Domestic Violence and Maternal Mortality Are Rising. The NIH Just Defunded a Project to Study Both.

Rebecca Fielding-Miller, an associate professor of public health at the University of California, San Diego, was in a faculty meeting on Friday discussing how the Trump administration’s cuts to funding will affect academic research when she got some unexpected, and unfortunatelyrelevant, news: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) intended to terminate a grant of approximately $400,000 for one of her projects.

Fielding-Miller, who researches infectious diseases and gender-based violence, along with some colleagues who do similar work, received the funds last fall to support a project focused on training up to a dozen early-career researchers on how to better study intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy. The lead researchers were just about to start recruiting mentees for the year-and-a-half-long program, Fielding-Miller said.

As the researchers wrote in their description of the project, it planned to focus on a vital yet understudied issue. Research has found homicide is a leading causeof maternal mortality in the US, and IPV plays a key role. The project also seemed particularly timely, given that increasing nationwide restrictions on abortion have given abusers another way to control and trap pregnant partners, as I have reported. Research published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons last year found that pregnant people in states with abortion bans are at a higher risk of homicide perpetrated by a partner—and that there’s “a dire need for universal screening and interventions.”

As Liz Tobin-Tyler, an associate professor of health services, policy, and practice at Brown University, notes, a project like the one Fielding-Miller was helping lead is exactly what’s needed at this moment—particularly as shelters and hotlines assisting people experiencing IPV also face drastic federal funding cuts. “It sounds like what they were attempting to do is not only to encourage young researchers to be working in this area, but to also make it a prominent area of research going forward—which it needs to be, if we’re going to address the maternal mortality and violence against women crises,” said Tobin-Tyler, who was not involved with Fielding-Miller’s study.“If we’re not studying the problem sufficiently, and then there are other federal funding cuts to serve the populations that are being harmed, we’re really undermining the work at multiple levels.”

“If we’re not studying the problem sufficiently, and then there are other federal funding cuts to serve the populations that are being harmed, we’re really undermining the work at multiple levels.”

The White House did not respond to questions from Mother Jones, but the NIH saw Fielding-Miller’s project differently. “Research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness,” the termination letter from the NIH said. In response to questions from Mother Jones about why the grant—entitled “Restoring equity to measuring and preventing perinatal intimate partner violence”—was canceled, Emily Hillard, deputy press secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the NIH, said: “At HHS, we are dedicated to restoring our agencies to their tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science. As we begin to Make America Healthy Again, it’s important to prioritize research that directly affects the health of Americans.” Three other projects that received funding under the same NIH grant have not been canceled as of Monday_,_ researchers involved in those studies confirmed.

For Fielding-Miller, the only upside of learning about the cancellation was the timingat the end of the faculty meeting—”So I could go to my office and cry,” she told me by phone on Sunday. We discussed the project that would have been, the need to conduct more research on IPV and pregnancy, and the longer-term effects she anticipates resulting from the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn approach to research affecting marginalized people.

This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity. Fielding-Miller said her views do not represent those of the University of California.

Rebecca Fielding-Miller worries even fewer researchers will study the intersection of domestic violence and pregnancy outcomes in the future.Photo courtesy of Rebecca Fielding-Miller

Explain a bit about the project that you were working on. What was its goal?

Pregnancy is a really dangerous time for women in violent relationships, and there’s also just not a lot of good research on violence, in large part because the NIH has not prioritized it. So there was a very small request for people to develop these training programs to support more people to go into this type of research. In particular, we were interested in how to teach people how to measure IPV, because it’s a surprisingly hard thing to measure.

Our grant was meant to last about a year and a half. We planned to recruit some early career researchers—people at the assistant professor level, especially clinician-researchers, maybe somebody who is an OB-GYN or a family doctor who also does public health research—and pair them with a mentor. Then we would do some training on how to measure IPV and best practices in violence research. The goal was to jumpstart careers in this cohort so that more people would be doing high-quality research on IPV in the perinatal period. It was a pretty big bang for your buck. After a year of training, we would have 12 new people who were experts in this who weren’t experts before. We would document this model and this curriculum, and then put it out there and say, “Here’s a very low budget, low effort curriculum for training folks.”

President Donald Trump has said he would “protect” women and make women “happy, healthy, confident, and free.” Vice President JD Vance and others in the GOP have tried to encourage more Americans to have more kids as birth rates have declined. So why do you think the NIH would cancel this grant?

My guess is that we had two strikes against us—“equity” in the title of the project, and we mentioned a background fact in the application, that IPV is worse for sexual and gender minorities. I’m assuming that whatever knock-off AI they’re using flagged that. We absolutely would have welcomed people who wanted to do this kind of research on sexual and gender minorities because it’s important, but it was not the specific focus of the grant.

It’s been very hard to get violence research funded. I have been told by the pre-Trump NIH that a project that I submitted was less significant because it had a gender-based violence component. I know that what we do is important. I know that violence against women, violence against people who are not cisgender men, it’s a part of reinforcing power structures, and so I find it almost complimentary and affirming that what we do matters because it is about directly addressing the type of power structures that bring people like the current president into office. I think it suggests that one of the first things that Congress needs to pour money into is this kind of work, because ensuring that women, minorities, and people who don’t conform are physically safe is a cornerstone of democracy. In some ways their immediate attack emphasizes how vital it is.

“There is just this implicit bias that violence against women is not an important public health area or a significant area of study.”

Why is this area of research so understudied?

There’s been some really interesting research about what is more likely to be considered significant science, or impactful science, and what isn’t. There is just this implicit bias that violence against women is not an important public health area or a significant area of study. But that wasn’t always the case: In the 70s, the National Institute of Mental Health had a Center for the Prevention of Rape and Sexual Violence because social movements pushed for that to happen. It’s really important for people to think about that because there will be a “putting things back together” phase after they finish dismantling this—and it’s important to know that we can have that again.

What should we know about the prevalence of perinatal IPV and how it affects pregnant people and infants?

The thing that a lot of people find really shocking is that IPV kills more people during pregnancy and immediately after the baby is born than obstetric complications do. The science is not very good on the exact reasons why that is, and it’s certainly not very good on how to prevent it. But this is usually a time of increasing conflict and increasing attempts for partner control. And so, when a person decides that it’s time to leave a relationship and pregnancy and childbirth, are some of the most dangerous times for someone with a violent partner.

What happens now that you don’t have the NIH funding for this study?

We’re going to lose people who are early in their careers. The people who research violence against women and violence against sexual and gender minorities tend to be women and sexual gender minorities. So they yanked diversity supplements and all these mechanisms that were explicitly about making the academy more diverse. Now they are implicitly doing it in the research funding that they pull. The result is going to be the systematic removal of women and people of color from the act of research. At the end of this, we’re going to end up with an academy that is more white, more wealthy, more male, more cisgender, and it’s going to reinforce the same problem. We’re only going to do the science that people who are majority white, cisgender, male, and wealthy think is important. There’s a risk of a major negative feedback loop in what is seen as important and in whose experiences, voices, and lives are seen as important.

It’s already an extremely underfunded field. Most of the good research on IPV comes out of South Africa. They’re doing really extraordinary, cutting-edge work there. The administration also has cut off, or is attempting to cut off, collaborations with South Africa.

We have a lot of experience with this not being a high-priority area. A lot of us who do violence research also do work around mental health or HIV, because that’s how you can get this work funded. So we will go back to being tactical, being strategic, and looking for money in the couch cushions as we always have. But it’s going to be harder.

If you or someone you care about is experiencing or at risk of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by texting “start” to 88788 or calling 800-799-SAFE (7233) or going to thehotline.org. The Department of Health and Human Services has also compiled a list of organizations by state.

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What Was the Plan Behind This Fake CDC Website?

A fake website meant to look like a CDC webpage was put up sometime this month and quickly taken offline, but not before diligent information manipulation researchers noticed several signs that it was likely connected to Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization founded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The site falsely suggested a link between vaccines and autism, using “testimonial” videos made by CHD and long-debunked scientific disinformation. While the site has been taken down, the question remains: what, exactly, was the plan here?

“This episode should dispel any suggestion that anti-vaccine groups are simply interested in helping parents.”

The fake website, RealCDC.org, was first spotted in late January by intel threat researcher Kyle Ehmke. While the page displayed no content then, he noted it was hosted through the same Cloudflare web nameserver as CHD’s website and other domains related to CHD.

By March 20, according to Ehmke’s later research, and as corroborated by archived versions of the site, the page was populated with content meant to look exactly like an official CDC website, replicating its fonts, links, and presentation.

But there was a crucial difference: the fake site included a series of papers and other purported evidence claiming “increased risks of various chronic conditions, including ASD [autism spectrum disorder]” from vaccines. It also included testimonial videos from parents claiming their children had been sickened by vaccines, with scaremongering titles like “MMR Vax Gave My Son Autism,” “We Signed His Life Away,” and “Mother of 3: I Will Never Vaccinate Again.” The videos featured on the site are all hosted by Children’s Health Defense.

The site also contained accurate information about the fact that vaccines don’t cause autism, making what Dr. Bruce Gellin, who previously directed HHS’ vaccine program, described to the New York Times as “a mixture of things that are legitimately peer-reviewed and things that are bogus.” Among the papers was one authored by former physician Mark Geier, whose license to practice has been suspended or revoked in every state where he once held one, and his son David, who has no medical training; both Geiers have a long history in the anti-vaccine movement and as witnesses in court cases attempting to link vaccines and autism.

The site was also independently investigated by E. Rosalie Li, the founder of the Information Epidemiology Lab, which studies information manipulation and malign influence, especially around the intersection of public health and national security, and who, in addition to the Cloudfare account, found further evidence linking it to Children’s Health Defense. Both Li and Ehmke found that RealCDC.org redirected to CHDstaging.org, which has been used by Children’s Health Defense to power projects like its community discussion forum and a site promoting Vaxxed 3, the latest installment in a series of CHD films promoting discredited claims about COVID-19 and vaccine safety. Overall, the CHD sites and RealCDC use “identical infrastructure,” Li says_,_ “that would be unlikely if they were just random websites” unrelated to one another.

“You click on the videos and it goes to the CHD website,” she told Mother Jones.

The situation was another awkward one for Kennedy, who has maintained that he became chairman-on-leave of CHD during his presidential campaign and then left the organization entirely in December 2024. The Department of Health and Human services told the Times that Kennedy had “instructed the Office of the General Counsel to send a formal demand to Children’s Health Defense requesting the removal of their website.”

Li told Mother Jones that the fake CDC site went offline after she published her findings on Substack on Friday, and that her readers reported they couldn’t access the site on Saturday. Children’s Health Defense didn’t respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones, nor did Mary Holland, the organization’s president and general counsel.

“This episode should dispel any suggestion that anti-vaccine groups are simply interested in helping parents access information,” Li told Mother Jones. “Providing the public with health-related information carries a responsibility to ensure accuracy and completeness. What appeared on that website seemed to be a calculated effort to exploit public trust in the CDC to advance an ideology—weaponizing parental concern at the expense of public health.”

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Ed Martin Is Trampling the Rule of Law. And He Won’t Shut Up About It.

When Elon Musk ordered a government-wide email blast directing federal employees to list their recent accomplishments, most senior officials paused to consider their options. In the Justice Department, US attorneys around the country discussed the matter over an email list they share, with many deciding to seek more guidance before instructing career prosecutors on how to respond. One questioned whether the email was even real.

But Ed Martin, an acolyte of President Donald Trump named interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, charged ahead. “It’s legit and we’ve already replied,” he told his fellow US attorneys. “Great leadership.”

Just 33 minutes after the Office of Personnel Management directive hit inboxes, Martin urged lawyers under him to comply, though he suggested they respond carefully. “DOGE and Elon are doing great work!” Martin wrote in one of his frequent communiques to hundreds of assistant US attorneys and support staff. “We are happy to be participate.”

“We are happy to be participate.”

For Martin—a right-wing activist and serial political candidate who has enthusiastically defended January 6 rioters—this was just one more typographically challenged missive in a campaign to turn a powerful legal office into a partisan weapon. Since taking on the gig in January, he’s compensated for his lack of prosecutorial experience by loudly proclaiming his desire to help Trump and Musk use the DOJ to punish their foes. Trump quickly returned the favor, nominating him to hold the post indefinitely.

Martin, who did not respond to questions from Mother Jones, has announced investigations into his own staff for their role in January 6 cases and has volunteered to support Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Orwellian “Weaponization Working Group,” which purports to take aim at abuses of the justice system during the Biden administration. Martin has threatened former special counsel Jack Smith and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and has used X to indicate plans to investigate administration critics. He has even tried to leverage a dubious criminal probe to seize climate grant money awarded by the Biden administration.

The US Attorney in DC is investigating Georgetown Law School, demanding that "if DEI is found in your courses or teaching in anyway [sic]," the law school should "move swiftly to remove it"

Federal prosecutors don't control classrooms. pic.twitter.com/UCJhSe4uMp

— Adam Steinbaugh (@adamsteinbaugh) March 6, 2025

As he posts his way to prominence, Martin has bombarded his staff with chatty emails recounting his daily activities, then repeatedly berated them after those emails leaked. In a new administration defined by a mixture of malevolence and ineptitude, Martin has emerged as an avatar: a typo-spewing henchman of the moment, eager to help Trump transform the Justice Department into a political tool—and unable to shut up about it.

Eagle Ed

Martin, whom associates call outwardly affable, presents as a guy pleased and a bit surprised by his elevation.

“He has a little bit of buffoonery and a ‘Mr. Smith comes to Washington’ vibe,” said one person who has worked in the DC US attorney’s office.

His emails and other communications tend to read like daily journal entries. “Life is very different for me and my family these days,” Martin wrote in a February 4 Substack post. “I am up earlier and into the office in downtown DC. Home late. Pretty tired by then.”

“There is so much to tell you,” he added. “One aspect: my new office is large.”

If Martin is pinching himself at his new position, he has reason. While US attorneys are often experienced prosecutors or rising political prospects, Martin, 54, is more of a journeyman. He spent much of the past two decades as a conservative activist in Missouri, running a series of political organizations—a sort of far-right change agent who sometimes leaves behind litigation and enemies.

As chief of staff for Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt in 2007, Martin fired a state attorney, Scott Eckersley, who had warned against deleting emails that state law required be retained. In a lawsuit, Eckersley alleged that Martin and other officials had falsely accused him of “accessing group sex websites on his state computer” and had defamed him to the media. The state attorney general’s office ultimately agreed to pay Eckersley a $500,000 settlement in the matter.

Martin ran for Congress in 2010; he started and ended Senate and House campaigns in 2012, before committing to the state attorney general race that year. None of his campaigns were successful.

After a stint running Missouri’s GOP and heading several conservative nonprofits, Martin landed in 2015 as president of the Eagle Forum, an organization founded by conservative hero Phyllis Schlafly, then 90 years old. Within a year, Martin had been fired by the group’s board and accused by Schlafly’s daughter, Anne Schlafly Cori, of manipulating the aging icon to commandeer her organizations and legacy. In 2016, Cori and other group members sued Martin for alleged acts that included impersonating Schlafly in Facebook posts and other correspondence. “During Martin’s brief tenure, the Eagle Forum…has experienced unprecedented chaos,” the plaintiffs asserted in their complaint. Martin denied those claims.

In March 2016, with Martin at her side, Schlafly endorsed Trump. She died September 5, 2016. Her name appeared posthumously alongside Martin’s as an author of the book The Conservative Case for Trump, published the next day.

A year later, Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice then running for Senate, claimed Schlafly among his endorsers. Moore’s webpage, Roll Call reported, said: “Phyllis Schlafly, Late President, Eagle Forum; inference of Ed Martin.”

Martin by then had launched a new group, Phyllis Schlafly’s American Eagles. And he retained control of another Schlafly-founded nonprofit, the Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund. Tax filings by the latter group show Martin’s salary as president, which fluctuated, peaked at just over $204,000 in 2020. He’d received more than $1.4 million in total from the group as of 2023. He still uses the X handle @EagleEdMartin.

Martin netted more than $322,000 from yet another former Schlafly nonprofit, America’s Future, while serving as its president beginning in 2016. In 2021, Martin’s final year leading that group, he received more than $83,000 for the job, which, according to tax filings, took him eight hours per week. That year, the group appointed Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser and a prominent far-right conspiracy theorist, as its board chair. America’s Future also hired Flynn’s brother Joe and sister Mary to top jobs. Within a few years of Martin’s departure, America’s Future was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to members of the Flynn family. Asked about this, Joe Flynn, a sometime-spokesperson for the family, texted: “Fuck off quote me.”

Stop the Steal

Martin moved to Virginia in 2017 and spent much of the first Trump administration as a far-right pundit. He lost a gig as a CNN contributor after complaining about appearing on the network alongside “Black racists.” He ran a feeble 2019 campaign for the Board of Supervisors in Fairfax County, Virginia. He also designed a coloring book based on Trump’s 2017 “covfefe” typo tweet. In it, aspiring artists can color in outlined images of Kanye West and Candace Owens under a West tweet boasting that he had a signed MAGA hat, or they can complete a connect-the-dots puzzle of a MAGA hat on a page advertising a free downloadable song sharing a “#CovfefeIsLove” message.

Wondering what that page is on #TheMovement? It's a page from Can't Trump This Covfefe: Top Trump Tweets – The MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL Coloring and Activity Book for All Ages (but especially adults)! https://t.co/3hoC7nzEsL pic.twitter.com/4aB5J1WzSc

— Ed Martin (@EagleEdMartin) June 5, 2018

Martin gained focus following the 2020 election, organizing pro-Trump protests alongside Ali Alexander, the “Stop the Steal” activist who claimed he “came up with the idea” to pressure Congress on January 6 to not certify Biden’s victory.

Martin “was kind of like a mentor,” Alexander said in a December 2021 deposition conducted by the House January 6 committee. According to Alexander, the two men “prayed together every morning.”

In depositions, other January 6 rally organizers expressed various concerns about Alexander, who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars without setting up a nonprofit group or accounting for the funds. But Martin offered his own nonprofit as a place for Alexander to park cash, Alexander told the committee. Martin’s group acted “as a sponsor for collecting Stop the Steal funds” for the rally, Alexander testified. Alexander did not respond to inquiries from Mother Jones.

In late 2020, Martin was in regular contact with Vincent Haley, a White House aide, according to previously unreported text messages released by the January 6 committee. Shortly after the election, Martin urged Haley to “push” a pardon for Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI but was never imprisoned. The Trump DOJ already had dropped the case against Flynn, but Martin suggested that the former general would be more willing to join Stop the Steal rallies once pardoned. “He’d come to dc for the rally/March,” Martin texted Haley on November 10. “We need that guy loosed.”

“I have recommended it,” Haley responded. It is not clear whether Martin’s pressure had any impact, and Haley didn’t respond to Mother Jones’ questions. But Trump pardoned Flynn on November 26, 2020. Flynn then spoke at DC rallies on December 12 and January 5.

“They know they’re going to jail.”

Martin also spoke at those rallies. And he was outside the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as rioters attacked police. But Martin, who was not charged with a crime, saw no evil. “Rowdy crowd but nothing out of hand,” Martin tweeted at 2:53 p.m. that day. “Ignore the #FakeNews.” In a video he posted the next day, Martin repeated false claims that the attack had been orchestrated by left-wing infiltrators. “Now we know that it was antifa,” he said. “It was plants.”

Martin’s efforts drew a subpoena from the January 6 committee. He ignored it, failing to appear for a scheduled deposition. He went on to become a vocal advocate for attackers facing legal charges and represented several people charged with taking part in the riot.

Martin was no ordinary defense attorney. He suggested that the defendants should receive “reparations” and pushed a bizarre and unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that “January 6 was staged by Mr. Coffee,” a supposedly unidentified man seen drinking coffee near the gallows display constructed outside the Capitol that day. Martin pursued this theory vigorously, posting “missing person” flyers featuring grainy images of the man around Washington.

On the right-wing podcast circuit, he called for “accountability” for those who had investigated January 6. “One of the reasons I think that we should fear for this election,” he said last summer, “is because there’s hundreds of Democrats and some Republicans—Liz Cheney—that they know they’re going to jail.”

“A Great Failure of Our Office”

Martin began working as US attorney on Inauguration Day, the day Trump granted clemency to 1,600 January 6 defendants. The president’s vaguely worded declaration largely left implementation to the DOJ. Martin took on that task with alacrity.

When a judge barred Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, whose 18-year sentence Trump had commuted, from entering DC, Martin intervened, successfully arguing that the order was improper. Rhodes—who has since shown up on Capitol Hill—later told reporters that the judge “got slapped down by Ed Martin.”

As an interim US attorney, Martin can serve a maximum of 120 days, unless the Senate confirms him to fill the job permanently. He wasted no time in reshaping the office in his image, demoting key attorneys who’d worked on January 6 cases and initiating an internal investigation of prosecutors who charged defendants with violating a particularly harsh obstruction statute—18 USC 1512—that the Supreme Court later ruled did not apply to most of the rioters.

For Martin, the DOJ’s use of the that provision had long been an obsession. “Who ordered the 1512?” he asked on Charlie Kirk’s podcast in 2023. “If it was [Merrick] Garland, or [former Deputy Attorney General] Lisa Monaco, or Joe Biden, or Hunter…that guy or gal needs to end up in jail.”

In a January 27, 2025, email that began by lamenting the Washington Commanders’ playoff loss the day before, Martin asked DC prosecutors to hand over material relevant to his probe into this matter, which he dubbed the “1512 Project.”

“Obviously, the use [of the statute] was a great failure of our office,” he wrote to his staff, “and we need to get to the bottom of it.” The next day, he reminded employees to cough up information about their own activities. “Please be proactive – if you have nothing, tell the co-chairs,” he wrote. “Failure to do so strikes me as insubordinate.”

News of this investigation was quickly reported. “Wow, what a disappointment to have my email yesterday to you all was leaked almost immediately,” Martin wrote in another email. “Again, personally insulting and professionally unacceptable. I guess I have learned my lesson.”

Maybe not. A few days later, Martin was again chastising his staff after Reuters reported that he had put his name on a January 21 DOJ filing requesting that a judge dismiss charges against one of Martin’s personal January 6 clients, whom Trump had just pardoned. Martin, it emerged, had not withdrawn as the man’s attorney, putting him on both sides of the case, an ethical breach that drew a bar complaint. (In a February 5 filing, he told the judge that he had not actually represented that defendant since 2023 and asked to withdraw from the case.)

“I have said repeatedly over the past few days that we must protect our lawyers, staff, and all on our team from doxing, from attacks and from any threats,” he wrote in a February 5 email to his staff complaining about that “leak.” He urged them to join a training “to protect ourselves from unethical behavior.” This admonishment came a few paragraphs after Martin’s description of his visit to Frederick Douglass’ house in DC—“It’s a fascinating site and I encourage you to visit”—and a meeting with DC District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg and other judges: “It was an off the record conversation, but I can say it was an extraordinary one.”

“Noone Is Above the Law”

Martin has also made repeated public offers of DOJ assistance in combating the Trump administration’s enemies. Shortly after Wired reported the names of engineers working for Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency—prompting a flurry of social media attention and public complaints from the billionaire—Martin posted an image of a letter to Musk on X. In it, he typed, “Dear Elon,” which he then crossed out and replaced with a handwritten “Elon.”

“I ask that you utilize me and my staff to assist in protecting the DOGE work and DOGE workers,” Martin wrote. “Any threats, confrontations, or other actions in any way that impact their work may break numerous laws.” Five hours later, Martin posted that his office already had found that “certain individuals and/or groups have committed acts that appear to violate the law in targeting DOGE employees.”

Martin released a new letter February 7—which he clarified had been “sent only via X.” He again crossed out a typed “Elon” in favor of a handwritten “Elon.”

Follow up.
Sent only via X: to ⁦@elonmusk⁩ pic.twitter.com/FVO7pDFf3Q

— Ed Martin (@EagleEdMartin) February 7, 2025

“Thank you for the referral of individuals and networks who appear to be stealing government property and/or threatening government employees,” Martin wrote. “If people are discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically, we will investigate them and we will chase them to the end of the Earth to hold them accountable.”

He added, misspelled and in bold: “Noone is above the law.”

Martin has since routinely used his X account to publicly suggest that the Trump DOJ might take action in response to allegations lobbed on social media. “Duly noted,” he wrote in response to a request from the Homeland Security Department X account that he look into an unsubstantiated DOGE claim that a “Biden transition team member” had rigged a contract. “We are on it.”

As large protests against DOGE began last month, Martin retweeted a post by Mike Cernovich, a commentator known for his role in boosting a false conspiracy theory related to Pizzagate back in 2016. Cernovich was now suggesting that Trump fans take advantage of Martin’s presence at the DOJ to “attend far left wing rallies, capture the reaction, and where appropriate, seek criminal prosecution.”

Martin in January personally wrote to Schumer, threatening legal action over a 2020 speech warning Supreme Court justices against curtailing abortion rights. “You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price,” Schumer said at the time. The Democratic senator wasn’t threatening actual violence, but he expressed regret for his statement the day after he made it, saying he meant “there would be political consequences.” And his chief of staff appears to have explained that in a response to Martin’s query.

But Martin, in a February email, asserted that Schumer had ignored him, calling the snub “a personal disappointment and professionally unacceptable.” That’s nearly the same phrase Martin used to berate his staff for email leaks. He urged Schumer to “complete this inquiry before any action is taken. I remind you: no one is above the law.”

Days later, Martin forced the resignation of Denise Cheung, a 24-year DOJ veteran, after she declined to launch a criminal probe and freeze assets of an environmental group awarded a contract by the Biden administration. Martin then personally submitted a seizure warrant application, an extraordinary move for a US attorney. A magistrate judge rejected the request, finding the application lacked sufficient evidence of a crime, the Washington Post reported.

pic.twitter.com/utpmdIEmk7

— U.S. Attorney DC (@USAO_DC) February 24, 2025

The same week, Martin helped defend the administration from a lawsuit filed by the Associated Press, which had been barred from some White House events over the news organization’s refusal to adopt “Gulf of America” in its style guide. “As President Trumps’ [sic] lawyers, we are proud to fight to protect his leadership as our President,” he declared in a graphic posted on X by the US attorney’s office while a court hearing in the case was taking place. The AP, he complained, was refusing “to put America first.”

On February 17, Trump officially nominated Martin for the permanent US attorney job. His conduct so far could complicate his Senate confirmation. Even Sen. Josh Hawley, Martin’s fellow Missouri election denier, has declined to commit to backing him. But the same antics that leave some Republican lawmakers wary of Martin appear to make him exactly who the president wants.

Meanwhile, Martin is still firing off communiques. A few days after ousting Cheung, he sent his staff pictures from a meeting with Joe diGenova, a pro-Trump former DC US attorney who once claimed Fox News “is compromised when it comes to” George Soros. “These weeks have been a whirlwind,” Martin commented. “Meeting so many new people.”

In a March 15 Substack post, Martin again groused about his emails leaking. “Personally insulting and professionally unacceptable,” he wrote. “But regularly happening.” He added that he is “actively and carefully (quietly!) investigating. And when I find the leaks, you will find the accountability.”

The same day, Martin renewed his search for “Mr. Coffee,” posting a video he’d previously made suggesting “the real architects of January 6” were connected to the FBI. “Worth a look, no?” the interim US attorney wrote. “Who lied to us?”

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Fossil Fuel Execs Urge Canada’s Leaders to Follow Trump’s Lead, Declare Energy Emergency

This story was originally published b_y Canada’s National Observer a_nd is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Oil and gas executives in Canada are calling on Canadian federal leaders to take their cues from US President Donald Trump—they’re asking the government to declare a national energy crisis to fast-track expensive fossil fuel infrastructure that would increase production and export capacity.

“By declaring a Canadian energy crisis and key projects in the ‘national interest,’ the federal government will be able to use all its available emergency powers to ensure that the dramatic regulatory restructuring required to expand the oil and natural gas sector is rapidly achieved,” reads an open-letter from 14 oil and gas executives, addressed to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, and Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet.

If the country boosts fossil fuel production, even if paired with carbon capture technology, global carbon emissions would still rise because the vast majority of emissions from fossil fuels comes when the fuel is burned. Climate science is clear that the planet will continue to warm to dangerous levels—leading to worsening extreme weather, premature deaths, lost species and disrupted economies—until greenhouse gas emissions reach net-zero (in other words, reduced until any remaining emissions created are offset by their removal from the atmosphere).

“Full decarbonization will require non-fossil fuel alternatives rather than a shift from coal to gas.”

The companies behind the letter include pipeline giants Enbridge, TC Energy, South Bow, and Pembina Pipeline, as well as major oil and gas producers like Imperial Oil, Suncor, Canadian Natural Resources, MEG Energy, Cenovus Energy, Tourmaline Oil, Strathcona Resources, Arc Resources, Veren, and Whitecap Resources.

According to an analysis of company spending plans, collectively, the signatories to the letter are already planning to spend more than $280 billion over the next decade increasing oil and gas supply and reaching new markets. But the companies now say to expand they need the Canadian government to “reset its policies and regulatory frameworks.”

Specifically, the fossil fuel executives say federal environmental assessment requirements and the West Coast ban on tanker ships of a certain size, are “impeding development and need to be overhauled.” They also want to see major projects approved within six months of filing an application, a commitment from the federal government to abandon industrial carbon pricing and its promised cap on oil and gas pollution, and for Ottawa to increase the amount of loans it is willing to backstop for Indigenous groups who want to invest in new oil and gas projects.

Environmentalists derided the request.

“As the source of almost one third of Canada’s carbon pollution, letting oil and gas CEOs off the hook for doing their fair share to fight climate change would make Canada a climate pariah, just like the Trump administration,” said Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada in a statement. “We can’t ignore that oil companies backed Trump’s rise to power and now demand Canada copy his declaration of an energy emergency to give them an unfair advantage against their clean energy competitors.”

The company officials say Canada is at a turning point and the country should grow its fossil fuel economy by boosting production and rapidly building new pipelines and LNG export terminals to reach new markets. The group claims that exporting Canadian LNG can help the world lower its carbon emissions, especially if Asian countries are willing to swap coal-fired electricity generation for gas—a position wildly at odds with climate science.

According to a recent study from Cornell University, emissions from American LNG are 33 per cent higher than coal emissions, when processing and shipping are taken into account. The findings add to a growing pile of evidence that the “bridge fuel” argument for LNG put forward by fossil fuel companies, is bunk. In China, for instance, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found growing LNG imports have not reduced the country’s coal demand due to cost, energy security concerns, and the “meteoric rise” of renewables.

In 2023, carbon emissions from the fossil fuels Canada exported were 47 percent higher than its own domestic carbon emissions.

“LNG is likely to play a trivial role in supporting the clean energy transition in China’s power sector. Even outside China’s power sector, LNG is doing little to displace coal consumption,” said Ghee Peh, an energy finance Asian coal markets specialist with IEEFA in a statement. “Chinese investments in coal-based iron and steelmaking capacity still far exceed natural gas-based processes, and full decarbonization will require non-fossil fuel alternatives rather than a shift from coal to gas.”

The call to ramp up fossil fuel production for exports comes as Canada and the United States square off in a trade war, triggering public debate about building new pipelines to reach new markets. But ramping up fossil fuel exports goes against the grain of global energy forecasts from the authoritative International Energy Agency, which expects global oil demand to peak by 2030.

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has embraced many items on the oil and gas industry’s latest wishlist. Like the executives behind Wednesday’s letter, he is calling for the removal of industrial carbon pricing, scrapping the oil and gas pollution cap, enticing Indigenous nations to support resource extraction projects with financial incentives, and repealing the federal environmental assessment for major projects.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she “wholeheartedly” supports the letter from oil and gas executives, accusing the federal government, which spent more than $34 billion building the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline to help companies reach new markets, of doing “everything they can to keep our oil and gas in the ground.”

“To leave this treasured resource in the ground would be an outright betrayal of current and future generations of Canadians,” she said in a statement.

The oil and gas industry is Canada’s largest and growing source of carbon emissions domestically, but its exports to other countries are even more damaging to the planet. In 2023, the most recent year data is available, the oil and gas sector’s exported emissions surpassed 1 billion metric tons—significantly more than the country’s domestic total.

Since 2012, Canada’s domestic emissions have fallen about 6 percent, from 744 million metric tons (Mt) of CO2e to 702 Mt in 2023. Over the same period, exported emissions from fossil fuels have grown 58 percent, from 652 Mt to 1,030 Mt.

Even if the fossil fuel industry’s requests to the government to boost production and exports are ignored, emissions are still projected to get worse in the coming years thanks to the opening of the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline last year, and this year’s scheduled opening of LNG Canada.

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“Send Them to Jail”: GOP Officials Keep Saying Trump Can Arrest People for Protesting

When Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, he made a solemn pledge.

“After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I also will sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America,” he declared. “Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.”

It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

In the first two months of Trump’s second term, we’ve seen the “immense power of the state” weaponized so often that it’s difficult to keep track. The president and his administration have sought to investigate and punish law firms that represent Trump’s foes, news outlets whose reporting displeases the right, and universities whose policies or curricula Republicans dislike.

In perhaps the most chilling abuse thus far, the administration arrested and is attempting to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a green card-holder and outspoken Palestinian activist who was a graduate student at Columbia University during last year’s protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. Khalil has not been accused of any crime. Rather, the administration has made the constitutionally dubious argument that he was legally targeted because Secretary of State Marco Rubio “has reasonable grounds to believe that his presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

In their public comments, Trump’s aides and allies have explained what Rubio’s legalese means in practice: Khalil is being punished because he is an immigrant who participated in protests that Trump doesn’t like. “This is somebody that we’ve invited and allowed the student to come into the country, and he’s put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity,” Troy Edgar, Trump’s deputy Homeland Security secretary, told NPR earlier this month.

Later in the interview, Edgar was asked whether he believes that “any criticism of the government” is “a deportable offense.”

“Let me put it this way,” Edgar responded. “Imagine if [Khalil] came in and filled out the form and said, ‘I want a student visa,’ and they asked him, ‘What are you going to do here?’ And he said, ‘I’m going to go and protest and join in antisemitic activity.’ We would have never let him into the country.”

In other words, yes, the Trump administration explicitly considers protest to be a deportable offense.

And the administration has been clear that this policy—that purportedly “anti-American, antisemitic, pro-Hamas protest will not be tolerated”—is not limited to Khalil. During a briefing on March 11, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt for a “rough estimate” of how many similar arrests of non-citizens the administration planned to make.

“I don’t have an estimate,” Leavitt responded. “I do know that DHS, based on very good intel that they have gathered at the direction of the president’s executive order, which made it very clear to the Department of Homeland Security that engaging, as I said, in anti-American, antisemitic, pro-Hamas protest will not be tolerated.”

Leavitt added that the administration has been “using intelligence to identify individuals on our nation’s colleges and universities…who have engaged in such behavior and activity, and especially illegal activity.”

The key word in that sentence is “especially,” which implies that the administration is also targeting law-abiding dissidents. Protests do not become “illegal activity” simply because Trump claims to believe they are “anti-American, antisemitic, pro-Hamas.” And, again, Khalil hasn’t been charged with any crimes.

If you are counting on the GOP-controlled Congress to push back on Trump’s efforts to trample the right to protest, you are likely to be disappointed. As Trump was promising on the campaign trail to deport pro-Palestinian protesters, Republican lawmakers, including Rubio, showed they were willing to do his bidding. And one day after Leavitt’s comments about Khalil, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.)—a close Trump ally who serves on Senate committees overseeing the military and education—went on Fox Business Network to defend the arrest.

“When it comes to protesters, we gotta make sure we treat all of them the same: Send them to jail,” Tuberville announced. “Free speech is great, but hateful, hate, free speech is not what we need in these universities.”

Tommy Tuberville: "When it comes to protesters, we gotta make sure we treat all of them the same: send them to jail."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 12, 2025 at 6:19 PM

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Report: The White House Easter Egg Roll Is for Sale

The White House is offering a new corporate sponsorship opportunity-slash-potential-ethics-catastrophe: The annual Easter Egg Roll.

According to a CNN report published Sunday, the Trump administration is soliciting sponsors for the nearly 150-year-old tradition—which is slated for April 21 and features games and activities for kids—through a production company that is helping stage the event. For sums ranging from $75,000 to $200,000, participating companies can get their logos or names slapped on Easter baskets and signage, along with an invitation to a brunch hosted by First Lady Melania Trump and a private tour of the White House, among other perks, according to a document obtained by CNN.

“Sponsors of WHEER [White House Easter Egg Roll] provide financial support, activities, and giveaways to enhance the event while gaining valuable brand visibility and national recognition,” the document says, per CNN’s report.

Corporate backing for the Easter Egg Rollis itself something of an annual tradition. But according to CNN’s reporting, this year’s “unprecedented” planned event goes well beyond prior arrangements:

The Egg Roll, which began during the Rutherford B. Hayes administration in 1878, has long been privately funded without taxpayer dollars, largely through the American Egg Board, which also provides tens of thousands of eggs for the occasion. And all money raised by [the production company] Harbinger will go to the White House Historical Association…

Donald Sherman, the chief counsel and executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), said he had “never seen anything like this before” associated with a White House.

“I understand that there are corporate sponsors for the Easter Egg Roll,” Sherman told CNN. “What I have not seen before is sort of the outright solicitation and the use of the imprimatur of the White House to give corporate sponsorship.”

Previous egg rolls have been a source of tension between those involved with planning and the [White House] Counsel’s Office. Multiple administrations had to tell Coca-Cola that thousands of Dasani water bottles donated for the event could not be served in Coke-branded coolers, for instance, because of the branding restrictions placed by the White House lawyers.

CNN also quoted Richard Painter—who served as an ethics attorney in the White House counsel’s office under President George W. Bush—as saying that what Trump is planning “would have been vetoed in about 30 seconds in my day…We’re not running this like a football stadium where you get all logos all over the place for kicking in money.” On X, Painter pointed to a federal law barring the use of public office for private gain, writing, “Back in the day, the White House staff followed rules.”

Of course, potential ethical entanglements haven’t always stopped Trump administration officialsin the past; it was only about two weeks ago, after all, that Trump and ElonMusk turned the White House driveway into a Tesla sales lot, with Trump buying a car on the spot to show his support for the company in the face of increasing nationwide protests and plummeting stock prices. And just a few days ago, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged Fox viewers to “buy Tesla…[the stock] will never be this cheap again.”

Trump and Musk turned the White House driveway into a Tesla lot, with Trump buying a car on the spot.Molly Riley/White House/Planet Pix/ZUMA

CNN reports that all money raised from Easter Egg Roll sponsorships will be put in an account run by the White House Historical Association, a private educational nonprofit. According to an anonymous source familiar with the planning of the event who spoke to CNN, excess funds raised will go toward other White House events, such as July 4 or Halloween celebrations.

Regardless, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called the news “absurdly corrupt” in a Facebook post.

The White House is working with the same event production company—Harbinger, founded by former Mitt Romney campaign staffers—that produced the Easter Egg Roll during Trump’s first term, CNN reports. Spokespeople for the White House and Harbinger did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones.

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Alaska Natives Want the Military to Finally Clean Up Its Toxic Waste

This story was originally published b_yGrist a_nd is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In June 1942, Japan’s invasion of the Aleutian islands in Alaska prompted the US military to activate the Alaska territorial guard, an Army reserve made up of volunteers who wanted to help protect the US. So many of the volunteers were from Alaska’s Indigenous peoples—Aleut, Inupiak, Yupik, Tlingit, and many others—that the guard was nicknamed the “Eskimo Scouts.”

When World War II ended and the reserve force ceased operations in 1947, the US approached the Indigenous Yupik people of Alaska with another ask: Could the Air Force set up “listening posts” on the island of Sivuqaq, also known as St. Lawrence Island, to help with the intelligence gathering needed to win the Cold War?

Viola Waghiyi, who is Yupik from Sivuqaq, said the answer was a resounding yes. “Our grandfathers and fathers volunteered for the Alaska territorial guard,” she said. “We were very patriotic.”

But that trust was abused, Waghiyi said. The US military eventually abandoned its Air Force and Army bases, leaving the land polluted with toxic chemicals such as fuel, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are known as “forever chemicals” because they persist so long in the environment. The contamination was largely due to spilled and leaking fuel from storage tanks and pipes, both above ground and below ground. More chemical waste came from electrical transformers, abandoned metals, and 55-gallon drums.

Now, Waghiyi is the environmental health and justice program director at the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, an organization dedicated to limiting the effects of toxic substances on Alaska’s residents and environment. Last week, the organization filed a complaint to the United Nations special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, in partnership with the University of California-Berkeley Environmental Law Clinic.

Their complaint calls for the United Nations to investigate how military waste on Sivuqaq continues to violate the rights of the people who live there, such as the right to a clean and healthy environment and Indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior, and informed consent to what happens on their land.

“By exposing the Yupik people of Sivuqaq to polluted drinking water sources, air, and soil, and by contaminating local native foods; by causing pervasive human exposure to hazardous chemicals through multiple routes; by toxifying the broader ecosystem; and by not cleaning up contamination sufficiently to protect human health and the environment, the US Air Force and Army Corps of Engineers violated human rights long recognized in international law,” the complaint says.

“We wanted our lands to be turned back in the same condition when they turned over.”

This submission from Alaska is part of a larger, global effort to raise awareness of military toxic waste by the United Nations. The UN special rapporteur on toxics and human rights is collecting public input on military activities and toxic waste until April 1. The information collected will be used in a report presented to the UN General Assembly in October.

The two shuttered bases in Sivuqaq, Alaska, are now classified as “formerly used defense,” or FUD, sites, overseen by the US Army Corps of Engineers, and more than $130 million has been spent to remove the contamination. John Budnick, a spokesman for the US Army Corps of Engineers in Alaska, said the cleanup is considered complete but that the agency is reviewing the site every five years “to ensure the selected remedies continue to be protective of human health and the environment.”

“We have completed the work at Northeast Cape, but additional follow-up actions may result from the monitoring phase of the Formerly Used Defense Sites Program,” he said. The last site visit occurred last July and an updated review report is expected to be released this summer.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency similarly concluded in 2013 that an additional EPA cleanup wouldn’t significantly differ from what the Army Corps of Engineers is doing and declined to place the sites on the EPA’s list of hazardous waste cleanup priorities.

A 2022 study found that so far, federal cleanup efforts have been inadequate. “High levels of persistent organic pollutants and toxic metals continue to leach from the Northeast Cape FUD site despite large-scale remediation that occurred in the early 2000s,” the authors concluded.

The persisting pollution has garnered the attention of Alaska’s state Department of Environmental Conservation, which oversees the cleanup of contaminated sites. Stephanie Buss, contaminated sites program manager at the agency, said her office has asked the Army Corps of Engineers to do additional cleanup at Northeast Cape.

“These active contaminated sites have not met closure requirements,” she said. The second former base, Gambell, was classified as completed but still lacks land use controls, she noted.

“DEC takes community health concerns seriously and will continue to provide oversight of the conditions at its active sites in accordance with the state’s regulatory framework to ensure an appropriate response that protects human health and welfare,” Buss said.

That same 2022 study found that 89 percent of the fish around the Northeast Cape base contained mercury exceeding the levels the EPA deemed appropriate for people who rely on subsistence fishing. “All fish sampled near the FUD site exceeded the EPA’s PCB guidelines for cancer risk for unrestricted human consumption,” the researchers further found. Waghiyi said the contamination displaced 130 people, and has left her friends and family with a lasting legacy of illness.

“It’s not a matter of if we’ll get cancer, but when,” Waghiyi said. Her father died of cancer. Her mother had a stillborn child. Waghiyi herself is a cancer survivor and has had three miscarriages.

“We feel that they have turned their back on us,” Waghiyi said of the U.S. military. “We wanted our lands to be turned back in the same condition when they turned over.”

The US military has a long history of contaminating lands and waters through training and battles sites, including on Indigenous lands. Citizens of the Navajo Nation in Arizona and Yakama Nation in Washington continue to raise concerns about the ongoing effects of military nuclear testing on their lands and health.

In the Marshall Islands, fishing around certain atolls is discouraged due to high rates of toxicity due to nuclear testing and other military training. On Guam, chemicals from an active Air Force base have contaminated parts of the islandʻs sole-source aquifer that serves 70 percent of the population. Last year, a federal report found that climate change threatens to unearth even more US military nuclear waste in both the Marshall Islands and Greenland.

In 2021, the Navy in Hawaiʻi poisoned 90,000 people when jet fuel leached from aging, massive underground storage tanks into the drinking water supply after the Navy ignored years of warning to upgrade the tanks or remove the fuel. The federal government spent hundreds of millions of dollars to remove unexploded ordnance from the island of Kahoʻolawe, a former bombing range in Hawaiʻi, but the island is still considered dangerous to walk on because of the risk of more ordnance unearthing due to extensive erosion.

The complaint filed last week by the Alaska Community Action on Toxics calls for the United Nations to write to federal and state agencies and call upon them to honor a 1951 agreement between the government and the Sivuqaq Yupik people that prohibited polluting the land.

The agreement said that the Sivuqaq Tribes would allow the Air Force to construct surveillance sites to spy on the Soviet Union, but they had four conditions, including allowing Indigenous peoples to continue to hunt, fish and trap where desired and preventing outsiders from killing their game. Finally, the agreement said that “any refuse or garbage will not be dumped in streams or near the beach within the proposed area.”

“The import of the agreement was clear: The military must not despoil the island; must protect the resources critical to Indigenous Yupik inhabitants’ sustenance; and must leave the island in the condition they found it, which ensured their health and well-being,” the Alaska Community Action on Toxics wrote in their complaint.

“This is a burden we didn’t create,” Waghiyi said.

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Trump Declares War on “Frivolous” Lawsuits

Late Friday night, the White House released the latest tranche of Trump executive actions and directives aimed at further kneecapping some of the nation’s most famous lawyers and law firms the president believes are obstructing his agenda or have tangled with him in the past.

One of the late-night directives is entitled “Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court.” Both terrifying and hilarious given its author, the memoinstructs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to aggressively pursue court sanctions and disciplinary actions against lawyers and law firms that engage in “grossly unethical misconduct,” which it mainly seems to define as lawyers and lawsuits Trump doesn’t like. Singled out for persecution are immigration lawyers and “Big Law” firms with pro bono practices that represent immigrants or litigate against the federal government, as well as Democratic Party lawyer Marc Elias.

The memo then states:

“I hereby direct the Attorney General to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States or in matters before executive departments and agencies of the United States.”

Trump launching a war on “frivolous” lawsuits is pretty rich given his long misuse of the legal system. As a private citizen, Trump was involved in more than 4,000 lawsuits, many of which involved his refusing to pay people for work they did for him.

For instance, ahead of his 2005 wedding to Melania, Trump ordered two crystal chandeliers for the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago from an 82-year-old Latvian immigrant in West Palm Beach who specialized in making replicas of chandeliers that hung in Versailles. He then allegedly stiffed the man on most of the bill, and when the owner complained to the local paper, Trump sued him claiming the installation work was shoddy.

The businessman ended up having to settle for only a third of what he was owed. “My client [was] just a small businessman. No big corporation. He just didn’t have the money to fight Mr. Trump,” his lawyer told Mother Jonesin 2016_,_ adding that Trump’s behavior in the chandelier case is apparently “his modus operandi.”

Or consider the time in 1984 when Trump sued the Chicago Tribune for $500 million because its architecture critic made fun of his plan to try to build the world’s tallest tower in New York City, calling it “aesthetically lousy.” (The case was dismissed, but it still cost the paper $60,000 in legal fees.)

Trump’s litigiousness didn’t end after he became president. In 2023, he filed a $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN for using the term “the Big Lie” to describe his false claims that he won the 2020 election. (It was dismissed.) That same year, a federal judge ordered Trump and his lawyer Alina Habba to pay the defendants nearly $1 million for filing a frivolous suit against Hillary Clinton, a handful of FBI officials, and the Democratic Party alleging that their claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election had hurt his campaign.

“Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries,” the judge wrote in his order tossing the case. “He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer.”

That’s one thing to be said for the expertise behind his new memo: Trump certainly knows a frivolous suit when he files one.

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This Week’s Reveal Podcast: The Deputies Who Tortured a Mississippi County

When Andrea Dettore-Murphy first moved to Rankin County, Mississippi, she didn’t believe the stories she heard about how brutal the sheriff’s department could be when pursuing suspected drug crimes.

But in 2018, she learned the hard way that the rumors were true when a group of sheriff’s deputies raided the home of her friend Rick Loveday and beat him relentlessly while she watched.

A few years later, Dettore-Murphy says deputies put her through another haunting incident with her friend Robert Grozier. Dettore-Murphy was just the latest in a long line of people who said they witnessed or experienced torture by a small group of deputies, some of whom called themselves the “Goon Squad.”

For nearly two decades, the deputies roamed Rankin County at night, beating, tasing, and choking suspects in drug crimes until they admitted to buying or selling illegal substances. Their reign of terror continued unabated until 2023, when the deputies were finally exposed.

“Rankin County has always been notorious,” says Garry Curro, one the Goon Squad’s many alleged victims. “They don’t follow the laws of the land. They make their own laws.”

This week on Reveal, reporters Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield with Mississippi Today and the New York Times investigate the Goon Squad, whose members have allegedly tortured at least 22 people since the early 2000s.

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While Washington DC Burns, Trump Golfs

It’s been 61 days since President Donald Trump promised that he would end the war in Ukraine on “day one” of his new administration, and the war is still going strong. Shadow president Elon Musk and his DOGE boys are upending Washington, laying waste to federal agencies and deploying law enforcement to break into the nonprofit Institute of Peace. Consumer confidence is in the toilet, inflation is threatening a resurgence, and the country is possibly headed for a self-inflicted recession. But never fear! The president will be hard at work this weekend, forcing taxpayers to subsidize his New Jersey golf club while he works on his backswing.

Trump’s official schedule for Saturday involves spending the day at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster until around 5:45 pm, at which point he will fly off to Philly to catch the NCAA wrestling championships.

This will be the seventh weekend, or 17th day of Trump’s second presidency, spent golfing at one of his own clubs, more than a quarter of his time in office. Earlier this month, HuffPost calculated that the golf outings had already cost taxpayers more than $18 million, much of which went directly into Trump’s own company coffers. The outlet also suggested Trump was on track to exceed the $151 million he spent during his first term, when he made 428 visits to a Trump Organization property and played an estimated 261 rounds of golf.

Clearly all that hard work is paying off! Last Sunday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he’d won his third consecutive championship at his golf club in Palm Beach:

“I just won the Golf Club Championship, probably my last, at Trump International Golf Club, in Palm Beach County, Florida. Such a great honor! The awards dinner is tonight, at the Club. I want to thank the wonderful Golf Staff, and all of the many fantastic golfers, that participated in the even. Such fun!”

Of course, critics note that Trump only wins golf tournaments when they’re held at his own clubs. He’s notorious for cheating. Last year, for instance, he boasted about winning the senior tournament in West Palm Beach even though he didn’t play the first round of the event.

In 2019, the sportswriter Rick Reilly wrote in his 2019 book Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump:

“Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf. He throws it, boots it, and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and foozles and fluffs. At Winged Foot, where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: ‘Pelé.‘ ”

Trump will cap off his leisurely Saturday by flying at taxpayer expense to Philadelphia to attend the NCAA wrestling tournament, one of his favorite sporting events. Fox News reports he will be joined by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Jordan is the former Ohio State University assistant wrestling coach who has famously been accused of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse allegations against a team doctor.

Trump clearly invited Jordan to join him to troll the libs. After all, the straight-laced and ultra-religious Jordan has never been known as the life of the party. (“He is wound tighter than a baseball,” former House Speaker John Boehner and fellow Ohio Republican once told the Washington Post.) But the notorious House brawler has endeared himself to Trump with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and vigorous impeachment defense. Trump may not enjoy Jordan’s humorless presence, but he will no doubt enjoy the joke of his attendance.

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Author and Activist Bill McKibben on Climate Progress in the Age of Trump 2.0

This story was originally published b_yYale e360 a_nd is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In the first six weeks of the new Trump administration, it’s become clear that the president intends to undo not just Joe Biden’s environmental legacy, but an entire generation’s worth of action on climate change. The administration has announced it is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. It has frozen Inflation Reduction Act grants, stopped issuing permits for offshore wind development, and declared an “energy emergency” to boost fossil fuel production. The White House appears to be preparing to go after the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” which undergirds EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, while cutting EPA spending by 65 percent.

How should environmentalists respond? Activist and author Bill McKibben has been a leading voice on climate change since 1989, when he published The End of Nature, the first book on the subject aimed at a general audience. McKibben spoke to e360 contributing writer Elizabeth Kolbert about the urgency of the moment, the role of protest, the future of clean energy, and where he sees glimmers of hope.

If you care about the future of the planet, what do you do at a time like this?

I think it’s fair to despair a little bit. I mean, we should acknowledge what a remarkable moment it is that the government of the most powerful country on Earth, at least for the moment, is rejecting flat-out the science that’s been developed over many decades, often by scientists working for the government, about the single most dangerous thing that’s ever happened in human history. And the level of irresponsibility, indeed just craziness, is off the charts.

The Inflation Reduction Act represented the first significant act by the US Congress to deal with climate science. It was a far from perfect bill, but powerful in many ways. So powerful that the fossil fuel industry needed to do what it could to shut it down and to shut down the energy transition to the extent that it could. And hence, the oil industry spent unprecedented sums of money—the number I saw most recently was $455 million—on the last election cycle.

“I sense in everyone’s despair and upset a sort of hunger for some kind of joyful possibility, for something to rally around.”

I’d say the two slight saving graces are, one, as the US retreats from leadership here, there are others, especially the Chinese, who have been stepping up to fill this vacuum. I have a lot of problems with the Chinese government and don’t particularly look forward to their hegemony. But on issues around energy, they’ve been more responsible than we have and built out most of the world’s clean energy at this point.

And the second saving grace is that though they can delay this energy transition, they can’t stop it. It’s rooted in the simple fact that we now live on a planet, as of the last three or four years, where the cheapest way to produce energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. And that won’t change. So, Americans may be denied some of the fruits of that technological revolution, and it will be delayed in ways that make the climate crisis far worse, but it’s not as if [the Trump administration] has complete control of this situation.

The moratorium that the Biden administration put on export permits for liquefied natural gas was a big climate win. You were very much a part of that. But now Trump seems to be using the threat of tariffs to get countries to increase their liquefied gas imports from the US.

This scares me a ton. It’s one thing for us to derail our own energy future, and it’s another to try and derail everybody else with what is essentially a shakedown. My guess is that it’ll work in the short run, and it’ll backfire in the long run. Europeans have figured out in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine that it was foolish to be dependent on the good graces of Vladimir Putin for their energy supply. Anyone who puts themselves more under the thumb of Donald Trump than they need to is a fool.

You’ve indicated you are worried about civil disobedience as a form of climate activism, because instead of looking at a night in jail, people might now be looking at a year or more of jail, as some activists in the UK have gotten.

I think that we need to continue to use all the tools that we have, and we will. But I do think that at the moment civil disobedience of the sort that we’ve been doing a lot of in recent years is unlikely to be particularly effective. I think that the Trump-MAGA world welcomes resistance of that kind. They like those kinds of fights. It energizes them. They’re cruel, and cruelty really is their kink in a lot of ways.

We’re gearing up to do this big national day of action in September. It’s called Sun Day. I think it’s going to be a huge celebration of possibility. And I think that that’s more dangerous right now to the MAGA agenda. They depend on people staying in a fearful crouch, convinced that whatever they have is under threat from somebody. And the idea of Sun Day, instead, is that we’re on the edge of this extraordinary possibility for solar.

I’m excited about figuring out how we do huge parades of e-bikes, and inaugurate dozens of community solar farms, and have thousands of Americans opening their homes so their neighbors can see their heat pumps. And get millions of people who already have solar panels to put a green light in the window that night to tell everybody that they’re powered by the sun.

I sense in everyone’s despair and upset—all of which is completely justified and correct—a sort of hunger for some kind of joyful possibility, for something to rally around as well as stuff to rally against.

The Inflation Reduction Act put billions of dollars towards clean energy manufacturing. So far something like 80 percent of the manufacturing investments spurred on by the law have gone to red states. Do you see any payoff for that with support for clean energy in those states?

I don’t know. The laws of normal political gravity in America don’t seem to be operating. That’s why we’re doing the Sun Day thing. We need to build again, and maybe from the ground up, a real constituency demanding action. And it’s got to include workers at that factory. It’s got to include solar panel installers. It’s got to include local officials who would like to keep energy money close to home instead of sending it off to Saudi Arabia.

There’s some hope that climate action will continue at the state and local level. Do you see that happening?

There are lots and lots of things that localities can do to make things much easier. For example, it costs about three times as much to put solar on your roof in this country as it does in Europe or Australia. The panels are the same price. The soft costs, which are mostly around permitting and marketing, are much, much higher because we have this endless welter of regulations that gets in the way of what should be a very simple act: just giving someone a permit, if they should even require one, to put a solar panel, a safe thing, on their roof. And so those are the kinds of barriers that we can continue to knock away in blue states and blue cities and really in some red states.

Last year in Germany, a million and a half people put solar panels on their balconies of their apartments. And in many cases, those were supplying 20 percent of the electricity they used. You can’t do that in this country. You can’t go to IKEA the way you can in Germany and just buy a solar panel and hang it from your balcony and plug it in. It’s illegal. And those are the kind of things that can and should shift.

One of the things that the new administration really has taken a sledgehammer to is every environmental justice program.

[Environmental justice] manages to combine the things they hate most in the world: clean energy and sensitivity to American history. It’s truly terrible. Just in terms of sheer honesty, we need to keep reckoning with the fact that the people who’ve done the least to cause the problems that we face suffer the most from them, here and around the world. And because these are people who are paying a huge percentage of their income for energy, in a rational world, that’s where we’d be concentrating this stuff first.

We also seem to be looking at the government potentially not doing any climate research under Trump.

At this point we’ll be very lucky if we keep operating the observatory at Mauna Loa [in Hawaii, which measures global carbon dioxide levels]. It has provided the single most important scientific instrument in the history of the world. But if there’s any good news in this, it’s that most of the really crucial science has been done. It’s certainly a kick in the teeth to watch what’s going to happen at NOAA and everyplace else. But my prediction is that the­­ Chinese will pick up a lot of this slack, because they’ve understood that this is their ticket to some kind of moral high ground on this planet.

“Our species is now fully capable…of moving from an energy source that’s concentrated in a few hands in a few places to one that’s diffuse and ubiquitous.”

The US has always had an uneven role in global climate negotiations, waffling in and out. But this time it feels different.

You can make an argument that it might not be the worst thing in the world to have the US out of the way, because we’re the reason that Kyoto didn’t work, we’re a big part of the reason that Copenhagen didn’t work, just on and on and on. And that’s a kick in the teeth because America is really where we learned about the climate crisis—it was from great research. And America is where the first wind turbine and the first solar cells and other key things came from. But, as I say, the slight silver lining to that cloud is we’ve been in many ways a stumbling block as much as a boost to getting anything done.

I’m wondering if you are feeling at all hopeful right now.

In a world where there are a lot of bad things going on, the one overwhelming good thing is this sudden emergence of this possibility [of clean energy]—a possibility that I think most people haven’t fully recognized yet. Even those of us who want it still refer to it as alternative energy, and that’s no longer the truth. It’s not the Whole Foods of energy, pricey and a bit nice. It’s the Costco of energy: cheap, available in bulk on the shelf, ready to go.

Our species is now fully capable, in short order, of moving from an energy source that’s concentrated in a few hands in a few places to one that’s diffuse and ubiquitous, available everywhere. And I think that’s the most subversive and liberating possibility that we really have at the moment on this planet. And in the places that have started to do the work, we get the sense of what’s possible.

What are some of those places?

California last year used 25 percent less natural gas than it did the year before to generate electricity. They reached a tipping point. They have enough batteries and enough solar panels out there that day after day they’re supplying more than 100 percent of their electricity renewably. And Texas is now putting up clean energy faster than California.

Pakistanis over the last three years imported enough solar panels to build out the equivalent of half their national electric grid. Truly amazing what happened inside of 12 months just because they had access to a lot of cheap Chinese solar panels. The same thing seems to be happening in parts of southern Africa.

And so those numbers—25 percent less fossil fuel in a year—those are numbers big enough to take a bite out of the 3 degrees Celsius [of warming] that we’re aimed at right now. And I think this is the only way forward. I do not think humans are going to change their behaviors in large numbers in short order in ways that will reduce our emissions. I think this is the path.

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Caving to Trump’s Demands, Columbia University Says It Will Ban Mask-Wearing

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Columbia University has agreed to terms set by the Trump administration in order to retain its federal funding. This includes a mask ban, and it’s unclear whether and how health exceptions would be implemented for people who, for example, are immunocompromised. The administration’s anti-mask demand seems to be in response to students at Columbia’s encampment wearing medical and other masks, which are really not that effective in concealing one’s identity.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, too, is reportedly trying to get lawmakers to include a mask ban in the state’s budget bill. High-grade masks remain the most efficient preventative safeguard against Covid, flu, and other communicable respiratory diseases. When Hochul first proposed mask bans last year, some New Yorkers I spoke with were angry that the bans were being proposed in the name of Jewish safety.

When Rikki Baker Keusch, a disabled New York-based Jewish community organizer, saw that Hochul was seriously thinking about a mask ban, they were livid. Taking Covid precautions has also become the norm in the Jewish community they are a part of in New York City. “We required everyone to test [for Covid] before Seder,” said Baker Keusch, who wears masks to protect themselves from infectious diseases during pro-Palestinian protests. Getting Covid again while at a demonstration would set back “all of the health progress I’ve barely been able to make since my last Covid infection,” Baker Keusch said.

As I reported, North Carolina passed the first state-level ban on masks in response to pro-Palestinian protestors. That was followed by a ban in Nassau County, New York, where police officers did not receive adequate training on what health exemptions could look like.

There are reasons for concern that a mask ban on a university campus could likewise be poorly implemented. “You’re not allowed to interrogate somebody about their private health information, or family member’s or loved one’s health information,” New York Civil Liberties Union senior attorney Beth Haroules told me previously, a fact Nassau County officials had apparently overlooked.

The date when a mask ban would be implemented at Columbia, and the parameters of the ban, have yet to be announced.

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As Powerful Law Firms Roll Over for Trump, One Lawyer Has Had Enough

On the heels of Donald Trump’s executive order targeting several top law firms over ties to the president’s perceived enemies and decisions he opposes, Trump on Thursday announced that he had reached an agreement to drop his attack against one of the firms, Paul, Weiss. The deal, according to a Truth Social post, will renege Trump’s threat to suspend the security clearances of the firm’s attorneys in exchange for Paul, Weiss to dedicate $40 million in pro-bono services throughout his term.

The deal was widely seen as a remarkable act of capitulation by one of the most powerful law firms in the country. And now, an associate at Skadden Arps, another top firm, is speaking out.

In a company-wide email that was publicized online, Rachel Cohen, a third-year finance associate, condemned her employers for failing to speak out against the Trump administration’s retaliatory efforts. Cohen said that her letter should be considered a resignation unless any meaningful action emerged.

“This is not what I saw for my career or for my evening, but Paul Weiss’ decision to cave to the Trump administration on DEI, representation, and staffing has forced my hand,” she wrote. “We do not have time. It is either now or never, and if it’s never, I will not continue to work here.”

Though she appears to be the most outspoken, Cohen is not alone in her anguish. Earlier this week, more than 300 attorneys joined Cohen’s open letter to so-called Big Law firms that encouraged their employers to defend the profession against the Trump administration’s attacks.

“We call on our employers, large American law firms, to defend their colleagues and the legal profession by condemning this rapid purge of ‘partisan actors,’ a group that seems to be synonymous with those the president feels have wronged him,” the letter states.

Trump’s executive order is one part of a long revenge campaign against people who’ve gotten on the president’s bad side. As our staff recently reported:

The last 10 years Donald Trump spent running for president had an organizing principle: They ruined America, and we have to take it back. The “theys” were a varied group: immigrants, whistleblowers, trans people, journalists, Democrats, civil servants, independent-minded Republicans. But Trump’s option for dealing with resistance was the same: unsparing retribution, often trampling the norms of a legal and political system attempting to thwart his antidemocratic power grabs.

As of this morning, Cohen does not appear to have access to her corporate email account.

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Greenpeace Verdict Stems From “Weaponization of the Legal System,” Advocates Say

This story was originally published b_y the Guardian a_nd is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The verdict against the environmental group Greenpeace finding it liable for huge damages to a pipeline company over protests has been described by advocacy groups as a “weaponization of the legal system” and an “assault” on free speech and protest rights.

A North Dakota jury decided on Wednesday that Greenpeace will have to pay at least $660 million to the pipeline company Energy Transfer, and is liable for defamation and other claims over protests in 2016 and 2017.

Rebecca Brown, the president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law issued a statement highlighting the threat the decision poses to free speech and the right to protest. She says the verdict is “a calculated attack on the sovereign rights of the Standing Rock Sioux and all indigenous peoples defending their land and water. This case is a textbook example of corporate weaponization of the legal system to silence protest and intimidate communities.”

ClientEarth, a nonprofit and partner to Greenpeace, said that the verdict highlighted the growing trend of big polluters using the legal system to intimidate and silence critics and that corporations want to send the message that “no organization that challenges the polluting industries is safe” in a statement on social media.

“This ruling is a blatant attempt to silence dissent and crush the power of grassroots activism.”

Energy Transfer was “frivolously alleging defamation and seeking money damages, designed to shut down all voice supporting Standing Rock,” Janet Alkire, the tribal chair for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, said in a statement.

“The case is an attempt to silence our Tribe about the truth of what happened at Standing Rock, and the threat posed by DAPL to our land, our water and our people. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe will not be silenced,” the statement said.

Energy Transfer counsel during the case, Trey Cox, said that the verdict showed that Greenpeace’s actions had been unlawful. “It is also a day of celebration for the constitution, the state of North Dakota and Energy Transfer,” he said following the decision.

Kevin Cramer, a Republican senator for North Dakota, also celebrated the verdict on social media, writing in a post on X: “Today, justice has been done with Greenpeace and its radical environmentalist buddies who encouraged this destructive behavior during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests with their defamatory and false claims about the pipeline.”

But experts and nonprofit groups expressed alarm over the verdict and what it means for constitutional rights in the US.

EarthRights, another non-governmental, nonprofit group, says that the Dakota Access pipeline protests were “overwhelmingly peaceful” and that the organization “proudly joins Greenpeace USA in speaking up against brazen legal attacks and ensuring that the environmental movement only continues to grow stronger, despite the appalling result in North Dakota.”

The case is being described by legal experts as a classic example of a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation)—a form of civil litigation increasingly deployed by corporations, politicians, and wealthy individuals to deliberately wear down and silence critics including journalists, activists, and watchdog groups. These cases often result in significant legal costs for the defendants, which is viewed as “a win” for the suing entity even if they don’t win the lawsuit.

The international environmental organization 350.org called the verdict against Greenpeace a “devastating legal ruling.”

“This ruling is a blatant attempt to silence dissent and crush the power of grassroots activism,” the group said in a statement. “It sends a dangerous message: that fossil fuel giants can weaponize the courts to silence those who challenge the destruction of our planet.”

They also warn that the fossil fuel industry is increasingly turning to “lawfare”—the use of courts and legal action as weapons of intimidation.

Brice Böhmer, the climate and environment lead at Transparency International, said: “In the face of a climate emergency, it is unconscionable that organizations committed to protecting our planet from the devastating consequences of fossil fuel extraction should be prosecuted in this manner. “As the world struggles under the weight of an existential climate crisis, it cannot be right that environmental defenders are being silenced by a weaponized legal system.”

Greenpeace says it plans to appeal the verdict, and some legal experts say it has a good case to do so. The appeal would go straight to the state supreme court, as North Dakota does not have an appellate level court.

Kelcy Warren, Energy Transfer’s billionaire founder, is a major donor to Donald Trump.

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What DOGE is Getting Wrong About Privatizing USPS

On Thursday, United States Postal Service workers, retirees, and supporters gathered in dozens of cities nationwide to protest the Trump administration’s efforts to privatize the USPS as part of the American Postal Workers Union’s Day of Action.

The March 20 demonstration in New York City was a cold, rainy day, but hundreds of demonstrators showed up in front of Manhattan’s James A. Farley Building, holding signs reading, “The Post Office Belongs to The People Not the Billionaires” and “Hands Off Our Mail.” The crowd also chanted in call-and-response, “Whose Post Office? The People’s Post Office” and “U.S. Mail. Not for Sale!” To the side, volunteers were handing out flyers to people passing by on the street.

An American Postal Workers Union flyer from March 20’s Day of Action.Nguyen/Mother Jones

The APWU, which represents over 200,000 USPS employees and retirees, announced these protests earlier this month. The union warned at the time that if privatization happened, the move would lead to “higher prices, reduced service, and the destruction of tens of thousands of union jobs.”

US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told congressional leaders in a March 13 letter that he signed an agreement to work with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency in a cost-cutting initiative that includes plans to lay off 10,000 workers within 30 days through a “Voluntary Early Retirement program.”

The agreement drew criticism from many unions and lawmakers. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), a ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said that DeJoy’s plan would allow DOGE to “profit off Americans’ loss,” especially those who “rely on the Postal Service every day to deliver mail, medications, ballots, and more.”

A few hours after a March 14 meeting with the APWU National Executive Board aboutDeJoy’s decision, APWU President Mark Dimondstein told me that the DeJoy-DOGE partnership didn’t surprise him since lawmakers and corporations have spent decades trying to gut the agency. “We don’t think they’re about efficiency at all,” he said, referring to DOGE. “We think they’re about how to rip off the public sector for the benefit of private profit.”

Dimondstein was also concerned about privacy for workers and people, pointing to DOGE’s threat to government-held data: “If need be, we’re ready to roll into all sorts of action, whether it’s enforcing our rights under our union contract or going into court to defend the privacy of postal workers.”

Earlier this year, Dimondstein told me that the US needs to reframe its approach: Instead of attempting to privatize the Post Office, what if it was expanded?

There’s new opportunity for financial services—tens of millions of low-income people are either unbanked or underbanked. In many parts of the world, people do basic banking and financial services through a public postal service.

In New York City, there were several speakers, including union leaders, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), and retirees. “I got 37 years in the Post Office, but this fight is not about me,” Jonathan Smith, the president of the New York Metro Area Postal Workers Union told the crowd. “It’s about my children and my children’s children having the opportunity that was given to me. There’s no greater feeling than a living wage job where you can buy your own house or car. That’s what the Post Office represents.”

Bill Bachmann, a retired USPS maintenance worker, pointed to the calls for better pay, benefits, and working conditions—there were signs that read, “Protect Good Living Wage Jobs” and “Hands Off Our Medicare”—as indicative of the moment many workers are living in. “It’s a war on working-class and poor people to transfer wealth to very wealthy people,” Bachmann told me at the demonstration. “It’s legal looting, and as I say, it’s all tied together.” Because of this, for Bachmann, “collective action” is needed that goes beyond simply writing to one’s congressperson.

Although other unions representing postal workers are also hosting protests across the nation, employees and retirees were not the only people at the rally—I talked with Cindi, a New York resident not affiliated with USPS who showed up in solidarity. “The Postal Service is American. It’s a public good. It’s not here to make a profit and we all depend on it,” she said. “There’s nothing like getting a letter in the mail—a real letter from somebody that you love.”

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Remembering One of Our Founders

Mother Jones lost a major figure from its early history with the death, on March 13, 2025, of Jeffrey Klein. He had been in ill health for some years, suffering from a painful nerve disease. He was 77.

Jeffrey was part of the core group that started planning this magazine many months before we began publishing in 1976. At that early stage, there were a mere half dozen of us, working out of a two-room office. Only 27, he was one of the youngest of our crew, his intense face under a thatch of red hair looking little different than it had when he was an undergraduate at Columbia just a few years before. Undaunted by the prospect of persuading established writers to contribute to a magazine that didn’t yet even exist, he energetically barraged a wide array of them, both famous and unknown, by the means available at the time: letter, phone, and just showing up. On a trip to New York, one of the people he called on was the late Ted Solotaroff, a well-known book and literary magazine editor. Solotaroff was so impressed by Jeffrey’s zeal for tracking down writers that he said, “Now I’m going out to lunch. Stay here and copy anything you want from my Rolodex.” Jeffrey’s determined outreach brought in, for our very first issue, a memoir that he edited, “Peking! Peking!” by Li-Li Ch’en. It won the highest honor in our line of work, a National Magazine Award.

Soon after that, Jeffrey occupied the position of managing editor, that we then began rotating yearly. Feisty, provocative, and with a productive contrarian streak, he always pushed us to be both trenchant and unpredictable. Over the half dozen years following Mother Jones’ launch, he brought in scores of pieces by other writers and wrote many of his own. His reporting unearthed ties between Richard V. Allen, at one point President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, and Robert Vesco, a shady investor who had fled the country to avoid prosecution. His other subjects ranged from a charismatic psychic to basketball star Bill Walton to porn mogul Larry Flynt to Jewish refusniks barred from leaving the Soviet Union. Soviet customs agents confiscated copies of the issue containing the latter piece at the Leningrad airport when we tried to bring them to some of the people he had written about.

Klein in Moscow on assignment for Mother Jones, 1978.[][2]

One 1979 cover story Jeffrey wrote was about 60 Minutes correspondent [Mike Wallace][3], famous for his brash, aggressive questioning of people on camera. Wallace, however, was extremely skittish about being interviewed by Mother Jones and refused to talk. “When we persisted,” Jeffrey wrote, “he said repeatedly that he’d get back to us and then never did.” Jeffrey did not give up, and when Wallace gave the excuse that he was about to fly across the country, Jeffrey said, “Then I’ll book the seat next to you.” Jeffrey kept his tape recorder on for almost the whole trip from Los Angeles to New York. He asked Wallace, among other things, why he seemed so soft on Richard Nixon, whether his friendships with many of the wealthy and powerful gave him “an unconscious bias,” why 60 Minutes never talked about the inequities of American income distribution, and whether “invisible hand signals are passed from the top” about what the show should or shouldn’t cover.

Wallace must have been glad when the plane finally landed.

In 1992, after a stint at another magazine, Jeffrey returned for a second spell at Mother Jones to serve as its editor-in-chief. In the six years he held that role, he greatly widened MoJo’s reach, not least by launching the first website run by a general-interest magazine. He also established a popular annual feature, [“The Mother Jones 400,” ][4]which had thumbnail portraits of the country’s biggest political donors—and details of what they expected in return for their money. In 1996, he published a special issue on the American tobacco industry, including an [investigative story][5] about its ties to that year’s Republican presidential candidate, Senator Robert Dole. A frequent target of Klein and his reporters in those years—a choice that proved prescient, given his lasting influence on the Republican Party—was Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

Klein during one of his appearances on C-SPAN.Photo courtesy of Adam Hochschild

Between and after his stints at Mother Jones, Jeffrey was editor-in-chief of San Francisco Magazine and founded and edited West, the prize-winning Sunday magazine of the San Jose Mercury News. He also founded a tech start-up, worked in public television, taught journalism classes at UC Berkeley and Stanford, and published a novel, The Black Hole Affair.

Jeffrey’s work as an editor and writer was often focused on the injustices of the world. He also experienced and overcame many of his own. When he was 12 his father died suddenly of a heart attack. When he was in high school, living alone with his mother, she became bedridden from multiple sclerosis for the remaining few years of her life. And, when he was 48 his first wife and the mother of his two children, Judith Weinstein Klein, died after a long struggle with breast cancer. He is survived by his wife Claudia Books Klein, who cared for him in his last illness, by his sister Carol White and brother Ken Klein, by his sons Jacob and Jonah Klein, by their wives Liz and Ana, and by four grandchildren. The family requests that any memorial contributions be made to theInternational Consortium of Investigative Journalists, https://www.icij.org/?form=donate.

[2]: Photo courtesy of Adam Hochschild [3]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1979/04/mike-wallace-60-minutes-interview/ [4]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1996/03/mother-jones-400-1996-overview/ [5]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1996/03/smoked-out/

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Tesla’s in Trouble. Elon Blames…Trans People?

Elon Musk and his GOP acolytes are using the proliferation of Tesla protests to double down on their transphobia.

As my colleague Sam van Pykeren recently reported, Americans across the country have been showing their dissatisfaction with the unelected billionaire’s dismantling of the federal government by protesting at Tesla dealerships—including one last weekend in Palo Alto, the Silicon Valley city that Musk previously called home. While many of the protesters have been peaceful, there have been some instances of violence and vandalizing Tesla vehicles, including in both Las Vegas and Kansas City earlier this week, where unidentified people lit Teslas on fire, according to law enforcement. In a statement provided to Mother Jones on Thursday, the FBI’s national office said the agency is working with local law enforcement to investigate “a number of incidents in which Tesla charging stations and dealerships were damaged.”

In the meantime, Musk appears to be doing his own investigation into the incidents at Tesla facilities—and by “investigation,” I mean boosting transphobia by blaming trans people for the events and reposting dubious data suggesting they are more violent than cisgender people.

On Thursday morning, Musk reposted a post from an X user who goes by the name Insurrectionist Barbie. “Of course 3 out of 4 of the people who have been arrested for vandalizing Teslas are transgender or nonbinary,” the user wrote, adding an eye roll emoji.

The user appeared to be parroting a story from the right-wing Daily Caller website, which identifies three people who have been arrested—Lucy Grace Nelson, Erin White, and Adam Matthew Lansky—who appear, based on media reports or their social media accounts, to be gender non-conforming. (It’s unclear, though, how Nelson, White, and Lansky self-identify.) According to a DOJ spokesperson, Lansky and Nelson are two of three people—along with Daniel Brendan Kurt Clarke-Pounder—who are facing charges related to allegedly vandalizing Tesla property. The charges carry a minimum of five years and a maximum of 20 years in prison, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Thursday.

Unsurprisingly, Musk ran with the fact that some of the people charged with the Tesla vandalism may be gender non-conforming, suggesting that it pointed to a larger phenomenon of violence perpetrated by trans people. “What are the statistics on trans violence?” Musk asked in his repost of Insurrectionist Barbie’s post. Ever the dilettante, Musk quickly answered his own question—with more of the baseless transphobia he has long spewed on his platform. “The probability of a trans person being violent appears to be vastly higher than non-trans,” Musk falsely claimed. “Hormone injections cause extreme emotional volatility. That is simply a fact.”

Actually, it’s not. Here are some actual facts: Trans people are more than four times as likely as cis people to be victims of violent crime, according to research conducted by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. The recent efforts of Musk and his right-wing cronies—including Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Libs of TikTok—to suggest that there’s an epidemic of violence being perpetrated by trans people are not new; the same assertions circulated after trans people were alleged to have been behind a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee in 2023 and a shooting at a Houston church last year—but there was no evidence to support those claims then, either, PolitiFact repeatedly reported. And while hormones naturally affect the emotions of trans and cis folks alike, gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy has been found to reduce depression and psychological distress.

As a spokesperson for GLAAD put it: “Promoting false narratives about transgender people, including baselessly characterizing them as violent, has become an all too common tactic in anti-trans fearmongering.”

Musk’s fearmongering did not stop with his repost of Insurrectionist Barbie, though. Just a few minutes after that Thursday morning post, he shared a graphic from a user by the name of Hanjo Girke that purports to show a higher proportion of trans women in British prisons incarcerated due to sex crimes than cis men or women. “Wow, trans violence is EXTREMELY FAR above normal levels!!” Musk wrote in the post, which he promptly pinned to the top of his X account.

What Musk missed, though, is that the data presented in that graphic is deeply skewed. The graphic claims that there are 48,000 trans women in the UK, and that 92 trans women are incarcerated for sex offenses. But the source of the latter figure is unclear, and previous data shared by the Ministry of Justice said the overall figure of trans people incarcerated for sex crimes was lower—about 60 total, which did not distinguish between trans men and trans women. Plus, the U.K. government’s own data shows that there are likely more than 48,000 trans women in the U.K. In the most recent census, which was the first to ask about gender identity, an additional 118,000 people reported that their gender identity is not aligned with their sex assigned at birth, but did not elaborate further; another 30,000 identified as nonbinary; 18,000 wrote in a different gender identity; and 2.9 million people skipped the question entirely. (The UK’s Ministry of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the figures.)

All of which is to say, the proportion of trans women incarcerated due to sex crimes compared is likely far lower than the X post suggests, because the number of trans women in the UK is likely far greater than the number listed. And as a 2020 report from the Bent Bars Project, an organization that supports incarcerated LGBTQ people in England and Northern Ireland, notes, trans people are generally undercounted in the prison system—which the UK government itself has noted—making claims that a higher proportion of trans people are incarcerated for sex offenses than cis people dubious. And as the report notes, marginalized communities are often policed, charged, and convicted for crimes at rates higher than other groups, meaning that the data is inherently skewed—even if a higher proportion of trans people were incarcerated for sex crimes, it wouldn’t tell us that they’re inherently more likely than cis people to commit them.

Trans rights advocates slammed Musk’s latest posts as disinformation designed to distract from his unpopularity and his suffering business interests.

“Rather than cosplaying as a medical professional and spreading misinformation on the internet, perhaps Elon Musk should focus on his rapidly deteriorating business portfolio and the growing American rage at his hostile takeover of government,” Brandon Wolf, national press secretary at Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement provided to Mother Jones.

“Elon Musk is the wealthiest man in the world, but spends his days scapegoating a small, vulnerable community,” Caius Willingham, senior policy analyst at Advocates for Trans Equality, added. “That is because Musk wants Americans to be focused on the one percent of trans people instead of the one percent of the wealthiest people in the world so that he and his unelected cronies can profit from the dismantling of the U.S. Government.”

Musk’s latest transphobic tirade came on the same day that his estranged trans daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, was profiled in Teen Vogue—and she’s not giving her dad, or his unhinged X posts, any brain space. “He’s a pathetic man-child,” she told the magazine.

Henry Carnell contributed reporting.

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A Child Died of Measles. Then Her Parents Appeared in an Anti-Vax Video.

The measles outbreak in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma continues to grow, with 290 confirmed cases and at least one death. Last week, I wrote about Veritas Wellness, a holistic clinic in Lubbock, Texas, that is reportedly distributing untested remedies—including cod liver oil, vitamin C, and the steroid budesonide—to households with measles patients with help from an online fundraiser that has been organized by the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense, which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. helmed until he ran for president. Last week, Kennedy reportedly had a phone call with Dr. Ben Edwards of Veritas Wellness, along with a local historian and member of the local Mennonite community.

Late last week, two Children’s Health Defense staffers, chief scientific officer Brian Hooker and Polly Tommey, the group’s director of programming for its video division, traveled to the west Texas region where the outbreak is most widespread. There, they filmed a conversation withthe parents of the unvaccinated six-year-old child who had died of the highly contagious viral disease a few weeks earlier. The young couple, members of the Mennonite community, attributed their other four children’s mild cases of measles to treatments they received from Veritas Wellness.

This week, Children’s Health Defense aired the video of Hooker and Tommey’s conversation with the parents. The harrowing interview could reasonably be interpreted as a strong case in favor of measles vaccination—had she received the MMR immunization, the child would likely still be alive. But stunningly, the anti-vaccine activists see in the parents’ story a very different message: that shots are unnecessary as long as measles patients have access to untested treatments.

Speaking in a dialect of German through a translator, the parents said, at first their child seemed to be suffering from a typical case of measles, with the hallmark rash accompanied by fever and mild respiratory symptoms. A few days into the illness, though, the girl’s fever persisted, and her breathing was becoming more labored. They took her to the emergency room where she was diagnosed with pneumonia. After being transferred to the Intensive Care Unit, the child was placed on a ventilator, before she died.

After the girl’s funeral, the couple said, their other four children, who range in age from two to seven, also contracted the disease and were treated by Veritas Wellness’ Dr. Ben Edwards. “Dr. Ben came helping us, and he gave them treatments, or like medicine,” the children’s mother said. “And they had a really good, quick, recovery.”

At one point, Children Health Defense’s Tommey observed, “We spent the morning at Dr. Ben Edwards’ clinic, and the parents are all still sitting there saying they would rather have this than the MMR vaccination because they’ve seen so much injury, which we have as well. Do you still feel the same way about the MMR vaccine versus measles and the proper treatment with Dr Ben Edwards?”

“Absolutely not take the MMR [vaccine]. The measles wasn’t that bad. [The other children] got over it pretty quickly. And Dr. Edwards was there for us.”

The mother did not hesitate. “Absolutely not take the MMR [vaccine],” she said. “The measles wasn’t that bad. [The other children] got over it pretty quickly. And Dr. Edwards was there for us.”

It’s statistically likely, however, that the siblings of the child who died would have had mild cases—whether or not they received the treatment. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in five unvaccinated children with measles end up hospitalized. Dr. Pedro Piedra, a pediatric infections disease specialist at Baylor University College of Medicine in Texas, notes that about one in 20 develop pneumonia, and 1-3 out of every 1,000 children with measles will die from complications of the disease.

For children who do survive measles, Piedra notes, long-term complications, ranging from lung problems resulting from pneumonia to a rare fatal neurological syndrome, can occur years after recovery.

Piedra emphasized that the treatments that the deceased child’s siblings received are not backed by robust scientific evidence. But they do reflect statements made recently by Kennedy from his position as head of HHS. In a Fox News interview earlier this month, Kennedy claimed, without citing research, that treating measles with steroids, antibiotics, and cod liver oil yielded “very, very good results.” Cod liver oil contains Vitamin A, which is often used in much higher concentrations to prevent severe complications from the disease. There is no credible evidence that cod liver oil itself can treat or prevent measles. If these treatments are “so efficient as an antiviral,” Baylor’s Piedra asks, “Why do we still have almost one in 20 children being hospitalized for pneumonia or some other complications due to measles?”

During their interview, the couple repeated several other unfounded claims about measles. The father added through the translator that he believed that measles strengthened the immune system overall, for instance, and that their children would then be protected from other diseases like cancer in the future. That’s not true—although the measles virus is being studied as a potential therapy for some types of cancer, research has found that it is more effective for vaccinated patients.

In a lengthy commentary section after the interview, Tommey described her visit to Veritas Wellness. “These parents had no fear,” she said. “They’re not wearing any masks. There’s no Plexiglas. There’s no six feet apart. They were sitting around in chairs, and at times, laughing. Their babies still have these ghastly coughs and stuff, but there was no fear in the room.” They also suggested without evidence that many vaccinated people were coming down with measles and wondered aloud whether they would be infected with the disease themselves after having visited the clinic. (Tommey said she had previously had the measles and Hooker said he had been vaccinated.) Children’s Health Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

Children Health Defense’s Hooker is also listed as the creator of the online fundraising campaign to help Dr. Edwards distribute measles remedies. The $16,000 it has reportedly collected so far will be “used to defray the cost of essential vitamins, supplements, and medicines necessary to treat children enduring complications from the measles virus and other illnesses,” its website states.

In response to a query from Mother Jones about the clinic’s promotion of unproven measles remedies, a CDC spokesperson provided a link to a February 27th statement on the outbreak. “Vaccination remains the best defense against measles infection,” it said. “Supportive care, including vitamin A administration under the direction of a physician, may be appropriate.”

On Wednesday, Children’s Health Defense aired a follow-up video in which Hooker and Tommey claimed that they had obtained the deceased child’s hospital records and had come to the conclusion that she had not died of measles but rather as a result of the hospital using the wrong treatment protocol. The doctor who reviewed the medical records was Pierre Kory, a pulmonologist who gained notoriety during the Covid pandemic for his promotion of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin as a treatment for the disease, despite abundant evidence that it wasn’t effective. The American Board of Internal Medicine has since revoked Kory’s certification.

The parents of the child who died said in the interview that their daughter’s death had been very hard for the whole family, especially her siblings, with whom she had shared a bed. But they believed that her death was God’s will. “It was her time on Earth,” the translator said. “They believe that she’s better off where she is now, versus all the negativity and all the stuff going on. They think she was too good for this earth.”

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How Chinese EV Manufacturer BYD Hopes to Drive Tesla off the Road

This story was originally published b_y the Guardian a_nd is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The leading Chinese electric carmaker BYD has soared in value after it said its latest batteries charge fast enough to 249 miles of range in only five minutes.

BYD’s Hong Kong-listed shares gained 4.1 percent on Tuesday to hit a record high of 408.80 Hong Kong dollars (US $40.58), as investors bet that the company could strengthen its already commanding market position.

The Chinese company is already the world’s biggest manufacturer of battery electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars that combine a battery and a polluting petrol engine. Investors including Warren Buffett have bet that the company can extend its lead in electric car production—and the sale of batteries to rival carmakers.

Here is what you need to know.

What’s special about the cars?
BYD founder Wang Chuanfu—often described as China’s Elon Musk—said flagship models would be able to receive 1 megawatt of power, or 1,000 kilowatts (kW), allowing the company to “completely solve users’ charging anxiety.”

The first models to have the super-fast charging technology will be the Han L saloon and the Tang L SUV. At megawatt speed, the new cars achieve “the same speed of oil and electricity” in terms of charging time.

A 10C rating means it can charge to full in six minutes—every second adds about 1.25 miles in range.

How does in compare with the competition?
Tesla narrowly retained its title as the biggest maker of pure electric cars in 2024, but BYD’s announcement appeared to prompt investors to question whether the company run by Musk—distracted by his allegiance to Donald Trump—could fall behind. Most of Tesla’s “supercharger” network—a key part of its appeal to early electric car buyers—can provide enough charge in 15 minutes to drive 172 miles at a power level of up to 250kW, although its latest chargers will reach 500kW.

Tesla shares shed almost 5 percent on Monday; as of Wednesday evening, they remained down about 6 percent from the start of the week.

Eunice Lee, the Asian autos analyst at Bernstein, an investment research company, cited Chinese rivals XPeng and Zeekr, whose respective 5C and 5.5C charging systems can add about 280 miles and 342 miles of range in 10 minutes. She was “generally impressed” by BYD’s claims, after it had lagged behind rivals.

For comparison, a mains plug (standard socket) offers about 2.3 kW of power—compared with the 1,000 kW that BYD claims. In the UK, “ultra-rapid” is generally considered to be above 150 kW, although there are dozens of chargers on main roads as fast as 350 kW.

How is such fast charging possible?
The chargers need to deliver ultra-high voltage and ultra-large current at the same time. But big currents, in particular, cause problems for batteries because they tend to generate damaging heat. BYD said it had managed to reduce the internal resistance of the new battery, allowing the highest charging speeds for any production vehicle.

To handle the high voltages, BYD also had to produce a new generation of silicon carbide power chips, it said.

BYD also said it would install a network of 4,000 “flash-charging stations” across China to allow for the fast charging.

Are there any disadvantages?
The obvious one is cost: The new electrical technology will add to the cost of producing the vehicle—although the speed of the charging could make the cars more desirable for people with “range anxiety.”

Another big problem will be the cost of energy. Faster charging costs more, because more power is needed. That requires expensive connections to power grids, which mean that the fastest chargers command a big premium.

Added to that, it is unclear what effect such fast charging could have on batteries, which degrade over their lifetimes. In existing technology, regular fast charging comes at the expense of reducing overall range.

Will every car have this tech?
No—or not soon, at any rate. Premium carmakers will scramble to keep up with BYD, but in the mass market a lot of the focus is on reducing costs of batteries rather than going for the most advanced. Many drivers—and particularly those with private charging—will rarely need to charge at public chargers, except for the occasional long-distance holiday. Otherwise, they can top up overnight when energy prices are lowest.

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Republicans’ Social Security Attacks Disproportionately Harm Retirees of Color

On March 31, the Social Security Administration will cease allowing people to confirm their identity over the phone when enrolling or changing their bank information, according to a memo obtained by journalist Judd Legum’s Popular Information. The policy change means that anyone who cannot confirm their identity independently online will have to appear in person, a shift framed as minor but likely to harm a large number of the program’s approximately 70 million beneficiaries.

The move came as Elon Musk continues to claim—without providing any evidence—that there is a sweeping Democratic conspiracy to orchestrate supposed benefits fraud among noncitizens. This is not the only move that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has taken to undermine the Social Security Administration and the disabled and aging adults who need its services. DOGE is, among other things, closing 10 of the agency’s field offices throughout the country, which will compel some of those users drive up to 100 miles for appointments—like the in-person appearances the agency’s new phone rules would entail. SSA also plans to terminate 7,000 workers, around 12 percent of its workforce.

Retirees of color are more likely to rely on Social Security as their sole source of income.

Last week, 13 senators—including Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.)—sent a letter to their colleague, Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Michael Dean Crapo (R-Idaho), urging him to hold a hearing on Musk’s attacks on Social Security. “At a time when the agency’s workforce is at a 50-year low,” the letter reads, the potential loss of centuries’ worth of agency experience will risk worsening backlogs, lengthening wait times, and interrupting benefit payments,” the senators wrote.

Advocates say that the changes will have a greater impact on aging adults living in rural areas, who are less likely to have steady internet service. The Affordable Connectivity Program, launched in 2021 under the Biden administration to ease the cost burden of internet use, ended in June 2024; moreover, not all older adults have access to a smartphone and computer, or the ability to use them unaided for sensitive, high-stakes tasks like identity checks. Pew Research Center reports that 61 percent of aging adults, defined as people 65 and older, have a smartphone; 44 percent, likely with some overlap, have a computer.

There are also reasons to believe that Trump and Musk’s attacks on Social Security will disproportionately impact retirees of color. According to the National Academy of Social Security Insurance, retirees of color are more likely to rely on Social Security as their sole source of income in comparison to white retirees—a consequence of being more likely to have jobs that don’t contribute to retirement funds or provide pensions, and of being less likely to have generational wealth.

“Adding additional barriers such as discontinuing some phone services, imposing new online requirements, and closing field offices will harm low-income older adults of color disproportionately,” Tracey Gronniger, managing director of economic security at advocacy group Justice in Aging, said in a statement to Mother Jones. “When Social Security is your sole source of income, losing even one month of benefits can lead to hunger, poor health, and housing precarity.”

According to research from the National Equity Alliance, people of color across different income levels are also less likely to have access to a car, making it more difficult to travel between cities (or even within a city with less-than-robust public transit) to get to a Social Security Administration office for identity verification—none of which appears to be of any concern to Musk.

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Trump and Musk Are Running a Disinformation Campaign on Social Security

Donald Trump keeps saying he has no intention of slashing Social Security, but…he and his mini-me, Elon Musk, won’t stop making outlandish claims about the program and appear to be setting the table for cuts that they will try to call something other than “cuts.”

Just about every time they mention the program and entitlement spending, they lie. Musk recently denigrated Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.” It isn’t, but if it were, shouldn’t you whack away at it? And during an interview with Fox Business, he claimed there’s $500 to $700 billion in annual waste and fraud within entitlement spending—when there is no evidence of that (as Forbes notes). Moreover, he and Trump have falsely insisted there are a gazillion dead people on the rolls, implying checks are going out to ghosts.

If things go to hell at the SSA, older voters might get truly get pissed.

This duo of deceit is doing all they can to raise doubts about the most popular and arguably the most important government program. Meanwhile, Musk and his dodgy DOGErs have moved to shitcan or force out thousands of employees at the Social Security Administration, perhaps as many as 10,000. (Good luck reaching someone there on the phone.) The downsizing that has already occurred at the agency has led to “a significant loss of expertise,” according to one former employee. If things go to hell at the SSA, older voters might get truly get pissed.

Unlike ideologues of the right who have long salivated at the thought of shrinking entitlements and privatizing Social Security, Trump realizes such a move could be political suicide. So he has repeatedly vowed not to reduce the program. But should his promise be believed? (That’s a rhetorical question.) After Musk uttered an inartful statement this week about eliminating purported waste and fraud within entitlement programs—which some people interpreted as an expression of his desire to kill these programs—the White House rushed out a press release declaring, “The Trump Administration will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits. President Trump himself has said it (over and over and over again).” But here’s the tell that the White House cannot be trusted on this front: The statement was full of lies about entitlement spending.

The press release claimed Musk was correct to opine that waste and fraud in entitlement programs totaled up to $700 billion each year. To back this up, the White House listed four “facts” and provided citations. Nerd that I am, I clicked on the links and discovered—wait for it—these citations did not support what the Trump White House was asserting. Let’s run through them:

FACT: The US Government Accountability Office estimates taxpayers lose as much as $521 billion annually to fraud—and most of that is within entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid.

That is not what the GAO said. Its report stated, “The federal government could lose between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.” That is, could. Not that it does. And this estimate of possible fraud included Covid pandemic-fraud, which likely boosted the number. As for the claim that most of this comes from entitlement program, the citation supplied by the White House links to a GAO report that says there was an estimated $236 billion in “improper payments” in 2023. But it adds, “Such payments are essentially payment errors that can be the result of many things—including overpayments, inaccurate recordkeeping, or even fraud.” Medicare and Medicaid did have the most payment errors—$186 billion—but, again, that’s not necessarily due to fraud.

FACT: Over the past two decades, the federal government has made an estimated $2.7 trillion in “improper payments”—the majority of which come in the form of “payments to deceased individuals or those who no longer [are] eligible for government programs.”

This is highly misleading. The GAO report cited says that most of the improper payments were overpayments. As an example of an overpayment, it pointed to “payments to deceased individuals or those no longer eligible for government programs.” It did not say that payments to dead people or ineligible recipients comprise the majority of these improper payments—only that they account for some of these errant payments.

FACT: The Social Security Administration made an estimated $72 billion in improper payments between 2015 and 2022.

This “fact” left out important context. The inspector general of the SSA, who came up with this statistic, noted that the $72 billion was “less than 1 percent of the total benefits paid during that period.” While $72 billion seems like a lot of money, a 1 percent error rate is rather admirable for an immense and complex program. Plus, the IG said that some of these payments were deemed improper because of errors made by beneficiaries in reporting changes in their circumstances. These might not be instances of fraud.

FACT: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services estimated it made $140+ billion in improper payments in 2024 alone.

The White House is mugging the truth to foster the impression that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are ridden with fraud.

This was quite the whopper. Click on that link and you get a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services fact sheet on improper payments. Add up the figures, and the total is $86 billion, not $140-plus billion. More important, the CMS states, “It is important to keep in mind that not all improper payments represent fraud or abuse. Improper payments are payments that do not meet CMS program requirements. They can be overpayments, underpayments, or payments where insufficient information was provided to determine whether a payment was proper. Most improper payments involve a state, contractor, or provider missing an administrative step.” It added, “Of the 2024 Medicaid improper payments, 79.11% were the result of insufficient documentation.” In other words, these payments might have nothing to do with waste and fraud.

You can see what’s going on here. The White House is mugging the truth to foster the impression that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are ridden with fraud. No doubt, within enormous programs that disburse a combined total of about $2.8 trillion a year, there will be waste, abuse, and fraud. That needs to be addressed, and the feds routinely spend a lot of resources each year trying to do so (without having to be besieged by the minions of DOGE). In its fact sheet, CMS reported that the improper payment rate had dropped for several of its major programs.

By and large, the stats ain’t so bad. Yet Trump and Musk are running a disinformation campaign that targets Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, inaccurately depicting them as rotting with criminality. Why do that? What are they setting up? It’s not too hard to imagine.

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Mindless USDA Job Cuts Could Raise Food Prices and Unleash Agricultural Pests

This story was originally published b_y WIRED a_nd is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Before he was abruptly fired last month, Derek Copeland worked as a trainer at the US Department of Agriculture’s National Dog Detection Training Center, preparing beagles and Labrador retrievers to sniff out plants and animals that are invasive or vectors for zoonotic diseases, like swine fever. Copeland estimates the center lost about a fifth of its trainers and a number of other support staff when 6,000 employees were let go at the USDA in February as part of a government-wide purge orchestrated by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Before he received his termination notice, he says, Copeland had just spent several months training the only dog stationed in Florida capable of detecting the Giant African land snail, an invasive mollusk that poses a significant threat to Florida agriculture. “We have dogs for spotted and lantern flies, Asian longhorn beetles,” he says, referring to two other nonnative species. “I don’t think the American people realize how much crap that people bring into the United States.”

“We could be back to pandemic-level issues for some goods if we don’t fix this.”

Dog trainers are just one example of the kind of highly specialized USDA staff that have been removed from their stations in recent weeks. Teams devoted to inspecting plant and food imports have been hit especially hard by the recent cuts, including the Plant Protection and Quarantine program, which has lost hundreds of staffers alone.

“It’s causing problems left and right,” says one current USDA worker, who like other federal employees in this story asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “It’s basically a skeleton crew working now,” says another current USDA staffer, who noted that both they and most of their colleagues held advanced degrees and had many years of training to protect US food and agriculture supply chains from invasive pests. “It’s not something that is easily replaced by artificial intelligence.”

“These aren’t your average people,” says Mike Lahar, the regulatory affairs manager at US customs broker behemoth Deringer. “These were highly trained individuals—inspectors, entomologists, taxonomists.”

Lahar and other supply chain experts warn that the losses could cause food to go rotten while waiting in ports and could lead to even higher grocery prices, in addition to increasing the chances of potentially devastating invasive species getting into the country. These dangers are especially acute at a moment when US grocery supply chains are already reeling from other business disruptions such as bird flu and President Trump’s new tariffs.

“If we’re inspecting less food, the first basic thing that happens is some amount of that food we don’t inspect is likely to go bad. We’re going to end up losing resources,” says supply chain industry veteran and software CEO Joe Hudicka.

The USDA cuts are being felt especially in coastal states home to major shipping ports. USDA sources who spoke to WIRED estimate that the Port of Los Angeles, one of the busiest in the US, lost around 35 percent of its total Plant Protection and Quarantine staff and 60 percent of its “smuggling and interdiction” employees, who are tasked with stopping illegal pests and goods from entering the country. The Port of Miami, which handles high volumes of US plant imports, lost about 35 percent of its plant inspectors.

Navigating the workforce cuts has “been absolute chaos,” says Armando Rosario-Lebrón, a vice president of the National Association of Agriculture Employees, which represents workers in Plant Protection and Quarantine program.

“These ports were already strained in how they process cargo, and now some of them have been completely decimated,” Rosario-Lebrón says. “We could be back to pandemic-level issues for some goods if we don’t fix this.”

The Department of Agriculture did not respond to a request for comment. Republican senator Joni Ernst, who has been a vocal backer of DOGE’s efforts, previously publicly supported the USDA’s dog training program and cosponsored legislation that would give it permanent funding. Her office declined to comment on cuts made to it.

Two federal judges and an independent agency that assesses government personnel decisions have already ordered that fired USDA employees be reinstated. Earlier this week, the USDA said that it was pausing the terminations for 45 days and would “develop a phased plan for return-to-duty.” But affected staff remain in the dark about their future, and the Trump administration has signaled it will fight court decisions to reinstate employees, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt calling one of the rulings “absurd and unconstitutional.”

As these legal and regulatory battles continue to play out, Hudicka says he anticipates a number of trickle-down effects to happen, such as local market wars over resources, which bigger cities and larger grocery chains will be better equipped for than mom-and-pops and rural communities. Hudicka says that allowing shipping containers to sit uninspected could also impact other sectors, as the delays will prevent them from being reused for other kinds of goods. “Those containers are supposed to be moving stuff every day, and now they’re just parked somewhere,” he says.

Kit Johnson, the director of trade compliance at the US customs broker John S. James, also predicts prices and waste to increase. But what raises the most alarms for him is the increased likelihood of invasive species slipping through inspection cracks. He says the price of missing a threatening pest is “wiping out an entire agricultural commodity,” an event that could have “not just economic but national security impacts.”

Decimating the Department of Agriculture could even have consequences for US Customs and Border Protection, which deploys the dogs trained by Copeland and other staffers at the National Dog Detection Training Center. CBP works closely with the USDA in other ways as well, particularly at points of entry. The two agencies run the Agricultural Quarantine Inspection program, but it’s funded by the USDA. Many Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service programs do not rely on taxpayer dollars to operate but instead collect fees from importers and other industry players. In this way, it subsidizes some of CBP’s agriculture-related activities. CBP did not respond to a request for comment.

As the fired USDA workers wait to hear whether their reinstatements will actually take place, ports are beginning to feel their absence. “There aren’t as many inspections being done, and it doesn’t just put us at risk,” says Lahar. “It puts our farmers and our food chains at risk.”

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Israel Is Bombing Gaza Again. Here’s What Doctors Are Seeing On The Ground.

The ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, instituted in mid-January, was always shaky. It could even be argued it never fully existed. Sixteen days ago Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza, prohibiting any food or medical supplies from entering the territory, and cutting off electricity to Gaza’s water desalination plants. At the beginning of March, Israeli negotiators refused to move into the second—more durable—phase of the ceasefire agreement. Three days ago, Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of Palestinians, including a group of journalists. In total, between the ceasefire’s start on January 19th and yesterday, Israeli forces killed at least 170 Palestinians.

Then, the official break: Over the past day, Israeli airstrikes killed over 404 Palestinians and wounded 560, targeting residential areas and reportedly wiping out entire families. Now, it is inarguable. The ceasefire is dead.

“We haven’t had any meat or chicken in Gaza for the last two weeks.”

The United States was helpful throughout to its partner. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in direct consultation with US President Donald Trump’s administration as he ordered airstrikes, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said. In late February, Trump bypassed a congressional review to authorize $3 billion worth of arms transfers—mostly, 2000-pound bombs—to Israel. (Netanyahu benefitted personally, too; he was excused from a scheduled court hearing for his corruption trial today. And the mass killing has paid other dividends—ultranationalist right-wing minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, in an apparent response to the airstrikes, said today that he will rejoin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.)

Netanyahu has called the offensive “open-ended,” making it unclear whether this means another ground assault into Gaza, where Palestinians have hardly begun rebuilding from the previous sixteen months of nearly nonstop bombardment.

“This is only the beginning,” Netanyahu said Tuesday. Future ceasefire talks, he said, will take place “only under fire.”

Gazan doctors being trained by an international delegation to perform ultrasounds.Dr. Sabrina Das

Trump’s justification for his “full backing” of these airstrikes was that Hamas has not released all of the scheduled Israeli hostages. But many hostage families are decrying the resumption of violence. Bombing the place where their family members are being held hostage puts relatives in danger.

The international condemnations are rolling in, too. United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk described this round of bombing as “adding tragedy onto tragedy.” Palestinians themselves want more than condemnations, though. As Palestinian UN ambassador Riyad Mansour told his colleagues Tuesday, “You are the Security Council. Act. Stop this criminal action. Stop them from denying our people food in the month of Ramadan. You have resolutions. Act. You have power. Act.”

Throughout both the bombardment and the ceasefire the only internationals allowed into Gaza have been doctors and aid workers. Two of those doctors called me from Gaza and told me what they saw.

Sabrina Das, an OBGYN from the UK, entered Gaza earlier this month hoping to be part of the rebuilding effort. She was there to train primary healthcare workers in using ultrasound machines for prenatal care. She traveled from south to north Gaza each day to go to the clinic.

“All I could think was: We’re going to go back to this, and the world is going to continue to not care.”

The training was “really, really successful,” Das said. “There’s just been this real thirst for knowledge and development, and also, you know, just normalcy.” She was planning to bring handheld ultrasound machines to the north Gaza clinic where she holds the training “within the next couple of days.”

But, in the middle of the night on March 18th, she woke up to the sound of bombs—and the news that the Netzarim Corridor between north and south Gaza was closed once again. That meant she wouldn’t be able to deliver the ultrasound machines after all.

A damaged UNRWA clinic.Dr. Sabrina Das

“I mean, my brain knew that the ceasefire might or might not hold,” Das said. But her colleagues’ hope to rebuild their lives was infectious. “I’d just gotten so caught up in the optimism all around me.”

She and her colleagues plan to go to Nasser Hospital and serve as extra hands while they can. And for some of those doctors, this all feels familiar. Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, from California, has been to Gaza three times in the past year.

“I think ceasefire is a very loose term,” Abughnaim said. “Although the frequency of air strikes was minimized, that did not necessarily guarantee our safety.” When she arrived, the infrastructure around her was still demolished—and, two weeks before today’s bombings, Israel stopped letting food into Gaza. “I wouldn’t say we entered Gaza at a time of peace and quiet.”

“We haven’t had any meat or chicken in Gaza for the last two weeks,” she said. “There’s only so many ways that you can make canned tuna, and they’re utilizing all of them.”

Nonetheless, Abughnaim said, the day before the bombing was the most normal she had ever felt in Gaza. She had the chance to walk on the beach, and she even planned to take a bus north to visit friends. People sold goods out of pop-up market stalls in front of the hospital complex, and children played in the streets. There was, for once, “a semblance of people returning to life around us.”

Then they woke up to the bombs.

“We were up from two to 6 a.m., maybe got a half-hour of sleep, and all I could think was: we’re going to go back to this, and the world is going to continue to not care,” Abughnaim said. “I don’t know why more people aren’t burning shit down over this, I really don’t.” She has tried to talk to her legislators about Gaza, she said, but is met with canned responses that Israel has the right to defend itself.

El Shifa hospital, destroyed in previous attacks.Dr. Sabrina Das

Meanwhile, she said, she was receiving dispatches from colleagues across the strip. One doctor, at Shifa Hospital, went out on the balcony after a night spent intubating children and counted 50 bodies in the courtyard.

“I’ve gotten messages from nurses saying, this is the worst night we’ve experienced in a very, very long time,” Abughnaim said. Today, outside the guest house where the foreign physicians are staying, there were no children playing.

“Americans need to know that the Trump administration has signed off on all of this,” Abughnaim said. “They need to know that Israel has violated the terms of the ceasefire by this unprovoked attack, and they need to know that the ceasefire itself was not, in reality, a ceasefire. It has been a time of strategic mass starvation for the Palestinian people. I don’t know what kind of ceasefire agreement includes provisions for mass starvation, but it’s not one that any reasonable person would accept.”

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Ken Paxton Finally Found Healthcare Providers to Charge With “Illegal” Abortion

In what appears to be the first arrests of healthcare providers for allegedly violating a post-Roe v. Wade state abortion ban, Maria Margarita Rojas, a midwife working in the region around Houston, and her employee, medical assistant Jose Manuel Cendan Ley, were taken into custody by Texas authorities on Monday.

Court records from Waller County, west of Houston, show that law enforcement initially accused Rojas with practicing medicine without a license, but on Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that he was adding the illegal performance of an abortion to her indictment—a second-degree felony in Texas, carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Ley is facing the same charges.

The New York Times reports that court documents allege that Rojas “attempted an abortion” on a woman on two occasions in March and was “known by law enforcement to have performed an abortion” on another patient this year. In his press release, Paxton claimed that Rojas ran a network of clinics in towns around Houston that “unlawfully employed unlicensed individuals who falsely presented themselves as licensed medical professionals.” The website for the network, Clinicás Latinoamericanas, advertises urgent care services, treatment for chronic illness, and dietary counseling to a Spanish-language community. Paxton’s office said it had filed for a temporary restraining order to shut down the clinics.

On Tuesday, Paxton announced that a third person associated with the clinics, nurse practitioner Rubildo Labanino Matos, whose license is currently on probation, was arrested on March 8 and charged with conspiracy to practice medicine without a license.

“I will always do everything in my power to protect the unborn, defend our state’s pro-life laws, and work to ensure that unlicensed individuals endangering the lives of women by performing illegal abortions are fully prosecuted,” Paxton said in his statement on Monday. “Texas law protecting life is clear, and we will hold those who violate it accountable.”

Maternal deaths have surged in Texas since it enacted its abortion ban, according to an analysis published last month by ProPublica. Dozens more pregnant and postpartum patients died in Texas hospitals in 2022 and 2023, compared to before the pandemic. Sepsis rates likewise rose more than 50 percent among women who were hospitalized after losing their pregnancies in the second trimester. Experts attribute the increasing danger of being pregnant in Texas to doctors delaying or withholding treatments out of fear of running afoul of the state abortion ban, which only provides a narrow exception to save the life of a patient.

It’s unsurprising then that these charges are coming from Paxton, the three-term state attorney general who survived a 16-count impeachment effort in 2023. Ever since Texas implemented its near-total abortion ban, Paxton, a longtime abortion opponent, has embarked on zealous enforcement efforts of anti-abortion laws, even beyond his state’s borders. Nonetheless, until now in Texas, as in other states that have passed near-total abortion bans, law enforcement has struggled to identify abortion providers to prosecute—much to the frustration of the anti-abortion movement. The Texas legislature is currently considering a bill that would expand Paxton’s power by enabling him to target providers who send abortion pills through the mail. Like a mini “Comstock Act,” the measure focuses on the telehealth practitioners and community activists who, post-Dobbs, have become a critical part of the US abortion access infrastructure by mailing abortion medications into red states.

Instead of directly going after providers, Paxton has found other ways to carry out his anti-abortion crackdown. He sued the city of Austin last fall over its creation of a fund to help pregnant patients travel out of state to get abortions. He’s fighting to overturn 25-year-old HIPAA privacy rules shielding patient data from state investigators as well as recent regulations adding extra protections for abortion patients’ private health information. And, according to the [Washington Post,][12] last year Paxton’s office quietly launched an initiative to find cases to prosecute by collecting tips from the male sex partners of women who receive abortions.

“The doctors all across the state are saying that they are afraid that their judgment is going to be second-guessed,” Marc Hearron, interim associate director of US litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told [The Cut][13] on Monday. “All of these actions show that Paxton is chomping at the bit to go after anybody who provides an abortion.”

A tip from the male partner of an abortion patient is what reportedly led Paxton, last December, to [file a civil ][14]lawsuit against Margaret Carpenter, a New York doctor accused of using telehealth to prescribe the abortion medication mifepristone to a Texas patient. Carpenter, who is protected by New York’s shield law for abortion providers, has not appeared in Texas court to defend herself but recently was [ordered][15] to pay a $100,000 fine. In late January, a prosecutor in Louisiana followed Paxton’s lead and indicted Carpenter for allegedly prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant teenager. But New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has [blocked][16] attempts to extradite her.

The case against Rojas appears to represent the first time a healthcare provider has been arrested and jailed on charges of providing an illegal abortion. A [website for a birthing][17] center linked to Clinicás Latinoamericanas says Rojas was born in Peru, received her Texas midwife certification in 2018, and has attended “over 700 births in community-based and hospital settings.” The birthing centeropened the same year Rojas got her license. Its website describes the center as focusing “on providing comprehensive care to pregnant woman and their families…Women here are treated with love and respect, empowering them to fulfilling their desire for a natural childbirth.”

Rojas’ friend and fellow midwife, Holly Shearman, reacted to the charges with shock, the New York Times reported. “They’re saying that she did abortions or something?” Shearman told the Times. “She never ever talked about anything like that, and she’s very Catholic. I just don’t believe the charges.”

According to [Bloomberg][18], Rojas’ bail has been set at $1.4 million, and Ley’s at $700,000.

[12]: http://ale sex partners of women who decided to end their pregnancies. [13]: https://www.thecut.com/article/texas-abortion-arrest-maria-margarita-rojas-midwife.html [14]: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-pills-lawsuit-shield-laws-texas-telemedicine-74c9b7d5c3c152e4c8f199b29132daec [15]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/health/texas-new-york-abortion-pills-lawsuit.html [16]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/nyregion/abortion-extradition-louisiana-doctor.html [17]: https://www.houstonbirthhouse.com/about [18]: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/texas-midwife-arrested-in-paxton-abortion-investigation

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A Constitutional Crisis Is Here

On Saturday evening, federal judge James Boasberg unambiguously ordered the Trump administration not to deport any Venezuelans using an extreme wartime presidential power. Boasberg made clear that the order applied even if it meant turning around planes that were already in the air. The Trump administration ignored the order.

Officials kept jets carrying Venezuelans flying towards El Salvador, where right-wing President Nayib Bukele has struck a deal with the US to house the immigrants in an infamous prison. The deportees had their heads shaved upon arrival in a dystopian video that was quickly promoted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House.

Senior Trump officials have left little doubt that they willfully disobeyed. “We are not stopping,” White House border czar Tom Homan said on television on Monday. “I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the Left thinks. We’re coming.” President Donald Trump has now called for Boasberg to be impeached, writing on social media, “This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President.”

Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney representing the Venezuelans suing to prevent their deportation, made the stakes clear on Monday. “I want to choose my words very carefully,” Gelernt told the court. “There’s been a lot of talk over the last few weeks about constitutional crises. I think we’re getting very close to it.”

“It’s essentially, sending someone, we believe, outside of the United States with no due process. With no ability to refute the allegations against them.”

Boasberg issued his oral order blocking removals at about 6:45 pm Eastern Time on Saturday. “You shall inform your clients of this immediately,” he said. “However that’s accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you.” A written order to the same effect appeared on the court’s docket about forty minutes later.

Flight data analyzed by the Washington Post shows three removal flights taking off from Texas on Saturday, landing in Honduras, and then continuing on to El Salvador. Two of those flights were en route to Honduras at the time of the court order. They then took for El Salvador despite Boasberg’s command that they be turned around. The third flight appears to have taken off in Texas about 50 minutes after Boasberg’s oral order.

The administration alleges that the last flight did not carry any Venezuelans covered by the ACLU’s suit. In a filing on Tuesday, the Trump administration said two of the planes departed before 7:25 pm, and the one that departed after the judge’s written order had only individuals with final orders of removal who were not being “removed solely on the basis of” the proclamation.

At a Monday afternoon hearing before Boasberg about the flights, the Trump administration made an absurd and unconvincing case for why not turning around the flights complied with the court orders. Deputy Associate Attorney General Abhishek Kambli argued that because Boasberg only ordered flights to turn around orally—and not explicitly in writing—the administration was free to keep them flying to El Salvador. “The idea that because my written order was pithier it could be disregarded,” Boasberg replied, “that’s one heck of a stretch.”

Kambli also suggested on Monday that the administration officials felt entitled to ignore Boasbaerg because the first two planes headed to El Salvador were allegedly outside of US territory by the time the judge weighed in. Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck has made clear that it is essentially nonsense to claim that Boasberg lost authority over government-chartered planes as soon as they left US airspace.

Nor does the administration have the legal authority to ignore a federal judge because they think he’s wrong. They must comply with court orders and then file appeals in the hopes of having them overturned. Instead, the administration defied Boasberg. As a senior Trump official told Axios over the weekend, “There was a discussion about how far the judge’s ruling can go under the circumstances and over international waters and, on advice of counsel, we proceeded with deporting these thugs.”

Bosaberg responded on Monday by ordering the government to provide information about the deportation flights or, if the administration refused to do so, to submit an explanation as to why the information could not be provided. The government respond by largely doubling-down on its logic. The Trump administration also said that because their motion to stay the judge’s order is pending, “the Government should not be required to disclose sensitive information bearing on national security and foreign relations until that motion is resolved, especially given that this information is neither material nor time-sensitive.”

Amidst the legal back and forth, it is easy to lose sight of what led the ACLU and Democracy Forward to sue in the first place. The removal flights to El Salvador resulted from the White House quietly invoking the Alien Enemies Act on Friday. The law, which came into force shortly before the now infamous Sedition Act of 1798, had only been invoked three times in US history before: during the War of 1812; World War I; and World War II. The White House has said that 137 Venezuelans have been deported so far under it.

Trump is providing no due process for Venezuelans who are accused of being members of Tren de Aragua. It means that they can be deported without ever having a chance to make their case to a judge. That is particularly disturbing because the administration’s now largely abandoned plan to deport Venezuelans to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base made clear that US officials often appear to be falsely accusing people of being gang members.

The Venezuelans sent to El Salvador in defiance of Boasberg now face a terrifying reality as they are indefinitely held at a mega-prison notorious for human rights abuses, while cut off from lawyers in the United States. Lindsay Toczylowski, the president and CEO of the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center, told Mother Jones on Monday that her organization is representing a Venezuelan asylum seeker who she believed was in that position after entering the United States last year.

Toczylowski said the client, whose name she is withholding due to fear of potential retaliation, had been detained in the United States last year after being falsely accused by US immigration officials of being a gang member because of tattoos. In reality, she explained that the asylum seeker, who previously worked in the arts, had tattoos “that you really could see on any art student in LA or New York.”

“They’re fairly benign. Clearly not gang tattoos,” Toczylowski continued. “But we never got to the point where we could dispute that fact because our client was supposed to have court on Thursday. And when our attorney went to court, the client was not produced by ICE.”

By the time of the Thursday hearing, Immigrant Defenders’ client had already been moved to Texas. They learned on Friday that he had been moved again but they were unable to determine to where. By Saturday morning, he had disappeared from ICE’s detainee locator system.

“This is someone whose had a lawyer the entire time,” Toczylowski stressed. “It’s truly a terrifying development in deportation [procedures]. It’s essentially, sending someone, we believe, outside of the United States with no due process. With no ability to refute the allegations against them. And in the case of our client, it’s happening to someone that we can definitively say has been wrongly accused of being in a gang.”

Later on Monday, around the same time Boasberg was hearing from the Trump administration, Immigrant Defenders’ and the Venezuelan asylum seeker were supposed to be in immigration court again. This time, his legal team got confirmation from the government: Their client is in El Salvador. They have no way to contact him, or any idea what will happen to his theoretically still pending asylum claim. A man with American lawyers has effectively disappeared into a Salvadoran gulag in defiance of a federal court order.

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Mass Protests Rock Serbia and Hungary. Their Autocratic Leaders Blame USAID.

As massive protests swept through the capitals of Hungary and Serbia in recent days, the embattled and increasingly autocratic leaders of both countries moved to crack down on critics, who, they insisted, have received quiet assistance from a hostile foreign entity: the United States Agency for International Development.

Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic, facing protests over economic conditions and corruption, have attributed their political woes to foreign conspiracies. They’ve blamed the movements threatening their power on EU bureaucrats in Brussels, on the 94-year-old George Soros, and—inspired by the actions by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk—on USAID.

In Budapest Saturday, tens of thousands demonstrated against Orban amid anger over inflation. The right-wing populist leader—who has trailed a center-right opponent in polls ahead of an election next year—vowed to purge critics at non-governmental organizations and media outlets that, he claims, were paid by the EU and the United States.

“After today’s festive gathering comes the Easter cleaning,” Orban said. “The bugs have overwintered. We will dismantle the financial machine that has used corrupt dollars to buy politicians, judges, journalists, pseudo-NGOs and political activists. We will eliminate the entire shadow army.”

Those remarks seemingly referenced Orban’s vow last month to go “line by line” through pro-democracy organizations in Hungary that have received US funding in an bid to “make their existence legally impossible.”

In Belgrade on Saturday, a crowd the government said was just over 100,000 people—and which protesters said was at least 300,000—rallied in the city center against President Vucic, another right-leaning populist. The assembly was part of a mounting anti-corruption protest movement set off by the November collapse of a concrete canopy at a train station that killed 15 people. Critics have blamed the disaster on shoddy work by contractors and alleged corruption by government officials.

But Vucic has called the movement a “color revolution,” using a term popularized by Vladimir Putin to suggest protesters are part of a western-funded regime-change effort. And recently, he has added USAID to the constellation of groups he says are part of the plot against him. Vucic last month cited Trump’s attack on USAID to justify raids against good-government groups, some of which had received modest funding from the agency. When a Serbian journalist last month asked Vucic about his son’s alleged links to criminals, the president responded: “How much money have you received from USAID?”

Such rhetoric has quickly become common among governments in central and eastern Europe. Leaders are using Trump’s and Musk’s hyperbolic and often false attacks on USAID—including Musk’s claim that the agency is a “criminal organization”—as a cudgel to attack domestic critics and civil society.

In Georgia, increasingly pro-Russian and autocratic Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has cheered Trump’s suspension of foreign aid and has accused USAID of joining in a “coordinated” attack on Georgian interests, the Guardian has reported. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico—who critics accuse of dismantling anti-corruption efforts to help political allies facing prosecution—has similarly celebrated the attacks on USAID and has asked Musk for information on past US support for non-governmental groups in that country.

But the trend of adopting USAID as a bogeyman looks particularly ominous in Serbia and Hungary, as those countries’ leaders edge toward using past US support, real or alleged, as an excuse to shut down democratic opposition.

“We are certainly seeing this played out in Hungary and Serbia with Orban and [Vucic] using Musk’s and others’ negative statements about USAID as a justification for cracking down on some groups that received USAID funding,” said Thomas Carothers, a democracy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Trump and his allies aren’t simply enabling such efforts—they are encouraging them. In a visit last week to Serbia, Donald Trump Jr. used his podcast to conduct a fawning interview with Vucic, in which the US president’s son eagerly amplified the Serbian leader’s claim that USAID funds were part of an international conspiracy aimed at undermining the Vucic government.

Trump Jr. asked if the canopy collapse that set off was anti-corruption protests in Serbia had been “weaponized, perhaps like our January 6.” Vucic said he had already reached that conclusion: “I was saying the same to my people here,” he claimed.

Asked by Trump Jr. about the extent to which the protests against him are “manufactured,” the Serbian president indicated the movement is wholly the work NGOs funded by USAID and other foreign organizations. “I am absolutely certain that your father and…Elon Musk and some others guys, they can recognize it easily,” Vucic said.

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The US Used the Alien Enemies Act to Detain Their Families. Now, They Are Watching History Repeat.

Heidi Gurcke Donald does not remember much about the Crystal City family internment camp in South Texas. She was barely three at the time. But Donald can picture certain moments. There were the floodlights, atop the barbed-wire fence, shining through the curtains her mother had sewn for the bedroom windows; the nursery school singing game in which she and her younger sister played Sleeping Beauty in the middle of a circle as the other kids stood tall and held their hands together in the air to form a hedge; the icicle her German-born father snapped from the edge of the roof on a frigid winter and offered on a cracked plate.

The Gurcke family was among the first group of German nationals and Latin Americans of German origin deported from Costa Rica to arrive in Texas in February 1943. They had been rounded up and shipped away as part of a secretive transnational State Department program known as Special War Problems. The hope was to trade “enemy aliens”’ in exchange for American hostages. Through the initiative, the US government orchestrated the uprooting of more than 6,000 Germans, Italians, and Japanese—connected through citizenship or ancestry to the Axis countries—residing in Latin America and sent them to domestic internment camps across the United States.

“It’s what happened to us, only on steroids.”

As Donald would later document in her memoir, We Were Not the Enemy: Remembering the United States’ Latin-American Civilian Internment Program of World War II, the Gurckes became “one of many caught in the far-flung net cast by US authorities seeking the enemy.” After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt’s proclamations authorized broad detentions premised on promoting hemispheric security. “They swept up all of us,” Donald said in an oral history interview conducted by the Texas Historical Commission in 2009 “with none of us being serious threats of any sort.”

Now, Donald, and descendants of those interned during World War II, are watching as the same law that authorized the imprisonments then is used again by President Donald Trump—this time without the United States at warand with the goal of speeding up mass deportation.

On March 14, President Donald Trump quietly signed a presidential proclamation invoking the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The 18th-century statute gives the president extraordinary powers to summarily detain and remove noncitizens from a foreign country during a “declared war” or while under an “invasion or predatory incursion.” Last used during World War II, the law served as the legal rationale behind the forced relocation and internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, as well as people of German and Italian descent.

As we previously reported, the Trump administration has long spoken of using the ancient wartime statute to justify hasty deportations, arguing migrants are leading an “invasion” of the United States. The executive order states that alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua—which the administration previously designated as a foreign terrorist organization—are “conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions” in coordination with or “at the direction” of the regime of Nicolás Maduro and therefore operating as a de facto government.

In a lawsuit filed on March 15 challenging the executive order as unlawful, the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward argue the Alien Enemies Act—which has only been used three times before, always in times of war—can’t be deployed against citizens of a country, in this instance Venezuela, that isn’t engaging in “warlike actions” against the United States. As a result of the proclamation, the class action complaint states, “countless Venezuelans are at imminent risk of deportation without any hearing or meaningful review, regardless of their ties to the United States or the availability of claims for relief from and defenses to removal.”

By invoking the centuries-old statute during peacetime, the organizations further claim, the president is trying to supercharge mass deportations while sidestepping the judicial process. “The Trump administration’s intent to use a wartime authority for immigration enforcement is as unprecedented as it is lawless,” Lee Gelernt, lead counsel and deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “It may be the administration’s most extreme measure yet, and that is saying a lot.”

US District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, DC, issued a temporary restraining order stopping the removal of Venezuelans based on the proclamation and instructed that deportation planes should be turned around. The Trump administration reportedly ignored the court order, deporting 137 Venezuelans to El Salvador—to be held in a notorious prison—under the wartime authority. (The administration said flights had already departed the United States.) “The White House welcomes that fight,” one official told Axios. “This is headed to the Supreme Court. And we’re going to win.” On appeal, the Department of Justice argued the federal judge’s decision violated the president’s inherent authority to remove those determined to be national security threats.

As Katherine Yon Ebright, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program explained, the US government has previouslyused the Alien Enemies Act to target noncitizens deemed “dangerous” solely based on their identity. In reaction to the Trump administration’s proclamation, she lamented that former internees and family members have “to watch their country fail to learn from the mistakes of its past.”

“I think my mother would have been completely terrified by this,” Donald says. “It’s what happened to us, only on steroids.”

In the 1920s, Donald’s father, Werner Gurcke, and her uncle Karl Oskar chose to relocate from Hamburg to Costa Rica. Werner married US citizen Starr Pait in 1936, and they settled in the capital San José, where Donald and her sister Ingrid were born. Werner set up a thriving enterprise as a middleman for imported goods. But by 1941, amidst growing concern of the Axis powers establishing a foothold in the region, the British and US governments blacklisted Werner and Karl. “I’m still an American,” Starr wrote in a letter to a friend at the time “and have written to the Government stating our innocence of any conspiring against it.”

Both men were jailed in July 1942 despite no evidence of their sympathy for or association with the Nazi regime. Later, an independent investigation would show that Werner was considered one of the “most dangerous German nationals” in the country partly because he had been treasurer of the local German Club. “People were just picked up because the neighbor down the street thought they were bad guys or somebody had heard what they thought was the sound of secret meetings late at night as they were passing by,” Donald says. “They were German and therefore they must be enemies.”

“When you allow the rule of law to disappear for one group of people in the country, it will soon disappear for everybody. And then we lose everything which we believe the United States should stand for.”

That December in 1942, the police took Starr and the girls to the German club, where they were holding the wives and children of those detained. The family was then made to board an overcrowded ship to the United States. Passengers had their passports confiscated and, without documents, were charged with illegal entry upon docking in California. After undergoing interrogation, they were handed identification numbers and put on a train to Crystal City, where a Popeye tribute served as a marker of the small desert town’s status as “spinach center of the world.” They entered the vast camp, once a migrant labor site, on February 12, 1943.

In a photo taken not long after the family’s arrival, a white-blonde Donald sits by her father. She’s not looking at the camera, instead eyeing her sister, both sick from whooping cough. The mug shot of the “Gurcke family criminals,” as Donald calls it, mirrors a similar photo she has seen of an interned Japanese Peruvian family. “The same exhaustion in the parents’ eyes and the same wariness in the children’s faces,” she says.

Donald didn’t learn the full story of her family’s ordeal and the impact it had on her parents until adulthood. Her father didn’t talk about it when she was growing up. Having lost his business and determined to provide for his family, Werner became a workaholic and a chain smoker, passing away from lung cancer in his early sixties. “It consumed him,” she says. Eventually, Donald decided to ask her octogenarian mother, who couldn’t recount what they had gone through without crying. “It was the most terrible experience in her life, and I hadn’t even been aware of it.”

Like Donald, Conrad Caspari had to puzzle together the events that led to his German-born father, Fritz, being sent to the Tuna Canyon Detention Station, in the Los Angeles area, in September 1942. He studied a 120-page FBI case file obtained through public records request and other documents found in his parents’ basement. Caspari learned how flimsy the evidence the US government had against Fritz, who opposed Hitler’s totalitarian rule, was: One of the allegations accused him of sharing intelligence about high-power transmission lines with German authorities; in reality, his father had been followed by agents who mistook his harmonica for a mirror to send a Morse code message.

“The charges were essentially the result of a lot of hysteria,” Caspari says. His father would be acquitted and released in January 1943. But, not without losing his teaching job in the United States. “People’s livelihoods were taken from them without any good reason.”

Caspari, a director on the board of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition, fears the Alien Enemies Act can be similarly weaponized again, unless repealed. “When you allow the rule of law to disappear for one group of people in the country,” he says “it will soon disappear for everybody, and then we lose everything which we believe the United States should stand for.”

The grandson of a Tuna Canyon detainee, Colorado-based researcher Russell Endo has looked into the files of 500 Japanese arrested in Southern California in the 1940s and found no indication of subversive acts or allegiance to imperial Japan. “The people were completely innocent,” he says. “But they were swept up because of the abuse of the Alien Enemies Act.”

Endo, who grew up in the vicinity of the former detention camp, sees another parallel between the wartime period and the current moment: the impulse for the mass arrests had to do with public pressure for the federal government to respond forcefully to the attack on Pearl Harbor, all in the name of safety and national security. “If that argument sounds familiar today,” Endo says “it’s because history is repeating itself.”

After the Gurckes were released from Crystal City in May 1944, they moved to Starr’s family beach house in Santa Cruz, California. A government review later found no evidence that Werner engaged in pro-Nazi activity. Still, he remained at risk of repatriation because of the illegal entry charge until 1948, when the US government granted him suspension of deportation. Four years later, Werner became an American citizen.

Donald still lives near the beach house. “Maybe that’s how I’m affected,” she says. “I’ve stayed very close to the first safe place that I knew.”

In 2002, Donald, her sister Ingrid, and their husbands returned to the site of the Crystal City camp for the first time to join a former internees’ reunion. The siblings sat by what used to be the swimming pool, one of the only remaining features of the original place. Realizing that, unlike their parents, they both could freely walk away, they were overcome with emotion.

Donald co-founded the German American Internee Coalition to preserve this lesser-known history. Over the years, many families have contacted the organization looking for information about the unknown fate of their relatives, even decades later. One case stuck with her: an 80-year-old woman who had been just a child when her father was taken away and the family never heard from him again. Although the group couldn’t help her, they have offered leads to others.

“It’s dying just like we are,” Donald says. “We’re going to be a memory fairly soon and we haven’t done all we wanted to do, which was to prevent something like what’s happening today from happening again to another group of people.” She adds: “I know to some extent what these people that are now being targeted for pickup and sending off are going to go through not because I remember it, but because I feel it.”

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The Washington Post Canceled Me for Currygate. Jeff Bezos Was My Unlikely Savior.

When Jeffrey Bezos came for the journalists in the Washington Post‘s Opinions section a few weeks ago, their colleagues in the paper’s news sections didn’t protest too loudly, because they were not in the Opinions section.

Then Bezos came for the newsies.

Post people wondered: What’s next, face-eating leopards?

The recent pattern of Chernobylic meltdowns at the Washington Post has been stupefying, a display of serial journalistic malpractice by a seniormanagement beholden to the whims and ruthlessness of its billionaire owner—the man who turned Amazon into a retail behemoth while pushinghis prole workers so hard that the drivers began peeing into bottles to meet draconian delivery quotas.

I’ve had an interesting vantage point from which to view all of this—close up and bone-deep—but also at a felicitous remove. I no longer work for the Post, but I did for 30 years, to significant acclaim, until I violated a sacrosanct stricture: I embarrassed the newspaper and subjected it to the ire of a ravening, cancel-crazed global Internet.

And so I was gone.

The timing proved fortuitous for me. I had an indigenous institutional knowledge of the place, and many loyal friends within it, but since I no longer worked for the Post when all this happened, I was free to report exactly what I found out and say exactly what I thought about it, lobbing grenades at my old employer from safe in my bunker, a Substack newsletter called The Gene Pool.

The Gene Pool can be nasty. And it turns out people like nasty in these deeply polarized, paranoid times because they are so angry at, and scared of, the Trump-Musk-Bezos troika that they are willing to part with their hard-earned ducats to see these people spanked ruthlessly in indelible digital print by someone who writes with insider authenticity.

The same Internet that chased me from the Post has now rescued my wallet, my career, and (so far) my reputation.

I’m the guy who infamously doesn’t like Indian food.

In late 2021, I wrote exactly that in a humor column that was mostly at my expense, reflecting on my own infantile understanding of cuisine. I wrote that drowning a hot dog in a wet heap of a half dozen dressings was as big a crime as drowning a puppy in a toilet. I said that Old Bay Seasoning tasted like dandruff from a corpse. I claimed that balsamic vinegar broke up the Beatles, and that sweet pickles made as much gustatorial sense as chicken-flavored jelly beans. Readers laughed. Then, in the same column, I wrote that Indian curry—which I incorrectly described as a single spice, instead of a varying mixture of different spices—was pungent enough to “knock a vulture off a meat wagon.” Readers stopped laughing.

Because I had casually insulted an entire subcontinent and its diaspora, the wrath on Twitter was overpowering and relentless. My bosses at the Post were similarly, and understandably, unamused. They decided my food column had been, ironically, tasteless. Also culturally insensitive, which it was. And that, as they say, was that.

Except it wasn’t that, as it turns out.

I started my Substack roughly a year later because, even at 71, I did not want to have to dip into my retirement savings. For about two years, The Gene Pool was a modest success. Then Jeff Bezos started perpetrating grandiose, self-serving malfeasances, mauling the integrity of the paper I loved, infuriating the staff, and prompting a hemorrhage of canceled subscriptions (more than 300,000 as of this writing.)

Bezos’ first, and most dramatic, move came late in October, shortly before the presidential election, when he learned that the Post planned to endorse Kamala Harris. His response was to order his Opinions staff not to endorse any presidential candidate, and he then evidently ordered the Post‘s publisher to lie about why—the obvious truth being that he wanted to ingratiate himself with a new, vindictive, spiteful president notorious for punishing his perceived enemies. (Bezos’ financial empire relies on federal contracts.)

With that, The Gene Pool, previously a versatile, thrice-weekly general interest column, became much more voluble, focused, and occasionally embittered. I began writing five or six days a week.

I created a snarkynew masthead for the Post, for whenever I write unpleasant things about its managers and express rage at their spinelessness:

My response to Bezos’ order was a post titled, “Courage and Cowardice,” a lengthy diatribe unflatteringly comparing him to a famous previous owner of the newspaper, Katharine Graham. You can guess which of the two represented courage.

It included these paragraphs:

In his statement, publisher William Lewis, a Rupert Murdoch protégé, lied nakedly about what had happened, and why. He said the newspaper made its choice in order to “return to their roots,” to reset itself to a prior, better, more genteel time when the Post declined to endorse presidential candidates.

If you think that’s even remotely true, you are the idiot he takes you for.

Elsewhere in the piece, I wrote:

On July 17, 2001, when Mrs. Graham died after a fall on the street, her employees walked the halls of the Washington Post building, tearful.

Jeff Bezos has earned billions in his life, but he will never earn that.

And finally:

There is such a thing as moral authority. It may be intangible, but it is there, and it can be powerful. It is essential to newspaper opinion writing. The Washington Post owner flushed it down the toilet yesterday. What is left is invertebrate.

This action has damaged everyone, not the least of whom are the dedicated, talented employees of the Post, whose careers are likely now diminished because, well, do they work for a great newspaper anymore? They are like homeowners whose neighborhood suddenly gets a pig slaughterhouse. All the home values are diminished.

In the one or two days before the election, expect to read a banal, obligatory piece in the Post—most newspapers do it—urging everyone to vote, for the sake of civic responsibility. Why should you believe it from the Post, now? The hypocrisy is thick and gooey. This is a newspaper that looked at the stark, existential choice facing the country, with the people in fear, and decided to sit this one out. They’re not voting. Why should you?

This post went semi-viral—almost as viral as my initial foray into apparent anti-Indian colonialism. Over the next four months, the number of _Gene Pool_subscribers, the ones I had managed to amass in the first two years, more than tripled.

There would be more mile markers to come. After each new depredation by the Bezos team, readers searched for reliably dissenting voices and found my Substack. The leaps insubscribership inevitably accompanied Post executives’ leaps in lickspittlery:

November: Bezos, the owner of the newspaper of record for the nation’s capital, a role demanding political impartiality and restraint, writes Trump an obsequious tweet applauding his, er, historic achievement.

Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) November 6, 2024

December: Bezos, via Amazon, decides to gift the Trump administration $1 million for its inaugural festivities and stream the events on Prime Video, which is worth another $1 million.

January: Amazon announces it has agreed to produce a documentary about Melania Trump for which the First Lady will receive at least $28 million. Melania—who’d written a largely insipid memoir the year before—gives the following explanation to a TV interviewer. It seems right out of the Broadway musical_Sunset Boulevard_: “I get so many messages and letters how they enjoyed the book and they would love, my fans and people, would love to hear more from me.”

The deal smelled a lot like a bribe—I implied that.

But February and March were my most fecund months for new subscribers because Bezos continued to act like a member of the Trump administration in his handling of the Post. His behavior coincided with my decision to discard the word “administration” and just start calling it the “Trump regime.”

Then Bezos did something really stupid, and characteristically arrogant. He instructed the Opinions staff that henceforth, they would only write stories “in defense of personal liberties and free markets.” He was instructing some of the nation’s most distinguished journalists to only write opinions that agreed with his own. Opinions editor David Shipley resigned immediately.

And so, my next post consisted of two op-ed ideas that ostensibly aligned with the new rules:

To the Washington Post:

Please accept this submission for your op-ed pages. I have included illustrations for your exclusive use. I believe my piece conforms to your new strictures, requiring only opinions defending free markets and personal liberties:

I’m mad as hell about all the threats to the existence of free markets, particularly tariffs. Instead of leveling the playing field, tariffs distort it. For example, imagine you are a Mexican boxer fighting against an American boxer in Altoona, Pa. And your bucktoothed American hosts make you, and not your opponent, drag around one of these balls and chains.

(Here I placed an illustration of a faceless character wearing the classic ball and chain.)

You’re gonna get your ass kicked! Is that free? Is that fair? So then, when an American goes to fight a Mexican guy in, say, Guadalajara, they’re gonna get back at us. They’re gonna make the American wear a chastity cage!

(Here was a racier illustration of an actual product—a stainless steel cage designed to fit very, very tightly over a man’s penis.)

So, no. I, like all wise Americans, am in favor of no restrictive or punitive tariffs. Let’s compete as usual on the basis of product quality and bribes where necessary.

And don’t get me started on personal liberties!

Too late. I’m going to start. I’m all for extending personal liberties by reducing Deep State control over our lives. And by “our,” I include corporations, which, according to the Supreme Court, are people except for not being able to have sex and defecate.

For example, this whole patent and trademark thing. Why should the government regulate our personal business decisions like that? Why shouldn’t I be able to manufacture a line of bidets under the name “Trump® Ass Washers”? Or the “Amazon®” line of airline vomit bags?

And why should the government be able to tell me what sex I am? We have freedom of expression! If I want to identify as a schnizzle, which I declare to be a sterile, twelve-breasted egg-laying fish with gonads the size of mature gophers, why should the jackbooted government stop me?

We should not be subject to the whims of the politicized, left-leaning justice system. Shouldn’t we all have the freedom, without fear of prosecution, to continue the recent practice of depositing warm dog poop bags on Teslas parked in the street? Should I not also be free, if it is my desire, or if it is my parents’ desire, for me to die of measles, like that kid just did in Texas, the anti-vaxx state?

The Post‘s writers helped me out out in this crusade by being outraged, but also silenced because they still needed to take home a paycheck. Fortunately, they had someone to vent to on background: the proprietor of that alternative news source, the Washington Pist!

I learned, for instance, that the newspaper’s media critic, Erik Wemple, had submitted an essay about his disappointment in the new edicts. Then I found out that the piece had been spiked, and wrote about that.

One of Bezos’ dumbest moves was yet to come. His promise—or implied promise—alwayshad been for everyone not to worry, because he would keep his hands off the news side of the paper.

That’s the default: Most reputable news organizations maintain a strict ethical firewall between the business side—owners, publishers, advertising reps—and the news operations.

But then it was reported that the Post’s publisher—whom Bezos had hand-picked—had met privately with the editor of the Washington Free Beacon, a muckraking hard-right news organization of squishy ethics, to ask how he could recruit more conservative journalists.

The initial report of the meeting did not specify that the Post was seeking news reporters—as opposed to staff opinion writers, who serve at the publisher’s pleasure—but that’s how it was widely reported. The Free Beacon, after all, prides itself on its “combat journalism.”

Bezos’ hands were now all over the news side, apparently. It felt like a groping incident.

All along, writers and editors were leaving the paper in daunting numbers. The Post lost its gifted political cartoonist Ann Telnaes, who quit after one of her cartoons was spiked. The cartoon in question depicted Bezos and other media moguls as Trump suckups. Matea Gold, the Post‘s widely admired managing editor, and its White House reporter Tyler Pager went to the NewYork Times. Political reporters Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker jumped ship for The Atlantic. Political columnist and blogger Jennifer Rubin quit the Post and started her own Substack,The Contrarian. (Slogan: “Not owned by anybody.”)

The most recent notable departure was Ruth Marcus, a universally respected Opinions columnist and associate editor. She quit after the Post spiked one of her columns about the lamentable state of affairs at the newspaper. I believe I was the first to break that story. But I couldn’t get access to her spiked column.

Marcus published it herself a few days laterin The New Yorker. You should read it. It’s elegant from start to finish, and heartbreaking in places.

She writes: “We have lost so much talent in the newsroom in the past few months as reporters and editors have defected to competitors—and we’re still publishing remarkable work. (I’ll never stop saying ‘we’.)”

Marcus summarizes her reason for leaving in one grandly efficient line: “My job is supposed to be to tell you what I think, not what Jeff Bezos thinks I should think.”

For once, I had nothing to add. The Washington Pist was silent that day.

Gene Weingarten, a former Washington Post staff writer, syndicated humor columnist, and author of a nonfiction collection, The Fiddler in the Subway, has won two Pulitzer prizes for feature writing. To subscribe to his Substack, The Gene Pool, click here.

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Department of Veterans Affairs Ends Transgender and Intersex Care Directives

On Monday, citing Donald Trump’s “Defending Women” executive order, the federal Department of Veterans Affairs announced that it would “phase out treatment for gender dysphoria” by discontinuing hormone replacement therapy for patients not already in treatment.

The agency provides health care and benefits for about nine million veterans, tens of thousands of whom—by the VA’s estimate—identify as trans. Its press release says that the agency’s LGBTQ+ veteran care coordinators, who run its LGBTQ Health Program, would not be affected by the changes. But Pete Hegseth, Trump’s secretary of defense, has been vocal about his ire toward the LGBTQ community and his support for cutting VA health care.

Although the VA has never provided gender-affirming surgeries, it has been able to provide letters in support of veterans seeking them. That’s now on the chopping block.

“It’s infuriating,” a medical professional with the agency, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Mother Jones. “To be honest, I don’t understand how it’s allowed—how are they able to tell providers what they can and cannot treat?”

The announcement follows reporting in the Advocate on a Veterans Health Administration memo with similar provisions circulated on March 14, which rescinded the agency’s 2018 directive establishing health care standards for transgender and intersex veterans. In response to subsequent coverage by National Public Radio, VA press secretary Peter Kasperowicz told NPR that there had been no policy change—but by Saturday night, the agency officially published the memo, which showed otherwise.

The VA’s press release claims that funds spent to treat transgender veterans will be redirected to treatment of paralyzed veterans and amputees, a supposed annual savings of $2.4 to $8.4 million, according to the RAND Corporation, or 0.04 to 0.13 percent of military health expenditures.

Notably, the memo rescinded VHA Directive 1341(4), “a policy for the respectful delivery of health care” for transgender and intersex veterans.The policy provides background on the transgender and intersex veteran populations and their healthcare needs, defines the “respectful delivery” of that care, and outlines what the VA benefits package covers. It can no longer be found on the VA’s website.

The department’s new memo rescinding those standards claims to apply to intersex veterans, in addition to transgender ones, though it isn’t clear to what extent they will. Intersex people, who make up approximately 1.7 percent of the population, have sex characteristics outside of the binary of female and male. Those variations can present in external genitalia, gonads, hormone production, internal reproductive organs, and chromosomes. Intersex people can be prescribed hormone replacement therapy to aid with gonadal function or help masculinize or feminize secondary sex characteristics, among other uses.

Some intersex folks require HRT because of non-consensual surgeries as infants—as intersex activist Alicia Roth Weigel said to NPR, “By removing my testes, they basically put my body into artificial hormone withdrawal and didn’t give me new hormones until a certain age.”

Right now, the VA’s former policy supporting intersex healthcare is moot, but the agency hasn’t outlined a direction for its future.

According to the new policy, anyone without previous Veterans Affairs health coverage is “not eligible for cross-sex hormone therapy.” But what constitutes “cross-sex” hormone therapy for intersex veterans? Is it based on the sex they were assigned at birth? What happens when that conflicts with what the current administration defines as sex—based on the production of certain sizes of reproductive cells?

In fact, what is cross-sex hormone therapy for anyone? Everyone has both testosterone and estrogen at varying levels. It is increasingly common for cisgender people to take hormones associated with the other sex.

The VA health care professional who spoke to Mother Jones said that the agency now seems to have “no official stance on the treatment of intersex people.” The source takes that to mean that, “in theory,” things won’t necessarily change—though “it can definitely lead to confusion for providers attempting to treat patients,” they acknowledged.

It’s not the first time intersex folks have been swept up in anti-trans policies and legislation.

The VA, the memo states, “provides care and treatment…compatible with generally accepted standards of medical practice.” Hormone replacement therapy falls into that category: Every major medical association in the United States supports gender-affirming care for transgender people.

The VA staffer who spoke to Mother Jones said it felt “frustrating that the party that pushes against the idea of government involved in your health care [is] taking the opportunity to define for care providers what they can and cannot treat.”

The department did not respond to a request for clarification about its current policy dictating care for intersex veterans.

Additional reporting by Anna Merlan.

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A Florida Cinema Showed a Documentary About Palestine. Now, The Mayor Could Shut It Down.

Kareem Tabsch, co-founder of Miami Beach’s O Cinema, loves his hometown. He’s made an award-winning movie about Miami Beach’s historic Jewish community. He has been lauded in his local press for his contributions to South Florida’s artistic culture. And in 2008, he co-founded an arthouse movie theater to give his neighborhood access to independent films that would otherwise pass it by in favor of more lucrative screens elsewhere.

But, until last week, Tabsch had never interacted much with Miami Beach’s municipal government. That changed on March 11th, when the cinema received a letter from Miami Beach mayor Steven Meiner, telling the business they had to cancel their planned showings of “No Other Land,” a documentary about a Palestinian village struggling to survive in the West Bank amid Israeli government and settler violence. If the movie theatre failed to comply, Meiner said he would introduce a City Council resolution to terminate the cinema’s lease in a city-owned building and revoke at least $40,000 in grant money.

On March 3rd, “No Other Land” made history when it won the Oscar for Best Documentary. But it still does not have a US distributor. That means that one-on-one deals with independent theaters like O Cinema are the only way US audiences can see the film.

Tabsch’s patrons, he told Mother Jones, wanted “No Other” Land in particular: so, despite the eviction threat, O Cinema went ahead and screened the film. They sold out every single showing.

“We recognize that some stories—especially those rooted in real-world conflicts—can evoke strong feelings and passionate reactions. As they should,” O Cinema CEO Vivian Marthell said in a statement. “Our decision to screen ‘No Other Land’ is not a declaration of political alignment. It is a bold reaffirmation of our fundamental belief that every voice deserves to be heard.” T

he resolution canceling O Cinema’s lease and withdrawing city funding is due for a vote on Wednesday. That same night, O Cinema’s public schedule lists another showing of “No Other Land.”

I talked with Tabsch about what happens when your local government decides screening a film is “not consistent” with your city’s values.

How was the decision to screen “No Other Land” made?

The film had been on our radar pretty much all last year, because it’s been so universally lauded. People started asking us: When are you going to show it? So discussions began in the fall of last year. It’s a 69-seat theater, so scheduling is tricky…we kind of earmarked this early 2025 window. That was before the Academy Awards. We always try to show as many of the Academy Award nominees as possible, which is pretty common for art-house theaters.

At the time, when we programmed it, we were the only theater in South Florida showing “No Other Land.” We may have been the only theater in the state of Florida.

Now, after we’ve shown it, other theaters are coming in to show it.

O Cinema movie theater.Courtesy O Cinema

Let’s talk about what happened with the mayor. How did you first hear about this threat of eviction?

We received a letter from the Mayor. The initial reaction, from many of us, was that this very clearly felt like a threat from our elected officials. And I don’t think in our history we have ever received any outreach from any local politician asking us about or questioning our programming.

It came across as a not-so-veiled threat to our future. Initially, we felt the future of our indie theater was threatened, and decided that we were not going to show the film. Vivian [Marthell, CEO of O Cinema] sent a letter to the mayor saying as much. But, very quickly, I think we all realized that was really against the mission of our organization, the spirit of independent film, and really an affront to the First Amendment. So, within 12 hours, she sent an email to the mayor where she informed him that we were actually going to go through with the screenings.

And we went through with the screenings! Every screening of “No Other Land” at O Cinema was sold out.

The overwhelming feedback that I heard from members of the community was very positive. They were thankful that we were showing the film. Folks walked up to the staff and thanked them for showing the It’s very clear that Miami Beach audiences, in particular, wanted to see the film and were grateful to be able to do so.

You, yourself, are a documentarian. As someone who makes documentary films, what was your reaction to all this?

As someone who’s born and raised and lives in this community and has seen the trajectory of its growth and evolution, I was really taken aback by the course this has taken. We see more and more attempts at censorship at different levels—especially at the federal government level, we’re seeing a lot of threats to freedom of expression.

But I never truly expected that in this vibrant cultural community that is Miami Beach, where folks have so many different backgrounds, and many of them came fleeing oppression… I never expected our local government to decide that showing a film was so much against the values of the city that they had to shut us down. I never expected our local government to enact retribution against an arts organization for extending and fulfilling their artistic license and freedom to show films.

So, what happens now?

The Mayor’s resolution to defund the cinema and cancel its lease will come to a vote and a discussion on Wednesday. It’s my sincere hope that we will find an amicable solution to this.

I mean, listen, I respect deeply held views. And I know the subject matter of the film is certainly provocative, and it could evoke strong feelings. But good films evoke strong feelings. As a filmmaker, I always say you don’t have to like my movies, but I want to make you feel something one way or another.

This film, clearly, evokes strong feelings in local government. But I hope cooler heads will prevail and we can move forward operating in the city, because we love the city of Miami Beach, and our community loves us. That’s evident by how they come out to see our films, and how they came out to see this one.

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