A 10-year-old Minnesota girl has been released from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after a month in detention in Dilley, Texas, school officials said, one of hundreds of children detained at the facility.
Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano, a fourth-grader, and her mother walked free from the immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, on Tuesday night. Elizabeth is a student in the school district of Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, which is also home to five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was released from Dilley over the weekend amid widespread outrage about his detention.
Elizabeth and her mother were taken by federal agents on 6 January, the first of five students from the Columbia Heights district to be detained by ICE during the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown in the region, school leaders said. The family, originally from Ecuador, has an active asylum case, school officials said.
The girl and her mother were at a Texas shelter as of Wednesday morning, a family attorney said, and would be heading back to Minnesota to reunite with her father.
There have been growing concerns about Elizabeth’s health as federal officials confirmed that Dilley, which houses families, is now the site of a measles outbreak. Hundreds of children are detained at the facility.
Carolina Gutierrez, principal secretary at Highland elementary, Elizabeth’s school, has been assisting the family and told the Guardian on Wednesday that the girl was experiencing flu-like symptoms and her mother had broken out in hives, but they had not yet received a medical assessment.
“I’m just excited to see Elizabeth come back to school. I’m extremely happy and relieved, and we have to continue advocating and speaking up for other people to come home,” Gutierrez said.
Elizabeth and her mother had been picked up by agents on the way to school, and the girl was able to call her father during the arrests, acting as an interpreter for her family and telling her dad that officers would drop her off at school, Gutierrez said.
The father has said he rushed to the elementary school and waited for hours with school staff, but Elizabeth never arrived. By the end of that day, Elizabeth and her mother had both already been flown to Texas. Tracy Xiong, a school social worker, recounted the episode at a press conference on Tuesday with Tim Walz, Minnesota’s governor, saying the father had been inconsolable after his family was picked up, according to the Sahan Journal, a local news outlet.
“That image of Elizabeth’s father will stay with me forever,” Xiong said. “I watched him sit in his car, bury his head in his hands, and cry uncontrollably.”
When Elizabeth was detained, she assumed she was being sent back to Ecuador, Gutierrez said: “When she was flown to Texas, she thought her dreams were over. She dreams of being a doctor. She’s pleaded with her dad: ‘Get me out of here. I want to go back home. I want to go back to school. I want to eat good food.’ … Mom and Dad didn’t understand why they were being treated like this. They were like, we didn’t do anything wrong.”
Gutierrez, who has been working with the father and raising funds for the family, said: “He has been sad and desperate for answers. He hasn’t been able to sleep. He doesn’t have an appetite. He felt very helpless.”
Elizabeth’s case was assigned to the US judge Fred Biery, who had ordered Liam’s release. The judge argued that the boy’s case “has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children”.
Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, in San Antonio, Texas, on 31 January after being released from the Dilley detention center. Photograph: Joaquin Castro via AP
On Monday, Biery issued an order blocking the removal or transfer of Elizabeth and her mother and giving the federal government five days to respond to the family’s release petition.
Their sudden release the following day came as something of a surprise, said Bobby Painter, managing attorney with the Texas Immigration Law Council, a non-profit representing the family.
Elizabeth and her mother should never have been detained, he said: “This didn’t have to happen. This is a family going through the process as it was intended. They presented at the border as asylum seekers and were admitted to the country. That case is still ongoing. They did everything they were supposed to do and still found themselves detained and separated.”
Painter said Elizabeth was an “avid reader” and “really wants to get back into that routine”.
In the wake of growing backlash against the detention of Elizabeth, Liam, and other Minnesota students, including a two-year-old girl, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said it gives arrested parents an opportunity to have their children detained with them or placed into the custody of another adult.
But Columbia Heights officials have countered that agents have made it difficult or impossible for parents to place their children with others during often chaotic arrests.
The DHS defended the detention of the girl in a statement, saying that after Elizabeth’s mother was arrested, “officers allowed her to make phone calls to place the child in the custody of someone she designated”. The DHS’s statement said: “She failed to find a trusted adult to care for the child, so officers kept the family together for the welfare of the child.”
That account is contradicted by the assertions of her family and school officials, who said the father was ready to take custody, and the DHS did not respond to questions about the discrepancies.
The DHS also said Elizabeth’s mother had a “final order of removal”. Painter disputed that characterization, saying one judge had denied asylum, but the family filed a timely appeal, which is still pending, meaning there is no final removal order.
Brian Todd, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, the private prison corporation that runs Dilley, declined to comment on Elizabeth’s case and the measles outbreak, saying in an email that CoreCivic has doctors and mental health professionals on staff who “meet the highest standards of care”. Dilley, Todd said, provides residents a “continuum of health care services, including screening, prevention, health education, diagnosis and treatment”.
Liam’s case received international attention after his photo went viral, but his case is not unique, advocates say.
ICE booked about 3,800 minors into immigrant family detention from January to October 2025, including children as young as one or two years old, according to a Guardian analysis of detention data.
“Family detention is very traumatic for children, even for relatively short periods,” Painter said. “Children should not be detained under any circumstances, period. The entire practice of family detention is immoral and bad policy, and I hope there is continued public attention on this until we don’t have any more kids in this position.”
Gutierrez said the community had stepped up to defend families, but that the detention of Elizabeth and others had taken a toll on families: “The trauma is following these kids into classrooms. The students fear for themselves and their classmates. Every day, they wonder if they are going to see their classmates tomorrow.”
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Elizabeth Caisaguano. Photograph: Columbia Heights school district
In the long-running power struggle between the legislative and executive branches, a House Republican’s success this week at forcing a former president to agree to be deposed in a congressional investigation counted as a triumph for Congress.
The victory of Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the chairman of the Oversight Committee, in a monthslong battle with Bill and Hillary Clinton over testifying on Capitol Hill in his panel’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation marked a singular moment.
No former president has ever been compelled to testify to Congress under subpoena.
Members of Congress don’t necessarily think that is a good thing; they want the ability to bring in former presidents when they are relevant witnesses and may have something meaningful to say. And Mr. Comer’s move was a rare power play by a Republican lawmaker at a time when the G.O.P.-led House and Senate have ceded much of their power to the White House.
But his accomplishment also amounted to a remarkable use of government power to target a political adversary — the kind seen more often in autocratic societies where a peaceful transfer of power is not a given because leaders fear ending up in prison after leaving office. And it was one that some experts said further chipped away at the country’s democratic norms.
“It’s something we would do in a banana republic,” said the historian Douglas Brinkley. “The depositions will be controlled by Comer. The lighting could be odd, or sketchy, to make the Clintons look like criminals. It will generate conspiracy stories and they will try to show that the Democrats are the party of corruption, not the Republicans.”
Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview that, “like all powers of Congress or any other branch, these are powers that can be abused. We’re living in a period of spectacular abuse of power.”
Yet Democrats saw a silver lining in Mr. Comer’s move, which they said had given them new leeway to target President Trump and his family members down the line once the Democrats regain power in Congress and Mr. Trump is no longer in office.
“There’s no question that Oversight Democrats will want to speak to Donald Trump and others,” Representative Robert Garcia of California, the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, said in an interview. “That is a precedent that has now been set by Comer and House Republicans. If you watch President Trump’s remarks, it’s pretty clear he understands that.”
On Tuesday night in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump did not crow about the Clintons’ predicament, nor did he acknowledge that when it comes to Mrs. Clinton, he for years encouraged his crowds to call to “lock her up.” Instead, he expressed concern.
“I think it’s a shame, to be honest,” Mr. Trump told reporters of the Clintons’ being forced to testify. “I always liked him. Her? Yeah, she’s a very capable woman.”
He added, “I hate to see it, in many ways. I hate to see it, but then look at me — they went after me.”
Mr. Trump has been fairly transparent for months about what he thinks about the Epstein saga. And the spectacle of the Clintons appearing on Capitol Hill in an ongoing inquiry into Mr. Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019, only keeps alive a story that the president has long made clear he wants to move on from.
But for years, he has directed Republicans to target his political enemies, and to only investigate Democrats. In dangling the threat of criminal charges against the Clintons to secure their cooperation, Mr. Comer has followed through. His main investigations have targeted two of the last three Democratic presidents, and three of the last Democratic presidential nominees.
It was Mr. Comer who summoned Hunter Biden to testify in a House impeachment inquiry against his father, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
But pushing his case against the Clintons to the point where they capitulated to all of his demands put Mr. Comer in uncharted territory. And it’s not clear that it is where he or Mr. Trump necessarily planned to end up.
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Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, at the Capitol on Tuesday, had been trying for months to get Bill and Hillary Clinton to testify in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Credit…Eric Lee for The New York Times
When a friend messaged me two days ago about Clawdbot—a new open-source AI agent that has since been renamed OpenClaw—I expected yet another disappointing “assistant.” But it was already a viral sensation, with social media testimonies calling it “AI with hands” because it actually interacts with your files and software.
OpenClaw is free and lives locally on your device. Many users are installing it on Mac mini computers that they leave on 24/7. Paired with OpenClaw’s lobster logo, viral meme threads about the bot resemble the fused feeds of an Apple vendor and a seafood restaurant.
When I set up OpenClaw, it asked for a name, a personality (such as “AI,” “robot,” or “ghost in the machine”), and a vibe (such as “sharp,” “warm,” “chaotic,” or “calm”). I picked “Cy,” “AI assistant,” and “sharp and efficient.” I chose Claude, Anthropic’s flagship AI model, as its brain (ChatGPT is also an option). I then connected Cy to WhatsApp and Telegram so my new assistant and I could communicate.
My online life is already streamlined, and I had no pressing needs for Cy, so I called my friend who got me into this. He was sitting in a sauna he’d installed under his stairs, texting with his OpenClaw, “Samantha.” The assistant was generating an audiobook for him. He advised me to ask Cy for help anytime a task came up.
Later, I needed voice memos transcribed and forwarded them to Cy. The assistant downloaded transcription software from GitHub, installed it, and promptly did the transcriptions, saving them to a document on my desktop. I then instructed it to keep one of my coding projects running and to send me updates in audio messages that I could listen to while cooking. Each time it did, I replied with voice messages—no typing required. Then I asked it to call me to chat about projects. I told it to set up the software it would need to make calls and ring me when it was ready; then I went back to finishing this article.
To be clear, OpenClaw isn’t a new AI model. It’s open-source software that uses a preexisting AI model as its brain. OpenClaw gives that model so-called hands (or claws) so it can run commands and manipulate files. It also remembers what you’ve previously worked on and how you prefer to receive information.
Whereas a chatbot tells you what to do, OpenClaw does it. Unlike Siri and Alexa, which chirp about weather, music, and timers and only execute specific commands, OpenClaw follows almost any order like a well-paid mercenary. Send it a goal, and it will break the objective into steps, find tools, install them, troubleshoot them, and attempt to solve any obstacles that arise. You know those frustrated hours you spend searching labyrinthine websites or tinkering with stubborn software? OpenClaw takes over, alerting you only if it needs passwords or payment info. (My friend plans to give Samantha a preloaded credit card with a $100 limit as an experiment.)
Behind the lobster is a real person: Peter Steinberger, a longtime developer. He made OpenClaw to answer a simple question he asked on the Insecure Agents podcast: “Why don’t I have an agent that can look over my agents?” His now viral idea appears to successfully do just that. “An open-source AI agent running on my Mac mini server is the most fun and productive experience I’ve had with AI in a while,” wrote Federico Viticci, founder and editor in chief of MacStories, on Mastodon. People are using OpenClaw to send e-mails, summarize inbox contents, manage calendars, and book and check into flights, all from chat apps they already use. If OpenClaw can’t do something, giving it access to better tools often solves the issue.
Clawdbot was already racking up stars on GitHub (the assistant has garnered more than 116,000 as of this week) when Anthropic raised trademark concerns. Because “Clawdbot” was a riff on Claude, Anthropic asked that the former be renamed to avoid confusion. Steinberger leaned into the lobster theme: lobsters molt to grow, so he chose Moltbot. But he didn’t end up liking the name, so a few days later, he changed it again to OpenClaw.
Of course, Silicon Valley has been abuzz with talk about AI agents for years now. “Agents are not only going to change how everyone interacts with computers. They’re also going to upend the software industry, bringing about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to tapping on icons,” wrote Bill Gates in November 2023. But while agents like Claude Code are improving, we have yet to see such easy integration into workflows and daily life at OpenClaw’s scale.
But before you rush to install OpenClaw, consider the risks. Experts have warned that OpenClaw can expose sensitive information and bypass security boundaries. “AI agents tear all of that down by design,” said security specialist Jamieson O’Reilly to the Register. “They need to read your files, access your credentials, execute commands, and interact with external services. The value proposition requires punching holes through every boundary we spent decades building.”
This doesn’t mean you should fear OpenClaw. Just treat it like a new hire: give it minimum permissions, clear rules, and close supervision while trust is being established. You should also be alert to how others might use the assistant. Expect “Nigerian” prince scams to become more interactive and convincing.
As I was finishing this article, my phone rang. It was a Florida number. I answered, and a slightly robotic male voice said, “Hello, this is Cy.”
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The logo of Moltbot, now called OpenClaw, is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Gen-Zers have become the first generation since records began to be less intelligent than their parents, and an expert has uncovered the reason.
Click the link below the picture
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Gen-Zers have become the first generation since records began to be less intelligent than their parents, and an expert has uncovered the reason.
Dr Jared Cooney Horvath, a former teacher-turned-neuroscientist, revealed that the generation born between 1997 and the early 2010s has been cognitively stunted by their over-reliance on digital technology in school.
Since records have been kept on cognitive development in the late 1800s, Gen Z is now officially the first group to ever score lower than the generation before them, declining in attention, memory, reading, and math skills, problem-solving abilities, and overall IQ.
Horvath told the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that Gen Z intelligence dropped despite these teenagers and young adults spending more time in school than children did in the 20th century.
The cause, Horvath claimed, is directly tied to the increase in the amount of learning that is now carried out using what he called ‘educational technology’ or EdTech, which includes computers and tablets.
The neuroscientist explained that this generation has fallen behind because the human brain was never wired to learn from short clips seen online and reading brief sentences that sum up much larger books and complex ideas.
‘More than half of the time a teenager is awake, half of it is spent staring at a screen,’ Horvath told the New York Post.
‘Humans are biologically programmed to learn from other humans and from deep study, not flipping through screens for bullet point summaries.’
Gen Z, born approximately between 1997 and 2010, grew up during the age when digital devices were widely distributed in schools worldwide (stock image)
Horvath and other experts speaking to Congress explained that humans evolved to learn best through real human interaction, meaning face-to-face with teachers and peers, not from screens.
He added that screens disrupt the natural biological processes that build deep understanding, memory, and focus.
It is not about poor implementation, inadequate training, or the need for better apps in schools. Scientists said the technology itself was mismatched with how our brains naturally work, grow, and retain information.
Horvath, the director of LME Global, a group that shares brain and behavioral research with businesses and schools, said that data clearly show that cognitive abilities began to plateau and even decline around 2010.
The expert told senators that schools in general hadn’t changed much that year, and that human biology evolves too slowly for it to have been the reason.
‘The answer appears to be the tools we are using within schools to drive that learning,’ Horvath told lawmakers on January 15.
‘If you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly.’
He added that the US wasn’t the only country affected by digital cognitive decline, noting that his research covered 80 countries and showed a six-decade trend of poorer learning outcomes as more tech entered classrooms.
Moreover, kids using computers for just five hours a day specifically for their schoolwork scored noticeably lower than those who rarely or never used tech in class.
In the US, data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) uncovered that when states rolled out widespread one-to-one device programs, meaning each student gets their own device, scores often flattened or dropped quickly.
While centuries of data have shown that Gen Z has fallen off the path of constant human development, Horvath claimed that many teens and young adults were unaware of their struggles and were actually proud of their alleged intelligence.
‘Most of these young people are overconfident about how smart they are. The smarter people think they are, the dumber they actually are,’ he told the Post.
He noted that Gen Z has become so comfortable with consuming information outside of class through short, attention-escaping sentences and video clips, on platforms such as TikTok, that many schools have given in and now teach in this same manner.
‘What do kids do on computers? They skim. So rather than determining what do we want our children to do and gearing education towards that, we are redefining education to better suit the tool. That’s not progress, that is surrender,’ Horvath warned.
Education experts at the January hearing recommended imposing delays on giving children smartphones, bringing back flip phones instead for young children when needed, and taking nationwide action to normalize limits on tech in schools.
The group called the issue plaguing Gen Z a ‘societal emergency,’ and urged federal lawmakers to consider models like Scandinavia’s EdTech bans.
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Dr Jared Cooney Horvath (Pictured) revealed during a US Senate hearing that Gen Zers have become the first group in history to have a lower IQ than their parents.
Partial Shutdown: President Trump signed the bill ending the partial government shutdown on Tuesday afternoon, hours after it narrowly passed the House. The measure funds an array of agencies for the rest of the fiscal year but sets up crucial negotiations over the administration’s immigration crackdown. Democrats want new restrictions on federal agents, and the deal funded the Department of Homeland Security just until the end of next week. Mr. Trump and Democrats have roughly 10 days to strike a deal before regular funding for the Department of Homeland Security lapses. Read more ›
Colombian President: Mr. Trump met privately with President Gustavo Petro of Colombia at the White House. It was the first face-to-face encounter between two leaders who have spent months verbally attacking each other over the U.S. military raid in Venezuela and strikes on boats the White House said were carrying drugs. Read more ›
Clinton Testimony: Bill and Hillary Clinton asked to testify publicly in House Oversight Committee hearings on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, escalating their fight with Republicans a day before the House was set to vote to hold them in contempt of Congress. Read more ›
Partial Shutdown
Feb. 3, 2026, 5:03 p.m. ET16 minutes ago
Chris Cameron
In the Oval Office with reporters after signing the bill to end the government shutdown, Trump was pressed on Epstein’s association with Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, and Elon Musk. The president suggested that he had been too busy to address it.
“I have a lot of things I’m doing,” Trump said. “You mentioned two names, I’m sure they’re fine.”
Feb. 3, 2026, 5:01 p.m. ET17 minutes ago
Chris Cameron
President Trump adjusted his false claims that he had brought down prescription drug prices by 800 or 900 percent, saying instead that the deals he has struck with pharmaceutical companies would eventually bring prices down by “about 80 percent.”
Feb. 3, 2026, 5:00 p.m. ET18 minutes ago
Chris Cameron
Continuing his long streak of trying to steer attention away from his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Trump said that “a lot of Democrats are very much involved with Epstein,” and then immediately pivoted to say, “I’ll be honest with you, we have to get back to running the country.”
Feb. 3, 2026, 4:59 p.m. ET19 minutes ago
Erica L. Green
White House reporter
President Trump doubled down on his assertion that the federal government should oversee state elections, even after his press secretary attempted to walk back his comments that the Republican Party should “nationalize” elections. Trump asserted that there were several cities with election irregularities, for which there was no evidence. “Look at some of the places that horrible corruption on elections, and the federal government should not allow that,” Trump said. “The federal government should get involved.”
Feb. 3, 2026, 4:45 p.m. ET33 minutes ago
Erica L. Green
White House reporter
President Trump has signed the legislation ending the partial federal government shutdown. Before he signed the bill, he lamented how a longer shutdown, like the one that ended in November that lasted 43 days, would have harmed the economy. He also listed other accomplishments that the bill achieved, including ending “taxpayer subsidies for radical far left woke programming” on NPR and PBS, slashing funding for foreign aid organizations, and continuing funds for deportation flights. He also spent a considerable amount of time promoting First Lady Melania Trump’s initiative for foster youth, which is also funded in the bill, and also praised her new documentary.
Feb. 3, 2026, 2:29 p.m. ET3 hours ago
Catie Edmondson
Congressional reporter
Most House Democrats, 193 of them, voted against the spending deal on Tuesday, a reflection of how toxic funding the Department of Homeland Security and ICE has become in the party. Twenty-one supported it.
Twenty-one Republicans opposed the Trump-backed measure.
Colombian President
Feb. 3, 2026, 5:06 p.m. ET12 minutes ago
Erica L. Green
White House reporter
President Trump, speaking with reporters in the Oval Office after signing the bill to end the government shutdown, said that his meeting with Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, had been good, though he has in the past accused Petro of being an “illegal drug leader.” When asked if the two came to any agreement on counternarcotic efforts, Trump said they had. “We worked on it, and we got along very well,” he said. He added that the two were “working on some other things too, including sanctions.”
Petro followed up his last post on X with a new one showing a signed copy of President Trump’s 1987 book “The Art of the Deal.” Colombia’s ambassador to the United States had been pictured carrying the book into the meeting of the two presidents in the White House earlier in the day.
In his post, Petro jokes that he doesn’t know enough English to understand what Trump said in his dedication — but what Trump wrote is quite clear and simple: “You are great.”
Petro is expected to speak to reporters soon, and Colombians are waiting in hopes that Petro says the meeting went as well as his posts seem to portray.
Colombians rally during their president’s meeting with Trump.
Thousands of Colombians rallied around the country on Tuesday to support President Gustavo Petro as he met at the White House with President Trump, a visit that appeared to have gone smoothly despite past tensions between the two leaders.
Colombian officials had stressed that the meeting would focus on cooperation between the two governments on combating drug trafficking.
Petro just posted a picture on X of a signed note he received from President Trump. The note says: “Gustavo — A great honor. I love Colombia.”The White House just posted an image on X of President Gustavo Petro of Colombia sitting beside President Trump and officials, including Vice President JD Vance.
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President Trump at a bill signing in the Oval Office on Tuesday. Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Americans are living longer than ever but still well behind the life expectancy of other developed countries
The latest death data for the U.S. are in, and they paint an optimistic picture: The average American born in 2024 is now expected to live to age 79. That life expectancy is more than a half-year longer than it was in 2023 and great than in any prior year going back to 1900. It was still lower than that of most other developed countries, however.
The projection, released on Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics, offers a glimmer of hope after COVID and overdose deaths pushed the U.S.’s average life expectancy down to 76.4 years in 2021, a drop of 2.4 years since 2019. Even so, there were 47,539 deaths involving COVID in 2024 and about 87,000 deaths from drug overdoses between October 2023 and September 2024, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
The new report also showed a decrease in age-adjusted death rates, from about 751 deaths per 100,000 Americans in 2023 to about 722 in 2024.
“The rise in life expectancy is welcome news, and it is good to see that it was widespread across race, ethnicity and gender,” says Philip Cohen, a sociologist and demographer at the University of Maryland, College Park.
By 2024, Americans were still dying in the largest numbers from heart disease, cancer, and unintentional injuries, in that order, though suicide replaced COVID as the 10th most common cause of mortality. Still, the age-adjusted death rate for all top 10 causes of death also decreased, with the biggest drop seen for unintentional injuries—from 62.3 deaths per 100,000 Americans in 2023 to 53.3 in 2024.
Though the news may be cause for celebration, there’s plenty of room for improvement. Andrew Stokes, who studies population health and mortality at Boston University, says he’s “concerned that the post-COVID recovery creates an appearance of momentum but obscures a larger story around stagnating and decelerating improvements that became apparent in the decade prior to the pandemic.” The causes of this stagnation, Stokes explains, include cardiometabolic risk factors such as high blood pressure and obesity, whose rates will likely grow.
In most other developed countries, the life expectancy in 2024 was in the low to mid-80s, according to the United Nations. “There are still critical problems in the U.S. public health profile. It should not be big news when the life expectancy rises, which happens every year in every other developed country,” Cohen says, adding that U.S. infant mortality showed no change in 2024.
“And overall…, the U.S. has a shockingly low life expectancy,” he says. “We may be back above where we were before the pandemic, but it is too little, too late, as we were already trending much lower than countries with comparable economic profiles.”
Cohen and Stokes are both worried that U.S. health care is moving in the wrong direction, “with more people losing health care coverage and less support for basic public health among the population,” Cohen says.
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Amanda Montañez; Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (data)
Sunday, February 1, marked the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, when the best and brightest in the music industry gathered in Los Angeles to fête the greatest albums and performances of the last year.
So, who walked away with hardware? Kendrick Lamar—the most-nominated artist of the night, with nine nods—was also, fittingly, the winningest, taking home five Grammys, including record of the year (for “Luther”) and best rap album (for GNX). He was followed by Bad Bunny, who claimed three awards (including album of the year, for Debí Tirar Más Fotos), and the likes of Lady Gaga and Kehlani, who won two each.
See the winners from some of the top categories—distributed during the primetime ceremony at the Crypto.com Arena and at the Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony, where 80-something of the night’s 95 awards were announced at the Peacock Theater beforehand—right here.
Album of the Year
WINNER: Debí Tirar Más Fotos, Bad BunnySwag, Justin Bieber Man’s Best Friend, Sabrina Carpenter Let God Sort Em Out, Clipse, Pusha T, and Malice Mayhem, Lady Gaga GNX, Kendrick Lamar Mutt, Leon Thomas Chromakopia, Tyler, the CreatorRecord of the Year
Record of the Year
WINNER: “Luther,” Kendrick Lamar with SZA
“DtMF,” Bad Bunny “Manchild,” Sabrina Carpenter “Abracadabra,” Lady Gaga “Wildflower,” Billie Eilish “Anxiety,” Doechii “The Subway,” Chappell Roan “Apt.,” Rosé and Bruno Marsong of the Year
Song of the Year
WINNER: “Wildflower,” Billie Eilish
“Abracadabra,” Lady Gaga “Anxiety,” Doechii “Apt.,” Rosé and Bruno Mars “DtMF,” Bad Bunny “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters, Huntr/x (Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami) “Luther,” Kendrick Lamar with SZA “Manchild,” Sabrina Carpenter
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Photo: Getty Images
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Click the link belowfor the complete list and videos.:
In November of 2024, two weeks after voters returned President Donald Trump to office, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. summoned employees of the U.S. Supreme Court for an unusual announcement. Facing them in a grand conference room beneath ornate chandeliers, he requested they each sign a nondisclosure agreement promising to keep the court’s inner workings secret.
The chief justice acted after a series of unusual leaks of internal court documents, most notably of the decision overturning the right to abortion, and news reports about ethical lapses by the justices. Trust in the institution was languishing at a historic low. Debate was intensifying over whether the black box institution should be more transparent.
Instead, the chief justice tightened the court’s hold on information. Its employees have long been expected to stay silent about what they witness behind the scenes. But starting that autumn, in a move that has not been previously reported, the chief justice converted what was once a norm into a formal contract, according to five people familiar with the shift.
Over the years, journalists and authors have sought to penetrate the court, and the justices have tried varying methods to guard its secrets. Some generations of clerks, but not others, said they were asked to sign a different kind of confidentiality pledge.
The New York Times has not reviewed the new agreements. But people familiar with them said they appeared to be more forceful and understood them to threaten legal action if an employee revealed confidential information. Clerks and members of the court’s support staff signed them in 2024, and new arrivals have continued to do so, the people said.
A spokeswoman for the court declined to comment about the nondisclosure agreements. She also did not respond to a question about whether the justices have been asked to sign the contracts.
The people who described the agreements spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about court matters.
The justices are accustomed to controlling what the public knows about their work, sealing nearly everything but their oral arguments and written opinions behind a high wall of secrecy. Courts are excluded from the open records laws that require many other government bodies to maintain and make available internal information.
The justices claim their papers belong to them, not the government or the public, and generally arrange to have them locked away until long after their deaths. The court releases no visitor logs to reveal who meets with the justices.
But in 2022, in a shock to many at the court, someone leaked a draft of the court’s decision overturning the federal right to abortion to Politico, which published the document weeks before the justices had intended to make it public. The court conducted an investigation of its staff but mostly spared the justices, and the source was never publicly identified.
More recently, The Times has been regularly publishing stories illuminating the court’s inner workings, including accounts of sensitive debates among the justices.
In September 2024, The Times published an article describing how the chief justice pushed to grant President Trump broad immunity from prosecution. The article quoted from confidential memos by the chief justice and other members of the court who applauded his reasoning. Weeks later, the chief justice abruptly introduced the nondisclosure agreements, after the term had begun.
Before then, the chief justice — fond of referring to court members and employees as a family — relied on softer measures to preserve confidentiality, delivering a lecture to clerks at the start of each term and distributing a written code of conduct to them.
“The law clerk owes the appointing Justice, all other Justices, and the Court as an institution, duties of complete confidentiality, accuracy and loyalty,” instructed a 2018 version obtained by The Times, in which every page is labeled “confidential — for authorized internal use only.” The final page mentioned that breaches could lead to “appropriate sanctions,” but did not specify what those might be.
Some Supreme Court clerks who served in past decades also recall being asked to sign a document agreeing to abide by the court’s rules of confidentiality. A version of the agreement was introduced in the years after a former clerk published a rare tell-all book in 1998, they said. Those clerks said the documents did not amount to legal nondisclosure agreements.
Peter Kaplan, a spokesman for the federal courts, said other judges have also used those kinds of pledges in the past though he and others did not believe they were currently in widespread use. He said the Judiciary’s code of conduct includes confidentiality requirements.
Former clerks and academics, told by The Times about the Supreme Court’s new nondisclosure agreements, said they were a sign that the justices felt they could no longer rely on more informal pledges or longstanding norms to guard their internal workings from public view.
“They feel under the microscope and are unwilling to rely simply on trust,” said Jeffrey L. Fisher, co-director of the Supreme Court litigation clinic at Stanford Law School and a former clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens.
The switch to formal contracts is “a sign of the court’s own weakness” and the erosion of an internal compact, said Mark Fenster, a law professor at the University of Florida.
Court employees see the justices’ maneuverings, their compromises, tensions, and reversals. They read the memos and draft opinions that tell the story of how the law is really shaped. That includes the secret negotiations behind so-called “shadow docket” decisions, emergency orders the court issues often with little or no public rationale. Since Mr. Trump took office, the court has repeatedly issued such emergency orders, allowing him to implement his agenda.
Legal experts said the new agreements may be more effective at scaring employees than at legally binding them. Such agreements are tricky to enforce even in typical workplaces, they say, and most likely harder at the Supreme Court.
Nondisclosure agreements are a paradox, said Mr. Fenster, because seeking to enforce them risks further exposing the very information they are designed to conceal. “If the employer has to go to court to enforce a damages claim or an injunction, you’re in public,” he said.
For the nation’s highest court to bring legal action against an employee could create its own puzzle, he and others said. “Who would represent the Supreme Court?” Mr. Fenster asked.
The agreements may complicate another Supreme Court tradition: former clerks cashing in on what they learn there. Law firms now pay clerks signing bonuses as high as $500,000. The court requires them to avoid working on its own cases for two years. But after that, former clerks often spend the rest of their careers monetizing the knowledge they gained from working directly with the justices and also reading still-secret older case files, some said in interviews. While they are not supposed to share specifics with clients, plenty of details slip out, the former clerks said.
The debate over whether the Supreme Court is too secretive has played out since the nation’s earliest days. In 1821, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the institution was “smothering evidence” and that the nation needed to know more about the character of the justices, who are appointed for life.
Now, even as some observers of the court call for it to be more transparent, judges, including the justices, generally defend the longstanding tradition of keeping their decision-making private.
“I don’t see any need on the public’s part to see the internal deliberations,” said Paul J. Watford, a retired federal judge appointed by President Barack Obama. “What you’re trying to do as a judge in interacting with your colleagues is be completely open and wrestle with the difficult questions,” he added.
Leaks discourage judges from changing their minds and “undermine the ability of the court to function as a collegial body,” he said.
Justices have long warned of the dangers of opening their private deliberations, saying it could undermine their independence and lead to “lobbying pressures,” as Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist put it in a 1977 speech arguing for secrecy.
More recently, Justice Amy Coney Barrett relayed what Justice Antonin Scalia, her own former boss, used to tell new clerks. “He would say, If you ever leak information now or any point in your lifetime about what happened in this court, I will hunt you down and destroy your career,” she said in a talk last September at the University of Notre Dame.
She said she now gives her clerks a similar warning, though in less dire terms.
But once the decisions have been announced, and as time passes, the arguments for opacity fade, said Daniel Epps, a law professor at Washington University School of Law and former clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.
“The justices have immense power — they’re not elected. That power depends on our consent as a democracy, and we have some interest in seeing how they’re using their power and making decisions,” he said.
The secrecy allows the justices to dismiss criticism on the grounds that outsiders don’t know or understand what’s happening behind the scenes, said Nikolas Bowie, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
“Many of the court’s decisions are being made out of the public eye in a way that makes it difficult to assess or criticize them, or to understand what actually motivated the justices,” he said. “The lack of transparency makes it difficult for the broader public to know how to respond.”
He said it also allows the court to conceal weaknesses in its processes, including the justices’ reliance on clerks for legal reasoning and writing.
“If the public were aware of how much of the deliberations affecting millions of people are made by 27-year-olds after happy hour, they’d be shocked,” he said.
Ann E. Marimow contributed reporting. Julie Tate contributed research.
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Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in Washington last year.Credit…Eric Lee/The New York Times
Three decades ago, a famous study of Danish twins found that our genes “only moderately” influence how long we’re likely to live. Longevity, the authors estimated, was about 25 percent heritable, meaning the remaining three-quarters was determined by environmental factors and lifestyle choices, such as diet and exercise. Most subsequent studies found heritability to be somewhere in the 20 to 25 percent range, and 25 percent is now widely accepted. But a new study more than doubles it, suggesting lifespan may be more genetically fixed than we thought.
The study, which was published today in Science, arrives at this dramatic increase by reframing how scientists think about longevity. Rather than lumping all deaths together, the researchers distinguish between two kinds: “intrinsic mortality” comes from built-in biological aging processes and genetic mutations, whereas “extrinsic mortality” comes from outside causes, such as accidents and infection. Early longevity studies analyzed groups of people who were born in a time of widespread extrinsic mortality. That skewed previous estimates of heritability, says Uri Alon, a systems biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and senior author of the new paper.
To sort out the effects of intrinsic versus extrinsic deaths on longevity heritability, he and his colleagues ran computer simulations of human mortality, calibrated using data from those previous twin studies. When they dialed extrinsic mortality down to zero, leaving only deaths caused by intrinsic aging processes, lifespan heritability roughly doubled. Surprised, the team performed a sanity check—the researchers calculated heritability in the traditional way for twins born between 1900 and 1935, an era when rapid medical advances steadily curtailed premature death. From one generation to the next, Alon says, “they have lower and lower extrinsic mortality, and we see that their heritability goes up and up.” Taken together, the results indicate that intrinsic lifespan—how long a person lives if they don’t die of an external cause—is about 55 percent heritable.
Kaare Christensen, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Southern Denmark’s Danish Twin Research Center, who was not involved in the study, calls it “an interesting mathematical exercise” but notes that “in the real world, people die from both kinds of death.” There’s no actual discrepancy between the two heritability estimates, 25 and 55 percent, he says, because they’re measuring different things. Considering extrinsic mortality has declined so much in the past century, however, Alon argues that “the higher number is more relevant” for people born today. In reality, except for the most clear-cut cases of genetic causes (such as a genetic disease) or environmental ones (such as a lightning strike), it’s hard to separate extrinsic and intrinsic factors.
Whether or not the new estimate offers a more realistic picture of lifespan heritability, it highlights the importance of genetics in extending lives, says Sofiya Milman, a scientists who studies aging and longevity at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She’s one of many researchers who are trying to understand how centenarians’ unique biology protects them from age-related disease. “We’re hoping to create therapies that will mimic those intrinsic factors,” Milman says, “and make them accessible to people who didn’t win the genetic lottery.”
Most of us are unlikely to break 100 without the right set of genes—or at least drugs designed to replicate their beneficial effects. Until such treatments become available, though, a healthy lifestyle remains the best path to living longer. Even if exercise, sleep, and a balanced diet only contribute 45 percent to lifespan, evidence shows they can still add 10 years or more to a person’s life. “Those things will be helpful,” Milman says, “irrespective of your genetic makeup.”
A 5-year-old boy who became a viral symbol of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is back home after he and his father were released from an immigration facility in Texas on Saturday.
Liam Conejo Ramos was taken into custody with his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, on Jan. 20 after they encountered immigration agents upon returning home from Liam’s preschool in Minnesota. The case drew widespread condemnation and international headlines as the image of Liam in his blue hat and Spider-Man backpack spread online.
The father and son were transferred to a facility in Texas, where congressional representatives were able to make a visit to check on them. Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas told PBS News on Friday that Liam hadn’t been eating well and that “he’s been very depressed.”
Castro wrote Sunday on X that he picked up the father and son on Saturday night and escorted them back to Minnesota on Sunday morning.
“Liam is now home,” Castro said. “With his hat and his backpack. Thank you to everyone who demanded freedom for Liam. We won’t stop until all children and families are home.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., also posted a photo of herself with Liam, his father, and Castro on social media. She thanked Castro for traveling back to Minneapolis with them.
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery said in a scathing court order Saturday that the Trump administration must release Liam and his father by Tuesday.
“Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency,” Biery wrote in his order. “And the rule of law be damned.”
Marc Prokosch, the attorney representing the family, said they entered the United States in 2023 after having booked an appointment through the CBP One app, which was set up during the Biden administration to create an orderly way for migrants to enter the U.S. and reduce illegal border crossings.
“They were following all the established protocols, pursuing their claim for asylum, showing up for their court hearings, and pose no safety or flight risk. They never should have been detained,” Prokosch said.
The Department of Homeland Security said it was conducting a “targeted operation” to arrest Conejo Arias on Jan. 20 when Liam was also taken into custody. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin defended the agents’ actions, describing Liam as having been “abandoned” and saying the child’s mother refused multiple attempts to claim custody of him, even after officers assured her she would not be arrested.
Liam’s father agreed to keep his son with him, the department said.
Liam’s mother denied the Homeland Security account of events, saying federal agents tried to use her son as “bait” to get her out of the home.
Erika Ramos told Telemundo through tears that agents had her son knock on the door and tell her to come outside, but she was afraid she would be arrested, and her other child would be left alone.
“When I didn’t open the door, they took Liam to the ICE van,” she said. “It all seemed like an attempt to provoke me, as if they wanted me to run out desperately for my son so they could arrest me, as well.”
Her husband insisted she stay inside to avoid arrest and protect their family, Ramos said, “like any responsible husband and father.”
School board Chair Mary Granlund told reporters last week that she was on her way to pick up her own children that day when she saw what was happening at the home. She said she saw Liam’s mother inside and heard her husband yelling that she should not open the door, fearing immigration officers would go inside.
Granlund said someone told her that a representative from the district was present and could assume responsibility for Liam.
“There was ample opportunity to safely hand that child off to adults,” Granlund said.
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A 5-year-old boy and father return to Minnesota after release from immigration custody
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Elizabeth Caisaguano. Photograph: Columbia Heights school district
Amanda Montañez; Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (data)
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A 5-year-old boy and father return to Minnesota after release from immigration custody
James' World 2 
