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      White House Correspondents Cancel Comedian Booked for Annual Dinner

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      Here’s another thing getting cut in Washington: comedy.The White House Correspondents’ Association said on Saturday that it canceled a planned performance by Amber Ruffin, the actress and talk-show host, at its annual black-tie dinner on April 26.A monologue by a featured comedian is usually the highlight of the journalists’ soiree. Memorable performances by Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers, among other stars, have turned into touchstones of political satire.But amid rocky relations between President Trump and the White House press corps — and numerous efforts by the administration to undermine the news media — the correspondents’ group decided to go in a different direction.“The W.H.C.A. board has unanimously decided we are no longer featuring a comedic performance this year,” the association’s president, Eugene Daniels, wrote to members on Saturday. “At this consequential moment for journalism, I want to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division but entirely on awarding our colleagues for their outstanding work and providing scholarship and mentorship to the next generation of journalists.”Representatives of Ms. Ruffin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The announcement was a sharp break from the group’s position in early February, when it trumpeted Ms. Ruffin’s comedic style as “the ideal fit for this current political and cultural climate.”“She has the ability to walk the line between blistering commentary and humor all while provoking her audience to think about the important issues of the day,” Mr. Daniels said in a news release. “I’m thrilled and honored she said yes.”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 Order Could Cripple Federal Worker Unions Fighting DOGE Cuts

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      The move added to the list of actions by President Trump that use the powers of his office to weaken perceived enemies.Federal worker unions have sought over the past two months to lead the resistance to President Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency, filing lawsuits, organizing protests and signing up new members by the thousands.This week, Mr. Trump struck back with a potentially crippling blow.In a sweeping executive order denouncing the unions as “hostile” to his agenda, the president cited national security concerns to remove some one million civil servants across more than a dozen agencies from the reach of organized labor, eliminating the unions’ power to represent those workers at the bargaining table or in court.A lawsuit accompanying the executive order, filed by the administration in federal court in Texas, asks a judge to give the president permission to rescind collective bargaining agreements, citing national security interests and saying the agreements had “hamstrung” executive authority.Labor leaders vowed on Friday to challenge the Trump actions in court. But, barring a legal intervention, the moves could kneecap federal unions and protections for many civil service employees just as workers brace for a new round of job cuts across the government.“They are hobbling the union, ripping up collective bargaining agreements, and then they will come for the workers,” said Brian Kelly, a Michigan-based employee of the Environmental Protection Agency who heads a local of the American Federation of Government Employees, the country’s largest federal employee union. “So, it’s a worst-case scenario.”The move added to the list of actions by Mr. Trump to use the levers of the presidency to weaken perceived enemies, in this case seeking to neutralize groups that represent civil servants who make up the “deep state” he is trying to dismantle. In issuing the order, Mr. Trump said he was using congressionally granted powers to designate certain sectors of the federal work force central to “national security missions,” and exempt from collective-bargaining requirements. Employees of some agencies, like the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., are already excluded from collective bargaining for these reasons.Are you a federal worker? We want to hear from you.The Times would like to hear about your experience as a federal worker under the second Trump administration. We may reach out about your submission, but we will not publish any part of your response without contacting you first.

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      Leaders of Harvard’s Middle Eastern Studies Center Will Leave

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      Harvard University has been under pressure by the Trump administration to follow directives related to diversity and combating antisemitism.Two of the leaders of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the director and associate director, will be leaving their positions, according to two professors with direct knowledge of the moves.The department had been under criticism from alumni that it had an anti-Israel bias, and the university more broadly has been under intense pressure from the federal government to address accusations of antisemitism on campus.The director, Cemal Kafadar, a professor of Turkish studies, and the associate director, Rosie Bsheer, a historian of the Middle East, did not respond to messages seeking comment on Friday.The news was first reported by The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper. A spokesman for the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, James Chisholm, declined to comment, saying only that the matter was a personnel matter.David Cutler, the interim dean of Social Science, announced in an email on Wednesday obtained by The New York Times that Dr. Kafadar would be stepping down from his post at the end of the academic year.Dr. Cutler did not respond to a message late Friday.Faculty members who have spoken with both professors say each believe they were forced out of their posts.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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      Justice Sonia Sotomayor Says Judges Must Be ‘Fearlessly Independent’

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      Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the senior member of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing, said on Friday that judges must remain “fearlessly independent” if the rule of law is to survive.Her remarks, made in a packed auditorium at Georgetown University Law Center, were at once cautious and forceful. She did not address particular controversies arising from the Trump administration’s actions testing the conventional understanding of presidential power, many of which appear likely to land at the Supreme Court. But she made plain that her observations about the fragility of the justice system addressed current events.She bemoaned, for instance, “the fact that some of our public leaders are lawyers making statements challenging the rule of law.”She was interviewed by the law school’s dean, William M. Treanor, who interspersed his questions with ones that had been submitted by students. He started the conversation by characterizing those questions, alluding to recent efforts by the Trump administration to punish major law firms and its battles with courts over its blitz of executive orders.“As our students prepare to join the legal profession, they are confronting genuine unsettling questions about the durability of that profession and of the law itself,” he said. “The most commonly asked question was the role of courts in safeguarding the rule of law.”Justice Sotomayor answered in general terms, citing reference works and experts. She said she had consulted with Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella, a former member of the Supreme Court of Canada, about judges’ obligations, quoting her response: “They need to remain fearlessly independent, protective of rights and ensure that the state is respectful of both.”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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      Appeals Court Allows Trump to Fire Heads of 2 Independent Boards

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      A federal appeals court sided on Friday with President Trump’s drive to bring agencies with some independence more directly under his control, ruling that the president was within his rights to fire the heads of two administrative boards that review employment actions and labor disputes.The decision cripples one of the bodies that might stand in Mr. Trump’s way as he slashes and reshapes the government, an agency known as the Merit Systems Protection Board that reviews federal employment disputes, just as it is deluged with cases from the firings of thousands of federal workers.It also effectively paralyzes the other body, the National Labor Relations Board, in another blow to unions the day after Mr. Trump moved to end collective bargaining agreements for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.More broadly, the decision was an endorsement of Mr. Trump’s expansive view of executive powers in a case that many legal observers believe is headed for the Supreme Court. A final ruling there could put agencies across the government that Congress intended to be separate from the White House under the president’s control.By a 2-to-1 vote, the ruling on Friday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed two district court decisions that had reinstated Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne A. Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board while their cases play out. Mr. Trump fired Ms. Wilcox in January and Ms. Harris in February. Both women argued that they had been improperly terminated.“The government contends that the president suffers irreversible harm each day the district courts’ injunctions remain in effect because he is deprived of the constitutional authority vested in him alone. I agree,” Judge Justin Walker wrote in the opinion. Judge Walker was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2020. Judge Karen L. Henderson, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, also sided with the government.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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      States Will Be Able to Bar Federal Food Benefit Recipients From Buying Soft Drinks, Kennedy Says

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      Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Friday that the Trump administration will begin allowing states to bar recipients of federal food assistance from using the money to pay for soft drinks — a core component of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.Mr. Kennedy announced the change to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, in Martinsburg, W.Va., where he appeared with Gov. Patrick Morrissey, who recently signed legislation banning foods containing most artificial food dyes and two preservatives — the first state to do so.The health secretary is talking to 15 other governors about similar moves, according to Calley Means, a health food entrepreneur who recently joined the White House to help carry out Mr. Kennedy’s agenda. Mr. Kennedy told the audience in West Virginia that the food companies had used science to make their products addictive, just as tobacco firms had.“Food is medicine,” Mr. Kennedy told a group of teachers, children and parents in the gymnasium of a local school. He added: “It treats our health. It treats our mental health.”Mr. Kennedy’s appearance, with a Republican governor, speaks to a pronounced cultural change in the politics of food and health, as Republicans join the health secretary’s “make America healthy again” movement. But in a decidedly Republican twist, Mr. Morrissey also announced new “work, training and educational requirements” for SNAP participants.The governor also announced a new statewide exercise initiative, and said he intended to “start shedding a few pounds” himself.Mr. Morrisey announced he would seek the required waiver to bar soft drink purchases using SNAP, along with other initiatives intended to promote exercise and to encourage West Virginians to become healthier. The state has one of the highest obesity rates in the nation. He introduced Mr. Kennedy as one of “the most talked about, vilified men in America” and “a warrior for children.”Mr. Kennedy does not have authority over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which falls under the Agriculture Department. But Mr. Means said that the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, has agreed to grant the waivers. More

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      Security Breaches Can Be Fixed. People Without Honor Can’t Be Trusted.

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      So now it’s clear: The Trump administration has not kept sensitive details of national security secure. Thanks to reporting by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, we have learned that officials at the highest levels, including Vice President JD Vance, discussed military operations via chat on the cellphone app Signal, a medium vulnerable to hostile intelligence services. And they accidentally included Mr. Goldberg in the chat. Which is funny, but also, from an operational security standpoint, not great.As the Trump administration has responded with a mixture of denials, brush-offs, lies and vitriolic attacks on Mr. Goldberg, I’ve found myself worrying less about the leak and more about the character of the people in charge of our nation’s defense. The breach is serious, but security breaches can be plugged. Men and women who have shown themselves to have no character, though, can never be trusted. Not with national security, not with anything.Perhaps it seems old-fashioned to talk of character. We’re cynical modern Americans, after all. When idealism feels exhausted and the old order seems insufficient to meet the challenges of the modern world, candid appeals to raw interest, however amoral, can feel like a breath of fresh air. That’s part of Donald Trump’s appeal.But there remains constant talk of character in the miliary — of integrity and accountability. This is not just for moral reasons but also for practical ones: You cannot ask men and women to go to war in a group bound by nothing stronger than self-interest. How could they trust their comrades and their leaders when their lives are on the line?This is why a military career starts not with training in lethality but with character formation. When I joined the Marine Corps two decades ago, I entered a decidedly archaic, premodern society for which virtue was of paramount importance. At Quantico, Va. — where Mr. Vance traveled on Wednesday to speak with Marines in training — they shaved my head and put me in a uniform, because my individuality was less important than our shared purpose. Before they taught me how to fire a rifle, they taught me about honor, courage and commitment. We weren’t supposed to be hired guns; we were supposed to be the first to fight for right and freedom.There’s a reason essentially every warrior society throughout history has had a code like this — and it’s not that every society has been enlightened. Soldiers don’t need to be saints. But to be good soldiers, to complete their missions and protect their comrades, they do need a bedrock of integrity.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 Deportation Fight Reaches Supreme Court

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      The Trump administration asked the justices to allow it to use a wartime law to continue deportations of Venezuelans with little or no due process.The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow it to use a rarely invoked wartime law to continue to deport Venezuelans with little to no due process.The emergency application arrived at the court after a federal appeals court kept in place a temporary block on the deportations. In its application to the Supreme Court, lawyers for the administration argued that the matter was too urgent to wait for the case to wind its way through the lower courts.In the government’s application, acting Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris said the case presented “fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country.”“The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the president,” Ms. Harris wrote. “The Republic cannot afford a different choice.”The case will offer a major early test for how the nation’s highest court will confront President Trump’s aggressive efforts to deport of millions of migrants and his hostile posture toward the courts. Mr. Trump has called for impeaching a lower-court judge who paused his deportations.The case hinges on the legality of an executive order signed by Mr. Trump that invokes the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The order uses the law to target people believed to be Venezuelan gang members in the United States.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