Trump

May 6 (UPI) — Britain and India announced a trade agreement Tuesday following three years of negotiations.

The british government said it had “secured the best deal [to which] India has ever agreed,” and will provide “businesses with security and confidence to trade with the fastest-growing economy in the G20.”

“Today Britain has agreed [to] a landmark trade deal with India,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer posted to X Tuesday. “Fantastic news for British business, British workers, and British shoppers, delivering on our plan for change.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also shared on social media Tuesday that he was “delighted” to speak with Starmer on the deal.

“In a historic milestone, India and the U.K. have successfully concluded an ambitious and mutually beneficial free trade agreement, along with a Double Contribution Convention,” Modi said.

“These landmark agreements will further deepen our comprehensive strategic partnership, and catalyze trade, investment, growth, job creation, and innovation in both our economies.”

The agreement was locked in by a final hard-pressed effort by trade officials last week. A pact had become an urgent economic concern for both nations after the Trump administration levied tariffs on countries around the world in April.

The deal, known as the Double Contribution Convention, or DCC, is a lucrative one for Britian, the most valuable since it left the European Union as the British government expects the agreement will up Britian’s GDP by more than $6.4 billion by 2040.

It may take more than a year, but once in effect, the British Department for Business says consumers can expect tariffs on goods from India to decrease, on products like food, jewelry, clothing and footwear. The forecast also emphasized how expansion of exports to India will lead to British job creation and economic improvement.

Britain also expects tariffs in its whisky, gin, technologies, cosmetics and food will drop to 75%. Further reductions will then take effect in later years.

The DCC also includes a three-year exemption on the social security paid by Indian employees who work in Britian on short-term visas and will guarantee that social security contributions are not made in more than one country. India, which is expected to become the world’s third-largest economy in the near future, has a target of export expansion growth of $1 trillion by 2030.

“Our landmark agreement with India is the largest ever trade deal secured by the U.K.,” said British Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds in a social media post Tuesday, “This deal will help deliver our plan for change, putting more money in working people’s pockets, boosting our economy and bolstering British business.”

The British Labour Party took to social media Tuesday to announce that “We are going further and faster to strengthen the U.K.’s economy and put more money in working people’s pockets.”

The Justice Department unit that ensures compliance with voting rights laws will switch its focus to investigating voter fraud and ensuring elections are not marred by “suspicion,” according to an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press.

The new mission statement for the voting section makes a passing reference to the historic Voting Rights Act, but no mention of typical enforcement of the provision through protecting people’s right to cast ballots or ensuring that lines for legislative maps do not divide voters by race. Instead, it redefines the unit’s mission around conspiracy theories pushed by Republican President Trump to explain away his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump’s attorney general at the time, William Barr, said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in that election. Repeated recounts and audits in the battleground states where Trump contested his loss, including some led by Republicans, affirmed Biden’s win and found the election was run properly. Trump and his supporters also lost dozens of court cases trying to overturn the election results.

But in Trump’s second term, the attorney general is Pam Bondi, who backed his effort to reverse his 2020 loss. The president picked Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican Party lawyer and longtime ally who has echoed some of Trump’s false claims about voting, to run the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, where the voting section is housed.

“The Civil Rights Division has always worked to make sure Americans have access to the polls and that their votes matter,” said Stacey Young, an 18-year Department of Justice veteran who left that division days after Trump’s inauguration in January and founded Justice Connection, an organization supporting the agency’s employees. “The division’s job is not to promote the politically expedient fiction that voting fraud is widespread.”

The department did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump has already demonstrated his interest in using the Justice Department to pursue those who stood up for the 2020 election by directing the department to investigate one of his former appointees who publicly vouched for the safety and accuracy of the 2020 vote count.

“The mission of the Voting Rights Section of the DOJ Civil Rights Division is to ensure free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion,” the new mission statement declares.

It adds that the unit will “vigorously enforce” Trump’s executive order seeking to reshape how elections are run. Parts of that order have been put on hold by a judge.

The executive order signed late last month calls for people to provide documented proof of U.S. citizenship each time they register to vote; would require all mail ballots to be received by election day, which is counter to the law in 18 states; and directs an independent federal agency, the Election Assistance Commission, to amend its guidelines for voting machines.

Several legal analysts say much of the order is unconstitutional because only states and, for federal contests, Congress, can set election procedures. The Constitution provides no provision for the president to set the rules for elections.

The new mission statement for the Civil Rights Division also says the voting unit will focus on ensuring that “only American citizens vote in U.S. federal elections.” It’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote. People have to attest they are U.S. citizens when they register and attempts to vote by noncitizens can lead to felony charges and deportation.

Repeated investigations have turned up just a tiny number of noncitizens casting ballots, often doing so accidentally, out of the hundreds of millions of votes over recent contests. A proof-of-citizenship requirement in Kansas a little over a decade ago blocked 31,000 eligible U.S. citizens from registering to vote before it was overturned by the courts.

But Republicans, including Trump, have continued to insist there must be far more noncitizens casting votes and are pushing to tighten election laws to screen them out.

Notably, the roughly 200-word statement on the voting rights section mentions fighting “fraud” twice, as well as investigating “other forms of malfeasance.” The Department of Justice already investigates and prosecutes voting fraud, but in a separate division on the criminal side. The voting section is a civil unit that does not investigate potential crimes.

Now, however, it will “protect the right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated,” according to the statement. It was unclear what that refers to. There have been no widespread cases of votes being improperly tabulated.

Justin Levitt, who served as President Biden’s senior policy advisor for democracy and voting rights, noted that because the voting rights section does not pursue prosecutions, its power is sharply limited by the specifics of civil rights laws and what judges will approve.

“For the civil section of the Civil Rights Division, courts need to be buying what they’re selling,” he said.

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.

May 6 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney Tuesday a week after Carney’s Liberal Party succeeded in elections considered to be influenced by Trump’s comments and economic moves made against Canada.

“Canada and the United States are strongest when we work together and that work starts now,” Carney posted to X Monday after his plane touched down in Washington.

The post was a follow-up to what Carney said Friday in regard to Tuesday’s meeting, that they would “focus on addressing immediate trade pressures” and “the future economic and security relationship between our two sovereign nations.”

The Trump administration placed a 25% import tariff on all Canadian goods not covered by the USMCA trade agreement on March 4, which Trump called a punitive move based on allegations that Canada hadn’t properly stopped the entry of migrants and fentanyl into the United States. Canada responded with tariffs on many American goods.

Canada’s Liberal Party rode a wave of anti-American sentiment led vociferously by Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada, who has described Trump’s actions as a “betrayal” and a fundamental shift in the U.S.-Canada relationship.

Trump has also soured the relationship between the two countries by repeatedly commenting that he is interested in annexing Canada to become a U.S. State.

He posted to his Truth Social account on APril 28 when Carney was announced the election winner, that duties would disappear and taxes would be halved “if Canada becomes the cherished 51st State of the United States of America.”

“America can no longer subsidize Canada with the hundreds of billions of dollars a year that we have been spending in the past,” and that “It makes no sense unless Canada is a state,” Trump wrote.

During his victory speech, Carney told the crowd that Trump’s comments weren’t “idle threats,” and that “President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never, ever happen.”

United States President Donald Trump’s broad array of tariffs on foreign goods has spooked consumers, businesses and the stock market. But what will the specific impact be for typical American consumers?

US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer offered a figure on April 27 on CNN’s State of the Union.

The Democrat from New York said, as a candidate, Trump never fully explained to voters that tariffs would raise their costs. “It’s estimated it’ll raise the American costs … American families would have to pay about $4,000 more a year,” he said.

Calculating how typical households would be hit involves estimation and assumptions, especially given Trump’s frequent tinkering with what items will be tariffed and when. But Schumer’s figure is roughly in line with four independent estimates that PolitiFact identified.

Four of five estimates by groups with varying political ideologies range from $3,100 to $4,900 a year; the midpoint of that range is in line with Schumer’s figure. A fifth group estimated the cost to consumers would be $1,243.

The estimate variations stem from the groups’ differing assumptions about how the tariffs will be absorbed into the economy.

Schumer’s office did not respond to inquiries for this article.

Several groups’ estimates hover around $4,000

We identified five estimates on Trump’s tariffs’ effect on US families, based on the tariffs he imposed before April 2 (including those on Canada and Mexico), the 10 percent across-the-board tariffs on virtually every country, and the 145 percent tariff on China. The estimates do not include the impact of higher country-by-country tariffs that Trump announced on April 2 but paused for 90 days beginning on April 9.

Here are the estimates in descending order.

Yale Budget Lab: The most recent estimate from the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University shows an average loss per household of $4,900. The lab also offered a more limited calculation that accounts for changes in consumer behaviour because of tariffs without factoring those in as losses; this worked out to a $2,600 loss per family.

The analysis found that low-earning families would be hit hardest. A family earning roughly $30,000 to $40,000 would lose 5.1 percent of its income, more than twice the proportional hit for a family earning well above $100,000.

Bigger tariff costs for households at the lower end of the income spectrum

Center for American Progress: The liberal group estimated an average loss of $4,600 annually.

American Action Forum: The centre-right think tank told PolitiFact that its pre-April 9 estimate of $3,900 loss per household remains a solid guess even though it was calculated using a 60 percent tariff on China, rather than the current 145 percent. Jacob Jensen, the group’s trade policy analyst, said tariffs as high as 145 percent curb consumer purchases so much that they tend to bring in less revenue than tariffs that are set at lower rates.

Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center: The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that the average household loss would be $3,100.

Tax Foundation: The centre-right Tax Foundation put the average loss lower than the other four, at $1,243.

Erica York, the Tax Foundation’s vice president of federal tax policy, told PolitiFact that her group’s analysis has a more limited scope, encompassing households’ 2025 direct losses of income from higher taxes.

York said other groups’ estimates go beyond this, including loss in quality of life from having to switch to inferior products, factoring in the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy response or using 2026 – assuming that it produces a full year of impact – rather than 2025, when the tariffs will be in force for less than a full year.

Differing methods such as these would produce variations in numbers, she said, citing the Yale Budget Lab’s dual estimates as an example.

Our ruling

Schumer said “it’s estimated” that Trump’s tariffs will mean “American families would have to pay about $4,000 more a year”.

Calculating the tariffs’ impact requires guesswork and is complicated by Trump’s frequent pauses on certain tariffs.

Four independent groups’ estimates range from $3,100 a year to $4,900 a year on average. The fifth, using a more restrictive method, estimated a $1,243 loss.

Based on these estimates, the statement is accurate but needs additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.

WASHINGTON — President Trump remains deeply unpopular in California after his first 100 days in office, with conservatives and liberals alike expressing concern that U.S. courts can effectively serve as a check on his power, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times.

Overall, the poll, conducted during the last week of April, found that 68% of registered voters in California disapprove of the president’s job performance and believe the country is on the wrong track.

Republicans in California, who make up roughly a quarter of registered voters, continue to support the president’s policies. But 65% of registered voters across the state believe that Trump’s actions have “gone beyond his constitutional authority as president,” including 24% of Republicans and 63% of independents, the poll found.

Looking forward, voters said they lack confidence that the U.S. judicial system can serve as a check against Trump “should he overstep his constitutional authorities,” with only 13% of total registered voters expressing strong confidence in the powers of the courts.

Only 51% of voters who identified as strong conservatives, and 53% of registered Republicans, said they have any confidence in the judiciary’s ability to check an overstepping president. And among the Republicans, just 27% said they are very confident.

Since Trump took office, officials in his administration have launched a series of attacks on district court judges who have ruled against them, and have slow-walked, if not explicitly defied, several court rulings, including one order from the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the mistaken deportation of a Maryland man to a prison in El Salvador.

The poll found that up to this point, 27% of voters believe Trump has operated within his constitutional authorities, while 65% do not.

“That’s an interesting set of numbers, because you would think that the public would be standing behind the judicial system,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS Poll. “Trump is really pushing the limits and testing the system.”

Trump support is consistently low

Among all registered voters, 61% said they believe that Trump’s second term will be worse than his first. Only 33% said the changes Trump is making to the federal government will have a positive impact on California.

“The numbers, historically, kind of speak for themselves — they’re extremely low, greater than 2 to 1, disapproving of Trump in those first hundred days,” DiCamillo said.

Those numbers are consistent across demographics, with 68% of white voters, 64% of Latino voters, 79% of Black voters and 71% of Asian American and Pacific Islander voters in the state disapproving of the president’s job performance.

Trump faced similarly low approval numbers among California voters throughout his first term, reaching a nadir during the summer of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when 71% of the state’s registered voters disapproved of his job performance. At the time, only 29% approved of the president’s record.

Few are missing Biden

Despite historic disapproval of Trump throughout the state, Californians are still looking back on President Biden’s term with mixed emotions, the poll found.

Asked to reflect on Biden’s legacy, 31% of registered voters said that he would be remembered as an average president. Only 23% said his performance was above average, or among the best of any president, while 43% said it was below average, if not one of the worst.

It is a stark report card from one of the most heavily Democratic states in the nation, where 63.5% of voters cast ballots for Biden in 2020. In the 2024 election, after Biden dropped out of the race, 58.5% in the state cast votes for his vice president and a native Californian, Kamala Harris.

“The Biden numbers are more negative than positive,” DiCamillo said. “Even when you look at the Democrats, they’re not overwhelmingly of the view that he’s done an above-average job.”

“It’s a very mediocre set of numbers,” he added. “It’s not a ringing endorsement as they look back on the Biden years.”

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The Trump administration announced a plan Monday to try to ramp up the number of deportations: paying unauthorized immigrants $1,000 if they return to their home country voluntarily.

The Department of Homeland Security called the plan a “historic opportunity for illegal aliens,” noting in a news release that it would also pay for travel assistance.

Any immigrant who used the Customs and Border Protection Home App to inform the government that they plan to return home, the department said, would receive a $1,000 payment after the government had confirmed their return.

“If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. “This is the safest option for our law enforcement, aliens and is a 70% savings for US taxpayers.”

President Trump has made mass deportations — a key platform of his 2024 election campaign — a priority in his first three months in office. But so far, the actual number of immigrants deported under his Republican administration has slightly lagged the number deported under his predecessor, Democratic President Biden, as fewer immigrants are now attempting to cross the U.S. border.

Hiroshi Motomura, a law professor at UCLA who specializes in American immigration and citizenship, said the U.S. is not the first nation to try to persuade immigrants to leave the country. Over the years, other countries, such as Germany and Japan, have offered financial incentives for immigrants to self-deport.

“Some of the calculus is what you’re seeing now, which is it’s much cheaper to pay people to leave than it is to forcibly deport them,” Motomura said.

Clearly, the Trump administration is looking for ways to up the number of deportations to match its campaign rhetoric, Motomura said. But he urged any immigrant considering whether to self-deport to consult with an attorney.

Many immigrants have a potential legal pathway to stay — if they are married to a U.S. citizen or have a job offer or a claim of persecution in their home country — but may not have access to an attorney or the legal help to negotiate that pathway, Motomura said.

“Self-deportation certainly is one way to get people to leave the country,” he said. “But the dilemma here, or the policy problem, is that they’re going to get people to leave the country who actually have a right to stay. … They’re asking people to make decisions in a vacuum of knowing what their rights are.”

The Trump administration is promoting its incentives to immigrants who are in the country illegally to leave on their own as a “dignified way to leave the U.S.” — one that it says will have them deprioritized for detention or being picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents if they demonstrate they’re making plans to depart.

Homeland Security also provoked controversy in legal circles by promoting its offer as a way for unauthorized immigrants to legally return to the U.S.: Self-deporting, the news release states, “may help preserve the option … to re-enter the United States legally in the future.”

Some immigration experts warned that this offered false promise.

“It is an incredibly cruel bit of deception for DHS to be telling people that if they leave they ‘will maintain the ability to return to the U.S. legally in the future,’ Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said on the social media platform X.

“Despite DHS’s claims, leaving the country could impose SEVERE consequences for many people here currently without status, with a 10-year bar on reentry being a best-case scenario for most,” he added.

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said immigrants who took advantage of the deal could “potentially come back the legal, right way and come back to live the American dream.”

“This might put you in a better position,” she added, “because there’s documentation that you have decided to self deport.”

Asked why immigrants should trust the Trump administration’s offer, McLaughlin said: “We’re giving you our word that we will give you this money and that you can leave today. It’s the safest way. You will not be arrested, you will not be detained, and we will give you that free flight.”

Motomura said the idea that immigrants who self-deport would have a better chance of returning to live in the U.S. legally stemmed from the fact that there are some negative consequences to a formal order of removal: “It limits when you can come back,” he said, “and it may limit your ability to access other immigration related benefits.”

But ultimately, Motomura said, any benefit of self-deportation would depend on the individual: an immigrant who left the U.S. after being in the country without status for 180 days could not come back for three years, he noted, and an immigrant who left the U.S. after being in the country for a year could not come back for 10 years.

He added that while an immigrant who was in the country without status for a shorter period of time, such as two weeks for example, could be better off leaving on their own rather than being subject to a formal deportation order, such situations were less typical.

The Trump administration is also pitching its plan as a deal for American taxpayers.

“Even with the cost of the stipend, it is projected that the use of CBP Home will decrease the costs of a deportation by around 70 percent,” the Department of Homeland Security said in its release, noting that it costs more than $17,000, on average, to arrest, detain and remove an unauthorized immigrant.

Homeland Security said that an immigrant in the U.S. illegally recently used the program to receive a ticket for a flight from Chicago to Honduras, and that additional plane tickets have been booked for the next few weeks.

US Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon halts funding in escalation of dispute centred around anti-Semitism claims.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced that Harvard University will no longer receive public funding for research in a sharp escalation of its dispute with the top university.

In a letter to Harvard on Monday, US Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon said the elite university had made a “mockery” of higher education and should no longer seek federal grants, “since no will be provided”.

“Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution, and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment, and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni,” McMahon wrote in the letter.

The move comes after the Trump administration last month froze nearly $2.3bn in federal funding to Harvard over what it claimed was its failure to tackle rampant anti-Semitism on campus.

The administration announced the freeze after Harvard rejected a series of demands that it said would subject the university to undue government control, including that it accede to external audits of faculty and students to ensure “viewpoint diversity”.

In her letter, McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, outlined a series of grievances often made by conservatives against the university, including that it had fostered lax academic standards and admitted foreign students who “engage in violent behaviour and show contempt toward the United States of America”.

“Where do many of these ‘students’ come from, who are they, and how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country – and why is there so much HATE?” McMahon wrote in the letter, emulating Trump’s use of all-capital letters to emphasise certain words.

“These are questions that must be answered, among many more, but the biggest question of all is, why will Harvard not give straightforward answers to the American public?”

Harvard, which is fighting the Trump administration’s earlier funding freeze in court, said in a statement that McMahon’s latest demands would have “chilling implications for higher education”.

“Today’s letter makes new threats to illegally withhold funding for lifesaving research and innovation in retaliation against Harvard for filing its lawsuit on April 21,” a university spokesperson said.

“Harvard will continue to comply with the law, promote and encourage respect for viewpoint diversity, and combat antisemitism in our community. Harvard will also continue to defend against illegal government overreach aimed at stifling research and innovation that make Americans safer and more secure.”

US universities have faced controversy over alleged anti-Semitism on their campuses since the eruption last year of nationwide student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

In two reports released last month, separate Harvard task forces said that students and staff had faced both anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim bias on campus.

In response to the reports, Harvard President Alan Garber expressed concern that some students had been pushed “to the periphery of campus life because of who they are or what they believe”, and pledged to redouble efforts to ensure the university was a place where “mutual respect is the norm”.

Trump and prominent conservatives in the US have also long accused Harvard and other universities of propagating extreme left-wing views and stifling right-wing perspectives.

ALCATRAZ ISLAND, Calif.  — The exhibits on Alcatraz Island, the infamous federal prison that decades ago was shuttered and preserved as a national park site and tourist attraction, invite visitors to imagine what it was like to be a guard or an inmate confined to the lonesome, foggy rock in the middle of San Francisco Bay.

But on Monday, a day after President Trump posted on social media that he wants to reopen the nearly century-old prison as a “substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders,” many tourists were imagining a very different role: what it would be like to be the construction manager who might actually have to figure out how to make that happen.

“I’m all for what [Trump] is doing, but this doesn’t make sense,” said Beverly Klir, 63, an ardent Trump supporter who was visiting from Chicago. “I believe Gitmo [the prison at Guantanamo Bay] may be better. That’s where they all belong. They don’t belong here.”

She and her husband were standing amid a riot of pink flowers on the island’s craggy bluffs, looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge as a pair of Canada geese and three fuzzy ducklings waddled by. Behind them loomed the prison, its fortress-like facade menacing in appearance, but also a testament to age and weather, with crumbling stucco, deteriorated masonry and leaking joints.

Higher up on the island, outside the three-story cellhouse where some of the nation’s most incorrigible prisoners were once locked away in primitive cells, 10-year-old Melody Garcia, visiting with family from Concord, appeared equally perplexed. “Most of Alcatraz is broken down and stuff,” she said.

Still, within hours of Trump’s pronouncement, the Bureau of Prisons released a statement saying it was already on the job.

“The Bureau of Prisons will vigorously pursue all avenues to support and implement the President’s agenda,” said bureau Director William K. Marshall III. “I have ordered an immediate assessment to determine our needs and the next steps. USP Alcatraz has a rich history. We look forward to restoring this powerful symbol of law, order, and justice.”

Many California officials, meanwhile, responded with a range of ridicule and concern. A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom dismissed the pronouncement as a ploy designed to distract voters from Trump’s actions as president. State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) called it “unhinged.” But he also cautioned that “when Donald Trump says something, he means it,” and speculated that Trump may want to “open a gulag here in the U.S.”

The U.S. government’s presence on Alcatraz began in the 1850s, with construction of a fort bristling with cannons to defend San Francisco from hostile ships.

Soon after, U.S. officials also began using it as a military prison. During the Civil War, the crew of a Confederate ship, along with Union soldiers convicted of rape, murder, desertion and other offenses, were imprisoned there. The U.S. Army also locked up Hope, Apache and Modoc Indians there and, later, conscientious objectors to World War I.

In 1934, Alcatraz opened as an official federal prison for men who had made escape attempts from other federal prisons, or otherwise misbehaved. Among its notable inmates were Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.

Known as “the Rock,” the prison, which had capacity for 336 men, earned a place in popular culture as an island of remote despair. “Everybody wants to be an individual,” said former inmate James Quillen, who served 10 years there, from 1942 to 1952. “You want to be human. And you weren’t at ‘the Rock.’”

In addition to being formidable, the prison was fearsomely expensive to maintain and operate. So expensive, in fact, that in 1963, then-Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy ordered it closed.

John Martini, an Alcatraz historian, said the prison was closed in part because it was built with flawed construction methods and was decaying, and it “would be such a money pit to bring it up to standards … that it was easier to build a new penitentiary.”

Six years later, the island acquired a prominent place in Native American history when a group of Native American activists landed on the island, declaring they were taking it in the name of “Indians of All Tribes.” The occupation lasted 19 months, and helped awaken the nation to the concerns of Indigenous Americans.

When federal agents moved in to remove the last occupiers in 1971, officials had plans to bulldoze the entire thing. But in 1972, Congress created the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and the island instead became one of San Francisco’s most beloved attractions. More than 1.4 million people visit each year, walking through the dank cell blocks and taking in exhibits on the Native American occupation.

In calling for Alcatraz to be reopened, Trump said its restoration would “serve as a symbol of law, order, and justice.”

But the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, a nonprofit that helps preserve and support operations at Alcatraz, issued a statement Monday saying the prison’s stature as a historic landmark and educational destination already serves an important role.

“Alcatraz hasn’t been a working prison for over 60 years,” the organization said in its statement. “Today, it’s a powerful symbol — a National Historic Landmark preserved for all time, a transformative national park experience and global site of reflection. … This is where history speaks — and where we learn from the past to shape a better future. “

John Kostelnik, western regional vice president of the Council of Prison Locals 33, said the idea of reopening Alcatraz was not only an “irresponsible” use of federal money but also a slap in the face to prison guards, who have long complained about low wages.

“It just seems very hypocritical that they came in and said they’re going to make government more efficient and DOGE and all that stuff,” Kostelnik said, using the acronym for Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team, “and now they’re saying they’re gonna throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a symbol.”

In December, the Bureau of Prisons said it was closing its troubled federal prison in Dublin, Calif., about 30 miles east of San Francisco, as well as five minimum-security prison camps in states from Florida to Colorado. The bureau said in a document obtained by the Associated Press that it was closing the facilities to address “significant challenges, including a critical staffing shortage, crumbling infrastructure and limited budgetary resources.”

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office directed inquiries about the Alcatraz proposal to the National Park Service, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tourists roaming the island Monday seemed preoccupied with two questions: How and why?

“It’s not ready. It is in no way, shape or form ready,” said Daniel Mulvad, 24, who lives in San Francisco and was visiting with guests from out of town. He noted that the costs of renovating the structure would be astronomical and seemed senseless given that, as a tourist attraction, Alcatraz appeared to be generating a great deal of revenue through ticket sales and merchandise.

“You’d have to really … rewire,” said Alyssa Sibley, 26, of Sacramento, as she stood in the old shower room, staring at the crude and rusting bathroom fixtures.

Tumidei Valentin, 34, a French psychologist vacationing in California, decried it as a “terrible idea.” “Every day he has new ideas,” Valentin said of Trump, most of them “to make a buzz” and get attention.

Kristin Nichols, 60, of Palm Springs, who was visiting with family, said that as someone who is part Chickasaw she was particularly moved by the exhibits about the Native American occupation.

“The amount of money it would take to do this…” she said. “I would question the purpose.”

She added: “It’s a historic place, and if they turn it back into a prison, it’s going to ruin all the history.”

California and a coalition of other states sued the Trump administration Monday to block sweeping cuts to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, arguing they are unconstitutional and endanger Americans.

The lawsuit specifically challenges Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s March 27 directive firing 10,000 full-time employees, consolidating 28 department divisions into 15 and shutting down five of 10 regional offices, including one in San Francisco. The moves have upended an array of crucial services, the states argue, including by closing laboratories monitoring the nation’s current measles outbreak.

The lawsuit — brought by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and the attorneys general of 18 other states and the District of Columbia — argues the cuts are “arbitrary and capricious” and unconstitutional, violating the Administrative Procedure Act and going “beyond the scope of presidential power” by usurping the authority of Congress to appropriate funding toward certain government services, Bonta’s office said.

“The Trump Administration does not have the power to incapacitate a department that Congress created, nor can it decline to spend funds that were appropriated by Congress for that department,” Bonta said in a statement. “That’s why my fellow attorneys general and I are taking the Trump Administration to court — HHS is under attack, and we won’t stand for it.”

The lawsuit asks the courts to declare the cuts illegal, block or reverse their implementation and undo the firings, Bonta’s office said. It was one of two lawsuits filed by Bonta’s office against the Trump administration Monday — the second challenging new federal restrictions on wind energy.

A Health and Human Services spokesperson defended the agency’s actions Monday, saying they have been carried out in accordance with the law and other federal employee protections.

Health and Human Services previously characterized the changes as a “dramatic restructuring” of the agency in line with an executive order by President Trump in February that tasked advisor Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency with “eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity” in the federal workforce, including through mass firings.

Health and Human Services said the overhaul also 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 said in a statement. “This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

Kennedy said that “bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient” over time, “even when most of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants,” and that the overhaul would “be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves.”

“That’s the entire American public, because our goal is to Make America Healthy Again,” he said, repeating a slogan the Trump campaign took up after Kennedy suspended his own presidential bid to back Trump in August.

Kennedy was confirmed by the Senate as Health and Human Services secretary in February amid sharp criticism from Democrats, who lambasted the eccentric scion of the politically storied Kennedy family as an antivaccine conspiracy theorist who for years has spread dangerous, unscientific beliefs about a host of health issues and viruses, including HIV and COVID-19.

Kennedy has continued to cause alarm since, including through his handling of the nation’s measles outbreak, which in recent months has swept through large parts of the Southwest where vaccination rates have lagged.

Rather than push for greater vaccination, which has proved highly effective and safe, Kennedy has directed his department to look for new treatment options. Scientists have derided the move as a foolish and likely ineffective diversion of resources in the face of a serious and deadly threat — and one that is unnecessary, given the effectiveness of the measles vaccine.

In their lawsuit, the states refer to Kennedy’s “history of spinning conspiracy theories” and advocating for the dismantling of Health and Human Services, Bonta’s office said. Already, his directive downsizing the agency is causing harm, crippling support for programs such as Head Start, ending production of N95 masks and shutting down laboratories that monitor infectious diseases such as measles, Bonta’s office said.

The Associated Press has reported that cuts under Kennedy appear to have eliminated more than a dozen data-gathering programs that tracked deaths and diseases across the nation.

Congress provided Health and Human Services with a budget of $1.8 trillion in 2024 and has passed various laws that outline its mission, Bonta’s office said.

Including departures from an earlier buyout, the department has lost about 20,000 of its 82,000 employees since the start of the Trump administration, Bonta’s office said.

The states argue in their lawsuit that Health and Human Services fell into disarray after termination notices went out April 1, thousands of employees were “immediately expelled from their work email, laptops, and offices,” and work across the department “came to a sudden halt.”

“Throughout HHS, critical offices were left unable to perform statutory functions. There was no one to answer the phone, factories went into shutdown mode, experiments were abandoned, trainings were cancelled, site visits were postponed, application portals were closed, laboratories stopped testing for infectious diseases such as hepatitis, and partnerships were immediately suspended,” the states say.

Joining Bonta in the lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

The lawsuit was the 17th filed by Bonta’s office against the Trump administration. The 18th came Monday too as California joined 16 other states and the District of Columbia in suing the administration over its halting of federal approvals for offshore and onshore wind energy projects — a move that the states argue violates the Administrative Procedure Act and their right to pursue clean energy sources.

California has separately sued the Trump administration over Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to cut billions of dollars in federal public health grants aimed at increasing state resilience to infectious disease, based on similar arguments about the administration overreaching its authority to contradict decisions by Congress on federal spending.

California leaders also have raised concerns about the planned closure of the Health and Human Services office in San Francisco. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said the move was “shortsighted” and would have “detrimental impacts to our public health response capabilities,” and that she was “examining all possible avenues to fight back” against the cuts.

President Trump posted Sunday on his Truth Social platform that he’s ordered various government agencies to reopen Alcatraz to serve as a symbol of law, order and justice.

“For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering,” he wrote.

As he is a 34-count felon himself, it’s strange that the president does not seem to believe in rehabilitation or second chances. And it’s easy, as many quickly did, to write off this push to spruce up and fill up America’s most notorious prison-turned-national park as just bloviating or distraction. But like the sharks that circle that island in the Bay, the real danger of the idea lurks beneath the surface.

Trump in recent weeks has moved to undo years of criminal justice reform. He is making changes that increase police power, signaling a push to refill federal prisons and detention centers with Black and brown people and curbing the ability of those impacted to seek redress in courts.

None of that is about justice or safety — most violent crime rates are actually declining, despite what the president would like us to believe. It’s about empowering authorities to act without fear of consequence, and undoing the changes in culture and law set in motion by the killing of George Floyd.

The real-time results of those moves can already be seen in Los Angeles.

My colleagues Brittny Mejia , James Queally and Keri Blakinger reported last week that the office of Trump’s newly appointed U.S. attorney for Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, made the extraordinary move of offering a plea deal to a sheriff’s deputy — who had already been found guilty by a jury of using excessive force.

Yes, he is asking a judge to throw out a jury’s decision.

The idea that the new U.S. attorney would basically tell a jury to stuff it isn’t just arrogant. It’s alarming. It sends the message that if the people want to hold local authorities accountable for brutality, the federal authorities will simply override them.

This is what Trump promised law enforcement during his campaign, and he is delivering. Do you remember in 2017 when, to cheers, he requested officers “don’t be too nice” when making arrests?

The case in question feels spot-on for Trump’s plea.

The incident that landed former Deputy Trevor Kirk in court stemmed from an arrest at a Lancaster grocery store in June 2023. Responding to a possible robbery call, Kirk grabbed a Black woman who matched the description of a suspect, threw her face-first to the ground while she filmed him and pepper-sprayed her. The woman was later treated for blunt force trauma to her head, and was never charged with a crime.

The case was investigated by the FBI, and in April, Kirk was convicted of one felony count of deprivation of rights under color of law.

The judge has yet to sentence him, but Kirk could face up to 10 years in prison. Unless the judge accepts the dubious plea deal, in which case Kirk would plead guilty to a misdemeanor, which could result in probation rather than time behind bars. It would also mean Kirk would not be prevented from working in law enforcement again.

An organization that that represents some sheriff’s deputies and which contacted Trump about the case, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Professional Assn., has long contended that the prosecution was “politically charged” and Kirk did nothing beyond the bounds of training or law. Many of his former fellow officers agree.

But prosecutors saw it differently, arguing in a three-day trial that the deputy had gone too far. The jury agreed.

Occasionally, and I do mean rarely, a prosecutor may move to undo a conviction if new evidence pops up post-trial. But that does not appear to be the case here, as The Times noted. This really looks like a Trump-appointed prosecutor trying to undo the will of the people.

Like any other defendant, Kirk has the right to appeal his conviction. By his stepping in now, it’s hard to see Essayli’s actions as anything other than political. Three attorneys resigned from his office in the wake of his unusual request.

To drive home the point, also last week, Trump signed an executive order on policing that promised to “unleash” U.S. law enforcement to “firmly police” criminal activity.

“When local leaders demonize law enforcement and impose legal and political handcuffs that make aggressively enforcing the law impossible, crime thrives and innocent citizens and small business owners suffer,” Trump wrote.

That same executive order promised to provide new legal protections for law enforcement and even help cover costs if an officer is sued.

So when we talk about Alcatraz, don’t write it off as a joke or another empty decree. Alcatraz closed in 1963, one year before the Civil Rights Act passed.

Reopening it is nostalgia for an America where power ran roughshod over true justice, and police were an authority not to be questioned — or restrained.

ATLANTA — It’s what one historian calls an “elaborate, clunky machine,” one that’s been fundamental to American democracy for more than two centuries.

The principle of checks and balances is rooted in the Constitution’s design of a national government with three distinct, coequal branches.

President Trump in his first 100 days tested that system like rarely before, signing dozens of executive orders, closing or sharply reducing government agencies funded by Congress, and denigrating judges who have issued dozens of rulings against him.

“The framers were acutely aware of competing interests, and they had great distrust of concentrated authority,” said Dartmouth College professor John Carey, an expert on American democracy. “That’s where the idea came from.”

Their road map has mostly prevented control from falling into “one person’s hands,” Carey said. But he warned that the system depends on “people operating in good faith … and not necessarily exercising power to the fullest extent imaginable.”

Here’s a look at checks and balances and previous tests across U.S. history.

A fight over Jefferson ignoring Adams’ appointments

The foundational checks-and-balances fight: President John Adams made last-minute appointments before he left office in 1801. His successor, Thomas Jefferson, and Secretary of State James Madison ignored them. William Marbury, an Adams justice of the peace appointee, asked the Supreme Court to compel Jefferson and Madison to honor Adams’ decisions.

Chief Justice John Marshall concluded in 1803 that the commissions became legitimate with Adams’ signature and, thus, Madison acted illegally by shelving them. Marshall, however, stopped short of ordering anything. Marbury had sued under a 1789 law that made the Supreme Court the trial court in the dispute. Marshall’s opinion voided that law because it gave justices — who almost exclusively hear appeals — more power than the Constitution afforded them.

The split decision asserted the court’s role in interpreting congressional acts — and striking them down — while also adjudicating executive branch actions.

Hamilton, Jackson and national banks

Congress and President George Washington chartered the First Bank of the United States in 1791. Federalists, led by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, favored a strong central government and wanted a national bank that could lend the government money. Anti-Federalists, led by Jefferson and Madison, wanted less centralized power and argued Congress had no authority to charter a bank. But they did not ask the courts to step in.

Andrew Jackson, the first populist president, loathed the bank, believing it to be a sop to the rich. Congress voted in 1832 to extend the charter, with provisions to mollify Jackson. The president vetoed the measure anyway, and Congress failed to muster the two-thirds majorities required by the Constitution to override him. In 1836, the Philadelphia-based bank became a private state bank.

Lincoln and due process

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus — a legal process that allows individuals to challenge their detention. That allowed federal authorities to arrest and hold people without granting due process. Lincoln said his maneuver might not be “strictly legal” but was a “public necessity” to protect the Union. The Supreme Court’s Roger Taney, sitting as a circuit judge, declared the suspension illegal but noted he did not have the power to enforce the opinion.

Congress ultimately sided with Lincoln through retroactive statutes. And the Supreme Court, in a separate 1862 case challenging other Lincoln actions, endorsed the president’s argument that the office comes with inherent wartime powers not expressly allowed via the Constitution or congressional act.

Reconstruction: Johnson vs. Congress

After the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination, “Radical Republicans” in Congress wanted penalties on states that had seceded and on the Confederacy’s leaders and combatants. They also advocated Reconstruction programs that enfranchised and elevated formerly enslaved people (the men, at least). President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessean, was more lenient on Confederates and harsher to formerly enslaved people. Congress, with appropriations power, established the Freedmen’s Bureau to assist newly freed Black Americans. Johnson, with pardon power, repatriated former Confederates. He also limited Freedmen’s Bureau authority to seize Confederates’ assets.

Spoils system vs. civil service

For a century, nearly all federal jobs were executive branch political appointments: revolving doors after every presidential transition. In 1883, Congress stepped in with the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Changes started with some posts being filled through examinations rather than political favor. Congress added to the law over generations, developing the civil service system that Trump is now seeking to dismantle by reclassifying tens of thousands of government employees. His aim is to turn civil servants into political appointees or other at-will workers who are more easily dismissed from their jobs.

Wilson’s League of Nations

After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles called for an international body to bring countries together to discuss global affairs and prevent war. President Woodrow Wilson advocated for the League of Nations. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Republican Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, brought the treaty to the Senate in 1919 with amendments to limit the League of Nations’ influence. Wilson opposed the caveats, and the Senate fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to ratify the treaty and join the League. After World War II, the U.S. took a lead role, with Senate support, in establishing the United Nations and the NATO alliance.

FDR and court packing

Franklin D. Roosevelt met the Great Depression with large federal programs and aggressive regulatory actions, much of it approved by Democratic majorities in Congress. A conservative Supreme Court struck down some of the New Deal legislation as beyond the scope of congressional power. Roosevelt answered by proposing to expand the nine-seat court and pressuring aging justices to retire. The president’s critics dubbed it “a court-packing scheme.” He disputed the allegation. But not even the Democratic Congress seriously entertained his idea.

Presidential term limits

Roosevelt ignored the unwritten rule, established by Washington, that a president serves no more than two terms. He won third and fourth terms during World War II, rankling even some of his allies. Soon after his death, a bipartisan coalition pushed the 22nd Amendment that limits presidents to being elected twice. Trump has talked about seeking a third term despite this constitutional prohibition.

Nixon and Watergate

The Washington Post and other media exposed ties between President Richard Nixon’s associates and a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel during the 1972 campaign. By summer 1974, the story ballooned into congressional hearings, court fights and plans for impeachment proceedings. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Nixon in his assertion that executive privilege allowed him not to turn over potential evidence of his and top aides’ roles in the cover-up — including recordings of private Oval Office conversations. Nixon resigned after a delegation of his fellow Republicans told him that Congress was poised to remove him from office.

Leaving Vietnam

Presidents from John F. Kennedy through Nixon ratcheted up U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. But Congress never declared war in Vietnam. A 1973 deal, under Nixon, ended official American military involvement. But complete U.S. withdrawal didn’t occur until more than two years later — a period during which Congress reduced funding for South Vietnam’s democratic government. Congress did not cut off all money for Saigon, as some conservatives later claimed. But lawmakers refused to rubber-stamp larger administration requests, asserting a congressional check on the president’s military and foreign policy agenda.

The Affordable Care Act

A Democratic-controlled Congress overhauled the nation’s health insurance system in 2010. The Affordable Care Act, in part, tried to require states to expand the Medicaid program that covers millions of children, disabled people and some low-income adults. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Congress and President Obama could not compel states to expand the program by threatening to withhold other federal money already obligated to the states under previous federal law. The court on multiple occasions has upheld other portions of the law. Republicans, even when they have controlled the White House and Capitol Hill, have been unable to repeal the act.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.