President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed into law the Laken Riley Act, which is designed to cede some federal immigration enforcement power to the states and usher in a harsher new era of immigration detention. Trump's signing comes after the House gave the measure final approval on Wednesday with support from 217 Republicans and 46 Democrats. It previously drew bipartisan support in the Republican-controlled Senate, with 12 Democratic Senators voting yes on Monday. Senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, both Democrats, co-sponsored the Senate version. The measure’s lead provisions would force immigration officers to arrest and detain immigrants in the country unlawfully who were arrested or admitted to minor theft of $100 or more, assaulting a police officer, or “any crime that results in death or serious bodily injury.” The bill would also greatly expand the power that state attorney generals have over federal immigration policy, allowing state officials to sue the federal government to have specific immigrants detained and force the State Department to block visas from countries that won’t take back individuals being deported. The 8-page bill is named for Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered last year in Athens, Georgia by Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan immigrant who was in the country unlawfully and had been previously apprehended by Border Patrol and released. Ibarra was sentenced in November to life in prison without parole for Riley’s killing. Mandatory custody for immigrants suspected of theft The Laken Riley Act into law changes how the federal government handles immigrants who are in the country unlawfully and suspected of stealing something worth $100 or more, a relatively minor infraction that would include cases of shoplifting. The bill requires the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security “to take into custody aliens who have been charged in the United States with theft, and for other purposes,” meaning immigration officers would be required to arrest and detain those people. Currently, immigration officials use their discretion to first detain people with violent criminal records. But the law would override that discretion. “This bill hinders the work ICE does day to day,” said Jason Houser, who was chief of staff for Immigration and Customs Enforcement from 2021 to 2023. The federal government has enough funding to pay for housing about 41,000 people in immigration detention. Houser estimates that the bill would add another 20,000 people to immigration detention and would require federal agencies to divert manpower from finding the most violent and dangerous offenders. “If passed, you will see less individuals in detention who are violent convicted criminals than you see today.” The bill also impacts legal immigration. The legislation instructs Customs and Border Protection officers to consider a person “inadmissible” to the U.S. if they are arrested for, or admit to, committing acts that constitute theft or shoplifting. That would mean someone with a valid visa to be in the U.S. could be removed before they had a chance to defend themselves from such charges in front of a judge. State attorneys general could sue to have immigrants detained The law gives state attorneys general the power to sue the federal government over its handling of undocumented people in its custody. The state officials would be able to demand a court instruct immigration agents to track down and arrest people it had released from immigration detention. “It allows state attorneys general to sue the Secretary of Homeland Security for injunctive relief if immigration actions such as parole, violation of detention requirements, or other policy failures harm that state or its citizens,” said Rep. Mike Collins, the Republican congressman from Georgia who introduced the bill in the House. For most of U.S. history, courts have given the President and the federal government broad authority over immigration decisions. This law reverses that, giving state attorneys general the ability to override immigration decisions made by federal officials. Critics of the Laken Riley Act argue that some of its supporters haven’t properly considered the sweeping ramifications of that change. “We don’t think it makes sense to invert our system of federal supremacy and give state attorneys general the power to superintend the decisions of individual line officers working at ICE and CBP and decisions all the way up to the Secretary of State,” says Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. State officials could demand the State Department stop issuing visas from countries that don’t accept people being deported The law also gives states power to insert themselves into U.S. foreign policy. One reason immigrants found in the country illegally aren’t deported is because their home country won’t accept them. Nicaragua, Honduras, Brazil, India, Russia, and Democratic Republic of the Congo are among the countries currently unwilling to accept people being deported from the U.S. Supporters of the bill want state attorneys general to be able to sue the State Department to require no U.S. visas be issued for any country refusing to accept the deportation of their nationals. “You’re putting the immigration process, the visa process in the hands of the courts and the states,” Reichlin-Melnick said. Who supported the bill in Congress? The bill ultimately passed the House with unanimous support from Republicans, and the backing of 46 of 215 Democrats. In the Senate, 12 Democrats joined all Senate Republicans to move the bill forward. In addition to Senators Fetterman and Gallego co-sponsoring the bill, other Democratic Senators supported the bill, including Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona, Gary Peters of Michigan, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, and both of Georgia's Senators, Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff. The Senate passed the bill with a few changes that expanded the crimes that would require a person to be detained by immigration authorities to include assaulting a police officer, or “any crime that results in death or serious bodily injury.”

Who gets to be an American? Since the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1868, the answer to that question has been cemented in the American psyche: anyone born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen. That is until Donald Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 20, 2025—the first day of his second term as President—that would make birthright citizenship conditional on the legal status of one’s parents, targeting many of the hundreds of thousands of children born each year to immigrants. The order was immediately challenged as unconstitutional and is expected to be held up and potentially blocked by the courts before it can go into effect. But just how radical is the idea of limiting who can be a citizen? The U.S. is one of around 30 countries that follows the principle of generally unrestricted jus soli, meaning “right of soil.” This has allowed millions of people each year to automatically become American citizens irrespective of their parentage. Under Trump’s order, which is set to take effect on Feb. 19, at least one parent must be either a citizen or a lawful permanent resident for their U.S.-born child to become a citizen. What does it mean to not have birthright citizenship? Across the world, birthright citizenship is not considered the norm. Canada and Mexico have unrestricted birthright citizenship, as do a majority of Latin American countries. But across Asia, Europe, and Africa, almost none do—at least without similar restrictions to what Trump is proposing. Most countries with restricted birthright citizenship have conditions that broadly depend on either the legal residency status of at least one of the child’s parents, the residency of the child, or both. In Australia, for example, a child born there can become a citizen either if at least one parent is a citizen or permanent resident of Australia, or if the child resides in Australia for a decade following their birth. Where countries don’t follow jus soli, they generally rely on jus sanguinis, meaning “right of blood.” Countries like Singapore and China require at least one parent to be a citizen in order for their child to become one. Whether or not the child is born in the country doesn’t matter—citizenship still follows their parents’ nationality. The U.S., like many other countries that follow jus soli, also applies jus sanguinis to children born to an American parent overseas. If the practice of birthright citizenship appears geographically skewed—it’s much more common in the Western Hemisphere—sociologist John Skrenty told Politifact that might be because for many countries it was a tool of colonialism, used to quickly outnumber native populations. In the U.S., the 14th Amendment was adopted to address the legal status of freed slaves. Have other countries changed their birthright citizenship laws before? In recent years, several countries—including Pakistan, the Dominican Republic, and Ireland—have revised their citizenship laws to restrict or revoke birthright citizenship. An Islamabad High Court heard the 2022 petition of a Pakistani-born Afghan who had not been granted citizenship despite Pakistan’s birthright citizenship. The Court ruled in favor of the petitioner, but in November 2024, Pakistan introduced restrictions that would mean a person born in Pakistan, to be a citizen, had to either have a parent who was a citizen or permanent resident, or reside in Pakistan for a decade after their birth. The change stands to impact many more Afghan refugees who may lack the documentation needed to stay in Pakistan. One of the most severe changes occurred in the Dominican Republic, where the government abolished birthright citizenship in 2013, ruling that anyone born after 1929 who does not have at least one parent of Dominican blood would be considered to be in the country illegally or “in transit.” The restriction denationalized more than 200,000 children of immigrants, many of whom were ethnically Haitian, according to Reuters. And in 2004, Ireland became the last country in Europe to end unrestricted birthright citizenship when 79% of voters in a referendum chose to amend their constitution to require at least one parent be an Irish or British citizen, permanent resident, or legal temporary resident (excluding students and asylum seekers). The change was brought about after a much-publicized “immigration loophole” was discovered when two Chinese nationals living in the U.K. traveled to Belfast to give birth, which (due to Ireland’s unique relationship with both the U.K. and the E.U.) gave them so-called “backdoor” access to permanent residence in the U.K. as parents of a dependent E.U. citizen. In 2018, around when Trump earlier discussed ending birthright citizenship in the U.S., a proposed law to restore birthright citizenship in Ireland gained ground after a high-profile case of a nine-year-old Ireland-born boy who faced deportation along with his Chinese mother. A survey at the time found 71% of Irish respondents wanted to bring birthright citizenship back. However, while the boy was ultimately granted a reprieve from the government, the bill to restore birthright citizenship failed, though the Irish Labour Party continues to advocate for such a change.

If Elon Musk is serious about cutting government waste, fraud, and abuse, he may find help in an unusual place: Elizabeth Warren. While many Democrats in Congress want nothing to do with the billionaire who spent a fortune to help elect Donald Trump, the Massachusetts Senator says she wants to find common ground with Musk in his new role leading the White House's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In a letter she sent him Thursday morning, Warren proposed 30 recommendations for eliminating $2 trillion in federal spending over the next decade, according to a copy of the letter obtained by TIME. The list includes several of the progressive icon’s long-held policy fixations: renegotiating Department of Defense (DOD) contracts that independent analysts have found waste billions each year; reforming the Medicare Advantage insurance program and allowing Medicare to negotiate lower costs of prescription drugs; and closing tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthiest earners. It’s not clear how Musk will respond—but he’s in need of suggestions. Earlier this month, he walked back his pledge of finding $2 trillion in federal savings. That may be due to political constraints. Because Trump vowed on the campaign trail not to touch Medicare and Social Security, and Republicans refuse to cut military spending, DOGE will have to find less conventional ideas to fulfill Musk’s budget-slashing fantasy. For years, Democrats and Republicans alike have wanted to curb wasteful government spending. While much of Washington recoils at Trump’s disruptive, norm-shattering second-term agenda, some see an opportunity for strange bedfellows to emerge. “In the interest of taking aggressive, bipartisan action to ensure sustainable spending, protect taxpayer dollars, curb abusive practices by giant corporations, and improve middle-class Americans’ quality of life,” Warren writes to Musk, “I would be happy to work with you on these matters.” That may be easier said than done. Many of Warren’s proposals won’t go far with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, and Musk himself may bristle at many of them. Her missive might do more to make a point than spur an improbable collaboration. Equally significant will be the chorus of deficit hawks who insist the only way to remedy a bloated federal government is to restructure entitlement programs at risk of collapse in 10 years. “There's no way to meaningfully improve the deficit and debt situation without meaningful reforms to entitlements, which we also need to do to avert insolvency for Social Security and Medicare,” says Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Still, Trump won the election after campaigning on cutting federal spending. For a cross section of Americans, it’s an issue of serious concern. To that end, Warren’s outreach stands to serve as an early test for whether there are areas of bipartisan agreement over where taxpayer money is being squandered, or whether it’s the first round of a four-year clash of competing visions and priorities. The biggest cost-saving idea in Warren’s letter is to preserve $200 billion by renegotiating Defense contracts. She points to an Inspector General report from 2011 that found contractors regularly hike prices for the military. One egregious example includes the Air Force overpaying 7,943% on soap dispensers. To rectify the problem, she urged passing legislation she previously introduced with Mike Braun, the former Republican Senator from Indiana, that would close loopholes to prevent defense contractors from price gouging the DOD. “There is a huge problem of the government being able to supervise these contractors carefully enough to be able to make sure we're getting our money's worth,” says Don Kettl, an expert on government administration and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Kettl recently wrote an essay in the Washington Monthly arguing that the federal government needs more and better skilled civil servants to oversee contractors and that Musk and Trump’s plans to massively reduce the federal workforce will perversely lead to higher, not lower, government spending. “The argument is that the market can do the government's work better and cheaper,” Kettl says. “The problem is that that's not always the case, and contractors often get higher wages.” One area ripe for bipartisan cooperation may be tackling wasteful spending and abuse in the healthcare industry, such as ending or overhauling Medicare Advantage. Non-partisan analysts estimate the insurance program overcharged taxpayers by more than $83 billion last year alone. Warren also wants to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, an idea for which Trump has previously expressed support. At the same time, Warren proposed cracking down on Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), which Trump once castigated as “famous middlemen” who “rip off Medicare patients.” There has already been some movement in Congress. Last year, Warren introduced legislation with Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri that would prohibit the parent company of a PBM from owning a pharmacy—a form of market domination that allows them to charge higher prices with impunity. But not all of Warren’s proposals enjoy the same level of budding support across the aisle. In her letter, she calls for boosting the Internal Revenue Service’s budget—an expense that she argues would be offset by collecting more in taxes—and changing the tax code to close loopholes for corporations and the highest income earners. Both ideas are anathema to Republicans, and one of Trump’s main domestic priorities is to extend his 2017 tax cuts and embark on a deregulatory crusade. Warren also wants to eliminate or substantially reduce funding for the Charter Schools Program, which was designed to provide federal grants for charter schools but which the Government Accountability Office has found mismanages and wastes most of its funding. Warren estimates that cuts to this program could save up to $400 million from being frittered away each year. Another target in the educational sector includes for-profit colleges, which have a long history of ripping off students. Warren wants to make them ineligible for federal aid grants. It’s still not clear how DOGE plans to operate. Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for the operation, did not respond to questions. Watchdog groups have already sued the Musk commission for allegedly violating federal transparency requirements. Many also fear the apparent conflict of interest in Musk overseeing the agencies that regulate his companies that have contracts with the government. In a December letter to Musk that went unanswered, Warren asked how he would avoid self-dealing. In her latest letter, she offered the chance to cooperate on achieving his larger objectives. “Your broad point—that the federal government spends trillions of dollars on wasteful spending is correct,” she writes. “And if you are serious about working together in good faith to cut government spending—in a way that does not harm the middle class—I have proposals for your consideration.” Whether those proposals can go anywhere remains to be seen. Many doubt Musk’s true intentions in taking the reins of DOGE. Others see the possibility of him proposing technological innovations that can save the U.S. money. But for some of Washington’s most strident voices arguing for government spending reforms, it represents a chance for ideas usually relegated to white papers to finally get a full airing. “At this moment,” says MacGuineas, “I'm a fan of what Elon Musk is doing and I’m a fan of what Elizabeth Warren is doing.”

In one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump issued a proclamation declaring a national emergency at the southern border. The proclamation authorizes the Secretary of Defense to move money within the department to fund construction of the border wall. It further authorizes the Secretary to call up reservists to assist the Department of Homeland Security in its border activities. Six years ago, with illegal border crossings hovering near a 40-year low, Trump also declared an emergency to secure funding for the border wall and to call up reservists. So it should come as no surprise that he did the same in his second term, with illegal border crossings at higher levels (although still steadily decreasing from the record highs seen in late 2023 and early 2024). But the increased traffic at the border does not justify what is still a misuse of emergency powers. By using these authorities to address a longstanding policy problem, Trump is usurping the role that the Constitution assigns to Congress. Moreover, the actions he has laid out likely exceed the authority provided by the specific powers he has invoked. The 1976 National Emergencies Act gives the president broad discretion to declare a national emergency. That declaration serves as a trigger to unlock powers contained in 150 different provisions of law, including some that carry alarming potential for abuse. For instance, there are provisions allowing the president to take over or shut down communications facilities and to freeze Americans’ assets without judicial process. It is not hard to see how a president could wield these powers to erode both individual liberties and democracy itself. In the proclamation he issued Monday, Trump invoked a provision that allows the Secretary of Defense to reallocate department funds to pay for “military construction” projects that Congress has not authorized. He used this provision in 2019 to secure funding for the border wall after a split Congress refused to allocate the amounts he requested. Reprogramming these funds meant terminating ongoing projects to build weapons maintenance shops, fire rescue stations, and cyberoperations facilities. He has now invoked the same provision for the same purpose, without waiting to see if the new Republican-controlled Congress would provide funding. Trump also invoked a power that allows the Secretary of Defense to call up reservists, including National Guard forces, in a national emergency. These troops will supplement National Guard forces currently deployed at the border to support the Department of Homeland Security. The military has been deployed in this role for years, and President Biden relied on the same emergency authority to augment their numbers. (Because the troops are providing logistical support rather than apprehending or detaining migrants, they are not violating the Posse Comitatus Act’s general prohibition on military participation in law enforcement.) Leaving aside the merits of these policies, accomplishing them through emergency powers is an abuse of presidential authority. Emergency powers play a particular role in our constitutional system. They give the president extraordinary flexibility to address sudden, unexpected crises—the very definition of “emergency”—that Congress could not have foreseen and cannot act quickly or flexibly enough to address after-the-fact. If a problem is longstanding and Congress has had time to grapple with it, it is not a valid target of emergency powers, however serious it may be. There is nothing sudden or unexpected about unlawful immigration at the southern border. Moreover, Congress can and should address the problem by passing comprehensive immigration reform and allocating sufficient resources to handle the backlog of people seeking to immigrate through lawful means. So far, though, Trump hasn’t shown much interest in a long-term solution. Indeed, when Congress was on the verge of passing a bipartisan border security bill in 2024, he reportedly pressured Republican lawmakers to kill it so he could continue to campaign on border chaos. Unfortunately, even though Congress clearly intended for national emergencies to be declared sparingly, there is no definition of “national emergency” in the law. Absent such a definition, courts historically have been quite deferential to a president’s determination that an emergency exists. But they have been much more willing to examine whether a president’s actions comport with the specific emergency powers the president has invoked. And on this count, Trump will likely run into trouble. In particular, some courts struck down Trump’s previous use of the “military construction” provision to build the border wall. Under the provision, the purpose of the construction project must be to support a deployment of the armed forces. For instance, a temporary base may be built to support troops deployed to a remote overseas location. The border wall turns this condition on its head: Instead of the construction supporting a military deployment, the military is being deployed to support the construction. The courts’ decisions were stayed on appeal, and the Supreme Court vacated them in 2021 after Biden terminated Trump’s emergency declaration. But the same arguments will be raised now—and if courts faithfully interpret and apply the law, they should prevail. Trump’s invocation of the power to call up reservists could fail for a different reason. Under a separate law, the armed forces may not provide support to law enforcement agencies (such as the Department of Homeland Security) “if the provision of such support will adversely affect the military preparedness of the United States.” U.S. military personnel are already stationed in over 160 countries throughout the world, and the National Guard is stretched thin. Moreover, lengthy border deployments have proven bad for morale at a time when the military is experiencing unprecedented recruitment and retention challenges. Under these circumstances, any substantial call-up of reservists would likely be detrimental to military preparedness. Without question, there are serious problems at the southern border. The numbers of people attempting to flee persecution, drug or gang-related violence, and economic hardship are creating a humanitarian crisis. Moreover, the level of unlawful migration in recent years speaks to a broken immigration system that must be fixed. But misusing emergency powers will not solve the problem; instead, it will open the door to further such abuses—by this president or a future one. And the next time, those abuses could involve even more potent emergency powers, with even greater potential to undermine liberties and democracy. Until Congress reforms the National Emergencies Act to help prevent presidential overreach, it will be up to the courts to keep us off that slippery slope.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, Softbank, MGX and Oracle to build new datacenters to power the next wave of artificial intelligence (AI) – in an early signal that his Administration would embrace the technology. The plans, which predate the Trump Administration and involve no U.S. government funds, would result in the construction of large datacenters on U.S. soil containing thousands of advanced computer chips required to train new AI systems. Trump cast his support for the venture in part as a matter of national competitiveness. “We want to keep it in this country; China’s a competitor,” Trump said of AI. “I’m going to help a lot through emergency declarations – we have an emergency, we have to get this stuff built.” The message echoed recent talking points by the heads of AI companies like Sam Altman of OpenAI, who flanked him during the White House announcement. Altman has argued more vocally in recent months that the U.S. must race to build the energy and datacenter infrastructure in order to create powerful AI before China. The intent is to build datacenters on American soil, so that the U.S. retains sovereignty over the AI models that are created and run there. Some of the financing for Stargate, however, comes from abroad, via MGX, an investor owned by an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, and Softbank, which is Japanese. OpenAI and Oracle have been working on building out datacenter capacity in the United States since long before Trump’s inauguration, and construction is reportedly already underway on some of the facilities connected to Stargate. The new President’s blessing, however, is a win both for OpenAI – which like all tech companies has attempted to position itself in Trump’s favor – and for Trump himself, who has seized on AI as a means for strengthening the U.S. economy and achieving dominance over China. Stargate also appears to mark an end to OpenAI’s exclusive cloud computing partnership with Microsoft, meaning the startup is now free to train its models with other providers. In return for early investment, OpenAI had agreed to train its AIs only on Microsoft’s systems. But the startup has chafed in the past at what insiders felt was Microsoft’s inability to supply it with enough computing power, according to reports. Microsoft remains a large investor in OpenAI, and gains a share of its revenue. What could Stargate mean? The goal behind Stargate is to create the infrastructure required to build even more powerful AI systems – systems that could perform most economically valuable tasks better and faster than humans could, or that could make new scientific discoveries. Many AI investors and CEOs believe this technology, sometimes referred to as artificial general intelligence, is attainable within the next five years or fewer. But to get there, those AIs need to first be trained. This presents a problem, because the bigger an AI you want to train, the more interlinked chips you need in a datacenter, and the larger the electricity capacity of that datacenter needs to be. Currently, experts say, AI’s performance is bottlenecked by these two factors, especially power capacity. Stargate would mean not only the construction of new datacenters to house the latest chips, but also the construction of new energy infrastructure that could supply those datacenters with the gargantuan amount of power needed for an AI training run. Those runs can last for months, with chips running day and night to mold a neural network based on connections within a vast corpus of data. “They have to produce a lot of electricity, and we’ll make it possible for them to get that production done very easily, at their own plants if they want – at the AI plant they will build their own energy generation and that will be incredible,” Trump said Tuesday. “It’s technology and artificial intelligence, all made in the USA.” Much of this electricity is likely to come from fossil fuels. Trump has committed to “unleash” oil and gas drilling, and has moved to block the grid’s transition to renewable energy. To cope with the rising demand by U.S. data centers for electricity, utilities companies have delayed retiring coal-fired power plants and have added new gas plants. It already is. Construction has reportedly already begun on a datacenter in Abilene, Texas, that will house part of the Stargate project. But not all of the $500 billion pledged for the joint venture is likely to be available all at once. Of that figure, OpenAI said in a statement that Stargate would “begin deploying” only a fifth, $100 billion, immediately. The rest will be deployed over the next four years. Stargate’s announcement led to a rare moment of disharmony between Trump and his most powerful political cheerleader, Elon Musk. “They don’t actually have the money,” Musk posted on X shortly after the announcement. “SoftBank has well under $10 [billion] secured. I have that on good authority.” Musk has a long and fractious history with Altman. The pair co-founded OpenAI together, but Musk left in 2019 after reportedly mounting a failed bid to become CEO; he now owns the rival AI company xAI and is suing Altman, accusing him of reneging on OpenAI’s founding principles. Altman denied Musk’s allegations on X, inviting him to come to visit the first site already under construction. “This is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn't always what's optimal for your companies, but in your new role I hope you'll mostly put 🇺🇸 first,” he wrote. He had earlier written: “I genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time.” An OpenAI spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Regardless of the size of Stargate’s checking account, it would be foolish to bet against a massive surge in datacenter construction on U.S. soil. Tech companies are already investing billions into the construction of facilities where they can train their next AI systems. And with Trump in the oval office, it appears they have succeeded in convincing the highest levels of government that building more AI infrastructure is an urgent national security priority. “We wouldn’t be able to do this without you Mr. President,” Altman said at the White House on Tuesday, addressing Trump. “And I’m thrilled that we get to.”

President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 in Washington D.C. brought the world’s wealthiest people together to celebrate his return to the presidency, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, who have a combined net worth of nearly $900 billion, according to Forbes. As Trump was inaugurated, longtime Trump supporter Harold Hamm—known for fracking and considered “America’s richest oil man” with over $18.5 billion in wealth running Continental Resources— hosted an exclusive inauguration watch party. Invitees included Trump’s pick to run the Interior Department, former Governor of North Dakota Doug Burnam. The connection between Trump’s rise and policy choices and American business leaders is especially true for the top fossil fuel billionaires, says the Climate Accountability Research Project (CARP). The group has been tracking the impact of Trump’s latest presidential campaign and election win on the wealth of 15 individual billionaires involved in the fossil fuel industry. In just one day after Trump’s inauguration, CARP says these 15 billionaires saw their combined wealth increase $3.31 billion, from $317.86 billion to $321.17 billion. And since the new year began, these individuals have made $17 billion, according to a CARP analysis using Bloomberg Data. This list of top U.S. fossil fuel billionaires includes David Koch’s widow Julia Flesher Koch, Charles Koch, the current chairman and CEO of Koch Inc., Hamm, as well as many other owners of oil and gas companies like Kinder Morgan, Enterprise Products, and Hunt Consolidated. “A good return on investment,” Chuck Collins, co-founder of CARP tells TIME of the billionaires’ wealth increase since Trump’s election. Collins co-authored a report released this month by CARP tracking connections between Trump’s second run for office and U.S. oil and gas giants. According to Yale Climate Connections, nearly $23 million in oil and gas industry funds went directly to candidate Trump and the PACs supporting him during his recent election campaign. At an April 2024 dinner organized with Hamm and attended by oil executives from places including Exxon and Chevron at Mar-a-Lago, Trump asked attendees to donate $1 billion to his campaign. He told these executives they would save that much money and more after he repealed environmental regulations and fast track drilling permits, the Washington Post reported. CARP’s analysis comes as Trump declares a “national energy emergency,” begins the process of pulling out of the Paris Agreement, and promises to speed fossil fuel project approvals. In his declaration of a “National Energy Emergency,” Trump cited the need to lower energy costs and to boost oil and natural gas production across the country, in line with his mantra throughout his campaign: “drill, baby, drill.” Trump stayed the same course in his inauguration day address: “We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have—the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it. We’re going to use it.” His remarks received a standing ovation at Hamm’s inauguration watch party at Hay-Adams hotel in downtown Washington, the New York Times reported. Collins says Trump’s election and his immediate executive orders are a “dream” for oil and gas executives—a dream they can only expect to get better. “It's a huge windfall for the industry, and it's kind of a beginning,” Collins said. “This is the payback for investing millions and millions of dollars to get Trump elected, and clearing the way for members of Congress who are pro industry and climate deniers. This is what they paid for.”

As President Donald Trump's Cabinet and Administration nominees face confirmation hearings, they are set to wield control over a range of departments affecting everything from healthcare to the economy. And many of them will have some power over abortion access—even in agencies you may not expect. Many health and legal experts expect that the Trump Administration will curtail abortion access. Elizabeth Sepper, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, says Project 2025 offers a roadmap for what the Trump Administration might do when it comes to abortion, and that she thinks the Administration will launch “sweeping efforts to make abortion more difficult to access” even in states where abortion is relatively accessible. (Trump distanced himself from Project 2025’s plans during the 2024 election cycle, though it has ties to his orbit.) But experts also say that the specific actions the Administration will take on abortion are, at this point, still unknown. “Trump on the campaign trail was kind of cryptic about what he would do on abortion,” says Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law. “His nominees haven’t exactly clarified things.” While Trump took sweeping actions on his first day in office on issues from immigration to gender identity, he has yet to announce policies related specifically to abortion. But soon after he took the oath of office, reproductiverights.gov, a website launched by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Biden Administration that shared information about abortion and reproductive health care access, went offline. Here are some of the actions Trump’s nominees could take on abortion, if confirmed by the Senate to their positions. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appointment to head HHS alarmed some public health experts, in particular because of his vaccine skepticism. When it comes to abortion, Kennedy, like Trump, has flip-flopped: he previously expressed support for a federal ban on abortion after the first trimester of pregnancy, but later said that abortion “should be legal up until a certain number of weeks, and restricted thereafter.” HHS oversees many of the country’s health agencies, from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and, if Kennedy is confirmed to lead the department, he would have authority over these agencies. For instance—“There’s a possibility that RFK could take pretty dramatic steps on mifepristone, even without the approval of FDA,” Ziegler says, adding that it’s possible Kennedy could impose restrictions on the abortion pill or withdraw it from the market. Any such move would likely face legal challenges—as is the case with many of the possibilities outlined in this story. Dr. Marty Makary, Commissioner of the FDA Dr. Marty Makary, a surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins University, would have significant influence over the abortion medication mifepristone if he’s confirmed to lead the FDA. The FDA approved mifepristone to be used for abortion purposes in 2000. Under the Biden Administration, the FDA helped facilitate access to medication abortion by allowing mifepristone to be prescribed via telehealth and received by mail—first temporarily during the COVID-19 pandemic, before making the change permanent in 2023, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which protected the constitutional right to an abortion. Pam Bondi, Attorney General While serving as Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi supported restrictions on abortion, such as mandatory waiting periods. And during her Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 15, Bondi said she has “always been pro-life.” If Bondi is confirmed by the Senate to lead the Department of Justice (DOJ), experts say she could take steps to restrict abortion access through the Comstock Act, a 19th century anti-obscenity law. Under the Biden Administration, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel released a letter reaffirming that the law doesn’t ban the mailing, delivery, or receipt of legal medication abortion, although anti-abortion activists expressed interest in using the law to do so. Under Bondi’s leadership, the DOJ could withdraw the Biden-era memo without issuing a new one. “Then there’s going to obviously be a lot of uncertainty, and we won’t know if DOJ will proceed with prosecutions,” Ziegler says. “That could still have a chilling effect because doctors may be reluctant to act if they don’t know when they’ll be protected.” Or the Trump Administration’s DOJ could issue a new memo stating that the Comstock Act could be used to prohibit the mailing of abortion pills. Under the Biden Administration, the DOJ and the FDA defended access to mifepristone. At Bondi’s hearing, Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, asked the nominee if she would commit to maintaining the DOJ’s efforts to defend the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in the face of lawsuits challenging the drug. Bondi replied that she had not been aware of the issue until she had spoken to Booker about it and that she would “look at that policy.” “I am personally pro-life; I have always been pro-life, but I will look at that policy,” Bondi said. “I will not let my personal beliefs affect how I carry out the law.” Under the Biden Administration, the DOJ also filed a lawsuit that argued that Idaho’s near-total abortion ban violated EMTALA (the Supreme Court ruled in June that hospitals in the state that receive federal funds are allowed to temporarily provide abortions in emergency situations). Sepper says she thinks it’s likely that the Trump Administration’s DOJ will drop litigation efforts like that. Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California, asked Bondi during her hearing about whether she would advocate for federal abortion restrictions if confirmed to lead the DOJ. Bondi replied that the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe meant that abortion law should be left to the states. “I will follow the law of the United States of America,” Bondi said. “My personal feelings would not influence, Senator.” Doug Collins, Secretary for Veterans Affairs, and Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense Both Doug Collins, a former Republican congressman from Georgia, and Pete Hegseth, co-host of Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends, have publicly shared their anti-abortion beliefs, and experts say the two could roll back Biden-era protections for veterans and active service members if confirmed to their roles. Under the Biden Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) enacted a rule that allows VA to offer abortion counseling and abortion care to veterans and VA beneficiaries in certain situations—for instance, if the health or life of the patient is at risk or in situations of rape or incest. Under the policy, VA employees are allowed to provide abortion services even if their state has restricted or banned the procedure. Collins, if confirmed to head the department, could reverse that policy. Collins was asked about the policy during his hearing on Tuesday; he said a 1992 law prohibits VA from offering abortion care, but said: “We will look at this rule and see if it complies with the law.” The Biden Administration's Department of Defense (DoD) helped facilitate travel for active service members and their families to access reproductive health care, including abortion. Hegseth, if confirmed to lead the department, could also reverse that policy. Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, asked Hegseth during his hearing on Jan. 14 if he would “maintain this common sense policy,” to which he replied: “I’ve always been personally pro-life. I know President Trump has as well, and we will review all policies. Our standard is whatever the President wants on this particular issue. I don’t believe the federal government should be funding travel for abortion.”

President Donald Trump lashed out on Wednesday at the bishop who had delivered a pointed plea directly at him on behalf of immigrants and LGBTQ+ children during a service at the National Cathedral a day earlier. In a post on Truth Social, Trump called the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde, a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” who is “not very good at her job.” He said she “brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way” and demanded an apology. Budde’s sermon may have been the only critical words Donald Trump heard during his first full day in office. As Trump sat in the first pew of the National Cathedral on Tuesday during a traditional prayer service, Bishop Budde asked Trump “to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” Trump glared and shifted uncomfortably as she spoke. “There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.” In his first hours as President, Trump signed an order recognizing “two sexes, male and female,” and saying those are set at birth and cannot be changed. He also ordered immigration officers to ramp up deportations of people in the country without authorization. Budde said in her sermon that those being targeted for deportation “may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples.” She added, “I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away.” Since her sermon drew national attention on Tuesday, Budde tells TIME she has “heard from many people who are grateful that someone was willing to speak on their behalf” as well as those who “have said they do wish me dead, and that's a little heartbreaking.” Budde has served as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington since 2011. She was also critical of Trump in 2020 when he ordered racial justice protestors to be forcibly removed from Lafayette Park and the courtyard of St. John’s Church and then posed there for a photo while holding a Bible. In an interview with TIME, Budde described her reaction to the blowback and Trump calling her out. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. TIME: Are you comfortable with being this well known nationally? BISHOP BUDDE: I hope that a message calling for dignity, respecting dignity, honesty, humility and kindness is resonating with people. I'm grateful for that. I'm saddened by the level of vitriol that it has evoked in others, and the intensity of it has been disheartening. I've heard from many people who are grateful that someone was willing to speak on their behalf, and also others feeling emboldened to do the same, and I'm grateful for that. I'm not comfortable with the — I don't know how to describe it — but I'm perfectly happy to be in conversation with people who disagree with me. The level of attack has been sobering and disheartening. Are you hoping to inspire others to push back against President Trump's policies? I would love to have people present another alternative, yes, and to bring compassion and breadth into our public discourse.

When Donald Trump won the presidency in November, many crypto fanatics celebrated, based on his promises to the industry that he would prioritize deregulation and legitimize crypto entrepreneurs. Days before his inauguration, industry heavyweights gathered in Washington for the Crypto Ball, celebrating their newly minted status as D.C. insiders. But during the event, Trump shocked nearly the entire room by posting online about the launch of a new cryptocurrency called TRUMP. This new currency, a so-called meme coin, has no inherent value, but rather fluctuates in price as people buy and sell the coin. Trump’s fans and opportunistic day traders have generated billions of dollars in sales, driven by loyalty, hype, and the chance to make a quick buck. All of these trades have made the coin’s creators—affiliate companies of the Trump organization—billions of dollars on paper. A day after its release, Melania Trump announced her own meme coin, which also rose and fell in crazed spurts. On Wednesday, TRUMP was the 25th most valuable cryptocurrency in the world, according to CoinMarketCap—although its price of about $43 was well off its $75 high. Read More: What Trump’s Win Means for Crypto. Trump’s meme coins brought a surge of attention to crypto and many newcomers into the space. To some, the coins signaled Trump’s commitment to crypto and to spurring its growth. But many more in the crypto world responded with revulsion to what they saw as a cash grab, and a way for Trump to directly profit off of his followers. Trump’s team holds at least 80% of the coin’s supply, giving them vast power to control its price. While they are not allowed to sell off their holdings for months, doing so would crash the market and leave regular users with a loss. Crypto insiders worry that the coins will make the public even leerier of an industry already filled with scams and bad-faith actors. “The crypto sector put someone in power whose first act is to emphasize and take advantage of the opportunity for grift within crypto,” says Angela Walch, a crypto researcher and writer. “And that's just embarrassing.” Trump has downplayed his role in launching the coin, saying at a Jan. 21 press conference: “I don’t know much about it other than I launched it.” The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A White House press officer declined to comment. But elected officials and legal experts are raising ethical and geopolitical concerns about the tokens, which they say could serve as a vehicle for bribery and conflicts of interest. “These coins open a channel for him to receive financial benefits from foreign adversaries and to prioritize his personal interests, to the collective detriment of Americans,” says Puja Ohlhaver, a lawyer affiliated with Harvard’s Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation. What are meme coins? TRUMP and MELANIA are meme coins: cryptocurrencies that are essentially created by entrepreneurs out of thin air by writing code to deploy on a blockchain. Their worth comes from how much people believe in them and buy them. In order to generate excitement, the teams behind such coins often market them using popular memes which can be shared and iterated upon on social media. If memes on social media can propel culture, creativity, and even ideology, the thinking goes, then why shouldn’t they be worth something financially as well? Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are two examples, with Dogecoin particularly propelled by Elon Musk, whose tweets about the coin have led to price spikes. The lack of inherent value makes meme coins especially volatile and speculative, which, to some, is part of their appeal: If investors buy at the right time, they can make a lot of money. Conversely, they can lose everything extremely fast if they buy in at the market’s top. Meme coins have also been the vehicle for alleged scams, in which investors lost significant sums. Trump’s admirers have often wielded memes as a marketing tool. During his presidential campaign, a team of content creators flooded social media with pro-Trump meme content. Last summer, unofficial Trump meme coins with names like Pepe (TRUMP) and Maga People Token (PEOPLE) rose and fell, with some bettors treating them as proxies for his chances of victory. Trump also has a history of using crypto to make money. He started selling NFT trading cards in 2022, and has made millions from them, according to financial disclosure documents. In September, he launched World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency platform which is not yet live. And in 2025, meme coins are perhaps the easiest way for aspiring crypto entrepreneurs to make money, fast. TRUMP starts trading On Jan. 18, two days before taking the oath of office, Trump launched his token via CIC Digital LLC, an affiliate of the Trump Organization, while the Crypto Ball was in full swing. The move took the industry by surprise. Nick O’Neill, a crypto entrepreneur at the event—which also featured appearances from Snoop Dogg and Speaker Mike Johnson—posted a video on X saying that very few people there were aware of the token. The next day saw a mad rush to buy and sell the token, causing all sorts of spillover effects. Solana, the blockchain supporting the token, and Coinbase, an exchange used to trade the coin, both experienced hours-long transaction delays. “We were not anticipating this level of surge,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote on Twitter.

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 pitch was as plausible as it was persuasive: a second term for Donald Trump would be less erratic, more disciplined, and savvier about the presidential powers he barely understood when he had them the first time. His team would also be better calibrated to keep him coloring in the lines. All of the worst impulses had been excised and fresh energy was his tailwind. Rather than gunning from his gut, Trump had reams of drafted ideas at the ready thanks to his pals in Washington’s back-hall think tanks and their Project 2025 agenda. The argument proved to be foolish, as evidenced in the first days’ sloppiness. Despite assurances that the conservative movement’s best minds would have a Day One agenda ready backed up by legal genius’ years of preparation, the first steps proved full of trouble. Seemingly limitless resources at the ready for the incoming team was not enough to avoid myriad typos, internal contradictions, and an inability to pick a format and stick with it. Take the barrage of executive orders Trump issued over the first 12 hours. When first published, they were filled with strange formatting errors. Bold here. Bigger there. Passages duplicated. Lists were sometimes ordered with the same numbers used over and over again. (Not everything can be a 1, especially within a political movement that has made participation trophies a subject of ire.) Legal eagles on social media were eager to point out the hiccups in the formatting and more than a few typos that were cleaned-up on the White House’s website before they got pilloried too badly. One laundry list of Interior Department tweaks had six subsections numbered as Part One. Another first-day memo announcing the structure of the National Security Council members identified more than one member as number one, and others in the same list with bullet points. Others noticed typos that probably don’t change the weight of these actions but still are embarrassing for a new administration that promised to restore greatness to the Oval Office. But then there are the errors that could meaningfully change what some executive orders do. For instance, in an effort to give the culture warriors a win and transgender individuals a loss, Trump ordered that people would be pinned down to use the biological “sex”—and not gender—assigned at the moment of conception. What the order missed, though, is that all fetuses spend their first six weeks as females, and then some become males. In feeding an anti-trans ideology—one that swayed some voters during his campaign against Kamala Harris, to be sure—he also fed uncertainty in pursuit of imposing pronouns assigned at birth. Another Trump order sowing confusion is one that suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program as of Jan. 27. Despite that cut-off still being days away, Trump officials shut it down almost as soon as he was inaugurated, leaving thousands of refugees who had already been vetted and booked to relocate to the United States stranded around the world, without an understanding if they’ll ever be allowed into the U.S. Trump’s first term was also beset with a whole rash of typos and confusion over language, too. That did not stop him from issuing more than 200 executive orders in those first four years, a tally he seems determined to break given the pace and ambition of his unilateral moves thus far. Beyond what he signs his name to, Trump is also revealing that, once again, the extent to which you should take what he says as what he means is going to be a moving target. On his first night in the Oval Office, with reporters watching and TV cameras rolling, he appeared to remake an informal global alliance of emerging economies. Instead of South Africa as the “S” in the BRICS bloc—Brazil, Russia, India, and China being the others—Trump told reporters with signature bravado that it was actually Spain—and that, as such, the European country could be among those swept up in his most punitive tariffs. "They're a BRICS nation, Spain. Do you know what a BRICS nation is? You'll figure it out,” Trump said in the Oval Office. Zero points for accuracy. All of the points for confidence. And, at this point two full days into this return to the Trump era, that might be the whole point. Americans knew they weren’t electing a details guy to lead the country. They were going with a vibe. And part of that vibe, it seems, is an aggressive indifference to the specifics. After all, Trump has other things to help draw the spotlight—including sensitive trips to tour disaster recovery programs in North Carolina and California where those trying to rebuild could not care less if the President gets there if he arrives on Air Force One or Air Force Once. It’s why his casual care for buttoned-down professionalism may prove maddening for many, but is largely waved off by the folks who signed up for another four years of this style of slapdash government. Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.