policy

WASHINGTON — State and local officials are once again on the defensive after President Trump renewed threats Wednesday to strike federal dollars from “sanctuary” jurisdictions such as California and Los Angeles, which have long opposed cooperation with immigration enforcement agencies.

The ultimatum, laid out in an early morning Truth Social post, echoed sweeping statements the president made Tuesday at the Detroit Economic Club, putting billions in funding flagged for healthcare, education and transportation at stake.

“Effective Feb. 1, no more payments will be made by the federal government to states for their corrupt criminal protection centers known as sanctuary cities. All they do is breed crime and violence. If states want them, they will have to pay for them,” he said.

The U.S. government is supplying $175 billion to California this fiscal year — about a third of the state’s total 2025-26 spending plan, according to state budget records.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice created a list of dozens of state and local governments identified as “sanctuary” jurisdictions based on policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

Those policies generally do not block federal authorities from carrying out immigration actions, but restrict how local resources can be used.

California Department of Justice officials were quick to point out that courts have repeatedly sided against the president on this matter, most recently in August, when a judge ruled the federal government cannot deny funding to Los Angeles and 30 other cities over policies that limit cooperation on immigration enforcement.

The ruling, by U.S. District Judge William Orrick, extended an earlier injunction that established Trump’s efforts to cut federal funding were probably unconstitutional and violated the separation of powers doctrine.

But at a December hearing, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel signaled it might overturn the injunction, as judges questioned whether the administration’s latest orders actually require agencies to cut funding in a way that exceeds their authority.

A final ruling on the appeal is pending.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office said in a statement Wednesday that the substance of White House threats wasn’t clear.

“While details here are in short supply, we’ll have to take a look at whatever the president actually does,” Bonta said. “We remain prepared to take action as necessary to protect our state and uphold the law.”

Bonta has also defeated the administration over its attempts to impose illegal immigration enforcement conditions on transportation, homeland security and Victims of Crime Act funding.

On Tuesday, he announced a multistate challenge to Trump’s plans to freeze $10 billion in federal child care and social services funding amid unsubstantiated allegations that the state was “illicitly providing illegal aliens” with benefits.

Gov. Gavin Newsom took a moment to lean on the state’s winning legal record.

“Please pray for the president as he struggles with cognitive decline. He already forgot he tried this before — multiple times — and we sued him and won,” Newsom said in a statement Wednesday.

Though the White House wouldn’t comment on a specific legal framework or dollar amount for this wave of funding cuts, Spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Wednesday that sanctuary cities are “incredibly dangerous” and put law-abiding Americans at risk.

She added that the Trump administration is considering “a variety of lawful options” to implement this policy.

The issue of executive overreach is at the fore for Senate Democrats, too, who are challenging the president over military action in Venezuela.

“Let me be clear: Congress—not the White House and not Donald Trump — holds the power of the purse,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

Los Angeles City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto confirmed the city would take legal action to protect its access to federal dollars.

Mayor Karen Bass said she plans to work with partners at every level of government to ensure Angelenos continue to receive government services.

“Hardworking, honest Americans should not have to pay the price for the president’s continued political attack on blue states and cities,” she said in a statement.

WASHINGTON — Twelve House Democrats who last year sued the Trump administration over a policy limiting congressional oversight of immigrant detention facilities returned to federal court Monday to challenge a second, new policy imposing further limits on such unannounced visits.

In December, those members of Congress won their lawsuit challenging a Department of Homeland Security policy from June that required a week’s notice from lawmakers before an oversight visit. Now they’re accusing Homeland Security of having “secretly reimposed” the requirement last week.

In a Jan. 8 memorandum, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote that “Facility visit requests must be made a minimum of seven (7) calendar days in advance. Any requests to shorten that time must be approved by me.”

The lawmakers who challenged the policies are led by Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) and include five members from California: Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) and Norma Torres (D-Pomona).

Last summer, as immigration raids spread through Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California, many Democrats including those named in the lawsuit were denied entry to local detention facilities. Before then, unannounced inspections had been a common, long-standing practice under congressional oversight powers.

“The duplicate notice policy is a transparent attempt by DHS to again subvert Congress’s will…and this Court’s stay of DHS’s oversight visit policy,” the plaintiffs wrote in a federal court motion Monday requesting an emergency hearing.

On Saturday, three days after Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, three members of Congress from Minnesota attempted to conduct an oversight visit of an ICE facility near Minneapolis. They were denied access.

Afterward, lawyers for Homeland Security notified the lawmakers and the court of the new policy, according to the court filing.

In a joint statement, the plaintiffs wrote that “rather than complying with the law, the Department of Homeland Security is attempting to get around this order by re-imposing the same unlawful policy.”

“This is unacceptable,” they said. “Oversight is a core responsibility of Members of Congress, and a constitutional duty we do not take lightly. It is not something the executive branch can turn on or off at will.”

Congress has stipulated in yearly appropriations packages since 2020 that funds may not be used to prevent a member of Congress “from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.”

That language formed the basis of the decision last month by U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb in Washington, who found that lawmakers cannot be denied entry for visits “unless and until” the government could show that no appropriations money was being used to operate detention facilities.

In her policy memorandum, Noem wrote that funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which supplied roughly $170 billion toward immigration and border enforcement, are not subject to the limitations of the yearly appropriations law.

“ICE must ensure that this policy is implemented and enforced exclusively with money appropriated” by the act, Noem said.

Noem said the new policy is justified because unannounced visits pull ICE officers away from their normal duties. “Moreover, there is an increasing trend of replacing legitimate oversight activities with circus-like publicity stunts, all of which creates a chaotic environment with heightened emotions,” she wrote.

The lawmakers, in the court filing, argued it’s clear that the new policy violates the law.

“It is practically impossible that the development, promulgation, communication, and implementation of this policy has been, and will be, accomplished — as required — without using a single dollar of annually appropriated funds,” they wrote.

WASHINGTON — President Obama took historic steps to thaw the hostile, Cold War-era relationship with the island nation of Cuba, 120 miles south of Miami. President Trump did his best to put everything back on ice.

Now the Biden administration says it will lift some of Trump’s restrictions on business and travel between the U.S. and Cuba, and renew diplomatic talks.

But President Biden’s initial actions will disappoint advocates longing for the more robust relationship that was emerging in the Obama years.

Although he promised during the campaign to aggressively reverse Trump’s Cuba policy, Biden’s plans will have to roll out more slowly than some of his advisors had hoped.

He faces stiff resistance in Congress from members opposed to détente with Cuba, including from one of the Senate’s most powerful Democrats. At the same time, Cuba’s behavior has become more controversial with repression of dissidents and support for Venezuela. And Trump left numerous obstacles, such as formally declaring Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, which takes time and a bundle of red tape to reverse.

“There was never going to be Obama Redux,” said Cuba expert John Kavulich, head of an economic institute that for decades has focused on Cuba.

The Biden government will remove harsh Trump restrictions that most directly harmed civilian Cubans, administration officials said. First of those are the limits on the amount of remittances that Cuban Americans can send to their relatives on the island. The administration will also restore some of the wiring services, including Western Union, that are used to transmit the money and that the previous government blocked. The money is a lifeline for many Cubans.

Biden’s team also intends to allow more travel between the countries, people familiar with the plans said. U.S.-origin flights to various Cuban cities were opened under Obama, along with a large cruise ship itinerary. But those mostly shut down under Trump. Obama’s reasoning was that the exposure of Cubans to more Westerners would plant the seeds of democratization; Trump’s people argued that a lot of the dollars spent by tourists and other visitors ended up in the hands of the Cuban military.

Biden’s first steps will be taken as initial gestures, while more difficult matters are debated.

“Politically he is going to keep it limited for now,” said John Caulfield, former head of the U.S. mission in Havana and specialist in U.S.-Cuba policy. Caulfield said Biden needs to see how much political will there is in Havana.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has said he welcomes dialogue with Washington, but without preconditions.

Biden may also rebuild the staff at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana, which sank to a skeleton crew under Trump, and resume issuing visas to Cuban nationals.

Since Biden assumed office, his aides have become more circumspect about the plans for Cuba, repeating publicly that the policy is “under review.”

However, Juan Gonzalez, an Obama administration alum who is now head of Western Hemisphere affairs for Biden’s National Security Council, last week confirmed broad strokes of the new policy.

Biden’s “commitment on Cuba is to lift the limitations on remittances and make possible the travel of Americans to the island,” he said in Spanish to Spanish-language news channel Univision.

The previous administration “only penalized Cuban Americans and the Cuban people in the middle of a pandemic” by making it difficult for them to receive money from relatives and “did nothing to try to advance a democratic future in Cuba,” Gonzalez said.

Two other people who have participated in talks about Cuba with members of the administration confirmed the steps. The State Department declined comment.

Obama’s opening with Cuba, announced in 2014, came in his second term, when he no longer had to worry about reelection and after the critical and traditionally Republican Florida vote in the 2012 contest had moved into his camp.

He reestablished the U.S. Embassy in Havana, made the first trip there of an American president in 90 years, and oversaw the revival of numerous bilateral operations, like the interdiction of drug traffickers.

Biden, by contrast, must confront the issue early in his first term, when not only are Florida Republicans including Sen. Marco Rubio arrayed against him, but Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a hawk on Cuba, is ascending to the powerful chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Nine days before leaving office, Trump’s Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo embedded extra obstacles that would trip up the Biden administration in its efforts to return to rapprochement with Cuba. Pompeo and Trump put Cuba on the list of state “sponsors of terrorism” with only three other countries: Iran, North Korea and Syria.

Most experts say the designation is purely political. Normally this designation comes after an extensive review by the State Department and then consultation with Congress. That did not happen.

Politically it puts Biden in the tricky position of having to affirmatively recertify that Cuba is not sponsoring terrorism, and Havana’s support for Colombia’s leftist guerrillas and Venezuela dictator Nicolas Maduro will complicate that. Cuba and Venezuela exchange intelligence officers, doctors, oil and possibly weapons.

While there is wide confidence among lawmakers and academics that Biden will fulfill some of his Cuba campaign promises, there is also concern the administration will stumble if it begins to demand Cuba take reciprocal steps, such as freeing dissidents from jail, to “earn” U.S. concessions. It’s a tactic that has never worked.

“There will be a temptation to demand reciprocity and concessions from the Cubans in return,” said Peter Kornbluh, coauthor of “Back Channel to Cuba,” a book recounting Obama’s secret negotiations. “The history of negotiations with Cuba demonstrates that the quid pro quo approach is a non-starter, and a recipe for policy failure.”

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) has lobbied both Biden and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on reestablishing full ties with Cuba, making similar warnings.

Richard Feinberg, a veteran of the Clinton White House and now an international political economy professor at UC San Diego, also cautioned against “overdemanding,” saying the Biden team is “overestimating U.S. leverage worldwide.”

“The administration is looking for positive developments on the island to wrap their announcements around,” Feinberg said. Earlier this month, Diaz-Canel, struggling with a moribund economy, vastly expanded the list of small businesses that Cubans may operate, the most important step Havana has taken in allowing a form of private enterprise.

The most ardent Cuba advocates in Congress and elsewhere are reviving a campaign to end the 59-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba, initiated by President Kennedy to isolate the island’s communist leadership. Obama, along with experts, historians and activists, long declared the embargo a failure — it never unseated revolutionary leader Fidel Castro or his successors — and it remains the sorest point Cubans cite in the troubled relationship with the United States.

It can only be lifted by Congress, where Rubio or like-minded Republicans would work to block such action.

“Our nation’s embargo on Cuba is an artifact from the 1960s,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said as he introduced a bill this month to repeal the sanctions. “To continue this outdated, harmful policy of isolation would be a failure of American leadership.”

VATICAN CITY — In his most substantial critique of U.S., Russian and other military incursions in sovereign countries, Pope Leo XIV on Friday denounced how nations were using force to assert their dominion worldwide, “completely undermining” peace and the post-World War II international legal order.

“War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading,” Leo told ambassadors from around the world who represent their countries’ interests at the Holy See.

Leo didn’t name individual countries that have resorted to force in his lengthy speech, the bulk of which he delivered in English in a break from the Vatican’s traditional diplomatic protocol of Italian and French. But his speech came amid the backdrop of the recent U.S. military operation in Venezuela to remove Nicolás Maduro from power, Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and other conflicts.

The occasion was the pope’s annual audience with the Vatican diplomatic corps, which traditionally amounts to his yearly foreign policy address.

In his first such encounter, history’s first U.S.-born pope delivered much more than the traditional roundup of global hotspots. In a speech that touched on threats to religious freedom and the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion and surrogacy, Leo lamented how the United Nations and multilateralism as a whole were increasingly under threat.

“A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies,” he said. “The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined.”

“Instead, peace is sought through weapons as a condition for asserting one’s own dominion. This gravely threatens the rule of law, which is the foundation of all peaceful civil coexistence,” he said.

A geopolitical roundup of conflicts and suffering

Leo did refer explicitly to tensions in Venezuela, calling for a peaceful political solution that keeps in mind the “common good of the peoples and not the defense of partisan interests.”

The U.S. military seized Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, in a surprise nighttime raid. The Trump administration is now seeking to control Venezuela’s oil resources and its government. The U.S. government has insisted Maduro’s capture was legal, saying drug cartels operating from Venezuela amounted to unlawful combatants and that the U.S. is now in an “armed conflict” with them.

Analysts and some world leaders have condemned the Venezuela mission, warning that Maduro’s ouster could pave the way for more military interventions and a further erosion of the global legal order.

On Ukraine, Leo repeated his appeal for an immediate ceasefire and urgently called for the international community “not to waver in its commitment to pursuing just and lasting solutions that will protect the most vulnerable and restore hope to the afflicted peoples.”

On Gaza, Leo repeated the Holy See’s call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and insisted on the Palestinians’ right to live in Gaza and the West Bank “in their own land.”

In other comments, Leo said the persecution of Christians around the world was “one of the most widespread human rights crises today,” affecting one in seven Christians globally. He cited religiously motivated violence in Bangladesh, Nigeria, the Sahel, Mozambique and Syria but said religious discrimination was also present in Europe and the Americas.

There, Christians “are sometimes restricted in their ability to proclaim the truths of the Gospel for political or ideological reasons, especially when they defend the dignity of the weakest, the unborn, refugees and migrants, or promote the family.”

Leo repeated the church’s opposition to abortion and euthanasia and expressed “deep concern” about projects to provide cross-border access to mothers seeking abortion.

He also described surrogacy as a threat to life and dignity. “By transforming gestation into a negotiable service, this violates the dignity both of the child, who is reduced to a product, and of the mother, exploiting her body and the generative process, and distorting the original relational calling of the family,” he said.

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is facing a new legal complaint from a group of government employees affected by a policy that went into effect Thursday that eliminates coverage for gender-affirming care in federal health insurance programs.

The complaint, filed Thursday on the employees’ behalf by the Human Rights Campaign, is in response to an August announcement from the Office of Personnel Management that it would no longer cover “chemical and surgical modification of an individual’s sex traits through medical interventions” in health insurance programs for federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers.

The complaint argues that denying coverage of gender-affirming care is sex-based discrimination and asks the personnel office to rescind the policy.

“This policy is not about cost or care — it is about driving transgender people and people with transgender spouses, children, and dependents out of the federal workforce,” Human Rights Campaign Foundation President Kelley Robinson said in a statement.

The complaint, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, includes testimonies from four current federal workers at the State Department, Health and Human Services and the Postal Service who would be directly affected by the elimination of coverage.

For instance, the Postal Service employee has a daughter whose doctors recommended that she get puberty blockers and potentially hormone replacement therapy for her diagnosed gender dysphoria, which would not be covered under the new policy, according to the complaint.

The complaint notes that the workers are making the claim on behalf of themselves and a “class of similarly situated federal employees.”

The Trump administration has taken other steps to restrict care for transgender Americans, particularly minors. In December, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released proposals that would block gender-affirming care to minors, including a policy that would bar Medicare and Medicaid dollars to hospitals that provide such care to children.

Senior Trump officials, such as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., call gender-affirming care “malpractice” for minors. But such restrictions go against recommendations from major medical groups such as the American Medical Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The complaint targets a policy that would nix coverage under federal health insurance for gender-affirming healthcare.

A group of federal government employees in the United States has filed a class action complaint against President Donald Trump’s administration over a new policy that will eliminate coverage for gender-affirming care in federal health insurance programmes.

The policy took effect with the start of the new year, and on Thursday, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation issued the complaint, acting on behalf of the federal employees.

The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was named as a defendant.

In an August letter, the OPM stated that, as of 2026, “chemical and surgical modification of an individual’s sex traits through medical interventions” would no longer be covered under health insurance programmes for federal employees and US postal workers.

OPM officials could not be reached for immediate comment.

The complaint argues that the policy is discriminatory on the basis of sex. It asks that the policy be rescinded and seeks payment for economic damages and other relief.

If the issue is not resolved with the OPM, the foundation said that plaintiffs will pursue class claims before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and potentially continue with a class action lawsuit in federal court.

Separately, a group of Democratic state attorneys general last month sued the Trump administration to block proposed rules that would cut children’s access to gender-affirming care, the latest court battle over Trump’s efforts to eliminate legal protections for transgender people.

US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr has proposed rules that would bar hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children from Medicaid and Medicare and prohibit the Children’s Health Insurance Program from paying for it.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ended the first year of President Trump’s second term with a record of rulings that gave him much broader power to control the federal government.

In a series of fast-track decisions, the justices granted emergency appeals and set aside rulings from district judges who blocked Trump’s orders from taking effect.

With the court’s approval, the administration dismissed thousands of federal employees, cut funding for education and health research grants, dismantled the agency that funds foreign aid and cleared the way for the U.S. military to reject transgender troops.

But the court also put two important checks on the president’s power.

In April, the court twice ruled — including in a post-midnight order — that the Trump administration could not secretly whisk immigrants out of the country without giving them a hearing before a judge.

Upon taking office, Trump claimed migrants who were alleged to belong to “foreign terrorist” gangs could be arrested as “enemy aliens” and flown secretly to a prison in El Salvador.

Roberts and the court blocked such secret deportations and said the 5th Amendment entitles immigrants, like citizens, a right to “due process of law.” Many of the arrested men had no criminal records and said they never belonged to a criminal gang.
Those who face deportation “are entitled to notice and opportunity to challenge their removal,” the justices said in Trump vs. J.G.G.

They also required the government to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been wrongly deported to El Salvador. He is now back in Maryland with his wife, but may face further criminal charges or efforts to deport him.

And last week, Roberts and the court barred Trump from deploying the National Guard in Chicago to enforce the immigration laws.

Trump had claimed he had the power to defy state governors and deploy the Guard troops in Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., Chicago and other Democratic-led states and cities.

The Supreme Court disagreed over dissents from conservative Justices Samuel A. Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.

For much of the year, however, Roberts and the five other conservatives were in the majority ruling for Trump. In dissent, the three liberal justices said the court should stand aside for now and defer to district judges.

In May, the court agreed that Trump could end the Biden administration’s special temporary protections extended to more than 350,000 Venezuelans as well as an additional 530,000 migrants who arrived legally from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua or Venezuela.

It was easier to explain why the new administration’s policies were cruel and disruptive rather than why they were illegal.

Trump’s lawyers argued that the law gave the president’s top immigration officials the sole power to decide on these temporary protections and that “no judicial review” was authorized.

Nonetheless, a federal judge in San Francisco twice blocked the administration’s repeal of the temporary protected status for Venezuelans, and a federal judge in Boston blocked the repeal of the entry-level parole granted to migrants under Biden.

The court is also poised to uphold the president’s power to fire officials who have been appointed for fixed terms at independent agencies.

Since 1887, when Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad rates, the government has had semi-independent boards and commissions led by a mix of Republicans and Democrats.

But Roberts and the court’s conservatives believe that because these agencies enforce the law, they come under the president’s “executive power.”

That ruling may come with an exception for the Federal Reserve Board, an independent agency whose nonpartisan stability is valued by business leaders.

Georgetown Law Professor David Cole, the former legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the court has sent mixed signals.

“On the emergency docket, it has ruled consistently for the president, with some notable exceptions,” he said. “I do think it significant that it put a halt to the National Guard deployments and to the Alien Enemies Act deportations, at least for the time being. And I think by this time next year, it’s possible that the court will have overturned two of Trump’s signature initiatives — the birthright citizenship executive order and the tariffs.”

For much of 2025, the court was criticized for handing down temporary unsigned orders with little or no explanation.

That practice arose in 2017 in response to Trump’s use of executive orders to make abrupt, far-reaching changes in the law. In response, Democratic state attorneys and lawyers for progressive groups sued in friendly forums such as Seattle, San Francisco and Boston and won rulings from district judges who put Trump’s policies on hold.

The 2017 “travel ban” announced in Trump’s first week in the White House set the pattern. It suspended the entry of visitors and migrants from Venezuela and seven mostly-Muslim countries on the grounds that those countries had weak vetting procedures.

Judges blocked it from taking effect, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, saying the order discriminated based on nationality.

A year later, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and upheld Trump’s order in a 5-4 ruling. Roberts pointed out that Congress in the immigration laws clearly gave this power to the president. If he “finds that the entry of … any class of aliens … would be detrimental,” it says, he may “suspend the entry” of all such migrants for as long as “he shall deem necessary.”

Since then, Roberts and the court’s conservatives have been less willing to stand aside while federal judges hand down nationwide rulings.

Democrats saw the same problem when Biden was president.

In April 2023, a federal judge in west Texas ruled for anti-abortion advocates and decreed that the Food and Drug Administration had wrongly approved abortion pills that can end an early pregnancy. He ordered that they be removed from the market before any appeals could be heard and decided.

The Biden administration filed an emergency appeal. Two weeks later, the Supreme Court set aside the judge’s order, over dissents from Thomas and Alito.

The next year, the court heard arguments and then threw out the entire lawsuit on the grounds that abortion foes did not have standing to sue.

Since Trump returned to the White House, the court’s conservative majority has not deferred to district judges. Instead, it has repeatedly lifted injunctions that blocked Trump’s policies from taking effect.

Although these are not final rulings, they are strong signs that the administration will prevail.

But Trump’s early wins do not mean he will win on some of his most disputed policies.

In November, the justices sounded skeptical of Trump’s claim that a 1977 trade law, which did not mention tariffs, gave him the power to set these import taxes on products coming from around the world.

In the spring, the court will hear Trump’s claim that he can change the principle of birthright citizenship set in the 14th Amendment and deny citizenship it to newborns whose parents are here illegally or entered as visitors.

Rulings on both cases will be handed down by late June.

WASHINGTON — In the whirlwind first year of President Trump’s second term, some of the most polarizing changes have taken place within the Department of Health and Human Services, where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has openly rebuffed the medical establishment as he converts the ideas of his Make America Healthy Again movement into public policy.

Since entering office in February, the Health secretary has overseen a dramatic reshaping of the agencies he oversees, including eliminating thousands of jobs and freezing or canceling billions of dollars for scientific research. As part of his campaign against chronic disease, he has redrawn the government’s position on topics such as seed oils, fluoride and Tylenol. He also has repeatedly used his authority to promote discredited ideas about vaccines.

The department’s rapid transformation has garnered praise from MAHA supporters who say they long viewed Health and Human Services as corrupt and untrustworthy and have been waiting for such a disruption. And both Democrats and Republicans have applauded some of the agency’s actions, including efforts to encourage healthy eating and exercise, and deals to lower the prices of costly drugs.

But many of the drastic changes Kennedy has led at the department are raising grave concerns among doctors and public health experts.

“At least in the immediate or intermediate future, the United States is going to be hobbled and hollowed out in its scientific leadership,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University public health law professor who was removed from a National Institutes of Health advisory board this year with a letter that said he was no longer needed. “I think it will be extraordinarily difficult to reverse all the damage.”

Department spokesperson Andrew Nixon denied any threat to scientific expertise at the agency and lauded its work.

“In 2025, the Department confronted long-standing public health challenges with transparency, courage, and gold-standard science,” Nixon said in a statement. “HHS will carry this momentum into 2026 to strengthen accountability, put patients first, and protect public health.”

The overhaul comes alongside broader uncertainties in the nation’s health system, including Medicaid cuts passed by Congress this year and expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies that are putting millions of Americans’ insurance coverage in jeopardy.

Here’s a closer look at Kennedy’s first year leading the nation’s health agency:

Kennedy’s vaccine views ripple across the department

After many years spent publicly assailing vaccines, Kennedy sought during his confirmation process to reassure senators he wouldn’t take a wrecking ball to vaccine science. But less than a year later, his Health Department has repeatedly pushed the limits of those commitments.

In May, Kennedy announced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women — a move immediately questioned by public health experts who saw no new data to justify the change.

In June, Kennedy fired an entire 17-member CDC vaccine advisory committee — later installing several of his own replacements, including multiple vaccine skeptics.

That group has made decisions that have shocked medical professionals, including declining to recommend COVID-19 shots for anyone, adding new restrictions on a combination shot against chickenpox, measles, mumps and rubella and reversing the long-standing recommendation that all babies receive a hepatitis B shot at birth.

Kennedy in November also personally directed the CDC to abandon its position that vaccines do not cause autism, without supplying any new evidence to support the change. Although he left the old language on the agency website to keep a promise he made to Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, he added a disclaimer saying it remained because of the agreement.

Public health researchers and advocates strongly refute the updated website and note that scientists have thoroughly explored the issue in rigorous research spanning decades, all pointing to the same conclusion that vaccines don’t cause autism.

Kennedy has promised a wide-ranging effort to study environmental factors that potentially contribute to autism and in an Oval Office event with Trump in September promoted unproven — and in some cases discredited — ties among Tylenol, vaccines and the complex brain disorder.

Kennedy reconfigures department with massive staffing and research cuts

Within two months of taking office, Kennedy announced a sweeping restructuring of Health and Human Services that would shut down entire agencies, consolidate others into a new one focused on chronic disease and lay off about 10,000 employees on top of 10,000 others who had already taken buyouts.

Although parts of the effort are still tied up in court, thousands of the mass layoffs were allowed to stand. Those and voluntary departures significantly thinned out the sprawling $1.7-trillion department, which oversees food and hospital inspections, health insurance for roughly half of the country and vaccine recommendations.

Kennedy also has fired or forced out several leaders at the department, among them four directors at the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration’s former vaccine chief and a director of the CDC whom he had hired less than a month earlier.

On top of staffing reductions, he has overseen significant cuts to scientific research. That includes the NIH slashing billions of dollars in research projects and the termination of $500 million in contracts to develop vaccines using mRNA technology.

Amid the cuts, Kennedy has proposed or funded some new research on topics related to his MAHA goals, including autism, Lyme disease and food additives.

MAHA gains momentum despite some stumbles

Kennedy started using the phrase “MAHA” on the campaign trail last year to describe his crusade against toxic exposures and childhood chronic disease, but 2025 was the year it became ingrained in the national lexicon.

In his tenure so far, the Health secretary has made it the centerpiece of his work, using the MAHA branding to wage war on ultra-processed foods, pressure companies to phase out artificial food dyes, criticize fluoride in drinking water and push to ban junk food from the program that subsidizes grocery store runs for low-income Americans.

The idea has even spread beyond Kennedy’s agency across the federal government.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has appeared with Kennedy to promote fitness with pull-up displays. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy teamed up with Kennedy in early December to announce $1 billion in funding for airports to install resources including playgrounds and nursing pods for mothers and babies. And Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin recently announced he is working toward unveiling a MAHA agenda with health-related goals for his own department.

MAHA has earned widespread popularity among the American public — even as it has endured some administration foibles. In May, for example, Health and Human Services faced scrutiny for releasing a MAHA report that contained several citations to studies that didn’t exist.

But to the extent that the initiative has included calls to action that aren’t based on science — such as urging distrust in vaccines or promoting raw milk, which is far more likely than pasteurized milk to lead to illness — critics say it can be dangerous.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Ben Sasse told Nebraska constituents in a telephone town hall meeting that President Trump has “flirted with white supremacists,” mocks Christian evangelicals in private and “kisses dictators’ butts.”

Sasse, who is running for a second term representing the reliably red state, made the comments in response to a question about why he has been willing to publicly criticize a president of his own party. He also criticized Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis and said Trump’s family has treated the presidency “like a business opportunity.”

The comments were first reported by the Washington Examiner after it obtained an audio recording of the senator’s comments, which has been posted on YouTube. Sasse spokesman James Wegmann said the call occurred Wednesday.

Other Nebraska Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Dan Bacon and state GOP executive director Ryan Hamilton, told the Omaha World-Herald that they disagree with Sasse’s characterizations of the president.

“Sen. Sasse is entitled to his own opinion,” U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, another Nebraska Republican, said in a statement. “I appreciate what President Trump has accomplished for our country and will continue to work with him on efforts which help Nebraska.”

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh declined to comment on Sasse’s remarks, the World-Herald said.

Sasse has positioned himself as a conservative willing to criticize Trump at times, and he is seen as a potential presidential candidate for 2024. His comments Wednesday were in response to a caller who asked about his relationship with the president, adding, “Why do you have to criticize him so much?” Trump carried Nebraska by 25 percentage points in 2016.

The senator said he has worked hard to have a good relationship with Trump and prays for the president regularly “at the breakfast table in our house.” He praised Trump’s judicial appointments.

But he said he’s had disagreements with Trump that do not involve “mere policy issues,” adding, “I’m not at all apologetic for having fought for my values against his in places where I think his are deficient, not just for a Republican, but for an American.”

Sasse began his list with, “The way he kisses dictators’ butts,” and said Trump “hasn’t lifted a finger” on behalf of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

“I mean, he and I have a very different foreign policy,” Sasse said. “It isn’t just that he fails to lead our allies. It’s that we, the United States, regularly sells out our allies under his leadership.”

Sasse said he criticizes Trump for how he treats women and because Trump “spends like a drunken sailor,” saying he criticized Democratic President Obama over spending.

“He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors,” Sasse said. “At the beginning of the COVID crisis, he refused to treat it seriously. For months, he treated it like a news-cycle-by-news-cycle PR crisis rather than a multiyear public health challenge, which is what it is.”

Dec. 18 (UPI) — Closing arguments began Thursday in the trial for Judge Hannah Dugan after the court heard testimony from fellow Milwaukee County judicial officials about a lack of court policy on immigration arrests in public areas.

The testimony came on Day 4 of Dugan’s trial. She pleaded not guilty earlier this year to federal charges including one count of obstructing an official proceeding and concealing a person from arrest, and another of concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.

The case stems from an incident on April 18, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials came to her courtroom and notified her they planned to arrest undocumented immigrant Eduardo Flores-Ruiz. They said she sent the agents to the chief judge’s office before going back to her courtroom, pushing Flores-Ruiz’s case to the front of her docket, then helped him and his lawyer leave from a private jury door.

The ICE agents ultimately found and arrested Flores-Ruiz outside the courthouse.

The defense called two fellow circuit court judges — Katie Kegel and Laura Gramling Perez — to the stand on Thursday to ask them about an email chain also involving Dugan. The email was about the courthouse and county policy on federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests on courthouse grounds.

Kegel said she sent the email after people were “snatched up out of my gallery while waiting for their hearing” and wanted to know about any policies on “detentions of any sort from inside the courtroom.” She said she saw someone who wasn’t in law enforcement clothing — whom she was later told belonged to a federal task force unrelated to immigration — carrying out activity in the gallery of her courtroom.

Grayling Perez said Chief Judge Carl Ashley had scheduled online training via Zoom about ICE activity in the courthouse and that Dugan had had trouble registering for the training session. Gramling Perez said the training indicated that ICE can conduct enforcement actions in public areas of the courthouse with certain “statutory and policy limitations.” She suggested the court develop a policy for such incidents, including a requirement that federal agents consult with the chief judge beforehand.

Gramling Perez said she had concerns about ICE operating in the courthouse, as did Dugan, USA Today reported.

“We are in some uncharted waters with some very serious and even potentially tragic community interests at risk in the balance,” Dugan wrote in an email as testified by Gramling Perez.

Defense attorneys also called former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to testify to Dugan’s character, describing her as “extremely honest” and someone who “will tell you how she feels. Barrett said he’s known Dugan for more than 50 years and that they went to high school together.

The defense rested its cause after hearing from Barrett and closing arguments were underway.

HumAngle, the newsroom known for its in-depth coverage of conflict, displacement, and insecurity across West Africa, has announced a major overhaul of how our journalists work and rest.

From January 2026, an Anti-Burnout Work Policy that restructures the work year into nine active months and three mandatory rest months will be introduced, while maintaining a full 12-month salary for our journalists.

The move, an attempt at reimagining what sustainable journalism looks like, is designed to protect mental health, reduce burnout, and sustain the quality of reporting from some of the region’s most difficult environments.

Under the new system, editorial staff will work in three cycles each year:

• Work: January–March 
• Rest: April
• Work: May–July 
• Rest: August
• Work: September–November 
• Rest: December

Traditional annual leave will be embedded into these rest periods, which are intended to serve as structured breaks for recovery, reflection, and creative renewal. The in-house workweek for journalists will also be shortened to three days — Monday to Wednesday.

Support teams and staff of the advocacy arm, HumAngle Foundation, will have a different, flexible structure: they will be required to work two in-office days per week, with the remaining days remote, and will receive 28 days of paid annual leave. Accountability and performance expectations will remain in place, but alongside a clearer recognition of human limits.

Why rest is now part of the job

HumAngle’s reporters routinely work in and around conflict zones, camps for displaced people, and communities living with violence and trauma. This kind of journalism demands not just technical skill but emotional stamina and deep empathy, and the costs are often borne silently. We have a dedicated clinical psychologist who supports staff well-being and manages secondary trauma that results from our regular interaction with violence and victims of violence.

HumAngle sees burnout not simply as personal exhaustion, but as a direct threat to credible journalism, storytelling, creativity, and accuracy. Building rest into the structure of work itself is a step towards treating mental health as a core requirement for excellence, not an afterthought. Well-rested journalists are better able to think clearly, write powerfully, and engage more sensitively with vulnerable sources and communities.

The policy aims to ensure continuity in coverage while allowing staff to step back regularly, process the emotional weight of their work, and return with renewed focus.

A cultural shift in African newsroom practice

Care, structure, and humanity, especially in newsrooms that routinely deal with violence, loss, and injustice, are critical for the sustainability of newsrooms. By aligning productivity with well-being, HumAngle hopes to model an alternative to the long-standing culture of overwork that exists in many media spaces.

The policy is a commitment to our people and our mission: to demonstrate that rest and excellence can reinforce each other, and that protecting journalists’ minds is part of preserving the integrity of the stories they tell.