Axolotls are famous for their ability to regrow significant parts of their bodies. But according to recent research, these frilly-headed salamanders, which are native to lakes and wetlands around Mexico City, can perform an even more extraordinary biological feat: they can completely regrow their thymus, a complex organ instrumental to the immune system in most vertebrates.
Previous work suggested that some animals can partially regrow thymuses, but the co-authors of the new paper, published in Science Immunology, were surprised to see axolotls completely rebuild the intricately structured organ from nothing.
“Axolotls are legendary for regenerating limbs and parts of the central nervous system,” says study co-author Maximina H. Yun, a biologist at the Chinese Institutes for Medical Research in Beijing. “The realization that these animals can regrow their full thymus from scratch is a breakthrough moment.”
The thymus is responsible for producing the body’s T cells, which help to target and destroy invading pathogens. “In humans and most other vertebrates, the thymus is famous for being one of the first organs to degenerate,” says Turan Demircan, a biologist and regeneration expert at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University in Turkey who was not involved in the new research. “Until now, it was believed that once this tissue is gone or removed, it cannot be fully rebuilt.”
For the new study, Yun and her colleagues removed the thymus from several juvenile axolotls. After seven days, many of the animals were already budding new thymuses. After 35 days, more than 60 percent of them had fully regenerated the organ. “I was genuinely surprised,” says study co-author René Maehr, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. “A full, functional regeneration of a complex immune organ wasn’t something I expected.”
The team next tested the function of the regenerated thymuses by transplanting them into other axolotls. “Remarkably, the transplanted organs integrated perfectly,” Demircan says.
Further analysis identified two key features essential to the regeneration process: the Foxn1 gene, which scientists already knew was involved in thymus development, and a signaling molecule called midkine, which Demircan says appears in human embryos but is largely inactive in adults. The results indicate there may be a biological pathway involving these components that could be useful for treating thymus-related conditions in humans.
“Axolotls are essentially nature’s ‘master key’ for regeneration research,” Demircan says. “If we could reawaken this specific pathway in humans, we might be able to stimulate the thymus to regrow, potentially reversing immune aging or helping patients who have undergone thymectomies.”
According to Yun, researchers might someday tweak human stem cells to emulate the axolotl and recover thymus function. “We are laying the groundwork for transformative therapies that could redefine our approach to immune restoration.”
At least a half-dozen top officials in the current Trump administration have connections to Jeffrey Epstein, according to an NBC News review of some of the over 3 million documents the Justice Department has released.
The degree to which each individual was connected to Epstein varies significantly, from a single email to years of communications. President Donald Trump, who had a lengthy relationship with Epstein, is mentioned thousands of times in the files. Trump has never been accused by authorities of any wrongdoing connected to Epstein, and has said he parted ways with him in the mid-2000s because he was a “creep.” He has also denied any wrongdoing.
During a testy oversight hearing on Wednesday. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi on whether any current administration officials have been questioned by the Justice Department about their ties to Epstein.
“I’m stunned that you want to continue talking about Epstein,” Bondi replied while sidestepping the question.
In a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump praised Bondi’s appearance at the Senate hearing and claimed that the files provide “conclusively” that he “has been 100% exonerated.”
Some officials from previous Democratic administrations have appeared in the files — including former President Bill Clinton, his former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and former Obama White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler.
Ruemmler announced this week that she would leave her position as Goldman Sachs’ top lawyer amid blowback over her extensive emails with Epstein. Ruemmler has said she was friendly with Epstein only in the context of being a criminal defense attorney and that she regrets ever having known him.
Summers announced in November that he was taking a leave of absence from his teaching at Harvard University and would step back from other public commitments. Summers said in November that he was “deeply ashamed” of emails that came out last year showing him corresponding with Epstein as recently as July 2019. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s crimes.
Clinton has said that he cut ties with Epstein before the financier was accused in 2006 of having sex with a minor. His spokesperson said the emails “prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing.” He has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein by authorities.
Two other ex-Trump administration officials — former DOGE chief Elon Musk and former chief strategist Steve Bannon — also made appearances in the files. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s crimes.
Alex Acosta, who was Trump’s Labor secretary during his first term, led the first federal criminal probe into Epstein as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Acosta approved a much-maligned secret nonprosecutorial agreement that allowed Epstein to plead guilty in 2008 to lesser state charges, which helped him avoid potentially decades of jail time. Acosta has defended the plea deal and said that his office “acted appropriately” given the context of the 2008 case. “Times have changed, and coverage of this case has certainly changed,” he said in 2019 after Epstein’s arrest in New York.
Reached for comment, a White House spokesperson referred NBC News to remarks Trump made on Thursday about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who admitted this week to visiting Epstein’s island in 2012.
“No, I wasn’t aware of it,” he said of Lutnick’s trip, adding, “I actually haven’t spoken to him about it, I wasn’t, but from what I hear, he was there with his wife and children. And I guess in some cases, some people were. I wasn’t. I was never there. Somebody will someday say that. I was never there.”
No major U.S. political figure has been accused by law enforcement of any crimes, and all have denied wrongdoing. A joint DOJ-FBI memo released last year found that there was no evidence of a so-called “client list” and that no one else would be investigated in connection with Epstein.
Here’s a look at administration officials’ ties to Epstein and his co-conspirator in a sex tracking ring, Ghislaine Maxwell:
Epstein and Trump’s overlap
Numerous people in President Donald Trump’s administrations, past and present, showed up in Epstein file dumps.
NBC News mapped out the web of connections between Jeffrey Epstein and those in President Trump’s administration
This chart shows Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, and eight others who serve or served in Trump’s administration. Mouse over or tap an artist name to hear how they showed up in an Epstein files dump.
Jeffrey Epstein
Trump, who was friends with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, and was president when Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in 2019, is mentioned in the files thousands of times.
Kennedy Jr. shows up in the flight logs of Epstein’s private jet and is referenced in an email exchange between Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein.
Lutnick and Epstein emailed in 2012 about a possible boat trip to Epstein’s island. He and his family ended up taking that trip, Lutnick told a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.
A 2016 email from Oz to Epstein appeared to contain an invitation to a Valentine’s Day party.
Feinberg, a billionaire investor, is named on business documents included in the January Epstein document dump.
In a 2025 Epstein document dump, Phelan’s name was listed in a 2006 flight manifest for Epstein’s private jet.
Warsh was on a list of people a redacted sender forwarded to Epstein, labeled “St. Barth’s Christmas 2010.”
Musk made numerous appearances in the newly released files in friendly-sounding email exchanges with Epstein in 2012 and 2013.
Bannon and Epstein frequently emailed and texted each other from January 2018 and up until days before Epstein’s June 2019 arrest on federal sex trafficking charges.
RFK Jr. : Kennedy Jr. shows up in the flight logs of Epstein’s private jet and is referenced in an email exchange between Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein.
A 2,200-year-old bone unearthed near Córdoba, Spain, may provide the first direct archaeological evidence of the formidable battle elephants employed by the Carthaginian general Hannibal.
Tucked away in a bed of rubble alongside Carthaginian coins from the third century B.C., the baseball-size ankle bone serves as a bridge between colorful historical narratives about the Second Punic War and hardened archaeological fact. The fossil wasn’t from the 37 elephants that famously crossed the Alps in 218 B.C., but it offers what Fernando Quesada Sanz, an archaeologist at the Autonomous University of Madrid, calls a “landmark” connection to Hannibal’s military campaigns, as well as his tactical errors.
Traces of combat — specifically, catapult ammunition found with the specimen — suggest the elephant died in battle, according to Dr. Quesada, an author of a study published last month in The Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
During the closing decades of the third century B.C., the Mediterranean was dominated by two superpowers: the emergent Roman Republic and Carthage, a North African city-state in what is now Tunisia. Still reeling from a humiliating defeat in the First Punic War — which cost them the strategic islands of Sardinia and Corsica — the debt-stricken Carthaginians pivoted to Spain, carving out a prosperous new empire from its silver mines.
Leading this expansion was Hannibal of the Barca family, whose brother Mago is credited with bringing elephants to the Iberian peninsula around 228 B.C. Hannibal then revolutionized warfare by deploying armored pachyderms against local tribes. This terrifying shock force broke battle lines and provided elevated, commanding positions for his archers.
“It is quite possible that the bone uncovered around Cordoba belonged to one of the elephants that Hannibal used to crush the Carpetani tribe in central Spain,” Dr. Quesada said.
The Second Punic War was ignited in 219 B.C. by Hannibal’s brutal, eight-month siege of Saguntum, a strategic Spanish stronghold allied with Rome. Believing the siege to be a rogue act, Rome demanded that Hannibal be handed over. When Carthage refused, the two powers declared war, setting the stage for a colossal 17-year conflict.
Before his invasion of Italy, Hannibal left 21 war elephants in Spain under the authority of his brother Hasdrubal. Those so-called tanks of antiquity were distributed among Mago and other generals. Dr. Quesada said the bones in his team’s archaeological find might be linked to those elephants.
The four-inch bone fragment was dug up six years ago, ahead of construction work at the Iron Age site Colina de los Quemados. The excavation revealed a violent past for the fortified village. Sealed beneath a collapsed adobe wall, the remnant was found with 12 large stone catapult projectiles, suggesting that a fierce clash had taken place on the grounds of the settlement.
The artifact was found in isolation, with the rest of the animal’s remains lost. This anomaly has led researchers to a curious possibility: The relic might have been intentionally spared, salvaged by someone who found its small size ideal for a souvenir.
Researchers identified the specimen as the third carpal bone from an elephant’s right foreleg by comparing it with anatomical collections at the University of Valladolid in Spain and the Leiden University in the Netherlands. The anatomical match for the bone was confirmed through measurements against Asian elephant and steppe mammoth samples.
Eve MacDonald, a historian at Cardiff University and the author of “Carthage: A New History,” who was not involved in the new study, said that while a single ankle bone limits interpretation, “the association alone adds to the understanding of the significance of the elephant in the Carthaginian war machine.”
The fate of the Córdoba elephant was undoubtedly grim, but it was probably a swifter mercy than the marathon of misery endured by Hannibal’s herd. Over five grueling months, the elephants caravaned from Catalonia across the Pyrenees and the Rhone, ultimately scaling the snow-slicked Alps. Their thousand-mile journey was less a military feat and more a slow-motion catastrophe.
While accounts vary, many historians believe a significant number of the elephants — perhaps nearly all 37 — initially survived the passage. But by the spring of 217 B.C., Hannibal’s grand trunk show had been reduced to a lone survivor: a tusk-shorn animal named Surus, meaning the Syrian. The others had died following the Battle of Trebia because of exhaustion, wounds, and a severe winter ice storm.
Hannibal is said to have ridden Surus across the treacherous Arno marshes after losing an eye to an infection. The chilling admission of the Roman playwright Plautus — that Surus “set my heart a-freezing” — endures as the ultimate testimonial to a creature that commanded absolute, frosty respect.
Uncovering the Past, One Discovery at a Time
War Elephants: Archaeologists say a 2,200-year-old specimen is the first direct evidence of how the Carthaginians used the giant mammals in the Punic Wars.
The Lighthouse of Alexandria: An ancient skyscraper considered the seventh wonder of the world crumbled to ruin centuries ago. Now an ambitious archaeological project aims to reassemble it in 3-D.
Rock Art: An ancient handprint in a cave on an Indonesian island may be the oldest known rock art, created at least 67,800 years ago.
Roman Villa Under Deer Park: The unexpected discovery of a well-preserved and fortified villa in Margam Park in South Wales sheds new light on the Roman occupation there, an expert said.
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A Renaissance-era fresco attributed to Jacopo Ripanda depicting Hannibal on the back of an elephant during the Second Punic War, in the third century B.C. Credit…Adam Eastland/Alamy
In the run-up to this year’s Winter Olympics, and even as the Games have got underway, a scandal has been brewing: allegedly, some competitive ski jumpers may have artificially enlarged their crotch area by injecting their genitals with engorging chemicals or stuffing their underwear to create bigger bulges. The apparent reason: to alter their suit measurements—ski jumpsuits are precisely tailored to jumpers’ bodies—and, reportedly, to gain a boost in jumps.
The allegations, first reported by a German media outlet and since dubbed “Penisgate,” have caught not only the Internet’s attention but also the World Anti-Doping Agency’s eye, although no athletes have been implicated by name.
Still the affair raises an important science question: How does a slight increase in a ski jumper’s suit surface area actually change their jumping distance?
Let’s start with the crotch. According to rules issued by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), the body that regulates ski jumping, “crotch height” measurements for an athlete’s suit are taken by laser. So, in theory, if an athlete’s crotch is temporarily a little larger, they would get a slightly roomier suit than they might otherwise.
The extra fabric might be enough to minimally lengthen their jumps by providing a little more lift in the air—much like the patagium of a flying squirrel—and, in turn, more distance. In a sport that’s often decided by a matter of centimeters, any additional hang time can be the difference between gold and silver.
“It has a huge impact,” says Lasse Ottesen, now race director for the Nordic Combined event at FIS and a former Olympic ski jumper. He said research conducted in the 2000s suggested jumpers with a single centimeter of extra material at the crotch could increase jump length by as much as four meters. And according to a more recent study accepted for publication by Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, scientists found that adding one centimeter to the overall circumference of ski jumpers’ suits could lengthen jumps by 3.2 meters.
Athletes, coaches, and regulators are aware of this. In January, before “Penisgate” went viral, several officials from Norway’s ski jumping team were temporarily banned from competition after they were found to have altered athletes’ suits with extra crotch stitching at last year’s Nordic World Ski Championships. That incident went “way beyond what we have ever seen before,” Ottesen says, adding that the FIS is working to refine ski jumping regulations—not least to make sure that “everyone is measured in the correct way.”
Suit size is far from the only factor to influence ski jump lengths, however.
Amy Pope, a principal lecturer in physics and astronomy at Clemson University, explains that how far a ski jumper flies is ultimately the result of physics.
To prepare for their jumps, ski jumpers race down ramps etched with ice grooves in the snow, Pope says. As they descend, the jumpers are aiming to minimize air resistance and the friction on their skis to juice their speed. By the time they reach the bottom, they’re hitting speeds of about 60 miles per hour and a “huge” wall of air resistance—imagine sticking your hand out the window of a car barreling down the highway. “That’s exactly what the athletes are feeling,” she says. And then they jump.
At this point, if the jumper was in a vacuum, their trajectory would be parabolic, with the ideal launch angle of 45 degrees, says Philip Langill, an associate professor in the department of physics at the University of Calgary. A degree more or less, and they wouldn’t travel as far as possible.
Of course, no one is jumping in a vacuum at the Winter Olympics. Instead, the athletes harness “the power of the air around them” to stay aloft longer, Pope says. They contort their bodies to maximize lift, reduce drag, and fight the pull of gravity.
That’s where the sport’s signature “V” style jump comes in—the “biggest revolution” in ski jumping in the last three decades, Ottesen says. In the early 1980s, long jumpers would often keep their skis parallel in the air, he says. But by the 1990s skiers started to fly with their skis in a “V,” increasing their surface area and lift. “All of a sudden, we were jumping a lot farther than we used to,” he says, “and we were crashing more.”
Do the athletes think about all this physics? Sometimes, according to Ottesen, at least—in training, he recalls being “more observant” of the forces acting on his body. But when it comes to competition time, muscle memory takes over. “You’re not thinking about any of this at all. The body and mind are just doing what it’s been practicing,” he says.
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Qiwu Song of Team People’s Republic of China competes in the Mixed Team Trial Round on day four of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, Lars Baron/Getty
As any working mother can tell you, at one point or another, you’re going to need to outsource—even if you’re Michelle Obama. At an exclusive in-person event at People Inc. headquarters in New York City, the former First Lady spoke with her friend La La Anthony about her new book, The Look. People, Inc. is the parent company of Parents.
She admitted that it wasn’t long before her busy schedule campaigning as First Lady—while raising daughters Malia and Sasha (now 27 and 24)—led her to hire a stylist.
“There was no time to shop or think about clothes, so my executive brain function said, ‘I’m going to need some help,’” said Obama.
As Obama, 61, explains in her new book, co-written with longtime stylist Meredith Koop, that smart hire led to some of the most iconic looks in the White House despite her reluctance to talk about fashion while performing her duties as First Lady.
“Before I talked about the shoes and the gowns, I wanted my initiatives to speak,” she said.
But for Obama, it was never just about the clothes. In fact, function always took precedence over fashion. She insisted on having the ability to move freely—to hug, squat, or whatever was needed at an engagement.
“It would drive Meredith [Koop] and her team crazy,” said the Former First Lady. “I never wanted my clothes to stop me from engaging. If it calls for me to take off my shoes and connect with a kid, then that’s what’s going to happen. So don’t put me in something that is going to stain or wrinkle.”
Something that all mothers can relate to.
Unsurprisingly, while Obama was there to promote her new coffee table book, she gave us so much more to think about. Including multigenerational life lessons that all of us parents can benefit from.
Real Confidence Comes From Your Parents
Being a First Lady in the public eye takes confidence. When asked by LaLa Anthony where she gained hers from, Obama credited her parents for their love, stability, and adoration.
“I think that’s where real confidence comes from. I sat around a table where my parents loved my voice. They loved me and my brother’s conversation. They wanted to hear our ideas. They gave us a platform at our own kitchen table,” she said. “That’s the power of great parenting. It buttressed me for all that the world was going to present for me.”
That world wasn’t always kind, Obama explains.
“Because you go outside your home, particularly as a Black kid. As a tall Black kid. I think they knew that I was going to get a lot of ‘no’s’ and I was going to get a lot of pushback from a world, a country, a society that would have lower expectations of me than I had for myself. So I always came through the door blazing, feeling pretty smart and sure about things.”
Teach Your Kids to Live Without You
Now an empty nester, Obama can see the different ways her mom was preparing her to be independent.
“My mom had been preparing us for her death since she was 10. I think what she was doing was letting us know that she loved us, but that we can live life with and without her. And I understand that now as a parent,” she explains. “I want my daughters to know ‘I love you. You love me, but you don’t need me. You know everything you need to know to be successful.’”
Be Present in the Feeling
When the former First Lady was caring for her mom, Marian Robinson, near the end of her life, she said something that changed how Obama approached her sixth decade.
“She said, ‘Wow, that quick.’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ and she said, ‘Life.’ What I got from that was that you’re never ready,” said Obama. “And I was like, let me hear that. Let me understand that. Even with a wonderful life, I want to be present. And I think that feeling of 60 is about me trying to be present in the feeling—trying to be present in this moment in my life so that this last chapter is exactly how I want it to be.”
There’s Freedom in Being an Empty Nester
Everything Michelle Obama has done since becoming a mother has been to ensure her girls turn out whole. But with her daughters now out of the house, she’s embracing life rather than mourning the past like so many other empty nesters might do.
“This is the first time in my life where every single decision I make is mine,” she said. “It’s what I want to do. And there’s a burden in that, too. This is the first time I’ve been able to do that for me with no excuses, so that means the consequences are mine too. There’s freedom with that.”
Only Take Advice From Seasoned Moms
The conversation would not have been complete without her making us laugh. Several times. The most memorable? A playful PSA reminding attendees to stop listening to young mommy bloggers. All in jest, she reminded us that none of us has any idea what we’re doing during those first few years.
“Let me hear what you have to say when they’re 27. That’s when I’ll take your advice,” she said. “I don’t know you’re right until I see the final product. I want to talk to Mariane Robinson. I want to talk to the woman who raised the First Lady. All parent bloggers should be grown people.”
Who are we to disagree?
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Former First Lady Michelle Obama & La La Anthony discuss her new book ‘The Look’ at People Inc.Photo: Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock for People, Inc.
Longtime allies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, have launched a new effort to repeal laws that for decades have required children to be vaccinated against measles, polio, and other diseases before they enter day care or kindergarten.
A newly formed coalition of vaccine activists is targeting laws that are considered the linchpin of protection from deadly diseases. States have long mandated childhood immunizations before children can start day care or school, though some exemptions are available.
“What we need to do is freaking burst the dam open,” Leslie Manookian, the backer of a law that banned medical mandates in Idaho, told supporters on a recent call. “And that is what this year is all about, bursting the dam open in the states where we think it can happen first.”
Ms. Manookian is a leader of the Medical Freedom Act Coalition, a new umbrella group of at least 15 nonprofit organizations advocating an end to state laws that codify what they call medical mandates, which largely pertain to vaccines.
So far, bills have been introduced in at least nine states that would eliminate all or nearly all school requirements, including Democratic states like New York, where there is no chance of passage, to states such as New Hampshire, Georgia, Iowa, and Idaho, where the proposals have gained some traction.
Many vaccine proponents view the state-level push as a second stage in the dismantling of the nation’s vaccine infrastructure, building on Mr. Kennedy’s significant reduction of federally recommended vaccines.
While not entirely new, the strategy demonstrates a sophisticated grasp of how to try to unravel more than 100 years of progress in protecting children from deadly pathogens, said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law professor emerita at George Washington University and former Clinton administration health official.
“They’re drunk on their apparent power, because they have one of their own sitting in the secretarial office of H.H.S.,” Ms. Rosenbaum said, referring to Mr. Kennedy’s position at the Department of Health and Human Services. “They think this is the time for them to go for broke and just simply make the default no requirements at all.”
Groups in the new coalition include Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit that Mr. Kennedy co-founded, and two others created to support his MAHA, or Make America Healthy Again, initiative. One of them, the MAHA Institute, works on state policy and said it is hiring people to support the agenda.
Mr. Kennedy’s retreat from longstanding federal vaccine advice has prompted a flurry of activity at the state level. As his policies take hold, some Democratic leaning states have created their own alliances to reject the new federal vaccine guidance, while some Republican-led states have moved to enshrine it.
At a Heritage Foundation event featuring Mr. Kennedy this month, Kim Mack Rosenberg, general counsel for Children’s Health Defense, said a high priority would be undoing state requirements.
“Ultimately, the goal is to remove mandates,” Ms. Mack Rosenberg said.
“Particularly when you tie those mandates to school attendance, that creates an incredibly difficult situation for families,” she added.
Asked at an event in Tennessee earlier this month about the push to repeal school-entry requirements, Mr. Kennedy said he was not involved in the effort. But he added, “I believe in freedom of choice,” drawing applause from the audience. He said he supported allowing people to make vaccine decisions with their families and physicians.
Ms. Manookian said the coalition’s effort is meant to end what she considered coercion related to all medical interventions. “It’s about putting the power back in the hands of the individual,” she said in an interview.
Proposals to eliminate school-entry vaccine requirements have met mixed fates, with some efforts stalling, in Oklahoma and Indiana, and others pending, including in West Virginia. A bill in Arizona is also pending but is expected to face a veto from the governor, a Democrat, and one in New York is unlikely to clear the Democratic-controlled state legislature. Backers of the coalition say they expect a bill to be introduced in Louisiana next month.
In Florida, despite state officials’ declared intent to end childhood vaccine mandates, no bill has been introduced that would eliminate school-entry rules. One proposal, though, would allow a “conscience” or personal-belief exemption that would make it easier for parents to opt out of immunizations.
The moves to overturn state laws have alarmed pediatricians and other vaccine supporters, who maintain that there is widespread acceptance among parents and the public of immunizing young children.
Eliminating school requirements is viewed by public health experts as a sure way to reduce vaccine coverage, resulting in a surge of measles and whooping cough cases, followed later by potential outbreaks of rubella and polio. The consequences are on display in South Carolina, where a measles outbreak has affected more than 900 people, including at least 19 who were hospitalized with complications, including pneumonia and brain swelling.
At several schools in the center of the outbreak, fewer than 80 percent of students had received all of the required childhood immunizations, well short of the 95 percent needed to stem the spread of measles, a highly contagious virus.
Yet one potent guardrail against weakening immunization mandates has emerged. A number of polls show that voters would penalize lawmakers who favor eliminating school requirements. In one recent poll, conducted by The Wall Street Journal, voters gave Democrats a 9 percent advantage over Republicans when asked which party is best suited to handle vaccine policy.
Two polls commissioned by vaccine backers and conducted by Republican-leaning firms found that voters in Florida and Tennessee would not support lawmakers who want to end school-vaccine mandates. One poll by Fabrizio Ward, a firm that President Trump relies on, found that swing voters in tight congressional races would strip about 20 percentage points from a Republican candidate who was critical of vaccines.
“Vaccine skepticism is bad politics,” the Fabrizio Ward memo said.
Vaccine backers are still concerned about proposals in New Hampshire, Iowa, Idaho, Georgia, and potentially other states that could end or sharply limit vaccine requirements for school entry.
“Prior to vaccines, one in five kids didn’t make it to their fifth birthday,” said Jennifer Herricks, advocacy director for American Families for Vaccines, a nonprofit that receives some of its funding from vaccine makers. “Having these policies in place has really served to protect kids at the time when they are the most vulnerable to these diseases.”
In New Hampshire, vaccine skeptics dominated a lengthy hearing on a bill that would eliminate required vaccines for school, but was amended to keep the polio vaccine. Health department officials said the proposal would put the state out of compliance with federal grant requirements and cost it several million dollars used to immunize low-income children each year.
If the bill passed, there could be “widespread uncontrolled illness,” said Megan Petty, chief of the New Hampshire Bureau of Infectious Disease Control.
Idaho passed a law in 2025 eliminating medical mandates for vaccines or other interventions, but it did not specifically address or change day care or school vaccine requirements, Ms. Manookian said.
She said she planned to support a new Idaho proposal that would. Some Idaho school districts have continued to stand firm on vaccine requirements despite the existing law’s general prohibition against medical mandates, she said.
“The more that the schools and the day cares actually play parent and intrude,” she said, “the more they’re actually harming themselves.”
Chris Anders, a Republican lawmaker in West Virginia, introduced a bill this month that would eliminate school vaccination mandates, including the requirement that county health departments offer free shots to low-income children. He said other lawmakers were unlikely to advance the measure.
“If people decide not to be vaccinated, that is their choice,” he said. “Just like if they decide not to wear a seatbelt or a motorcycle helmet or anything else. If they decide that, they suffer the consequences.”
Last year in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott quietly signed a bill that opened the door to lawsuits against vaccine makers that advertise in the state.
A 1986 federal law created a special court, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, that handles vaccine-injury claims. Mr. Kennedy, who worked on a large lawsuit against one vaccine maker, has long been a critic of the special court, saying vaccine lawsuits should be easier to pursue.
In Florida, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the surgeon general, announced last fall that the state would end vaccine requirements. With no proposal in the legislature to make that happen, a pared-down effort to change state rules is moving forward.
Florida officials are seeking to repeal the requirement that children be vaccinated against varicella, or chickenpox; hepatitis B, pneumococcal bacteria and Haemophilus influenzae type B, or Hib, a condition that can be deadly.
The state held a contentious hearing in December on the plan. Among those testifying was Jamie Schanbaum, whose fingers and lower legs were amputated after she became severely ill from meningitis, which is prevented by the pneumococcal vaccine. She has advocated the vaccine extensively and in December asked Florida leaders to keep their vaccination requirements in place.
“It’s very frustrating,” she said in an interview, “to see and experience the reality of today and that our most prominent, most respected medical guidances are being not taken seriously.”
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An empty classroom at the high school in Williston, N.D., during an outbreak of measles there last year. Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times
The Trump administration’s decision to scrap the “endangerment finding” on Thursday will have wide-reaching consequences for greenhouse gas emissions and, ultimately, could hasten climate change, increase risk to human health, and raise fuel costs.
But what is the “endangerment finding,” and what does the revocation of the legal precedent of this 2009 conclusion mean for you? Let’s break down the facts.
What is the endangerment finding?
To understand the endangerment finding, we need to rewind the clock to the Clean Air Act, the landmark 1970 law that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate air pollutants.
The act was originally used to target pollutants such as sulfur oxides and particulate matter, but it was intentionally written broadly so that Congress wouldn’t have to revisit it every time a new pollutant emerged, said Camille Pannu, associate clinical professor of law at Columbia Law School, to Scientific American last year.
In 1999, a group of environmental organizations and eventually states began petitioning the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Eventually, in 2007, the Supreme Court decided in the case Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, qualified as “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act. The EPA was required to determine whether or not emissions from cars and trucks would endanger public health or if the science was too uncertain.
Flash forward to 2009: Lisa P. Jackson, then administrator of the EPA, issued the “endangerment finding,” which identified six greenhouse gases and held that they did indeed “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” The rule became the bedrock on which all subsequent EPA regulations of greenhouse gases have been based. While it was in place, the EPA could not legally ignore climate change or completely cut greenhouse gas regulations.
What effect does repealing the endangerment finding have?
In the short term, EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions and fuel efficiency standards for new cars and trucks will be repealed and not replaced. The decision to repeal the rule, however, will face lengthy legal challenges.
The EPA has also proposed repealing regulations on industrial emissions and delaying rules designed to reduce methane emissions, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, from oil and gas facilities.
Rescinding the endangerment finding will also make it harder for future administrations to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act without a new law or amendment passed by Congress.
How does climate change affect public health?
There is a robust body of evidence showing the harms of climate change on health. One of the most direct risks is through heat waves, which have become more intense, more frequent, and longer-lasting as global background temperatures have risen. Children, pregnant people, older people, and those who work outdoors are particularly susceptible to heat illness—causing issues from dehydration to death.
Climate change has also been linked to worsened seasonal allergies and higher risks of preterm birth. Additionally, it exacerbates smog and other air pollution that has been linked to asthma, cardiovascular disease, and adverse pregnancy outcomes. More extreme rains fueled by a warmer climate also raise the risks of drinking water being contaminated with toxic bacteria such as Salmonella and Campylobacter. And as temperatures warm and precipitation patterns change, insects that spread diseases—such as mosquitoes that spread malaria and West Nile virus and ticks that spread Lyme disease—are expanding their ranges.
Climate change also exerts a toll on mental health, causing mental trauma—as well as physical injury—from climate-fueled weather extremes such as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. And research has shown that the effects from events such as hurricanes can cause deaths long after the storms.
Has the endangerment finding been at risk before?
In President Donald Trump’s first term in office, then EPA administrator Scott Pruitt sought to replace Obama-era emissions regulations with weaker ones that were favored by fossil fuel companies, the industrial sector, and car companies. This strategy would have allowed the endangerment finding to stand, dodging potential legal challenges.
When President Joe Biden took office in 2021, his EPA replaced those weakened regulations with more stringent ones. At the end of his presidency in 2024, Biden announced his pledge to reduce U.S. emissions by up to 66 percent by 2035. Overturning Biden’s updated laws has become a focal point of Trump’s second term.
How does this fit in with the rest of Trump’s climate policy?
Trump has long referred to climate change as a “hoax” despite decades of rigorous research and evidence in support of global warming. He began his second presidency by once again removing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement to limit warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius. In 2026, Trump also withdrew the U.S. from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the treaty under which the Paris Agreement was negotiated.
The current Trump administration has also sought to hobble the build-out of renewable energy in the U.S., particularly offshore wind turbines, which the president has falsely linked to the deaths of whales. And the administration has sought to bolster fossil fuels by opening more federal lands to drilling and ordering coal plants that were marked for retirement to stay open.
The Trump administration has revoked the bedrock scientific determination that gives the government the ability to regulate climate-heating pollution. The move was described as a gift to “billionaire polluters” at the expense of Americans’ health.
The endangerment finding, which states that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare, has since 2009 allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit heat-trapping pollution from vehicles, power plants, and other industrial sources.
Donald Trump called the move “the single largest deregulatory action in American history”.
“This is a big one if you’re into environment,” he told reporters on Thursday. “This is about as big as it gets.”
The move comes as part of Trump’s bigger anti-environment push, which has seen him roll back pollution rules and boost oil and gas.
On social media, Barack Obama said the repeal will leave Americans “less safe, less healthy, and less able to fight climate change – all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money”.
The former Secretary of State John Kerry called the new rule “un-American”.
“Repealing the Endangerment Finding takes Orwellian governance to new heights and invites enormous damage to people and property around the world,” said Kerry, who also served as Joe Biden’s climate envoy. “Ignoring warning signs will not stop the storm. It puts more Americans directly in its path.”
The final rule removes the government’s ability to impose requirements to track, report, and limit climate-heating pollution from cars and trucks. Transportation is the largest source of climate pollution in the US.
It does not apply to regulations on stationary sources of emissions, such as power plants and fossil fuel infrastructure, which are regulated under a separate section of the Clean Air Act, but it will open the door to end those standards, too.
Trump’s EPA has separately proposed to find that emissions from power plants “do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution” and therefore should not be regulated. Joseph Goffman, who served as EPA air chief under Joe Biden, expects the agency will apply their vehicles-focused arguments to stationary polluters in order to kill the endangerment finding for all sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
“Instead of the entire house of cards of all EPA climate regulation collapsing all at once today, it’s going to be like a row of dominoes falling,” said Goffman, who helped write and implement the Clean Air Act and worked directly on the endangerment finding.
Environmental advocates have condemned the move as illegal. A slew of green groups have promised to take the EPA to court over the rollback, as has the state of California.
“If this reckless decision survives legal challenges, it will lead to more deadly wildfires, more extreme heat deaths, more climate-driven floods and droughts, and greater threats to communities nationwide – all while the EPA dismisses the overwhelming science that has protected public health for decades,” Gavin Newsom, the California governor, said in a statement.
The move marks “the most aggressive, ruthless act of dismantling public health protections in the agency’s 55-year history”, said Dominique Browning, director and co-founder of environmental advocacy group Moms Clean Air Force.
In a press release, the EPA said the move will save the US $1.3tn, while Trump said Thursday that the move “will save American consumers trillions of dollars”.
The EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, said the Obama and Biden administrations used the endangerment finding “to steamroll into existence a leftwing wish list of costly climate policies”.
“Who paid the biggest price? Hardworking families, small businesses, millions of Americans who just want a reliable, affordable car to get to work or take their kids to school or go to church on Sunday,” he said.
But though the rollback could save some corporations money, experts note it could take a massive toll on ordinary Americans’ well-being and pocketbooks.
One analysis from green group Environmental Defense Fund found the full repeal of the endangerment finding combined with Trump’s proposal to roll back motor vehicle standards would result in as much as 18bn more tons of planet-warming pollution by 2055 – the same as the annual emissions of China, the world’s top polluter – and would impose up to $4.7tn in additional expenses tied to harmful climate and air pollution by that time.
Zeldin submitted the repeal of the legal determination for White House review last month. In July, he officially announced plans to repeal the finding, justifying the proposal with a widely criticized Energy Department report questioning climate science.
The agency received half a million comments on the proposal. Last month, a federal judge said the July Energy Department report was created unlawfully.
In the repeal of the endangerment finding, the EPA is claiming that the Clean Air Act is only meant to regulate pollution “that harms health or the environment through local and regional exposure”. But there is scientific consensus that by trapping heat in the atmosphere, greenhouse gas emissions are intensifying dangerous extreme weather events, allowing diseases to spread faster, and worsening illnesses from allergies to lung disease.
Trump described the finding as “the legal foundation for the green new scam”, which he claimed “the Obama and Biden administration used to destroy countless jobs”.
But the new rule will have ruinous consequences for working-class Americans, said Jason Walsh, executive director of BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups.
“Billionaires like Donald Trump don’t suffer the devastation of climate change,” he said. “Working people do.”
The rollback comes one month after the Trump administration announced it will pull the US from the foundational UN agreement to address the climate crisis, as well as the world’s leading body of climate scientists. Over the past year, Zeldin has also launched an all-out assault on climate, air, water, and chemical protections. The EPA has also removed crucial climate-focused science and data from its webpages.
“This is all part of the Trump administration’s authoritarian playbook to replace facts with propaganda, to enrich a few while harming the rest of us,” said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for the climate and energy program at the science advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Administrator Zeldin has fully abdicated EPA’s responsibility to protect our health and the environment.”
The EPA has said that it determined the US would save billions annually by revoking the endangerment determination. But the agency’s analysis did not account for the money and lives saved by the environmental and public-health protections that the change would eliminate, experts say.
Alex Witt, senior adviser at green advocacy group Climate Power, said: “Zeldin and Trump are telling our families: we’ll let you get sicker and watch your healthcare costs skyrocket as long as oil and gas CEOs can profit.”
“This decision makes it abundantly clear that Trump is willing to make our families sicker and less safe, all to benefit a few billionaire polluters,” said Witt.
Some industry groups have been reluctant to support the full rollback of the endangerment finding. The American Petroleum Institute, the top US oil lobby group, last month said it backed a repeal of the endangerment finding for vehicles, but not for stationary sources of pollution like power plants.
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The morning commute on northbound Interstate 405 at sunrise on 15 January in Los Angeles, California. Photograph: Kevin Carter/Getty Images
Funding Standoff: Senate Democrats blocked a measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security as lawmakers remained locked in a standoff that could shut down the agency this weekend. The bill contained none of the restrictions on immigration enforcement that Democrats have demanded to fund the department. The vote came after a heated, four-hour Senate hearing with top immigration officials in which Todd Lyons, the acting chief of ICE, acknowledged that two citizens killed by agents in Minnesota, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, did not appear to be domestic terrorists. Read more ›
Minnesota ICE Drawdown: Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said the Trump administration was ending the fiercely criticized surge of immigration agents in Minnesota. State and local officials greeted the announcement with cautious optimism as they celebrated Minnesotans for challenging the conduct of federal agents and protecting immigrants.
Military Video: A federal judge temporarily blocked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from punishing Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy pilot, for participating in a video that reminded active-duty service members not to follow illegal orders. The judge said it would infringe on his First Amendment rights.
A homeland security shutdown draws nearer as Democrats block funding.
Members of Congress were departed Washington on Thursday without funding the Department of Homeland Security, putting it on a near-certain path to a shutdown this weekend amid a deep partisan divide over Democrats’ demands to place new restrictions on federal immigration agents.
Senate Democrats blocked a spending bill that would have funded the department past a Friday night shutdown deadline without adding any new curbs on immigration enforcement, an expected outcome after bipartisan talks on limiting President Trump’s crackdown deadlocked.
Speaker Mike Johnson has canceled a House congressional delegation to the Munich Security Conference this weekend in light of the expected shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security on Saturday, according to five congressional aides with knowledge of the trip.
Dozens of House members were expected to be at the gathering of world leaders, with the heads of the conference touting the U.S. delegation as the largest ever to attend. Now those members, including the top Republicans and Democrats on the foreign affairs and armed services committees, will be absent. Some senators are still planning to travel to Germany to participate.
Senate Democrats just blocked a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, after Republicans tried to advance a spending measure that they had already rejected. The measure fell short of the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster, with all but one Democrat voting to block it in a 52-47 vote.
The Senate is voting on funding the Department of Homeland Security after it lapses at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, but Democrats are blocking it over a lack of restrictions on immigration agents, putting the agency on the verge of a shutdown. A second vote is expected this afternoon on stop-gap funding, but it is also expected to fail.
The hearing has concluded after about four hours of testimony.
Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, said that a shutdown of the Homeland Security Department “would impact personnel actions” like hiring and recruitment.
But when asked further by Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, he acknowledged that a shutdown was unlikely to heavily affect immigration enforcement operations because of the $75 billion fund that Republicans allocated to ICE last year as part of their major tax and policy bill.
The Minnesota surge led to thousands of arrests, tense protests and three shootings.
The Trump administration said on Thursday that it was ending its deployment of immigration agents to Minnesota, unwinding an aggressive operation that has stretched for more than two months despite loud opposition from residents and local officials.
For many Minnesotans who had watched the federal government exert its will on their state — wielding law enforcement power and physical force at a scale that had no modern American precedent — the announcement signaled a welcome shift. Still, some expressed skepticism about whether the administration would follow through.
Lawyers for the family of Renee Good, who was killed by a federal agent in Minneapolis, said they were “cautiously optimistic about the drawdown of federal agents from Minnesota.” They added that the “agents’ departure from Minnesota does not dismiss the absolute need for accountability for their actions.”
Minnesota leaders praise residents for standing up to ‘bullies’ during Trump crackdown.
Minnesota officials said the nearly six-week surge of immigration enforcement in the state would leave deep economic and psychological scars that last long after the drawdown of federal agents, which President Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, announced on Thursday.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the announcement and would now turn his attention to the state’s economic recovery. “They left us with deep damage, generational trauma,” he said. “They left us with economic ruin, in some cases.”
On the same day, the White House announced that it was ending its immigration operation in Minnesota, Kaohly Her, the mayor of St. Paul., Minn., signed an ordinance requiring that all law enforcement officials operating in the city display their names or badge numbers on the outer layer of their uniforms. “Federal law enforcement officers have too often used generic ‘police’ uniforms to obscure their identities and avoid being clearly identified by the agencies they represent,” the mayor said in a statement. Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said the expected drawdown of federal agents in his state does not mean that Democrats in Congress should change the way they negotiate on a funding package for the Department of Homeland Security. “Hold the line until you get the minimum reforms necessary in this rogue agency,” he said. Democrats in Congress have suggested new rules for immigration officers as a condition for funding the department. Republicans have so far rejected them.
Tom Homan’s announcement of a drawdown in Minnesota signaled a shift in strategy and messaging for the Trump administration when it comes to immigration enforcement. When the administration wound down its aggressive operations in Los Angeles and Chicago last year, the administration made no formal announcement that agents were leaving town, leaving local and state officials in the dark about their intentions.
Intelligence dispute centers on Kushner reference in intercepted communication.
It was a discussion last year between two foreign nationals about Iran, not an unusual topic for American spies to study. But an intercept of that communication, collected by a foreign spy service and given to the United States, has now become a flashpoint within the intelligence community and between the administration and Congress. The reason is a single name that came up in the discussion: Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law.
The previously unreported mention of Mr. Kushner in the discussion came after members of Congress were briefed last week about a classified report filed by a whistle-blower regarding the intercept, according to people familiar with the material. The whistle-blower has accused Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of limiting who could see the report and of blocking wider distribution among the nation’s spy agencies, people familiar with the complaint said.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he planned to appeal the ruling by a federal judge that blocked the Pentagon from seeking to punish Senator Mark Kelly for taking part in a video that reminded active-duty service members not to follow illegal orders.
“This will be immediately appealed,” Hegseth wrote in a social media post. “Sedition is sedition, ‘captain.’”
A judge ordered the government to help return Venezuelans detained in El Salvador.
A federal judge in Washington ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to help bring back any of the nearly 140 Venezuelan immigrants who want to return to the United States from the international limbo they have been living in since March, when officials deported them to El Salvador.
The ruling by the judge, James E. Boasberg, was one of the most robust steps taken so far to force the administration to give due process to the Venezuelan immigrants deported under the authority of an 18th century wartime law.
President Trump said Thursday that he had no knowledge that Howard Lutnick, his secretary of commerce, had ever visited the private island of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I wasn’t aware of it, no,” Trump told reporters, adding, “I actually haven’t spoken to him about it.” Trump then explained: “But from what I hear, he was there with his wife and children.” The president then said that he, personally, “was never there.”
The White House has publicly rallied behind Lutnick in recent days, even after learning his ties to Epstein were deeper than the secretary initially suggested.
“It’s a ruling we wanted and hoped for and we’ll see what happens next,” Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, said of the decision by a federal judge who blocked the Pentagon from downgrading his military retirement rank and pay.
Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change
President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.
The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane, and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and other extreme weather.
President Trump and Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, are expected to make a major announcement at the White House related to climate change.
They are set to announce the repeal of the scientific determination that underpins the government’s legal authority to combat climate change. That 2009 determination, known as the endangerment finding, gave the E.P.A. the power to set climate regulations for cars, power plants, and other sources of planet-warming pollution.
Judge Temporarily Blocks Hegseth from Punishing Kelly for Video
A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from punishing Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, for participating in a video that warned active-duty service members not to follow illegal orders.
Judge Richard J. Leon of the District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in a 29-page opinion that the Defense Department’s move to discipline Mr. Kelly, a retired Navy captain and former astronaut, ran roughshod over his freedom of speech. Judge Leon barred Mr. Hegseth and the Pentagon from taking any steps to reduce the senator’s retirement rank and pay, or using the findings against Mr. Kelly in a criminal proceeding.
A federal judge in Washington blocked an attempt by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, to penalize Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, for participating in a video that warned active-duty service members not to follow illegal orders.
In a curt 29-page opinion, Judge Richard J. Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote the efforts to punish Kelly were a clear violation of his First Amendment rights as a military retiree.
Today’s Senate hearing with the heads of three federal immigration agencies has again highlighted the partisan divide over immigration enforcement efforts, one that has increased the likelihood of a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
Democrats have criticized the practices of federal immigration agents as abusive, aggressive, and out of line with policing standards that govern the use of force and de-escalation tactics. Republicans have argued that policies in Democratic-run cities and states are hampering ICE from deporting undocumented immigrants, some of whom are accused of violent crimes.
Though members of both parties have argued for independent investigations of the shootings in Minnesota, both sides have insisted that a bill to fund the Homeland Security Department addresses their separate concerns.
Republicans are pointing to the announcement by Homan to end the surge of agents to Minneapolis, along with a White House counterproposal to Democrats’ demands as signs that they are operating in good faith in their negotiations to fund the Homeland Security Department.
But on Thursday morning, many Democrats said they still haven’t seen the White House offer, and others said the actions were insufficient. “Abuses cannot be solved merely through executive fiat alone,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said. “Without legislation, what Tom Homan says today could be reversed tomorrow on a whim from Donald Donald Trump.”
Republicans’ advantage on immigration has shrunk, according to a new poll.
The Republican Party’s advantage on immigration appears to be shrinking, according to a new poll from The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Republicans now hold a narrow, 4 percentage point edge over Democrats on which party Americans trust to handle immigration, down from a 13 percentage point advantage in October.
Senator John Thune, the majority leader, said that a counterproposal from the White House to keep funding flowing to the Homeland Security Department had moved negotiations closer to an “agreement zone,” and he urged Democrats to remain at the table to reach a deal.
He did conceded that “maybe there’s some more ground the White House could give on a couple of fronts” to secure a deal and avoid a partial government shutdown or keep it brief. Thune refused to disclose details of the White House proposal but indicated that any requirement for the department’s officers to have a judicial warrant before entering private property would be a nonstarter.
“The issue of warrants is going to be very hard for the White House or for Republicans,” he told reporters. “But I think there are a lot of other areas where there has been give and progress.”
The Justice Department’s antitrust chief is leaving her post after months of mounting tension.
Gail Slater said on Thursday that she was leaving the top antitrust post at the Justice Department, ending a short tenure for the veteran tech and media lawyer who had faced tensions over her handling of corporate mergers.
Ms. Slater, 54, who was the assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, said in a social media post that she was leaving her role on Thursday with “great sadness and abiding hope.” She was in the job for roughly a year, after her confirmation in March.
Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday denounced the Trump administration’s failed attempt to criminally prosecute six lawmakers for posting a video warning active-duty service members that they are not obligated to follow illegal orders.
The video posted in November sparked anger from President Trump. “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” he wrote in a post on his social media site.
The Latest on the Trump Administration
El Paso: The abrupt, and ultimately short-lived, closure of the city’s airspace was precipitated when Customs and Border Protection officials deployed an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft, according to multiple people briefed on the situation.
U.S. Attorney Fired: Federal judges in upstate New York appointed a new U.S. attorney after the Trump administration’s nominee was found to be serving unlawfully, only to see him abruptly fired by the White House.
Trump Tax Cuts: The tax law passed in Congress, which revived a slew of expensive tax breaks for both business and individuals, is hitting state revenues and prompting some states to proactively exclude the new federal tax cuts from their tax codes.
Lost Factory Jobs: Ford Motor shut down a battery factory and laid off 1,600 workers after President Trump and Republicans gutted government support for electric vehicles. Yet few people in Hardin County, where Trump won 64 percent of the vote in 2024, place much blame on Republicans.
Foreign Military Chiefs: Dozens of military chiefs from the Western Hemisphere gathered in Washington for the first time to discuss a wide range of security issues that the Trump administration says are paramount to safeguarding the United States.
Kennedy Changes Course: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, is making a calculated election-year pivot away from vaccines, using high profile events to promote his “Eat Real Food” agenda.
Nuclear Waste: After years of missed deadlines, New Mexico is demanding that the Energy Department expedite the cleanup of so-called legacy nuclear and hazardous waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb.
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Senate Democrats and Republicans continue to clash over funding part of the government.Credit…Eric Lee for The New York Times
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.
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Secretary Lutnick
A Renaissance-era fresco attributed to Jacopo Ripanda depicting Hannibal on the back of an elephant during the Second Punic War, in the third century B.C. Credit…Adam Eastland/Alamy
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Former First Lady Michelle Obama & La La Anthony discuss her new book ‘The Look’ at People Inc. Photo: Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock for People, Inc.
An empty classroom at the high school in Williston, N.D., during an outbreak of measles there last year. Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times
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The morning commute on northbound Interstate 405 at sunrise on 15 January in Los Angeles, California. Photograph: Kevin Carter/Getty Images
Senate Democrats and Republicans continue to clash over funding part of the government.Credit…Eric Lee for The New York Times
James' World 2 