5 things to know for May 22: Embassy shooting, Budget cuts, Trump-Ramaphosa meeting, Qatar jet, Police reform
Should the Department of Government Efficiency be required to release public records under the Freedom of Information Act, or can it keep such files hidden due to executive privilege? That's the question the Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to decide. What is known is that in the past four months, DOGE has fired more than 120,000 federal workers, slashed agency budgets, accessed sensitive computer systems and cut billions in research grants, prompting a wave of federal lawsuits.
Here's what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.
Get '5 Things' in your inbox
If your day doesn't start until you're up to speed on the latest headlines, then let us introduce you to your new favorite morning fix. Sign up here for the '5 Things' newsletter.
Two Israeli Embassy staff members were shot and killed while standing outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, last night. Authorities say the suspected gunman, who was observed pacing back and forth outside the museum before opening fire on a group of people. He then entered the building and waited to be detained. Police said the 30-year-old man showed officers where to find the weapon and chanted 'Free Free Palestine' while in custody. The victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were a young couple who soon planned to get engaged, according to Israel's ambassador to the US. 'I am devastated by the scenes in Washington D.C.,' Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in a statement on X. 'This is a despicable act of hatred, of antisemitism, which has claimed the lives of two young employees of the Israeli embassy.'
The House voted 217 to 212 overnight to clear a key procedural hurdle and bring President Donald Trump's domestic policy bill to the floor for a full vote. House Speaker Mike Johnson is determined to pass the bill before Memorial Day, which has prompted weeks of difficult negotiations within the GOP and a visit from the president to tell Republicans to get on board. Although all of the details about the massive legislative package have not yet been released, it does include:
Nearly $1 trillion in cuts from Medicaid and food stamps
Work requirements for Medicaid starting at the end of 2026
Raising the debt ceiling by $4 trillion
Spending $150 billion on defense programs
Limiting judges' power to hold the Trump administration in contempt
Phasing out Biden-era energy tax credits sooner than planned
Increasing the state and local tax deduction
Making trillions of dollars of income tax breaks permanent
Allocating $45 billion to build new immigration detention facilities
Allowing certain taxpayers to deduct income from tips on tax returns
The Congressional Budget Office said the bill will increase the budget deficit by $3.8 trillion between 2026-2034.
Fans of President Trump's reality TV show 'The Apprentice' will likely not be surprised by how he's been treating world leaders in televised Oval Office meetings. In a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump and his staffers berated him for not wearing a suit and for not thanking Trump enough for the money the US has given to the war effort. When Trump met with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, he went on a tirade about defending Canada militarily and then told the press to leave before Carney could respond. In his latest Oval Office event this week, Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa — who once served as Nelson Mandela's chief negotiator during talks to end White minority rule — with false claims about White South African farmers being victims of genocide. For his part, Ramaphosa pushed back gently whenever he could, but he didn't raise his voice or show anger, displaying his decades of negotiation experience.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar that President Trump plans to use as the next Air Force One. The controversial transfer has sparked a political furor, with both Democrats and Republicans opposing the luxury jet on ethical grounds. While details about its transfer have not yet been released, Trump told reporters on Wednesday that Qatar was 'giving the United States Air Force a jet, okay, and it's a great thing.' Earlier this week, sources said it was the Trump administration that had first approached Qatar about acquiring the Boeing 747. It's also unknown how much it'll cost to strip down the entire aircraft for surveillance and safety checks and then retrofit it to the required security specifications.
The Trump administration is moving to dismiss federal oversight agreements with several major US police departments. The agreements, called consent decrees, are used as a monitoring system at police departments where the Justice Department has found a pattern of misconduct. In court filings on Wednesday, the DOJ asked judges in Minnesota and Kentucky to dismiss the consent decrees reached with the police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis. They were approved by a federal judge and enacted following the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor and the police killing of George Floyd.
Double-checking the calendarMemorial Day weekend may mark the unofficial start of summer, but the Northeast and parts of the mid-Atlantic will be experiencing a rare May nor'easter. Some areas of New Hampshire and Vermont may even see snow.
Rare side effect to be highlighted on vaccine packagingThe FDA is now requiring some Covid-19 vaccines to use expanded warning labels detailing a small risk for myocarditis. The vaccines' old labels already provided a warning about the heart condition.
No NFL ban for controversial 'tush push'The nearly unstoppable running play was used to great success by the Philadelphia Eagles last year.
Manny Pacquiao: I'm backThe Mexican-American boxer will come out of retirement this summer to face Mario Barrios for the WBC welterweight championship. In 2019, Pacquiao became the oldest welterweight world champion in history at the age of 40.
She knew him whenPeruvian TikToker Luciana Marquez traveled to Rome last year to meet a family friend. They recorded a TikTok video. Now, he's Pope Leo XIV.
10That's how many minutes a Lufthansa flight carrying 205 people went without a pilot last year after the co-pilot fainted while he was alone in the cockpit.
'These staff cuts and the potential budget cuts make the United States more at risk for a tsunami and earthquake, and they will have devastating impacts for coastal populations and the US economy.'
— Corina Allen, who, like thousands of other probationary federal employees, was recently fired from her job as a manager at NOAA's National Weather Service Tsunami Program.
Check your local forecast here>>>
Oh baby, baby! Britney Spears' album, 'Oops! … I Did It Again,' turns 25 this year. To celebrate, Sony Music will release an expanded edition.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
16 minutes ago
- New York Times
Live Updates: Trump to Send National Guard to L.A. to Quell Immigration Protests
The chaos that engulfed Los Angeles on Saturday began a day earlier when camouflage-clad federal agents rolled through the garment district in search of workers who they suspected of being undocumented immigrants. They were met with protesters, who chanted and threw eggs before being dispersed with pepper spray and nonlethal bullets. The enforcement operation turned into one of the most volatile scenes of President Trump's immigration crackdown so far, but it was not an isolated incident. Image Law enforcement during a protest in California on Saturday. Credit... Eric Thayer/Associated Press Last week, at a student housing complex under construction in Tallahassee, Fla., masked immigration agents loaded dozens of migrants into buses headed to detention centers. In New Orleans, 15 people working on a flood control project were detained. And raids in San Diego and Massachusetts — in Martha's Vineyard and the Berkshires — led to standoffs in recent days as bystanders angrily confronted federal agents who were taking workers into custody. The high-profile raids appeared to mark a new phase of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, in which officials say they will increasingly focus on workplaces — taking aim at the reason millions of people have illegally crossed the border for decades. That is an expansion from plans early in the administration to prioritize detaining hardened criminals and later to focus on hundreds of international students. 'You're going to see more work site enforcement than you've ever seen in the history of this nation,' Thomas D. Homan, the White House border czar told reporters recently. 'We're going to flood the zone.' Image Thomas D. Homan, the White House border czar, at a news conference last month. Credit... Eric Lee/The New York Times It remains to be seen how aggressively Mr. Trump will pursue sectors like construction, food production and hospitality. Raids are sometimes directed based on tips, but otherwise appear to be distributed without a clear pattern, hitting establishments large and small. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to an email seeking details about the government's plans, including an explanation about why the administration is ramping up work-site arrests now. Over the past month, though, the White House has pressured immigration officials to increase deportations, which have fallen short of the administration's goals. The number of arrests has risen sharply in the past week, according to figures provided by the Department of Homeland Security. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for Homeland Security, said 2,000 immigrants per day were arrested over the last week, up from 600 earlier in the administration. It was not clear how many of those arrests were made at raids of work sites. More than 4 percent of the nation's 170 million person work force was made up of undocumented immigrants in 2023, according to estimates from Goldman Sachs, making job sites a prime setting for agents to find people. The number of immigrants who could be subject to such sweeps increased by at least 500,000 at the end of May, as the Supreme Court allowed the administration to revoke the temporary status that had allowed many Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans to work. Workplace raids require significant planning, can be costly and draw on large teams of agents, but they can yield more arrests than pursuing individual targets. The raids may have become feasible in recent weeks, experts said, as personnel from the F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies have been enlisted on immigration operations. 'Goosing the numbers is a big part of this because it's so much more efficient in manpower to raid a warehouse and arrest 100 illegal aliens than it is to send five guys after one criminal,' said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates less immigration. Workplace raids also send a warning to a far broader group of undocumented people, most of whom have not committed crimes. 'If you want to get people packing up and leaving, that isn't going to happen if you're just focusing on the criminals,' Mr. Krikorian said. Image A crowd formed at the back gate of Ambiance Apparel in Los Angeles on Friday after federal immigration agents gathered at the company. Credit... Alex Welsh for The New York Times In interviews, migrants and employers expressed alarm about the toll a sustained crackdown could take on the work force. Undocumented immigrants are concentrated in a few American industries, making up 19 percent of landscaping workers, 17 percent of farm workers and 13 percent of construction workers, according to the estimates from Goldman Sachs. Gus Hoyas, a Republican who runs a construction firm in Cleveland, said his industry has long leaned heavily on people with valuable skills who are in the country without permission. 'They're undocumented, but we've got to do something, because these people are tradesmen — they're pros in the field,' said Mr. Hoyas, a naturalized immigrant from Colombia. 'You get rid of these folks, and it's going to kill us in the construction arena.' During his first term, Mr. Trump — whose own businesses have employed workers without papers — sent mixed messages about his eagerness to crack down on undocumented labor. Early on, his administration carried out several workplace raids, and conducted more audits of worker eligibility paperwork than the Obama administration had. But Mr. Trump's Justice Department prosecuted relatively few employers for hiring undocumented workers. And in 2017, the president commuted the sentence of an Iowa meatpacking plant executive convicted in the Obama era after a jury found that he knowingly hired hundreds of undocumented workers and paid for their forged documents. The Covid-19 pandemic halted efforts to go after undocumented workers. 'These were people who were processing our food, making our food, delivering our food so we could all live in the comfort of our Zoom existence,' said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. 'That was not lost on people.' Mr. Biden, who began his presidency facing a beleaguered economy and a severe labor shortage, never prioritized workplace immigration enforcement. The system that gave rise to this shadow work force dates to 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed a bill granting amnesty to nearly three million undocumented immigrants, allowing them to pursue citizenship. The bill also criminalized hiring people without legal status and required that employers collect an I-9 form from every new hire, substantiating their work authorization with identification. In 1996, the Internal Revenue Service created an alternative to a Social Security number that allowed immigrants to file federal tax returns on their earnings. Unauthorized immigrants often do so because it can be beneficial on citizenship applications down the line and also count toward Social Security benefits if they are able to naturalize. Their payments generate tens of billions of dollars in tax revenue each year. Since then, enforcement of immigration labor laws has varied widely. In the late 1990s, the government prioritized egregious cases of employers who abused workers or who knowingly hired large numbers of undocumented migrants. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, investigators focused on sensitive sites such as airports and military bases. Over the years, raids at farms, meatpacking plants and construction sites have grabbed headlines, but employers have seldom faced severe consequences. Many subcontract to avoid liability, and managers have long asserted that it is difficult to identify fake documents. Image Workers were guided to a bus after a raid by immigration officials at a plant in 2019. Credit... Rogelio V. Solis/Associated Press 'They have plausible deniability for just about any hires,' said Daniel Costa, an immigration labor expert at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. 'The system was kind of rigged against workers and in favor of employers from the beginning.' Immigrant workers tend to be younger, while the U.S.-born population is aging into retirement. Millions of people who arrived between 2022 and 2024, largely from Latin America, Ukraine and Afghanistan, were generally eligible to work, since the Biden administration granted most of them some kind of temporary legal status. For those reasons, the share of the labor force that is foreign born rose to 19.7 percent in March, the highest on record. That is why a serious work-site crackdown could severely affect some industries, especially if employers begin preemptively firing people known to be undocumented. Employers also must balance verifying a worker's status with risking accusations of discrimination on the basis of race and national origin, which is also illegal. 'If you've done your due diligence as an employer, your own doubt or suspicion isn't going to be enough for me to say, 'Yeah, fire that person,'' said Eric Welsh, an attorney with Reeves Immigration Law Group, which helps both individuals and companies with visa issues. 'You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.' After Mr. Trump's election, employers started performing more internal audits to verify employees' identification documents and work permits, immigration attorneys said. Chris Thomas, a partner with the firm Holland & Hart in Denver, said his business clients had seen more notices of investigation and letters from the Internal Revenue Service flagging Social Security numbers that don't match the agency's records. The Department of Justice raised the stakes in early February with a memo that directed attorneys to use 'all available criminal statutes' to enforce immigration laws. 'If you know you have undocumented workers, and you're not severing ties with them at this stage, you're in a position where they're coming pretty soon,' Mr. Thomas said. 'If you wait until they arrive on the scene it's probably too late.' Greg Casten, who co-owns several restaurants, a fish wholesaler and a few other hospitality businesses in Washington D.C., has watched the government's shifting approach to undocumented workers for more than 40 years. Many of his 600 employees are immigrants. He has found Salvadorans in particular, to be skilled at cutting fish. Every year he gets a list from the I.R.S. of Social Security numbers on his payroll that don't match official records, and every year he goes through to try to address any gaps. Still, it's not perfect. Image Greg Casten, owner of Ivy City Tavern. Credit... Jason Andrew for The New York Times 'I do have some people who work for me who can barely speak English, and I find it hard to believe sometimes when they're giving me paperwork,' Mr. Casten said. But since he puts in the necessary effort, he doesn't worry much about punishment. In early May, the Department of Homeland Security served inspection notices to 187 businesses in Washington, though none of Mr. Casten's. 'Right now, as fragile as this industry is, if they came in and took 20 percent or 10 percent of someone's work staff, they would be out of business,' he said. The heightened risk of enforcement has led some employers to preemptively let go of workers they suspect are undocumented. Miriam, a mother of five in Los Angeles who crossed the border illegally 26 years ago, said the Trump administration's immigration policies led her boss at a 24-hour laundromat to fire her recently. 'Many people have lost their jobs overnight,' said Miriam, who is 40 and agreed to be identified only by her first name out of concern about drawing the attention of immigration officials. 'We're all afraid.' Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting.
CNN
27 minutes ago
- CNN
Israel says it has killed leader of Palestinian militant group that took part in October 7 attack
The Israeli military says it has killed the leader of a Palestinian militant group that took part in the October 7, 2023, terror attacks on southern Israel. Asaad Abu Sharia, who led the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement and its armed wing the Mujahideen Brigades, was killed in a joint operation with Israel's Shin Bet security agency, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Saturday. His death and that of his brother Ahmed Abu Sharia were confirmed by the militant group hours after Gaza's Civil Defense reported that an Israeli airstrike had hit their family home in the Sabra area of Gaza City. Hamas run Al-Aqsa TV said the strike killed at least 15 people and injured several. Video showed people searching through the debris of a demolished four-story house. The Mujahideen Brigades took part in the October 7 attacks alongside Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups and took hostage some of the most high-profile captives, including a family whose suffering became a symbol of the attack. According to the Israeli military, Sharia was among the militant leaders who stormed Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where many residents were killed or taken hostage during the brutal terror assault that led to Israel's war in Gaza. Despite not being aware of Hamas' plans in advance, fighters from the jihadist group joined in the cross-border assault 'as an extension of the Hamas attack,' the Israeli military said. According to Israel, Sharia was directly involved in the abduction and murders of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas – a family that became one of the most recognizable victims of the attack, partly because of the young ages of Kfir and Ariel, who were nine months and four years old respectively at the time. Kfir was the youngest hostage kidnapped into Gaza and the youngest to have been killed. The boys' mother, Shiri, was 32 at the time of her kidnap. Their father Yarden was also captured, but was released alive in February after 484 days in captivity. Reacting to news of Sharia's killing, the Bibas family expressed their 'heartfelt gratitude' to the Israeli military, saying his death was 'another step on the journey towards closure.' 'While Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir cannot be brought back, we find some measure of comfort knowing these despicable murderers will not harm another family,' the Bibas family said in a statement shared via the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Israel's military said Sharia was also involved in the abduction of the Israeli-American couple Gad Haggai and Judi Lynn Weinstein Haggai and the abduction and killing of Thai national Nattapong Pinta. The Israeli-American couple were killed near their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the attack in 2023. The body of Nattapong, an agricultural worker who was abducted alive on October 7, was recovered from southern Gaza in a military operation on Friday. Israel said it believes the Mujahideen Brigades are still holding the body of an additional foreign national. The group has previously denied killing their captives.
CNN
27 minutes ago
- CNN
Israel says it has killed leader of Palestinian militant group that took part in October 7 attack
The Israeli military says it has killed the leader of a Palestinian militant group that took part in the October 7, 2023, terror attacks on southern Israel. Asaad Abu Sharia, who led the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement and its armed wing the Mujahideen Brigades, was killed in a joint operation with Israel's Shin Bet security agency, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Saturday. His death and that of his brother Ahmed Abu Sharia were confirmed by the militant group hours after Gaza's Civil Defense reported that an Israeli airstrike had hit their family home in the Sabra area of Gaza City. Hamas run Al-Aqsa TV said the strike killed at least 15 people and injured several. Video showed people searching through the debris of a demolished four-story house. The Mujahideen Brigades took part in the October 7 attacks alongside Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups and took hostage some of the most high-profile captives, including a family whose suffering became a symbol of the attack. According to the Israeli military, Sharia was among the militant leaders who stormed Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where many residents were killed or taken hostage during the brutal terror assault that led to Israel's war in Gaza. Despite not being aware of Hamas' plans in advance, fighters from the jihadist group joined in the cross-border assault 'as an extension of the Hamas attack,' the Israeli military said. According to Israel, Sharia was directly involved in the abduction and murders of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas – a family that became one of the most recognizable victims of the attack, partly because of the young ages of Kfir and Ariel, who were nine months and four years old respectively at the time. Kfir was the youngest hostage kidnapped into Gaza and the youngest to have been killed. The boys' mother, Shiri, was 32 at the time of her kidnap. Their father Yarden was also captured, but was released alive in February after 484 days in captivity. Reacting to news of Sharia's killing, the Bibas family expressed their 'heartfelt gratitude' to the Israeli military, saying his death was 'another step on the journey towards closure.' 'While Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir cannot be brought back, we find some measure of comfort knowing these despicable murderers will not harm another family,' the Bibas family said in a statement shared via the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Israel's military said Sharia was also involved in the abduction of the Israeli-American couple Gad Haggai and Judi Lynn Weinstein Haggai and the abduction and killing of Thai national Nattapong Pinta. The Israeli-American couple were killed near their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the attack in 2023. The body of Nattapong, an agricultural worker who was abducted alive on October 7, was recovered from southern Gaza in a military operation on Friday. Israel said it believes the Mujahideen Brigades are still holding the body of an additional foreign national. The group has previously denied killing their captives.
