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      A Second Child Dies of Measles in Texas

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      It is the second confirmed measles death in the U.S. in a decade. If the outbreak continues at the current pace, the nation may lose its “elimination” status.The measles crisis in West Texas has claimed the life of another child, the second death in an outbreak that has burned through the region and infected dozens of residents in bordering states.The 8-year-old girl died early Thursday morning of “measles pulmonary failure” at a hospital in Lubbock, Texas, according to records obtained by The New York Times. It is the second confirmed measles death in a decade in the United States.The first was an unvaccinated child who died in West Texas in February. Another unvaccinated person died in New Mexico after testing positive for measles, though officials have not yet confirmed that measles was the cause of death.A Trump administration official said on Saturday night that the girl’s cause of death is “still being looked at.” Since late January, when the outbreak began, West Texas has reported 480 cases of measles and 56 hospitalizations. The outbreak has also spread to bordering states, sickening 54 people in New Mexico and 10 in Oklahoma.If the virus continues to spread at this pace, the country risks losing its measles elimination status, a hard-fought victory earned in 2000. Public health officials in West Texas have predicted the outbreak will continue for a year.Robert F. Kennedy, the nation’s health secretary, has faced intense criticism for his handling of the outbreak. A prominent vaccine skeptic, he has offered muted support for vaccination and has emphasized untested treatments for measles, like cod liver oil.According to doctors in Texas, Mr. Kennedy’s endorsement of alternative treatments has contributed to patients delaying critical care and ingesting toxic levels of vitamin A.Experts also fear that the Trump administration’s recent decisions to dismantle international public health safeguards and pull funding from local health departments have made large, multistate outbreaks more likely.Measles is one of the most contagious pathogens. The virus can linger in the air for up to two hours after an infected person has left the room and spreads when a sick person breathes, coughs or sneezes.Within a week or two of being exposed, those who are infected may develop a high fever, cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes. Within a few days, a telltale rash breaks out as flat, red spots on the face and then spreads down the neck and torso to the rest of the body.In most cases, these symptoms resolve in a few weeks. But in rare cases, the virus causes pneumonia, making it difficult for patients, but especially children, to get oxygen into their lungs.It may also cause brain swelling, which can leave lasting problems, like blindness, deafness and intellectual disabilities.For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus also harms the body’s immune defenses, leaving it vulnerable to other pathogens.Christina Jewett More

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      Justice Dept. Accuses Top Immigration Lawyer of Failing to Follow Orders

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      A senior Justice Department immigration lawyer was put on indefinite leave Saturday after questioning the Trump administration’s decision to deport a Maryland man to El Salvador — one day after representing the government in court.Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche suspended Erez Reuveni, the acting deputy director of the department’s immigration litigation division, for failing to “follow a directive from your superiors,” according to a letter sent to Mr. Reuveni and obtained by The New York Times.Mr. Reuveni — who was praised as a “top-notched” prosecutor by his superiors in an email announcing his promotion two weeks ago — is the latest career official to be suspended, demoted, transferred or fired for refusing to comply with a directive from President Trump’s appointees to take actions they deem improper or unethical.“At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a statement sent to The Times on Saturday. “Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences.”Under questioning by a federal judge on Friday, Mr. Reuveni conceded that the deportation last month of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who had a court order allowing him to stay in the United States, should never have taken place. Mr. Reuveni also said he had been frustrated when the case landed on his desk.Mr. Reuveni, a respected 15-year veteran of the immigration division, asked the judge for 24 hours to persuade his “client,” the Trump administration, to begin the process of retrieving and repatriating Mr. Abrego Garcia.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 Family’s Cash Registers Ring as Financial Meltdown Plays Out

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      The party was on at a Saudi-backed LIV Golf tournament at the president’s Doral resort in Florida and a fund-raiser at Mar-a-Lago, even as markets tumbled.The financial market meltdown was underway when President Trump boarded Air Force One on his way to Florida on Thursday for a doubleheader of sorts: a Saudi-backed golf tournament at his family’s Miami resort and a weekend of fund-raisers attracting hundreds of donors to his Palm Beach club.It was a fresh reminder that in his second term, Mr. Trump has continued to find ways to drive business to his family-owned real-estate ventures, a practice he has sustained even when his work in Washington has caused worldwide financial turmoil.The Trump family monetization weekend started Thursday night, as crowds began to form at both the Trump National Doral resort near Miami International Airport, and separately at his Mar-a-Lago resort 70 miles up the coast.Mr. Trump landed on the edge of one of the golf courses in a military helicopter — just in time for a dinner at Doral. The next day, LIV Golf, the breakaway professional league backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, was scheduled to hold a tournament at the course for the fourth time.On Thursday at Mar-a-Lago, hundreds of guests gathered for the American Patriots Gala, a conservative fund-raiser that featured Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and President Javier Milei of Argentina, who told his supporters back home that he was hoping to catch up with Mr. Trump while there, seemingly unaware that Mr. Trump was double-booked at two of his family properties that night.And that was just the weekend’s lead-up.Mr. Trump ordered a new set of global tariffs on Wednesday from the White House using his trademark Sharpie pen, a version of which is on sale at Mar-a-Lago for $3.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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      Former Aides to Ken Paxton Win $6.6 Million in Whistle-Blower Case

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      A judge found that four whistle-blowers who accused Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, of corruption and reported him to the F.B.I. were unjustly fired.A judge awarded a total of $6.6 million to four former high-level aides to Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, who claimed that they were unduly fired after reporting him to federal investigators and accusing him of corruption in 2020.The plaintiffs — Blake Brickman, Mark Penley, David Maxwell and Ryan Vassar — proved that the attorney general’s office violated the state’s whistle-blower act, Judge Catherine Mauzy of a district court in Travis County ruled on Friday.Each plaintiff was awarded between $1 million and more than $2 million for lost wages, emotional pain, legal fees and other costs associated with the trial.“The Court finds that Plaintiffs have proved liability, damages, and reasonable and necessary attorney’s fees by a preponderance of the evidence,” Judge Mauzy wrote in her ruling.Judge Mauzy also noted that Mr. Paxton never disputed any issue or fact in the case, opting not to contest his office’s liability. Mr. Paxton did not testify.Tom Nesbitt, a lawyer for Mr. Brickman, celebrated the decision.“Yesterday’s judgment is the natural and intended consequence of Ken Paxton’s choice to surrender rather than fight the whistle-blowers’ claims in court,” he said in a statement on Saturday.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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      Prosectors on George Santos Case Seek 7-Year Sentence

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      The disgraced former congressman is set to be sentenced on April 25. His lawyers asked for a penalty of two years, the minimum allowed.Federal prosecutors on Friday asked for a prison sentence of more than seven years for George Santos, the former Republican congressman from New York whose career unraveled after he told a series of lies, and who later pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft.Prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York asked in a court filing for a sentence of 87 months to reflect the “seriousness of his unparalleled crimes.”Mr. Santos, 36, is set to be sentenced on April 25, bringing to an end a criminal case that began in 2023. Prosecutors charged him with 23 felony counts while he was still a representative in Congress.A provocateur who insisted on his innocence even as his serial falsehoods came to light, Mr. Santos pleaded guilty last August to two of the counts and admitted to an array of other frauds. Guidelines call for a sentence of roughly six to seven years in prison, though a judge will make the final decision later this month.In his drive to seek higher office, the prosecutors’ filing said, Mr. Santos fabricated his past and engaged in deceitful schemes, including inflating his fund-raising numbers and stealing from donors. “He lied to his campaign staff, his supporters, his putative employer and congressional colleagues, and the American public,” the prosecutors wrote.“Santos’s conduct has made a mockery of our election system,” they added.Lawyers for Mr. Santos, Robert M. Fantone and Joseph W. Murray, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday morning. In a separate filing on Friday, they asked for a sentence of two years, the minimum allowed for the crimes involved, followed by probation. Mr. Santos had acknowledged the gravity of his crimes, the filing said, and agreed to pay nearly $374,000 in restitution.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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      A Tariffs Cheat Sheet

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      An escalating global trade war has tanked markets and plunged corporate America into chaos. DealBook asked economists, investors and other experts to help make sense of what’s next.It was much worse than expected. President Trump’s attempt to reverse the rules of global trade through sweeping tariffs against dozens of nations, including major partners like the European Union, Japan and China, has caused a meltdown in global markets and sent corporate boardrooms scrambling.Today, 10 percent tariffs go into effect on all of America’s trading partners except Canada and Mexico. Additional, “reciprocal” tariffs will go into effect on dozens of other nations on Wednesday. China faces the toughest levies — at least 54 percent — and it hit back with its own toll on U.S. goods yesterday. Expect a response from the E.U. next week.Trump has argued that the economic pain caused by the tariffs will be short term and ultimately justified by a boom in the U.S. economy, but news of the measures hit investors hard. The benchmark S&P 500 closed yesterday near bear market territory, with analysts warning of an increased risk of recession.Jerome Powell, the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, offered a somewhat glum outlook yesterday on the prospects for growth and warned of higher prices that he acknowledged could be more than temporary.There’s a lot going on. DealBook asked economists, investment researchers and other experts to help make sense of what’s next.How have the new tariffs changed the risk of a recession?We asked: Jason Furman, a professor of economics at Harvard and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama.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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      The Theories Behind the Trump Shock

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      There are two related theories of what Donald Trump’s dramatic revision of the global trade system is intended to accomplish.First, the goal is to revitalize American manufacturing, our capacity to build at home and export to the world. The global free trade system that took shape in the late 20th century served the American empire and American G.D.P. but at the expense of America’s earlier role as a manufacturing powerhouse — and because manufacturing jobs were such an important source of blue-collar male employment, at the expense of the working-class social fabric.Meanwhile, over time, our manufacturing base didn’t just move overseas, it moved into the territory of our greatest rival, the People’s Republic of China. So rebuilding industry in America has two potential benefits even if it sacrifices some of the efficiencies offered by global trade. Factory jobs fill a particular socioeconomic niche that’s been filled instead by drugs, decline, despair. And having a real manufacturing base is essential if we’re going to be locked into great power competition for decades to come.Under this theory, though, it would seem like tariffs would be most effectively deployed against China, countries in China’s immediate economic orbit, and developing countries that are natural zones for outsourcing. But the Trump administration has deployed them generally, against peer economies and allies. The policy seems much more sweeping than the goal, the potential damage to both growth and basic international comity too large to justify the upside.Which is where the second argument comes in — that this policy is about fiscal deficits, not just trade deficits and manufacturing. The same global system that made America a net importer also enabled us to borrow immense sums, but we are reaching the point where that borrowing cannot be sustained, where interest rates on the debt will crush our policymaking capacities even if there isn’t an overall flight from the dollar.Here tariffs serve several purposes. Most straightforwardly they generate revenue without striking the kind of grand bargain on Medicare and taxes that the two parties are just too polarized to make. (The only way a Republican president can preside over tax increases is to implement them unilaterally while insisting that they will fall mostly on foreigners.)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