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    Trump Administration Freezes $1 Billion for Cornell and $790 Million for Northwestern, Officials Say

    The Trump administration has frozen more than $1 billion in funding for Cornell and $790 million for Northwestern amid civil rights investigations into both schools, two U.S. officials said.The funding pause involves mostly grants from and contracts with the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education and Health and Human Services, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the unannounced decision.The moves are the latest and largest in a rapidly escalating campaign against elite American universities that has resulted in roughly $3.3 billion in federal funds being suspended or put under review in just over a month. Other schools that have had funds threatened include Brown, Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.Cornell and Northwestern are both facing investigations into allegations of antisemitism and into accusations of racial discrimination stemming from their efforts to promote diversity.Cornell officials said in a statement that they had received more than 75 stop-work orders from the Defense Department on Tuesday, but that they had no information to confirm that more than $1 billion in funding had been suspended. The affected grants, they said, supported research that they described as “profoundly significant to American defense, cybersecurity and health.”“We are actively seeking information from federal officials to learn more about the basis for these decisions,” according to the joint statement from Michael Kotlikoff, the university president; Kavita Bala, the provost; and Robert Harrington, provost for medical affairs.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 Officials Point to Outreach on Tariffs in a Bid to Calm Markets

    President Trump’s top trade official defended the administration’s aggressive tariff moves on Tuesday, arguing before a Senate committee that the U.S. economy is facing “a moment of drastic, overdue change” after decades of being propped up by the financial sector and government spending.The remarks by Jamieson Greer, the United States trade representative, came as the Trump administration faced blowback from trading partners, businesses and investors over Mr. Trump’s approach. The president’s moves this month to impose a 10 percent global tariff and steep “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries have already triggered a trade war with China and caused other countries to draw up their own retaliation plans. Economists now consider a recession increasingly likely.Mr. Trump has dismissed those concerns and said he will not back away from his trade agenda, which he says is necessary to return manufacturing and industrial production to the United States. He and his economic advisers have claimed that countries are clamoring to make new trade agreements with the United States and to lower their tariffs and other trade barriers.In a social media post on Tuesday, Mr. Trump described a call with South Korea’s acting president, Han Duck-soo, about trade and tariffs and that South Korean officials were heading to the United States for talks. He also expressed optimism that a trade war with China could be averted.“China also wants to make a deal, badly, but they don’t know how to get it started,” Mr. Trump wrote. “We are waiting for their call. It will happen!”Mr. Greer said in his prepared remarks that nearly 50 countries have approached him to discuss how to “achieve reciprocity on trade.”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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    Two Chinese Citizens Captured in Ukraine While Fighting for Russia, Zelensky Says

    The Ukrainian president did not suggest that they had been sent by Beijing’s military, but he pointed to their presence as further evidence that Moscow was not truly interested in peace.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Tuesday that two Chinese citizens fighting alongside Russian forces had been taken as prisoners of war.Mr. Zelensky said that the two Chinese citizens had been captured while fighting in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. He added that Kyiv had information that “there are many more such Chinese citizens in the enemy’s units,” without providing evidence. The claims could not be independently verified, and there was no immediate comment from the Chinese or Russian governments.The announcement came at a fraught moment for Ukraine as the Trump administration has seemingly drawn closer to Russia while trying to act as a mediator in cease-fire talks.Mr. Zelensky on Tuesday did not suggest that the Chinese fighters had been sent by China’s military, but he pointed to their presence as further evidence that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was not truly interested in peace.“Russia’s involvement of China, along with other countries, whether directly or indirectly, in this war in Europe is a clear signal that Putin intends to do anything but end the war. He is looking for ways to continue fighting,” he wrote on social media.Mr. Zelensky said that he had instructed his foreign minister to “immediately contact Beijing and clarify how China intends to respond to this.” The foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, confirmed that he had summoned the Chinese chargé d’affaires to demand an explanation.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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    Case in Texas Could Shed More Light on Invocation of Alien Enemies Act

    Immigration lawyers are reacting to the Supreme Court’s ruling, which declared that any legal challenges to the Trump administration’s plan to use a wartime statute to deport a group of Venezuelan migrants have to be filed where the men are being held.And as they scrambled to adjust on Tuesday, their efforts could be guided by a similar case that is underway in Federal District Court in Brownsville, Texas. It was filed last month by Daniel Zacarias Matos, a Venezuelan migrant who claimed that the administration tried to deport him — without a hearing or an order of removal — under President Trump’s recent proclamation invoking the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act.In mid-March, Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., who is handling the case, issued an order stopping Mr. Zacarias Matos from being deported until he could look deeper into the matter. His lawyers and lawyers for the Justice Department are expected to file dueling court papers this month laying out the details of what happened.While the facts in Mr. Zacarias Matos’s case do not line up exactly with those in the cases of the Venezuelan migrants directly affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling, they could shed light on some of those proceedings as they start to move forward, most likely one by one.According to court papers, Mr. Zacarias Matos came to the United States with his 8-year-old daughter in December 2023, seeking asylum from Venezuela. Federal immigration agents took him into custody in October at the El Paso County Jail after he was arrested on charges of violating the terms of his probation on two, now-dismissed misdemeanor charges, court papers show.Early last month, the papers say, Mr. Zacarias Matos was sent to the El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas, where the administration was holding scores of Venezuelan migrants they were planning to deport to a prison in El Salvador under the expansive powers of the Alien Enemies Act.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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    I.R.S. Audits Are at a Record Low. Trump’s Cuts Could Make Them Even Rarer.

    The Biden plan to increase tax revenue through more enforcement is being reversed. The Internal Revenue Service’s audit rate has been lower this decade than in most taxpayers’ lifetimes, a New York Times analysis shows, and if the Trump administration follows through with plans to cut the agency’s work force, audits will almost certainly become even rarer.The most recent I.R.S. data shows the audit rate of individual taxpayers has decreased by about two-thirds since 2010. More

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    China Condemns JD Vance’s ‘Chinese Peasants’ Comment

    Beijing has denounced Vice President JD Vance’s rhetoric as “ignorant” after he said the United States was borrowing money from “Chinese peasants” in a television interview last week.“China’s position on Sino-U.S. economic and trade relations has been made very clear,” said Lin Jian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, during a news conference on Tuesday. “It is surprising and sad to hear the vice president say such ignorant and impolite words.”China has remained defiant in the face of the Trump administration’s tariffs and the latest threat from President Trump of an additional 50 percent tariff on Chinese goods unless Beijing reverses its retaliatory levies on U.S. imports. China’s Ministry of Commerce on Tuesday accused the United States of “blackmail,” and said that Beijing would “fight to the end.”In an interview with Fox News last week, Mr. Vance defended the Trump administration’s sweeping global tariffs, asking what the “globalist economy” has given the United States.Answering his own question, Mr. Vance said America was “incurring a huge amount of debt to buy things that other countries make” for its market. “We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture,” he said.Mr. Trump’s new policies, condemned by many international leaders, have wrought havoc on financial markets and spurred experts to issue warnings about inflation.The spiraling trade war between the two countries is poised to be costly to Americans, who last year purchased $440 billion of goods from China, making the country the second-largest source of imports after Mexico.Gillian Wong More

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    Some Calm Returns to Asian Markets Even as Trade Tensions Escalate

    Stocks rise in China after Beijing announces support measures a day after market plunges triggered by tariffs imposed by President Trump.After three days of global market turmoil not seen since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, stocks in Asia regained a measure of calm on Tuesday despite little let up in the escalating trade tensions caused by President Trump’s tariffs.Before markets opened in China, the government unleashed a series of measures to stabilize stocks. In turn, share prices in Hong Kong, a day after plunging 13.2 percent, rose 2 percent. Benchmarks in mainland China ticked higher, recovering from big declines the day before.In Japan, the Nikkei 225, a key benchmark in Japan, gained 6 percent, recouping a portion of the previous days losses. The uptick in sentiment followed comments made on Monday by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said he would soon begin discussions with the Japanese government regarding tariffs.The Kospi index rose in South Korea rose about 1.5 percent.Markets around the world were unmoored last week by Mr. Trump’s announcement of broad new tariffs — a base tax of 10 percent on American imports, plus significantly higher rates on dozens of other countries. Countries have responded with tariffs of their own on U.S. goods, or with threats of retaliation. China retaliated forcefully on Friday, matching a new 34 percent tariff with one of its own on many American imports.In the United States on Monday, the S&P 500 fell 0.2 percent after tumultuous trading that at one point pulled the benchmark into bear market territory, or a drop of 20 percent or more from its recent high. S&P futures, indicating how markets might perform when they reopen for trading on Wednesday in New York, were 1.5 percent higher.Wall Street executives and analysts are growing increasingly worried that escalating trade tensions could do lasting damage to the global economy.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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    China Accuses U.S. of Blackmail After Trump Threatens More Tariffs

    The country’s commerce ministry called President Trump’s threat to escalate tariffs on China by another 50 percent “blackmail.”China lashed out at the United States on Tuesday after President Trump demanded that Beijing rescind its retaliatory tariffs or face an additional 50 percent U.S. levy, calling his threat “blackmail,” as tensions between the two major powers rose.The Ministry of Commerce, without referring to the American president by name, said that Beijing had noted that the United States had threatened to impose a further 50 percent tariff on China. It said that Beijing would take countermeasures to safeguard its interests.“The U.S. threat to escalate tariffs on China is a mistake on top of a mistake, which once again exposes the blackmail nature of the United States,” the ministry’s statement said. “China will never accept it. If the United States insists on its own way, China will fight to the end.”China had announced last week that it would match Mr. Trump’s tariffs by imposing a retaliatory 34 percent tax on imports from America. The latest escalation that Mr. Trump described on Monday, if imposed, could bring the U.S. tariff on Chinese goods to 104 percent. For some products, though, the rate is likely to be much higher because of levies that date back to Mr. Trump’s first term. Mr. Trump also threatened to halt any further negotiations.American consumers last year bought $440 billion of goods from China, making it the second-largest source of U.S. imports after Mexico. Taken together, it could prove costly for American importers bringing in clothing, cellphones, chemicals and machinery from China.China said that the United States should cancel all unilateral tariffs against China, “stop suppressing China’s economy and trade, and properly resolve differences with China through equal dialogue on the basis of mutual respect.”China has been trying for months to engage in high-level talks with the Trump administration to try to lay the ground for a potential summit between Mr. Trump and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. But despite Mr. Trump saying earlier this year that he was open to engaging with Mr. Xi, Beijing has struggled to receive much of a response from the White House.Berry Wang More