Grateful is a small world for a tribute to a revolutionary. She also taught me what the world revolution means and what it takes to lead a revultion. The interview not before seen the NYTimes published today is a good capsule of the trajectory Gloria Stynem rode, gave birth to, and the devotion, the discipline she demonstrated.

The Steinem, the real person is in contrast to today’s would be rebels who too often substitute the thrust of their language and the volume they generate to push their ideas. Yes those are all too easy contrasts to the time Ms Steiunmen came into prominence, and the time we are now in. Yes she used volume and anger where she decided it was needed, but she also was nuanced and divided rhetoric from reason.

Historians have, and I hope will write more about who and what she represents and ignite others to not only understand Gloria Stynem but to line up and continue not so much the fight that was necessary to light fires in the 1970s, but to bring reason and the forceful ideas and changes we still need today.

Thank you Gloria. I listened, learned, and you were the inspiration. Vive la Revolution.

The turmoil of the Paramount ownership, the fears and evidence of early management fires and departures at 60 Minutes made me wonder why Lesley Stahl and Bill Whittaker decided to stay on. The critics of the new “conservative”, Trump-associated rich-father Larry Elison with son CEO David had them drawn and quartered, highlighting every real and potential ill.

I have been away from the CBS News that raised me in a 2 network universe (ABC was there but a fledgling. CBS and NBC were network TV and lest it be forgotten it became profitable last levels where Network VP managers were not embarrassed to answer a question often asked: “So what is it a network TV VP does?”

Two fof the better answers, true, were “As little as possible.” “Stay out of the way” The growth of TV viewing was fast, young, lucrative, and profitable beyond the highest hopes of its owners and managers.

This universe and culture is long gone. The names remain, but the debates today over influence, importance, profitability have a different relationship to what was

In 1979-80 as I have written before, if you had not watched 60 MINUTES on Sunday night 7p you might be left out of conversations the following Monday. Exaggeration?. Household rating (percentage of households with TV sets) 28-30. About one in five TV sets in the country watched 60.

25-30 million people watched at its height , today that is 8 to 9 million. The communication landscape world wide has changed.

The recent hiring of 1 new correspondent, Ross Douthat, formerly of the NYTimes opinion section, Sebastian Toboni author of The Perfect Storm, a producer of documentaries is announced as contributor, as is Gianna Toboni who returns toCBS News, who will also become a national correspondent.

Who knows how this will play out. Far more unknowns than knows but, what do we know:

1. CBS eosin the era of its and parent CBS TV audience and ad dominance of a smaller TV universe make any comparison with today’s TV universe and audience incomparable. Incomparable because they are apples and oranges. This will not stop those who bemoan the change in CBS Ownership which has dismayed those of claim the conservative politics of the Edison's is and will overwhelm this great old institution.

2. The great told institution hasn’t existed for years. Everything that happens now is “unprecedented”. Instead of declaring a horror the people who remember the long-gone CBS News with new owners, judge it by what it is, what their 60 Minutes reports and how, and don’t compare. Comparisons make no sense when the worlds are incomparable Don’t let the poison of political and personal politics cripple what needs to happen. Judge the CBS that still carries the name and CBS News as well by what they produce. Don’t make assumptions about what you think or feel will happen.Watch, look, and then decide the good and bad.

3. The fact that Lesley Stahl and Bill Whittaker, both of whom I know and respect chose to stick with 60 Minutes under new ownership raises questions. They come to stay in a management that has no relation to their history at 60 Minutes. Watch what they report and how, and if you remember the quality, standards and accuracy of their and their producer’s work, that’s their measure. If they can work at the level that earned them the reputation they developed, that’s what’s needed

4. Ross Douthat was an opinion columnist I watched regularly. on his NYTimes podcasts. I knew many friends who dis missed him because they felt he had conservative views and they projected to something that made me want to watch and listen. He had many conservatives who agreed to be interviewed. I learned a lot. Douthat always did is homework and challenged those he interviewed as any skilled interviewer does. (Want a great example of a skilled interviewer? Try the Musk interview by the Editor of the Economist magazine) Douthat is man with reportorial standards when he reports. He is not a polemicist, which is the easy path if you are content to preach to the choir. He’s writer. It will be interesting to see how he views and uses his new role.

Give whatever CBS, and its news division a chance to see, hear, and listen to what they do. If they become the worst of what the fearful claim, take heart, if you go to the office on Monday morning and you ask friend or co-worker: Did you see what they’d on 6o MINUTES last night. The answer that would start a dialogue is more likely to be: “Nah, didn’t watch”

I’m a retired journalist who at 90 is huffing and puffing reading as much and fast as I can to keep up. I’m no experts. One of my trusted sources is where I will refer all of who want to go beyond my lay shorthand to understand what happened. Go to the current episode of HARD FORK (The New York Times podcast available on YOUTUBE)

KEVIN ROUSE (NYTIMES) AND CASEY NEWTON ARE CO-HOSTS (NEWTON is an independent expert and publishes PLATFORMER which is considered one of the best technology newsletters and has wide readership which underlines both his credibility and influence. If you know their work I am being redundant.

This week’s episode is something front line AI developers who understand the potential of AI as it moves beyond today’s applications have warned about. Something happened for the first time that Open AI (Sam Altman and Co.) found out about about what one of their labs models developments did from outside. Their unreleased beta model “escaped” and in fulfilling an ask it was programmed to develop went beyond what Open Ai thought it would and hacked into another system. In laymen’s terms, the beta model thought beyond the box that the OPEN AI developers thought they had put it and found its own way to beyond what its developers had asked.

AI artificial intelligence. The term and basic idea, which is what many come to understand because we sit and computers and realize the machine can’t do anything but calculate rapidly based on programs we users get when we buy the machines. I get that AI has speed and compute potential beyond what most of my layman level can imagine. We have become accustomed to reading about the potential, and in that potential we are becoming accustomed to fewer experts who have and continue to warn about the dangers in the potential.

The evidence of what happened is that OEN AI’s lab was developing an AI model (and unless you shot me down) that is their job). AI labs are there to grow and improve the systems they expect will be used to produce the applications and income and perhaps even profit to return the money + they have and continue to raise to achieve the promise. That’s a whole separate debate.

In the current shock for Open AI that they got a call from outside their systems, their developers, their people telling them “You hacked us?” The people who called seems to be relative small fry in the AI developer world.

HARD FORK’s host do the job of explaining and pointing out why this is as important because it happened The brains, power, and tools of today made it possible to happen.

BUT IT HAPPENED WITHOUT HUMAN INPUT. OK that happens all the time, but ifI understand it correctly, it happens when the program, goals given to systems, or doors consciously and deliberately left open have been put there in the course of “new model development.”

This time the evidence is that the not-yet-released Open AI model took what the developers asked of it as goals, achieved the goals, and took what It learned as it achieved its goals, AND WENT BEYOND WITHOUT BEING TOLD OR ASKED TO GO HACK SOMEONE IN ANOTHER SYSTEM.

Hard Fork, and many more discussions to come ask “how does this happen? One thing is we should have been doing all along is discussion of how do we regulate the task that I find increasingly difficult to get my head around?

Regulating

Hard enough to do what should be say. Speed limits. Zoning restrictions. Safety. But if things are happening whose human input is removed in time or place from what happened, what then?

In the US the level of serious debate has been deteriorated to a level where economic, sociological, educational, political divides create their own unregulated divisions that go beyond beyond the ability to do much more than take sides and scream. Is the US capable of dealing with the subtleties of issues like this one?

I’ll throw one other consideration that applies to this issue of how to regulate challenges we have never experienced over a question like: in this case there is no evidence that a model has gone beyond what its human developer asked of it and done something (hacked) in what we are concluding is on-its-own?

I’m left with a parallel discussion that has been had about the effects of President Trump’s behavior. Trump behavior was not tolerated because there were what seemed to be long standing consensus. “American” society as diverse as it is many thought thought had general societal guard rails in a broad consensus of values. I am referring to simple concepts. Lying, stealing, cheating, corruption. The argument is made that that if behavior that is repeated and not stopped or regulated NORMALIZES and looses potency. A rarely used word: standards?

I told my friend that I feel the attempt to limit or interfere with the spread of anything the President says or does is wrong. And not because I think Trump is his own worst enemy. He may be, but that is not sure.

The CBS News years that were part of the Ed Murrow, Cronkite, Savored, Collingwood, Safer Schorr, Hottelet, Reasoner, Stahl, Rooney, Wallace, Rather, the lesser known Richard Salant who was President of CBS News, and guided during the years the organization built its reputation, Don Hewitt, the 60 MINUTES Executive Producer; they taught those of us who were there at the time that maximum light and sound were what made a broadcast news organization. If you are old enough Bob Edwards, Bob Trout were among their radio predecessors. There were many more.

The changes in the technologies of how we access and distribute what we still call “news”, but I suggest we understood as “information” is the subject for academics, academics, books of research, beyond the narrower point I make with this tale.

I do not want to “understand” Trump or analyze him. I do want to keep the light and sound on him. There are increasing numbers who were not neutral to begin with about Trump and have now reached the point where the name Trump: anything he does, or says is automatically painful and assumed to be wrong or a lie. Does not get you anywhere does it?

There does seem to be agreement on one point: The President has succeeded in dividing the country. But if you agree that he has divided the US and there are roughly 35% of the population who immovably support him, instead of frustration, anger and “turn him off”, aren’t there questions we should be asking that are not getting enough concern? Reporting that says surveys show Trump losing support “steadily”? His support slips by a percentage or two or three. The fact is those small changes can be within the margin of error.

The big general question I have is the same one I have whenever I wear a reporting/producing hat or when I write: What can I learn?

The support that the MAGA Presidency of Donald Trump and Trump himself seem to have: +/- 30% leave me with, beyond what is there to learn? I’m asking myself: “who are we?”

“One nation indivisible”? The Civil Ware proved the divisible. The Civil Rights movement showed us how long the Civil War could last? There those who can make a good case that says, the Civil War has not ended, and others who go further and say that Civil War cannot end. Maybe that is the US “strength?”

Yes,I know, Im all over the lot; that what being a “journalist” is all about. That’s one of the things I learned from all those journalists working with them when there was a CBS News. Keep learning. Keep asking.

So much for the next two years. Political timing is both science and art and today.s GOP departure is a good example of both. Pay your money, make your choice. It took less than millisecond to see a Carlson/Greene ticket. That is easy and as good to happen as not happen.

What does seem clear that recent maneuvering by what is left of President Trump to throw JD Vance the once, and not likely, future front runner to succeed President Trump, under there Iran bus, leaves the Hilly Billy Elegy made-me into a VP out to dry or perhaps drown trying to stay afloat.

Watch the next week closely as June’s official summer season takes over. Everything and nothing will matter…or not.

Hanging the GOP around President Trump’s once formidable control is an unlikely challenge. The punditry class has generally come together with the view that Trump’s control and exercise of “like/love me or risk your political neuterhood” has long since left the traditional GOP without a tradition.

First thing to watch is to pay attention to who salutes whose flag. Trump and MAGA are increasing wounded by continually diminishing poll numbers. Can you hear the backroom huddles of the strategists. If you were or still are on the Trump side, you face what may face political death for sticking with the eighty year old kleptocrat. But that assumes today’s change in political wind leaves the President with the powers that had so many in fear. Seems unlikely.

Welcome to the beginning of unknown season, that, unless there is unexpected political coalescence on the part of known and expected candidates, is fee-for all season. This quickly becomes rich food for those who speak as if they are insiders and in-theknow. Don’t bite. Nobody knows nuttin for more than day from here on in is the most likely path forward.

The Democrats have to be smiling with the prospect of a GOP torn asunder, but maybe not, because there are many who claim the GOP hasn’t existed since Trump through his way weight around.

One parallel strikes me. The economists who are far more disciplined than the political flamers have been wrestling with the challenge of the economic consequences of markets no longer driven by economic analyses whose measures have become so nuanced and sophisticate that millisecond trading make hash of anything but the new watchword: instability.

Instability Inc is now the best description of politics and the economy in the US. Ain’t no experts at that. Instability is anything you want to make of it. Hard to support or contradict anyone for any group for more than day. Not only can the players change, their positions can, will, and must change to moments that once took weeks and even months to develop.

Thanks Tucker and Margery, you may have stated something by making what is a provocative and maybe also meaningless declaration.

Bye Bye GOP? Really? GOP hasn't been mentioned with any frequency since Trump Trumped it. First question, what is it you think you have left?

And just to come full circle to the title of this screed: whose to say - and many will say in the coming days - that the “we are leaving the GOP” from two candidates for something haven’t used the first day of summer to drop the flag, turn the starting lights green, as is done in road racing everywhere.

It’s open season citizens. Ohmygod, imagine two more years of delicious political torture.

Like many of you, the MAGA/TRUMP world is adept at concentrating too much time and creating darkness.

I’m spoiled by many things, among them Columbia University where I found history.

The RECKONING AHEAD reminded me of what the the historians one learns from reminded me of the ability of the faculty I had in the 1950s as an undergrad let me discovery not only history but the continuum of history and put perspective and meaning to it in a contemporary context.

I resist burning you with detail that two smart people in. conversation help you think, remember, recall, contextualize beyond dates, times, events as static facts and yalso beyond the cliche of the simpler false “there is nothing new”.

Thanks Heather Sox Richardson and Scott Galloway.

If you are still with me, you know I am spoiled by time I have to indulge what my life as journalist and teacher have permitted me: to keep learning and be paid for it.

29 May A US judge ruled that that the Trump name must be removed from the KENNEDY CENTER because Congress put the Kennedy name on the building and only Congress can change that.

CBS News has no Congress, no judge to go to to do what I try to convince those who remember CBS News that the organization - while imperfect as any journalistic organization is - has not existed in the way so many of today’s voices remember.

Bill Leonard (1945 to 1982). In the early 1970s, Bill (then VP of CBS News) proved prescient decades before the current 60 MINUTES controversy. A group of us were complaining about a decision we couched in principles repeated recently; the death of CBS News as we knew it, the death of journalism and democracy.

“The trouble with you guys”, said Bill, “Is you think there will always be a CBS News”. That shut us up. Bill had been a reporter in WW II, went on to CBS Radio at the end of the war. Before his final job as CBS News President he oversaw the early development of 60 MINUTES.

I kept Bill Leonard’s perspective in mind when I dealt with the end of my own 27 year CBS News career in 1986.

Larry Tisch took control of CBS from the group broadcaster Westinghouse which also owned 2 CBS affiliates. Westinghouse seemed OK because they were broadcasters.

Not so Larry Tisch a successful modern business manager noted for cutting costs and improving profits. I smelled vulnerability. I was right. I was out.

I spent a year “on the beach”. No jobs for an ageing middle ager. Rescue came from CBS News President Howard Stringer who said: “Peter, we made a mistake, I want you to come back.” That was a kindness and professionalism that not only restored my self-esteem but taught me two lessons:

1. You can be kind in management, and rescue a fallen colleague;

2. Don’t assume that kindness changes the circumstances that made you expendable.

After my original firing, Larry Tisch said of the cuts that his management made: “The ones who are leaving are the lucky ones.” 1986.

Morley Safter made a similar judgement about the impact on CBS News when Larry Tisch made his “the ones who are gone are the lucky ones.” Morley recognized that the Larry Tisch financial culture saw CBS News as a potential profit center. There were no public service requirements on networks, only the individually federally licensed stations

Morley had ascended to co-anchor 60 MINUTES. The program grew from a public service, produced and owned by CBS at a bargain compared to entertainment budgets.

CBS TV was losing millions producing expensive entertainment programs that “were not attracting flies” in TV audience parlance compared the growing millions who were watching professional football on Sunday evening. The NFL was not on CBS.

60 MINTES was created out of economic necessity.

No one thought it would become the program that would last for decades, and for 3 consecutive years produce more profit for CBS than all of the networks the entertainment programs combined.

That was delicious irony.

(Below this article I have posted the changes in TV network audiences that have seen reductions of 50-60-70% from their peaks. Context and the continuing decrease and ageing of TV viewing have seen less attention than they deserve.)

Bill Leonard’s “don’t assume there will always be a CBS News” a decade earlier had also never left my mind.

I preceded Scott Pelley’s 60 MINUTES career at CBS News. When his comments that attacked and challenged the new CBS News and 60 MINUTES management, I questioned what his strategy might be. Within 24 hours he was fired, and the fracas continued, and escalated.

Mr. Pelley’s New York Times “The Interview” was passionate and paralleled much of the commentary that continues. There is a lot of heat, and hyperbole, and tears but little light.

The firings at 69 MINUTES that preceded Pelley had been handwriting on the wall. Scott Pelley seems to have decided to become both lightening rod and wrecking ball.

I am left with questions with two different approaches to what is a continuing set of issues and approaches.

I have known Leslie Stahl since she first came to CBS News. I am a part of the reason Bill Whittaker is at CBS News.

They met with the new Executive Producer of 60 MINUTES Nick Bilton and took a different approach from Mr. Pelley. They said they will hold any decision about their future at 60 MINUTES and CBS News to see whether the assurances they received from Mr. Bilton hold up.

Looking for light to see might lay ahead?

Seems like a good approach dipping into their journalistic approach.

DIMINSHED TV AUDIENCES

The change in network TV viewing looks like this by the numbers:

Measure

Peak (1970s)

oday

Share of TV viewing held by networks broadcast

90–95%

Often under 25%

Combined evening-news audience

55 million

18–22 million

Audience for a major hit series

30–50+ million

4–10 million

Largest TV events

80–100+ million

Usually sports only reach those levels

The U.S. population has grown from about 215 million in 1975 to roughly 340 million today. So the decline in network audiences is even steeper when measured as a percentage of the population. A program that reached one-third of Americans in the 1970s might reach only a few percent today.

NUTES SUBSTACK STATS

29 May A US judge ruled that that the Trump name must be removed from the KENNEDY CENTER because Congress put the Kennedy name on the building and only Congress can change that.

CBS News has no judge to go to to do what I have tried to convince those who remember CBS News that the organization - while imperfect as any journalistic organization is - has not existed since 1986 when Larry Tisch the investor, entrepreneur, cost cutter took control of CBS. It would have been useful if law required all takeovers to change the names of their acquisitions. Not to say, takeovers, conglomerates, acquisitions cannot improve what they take over. A change in name would not prevent improvements. What a CBS was under its founder Bill Paley and VP Frank Stanton was a baby grown to a level of entertainment, including high and low culture along with a concept of public service born of the fact that the public owned the airwaves. Public service was baked into the regulations that governed what was a two network world CBS and the older NBC that both grew out of radio across the country in the 1920s. ABC was a newcomer in the 1940s that made it a triumvirate.

CBS News is associated with Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid, Mike Wallace and Harry Reasoner, Morley Safer, pre-Cronkite’s Doug Edwards, Ed Murrow, William C Hottelet, Dan Schorr, Bob Schieffer, Charles Kuralt, Wilson Burdett, Charles Collingwood, Howard K Smith, Maraya McGlaughlin, and Susan Peterson preceded by Nancy Hanschman, the first CBS News woman correspondent 1954-60. Nancy Dickerson after she married.

Not to be forgotten, impossible to forget: Don Hewitt, Executive Producer of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.. The Executive Producer and the creator of 60 MINUTES. His child was born of network desperation. The NFL had grown on Sunday afternoons and so dominated its fervent audience. Everything the CBSTV network tried to throw against the NFL with entertainment did not make a dent to the sports drawn audience. (Michael Socolow, an historian at the University of Maine has a version of this story taken from Reuven Frank, founding Executive Producer of the Huntley/Brinkley report on NBC. Socolow’s FROM THE LINT TRAP Substack is a good source for well researched history and contemporary media.}

CBSTV tried to compete with NBC’s NFL with programs that were costly to produce but had small audiences that did not attract advertisers. The network bosses solution was: CBS NEWS belongs to us and their costs are ours anyway so let’s have them fill the time period. The rest, as they say, is history.

That 60 MINUTES history, as frequently told by Don Hewitt, made more money for CBS than all the other programs on the network combined.

Really?

Anyone who worked with Don Hewitt knew him as a creative TV genius. His “shows” when he was the Director of the Evening News with Walter Cronkite drew an audience. He welcomed guests in contrast to the quiet no-visitor restrictions that characterized most control rooms. If you knew Don you endeared himself to you and impressed your guest into an exclusive experience by a master of showmanship. Don added panache and performance that offset doing the same chore night after night five days a week. He turned a technical TV job into an art form.

Hewitt earned and deserved credit for creating, championing an idea that was designed to be no more than a fix for a programming hole in the schedule,. 60 MINUTES went from filling a hole in the TV schedule into the longest running most popular news program in the history of TV. In Don’s telling also the most profitable. Profitable for sure. More than all other CBS TV programs combined for three years he claimed, to all who listened Hard if not impossible to document because CBS did not break out and reveal ad revenue and profit program by program. Not worth arguing or fighting over. details beyond the fact that 60 MINUTES was the most profitable program series that history of TV. Those were the days as the saying goes.

The detail here is important to put context to the the shouting between Scott Pelley and Paramount. Mr. Pelley adroitly couches his anger in his claim that Paramount is ruining 60 MINUTES by violating the journalistic integrity of the program; presumably alluding to the fact that Paramount is currying favor with President Trump because his approval will be needed to OK Paramount’s taking over CBS. Four other 60 MINUTES principles were fired before Pelley’s comments earned him the door. In the previous recent firings no reason has so far been offered by the new management.

This all seems like a fight over principles. It is if ignore other truths, which is why my preview of everything that preceded the current events traces to 1986 when a round of financial and corporate maneuvering resulted in control of CBS went from the founder William Paley to Larry Tisch and his Lowe Corporation.

Tisch was what. now is standard grow-profits management. Cut costs cut, cut, cut. Cut people, cut budgets. The new owner understood the new math of declining audiences that would never grow again. My thesis is taken from what Tisch said in 1986 as the reality of what he was doing with his new acquisition set in, and as I became a 50 year old former CBS News person.

“The ones who are leaving are the lucky ones.” Doesn’t do much to salve the hurt at the end of 27 years. Many of my friends and colleagues stayed; and I might have if my contract had been renewed – translation: fired. The current 60 MINUTES story of the latest new owner of CBS I suggest was destined to happen. The change in network TV viewing looks like this by the numbers:

Measure

Peak (1970s)

Today

Share of TV viewing held by broadcast networks

90–95%

Often under 25%

Combined evening-news audience

45–55 million

18–22 million

Audience for a major hit series

30–50+ million

4–10 million

Largest TV events

80–100+ million

Usually sports only reach those levels

The U.S. population has grown from about 215 million in 1975 to roughly 340 million today. So the decline in network audiences is even steeper when measured as a percentage of the population. A program that reached one-third of Americans in the 1970s might reach only a single digit percent today.

My suggestion earlier that Scott Pelley’s reported complaints in a closed door meeting meant to introduce him and the 60 staff to the new management at 60 MINUTES might be “orchestration”. He is now making the rounds to repeat and underline his complaints.

Mr. Pelley and those who stayed on or were hired after 1986 did not have the advantage I enjoyed after being pushed out. I would like to take credit for foresight. I did not see it coming. It hit me like a freight train.

I hold to my claim that I learned from my loss of contract…a polite way of saying firing. Since the advent of satellites, the proliferation of media, and channels to carry them on, telephony called “smart”, the old rules that made 60 MINUTES and other programs possible haven’t applied.

Gee, technology changes things.

I will soon post the thesis that I have expressed frequently to those who are either caught in how they feel about the changes at CBS News: there hasn’t been a CBS News since 1986 whenLarry Tisch took control of the broadcaster.

As the turmoil continues I have sympathy and understanding for those who made the choice to stay at CBS News. My choice was made from. After 27 years at CBS News, including 60 MINUTES, When Laurence (Larry) Tisch, with entrepreneurial/builder expertise, used the cost-cutting skills that had made him notable and rich, ended my 27 year CBS News career, I learned a lesson lesson in accepting change. Mr. Tisch did for me what I should have done for myself: read the tea leaves before they were obvious. Looking back, I say thank you to Mr. Tisch because after my hurt and anger that I outgrew, I enjoy the continuation of 40 ongoing years of journalism, teaching, and learning.

I have sympathy and understanding for Mr. Pelley’s reported outburst at his new bosses. I had it easy and lost my job by assuming it could not happen to me. I had lasted 27 years. In the thin pre-digital age of analogue TV, no satellites, no cable, not internet and more “nots” it never entered my mind that my CBS News demise would happen.

At a higher level of visibility, Mr. Pelley’s frustration with the latest changes at CBS News burst. My innocence and the end of my CBS News career were the result of allowing my good fortune as I grew with with television’s growth to think I had a level of immunity from being a victim of change.

Mr. Pelley let his heart overtake him. He knows a “closed door” meeting to introduce his new 60 MINUTE boss,…ain’t no such thing as a closed door meeting of journalists. Those who like conspiracy theories will go down the path of thinking that Mr,Pelley planned and expected his outbursts to go public.

Mr. Pelley has every right to his feelings and anger, but he has and still has the best answer to his situation: A brief, resignation, minus any adjectival justification. By the time you read this he may have announced his resignation.

The kleptocracy would be King who is President Donald Trump was destroying my tendency toward optimism with his latest slush fund attempt at rewarding the miscreants and criminals who do the President’s bidding and expect only cash as a reward.

Hermant Wadhwani is name that I didn’t know. His studied anonymity was a even a challenge to ChatGPT after I asked it:

You’re probably referring to Hemant Wadhwani, though there is surprisingly little publicly available information about him specifically. He appears to maintain a deliberately low profile, which is not unusual among some private philanthropists.

I could not verify a major public biography under that exact name, but there are a few possibilities:

• He may be connected to the broader Wadhwani Foundation philanthropic network founded by Romesh Wadhwani, the Indian-American entrepreneur and philanthropist known for large-scale social impact work. The Wadhwani organizations focus heavily on job creation, education, entrepreneurship, and technology for social good.

• Some individuals involved in homelessness outreach and charitable funding in New Jersey intentionally avoid publicity and operate through donor-advised funds, family foundations, or local nonprofit partnerships rather than highly visible branded charities.

On a weekend in New York I was invited to a surprise celebration of the man, Knowing he avoids recognition in any form, he had been asked to join a small gathering of friends. He tried to avoid even that by calling in sick the day before. With friends coming from all over the world to celebrate, the “secret” celebration had to be revealed. He said he would come.

A few hundred gathered in Midtown Manhattan. A contrast in style and culture. More than 3/4 of those who came were Indians as are the honoree and his father and family. Brief, spontaneous unscripted remarks were thanks .The guest of honor was honored, not given awards. A brother, and a chain of “who’s next” friends spoke briefly, knowingly, and spontaneously of a man who helps, not with the easy part of wealth and money, but plans and jobs and the understanding that feel good is a long way off and not the result of onetime gifts,

No cliches. No posing or posseurs. No claims of heroes or heroics. The Wadwwani family are anonymous. I didn’t know them, I still don’t. Their choice that I respect despite this breech.

I made a plea a few Substacks ago to suggest the Trump/MAGA hard core should challenge the US that ask: “who and what’s the US?”. Evidence shows the US is increasingly adept at bifurcating complexity, vilifying those who disagree.. Compromise, bipartisan, give and take, have been exited from the US lexicon

Hermant Wadhwani a diaspora of Indian/American friends reminded me, showed me, what is possible.

President Trump has been revealed to be a daily political functionary who manages levers of power that are inherent in the American executive office and ignores constraints he does not like,
He uses powers he does not have and challenges a country where many now discover that the United States America is not the country they thought they knew. More importantly he is getting away it

How can this be? What is happening?

President Trump’s most committed supporters, the “hard core” will acknowledge that he does not always tell the truth. The President lies. The hard core do not appear to know or care that there is arguably illegal unconstitutional, immoral activity in the executive branch of the US government Evidence demonstrates a standard that goes unchecked. To say that Trump true believers have“Blind faith” is extreme. If you listen to the Trump supporters on Fox News or from civilians who have the capacity to forgive acceptable mistakes or misbehavior they do so because he embodies a person they “believe in”. A parent who supports and defends the child or partner loved to the point of overlooking fault or failure.

Confusion, contradiction, inconsistency, obfuscation is what has come to be expected from the President and therein a strategy has become a policy. This not an accident. The aim is to be inconsistently consistent. Lying, cheating, obfuscation and more is made to seem“normal” and eventually even expected.. Behavior once considered unacceptable gradually becomes accepted as normal because you get used to it.

There is no evidence that Donald Trump came up with this approach to governing on his own. The President is not a theorist, nor a thinker. Whether he is functionally illiterate as some claim, or as wily and sneaky as accusers offer. he has appointed men who know they are there for loyalty and unquestioned support. Among them may be the person or persons who have designed the technique that has created what is in academic circles known as “normalization of deviance”.

If you try to answer the question of what Trump’s platform is and what are his administrations policies, you face answers that would have to change ever day, and sometimes by the hour. Trump improvises to fulfill his determination to dominate the news and information flow. Whatever headline he knows will be reported will ensure that he is seen as the President. He knows his core will accept and often cheer. He also knows that “normalization of deviance” frustrates and angers those against him, but proves his ability to command and use power.

Trump said he was going to be a peace President. That was two wars ago he started. One war continues.. He brought his friend Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, into government to get rid of government he attacked and knew many people felt was bloated. Musk and Trump fell out then fell together. Musk is back in not for round two of firings which are considered a failure, but because he needs a clear field for what many believe will vault him into being the first trillionaire in history via the IPO of Space X whose Internet arm is his satellitee saround the globe operation.

In the complicated verbiage of government the downsizing government bloat statistics are at best sketchy - not so much because the Administration does not want to reveal anything - it is likely the Administration does not know how many civil servant it has fired, convinced to leave under pressure, or quit for their own reasons.

Roughly 10% of federal employees was the net decline, approximately 240,000 people.

President Trump is reported to be at the nadir of his popularity. Polling consistently shows the President with support that is around +/- 30%. That suggests the remaining 70% are not for President?

Not that simple.

The Republican Party is about 30% of voters. About 85% of Republicans are Trump supporters. Traditional Republicans, conservatives who have been around since before Trump captured the Party are in the 10-15% category. The Trump hard core is and remaine strong and consistent for a decadence. This true particularly in the second term when evidence that the President, his family, his advisors, some of his cabinet appointees are willing and able to use their connections and powers to favor family and friends at one end of the scale, and/or lie, cheat and steal to enrich themselves and those around them.

The kleptocratic administration continues. The fulminations of those who are not Trump supporters fill print, a growing podcast universe of opposition.

How can MAGA/Trump continue their ways?

If you group current polling there is evidence that the anti-MAGA/Trumpers are not what they may think.

Strong Trump, those who lean” Trump, those who areconflicted Trump supporters, persuadable, mixed and disengaged voters make up 45-60% of adult voters in recent polls. Well beyond the easy 30-35% live and die by Trumpers.

Yes, polls have validity the moment they are taken and arguably less or not meaningful a minute later; but they are a snapshot of who we are, neither permanent or temporary.

If you put “lean anti-Trump” and “strong anti-Trump” together the range would be 45-60%.

Interesting, and troublesome. Far from the comfort to anti-MAGA/Trumpers who seek: the "nadir” of Trump’s support that pervades much of recent reporting.

This leaves me where I began: Who are we and what are we? The US is soon to celebrate its 250th birthday. The US has been labeled an experiment a democracy, a phrase often used to fall back on when dealing with US failures. You can fail as an experiment more easily with less dracronian consequences as an experiment than you can as a country, an ideology, an idea.

The question I suggest is an uncomfortable one that has become unavoidable. The US is and always has been many things to many people, small in population by today’s standards. The US was founded in revolution against oppressive British overlords who taxed the young colonies from afar. Taxation will get you in trouble is one of the few guarantees that will make you an enemy.

The young revolutionaries gathered and created a constitution and government structure that was wise in some ways, wisely flexible and with resistance to absolute imperatives. The US has always been considered a work in progress, an experiment in democracy. For a variety of, reasons we face the fact that while the US created the biggest military power the world has ever seen, technology is redefining warfare.

Civilian military control by a President is opening questions that many thought were settled. The US is arguably losing a war against a non=military power that has disrupted world trade. Politically the US has become not only a one-party state but a President who has taken on powers he does not have and flaunted them against what should be opposition that is supposed to lead to compromise and the resolution of differences.

WHO AND WHAT IS THE USA?

For now the answer is negative: The USA is not what many of its citizens thought it was or think it is. The USA is not what many countries in the world thought it was, or needs it to be. The USA today is not what many pointed out the USA has never been: The United States of America.

The French have a phrase they used in answering similar questions about themselves centuries ago: AUX ARMES CITOYENS

If the next President comes into office he/she will face a prioritiy dictated by the debt: an economic plan and strategy to begin debt reduction. Unless there are changes in the extreme a new administration and congress, or for that matter a continued Republican administration faces priorities that are already in place

Spending cuts and taxes are the two principle tools to deal with the US debt.

The world’s biggest economy has continued to grow despite indicators and economic realities that are, for the most part, defying economic realities, explaining away conditions and incoherent policies that make no sense.

Debt, whether it is personal, corporate, national or international can grow as it has as a matter of public policy for decades. But as much as debt has been and will continue as an accepted economic strategy in dealing with your own or a country’s economic policy there is a point at which another factor intrudes. SIZE MATTER, and the US has reached a stage of debt that has risen beyond where yellow flags have been flying and are looking increaslingly red

When we make 100 and spend 100 that’s a match. But if you have reached 50-50 between what you make and what you spend how do you feel? To go for more which is one of the charms of youth, you want more. I remember being in debt in my young years, but I was hopeful, encouraged and advice that said I was living in a growing economy.

The United States, often called the richest country in the world…is it growing?

The debt to GDP ratio is said to be 100%. Looks like a balance, WRONG. As in all economic measures and figures there is “wiggle room” on who is doing the measuring, the analyzing, and more.

There have been long standing ratios for the US that have applied to policy.

The 100% figure looks like a balance. WRONG.

The gross federal deb is about 120%. The US owes more than it has or brings in and the ratio is growing not shrinking. Worried? Consider worry.

A general view of safe national debt is 60%. At 120% that is double safe.

60-90% is considered elevated but sustainable if the economy is strong and growing. I expect the Trump argument would be that the US economy is strong and growing stronger? There are analysts on all sides ion the political spectrum who don’t agree

90-120%, means higher interest rate costs. less economic flexibility, and reduced policy choices. That is where we are now.

150%, Danger zone, options begin to disappear and public concern leans toward panic.

Japan has debt above 250% of GDP and hasn’t collapsed, but the Japanese Yen did collapse, and if this were about Japan there are long turgid economic, and social explanations to explain what remains a strong Japanese economy.

The US debt was 100% at the end of World War II. The US and its allies were the winners that war and the US peacetime economy unscarred by the battles of WWII took off.

Back to where this started.

In 2028 any new US President faces economic realities that may offer not only fewer choices no matter which party wins in the Presidential, and Congressional elections.

The steps that will need to be taken in the wake of the Trump years will likely force a new President and administration to make unpopular choices that will be demanded by where the US is heading economically, and geopolitically. The demands and reduction of choices will at best restrain and at worst eliminate policy choices and force policy that will likely condemn an elected President to growing unpopularity and a single term that requires fixing what is being broken now rather than building the dreams iota brighter future.

Pick your side. Go. to your corner. There are those who try hard, and even succeed in what was once described as discussion. The largest groups thanks to the reach of all-media permits people who by the numbers - because of our ability to survey survey survey - have chosen to do n o more than take sides.

Anyone can accumulate what we offer as “facts” to bolster their case, but it is equally acceptable to use opinions as if they were facts.. When you build followers you gain credibility. The credibility of a large following can also build economic return and the circular concept sets in: Numbers alone help you convince and convince yourself.

I am whipsawed into and out of opinions to the detriment of what I spend my life doing: ask questions.

Its easy to have opinions, asking questions is hard.

Most of this word scramble is not new. The swing of opinions, finding a home on some side of any issue is natural and normal.

Trump term one now seems like sanity left behind. I became stuck on:how did we get here? I overlooked a more important question born of “facts” that I hadn’t accepted. My world of journalmism had been simple; not easy, but the principles were easy. Facts come come from evidence. No evidence, no facts.

OK, new standards. Facts are fungible. Hard to. avoid science and numbers. 2+2.

Experiment following rules. Show results. You don’t have to accept results, but then prove them wrong.

Among the facts that gets to me: Trump makes up “facts”. I used to try that in desperation to avoid responsibility, to explain away punishment I knew I deserved, consequences for stupidity, dumb me. Didn’t work.

So why does President Trump and his hard core followers get away with making up facts, and lying? I have been ignoring facts.

21% and 28%.

21% of Americans are “functionally illiterate”, they can read but do not understand what they read.

28% of Americans are at the lowest level in federal literacy level tests

54% of Americans read below a 6th grade level.

I was content with equating support of MAGA/Trump with ignorance born of functional or total illiteracy. Biased conclusion:

Most MAGA voters are fully literate. The political divide in the U.S. is much more strongly associated with:college vs. non-college education,

• urban vs. rural residence,

• age,

• religion,

• and media consumption habits.

The Why I am left with is more fundamental.

As the US enters 250 years of history: WHO ARE WE?

The US is not who and what I thought it was. Yes, I am siloed among like-thinking privileged, grad school educated, white males, but as a journalist I also subscribe to organizations, publications, podcasts, and other sources that offer me their facts and opinions. This includes the President whose daily output to me often exceeds half a dozen declarations, requests for money, or “opinion” for the constant surveying his organization produces.

A friend forwarded a Facebook posting that brought to mind something I have been meaning to correct. The correction is simple enough and the Facebook story is a good place to start:

CBS News is a name whose image and reputation was. personified by its title and the man who by survey was considered “the most trusted man In America”. The current CBS News is a title of an organization that according to PEW research is a fringe withb unreliable outlets and low credibility

The CBS News that was part of a pre-digital/satellite world of CBS, NBC and later ABC networks.was where 27=30 million viewers watched the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. About 70 million viewers watched and listened to the three network broadcasts Monday through Friday. Today the three networks names are still there and they have news broadcasts on weekday nights that about 18 million watch.

That is a picture of what was then and now. No invidious comparisons. This is an exercise in perspective. The following is a story of how a man who was one of five of the best correspondent/reporters who were my team when I was Bureau Chief for CBS News during part of the war in Vietnam, a larger unpopular war than Iran is today.

“On the morning of August 3, 1965, Morley Safer was sitting with Marine officers in Da Nang, Vietnam, drinking coffee and looking for a story.

He was thirty-three years old, a CBS News correspondent in a war that America was still trying to describe to itself in clean language. A lieutenant mentioned that his unit would be heading out the next morning on an operation and invited Safer to come along. The destination was Cam Ne, a small village suspected of sheltering Viet Cong fighters.

Safer agreed.

He brought his camera crew, climbed into an armored vehicle before sunrise, and headed toward the village.

What he found there was not a battlefield.

It was a village of women, children, and old men.

The Marines moved through Cam Ne in a methodical sweep. When villagers could not answer questions, or did not understand what was being asked of them in English, the soldiers responded not with patience but with fire. Cigarette lighters appeared. Flamethrowers appeared. Thatched roofs caught. Homes began to burn.

Old women pleaded for time.

They begged the Marines to wait long enough for them to carry out their belongings. Their voices did not stop the flames. Rice stores were set on fire. Possessions were consumed. Household life, the fragile material of survival, disappeared in smoke.

By the time the operation was over, one hundred and fifty homes had been destroyed.

Three women were wounded.

A baby was dead.

And the only prisoners taken were four elderly men who did not understand English and did not know what an identification card was.

Morley Safer kept filming.

That is what matters.

He did not turn away. He did not decide this was too sensitive, too dangerous, too inconvenient for the story America preferred to tell itself. He let the camera keep running while a village burned.

That evening, he sent the film and his narration back to New York.

At CBS, news president Fred Friendly and anchor Walter Cronkite watched the footage together. Both men were stunned. Both understood immediately that what they were looking at could not be buried. Whatever pressure might follow, whatever anger might erupt, the report had to air.

So on August 5, 1965, it did.

The Cam Ne broadcast ran on the CBS Evening News.

The reaction was immediate.

Viewers flooded the network with letters and calls, many of them furious that American troops had been shown in such a light. For some, the greater outrage was not what had happened in the village, but that it had been shown at all.

Then came the call from the White House.

Early the next morning, CBS president Frank Stanton was awakened by his telephone. The voice on the other end did not bother with ceremony. It was President Lyndon B. Johnson, angry and raw. He demanded to know if CBS was trying to silence him, and he lashed out at what the network had done. In his view, the broadcast had disgraced the country. He believed no loyal journalist would have filed such a report.

Johnson was so furious that he ordered a background investigation into Safer, convinced that a man capable of documenting something like Cam Ne must somehow be working for the communists.

The investigation found nothing.

Then Johnson turned his suspicion elsewhere. He ordered an investigation into the Marine officer in charge, convinced Safer must have bribed him or manipulated the situation in some way to produce such damning footage.

That went nowhere too.

Still, the pressure did not stop. The Pentagon formally demanded that CBS pull Safer out of Vietnam. The general commanding the Marine Corps area in South Vietnam banned him from Marine territory altogether.

CBS refused.

The network stood by the report.

Eventually, the ban was lifted. But the danger around Safer did not disappear just because the order had been softened. He received death threats. He began sleeping with a loaded pistol next to his bed. One night, a drunken man outside his window shouted accusations into the dark and fired a gun into the air.

This is part of the story too.

Not only what he filmed, but what it cost to film it honestly.

And then something else happened.

The military, however reluctantly, was forced to respond. After the Cam Ne broadcast, Marines were prohibited from burning villages. Within weeks, General William Westmoreland issued new guidelines banning the indiscriminate destruction of populated areas. Future operations near civilians would require warning leaflets, loudspeakers, and South Vietnamese personnel to help communicate with villagers.

A single television report had altered military policy.

That is the scale of what truth can do when it reaches enough people before power manages to bury it.

Years later, New York University’s Department of Journalism named the Cam Ne report one of the hundred greatest works of journalism in twentieth-century America.

Morley Safer went on to become one of the defining figures in American broadcast journalism. In 1970, he joined 60 Minutes, where he would remain for forty-six years, the program’s longest-serving correspondent. He won twelve Emmy Awards, three Peabody Awards, and became one of the most recognizable journalists in the country. He died on May 19, 2016, at the age of eighty-four, only days after announcing his retirement.

But for all the honors that followed, the moment that revealed what journalism can be at its most necessary happened much earlier, in a Vietnamese village on a Tuesday morning in 1965.

A young reporter arrived expecting to cover an operation.

Instead, he watched homes burn.

And he kept the camera rolling.

He was not trying to become a symbol. He was not setting out to shame a president or redefine the war. He was doing something more basic, and therefore more dangerous.

He was recording what was right in front of him.

That was enough.

In fact, that was exactly why power wanted him silenced.

Because honest footage, shown at the right moment, can do something arguments sometimes cannot. It can strip away euphemism. It can destroy distance. It can force a country to see what is being done in its name.

And once that happens, control begins to slip.

President Johnson’s self-control sdisappeared after seeing the multiple airings of Morley Safer’s Cam Ne report. He was furious.

Frank Stanton, Vice President of CBS Inc, had a working friendship with the US President. Translation: They answered each other’s phone calls.; not buddy buddy but knew the value of their mutual respect.

Dr. Stanton was a workaholic who came to his office an hour or two before his secretary for precious solo work time. Safer’s Cam Ne story had first aired on the CBS Morning News . President Johnson saw it, VP Stanton did not. He didn’t watch as much TV as the President. When VP Stanton’s personal number rang he answered knowing it was a call from the President.

“Frank, do you know what your network did this morning?

“No Mr. President, what happened?”

“You fucked the United States.”

Vintage Johnson, Stanton was measured, smart, a student of media and communication who was the opposite of the Johnson Texas, politico who was equally smart, but emotional and volatile.. Both men knew their value to each other and Stanton knew to absorb Johnson’s frustration and move on.

The President knew himself well. He had inherited an administration after the assassination of loved and admired John F Kennedy. Johnsonknew he was not alovable young man.

He inherited a small Asian conflict that grew. Johnson like the current President suffered from “the US wins” syndrome. He did not learn to listen to those whose messages contradicted his own flawed instincts and emotions, Yet wonder that while it was two years later that Johnson made his public declaration of “I will not run again”; Morley Safer’s Cam Ne report may have been Johnson’s tipping point.

That got me to thinking about Hong Kong.

With a tip of the research to The South China Morning Post, my own experience is that Hong Kongers, with a mainland Chinese neighbor just a short subway/walk across the border, or 14 minute train trip (every 15 minutes) can change economics, and cultures; and yet technically never leave China. So while some of us “stew” as the US administration confuses and frightens us, what are Hong Kongers doing?

This year 8%. almost 600,000) of Hong Kong’s 7,000,000+ population are making the cross-border trip to neighboring Shenzen (population 10 million) during this Easter weekend. . This is an example of scale and efficiency that is a lesson in understanding what “size matters” means.

Hongkongers crossing border for Easter break wowed by new Shenzhen tech museum

(SCMP}

Hongkongers crossed the border into Shenzhen in droves on the second day of the Easter holiday on Saturday, drawn by a wider range of bargain-priced shopping, dining and entertainment options, as well as new landmark attractions including a futuristic tech museum.

While bracing for heavy rain, many travellers cited mainland China’s broader selection of shopping centres and restaurants, along with more affordable prices as key draws. Some also said neighbouring Shenzhen boasted fresh cultural and leisure complexes rarely found in Hong Kong.

Immigration statistics on Saturday showed that 532,023 residents had departed Hong Kong as of 9pm, including 405,805 who left via land border checkpoints with the mainland and another 65,518 by the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge.

Among popular spots is the Shenzhen Science and Technology Museum, a new futuristic landmark in Guangming district that opened in May last year.

Housewife Teresa Lau took her parents and her 12-year-old daughter, a Form One pupil, to the museum to learn about the country’s technology developments, which was one stop during their two-day trip to Shenzhen.

“I often took my daughter across the border to visit various museums to broaden her horizons,” she said, adding that they had also been to the Shenzhen Museum before.

Hongkongers also flocked to popular shopping centres for food and bargains.

Grace Chu and four other friends visited the Coco Park shopping centre in Shenzhen’s Futian district to watch the newly released film Game of Identity and for a taste of good food.

The 32-year-old bank employee said they crossed the border to watch the movie that was not screened in Hong Kong, while Shenzhen also offered dining options such as hotpot at lower prices, adding that they preferred trying eateries only found on the mainland.

Chu also said they enjoyed massage services in Shenzhen the day before.

“We took advantage of the Easter break to enjoy the new movie and a wide range of dining choices here in Shenzhen,” she said.

Also at the shopping centre, clerk Alice Lo, 42, and her six-year-old daughter were shopping for merchandise of animated musical urban fantasy film KPop Demon Hunters at a pop-up store.

Lo said she took her daughter on a three-day trip to Shenzhen, along with her sister, brother-in-law and their two children.

Yana Yan Chi, a staff member working at the pop-up store, said the number of Hongkongers more than doubled on the first day of the Easter break on Friday to about 100.

“There is a sharp increase in people from Hong Kong coming here to shop for goods,” she said.

Hong Kong residents get a five-day Easter holiday this year from Friday, as the break coincides with the Ching Ming Festival, which falls on Sunday.

It is hard/impossible to avoid comparisons and questions about how two different societies and cultures develop and evolve. This Easter comparisons I is oversimplification if too much is made of it. Yet if the diversity of choices in this Asian example with the Passover/Easter experience of 2026 in the USA are considered, the question of values cannot be avoided.

Shorter version: If Krugman is worried, I’m worried…and maybe we all should be. Worry.

Krugman’s concern tell me we may not solve/outlive what we all have been living with since electing Donald Trump in 2020. The assumptions that many of us had, consciously or unconsciously, that the history, wisdom, truth, experience, success and failures of the US 250 year history what we have learned, gives the country strength and insulates insulates us from existential collapse. The country seems to have built the belief that the United States has built a system of governance, roughly known as democracy, that offered a better, stronger, permanent system that would defy evidence to the contrary?

As a child survivor of Nazi Germany, the 2nd World War, and opportunities as well as the benefits of skepticism drilled into me by a career in journalism, I too played the game of denial that many Americans play: The US IS DIFFERENT.

Paul Krugman exemplifies what is best in the US system. He has used his education, that he has never allowed to end, to keep mastering his craft called (loosely) Economics) to explain, educate, in the belief that the power of understanding gives us the ability to survive; and make judgments and decisions that, like good health ,perpetuates and grows the speciesx.

The last few days of Trump, his speech, his actions, the increasing fervor of Trump acolyte and self-described Minister of War Pete Hegseth has dtiven the United States into an unknown. True the 2nd Trump Presidency has left the best and worst minds befuddled by “what dooes what he says mean?” and “what will he do do next?”.

It is not as if the US has never been here before. The United States has had weak, flawed, and corrupt Presidents. But the US has never had the current combination before. The ubiquity of information, undifferentiated by filters of truth or fiction, speed of transmission worldwide, through languages and cultures that inhibit common understanding, and the luxury of time to absord, consider and thin.

That is what seems to have shaken a wise and ultimately. hopeful Paul Krugman to wish his readers: “I guess, have a good weekend”.

Pesach/

Easter

Trump Administration Live Updates: Trump’s Signature to Be Added to U.S. Dollars, a First for a Sitting President

• Mail-in Voting: President Trump defended his use of mail-in voting in this week’s special election in Palm Beach County, Fla., despite having repeatedly claimed that such ballots are used for “cheating.” Read more ›

March 26, 2026, 6:04 p.m. ET2 hours ago

Alan Rappeport

Economic policy reporter

Trump’s signature will appear alongside that of the Treasury secretary.

The addition of President Trump’s signature to dollars is the latest example of his emblazoning national institutions with his personal brand.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times

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

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

“There is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S. dollar bills bearing his name, and it is only appropriate that this historic currency be issued at the semiquincentennial,” Mr. Bessent said in a statement.

The addition of Mr. Trump’s signature to dollars is the latest example of the president emblazoning national institutions with his personal brand as he looks to permanently imprint his legacy in American society.

Since retaking the White House last year, Mr. Trump has pushed for the minting of a one-dollar coin featuring his face along with the creation of a commemorative, 24-karat gold coin bearing his image. Mr. Trump also had his name added to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington and his administration has pushed for Washington’s Dulles Airport to be renamed after him.

In his first term, Mr. Trump had his signature added to millions of economic stimulus checks that were mailed to Americans during the pandemic.

The history of who gets to sign the money dates to 1861, when President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill allowing the Treasury secretary to delegate the treasurer of the United States to sign Treasury notes and bonds. According to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, 1914 was the first year that the Treasury secretary and the treasurer started signing the currency together.

During the Biden administration, there was a delay in adding Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen’s signature to the money because President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was slow to appoint a new treasurer.

It is not clear if Mr. Trump’s signature will appear on all currency notes. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Brandon Beach, Mr. Trump’s treasurer, expressed support for the president’s signature replacing his on the greenback.

“The president’s mark on history as the architect of America’s Golden Age economic revival is undeniable,” Mr. Beach said in a statement. “Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate, but also well deserved.”

Changes to the features of American currency are often fraught with controversy.

During the Obama administration, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew initiated an effort to make Harriet Tubman, the former slave, abolitionist and “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, the face of the $20 note. That stalled during Mr. Trump’s first term, and Mr. Biden did not revive the change.

The move to add Mr. Trump’s signature could stir controversy of its own.

“Why is this in the national interest?” asked Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican economist who served in the administration of former President George W. Bush.

Noting that Mr. Trump has a full agenda and that fewer people are using cash, Mr. Holtz-Eakin added, “This may be the ultimate act of futility.”

Show more

D.H.S. Shutdown

March 26, 2026, 6:10 p.m. ET2 hours ago

Michael Gold and Megan Mineiro

Reporting from the Capitol

Trump says he will sign an order to pay T.S.A. agents.

Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, surrounded by reporters outside the Senate chamber on Thursday.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

President Trump said on Thursday that he would sign an emergency order to pay Transportation Security Administration agents, as senators struggled to break their logjam over funding the Department of Homeland Security and end the intensifying crisis at airports.

With long lines at airports ahead of a prime spring travel weekend, and with lawmakers eager to compromise ahead of their two-week recess, Democrats and Republicans spent the day haggling over an elusive deal amid disputes over Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown. They continued to trade proposals, at times in public in the Senate chamber, to end a weekslong impasse.

But even as the pace of conversations picked up, there was still no sign of a deal by dusk, which Mr. Trump acknowledged in a social media post announcing his plan. “I am going to sign an Order instructing the Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, to immediately pay our TSA Agents in order to address this Emergency Situation,” he said.

The details of Mr. Trump’s order were not immediately available, including what authority the White House would cite to move the funds. Democrats had been pressing to separately fund the T.S.A. for weeks, an approach that Republicans repeatedly rejected since the partial government shutdown began on Feb. 14.

Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Republican, said that Mr. Trump was “going to repurpose funds,” though he did not explain how. But Mr. Barrasso acknowledged that senators, who have traditionally fought to preserve their power of the purse, “would have preferred to get this done here on the floor of the United States Senate.”

Republicans on Thursday morning sent Democrats what Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, called “our last and final” offer. It would have funded the department without money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation and detention operations.

But Democrats have continued to insist that any measure still include limits on federal immigration agents, and that no funds be moved from other parts of the department for immigration enforcement efforts.

Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, hinted at productive talks, saying that the “back-and-forth” was continuing between the two parties.

“I think the good news is that there is very broad agreement that we have to fund T.S.A.,” he said. “The bad news is that there’s not yet agreement on exactly how to fund D.H.S. without Democrats funding ICE, and we’re trying to get clarity on exactly what that looks like.”

The negotiating was happening in closed-door meetings and in public, as bipartisan groups of senators huddled in the Senate chamber to discuss the shape of a potential deal. Still, by Thursday evening, optimism had faded.

Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, looked glum when he was asked whether lawmakers had made progress on negotiations.

“No,” he said, shaking his head before heading to the Senate floor.

The House on Thursday separately voted to pass a bill to fund the Homeland Security Department, the third time in two months that the chamber had done so. Four Democrats joined Republicans in supporting the bill, which passed 218 to 206.

Still, a funding bill remains stalled in the Senate, where 60 votes are required for major legislation to move forward. With the Trump administration eager to alleviate lines at some of the nation’s busiest airports, lawmakers and officials were exploring alternatives that would pay airport security workers in the absence of a larger funding deal.

Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, said he would push for a separate bill that would fund just the T.S.A. And before Mr. Trump’s announcement, officials had considered whether they could find a way to pay T.S.A. agents by using funds that Republicans gave the department last year as part of their sweeping tax and domestic policy bill.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, told reporters on Thursday that the Office of Management and Budget had determined that Mr. Trump had the authority to use funds this way.

Carl Hulse contributed reporting.

Show more

March 26, 2026, 7:52 p.m. ET11 minutes ago

Michael Gold

Congressional reporter

Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and majority leader, called Trump’s announcement of an emergency order to pay Transportation Security Administration agents a “short-term solution,” suggesting negotiations over funding the Department of Homeland Security were likely to continue. “Obviously we want to fund everything within” the department, he said.

March 26, 2026, 7:04 p.m. ET59 minutes ago

Ashley Wu

The D.H.S. funding lapse has led to the longest partial shutdown in history.

What began as a budget stalemate in February has become the longest partial shutdown on record, which has frozen funds for the Department of Homeland Security for more than a month. If the shutdown continues after this weekend, it will be longer than any previous shutdown, partial or full.

March 26, 2026, 7:04 p.m. ET59 minutes ago

Michael Gold

Congressional reporter

Trump’s announcement of an emergency order to pay Transportation Security Administration agents came as some Republicans had weighed supporting a Democratic proposal to fund the T.S.A. separately from the rest of the Department of Homeland Security.

Republicans had blocked that effort for weeks, arguing that it did not make sense to carve out one agency from the rest of the department. But Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, suggested today that he was ready to push a bill that would do so.

Mail-in Voting

March 26, 2026, 2:28 p.m. ET6 hours ago

Erica L. Green

White House reporter

Trump defends use of mail-in voting, saying he did so ‘because I’m president.’

President Trump defended his use of mail-in voting during a cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday, despite having referred to the practice as “mail-in cheating.”Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Trump on Thursday defended his use of mail-in voting, saying he cast a ballot by mail recently “because I’m president” and “I had a lot of different things” to do, even as he tries to restrict the practice for most Americans.

Mr. Trump voted by mail in a special election in Florida this week, despite previously saying that mail-in voting amounted to “cheating.” Mr. Trump has called for some exceptions to allow for the practice, such as when voters are ill, disabled, traveling or in the military.

Asked about his vote on Thursday, Mr. Trump said: “You know what, because I’m president of the United States. And because of the fact that I’m president of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida because I felt I should be here instead of being in the beautiful sunshine.”

Pressed on the fact that he traveled to West Palm Beach, Fla., where he spent time in his residence and played golf — both of which are only 15 minutes driving distance to his polling place — during the early voting period, Mr. Trump said he fit the criteria for the exceptions he has pushed for in what he calls the SAVE America Act.

“I decided that I was going to vote by mail-in ballot because I couldn’t be there, because I had a lot of different things,” he said, without saying which exception applied to him.

“So I was away mostly, in Washington, D.C.,” he said.

The legislation, which Mr. Trump has called “one of the most IMPORTANT & CONSEQUENTIAL pieces of legislation in the history of Congress,” would stiffen voter identification requirements and make mail-in voting significantly more difficult.

“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” Mr. Trump said earlier this week during an appearance in Memphis. “I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all.”

Critics of the president’s voting legislation say it would suppress and discourage legal voting, particularly among groups that typically support Democrats, such as naturalized citizens, people of color and lower-income people.

So far, the measure faces an uphill battle in Congress.

Mr. Trump has long fixated on mail-in voting to bolster his baseless claims of widespread fraud in elections. But he also has used mail-in voting himself.

Voter records made public by the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections website show that Mr. Trump voted most recently by mail in Palm Beach County, home to his Mar-a-Lago estate, where he has been registered to vote since 2019, and also voted by mail in 2020. That year, he said he voted by mail because he was “allowed to.”

Mr. Trump voted in a special election for a Florida legislative district between the Democrat Emily Gregory and the Republican Jon Maples, whom Mr. Trump endorsed. Ms. Gregory won the election, flipping the seat.

On Wednesday, the day after the special election, Mr. Trump continued to rail against mail-in voting, which he admitted he benefited from in previous elections, particularly in Florida.

“I’ve won with mail-in ballots,” Mr. Trump told Republican lawmakers at a​ fund-raiser for the National Republican Congressional Committee​, “but I hate mail-in ballots​, because basically, it’s a way of cheating.”

Show more

Inflation

March 26, 2026, 11:49 a.m. ETMarch 26, 2026

Tony Romm

Economic policy reporter

President Trump said during the cabinet meeting that he was amenable to trying to suspend the federal gas tax in a bid to bring down high costs at the pump stemming from the war with Iran. He said he “thought about it, I guess,” later adding it was “something we have in our pocket if we think it’s necessary.”

March 26, 2026, 11:41 a.m. ETMarch 26, 2026

Alan Rappeport

Economic policy reporter

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that he was confident that oil shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would start to increase and that the oil market was “well supplied.” Bessent added that the world would have lower energy prices and less inflation after the war concludes because there would be “absolute security.”

Cabinet Meeting

March 26, 2026, 12:01 p.m. ET8 hours ago

Erica L. Green

White House reporter

During his cabinet meeting today, President Trump defended his use of mail-in voting in this week’s special election in Palm Beach County, Fla., even as he continues to allege that mail-in ballots are used for “cheating.”

Asked why he chose to use the method, he said, “Because I’m president of the United States. And because of the fact that I’m President of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida, because I felt I should be here instead of being in the beautiful sunshine.”

When confronted with the fact that he was in West Palm Beach during the early-voting period, during which he played golf at his golf course, he said he had “a lot of different things” to do, and that he was “away mostly, in Washington, D.C.”

March 26, 2026, 11:38 a.m. ETMarch 26, 2026

Erica L. Green

White House reporter

President Trump just spent minutes of the cabinet meeting talking about pens, after spending several minutes complaining about being sued by preservation groups for his renovation projects at the White House and the Kennedy Center.

Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

March 26, 2026, 10:54 a.m. ETMarch 26, 2026

Erica L. Green

White House reporter

After welcoming the new Homeland Security Department Secretary Markwayne Mullin to his first cabinet meeting, President Trump opened by noting that the U.S. is on “day 41 of the disgraceful Democrat shutdown of Markwayne’s department.”

Trump continued to blame Democrats for the lines at airports, which are experiencing long wait times as a result of Transportation Security Administration workers quitting or calling out en masse because they are not being paid.

Earlier this week, Trump derailed a deal between Democrats and Republicans to end the partial government shutdown. Instead, he deployed ICE agents to help staff airports, and said that Democrats needed to end the shutdown immediately “or we’ll have to take some very drastic measures.”

Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

March 26, 2026, 10:41 a.m. ETMarch 26, 2026

Erica L. Green

White House reporter

President Trump is hosting his first cabinet meeting since the U.S. went to war in Iran, and it comes as he is clearly perturbed by his inability to mitigate the fallout of multiple crises, from chaos at U.S. airports to tenuous negotiations in Iran.

This morning, he posted a string of angry social media posts threatening Iran over negotiations, lashing out at NATO allies for not joining the war, pressuring congressional Republicans to “terminate” the filibuster, and blaming Democrats for the ongoing partial government shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security.

More Administration News

March 26, 2026, 5:55 p.m. ET2 hours ago

Alan Rappeport

Economic policy reporter

U.S. dollars will bear the signature of President Trump later this year, an unprecedented change to the nation’s currency that the Treasury Department said was being made in honor of America’s 250th anniversary.

Trump will be the first sitting president to have his signature on the currency. It will appear alongside that of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and replace the name of the treasurer, whose name has been on the currency for more than a century.

Bessent said in a statement that there was “no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S dollar bills bearing his name, and it is only appropriate that this historic currency be issued at the Semiquincentennial.”

March 26, 2026, 3:44 p.m. ET4 hours ago

Michael Gold

Congressional reporter

The House just voted to pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security through September, the third time in two months that the chamber has approved funding for the department. Four Democrats joined Republicans to pass the bill, in a 218 to 206 vote.

Still, a funding deal remains stalled as the Senate remained at an impasse. Senators from both parties have said that talks are continuing and have sounded optimistic, and a bipartisan group has been having periodic conversations on the floor this afternoon.

Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

March 26, 2026, 2:54 p.m. ET5 hours ago

Linda Qiu

Reporting from Washington

On President Trump’s mind at a cabinet meeting Thursday: Iran, inflation and Sharpies.

President Trump spent several minutes during Thursday’s cabinet meeting at the White House talking about the Sharpie pen he uses and comparing it to pens used by previous presidents.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Trump assembled his cabinet on Thursday to talk about the war in Iran. But he also seized the moment to regale top officials with an extended digression about his preferred writing tool, the Sharpie.

In between complaining about the Fed chair Jerome H. Powell’s renovation of the central bank’s headquarters, he waxed on about the virtues of the Sharpie, which he said was more economical and a better writing instrument than the fancier ones preferred by his predecessors. It was an anecdote meant to signal his business acumen and man-of-the-people tastes.

“I came here. They have thousand-dollar pens, and, you know, you hand pens out, you’re signing and you hand them out. You’re handing them with all these people, sometimes you have 30 or 40 people, and they were $1,000 a piece,” he said.

The pens, Mr. Trump continued, “didn’t write well” and had “no ink.” He instead turned to the Sharpie when signing bills. “The bottom line is: They’re better pens,” he said. “It’s a business story. So for $5, it could be zero, but for $5, I get a much better pen than for $1,000.”

Mr. Trump is correct that Sharpies are cheaper, but he overstated the cost of past presidential writing instruments. (Whether Sharpies are better is in the eye of the penholder.)

A.T. Cross, which is based in Rhode Island, said it had manufactured the pens preferred by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, all of whom used the Townsend model. The pen, described by Cross as possessing a “bold profile, intricate detailing and superior writing performance,” now retails for about $200. (The classic black version costs about $265.)

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. preferred Cross’s Century II model, which the company says brings “modern flair to a time-honored design.” That model is slightly less expensive, ranging from $99 to $270 a pen.

Luxury pen enthusiasts, it should be noted, often describe Cross pens, as relatively affordable alternatives to other famous pens made by Montblanc and Nakaya, which can retail for over $1,000.

In contrast, Mr. Trump said that Sharpie agreed to create a special version for the White House, painting it black and embossing it with his signature in gold. The cost of that pen, he said, was only $5. Sharpie, Cross and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

It is unclear whether that exact model is available for purchase. But the president and his family have sold other versions.

After Mr. Trump in 2019 displayed a large map of a hurricane’s path that included a line drawn in black marker, his campaign began selling a set of five fine-point markers for $15. Last year, a version of Mr. Trump’s Sharpie was on sale at Mar-a-Lago for $3, The New York Times reported. The Trump Organization currently sells a Trump-branded pen for $25. It is unclear if that version is a Sharpie.

Mr. Trump’s renewed promotion of the brand did not appear to be enough to overcome the market fears caused by his war with Iran. The stock of Newell Brands, which makes Sharpies, fell steadily after the meeting.

Show more

March 26, 2026, 2:51 p.m. ET5 hours ago

Ashley Ahn

Breaking news reporter

A group of Yemeni nationals sued the Trump administration for ending their deportation protections, and filed a petition to postpone their terminations until the court rules.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, along with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, filed the emergency relief petition late Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The brief argued that Yemen’s removal from the Temporary Protected Status program was “arbitrary and capricious” and violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires the executive branch to follow certain steps when it wants to change policies.

The Trump administration has long targeted the decades-old humanitarian program, which allows people fleeing crisis in their home countries to live and work in the U.S. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, announced Yemen’s removal in February even as conflict there escalated. Protections for Yemenis end on May 4, according to the brief.

March 26, 2026, 1:32 p.m. ET7 hours ago

Michael C. Bender and Alan Blinder

Michael C. Bender and Alan Blinder have been covering the Trump administration’s efforts to force changes at American universities.

The Trump administration begins investigations into three medical schools.

Enrollment in medical programs is generally a fraction of that of undergraduate programs. At Stanford University, pictured, the incoming class this academic year had 119 students.Credit...David Madison, via Getty Images

The Trump administration has opened investigations into admissions policies at three major medical schools, expanding the federal government’s pressure campaign beyond campus culture and taking aim at the heart of scientific authority in the United States.

The Justice Department on Wednesday informed Stanford University, the Ohio State University and the University of California, San Diego, about the investigations and demanded that the schools turn over extensive lists of data by April 24 or risk interruptions to essential federal funding, according to two administration officials familiar with the inquiries and documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The government is seeking information about medical school applicants from each of the past seven years, including test scores, home ZIP codes and any familial relationships to alumni or ties to university donors. The administration also demanded copies of any internal messages at the universities about diversity, equity and inclusion and any correspondence between school officials and pharmaceutical companies about admissions policies.

“At this time, our investigation will focus on possible race discrimination in medical school admissions,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, wrote in each of the letters.

Ms. Dhillon on Wednesday afternoon posted a picture on social media of her signing one of the letters with her fountain pen, a Pelikan Souverän with an 18-karat gold, extra-fine nib. “Launching a series of civil rights investigations,” Ms. Dhillon wrote. “Another day in paradise!”

Two hours later, an editor at Lawfare posted a zoomed-in version of Ms. Dhillon’s picture that revealed the letter was to Ohio State’s College of Medicine.

It was not clear how the Justice Department chose the three medical schools. A department spokesman declined to comment.

Officials at all three universities confirmed they had been notified about the inquiries. A Stanford spokeswoman declined to comment. U.C. San Diego said it was reviewing the notice from the Justice Department and that it was “committed to fair processes in all of our programs and activities, including admissions, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws.”

An Ohio State spokesman, Ben Johnson, said the university was “fully compliant with all state and federal regulations and legal rulings regarding admissions.”

The government’s attacks on higher education during the past year have in part been aimed at tilting the political balance of academia, which President Trump views as hostile to his brand of conservatism. Some medical schools had been swept up in that campaign, but largely at universities like Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Los Angeles, where the full force of the government was on display through investigations into antisemitism, protections for transgender athletes and admissions policies.

By directing a triad of investigations specifically at medical schools in a single day, the administration is widening its targets and transforming a decades-long financial partnership into a tool of cultural leverage.

That partnership dates back to a postwar consensus in the country that scientific progress is a fundamental public good — one too vital to be left to the vagaries of the market or the limitations of private philanthropy. Since the 1950s, the federal government has consistently operated as the predominant source of research funding for universities, according to the National Science Foundation.

One of the largest government sources of research funding has been the National Institutes of Health, which disburses about $35 billion each year. The largest recipients of those N.I.H grants are medical schools, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The new round of investigations also signals the latest chapter in a growing legal dispute the administration has sparked over college admissions.

Earlier this month, a group of 17 state attorneys general, all Democrats, sued the Education Department over the government’s growing appetite for admissions data. They argued, in part, that the depth of detail sought by the government posed a “significant risk” of identifying students and exposing sensitive information, including financial aid.

The privacy concerns may be more pronounced at medical schools, where enrollment is generally a fraction of that of undergraduate programs. The incoming class of aspiring doctors and physician assistants at Stanford this academic year was 119 students. Ohio State welcomed 211 medical students, while U.C. San Diego enrolled 140.

The University of California, San Diego, ranked 14th among medical schools in 2025, with $427 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health.Credit...Jeremy Graham, via Alamy

In the Justice Department’s letters on Wednesday, Ms. Dhillon indicated that civil rights laws override privacy concerns. She added that the information would be “maintained in accordance with applicable federal confidentiality requirements.”

Beyond legal battles, the new investigations exemplify an indisputable flex of federal power in an effort to tilt the racial balance in medical education.

The inquiries did not arise from a complaint or allegation, which typically prompt federal action. Instead, the Justice Department has invoked its broad powers from Congress to proactively investigate any federally funded institution for compliance with the law.

But the Trump administration’s interpretation of civil rights law, particularly regarding the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling ending affirmative action, is widely debated.

The administration’s civil rights investigations into admissions processes have tended to focus on potential discrimination against white applicants. The Supreme Court ruling did halt race-conscious admissions, but many university officials maintain that the justices did not forbid a less direct consideration of an applicant’s race, through interviews or essays included in the application process.

But the administration has taken a harder stance, and has attempted to codify its stricter reading of the ruling through executive orders signed by Mr. Trump and guidance from Attorney General Pam Bondi.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, there were 99,400 students enrolled in medical school for the 2025-26 academic year. About 42 percent of those medical students were white, 28 percent were Asian and about 8 percent were Black.

Those percentages closely aligned with the breakdown of the Ohio State medical school enrollment. The two California-based medical schools had about half as many white students, but a higher rate of Asian students. Black students accounted for 13 percent of the medical school enrollment at Stanford, and 6 percent at U.C. San Diego.

All three medical schools rank among the top recipients of N.I.H. funding.

In 2025, Stanford was awarded $575 million in N.I.H. grants, according to data compiled by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research. Only U.C. San Francisco, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University were awarded more.

U.C. San Diego ranked 14th among medical schools, with $427 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health, while Ohio State received $210 million, 35th among medical schools.

The U.C. San Diego medical school is one of six within the University of California system, and largely enrolls California residents. But it is also a part of the public university system that has faced the most intense pressure from the Trump administration.

In California, federal officials have mostly focused on the campuses in Berkeley, which Ms. Dhillon visited last year, and Los Angeles. The Justice Department last month filed a lawsuit accusing the Los Angeles campus of being indifferent to antisemitism, and recently joined a separate lawsuit challenging admissions practices at its medical school. The San Diego campus, though, was the subject of an Education Department investigation into what the department described as “Title VI violations relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.”

Stanford has not come under as much pressure from Washington as many other elite universities, but it was targeted by the Justice Department last March in an inquiry related to its admissions policies. And the Education Department said last year that it was looking into accusations of antisemitism at Stanford.

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

Show more

March 26, 2026, 1:20 p.m. ET7 hours ago

Michael Gold

Congressional reporter

Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said that Republicans sent a new proposal to Democrats to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

The two sides are expected to continue negotiating today, as lawmakers try to find a way to end the ongoing shutdown, though Thune characterized the latest proposal as “what I think is our last and final” offer.

Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

March 26, 2026, 12:48 p.m. ET7 hours ago

Megan Mineiro

Reporting from the Capitol

Lawmakers press to ban prediction bets by policymakers.

People standing near a police station in Tehran that was damaged in U.S.-Israeli attacks. Over a hundred people made more than $10,000 by betting that the United States would strike Iran on Feb. 28.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

The day before President Trump began attacking Iran, more than 150 bettors correctly predicted that the United States would do so on Feb. 28. At least 109 of those accounts on Polymarket, one of the largest prediction markets, raked in over $10,000, and 16 accounts profited more than that.

The proliferation of such bets has raised concerns among members of Congress in both parties, who are pressing to enact legislation that would crack down on policymakers placing wagers on prediction markets.

In recent days, proponents of such measures have pointed to the betting on Iran and similar wagers on the U.S. invasion of Venezuela as potentially creating the impression that federal officials might be profiting off the secret information they are privy to on the job. They have also warned that if federal officials’ bets are not limited, betting patterns on military action could pose a national security threat.

“It’s an operational risk,” said Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, the lead Democratic sponsor of the legislation on the matter, which was introduced on Thursday. “If you’re just hanging out on one of these sites, and suddenly you see a bunch of people placing large bets on military action, that is a tell that we’re about to take military action.”

Her legislation would bar any public official, from the president to low-level congressional aides, from placing prediction-market bets using nonpublic information they learn in the course of their jobs, with fines up to $500 or double the profit made on the bet for violations. Officials also would be required to report any bets valued at more than $250, including when they placed them, on what platform and any profit earned.

The popularity of betting on whether almost any event will occur, on sites like Polymarket and Kalshi, its main competitor, has soared in recent years. Bets on geopolitical developments have also included predictions on whether the United States would invade Greenland or Cuba. A Polymarket user bet $34,000 and earned over $400,000 for predicting that Nicolás Maduro would fall from power, hours before American troops captured the Venezuelan president.

Prediction markets can “create incentives for elected officials or other well-placed public individuals to change their behavior,” said Senator Todd Young of Indiana, the lead Republican sponsoring the measure, which he said would “cut down on any such incentives or temptations that those who hold positions of public trust might harbor.”

With the Iran war now in its fourth week, both senators said there was an urgent need to regulate prediction markets to protect sensitive information on the combat operations. Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, and Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, are also backing the proposal.

Bets on the Iran war have been “very disturbing,” Mr. Curtis said, and are something Congress “should take very seriously.”

“It should be some pretty low-hanging fruit” to limit such activity among policymakers, he added.

Insider trading is already illegal. But proponents of the legislation argue that new penalties and reporting requirements are needed for government workers.

Both Kalshi and Polymarket announced Tuesday they would take steps to guard against insider trading on their platforms, but Mr. Schiff said the companies “can’t be left alone to self-police.”

A proposal introduced in the House on Wednesday would go further than the Senate measure, barring members of Congress, their family members and federal employees, including the president and vice president, from betting on prediction markets about “the occurrence of a specific political event.”

Representative Nikki Budzinski, Democrat of Illinois, said in a statement that “traders making massive profits on events ranging from war with Iran to how long a government shutdown will last” have raised “necessary questions” about federal officials profiting off insider information. She introduced the measure with Representative Adrian Smith, Republican of Nebraska.

Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, took matters into his own hands on Wednesday and barred his congressional staff from placing any bets on prediction markets.

Mr. Trump in his State of the Union address called on Congress to pass legislation that would place some stock-trading limits on lawmakers and their family members, though that effort appears stalled on Capitol Hill.

But it is not clear whether he would back bipartisan efforts to curb prediction bets. The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is a paid adviser to Kalshi, and an unpaid adviser to and investor in Polymarket.

Ephrat Livni and Amy Fan contributed reporting.

Show more

March 26, 2026, 12:07 p.m. ET8 hours ago

Edward Wong

U.S. foreign policy reporter

Vice President JD Vance plans to travel to Budapest in early April to meet with Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, just days before a critical election in the country that could force Orban to leave office, a U.S. official said.

President Trump has publicly supported Orban, a conservative leader who promotes authoritarian governance and policies. The White House has not announced Vance’s trip, and the vice president’s office did not have comment. Reuters reported earlier on Vance’s plans to go to Budapest.

In February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Orban and said the Trump administration could give financial benefits to Hungary if Orban were to stay in power.

Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

March 26, 2026, 12:03 p.m. ET8 hours ago

Gregory Schmidt

Mortgage rates jump again, as the Iran war’s effects ripple through the U.S. housing market.

U.S. average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage

Source: Freddie Mac.

The war in the Middle East continued to weigh on the U.S. housing market, as mortgage rates climbed for the fourth week in a row, squeezing Americans already struggling with high housing costs.

The average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rate climbed to 6.38 percent, according to the mortgage-financing giant Freddie Mac, up from 6.22 percent the week before and the highest level since the first week of September.

That rate is still significantly below its peak of 7.79 percent in October 2023. Until the war started, rates had been gradually declining, falling below 6 percent in the last week of February. The drop in rates had offered hope that more prospective buyers would enter the market, but rates have since marched steadily higher.

Mortgage rates are influenced by the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which has risen as the war deepens uncertainty for investors. Bond yields have jumped in the past few weeks, hitting 4.38 percent on Thursday, up from just under 4 percent before the war began. Disruptions to energy supplies from the Middle East have led to surging oil and gas prices, intensifying fears of higher inflation.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned on Thursday that the war would push up inflation in the United States to 4.2 percent this year, more than a percentage point higher than its previous forecast. A resurgence in inflation would make it more unlikely that Federal Reserve would cut interest rates this year, an expectation that feeds into higher bond yields — and mortgage rates.

President Trump has said that Iran is willing to negotiate a possible cease-fire, a proposal that the Iranian government has publicly dismissed.

The war is expected to slow the construction of new homes this year, according to a report from Oxford Economics, a global advisory firm. “Unless the war is brought to a quick end, higher mortgage rates and softer labor market conditions will weigh on residential spending this year,” Nancy Vanden Houten, the firm’s lead U.S. economist, wrote in the report.

Show more

March 26, 2026, 11:31 a.m. ETMarch 26, 2026

Rob Copeland

Finance reporter

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, said he was suspending attempts to raise money for his personal private equity firm as he concurrently serves as a top U.S. government Mideast negotiator.

The New York Times reported earlier this month that Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, had met recently with Saudi Arabian officials, among others, in an attempt to drum up more than $5 billion. That effort attracted predictably withering criticism from Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Kushner, speaking at a Miami investing conference organized by the Saudis, said that he would pause the efforts for an unspecified period.

March 26, 2026, 11:09 a.m. ETMarch 26, 2026

Alan Rappeport

Economic policy reporter

The Trump administration lifted sanctions on the Belarussian finance ministry and several companies after the release of 250 political prisoners. The sanctions relief comes after the U.S. eased oil sanctions on Russia and Iran.

March 26, 2026, 8:47 a.m. ETMarch 26, 2026

Eshe Nelson

The war will push U.S. inflation above 4 percent this year, according to a new forecast.

U.S. inflation is expected to average 4.2 percent this year, more than 1 percentage point higher than the O.E.C.D.’s previous forecast.Credit...Vincent Alban/The New York Times

The war in Iran will lead to a surge in inflation this year, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz pushes up prices for oil, gas and other commodities, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said on Thursday.

The inflation rate in the United States will average 4.2 percent this year, more than one percentage point higher than the group’s previous forecast, made late last year, the Paris-based organization said. Across the Group of 20 nations, inflation is forecast to average 4 percent this year, 1.2 percentage points higher than previously expected.

The global economy is projected to grow by 2.9 percent this year, an unchanged forecast, supported by spending on artificial intelligence.

“The resilience of the global economy is now being tested,” the O.E.C.D. said in a report. There is a “significant” risk to its projections if there are persistent disruptions to exports from the Middle East.

For the past month, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway off the southern coast of Iran, has plummeted because of attacks on ships. That, along with attacks on energy infrastructure across the Persian Gulf region, has led to a sharp reduction in the supply of energy, as well as other goods such as fertilizers. That will push up the costs of food and other goods.

“Higher energy and fertilizer prices and the unpredictable nature of the evolving conflict in the Middle East will add to inflation and weigh on demand,” the O.E.C.D. said.

In the United States, growth momentum from the beginning of this year is expected to be offset by a slowdown in consumer spending. At the same time, the impact of higher energy prices will outweigh the effect from lower tariff rates on imports. The jump in inflation narrows the chances that the Federal Reserve will be able to cut interest rates this year.

Among the G20 countries, Britain is forecast to suffer the biggest hit to growth, in addition to a large increase in inflation.

The O.E.C.D. said that central bankers needed to remain vigilant for signs that the energy shock could lead to a longer-term increase in inflation, and that lawmakers should respond to higher prices with “temporary and well-targeted measures” because of pressure on government budgets.

Show more

March 26, 2026, 8:10 a.m. ETMarch 26, 2026

Eric Schmitt

Reporting from Washington

The U.S. military kills 4 people in a boat strike in Caribbean.

The Pentagon said it blew up a boat in the Caribbean on Wednesday, the 47th such attack since the campaign started in early September.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

The Pentagon said it blew up a boat in the Caribbean Sea on Wednesday, killing four people. The strike raised the death toll in the Trump administration’s campaign against people it accuses of smuggling drugs at sea to at least 163 people.

The U.S. military’s Southern Command announced the strike on social media with a 15-second video clip that showed a stationary boat floating in the water and then suddenly exploding.

Legal specialists on the use of lethal force have said the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings because the military cannot deliberately target civilians who do not pose an imminent threat of violence, even if they are suspected of engaging in criminal acts. The Trump administration has not provided evidence of drug smuggling.

Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean from its headquarters near Miami, cited unspecified intelligence in its announcement. It said the boat had been traveling on “known narco-trafficking routes” and was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”

The attack, the 47th since the U.S. campaign against boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific started in early September, continued a recent increase in the pace of strikes.

Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the head of Southern Command, acknowledged last week that the U.S. strikes “aren’t the answer” to the nation’s drug problem.

In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Donovan said the strikes had forced narco-terrorist groups in the region to change their operational patterns but were not a long-term solution.

Show more

March 25, 2026, 10:49 p.m. ETMarch 25, 2026

Chris Cameron

Reporting from Washington

Trump calls for a law cracking down on crime and ‘rogue judges.’

President Trump and top aides have been railing against judges who have ruled against him, including justices on the Supreme Court.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times

President Trump escalated his attacks on judges on Wednesday, calling on Republican lawmakers to pass a crime bill that “cracks down on rogue judges.”

Mr. Trump and top aides have been railing against judges who have ruled against him, including justices on the Supreme Court, but he had not yet called for a legal crackdown on sitting judges.

“The time has also come for Republicans to pass a tough new crime bill that imposes harsh penalties for dangerous repeat offenders, cracks down on rogue judges. We got rogue judges that are criminals. They are criminals, what they do to our country. The decisions that they hand down and hurt our country,” Mr. Trump said at a National Republican Congressional Committee event in Washington.

When asked what measures Mr. Trump would want taken against judges he labels as “rogue” or “criminals,” the White House referred to the president’s statements.

Mr. Trump has previously said that he would not sign any legislation until a strict voter identification bill was passed, saying that it would “guarantee the midterms” for his party. He appeared to suggest that a crime bill could be handled after the midterms. Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that “if we get a few more votes,” then “we could do things that would be a miracle. We got to get out and win.”

The midterm campaign pledge was the latest escalation in Mr. Trump’s barrage of attacks against the federal judiciary, which have grown increasingly pointed after the Supreme Court struck down his wide-reaching tariffs as unlawful. The acrimony has been echoed by aides like Stephen Miller, Vice President JD Vance and even in the Justice Department, where prosecutors are attacking federal judges in their court filings and legal arguments.

Last week, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. denounced personal attacks aimed at judges and justices, calling them “dangerous.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump singled out the Supreme Court’s tariff decision as he spoke of court rulings that have blocked his policies.

“The decisions that these people make,” Mr. Trump said. “I got a decision on tariffs that’s going to cost our country — not me, I do it a different way — going to cost our country hundreds of billions, potentially, of refunds. Giving them back to people that have been ripping off our country.”

The vast majority of the economic burden of Mr. Trump’s tariffs has fallen on U.S. companies and consumers. An estimated $166 billion in illegal duties were collected by the Trump administration, and U.S. businesses are clamoring for refunds.

Mr. Trump then complained that “the Supreme Court didn’t want to put one little sentence that all money taken in up ’til this day doesn’t have to be paid back.” He added: “Going to cost us hundreds of billions of dollars. So sad to see.”

Erica L. Green contributed reporting.

Show more

March 25, 2026, 7:29 p.m. ETMarch 25, 2026

Alan Feuer

The Justice Dept. settles Flynn’s wrongful prosecution suit for $1.25 million.

Michael T. Flynn, seen in 2018, briefly served as President Trump’s national security adviser in his first term.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

The Justice Department has agreed to pay Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, $1.25 million to settle claims that he was wrongfully prosecuted for making false statements to federal agents investigating ties between Russia and Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The settlement agreement, which put to rest a lawsuit Mr. Flynn filed three years ago, was an extraordinary example of how the Trump administration has offered legal relief to those aligned with the president. It appeared to be part of a broader effort to erase the effect of some of the prominent criminal cases brought against Mr. Trump and his allies.

Mr. Flynn’s suit, filed in Federal District Court in Tampa, accused federal prosecutors of maliciously charging him with lying to investigators who were working on the Russia inquiry, even though he had twice pleaded guilty to misleading the F.B.I. about conversations he had had with a Russian diplomat as Mr. Trump was poised to enter the White House for the first time.

In 2020, after an unusual pressure campaign by Mr. Trump and several of his allies, the Justice Department dropped its case against Mr. Flynn, chiseling away at the results of the Russia investigation.

Both the Justice Department and Mr. Flynn himself hailed the agreement in separate statements, hinting at the cooperative nature of the settlement.

A department spokeswoman called it “an important step in redressing” a “historic injustice,” and accused those who had worked on the Russia investigation of abusing their power.

Mr. Flynn, in a statement issued by his lawyer, Jesse Binnall, said he was pleased by the agreement, which ended “a coordinated effort to pursue an innocent man as part of a broader campaign to undermine President Trump and his administration.”

“It marks a meaningful step toward righting a profound wrong,” the statement said.

The Russia investigation, which unfolded during much of Mr. Trump’s first term in office, ultimately determined that his 2016 campaign had not conspired with Russia to help him win the White House, but explicitly did not exonerate him on separate accusations of obstructing justice. The inquiry was first led by James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, and then after he was fired by Mr. Trump, by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who died last Friday.

Mr. Trump has long complained that the F.B.I. mistreated Mr. Flynn, even though Mr. Trump fired him weeks into his first presidency for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations with the Russian diplomat. In late 2020, after he lost that year’s election to Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Flynn, bringing an end to the drawn-out legal saga of his prosecution.

But the end of his criminal case was in essence the beginning of Mr. Flynn’s efforts to sue the Justice Department in a claim that originally sought $50 million.

He accused federal law enforcement of opening “a baseless investigation” into him and ultimately filing “unjustified criminal charges.” The Biden administration sought to dismiss the suit, but the litigation took a different turn after Mr. Trump re-entered the White House.

Time and again, the Justice Department under Mr. Trump has sought to use the legal system to punish the president’s enemies and reward his allies and supporters — including those who have filed wrongful prosecution suits.

Last year, the department paid nearly $5 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the relatives of Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who was killed by the police during the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Trump himself has filed claims demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the two federal prosecutions in which he faced separate charges of trying overturn the 2020 election and illegally holding on to reams of classified documents after he left office in 2021.

Show more

March 25, 2026, 6:04 p.m. ETMarch 25, 2026

Apoorva Mandavilli and Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Trump to delay nominating new C.D.C. director.

Under federal law, the White House had until midnight on Wednesday to nominate a replacement for former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Susan Monarez.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

The White House plans to delay naming a candidate to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency that has been roiled by a string of high-level departures and has had three different leaders since President Trump returned to the White House, according to people familiar with the situation.

Federal law imposes a 210-day limit on those filling Senate-confirmed positions in an acting capacity. The agency became officially leaderless after Mr. Trump did not nominate a permanent director by midnight on Wednesday.

Record your activities, connect with community set and track custom goals. Train smarter with personalized insights. View your full training history. Find, build and save routes. See your progress and fitness over timen. Join and create Challenges with friend.

SO, you ask?

They left out unintended consequences. STRAVA tracks you, as in a French sailor assigned to the country’s one and only aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, “secretly” plowing Eastern Mediterranean waters waters protecting French shipping-- or so he and the French Navy thought.

This. sailor was into fitness, a runner. What better place than. the desk of an aircraft carrier. He ran 4 miles, and Strava’d his progress and other parameters on his smart watch. And while Strava kept the sailor’s physical parameters and other useful information, it was also keeping track of the sailor; his where and when.

LE MONDE is a venerable and highly regarded French daily newspaper. If you don’t know it, I recommend it. No French? No problem. Most newspapers of value are available in whatever language you need, ubiquitous English included.

See it coming?

LE MONDE wanted to find the Charles de Gaulle and what it was up to. The French Navy wouldn’t tell them, secret location. So Strava on the wrist of a French sailor running the De Gaulle’s deck provided the answer, LE MONDE confirmed its “finding” using available satellite photographs, and had its “where’s" the De Gaulle carrier group” story.

Bon Dieu!

OOPS.

New wrinkle is $$3.50 really the standard price for a BIG MAC in the US? Sure if you go to counter, but what if, as is increasingly common, you UBER up for BIG MAC for the office or home

The folks at BUSINESS INSIDER investigated. Sure enough they found “Algorhythnm” ar work, and pricing all over the lot.

The full story is detailed and informative, but here’s a synopsis:

There is a new world of algorithm-driven, personalized pricing, where companies quietly charge different customers different amounts for the same product . They’re screwing up ECONOMIST’S simple useful model.

New technology, that you can’t see, smell, or feel allows businesses to use personal data (location, device, spending habits) to tailor prices individually. It’s called “surveillance pricing,” opaque and difficult for consumers to detect.

BUSINESS INSIDER.s “investigation” was easy. The same MCDONALD’S BOG MAC order by different people from the same location at the same time. Result: individual different prices, not by a lot, but no standard $3.50. No word from McDonald’s how come. Go to a store and you pay the marked price. Online ordering is the new growth market for more than McD’s. Online pricing can be opaque; particularly if you ”don’t know” the price you always pay for what you order.

Opacity, lack of transparency is BUSINESS INSIDER’S why answer as to why this is a growing model.

If you are traveler, particularly of the frequent kind, you have seen this play before. Airline fares used to be “fixed”. But computer programs and now algorithms opened the flood gates. You never see air fares advertised as they once were, in those days what you read is what you paid. Yes, that was WAY back.

No longer, if you see an attractive fare of any kind and “it’s too cheap to be true”; you’re right it is likely not the fare you will have to pay. Time of day you travel, day, moon, and year, “fees” (hidden but required if want to got there - and return), these have been variables for years. Ain’t technology grand?

So enjoy your $3.50 BIG MAC at the GOLDEN MARCHES. But at your desk ge prepared for$3.93, or $4.05, Don’t gamble on a $2.60 bargain. No self respecting algorithm would le that happen.,