Trump Administration Live Updates: President Steps Up Attack on Fed as He Demands a Governor Resign
PHOTO: Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She has consistently voted with the board chair, Jerome Powell, whom President Trump regularly criticizes. Credit: Brittany Greeson for The New York Times
PHOTO: Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She has consistently voted with the board chair, Jerome Powell, whom President Trump regularly criticizes. Credit: Brittany Greeson for The New York Times
Where Things Stand:
Federal Reserve: President Trump demanded on Wednesday that a Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook, “resign, now!!!,” citing unconfirmed allegations that she may have engaged in mortgage fraud. It is the latest sign that the administration is ramping up its campaign to remake the independent central bank. The president has pressured the bank to lower interest rates, which it has kept steady out of concern that his policies could cause prices to rise. Read more ›
Trump and Netanyahu: President Trump praised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as a “war hero” for ordering his country’s forces to bombard Iran’s nuclear sites this year, and then said that the same label should apply to himself. Read more ›
Security clearances: Before Mr. Trump revoked the clearances of 37 current and former national security officials on Tuesday, the acting director of the National Security Agency tried to protect one of his top scientists. But Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, fired the scientist, who was a leading government expert on artificial intelligence, cryptology and advanced mathematics. Read more ›
August 20, 2025, 10:11 a.m. ET58 minutes ago
Julian E. Barnes
Reporting from Washington
The N.S.A.’s acting director tried to save a top scientist from this week’s purge.
PHOTO: Lt. Gen. William J. Hartman, the acting N.S.A. director, asked to see evidence that the agency’s chief data scientist had done anything to merit the revocation of his security clearance. Credit: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The acting director of the National Security Agency tried to protect one of his top scientists from losing his security clearance as Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, prepared to announce the move this week, according to officials briefed on the matter.
The effort failed. Ms. Gabbard, on orders from President Trump, fired the scientist, who was a leading government expert on artificial intelligence, cryptology and advanced mathematics.
The scientist, Vinh Nguyen, was one of 37 current and former national security officials whose security clearances were revoked on Tuesday. Many, though not all, had tangential connections to the intelligence agencies’ review of Russian efforts to influence and meddle in the 2016 election.
Ms. Gabbard has released documents about that intelligence inquiry and accused Obama administration officials of related crimes, an effort Mr. Trump has praised.
Lt. Gen. William J. Hartman, the acting N.S.A. director, called Ms. Gabbard in the days before the revocation and asked to see the evidence that Mr. Nguyen, the agency’s chief data scientist, had done anything that merited the revocation of his security clearance.
Ms. Gabbard rebuffed the request, the officials said. The list of people losing their clearance began to circulate Tuesday morning and was made public in the afternoon.
The N.S.A. referred all questions to Ms. Gabbard’s office, which did not return a request for comment.
Former officials have criticized the revocation of the 37 security clearances and the wider purge of national security officials. In an article in The Atlantic published on Wednesday, William J. Burns, the former C.I.A. director and a longtime diplomat, said the removal of public servants was part of a campaign of retribution.
“It is about breaking people and breaking institutions by sowing fear and mistrust throughout our government,” Mr. Burns wrote. “It is about paralyzing public servants — making them apprehensive about what they say, how it might be interpreted, and who might report on them. It is about deterring anyone from daring to speak truth to power.”
Mr. Nguyen, the son of a South Vietnamese general who fought alongside American forces in the Vietnam War, was recruited as a 17-year-old high school student to join the National Security Agency because of his math skills.
He rose through the ranks of the agency to become its chief data scientist. Friends and former colleagues of Mr. Nguyen said he had been in charge of developing artificial intelligence systems to improve the gathering of foreign communications. He has also been involved in the intelligence community’s work on quantum computing, which has the potential to break current encryption systems and revolutionize espionage.
In the days before Mr. Nguyen was dismissed, N.S.A. officials were concerned that his job was at risk, as conservative publications began to look at his work as the national intelligence officer in charge of cyber in 2016.
Reports in conservative publications had led to the ouster of the N.S.A.’s top lawyer, April Falcon Doss, in July. And the previous director of the agency, Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, was fired in the spring after Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracy theorist, accused him of having ties to Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Former officials had expected General Hartman, who replaced General Haugh, to be nominated for the job permanently. But neither the Pentagon nor the White House has formally made that move.
August 20, 2025, 9:53 a.m. ET1 hour ago
Tony RommBen Casselman and Colby Smith
Trump demands that a Fed governor resign, escalating his campaign to remake central bank.
PHOTO: Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, during a round table event at Spelman College in Atlanta in 2023. Credit: Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times
President Trump demanded on Wednesday that a Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook, “resign, now!!!,” citing unconfirmed allegations that she may have engaged in mortgage fraud as the administration ramped up its campaign to try to remake the central bank.
Mr. Trump unleashed his latest attack shortly after Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said on social media that his office had investigated Ms. Cook and found that she appeared to have falsified bank documents to obtain favorable loan terms. Mr. Pulte said the F.H.F.A. had referred the matter to the Justice Department for a criminal inquiry.
In attacking Ms. Cook, the first Black woman to ever serve as a Fed governor, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Pulte signaled anew their willingness to weaponize the instruments of government to influence monetary policy, even though experts long have warned that interfering with the Fed and its independence could bring about catastrophic economic and financial consequences.
For Mr. Trump, the goal is to force down interest rates, which he believes will boost the economy and make American debt less expensive. The Fed has instead kept those borrowing costs steady this year, in part because officials are concerned that Mr. Trump’s tariffs will spark a new round of price increases.
To achieve his goal, the president has embarked on an all-out campaign to pressure the Fed and its members, relentlessly lambasting its chair, Jerome H. Powell, and threatening to fire him, while also trying to subject the central bank to uncomfortable public scrutiny.
Mr. Trump recently seized on renovations underway at the Fed’s headquarters in Washington, which are running around $700 million over budget and are expected to cost around $2.5 billion. The president visited the active construction site in July after questioning whether there was evidence of fraud given the project’s swelling expenses. Earlier this month, Mr. Trump threatened to allow a “major lawsuit” against the Fed chair related to the renovations to go forward as he again called for lower borrowing costs.
The president is limited in his ability to remove an official from the central bank, a protection recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court. Policymakers on the Board of Governors can only be removed for “cause,” which legal experts define as breaking the law or gross misconduct.
Ms. Cook has consistently voted with Mr. Powell and is generally seen as aligned with him on policy decisions. Ousting Ms. Cook, whose term as governor runs through 2038, would give Mr. Trump another seat on the seven-member board that he could fill with someone more likely to support cutting rates.
Mr. Trump already has one unexpected seat to fill. Adriana Kugler, another Fed governor, resigned unexpectedly this month, several months before her term was set to expire in January. Mr. Trump has nominated Stephen Miran, currently the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, to fill out Ms. Kugler’s term. He must still be confirmed by the Senate.
The White House has also started weighing potential replacements for Mr. Powell, whose term as chair ends in May. On Tuesday, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, sad there are “11 very strong candidates” under consideration, and told CNBC he would begin meeting with them around Labor Day to narrow the list.
A spokeswoman for the Fed did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Ms. Cook. The Justice Department declined to comment.
A specialist in international economics who has also researched racial disparities in labor markets, Ms. Cook was a professor at Michigan State University when President Biden appointed her to the Fed board in 2022.
Her confirmation was a narrow one: Vice President Kamala Harris broke a 50-50 tie in the Senate after Republicans voted overwhelmingly against her appointment.
One of the most prominent Black women in a field long dominated by white men, Ms. Cook has been an advocate for diversity in economics. She helped lead the American Economic Association’s summer program, which helps prepare students from underrepresented backgrounds for graduate programs in the social sciences.
In a letter posted Wednesday to social media, Mr. Pulte revealed that the housing agency had been investigating Ms. Cook on suspicion of mortgage fraud. It marked the latest instance in which Mr. Pulte, a key political ally of the president, had personally targeted a member of the Fed, after he helped stoke suspicion around Mr. Powell and drafted a letter for Mr. Trump firing the chair. The president ultimately opted not to dismiss Mr. Powell.
Mr. Pulte said his inquiry ultimately found that the Fed governor had obtained loans for two homes in 2021 in Ann Arbor, Mich. and Atlanta, Ga., and indicated both would be her primary residence. Ms. Cook later listed the latter dwelling for rent, according to Mr. Pulte, but did not report any rental income on her ethics filings.
Mr. Pulte echoed Mr. Trump’s calls for Ms. Cook to resign, posting at one point on X: “How can this woman be in charge of interest rates if she is allegedly lying to help her own interest rates?
Mr. Trump has himself been found liable for lying to lenders to secure more favorable interest rates. A judge in New York last year found that Mr. Trump had inflated his net worth on loan applications, and imposed a fine of about $450 million, including interest. Mr. Trump has appealed the ruling.
August 20, 2025, 7:17 a.m. ET4 hours ago
Matthew Mpoke Bigg
PHOTO: Lt. Gen. William J. Hartman, the acting N.S.A. director, asked to see evidence that the agency’s chief data scientist had done anything to merit the revocation of his security clearance. Credit: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The acting director of the National Security Agency tried to protect one of his top scientists from losing his security clearance as Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, prepared to announce the move this week, according to officials briefed on the matter.
The effort failed. Ms. Gabbard, on orders from President Trump, fired the scientist, who was a leading government expert on artificial intelligence, cryptology and advanced mathematics.
The scientist, Vinh Nguyen, was one of 37 current and former national security officials whose security clearances were revoked on Tuesday. Many, though not all, had tangential connections to the intelligence agencies’ review of Russian efforts to influence and meddle in the 2016 election.
Ms. Gabbard has released documents about that intelligence inquiry and accused Obama administration officials of related crimes, an effort Mr. Trump has praised.
Lt. Gen. William J. Hartman, the acting N.S.A. director, called Ms. Gabbard in the days before the revocation and asked to see the evidence that Mr. Nguyen, the agency’s chief data scientist, had done anything that merited the revocation of his security clearance.
Ms. Gabbard rebuffed the request, the officials said. The list of people losing their clearance began to circulate Tuesday morning and was made public in the afternoon.
The N.S.A. referred all questions to Ms. Gabbard’s office, which did not return a request for comment.
Former officials have criticized the revocation of the 37 security clearances and the wider purge of national security officials. In an article in The Atlantic published on Wednesday, William J. Burns, the former C.I.A. director and a longtime diplomat, said the removal of public servants was part of a campaign of retribution.
“It is about breaking people and breaking institutions by sowing fear and mistrust throughout our government,” Mr. Burns wrote. “It is about paralyzing public servants — making them apprehensive about what they say, how it might be interpreted, and who might report on them. It is about deterring anyone from daring to speak truth to power.”
Mr. Nguyen, the son of a South Vietnamese general who fought alongside American forces in the Vietnam War, was recruited as a 17-year-old high school student to join the National Security Agency because of his math skills.
He rose through the ranks of the agency to become its chief data scientist. Friends and former colleagues of Mr. Nguyen said he had been in charge of developing artificial intelligence systems to improve the gathering of foreign communications. He has also been involved in the intelligence community’s work on quantum computing, which has the potential to break current encryption systems and revolutionize espionage.
In the days before Mr. Nguyen was dismissed, N.S.A. officials were concerned that his job was at risk, as conservative publications began to look at his work as the national intelligence officer in charge of cyber in 2016.
Reports in conservative publications had led to the ouster of the N.S.A.’s top lawyer, April Falcon Doss, in July. And the previous director of the agency, Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, was fired in the spring after Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracy theorist, accused him of having ties to Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Former officials had expected General Hartman, who replaced General Haugh, to be nominated for the job permanently. But neither the Pentagon nor the White House has formally made that move.
August 20, 2025, 9:53 a.m. ET1 hour ago
Tony RommBen Casselman and Colby Smith
Trump demands that a Fed governor resign, escalating his campaign to remake central bank.
PHOTO: Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, during a round table event at Spelman College in Atlanta in 2023. Credit: Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times
President Trump demanded on Wednesday that a Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook, “resign, now!!!,” citing unconfirmed allegations that she may have engaged in mortgage fraud as the administration ramped up its campaign to try to remake the central bank.
Mr. Trump unleashed his latest attack shortly after Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said on social media that his office had investigated Ms. Cook and found that she appeared to have falsified bank documents to obtain favorable loan terms. Mr. Pulte said the F.H.F.A. had referred the matter to the Justice Department for a criminal inquiry.
In attacking Ms. Cook, the first Black woman to ever serve as a Fed governor, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Pulte signaled anew their willingness to weaponize the instruments of government to influence monetary policy, even though experts long have warned that interfering with the Fed and its independence could bring about catastrophic economic and financial consequences.
For Mr. Trump, the goal is to force down interest rates, which he believes will boost the economy and make American debt less expensive. The Fed has instead kept those borrowing costs steady this year, in part because officials are concerned that Mr. Trump’s tariffs will spark a new round of price increases.
To achieve his goal, the president has embarked on an all-out campaign to pressure the Fed and its members, relentlessly lambasting its chair, Jerome H. Powell, and threatening to fire him, while also trying to subject the central bank to uncomfortable public scrutiny.
Mr. Trump recently seized on renovations underway at the Fed’s headquarters in Washington, which are running around $700 million over budget and are expected to cost around $2.5 billion. The president visited the active construction site in July after questioning whether there was evidence of fraud given the project’s swelling expenses. Earlier this month, Mr. Trump threatened to allow a “major lawsuit” against the Fed chair related to the renovations to go forward as he again called for lower borrowing costs.
The president is limited in his ability to remove an official from the central bank, a protection recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court. Policymakers on the Board of Governors can only be removed for “cause,” which legal experts define as breaking the law or gross misconduct.
Ms. Cook has consistently voted with Mr. Powell and is generally seen as aligned with him on policy decisions. Ousting Ms. Cook, whose term as governor runs through 2038, would give Mr. Trump another seat on the seven-member board that he could fill with someone more likely to support cutting rates.
Mr. Trump already has one unexpected seat to fill. Adriana Kugler, another Fed governor, resigned unexpectedly this month, several months before her term was set to expire in January. Mr. Trump has nominated Stephen Miran, currently the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, to fill out Ms. Kugler’s term. He must still be confirmed by the Senate.
The White House has also started weighing potential replacements for Mr. Powell, whose term as chair ends in May. On Tuesday, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, sad there are “11 very strong candidates” under consideration, and told CNBC he would begin meeting with them around Labor Day to narrow the list.
A spokeswoman for the Fed did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Ms. Cook. The Justice Department declined to comment.
A specialist in international economics who has also researched racial disparities in labor markets, Ms. Cook was a professor at Michigan State University when President Biden appointed her to the Fed board in 2022.
Her confirmation was a narrow one: Vice President Kamala Harris broke a 50-50 tie in the Senate after Republicans voted overwhelmingly against her appointment.
One of the most prominent Black women in a field long dominated by white men, Ms. Cook has been an advocate for diversity in economics. She helped lead the American Economic Association’s summer program, which helps prepare students from underrepresented backgrounds for graduate programs in the social sciences.
In a letter posted Wednesday to social media, Mr. Pulte revealed that the housing agency had been investigating Ms. Cook on suspicion of mortgage fraud. It marked the latest instance in which Mr. Pulte, a key political ally of the president, had personally targeted a member of the Fed, after he helped stoke suspicion around Mr. Powell and drafted a letter for Mr. Trump firing the chair. The president ultimately opted not to dismiss Mr. Powell.
Mr. Pulte said his inquiry ultimately found that the Fed governor had obtained loans for two homes in 2021 in Ann Arbor, Mich. and Atlanta, Ga., and indicated both would be her primary residence. Ms. Cook later listed the latter dwelling for rent, according to Mr. Pulte, but did not report any rental income on her ethics filings.
Mr. Pulte echoed Mr. Trump’s calls for Ms. Cook to resign, posting at one point on X: “How can this woman be in charge of interest rates if she is allegedly lying to help her own interest rates?
Mr. Trump has himself been found liable for lying to lenders to secure more favorable interest rates. A judge in New York last year found that Mr. Trump had inflated his net worth on loan applications, and imposed a fine of about $450 million, including interest. Mr. Trump has appealed the ruling.
August 20, 2025, 7:17 a.m. ET4 hours ago
Matthew Mpoke Bigg
PHOTO: President Trump at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July. Credit: Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
President Trump praised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as a “war hero” for ordering his country’s forces to bombard Iran’s nuclear sites — and then said that the same label should apply to himself.
In an interview aired Tuesday with Mark Levin, the conservative talk show host and author who is a prominent supporter of the president, Mr. Trump described Mr. Netanyahu as a “good man.” His words echoed the mood of self-congratulation over the strikes on Iran when the two leaders met at the White House in July.
“He’s a war hero, because we work together. He’s a war hero,” Mr. Trump said of the Israeli leader. “I guess I am too,” he added.
Israel in mid-June launched waves of airstrikes against Iran, hitting important nuclear facilities in Natanz and Isfahan. It killed much of the country’s military chain of command along with several nuclear scientists. Then, on June 22, the United States used large bombs to strike the Iranian nuclear site at Fordo, which is buried under a mountain.
A recent U.S. assessment described Fordo as badly damaged, although it is difficult to precisely gauge the extent without access to the site.
During the interview, Mr. Trump also took credit for the return of hostages held in Gaza who have been freed since his election victory in November.
Hamas freed around 30 hostages during a cease-fire that began just before Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January, and another captive was released in May on the eve of the president’s visit to the Middle East.
They were among 240 hostages taken during the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the war in Gaza. About 105 hostages were freed during an earlier cease-fire, while Joseph R. Biden Jr. was president.
“I’m the one that got all the hostages back,” Mr. Trump said.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, Israel’s former defense minister, in November 2024, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Israel has rejected the accusations, and the State Department in June imposed sanctions on four of the court’s judges in response to the warrants.
Since taking office in January, Mr. Trump has frequently taken credit for resolving conflicts including those between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, between India and Pakistan and between Thailand and Cambodia. He also announced the cease-fire between Iran and Israel that ended the nearly two weeks of back-and-forth strikes in June.
In the interview with Mr. Levin, Mr. Trump said: “I’ve settled six wars, and we did Iran, and I wiped out their total nuclear capability, which they would have used against Israel in two seconds if they had the chance.” He compared that record favorably with those of his Democratic predecessors.
Iran has long said that its nuclear program is intended for peaceful purposes. Though its ability to enrich uranium, which is needed for a nuclear weapon, was set back significantly by the U.S. and Israeli attacks, some experts believe that Tehran could eventually resume enrichment at other sites.
In response to the interview, Iran’s Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the country’s Revolutionary Guard, on Wednesday described Mr. Trump’s remarks on Iran as “incoherent.”
Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting.
Aug. 20, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ETAug. 20, 2025
Anemona Hartocollis
Trump’s tactics mean many international students won’t make it to campus.
PHOTO: Arizona State University has one of the highest proportions of international students, but their numbers are set to drop this fall. Credit: Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
Many Iranians are not going to American universities this fall. Students from Afghanistan are having trouble getting to campus.
Even students from China and India, the top two senders of international students to the United States, have been flummoxed by a maze of new obstacles the Trump administration has set up to slow or deter people entering the country from abroad
Between the federal government’s heightened vetting of student visas and President Trump’s travel ban, the number of international students newly enrolled in American universities seems certain to drop — by a lot.
There were about a million international students studying in the United States a year ago, according to figures published by the State Department. Data on international student enrollment is not expected to be released until the fall. But higher education is already feeling the pain and deeply worried about the fallout.
Many schools have seen the number of international students grow in recent years. But a survey of over 500 colleges and universities by the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit which works with governments and others to promote international education, found that 35 percent of the schools experienced a dip in applications from abroad last spring, the most since the pandemic.
In China and India, there have been few visa appointments available for students in recent months, and sometimes none at all, according to the Association of International Educators, also known as NAFSA, a professional organization. If visa problems persist, new international student enrollment in American colleges could drop by 30 to 40 percent overall this fall, a loss of 150,000 students, according to the group’s analysis.
Some students have given up on enrolling in U.S. schools entirely out of anxiety over the political environment in the United States. Others are staying away because they worry that even if they were to gain entry, they would effectively be trapped, unable to do things that other students can, like apply for internships or travel home over the holidays to see their families.
International students make up a significant portion of enrollment at elite universities like Columbia, but also at public institutions like Purdue. At Arizona State University, one of the ten universities that enroll the most international students, the number beginning their studies this fall — 14,600 in all — is down by about 500 from last fall, a spokesman said, mostly because of visa delays.
Many international students pay full tuition and are a revenue source that schools have come to rely on, including to help underwrite financial aid for other students. It’s part of the business model.
Wendy Wolford, vice provost for international affairs at Cornell University, said the biggest loss from the drop in international enrollment is talent.
“They’re literally some of the best in the world,” she said.
Dr. Wolford said she was also worried about the lost opportunity for domestic students to be exposed to students from different cultures, and for international students to spread good will toward the United States when they return home.
The Trump administration began focusing on international students last spring, taking a number of steps to target students who were already in the country and to increase vetting of those who wanted to enroll.
While President Trump said that he welcomed international students, he argued that some of them pose security risks and may be involved in academic espionage. He also said foreign students were taking up coveted slots at universities that could instead go to American citizens.
“We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can’t get in because we have foreign students there,” Mr. Trump said. “But I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country.”
PHOTO: Cornell University is allowing international students to enroll at its campuses abroad, but few have taken up the opportunity. Credit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times
In one of its first moves, the Trump administration threatened to deport more than 1,800 international students studying in the United States. In many cases, the reasons were opaque.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that international students who were a part of campus protests over the war in Gaza, in particular, were not welcome. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree,” he said last spring, “not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.”
Several groups have gone to court to challenge what they called an ideological deportation policy. Veena Dubal, general counsel for the American Association of University Professors, says the administration is violating the constitutional rights of noncitizens and citizens alike in choosing to deport people based on views that are protected by the First Amendment.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, has argued that the crackdown is undemocratic. “This practice is one we’d ordinarily associate with the most repressive political regimes,” he has said.
After an outcry, many of the students targeted for deportation were reinstated. But overall this year, State Department officials said they have revoked more than 6,000 student visas, on grounds of supporting terrorism, overstaying visas and breaking the law, a number first reported by Fox News.
And the State Department suspended new student visa appointments between May 27 and June 18, a time of year that is ordinarily the peak season.
When the government began issuing student visas again in late June, it was with a proviso that consulates would scrutinize applicants’ social media more rigorously. That has made the process much slower, and students who have yet to clear the interview process may be in danger of missing the start of fall classes or may even have to postpone enrollment by a semester or more.
“There does appear to be a heightened review of student visa applications,” said Ms. Dubal, adding: “Their social media are being reviewed for expression of pro-Palestinian sentiment or critiques of Trump’s foreign policy positions.”
Mr. Trump signed a proclamation in late May barring foreign students from entering the United States to attend Harvard, citing security concerns, but a judge has blocked the order from taking effect.
In June, Mr. Trump signed another proclamation to fully or partially restrict the entry of people from 19 countries, including Afghanistan, Haiti, Iran, Yemen, Cuba, Laos and Venezuela, and to increase scrutiny of people from other countries, to make sure that the people “do not intend to harm Americans or our national interests.”
Though the proclamation did not target students in particular, many students have been caught up in the travel restrictions.
“Because of the travel ban, it’s just not possible to get student visas from certain countries,” said Dan Berger, an immigration lawyer in Northampton, Mass. “A lot of Afghan women had been offered full scholarships in the U.S. and can’t get visas.”
Asked about delays, a State Department spokesperson said that the department had made its vetting of visa applicants more effective and more efficient. “But in every case, we will take the time necessary to ensure an applicant is eligible for the visa sought and does not pose a risk to the safety and security of the United States,” the spokesperson said.
Noushin, an Iranian student who was admitted to the University of South Carolina to study for a doctorate in chemical engineering, was caught up in the travel ban. She had a visa interview in September 2024 and was to start her studies in the spring of 2025, but she has yet to hear whether her visa will be approved. She is now helping to organize a lobbying campaign to end the visa delays, and says that a chat group on Telegram suggests that there are hundreds of other Iranian students in similar situations.
Noushin, who asked for her last name not to be disclosed for fear that it would affect her visa prospects, said she chose the United States as the place to study because she believed that it offered the best higher education in the world. Now she believes she is being punished because of assumptions about her political beliefs, though as a scholar, she argues, she is separate from politics.
Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University, said he met with an American diplomatic official in India a few months ago to discuss the visa problem, and was told the State Department was doing the best it could.
The uncertainty about getting a U.S. visa is prompting some students to look elsewhere. Dr. Wolford, of Cornell, said universities were already seeing European students diverting to European universities and Asian students to Asian universities.
“Our international students had always been very secure in the knowledge that they understood the rules of the game, and last year the rules of the game changed dramatically,” she said.
Many American universities now have campuses abroad and have tried to accommodate international students at those campuses until they can get U.S. visas. Cornell, for instance, gave students the option to start the fall 2025 semester at its campuses in Edinburgh, Hong Kong or Seoul.
“We didn’t have many students take us up,” Dr. Wolford said. “Students were hoping they would either get their applications through and come to us, or they decided to go someplace else.”
Iranian students, including some admitted to Cornell, have banded together to try to attract attention to their plight. The group is highly educated, said Pouria, a civil engineering student, who asked that his surname not be used to protect his visa chances. He was admitted to a doctoral program at the University of Texas at Austin.
He said his research project — to investigate how polymeric geocells can be used to reinforce roadway foundations — is financed by the Texas Department of Transportation. His request for a visa has been stuck in “administrative processing” for 14 months, he said.
In the meantime he has been collaborating with colleagues remotely to keep the project from slowing down. Students like him, he argued, are not a threat to U.S. society.
Corrections were made on
August 20, 2025
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly in one passage to Wendy Wolford, Cornell University’s vice provost for international affairs. Dr. Wolford is a woman.
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated which university is led by Michael Crow. He is president of Arizona State University, not the University of Arizona.
August 19, 2025, 9:05 p.m. ET
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Reporting from Washington
President Trump praised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as a “war hero” for ordering his country’s forces to bombard Iran’s nuclear sites — and then said that the same label should apply to himself.
In an interview aired Tuesday with Mark Levin, the conservative talk show host and author who is a prominent supporter of the president, Mr. Trump described Mr. Netanyahu as a “good man.” His words echoed the mood of self-congratulation over the strikes on Iran when the two leaders met at the White House in July.
“He’s a war hero, because we work together. He’s a war hero,” Mr. Trump said of the Israeli leader. “I guess I am too,” he added.
Israel in mid-June launched waves of airstrikes against Iran, hitting important nuclear facilities in Natanz and Isfahan. It killed much of the country’s military chain of command along with several nuclear scientists. Then, on June 22, the United States used large bombs to strike the Iranian nuclear site at Fordo, which is buried under a mountain.
A recent U.S. assessment described Fordo as badly damaged, although it is difficult to precisely gauge the extent without access to the site.
During the interview, Mr. Trump also took credit for the return of hostages held in Gaza who have been freed since his election victory in November.
Hamas freed around 30 hostages during a cease-fire that began just before Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January, and another captive was released in May on the eve of the president’s visit to the Middle East.
They were among 240 hostages taken during the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the war in Gaza. About 105 hostages were freed during an earlier cease-fire, while Joseph R. Biden Jr. was president.
“I’m the one that got all the hostages back,” Mr. Trump said.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, Israel’s former defense minister, in November 2024, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Israel has rejected the accusations, and the State Department in June imposed sanctions on four of the court’s judges in response to the warrants.
Since taking office in January, Mr. Trump has frequently taken credit for resolving conflicts including those between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, between India and Pakistan and between Thailand and Cambodia. He also announced the cease-fire between Iran and Israel that ended the nearly two weeks of back-and-forth strikes in June.
In the interview with Mr. Levin, Mr. Trump said: “I’ve settled six wars, and we did Iran, and I wiped out their total nuclear capability, which they would have used against Israel in two seconds if they had the chance.” He compared that record favorably with those of his Democratic predecessors.
Iran has long said that its nuclear program is intended for peaceful purposes. Though its ability to enrich uranium, which is needed for a nuclear weapon, was set back significantly by the U.S. and Israeli attacks, some experts believe that Tehran could eventually resume enrichment at other sites.
In response to the interview, Iran’s Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the country’s Revolutionary Guard, on Wednesday described Mr. Trump’s remarks on Iran as “incoherent.”
Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting.
Aug. 20, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ETAug. 20, 2025
Anemona Hartocollis
Trump’s tactics mean many international students won’t make it to campus.
PHOTO: Arizona State University has one of the highest proportions of international students, but their numbers are set to drop this fall. Credit: Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
Many Iranians are not going to American universities this fall. Students from Afghanistan are having trouble getting to campus.
Even students from China and India, the top two senders of international students to the United States, have been flummoxed by a maze of new obstacles the Trump administration has set up to slow or deter people entering the country from abroad
Between the federal government’s heightened vetting of student visas and President Trump’s travel ban, the number of international students newly enrolled in American universities seems certain to drop — by a lot.
There were about a million international students studying in the United States a year ago, according to figures published by the State Department. Data on international student enrollment is not expected to be released until the fall. But higher education is already feeling the pain and deeply worried about the fallout.
Many schools have seen the number of international students grow in recent years. But a survey of over 500 colleges and universities by the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit which works with governments and others to promote international education, found that 35 percent of the schools experienced a dip in applications from abroad last spring, the most since the pandemic.
In China and India, there have been few visa appointments available for students in recent months, and sometimes none at all, according to the Association of International Educators, also known as NAFSA, a professional organization. If visa problems persist, new international student enrollment in American colleges could drop by 30 to 40 percent overall this fall, a loss of 150,000 students, according to the group’s analysis.
Some students have given up on enrolling in U.S. schools entirely out of anxiety over the political environment in the United States. Others are staying away because they worry that even if they were to gain entry, they would effectively be trapped, unable to do things that other students can, like apply for internships or travel home over the holidays to see their families.
International students make up a significant portion of enrollment at elite universities like Columbia, but also at public institutions like Purdue. At Arizona State University, one of the ten universities that enroll the most international students, the number beginning their studies this fall — 14,600 in all — is down by about 500 from last fall, a spokesman said, mostly because of visa delays.
Many international students pay full tuition and are a revenue source that schools have come to rely on, including to help underwrite financial aid for other students. It’s part of the business model.
Wendy Wolford, vice provost for international affairs at Cornell University, said the biggest loss from the drop in international enrollment is talent.
“They’re literally some of the best in the world,” she said.
Dr. Wolford said she was also worried about the lost opportunity for domestic students to be exposed to students from different cultures, and for international students to spread good will toward the United States when they return home.
The Trump administration began focusing on international students last spring, taking a number of steps to target students who were already in the country and to increase vetting of those who wanted to enroll.
While President Trump said that he welcomed international students, he argued that some of them pose security risks and may be involved in academic espionage. He also said foreign students were taking up coveted slots at universities that could instead go to American citizens.
“We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can’t get in because we have foreign students there,” Mr. Trump said. “But I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country.”
PHOTO: Cornell University is allowing international students to enroll at its campuses abroad, but few have taken up the opportunity. Credit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times
In one of its first moves, the Trump administration threatened to deport more than 1,800 international students studying in the United States. In many cases, the reasons were opaque.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that international students who were a part of campus protests over the war in Gaza, in particular, were not welcome. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree,” he said last spring, “not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.”
Several groups have gone to court to challenge what they called an ideological deportation policy. Veena Dubal, general counsel for the American Association of University Professors, says the administration is violating the constitutional rights of noncitizens and citizens alike in choosing to deport people based on views that are protected by the First Amendment.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, has argued that the crackdown is undemocratic. “This practice is one we’d ordinarily associate with the most repressive political regimes,” he has said.
After an outcry, many of the students targeted for deportation were reinstated. But overall this year, State Department officials said they have revoked more than 6,000 student visas, on grounds of supporting terrorism, overstaying visas and breaking the law, a number first reported by Fox News.
And the State Department suspended new student visa appointments between May 27 and June 18, a time of year that is ordinarily the peak season.
When the government began issuing student visas again in late June, it was with a proviso that consulates would scrutinize applicants’ social media more rigorously. That has made the process much slower, and students who have yet to clear the interview process may be in danger of missing the start of fall classes or may even have to postpone enrollment by a semester or more.
“There does appear to be a heightened review of student visa applications,” said Ms. Dubal, adding: “Their social media are being reviewed for expression of pro-Palestinian sentiment or critiques of Trump’s foreign policy positions.”
Mr. Trump signed a proclamation in late May barring foreign students from entering the United States to attend Harvard, citing security concerns, but a judge has blocked the order from taking effect.
In June, Mr. Trump signed another proclamation to fully or partially restrict the entry of people from 19 countries, including Afghanistan, Haiti, Iran, Yemen, Cuba, Laos and Venezuela, and to increase scrutiny of people from other countries, to make sure that the people “do not intend to harm Americans or our national interests.”
Though the proclamation did not target students in particular, many students have been caught up in the travel restrictions.
“Because of the travel ban, it’s just not possible to get student visas from certain countries,” said Dan Berger, an immigration lawyer in Northampton, Mass. “A lot of Afghan women had been offered full scholarships in the U.S. and can’t get visas.”
Asked about delays, a State Department spokesperson said that the department had made its vetting of visa applicants more effective and more efficient. “But in every case, we will take the time necessary to ensure an applicant is eligible for the visa sought and does not pose a risk to the safety and security of the United States,” the spokesperson said.
Noushin, an Iranian student who was admitted to the University of South Carolina to study for a doctorate in chemical engineering, was caught up in the travel ban. She had a visa interview in September 2024 and was to start her studies in the spring of 2025, but she has yet to hear whether her visa will be approved. She is now helping to organize a lobbying campaign to end the visa delays, and says that a chat group on Telegram suggests that there are hundreds of other Iranian students in similar situations.
Noushin, who asked for her last name not to be disclosed for fear that it would affect her visa prospects, said she chose the United States as the place to study because she believed that it offered the best higher education in the world. Now she believes she is being punished because of assumptions about her political beliefs, though as a scholar, she argues, she is separate from politics.
Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University, said he met with an American diplomatic official in India a few months ago to discuss the visa problem, and was told the State Department was doing the best it could.
The uncertainty about getting a U.S. visa is prompting some students to look elsewhere. Dr. Wolford, of Cornell, said universities were already seeing European students diverting to European universities and Asian students to Asian universities.
“Our international students had always been very secure in the knowledge that they understood the rules of the game, and last year the rules of the game changed dramatically,” she said.
Many American universities now have campuses abroad and have tried to accommodate international students at those campuses until they can get U.S. visas. Cornell, for instance, gave students the option to start the fall 2025 semester at its campuses in Edinburgh, Hong Kong or Seoul.
“We didn’t have many students take us up,” Dr. Wolford said. “Students were hoping they would either get their applications through and come to us, or they decided to go someplace else.”
Iranian students, including some admitted to Cornell, have banded together to try to attract attention to their plight. The group is highly educated, said Pouria, a civil engineering student, who asked that his surname not be used to protect his visa chances. He was admitted to a doctoral program at the University of Texas at Austin.
He said his research project — to investigate how polymeric geocells can be used to reinforce roadway foundations — is financed by the Texas Department of Transportation. His request for a visa has been stuck in “administrative processing” for 14 months, he said.
In the meantime he has been collaborating with colleagues remotely to keep the project from slowing down. Students like him, he argued, are not a threat to U.S. society.
Corrections were made on
August 20, 2025
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly in one passage to Wendy Wolford, Cornell University’s vice provost for international affairs. Dr. Wolford is a woman.
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated which university is led by Michael Crow. He is president of Arizona State University, not the University of Arizona.
August 19, 2025, 9:05 p.m. ET
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Reporting from Washington
Trump says Smithsonian focuses too much on ‘how bad slavery was.’
PHOTO: The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. Credit: Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
President Trump accused the Smithsonian Institution on Tuesday of focusing too much on “how bad slavery was” and not enough on the “brightness” of America as his administration conducts a wide-ranging review of the content in its museum exhibits:
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Mr. Trump said in a social media post. “This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.”
Mr. Trump made the comments a week after the White House told the Smithsonian that its museums would be required to adjust any content that the administration finds problematic in “tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals” within 120 days. Taken together, the administration’s examination and Mr. Trump’s post on Tuesday were the latest example of Mr. Trump trying to impose his will on a cultural institution and minimize the experiences and history of Black people in the United States.
“It’s the epitome of dumbness to criticize the Smithsonian for dealing with the reality of slavery in America,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. “It’s what led to our Civil War and is a defining aspect of our national history. And the Smithsonian deals in a robust way with what slavery was, but it also deals with human rights and civil rights in equal abundance.”
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has led an effort to purge diversity, equity and inclusion policies from the federal government and threatened to investigate companies and schools that adopt such policies. He has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history, preferring to instead spotlight a sanitized, rosy depiction of America.
The administration has worked to scrub or minimize government references to the contributions of Black heroes, from the Tuskegee Airmen, who fought in World War II, to Harriet Tubman, who guided enslaved people along the Underground Railroad. Mr. Trump commemorated Juneteenth, the celebration of the end of slavery in the United States that became a federal holiday in 2021, by complaining that there were too many non-working holidays in America. He has called for the return of Confederate insignia and statues honoring those who fought to preserve slavery.
And he has previously attacked the exhibits on race at the Smithsonian, which has traditionally operated as an independent institution that regards itself as outside the purview of the executive branch, as “divisive, race-centered ideology.”
Mr. Trump’s comments also ignore the breadth of the displays in Smithsonian museums. While the National Museum of African American History and Culture, for example, does include exhibits on the Middle Passage and slavery, it also showcases civil rights and cultural icons in Black history. The director of that museum, Kevin Young, stepped down this spring as Mr. Trump increasingly targeted the Smithsonian and its museum intended to tell the African American story for all Americans.
Mr. Trump has often stoked divisions in the United States by tapping into white grievance and framing himself as a protector of white people both in the United States and overseas. Quentin James, a co-founder of the Collective, which aims to elect Black officials in America, said Mr. Trump’s comments about the museums were an attempt to protect “white fragility.”
“For all of us, it’s an assault on our history and an assault on what we know to be true,” Mr. James said, while for Mr. Trump it is about “white grievance and him exerting his authority.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Trump added in the social media post that he had instructed his lawyers “to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities.” His administration has pursued an effort to investigate universities that have adopted diversity, equity and inclusion programs, leading to court fights, funding battles and, in many cases, the removal of diversity initiatives.
August 19, 2025, 8:27 p.m. ET
Chris Cameron
Reporting from Washington
Trump’s White House joins TikTok.
PHOTO: President Trump’s personal TikTok account, shown here, has been inactive, but the president started a White House account on Tuesday. Credit: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
President Trump started an official White House account on TikTok on Tuesday, deepening his ties with the Chinese-owned social media company as he repeatedly declines to enforce a federal law that would ban the company’s app because of national security concerns.
The first post by @WhiteHouse on TikTok — showing Mr. Trump at various events while dramatic music plays — made reference to a viral video on the social media site that featured footage from the movie “Creed” and music by the rapper Kendrick Lamar.
The White House’s embrace of TikTok continues a remarkable turnabout for Mr. Trump, who tried to ban the platform in his first term. Mr. Trump created a personal account in June 2024, and his popularity on the app soared amid his effort to court TikTok’s predominantly younger voters.
“President Trump’s message dominated TikTok during his presidential campaign,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “And we’re excited to build upon those successes and communicate in a way no other administration has before.”
Donors to Mr. Trump and the company’s executives have undertaken a lobbying effort to prevent TikTok from going dark in the United States. Mr. Trump’s return to TikTok — the last post on his personal account was on Election Day — is the latest sign that he has little intention of enforcing the national security ban on the app.
The ban stemmed from a 2024 law that requires app stores and cloud computing providers to stop distributing or hosting TikTok unless it is sold by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. A bipartisan coalition in Congress passed the law over concerns that the Chinese government could use the app to gather information about Americans or spread propaganda.
After drawing a devoted following on TikTok that supported his successful re-election bid, the president-elect threw the app an unexpected lifeline in its quest to continue operating in the United States. Hours after the federal law banning the app took effect in the final days of the Biden administration, Mr. Trump said that he would issue an executive order to delay the enforcement of the ban.
The law has a section allowing Mr. Trump to grant a 90-day extension if a buyer is found, but only if there is “significant progress” toward a deal that puts TikTok in the hands of a non-Chinese company. Mr. Trump made several additional extensions anyway. TikTok has until mid-September to find a new owner, but Mr. Trump could grant another extension.
August 19, 2025, 4:22 p.m. ETAug. 19, 2025
Julian E. Barnes and Maggie Haberman
Reporting from Washington
PHOTO: President Trump’s personal TikTok account, shown here, has been inactive, but the president started a White House account on Tuesday. Credit: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
President Trump started an official White House account on TikTok on Tuesday, deepening his ties with the Chinese-owned social media company as he repeatedly declines to enforce a federal law that would ban the company’s app because of national security concerns.
The first post by @WhiteHouse on TikTok — showing Mr. Trump at various events while dramatic music plays — made reference to a viral video on the social media site that featured footage from the movie “Creed” and music by the rapper Kendrick Lamar.
The White House’s embrace of TikTok continues a remarkable turnabout for Mr. Trump, who tried to ban the platform in his first term. Mr. Trump created a personal account in June 2024, and his popularity on the app soared amid his effort to court TikTok’s predominantly younger voters.
“President Trump’s message dominated TikTok during his presidential campaign,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “And we’re excited to build upon those successes and communicate in a way no other administration has before.”
Donors to Mr. Trump and the company’s executives have undertaken a lobbying effort to prevent TikTok from going dark in the United States. Mr. Trump’s return to TikTok — the last post on his personal account was on Election Day — is the latest sign that he has little intention of enforcing the national security ban on the app.
The ban stemmed from a 2024 law that requires app stores and cloud computing providers to stop distributing or hosting TikTok unless it is sold by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. A bipartisan coalition in Congress passed the law over concerns that the Chinese government could use the app to gather information about Americans or spread propaganda.
After drawing a devoted following on TikTok that supported his successful re-election bid, the president-elect threw the app an unexpected lifeline in its quest to continue operating in the United States. Hours after the federal law banning the app took effect in the final days of the Biden administration, Mr. Trump said that he would issue an executive order to delay the enforcement of the ban.
The law has a section allowing Mr. Trump to grant a 90-day extension if a buyer is found, but only if there is “significant progress” toward a deal that puts TikTok in the hands of a non-Chinese company. Mr. Trump made several additional extensions anyway. TikTok has until mid-September to find a new owner, but Mr. Trump could grant another extension.
August 19, 2025, 4:22 p.m. ETAug. 19, 2025
Julian E. Barnes and Maggie Haberman
Reporting from Washington
Trump revokes the security clearances of 37 former and current national security officials.
PHOTO: Voters casting their ballots in Brooklyn in November 2016. The Trump administration has been trying to shift the public’s attention to the 2016 election and away from questions about the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Credit: Todd Heisler/The New York Times
President Trump revoked the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials, many of whom worked on Russia analysis or foreign threats to U.S. elections, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Mr. Trump has stripped security clearances throughout his administration, including from his best-known rivals like former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. But the actions announced on Tuesday were a deeper cut, pushing far into the national security establishment.
At least three current senior officials at various intelligence agencies, all with reputations for nonpartisan work, are among those who lost their clearances and their jobs.
They included Shelby Pierson, a senior intelligence official who warned Congress about Russian meddling in the 2020 election; a senior C.I.A. analyst currently serving undercover; and Vinh X. Nguyen, a senior National Security Agency data scientist.
Rescinding security clearances appears to be part of a campaign by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, to reveal what she sees as flaws in intelligence assessments about Russian malign influence operations during the 2016 election. Ms. Gabbard’s attention to that issue has won praise from Mr. Trump, who has long claimed without evidence that the Obama administration tried to undermine him in that vote.
Critics also say that Mr. Trump has turned the focus onto the 2016 election to distract from questions about the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“Gabbard’s move to yank clearances from a seemingly random list of national security officials is a reckless abuse of the security clearance process and nothing more than another sad attempt to distract from the administration’s failure to release the Epstein files,” said Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Mr. Warner said he had introduced legislation to create standards for security clearances and prevent political abuse of the system.
Current and former officials said they were particularly distraught by the removal of Mr. Nguyen, a gifted mathematician, from the N.S.A.
Mr. Nguyen was mentioned in an article in Real Clear Investigations that noted his work for the director of national intelligence at the time of the 2016 election assessments. The article was highlighted on social media by Sebastian Gorka, a Trump administration national security official.
Mr. Nguyen is an expert on quantum computing, data science and cyber issues. He has been working on artificial intelligence projects for the agency. Former officials said the loss of his expertise could set back the U.S. government’s development of key technologies.
Ms. Gabbard is not the only administration official releasing documents or investigating the 2016 intelligence assessments. After she released a report and accused the Obama administration of a “treasonous conspiracy,” Pam Bondi, the attorney general, announced a task force to look into potential wrongdoing. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, declassified a tradecraft review related to the 2016 inquiries, and made a referral to the F.B.I. seeking an investigation of John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. head.
Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Gabbard released a memo on social media about her actions, which she said were taken at the direction of Mr. Trump.
“Being entrusted with a security clearance is a privilege, not a right,” Ms. Gabbard wrote. “Those in the Intelligence Community who betray their oath to the Constitution and put their own interests ahead of the interests of the American people have broken the sacred trust they promised to uphold.”
Ms. Gabbard’s office claimed that the people who would lose their security clearances were involved in the “politicization or weaponization of intelligence” to advance partisan agendas, or had failed to adhere to tradecraft practices or to safeguard classified information.
The memo provided no evidence the individuals had mishandled material or used it for partisan purposes.
While stripping the security clearances of current officials effectively removes them from their jobs, it is not clear how many of the 37 individuals were currently employed by intelligence agencies or held government contracts. It is also not clear how many of the former officials maintained a current clearance.
Most former officials who are not working for government contractors do not need clearances, though some do informal or formal consulting for intelligence officials. Holding a clearance makes such advising easier.
Many of the officials have only tangential ties or no ties to the original analysis of Russian malign influence operations. Some have been mentioned in reporting about the 2016 election assessments or have commented on the intelligence work publicly.
Edward Gistaro and Beth Sanner, both of whom briefed Mr. Trump during his first term, were also on the list. Both were mentioned in a recent book on the C.I.A. written by Tim Weiner.
Many of the individuals have commented publicly on national security matters. Some, though not all, had been critical of the Trump administration.
After serving as election threat official, Ms. Pierson returned to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to take a senior position. She has been leading the agency’s analysis team, according to former officials.
During the first Trump administration, Richard Grenell, who was the acting director of national intelligence agency, opted to keep Ms. Pierson in her post.
Members of the Biden administration’s national security staff will also lose their clearance, including Maher Bitar, who was a senior director for intelligence, and Emily Horne, a former spokeswoman.
The order stripping Mr. Bitar of his clearance presents a potential separation-of-powers issue. He is now a senior national security aide to Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California. The order also stripped the clearance of a second Senate staff member, Thomas W. West. He currently works on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Mark Zaid, a lawyer who frequently represents intelligence officials and whose own security clearance was stripped by the Trump administration, said to strip the security clearances in the name of ending the politicization was hypocritical.
“These are unlawful and unconstitutional decisions that deviate from well-settled, decades-old laws and policies that sought to protect against just this type of action,” Mr. Zaid said. Referring to the intelligence community, he continued, “It has become clear that the current I.C. leadership itself constitutes a grave danger to national security.”
Ms. Gabbard has been removing security clearances of former officials in keeping with an executive order from Mr. Trump and as part of her efforts to counter the “politicization or weaponization of intelligence.”
C.I.A. and N.S.A. officials declined to comment, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency did not return a request for comment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/opinion/trump-intrusion-lincoln-roosevelt.html
Opinion
The Mind-Boggling Intrusiveness of Donald J. Trump
Credit: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press
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by Thomas B. Edsall
August 19, 2025
New York Times
[Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.]
The Trump administration ranks among the most intrusive in American history, driving the tentacles of the federal government deep into the nation’s economy, culture and legal system.
Economically, the administration is dictating corporate behavior through tariffs, subsidies and the punishment of disfavored industries and companies, while rewarding allies with tax breaks and deregulation. And that’s all before the government takes its cut.
Culturally, Trump is seeking to redefine the boundaries of public discourse: pressuring universities, elevating grievance politics and reshaping federal agencies to reflect ideological loyalty rather than expertise or experience.
Within the legal system, the administration is aggressively reshaping the federal judiciary, asserting executive power over independent institutions and using the Justice Department for political ends.
Taken together, these interventions reveal a presidency determined to expand executive reach into virtually every sphere of national life.
“No peacetime president has remotely approached the Trump administration’s campaign to control the conduct of all the major institutions that comprise American civil society as well as its governments,” Rogers Smith, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote to me by email.
This is comparable to the rise of totalitarian regimes in the 1920s and 1930s, when Mussolini said even a teacher of mathematics must be a fascist.
Now all who do not take positions on American politics, policies and history that comply with the administration’s views are in danger of being denied funding, subjected to lawsuits, and derided by the White House in ways that can inspire violent private attacks. All this has precedents, but not in America’s peacetime history.
Trump’s intrusions are aimed at wide and varied subjects, with targets that include corporate governance, academia, the legal profession, the administration of justice, criminal investigations of political adversaries and such liberal Democratic organizations as ActBlue and Media Matters.
For Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton, the word “intrusive” fails to capture the full scope of Trump’s agenda. Writing by email, Wilentz argued that Trump
has intimidated major institutions of civil society, including universities, major law firms, and the corporate media, to bend them to his will. He has deployed the military for political purposes. He has militarized ICE and turned it into nation’s largest law enforcement force, accountable only to himself and Stephen Miller, thus laying the basis for a police state.
He and his attorney general have hounded federal judges who oppose the Trump agenda to the point where those judges and their families rightly fear for their lives. His appointees to the Supreme Court, in concert with Chief Justice Roberts, are completing the gutting of the 14th Amendment and (as crucially supplemented by the 1965 Voting Rights Act) the 15th Amendment, thereby destroying crucial legal legacies of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.
Trump has taken upon himself an attempt to force a revision of the American historical narrative. As Wilentz put it:
Most recently, he has commanded a rewriting of American history as a providential story culminating in his own divinely inspired rule. Approaching the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, he is grasping for a monarchy that the Revolution repudiated, in the name of a plutocratic and theocratic order that the Revolution rejected.
At one level, Trump’s policies are the embodiment of what have been core Republican principles since Ronald Reagan, as foreshadowed by the ultraright big business opposition to the New Deal: slash taxes on the wealthy, bash the poor, dissolve the social safety net and deregulate, deregulate, deregulate.
This is the main reason so many Republicans who otherwise despise Trump remain so loyal to him. They don’t quite get how, alongside his turbocharged Reaganism, Trump is building the framework of an international crime and corruption syndicate, ending restraint of private efforts to corrupt foreign governments, embracing Bitcoin, a currency custom-made for bribery, asset-laundering, and other gangster-like activities.
Trump, Wilentz argued,
is intruding like a wartime president when there’s no war. The only checks on his brazen lawlessness would be the Congress and the Supreme Court. But the first is supine and the second has thus far sustained Trump on 90 percent of the cases where lower courts have tried to restrain him. And if permitted, his assumption of war powers without a war will enable his authoritarian regime.
Bruce Miroff, a political scientist at SUNY-Albany, expanded on Trump’s autocratic approach to government in an email:
Trump himself has an authoritarian mind-set that ignores a checks and balances system that has frustrated some earlier chief executives. But he also has an advantage in the capitulation of the other two branches out of fear, but also out of hope that only under him can a long sought conservative agenda finally roll back the liberal welfare state.
From the early dismantling of the “deep state” to the current takeover of law enforcement in D.C. and Trump’s threat to institute a makeover of the Smithsonian that will stifle any exhibits that don’t use happy talk on even the darkest moments in American history, Trump has forged ahead to shut down anything he dislikes and replace it with his own imagination.
There are experts in presidential studies who contend that other presidents have been more aggressive and activist than Trump.
“Measured in terms of sheer scale and scope,” Terri Bimes, a political scientist at Berkeley, wrote by email, “Franklin Roosevelt’s interventions during the New Deal and World War II eclipsed anything attempted by Donald Trump.”
“F.D.R.,” she continued,
shut down the entire banking system on his first day, imposed sweeping regulations on finance, built an industrial code regime through the National Recovery Administration that reached into prices, wages and production quotas, expanded federal oversight of labor relations, and through the Works Progress Administration and other agencies inserted the federal government directly into the cultural and intellectual life of the nation.
In 1942, through Executive Order 9066, F.D.R. ordered the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast to inland prison camps. This unprecedented domestic action, justified at the time as a wartime security measure, stripped an entire population of its rights and livelihoods, and stands as one of the most sweeping and controversial exercises of presidential power in American history.
There are, however, major differences between the Roosevelt and the Trump administrations, including Roosevelt’s willingness to respect court decisions and his willingness to seek congressional approval for his policies.
Roosevelt, Bimes wrote,
commanded huge congressional majorities, yet still encountered formidable pushback. The Supreme Court struck down key New Deal programs. Congress blocked or diluted others. Even at the height of his presidency after winning a major landslide election in 1936, his court-packing plan failed, his first attempt at executive reorganization was voted down, and his bid to purge conservative Democrats failed.
By contrast, Trump’s actions have met with far less resistance. Operating largely through executive orders, administrative reinterpretations, and emergency declarations, he has pursued an agenda aimed less at constructing a new administrative order than at dismantling existing institutions, a process requiring little cooperation from Congress.
In short, Roosevelt’s most ambitious projects were checked by resilient institutions; Trump’s have advanced in part because those institutions are weaker.
Jeremi Suri, a historian at the University of Texas-Austin, pointed to Abraham Lincoln as an activist president in his determination to prevent the South from seceding, to restore the union and ultimately to end slavery.
Lincoln, Suri wrote by email,
was more intrusive than Trump has been so far. Lincoln was the first president to use conscription, requiring Union residents (many recent immigrants) to serve in uniform. He remade the Supreme Court, creating a new bench dominated by Republicans. He limited civil liberties on a number of occasions.
Lincoln used a war order to end constitutionally protected slavery in Confederate-held territories. Lincoln then brought more than 100,000 of those former slaves into the Union Army, gave them guns and sent them to fight their former masters.
That comparison does not, however, diminish the import and adverse consequences of Trump’s invasive policies, Suri wrote:
What makes Trump so different and threatening is how he does things — he is acting unilaterally and on personal whim, largely ignoring separation of powers. He is pushing the boundaries from president to dictator.
That is new in peacetime. F.D.R. and L.B.J. were aggressive, but they worked through Congress and the courts. Trump is willing to work around them. That is what puts him beyond the pale for a historian.
Republicans in Congress have remained both prostrate and complicit in the face of Trump’s assaults on traditional party beliefs even as some of the administration’s policies have alarmed conservative and libertarian proponents of free markets.
The libertarian Cato Institute faulted Trump’s recent deal with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices allowing the companies to export chips used for artificial intelligence to China in return for the payment of 15 percent of revenues from the sales to the government.
In their Aug. 13, 2025, article, “The Nvidia/AMD-Trump Deal: Legal Questions, Crony Capitalism and National Security for Sale,” Clark Packard and Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, both Cato researchers, wrote:
The president’s unprecedented deal with Nvidia and AMD raises serious legal questions, further entrenches Washington’s crony capitalist favor factory, and gives at least the appearance of putting national security up for bid. Whatever the future of this arrangement, it sets yet another dangerous precedent of the executive branch abusing its national security authorities to influence or dictate the actions of private entities.
Similarly, Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, which supports entrepreneurial scholars and market-oriented thinking, warned in an Aug. 11 essay, “To Aid Economy, Trump Must Restore Faith in Institutions,” that “if the president continues to treat disagreement as disloyalty — especially from vital, independent agencies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Congressional Budget Office — then Trump’s second term could leave a dark mark on the country.”
In February, Ryan Young, senior economist for the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, published a broadside attacking a key element of Trump’s economic policy, “Trump’s Unilateral Tariffs: Time for Congress to Do Its Job.”
“Why,” Young wrote,
does Donald Trump like tariffs so much? It’s clearly not on the merits. When he talks about trade deficits, or raising revenue, or being treated badly by another country, all he’s doing is rationalizing a conclusion he reached long ago. While Trump is unlikely to ever admit he is wrong about tariffs, the rest of us can learn from his mistakes. This includes Congress, which needs to take back the taxing authority it should never have delegated away in the first place.
“Other countries,” Young argued,
nearly always retaliate against tariffs. It happened with the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which led to a 60 percent decline in global trade.
The Canadian and Mexican tariffs almost certainly violate the USMCA, which Trump himself signed in 2018. The best-case scenario here is that our allies think that only Trump is untrustworthy, and not the American government.
Economists of all political stripes know that trade deficits have nothing to do with a country’s economic health.
Tariffs have built-in diminishing returns. The higher the tariff, the less people will import. The steeper the rate increase, the steeper the drop-off in imports, until imports (and revenues) hit zero. This is the point of most tariffs. They are supposed to discourage imports.
These complaints from the right have not deterred Trump, even as his standings in the polls decline.
In terms of public support, Trump began his second term with positive job approval numbers, 50.5 percent favorable to 44.3 percent unfavorable, according to RealClearPolitics. The numbers turned negative in late March, and in the most recent aggregated count, Trump had a disapproval rating of 51.2 percent and an approval rating of 45.8 percent.
Trump’s deviousness, his disregard for the truth and his all-consuming narcissism are exceptional, even among politicians and even among the kind of men and women who seek the presidency.
“Any attempt to compare Donald Trump to any other president is a pointless exercise,” Jack Rakove, professor of history and American studies at Stanford, argued in an email:
His overt acts, craven ambition, delusional beliefs, erratic behaviors, perpetual dishonesty, and mental capacities lie so many norms of deviation apart from all his presidential counterparts that he has to be taken as a unique case.
Simply asking whether “any peacetime president has been as intrusive as Donald Trump” virtually answers the question in itself. Of course not — it would have been literally inconceivable.
Trump, Rakove argued, has adopted a strategy of making false claims to justify casting “himself as a wartime or emergency president.”
The flow of immigrants across the border, Rakove wrote,
may create social problems aplenty, but that does not turn them into the form of “invasion” to which the Constitution refers. You cannot place cities in a state of emergency warranting unprecedented action by federal agencies and the National Guard when their crime and especially their homicide rates are falling.
The fact that American families prefer Japanese automobiles to the Fords we used to buy may contribute to our trade balance, but that does not create the narrowly defined economic emergencies that empower an intrusive president to usurp congressional authority over taxation.
Along parallel lines, Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, wrote by email:
What distinguishes Trump from his predecessors is the aggressive, holistic nature of his intrusions. As with so many other aspects of his second term, Trump stands alone.
The president has used federal funds to intimidate universities into adopting policies he supports, cut research grants that cover issues of diversity and inclusion, forced law firms to agree to pro bono work in order to do business with the government, sued media outlets, called for C.E.O.s to be fired, made F.B.I. agents cops on the beat in Washington, D.C., and forced museums to vet their content to meet the administration’s version of history.
Trump stands apart from his predecessors, Dallek wrote,
because he has been so eager to push past laws, norms, and constitutional guardrails to force institutions and individuals to cater to his vision of American greatness. His intrusive acts have been more aggressive, covering more areas of domestic life, than anything seen in the modern presidency.
George C. Edwards III, a professor emeritus at Texas A&M and a fellow at Oxford, contended that “President Trump is unique”:
No peacetime president has been as intrusive in intervening in the economy, including extracting funds from corporations (Nvidia), requiring domestic investments, strongarming the selection of C.E.O.s, picking winners (fossil fuel companies, steel manufacturers) and losers (wind farms, EV vehicles) in the economy, and using tariffs — to raise revenue, to reduce trade imbalances, and to coerce both U.S. companies and other nations.
And no other peacetime president has so blatantly sought the territory of a sovereign nation. No president has been as hostile to environmental protection, financial regulation, and efforts to advance civil rights.
What makes Trump one of a kind, Edwards wrote, are
his efforts to influence so many other spheres of American life. No president has reached so far into the governing of universities, been so active in determining Kennedy Center honors, and been so eager to employ the symbolic politics of naming everything from athletic teams to mountains and oceans.
What may be most significant of all, in Edwards’s view,
is the president’s undermining the structural and moral underpinnings of the government. Unilaterally dismantling the administrative state by destroying expertise that took generations to build in areas ranging from investigating and prosecuting crime and protecting the public against environmental hazards to predicting the weather and curing cancer can cause long-term, structural harm to American society.
Disregarding appropriate legal bases for action, disobeying judicial orders, punishing law firms, stretching the interpretation of laws, and employing the military for domestic purposes weakens the foundations of American government. So do the many ethical lapses and brazen profiteering of the president and his family. The rule of law is the bedrock of any democracy, and the White House itself is threatening it.
For Trump, the rule of law is not a principle of democratic government; it is a speed bump on the road to exercising unilateral authority. In his own mind, he is on a path to the ultimate in gold-plated power.
More on Trump and power:
Opinion | David French
Trump’s Domestic Deployments Are Dangerous. For the Military.
Aug. 17, 2025
Opinion | Michelle Goldberg
Trump’s Attempt to Make Museums Submit Feels Familiar
Aug. 15, 2025
Opinion | Jamelle Bouie
Why Trump Always Wants a Crisis
Aug. 13, 2025
Opinion | Ben Rhodes
We’re Trapped in Trump’s Reality. This Is How We Escape It.
Aug. 11, 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Tuesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/realestate/arkansas-white-housing-return-to-land.html
The Founders of This New Development Say You Must Be White to Live There
Housing rights experts say a community restricted to white residents is illegal, but the creators believe they could win a potential challenge in court in the current political climate.
Listen to this article · 16:57 minutes
Learn more
by Thomas B. Edsall
August 19, 2025
New York Times
[Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.]
The Trump administration ranks among the most intrusive in American history, driving the tentacles of the federal government deep into the nation’s economy, culture and legal system.
Economically, the administration is dictating corporate behavior through tariffs, subsidies and the punishment of disfavored industries and companies, while rewarding allies with tax breaks and deregulation. And that’s all before the government takes its cut.
Culturally, Trump is seeking to redefine the boundaries of public discourse: pressuring universities, elevating grievance politics and reshaping federal agencies to reflect ideological loyalty rather than expertise or experience.
Within the legal system, the administration is aggressively reshaping the federal judiciary, asserting executive power over independent institutions and using the Justice Department for political ends.
Taken together, these interventions reveal a presidency determined to expand executive reach into virtually every sphere of national life.
“No peacetime president has remotely approached the Trump administration’s campaign to control the conduct of all the major institutions that comprise American civil society as well as its governments,” Rogers Smith, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote to me by email.
This is comparable to the rise of totalitarian regimes in the 1920s and 1930s, when Mussolini said even a teacher of mathematics must be a fascist.
Now all who do not take positions on American politics, policies and history that comply with the administration’s views are in danger of being denied funding, subjected to lawsuits, and derided by the White House in ways that can inspire violent private attacks. All this has precedents, but not in America’s peacetime history.
Trump’s intrusions are aimed at wide and varied subjects, with targets that include corporate governance, academia, the legal profession, the administration of justice, criminal investigations of political adversaries and such liberal Democratic organizations as ActBlue and Media Matters.
For Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton, the word “intrusive” fails to capture the full scope of Trump’s agenda. Writing by email, Wilentz argued that Trump
has intimidated major institutions of civil society, including universities, major law firms, and the corporate media, to bend them to his will. He has deployed the military for political purposes. He has militarized ICE and turned it into nation’s largest law enforcement force, accountable only to himself and Stephen Miller, thus laying the basis for a police state.
He and his attorney general have hounded federal judges who oppose the Trump agenda to the point where those judges and their families rightly fear for their lives. His appointees to the Supreme Court, in concert with Chief Justice Roberts, are completing the gutting of the 14th Amendment and (as crucially supplemented by the 1965 Voting Rights Act) the 15th Amendment, thereby destroying crucial legal legacies of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.
Trump has taken upon himself an attempt to force a revision of the American historical narrative. As Wilentz put it:
Most recently, he has commanded a rewriting of American history as a providential story culminating in his own divinely inspired rule. Approaching the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, he is grasping for a monarchy that the Revolution repudiated, in the name of a plutocratic and theocratic order that the Revolution rejected.
At one level, Trump’s policies are the embodiment of what have been core Republican principles since Ronald Reagan, as foreshadowed by the ultraright big business opposition to the New Deal: slash taxes on the wealthy, bash the poor, dissolve the social safety net and deregulate, deregulate, deregulate.
This is the main reason so many Republicans who otherwise despise Trump remain so loyal to him. They don’t quite get how, alongside his turbocharged Reaganism, Trump is building the framework of an international crime and corruption syndicate, ending restraint of private efforts to corrupt foreign governments, embracing Bitcoin, a currency custom-made for bribery, asset-laundering, and other gangster-like activities.
Trump, Wilentz argued,
is intruding like a wartime president when there’s no war. The only checks on his brazen lawlessness would be the Congress and the Supreme Court. But the first is supine and the second has thus far sustained Trump on 90 percent of the cases where lower courts have tried to restrain him. And if permitted, his assumption of war powers without a war will enable his authoritarian regime.
Bruce Miroff, a political scientist at SUNY-Albany, expanded on Trump’s autocratic approach to government in an email:
Trump himself has an authoritarian mind-set that ignores a checks and balances system that has frustrated some earlier chief executives. But he also has an advantage in the capitulation of the other two branches out of fear, but also out of hope that only under him can a long sought conservative agenda finally roll back the liberal welfare state.
From the early dismantling of the “deep state” to the current takeover of law enforcement in D.C. and Trump’s threat to institute a makeover of the Smithsonian that will stifle any exhibits that don’t use happy talk on even the darkest moments in American history, Trump has forged ahead to shut down anything he dislikes and replace it with his own imagination.
There are experts in presidential studies who contend that other presidents have been more aggressive and activist than Trump.
“Measured in terms of sheer scale and scope,” Terri Bimes, a political scientist at Berkeley, wrote by email, “Franklin Roosevelt’s interventions during the New Deal and World War II eclipsed anything attempted by Donald Trump.”
“F.D.R.,” she continued,
shut down the entire banking system on his first day, imposed sweeping regulations on finance, built an industrial code regime through the National Recovery Administration that reached into prices, wages and production quotas, expanded federal oversight of labor relations, and through the Works Progress Administration and other agencies inserted the federal government directly into the cultural and intellectual life of the nation.
In 1942, through Executive Order 9066, F.D.R. ordered the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast to inland prison camps. This unprecedented domestic action, justified at the time as a wartime security measure, stripped an entire population of its rights and livelihoods, and stands as one of the most sweeping and controversial exercises of presidential power in American history.
There are, however, major differences between the Roosevelt and the Trump administrations, including Roosevelt’s willingness to respect court decisions and his willingness to seek congressional approval for his policies.
Roosevelt, Bimes wrote,
commanded huge congressional majorities, yet still encountered formidable pushback. The Supreme Court struck down key New Deal programs. Congress blocked or diluted others. Even at the height of his presidency after winning a major landslide election in 1936, his court-packing plan failed, his first attempt at executive reorganization was voted down, and his bid to purge conservative Democrats failed.
By contrast, Trump’s actions have met with far less resistance. Operating largely through executive orders, administrative reinterpretations, and emergency declarations, he has pursued an agenda aimed less at constructing a new administrative order than at dismantling existing institutions, a process requiring little cooperation from Congress.
In short, Roosevelt’s most ambitious projects were checked by resilient institutions; Trump’s have advanced in part because those institutions are weaker.
Jeremi Suri, a historian at the University of Texas-Austin, pointed to Abraham Lincoln as an activist president in his determination to prevent the South from seceding, to restore the union and ultimately to end slavery.
Lincoln, Suri wrote by email,
was more intrusive than Trump has been so far. Lincoln was the first president to use conscription, requiring Union residents (many recent immigrants) to serve in uniform. He remade the Supreme Court, creating a new bench dominated by Republicans. He limited civil liberties on a number of occasions.
Lincoln used a war order to end constitutionally protected slavery in Confederate-held territories. Lincoln then brought more than 100,000 of those former slaves into the Union Army, gave them guns and sent them to fight their former masters.
That comparison does not, however, diminish the import and adverse consequences of Trump’s invasive policies, Suri wrote:
What makes Trump so different and threatening is how he does things — he is acting unilaterally and on personal whim, largely ignoring separation of powers. He is pushing the boundaries from president to dictator.
That is new in peacetime. F.D.R. and L.B.J. were aggressive, but they worked through Congress and the courts. Trump is willing to work around them. That is what puts him beyond the pale for a historian.
Republicans in Congress have remained both prostrate and complicit in the face of Trump’s assaults on traditional party beliefs even as some of the administration’s policies have alarmed conservative and libertarian proponents of free markets.
The libertarian Cato Institute faulted Trump’s recent deal with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices allowing the companies to export chips used for artificial intelligence to China in return for the payment of 15 percent of revenues from the sales to the government.
In their Aug. 13, 2025, article, “The Nvidia/AMD-Trump Deal: Legal Questions, Crony Capitalism and National Security for Sale,” Clark Packard and Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, both Cato researchers, wrote:
The president’s unprecedented deal with Nvidia and AMD raises serious legal questions, further entrenches Washington’s crony capitalist favor factory, and gives at least the appearance of putting national security up for bid. Whatever the future of this arrangement, it sets yet another dangerous precedent of the executive branch abusing its national security authorities to influence or dictate the actions of private entities.
Similarly, Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, which supports entrepreneurial scholars and market-oriented thinking, warned in an Aug. 11 essay, “To Aid Economy, Trump Must Restore Faith in Institutions,” that “if the president continues to treat disagreement as disloyalty — especially from vital, independent agencies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Congressional Budget Office — then Trump’s second term could leave a dark mark on the country.”
In February, Ryan Young, senior economist for the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, published a broadside attacking a key element of Trump’s economic policy, “Trump’s Unilateral Tariffs: Time for Congress to Do Its Job.”
“Why,” Young wrote,
does Donald Trump like tariffs so much? It’s clearly not on the merits. When he talks about trade deficits, or raising revenue, or being treated badly by another country, all he’s doing is rationalizing a conclusion he reached long ago. While Trump is unlikely to ever admit he is wrong about tariffs, the rest of us can learn from his mistakes. This includes Congress, which needs to take back the taxing authority it should never have delegated away in the first place.
“Other countries,” Young argued,
nearly always retaliate against tariffs. It happened with the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which led to a 60 percent decline in global trade.
The Canadian and Mexican tariffs almost certainly violate the USMCA, which Trump himself signed in 2018. The best-case scenario here is that our allies think that only Trump is untrustworthy, and not the American government.
Economists of all political stripes know that trade deficits have nothing to do with a country’s economic health.
Tariffs have built-in diminishing returns. The higher the tariff, the less people will import. The steeper the rate increase, the steeper the drop-off in imports, until imports (and revenues) hit zero. This is the point of most tariffs. They are supposed to discourage imports.
These complaints from the right have not deterred Trump, even as his standings in the polls decline.
In terms of public support, Trump began his second term with positive job approval numbers, 50.5 percent favorable to 44.3 percent unfavorable, according to RealClearPolitics. The numbers turned negative in late March, and in the most recent aggregated count, Trump had a disapproval rating of 51.2 percent and an approval rating of 45.8 percent.
Trump’s deviousness, his disregard for the truth and his all-consuming narcissism are exceptional, even among politicians and even among the kind of men and women who seek the presidency.
“Any attempt to compare Donald Trump to any other president is a pointless exercise,” Jack Rakove, professor of history and American studies at Stanford, argued in an email:
His overt acts, craven ambition, delusional beliefs, erratic behaviors, perpetual dishonesty, and mental capacities lie so many norms of deviation apart from all his presidential counterparts that he has to be taken as a unique case.
Simply asking whether “any peacetime president has been as intrusive as Donald Trump” virtually answers the question in itself. Of course not — it would have been literally inconceivable.
Trump, Rakove argued, has adopted a strategy of making false claims to justify casting “himself as a wartime or emergency president.”
The flow of immigrants across the border, Rakove wrote,
may create social problems aplenty, but that does not turn them into the form of “invasion” to which the Constitution refers. You cannot place cities in a state of emergency warranting unprecedented action by federal agencies and the National Guard when their crime and especially their homicide rates are falling.
The fact that American families prefer Japanese automobiles to the Fords we used to buy may contribute to our trade balance, but that does not create the narrowly defined economic emergencies that empower an intrusive president to usurp congressional authority over taxation.
Along parallel lines, Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, wrote by email:
What distinguishes Trump from his predecessors is the aggressive, holistic nature of his intrusions. As with so many other aspects of his second term, Trump stands alone.
The president has used federal funds to intimidate universities into adopting policies he supports, cut research grants that cover issues of diversity and inclusion, forced law firms to agree to pro bono work in order to do business with the government, sued media outlets, called for C.E.O.s to be fired, made F.B.I. agents cops on the beat in Washington, D.C., and forced museums to vet their content to meet the administration’s version of history.
Trump stands apart from his predecessors, Dallek wrote,
because he has been so eager to push past laws, norms, and constitutional guardrails to force institutions and individuals to cater to his vision of American greatness. His intrusive acts have been more aggressive, covering more areas of domestic life, than anything seen in the modern presidency.
George C. Edwards III, a professor emeritus at Texas A&M and a fellow at Oxford, contended that “President Trump is unique”:
No peacetime president has been as intrusive in intervening in the economy, including extracting funds from corporations (Nvidia), requiring domestic investments, strongarming the selection of C.E.O.s, picking winners (fossil fuel companies, steel manufacturers) and losers (wind farms, EV vehicles) in the economy, and using tariffs — to raise revenue, to reduce trade imbalances, and to coerce both U.S. companies and other nations.
And no other peacetime president has so blatantly sought the territory of a sovereign nation. No president has been as hostile to environmental protection, financial regulation, and efforts to advance civil rights.
What makes Trump one of a kind, Edwards wrote, are
his efforts to influence so many other spheres of American life. No president has reached so far into the governing of universities, been so active in determining Kennedy Center honors, and been so eager to employ the symbolic politics of naming everything from athletic teams to mountains and oceans.
What may be most significant of all, in Edwards’s view,
is the president’s undermining the structural and moral underpinnings of the government. Unilaterally dismantling the administrative state by destroying expertise that took generations to build in areas ranging from investigating and prosecuting crime and protecting the public against environmental hazards to predicting the weather and curing cancer can cause long-term, structural harm to American society.
Disregarding appropriate legal bases for action, disobeying judicial orders, punishing law firms, stretching the interpretation of laws, and employing the military for domestic purposes weakens the foundations of American government. So do the many ethical lapses and brazen profiteering of the president and his family. The rule of law is the bedrock of any democracy, and the White House itself is threatening it.
For Trump, the rule of law is not a principle of democratic government; it is a speed bump on the road to exercising unilateral authority. In his own mind, he is on a path to the ultimate in gold-plated power.
More on Trump and power:
Opinion | David French
Trump’s Domestic Deployments Are Dangerous. For the Military.
Aug. 17, 2025
Opinion | Michelle Goldberg
Trump’s Attempt to Make Museums Submit Feels Familiar
Aug. 15, 2025
Opinion | Jamelle Bouie
Why Trump Always Wants a Crisis
Aug. 13, 2025
Opinion | Ben Rhodes
We’re Trapped in Trump’s Reality. This Is How We Escape It.
Aug. 11, 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Tuesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/realestate/arkansas-white-housing-return-to-land.html
The Founders of This New Development Say You Must Be White to Live There
Housing rights experts say a community restricted to white residents is illegal, but the creators believe they could win a potential challenge in court in the current political climate.
PHOTO: Eric Orwoll, president of Return to the Land, said his group can reject an applicant “who doesn’t present as white.”
by Debra Kamin
August 20, 2025
New York Times
by Debra Kamin
August 20, 2025
New York Times
Photographs by Whitten Sabbatini
[Debra Kamin reported from Return to the Land’s compound in Ravenden, Ark.]
In the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, nearly an hour from the closest city, a small group of homesteaders is building an exclusive community from scratch.
Listen to this article with reporter commentary
Applicants to the community are screened with an in-person interview, a criminal-background check, a questionnaire about ancestral heritage and sometimes even photographs of their relatives.
The community’s two architects — a classically trained French horn player who has livestreamed his own sex videos, and a former jazz pianist arrested but not charged for attempted murder in Ecuador — say they must personally confirm that applicants are white before they can be welcomed in.
“Seeing someone who doesn’t present as white might lead us to, among other things, not admit that person,” said one founder, Eric Orwoll, who moonlights as a Platonic scholar on YouTube but is now focused on developing 160 acres in Ravenden, Ark., into a community strictly for white, heterosexual people called Return to the Land.
[Debra Kamin reported from Return to the Land’s compound in Ravenden, Ark.]
In the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, nearly an hour from the closest city, a small group of homesteaders is building an exclusive community from scratch.
Listen to this article with reporter commentary
Applicants to the community are screened with an in-person interview, a criminal-background check, a questionnaire about ancestral heritage and sometimes even photographs of their relatives.
The community’s two architects — a classically trained French horn player who has livestreamed his own sex videos, and a former jazz pianist arrested but not charged for attempted murder in Ecuador — say they must personally confirm that applicants are white before they can be welcomed in.
“Seeing someone who doesn’t present as white might lead us to, among other things, not admit that person,” said one founder, Eric Orwoll, who moonlights as a Platonic scholar on YouTube but is now focused on developing 160 acres in Ravenden, Ark., into a community strictly for white, heterosexual people called Return to the Land.
PHOTO: Most of the homes on the compound were built by the residents. Some already have solar panels, generators for electricity, and septic and water systems.
The far right is surging in the United States, driven in part by white nationalists exploiting economic anxieties and a populace increasingly frustrated with the political status quo. Now, as the Trump administration rolls back diversity, equity and inclusion policies, cracks down on immigration and offers pardons to white supremacists, some see an opening. In creating their community, the founders of Return to the Land are testing anti-discrimination housing laws that have been in place for 57 years.
The community’s other founder, Peter Csere, was arrested in Ecuador for stabbing a miner and is accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a vegan community there. Both he and Mr. Orwoll say they believe Return to the Land meets the requirements for a legal exemption for private associations and religious groups that offer housing to their members.
Tim Griffin, the Arkansas attorney general, opened an investigation into potential legal violations by Return to the Land after reports on the community were published earlier in the summer in The Forward and on Sky News. Jeff LeMaster, his communications director, said in a statement, “We’re continuing our review of this matter.”
ReNika Moore, the director of the racial justice program at the American Civil Liberties Union, disputed the men’s claims that Return to the Land is legal.
“Federal and state law, including the Fair Housing Act, prohibit housing discrimination based on race, period,” she said in an email. “Repackaging residential segregation as a ‘private club’ is still a textbook violation of federal law.”
Representatives for America First Legal, the conservative advocacy group, did not respond to a request for comment on the community’s legal status. Representatives for Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas also did not respond to a request for comment.
The far right is surging in the United States, driven in part by white nationalists exploiting economic anxieties and a populace increasingly frustrated with the political status quo. Now, as the Trump administration rolls back diversity, equity and inclusion policies, cracks down on immigration and offers pardons to white supremacists, some see an opening. In creating their community, the founders of Return to the Land are testing anti-discrimination housing laws that have been in place for 57 years.
The community’s other founder, Peter Csere, was arrested in Ecuador for stabbing a miner and is accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a vegan community there. Both he and Mr. Orwoll say they believe Return to the Land meets the requirements for a legal exemption for private associations and religious groups that offer housing to their members.
Tim Griffin, the Arkansas attorney general, opened an investigation into potential legal violations by Return to the Land after reports on the community were published earlier in the summer in The Forward and on Sky News. Jeff LeMaster, his communications director, said in a statement, “We’re continuing our review of this matter.”
ReNika Moore, the director of the racial justice program at the American Civil Liberties Union, disputed the men’s claims that Return to the Land is legal.
“Federal and state law, including the Fair Housing Act, prohibit housing discrimination based on race, period,” she said in an email. “Repackaging residential segregation as a ‘private club’ is still a textbook violation of federal law.”
Representatives for America First Legal, the conservative advocacy group, did not respond to a request for comment on the community’s legal status. Representatives for Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas also did not respond to a request for comment.
PHOTO: Peter Csere, one of the compound’s co-founders, designed Return to the Land’s legal structure. A former jazz pianist facing criminal charges in Ecuador, he has an X account full of antisemitic posts.
To date, there have been no legal challenges to Return to the Land. But John Relman, a civil rights lawyer who specializes in fair housing violations, said the group could be sued under not just the 1968 Fair Housing Act but also multiple sections of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1866.
“You’ve got a smoking gun case of intentional discrimination,” he said. “I think they’re misguided when they say that they’re home free.”
But Return to the Land say they see an opening under a federal government that has pushed the boundaries of laws and norms, especially when it comes to race.
“Return to the Land needs to strike while the iron is hot,” Mr. Orwoll wrote on a fund-raising page for the group, which has raised nearly $90,000.
“They see right now as a very opportune time. They see a friend in the White House at the highest level,” said Peter Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University in California who is an expert on extremist violence. “They see themselves quite literally in various positions in the administration, including the Department of Justice and Department of Defense.”
The timing, both Mr. Orwoll and Mr. Csere said, is right. “I would rather the precedent is set and the discussion is had while there’s a relatively favorable cultural and legal climate for it,” said Mr. Orwoll, 35. “So if we’re going to fight this battle — and it’s a battle that’s going to be fought at some point — it better be now.”
To date, there have been no legal challenges to Return to the Land. But John Relman, a civil rights lawyer who specializes in fair housing violations, said the group could be sued under not just the 1968 Fair Housing Act but also multiple sections of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1866.
“You’ve got a smoking gun case of intentional discrimination,” he said. “I think they’re misguided when they say that they’re home free.”
But Return to the Land say they see an opening under a federal government that has pushed the boundaries of laws and norms, especially when it comes to race.
“Return to the Land needs to strike while the iron is hot,” Mr. Orwoll wrote on a fund-raising page for the group, which has raised nearly $90,000.
“They see right now as a very opportune time. They see a friend in the White House at the highest level,” said Peter Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University in California who is an expert on extremist violence. “They see themselves quite literally in various positions in the administration, including the Department of Justice and Department of Defense.”
The timing, both Mr. Orwoll and Mr. Csere said, is right. “I would rather the precedent is set and the discussion is had while there’s a relatively favorable cultural and legal climate for it,” said Mr. Orwoll, 35. “So if we’re going to fight this battle — and it’s a battle that’s going to be fought at some point — it better be now.”
40 Occupants and Some Goats
PHOTO: Ravenden is a tiny strip of a town that has around 400 residents and one barbecue restaurant. The closest grocery store is inside a Walmart Supercenter 30 minutes away.
Return to the Land is the name of both the 160-acre compound, which has about 40 residents, and a private association that Mr. Orwoll said “hundreds” have joined, paying a one-time $25 membership fee and earning acceptance after sharing information online about their ethnic background.
Mr. Orwoll and Mr. Csere, along with three other men, run a limited liability company founded in September 2023. Nearly two weeks later, they bought the land in Ravenden for $237,000, property records show. Members of the association can buy shares currently valued around $6,600 each in the L.L.C. In exchange for each share, they each receive three acres in the compound.
Mr. Orwoll and Mr. Csere initially welcomed media attention into their compound, eager to draw in new recruits and also traffic to the donation pages for both cryptocurrency and precious metals on their website.
They are now more wary.
PHOTO: Down past a creek on the compound is a pen of milk goats, both mothers and babies, guarded by Lucy, a white Great Pyrenees, on a long chain.
Mr. Orwoll recently gave The New York Times a limited tour, allowing entry to the property through a gate that had a lock. He sat on a folding chair in his office, housed in an insulated shed with air-conditioning and fiber internet, two pianos and shelves full of philosophy texts. Before a photographer could snap pictures, he pulled a copy of “Mein Kampf” from a bookshelf and turned it around to hide its spine.
The compound feels isolated from the rest of the world. Ravenden is a tiny strip of a town that has around 400 residents and one barbecue restaurant. The closest grocery store is inside a Walmart Supercenter 30 minutes away. The town mascot, a raven, is commemorated by a 12-foot stucco statue on the side of its main road.
PHOTO: Eric Orwoll, the community’s co-founder and its de facto spokesman, moonlights as a Platonic scholar on YouTube. Before he had four children, he made live sex videos with his now ex-wife on a porn site.
At the compound, rough gravel roads have been carved by bulldozer into the rugged, wooded terrain. Mr. Orwoll showed off one trim, two-story white cabin with an American flag flapping above its front door, and a rising community center he hopes will one day host dinners and events. Down past a creek was a pen of milk goats, both mothers and babies, guarded by Lucy, a white Great Pyrenees, on a long chain.
The rest of the compound, he said, was off limits because of residents’ wishes. He declined to say how many cabins have been fully built, but some members, he said, already have installed solar panels, dug septic and water systems, and installed generators for electricity.
At the compound, rough gravel roads have been carved by bulldozer into the rugged, wooded terrain. Mr. Orwoll showed off one trim, two-story white cabin with an American flag flapping above its front door, and a rising community center he hopes will one day host dinners and events. Down past a creek was a pen of milk goats, both mothers and babies, guarded by Lucy, a white Great Pyrenees, on a long chain.
The rest of the compound, he said, was off limits because of residents’ wishes. He declined to say how many cabins have been fully built, but some members, he said, already have installed solar panels, dug septic and water systems, and installed generators for electricity.
From Plato to Orania
PHOTO: Inside Eric Orwoll’s office on the compound are shelves of books, including philosophy volumes and Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” A Corinthian Greek helmet belonging to another resident sits atop one of the shelves.
Mr. Orwoll grew up in La Mirada, Calif., outside Los Angeles, and in high school he considered himself a libertarian. He studied the French horn at the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., before moving to Milwaukee to join the orchestra with Shen Yun, the classical Chinese dance and music production.
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While Mr. Orwoll considers the group a cult, he said, “I liked a lot of how they did things though. They’re very efficient. I thought it was interesting having a compound like they have.”
Despite never studying it formally, he’d always been drawn to Greek philosophy, and he eventually started uploading homemade videos about Plato and collective consciousness to his YouTube channel.
He attracted a following, including some commenters who responded with arguments about demographic shifts in the United States. They repeated ideas from what’s known as the Great Replacement theory — a conspiracy theory that nonwhite populations will replace white people through birthrates and mass migration — and racist pseudoscience about human intelligence and its link to genetics, an idea that has been broadly debunked by experts.
PHOTO: Mr. Orwoll also uses his office to record YouTube videos for his popular channel.
Those comments, he said, began to convince him that white people in America were being persecuted and that the fabric of the United States was fraying as its nonwhite populations grew. “I got red-pilled,” he said, using a term for awakening to a supposed hidden truth. “If we never had mass immigration, if we were still a homogeneous nation, we would not feel as much of a need to form communities like this,” he said.
Between his recorded musings on Plato, he began weaving in videos about elites in the United States and theories on how the genetics for blond hair and blue eyes spread across the globe through history.
The videos caught the eye of Mr. Csere, 36, a Connecticut-raised jazz pianist. The two men struck up a friendship online.
“Eventually I realized there is a genetic component to I.Q., and it’s one of those things that people like to pretend doesn’t exist because it’s politically inconvenient,” Mr. Csere said, repeating the theory in an interview on the compound. “You have cultures that invented the wheel thousands of years ago and then you have cultures that never ever invented the wheel until it was given to them by somebody else.”
He said he became interested in Orania, a town for white people in South Africa established at the end of the apartheid era that is restricted to Afrikaners — South Africans of European descent — and has been largely ignored by the South African government.
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PHOTO: Mr. Orwoll studied the French horn at the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. His office has both an electric keyboard and a piano. He prefers European classical music.
Unfulfilled by a life as a musician, Mr. Csere said he began searching for something with “more meaning.” He first embraced veganism and a “need to become a hippie” and formed an eco-village in Ecuador. The village, Fruit Haven, publicly accused Mr. Csere of fraud and theft on its website. In a statement, it accused him of absconding in July 2023 with thousands of misappropriated dollars, and also said that he once stabbed an Ecuadorean miner, causing him a collapsed lung, and was arrested on a potential charge of attempted murder in Ecuador. He has not yet been formally charged. The Times reviewed documentation of the arrest, as well as emails from members of the community begging Mr. Csere to return their funds.
Mr. Csere said the stabbing was an act of self-defense during an altercation, and he left the country many months after the incident. He disputed the idea that he owed money to any members of the community.
“They’ve been trying to press charges for a long time and were unable to,” Mr. Csere said of the Ecuadorean authorities. Members of the community were “trying to generate drama” by discussing the incident and claiming he owed them money, he said.
‘Well, It Was Bad’
PHOTO: At the compound, rough gravel roads have been carved by bulldozer into the rugged, wooded terrain. Members of the association can buy shares, each worth three acres.
Mr. Csere designed the structure of Return to the Land. He and Mr. Orwoll believe the structure is legal because a line in the Fair Housing Act allows an exemption for private associations and religious groups to give preference to their own members when offering housing. It’s a rule, legal experts say, designed to allow groups like churches to offer a house for clergy on their property.
Mr. Orwoll argued that other groups have communities designed exclusively for members of one race or religion — he pointed to EPIC City, a master-planned Muslim-centric community in Texas, as an example.
Those communities do not explicitly bar outsiders. Rather, they are designed with amenities that would attract certain people. EPIC City, which has a mosque and halal markets, was investigated by the Justice Department for potential civil rights violations. No discrimination was found, and that investigation was dropped in June, although the state of Texas is continuing its own inquiry. The developers have said they will welcome residents of any faith.
But Mr. Orwoll and Mr. Csere believe the rule they’ve homed in on from the Fair Housing Act gives them grounds to restrict membership to those, as they put it, with strict European heritage. They’ve rejected applicants that they believed did not appear to be white enough.
PHOTO: A community center is being built. Residents hope it will eventually be the site of communal dinners and celebrations.
“They didn’t seem like a white person,” Mr. Orwoll said. “They didn’t look like a white person.”
The founders said many residents do not support President Trump, or are apathetic to his presidency. Unlike many of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters, most residents of Return to the Land are not particularly religious.
Mr. Orwoll voted for Mr. Trump, he said, but only because the prospect of a Kamala Harris presidency seemed like a worse option. Mr. Csere criticized the MAGA movement’s “rabid support for Israel.”
On his X account, Mr. Csere uses antisemitic slurs and says that the Holocaust never happened but should have. When asked in an interview about the genocide, he contradicted his X posts and said he believed the Holocaust happened. “Well, it was bad,” he said.
Men, Women and Children
PHOTO: All of the children on the compound are home-schooled by their parents.
On a Monday in August, four children giggled and played on a rusty seesaw under the shade of a few trees.
There are about a dozen children living at Return to the Land — Mr. Orwoll declined to give a firm number — and all are home-schooled, he said. “I’d rather leave it to the parents to educate their kids how they want,” he said.
Mr. Orwoll and his ex-wife, Caitlin Smith, have four children between the ages of 2 and 8. Living in the community, Ms. Smith said, has been great for her children because it has given them “people to play with that we could trust.”
The pair met at music school — like Mr. Orwoll, Ms. Smith, 31, who is originally from upstate New York, plays the French horn. Before they had four children, the pair made live sex videos for money on the porn site Chaturbate.
“When I was doing that, I was a moral nihilist. I was not yet a Christian,” Mr. Orwoll said of the videos. “I had a different worldview and value system and part of my rationale for going toward more traditional values was seeing the mistakes I made when I did not have them as a young person.”
Ms. Smith declined to comment on the videos. According to her profile page, which is still visible, along with the videos, she listed a preference for men, women, trans people and couples. At Return to the Land, gay people of any race are barred.
Caitlin Smith and Eric Orwoll have four children. They divorced in 2024, and she now is remarried to another man on the compound.
Ms. Smith is now remarried to another man, and they live on the compound. She sat next to Mr. Orwoll and his new fiancée, Allison, who declined to give her last name, saying she was fearful of being targeted for her views.
“This is how I’ve always wanted to live — returning to the land,” Ms. Smith said. “The most important thing about this project for me is being able to actually vet my neighbors. You can move to a nice area and in 10 years you have no idea who’s going to be living down the street. What makes a person a person is their whole past, who they are now. And the genetics as well.”
Mr. Orwoll hopes to one day welcome around 200 men, women and children to Return to the Land in Arkansas. He said supporters nationwide have expressed interest in following the Ravenden model to build their own communities. The website of Return to the Land shows five additional projects — two more in the Ozarks, one in the Deep South and two in the Appalachian Mountains.
Mr. Orwoll has a trip planned to Missouri soon, he said, to look at potential land sites for a community there and to “vet people who may not necessarily be fully vetted.”
Read by Debra Kamin
Audio produced by Tally Abecassis.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Debra Kamin reports on real estate for The Times, covering what it means to buy, sell and own a home in America today.
