Trump

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration late Friday to facilitate the return of a Guatemalan man it deported to Mexico in spite of his fears of being harmed there.

The man, who is gay, was protected from being returned to his home country under a U.S. immigration judge’s order at the time. But the U.S. put him on a bus and sent him to Mexico instead, a removal that U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy found probably “lacked any semblance of due process.”

Mexico has since returned him to Guatemala, where he is in hiding, according to court documents. An earlier court proceeding determined that the man, identified by the initials O.C.G., risked persecution or torture if returned to Guatemala, but said he also feared returning to Mexico. He presented evidence of being raped and held for ransom in Mexico while seeking asylum in the U.S.

“No one has ever suggested that O.C.G. poses any sort of security threat,” Murphy wrote. “In general, this case presents no special facts or legal circumstances, only the banal horror of a man being wrongfully loaded onto a bus and sent back to a country where he was allegedly just raped and kidnapped.”

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said O.C.G. was in the country illegally, was “granted withholding of removal to Guatemala” and was instead sent to Mexico, which she said was “a safe third option for him, pending his asylum claim.”

McLaughlin called the judge a “federal activist judge” and said the administration expects to be vindicated by a higher court.

Murphy’s order adds to a string of findings by federal courts against recent Trump administration deportations. Those have included other deportations to third countries and the erroneous deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran who had lived as a legal U.S. resident in Maryland for 14 years while working and raising a family.

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. from a notorious prison in El Salvador, rejecting the White House’s claim that it couldn’t retrieve him after mistakenly deporting him. The White House and the Salvadoran president have said they are powerless to return him. The Trump administration has tried to invoke the state secrets privilege, arguing that releasing details in open court — or even to the judge in private — about returning Abrego Garcia to the United States would jeopardize national security.

In his Friday ruling, Murphy nodded to the dispute over the verb “facilitate” in that case and others, saying that returning O.C.G. to the U.S. is not complicated.

“The Court notes that ‘facilitate’ in this context should carry less baggage than in several other notable cases,” he wrote. “O.C.G. is not held by any foreign government. Defendants have declined to make any argument that facilitating his return would be costly, burdensome, or otherwise impede the government’s objectives.”

Smyth writes for the Associated Press.

May 24 (UPI) — A record number of Americans applied to become British citizens during the first three months of this year after Donald Trump re-took office as president, according to official data.

The last time American applications for British citizenship spiked was in 2020 during Trump’s first presidential term early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

This comes as the British government is toughening requirements for legal migrants and extending the wait for newcomers to claim citizenship.

Britain’s Home Office on Thursday reported 6,618 U.S. citizens applied for British citizenship over the past 12 months through March, the highest annual figure since records began in 2004. That includes 1,931 applications between January and March — the highest number for any quarter on record.

There also is a record number of Americans seeking to live and work indefinitely in the country as a necessary precursor to citizenship. Of the 5,521 settlement applications granted last year, most were for people eligible because of their spouses, parents and other family links. And a substantial portion had originally arrived in Britain on temporary visas for “skilled workers” and want to remain.

For the year through March, there were 238,690 applications worldwide, an increase of 238,690 for the same period last year.

Some people might qualify “more swiftly” for permanent settlement in Britain depending on the “contribution” they made, Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, said in Parliament on May 12.

Since Trump was elected president again, immigration lawyers told The New York Times they had received an increased number of inquiries from people in the United States about possibly relocating to Britain.

“People who were already here may have been thinking, ‘I want the option of dual citizenship in the event that I don’t want to go back to the U.S,'” Muhunthan Paramesvaran, a senior immigration lawyer at Wilsons Solicitors in London, said.

There also have been increased applications from non-U.S. citizens living there seeking to go to Britain.

“We’ve seen increases in inquiries and applications not just for U.S. nationals, but for U.S. residents of other nationalities who are currently in the U.S. but looking at plans to settle in the U.K.,” Zeena Luchowa, a partner at Laura Devine Immigration, a law firm that specializes in American migration to Britain, said. “The queries we’re seeing are not necessarily about British citizenship – it’s more about seeking to relocate.”

This comes as British authorities under a Labor government are trying to reduce immigration. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain has to take “back control of our borders” and warned uncontrolled immigration could result in “becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.”

British figures show net migration dropped by almost half in 2024 to 431,000 compared with 2023.

The British government had extended the qualification period from five years to 10 before they could apply for settlement.

Also, the government wants to raise English language requirements across every immigration route. In 2021, nine out of 10 migrants reported speaking English well, according to analysis by the Oxford University Migration Observatory.

On May 5, European Union nations announced they would spend $566 million from 2025 to 2027 to attract foreign researchers after the Trump administration cut funding to universities in the United States. Britain left EU in 2020.

Under Trump’s direction, there will be a “gold card” at a cost of $5 million, as an extension of the EB-5 program that extends green cards to foreign investors and their families.

“We’re going to be selling a gold card,” Trump told reporters on Feb. 5 in the Oval Office, which is adorned by items in gold.

The current program grants green cards to immigrants who make a minimum investment of at least $1.050 million or $800,000 in economically distressed areas.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Wednesday: “I expect there will be a website up called ‘Trump card dot gov’ in about a week. The details of that will come soon after, but people can start to register.”

US President Donald Trump is once again taking aim at trading partners of the United States. This time it’s the European Union.

The US president is now threatening to impose a 50-percent tariff on all goods from the EU starting June 1. If he follows through, that will mean much higher import taxes on the EU’s hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of exported goods.

So is Europe about to pay a high price for not settling with Trump sooner? Or will Trump’s tariffs – now his signature move – backfire for US manufacturing?

Presenter: Tom Mcrae

Guests:

Paolo von Schirach, President, Global Policy Institute

Will Hutton, President, Academy of Social Sciences.

Brian Wong, Fellow, Centre on Contemporary China and the World

WEST POINT, N.Y. — President Trump used the first military commencement address of his second term Saturday to congratulate West Point cadets on their academic and physical accomplishments while veering sharply into politics, claiming credit for America’s military might while boasting about his election victory last fall.

“In a few moments, you’ll become graduates of the most elite and storied military academy in human history,” Trump said at the ceremony at Michie Stadium. “And you will become officers of the greatest and most powerful army the world has ever known. And I know, because I rebuilt that army, and I rebuilt the military. And we rebuilt it like nobody has ever rebuilt it before in my first term.”

Wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, the Republican president told the 1,002 graduating cadets that the U.S. is the “hottest country in the world,” boasted of his administration’s record and underscored an “America first” theme for the U.S. military, which he called “the greatest fighting force in the history of the world.”

“We’re getting rid of distractions and we’re focusing our military on its core mission: crushing America’s adversaries, killing America’s enemies and defending our great American flag like it has never been defended before,” Trump said. He later said that “the job of the U.S. armed forces is not to host drag shows or transform foreign cultures,” a reference to drag shows on military bases that the Biden administration halted after Republican criticism.

Trump said the cadets were graduating at a “defining moment” in the Army’s history, as he criticized past political leaders, whom he said led soldiers into “nation-building crusades to nations that wanted nothing to do with us.” He said he was clearing the military of transgender ideas, “critical race theory” and trainings he called divisive and political.

“They subjected the armed forces to all manner of social projects and political causes while leaving our borders undefended and depleting our arsenals to fight other countries’ wars,” he said of past administrations.

Several points during his address at the football stadium on the military academy’s campus were indistinguishable from a political speech. Trump claimed that when he left the White House in 2021, “we had no wars, we had no problems, we had nothing but success, we had the most incredible economy” — although voters had just rejected his bid for reelection.

Turning to last year’s election, he noted that he won all seven swing states, arguing that those results gave him a “great mandate” and “it gives us the right to do what we want to do,” although he did not win a majority of votes nationwide.

The president also took several moments to acknowledge specific graduates’ achievements. He summoned Chris Verdugo onto the stage, noting that the cadet completed an 18.5-mile march on a freezing night in January in two hours and 30 minutes. Trump had the top-ranking lacrosse team stand to be recognized. He also brought West Point’s football quarterback, Bryson Daily, to the lectern, praising him as having a “steel”-like shoulder. He later used Daily as an example to make a case against transgender women participating in women’s athletics.

In a nod to presidential tradition, Trump also pardoned about half a dozen cadets who had faced disciplinary infractions.

“You could have done anything you wanted, you could have gone anywhere,” Trump told the class, later continuing: “Writing your own ticket to top jobs on Wall Street or Silicon Valley wouldn’t be bad, but I think what you’re doing is better.”

The president also ran through several pieces of advice for the graduating cadets, urging them to do what they love, think big, work hard, hold onto their culture, keep faith in America and take risks.

“This is a time of incredible change and we do not need an officer corps of careerists and yes men,” Trump said, going on to note recent advances in military technology. “We need patriots with guts and vision and backbone.”

Trump closed his speech by calling on the graduating cadets to “never ever give up,” then said he was leaving to deal with matters involving Russia and China.

“We’re going to keep winning, this country’s going to keep winning, and with you, the job is easy,” he said.

Just outside campus, about three dozen protesters gathered before the ceremony, waving miniature American flags. One in the crowd carried a sign that said “Support Our Veterans” and “Stop the Cuts,” while others held up plastic buckets with the message: “Go Army Beat Fascism.”

Trump gave the commencement address at West Point in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He urged the graduating cadets to “never forget” the soldiers who fought a war over slavery during his remarks that day, which came as the nation was reckoning with its history on race after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The ceremony five years ago drew scrutiny because the U.S. Military Academy forced the graduating cadets, who had been home because of COVID-19, to return to an area near a pandemic hot spot.

Trump traveled to Tuscaloosa, Ala., earlier this month to speak to the University of Alabama’s graduating class. His remarks mixed standard commencement fare and advice with political attacks against his Democratic predecessor, President Biden, musings about transgender athletes and lies about the 2020 election.

On Friday, Vice President JD Vance spoke to the graduating class at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Vance said in his remarks that Trump is working to ensure U.S. soldiers are deployed with clear goals, rather than “undefined missions” and “open-ended conflicts.”

Kim and Swenson write for the Associated Press and reported from West Point and Bridgewater, N.J., respectively.

When tenant rights attorney Ysabel Jurado ran for Los Angeles City Council last year, she positioned herself as a potential fourth vote against Mayor Karen Bass’ plan to hire more police officers.

While she was waging her campaign, the council’s three-member super progressive bloc — Eunisses Hernandez, Nithya Raman and Hugo Soto–Martínez — voted against the mayor’s budget, decrying the amount of money allocated for the Los Angeles Police Department. Jurado, who went on to unseat Councilmember Kevin de León, said she would have joined them, turning the 12-3 budget vote into an 11-4.

Turns out it none of that was necessary.

On Thursday, the council approved a $14-billion annual budget that would cut police hiring in half, while sparing hundreds of other city workers from layoffs. Jurado, now on the council, praised the spending plan, then voted for it.

And this time around, the council members on the losing end of a 12-3 vote were those who occupy the body’s more moderate wing: Monica Rodriguez, Traci Park and John Lee.

The shift in budget votes from last year to now offers perhaps the strongest evidence of the political pendulum swing under way at City Hall. When other recent votes are added to the equation, the council chamber might even be undergoing a permanent realignment.

The council also voted 12-3 last week to hike the city’s minimum wage for hotel employees and private-sector tourism workers, boosting it to $30 per hour by 2028. Park, Rodriguez and Lee were in the minority on that issue as well, arguing that hotel and airport wages were rising too much and too quickly, jeopardizing the financial health of L.A.’s tourism industry.

The three ultra moderates also voiced alarm at their colleagues’ decision to scale back the mayor’s plan for increasing hiring at the fire department. Rodriguez, who gave a long and passionate speech against the budget, said in an interview she thinks “there’s clearly a shift in the politics of the council.”

“We have different ideology with respect to how we need to be making sure that the city is safe,” she said.

Soto-Martínez, who represents an Echo Park-to-Hollywood district, wouldn’t pin the political shift on any one vote, arguing instead that “the realignment has been happening for quite some years now.” The move to the left at City Hall, he said, has been driven by the election of candidates — including himself — who have sworn off contributions from corporations and real estate interests.

Because this year’s financial situation was so dire, and the list of proposed cuts so large, the council had no sacred cows when preparing the 2025-26 spending plan, he said. That paved the way for the council to scale back the recruitment of new police officers, he said.

“For many years, including the first two years that I was here, that issue was untouchable. No one would touch it or go near it,” said Soto-Martínez, who was elected in 2022. “And this year, we were realistic about police hiring.”

The realignment is in part of the product of years of campaigning and grassroots advocacy from the hotel workers’ union, LA Forward, Democratic Socialists of America-Los Angeles and many other organizations. But it also reflects the choices of Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who is still in his first year in his leadership role.

Harris-Dawson reshuffled the council’s committee assignments last year, offering plum spots to the newest arrivals. Hernandez, who promised during her 2022 campaign not to hire any additional police officers, landed a coveted spot on the budget committee. She then forged a strong working relationship with Councilmember Heather Hutt, another new appointee to the budget committee, who broke into tears on Thursday as she described Hernandez’ contributions to their deliberations.

Over the course of the budget committee’s nine meetings, Hernandez worked with her colleagues to restore funding for programs that help day laborers, an LGBTQ+ liaison in the city’s civil rights department and $1 million for the legal defense of immigrants facing deportation. She also fought for core services, such as street light repairs, graffiti removal and crews that address illegal dumping.

By contrast, Rodriguez, Park and Lee made clear they felt excluded from key decisions, particularly the budget committee’s vote to shift management over certain homelessness initiatives out of the office of City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo and into the Los Angeles Housing Department.

After a lengthy debate, the three moderates picked up two votes in their effort to delay those changes, not enough to win the day. Instead, their biggest victory — one that took multiple tries — was securing the votes to restore $376,961 at the fire department, which will allow the city to send 45 firefighters to paramedic training.

Park, whose district includes the fire-scarred Pacific Palisades, sounded furious by the time the entire budget came up for a vote.

“I don’t think we should agree to spend another penny on homelessness until we as a full council — not just the few of you who get invited into the conversation — have the chance to chime in,” she said, adding: “But instead of fixing that mess, what did we decide to go after? The increase [Bass requested for] our fire department, after all we literally just witnessed in January.”

One day after the budget vote, Councilmember Bob Blumenfield acknowledged that the pendulum had swung left at City Hall, pointing to the results of several recent elections. Still, he cautioned against reading too much into a single budget, saying a pendulum can swing in opposing directions.

Blumenfield, who represents part of the west San Fernando Valley, said he voted to slow down police hiring as part of a compromise to protect civilian jobs at the LAPD and elsewhere. “I hate seeing the lower number of police recruitment,” he said.

Blumenfield, who occupies the terrain between super progressive and ultra moderate, said he’s still hoping the council will find additional funds later in the budget year to allow the LAPD to hire more officers beyond the 240 that received funding from the council.

“I don’t like to look at the council as a spectrum. I don’t see myself on that spectrum,” he said. “On different issues, I feel like I’m on different parts of it.”

State of play

— SEEKING A VETO: Business groups pressed Mayor Karen Bass to veto the measure hiking the minimum wage of tourism workers, saying hotels and other businesses cannot afford to wage hikes of 50% between now and 2028. Bass, appearing Tuesday at the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, sounded sympathetic to their complaints but stopped short of stating her opposition.

“I’m concerned about the hit to tourism and just the hit in general, especially with downtown, but citywide, because downtown was already suffering,” she told the audience. She also raised doubts that she would intervene, calling the initial wage vote “veto proof.”

— BAD CALL: Former deputy Mayor Brian Williams struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors, admitting he called in a fake bomb threat to City Hall late last year that was blamed on anti-Israel sentiment. Williams, who handled public safety issues for Bass, falsely stated that he had just received a call on his city-issued cellphone from an unknown male caller who made a bomb threat against City Hall, according to his plea agreement.

— HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD: L.A.’s mayor promised to reduce barriers to filming in Los Angeles this week, signing an executive directive aimed at streamlining city permit processes and increasing access to legendary L.A. locations, such as Griffith Observatory and the Central Library. “We’ve taken the industry for granted,” Bass said. “We know that the industry is a part of our DNA here. And sometimes, if you think it’s a part of your DNA, you can think it’s always going to be here.”

— ZOO STORY: The elephants Billy and Tina were whisked out of the Los Angeles Zoo this week, relocated to a zoo in Tulsa over the fierce objections of animal advocates. The late night relocation drew complaints from Blumenfield and an array of activists, who argued that the pachyderms needed a much larger expanse of land for their health and well being.

— PUBLIC PAYOUTS: Two fired employees who received a combined $800,000 in legal settlements from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority had accused the agency’s chief executive, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, of hiring cronies for top jobs, attempting to destroy records and being “extremely inebriated” at an out-of-state conference, according to two settlement demand letters released this week. LAHSA “strenuously” denied the allegations, saying the agency “made a business decision” to pay the fired workers and resolve the employee dispute.

— PUSHBACK OVER PCH: Officials from city and state government tussled this week over plans for reopening an 11-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway. Nancy Ward, who leads the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, complained that her office had been kept “in the dark” about the city’s security plan for the fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades area. A Bass spokesperson pushed back on that claim, saying the city would deploy 112 officers to staff 16 checkpoints 24 hours a day in the Palisades. Either way, traffic was flowing Friday afternoon.

— COUNTY CRIME: A veteran emergency management official with Los Angeles County has been arrested on charges of murdering his mother. Robert Barreras, 42, was suspended without pay, and had been on leave when the crime took place, a county official said.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness carried out operations in two locations: the area around Lankershim Boulevard and Strathern Street in Councilmember Imelda Padilla’s San Fernando Valley district and the area around Vermont Avenue and 73rd Street in Harris-Dawson’s South L.A. district. Outreach workers also returned to other parts of South L.A. and Hollywood, according to the mayor’s team.
• On the docket for next week: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to take up appointees to its new governance reform task force, which will help oversee the implementation of Measure G, last year’s voter-approved measure to overhaul county government.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

May 24 (UPI) — President Donald Trump signed four executive orders to overhaul the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and hasten the process and deployment of new nuclear power reactors in the United States.

They allow agencies to build reactors on federally owned land, revamp the NRC, create new timelines for construction permits, and expand domestic uranium production and enrichment capabilities.

Trump on Friday signed the orders called: Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy, Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security and Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base.

Nuclear executives joined Trump, including Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez, who leads the largest operator of nuclear plants in the U.S.

Constellation wants to restart operations at Three Mile Island, aiming to bring the Unit 1 reactor back online in 2028. The Unit 2 reactor at Three Mile Island was the site of a partial meltdown in 1979.

“We’re wasting too much time on permitting and we’re answering silly questions, not the important ones,” the Constellation CEO said.

The agency is also reviewing whether to restart the mothballed Palisades plant in Michigan.

Dominguez said nuclear energy is best-suited to support artificial intelligence data center needs with consistent, around-the-clock service.

Between 1954 and 1978, the United States authorized construction of 133 civilian nuclear reactors at 81 power plants. Since 1978, the NRC has authorized a fraction of that number, and only two reactors have entered into commercial operation.

“Instead of efficiently promoting safe, abundant nuclear energy, the NRC has instead tried to insulate Americans from the most remote risks without appropriate regard for the severe domestic and geopolitical costs of such risk aversion,” according to one of the executive orders.

Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who now heads the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Energy Futures Initiative, said the moves could increase safety or security risks.

“Reorganizing and reducing the independence of the NRC could lead to the hasty deployment of advanced reactors with safety and security flaws,” Moniz, a nuclear physicist who served under President Barack Obama, said.

NRC overhaul

The 50-year-old independent NRC regulates nuclear reactors. The new executive order dictates reductions in force “though certain functions may increase in size consistent with the policies in this order, including those devoted to new reactor licensing.”

The NRC shall also create a team of at least 20 officials to draft the new regulations.

The order will not remove or replace any of the five commissioners who lead the body, according to the White House.

The NRC will work with the Department of Government Efficiency, the Office of Management and Budget, and other executive departments and agencies on the reorganization, according to the White House.

The public hearings process at the agency also will be streamlined, the executive order said.

New reactors

Trump’s orders also create a regulatory method for the departments of Energy and Defense to build nuclear reactors on federal land, the administration official said.

The commission will be required to decide on nuclear reactor licenses within 18 months and, within 60 days, the secretary of energy is expected to issue guidance on what counts as a qualified test reactor.

The order says that qualified test reactors can be safely operational at Department-owned or Department-controlled facilities within two years.

“Federal Government has effectively throttled the domestic deployment of advanced reactors, ceding the initiative to foreign nations in building this critical technology,” the order reads. “Our proud history of innovation has succumbed to overregulated complacency.”

Two new reactors that recently came online at Plant Vogtle near Augusta, Ga., took seven years longer than planned to build and came in $18 billion over budget.

The secretary of state is also expected to “aggressively pursue” at least 20 new agreements by the close of the 120th Congress “to enable the United States nuclear industry to access new markets in partner countries.”

“We’re also talking about the big plants — the very, very big, the biggest,” Trump said at the signing. “We’re going to be doing them also.”

Other changes

Another of the orders Trump signed seeks to fully leverage federally owned uranium and plutonium resources declared excess to defense needs.

Trump also wants a pilot program for reactor construction and operation outside the National Laboratories.

Within 240 days, the agencies are expected to develop management of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste, and deployment of advanced fuel cycle capabilities “to establish a safe, secure, and sustainable long-term fuel cycle,” according to the order.

Additionally, the order directs the Department of Education to work toward increasing participation in nuclear energy-related apprenticeships and career and technical education programs.

May 23 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Friday threatened tariffs against Apple on iPhones that are manufactured outside of the United States.

Trump said in a Truth Social post that a tariff of “at least 25%” will be levied on future iPhones that are manufactured internationally and sold in the United States.

“I long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their [iPhones] that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote.

Trump’s post did not include details on how the proposed tariffs would be implemented.

The warning came after a White House official said Trump met with Cook at the White House earlier in the week, CBS News reported.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News Friday he was not present in that meeting but suggested they may have discussed an effort by the Trump administration to focus on “precision manufacturing” of products made in the United States.

“A large part of Apple’s components are in semiconductors. So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure,” he said.

Most iPhone production is currently handled in China, but Foxconn, a primary assembly partner on the phones, has been exploring expanding its facilities in India.

Dan Ives, senior equity research analyst and managing director at Wedbush Securities, suggested in a post on X that manufacturing an iPhone in the United States could more than triple the cost of an iPhone 16, the latest model, from its current $1,000 price tag.

“The pressure from Trump on Apple to build iPhone production in the U.S. as we have discussed this would result in an iPhone price point that is a non-starter for Cupertino and translate into iPhone prices of [approximately] $3,500 if it was made in the U.S. which is not realistic in our view,” Ives wrote.

Apple stock was down 2.44% roughly an hour after markets opened on Friday.

May 23 (UPI) — A federal judge in San Francisco on Friday issued an injunction, blocking President Donald Trump from laying off thousands of federal employees working at more than 20 government agencies.

The order issued by U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of California Susan Illston also bars the Department of Government Efficiency and U.S. Office of Management and Budget from making further reductions to the federal workforce.

“Presidents may set policy priorities for the executive branch, and agency heads may implement them. This much is undisputed. But Congress creates federal agencies, funds them, and gives them duties that-by statute-they must carry out,” Illston wrote in her 51-page ruling.

“Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress’s mandates, and a President may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress.”

The Justice Department said in court Friday it plans to appeal the judge’s decision.

Trump in February issued an executive order declaring his intention to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget then began large-scale layoffs of thousands of federal employees later that month.

A separate executive order in March targets a further seven agencies.

The lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Government Employees seeks to block the Trump administration from carrying out those layoffs and seeks to have fired employees re-hired.

Several other local governments, unions and other groups have filed similar lawsuits, calling the layoffs unlawful.

The Justice Department said in court Friday it plans to appeal the judge’s decision.

“The defendants in this case are President Trump, numerous federal agencies, and the heads of those agencies. Defendants insist that the new administration does not need Congress’s support to lay off and restructure large swathes of the federal workforce, essentially telling the Court, ‘Nothing to see here.’ In their view, federal agencies are not reorganizing. Rather, they have simply initiated reductions in force according to established regulations and ‘consistent with applicable law.’ The Court and the bystanding public should just move along,” the judge wrote Friday.

“Yet the role of a district court is to examine the evidence, and at this stage of the case the evidence discredits the executive’s position and persuades the Court that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their suit.”

Friday’s ruling comes a day after a federal judge in Massachusetts issued a separate injunction prohibiting the Trump administration from further layoffs at the Department of Education. U.S. District Judge Myong Joun’s ruling also forces the federal government to rehire Education Department employees previously let go under Trump’s executive orders.

“Indeed, the Court holds the President likely must request Congressional cooperation to order the changes he seeks, and thus issues a preliminary injunction to pause large-scale reductions in force and reorganizations in the meantime.” Illston wrote Friday.

May 23 (UPI) — A federal judge in Massachusetts on Friday issued an injunction that blocks President Donald Trump‘s administration from stopping Harvard University’s enrollment of international students.

The Trump administration may not proceed with an order that blocks Harvard from using the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Massachusetts Allison D. Burroughs said in her written ruling.

Such an order would cause Harvard to “sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties,” Burroughs wrote.

On Thursday, the Trump administration blocked Harvard from using the SEVP process to enroll foreign students, because of the school’s “refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students.”

Harvard filed a lawsuit, naming the Justice Department, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and others as defendants, seeking to block the move.

“This revocation is a blatant violation of the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act. It is the latest act by the government in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students,” the lawsuit contends.

The university contends the administration’s move would negatively affect more than 7,000 current students.

“For more than 70 years, Harvard University has been certified by the federal government to enroll international students under the F-1 visa program, and it has long been designated as an exchange program sponsor to host J-1 nonimmigrants. Harvard has, over this time, developed programs and degrees tailored to its international students, invested millions to recruit the most talented such students, and integrated its international students into all aspects of the Harvard community,” the school said in its application for an injunction.

This week’s news is the latest chapter in a back-and-forth saga between the Trump administration and the post-secondary institution.

Last month, the federal government said it would withhold some $2 billion in funding. Earlier this month, the government blocked further grants, accusing Harvard of “engaging in a systemic pattern of violating federal law.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the school is resisting what the administration calls “common-sense reforms.”

Earlier, the school took to social media to state its views on the matter. On Twitter, it posted, “Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard.”

Later, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also used the same social-media app to criticize the administration’s moves. “America cannot long remain free, nor first among nations, if it becomes the kind of place where universities are dismantled because they don’t align politically with the current head of the government,” he said.

EU official says a trade deal ‘must be guided by mutual respect, not threats’ after the US president says talks with the bloc are ‘going nowhere’.

The European Union has said it will defend its interests after United States President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 50-percent tariff on all goods from the 27-member bloc.

The EU’s top trade official, Maros Sefcovic, said in a post on X that he spoke on Friday with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the issue.

“The EU is fully engaged, committed to securing a deal that works for both,” he said, adding that the EU Commission remains ready to work in good faith towards an agreement.

“EU-US trade is unmatched and must be guided by mutual respect, not threats. We stand ready to defend our interests.”

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he is “recommending” a huge 50 percent duty on the EU starting on June 1 since talks with them “are going nowhere”.

Speaking later in the Oval Office, the Republican president emphasised that he was not seeking a deal with the EU but might delay the tariffs if more European companies made major investments in the US.

“I’m not looking for a deal,” Trump told the reporters. “We’ve set the deal. It’s at 50 percent.”

European leaders warned the tariffs will hurt both sides.

German economy minister Katherina Reiche said everything must be done “to ensure that the European Commission reaches a negotiated solution with the United States” while French foreign minister Laurent Saint-Martin said the bloc prefers de-escalation but is “ready to respond”.

If implemented, the tariffs would mean that the EU will have higher import taxes on its hundreds of billions worth of exported goods compared with China, which had its tariffs cut earlier this month to allow more negotiations between Washington, DC, and Beijing.

In early April, Trump announced a 20 percent tariff on most EU goods but brought it down to 10 percent until July 8 to allow time for more negotiations.

Trump has complained that existing frameworks are “unfair” to US companies as the European bloc sells more goods to its ally than it buys from it.

Trump on Friday also warned that the US tech giant Apple could also be hit with a 25 percent import tax on all iPhones not manufactured but sold in the US.

His announcements online dealt another blow to stock markets both in the US and in the EU, with the S&P 500 down about 0.8 percent and the pan-European STOXX 600 index falling about 1.2 percent.

HONOLULU — Environmentalists are challenging in court President Trump’s executive order that they say strips core protections from the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument and opens the area to harmful commercial fishing.

On the same day of last month’s proclamation allowing commercial fishing in the monument, Trump issued an order to boost the U.S. commercial fishing industry by peeling back regulations and opening up harvesting in previously protected areas.

The monument was created by President George W. Bush in 2009 and expanded by President Obama to nearly 500,000 square miles in the central Pacific Ocean.

A week after the April 17 proclamation, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service sent a letter to fishing permit holders giving them a green light to fish commercially within the monument’s boundaries, even though a long-standing fishing ban remains on the books, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Honolulu.

The first longline fisher started fishing in the monument just three days after that letter, according to Earthjustice, which has been tracking vessel activity within the monument using Global Fishing Watch.

The Department of Justice declined to comment Friday.

The lawsuit noted that commercial longline fishing, an industrial method involving baited hooks from lines 60 miles or longer, will snag turtles, marine mammals or seabirds that are attracted to the bait or swim through the curtain of hooks.

“We will not stand by as the Trump administration unleashes highly destructive commercial fishing on some of the planet’s most pristine, biodiverse marine environments,” David Henkin, an Earthjustice attorney, said in a statement. “Piling lawlessness on top of lawlessness, the National Marine Fisheries Service chose to carry out President Trump’s illegal proclamation by issuing its own illegal directive, with no public input.”

Designating the area in the Pacific to the south and west of the Hawaiian Islands as a monument provided “needed protection to a wide variety of scientific and historical treasures in one of the most spectacular and unique ocean ecosystems on earth,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit added that allowing commercial fishing in the monument expansion harms the “cultural, spiritual, religious, subsistence, educational, recreational, and aesthetic interests” of a group of Native Hawaiian plaintiffs who are connected genealogically to the Indigenous people of the Pacific.

Johnston Atoll is the closest island in the monument to Hawaii, about 717 nautical miles west-southwest of the state.

Kelleher writes for the Associated Press.

A series of new executive orders seeks to fast-track approvals to grow the US’s nuclear energy sector, a lengthy process.

United States President Donald Trump has signed a series of new executive orders aimed at boosting nuclear energy production in the country, while rolling back regulations.

Friday’s orders, signed by Trump at an Oval Office event, called on the nation’s independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission to cut down on regulations and fast-track new licences for reactors and power plants.

One order requires the body to make decisions on new nuclear reactors within 18 months. That would severely pare down a process that can take more than a decade. Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump described the nuclear industry as “hot”.

“It’s a brilliant industry. You have to do it right,” he said, flanked by CEOs of nuclear companies, as well as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Burgum told reporters that the president’s actions would “turn the clock back on over 50 years of overregulation” in the nuclear industry.

Trump’s orders also called for assessing staffing levels at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and directed the US Departments of Energy and Defense to work together to build nuclear plants on federal land.

Building more nuclear reactors, an official told reporters in advance of the signing, is aimed in part at addressing the increased energy needs created by artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

It was not immediately clear how much authority Trump and the executive branch could assert over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which Congress created as an independent agency in 1974.

Trump’s orders also called for growth in the domestic production and enrichment of uranium, the primary fuel used in nuclear power.

‘National energy emergency’

Trump has focused heavily on energy industry deregulation since taking office for a second term in January, but much of the emphasis has been directed at fossil fuels.

On January 20, the day he returned to the White House, Trump declared a “national energy emergency”.

As part of that order, he called on the heads of federal agencies to identify any emergency powers they could use to “facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources” on federal and non-federal land.

He further called high energy prices an “active threat” to US citizens and national security.

Nuclear energy has long been a thorny issue in the US, splitting those who seek alternatives to fossil fuels.

On one hand, the industry offers a means of producing energy with low levels of greenhouse gas emissions. But on the other hand, the production of nuclear energy creates waste that can remain radioactive for long periods of time, and requires special storage to ensure public safety.

Nuclear power also carries the risk of rare, but potentially cataclysmic, accidents.

For many, incidents like the Three Mile Island accident represent the possible dangers. In 1979, the nuclear generator on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania suffered a mechanical failure, releasing radioactive gases into the air and spurring a backlash against nuclear power.

Even with Trump’s regulatory rollback, many experts in the field believe it would take years for the US to scale up its nuclear infrastructure.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has taken its first concrete action to deliver sanctions relief for Syria, following a surprise policy pivot earlier this month.

On Friday, the US Department of the Treasury announced sweeping relief to an array of individuals and entities, which it said will “enable new investment and private sector activity consistent with [Trump’s] America First strategy”.

The US State Department, meanwhile, concurrently issued a waiver to a 2019 law, the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, that would “enable our foreign partners, allies, and the region to further unlock Syria’s potential”.

Trump surprised the international community when, on May 13, he pledged to remove sanctions placed on Syria during the leadership of its now-ousted leader, President Bashar al-Assad.

Friday’s announcements mark an initial step towards that goal, as Syria recovers from abuses under al-Assad’s government and 13 years of civil war.

“As President Trump promised, the Treasury Department and the State Department are implementing authorizations to encourage new investment into Syria,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

“Syria must also continue to work towards becoming a stable country that is at peace, and today’s actions will hopefully put the country on a path to a bright, prosperous, and stable future”.

Sanctions relief is critical for Syria to move forward. The United States is issuing a Caesar Act sanctions waiver to increase investments and cash flows that will facilitate basic services and reconstruction in Syria. We support the Syrian people’s efforts to build a more…

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) May 23, 2025

Trump first unveiled his plans for sanctions relief during a tour of the Middle East in mid-May. He said lifting US sanctions would give Syria “a chance at greatness”, since the restrictions left the war-torn country economically isolated.

“It’s their time to shine. We’re taking them all off,” he said from Riyadh.

Shortly after, Trump met and shook hands with Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who had only recently been removed from the US’s “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” list.

Appeal for relief

Calls for sanctions relief had grown following the fall of al-Assad’s government last December. As head of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, al-Sharaa spearheaded the offensive that led to al-Assad fleeing the country, bringing the civil war to an end.

The war, which first broke out in 2011, had left Syria’s economy in tatters.

As many as 656,493 people were killed during the conflict, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and a 2020 report from the United Nations estimated that the country suffered total economic losses of about $442.2bn in the first eight years of the war alone.

Sanctions have further dampened Syria’s economic outlook, making it difficult for countries with ties to the US to conduct business there.

Since taking power in December, Syria’s interim government has argued the ongoing sanctions, largely imposed during al-Assad’s rule, would slow development and cause further instability.

Trump’s announcement earlier this month buoyed hope for many Syrians of a new path forward, although the extent of the relief had remained unclear.

Earlier this week, the European Union also announced it had lifted sanctions against Syria.

Friday’s sanctions relief in the US applies to the “the Government of Syria … as in existence on or after May 13, 2025”, according to the Treasury Department.

The reprieve also applies to several previously sanctioned transportation, banking, tourism and fossil fuel entities.

Transactions related to Russia, Iran and North Korea remain under US sanctions.

One of the biggest hurdles, however, is the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, a law that was passed in 2019, during Trump’s first term.

It included broad sanctions that targeted al-Assad’s government and its allies and supporters for atrocities committed against civilians.

The act was named after a former Syrian military photographer and whistleblower who smuggled out of the country a cache of images showing torture and mass killing at detention centres run by al-Assad’s security forces.

But since the law was passed by Congress, it will likely take an act of Congress to completely lift its restrictions.

The president, however, can issue temporary waivers to the law, which is what the Trump administration did on Friday.

In a statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the waiver will last for 180 days, in order to “increase investments and cash flows that will facilitate basic services and reconstruction in Syria”.

“We support the Syrian people’s efforts to build a more hopeful future,” Rubio said.

WASHINGTON — A multifront assault by the Trump administration against the nation’s oldest university intensified on Friday when Harvard sued to block the government from barring international student enrollment, and a judge issued an immediate order to halt the ban.

The rapid-fire legal action is the latest in Trump administration attacks against the university as it claims Harvard failed to adhere to its demands to combat antisemitism.

But the whiplash felt by Harvard international students is reverberating far beyond Cambridge, Mass., as university leaders and foreign students across the United States and California watch with growing alarm over how federal actions will affect the nation’s 1.1-million foreign student population — 6% of American higher education enrollment.

Campuses have been on alert since last month, when the Homeland Security and State departments canceled thousands of enrollment certifications and visas at dozens of U.S. colleges, including UCLA, for individuals who often had minor infractions such as traffic tickets. The government, seeing losses in court, later reversed those cancellations and was further blocked from undertaking them when an Oakland-based federal judge issued an injunction Thursday.

“The current mindset of the international community is uncertainty,” said Syed Tamim Ahmad, a junior at UCLA who is from India and recently completed his term as the student government’s international student representative.

Ahmad, who recently took the MCAT and plans to apply to medical school, said he was reconsidering whether continuing his studies in the United States is a safe option.

“We do not know what to expect or what to come next,” he said. “Every student saw what happened at Harvard and was absolutely shocked. We wonder, what if it happens at UCLA or any other university?”

UCLA senior Adam Tfayli, a dual U.S.-Lebanese citizen who grew up in Beirut, had a different view. “My friends at Harvard are very concerned right now,” said Tfayli, who finished his term this week as the Undergraduate Student Assn. Council President. “At UCLA, it’s tense just because it has been on college campuses for months under this administration, but doesn’t feel as bad as it did when people’s visas were being revoked last month.”

In a statement, UCLA Vice Chancellor of Strategic Communications Mary Osako said that “international Bruins are an essential part of our community.”

“We recognize that recent developments at other universities have created a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety, and we remain committed to supporting all Bruins’ ability to work, learn, teach and thrive here at UCLA,” Osako said.

USC, home to 17,000 international students — the most of any California school — declined to respond to events at Harvard, and pointed The Times to statements on its Office of International Services website about foreign students. “New restrictions could be implemented with little notice. The decision to travel internationally should be made carefully,” said a letter this month.

Like at Harvard, government officials have also scrutinized USC for its enrollment of Chinese students, who they have suggested may be a security threat — an accusation that also arose at California colleges during the first Trump administration. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has accused Harvard of failing to protect Jewish students amid pro-Palestinian protests, accused the university on Thursday of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.”

In March, a House commitee wrote to USC to request data on Chinese nationals and their “involvement in federally funded research and the security of sensitive technologies developed on campus.”

USC said in a statement Friday that it is “cooperating with the select committee’s inquiries and are following all applicable privacy laws and other legal protections.”

Speaking on Fox News on Thursday, Noem said the actions against Harvard were a “warning” to universities nationwide.

“This should be a warning to every other university to get your act together,” she said. “Get your act together.”

The case amplifies an increasingly existential fight for Harvard, one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions of higher education. The Trump administration has launched multiple investigations into the university, moved to freeze nearly $3 billion in federal funding and pushed to end its tax-exempt status. Taken together, the federal actions raise fundamental questions over Harvard’s ability to sustain its international standards.

Harvard alleged in its suit Friday that the Trump administration’s moves mark “the latest act by the government in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”

The administration’s “pernicious” actions, Harvard alleged, would prevent some of the world’s greatest minds from pursuing research and degrees at the university. Already, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has offered “unconditional” acceptance of international students forced to depart the Boston area due to Trump’s policies.

U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs, appointed by former President Obama, granted an immediate restraining order, agreeing with Harvard’s argument that the Trump directive would cause “immediate and irreparable harm” to the institution.

In a statement to The Times, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, dismissed the judicial injunction out of Massachusetts.

“The American people elected President Trump — not random local judges with their own liberal agenda — to run the country,” Jackson said. “These unelected judges have no right to stop the Trump administration from exercising their rightful control over immigration policy and national security policy.”

The Trump administration’s assault on higher education has not focused solely on Harvard, but on much of the Ivy League and other elite campuses, including Columbia University, several UC campuses, USC and Stanford. Columbia and UCLA in particular became a focal point last year when protests against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza roiled campuses.

A Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism established by Trump sent Harvard a letter last month demanding the university police ideology on campus and expel students it deems are “anti-American.”Harvard has sued over those demands, as well, calling them a violation of free speech.

Discussing the legal fight with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump noted that “billions of dollars have been paid to Harvard.”

“How ridiculous is that?” he asked. “Harvard’s going to have to change its ways.”

The same task force has also similarly singled out UCLA, USC and UC Berkeley. While the campuses have been subject to hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grant cancellations that have affected a wide swath of American academia, they have not seen the targeted federal funding clawbacks that took place at Harvard and Columbia.

Still, the California universities — anticipating less federal support overall — have recently instituted hiring freezes and budget cuts. They’ve also vowed to address campus antisemitism allegations and faced criticism that they have given unequal treatment to allegations of bias against Muslim and Arab American student activists.

Reuter

Graduation in the shadow of uncertainty

Student dreams left in limbo

The government vs. an ultra-elite university

A growing coalition of HIV prevention organizations, health experts and Democrats in Congress are sounding the alarm over sweeping Trump administration cuts to HIV/AIDS prevention and surveillance programs nationally, warning they will reverse years of progress combating the disease and cause spikes in new cases — especially in California and among the LGBTQ+ community.

In a letter addressed Friday to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) and 22 of her House colleagues demanded the release of HIV funding allocated by Congress but withheld by the Trump administration. They cited estimates from the Foundation for AIDS Research, known as amfAR, that the cuts could lead to 143,000 additional HIV infections nationwide and 127,000 additional deaths from AIDS-related causes within five years.

Friedman said the effects would be felt in communities small and large across the country but that California would be hit the hardest. She said L.A. County — which stands to lose nearly $20 million in annual federal HIV prevention funding — is being forced to terminate contracts with 39 providers and could see as many as 650 new cases per year as a result.

According to amfAR, that would mark a huge increase, pushing the total number of new infections per year in the county to roughly 2,000.

“South L.A. and communities across California are already feeling the devastating impacts of these withheld HIV prevention funds. These cuts aren’t just numbers — they’re shuttered clinics, canceled programs, and lives lost,” Friedman said in a statement to The Times.

As one example, she said, the Los Angeles LGBT Center — which is headquartered in her district — would likely have to eliminate a range of services including HIV testing, STD screening, community education and assistance for patients using pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medicine taken by pill or shot that can greatly reduce a person’s risk of becoming infected from sex or injection drug use.

A list reviewed by The Times of L.A. County providers facing funding cuts included large and small organizations and medical institutions in a diverse set of communities, from major hospitals and nonprofits to small clinics. The list was provided by a source on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid about the funding of organizations that have not all publicly announced the cuts.

The affected organizations serve a host of communities that already struggle with relatively high rates of HIV infection, including low-income, Spanish speaking, Black and brown and LGBTQ+ communities.

According to L.A. County, the Trump administration’s budget blueprint eliminates or reduces a number of congressionally authorized public health programs, including funding cuts to the domestic HIV prevention program and the Ryan White program, which supports critical care and treatment services for uninsured and underinsured people living with HIV.

The county said the cuts would have “an immediate and long-lasting impact” on community health.

Dozens of organizations and hospitals, such as Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, are bracing for the disruption and potential vacuum of preventative services they’ve been providing to the community since the 1980s, according to Claudia Borzutzky, the hospital’s Chief of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine.

Borzutzky said without the funding, programs that provide screening, education, patient navigation and community outreach — especially for at-risk adolescents and young adults — will evaporate. So, too, will free services that help patients enroll in insurance and access HIV prevention medications.

Patients who “face a variety of health barriers” and are often stigmatized will bear the brunt, she said, losing the “role models [and] peer educators that they can relate to and help [them] build confidence to come into a doctor’s office and seek testing and treatment.”

“We are having to sunset these programs really, really quickly, which impacts our patients and staff in really dramatic ways,” she said.

Answers to queries sent to other southern California health departments suggested they are trying to figure out how to cope with budget shortfalls, too. Health officials from Kern, San Bernardino and Riverside counties all said the situation is uncertain, and that they don’t yet know how they will respond.

Friedman and her colleagues — including fellow California representatives Nancy Pelosi, Judy Chu, Gilbert Cisneros Jr., Robert Garcia, Sam Liccardo, Kevin Mullin, Mark Takano, Derek Tran and George Whitesides — said they were concerned not only about funding for programs nationwide being cut, but also about the wholesale dismantling or defunding of important divisions working on HIV prevention within the federal government.

They questioned in their letter staffing cuts to the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as “the reported elimination” of the Division of HIV Prevention within that center.

In addition to demanding the release of funds already allocated by Congress, the representatives called on Kennedy — and Dr. Debra Houry, deputy director of the CDC — to better communicate the status of ongoing grant funding, and to release “a list of personnel within CDC who can provide timely responses” when those groups to whom Congress had already allocated funding have questions moving forward.

“Although Congress has appropriated funding for HIV prevention in Fiscal Year 2025, several grant recipients have failed to receive adequate communication from CDC regarding the status of their awards,” Friedman and her colleagues wrote. “This ambiguity has caused health departments across the country to pre-emptively terminate HIV and STD prevention contracts with local organizations due to an anticipated lack of funding.”

The letter is just the latest challenge to the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to federal agencies and to federal funding allocated by Congress to organizations around the country.

Through a series of executive orders and with the help of his billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” and other agency heads, Trump in the first months of his second term has radically altered the federal government’s footprint, laying off thousands of federal workers and attempting to claw back trillions of dollars in federal spending — to be reallocated to projects more aligned with his political agenda, or used to pay for tax cuts that Democrats and independent reviewers have said will disproportionately help wealthy Americans.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office has repeatedly sued the Trump administration over such moves, including cuts and layoffs within Health and Human Services broadly and cuts to grants intended to make states more resistant to infectious disease specifically — calling them unwise, legally unjustifiable and a threat to the health of average Americans.

LGBTQ+ organizations also have sued the Trump administration over orders to preclude health and other organizations from spending federal funding on diversity, equity and inclusion programs geared toward LGBTQ+ populations, including programs designed to decrease new HIV infections and increase healthy management of the disease among transgender people and other vulnerable groups.

“The orders seek to erase transgender people from public life; dismantle diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives; and strip funding from nonprofits providing life-saving health care, housing, and support services,” said Jose Abrigo, the HIV Project Director of Lambda Legal, in a statement. The legal group has filed a number of lawsuits challenging the Trump administration cuts, including one on behalf of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and other nonprofits.

Trump has defended his cuts to the federal government as necessary to implement his agenda. He and his agency leaders have consistently said that the cuts target waste, fraud and abuse in the government, and that average Americans will be better served following the reshuffling.

Kennedy has consistently defended the changes within Health and Human Services, as well. Agency spokespeople have said the substantial cuts would help it focus on Kennedy’s priorities of “ending America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins.”

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy has said. “This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

Kennedy has repeatedly spread misinformation about HIV and AIDS in the past, including by giving credence to the false claim that HIV does not cause AIDS.

As recently as June 2023, Kennedy told a reporter for New York Magazine that there “are much better candidates than H.I.V. for what causes AIDS,” and he has previously suggested that environmental toxins and “poppers” — an inhalant drug popular in the gay community — could be causes of AIDS instead.

None of that is supported by science or medicine. Studies from around the world have proven the link between HIV and AIDS, and found it — not drug use or sexual behavior — to be the only common factor in AIDS cases.

Officials in L.A. County said they remained hopeful that the Trump administration would reverse course after considering the effects of the cuts — and the “detrimental impacts on the health and well-being of residents and workers across” the county if they are allowed to stand.

May 23 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced Friday afternoon that U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel will form a “planned partnership,” keeping the American company’s headquarters in Pittsburgh rather than in Japan.

The Tokyo-based steelmaker’s $14.9 billion bid to acquire its U.S. rival was blocked on national security grounds before President Joe Biden left office on Jan. 3.

Politico described it as a purchase by Nippon Steel, and CNBC as a merger. U.S. Steel, which was founded in 1901, has about 22,000 employees with revenue of $15.6 billion in 2024. Nippon, which traces its roots to Japan Iron & Steel Co. in 1934, has about 113,640 workers with revenue of $43 billion in 2019.

“I am proud to announce that, after much consideration and negotiation, US Steel will REMAIN in America, and keep its Headquarters in the Great City of Pittsburgh,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “For many years, the name, ‘United States Steel’ was synonymous with Greatness, and now, it will be again.”

He said the partnership will create at least 70,000 jobs and add $14 billion to the U.S. economy, with the bulk of the investment in the next 14 months. He gave no details on the partnership.

“This is the largest Investment in the History of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” he wrote.”My Tariff Policies will ensure that Steel will once again be, forever, MADE IN AMERICA. From Pennsylvania to Arkansas, and from Minnesota to Indiana, AMERICAN MADE is BACK.”

He said he is planning “a BIG Rally” at U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh on May 30.

Besides Pittsburgh, U.S. Steel has mills in Gary, Ind.; Ecorse, Mich.; and Granite City, Ill.

“CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!” he ended the post.

U.S. Steel shares rose 21.9% to $52.01 at closing Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. Trump disclosed the news at 3:25 p.m., 35 minutes before closing.

In April, Trump ordered a new review of the proposed acquisition, directing the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to determine “whether further action in this matter may be appropriate.” CFIUS is made up of the departments of the Treasury and Justice and other critical agencies.

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., which lost out to Nippon in its bid to purchase U.S. Steel, has since purchased a Canadian steel producer.

The deal was first announced in December 2023.

In rejecting the purchase, Biden said: “This acquisition would place one of America’s largest steel producers under foreign control and create risk for our national security and our critical supply chain

“It is my solemn responsibility as president to ensure that, now and long into the future, America has a strong domestically owned and operated steel industry that can continue to power our national sources of strength at home and abroad; and it is a fulfillment of that responsibility to block foreign ownership of this viral American company.”

On Feb. 11, Trump restored a 25% tariff on steel and increased the aluminum tariff from 10% to 25%.

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, the European Union, Ukraine and Britain had received exemptions, “which prevented the tariffs from being effective,” according to the order.

“Foreign nations have been flooding the United States market with cheap steel and aluminum, often subsidized by their governments,” Trump wrote.

“The United States does not want to be in a position where it would be unable to meet demand for national defense and critical infrastructure in a national emergency.”

On April 2, Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on the worst trading partner offenders, including 24% against Japan, but one week later paused them for 90 days.

WASHINGTON — President Trump signed executive orders Friday intended to quadruple domestic production of nuclear power within the next 25 years, a goal experts say the United States is highly unlikely to reach.

To speed up the development of nuclear power, the orders grant the U.S. Energy secretary authority to approve advanced reactor designs and projects, taking authority away from the independent safety agency that has regulated the U.S. nuclear industry for five decades.

The order comes as demand for electricity surges amid a boom in energy-hungry data centers and artificial intelligence. Tech companies, venture capitalists, states and others are competing for electricity and straining the nation’s electric grid.

“We’ve got enough electricity to win the AI arms race with China,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said. “What we do in the next five years related to electricity is going to determine the next 50” years in the industry.

Still, it’s unlikely the U.S. could quadruple its nuclear production in the time frame the White House specified. The United States lacks any next-generation reactors operating commercially and only two large reactors have been built from scratch in nearly 50 years. Those two reactors, at a nuclear plant in Georgia, were completed years late and at least $17 billion over budget.

Trump is enthusiastic

At the Oval Office signing, Trump, surrounded by industry executives, called nuclear a “hot industry,” adding, “It’s time for nuclear, and we’re going to do it very big.”

Burgum and other speakers said the industry has stagnated and has been choked by overregulation.

“Mark this day on your calendar. This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of overregulation of an industry,’’ said Burgum, who chairs Trump’s newly formed Energy Dominance Council.

The orders would reorganize the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ensure quicker reviews of nuclear projects, including an 18-month deadline for the NRC to act on industry applications. The measures also create a pilot program intended to place three new experimental reactors online by July 4, 2026 — 13 months from now — and invoke the Defense Production Act to allow emergency measures to ensure the U.S. has the reactor fuel needed for a modernized nuclear energy sector.

The NRC is assessing the executive orders and will comply with White House directives, spokesperson Scott Burnell said Friday.

Jacob DeWitte, chief executive of the nuclear energy company Oklo, brought a golf ball to the Oval Office. He told Trump that’s the amount of uranium that can power someone’s needs for their entire life.

“It doesn’t get any better than that,” he said, holding up the ball.

“Very exciting indeed,” Trump said.

Trump has signed a spate of executive orders promoting oil, gas and coal that warm the planet when burned to produce electricity. Nuclear reactors generate electricity without emitting greenhouse gases. Trump said reactors are safe and clean but did not mention climate benefits. Safety advocates warn that nuclear technology still comes with significant risks that other low-carbon energy sources don’t, including the danger of accidents or targeted attacks, and the unresolved question of how to store tens of thousands of tons of hazardous nuclear waste.

The order to reorganize the NRC will include significant staff reductions but is not intended to fire NRC commissioners who lead the agency. David Wright, a former South Carolina elected official and utility commissioner, chairs the five-member panel. His term ends June 30, and it is unclear whether he will be reappointed.

Critics have trepidations

Critics say the White House moves could compromise safety and violate legal frameworks such as the Atomic Energy Act. Compromising the independence of the NRC or encouraging it to be circumvented entirely could weaken the agency and make regulation less effective, said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Simply put, the U.S. nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority,” he said.

Gregory Jaczko, who led the NRC under President Obama, said Trump’s executive orders look like someone asked an AI chatbot, “How do we make the nuclear industry worse in this country?”

He called the orders a “guillotine to the nation’s nuclear safety system” that will make the country less safe, the industry less reliable and the climate crisis more severe.

A number of countries are speeding up efforts to license and build a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors to meet a surging demand for electricity and supply it carbon-free. Last year, Congress passed legislation that President Biden signed to modernize the licensing of new reactor technologies so they can be built faster.

This month, the power company in Ontario, Canada, began building the first of four small nuclear reactors.

Valar Atomics is a nuclear reactor developer in California. Founder and CEO Isaiah Taylor said nuclear development and innovation in the United States has been slowed by too much red tape, while Russia and China are speeding ahead. He said he’s most excited about the mandate for the Energy Department to speed up the pace of innovation.

The NRC is currently reviewing applications from companies and a utility that want to build small nuclear reactors to begin providing power in the early 2030s. Currently, the NRC expects its reviews to take three years or less.

Tori Shivanandan, chief operating officer of Radiant Nuclear, a California-based startup, said the executive orders mark a “watershed moment” for nuclear power in the U.S., adding that Trump’s support for the advanced nuclear industry will help ensure its success.

Daly and McDermott write for the Associated Press.

Donald Trump’s decision to ban Harvard from enrolling foreign students has caused irreparable damage, says one student leader. The order was the latest move in the administration’s escalating battle with the Ivy League school. A federal judge has now temporarily blocked it.

TRENTON, N.J. — The Trump administration sued four New Jersey cities over their so-called sanctuary city policies aimed at prohibiting police from cooperating with immigration officials, saying the local governments are standing in the way of federal enforcement.

The Justice Department filed the suit Thursday against Newark, Jersey City, Paterson and Hoboken in New Jersey federal court. The lawsuit seeks a judgment against the cities and an injunction to halt them from enacting the so-called sanctuary city policies.

“While states and local governments are free to stand aside as the United States performs this important work, they cannot stand in the way,” the suit says.

It’s the latest case from President Trump’s administration against sanctuary policies. The administration also sued Chicago, Denver, the state of Colorado, and Rochester, N.Y.

There is no official definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities. The terms generally describe limited local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces U.S. immigration laws nationwide but sometimes seeks state and local help.

Messages seeking comment were left Friday with the affected cities.

Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh said his city would fight the suit, calling it an “egregious attempt to score political points at Paterson’s expense.”

“We will not be intimidated,” he said in a text message.

Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla said in a statement the city prides itself on its inclusivity.

“The City of Hoboken will vigorously work to defend our rights, have our day in court, and defeat the Trump Administration’s lawlessness. To be clear: we will not back down,” he said.

The mayors of all four cities are Democrats.

New Jersey’s attorney general adopted a statewide Immigrant Trust Directive in 2018, which bars local police from cooperation with federal officials conducting immigration enforcement. The policies adopted by the four cities are similar.

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court that New Jersey’s statewide policy could stand, but it’s unclear how that court’s order might affect the government’s case against the four cities.

Catalini writes for the Associated Press.