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      Trump Wants $3 Billion in Harvard Grants Redirected to Trade Schools

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      In a social media post, the president mused about redirecting $3 billion in research grant funding that his administration has frozen or withdrawn, but he gave no details.President Trump floated a new plan on Monday for the $3 billion he wants to strip from Harvard University, saying in a social media post that he was thinking about using the money to fund vocational schools.“I am considering taking THREE BILLION DOLLARS of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media platform.The announcement, among the president’s Memorial Day social media messages, did not appear to refer to any new cut in funding, but rather to a redistribution of money the administration already announced it had frozen or stripped from Harvard and its research partners.Mr. Trump gave no details about how such a plan would work.The message was accompanied by yet another post accusing Harvard of being slow to respond to the administration’s requests for information on “foreign student lists.” Mr. Trump said his administration wanted them in order to determine how many “radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country.”The posts seemed intended to keep up public relations pressure on Harvard, the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university. Harvard is engaged in an epic battle with the White House, rooted in the administration’s claims that the university tolerates antisemitism and promotes liberal ideology.Harvard declined on Monday to comment on the president’s post.The university is battling the White House in federal court in Boston to secure the reinstatement of grants and contracts that the government has frozen or withdrawn, amounting to more than $3 billion. In a separate lawsuit, the university is also fighting Mr. Trump’s plan to take away the university’s right to admit international students.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 Praises Military Service and Personal Achievements in Arlington Memorial Day Speech

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      In a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, President Trump highlighted the sacrifices of soldiers and their families but also his own achievements. President Trump memorialized the nation’s fallen soldiers in a speech at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, recognizing the families of servicemen and servicewomen who died fighting for their country hours after airing grievances and attacking his political opponents on social media.In remarks commemorating Memorial Day, Mr. Trump thanked those who had fought in some of the nation’s defining battles, and cited specific stories of sacrifice by soldiers and their families.“We certainly know what we owe to them,” Mr. Trump said. “Their valor gave us the freest, greatest and most noble republic ever to exist on the face of the earth — a republic that I am fixing after a long and hard four years.”He also used the occasion, traditionally a solemn day of tributes, to indirectly criticize his predecessor, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., for his border policies while valorizing his own return to office. “We’re doing so very well right now, considering the circumstances,” Mr. Trump said. “And we’ll do record-setting better with time. We will do better than we’ve ever done as a nation, better than ever before. I promise you that.”Mr. Trump delivered the speech after taking part in the presidential tradition of laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns to honor America’s war dead. He was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance, both of whom served in the military. 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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      Republican Vote Against E.V. Mandate Felt Like an Attack on California, Democrats Say

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      For decades, California has been able to adopt its own emissions regulations, effectively setting the bar for carmakers nationally. And for just as long, Republicans have resented the state’s outsize influence.There is little question that California leaders already see fossil fuels as a relic of the past.At the Southern California headquarters of the state’s powerful clean-air regulator, the centerpiece art installation depicts in limestone a petrified gas station. Fuel nozzles lie on the ground in decay, evoking an imagined extinction of gas pumps.For more than half a century, the federal government has allowed California to set its own stringent pollution limits, a practice that has resulted in more efficient vehicles and the nation’s most aggressive push toward electric cars. Many Democratic-led states have adopted California’s standards, prompting automakers to move their national fleets in the same direction.With that unusual power, however, has come resentment from Republican states where the fossil fuel industry still undergirds their present and future. When Republicans in Congress last week revoked the state’s authority to set three of its mandates on electric vehicles and trucks, they saw it not just as a policy reversal but also as a statement that liberal California should be put in its place.“We’ve created a superstate system where California has more rights than other states,” Representative Morgan Griffith, who represents rural southwestern Virginia, said in an interview. “My constituents think most folks in California are out of touch with reality. You see this stuff coming out of California and say, ‘What?’”Federal law typically pre-empts state law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. But in 1967, the federal government allowed smoggy California to receive waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency to enact its own clean-air standards that were tougher than federal limits, because the state historically had some of the most polluted air in the nation. Federal law also allows other states to adopt California’s standards as their own under certain circumstances.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said last week that the state would fight in court to preserve its autonomy in setting emissions rules.Rich Pedroncelli/Associated PressWe 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’s Comments on Gaza Reflect Israel’s Growing Isolation

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      For months, Israel’s strongest allies had been reluctant to join a wave of global censure against the war. Now, even the Trump administration appears to be growing impatient.Through more than 18 months of war in Gaza, Israel has faced intense criticism from foreign leaders and aid groups but has rarely experienced sustained public censure, let alone concrete repercussions, from its close allies.Until now.In recent weeks, partners such as the United States, Britain and France have become more willing to place Israel under overt pressure, culminating in President Trump’s call on Sunday for the war to wind down.“Israel, we’ve been talking to them, and we want to see if we can stop that whole situation as quickly as possible,” Mr. Trump told reporters in New Jersey shortly before boarding Air Force One.Those comments contrast with the public position Mr. Trump held entering office in January, when he blamed Hamas rather than Israel for the war’s continuation. He was also careful to present a united front with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.Mr. Trump’s latest intervention came hours before the German government, normally a steadfast supporter of Israel, expressed unusually strong criticism of Israel’s expanded attacks in Gaza. “What the Israeli Army is doing in the Gaza Strip right now — I honestly don’t understand what the goal is in causing such suffering to the civilian population,” said Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new chancellor, during an interview broadcast on television on Monday.The German shift came days after a similarly worded intervention from the right-wing Italian government, another ally of Israel that has previously avoided such strong condemnation of Israel. “Netanyahu must halt the raids on Gaza,” said Antonio Tajani, the Italian foreign minister, in an interview posted on his ministry website. “We need an immediate cease-fire and the release of hostages by Hamas, which must leave Gaza.”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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      Understanding Lapses in Learning

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      More from our inbox:Will We Train Better Robots or Better Humans? Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Have We Quit on Learning?,” by Dana Goldstein (news article, May 11):Governors are rising up — not giving up — on education as we know it. Education is the single best investment we can make in the future of our states and economy. This is a national conversation not being had enough in the halls of Washington by either party. But it is happening in the states — and it’s one we have to elevate nationally, before too many youngsters fall behind.States are passing nonpartisan, common-sense reforms, and it’s making a difference. Colorado passed free full-day kindergarten and universal preschool to prevent achievement gaps from forming in the first place, give our youngest learners a strong start and save parents and families thousands of dollars. We’ve deployed targeted tutoring and after-school opportunities for K-12 students, including an online math platform that is free for schools to use, and that increased scores after just one year.Governors from both parties are leading similar efforts to improve student performance in reading and math, with science-based initiatives generating real results in states such as Alabama, California, Louisiana and New York.Through an effort I’m leading with the National Governors Association known as Let’s Get Ready: Educating All Americans for Success, we’re looking at how we can best measure what skills and knowledge students need to thrive in school and beyond, invest in what works and change what doesn’t.In Colorado, Canon City and Poudre high schools are allowing ninth-grade students to choose a focus — including agriculture, the arts, engineering, health services, hospitality, skilled trades and more — to guide their studies. This program combines strong academics, technical education and real-world experience, and offers college credit and industry certifications.Technological change has made the job market unrecognizable compared with just a decade ago, and a decade from now, it will be more unrecognizable still. That’s why my main focus as governor is to ensure that our education system equips students with the skills they need to meet current and future needs. To keep up, schools have to evolve and innovate, too.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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      Why Is This Supreme Court Handing Trump More and More Power?

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      Since taking his second oath of office, President Trump has been on a firing spree. In violation of numerous laws or longstanding presidential practice (or both), he has ordered the removal of many high-level officials who normally retain their positions regardless of who is in the Oval Office.Some of these high-level officials have successfully challenged their removal in the lower courts. But on Thursday, in a case involving members of the National Labor Relations and Merit Systems Protection Boards, the Supreme Court quietly blessed some or all of these firings. In doing so, the court effectively allowed the president to neutralize some of the last remaining sites of independent expertise and authority inside the executive branch.The court sought to cast its intervention as temporary, procedural and grounded in considerations of stability, with the unsigned order noting concerns about the “disruptive effect of the repeated removal and reinstatement of officers during the pendency of this litigation.”In truth, the decision was radical. Whatever one thinks about the underlying question of presidential authority, the court should not have disposed of the case this way. It effectively overruled an important and nearly century-old precedent central to the structure of the federal government without full briefing or argument. And it did so in a thinly reasoned, unsigned, two-page order handing the president underspecified but considerable new authority.Over the last four months, the legal world — and the country — has been plunged into chaos, and the Supreme Court bears a heavy dose of responsibility. Many of it decisions involving the presidency — including last year’s on presidential immunity — have enabled the president to declare himself above the law. The court’s latest order both enables the consolidation of additional power in the presidency and risks assimilating a “move fast and break things” ethos into constitutional law.No modern president has ever come close to the large-scale personnel purges that we have seen under Mr. Trump, and for good reason: Many of the officials in question are protected by law from being fired at will by the president. Mr. Trump maintains that laws limiting the president’s ability to fire high-level officials are unconstitutional. In making that argument, he is drawing on a series of recent Supreme Court opinions emphasizing the importance of presidential control over subordinate officials and invalidating removal limitations at agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.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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      Seeing a Tide of Fascism: Flee or Fight?

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      More from our inbox:West Point Book BanCooperation on the Environment To the Editor:Re “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the U.S.” (Opinion video, nytimes.com, May 14):As a British historian and the author of a book on totalitarian Russia and the fall of Communism, I am worried that there have been too few coherent warnings of the isolationism and the threats to American democracy posed by the Trump administration — until I saw this eloquent video.Here in France there is talk of demanding that the Statue of Liberty — that beacon of freedom given to the United States by this country — be returned to Europe. As a child of a diplomatic family living in Communist Bulgaria in the 1960s, I witnessed directly the fear that a totalitarian state can induce in a population.I worry for America, and I desperately hope that it can reverse the tide of fascism threatening the independence of its universities, courts and admirable media. This video clearly lays out the challenges posed to the United States, which we Europeans have for so long respected and admired.Myles SandersonParisThe writer is the author of the book “Secret Service in the Cold War.”To the Editor:What Profs. Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley say is undeniably true: The United States is rapidly descending into fascism.Why, then, are they leaving the country? Why aren’t they staying and resisting along with the millions of people who are marching on the streets and refusing to submit?Why aren’t they staying here in solidarity with those who have been unjustly imprisoned and deported, those who have lost their jobs and those who are at risk of losing health care and basic services? Do they think that appearing in a video from The New York Times is sufficient?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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      Teachers Saved My Life. Why Do We Treat Them So Poorly?

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      I have attended commencements of all kinds throughout my career, and I can tell you that some of the best are in prisons.Over and over, I have spoken at these commencements with incarcerated men and women who acknowledge the awful choices or stupid mistakes they made, the strangers or loved ones they hurt, yet emerge from prison renewed through higher education. While 95 percent of the people incarcerated will come home one day, they often return to the same cycles that led them to prison in the first place. Through college coursework, they are able to reflect on their past, develop a clearer vision for their future and gain the skills to contribute to their families and communities.One student told me that pursuing college while incarcerated was the first time he had moral and academic credibility with his family. The potential for higher education in prison to change lives is the reason that I worked to expand these programs when I was the U.S. secretary of education and president of a national education civil rights organization, and do so now as chancellor of the State University of New York.I believe so deeply in the transformative power of education because teachers saved my life.When I was 8 years old, in October of 1983, my mother died suddenly from a heart attack. It was indescribably devastating. I then lived alone with my father, who was struggling with Alzheimer’s until he died when I was 12. During those years with my father, no one outside our home knew he was sick, and I didn’t know why he acted the way he did.Some nights he would talk to me; some nights he wouldn’t say a word. Other nights he would be sad or angry, or even violent. Home was scary and unstable, but I was blessed to have New York City public schoolteachers who made school a place that was safe, nurturing, academically rigorous and engaging.If not for Allan Osterweil, my teacher in fourth, fifth and sixth grade at P.S. 276 in Canarsie, Brooklyn, I would be in prison or dead. Amid the darkness of my home life, Mr. Osterweil gave me a sense of hope and purpose. In his classroom, we read The New York Times every day. We learned the capital and leader of every country in the world. We did productions of Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll.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