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New York Times
14 hours ago
- General
- New York Times
National Park Service to Close Dupont Circle in Washington During Pride Event
The National Park Service will close the park at Dupont Circle, a gathering place for the city's L.G.B.T.Q. community, during a major Pride Month event this weekend that is already grappling with cancellations and pulled corporate sponsorships. The event, WorldPride, is an international celebration of the L.G.B.T.Q. community that is held each June in a different city. Washington won the bid for this year's edition, which began in mid-May and runs through Sunday, in 2022. The Park Service will fence off the Dupont Circle park during WorldPride celebrations from Thursday to Monday as a 'public safety measure,' said Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the agency, in a statement first shared on Monday. The statement cited 'a history and pattern of destructive and disorderly behavior' in the park during previous Pride celebrations, including vandalism of the park fountain in 2023. The last WorldPride event in the United States, in New York City six years ago, was largely peaceful. 'Five million people, and there was almost not a single incident,' Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the time. The Park Service said it was closing the park in response to a request from Washington's police force, and that the closure was in line with President Trump's executive order in March to protect historic national monuments. Some L.G.B.T.Q. residents and at least one elected official responded on social media by calling on Mayor Muriel Bowser, who is set to march in the city's Pride Parade this weekend, to open the park. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Trump Budget Cuts Hobble Antismoking Programs
Students at Wyoming East High School in West Virginia's coal country had different reasons for joining Raze, a state program meant to raise awareness about the health risks of tobacco and e-cigarettes. Cayden Oliver, 17, grew up around generations of people who smoked and vaped, and he wanted to make his own choice. Nathiah Brown, 18, was struggling to quit e-cigarettes and showed up for moral support. Kimberly Mills, 18, wanted to prove that even though she had been a foster child, she would defy the odds. This high school's program cost West Virginia less than $3,000 a year and was meant to protect teenagers in the state that has the highest vaping rate in their age group. It fell prey to U.S. government health budget cuts that included hundreds of millions of dollars in tobacco control funds that reached far beyond Washington, D.C. At the high school, students pack into stalls in the school restrooms, sneaking puffs between classes. 'It's bad now,' said Logan Stacy, 18, a member of the Raze group. 'Imagine what it will be like in two years.' Experts on tobacco control said the Trump administration's funding cuts would set back a quarter-century of public health efforts that have driven the smoking rate to a record low and saved lives and billions of dollars in health care spending. Still, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 29 million people in the United States continue to smoke. The decimation of antismoking work follows a year of lavish campaign donations by tobacco and e-cigarette companies to President Trump and congressional Republicans. During budget hearings on Wednesday, lawmakers expressed concerns about the cuts to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. At least one pending lawsuit could reverse them. So far, though, the budget reductions have sliced across several federal agencies and every state, more than 20 former federal and current state tobacco control staff members said in interviews. At the Food and Drug Administration, officials fired many staff members who levied fines on retailers that sold tobacco to minors or marketed illicit vapes. Some scientists who were experts in addiction and toxicology lost their jobs. The agency also fired the team that wrote proposals to ban menthol cigarettes and to reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes, efforts the Trump administration has abandoned. Most staff members who review new tobacco products for approval kept their jobs. The National Institutes of Health canceled grants to researchers examining tobacco use among certain groups, including L.G.B.T.Q. youths, Black people and young people. One $14 million grant sought to determine the most effective messages to persuade teenagers not to vape. The White House shuttered the Office on Smoking and Health at the C.D.C., a unit that traced its roots to a landmark report by the surgeon general in 1964 that first linked smoking to lung cancer. The office distributed nearly $100 million of its $260 million budget to the states. It supported an antismoking ad campaign called Tips From Former Smokers, which featured people who were often visibly debilitated from tobacco-related disease. Those ads drove calls to a national network of help lines staffed with trained coaches. The C.D.C. also funded youth initiatives like the West Virginia Raze program across the United States. State health departments have already received notices that no funding will come from the C.D.C. New York State's health officials had to lay off 13 tobacco control staff members, and in North Carolina, nine of 12 tobacco staff members were let go, according to a department spokeswoman. The help lines for quitting smoking in Connecticut, New Jersey, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington and Tennessee relied on the C.D.C. for half or more of their funding, according to state officials and Thomas Ylioja, president of the North American Quitline Consortium, which is based in Phoenix. Those dollars paid for staff members to counsel callers and provide free smoking cessation aids like nicotine patches, gums or, in some states, medications. States are now trying to figure out how to keep up with thousands of calls and pay for the supplies. Mr. Kennedy has made chronic disease his top priority, taking aim at artificial colors in food and unproven theories about vaccines. Yet decades of data show that smoking is a top driver of cardiovascular disease, cancer and premature death. 'Ultimately, the casualties of these cuts are the American people and their wallets,' said Brian King, the executive vice president at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, who was forced out as the F.D.A. tobacco division chief on April 1. 'The math is very simple: Less tobacco control work equals more tobacco-related disease and death.' The Department of Health and Human Services did not directly respond to questions about the elimination of the C.D.C.'s antismoking work, but said that the F.D.A. was continuing to enforce tobacco laws. 'H.H.S. remains committed to reducing tobacco use, preventing youth addiction and protecting public health,' Andrew Nixon, a department spokesman, said in an email. 'Functions are being streamlined — not abandoned — to ensure continued impact in a tighter fiscal environment.' But some public health experts fear a reversal of progress: The rate of smoking cigarettes has reached a 75-year low among adults, and the rate of youth vaping has hit a 25-year low. 'We're at an inflection point,' said Mitch Zeller, a former director of the F.D.A.'s tobacco center. He likened the cutbacks to 'kneecapping' the agencies' mission. The tobacco industry, meanwhile, has heavily supported Republican politicians and introduced new products. In 2024, Reynolds American, which makes Newport cigarettes and Vuse vapes, gave $10 million to PACs supporting President Trump and $4.6 million to support Republican leaders in Congress. Altria, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes and NJOY vapes, contributed $6.4 million to congressional Republicans and $1 million to the Trump inaugural committee. Breeze Smoke, a vape company, and the Vapor Technology Association each contributed at least $1 million to the inauguration. The F.D.A. has the authority to review new tobacco products, under a standard that's meant to help cigarette smokers make the transition to less harmful products and to avoid luring a new generation of tobacco users. New offerings from the $50 billion U.S. tobacco industry include IQOS, a penlike heated tobacco device that was being introduced in Austin, Tex., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., after reaching $11 billion in sales in 2024, so far mostly in Japan and the European Union. Oral nicotine pouches, like Zyn, are used by a small but rapidly growing percentage of teenagers. The students in West Virginia knew they could go online or take a quick drive up the Coalfields Expressway to buy the illicit e-cigarettes that have flooded the country. Green apple, peach and strawberry slushy and jam flavors are popular, Mr. Brown said. Teenagers also like vapes that can be easily hidden from teachers and passed off as a pen, a highlighter or a smartwatch. He said some students vape in class — and blow the vapor into their sleeve — to seem cool. Others, he said, are addicted. 'I wish we could make the kids understand this is not a 'gotcha' sort of thing,' said Christy Cardwell, the adult adviser of the Raze program and an English teacher at Wyoming East High School. Instead, she said, 'this is a 'we want to get it from you and stop you from doing this before you make such a destructive decision that you can never take it back.'' One recent study that followed people for four years found that those who used e-cigarettes exclusively were twice as likely as others to develop COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. 'That was pretty shocking and was discussed quite widely,' said Sven Eric Jordt, a tobacco, cancer and physiology researcher at Duke University. The strategies federal officials have used to identify smoking trends and, more recently, vaping behavior are among the many efforts eliminated by the Trump cutbacks. The National Youth Tobacco Survey, an annual study by the F.D.A. and C.D.C., is expected to be conducted this year but not in following years, Mr. Zeller said. The survey has tracked the rise and fall of youth e-cigarette use, listing teenagers' favored brands and flavors. The F.D.A. ran a campaign called the Real Cost, which featured award-winning anti-vaping ads that reached young people on YouTube and gaming platforms. Researchers estimated that the campaign prevented about 444,000 young people from taking up vaping in 2023 and 2024. Most of the staff members who coordinated the campaign were fired recently, according to Mr. King. The lack of survey data will limit the ability of experts to identify trends and rising popularity of the latest products, and to figure out how to combat the latest or most harmful. 'We will, as a country, basically be flying blind in terms of what nicotine and tobacco products people use very soon,' Dr. Jordt said. The Trump administration also fired C.D.C. staff members who ran the long-running ad campaign featuring people who were weakened by smoking-related illnesses. The ads sent viewers to help lines that have been credited by C.D.C. researchers with helping one million people quit smoking. The public service ads that have already been purchased are expected to end after September, former C.D.C. staff members said. Since 2012, the ads had concluded with a prompt for people to call a help line, but now direct people to a C.D.C. website. Mr. Brown, one of the students at Wyoming East, was relying on the Raze program to help him quit vaping, and said he was frustrated by being unable to stop for good. 'Walking down the hall, I'm out of breath, ' he said. Another student, Mr. Oliver, said he had helped a couple of friends quit e-cigarettes for good, and was disappointed that Raze was folding. 'This program means a lot to me,' he said. 'I try to help people see the big picture.'
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Top Sexual Assault Hotline Drops Resources After Trump Orders
Fearing the loss of federal funding, the nation's largest anti-sexual-violence organization has barred its crisis hotline staff from pointing people to resources that might violate President Trump's executive orders to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The organization, RAINN (the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network) has removed more than two dozen resources for L.G.B.T.Q. people, immigrants and other marginalized groups from its list of permissible referrals, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The employees who answer phone calls, and the volunteers who answer online and text chats, are instructed not to deviate from that list, a policy that predates the Trump administration. For more than three months, they have been prohibited from suggesting specialized mental health hotlines for gay and transgender people, referring immigrants to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, directing students to a group that educates them about sex-based discrimination, recommending books about male-on-male or female-on-female sexual violence, and more. Jennifer Simmons Kaleba, a spokeswoman for RAINN, confirmed that these resources had been removed. RAINN and local affiliates operate the National Sexual Assault Hotline, which reported serving 460,000 people last year and is one of the country's largest crisis lines for sexual violence survivors. RAINN also runs a federally funded help line for members of the military. The Trump administration's push to prohibit the use of federal funds for D.E.I. initiatives has led to debates within organizations across science, education, health and law over whether — and how — to comply in order to continue receiving federal funding. Mr. Trump has made dismantling these initiatives a central goal of his presidency, arguing that programs designed to redress discrimination against marginalized groups are themselves discriminatory. His executive orders face ongoing legal challenges. At RAINN, the decision to ban referrals specific to L.G.B.T.Q. people and immigrants — groups that are disproportionately likely to experience sexual violence — angered many volunteers. A group of them signed a letter in February urging their leaders to restore the resources, and volunteers sent another letter this month escalating their concerns to the organization's board of directors, whose members did not respond to requests for comment. 'When trans, queer, Black, brown, Asian and undocumented survivors come to the hotline in crisis, we are not allowed to provide them with the same level of supportive care as other survivors,' the letter to the board said. 'RAINN may face uncertain risks in the future if we stand by marginalized survivors, but we are certain to lose our values now if we do not stand with them today,' the organization said. The letter asked the board to restore the resources and to develop a plan to keep RAINN running if it were to lose federal funding. The organization has a contract with the Defense Department worth millions of dollars to run the military hotline, and receives additional funding through federal grants. But RAINN also gets a significant portion of its revenue from private donations. Ms. Simmons Kaleba said in an interview that the executive orders had forced RAINN's hand, and that people who filled out comment cards after contacting the hotline had not noted a decline in service. She added that RAINN had decided which resources to remove based on 'guidance' from government officials, but declined to identify the officials or to describe what they had said, citing confidentiality agreements. 'In an environment where nonprofits are trying to do everything we can to stay open, to stay active, to support as many survivors as we can through some pretty unprecedented times, it's disappointing that that can't be our singular focus,' she said. In a meeting with volunteers shortly after the resources were cut — a partial audio recording of which one volunteer shared — Ms. Simmons Kaleba and Megan Cutter, RAINN's chief of victim services, said that the organization had no good options. 'We've put each of these choices up against this core question: If we do this, are we still serving RAINN's mission of ending sexual violence?' Ms. Simmons Kaleba said. She recognized that many people were 'going to think we had better options to choose from, and they're going to be mad, and I don't blame them,' she added. Ms. Cutter acknowledged in the meeting that 'we're not able to offer what we've always offered,' and said she understood why volunteers were upset. She added, 'We're trying to be as thoughtful as we can within the circumstances.' Some other organizations have responded more defiantly to the executive orders. The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention organization for L.G.B.T.Q. youth, is at risk of losing funding and is running an emergency fund-raising campaign to try to compensate without making concessions. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center initially removed references to transgender people from its website, but then restored the content and apologized for 'a fear-based decision.' Jennifer Grove, the organization's director, said it had not lost funding or heard from the Trump administration since then. RAINN also deleted references to transgender people from its website, a move reported by The Washington Post in February. It has not restored them. The volunteers who signed the letter to RAINN's board of directors cited the Trevor Project and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center as models. 'What we are asking you today is not even as expansive as these examples of public leadership,' they wrote. 'We are simply requesting the quiet but immediate restoration of internal services for all survivors.'
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
There's a Darker Reason Trump Is Going After Those Law Firms
Every year, The American Lawyer publishes a scorecard ranking big law firms by the amount of pro bono service they provide. In 2024 the top firms on the list were Jenner & Block, Covington & Burling and WilmerHale, whose lawyers collectively donated over 400,000 hours to cases advancing the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people, helping immigrants gain asylum and fighting voter disenfranchisement, among other causes. These firms now top a different list: law firms targeted by the Trump administration's executive orders. This is no accident. These orders use the pretense of punishing Mr. Trump's perceived enemies to pursue the far more comprehensive goal of controlling pro bono work, the lifeblood of legal aid and public-interest law organizations, which depend on pro bono support to promote access to justice and defend the values of liberal democracy. This targeting replaces the ideal of pro bono publico, literally 'for the public good,' with pro bono Trump. I've studied pro bono work around the world, and the American model — in which prominent firms devote enormous amounts of lawyer time, which would otherwise be billed at rates surpassing $1,000 per hour, to litigate cases against the government — is unique. It's also powerful. That model is behind some of the most consequential Supreme Court cases of the past quarter-century. Perkins Coie worked pro bono for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver, helping win a 2006 ruling that military commissions at Guantánamo Bay violated federal and international law. WilmerHale and Covington & Burling contributed tens of thousands of hours to petitioners in Boumediene v. Bush, holding that Guantánamo detainees were entitled to habeas corpus. The 2015 case Obergefell v. Hodges, which established the right of same-sex couples to marry, was argued by a lawyer at Ropes & Gray and was supported by an amicus brief filed by Munger, Tolles & Olson. During President Trump's first term, prestigious firms helped immigrants targeted by the Muslim travel ban and filed amicus briefs in the Supreme Court case challenging it. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Overall, American lawyers contribute over 35 million hours of free counsel annually to clients in need, representing them in cases involving domestic violence, illegal evictions, family separation and more. These efforts are led by lawyers in the nation's largest firms, with members of the top American Lawyer firms donating over five million hours last year. Why do big law firms do it? It's not just charity. While firm leaders care deeply about professional service and make sacrifices to do it well, they also follow what is referred to as the business case for pro bono. Firms use unpaid work in part to burnish their prestige and to buoy their positions in the influential American Lawyer rankings. That helps them to attract and retain the best lawyers — and the biggest corporate clients, which often select firms whose pro bono advances the clients' corporate social responsibilities. But the logic of the business case also imposes constraints. It means that firms generally avoid pro bono matters that even appear to conflict with the interests of clients — and decline pro bono litigation in areas like employment and environmental law on the purely financial grounds that paying clients can walk away if their firms take legal positions viewed as limiting corporate rights. It's that pain point that the Trump administration has used to exert control, by making the case that the old model of pro bono is no longer good for law firms' business. Targeting pro bono work, a longtime goal of the conservative legal movement, has already paid handsome dividends. Nine of the nation's premier law firms — including the mergers and acquisitions heavy hitters Skadden, Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins — signed agreements to provide a collective $940 million in free work. As Mr. Trump summarized the Skadden deal, 'Pro bono Legal Services' are to be provided 'during the Trump administration and beyond, to causes that the President' and the firm 'both support.' Precisely what this free work will look like is an open question. Firm leaders have claimed ultimate authority to, as W. Neil Eggleston of Kirkland put it, 'determine which matters we take on — both pro bono and otherwise.' Mr. Trump has asserted a contrary view, declaring that the agreements effectively create a pro bono war chest to conduct government business, such as negotiating trade deals and supporting the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. The recent executive order called Strengthening and Unleashing America's Law Enforcement pointed to another potential repository of pro-Trump work by instructing the attorney general to promote 'the use of private-sector pro bono assistance' for police officers accused of violating civil rights. These proposals turn the meaning of pro bono on its head by mobilizing free lawyers on behalf of government officials accused of engaging in abuse, rather than vulnerable members of the community who suffer at the government's hand. The law firm agreements harm legitimate pro bono causes in several ways. First, they will absorb firms' capacity for unpaid work, leaving less for people in need. Second, they could introduce significant conflicts of interest between government-sanctioned clients and pro bono matters against the government. Even in the absence of conflicts, it seems safe to assume that the administration will not stand by if firms seek to defend individuals from illegal government action — particularly immigrants detained and deported without due process. This much the president made clear in his call to punish 'the immigration bar and powerful Big Law pro bono practices' accused of vague 'abuses of the legal system' in 'litigating against the federal government.' The president could tie firms up in ancillary disputes, a stalling strategy he successfully deployed in criminal cases against him, or threaten new orders. This threat has a deliberately powerful chilling effect. Already, many firms are declining to take on cases that challenge the administration's policies. That's not a side effect of the crackdown. It was the purpose all along.
New York Times
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Planned Attack on Lady Gaga Concert in Brazil Is Foiled, Police Say
The police in Brazil said on Sunday that they had foiled a plot to detonate explosives at a Lady Gaga concert in Rio de Janeiro, an event that, by some estimates, drew more than two million people. Rio de Janeiro's civil police made the announcement a day after Lady Gaga's free concert on Copacabana Beach. The show proceeded without disruption, and a representative for the pop star later told The Associated Press that she had learned about the threat from news media reports. The police said the group behind the foiled plot had been recruiting would-be participants, including teenagers, to carry out attacks with improvised explosives and Molotov cocktails. It said the group's targets included children, adolescents and members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. The group's leader was arrested in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul for illegal possession of a firearm, and a teenager was arrested for storing child pornography, the police said in the announcement. It was not immediately clear if either person had been charged. Representatives for Lady Gaga, a vocal supporter of L.G.B.T.Q. rights, did not respond to an inquiry on Sunday night. Her show over the weekend was part of Rio de Janeiro's strategy of attracting major acts to play enormous free concerts on Copacabana Beach. Madonna played one last year.
