MILWAUKEE — Quentin Grimes scored 22 points to lead a productive performance from Philadelphia’s bench as the 76ers beat the Milwaukee Bucks 116-101 on Friday night.
Paul George added 20 points and Jabari Walker had a season-high 18 off the bench as the 76ers won for a second straight night after beating the Golden State Warriors 99-98 on Thursday.
Philadelphia’s reserves scored 61 points to make up for the fact Milwaukee limited Tyrese Maxey to a season-low 12 points.
Neither team had its former league MVP on the floor.
Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo was out after straining his right calf in the first few minutes of a 113-109 victory over Detroit on Wednesday. With the 76ers playing for a second straight night, Philadelphia rested Joel Embiid.
Bucks coach Doc Rivers said before Friday’s game that he anticipates Antetokounmpo will miss about four weeks.
Milwaukee’s AJ Green left with a bruised shoulder in the second quarter.
Bobby Portis scored 22 points, Kevin Porter Jr. 20 and Myles Turner 19 for the Bucks.
It was tied until the 76ers began a 15-2 run that started about seven minutes into the game and put Philadelphia ahead 28-15. Jared McCain sank a pair of 3-pointers during that spurt.
Philadelphia stayed ahead the rest of the way and led by as many as 26 in the second quarter.
Milwaukee got the margin down to single digits for the first time since the first quarter when Portis hit a corner 3-pointer to cut Philadelphia’s lead to 103-94 with 4:16 left.
After Ryan Rollins got a steal on Philadelphia’s ensuing possession, the ball went back to Portis, who drove to the basket but couldn’t finish. Maxey made a basket with 3:45 remaining, and the 76ers maintained a double-figure edge the rest of the way.
Up next
76ers: Host the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday night.
KERRVILLE, Texas — In an instant, frantic voices overwhelmed the two county emergency dispatchers on duty in the Texas Hill Country as catastrophic flooding inundated cabins and youth camps along the Guadalupe River.
A firefighter clinging to a tree who watched his wife be swept away. A family breaking through their roof, hoping for rescue. A woman calling from an all-girls camp, waters swirling around and unsure how to escape.
Their panic-stricken pleas were among more than 400 calls for help across Kerr County last summer when unimaginable floods hit during the overnight hours on the July Fourth holiday, according to recordings of the calls released Friday.
“There’s water filling up super fast, we can’t get out of our cabin,” a camp counselor told a dispatcher above the screams of campers in the background. “We can’t get out of our cabin, so how do we get to the boats?”
Amazingly, everyone in the cabin and the rest of campers at Camp La Junta were rescued.
The flooding killed at least 136 people statewide during the holiday weekend, including 117 in Kerr County alone. Most were from Texas, but others came from Alabama, California and Florida, according to a list released by county officials.
One woman called for help as the water closed in on her house near Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp for girls, where 25 campers and two teenage counselors died.
“We’re OK, but we live a mile down the road from Camp Mystic and we had two little girls come down the river. And we’ve gotten to them, but I’m not sure how many others are out there,” she said in a shaky voice.
A spokesperson for the parents of the children and counselors who died at Camp Mystic declined to comment on the release of the recordings.
Calls came from people on rooftops and in trees
Many residents in the hard-hit Texas Hill Country have said they were caught off guard and didn’t receive any warning when the floods overtopped the Guadalupe River. Kerr County leaders have faced scrutiny about whether they did enough right away. Two officials told Texas legislators this summer that they were asleep during the initial hours of the flooding, and a third was out of town.
Using recordings of first responder communications, weather service warnings, survivor videos and official testimony, the Associated Press assembled a chronology of the chaotic rescue effort. The AP was one of the media outlets that filed public information requests for recordings of the 911 calls to be released.
Many people were rescued by boats and emergency vehicles. A few desperate pleas came from people floating away in RVs. Some survivors were found in trees and on rooftops.
But some of the calls released Friday came from people who did not survive, said Kerrville Police Chief Chris McCall, who warned that the audio is unsettling.
“The tree I’m in is starting to lean and it’s going to fall. Is there a helicopter close?” Bradley Perry, a firefighter, calmy told a dispatcher, adding that he saw his wife, Tina, and their RV wash away.
“I’ve probably got maybe five minutes left,” he said.
Bradley Perry did not survive. His wife was later found clinging to a tree, still alive.
Moving higher and higher to survive
In another heartbreaking call, a woman staying in a community of riverside cabins told a dispatcher the water was inundating their building
“We are flooding, and we have people in cabins we can’t get to,” she said. ”We are flooding almost all the way to the top.”
The caller speaks slowly and deliberately. The faint voices of what sounds like children can be heard in the background.
Some people called back multiple times, climbing higher and higher in houses to let rescuers know where they were and that their situations were getting more dire. Families called from second floors, then attics, then roofs sometimes in the course of 30 or 40 minutes, revealing how fast and how high the waters rose.
The 911 recordings show that relatives and friends outside of the unfolding disaster and those who had made it to safety had called to get help for loved ones trapped in the flooding.
One woman said a friend, an elderly man, was trapped in his home with water up to his head. She had realized his phone cut out as she was trying to relay instructions from a 911 operator.
Dispatchers gave advice and comfort
Overwhelmed by the endless calls, dispatchers tried to comfort the panic-stricken callers yet were forced to move on to the next one. They advised many of those who were trapped to get to their rooftops or run to higher ground. In some calls, children could be heard screaming in the background.
“There is water everywhere, we cannot move. We are upstairs in a room and the water is rising,” said a woman who called from Camp Mystic.
The same woman called back later.
“How do we get to the roof if the water is so high?“ she asked. “Can you already send someone here? With the boats?”
She asked the dispatcher when help would arrive.
“I don’t know,” the dispatcher said. “I don’t know.”
LOS ANGELES — Frank Gehry, who designed some of the most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect, has died. He was 96.
Mr. Gehry died Friday in his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners LLP.
Mr. Gehry’s fascination with modern pop art led to the creation of distinctive, striking buildings. Among his many masterpieces are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; and Berlin’s DZ Bank Building.
He also oversaw a $233 million renovation of the Philadelphia Museum of Art that stuck with tradition. “Instead of wreaking havoc, the 92-year-old architectural radical has played against type and given museum officials precisely what they wanted: clarity, light, and space,” Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron wrote when the new galleries and public spaces opened in 2021.
He also designed an expansion of Facebook’s Northern California headquarters at the insistence of the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
Mr. Gehry was awarded every major prize architecture has to offer, including the field’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize, for what has been described as “refreshingly original and totally American” work.
Other honors include the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, the Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award, and his native country’s highest honor, the Companion of the Order of Canada.
To improve the flow and sight lines into the Philadelphia Museum of Art, architect Frank Gehry took down the wall where Chagall’s theater backdrop hung and streamlined the space.
The start of his career in architecture
After earning a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954 and serving in the Army, Mr. Gehry studied urban planning at Harvard University.
But his career got off to a slow start. He struggled for years to make ends meet, designing public housing projects, shopping centers, and even driving a delivery truck for a time.
Eventually, he got the chance to design a modern shopping mall overlooking the Santa Monica Pier. He was determined to play it safe and came up with drawings for an enclosed shopping mall that looked similar to others in the United States in the 1980s.
To celebrate its completion, the mall’s developer dropped by Mr. Gehry’s house and was stunned by what he saw: The architect had transformed a modest 1920s-era bungalow into an inventive abode by remodeling it with chain-link fencing, exposed wood, and corrugated metal.
Asked why he hadn’t proposed something similar for the mall, Mr. Gehry replied, “Because I have to make a living.”
If he really wanted to make a statement as an architect, he was told, he should drop that attitude and follow his creative vision.
Mr. Gehry would do just that for the rest of his life, working into his 90s to create buildings that doubled as stunning works of art.
As his acclaim grew, Gehry Partners LLP, the architectural firm he founded in 1962, grew with it, expanding to include more than 130 employees at one point. But as big as it got, Mr. Gehry insisted on personally overseeing every project it took on.
The headquarters of the InterActiveCorp, known as the IAC Building, took the shape of a shimmering beehive when it was completed in New York City’s Chelsea district in 2007. The 76-story New York By Gehry building, once one of the world’s tallest residential structures, was a stunning addition to the lower Manhattan skyline when it opened in 2011.
That same year, Mr. Gehry joined the faculty of his alma mater, the University of Southern California, as a professor of architecture. He also taught at Yale and Columbia University.
The Walt Disney Concert Hall is the fourth hall of the Los Angeles Music Center and was designed by Frank Gehry. Here, it’s photographed from the Los Angeles City Hall Observation Deck on Feb. 14, 2018, in Los Angeles.
Imaginative designs drew criticism along with praise
Not everyone was a fan of Mr. Gehry’s work. Some naysayers dismissed it as not much more than gigantic, lopsided reincarnations of the little scrap-wood cities he said he spent hours building when he was growing up in the mining town of Timmins, Ontario.
Princeton art critic Hal Foster dismissed many of his later efforts as “oppressive,” arguing they were designed primarily to be tourist attractions. Some denounced the Disney Hall as looking like a collection of cardboard boxes that had been left out in the rain.
Still other critics included Dwight D. Eisenhower’s family, who objected to Mr. Gehry’s bold proposal for a memorial to honor the nation’s 34th president. Although the family said it wanted a simple memorial and not the one Mr. Gehry had proposed, with its multiple statues and billowing metal tapestries depicting Eisenhower’s life, the architect declined to change his design significantly.
If the words of his critics annoyed Mr. Gehry, he rarely let on. Indeed, he even sometimes played along. He appeared as himself in a 2005 episode of The Simpsons cartoon show, in which he agreed to design a concert hall that was later converted into a prison.
He came up with the idea for the design, which looked a lot like the Disney Hall, after crumpling Marge Simpson’s letter to him and throwing it on the ground. After taking a look at it, he declared, “Frank Gehry, you’ve done it again!”
“Some people think I actually do that,” he would later tell the AP.
Gehry’s lasting legacy around the world
Ephraim Owen Goldberg was born in Toronto on Feb. 28, 1929, and moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1947, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen. As an adult, he changed his name at the suggestion of his first wife, who told him antisemitism might be holding back his career.
Although he had enjoyed drawing and building model cities as a child, Mr. Gehry said it wasn’t until he was 20 that he pondered the possibility of pursuing a career in architecture, after a college ceramics teacher recognized his talent.
“It was like the first thing in my life that I’d done well in,” he said.
Mr. Gehry steadfastly denied being an artist though.
“Yes, architects in the past have been both sculptors and architects,” he declared in a 2006 interview with the Associated Press. “But I still think I’m doing buildings, and it’s different from what they do.”
His words reflected both a lifelong shyness and an insecurity that stayed with Mr. Gehry long after he’d been declared the greatest architect of his time.
“I’m totally flabbergasted that I got to where I’ve gotten,” he told the AP in 2001. “Now it seems inevitable, but at the time it seemed very problematic.”
The Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi, first proposed in 2006, is expected to finally be completed in 2026 after a series of construction delays and sporadic work. The 30,000-square-foot structure will be the world’s largest Guggenheim, leaving a lasting legacy in the capital city of the United Arab Emirates.
His survivors include his wife, Berta; daughter, Brina; sons Alejandro and Samuel; and the buildings he created.
Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to take up the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s order on birthright citizenship declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.
The justices will hear Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling that struck down the citizenship restrictions. They have not taken effect anywhere in the country.
The case will be argued in the spring. A definitive ruling is expected by early summer.
The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed Jan. 20, the first day of his second term, is part of his Republican administration’s broad immigration crackdown. Other actions include immigration enforcement surges in several cities and the first peacetime invocation of the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act.
The administration is facing multiple court challenges, and the high court has sent mixed signals in emergency orders it has issued. The justices effectively stopped the use of the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without court hearings. But the Supreme Court allowed the resumption of sweeping immigration stops in the Los Angeles area after a lower court blocked the practice of stopping people solely based on their race, language, job or location.
The justices also are weighing the administration’s emergency appeal to be allowed to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area for immigration enforcement actions. A lower court has indefinitely prevented the deployment.
Birthright citizenship is the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the court for a final ruling. His order would upend more than 125 years of understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.
In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or likely so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.
The Supreme Court, however, did not rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class action lawsuits and those brought by states. The justices did not decide at that time whether the underlying citizenship order was constitutional.
Every lower court that has looked at the issue has concluded that Trump’s order violates or likely violates the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that Black people, including the formerly enslaved, had citizenship. Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally, under longstanding rules.
The case under review comes from New Hampshire. A federal judge in July blocked the citizenship order in a class-action lawsuit including all children who would be affected. The American Civil Liberties Union is leading the legal team representing the children and their parents who challenged Trump’s order.
“No president can change the 14th Amendment’s fundamental promise of citizenship,” Cecillia Wang, the ACLU’s national legal director, said in a statement, adding, “We look forward to putting this issue to rest once and for all in the Supreme Court this term.”
The administration had also asked the justices to review a ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. That court, also in July, ruled that a group of Democratic-led states that sued over Trump’s order needed a nationwide injunction to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship being in effect in some states and not others. The justices took no action in the 9th Circuit case.
The administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.
“The Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause was adopted to grant citizenship to newly freed slaves and their children — not … to the children of aliens illegally or temporarily in the United States,” top administration top Supreme Court lawyer, D. John Sauer, wrote in urging the high court’s review.
Twenty-four Republican-led states and 27 Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, are backing the administration.
ORLANDO, Fla. — A federal judge on Friday gave the Justice Department permission to release transcripts of a grand jury investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of underage girls in Florida — a case that ultimately ended without any federal charges being filed against the millionaire sex offender.
U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith said a recently passed federal law ordering the release of records related to Epstein overrode the usual rules about grand jury secrecy.
The law signed in November by President Donald Trump compels the Justice Department, FBI, and federal prosecutors to release later this month the vast troves of material they have amassed during investigations into Epstein that date back at least two decades.
Friday’s court ruling dealt with the earliest known federal inquiry.
In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Fla., where Epstein had a mansion, began interviewing teenage girls who told of being hired to give the financier sexualized massages. The FBI later joined the investigation.
Federal prosecutors in Florida prepared an indictment in 2007, but Epstein’s lawyers attacked the credibility of his accusers publicly while secretly negotiating a plea bargain that would let him avoid serious jail time.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to relatively minor state charges of soliciting prostitution from someone under age 18. He served most of his 18-month sentence in a work release program that let him spend his days in his office.
The U.S. attorney in Miami at the time, Alex Acosta, agreed not to prosecute Epstein on federal charges — a decision that outraged Epstein’s accusers. After the Miami Herald reexamined the unusual plea bargain in a series of stories in 2018, public outrage over Epstein’s light sentence led to Acosta’s resignation as Trump’s labor secretary.
A Justice Department report in 2020 found that Acosta exercised “poor judgment” in handling the investigation, but it also said he did not engage in professional misconduct.
A different federal prosecutor, in New York, brought a sex trafficking indictment against Epstein in 2019, mirroring some of the same allegations involving underage girls that had been the subject of the aborted investigation. Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial. His longtime confidant and ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was then tried on similar charges, convicted and sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison.
Transcripts of the grand jury proceedings from the aborted federal case in Florida could shed more light on federal prosecutors’ decision not to go forward with it. Records related to state grand jury proceedings have already been made public.
When the documents will be released is unknown. The Justice Department asked the court to unseal them so they could be released with other records required to be disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The Justice Department hasn’t set a timetable for when it plans to start releasing information, but the law set a deadline of Dec. 19.
The law also allows the Justice Department to withhold files that it says could jeopardize an active federal investigation. Files can also be withheld if they’re found to be classified or if they pertain to national defense or foreign policy.
One of the federal prosecutors on the Florida case did not answer a phone call Friday and the other declined to answer questions.
A judge had previously declined to release the grand jury records, citing the usual rules about grand jury secrecy, but Smith said the new federal law allowed public disclosure.
The Justice Department has separate requests pending for the release of grand jury records related to the sex trafficking cases against Epstein and Maxwell in New York. The judges in those matters have said they plan to rule expeditiously.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s advisers and Ukrainian officials say they’ll meet for a third day of talks on Saturday after making progress on finding agreement on a security framework for postwar Ukraine.
The two sides also offered the sober assessment that any “real progress toward any agreement” ultimately will depend “on Russia’s readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace.”
The statement from U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as well as Ukrainian negotiators Rustem Umerov and Andriy Hnatov came after they met for a second day in Florida on Friday. They offered only broad brushstrokes about the progress they say has been made as Trump pushes Kyiv and Moscow to agree to a U.S.-mediated proposal to end nearly four years of war.
“Both parties agreed that real progress toward any agreement depends on Russia’s readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace, including steps toward de-escalation and cessation of killings,” the statement said. “Parties also separately reviewed the future prosperity agenda which aims to support Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction, joint U.S.–Ukraine economic initiatives, and long-term recovery projects.”
The U.S. and Ukrainian officials also discussed “deterrence capabilities” that Ukraine will need “to sustain a lasting peace.”
Friday’s session took place at the Shell Bay Club in Hallandale Beach, a high-end private golf and lifestyle destination owned by Witkoff’s real estate development company.
Previous diplomatic attempts to break the deadlock have come to nothing and the war has continued unabated. Officials largely have kept a lid on how the latest talks are going, though Trump’s initial 28-point plan was leaked.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country’s delegation in Florida wanted to hear from the U.S. side about the talks at the Kremlin.
Zelensky, as well as European leaders backing him, have repeatedly accused Putin of stalling in peace talks while the Russian army tries to press forward with its invasion. Zelensky said in a video address late Thursday that officials wanted to know “what other pretexts Putin has come up with to drag out the war and to pressure Ukraine.”
Speaking to Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Friday, Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov praised Kushner as potentially playing an important role in ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ushakov also took part in Tuesday’s talks at the Kremlin.
“If any plan leading to a settlement is put on paper, it will be the pen of Mr. Kushner that will lead the way,” Ushakov said.
The flattering comments about Kushner by the senior Russian official come as Putin has sought to sow division between Trump and Ukraine and Europe at a moment when Trump’s impatience with the conflict is mounting. Putin said his five-hour talks this week with Witkoff and Kushner were “necessary” and “useful,” but some proposals were unacceptable.
Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, was a senior adviser to Trump during his first term and was the president’s point person on developing the Abraham Accords, which formalized commercial and diplomatic ties between Israel and a trio of Arab nations.
Kushner has played a more informal role in Trump’s second go-around, but he helped Witkoff close out ceasefire and hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas this fall. Trump tapped Kushner again to pair up with Witkoff to try to find an endgame to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The European take on the peace talks
Ushakov, who accompanied Putin on a visit to India on Friday, repeated the Russian president’s recent criticism of Europe’s stance on the peace talks. Kyiv’s European allies are concerned about possible Russian aggression beyond Ukraine and want a prospective peace deal to include strong security guarantees.
Kyiv’s allies in Europe are “constantly putting forward demands that are unacceptable to Moscow,” Ushakov told Russia’s state-owned Zvezda TV. “Putting it mildly, the Europeans don’t help Washington and Moscow reach a settlement on the Ukrainian issues.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday that he made progress during a visit to Beijing on getting Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s support for peace efforts.
“We exchanged deeply and truthfully on all points, and I saw a willingness from the [Chinese] president to contribute to stability and peace,” Macron said.
The French president said he stressed that Ukraine needs guarantees that Russia won’t attack it again if a settlement is reached and that Europe must have a voice in negotiations.
“The unity between Americans and Europeans on the Ukrainian issue is essential. And I say it, repeat it, emphasize it. We need to work together,” Macron said.
The latest drone attacks
Russian drones struck a house in central Ukraine, killing a 12-year-old boy, officials said, while long-range Ukrainian strikes reportedly targeted a Russian port and an oil refinery.
The Russian attack on Thursday night in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region destroyed the house where the boy was killed and also two women were injured, according to the head of the regional military administration, Vladyslav Haivanenko.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia fired 137 drones of various types during the night.
Ukrainian drones attacked a port and an oil refinery inside Russia overnight as part of Kyiv’s campaign to disrupt Russian logistics, Ukraine’s general staff said.
The drones struck Temriuk sea port in Russia’s Krasnodar region and the Syzran oil refinery in the Samara region, starting blazes, a statement said. Syzran is about 500 miles east of the border with Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry said only that its air defenses intercepted 85 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions and Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
The expansion would build on a travel ban already announced in June by the Republican administration, which barred travel to the U.S. for citizens from 12 countries and restricted access to the U.S. for people from seven others. In a social media post earlier this week, Noem had suggested more countries would be included.
Noem, who spoke late Thursday in an interview with Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham, would not provide further details, saying President Donald Trump was considering which countries would be included.
In the wake of the National Guard shooting, the administration already ratcheted up restrictions on the 19 countries included in the initial travel ban, which include Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran and Haiti, among others.
Ingraham asked Noem whether the travel ban was expanding to 32 countries and asked which countries would be added to the 19 announced earlier this year.
“I won’t be specific on the number, but it’s over 30. And the president is continuing to evaluate countries,” Noem said.
“If they don’t have a stable government there, if they don’t have a country that can sustain itself and tell us who those individuals are and help us vet them, why should we allow people from that country to come here to the United States?” Noem said.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment about when an updated travel ban might go into effect and which countries would be included in it.
Additions to the June travel ban are the latest in what has been a rapidly unfolding series of immigration actions since the shooting Thanksgiving week of two National Guard troops in Washington.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who emigrated to the U.S. from Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal, has been charged with first-degree murder after one of the two victims, West Virginia National Guard Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, died of wounds sustained in the Nov. 26 shooting. The second victim, Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, was critically wounded. Lakanwal has pleaded not guilty.
The Trump administration has argued that more vetting is needed to make sure people entering or already in the U.S. aren’t a threat. Critics say the administration is traumatizing people who’ve already gone through extensive vetting to get to the U.S. and say the new measures amount to collective punishment.
Over the course of a little more than a week, the administration has halted asylum decisions, paused processing of immigration-related benefits for people in the U.S. from the 19 travel ban countries and halted visas for Afghans who assisted the U.S. war effort.
On Thursday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it was reducing the time period that work permits are valid for certain applicants such as refugees and people with asylum so they have to reapply more often and go through vetting more frequently.
BRUSSELS, Belgium — When NATO foreign ministers gathered this week to deliberate on a U.S. plan to end the war in Ukraine, they had neither the plan in hand nor Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the room to represent the alliance’s biggest, most powerful member. Rubio skipped the meeting as the White House held talks with Russia and Ukraine that have kept European allies sidelined.
The State Department did not give a reason for Rubio’s absence, but his decision not to attend the high-profile meeting only added to the quiet frustration among his European counterparts as President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner visited Moscow to discuss a plan with huge ramifications for European security.
It was here at NATO’s glassy headquarters that Trump rattled America’s partners during his first presidency by telling them that if they didn’t pull their weight, he could “do his own thing.” Now Washington appears to be doing just that, and not only in the Russia talks. In the Middle East, the Caribbean, the South Caucasus and pretty much everywhere else, Trump acts first, consults after — if at all.
In their plan for Ukraine, the president and his advisers have even seemed to position the United States as speaking not for the alliance — synonymous with American military might since its founding in 1949 — but as an independent arbiter, whose interests do not necessarily coincide with those of the 31 other allies, from Canada to Estonia.
“The spirit of the plan was: We are no longer an ally, we are a broker. We are not in this camp or that one, we are above that. It was perceived as a catastrophe by the Europeans,” said Claudia Major, a senior vice president of the German Marshall Fund, a Washington-based think tank.
“They don’t have to leave NATO to weaken NATO,” she said. “I mean, I’m a member of a gym but I don’t go.”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, whose core job responsibility often seems to be to smooth over relations between Trump and other allies, told reporters there was nothing to worry about. The White House is “absolutely consulting enough” with European allies and he is “in constant contact” with U.S. officials, Rutte said as he convened the foreign ministers meeting Wednesday.
But Trump’s approach repeatedly has left European leaders in the dark, relying on leaks and news reports for the latest developments, then scrambling from afar to shape policy discussions in which their constituents and their continent have a far more direct stake.
Ahead of Witkoff’s trip, several diplomats at NATO said they weren’t sure which version of the plan he was taking to the Kremlin — an updated proposal reflecting changes from talks with Ukrainian negotiators, or something else.
European leaders are anxious and distrustful of the Trump administration. According to the leaked transcript of a phone call among leaders, published on Thursday by Der Spiegel, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the Americans are “playing games” while French President Emmanuel Macron warned that Washington might “betray” Ukraine.
American exceptionalism — including unilateral decision-making and military action — is nothing new. Butfor Europeans, it now hits closer to home. After supporting the U.S. in many conflicts, including by sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, some allies feel bitterly slighted by Trump’s limited regard for their priorities.
European leaders were already alarmed by Trump’s interest in renewing economic ties with Russia, along with the president’s uncertain commitment to Europe’s security.
In an earlier bid to end the war, Trump invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to Alaska and seemed open toRussia’s demands for Ukrainian territory, prompting several European leaders to race to the White House for a meeting.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff (from left), Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Jared Kushner meet with Ukrainian officials Nov. 30 in Hallandale Beach, Fla.
Last month, Witkoff floated a plan for Ukraine that many European officials found out about in the press. The proposal triggered alarm not only for the concessions it demanded of Kyiv but also because it mentioned using Russian frozen assets held in Europe, as well as restricting NATO expansion and the European Union’s ability to accept Ukraine as a member.
The initial, 28-point plan appeared to get revised after meetings between U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators. European diplomats expressed relief that it was revamped and said they had received U.S. assurances that NATO and EU questions would be addressed separately.
But Trump’s constant freelancing has cut to the heart of European apprehension that Washington does not share their dark assessment of Putin’s ultimate intentions, which they see as undermining European democracies and weakening NATO.
The negotiations also feed a fear that Trump shares with Putin a vision of the world in which Washington and Moscow get to decide the fate of others.
“You have this idea behind it that the great powers decide, and the smaller ones have limited sovereignty, and they are informed afterward,” Major said. “There is a certain intellectual dissonance,” she added, in the U.S. wanting to potentially do business with Russia while most NATO leaders describe Russia as their biggest threat.
Still, some European diplomats say the only option in the immediate term is to keep getting in Trump’s ear — because even if he were willing to consult more, Putin is not.
“The fact of life is the only ones capable of negotiating an end to the Ukraine war are the U.S., for the simple reason that Putin will not sit at the table with anyone else,” said a NATO diplomat, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues. “This causes a lot of discomfort for many Europeans, but it is a fact of life, so as long as the Americans listen to us.”
“I think it’s fair to say these are the most consequential negotiations for European security of this century,” the diplomat added.
At this week’s NATO meeting, the United States was represented by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau — who earlier this year questioned the need for NATO, calling it “a solution in search of a problem” in a post on X that he later deleted.
A State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss Rubio’s travel, said NATO was “completely revitalized” since Trump secured a European pledge to increase national defense spending by allies. Rubio has “already attended dozens of meetings with NATO allies, and it would be completely impractical to expect him at every meeting,” the official said.
NATO foreign ministers typically meet twotimes per year, with ambassadors stationed in Brussels meeting far more frequently.
“I totally accept him not being able to be here,” Rutte said of Rubio, who is juggling multiple jobs in the administration. Rutte also told reporters that he hears from “all allies that they’re completely committed” to NATO’s political doctrine that Russia poses the biggest threat to the Western alliance.
Several European diplomats acknowledge privately, however, that they encounter conflicting messages among those in Trump’s circle — seeing Rubio, for example, as more aligned with their ideas and Witkoff as too close to Moscow.
The Kremlin regularly criticizes input from European officials on the negotiations, casting them as warmongers seeking to perpetuate the conflict with their backing of Ukraine.
Putin declared this week that Russia is ready for war with Europe “right now if Europe starts it,” drawing consternation from European ministers, who said this was proof that they should funnel more money to Ukraine and their own militaries.
The increasingly tense rhetoric is fueling European calls to take charge at NATO in case the U.S. shrinks its dominantrole, including in the command structure and quick-response plans.
European leaders must “adjust to a new reality” in which U.S. interests don’t necessarily match theirs, said Giuseppe Spatafora, an analyst at the EU’s Institute for Security Studies and a former NATO policy adviser.
“This opinion is becoming more popular among European leaders,” as the leaked phone call suggested, Spatafora said. “They thought that relentless engagement would avoid the worst outcomes, which it did, or could have slowly shifted Trump’s needle. I don’t think the latter happened.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, is dealing with a major corruption scandal that prompted the resignation of his chief of staff, and his negotiating leverage remains precarious. That’sespecially because of a disagreement among EU nations on how to find fresh cash for Kyiv, now that the U.S. has halted direct cash assistance.
An EU plan to tap into some $200 billion in frozen Russian assets has run into stiff opposition from Belgium, where most of the funds are located.
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahknasaidthere was “very important momentum” in the U.S.-led talks, but he acknowledged early Wednesday, the morning after the American delegation went to the Kremlin: “We don’t know exactly what was discussed, and what will be the results.”
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration has set forth a new national security strategy that paints European allies as weak and aims to reassert America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
The document released Friday by the White House is sure to roil long-standing U.S. allies in Europe for its scathing critiques of their migration and free speech policies, suggesting they face the “prospect of civilizational erasure” and raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners.
At the same time the administration is sharply critical of its democratic allies in Europe and carrying out a pressure campaign of boat strikes in South America, it chides past U.S. efforts to shape or criticize Middle Eastern nations and seeks to discourage attempts for changes in those countries’ governments and policies.
The strategy reinforces, in sometimes chilly and bellicose terms, Trump’s “America First” philosophy, which favors nonintervention overseas, questions decades of strategic relationships, and prioritizes U.S. interests.
The U.S. strategy “is motivated above all by what works for America — or, in two words, ‘America First,’” the document said.
This is the first national security strategy, a document the administration is required by law to release, since the Republican president’s return to office in January. It is a stark break from the course set by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, which sought to reinvigorate alliances after many were rattled in Trump’s first term and to check a more assertive Russia.
Democratic Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, who sits on House committees overseeing intelligence and the armed forces, called the strategy “catastrophic to America’s standing in the world and a retreat from our alliances and partnerships.”
“The world will be a more dangerous place and Americans will be less safe if this plan moves forward,” Crow said.
Criticism of Europe
The United States is seeking to broker an end to Russia’s nearly four-year-old war in Ukraine, a goal that the national security strategy says is in America’s vital interests. But the document makes clear that the U.S. wants to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah and that ending the war is a core U.S. interest to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”
The document also accuses America’s longstanding European allies, which have found themselves sometimes at odds with Trump’s shifting approaches to the Russia-Ukraine war, of facing not just domestic economic challenges but, according to the U.S., an existential crisis.
Economic stagnation in Europe “is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure,” the strategy document said.
The U.S. suggests that Europe is being enfeebled by its immigration policies, declining birthrates, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition” and a “loss of national identities and self-confidence.”
“Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies,” the document said.
The document also gives a nod to the rise of far-right political parties in Europe, which have been outspoken in their opposition to illegal immigration and climate policies.
“America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism,” the strategy said.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul acknowledged the U.S. is “our most important ally” in NATO but said questions about freedom of expression or “the organization of our free societies” are not part of alliance discussions.
“We also don’t think that anyone needs to give us any advice on this,” Wadephul told reporters.
Markus Frohnmaier, a lawmaker with the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, described the U.S. strategy as “a foreign policy reality check for Europe and particularly for Germany.”
Setting sights on power in the Americas
Despite Trump’s “America First” maxim, his administration has carried out a series of military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean while weighing possible military action in Venezuela to pressure President Nicolás Maduro.
The moves are part of what the national security strategy lays out as “a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine” to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.” The 1823 Monroe Doctrine, formulated by President James Monroe, was originally aimed at opposing any European meddling in the Western Hemisphere and was used to justify U.S. military interventions in Latin America.
Trump’s strategy document says it aims to combat drug trafficking and control migration. The U.S. also is reimagining its military footprint in the region even after building up the largest military presence there in generations.
That means, for instance, “targeted deployments to secure the border and defeat cartels, including where necessary the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades,” it says.
Shifting focus away from the Middle East
With a shift to the Americas, the U.S. will seek a different approach in the Middle East.
The U.S., according to the strategy, should abandon “America’s misguided experiment with hectoring” nations in the Middle East, especially monarchies in the Gulf, about their traditions and forms of government.
Trump has bolstered ties with nations there and sees Middle Eastern countries as ripe for economic opportunities, and the Arab nations are “emerging as a place of partnership, friendship, and investment,” the document says.
“We should encourage and applaud reform when and where it emerges organically, without trying to impose it,” it says.
This year, Trump made his first major foreign trip to the Middle East, and his efforts to settle the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has been a major focus. But the U.S. plans to shift its focus from the region, the administration says, as America is less dependent on its oil supply.
‘Rebalance’ of U.S. relationship with China
Meanwhile, as the U.S. under Trump has overturned decades of free trade policies with his sweeping global tariffs, its ties with China have been a prime focus. America under Trump is seeking to “rebalance” the U.S.-China relationship while also countering Beijing’s aggressive stance toward Taiwan, according to the document.
The Trump administration wants to prevent a war over Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own and to which the U.S. is obligated by its own laws to give military support, by maintaining a military advantage over China.
But the U.S. wants allies in the region to do more to push back against Chinese pressure and contribute more to their defense.
“The American military cannot, and should not have to, do this alone,” the strategy says. “Our allies must step up and spend — and more importantly do — much more for collective defense.”
Rebecca Kelly Slaughter was a powerful — but low-profile — bureaucrat when a New York Times news alert popped up on her phone blasting to the world her firing by President Donald Trump. The Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission had found out only minutes earlier.
Her phone began blowing up as she stood outside her daughter’s school during a rehearsal of Beauty and the Beast Jr. Slaughter, who mostly avoided the media, was soon participating in an impromptu news conference on her phone as the musical carried on inside.
When her daughter stepped offstage, Slaughter pushed through a crowd so she could be the first to spill the news to the girl. The fifth grader burst into tears before asking, “Are you going to fight back?”
“Probably,” Slaughter replied.
Thrust into the spotlight in March, a regulator more comfortable with the minutiae of antitrust issues than the dynamics of a political fight, has emerged as one of the primary opponents of Trump’s war on the federal workforce he disparages as the “deep state.”
Slaughter has not onlyfought her owndismissal in court, she has defended the work of civil servants beforeCongress, on podcasts and on TV, speaking outwhen many others are demoralizedfrom losing jobs and absorbingthe president’s repeated attacks.
Rebecca Slaughter chats with her children as she makes dinner.
On Monday,the Supreme Courtwill hear arguments in her case — which probably will be the first in which the justicesrender a final decision on the legality of Trump’s moves to fire agency heads and gut agencies.
Many legal experts expect the court to rule against Slaughter — a majority of the justices have signaled support for much of Trump’s argument.The stakes are high: The case could upend how the federal government has been run for nearly a century. A ruling against her could give the president greater control over sometwo-dozen independent agencies, a major goal in his quest to enlarge his power.
The administration says presidential control will make agenciessuch as the Federal Trade Commission,Federal Election Commission and Federal Communications Commission more accountable to voters who elect presidents. Slaughter fears political influence will replace the expertise that has guided decisions on issues such as product safety, banking, and media mergers.
In other words, the very work she and some of the roughly 300,000 other civil servants who have been laid off in recent months have unobtrusively carried out for decades. Trump’s purge of the federal workforce is the largest in a single year since World War II.
“The alternative to allowing these agencies to operate as Congress designed is … accruing power to the president,” Slaughter said. “That is something that would be concerning at any time, but really concerning when you have a president who is interested in wielding power for the benefit of himself, his friends and allies — and at the expense of everyday Americans.”
Dismissed
Independent agencies were some of the first targets of Trump’ssecond-term buzz saw as he slashed government jobs and put the executive branch under a tighter grip.
“My administration will reclaim power from this unaccountable bureaucracy, and we will restore true democracy to America again,” Trump said in his first speech to Congress of his current term.
Slaughter watched with trepidation as Trump fired a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board in January and the Democratic chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board in February.
She guessed she might be a target but was still shocked when the email landed in her inbox March 18. Slaughter had spent nearly seven years on the commission and loved the work. Trump had originally appointed her in his first term, and she was reappointed by President Joe Biden.
“Your continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities,” stated the message sent on behalf of the president.
It was the first time in 91 years a president had tried to fire a member of the FTC, which focuses on consumer protection and increasing business competition. Trump also dismissed the other Democrat on the five-member commission, Alvaro Bedoya, leaving only Republicans.
What struck Slaughter was thatTrump had given no reason for her dismissal. Congress insulated the FTC from the president through a law allowing the executive to remove commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Slaughter said firing her without citing any such reason was a blatant and illegal power grab. Almost immediately, she resolved to sue.
The stakes of her public stand quickly became apparent.
After juggling press calls and her daughter’s performance the night of her firing, Slaughter returned home. She received a knock on her door around 11:30 p.m. as her four children slept. It was a pizza delivery she had not ordered. Bedoya got one, too, the same night.
They concluded the pizzas were probably part of a wave sent to the homes of judges and other officials, most of whom had ruled against or opposed Trump’s policies — a reminder that potential assailants knew where they lived. They alerted police and scrubbed personal information from the internet.
Rebecca Slaughter chats with fellow FTC member Alvaro Bedoya on Capitol Hill in 2023.
But she and Bedoya resolved to stay in the public eye despite the risks. Days later, Slaughter appeared before a House committee to testify about her firing.
“I will not be the first to go down without a fight, and neither will Commissioner Bedoya,” Slaughter told the legislators. “We swore an oath to serve the American people and our Constitution, and I believe that the law will vindicate our right to finish the job.”
The legal fight
That was not so easily accomplished.
The path to the Supreme Court has been winding and full of setbacks. Bedoya had to drop out along the way.His family was struggling financially with one paycheck. The problems were compounded when someone tried to take out a $500,000 line of credit in his name, an act he suspects wastied to hisspeaking out about his firing.
“It is not fun to take on the president of the United States, particularly in this environment,” Bedoya said. “It’s not fun to notknow where your next paycheck will come from or if you will get a paycheck, period.”
Slaughter carried on, with her husband, who works for an investment firm, shouldering the financial load for the family and withhelp from pro bono attorneys. She has continued to publicly weigh in on matters before the FTC as if she werestill on the job, while speaking and making media appearances to draw attention to her case.
Rebecca Slaughter kisses one of her daughters as she prepares a meal in November.
“Mommy, I thought that being fired would make you less busy,” Slaughter recalled her 6-year-old daughter telling her.
In July, a federal judge ruled she could return to her job while her case played out in the courts. When Slaughter arrived back to work on a Friday, about two-dozen FTC staffers stood outside and clapped as she entered the building.
The returnwas exhilarating — but short-lived. By the following Monday, an appeals court hadpaused her reinstatement. In September, the appeals court ruled she could return to work again, but the Supreme Court soon stayed that order until it makes a final ruling on her dismissal.
Slaughter joked she is the first person in history fired from the FTC three times but said “the whiplash was really disheartening.” Even more disturbing were the glimpses she got inside the FTC during her second stint back.
It was an agency transformed.
“There were a lot of questions about political interference,” Slaughter said of two staff meetings she held. “People seem demoralized. People felt beaten down.”
A case with major ramifications
Slaughter’s case is in many ways a redo of another that changed the course of the federal government nine decades ago.
Through the late 1800s, presidents regularly rewarded political supporters with federal jobs. But the spoils system, as it was called then, was phased out after a backer of President James Garfieldwho had been denied a position assassinated him. Congress passed new laws for a nonpartisan civil service and prevented some officialsfrom being removed for political reasons.
A major test of thosestandards came in 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt fired an FTC commissioner over policy disagreements related to economic regulation and the New Deal. William E. Humphrey sued, saying he could be removed only for cause under the law that created the FTC.
The Supreme Court sided with Humphrey, upholding Congress’s ability to limit the president’s firing ofthe heads of independent agencies. The case, knownas Humphrey’s Executor, is little known to the general public, but it has outsize legal importance.
University of Michigan law professor Daniel A. Crane credited it with “paving the way for the modern administrative state” — the alphabet soup of agencies that rely on technical expertise to regulate interest rates, bank deposits, labor disputes, and more.
The agencies are often run by bipartisan commissions, whose membersare appointed to staggered terms and can be removed only for cause. The idea was to mitigate political pressure on the agencies, so they could make decisions based on expertiseand technical knowledge, rather than political considerations.
Backers of the idea of independent agencies worry the demise of Humphrey’s Executor will mean presidents could politicize regulation of baby food, credit card fees, and a host of other things to please cronies, big donors, and ideological allies.
“The last thing we want is for industry to be able to come in and insert their favorite folks on commissions,” said Erin Witte, director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America. “Congress designed these agencies to be independent for a reason. There’s a lot at stake.”
The Trump administration counters by arguing the contemporary FTC is far different fromthe one that existed when Humphrey’s Executor was decided. The agency now wields significant executive power, so the president — as head of the executive branch — has the constitutional authority to remove its commissioners.
“In this case, the lower courts have once again ordered the reinstatement of a high-level officer wielding substantial executive authority whom the President has determined should not exercise any executive power,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a court filing.
The position is in keeping with a muscular vision of the presidency embraced by Trump and some conservatives, known as the unitary executive theory, that holds the president should have unfettered control over hiring and firing in the executive branch.
So far, the court has appeared to endorse that idea in temporary ordersallowing Trump to remove Democrats from the National Labor Relations Board, Consumer Product Safety Commission and Merit Systems Protection Board. Those orders aren’t final decisions on the merits of the cases but give a strong suggestion of where the court’s majority is headed, legal experts say.
“The Supreme Court has given every indication it will overrule Humphrey’s Executor,” Crane said.
Despite the seemingly long odds, Slaughter remains hopeful she will prevail. On a recent morning, she was once again making her case in public before a conference of women who work on antitrust issues.
“Why are you staying in the fight?” the host asked.
Slaughter said that independent agencies are crucial for protecting Americans and that she was taking a stand against Trump’s lawlessness. Trump should have sought a change in the law if he wanted to dismiss her, she said.
“As a person who took an oath to the Constitution, I feel very strongly that when that process for changing the law isn’t followed, then I need to stand up and push back,” Slaughter said. “I really recognize deeply how many people in this country are not in a position to do that. I am, so I have the obligation to do it.”
