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.

President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), former Republican Congressman Dr. Dave Weldon, was set to face questioning by Senators on March 13. But on the morning of the hearing, the White House withdrew Weldon’s nomination, according to Axios, which first reported the news. Weldon was due to appear before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, and members were expected to question him on topics including his past statements expressing vaccine skepticism. In an interview, Weldon told the New York Times that he just learned about the withdrawal of his nomination the night before; a White House official told him he didn’t have the votes to be confirmed for the role. “It is a shock, but, you know, in some ways, it’s relief,” he told the Times. “Government jobs demand a lot of you, and if God doesn’t want me in it, I’m fine with that.” Here’s what to know about Weldon. Dave Weldon is a physician, veteran, and former Congressman Weldon, 71, served in the Army, and currently operates a private medical practice in Florida. From 1995 to 2009, he served in Congress, representing Florida. Since then, he’s largely been out of the political spotlight, though he’s run campaigns—he lost the GOP Primary for a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2012, as well as the GOP Primary for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives in 2024. He was the president of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries From 2017 to 2020, Weldon was the president of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, an association of faith-based organizations that claim to offer alternatives to health insurance. The organizations have sparked controversy and criticism from state regulators, who have expressed concern that the groups’ marketing strategies have led to confusion among consumers over whether the ministries would fund medical claims. He has repeated the debunked claim that there’s a link between vaccines and autism In the past, Weldon shared similar views on vaccination to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Despite years of research proving the safety and efficacy of vaccines, Weldon has previously repeated the debunked claim that some children could develop autism if they receive the measles vaccine. Dr. Peter Hotez—professor of pediatrics and molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development—has never worked with Weldon, but says the false claim that vaccines can cause autism “makes no sense.” “We have overwhelming evidence that vaccines don’t cause autism,” Hotez says. “Anyone who wants to reopen spurious autism and vaccine links, you have to believe either they’re misinformed or they have an agenda outside of public health.” Hotez says that many of Weldon’s comments were made years ago, and he hopes that Weldon has since learned more about the topic and changed his views. In November, when the Times spoke to Weldon, they asked him about his past comments, but Weldon declined to state whether he still believed that there is a link between vaccines and autism. He told the Times that his two adult children have been vaccinated, and that he gives vaccines, including the flu shot, to his adult patients. “I’ve been described as anti-vaccine,” he told the Times, adding, “I give shots. I believe in vaccination.” While serving in Congress, Weldon sponsored a bill that passed with bipartisan support in 2003. The bill launched a program, known as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), that allocated $15 billion for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria prevention and treatment programs in low-income countries. In the more than two decades since, PEPFAR has saved up to 25 million lives, officials estimate. Hotez says “there’s clearly a disconnect” between Weldon’s support for PEPFAR and his previous anti-vaccine statements. ”But again, those [anti-vaccine theories] were statements he made almost 20 years ago, so what we need to find out is, where does he stand today and what are his views? So the [nomination hearing] will be very instructive in finding that out,” Hotez said (before the hearing was canceled). He has criticized federal health agencies Like some of Trump’s other nominees to lead the nation’s health agencies, such as Dr. Marty Makary, who has been nominated to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Weldon has been a vocal critic of health agencies in the past. In April 2007, he said that federal agencies “failed to free themselves from conflicts of interest that serve to undermine public confidence in the safety of vaccines.” He accused the federal government at the time of dedicating “far more resources to promoting the immunizations than in safety evaluations,” and claimed that the CDC focused its vaccine safety resources on considering short-term side effects, and not enough focus was given to long-term side effects. He also proposed that the vaccine safety office be moved out of the CDC and operate instead as a separate office within HHS. He introduced the "Weldon Amendment" Weldon authored and introduced the Weldon Amendment, which passed in 2005 and prohibits health agencies from discriminating against health care institutions, medical providers, and insurance plans that don’t provide or fund abortion care, typically on religious grounds. Nourbese Flint, president of the reproductive rights group All* Above All, says the amendment “has been incredibly harmful to abortion access.” “This is particularly important in places where people don’t have a lot of providers to turn to,” Flint says. “Particularly for those in rural spaces where there are no other providers, people are stuck.” lint points out that Project 2025 encouraged the next presidential Administration to conduct “abortion surveillance” through the CDC, which is the agency tasked with collecting health data across the country. Project 2025 calls for HHS to ensure that “every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.” Before the White House pulled Weldon’s nomination, Flint and other reproductive rights advocates had expressed concerns that Weldon could follow through on that Project 2025 suggestion, and that the data collected could be used to identify and penalize providers or even patients. Weldon has also shared unreliable claims about reproductive health. In 1998, he suggested that there was a connection between abortion and breast cancer; the American Cancer Society maintains that “the best scientific evidence does not support a link between abortion and breast cancer risk.” In 2002, Weldon suggested that federal programs focus on abstinence education, rather than teaching adolescents about contraceptives, to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs)—research has found that abstinence-only education programs are ineffective. “We’ve seen time and time again that Weldon has used bad science,” Flint says. “Anybody who is worth their weight in salt has known that abstinence is not an effective policy against both STI and unplanned, untimed pregnancies, and that we have a lot of data and research on our side that having a robust sexual education and access to reproductive health care and destigmatizing has been the best ways in which we can reduce STIs and unplanned pregnancies.” Flint calls Weldon “dangerous” for America’s public health, pointing to both his past anti-vaccine and anti-abortion comments. Flint says that when people share “bad science,” it can lead to the public being uninformed about important health topics, which can have fatal consequences.

Suhas Subramanyam is about to wear through his fourth pair of walking shoes. The 38-year-old Democrat wore out the first three knocking on doors to convince voters in the Northern Virginia suburbs to send him to Capitol Hill. He’s only been in Congress a month and his current pair have started to fray as he’s paced the Capitol and his district responding to President Donald Trump’s remaking of Washington and the federal government. Subramanyam has been moving at a frenzied pace ever since being sworn in on Jan. 6, as Trump and Elon Musk have taken steps to dismantle federal agencies, gut the federal workforce, and, some argue, set the stage for a constitutional crisis. “Everything so far is so crazy,” says Subramanyam, in an interview in his basement office in the Longworth House Office Building. “We are just trying to adapt to everything that is going on and go with the punches and figure out what our response is.” In Washington, Subramanyam has been among those Democrats from Congress joining ousted federal workers outside the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Treasury Department to denounce the Musk-led restructuring. In his district, home to 34,000 federal workers, Subramanyam has been struck by the anxiety of so many of his constituents. On a recent Monday night, he expected his first town hall in Leesburg to draw a few dozen people. Instead the place was packed to capacity. Hundreds filled long benches inside the Loudoun County Government Center to express their concerns about federal job cuts and funding freezes. Hundreds more watched the discussion from monitors in the building’s lobby. Several stood up to express their concerns about federal programs and jobs that were being slashed. One man said his agency was told to cut 50% of its jobs and described how an official sent from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had started sleeping in the office. Subramanyam, whose committee assignments include the House Oversight Committee, directed his staff to log the testimony and contact details of whistleblowers and collect details to document the Trump administration’s actions. He says his concerns are about more than the federal workers in his district losing their livelihoods. He’s heard from food safety experts, crop security specialists, and nuclear scientists who are seeing their work halted. He fears the loss of expertise in the federal government, as people who have worked in their fields for years or decades get pushed out of public service and end up in the private sector. Subramanyam says he’s already seeing a “brain drain” from the federal government. It’s not a downsizing of government, he says, it’s a “dumbsizing.” “When we talk about Trump getting rid of highly educated employees at federal agencies, that’s not just the income of a working family in our district,” he says. “That is the deterioration of food safety or of security for our country.” This is not Subramanyam’s first time in the federal government. He served as a White House technology policy adviser in the Obama administration. He then spent five years in the Virginia Legislature. On the campaign trail, he often laid out his entire life story, including his parents immigrating to America from India before he was born. Last week, Musk announced his Department of Government Efficiency was rehiring Marko Elez, a 25-year-old software engineer who had resigned after The Wall Street Journal linked him to a social media account that had recently posted racist messages including "Normalize Indian hate," and "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity." Subramanyam says the incident “shows the values of the people Musk is bringing on.” “I don’t dwell on it but I see it as a responsibility not to normalize it,” he says. “I’m Indian American and in a mixed-race marriage. It’s deeply offensive, but it’s becoming normal for me to hear things like that—especially over the last couple of years.” While he spent much of his first time opposing the GOP’s agenda, Subramanyam found at least one moment of bipartisanship. Last month, he was among the Democrats who joined Republicans to pass the Laken Riley Act, which requires immigration officers to arrest and detain immigrants who are in the country unlawfully if they are charged with any of a list of crimes, including minor theft of $100 or more. It is the first bill Trump has signed into law in his second term.

Google was among the tech companies that donated $1 million to Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. It also, like many other companies, pulled back on its internal diversity hiring policies in response to the Trump Administration’s anti-DEI crackdown. And in early February, Google dropped its pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance, a move seen as paving the way for closer cooperation with Trump’s government. Now, users of Google’s consumer products are noticing that a number of updates have been made—seemingly in response to the new administration—to everyday tools like Maps, Calendar, and Search. Google Maps renames Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America Among Trump’s first executive orders was a directive to rename the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America and Alaska’s Denali, the highest mountain peak in North America, to its former name Mt. McKinley. Google announced on Jan. 27 that it would “quickly” update its maps accordingly, as soon as the federal Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is updated. On Monday, Feb. 10, following changes around the same time by the Storm Prediction Center and Federal Aviation Administration, Google announced that, in line with its longstanding convention on naming disputed regions, U.S. based users would now see “Gulf of America,” Mexican users will continue to see “Gulf of Mexico,” while users elsewhere will see “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).” As of Tuesday, Feb. 11, alternatives Apple Maps and OpenStreetMap still show “Gulf of Mexico.” Google Calendar removes Pride, Black History Month, and other cultural holidays Last week, some users noticed that Google removed certain default markers from its calendar, including Pride (June), Black History Month (February), Indigenous Peoples Month (November), and Hispanic Heritage Month (mid-September to mid-October). “Dear Google. Stop sucking up to Trump,” reads one comment on a Google Support forum about the noticed changes. A Google spokesperson confirmed the removal of some holidays and observances to The Verge but said that such changes began in 2024 because “maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable,” explaining that Google Calendar now defers to public holidays and national observances globally listed on timeanddate.com. But not everyone is buying the explanation: “These are lies by Google in order to please the American dictator,” wrote a commenter on another Google Support forum about the changes. Google Search prohibits autocomplete for ‘impeach Trump’ Earlier this month, social media users also noticed that Google Search no longer suggests an autocomplete for “impeach Trump” when the beginning of the query is typed in the search box, Snopes reported. A Google spokesperson told the fact-checking site that the autocomplete suggestion was removed because the company’s “policies prohibit autocomplete predictions that could be interpreted as a position for or against a political figure. In this case, some predictions were appearing that shouldn’t have been, and we’re taking action to block them.” Google also recently removed predictions for “impeach Biden,” “impeach Clinton,” and others, the spokesperson added, though search results don’t appear to be altered.

Rep. Nancy Mace, the firebrand South Carolina Republican who is considering a run for governor, made headlines Monday when she gave a highly unusual speech on the U.S. House floor accusing four men—including her former fiancé—of rape, physical abuse, and sexual misconduct. Speaking for nearly an hour, Mace said she was “going scorched earth” to “call out the cowards who think they can prey on women and get away with it,” providing in detail what she said the men did to her and other victims. Mace said she spoke up because the state's top prosecutor, Attorney General Alan Wilson, did not take meaningful action after she allegedly alerted investigators. Wilson—who is likely to be Mace’s opponent if she runs for governor of South Carolina in 2026—said the rape allegations were never sent to his office. Mace, 47, has long positioned herself as a champion of the safety of women and children. She often shares the story of being molested at a swimming pool when she was 14 and raped when she was 16, leading her to drop out of high school. Mace went on to become the first woman to graduate from the Citadel, a military college, and was elected to Congress in 2021. But her political career is one marked by defiance and controversy. The Daily Beast reported last year, based on interviews with her former staff, that Mace prioritizes national media exposure to an unusual degree. Once considered a moderate, Mace has fully embraced President Donald Trump’s agenda, despite him being found liable for sexual abuse. She has been arguably the most vocal figure in the GOP’s crusade against transgender rights, introducing a controversial resolution in November to ban trans women from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol in response to the first openly trans woman being elected to Congress. Mace has since continued to cast anti-trans views on her social media and often uses transphobic slurs, including during a February House committee hearing. Airing sexual assault allegations on the House floor Mace accused her ex-fiancé Patrick Bryant and three other South Carolina men of drugging, raping, and filming women without their consent, as well as sex-trafficking. She did not present evidence to back up her allegations but said she had materials to corroborate them. Bryant told the Associated Press: “I categorically deny these allegations. I take this matter seriously and will cooperate fully with any necessary legal processes to clear my name.” TIME could not independently verify these allegations. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division has since confirmed the agency has had an active investigation focused on Bryant since December 2023. Mace said that in November 2023 she “accidentally uncovered some of the most heinous crimes against women imaginable” after finding on Bryant’s phone a video of herself undressed and unaware she was being filmed, along with additional videos and photographs of other women. She accused Bryant of physically assaulting her after she found the contents of his phone. “I still have the mark that Patrick Bryant made on me the night that he assaulted me,” Mace said. “I will wear this mark that he made on me for the rest of my life as a badge of honor.” She also claimed that Bryant and his business associates drugged her in 2022, and that she was raped during that incident. “I believe that they purposely incapacitated me. Was anyone else there, was it filmed, was it sold on the dark web? I have no idea, but I know what these men do to their victims,” she said. Mace said she had turned over all the evidence she had against the men to law enforcement in South Carolina, but that Wilson, the state’s attorney general, had failed to act. Wilson rejected Mace’s comments as “categorically false” and added that she “either does not understand or is purposefully mischaracterizing the role of the Attorney General.” “Our office has not received any reports or requests for assistance from any law enforcement or prosecution agencies regarding these matters,” his office said in a statement. “The Attorney General and members of his office have had no role and no knowledge of these allegations until her public statements.” She once claimed to be an LGBTQ+ ally Mace’s views on the LGBTQ+ community appear to have changed since she first took office. In an interview with the Washington Examiner in 2021, she said: "I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality ... no one should be discriminated against." She added that she has “friends and family that identify as LGBTQ” and that “understanding how they feel and how they’ve been treated is important.” In a 2023 interview with CBS News, Mace said “I'm pro-transgender rights” and expressed support for youth who are socially transitioning genders. “If they wanna take on a different pronoun or a different gender identity or grow their hair out, or wear a dress or wear pants, or do those things as a minor—those are all things that I think most people would support. Be who you want to be, but don’t make permanent changes as a child,” Mace said, noting that she supports bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Since November, Mace has been one of the most vocal Republican critics of policies aimed at expanding rights for transgender people. She has faced criticism for misgendering and making derogatory comments about transgender individuals, including a recent exchange during a House Oversight Committee hearing where she repeatedly used a transphobic slur. Despite the criticism, Mace doubled down, posting clips of the exchange on social media and defending her remarks as part of a broader effort to resist what she sees as the overreach of the left. Mace’s hardline stance on transgender rights extends to legislation she has championed, such as her proposal to ban trans women from using women’s restrooms and changing rooms in the Capitol and House office buildings. The policy, which was part of a broader conservative push, was not initially included in the House rules package for the 118th Congress but found its way into the 119th after Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, included it in his policies. Mace has framed her anti-trans rhetoric as an effort to protect women and children, though her opponents accuse her of stoking division and perpetuating harmful myths about the transgender community. She voted to oust the former House Speaker Mace was one of eight House Republicans who voted to oust Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in October 2023 after he struck a deal with Democrats to pass a stopgap spending bill and avoid a government shutdown. It was the first time in history that the House had voted to remove a Speaker. Mace faced sharp criticism for her vote. She said she voted to oust McCarthy over a “perceived lack of trust,” claiming that he didn’t honor commitments regarding balanced budget amendments and didn’t support two women's related bills she'd worked on. "For me, this was a vote of principle and a vote of conscience," Mace said. "I could not, in good conscience, continue to support a speaker who was unwilling to tell the truth. To me, you have to have honesty and truth, especially [given] how divisive this country is. We had a guy who was telling Conservatives one thing, moderates another, and Democrats something else. This is not the way to lead." Mace made headlines for wearing a red “A” on her shirt after leaving the vote, claiming she felt “demonized” for her choice, in reference to The Scarlet Letter, a 19th century novel in which the protagonist was condemned to wear a red “A” after becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Considering a run for governor Mace told the AP in January that she is “seriously considering” a gubernatorial run in 2026 and will make a final decision in the coming weeks. She added that she plans to ask for Trump’s support, after he backed her in last year’s GOP primary race. “Trump is going to need people in governor seats in ’26,” Mace told the AP. “It’s not going to be an easy election cycle for us. In ’26, we need people who can win, win big, and implement his agenda, and I will do that. I’ve been doing it. I have a great relationship with him, and I will be asking him for his support statewide in South Carolina.” Wilson, the state Attorney General, has also said he is considering a run for governor.

President Donald Trump announced on Air Force One Sunday that he would impose a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports, the latest move as part of the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and its allies. Tariffs refer to taxes that are placed on imported goods, or products that come into the country. Importers have to pay tariffs to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which could cause companies to increase prices on their goods to make up for the additional taxes they have to pay. The move is meant to help domestic steel and aluminum companies, but could also cause local companies that rely on foreign steel to struggle. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest steel importer, with the top three import sources being Canada, Brazil, and Mexico, although other countries, such as South Korea, heavily rely on exporting steel to the U.S. Steel and aluminum are heavily used in the automotive and construction industry, but are also used to manufacture goods and appliances. The decision mirrors the actions Trump levied during his first Administration, when he enacted a 25% tariff on steel and 10% tariff on aluminum, though some countries, including South Korea were exempt. In response to the most-recent tariff announcement, shares of major South Korean steelmakers in the country fell on the stock market Monday morning, while that of U.S. steel companies rose. On average, the U.S. imports more than 2 million metric tons of steel mill products per month, according to data by the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration, but only about a quarter of all steel in the U.S. is imported, as total steel imports have been decreasing year-over-year. “You see these empty, old, beautiful steel mills and factories that are empty and falling down,” Trump said on the campaign trail in October 2024. “We’re going to bring the companies back. We’re going to lower taxes for companies that are going to make their products in the USA. And we’re going to protect those companies with strong tariffs.” The U.S. imports about half of all aluminum it uses from other countries, mostly from neighboring Canada. The International Trade Administration reports that there’s been a significant increase of U.S. imports on aluminum, up 25% from 2015 to 2022. Earlier in February, Trump threatened to impose a 25% tariff on most Canadian and Mexican imports, though he later decided to pause the tariffs for 30 days after negotiations with each country. Trump also issued a 10% tariff on China which remains in place. The President said he will also charge retaliatory tariffs on other countries.

Super Bowl LIX saw the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 for the ultimate trophy win. But those teams weren't the only adversaries present at New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome. President Donald Trump and musician Taylor Swift were also in attendance, as was expected. Trump, the 2024 TIME Person of the Year, and Swift, who received TIME’s Person of the Year title in 2023, have a complicated past. Both parties have called one another out over opposing political views and actions. After staying away from publicly commenting on politics during the beginning of her career, Swift endorsed a Democratic candidate in the U.S. Senate election in Tennessee in 2018. Trump publicly responded to Swift’s endorsement, and various comments have been made by both sides since. Indeed, this tense relationship became a focus of the night, as a moment when Swift appeared to be booed—perhaps by Eagles fans opposing her boyfriend Travis Kelce's Chiefs—was widely shared by Trump supporters online, and even by Trump himself on his social media platform Truth Social. In light of both Trump and Swift attending the Super Bowl, here’s a look back at their tense history. October 2018: Trump responds to Swift’s endorsement of Democratic candidate Though Swift had, prior to this, stayed away from political endorsements, she decided in 2018 to voice her support for Democratic senatorial candidate Phil Bredesen over Republican candidate Blackburn. Swift said Blackburn's voting record in Congress “appalls and terrifies" her. At the White House a few days later, Trump was asked about the endorsement by reporters. August 2019: Swift says Trump thinks he’s in an “autocracy” In an interview with the Guardian, Swift publicly criticized Trump after not endorsing a candidate during the 2016 election. When asked about the Trump Administration by the publication, she said: “We’re a democracy—at least, we’re supposed to be—where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate. I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy." She also told the outlet that she felt “really remorseful for not saying anything” during the 2016 election between Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. January 2020: Swift reveals more in her Miss Americana documentary In her 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, Swift took fans behind the scenes of her decision to endorse Tennessee Democratic candidate Bredesen in his Senate race against Republican candidate Blackburn, which was ultimately won by Blackburn. In the documentary, Swift refers to Blackburn as “Trump in a wig.” May 29, 2020: Swift tells Trump “we will vote you out” Swift took a strong stand against the President in the midst of the protests after the killing of George Floyd. Trump posted on X (formerly Twitter), warning protesters in Minnesota that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Trump’s post was then flagged by Twitter—two years before the platform was bought by Trump supporter and DOGE leader Elon Musk—for “glorifying violence.” Swift then took to the same social media platform to address Trump directly. “After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?” she wrote. “‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump.”

Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show was filled with symbolism—from Uncle Sam(uel L. Jackson) to a crip walking Serena Williams—but perhaps the most powerful symbol on stage was not even planned, according to the producers of the performance. Standing on the hood of a Buick Grand National GNX (after which Lamar named his most recent album, “GNX”), in a sea of dancers, a man clad in black sweats unfurled the Palestinian and Sudanese flags. He then jumped down from the car and ran along the perimeter of the stage, waving the flags, which had the words “Sudan” and “Gaza” written on them with a heart and a solidarity fist, before being tackled by security staff. The NFL said the protester, who was detained by security, was part of the 400-member field cast for the show but said that he had hidden the flags on him. “No one involved with the production was aware of the individual’s intent,” the league said in a statement. Roc Nation, the entertainment company behind the halftime show, said that the act was “neither planned nor part of the production and was never in any rehearsal.” The man, who later identified himself as Zül-Qarnain Nantambu, will not face charges, New Orleans police said on Monday. He has been banned from future NFL events, according to the league and the New Orleans Police Department. The game, attended by President Donald Trump, took place amid a weekslong ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, pausing the war in Gaza that has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians. Meanwhile, the Sudanese civil war between the paramilitary group RSF and the Sudanese military rages on, having killed more than 28,000 people and displacing millions more since April 2023. The moment has gained significant attention on social media. Critics labeled the protester a “Hamas supporter” and “terror supporter,” but many more were supportive of the act. One X user wrote: “Do you understand how wild it is that people are breaking down the symbolism in Kendrick’s performance while a Black man literally got arrested for unfurling Palestine’s and Sudan’s flag during it?! The display of solidarity was clearly the more powerful piece of art!” Some Lamar fans, despite clarification from the NFL and Roc Nation, assumed the artist endorsed the move by one of his performers. “KENDRICK WENT ON THE BIGGEST STAGE ARGUABLY IN WESTERN MUSIC AND PUT UP THE PALESTINE FLAG WHILE SOMEONE ELSE IS IN THE BUILDING AND THATS HOW I KNOW WE MADE THE RIGHT ONE FAMOUS,” one X user said. “I know the NFL will rake him over the coals for this but I really appreciate the gesture. Thank you Kendrick Lamar,” another wrote. Others, however, noted that Lamar has not publicly spoken about the wars in Gaza and Sudan. “This should have been part of Kendrick’s performance but he’s not brave enough. His silence on Palestine/Sudan makes his ‘conscious about issues on the world’ music lose a lot of value,” sports journalist Leyla Hamed posted. But whether or not Lamar was on board, many celebrated the protest for bringing attention to the humanitarian crises in Palestine and Sudan. One wrote: “either way if someone snuck in during the performance and held the sudan and palestine flag up, or it was planned by Kendrick and his backup dancers they were incredibly brave for this and its a reminder to not be distracted from the genocides taking place.”

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. Judges are starting to restrain Donald Trump and Elon Musk, doing the work the legislative branch and activists seem unable to muster. The number of rulings pushing back against the President’s barrage of executive actions keeps climbing, as courts have halted plans to shut down congressionally authorized agencies, transfer transgender women in the prison system to male-only prisons, and offer unfunded buyouts to millions of federal employees. Judges were even working on it over the weekend, with one issuing an emergency order early Saturday to temporarily restrict Elon Musk’s team from access to the highly sensitive Treasury Department’s payment system. At least 40 lawsuits are rushing the legal system to oppose some aspects of the administration's efforts. Brian Schatz was counting on all of this. The senior Senator from Hawaii has emerged as one of Democrats’ standout fighters in the first three weeks of the second Trump era, thanks in part to his meeting the moment with hair-on-fire passion while still stressing a steady-as-she-goes long view. Schatz is working off a playbook that assumes the courts, remade over the last two decades to be decidedly right-of-center, will stick to the law as the mainstream legal community has long interpreted it. “I’m not here to suggest that people shouldn’t be alarmed,” he told The New Yorker. “I think they should be alarmed, but I also think that one of Trump’s great advantages is that he’s a very effective bluffer. And most of this stuff is going to cause a ton of damage, but will eventually be found to be illegal.” It’s lost on few in Washington that Schatz is having a moment. As many Democrats in Congress have struggled to respond to the fire hose of disruption—at times seeming downright doddering in response to the White House’s potential upending of the constitutional order—the 53-year-old Schatz has helped his party find their footing. Yet even Schatz understands his form of The Resistance is only nibbling at the edges. “There’s very little we can do but to scream about it and cause delays at the margins,” Schatz told New York last week. He pointed to Senate Democrats recently refusing to give Republicans a unanimous go-ahead on a procedural vote. The net cost: “all of 12 minutes” of delay. “So people need to understand there is no magic button called ‘courageously obstruct,’” he said. Schatz’s background as a former aid worker in Africa is proving especially apt for this moment, making him possibly the most effective spokesman for the pushback against Trump’s assault on foreign aid, despite some prominent Democrats arguing it’s a fight their party should concede. Even then, Schatz is stressing that the center will hold thanks to the resiliency of the courts. "A stable world means a stable America,” Schatz said a week ago in front of the headquarters of the U.S. Agency for International Development, doing his level best to buck-up soon-to-be-fired employees who at that point had only been abruptly locked out of their office. “They are counting on some sense of inevitability. This is a bluff. It is a harmful, dangerous, killer bluff. But they don't have the law on their side." That was last Monday. On Friday, workers riding a cherry-picker removed the signage outside of U.S. AID at the precise spot where Schatz had delivered his pep talk. They also put wide black tape over U.S. AID’s name on signposts around the headquarters, effectively vanishing it from the map. And then that very afternoon, a district judge nominated by Trump in 2019, blocked the administration’s plan to put 2,200 U.S. AID employees on administrative leave and withdraw nearly all of the agency’s workers from overseas. The ruling was to allow the court to hear arguments from the administration and unions representing many of the agency’s workers about the legality of shutting down an agency authorized by Congress. Yet even if Trump doesn’t get to, as Musk crowed, feed “U.S.A.I.D. into the wood chipper,” the agency’s work and reputation has still been damaged. And the fact that desperately needed food and medicine has been made into a political football says as much about this moment as anything. And of course, it’s worth remembering, it’s only been three weeks. Which is why so much of Washington is looking to the courts as the bulwark against Trumpism’s total domination. But assuming the judiciary knocks down the administration’s most disruptive efforts—no sure thing—there’s still the fear that Trump might barrel forward with what a judge expressly told him he could not do. At that point, the debate over whether we’re in the midst of a constitutional crisis will be over. So, for now, plugged-in players in D.C watch as a far-flung coalition of anti-Trump forces look to obstruction as a tool but not an answer, and hold to the belief that judges can curb most of the President’s overreach.

James Akot has three goats. He shares them with his wife, his mother, three younger siblings, and two of his cousin's children, in a household in Northern Bahr el Ghazal in South Sudan. The crops Akot's family planted were washed away in the floods last year, the fourth and worst flood in the region in four consecutive years. This month, food deliveries were due to arrive to his region to tide families over until the next crop. But in late January, Akot and his neighbors heard that these deliveries would not be coming. A volunteer community organizer, Akot is reluctant to talk about his woes; many in his region are so much worse off. Four of the local health centers have closed. Cholera cases are ticking up. Too many children are malnourished. There's a local refugee camp, Wedwill, overflowing with families who have fled war from just across the border in Sudan. Not all of this is because in early February, USAID funds were frozen for all but the most emergency and lifesaving missions; the World Food Programme had already announced it would need $404 million to serve the region before the 90-day pause imposed by the U.S. government on foreign aid. But the stoppage is making many dire situations into desperate ones. "This is not about one organization," says Marta Valdes Garcia, humanitarian director of Oxfam International. "It's a full humanitarian system that is working, and, under a specific coordination, aims to deliver humanitarian assistance for millions of people around the globe. The stop-work order is shaking the whole system." I ask Akot, 34, what he will do now. That's when he mentions the goats. "I have to sell one goat to get 10 kg [22 lbs.] of flour," he says. "We can eat it maybe for five to six days, because we are extended family. Then I sell another one. So for these 15 days, we are going to sell three goats. We don't know what will happen from there." He laughs, nervously, as he faces the enormity of it. TIME spoke to humanitarian workers—many of whom asked not to be named for fear of reprisals to their employers—about the implications of the suspension. Schools for fourth- to sixth-grade girls are being closed in Afghanistan. Families are returning to destroyed neighborhoods in Gaza with no access to clean water, shelter, or provisions. Funding for teachers and supplies in Uganda has dried up. Tons of seeds are currently sitting in a warehouse in Haiti instead of being distributed to farmers. Maternal health and family-planning clinics in Malawi are shuttered. In Bangladesh, food assistance for refugees will be cut by half in March and run out entirely in April. "As bad as all these are, the things that you're not able to see right now are going to be the really devastating things," says a representative from an aid organization that works on nutrition in the Horn of Africa. "We're prioritizing severe acute malnutrition instead of moderate acute malnutrition. But if a child moves from moderate to severe acute malnutrition, there are all these developmental problems it causes and stunts them for the rest of their life. So we're literally causing kids to have an entire life of poor health because of the decisions we have to make." As the Trump Administration has pursued its goal of reducing government spending, it seems to be taking the same approach as big cats do when pursuing prey: move fast and take down the most vulnerable first. And the results are just as brutal. The U.S. was the biggest distributor of funds to countries in crisis, providing more than 40% of the world's nonmilitary foreign aid. When that wallet is suddenly zipped, even for three months, it puts the aid network under so much pressure that small holes in the web of support grow into chasms. And while any step back in funding by the world's richest economy is going to send shudders through the sector, this pullback came at a particularly disastrous time. Wars and political instability in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa have created crises that are difficult and expensive to alleviate. Natural calamities—floods, earthquakes, droughts, landslides—have also drained resources. Last year Germany, another big donor country, also scaled back its foreign aid, but didn't stop it completely. Because the future has become very uncertain, the careful planning and coordination aid organizations need to do is almost impossible. "We work in spaces like Syria or the occupied Palestinian territories that are very volatile," says Valdes Garcia. "The coordination mechanism that we have is put in place in order to support an efficient and effective response, to keep people safe, and to ensure that the response that is delivered is quality." One of the biggest issues aid workers on the ground are worried about is water sanitation. Under the terms of the funding pause, organizations are allowed to pursue "life-saving" activities, including emergency food distribution. But there is no point in delivering food if there is no clean water with which to wash and prepare it. "It was not clearly stated whether water sanitation was included in the waiver," says Valdes Garcia. Without access to clean water, people die, not just of thirst, but of waterborne diseases such as cholera. The nutrition organization in the Horn of Africa is continuing to truck water into communities with none but is not sure about whether water-treatment kits are also allowed, so they've paused distribution of those until funds are released. It galls many humanitarian workers that the USAID is being reviewed for wasting government money while many of the investments they have made in areas that take a while to pay off, such as education, are being frittered away. After the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan, humanitarian agencies spent months negotiating with Afghan leaders to allow girls to go to school beyond third grade in some regions. Aid agencies there worry that even if funds for the schools are restored after 90 days, the hard-won memoranda of understanding signed by the authorities may need to be renegotiated. "We have lost precious time in which girls can access schools, we may be losing negotiating power with the de facto authorities, and we may lose core design elements that are critical," says one agency director. Even in places where school is welcome, advances are being lost. Peter Waiswa works for the Global Compassion Coalition in Uganda and is the chairperson of the school management committee of Bulogo Primary School, where the academic year has just begun. He does not think it will last long. For many years, USAID has supported rural Ugandan children's education by paying for teachers' salaries and some supplies, through a program known as Universal Public Education. "Most of these schools that have been administering this program have put their students on high alert not to come to school," says Waiswa, since they won't be able to operate. "I am talking about millions of students, both in primary and secondary schools." Many of the parents, who live on less than a dollar a day, will not be able to afford to send them if they have to buy supplies. Agriculture is another area where the halt has squandered effort and time. World Relief, one of the few agencies funded by USAID to speak up about the impact of the funding cut, says it has 3.9 metric tons of bean seeds in Haiti that it cannot distribute, because of the stop-work order. "If they are not distributed soon, then the seeds will rot, farmers will miss planting season, and families will be at high risk for food insecurity," the organization said in a statement to TIME. "These are real people, real lives, hanging in the balance. This isn't about politics; it's about the very real consequences of these funding delays on the people we serve." It's easy to give in to despair, but for Akot and those who are bearing the brunt of the reduction in aid, that's just one more thing they can't afford. "Thinking about it, sometimes it gives you a hard time," he says of his family's situation. "I just keep encouraging them, 'Let's wait. Maybe this decision will be considered by the President of the United States.'" That's what I can tell them. But as for now, we do not have an idea of what we can do."