AMERICA IS A FASCIST STATE
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxismfascism is at the far right wing of the traditional left–right spectrum.
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxismfascism is at the far right wing of the traditional left–right spectrum.
AMERICA IS A ROGUE STATE
A nation or state regarded as breaking international law and posing a threat to the security of other nations.
Mexico’s president says the U.S. military will not operate in her country.
President Trump directed the Pentagon to target drug cartels on Friday. If the Pentagon plans to deploy troops to Mexico, it could strain ties to their worst point in decades. Credit: Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico rejected the use of U.S. military forces in her country on Friday, responding to news that President Trump had directed the Pentagon to target drug cartels that the United States considers terrorist organizations.
“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military. We cooperate, we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invasion. That is ruled out, absolutely ruled out,” she said. “It is not part of any agreement, far from it. When it has been brought up, we have always said no.”
It remains unclear what plans the Pentagon is drawing up for possible action, and the order raises legal questions about several issues. It is also unclear what notice the Mexican government had of the directive: Although Ms. Sheinbaum said U.S. officials had told her and her team that the directive “was coming," three people familiar with the matter said Mexican officials had been blindsided.
Depending on what the United States does, Mexico could pull back its cooperation on issues like security and migration if the White House acts unilaterally, those people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.
For months, Mexican officials have in public and in private flatly rejected suggestions of U.S. military action against drug cartels on Mexican territory.
Speaking in her morning news conference, Ms. Sheinbaum said she would read President Trump’s order. She said she had been assured that it did not involve the presence of U.S. military in Mexican territory.
The issue of U.S. military action has long raised hackles in Latin America, where the United States has a long history of interventions.
If the Pentagon plans to use forces in Mexico or elsewhere in the region, it could strain ties to their worst point in decades, at a time when the countries around the region are trying to work closely with the United States on major issues like migration and combating the drug trade.
“They need Mexico’s cooperation and they need Mexico’s state and society to be functioning. This isn’t Afghanistan, where the state is broken, and you can do whatever you want as there’s a void,” said Arturo Rocha, who resigned late last year from the Mexican foreign ministry, where he helped handle relations with the United States.
“This has always been Mexico’s deepest fear, this constant sense that we could be invaded by the U.S. again,” he added. “It would have major implications in terms of cooperation with the U.S. going forward. The president has been clear that our sovereignty is a redline.”
Mexican officials thought they had turned a corner with the Trump administration in fighting the drug trade, having launched an aggressive crackdown on the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the world’s largest producers of fentanyl. The cartel, one of Mexico’s oldest and most powerful, has suffered serious losses as President Claudia Sheinbaum has deployed hundreds of troops to fight it.
Members of the Mexican Navy guarding a crime scene earlier this summer. Mexican officials have flatly rejected suggestions of U.S. military action against drug cartels on Mexican territory. Credit: Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
American officials seemed pleased with the progress, and had touted a 50 percent drop in fentanyl seizures in recent months compared to the same months last year. It is unclear if the decrease is because the cartels are feeling pressure and curbing production or finding new, innovative ways to evade detection.
The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, boasted late last month that the drop in fentanyl seizures was “due to a secure border” and “increased collaboration between the U.S. and Mexico.”
Under Mr. Trump and Ms. Sheinbaum’s “leadership, cartels are going bankrupt and our countries are safer because of it,” Mr. Johnson said on the social media platform X.
Washington has also cooperated with Mexico on migration, which hit record lows earlier this year and was a central issue of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns.
The U.S.-Mexican border has been quiet over the last year in large part because Mexico stepped up its efforts to stop migrants from crossing its territory. June saw the lowest border crossings on record, according to Customs and Border Protection data, with 6,072 migrants intercepted at the southwest border with Mexico compared with 83,532 for the same month in 2024.
If Mr. Trump pursues a more aggressive U.S. military posture in Mexico, such as deploying American troops or using attack drones, it could be politically disastrous for Ms. Sheinbaum. Mexicans are extremely sensitive to the U.S. military because of the history of American intervention, war and taking territory.
Ms. Sheinbaum has enjoyed high approval ratings, hovering around 75 percent, but there are deep divides and competition for power inside her governing party. While Mexicans have supported her efforts to negotiate with the Trump administration on a range of issues from migration to tariffs, U.S. military action inside Mexico would probably hit her hard, analysts said.
It could also undermine her ability to negotiate with Mr. Trump on future bilateral issues, they added.
The Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s oldest and most powerful, has suffered serious losses as President Claudia Sheinbaum has deployed hundreds of troops to fight it.Credit...Raquel Cunha/Reuters
The drug war in Mexico has historically been spearheaded by the Department of Justice and its counternarcotics agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration. But that effort has been in close collaboration with the Mexican authorities.
And the secrecy around the Pentagon directive has raised questions over whether the United States may use unilateral military force, without Mexico’s prior knowledge — a possibility that could hurt the painstakingly built trust between the authorities in the two countries.
“The short-term benefits will be far outweighed by the long-term costs,” said Craig Deare, a former military attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico in the 1990s.
“Mexico has mistrusted us for decades, and there was this thawing in the relationship that began in the 1990s,” he said. “That mistrust could snap back now.”
Mr. Deare cautioned that there was little indication of what type of action the military could take, whether using lethal drones or deploying forces.
The United States has long operated drones to hunt for drug production and smuggling networks inside Mexico, but those covert programs were not authorized to take lethal action.
Mexican officials have warned the Trump administration that the lethal drone programs the United States runs in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, where terrorist groups are often targeted in rural areas, would face far different circumstances and risks.
In Mexico, drug cartels are often embedded in dense urban centers, raising the chances of civilian casualties, and there are many more dual U.S.-Mexican citizens and their relatives living in places that could be targeted.
“If the U.S. does this without Mexico’s consent, it will set the relationship back a hundred years,” said Todd Robinson, who served as the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs at the State Department.
He said the U.S. military does not have the relationships that other parts of the U.S. government had developed with the Mexican authorities over many years. (The F.B.I. and D.E.A. have offices in embassies across the world, and have set up vetted teams in countries like Mexico, Colombia and Vietnam that work closely with American forces.)
“We worked together to build cases, by sharing intelligence, that is what builds a long-term relationship,” he said, adding “there is no way you get a good relationship if you shove the U.S. military down their throat.”
Aug. 8, 2025, 11:03 a.m. ET6 hours ago
Tony Romm
As federal courts continue to consider the legality of President Trump’s tariffs, he took to social media on Friday to claim that a loss for the White House would amount to an event on the magnitude of the “GREAT DEPRESSION,” suggesting the government might be forced to pay back potentially billions of dollars.
“If a Radical Left Court ruled against us at this late date, in an attempt to bring down or disturb the largest amount of money, wealth creation and influence the U.S.A. has ever seen, it would be impossible to ever recover, or pay back, these massive sums of money and honor,” he wrote.
Mr. Trump said the courts, if they did indeed rule against him, “should have done so LONG AGO, at the beginning of the case.” In fact, the Court of International Trade invalidated his tariffs earlier this year, prompting the administration to appeal the ruling.
Aug. 8, 2025, 10:40 a.m. ET6 hours ago
Jonah E. BromwichDevlin BarrettGlenn Thrush and Santul Nerkar
The Justice Department targets New York’s attorney general, a longtime Trump adversary.
Letitia James, the New York attorney general, won her lawsuit accusing President Trump of fraudulently overvaluing his assets. He was penalized more than half a billion dollars. Credit: Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times
The Justice Department this week abruptly escalated its pressure campaign on Letitia James, New York’s attorney general and one of President Trump’s longtime adversaries, opening a civil rights investigation into her office and appointing a special prosecutor to scrutinize her real estate dealings.
Taken together, the developments concerning Ms. James mark a stark escalation of Mr. Trump’s retribution campaign against one of his foremost nemeses and a remarkable use of Justice Department power to pursue a foe.
The civil rights investigation, which had not previously been reported, is examining whether Ms. James’s office violated Mr. Trump’s civil rights in its successful fraud suit against him, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
The acting U.S. attorney in Albany sent Ms. James’s office two subpoenas, one of which was related to the civil fraud case, which led to Mr. Trump being penalized more than half a billion dollars, including interest.
The second subpoena is related to the office’s long-running case against the National Rifle Association, the people said. Ms. James sued the organization in 2020, winning the ouster of its longtime leader, Wayne LaPierre, and sharply diminishing its power, which it had used on the president’s behalf.
Two of the people familiar with the matter said that the new subpoenas were part of a broader investigation to determine whether the office had violated the rights of Mr. Trump or others. It is a highly unusual use of a civil rights law more typically used to investigate potential racial, religious or sex discrimination, among other categories.
On Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi also appointed Ed Martin — the far-right former interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. — as a special prosecutor to supervise an ongoing investigation into Ms. James’s real estate dealings, according to two people briefed on the move.
Ms. James’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, on Friday called the investigation related to the fraud case against Mr. Trump “the most blatant and desperate example of this administration carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.” He added that the appointment of Mr. Martin “makes it crystal clear this is a manufactured investigation to pursue political retribution.”
The White House declined to answer a question about whether it was directing the investigations into Ms. James.
Mr. Martin is also investigating the real estate transactions of Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, another high-profile enemy whom Mr. Trump has singled out, the two people said.
A spokesman for Mr. Schiff did not immediately return a request for comment.
Ms. James has been one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest opponents since she first ran for attorney general in 2018, pledging to investigate him. Four years later, she sued him and his family business, accusing him of overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars. Mr. Trump lost the case and was penalized with the fine. The case is on appeal.
Geoff Burgan, a spokesman for Ms. James, said Friday: “We stand strongly behind our successful litigation against the Trump Organization and the National Rifle Association, and we will continue to stand up for New Yorkers’ rights.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the developments. The acting U.S. attorney in Albany, John A. Sarcone III, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In addition to Mr. Lowell, who is representing Ms. James as her personal lawyer, Ms. James’s office has retained Steven Banks, formerly of the firm Paul Weiss, to defend its staff members.
The civil rights inquiry into Ms. James’s office reflects a strategy that has been championed by some of Mr. Trump’s supporters, who have argued that his Justice Department should pursue cases against those who investigated or prosecuted him.
They have suggested that a specific civil rights statute, which makes using law-enforcement authority to deprive a person of rights a crime, provides the grounds to do so.
Historically, the law has been used to prosecute police officers or prison guards who mistreat people based on their race, religion, sex, or national origin. The law, however, does not require that motive.
That is not the only unusual aspect of the inquiries into Ms. James.
This year, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, confirmed that Ms. James’s personal real estate transactions were the subject of an investigation, a rare televised acknowledgment of a current inquiry by a federal law enforcement official.
That investigation has focused on whether Ms. James manipulated records related to homes in Brooklyn and Virginia to receive favorable loan terms. The allegations, which Mr. Lowell has called preposterous, resemble in miniature those that Ms. James pursued against Mr. Trump.
Ms. James ultimately convinced a judge that Mr. Trump had inflated the value of his properties on annual statements submitted to lenders, garnering hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains. Ms. James’s properties are valued at less than $2 million.
It had been unclear how — or whether — that inquiry was progressing, and Mr. Martin’s appointment adds an extra element of volatility.
Mr. Martin, a Missouri-based lawyer who represented some of the pro-Trump rioters who ransacked the U.S. Capitol, has suggested it is legitimate to investigate Trump adversaries simply to shame them.
In his brief stint as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, he thrust himself into national politics by leveling threats against Democrats and academic institutions. When Senate Republicans blocked his permanent nomination to the role, the White House found a job for him inside the Justice Department overseeing a “weaponization working group.”
That group was formed in February with the explicit mission of assessing Ms. James’s investigation into the president, as well as other law enforcement inquiries into Mr. Trump while he was out of office.
Mr. Sarcone, the U.S. attorney whose office sent the subpoenas to Ms. James, is also a Trump loyalist. He is one of several U.S. attorneys the Justice Department has installed using a circuitous legal procedure after judges and senators declined to appoint them permanently.
He has taken a strong stance against immigration and has inserted himself into the national culture war over the issue, railing against former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s policies.
Aug. 8, 2025, 2:34 p.m. ET2 hours ago
John Ismay
Reporting from Washington
The Air Force rescinds early retirement for transgender men and women, denying them benefits.
The move was part of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s assault on transgender rights. Credit: Kenny Holston/The New York Times
At least a dozen transgender men and women serving in the U.S. Air Force who had applied for early retirement to avoid being kicked out of the service for their gender identity have had their retirement approval rescinded by the service.
The airmen, all of whom have served 15 to 18 years, must now choose between a voluntary separation agreement or involuntary removal with few, if any, benefits. Either course of action will result in a substantial loss of financial, medical and other benefits worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each of them.
The Air Force’s decision on Wednesday to rescind its approval of early retirements for transgender men and women, which was reported earlier by Reuters, is the latest battle in President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s assault on transgender rights.
One of the affected airmen is Master Sgt. Logan Ireland, who is stationed in Oahu, Hawaii, and is represented by Shannon Minter, a lawyer and the legal director of the National Center for L.G.B.T.Q. Rights.
“It’s just mind-boggling,” Mr. Minter said in an interview. “Master Sergeant Ireland deployed to combat multiple times and is a superstar who re-enlisted earlier this year.”
During the Biden administration, Mr. Minter said, active duty service members were allowed to transition. “They followed policy. They never did anything wrong,” Mr. Minter said.
The Pentagon issued a memo in February that declared medical diagnoses of gender dysphoria to be incompatible with military service. Yet, Mr. Minter said, the decision to separate these men and women is not being handled the way any other disqualifying medical condition diagnosed during active service would be — with a medical retirement.
Typically, a member of the military is eligible for retirement benefits after accruing 20 or more years of active service. Those benefits include one half to three-quarters of their base pay as well as access to military bases, commissary rights and free medical care at military clinics and hospitals for life.
A medical retirement would offer those same kinds of benefits.
There are also so-called early retirements that are usually offered to service members who have 15 to 18 years of service. The early retirements are used to reduce the number of people in overstaffed job fields, and they offer the same kind of retirement benefits available to those who stay in uniform for 20 or more years.
According to an Air Force spokeswoman who was not authorized to speak publicly about policy decisions, approximately a dozen transgender men and women who have 15 to 18 years of service had their applications for early retirement approved, only to have that approval rescinded Wednesday after legal review.
Under the Air Force’s policy, transgender men and women must now choose between a voluntary separation package or an involuntary separation that is typically reserved for cases of misconduct.
“Calling this a voluntary separation is such an Orwellian misnomer,” Mr. Minter said.
The number of transgender men and women in uniform is believed to be 4,000 to 5,000, or less than 2 percent of the total force. Pentagon policy now requires them to revert to the grooming standards and uniforms of their birth sex before being kicked out, but Mr. Minter said he didn’t think any were doing so.
“This whole process has been designed to inflict maximum humiliation on them,” he said. “This whole thing is based on a fiction that being transgender isn’t a real identity and that people could just toss it aside.”
Mr. Minter added, “It’s just who they are.”
The Latest on the Trump Administration
Health Company Donations: The president posted talking points provided by one firm that donated millions, and his administration delayed a change on coverage of pricey bandages that could have hurt the company and others like it.
Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’: The state must stop construction at the immigration detention center for 14 days, a federal judge ruled, granting at least a temporary victory to environmentalists who say the facility has the potential to cause serious harm to sensitive wetlands and endangered species.
Law Enforcement in Washington, D.C.: President Trump has ordered an unspecified number of federal law enforcement agents to be deployed in Washington, days after threatening a federal takeover of the city.
Kennedy and Vaccines: While many officials and scientists embrace other parts of the secretary’s agenda, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stance on vaccines is alienating allies who fear a public health crisis.
E.P.A.: The agency said it would stop updating research that companies use to calculate their greenhouse gas emissions after the agency suspended the database’s creator because he had signed a letter criticizing the Trump administration’s approach to scientific research.
Temporary Fed Pick: Trump’s top economic adviser and his nominee to serve as a governor at the Federal Reserve, Stephen Miran, may be filling only a temporary opening, but in that role he can influence important discussions in and around the central bank.
A nation or state regarded as breaking international law and posing a threat to the security of other nations.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08/08/us/trump-news
August 8, 2025, 2:36 p.m. ET2 hours ago
by Alan Blinder and Michael C. Bender
New York Times
August 8, 2025, 2:36 p.m. ET2 hours ago
by Alan Blinder and Michael C. Bender
New York Times
Trump wants U.C.L.A. to pay $1 billion to restore its research funding.
The University of California, Los Angeles, campus. Credit: Alisha Jucevic for The New York Times
The Trump administration is seeking more than $1 billion from the University of California, Los Angeles, to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding that the government halted, according to a draft of a settlement agreement reviewed by The New York Times.
The proposal calls for the university to make a $1 billion payment to the U.S. government and to contribute $172 million to a claims fund that would compensate victims of civil rights violations.
If U.C.L.A. accedes to the demand, it would be the largest payout — by far — of any university that has so far reached a deal with the White House. Columbia University agreed to pay $221 million in connection with its settlement with the government, and Brown University pledged to spend $50 million with state work force programs.
The University of California’s president, James B. Milliken, said in a statement on Friday that the university had “just received a document from the Department of Justice and is reviewing it.”
He added, “As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources, and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians.”
Administrators at the campus in Los Angeles did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Julio Frenk, U.C.L.A.’s chancellor, said this week that about $584 million in research funding was already “suspended and at risk.” The university, like many other top schools, is deeply dependent on federal research money; about 11 percent of its revenues come from federal grants and contracts.
The Trump administration has largely targeted elite private universities in recent months as a part of what it has depicted as a campaign to fight antisemitism and reshape institutions that it views as cathedrals of liberalism.
But its turn toward U.C.L.A. has been sharp. On July 29, the day the University of California settled a lawsuit that accused U.C.L.A. of allowing pro-Palestinian protesters to block Jewish students on campus, the Justice Department said it believed U.C.L.A. had committed civil rights violations.
Dr. Frenk announced later that week the federal government had started freezing research money.
The White House’s demands of U.C.L.A. fit into a broad pattern of how the Trump administration has targeted California. The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is one of President Trump’s top political foes and a potential candidate for the White House.
On Thursday, the day before the terms of the White House’s proposed settlement emerged, Mr. Newsom suggested the University of California would not bow to the federal government.
“I will fight like hell to make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Mr. Newsom, an ex officio member of the university’s board of regents. “There’s principles. There’s right and wrong, and we’ll do the right thing, and what President Trump is doing is wrong, and everybody knows it.”
He added that he would “do everything in my power to encourage them to do the right thing and not to become another law firm that bends on their knees, another company that sells their soul, or another institution that takes a short cut and takes the easy wrong versus the hard right.”
But the University of California has shown a willingness to talk to the federal government. Mr. Milliken, the system’s newly installed president, said on Wednesday that the university had agreed “to engage in dialogue with the federal administration.” Mr. Milliken, though, sharply criticized the administration’s moves against funding.
“These cuts do nothing to address antisemitism,” said Mr. Milliken, who started his job on Aug. 1. “Moreover, the extensive work that U.C.L.A. and the entire University of California have taken to combat antisemitism has apparently been ignored.”
The White House’s proposed terms, some of which were first reported by CNN, were not exclusively financial. Among other conditions, the government is seeking the appointment of a monitor to enforce the settlement’s terms, the abolition of scholarships connected to race or ethnicity and the cessation of diversity statements in hiring.
But the government included a provision, as it did with Brown and Columbia, that would seem to keep U.S. officials from using the settlement to interfere directly with academic freedom, admissions and hiring.
The administration is negotiating with a handful of universities, including Cornell and Harvard. And although Brown and Columbia each agreed to payments, the government’s settlement with the University of Pennsylvania included no financial penalties.
Among the universities that have been targeted by the Trump administration, Harvard is the only one that has sued, arguing the government’s moves are illegal. It was unclear whether U.C.L.A. would take that step.
Even as Harvard’s case moves through the court system, the school has been in talks with the Trump administration in an effort to end the conflict.
Aug. 8, 2025, 12:19 p.m. ET4 hours ago
Mattathias Schwartz
Mattathias Schwartz reports on the federal judiciary.
A federal appeals court ended an inquiry into the administration over deportation flights.
Judge James E. Boasberg had ruled in April that there was probable cause to believe the Trump administration had committed criminal contempt by ignoring his order. But the administration appealed. Credit: Erin Schaff/The New York Times
A federal appeals panel on Friday terminated a district-court judge’s plan to assess whether Trump administration officials were guilty of criminal contempt for sending flights of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, despite the judge’s verbal order that they turn around and return to the United States.
The ruling by the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will make it far more difficult for Judge James E. Boasberg to determine the details of who was made aware of his order in March, and why the planes continued on to El Salvador.
Judge Boasberg had ruled in April that there was probable cause to believe the administration had committed criminal contempt by ignoring his order. But the administration appealed.
The brief order was accompanied by 57 pages of concurrences by Judges Gregory G. Katsas and Neomi Rao. It represents a victory for Mr. Trump and a brushback of a judge who had sought to curb Mr. Trump’s second-term agenda, earning his ire.
Judge Katsas wrote that any order to turn planes around midair would be “indefensible,” comparing it to a district-court judge who had ordered President Richard M. Nixon’s administration to stop bombing Cambodia during the Vietnam War, which was quickly stayed.
In a 49-page dissent, Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote that government officials “appear to have disobeyed” Judge Boasberg’s order and that she would have let Judge Boasberg move forward with criminal contempt proceedings. “The rule of law depends on obedience to judicial orders,” she wrote.
Judge Katsas and Judge Rao were nominated by Mr. Trump. Judge Pillard was nominated by President Barack Obama. Judge Boasberg was nominated first by President George W. Bush to the D.C. Superior Court and then to the Federal District Court bench by President Barack Obama.
Judge Boasberg’s initial order was issued on March 15, shortly after he received an urgent request from lawyers representing five Venezuelan migrants to block Mr. Trump if he invoked a wartime authority, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport them and others without notice or a hearing.
When Judge Boasberg convened a hearing at 5 p.m., the government was in the process of loading more than 200 other Venezuelans onto planes. At 6:48 p.m., the judge verbally ordered the government not to deport anyone under the Alien Enemies Act and to bring back any planes that had taken off. Shortly after, he ordered the government not to remove the Venezuelan detainees but left out the explicit requirement for airborne planes to turn around.
Despite Judge Boasberg’s order, the planes flew to El Salvador, where the Venezuelans were taken to a maximum-security prison. When the judge asked why on March 17, the government argued it had complied with his written order, which they claimed superseded the verbal one.
August 8, 2025, 11:31 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Maria Abi-Habib
Reporting from Mexico City
The University of California, Los Angeles, campus. Credit: Alisha Jucevic for The New York Times
The Trump administration is seeking more than $1 billion from the University of California, Los Angeles, to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding that the government halted, according to a draft of a settlement agreement reviewed by The New York Times.
The proposal calls for the university to make a $1 billion payment to the U.S. government and to contribute $172 million to a claims fund that would compensate victims of civil rights violations.
If U.C.L.A. accedes to the demand, it would be the largest payout — by far — of any university that has so far reached a deal with the White House. Columbia University agreed to pay $221 million in connection with its settlement with the government, and Brown University pledged to spend $50 million with state work force programs.
The University of California’s president, James B. Milliken, said in a statement on Friday that the university had “just received a document from the Department of Justice and is reviewing it.”
He added, “As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources, and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians.”
Administrators at the campus in Los Angeles did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Julio Frenk, U.C.L.A.’s chancellor, said this week that about $584 million in research funding was already “suspended and at risk.” The university, like many other top schools, is deeply dependent on federal research money; about 11 percent of its revenues come from federal grants and contracts.
The Trump administration has largely targeted elite private universities in recent months as a part of what it has depicted as a campaign to fight antisemitism and reshape institutions that it views as cathedrals of liberalism.
But its turn toward U.C.L.A. has been sharp. On July 29, the day the University of California settled a lawsuit that accused U.C.L.A. of allowing pro-Palestinian protesters to block Jewish students on campus, the Justice Department said it believed U.C.L.A. had committed civil rights violations.
Dr. Frenk announced later that week the federal government had started freezing research money.
The White House’s demands of U.C.L.A. fit into a broad pattern of how the Trump administration has targeted California. The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is one of President Trump’s top political foes and a potential candidate for the White House.
On Thursday, the day before the terms of the White House’s proposed settlement emerged, Mr. Newsom suggested the University of California would not bow to the federal government.
“I will fight like hell to make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Mr. Newsom, an ex officio member of the university’s board of regents. “There’s principles. There’s right and wrong, and we’ll do the right thing, and what President Trump is doing is wrong, and everybody knows it.”
He added that he would “do everything in my power to encourage them to do the right thing and not to become another law firm that bends on their knees, another company that sells their soul, or another institution that takes a short cut and takes the easy wrong versus the hard right.”
But the University of California has shown a willingness to talk to the federal government. Mr. Milliken, the system’s newly installed president, said on Wednesday that the university had agreed “to engage in dialogue with the federal administration.” Mr. Milliken, though, sharply criticized the administration’s moves against funding.
“These cuts do nothing to address antisemitism,” said Mr. Milliken, who started his job on Aug. 1. “Moreover, the extensive work that U.C.L.A. and the entire University of California have taken to combat antisemitism has apparently been ignored.”
The White House’s proposed terms, some of which were first reported by CNN, were not exclusively financial. Among other conditions, the government is seeking the appointment of a monitor to enforce the settlement’s terms, the abolition of scholarships connected to race or ethnicity and the cessation of diversity statements in hiring.
But the government included a provision, as it did with Brown and Columbia, that would seem to keep U.S. officials from using the settlement to interfere directly with academic freedom, admissions and hiring.
The administration is negotiating with a handful of universities, including Cornell and Harvard. And although Brown and Columbia each agreed to payments, the government’s settlement with the University of Pennsylvania included no financial penalties.
Among the universities that have been targeted by the Trump administration, Harvard is the only one that has sued, arguing the government’s moves are illegal. It was unclear whether U.C.L.A. would take that step.
Even as Harvard’s case moves through the court system, the school has been in talks with the Trump administration in an effort to end the conflict.
Aug. 8, 2025, 12:19 p.m. ET4 hours ago
Mattathias Schwartz
Mattathias Schwartz reports on the federal judiciary.
A federal appeals court ended an inquiry into the administration over deportation flights.
Judge James E. Boasberg had ruled in April that there was probable cause to believe the Trump administration had committed criminal contempt by ignoring his order. But the administration appealed. Credit: Erin Schaff/The New York Times
A federal appeals panel on Friday terminated a district-court judge’s plan to assess whether Trump administration officials were guilty of criminal contempt for sending flights of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, despite the judge’s verbal order that they turn around and return to the United States.
The ruling by the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will make it far more difficult for Judge James E. Boasberg to determine the details of who was made aware of his order in March, and why the planes continued on to El Salvador.
Judge Boasberg had ruled in April that there was probable cause to believe the administration had committed criminal contempt by ignoring his order. But the administration appealed.
The brief order was accompanied by 57 pages of concurrences by Judges Gregory G. Katsas and Neomi Rao. It represents a victory for Mr. Trump and a brushback of a judge who had sought to curb Mr. Trump’s second-term agenda, earning his ire.
Judge Katsas wrote that any order to turn planes around midair would be “indefensible,” comparing it to a district-court judge who had ordered President Richard M. Nixon’s administration to stop bombing Cambodia during the Vietnam War, which was quickly stayed.
In a 49-page dissent, Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote that government officials “appear to have disobeyed” Judge Boasberg’s order and that she would have let Judge Boasberg move forward with criminal contempt proceedings. “The rule of law depends on obedience to judicial orders,” she wrote.
Judge Katsas and Judge Rao were nominated by Mr. Trump. Judge Pillard was nominated by President Barack Obama. Judge Boasberg was nominated first by President George W. Bush to the D.C. Superior Court and then to the Federal District Court bench by President Barack Obama.
Judge Boasberg’s initial order was issued on March 15, shortly after he received an urgent request from lawyers representing five Venezuelan migrants to block Mr. Trump if he invoked a wartime authority, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport them and others without notice or a hearing.
When Judge Boasberg convened a hearing at 5 p.m., the government was in the process of loading more than 200 other Venezuelans onto planes. At 6:48 p.m., the judge verbally ordered the government not to deport anyone under the Alien Enemies Act and to bring back any planes that had taken off. Shortly after, he ordered the government not to remove the Venezuelan detainees but left out the explicit requirement for airborne planes to turn around.
Despite Judge Boasberg’s order, the planes flew to El Salvador, where the Venezuelans were taken to a maximum-security prison. When the judge asked why on March 17, the government argued it had complied with his written order, which they claimed superseded the verbal one.
August 8, 2025, 11:31 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Maria Abi-Habib
Reporting from Mexico City
Mexico’s president says the U.S. military will not operate in her country.
President Trump directed the Pentagon to target drug cartels on Friday. If the Pentagon plans to deploy troops to Mexico, it could strain ties to their worst point in decades. Credit: Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico rejected the use of U.S. military forces in her country on Friday, responding to news that President Trump had directed the Pentagon to target drug cartels that the United States considers terrorist organizations.
“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military. We cooperate, we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invasion. That is ruled out, absolutely ruled out,” she said. “It is not part of any agreement, far from it. When it has been brought up, we have always said no.”
It remains unclear what plans the Pentagon is drawing up for possible action, and the order raises legal questions about several issues. It is also unclear what notice the Mexican government had of the directive: Although Ms. Sheinbaum said U.S. officials had told her and her team that the directive “was coming," three people familiar with the matter said Mexican officials had been blindsided.
Depending on what the United States does, Mexico could pull back its cooperation on issues like security and migration if the White House acts unilaterally, those people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.
For months, Mexican officials have in public and in private flatly rejected suggestions of U.S. military action against drug cartels on Mexican territory.
Speaking in her morning news conference, Ms. Sheinbaum said she would read President Trump’s order. She said she had been assured that it did not involve the presence of U.S. military in Mexican territory.
The issue of U.S. military action has long raised hackles in Latin America, where the United States has a long history of interventions.
If the Pentagon plans to use forces in Mexico or elsewhere in the region, it could strain ties to their worst point in decades, at a time when the countries around the region are trying to work closely with the United States on major issues like migration and combating the drug trade.
“They need Mexico’s cooperation and they need Mexico’s state and society to be functioning. This isn’t Afghanistan, where the state is broken, and you can do whatever you want as there’s a void,” said Arturo Rocha, who resigned late last year from the Mexican foreign ministry, where he helped handle relations with the United States.
“This has always been Mexico’s deepest fear, this constant sense that we could be invaded by the U.S. again,” he added. “It would have major implications in terms of cooperation with the U.S. going forward. The president has been clear that our sovereignty is a redline.”
Mexican officials thought they had turned a corner with the Trump administration in fighting the drug trade, having launched an aggressive crackdown on the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the world’s largest producers of fentanyl. The cartel, one of Mexico’s oldest and most powerful, has suffered serious losses as President Claudia Sheinbaum has deployed hundreds of troops to fight it.
Members of the Mexican Navy guarding a crime scene earlier this summer. Mexican officials have flatly rejected suggestions of U.S. military action against drug cartels on Mexican territory. Credit: Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
American officials seemed pleased with the progress, and had touted a 50 percent drop in fentanyl seizures in recent months compared to the same months last year. It is unclear if the decrease is because the cartels are feeling pressure and curbing production or finding new, innovative ways to evade detection.
The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, boasted late last month that the drop in fentanyl seizures was “due to a secure border” and “increased collaboration between the U.S. and Mexico.”
Under Mr. Trump and Ms. Sheinbaum’s “leadership, cartels are going bankrupt and our countries are safer because of it,” Mr. Johnson said on the social media platform X.
Washington has also cooperated with Mexico on migration, which hit record lows earlier this year and was a central issue of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns.
The U.S.-Mexican border has been quiet over the last year in large part because Mexico stepped up its efforts to stop migrants from crossing its territory. June saw the lowest border crossings on record, according to Customs and Border Protection data, with 6,072 migrants intercepted at the southwest border with Mexico compared with 83,532 for the same month in 2024.
If Mr. Trump pursues a more aggressive U.S. military posture in Mexico, such as deploying American troops or using attack drones, it could be politically disastrous for Ms. Sheinbaum. Mexicans are extremely sensitive to the U.S. military because of the history of American intervention, war and taking territory.
Ms. Sheinbaum has enjoyed high approval ratings, hovering around 75 percent, but there are deep divides and competition for power inside her governing party. While Mexicans have supported her efforts to negotiate with the Trump administration on a range of issues from migration to tariffs, U.S. military action inside Mexico would probably hit her hard, analysts said.
It could also undermine her ability to negotiate with Mr. Trump on future bilateral issues, they added.
The Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s oldest and most powerful, has suffered serious losses as President Claudia Sheinbaum has deployed hundreds of troops to fight it.Credit...Raquel Cunha/Reuters
The drug war in Mexico has historically been spearheaded by the Department of Justice and its counternarcotics agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration. But that effort has been in close collaboration with the Mexican authorities.
And the secrecy around the Pentagon directive has raised questions over whether the United States may use unilateral military force, without Mexico’s prior knowledge — a possibility that could hurt the painstakingly built trust between the authorities in the two countries.
“The short-term benefits will be far outweighed by the long-term costs,” said Craig Deare, a former military attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico in the 1990s.
“Mexico has mistrusted us for decades, and there was this thawing in the relationship that began in the 1990s,” he said. “That mistrust could snap back now.”
Mr. Deare cautioned that there was little indication of what type of action the military could take, whether using lethal drones or deploying forces.
The United States has long operated drones to hunt for drug production and smuggling networks inside Mexico, but those covert programs were not authorized to take lethal action.
Mexican officials have warned the Trump administration that the lethal drone programs the United States runs in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, where terrorist groups are often targeted in rural areas, would face far different circumstances and risks.
In Mexico, drug cartels are often embedded in dense urban centers, raising the chances of civilian casualties, and there are many more dual U.S.-Mexican citizens and their relatives living in places that could be targeted.
“If the U.S. does this without Mexico’s consent, it will set the relationship back a hundred years,” said Todd Robinson, who served as the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs at the State Department.
He said the U.S. military does not have the relationships that other parts of the U.S. government had developed with the Mexican authorities over many years. (The F.B.I. and D.E.A. have offices in embassies across the world, and have set up vetted teams in countries like Mexico, Colombia and Vietnam that work closely with American forces.)
“We worked together to build cases, by sharing intelligence, that is what builds a long-term relationship,” he said, adding “there is no way you get a good relationship if you shove the U.S. military down their throat.”
Aug. 8, 2025, 11:03 a.m. ET6 hours ago
Tony Romm
As federal courts continue to consider the legality of President Trump’s tariffs, he took to social media on Friday to claim that a loss for the White House would amount to an event on the magnitude of the “GREAT DEPRESSION,” suggesting the government might be forced to pay back potentially billions of dollars.
“If a Radical Left Court ruled against us at this late date, in an attempt to bring down or disturb the largest amount of money, wealth creation and influence the U.S.A. has ever seen, it would be impossible to ever recover, or pay back, these massive sums of money and honor,” he wrote.
Mr. Trump said the courts, if they did indeed rule against him, “should have done so LONG AGO, at the beginning of the case.” In fact, the Court of International Trade invalidated his tariffs earlier this year, prompting the administration to appeal the ruling.
Aug. 8, 2025, 10:40 a.m. ET6 hours ago
Jonah E. BromwichDevlin BarrettGlenn Thrush and Santul Nerkar
The Justice Department targets New York’s attorney general, a longtime Trump adversary.
Letitia James, the New York attorney general, won her lawsuit accusing President Trump of fraudulently overvaluing his assets. He was penalized more than half a billion dollars. Credit: Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times
The Justice Department this week abruptly escalated its pressure campaign on Letitia James, New York’s attorney general and one of President Trump’s longtime adversaries, opening a civil rights investigation into her office and appointing a special prosecutor to scrutinize her real estate dealings.
Taken together, the developments concerning Ms. James mark a stark escalation of Mr. Trump’s retribution campaign against one of his foremost nemeses and a remarkable use of Justice Department power to pursue a foe.
The civil rights investigation, which had not previously been reported, is examining whether Ms. James’s office violated Mr. Trump’s civil rights in its successful fraud suit against him, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
The acting U.S. attorney in Albany sent Ms. James’s office two subpoenas, one of which was related to the civil fraud case, which led to Mr. Trump being penalized more than half a billion dollars, including interest.
The second subpoena is related to the office’s long-running case against the National Rifle Association, the people said. Ms. James sued the organization in 2020, winning the ouster of its longtime leader, Wayne LaPierre, and sharply diminishing its power, which it had used on the president’s behalf.
Two of the people familiar with the matter said that the new subpoenas were part of a broader investigation to determine whether the office had violated the rights of Mr. Trump or others. It is a highly unusual use of a civil rights law more typically used to investigate potential racial, religious or sex discrimination, among other categories.
On Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi also appointed Ed Martin — the far-right former interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. — as a special prosecutor to supervise an ongoing investigation into Ms. James’s real estate dealings, according to two people briefed on the move.
Ms. James’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, on Friday called the investigation related to the fraud case against Mr. Trump “the most blatant and desperate example of this administration carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.” He added that the appointment of Mr. Martin “makes it crystal clear this is a manufactured investigation to pursue political retribution.”
The White House declined to answer a question about whether it was directing the investigations into Ms. James.
Mr. Martin is also investigating the real estate transactions of Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, another high-profile enemy whom Mr. Trump has singled out, the two people said.
A spokesman for Mr. Schiff did not immediately return a request for comment.
Ms. James has been one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest opponents since she first ran for attorney general in 2018, pledging to investigate him. Four years later, she sued him and his family business, accusing him of overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars. Mr. Trump lost the case and was penalized with the fine. The case is on appeal.
Geoff Burgan, a spokesman for Ms. James, said Friday: “We stand strongly behind our successful litigation against the Trump Organization and the National Rifle Association, and we will continue to stand up for New Yorkers’ rights.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the developments. The acting U.S. attorney in Albany, John A. Sarcone III, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In addition to Mr. Lowell, who is representing Ms. James as her personal lawyer, Ms. James’s office has retained Steven Banks, formerly of the firm Paul Weiss, to defend its staff members.
The civil rights inquiry into Ms. James’s office reflects a strategy that has been championed by some of Mr. Trump’s supporters, who have argued that his Justice Department should pursue cases against those who investigated or prosecuted him.
They have suggested that a specific civil rights statute, which makes using law-enforcement authority to deprive a person of rights a crime, provides the grounds to do so.
Historically, the law has been used to prosecute police officers or prison guards who mistreat people based on their race, religion, sex, or national origin. The law, however, does not require that motive.
That is not the only unusual aspect of the inquiries into Ms. James.
This year, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, confirmed that Ms. James’s personal real estate transactions were the subject of an investigation, a rare televised acknowledgment of a current inquiry by a federal law enforcement official.
That investigation has focused on whether Ms. James manipulated records related to homes in Brooklyn and Virginia to receive favorable loan terms. The allegations, which Mr. Lowell has called preposterous, resemble in miniature those that Ms. James pursued against Mr. Trump.
Ms. James ultimately convinced a judge that Mr. Trump had inflated the value of his properties on annual statements submitted to lenders, garnering hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains. Ms. James’s properties are valued at less than $2 million.
It had been unclear how — or whether — that inquiry was progressing, and Mr. Martin’s appointment adds an extra element of volatility.
Mr. Martin, a Missouri-based lawyer who represented some of the pro-Trump rioters who ransacked the U.S. Capitol, has suggested it is legitimate to investigate Trump adversaries simply to shame them.
In his brief stint as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, he thrust himself into national politics by leveling threats against Democrats and academic institutions. When Senate Republicans blocked his permanent nomination to the role, the White House found a job for him inside the Justice Department overseeing a “weaponization working group.”
That group was formed in February with the explicit mission of assessing Ms. James’s investigation into the president, as well as other law enforcement inquiries into Mr. Trump while he was out of office.
Mr. Sarcone, the U.S. attorney whose office sent the subpoenas to Ms. James, is also a Trump loyalist. He is one of several U.S. attorneys the Justice Department has installed using a circuitous legal procedure after judges and senators declined to appoint them permanently.
He has taken a strong stance against immigration and has inserted himself into the national culture war over the issue, railing against former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s policies.
Aug. 8, 2025, 2:34 p.m. ET2 hours ago
John Ismay
Reporting from Washington
The Air Force rescinds early retirement for transgender men and women, denying them benefits.
The move was part of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s assault on transgender rights. Credit: Kenny Holston/The New York Times
At least a dozen transgender men and women serving in the U.S. Air Force who had applied for early retirement to avoid being kicked out of the service for their gender identity have had their retirement approval rescinded by the service.
The airmen, all of whom have served 15 to 18 years, must now choose between a voluntary separation agreement or involuntary removal with few, if any, benefits. Either course of action will result in a substantial loss of financial, medical and other benefits worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each of them.
The Air Force’s decision on Wednesday to rescind its approval of early retirements for transgender men and women, which was reported earlier by Reuters, is the latest battle in President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s assault on transgender rights.
One of the affected airmen is Master Sgt. Logan Ireland, who is stationed in Oahu, Hawaii, and is represented by Shannon Minter, a lawyer and the legal director of the National Center for L.G.B.T.Q. Rights.
“It’s just mind-boggling,” Mr. Minter said in an interview. “Master Sergeant Ireland deployed to combat multiple times and is a superstar who re-enlisted earlier this year.”
During the Biden administration, Mr. Minter said, active duty service members were allowed to transition. “They followed policy. They never did anything wrong,” Mr. Minter said.
The Pentagon issued a memo in February that declared medical diagnoses of gender dysphoria to be incompatible with military service. Yet, Mr. Minter said, the decision to separate these men and women is not being handled the way any other disqualifying medical condition diagnosed during active service would be — with a medical retirement.
Typically, a member of the military is eligible for retirement benefits after accruing 20 or more years of active service. Those benefits include one half to three-quarters of their base pay as well as access to military bases, commissary rights and free medical care at military clinics and hospitals for life.
A medical retirement would offer those same kinds of benefits.
There are also so-called early retirements that are usually offered to service members who have 15 to 18 years of service. The early retirements are used to reduce the number of people in overstaffed job fields, and they offer the same kind of retirement benefits available to those who stay in uniform for 20 or more years.
According to an Air Force spokeswoman who was not authorized to speak publicly about policy decisions, approximately a dozen transgender men and women who have 15 to 18 years of service had their applications for early retirement approved, only to have that approval rescinded Wednesday after legal review.
Under the Air Force’s policy, transgender men and women must now choose between a voluntary separation package or an involuntary separation that is typically reserved for cases of misconduct.
“Calling this a voluntary separation is such an Orwellian misnomer,” Mr. Minter said.
The number of transgender men and women in uniform is believed to be 4,000 to 5,000, or less than 2 percent of the total force. Pentagon policy now requires them to revert to the grooming standards and uniforms of their birth sex before being kicked out, but Mr. Minter said he didn’t think any were doing so.
“This whole process has been designed to inflict maximum humiliation on them,” he said. “This whole thing is based on a fiction that being transgender isn’t a real identity and that people could just toss it aside.”
Mr. Minter added, “It’s just who they are.”
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Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’: The state must stop construction at the immigration detention center for 14 days, a federal judge ruled, granting at least a temporary victory to environmentalists who say the facility has the potential to cause serious harm to sensitive wetlands and endangered species.
Law Enforcement in Washington, D.C.: President Trump has ordered an unspecified number of federal law enforcement agents to be deployed in Washington, days after threatening a federal takeover of the city.
Kennedy and Vaccines: While many officials and scientists embrace other parts of the secretary’s agenda, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stance on vaccines is alienating allies who fear a public health crisis.
E.P.A.: The agency said it would stop updating research that companies use to calculate their greenhouse gas emissions after the agency suspended the database’s creator because he had signed a letter criticizing the Trump administration’s approach to scientific research.
Temporary Fed Pick: Trump’s top economic adviser and his nominee to serve as a governor at the Federal Reserve, Stephen Miran, may be filling only a temporary opening, but in that role he can influence important discussions in and around the central bank.
