Aurelia Butler

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    Trump Administration Unveils EPA Overhaul With Shift to Approving New Chemicals

    The Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, announced the agency was “shifting its scientific expertise.”The Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday that it would disperse scientists from its independent research office to other divisions where they among other things will be tasked with approving the use of new chemicals.Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the changes to the E.P.A. in a video, saying the agency was “shifting its scientific expertise” to focus on issues he described as “mission essential.”Most of the immediate changes will affect the Office of Research and Development, the E.P.A.’s main research arm that conducts studies on things like the health and environmental risks of “forever chemicals” in drinking water and the best way to reduce fine particle pollution in the atmosphere.An internal document previously reviewed by The New York Times outlined the Trump administration’s recommendation to eliminate that office, with plans to fire as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists working on health and environmental research.That didn’t happen on Friday, but the agency’s new priorities were made clear: One hundred and thirty jobs will be moved to an office at the agency tasked with approving new chemicals for use, Mr. Zeldin said. Chemical industry groups have long complained of a backlog in approvals, which they say is stifling innovation.At an all-hands staff meeting late Friday, Nancy Beck, a former lobbyist at the American Chemistry Council who now heads the E.P.A.’s chemicals office, told stunned scientists that it was “a very exciting time.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers Is Not Afraid of Trump Administration Immigration Warning

    Thomas Homan, the border czar, had said, “Wait to see what’s coming,” when asked about guidance sent to state workers about interacting with ICE agents.A dispute over a memo about how Wisconsin state workers should interact with federal immigration agents escalated this week into sharply worded warnings from the president’s border czar, Thomas Homan, and the state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers.Mr. Evers and others interpreted comments by Mr. Homan to suggest that he and other elected officials could face arrest over local immigration policies, leading the Wisconsin governor to say he was “not afraid” of what he described as “chilling threats.”The Wisconsin dispute was the latest chapter in a long-running fight between President Trump’s administration and Democratic-led cities and states over whether local officials must cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.In Wisconsin, Republicans had for days pushed for Mr. Evers to rescind a message to state employees, issued on April 18 by the state’s Department of Administration. The single-page memo instructed workers to call a state lawyer if an ICE agent or other federal official visited their workplace. The memo told state workers to stay calm and notify their supervisors, to not immediately answer an agent’s questions and to not give them access to nonpublic areas. Chicago officials issued similar guidance to city workers earlier this year.Read the Memo to Wisconsin State WorkersRead Document 1 pageThe disagreement over the memo intensified outside the White House on Thursday when a person who identified himself as being from The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing website, asked Mr. Homan why the government was not simply arresting “the leaders who are harboring and shielding” people who should be deported.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Newark Airport Is Experiencing Major Flight Delays. What’s Causing Them?

    Staffing shortages at an air traffic control center have added to the effects of a runway closure, prompting United Airlines to cut flights at the hub.Flying into or out of Newark Liberty International Airport has brought plenty of misery in the last week, with cancellations, delays stretching well past five hours and flight diversions that have stranded travelers far from their destinations.Passengers are reporting on social media that they have missed flights and spent hours stuck on the tarmac aboard planes. Some are still struggling to make new travel arrangements.The disruptions, which stretched into Friday with delays averaging over two hours, have highlighted ongoing air traffic control staffing issues. The troubles prompted United Airlines, Newark’s largest carrier, to cut nearly three dozen round-trip flights per day at the hub beginning this weekend, the carrier’s chief executive, Scott Kirby, announced on Friday.Here’s what anyone heading to Newark Airport needs to know.Air traffic control staffing is limiting capacityLast summer, management of the airspace surrounding Newark shifted from New York to Philadelphia. This move, which involved relocating at least a dozen air traffic controllers, was meant to ease air traffic delays.The Federal Aviation Administration has attributed this week’s flight disruptions at Newark to equipment failures and unspecified staffing issues at the Philadelphia air traffic control center as well as to construction on one of Newark’s runways.These ongoing staffing issues are “effectively limiting the capacity of Newark Airport,” said Aidan O’Donnell, the general manager of New Jersey airports at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    C.I.A. to Cut Over 1,000 Staff Positions, Using Attrition

    The agency plans, for now, to use attrition, including retirements and voluntary resignations, to reduce the size of the C.I.A. instead of more mass firings.The C.I.A. plans to cut more than 1,000 staff positions through attrition over the next few years as the Trump administration shrinks the federal government, according to officials briefed on the plans.The agency does not plan any more mass firings. About 80 recently hired employees were let go in March. The C.I.A. is also firing officers who had worked on diversity issues, although a judge has temporarily halted that effort.For the next rounds of reduction, the agency plans, for now, to use normal attrition, including retirements and resignations.A spokeswoman for the agency did not directly confirm the plan to reduce its size but said in a statement that John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, was “moving swiftly” to ensure that its work force was “responsive to the administration’s national security priorities.” The cuts were confirmed by officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about them.Changes at the agency, the spokeswoman said, would “provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position C.I.A. to deliver on its mission.”The plan to reduce the size of the agency was earlier reported by The Washington Post.The C.I.A. does not officially discuss the size of its staff, but it is believed to number about 22,000. Other intelligence agencies, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency, are planning reductions as well. More

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    Republicans Wrestle With Trump’s Demands for Tax Cuts

    House Republicans are planning to include several of President Trump’s campaign promises in the first draft of the bill, which they hope to release soon.It was easy to miss, but last weekend President Trump floated a fundamental rewrite of the American tax code. In a social media post, and again in remarks to reporters, Mr. Trump suggested the United States could stop taxing income under $200,000 and instead rely on revenue from his extensive tariffs.“It’ll take a little while before we do that, but we’re going to be cutting taxes, and it’s possible we’ll do a complete tax cut,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday. “Because I think the tariffs will be enough to cut all of the income tax.”The idea was news to Republicans on Capitol Hill already in the throes of translating Mr. Trump’s impulses for cutting taxes into law.Senator Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho who leads the Finance Committee, said he had not heard from Mr. Trump or his staff about the proposal. “So I just don’t know what that’s referencing,” he said.Likewise in the House, where Republicans are preparing to release their first stab at the tax bill in the coming days. “We aren’t having that discussion at all — it’s never come up,” Representative Lloyd Smucker, a Republican from Pennsylvania and a member of the Ways and Means committee, said of not collecting income taxes on earnings under $200,000.Even if they take a pass on Mr. Trump’s most recent notion, congressional Republicans are straining to incorporate several of his previous tax proposals into the legislation. Those include not taxing tips, overtime pay or Social Security benefits, three of Mr. Trump’s campaign pledges that the White House has continued to push in his second term.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Read Trump’s 2026 Discretionary Budget Request

    Job Corps

    Program Name

    $ Change from 2025 Enacted (in millions)

    -1,584

    Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP)

    -405

    Brief Description of Program and Recommended Reduction or Increase

    The Budget eliminates Job Corps, which has been a failed experiment to help America’s youth—and, in some cases, has harmed them. The program has been plagued by a culture of violence, assault, sex crimes, drug infractions, and death. A 2017 GAO report found there were nearly 50,000 reported safety violations and 265 deaths in just 10 years of the program. Not only is Job Corps financially unsustainable, with an exorbitant per-graduate cost (some centers spend more than $400,000 per graduate), it fails to give young people the start they need in their careers. In fact, an audit of Job Corps from DOL’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) found program graduates made less than the poverty threshold. This program has often made participants worse off, which is severely misaligned with the President’s priority to improve job opportunities and economic growth for all Americans. SCSEP purports to provide job training and subsidized employment to low-income seniors, but fails at its goal: to move seniors to unsubsidized, gainful employment. In reality, it is effectively an earmark to leftist, DEI-promoting entities like the National Urban League, the Center for Workforce Inclusion, and Easter Seals. It also is duplicative of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Employment and Training and DOL’s Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act funding, including the new MASA grant program. Seniors would be better served by programs operated by State and local governments, with proven track records of increasing wages.

    Department of the Interior (DOI) Cuts, Reductions, and Consolidations

    Bureau of Reclamation and the Central Utah Project

    -609

    Operation of the National Park System

    -900

    The Budget provides $1.2 billion for the Bureau of Reclamation and the Central Utah Project. The Budget reduces funding for programs that have nothing to do with building and maintaining water infrastructure, such as habitat restoration. Instead, the Budget focuses Reclamation and the Central Utah Project on their core missions of maintaining assets that provide safe, reliable, and efficient management of water resources throughout the western United States.
    The National Park Service (NPS) responsibilities include a large number of sites that are not “National Parks,” in the traditionally understood sense, many of which receive small numbers of mostly local visitors, and are better categorized and managed as State-level parks. The Budget would continue supporting many national treasures, but there is an urgent need to streamline staffing and transfer certain properties to State-level management to ensure the long-term health and sustainment of the National Park system.

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    Jeremy Renner and the Science of Extraordinary Near-Death Experiences

    A little over two years ago, the actor was run over by a snowplow. Like thousands of others, he then felt an “exhilarating peace.” Why?A little over two years ago, the actor Jeremy Renner was run over by a seven-ton snowplow. In a new memoir, he wrote that as he lay near death, he experienced something extraordinary.He could see his entire life at once, and felt an “exhilarating peace” and a connection to the world. He also saw family and friends arrayed before him, telling him not to let go.“What I felt was energy, a constantly connected, beautiful and fantastic energy,” Mr. Renner wrote. “There was no time, place or space, and nothing to see, except a kind of electric, two-way vision made from strands of that inconceivable energy, like the whipping lines of cars’ taillights photographed by a time-lapse camera.”What Mr. Renner described is “classic for near-death experiences,” the term researchers use for such events, said Dr. Jeffrey Long, the founder of the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation.Dr. Long’s foundation has collected more than 4,000 accounts similar to Mr. Renner’s. Some people who have come close to death have recounted a sense of energy, peace and absence of time, as Mr. Renner did. Some have also described watching their body from above, moving through a tunnel toward a light and even meeting God.The general public may be familiar with these events through a genre of memoirs that present near-death experiences as proof of a Christian afterlife. But they have been reported across countries, demographics and religions, as well as by atheists, and have been a subject of scientific research for decades.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More