break through is for us to get serious about building new cities in this country that just totally bypassed the local zoning issue, right? Americans used to build new cities every time we ran into a river. We stopped building new cities, but they're very important ways to foment economic dynamism and mobility. We've got lots of decommissioned military bases that are not locally zoned, federal land that's not locally zoned. Let's invest in building new cities there, and it’ll open up lots of opportunities. What other big ideas do you have? We need to get rid of the primary system. Get rid of the primary system like California did or Alaska did, try to limit the influence of big money like Maine is trying to do. Every state should be pushing for those reforms and Democrats should be leading the charge there. Because what that does is it unlocks the power of the median voter. Right now, of 435 members of Congress, only 35 of them are oriented towards the median voter. The other 400 are oriented towards their primaries. So if you take all these big ideas together and package them, how would you describe them? How would you explain this worldview to somebody if you didn’t have time to go through each idea step by step? It's a great question, but I'm gonna reject the debate, actually. I am insistent that right now, we need to be talking about the ideas, the merits of the ideas. I am sure that some people will agree with what I'm putting forward. Some people will disagree. We need to be seeing what excites people. What actually galvanizes the electorate? What do people see as relevant to their lives? What I'm very skeptical of is this top-down approach where the pollsters or the storytelling maestros of Democratic circles say, ‘this message is what works, it’s about fighting for the working class,’ or whatever. Voters can tell.

Nearly a week after the Trump administration flew more than 200 Venezuelan men to El Salvador, the mass deportation is continuing to draw intense scrutiny, with a federal judge admonishing Administration officials for "evading its obligations," and skepticism building around the allegations that all of the men were members of a dangerous gang. Federal District Court Judge James E. Boasberg on Thursday called the Justice Department’s filings about the deportation flights “woefully insufficient,” as he sought to determine if Trump officials had ignored his verbal order on Saturday to turn around the flights and return the men to the U.S. Instead, the men were delivered to El Salvador and the Salvadoran government quickly released photos of them dispatched to the country’s largest prison. On Thursday, Boasberg expressed frustration that Administration officials had still not fulfilled his request for details about when the flights took off from the U.S. and when they landed in El Salvador. “The government has again evaded its obligations,” Boasberg wrote. If the judge believes the government violated his instructions, he could hold the Trump administration in contempt. Lawyers and family members of many of the deported Venezuelan men have disputed the Administration’s claims that they were members of Tren de Aragua. In a court filing this week, the Trump administration acknowledged that many of the people it has removed under the Alien Enemies Act do not have criminal records in the U.S. Robert Cerna, an official with the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement’s field office in Harlingen, Texas, said in the filing that the men had “only been in the United States for a short period of time" but that “agency personnel carefully vetted each individual alien to ensure they were in fact members” of the gang. In a claim that strains logic, Cerna told the court that the dearth of information the government has about many of the men bolsters its assertion they are dangerous. The “lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose,” the filing states. “It demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.” Among the deported men with no apparent criminal record was Jerce Reyes Barrios, a 35-year-old Venezuelan and former professional soccer player who had sought asylum in the U.S. after he was electrocuted and suffocated following a protest against the repressive actions of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Reyes Barrios’ lawyer asserted in a court filing that border officials had incorrectly determined he was a member of a gang by misreading his tattoo and a hand symbol in a photo. “The Trump administration is willing to toss aside due process for splashy deportation theater,” says Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “This is something that should make every American afraid.” Some of Trump’s loudest supporters seemed unsurprised that some of those swept up in deportations and jailed in El Salvador had no criminal record. “Guess what, if there are some innocent gardeners in there, hey, tough break for a swell guy,” Steve Bannon said Monday on his show War Room. “That’s where we stand. We’re getting these criminals out of the United States.” Stephen Miller told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that the Trump Administration didn’t need to wait for a crime to be committed before deporting someone. “Our job is to send the terrorists out before anyone else gets raped or murdered,” Miller said. He sidestepped a follow-up on whether the Administration would present additional evidence that all those deported were part of Tren de Aragua. Reyes Barrios originally dealt with Biden administration officials when he fled to the U.S. in September. Once in Mexico he made an appointment on the CBP One app to present himself to CBP officials at the border. He was initially placed in a “maximum security” section of the detention facility at Otay Mesa Detention Facility in California, and accused of being a Tren de Aragua gang member. Border officials made that determination, his attorney Linette Tobin wrote in a sworn declaration, because of a tattoo that features a crown on top of a soccer ball that was based on the logo for his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid; and a photo on social media of him posing with his fingers spayed out like horns—a hand gesture with multiple non-gang-related connotations. Working with an immigration attorney, Reyes Barrios applied for asylum in December and was set to appear before a judge at the Otay Mesa Immigration court on April 17. Reyes Barrios was moved out of the maximum security prison after his lawyer presented immigration officials with employment letters, a police clearance from Venezuela showing no criminal record, an explanation of the meaning of the hand gesture and a declaration from the tattoo artist about the meaning of the image. Reyes Barrios’ hopes of pleading his case in immigration court evaporated once the Trump administration took over. In early March, Reyes Barrios was transferred from Otay Mesa in California to Texas without his attorney being notified. On March 15, he was deported to El Salvador, 1,500 miles from his homeland of Venezuela. Three days later, his immigration attorney was able to reach an ICE official who confirmed that their client was in a prison in another country.

Since President Donald Trump returned to office and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader Elon Musk was tapped to lead a spree of federal government cuts, departments across the federal government have faced massive overhauls and layoffs. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which is responsible for national policy and programs that address housing needs and enforce fair housing laws, is no different. Trump-appointed HUD Secretary Scott Turner has been reviewing HUD’s charge as an agency and considering cuts to a variety of offices within the department. During Trump’s first term as President, he and his Administration repeatedly proposed massive cuts—including the slashing of entire affordable housing programs. But things seem even more heightened now. “In the previous go-around with Trump, there were very sharp proposed reductions and program eliminations, but Congress did not approve them. Now, we have DOGE, and they are basically undermining the capacity of the agency to fulfill its mission,” says Alex Schwartz, professor of urban policy at the New School. When asked how the department is faring, he replies: “In one word: Badly.” Turner has not only embraced DOGE’s mentality of massive cuts to government spending, but has launched his own DOGE taskforce within HUD to “identify and eliminate waste” within the department. On March 11, HUD and Turner showed their loyalty to Trump’s political goals when they rejected a draft version of what Schwartz calls a “routine request for disaster recovery assistance” from the city of Asheville, North Carolina, as the city continues its efforts to recover from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene in 2024. The rejection was based on the fact that the city’s recovery plan included a desire to “prioritize assistance for Minority and Women Owned Businesses (MWBE),” which HUD argued was not compliant with Trump’s January Executive Order titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing” that effectively dismantled diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts at the federal level and efforts that are federally-funded. “HUD looks forward to helping thousands of North Carolinians rebuild after Hurricane Helene by directing funding assistance to impacted businesses, nonprofit organizations, and neighborhoods,” Turner said in a statement. “Once again, let me be clear, DEI is dead at HUD. We will not provide funding to any program or grantee that does not comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.” Beyond political changes in the department, the financial changes and cuts, Schwartz says, could undercut much of HUD's major charges, including the enforcement of fair housing and the development of affordable housing. This contrasts the fact that Trump ran on affordability throughout his campaign. “HUD is not a high profile agency, and frankly, most of its operations have gone to sustaining existing prior budget commitments, housing, and rental assistance. There's been very little growth over the last decade or more,” Schwartz says. Where HUD is looking to cut is “a very small part of the federal budget,” he continues, adding that many small organizations are “highly dependent” on the department’s financial assistance. Here’s how the Department of Housing and Urban Development is faring under the Trump Administration so far. Staff and field office proposed cuts As various departments across the federal government have encountered severe staff cuts, HUD is bracing for mass layoffs—in addition to the probationary employees who have already been fired—as Turner promises to reduce “waste” at the department in a similar fashion to Musk’s DOGE. The exact number of cuts have yet to be fully finalized by the department, but according to a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), these cuts could include 50% of staff in the HUD office that administers vouchers, public housing, and Native American housing programs, which together help 7 million people afford housing. It could also impact 44% in the office that oversees the project-based rental assistance program, 84% in the office that administers homelessness assistance and grants that help communities build affordable housing and recover from disasters, and 77% in the office that enforces fair housing laws. “HUD is taking inventory of every program and process to determine when and where the department can be more efficient….this is not a bad thing…change is good,” said Turner in a video posted to social media. “We are taking a surgical approach and making sure we retain top talent and institutional knowledge so that we can best serve the American people.” Antonio Gaines, the president of AFGE National Council 222, a union that represents HUD employees, told Bloomberg Law the Trump Administration was planning to terminate 50% of HUD’s workforce, including in departments that enforce civil rights law and rebuild after disasters. “I think there's a really strong evidence base that a lot of what HUD does is really effective in reducing homelessness and helping people afford housing,” says Will Fischer who authored the report for CBPP. “Those programs only reach a fraction of the people who need help because of funding limitations, so there's a really strong case to expand them. But these costs are going to go in the opposite direction by disrupting and undermining.” ​​ Margaret Salazar, a career and political housing expert who worked for 12 years at HUD under three different Administrations believes that these programs will all still exist and distribute funding to communities around the country, but will be less effective with less personnel to work within said local communities. “I think something that people might not realize about HUD that's really unique is that half of HUD's staff is actually in the field offices,” Salazar says. “It's really because of the organization's connections on the ground to local governments, nonprofits, and housing authorities and to tribes.” On March 5, Bloomberg reported plans to close dozens of field offices across the U.S. However, there is a certain layer of protection expected, as U.S. housing law requires that HUD maintain at least one field office in every state in order to process applications so the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)—which is also set to have major staff and budget cuts—can underwrite mortgage insurance for buyers. Salazar says her former colleagues in the HUD headquarters and in the field office remain confused about what is currently underway. “They say they're not getting any clear direction or justification to what will or won’t be cut. There’s a lot of fear,” she claims. “I was talking to a colleague who said that normally when you’re facing [a] layoff, it's a personal issue. But when you're a federal employee and you're getting laid off, and there's no real clear justification for that, you're also worried about the housing projects [being worked on], so you are carrying that load as well.” Some of the $60 million funds were intended to go to small community nonprofits that develop affordable housing in Section 4 programming—which is meant to benefit individuals and families with low incomes. Enterprise Community Partners is one of the intermediaries that has deployed Section 4 grants to hundreds of organizations across the U.S., along with LISC and Habitat for Humanity. On Feb. 26, Enterprise Community Partners received a notification that HUD intends to terminate its Section 4 nonprofit capacity building grants and technical assistance program. “Make no mistake: Today’s decision will raise costs for families, hobble the creation of affordable homes, sacrifice local jobs, and sap opportunity from thousands of communities in all 50 states,” Enterprise president and CEO Shaun Donovan, former HUD Secretary, said in the group’s statement. “We intend to pursue every avenue to ensure these vital programs are not torn away from the neighborhoods and working Americans who benefit from them.” Salazar is CEO of REACH, a nonprofit affordable housing developer in Oregon and Washington State. She reports that two of REACH’s projects that were financed by an award from HUD have been stalled due to funding freezes from the federal government. Salazar says the $4.5 million may just be a “tick on a line” for HUD, but for her organization, it jeopardizes the future of one property designated for seniors and another designated for people with disabilities. “I think the one thing that housing developers need is certainty, so that we can plan out our timeframe and start moving dirt on projects,” Salazar says. “That's a certainty we [currently] don’t have.” Also concerning to Salazar is the possible termination of the Green and Resilient Retrofit Program, which she says is “one of the only really significant sticks and bricks housing investments that HUD received in the last several years.” The Green and Resilient Retrofit Program, which as a part of the Inflation Reduction Act, works to provide direct loans and grants to fund projects that improve energy, water efficiency, or climate resilience of affordable housing. “HUD helps to ensure Americans have access to fair and affordable housing. The previous Administration’s extreme energy efficiency crusade diverted valuable resources, including funding, from the department’s mission,” a HUD spokesperson tells TIME in an emailed statement. “The department is evaluating options to ensure rural, tribal and urban communities have the resources they need, which are not solar panels.” Rather than developing housing, these nonprofits work to combat housing discrimination, enforce fair housing laws, and educate people on their rights. In response, four fair housing groups—Massachusetts Fair Housing Center, the Intermountain Fair Housing Council, Fair Housing Council of South Texas, and the Housing Research and Advocacy Center—sued HUD and DOGE over cancelling contracts under the Fair Housing Initiatives (FHIP), arguing that HUD acted arbitrarily by failing to provide adequate reasoning for its decision. All four plaintiffs are members of the National Fair Housing Alliance. “The cancellation of [the plaintiffs’] FHIP grants has caused an immediate and devastating impact. They have had to shutter programs, terminate services, lay off staff members, and shrink their core activities,” the lawsuit states. “Many class members operate in states where no other organization engages in such work, and many serve communities that are often overlooked and underserved: rural areas, low-income neighborhoods, immigrant groups, veterans, and people with disabilities.” Meanwhile, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, released a statement on Feb. 27 addressing Turner terminating the anti-discrimination housing rule. “At a time when America is experiencing a full-blown housing crisis and record levels of housing discrimination complaints, this outright assault on civil rights takes us back to the days when the federal government rubber stamped segregation and discrimination,” the statement read. On March 3, Waters hand-delivered a letter to Turner and led an event outside HUD's main offices in Washington, D.C., to “sound the alarm on how Trump and DOGE's actions will worsen our nation’s housing and homelessness crisis and exacerbate discrimination in housing.” Meanwhile, on March 17, Warren and Waters were joined by 106 Congressional Democrats in sending a letter to Turner “demanding answers regarding recent actions taken by the Trump Administration to gut enforcement of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and other housing-related civil rights laws.” Schwartz says the defunding of these fair housing groups “signals” to voters that “discrimination is an issue that the federal government is not concerned about… and it’s certainly not going to help educate people about their rights.” Turner responded to the letter and statements penned by Warren and Waters during an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, saying that HUD “will uphold the law” and is "committed to uphold[ing] the Fair Housing Act.” A new plan for affordable housing Despite cuts under the Trump Administration, Secretary Turner and Trump have outlined ways that they hope to address the housing crisis. One of their strategies is to build homes on some of the 650 million acres of federal land as a way to face the housing shortage. The task force will be led by Turner and HUD as well as the Interior Department, per an announcement made by HUD on March 17. Turner and Department of the Interior (DOI) Secretary Doug Burgum published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about their task force, stating that “America needs more affordable housing” and “making federal land available” will make it happen. They said “overlooked rural and tribal communities” will be at the center of the task force. “Historically, building on federal land is a nightmare of red tape—lengthy environmental reviews, complex transfer protocols and disjointed agency priorities. This partnership will cut through the bureaucracy,” Turner and Burgum wrote.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities,” that attempts to dismantle the Department of Education. It directs newly-instated Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “return authority over education to the States and local communities.” Trump said that the department will still keep some “core necessities," and that Congress will vote on whether or not to abolish, since only Congress can officially dismantle a government agency. The Democrats know it’s right. I hope they’re going to be voting for it,” Trump said at Thursday’s press briefing about signing the Executive Order. “Because ultimately, it may come before them.” The historic gutting of the department is part of the charge that has defined the first few weeks of Trump’s second term. Led by his Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE], under the watchful eye of Elon Musk, the President has made great strides to make the government smaller by implementing major cuts and funding freezes across the board. On March 11, news came that 50% of the Department of Education was set to be laid off—part of its “final mission,” according to the department’s website, which stated that “impacted department staff will be placed on administrative leave beginning Friday, March 21st.” Speaking to TIME in early March, Jonathan E. Collins, an assistant professor of political science and education at Columbia University's Teachers College, said: “We’re more likely to continue to see what we've been seeing from the Trump Administration. Gutting all the activity underneath it and basically make it [the Department of Education] a shell of itself.” Amid concern and confusion as to what the future holds under the Trump Administration, here’s a look at the history of the Department of Education and what it actually does: When was the Department of Education established? The origins of the Department of Education can be traced back to 1867, when the first Department of this name was established by Congress. Its charge back then was very different and mostly focused on ​​collecting statistics about schools and disseminating some best educational practices. Due to concern that the department would have too much purview over schools, it was then demoted to an Office of Education under different agencies. The Department of Education as we know it today was established by Congress in the 1979 “Department of Education Organization Act,” after calls for expanded federal funding in education and “national efforts to help racial minorities, women, people with disabilities, and non-English speaking students gain equal access to education,” according to the department’s website. Collins has pointed out how the department is in its “infancy” in comparison to other agencies. “We won’t even have begun to fully see how the Department of Education can grow and transform into the best version of itself it can be… the abolition discussion has clouded that fact,” Collins said during a follow-up phone call on March 20, ahead of Trump signing the Executive Order. “We’ve had education inequality for a long time. We’ve had it longer than we’ve had the Department of Education. The persistence of it just underscores the need for some federal agency that is committed to this," he said. How big is the Department of Education? The Department of Education employed around 4,200 employees last September, according to the Office of Personnel Management, which accounted for about 0.2% of overall federal employment last year—the smallest staff of the 15 Cabinet agencies. What does the Department of Education do? The Department of Education has many different and varied responsibilities under its current formation and governs many offices including the Federal Student Aid (FSA), Institute of Education Sciences (IES), Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS). Under the FSA, the Education Department manages the $1.693 trillion outstanding federal student loan balance, as well several student aid programs like the Pell Grant and work study. The department is the largest source of loans for college students. The department also provides 13.6% of funding for public K-12 education, according to the Education Data Initiative, sending funding streams that include Title I—which describes federal allocation of supplemental financial assistance to school districts/schools with a high percentage of children from low-income families—as well as grants under IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), providing money to districts to serve and teach students with disabilities, and grants for things like adult rehabilitation services. The department collects data on education facilities nationwide, and enforces non-discrimination and civil rights laws in federally funded schools, including Title VI and Title IX. Collins pointed out that Title I, Title IX, and programs at the federal level create an equalizing factor that helps to cut through education inequalities between states, creating “incentives for continuity.” “This is the problem of pursuing so much responsibility and discretion at the state level,” he said. “The potential danger [with dismantling the Department] is that you're putting a lot of responsibility on the backs of these education agencies across states that are already strapped when it comes to their capacity, and you're creating an environment where [a person’s] educational experience will become heavily dependent on the state they live in”

Jacob Bushno has spent his entire adult life serving his country. He enlisted in the military straight out of high school. After two tours in Iraq as part of the Army’s air assault division, he transitioned into civilian service in the federal workforce. Last month, just seven days before finishing his one-year probationary period with the U.S. Forest Service, he was abruptly fired. This week, he was rehired. Like many of the thousands of federal workers caught in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce, Bushno has spent the last few weeks frustrated and confused. But as a veteran, he views his treatment by the new Administration with a different lens. “I feel very betrayed. All I’ve done my whole life since getting out of high school was serve this country,” says Bushno, 40, who worked in the Shawnee National Forest in Illinois. “I feel like, who's fighting for me, you know?” Bushno’s rehiring came after a federal judge on Monday ruled the Trump Administration’s mass terminations of probationary workers was illegal. Even as Bushno prepares to return to his position, he remains skeptical about the Administration’s commitment to those who have served. “I don’t trust it, and I think they’re gonna terminate probationary employees again,” he says. The impact of the Trump Administration's job cuts has reverberated across the federal workforce, where veterans make up nearly 30 percent of civilian employees. The Department of Veterans Affairs has not been spared, with over 1,000 employees—including staff at the Veterans Crisis Line—dismissed. While some have since been rehired, many remain in administrative limbo, left wondering whether they will ever be reinstated. To some veterans, the wave of firings, as well as cuts to workers tasked with helping veterans, has raised deeper questions about the Trump Administration’s commitment to those who served their country in uniform. They say the cuts present a contradiction at the heart of Trump's messaging: while he often positions himself as a champion of veterans, his Administration’s policies in its first months have placed many former service members in financial and professional jeopardy. “If they're the patriotic party, why are you guys firing disabled veterans?” asks Bushno, who says he has PTSD from his tours in Iraq. The political fallout from the firings may already be shaping upcoming congressional battles and the 2026 midterm elections. VoteVets, a progressive veterans’ organization, recently launched a six-figure ad campaign targeting Republican lawmakers in competitive districts, highlighting the economic uncertainty veterans face under the Trump Administration. The ad features laid off veterans discussing their growing frustration with the political forces behind the job cuts. “I did not put my life on the line for some tech bro billionaire from South Africa to come in here and try to destroy our country,” one of the veterans says, referring to White House advisor Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has played a role in the cuts. Exit polling from the November presidential election showed that veterans were much more likely to support Trump than his opponent, with more than 6 in 10 veterans casting their ballot for him. Ross Dickman, the chief executive of Hire Heroes, a nonprofit that helps veterans find employment, said his organization has seen a sharp increase in veterans seeking help compared to a year ago. He cautioned that while the labor market is strong, “it’s not enough to really overcome the amount of unemployed veterans that we’re going to see entering the market.” Tony Ruiz, a veteran from Orange County, Calif., was proud to be hired by the Department of Veterans Affairs last year as a Veteran Service Representative. Then he was fired last month, 10 days before his probation period was set to end. He says he was especially shocked to see the phrase “unacceptable performance” in his termination letter, after becoming the first employee in his division to win an employee of the quarter award in August. The firing left Ruiz feeling abandoned: “I feel like I got a big F-you from the American people, and I feel betrayed.” Ruiz says he had been recruited for the position by the VA and jumped at the opportunity. “I said to myself, this is a chance to serve my country again, serve the veterans again. So I took it, but ultimately it cost me my livelihood and it cost my career,” he says. Although he was technically still a probationary worker like many others let go, Ruiz suspects his firing was politically motivated and a result of his criticism of emails sent by the acting secretary to VA employees unwinding some of the agency’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Unlike other probationary employees, Ruiz has not been offered reinstatement and believes it’s because he failed the Administration’s unofficial “loyalty test.” “As an American soldier, as a veteran, we value the oath. And so for me, I didn't take an oath to a king, or take an oath to the Administration.” “I'd rather be homeless… than to bow down to Donald Trump,” he adds. In a statement to TIME, VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz said that Ruiz was fired for “poor performance” and that “his dismissal had nothing to do with VA’s Feb. 13 and Feb. 24 probationary termination announcements.” In Congress, Democrats are pushing legislation aimed at protecting veterans in the federal workforce. Sens. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Andy Kim of New Jersey introduced a bill last week that would require the Trump Administration to reinstate veterans who were terminated and provide transparency on future dismissals. Duckworth, herself a disabled veteran, has been particularly outspoken, calling the Administration’s actions a betrayal. “He says he loves veterans. No, he doesn't,” she tells TIME. “He's firing veterans left and right. These are people who served their country in uniform and then chose to enter federal service to continue serving this country.” ExploreClose Subscribe Mar 20, 2025 9:11 PM IST For Veterans Fired by Trump, the Sense of Betrayal Runs Deep Politics Trump Administration Nik Popli by Nik Popli Reporter Jacob Bushno, a federal employee from Illinois, served two tours in Iraq as part of the Army’s air assault division before taking jobs at the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Forest Service. Bushno was fired in early February along with thousands of other probationary employees.Courtesy Jacob Bushno Jacob Bushno has spent his entire adult life serving his country. He enlisted in the military straight out of high school. After two tours in Iraq as part of the Army’s air assault division, he transitioned into civilian service in the federal workforce. Last month, just seven days before finishing his one-year probationary period with the U.S. Forest Service, he was abruptly fired. This week, he was rehired. Like many of the thousands of federal workers caught in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce, Bushno has spent the last few weeks frustrated and confused. But as a veteran, he views his treatment by the new Administration with a different lens. Advertisement 00:06 03:00 Read More “I feel very betrayed. All I’ve done my whole life since getting out of high school was serve this country,” says Bushno, 40, who worked in the Shawnee National Forest in Illinois. “I feel like, who's fighting for me, you know?” Bushno’s rehiring came after a federal judge on Monday ruled the Trump Administration’s mass terminations of probationary workers was illegal. Even as Bushno prepares to return to his position, he remains skeptical about the Administration’s commitment to those who have served. “I don’t trust it, and I think they’re gonna terminate probationary employees again,” he says. The impact of the Trump Administration's job cuts has reverberated across the federal workforce, where veterans make up nearly 30 percent of civilian employees. The Department of Veterans Affairs has not been spared, with over 1,000 employees—including staff at the Veterans Crisis Line—dismissed. While some have since been rehired, many remain in administrative limbo, left wondering whether they will ever be reinstated. Advertisement Grottoes bear the enduring touch of Tang Branded Content Grottoes bear the enduring touch of Tang By China Daily Read more: Trump Administration Has Reversed Course More Than A Dozen Times To some veterans, the wave of firings, as well as cuts to workers tasked with helping veterans, has raised deeper questions about the Trump Administration’s commitment to those who served their country in uniform. They say the cuts present a contradiction at the heart of Trump's messaging: while he often positions himself as a champion of veterans, his Administration’s policies in its first months have placed many former service members in financial and professional jeopardy. “If they're the patriotic party, why are you guys firing disabled veterans?” asks Bushno, who says he has PTSD from his tours in Iraq. The political fallout from the firings may already be shaping upcoming congressional battles and the 2026 midterm elections. VoteVets, a progressive veterans’ organization, recently launched a six-figure ad campaign targeting Republican lawmakers in competitive districts, highlighting the economic uncertainty veterans face under the Trump Administration. The ad features laid off veterans discussing their growing frustration with the political forces behind the job cuts. “I did not put my life on the line for some tech bro billionaire from South Africa to come in here and try to destroy our country,” one of the veterans says, referring to White House advisor Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has played a role in the cuts. Advertisement Exit polling from the November presidential election showed that veterans were much more likely to support Trump than his opponent, with more than 6 in 10 veterans casting their ballot for him. Ross Dickman, the chief executive of Hire Heroes, a nonprofit that helps veterans find employment, said his organization has seen a sharp increase in veterans seeking help compared to a year ago. He cautioned that while the labor market is strong, “it’s not enough to really overcome the amount of unemployed veterans that we’re going to see entering the market.” Tony Ruiz, a veteran from Orange County, Calif., was proud to be hired by the Department of Veterans Affairs last year as a Veteran Service Representative. Then he was fired last month, 10 days before his probation period was set to end. He says he was especially shocked to see the phrase “unacceptable performance” in his termination letter, after becoming the first employee in his division to win an employee of the quarter award in August. The firing left Ruiz feeling abandoned: “I feel like I got a big F-you from the American people, and I feel betrayed.” Advertisement Former Veterans Affairs employee Tony Ruiz and VA Under Secretary Josh Jacobs pose in Los Angeles after Ruiz received an employee of the quarter award, which Jacobs presented to him. Courtesy Tony Ruiz Ruiz says he had been recruited for the position by the VA and jumped at the opportunity. “I said to myself, this is a chance to serve my country again, serve the veterans again. So I took it, but ultimately it cost me my livelihood and it cost my career,” he says. Although he was technically still a probationary worker like many others let go, Ruiz suspects his firing was politically motivated and a result of his criticism of emails sent by the acting secretary to VA employees unwinding some of the agency’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Unlike other probationary employees, Ruiz has not been offered reinstatement and believes it’s because he failed the Administration’s unofficial “loyalty test.” “As an American soldier, as a veteran, we value the oath. And so for me, I didn't take an oath to a king, or take an oath to the Administration.” Advertisement “I'd rather be homeless… than to bow down to Donald Trump,” he adds. In a statement to TIME, VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz said that Ruiz was fired for “poor performance” and that “his dismissal had nothing to do with VA’s Feb. 13 and Feb. 24 probationary termination announcements.” In Congress, Democrats are pushing legislation aimed at protecting veterans in the federal workforce. Sens. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Andy Kim of New Jersey introduced a bill last week that would require the Trump Administration to reinstate veterans who were terminated and provide transparency on future dismissals. Duckworth, herself a disabled veteran, has been particularly outspoken, calling the Administration’s actions a betrayal. “He says he loves veterans. No, he doesn't,” she tells TIME. “He's firing veterans left and right. These are people who served their country in uniform and then chose to enter federal service to continue serving this country.” Advertisement Trump has repeatedly defended the workforce cuts. Asked last week whether he feels responsible for people losing their jobs, Trump said: "Sure I do. I feel very badly ... but many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work." White House counselor Alina Habba on March 4 suggested that some veterans working in the federal government were perhaps “not fit” for their positions. “As you know, we care about veterans tremendously… But at the same time, we have taxpayer dollars, we have a fiscal responsibility to use taxpayer dollars to pay people that actually work,” Habba told reporters. “That doesn’t mean that we forget our veterans by any means. We are going to care for them in the right way, but perhaps they’re not fit to have a job at this moment, or not willing to come to work. … I wouldn’t take money from you and pay somebody and say, ‘Sorry, they’re not going to come to work.’ It’s just not acceptable,” Habba said. In response to a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic attorneys general, U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar on Monday ruled that the mass firings were conducted illegally and ordered the administration to reinstate affected employees. More than 24,000 probationary employees across 18 agencies have since been offered their jobs back. Agencies are still sorting out how to bring back those workers and give them the back pay ordered by the courts. Yet the Trump Administration has signaled that its broader push to downsize the federal workforce is far from over. Already, the VA is planning to cut more than 80,000 workers beginning in June in an attempt to return to 2019 staffing levels, according to an internal memo obtained by TIME. Other agencies are planning similar reductions. Despite his misgivings with the new Administration, Ruiz says he fears losing his house and would take his job back if offered. “But then again if they don’t, I will never work for this government again,” he says.

In July 2024, Chief Justice John Roberts penned one of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions of President Donald Trump’s political career. In a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, Roberts and the court’s conservative majority established that Presidents can enjoy broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts—a decision that provided Trump with a crucial legal shield as he campaigned to return to the White House. The ruling effectively delayed one of Trump’s most serious criminal cases related to his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, contributing to the political landscape that allowed his re-election bid to thrive. But on Tuesday, after weeks of silence, Roberts took a markedly different stance. In a rare move, he issued a public statement pushing back against Trump’s escalating attacks on federal judges who have ruled against his Administration—just hours after Trump called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg over a ruling blocking a key deportation policy. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts wrote, according to the Associated Press. His words, measured but firm, represented a striking contrast to his previous willingness to bolster Trump’s legal arguments. The moment highlighted the complex and sometimes contradictory role Roberts has played in Trump’s political and legal battles. As the leader of the judiciary, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush in 2005, he has, at times, enabled Trump’s expansive claims of presidential power. Yet, as Trump’s attacks on judges have grown more incendiary, Roberts appears increasingly compelled to push back. Here’s what to know about Chief Justice John Roberts and his complicated relationship with President Donald Trump: A history of enabling Trump's legal shield Roberts’ tenure as Chief Justice has coincided with some of the most tumultuous legal battles involving a sitting President. Despite his reputation as an institutionalist committed to preserving the court’s legitimacy, Roberts has frequently authored or joined opinions that benefited Trump’s political and legal standing. In 2018, he cast the decisive vote in upholding Trump’s controversial travel ban on several majority-Muslim countries. More recently, in March 2024, his court issued a unanimous decision blocking state-level efforts to bar Trump from the ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause—a ruling that secured Trump’s path to renomination. But no decision was more consequential than last year’s ruling on presidential immunity. By siding with Trump’s argument that former Presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted for official acts, Roberts’ court delayed legal proceedings that could have put Trump on trial before the 2024 election. The decision drew sharp criticism from legal experts who warned that it effectively placed the presidency above the law, granting future occupants of the office unprecedented protection from accountability. Trump, for his part, appeared to recognize the significance of the ruling. As he exited a joint session of Congress earlier this month, cameras captured him warmly thanking Roberts. “Thank you again. Won’t forget it,” the President said. While Trump later insisted on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he was referring to Roberts’ role in swearing him in as President, the moment fueled speculation that the President saw Roberts as an ally in his legal battles. A rare rebuke to Trump's judiciary attacks Despite his past decisions aiding Trump’s legal defenses, Roberts has also taken pains to push back when Trump directly undermines the judiciary’s independence. His statement on Tuesday was not the first time he has publicly criticized Trump for attacking judges. In 2018, after Trump dismissed a federal judge as an “Obama judge” following a ruling against his asylum policy, Roberts issued an uncharacteristically direct response. “We do not have ‘Obama judges’ or ‘Trump judges,’ ‘Bush judges’ or ‘Clinton judges.’ What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them,” he said at the time. Trump dismissed Roberts’ latest statement on Tuesday night during a Fox News interview. “He didn’t mention my name in his statement,” Trump said of Roberts, suggesting that he could have been referring to other people who have called for Judge Boasberg to be impeached. Prior to Roberts’ intervention, Trump called Boasberg “a Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama,” after he blocked his Administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants. A judiciary under siege in Trump's second term As Trump’s presidency unfolds, the courts remain one of the few institutions capable of checking his expansive use of executive power. Since taking office again in January, Trump has pushed an aggressive legal agenda that has triggered a flurry of lawsuits. His Administration’s frequent losses in lower courts have seemingly fueled Trump’s attacks on the judiciary, with some conservative allies in Congress introducing articles of impeachment against multiple judges, including Boasberg. Impeaching a judge would require 67 votes in the Senate, which means Republicans and Democrats would both have to support it. Roberts, as the head of the federal judiciary, has been facing mounting pressure to protect the courts from political interference. With a lifetime appointment, it remains to be seen whether the 70-year-old Chief Justice will take further steps to defend judicial independence as Trump continues his broadsides against the judiciary.

President Trump on Tuesday escalated his campaign to discredit judges who get in his way, calling on Congress to impeach the judge at the center of a legal fight over the deportation of hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador. Trump’s brazen assault on the judicial branch drew an unusual rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Posting on his website TruthSocial, Trump called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered Trump to halt his use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants suspected of belonging to transnational criminal gangs. Despite the judge’s order, administration officials let the deportations continue in apparent defiance of the court, and flights carrying 261 people removed from the U.S. landed over the weekend in El Salvador, where the Salvadorian government says they have been imprisoned. Trump called Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic” and “a troublemaker and agitator.” He also mocked the idea that a federal judge could constrain his actions as President. “He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE,” Trump wrote. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Within hours of Trump's post, Roberts issued a rare public criticism of a sitting President. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts wrote in a statement, according to the AP. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.” Roberts has previously warned of the problem of judges facing threats and intimidation, including writing about the issue in his year-end report in December. “Attempts to intimidate judges for their rulings in cases are inappropriate and should be vigorously opposed,” Roberts wrote. Boasberg was appointed as a federal judge by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in March 2011. He became the chief judge of the District Court of the District of Columbia in 2023. Earlier in his career, Boasberg worked as a U.S. attorney specializing in homicide prosecutions and President George W. Bush appointed him in 2002 to the D.C. superior court as an associate judge presiding over civil, criminal and domestic violence cases before being named to the federal bench. Only Congress has the authority to remove a federal judge, and the process is similar to how Congress can remove a President. First the House must vote to impeach a judge, which would require a simple majority. If that succeeds, then the Senate holds a trial and votes whether to convict. A conviction requires two thirds of the votes in the Senate to pass. In the past 250 years, Congress has impeached 15 federal judges, and the Senate has convicted only eight of them, according to a tally by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The most recent federal judge to be removed from office by Congress was G. Thomas Porteous, Jr., a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Porteous was convicted by the Senate in December 2010 on charges of accepting bribes and making false statements under penalty of perjury. ​​Rep. Brandon Gill, a Republican from Texas, posted on X Tuesday that he planned to file articles of impeachment against Boasberg in the House. House Republicans have either threatened to file or filed articles of impeachment against at least four other federal judges who have ruled against Trump since he took office on Jan. 20.