James' World 2

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President Donald Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, on Friday effectively took the side of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in his brutal invasion of Ukraine, calling visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “disrespectful” and telling him he has “no cards” with which to negotiate.

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Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza told reporters at a Friday afternoon press conference that Hackman’s pacemaker last recorded an event on Feb. 17, though that doesn’t mean the pacemaker was implicated in his death.

Mendoza said an “initial interrogation” of the pacemaker showed “that his last event was recorded on Feb. 17, 2025,” which strongly suggests “that was his last day of life.”

The sheriff also confirmed earlier reports that authorities removed a handful of items from the legendary actor’s Santa Fe, New Mexico, home while executing a search warrant.

They include two green cellular devices, records from a medical diagnostics and health tracking company called MyQuest and a 2025 monthly planner. Officials also removed three types of medicine from the house: Diltiazem, typically used to treat high blood pressure; a thyroid medication; and Tylenol.

Mendoza declined to identify who was prescribed which medications, citing HIPAA laws.

The items were enumerated in a search warrant return released Friday and obtained by the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Hackman, 95, and Arakawa, 65, were found dead in the home Wednesday during a welfare check, along with one of their dogs. It’s unclear who died first, Mendoza said.

While the sheriff said there were “no apparent signs of foul play,” the circumstances were “suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation.”

According to the affidavit, Hackman’s body was found in a mudroom near his cane, and he appeared to have fallen, while authorities found Arakawa in a bathroom with a space heater near her head.

A countertop near Arakawa had an open prescription bottle and pills scattered on its surface.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The private Athena lunar lander is on its way to the moon.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off shortly after sunset this evening (Feb. 26), carrying Athena and NASA’s ride-along Lunar Trailblazer orbiter aloft against a darkening sky here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

Athena — which was built by the Houston-based spaceflight company Intuitive Machines — carries 10 NASA science instruments, many of which are designed to hunt for signs of water ice. Lunar Trailblazer will do similar work from its higher perch. That’s a big priority for NASA, which aims to establish one or more human settlements on the moon via its Artemis program.

“I’m very excited to see the science that our tech demonstrations deliver as we prepare for humanity’s return to the moon and the journey to Mars,” Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said during a prelaunch briefing today.

The Falcon 9 launched at 7:16 p.m. EST (0017 GMT on Feb. 27) this evening from KSC’s Launch Complex-39A. About 8.5 minutes later, the rocket’s first-stage booster came back to Earth for a landing on SpaceX’s A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship as planned. This was the ninth launch and landing of the Falcon 9 booster (B1083) supporting the IM-2 mission.

The Falcon 9’s upper stage rocketed onward. It deployed Athena into translunar injection orbit about 43.5 minutes after liftoff and Lunar Trailblazer four minutes later, as planned.

Athena’s mission is called IM-2, because it’s the second launch to the moon in as many years for Intuitive Machines. IM-2 is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which seeks out commercial partnerships to deliver science and technology gear to the moon.

Athena’s ambitious mission focuses on the abundance of water ice and other resources near the moon’s south pole, and the prospect for future missions to utilize those resources for sustainable habitability in space — a process known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). To fulfil all IM-2’s objectives, the lander is carrying two secondary vehicles: a mini rover named MAPP (Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform) that was built by the Colorado company Lunar Outpost and Grace, an Intuitive Machines “hopper” robot that will explore the region around the landing site via a series of leaps.

IM-2 follows Intuitive Machines’ historic first mission, IM-1, by just over a year. The IM-1 lander, “Odysseus,” launched in February 2024, also on a CLPS flight. Odysseus managed to make it to the surface, pulling off the first-ever soft lunar landing by a private spacecraft. But the probe came in too fast and broke one of its landing legs, which caused it to tip over during the touchdown. As a result, the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna was blocked, preventing the transmission of some of the data that NASA had hoped to collect.

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Maternity-Leave Moola

My wife is a clinical social worker and therapist at an integrated health clinic in Massachusetts. This year, like other years, the staff recently received their year-end bonus. This bonus is a relatively paltry $1,000 and is standard across the staff, with no fluctuations based on merit. Everyone gets $1,000 (minus taxes). However, this year my wife took short-term medical leave. Her bonus was prorated to account for the time that she was on leave. Another woman, who was on maternity leave for part of the year, also received a prorated bonus. Is this discriminatory on the part of their employer or just unfair? Both these types of leave are perfectly legal and necessary and, speaking for my wife, enabled her to provide the best care that she could for her patients upon her return. Do these hardworking, dedicated women have any recourse to recoup the rest of their well-deserved bonuses?

— Disgruntled Husband, Massachusetts

It’s unfair, in my opinion, but in this case my opinion carries little weight. This is a legal question, and a very interesting — albeit complicated — one.

I spoke to Inimai Chettiar, president of A Better Balance, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization, to get her take. Ms. Chettiar says that if there’s a prorated bonus and it’s clearly based on performance, then what your wife and her colleague experienced was legal.

But what does “performance” mean? Does going on medical or maternity leave mean a person has demonstrated a lesser performance than, say, someone who didn’t? The additional wrinkle here is that you say in general everyone gets the same bonus, so it’s unclear that it is in fact a performance-based bonus.

This is one of those gray-area examples where it comes down to interpretation of the law and the individual circumstance, and whether your wife is being treated the same as other people who took leave. For example, if workers who took leave for something other than disability or medical reasons did NOT have their bonuses prorated, Ms. Chettiar says, that would clearly be discrimination under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which make it illegal to retaliate against workers for being pregnant or because of pregnancy-related needs. In this case, however, it seems that your wife is being treated the same as her nonpregnant colleague.

Marylou Fabbo, an employment lawyer in Massachusetts, your home state, said it was important to know that there’s also the Family and Medical Leave Act, a federal statute that entitles

employees to take unpaid leave for specific medical or family-related reasons, which include a birth, a relative with health issues that require employee care or, as the website of Department of Labor says, “a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the essential functions of his or her job.” Massachusetts has a fairly new paid-leave law that is similar to that federal law, Ms. Fabbo added.

In this circumstance, she said, while the prorated bonus didn’t sound strictly discriminatory, it didn’t sound particularly fair.

She suggested that it would probably in your wife’s best interest to consult an employment lawyer just to be sure. A statute like the Family and Medical Leave Act would probably require an employer “to pay the full amount, depending on the laws that are applicable to the particular employee,” Ms. Fabbo said.

And if you’re worried that the legal fees would exceed the bonus amount, she pointed out that many employment statutes, including those related to discrimination or failure to pay wages, required the employer to pay the employee’s legal fees if the employee won the case.

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Credit…Photo illustration by Margeaux Walter for The New York Times

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CLIMATEWIRE | Congress’ oversight arm has issued an unprecedented warning about the risks facing federal disaster aid.

The Government Accountability Office said staffing levels and other workforce issues at the Federal Emergency Management Agency “has limited its capacity to provide effective disaster assistance.” It added that FEMA “needs to strengthen its disaster workforce by addressing staffing gaps.”

A staffing shortage that persisted from 2019 to 2022 “continues to grow” and left the agency with minimal staffing when Hurricane Milton hit Florida in October, days after Hurricane Helene deluged the state and large parts of the Southeast, GAO found.

The warning coincides with President Donald Trump’s threats to shutter FEMA, and it came two weeks after his administration fired at least 200 people from the agency.

The report marks the first time GAO put disaster aid on its annual “High-Risk List,” which highlights areas of the federal government that are “seriously vulnerable” to waste, fraud and abuse or need transformation. In addition to FEMA’s staffing problems, the report noted that “natural disasters have become costlier and more frequent.”

The GAO did not mention Trump or the FEMA firings that were carried out by his administration.

Trump, who has assailed FEMA’s response to flooding caused by Helene in western North Carolina, created a council to review whether the agency should be disbanded. It’s led by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

FEMA staffing is only one problem the GAO found with disaster response. Others include the fragmentation of federal disaster response across more than 30 entities and a complex process for individuals to get emergency help after a disaster.

“Survivors face numerous challenges receiving needed aid, including lengthy and complex application review processes,” the GAO said, echoing a concern that has been raised for years. “Reforming the federal government’s approach to disaster recovery and reducing fragmentation could improve service delivery to disaster survivors.”

Numerous federal entities provide disaster aid, including the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and the Small Business Administration.

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When I was 17 in the late 1980s, I fell in love with a boy from work. He was 19 and from another country and when our work time was over, he had to fly home. What followed were many love letters (international phone calls were far too expensive then), every one of which I saw as fiercely romantic.

One day about six months into the relationship, a letter was waiting for me at home. My long-distance boyfriend often addressed letters with silly names or in-jokes. This time, he addressed the letter to “Mrs. [his last name].” My mother got very serious. She told me that this was possessive and too serious for our age, and that I had to write him a letter to break up with him immediately. I did, but I was still in love. Secretly, I kept writing the letters. I thought being “Mrs.” was romantic, and my mom was overreacting.

At age 21, after five years of separation by an ocean, I started an in-person relationship with him. It was deep and real love—or so I thought. By 24, I was being so emotionally abused and physically threatened, I barely knew my own name. This is how it happens. I was frozen and couldn’t seem to reconcile the dichotomy of my own life. I was deeply in love but was very confused by these behaviors because he would tell me how much he loved me while he was doing them. I was smart and educated. I knew about domestic violence, and I knew what he was doing was wrong, but no one had told me how to actually handle it—the frozenness, the confusion, and the gaslighting. Mostly, what I’d learned from a society that blames women for staying is that, if I stayed or still loved him, the abuse was my own fault.

Intimate partner violence is the number one cause of serious injury or death of women ages 18 to 24 in America, according to a 2018 statement released by the American College of Surgeons, and homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the U.S. If it’s shocking to you to hear that, then it’s time to pay attention. This trend also applies to adolescent girls, who are being murdered by their intimate partners in increasingly dangerous numbers. A study from 2019 looked at homicide rates for teens and 7% were murdered by their partner, whether current or former.

Adolescence is a critical developmental time when young people are more vulnerable to societal pressures. A rise in misogyny (such as the recent explosion of “your body, my choice” as a slogan boys and men say), a marked increase in forced and violent sex for girls, and a culture that views rape prevention as a girls’ issue versus a boys’ issue is setting the stage for the already-large teen mental health epidemic to worsen.

Teen dating violence (TDV) is a type of intimate partner violence (IPV) that includes behaviors such as “physical violence, sexual violence and coercion, psychological aggression, and stalking” and is associated with an increased risk for further intimate partner violence, depression and anxiety, mental and physical illness, substance use, and suicidal ideation. In 2025, at least 1 in 3 girls in the U.S. have experienced teen dating violence according to the organization Love Is Respect, and it’s affecting them at dangerously high levels.

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Hmmmmm… Hood->Robin Administration?

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CLIMATEWIRE | Lawmakers and officials from Western states are warning that President Donald Trump’s firings and funding freezes will leave the region woefully unprepared for the coming wildfire season, just two months after blazes ravaged Los Angeles.

The new administration’s moves to terminate nearly 10 percent of Forest Service personnel and pause grants intended to reduce the risk and intensity of fires have left states scrambling to make sure they don’t lose valuable preparation time. The uncertainty is coming during a period when the Forest Service and state governments would normally be doing crucial work such as creating fire breaks, carrying out controlled burns, thinning trees and clearing brush.

“These cuts are clobbering rural Oregon,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). “This is going to make it extraordinarily difficult to get a balanced approach on natural resources.”

The pullbacks represent a major change from the Biden administration, which poured more than $3 billion into wildfire prevention. They are also notable given that Trump has repeatedly faulted Western officials for not doing enough on forest management dating back to his first term.

Record drought, heat waves and sluggish forest management in both state and federal forests have exacerbated fires in recent decades: An average of 3 million acres burned nationwide each year in the 1990s, but now, the average is nearly 7 million, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center.

While the Agriculture Department, which oversees the Forest Service, now appears ready to unfreeze some wildfire mitigation funding, cuts have stalled active forest management projects, delayed wildfire training, and raised concerns that bipartisan legislation already passed this Congress could fail to help. And even though direct firefighters are exempt from the Forest Service cuts, many of the 3,400 workers fired at the agency supported in trail maintenance, fuels reduction and other forestry projects just as summer hirings would start in preparation for wildfire season.

“The threat of these changes is significant,” said Vicki Christiansen, who served as Forest Service chief during Trump’s first term. “$40 million in savings now just to have an additional $4 billion in wildfire expenses is crazy.”

The Forest Service is responsible for some 193 million acres of forests and grasslands — the majority of it in the West. Federal reductions could force states with large swaths of Forest Service land to do more to manage or respond to incidents.

State and local officials in Nevada, California, Utah and Washington state said they are now looking to their own state budgets to cobble together resources. Utah and Oregon already are working to expand state forest management funding. Other states, like Washington, are trimming their own budgets and have no surplus to use to make up for a gap in federal funding. Every state said there is no way they can fully patch the hole left by the federal government.

Nevada State Forester and Firewarden Kacey KC said a big worry is staffing emergency management teams with dispatchers, technicians and GIS workers, none of whom would likely qualify for the exemption for direct firefighters but are still a vital part of wildfire prevention and mitigation. KC, who was appointed by former Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval and works in a state where 86 percent of the land is federally owned, is already talking about a “Plan B” to exercise her agency’s authority to make emergency hires.

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Hmmmmm… Hood->Robin Administration?

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Gender expression can come in many forms, but for a kid I’ll call Sarah, it first came in the form of a pair of owl pajamas. They were soft cotton, with wide-eyed owls cavorting on a pink background, and at 18 months old, Sarah would wriggle her way out of her “boy” clothes and into the pajamas as soon as she got home from preschool, toddling back into the living room pleased as punch with herself. “She was so, so determined,” says Sarah’s parent Ingrid (who has asked in this article to go by her middle name). “Like, ‘No, this is actually what I want.’”

At age two, Sarah came across a rack of dresses hanging outside a store and tried to put one on right there on the sidewalk (“You look beautiful,” an older woman said in passing, to Ingrid’s relief). At three, according to Ingrid, Sarah began to “socially transition herself,” asking to grow her hair out, gravitating in the aisles of Target toward sparkly dresses in hues of Pepto-Bismol pink and to anything having to do with unicorns. In kindergarten, Sarah said she wanted to change her pronouns. In first grade, she said she wanted to change her name. Somewhere along the way, her parents went to see some specialists to ask for advice on how to handle what was clearly not just a phase: “We were like, ‘Well, this thing seems to be a thing. What do we do to not mess her up?’ And they were like, ‘Just give her space, make sure she’s safe, and let her lead.’ And so that’s what we’ve [done].” 

They also began to join listservs for the families of transgender children, tapping into a network of fellow New York City parents who had experience navigating some of the parenting concerns specific to raising a trans child. There were meetups and playdates and support groups. There was also information about medical providers and timelines. It was understood that not every trans child would want or require medical care — especially when it comes to a generation of children that, more than previous generations, understand gender to be both a spectrum and a construct. But it was also understood that trans kids were significantly more likely than their cisgender peers to die by suicide. A national 2022 study conducted by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention, found that more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered suicide in that year alone. Another study, published this past September in the journal Nature Human Behavior, linked those rates not to something inherent in trans identity but instead to trans acceptance in the broader culture: In states that passed anti-trans legislation, including bans on gender-affirming care, suicide attempts by transgender teenagers could increase by as much as 72 percent in the years after the ban went into effect. It stood to reason that for children who experience gender dysphoria, or distress over the disconnect between their biological sex and their gender identity, even offering them possibility of not having to grow into an unwelcome body could buttress their mental health. Sarah’s parents had noticed that each step she took in transitioning seemed to calm her, to make her more “settled,” as Ingrid puts it. As Sarah approached the age of puberty, they began to carefully broach the subject of what she could expect. “I mean, who wants to talk about puberty with their parents?” asks Ingrid. “We were just like, ‘You’re going to enter this thing called puberty pretty soon. Right now, your puberty will have you end up in a boy body, but there’s these different options. If you want to, we can pause it until you figure out if you want a girl body or a boy body.’” Sarah was adamant that she already knew: She was not a boy; she did not want to end up in a boy body. Her parents booked an informational appointment with the Transgender Youth Health Program at NYU Langone’s children’s hospital, one of the world’s most well-regarded gender-affirming-care practices at one of the world’s premier medical institutions.

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Lindsey Wasson/AP

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Hmmmmm… Hood->Robin Administration?

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Good morning. Hallam Bullock here, writing to you from London. Our US team is observing Presidents’ Day, so I’m bringing you a shorter version of the newsletter.

In case you missed it, Jamie Dimon’s comments on work-from-home last week went viral. In a leaked recording, the JPMorgan CEO explained to staffers why remote work is a detriment to his company — using language that was at times colorful and confrontational.

However, copies of the audio obtained by BI suggest that remote work was just a sliver of the conversation. Dimon also addressed a wide range of issues, including the impact of AI, reducing corporate bureaucracy, and the bank’s fintech failings.

In today’s big story, many federal workers have expressed outrage and despair at President Donald Trump’s workforce mandates — but what do the ones who voted for him think? BI spoke with four Trump-supporting federal workers to find out.

The big story

Trump’s workforce blitz

“It shouldn’t have come to this.”

That’s what one federal worker who voted for Trump told BI amid the president’s ongoing efforts to reduce the federal workforce. And no, they haven’t changed their stance on supporting Trump.

As of last Thursday, about 75,000 federal employees had accepted the president’s buyout offer. That’s about 3.75% of the federal workforce, inching closer to the White House’s goal of reducing the federal staff count by 5 – 10%.

It’s a strange position to imagine yourself in: voting for a president who, weeks into his new administration, places your livelihood at risk.

But this is the exact scenario some federal workers are now facing.

Four of those workers spoke to BI’s Ana Altchek and Ayelet Sheffey about how they’re feeling.

“I voted for Trump. I wanted to see some positive change,” one federal employee of 17 years said. But they didn’t know that change could put their job in jeopardy.

Some of the workers BI spoke with are still standing by the overall mission to reduce government waste.

“They’re uncovering a lot of waste and abuse there,” one worker said. “I just can’t believe some of the stuff that they’re finding which is a total waste of taxpayer money.”

Elon Musk’s DOGE has been targeting federal agencies it deems wasteful to lower government spending. In the weeks since Trump took office for the second time, DOGE has applied Silicon Valley’s “slash and burn” mentality to multiple agencies, including USAID.

Some of the workers BI spoke with are still standing by the overall mission to reduce government waste.

“They’re uncovering a lot of waste and abuse there,” one worker said. “I just can’t believe some of the stuff that they’re finding which is a total waste of taxpayer money.”

Elon Musk’s DOGE has been targeting federal agencies it deems wasteful to lower government spending. In the weeks since Trump took office for the second time, DOGE has applied Silicon Valley’s “slash and burn” mentality to multiple agencies, including USAID.

Read everything the workers said here.

Many federal workers have expressed outrage and despair at President Donald Trump’s workforce mandates — but what about those who filled in the bubble next to his name on the ballot?

“I voted for Trump. I wanted to see some positive change,” a federal employee of 17 years told Business Insider, adding that they didn’t know that change would put them at risk of losing their job.

While some of the hot-button issues Trump is tackling, such as eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and cutting spending, may resonate with right-leaning workers, policies such as remote work and cutting the government’s head count haven’t traditionally been partisan matters.

As of Thursday, about 75,000 federal employees had accepted the president’s buyout offer. That’s about 3.75% of the federal workforce, inching closer to the White House’s goal of reducing the federal staff count by 5% to 10%.

Four federal employees who said they voted for Trump spoke with Business Insider about their feelings on his approach to the federal workforce. BI granted their requests for anonymity and verified their identities.

Trump supporters said they stood by the cost-cutting mission

While the federal workers BI spoke with said they didn’t fully support certain policies affecting them, some stood by the overall mission to reduce government waste.

One federal worker said they didn’t understand why some government agencies had so many employees.

“They’re uncovering a lot of waste and abuse there,” the worker said about the Department of Government Efficiency. “I just can’t believe some of the stuff that they’re finding which is a total waste of taxpayer money.”

Elon Musk, who leads DOGE — a Trump-created commission aimed at slashing government waste — has vowed to target a range of existing federal programs, including expired spending authorization that goes to veterans’ healthcare and NASA.

“This is the reason why people voted for Trump,” the worker said. “Because what is the government doing? Why aren’t they forthcoming? Why? People want answers.”

While the worker said they understood why some people might be annoyed to return to the office full time, they said that “somebody needs to put their foot down.”

Another federal worker said they disagreed with focusing on federal workers without better understanding the various programs and the need for federal employees to keep them going. That said, they added that they saw value in looking at where money was being spent and that they were overall supportive of Trump.

For example, the worker said they supported the administration’s approach with the US Agency for International Development. Trump and Musk have both called USAID out over wastefulness and supporting liberal causes. A federal judge blocked Trump’s funding freeze on the agency and his attempt to put thousands of workers on leave.

USAID spent $32.5 billion in global aid in 2024. About a quarter of the money went toward humanitarian efforts, another quarter went to health and population initiatives, and additional funds were directed toward governance and administrative expenses.

“I think overall we’re going to end up better off with him as a president,” the worker said.

Some had concerns about targeting the federal workforce

The 17-year federal employee said they voted for Trump thinking he would help the economy and struggling Americans. Now, the worker said, they feel as if the president is making things worse by putting federal workers’ livelihoods at risk.

“Do Trump and Musk know the whole situation of every federal building? I don’t think they’re making proper choices,” the worker said.

They added that while they agreed with Trump’s goal to cut government waste, they didn’t agree that cutting the federal workforce and requiring all employees to return to the office full time was an effective approach.

Another federal worker said they voted for Trump twice and “had hope that he would fulfill his promises,” but that hope disappeared after the administration’s deferred resignation offers. The Office of Personnel Management offered federal employees the option to resign and receive pay through September, but this offer is now on pause because of ongoing litigation.

One worker said the way they’d gone about the federal workforce changes was a “little disconcerting.” The worker said that while they understood Musk was only there for so long, it seemed as if they were “getting rid of people very quickly.”

The worker also had concerns about returning to work in person because they moved out of DC, saying it would be a financial burden to return to the office.

A federal worker said they reached out to their senators and congressman and told them that “demonizing the federal workforce is not good.” They said federal workers have performance reviews, meet with supervisors, and act in compliance with their mission.

“Don’t take it out on us just because of the bad behavior of the prior administration,” the worker said, adding that they hadn’t changed their stance on supporting Trump because “it shouldn’t have come to this.”

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President-elect Donald Trump said he is not concerned about the potential conflicts of interest posed by Elon Musk’s work on DOGE. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

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Few voters likely expected President Donald Trump in the first weeks of his administration to slash billions of dollars from the nation’s premier federal cancer research agency.

But funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health were presaged in Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” a conservative plan for governing that Trump said he knew nothing about during his campaign. Now, his administration has embraced it.

The 922-page playbook compiled by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington, says “the NIH monopoly on directing research should be broken” and calls for capping payments to universities and their hospitals to “help reduce federal taxpayer subsidization of leftist agendas.”

Universities, now slated to face sweeping cuts in agency grants that cover these overhead costs, say the policy will destroy ongoing and future biomedical science. A federal judge temporarily halted the cuts to medical research on Feb. 10 after they drew legal challenges from medical institutions and 22 states.

Project 2025 as Prologue

The rapid-fire adoption of many of Project 2025’s objectives indicates that Trump acolytes — many of its contributors were veterans of his first term, and some have joined his second administration — have for years quietly laid the groundwork to disrupt the national health system. That runs counter to Trump’s insistence on the campaign trail, after Democrats made Project 2025 a potent attack line, that he was ignorant of the document.

“I have no idea what Project 2025 is,” Trump said Oct. 31 at a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, one of many times he disclaimed any knowledge of the plan. “I’ve never read it, and I never will.”

But because his administration is hewing to the Heritage Foundation-compiled playbook so closely, opposition groups and some state Democratic leaders say they’re able to act swiftly to counter Trump’s moves in court.

They’re now preparing for Trump to act on Project 2025 recommendations for some of the nation’s largest and most important health programs, including Medicaid and Medicare, and for federal health agencies.

“There has been a lot of planning on the litigation side to challenge the executive orders and other early actions from a lot of different organizations,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group. “Project 2025 allowed for some preparation.”

The plan, for example, calls for state flexibility to impose premiums for some beneficiaries, work requirements, and lifetime caps or time limits on Medicaid coverage for some enrollees in the program for low-income and disabled Americans, which could lead to a surge in the number of uninsured after the Biden administration vastly expanded the program’s coverage.

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