Category: Nation & World

The Trump administration’s ongoing feud with the American Bar Association has come to a head, as the Education Department threatens to strip the organization of its power to oversee law school programs across the country.

Career staffers at the department recently recommended the ABA lose the federal recognition needed to operate as an accreditor. In a report made public Friday, staffers at the department said the ABA, which accredits nearly 200 law schools, had failed to keep both sides of its house “separate and independent,” undermining its effectiveness as an accreditor.

The association is both an accreditor for law schools and a trade group for legal professionals. As an accreditor, ABA oversees the quality of law school education and determines whether law schools not affiliated with a university can accept federal student aid.

President Donald Trump and other Republican lawmakers have accused the ABA of having a liberal bias and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, pushing a political agenda in law schools. Conservatives have also criticized the ABA, which has accredited law schools since 1952, for having a monopoly on oversight of law school education.

The Education Department declined to comment.

David Barker, assistant secretary for postsecondary education, told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the recommendation, “We have said many times that accreditation, in general, operates like a cartel. When there’s no competition, accreditors feel free to inject their own political preferences, their own ideologies into the work that they do.”

The ABA’s accreditation council chairperson, Melissa Hart, told the Washington Post the council is confident it complies with the Education Department’s requirements for accreditors and federal laws.

“The outcomes produced by Council-accredited law schools are unmatched, and we continue the important work of accrediting law schools as our recognition process proceeds,” she said in a statement.

The Education Department last approved the association to accredit law schools in 2021, a five-year designation that is up for review next month.

The federal government relies on accreditors, little-known but powerful organizations, to deem colleges worthy to participate in the federal student aid program and to review educational quality.

The report comes as the Trump administration seeks to reshape college accreditation, a system it has accused of being captured by liberal politics. The Education Department has proposed regulations to encourage intellectual diversity and increase competition among accreditors. The proposed rule also calls on accreditors and trade associations to be separate to prevent conflicts of interest.

Tensions have simmered between the ABA and the Trump administration on multiple fronts, including in court. Top Justice Department officials have repeatedly taken aim at the legal group.

Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to the ABA last year that the group was biased in favor of Democrats and said the administration would not allow it to help vet judicial nominees.

Also last year, Todd Blanche — then the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, who has since replaced Bondi as attorney general — said that the agency would no longer pay for its employees to travel to the ABA’s events or allow them to even attend such functions.

The ABA has also sued the administration, including in a case challenging Trump’s campaign to crack down on prominent law firms.

Trump issued executive orders last year taking aim at several firms that had hired his perceived enemies or took on cases he disliked. Four of the firms that were targeted sued to fight those orders, and all of them won court orders blocking Trump’s sanctions.

The ABA filed its own lawsuit challenging Trump’s actions, saying it had to act to protect its members “and the rule of law itself.” The case is ongoing, and a judge earlier this year rejected the Trump administration’s effort to have the lawsuit thrown out.

An independent advisory board will meet next month to consider the Education Department’s recommendation and decide the ABA’s fate as an accreditor. A senior Education Department official will then weigh in.

“We look forward to the opportunity to address any misconceptions and clarify the record at our upcoming hearing,” Hart said. “We’re confident the Council will address any concerns the Department may have at that hearing.”

If the advisory board votes that the government should withdraw its recognition of the ABA as an accreditor and that decision is upheld by a senior department official, the ABA can then appeal to Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

If McMahon denies the appeal, law schools affiliated with a university could use their school’s accreditor, while unaffiliated schools will have to find a new accreditor.

A historic wave of departures at the CIA and deep cutbacks at the Office of Personnel Management are swamping the spy agency’s retirement system, leaving former spies with monthslong waits to get their first pension check, according to former intelligence officials and internal agency messages.

While precise numbers are classified, current and former officials say the pace of retirements and resignations from the CIA outstrips anything in recent memory. They are being fueled in part by President Donald Trump’s push to shrink the federal government, including deferred resignations offered to workers last year.

The CIA, in a recent note to alumni, acknowledged the problem and pleaded for patience.

“The Retirement Branch is currently processing an unprecedented number of retirement cases, and is working diligently around the clock to expedite these cases,” the note said. “We appreciate your understanding and patience as we navigate this challenging period. Rest assured that our team is committed to processing your annuity payments as efficiently as possible.”

It gave retirees two toll-free numbers to call if more than six months had passed since they’d received their final paycheck.

One former official said she recently spoke to a colleague who retired in March and had just received their first, partial retirement check.

“The question is how do you pay for your mortgage, and how do you pay for your kids’ college,” the former official said.

As CIA workers prepare to retire, they are eligible to take a one-week, in-house seminar called “Horizons” that is meant to help them navigate life outside the spy agency’s cloistered halls — like how to prepare a job-hunting resumé that doesn’t disclose classified information.

Lately, those in the seminar are being told they may not see their first full retirement check for up to nine months, or longer, after they depart the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va.

The retirement crush mirrors trends across the federal government, where, data show, there are unprecedented numbers of people leaving, creating lengthy delays in retirees receiving their benefits. Last year, there were more than 330,000 departures, most of which were voluntary.

The situation is particularly poignant at the CIA, where officers often serve in danger zones, rarely receive public recognition and share a culture of not complaining publicly outside the spy agency’s walls.

CIA officers who until recently recruited agents, prepared classified reports on world crises or developed high-tech espionage tools are feeling the squeeze, said the former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal CIA dynamics.

“If military retirees were told they had to wait a year or more for earned pension benefits, Washington would be apoplectic. Intelligence officers serve in the shadows, and their discretion should not become a shield for institutional failure,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the issue.

“If agency and congressional leaders were not aware of this problem before, they are now,” he said.

In response to the crunch, the CIA has surged personnel to the Retirement Branch, including people with experience with that work.

“CIA is committed to ensuring that retired officers who dedicated their careers to our mission receive their hard-earned benefits as quickly as possible,” a CIA spokesperson said in response to questions from the Post.

“Under Director [John] Ratcliffe, CIA is focused on returning the Agency to its mission of recruiting spies, and recently hired our largest class of operations officers in two decades,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The size of the CIA’s workforce and the number of employees who have left since the start of Trump’s second term are classified. Overall, the CIA workforce was believed to be about 22,000 in early 2025, U.S. officials said. Many hundreds of people — perhaps more than 1,000 — have since left, one of the former officials estimated.

Some former officials describe the agency’s downsizing as the largest since the CIA was significantly cut back in the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

In May 2025, the Trump administration told Congress it planned to reduce the CIA workforce by 1,200 over several years, mostly through attrition and reduced hiring. Agency workers were among the tens of thousands of federal employees who took a deferred resignation package the Trump administration offered to shrink the government’s ranks. Others simply decided it was time to leave.

Administrators responsible for processing retirement requests are among those who have left, worsening the crunch, said two former intelligence officials.

“The men and women of the CIA protect our country and make Americans safer every day, often without any acknowledgment or recognition,” said Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The least our government can do is ensure they receive the benefits they deserve when they decide to leave.”

“Again and again, this administration has mistreated our public servants, including those in the CIA. And whether it’s incompetence or disrespect that is creating the delay, the administration needs to figure out how to fix it,” Warner said.

Some CIA officers have pulled back their retirement requests because they can’t afford to go long periods without being paid, one of the former officials said. Others are falling back on savings or taking out second mortgages to cover the gap.

“Start looking now, hoard cash, plan for a longer period of time” before receiving retirement pay, said a retired CIA official who left last fall. “More thoughtfully and aggressively pursue jobs before you leave.”

The official said it took four to five months before he was paid for unused annual leave — a sum that can be substantial for some retirees — and another month after that before he saw his first retirement check.

The CIA has a tradition of treating its retirees well, former officials said. Among the reasons: Angry ex-employees with heads full of secrets are a target for adversary intelligence services. “We are creating a massive [counterintelligence] risk,” said the official who left last fall.

Like other federal officials, former CIA officers are banned from taking certain jobs for a set period after retirement, such as lobbying on issues they handled while in government or working for foreign governments.

CIA retirement packages are initially handled within the agency, which can take several months. Retirees are given an estimate of what their benefits will be.

Many factors can complicate the process. Departing officials may have served undercover, using a different identity; spent time in the U.S. military or at another intelligence agency; or have a spouse who also worked at the CIA.

Once completed, the packages are transmitted to the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources agency. Before the cases are finalized, OPM issues interim payments to retirees that are typically 60 to 80% of their eventual checks. The government eventually makes up the difference.

John Hatton, staff vice president of policy and programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said there is no legal recourse for retirees who want to get their benefits sooner, and the government will not owe interest for delayed payments.

“It’s a tough situation,” he said.

The OPM’s workforce declined by a third, from just over 3,000 in fiscal year 2024 to 1,980 in fiscal 2026, according to the agency’s data. Though the OPM expanded the main office responsible for retirement services to handle the wave of departures, the team still shrank by 16%, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

OPM data show it is taking longer on average for the agency to process retirement claims, from 79 days in October 2025 to 109 days in July.

HOUSTON — For years, travelers passing through Texas’ two biggest airports have had access to small washing stations for a ritual called wudu, in which Muslims clean their hands, arms, head and feet before the five daily prayers.

Such facilities have become more common in states with the largest Muslim populations, including Texas, where on Wednesday travelers and others popped in and out of washing stations at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The tiled wudu room sits along an airport hall just past a vending machine, with a small sign showing a draped person kneeling.

Public wudu stations are also open at places including the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan, LaGuardia Airport in New York, and O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.

Now, amid rising attacks on Muslims by Republican elected officials, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is making the stations a target. He sent a letter Friday to the heads of the Houston airport and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport that said facilities aimed at serving one religious group are discriminatory against everyone else.

Abbott said he has asked the U.S. Department of Transportation to investigate both airports and warned that his office is “reviewing all grants to any local governmental entities involved in these schemes.”

Later that day, DFW announced it had scrapped plans to add additional washing stations in men’s and women’s restrooms that are available to passersby outside the security perimeter.

Airport spokesman Heath Montgomery wrote in an email that officials “determined the originally anticipated benefit may not be achieved” if the stations were built.

Asked if the decision was a response to Abbott’s letter, Montgomery said it was made before the letter was issued, but that airport officials “were aware of his and other public officials’ emerging concerns.”

Muslim leaders and experts in religious liberties rejected Abbott’s claim that the facilities would discriminate against non-Muslims. Several said opposition to the washing stations is the latest example of GOP leaders, perhaps most visibly in Texas, railing against Islam.

“If there is one thing all religious liberty scholars and advocates across the ideological spectrum have agreed on, it is that the Free Exercise Clause forbids government discrimination because of religion,” Steven T. Collis, a University of Texas at Austin law professor, said in an email. “Although Gov. Abbott’s letter characterized what the airports were providing as discriminating in favor of Muslims, this newest saga is actually part of a much broader pattern of state officials targeting Muslims and trying to make Texas an inhospitable place for them.”

Asma Uddin, a constitutional law scholar who writes about Islam in America, said the Supreme Court has long ruled that neutrality “does not mean that every religion gets treated exactly equally; it means the government cannot coerce, endorse, or exclude based on religious identity.”

The experts noted a range of public services targeted to specific groups, from kosher food served at airports to special low-sensory hours at museums or parks for autistic people. The public-private Texas waterpark chain Hawaiian Falls has hosted events for Christians including “Modesty Matters” and mass baptisms. President Donald Trump this summer hosted a massive evangelical Christian worship event on the National Mall in D.C.

“We can choose to be coy about it and pretend like there are actually sophisticated ideas or sincere concerns here about discrimination, religious encroachment, public safety or spending,” said Imam Omar Suleiman, who leads the think tank Yaqeen Institute outside Dallas. “Or we can embrace the fact that bigotry toward Muslims is alive and well and being fanned, funded and fueled to increase, in Texas and across the country. And people like Governor Abbott are at the center of that phenomenon.”

Abbott’s office declined to comment Wednesday, referring The Washington Post to social media posts in which he repeated his claim that the washing stations were religious discrimination.

The office also noted a Sunday interview on Fox News in which Abbott was asked why he opposes the stations but supports a new state law mandating the posting of a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

Abbott called the two things “apples and oranges.” The biblical commandments, he said, were part of Texas history all the way up until “who we are today,” while “other faiths” don’t have “the same applications over the course of history of the state of Texas and hence don’t need to be recognized.”

Suleiman, who uses airport wudu stations when he’s traveling, called the washing facilities an important part of making Muslims comfortable and described Abbott’s letter as part of a movement looking to curtail that group’s religious freedoms.

“Putting one’s foot in the nasty sink of a public restroom — often trying to carefully ensure that no part of the body touches some yucky bathroom surface while balancing on one leg — isn’t really something Muslims are thrilled to be doing,” he said.

There are about 4.6 million Muslims in the United States and about 313,000 in Texas, according to the World Population Review. Muslims have become more visible in American public life in recent years, with milestones including the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) in New York and the Michigan Democratic primary win of Abdul El-Sayed, who would become the nation’s first Muslim U.S. senator if he defeats his Republican opponent this fall.

At the same time, anti-Muslim sentiment has become more public and more pointed.

“The blatant and mainstreaming of Islamophobia is worse than after [the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks],” said Haris Tarin, vice president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, an advocacy group that focuses on policies of interest to U.S. Muslims.

Trump, who has declined to condemn anti-Islam comments from members of his party, last week described Democratic candidates in the midterm elections as “jihadists.” Earlier this month, Rep. Nancy Mace (R, South Carolina) said “every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse.”

The growth of Muslim communities in Texas is impossible to miss.

The Houston area is now home to Texas’s largest Muslim community, with more than 200 mosques and Islamic centers. The Muslim population in the Dallas-Fort Worth area doubled in a decade, and Muslim state lawmakers represent suburban districts in both the Dallas and Houston metro areas.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire released a statement in response to Abbott’s letter saying 22 percent of all international travelers departing from Terminal D — where the wudu station is — are flying on airlines based in Muslim-majority countries. “IAH is a global gateway,” Whitmire wrote. “The ablution room was created in response to passenger requests and serves a practical need.”

Abbott, who is running for reelection, and Attorney General Ken Paxton — a Trump ally who is waging a competitive race for the Senate — have both embraced Islamophobic rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Last year, Abbott designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, as a foreign terrorist group. He and Paxton fought to revoke the group’s nonprofit status, a move that CAIR has challenged in court.

Abbott has also led GOP efforts to block a residential development planned around a large mosque complex in the Dallas area.

Texas officials denied Islamic schools access to the state voucher program until a judge ordered them not to. At the Texas GOP convention in Houston in June, Republicans added to their platform a provision banning “sharia,” or Islamic law, even though sharia law does not apply under U.S. civil law.

At the airport in Houston on Wednesday, people came in and out of the wudu rooms ahead of Dhuhr, the midday prayers. A man and woman wearing airport employee tags — she also wore a blue head scarf — slipped into their respective rooms shortly before 1:30 p.m. A mother and her teenage son, traveling home to Toronto after visiting family, said ablution stations are common in Canada.

Ubaid Mian, who manages several airport restaurants, said he uses the prayer and wudu rooms multiple times each day.

“The airport is a place where everybody travels. Diversity should be appreciated,” he said, shaking his head at the controversy. Texas “has so many people here who have so many different beliefs. There’s no harm in it. It should be respected.”

Mian said he would be back at the wudu room to prepare for evening prayer before heading home.

It was another sizzling summer day in late July, with temperatures nearing 100 degrees, when one of the main roads cutting through Greenville, Texas, finally just gave up.

The stretch of U.S. Highway 69 kept expanding in the extreme heat until it exploded, creating a sharp, two-foot-tall ramp where it broke at the pavement joint. Most of the traffic in this Dallas exurb drove around it.

But then a black pickup hit the ramp going about 30 mph, sending the truck airborne, Dukes of Hazzard-style, flying several feet in the air and slamming down on its front tires.

“Oh, my God!” an onlooker said, as the scene was being recorded. “That’s crazy!”

It was a dramatic example of what has been playing out repeatedly this summer along the nation’s roadways, railroad tracks and bridges: Intense heat is causing surfaces to expand to the point that they break.

The failures illustrate how the nation’s transportation networks, built for a different era, increasingly struggle to handle hotter modern-day summers. And this summer has been brutal. July, federal scientists have said, was the single hottest month on record in the contiguous United States.

Heat waves melt asphalt into goo. Train tracks twist. Overhead power lines sag. Concrete snaps into pieces in what are known as “blowups” — the technical term for what the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation defines as “a heave in a concrete or brick pavement caused by pavement expansion from excessive heat.”

The entire state of Wisconsin was cautioned earlier this summer to “watch for pavement buckles.” A blowup last month closed part of Interstate 97 near Severna Park, Maryland, clogging traffic for a quick repair and then for three straight nights. Interstate 49 in Shreveport, Louisiana, was also shut for hours while crews raced to deal with a blowup. After a bike path next to U.S. 36 buckled, officials in Boulder County, Colorado, warned residents to prepare for more.

“You start seeing them in early summer, and then they surge as the heat builds,” said David North, a district engineer with Louisiana’s transportation department.

Blowups, he said, are “unpredictable and instant.”

In New Jersey, a vertical-lift bridge over the Point Pleasant Canal has been forced to close to boat traffic four different times this summer — on June 11, June 30, July 14 and Aug. 7 — because unrelenting heat kept cooking bridge components and preventing the span from moving.

The bridge, which opened in 1972, was built for a different climate.

State officials now “are working with our consultants to see if there can be any modifications made to mitigate these issues,” Steve Schapiro of the New Jersey Department of Transportation said in a statement.

In Wisconsin, the rate of pavement buckling had been increasing over the last decade, with higher temperatures partly to blame, according to a 2022 state report.

The Federal Highway Administration in 2023 warned against relying on historical climate records when designing new roads and suggested looking instead to predictive climate models.

“I do think there is a recognition that [road] specifications and standards are static, but weather patterns are changing,” said Shane Underwood, an engineering professor at North Carolina State University and president of the Academy of Pavement Science and Engineering.

He was the lead author on a 2017 paper that warned that failing to change methods “significantly threatens” the nation’s roads.

Underwood said he’s seen some progress. He pointed to an online tool developed by federal officials that uses site-specific climate data to help engineers select the correct blend of binders for asphalt pavement. Roads in Arizona, for example, need to be stiffer than those in Minnesota to survive the high temperatures.

The regional recipes for new roads have changed over the years, like how the U.S. Agriculture Department updated its plant hardiness zone map to account for warm-weather plants surviving farther north these days.

Road engineers also are experimenting with other ways to protect the nation’s infrastructure.

“It’s really taken off in the last 10 to 20 years,” said Kim Roddis, professor emerita of civil and environmental engineering at George Washington University.

Some asphalt roads — which can soften like chocolate chip cookies — are now dusted with plastic polymers for better rigidity, Roddis said.

Several cities have tested out what is essentially white asphalt, to reflect more heat. San Antonio, Phoenix and Los Angeles have launched “cool pavement” pilot programs.

New Jersey has stopped building concrete roads with asphalt on top due to hotter temperatures, calling it an outdated design, Schapiro said. Next year, it plans to repair concrete pavement slabs along 11 miles of Interstate 287, in part to get ahead of potential future blowups caused by the heat.

Railroads are struggling with hotter days, too.

Metal tracks can bend in extreme summer heat, creating what’s known as a “sun kink” as rails exert force against the ties. That can cause trains to derail.

Train operators have responded by stepping up rail inspections and going slower during heat waves.

Washington’s Metro uses “heat ride” inspections to look for rails reaching 135 degrees, the trigger for speed restrictions. Amtrak runs into the problem so often that it offers an explainer page on its website so customers understand why trains might run slower during heat waves.

In February, a trade group for public transit agencies issued new guidelines “to improve its resilience to climate hazards,” with ideas such as replacing wood ties with concrete ones.

Union Pacific, one of the nation’s largest freight railroads, said this summer it was spraying white paint on its rail network in some places to cool the metal, borrowing a page from European railroads.

In Greenville, that flying pickup truck was not the first time extreme summer heat caused problems on U.S. Highway 69.

Just three weeks earlier and 10 miles away, a different section of the highway also succumbed to the heat when the asphalt pavement softened and vehicles pulled up the roadway in chunks.

It was a mess. But it was no match for what was to come.

The viral video of the pavement blowup was the talk of the town, said Greenville spokesman Daniel Starks.

“I was shocked,” he said. “You don’t ever want your road buckling — and definitely not like that.”