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    Chinese Students Rattled by Trump Plan to ‘Aggressively’ Revoke Visas

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    Students said the latest move had upended their plans and intensified their fears.It had been all figured out, Cici Wang said. Summer at home in China, then back to get her master’s degree in Chicago. After that, if she was lucky, a job in the United States.Now all of that is up in the air, she said, a potential casualty of a crackdown that has upended the future for more than 277,000 Chinese nationals studying in this country.“Hopefully, I’ll be fine,” said Ms. Wang, a 22-year-old aspiring computer scientist, sitting with her parents in the stately main quad of the University of Chicago on Thursday. “But I’m not sure.”Across the country, Chinese students reeled Thursday from Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement that the Trump administration would begin “aggressively” revoking visas for Chinese students studying in the United States. More than two dozen students studying in the United States, most of whom did not want their names published for fear of retaliation, told The New York Times that they worried they could lose their academic opportunities in an instant, with little explanation.In a statement late Wednesday, the State Department announced it was focusing on those who were studying in “critical fields” or who had ties to the Chinese Communist Party and was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.The vague parameters had a chilling effect on Thursday as students wondered how broadly the Trump administration would apply its new criteria. Mr. Rubio did not define “critical fields,” but science students felt particularly vulnerable because American officials have expressed concerns about the recruiting of U.S.-trained scientists by China. Nor was it clear how American officials would determine which students had ties to the Communist Party.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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      U.S. Will ‘Aggressively’ Revoke Visas of Chinese Students, Rubio Says

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      Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the students who will have their visas canceled include people with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and those studying in “critical fields.”Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday evening that the Trump administration would work to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in “critical fields.”He added that the State Department was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.The move was certain to send ripples of anxiety across university campuses in the United States and was likely to lead to reprisal from China, the country of origin for the second-largest group of international students in the United States.Mr. Rubio’s brief statement announcing the visa crackdown did not define “critical fields” of study, but the phrase most likely refers to research in the physical sciences. In recent years, American officials have expressed concerns about the Chinese government recruiting U.S.-trained scientists, though there is no evidence of such scientists working for China in large numbers.Similarly, it is unclear how U.S. officials will determine which students have ties to the Communist Party. The lack of detail on the scope of the directive will no doubt fuel worries among the roughly 275,000 Chinese students in the United States, as well as professors and university administrators who depend on their research skills and financial support.American universities and research laboratories have benefited over many decades by drawing some of the most talented students from China and other countries, and many universities rely on international students paying full tuition for a substantial part of their annual revenue.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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      What to Know About the Deportees the Trump Administration Wants to Send to South Sudan

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      Experts say the administration may be trying to shape the behavior of immigrants through fear. The Trump administration is trying to deport a group of eight migrants to South Sudan, a country on the brink of civil war. The men, who are from countries including Vietnam, Cuba and Mexico, are currently believed to be held at an American military base in the East African nation of Djibouti, after a federal judge ordered the administration not to turn them over to the government of South Sudan.U.S. immigration law does, under some circumstances, allow people to be sent to countries that are not their own. But this has been rare under past administrations.The Trump administration is attempting to do something more expansive: potentially sending large groups of people to dangerous places like South Sudan, Libya or a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, with little or no due process, even if their countries of origin are willing to take them back. “The trifecta of being sent to a third country, plus the intended scale, plus the punishment-is-the-point approach — those three things in combination, that feels very new,” said Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes, a professor at Boston University School of Law.The administration’s ultimate goal, experts say, may be to shape the behavior of other immigrants through fear. 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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      National Security Council Staff Will Be Cut by Half

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      The drastic restructuring, revealed by Marco Rubio, the acting national security adviser, is likely to encourage the president’s preferred style of top-down decision-making in foreign affairs.Marco Rubio, the secretary of state who is also serving as the national security adviser, on Friday revealed a significant restructuring of the National Security Council, reducing the size of its staff by at least half, according to a person with knowledge of the move.The dramatic downsizing of the council, a coordinating body across departments that guides the president and his top aides on key policy decisions, comes as Mr. Trump has built his national security and foreign policy teams with officials who largely share his skepticism of foreign interventions, and who will not work aggressively to oppose that perspective.Rather than build decisions from the ground up incorporating an array of sources and offering a significant menu of different viewpoints, the changes are likely to help Mr. Trump conduct foreign policy debates in his preferred style, with advisers taking the president’s desired outcomes and finding a way to comply with them.Some National Security Council officials from other agencies are returning to their original offices, and others are being placed on administrative leave, effective immediately, said the person with knowledge of the move, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Some of the teams on the council that focus on specific regions or issues will be gutted, while others will be collapsed and folded into others. Still other teams will cease to exist.Andy Baker, Vice President JD Vance’s national security adviser, will serve as the deputy for the reconfigured council, alongside Robert Gabriel, whose current title is assistant to the president for policy.The changes were reported earlier by Axios. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The council has a core staff of presidential appointees supported by dozens of specialists who are detailed — or essentially on loan — from other departments and agencies across the government. Presidents have used the council in different ways, but it has had a central role in foreign policy events since its creation in 1947.Mr. Trump’s allies have long argued that the council had grown too large over time.Mr. Trump has also held a deep distrust for and suspicion of the council since the earliest days of his first term, in 2017. People who have worked for him over time say he believes it was the source of significant undermining of his policy views.Mr. Trump’s first impeachment involved testimony before Congress from Alexander S. Vindman, the council’s director of European affairs, who said the president pressed the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, for an investigation into Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his family. At the time, Mr. Biden was one of Mr. Trump’s chief potential rivals in the 2020 election.In early April, Mr. Trump fired several N.S.C. aides after a meeting with the far-right activist Laura Loomer, who presented him with a list of people she suspected of disloyalty. More

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      Senate Democrats Grill Defiant Rubio on Trump Policies

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      There was shouting and gavel banging as Marco Rubio and his former Senate Democratic colleagues clashed over U.S. foreign aid.A defiant Secretary of State Marco Rubio clashed in sometimes personal terms with his former Senate Democratic colleagues on Tuesday, calling their criticism evidence of his success.At a hearing on the State Department budget, several Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee said that they were deeply disappointed in Mr. Rubio and regretted voting for his confirmation.The contentious scene reflected Democratic fury over President Trump’s policies, such as the evisceration of U.S. foreign aid programs, which they said benefited rivals like China. Mr. Rubio, they argued, had betrayed his principles while serving Mr. Trump.“I have to tell you, directly and personally, that I regret voting for you for secretary of state,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, told Mr. Rubio after castigating him for approving huge cuts to aid programs promoting human rights, public health, food assistance and democracy.“First of all, your regret for voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job,” Mr. Rubio retorted, launching into an unapologetic response that produced shouting and gavel banging as Mr. Van Hollen called portions of Mr. Rubio’s answer “flippant” and “pathetic.”In January, the Senate confirmed Mr. Rubio, who served on the Foreign Relations Committee before joining Mr. Trump’s cabinet, by a 99-to-0 vote. Many Democrats said he had promised to be a responsible steward of the State Department. And they privately hoped Mr. Rubio would check Mr. Trump’s disruptive impulses.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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      Trump Is Destroying a Core American Value. The World Will Notice.

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      In the late 1980s, Joseph Nye, the Harvard political scientist who died this month, developed the concept of “soft power.” His central premise, that the United States enhances its global influence by promoting values like human rights and democracy, has guided U.S. foreign policy for decades across both Republican and Democratic administrations.Donald Trump has made clear that he fundamentally rejects this vision. As president, he has ordered a sweeping overhaul of the State Department that will cripple its capacity to promote American values abroad. At the center of this effort are drastic cuts to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor — the State Department’s core institution for advancing soft power, which I led under President Barack Obama. Unless Congress intervenes, the debasement of the bureau’s role will impair America’s ability to challenge authoritarianism, support democratic movements and provide independent analysis to inform U.S. foreign policy. The long-term result will be a United States that is weaker, less principled and increasingly sidelined as authoritarian powers like Russia and China offer their own transactional models of global engagement.The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor was created with bipartisan congressional support in 1977, a time when lawmakers sought greater influence over foreign policy in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and America’s support for authoritarian regimes in countries like Chile and South Korea. President Jimmy Carter’s religious convictions and deep commitment to human rights gave the fledgling bureau early momentum. Still, its purpose was always practical: to ensure U.S. foreign aid and trade decisions were informed by credible assessments of human rights conditions around the world. That’s why every year, the bureau prepares congressionally mandated human rights reports.In its early years, it struggled to defend its existence. Foreign governments resented being called out in its annual reports and attacked its legitimacy. Many State Department traditionalists viewed its focus on human rights as an unhelpful distraction from the realpolitik topics they were much more comfortable addressing. It also drew criticisms of hypocrisy, mostly from the left, for condemning the records of other countries in the face of unresolved human rights problems here in the United States. Others accurately pointed out that even as the State Department’s human rights reports documented serious abuses, the United States continued to provide substantial aid to governments like Ferdinand E. Marcos’s Philippines, Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire, Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt and numerous military regimes across Latin America.These tensions have not disappeared. But over nearly five decades, the bureau has evolved to confront them. Governments, companies, judges and nongovernmental organizations have all come to rely on its annual country reports. It plays the lead role in preventing the United States from funding foreign security forces that violate human rights. And its policy engagement has guided the U.S. approach to international conflicts, repressive regimes and civil wars.That progress is now at risk. The Trump administration’s proposed “reforms” will hamstring my former agency’s capacity to uphold its mission in three major ways.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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      Reluctant at First, Trump Officials Intervened in South Asia as Nuclear Fears Grew

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      After Vice President JD Vance suggested that the conflict between India and Pakistan was not America’s problem, the Trump administration grew concerned that it could spiral out of control.As a conflict between India and Pakistan escalated, Vice President JD Vance told Fox News on Thursday that it was “fundamentally none of our business.” The United States could counsel both sides to back away, he suggested, but this was not America’s fight.Yet within 24 hours, Mr. Vance and Marco Rubio, in his first week in the dual role of national security adviser and secretary of state, found themselves plunged into the details. The reason was the same one that prompted Bill Clinton in 1999 to deal with another major conflict between the two longtime enemies: fear that it might quickly go nuclear.What drove Mr. Vance and Mr. Rubio into action was evidence that the Pakistani and Indian Air Forces had begun to engage in serious dogfights, and that Pakistan had sent 300 to 400 drones into Indian territory to probe its air defenses. But the most significant causes for concern came late Friday, when explosions hit the Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the garrison city adjacent to Islamabad.The base is a key installation, one of the central transport hubs for Pakistan’s military and the home to the air refueling capability that would keep Pakistani fighters aloft. But it is also just a short distance from the headquarters of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, which oversees and protects the country’s nuclear arsenal, now believed to include about 170 or more warheads. The warheads themselves are presumed to be spread around the country.The intense fighting broke out between India and Pakistan after 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, were killed in a terrorist attack on April 22 in Kashmir, a border region claimed by both nations. On Saturday morning, President Trump announced that the two countries had agreed to a cease-fire.One former American official long familiar with Pakistan’s nuclear program noted on Saturday that Pakistan’s deepest fear is of its nuclear command authority being decapitated. The missile strike on Nur Khan could have been interpreted, the former official said, as a warning that India could do just that.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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      Trump Administration Plans to Send Migrants to Libya on a Military Flight

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      Human rights groups have called conditions in the country’s network of migrant detention centers “horrific” and “deplorable.”The Trump administration is planning to transport a group of immigrants to Libya on a U.S. military plane, according to U.S. officials, another sharp escalation in a deportation program that has sparked widespread legal challenges and intense political debate.The nationalities of the migrants were not immediately clear, but a flight to Libya carrying the deportees could leave as soon as Wednesday, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation.The decision to send deportees to Libya was striking. The country is racked with conflict, and human rights groups have called conditions in its network of migrant detention centers “horrific” and “deplorable.”The Libya operation falls in line with the Trump administration’s effort to not only deter migrants from trying to enter the country illegally but also to send a strong message to those in the country illegally that they can be deported to countries where they could face brutal conditions. Reuters earlier reported the possibility of a U.S. deportation flight to Libya.The planning for the flight to Libya has been tightly held, and could still be derailed by logistical, legal or diplomatic obstacles.The White House declined to comment. The State Department and Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.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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      Rwanda in Talks With Trump Administration to Take in Migrants Deported From U.S.

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      Discussions with the Central African country come as the Trump administration looks for more countries willing to accept deportees as part of a sweeping crackdown.Rwanda is in talks with the Trump administration to take in migrants deported from the United States, the central African nation’s foreign minister said late Sunday. It was unclear if a deal would involve migrants who had already been deported or those who will be in the future, but any deal would potentially make Rwanda the first African country to enter into such an agreement with the United States.Rwanda’s foreign minister, Olivier J.P. Nduhungirehe, said on Sunday that his country’s government was in “early stage” talks about receiving third-country deportees from the United States.“It is true that we are in discussions with the United States,” Mr. Nduhungirehe said in an interview with Rwanda TV, the state broadcaster. “These talks are still ongoing, and it would be premature to conclude how they will unfold,” he added.Rwanda’s government did not respond to a request for comment. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Rwanda has long positioned itself as a partner to Western nations seeking to curb migration, offering to provide asylum to migrants or house them as they await resettlement elsewhere, sometimes in return for payment. Mr. Nduhungirehe did not say whether Rwanda would be paid as part of any U.S. agreement.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