James' World 2

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Just more than a decade ago, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) picked up the signal of something entirely new: a ripple in the fabric of spacetime. About 1.3 billion light-years away, two massive black holes had merged, and the resulting shockwave—a gravitational wave—was strong enough for LIGO to detect the moment it washed over Earth.

Since then, gravitational-wave researchers have focused on fine-tuning their instruments to detect more of these fleeting ripples. Each confirmed, or high-quality candidate event, is added to a running tally in a catalog maintained by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration, a network of four gravitational-wave detectors: the two LIGO stations in the U.S., the Virgo station in Italy, and the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA) in Japan. The newest entries on the collaboration’s list—a record-breaking 161 events spotted between April 2024 and January 2025—have researchers excited for a new era of discovery, an “age of gravitational astronomy.”

“The extraordinary sensitivity of our detectors now allows us to capture three or four gravitational wave signals every week,” said Ed Porter, a researcher at the AstroParticle and Cosmology Laboratory, overseen by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Paris City University, in a statement. “This ever-growing wealth of data, which an entire community of scientists and astronomers is working to analyze and study, has taken us from the era of initial discoveries into that of precision gravitational astronomy.”

These recent weekly signals form about 75 percent of the total number of confirmed gravitational-wave events observed by the LVK network; the total is now up to 390. Having more observations of these unusual cosmic events gives researchers the ability to study phenomena and locales of the universe that are too faint or far away to detect through other methods, as well as to better understand the nature and evolution of black holes and a diverse assortment of other fundamental questions in astrophysics.

Among the exciting findings from the latest batch of gravitational-wave detections are GW240615, for which scientists were able to triangulate the exact location of the event’s source; GW250114, which offered the clearest signal ever recorded, with a signal-to-noise ratio of 76.9; and GW241011 and GW241110, which, scientists say, collectively support the existence of “second-generation black holes” that form solely from the mergers of smaller black holes.

“It is another hint that the Universe may still be hiding important pieces of the story of how black holes are born, evolve, and merge,” said Mario Spera, a Virgo Collaboration researcher at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Italy, in the same statement. “And this picture will become richer, and more surprising, with every new gravitational-wave catalog by LVK.”

The 161 new entries provide enough data to keep scientists busy for years, but the LVK Collaboration says there is a lot more to come—especially as researchers continue optimizing the detectors to make them even more sensitive to spacetime ripples.

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VICTOR de SCHWANBERG/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

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The Trump administration unlawfully barred applicants from 39 travel-ban countries from receiving decisions on asylum, work permits, green cards, and citizenship applications, a US federal judge ruled on Friday.

The decision came on the same day that the US Senate voted to pass legislation to fund Donald Trump’s controversial immigration crackdown.

Chief US district judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, ruled that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had adopted a series of unlawful policies targeting people from 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries.

His ruling came in a lawsuit filed in March by a coalition of immigrant service organizations and labor unions challenging a suite of policies adopted starting in November by USCIS, which is part of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), amid the US president’s anti-immigration agenda.

Those measures placed a hold on processing immigration benefit applications from people in the 39 countries subject to Trump’s full or partial travel bans, which he has justified on vetting and security grounds. Green cards grant foreign nationals permanent resident status in the US.

The DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

McConnell, who was appointed by Barack Obama, said those policies “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo.”

The judge wrote: “USCIS’s hold on adjudications cannot be attributed to anything that these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by the happenstance of their birth.“

He said the immigrants at issue had adhered to the legal processes that the US Congress had enacted and USCIS had adopted by regulation, yet had been “stuck waiting, for months on end, for benefit requests that USCIS refuses to adjudicate”.

“But the rule of law has to apply to everyone equally and, as evident here, USCIS has neither ‘followed the law’ nor ‘done things the right way’,” McConnell wrote, adding: “Indeed, the agency has violated the very immigration laws that Congress has charged it with administering, as well as the administrative laws that govern the agency’s actions.”

The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) applauded the judge’s decision.

“Every person seeking safety, stability, and opportunity deserves a fair chance to have their case heard under the law. Today, a federal judge reaffirmed what we already knew: that the Trump administration violated the law, and did so with anti-immigrant malice. By shutting down access to asylum and preventing thousands of immigrants from receiving a decision on their immigration applications solely on the basis of which country they come from, the Trump administration acted against statute and against the rule of law,” said Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of NYIC, in a statement. “Their unlawful actions left thousands of families in limbo, cut people from life-saving protections, and undermined the rule of law by attempting to bypass the immigration system established by Congress.”

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Travelers in a waiting area at Kabul international airport in Afghanistan on 2 October 2024. Photograph: Francois LOCHON/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

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Hmmmm … Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein!

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President Trump is routinely called powerful and also weak. He holds an iron grip on the G.O.P., helping to dispatch such perceived enemies as Senators Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn, and Representative Thomas Massie.

But on Wednesday, a handful of House Republicans voted to try to rein in the president’s war-making capacity in Iran. Republicans in the Senate have resisted his “weaponization” fund and refused to kill the filibuster, an obstacle to passing the SAVE Act. And a judge ordered his name to be pulled from the Kennedy Center.

So, powerful or weak? Jonathan Bernstein, a political scientist and writer of the Good Politics/Bad Politics newsletter on Substack, makes sense of this apparent contradiction in a written conversation with John Guida, an editor in Times Opinion. It has been edited for length and clarity.

John Guida: President Trump presents a conundrum. He seems both powerful and weak. His record in Republican primaries appears formidable.

Jonathan Bernstein: First of all, his dominance within the Republican Party is a bit overrated. For one thing, a lot of his primary-endorsement successes are pretty hollow. He often, as he did in the Texas Senate race, waits until a leader emerges. He clearly was the main actor in purging Thomas Massie, but it’s not clear in those other cases whether he was the main actor or if other party leaders — especially those in Republican-aligned media, such as local talk-show hosts — were the key players.

It’s hard to compare Trump to other presidents because they generally didn’t try to do such things — for good reason; it risks a lot of blowback. In other words, bullying can get Trump some things that other presidents don’t get, but only at costs that other presidents haven’t had to bear.

Guida: So you think his winning is both overblown and in pursuit of questionable goals. But you have written that he is also losing “a lot” — “far more than any other modern president.” How do you make sense of this?

Bernstein: All presidents lose. Trump loses more often, on more things, than most. I usually begin by following the analysis of Richard Neustadt, the presidency scholar who wrote the 1960 classic “Presidential Power.” Neustadt advised presidents to increase their influence by building a strong presidential reputation and by doing what they can to be popular with voters. Trump has consistently done neither.

The most important tool to achieve those things, for Neustadt, is information. Presidents have more access to useful information than anyone they deal with. Trump, by all accounts, ignores it. Instead, he’s built his second presidency around the goal of keeping himself, as much as possible, from not having to confront information that might contradict his impulses. And that leaves him unable to negotiate deals with friends or enemies abroad, or to adjust his policies at home to account for realities other politicians must live in.

Guida: Could you give examples of where you see Trump losing? You’ve often noted this in his dealings with Congress, right?

Bernstein: Just this week, he had several setbacks. The House embarrassed him with a war powers vote that would end the war in Iran — and then immediately after that, they took a procedural vote to move ahead with support for Ukraine. That’s extraordinary. In the modern House, the majority maintains strict control over the agenda, but a handful of Republicans were willing to defect and basically give Democrats agenda control on both of these foreign policy issues. Normally, a president would have found a way to defuse that revolt, but he’s so alienated some of those Republicans, and his word is so worthless, that he’s not really able to, even if he tried.

Then over on the Senate side, Republicans revolted against his “weaponization” slush fund and against his ballroom. They removed funding for ballroom security from the spending bill they’re working on.

Congress is important, but this is going on everywhere — especially in the courts, where Trump’s Justice Department has squandered the presumption of trust that judges have always had for administration statements. Misleading, if not lying to the courts — or to Congress, bureaucrats, state-level politicians, or foreign nations — might yield some short-term victories. Maybe. But over time, it’s a losing move. Reputation matters.

Guida: The conventional story of Trump 2.0 is that Republicans in Congress have done nothing to oppose the president and have instead enabled his agenda. You are suggesting that this narrative is not true, or at least not complete.

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Daniel Ribar for The New York Times

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As more than 50,000 residents of Garden Grove, Calif., returned home on Tuesday and Wednesday after a narrowly averted chemical crisis at an aerospace plant, a rupture at a separate chemical tank in Washington State claimed two lives and left nine people missing and presumed dead.

The back-to-back incidents are among several high-profile disasters at chemical plants in the past year. And a Trump administration proposal to roll back federal regulations that are meant to guard against such accidents means they could become more frequent, threatening surrounding communities and on-site workers.

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed repealing a 2024 rule that tightened safeguards that were designed to prevent explosions and the release of toxic chemicals at chemical plants and refineries. The rollback, which is opposed by California’s attorney general, would reduce requirements for facilities to implement safer technologies, involve employees in safety planning, and conduct third-party audits after an accident. The plan would also erase a mandate that facilities consider climate-related disasters such as floods when making emergency plans.

Without the rule, many of these details would be left to the discretion of individual companies and their safety culture. And that, experts say, means that accidents will keep happening.

“There is just not enough of that kind of planning that goes on,” says Philip Price, a retired senior research scientist and chemist in Maryland, who has worked on chemical incident investigations.

The rule hasn’t been repealed yet; a call for public comment on the proposal to repeal it just closed. The rule itself hasn’t yet been fully implemented, however, says Emma Cheuse, an attorney for the environmental law nonprofit Earthjustice, which opposes the rollback.

“Some of the key provisions in the rule have compliance deadlines that were going to kick in in May 2027, so EPA is proposing to undo and weaken provisions in advance of those requirements,” Cheuse says.

The Trump administration has argued that the 2024 stipulations that require disclosures about hazardous chemicals have made chemical facilities more vulnerable to attacks and that the rule has been costly and burdensome for businesses.

The twin crises in the past week have sparked questions over safety rules for chemical plants and processing facilities. The one in southern California began at the GKN Aerospace Transparency Systems plant on May 22, when temperatures spiked inside a tank containing around 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate, raising the risk that the liquid, which is used in making plexiglass, would volatilize into a gas and cause a massive explosion. In a press conference on May 25, Orange County Fire Authority officials said that a valve in the tank’s cooling system failed, leading to the potential explosion. Methyl methacrylate can cause damage to the skin and respiratory system. Andrew Whelton, an engineering professor at Purdue University, who has developed monitoring and response plans after chemical accidents, explains that because of the chemical’s nature, some people who are exposed to even small amounts will develop serious allergic reactions.

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Every evening at about 6:30 p.m., I pour my toddler a sippy cup of cold milk and we curl up on the couch next to my husband. “Mama sit!” he says, his way of asking to sit on my lap as he enjoys his milk and a movie of his choosing. It’s a joyful moment of family time, a carefree and cozy break at the end of our busy days.

When I learned that the Food and Drug Administration paused its quality testing on milk, my mind immediately went to our sweet family ritual. It rocked me. The testing pause comes after we learned that bird flu is spreading in dairy cows, traces of the killed virus in our commercial milk supply, which was another development that caused a spike in my anxiety and a late-night message to our pediatrician. I wondered what exactly this pause in testing meant, in the literal sense, and how long it would go on. I worried I would now spend that precious family time concerned about what was in my kid’s milk.

This particular threat is just one of many. From increasing grocery prices, shuttering Head Start programs, abortion bans that make pregnancy more dangerous, bringing back measles, not to mention the threat of gun violence in schools — there are many large ways that the Trump administration has made parents’ lives more difficult — and comparatively, concern over a sippy cup of milk might seem small.

But that smallness is part of what makes this new concern feel so particularly insidious.

Milk is a drink that, for many children, becomes an extension of the comforting bond they formed with their parent through breast- or bottle-feeding, a bridge from baby- to toddlerhood. I relish my son’s faint, milky breath before bedtime, and when I read about the FDA pause, my initial panic came in part from the fear that this tether to his early moments would be severed too soon.

These seemingly small issues like the milk testing are the ones that make the everyday lived experience of parenting feel less safe — and less joyful. It’s death by a thousand cuts.

Brittney Pagone, a former nurse and current stay-at-home mom who runs the Instagram page PAMoms4Change, felt a similar panic. The news alarmed her so much, she says, that she no longer plans to wean her nearly 1-year-old daughter, opting to breastfeed for longer rather than switching to whole milk. This is a privilege, she knows; she has both the time and the ability to breastfeed her daughter, two things many moms don’t have.

The confusion Pagone felt with this news, she says, is just another part of parenting under the current Trump administration, which is currently brewing plans to boost the national birth rate. Pagone finds the administration’s push for families to have more children, at the same time eliminating the safety nets that make it feasible, utterly infuriating.

The decision to breastfeed longer than she’d planned isn’t the only one Pagone has felt forced into because of the Trump administration. Her family recently took a vacation that was close enough to Texas that she requested her infant be vaccinated for measles early.

Meanwhile, the president, who has contemplated giving people $5,000 per child to encourage larger families, has taken to billing himself as the “fertilization president.” And as we struggle to navigate what feels like an increasingly dangerous environment for our children, the government goads us to have more.

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Experts are reassuring, but for moms like me, the FDA pause on milk testing is just one more way parenting feels less safe — and less joyful — right now.

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The House on Wednesday voted to direct President Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from the conflict with Iran or win approval from Congress to continue the war, after four Republicans sided with Democrats in a striking sign of growing opposition to a military campaign now in its fourth month.

Adoption of the resolution was a remarkable rebuke to Mr. Trump and his handling of the conflict, after he has repeatedly dismissed any effort by Congress to curb his power and as the G.O.P. has largely ceded its prerogatives to do so, deferring to him time and again. Republicans had abruptly postponed the vote two weeks ago, recognizing that they did not have sufficient votes to defeat the measure and wanting to spare themselves and the president the affront.

But they made no headway over the ensuing days in winning converts, as the conflict has dragged on and Mr. Trump has made little progress toward ending it. G.O.P. leaders were unable to delay the vote any longer because Democrats had invoked the War Powers Resolution, which requires consideration of such measures within a limited period of time.

The move was also the latest reflection of divisions between Republicans in Congress and the president on a range of issues as their interests diverge in the run-up to the midterm congressional elections. It came after Senate Republicans have in recent days, forced Mr. Trump to abandon his request for $1 billion in security funding for his ballroom project and a plan that the Justice Department announced to create a federal fund to pay claimants who accuse the government of having victimized them.

The vote was 215 to 208 to adopt the war powers resolution, sending it to the Senate. Even if it were to pass both chambers, the ability of lawmakers to force a president to withdraw troops remains a contested legal question, and Mr. Trump and his senior aides have dismissed any effort by Congress to limit his war powers as unconstitutional.

But the vote in the House, and a similar one in the Senate last month, when a handful of G.O.P. defectors broke from the president and opposed the war, indicate an increasing willingness by some members of the president’s party to pressure him to end a conflict that a majority of Americans say is not worth the costs.

Republican Representatives Tom Barrett of Michigan, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Thomas Massie of Kentucky crossed party lines to vote with Democrats in favor of the resolution. Representative Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, who had previously opposed similar measures, switched his position to support it.

Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee who led the measure, praised its Republican supporters for standing up to a president who has in recent weeks sought political retribution against members of his party who have bucked him, including Mr. Massie.

Moments after the vote, he said the Republican defectors “had the wherewithal to search within themselves to do the right thing.”

Though the few defections were notable, almost every Republican voted against the resolution. Most of them have accepted the Trump administration’s claim that the initial operation had concluded and that the most recent strikes in Iran were necessary acts of self-defense, arguing that gave him full power as the commander in chief to order American troops to respond.

Republican lawmakers in the House had been able to maintain enough unity to ward off previous attempts to limit Mr. Trump’s authority.

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The vote on Wednesday was the latest reflection of divisions between Republicans in Congress and President Trump on a range of issues as their interests diverge in the run-up to the midterm congressional elections. Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times

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