As the U.S. government endeavors to trim its spending, no agency has been as pared back as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). On Feb. 26, after 30 days of what was purported to be a 90-day review, the Trump Administration announced that 90% of the international aid projects the agency was funding were going to be canceled, ending an era of outsize dominance and generosity by the U.S. in foreign aid. These cuts include funding for medical, nutrition, educational and democratic initiatives that were sustaining and protecting millions of people. While foreign aid represented about half a percentage of the U.S. budget, it also represented more than 40% of the world’s foreign aid. The size and speed of the cancellations have reverberated around the world, with many experts suggesting that America’s reputation as a reliable and trustworthy partner has taken a hit simply because of the abruptness of the process. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that all foreign-aid projects must make Americans safer, stronger, and more prosperous. Valerie Karr, who has been working in disability rights for two decades, understands that impulse but is aghast at the cost to the people her small business served: disabled children in impoverished countries. For the last six years, Inclusive Development Partners (IDP) has helped implement plans to get children with disabilities around the world into schools and keep them there. IDP was hired by other aid organizations to make sure the work they were doing included people with disabilities. In that way it was occasionally branded as a DEI project, but it was not one informed by identity. If an education program was being established, IDP helped train teachers on how to instruct disabled children. It also helped identify disabled children, who were often kept home, and provided them with the materials they needed to get to school, including wheelchairs and braille books. Now after the termination of its contracts, IDP is struggling to stave off bankruptcy. Karr, who as well as being president of IDP is an associate professor at UMass Boston, spoke to TIME about how this will affect disabled children, what Americans got out of USAID, and what she learned in the weeks since the foreign-aid freeze was implemented. What led you to found your organization? I got to attend the negotiations for the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I learned the value of the disability community having a voice and advocating for their rights at an international level. In 2018, my co-founder Anne Hayes and I realized that the task was no longer advocating for disability rights; it was, how do we achieve these rights? I’m an academic and she’s a practitioner. Academics aren't good at practice, and development practitioners aren't good at using evidence. So we were meeting in the middle: how do we do quality work, using the evidence base? How can we include kids with disabilities in education around the world? We had a really strong collaboration with USAID. As of Jan. 22 we had 17 programs to include children of all age ranges, from pre-primary all the way through workforce transition. Morning meeting between students at a school and students from a school with disabilities in Western Kenya An inclusive morning meeting between students at a primary school and students from a school with disabilities in Western Kenya in 2018.Courtesy Inclusive Development Partners As the U.S. government endeavors to trim its spending, no agency has been as pared back as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). On Feb. 26, after 30 days of what was purported to be a 90-day review, the Trump Administration announced that 90% of the international aid projects the agency was funding were going to be canceled, ending an era of outsize dominance and generosity by the U.S. in foreign aid. These cuts include funding for medical, nutrition, educational and democratic initiatives that were sustaining and protecting millions of people. While foreign aid represented about half a percentage of the U.S. budget, it also represented more than 40% of the world’s foreign aid. The size and speed of the cancellations have reverberated around the world, with many experts suggesting that America’s reputation as a reliable and trustworthy partner has taken a hit simply because of the abruptness of the process. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that all foreign-aid projects must make Americans safer, stronger, and more prosperous. Valerie Karr, who has been working in disability rights for two decades, understands that impulse but is aghast at the cost to the people her small business served: disabled children in impoverished countries. For the last six years, Inclusive Development Partners (IDP) has helped implement plans to get children with disabilities around the world into schools and keep them there. Read More: Franklin Graham Thinks It's 'Very Good' to Take a Pause on Foreign Aid IDP was hired by other aid organizations to make sure the work they were doing included people with disabilities. In that way it was occasionally branded as a DEI project, but it was not one informed by identity. If an education program was being established, IDP helped train teachers on how to instruct disabled children. It also helped identify disabled children, who were often kept home, and provided them with the materials they needed to get to school, including wheelchairs and braille books. Now after the termination of its contracts, IDP is struggling to stave off bankruptcy. Karr, who as well as being president of IDP is an associate professor at UMass Boston, spoke to TIME about how this will affect disabled children, what Americans got out of USAID, and what she learned in the weeks since the foreign-aid freeze was implemented. What led you to found your organization? I got to attend the negotiations for the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I learned the value of the disability community having a voice and advocating for their rights at an international level. In 2018, my co-founder Anne Hayes and I realized that the task was no longer advocating for disability rights; it was, how do we achieve these rights? I’m an academic and she’s a practitioner. Academics aren't good at practice, and development practitioners aren't good at using evidence. So we were meeting in the middle: how do we do quality work, using the evidence base? How can we include kids with disabilities in education around the world? We had a really strong collaboration with USAID. As of Jan. 22 we had 17 programs to include children of all age ranges, from pre-primary all the way through workforce transition. What did your work actually look like? In northern Nigeria, we were working with the International Rescue Committee on a USAID activity called Opportunities to Learn. These kids were out of school. We know that children with disabilities are eight to 10 times more likely to be out of school than a child without a disability. We train teachers how to be inclusive and use something called Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which has been found to not only help children with disabilities learn better, but children who are malnourished, children of minority status, and children who have issues with chronic absenteeism due to child labor or having to support farming communities. In Bangladesh, we work with parents and communities on how to reduce stigma towards kids with disabilities, because kids with disabilities don't go to school for a variety of reasons. The classroom is not accessible. But also parents are scared to send their kids because their child is more likely to be hurt or harmed if they leave the household. We work with communities and schools to ensure kids ultimately get the access they need to an education. What kind of disabilities are you dealing with? USAID started more with hearing and vision and physical disabilities, because those are obvious, but over time—because we're using Universal Design for Learning, which meets the needs of all children—we realized we don’t need to know the specific disability a child has. There's also something called a twin-track approach. You can’t just build more inclusive spaces; kids need braille, kids need sign-language literacy, they need glasses or hearing aids. So we were providing both. In Kenya, 70% of children with disabilities are undiagnosed and in the mainstream classroom. We went in with remediation and after-school programs to help, as well specific universal pedagogy. That program, the Kenya Primary Literacy Program, just got canceled. It was in its first year. Teacher training sounds a bit amorphous. It’s hard to know whether the teachers were applying it or not. Do you have a success story that you can say, well, here is an impact that we had? We worked a lot on the fact that there were no numbers, there were no resources, there was nothing in place at the time we started, so our progress is much more on intermediary goals. We’ve been working to build assessment instruments, so that this type of data would exist. It’s also what my guide for USAID—published in November and now removed from the web—was guiding other orgs to do: measure the impact of inclusion. Our data in Ghana showed that when you trained teachers in UDL, they implemented it and felt more prepared to include learners with disabilities. What would you say to people who say that Nepal and Bangladesh and Nigeria need to look after their own and ask why America should look after the disabled kids of other countries? I’d say we do it to develop ties with communities. If you're a parent of a child with a disability, which my co-founder is, and you meet a parent of a child with a disability in a different country, you immediately have a very strong bond. That is a relationship that we have cultivated and really established. So we know that when we need to call on allies and friends, these countries are our friends. They are advocating for the American people as well. We also know that a more educated population has greater productivity. We know there's better economic outcomes and that we reduce migration. These education programs build resilient communities, they build stable political communities, and they build allies with the United States. And honestly, it's working. Nepal was graduating from a low-income country to a middle-income country in the next year or two, and that's because the investment of USAID has helped stabilize and build a system. And that, to me, is success. Did you see this as Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) work? Disability rights have actually always been politically a left and a right issue. Republicans say if you support people with disabilities while they're young, they can get a job, they can be income earners, and that helps the economy. The left has an equal-rights stance on disability inclusion. Honestly, we really became IDP under Trump's first Administration. Over time, we've benefited from DEI, and we, at our hearts, support everybody being included. For example, in our Nepal equity and inclusion in education program, our role was called the DEIA advisor. So we'd seen DEIA have an influence on disability, but they were really pretty different for a very long time. Have you heard from people who are asking where your service is? The harder, more pressing matter has actually been trying to pay people. So you know, we haven't been paid for some of our December work, and we definitely haven't been paid for most of our January work that we already paid out. So IDP had lost about $350,000 and we now are still owed over $250,000. We’re a woman-owned small business. We've never actually generated profits because we work on grants and contracts, there's not actually profit in them. Every line item is accounted for. So we launched a GoFundMe and raised a little bit over $20,000 to avoid bankruptcy. I have employees with disabilities that need to be paid. We owe them money. But they're like, What do you need? Can I write a letter? Can I call my congressman? So I try to look at it that way, that if USAID has collapsed, it's catastrophic for my country and it's catastrophic for my work, but we're still going to all be pushing for inclusion. How much of your revenue came from USAID? Ninety percent. In hindsight, did you think, Oh, I really should have diversified my clients? Yeah. We were a group of consultants that decided it was better to work together, because when you're a partner, you're able to really build inclusive systems. When you're just a consultant by yourself, it's hard. It was a great business model to create the change we needed to see in these programs. But because the USAID programs went from one to two to four to 18, it was so much work for a very small staff—we're only 14 staff and nine international. It was really hard to keep up that pace and grow our systems; we were just running to catch up. I don't think anyone could see that a whole industry would fall. I kind of relate this to COVID, right, where we all went in the pandemic. In the first days, you just couldn't believe what was happening, that the world would halt. Is there one loss that keeps you awake at night? I'm kept up at night mainly for some of our international team members, because I know people live day to day on their income, and that means that you're very close to poverty immediately from this loss. I have been holding off the grief on what it means to the kids. I'll get too emotional at the thought of 10,000 kids not being able to go to school. I have a moral sense of responsibility and failure that we won't be able to do that. I know education isn't as stark as AIDS medication being stopped, or people starving. To me, it is really striking that the American people are like, Oh, I didn't know. There's a lack of consciousness over the atrocity that is happening here. I had a friend from college contact me after one of my posts about USAID, and the summary of that was that kids in New Hampshire need you too. We ended up having a really good conversation. Politically they want us to fight. They want us to think that because I was working for a child with a disability in Nepal, that I was somehow robbing an opportunity from a child in New Hampshire with a disability. But we all care about kids with disabilities being able to have access. I know that a child in New Hampshire is just as important as a child in Nepal. But the money that is saved from USAID is not going to be given to New Hampshire children. They're cutting just as much out of education and Medicaid. This is not an either/or. This is not a red or blue. Everyone wants their kids to have an education and have opportunity. What is your plan going forward? Our plan is to try and avoid bankruptcy and make sure we can pay out all the people who have to leave, so they have as much money as they can to stabilize their homes for a little bit longer while they search for new jobs. We do have a little bit of U.N. programming and World Bank programming, and if we go bankrupt, we will lose those programs along with it, and that will put those programs in a bind, right? If we can survive, which I think we will, we'll be working on research and programs with other donors and continuing programs, which means we'll have to be small. We'll all go back to being consultants working small and part time and for limited hours, and we'll try and rebuild. We have a hope that the American people will see that aid is valuable, and maybe someday it'll come back, which would be great.

Doug Collins, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, is reportedly serving as the designated survivor during President Donald Trump's joint congressional address on Tuesday night. The designated survivor is a person in the presidential line of succession—often a low-level Cabinet member—chosen to be kept separate from other executive branch officials when the government is all gathered in one place in the event of a catastrophic event. Collins was revealed to be the designated survivor, according to multiple media reports. The practice ensures that the government can still run even if all those present at a large governmental event are wiped out—which is why some members of Congress also are kept separate to ensure that the legislative branch can continue to function. The practice began during the Cold War, when the idea of nuclear warfare was heavy on the minds of the U.S. government. In the event of a nuclear event wiping out the presidential line of succession in one go, the designated survivor is chosen so that they are eligible to be president, and could take up the mantle to lead the United States if need be. There are very few times in which all of America’s governmental leaders are in the same place, and thus it is rare that the designated survivor must be tapped—only a handful of times during each presidency, usually. The American Presidency Project at the University of California-Santa Barbara keeps a running list of designated survivors dating back to 1984 when Ronald Reagan was president. In Politico Magazine in 2017, Dan Glickman, former United States Secretary of Agriculture under Bill Clinton, wrote about his experience as designated survivor, and spending the State of the Union address at his daughter’s apartment in New York City. “I don’t recall getting any specific instructions on what to do if the doomsday scenario happened. All I knew is that if necessary, I could turn to that military officer accompanying me, holding that 45-pound bag, and trigger a military response, including a nuclear strike,” Glickman wrote of his experience. “It felt like an awesome responsibility to put on one man’s shoulders, even if it was exceedingly unlikely the president—or in this case, the secretary of agriculture—would ever have to use it.”

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. The candor on the tarmac Sunday night at Joint Base Andrews, under the wing of the presidential aircraft, came without any flinch of self doubt. “This is retaliatory,” President Donald Trump told reporters, essentially summing up his first two weeks in office in the most inelegant but honest bit of sloganeering. He was talking about tariffs against U.S. neighbors but he just as plausibly was describing his posture toward all corners of his new empire. Gag orders. Mass firings. Legally questionable buyouts. Foiled breaches of classified data and personnel files. A game of chicken over sanctions. Purged people and websites alike. The anxiety across the civil service at this hour is rightly earned and has no sign of slackening. If you’re a career federal worker, you’re marking your time in hours at this point as Trump is looking to shed professional expertise in favor of political hacks. Trump has begun his one-sided war against his foes, and the costs are just starting to be counted. Just ask the feds who found themselves put on leave as punishment for having attended diversity training during the first Trump term. The whole pile-up of chaos over the weekend left Washington insiders trying to figure out just how to triage the waves of norm-breaking headlines flowing from the White House without any real push-back from Republicans. Democrats, left in the minority for at least the next two years, tried to summon an opposition but found themselves once again stumbling over each other with so many competing theories about how to blunt the Trump aggressions in any meaningful way. The Democratic National Committee has a new chief, but there are no signs a shift in leadership is going to be anything passing for sufficient to counter the turmoil being cooked from the West Wing. The bipartisan Establishment can only shake its head at the massive break from the way things have rolled in the post-World War II cadences. When a veteran FBI agent calls for colleagues to “dig in” against the coming purges, it’s tough to argue that there is an over-reaction. The weekend’s roll of maddening moves came quicker than most could handle. Chasing the developments was like tracing buckshot. Tariffs here and sanctions there. Calls to re-take the Panama Canal would have been banner headlines for typical administrations yet amounted to also-ran stories this weekend. Calls went out for whistleblowers to speak out against the new administration’s attacks on the civil service, but it’s not clear the hotlines had enough manpower to accommodate all the reports of intimidation and bullying. While Hill Democrats’ offices were ready to listen to the horror stories—putting out word to union allies that they want it all—it’s not evident that they have much more power than naming and shaming. After all, even a shocking mid-air collision between a military helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet last week turned into a political proving point, with Trump blaming diversity, equity, and inclusion programs for the fiery and fatal crash over the Potomac River. His loyalists were on TV on Sunday repeating his fact-free assertion that D.E.I. programs were to blame for the bodycount. Given a chance to make anything into a piece of the culture wars, the Trumpists missed no opening, leaving opponents shouting back with facts about a durable credible workforce but not getting nearly as much attention. And, returning to Washington Sunday evening, Trump took a chance to double-down on the flurry of fancy, defending his empowerment of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to take a hatchet to the whole of government. “I think Elon is doing a good job. He's a big cost-cutter,” Trump said at Andrews. “He's very much into cutting the budget of our federal government.” Musk, who has been raging against anyone who dares to get in his way, is smashing through agencies so quickly that Washington is struggling to fully understand what is happening in real time. A top Treasury official found out what saying no to Musk cost; having denied Musk access to the sensitive system overseeing trillions of dollars in payments, he was placed on leave and then retired suddenly, allowing Musk’s team to get what it wanted. Separately, the heads of security at U.S. Agency for International Development, the nation’s marquee foreign aid arm, were put on leave after they refused to give Musk and his functionaries access to an internal data system that holds the nuts and bolts of a roughly $40 billion pile of cash that handles health care, disaster relief, and foreign assistance programs. The U.S. AID website went offline wholesale, and staffers are bracing for deep cuts and an end to its stand-alone status. Staffers were well aware that Musk had deemed it a “criminal” enterprise that needed to “die.” Given the chance to calm those jitters, Trump did the opposite on Sunday, saying the flagship foreign aid shop is “run by radical lunatics.” Neither he nor Musk mentioned that it is the world’s largest provider of food assistance. That push from Musk, under the auspices of the self-created Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE, like the crypto trinket—is barrelling over the typically staid career staff that is tasked with keeping the cogs of bureaucracy going across administrations. In fact, that Musk regime seems to be spreading with little regard for what has been long-standing expectations inside the federal workforce. In this environment, career feds see their time as limited. Trump has made clear he has little regard for their work, offering as many as two million the chance to end their career with a six-letter reply-all: “Resign.” He also hinted that loyalty tests were in the offing for those who chose to stay in their jobs. Staying may prove insufferable for those who opt against wearing the red MAGA caps. It’s why feds around town were looking at what is unfolding at U.S. AID as a warning for what is to come more broadly. If Trump and Musk are able to dismantle a popular piece of bureaucratic backwater without much of an objection from the Republican majority, there’s no worry that they could move more forcefully elsewhere. Trump has made clear he wants the federal workforce to reflect his values and any holdouts or remnants of a more professional era are only nuisances. Now that he and Musk have started the hollowing out of the professional spine of the federal government, there’s no telling just how far Trump would go.

Inflation-weary consumers chose Donald J. Trump for President in part because they were sick of seeing prices continue to rise. Now, in the first few weeks of the Trump Administration, prices for homes, cars, fuel, and food are expected to jump once again because of the tariffs Trump announced Feb. 1 on Mexico, Canada, and China. Mexico said Feb. 3 that it had reached a deal with the U.S. to delay its tariffs for a month as the two countries negotiate on border security, but the blanket 25% tariffs Trump threatened could still hit later. Trump also struck a deal with Canada to delay his 25% tariffs on Canadian goods (10% on oil and natural gas) for a month. But 10% tariffs on China are expected to go into effect Feb. 4. Experts say consumer prices on a number of goods are almost sure to rise if these tariffs are in effect for more than a few months. The right-leaning Tax Foundation estimates that the proposed tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China could add more than $800 of costs to each U.S. household in 2025. Here are some of the products that could be most impacted: Housing Home prices shot up in 2020 and have barely moderated since, but there’s more pain to come for potential buyers, experts say. Materials for homebuilding are getting more and more expensive, and the tariffs won’t help: more than 70% of imports of softwood lumber comes from Canada, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). The 25% tariff on softwood lumber comes on top of a 14.5% tariff already in place, according to the NAHB. Mexico supplies the U.S. with gypsum, a building material used for drywall, and the price of it is expected to climb when those tariffs go into effect. Tariffs on lumber “increase the cost of construction and discourage new development,” said Carl Harris, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders, in a statement. Consumers may end up paying in the form of higher home prices, which are already up about 40% since 2020. America has a chronic shortage of homes, and many experts say building houses is the key to easing costs. Last year was already a slow time for homebuilding; construction was started on only about 1.4 million units, the lowest level since 2019 and a 4% decline from 2023. That’s partly because of costs. Inputs to residential construction—essentially labor and materials—are up more than 30% since Jan. 2021. The Trump Administration’s round-up of migrants will also drive the cost of labor up, says Jeff Schott, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics. The roundups will leave fewer construction workers available, he says. Autos There are few industries with supply chains that straddle borders as much as automobiles. Parts can be sent across the border to Canada and other countries and then back again numerous times as a car is made, says William Reinsch, senior advisor at the nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Even if the tariffs are just on Canada, this is going to royally mess up automobile supply chains,” he says. The U.S. and Canada have had a free trade agreement on automobiles that goes back to the 1970s and predates NAFTA, Reinsch says. The tariffs on Mexico and Canada could increase the price of a sedan by around $2,000, says Michael Hicks, an economist at Ball State University in Indiana. The cost of a big SUV would go up even more because it has so many different electronic components, he says, estimating that a $50,000 U.S. made car could see its prices increase by $5,000 because of the tariffs. Energy Canada is a big supplier of energy, including crude oil, natural gas, and hydropower. Although the energy tariffs on Canadian imports are a bit lower, at 10%, that will still have an impact, says Reinsch. This could lead to pain at the pump in the Midwest, he says, where crude oil from Alberta is sent to refineries which turn it into gasoline. Gas prices in the Midwest peaked in June 2022 at nearly $5 per gallon, according to the Energy Information Administration. They’ve come down since but started ticking up again in January. “These refineries can’t easily shift to another kind of oil,” Reinsch says, meaning they’ll continue to import Canadian crude and pay the tariffs. Read More: The Age of Scams. The energy tariffs could also bump up energy prices in New England and New York, which get some of their electricity from Canadian hydropower. About 53% of Hydro-Quebec’s sales outside of Quebec came from New England in 2023, and 10% came from New York, according to the company’s annual report. The New England Independent Systems Operator, which operates the region’s electricity transmission network, said in a statement that about 9% of electricity demand in New England was met through imports from Canada and New York. Food The U.S. grows a lot of food, but it is increasingly reliant on Mexico and Canada for fresh produce, according to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. The volume of imported fresh vegetables alone rose nearly 200% over the past two decades. The tariffs on Canadian imports will affect prices of a few other foods in particular. About 75% of the world’s maple syrup is made in Canada, and the U.S. was the world’s top importer of the stuff in 2023, buying about $280 million dollars worth, according to the World Bank. Even maple syrup made in Vermont and other places in the Northeast could be affected by the tariffs; most of the equipment used in producing it is made in Canada. Companies in Vermont are frantically moving maple equipment over the border, according to the Maple News, a Vermont trade publication. The U.S. also imports about $17 billion worth of Canadian grain and grain products every year, according to the Grain Growers of Canada. The grain is used for products like bread, pasta, biofuels, feed, and brewing. “Whether you’re growing crops or buying groceries, these tariffs will make life more expensive at a time when most are already being priced out,” Tara Sawyer, an Alberta farmer and chair of the Grain Growers of Canada, said in a statement. Cheap Stuff Online Many economists aren’t thinking as much about how the 10% tariffs on China might affect consumers because those tariffs are relatively small compared to the ones announced on the U.S.’s North American counterparts. But there’s one part of the tariffs in particular that could have a big impact on stuff from China. It’s known as the de minimus provision. For years, companies sending cheap goods to U.S. consumers have been able to avoid tariffs because of the provision, which exempts goods that cost less than $800 from tariffs and inspection. That’s allowed Chinese retailers to send stuff directly to U.S. consumers and avoid taxes that would otherwise be levied on them. One Congressional report from June 2024 found that Chinese e-commerce sites Temu and Shein account for more than 30% of all packages shipped to the U.S. every day under the de minimus provision. The latest executive orders on tariffs, however, suspend the de minimis provision, saying that it has been used to funnel fentanyl into the U.S. One memo from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office obtained by TIME said that, as of Feb. 4, 2025, “Requests for de minimis entry and clearance for ineligible shipments will be rejected.” This could mean that some of that stuff you’re buying on the Internet, from clothes and cheap electronics to furniture, is likely to become a little more expensive soon.

President Donald Trump has made good on his campaign promise to impose tariffs on imports from the United States’ three largest supplier countries—Canada, China, and Mexico. Trump signed orders on Saturday evening, imposing 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada (though Canadian energy faces a lower tariff of 10%) and 10% tariffs on goods from China. Trump signed an Executive Order titled: “Imposing Duties to Address the Flow of Illicit Drugs Across Our Northern Border.” Trump discussed the tariffs in a series of posts on his social media platform, Truth Social. One update announced the official orders of the tariffs, stating that the decision was made to “protect” Americans “because of the major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs killing our Citizens, including fentanyl.” In a second post, Trump included a video of himself on the campaign trail, where he promised the tariffs he is now imposing. Though tariffs have been used as useful tools by politicians, consumers and economists are concerned about whether, just weeks into Trump’s term, his tariffs could raise prices of goods and services. Many voters described grocery prices and general affordability issues as high on their voting priorities, but there is the possibility of these tariffs raising prices of groceries, gas, energy, and automotive sectors. With a heightened focus on tariffs and discussions about the potential benefits and risks, here’s what you need to know about the government-imposed taxes and why Trump is in favor of them. What are tariffs? Simply put, ​​import tariffs, the kind of tariffs Trump is levying, are taxes placed on goods imported from other countries. There are also export tariffs, which are taxes on goods brought out of a country, though these are much more rare. There are several different types of tariffs, and the kind that Trump is imposing is known as an “ad valorem tariff”—meaning the tax on imported goods is calculated as a percentage of the product’s value. Who pays for tariffs? Typically, tariffs are paid by domestic importers, and paid to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. However, economists often say that portions of the cost of tariffs ends up paid by consumers. In response to tariffs, sellers may hike up prices of the goods that they are importing for consumers. “Generally, it will make it more costly to import goods,” says Felix Tintelnot, associate professor of economics at Duke University. “With the one caveat: it is conceivable that the foreign exporter could reduce its price in order to maintain competitiveness and not lose out.” For example, since avocados are mostly imported from Mexico, with Trump’s new tariffs potentially making it more expensive to import avocados, grocery stores could raise the prices of avocados to make up for the added tax, Tintelnot explains. Why is Trump in favor of tariffs? Trump has said that he planned to impose tariffs on imported goods to boost American manufacturing and end, what he says, are unfair trade practices. “You see these empty, old, beautiful steel mills and factories that are empty and falling down,” Trump declared in October 2024 on the campaign trail. “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.” “A bilateral trade deficit is a terrible metric to focus on, because it's completely natural that bilateral trade deficits exist,” Tintelnot says. “It's like if you put a tariff on your local gym because you're paying them more than they're buying from you.” Trump has also stated that the tariffs are intended to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants and illegal drugs into the United States. “China makes the fentanyl, gives it to Mexico, puts it through Canada, puts it through different places, mostly Mexico, but also a lot through Canada,” Trump claimed while speaking from the Oval Office on Friday. “And so all three haven't treated us very well.”

In the deadliest U.S. major commercial aviation incident in 16 years, there were no survivors in a collision between a commercial aircraft and an Army helicopter by Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington D.C. on Wednesday, Jan. 29. There were 64 people on board the jet, and three military personnel on the helicopter. Recovery operations are underway at the Potomac River, over which the crash occurred. This is President Trump’s first major incident to lead the country through in his second term at the White House. What did Trump say in the immediate aftermath of the passenger jet and Army helicopter crash? Late Wednesday night, Trump’s Press Secretary posted a statement from the President on X (formerly Twitter), in which he thanked first responders and said he had been “fully briefed on the terrible accident.” He said he was “monitoring the situation and will provide more details as they arise.” Trump posted the same statement on his own social media platform, Truth Social, on Thursday morning. Trump posted another remark about the incident just after midnight on Thursday, seemingly suspicious of the incident, and saying the situation “looks like it should have been prevented.” “The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time,” he wrote on Truth Social. “It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane.” What did Trump say in his press briefing the day after the crash? At around 11:30 a.m. on Thursday morning President Trump delivered remarks about the crash to press in the White House briefing room. He was joined by Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. After beginning with a moment of silence for the victims, Trump spoke about the timeline of the crash and confirmed, once more, that there were no survivors. Trump emphasized putting aside differences and grieving this “tragedy” as a nation, also stating he would contact the countries of origin of the non-Americans on board, including the Russian figure skaters. “On behalf of the First Lady, myself, and 340 million Americans, our hearts are shattered alongside yours, and our prayers are with you now and in the days to come, we'll be working very, very diligently in the days to come,” he said. “In moments like this, the differences between Americans fade to nothing compared to the bonds of affection and loyalty that unite us all, both as Americans and even as nations, we are one family, and today we are all heartbroken.” Soon after, Trump went on to call out former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s air traffic policies. He then started to focus on “diversity” within the Federal Aviation Administration. Last week, on his second day in office, Trump signed an Executive Order to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs (DEI) in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), proclaiming that DEI “penalizes hard-working Americans who want to serve in the FAA but are unable to do so, as they lack a requisite disability or skin color.” When asked by a reporter if he had any evidence to show that DEI policies were to blame for the crash, Trump said “it just could have been.” When asked if he was getting ahead of the investigation, he said he did not think so. “Because I have common sense,” Trump said when asked how he could already come to the conclusion that diversity had something to do with the crash. “We want brilliant people doing this. This is a major chess game at the highest level when you have 60 planes coming in during a short period of time and they're all coming in different directions.” The FAA has yet to publicly identify any of the controllers responsible for monitoring flights around the airport. Furthermore, air traffic controllers must undergo extensive training and mental fitness tests.According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, these tests are to determine that air traffic controllers don’t have any “personality or mental disorder that clearly demonstrates a potential hazard to safety in the air traffic control system.” Trump continued to flesh out his suspicions about how this tragedy occurred, again emphasizing the visibility during the clear night, and the potential maneuvers the pilots could have made to prevent the crash. “We don't know that necessarily it’s even the controller's fault, but one thing we do know: there was a lot of vision, and people should have been able to see that,” Trump said. “At what point do you stop at what point you say ‘wow that plane's getting a little bit close,’ so this is a tragedy that should not have happened.” What has Trump said since? Later on Thursday, Trump spoke to reporters in the Oval Office, where he was asked if he had spoken to any of the victims’ families, to which he denied to comment. He was then asked if he plans to go and visit the site of the crash. “I have a plan to visit—not the site,” he said. “You tell me, what’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?” Trump went on to say that he will be meeting with some of the families impacted by the crash. The President was also asked whether he believed his remarks on diversity earlier in the day would affect the investigation of the crash, to which he responded “no.” “I think they’ll do an investigation, it will probably come out the way I said it,” Trump said. Trump has gone on to speak about the crash via various posts on Truth Social. On Friday, he posted a video of Denver International Airport CEO Phil Washington during his March 2023 confirmation hearings in the Senate, getting questioned by Republican Senator Ted Budd. He had been nominated by former President Joe Biden to lead the FAA after the role remained empty since mid-2022, and if confirmed, would have been the first Black person to serve as FAA Administrator. Though Washington, a 24-year veteran, held multiple transit-related positions, he was grilled for his lack of aviation experience. Washington eventually withdrew his nomination for leading the FAA after continued opposition from Republicans.

The dominoes fell really fast. On Monday, Jan. 20, shortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order that called for a 90-day pause on new foreign-aid programs for efficiency and "consistency with U.S. foreign policy." The order got less attention than some of the others he signed that day but may have much more far-reaching effects. By the evening of Friday, Jan. 24, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had issued a directive that went even further, effectively freezing operations at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. government's lead provider of nonmilitary foreign aid. No new projects were to be started, no contracts were to be extended, and work was to be stopped on most existing programs. By Monday, Jan. 27, at least 56 of USAID's top brass were sent home on paid administrative leave for 90 days, reportedly cut off from their email, and, in case the message was not clear, the photos from the walls of their office were removed. Chaos and confusion began to spread through the ranks of USAID, both in Washington, D.C, where there are about 15,000 employees and abroad, where there are thousands more. It also spread among the many nongovernmental organizations and religious groups that receive funds from it, and the small businesses the agency contracts to provide services. Some of them had to guess whether their programs had to be paused under the terms of their agreement with the State Department and others received suspension notices and memos from a variety of different channels. TIME spoke to several current and former senior officials at USAID and others who head up organizations it supports about the impact of the move on their activity. Almost all requested that TIME not use their names because they didn't want to jeopardize their future funding or employment. On Tuesday morning one of those aid organizations, which runs dozens of child nutrition clinics in several extremely impoverished countries, had an emergency meeting to try to decide whether to close them. "Those kids have to be fed every three to four hours with therapeutic feeding products in order to reverse the effects of malnutrition, prevent long-term harm, and basically keep them alive," says an official at the NGO. "We had to make a decision: Do we close those centers? Or do we keep them open at the risk of being in violation of our suspension notice or stop-work order?" Later that day, after the NGO opted to keep the clinic open by repurposing some non-USAID funding, Secretary Rubio released a clarification that "life-saving humanitarian assistance" could proceed. The organization believes, but is not sure, the clinics fall under that heading. Charitable groups around the world told TIME they were making similar agonizing choices. One had to decide whether to abide by a stop-work order or deliver lunches to schoolchildren in impoverished communities, as it has for years. It decided to obey the order, wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of perishable food. Another is figuring out whether to close health clinics for pregnant mothers in Haiti, leaving them with scant alternatives for a place to give birth. Yet another was forced to pause a program that helped migrants fleeing Venezuela stay in South American countries (rather than continuing north to the U.S. border), through work training, housing, and support of the host community. The U.S. plays an outsize role in responding to international crises, providing 40% of the world's humanitarian assistance. Most people in the humanitarian sector acknowledge that Washington has the right to review how the more than $40 billion it spends doing so every year is used. "The government has the prerogative to conduct a review of spending and programs against their priorities," says an executive of a major aid organization. "But the ways in which they're going about it, in my mind, would undermine the likelihood of them actually having an aid sector to work with as they go forward."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has enormous power to investigate crime. Leading the agency requires judgment, restraint, and, above all, fidelity to the rule of law over loyalty to any individual. On this, Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI director, falls short. While some senators may disagree about whether Patel has sufficient experience to manage the Bureau’s 38,000 employees, his lack of independence is disqualifying. During his confirmation hearing on January 30, Patel refused to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. That answer, combined with his history of kowtowing to Trump, made it clear that Patel is unlikely to stand up to the executive branch if abuses of power occur. I know from my work as a former national security prosecutor and law professor that the FBI has a stained history. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s director for almost half a century, used warrantless wiretaps to intercept communications of people he deemed to be “subversive,” including Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Bureau’s COINTEL program infiltrated student groups, civil rights organizations, and the anti-war movement, all in the name of domestic security. The FBI identified targets based on First Amendment-protected activity and used underhanded propaganda campaigns to discredit them. When a senate committee revealed these aggressive tactics in the 1970s, the FBI responded by creating its Domestic Investigations Operations Guide, known internally as the “DIOG,” a policy manual that provides stringent safeguards for opening cases and using invasive investigative techniques. Strict adherence to those requirements prevents the FBI from abusing its power. But the DIOG is policy—not law. A new director could erase it with one press of the delete key. One would hope that career FBI agents would balk at opening cases without a factual predicate or at using invasive investigative techniques as fishing expeditions. But if the boss changes the FBI’s policy, then they would be expected to comply with his orders. During questioning from senators, Patel refused to say whether he would resign if Trump directed him to engage in conduct that was unethical or unconstitutional, simply parroting the stock answer used repeatedly by Pam Bondi at her confirmation hearing for attorney general: “I will follow the law.” After Trump’s first term, Patel’s public displays of loyalty to his former boss have been hard to miss. According to a 2022 Breitbart report about the classified documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Patel claimed to have been present when Trump declassified “whole sets of documents,” but “the White House counsel failed to generate the paperwork to change the classification markings.” Trump was later indicted for unlawfully retaining national defense documents, but the charges were dismissed after Trump was elected in November. Patel also produced the “Justice for All” musical recording, in which Trump recited the pledge of allegiance backed by the voices of the “J6 Prison Choir”: charged Jan. 6 defendants held in custody, singing the national anthem over a jailhouse phone line. And, perhaps most astonishingly, Patel authored a children’s book called The Plot Against the King, in which “King Donald” is falsely accused of cheating to win an election by working with Russia. The hero who saves the day? A wizard named “Kash.” Fierce loyalty to the president would be worrisome in any administration in light of the FBI’s law enforcement mission. But it is especially troubling when the president has vowed retribution against his political enemies, as Trump has. Many of Trump’s targets appear in another book authored by Patel called Government Gangsters, an attack on the so-called “deep state.” The book lists the names of government officials he calls “a cabal of unelected tyrants,” including former Attorney General William Barr and former FBI directors James Comey and Christopher Wray. While Patel has denied that the names constitute an enemies list, Patel has indicated that he plans to target not just former government officials, but also journalists. In a 2023 podcast interview, Patel said that in a second Trump administration, “We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media.” It seems unlikely that Trump’s rivals would be convicted of baseless criminal charges in light of due process protections, such as the right to a grand jury and judicial review, representation by counsel, and a requirement that guilt be found by a unanimous jury beyond a reasonable doubt. But even undergoing an investigation can be costly and emotionally draining, and it can irreparably tarnish the reputation of a public figure. The decision to subject anyone to the criminal justice process should be made by responsible professionals making objective decisions based on fact and law. Based on his track record, Kash Patel cannot be trusted to make those decisions.

If the Senate votes to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as President Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, she will be the person briefing him each day on the nation’s most closely held secrets. At her confirmation hearing on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senators from both parties expressed serious concerns about whether they trust Gabbard in that crucial role. While Gabbard, a former Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii and U.S. Army Reserve officer with no background in intelligence, faced questions about controversial moments in her past—her 2017 meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, her expressing skepticism of U.S. intelligence assessments about Syria’s use of chemical weapons, and her criticism of how the intelligence community collects data on U.S. citizens—many Senators homed in on her praise of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden as a way to question her overall judgment. In 2013, Snowden fled the country after removing 1.5 million classified documents about military and intelligence programs, initially traveling to Hong Kong to share some of the files with journalists and eventually seeking asylum in Russia. Snowden leaked thousands of documents that revealed a broad collection of American telephone records by the U.S. government and other secret programs, prompting a national debate about civil liberties. Gabbard has called Snowden “brave.” Senators suggested Gabbard’s support for someone who so famously leaked classified documents would undermine her credibility as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence. Asked repeatedly on Thursday if she stood by that compliment, Gabbard wouldn’t back away from it. “Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said. “He also exposed information that revealed the United States’ government’s illegal activities.” Snowden’s leaks prompted Congress to pass the USA Freedom Act in 2015 that was designed to curtail the collection of American phone records. A bipartisan House intelligence committee investigation concluded in 2016 that Snowden’s theft caused “tremendous damage” to national security and quoted a Russian official saying Snowden did share intelligence with Moscow. Multiple senators pressed Gabbard to call Snowden a traitor. She steadfastly refused. Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma asked Gabbard if Snowden was “a traitor” when he leaked intelligence and fled to Russia. “Senator, I’m focused on the future and how we can prevent something like this from happening again,” Gabbard said. Another Republican, Indiana Senator Todd Young, pointed out that Gabbard has previously said Snowden should be pardoned and asked Gabbard if Snowden betrayed his duty to the American people. Gabbard wouldn’t go that far. Instead, she repeated that Snowden broke the law and said he “released his information in a way he should not have.” Young told Gabbard that Snowden was likely watching the hearing. Snowden himself weighed in on Thursday before Gabbard met with Senators, writing on X that Gabbard “will be required to disown all prior support for whistleblowers as a condition of confirmation.” Snowden wryly said he encouraged her to do so and to tell Senators that he “harmed national security and the sweet, soft feelings of staff.” “This may be a rare instance where I agree with Mr. Snowden,” Young said. Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat representing Colorado, became exasperated when Gabbard continued to talk around a condemnation of Snowden’s actions and refused to recant past comments justifying Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. “Can’t we do better than somebody who can’t answer whether Snowden was a traitor five times today, who made excuses for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine?” “I’m questioning her judgment, that’s the issue that’s at stake here,” Bennet said. Asked if she was aware that her comments about Russia’s invasion in 2022 were amplified by Russian state TV, Gabbard said, “I don’t pay attention to Russian propaganda. My goal is to speak the truth whether you like it or not.” At the beginning of the hearing, Gabbard gave a scathing review of the track record of the American intelligence community. “For too long, faulty, inadequate, or weaponized intelligence have led to costly failures and the undermining of our national security and God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution,” she said. The false intelligence conclusion that Iraq’s former dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers, millions of deaths, the rise of Islamist terror groups in the region and the strengthening of Iran, she said. And the intelligence community overstepped in its investigation of Donald Trump during his first term to “falsely portray him as a puppet of Putin,” she said. If confirmed to be the country’s top intelligence official, Gabbard said she intends to “break this cycle of failure and the weaponization of and politicalization of the intelligence community.” As the hearing ended midday Thursday, it was unclear if the pushback Gabbard received on Snowden and other issues would stall her nomination. Nearly every Republican Senator has signed off on Trump’s nominees in the past few days. Enough Republicans were willing to brush aside allegations of heavy drinking and aggressive behavior by Pete Hegseth to confirm him as Defense Secretary. And most Republican Senators seemed poised to look past Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s extensive public campaigns against vaccines to sign off on him running Health and Human Services.

Outside a hearing room in the Hart Senate Office Building, there was a long line of expectant MAGA supporters. Many had been waiting for hours, hoping to witness a defining moment ushering in a Trumpian takeover of one of the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agencies. They may well have. On Thursday, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, endured hours of questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, in what seemed more like a ceremonial exercise than a high-stakes confirmation hearing. The former Trump official faced no resistance from Republicans, who hold a 52-seat majority and can confirm him without any Democratic support. Even Democrats, who say Patel is unqualified and unfit for the role, seemed resigned to his fate. Still, the more Democrats grilled Patel, the more he distanced himself from the no-holes-barred bombast that made him a darling of the America First movement. He scaled back his fierce criticisms of the FBI as a cesspool, saying 98% of its agents are “courageous apolitical warriors for justice.” He repudiated far-right QAnon conspiracy theories. When pressed on comments he’s made on right-wing podcasts, he denied that his own words reflected his views, calling them “false accusations and grotesque mischaracterizations." Most notably, Patel broke with Trump on granting clemency to all of the Jan. 6 defendants: “I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement,” he said. It was no secret why. With nearly the entire Republican Party under Trump’s control, Patel needs only to avoid alienating a small cohort of GOP Senators whose opposition could imperil his nomination. To that end, Patel played it safe, hoping to abate fears that he would end the bureau's longstanding tradition of independence from the White House. He often tiptoed around potential tripwires and stripped Democrats of the chance to land any fatal blows. At the same time, though, he sent enough signals to Trump World that he would fulfill the President’s plan to refashion the FBI and impose his will on its far-flung investigators and prosecutors. During the hearing, Patel refused to rule out opening investigations into former Attorney General William Barr, former FBI Director Christopher Wray, or any of the other people on a 60-person “deep state” roster included in his 2023 book, Government Gangsters. The list also includes Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Merrick Garland, Robert Mueller and James Comey. Patel eschewed direct questions about specific actions he would take in office, instead committing to avoid wrongdoing more broadly. “I would never do anything unconstitutional or unlawful,” he said. When Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey asked him to share his grand jury testimony on Trump’s classified documents case, Patel rebuffed the request, saying (incorrectly) that he didn’t have the authority to do so. At another point, he refused to say whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Those evasions may be simply to get over the finish line. If the Senate confirms Patel, he will enjoy a 10-year term granting him enormous power over American life, leading a law enforcement entity of more than 38,000 agents who do everything from hunting down terrorists and prosecuting child sex predators to investigating political corruption. To MAGA, he offers a revolutionary opportunity to smash an institution that has investigated Trump and his allies. To critics, Patel is a Trump acolyte who represents a danger to constitutional norms. Recalling J. Edgar Hoover’s abuses—greenlighting improper investigations into Martin Luther King Jr.—they worry he would exploit his power to curtail Americans’ freedoms and target Trump’s political adversaries. Most of the Democratic line of questioning focused on Patel’s past statements. Patel told Senators that he “rejected outright QAnon baseless conspiracy theories”—a carefully worded answer that rhetorically disassociated himself from the far-right online community without technically contradicting his once partial embrace of it. In 2022, for instance, he said: “I disagree with a lot of what that movement says, but I agree with a lot of what that movement says.” In a surprising move, Patel said he didn’t agree with Trump commuting the sentences of people who assaulted Capitol police officers on Jan. 6, 2021. “There can never be a tolerance for anyone who committed violence against law enforcement,” said Patel, who has called the rioters charged with crimes “political prisoners.” Multiple Democrats pressed Patel on his long-held support for those involved with the attack, including producing a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by a choir of defendants imprisoned for storming the U.S. capitol, which topped Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart and became a staple at Trump rallies. Under questioning from Sen. Adam Schiff of California, who said it “glorified” the brutality of that day, Patel downplayed his involvement in the project. Another point of contention was Patel’s dramatic designs to remake the bureau. “I’d shut down the F.B.I. Hoover Building on Day 1 and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state,’” Patel said last year on a popular podcast. “Then, I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops—go be cops.” Democrats persistently rung alarms about Patel’s professions of obeisance to Trump. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island suggested Patel fit the mold of an authoritarian foot soldier, characterizing him as vengeful, intemperate, and servile. “I’m afraid that the history of this nominee’s conduct raises those warnings,” he said. Republicans, for their part, defended Patel as the victim of partisan attacks. He was joined in the hearing room by allies such as Trump advisor Alina Habba, former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grennell, and former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker. His supporters depict him as a crusader for FBI reform who wants to tamp down prosecutorial misconduct and surveillance abuse. Senate Republicans seem to agree. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the committee chairman, said Patel has “exactly the qualifications we need,” describing his career as “a study in fighting for unpopular but righteous causes.”