Fire up to 75% of its staff

EPA plans to eliminate science research office and fire up to 75% of its staff, sources say

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

The Trump administration is planning to cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s science-focused Office of Research and Development (ORD) and fire up to 75% of its employees, according to House Science Committee Democratic staff who reviewed documents about the plan.

The move could eliminate over 1,000 positions in the office, which provides scientific expertise not only for federal regulations but also during times of disaster cleanup. The EPA documents discuss reassigning remaining ORD employees to other parts of the agency, the science committee staff said.

“While no decisions have been made yet, we are actively listening to employees at all levels to gather ideas on how to better fulfill agency statutory obligations, increase efficiency, and ensure the EPA is as up-to-date and effective as ever,” EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said in a statement.

Chris Frey, a former EPA official who led ORD under the Biden administration, told CNN the office provides scientific information critical for decision-making to protect human health during disasters. For instance, ORD worked to identify the health impacts of chemical hazards in the aftermath of the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment and chemical spill.

Frey said “the whole premise” of having this office “is to have some separation between the decisionmakers and the folks who are developing and translating the science, so the science is independent and can be done according to scientific integrity.” ORD also supports many states that don’t have their own scientific research offices to deal with things like harmful algal blooms, wildfire smoke, and cleaning up so-called forever chemicals, Frey added.

House Science Committee ranking member Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, blasted EPA’s move in a statement.

Violated the Constitution

Federal judge blocks dismantling of USAID, saying it "likely violated" the Constitution

From CNN's Katelyn Polantz

A federal judge has indefinitely blocked the dismantling of US Agency for International Development, a major win for groups broadly challenging Elon Musk’s role in the federal government.

The judge also cut off staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing sensitive personal data kept by the agency.

“The court finds that Defendants’ unilateral actions to shut down USAID likely violated the United States Constitution,” Judge Theodore D. Chuang of the US District Court in Maryland said.

Nations denounce.......

European nations denounce Israeli strikes on Gaza

From CNN’s Catherine Nicholls and Hira Humayun

Numerous European countries on Tuesday condemned Israel’s renewed war in Gaza, which killed more than 400 people in the enclave, while urging both sides to respect the ceasefire deal.

Here’s what they are saying:

Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheál Martin condemned Israel’s strikes, noting that they have resulted in “hundreds of civilian deaths.” He called on both Israel and Hamas to respect the ceasefire deal, urging “all sides to step back from the brink of the resumption of an all-out war.”

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that “the civilian casualties from Israeli strikes overnight are appalling,” calling on both parties to “re-engage with negotiations to get hostages out, surge aid, and secure a permanent end to this conflict. Diplomacy, not more bloodshed, is how we get security for Israelis and Palestinians.”

Belgium’s Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot said “the agreement between Israel and Hamas is clear: it provides for a ceasefire and the release of hostages. I denounce the new Israeli strikes and their heavy human toll, which threatens these objectives.” Prevot condemned the blocking of humanitarian aid to civilians and called on all parties to implement the second phase of the ceasefire deal.

Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said that he had spoken to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the “latest alarming reports about the war in Gaza,” adding that “it is crucial that all parties respect the ceasefire and the agreement on the release of the hostages.”

Malta’s Prime Minister Robert Abela called Israel’s overnight strikes on Gaza “barbarous,” saying that Malta’s government “strongly condemns” the attacks.

Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen called for all parties to “respect the ceasefire” and for the release of all remaining hostages. “We expect full protection of civilians and immediate unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid,” she posted to X.

Switzerland’s foreign ministry called for “an immediate return to the ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid.”

Portugal’s foreign ministry called Israel’s strikes on Gaza “deeply alarming,” adding that “all parties must respect the ceasefire agreement and implement its second phase.”

Norway’s foreign minister Espen Barth Eide called the situation a “nightmare” for Palestinian civilians, the hostages, and their families.

Estonia’s foreign ministry said it is “deeply concerned about the escalation of conflict in Gaza, resulting in the tragic loss of innocent lives,” calling on both Israel and Hamas to resume peace negotiations.

Poland’s foreign ministry said it “deplores the renewed hostilities and civilian casualties from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza Strip,” urging “all parties to cease fighting and fully implement the ceasefire to enable the release of all hostages and the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid.”

Slovenia’s foreign ministry also said it is “deeply concerned about the renewed attacks in Gaza, which have tragically claimed innocent lives,” urging Israel to “cease all military operations immediately, allowing for all hostages to be returned and call for the restoration of full humanitarian access. All parties must return to negotiations leading to a lasting peace and a two-state solution.”

António Costa, president of the European Council, said he is “shocked and saddened by the news coming from Gaza and the many civilian casualties following the Israeli airstrikes.” Costa called for the terms of the ceasefire agreement to be respected, for hostages and detainees to be released, and for humanitarian aid to be resumed into Gaza.

End of the world?

"This is only the beginning," Netanyahu warns Hamas

From CNN's Hira Humayun

Israel would continue to fight until its war aims are achieved, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hamas in a televised address on Tuesday.

“This is only the beginning,” Netanyahu said at the military headquarters in Tel Aviv.

He described Israel’s renewed deadly attacks on Gaza as a “return to battle forcefully,” arguing that military pressure is necessary to get the remaining hostages released. The Israeli military would continue fighting Hamas with increasing force, he added.

Netanyahu said negotiations from now on will be “under fire.”

Charge With “Illegal” Abortion

Ken Paxton Finally Found Healthcare Providers to Charge With “Illegal” Abortion

A midwife and a medical assistant in Texas also are accused of practicing medicine without a license.

Madison Pauly

In what appears to be the first arrests of healthcare providers for allegedly violating a post-Roe v. Wade state abortion ban, Maria Margarita Rojas, a midwife working in the region around Houston, and her employee, medical assistant Jose Manuel Cendan Ley, were taken into custody by Texas authorities on Monday.

Court records from Waller County, west of Houston, show that law enforcement initially accused Rojas with practicing medicine without a license, but on Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that he was adding the illegal performance of an abortion to her indictment—a second-degree felony in Texas, carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Ley is facing the same charges.

The New York Times reports that court documents allege that Rojas “attempted an abortion” on a woman on two occasions in March and was “known by law enforcement to have performed an abortion” on another patient this year. In his press release, Paxton claimed that Rojas ran a network of clinics in towns around Houston that “unlawfully employed unlicensed individuals who falsely presented themselves as licensed medical professionals.” The website for the network, Clinicás Latinoamericanas, advertises urgent care services, treatment for chronic illness, and dietary counseling to a Spanish-language community. Paxton’s office said it had filed for a temporary restraining order to shut down the clinics.

On Tuesday, Paxton announced that a third person associated with the clinics, nurse practitioner Rubildo Labanino Matos, whose license is currently on probation, was arrested on March 8 and charged with conspiracy to practice medicine without a license.

“I will always do everything in my power to protect the unborn, defend our state’s pro-life laws, and work to ensure that unlicensed individuals endangering the lives of women by performing illegal abortions are fully prosecuted,” Paxton said in his statement on Monday. “Texas law protecting life is clear, and we will hold those who violate it accountable.”

Maternal deaths have surged in Texas since it enacted its abortion ban, according to an analysis published last month by ProPublica. Dozens more pregnant and postpartum patients died in Texas hospitals in 2022 and 2023, compared to before the pandemic. Sepsis rates likewise rose more than 50 percent among women who were hospitalized after losing their pregnancies in the second trimester. Experts attribute the increasing danger of being pregnant in Texas to doctors delaying or withholding treatments out of fear of running afoul of the state abortion ban, which only provides a narrow exception to save the life of a patient.

It’s unsurprising then that these charges are coming from Paxton, the three-term state attorney general who survived a 16-count impeachment effort in 2023. Ever since Texas implemented its near-total abortion ban, Paxton, a longtime abortion opponent, has embarked on zealous enforcement efforts of anti-abortion laws, even beyond his state’s borders. Nonetheless, until now in Texas, as in other states that have passed near-total abortion bans, law enforcement has struggled to identify abortion providers to prosecute—much to the frustration of the anti-abortion movement. The Texas legislature is currently considering a bill that would expand Paxton’s power by enabling him to target providers who send abortion pills through the mail. Like a mini “Comstock Act,” the measure focuses on the telehealth practitioners and community activists who, post-Dobbs, have become a critical part of the US abortion access infrastructure by mailing abortion medications into red states.

Instead of directly going after providers, Paxton has found other ways to carry out his anti-abortion crackdown. He sued the city of Austin last fall over its creation of a fund to help pregnant patients travel out of state to get abortions. He’s fighting to overturn 25-year-old HIPAA privacy rules shielding patient data from state investigators as well as recent regulations adding extra protections for abortion patients’ private health information. And, according to the Washington Post, last year Paxton’s office quietly launched an initiative to find cases to prosecute by collecting tips from the male sex partners of women who receive abortions.

“The doctors all across the state are saying that they are afraid that their judgment is going to be second-guessed,” Marc Hearron, interim associate director of US litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told The Cut on Monday. “All of these actions show that Paxton is chomping at the bit to go after anybody who provides an abortion.”

A tip from the male partner of an abortion patient is what reportedly led Paxton, last December, to file a civil lawsuit against Margaret Carpenter, a New York doctor accused of using telehealth to prescribe the abortion medication mifepristone to a Texas patient. Carpenter, who is protected by New York’s shield law for abortion providers, has not appeared in Texas court to defend herself but recently was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine. In late January, a prosecutor in Louisiana followed Paxton’s lead and indicted Carpenter for allegedly prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant teenager. But New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has blocked attempts to extradite her.

The case against Rojas appears to represent the first time a healthcare provider has been arrested and jailed on charges of providing an illegal abortion. A website for a birthing center linked to Clinicás Latinoamericanas says Rojas was born in Peru, received her Texas midwife certification in 2018, and has attended “over 700 births in community-based and hospital settings.” The birthing center opened the same year Rojas got her license. Its website describes the center as focusing “on providing comprehensive care to pregnant woman and their families…Women here are treated with love and respect, empowering them to fulfilling their desire for a natural childbirth.”

Rojas’ friend and fellow midwife, Holly Shearman, reacted to the charges with shock, the New York Times reported. “They’re saying that she did abortions or something?” Shearman told the Times. “She never ever talked about anything like that, and she’s very Catholic. I just don’t believe the charges.”

According to Bloomberg, Rojas’ bail has been set at $1.4 million, and Ley’s at $700,000.

Crisis Is Here.......

A Constitutional Crisis Is Here

The Trump administration, in defiance of a court order, deported Venezuleans to El Salvador. Government lawyers tried to argue it was just a technicality.

Noah Lanard and Isabela Dias

On Saturday evening, federal judge James Boasberg unambiguously ordered the Trump administration not to deport any Venezuelans using an extreme wartime presidential power. Boasberg made clear that the order applied even if it meant turning around planes that were already in the air. The Trump administration ignored the order.

Officials kept jets carrying Venezuelans flying towards El Salvador, where right-wing President Nayib Bukele has struck a deal with the US to house the immigrants in an infamous prison. The deportees had their heads shaved upon arrival in a dystopian video that was quickly promoted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House.

Senior Trump officials have left little doubt that they willfully disobeyed. “We are not stopping,” White House border czar Tom Homan said on television on Monday. “I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the Left thinks. We’re coming.” President Donald Trump has now called for Boasberg to be impeached, writing on social media, “This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President.”

Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney representing the Venezuelans suing to prevent their deportation, made the stakes clear on Monday. “I want to choose my words very carefully,” Gelernt told the court. “There’s been a lot of talk over the last few weeks about constitutional crises. I think we’re getting very close to it.”

Boasberg issued his oral order blocking removals at about 6:45 pm Eastern Time on Saturday. “You shall inform your clients of this immediately,” he said. “However that’s accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you.” A written order to the same effect appeared on the court’s docket about forty minutes later.

Flight data analyzed by the Washington Post shows three removal flights taking off from Texas on Saturday, landing in Honduras, and then continuing on to El Salvador. Two of those flights were en route to Honduras at the time of the court order. They then took for El Salvador despite Boasberg’s command that they be turned around. The third flight appears to have taken off in Texas about 50 minutes after Boasberg’s oral order.

The administration alleges that the last flight did not carry any Venezuelans covered by the ACLU’s suit. In a filing on Tuesday, the Trump administration said two of the planes departed before 7:25 pm, and the one that departed after the judge’s written order had only individuals with final orders of removal who were not being “removed solely on the basis of” the proclamation.

At a Monday afternoon hearing before Boasberg about the flights, the Trump administration made an absurd and unconvincing case for why not turning around the flights complied with the court orders. Deputy Associate Attorney General Abhishek Kambli argued that because Boasberg only ordered flights to turn around orally—and not explicitly in writing—the administration was free to keep them flying to El Salvador. “The idea that because my written order was pithier it could be disregarded,” Boasberg replied, “that’s one heck of a stretch.”

Kambli also suggested on Monday that the administration officials felt entitled to ignore Boasbaerg because the first two planes headed to El Salvador were allegedly outside of US territory by the time the judge weighed in. Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck has made clear that it is essentially nonsense to claim that Boasberg lost authority over government-chartered planes as soon as they left US airspace.

Nor does the administration have the legal authority to ignore a federal judge because they think he’s wrong. They must comply with court orders and then file appeals in the hopes of having them overturned. Instead, the administration defied Boasberg. As a senior Trump official told Axios over the weekend, “There was a discussion about how far the judge’s ruling can go under the circumstances and over international waters and, on advice of counsel, we proceeded with deporting these thugs.”

Bosaberg responded on Monday by ordering the government to provide information about the deportation flights or, if the administration refused to do so, to submit an explanation as to why the information could not be provided. The government respond by largely doubling-down on its logic. The Trump administration also said that because their motion to stay the judge’s order is pending, “the Government should not be required to disclose sensitive information bearing on national security and foreign relations until that motion is resolved, especially given that this information is neither material nor time-sensitive.”

Amidst the legal back and forth, it is easy to lose sight of what led the ACLU and Democracy Forward to sue in the first place. The removal flights to El Salvador resulted from the White House quietly invoking the Alien Enemies Act on Friday. The law, which came into force shortly before the now infamous Sedition Act of 1798, had only been invoked three times in US history before: during the War of 1812; World War I; and World War II. The White House has said that 137 Venezuelans have been deported so far under it.

Trump is providing no due process for Venezuelans who are accused of being members of Tren de Aragua. It means that they can be deported without ever having a chance to make their case to a judge. That is particularly disturbing because the administration’s now largely abandoned plan to deport Venezuelans to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base made clear that US officials often appear to be falsely accusing people of being gang members.

The Venezuelans sent to El Salvador in defiance of Boasberg now face a terrifying reality as they are indefinitely held at a mega-prison notorious for human rights abuses, while cut off from lawyers in the United States. Lindsay Toczylowski, the president and CEO of the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center, told Mother Jones on Monday that her organization is representing a Venezuelan asylum seeker who she believed was in that position after entering the United States last year.

Toczylowski said the client, whose name she is withholding due to fear of potential retaliation, had been detained in the United States last year after being falsely accused by US immigration officials of being a gang member because of tattoos. In reality, she explained that the asylum seeker, who previously worked in the arts, had tattoos “that you really could see on any art student in LA or New York.”

“They’re fairly benign. Clearly not gang tattoos,” Toczylowski continued. “But we never got to the point where we could dispute that fact because our client was supposed to have court on Thursday. And when our attorney went to court, the client was not produced by ICE.”

By the time of the Thursday hearing, Immigrant Defenders’ client had already been moved to Texas. They learned on Friday that he had been moved again but they were unable to determine to where. By Saturday morning, he had disappeared from ICE’s detainee locator system.

“This is someone whose had a lawyer the entire time,” Toczylowski stressed. “It’s truly a terrifying development in deportation [procedures]. It’s essentially, sending someone, we believe, outside of the United States with no due process. With no ability to refute the allegations against them. And in the case of our client, it’s happening to someone that we can definitively say has been wrongly accused of being in a gang.”

Later on Monday, around the same time Boasberg was hearing from the Trump administration, Immigrant Defenders’ and the Venezuelan asylum seeker were supposed to be in immigration court again. This time, his legal team got confirmation from the government: Their client is in El Salvador. They have no way to contact him, or any idea what will happen to his theoretically still pending asylum claim. A man with American lawyers has effectively disappeared into a Salvadoran gulag in defiance of a federal court order.

Huge defense and infrastructure spending

German lawmakers approve huge defense and infrastructure spending

By The Associated Press

Germany's would-be next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, won lawmakers' approval Tuesday for ambitious plans to loosen the nation's strict debt rules for higher defense spending as doubts mount about the strength of the trans-Atlantic alliance, and to set up an enormous fund for investment in its creaking infrastructure.

Merz passed a major test as the outgoing parliament voted 513-207 in its final meeting to approve the plans.

The decision helps smooth the way for a governing coalition of Merz's center-right Union bloc and the center-left Social Democrats of outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz after he won last month's election. But he still faces plenty of work to seal a deal in ongoing talks.

Easing off the brake

The plans needed a two-thirds majority of at least 489 votes in parliament's lower house, the Bundestag, because they involve changes to Germany's strict self-imposed borrowing rules — the so-called "debt brake," which allows new borrowing worth only 0.35% of annual gross domestic product and is anchored in the constitution. That forced the prospective coalition partners into negotiations with the environmentalist Greens to get enough votes.

The package will exempt from the debt rules spending on defense and security, including intelligence agencies and assistance to Ukraine, worth more than 1% of GDP. It also foresees a 500 billion-euro ($544 billion) fund, financed by borrowing, to pour funding into Germany's infrastructure over the next 12 years and help restore the stagnant economy — Europe's biggest — to growth.

At the Greens' insistence, 100 billion euros from the investment fund will go into climate-related spending.

'Whatever it takes'

The plans amounted to an about-turn for Merz, whose party had spoken out against running up new debt before the election without entirely closing the door to future changes to the "debt brake." The Social Democrats and Greens had argued for a reform of the borrowing rules — arguing that Germany, whose debt load is relatively low, has room to borrow more.

Recent weeks have brought new urgency to efforts to further strengthen Germany's long-neglected military. The outgoing government created a special 100 billion-euro fund to modernize it, which also helped Berlin meet the current NATO target of spending 2% of GDP on defense. But that pot will be used up in 2027, and doubts have grown recently about the Trump administration's commitment to European allies.

Merz said earlier this month that Germany and Europe must quickly strengthen their defense capability and that "'whatever it takes' must also go for our defense now."

On Tuesday, he pointed to the danger from Russian President Vladimir "Putin's war of aggression against Europe — it is a war against Europe and not just a war against Ukraine's territorial integrity." He pointed to suspected Russian sabotage and disinformation in Europe.

Merz said the prospective German government's move should be "the first step toward a new European defense community," which could include countries outside the European Union such as Britain and Norway.

The Social Democrats' co-leader, Lars Klingbeil, said that "Europe stands today next to an aggressive Russia on one side and an unpredictable United States of America on the other side." He said he favors doing everything to maintain "indispensable" trans-Atlantic cooperation, but "we must now do our homework in Europe — we must become stronger, we must take care of our own security."

Merz acknowledged that many are struggling to digest the wider spending plans but argued that "they open prospects for our country that, in the times we are living in, are urgently needed."

One more hurdle

The package was brought to the old parliament — not the newly elected one, which will hold its first session March 25, in which parties that were unlikely to agree have just over one-third of the seats. The far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany portrays itself as a staunch defender of the "debt brake," while the Left Party opposes it but is skeptical about military spending.

"A politician's greatest asset is credibility and with this embarrassing action, dear Mr. Merz, you have already squandered yours completely," Alternative for Germany co-leader Tino Chrupalla said. "Voters feel cheated by you, and rightly."

Ahead of Tuesday's vote, Germany's highest court rejected several bids to block the meeting of the outgoing parliament.

The package faces another hurdle Friday in parliament's upper house, which represents Germany's 16 state governments. They are also set to be given more freedom to borrow money.

A two-thirds majority will also be needed in the upper house. That initially was uncertain because the parties behind the plans control only 41 of the 69 upper-house votes. But on Monday, the conservative-led governing coalition in Bavaria, which has six votes, also agreed to support the package.

More stupid bullshit from the mango.....

Trump tries to void Biden's pardons, blaming autopen. Many presidents have used it

By Rachel Treisman

President Trump is claiming without evidence that some of former President Joe Biden's actions are invalid because he allegedly used a machine to automate signatures on documents, which is a longstanding practice in the White House.

In a late-night Truth Social post, Trump said his predecessor's preemptive pardons of members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection are "hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OF EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen."

The notion that Biden relied on the autopen to sign important documents was heavily perpetuated by the Oversight Project, an arm of the Heritage Foundation that played a key role in promoting false claims about noncitizen voting last year.

Trump's rhetoric fans the flames of conspiracies about Biden not really being in charge during his presidency. While concerns about Biden's fitness for office forced him to call off his reelection campaign, the right has taken that to an extreme.

"In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!" Trump wrote of the pardons. However, there is no evidence that is the case.

It is not clear whether Biden actually used an autopen to sign the documents in question. And even if he did, legal experts say it's not clear the pardons could be rescinded — for that or any other reason.

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which grants presidents broad clemency powers, says the pardon only needs to be "accepted by its subject" to take effect — and does not mention anything about reversing them after the fact.

Jay Wexler, a professor of constitutional law at Boston University School of Law, told NPR he thinks the autopen issue is a "nonstarter" and a "distraction." Importantly, he says, there is nothing in the Constitution that requires pardons be in writing at all.

"The argument that the pardon fails because it was signed by an autopen fails at the get-go, because there's no requirement that the pardon even be signed," he explained.

Trump acknowledged the potential gray area — and repeated his claim about Biden's cognition — while speaking to reporters on Air Force One.

"It's not my decision, that would be up to a court," he said. "But I would say that they're null and void, because I'm sure Biden didn't have any idea that it was taking place."

Concerns about Biden's age and fitness for office are not new — even from Trump, who became the oldest president inaugurated when he began his second term at age 78. But claims that autopen signatures could be nullifying are more unusual, especially since multiple presidents have used the devices over the years.

"It doesn't come up regularly," Wexler says. "And I think that's because people understand that it's really not a real issue."

What is an autopen? 

An autopen is a generic name for a machine that duplicates signatures using real ink, making it easy for public figures to autograph everything from correspondence to merchandise in bulk.

They are printer-sized machines with an arm that can hold a standard pen or pencil, and use it to replicate the programmed signature on a piece of paper below.

The Autopen Company, a Maryland-based firm that makes the devices, says they have been "used by universities, government agencies, and other institutions for more than 60 years."

"The Autopen has long been a tool for the world's most influential leaders, allowing them to more effectively apply their time and attention to important issues without compromising the impact of personalized correspondence," it writes.

Where did they come from? 

A precursor to the autopen is the 19th-century polygraph, which allowed one writer to move two pens simultaneously. It was patented in the U.S. in 1803, produced the following year and used enthusiastically by Thomas Jefferson during and after his presidency.

"The use of the polygraph has spoiled me for the old copying press, the copies of which are hardly ever legible," Jefferson wrote in 1809. "I could not, now therefore, live without the Polygraph."

As the autopen evolved, a man named Robert De Shazo Jr. learned about an early design while working at a naval torpedo factory in Virginia during World War II. He created the technology and began commercially producing it shortly afterward.

De Shazo's first order was from the secretary of the Navy — and the devices quickly became commonplace in the government.

De Shazo — whose company, Automated Signature Technology, was headquartered in Virginia — told The Washingtonian in 1983 that an estimated 500 autopens were being used in the nation's capital, from Congress to the Cabinet.

"Within four or five square blocks, you've got more people who need them than anyplace else in the world," he said.

Which presidents have used them? 

A number of presidents since Jefferson have relied on autopens, some more publicly than others.

Harry Truman was rumored to have used one, as was Gerald Ford, according to the Shappell Manuscript Foundation.

Lyndon Johnson is credited with publicizing the practice by allowing photos of the device to be taken during his time in office. That story made the front cover of the National Enquirer in 1968 under the headline: "One of the best kept secrets in Washington: The Robot that Sits in for the President."

The presidents who used autopens in the second half of the 20th century — a list that is reported to include John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon — did so to sign correspondence and other documents.

Barack Obama became the first known president to sign legislation with an autopen, in 2011, when he signed a Patriot Act extension while he was in France — prompting Republican critics to wonder whether that move was constitutionally sound.

It turned out that the administration of George W. Bush had already considered — and answered — that question. Bush's Office of Legal Counsel published a 29-page document in 2005 concluding that the president "need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law."

"Rather, the President may sign a bill ... by directing a subordinate to affix the President's signature to such a bill, for example by autopen," it reads.

Bush ultimately decided against using the autopen himself, flying through the night to get back to the White House in time to sign emergency legislation in 2005. But his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was criticized for using one to sign hundreds of condolence letters to families of troops killed in the Iraq War.

Did he look down and see two small balls for once???

Chief Justice Roberts rebukes Trump and GOP rhetoric about impeaching judges

By John Fritze

Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back on President Donald Trump’s escalating rhetoric against the federal judiciary on Tuesday in a highly unusual statement that appeared to be aimed at the president’s call to impeach judges who rule against him.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a statement released by the Supreme Court. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Roberts’ statement did not mention Trump by name, but it came hours after the president stepped up his attacks on federal judges by specifically calling for Judge James Boasberg, who has temporarily blocked the deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members, to be impeached.

Several Trump allies, including Elon Musk, have been calling for impeaching judges for weeks after rulings against the Trump administration.

“This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President - He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”

The chief justice and the other members of the Supreme Court have largely remained silent as Trump and allies have ramped up their attacks on the judiciary amid a slew of preliminary rulings that haven’t gone their way. Most of those cases are being appealed and will likely wind their way up the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court in coming weeks.

Though Roberts and other justices have largely steered clear of Trump’s unusually sharp criticism of federal judges, the statement Tuesday was similar to a rebuke the chief justice issued in 2018, when he responded to Trump’s remarks by saying that, “we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.”

Already on a collision course with destruction........

Trump, already on a collision course with the courts, hits the gas

Trump and his allies’ attacks on a judge weighing the validity of the president’s deportation orders escalated an already tense power struggle between the co-equal branches of government.

By Kyle Cheney, Megan Messerly and Josh Gerstein

Donald Trump is trying to show the world what he wants it to see: a president wielding unlimited and uncheckable power.

Trump’s challenge to the authority of Congress and the courts has increased in velocity and intensity in recent days. It reached a crescendo this weekend, when Trump invoked wartime powers to summarily deport Venezuelan nationals he deems to be terrorists, and his White House amplified a foreign strongman’s mockery of the judge who tried to pause the deportations.

That skirmish was only the latest in an increasingly ominous confrontation between Trump’s White House and the other two constitutional branches. In short, the most significant test of America’s system of checks and balances in Trump’s second term has arrived. And the outcome is less certain than ever.

This latest collision between Trump and the judicial branch — in which the White House and its allies are openly assailing the judge weighing the validity of Trump’s orders — is a more intense version of the clashes that have stymied his administration since Inauguration Day. Judges have sought to slow or stop some of Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and workforce, saying they have run afoul of Congress’ spending authority and laws governing hiring and firing of federal workers.

Judges have also in recent weeks blocked Trump’s effort to limit the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship for the children of some immigrants; his efforts to strip federal funding from medical institutions that provide care for transgender youth; his attempt to fire members of the federal boards that handle workplace grievances and labor disputes; his attempt to freeze refugee admissions; and his effort to strip funding from institutions that his administration says participate in impermissible “DEI” practices.

The White House has brushed off its critics as partisan doomsayers who, if they had their way, would see dangerous criminals returned to the country. Officials argue the administration has scrupulously adhered to court orders even as they have publicly attacked the judges who rule against them.

But the administration’s legal tangles underscore its make-decisions-first, figure-out-a-legal-defense-later approach to policy making. And the frustration over the rulings highlights how sensitive the White House is about efforts to thwart its agenda after they spent four years during Trump’s first term battling not just Democrats but the courts, Congress and even some within the administration to implement their policy proposals. Now, this administration is primed to see any pushback as illegitimate.

Each order has led to a wave of fury among Trump’s Cabinet loyalists, supporters in Congress and the always-online MAGA faithful. On Monday, Trump labeled as “dangerous” a judge’s order requiring his administration to reinstate thousands of fired federal workers over a ruling that the administration broke the law by failing to give state governments enough notice about the mass terminations.

Trump has also sought to expand his power in other ways, declaring in a late night Truth Social post over the weekend that some of his predecessor Joe Biden’s pardons are void. Trump suggested he may have his administration prosecute the recipients — members of the committee that investigated his supporters’ Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

But it was the fight over Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act — the 1798 law granting the president power to deport nationals of a wartime enemy nation — that seemed to push the conflict closest to a crisis.

On Saturday evening, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued an emergency order to pause those deportations, raising questions about Trump’s authority to order them in the first place. But Trump sent plane loads of Venezuelans out of the country anyway, delivering them to El Salvador, whose strongman president Nayib Bukele openly mocked the judge’s effort to intervene in the matter.

“Oopsie, too late,” Bukele posted on X.

The White House and Trump’s supporters quickly cheered Bukele on, and Attorney General Pam Bondi accused the judge, an appointee of President Barack Obama, of supporting terrorists over Americans. By Sunday, Trump’s uber-adviser and megadonor, Musk, had revived his call for Congress to impeach judges who rule against Trump and his claim that the left had “captured” the judiciary.

“We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming,” said Thomas Homan, Trump’s border czar, in a Monday appearance on Fox News.

On Monday afternoon, the Justice Department urged Boasberg to call off his scrutiny of Trump’s decision to label some Venezuelan migrants as terrorists in order to “de-escalate the grave incursions on Executive Branch authority that have already arisen.”

When Boasberg refused to cancel a Monday afternoon hearing, DOJ asked a federal appellate court to remove him from the case altogether, an extraordinary step to circumvent judicial scrutiny.

The White House, for its part, is dismissing arguments that the president’s actions are pushing the country toward a constitutional crisis. Officials agree the nation is in one, but they blame it on the courts, framing recent rulings as the moves of “radical leftist judges” — though some of those judges were appointed by Republican presidents.

“The constitutional crisis is not in the executive branch. It’s in the judiciary branch,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said, adding that the pushback to the administration’s weekend deportations “speaks more of [Democrats’] loyalty, or lack thereof, to this nation than anything else.”

It was a point that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed during a Monday press conference, saying that the administration “acted within the confines of the law” and “the president’s constitutional authority.”

Perhaps most significantly: The administration firmly believes that it has popular opinion on its side, at least in the fight over deportations of alleged gang members. An analysis from Gallup of six recent polls found that support for deportations reaches high majority levels when voters are asked specifically about deporting people with criminal records, while support for deporting people whose only crime was entering the country illegally is more mixed.

And the Hollywood-style video the El Salvadoran president released — and Trump approvingly republished on his Truth Social account — conveys a get-tough approach to potentially-threatening migrants that could resonate with some Americans. That’s probably the case even as immigrant rights advocates warn the administration has provided little insight into how it determined that those sent to El Salvador under Trump’s declaration, seen being forcibly shaved and restrained in the video, were members of Tren de Aragua.

Leavitt, during the briefing, said that the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are “sure about the identities of the individuals that were on these planes” and the threat they posed. She added that the administration is determining gang affiliation based on “intelligence and the men and women on the ground in the interior of the country.”

Still, it’s a political playing field on which Republicans are happy to be.

“If this is the hill that Democrats, Democrat lawyers and judges, want to die on — keeping MS-13 and TdA in our country, the American people will have something to say about that come the midterms,” Fields said.

The line between deliberate defiance and bureaucratic indifference can often be hard to discern. And even when lawyers and courts move quickly, the judicial system can have trouble matching the agility with which the executive branch can carry out a presidential order.

Tried to stop the deportation planes........

The judge who tried to stop the deportation planes is not happy with the Trump administration

Judge James Boasberg is demanding answers about the three planes that rushed Venezuelan nationals from the U.S. to El Salvador over the weekend.

By Josh Gerstein

A federal judge sharply questioned the Trump administration Monday about its decision to rush three planes carrying Venezuelan nationals out of U.S. airspace under President Donald Trump’s unprecedented invocation of wartime deportation powers against a criminal gang.

James Boasberg, the chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, was clearly galled by the government’s actions and legal arguments in the case, particularly its assertion that an order he issued Saturday to turn around any planes carrying such deportees had no force once they were outside U.S. territorial waters.

Only minutes before the hearing Monday, the Justice Department took the unusual step of asking a federal appeals court to remove Boasberg from the case altogether. The appeals court did not immediately act on that request.

At the heart of the issue is Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 statute intended to bolster the president’s ability to deport foreign nationals from countries with which the United States is at war. Trump issued a proclamation labeling Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organization, as sufficiently linked to the Venezuelan government to trigger those wartime powers.

Boasberg on Saturday ordered the administration to refrain from removing anyone from the country under Trump’s claimed authority after five Venezuelans who feared deportation under the Alien Enemies Act filed suit. Those five men apparently remain in the country, in U.S. custody. But planes carrying about 250 other Venezuelan nationals — many of whom the Trump administration accused of being members of Tren de Aragua — departed from the U.S. shortly before Boasberg issued his order. They landed Saturday night in El Salvador, which had agreed to take the prisoners for a fee.

Then, Boasberg scheduled another court hearing on Monday evening to address claims from immigrant rights advocates that the Trump administration appeared to be defying the court.

At moments during the 45-minute hearing, the normally unflappable judge raised his voice, rejecting the Justice Department’s contention that the government had an exceptionally urgent need to move the planes.

Boasberg implied that the government had intentionally hurried the planes off the ground on Saturday afternoon because the government knew he had scheduled a hearing at 5 p.m. Saturday. “Any plane that you put into the air in or around that time, you knew that I was having a hearing at 5,” the judge said with evident frustration.

Boasberg also grilled a Justice Department lawyer over a key stretch of time on Saturday between two orders Boasberg issued. In the first order — which Boasberg issued orally from the bench — the judge directed the government to “immediately” turn around any planes carrying deportees subject to Trump’s proclamation. About 40 minutes later, Boasberg followed up with a written order in the court’s electronic docket that lacked some of the detail in his oral directive.

Deputy Associate Attorney General Abhishek Kambli claimed Monday that the government was free to ignore the oral order.

“We believe that there was no order given” orally, Kambli said. “An injunction is not ordered until it’s in the written filing.”

Boasberg, an appointee of President Barack Obama, was highly dubious.

“That’s a heck of a stretch,” the judge said. “You can’t violate the injunction. If you don’t like it, you can appeal it or seek to modify it.”

Boasberg also rejected the Justice Department’s claim that he lacked any authority over the flights once they cleared U.S. airspace.

“It’s not a question that the plane was or was not in United States airspace,” the judge said, adding that the power of federal courts does not “lapse at the water’s edge” or “the airspace’s edge.”

But Kambli said the foreign policy concerns related to the operation were paramount.

“These arrangements were the result of intensive and delicate negotiations between the United States and El Salvador,” he said.

DOJ further frustrated Boasberg by refusing to provide almost any details about the deportation operation, repeatedly invoking national security to defend the secrecy.

“Why are you showing up today and not having answers to why you can’t even disclose it to me?” the judge asked.

As the hearing neared its conclusion, Boasberg demanded that the government answer — by noon tomorrow — a series of questions about the flights and their passengers, as well as exactly when Trump signed the proclamation calling for the alleged gang members to be expelled from the country. He also ordered the filing of more briefs on the legal arguments in the case.

And Boasberg told the government lawyers that, just to be clear, he’d write down everything he wanted them to address.

“My oral orders don’t seem to carry much weight,” the judge said.

Killed career....

Schumer is doing damage control. It isn’t working.

The Senate minority leader and his aides have been talking privately with liberal groups.

By Holly Otterbein

Chuck Schumer is in damage-control mode. It isn’t going great.

The Senate minority leader and his aides in recent days have been talking privately with liberal groups in an apparent effort to ease tensions after sparking a civil war in the Democratic Party over a stopgap funding bill, according to five people familiar with the conversations. They were granted anonymity to describe them in a frank manner, and some of the discussions were confirmed by Schumer himself on Monday to POLITICO.

The outreach by Schumer and his team included officials at Indivisible. The pro-Democratic organization called for him to step down from his leadership position on Saturday over what it saw as his unwillingness to resist President Donald Trump. Schumer enraged Democrats across the party on Friday by voting for a GOP bill to prevent a government shutdown.

Schumer spoke with Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin, the people said, and he and his staff have been in communication with the group’s local leaders in New York, as well.

The minority leader is in a perilous position in the party, drawing furious backlash from Democrats after his vote last week. While maneuvering privately to repair relationships, he postponed scheduled book tour events this week, with a spokesperson citing “security concerns.” The events would have taken him to heavily Democratic cities, including Baltimore and Washington, and activists had made plans to protest them.

Schumer’s team tried to persuade the New York leaders at Indivisible not to immediately sign onto a statewide letter that called for Schumer to quit his position as minority leader, said one of the people familiar with the discussions. Schumer spoke to the New York Indivisible officials on Sunday. They called for him to step down as minority leader anyway on Monday.

“The goal was to get Sen. Schumer in front of Indivisible group leaders before they made any decisions on anything,” said a second person familiar with the meeting.

A third person described the conversations between Schumer and Indivisible as “tense and unproductive.”

A fourth person said Schumer’s team has reached out to other liberal groups in the wake of his vote to head off a shutdown, but did not provide further details.

“I have had a long relationship with many groups, including Indivisible, and wanted an opportunity to explain my position,” Schumer told POLITICO. “Many disagree and I respect that, but I look forward to continuing to work together with them against the evils of the Trump administration.”

Levin declined to comment on his discussion with Schumer in a brief interview, but doubled down on his call for the minority leader to step aside.

“Schumer’s fate as a leader in the Democratic caucus is not in Schumer’s hands,” he said. “It’s in the hands of fellow elected Democrats. It’s in the hands of outside groups with constituencies, and most of all, it’s in the hands of grassroots constituents who can choose to organize in this moment and demand better leadership or choose to accept the failed leadership that we’ve received.”

Angry Democrats are hardly waiting for Schumer to come to them to voice their displeasure.

Britt Jacovich, a spokesperson for the progressive organization MoveOn, said it had been in touch with Schumer’s office, relaying “our members’ concerns about the lack of strategy and message around the Republican funding bill vote and the desire from our members for Democrats to use every bit of their power to fight back against Trump and [Elon Musk’s] destruction of our government.”

Charlotte Clymer, a Democratic operative associated with the moderate wing of the party who launched a petition to boycott donations to Senate Democrats until they force Schumer out as minority leader, said her petition is now up to 25,000 signatures. She said of Schumer’s postponing book tour events that he “doesn’t want to face the music over his caving to Trump and Elon Musk.”

Schumer has argued that backing the stopgap bill was the best of two bad options because a government shutdown would have given more power to Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk. In addition to his outreach to liberal groups, Schumer has done a number of interviews with news outlets in recent days, including CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Both moderate and progressive Democrats have expressed frustration with what they cast as their party leadership’s lack of a clear strategy to take on Trump. Many thought that the potential shutdown was one of the only points of leverage they had since they have been shut out of power in Congress.

Some House Democrats, even in battleground districts, are floating supporting a primary challenge to Schumer. Still, few Democrats currently think Schumer’s leadership post is at risk, and he does not face reelection until 2028.

The stupidity.......

Walz knocks Schumer over government funding blowup

Walz piled on the Senate minority leader during Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s most recent podcast episode.

By Amanda Friedman and Christopher Cadelago

Tim Walz took a jab at Chuck Schumer over his decision to avert a government shutdown, accusing the party of ceding to Republicans.

“I believe that Chuck 100 percent believes that he made a decision that reduced the pain and the risk to Americans,” the Minnesota governor said in the latest episode of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s podcast released on Tuesday. “I see it now that we’re in a point where … that pain is coming anyway and I think we gave up our leverage.”

Walz’s comments are the latest in the chorus of Democratic backlash aimed at Schumer over the Senate Democratic leader’s support for a Republican-backed stopgap measure last week to keep the government funded and prevent a government shutdown.

Walz has long been scheduled to be a guest on Newsom’s podcast, which launched on Tuesday. But Newsom’s conversation with Walz was rerecorded on Monday, according to a person familiar with the discussion who was granted anonymity to discuss it. The original conversation came on the same day Newsom taped his episode with the campus culture warrior Charlie Kirk.

But Walz wanted the chance to address news that had happened since then, like Schumer’s funding bill controversy.

As a result of Schumer and a small group of other Democrats’ support for the funding patch, Walz warned Newsom that Democrats will face blame for any negative fallout from the bill.

“To the American public who doesn’t do this for a living and is out doing their job, they said, ‘well, they passed this budget and they agreed with Donald Trump, and now we all own that,’” Walz said. “I think you should have made Donald Trump justify why things were getting so bad.”

Walz’s remarks about the funding controversy come on the heels of his recent critiques of the 2024 Harris-Walz campaign, where he said the ticket did not take enough risks. He said he — along with other Democrats — should have made a stronger effort to engage with voters, particularly through town halls.

Walz doubled down on criticism of his party during his interview with Newsom, saying the lack of coordination among Democrats on how to approach the funding debate only reinforced perceptions that the Democratic Party is fragmented.

“I think the public saying is, ‘you guys weren’t even coordinated on that,’” he said.

Mass deportation plans

Trump’s mass deportation plans hit riskier phase with legal immigrants, court fights

The new strategy, especially involving immigrants with green cards or American spouses, poses political test.

By Myah Ward

President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda has reached a turning point in recent days, as the administration expands the group of immigrants it has targeted for removal, quarrels with judges and wades into increasingly risky political territory.

Trump spent his first weeks in office emphasizing a mass deportation campaign aimed at criminals who are in the country illegally.

But late last week, immigration agents arrested a Lebanese doctor on a legal visa, despite a court order temporarily blocking her immediate removal. That followed the detention of German tourists, a former Columbia University graduate student with a green card and multiple immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens or have long lived in the United States.

And even as the administration targeted a group of Venezuelans this weekend who officials said are affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang, they used an archaic, war-time law to round them up and then seemingly ignored a judge’s order to halt deportation flights.

The striking shift has captured the public’s attention and is likely to define Trump’s strategy in the months ahead as he looks to convey progress on his lagging promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. But the expanded list of targets — especially immigrants married to U.S. citizens — carries political risks on an issue that has long been a strength for the president.

“Public opinion varies dramatically depending on the kind of illegal immigrant you’re talking about,” said GOP pollster Whit Ayres, adding that some undocumented immigrants, including those who came to the country as children, tend to garner much more public sympathy in surveys than others.

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll last month found overwhelming support for deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crimes, with a solid majority of Americans also backing the removal of those who have been accused of committing nonviolent offenses. But there’s a downturn in support when Americans are asked about deporting immigrants who have only broken immigration laws, those who have lived in the United States for more than a decade, and immigrants who arrived as children or are parents of children who are U.S. citizens.

“We can all get behind deporting violent criminals,” Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) told POLITICO. “But there’s a lot of moderate Republicans that are concerned that they may be jumping the shark, as they say — they may be going a little too far on some of these things.”

Trump tested the political limits of hardline immigration enforcement during his first term with his family separation policy that proved to be widely unpopular with voters. Democrats warned voters that his promised mass deportations effort in a second term would result in similarly unpopular measures — a message that failed to break through during the campaign.

Trump hasn’t crossed a red line like family separation yet, but it’s still early, said Barrett Marson, a GOP strategist in Arizona. Republicans are crediting Trump for a historic drop in border crossings and the arrests of criminals, and the question is whether moderates will give him a pass for collateral damage — and whether that matters politically to a president who only has one term left to serve.

“Trump couldn’t have been clearer that he wanted to deport everyone who was here illegally, whether they are a gardener, a gang member or a stay-at-home mother,” Marson said. “And since he isn’t running again … what does he care if he’s at 49 percent, 46 percent, or 40 percent?”

A woman from Peru was detained by ICE last month traveling back from her honeymoon in Puerto Rico with her husband, who voted for Trump. USA Today found that a number of other immigrants who have long resided in the country and are married to U.S. citizens were also swept up in the Trump administration’s increased enforcement efforts.

In another case, a kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical school, Rasha Alawieh, was deported from the United States late last week. She had a valid visa and a court order temporarily blocking her removal, but the Trump administration deported her anyway, claiming officials hadn’t received formal notification of the order before she was put on an Air France flight bound for Paris Friday night. Federal authorities said Monday that they deported the Lebanese doctor after finding “sympathetic photos and videos of prominent Hezbollah figures” in her phone.

And a story about German tourists has also grabbed headlines in Germany and the U.S., as a man and a woman who say they tried to enter the U.S. legally were sent to a crowded detention facility and eventually deported, in a case that took weeks to resolve.

There will likely be other cases that raise public opposition to the effort as the administration looks for ways to remove more immigrants. Trump has struggled to immediately deport immigrants in the large numbers he promised on the campaign trail because of constraints on resources — including detention capacity and a bogged down immigration court system.

As a result, he has looked for other ways to project action.

His administration has touted the arrests of people charged with or convicted of crimes, but others with no criminal record, U.S. citizen spouses and children, and people with valid deportation protections have been swept up in his increased enforcement. It has sparked fear in immigrant communities across the country, as lawyers are increasingly warning immigrants, even green card holders, to avoid travel.

“When you take a look at all of this, it’s like death by 1,000 cuts, and it will soon snowball into more and worse, and it will catch up to him electorally. There will be backlash,” said Beatriz Lopez, co-executive director of the Immigration Hub, an immigration advocacy group. “And the more that there are these high-profile cases, the more that it will hit the average American.”

Trump’s policies have also pushed the legal limits this month. The White House touted the removal of more than 100 Venezuelan nationals they say were members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, ignoring a judge’s order to turn the planes around. Administration officials celebrated the weekend deportations to El Salvador, as President Nayib Bukele posted grim video on X of scenes of soldiers leading tattooed men off an airplane, forcing them to bend toward the ground as they were frog-marched to waiting buses and had their heads shaved by hooded prison guards.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday reiterated that the administration “acted within the confines of the law,” and said the Department of Homeland Security was sure about the identities of the alleged gang members they deported to El Salvador, as questions emerge about how the administration is making these determinations and lawyers for some deportees say their clients had no gang affiliation and no final orders of removal from a U.S. immigration judge.

“Countless lives will be saved because of this action,” Leavitt said. “The president is proud to deliver on that promise.”

Kill more than 400 Palestinians.....

Israeli strikes across Gaza kill more than 400 Palestinians and shatter ceasefire with Hamas

By WAFAA SHURAFA, JOSEF FEDERMAN and SAMY MAGDY

Israel launched airstrikes across the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, killing at least 400 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to local health officials. The surprise bombardment, the deadliest in Gaza since the start of the 17-month war, shattered a ceasefire in place since January.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the strikes after Hamas refused Israeli demands to change the ceasefire agreement. Officials said the operation was open-ended and was expected to expand. The White House said it had been consulted and voiced support for Israel's actions.

The Israeli military ordered people to evacuate eastern Gaza, including much of the northern town of Beit Hanoun and other communities further south, and head toward the center of the territory, indicating that Israel could soon launch renewed ground operations.

“Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” Netanyahu’s office said.

The attack during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan could signal the full resumption of a war that has already killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and caused widespread destruction across Gaza. It also raised concerns about the fate of the roughly two dozen Israeli hostages held by Hamas who are believed to still be alive.

The renewal of the campaign against Hamas, which is supported by Iran, came as the U.S. and Israel stepped up attacks this week across the region. The U.S. launched deadly strikes against Iran-allied rebels in Yemen, while Israel has targeted Iran-backed militants in Lebanon and Syria.

A senior Hamas official said Netanyahu’s decision to return to war amounts to a “death sentence” for the remaining hostages. Izzat al-Risheq accused Netanyahu of launching the strikes to try and save his far-right governing coalition and called on mediators to “reveal facts” on who broke the truce. Hamas said at least four senior officials were killed in Tuesday's strikes.

There were no reports of any attacks by Hamas several hours after the bombardment, indicating it still hoped to restore the truce.

The strikes came as Netanyahu comes under mounting domestic pressure, with mass protests planned over his handling of the hostage crisis and his decision to fire the head of Israel's internal security agency. His latest testimony in a long-running corruption trial was canceled after the strikes.

The strikes appeared to give Netanyahu a political boost, with a far-right party that had bolted the government over the ceasefire announcing Tuesday that it was rejoining.

The main group representing families of the captives accused the government of backing out of the ceasefire, saying it “chose to give up on the hostages.”

“We are shocked, angry and terrified by the deliberate dismantling of the process to return our loved ones from the terrible captivity of Hamas,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.

Wounded stream into Gaza hospitals

A strike on a home in the southern city of Rafah killed 17 members of one family, according to the European Hospital, which received the bodies. The dead included five children, their parents, and another father and his three children.

In the southern city of Khan Younis, Associated Press reporters saw explosions and plumes of smoke. Ambulances brought wounded people to Nasser Hospital, where patients lay on the floor, some screaming. A young girl cried as her bloody arm was bandaged.

Many Palestinians said they had expected a return to all-out war when talks over the second phase of the ceasefire did not begin as scheduled in early February. The second phase was broadly outlined in the original agreement, but the details had been expected to be hammered out in those talks.

Israel instead embraced an alternative proposal and cut off all shipments of food, fuel and other aid to the territory's 2 million Palestinians to try to pressure Hamas to accept it.

“Nobody wants to fight,” Palestinian resident Nidal Alzaanin told the AP by phone from Gaza City. "Everyone is still suffering from the previous months,” he said.

Gaza's Health Ministry said at least 404 people were killed in the strikes and more than 560 were wounded after earlier saying that 413 were dead and 660 wounded. Rescuers were still searching the rubble for dead and wounded as the strikes continued.

Zaher al-Waheidi, head of the records department in the ministry, said at least 263 of those killed were women or children 18 and under. He described it as the deadliest day in Gaza since the start of the war.

The war has killed over 48,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and displaced an estimated 90% of Gaza’s population. The Health Ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and militants, but says over half of the dead have been women and children.

The war erupted when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages. Most have been released in ceasefires or other deals, with Israeli forces rescuing only eight and recovering dozens of bodies.

Israel responded with one of the most destructive military offensives in recent memory.

The ceasefire brought some relief to Gaza and allowed hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to return to what remained of their homes.

US backs Israel and blames Hamas

The White House sought to blame Hamas for the renewed fighting. National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said the militant group "could have released hostages to extend the ceasefire but instead chose refusal and war.”

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the unfolding operation, said Israel was striking Hamas' military, leaders and infrastructure and planned to expand the operation beyond air attacks. The official accused Hamas of attempting to rebuild and plan new attacks. Hamas militants and security forces quickly returned to the streets in recent weeks after the ceasefire went into effect.

Talks on a second phase of the ceasefire had stalled

The strikes came two months after a ceasefire was reached to pause the war. Over six weeks, Hamas released 25 Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight more in exchange for more than 1,700 Palestinian prisoners as agreed in the first phase.

But since that phase ended two weeks ago, the sides have not been able to agree on a way forward with a second phase that was meant to free the 24 living hostages still in captivity and bring about an end to the war. Israel says Hamas also holds the remains of 35 captives.

Hamas has demanded an end to the war and full withdrawal of Israeli troops in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages. Israel says it will not end the war until it destroys Hamas' governing and military capabilities and frees all hostages — two goals that could be incompatible.

Now Israel has demanded Hamas to release half of the remaining hostages in return for a promise to negotiate a lasting truce. Hamas instead wants to follow the original ceasefire deal reached by the two sides.

Though Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinians who the military says approached its troops or entered unauthorized areas since the ceasefire began, the deal has largely held. Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been trying to mediate the next steps.

A full resumption of the war would allow Netanyahu to avoid the tough trade-offs called for in the second phase of the agreement and the thorny question of who would govern Gaza.

It would also shore up his coalition, which depends on far-right lawmakers who want to depopulate Gaza and rebuild Jewish settlements there. That was already in motion with the return of far-right Itamar Ben-Gvir and his party to Netanyahu’s government Tuesday.

Netanyahu faces mounting criticism

The released hostages, some of whom were emaciated, have repeatedly implored the government to press ahead with the ceasefire to return all remaining captives. Tens of thousands of Israelis have taken part in mass protests calling for a ceasefire and return of all hostages.

Mass demonstrations are planned later Tuesday and Wednesday following Netanyahu's announcement this week that he wants to fire the head of Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency. Critics have lambasted the move as an attempt by Netanyahu to divert blame for his government's failures in the Oct. 7 attack and handling of the war.

Funding cuts....

Trump funding cuts worry researchers at most active West Coast volcano

By Sam Hill

When Mount St. Helens in Washington erupted nearly 45 years ago, it killed 57 people, destroyed hundreds of homes, spread ash to at least 10 other states and blasted a wide, horseshoe-shaped crater out of the volcano’s north side. Widely considered the most disastrous volcanic eruption in U.S. history, the event drastically altered the surrounding landscape.

As the region slowly recovered, Mount St. Helens became a tourist destination. But the volcano is still active.

“St. Helens is by far the most active volcano in the Cascades and presents the highest likelihood of the next future eruption in our region,” Pacific Northwest Seismic Network Director Harold Tobin told SFGATE.

The network, a collaborative research partnership among the University of Washington, University of Oregon and U.S. Geological Survey, operates around 20 seismometers in the area and records around a dozen small earthquakes in the vicinity of the volcano each week. Unfortunately, efforts to monitor that seismic activity have been hindered by a spending freeze across the Department of the Interior. 

Similar to what’s happened with the National Parks Service, spending limits on government credit cards held by USGS employees have dropped to $1. This has eliminated overnight research trips and plans for larger-scale research projects, including the maintenance and upgrade of seismic stations on the mountain.

“It’s only been a short time, and our network is still functioning fully, but over time, that will interfere with maintenance and improvements, and we will see things start to degrade,” Tobin said. “I’m concerned that, over some time, our ability to monitor for earthquake hazards that may lead to an eruption will just not be as good as it should be.”

Network partners at the universities can pick up the slack for a time, he said, but not indefinitely.

The network receives funding from many sources, but most of it comes from annual contracts with the USGS through its Volcano Hazards Program. The current federal funding contract for the University of Washington expires at the end of March, and Tobin isn’t confident that a renewal will be in place immediately. This would force the network to deprioritize repairing seismometers and other research endeavors near the volcanoes in the Cascades.

Along with a potential backslide in volcano monitoring, the monument is also facing problems when it comes to recreation and tourism.

The popular Johnston Ridge Observatory that looks over Mount St. Helens’ gaping crater has been closed since 2023 after a landslide took out a bridge on the windy road leading there. State officials have reported that it won’t be repaired until 2027.

While there are other ways to enter the monument, those areas will be less maintained and sparsely staffed this summer after cuts to the U.S. Forest Service, according to the Mount St. Helens Institute, a nonprofit organization that works with the monument. At least 15 forest service employees from the surrounding Gifford Pinchot National Forest were fired by executive order, according to reports.

“With the decreased number of staff, the forest service just can’t meet the demand that will be put on it by public visitation,” Mount St. Helens Institute Co-Executive Director Alyssa Hoyt told SFGATE.

The institute published a blog post last week alerting visitors to the impacts they may see with cuts to federal agencies. Visitors will have less access to expert information, it states, and trails in the area will be maintained less than in years prior. Wildfire prevention efforts may be slowed.

Hoyt couldn’t identify the exact number of forest service employees active at monument facilities, because it is in flux right now, she said. But she confirmed that significantly fewer people than usual are on staff.

Officials at Gifford Pinchot National Forest did not respond to inquiries from SFGATE about fired employees.

Beyond the current wave of funding cuts, Hoyt is fearful of what an understaffed season could mean for the future of monument funding. “There’s likely to be an effect of ‘well, the forest service is ineffective at carrying out its mission because of these cuts,’ and there may be less funding going forward because they are not getting the job done,” she said.

The earthquake activity around Mount St. Helens has been at a normal, safe level since a four-year period of minor eruptions ended in 2008. Volcanoes usually have a period of increased earthquake activity for weeks leading up to an eruption event.

“We’re pretty confident that we would see signs of developing unrest before eruption. Unlike earthquakes, volcanoes tend to give you some warning that they’re doing something,” Harold said. “We’ll continue to prioritize public safety, of course. Even in the face of fiscal challenges, we’re going to do everything we can to monitor these volcanoes. But if the current [federal funding] trend continues, that will all begin to degrade.”

The Mount St. Helens Institute is reevaluating its programming, looking at what programs or events may need to be removed from the 2025 docket in preparation for its own funding gap. About 10% of funding for the institute comes from federal agreements.

The institute is finding ways to work around budget and staffing woes, though, and during these difficult times, Hoyt says she’s looking to the recovering landscape for inspiration.

“When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, it created one of the most devastated landscapes that we’ve seen. This smoking moonscape … it was lifeless,” Hoyt said. “But this story of resilience, how life has returned and nature has overcome over the last 45 years is a story of hope for me that I love to share with everyone who visits the mountain.”

LDN 1235

There is no sea on Earth large enough to contain the Shark nebula. This predator apparition poses us no danger as it is composed only of interstellar gas and dust. Dark dust like that featured here is somewhat like cigarette smoke and created in the cool atmospheres of giant stars. After expelling gas and gravitationally recondensing, massive stars may carve intricate structures into their birth cloud using their high energy light and fast stellar winds as sculpting tools. The heat they generate evaporates the murky molecular cloud as well as causing ambient hydrogen gas to disperse and glow red. During disintegration, we humans can enjoy imagining these great clouds as common icons, like we do for water clouds on Earth. Including smaller dust nebulae such as Van den Bergh 149 & 150, the Shark nebula, sometimes cataloged as LDN 1235, spans about 15 light years and lies about 650 light years away toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus).

Deaths Mount

Storm Deaths Mount, Exacerbated By DOGE and Trump’s Climate Chaos

At least 35 people have died in a devastating combination of tornadoes, wildfires, and floods.

Henry Carnell

On Friday and Saturday, a mega-storm system hit the Midwestern and southern United States with a devastating combination of tornadoes, wildfires, high-speed winds, flooding, dust storms, and blizzard-like conditions.

Winds in Texas and New Mexico approached 100 miles per hour. Eighteen-wheeler trucks were knocked over. Dozens or hundreds of houses were leveled from Texas to Indiana. There are still more than 300,000 power outages affecting over 170 million households, per USA Today‘s grid tracker. At least 35 people have been reported dead as of Sunday in Kansas, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.

Meteorologists predict the storm complex—now focused on more central areas of the country—will move towards the east coast. Seven states from Florida to Ohio are under a tornado watch.

The storms come just weeks after the Trump administration cut the jobs of hundreds of federal weather forecasters. The New York Times reported last week that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is responsible for tornado warnings and other weather forecasts, is set to cut 20 percent of its workforce. Meteorologists and scientists warned earlier this month that eviscerating weather agencies would risk public safety.

“It’s going to affect safety. It’s going to affect the economy,” warned former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad in an interview with the Associated Press, pointing out that the country was “getting into prime tornado time.”

As the devastated areas begin to rebuild, they will also have less help. At the directive of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” the Federal Emergency Management Agency also cut 200 positions barely a week ago and is making preparations to cut more.

More events like this, with consequences exacerbated by those cuts, may be on the horizon. Research shows that climate change creates storm conditions favorable for tornadoes, and that the timing and locations of tornadoes is shifting to become less predictable. The administration, of course, is cracking down on research that includes the word “climate”—and, for that matter, “resilience.”

Tragedy and Tyranny

The Tragedy—and Tyranny—of Donald Trump’s War on “Woke”

“It really does alter our ability as a collective society to be able to identify and discuss reality.”

Kate Yoder

In his first hours back in the White House in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” Yet it was immediately clear he was in fact imposing rules on language, ordering the government to recognize only two genders and shut down any diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. In one executive order, he redefined “energy” to exclude solar and wind power.

Within days, not just “diversity” but also “clean energy” and “climate change” began vanishing from federal websites. Other institutions and organizations started scrubbing their websites. Scientists who receive federal funding were told to end any activities that contradicted Trump’s executive orders. Government employees—at least the ones who hadn’t been fired—began finding ways to take their climate work underground, worried that even acknowledging the existence of global warming could put their jobs at risk.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on words tied to progressive causes reflects the rise of what’s been called the “woke right,” a reactionary movement with its own language rules in opposition to “woke” terms that have become more prevalent in recent years. Since Trump took office, federal agencies have deleted climate change information from more than 200 government websites, according to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a network that tracks these changes. These shifts in language lay the groundwork for how people understand what’s real and true, widening the deepening divide between how Republicans and Democrats understand the world.

“I think that all powerful individuals and all powerful entities are in some sense trying to bend reality to favor them, to play for their own interests,” said Norma Mendoza-Denton, an anthropology professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, who coedited a book about Trump’s use of language. “So it’s not unique, but definitely the scope at which it’s happening, the way it’s happening, the speed of it right now is unprecedented.”

Gretchen Gehrke, who monitors federal websites for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, says that government sites are one of the few sources the public trusts for authoritative, reliable information, which is why removing facts about climate change from them is such a problem. 

“It really does alter our ability as a collective society to be able to identify and discuss reality,” Gehrke said. “If we only are dealing with the information that we’re receiving via social media, we’re literally operating in different realities.” 

Institutions that fail to follow Trump’s executive orders have already faced consequences. After Trump rechristened the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America,” for instance, The Associated Press stood by the original, centuries-old name in its coverage—and its reporters lost access to the White House as a result. The effects of these language mandates have reverberated across society, with university researchers, nonprofits, and business executives searching for MAGA-friendly phrases to stay out of the administration’s crosshairs. The solar industry is no longer talking about climate change, for instance, but “American energy dominance,” echoing Trump’s platform.

The new language rules are expected to limit what many scientists are permitted to research. “It’s going to make it really hard to do the climate justice work,” said Amanda Fencl, director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists, referring to the field that studies how a warming planet affects people unequally.

The National Science Foundation, which accounts for about a quarter of federal support to universities, has been flagging studies that might violate Trump’s executive orders on gender and diversity initiatives based on a search for words such as “female,” “institutional,” “biases,” “marginalized,” and “trauma.” “I do think that deleting information and repressing and silencing scientists, it just has a chilling effect,” Fencl said. “It’s really demoralizing.”

During Trump’s first term, references to climate change disappeared from federal environmental websites, with the use of the term declining by roughly 38 percent between 2016 and 2020, only to reappear under the Biden administration. Trump’s second term appears to be taking a much more aggressive stance on wiping out words used by left-leaning organizations, scientists, and the broader public, likely with more to come. Last summer, a leaked video from Project 2025—a policy agenda organized by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank—revealed a former Trump official declaring that political appointees would have to “eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.”

Some government employees are finding ways to continue their climate work, despite the hostile atmosphere. The Atlantic reported in February that one team of federal workers at an unnamed agency had sealed itself off in a technology-free room to conduct meetings related to climate change, with employees using encrypted Signal messages instead of email. “All I have ever wanted to do was help the American people become more resilient to climate change,” an anonymous source at the agency reportedly said. “Now I am being treated like a criminal.”

The last time Trump was in office, federal employees replaced many references to “climate change” with softer phrases like “sustainability” and “resilience.” Now many of those vague, previously safe terms are disappearing from websites too, leaving fewer and fewer options for raising concerns about the environment. “You really cannot address a problem that you can’t identify,” Gehrke said. A study in the journal Ecological Economics in 2022 examined euphemisms for climate change used under the previous Trump administration and argued that the avoidance of clear language could undermine efforts to raise awareness for taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

Yet using more palatable synonyms could also be viewed as a way for scientists and government employees to continue doing important work. For example, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency rebranded its “Climate Resilience” site to “Future Conditions” in January, it stripped references to climate change from its main landing page while leaving them in subpages. “To me, that reads as trying to fly under the radar,” Gehrke said.

Of course, the reality of the changing climate won’t disappear, even if the phrase itself goes into hiding. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who last year signed a bill deleting most mentions of climate change from Florida state law, is still dealing with the consequences of a warming planet, continuing to approve funding for coastal communities to adapt to flooding and protect themselves against hurricanes. He just calls it “strengthening and fortifying Florida” without any mention of climate change.

“You can ban a word if you want,” Mendoza-Denton said, “but the concept still needs to be talked about.”