WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is in “exceptional health,” his physician said Friday after he underwent a checkup that included lab tests and preventive health assessments at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Trump spent roughly three hours at the Bethesda, Maryland, hospital earlier Friday for what his doctor, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, called a “scheduled follow-up evaluation” that was a “part of his ongoing health maintenance plan.” While there, Trump also got his yearly flu shot, as well as a COVID-19 booster vaccine.
“President Donald J. Trump remains in exceptional health, exhibiting strong cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurological and physical performance,” Barbabella wrote in a one-page memo released Friday night by the White House. The doctor noted in the memo that the evaluation helped prepare for Trump’s upcoming overseas trips and included advanced imaging, lab testing and preventive health assessments.
The president is traveling to the Middle East this weekend and is scheduled to fly to Asia at the end of this month.
Barbabella also said he evaluated Trump’s cardiac age, which was about 14 years younger than his chronological age. Trump is 79 and was the oldest U.S. president at his inauguration.
The White House this week initially described Trump’s Walter Reed visit as a “routine yearly checkup,” although Trump had his annual physical in April. The president then called it a “semiannual physical.”
Trump’s April physical found that he was “fully fit” to serve as commander in chief. The three-page summary of the exam done by Barbabella then said he had lost 20 pounds since a medical exam in June 2020 and said he has an “active lifestyle” that “continues to contribute significantly” to the well-being of the president.
In July, the White House announced that Trump had recently undergone a medical checkup after noticing “mild swelling” in his lower legs and was found to have a condition common in older adults that causes blood to pool in his veins. Tests by the White House medical unit showed that Trump has chronic venous insufficiency, which occurs when little valves inside the veins that normally help move blood against gravity gradually lose the ability to work properly.
At the April physical, Trump also passed a short screening test to assess different brain functions.
Presidents have large discretion over what health information they choose to release to the public. Trump’s summary from his April exam included information about his weight, body mass index, past surgeries, mental health screenings, cholesterol levels and blood pressure.
When spokesperson Karoline Leavitt discussed the results of his chronic venous insufficiency diagnosis from the briefing room, she noted that the White House was disclosing details of the checkup to dispel rumors about Trump’s health. At the time, Trump was frequently observed with bruising on his hand.
The Republican president has also repeatedly used the issue of health as a political cudgel. He repeatedly questioned the mental and physical health of his Democratic predecessor, President Joe Biden, and pointed out that he has undergone cognitive testing that Biden hadn’t.
Biden has brushed aside those criticisms and said he was fit to serve, but he dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House after a disastrous debate with Trump raised doubts about his fitness for office.
Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has floated a seismic idea: adding autism to the list of conditions covered by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The program, known as VICP, provides a system for families to file claims against vaccine providers in cases in which they experience severe side effects. Kennedy has also suggested broadening the definitions of two serious brain conditions — encephalopathy and encephalitis — so that autism cases could qualify.
Either move, experts warn, would unleash a flood of claims, threatening the program’s financial stability and handing vaccine opponents a powerful new talking point.
Legally, HHS “is required to undergo notice and comment rulemaking to revise the table,” said Richard Hughes, a law firm partner who teaches at George Washington University. The “table” is a list of specific injuries that the U.S. government accepts as presumed to be caused by a vaccine if those injuries occur within a certain time window. If someone can show they meet the criteria, they have a simpler path to securing compensation without having to prove fault. Autism is not in the table because a link between vaccines and autism has been thoroughly debunked.
If autism is added, Hughes explained, the VICP could face “an exorbitant number of claims that would threaten the viability of the program.”
Asked about its possible plans, an HHS spokesperson told CBS News the agency does not comment on future or potential policy decisions.
Carole Johnson, former administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees VICP, cautioned that the system is already overburdened: “The backlog is not just a function of management, it’s built into the statute itself. That’s important context for any conversation about adding new categories of claims.”
Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the University of California College of the Law-San Francisco, said that any such change would be exploited: “This can, and likely will, be used to cast doubt on vaccines.”
Compensation without causation
The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was born of crisis. In 1982, “Vaccine Roulette,” a television documentary, aired nationwide, alleging routine childhood shots were causing seizures, brain damage, and even sudden infant death. The program alarmed parents and triggered a surge of lawsuits against vaccine makers.
“That led to a flood of litigation against vaccine makers,” recalled Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and vaccine inventor at the University of Pennsylvania. “I mean, to the point that it drove them out of the business. … By the mid-1980s, there were $3.2 billion worth of lawsuits against these companies.”
Were it not for the VICP, Offit said, “We wouldn’t have vaccines for American children. The companies — it wasn’t worth it for them.”
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 created a no-fault system. Families who believed a vaccine caused harm could file a claim; if the injury appeared on the table within a set time frame, compensation was automatic. If not, claimants could present medical evidence. The system had two purposes: provide compensation and protect the vaccine supply.
From the beginning, the table was understood not as a scientific document but as a legal tool.
“It’s a legal document and things can be included for policy reasons even if the causation evidence is weak,” Reiss said. She explained, “The program is designed to be generous, to compensate in cases of doubt.”
But, she said, “autism is not in that category. The science is clear. Adding it would be pure politics.”
This tension — between law, science, and public perception — has defined the program for nearly four decades.
What expansion would mean in practice
Since 1988, federal data shows more than 25,000 petitions to the VICP have been adjudicated; of those, 12,019 were granted compensation and 13,007 were dismissed. About 60% of compensated cases involved negotiated settlements in which HHS drew no conclusion about the cause. Over the same period, billions of vaccine doses were safely administered to millions of Americans.
Adding autism to the VICP table would change that picture overnight.
Federal estimates suggest up to 48,000 children could qualify immediately under a “profound autism” standard, with potential payouts averaging $2 million per case, at an initial cost of nearly $100 billion, followed by annual totals of about $30 billion a year — dwarfing the current $4 billion trust, a new analysis finds.
“Any case where the symptoms appeared in the past eight years and the parents blame vaccines,” Reiss said. “I don’t know how many that would be. The fund has a surplus of over $4 billion. One seriously disabled child’s care can cost millions, so a significant number, say 100,000 compensations, might exhaust it.”
Furthermore, with only eight special masters handling cases, the system would also be paralyzed by backlogs.
The stakes are not just fiscal. If the fund collapses under the weight of autism claims, vaccine makers may question whether producing vaccines for the U.S. market is worth the risk. That would mirror the crisis of the 1980s, which led to the establishment of the VICP.
Autism and the courts
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Andrew Wakefield’s now-retracted paper alleging a link between the MMR vaccine and autism fueled a surge of VICP claims. By 2002, the VICP was swamped with petitions alleging vaccines had caused autism. The court consolidated thousands of cases into the Omnibus Autism Proceedings, selecting a handful of test cases to decide them all.
After years of hearings and expert testimony, the conclusion was unequivocal: vaccines do not cause autism. In 2010, the court ruled against petitioners on every theory of causation. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims affirmed, and the Court of Appeals upheld, the decision.
“That precedent is binding,” said Richard Hughes, a vaccine law expert at George Washington University and former VICP legal counsel. “Autism was litigated thoroughly and rejected. That still carries weight in the court today.”
The ghost of Hannah Poling
Yet, the vaccine-autism debate has never quite faded. In 2008, the government conceded a case involving Hannah Poling, a girl with a rare mitochondrial disorder who developed autism-like symptoms after vaccination. Officials stressed the concession was specific to her condition, not evidence of a general link. But headlines told another story: “Family to Receive $1.5 Million in First-Ever Vaccine Autism Court Award.”
The Poling case fueled years of confusion.
Autism science today
The science is clearer than ever. Autism begins early in pregnancy, not in toddlerhood when most vaccines are given.
“Vaccinations … happened around the time families were recognizing symptoms of autism in their children,” said Catherine Lord, a UCLA clinical psychologist and specialist in autism diagnosis. “However, we now know that autism begins much earlier, likely as the fetus develops during pregnancy, so it cannot be an explanation.”
Peter Hotez, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and vaccine scientist at the Baylor College of Medicine who is also the father of a young adult with autism, underscores that point: “The drivers of autism are genetics and, in rare cases, environmental exposures during pregnancy, not vaccines. We’ve been over this ground for decades, and the evidence is overwhelming.”
Sarah Despres, former legal counsel to the secretary of Health and Human Services in the Biden administration and now a consultant to nonprofit organizations on immunization policy, adds that the compensation program itself is often misunderstood.
“The table was originally written as a political document,” she said. “The purpose of the program was to be swift, generous, and fair. … There would be cases that may not be caused by the vaccine but would be compensated if you went through this table injury scheme, where you don’t have to prove causation.”
What’s at risk: Harm from the diseases themselves
The stakes are not abstract. Measles, one of the most contagious pathogens on Earth, spreads so efficiently that one infected child can transmit it to 90% of susceptible contacts. Before vaccinations began in the 1960s, measles sickened hundreds of thousands annually in the U.S., killing hundreds and causing thousands of cases of encephalitis and lifelong disability. Complications included pneumonia, brain swelling, and, in rare cases, a fatal degenerative brain disorder called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, or SSPE, that can strike years later. This year, a school-age child in Los Angeles County died of SSPE after contracting measles in infancy, before being eligible for vaccination.
Mumps was once a near-universal childhood illness. Though often dismissed as mild, it can cause sterility in men, meningitis, and permanent hearing loss. Outbreaks on college campuses, as recently as the 2000s, showed how quickly it can return when vaccination rates slip.
Rubella, also known as German measles, is mild in most children, but can be devastating during pregnancy. Congenital Rubella Syndrome, or CRS, caused waves of tragedy before the development of the vaccine: Thousands of babies each year were born blind, deaf, with heart defects, or with intellectual disabilities. In medical texts, autism itself is listed as one of CRS’ sequelae, or possible consequences — proof that rubella infection, not vaccination, can contribute to developmental disorders.
Measles, mumps, and rubella “are not trivial,” said Walt Orenstein, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s immunization program. “Fever, high fever, is common … and they have frequent complications.”
And yet, as these diseases fade from living memory, a counternarrative has gained traction. On Sept. 29, the nonprofit Physicians for Informed Consent, a group that disputes the scientific consensus on vaccines, announced it had mailed its “Silver Booklet” on vaccine safety to every member of Congress, as well as to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The book claims that “vaccines are not proven to be safer than the diseases they intend to prevent,” and calls on federal leaders to punish states that restrict vaccine exemptions. (The booklet isn’t free. The group sells copies for $25 on Amazon.)
Scientists say this framing misrepresents the basic math of risk. “Measles is one of the most important infectious diseases in human history,” notes “Plotkin’s Vaccines,” the field’s authoritative textbook. “The widespread use of measles vaccines in the late 20th and early 21st centuries led to a further marked reduction in measles deaths. Measles vaccination averted an estimated 31.7 million deaths from 2000 to 2020.”
Kennedy’s possible move to expand the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program hinges on casting doubt — on suggesting that science is unsettled, that vaccines may be riskier than diseases.
“One tactic used to argue that vaccines cause autism is the use of compensation decisions from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to claim such a link,” said Reiss of UC Law-San Francisco. “Even the cases that most closely address the question of vaccines and autism do not show the link that opponents claim exists, and many of the cases used are misrepresented and misused.”
Offit underscores the danger on the perception side. “When people see the Vaccine Injury Compensation program, they assume that any money that is given is because there was a vaccine injury,” he said.
Kathryn Edwards, an expert in pediatric infectious diseases and vaccine safety at Vanderbilt University, said, “Expanding compensation for issues that are not clearly related to vaccines … suggests that these conditions are related to vaccines when they are not.” She compared it to the removal of thimerosal, a preservative dropped from most childhood vaccines to ease public fears, despite no evidence of harm. “Now, we are still suffering from that action.”
Public health experts stress that such narratives invert reality. The very diseases being downplayed once killed or disabled tens of thousands of American children each year. As pediatrician, psychiatrist, and medical historian Howard Markel put it: “Back a hundred years ago, everybody lost a kid or knew a kid who died of one of these diseases. … We never conquer germs, we wrestle them to a draw. That’s the best we do. And so this is a real … handicap to the other side, the microbes who live to infect.”
Families and the future
The hardest voices to reckon with are those of families. Parents of autistic children often feel abandoned — unsupported by disability programs, exhausted by care needs, searching for answers. Kennedy’s appeal to them is emotional, not scientific.
Reiss noted that families deserve far more support but argues that it shouldn’t come through VICP.
“The program is to award compensation to those injured by vaccines,” she said. “We should have more direct support — disability funding, disability aid. Kennedy has been taking HHS in the opposite direction, cutting services where we need more.”
Despres made the same point: “The goal of the program really was if there’s a close call, we’re going to err on the side of compensation. … And it’s really important that everyone understands that compensation does not mean that the vaccine actually caused the injury. … And I think we have seen statistics around the compensation program misused by those who would want to sow distrust in vaccines, to say vaccines are unsafe, when in fact … that’s not what this is.”
UCLA’s Lord urged a shift in focus. “For the last 50 years, science has focused on the biological causes of autism, which has led to great progress, especially in genetics,” she said. Of Secretary Kennedy, she said, “He could help more by acknowledging the value of science, but also the need to better attend to the actual lives of autistic people and their families.”
What comes next?
If Kennedy decides to move forward with such a plan, HHS would need to draft a rule, open it to public comment, and then defend the change in court. The pushback will be fierce: from scientists, from public health leaders, and from families who fear being misled yet again.
The debate over adding autism to the Vaccine Injury Table is not just a policy debate. The program was built on the principle of compensation without causation, a fragile balance designed to sustain both trust and supply. Adding autism could collapse that distinction entirely.
About 1,500 federally funded health centers that serve millions of low-income people face significant financial challenges, their leaders say, as the government shutdown compounds other cuts to their revenue.
Some of these community health centers may have to cut medical and administrative staff or reduce services. Some could eventually close. The result, their advocates warn, may be added pressure on already crowded hospital emergency rooms.
“This is the worst time in all the years I have been working in health care,” said Jim Mangia, president and CEO of St. John’s Community Health, a network of 28 clinics that serves more than 144,000 patients in Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties in California. “We are facing federal cuts and extreme state cuts that will impact services.”
St. John’s and other federally qualified health centers offer primary care and a wide range of other services free of charge or on a sliding fee scale. Nationwide, they see nearly 34 million patients in the country’s most underserved areas.
The federal funds come through two primary routes, both of which face challenges: grants paid in part through the federal Community Health Center Fund and reimbursements for patients’ care through programs like Medicaid, which provides health insurance for low-income people and people with disabilities. Medicaid is jointly funded by states and the federal government.
Congress has approved the grant money in dribs and drabs recently. In March, lawmakers extended the funds until Sept. 30. That money expired after the Republican-controlled Congress did not pass a funding law, leading to a government shutdown.
Advocates say the health centers need long-term funding to help them plan with more certainty, ideally through a multiyear fund.
The centers received $4.4 billion in grants in early 2024. The National Association of Community Health Centers is advocating for at least $5.8 billion in grants annually for two years to keep the centers fully functional.
The health center safety net faces “multiple layers of challenges,” said Vacheria Keys, vice president of policy and regulatory affairs for the association.
The new spending law that Republicans call the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” will significantly cut Medicaid, raising the second set of threats for health centers.
Medicaid accounted for 43% of the $46.7 billion in health center revenue in 2023.
Advocates said lower Medicaid payments will exacerbate a gap between funding and operational costs.
Funding for workforce programs also is needed to support the delivery of health care services as centers struggle to hire and retain workers, said Feygele Jacobs, director of the Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health at George Washington University.
The first clinics of this type opened in places such as Massachusetts in the 1960s. Congress typically has funded them with bipartisan support, with minor fluctuations.
The struggle this year began when the Trump administration froze domestic aid through a January memo, which prevented some centers from receiving already approved grant money. As a consequence, some health centers in states such as Virginia closed or merged operations.
The upcoming cuts also are set to arrive at a time when patients will face new demands and challenges. The Medicaid changes in President Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending law include requirements for Medicaid enrollees to report their work or other service hours to keep their benefits.
Meanwhile, more generous tax credits the Biden administration and Congress provided consumers to help pay for Affordable Care Act health insurance are set to expire at the end of the year. Some consumers’ costs will spike if Congress doesn’t renew them.
One reason the government shut down is that Democrats want to extend the tax credits, which protect consumers from higher insurance costs. The Republican funding bill did not include an extension; Republican congressional leaders say the issue should be addressed separately.
Consumers “will need more support than ever,” said Jacobs, noting that Medicaid cuts and the expiration of the higher tax credits will both “potentially throw people out of coverage.”
“We are also receiving 300 calls per day from patients concerned about their coverage,” said Mangia, from St. John’s.
Republicans are not directly targeting the centers, although they supported the Medicaid cuts that will affect the clinics’ finances. Many Republicans say Medicaid spending has ballooned and that reducing the program’s growth will make it more sustainable.
State and Local Support
While advocating for longer-term federal funding, the centers also are looking to their community and local governments for backing.
While some states boosted their support of the centers, others are going in the opposite direction. Anticipating the impact of Medicaid cuts, states such as California made their own cuts to the program.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, the federal Department of Health and Human Services, and the federal Health Resources and Services Administration did not respond to requests for comment.
In Los Angeles, Mangia said, one potential solution is to work with partners at the county level, noting that L.A. County has about 10 million residents.
“We can tax ourselves to increase funding for health care services,” he said.
Health center leaders are building a coalition that “hopefully” will include the main stakeholders in the county’s health care system — community health centers, clinics, hospitals, doctors, health plans, unions — to begin the process to fill out a ballot petition, Mangia said. The goal: Put the question about taxes for health centers on the ballot and let voters decide.
“We are learning that the federal government and the state government are not reliable when it comes to continuing to fund health care,” Mangia said.
(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed off on a recommendation that patients must consult a health care provider to get a Covid-19 vaccine, although they don’t necessarily need a prescription.
The recommendations shifted away from a broader push most people to get a Covid-19 vaccine and was made by a new panel of vaccine advisers chosen by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. CDC’s OK makes the recommendations final and US vaccine schedules will be updated, HHS said on Tuesday.
The new recommendations mean that people ages 6 months and older can get Covid-19 vaccines after shared clinical decision making with a qualified health care provider, a recommendation that keeps the shots available to people, but also creates barriers to access.
The signoff is coming later than usual for the fall respiratory virus season. With the recommendation, the government can finally distribute Covid-19 vaccines through its Vaccines for Children program which provides free inoculations to about half of US children.
The CDC’s independent vaccine advisers, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, voted unanimously last month that people who want a Covid-19 vaccine should consult with a health care provider, a process called shared clinical decision-making. However, they narrowly voted down a recommendation that a prescription should be required to get the shot.
In August, the US Food and Drug Administration moved to limit approval of Covid-19 vaccines to adults 65 and older as well as younger people who are at higher risk of severe illness because of other health conditions.
A study published recently in the journal JAMA Network Open found that a universal Covid-19 vaccine recommendation — as had been in place for the US in recent years — could save thousands more lives than limiting the recommendation to high-risk groups.
Experts said that even requiring shared clinical decision-making could make Covid-19 shots harder to get.
The recommendation “assumes health care and insurance,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who recently resigned as head of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “We do not have universal health care in this country, and we know millions of people are losing insurance.”
Another new recommendation will mean that toddlers get their first vaccines against measles and chickenpox separately, around their first birthdays. In this case, the ACIP guidance formalizes an existing recommendation, which is designed to reduce a very rare, slightly elevated risk of seizures when the two shots are combined into a single injection.
The CDC advisers said that the single-dose measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccine was not recommended before age 4 and that younger kids should get the varicella vaccine, which protects against chickenpox, separately from the shot that protects against measles, mumps and rubella.
PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from deploying the National Guard in Portland, ruling in a lawsuit brought by the state and city.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut issued the order pending further arguments in the suit. The plaintiffs say the a deployment would violate the U.S. Constitution as well as a federal law that generally prohibits the military from being used to enforce domestic laws.
The Defense Department had said it was placing 200 members of Oregon’s National Guard under federal control for 60 days to protect federal property at locations where protests are occurring or likely to occur after Trump called the city “war-ravaged.”
Oregon officials said that description was ludicrous. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in the city has recently been the site of nightly protests, which typically drew a couple dozen people in recent weeks before the deployment was announced.
Trump The Republican president has deployed or threatened to deploy troops in several U.S. cities, particularly ones led by Democrats, including Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and Memphis. Speaking Tuesday to U.S. military leaders in Virginia, the president proposed using cities as training grounds for the armed forces.
Last month a federal judge ruled that Trump’s deployment of some 4,700 National Guard soldiers and Marines in Los Angeles earlier this year was illegal, but he allowed the 300 who remain in the city to stay as long as they do not enforce civilian laws.
As for Portland, the Defense Department announced that it was placing 200 members of Oregon’s National Guard under federal control for 60 days to protect federal property at locations where protests are occurring or likely to occur.
That announcement came after Trump called “war-ravaged” in late September, a characterization that Oregon officials called ludicrous while saying they do not need or want federal troops there.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland has been the site of nightly protests, and the demonstrations and occasional clashes with law enforcement have been limited to a one-block area in a city that covers about 145 square miles (375 square km) and has about 636,000 residents.
A handful of immigration and legal advocates often gather at the building during the day. At night, recent protests have typically drawn a couple dozen people.
A larger crowd demonstrated Sept. 28 following the announcement of the guard deployment. The Portland Police Bureau, which has said it does not participate in immigration enforcement and only intervenes in the protests if there is vandalism or criminal activity, arrested two people on assault charges.
A peaceful march earlier that day drew thousands to downtown and saw no arrests, police said.
Trump sent federal officers to Portland over the objections of local and state leaders in 2020 during long-running racial justice protests following George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police. The administration sent hundreds of agents for the stated purpose of protecting the federal courthouse and other federal property from vandalism.
That deployment antagonized demonstrators and prompted nightly clashes. Federal officers fired rubber bulled and used tear gas.
Viral videos captured federal officers arresting people and hustling them into unmarked vehicles. A report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found that while the federal government had legal authority to deploy the officers, many of them lacked the training and equipment necessary for the mission.
The government agreed this year to settle an excessive-force lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union by paying compensating several plaintiffs for their injuries.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has embraced the federal shutdown as an “unprecedented opportunity” to slash spending and shrink government, but new rounds of targeted spending cuts from the White House aimed at Democratic states and priorities are raising concerns among Republicans that they may be at risk of ceding their political advantage.
Republicans in Congress believe they hold the upper hand in four-day-old stalemate, as Democrats voted against measures to keep the government open because they want to attach additional policy measures. But the sweeping cuts to home-state projects — and the threat of mass federal firings — have some in the GOP worried the White House may be going too far and potentially give Democrats a way out of their tight spot.
“This is certainly the most moral high ground Republicans have had in a moment like this that I can recall, and I just don’t like squandering that political capital when you have that kind of high ground,” GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told reporters this week.
As hopes faded Friday for a quick end to the shutdown — with Democrats holding firm in a key Senate vote — the White House signaled more layoffs and agency cuts could follow. Trump shared a video Thursday night portraying budget director Russ Vought as the grim reaper. The cuts are raising fresh questions about whether voters want a government that uses discretionary power to punish political opponents — and whether Republicans may face electoral consequences for the White House’s actions.
“There’s the political ramifications that could cause backlash,” Cramer said in another interview. “It makes everything going forward more difficult for us.”
Since the shutdown began, Trump has moved to cancel $7.6 billion in clean energy grants across 16 states, all of which voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election. On Friday, the administration announced an additional $2 billion cut, this time to a major public transit project in Chicago. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration is also reviewing funding to Portland, Oregon.
“He’s just literally took out the map and pointed to all the blue states,” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, told The Associated Press.
Democrats have seized on the shutdown and cuts as evidence of Trump’s overreach. There could be near-term fallout, including in next month’s governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia. Democratic candidates in both states have linked their GOP opponents to Trump’s policies and criticized them for not standing up to his latest moves.
In New Jersey, Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill blasted Republican Jack Ciattarelli over Trump’s move to block funding for a long-delayed rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey, saying it will hurt commuters and put thousands of good-paying union jobs at risk.
“What’s wrong with this guy?” Sherrill said Friday.
In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger noted the state already has been hit hard by job cuts made by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. She said Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears is “refusing to stand up for our workforce and our economy.”
Earle-Sears said Democrats are to blame for the shutdown, and said Spanberger did nothing to encourage the state’s Democratic senators to stop it.
The administration’s targeting of blue states has already begun to ripple through states like California, where $1.2 billion in funding for the state’s hydrogen hub was scrapped. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said it threatens more than 200,000 jobs.
Though Harris won California handily in 2024, the state includes several competitive House districts that could decide control of the chamber in 2026. Similar districts exist in other states affected by the cuts, including New York and New Hampshire, which also has key gubernatorial and Senate races.
Democratic groups have moved quickly to tie local Republicans to the fallout. American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic group, has highlighted swing-district Republicans in states where cuts have occurred, accusing them of having “sat by and let it happen.”
“The cruelty that they might unleash on everyday Americans using the pretense of a shutdown is only going to backfire against them,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in an interview with The Associated Press and other outlets at the Capitol.
The cuts are also complicating Senate negotiations, prolonging a shutdown that could leave thousands of federal workers without pay and halt key programs. Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat whom Republicans have tried to sway, said “there’s no question” the cuts have damaged talks.
“If you’re trying to get people to come together and try to find common ground, that’s the absolute wrong way to do it,” said Peters.
Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent, broke from Democrats earlier this week to support the GOP funding bill. He called the cuts “so utterly partisan as to be almost laughable.”
“If they overreach, which is entirely possible, I think they’re going to be in trouble with Republicans as well,” said King.
Many Senate Republicans have not endorsed Vought’s approach directly, instead blaming Democrats for rejecting funding bills and opening the door to the White House’s more aggressive moves.
“It’s the reason why Republicans have continued to support a continuation,” said GOP Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota. “If you’ve noticed, Republicans have solidly supported this short-term continuing resolution because we do not want to see this.”
“It’s not like we promoted it,” said Rounds. “We’ve done everything we can right now to try to avoid it.”
Associated Press reporter Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that Hamas must agree to a proposed peace deal by Sunday evening, threatening an even greater military onslaught nearly two years into the war sparked by the Oct. 7 attack into Israel.
Trump appears keen to deliver on pledges to end the war and return dozens of hostages ahead of the second anniversary of the attack on Tuesday. His peace plan has been accepted by Israel and welcomed internationally, but key mediators Egypt and Qatar, and at least one Hamas official, have said some elements need further negotiation, without elaborating.
“An Agreement must be reached with Hamas by Sunday Evening at SIX (6) P.M., Washington, D.C. time,” Trump wrote Friday on social media. “Every Country has signed on! If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas. THERE WILL BE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST ONE WAY OR THE OTHER.”
Trump’s plan would end the fighting and return hostages
Under the plan, which Trump unveiled earlier this week alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hamas would immediately release the remaining 48 hostages — around 20 of them believed to be alive. It would also give up power and disarm.
In return, Israel would halt its offensive and withdraw from much of the territory, release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and allow an influx of humanitarian aid and eventual reconstruction. Plans to relocate much of Gaza’s population to other countries would be shelved.
The territory of some 2 million Palestinians would be placed under international governance, with Trump himself and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair overseeing it. The plan provides no path for eventual reunification with the Israeli-occupied West Bank in a future Palestinian state.
A Hamas official told The Associated Press this week that some elements of the plan are unacceptable and need to be amended, without elaborating. Palestinians long for an end to the war, but many view this and previous U.S. proposals as strongly favoring Israel.
US and Israel seek to pressure Hamas
Israel has sought to ramp up pressure on Hamas since ending an earlier ceasefire in March. It sealed the territory off from food, medicine and other goods for 2 1/2 months and has seized, flattened and largely depopulated large areas of the territory.
Experts determined that Gaza City had slid into famine shortly before Israel launched a major offensive aimed at occupying it. An estimated 400,000 people have fled the city in recent weeks, but hundreds of thousands more have stayed behind.
Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the U.N. humanitarian office, said she saw several displaced families staying in the parking lot of Shifa Hospital during a visit on Thursday.
“They are not able to move south because they just cannot afford it,” Cherevko told The Associated Press. “One of the families had three children and the woman was pregnant with her fourth. And there were many other vulnerable cases there, including elderly people and people with disabilities.”
Trump wrote that most of Hamas’ fighters are “surrounded and MILITARILY TRAPPED, just waiting for me to give the word, ‘GO,’ for their lives to be quickly extinguished. As for the rest, we know where and who you are, and you will be hunted down, and killed.”
Most of Hamas’ top leaders in Gaza and thousands of its fighters have already been killed, but it still has influence in areas not controlled by the Israeli military and launches sporadic attacks that have killed and wounded Israeli soldiers.
Hamas has held firm to its position that it will only release the remaining hostages — its sole bargaining chip and potential human shields — in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal. Netanyahu has rejected those terms, saying Hamas must surrender and disarm.
Second anniversary approaches
Thousands of Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, attacking army bases, farming communities and an outdoor music festival, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. They abducted 251 others, most of them since released in ceasefires or other deals.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 66,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants. It says women and children make up around half the dead.
The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, and the U.N. and many independent experts consider its figures to be the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties.
The offensive has displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population, often multiple times, and left much of the territory uninhabitable.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations have tried to end the fighting and bring back the hostages while providing extensive military and diplomatic support to Israel.
California shoppers’ optimism hit a three-month low, according to new polling data.
My trusty spreadsheet’s review of the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index for California showed a 4% decline in this shopper psyche measurement from August to September. This index is based on consumer surveys.
Golden State confidence has declined 23% over the past year and is 9% below its average dating to 2007.
California and President Donald Trump are not a good mix, politically or economically. The new administration’s “American First” thinking sharply contrasts with California’s globally oriented business environment.
Think about the two parts that comprise this confidence index.
California’s “present situation” index – tracking impressions of current economic conditions – was off 8% for September to a five-month low. It’s off 22% year-over-year yet remains 1% above its 19-year average.
However, the future remains the biggest question mark. California’s forward-looking “expectations” index did rise 1% in a month to its highest level in seven months. But it’s down 24% in a year and is 16% below average.
Nationally nervous
The White House’s unorthodox business policies have shaken the economy statewide and nationally. The Federal Reserve’s recent interest rate cut was a signal that the economy is, at best, cooling.
Nationwide polling found U.S. confidence fell 4% in a month to a five-month low and has declined 5% over the past year. However, the index is 3% above its average since 2007.
Americans have mixed feelings about today’s economy. The U.S. “present situation” yardstick is down 5% in a month to a 12-month low. Nevertheless, it’s up 1% in a year and 19% above its 19-year average.
Yet U.S. consumers also see an uneasy economic future. The “expectations” marker is down 2% in a month to a three-month low. It’s off 11% in a year and runs 11% below average.
Unsettled states
Five of the seven other states tracked experienced confidence dips for the month, ranked by the index change.
Illinois: Off 23% in September to a five-month low. It’s down 9% in a year, but 2% above the average.
Texas: Off 18% in September to the lowest since December 2020. It’s down 12% in a year but 18% below average.
Pennsylvania: Off 11% in September to a 12-month low. It’s up 4% in a year but 7% below average.
Ohio: Off 6% in September to the lowest since October 2016. It’s down 17% in a year but 2% above average.
Florida: Off 6% in September to a five-month low. It’s down 1% in a year, but 7% above average.
Michigan: Up 4% in September, off 3% in a year, and 17% above average.
New York: Up 13% in September to a five-month high. It’s up 13% in a year and 28% above average.
Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency was already reeling from massive stuff cuts and dramatic shifts in priority and policy. A government shutdown raises new questions about how it can carry out its founding mission of protecting America’s health and environment with little more than skeletal staff and funding.
In President Donald Trump’s second term, the EPA has leaned hard into an agenda of deregulation and facilitating Trump’s boosting of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal to meet what he has called an energy emergency.
Jeremy Symons, a former EPA policy official under President Bill Clinton, said it’s natural to worry that a shutdown will lead “the worst polluters” to treat it as a chance to dump toxic pollution without getting caught.
“Nobody will be holding polluters accountable for what they dump into the air we breathe, in the water we drink while EPA is shut down,” said Symons, now a senior adviser to the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former agency officials advocating for a strong Earth-friendly department.
“This administration has already been implementing a serial shutdown of EPA,” Symons said. “Whittling away at EPA’s ability to do its job.”
A scientific study of pollution from about 200 coal-fired power plants during the 2018-2019 government shutdown found they “significantly increased their particulate matter emissions due to the EPA’s furlough.” Soot pollution is connected to thousands of deaths per year in the United States.
The birth of EPA
The EPA was created under Republican President Richard Nixon in 1970 amid growing fears about pollution of the planet’s air, land and water. Its first administrator, William D. Ruckelshaus, spoke of the need for an “environmental ethic” in his first speech.
“Each of us must begin to realize our own relationship to the environment,” Ruckelshaus said. “Each of us must begin to measure the impact of our own decisions and actions on the quality of air, water, and soil of this nation.”
In the time since then, it has focused on safeguarding and cleaning up the environment, and over the past couple of decades, it also added fighting climate change to its charge.
EPA’s job is essentially setting up standards for what’s healthy for people and the environment, giving money to state and local governments to get that done and then coming down as Earth’s police officer if it isn’t.
“Protecting human health and the environment is critical to the country’s overall well-being,” said Christine Todd Whitman, who was EPA chief under Republican President George W. Bush. “Anything that stops that regulatory process puts us at a disadvantage and endangers the public.”
But priorities change with presidential administrations.
Earlier this year, Trump’s new EPA chief Lee Zeldin unveiled five pillars for the agency. The first is to ensure clean air, land and water. Right behind it is to “restore American energy dominance,” followed by environmental permitting reform, making U.S. the capital of artificial intelligence and protecting American auto jobs.
Zeldin is seeking to rescind a 2009 science-based finding that climate change is a threat to America’s health and well-being. Known as the “endangerment” finding, it forms the foundation of a range of rules that limit pollution from cars, power plants and other sources. Zeldin also has proposed ending a requirement that large, mostly industrial polluters report their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, canceled billions of dollars in solar energy grants and eliminated a research and development division.
Agency’s shutdown plan
The EPA’s shutdown contingency plan, first written a decade ago and slightly updated for this year, says 905 employees are considered essential because they are necessary to protect life and property or because they perform duties needed by law. An additional 828 employees can keep working because they aren’t funded by the annual federal budget and instead get their pay from fees and such.
EPA officials won’t say how many employees they have cut — former officials now at the Environmental Protection Network say it’s 25% — but the Trump administration’s budget plan says the agency now has 14,130 employees, down 1,000 from a year ago. The administration is proposing cutting that to 12,856 in this upcoming budget year and Zeldin has talked of going to levels of around Ronald Reagan’s presidency, which started at around 11,000.
The agency’s shutdown plan calls for it to stop doing non-criminal pollution inspections needed to enforce clean air and water rules. It won’t issue new grants to other governmental agencies, update its website, issue new permits, approve state requests dealing with pollution regulations or conduct most scientific research, according to the EPA document. Except in situations where the public health would be at risk, work on Superfund cleanup sites will stop.
Marc Boom, a former EPA policy official during the Biden administration, said inspections under the Chemical Accident Risk Reduction program would halt. Those are done under the Clean Air Act to make sure facilities are adequately managing the risk of chemical accidents.
“Communities near the facilities will have their risk exposure go up immediately since accidents will be more likely to occur,” Boom said.
He also said EPA hotlines for reporting water and other pollution problems likely will be closed. “So if your water tastes off later this week, there will be no one at EPA to pick up the phone,” he said.
“The quality of water coming out of your tap is directly tied to whether EPA is doing its job,” said Jeanne Briskin, a former 40-year EPA employee who once headed the children’s health protection division.
This is the third time Trump has presided over a federal funding lapse, the first since his return to the White House this year, in a remarkable record that underscores the polarizing divide over budget priorities and a political climate that rewards hardline positions rather than more traditional compromises.
Plenty of blame being thrown around
The Democrats picked this fight, which was unusual for the party that prefers to keep government running, but their voters are eager to challenge the president’s second-term agenda. Democrats are demanding funding for health care subsidies that are expiring for millions of people under the Affordable Care Act, spiking the costs of insurance premiums nationwide.
Republicans have refused to negotiate for now and have encouraged Trump to steer clear of any talks. After the White House meeting, the president posted a cartoonish fake video mocking the Democratic leadership that was widely viewed as unserious and racist.
What neither side has devised is an easy offramp to prevent what could become a protracted closure. The ramifications are certain to spread beyond the political arena, upending the lives of Americans who rely on the government for benefit payments, work contracts and the various services being thrown into turmoil.
“What the government spends money on is a demonstration of our country’s priorities,” said Rachel Snyderman, a former White House budget official who is the managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank in Washington.
Shutdowns, she said, “only inflict economic cost, fear and confusion across the country.”
Economic fallout expected to ripple nationwide
An economic jolt could be felt in a matter of days. The government is expected Friday to produce its monthly jobs report, which may or may not be delivered.
While the financial markets have generally “shrugged” during past shutdowns, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis, this one could be different partly because there are no signs of broader negotiations.
“There are also few good analogies to this week’s potential shutdown,” the analysis said.
Across the government, preparations have been underway. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, headed by Russ Vought, directed agencies to execute plans for not just furloughs, as are typical during a federal funding lapse, but mass firings of federal workers. It’s part of the Trump administration’s mission, including its Department of Government Efficiency, to shrink the federal government.
What’s staying open and shutting down
The Medicare and Medicaid health care programs are expected to continue, though staffing shortages could mean delays for some services. The Pentagon would still function. And most employees will stay on the job at the Department of Homeland Security.
But Trump has warned that the administration could focus on programs that are important to Democrats, “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”
As agencies sort out which workers are essential, or not, Smithsonian museums are expected to stay open at least until Monday. A group of former national park superintendents urged the Trump administration to close the parks to visitors, arguing that poorly staffed parks in a shutdown are a danger to the public and put park resources at risk.
No easy exit as health care costs soar
Ahead of Wednesday’s start of the fiscal year, House Republicans had approved a temporary funding bill, over opposition from Democrats, to keep government running into mid-November while broader negotiations continue.
But that bill has failed repeatedly in the Senate, including late Tuesday. It takes a 60-vote threshold for approval, which requires cooperation between the two parties. A Democratic bill also failed. With a 53-47 GOP majority, Democrats are leveraging their votes to demand negotiation.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said Republicans are happy to discuss the health care issue with Democrats — but not as part of talks to keep the government open. More votes are expected Wednesday.
The standoff is a political test for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who has drawn scorn from a restive base of left-flank voters pushing the party to hold firm in its demands for health care funding.
“Americans are hurting with higher costs,” Schumer said after the failed vote Tuesday.
House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers home nearly two weeks ago after having passed the GOP bill, blaming Democrats for the shutdown.
“They want to fight Trump,” Johnson said Tuesday on CNBC. “A lot of good people are going to be hurt because of this.”
Trump, during his meeting with the congressional leaders, expressed surprise at the scope of the rising costs of health care, but Democrats left with no path toward talks.
During Trump’s first term, the nation endured its longest-ever shutdown, 35 days, over his demands for funds Congress refused to provide to build his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.
In 2013, the government shut down for 16 days during the Obama presidency over GOP demands to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Other closures date back decades.
___
Associated Press writers Matt Brown, Joey Cappelletti, Will Weissert, Fatima Hussein and other AP reporters nationwide contributed to this report.
The Trump administration has restored almost all of the 500 National Institutes of Health grants it suspended at UCLA in July in response to a federal judge’s order last week.
Attorneys in the U.S. Department of Justice submitted a court-mandated update on the status of the grant restorations Monday evening. They report that the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, has restored all but nine grants to UCLA health science researchers, though that figure may be even smaller.
In response to a similar court order in August, the federal National Science Foundation restored 300 grants it had suspended in July.
The restorations cap a remarkable turnaround for UCLA, which lost access to more than $500 million in research in July after the Trump administration froze 800 science grants to the esteemed public university. The National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health accused UCLA of tolerating antisemitism as part of their justification for the grant funding freezes. Those claims followed months of efforts at the university to implement the recommendations of a task force on antisemitism that campus administrators appointed to examine bias at the school.
The science grants pay for research into life-saving drugs, dementia, heart disease in rural areas, robotics education and a vast array of science inquiries across the country. They help propel the country’s research enterprise and are the top source of federal research grants at the University of California. The UC system has battled the Trump administration over various efforts to slash its funding since President Donald Trump’s second term began. Science funding is also a key source of income and training for graduate students, who are the next generation of publicly funded academics. Still, UCLA and the rest of the UC remain in the hot seat as the system contends with settlement demands from Trump that amount to $1.2 billion. Trump sought that settlement over a litany of accusations, including that the campus tolerates antisemitism.
More than 600 Jewish faculty, students, staff and alumni of the University of California wrote in a public letter that stripping funding in response to those claims is “misguided and punitive.”
“Cutting off hundreds of millions of research funds will do nothing to make UCLA safer for Jews nor diminish antisemitism in the world,” the public letter says. A coalition of UC faculty and staff have sued to halt Trump from pursuing his settlement demands. The California federal judge who ordered the grants returned to UCLA, Rita Lin, has issued a string of decisions since June that have restored hundreds of other research grants from multiple agencies across the UC system. Her injunction last week is preliminary and the trial is ongoing. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld some of her other preliminary injunctions that forced the Trump administration to restore scores of science, humanities and environmental research grants.
Lin last week also ordered the Department of Defense and Department of Transportation to restore grants to at least several dozen UC researchers, not just those at UCLA. Attorneys for the government say they need more time — until Oct. 10 — to bring back the defense grants, but said funding for all the terminated defense grants will be restored. Lin is also the judge in the Trump settlement lawsuit.
This story was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
BOSTON — The Trump administration violated the Constitution when it targeted non-U.S. citizens for deportation solely for supporting Palestinians and criticizing Israel, a federal judged said Tuesday in a scathing ruling directly and sharply criticizing President Donald Trump and his policies as serious threats to free speech.
U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston agreed with several university associations that the policy they described as ideological deportation violates the First Amendment as well as the Administrative Procedure Act, a law governing how federal agencies develop and issue regulations. Young also found the policy was “arbitrary or capricious because it reverses prior policy without reasoned explanation.”
“This case -– perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court –- squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do,’” Young, a nominee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Plaintiffs in the case welcomed the ruling.
“The Trump administration’s attempt to deport students for their political views is an assault on the Constitution and a betrayal of American values,” said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors union. “This trial exposed their true aim: to intimidate and silence anyone who dares oppose them. If we fail to fight back, Trump’s thought police won’t stop at pro-Palestinian voices—they will come for anyone who speaks out.”
The ruling came after a trial during which lawyers for the associations presented witnesses who testified that the Trump administration had launched a coordinated effort to target students and scholars who had criticized Israel or showed sympathy for Palestinians.
“Not since the McCarthy era have immigrants been the target of such intense repression for lawful political speech,” Ramya Krishnan, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, told the court. “The policy creates a cloud of fear over university communities, and it is at war with the First Amendment.”
Lawyers for the Trump administration put up witnesses who testified there was no ideological deportation policy as the plaintiffs contended.
“There is no policy to revoke visas on the basis of protected speech,” Victoria Santora told the court. “The evidence presented at this trial will show that plaintiffs are challenging nothing more than government enforcement of immigration laws.”
John Armstrong, the senior bureau official in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, testified that visa revocations were based on longstanding immigration law. Armstrong acknowledged he played a role in the visa revocation of several high-profile activists, including Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil, and was shown memos endorsing their removal.
Armstrong also insisted that visa revocations were not based on protected speech and rejected accusations that there was a policy of targeting someone for their ideology.
One witness testified that the campaign targeted more than 5,000 pro-Palestinian protesters. Out of the 5,000 names reviewed, investigators wrote reports on about 200 who had potentially violated U.S. law, Peter Hatch of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations Unit testified. Until this year, Hatch said, he could not recall a student protester being referred for a visa revocation.
Among the report subjects was Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Khalil, who was released last month after 104 days in federal immigration detention. Khalil has become a symbol of Trump’s clampdown on the protests.
Another was the Tufts University student Ozturk, who was released in May from six weeks in detention after being arrested on a suburban Boston street. She said she was illegally detained following an op-ed she co-wrote last year criticizing her school’s response to the war in Gaza.
Young accused Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and their agents of misusing their powers to target noncitizens who were pro-Palestinian in order to silence them and, in doing so, “intentionally denying such individuals (including the plaintiffs here) the freedom of speech that is their right.”
“Moreover, the effect of these targeted deportation proceedings continues unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech to this day,” he added.
Young also criticized Trump in his 161-page ruling, suggesting he supported the policy, even though he may not have authorized its operation. “The facts prove that the President himself approves truly scandalous and unconstitutional suppression of free speech” on the part of two of his senior Cabinet secretaries, he wrote.
He also used the ruling to take aim at Trump’s broader effort to stifle dissent and attack anyone whom he disagrees. He opened the ruling with the words “Trump has pardons and tanks. What do you have?” written at the top of the first page.
Young then described Trump as someone who ignores “the Constitution, our civil laws, regulations, mores, customs, practices, courtesies.”
“Now that he is our duly elected President after a full and fair election, he not only enjoys broad immunity from any personal liability, he is prepared to deploy all the resources of the nation against obstruction,” he wrote. “Daunting prospect, isn’t it?”
NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Sunday that he is ending his campaign for reelection.
In a video released on social media, Adams spoke with pride about his achievements as mayor, including a drop in violent crime. But he said that “constant media speculation” about his future and a decision by the city’s campaign finance board to withhold public funding from his reelection effort, made it impossible to stay in the race.
“Despite all we’ve achieved, I cannot continue my reelection campaign,” Adams said.
The one-term Democrat’s decision to quit the race comes days after he repeatedly insisted he would stay in the contest, saying everyday New Yorkers don’t “surrender.”
But speculation that he wouldn’t make it to Election Day has been rampant for a year. Adams’ campaign was severely wounded by his now-dismissed federal bribery case and liberal anger over his warm relationship with President Donald Trump. He skipped the Democratic primary and got on the ballot as an independent.
Adams makes no endorsements in dropping out
In the video, Adams did not directly mention or endorse any of the remaining candidates in the race, but he warned of “insidious forces” using local government to “advance divisive agendas.”
“Major change is welcome and necessary, but beware of those who claim the answer (is) to destroy the very system we built over generations,” he said. “That is not change, that is chaos. Instead, I urge leaders to choose leaders not by what they promise, but by what they have delivered.
Adams capitulation could potentially provide a lift to the campaign of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a fellow centrist who has portrayed himself as the only candidate potentially able to beat the Democratic Party’s nominee, state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani.
It was unclear, though, whether enough Adams’ supporters would shift their allegiances to Cuomo to make a difference.
Mamdani, who, at age 33, would be the city’s youngest and most liberal mayor in generations if elected, beat Cuomo decisively in the Democratic primary by campaigning on a promise try to lower the cost of living in one of the world’s most expensive cities.
Republican Curtis Sliwa also remains in the race, though his candidacy has been undercut from within his own party; Trump in a recent interview called him “not exactly prime time.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has endorsed Mamdani, said in a statement after the mayor’s announcement that she has been proud to have worked with Adams for the last four years, and that he leaves the city “better than he inherited it.”
Rough showing in polls
Polls conducted in early September illustrated Adams’ challenges. One poll by The New York Times and Siena University and another by Quinnipiac University showed likely voters favoring Mamdani over Cuomo, with Sliwa and Adams trailing further behind.
The Quinnipiac poll suggested the gap between Mamdani and Cuomo could narrow if Adams dropped out. The Times/Siena poll suggested that if both Adams and Sliwa withdrew, Mamdani’s advantage over Cuomo could shrink even further.
Sliwa, though, has repeatedly insisted he will not quit under any circumstances.
In recent weeks, Trump administration intermediaries interested in blocking Mamdani’s path to victory by getting him into a one-on-one matchup with Cuomo had approached Adams to see if he could be coaxed out of the contest with an offer of a government job.
Amid reports on those discussions, Adams called a news conference where he pledged to keep running and derided Cuomo and Mamdani as “spoiled brats.” Later, Adams went even further on social media, calling Cuomo “a liar and a snake.”
Indictment overshadows progress
Adams, 65, is the city’s second Black mayor. A former New York City police captain and Brooklyn borough president, he took office in 2022 promising to crack down on crime and revitalize the city with his signature “swagger” as it recovered from the coronavirus pandemic.
On his signature issue, he succeeded. Crime rates that ticked upward after COVID-19 hit the city has fallen back to pre-pandemic levels, though it is unclear how much that had to do with Adams’ policies.
But Adams’ focus on reducing crime and disorder has been overshadowed, time and again, by swirling scandals, corruption probes and lawsuits that have alleged rampant favor-trading at the highest levels of city government.
Over a head-spinning period of weeks last year, his police commissioner, schools chancellor and several deputy mayors resigned following a series of federal raids on their homes. None have faced criminal charges.
Then, in late September, federal prosecutors brought fraud and bribery charges against Adams himself, saying he had accepted illegal campaign contributions and steep travel discounts from a Turkish official and others in exchange for accelerating the opening of Turkey’s diplomatic building, among other favors.
Trump intervenes
Adams denied wrongdoing and pledged to remain in office as he fought the case in court. But he also began speaking warmly about Trump, who was then seen as having a growing chance of regaining the White House. He defended Trump in media briefings, urged his own party to tone down rhetoric against the Republican, refrained from criticizing him and also largely stopped promoting the campaign of Trump’s Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris.
After Trump won, Adams met with Trump’s border czar, Thomas Homan, and pledged the city’s cooperation with some aspects of the new administration’s immigration crackdown.
Then, in February, Trump’s Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop the charges against Adams so the mayor could assist with the Republican president’s immigration agenda.
The extraordinary intervention set off a fresh round of tumult in City Hall and the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, with some of Adams’ closest allies suggesting he had struck a deal with the White House for his freedom.
Adams announced he would skip the June Democratic primary but would stay in the race.
Summer brings no reprieve
Since returning to the campaign trail this summer, Adams, who often describes himself as “perfectly imperfect,” once again found himself surrounded by scandal.
In late August, his former top advisor — who served as a campaign volunteer — was hit with fresh bribery charges. Another former aide was removed from the campaign after handing a potato chip bag full of cash to a local reporter.
In the final weeks of his campaign, he had rejected mounting calls to bow out to give Cuomo a better shot at beating Mamdani.
“History is going to be kind to me when I’m out of the political spotlight 10, 15 years from now, and they look over and say: You know what? We got to give this guy his due,” Adams said recently. “That’s what I’m fighting for.”
WASHINGTON — The indictment of former FBI Director James Comey is only two pages and alleges he falsely testified to Congress in 2020 about authorizing someone to be an anonymous source in news stories.
That brevity belies a convoluted and contentious backstory. The events at the heart of the disputed testimony are among the most heavily scrutinized in the bureau’s history, generating internal and congressional investigations that have produced thousands of pages of records and transcripts.
Those investigations were focused on how Comey and his agents conducted high-stakes inquiries into whether Russia was helping Republican Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 presidential race against Democrat Hillary Clinton and her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
Here are some things to know about that period and how they fit into Comey’s indictment:
What are the allegations?
The indictment alleges that Comey made a false statement in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The single quote from the indictment appears to be from an interaction with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Prosecutors contend Comey lied when he denied having authorized anyone at the FBI to be an anonymous source to the media. In fact, prosecutors allege, he had done that very thing by telling someone — identified as “Person 3” in the indictment — to speak to reporters.
“It’s such a bare-bones indictment,’ said Solomon Wisenberg, a former federal prosecutor and now a defense attorney in private practice. “We do not know what the evidence is going to be” at trial.
What did Comey say to Congress?
Wisenberg said the testimony in question appears to have come when Cruz was pressing Comey over the role that his deputy director, Andy McCabe, played in authorizing a leak to The Wall Street Journal for a story examining how the FBI handled an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.
Cruz’s question was complicated, but it boiled down to pitting Comey against McCabe. The senator noted that Comey told Congress in 2017 that he had not authorized anyone to speak to reporters. But Cruz asserted that McCabe had “publicly and repeatedly said he leaked information to The Wall Street Journal and that you were directly aware of it and that you directly authorized it.”
“Who’s telling the truth?” Cruz asked.
Comey answered: “I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017.”
At that time, Comey had been put on the spot by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. Comey was asked whether he had “ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation.”
Comey answered, “No.”
The indictment says Comey falsely stated that he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports,” but Comey appears not to have used that exact phrasing during the 2020 hearing at issue, potentially complicating efforts to establish that he made a false statement.
What may have sparked the questions?
“Person 3” is not identified in the indictment. That person appears to have been discussing an investigation related to Clinton, based on a clearer reference in a felony charge that grand jurors rejected. Comey figured in several inquiries into alleged leaks in the Clinton investigation.
One involved McCabe, who told the Justice Department’s inspector general that as deputy FBI director he had authorized a subordinate to talk to a Journal reporter. He told investigators he had informed Comey about that interaction after the fact.
It’s unlikely the indictment is focused on that episode because McCabe never told investigators that Comey had authorized him to talk to the media, only that the FBI director was aware that McCabe had done so.
Two other leak investigations involved a friend of Comey’s who served for a time as a paid government adviser to the director. That adviser, Daniel Richman, has told investigators he spoke to the media to help shape perceptions of the embattled FBI chief.
Richman, a law professor at Columbia University, was interviewed by FBI agents in 2019 about leaks to the media that concerned the bureau’s investigation into Clinton. Richman said Comey had never authorized him to speak to the media about the Clinton investigation but he acknowledged Comey was aware that he sometimes engaged with reporters.
Comey has acknowledged using Richman as a conduit to the media in another matter. After Comey was fired by Trump in 2017, he gave Richman a memo that detailed his interactions with the president. Comey later testified to Congress that he had authorized Richman to disclose the contents of the memo to journalists with the hopes of spurring the appointment of a special counsel who might investigate Trump.
How did we get here?
Trump and Comey have been engaged in a long-running feud. Trump blames Comey for having started an investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 campaign that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller spent the better part of two years investigating whether Trump’s campaign colluded with the Kremlin to help him win the White House.
In the end, Mueller uncovered no evidence that Trump or his associates criminally colluded with Russia, but found that they had welcomed Moscow’s assistance. Trump has long vented about the “Russia hoax,” which shadowed and defined the early years of his first term.
Trump has spent the ensuing years bashing Comey and saying he was worthy of being charged with treason.
Just days before the indictment, Trump publicly urged his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to act against Comey and two other perceived Trump enemies: “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump posted on social media last week. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW.”
Within hours of the indictment being returned, Trump turned again to social media to gloat: “JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey.”
Comey has hardly backed down, criticizing Trump on a host of matters. In a 2018 memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” Comey compared Trump to a mafia don and said he was unethical and “untethered to truth.”
Like Trump, Comey took to social media after his indictment.
“My family and I have known for years there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” he said. “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So, let’s have a trial.”
Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
BOSTON — State government officials are girding for the possibility of a federal government shutdown, and executive branch leaders have been instructed to summarize concerns about their ability to address payroll concerns and lay out their plans to protect Massachusetts residents and resources.
“We are asking departments for a quick turnaround, with responses to this memo due on Tuesday, September 30 by 5:00 pm.,” officials in the Office of the Comptroller and the Executive Office of Administration and Finance wrote Sept. 23 in a memo to state chief fiscal officers, budget directors and general counsels.
Thomas Smith-Vaughan, chief operating officer in the Office of the Comptroller, and Assistant Secretary for Budget Christopher Marino told state officials in the memo that with the federal fiscal year set to begin Oct. 1, Congress has not passed any of the 12 full-year appropriations bills needed to fund the government.
In the event of a shutdown, they wrote, federal agencies “must discontinue all non-essential discretionary functions until new funding legislation is passed and signed into law” but essential services will continue to function, as well as mandatory spending programs such as Social Security.
The warning comes as partisan gridlock paralyzes Congress, which has failed to agree on a short-term continuing resolution or full-year appropriations. According to ABC News, members of Congress are on recess until Monday, Sept. 29, giving them just two days to act before the Oct. 1 deadline. With control of the House and Senate split, any funding deal will require bipartisan support — at least 60 votes in the Senate — a threshold that has proven elusive amid disagreements over priorities between Democrats and Republicans.
The prospect of a shutdown comes as Massachusetts is navigating significant fiscal complexity. The Legislature passed a stream of funding bills earlier this year to address shortfalls in the fiscal 2025 budget, and the state’s $61 billion fiscal 2026 budget signed by Gov. Maura Healey this summer relies heavily on federal dollars.
About $15.6 billion of the fiscal 2026 budget comes from federal reimbursements and grants, the vast majority of which support MassHealth through Medicaid payments.
“A shutdown could create challenges for certain spending accounts in the General Federal Grants Fund, revenue collected through federal reimbursement, and for programs run and funded primarily by the federal government,” the memo says.
Among the programs flagged as vulnerable are Medicaid waiver services at MassHealth and the Department of Developmental Services, the federal highway capital project fund, and Federal Emergency Management Agency grants. These categories align closely with where the state receives the bulk of its federal support.
An analysis from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation recently estimated that federal cuts to Medicaid alone could have a $100 million impact on the state’s fiscal 2026 budget.
The memo also notes that “agencies should not assume that additional state funding will be available. Therefore, please identify any state funding that would be required for the state to take on responsibility for critical federal programs and indicate whether and when legislative authorization would be required,” the memo says.
Departments are being asked to assess their ability to cover bi-weekly payroll for employees currently paid through federal sources.
A hearing is planned at the State House on Tuesday, the day before the shutdown deadline, where state officials will hear from economists and policy experts about the implications of federal funding shifts on the state’s economy.
Real gross domestic product increased in the United States at an annual rate of 3.8% in the second quarter, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, after a 0.6% contraction in the first quarter — a sign of economic growth that has yet to resolve underlying fiscal tensions.
The potential shutdown coincides with a broader retrenchment in federal fiscal commitments, particularly in areas like health care and nutrition assistance, putting further pressure on state-level services.
Departments in Massachusetts have been through this before. According to the memo, agencies were asked to develop contingency plans in case of federal shutdowns in 2013, 2015, 2019, 2020, 2021, and most recently in 2024.
“Negotiations are ongoing to attempt to reach a budget deal before the October 1 deadline. However, we must be prepared for the possibility that federal government operations and/or federal funding for many purposes and programs will not be authorized beyond that date,” the memo says.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Sara Jane Moore, who was imprisoned for more than 30 years after she made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, has died. She was 95.
Moore died Wednesday at a nursing home in Franklin, Tennessee, according to Demetria Kalodimos, a longtime acquaintance who said she was informed by the executor of Moore’s estate. Kalodimos is an executive producer at the Nashville Banner newspaper, which was first to report the death.
Moore seemed an unlikely candidate to gain national notoriety as a violent political radical who nearly killed a president. When she shot at Ford in San Francisco, she was a middle-aged woman who had begun dabbling in leftist groups and sometimes served as an FBI informant.
Sentenced to life, Moore was serving her time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, when she was unexpectedly paroled Dec. 31, 2007. Federal officials gave no details on why she was set free.
She lived largely anonymously in an undisclosed location after that, but in broadcast interviews she expressed regret for what she had done. She said she had been caught up in the radical political movements that were common in California in the mid-1970s.
“I had put blinders on, I really had, and I was listening to only … what I thought I believed,”” she told San Francisco television station KGO in April 2009. “We thought that doing that would actually trigger a new revolution.”
Two would-be assassins
Moore was often confused with Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a disciple of cult murderer Charles Manson who aimed a semiautomatic pistol at Ford in Sacramento, California, on Sept. 5, 1975. A Secret Service agent grabbed the gun before any shots could be fired, and the president was unharmed.
Just 17 days later, on Sept. 22, Moore shot at Ford as he waved to a crowd outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco’s Union Square. Oliver Sipple, a 33-year-old former Marine, knocked the .38-caliber pistol out of her hand as she fired, causing the shot to go astray and hit a building.
“I’m sorry I missed,” Moore said during an interview with the San Jose Mercury News seven years later. “Yes, I’m sorry I missed. I don’t like to be a failure.”
But in later interviews, before and after her release, she repeatedly said that she regretted her actions, saying she was convinced that the government had declared war on the left.
Asked by KGO in 2009 what she would say to Ford if that had been possible, she replied that she would tell him, “I’m very sorry that it happened. … I’m very happy that I did not succeed.” Ford died in 2006, about a year before her release.
Her family did not publicly comment on her death. Geri Spieler, who wrote a biography of Moore titled “Housewife Assassin,” said she had abandoned her children and was estranged from all her living relatives.
Multiples marriages, name changes, unclear motives
Moore was born Sara Jane Kahn on Feb. 15, 1930, in Charleston, West Virginia. Her confusing background, which included multiple failed marriages, name changes and involvement with both leftist political groups and the FBI, baffled the public and even her own defense attorney during her trial.
“I never got a satisfactory answer from her as to why she did it,” retired federal public defender James F. Hewitt once said. “There was just bizarre stuff, and she would never tell anyone anything about her background.”
Ford insisted that the two attempts on his life should not prevent him from having contact with the people, saying, “If we can’t have the opportunity of talking with one another, seeing one another, shaking hands with one another, something has gone wrong in our society.”
His other attacker, Fromme, also was freed from prison eventually. She had no comment as she left a federal lockup in Texas in August 2009 at age 60.
Working with leftist groups but also the FBI
It was in 1974 that Moore began working for People in Need, a free food program for poor people established by millionaire Randolph Hearst as ransom after his daughter Patty was kidnapped by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army.
Moore soon became involved with leftists, ex-convicts and other members of San Francisco’s counterculture. At this time, she became an FBI informant.
Moore said she shot at Ford because she thought she would be killed once it was disclosed that she was an FBI informant. The agency ended its relationship with her about four months before the shooting.
“I was going to go down anyway,” she said in the 1982 interview with the San Jose Mercury News. “And if I was going to go down, I was going to do it my way. If the government was going to kill me, I was going to make some kind of statement.”
A failed prison escape
Moore was sent to a West Virginia women’s prison in 1977. Two years later she escaped but was captured several hours later.
She was later transferred to a prison in Pleasanton, California, before going to Dublin.
In 2000 she sued the warden of her federal prison to prevent him from taking keys given to inmates to lock themselves in as a security measure.
In an interview after the July 2024 assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, Moore told the Nashville Banner that part of what motivated her was that Ford, who became president after Richard Nixon resigned, was not elected president.
“He wasn’t elected to anything. He was appointed,” Moore said. “It wasn’t a belief, it was a fact. It was a fact that he was appointed.”
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will put import taxes of 100% on pharmaceutical drugs, 50% on kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities, 30% on upholstered furniture and 25% on heavy trucks starting on Oct. 1.
The posts on his social media site showed that Trump’s devotion to tariffs did not end with the trade frameworks and import taxes that were launched in August, a reflection of the president’s confidence that taxes will help to reduce the government’s budget deficit while increasing domestic manufacturing.
While Trump did not provide a legal justification for the tariffs, he appeared to stretch the bounds of his role as commander-in-chief by stating on Truth Social that the taxes on imported kitchen cabinets and sofas were needed “for National Security and other reasons.”
Under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the administration launched a Section 232 investigation in April about the impacts on national security from pharmaceutical drug and truck imports. The Commerce Department launched a 232 investigation into timber and lumber in March, though it’s unclear whether the furniture tariffs stem from that.
The tariffs are another dose of uncertainty for the U.S. economy with a solid stock market but a weakening outlook for jobs and elevated inflation. These new taxes on imports could pass through to consumers in the form of higher prices and dampen hiring, a process that economic data suggests is already underway.
“We have begun to see goods prices showing through into higher inflation,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned in a recent news conference, adding that higher costs for goods account for “most” or potentially “all” of the increase in inflation levels this year.
The president has pressured Powell to resign, arguing that the Fed should cut its benchmark interest rates more aggressively because inflation is no longer a concern. Fed officials have stayed cautious on rate cuts because of the uncertainty created by tariffs.
Trump said on Truth Social that the pharmaceutical tariffs would not apply to companies that are building manufacturing plants in the United States, which he defined as either “breaking ground” or being “under construction.” It was unclear how the tariffs would apply to companies that already have factories in the U.S.
In 2024, America imported nearly $233 billion in pharmaceutical and medicinal products, according to the Census Bureau. The prospect of prices doubling for some medicines could send shock waves to voters as health care expenses, as well as the costs of Medicare and Medicaid, potentially increase.
The pharmaceutical drug announcement was shocking as Trump has previously suggested that tariffs would be phased in over time so that companies had time to build factories and relocate production. On CNBC in August, Trump said he would start by charging a “small tariff” on pharmaceuticals and raise the rate over a year or more to 150% and even 250%.
According to the White House, the threat of tariffs earlier this year contributed to many major pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Roche, Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly, among others, to announce investments in U.S. production.
Pascal Chan, vice president for strategic policy and supply chains at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, warned that the tariffs could harm Americans’ health with “immediate price hikes, strained insurance systems, hospital shortages, and the real risk of patients rationing or foregoing essential medicines.”
The new tariffs on cabinetry could further increase the costs for homebuilders at a time when many people seeking to buy a house feel priced out by the mix of housing shortages and high mortgage rates. The National Association of Realtors on Thursday said there were signs of price pressures easing as sales listings increased 11.7% in August from a year ago, but the median price for an existing home was $422,600.
Trump said that foreign-made heavy trucks and parts are hurting domestic producers that need to be defended.
“Large Truck Company Manufacturers, such as Peterbilt, Kenworth, Freightliner, Mack Trucks, and others, will be protected from the onslaught of outside interruptions,” Trump posted.
Trump has long maintained that tariffs are the key to forcing companies to invest more in domestic factories. He has dismissed fears that importers would simply pass along much of the cost of the taxes to consumers and businesses in the form of higher prices.
His broader country-by-country tariffs relied on declaring an economic emergency based on a 1977 law, a drastic tax hike that two federal courts said exceeded Trump’s authority as president. The Supreme Court is set to hear the case in November.
The president continues to claim that inflation is no longer a challenge for the U.S. economy, despite evidence to the contrary. The consumer price index has increased 2.9% over the past 12 months, up from an annual pace of 2.3% in April, when Trump first launched a sweeping set of import taxes.
Nor is there evidence that the tariffs are creating factory jobs or more construction of manufacturing facilities. Since April, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that manufacturers cut 42,000 jobs and builders have downsized by 8,000.
“There’s no inflation,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “We’re having unbelievable success.”
Still, Trump also acknowledged that his tariffs against China had hurt American farmers, who lost out on sales of soybeans. The president separately promised on Thursday to divert tariff revenues to the farmers hurt by the conflict, just as he did during his first term in 2018 and 2019 when his tariffs led to retaliation against the agricultural sector.
A new Trump administration rule bars immigrants living in the United States under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) from buying health insurance from Affordable Care Act marketplaces.
The change, announced in June, took effect at the beginning of this month. It reverses a policy change enacted by the Biden administration for last November’s annual enrollment period.
DACA, which President Barack Obama established in 2012, applies to certain immigrants who are here illegally but were brought to the U.S. as children. The program was enacted to protect them from deportation and allows them to work for renewable two-year periods. To be eligible, an immigrant must have come to the U.S. at age 15 or younger before June 15, 2007. DACA participants also must be high school graduates, high school students or veterans of the U.S. military.
The oldest are now in their early 40s, some with children of their own.
Even though there are some 525,000 active DACA recipients, only about 10,000 were getting their health insurance from the marketplaces before the policy change, according to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. However, critics of the new Trump administration rule say participation would have grown as more people became aware of their eligibility.
DACA recipients from 19 states were blocked from the marketplaces, though, because of pending litigation. More than 20% of all DACA recipients reside in just two of those states: Texas (17%) and Florida (4%).
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit group that backs stricter immigration rules, said DACA was an “abuse of executive authority” and should not have entitled some immigrants to benefits. The rule change simply restores the status quo, Vaughan said.
“It was kind of an experiment or an end run around our legal immigration system that was set up by the rules that were set up by Congress to try to offer an amnesty to this particular group,” Vaughan said. “Because it’s not a legal status, these individuals are not, under the law, eligible for certain public benefits, and one of them is subsidized health insurance.”
But critics of the change say it’s cruel to cancel health care coverage for people who were brought to the country as children.
“Health care is a fundamental human right all of us, no matter where we were born, how much money we have, what we look like, what language we speak, we should be able to access quality and affordable care when we need it,” said Isobel Mohyeddin, a policy associate at the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates for immigrants.
Mohyeddin and her colleagues surveyed 433 DACA recipients in 2024, before DACA recipients were eligible for the marketplace. Eighty-one percent had health coverage, the vast majority through their employer or a union or professional association. But nearly 20% lacked coverage, more than twice the national uninsured rate of 8%.
Mohyeddin said that many of the DACA recipients without coverage reported skipping recommended medical and dental appointments or declining to fill prescriptions, because they couldn’t afford it or were fearful of being targeted for their status.
“The stripping of eligibility is a devastating step backwards, not only for DACA recipients, but families and immigrant communities in general,” Mohyeddin said.
While DACA recipients were only recently allowed to purchase coverage on the marketplace, it was a huge step toward better health outcomes for them, said Arline Cruz Escobar, director of health programs at Make the Road New York, a group that provides legal and social services to immigrants.
“We see a lot of mixed-status households, and so I think people are just very confused about what this means for them, and what it means for their families,” Cruz Escobar said. “We already know that the immigrant community doesn’t access enough preventive care and screenings and so, I can only imagine that we will see an increase in a lot of chronic conditions, or undiagnosed chronic conditions that could have been prevented.”
The impact of the new Trump administration rule on DACA recipients will vary, as some states offer other health care options to noncitizens.
States are going to have to decide whether they can afford to offer state-subsidized health coverage to DACA recipients and other immigrants who are no longer eligible for federal help, said Jessica Altman, executive director of California’s marketplace exchange, Covered California.
California has the most DACA recipients, at 147,440. Altman said more than 2,300 of them have purchased plans on the California marketplace and will lose their coverage. She said many DACA recipients in the state were not aware of their eligibility, and more would have enrolled if the Trump administration hadn’t made the policy change.
California provides state-funded health coverage to all income-eligible immigrants, regardless of their legal status. But Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in June signed a budget that scales back that coverage because of budgetary issues.
In light of federal changes and financial obligations on states, Altman said, California will have to make the same choices as other states about how or whether to help DACA recipients with their health care.
“The hard part is, to actually make coverage affordable for the populations that we’re talking about, you have to fund financial assistance at least somewhat comparable to what’s available on the federal marketplace,” Altman said. “So the state dollars are really where the rubber meets the road.”
By PAUL WISEMAN, BARBARA ORTUTAY and PIYUSH NAGPAL, Associated Press
The Trump administration’s abrupt decision to slap a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas has stunned and confused employers, students and workers from the United States to India and beyond.
Since announcing the decision Friday, the White House has tried to reassure jittery companies that the fee does not apply to existing visa holders and that their H-1B employees traveling abroad will not be stranded, unable to re-enter the United States without coming up with $100,000. The new policy took effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Sunday.
Despite the effort at reassurance, “there’s still some folks out there recommending to their H-1B employees that they not travel right now until it’s a little clearer,” Leon Rodriguez, a partner at the Seyfarth law firm who was director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Obama administration.
Other questions remain, some of them basic. “What actually is the process for paying this $100,000,” Rodriguez said. “Usually, when an agency is going to charge a fee, there’s a whole process. There’s the creation of forms for collecting that fee. … At this point, we don’t actually know what that process will be like.”
“Key questions remain, such as whether the new fee will apply to universities and nonprofit research organizations, employers that Congress has exempted from the annual limit on H-1B visas,” said Bo Cooper, partner at the immigration law firm Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy.
Here’s a look at what the H-1B visa program is and what the Trump administration is doing to it.
What are H-1B visas and who uses them?
Created by the 1990 Immigration Act, they are type of nonimmigrant visa, meant to allow American companies to bring in people with technical skills that are hard to find in the United States. The visas are not intended for people who want to stay permanently. Some eventually do, but only after transitioning to different immigration statuses.
An H-1B allows employers to hire foreign workers who have specialized skills and a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent. They are good for three years and can be extended another three years, suggesting that there are now “around 700,000 H-1B visa holders in the country and another half a million or so dependents,” economist Stephen Brown of Capital Economics wrote in a commentary Monday.
At least 60% of the H-1B visas approved since 2012 have been for computer-related jobs, according to the Pew Research Center. But hospitals, banks, universities and a wide range of other employers can and do apply for H-1B visas.
The number of new visas issued annually is capped at 65,000, plus an additional 20,000 for people with a master’s degree or higher. Those visas are handed out by a lottery. Some employers, such as universities and nonprofits, are exempt from the limits.
According to Pew, nearly three-quarters of those whose applications were approved in 2023 came from India.
What did Trump do?
The White House announced the $100,000 fee. The application fee is currently $215, plus other relatively nominal processing charges. It took effect barely 24 hours later.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the fee would be applied annually, for a total of $600,000 over the maximum number of renewals allowed. The White House clarified Saturday that it was a one-time fee and said it would not apply to current visa holders.
Trump also rolled out a $1 million “gold card” visa for wealthy individuals.
The moves are certain to draw lawsuits charging that the president was improperly sidestepping Congress with a dramatic overhaul of the legal immigration system.
Why target H-1B visas?
Critics say they undercut American workers, luring people from overseas who are often willing to work for less than American tech workers do. Staffing companies such as Tata Consultancy Services often supply Indian workers to corporate clients.
“To take advantage of artificially low labor costs incentivized by the program, companies close their IT divisions, fire their American staff, and outsource IT jobs to lower-paid foreign workers,” the White House said in its proclamation Friday.
In a 2020 report, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that 60% of the H-1B positions certified by U.S. Labor Department are assigned wages below the median for the job.
Brown at Capital Economics wrote that “it is hard to disagree with the administration’s argument that the program needs reform.”
Giovanni Peri, director of the Global Migration Center at the University of California, Davis, said that abuses of the program — such as bringing in mid-level coders to replace higher-paid Americans — do occur but are relatively rare.
Most H-1B visa holders, he said, really are highly skilled workers who are hard to find. “Most of these people come in, and they have helped the productivity of firms; they have helped innovation,” Peri said. “They have complemented the work of Americans, and they have allowed growth.’’
What impact will the H-1B crackdown have?
Brown said that many tech firms can probably afford to pay $100,000 to bring in skilled workers.
“Nonetheless,″ he wrote, “the upfront fee will clearly be too high for many companies to stomach. Last year, the healthcare, retail and accommodation & food services sectors accounted for a quarter of H-1B visas between them, and firms in those sectors will probably find it harder to afford the fee.″
The higher fee — along with other Trump administration attempts to curb immigration — is likely to reduce the U.S. labor supply and push wages higher, Brown said.
Foreign workers like Alan Wu are worried – and stunned by the speed with which Trump disrupted the H-1B process. “Can you release some policy which impacts tons of people just like that?” said Wu, who is working in Indianapolis as a data scientist for a pharmaceutical company.
He is working legally on his student visa after earning a doctorate. He’s failed to win the H-1B lottery for two consecutive years. And he’s now rethinking his plan to live permanently in the United States, where he’s lived for more than a decade. “I am definitely concerned about my job now that the cost and risk of hiring a foreigner is so high,” he said.
Navneet Singh, who runs a consultancy “Go Global Immigration” in India’s Punjab state, said changes to H-1B visa policies are likely to significantly impact future migration to the U.S., particularly from India.
“Trump is trying to suffocate new immigrants who are skilled, so that they won’t take the jobs away from the average American. But by doing so, they will be making (U.S.) production expensive,” Singh said.
He said the new policy is likely to create advantages for competitors in other countries. “Countries like France, Netherlands, Germany and Canada are set to gain from this move,” he added.
Some Indian students aspiring to pursue higher studies in the U.S. are disappointed. “It feels like a door closing,” said one aspiring student who requested anonymity.
What businesses will be hurt the most?
Greg Morrisett, dean and vice provost at Cornell Tech, said startups and small businesses are likely to be the most affected by the fees since there’s “no way they can” pay them. Cornell Tech, for instance, has launched about 120 startups and the “vast majority” have students coming from overseas. The result? “They’ll pick up and move to Europe or Asia, wherever they can find,” he said.
“The big tech companies will likely move a lot of operations and things into other countries. We saw this when, for example, you know, Ireland made it really attractive from a tax perspective. All of a sudden all the headquarters move to Ireland,” Morrisett said.
And startups, he added, “the next Amazon, the next Google will give up here and go somewhere else and then we won’t have that advantage in the next generation of tech leadership.”
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Barbara Ortutay reported from Oakland, California, and Piyush Nagpal from New Delhi, India.
Denver Public Schools has not complied with the Trump administration’s request that the district convert all multi-stall, all-gender bathrooms in its schools into separate facilities for female and male students by the agency’s Monday deadline.
In a five-page response dated Sunday, DPS general counsel Kristin Bailey accused the U.S. Department of Education’sOffice of Civil Rights of “intransigence,” a failure to adequately communicate and a “startling” lack of clarity surrounding the alleged Title IX violation levied against the school district.
“We write to rebut the stated presumption that the District and the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) are at an impasse,” Bailey wrote. “We are not. In fact, as the District has shared throughout this Directed Investigation, we want to discuss resolution options with OCR, and at this stage, the District remains interested in doing so.”
Education Department representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Denver Post on Monday.
DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero issued a statement the following day, vowing to protect Denver students and families from an administration hostile to the LGBTQ community.
The department’s Office of Civil Rights said DPS’s all-gender restrooms violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, enacted to allow girls and women to participate in educational activities in school, including sports, without sexual harassment.
The office gave the district 10 days to agree to a proposed resolution — which included converting all-gender restrooms back to single-sex facilities — or “risk imminent enforcement action.”
The findings come after the Education Department announced in January that it was investigating DPS over the East High’s conversion of a girls restroom into a bathroom for all genders last academic year.
The Denver high school created the gender-neutral bathroom at the request of students who wanted another facility, choosing to convert a girls bathroom because it was more cost-effective, district officials said.
The all-gender bathroom has stalls that offer more privacy than other facilities, with 12-foot walls that nearly reach the ceiling and metal blocks that prevent people from seeing through.
In response to the January investigation, East High recently renovated a boys bathroom into a second all-gender restroom — a move the district said it made to address any disparity. The district has two other all-gender facilities, at the Denver School of the Arts and the Career Education Center Early College.
In the federal agency’s letter alleging DPS violated Title IX, the Education Department also said the Denver district created “a hostile environment for its students by endangering their safety, privacy and dignity” through its use of all-gender restrooms.
The Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to cut K-12 and higher education funding from schools with policies that the federal government calls discriminatory, particularly those that relate to gender identity, the LGBTQ community and race.
Bailey argued in Sunday’s response that the Office of Civil Rights failed to articulate what about the gender-neutral restrooms constituted a Title IX violation and what possible remedies existed despite multiple requests by the district for further discussion.
The accusation of a “hostile environment,” Bailey wrote, was new.
“This new and different allegation has never been discussed and raises a host of new questions in addition to those that have been unanswered throughout the process thus far,” Bailey wrote. “If OCR can provide a more precise articulation, based in fact, of the reasons it purports to have sufficient evidence to support a legal conclusion that the bathroom created a hostile environment, it may prompt an appropriate resolution to this matter.”
The district requested to engage in a 90-day resolution negotiation period.