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The nostalgia behind the slogan “Make America great again” has always provoked the obvious questions of just when America was great, and for whom. Early in the second Trump administration, we are getting the answer.

In August, speaking with someone he believed to be a sympathetic donor, one of the Project 2025 architects, Russell Vought, said that a goal of the next Trump administration would be to “get us off of multiculturalism” in America. Now Vought is running Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, and the plan to end multiculturalism is proceeding apace. Much of the chaos, lawlessness, and destruction of the past few weeks can be understood as part of the administration’s central ideological project: restoring America’s traditional hierarchies of race and gender. Call it the “Great Resegregation.”  

[From the January/February 2024 issue: Civil rights undone]

Since taking office, Trump has rescinded decades-old orders ensuring equal opportunity in government contracts and vowed to purge DEI from the federal government, intending to lay off any federal worker whose job they associate with DEI. Yesterday evening, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q Brown, and replaced him with a lower ranking white official, a retired three-star Air Force officer named Dan Caine. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had previously attacked Brown as an unqualified diversity hire based on the fact that he is Black. Trump’s Department of Justice has implied that it will prosecute or sue companies that engage in diversity outreach. Elon Musk’s DOGE is attempting to purge federal workers “that protect employees’ civil rights and others that investigate complaints of employment discrimination in the federal workplace,” the Washington Post reported. Colleges and universities are being threatened with defunding for any programming related to DEI, which the free-speech organization PEN America has noted could include “everything from a panel on the Civil Rights Movement to a Lunar New Year celebration.”

Trump has also signed executive orders that threaten government funding for scientific research on inequality or on health issues that disproportionately affect nonwhite ethnic groups, and has imposed censorious gag orders that could block discussion of race or sex discrimination in American classrooms. During her confirmation hearing, Trump’s education-secretary nominee, Linda McMahon, said she did not know if schools could lose funding for teaching Black-history classes under the order. The legality of the order over K–12 curricula is unclear, but the chilling effects are real nonetheless.

Under the Trump administration, schools within the Department of Defense system that serve military families—American service members are disproportionately Black and Hispanic—have torn down pictures of Black historical figures and removed books from their libraries on subjects such as race and gender. This record, within a school system entirely under the administration’s control, offers an alarming preview—one in which a historical figure like Harriet Tubman is no longer a welcome subject in educational settings because she was a Black woman.

An OMB memo ordering a federal-funding freeze illustrates the ideological vision behind these decisions. The memo states that the administration seeks to prevent the use of “federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies,” Acting Director Matthew Vaeth wrote. Equal opportunity in employment is described here as “Marxist,” because it affirms what the desegregators see as an unnatural principle: that nonwhite people are equal to white people, that women are equal to men, and that LGBTQ people deserve the same rights as everyone else.

If the Great Resegregation proves successful, it will restore an America past where racial and ethnic minorities were the occasional token presence in an otherwise white-dominated landscape. It would repeal the gains of the civil-rights era in their entirety. What its advocates want is not a restoration of explicit Jim Crow segregation—that would shatter the illusion that their own achievements are based in a color-blind meritocracy. They want an arrangement that perpetuates racial inequality indefinitely while retaining some plausible deniability, a rigged system that maintains a mirage of equal opportunity while maintaining an unofficial racial hierarchy. Like elections in authoritarian countries where the autocrat is always reelected in a landslide, they want a system in which they never risk losing but can still pretend they won fairly.

The battles of the Great Resegregation are now taking place in at least three overlapping arenas. The first is politics, where right-wing legal organizations have succeeded in rolling back many civil-rights-era voting protections; they want to now fully destroy the remaining shreds. The second is education and employment, particularly at elite institutions, such as the media and academia; right-wing legal strategies have been similarly fruitful here in attacking diversity, thanks to the conservative capture of the Supreme Court. The third is popular culture, where conservatives have sought to leverage anger and nostalgia against movies, television, books, and other creative media brought to life by artists of color.

The term DEI, frequently invoked by the Trump administration, functions as a smoke screen. It allows people to think that the Trump administration’s anti-DEI purge is about removing pointless corporate symbolism or sensitivity trainings. Although it is easy to find examples of DEI efforts that are ill-conceived or ill-applied, some conservatives have leveraged those criticisms to pursue a much broader agenda that is really about tearing anti-discrimination laws out at the roots, so that businesses and governments are free to extend or deny opportunities based on race, gender, and sexual orientation if they so choose.

“This is really taking us back to a kind of pre-civil-rights-movement vision of America,” Sherrilyn Ifill, the former head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told me in an interview last year, before Trump won the 2024 election. “A backlash is a pushback. This is really much more of a demolition effort.”

As the Trump State Department official Darren Beattie wrote, “Competent white men must be put in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” This analysis is perceptive in the sense that the exact reverse is true—we are now in the second decade of a years-long temper tantrum sparked by the election of Barack Obama—not to mention the failed attempts to elect a woman to succeed him—and the effect it had on the fragile self-esteem of people like Beattie.

[Read: Is there anything Trump won’t blame on DEI?]

Other MAGA figureheads have promoted similar ideas. In 2020, the conservative writer Christopher Caldwell published a book arguing that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had revoked “the de jure constitution of 1788, with all the traditional forms of jurisprudential legitimacy and centuries of American culture behind it.” Because of the Civil Rights Act, white people had fallen “asleep thinking of themselves as the people who had built this country and woke up to find themselves occupying the bottom rung of an official hierarchy of races.”

Caldwell’s assessment has grown in popularity among prominent conservatives. The right-wing activist Charlie Kirk has described the Civil Rights Act as having “created a beast, and that beast has now turned into an anti-white weapon,” and he has attacked Martin Luther King Jr., Wired reported, as part of a “broader strategy to discredit” King and “the Civil Rights Act.” On his social network, X, the South African–born Musk, who is playing a key role in the Trump administration, regularly promotes scientific racism, the pseudoscientific ideology that holds that race determines individual potential. Some of the staffers Musk has hired to dismantle the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws seem to share those ideological predilections. One DOGE staffer resigned after the Wall Street Journal revealed he maintained a pro-eugenics social media account where “he appeared to have a special dislike for Indian software engineers.” He was reinstated after receiving public support from Trump and J. D. Vance.  The problem conservatives trying to undermine anti-discrimination law seem to have with an “official hierarchy of races” is not that one exists but that, in their warped conception, white people are not on top, as they should be.

This ideology is apparent in the rote blaming of diversity by some conservatives for every catastrophic event—as they did following a midair collision over the Potomac River. Or a freighter crashing into a bridge in Baltimore. Or doors flying off Boeing planes.The contention, overt or implied, is always that unlike white men, whose competence can be assumed, the non-white people with desirable jobs are undeserving. The irony, of course, is that many of the white men making these assumptions are themselves unqualified. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is best-known for being a reality-television star.  

Even so, the Great Resegregation seeks not a return to the explicit racial separation of Jim Crow, but rather an embrace of ostensibly “color-blind” policies intended to sustain a de facto segregation that is more durable and less overt, one in which Black access to the middle and elite strata of American life will be ever more rare and fleeting. The numbers of Black doctors, lawyers, scientists, architects, showrunners, and generals would no longer rise. And there would be no more Black presidents. The real but fragile advancement of the Black poor into the Black middle class would be stalled or reversed. Most Black people would be confined to, as Trump memorably put it, the menial “Black jobs” they were meant for, save for those willing to sustain the self-serving fiction that they are among the good ones.

The demolition of multiracial democracy began a dozen years ago, when the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rolled back voting-rights protections adopted in the 1960s to enforce the rights enshrined in the Fifteenth Amendment. Those protections made America, for the first time, a democracy for all its citizens. They diversified Congress, and led to the election of the first Black president. The Roberts Court has steadily eroded those protections, insisting that they are no longer necessary, even as racist ideas once considered beyond the pale return to the mainstream. These changes have had the predictable outcome of increasing racial disparities in voting.

The Roberts Court has treated policies meant to rectify racial discrimination as themselves racist. The Court shut down what remained of public-school integration efforts. It overturned affirmative action in higher education. These decisions have eroded diversity in the classroom. But they’re just the beginning for the resegregators, who intend to ensure that America’s traditional racial hierarchies are persistent and stable.

One clear example comes in the world of higher education. Because giving all Americans equal access to elite higher education is a step toward broader societal integration, such efforts must be shut down. To this end, conservative groups are suing colleges even in states such as California, where affirmative action in public universities has long been banned, claiming that the fact that their incoming classes have become more diverse rather than less is evidence of reverse discrimination. At least two conservative justices have objected to color-blind, class-based affirmative-action programs. This approach suggests a topsy-turvy understanding of racial discrimination, in which a diverse classroom is one in which white men have been discriminated against, based on the conviction that white men are by definition the most competent possible candidates.

[Read: Donald Trump is very busy]

When Trump officials speak of a society that is color-blind and merit-based, they do not appear to mean meritocracy or color-blindness in the traditional sense. Instead of individual meritocracy, they seem to be advocating a racial meritocracy, in which the merit of an individual hire or admission can be assessed not by their individual accomplishments but by how well the group they are associated with fits a particular role. In this way, the Great Resegregation seeks firmer moral ground than the racial apartheid of the past. Racial disparities can be framed not as the result of discrimination, but as a fact: that white people are just better and more qualified. And by withholding federal funding from places that engage in scientific inquiry on social inequalities or offer historical instruction that could be seen as portraying America as “fundamentally racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory,” the Trump administration can make the causes of those inequalities illegible.

What the proponents of the Great Resegregation seek is a counterrevolution not merely in law, but also in culture. The civil-rights revolution of the 1960s changed hearts and minds as well as laws, and one of those changes was that racially exclusive institutions became morally suspect. Notably, Trump officials are not willing to state their aims explicitly; they feel obligated to pay lip service to ideals of color-blind meritocracy and mislead about their intentions.

“My view is that the diversity ethos has really sunk deep roots,” the Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy told me. “There are a lot of people across a wide variety of ideological positions who would not like a racially homogeneous, all-white outfit. Even people who say they’re against affirmative action, they would feel somewhat nervous or somewhat embarrassed or somewhat guilty about that.” Trumpists seek to not just repeal protections against discrimination, but reverse the “diversity ethos” that has enabled America’s tenuous strides toward equality.

And that progress is not only fragile but remarkably incomplete. Neither schools nor workplaces have ever been particularly integrated. Public-school integration stalled long ago. Even prior to the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing affirmative action in admissions, enrollment of Black and Hispanic students at elite universities had stalled at percentages far below their share of the student-age population. Occupational segregation has remained stagnant since the ’90s. Black workers with or without college degrees are concentrated in professions that pay less than those of their white counterparts, despite a rise in Black people obtaining college degrees. Corporate DEI efforts never made much progress on integration to begin with, in part because many of these efforts were more about branding and limiting liability than equal opportunity, and now the federal government will be dead set on reversing whatever headway was made.

“The segregation we see in the labor market right now is three to five times worse than we would expect if race wasn’t a core factor,” Justin Heck of Opportunity@Work, an organization that advocates for workers without college degrees, told me. “We’ve seen it go down a little bit in the years leading up to 1990. But the current world looks the same as it did in 1990. It’s been stagnant or worse, or slightly worse today.” Heck is one of the authors of a 2023 study on occupational segregation published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

There are perhaps two exceptions. One is the federal government, where until now, anti-discrimination laws have been strictly enforced. Trump’s cronies have tried to discredit the federal workforce precisely because it is often more meritocratic, and therefore more integrated than the private sector. “It’s harder in a federal-government job to get a position simply through an informal network,” the political scientist Ashley Jardina, who also worked on the NBER study, told me. “Whereas in the private sector, especially in building trades, for example, a lot of people are getting their jobs through their social networks, which are incredibly segregated.”

That is why Trumpists are so focused on “ending DEI” in the federal workforce. They see anti-discrimination and inclusion as a ladder of upward mobility for people they do not believe should have one. Under Trump, a workplace or college that is perceived as too diverse might come under legal scrutiny, effectively enforcing racial quotas. For example, Andrew Bailey, the attorney general of Missouri, is suing the coffee chain Starbucks on the basis that after adopting DEI programs its workforce has become “more female and less white.”

The second place where America has grown more integrated is media and entertainment, arenas highly visible to the public. This has depreciated the value of what W. E. B. Du Bois called the “psychological wage” of white racial identity—making those who once held an unquestioned hegemony over American culture feel like something has been stolen from them. And this shift helped fuel the nationwide backlash to diversity efforts that Trump rode to office.

[W. E. B. Du Bois: Strivings of the Negro people]

The slight but substantive integration of characters in film, television, and other forms of entertainment has itself led to a visible backlash, subjecting actors, writers, and other creative workers of color to harassment whenever they participate in a high-profile project, especially in the genres of science fiction or fantasy. An integrated cast, writers’ room, or development team is deemed “woke,” by which critics simply mean integrated, and therefore suspect. A woman, LGBTQ person, or person of color in a leading role is deemed unqualified, or worthy of rejection just because of who they are. What may seem like silly internet controversies are in fact demands for a resegregation of creative workplaces.

“I think probably part of why we observe more integration in some spaces and others also just has a lot to do with the demands that capitalism places on having a market,” Jardina told me. “It earns money for media organizations and studios to diversify their shows and their casts, because there’s a market for that, in the same way that there isn’t in a lot of industries.”

In other words, the exceptions to America’s persistent segregation have taken place in America’s most public-facing professions, among those assigned to interpret the world around them. What people consuming American media see, for the most part, is a mirage of a more integrated America that has yet to come into being. In virtually every other arena—the private-sector workplace, housing, schooling—America remains profoundly segregated, with opportunities limited by class and race.

This is why Trump’s funding freeze has targeted DEI despite no evidence that the government has lowered its standards on behalf of women and minorities. Asked to provide a real example of lowered standards in the military during his confirmation hearings, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was unable to. The U.S. military has long led the way in demonstrating how a diverse workforce yields American excellence—one reason some conservatives are fixated on its relative egalitarianism, which they deride as “wokeness.” Hegseth recently said he believed that “the single dumbest phrase in military history is our diversity is our strength." The Nazis and Confederates learned otherwise.

Of course he himself is an illustration of lowered standards—Hegseth has no demonstrable expertise for the job he was given—but because he is a white man, his qualifications for the job are assumed, as a result of the Trumpist concept of racial meritocracy. This is why the funding freeze is targeting research on inequality. It is why private companies are threatened with government lawsuits and prosecutions if they seek a broader pool of applicants. It is why the Trump administration’s deportations do not target merely undocumented criminals but also immigrants on Temporary Protective Status. It is why Trump’s loyalists are dismantling any and all government programs that might conceivably even the playing field between those born with plenty and those born with little.

For all the big talk about putting an end to “social engineering,” the Great Resegregation is itself a radical attempt to socially engineer America to be poorer, whiter, less equal, and less democratic. Much as the old Jim Crow measures kept many southern white people impoverished and disenfranchised alongside the Black southerners they targeted, the Great Resegregation will leave wealthy white elites with a firmer grip on power and the working classes with fewer opportunities and a weakened social safety net. The only people left with more will be those who already had more than they needed to begin with.

On Friday, a Coinbase executive declared the "war against crypto" over—"at least as it applies to Coinbase."

According to Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plans to drop its lawsuit against the largest US cryptocurrency exchange as the agency shifts to embrace Donald Trump's new approach to regulating cryptocurrency in the US.

The SEC sued Coinbase in 2023, accusing Coinbase of "operating its crypto asset trading platform as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency" and "failing to register the offer and sale of its crypto asset staking-as-a-service program."

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Engineers who work for Elon Musk’s SpaceX have been brought on as senior advisers to the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), sources tell WIRED.

On Sunday, Sean Duffy, secretary of the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA, announced in a post on X that SpaceX engineers would be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia to take what he positioned as a tour. “The safety of air travel is a nonpartisan matter,” Musk replied. “SpaceX engineers will help make air travel safer.”

By the time these posts were made, though, according to sources who were granted anonymity because they fear retaliation, SpaceX engineers were already being onboarded at the agency under Schedule A, a special authority that allows government managers to “hire persons with disabilities without requiring them to compete for the job,” according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

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Conspiracy theorist Kash Patel was confirmed to lead the FBI on Thursday, cementing President Donald Trump’s grip on federal law enforcement. 

Senate Republicans confirmed him by a vote of 51 to 49, with two GOP defectors. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined all 47 Democrats in voting “no,” citing deep concerns over Patel’s partisan loyalties and potential abuses of power.

“[T]here is a compelling need for an FBI Director who is decidedly apolitical,” said Collins in a press release announcing she would not confirm his nomination. “Mr. Patel has made numerous politically charged statements in his book and elsewhere discrediting the work of the FBI, the very institution he has been nominated to lead. These statements … cast doubt on Mr. Patel’s ability to advance the FBI’s law enforcement mission in a way that is free from the appearance of political motivation.”

However, those concerns weren’t enough to stop other Republicans, and now Patel will oversee everything from cybersecurity to terrorist threats to foreign intelligence operations. Patel will also be responsible for steering investigations of crimes and public corruption—something Trump might be familiar with.

Since Trump announced his nomination, Patel's introduction to the national political stage has been rife with controversy and conflicts of interest. 

Democrats spent weeks raising the alarms about Patel’s unsettling views on political retribution. He likely perjured himself over his hand in FBI firings orchestrated by the Trump administration. And he sent chills down Democrats’ spines over national security concerns from the gutting of Department of Justice and FBI officials.

“Kash Patel has been personally directing the ongoing purge of career civil servants at the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois wrote in a letter to an inspector general in the Department of Justice.

Patel infamously published his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” in which he listed the names of 60 people and called them members of the “deep state.” He has said favorable things about QAnon, a bizarre pro-Trump conspiracy theory. He also wrote three children’s books portraying Trump as a literal king. 

Before his nomination, Patel was a key figure in spreading conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. And in December, Patel publicly ignored questions from reporters that Trump’s Justice Department spied on Democratic members of Congress and their aides in 2017 and 2018.

Patel’s confirmation follows a trend of sycophants and deplorables being confirmed to roles in Trump’s administration. Pete Hegseth, who has been accused of rape, now runs the Department of Defense. Anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. leads the Department of Health and Human Services. And former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, best known for refusing to investigate Trump’s for-profit university after she received a campaign donation, heads the Department of Justice.

Patel is just the latest Trump loyalist to sit in charge of a critical American institution. Only time will tell what damage he will bring to the federal government and society at large.

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Some Democratic senators are now publicly admitting that they made a serious mistake in voting to confirm several of the Cabinet secretaries who are now carrying out President Donald Trump’s destructive agenda.

New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim told Migrant Insider this week that he regrets his vote for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and told the outlet he wouldn’t vote for any future Trump nominees.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said he regrets voting for Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins. “Voting for Collins was a mistake, and I apologize to the veterans of the country,” he told reporters Wednesday

“My one vote I cast for a member of the Trump Cabinet was for now-Secretary Rubio. I regret to say I regret that vote, because once installed in office, he is essentially abandoning the positions he took here as United States senator,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told CNN Feb. 12.

The Democratic confessions come a month into Trump’s second term where the Cabinet secretaries in question, along with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, have run roughshod over the federal government. Key agencies and departments like the Department of Defense, USAID, the Treasury, the IRS, and the FAA have seen massive firings, systems disruptions, and a rollback of civil rights protections that were in place for decades.

While Trump’s agenda has received an almost unanimous vote of support from his fellow Republicans, Democratic votes have helped to put a bipartisan stamp on the resulting disruption of American life. Trump nominees like Noem, Collins, and former MTV “Real World” star turned Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy all got to their positions with Democratic votes, either directly or through procedural votes.

The biggest beneficiary of this bipartisanship was Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose nomination sailed through 99-0 as senators voted en masse for one of their own.

Since Trump took office, Democrats have been hearing complaints from their core voters that they are not doing enough to oppose him. Some Democratic leaders have reportedly held closed-door meetings and complained about the criticism.

Recent opinion polling has reflected this dissatisfaction. In a SurveyUSA poll taken from Feb. 13 to 16, 41% of respondents said the party was “not standing up enough” to Trump.

Democrats have been fumbling in trying to find the right rhetorical response to Trump. In the House, Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has brought up concerns over consumer costs and the administration’s failure to address them while introducing inflationary tariffs, but the line of attack has not resonated.

By contrast, progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, has provoked the ire of the Trump administration by forcefully asserting immigrants’ rights in the face of attempted mass deportation raids. Jeffries reportedly plans to invite guests to Trump’s first congressional address that will rebut his actions and rhetoric.

Combined with the Senate admissions, the party may be signaling it is pivoting toward more forceful opposition—a position that the general public seems ready for.

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The Trump administration on Wednesday pulled approval for New York City's congestion pricing, which went into effect on Jan. 5, meddling in state policymaking by ending a popular program intended to fund much-needed subway repairs while reducing traffic and encouraging use of mass transit in one of the most congested cities in the country.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made the announcement in a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, saying that the congestion pricing plan "is a slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners."

Under the program, most passenger cars must pay $9 to enter Manhattan’s busiest area, which includes major tourist attractions like Times Square.

"The toll program leaves drivers without any free highway alternative, and instead, takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways," Duffy said. "It’s backwards and unfair."

Duffy added that congestion pricing goes against the Value Pricing Pilot Program, a Department of Transportation initiative that “provides transportation agencies with options to manage congestion on highways through tolling and other pricing mechanisms.”

Duffy said the VPPP is intended to "impose tolls for congestion reduction—not transit revenue generation.”

However, congestion pricing has reduced congestion in New York City with tremendous success.

In just the first month of the program, 1 million fewer vehicles entered Manhattan’s most congested zone in the first month the program went into effect, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Travel times at bridges and tunnels into Manhattan were also 10% to 30% faster, according to the MTA.

“Before the start of congestion relief, talk of lawsuits and doubts dominated the conversation, but now it’s the undeniably positive results we’ve been seeing since week one,” MTA chair and CEO Janno Lieber said in a January news release. “Better bus service, faster drive times and safer streets are good for all New Yorkers.”

In fact, the program has been so successful that a February poll from the Partnership for New York City found that 59% of New Yorkers said they wanted the Trump administration to allow the program to continue.

Halting the program will almost certainly raise the levels of congestion and travel times again, as well as depriving New York City of much-needed funds.

None of this stopped Trump from bragging on his Truth Social site about ending the popular and successful program.

“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD,” Trump wrote. “Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”

Later, the official White House account tweeted the same message, with a horrifying image:

Beleaguered New York City Mayor Eric Adams—whose corrupt deal to enforce Trump’s immigration policy in exchange for dropping his criminal indictment has put his mayorship in jeopardy—is unlikely to challenge the Trump administration’s decision to end congestion pricing.

“If he reverses it, it doesn’t matter if I support or don’t support (it),” Adams said in January, before Trump was inaugurated and when Adams was sucking up to the incoming president to try to get his prosecution dropped. “If the federal government has the authority to do something within their powers, then we can’t sit back and complain about it, because we do things within our powers.” 

But even if Adams doesn’t fight it, other New York leaders vowed to challenge the Trump administration’s move and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority filed suit on Wednesday challenging the federal order, claiming termination of the program is a violation of the agreement and is “arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with the law[.]” 

MTA chair Lieber criticized the administration’s move in a statement.

“It’s mystifying that after four years and 4,000 pages of federally-supervised environmental review – and barely three months after giving final approval to the Congestion Relief Program – USDOT would seek to totally reverse course,” Lieber said.

Hochul’s pushback was more direct.

“We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king,” the governor said in a statement on X. “The MTA has initiated legal proceedings in the Southern District of New York to preserve this federal program. We’ll see you in court.”

Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, who represents Manhattan in the House, said the Trump administration’s reasons for killing the program “are utterly baseless and frankly, laughable.” 

“Congestion pricing has not only consistently withstood significant legal challenges, emerging victorious in every court decision to date, but it has also become immensely popular among New Yorkers, delivering on its promises—less traffic, fewer crashes, and reduced noise pollution, all contributing to safer, quieter streets,” Nadler said in a post on X. “The notion of revoking approval for a federal initiative of this magnitude is nearly without precedent. I firmly believe that there is no legal basis for the President to unilaterally halt this program. The Value Pricing Program is solidly established under federal law, and its approval cannot be arbitrarily revoked, especially when it is clearly delivering tangible benefits.”

Republicans love to talk about states’ rights and letting states make their own policy decisions.

But this decision is just more proof that Republicans only care about states’ rights when it benefits them, no matter how unpopular their actions are or how much damage they inflict.

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Hampton Dellinger, a federal official who President Donald Trump attempted to fire earlier this month, seems very likely to lose a lawsuit challenging that firing … eventually. 

But the Trump administration is impatient to make that happen as soon as possible, asking the Supreme Court to intervene in the lower court battle currently underway over the firing. In making this request, the administration is effectively asking the justices to resolve a core question about constitutional separation of powers just weeks after Dellinger filed that lawsuit.

So the case, known as Bessent v. Dellinger, is worth watching not so much because there is much mystery about whether Trump could fire Dellinger — again, the Court is exceedingly likely to rule against Dellinger if forced to decide that question. Instead, the Dellinger case is worth watching as a sign of just how impatient a GOP-controlled Supreme Court is to expand a Republican president’s authority.

Last year, then-President Joe Biden appointed Dellinger as special counsel of the United States, a role that is primarily responsible for investigating unlawful personnel practices against the federal government’s own employees. By law, Dellinger serves a five-year term, and “may be removed by the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

Nevertheless, a White House official wrote Dellinger on February 7, telling him that he was terminated from his role, effective immediately. Dellinger filed suit, and obtained a court order known as a temporary restraining order (TRO), which allows him to remain in office for now. Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who issued the order, also scheduled a hearing for February 26 to determine whether to issue a more lasting injunction leaving Dellinger in office.

Jackson’s TRO is now before the Supreme Court on its “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other matters which ask the justices to rule on a legal question unusually quickly. The specific dispute before the justices involves two conflicting principles.

On the one hand, the Court’s Republican majority is enraptured by a legal theory known as the “unitary executive,” which holds that the president generally must have the authority to fire any federal official — or, at least, any federal official who wields “significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States.” The Court’s current precedents recognize some exceptions to this theory, but Republican judges frequently disparage those precedents. And, in any event, the Trump administration has a strong argument that those exceptions do not apply to this case.

On the other hand, TROs, which are quite temporary and typically expire within two weeks, ordinarily cannot be appealed to a higher court. The purpose of these temporary orders is to allow a judge to briefly hit pause on a case while they figure out how they should rule on it. Allowing the Trump administration to run off to the Supreme Court before Jackson holds the February 26 hearing would short circuit that process. 

It would also require the justices to decide an important constitutional dispute on an extremely rushed schedule, increasing the likelihood that the Court will hand down an erroneous decision.

Dellinger’s case is not particularly strong, at least in this Supreme Court

Ordinarily, the Court’s “unitary executive” precedents permit the president to fire the heads of federal agencies. As the Court said in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010), the president’s power “as a general matter” includes “the authority to remove those who assist him in carrying out his duties.” The Court reasoned that, “without such power, the President could not be held fully accountable for discharging his own responsibilities; the buck would stop somewhere else.”

The core question before the justices right now is whether to honor the rules governing when the Supreme Court is allowed to intervene in a case, or whether to ignore those rules to benefit a Republican president.

That said, some of the Court’s precedents make exceptions to this general rule. Most notably, in Morrison v. Olson (1988), the Court upheld a now-defunct statute creating an “independent counsel” who could investigate and potentially prosecute high-ranking government officials — and who, like Dellinger, was protected against being fired by the president.  

The independent counsel role upheld in Morrison is somewhat similar to Dellinger’s role as special counsel, as both positions were charged with investigating alleged legal violations by people within government. So there’s a good argument that, under Morrison, Dellinger cannot be fired except for cause.

But Morrison is reviled by Republican legal elites, including many of the Republican justices. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in 2016, for example, that he wants to “put the final nail” in Morrison’s coffin.  

Indeed, this Court has already taken significant steps to bury Morrison. In Trump v. United States (2024), the Republican justices’ infamous decision holding that Trump has broad immunity from the criminal law, they quoted from Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Morrison to argue that “investigation and prosecution of crimes is a quintessentially executive function” which must be under the full control of the president. 

It’s hard to square Morrison’s holding that a particular prosecutor can be insulated from being fired by the president with Trump’s conclusion that investigation and prosecutions of crimes must be done under the president’s full control.

So, while Dellinger has a good argument under Morrison and similar cases that he was not lawfully fired, those cases rest on the thinnest of ice. If anything, by challenging his firing, Dellinger gives the Republican justices an opportunity they’ve craved for a very long time — to overrule Morrison.

It is too soon for the Supreme Court to act on this case

All of this said, the rules governing temporary restraining orders should prevent the Trump administration from appealing Jackson’s order right now. Jackson has already signaled that she intends to decide whether to extend that order by the end of next week, and if she rules against Trump that decision can be appealed. 

As mentioned above, TROs allow a trial court to briefly hit pause on a case until they have time to figure out what result is required by law. They typically expire within two weeks of when they were first issued.

Additionally, as an appeals court warned when it declined to review Jackson’s TRO, permitting these temporary orders to be appealed would force courts to decide difficult cases “at a breakneck pace,” because the appeal would become moot once the TRO expired after the second week. That would lead to rushed decisions by powerful appeals courts, or even the Supreme Court, which may not fully consider all the nuances of a particular case.

The Trump administration, for what its worth, argues that the Court should create an exception to the rule against appealing TROs for cases involving the president. Quoting from Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump judge who dissented from the appeals court order declining to review Jackson’s TRO, the Trump administration’s lawyer claims that “where a lower court allegedly impinges on the President’s core [constitutional] powers, immediate appellate review should be generally available.” 

But, as the appeals court majority pointed out, “none of the authorities cited by the government or the dissent hold that the rules of civil procedure and appellate jurisdiction are suspended when the President is included as a party to a lawsuit.” Basically, they argued that Trump may be important, but he can wait a couple weeks for appellate review just like any other litigant.

Ultimately, the core question before the justices right now is whether to honor the rules governing when the Supreme Court is allowed to intervene in a case, or whether to ignore those rules to benefit a Republican president. 

If the justices decide that they can’t wait two weeks before deciding this case, they will significantly alter the balance of power between Trump and the judiciary — they could effectively strip trial courts of their authority to briefly pause Trump’s actions in order to figure out whether those actions are legal. 

Just as significantly, if Trump prevails in his shadow docket request, it will be a clear sign that the Court is willing to wave away ordinary legal procedures in order to benefit this Republican president.

President Trump yesterday issued an executive order declaring sweeping power over agencies that were created to operate independently from the White House. The order declares that "officials who wield vast executive power must be supervised and controlled by the people's elected President," and that "it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch."

An accompanying fact sheet issued by the White House said the order applies to "so-called independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)." The Federal Election Commission is also expected to be affected by the order.

The White House said it will require independent agencies to submit draft regulations for review, except for the monetary policy functions of the Federal Reserve. Independent agencies are also ordered to "consult with the White House on their priorities and strategic plans." The order claims more White House control over how agencies spend their budgets.

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The DOGE site has a “wall of receipts” that claims $55 billion in federal government savings. However, as noted by NYT’s the Upshot, a large line item, since removed, showed a contract for $8 billion (with a ‘b’) that should’ve been $8 million (with an ‘m’):

Almost half of those line-item savings could be attributed to a single $8 billion contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But it appears that the DOGE list vastly overstated the actual intended value of that contract. A closer scrutiny of a federal database shows that a recent version of the contract was for $8 million, not $8 billion. A larger total savings number published on the site, $55 billion, lacked specific documentation.

Everyone makes mistakes, but it seems out of bounds when coupled with firings, takedowns, budget cuts, and all the other stuff.

Tags: DOGE, funding, government, Upshot

An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. personal injury law firm Morgan & Morgan sent an urgent email this month to its more than 1,000 lawyers: Artificial intelligence can invent fake case law, and using made-up information in a court filing could get you fired. A federal judge in Wyoming had just threatened to sanction two lawyers at the firm who included fictitious case citations in a lawsuit against Walmart. One of the lawyers admitted in court filings last week that he used an AI program that "hallucinated" the cases and apologized for what he called an inadvertent mistake. AI's penchant for generating legal fiction in case filings has led courts around the country to question or discipline lawyers in at least seven cases over the last two years, and created a new high-tech headache for litigants and judges, Reuters found. The Walmart case stands out because it involves a well-known law firm and a big corporate defendant. But examples like it have cropped up in all kinds of lawsuits since chatbots like ChatGPT ushered in the AI era, highlighting a new litigation risk.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have identified nearly a dozen immigrants who have been flown to Guantanamo Bay. Government officials have refused to release the names of detainees or provide details about the crimes that landed them in detention.

by Perla Trevizo and Mica Rosenberg, for ProPublica and Texas Tribune

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

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President Donald Trump’s freeze on federal funding shows little sign of thawing for climate, energy and environmental justice programs.

Despite two federal court orders directing the administration to resume distributing federal grants and loans, at least $19 billion in Environmental Protection Agency funding to thousands of state and local governments and nonprofits remained on hold as of Feb. 14, said environmental and legal advocates who are tracking the issue.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has vowed to seek return of an additional $20 billion the agency invested last year in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program, calling for a Department of Justice investigation into what he characterized as a “scheme… purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.”

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Hovertext:
I posted a draft of this on bluesky and was surprised by the number of men asking where they could find such an institution.

Today's News:

The White House has officially banned the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One, citing “irresponsible and dishonest reporting” over the ridiculous renaming of the Gulf of Mexico.  

The news organization refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” in its reporting, even though other countries also don’t recognize the name change.

“The Associated Press continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change of the Gulf of America,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich wrote on X. 

“This decision is not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press' commitment to misinformation. While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One. Going forward, that space will now be opened up to the many thousands of reporters who have been barred from covering these intimate areas of the administration,” he added.

Budowich said that AP journalists and photographers would retain their credentials on White House grounds. 

This comes as the AP was twice banned from press events, including an executive order event in the Oval Office and another in the East Room for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

“Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office,” AP said in a statement Wednesday.

It is an apparent infringement on the First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The First Amendment protects free speech in public spaces or “forums.” Private entities have the right to enact policy as they see fit—a public sidewalk is fair game to dissent, but the lobby of a private business is not, unless its policy allows for it. 

This is why the idea that social media is a “public square” and not a private entity has been taken all the way up to the Supreme Court. 

The White House—and any part of government grounds—could be a public forum that allows for unabridged freedom of speech, expression, and, of course, the press. It’s unclear if the courts would interpret the White House as a public space and, therefore, a space where First Amendment rights must be granted.

AP is the largest and arguably most consequential news wire service in the world. The publication has a storied history, with reporting from the White House dating back to 1881. Its style guide is the standard for all journalistic writing and is adhered to by newsrooms worldwide. 

Sadly, this kind of animosity toward journalists, which is common in authoritarian nations, is nothing new for Trump and his cronies. 

Trump has long attacked the press. He has threatened to jail journalists who don’t produce glowing coverage of Dear Leader, said he wouldn’t mind if journalists at his rallies were shot, gone after specific reporters by name on social media, and propped up far-right “new media” organizations like One America News and Breitbart in place of reputable publications. 

Last week, Republicans joined in on the fun when they started losing their minds over POLITICO subscriptions when Elon Musk’s reply guys—including Trump himself—hawked false claims that the U.S. Agency for International Development gave millions to the news organization. 

On Thursday, Trump and Musk attacked Reuters over an alleged $9 million that the “radical left” publication was given as part of a defense contract in 2018. Reuters responded, stating that the contract was “inaccurately represented.” 

The attack on Reuters—and now AP—is part of a disturbing pattern to silence voices of dissent or questions of accountability. People around the world rely on their reporting, and Trump’s recent retaliation threatens how the White House is covered and what information the public receives. 

Unless the White House recoils and gives AP back its access, the ban is likely to be challenged in court.

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The cadre of elite disease detectives at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to be left in ruin today as the Trump administration continues to slash the federal workforce.

Many members of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service, EIS—a globally revered public health training program—were informed earlier Friday that they were about to be fired, according to reporting from Stat News. Multiple sources told CBS News that half of EIS officers are among the ongoing cuts.

The Trump administration is ousting thousands of probationary federal workers in a wide-scale effort to dramatically slim agencies.

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In 2019, Haley Olson's life in Grant County, Oregon, was upended when people in town appeared to know about private nude photos that Olson kept on her phone. Worse, some of the people appeared to have seen and shared the photos. The incidents all had some relationship to the local sheriff's department, where Olson was dating one of the deputies.

In July, for instance, a stranger in a sheriff's office uniform approached her to say that he had "heard there’s some pretty smokin’ pictures of you going around the sheriff’s office." Someone else saw a married couple, both of whom worked for the sheriff's office, looking at Olson's photos on the husband's phone. Other people also approached Olson with knowledge of her recent out-of-state arrest. One person called her "the drug dealer that likes to f--- cops."

What was going on?

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Demands are growing for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to remove New York City Mayor Eric Adams from office after allegedly participating in a “quid pro quo” with President Donald Trump to squash his bribery case in exchange for immigration enforcement in the city.

Hochul is the only person with the authority to remove Adams from office, as granted to her by New York’s constitution and New York City’s Charter. 

“Adams must be removed. The city cannot sustain being governed for nearly a year by a Mayor who is being coerced by the Trump admin in order to escape charges. This corruption poses a real threat to the people of the city. He should have resigned a while ago, but will not. So it’s time for him to go,” Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York wrote on Bluesky Thursday

Hochul appeared on MSNBC after the news broke Thursday. 

“The allegations are extremely concerning and serious, but I cannot, as the Governor of this state, have a knee jerk, politically motivated reaction like a lot of other people are saying right now,” she told host Rachel Maddow. “I have to do what's smart, what's right, and I'm consulting with other leaders in government at this time. You got to have one sane person in this state who can cut through all the crap and say, ‘What does my responsibility guide me to do?’”

This comes after the Department of Justice ordered federal prosecutors to drop bribery charges against Adams on Monday. 

And on Thursday, Interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon resigned from her position as a refusal to sign off on dismissing the case against Adams, which she considered to be “what amounted to a quid pro quo” between Adams and the acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove.

“Dismissing the case will amplify, rather than abate, concerns about weaponization of the Department,” she wrote in an eight-page resignation letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. “Despite Mr. Bove's observation that the directive to dismiss the case has been reached without assessing the strength of the evidence against Adams.”

Former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann compared Sassoon’s departure to Richard Nixon’s “Saturday night massacre,” when Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox was fired for working on the case against the president in 1973.

“I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams's counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal,” Sassoon said. 

Adams, who has recently gotten cozy with Trump and “border czar” Tim Homan, also seems to have the delusion that, when he leaves office as a Democrat—voluntarily or not—he’ll just have to run as a Republican to be reinstated as mayor of New York City.

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"An official website of the United States government," reads small text atop the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) website that Elon Musk's team started populating this week with information on agency cuts.

But you apparently don't have to work in government to push updates to the site. A couple of prankster web developers told 404 Media that they separately discovered how "insecure" the DOGE site was, seemingly pulling from a "database that can be edited by anyone."

One coder couldn't resist and pushed two updates that, as of this writing, remained on the DOGE site. "This is a joke of a .gov site," one read. "THESE 'EXPERTS' LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN," read another.

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Republicans have failed to schedule a confirmation vote for Rep. Elise Stefanik as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations because her vote is needed as House Republicans cut the social safety net.

The Trump team announced that Stefanik would go to the U.N. soon after he won the election, but they have needed her in the House because Republicans only have a three-vote majority over the Democrats. After their success in the 2024 election, Trump picked multiple House members to fill his Cabinet (including failed Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz) that eroded their already small majority.

So now Republicans are sitting on her nomination until they can figure a way out of the mess they created for themselves.

“The concern is … obviously the situation in the House and how narrow the majority is,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Politico. “I think they’re trying to figure out how to coordinate and time it all.”

At the moment, there are several international crises—some triggered by Donald Trump’s actions and rhetoric—that would benefit from a unified American response at the U.N. There is the war in Gaza (and Trump’s plan for ethnic cleansing), the war in Ukraine, and the international feuds that Trump has set off with Canada, Mexico, Denmark, and much of the European Union.

When other senior members of Trump’s team have spoken up it has created more of a mess. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth triggered anger from America’s NATO allies when he suggested Ukraine should capitulate to Russian invaders. Then a day later Vice President JD Vance flip-flopped and said American troops could be deployed in the region.

The agenda that Stefanik’s nomination is being held in limbo for would create domestic chaos as well.

Republicans have begun formulating legislation to make permanent the tax cuts Trump signed into law in 2017 that assisted the ultra-wealthy (like Elon Musk) far more than the average taxpayer. The party intends to get there by cutting programs that are in place to assist working families: food stamps and Medicaid.

The party needs Stefanik—or another Republican in her seat—so they can cut $880 billion from Medicaid alongside a 20% cut to food stamps. There is also a concern that Social Security cuts are an option.

The state of paralysis once again shows that Republicans have prioritized the well-being of the wealthiest above everything else, even America’s role on the world stage.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon scorned calls from some employees to soften the bank's five-day return-to-office policy in an animated town hall meeting on Wednesday, according to a recording reviewed by Reuters. Employees at the largest U.S. bank have complained on internal message boards and chats about losing hybrid working arrangements, and one group launched an online petition urging Dimon to reconsider. When asked about the in-person work policy during the staff meeting, he said: "Don't waste time on it. I don't care how many people sign that fucking petition," he said. Instead, Dimon demanded more efficiency and stressed that employees have a choice whether to work at JPMorgan. The CEO told them not to be mad at him, and said that it was a free country.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Mary Fox went to apply for a passport, she brought copies of her birth certificate, certificate of legal name, driver’s license, and a check, because the State Department website said passport fees had to be paid by check or cash. “They took Apple Pay,” Fox, a transgender woman, told Vox. “I was worried about the wrong things.”

Fox handed over the documents, paid, and received a slip for pickup of her passport after January 28 — in time for travel she had planned in early February. But when Fox returned on the 29th, the agency official said there was a problem in the system. “We don’t have authorization right now to issue a passport,” he told her in a recording of the conversation, which Vox has reviewed. Fox asked if he knew how long it would be until she’d be able to get one. “Unfortunately not, there’s no time frame,” he told her. 

Fox had expected that there might be issues with getting a passport with a female gender marker in light of President Donald Trump’s Day 1 executive order, which requires that government-issued documents reflect a person’s sex “at conception.” (The “conception” terminology reflects new influence from the anti-abortion movement, which seeks to ascribe full legal personhood to embryos from their earliest stages.) Fox was ultimately fine with being issued a passport with a male gender marker, telling Vox that, “being able to travel is more important than the letter on a piece of paper.”

“I don’t care what marker you put on it,” she said to the agency official, according to the recording. “See, from my perspective, all I want is any passport that has my legal name.” But Fox was ultimately told that the agency couldn’t issue her any passport, male or female. “So I can’t leave the country?” Fox asks incredulously. “I can’t answer that question,” the official replied. 

Fox shared her story on TikTok, where it went viral, and she was ultimately able to collect her new ID documents — albeit with the male identity marker — on February 3. 

But many others have encountered similar, bewildering bureaucratic limbo with no such resolution. These restrictions on transgender people’s passports — just one part of a broader campaign by the new administration to intimidate transgender Americans — affect more than just international travel. Passports are also frequently used for domestic purposes, such as applying for jobs, housing, loans, or other government benefits. 

“The goal is to make life untenable for transgender and nonbinary folks,” ACLU attorney Aditi Fruitwala said. “They want to sow fear and chaos and to make everyone extremely afraid to be out and who they are.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, over 1,700 people had reported concerns to the American Civil Liberties Union regarding new passport issues, Fruitwala told Vox.

Trans passports are getting caught in the crosshairs

On Trump’s first day back in office, he passed an executive order stating that the government would only recognize a person’s sex and not their gender, and that sex was unalterable. After the EO, which also required that government documents “accurately reflect the holder’s sex,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a directive to pause all processing of passports that requested that the gender be changed, leaving many applicants in limbo.

The policy change marks a sharp departure from decades of evolving passport rules. The inclusion of gender markers on US passports dates back to 1977, when government officials felt they needed to distinguish between men and women due to increasingly similar fashion trends. Beginning in the early 1990s, transgender Americans could update their passports by providing proof of having undergone gender-affirming surgery. By 2022, the State Department moved to allow for self-attestation. 

Across the US, the majority of states allow people to update gender markers on their drivers’ licenses and birth certificates. And the Trump policy shift also comes at a time when other nations have been moving in the opposite direction — 14 countries now allow gender self-attestation on passports, and 16 permit “X” gender markers. In truth, the 1,700 transgender and nonbinary people reported by the ACLU likely far undercounts the number of people who have been struggling with their passports. One such person is Aiden McDermott, a 28-year-old trans man in New York, who applied to renew his expired passport on January 20, requesting a name and gender marker change as well.

“I honestly wanted the passport in case I needed to make a quick exit,” explained McDermott, who has not contacted the ACLU. Since he’s adopted from China, he’s found his US passport tends to be the easiest way to prove his US citizenship. “I just hadn’t had the money [to renew earlier] — it’s like $130 — so when I finally got the money I was hoping there would be time between Trump entering office and him signing things into law,” McDermott told Vox. 

McDermott received State Department confirmation that his application was received on January 28, and his file was marked online as “in progress.” But by February 5 his online application status had changed to “not available” and he’s received no further information or update since. 

Lawyers are taking the new passport rules to court

Last Friday, the ACLU announced it would be suing the Trump administration over the new passport restrictions on behalf of seven transgender and nonbinary Americans. The ACLU alleges that the restrictions violate the Americans’ right to privacy, the First Amendment, the freedom to travel, and the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Lawyers are also claiming the Trump administration failed to comply with a requirement for a 60-day notice and comment period. 

ACLU plaintiffs include people like Drew Hall, a 25-year-old PhD student at the University of British Columbia whose passport has been held by the State Department for weeks, preventing them from traveling home to be with family in Wisconsin. They have a US wedding to attend in May and an academic conference in July, and worry about being stuck in Canada. 

Another plaintiff is Reid Solomon-Lane, a 36-year-old Massachusetts resident who regularly travels to Ireland to visit his mother-in-law. Despite having been openly out and transgender since 2007, he now worries about what could happen to him or his three children if he’s stopped while traveling for a discrepancy on his documents.

This fear is not theoretical. “Any time you need to show multiple forms of identification, and this is especially true when you are traveling abroad, you might be accused of fraud if there is a mismatch,” said Fruitwala, who added she’s already spoken with a trans person who recently faced hostile questioning like this from a US passport officer.

Given all the uncertainty, LGBTQ rights organizations like Lambda Legal are now actively discouraging transgender people who have valid US passports from applying to renew or change their documents. “If you have urgent upcoming travel or an emergency need, you should seek out an attorney licensed in your state of residence,” the group advises.

When asked what the stalled applications mean for people like McDermott, a State Department spokesperson referred Vox to this webpage titled “Get My Application Status.”

Citing new agency guidance issued Monday, the spokesperson also said that if any applicant’s biological sex at birth is “not sufficiently established,” the government will hold the application and request more information. “Once we have the needed information, we will issue a new passport to you in your biological sex at birth,” they told Vox.

Per the new guidance, passports previously issued with an X marker will remain valid for travel until their expiration date, and those holding an X passport issued less than a year ago may apply for free to replace it with one “that reflects their biological sex at birth.” 

Fruitwala said the new guidance does little to provide clarity. She’s hopeful that the federal courts will soon block the passport policy entirely, even though that won’t end the confusion and fear for trans Americans navigating the situation.

“I think the [government is] scrambling, it’s all a very confused and confusing policy,” she said. “They really don’t know how to implement this executive order.”

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Today, the war in Ukraine ended, at least in a sense.

Bloody fighting between depleted militaries will continue to barely move the frozen front lines. Russian missile and drone raids will still pummel Ukrainian cities and terrorize their citizens. Gutsy, covert Ukrainian strikes will hit deep behind the Russian border.

But a new, and likely final, chapter in the nearly three-year conflict began today with a confluence of clear signals from the United States that it will no longer back Kyiv’s goals in the war, all but ensuring that Ukraine will not regain its sovereign territory or achieve its most sought-after security guarantees.

Ukrainians have warily watched Donald Trump reclaim power, knowing his longtime deference toward Russian President Vladimir Putin and having heard his promise to end the conflict “in 24 hours,” which always seemed like a way to codify Russian war gains. Although Trump failed in fulfilling that pledge, he has made no secret of wanting to bring about a quick end to the fighting.

And when he interjected himself into the conflict today, he did so in telling fashion: by calling Putin, a move that White House framed as the beginning of a negotiation to end the war in Ukraine.

“We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the call. “But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine. President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of ‘COMMON SENSE.’” Only afterward did Trump call Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky “to inform him of the conversation.”

[Charles A. Kupchan: Trump is right that Pax Americana is over]

Trump and his top advisers rewarded Putin’s patience to continue the conflict through the November U.S. election, likely enabling him to strike a deal closer to his liking as Russia and Ukraine finally consider a negotiated end to the war. Before his call with Zelensky, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would tell Zelensky that he and Putin agreed to “have our respective teams start negotiations immediately,” pushing Ukraine to the sidelines of its own war. In his own social-media post, Zelensky later described his call with Trump as having been “meaningful.” But Trump didn’t promise Zelensky the same meeting he offered Putin; Zelensky will meet with Vice President J. D. Vance at this week’s Munich security conference.

Taken together, the events today reinforced that Ukraine’s leverage is slipping away. Just as Trump and Putin spoke, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared, in an appearance at NATO headquarters, that achieving Ukraine’s main objective in the war—to restore its borders as they were before 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea—was “unrealistic.” “Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” Hegseth said in Brussels.

Hegseth chose the occasion to declare, as well, that the Trump administration does not support Ukraine’s desire to join NATO as part of any peace plan, a position that Putin has long opposed, not wanting to bring the alliance to his border. And Hegseth urged Europe to take on more responsibility for its own defense, saying that it should no longer count on Washington as it has in the past.

That sentiment has alarmed Kyiv, which has relied on the United States for much of the financial and military assistance that has allowed it to repel Russia’s invasion. “There are voices which say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans, and I always say no,” Zelensky said just days ago. “Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees.”

[Anthony Borden: Democracy in Eastern Europe faces another crisis]

The war has gone nowhere near as Putin first envisioned, but now he clearly has momentum. The Kremlin this week rejected a Zelensky proposal to swap territory that Ukraine seized during a counteroffensive in Russia’s Kursk region for some of the land that Putin’s war machine had captured since the start of the invasion. Trump told reporters at the White House late this afternoon that it was “unlikely that Ukraine gets all of its land back.” The Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov told reporters today that Putin had told Trump of “the need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict”—a signal that Moscow will not accept a simple cease-fire in Ukraine and instead will seek broader concessions from the West before it stops fighting.

That a presidential phone call happened at all was a major milestone for Putin, signaling the end of Western efforts to isolate him. President Joe Biden broke off contact with his Russian counterpart after the February 2022 invasion, and his administration steered tens of billions of dollars of financial assistance and weapons toward Ukraine. But the new administration has made clear that it would cut aid to Kyiv. Trump aides have said the president sees an opportunity to end a conflict and try to stabilize relations with Moscow. To that end, a prisoner swap was brokered yesterday that returned teacher Marc Fogel to the U.S. after he’d spent three years at a Russian labor camp.

Trump also wrote on Truth Social that he and Putin had “agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations.” In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin following an investigation of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Ukraine. An invitation to the United States—and potentially the White House—would be rightly perceived as Trump welcoming Putin back to the democratic world’s good graces even after an unjustified invasion of a sovereign neighbor.

Trump told reporters that he and Putin might first meet at a neutral site, floating Saudi Arabia as a possibility. An eventual visit to Moscow—an invitation confirmed by Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman—would also be Trump’s first as president and another remarkable moment in his long entanglement with Russia. (The last U.S. president to visit Russia was Barack Obama, for a G20 summit in 2013.)

After U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered on Trump’s behalf in the 2016 election, his first administration still occasionally took a hard line against Moscow. But Trump often sided with Putin, including at their 2018 summit in Helsinki. At a joint news conference there, I asked Trump whom he believed about election interference, Putin or his own intelligence agencies—and the U.S. president made clear that he sided with his Russian counterpart.

[From the March 2025 issue: Europe’s Elon Musk problem]

He seems ready to do so again. When Trump named his negotiating team with Russia, he mentioned Secretary of State Marco Rubio; John Ratcliffe, the CIA director; his national security adviser, Michael Waltz; and his Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff. But he did not list Keith Kellogg, the retired general named as envoy for Russia and Ukraine. Kellogg has generally taken a more aggressive posture toward Russia than Trump and is disliked in Moscow.

Yesterday, the Senate confirmed former Representative Tulsi Gabbard as Trump’s new director of national intelligence. Gabbard has received scrutiny for her previous comments about Russia and has been accused by Democrats of adopting Kremlin talking points, including when she suggested, shortly after the war started, that Moscow had been provoked into invading Ukraine.

Her selection as DNI was praised by Russian state media, surely a first for anyone in the position. And in another act of symbolism on a day full of them, Trump hosted Gabbard’s swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office late this afternoon. He then took a few questions, including one about whether he viewed Ukraine as “an equal member of this peace process.”

Trump paused.

“That’s an interesting question,” he finally said. “I think they have to make peace.”

He did not answer further.

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Monday brought chilling news reports of the all-count trial convictions of three individuals for a conspiracy to rob and drug people outside of LGBTQ+ nightclubs in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, which led to the deaths of two of their victims. The defendants were found guilty on all 24 counts, which included murder, robbery, burglary, and conspiracy. "As proven at trial," explained the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in a press release, "the defendants lurked outside of nightclubs to exploit intoxicated individuals. They would give them drugs, laced with fentanyl, to incapacitate their victims so they could take the victims' phones and drain their online financial accounts [including unauthorized charges and transfers using Cash App, Apple Cash, Apple Pay]." District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. added, "My Office will continue to take every measure possible to protect New Yorkers from this type of criminal conduct. That includes ensuring accountability for those who commit this harm, while also working with financial companies to enhance security measures on their phone apps." In 2024, D.A. Bragg called on financial companies to better protect consumers from fraud, including: adding a second and separate password for accessing the app on a smartphone as a default security option; imposing lower default limits on the monetary amount of total daily transfers; requiring wait times of up to a day and secondary verification for large monetary transactions; better monitoring of accounts for unusual transfer activities; and asking for confirmation when suspicious transactions occur. "No longer is the smartphone itself the most lucrative target for scammers and robbers -- it's the financial apps contained within," said Bragg as he released letters (PDF) sent to the companies that own Venmo, Zelle, and Cash App. "Thousands or even tens of thousands can be drained from financial accounts in a matter of seconds with just a few taps. Without additional protections, customers' financial and physical safety is being put at risk. I hope these companies accept our request to discuss commonsense solutions to deter scammers and protect New Yorkers' hard-earned money." "Our cellphones aren't safe," warned the EFF's Cooper Quintin in a 2018 New York Times op-ed. "So why aren't we fixing them?" Any thoughts on what can and should be done with software, hardware, and procedures to stop "bank jackings"?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The story of how french fries got to be ridiculously expensive starts really small, before making you scratch your head about the way the whole world works. 

The short version is that there’s possibly an algorithm-driven conspiracy in which a literal potato cartel has been colluding to raise the price of all of our french fries.

The long version goes like this: Plaintiffs have alleged in a set of lawsuits that the largest potato product manufacturers in the country — the four that have cornered nearly the entire frozen potato market — all put their sensitive market data into the same third-party software, which uses that aggregate data to spit out recommendations about how they should price their products. And that software has essentially been giving each company the same recommendations. 

If the CEOs of these four companies got in a room, and while they were all chomping on cigars, said, “Hey, let’s all set the price of our french fries at the exact same amount,” that would be illegal. What’s allegedly happening is these companies are using this software in the same way they’d use that room. And there are plenty of people out there — including people in the US government — who say that’s illegal. The question is whether they’re right. 

And it turns out the business practice at the heart of this case is happening all over the place.  

There have been big lawsuits and government investigations into how this is happening with our rent. Many landlords use a third-party app called RealPage, which takes landlord data and recommends rents. And renters have seen an increase in rental prices as a result. Meatpackers are doing a similar thing, as are hotels. 

Congressional legislation has been introduced to tackle some of this stuff head-on. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) co-sponsored a bill in 2024 that tried to combat landlords using third-party rental software to set prices. Recently, she introduced legislation that specifically targets algorithmic pricing practices.

Those bills aren’t yet law and have a lot of congressional hurdles to overcome. In the meantime, there are class action lawsuits going on around this. In the event that they do come to some resolution, maybe you’ll see a notification along the lines of, “Have you paid too much for french fries? You may be owed money,” and you’ll get 92 cents in the mail. And then you can go buy, maybe, a quarter of a french fry.

This piece originally ran in the Today, Explained newsletter. For more stories like this, sign up here.

Members of the Trump administration are apparently pressuring congressional Republicans to fast-track $175 billion in new border money, according to Axios.

Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, and Office of Management and Budget Chief Russell Vought told GOP senators during a closed-door meeting Tuesday that the administration is strapped for cash for President Donald Trump’s mass deportations and other inhumane immigration wants. 

Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told reporters that Homan and Vought made clear that “we’re living on borrowed time.” 

After the meeting, Homan said that his message to senators was “more money, more success,” and he expressed optimism that the administration would find the money needed to continue its immigration operations. 

“Hopefully, we won’t run out of money,” he said. “The more money we got, the more bad guys we take off the street, the safer America is.”

But it’s not just Homan and Vought who want lawmakers to shore up money for Trump’s immigration crackdown. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sent a separate letter to lawmakers requesting money for more border resources.

According to Fox News, which also obtained a copy of the letter, the money officials are soliciting will go toward more law enforcement and military personnel, aircrafts and additional means of transportation to facilitate deportations, and materials and workers to finish constructing a “permanent barrier” at the border, among other things.

At issue is whether the GOP-dominated chambers of Congress can get on the same page for their approach. Graham, the Senate Budget Committee chair, plans to mark up his own budget resolution on Wednesday, which includes more than $340 million in new funding for border security and the Pentagon, according to Punchbowl News. This amount, he said, provides enough funding for the next four years. 

Over in the House, however, Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, pleaded with Graham to hold off. Johnson is apparently hopeful that House Republicans can pass “one big, beautiful [reconciliation] bill,” as Trump has advocated for, which would include various tenets of his agenda and an extension of tax cuts from his first term. 

But this is at odds with what GOP senators are angling for. Graham’s strategy, in particular, calls for two bills. 

Meanwhile, Senate Republican Leader John Thune of South Dakota has argued for a border and energy policy bill, while punting a second tax bill to later in the year.

Even as Senate Republicans move forward with Graham’s bill, Johnson has said that he will not bring it to the House floor. 

“I’m afraid it’s a non-starter over here. I’ve expressed that to [Graham], there is no animus or daylight between us. We all are trying to get to the same achievable objectives,” Johnson told a CNN reporter Tuesday.

It’s interesting that Republicans can’t seem to find the money needed to fulfill their hardline border and immigration agenda, considering that the federal government, under Trump’s direction, just capped funding for the National Institutes of Health’s research facilities. And if they can’t find the funding there, maybe enough federal workers will take Trump’s so-called buyout offer, vacating their positions with various government agencies.

Either way, it’s foolish that the Trump administration is claiming to be low on cash when it has spent the better part of the past month axing federal agencies all in the name of making the government more “efficient.”

When it comes to how and whether Republican lawmakers will acquiesce to Trump’s latest request, it seems that things are playing out in favor of Graham and the Senate. According to Axios, White House officials told GOP senators that the money earmarked in Graham’s bill would be enough to deliver on Trump’s border promises for the next four years. 

Now we just need to see whether Johnson will give up on his want for one big bill—and he might. Especially if Trump becomes so desperate for border money that he reneges on his previous ask.

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There are 444 counties in the United States classified by the United States Department of Agriculture (is that still around?) as “farming-dependent.” which is defined as counties where either 25% of its earnings come from agriculture, or 16% of the workforce works in farming.

Donald Trump won 433 of those counties, with an average vote of 77.7%. Over 100 of them gave Trump 80% or more of their vote.

So how’s that working out for them? 

We’ve already talked about how screwed Nebraska is if Trump gets his wish with mass deportations, and that’s not even taking into account the effect of tariffs and shutting down food aid programs will have. The Washington Post ran a story over the weekend on how one specific Nebraska town, O’Neill, was gutted during the first Trump administration, and how they fear a second cataclysm. 

O’Neill is the county seat of Holt County. It voted for Trump 87-13%. 

Soybean and corn farmers stand to lose millions of dollars in climate-change-related grants helping them adapt their farms to environmentally friendly practices. In fact, the Inflation Reduction Act had allocated $3.05 billion to help farmers with conservation efforts, which is apparently all gone now. 

“One project provided assistance to Midwestern farmers to grow organic grains, while another focused on bolstering potato farm operations in Idaho, Washington and Oregon,” reported Reuters. Too bad they voted for “socialism is bad,” conveniently forgetting how dependent they were on socialism. 

“No one knows what funding will be available or if key programs will have the staff needed to operate,” National Farmers Union President Rob Larew testified at a Senate committee hearing. “Freezing spending and making sweeping decisions without congressional oversight just adds more uncertainty to an already tough farm economy.”

Farmers are also reporting missed payments from another program that reimburses them for things such as fixing fences. “Missouri cattle producer Skylar Holden posted a series of videos on TikTok this week, saying he had signed a contract with USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service for $240,000 for improved water lines, fences and a well,” reported Reuters, noting the USDA had informed him the contract was now frozen. “‘I've already done a bunch of the work, already paid for the material and the labor, so I'm out all that cost,’ Holden said in one video, adding, ‘We are possibly going to lose our farm if NRCS doesn't hold up their contract with us.’" Here’s one of his TikTok videos.

Holden voted for this (he talks about it on his TikTok account), as did his family, friends, neighbors, and community. It’s unclear to me why my tax dollars were paying to fix his fences, but at least he’s now living his values. Congrats, Skylar! You now get to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and no longer need to rely on California, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Washington to subsidize your life. (Of course, now he’s “willing to listen” to critics, but “both sides” are bad, and the problem is the left being “hateful.”) 

Honestly, I do hope he and his people are learning from this experience. Most won’t, but all we need is 5-10% to see the light, and the electoral math looks significantly different. 

Trump’s efforts to kill USAID, a foreign-aid program that feeds hungry people around the world, is costing American farmers billions. For example, the entire Kansas sorghum industry is screwed, which has led to the state’s two Republican senators to jump in support of this government spending, because this is valuable, unlike all the other government spending that doesn’t affect them directly. 

“The World Food Programme estimated $340 million in U.S. food aid was idled at domestic ports by order of the Trump administration,” reported the Kansas Reflector. “In total, $566 million in U.S.-grown commodities designated for humanitarian purposes was locked down in warehouses throughout the world.” The Food for Peace program bought $2 billion in farm products every year. 

Republicans are finally trying to do something to save USAID with a new bill, but the question remains whether it will work. Maybe farmers should switch to farming bootstraps. Demand would go through the roof. 

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The military is being criticized for the decision, spearheaded by President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, to stop longstanding recruiting efforts at the annual Black Engineer of the Year Awards. According to Millitary.com, the service abandoned recruitment over “concerns that participation in the predominantly Black event could run afoul of Trump's orders and the Pentagon's intensifying push to erase diversity efforts in the military.”

Under previous administrations, representatives from the Army and other branches of the military sent representatives to the event as part of efforts to recruit at the event that features students, academics, and professionals in STEM.

“It's fucking racist,” an active duty Army general told Military.com. “For the Army now, it's 'Blacks need not apply' and it breaks my heart.”

An Army recruiter also told the outlet that the annual conference is “one of the most talent-dense events we do,” and that the armed services needs to recruit people there.

The BEYA attendance ban is intended to comply with executive orders and other directives from Trump meant to reverse policies designed to further diversity across the United States. The same unit of the Army that usually goes to BEYA was recently sent to recruit at an event in Pennsylvania sponsored by the pro-Trump NRA attended by mostly white attendees. Recruiters admitted to Military.com that the NRA-affiliated event is less likely to yield the high-caliber applicants the military needs.

Under the Biden administration, military representatives attended BEYA for outreach and recruitment, including then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin who gave the keynote speech to the conference in 2023. Austin was the first Black person to be appointed to the position.

In that speech, Austin paid tribute to NASA astronaut and aerospace engineer Guion “Guy” Bluford, the first African American to travel in space and a former colonel in the U.S. Air Force who flew combat missions in the Vietnam War. Bluford flew into space multiple times.

In a related development, Hegseth ordered that Fort Liberty in North Carolina would have its name changed back to Fort Bragg. The original Fort Bragg was named to honor failed General Braxton Bragg who fought on the side of the pro-slavery Confederacy during the Civil War.

The Trump administration claimed that the name is in honor of World War II veteran Private Roland Bragg but Trump has long railed against efforts to rename monuments and other locations honoring those who fought to preserve the institution of slavery.

The military recruitment change and the base renaming are just the latest in Trump’s actions within the military meant to roll back advances in diversity. The administration recently barred clubs for women and ethnic minorities at West Point and a training video featuring the Tuskegee Airmen was briefly pulled as the military struggled to comply with Trump’s anti-diversity initiatives.

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