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‘No Kings’ rallies draw crowds across US against Trump Adminstration

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Tens of thousands of people have joined “No Kings” protests across the U.S. against the war in Iran and President Donald Trump’s actions. (AP video by Mike Pesoli, Mark Vancleave, and Emily Wang)

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In big cities and small towns across the world, protesters gathered for thousands of rallies against President Trump and his policies and actions, with the self-stated goal of fighting dictatorship.

Demonstrators, including elected officials and community leaders, chanted defiant messages and carried homemade signs that condemned the war in Iran, threats against voting rights, and the White House’s mass deportation push, among other topics. Organized by a coalition of activist groups under the banner “No Kings,” it was the third such countrywide protest in the past 10 months.

No Kings organizers said eight million people took part, one of the largest protests in recent history. Their estimates in some cities were higher than those of local public safety officials. The New York Times is doing its own reporting on some of the turnout, but has not independently confirmed the numbers from the thousands of protest sites.

One of the largest rallies took place outside the Minnesota Capitol, where the singer Bruce Springsteen performed “Streets of Minneapolis,” which he wrote to protest the immigration crackdown that led to the fatal shootings of two American citizens by federal agents in January.

“They picked the wrong city,” Mr. Springsteen told the large crowd, adding that “these invasions of American cities will not stand.”

In Washington, D.C., some protesters marched to the military base where Stephen Miller, the White House official overseeing the mass deportation push, has been residing. Some chanted, “Stephen Miller’s got to go,” and “We’ve got the people outside your door.”

Protesters marched down small-town main streets and thoroughfares, many bundled up to withstand chilly temperatures. Attendees at small gatherings, including one in Richmond, Ky., waved American flags as drivers signaled support by honking. In Atlanta, protesters chanted for an end to immigration raids.

Demonstrators seized upon topics where they said there was overreach by the Trump administration, including health care and the environment.

A White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, called the protests “Trump derangement therapy sessions” in a statement on Thursday.

The protests, organizers have said, intentionally lack a single, specific demand but rather seek to harness energy on a wide variety of grievances regarding Mr. Trump and his policies.

Like many silver-haired protesters gathered at Auditorium Shores, a riverside park in Austin, Texas, Gilbert Martinez, a 93-year-old Korean War veteran, sees Mr. Trump as reckless and rebellious. And that’s not aligned with the values Mr. Martinez has spent his life preaching.

He called the attack on Iran a “diversion.”

“That idiot is going to cause a lot of good military people to lose their lives,” he said.

A longtime local business leader, Mr. Martinez is from the Texas Panhandle and says he can trace his family lineage to El Paso. He started Austin’s Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in 1973, he said, because in those days, downtown was a “backwater” devoid of Hispanic-owned businesses.

“I’m an American,” Mr. Martinez said. “We didn’t just get here.”

Chicagoans gathered at Grant Park, where Saira Bensett, 60, a retired zoological worker, described the turnout as cathartic.

“When I watch the news, it’s often too much — the emotions I feel make me feel like I’m alone,” she said. “So I wanted to be here to feel like I’m not by myself.”

Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton of Illinois, who is also the Democratic nominee for a Senate seat, told a crowd, “We all know the power of turning our anger into action.”

Many who gathered outside the Minnesota State Capitol said they had been driven to protest by the tumultuous monthslong presence of federal immigration officers in the Twin Cities region.

“We don’t want to walk out our door in fear,” said Chas Jensen, 68, who has lived in St. Paul his entire life and marched with his wife, Kitty Warner. “I’ve seen a lot over the years, but nothing like this.”

“It’s been hell, the last few months,” added Sadikshya Aryal, who came from South Minneapolis with her husband and two friends. Ms. Aryal, 32, still carries her passport whenever she leaves her house, she said.

Attendees said they felt the area had not returned to normal since the immigration operation but were comforted by how many people showed up Saturday.

“As much as it can feel helpless, this shows it’s not,” said Ms. Warner, 80.

The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, gave a fiery address from behind a row of bulletproof glass panels, which underscored fears of political violence. Referring to the president’s oft-stated disdain for Somali immigrants, Mr. Walz said that their grandchildren would remain in the United States long after “the orange clown is in the dustbin of history.”

In New York City, Valerie Tirado said she decided to attend an anti-Trump demonstration for the first time because her son, a Marine, was set to be deployed to the Middle East.

“Trump is using these military men as pawns, just to flex,” said Ms. Tirado, 60, a registered Democrat.

Spouses Michael Bianco and Susan Draper said they had demonstrated in the streets for causes they support since 1968. What struck them most about Saturday’s was how many people their age were on the streets.

“I want to express my disdain,” said Ms. Draper, 77, a retired N.Y.U. urban anthropology professor.

Eileen McHugh, 59, traveled an hour from her Republican-leaning town in Westchester County to protest at Columbus Circle.

“The whole Republican Party has blood on their hands,” Ms. McHugh said. “Bombing boats in Venezuela and schools in Iran is murder.”

While immigration policy was the focus of past No Kings protests in Atlanta, demonstrators on Saturday drew attention to the war in Iran, the toll the partial government shutdown is taking on air travel, and a bill Republicans are championing to tighten voting rules.

“They just keep pushing the limits every day to see how far they can take their regime,” said Alan Reed, 72, who attended the protest using a walker and had a rainbow flag draped over his back. “To see how much authority they can grab, until they can cancel our elections.”

Nicholas Phillips, 34, of Long Beach, Calif., cooled himself outside Los Angeles City Hall with a rainbow fan, joined by friends.

Mr. Phillips, who is gay, said he came to protest the Trump administration’s anti-transgender policies and the potential for the Supreme Court to reverse the country’s marriage equality laws.

“It’s important to show up,” he said.

Later in the day, tensions escalated toward a separate group of protesters who had gathered outside of the Metropolitan Detention Center. Tear gas was deployed, and rubber bullets were shot into the crowd. The police declared an unlawful assembly, formed a line, and made several arrests.

In statements on social media, the Los Angeles Police Department said that federal authorities had used nonlethal measures to move the crowd back after protesters were warned not to throw items or try to tear down the gate.

A city councilor, Sameer Kanal, described “a sea of Portlanders” in a park near downtown. Many were wearing the inflatable animal costumes that have made the city’s anti-immigration rallies a viral sensation.

Deana Fredericks, 65, was among a group of women wearing outfits inspired by “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a show drawn from the Margaret Atwood novel that depicts a totalitarian society in which women are treated as property. “We’re concerned about women’s rights, but it’s also gone beyond that,” she said, citing the Iran war and voting rights.

Later, outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, hundreds of protesters gathered, with some breaking open a gate at the entrance of the building. The authorities pushed them back. State and city police officers arrived to further break up the crowd.

No Kings protesters gathered at the park at Pier A in Hoboken on the banks of the Hudson River on a chilly morning. A local folk singer, Ed Fogarty, played the classic Bob Dylan protest song “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Noah Schwartz, 54, one of the organizers of a march from Jersey City to Hoboken, used a bullhorn to lead the crowd in a chant.

“We will not stop our fun, our joy, our democracy,” he said. “Say it once, say it twice! We will not put up with ICE!”

Protesters with signs slung over their shoulders streamed into Anchorage’s Town Square Park, as temperatures hovered around 20.

Lynette Moreno-Hinz, a 67-year-old cabdriver from Anchorage, played a skin drum for the crowd. Ms. Moreno-Hinz, who is Tlingit, said she was protesting because Alaska Natives are concerned about federal support for myriad tribal programs. “He’s taking away the money for our Native people,” she said, referring to Mr. Trump.

The No Kings movement debuted in February 2025 on Presidents’ Day. The decentralized coalition had a stronger showing last June, on the day Mr. Trump marked his birthday by ordering the military to stage a large parade in Washington, D.C. The groups reported an even larger turnout in October.

In London, demonstrators carried scowling bobbleheads of Mr. Trump; the first lady, Melania Trump; and Vice President JD Vance. Caricatures of Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, and Kristi Noem also hovered over the crowd.

Carmen Kingston, a New Yorker who has lived in Britain for a decade, carried a poster with the words “Minab Massacre,” referring to the strike on an elementary school in Iran that killed at least 175 people, most of them children.

The war, she said, is “part of a domestics political climate that includes the erosion of democratic institutions, democratic guardrails, and unaccountable violence.”

More on the Fighting in the Middle East

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• Houthis Attack Israel: The attack by the Iranian-backed militia in Yemen marked an escalation in the conflict, bringing in a new actor who threatened to expand the war’s reach across the region.

• Strike on U.S. Base: A combined missile and drone attack by Iran injured 12 American troops, two of them seriously, at Prince ​Sultan Air Base in Saudi ​Arabia, two U.S. officials said.

• Iran’s Information War: With help from Russia, China, and A.I. tools, Iran is spreading content designed to exploit opposition to the U.S.-Israeli campaign and to deflect from its own considerable losses on the battlefield. Both U.S. and Iranian officials alike have used memes to taunt each other.

• Attacks on Iranian Infrastructure: Strikes on Iran’s industrial infrastructure widened, with attacks on two major steel production complexes that are vital to the country’s economy, along with other industrial sites. Iran attributed the strikes to Israel.

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Barreling through the universe with incredible power and speed, galactic cosmic rays are a major source of radiation in space. But thanks to Earth’s strong magnetic field, these charged particles don’t usually make it directly to our planet, so we are protected from the radiation’s damaging effects. This field may be doing much more: new data collected by China’s Chang’e 4 lunar lander shows that our magnetic field’s influence is so powerful that it extends farther into space than previously believed—stretching even beyond the moon.

n a study published on Wednesday in Science Advances, researchers describe a “cavity” in space between Earth and the moon where cosmic rays are deflected by Earth’s magnetic field. This suggests that the effects of our planet’s magnetism are present much farther from us than anyone could have expected.

Gravitational cosmic rays spiral through the heliosphere, but Earth’s magnetic influence shields a large area of space from some of the particles. From “A Galactic Cosmic Ray Cavity in Earth-Moon Space,” by Wensai Shang et al., in Science Advances, Vol. 12, No. 13; March 25, 2026

Launched in 2018, Chang’e 4 was the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the moon. Among the many scientific instruments onboard was the Lunar Lander Neutron and Dosimetry experiment, which was designed to measure the radiation future astronauts might experience if they were to land there. Scientists had long assumed most of the moon lay beyond the protection of Earth’s magnetic field, but in 2019, scientists began noticing something odd about the experiment’s data that suggested the moon was somewhat protected from galactic cosmic rays.

The finding came as “a surprise,” says Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber, a co-author of the study and a physicist at Kiel University in Germany. “Personally, I didn’t believe it for a long, long time. I thought it was an artifact in the data until we did a lot of statistical tests.”

Galactic cosmic rays originate from a variety of sources in space, such as stars, supernovae, and black holes. These diverse origins mean that by the time the rays get near Earth, they don’t all carry the same level of energy. The highest-energy particles move quickly through the solar system, while some of the weaker particles linger—and their radiation could affect astronauts, Wimmer-Schweingruber says.

“These low-energy particles weren’t that interesting to us until we saw this effect, and then we realized this is actually important for the skin dose of astronauts,” he says.

Shielding astronauts from the dangers of radiation is critical to ensuring a human presence in space. This means creating materials that are light enough to bring into space but protective enough to keep radiation at bay, says Philip Metzger, a professor of planetary science and space technology at the University of Central Florida, who was not involved in the new study. Knowing more about the distribution of radiation in space, and especially between the moon and Earth, could help scientists plan safer missions.

For example, if NASA’s plan to put humans on the moon in a semipermanent capacity comes to pass, then it may make sense for astronauts to schedule activities outside any sheltered habitats while the moon is within the influence of Earth’s magnetic field.

“It is brilliant research, and it just shows us that the more we study phenomena outside of our planet, the more we discover we don’t know,” Metzger says. “That’s why we need to do space missions.”

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Rapid eye movement, or REM sleep, is the final phase of the four stage cycle that occurs during sleep. Unlike non-REM sleep, the fourth phase is characterized by an increase in brain activity and autonomic nervous system functions, which are closer to what is seen during the awakened state. Similar to non-REM sleep stages, this stage of sleep is primarily controlled by the brainstem and hypothalamus, with added contributions from the hippocampus and amygdala. Additionally, REM sleep is associated with an increase in occurrence of vivid dreams. While non-REM sleep has been associated with rest and recovery, the purpose and benefits of REM sleep are still unknown. However, many theories hypothesize that REM sleep is useful for learning and memory formation.

Key Takeaways: What Is REM Sleep?

• REM sleep is an active stage of sleep characterized by increased brain wave activity, return to awake state autonomic functions, and dreams with associated paralysis.
• The brainstem, particularly the pons and midbrain, and the hypothalamus are key areas of the brain that control REM sleep with hormone-secreting “REM-on” and “REM-off” cells.
• The most vivid, elaborate, and emotional dreams occur during REM sleep.
• The benefits of REM sleep are uncertain, but may be related to learning and storage of memory.

REM Definition

REM sleep is often described as a “paradoxical” sleep state due to its increased activity after non-REM sleep. The three prior stages of sleep, known as non-REM or N1, N2, and N3, occur initially during the sleep cycle to progressively slow bodily functions and brain activity. However, after the occurrence of N3 sleep (the deepest stage of sleep), the brain signals for the onset of a more aroused state. As the name implies, the eyes move rapidly sideways during REM sleep. Autonomic functions such as heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure begin to increase closer to their values while awake. However, because this period is often associated with dreams, major limb muscle activities are temporarily paralyzed. Twitching can still be observed in smaller muscle groups.

During REM sleep, brain wave activity measured on an electroencephalogram (EEG) also increases, as compared to the slower wave activity seen during non-REM sleep. N1 sleep shows slowing of the normal alpha wave pattern noted during the awake state. N2 sleep introduces K waves, or long, high-voltage waves lasting up to 1 second, and sleep spindles, or periods of low voltage and high-frequency spikes. N3 sleep is characterized by delta waves, or high voltage, slow, and irregular activity. However, EEGs obtained during REM sleep show sleep patterns with low voltage and fast waves, some alpha waves, and muscle twitch spikes associated with transmitted rapid eye movement. These readings are also more variable than those observed during non-REM sleep, with random spiking patterns at times fluctuating more than activity seen while awake.

REM and Your Brain

During REM sleep, brain wave activity measured on an electroencephalogram (EEG) also increases, as compared to the slower wave activity seen during non-REM sleep. N1 sleep shows slowing of the normal alpha wave pattern noted during the awake state. N2 sleep introduces K waves, or long, high-voltage waves lasting up to 1 second, and sleep spindles, or periods of low voltage and high-frequency spikes. N3 sleep is characterized by delta waves, or high voltage, slow, and irregular activity. However, EEGs obtained during REM sleep show sleep patterns with low voltage and fast waves, some alpha waves, and muscle twitch spikes associated with transmitted rapid eye movement. These readings are also more variable than those observed during non-REM sleep, with random spiking patterns at times fluctuating more than activity seen while awake.

The major portions of the brain activated during REM sleep are the brainstem and the hypothalamus. The pons and midbrain, in particular, and the hypothalamus contain specialized cells known as “REM-on” and “REM-off” cells. To induce the transition to REM sleep, REM-on cells secrete hormones such as GABA, acetylcholine, and glutamate to instruct the onset of rapid eye movements, muscle activity suppression, and autonomic changes. REM-off cells, as their name implies, induce the offset of REM sleep by secretion of stimulatory hormones such as norepinephrine, epinephrine, and histamine.

The hypothalamus also contains stimulatory cells known as orexin neurons, which secrete the hormone orexin. This hormone is necessary for maintaining wakefulness and arousal from sleep and is often decreased or absent in people with sleep disorders. The hippocampus and amygdala are also involved in REM sleep, specifically during periods of dreams. These areas of the brain are most notable for their functions in memory and emotional regulation. An EEG will show increased hippocampal and amygdala activity with the presence of high voltage, regular waves known as theta waves. 

Dreams and REM Sleep

Although dreams can occur in other stages of sleep, the most vivid dreams occur during REM sleep. These dreams are often elaborate and emotional experiences of imagined life, most often associated with sadness, anger, apprehension, or fear. A person can also more readily recall a dream when awakened from REM sleep rather than from non-REM sleep. The purpose of dream content is not currently understood. Historically, neurologist and father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud suggested that dreams were a representation of unconscious thought, and therefore each dream had deeply significant meaning. His dream interpretation, however, is not a universally accepted theory. An opposing hypothesis proposes that dream content is a result of random brain activity that occurs during REM sleep, rather than a meaningful interpretive experience.

Benefits of REM Sleep

Sleep in general is necessary for health and well-being, as mild sleep deprivation increases risk for chronic health conditions and severe sleep deprivation can lead to hallucinations or even death. While non-REM sleep is required in order to survive, the benefits of REM sleep remain inconclusive. Studies in which participants were deprived of REM sleep by waking have shown no obvious adverse effects. Some drugs, including MAO antidepressants, lead to drastically decreased REM sleep without issue for patients even after years of treatment.

Due to the lack of conclusive evidence, many hypotheses exist concerning the benefits of REM sleep. One hypothesized benefit relates to the association of REM sleep and dreams. This theory suggests that certain negative behaviors, which should be “unlearned,” are rehearsed through dreams. Actions, events, and sequences related to fearful situations are often the subject of dreams and are therefore appropriately erased from the neural network. REM sleep is also proposed to help transfer memories from the hippocampus to the cerebral cortex. In fact, the cyclical occurrence of non-REM and REM sleep is often thought to enhance the body’s physical and mental rest as well as aid in memory formation.

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REM sleep is an active stage of sleep characterized by increased brain wave activity. Jamie Grill / Getty Images

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What We’re Covering Today

• D.H.S. Shutdown: House Republicans angrily rejected a measure passed by their Senate counterparts early Friday that would have restored most funding for the Department of Homeland Security, deepening an intraparty feud that will most likely extend a partial shutdown of the agency. In a move to address weeks of long lines at airport security checkpoints, the White House said that it had ordered the Department of Homeland Security to pay employees of the Transportation Security Administration out of existing funds.

• Patel Hack: Emails and photographs stolen from a personal email account of Kash Patel before his time as the director of the F.B.I. circulated online on Friday. But there were questions about who had carried out the cyberattack and when the intrusion had taken place.

House Republicans revolt over bill to reopen D.H.S., deepening shutdown rift.

House Republicans on Friday angrily rejected a Senate-passed deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, threatening to extend the agency shutdown that has crippled airports in a fit of outrage over the agreement their own party struck with Senate Democrats to end the crisis.

After quickly assessing the compromise that passed the Senate early Friday, conservative House Republicans tore into it in harsh terms. They derided it for hewing too closely to the Democratic position by omitting money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the two agencies responsible for carrying out President Trump’s immigration crackdown, which are operating under previously approved funds.

Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 Democrat, just hit on the logistical hurdle facing any bill that House Republicans try to pass to temporarily fund all of the Homeland Security Department, including ICE and Border Patrol: “The Senate is gone.” House members “know fully well what they’re doing” is continuing the shutdown, she added.

Even if he could pass the stopgap bill, and senators abandoned their spring break plans to hurry back to Washington, Senate Democrats would likely reject the House bill.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, said House Democrats would vote to pass the Senate-approved bill to partly fund the Department of Homeland Security if Speaker Mike Johnson were to put the measure on the floor. Jeffries added: “This should end, and could end today.”

House Republicans are gearing up to vote on a different measure that would fund the entire agency though May 22, and a majority of Democrats are expected to oppose it. It would need to be voted on by the Senate.

President Trump criticized the Senate-passed Homeland Security funding bill, saying it “wasn’t good” and “wasn’t appropriate” in a call with Fox News. Trump said it was unacceptable that the bill advanced out of the Senate and was delivered to the House without funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement: “In my opinion, you can’t have a bill that’s not going to fund ICE.”

The Department of Homeland Security said Transportation Security Administration officers should begin receiving paychecks as early as Monday. “Today, at the direction of President Trump and the Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, TSA has immediately begun the process of paying its workforce,” a department spokesperson said in a statement.

March 27, 2026, 2:30 p.m. ET

Speaker Mike Johnson said President Trump supported the plan to pass a short-term funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. “He understands exactly what we’re doing and why,” Johnson added.

Johnson said House Republicans would vote to send the measure to fully fund the agency to the Senate “as soon as possible,” when asked if his chamber would take up the stopgap bill on Friday.

Hacked files of Kash Patel, before his time as F.B.I. director, circulate online.

Emails and photographs stolen from a personal email account of Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I., circulated online on Friday, as hackers who claimed to be part of a group affiliated with Iranian intelligence took responsibility for the release.

The release of materials from before Mr. Patel’s time as F.B.I. chief appeared to be an effort to embarrass him as the war in Iran nears its first month. But there were questions about who had carried out the cyberattack, and it remained unclear when the intrusion had taken place.

A performer being sued by the Kennedy Center asked the judge to toss the case, calling it ‘retaliatory.’

Lawyers for a jazz musician who was sued by President Trump’s allies at the Kennedy Center asked a judge on Friday to toss out the lawsuit, calling it an attempt to stifle his protest of the organization’s takeover.

In December, Richard Grenell — at the time, the center’s president and a close ally of Mr. Trump’s — threatened to sue Chuck Redd, a jazz percussionist, for $1 million after Mr. Redd said he would not hold an annual Christmas Eve concert at the facility. Mr. Redd cited his opposition to renaming the performing arts center in honor of Mr. Trump.

The Defense Department argued in a court filing today that media rules it released this week did not defy a court order. The filing is the latest volley in a lawsuit filed by The New York Times in December, which claims that restrictions on journalists that the department adopted in October 2025 are unconstitutional.

The judge in the case, Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, sided with The Times last week. On Monday, the Defense Department issued a revised policy and also announced the closure of journalists’ work space inside the Pentagon. The Times has argued that the moves violate the judge’s order.

In its filing on Friday, the Pentagon laid out why it believed the department was in compliance with the order. Judge Friedman has scheduled a hearing in the case on Monday.

Another senior House Republican will retire as a midterm exodus grows.

Representative Sam Graves, the 13-term Missouri Republican who leads the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said on Friday that he would retire in January, the latest powerful member of his party to leave Congress ahead of midterm elections in which it is bracing for big losses.

“It’s time to pass the torch and allow a new guard of conservative leaders to step forward and chart a path forward for Missourians,” he said in a statement announcing his decision to depart Washington at the end of his term. “This wasn’t an easy decision, but it’s the right one. I believe in making room for the next generation.”

A federal judge in Rhode Island sided with a union of Veterans Affairs workers, finding that the Trump administration had ignored her previous order to reinstate a contract with the workers it had canceled last year. Judge Melissa R. DuBose gave the government until Tuesday to show it had taken concrete steps to reimplement the agreement.

The House Ethics Committee said it had found violations in 25 of the 27 counts against Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the Florida Democrat accused of embezzling $5 million of federal disaster money to support her congressional campaign.

The bipartisan vote came after a rare public hearing yesterday that lasted well into the night. Cherfilus-McCormick’s ethics trial was the first time in 16 years that the typically secretive panel had held a public hearing regarding the actions of a sitting lawmaker.

The adjudicatory panel will now schedule a hearing of the full panel to determine its recommendations for sanctions or expulsion. After that, the entire House will vote on the recommendation on the floor.

Hegseth strikes two Black and two female officers from a promotion list.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals, a highly unusual move that has prompted some senior military officials to question whether the officers are being singled out because of their race or gender.

Two of the officers targeted by Mr. Hegseth are Black and two are women on a promotion list that consists of about three dozen officers, most of whom are white men, senior military officials said.

Trump’s signature is set to appear on U.S. currency.

President Trump’s signature will appear on U.S. dollars later this year, the Treasury Department said on Thursday. The decision to have Mr. Trump’s John Hancock on America’s paper currency represented an unprecedented change, one that the department said was being made in honor of the United States’ 250th anniversary.

Mr. Trump is set to become the first sitting U.S. president to have his signature on the greenback. His name will appear alongside that of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. As a result, the U.S. treasurer, whose name has been on the currency for more than a century, will not appear on the currency.

The Latest on the Trump Administration

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• Standoff With Iran: President Trump’s war with Iran is testing the limits of his unorthodox diplomatic style as he grasps for a deal to end the conflict, relying on a jumble of emissaries that reflect his improvisational approach.

• Army Promotions Blocked: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotions of two Black officers and two women to be one-star generals, a highly unusual move that has prompted some officials to question whether the officers are being singled out because of their race or gender.

• Pentagon-Anthropic Dispute: A federal judge temporarily stopped the Department of Defense from labeling Anthropic as a security risk, in a reprieve for the start-up that has been in a dispute with the Pentagon over the use of A.I. in warfare.

• Brazilian Gangs: The Trump administration is weighing designating Brazil’s two biggest drug gangs as terrorist groups, after lobbying by two sons of former

• ‘No Kings’ Protests: More than 3,000 demonstrations are scheduled across the country on Saturday to condemn an array of Trump’s policies and to express general discontent toward the president, whom the protesters view as acting like a monarch.

• Signature on Currency: Trump will become the first sitting president with his signature on the U.S. dollar, the Treasury Department said, in honor of the United States’ 250th anniversary this year.

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Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed the Senate bill as “a joke” and said House Republicans would instead advance a measure to fully fund the agency. Credit…Eric Lee for The New York Times

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Key Takeaways

• Gregorys Coffee has grown from one small Park Avenue bar in 2006 to 53 locations nationwide, with typical stores now doing over $1 million in annual sales.
• Revenue reached about $40 million last year and is projected to hit roughly $45 million this year.
• Gregorys Coffee founder and CEO Gregory Zamfotis attributes the growth to quality coffee, roasted in-house.

Two decades ago, Gregory Zamfotis was at a crossroads. He was a second-year law student at Brooklyn Law School and had just been offered a full-time position at a real estate law firm. The only problem was that Zamfotis wanted to open his own business. 

“I grew up in the food business,” he explains in a new interview with Entrepreneur. “My father operated a number of concepts in New York City, so I grew up working with him.”

Zamfotis worked at his father’s sandwich shop during his time in law school. By the end of his education, he was effectively running the place. He wound up “really enjoying” the work and considering it as a potential career. He knew he wanted to start a business of his own one day, separate from his father’s endeavors. So after graduating from law school, he took his interest and passion for coffee and his experience working in food service, and decided to open his own coffee shop. He was 24 years old. 

“If you were in the Midtown Financial District, the areas where the majority of New Yorkers are spending their time working, the only options for coffee really were Starbucks or Dunkin,” Zamfotis says. “I thought that was a huge opportunity because I grew up working there. I wanted to take what I had learned, apply it to the coffee industry, and do it in a part of the city that was extremely underserved at the time.”

Zamfotis started by opening one coffee bar on Park Avenue and decided it would simply be better than anything around it. The plan was to obsess over the drinks, the ingredients and the feel of the place until it earned a permanent slot in New Yorkers’ daily routines.

Day after day, cup after cup, that little shop turned into a magnet for regulars who didn’t just like the coffee; they were loyal to the brand. The identity sharpened around bold, playful branding and a menu that refused to cut corners. 

“We wanted to do a quality specialty coffee operation in a volume setting,” Zamfotis says, describing early days when he put in “70 to 80 hours a week” at the store to make sure it ran exactly as he envisioned.

What surprised him

What Zamfotis didn’t fully understand at the time was how hard it would be to do coffee exceptionally well at scale. “I guess I was surprised at just how complex doing coffee really well was,” he says. “The only way we were gonna win is if we could differentiate ourselves from the national players or the other people doing coffee around the block.”

That realization pushed him into a kind of self-imposed coffee bootcamp. He visited shops, attended conferences, and immersed himself in the craft. “I had to spend a lot of time and energy not only visiting other coffee shops, traveling, going to conferences, listening to speakers, and just pouring myself literally into all things coffee, to make myself an expert,” he says.

That work changed the culture and the product. “There’s a difference between doing things well and doing things great,” he explains. As he elevated the coffee program and training standards, customers began noticing the difference — and kept their daily habit. “Customers, maybe in the beginning, were coming because of all the other things…great service, fast, good-looking store…then once I started to elevate the coffee program higher and higher, while also keeping all those other elements so strong, that’s when we really started to make things better,” he says. 

Today, Gregorys roasts its own beans in Long Island City, bakes fresh pastries, and emphasizes personalization — from milk choices to syrup levels — while still moving fast. The goal, Zamfotis says, is that customers should feel like they’re sacrificing nothing: not time, not quality, not options.

Scaling from one store to 53 — and to $45 million

Zamfotis estimates the first shop took 12 to 18 months to find consistency; the company hit the $1 million annual sales mark around year two or three. That traction gave him the confidence to open a second location roughly two and a half years after the first — and it was an instant hit. 

“When the first location may have taken 12 to 18 months to stabilize, the second location was stable from the get-go…very busy from the day we opened,” he says.

From there, growth became a function of systems and people. “I’ve always said you can only grow as fast as the people [you have] to help execute,” Zamfotis says. For about 12 years, every single person in a position of authority at Gregorys was promoted from within, often starting as baristas.

That philosophy helped the company expand from two stores to 53 across New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., Florida, California, Arizona, and Tennessee. The financials now reflect that footprint. “Last year we did just around $40 million,” Zamfotis says. “This year, I believe the projection is closer to like $45 million.”

Exploring franchising

At some point, Gregorys hit a crossroads: keep grinding out corporate stores one by one, or admit that the “incredible box” they’d built was strong enough to share with other operators and scale faster than a single team ever could. That’s when Craveworthy Brands and its CEO Gregg Majewski stepped in as managing partner and corporate operator in August 2025, bringing a platform built for franchising, from training to shared services that could support a national push.

“We knew that if we wanted to continue to grow the brand at the speed that was necessary, the only way was to attach to franchising,” Majewski tells Entrepreneur in a new interview. 

Now, with a 20-year track record and a typical store pulling in roughly $1 million in annual revenue (with high performers around $1.6 million and drive-thru models at about $1.4 million), Gregorys is no longer just the underdog Park Avenue café. It’s a New York–forged coffee brand stepping into the franchise spotlight, aiming to sell 50 to 75 locations in its first year of franchising this year and inviting operators to go toe-to-toe with the biggest coffee players in America.

“Any brand that’s been around the industry as long as that and has been successful in as many markets as it has over the 20-year timeframe is perfect for franchising — especially when you built your reputation in one of the hardest cities in the world to operate in, New York,” Majewski says. Gregorys has “a group of regulars that absolutely live and die [for] this brand,” Majewski explains. 

Craveworthy Brands brings scale muscle to franchising ambition. The firm has 21 brands in its portfolio, eight of which are already franchising, and it provides the infrastructure that early franchisees often lack: training, shared services, construction support, and operational systems built to replicate performance across stores. Craveworthy’s portfolio includes brands like Big Chicken, Taffer’s Taver,n and Genghis Grill. 

For would-be franchisees, Gregorys is now pitching itself as a way into a coveted segment that can otherwise be hard to access. Majewski notes that “some of the bigger players are sold out or aren’t accepting.” Gregorys offers a build-out cost “anywhere from $200,000 to $700,000,” he says.  

Why franchising works

Majewski is clear about why he believes franchising works, not just for Gregorys but across Craveworthy’s portfolio. On the franchisor side, the hurdle is ensuring systems and procedures are in place so the company can train effectively and execute the product consistently. 

On the franchisee side, the challenge is more psychological: “following the systems and procedures and reminding yourself that you bought into a system,” he says. The promise is that if the system is well designed and properly followed, it exists “for a reason so you can be successful.”

Majewski insists that culture is the differentiator in a successful franchise. He says success comes from “establishing an incredible culture in the system” and making sure operations are simple enough to replicate. “If any concept is ever too complicated, you can’t have the consistency,” he explains. 

The goal is that “when you walk into a store in Indiana or a store in California, you get the same experience,” he says. For Gregorys, that means protecting not only the coffee quality and menu but also the feel of a brand born on Park Avenue and refined in New York City’s daily grind.

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Gregory Zamfotis. Credit: Gregorys Coffee

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In January 2025, when the U.S. House took up legislation to bar trans women’s participation on women’s sports teams, all but two Democratic representatives — Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez — voted against the bill.

When the Senate took up a similar proposal three days ago, every Democrat present voted against it.

Why don’t more Democrats explicitly moderate their stands on transgender rights, immigration, and other issues? Those who maintain far-out positions are well to the left of the electorate and its emblematic median voter. The trans issue clearly weakened Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, leaving her open to devastating pro-Trump ads.

In the case of one of the most disputed rights claimed by some parts of the transgender activist community — transgender women’s participation on women’s sports teams — Democrats have clear liberal grounds to challenge that claim, by asserting that they are protecting a woman’s right from unfair competition.

But this phenomenon — drifting far from the median voter — is hardly limited to the left. There are many factors behind the reluctance of both Democrats and Republicans to shift to the center.

For one thing, donors, especially the growing legions of small donors, prefer more extreme candidates. Adding additional pressure, what have come to be known as “the groups” — advocacy organizations on the left and the right — demand fealty to policies that are sometimes politically costly; they threaten to support primary challengers to run against those who defy their authority. On a psychological level, Democrats and liberals are morally committed to protecting marginalized groups from harm and defending racial and sexual minorities.

Before exploring these pressures, let’s go to the dominant political fact of life working against moderation, which is that there are decisive majorities in both the House and the Senate that have no interest in abandoning more extreme stands. Many Democrats and Republicans won their seats with the promise to fight the partisan opposition until hell freezes over.

The combination of partisan gerrymandering, the deepening of affective polarization — smoldering hatred of partisan adversaries — and the steadily growing number of safe seats has created a calculus encouraging, nurturing, and fostering political positioning far to the left or right of the median voter.

The key piece of evidence: Of the 435 House districts, The Cook Political Report identifies 36 as competitive, broken down as 17 tossups, 15 leaning Democratic, and four leaning Republican. Adding the eight likely Democratic and 17 likely Republican districts, which are much less likely to be competitive, brings the total to 61, or a measly 14 percent of all 435 members.

In this one-seventh of House districts that are at least somewhat competitive, there is a real payoff on Election Day for a candidate to moderate more extreme stands.

That is decidedly not the case in the remaining 86 percent of House districts — 374 of them, 189 solid Democratic and 185 solid Republican — that are not competitive, with the winner chosen in the primary and the general election a formality.

Candidates in these safe districts are under no pressure to moderate in order to win a general election, and primary voters are free to vote ideologically instead of strategically.

Senate races are less preordained, but still a majority are foregone conclusions, party-wise: Nine to 11 states are considered battlegrounds, or “purple,” while 39 to 41, depending on who is doing the analysis, fall into the solid red or blue camp.

For a decisive majority of House members and a slightly less commanding majority of senators, then, the cost of adopting more extreme and intensely partisan stands drops close to zero, with a payoff in added voters in ideologically driven primaries.

What this comes down to is that in the calculations of incumbents in safe districts, adopting the hard-nosed position leaves no ideological space for challengers in the primaries.

In fact, among polarized primary electorates in these districts, the successful nominee is very likely to be naturally comfortable

positioning himself or herself at the further end of the political spectrum, deeply hostile to the opposition party, opposed in principle to compromise.

What does this mean for moderation and bipartisanship? Many if not most members of the House and Senate reject them as a threat to their political future and as contrary to what they believe in.

This conclusion is based not only on extensive political research but also on actual voting patterns.

Michael Bailey, a political scientist at Georgetown, has found that moderation lifts candidates in competitive districts but penalizes those in noncompetitive districts.

In an email, Bailey explained, “The primary election systems in most states strongly encourage and reward more ideologically extreme behavior.” In an October 2025 paper, “Ideology, Party and Policy-Oriented Voting,” Bailey put it this way:

When control of the national legislature (Congress) is closely contested — as it is in the U.S. in recent years — extreme candidates win primary and general elections under a broad range of contexts, especially when the parties are highly polarized. Many districts will nominate and elect legislators who are more extreme than even the party median.

“When control of the legislature is closely contested and the policy impact of a single legislator is modest,” he wrote,

because party nominators know that the district median will prefer electing an extremist from a favored party than a moderate from a disfavored party.

For example, a moderately conservative district median voter will prefer the policy outcomes under Republican control, even if their individual legislator is very conservative, over the policy outcomes under Democratic control, with a moderate Democrat representing their district.

The ideological patterns in Congress are evident in state legislative contests, Bailey wrote, citing a May 2025 paper, “Polarization and State Legislative Elections,” by three political scientists, Cassandra Handan-Nader of N.Y.U., and Andrew C.W. Myers and Andrew B. Hall of Stanford. They wrote:

The polarization of the whole set of candidates seeking state legislative office has risen dramatically over the past two decades. The growing polarization of state legislators tracks the polarization of the set of candidates running for office quite tightly.

While “more moderate candidates enjoy a meaningful advantage in contested general elections, that advantage has declined somewhat in recent years. At the same time, more extreme candidates are favored in contested primary elections.”

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Damon Winter/The New York Times

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Do you doomscroll? If so, you’re not alone. One 2024 survey found that almost a third of American adults regularly doomscroll—that is, swipe through endless social media feeds—and millennials and Gen Zers are even more likely to engage in this behavior.

This is partly because social media feeds often have no end, so users continuously scroll to get to the next thing that catches their attention—and the next after that. These design features keep users on social media platforms—but they have also been criticized as a pathway to problematic social media use and even addiction.

But is it possible for someone to become addicted to social media in the same way as they can develop an addiction to nicotine or alcohol, say? The answer is more complicated than you might think.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has an entire center dedicated to digital well-being, the Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. On its website, it explains that concerning social media use might include behaviors such as struggling in school because of technology or withdrawing socially—but that concerning use may not always rise to the level of “addiction.”

The issue of whether social media is addictive is at the center of thousands of lawsuits brought against the companies Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Snap. The verdict in one of these cases, involving Meta and YouTube, could be decided as soon as this week. In New Mexico, a jury recently found that Meta must pay $375 million for endangering child safety in violation of the state’s consumer protection law.

To try and understand what the science says about social media and addiction, we spoke to two experts in the field: Jenny Radesky, co-medical director of the AAP’s social media and youth mental health center, and Bradley Zicherman, a clinical associate professor at Stanford University, who directs the Youth Recovery Clinic and treats patients struggling with social media.

What evidence is there for social media addiction?

“I tend to think of addictive use as being a subset or a more intense or severe form of the larger umbrella of problematic media use,” Radesky says. The AAP encourages a broader (and less stigmatizing) term to talk about the issue: “problematic Internet use.”

Zicherman is more comfortable describing this kind of problematic behavior as addiction. “It is most appropriate at this point to actually say that there is a condition of social media addiction,” he says.

Zicherman likens social media to slot machines: “Because you don’t know when you’re going to win,” he says, “you keep pulling that slot machine lever, pressing the button, pressing the button, pressing button—eventually you win something.”

He argues that social media features such as likes, followers, and never-ending new content feeds function in much the same way, triggering a rush of dopamine that some users will keep chasing. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, helps the brain identify pleasurable experiences—say, validation or success or even a good meal—and to repeat behaviors linked to them. Substances like drugs, however, can make the process go haywire

The AAP notes that in a 2021 Common Sense Media survey, tweens said they spent about 18 minutes per day on social media, while teenagers devoted about an hour and a half, on average. And there is evidence that comes with some risks: One study published last May, for example, analyzed data from 11,876 children enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a large, long-term investigation that has been tracking children’s mental health over time. The May paper showed that an individual’s increase in social media use correlated with increased signs of depression in the following year. Interestingly, the reverse wasn’t true—children who had higher “depressive symptoms” didn’t necessarily use social media more later on.

Conversely, some studies suggest social media use can have some benefits. A recent study that included more than 100,000 Australian students in grades four to 12 showed that older adolescents who engaged in moderate social media use after school—up to 12.5 hours per week—had higher scores on measures of well-being than those who didn’t use social media at all.

Why is the research so mixed?

Part of the reason why there are such conflicting results is that social media and addiction is hard to study, Radesky says. Researchers often rely on study participants to self-report how they feel about a digital product, and these reports are not always reliable and are inherently subjective. Collecting phone data doesn’t offer a full picture either. Scientists could perform brain scans to look at how social media affects the brain’s reward centers, but that would require teenagers to undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans—which would also not exactly be a true snapshot of their real-life social media use, Radesky says.

Adults can have an unhealthy relationship with social media, but Zicherman says that children and younger users may be particularly vulnerable. Some platforms, such as Meta’s Instagram, have taken steps to limit younger users on the platform, including by offering special teen accounts or by limiting how long younger users can be on the app. But some of these age-based restrictions may be ineffective, not least because some kids may be able to get around them, Zicherman says.

“We’ve intentionally designed automatic defaults like Sleep Mode that encourage teens to leave the app and pause notifications over night. Parents can go even further by restricting their teens’ total time to as little as 15 minutes a day or setting scheduled breaks when teens are required to exit our apps,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the company now uses artificial intelligence to help verify young users’ ages. Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Addictive or not, social media platforms benefit from holding users’ attention, the experts argue. Some studies suggest people may seek out social media to dissociate—mindlessly scrolling purely to give their brain a break. But that behavior could also lead to “a loss of agency,” Radesky says.

“[There] are all these design features that keep us going and going and going,” she says. These include never-ending feeds, autoplay, and “engagement-based algorithms” that optimize for content that keeps users hooked. “Whether or not it was intentional, I think it simply is designed to be addictive,” Zicherman says.

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Paratroopers leaping down from Osprey choppers and swarming onto the shores of Kharg Island under a hail of gunfire…could this be the next phase of fighting in the Iran war?

The Pentagon is sending its prestigious 82^nd Airborne Division to the Middle East— elite soldiers trained to parachute into hostile foreign territory and take control of the area.

The deployment, leaked to media on Tuesday, is just the latest round of forces being directed to the region as the U.S. gears up for a potentially huge escalation in the war — a possible invasion of Iran’s oil export hub.

Up to 3,000 paratroopers could be joining the estimated 5,000 Marines currently being shipped over, swelling the ranks of the 50,000 American troops already in the Middle East.

President Donald Trump has proposed a deal with the Iranians this week, but also threatened attacks, saying the U.S. “can take out” Kharg Island “at any time”. The small island, sitting just 15 miles off the mainland, is crucial to Iran’s already poor economy, as it accounts for 90 percent of Tehran’s oil exports.

U.S. forces bombed it last week, targeting naval mine sites. But the arrival of thousands of Army soldiers and Marines could give the White House several options to launch an attack on land and allow the administration to make good on its threat.

Why Seize Kharg Island?

Iran’s shut down of the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial shipping lane through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally transits, has been one of the most effective elements of its fight back against the U.S and Israel’s bombardments since February 28.

Blocking flows through the strait has sent oil and gas prices soaring on supply concerns, wreaking havoc on share markets.

Seizing Kharg Island, which lies further north of the Strait in the Gulf, would give the U.S. control of Iran’s oil exports — the backbone of its economy — and also a foothold in the waterway. Taking control of Kharg would pressure Tehran into easing its chokehold on the Strait.

Iran says it is prepared for a U.S. invasion, though. On Wednesday, one of its top wartime leaders said Tehran was “closely monitoring all U.S. movements in the region, especially troop deployments.”

“Do not test our resolve to defend our land,” warned parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

Why Has the 82nd Airborne Division Been Deployed?

The 82^nd — a division of the U.S. Army —  is usually stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, but can be deployed anywhere, at any time. Officials speaking anonymously have indicated the troops are being sent over, but details on when they would arrive or where they would go have not been disclosed yet.

Unlike other soldiers, they’re trained to swoop into an area within 18 hours without lots of tanks or armored vehicles to back them up. That can leave them vulnerable to enemy attacks, experts say, but their goal is speed and surprise.

They would be supported by thousands of Marines who have also been ordered to the region in recent days. These Marines are masters of missions like quickly taking control of islands, said retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, now a professor of practice of public administration and international affairs at Syracuse University. 

Establishing control over an island is “as front a center a mission” as these Marines could have, Murrett told Newsweek.

The Marine Element

Just shy of 5,000 Marines are currently heading to the Middle East, in two Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs).

The 31st MEU, made up of 2,200 Marines, are travelling with the USS Tripoli, which left Japan last week and is expected to arrive in the region on Friday.

The Pentagon has also ordered the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) — made up of three warships and carrying the 11th MEU — to the region from California. That will take about three to four weeks to arrive, according to reports.

It’s “unusual” for two large MEUs to be deployed at the same time in the Middle East, Murrett said. They would likely work together as even combined, they would still be a relatively small force when pitched against what could be thousands of Iranian soldiers.

While it would make sense to use this number of troops on an island or to launch in-and-out raids on the mainland, they couldn’t hold territory on Iran’s coast for any length of time. These rapid-response units don’t have enough soldiers or equipment to do this successfully.

There have been reports that the U.S. could send troops to clear Iran’s southern coastline, ultimately reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Speculation has also swirled that the U.S. could take other islands off Iran’s coast to achieve the same goal as the need to restore traffic in the strait becomes more pressing for the U.S.

An ARG is made up of an amphibious assault ship — in this case, the USS Boxer, which is essentially a small aircraft carrier ferrying troops, helicopters, and advanced fighter jets — and two other ships. 

They carry vehicles, equipment, and smaller landing craft for Marines to quickly land on shore. 

Such an operation would be an amphibious assault, where U.S. troops would surge onto land from small boats and helicopters, supported by aircraft firing on any Iranian assets that could threaten the American personnel.

The U.S. would find and knock out the major defenses on Kharg in advance. Iranian state-linked media reported that U.S. strikes last week had targeted air defenses on the island, which would threaten troops, aircraft, and ships in a future invasion.

But Iran would still have some weapons to hit back at an invasion, including firing longer-range ballistic missiles or drones from the mainland.

Fighter jets and helicopters would need to shield the U.S. forces while they establish positions on the island, from which they can then launch further attacks.

But it’s risky. Troop deaths would be a nearly impossible to avoid, and although the Marines would receive some cover from their fighter jets and helicopters, ARGs don’t have the same firepower to target Iranian threats as aircraft carriers. 

So a Navy destroyer ship, equipped with powerful long-range missiles, would be key in protecting the ARG, said Murrett.

However, getting bigger ships close enough to the island to support the Marines has its own dangers. They would likely come under fire from Iranian forces, including from anti-ship missiles, and there are fears of mines within the waterway.

Once they’re on shore, the countdown starts. While the Marines and the 82nd could hold an island for a while — even under persistent Iranian fire — they would be unlikely to keep control of mainland Iranian sites without more troops arriving quickly.

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Prestigious 82^nd Airborne Division to the Middle East

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