Trump Administration Updates: U.S. Pauses Student Visa Interviews
May 27, 2025
New York Times
A rally in support of international students held at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. on Tuesday. Credit: Lucy Lu for The New York Times
Where Things Stand:
- Student visas: The State Department has temporarily stopped interviewing foreign citizens who are applying from abroad for student visas while it sets up procedures to review their social media posts. Many international students at American universities pay full tuition and are economically essential to the schools. Read more ›
- Law firm fight: A federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to use the government’s power to punish WilmerHale, a firm associated with Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated connections between Mr. Trump and Russia. The decision was the latest victory for law firms targeted by the president’s executive orders. Read more ›
- Deportation ban: The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to let it quickly deport migrants to countries not their own, despite a federal judge’s ruling that they must be first given a “meaningful opportunity” to object. The administration argued that the judge, in federal court in Boston, had overstepped his authority by requiring hearings in the case of several migrants convicted of violent crimes whom the U.S. government has flown to Africa and is holding there. Read more ›
- Covid vaccinations: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said healthy children and pregnant women no longer needed to be vaccinated for Covid. The announcement by Mr. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic, upends the normal process for vaccine recommendations. Pediatricians warn that the youngest infants face higher risks for hospitalization. Read more ›
May 27, 2025
by Edward Wong
Reporting from Washington
The State Department halts interviews for student visas, seeking scrutiny of social media accounts.
The order was issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a cable dated Tuesday that went out to U.S. embassies and consulates. Credit: Eric Lee/The New York Times
The State Department is temporarily halting interviews abroad with foreign citizens applying for student and exchange visas as it expands scrutiny of applicants’ social media posts.
The order was issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a cable dated Tuesday that went out to U.S. embassies and consulates. A State Department official confirmed on Tuesday that Mr. Rubio had given the order to pause new interview appointments until further guidance.
“We use all available information in our visa screening and vetting,” the State Department said in a statement, without specifying what could flag an applicant for rejection under a new social media policy. The statement noted that visa applicants have been asked to provide social media account information on forms since 2019.
The secretary of state’s order comes as President Trump is trying to coerce Harvard University and other institutions to restrict what can be said on campuses, with a particular focus on anti-Israel speech.
Mr. Trump this month said the U.S. government would no longer grant Harvard the right to enroll international students. On Friday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking Mr. Trump from moving forward with the action against Harvard and foreign students.
Many universities in the United States rely on foreign students to pay full tuition. Those students are responsible for a substantial portion of the annual revenues of many American universities. On some campuses, foreign students make up the majority of researchers in certain disciplines, mainly in the sciences.
Foreign students collectively pursued more than 1.3 million degrees in higher education in 2023, according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security. Visiting professors from abroad will also be affected by the new restrictions.
Foreign citizens with existing interview appointments for student or exchange visas should in theory still be able to attend those.
In its statement, the State Department suggested the pause was a part of the ordinarily “dynamic” scheduling of interviews for such visas. The department said it bases visa timelines on what the officers need for sufficient vetting, in compliance with U.S. law and “to ensure applicants do not pose a security or safety risk to the United States.”
Mr. Rubio issued a cable on March 25 that told consular officers to scrutinize the social media content of some applicants for student and other types of visas. That directive said that officers need to refer certain student and exchange visitor visa applicants to the “fraud prevention unit” for a “mandatory social media check.”
In recent months, Mr. Rubio has spoken about canceling student visas, revoking permanent residency status (“green cards”) and scrutinizing the social media history of foreign visitors, mainly in the context of outrage around Israel’s war in Gaza. He has said pro-Palestinian protesters on campuses have harassed other students, destroyed property and disrupted daily life, even though those acts have not been widespread across university protests.
Critics say the Trump administration is trying to suppress free speech and promote ideological conformity.
Mr. Rubio told reporters in late March that he had revoked 300 or more visas, many of which were issued to students, and was continuing to cancel more daily.
In early March, Mr. Rubio stripped Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate student at Columbia University, of his permanent residency status. Mr. Rubio said Mr. Khalil, who has Palestinian heritage and is married to an American citizen, was undermining U.S. foreign policy. Immigration agents then arrested Mr. Khalil.
In some cases, the foreign citizens at risk of losing their visas or green cards have brought cases against the U.S. government, and judges have issued temporary restraining orders on federal actions.
In March, Mr. Rubio boasted about revoking the visa of a Turkish doctorate student and Fulbright scholar at Tufts University, Rumeysa Ozturk. The only protest action she had taken of any note was to co-write an essay in a student newspaper calling for university support of Palestinian rights and divestment from Israel. A judge this month ordered immigration officers to free her from a detention center.
Andy Newman contributed reporting.
May 27, 2025, 8:51 p.m. ETMay 27, 2025
Ben Shpigel
Trump pardons Todd and Julie Chrisley, the reality show stars convicted of a $36 million fraud.
Todd and Julie Chrisley, stars of the USA Network television show “Chrisley Knows Best,” at the Country Music Awards in 2017. They were convicted of financial crimes in 2022. Credit: Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated Press
President Trump will fully pardon the reality television stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted three years ago of evading taxes and defrauding banks of more than $30 million to support their luxurious lifestyle.
The pardon, announced Tuesday by the White House, is the latest instance of Mr. Trump using his clemency power to settle grievances over what he calls the political weaponization of the justice system. Mr. Trump, in notifying the Chrisleys’ daughter, Savannah, called their treatment “pretty harsh,” as shown in a video clip of their call posted to social media by one of the president’s special assistants, Margo Martin.
“Your parents are going to be free and clean, and I hope we can do it by tomorrow,” Mr. Trump tells Savannah Chrisley, adding, “I don’t know them, but give them my regards and wish them a good life.”
Savannah Chrisley can be heard saying, “Thank you so much, Mr. President.”
The Chrisleys soared to fame about a decade ago in the USA Network hit “Chrisley Knows Best” as self-made, God-fearing real estate moguls who lived in a 30,000-square-foot mansion outside Atlanta. But according to prosecutors, their empire was “based on the lie that their wealth came from dedication and hard work” and they were “career swindlers who have made a living by jumping from one fraud scheme to another, lying to banks, stiffing vendors and evading taxes at every corner.”
A jury in 2022 found the couple guilty of eight counts of financial fraud and two counts of tax evasion, while Ms. Chrisley was convicted of additional counts of wire fraud and obstruction of justice. Mr. Chrisley received a 12-year prison sentence, and Ms. Chrisley was sentenced to seven years.
According to the Justice Department, the Chrisleys conspired with a former business partner to defraud banks around Atlanta into giving them more than $36 million in personal loans. They submitted false bank statements, audit reports and personal financial statements to obtain the loans, the Justice Department said, and spent the money on luxury cars, real estate and clothing, while also using new fraudulent loans to repay older ones. After spending all the money, the Justice Department said, Mr. Chrisley filed for bankruptcy.
Then, after earning millions of dollars from their show, the Chrisleys, along with their accountant, Peter Tarantino, defrauded the I.R.S., prosecutors said. To avoid paying about $500,000 in back taxes that Mr. Chrisley owed, the couple opened corporate bank accounts in Ms. Chrisley’s name, then transferred ownership of an account to a family member to hide their income from the I.R.S., prosecutors said.
Last year, an appeals court upheld the convictions of Mr. Chrisley and Mr. Tarantino but vacated the sentence of Ms. Chrisley, finding that the sentencing judge held her accountable for the entirety of the bank-fraud plot without specific evidence showing that she was involved in the first year of the scheme, 2006.
In pursuing clemency for the Chrisleys, their lawyer Alex Little prepared binders with court documents and testimonials to present to White House and Justice Department officials.
Mr. Little wrote that their conviction “exemplifies the weaponization of justice against conservatives and public figures, eroding basic constitutional protections.” His summary connected the prosecutors in the Chrisleys’ case to Fani T. Willis, the Georgia state prosecutor who brought an election interference case against Mr. Trump in 2023.
Savannah Chrisley, a supporter of Mr. Trump, said in a speech at the Republican National Convention last July that her parents were “persecuted by rogue prosecutors” because of their public profile and conservative beliefs.
In the post announcing the pardon, Mr. Trump’s assistant alluded playfully to the title of the Chrisleys’ show. “Trump Knows Best!” she wrote.
Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting.
May 27, 2025
Mattathias Schwartz
Mattathias Schwartz reports on the federal judiciary.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/politics/trump-pardon-paul-walczak-tax-crimes.html
Trump Pardoned Tax Cheat After Mother Attended $1 Million Dinner
Paul Walczak’s pardon application cited his mother’s support for the president, including raising millions of dollars and a connection to a plot to publicize a Biden family diary.
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Paul Walczak in 2011. His recent pardon by President Trump spared him from having to pay nearly $4.4 million in restitution and serving 18 months in prison. Credit: Bill Ingram/Palm Beach Post/USA TODAY NETWORK, via Imagn Images
by Kenneth P. Vogel
[Kenneth P. Vogel has reported on presidential pardons. He reported from Washington.]
May 27, 2025
New York Times
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As Paul Walczak awaited sentencing early this year, his best hope for avoiding prison time rested with the newly inaugurated president.
Mr. Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes days after the 2024 election, submitted a pardon application to President Trump around Inauguration Day. The application focused not solely on Mr. Walczak’s offenses but also on the political activity of his mother, Elizabeth Fago.
Ms. Fago had raised millions of dollars for Mr. Trump’s campaigns and those of other Republicans, the application said. It also highlighted her connections to an effort to sabotage Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 campaign by publicizing the addiction diary of his daughter Ashley Biden — an episode that drew law enforcement scrutiny.
Mr. Walczak’s pardon application argued that his criminal prosecution was motivated more by his mother’s efforts for Mr. Trump than by his admitted use of money earmarked for employees’ taxes to fund an extravagant lifestyle.
Threats against federal judges have risen sharply since Trump took office.
The increase in threats coincides with a flood of harsh rhetoric — often from President Trump himself — criticizing judges who have ruled against the administration and, in many cases, calling on Congress to impeach them.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
Threats against federal judges have risen drastically since President Trump took office, according to internal data compiled by the U.S. Marshals Service.
In the five-month period leading up to March 1 of this year, 80 individual judges had received threats, the data shows.
Then, over the next six weeks, an additional 162 judges received threats, a dramatic increase. That spike in threats coincided with a flood of harsh rhetoric — often from Mr. Trump himself — criticizing judges who have ruled against the administration and, in some cases, calling on Congress to impeach them.
Many judges have already spoken out, worrying about the possibility of violence and urging political leaders to tone things down.
Since mid-April, the pace of the threats has slowed slightly, the data shows. Between April 14 and May 27, it shows 35 additional individual judges received threats. Still, the total number of judges threatened this fiscal year — 277 — represents roughly a third of the judiciary.
The threat data was not released publicly but was provided to The New York Times by Judge Esther Salas of Federal District Court for New Jersey, who said she obtained it from the Marshals Service, which is tasked by law with overseeing security for the judiciary.
In 2020, Judge Salas’ son, Daniel Anderl, was shot and killed at the entrance of her home by a self-described “anti-feminist” lawyer, and since then she has advocated judicial safety.
“This has nothing to do with hysteria or hyperbole,” she said in an interview. “These numbers tell a dramatic story. They show a spike that ought to be alarming and concerning to everyone.”
Spokesmen for the White House and the marshals did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The marshals define a threat as “any action or communication, whether explicit or implied, of intent to assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate or interfere” with any marshals-protected person, including federal judges, according to an internal document reviewed by The Times. That language mirrors a federal statute that treats as criminals those who interfere with federal officials performing their duties.
Threats against judges have been rising in recent years, including before Mr. Trump took office.
Marshals Service data shows there were threats against more than 400 individual judges in 2023, the year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion. In June 2022, after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe leaked, an armed man tried to assassinate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh at his home.
A series of judges have blocked Mr. Trump’s sweeping executive actions, including his efforts to deliver on his campaign promise of mass deportations.
Last week, a federal judge in Boston ordered the United States to maintain custody of a group of deportees whom the administration is trying to send to South Sudan, and to bring back another deportee now in hiding in Guatemala.
In a statement, the White House called the judge, Brian E. Murphy, a “far-left activist.” Mr. Trump broadened the attack on Monday, condemning “USA hating judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick, and very dangerous for our country,” in a social media post rendered in all capital letters.
Some judges who have ruled against the administration have received unwelcome pizza deliveries at their homes, and at the homes of their family members. The authorities are investigating the matter. Judge Salas said she had learned from the marshals that 103 pizzas had been sent anonymously, including 20 in the name of her dead son.
May 27, 2025, 5:48 p.m. ETMay 27, 2025
Adam Liptak
Reporting from Washington
The administration asks the Supreme Court to let it send migrants to South Sudan.
Image
The Trump administration’s application came after a flight of eight men to Djibouti. Credit: Eric Lee/The New York Times
The Trump administration on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to allow speedy deportations of migrants to countries other than their own, despite a federal judge’s ruling that they must be first allowed a “meaningful opportunity” to object.
The judge has said that the administration violated an order he entered last month in the cases of several men who were loaded on a plane after they were told they were being sent to South Sudan, a violence-plagued African country that most of them are not from. The order required that they be allowed a chance first to show that they were at risk of torture if deported to a country other than their own.
Their flight apparently landed on Wednesday in the East African nation of Djibouti, where there is an American military base, and they have apparently been held there ever since. The judge, Brian E. Murphy of the U.S. District Court in Boston, ruled that the men must be given access to a lawyer and a chance to challenge the government plan.
There were eight deportees aboard the flight to Djibouti. One is South Sudanese, and the government has said that another will be sent to Myanmar, his home country, leaving the six others in limbo. All eight have been convicted of violent crimes.
In the administration’s emergency application, the solicitor general, D. John Sauer, wrote that Judge Murphy had thwarted “the government’s ability to remove some of the worst of the worst illegal aliens.”
“The United States is facing a crisis of illegal immigration, in no small part because many aliens most deserving of removal are often the hardest to remove,” Mr. Sauer wrote.
Mr. Sauer explained that the home countries of migrants convicted of violent crimes often refuse to allow them to be returned, making their deportations especially challenging.
“As a result, criminal aliens are often allowed to stay in the United States for years on end, victimizing law-abiding Americans in the meantime,” he wrote.
Judge Murphy had “stalled these efforts nationwide,” Mr. Sauer said, by insisting on a procedure for allowing the migrants to challenge their deportation that was “invented by the district court.” The procedure includes giving migrants at least 10 days to raise claims that they might be tortured and another 15 days to contest adverse findings.
In a ruling filed Monday, Judge Murphy wrote that administration officials were “manufacturing the very chaos they decry.”
Judge Murphy wrote that his rulings had been measured and patient. He did not, he said, order the men in Djibouti to be returned to the United States, as their lawyers had requested. Instead, he wrote, he had accepted a government lawyer’s suggestion at a hearing last week that the men be afforded the process due to them abroad, at the military base.
Mr. Sauer argued that the judge was interfering in the president’s ability to conduct foreign affairs and had imposed onerous requirements.
“It typically takes minutes, not weeks, for an alien to express a fear of being tortured in a country,” Mr. Sauer wrote.
At a hearing last week, Judge Murphy said that the government had given the deported men little more than 24 hours’ notice that they were being removed from the United States — a time frame he described as “plainly insufficient.”
Judge Murphy, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said the administration’s violation could ultimately result in a finding of criminal contempt. The Supreme Court issued a ruling last week insisting on due process for immigrants the administration seeks to deport under the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely invoked, 18th-century wartime law.
In an unsigned order, the court said that the administration’s practice of giving immigrants 24 hours to challenge deportations under that law “surely does not pass muster.”
In a similar case, a federal judge in Washington, James E. Boasberg, has opened an inquiry into whether Trump officials violated an order he issued in March seeking to stop flights of immigrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.
That inquiry is temporarily on hold as an appeals court considers a request by the Justice Department to end it.
May 27, 2025
by Niko Gallogly
The E.E.O.C. won’t pay state regulators for some discrimination claims.
The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission has for years paid state and local civil rights agencies to process and investigate many discrimination claims. Credit: Andrew Kelly/Reuters
The Trump administration is making it harder for state and local agencies to enforce certain workplace discrimination laws, another step in its efforts to strip away longstanding civil rights protections for minority groups.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the nation’s primary regulator of workplace discrimination, pays state and local civil rights agencies to process and investigate many discrimination claims under work-sharing agreements.
But in a memo sent to those agencies last week, the E.E.O.C. said it would stop paying them for claims involving transgender workers or those based on what is known as disparate impact, which relies on statistical outcomes to prove discrimination. The memo, which was viewed by The New York Times, said the policy was retroactive to Jan. 20, when Mr. Trump took office.
That loss of federal resources will make it harder for state and local agencies to investigate these claims. Legal experts say the policy is likely to be challenged in courts and fits into the Trump administration’s efforts to chip away at civil rights law.
“They are consistently eroding the protections from the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other foundational civil rights laws in this country, and undermining the rights of particular communities,” said Maya Raghu, a director at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, an advocacy group.
The E.E.O.C. declined to comment on the memo, which was dated May 20.
While presidents do not have the authority to unilaterally change civil rights law, the Trump administration has used executive orders to chart a new path on enforcement. The memo to state and local agencies said the directive was consistent with two of Mr. Trump’s executive orders — one that asserted that the federal government recognizes only two sexes, male and female; and another that ordered federal agencies to halt their use of “disparate-impact liability.”
In workplace discrimination cases, disparate-impact tests are used to determine whether an employer’s policy that appears neutral on its face disadvantages a particular group of people. Legal experts say that the test is one of the most critical tools for prosecuting civil rights discrimination.
“Disparate-impact theory is a really important mechanism for rooting out discrimination and inequality,” said Stacy Hawkins, a professor at Rutgers Law School who specializes in employment law.
The E.E.O.C. has emerged as a key enforcer of President Trump’s agenda.
Under Andrea Lucas, the acting chair who was appointed by Mr. Trump, the agency has already dismissed discrimination cases it previously filed on behalf of transgender employees, and it has investigated law firms for their diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
The E.E.O.C. allocated $31.5 million to state and local civil rights agencies last year. Those agencies help process about two-thirds of the tens of thousands of discrimination claims the E.E.O.C. receives each year.
State and city agencies are still required by local laws to enforce claims based on transgender discrimination or disparate impact, but for those that rely on the E.E.O.C. for a significant portion of their budgets, the policy change will hinder their ability to fully process or investigate these claims.
The Maine Human Rights Commission, for example, receives nearly a third of its funding from the E.E.O.C., according to a spokesperson. For bigger states, the percentage of funding tends to be smaller. New York and California receive roughly 5 percent of their funding from the E.E.O.C., according to officials from those states’ agencies.
“We are deeply disappointed that the E.E.O.C. has decided that it will no longer support investigations of claims involving discrimination based on gender-identity and disparate-impact discrimination,” New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, a Democrat, said in an emailed statement.
The E.E.O.C., established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to enforce anti-discrimination laws, has a long history of bringing claims based on disparate impact, even under the first Trump administration. In 2018, the agency secured a $3.2 million settlement from the railroad company CSX Transportation over strength tests it required as part of its job applications, which the agency said ended up disproportionately excluding women, a protected class under civil rights law.
In 2012, the E.E.O.C. began processing complaints of gender-identity and sexual orientation discrimination. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that gay and transgender employees were protected against discrimination under the landmark civil rights law. Since that ruling, the agency has processed thousands of such cases, including 3,000 last year.
Because of the agency’s new policy, the number of such cases that lead to investigations is likely to shrink drastically. Jocelyn Samuels, who was a Democratic commissioner at the agency until Mr. Trump fired her a few days into his second term, said she worried that the E.E.O.C.’s memo signaled to state and local agencies that they should prioritize the president’s executive orders over the Civil Rights Act.
The result may lead local agencies “to de-emphasize or ignore” cases claiming gender-identity or disparate-impact discrimination. Such an outcome, Ms. Samuels added, would deprive people of the “tools that the government can bring to bear in enforcing the law and vindicating their rights.”
May 27, 2025
Benjamin Mullin
NPR is suing Trump over his executive order to cut funding.
NPR headquarters in Washington. The group’s chief executive said that public media in the United States was “an irreplaceable foundation of American civic life.” Credit: Erin Schaff/The New York Times
NPR sued President Trump on Tuesday over his executive order that aims to end federal funding for NPR and PBS.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington by NPR and other public radio organizations, including Colorado Public Radio and Aspen Public Radio, said Mr. Trump’s order violated the Constitution and the First Amendment’s protections for freedom of speech.
“The president has no authority under the Constitution to take such actions,” the lawsuit said. “On the contrary, the power of the purse is reserved to Congress.”
The White House had no immediate comment.
This month, Mr. Trump signed an executive order ordering the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which backs NPR and PBS, to freeze all funding to those organizations. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting spends more than $500 million on public radio and TV stations annually.
Only a fraction of NPR’s budget — about 2 percent — comes directly from federal grants. Most of the funding goes to local public radio and TV stations across the U.S., helping fund their operations and create programming. About 15 percent of PBS’s budget comes from federal grants.
Mr. Trump said in his executive order that NPR and PBS were “biased” and that taxpayer support should go to “fair, accurate, unbiased and nonpartisan news coverage.” Public media leaders, including Katherine Maher, NPR’s chief executive, and Paula Kerger, the chief executive of PBS, condemned the executive order shortly after it was signed.
Mr. Trump’s executive order is one of several attempts by Republicans to weaken U.S. public media. The White House threatened to rescind public funding for TV and radio stations last month, and legislation is currently working its way through Congress to defund NPR and PBS. Last month, the White House tried to fire several members of the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which sued to block the attempt.
In its lawsuit, NPR asked the court to throw out Mr. Trump’s executive order on the grounds that it was unconstitutional and to prevent the president from enforcing it. The lawsuit also asked the court to declare that the National Endowment for the Arts could not withhold funding from public media organizations based on Mr. Trump’s executive order.
In a statement, Ms. Maher said that public media in the United States was “an irreplaceable foundation of American civic life.”
“At its best, it reflects our nation back to itself in all our complexity, contradictions and commonalities, and connects our communities across differences and divides,” she wrote.
May 27, 2025,
Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Trump pardons a former Virginia sheriff who was convicted of bribery.
Scott Jenkins, a former sheriff in Culpeper County, Va., was convicted last year of bribery and later sentenced to 10 years in prison. Credit: Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times
President Trump has issued a pardon to a former sheriff of Culpeper County, Va., who was convicted in federal court last year of bribery and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The president blamed the Biden administration for what he called a vindictive prosecution.
The pardon for Scott Jenkins, a prominent local supporter of the president who is also an advocate for gun rights, is the latest example of Mr. Trump’s use of clemency for his supporters who were convicted in federal court.
Mr. Jenkins and his family were “dragged through HELL by a Corrupt and Weaponized” Justice Department, Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Monday.
Mr. Jenkins accepted $75,000 in bribes in the form of campaign contributions from several businessmen in exchange for making them auxiliary deputy sheriffs in his department, the U.S. attorney’s office in the Western District of Virginia said.
He was convicted in 2024 of one count of conspiracy, four counts of honest services fraud and seven counts of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds.
The men who paid the bribes received badges and credentials even though they were not vetted or trained as sheriffs, the attorney’s office said in a statement.
Mr. Jenkins, who presents himself on his personal website as a defender of Second Amendment rights, was first elected sheriff in 2011. He was voted out in 2023 amid the bribery case, convicted last December and sentenced in March.
“He will NOT be going to jail tomorrow, but instead will have a wonderful and productive life,” said Mr. Trump, who issued a full and unconditional pardon.
Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond, said that there was no justification for the pardon, given the quality of the evidence amassed by the prosecution and the jury’s verdict.
“It is a straightforward case of bribery by a public official with many witnesses testifying,” Mr. Tobias said in an interview, adding that the position held by Mr. Jenkins made the crime all the more serious. “Sheriffs can put everybody else in jail.”
Mr. Trump’s decision in the case, however, is consistent with his commitment to undo what he portrays as the politicized application of justice by his predecessor. To that end, the administration has set up a team of appointees focusing on clemency grants. In the largest such example, Mr. Trump in January granted clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021.
Critics of Mr. Trump argue that he has ignored the screening and guidelines of the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney in his clemency grants. Some critics say Mr. Biden also ignored the guidelines when he issued a sweeping pardon in December for his son Hunter and other family members, after repeatedly saying that he would not do so.
May 27, 2025, 7:00 a.m. ETMay 27, 2025
Stephanie Saul
The Trump administration intends to cancel all federal funds directed at Harvard.
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The Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass. Credit: Sophie Park for The New York Times
The Trump administration is set to cancel the federal government’s remaining federal contracts with Harvard University — worth an estimated $100 million, according to a letter sent to federal agencies on Tuesday. The letter also instructs agencies to “find alternative vendors” for future services.
The additional planned cuts, outlined in a draft of the letter obtained by The New York Times, represented what an administration official called a complete severance of the government’s longstanding business relationship with Harvard.
The letter is the latest example of the Trump administration’s determination to bring Harvard — arguably the country’s most elite and culturally dominant university — to its knees, by undermining its financial health and global influence. Since last month, the administration has frozen about $3.2 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard. And it has tried to halt the university’s ability to enroll international students.
The latest letter, dated May 27 from the U.S. General Services Administration, was delivered Tuesday morning to federal agencies, according to an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official had not been authorized to discuss internal communications.
Read the Trump Administration Letter About Harvard Contracts
Here is a draft of the letter expected to be sent today to federal agencies asking them to cancel any remaining contracts with the university.
Read Document 2 pages
The letter instructs agencies to respond by June 6 with a list of contract cancellations. Any contracts for services deemed critical would not be immediately canceled but would be transitioned to other vendors, according to the letter, signed by Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the G.S.A.’s federal acquisition service, which is responsible for procuring government goods and services.
Contracts with about nine agencies would be affected, according to the administration official.
Examples of contracts that would be affected, according to a federal database, include a $49,858 National Institutes of Health contract to investigate the effects of coffee drinking and a $25,800 Homeland Security Department contract for senior executive training. Some of the Harvard contracts under review may have already been subject to “stop work” orders.
“Going forward, we also encourage your agency to seek alternative vendors for future services where you had previously considered Harvard,” the letter said.
The administration has cast its actions against Harvard as a fight for civil rights. It has accused the university of liberal bias, of continuing to use racial considerations in its admissions policies despite a Supreme Court ban, and of allowing antisemitic behavior on campus.
The university in Cambridge, Mass., has cast the fight as one over its First Amendment rights and accuses the Trump administration of trying to control its personnel, curriculum and enrollment.
Faced with government demands that included a ban on students “hostile to the American values,” an audit of the political ideology of students and faculty to ensure “viewpoint diversity,” and quarterly status updates to the administration, Harvard has vigorously pushed back in federal court.
In one lawsuit, filed last month, Harvard seeks the restoration of more than $3 billion in federal funding. In another, filed last week, it has asked a federal court to reinstate its right to enroll international students.
Last week, Judge Allison D. Burroughs temporarily reinstated Harvard’s right to enroll international students, and a hearing on Thursday will determine whether that order should be extended.
During his campaign for a second term, President Trump attacked elite universities as controlled by “Marxist maniacs and lunatics,” and vowed to increase taxes on the investment returns of university endowments, a plan approved this month by the House of Representatives. The tax provision, which still needs Senate approval, would cost Harvard, which has an endowment of $53 billion, an estimated $850 million a year.
Harvard has borne the brunt of the White House’s assault on higher education, and administrators and faculty on campus have watched with growing fear as the federal government has handed down edict after edict, cutting away at the financial foundation of the school.
The university has about 6,800 international students, making up 27 percent of its total enrollment. Harvard’s president, Alan M. Garber, characterized the cancellation of its ability to enroll international students as a potentially devastating blow.
“We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action,” Dr. Garber wrote in a statement last week, adding that it “imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities throughout the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.”
The Trump administration letter cited what it called a pattern in which Harvard had shown a “lack of commitment to nondiscrimination and our national values and priorities.”
As evidence, the letter said that The Harvard Law Review, an independent student-run publication, had recently given a fellowship to a law student who had been accused of assaulting a Jewish student during a 2023 pro-Palestinian campus protest.
The student avoided criminal prosecution on misdemeanor assault charges in that case and agreed to perform community service, but did not admit wrongdoing.
The letter also claimed that Harvard had not complied with the 2023 Supreme Court decision that banned the use of race as a deciding factor in admissions.
But the percentage of Black first-year students declined to 14 percent in fall 2024 after that decision, from 18 percent a year earlier. In the same period, Black enrollment in Harvard Law School’s first-year class dropped to 3.4 percent, the lowest it had been since the 1960s.
The letter did not provide statistical evidence for its claim about admissions, but cited the university’s addition of a remedial math course. It said the course was the result “of employing discriminatory factors, instead of merit, in admission decisions.”
May 27, 2025
Helene Cooper
Reporting from Washington
Trump’s military parade is set to include 6,700 soldiers, 50 helicopters and 2 mules.
The last big military parade held in the capital was to celebrate the conclusion of the Gulf War in 1991. Credit: Doug Mills/Associated Press
In President Trump’s first term, the Pentagon opposed his desire for a military parade in Washington, wanting to keep the armed forces out of politics.
But in Mr. Trump’s second term, that guardrail has vanished. There will be a parade this year, and on the president’s 79th birthday, no less.
The current plan involves a tremendous scene in the center of Washington: 28 M1A1 Abrams tanks (at 70 tons each for the heaviest in service); 28 Stryker armored personnel carriers; more than 100 other vehicles; a World War II-era B-25 bomber; 6,700 soldiers; 50 helicopters; 34 horses; two mules; and a dog.
Map shows the route of the Military Parade in Washington, D.C.
Base map data from OpenStreetMap.
By The New York Times
But critics say it is another example of how Mr. Trump has politicized the military.
The Army estimates the cost at $25 million to $45 million. But it could be higher because the Army has promised to fix any city streets that the parade damages, plus the cost of cleanup and police are not yet part of the estimate. While $45 million is a tiny fraction of Mr. Trump’s proposed Pentagon budget of $1.01 trillion for fiscal year 2026, it comes as the administration seeks to slash funding for education, health and public assistance.
“It’s a lot of money,” the Army spokesman Steve Warren acknowledged. “But I think that amount of money is dwarfed by 250 years of service and sacrifice by America’s Army.”
The Army is not calling the event a birthday parade for Mr. Trump. It is the Army’s birthday parade. The Continental Army was officially formed on June 14, 1775, so June 14 will mark 250 years.
That also happens to be Mr. Trump’s birthday.
There was no big parade in Washington back when the Army turned 200 in 1975, when Vietnam War scars were still raw. While smaller commemorations were held at Army bases around the country, complete with dinner dances, barbershop quartets and cake cutting, few people were looking to glorify the military so soon after the Kent State shootings. Besides, the country was gearing up for big bicentennial celebrations the next year.
The Golden Knights parachute team descending in front of the White House to celebrate July 4, 2020. One plan calls for paratroopers to land amid next month’s festivities and hand Mr. Trump a flag.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times
If things were going to be similarly low-key this time around, Fort Myer, across the Potomac in Arlington, Va., might be an ideal location, “where the Old Guard could march with some veterans,” said Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the leading Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, in a reference to the 3rd Infantry Regiment, the Army’s oldest active duty infantry unit.
“But this is Trump,” Mr. Reed added, speaking to reporters last week at the Defense Writers Group. “It’s consistent with so much of what he’s doing.”
Army officials say the parade will cross in front of Mr. Trump’s viewing stand on Constitution Avenue, near the White House, on the evening of Saturday, June 14, part of a big bash on the National Mall.
There will be marching troops who will be housed in two government buildings, officials say. They will sleep on military cots and bring their own sleeping bags, a topic of much merriment on late-night television.
There will be Paladins, the huge self-propelled howitzers, and nods to vintage style. Army officials want to outfit some troops in uniforms from the wars of long ago, like the one in 1812 or the Spanish-American War.
For more than two years, the Army has been planning national, global and even interstellar aspects of the celebration — an Army astronaut on the International Space Station will be phoning in, Mr. Warren said.
But those planned celebrations focused on festivals, a postal stamp, various fun runs, military bands and the like. At some point this year, Army officials said, a military parade in Washington appeared in the plans.
Still, officials say there are no plans at the moment to sing “Happy Birthday” to Mr. Trump, or to the Army, during the parade. One plan does, however, call for paratroopers from the Golden Knights, the Army parachute team, to land amid the festivities and hand Mr. Trump a flag.
In 2017 during his first term, Mr. Trump watched the Bastille Day parade in Paris with President Emmanuel Macron of France and returned home wanting his own. But the Trump 1.0 Pentagon shut him down. Jim Mattis, the defense secretary at the time, said he would “rather swallow acid,” according to “Holding the Line,” a book by Guy Snodgrass, Mr. Mattis’s former speechwriter.
U.S. Army Abrams tanks participating in a military parade in Warsaw in 2024. The celebration planned in Washington for the Army’s 250th birthday will feature 28 of the tanks. Credit: Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“We’re all aware in this country of the president’s affection and respect for the military,” Mr. Mattis said tersely when reporters asked about Mr. Trump’s wishes. “We have been putting together some options. We will send them up to the White House for decision.”
Gen. Paul J. Selva, then the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Mr. Trump during a meeting at the Pentagon that military parades were “what dictators do,” according to “The Divider,” by Peter Baker, a New York Times reporter, and Susan Glasser.
When Mr. Mattis was gone, Mr. Trump brought up the idea again. Mr. Mattis’s successor, Mark T. Esper, responded with an “air parade” as part of July 4 celebrations in 2020, Pentagon officials said. An array of fighter jets and other warplanes flew down the East Coast over cities that played roles in the American Revolution, including Boston, New York and Philadelphia.
Officials in Mr. Trump’s first Defense Department resisted his parade suggestion — it was never a direct order — because they viewed it as putting the military in the middle of politics, something the Pentagon historically has been loath to do.
But now Mr. Trump has Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and military leaders who so far have been more willing to put his musings into action.
This “raises the question, ‘Is the U.S. military celebrating Trump?’” said Risa Brooks, an associate professor of political science at Marquette University.
“Having tanks rolling down streets of the capital doesn’t look like something consistent with the tradition of a professional, highly capable military,” Dr. Brooks said in an interview. “It looks instead like a military that is politicized and turning inwardly, focusing on domestic oriented adversaries instead of external ones.”
There have been big American military parades in the past, but the last one was almost 35 years ago, to commemorate the end of the first Gulf War. Military parades in the United States have traditionally followed the end of major conflicts, such as the Civil War and the two World Wars. There were also military parades during three presidential inaugurations during the Cold War. And small-town festivities also sometimes commemorate the military with a few armored vehicles and troops.
“I don’t actually see the problem with a military parade,” said Kori Schake, a former defense official in the George W. Bush administration who directs foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Schake said more Americans need to see the troops who serve the country.
“If seeing our fellow Americans in uniform encourages public knowledge and connection, or inspires volunteering, it would be beneficial,” she said.
At the end of the day, “the military won’t die on this hill even if they do not like it,” said Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who has studied the military for decades. “Trump’s 2.0 team is better at giving the president what he wants whether or not it is best in the long run.”
