A Gun Deemed Too Dangerous for Cops, but Fine for Civilians

This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.

Shortly after dark one day in September 2022, police officers Yang Lee and Charles Laskey-Castle arrived on Milwaukee’s west side to investigate a car abandoned on the sidewalk. Lee knelt to examine the driver’s side floorboard as Laskey-Castle stood behind him. Then Lee rose — and his holstered gun fired a bullet into his partner’s leg.

The shooting was captured on body camera footage, and it was at least the third time in three years that a Milwaukee officer’s SIG Sauer P320 pistol had allegedly fired without a trigger pull, according to lawsuits and police records. The following month, the Milwaukee Police Department moved to replace its P320s with weapons from another manufacturer.

“There is no higher priority than the safety of the people who protect our city,” said Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson at an October 2022 news conference announcing the switch. “Unexplained discharges, they have injured people. That’s completely unacceptable to me.”

At the same event, Milwaukee’s police chief revealed that, to offset the cost of the new weapons, the department would be reselling its P320s to a gun dealer. Soon, the old P320s — deemed too dangerous for the city’s officers — would be available for purchase by civilians.

The decision in Milwaukee follows a pattern that has been repeated in cities across the nation as police departments reevaluate their use of the P320 amid mounting concerns about the weapon’s safety. A 2023 investigation by The Trace and The Washington Post revealed that the P320 has gruesomely injured scores of people who alleged in lawsuits that it has a potentially deadly defect. SIG Sauer denied these claims.

Over the past two months, The Trace surveyed more than 60 law enforcement agencies whose officers once used the P320. More than 20 of those agencies — including police departments in Oklahoma City, Denver, and Chicago — have moved to prohibit the gun because of fears about unintentional discharges. Twelve agencies said they resold their P320s to the public after determining the model was unsafe for officers to use.

Cumulatively, these departments sent at least 4,000 P320s back into the commercial market.

Sig Sauer

“If the primary function of law enforcement is to protect and serve, one would think that returning a problematic weapon to the public is not particularly consistent with that mission,” Jonathan Jacobs, director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics at New York’s John Jay College, told The Trace. “The ethical issues here are very, very plain.”

A Milwaukee police spokesperson said “the trade-in was a cost-savings for the department.”

SIG Sauer declined to comment on the specifics of this story and directed questions to p320truth.com, a website it created about the gun. The gunmaker has previously denied that the P320 is capable of firing without a trigger pull and cited accounts of unintentional discharges with other firearms as evidence that such issues are neither uncommon nor suggestive of a defect.

Concerns Grow After Multiple Shootings, Lawsuits

Concerns about the P320 surfaced recently in Washington, where in February the state’s Criminal Justice Training Commission banned the P320 from its facilities, citing an “abundance of allegations of un-commanded discharges occurring around the country.” Because the commission hosts mandatory training for police officers, its decision pressured law enforcement agencies across the state to reconsider their use of the P320.

The ban came after at least two shootings involving P320s among Washington law enforcement. Last year, a Kitsap County sheriff’s deputy’s holstered P320 discharged while she apprehended a suspect in a grocery store, according to body camera footage obtained by local media. Nobody was injured, but after the shooting, the Kitsap County Commission offered to fully fund the purchase of different guns plus the cost of destroying the old P320s to remove them from circulation.

The Sheriff’s Office declined the offer, and in March, it said it would be reselling more than 200 P320s to a dealer. “It seemed like the fiscally responsible thing to do,” Kitsap County Undersheriff Russ Clithero told The Trace. The office received roughly $300 per resold weapon — more than $60,000.

Different versions of the P320 pistol from arms manufacturer SIG Sauer GmbH & Co. KG at the comapany’s stand at the IWA OutdoorClassics hunting and sporting weapons fair in Nuremberg, Germany. Daniel Karmann/picture alliance/Getty

One of the most popular handguns in America, the P320 has been used by officers at more than a thousand law enforcement agencies across the country. But according to police records and lawsuits, as of April 23, at least 120 people have alleged that their P320 fired without the trigger being pulled. Those shootings resulted in more than 110 injuries and at least one death.

Dozens of people have sued SIG Sauer over P320 discharges. Several cases have been dismissed, and the company won a jury trial in 2022. More recently, however, two juries have ruled against SIG Sauer, awarding more than $13 million in damages. After the most recent verdict, in November, the national Fraternal Order of Police sent a letter to SIG Sauer requesting an accounting of measures taken by the company to address widespread concerns about the P320.

“The officers who rely on your products must have absolute confidence in the safety and performance of their weapon,” the letter read.

The Trace contacted 69 law enforcement agencies for this story and 41 responded. A total of 16 confirmed that after issuing the P320 to officers, they switched to a new pistol out of concern about the P320’s safety. Four others had acknowledged publicly that their departments switched pistols because of safety reasons, but did not respond to The Trace.

The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office in Florida resold more than 800 P320s after three officers survived incidents in which they say their P320s discharged although nobody pulled the guns’ triggers, records show.

“The trade-in value was necessary to facilitate the transition to the Glocks we currently use,” a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office said. “We cannot speak for what actions the vendor took with the weapons after we traded them back.”

The Police Department in Bridge City, Texas, resold its P320s after one of its officers claimed she was shot in the groin by a holstered gun zipped inside her purse, a police report shows. The bullet missed her spine by inches.

R.D. Bergeron, the assistant police chief of Bridge City, said the department kept the gun involved in the shooting. “The last thing we would want is anyone, officer or civilian, to get hurt due to it firing uncommanded,” Bergeron said.

A Common Police Practice

Law enforcement agencies generally resell weapons for budget reasons. Used police guns are popular among gun buyers because they’re relatively inexpensive and often in good condition. Resales have drawn criticism from law enforcement experts and gun violence researchers, who have argued that introducing used police weapons to the civilian marketplace risks fueling crime.

At least 52,000 police guns had been involved in crimes — including homicides and other violent assaults — since 2006, according to an investigation by The Trace, CBS News, and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. While that tally includes guns lost by or stolen from police, many of the firearms were resold by law enforcement.

Ed Obayashi, a deputy sheriff in Modoc County, California, and a national police ethics expert, said reselling an allegedly defective gun poses an added threat to public safety, even if it never slips into criminal hands. For this reason alone, he said, departments should not resell P320s if they believe the guns to be defective. “There are situations in law enforcement where you’re going to have to do the right thing, even if it’s going to cost you financially,” Obayashi said.

In Laredo, Texas, the Police Department resold about 500 P320s after an officer experienced an unintentional discharge, officials said. The officer was not injured, but investigators concluded that his gun had fired “without the trigger being pulled,” according to a Bexar County Criminal Investigations Laboratory report obtained by The Trace.

When asked why the agency had resold its P320s after pulling them from service, a police spokesperson did not respond.

In addition to the 12 agencies that resold P320s to dealers, two — the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority and the Honesdale Borough Police Department, also in Pennsylvania — returned their guns to SIG Sauer, The Trace found.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, or SEPTA, returned its P320s after an officer’s gun discharged in a Philadelphia subway station, narrowly missing his leg. Andrew Busch, a SEPTA spokesperson, said the agency could not place conditions on what might happen with the returned guns. When asked whether the agency had considered holding onto the guns, Busch said, “We are not going to comment on internal deliberations or discussions with the manufacturer.”

Attendees walk by the Sig Sauer booth during the National Rifle Association (NRA) Annual Meeting & Exhibits at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center on May 17, 2024 in Dallas, Texas. Justin Sullivan/Getty

Many of the largest police forces in the country allow officers to buy their own guns from an approved list rather than issuing a single model to the whole department. Five such agencies contacted for this story — the Chicago, Denver, and Dallas police departments, as well as the Clark County and Pierce County sheriff’s offices in Washington — said they had pulled the P320 from their approved handgun lists or planned to bar officers from carrying the model because of safety concerns.

“The SIG Sauer P320 was found to no longer meet the internal safety standards of the Denver Police Department,” a spokesperson for the agency wrote in an emailed statement.

Sixteen other agencies either remained confident in the P320’s reliability or said they had transitioned away from the gun for reasons other than safety concerns, like it not being compatible with their preferred accessories.

The Goshen, Indiana, police chief, José Miller, said the P320 had proven reliable and “operationally sound” in over a decade of service. “Our evaluation — bolstered by both our internal experience and external research, including findings from the Department of the Army — leaves no doubt,” Miller said. “The Sig Sauer P320 is a safe, dependable firearm.”

Only one police department — in Orange, Connecticut — opted not to resell its P320s. Instead, the guns are locked away at headquarters. “If we believe a firearm might be defective, we don’t agree with putting that weapon back on the street,” said Max Martins, the department’s assistant chief. “What if we traded in the guns, then a civilian bought one of our old ones and there was an accidental discharge? You don’t want that on your conscience.”

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Trump’s Pick to Lead Workplace Safety Agency Will Derail Heat Protections, Advocates Fear

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

As the US prepares for what could be another record-breaking hot summer, Donald Trump and his pick to lead the nation’s workplace safety agency are expected to derail the creation of the nation’s first-ever federal labor protections from extreme heat.

Trump in February nominated David Keeling to lead the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Keeling formerly served as an executive at the United Parcel Service (UPS) and Amazon—both of which have faced citations from OSHA for worker injuries and deaths amid heat exposure. The companies deny the deaths were heat-related.

During Keeling’s tenure, OSHA fined the two companies a combined $2 million for more than 300 workplace safety citations.

Under Keeling, OSHA is expected to thwart heat protections. After years of pressure from organized labor, the agency in 2021 began working to create a federal heat standard, and last year rolled out a draft rule aimed at requiring access to water, shade, breaks and training which the Biden administration estimated would protect 36 million workers.

But corporations have pushed to gut the rules, and there are concerns among safety advocates and some workers that Keeling could help them do so.

Seth Pacic, a UPS delivery driver and union steward in Dallas, Texas, who has experienced heat exhaustion on the job, said he feared “any meaningful policy to combat heat injuries will be put on hold while [Keeling] holds the position.”

Keeling served as the vice-president of global health and safety at UPS from 2018 to 2021, and as the director of road and transportation safety at Amazon from 2021 to 2023. Both companies have faced backlash for heat-related workplace incidents.

A recent review of federal records by investigative outlet the Lever found that during Keeling’s tenure, OSHA fined the two companies a combined $2 million for more than 300 workplace safety citations, including for heat-related incidents.

In the past decade, more than 170 UPS workers have been hospitalized due to heat exposure, including more than 50 during Keeling’s tenure. And at Amazon and UPS, at least seven workers died after extreme heat exposure in recent years with at least three of those deaths occurring when Keeling was at the companies. Both companies denied any of the deaths were both heat-related and job-related.

“These are companies that are known to be not that great when it comes to dealing with extreme heat,” said Juley Fulcher, a worker health and safety advocate at consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen.

Reached for comment, Courtney Parella, the spokesperson for the Department of Labor, OSHA’s parent agency, said: “OSHA’s mission to protect workers’ health and safety remains a clear priority for this administration. David Keeling was nominated to advance that mission and engage stakeholders thoughtfully on policy and rulemaking decisions.”

Both UPS and Amazon defended their heat policies. Amazon has said its practices meet state and federal requirements and, in some cases, go beyond them. UPS has said it has comprehensive training and protocols to support employees which it is continuously working to improve.

“They could put it on a shelf and say, we’re just not going to do anything with this.”

“At UPS, we focus on safety every day and always look for ways to improve. Over the past five years, we’ve invested more than 33 million hours and nearly $2 billion on safety training,” said Becca Hunnicutt, a spokesperson for UPS. “We report all recordable injuries to OSHA and train our employees to seek immediate treatment if they recognize or report any signs or symptoms of heat stress.”

She added that the company supplies materials including water, ice, and electrolytes to employees and has partnered with various firms to train them on heat safety and provide them with cooling fabrics.

Sam Stephenson, Amazon spokesperson, said: “We take the health and safety of our employees incredibly seriously…For example, all of our fulfillment centers have climate-controlled systems that are monitored throughout the day; all of our Amazon branded delivery vehicles have air conditioning; and we’ve invested $59 million to insulate our vans to help reduce the internal temperatures for our delivery partners.”

He said the recent Lever reporting “oversimplifies complex issues and provides broad generalizations in an effort to purposefully mislead its readers.”

“The fact is, Amazon has not been cited for any heat-related deaths,” he said. “Safety is our top priority across all our operations and any implication, stated or otherwise, is false.” Though OSHA did cite Amazon for heat-related conditions, he said the company has appealed.

In previous statements both UPS and Amazon have defended their heat policies. Amazon has said its practices meet state and federal requirements and, in some cases, go beyond them. UPS has said it has comprehensive training and protocols to support employees which it is continuously working to improve.

Keeling said he was unable to comment for the piece until he is confirmed by the Senate. In a 2021 op-ed, he wrote that he began his work at UPS in 1985 as a package handler—a role which showed him the importance of “safety and wellness,” as well as “sleep and hydration.” That experience informed his work as a safety executive, he wrote, encouraging him to “seek out the input and perspective of frontline employees.”

The Teamsters union, which represents UPS employees and some Amazon workers, endorsed Keeling’s nomination over dissent from some members of the rank and file.

Federal health and safety experts first recommended OSHA create a national heat standard more than 50 years ago. In the intervening years, US summers have warmed significantly due to the climate crisis.

The Department of Labor estimates that more than 400 US workers died from heat-related causes between 2011 and 2021. Many experts believe that to be a vast understatement; Public Citizen estimates the true number is up to 2,000 a year, with an additional 170,000 heat-related injuries and illnesses annually.

A federal heat standard, experts say, could drastically decrease those numbers. But OSHA is under no obligation to finalize the rule under Trump.

“There’s always a potential question about conflict when someone is regulating companies where they worked.”

“They could put it on a shelf and say, we’re just not going to do anything with this,” said Fulcher.

Recent cuts to regulatory staff at OSHA could make it difficult for the agency to finalize a rule “even if they wanted to,” said Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant secretary of labor at OSHA from 2009 to 2017. But if it musters up the ability to work on the rule, the agency could gut it, Barab said.

Corporations, including UPS, have spent millions lobbying against the standard. In public comments to OSHA on the 2024 draft rule, many companies contested provisions that would mandate breaks for workers, trigger certain protections when the temperature crosses 80F and 90F, and require that new and returning workers face limited heat exposure.

A weakened final rule could also exempt certain workers and workplaces, Barab said.

OSHA will host a public hearing on the federal heat standard next month.

Keeling’s confirmation hearing has yet to be scheduled. During Trump’s first term, the Senate never brought his nominee for OSHA head up for a vote.

If given the opportunity, Senators should press the nominee on potential “favoritism” toward UPS and Amazon, said Fulcher. “There’s always a potential question about conflict when someone is regulating companies where they worked,” she said. “And these are two huge, massive companies that employ hundreds of thousands of people and are going to certainly be the subject of a lot of complaints.”

Senators should ask Keeling questions “with workers in mind,” said Antoine Andrews, who has worked at UPS in Brooklyn, New York, for 29 years.

“I hope they think of the hardworking people getting up every day to support themselves and their loved ones and keep the country running,” said Andrews, who also serves as a union steward.

“We need people who are going to protect workers from the crisis of heat,” he said. “But Keeling? We’re afraid he will be biased in the other direction.”

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Trump Is Furious That His Tariffs Are Doing Exactly What Economists Said They’d Do

After President Donald Trump announced last month that the United States would impose a baseline 10-percent tariff on much of the world—with far higher rates for a set of other countries—economists warned that consumers would feel the impacts on a variety of products, including groceries, coffee, and cars.

But the Trump administration has tried a whole range of tactics to gaslight Americans into believing that would not happen—including claiming that the tariffs are, in the words of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, “a tax cut for the American people” and that they will help improve domestic manufacturing. After reports suggested that Amazon planned to list the costs that tariffs were adding to products on its retail website, the White House called it a “hostile and political act”—and Amazon seemed to quickly reverse course. (Since Trump’s initial rounds of tariffs were announced, the exact details of them have shifted repeatedly—and much of the increase has been paused. Last week, the US and China agreed to temporarily lower the high tariffs both countries had placed on the other; on Friday, Trump said the US would soon begin informing countries of their new tariff rates.)

On Thursday, Walmart became the latest company caught in Trump’s crosshairs after its CEO, Doug McMillon, admitted that the president’s tariffs would cause the retail giant to raise prices. On an earnings call, McMillon said “the higher tariffs will result in higher prices.”

“We will do our best to keep our prices as low as possible, but given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren’t able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins,” McMillon said on the call.

Predictably, this triggered Trump. On Saturday morning, he took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to try to bully Walmart into reversing course. “Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain,” Trump wrote. “Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!”

On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Jake Tapper that he spoke to Walmart’s CEO on Saturday, adding, “Walmart will be absorbing some of the tariffs, some may get passed on to consumers.” A source familiar with the situation told Mother Jones that Bessent’s call with McMillon was scheduled prior to Trump’s comments on Truth Social. But beyond that, details of Walmart’s plans remain unclear.

Treasury @SecScottBessent says he spoke to Walmart’s CEO after the company warned of price increases due to tariffs: “Walmart will be absorbing some of the tariffs, some may get passed on to consumers.” pic.twitter.com/FGQ4154SNT

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) May 18, 2025

Some Republicans have also been voicing dissent over Trump’s tariffs. In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, former Vice President Mike Pence called Trump’s initial round of tariffs “the largest peacetime tax hike on the American people in the history of this country.” Pence added that he was glad Trump had partially paused those tariffs. And Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on This Week on ABC Sunday, in response to a question about Walmart: “Tariffs are taxes, and when you put a tax on a business, it’s always passed through as a cost. So, there will be higher prices.” Paul added: “Most tariffs in our history have been passed by Congress. We’ve never had widespread tariffs that have been done by fiat by a president, and I object to that.”

The takeaways from this latest debacle? Contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, tariffs do raise taxes on consumers. And unlike Jeff Bezos, Walmart’s CEO is apparently willing to admit that. But in doing so, he unleashed Trump’s wrath—and made clear that, as my colleague Pema Levy previously wrote, “With tariffs, Trump is poised to trade a strong economy for one run on loyalty and retribution.”

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Trump’s New Qatari Jet Would Be Just Like the Statue of Liberty, Obviously

As they struggle to defend President Donald Trump’s plan to accept a luxury 747 from the nation of Qatar, the administration and its allies appear to have settled on one of the silliest talking points in history.

Here’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on CNN today, explaining that it’s fine to take a free jumbo jet from a petrostate because the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France.

TAPPER: Even if Qatar isn't asking for anything in return now for the jet, that's a bill that could come do. Nobody in the world just gives a $400m jet to be nice.BESSENT: Well, I don't know Jake. The French gave us the Statue of Liberty.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-05-18T13:20:36.611Z

As Jake Tapper pointed out in response, one key difference (among many) between those two “gifts” is that Congress actually passed a resolution authorizing the administration to accept the “colossal statue” of “Liberty enlightening the world.”

This is more than just a fun bit of historical trivia. Some legal experts (and even a few GOP senators) have argued that the transfer of Qatar’s “flying palace”—which would apparently serve as Trump’s new Air Force One before being donated to his future presidential library—may constitute an “emolument” from a foreign state. The Constitution prohibits US officials from accepting such gifts, unless explicitly authorized by Congress. President Ulysses S. Grant sought, and obtained, approval for the Statue of Liberty in 1877. But as modern-day lawmakers have pointed out, Trump appears intent on finalizing his “corrupt” 747 deal without first obtaining congressional consent.

Incredibly, Bessent’s ridiculous historical analogy isn’t even new. Trumpworld has been trying, and failing, to make it work all week. Here’s Ann Coulter, tweeting on Tuesday:

I can't wait for the press to find out about France's so-called "gift" of the Statue of Liberty, accepted in 1886 by then-President Grover Cleveland.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 13, 2025

I’m not actually certain whether Coulter—one of the few hard-right figures frequently willing to criticize Trump—meant this sincerely or sarcastically. Regardless, by Wednesday, Trump himself was busy re-truthing his fans’ astute observations that the Lady Liberty was a “gift from a foreign nation.”

That same day, Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer told Fox Business that Qatar’s offering was even “more generous than the Statue of Liberty, to be honest.” Cramer said he didn’t share Trump critics’ “negative guttural reaction” to the gift, though he allowed that concerns about the “image” it presents were legitimate.

“On the other hand, it’s a free airplane, for crying out loud,” Cramer continued. “The United States gives away a lot of stuff to other countries. If it’s a gift of appreciation for what the United States has done lately, or is doing, rather than a quid pro quo, I’m not all that concerned about it.”

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Redlining Shaped the Power Grid. Communities of Color Are Still Paying the Price.

This story was reported by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.

As an ice storm slicked roads across eastern Michigan on February 6, representatives from four houses of worship arrived at the offices of Democratic US Sen. Gary Peters.

They wanted Peters to pressure the Trump administration to lift the funding freeze on $20 million in “community change grants” promised by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to houses of worship across Detroit to create community resilience hubs. Powered by renewable energy, the hubs offered residents shelter during weather emergencies and utility outages.

More than three months later, spring has come to Michigan—and yet the expected $2 million in funding for the St. Suzanne Cody Rouge Community Resource Center in Detroit remains on ice.

St. Suzanne executive director Steve Wasko says his organization—which provides meals, clothing, daycare, and other programs for residents of this predominantly Black neighborhood—has “received conflicting and sometimes contradictory communication about the grant.”

Wasko had been promised funding to install heat pumps, solar panels, and a generator, among other upgrades. The retrofit would allow St. Suzanne to help more people while cutting an energy bill that can run up to $15,000 a month in the winter.

Steven Wasko is executive director of the St. Suzanne Cody Rouge Community Resource Center in Detroit.Courtesy of Michigan Interfaith Power & Light

The funding freeze is just the latest setback for poor communities of color across the United States—including in Detroit, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia—that are being left behind in the transition to cleaner, cheaper power.

Neighborhoods like Cody Rouge suffer from underpowered electrical service, more frequent power outages and high energy bills—a legacy of the once-legal practice of redlining that robbed communities of color of financial and public services, Floodlight found.

In formerly redlined neighborhoods like Cody Rouge, shutoffs for nonpayment are more likely. And poverty limits access to renewable energy: Aging roofs can’t support solar panels, outdated wiring can’t handle new heaters, and old electrical infrastructure struggles to accommodate electric vehicle charging and solar arrays.

“It’s now very clear that energy services, ranging from quality of service to price of service, are disproportionately poor if you are a minority, a woman or of low income,” said Daniel Kammen, professor of energy at the University of California-Berkeley.

High energy costs are a burden across Detroit. A quarter of the metro area’s poorest households spend at least 15 percent of their income to power and heat their homes, according to a Floodlight analysis of data from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

Across the United States, a quarter of all low-income households—roughly 23 million people—struggle to pay their energy bills. In most major US cities, including Detroit and Philadelphia, these one out-of-four low-income households pay 15 percent or more of their incomes on average on electricity, cooling and heat. In Los Angeles, this group pays just over 14 percent of their household income on utility bills.

These energy burdens have persisted for decades, despite billions of dollars from federal and state governments subsidizing electricity bills in low-income communities. And now, Trump’s administration has gutted the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides heating and cooling subsidies for 6 million households.

A group of representatives from four Detroit houses of worship stand outside the federal building in downtown Detroit on February 6, 2025. From left: Bob Chapman, Kenneth Jamison, Leah Wiste, Steve Wasko, and Abdur Rasheed. Ethan Bakuli / Planet Detroit

Other policy solutions face significant challenges. Energy subsidy programs suffer from low enrollment. Collective “community solar” efforts capable of bringing cheap renewable power to renters and the urban poor are stymied by utilities or not made available to folks with lower incomes.

During the Biden administration, tens of billions of dollars were allocated by Congress to help socially vulnerable groups participate in the energy transition. Trump froze much of that funding. Repeated court orders to resume the funding have been ignored or only partially honored.

The chaos has only deepened advocates’ concern that the disparities in America’s electric grid will persist—and perhaps even deepen. “The current energy system has this imbalance, but if we don’t fix that, we’ll continue down that path, even as we transition to a cleaner, greener energy system,” said Tony Reames, professor of environmental justice at the University of Michigan.

In some states, minority communities are more likely to lose power. And in others, Black and brown residents are more likely to have their power shut off for nonpayment. Because of gaps in data collection, a clear national picture of energy inequality is difficult to see.

Across the United States, counties with high minority populations in Arkansas, Louisiana and Michigan are disproportionately prone to having long blackouts, according to a 2023 study in Nature Communications.

At least 3 million Americans face disconnection each year because they can’t afford utility bills, with Hispanic and Black households being four and three times more likely to be disconnected, respectively, according to the Energy Justice Lab, which tracks disconnections.

That number could be much higher, though, since only 28 states require their utilities to disclose disconnections, meaning no data is available for 44 percent of the country, according to Selah Goodson Bell, an energy justice campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity.

And in certain cities, the inequality extends to the very structure of the grid itself.

In Detroit and California, advocates and scientists have found that outdated utility infrastructure is concentrated in predominantly minority areas. This barrier may limit those neighborhoods’ ability to access renewable energy technologies such as rooftop solar, battery storage, and electric-vehicle charging, which can lower energy costs.

When the lights flicker or go out in Detroit’s poorest neighborhoods, it’s often because of the electrical distribution grid.

Solar installers set up the array on the roof of the New Mount Hermon Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit.(Courtesy of Michigan Interfaith Power & Light)

Today in Motor City, many low-income residents get their power through DTE Energy’s 4.8-kilovolt (kV) electric system, which struggles to keep up with the changing climate. Whiter, wealthier suburbs of Detroit are serviced by a more modern 13.8-kV grid. In rate cases, activists have accused DTE of prioritizing infrastructure upgrades in wealthier, whiter communities while leaving Black and brown neighborhoods with outdated and unreliable service.

Across the city, power lines and transformers are decades past their intended lifespan, leading to frequent outages and prolonged blackouts. Aging infrastructure, beset by summer heat waves and winter storms, led to almost 45 percent of customers suffering eight or more hours of service disruptions in 2023. A company spokesperson notes it improved reliability by 70 percent between 2023 and 2024.

“I know after three days without power, the strands of civilization get tested,” said Jeff Jones, Detroit resident and executive director of Hope Village Revitalization, a nonprofit community development corporation. “It can get really frightening.”

DTE says it has committed to improving the grid, citing a $1.2 billion investment in downtown Detroit’s infrastructure and a push to prioritize grid upgrades in vulnerable communities.

Lauren Sarnacki, a senior communications strategist at DTE, said the company also helped connect customers to nearly $144 million in energy assistance last year. And the utility runs a pilot program for households earning up to 200% of the federal poverty level, capping their energy costs at 6% of their income.

One Black church in Metro Detroit did not wait for the grid to improve. Last fall, New Mount Hermon Missionary Baptist Church weatherized, upgraded its heating system and installed solar panels and a battery with the assistance of the nonprofit Michigan Interfaith Power & Light and a state grant.

The Rev. Alex Hill, pastor of New Mount Hermon Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit.Courtesy of Michigan Interfaith Power & Light

The solar array and battery give community members a chance to warm up or cool down in the building when the power is out in the neighborhood, said the church’s deacon, Wilson Moore.

“For the church itself, we’ve cut costs as far as energy consumption almost 40, 45 percent—and that’s without even solar panels up,” he said.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power also operates a 4.8-kV distribution grid in certain neighborhoods, including in Boyle Heights, a predominantly hispanic East LA enclave that was once redlined and has now begun to gentrify.

There, aging transformers and outdated service lines mean that businesses installing EV fast-charging stations or anyone trying to plug in a large solar array may have to pay for grid upgrades, according to an NREL study. “Grid limitations could limit the success of other clean energy equity programs,” the study concluded.

Old roofs also are a major barrier to rooftop solar adoption across Los Angeles, according to Alex Turek, deputy director at GRID Alternatives Greater Los Angeles, a nonprofit that deploys renewable energy in low-income neighborhoods.

“I think 70 percent or more of our folks who we build trust with, who are ready to move forward, can’t then adopt solar because their roofs are old and can’t support the weight,” Turek said.

Floodlight spoke to 18 organizations attempting to deploy renewable energy in low-income communities across the country. All of them said that poor housing stock, which is often concentrated in formerly redlined neighborhoods, was a major barrier to their work.

For renters and apartment dwellers, community solar may be a solution by allowing low-income residents “a way of dividing up an array and sharing it among multiple people,” said Alan Drew, a regional organizer with the Climate Witness project, a faith-based climate nonprofit. Programs in 24 states and Washington, DC, support this form of collective solar energy, which generates enough energy to power more than million homes, according to a yearly survey from the NREL. Most of the locations also offer financial assistance for low-income households to access this form of energy, according to the NREL study.

However, in Michigan and Pennsylvania, investor-owned utilities have stymied the adoption of community solar. California has 13 solar projects built on the community solar model, but only one—the Anza community solar project in Santa Rosa—is dedicated to low- and medium-income customers.

Parishioners and supporters of New Mount Hermon Missionary Baptist Church celebrate the installation of a solar panel system. Courtesy of Michigan Interfaith Power & Light

The state does have the Solar on Multifamily Housing (SOMAH) program that has subsidized over 700 solar arrays on multifamily affordable housing units, bringing costs down for some 50,000 apartments. The program makes sure that the cost savings don’t just go to the landlord.

“The smart policy design feature of the SOMAH program is that at least 50 percent of the system has to benefit the tenants,” said Turek, of GRID Alternatives.

On sweltering afternoons in Hunting Park, the heat rises in waves from the asphalt, baking the brick rowhouses. The Philadelphia neighborhood’s sparse tree cover offers little relief—only 9 percent of it is shaded, compared to 20 percent of the city overall.

The effect is brutal. With much of its land covered in concrete, brick and blacktop, temperatures in Hunting Park can soar as much as 22 degrees higher than in other parts of Philadelphia. That difference translates directly into higher electricity bills as residents struggle to cool aging homes never built for such extreme heat.

Charles Lanier, executive director of the Hunting Park Community Revitalization Corp., said some residents pay as much as 40% of their incomes just to heat and cool their homes.

“I’ve seen bills as high as $5,000,” Lanier said. “It’s a problem across the board in marginalized communities here in the city of Philadelphia.”

In Hunting Park and in low-income neighborhoods across the City of Brotherly Love, the Philadelphia Energy Authority has braided together several grant and funding streams to repair, weatherize, electrify and add solar power to some 200 low-income homes across the city in a state where community solar is not allowed.

The agency also runs Solarize Philly, a program that has helped install solar on some 3,300 homes, including low- to moderate-income households. “We think low-income solar is the best way to create long-term affordable housing,” said Emily Schapira, CEO of Philadelphia’s Energy Authority.

Lanier has seen the value of solar firsthand. “Here at our office we have installed rooftop solar panels. Our electric bill has gone from $100,” he added, “to almost zero.”

Ethan Bakuli reported from Detroit for Planet Detroit, an independent, nonprofit local news organization designed to inform residents about the environment and public health in Detroit and Michigan. This story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Environmental Journalism.

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The U.S. Just Lost Its Perfect Credit Rating Thanks to Trump’s Tax Cuts

On Friday evening, Moody’s downgraded the United States’ overall credit-rating—from the highest level of AAA—to one notch lower, AA1, based on years of rising debt and Donald Trump’s tax cut plan, which the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Budget has calculated could add $2.5 trillion more in debt.

The rating is important because it is a marker of how stable the US economy is, and how likely the US is to be able to pay back its debt to lenders. Moody’s is the last of the three major credit rating agencies to lower the U.S. rating—Fitch Ratings and S&P Global Ratings lowered theirs in 2023 and 2011, respectively.

On one level, the change is monumental: Since 1919 Moody’s has consistently assigned the U.S. government it’s highest credit rating and has held the U.S. as a gold standard. Any downgrading is a major symbol that global investors no longer trust the United States as much as they have for more than 100 years.

Practically, the change doesn’t mean much in terms of the country’s ability to borrow money—with a rating off AA1, the U.S. is still miles above anything resembling a credit risk for most lenders. However, the most concrete implications are likely to be for consumers: While lenders will still offer the US loans, they may ask for higher returns, which will likely get passed down the line into the consumer lending markets. That could mean higher interest rates for everyday people trying to borrow money for homes, cars, and more.

According to Moody’s, the rating was downgraded for a simple reason: Congress keeps cutting taxes, which means the government is bringing in less money but still spending heavily.

“Over more than a decade, U.S. federal debt has risen sharply due to continuous fiscal deficits. During that time, federal spending has increased while tax cuts have reduced government revenues,” Moody’s statement reads. “As deficits and debt have grown, and interest rates have risen, interest payments on government debt have increased markedly.”

Moody’s cited the administration’s plans to extend it’s 2017 tax breaks even further while continuing to spend as reason for the downgrade. The silver lining, if there is one, is that Moody’s said the U.S. economy is unique in its power and resilience, and did not see any changes to the U.S. system of checks and balances.

The Trump administration’s initial response suggested they weren’t taking the downgrade very seriously.

Steven Cheung, a White House spokesman, responded by posting a rant on X, assailing an analyst for Moody’s Analytics who is frequently critical of Trump.

Mark Zandi, the economist for Moody’s, is an Obama advisor and Clinton donor who has been a Never Trumper since 2016. Nobody takes his “analysis” seriously. He has been proven wrong time and time again. https://t.co/l1dUFM5BRY

— Steven Cheung (@StevenCheung47) May 16, 2025

Cheung was apparently unaware that Moody’s Analytics is a separate company from the credit rating agency and Zandi had no involvement with the downgrade.

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This Week’s Reveal Podcast: Lessons From a Mass Shooter’s Mother

In 2014, in the college town of Isla Vista, California, a 22-year-old man killed six people and injured 14 others before killing himself. He didn’t suddenly “snap” one day out of the blue; he planned the attack and spiraled into crisis in the years leading up to it. The horrific incident left violence prevention experts wondering: What were the missed warning signs?

One person who held some of the answers was the killer’s mother, Chin Rodger. She has long avoided the media, fearing that speaking publicly would only hurt the victims’ families more. But more than a decade later, she’s come to see a greater purpose—that sharing what she knows about her son’s behavior before the attack could help others identify similar warning signs and prevent further violence.

“I hope that my hindsight will be your foresight,” she says.

This week on Reveal, Rodger talks publicly for the first time with Mother Jones reporter Mark Follman. By confronting and sharing the painful memories and evidence her son, Elliot, left behind, Rodger has contributed to the field of threat assessment—teams of people who specialize in collecting information on possible threats, connecting the dots, and intervening before tragedy strikes.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired inMay 2024.

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ICE Officials Just Admitted to Another Major Deportation Error

The Trump administration’s race to deport as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, has led to another major error. This time, the administration is admitting it—and it could have a major effect on deportation lawsuits.

One of the challenges to the administration’s mass deportation scheme is a class-action lawsuit, filed by some of the deported immigrants. At the center of the case is a Guatemalan man, identified only as O.C.G., who despite trying to claim asylum, was sent to Mexico. Attorneys representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement had previously claimed that the man told ICE officials that he had no problem being sent to Mexico.

Now, according to a report in Politico, they are admitting they have no record of an ICE agent ever being told this by the man. In court filings, ICE blames a “software tool” that allows officials to insert comments into an asylum seeker’s file. They say that an entry in the system noted that the man didn’t mind returning to Mexico. But ICE officials haven’t been able to identify any specific officer who asked the man about returning to Mexico, which means the entry was made without basis.

The reason this matters so much is that O.C.G.’s case is part of a lawsuit to block Trump’s “third country” policy. It says that if an asylum seeker tells investigators they are afraid to go back to their home country—or if an immigrant’s home country won’t accept them back—they can still be forced to leave the United States, as long as they are sent to a third country.

This rule has already been used by the Trump administration to send immigrants to El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama. The administration also announced plans to send some Asian immigrants to Libya, and is in discussion with Rwanda as another possible site. Attorneys representing O.C.G. and other asylum seekers say they are not being given an opportunity to make their cases that the third country might be as dangerous as their home country.

In the case of O.C.G., his attorneys have said that he was targeted in Mexico for being a gay man. The man said that in April 2024 he was traveling through Mexico on the way to the U.S. to try and claim asylum, when he was kidnapped, raped, and held for ransom by a group of men.

Despite that dangerous history, O.C.G. says that he was deported to Mexico anyway, and O.C.G.’s attorneys have asked the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit to have him returned to the U.S. The judge did pause the third country deportation program, but based on ICE’s original assertion that O.C.G. had no problem returning to Mexico, the judge declined to order the man’s return.

The administration has appealed the order to stop “third country” deportations up to a federal appeals court. On Friday, that court did agree with the lower court’s decision to pause the deportations, at least temporarily. That decision freezes anymore deportations to El Salvador or Libya for the time being, but does not address the fate of O.C.G., or other immigrants who have already been improperly deported to a third country.

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How Pope Leo Will Approach Climate Change Is Unclear, but the Vibe Is Positive

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On a sweltering January day in 2018, Pope Francis addressed 100,000 of the faithful in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, not far from where gold mining had ravaged an expanse of Amazon rainforest about the size of Colorado. “The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present,” he told the crowd. He simultaneously condemned extractive industries and conservation efforts that “under the guise of preserving the forest, hoard great expanses of woodland and negotiate with them, leading to situations of oppression for the Native peoples.”

Francis denounced the insatiable consumerism that drives the destruction of the Amazon, supported those who say Indigenous peoples’ guardianship of their own territories should be respected, and urged everyone to defend isolated tribes. “Their cosmic vision and their wisdom have much to teach those of us who are not part of their culture,” he said.

To Julio Cusurichi Palacios, an Indigenous leader who was in the stadium that day, the words from the head of the Catholic Church—which claims 1.4 billion members and has a long, sordid history of violence against Indigenous peoples worldwide—were welcome and momentous.

“Few world leaders have spoken about our issues, and the pope said publicly the rights of Indigenous peoples were historically violated,” he said after Pope Francis died last month. “Let us hope that the new pope is a person who can continue implementing the position the pope who passed away has been talking about.”

During his 12 years as pontiff, Francis radically reshaped how the world’s most powerful religious institution approached the moral and ethical call to protect the planet. Beyond his invocations for Indigenous rights, Francis acknowledged the Church’s role in colonization, and considered climate change a moral issue born of rampant consumption and materialism.

As the Trump administration dismantles climate action and cuts funding to Indigenous peoples around the world—and far-right politics continues to rise globally—experts see the conclave’s selection of Robert Francis Prevost, or Pope Leo XIV, as he is now known, as a clear beacon that the faith-based climate justice movement his predecessor led isn’t going anywhere.

In 2015, Pope Francis released his historic papal letter, or encyclical, titled Laudato si’. In the roughly 180-page document, he unequivocally identified planet-heating pollution as a pressing global issue disproportionately impacting the world’s poor, and condemned the outsize role wealthy countries like the US have in contributing to the climate crisis. With it, Francis did what no pope had done before: He spoke with great clarity and urgency about human degradation of the environment being not just an environmental issue, but a social and moral one. Laudato si’ established the definitive connection between faith, climate change, and social justice, and made it a tenet of Catholic doctrine.

The lasting influence of Francis’ encyclical would be buoyed by his other writings, homilies, and his direct appeals to world leaders. He was, for example, credited with helping rally nearly 200 countries to sign the 2015 Paris Agreement, regularly urged cooperation at international climate summits, and released a follow-up to his pioneering encyclical in 2023 that sounded the alarm in the face of the climate crisis.

“Pope Francis routinely said that we have a throwaway society. We throw away people, we throw away nature…and that we really need a culture that’s much more based in care,” said Christopher Cox, executive director of the Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment and a former priest. “That means care for people, especially the most poor, the most vulnerable, the most marginalized. And we also need much greater care for creation. We’ve been given a beautiful earth and we’re consuming it at a rate that goes far beyond what will be able to sustain life for the long term.”

The first Latin American pope, Francis was unique in implicitly embracing some elements of liberation theology, a Catholic social justice movement that calls for the liberation of marginalized peoples from oppression. Although Francis was occasionally critical of the doctrine’s Marxist elements and never fully supportive of it, many observers see his statements regarding poor and Indigenous peoples as reflective of the doctrine’s central values.

“Right from the beginning of his papacy, that outreach, that recognition of Indigenous ways of being Catholic and Indigenous language in Catholicism, heralded—up to that point—the most expansive official recognition of Indigenous contributions to Catholicism thus far,” said Eben Levey, an assistant professor of history at Alfred University who has studied the relationship between Catholic Church and Indigenous peoples in Latin America. In the centuries since conquistadors arrived in the Americas and forced Indigenous peoples to accept their religion, many Indigenous communities have made Catholicism their own, and a growing number of church leaders have embraced the idea that there are multiple ways of being Catholic and that Catholicism and Indigenous cultures can coexist.

A year after becoming pope, Francis approved the use of two Mayan languages, Tzotzil and Tzeltal, in mass and in sacraments like baptism and confession. In 2015 he expanded that list to include the Aztec language Nahuatl, and in 2016, during a visit to Mexico, he celebrated mass in Tzeltal, Tzotzil, and Chol.

In 2022, Francis officially apologized to Canada for the residential schools that ripped Indigenous children from their families, leading to the deaths of many who were later buried in unmarked graves. The following year, he rejected the Doctrine of Discovery, a religious concept that colonizers used to justify the illegal seizure of land from Indigenous peoples and became part of an 1823 US Supreme Court ruling that described Native Americans as “savages.”

“It may be a signal to say ‘America, come back into the world community, come back into a planetary future.”

“The Doctrine of Discovery is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church,” Pope Francis said, adding that he strongly supports the global implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He also drew a clear connection between those rights and climate action: In 2023, he made clear that Indigenous peoples are critical to fighting climate change when he said, “Ignoring the original communities in the safeguarding of the Earth is a serious mistake, not to say a great injustice.”

But Pope Francis’ progressivism had its limits. In 2019, he called for a meeting of church leaders, known as the Synod of Bishops, for the pan-Amazon region to address issues affecting the Amazon Basin. Indigenous Catholics who attended brought up illegal logging and violence against land defenders and proposed reforms. “The ancestral wisdom of the aboriginal peoples affirms that mother earth has a feminine face,” reads the document that emerged from the gathering and urged the church to give women more leadership roles and allow married deacons to be ordained as priests. In his response, Francis condemned corporations that destroy the Amazon as committing “injustice and crime,” yet refused to embrace the proposals to make church leadership more inclusive of women and married men.

Francis’ climate activism was also riddled in constraint. He transformed how religious institutions viewed the climate crisis, framing a failure to act on it as a brutal injustice toward the most vulnerable, but could have implemented “more direct institutional action,” said Nadia Ahmad, a Barry University School of Law associate professor who has studied faith-based environmental action. Though the former pontiff publicly supported renewable energy adoption, called for fossil fuel disinvestment, and prompted churches across the world to go solar, he did not mandate what he deemed a “radical energy transition” across dioceses, schools, and hospitals. The work he accomplished “could have been amplified a bit more and had more accountability,” said Ahmad.

But that limitation, she noted, likely stemmed from contradictory politics playing out within the church—many traditional, conservative Catholics, particularly in the United States, resisted Francis’ progressive teachings. A 2021 study found that over a period of five years, most US bishops were “nearly silent and sometimes even misleading,” in their official messaging to parishioners about climate change and the pope’s famed encyclical.

Though Pope Leo XIV has been lauded for his advocacy in defense of immigrants and worker rights—his namesake, Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 until 1903 is known as a historical Catholic champion of social justice and equality—the new pope’s track record on engaging directly with climate change is sparse.

Still, Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, sees comments the new pope made last year on the need to move “from words to action” as a promising sign that he will continue Francis’ commitment to communicating the urgency of a warming world. The timing of the conclave’s unprecedented decision to select the first pontiff from the United States, coming amid the Trump administration’s sweeping dismissal of climate action, elimination of environmental protections, and attacks on Indigenous rights, isn’t lost on her.

“It may be a signal to say ‘America, come back into the world community, come back into a planetary future where we collectively have been working to create a future worthy of our children and our children’s children,’” she said.

Leo grew up in Chicago and is a citizen of both the US and Peru, where he spent decades serving as a missionary and bishop before Francis made him a cardinal in 2023. He speaks five languages fluently and some Quechua, an Indigenous Incan language.

While he was working in Peru in the 1990s, Leo was critical of the government’s human rights abuses—though he refrained from explicitly taking sides in the political fight between Maoist rebels and the government of then-dictator Alberto Fujimori, according to Matthew Casey, a historian and clinical associate professor at Arizona State University based in Lima. Still, his reaction to the country’s authoritarianism could provide a glimpse of what stances he might take as pope, Casey said. “It doesn’t matter who was abusing human rights, he was on the side of the people,” he said.

In 2016, the would-be pontiff spoke at a conference in Brazil where attendees talked about threats to the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous peoples who lived there. He praised Francis’ encyclical, describing the document as “very important,” and representing “something new in terms of this explicit expression of the church’s concern for all of creation.” To Casey, that suggests Pope Leo XIV, like his predecessor, has an awareness of the issues affecting Indigenous peoples, such as the rampant degradation of the environment.

“Both Francis and Prevost are attuned to Indigeneity in ways that they couldn’t have been if they worked in Europe or the United States, because the politics of Indigeneity in Latin America are just so different,” Casey said. More than a week after the conclave that named him pope, communities across Peru are still celebrating the selection of Pope Leo XIV.

Francis and Leo’s shared experiences working with marginalized communities harmed by colonialism and climate change, and their commitment to the social justice aspects of the church’s mission, are particularly meaningful in this political moment, said Levey, the Alfred University historian.

“We are seeing a resurgence of ultra-right-wing politics globally, and the Catholic Church next to the United Nations is one of the few multilateral organizations perhaps capable of responding in some form or fashion to the questions of our modern age or contemporary moment,” he said.

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Supreme Court Again Halts Trump’s Alien Enemies Act Deportations

In a 7-2 ruling on Friday afternoon, the Supreme Court once again barred the Trump administration from removing Venezuelans held at Texas immigration detention centers under the Alien Enemies Act, which gives the government extraordinary powers to summarilydeport noncitizensduring a “declared war” or “invasion.”

The justices found that the federal government violated the due process rights of detainees at Bluebonnet Detention Facility by failing to give them enough notice to contest their imminent removal on April 18, when dozens of men were put on a bus and vans headed to a nearby airport, presumably to be deported to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. The notice provided by the Trump administration to the Venezuelans, the court ruled, was severely inadequate—especially in light of the possibility of indefinite detention in a foreign prison.

“The Government has represented elsewhere that is unable to provide for the return of an individual deported in error to a prison in El Salvador,” the majority wrote in reference to the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the government has acknowledged it wrongly deported, “where it is alleged that detainees face indefinite detention…The detainees’ interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty. Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster.”

The Court also reaffirmed that Venezuelans facing removal under the Alien Enemies Act are “entitled to constitutionally adequate notice prior to any removal, in order to pursue appropriate relief.”

As a Mother Jones investigation based on firsthand accounts from six detainees at Bluebonnet previously revealed, the Trump administration tried to abruptly expel about 60 Venezuelan men without giving them a meaningful opportunity to challenge their removal—which the Supreme Court had previously required. The interviewed detainees, who were handed a one-page document informing them they were going to be removed under the Alien Enemies Act as alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang, disputed the government’s accusations.

In some cases, the men received the notice—written only in English and without any mention of their right to seek relief in court—just hours before being loaded onto a police-escorted convoy headed to the Abilene Regional Airport. Had it not been for a last-minute legal effort by the ACLU, which led to the men being returned to the detention center, they could have joined the hundreds of Venezuelans now trapped in President Nayib Bukele’s Terrorism Confinement Center. (In an overnight order on April 19, the Supreme Court then blocked the administration from deporting Venezuelans detained in northern Texas under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act “until further order” of the Court.)

The Court did not address the merits of the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to conduct summary deportations: “[W]e decide today only that the detainees are entitled to more notice than was given on April 18,” the decision states. Instead, the justices sent the case back to the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, instructing it to consider whether the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in challenging the legality of President Donald Trump’s use of the act, as well as “the issue of what notice is due” to Venezuelans facing potential removal under the wartime statute.

The Fifth Circuit will have to contend with a permanent injunction issued earlier this month by Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. in the Southern District of Texas that bars the government’s use of the Alien Enemies Act in that jurisdiction. In it, Rodriguez, a Trump appointee, concluded that the “historical record renders clear that the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.”

In a concurring opinion on Friday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh indicated that he would have preferred to see the Supreme Court take on the merits of the case, rather than have lower courts do so first. “[C]onsistent with the Executive Branch’s request for expedition—and as the detainees themselves urge—I would grant certiorari, order prompt briefing, hold oral argument soon thereafter, and then resolve the legal issues,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. “First and most important, we lack jurisdiction and therefore have no authority to issue any relief,” Alito argued. “Second, even if we had such authority, the applicants have not satisfied the requirements for the issuance of injunctive relief pending appellate review.”

Alito claimed that on April 18—the day District Court Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee in the Northern District of Texas, did not block the Venezuelans’ removal—the legal record “contained only sketchy evidence about any imminent threat” to any of the Venezuelans at Bluebonnet. In doing so, he brushed off a court declaration from a lawyer attesting to the men’s likely imminent removal as “double-hearsay.” (The majority disagreed with that assessment, noting evidence that the government had in fact taken steps on April 18 to remove the detainees.)

ACLU’s lead counsel in the case, Lee Gelernt, made clear in a Mother Jones interviewlast month that the stakes that day couldn’t have been higher.

“In more than 30 years of litigating,” Gelernt said, “I can’t remember a situation that was this urgent or extraordinary, where we were worried that every minute we delayed filing something could mean that our clients would end up permanently in a brutal foreign prison for the rest of their lives. It was literally minute to minute.”

In a statement, Gelernt called Friday’s ruling “a powerful rebuke to the government’s attempt to hurry people away to a Gulag-type prison in El Salvador.”

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How Star Wars Reveals Conservatives’ Authoritarian Fantasies

Why do Republicans and their enablers insist on fantasizing about one of the most evil empires in science fiction?

In a recent CNN appearance, former Mitch McConnell adviser and GOP operative Scott Jennings went on the defense, justifying Emperor Palpatine’s violent vision for a galactic empire. When podcaster and contributor Van Lathan pointed out just one of the many war crimes the Empire engaged in—blowing up Princess Leia’s adopted home planet and massacring everyone on it—Jennings replied: “I think some could argue that it was warranted, given their rebellious activities. I mean, he defended the Empire against unelected hippies and violent protesters.”

The entire massacre of a planet is justified because of some “unelected hippies” and “protesters”?

It turns out Jennings isn’t the only right-winger to defend the Empire’s actions—and specifically the destruction of an entire planet. For decades, the GOP and its allies have played with defending the Empire’s violence for the sake of order. (Republican and former FCC chairman Ajit Pai literally quoted Palpatine in a hearing once.)

Now, of course, Star Wars is entirely science fiction. It’s not real. But this past week, the final episodes of Andor, Disney’s critical and audience hit about how the rebellion in the original trilogy came to be, dropped. And the show has pulled the Star Wars franchise into somewhat of a cultural renaissance, as its obvious point of view on authoritarianism marks a return to what made Star Wars: Dissecting the effects of state violence on the everyday people who work toward liberation.

“I do think that looking at how Star Wars and other stories like it are used in our political conversation reveals something interesting about our political moment: Republicans are gunning for their own Galactic Empire, and they will blow up a planet to make it happen. Or in this case, they will blow up our country.”

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The Qatari 747 Is Just the Latest Mega-Donation Flowing to Trump’s “Library”

President Donald Trump insists that accepting a $400 million Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from Qatar’s ruling family would not amount to a huge bribe. That’s because this opulent new Air Force One would go to his “library”—not to him personally—when he leaves office.

That, at least, is what the president claimed amid concern that he might make personal use of a library-owned aircraft. Disputing that, he has suggested the plane would instead serve as a museum piece, like the decommissioned former Air Force One displayed at President Ronald Reagan’s library facility.

The president, or unnamed aides, are regularly attempting to wave off ethical concerns by saying that various huge donations will eventually go to the “library.”

It’s not yet clear whether this curious claim—that a so-called “flying palace” that US taxpayers may pay more than $1 billion to upgrade will be parked at a to-be-determined site in Florida after just a few years of use—will really come to pass. Facing rare bipartisan criticism over his plan to accept what experts call an unconstitutional emolument, Trump left Qatar Thursday without a public announcement finalizing a deal for the plane.

But Trump’s explanation is part of a trend. The president, or unnamed aides, are regularly attempting to wave off ethical concerns by saying that various huge donations will eventually go to the “library.”

Trump’s inaugural committee hasn’t said how much remains from the record-shattering $250 million raised via fealty displays from corporate chieftains. But the balance will go to the library, a “person close the inauguration” told the Wall Street Journal. Proceeds from the million-dollar-a-plate fundraising dinners and $5 million-one-on-one meetings with the president—organized by the pro-Trump MAGA Inc PAC—are “all going to the library,” a “person familiar with the dinners” told Wired.

Then there are Meta (owner of Facebook) and Disney (owner of ABC News), which settled dubious lawsuits Trump had filed against them by pledging $15 million and $22 million, respectively, to Trump’s presidential library foundation.

There is ample reason to be wary about how the money could ultimately be used. For one, these are pledges to give money to a organization that is only partly established.

Disney, in its a settlement actually said it would transfer settlement funds “to a presidential foundation and museum” before one existed. The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library was incorporated in Florida a few weeks later, apparently as a way to accept the settlement. (Meta’s January settlement, which Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said “looks like a bribe,” is also reportedly bound for that foundation.)

Modern presidential libraries are run by nonprofit foundations. They often take the form of hagiographic museums, which include a repository of presidential papers administered by the National Archives. Trump’s library foundation has not indicated if it has yet sought IRS recognition as a nonprofit, and it hasn’t publicly announced a board of directors.

Trump’s record with non-profit organizations leads to additional reasons for concern. In 2019, a New York judge ordered his nonprofit Trump Foundation to pay $2 million to an array of charities—and then to dissolve entirely—after finding Trump misused the foundation to further his political and business interests. In 2022, the Trump Organization and Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee agreed to pay $750,000 to settle a suit brought by the DC attorney general charging that the committee illegally misused nonprofit funds to enrich the Trump family by “grossly overpaying” Trump-owned companies “for use of event space at the Trump Hotel for certain inaugural events.”

Trump, of course, was indicted in 2023 for hiding highly classified government documents he had removed from the White House. Trump reportedly insisted the federal records, which belonged to the National Archives, were “mine.” Whether the 747 and the millions in donations and settlement money truly end up benefiting the future library—which would be run in part by the very same National Archives—remains to seen.

“If past is precedent, I don’t know that we should take them at the word until we see how the money is spent,” Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Mother Jones.

Regardless, the library itself is hardly an ethical panacea. Gifts to presidential libraries “fall between the cracks of campaign finance regulations and rules governing ethics in office,” Jacob Levy, a political theory professor at McGill University, wrote in a recent op-ed arguing that presidential fundraising for libraries while in office creates a “loophole you could fly a plane through.”

Levy noted that the foundations are bound only by loose rules applied to US nonprofits. Critics have labeled presidential libraries, generally, “a scam.”

“The fact that, according to President Trump, the plane would not remain in service to the United States but would rather be donated to his presidential library after his term concludes further raises the possibility that this ‘nice gesture’ is intended as a bribe to Donald Trump,” Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee charged in a letter to Trump’s attorney general and White House counsel. The plan, they argued, was “corrupt.”

Though legally Trump cannot simply pocket funds and assets intended for the library, he faces few other limits. He could choose to “take a salary,” Levy told Mother Jones. “He can fly around on the plane.”

Trump’s ability to raise donations that he could later personally benefit from creates a major ethical issue, Levy argued. “The fact that he can solicit those contributions” from people currying his favor during his presidency, Levy said, “makes them corruption.”

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“This Election Is a Whole Lot Bigger Than What Happens in Philadelphia”

Last November, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner issued a characteristically blunt warning to anyone hatching plans to “play militia,” threaten voters, or otherwise interfere in the upcoming election: “F around and find out.”

“You can have your fun in a jail cell, ’cause that’s what’s coming,” he said in a press conference that went viral on social media. The next day, Krasner downplayed it—“to everyone’s surprise, [I’m] getting a lot of attention”—but displayed a T-shirt that staff members had printed with an acronym: FAFO.

In Philadelphia, where the unbridled aggression of local sports fans is a point of pride, Krasner’s combativeness has been a political asset. In 2017, as a long-shot candidate to be district attorney, Krasner made waves by proclaiming law enforcement to be “systemically racist.” With no prosecutorial experience, he campaigned on his career as a civil rights attorney, having sued the Philadelphia Police Department about 75 times.

Soon after taking office, Krasner instituted sweeping policy changes and oversaw an exodus of prosecutors. He was mostly impervious to criticism from judges, the police union, local politicians, and those ousted from his office. Apparently reveling in open conflict with other public figures, he has nursed a yearslong feud with the more moderate DemocraticPennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and traded barbs with President Donald Trump.

Krasner hasexemplified a particularly antagonistic, burn-it-all-down approach to criminal justice reform. Even after eight years in office, he still sees himself as an outsider and as “more a voter than a politician.” During his tenure, he transformed the office of the district attorney—a local law enforcement position—into a national bully pulpit. Krasner has, “in many ways, come to define the progressive prosecutor movement,” said Chesa Boudin, the former San Francisco District Attorney.

But that movement is on its back foot. Efforts to tie criminal justice reform to crime and public disorder have brought down high-profile progressive prosecutors around the country—like Boudin and Los Angeles’ George Gascón.Though there are plenty of reformers still in office, many of whom are opting to keep their heads down, the idealism and enthusiasm have faded since 2020. Lara Bazelon, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, said that the movement is “in the wilderness.”

“It’s hard to convince progressives to run, knowing what has happened to the people who ran before,” Bazelon said. “There’s a problem with recruitment, momentum, and messaging.”

But Krasner sees a new opportunity for the progressive prosecutor under the second Trump administration. Though criminal justice reform has slid down the list of Democratic priorities, he argues that prosecutors still have a role to play in resisting the president. Krasner is now running for his third term—the Democratic primary is on May 20—and often seems to be more focused on Trump than on his opponent, retired municipal judge Patrick Dugan.

“This election is a whole lot bigger than what happens in Philadelphia,” Krasner said while announcing his reelection campaign in February. “DA has come to have a new meaning that I never expected in the last seven years—and that is Democracy Advocate.”

In a political era characterized by melodrama and bluster, it can be hard to tell the difference between grandstanding and, well, taking an actual stand. Krasner admitted that there are limitations to what any local prosecutor can do to resist the federal government, telling me that it primarily comes down to “showing some level of courage.” Krasner has described Trump as a “wannabe dictator surrounded by wannabe oligarchs” and the administration’s immigration crackdown as “Nazi stuff.” To the growing chorus of Democratic voices calling for more vehement opposition to Trump, it may be refreshing to see someone taking a big swing.

Krasner used to say he’d retire after his tenure as district attorney, but now, he’s not so sure. “I don’t have any plans,” Krasner told me. “But I do get a little irritated when elected officials in higher office open their mouths, and I hear clucking coming out.”

In April, I visited Krasner at his home, which doubles as his campaign headquarters, in Center City, Philadelphia. He was attempting to eat lunch while dodging the persistent efforts of a cat hoping to snag a piece of chicken. When an aide offered to move the cat to another room, Krasner waved him off.

Krasner is trim, silver-haired, and usually wears a dark suit and horn-rimmed glasses. He has a languid way of speaking off the campaign trail and has retained traces of a Southern drawl, likely from spending his early childhood in St. Louis. But there is an ever-present intensity to him, as if he is lying in wait for his moment to strike. It is easy to see that he was an effective and relentless litigator.

A graduate of Stanford Law School, Krasner began his career in the Philadelphia public defender’s office before going into private practice as a criminal defense and civil rights attorney. “I really miss the courtroom,” he told me recently. “I truly enjoyed cross-examination, trying cases.” He represented a slew of protesters, often for free, including those arrested during the 2000 Republican National Convention and members of Occupy and Black Lives Matter. “He developed a reputation as an activist lawyer,” said Michael Coard, an attorney in the city and friend of Krasner’s.

Mass incarceration has profoundly affected Philadelphia, with a population that is over 40 percent Black.In 2017, it had the highest incarceration rate of the country’s 10 largest cities. That year, it also led in probation and parole rates among major cities: A Philadelphia Inquirer analysis found that 1 in 23 adults were under some kind of court-ordered supervision.

In the 30 years that Krasner spent as a defense lawyer, he faced off with a district attorney’s office that he has described as punitive to an extreme and accused of turning a blind eye to police misconduct. Philadelphia’s longest-serving district attorney, Lynne Abraham, famously said that she was “passionate” about the death penalty and secured 108 capital sentences during her time in office from 1991 to 2010. In his memoir, Krasner wrote that being a defense attorney felt like “standing outside the DA’s office, banging my head against the wall.”

By 2016, several prosecutors around the country—from Baltimore, Maryland**,** to Corpus Christi, Texas—were ousted by candidates promising to reform the criminal justice system. A series of high-profile police killings had also drawn newfound attention to racial inequities in law enforcement. Kim Foxx was elected as Chicago’s top prosecutor amid outrage over how her predecessor handled the case of Laquan McDonald, who was shot and killed by police. There was growing support among criminal justice advocates and legal scholars to use the office of the chief prosecutor, historically a primary agent of mass incarceration, to curb it.

When Krasner entered the 2017 Democratic primary, five of his opponents had worked in the district attorney’s office, and one had been a judge. Krasner was initially attacked for his lack of prosecutorial experience, but as the race unfolded, this turned out to be an advantage. Trump was in office, and voters were eager to embrace a left-leaning candidate with a strong position on racial justice. After one debate, the lawyer who had moderated it told the Atlantic, “It sounds like they’re all running for public defender.” Krasner won both the primary and the general election decisively, buoyed by the support of criminal justice organizers and $1.4 million from a George Soros-funded PAC.

But the hard part had just begun. Krasner inherited an entrenched and insular office of about 300 lawyers. The long-standing practice had been to recruit prosecutors from the same local law schools and many, he said, had gone to high school together. Four days into his first term, Krasner fired 31 prosecutors, some of whom had spent decades in the office. Krasner told me that it was essential to reshaping the culture and, in retrospect, he “should have fired more.”

He overhauled office policies, instructing prosecutors to stop pursuing marijuana possession and prostitution charges, reduce or eliminate probation when possible, and seek lenient sentences in most cases. Krasner also ended the use of cash bail in many non-violent low-level offenses. It sent a clear message to those who remained: adapt or leave. Many prosecutors opted to leave, some for jobs at the state attorney general’s office, then led by Josh Shapiro. (At the time, Krasner joked that they were “war criminals” fleeing for Paraguay.)

But Krasner was still moving too slowly for some. At the beginning of his term, he regularly met with a group of criminal justice advocates who had supported his campaign. But the arrangement fizzled out as organizers grew frustrated that the office was still frequently seeking high bail in misdemeanor cases. Candace McKinley, who leads the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund, saw the meetings as a “PR thing” rather than an effort to earnestly engage with concerns.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Krajewski, a criminal justice organizer at the time, explained that some activists had underestimated the pace of reform. “It can be hard to balance your urgency with the patience required to actually understand how the system works,” Krajewski said.

Chief prosecutors are often described as ruling over their personal fiefdoms, and they have an almost unchecked ability to set policy in their own offices. But they still must work with—or around—the myriad of other players in the criminal justice system. Krasner faced considerable resistance from important stakeholders. There were reports that judges had criticized assistant district attorneys for being too lenient, and some rejected new deals that prosecutors had offered to people sentenced to life in prison as minors. Krasner also drew the ire of the local Fraternal Order of Police when he expanded his predecessor’s “do not call” list of police officers with a history of misconduct and filed charges against eight officers during his first nine months in office.

Krasner’s approach stood out even among his fellow progressive prosecutors. Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, who was elected in the same year, had spent 20 years rising in the ranks of his office. Gonzalez had a quieter, more incremental theory of change. In her 2019 book, Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration, journalist Emily Bazelon described Gonzalez as a “consensus-builder” and wrote that he “wanted to be a force for evolution, not revolution.”

In some ways, Gonzalez had a different task before him. His predecessor, Ken Thompson, had made the Brooklyn district attorney’s office one of the most progressive in the nation. “Other offices might need a firebrand to come in and blow up the culture,” John Pfaff, a Fordham University law professor, said. “It’s not a question of which is the right approach. It’s a question of, for a given county, which is the best response?”

Slow and steady also wasn’t in Krasner’s nature. He had built a career as an outside agitator and held onto that identity even after being elected. Krasner was not always willing to engage in the diplomacy required of local politics, which could be a source of frustration both inside and outside of his office.

One political ally told me that Krasner sometimes couldn’t stop himself from criticizing public officials despite needing their support. “When you want people to work with you, you don’t start by saying ‘you’re shitty,’” she said.

For Krasner, though, these political skirmishes were more motivated by “truth-telling than fighting for fighting’s sake.” Those who have worked with Krasner say that, during his time in office, he has grown more accommodating—if reluctantly.

“As I get older, I do recognize that sometimes you really ought to say, ‘wow, you look great today’ to someone who doesn’t,” Krasner told me. “But I don’t like it.”

Whether you chalk it up to stubbornness or conviction, Krasner is well-suited to face off with the fervent opposition that progressive prosecutors face. “Larry’s personality makes him immune to some of that pressure,” a former staffer in the district attorney’s office told me. “He has so much more tolerance for conflict than other people do.”

“Larry’s personality makes him immune to some of that pressure. He has so much more tolerance for conflict than other people do.”

Critics have argued that progressive prosecutors across the country have neglected public safety and abandoned law enforcement. In 2022, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares advised Republican lawmakers to make progressive prosecutors “the face of Democrats on police and crime.” That year, Republican state legislators unsuccessfully tried to impeach Krasner, arguing that he was selectively enforcing laws and endangering constituents. In 2024, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee traveled to Philadelphia to hold a hearing focused on Krasner’s “pro-criminal policies.”

Rebecca Goldstein, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said that much of the pushback against reform DAs is “toplash” from state-level officials, particularly Republicans, who have tried to rein them in or remove them from office. Despite some high-profile losses—such as in San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles—progressive prosecutors tend to win reelection, Goldstein said.

This held true for Krasner, who was reelected in 2021 by a wide margin. He was insulated by the geographic boundaries of Philadelphia, which contain fewer suburbs than other major urban areas. And in a majority-minority city, concerns about public safety may be equally weighed with concerns about systemic racism.

“People want to feel safe, but they also want to make sure that their child is not wrongfully criminalized because they’re Black and brown,” former City Council member Maria Quiñones-Sánchez told me. “Those families know that at the end of the day, Larry would, at minimum, give them a fair process.”

How does one measurethe success of a progressive prosecutor?Krasner has charted his tenure on two metrics, arguing that he has made the city both “safer and freer.” The DA’s office tracks all prison and jail sentences imposed each year, and Krasner says that future years of incarceration have decreased by around 50 percent, as compared to the previous administration. Last year, Philadelphia saw its lowest homicide rate in a decade, and, this April, its jail population also dropped to a 10-year low.

In late March, Krasner’s campaign commissioned a poll that showed him with a 37-point lead among likely primary voters. Remarkably, the poll also found that 40 percent of voters thought that violent crime in the city was decreasing and 32 percent thought it was staying the same—which the pollster described as “very very unusual.” Nationally, the majority of Americans think that crime is getting worse, even when data shows otherwise.

The upcoming primary will be the true measure of what voters think of Krasner’s policies. His opponent, retired municipal judge Patrick Dugan, is trying to strike a moderating tone and argues that, though the system needs reform, Krasner has gone too far. Dugan is hoping to convince voters that Krasner has mismanaged his office and failed to hold criminals accountable, calling him a “far off the left non-prosecutor.” (The campaign declined to make Dugan available for an interview.)

Though Dugan’s campaign has insisted that he is not the “tough-on-crime” candidate, he has a habit of defaulting to that kind of rhetoric. In April, I watched him speak at a candidate’s forum in the basement of a Southwest Philadelphia library. He appealed to nostalgia for a mostly mythical time when you could leave your door unlocked at night, asking the audience, “Do you let your kids go to the playground in this neighborhood? Do you let them go to the corner store anymore?”

He jabbed his finger. “Do you feel safe?”

Dugan has tried to impress upon voters that Krasner is more interested in courting national attention than fulfilling his duties as chief prosecutor. At the forum, Dugan argued that Krasner pivoted to the president to avoid answering questions about his own record, saying that it was as if Krasner was “running against Trump.”

When we spoke in April, Krasner told me that he’s merely meeting the moment. He called the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts a “public safety disaster” and argued that it was crucial for prosecutors to resist it, though their jurisdiction is admittedly narrow.

“Are we allowed to get in the way of lawful activity by ICE agents? No, nor should we,” Krasner said. “But we are allowed to prosecute ICE agents if they decide that they’re having so much fun that they’re going to start punching people gratuitously.”

Krasner has also signaled that he may be willing to take some unorthodox approaches. Last October, he unsuccessfully sued Elon Musk over his $1 million giveaway to swing state voters. And in January, he told NPR that he was looking into bringing state charges against Pennsylvanians who received pardons for their role in the January 6 riot.

All this goading may eventually trigger a crackdown. Recently,the Department of Justice announced that it was investigating the district attorney’s office in Hennepin County, Minnesota, for “illegal consideration of race in its prosecutorial decision-making.” Krasner is almost certainly on the administration’s radar, given that Trump called him the “worst district attorney” in 2019.

But this is unlikely to stop Krasner. “Why exactly are we all afraid?” he asked me in March. He certainly doesn’t seem to be. In fact, he seems to be trawling for another fight with Trump. Krasner’s campaign T-shirts have repurposed an old message, this time seemingly targeted towards the president. At his campaign launch, Krasner showed one off while grinning for the cameras. Its slogan read, “F*** AROUND AND FIND OUT.”

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Trump Administration Aims to Roll Back Limits on Toxic “Forever Chemicals” in Drinking Water

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Trump administration on Wednesday announced plans to rescind and postpone rules limiting “forever chemicals” in drinking water that were enacted under the Biden administration and designed to prevent millions of people from exposure to these persistent and dangerous contaminants.

Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the agency plans to issue new rules this fall that would repeal drinking water levels for four PFAS chemicals and delay the implementation of limits on two others.

PFAS—or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances—have been used in the manufacturing of a huge range of products for decades, becoming ubiquitous in water and soils despite the dangers they pose to human and environmental health. Research has shown that roughly half of the US population consumes water contaminated with PFAS, which are linked to cancers, reproductive and neurological problems, and low birth weights. New data shows that PFAS are found at more than 8,500 drinking water sources across all 50 states and Washington, DC.

Recent research has found that PFAS in ocean waters can disrupt carbon cycles, increasing climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

“The Trump administration caved to pressure by this very powerful industry. Unfortunately, Americans will pay the price.”

The chemical industry and water utilities have fought against any federal limits on PFAS in drinking water for years, but in 2024 the EPA, under President Joe Biden, set limits on six. The rule came after ongoing pushback from the chemical industry, which has long argued that the substances are safe, and marked the first time in decades that the agency took steps to limit unregulated contaminants in drinking water.

“This was a historic regulation and it came after decades of community organizing. Companies have known about the toxicity of these chemicals since the 1950s,” said Mary Grant, the water program director at the advocacy group Food & Water Watch. “Finally the EPA issued these rules, and today Lee Zeldin announced he’s rolling them back.”

After the Biden administration issued the new PFAS rules last April, the chemical industry, represented by the American Chemistry Council and the National Association of Manufacturers, joined with water utilities to sue the agency. Water utility trade associations argued that the costs of complying with the new rule were prohibitive and would be passed on to consumers.

The Trump administration has sought to delay the lawsuit, filing its latest attempt on Monday, saying it anticipated an “announcement of potential proceedings addressing the regulations challenged here.”

The agency’s proposed rollbacks were first reported by the Washington Post on Wednesday.

“On May 14, EPA announced next steps with the intent of reducing the burden on drinking water systems and the cost of water bills, while continuing to protect public health and ensure that the Agency is following the law in establishing impactful regulations such as these,” said Mike Bastasch, an EPA spokesman, in a written statement.

Bastasch explained that the compliance deadline for two types of PFAS—known as PFOA and PFOS, which are older-generation types of the chemicals and less widely used now—would be extended to 2031 under a proposed new rule. Another proposed new rule will attempt to rescind standards on so-called GenX PFAS types and change the “hazard index mixture” of those types, as well as an additional type, known as PFBS, to “to address procedural flaws” by the previous administration.

In their legal challenge to the Biden rules, the chemical industry and water utilities argued the administration made procedural missteps in the regulatory process.

Environmental groups, including those that intervened in the industry’s lawsuit, said they expect to sue over the Trump administration’s move, noting that the Safe Drinking Water Act contains an “anti-backsliding” provision that prevents the agency from issuing rules that are weaker than previous ones.

Advocates for communities affected by PFAS contamination, including especially hard-hit ones in North Carolina and New York, said they were disappointed by the announcement.

“The Trump administration is proposing to weaken really critical drinking water standards on toxic PFAS chemicals,” said Rob Hayes, the water policy director at Environmental Advocates NY. “This will result in more exposure to toxic chemicals to New Yorkers, every time they turn on the tap…The Trump administration caved to pressure by this very powerful industry. Unfortunately, Americans will pay the price.”

In 2017, residents in coastal North Carolina learned that GenX compounds were in their drinking water and successfully pushed for new safeguards in their water systems. Emily Donovan of the advocacy group Clean Cape Fear lives in a community about 85 miles south of a Chemours chemical plant that produced these GenX compounds for industrial processes.

“That facility was using the Cape Fear River as its sewer system,” Donovan said. “When we first learned about GenX in our tap water, that was such a shock for us. We had a lot of leaders tell us [PFAS levels] met or exceeded state and federal standards—but that’s because there weren’t any.”

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Trump’s Assault on Small Farmers

This story was produced in partnership with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

Laura Beth Resnick was delivering snapdragons and anemones to clients near the White House when she got the news: In his first wave of executive orders, President Donald Trump had frozen all projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, one of his predecessor’s signature achievements. Resnick was awaiting reimbursement for solar panels she’d purchased for her flower farm via the Rural Energy for America Program, which had received a $1 billion IRA injection to help farmers invest in renewable energy projects. Her frozen grant left her $36,000 in the hole.

Resnick pulled over, got out, and just started walking, shaky with adrenaline. “This sudden knowledge that we are on the hook for this money we don’t have—it’s so overwhelming,” she said in March.

“It would seem like they’re trying to create fewer farms.”

Trump’s chaotic first months back in office—his flurry of orders, tariffs, and cuts by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—have sent America’s farmers into a tailspin. Few farms were spared, but smaller and newer ones have been disproportionately harmed—with potentially far-reaching consequences for their communities. “I don’t think [the administration] knows enough about how the economy works to back up what they’re doing,” said Kevin Leavitt, an organic farmer in Maine whose own frozen funding threatened to tank his business (before his contract was honored in April). But “it would seem like they’re trying to create fewer farms.”

It’s hard to overstate how thoroughly Trump’s policies have disrupted farmers’ lives. According to DOGE’s (often dubious) “efficiency leaderboard,” the Department of Agriculture is among the federal agencies that have endured the deepest cuts. This spring, the USDA suspended billions of dollars in outstanding payments for at least 15 programs for farmers and rural communities. It also cut $1 billion destined for schools and food banks (another hit for the farmers who supply them), and gutted regional USDA offices, which provide a vital lifeline to farm country. Today, some farmers “may have to drive a hundred miles or more to get to an office,” said Ben Lilliston, the director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, meanwhile, has fired hundreds of workers and plans to slash its budget by 25 percent, which could jeopardize its ability to provide the accurate weather forecasts farmers rely on. And DOGE’s cuts to Bureau of Reclamation staff are so dramatic that water managers fear the government will be unable to operate the complex system of reservoirs, dams, and canals that supply Western farms. Compounding all of this are the tariffs Trump imposed on farmers’ top export markets; as of late April, two of them, China and Canada, had responded with their own tariffs of 125 percent and 25 percent, respectively, though many tariffs have since been suspended.

“Trade relationships are built over time,” said Aaron Lehman, a fifth-generation corn and soybean farmer and the president of the Iowa Farmers’ Union. Farmers’ efforts, he added, “can be undone really, really quickly.” Some buyers never came back after the trade war in Trump’s first term. Now, many growers who depend on exporting crops like soybeans are concerned they could hemorrhage buyers again, as countries like China turn to farmers in Brazil and Argentina.

Small farms are uniquely vulnerable. The Biden administration had provided their owners with a range of grants that also advanced priorities such as climate reform, food security, and racial equity. In dismantling Biden’s policies, Trump left those farmers in the lurch. “Many smaller farmers or farmers of color who are just getting started, they don’t have a Plan B,” says Michelle Hughes, co–executive director of the National Young Farmers Coalition, which works closely with small farmers and farmers of color. “They don’t have generational wealth to rely on.”

“Many smaller farmers or farmers of color who are just getting started, they don’t have a Plan B.”

As far as Trump’s trade war is concerned, large family and corporate farms, which are more likely to grow commodities like corn, wheat, and soybeans, are better positioned to withstand the financial chaos—and get some relief. Trump provided a $28 billion “bailout” to farmers damaged by his first-term tariffs, and may do it again. But that bailout focused on commodity growers, was distributed unevenly, and favored large producers; farmers still took a $27 billion hit from retaliatory tariffs, while multinational corporations walked away with over $100 million in bailout funds. Small farmers specializing in non-commodity crops were usually left in the dirt.

If small farms go belly-up, their land will be ripe for the taking. Over the past few decades, large agricultural operations and wealthy landowners have gobbled up an ever-greater share of the nation’s cropland, doubling the size of their holdings between 1987 and 2017. The costly tariffs and deep cuts to federal aid could accelerate the trend​​, as economic stressors force small and mid-sized farmers to sell. One need only to look at the trade war Trump initiated during his first term as evidence: farm bankruptcies spiked, jumping 24 percent from 2017 to 2018.

The cuts will also almost certainly dial back environmental progress, which analysts worry would empower Big Ag and degrade rural communities. According to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Lilliston, large agricultural operations tend to grow single commodity crop on large tracts of land, and that monoculture depletes the soil and relies on pesticides and chemical fertilizers. In Iowa, farm consolidation has coincided with a remarkable uptick in pollution. Thanks to runoff from nitrogen-based fertilizers, the state has one of the highest rates of nitrate pollution in the United States; it also has one of the nation’s highest cancer rates.

By accelerating farm consolidation, Trump’s policies will further hollow out rural communities. As large agricultural operations gobble up smaller ones, they displace middle class farm families and undermine mom-and-pop businesses; big growers tend to buy their supplies from multinationals, not local purveyors. “ It usually means fewer people in the town, fewer kids in school, fewer small businesses,” said Lilliston.

In the long term, the winner here could well be private equity at the expense of rural communities. The average American farmer is 57 years old. The scions of large, consolidated farms are often uninterested in running the family empire themselves. “Their kids move to Long Beach, and then they rent out the land to a capital asset manager in Chicago,” said Austin Frerick, an expert on agricultural and antitrust policy and the author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry.

Seven or eight years ago, Frerick had a conversation with a high level official at the Iowa Farm Bureau. “He said something I’ll never forget: ‘the future of Iowa is six towns and a bunch of driverless tractors,'” Frerick said. The state is already trending in that direction, he added—farm towns are “slowly becoming ghost towns,” and most farmland in Iowa is now owned by non-Iowans. “Iowa’s just an extraction colony at this point.”

The irony is that rural communities have tended to be loyal supporters of the president: Nearly 78 percent of voters in the nation’s farm-dependent counties cast their ballot for Trump in 2024.

Resnick finally received her grant in April. Soon after, a federal judge ordered the White House to unfreeze IRA funding already allocated in states that sued. But for her, the damage is permanent. “My trust in the government,” she told me, “has been irrevocably broken.”

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A Christian Nationalist TheoBro Church is Coming to DC

Earlier this week, Moscow, Idaho, pastor Doug Wilson made a big announcement: In July, his church will be opening a branch in Washington, DC, just blocks away from the US Capitol building. In a blog post, Wilson, a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist, wrote that he believed that the moment was right to bring his version of Christianity to the nation’s capital. “We believe that there will be many strategic opportunities with numerous evangelicals who will be present both in and around the Trump administration,” he wrote.

In a metropolitan area that includes more than 8,000 places of worship, what is it that Wilson hopes to provide? First, a bit of biographical information: Wilson, who is in his early 70s, is the head pastor of the flagship church of the denomination that he helped found, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). Wilson is also the unofficial patriarch of the TheoBros, members of a network of mostly millennial, highly opinionated, ultra-conservative men, many of whom also proudly call themselves Christian nationalists. Among the tenets of their particular tributary of Reformed Protestant Christianity is the idea that the United States should be subject to biblical law.

In Moscow, Wilson has been famous for decades: He helped to establish a college, a printing press, and a classical Christian school. More recently, he’s garnered national attention, largely by being extremely online. He blogs, he posts on social media, and he makes slickly produced YouTube videos. Last year, an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson raised his profile higher still.

As I wrote last year, even in the TheoBros fraternity, Wilson stands out as a firebrand: He has argued that the master-slave dynamic was “a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence,” called the trope of the dominant man and a submissive woman “an erotic necessity,” and opined that women never should have been given the right to vote. When I asked him about his most provocative statements, he compared himself to a chef who cooks with jalapeño peppers: “Some of my enemies online have combed through my writings, have gathered up all the jalapeños, and put them on one Ritz cracker,” he told me.

In order to understand more about what it means to plant a church, as much for political as religious reasons, I turned to Rev. Rob Schenck, a former evangelical leader who was once a key figure in the anti-abortion movement and brought his ministry to Washington in 1994. He notedsimilarities between Wilson’s new church and his own past efforts to infuse the Capital with evangelical Christianity. Even Wilson’s reference to DC as “Babylon,” a depraved city in the Bible, was one he used when describing and fundraising for his work. “The narrative is, ‘we are sending God-fearing people into a godless culture,'” Schenck said, “and redeeming that culture, or reclaiming, it for godly values.’”

Yet there was a key difference between Wilson’s foray into DC and his own. In 1994, when Schenck planted the National Community Church, also on Capitol Hill, he faced an uphill battle. Bill Clinton was president, and evangelicals were relegated to the fringes in Washington. Today, Christian nationalists occupy considerable power and influence—think House Speaker Mike Johnson and Project 2025 architect and OMB Director Russ Vought. “The government ranks from high to low are populated by many more evangelicals,” Schenck said, referring to the change since he moved to the city. “And among them, some of the most activist-oriented are the reformed. It’s a distinctly different atmosphere.”

Indeed, powerful people in the Trump administration have close ties to Wilson and the TheoBros. Although he is a Catholic, Vice President JD Vance is connected to them through Chris Buskirk, who sits on the board of a TheoBro magazine and cofounded a powerful Republican donor network. Vance once posed for a photo with several prominent TheoBros, and last year, he spoke at the National Conservatism conference, where Wilson was a fellow speaker.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also has connections to Wilson. He attends a Nashville church in Wilson’s denomination. Last year, the magazine Nashville Christian Family ran a profile of Hegseth, in which he mentioned being a member of a “Bible and book study” that focused on the book My Life for Yours by Doug Wilson.

Wilson’s new church is set to open in July, with pastors flying in from various places to take turns delivering sermons in hopes of capturing the attention of powerful DC Christians. “These believers are obviously culturally engaged already,” he wrote on his blog, “but we happen to believe that every form of cultural engagement needs to have a solid theological foundation,” without which, “cultural engagement tends to morph into something that resembles wind surfing on the various breezes of doctrine that tend to blow through evangelicalism. We don’t want anything like that.”

In a podcast appearance this week, Joe Rigney, an associate pastor at Wilson’s church, went into more detail. He explained that he worried about a kind of complacency in the Trump administration, about administration officials who might rest on their laurels, saying to themselves, “‘We’re not going to trans the kids—the boss is all in on that.’ And they’re like, ‘Look, we’re doing it!'” But Rigney wants the new church to push them further. “I need a minister there who’s going to say, ‘Obergefell [the 2015 Supreme Court case that made gay marriage legal] is next. We’re coming for that.'” he said. “You calibrate the Christians in DC by the word of God—and not by whatever the present administration can tolerate.”

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Trump Asks the Supreme Court for a “Catch Me if You Can” System of Justice

Not even a year ago, though it feels like a decade, the US Supreme Court granted presidents immunity from criminal laws when they act in their official capacity. In other words, presidents don’t have to worry about breaking the law, as they will never be held to account. On Thursday, the Trump administration was back at the court with a related request: Will the justices please allow us to enforce illegal orders against anyone who fails to sue to stop us?

As Trump portrays himself as a king, his lawyer presses for a king’s powers.

The request comes out of litigation over Trump’s illegal executive order denying birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants and visa holders. This is so obviously a violation of the citizenship clause of the Constitution, which guarantees birthright citizenship to virtually everyone born in the United States, that the Trump administration does not want the court to tackle that question. Instead, they are asking the court to strip the judiciary of the power to issue nationwide or universal injunctions—orders that halt the implementation of a rule, law, or policy while the courts contemplate a final ruling.

If courts cannot halt the government’s illegal actions until the Supreme Court has decided they are illegal—a process that can take years, if the case ever reaches the nine justices—then the government would be free to do essentially whatever it wanted to anyone unable to sue or possibly join a class action lawsuit. It transforms the justice system from one which stops illegal government activity into one that can only provide whack-a-mole relief to those who can stand up and ask for it.

It’s a nightmarish vision of the justice system. Imagine the police identify a serial thief. He’s targeting neighborhoods at night all across the country. Rather than lock him up, the thief simply promises to skip the homes that have called the police to complain and obtained a restraining order. Until a jury convicts him, everyone else keeps getting robbed. That’s what Trump is asking for: the ability to run roughshod over the Constitution and the law—and not just on this question of citizenship, but on any illegal or rights-depriving scheme he can think of—until the case somehow reaches the Supreme Court.

“Your argument seems to turn our justice system, in my view at least, into a ‘catch me if you can’ kind of regime from the standpoint of the executive, where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told Solicitor General John Sauer. “I don’t understand how that is remotely consistent with the rule of law.”

“You go back to English common law and the Chancery Court,” Jackson continued, “but they had a different system. The fact that courts back in English Chancery couldn’t enjoin the King, I think, is not analogous or indicative of what courts can do in our system, where the king, quote, unquote, the executive, is supposed to be bound by the law, and the court has the power to say what the law is.”

This is the crux of the issue. The Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority keeps moving the goal posts so that the president increasingly resembles the monarch the colonies declared independence from. As Trump portrays himself as a king on social media, his administration presses for him to possess a king’s powers as well.

In their battle against universal injunctions, the Trump administration has contended that final, nationwide relief from an illegal order would only come if and when the Supreme Court issued a ruling finding it unlawful. And Sauer did pledge the government would follow any such order. But as Justice Elena Kagan drew out in her questioning, there’s no guarantee that the Supreme Court would quickly hear a challenge to an illegal executive order, if ever.

“I don’t understand how that is remotely consistent with the rule of law.”

“Let’s just assume you’re dead wrong,” Kagan began,asking Sauer to concede the citizenship order is illegal to lay out how the administration would argue court review should play out to “get to the result that there is a single rule of citizenship, that is the rule that we’ve historically applied, rather than the rule that the EO would have us do.”

Sauer suggested litigants could get temporary relief througha class action. (Yes, a class action for infants being born constantly joined by parents who might fear deportation as a result of coming forward in court.) But Sauer soon acknowledged that the administration would likely fight class certification.

Next Kagan asked if an individual challenging the executive order won an appeal in a circuit court, which has jurisdiction over several states, would the government agree not to enforce the order in those states? Sauer would not commit to that.

Sauer and some of the GOP-appointed justices seemed content with the idea that through one of those routes—an individual plaintiff or a class action—a challenge to an executive order could quickly reach the Supreme Court, where would be resolved expeditiously. But Kagan quickly pointed out that the government was actually arguing for an extraordinary loophole: The more egregious the violation, the harder it will be for the issue to ever reach the Supreme Court.

The birthright citizenship question is a perfect example, because it is considered to be lawless and baseless by most lawyers. “Let’s assume that you lose in the lower courts pretty uniformly, as you have been losing on this issue,” Kagan pressed. “I noticed that you didn’t take the substantive question to us. You only took the nationwide injunction question to us. I mean, why would you take the substantive question to us? You’re losing a bunch of cases. This guy here, this woman over here, they’ll have to be treated as citizens, but nobody else will. Why would you ever take this case to us?”

In other words, the Trump administration can win by losing. If the losing party, the government, accepts individual losses and never appeals, then it wins by applying the order to everyone without a lawyer—which is most people, especially among immigrant populations fearful of deportation.

After two and a half hours of arguments, it is unclear whether there are five votes among the justices to end universal injunctions outright. Doing so would be a radical departurefrom the law, one that would subject the nation to every illegal fantasy Trump and his braintrust can think up for an indeterminate amount of time. This case clearly showed the contours of thechoice: The justices clearly do not like the pervasive use of universal injunctions, and the GOP appointees certainly don’t like the cascade of injunctions against Trump. But at the same time, the birthright citizenship order is clearly baloney.

Perhaps Justice Clarence Thomas’ questions best illustrate the conundrum. An originalist, Thomas’s questions focused on the history of universal injunctions and its common law ancestors, seemingly to disprove the notion that there is a bygone analogue that would justify its existence.

But does Thomas believe, as Sauer stated on Thursday, that the citizenship clause was merely intended to cover the children of formerly enslaved people? Two years ago, Thomas wrote that Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which includes the citizenship clause and the equal protection clause, were bound up together in one universal rule of equality for all. “The addition of a citizenship guarantee thus evidenced an intent to broaden the provision, extending beyond recently freed blacks and incorporating a more general view of equality for all Americans,” Thomas wrote in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, using the amendment to justify ending affirmative action by stressing its application to white people as well. As forthe amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, Thomas called it “a new birth of freedom.”

But that’s not worth the paper its written on if the courts can’t protect it.

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RFK, Jr. Is Coming for Abortion Pills

Earlier this month, the Trump administration scored seemingly positive headlines when it asked a federal court to dismiss a case brought by three Republican states seeking to restrict telehealth access to mifepristone, the first of two drugs used in a medication abortion.

Several news outlets claimed in headlines that the administration would “defend” access to the pills, despite the fact that Project 2025 and several of Trump’s top appointees have made it clear that they believe access to mifepristone—which, along with the second drug, misoprostol, now account for more than 60 percent of all abortions that occur nationwide—should be drastically rolled back, as I have previously reported. In reality, the administration merely argued the states do not have standing to sue and did not weigh in on the underlying issue of access to the pills.

But on Wednesday, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. made clear that the administration is not seeking to “defend” mifepristone; in fact, they could very well become responsible for decimating access to it nationwide—even though more than 100 scientific studies have proven they are safe and effective, including when they are prescribed virtually and mailed to patients.

While testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) about the HHS budget, Kennedy told anti-abortion stalwart Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that he has asked Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Martin Makary to “do a complete review” on mifepristone following a report from an anti-abortion group that purports to show dangers from the pill. But there’s a problem with that report: Experts say it’s pretty much bogus.

The report—entitled “The Abortion Pill Harms Women”—was published last month by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a right-wing organization that was on the advisory board of Project 2025. It claims that nearly 11 percent of women experience a “serious adverse event” within 45 days of taking mifepristone for an abortion—much higher percentage than numerous other studies that show less than one percent of people haveserious complications—and urges the FDA to reinstate more stringent protocols for accessing it and ultimately “reconsider its approval altogether.”

Experts have pointed out major flaws with the report’s alleged findings. As the Society of Family Planning (SFP), a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that supports abortion rights, noted in a May 2 letter to Makary, the FDA director, the report is not peer-reviewed (the EPPC claims the peer review process “is terribly biased against conservatives”); fails to reveal the database the authors relied on; lacks a standardized definition of “hemorrhage,” making it difficult to know if the report is characterizing normal post-abortion bleeding as a “serious adverse event”; and wrongly classifies emergency room visits and subsequent treatment to complete an abortion as “serious adverse events,” despite the fact that the FDA’s own guidance says emergency room visits alone should not be classified as serious adverse events, and that research shows people go to ERs after taking abortion pills for various reasons, including to ask questions about symptoms and to confirm they are no longer pregnant. “In short, this paper is not a methodologically rigorous, evidence-based resource, and does not warrant consideration, particularly in scientific spaces,” the letter states. “We urge the FDA to dismiss the paper—and all claims inconsistent with strong scientific standards—as irrelevant to its regulatory decision-making.”

Politico also reported that even Dr. Christina Francis, the CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs, warned on a private Zoom call with anti-abortion leaders that the report is “not a study in the traditional sense” and “not conclusive proof of anything.” If all this was not enough, the paper’s two co-authors are openly anti-abortion. One recently co-authored a book called “Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing.”

Nonetheless, when Hawley, who recently introduced a bill seeking to roll back access to abortion pills, asked Kennedy at the hearing if he would review access to mifepristone as a result of the new report, Kennedy said, “At very least the label [for mifepristone] should be changed.” Kennedy further added that he asked Makary “to do a complete review” of mifepristone and that he “will make a recommendation” about whether, and how, policies around access to mifepristone should be changed. “I feel that that the policy changes will ultimately go through the White House,” Kennedy said.

What exactly that means is unclear. Back in December, Trump told TIME Magazine that it was “very unlikely” the FDA would do anything to further restrict access to abortion pills. In August, while he was campaigning, Trump told CBS News he would not enforce the Comstock Act to prohibit the mailing of abortion pills.

Mary Ziegler, a scholar of reproductive rights law, said that Kennedy’s comment should be interpreted as sending a message to Hawley more than anything else. “‘This is going to go through the White House’ is a way of saying to Josh Hawley, ‘This is not going to happen through your little bill, we don’t want this to happen through the courts…the president wants to control if, whether, and how there are restrictions on mifepristone,'” she told me by phone on Thursday afternoon.

Despite Trump’s promises, the fact that the administration is going to review access to mifepristone is not exactly surprising, given that Project 2025 recommended the administration enforce the 19th-century Comstock Act to ban the mailing of abortion pills. As my colleague Madison Pauly and I reported back in January, anti-abortion groups sent a pair of letters to the heads of the Department of Justice and FDA requesting they roll back access to the pills by enforcing the Comstock Act and restoring old rule on accessing the pills, including requiring they be distributed in-person rather than by telehealth, which the Biden administration began permanently allowing in December 2021. (Now, medication abortions provided via telehealth account for around 20 percent of all abortions, according to SFP data.)

At his March confirmation hearing, Makary—who has a long history of anti-abortion views—said that while he had “no preconceived plans to make changes to the mifepristone policy,” he would also “review the totality of data and ongoing data,” adding that he knows of “OB doctors who prefer to insist…that mifepristone be taken, when necessary, in their office, as they observe the person taking it. And I think their concern there is if the drug is in the wrong hands, it could be used for coercion.” (The implication that the pills could be taken to facilitate reproductive coercion is also not supported by evidence, as I have reported.)

Reproductive rights advocates blasted Kennedy’s latest comments as proof that the administration is prioritizing politics over evidence when it comes to abortion pills.

“This call for a review is part of a coordinated campaign by the anti-abortion movement, not a response to science or public health,” said Katie O’Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at the National Women’s Law Center.

Liz Wagner, senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the Trump administration “is weaponizing the FDA to push an anti-abortion political agenda advanced by the architects of Project 2025. Any new restrictions on mifepristone would not only be medically unnecessary and unjustified, but would be a substantial barrier to abortion care amidst an ongoing public health crisis.”

Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute, said in a statement: “While it’s shocking that the FDA would investigate mifepristone based on shoddy research, it’s even more stunning that Secretary Kennedy embraced, rather than rejected, the notion of political interference in scientific and medical decisions that impact the health and safety of Americans.”

“We should all be scared if our access to safe, FDA-approved medications turns on President Trump’s gut instinct rather than credible scientific evidence,” Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney for the Reproductive Freedom Project at the ACLU, said in a statement. “If the FDA moves forward with this politically motivated review, that is a dangerous sign that the president is going back on his promises to voters not to restrict abortion access even further.”

Spokespeople for the White House, Hawley, and the EPPC did not immediately respond to questions about the administration’s plans for mifepristone or criticisms about the report Hawley cited. A spokesperson for HHS ignored my questions and pointed me to the comments Kennedy made at the hearing.

As I pointed out yesterday, the irony of all this is that it comes during National Women’s Health Week, which the White House acknowledged on Monday, claiming, “We promote and support the health and well-being of our Nation’s mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, and friends.” Since then, Republicans have “celebrated” by trying to gut Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood—which would impede access to pap smears, birth control access, and cancer screenings, since Medicaid already does not fund most abortions due to the Hyde Amendment—and, as Kennedy proved yesterday, seemingly getting one step closer to decimating abortion access nationwide.

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Dudes Emit More Greenhouse Gases Than Women Do. It’s the Cars—and the Meat.

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

Cars and meat are major factors driving a gender gap in greenhouse gas emissions, new research suggests.

Men emit 26 pecent more planet-heating pollution than women from transport and food, according to a preprint study of 15,000 people in France. The gap shrinks to 18 percent after controlling for socioeconomic factors such as income and education.

Eating red meat and driving cars explain almost all of the 6.5 to 9.5 percent difference in pollution that remains after also accounting for men eating more calories and traveling longer distances, the researchers said. They found no gender gap from flying.

“Our results suggest that traditional gender norms, particularly those linking masculinity with red meat consumption and car use, play a significant role in shaping individual carbon footprints,” said Ondine Berland, an economist at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a co-author of the study.

The disparaging term “soy boy” has been used by right-wing figures, including Vice President JD Vance

Research into gender gaps is often plagued by difficult decisions about which factors to control for, with seemingly independent variables often confounded by gendered differences. Men need to eat more calories than women, for instance, but they also eat disproportionately more than women. They also have higher average incomes, which is itself correlated with higher emissions.

Previous research from Sweden has found men’s spending on goods causes 16 percent more climate-heating emissions than women’s, despite the sums of money being very similar.

Marion Leroutier, an environmental economist at Crest-Ensae Paris and a co-author of the study, said: “I think it’s quite striking that the difference in carbon footprint in food and transport use in France between men and women is around the same as the difference we estimate for high-income people compared to lower-income people.”

The most powerful actions a person can take to cut their carbon pollution include getting rid of a gas-powered car, eating less meat, and avoiding flights.

But efforts to challenge car culture and promote plant-based diets have provoked furious backlashes from pundits, who perceive it as an attack on masculinity. The term “soy boy” has been used by far-right figures, including Vice President JD Vance and the self-described misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, to present progressive men as weak.

Soy is a common protein source in vegan cuisine, but three-quarters of the world’s soya beans are fed to animals to produce meat and dairy.

The French researchers suggested the gender differences in emissions could explain why women tend to be more concerned about the climate crisis, arguing the greater personal cost of reducing their emissions could cause men to avoid grappling with the reality of the climate emergency.

But they added that greater climate concern could lead women to do more to cut their emissions. “More research is needed to understand whether these differences in carbon footprints are also partly due to women’s greater concern about climate change and their higher likelihood of adopting climate-friendly behaviors in daily life,” Leroutier said.

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Republicans Slide “Nonprofit Killer” Law Into Tax Bill

The “nonprofit killer” is back—this time tucked into congressional Republicans’ aggressive new tax proposal, which they’ve dubbed the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill.”

For those who forgot: In November, the House of Representatives passed HR 9495, or the “Stop Terror Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act,” which would give the Secretary of the Treasury the power to strip a nonprofit’s tax-exempt status on the suspicion of giving or receiving any backing from a ‘terrorist supporting’ group or person—as defined by the White House.

The legislation started with widespread bipartisan support that waned as experts and constituents voiced outrage; it waned further after Donald Trump’s election. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), initially a backer, is one of dozens of House Democrats who flipped their vote. Doggett, as Sophie Hurwitz reported for Mother Jones, was less concerned about the bill’s text than the way Donald Trump was likely to use it:

One of the organizations whose nonprofit status Trump wants to terminate, Doggett said, “has protested one of my speeches.”

“Protests are inconvenient,” he said. “The one I had was inconvenient. [But] America is stronger when we protect dissent in all its forms, as long as it is done in a proper way.”

“There has been much made in this debate of the fact that some of us have been switching positions,” he said. “Well, we listen to our constituents.”

Kia Hamadanchy, the ACLU’s senior policy counsel, says the measure grants the Secretary of the Treasury “broad and unilateral discretion” to strip organizations of their tax-exempt status “without any due process”—or any evidence beyond the “accusation that they support terrorism.”

Hamadanchy calls that an authority that no administration of any party should have, one that “could be weaponized against people across the political spectrum,” particularly by the Trump administration. “They’ve already shown,” Hamadanchy says, “that they want to weaponize things like nonprofit status.”

Nonprofits are taking note, too.

Dom Kelly, who heads the disability rights group New Disabled South, characterized the legislation as “a continued attempt to silence those who work in opposition to the Trump administration and the right’s extreme agenda.” The bill’s vague, expansive language, Kelly explains, “means that this administration can go after organizations for any reason they want.”

Still, Kelly isn’t backing down: “If they come for us,” they said, “we will fight them with everything we’ve got.”

For most nonprofits, especially smaller ones, that fight won’t be easy. “Even having to litigate is a huge mess, takes time, causes all sorts of headaches,” Hamadanchy says, offering the example of universities targeted by the Trump administration over student protests.

“If they come for us, we will fight them with everything we’ve got.”

“A lot of people in Congress conflated student protesters with Hamas, without really any evidence,” he says. “You can imagine a world where the Trump administration tells a university: ‘You let these people protest on your campus? You are providing material support to Hamas.'”

Indeed, the Trump administration has already stripped Columbia’s research funding to the tune of $400 million, ostensibly motivated by allegations of antisemitismfollowing pro-Palestine protests last year. Harvard University has lost more than $2.5 billion in federal support since April, when it balked at Trump’s demands—again largely citing antisemitism claims—for sweeping power over its campus, curriculum, and personnel.

Hamadanchy doesn’t think every application of the bill will survive legal challenges, but harm would be done simply by its becoming law: “It basically serves a larger purpose,” he says, “of chilling speech.”

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The GOP’s Plan to Defund Planned Parenthood Would Add $300 Million to the Deficit

The contentious plan to defund Planned Parenthood, included in the Republican-backed reconciliation bill that would slash millions in Medicaid funding, would cost taxpayers $300 million over the next decade, according to a leaked preliminary estimate compiled by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The news comes as House Republicans have doubled down on the proposal to prohibit funding to Planned Parenthood, despite some moderate Republicans’ opposition to the measure. Medicaid already does not fund most abortions due to the Hyde Amendment, so the proposed cuts to the health centers would instead affect the provision of services such as pap smears, cancer screenings, and birth control. These services account for the majority of Planned Parenthood’s work, while abortions only account for four percent of services the organization’s affiliates provide.

Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said the organization provides those services to more than two million people a year. More than half of its patients use Medicaid and other public insurance programs, and most of the clinics are located in underserved areas.

Spokespeople for the CBO declined to comment on how it arrived at the $300 million estimate. Back in 2017, when Republicans tried, and failed, to defund Planned Parenthood, the CBO estimated increased government costs would come from additional births stemming from a lack of access to contraception and other services Planned Parenthood provides, as well as more children enrolling in Medicaid. The latest projected increase comes as especially ironic in light of President Donald Trump’s promises to slash spending, cut government programs, and slash personnel in an effort spearheaded by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Speaker Mike Johnson’s office (R-La.) did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Politico reported on Tuesday that Republicans released the estimates before the House Energy and Commerce Committee took up the legislation. That process ended Wednesday afternoon after more than 26 hours, during which time Democratic lawmakers slammed Republicans for claiming to care about women’s health while seeking to defund Planned Parenthood.

McGill Johnson said in a statement that the new CBO estimate shows that the reconciliation bill “is about attacking Planned Parenthood and taking away people’s access to essential health care.” While the bill text does not mention Planned Parenthood by name, it takes direct aim at Medicaid funding to “essential community providers that are primarily engaged in family planning services or reproductive services” and that receive one million dollars or more per year. New research published on Tuesday by Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research and policy organization, notes that other health centers “would need to dramatically increase their contraceptive client caseloads” if Planned Parenthood was, indeed, defunded.

Rachana Desai Martin, chief U.S. program officer at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said that Medicaid is critical to ensuring that millions of low-income Americans can access sexual and reproductive health services.

“Defunding providers like Planned Parenthood would eliminate that choice and targets communities who are already facing barriers to care,” she added.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said in a statement that despite polling that shows most Americans oppose defunding Planned Parenthood, “Republicans are so hell-bent on ripping away reproductive freedom at any cost that they are refusing to listen to their own constituents.”

The latest attack is not the only effort to restrict Planned Parenthood’s services. A case currently pending before the Supreme Court could allow states to unilaterally cut off Planned Parenthood’s access to Medicaid funding, as my colleague Madison Pauly has covered. In March, the Trump administration withheld tens of millions of dollars in Title X funding, which Planned Parenthood and other health centers use to provide birth control and other services to low-income people.

It looks like this latest effort to defund Planned Parenthood may also, ultimately, fail, just like it did in 2017: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said Wednesday he thinks the House reconciliation bill will struggle to pass the Senate.Spokespeople for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The irony of all this? It’s coming during National Women’s Health Week, which the White House acknowledged on Monday.

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We Still Don’t Know What Kash Patel Did as a Consultant for Qatar

In a curious twist during his confirmation process, Kash Patel failed to disclose significant personal financial information until after the Senate hearing in January on his nomination to become FBI director. Consequently, one peculiar item listed on his financial disclosure form received no attention during that hearing: Patel’s work as a consultant for the embassy of Qatar. On this document, Patel did not specify what he did for Qatar or how much he was paid.

Even now—nearly three months after he took the helm of the nation’s top law enforcement agency—the details of Patel’s Qatari connection remain a mystery.

This week Mother Jones contacted the FBI and texted Patel, asking if they would reveal what services he provided to Qatar and what payments he received. Neither responded.

Patel is just one of several top Trump administration aides who have had financial ties to this Arab monarchy. Susan Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, worked for a lobbying firm that represented Qatar. Attorney General Pam Bondi lobbied for the Qataris. Mike Huckabee, now US Ambassador to Israel, was paid $50,000 to visit Qatar in 2018. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, also has pocketed money from Qatar. In 2023, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund bought the Park Lane Hotel from Witkoff’s company in a $623 million deal. The Trump Organization itself recently struck a deal to develop a luxury golf resort in Qatar. And now Qatar is consideringhanding as a gift to Trump a jumbo airliner worth about $400 million for Trump to use as Air Force One. The plan reportedly is for the 747 to be transferred to Trump’s presidential library foundation after he leaves office, where it could come under his personal control.

There have been few public clues regarding the nature of Patel’s tie to Qatar. His financial disclosure form only says that he made more than $5,000 from this work. It notes that he was paid through a company he owned called Trishul, which engaged in “national security, defense, and intelligence” consulting. According to the form, he earned more than $2.1 million in 2024 through Trishul, which had a number of clients. Those clients included the Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social, Trump’s money-losing social media platform. But the form does not break down how much of Patel’s Trishul income came from each client.

In an ethics agreement Patel filed with the Justice Department, he noted that under federal law he would not be permitted to engage in matters related to Qatar without receiving written authorization permitting him to do so. The agreement stated that he expected such authorization to be granted.

Last year, the Atlantic reported that Patel had claimed that he worked as a security consultant for Qatar during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Doha. And in February—as ethics experts were questioning whether Patel’s consulting for Qatar would have required him to register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent (which he did not)—the right-wing Federalist reported, “A source close to Patel’s confirmation told The Federalist his work for Qatar was limited to securing the 2022 FIFA World Cup and other security measures, not the kind of representation that would require FARA registration.”

Patel has not offered this World Cup explanation himself. He has said nothing that has been publicly reported about his business association with Qatar. And when Mother Jones asked the Qatari Supreme Committee on Delivery and Legacy, which ran the 2022 World Cup, if Patel did work related to the event, it replied that it had “nothing to comment on this.”

Moreover, Patel’s paperwork states that he was working for Qatar until November 2024. That’s two years past the World Cup. Was he still providing security services at that point for an event that had long since concluded? Also, his financial disclosure form indicates he was paid by the Qatari embassy in the US, not the Qatari sports committee.

The whole point of financial disclosure for top-ranking US officials is for the public to be able to see the size and scope of any conflicts of interests. Yet this episode shows that the current requirements are inadequate. Patel is now heading the FBI, yet questions remain about his finances—including a $25,000 payment he received from a Russian-American-Ukrainian filmmaker who was connected to a Russian propaganda project financed by Vladimir Putin’s office.

Americans have the right know whether an FBI director is clean as a whistle and free of ties that could unduly affect or compromise his actions. Yet Patel has not provided the public a full view of his finances. And even though he is now securely in the position, he won’t explain his relationship to a foreign government with a checkered human rights record and that has has tried to influence US policy and policymakers. The Case of the FBI Chief’s Mysterious Tie to Qatar remains open.

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Will the Supreme Court Let Trump Target Babies for the “Sins of the Parents”?

In 2022, Florida Republicans enacted the Stop WOKE Act, which sought to remove from school curriculums any lessons that might cause students to feel “discomfort,” “guilt,” or any other “psychological distress” because of their race. It went without saying that the legislation’s authors were referring to white students who might experience a sad feeling because of what their ancestors did to Black people in the United States. Instead of bummer stuff like the enduring legacy of slavery, the bill required teaching that individuals do not “bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.”

“The Trump administration and its supporters want to redirect the attention to the parents.”

The law was an attempt to erase the history of discrimination from the public consciousness and with it the collective will to correct the unfairness that has stalked our society as a result. The irony, of course, is that the law’s odes to merit, equality, and a fresh start for everyone were being used to achieve a less fair, less meritocratic society in which fresh starts are handicapped by past discrimination.

Regardless, the ethos they were appealing to is real and deeply embedded in American culture and law, all the way back to the Constitution itself: Each individual deserves equal treatment, regardless of the sins of their ancestors. On the Supreme Court, Republican-appointed justices have wielded this definition of equality to roll back laws and policies that sought to make our society more equal, from affirmative action in college admissions to voting rights. Still, the idea that people should’t be punished for the actions of their parents is a noble one, even if it is often weaponized for opposite purposes.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over President Donald Trump’s executive order that seeks to withhold birthright citizenship fromchildren born to both undocumented immigrants and visa holders. Technically, the court is considering whether to allow the executive order to take effect for those who have not challenged it while the courts consider whether the order is legal. But it will be impossible for the court to consider this technical question without also considering whether it is likely to ultimately uphold or strike down the order.

The Trump administration’s argument limits the citizenship rights of children based on the actions and status of their parents. The argument is striking, as it contradicts the notion of an equality completely independent of the past that the Republican Party and its six justice majority on the court have embraced. If the Supreme Court sides with the administration’s argument, it will be opportunistically eschewing a principle it has championed again and again in recent years to advance the GOP’s agenda: That children don’t inherit the sins or status of their forefathers.

“It’s definitely inconsistent with a long standing conservative principle that we’re all individuals, and the Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause in particular, protect individuals, not groups,” says Cristina Rodríguez, a Yale Law professor and expert on birthright citizenship. “That’s part of the understanding of the birthright citizenship clause—that whatever the sins of the parents are, the clause breaks that connection. What matters is where the individual was born.”

Rodríguez has called the Citizenship Clause our “constitutional reset button” because “it’s what ensures that each generation starts fresh, and we don’t worry about status because of what’s in our past.”

Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, parts of which were struck down by federal courts as unconstitutional, sought to prohibit bad feelings by learning about history. It’s of a piece with Elon Musk telling Germans to stop feeling guilty about the Holocaust. Speaking virtually at a far-right political rally in Germany in January, days after joining the Trump administration, he told the crowd that “children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great-grandparents” and that “there is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that.” The Trump administration itself has taken up this call with executive orders attempting to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion policies across the government and private sector, on the basis that these policies replace merit-based assessments of individuals with attempts to remedy the effects of past discrimination. It’s even going after a New York state requirement that schools ditch Native American mascots, apparently under the idea that today’s children shouldn’t be deprived of offensive sports logos just because their ancestors tried to eradicate native peoples.

“It’s much harder to justify the assault on birthright citizenship if one stays focused on the child.”

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has been busy making sure that no one is judged today by the actions of their ancestors. Two years ago, the GOP-appointed justices overturned nearly 50 years of precedent to end affirmative action in higher education admissions. Chief Justice John Roberts, in his majority opinion, held that using race as a factor in admissions decisions did constitutional violence to the applicants. “‘Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality,’” Roberts wrote, importing a quotation from a case in which the Supreme Court greenlit curfews on Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite its soaring language in the case, the court’s 1943 ruling allowed the government to treat people differently based on their ancestry.

Roberts’ aversion to importing the past into the present extends to regulation of the states. In 2013, Roberts struck down a core provision of the Voting Rights Act on the premise that requiring states with a history of racial discrimination to get approval for voting rule changes was intolerable because it treated states unequally. The Constitution, he wrote, does not “punish for the past.” While that same punishment frame was invoked decades earlier by segregationist Strom Thurmond when attacking the law, the VRA wasn’t resurrecting past grievances: it sought to halt current discrimination. Once Roberts’ ruling removed the review—the ostensible punishment—these states immediately passed discriminatory voting laws.

Roberts and his GOP-appointed colleagues, like the Trump administration and its allies, are using the idea of not punishing people (or states) for past sins to shed the responsibility to make the country fairer today. It’s a contrivance to argue that the 14th Amendment, written to ensure equality, now prevents the creation of an equal society and instead mandates the status quo of inequality—but that’s where they’ve landed. Whereas the Democratic-appointed justices saw affirmative action admissions programs and federally-vetted voting rules as protections against inequality, the majority saw them as a form of retribution.

But this framework, however wrongheaded in the civil rights context, cannot be squared with the Trump administration’s anti-birthright citizenship crusade.

In the birthright citizenship case, the Trump administration is asking the court to literally punish newborn babies based on something their ancestors did in the past—coming to the United States on a temporary visa or crossing the border without authorization. On the campaign trail last year, Trump said citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants is a “reward for breaking the laws of the United States,” framing the issue not as a right of the child but dependent on the actions of the parents.

The 14th Amendment begins: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” It does not mention parents, or ancestors. The clause was intended to overturn Dred Scott v. Sanford, the 1857 Supreme Court case that had found all Black people ineligible for citizenship. The Civil War, which Dred Scott had precipitated, had ended the institution of slavery, which, in the United States, people were born into. The guarantee of birthright citizenship expanded citizenship to everyone born in the United States and ended the practice of inherited status.

Trump’s plan to limit birthright citizenship, and similar proposals that came before, have long been viewed by scholars as a return to Dred Scott. “You’re back to a system where citizenship is defined not by your birth in the territory, but by what your ancestry consists of,” says Rodríguez. Further, “Dred Scott reflects the idea that we, the people of the time, can decide who deserves to be a citizen and who’s capable of being a citizen, and who’s qualified to be a citizen. And the purpose of the 14th Amendment was to take that off the table and to say, ‘We’re going to have this universal rule. Anyone born here is a citizen, you can’t take that away from them.’”

“Anyone born here is a citizen, you can’t take that away.”

Without it, the country would create an underclass of people who lack the legal protections and opportunities afforded to citizens because of their ancestry—the exact situation Dred Scott had enshrined in the Constitution. Immigration experts warn that enforcing Trump’s executive order would force millions of Americans to begin digging through their ancestry to prove their citizenship and ensure it passes to their children.

The idea that status and guilt are not inheritable is not new. Garrett Epps, a former law professor at the University of Baltimore, points out that the Constitution even embodies this principle in its treatment of treason, where the framers provided that a convicted traitor’s confiscated property must be returned to the children upon their death. “Even a freaking traitor, even Benedict fucking Arnold loses his property, but only for life, because it’s not fair to take it away from his children,” says Epps. Guilt is not inherited.

The Trump administration argues that because the Citizenship Clause has three exceptions that do turn on the status of the parents, these exceptions are actually an unwritten rule to be read back into the amendment. But there’s no historical evidence of that, according to scholars of the 14th Amendment. The exceptions are for the children of foreign diplomats, the children of invaders occupying the land, and Indians born on tribal land. The first two are long-held common law exceptions and are also quite logical: diplomats hold diplomatic immunity and are not subjects of the country where they are posted, while invaders are trying to take over the country. The tribal exception is unique to the American experience but reflected the sovereignty of Indian tribes at the time. (Congress later granted Native Americans birthright citizenship.)

“The Trump administration and its supporters want to redirect the attention to the parents,” says John Mikhail, a professor at Georgetown Law. “They want to find a legitimate means by which to say it’s the parents’ lack of allegiance or the parents’ legal status or lack of domicile or lack of permanent residence, or lack of some other feature that the child inherits. It’s much harder to justify the assault on birthright citizenship if one stays focused on the child, which is what the text of the Constitution does.”

It won’t be long before the Supreme Court decides whether the executive order can go into effect for large swaths of the country. If they allow it, it will return us to a time, long since abolished, in which the equality of thousands of American-born children hinges on their ancestry.

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Jair Bolsonaro’s Son Has an Idea for Trump: Send Immigrants From Brazil to Prison in El Salvador

In December 2023, Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s sons and a congressman from Rio de Janeiro, led a delegation of federal deputiesto El Salvador on a fact-finding mission focused on public safety. As part of the trip, Eduardo and his entourage visited the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, the notorious mega-prison where the Trump administration recently sent more than 230 Venezuelans accused of gang membership.

At the time, Eduardo praised Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s state of exception and crackdown on crime, which have led to human rights groups sounding the alarm about systematic due process violations and arbitrary detentions.

“It’s really something sensational,” Eduardo said of CECOT in a recent video shared on his YouTube channel.

In the video, Eduardo also hinted at initial conversations he said he has hadwith the Trump administration about potentially sending immigrants from Brazil, who are detained in the United States and have alleged ties to criminal organizations, to El Salvador. The idea, which Eduardo described as a work in progress, would involve designating the two main Brazilian organized crime groups—Primeiro Comando da Capital, known as PCC, and Comando Vermelho (CV)—as foreign terrorist organizations. The gangs started in prisons in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro decades ago and have since expanded their drug trafficking and money laundering activitiesbeyond Latin America.

After assessing extradition agreements between Brazil and the United States, Eduardo suggested it could be possible to have “Brazilian criminals serve their sentences in prisons in El Salvador.”

Eduardo has recently taken a leave of absence from his role in Congress and is now living in the United States. Back in March, hehad already urged the Trump administration to formally designate the PCC as a foreign terrorist organization, calling it “a decisive step toward dismantling one of the most dangerous criminal networks in the world and ensuring the security and stability of our nations.” Then, on May 10, he posted on X how great it would be to see President Trump send “Brazil’s worst criminals to serve their sentences in the prison of the most hard-line guy of the moment, Bukele.”

Such a move would resemble President Donald Trump’s earlier designation of Venezuela’s gang Tren de Aragua and the Salvadoran group MS-13 as foreign terrorist organizations, later followed by the secret invocation of the 18th-century wartime Alien Enemies Act to summarily remove alleged members of those groups from the United States without due process. As a Mother Jones investigation showed, several of the men sent to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act appear to have been targeted because of their tattoos—which experts say offer no reliable sign of membership in Tren de Aragua—and despite having no criminal history. And several federal courts have now blocked Trump’s use of the Act as unlawful. It has only been invoked three times before and always at times of war.

Earlier this month, State Department officials, including theacting coordinator for sanctions David Gamble, traveled to Brazil to hold bilateral meetings to discuss, among other issues, transnational criminal organizations. During the meetings, Trump administration officials reportedly shared an assessment from the FBI showing PCC and CV had a presence in 12 US states, including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Florida, where they are said to be involved in money laundering.

The government of Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, however, reportedly turned down the Trump administration’s request to label these gangs as foreign terrorist organizations. “We don’t have terrorist organizations here,” Mario Sarrubbo, Brazil’s national secretary of public security told Reuters, “we have criminal organizations that have infiltrated society.”

In an interview with CNN Brasil, Sarrubbo explained that Brazilian legislation defines terrorism as specific acts motivated by xenophobia or discrimination based on race, color, ethnicity, and religion. The law, therefore, wouldn’t apply to the criminal organizations operating in the country. “That [terrorism] classification,” he said, “would not be in accordance with our constitutional and legal system.”

A spokesperson for the State Department said reports of these discussions didn’t accurately reflect the engagement with the Brazilian government, adding that the focus of the delegation led by Gamble was on “strengthening bilateral cooperation on transnational criminal organizations, as well as US Counter Terrorism and Counter Narcotic Trafficking sanctions programs.”

Still, Eduardo suggested on X that the Brazilian government’s refusal shouldn’t stop the Trump administration from moving forward with the designation in much the same way as it did with Tren de Aragua**,** which he called the “CV/PCC of Venezuela.”

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Every President Since Lyndon Johnson Has Recognized the Security Risks of Climate Change. Then Came Trump.

This story was originally published by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

For more than half a century, US intelligence agencies and the armed forces have analyzed threats to national security from a range of environmental angles, including dependence on fossil fuels, competition for scarce water resources and strategic minerals, and especially human-caused climate change. These reports have been produced under presidential administrations across the political spectrum.

Hundreds of assessments have come from, among others, White House National Security Strategy reports, Department of Defense Quadrennial Defense reviews, and studies from every branch of the military, all the war colleges, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Their consistent conclusions: Environmental factors pose direct, indirect, and accelerating threats to US forces, operations, bases, and national security interests.

Immediately after the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January 2025, his administration began purging these reports from the public record, removing environmental security studies from government websites or disabling those pages, cutting funding for environmental security studies, and requiring military and intelligence communities to suppress and censor references to climate change.

Trump also rescinded President Joe Biden’s executive order 14008, which said, “climate considerations shall be an essential element of United States foreign policy and national security.” This censorship was not limited to military and intelligence work; the administration ordered other federal agencies to “archive or unpublish” materials related to climate change as well.

These actions will not reduce the actual risk that environmental problems pose for national security or the military—the physical reality of those threats will be unchanged. Instead, they will blind the country to environmental instability and real-world conflict risks that jeopardize our military and national security.

Awareness of environmental security threats goes back to the middle of the last century. In November 1965, President Lyndon Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee issued a report warning about the growing impacts of environmental pollution, including the threat of catastrophic climate impacts from melting of ice caps, sea-level rise, and rising temperatures. In September 1969, White House advisor Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a memo to John Ehrlichman, assistant to President Nixon, highlighting those conclusions and urging the administration and NATO get involved with the growing risk to the United States of “the carbon dioxide problem.”

A year later, the Rand Corporation launched a program on “climate modification and national security” saying “the US might be harmed either inadvertently or maliciously by changes in the climate.” In December 1974, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger issued National Security Study Memorandum NSSM200, suggesting “a major research effort to address the growing problems of water supply, ecological damage, and adverse climate” and their threat to “world economic well-being and political stability.”

The 1990 White House National Security Strategy, required by Congress, explicitly acknowledged the growing risk of emissions from fossil fuels. That same year the US Naval War College issued a report “Global Climate Change: Implications for the United States,” which said:

Naval operations in the coming half century may be drastically affected by the impact of global climate change. For the Navy to be fully prepared for operations in this future climate environment, resources of both mind and money must be committed to the problem.

President Bush’s 1991 National Security Strategy explicitly called out climate change as a threat already contributing to political conflict:

Global environmental concerns include such diverse but interrelated issues as stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change, food security, water supply, deforestation, biodiversity and treatment of wastes. A common ingredient in each is that they respect no international boundaries. The stress from these environmental challenges is already contributing to political conflict.

My own work in this area extends back to 1989, when I published a research paper on the implications of global climatic changes for international security and an analysis of environmental security in the Bulletin in 1991. In May 2006, I testified on this issue to a congressional subcommittee on national security, emerging threats, and international relations.

The recognition of environmental security threats has only intensified in subsequent decades in hundreds of unclassified assessments and government statements, focused in two key areas: the risk that these factors will lead to (1) “widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states;” and (2) the strategic implications for “military capability,” bases, and operations, as the US Joint Forces Command concluded in 2007. That same year, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard published their joint concerns about how climate change is reshaping Arctic strategic issues.

In the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (HR2810), Congress noted the testimony of Secretary of Defense James Mattis:

I agree that the effects of a changing climate—such as increased maritime access to the Arctic, rising sea levels, desertification, among others—impact our security situation.

and the testimony of Former Chief of Staff of the US Army, Gordon Sullivan:

Climate change is a national security issue. We found that climate instability will lead to instability in geopolitics and impact American military operations around the world.

This emphasis continued through the Biden Administration as well and in 2023, the Annual Threat Assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated:

In every region of the world, challenges from climate change, demographic trends, human and health security, and economic disruptions caused by energy and food insecurity and technology proliferation will combine and interact in specific and unique ways to trigger events ranging from political instability, to terrorist threats, to mass migration, and potential humanitarian emergencies.

Climate change will increasingly exacerbate risks to US national security interests as the physical impacts increase and geopolitical tensions mount about the global response to the challenge. The increasing physical effects of climate change also are likely to intensify or cause domestic and cross-border geopolitical flashpoints.

But there were also hints that outmoded security concepts like realpolitik, focused on narrow “superpower competition,” together with deep climate denial, were in ascendency. The first Trump administration censored words like “climate change” in government documents and narrowed security concerns to single-nation competition with China, North Korea, and Iran.

The Trump White House failed to produce any National Security Strategy in 2018, 2019, or 2020, and the 2018 National Defense Strategy report, which replaced the Quadrennial Defense Assessments, for the first time made no mention of environmental security threats at all. These unprecedented changes were so worrisome that in March 2019, 58 senior military and national security leaders wrote a letter to President Trump to denounce his efforts to “dispute and undermine military and intelligence judgments on the threat posed by climate change.”

All of this is prelude to the recent massive and coordinated effort to purge documents that reference environmental security threats, censor and cut current research and intelligence assessments, and suppress climate science that informs the national security community. In early March 2025, democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth criticizing the Trump administration efforts:

Your threats to cut climate programs at the Department of Defense (DoD) will jeopardize our national security, putting thousands of American lives and billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk.

Very real climate changes are already underway, including accelerating extreme events, an increasingly ice-free Arctic and rising sea levels, disruptions to food supplies, more failed states and environmental refugees, and violence over shared water resources. Wars and armed conflicts are already being triggered, influenced, or worsened by environmental factors.

Denying or turning a blind eye to environmental security threats and hamstringing intelligence agencies will only make the United States weaker and more exposed to dangerous security surprises, military bases and operations more vulnerable, and communities less prepared. Physical reality will always trump political ideology.

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Pet-Eating Lies to Deportation Fears: Haitians in Trump’s Crosshairs

Lindsay Aime remembers the moment his Haitian immigrant community came under a national spotlight. It was September 2024 when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating people’s pets. To Aime, who is originally from Haiti but has lived in Springfield since 2019, the accusation was not just absurd. It felt like Trump was portraying his entire community as criminal.

Today, the estimated 10,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield are under a different sort of spotlight. The Trump administration is trying to revoke the legal status that allows hundreds of thousands of Haitians and other immigrants to live in the US. Those moves are being challenged in court, but many are feeling panicked and confused. Aime is the co-founder of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center in Springfield, a resource for immigrants looking for legal advice, especially now. “We don’t have any good news,” he says. “We keep telling all our people who come in our office: Stay safe, stay safe, stay safe. Stay out of trouble.”

On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with Aime about what it was like when all eyes were on his community during the election, why returning to his home country is not an option, and the challenges of trying to reunite with a son still living in Haiti.

Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to subscribe.

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Report: One in Five People in Gaza Could Starve to Death Within Months

Nearly 470,000 people in the Gaza Strip, or approximately one in five of its residents,could starve to death in the coming months under Israel’s total aid blockade, according to a new report published Monday.

The report, a product of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—a partnership between 19 organizations including various United Nations agencies, Save the Children, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Food Programme (WFP)—states that while the entire population of the Gaza Strip, approximately 2.1 million people, will at best be able to meet basic food needs, approximately 470,000 of the area’s residents will struggle to obtain almost any food at all through September. Women and children will face disproportionate impacts, with nearly 71,000 kids and almost 17,000 breastfeeding and pregnant women expected to experience “acute malnutrition” through next March.

Life for civilians in Gaza has been hell under continual bombardment by Israel following the terror attack launched by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 people as hostages, including a dozen Americans (the last living US citizen, Edan Alexander, was just released from captivity on Monday).

But ever since Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza in early March, the situation has grown more desperate, as food supplies have run critically low. Currently, about 1.94 million people in Gaza—or 93 percent of the population—are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity, including nearly 244,000 who are starving, according to the report. The more than two dozen bakeries supported by WFP have shuttered due to lack of supplies, and most of the 177 kitchens producing hot meals have also run out of supplies, according to the IPC report. At least 57 children have died since the aid blockade began, according to the WHO, citing the Gaza Health Ministry.

Nearly 71,000 kids in Gaza are expected to experience “acute malnutrition” through next March, according to a new report.Omar Ashtawy/APA/ZUMA

“Hunger and acute malnutrition are a daily reality for children across the Gaza Strip,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement. “We have repeatedly warned of this trajectory and call again on all parties to prevent a catastrophe.”

The blockade has also prevented water, medicine, fuel, and cooking gas from entering the Gaza Strip, and food prices have skyrocketed due to the shortage, with the price of wheat flour increasing by more than 3,000 percent since February, according to the IPC report. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that some Israeli military officers have privately admitted to a similar conclusion to the IPC report: Gaza could face widespread starvation if aid deliveries are not restored in the coming weeks. [According to][8] the WFP, there is enough food assistance ready to be brought into Gaza to feed up to one million people for four months.

The Trump administration has reportedly [backed][9] a plan proposed by Israel to force Gazans to move south to access aid, as part of a bid to prevent Hamas from accessing it. (President Donald Trump previously [floated][10] plans to take over Gaza and force Palestinians to leave, which UN Secretary-General António Guterres [described][11] as “ethnic cleansing.”) But top aid groups—including the WHO and [UN agencies][12]—oppose the aid plan, arguing it would be inadequate to solve the scale of the crisis and would allow the Israeli military to control the distribution of aid. NPR [reports][9] that the proposal would only initially provide food and aid to 60 percent of Gaza’s population, citing a copy of the plan the outlet reviewed.

Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) [blasted][13] Congress in a speech on the Senate floor for its silence on the suffering of Palestinians under Israel’s aid blockade. “What is happening in Gaza will be a permanent stain on the world’s collective conscience,” Sanders said. “History will never forget that we allowed this to happen and, for us here in the United States, that we, in fact, enabled this atrocity.”

The IPC report calls for “ending hostilities, ensuring unrestricted humanitarian access, restoring essential services and commercial flows, and providing sufficient lifesaving assistance to all in need.” Since the start of the war, approximately 90 precent of the population of the Gaza Strip has been displaced, and more than 52,400 people have been killed, including a large proportion of women and children, according to the IPC report; another 118,o00 have been injured.

In December, Amnesty International released a report concluding that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, as my colleague Noah Lanard [reported][14] at the time. Last year, the International Criminal Court also issued [arrest warrants][15] for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and the use of starvation as a weapon of war; Israeli [officials][16][ denied and condemned][17] the charges.

The White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the latest figures.

The war in Gaza has killed or injured 170,000.

Children are starving to death.

Trump is encouraging the ethnic cleansing of 2.2 million people.

Why is there no discussion in the US government about why we are spending billions of taxpayer dollars starving children in Gaza? [pic.twitter.com/SrPlmgT4PY][18]

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) [May 9, 2025][19]

[8]: http://bernie sanders [9]: https://www.npr.org/2025/05/11/nx-s1-5395011/israel-new-gaza-aid-plan-us [10]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/trump-gaza-real-estate-takeover/ [11]: https://x.com/farnazfassihi/status/1886943054696677881 [12]: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/statement-humanitarian-country-team-occupied-palestinian-territory-principled-aid-delivery-gaza [13]: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/prepared-remarks-sanders-confronts-congress-silence-on-gaza/ [14]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/12/israel-genocide-gaza-amnesty-international-report/ [15]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/05/why-the-icc-arrest-warrants-for-hamas-and-israeli-leaders-matter/ [16]: https://x.com/Isaac%5FHerzog/status/1859578515487592658 [17]: https://x.com/gidonsaar/status/1859587210548310191 [18]: https://t.co/SrPlmgT4PY [19]: https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1920824120335302666?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw

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25 Arrested While Protesting GOP Medicaid Cuts

Within the first few minutes of Tuesday’s House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on planned Republican Medicaid cuts—which would render more than 8 million Americans uninsured—a contingent of protesters entered the room in Washington, DC’s Rayburn Building where members of Congress had gathered. The protesters, shouting “No cuts to Medicaid!” represented groups including the disability rights protest organization ADAPT. Twenty-five demonstrators were arrested and removed from the building.

The committee’s proposal for extensive cuts to federal health funding, including sweeping Medicaid cuts, are estimated by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to likely “reduce the number of people with health insurance by at least 8.6 million” nationwide. The legislation would also enact more than $700 billion dollars in health-related cuts, in addition to also promoting work requirements for people on Medicaid—which tends only to serve as a means of of kicking them off, even though federal data shows that a majority of adults on Medicaid already work full- or part-time.

After the initial protests, committee Chair Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), who released the legislation on Sunday evening—Mother’s Day—threatened the protesters with arrest for disrupting the hearing, calling the outcry illegal and “a criminal offense.”

The Energy and Commerce Committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), asked the Capitol Police to avoid making arrests, especially given the subject at hand. “People feel very strongly because they know they’re losing their health care, and [because of] the cruelty that comes from the Republican proposal,” Pallone said.

Pallone went unheeded. The Hill reported that more than two dozen protesters were arrested for civil disobedience, including wheelchair users. One protester, while being escorted out of the room by the police, shouted, “You will kill me,” according to the Independent’s Eric Garcia.

It wasn’t just people in the room who were loudly protesting against Medicaid cuts—other protesters demanding that Medicaid cuts be halted filled the hallway.

BREAKING: Chaos at the Rayburn Building. A Congressional hearing just stopped cold as protesters flooded the halls to fight Medicaid cuts. Capitol Police are warning of arrests. The situation is developing… #NoCutsToMedicaid pic.twitter.com/cRAfsppI4U

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) May 13, 2025

Back in 2017, civil disobedience coordinated by ADAPT helped halt the GOP’s plan to destroy the Affordable Care Act: As activist Colleen Flanagan told the 19th’s Sara Luterman, “We risked injury. We put our bodies on the line to demand that they save our health care.”

Now, it’s a wait-and-see game to determine whether a similar fightback by disabled people can help stop destructive cuts to Medicaid.

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MAGA World Is Not Happy About Trump’s Gift From Qatar

Some of President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are not thrilled about his plan to accept a luxury jet as a gift from Qatari royals to use as Air Force One.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told CNN, “I don’t think another country should be providing America [a plane]. We don’t need that….I think America can afford their own plane and build their own Air Force One.” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told reporters, “It would be better if Air Force One were a big, beautiful jet made in the United States of America.” And Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told CNBC Tuesday morning that he is “not a fan of Qatar,” adding, “The plane poses significant espionage and surveillance problems.” (Indeed, a Defense Department official told the New York Times it would take “years, not months” to make the necessary security upgrades for the plane.)

Democrats and legal experts have alleged the plan, first reported by ABC News on Sunday, violates the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits any person holding elected office from accepting gifts “from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Even Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) acknowledged that the gift appears to run afoul of the Emoluments Clause, telling Fox News host Jesse Waters, “There is a provision in the Constitution that says you can’t do this.” Paul also characterized accepting the plane as “a mistake,” adding, “I think it’s not worth the appearance of impropriety.”

Paul: The constitution in article two talks about the president cannot take gifts from foreign leaders. There is a provision in the constitution that says you cannot do this… I think it’s not worth the appearance of impropriety pic.twitter.com/tPPcEVd8E8

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 13, 2025

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told CNN that Trump and the White House “need to look at the Constitutionality” of accepting the plane. And Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the news “raises questions” about whether the administration would be in compliance with the “gift law.”

According to ABC’s reporting, Attorney General Pam Bondi and top White House lawyer David Warrington believe that transferring the plane to the Trump library foundation before the end of his term will make the arrangement legally sound. When asked about the gift, valued at approximately $400 million, Trump called it a “very nice gesture,” adding, “it helps us out,” given that upgrades to the current Air Force One have repeatedly been delayed. “I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” Trump added.

But some of his most ardent supporter think he should.

Laura Loomer, a close friend of Trump’s who appeared to influence his decision to fire several members of his National Security Council and recently claimed credit for Mike Waltz’s ousting as national security advisor, lambasted the decision to accept the plane in multiple posts on X. “This is really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true. And I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump,” Loomer wrote on Sunday, noting that Qatar has helped fund Hamas. “We cannot accept a $400 million ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits,” Loomer added. (It’s worth noting that Loomer has a history of making Islamophobic comments.) In other posts, Loomer claimed, without evidence, that Qatar was funding the Black Lives Matter movement and Antifa and that Qatar was behind the attempted assassinations of Trump.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) also pointed to Qatar’s role in funding Hamas as his rationale for opposing the gift, adding, “I don’t know how you make [the plane] safe.” Right wing commentator Ben Shapiro called the decision to accept the gift “skeezy,” alleging it was “not America first” given Qatar’s support for Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the news outlet Al Jazeera, which is partly funded by the Qatari government.

It remains to be seen if this chorus of right-wing voices will sway Trump’s decision to accept the plane. But if he does, at least Loomer and her cronies will likely be staying off the “palace in the sky.”

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Your Weather Forecasts Are About to Get a Lot Less Accurate

This story was originally published by Vox.com and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Did you check the weather forecast today?

Whether it was on your phone, the five-day outlook in your newspaper, or your friendly TV meteorologist, that forecast was built on a massive government-run network of sensors and computers that get the weather right more often than not while rarely getting the attention they deserve. And now that system is being taken apart, piece by piece.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the main US science agency that studies weather and climate, has already lost at least 2,000 workers since January thanks to a combination of layoffs, buyouts, and retirements. More job cuts may be looming. The White House says it wants to cut NOAA’s $6 billion budget by almost 30 percent. The upshot is that with these cuts, efforts to make forecasts even more accurate will stall, while existing forecasts may get worse.

Weather forecasts are not just about whether or not you need an umbrella; they provide critical planning information for air travel, farming, shipping, and energy production. And they also save lives.

In April, massive spring floods hit the central and southern US. Ahead of the storm, the National Weather Service at NOAA warned of upward of 15 inches of rainfall. “This is not your average flood risk,” according to a NWS bulletin from April 2. “Generational flooding with devastating impacts is possible.”

“The National Weather Service, that is definitely the center point of all weather forecasting in the United States.”

The ensuing storms and floods killed at least 24 people, but given their extensive area, the death toll could have been much higher. In a report this week, scientists at the World Weather Attribution research group said that good storm predictions and effective emergency management were key to saving lives. Those forecasts and storm alerts were the product of decades of investment and infrastructure built up across the country.

“The US National Weather Service forecast the floods a week in advance and issued warnings throughout the event,” Friederike Otto, a climatologist who leads World Weather Attribution, said during a recent call with reporters. “And as a result, people in the region knew when they needed to evacuate, and so the death toll was relatively small compared to similar events.”

But with the recent government cuts, the US is losing the data that informs these predictions and the scientists who produce them. The NWS has been contending with understaffing for decades, and now the recent firings have made things worse as the US heads into another summer likely filled with more extreme weather.

Of the 122 NWS forecast offices across the US, 30 do not have a chief meteorologist at the moment.

More people are living in vulnerable areas, and as global temperatures continue to rise, the destruction from extreme weather is getting worse. But even places that historically have avoided severe heat and torrential downpours are seeing dangerous weather become more common. That’s why predicting the weather is more valuable than ever and why it’s so alarming that the US is losing its capabilities.

To build a weather prediction, you start with measurements of the Earth, the sky, and the sea, sometimes from very far away. A thunderstorm in the southeastern US may have its seeds in the Pacific Ocean weeks in advance, for example. “It all starts with data,” said Alan Sealls, president of the American Meteorological Society.

But how do we actually get all of that data? It can come from something as sophisticated as a geostationary satellite or as simple as a weather balloon. Twice a day, the National Weather Service launches these helium-filled orbs from 92 sites across the US. They take snapshots of temperature, humidity, and windspeed as they rise into the atmosphere. This data doesn’t just inform weather models for the US but feeds into global models that help predict sunshine, rain, clouds, and snow all over the world.

“The weather balloons give us such detailed, precise data no other instrument can get,” Sealls said. “If we don’t have those in the area where that weather is likely to be hazardous or threatening, we potentially have a degraded forecast.”

Between balloons, radars, satellites, buoys, aircraft measurements, and ground instruments across the country, NOAA has built one of the most robust weather monitoring systems in the world, collecting 6.3 billion observations per day. The NWS then plugs the data from these instruments into computer models to predict the next torrential downpour, cold snap, heat wave, or thunderstorm.

And almost all of this information is available to the public for free.

“They do not have enough folks to go out and launch those balloons.”

However, most of us aren’t collating our own, personal weather reports from raw data. We’re getting them from any of the multitude of cell phone apps available—from the Weather Channel to Carrot Weather to Weather Underground—or from local experts who we trust. Meteorologists from news agencies or private companies also use the government’s raw data and models to produce their own weather predictions that are focused on specific areas or draw on outside expertise and experience. That’s why the forecasts on TV, in newspapers, or in weather apps can differ. But they still rely on the same foundational government data—especially when it comes to dangerous extremes.

“When we’re on TV talking about hazardous weather, most of us around the country are in direct contact with the National Weather Service,” Sealls said. “The National Weather Service, that is definitely the center point of all weather forecasting in the United States.”

Government researchers are also constantly improving weather forecasting. A modern five-day forecast is as accurate as a one-day forecast in 1980. A 72-hour hurricane track prediction these days is better than a 24-hour prediction from decades ago.

The National Weather Service’s annual budget is just $1.3 billion—and yet its services add up to billions of dollars in economic benefits and untold numbers of lives saved. The NOAA is now testing even better models for hurricanes and tropical storms that could provide up to five days of lead time.

Already, some NWS sites in the US have reduced the number of weather balloon launches and some have stopped due to budget and staffing cuts.

“They’ve been short-staffed for a long time, but the recent spate of people retiring or being let go have led some stations now to the point where they do not have enough folks to go out and launch those balloons,” said Pamela Knox, an agricultural climatologist at the University of Georgia extension and director of the UGA weather network.

Since weather models rely so much on initial readings from real-world measurements like weather balloons, losing them can lower the quality of predictions. Losing personnel might also mean less maintenance on equipment like radars, leading to more outages. And having fewer staff scientists makes it more difficult to provide timely emergency alerts.

“We’re becoming more blind because we are not having access to that data anymore,” Knox said. “A bigger issue is when you have extreme events, because extreme events have a tendency to happen very quickly. You have to have real-time data.”

“If you have fewer people on staff,” she added, “more things are going to fall through the cracks.”

At the same time, the climate is changing. That means that the historical patterns of weather no longer apply in much of the country, and continued warming will alter these trends further. The World Weather Attribution team estimated that the April extreme rainfall in the US was two to five times more likely due to warming, and that its intensity increased by 13 to 26 percent.

Yet at a time when the impacts of these changes have become impossible to ignore, the Trump administration is cutting climate research as well. The White House’s budget proposal specifically “terminates a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs, which are not aligned with Administration policy-ending ‘Green New Deal’ initiatives.”

The US did have a system for staying ahead of these long-term threats, but the Trump administration dismissed all the scientists working on the National Climate Assessment, a report required by law that assesses the current and future impacts of climate change to the country.

The result is a country facing a growing threat from natural forces but actively sabotaging its ability to stay ahead of them.

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