Criminal Justice And Human Rights Law Blog

I Broke Down the Supreme Court's Latest Attack on Voting Rights in 4 Minutes

2026-06-05T09:28:08.580-04:00

“The Overseer Class”: Steven Thrasher on Black Cops, Pro-Palestine Protests, DEI & More

2026-06-05T08:29:35.963-04:00

‘We call it the P-word’: Chicago professor suspended after assignment mentions Palestinians

2026-06-05T08:22:24.186-04:00

‘We call it the P-word’: Chicago professor suspended after assignment mentions Palestinians

“A tenured art therapy professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago was suspended after a student complained about a case study mentioning violence against Palestinians. The student, involved in separate investigations regarding alleged antisemitism, claimed the assignment was discriminatory. The professor, who denies any wrongdoing, argues the suspension is motivated by the mere mention of Palestine and plans to file a discrimination complaint.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor put under investigation after a student complained about a case study

Alice Speri

Savneet Talwar. Photograph: Salome Chasnoff

A tenured art therapy professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago(SAIC) was suspended from teaching and placed under investigation following a student’s complaint about an assigned case study that mentioned violence against Palestinians.

Savneet Talwar, a faculty member with the school’s art therapy and counseling program, assigned the case study in April to a class on the cultural dimensions of therapy. The assignment asked students to develop an ethical treatment plan for a hypothetical queer, Muslim woman living in the US.

The language of the assignment read: “While she was not particularly politically active in her home country, protests in support of Palestineresonated with her on a personal level. She felt deeply affected by the violence against Palestinian civilians and was critical of the home government’s limited response.”

The two-page assignment, which was reviewed by the Guardian, mostly focused on other elements of the client’s case, including her family history, relationships and status as an immigrant. It made no additional references to Palestine or Palestinians, and no mention of Israel. But Talwar’s department had already been mired in multiple complaints and investigations about alleged antisemitism involving the same student, and faculty had been required to take anti-bias training as the school sought to address the “climate” in the department.

The school was also sued in late 2023 by an Israeli student in the same program over alleged antisemitism, including an assignment for which students were asked to review images drawn by children depicting violence by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian civilians.

After Talwar’s student received the case study, the professor got a call from a dean asking whether she had assigned “anything with Palestine in it”. She was then called into an “urgent” meeting with the school’s provost, and her class for the following day was canceled. The following day, on 17 April, the school formally notified Talwar that she was being put on paid leave, and forbade her from speaking about the matter with students and colleagues. The case study was removed from an online learning platform used for the class. In a letter, a school official warned Talwar that assigning the student the case study may constitute “discrimination, harassment and/or retaliation”.

According to the letter, the student was also involved in separate investigations “involving claims by her as a Jewish Israeli related to alleged conduct expressing an anti-Israeli, antisemitic, and/or pro-Palestine viewpoint”. The official wrote that despite being aware of the other investigations, Talwar “gave an academic assignment that focused solely on the issues of a Muslim woman with strong sympathies for the Palestinian cause”. In a separate letter to Talwar, a dean appeared to question her judgment for assigning the case study under the ongoing “circumstances”.

“One of the reasons this issue raises such serious concerns is that there have been multiple, prior complaints alleging the creation of a hostile environment within your department,” the dean wrote.

Talwar told the Guardian in an exclusive interview that she was “stunned” by a suspension that appeared to be motivated by “the mere mention of the word Palestine”.

A spokesperson for SAIC declined to comment on personnel matters or ongoing investigations, but said that the school is committed “to learning environments in which ideas are freely exchanged and students and faculty are welcomed, respected, and valued”. The Guardian could not reach the student who complained.

Talwar, through an attorney, submitted a formal grievance letter and argued that the suspension might itself be discriminatory. Nearly a month after she had been suspended from teaching, on 13 May, school officials outlined other issues involving the same student that predated the case study.

The school officials cited included exchanges in which Talwar allegedly characterized the Bondi beach terror attack in Australia as “gun violence” without acknowledging antisemitism, and suggested that the student “consider” whether or not to attend a lecture by a guest described as a “strong anti-Zionist activist”.

Talwar declined to respond to allegations involving the student, citing confidentiality she is bound to. She flatly rejected that the case study she assigned was antisemitic or discriminatory in any way, and plans to file a formal employment discrimination complaint against the school.

Rima Kapitan, her attorney, said in a letter to school officials that they don’t even have a clear “theory of discrimination”. She wrote that Talwar had “bent over backwards” to accommodate the student.

“Are SAIC faculty expected to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their course materials? Are Arab Muslims unworthy of their own case studies?” Kapitan wrote. “If a white supremacist student filed a discrimination complaint with the University alleging that he was triggered by a case study about a Black client who was struggling with police violence against Black people, would SAIC proceed with an investigation against the professor who drafted the assignment?”

Talwar said her case was an example of mounting “political pressure” in higher education.

“We call it the ‘P-word’ now,” she said, referring to faculty’s hesitation to discuss Palestine amid a repressive climate on US college campuses. “There is no tolerance for the very word.”

‘They are disturbing the dead’: reconstructing the site of the forgotten first genocide of the 20th century

2026-06-05T08:17:16.286-04:00

‘They are disturbing the dead’: reconstructing the site of the forgotten first genocide of the 20th century

(As usual European colonialists minimize the numbers of people they murder in their colonization of indigenous populations.   

What is Genocide?

One of five hundred children’s drawings collected by Waging Peace showing killings, bombing and looting committed by government troops. In November 2007, the drawings were accepted by the International Criminal Court as contextual evidence of the crimes committed in Darfur.

Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.

Genocide is defined as an act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The term ‘genocide’ was coined in 1944 by the Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin   in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In creating the term ‘genocide’, Lemkin intended to more clearly define the crime of mass murder of groups of people and to raise awareness of it.

Genocide became a crime in itself following the adoption of the ‘Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’ by the United Nations  General Assembly on 9 December 1948, as result of the events of the Holocaust. The Convention came into force on 12 January 1951.

Various different acts are defined in the convention as acts of genocide, including:

Killing members of a group.
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The Stages of Genocide

In 1987, Gregory Stanton, a professor of law, published a paper which explored how genocides develop and unfold.

In his original work, Stanton identified eight key stages which resulted in acts of genocide. According to Stanton’s model, some of these stages can happen at the same time or in a different order. In 2012, Stanton expanded on these ideas, and added two further stages (Discrimination and Persecution) to make ten. According to Stanton’s current model, therefore, the stages of genocide are as follows:

Classification – Dividing people into ‘them’ and ‘us’.
Symbolisation – Forcing groups to wear or be associated with symbols which identify them as different.
Discrimination – Excluding groups from participating in civil society, such as by excluding them from voting or certain places. In Nazi Germany, for example, Jews were not allowed to sit on certain park benches.
Dehumanisation – To deny the humanity of one group, and associate them with animals or diseases in order to belittle them.
Organisation – Training police or army units and providing them with weapons and knowledge in order to persecute a group in future.
Polarisation – Using propaganda  to polarise society, create distance and exclude a group further.
Preparation – Planning of mass murder and identifying specific victims.
Persecution – Incarcerating groups in ghettos  or concentration camps  , forcibly displacing groups, expropriating   property, belongings or wealth.
Extermination – Committing mass murder.
Denial – Denial of any crimes. This does not necessarily mean denying that the acts of murder happened, but denying that these acts were a crime, and were in fact justified.
Stanton hoped that by identifying these stages it would be easier to recognise genocide before it took place and thus stop it from happening.

The Herero and Namaqua Genocide

A photograph showing German forces gathered in GSWA to join in the conflict against the Herero people in 1904.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain].

The Herero and Namaqua Genocide was the massacre of approximately 50,000 – 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama  between 1904 and 1907 by German military forces in German South West Africa (GSWA) – modern-day Namibia  .

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‘They are disturbing the dead’: reconstructing the site of the forgotten first genocide of the 20th century
​
 Summary
The exhibition “Fractured Lifeworlds” in Berlin, created by Forensic Architecture and Forensis, uses digital technology to investigate the legacy of the Herero and Nama genocide in Namibia. The exhibition examines how colonial violence is inscribed into the Namibian landscape, focusing on sites like Shark Island, where a concentration camp operated from 1905 to 1907. The exhibition also highlights the ongoing impact of colonialism, including the Hyphen project, a green hydrogen initiative that threatens to disturb ancestral lands and burial grounds.
​
At least 3,000 Herero and Nama people died in a German concentration camp at Shark Island, Namibia. A new forensic exhibition in Berlin is using digital technology to unearth how colonisers scarred a landscape, and a community

Hanno Hauenstein
A black and white photograph of 1897 Namibian grassland showing a large tree, hills, and mountains
‘A digital shield against historical denial’ … an 1897 photograph from Hatsamas, Namibia, matched with a 3D digital reconstruction. Photograph: Forensic Architecture/Forensis, 2025
Visiting the Namibian port town of Lüderitz in late 2024, I came across a small museum run by descendants of German settlers. Alongside imperial German flags and memorabilia, it displayed artefacts of the Herero tribe that had been recovered from nearby Shark Island. What went unmentioned is that, from 1905 to 1907, Shark Island was the site of a concentration camp where Herero and Nama prisoners were subjected to forced labour, starvation and systematic abuse. At least 3,000 people are estimated to have died there.

Shark Island was used as a tourist campsite when I visited. Monuments on the island honoured Adolf Lüderitz and Heinrich Vogelsang, the German merchants who helped establish the colony known as German South West Africa. Today, it is widely reported that Namibia’s white minority – less than 2% of the population – owns roughly 70% of commercial farmland.

Fractured Lifeworlds, a new exhibition opening in Berlin this week, is built around questions of memory, geography and accountability. The show presents four years of research by Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research agency that uses visual reconstructions to investigate human rights abuses from Syria and Palestine to Greece and Germany.

Produced jointly with its Berlin-based sister organisation Forensis and developed in collaboration with Namibian researchers, the exhibition traces the legacy of what has been described as the first genocide of the 20th century. Originally presented at Namibia’s National Art Gallery in Windhoek last year, it now arrives at Spore Initiative in the form of three seasonal chapters, Bush, Wind and Sand, each examining how colonial violence became inscribed into Namibia’s arid landscape.

The show’s centrepiece is a series of films that combine oral testimony from descendants of genocide victims with meticulous geological research. An eerie 30-minute film on Shark Island reconstructs the concentration camp, showing how German authorities weaponised the island’s harsh environment against prisoners – and shipped their skulls back to Germany for pseudoscientific research. The investigation also identifies sand mounts nearby, believed to be unmarked mass graves for prisoners killed on Shark Island.

Underneath Shark Island, the Lüderitz port is set to expand as part of Hyphen, a multibillion-euro British-German green hydrogen project developed in Namibia. The project would use Namibia’s rich wind and solar resources to produce green hydrogen and ammonia for export. For Germany, it promises clean energy and greater independence from foreign fossil fuels.

For many Nama and Herero descendants, it recalls familiar patterns of extraction. Much of the project’s infrastructure is being developed across a 4,000 sq km area of ancestral land that belongs to Nama communities. According to human rights groups, they have been excluded from any meaningfully participation in the project.

Before and after images of Hatsamas, Namibia.
Before and after images of Hatsamas, Namibia. Photograph: Forensic Architecture/Forensis
Many descendants also fear that the Hyphen project could undermine efforts to preserve Namibia’s sites of the genocide as places of remembrance. Sima Luipert, adviser to the Nama Traditional Leaders Association (NTLA) and a collaborator on the exhibition, fears the port expansion could disturb burial grounds. “When they dredge, they don’t seem to realise that they are not simply moving dirt. They are disturbing the dead,” she says. “The water is the burial site.”

Germany refuses to pay reparations to Herero and Nama descendants, offering instead development aid payments negotiated with the Namibian government. When Germany formally recognised the atrocities in 2021, it described them as a genocide “from today’s perspective” – a formulation critics say avoids the legal and political implications of recognition. By that logic, no act committed before the 1948 genocide convention could fully qualify as such.

To Luipert, the agreement reflects a glaring double standard. “Germany can swiftly compensate victims of the Holocaust while invoking strict legal technicalities to deny reparations to Africans,” she says. To her, the show is a way to provide evidence – “a digital shield against historical denial”.

In recent years, Forensic Architecture’s work has divided opinion. Critics see its work as persuasive visualisations built on evidence that can be ambiguous; supporters argue the collective has pioneered new ways of exposing structures of violence that might otherwise remain hidden or obscured.

In the works presented in Berlin, transparency about methodology is central. This is perhaps most convincing in a film on the Hornkranz massacre of 1893, when German colonial troops under Curt von François attacked the settlement of Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi, killing dozens of civilians. Drawing on oral histories, photographs and in-depth analysis of changes in the landscape, the film reconstructs an atrocity largely absent from German collective memory.

The film’s process of reconstruction is visible throughout the exhibition space. Historical drawings, maps and a letter by Von François are displayed alongside digital models that imagine how the village might have looked before the massacre.

Evidence of a massacre: spent cartridges at Horncranz, dating back to 1893
Evidence of a massacre: spent cartridges at Horncranz, dating back to 1893. Photograph: Forensic Architecture/Forensis
Mark Mushiba, the lead curator of Fractured Lifeworlds and a researcher at Forensis, explains that historians have largely relied on colonial documents. Forensic Architecture and Forensis instead sought to “read the landscape”. In Hornkranz – which is now used as a private farm – that meant locating old bullet cartridges, identifying former homesteads through distinctive vegetation patterns and treating plants as historical evidence. “We were absolutely shocked by the lack of physical investigation that was done here,” Mushiba says.

Forensic Architecture founder Eyal Weizman describes their approach in Namibia as a form of “forensic botany”. With Forensis, the research agency analysed shades of grey in colonial photographs to infer patterns of grass density, and combined these findings with other sources to reconstruct the erasure of local communities. The aim is to recover a record inscribed in the landscape. In Weizman’s words, the show is about finding ways to “send a satellite back in time”.

This approach is mirrored in a work titled Satellite Images of Hatsamas, consisting of three digital prints in flashy red and green tones. Combining local knowledge, historical photographs and modern satellite data, the prints aim to visualise changes in vegetation over 150 years. The result will show how colonial settlement has shaped the land, leading to bush encroachment and desertification.

Contemporary artworks add a further layer to the show. Tuli Mekondjo contributes an embroidered Herero uniform titled Schutztruppe. Originally worn by German colonial soldiers, the garment was adopted by Herero communities as an act of resistance and commemoration. By stitching a human skeleton on to the fabric, Mekondjo transforms it into a wearable memorial for prisoners who died on Shark Island.

In speaking about the exhibition, Weizman repeatedly returns to the relationship between genocide and the desert: from the forced marches of Armenians into the Syrian desert to Gaza, where widespread destruction has transformed much of the territory into flattened terrain. Fractured Lifeworlds shows how colonial violence leaves traces in the land. As Germany continues to debate the meaning and scope of its memory culture, this exhibition is a timely reminder that the past remains part of the present.

Fractured Lifeworlds is at Spore Initiative, Berlin, from 7 June to 30 April”

“The exhibition “Fractured Lifeworlds” in Berlin, created by Forensic Architecture and Forensis, uses digital technology to investigate the legacy of the Herero and Nama genocide in Namibia. The exhibition examines how colonial violence is inscribed into the Namibian landscape, focusing on sites like Shark Island, where a concentration camp operated from 1905 to 1907. The exhibition also highlights the ongoing impact of colonialism, including the Hyphen project, a green hydrogen initiative that threatens to disturb ancestral lands and burial grounds.

At least 3,000 Herero and Nama people died in a German concentration camp at Shark Island, Namibia. A new forensic exhibition in Berlin is using digital technology to unearth how colonisers scarred a landscape, and a community

Hanno Hauenstein

‘A digital shield against historical denial’ … an 1897 photograph from Hatsamas, Namibia, matched with a 3D digital reconstruction. Photograph: Forensic Architecture/Forensis, 2025

Visiting the Namibian port town of Lüderitz in late 2024, I came across a small museum run by descendants of German settlers. Alongside imperial German flags and memorabilia, it displayed artefacts of the Herero tribe that had been recovered from nearby Shark Island. What went unmentioned is that, from 1905 to 1907, Shark Island was the site of a concentration camp where Herero and Nama prisoners were subjected to forced labour, starvation and systematic abuse. At least 3,000 people are estimated to have died there.

Shark Island was used as a tourist campsite when I visited. Monuments on the island honoured Adolf Lüderitz and Heinrich Vogelsang, the German merchants who helped establish the colony known as German South West Africa. Today, it is widely reported that Namibia’s white minority – less than 2% of the population – owns roughly 70% of commercial farmland.

Fractured Lifeworlds, a new exhibition opening in Berlin this week, is built around questions of memory, geography and accountability. The show presents four years of research by Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research agency that uses visual reconstructions to investigate human rights abuses from Syria and Palestine to Greece and Germany.

Produced jointly with its Berlin-based sister organisation Forensis and developed in collaboration with Namibian researchers, the exhibition traces the legacy of what has been described as the first genocide of the 20th century. Originally presented at Namibia’s National Art Gallery in Windhoek last year, it now arrives at Spore Initiative in the form of three seasonal chapters, Bush, Wind and Sand, each examining how colonial violence became inscribed into Namibia’s arid landscape.

The show’s centrepiece is a series of films that combine oral testimony from descendants of genocide victims with meticulous geological research. An eerie 30-minute film on Shark Island reconstructs the concentration camp, showing how German authorities weaponised the island’s harsh environment against prisoners – and shipped their skulls back to Germany for pseudoscientific research. The investigation also identifies sand mounts nearby, believed to be unmarked mass graves for prisoners killed on Shark Island.

Underneath Shark Island, the Lüderitz port is set to expand as part of Hyphen, a multibillion-euro British-German green hydrogen project developed in Namibia. The project would use Namibia’s rich wind and solar resources to produce green hydrogen and ammonia for export. For Germany, it promises clean energy and greater independence from foreign fossil fuels.

For many Nama and Herero descendants, it recalls familiar patterns of extraction. Much of the project’s infrastructure is being developed across a 4,000 sq km area of ancestral land that belongs to Nama communities. According to human rights groups, they have been excluded from any meaningfully participation in the project.

Before and after images of Hatsamas, Namibia. Photograph: Forensic Architecture/Forensis

Many descendants also fear that the Hyphen project could undermine efforts to preserve Namibia’s sites of the genocide as places of remembrance. Sima Luipert, adviser to the Nama Traditional Leaders Association (NTLA) and a collaborator on the exhibition, fears the port expansion could disturb burial grounds. “When they dredge, they don’t seem to realise that they are not simply moving dirt. They are disturbing the dead,” she says. “The water is the burial site.”

Germany refuses to pay reparations to Herero and Nama descendants, offering instead development aid payments negotiated with the Namibian government. When Germany formally recognised the atrocities in 2021, it described them as a genocide “from today’s perspective” – a formulation critics say avoids the legal and political implications of recognition. By that logic, no act committed before the 1948 genocide convention could fully qualify as such.

To Luipert, the agreement reflects a glaring double standard. “Germany can swiftly compensate victims of the Holocaust while invoking strict legal technicalities to deny reparations to Africans,” she says. To her, the show is a way to provide evidence – “a digital shield against historical denial”.

In recent years, Forensic Architecture’s work has divided opinion. Critics see its work as persuasive visualisations built on evidence that can be ambiguous; supporters argue the collective has pioneered new ways of exposing structures of violence that might otherwise remain hidden or obscured.

In the works presented in Berlin, transparency about methodology is central. This is perhaps most convincing in a film on the Hornkranz massacre of 1893, when German colonial troops under Curt von François attacked the settlement of Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi, killing dozens of civilians. Drawing on oral histories, photographs and in-depth analysis of changes in the landscape, the film reconstructs an atrocity largely absent from German collective memory.

The film’s process of reconstruction is visible throughout the exhibition space. Historical drawings, maps and a letter by Von François are displayed alongside digital models that imagine how the village might have looked before the massacre.

Evidence of a massacre: spent cartridges at Horncranz, dating back to 1893. Photograph: Forensic Architecture/Forensis

Mark Mushiba, the lead curator of Fractured Lifeworlds and a researcher at Forensis, explains that historians have largely relied on colonial documents. Forensic Architecture and Forensis instead sought to “read the landscape”. In Hornkranz – which is now used as a private farm – that meant locating old bullet cartridges, identifying former homesteads through distinctive vegetation patterns and treating plants as historical evidence. “We were absolutely shocked by the lack of physical investigation that was done here,” Mushiba says.

Forensic Architecture founder Eyal Weizman describes their approach in Namibia as a form of “forensic botany”. With Forensis, the research agency analysed shades of grey in colonial photographs to infer patterns of grass density, and combined these findings with other sources to reconstruct the erasure of local communities. The aim is to recover a record inscribed in the landscape. In Weizman’s words, the show is about finding ways to “send a satellite back in time”.

This approach is mirrored in a work titled Satellite Images of Hatsamas, consisting of three digital prints in flashy red and green tones. Combining local knowledge, historical photographs and modern satellite data, the prints aim to visualise changes in vegetation over 150 years. The result will show how colonial settlement has shaped the land, leading to bush encroachment and desertification.

Contemporary artworks add a further layer to the show. Tuli Mekondjo contributes an embroidered Herero uniform titled Schutztruppe. Originally worn by German colonial soldiers, the garment was adopted by Herero communities as an act of resistance and commemoration. By stitching a human skeleton on to the fabric, Mekondjo transforms it into a wearable memorial for prisoners who died on Shark Island.

In speaking about the exhibition, Weizman repeatedly returns to the relationship between genocide and the desert: from the forced marches of Armenians into the Syrian desert to Gaza, where widespread destruction has transformed much of the territory into flattened terrain. Fractured Lifeworlds shows how colonial violence leaves traces in the land. As Germany continues to debate the meaning and scope of its memory culture, this exhibition is a timely reminder that the past remains part of the present.

‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detainees say guards deny them food and clean water until they sign English documents

2026-06-05T07:55:02.908-04:00

‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detainees say guards deny them food and clean water until they sign English documents

“Detainees at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail allege guards are withholding food and water until they sign English documents they cannot understand. The detainees claim the water is contaminated with mosquito larvae and has a foul taste. The facility, operated by the state of Florida for ICE, has faced criticism for alleged human rights abuses.

Detainees say they’re given ‘rotten’ water and denied meals for not signing papers in English that they don’t understand

Richard Luscombe

Beds are seen inside the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ migrant detention center as Donald Trump tours the facility in Ochopee, Florida, on 1 July 2025. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Detainees at Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail said guards were denying them food and fresh water on Thursday until they signed documents presented to them in English that they did not understand.

In an audio recording of a telephone call to an immigration advocacy group heard by the Guardian, more than half a dozen detainees alleged that the water given to them over the last three days was “rotten” and containing mosquito larvae, in an apparent attempt to pressure them to sign.

During the call, all the detainees identified themselves by name and the section and cage number they are being held in. The Guardian is withholding those details because of the men’s stated fear of reprisals.

“They took all the water, and they don’t want to give us water,” one detainee said in the call to a representative of the Workers Circle, an advocacy group that has acted as a liaison between detainees and their families.

“They haven’t given us lunch, and they are mistreating us here. Right now, at this very moment, half past one in the afternoon, we haven’t had lunch here in Alcatraz, and they wanted to make us sign a paper in English that we don’t know what that paper says.

“They’ve taken reprisals with us for not taking that paper, not signing that paper. They took away the water and medicine to people who need medication. Today the medicine came very late, but here we have people here who are diabetic, one here with high blood pressure.”

An ambulance pulls in to the front entrance of the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades on 1 June 2026. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The detainee said he and others had been complaining for several days about the quality of the water they had been given, and on Thursday morning chants of “agua, agua” broke out when it was withheld altogether.

“The water has pests, the water has a bad taste, [you] open the water tubs and they have mosquito larvae,” he said.

Another detainee said the water was “stinky and rotten”, and that he saw mosquitoes emerging from a substance contained within it.

He said nobody in his cell had yet signed any document.

Reports last month said “Alligator Alcatraz”, operated by the state of Florida as an immigration jail on behalf of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, would wind down operations in June, leading to its eventual closure.

In its almost one year of operation, the tented facility, built on a little-used training airport deep in the Florida Everglades, has developed a reputation for the brutal treatment of undocumented detainees kept in metal cages, and a succession of alleged human and civil rights abuses.

Among the claims are a denial of access to immigration lawyers, frequent and sudden movement of detainees to other detention facilities, and pressure to consent to agree to deportation without legal representation.

The ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ immigration detention center is seen from above. Photograph: SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Noelle Damico, director of social justice for the Workers Circle, said Thursday’s developments appeared to be a ramping up of that pressure to force detainees to agree to leave.

“They’re being asked by guards to sign documents that they cannot fully see, nor do they understand,” she said. “This has been going on for several days, and right now they’ve stopped giving them water.

“The water in the past three days has been unusually disgusting with mosquito larvae, dirt in it, and tasting absolutely rotten. So that predates today, now they’ve removed the water.

“They were fed breakfast this morning, but lunch was withheld. This is an outrageous violation of basic human rights under international and national law.”

The Guardian has contacted the Florida department of emergency management, which oversees the operation of the facility using private guards, for a response.

In a statement on 29 May, following a previous allegation that a detainee with diabetes was denied medication, Stephanie Hartman, the department’s director of communications, said: “Medical facilities and staff, including a pharmacy, are available 24/7 to detainees.”

The department has also previously denied any mistreatment or abuse of detainees.“

Trump Squeezes Immigrants by Cutting Them Off From Jobs, Health Care and Housing

2026-06-05T07:05:14.890-04:00

Trump Squeezes Immigrants by Cutting Them Off From Jobs, Health Care and Housing

(Truly Evil)

“The Trump administration is implementing a strategy to pressure immigrants, including those with legal status, to leave the United States. This involves cutting off access to jobs, healthcare, and housing through various regulatory changes and executive orders. The goal is to make the U.S. less welcoming to immigrants and discourage future migration.

The methodically planned strategy is intended to pressure noncitizens, including many with legal status, to leave the United States.

May 30, 2026

A man and child exited the Annandale Immigration Court earlier this month in Annandale, Va. The Trump administration is pressuring immigrants to leave the country voluntarily by squeezing them financially.Salwan Georges for The New York Times

For nearly three decades, Raquel Molina — an immigrant from El Salvador who has a valid Social Security number and permission to work in the United States — swabbed the toilets, wiped down the seats and vacuumed the aisles of airplanes at Boston’s Logan International Airport.

But last summer, Ms. Molina, 65, was abruptly fired from her $19.75-per-hour cleaning job, alongside dozens of other immigrants who have long legally worked at Logan. Her supervisor told her she no longer had clearance to enter secure areas at the airport. The Trump administration had decided that only U.S. citizens, green card holders and others with more permanent forms of residency should be granted access, according to a lawsuit that a labor union filed in federal court.

“I didn’t understand what was going on,” said Ms. Molina, who has been living legally in the United States under Temporary Protected Status, a humanitarian program that shelters people from troubled countries until they can safely return home. “I had worked hard at my job. This news put me in a state of shock.”

Her firing reflected a broader and methodically planned piece of President Trump’s hard-line strategy to make the United States less welcoming to those from other countries.

For more than a year, administration officials have sought to pull every bureaucratic lever possible to cut off immigrants — both documented and undocumented — from jobs, medical care, financial services, tax credits and even from enrolling their children in day care. The goal has been to compel immigrants to leave the country, and, in the long run, to eliminate incentives that draw many people to the United States in the first place.

The initiative underscores the president’s ability to reshape immigration policy through executive orders and the vast power of federal regulations while sidestepping Congress. And it shows how the administration has pursued more creative — and lower-profile — tactics after Mr. Trump’s militarized deportation raids into major cities prompted political backlash earlier this year.

The changes range from structural shifts in the immigration system to small-scale, regulatory tweaks taking away jobs or services from just a few thousand people like Ms. Molina. In her case, the administration no longer considered T.P.S. a form of “authorized residency,” said Justin Long, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, meaning Ms. Molina could not be “given official government credentials and granted unescorted access to secure airport areas.”

The administration’s strategy, along with the threat of arrest and imprisonment, has helped drive many immigrants underground, intimidating them from filing taxes, visiting doctors and even traveling. So far, more than 116,000 people without permanent legal status have voluntarily left the United States, including some through a government self-deportation program, according to internal Department of Homeland Security figures reviewed by The New York Times. Many others are believed to have departed without telling the government.

“It has been immensely effective,” said Daniel Delgado, a former senior Department of Homeland Security official who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations and left government last year. “It’s truly widespread and far-reaching across all sides of the government. There are so many regulations that impact immigrant communities.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and other federal law enforcement officers, detained an immigrant from Ecuador outside a court hearing in New York last July.Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Overseeing the effort is Stephen Miller, one of Mr. Trump’s most influential aides and the architect of his immigration agenda, who has argued that many newcomers to the United States are a threat to American identity, security and prosperity.

“At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands,” he said on X last year.

Mr. Miller has asked White House officials to work with federal agencies to make sure they are using regulations against immigrants throughout the areas of American life they oversee, according to two former administration officials, especially to strip away the services that encourage what he calls “welfare migration.”

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that Mr. Trump’s immigration policy “will always be doing what’s best for the American people.”

Some of the legal immigrants affected by the strategy include permanent residents and people granted refugee status or asylum, as well as their families.

Federal officials are planning regulatory changes to prevent American-born children from receiving federal day care subsidies if one or more of their parents are not citizens. They have banned all noncitizens, including green card holders, from obtaining government-backed, small business loans. And they have issued a rule barring many immigrants from acquiring the commercial driver’s licenses needed to work as truckers.

The administration has also said it may require some green card applicants to return overseas, leading to confusion and fear.

Other changes have targeted the several million unauthorized immigrants who have applied for asylum after fleeing their home countries. Asylum seekers are generally allowed to work while they wait for immigration courts to resolve their cases — a process that can take years.

But this year, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services proposed a rulethat would effectively prevent people seeking asylum from receiving work permits. The move could be hugely consequential: Over the last fiscal year, more than two million asylum seekers received or renewed their permits, according to federal data.

Both Republicans and Democrats have argued that the overwhelmed asylum system needs reform. Mr. Miller has said the program has become a back door for migrants to remain in the country, even if they have little hope of ultimately receiving asylum.

In announcing the rule change, U.S.C.I.S. said the practice of allowing asylum seekers to work had encouraged migrants to file “frivolous, fraudulent, or otherwise meritless” claims.

“Working in the United States is a privilege, not a right,” said Zach Kahler, a spokesman for the agency.

George Fishman, who worked at the Department of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration, said Mr. Miller had returned to the White House better prepared for his policies to survive court challenges than during Mr. Trump’s first term.

“The administration has a much higher batting percentage in terms of making these major changes,” said Mr. Fishman, who is now at the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies.

The administration has also sought to cut off undocumented immigrants from financial services. This month, Mr. Trump signed an executive order urging banks to scrutinize the immigration status of their customers.

And federal agents initiated a wide-ranging investigation into whether immigrants were opening bank and credit card accounts through fraud, according to previously unreported records reviewed by The Times. Mr. Miller has expressed deep interest in the subject, according to people with knowledge of his comments who were not authorized to discuss them.

By law, undocumented immigrants are allowed to open financial accounts, provided they present legitimate documents, such as consular identification cards, passports, or the identity cards or drivers licenses issued mainly by Democratic-led states.

The investigation, called Operation Pickpocket, failed to document widespread fraud, instead finding that most people had lawfully opened the accounts with valid ID, according to the records and a federal official not authorized to talk publicly about the matter.

While Mr. Miller contends that immigrants eligible for social welfare programs are a drain on taxpayers, research suggests they actually use public benefits less than native-born Americans, and provide needed labor.

Undocumented people generally cannot enroll in federal health and welfare programs. But a Clinton-era policy has allowed them to gain access to some health programs, including about 1,600 federally funded community health clinics, which provide free or low-cost health and dental care.

Last July, the Trump administration announced it would roll back that policy. Patients would be required to submit documentation of their immigration status in order to receive treatment.

After 20 states and the District of Columbia sued, a federal court last summer paused those requirements. But some communities moved to enforce them anyway, out of fear of retribution by Mr. Trump.

In Santa Barbara, Calif., a wealthy area that relies on many immigrant service workers, local officials announced last September that the county’s five federally funded health clinics would stop treating the roughly 7,500 undocumented immigrants they served. At a public hearing last fall, officials said they feared that the Trump administration would seek retribution by clawing back unrelated federal grants.

“If the hammer comes down, do we risk losing funding for other programs that serve other vulnerable people?” said Joan Hartmann, a Santa Barbara County supervisor.

The county later backtracked after public outcry.

Still, doctors and officials at clinics in Santa Barbara and across the country told The Times that they had seen a significant drop in patients.

“The clinic became a ghost town,” said Sandra Polichetti, a registered nurse at one of the Santa Barbara county clinics, who was speaking on behalf of her union, the Service Employees International Union Local 620. “The patients stopped coming, out of fear.”

The administration is also moving to restrict immigrants’ access to child care. The policy change to ban undocumented immigrants from community health clinics would also end their eligibility for Head Start, a free preschool program for poor children.

And while some legal immigrant children younger than 5 currently qualify for federal child care subsidies, administration officials are planning to add a five-year waiting period, a step that would essentially ensure that the children age out of the benefit by the time they become eligible.

Mr. Trump’s signature policy bill also prevented the federal child tax credit from benefiting children who are U.S. citizens — if their parents are undocumented.

Gabriel and Ana Lorenzo have four American-born daughters. Three of the girls — ages 13, 11 and 7 — are young enough to qualify for the tax credit. Like millions of other undocumented immigrants, the Lorenzos have filed taxes for years.

Without the credit, the family’s refund sank from $3,500 last year to a projected $302, according to tax documents they shared with The Times.

“We have rent and bills to pay,” said Mr. Lorenzo, who works for a construction company.

Ms. Lorenzo, who underwent a hysterectomy, had to return to her job as a cleaner earlier than her doctors had recommended, she said, to help make up the family’s financial shortfall.

Like the Lorenzos, many undocumented immigrants live in mixed families with spouses or children who are U.S. citizens.

This year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said it planned to bar such mixed families from living in public housing. Under previous rules, only one member of a household had to be a legal resident. The department said the move could displace roughly 20,000 families.

Scott Turner, the housing secretary, argued for the change in a Washington Post opinion piece earlier this year, saying that previous administrations had “systematically neglected American families” by allowing ineligible residents to live in public housing, leaving many Americans on waiting lists.

The Small Business Administration cited a similar justification in announcing it would back loans only to businesses fully owned by U.S. citizens — a move that excluded green card holders.

Sergio Espinoza, a U.S. citizen born in Peru, runs a consulting firm for restaurants and has a credit line from the agency. He had hoped to grow his Massachusetts-based company by offering shares to his noncitizen employees as part of their compensation.

But doing so now would mean losing his federal financing.

“We would completely shoot ourselves in the foot for any kind of access to capital,” Mr. Espinoza said.

Alan Rappeport contributed reporting. Emily Powell contributed research.

A correction was made on

May 30, 2026

A caption on an earlier version of this story misstated when a photograph was taken. The photograph was shot earlier this month, not last May.

Nicholas Nehamas is a Washington correspondent for The Times, focusing on the Trump administration and its efforts to transform the federal government.

Miriam Jordan reports from a grass roots perspective on immigrants and their impact on the demographics, society and economy of the United States.

Coral Davenport covers energy and environment policy, with a focus on climate change, for The Times.

Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.“

SCOTUS Just Changed the Rules for November's Elections

2026-06-04T18:39:22.514-04:00

This EXPLOSIVE U.S. Senate Debate About Africa EXPOSED What's REALLY Coming...

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What happened when a tiny school district refused to ‘bend the knee’ to Trump and ICE | Vermont | The Guardian

2026-06-03T12:36:47.705-04:00

What happened when a tiny school district refused to ‘bend the knee’ to Trump and ICE

"In Winooski, Vermont, where more than a third of children are English learners, a school superintendent is taking a stand to protect immigrant students

A reading class at Winooski high school in Winooski, Vermont, on 7 April 2026. Photograph: Oliver Parini for The Hechinger Report

On an April morning at Winooski high school, the day started with a writing prompt: Do you feel safe in school? Why or why not?

The students – whose families hail from across the globe and speak Arabic, Nepali, Spanish, Somali and more – wrote their responses before reading them aloud.

“I feel safe in school because I saw the school doors are locked every time,” one student said.

“ICE can’t come in,” said another.

The sense of security students feel in this multilingual learner class at the Vermont high school is hard-won. Since the start of the second Trump administration, the federal government has investigated schools for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, rescinded a policy protecting students on school grounds from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests and threatened school districts with the loss of federal funding. Administration officials have also encouraged states to challenge a decades-old supreme court decision guaranteeing undocumented students’ right to public schooling.

While many districts have chosen to go quiet or self-censor, the Winooski school system and its superintendent, Wilmer Chavarria, have taken the opposite approach.

Wilmer Chavarria is the superintendent of the Winooski school district. Photograph: Oliver Parini/Oliver Parini for The Hechinger Report

Last year, this small district of about 800 students was the first in Vermont to pass a sanctuary policy aimed at protecting students from immigration enforcement while at school. Chavarria also refused to sign a document from the Trump administration saying it was complying with the federal ban on DEI efforts in schools.

This was despite the district being directly affected by federal policies. Last year, Chavarria, a naturalized citizen, was detained for several hours by immigration officials at the Houston airport while on his way back from visiting family in Nicaragua. Over Thanksgiving break, a second-grader was detained with his mother by federal agents. In early December, the Winooski school district was the target of racist messages and phone calls after a video of a student raising the Somali flag on a pole outside the high school went viral on social media.

While there have been no direct threats by the Trump administration to pull Winooski’s federal funding, which accounts for 6% of the district’s annual budget, Chavarria said he was preparing for the possibility.

“When somebody wants us to lose funding, we’re going to lose it anyways. The difference is, did we lose it while bending the knee, or did we lose it while standing up for our values?” Chavarria said. “Either way, the outcome will be the same.”

Nestled along the Winooski River on the outskirts of Burlington, this 1.5-sq-mile community is the most diverse district in a state that ranks among the nation’s whitest. Nearly 60% of students are people of color and more than a third are learning to speak English.

For more than three decades, the town and neighboring region have been a federal refugee resettlement community, accepting hundreds of immigrants annually who are fleeing conflict from Bhutan, Somalia, Bosnia and Syria, among other countries. Last year, the Trump administration decreased the admissions cap for refugees into the US from 125,000 in 2025 to 7,500 in 2026, the lowest level since the program’s inception. So far, about 50 refugees, all from South Africa, have relocated to Vermont this year.

Chavarria, 37, joined Winooski schools in 2023 after serving as director of equity and education support systems in another Vermont district. Born in Nicaragua, he didn’t learn English until high school, a background that resembles many of the Winooski students he serves. His actions on behalf of immigrant students have built him widespread support locally.

“Wilmer has been a brave voice in a time in our country where that’s being punished,” said Robin Merritt, a parent of three children in the district.

The sanctuary schools policy is a key reason. The guidance formally outlined in Winooski’s policy reaffirms that staff will not share student data with immigration officials. It also restricts agents’ access to campus without a signed judicial warrant, among other steps. In May, after advocacy from Chavarria and others, the Vermont legislature passed a law modeled after Winooski’s policy, requiring all schools in the state to have immigration enforcement protocols.

Ignacia Rodriguez Kmec, policy counsel at the nonprofit National Immigration Law Center, said clear policies like this one not only protect students, but also staff, who may not know what immigration agents are allowed to do on school grounds.

“You want to be able to show that you support all families, including immigrant families, that they ideally should participate and not be afraid of coming to school,” she said.

A 2022 study found that children from families with mixed citizenship status were more likely to earn As and less likely to report problems with their teachers and peers if they attended a school that had a “safe zone” policy restricting immigration enforcement on campus.

“I really see the impact in the classroom,” said Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver, who teaches English and history at Winooski high and was Vermont’s teacher of the year in 2025. “When kids feel seen and heard and valued in our district and community, it shows up in the work they’re doing.”

Caitlin Macleod Bluver teaches at Winooski high school. Photograph: Oliver Parini/Oliver Parini for The Hechinger Report

A desire to reassure immigrant families was the reason Chavarria decided to raise the Somali flag on school grounds on 5 December, three days after Donald Trump referred to Somalis as “garbage” in a cabinet meeting. When a video of the flag went viral on rightwing social media, staff had to temporarily take down the district’s website and social media accounts and unplug school phones because of death threats.

Despite the onslaught, the staff kept the Somali flag up, beside the US and Vermont flags, through the following week to show support for Somali students, who make up about 9% of the school system’s student population.

Chavarria – who, with his husband, stayed at a hotel for a few days following the episode after receiving death threats – said he believed if more school leaders publicly and vocally pushed back on Trump administration policies, Winooski wouldn’t be as big a target for hate.

“It does feel like we are alone in an ocean,” he said.

Inside the Winooski school building this spring, there were visible traces of the challenges of the past year. Since the deluge of death threats in December, doors separating hallways are locked, requiring a staff member to let students through sections of the building throughout the day.

A table with “Know your rights” and “Conoce tus derechos” emblazoned across a banner sits off to the side, with documents translated into more than half a dozen languages telling families how to organize their documents and talk to children about ICE.

Still, outside of school walls, the district has not been able to keep all students safe. In the weeks following the second-grader’s detention in November, teachers wrote letters of support appealing to immigration officials and organized a fundraiser for emergency resources and legal fees. Erin Hurley, a multilingual teacher who taught the boy, said detention center officials denied her request to send his schoolwork to him.

Letters of support hang on the walls of the Winooski school district. Photograph: Oliver Parini for The Hechinger Report

During phone calls, the mother told Winooski staff that her son wasn’t doing well at the detention center in Dilley, Texas. After seven weeks, and despite having a lawyer fighting for their release, the family decided to self-deport.

In the last year, Hurley and other staff members at the school district have volunteered to be temporary guardians for several students whose parents worry about being detained.

“I feel so disgusted that our country has come to this. These families make our community so much brighter. They contribute to Vermont so much,” Hurley said.

Back in Winooski high school’s multilingual learners class, their teacher turned to a new topic: astronauts onboard Artemis II had just released photos from the moon, the farthest any human has ever traveled from Earth. She pulled the images up on a screen for the class to see.

They had a million questions. Is that photo artificial intelligence? How do the astronauts have access to the internet? Why didn’t they land on the moon?

For a few minutes, their thoughts were 250,000 miles away. Then, it was time to practice reading and writing in English again.

This story was produced by the Hechinger Report, a non-profit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter."

What happened when a tiny school district refused to ‘bend the knee’ to Trump and ICE | Vermont | The Guardian

Blanche Says Justice Dept. Won’t Proceed With Trump’s $1.8 Billion Fund

2026-06-03T00:02:24.298-04:00

Blanche Says Justice Dept. Won’t Proceed With Trump’s $1.8 Billion Fund

“Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the withdrawal of a $1.8 billion fund proposal to compensate individuals claiming unfair prosecution. The fund, initially linked to a settlement involving former President Trump, faced backlash from Republicans and was deemed a potential political liability. While the fund proposal is scrapped, Blanche will maintain an order blocking IRS investigations into Trump and his associates for existing tax violations.

The acting attorney general told lawmakers that he would leave in place an order forcing the I.R.S. to drop investigations into President Trump, his family and his businesses.

June 2, 2026Updated 10:33 p.m. ET

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, made clear to a House committee on Tuesday that the fund proposal would be permanently withdrawn.Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

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Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said on Tuesday he was withdrawing a proposal to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people claiming to be victims of unfair prosecution, amid a revolt among Republicans who saw it as an ethical and political disaster.

“We’re not moving forward with the fund, period,” Mr. Blanche told members of a House Appropriations subcommittee. He repeated himself to make clear that he meant the fund proposal would be permanently withdrawn.

His statement could break an impasse with Senate Republicans, who had demanded the fund be scrapped as a precondition for passing a major immigration enforcement bill. Opponents had described the proposal as a slush fund for allies of President Trump.

But Mr. Blanche said he would leave in place an order he signed last month that would, in effect, block the I.R.S. from investigating Mr. Trump, his family and his businesses for existing tax violations.

“Nothing has changed with that,” said Mr. Blanche, who added that the tax order would not shield Mr. Trump and his associates from future investigations.

Outraged Democrats accused Mr. Blanche, the president’s former defense lawyer, of cutting a sweetheart deal that would let the president and his family avoid a potential $100 million penalty.

“So the blanket immunity is, is not something that you’re going to move back on?” asked Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut who accused Mr. Blanche of prioritizing the president’s financial interests over the public good.

“You do not belong in this job,” she added.

While Mr. Blanche has now taken the fund off the table, much political damage has already been done. In addition, the unusually favorable tax deal provides Democrats with a potentially potent line of attack in the midterm elections — that Republicans support shielding a billionaire president from tax penalties at a time when many Americans are struggling financially.

Democrats repeatedly requested that Mr. Blanche commit to rescind, in writing, his order creating the payout fund.

“You started it, you established it in writing, so it just makes sense to rescind it in writing,” said Representative Grace Meng, Democrat of New York.

“I’m not committing to put anything in writing,” he said, adding that he would abide by his word and would take the request under advisement.

The testimony came a day after the department committed to abiding by a federal judge’s order pausing the fund’s implementation until at least June 12, a decision some administration officials privately said could provide an off-ramp to unwind the plan.

Mr. Blanche, appearing last month before the Senate Appropriations Committee, had offered few details about how it would be implemented, and declined to guarantee that the money would not be doled out to those who ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Trump had discussed backing off the plan to establish the fund, bankrolled by taxpayers, which was announced last month immediately after he agreed to settle a $10 billion lawsuit he had filed against the I.R.S. over the leak of his tax returns.

Mr. Blanche has said he did not directly participate in the secretive negotiations that led to the settlement.

He had privately expressed concerns about a deal. But he determined that the plan, created by a subordinate and moved forward by Mr. Trump’s private lawyers, including Boris Epshteyn, passed legal muster and assented, according to officials briefed on the talks.

Critics have accused the acting attorney general, Mr. Trump’s former lead defense lawyer, of sacrificing his department’s independence to serve a president he still views as a client.

In a wide-ranging podcast interview with the Fox News host Sean Hannity released on Tuesday, a relaxed Mr. Blanche systematically attacked all the prosecutors who had overseen cases against the president, offering an unapologetic defense of his pursuit of Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution.

Mr. Blanche, ditching his standard suit for a polo shirt, assailed the former special counsels Robert S. Mueller III and Jack Smith, who had handled federal investigations into Mr. Trump. Mr. Blanche also attacked state and local prosecutors, including Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, and Letitia James, the New York attorney general, who had pursued cases against Mr. Trump.

Mr. Blanche openly talked about the so-called grand conspiracy investigation that seeks to tie many of those inquiries together in a single purported plot to deprive Mr. Trump of his rights, breaking sharply with a Justice Department policy that bars the public discussion of ongoing inquiries, particularly those involving grand juries.

“There is a grand conspiracy investigation, correct?” Mr. Hannity asked, in an interview recorded over the Memorial Day weekend.

“Yes, absolutely,” Mr. Blanche responded. “One hundred percent.”

Mr. Blanche then revealed information about two grand juries, which typically sit in secret, hearing evidence in the case. He agreed with Mr. Hannity that one had been empaneled in Florida and the second in another state.

Mr. Blanche even disclosed some targets of the grand conspiracy case by name: James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director; John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director; and James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence.

“Let’s talk about individuals,” Mr. Hannity said. “Comey? Brennan? Clapper?”

“Yeah,” Mr. Blanche said.

Nonetheless, Mr. Blanche and other senior officials have tried to blunt Mr. Trump’s attempt to monetize his grievances by obtaining government compensation for the leak of his tax returns.

The fund proposal allowed the president to drop his suit while creating a mechanism to provide payments to supporters who claimed they were also targeted unfairly.

“What we did was entirely legal and appropriate,” Mr. Blanche told Mr. Hannity. “And again, the Trump family gets nothing.”

But that proposal prompted a revolt among Senate Republicans, some of whom berated Mr. Blanche during a contentious meeting at the Capitol last month.

On Monday, the department had signaled that it was re-evaluating the situation, but stopped short of pulling the plug, saying in a statement that it would abide by the ruling in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia temporarily suspending payouts.

But that initially did little to ease the concerns of Republican senators, who reacted with revulsion to a plan they viewed as an ethical minefield and a potential political liability in midterm elections already made treacherous by Mr. Trump’s declining popularity.

Democrats pledged to attach amendments to legislation that would defund the effort, adding to demands by Republicans for the Trump administration to kill the plan outright.

Annie Karni contributed reporting.

A correction was made on

June 2, 2026

An earlier version of this article misidentified the panel that Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, appeared before on Tuesday. It was a House Appropriations subcommittee, not the House Appropriations Committee.

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.”

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Justice Roberts RUNS SCARED from the MONSTER he CREATED

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Hegseth Strikes Female and Black Navy Officers From Promotion List

2026-06-02T09:27:58.429-04:00

Hegseth Strikes Female and Black Navy Officers From Promotion List

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed nine Navy officers from the promotion list for one-star admiral, disproportionately targeting women and minority officers. This move, which appears to violate Pentagon rules, raises concerns about Hegseth’s anti-diversity stance and its impact on the military’s top ranks. Critics argue that Hegseth’s actions undermine the merit-based promotion system and create an atmosphere of anxiety among senior military officers.

The defense secretary’s decision to block the officers’ promotions appears driven by his anti-diversity stance rather than based on merit.

June 1, 2026

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s removal of at least seven officers from the list appears to violate rules governing the promotion system, according to current and former defense officials.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Leer en español

In a move that disproportionately targets women and minority officers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of nine Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior Navy admirals.

The net result of Mr. Hegseth’s intervention is a slate of 22 nominees to be one-star admirals that bears little resemblance to the broader force these officers will help lead.

Three of the officers removed by Mr. Hegseth from the promotion list are women and two are Black men. An additional four are white men.

Mr. Hegseth’s actions, which appear to violate the rules governing a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit-based, were described by five current and former defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.

No female officers were included on the new one-star list, which was released publicly in late May, despite the fact that women make up about 21 percent of the active-duty Navy. The list appears to include only two nonwhite officers, even though sailors who identify as racial minorities make up about 38 percentof the active-duty Navy.

Mr. Hegseth’s removal of the officers from the one-star list is highly unusual, said the current and former defense officials. According to Pentagon rules, the defense secretary is supposed to pull officers from the list only for moral, mental, physical or professional failings that raise questions about the officers’ fitness to lead.

Mr. Hegseth’s actions are the latest in a series of firings and personnel interventions that appear to be driven by his anti-diversity politics rather than the officers’ performance. Taken together, they could reshape the military’s top ranks for years to come.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, declined to say why Mr. Hegseth pulled the officers off the Navy one-star list. “Military promotions are given to those who have earned them,” Mr. Parnell said. “The department will never consider the color of a service member’s skin or their gender as a factor in promotions.” The Navy declined to comment.

Since taking office, Mr. Hegseth has fired or sidelined nearly three dozen senior military officers as part of a broader campaign designed to purge the Pentagon of leaders he has disparaged as “foolish,” “reckless” and “woke.” He has consistently refused to explain why he has chosen to fire officers or pull them from promotion lists.

His scrutiny has fallen heavily on female and minority officers, who have borne the brunt of the dismissals. Nearly 60 percent of the senior officers Mr. Hegseth has fired are female or Black, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in recent Senate testimony. Women and minorities currently account for fewer than 20 percent of all generals and admirals.

“You are hollowing out the military’s bench of experience and highest-performing senior officers, while making young officers wonder if they should continue to serve,” Mr. Reed told Mr. Hegseth at another recent hearing.

Among those dismissed were Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy.

Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti speaks during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on her nomination for reappointment to the grade of admiral and to be Chief of Naval Operations in 2023.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

Earlier this year, Mr. Hegseth also removed four colonels — two Black men and two women — from the Army’s list of nominees for one-star general over the objections of Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll. Mr. Driscoll insisted that the officers had a long history of exemplary service and had done nothing wrong.

Officers selected for one-star rank are chosen by a board of admirals or generals who review hundreds of personnel files over the course of meetings that can span two weeks. Only about 5 percent of those eligible for promotion to one-star are chosen, making it the most competitive board in the U.S. military.

The lists are then reviewed by the service secretaries and the defense secretary, who under Pentagon rules may strike names in limited circumstances, like the emergence of new information that raises questions about the officers’ qualifications for service.

The unpredictability of Mr. Hegseth’s interventions has created an atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust among the military’s top ranks, military officials said.

The lack of information has exasperated Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike. In April, Representative Austin Scott, Republican of Georgia, pressed Gen. Christopher C. LaNeve, the acting Army chief of staff, on whether Mr. Hegseth had pulled the names of officers from that service’s one-star list as first reported in The New York Times.

“I’m less worried about the race and the gender than if he did or he didn’t do it,” Mr. Scott said. “Did he pull four names from the list, as has been reported?”

General LaNeve, who had taken over after Mr. Hegseth fired his predecessor, Gen. Randy George, said that the congressman would have to ask Mr. Hegseth.

“Well, if I could get anybody over there to respond, I would,” Mr. Scott replied.

Two weeks later, when Mr. Hegseth appeared before the House Armed Services Committee, he acknowledged that he had pulled names from the Army one-star list, but declined to explain the specific grounds for their removal.

“We don’t talk about that out of respect for those officers,” he said. Instead, he spoke broadly of the need to correct for years of “gender and demographic engineering” that he asserted had blunted the effectiveness of U.S. troops on the battlefield.

In a break with protocol, Mr. Hegseth also urged senior Navy officials to include Capt. William Francis Jr., a Navy SEAL who serves as Mr. Hegseth’s special assistant, on the one-star list, current and former Navy officials said. Captain Francis’ lack of command experience made him ineligible for promotion under the board’s rules and he was not selected, officials said.

At a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing, Representative Chrissy Houlahan, Democrat of Pennsylvania and an Air Force veteran, asked Mr. Hegseth whether he had ordered the Navy to add a special operations officer who lacked the necessary command time to the Navy’s promotion list for admiral.

“I’m not aware of what you’re referring to,” Mr. Hegseth replied. His response was, at best, misleading.

The officers struck from the Navy one-star list seem to have been targeted because they took part in some diversity-related event years or even decades earlier, current and former Navy officials said.

One highly respected officer whose promotion was pulled had served as a surface warfare officer, completed the Navy’s advanced nuclear power school and was selected to be a top aide to a four-star admiral in the Pentagon.

She was singled out by Mr. Hegseth shortly after her name appeared on a website that said it was working to purge “woke” military officers. The site noted that the officer had worked as a “diversity liaison officer” two decades ago, responsible for helping the Navy recruit and retain women and minorities.

Another female officer targeted by Mr. Hegseth served as a Navy pilot and foreign area officer, interacting with militaries around the world. The third female officer is a physician who leads a major Navy medical command.

Before he was selected by President Trump to serve in the Pentagon, Mr. Hegseth had opposed the inclusion of women in combat jobs. Since then he has moderated his position, saying that women should be able to serve in combat roles, as they have since 2013, if they can meet the same physical standards as men.

Still, his actions have raised questions about whether he believes that female officers are fit to serve at the most senior levels of the U.S. military, his critics said.

In late May, Jessica Ruttenber, who retired as a lieutenant colonel and flew Air Force refueling tankers in Iraq and Afghanistan, noticed the striking absence of any women on the Navy’s one-star list.

She did not know that Mr. Hegseth had pulled female officers off the list.

“The military I left in 2021 feels very different from the one we are watching today,” she wrote in an online essay. “In some ways, it feels like we are watching hard-won progress move backward in real time. That is the part I cannot shake. Because if I am honest, I now find myself wondering: Would I want my own children to enter a system like this?”

Greg Jaffe covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military for The Times.

Kate Kelly is an investigative reporter covering government accountability for The Times.“

Trump Administration Live Updates: President Said to Be Backing Off Plans for $1.8 Billion Fund After Backlash

2026-06-01T19:28:31.795-04:00

Trump Administration Live Updates: President Said to Be Backing Off Plans for $1.8 Billion Fund After Backlash

“President Trump is reportedly backing off his plan for a $1.8 billion fund to compensate individuals claiming unfair prosecution by the government. The plan faced backlash from both Democrats and Republicans, with concerns it would reward Trump’s political allies. The Justice Department stated it would abide by a court order halting the fund’s disbursement, which some senators interpreted as a clear acknowledgment of the fund’s unworkability.

Updated

9 minutes ago

President Trump at the White House last week.Doug Mills/The New York Times

What We’re Covering Today

Payout Fund: President Trump is backing off his plan for a $1.8 billion fund to pay people he says have been victimized by the federal government, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Mr. Trump has not abandoned his immunity from audits, which also emerged as part of a deal with the I.R.S. to drop his lawsuit against the agency. It was not clear whether word that he planned to drop the plan would satisfy skeptical lawmakers, including many Republicans, who had revolted over the fund, imperiling the passage of a bill to fund the president’s immigration crackdown. Read more ›
U.S. Military: Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, recently blocked the promotions of at least seven Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior admirals to rise to one-star admiral rank. His actions appeared to violate promotion system rules and disproportionally affected women and minority officers. Read more ›

Beyond the legal challenges, President Trump has also faced increasing pressure from both parties on Capitol Hill to torpedo the fund.Allison Robbert for The New York Times

President Trump is backing off his plan to establish a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they were victims of unfair prosecution by the government, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the president’s thinking, said he had been leaning for days toward scrapping the fund, which critics have characterized as a scheme to reward Mr. Trump’s political allies with public benefits.

June 1, 2026, 6:22 p.m. ET1 hour ago

Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, said that “it is not enough for me to have the courts pushback” on the weaponization fund and echoed what many of his colleagues have said, that the statement from the Department of Justice did not satisfy all of his concerns. “I have a lot of unanswered questions,” he said adding that he would support “pretty robust” guardrails on any future effort to move ahead with the fund.

June 1, 2026, 6:04 p.m. ET1 hour ago

Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, told reporters on Monday that the Trump administration should clearly state that it is giving up on the $1.8 billion fund that stands to benefit President Trump’s allies if it had changed its position. Earlier today, the Justice Department said in a statement that it was abiding by the court order stopping disbursement of funds for now, but said it disagreed with the court’s decision. “I appreciate them saying that, but they don’t have a choice,” Kennedy told reporters. “They have to abide by “the federal district court order.”

June 1, 2026, 5:19 p.m. ET2 hours ago

On Capitol Hill, a Republican leadership aide said Republican senators interpreted the Justice Department’s statement, which said that it would abide by a federal judge’s temporary order not to proceed with any steps to activate the fund until at least June 12, as a clear walk back and a clear acknowledgement that the fund was unworkable. The aide said that this move was what members have been asking for, although it was not clear whether the statement alone would unlock the votes needed to move ahead with a narrow reconciliation bill.

June 1, 2026, 5:12 p.m. ET2 hours ago

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas who just lost his primary to a Trump-backed candidate last week, said that he was satisfied with the Justice Department statement on the fund, which threatened to hold up passage of a reconciliation bill. “It makes it moot,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll get the reconciliation bill done. They said they’ll accept the ruling of the judge, that makes it moot.”

June 1, 2026, 4:40 p.m. ET3 hours ago

Trump is backing off of his plan to establish a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they were victims of government “weaponization” by Democrats, according to two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

His move, which he not commented on publicly, came as the fund drew widespread backlash from Democrats and Republican senators.

The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean observation system that was put in place a decade ago to monitor coastal environments, marine ecosystems and powerful currents that affect the global climate.

The National Science Foundation said it would send ships in June to begin removing more than 900 deep-sea instruments anchored off Oregon, Washington State, Alaska, North Carolina, and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea.

A federal judge in Washington ruled on Monday that protesters criticizing President Trump near the Capitol could not be forced to take down a flag reading “8647,” finding no indication that the message could be taken as a true threat against the president’s life.

Judge Randolph D. Moss wrote that despite efforts by police to compel the group, an advocacy organization called Accountability Now USA, to remove the flag and other signage over the course of several months, he concluded it was clear that the flag and its message were protected speech. The dispute in some ways mirrored the criminal case against James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, who was indicted on a charge of making a threat against the president over a photograph posted to Instagram that depicted seashells on a beach arranged into the same numbers.

The Defense Department has designated its press office as a classified space, off limits to journalists, further restricting interactions between its public-facing representatives and the reporters assigned to cover the military.

The move, confirmed by the department’s acting press secretary, follows a change in policy from earlier this year that required journalists to have an official escort at all times when visiting the Pentagon.

A divided federal appeals court on Monday blocked the Trump administration from removing more than two dozen transgender service members from the military while a lawsuit fighting their dismissal is decided.

The 2-to-1 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is the latest legal salvo over a divisive policy that has forced out thousands of troops and left thousands of others in limbo for more than a year.

June 1, 2026, 4:56 p.m. ET2 hours ago

A federal judge on Monday blocked Trump administration efforts to strip the the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a Colorado-based climate research laboratory, of its oversight of a key computing center in Wyoming. The administration’s plan to transfer stewardship of the facility, announced in February, has already caused a “flood of resignations” by scientists and threatens the future of the lab, wrote R. Brooke Jackson, a senior U.S. district judge in Colorado, in a preliminary injunction against the National Science Foundation.

There is evidence the decision may have been driven by political retribution against Colorado leaders, and it may have violated federal law on administrative procedures, Judge Jackson said. N.S.F. officials declined to comment.

The center, known as NCAR, has managed the supercomputing center — used by more than 4,000 climate and weather scientists to model atmospheric conditions and study air pollution, wildfires, hurricanes and solar storms — since the facility opened in 2012. The Trump administration said it was transferring oversight of the facility to an unspecified third party.

The Energy Department has issued new guidance that could prevent people from receiving rebates for replacing gas appliances with electric ones.

The guidance, which took effect on Friday, would prevent states from offering rebates to people who buy an electric stove to replace a gas range. It would also end rebates for similar swaps of ovens, dryers, heat pumps and water heaters.

The net result of Mr. Hegseth’s intervention is a slate of 22 nominees to be one-star admirals that bears little resemblance to the broader force these officers will help lead.

In late April, a lawyer for the Justice Department told a federal judge that her colleagues had been in the midst of negotiations with a Rhode Island hospital about turning over gender-transition treatment health records, only for the hospital’s lawyers to stop responding.

But Judge Mary S. McElroy of Federal District Court in Rhode Island concluded that was not true. While the government claimed it had not heard from the hospital since February, emails showed the hospital’s lawyers had stayed in close touch.

Former F.B.I. officials are starting a group to help embattled bureau employees grapple with the Trump administration’s rapid efforts to reshape its agency, saying that the work force is under incredible strain under its director, Kash Patel.

The group, called the F.B.I. Support Network, is an offshoot of the Justice Connection organization, made up of former Justice Department employees who offer legal, mental health or job search services to current agency employees.

More than 200 people have now been killed in a bombing campaign by the U.S. military against people it has accused of smuggling drugs in the waters off South America, after a string of deadly attacks over the last week.

The military said on Saturday that three men had been killed in the eastern Pacific during a strike ordered by Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the head of the Southern Command, against a boat that was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations.” Their deaths bring the total killed to at least 202, in more than 60 strikes“

TOP Trump Official Has a NERVOUS BREAKDOWN After Brave Senator EXPOSE SHOCKING Lie Under Oath

2026-06-01T15:32:21.874-04:00

Trump's outrageous behavior yesterday is causing deep concern around the world - YouTube

2026-06-01T10:33:13.441-04:00

Trump's outrageous behavior yesterday is causing deep concern around the world - YouTube

Trump’s Pardons: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

2026-06-01T09:29:57.584-04:00

Full Speech | Jon Ossoff in Atlanta | 05.31.2026

2026-06-01T00:15:24.416-04:00

The Trump-Ruto Secret Deal That Just EXPLODED in Kenya

2026-05-31T19:03:11.195-04:00

Kimberlé Crenshaw: The Woman Who Invented Intersectionality | With Ash Sarkar

2026-05-31T16:28:52.538-04:00

Professor Crenshaw discusses the racism she faced in Italy, a country known for racism, a place that I would never visit due to it’s evil behavior even though my father spent years fighting to liberate it during WWII.

Georgia town’s novel strategy to fight ICE jail plan impresses legal experts | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) | The Guardian

2026-05-31T12:06:41.618-04:00

Georgia town’s novel strategy to fight ICE jail plan impresses legal experts

"Town of Social Circle’s complaint invokes ‘public nuisance’ law that scholars say could have impact for other localities

Timothy Pratt

A group of canvassers opposed to the Ice detention facility proposal in Social Circle, Georgia.Photograph: Dustin Chambers/The Guardian

A small Georgia town’s federal lawsuit opposing the Trump administration’s plans to turn a warehouse into one of the largest immigration detention centers in the US has the potential to create a wide impact as it uses novel legal arguments, experts said.

The town of Social Circle’s complaint goes further than other recently filed lawsuits around the same issues, which assert that the US federal government has not carried out environmental impact assessments for proposed detention centers, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa).

The town’s lawsuit goes on to allege that the homeland security department and ICE have also violated the federal Administrative Procedures Act (APA) – which “requires reasoned decision-making by federal agencies, including consideration of adversely affected interests and any reasonable alternatives”, according to the complaint.

Additionally, the complaint asserts that locating what ICE has called “megacenters” in the small town of about 5,000 residents would violate Georgia’s “public nuisance” law – meaning it would “harm their health, safety, and wellbeing”.

The approach shows that Social Circle “is willing to pursue a new legal theory to defend their rights, to defend their town”, said Adam Lauridsen, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys.

The innovation may prove important. “It’s significant that this is not just an environmental claim, but also raises the two other types of claims,” said Timothy D Lytton, law professor at Georgia State University. “This can frame placing these facilities in these towns in a different way.”

Samantha Hamilton, senior staff attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Atlanta, an organization that opposes ICE’s plans, agrees. “Other claims are focusing on Nepa – ‘They skipped a step and need to do an environmental review,’” she said. But the town’s decision to invoke state public nuisance law “reminds the court that communities are part of this discussion. It reminds of the humanity of the people behind this, and is more in step with what the public is saying.”

The complaint, filed in mid-May, is also the first to come from a local jurisdiction and not a state attorney general. Additionally, the small town sits in a county where nearly 75% voted for Trump. States that have sued over the issue in recent months – New Jersey, Michigan, Maryland and Arizona – are all led by Democrats.

Eric Taylor, city manager for Social Circle, told the Guardian “we went the route we had to go”, given that the proposed plans for his town would triple the local population, putting strains on drinking water and sewage, as well as on local police and ambulances.

The exterior of what is said will be a future ICE holding facility in Social Circle. Photograph: Dustin Chambers/The Guardian

“It’s pretty rare for a 5,000-person town to go up against the federal government in such a high-profile matter,” Lauridsen said.

“It shows that towns have the power to resist ICE and DHS coming in and building detention centers that will hurt the town and its people,” he added.

Lauridsen pointed to the town’s interactions with the agencies after it became clear that the federal government had purchased a warehouse for $128m in early February – nearly five times its assessed value of $29m last year, Taylor told the Guardian shortly after the sale went through.

The Guardian’s earlier reporting, which is cited in the lawsuit, went on to detail the frustrations of Taylor, the city manager, with obtaining answers from the federal government about his concerns over the proposed project’s impacts on the town.

Taylor said he has only spoken with federal officials once, by phone, for less than an hour – and the concerns remain.

A DHS spokesperson wrote in response to a query: “As with any transition, we are reviewing agency policies and proposals. As Secretary Mullin said in his confirmation hearing: ‘I will work with the community leaders and make sure that we are delivering for the American people what the president set out … We want to work with community leaders. We want to be good partners.’”

ICE did not reply.

“The federal government needs to plan things out and explain what its doing – it can’t just shoot first, explain later,” said Lauridsen, referring to the lawsuit’s APA claim.

Lauridsen said the APA’s “protections are now even more significant and relevant”, and that other local jurisdictions “can invoke their rights under the APA to force the government to follow the law – even in other areas outside immigration”.

Allison Gill, a former high-level official at the Department of Veterans Affairs who became known for her podcast Mueller, She Wrote, invoked the APA in a lawsuit she filed against the Department of Justice, over the Trump administration’s $1.776bn “anti-weaponization fund”.

As for public nuisance claims, Lauridsen noted that they are more commonly filed against corporations, and that he expects the federal government to assert it has immunity against such a claim.

Still, he said, the law exists for “people to protect themselves from someone coming in and hurting their environment and way of life”.

Lytton of Georgia State noted that while the case may take a while to be resolved in the courts, its overall approach may have a more immediate impact. “People file lawsuits to change government policy or decisions,” he said. “So it’s not just a matter of winning – if it attracts public interest, that can help [plaintiffs] meet their goals in other ways.”

Taylor pointed to localities around the nation where similar plans for detention centers are afoot.

“We’re all in the same boat … and we need to be learning from each other. If we’re successful, I hope it helps other communities down the line,” he said."

Georgia town’s novel strategy to fight ICE jail plan impresses legal experts | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) | The Guardian

Trump Administration Sees Striking Exodus of Legal Talent

2026-05-31T11:48:58.872-04:00

Trump Administration Sees Striking Exodus of Legal Talent

"The departure of more than 10,000 federal lawyers has left some agencies without sufficient staff and has boosted the ranks of state attorneys general offices and advocacy groups.

May 31, 2026Updated 10:19 a.m. ET

Phil Weiser, the Colorado attorney general, with some of the 22 lawyers from across the federal government that he has hired since May of last year.Rachel Woolf for The New York Times

By Eileen Sullivan and Andrea Fuller

Eileen Sullivan covers the federal government. Andrea Fuller analyzes data sets of public interest, including federal employment records.

President Trump’s upheaval of the federal government has led to an exodus of more than 10,000 lawyers since the beginning of 2025, a striking loss of legal talent that has left some agencies pushing to find attorneys to carry out his agenda.

Roughly one in five lawyers who worked in the government at the end of 2024 had left by March of this year, according to a New York Times analysis of federal employment data.

Along with the usual retirements and turnover in the federal work force, the last year saw deep staffing cuts and the resignations of some staff members who objected to Mr. Trump’s policies. Their departures show how rapidly the president has eroded the image of the federal government as the gold standard for lawyers seeking public service roles.

Instead, many of those looking for such work are flocking to the offices of Democratic state attorneys general and nonprofits that are challenging administration policies in the courts, boosting Mr. Trump’s opponents with seasoned lawyers.

“There’s all this awareness that people in the federal government are dissatisfied, are angry, are frustrated, and want no part of it,” said Phil Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general, who has hired 22 lawyers from across the federal government in the last year. “That’s translating directly to people saying, ‘I want to be part of organizations that actually operate with integrity, that people want to be a part of, that people feel good about doing the right thing.’”

Wariness of the Trump administration is also palpable inside law schools, where many aspiring lawyers who would have once jumped at the chance to hold a federal government job are seeking alternative paths, according to faculty members and students.

“A lot of people my age are asking, ‘Is it worth getting a job, and will that help career wise — having one year of Trump administration experience on your résumé?’” said Matthew Duray, who described himself as a conservative Republican and just finished his first year at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. “Or will that hurt? And that’s the question I guess everyone’s asking, and that’s the bet you have to make ahead of time. But it’s hard to know long term.”

Departures Outpace Hires

While federal agencies brought on about 3,200 lawyers since the beginning of 2025, departures still outpaced hiring, data shows. Lawyers also exited the government at a faster rate than turnover in the overall work force. All told, the federal government employed about 37,000 civilian lawyers at the end of March, 17 percent fewer than it did at the end of 2024.

The Justice Department, which employs more than a quarter of all government lawyers, saw the largest decline in raw numbers. But other agencies — including the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development — lost an even greater share of attorneys.

The only major agency to gain lawyers was the Department of Homeland Security, which saw its legal ranks grow by 21 percent as it drove Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown.

These cabinet agencies lost a greater share of lawyers than overall staff

Agency	Number of lawyers
Agency	Dec. 2024	March 2026	Change
Education	645	303	–53%
Housing	448	271	–40
Interior	542	394	–27
Labor	609	446	–27
Energy	721	530	–26
Agriculture	231	170	–26
Health	1,147	866	–24
Transportation	622	477	–23
Justice	12,975	10,310	–21
Veterans Affairs	1,935	1,640	–15
Defense	4,576	3,880	–15

It is difficult to assess the scope of the impact the legal departures have had on government functions. In some ways, it has meant fewer internal obstacles for a president who saw career lawyers as an impediment to much of his first-term agenda.

But the deficit of lawyers has also meant that there are fewer of them available to defend the administration’s policies in court, and to enforce laws across the government.

“There are a lot of things that just can’t get done without lawyers — appearances in court, reviewing of regulations,” said Erik Heins, a former lawyer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development who was fired last year after raising concerns internally about fair housing lawyers being reassigned to other offices. As of March, the agency employed 40 percent fewer lawyers than it did at the end of 2024.

The Education Department, which shed more than half of its lawyers since the end of 2024, now needs more attorneys for its civil rights division to clear a backlog of discrimination cases, Linda McMahon, the education secretary, recently told Congress.

The Justice Department, which saw its attorney ranks shrink by a fifth, has relaxed its hiring requirements for some positions.

“We are fast-tracking applications to bring talented professionals on board,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, declared in a recruiting ad posted on social media this spring.

But the overt political pressure inside the Justice Department to carry out Mr. Trump’s retribution agenda has turned off some potential candidates.

Are you a federal worker? We want to hear from you.

The Times would like to hear about your experience as a federal worker under the second Trump administration. We may reach out about your submission, but we will not publish any part of your response without contacting you first.

Scott Bourque, who just finished his first year at Georgetown University Law Center, said he declined a Justice Department internship this summer.

“A lot of people I’ve spoken to just in the last few months have said that they would look down on a person if they had a federal job on their résumé that they started during this administration,” he said. “And some people have explicitly said they would see a person willing to go to work at this D.O.J. as somebody they couldn’t trust.”

To bring in more lawyers for the entire government, the Office of Personnel Management recently launched a legal talent recruiting network for people to learn about openings, and to put them on the radar of hiring managers. So far, that outreach has drawn the interest of just 300 people, the agency’s spokeswoman said.

The White House did not respond directly to questions about the climate that has led so many lawyers to leave, or about whether the administration is struggling to hire new ones.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that the administration “remains totally dedicated to empowering and hiring hard-working Americans who are committed to public service and delivering on the president’s many promises to the American people.”

“The individuals who are hired are extremely qualified and talented,” she added.

‘Not a Sustainable Situation’

Mr. Trump’s willingness to blow through traditional guardrails and upend the mission of federal agencies has created a volatile environment far different than what many career lawyers said they experienced in his first administration.

“I was pretty blindsided by Trump 2.0,” said Brandon Jones-Cobb, a former Environmental Protection Agency Clean Air Act lawyer.

“All of the enforcement cases I’ve been developing for years were just on permanent pause,” Mr. Jones-Cobb said. He left the agency during the summer of 2025 to go work for a nonprofit organization, the Center for Biological Diversity. He recently sued the E.P.A. over not enforcing air pollution controls.

The E.P.A.’s legal ranks shrank by about a quarter between the end of 2024 and this March.

Brandon Jones-Cobb, a former Environmental Protection Agency Clean Air Act lawyer, left the agency last summer to go work for a nonprofit organization, the Center for Biological Diversity.Grant Hindsley for The New York Times

Some young lawyers looking to launch their careers are acutely aware of the federal government's shift in enforcement priorities, particularly on the environment.

“It didn’t seem to be the right mesh of what I, and perhaps others, ideologically believed in doing,” said Stanley Shaw, a recent graduate of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. He said he was also worried that if he took a job as an environmental lawyer at the Justice Department, he could be reassigned to conduct civil immigration enforcement. He, too, has turned his focus to looking for work with state and local governments and nonprofits.

For lawyers committed to a particular enforcement mission, the federal government may not be the right place for them to work, said Cara Petersen, a former lawyer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“At least not right now,” said Ms. Petersen, who works at Protect Borrowers, an advocacy group focused on student debt and predatory lending.

The agency had fewer than 200 lawyers in March, a loss of more than 50 percent from the Biden administration. It currently has just two openings posted on its website.

Some prospective applicants have also been rattled by the departures of high-profile attorneys inside the administration.

Earlier this month, the general counsel of the Treasury Department, Brian Morrissey, resigned hours after the government announced it was creating a $1.8 billion fund expected to benefit Mr. Trump’s allies, a maneuver the administration said resolved the president’s pending lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leaking of his tax records. (On Friday, a federal judge reopened the case, saying she wanted to examine allegations that the deal was based on “deception.”)

“We’re seeing a lot of alarm about the recent damage to the tax system and the rule of law,” said Chye-Ching Huang, the executive director of the Tax Law Center at New York University. “And people who want to be part of making things right, but they’re looking for guidance on whether there’s even a viable path to doing that.”

George Washington University’s law school, which is about a 15-minute walk from the White House, is now helping students who want to go into public service find opportunities with state legislatures or city councils.

“What we have done, in response, and we have to move nimbly because of our focus on public service, is we broaden the net of the kinds of public service jobs we can prepare and place our students in,” said Dayna Bowen Matthew, the dean of the law school.

Andrew Mergen, the director of the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, said that he recognizes more people from his government career when he is doing video calls with nonprofit organizations and environmental advocates.

“I know two-thirds of the people, because they were my colleagues at D.O.J.,” said Mr. Mergen, who spent more than 30 years at the Justice Department. “This is a remarkable shift in talent out of the federal government to other places.”

Mr. Weiser, the Colorado attorney general and another Justice Department veteran, said the changes were both an opportunity for attorneys general like him and a painful reality.

“We’re getting talent we wouldn’t have gotten, and we’re getting expertise that’s valuable,” Mr. Weiser said. He noted that Colorado and other states successfully obtained a verdict against the concert giant Live Nation after the federal government backed out of the case mid-trial and settled.

“The states are able to pick up some of the slack, but this is not a sustainable situation,” he added. “We need a Justice Department with high-quality legal talent that operates with integrity.”

Michael C. Bender and Andrew Duehren contributed reporting.

Eileen Sullivan is a Times reporter covering the changes to the federal work force under the Trump administration.

Andrea Fuller is a data journalist at The Times, using data analysis to make sense of complex topics."

Inside the Deal to Drop Trump’s $10 Billion Suit Against the I.R.S.

2026-05-31T11:44:10.901-04:00

Inside the Deal to Drop Trump’s $10 Billion Suit Against the I.R.S.

"Discussions among a group of lawyers with allegiance to the president were closely held. Some senior White House officials were said to have felt blindsided as the agreement took shape.

May 30, 2026

An agreement to set up a $1.8 billion fund to pay people deemed to have been harmed by government “weaponization” and to grant tax benefits to President Trump, his family and businesses was brokered by a tight-knit group of lawyers.Jason Andrew for The New York Times

Time was running out.

President Trump had sued the I.R.S. for $10 billion, and a federal judge was pressing the Justice Department to explain how it could muster an independent defense of the agency against the man who ultimately controlled it.

Behind the scenes, the job of addressing the vexing problem of how to settle the suit fell to a tight-knit group of lawyers, all of whom had allegiance to Mr. Trump.

On one side of the talks was a Justice Department run by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general who once served as Mr. Trump’s criminal defense lawyer.

On the other were the president’s private lawyers, among them Boris Epshteyn, who was a former client of Mr. Blanche’s. Mr. Epshteyn played a significant role in moving forward the deal to end the suit, coordinating and holding discussions with all of the sides involved: Mr. Trump, the president’s personal lawyers and Justice Department officials, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The discussions were so closely held that some senior White House officials told others that they were blindsided, learning of them only once the agreement was nearly complete.

In the end, the lawyers’ solution did not give Mr. Trump what his lawsuit had demanded, which was simply to move funds from the Treasury Department into his own pocket. But the agreement that was reached was still a big victory for the president and his allies: It set up a $1.8 billion fund to pay people deemed to have been harmed by so-called government “weaponization” — possibly including hundreds of rioters charged with storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — and released Mr. Trump and his businesses from potentially costly I.R.S. audits.

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen people who discussed internal deliberations about the I.R.S. suit on the condition of anonymity.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Epshteyn declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said that anyone who believed they were a victim of government weaponization could apply for money from the fund, claiming that many people had been victimized by the Biden administration.

Much is still unknown about how the arrangement came about. But the plan drafted by a group of Trump allies posed conflicts of interest that are remarkable, even for an administration riddled with them.

As questions have mounted about the nature of the deal, the federal judge who oversaw the lawsuit, Kathleen M. Williams, took the extraordinary step on Friday of revisiting the case, asking whether the parties had deceived her.

When the details of the agreement were first revealed two weeks ago, Democrats and former government officials lodged accusations of corruption and self-dealing, and even some Republicans reacted with scornful disbelief. Some G.O.P. senators were so angry they abandoned plans to approve a measure to finance the administration’s immigration crackdown.

Within days of the agreement becoming public, and before the judge raised questions about it, senior administration officials began preparing to get rid of the fund amid the intense blowback. Those discussions were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.

But while the agreement appeared to have emerged abruptly, it fused two ideas that had been kicking around in Mr. Trump’s circle for years: a desire by him and his family to avoid extensive tax audits, and a longing by his allies to obtain financial restitution for legal wrongs they claimed to have suffered during the Biden administration.

Sign up to get Maggie Haberman's articles emailed to you. Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent reporting on President Trump.

In its broad strokes, the plan was in keeping with other maneuvers by Mr. Trump. As president, he has often used the levers of power at his command to serve himself at a moment when he still maintains control over the government, including having the United States accept a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar that he could fly as president and intend to take later. But in establishing a fund that would involve billions in taxpayer money, the deal stands alone.

The president himself has said little about how the agreement came together or who played a role in resolving the suit, which faulted the I.R.S. for the leak of his tax information to The New York Times during his first term. The closest he has come in recent days was a post on social media in which he declared that he had given up “a lot of money” by “allowing” the fund to be created.

“I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!”

Trump v. Trump

Mr. Trump’s lawsuit against the I.R.S. landed at the Justice Department with a thud in late January.

By early spring, lawyers there were already wrestling with the legal dilemma the president’s pleading had created.

After all, to defend the I.R.S. against Mr. Trump, the department would have to fight a sitting president who was technically in charge of the agency and who demanded total loyalty from his subordinates.

Department lawyers were not the only ones who had identified this problem. Judge Williams, an Obama appointee who sits in Miami, had also homed in on it, wondering whether there was actually a conflict to adjudicate, given that Mr. Trump was effectively on both sides of the suit.

The suit contended that the I.R.S. had not done enough to prevent a contractor for the agency, Charles Littlejohn, from leaking to the news media reams of Mr. Trump’s tax information, along with the returns of hundreds of other very wealthy Americans during the president’s first term in office. Even though Mr. Littlejohn was prosecuted by the Biden administration and sentenced to five years in prison, Mr. Trump argued he was owed $10 billion by the I.R.S.

At first, there was a hope inside the Justice Department that lawyers would respond to the suit with a procedural maneuver to side step or delay the case. One option department lawyers quietly discussed was to ask Judge Williams to put the suit on hold until after Mr. Trump left office.

But that never happened. And it left Mr. Blanche and his team in a tight spot: They did not want the Justice Department to go into court and fight the suit, as it normally would, but also did not want to settle it by paying Mr. Trump directly, according to people familiar with their thinking.

Ending the case by funneling taxpayer money straight to the president struck them as politically untenable. Some department officials even worried that doing so could, under a future Democratic administration, expose them to a criminal investigation of conspiracy to defraud the government.

Mr. Trump’s lawsuit against the I.R.S. forced the Justice Department, led by the acting attorney general Todd Blanche, to wrestle with the legal dilemma of potentially fighting a sitting president who has demanded total loyalty from his subordinates.Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Inside the I.R.S., the suit was treated more or less as business as usual, even though the plaintiff was the president. Lawyers at the agency followed normal procedures for responding to claims and prepared a 25-page memo for the Justice Department, outlining their views of the case.

In the memo, the I.R.S. recommended that the department move to dismiss the suit, pointing to two main problems: It had been filed too late and had wrongly blamed the I.R.S. for the actions of Mr. Littlejohn.

I.R.S. officials sent the memo to colleagues in the Treasury Department but it remains unclear whether those Treasury officials ever passed it on to the Justice Department. In fact, no Trump administration lawyer responded to the president’s suit at all — or even made an appearance on the court docket.

What finally pushed Judge Williams into action was a request on April 17 from one of Mr. Trump’s private lawyers, Alejandro Brito — not from a government lawyer — to delay all proceedings in the case for three months. A week later, the judge effectively ordered the Justice Department to tell her whether it intended to defend the I.R.S., giving the department until May 20 to provide an answer.

The pressure of that deadline set off a scramble, as lawyers on both sides of the suit started looking for a way to resolve the case and avoid further scrutiny from the judge.

Central in the negotiations was Trent McCotter, Mr. Blanche’s senior deputy and a rising star in the department, according to people familiar with the talks. He served as one of the administration’s chief interlocutors with personal lawyers in Mr. Trump’s orbit, including Daniel Epstein, who often works with Mr. Epshteyn and once served as a special assistant to Mr. Trump during his first term in the White House.

Ultimately, the discussions about settling the I.R.S. suit were combined with talks about ending two other unusual claims previously filed by Mr. Epstein, who works for America First Legal, the outside group co-founded in 2021 by Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s powerful White House adviser. Those claims demanded that the Justice Department pay the president about $230 million in compensation for the investigation into possible ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign, as well as the well-publicized F.B.I. search of Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for classified documents in 2022.

The idea that emerged was a global settlement of all of the claims that would push Mr. Trump away from the politically damaging effort to take money for himself. Instead it would create a fund for his allies and supporters — including the pardoned Jan. 6 rioters — who believed they had been wronged in the courts by previous Democratic administrations.

Mr. McCotter proposed a patriotic marketing gimmick, setting the fund’s amount at the symbolic sum of $1.776 billion, according to people familiar with the idea.

Still, it was not entirely a new idea.

In mid-2025, Ed Martin, a longtime advocate for the Jan. 6 rioters who was leading the Justice Department’s pardon office and a special working group intended to counteract government weaponization, had proposed a plan to address what he believed was mistreatment of Trump supporters by the legal system, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Martin envisioned a “truth commission” of sorts that would assess accusations of misconduct by the Justice Department and possibly make payouts to worthy claimants.

He even floated the idea to senior administration officials like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary who has long complained that Americans were harmed by the government’s response to Covid-19, according to a person with direct knowledge of the exchange.

Mr. Blanche, who has often clashed with Mr. Martin, rejected the idea, the person said. But with the May 20 deadline quickly approaching, the Justice Department, at Mr. McCotter’s urging, came up with its own plan to redress the supposed past wrongs suffered by the president’s supporters.

The plan was closely based on an Obama-era case called Keepseagle v. Vilsack, a class-action lawsuit that gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Native American farmers to settle accusations of government discrimination. Mr. McCotter took the idea to the Office of Legal Counsel, which offers advice on the law to Justice Department leaders. The office, run by T. Elliot Gaiser, a former clerk for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., blessed the proposal, agreeing that Keepseagle could serve as a model.

When the plan was made public, it faced an avalanche of criticism. The Treasury Department’s top lawyer, a Trump appointee, resigned.

Among the loudest critics were former Justice Department lawyers who had worked on the Keepseagle case, who pointed out that the Keepseagle settlement was overseen by a federal judge after years of litigation and analysis of the claims and evidence.

The resolution to Mr. Trump’s suit against the I.R.S., by contrast, was reached in private by lawyers loyal to the president and without any judicial oversight.

Appearing on CNN in recent days, Mr. Blanche was asked directly who came up with the terms of the agreement and said that there had been negotiations between Mr. Trump’s “outside counsel” and the Justice Department.

But he quickly added, “Not me.”

Broad Immunity From Audits

There was more.

Even as the two sides were hashing out the contours of the fund, there were also discussions about a second agreement that would end the lawsuit: a plan to give the Trump family and their businesses broad protection from I.R.S. investigations of tax returns they had already filed.

The tax immunity agreement was more like a rescue operation than a formal legal settlement. It called for the I.R.S. to absolve Mr. Trump and his businesses of all audits they were currently facing — including a yearslong battle with the tax agency that could have cost the president more than $100 million.

That fight stemmed partly from a refund that Mr. Trump had claimed — and collected — starting in about 2010. He justified the refund by declaring huge business losses, including on his tower in Chicago.

Early in Mr. Trump’s first term in the White House, the matter was put on hold, but it came back to life before he left office.

More recently, the company had entered settlement talks with the agency, laying the groundwork for a potential resolution, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Now, it seemed, the audit would vanish.

Acting as a cheerleader for the overall plan, including the tax deal, was Mr. Epshteyn, Mr. Trump’s top outside legal adviser who has been close to the president for about a decade, both when he was in and out of office.

Mr. Epshteyn played a significant role in moving the proposals forward, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, discussing the issue with Mr. Trump and circulating drafts of the tax agreement to Trump advisers.

While the origins of the tax maneuver remain somewhat obscure, the Justice Department began to assess the proposal about a week before Judge William’s May 20 deadline, according to people familiar with the matter. One of the questions raised was whether giving the Trumps protection against I.R.S. scrutiny would run afoul of a law barring the tax agency from dropping audits at the direction of the president or his aides.

The tax proposal did not end up appearing in the initial document that declared the lawsuit resolved and described the details of the compensation fund. That document was signed by the Justice Department’s No. 3 official, Stanley Woodward Jr., who had worked with Mr. Blanche on Mr. Trump’s defense team and represented several of the president’s close aides in various investigations.

In a curious twist, the tax addendum was posted, without fanfare, on the Justice Department’s website one day after the terms of the main agreement were released. It was a murky piece of writing, full of long sentences stuffed with subordinate clauses and the Trumpian use of words in capital letters. Only Mr. Blanche, and no one from the I.R.S., signed it.

The details of the fund were also somewhat inscrutable. Although the Justice Department had explicitly stated that the Trump Organization and the Trump family were ineligible for the fund, one confusing clause appeared to open the door for them to file claims.

Indeed, officials at the Trump Organization briefly discussed whether to do so, according to people with knowledge of the matter. No decision was made. On Friday, a federal judge in Virginia temporarily froze the fund.

Devlin Barrett and Russ Buettner contributed reporting.

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.

Ben Protess is an investigative reporter at The Times, covering President Trump.

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump."