Anand Giridharadas: If you look at figures on the Supreme Court, who I’m sure at least at one point you’ve had respect for — maybe you still have respect for them — who now say things like, hold things like, Donald Trump can do whatever he wants as president and there can never be consequence, I wonder which of those situations you think they are more likely to be in: Do you think they’re essentially scared? Do you think…
The New York Times reports: The Trump administration can move forward with plans to slash the federal work force and dismantle federal agencies, the Supreme Court announced on Tuesday. The decision could result in job losses for tens of thousands of employees at agencies including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, State and Treasury. The order, which lifted a lower court’s ruling that had blocked mass layoffs, was unsigned and did not include a vote count. That is typical…
Politico reports: President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration is starting to ripple across the U.S. economy. From small farms in California, to meat packing facilities in Nebraska to corporate giants like Disney, businesses are scrambling to replace workers after recent administration actions have taken immigrants, both legal and illegal, out of the labor force, including several hundred thousand people who had been given temporary work permits under President Joe Biden. That’s because foreign-born workers, or their relatives, have become critical…
Reuters reports: U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Tuesday that there will be “no amnesty” for agricultural workers as President Donald Trump’s administration moves to deport all immigrants in the country illegally. Rollins said the administration wants a 100% American workforce and suggested some people receiving government aid could replace immigrant workers. “Ultimately, the answer on this is automation, also some reform within the current governing structure. And then also, when you think about, there are 34 million able-bodied…
By Robert Bird, University of Connecticut Something dangerous is happening to the U.S. economy, and it’s not inflation or trade wars. Chaotic deregulation and the selective enforcement of laws have upended markets and investor confidence. At one point, the threat of tariffs and resulting chaos evaporated US$4 trillion in value in the U.S. stock market. This approach isn’t helping the economy, and there are troubling signs it will hurt both the U.S. and the global economy in the short and…
The New York Times reports: The I.R.S. said on Monday that churches and other houses of worship can endorse political candidates to their congregations, carving out an exemption in a decades-old ban on political activity by tax-exempt nonprofits. The agency made that statement in a court filing intended to settle a lawsuit filed by two Texas churches and an association of Christian broadcasters. The plaintiffs that sued the I.R.S. had previously asked a federal court in Texas to create an…
Wired reports: Grok, the chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, made a series of deeply antisemitic remarks in response to several posts on X on Tuesday. A large language model that is integrated into X, Grok acts as a platform-native chatbot assistant. In several posts—some of which have been deleted but have been preserved via screenshot by X users—Grok parroted antisemitic tropes while insisting that it was being “neutral and truth-seeking.” In some posts, Grok said that…
Bloomberg reports: Los Angeles was already struggling to revive its fragile economy after the most destructive wildfires in its history erupted six months ago. Now, immigration raids are driving workers crucial to the rebuilding into the shadows. Framers and landscapers are abandoning job sites. Renovations of retail shops have stopped midway. Real estate developers say they are struggling to find crews to keep projects on track in a sector that relies heavily on immigrant labour. “We don’t have enough people…
Jason Zengerle writes: Stephen Miller was livid. It was a couple of months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, and Mr. Miller, a senior White House adviser, believed that the federal government was not doing nearly enough to stem the tide of illegal immigration into the United States. In a relentless round of meetings, phone calls and emails, he reached deep into the federal bureaucracy and, according to a former Department of Homeland Security official, berated mid- and low-level bureaucrats inside the…
Garrett Graff writes: No healthy law enforcement agency can grow quickly. And ICE is far from a healthy law enforcement agency. ICE’s annual budget is about $10 billion a year, and the new legislation is about to hand it about nearly untold billions more — including $30 billion for hiring staff and conducting deportations and $45 billion for detention operations, as well as about $46 billion for border security construction, which could include the border wall and more detention facilities….
Politico reports: A trial on a First Amendment lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s drive to deport pro-Palestinian academics quickly confronted a thorny legal issue Monday: whether foreigners in the U.S. enjoy the same free speech rights as American citizens. The administration’s stance on that critical question proved murky. Under questioning by U.S. District Judge William Young in his Boston courtroom, Justice Department attorney Victoria Santora initially said non-citizens have the same First Amendment rights as citizens. “People in the United…
John Cassidy writes: Ever since Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower ten years ago, he has portrayed himself as a gilded avenger of the toiling masses. At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last July, Vance famously remarked, “We’re done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street—we’ll commit to the working man.” The results of November’s election showed that the G.O.P. was, indeed, making progress in working-class areas. But, after Friday’s signing ceremony, what is left of Trump’s…
Dan Froomkin writes: The sad fact is that there is nothing terribly out of character about the New York Times’s decision to publish a deceptive hit piece about New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, based on hacked data supplied by a noted eugenicist to whom they granted anonymity. The newsroom will go to extreme lengths to achieve its primary missions — and one of them, most assuredly, is to take cheap shots at the left. You can see it almost…
Peter Beinart writes: To grasp the significance of Zohran Mamdani’s shocking victory in last month’s Democratic primary for mayor of New York, it’s worth recalling another upset, which took place 11 years ago and some 300 miles to the south, in a Republican congressional primary near Richmond, Va. In 2014 Dave Brat, a little-known economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, challenged Eric Cantor, who was then the House majority leader. Mr. Brat was outspent by a margin of more than 10…
Politico reports: At least five times in recent weeks, federal judges have forcefully rejected President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport pro-Palestinian student activists, issuing one stinging ruling after another to declare the efforts unconstitutional — with one judge comparing the deportation drive to the Red Scare. The five foreign-born academics, Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Yunseo Chung, Rumeysa Ozturk and Badar Khan Suri, were all targeted by the Trump administration after Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared their presence in the…
Anas Baba reports: What does it take to get food today in Gaza? It involves a perilous journey that I took myself. I faced Israeli military fire, private U.S. contractors pointing laser beams at my forehead, crowds with knives fighting for rations, and masked thieves — to get food from a group supported by the U.S. and Israel called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF. Every day since the group began offering food on May 26, thousands of hungry Palestinians…