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  • Is AI replacing tech workers or providing an excuse for job cuts?

    Is AI replacing tech workers or providing an excuse for job cuts?

    SAN FRANCISCO — Meta, Coinbase, and Block have each laid off at least 10% of their employees in recent months and partly blamed artificial intelligence. About 13,000 jobs were eliminated among the three companies.

    But the cuts also came after big changes and growing questions about their businesses. Meta backed away from its big bet on the so-called metaverse, which cost the company about $80 billion. Coinbase’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, said its business remained volatile and there was “a down market” for cryptocurrency. And Block’s top executive, Jack Dorsey, acknowledged that the company had grown too much during the pandemic, tripling its workforce from 2019 to 2022.

    Layoffs in the tech industry are accelerating, whatever the motivations of executives. So far this year, more than 150 technology companies have cut a total of at least 115,000 employees, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the industry.

    That drip-drip of layoffs has become a steady stream in recent weeks. Companies slashing their staffs have run the gamut from software providers Atlassian and Autodesk, to social networking apps Pinterest and LinkedIn, to financial technology companies Intuit and PayPal.

    But in more than a few cases, the recent layoffs have coincided with other business issues. Wall Street loves an AI story right now. That, analysts and economists say, has offered a smoke screen for companies looking to beef up profits or patch over old mistakes.

    Cutting jobs to make way for AI is “a nice excuse, but some of these aren’t necessarily the best, most well-run companies,” said Mark Mahaney, an analyst at investment bank Evercore. “They may have overhired, or they may be losing market share. There may be other issues.”

    When Snap’s CEO, Evan Spiegel, laid off 1,000 people in April, for example, he said the company needed to turn a profit, which it has done in only three quarters since going public in 2017. But he also said AI was improving efficiency at the company, with “small squads leveraging AI tools to drive meaningful progress across several important initiatives.”

    Meta’s turn toward AI was timed with a big shift away from its giant metaverse project. During the pandemic, the company hired thousands of people to work on the effort, saying it would add 10,000 employees in the European Union. From 2019 to 2022, Meta doubled in size to about 87,000 employees.

    Since then, Meta has steadily trimmed from its augmented and virtual reality unit as it has funneled money into AI. In April, Meta said it would spend $125 billion to $145 billion this year on capital expenditures like data centers, more than double its spending last year. Last month, Meta laid off 8,000 people, or 10% of its workforce, even though its most recent quarterly profit was nearly $27 billion.

    “All these cuts are happening, and there are record profits,” said Ava Sazanami, who worked for Meta from 2022 to 2025. AI “is actually not costing any less money,” she added. “It is an excuse to some extent.”

    Last month, Meta also reassigned 7,000 employees to work on AI tools and apps. The company has been pushing its workers to adopt AI, factoring their use of the technology into performance reviews and tracking employees’ computers to gather training data for its own AI.

    “We’re seeing more and more examples where one or two people are building something in a week that would have previously taken dozens of people months,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, said during a call with investors in April.

    Meta said its layoffs, reassignments, and other personnel changes varied by team. Coinbase and Snap declined to comment. Block did not respond to requests for comment.

    Many other companies have said they are cutting jobs to help free up money for AI projects. Intuit laid off about 3,000 people last month so it could devote more resources to its “big bets,” including expanding its “AI-native platform,” Sasan Goodarzi, its CEO, said in a memo to employees.

    Cisco’s CEO, Chuck Robbins, said the company would invest “in our employees’ use of AI across the company” as it cut 4,000 employees last month. And Microsoft offered early retirement in April to roughly 7% of its employees in the United States, or thousands of people, as it planned to spend about $190 billion this year on capital expenditures like data centers.

    Perhaps the most blunt explanation for job cuts has come from Cloudflare’s CEO, Matthew Prince. When the company, which provides various internet services, laid off 1,100 people last month, he said in a memo to employees that the cuts were “not a cost-cutting exercise or an assessment of individuals’ performance.”

    Prince said his company was restructuring for “the agentic AI era,” referring to digital assistants that can do tasks by themselves. In an opinion essay in the Wall Street Journal, he said the technology would replace workers he called “measurers” — people with jobs in sectors such as internal audit, compliance, finance, marketing and operations — and middle managers.

    Intuit, Cisco, Microsoft, and Cloudflare declined to comment.

    The rest of the economy has not yet seen sweeping job cuts because of AI, said Daniel Keum, an associate professor of management at Columbia Business School.

    “There are certain segments of the labor market where we’re starting to see real impact,” like “tech-concentrated sectors for juniors and new graduates,” Keum said. “If you’re a junior who graduated in the past two years — or, even worse, if you graduated this year — then hiring is getting cut.”

    But relief for tech workers doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, said last year that the company expected to operate with fewer corporate employees in the coming years “as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.” Amazon laid off 14,000 corporate employees in October and 16,000 more in January, saying those cuts were to reduce bureaucracy.

    For college graduates with computer science degrees just entering the workforce, getting a job could be a struggle. In addition to the layoffs, Meta said it would close 6,000 roles it had planned to fill. Snap said it would close 300 open roles. Although AI companies are still hiring, the technology has led some start-ups to hire many fewer people.

    “AI is causing this isolated recession for college graduates now,” Keum said. “Is that going to slow down? My answer is no. It’s going to accelerate.”

    This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

  • Letters to the Editor | June 14, 2026

    Letters to the Editor | June 14, 2026

    History untold

    It is with great sadness that I read the article about a proposal to end Black history education in Cherry Hill. As a retired history teacher, principal, and superintendent of schools with fond memories of my experience in Cherry Hill, I cannot help but remember the days when we were all Americans, regardless of our racial or religious identity.

    We took it for granted that Black history was an integral part of American history.

    We taught slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement as part of, and integral to, American history. We never had sufficient resources to satisfy all the expectations our communities had of us.

    If any of our racial (or religious) groups required further education, it came from the family, from the places of worship, or from some other community effort. It did not come from public education.

    To teach separately breeds separation. To breed separation is to secure separation.

    That was never our goal.

    Bernard D. Shapiro, Voorhees

    Power over people

    I am shocked and angered to find out about Councilmember Cindy Bass’ conduct in Philly’s 22nd Ward elections. There have been reports of misinformation around the time of the meeting, the bumbling of the vote, and the flap around the sign-in sheet. The most upsetting part of this story is the quote, “That’s democracy.” It’s as if our elected officials are going to just hoard power in the face of practicing the will of the people. It’s especially harrowing to see this behavior from a vice chair of the Philadelphia Democratic Party.

    Not only does the party need wholesale leadership change, but there has to be an overhaul of the entire system. Elected officials should not be able to serve as committeepeople or ward leaders. This is a clear conflict of interest. What do you do if you’re unhappy with your ward leader … and your ward leader is the mayor? Also, elected officials have full-time jobs they should be focusing on, not this volunteer role. One elected role should be enough. If we’re not practicing transparency and inclusion in a volunteer role at the street level of city politics, how is the rest of our democracy going to work?

    Jayson Massey, Philadelphia

    . . .

    As a former ward leader, I find it disheartening to learn that Cindy Bass acted like a mini-monarch on Monday in denying a fair ward election. The 27th Ward in West Philly faced a similar despotic challenge back 56 years ago — the more things change, the more they stay the same. Our contested ward leader election on Monday was fairly settled by secret ballot. Welcome to 21st-century democracy.

    Mary L. Goldman, Philadelphia

    Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.

  • Horoscopes: Sunday, June 14, 2026

    ARIES (March 21-April 19). New moon — new rules for love. You’ve been giving a surface-level tolerance to something that you know, on a deeper level, is not working for you. You now have the courage to admit this and move toward a change.

    TAURUS (April 20-May 20). New moon — new investment opportunity. You’ve often wondered what would happen if you did a bit more research or took a smidge more risk. The fates will favor this flavor of boldness in your financial sector.

    GEMINI (May 21-June 21). New moon — new vocabulary. It’s a matter of being a bit more precise when you talk about what you want, using language that stays positive and keeps you excited about the possibilities. Whether directed inwardly or to others, these tweaks will create manifestation magic.

    CANCER (June 22-July 22). New moon — new boundaries. You’ve spent enough time carrying emotional weight that doesn’t belong to you. This lunar reset helps you recognize where care ends and overextension begins. Protecting your peace will strengthen your closest relationships.

    LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). New moon — new audience. The people around you are ready to see another side of your talent, humor and leadership. Instead of trying to impress everyone, you’ll focus on connecting deeply with the right few.

    VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). New moon — new systems. A small adjustment to your daily habits creates far more ease than expected. You don’t need a dramatic overhaul to improve your life. Tiny acts of organization and consistency quietly open the door to freedom.

    LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). New moon — new perspective on romance. Forget about perfection. Love can be messy because it’s a creative process, and creativity is inherently messy. The connections worth keeping will allow room for honesty, individuality and change.

    SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). New moon — new emotional territory. You’re ready to stop circling the same private questions and move toward deeper trust in yourself. A revealing insight helps you release an old fear that has been unconsciously influencing your choices.

    SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). New moon — new route forward. Restlessness has been trying to tell you something useful. You’re ready for experiences that stretch your thinking and reconnect you to curiosity. Say yes to invitations, conversations and opportunities that widen your world.

    CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). New moon — new standards. You are becoming more selective about where your time, energy and loyalty go. This is not coldness. It’s wisdom earned through experience. What once felt obligatory may now feel negotiable, freeing you to focus more intentionally.

    AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). New moon — new experiment. Your unconventional instincts are leading somewhere interesting, even if the path looks odd from the outside. Follow your curiosity without needing immediate validation. The people who understand your vision will arrive once you begin building it.

    PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). New moon — new inner compass. You’ve absorbed enough outside noise lately to lose touch with your own timing and instincts. Quiet moments restore clarity now. Listen carefully to what brings relief, softness and a sense of emotional expansion.

    TODAY’S BIRTHDAY (June 14). It’s your Year of the Lyre. Just as Orpheus charmed the animals, trees and rivers with his magical stringed instrument, you will use your talents to soothe, heal, charm, persuade and create. You quite naturally evolve to a level of mastery few can claim. More highlights: A flirtation grows roots. You move on exclusive information, and it pays. Home is a sanctuary for brilliant people and unforgettable nights. Pisces and Libra adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 18, 4, 27, 10 and 31.

  • Dear Abby | A service dog is a critical resource for handler

    DEAR ABBY: Would you please do a much-needed public service for those of us who have a service dog? Service dogs are trained to perform specific tasks for their handlers. Tasks can include smelling dangerously high or low glucose levels, smelling mood swings, anxiety and depression, smelling an impending seizure and many other tasks.

    Service dogs are not family pets. Here in New Mexico and in many other states, it is a crime to misrepresent a dog as one. A service dog in training has the same access rights as one that’s fully trained. The dog cannot be denied access. Hotels that charge extra for pets cannot charge extra for a service dog. Airlines must allow service dogs to fly free of charge. They cannot be denied access to any public facility.

    The handler must be in control of the animal at all times. Service dogs that bark excessively must be taken out of the facility. A single “woof” is not excessive barking. Pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act, only two questions are allowed: “Is that a service dog?” and “What task is the dog trained to perform?”

    Questions about the handler’s disability or need for a service dog are not allowed. My dog in training is learning how to alert me to specific medical conditions and respond to assist me. Many people are unaware of proper behavior around service dogs. Never distract, talk to or pet the service dog. Do not make eye contact with it either. Distracting my dog could cause a serious problem for me.

    — AWARENESS ADVOCATE

    DEAR ADVOCATE: Thank you for your instructive letter about service dog responsibilities and etiquette. I hope it will prove useful to my readers because there appears to be some confusion about this subject, due to so many dog owners cheating the system by representing their pets as service animals.

    ** ** **

    DEAR ABBY: My significant other of 16 years is fighting cancer. I am proud of his determination. I recently had an EKG, and my results weren’t great. When I told him, he turned it right around to his own issues. Am I selfish for being upset about this? I have catered to him through it all, driven him to his appointments and waited on him hand and foot. I doubt you’ll answer this post, but I’m submitting it anyway.

    — FRUSTRATED IN MAINE

    DEAR FRUSTRATED: Oh, ye of little faith! No, you are not selfish. You are rightfully concerned about your own health as well as your significant other’s and realize how centered on himself he is. What, if anything, you decide to do about this is up to you. But if you need someone to watch your back and are feeling a breeze back there, you might want to depend less on him. Sit down with him, have a serious chat and map out a strategy that’s beneficial to you both.

  • Olympic gold medal-Stanley Cup double is at stake for Americans in the final

    Ken Morrow liked to consider himself the answer of a trivia question as the only hockey player who won an Olympic gold medal and hoisted the Stanley Cup in the same year. He was part of the 1980 U.S. “Miracle on Ice” team and then joined the New York Islanders for their first of four titles in a row.

    A half-dozen Canadians have done it since the NHL started sending players to the Olympics, but at this moment, more Americans have walked on the moon than accomplished what Morrow did. He is the only one.

    That will soon change, no matter how the Cup final ends. After the U.S. won gold at the Olympics for the first time in 46 years, Carolina’s Jaccob Slavin is one victory away from joining Morrow, unless Vegas wins Games 6 and 7 to put Jack Eichel and Noah Hanifin in that exclusive club.

    “I’ve had my 46 years,” Morrow told The Associated Press by phone Friday. “I’m always one that likes to see new people win the Cup, guys get a chance to do something that they’ll remember the rest of their lives. And for whoever does it this year, yes, I think it’s great.”

    Morrow won the Stanley Cup four times in a row as part of that Islanders dynasty. Eichel is the only U.S. player in the final with a Cup ring, and he had a major part in the Golden Knights’ championship run in 2023.

    After helping the U.S. win gold in Milan in February, Eichel says there are similarities and differences to those journeys.

    “One’s nine, 10 months; one’s two weeks,” Eichel said. “One of them is winner-take-all of just one game at a time. These are seven-game series, so it’s different in that sense. I think from an emotional standpoint and a mentality, I think there’s a lot of similarities: just the investment in winning and the feeling in the room and everything that comes with it.”

    The single-elimination element is a good way of thinking of playoff hockey, Eichel said, though Hanifin pointed out that it is drastically different preparing for a game at a time at the Olympics than enduring the ups and downs of a postseason.

    “When you’re playing seven-game series, you can kind of build over time and if you hit a little bit of a setback or some adversity, you can kind of learn from it and build and come back better,” Hanifin said. “Whereas Olympics, when you get into those medal rounds, it’s a one-and-done situation, so it’s different in that regard.”

    If the Hurricanes win, it would be some measure of retribution for Seth Jarvis, who played for Canada in the final and lost to the U.S. in overtime on Jack Hughes’ winning goal.

    When Carolina had him, Slavin and bronze medalist Sebastian Aho pose for a photo with their medals in their Olympic jerseys, Jarvis in a behind-the-scenes video quipped about reliving his nightmares and brought up the stuffed animal versions of an Olympic mascot that IOC officials gave to a group of players after losing the biggest game of their lives.

    Before the start of the final, Jarvis acknowledged the events are two separate things.

    “Obviously, losing in the gold medal is going to suck forever,” Jarvis said. “But now I get a chance to be a winner and win something big here with a group of guys that I’ve been grinding with for five years, been through the ups and downs of it and people that I just really care about.”

    Two more losses would put Jarvis back in the same spot, albeit without another stuffie. One more defeat by the Golden Knights would mean losing twice in a final this year for Mitch Marner, Shea Theodore and Mark Stone.

    Before the series began, Slavin was working hard to keep his brain from drifting to the possibility.

    “It crosses my mind,” Slavin said. “But we’ve got to go out and do a job first, so not trying to give it too much thought.”

    In the nearly five decades since Morrow completed the Olympic gold-Stanley Cup double, the entire situation has changed. The NHL has participated in the Olympics six times since 1998, so players are already professionals.

    Morrow at age 23 went less than a week and a half between beating the Soviet Union in the “Miracle on Ice” in Lake Placid, New York, visiting the White House, having his first practice with the Islanders and making his NHL debut.

    “I was trying to earn a living,” Morrow said. “I had to kind of really change focus quickly into trying to earn a job with the New York Islanders, and it wasn’t a sure thing for me when I first came to them right after the Olympics. Am I going to be able to play in the league? Those were questions that I was facing in trying to make a living. And these guys certainly didn’t have that facing them after the Olympics.”

    They just had to get back to doing their job, which was a challenge in itself. Vegas and Carolina each finished atop its division and got through three rounds of the playoffs.

    That gave Eichel, Hanifin and Slavin an opportunity to join Morrow, Steve Yzerman and Brendan Shanahan from Detroit in 2002, Jonathan Toews, Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith from Chicago 2010, and Drew Doughty from Los Angeles in 2014 in the history books.

    “For myself, it’s been a pretty surreal year: Winning gold was awesome, and then having the chance to play for a Stanley Cup is awesome,” Slavin said. “I take it as a blessing and just thankful for it.”

  • Gene Shalit, film critic bristling with hair and puns, dies at 100

    Gene Shalit, the Muppet look-alike who reviewed movies and other cultural arts with a whimsical bent and a shtick for puns as the resident wit on NBC’s Today show for four decades, one of the longest tenures on an American television program, died Friday at 100.

    NBC reported the death, citing a family statement. No further details were immediately available.

    For millions of Americans tuned in to the Today potpourri of news, interviews, entertainment, and weather, a dose of literate, wacky commentary from Mr. Shalit’s “Critic’s Corner,” often with cackles of appreciation for his own incorrigibility, was as much a part of the morning as a cup of coffee.

    With his handlebar mustache, bushy hair, black-rimmed glasses, and extravagant bow ties, he was one of the nation’s most recognizable characters, a composite caricature of Groucho Marx, William Howard Taft, and a Jim Henson puppet. His punchy, wry wit may have borrowed from Woody Allen and Mark Twain, but it played well in Peoria.

    “Ishtar ish tarrible!” Mr. Shalit concluded in a review of Elaine May’s 1987 comedy about two lounge singers looking for work in Morocco and stumbling into Cold War machinations.

    After seeing The Longest Yard, a 1974 flick in which Burt Reynolds organizes a prison football team, he suggested: “This movie should be penalized half the distance to the goal — twice.”

    And joining a chorus of critics panning Hudson Hawk, a 1991 Bruce Willis world-domination vehicle, he warned: “This movie is awful, spelled o-f-f-a-l.”

    His most controversial criticism came in a negative review of Brokeback Mountain, the widely acclaimed 2005 Ang Lee film depicting the romantic and sexual relationship between two men in the American West. Shalit called Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Jack Twist, a “sexual predator” who “tracks Ennis (Heath Ledger) down and coaxes him into sporadic trysts.”

    The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, now known as GLAAD, accused Mr. Shalit of promoting anti-gay prejudice and demanded an apology. Mr. Shalit, the father of six children, including a gay son, replied with a letter expressing regret, acknowledging that he had “angered, agitated and hurt many people,” and saying that he had had “no intention of casting aspersions on anyone in the gay community or the gay community itself.”

    Besides reviewing movies, books, plays, and other cultural offerings, Mr. Shalit interviewed authors and entertainers, including Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro, and Sophia Loren. He did cameos of himself in several movies and television shows, and was a familiar figure on television game and talk shows and charity fundraisers.

    On Today, a program sensitive to ratings and notable for personnel changes, Mr. Shalit was the durable mainstay in a cast that over the years included Barbara Walters, Jim Hartz, Tom Brokaw, John Chancellor, Hugh Downs, Joe Garagiola, Deborah Norville, Jane Pauley, Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel, Al Roker, Willard Scott, Matt Lauer, and Ann Curry.

    Mr. Shalit joined Today in 1968 as a book reviewer, became a regular in 1970, and was the culture critic from 1973 until he retired in 2010.

    His producer, Guy Ludwig, reflecting on Mr. Shalit’s long career in 2010, recalled seeing Mr. Shalit, late in his career, entering a theater for a screening with a look of glee on his face.

    “My God, how could you?” he said. “You’ve seen 2 million movies.”

    “Yeah,” Mr. Shalit replied, “but I’ve never seen this one!”

    Eugene Theodore Shalit was born in New York City on March 25, 1926, to Latvian immigrants, Isadore and Anna (Michelovich) Shalit. He grew up in Newark and Morristown, N.J., where his father owned a drugstore. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1949.

    Arriving in New York City in 1951, he was hired by a press agent to attend stage shows at the Paramount and laugh at the comics for $5 a day. “They weren’t funny,” he recalled in a 2012 interview for this obituary. “I couldn’t laugh. One other person was laughing. He got $5 too.” Mr. Shalit quit after one day.

    He next landed in the publicity department of Look magazine, doing promotionals with “two other kids” — Lawrence K. Grossman, who became president of NBC, and Marvin Josephson, who founded the talent agency International Creative Management.

    Mr. Shalit was married to Nancy Lewis from 1951 until her death in 1978, and they had six children: Peter, Willa, Emily, Amanda, Nevin, and Andrew. Emily died in 2012. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

    In the 1950s and early ’60s, Mr. Shalit wrote columns and culture reviews for Ladies’ Home Journal and Look magazine. An NBC executive spotted his writing and, worried about how audiences might react to his mustache and hair, hired him in 1967 for network radio work. A year later, NBC took a chance, and he began appearing on the Today show.

    “Once Gene was on, he’d get letters like, ‘Who is this part-time anarchist that you have on television?’” Ludwig recalled. “But what resonated above his unusual appearance was his incredible wit, his remarkable intelligence.”

    From 1970 to 1982, Mr. Shalit produced a daily essay for NBC Radio, “Man About Anything,” which was heard on more stations than any other NBC network feature. He was an occasional panelist on What’s My Line?; hosted programs on the Masterpiece Mystery series; and wrote for TV Guide, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Glamour, McCall’s, the New York Times, and other publications.

    Laughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor, a compendium of works by 200 authors, scriptwriters, and cartoonists selected by Mr. Shalit, was published in 1987. Mr. Shalit loved classical music, played the bassoon, and performed with the Boston Symphony in Boston, at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood near his home in Stockbridge, Mass., and at Lincoln Center in New York. He once conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony in a full concert. He liked to say that in none of these venues was he ever invited back.

    In 1974, Jim Henson’s Muppets appeared on the Today show with Bert gussied up in Shalit-style hair and mustache. Side by side, they looked like fraternal twins. In 1983, he appeared in the Great Muppet Look-Alike Contest in Muppet magazine’s first issue, and in 1996 he contributed a recipe for Movie Crumb Cake for the cookbook In the Kitchen With Miss Piggy.

    Mr. Shalit wrote many letters to the Times about baseball. In 2003, he suggested help for the New York Mets lineup: Sign Rickey Henderson, then in his last season.

    “With his walks, bunts and an occasional extra-base hit, he will get on base far more often than the current troupe,” he wrote. “And when Rickey gets to first, he’ll soon be on second. Sure, he’ll be stranded there, but won’t it be fun to see a Met in scoring position?”

    This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

  • Trump administration says it will restart asylum and immigration processing

    Trump administration says it will restart asylum and immigration processing

    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Friday that it would comply with a court order to restart processing asylum and other immigration applications filed by a broad swath of people who had been left in legal limbo for months.

    The move comes after a federal judge in Rhode Island last week struck down a suite of policies imposed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a major blow to the administration’s expanding efforts to restrict legal immigration. The policies included a global hold on asylum applications filed with the agency and a freeze on immigration applications filed by people from 39 countries, largely in Africa and the Middle East, that are subject to President Donald Trump’s travel ban.

    More than 1 million applications had ground to a halt as a result, preventing many people from obtaining green cards, citizenship, and other immigration benefits. The halt also disrupted people’s ability to legally work and left them waiting indefinitely for decisions on their applications.

    In a court filing Friday, Angelica Alfonso-Royals, deputy director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the agency instructed employees to treat the policies “as if they are no longer in effect.” The agency also said in a memo posted on its website that it “strongly disagrees with the court’s order” but that it would “follow its terms pending possible further judicial review.”

    As of Friday evening, it was unclear whether the agency had restarted making immigration application decisions. Also on Friday, the administration filed an appeal with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to pause the decision.

    The response came after Judge John J. McConnell Jr. rebuked the Trump administration for failing to immediately comply with the order he issued last week.

    The administration argued in a filing Tuesday that the initial order by McConnell, an appointee of President Barack Obama, was preliminary and therefore had not “become effective,” indicating that the department had yet to resume making application decisions.

    In response, McConnell quickly entered his judgment Thursday, ordering the government in blunt terms not to stall any further.

    “There is no excuse this time,” he wrote. “The government has an obligation to immediately comply with this order.”

    McConnell gave the administration until Friday evening to file an update “advising the court as to what specific steps it has taken to comply.”

    Democracy Forward, the legal organization representing the assorted unions and immigration aid groups, had accused the government of playing procedural games to deliberately dodge last week’s court order.

    “The Trump-Vance administration’s cruel immigration policies have been about chaos, confusion, and inefficiency, and we are proud to challenge these unlawful measures and to have secured a court order blocking the policies,” Skye Perryman, the organization’s president, said in a statement. “The federal government cannot shut down lawful immigration pathways or discriminate against people based on where they come from.”

    The policies at the center of the case were issued in November after authorities said an Afghan national had shot two National Guard members in Washington. The man, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, has pleaded not guilty.

    In his searing 135-page opinion last week, McConnell wrote that the policies effectively made it impossible for many people to remain in the country and that they were improperly fueled by “anti-immigration sentiments.”

    This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

  • A Tren de Aragua leader is killed in a joint strike, U.S. and Venezuela say

    A Tren de Aragua leader is killed in a joint strike, U.S. and Venezuela say

    A joint strike by the United States and Venezuela killed a leader of the Tren de Aragua transnational gang, President Donald Trump and officials in both countries said Friday, dealing a blow to a syndicate the Trump administration has blamed for an influx of violent crime and illicit drugs.

    The strike took place this past week alongside Venezuelan security forces, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, without providing a precise date. He said it targeted a compound housing Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, a founder of Tren de Aragua.

    A statement from Venezuela’s communications ministry said the operation took place in Venezuela, in the southeast of the state of Bolívar. Hegseth and Venezuelan officials said Guerrero Flores had been killed in the strike.

    Guerrero Flores, 43, was better known by the alias Niño Guerrero, meaning “warrior child.” He was wanted in the United States on federal charges of directing acts of terrorism, alongside other charges.

    The CIA, which has dedicated expanded resources to Latin America during Trump’s second term, supplied the intelligence that led to the strike, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the operation.

    Trump said on social media that the U.S. military’s Southern Command had conducted the strike at his direction as part of his pledge to dismantle foreign gangs. His administration designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization last year.

    Trump said the operation had been conducted with the Venezuelan government, which has become more cooperative with the United States since the United States captured former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and helped install a more pliant replacement, Delcy Rodríguez.

    Trump posted a video of a building exploding and invoked the names of crime victims in Georgia and Texas, calling the operation “retribution” for their families.

    Trump has often railed against the gang, using it to push his deportation agenda and to justify his military strikes on vessels purportedly ferrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the United States. Critics have questioned whether Tren de Aragua has truly played the dangerous role that Trump says it has.

    Gen. Francis L. Donovan, who leads U.S. Southern Command, thanked Venezuelan security forces in a social media post for their support in what he described as a joint operation.

    The Venezuelan government said in a statement Friday that a combined operation had targeted organized crime structures. The operation was based on the exchange of intelligence between the two countries, the statement said.

    Tren de Aragua originated as a prison gang in Venezuela in the mid-2000s and has since expanded across Latin America and several U.S. cities. The organization is one of the most notorious in the region, focused on sex trafficking, human smuggling and drugs, drawing intense scrutiny from U.S. law enforcement.

    The Biden administration in 2024 issued a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Guerrero Flores. He was charged last year in a New York federal court under the second Trump administration with racketeering, terrorism, drug importation and firearms offenses.

    This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

  • Trump, Pakistan say Iran deal could be signed Sunday

    ISLAMABAD — Key mediator Pakistan on Saturday said a deal to end the Iran war was closer than ever and U.S. President Donald Trump asserted it would be “signed tomorrow,” while Iran made some of its most optimistic statements yet but indicated a bit more time was needed.

    Trump said the Strait of Hormuz would open immediately after the signing.

    Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said a deal was expected to be finalized within 24 hours. Each side was expected to sign electronically. Pakistan’s foreign ministry said the signing ceremony was scheduled for Sunday but did not provide details.

    Iran foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei in statements carried by state media said the signing “will not happen tomorrow,” but “the likelihood of finalizing the memorandum of understanding in the coming days is high.”

    A tenuous ceasefire has been in place since April 7. Trump has asserted multiple times in recent weeks the countries were on the cusp of a deal.

    Iran has long expressed wariness in negotiations, pointing out that previous talks with the U.S. last year and early this year ended with attacks by the U.S. and Israel.

    Trump to discuss demining the strait at G7 summit

    Trump was expected to discuss demining the Strait of Hormuz during the Group of Seven summit that starts Monday.

    A senior U.S. official, who briefed journalists on condition of anonymity under rules set by the White House, said Trump planned to meet on the G7 sidelines with the leaders of Egypt, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates to discuss efforts to wind down the war.

    G7 members Britain and France have expressed interest in assisting with demining once the conflict is paused.

    It was not clear how many mines are in the strait that Iran has effectively controlled since shortly after the war began, virtually shutting down oil and natural gas shipments from the Persian Gulf. The U.S. has blockaded Iranian ports in response.

    The nuclear issue remains elusive

    Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said the memorandum of understanding under discussion was focused on ending the war and “at this stage, it has been decided that there will be no discussion of the nuclear issue.”

    Iran’s nuclear program and highly enriched uranium have long been at the center of tensions with the U.S. and Israel and an international source of concern.

    Trump on social media asserted that “when all is calm,” the U.S. would go in and “downblend and destroy” the enriched uranium in Iran or in the U.S.

    The apparent breakthrough in negotiations came after Iran exchanged fire with the U.S. and Israel earlier in the week, threatening to rupture the ceasefire and push the Middle East back into full-scale war.

    Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X on Friday that an agreement “has never been closer.” Trump on Thursday claimed significant progress in negotiations, hours after he threatened to seize Iran’s oil industry.

    Iran’s former supreme leader will be buried in July

    Iran’s state-run television said funeral ceremonies for former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in the war’s opening attack, will take place in July.

    The funeral, burial, and farewell events for Khamenei will occur between July 4-9 during Muharram, a traditional period of mourning in the Shiite Muslim calendar.

    Khamenei is succeeded by his son, Mojtaba, who is considered less compromising and has not been seen publicly since the war began.

    Funeral ceremonies are expected to begin in Tehran and move to Qom, a stronghold of many senior Shiite clerics, then to Mashhad, Khamenei’s birthplace. He’ll be buried there at the Imam Reza Shrine, considered the holiest place among Shiite devotees.

    Khamenei remolded the Islamic Republic following the death in 1989 of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the fiery, charismatic ideologue who led the overthrow of the shah and installed rule by Shiite Muslim clerics.

    Khamenei ruled far longer than Khomeini. He greatly expanded the Shiite clerical class and built the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard into the most important body underpinning his rule. The Guard became a military and business behemoth, the country’s most elite force and head of its ballistic missile arsenal — a key target for Israel and the U.S. in the war.

  • Trump’s name gone from the Kennedy Center’s facade

    WASHINGTON — The curtain may have come down for President Donald Trump at the Kennedy Center but the tarp stays up for now.

    Matt Floca, executive director and chief operating officer of the performing arts venue, told a federal court Saturday that the institution had complied with an order to remove Trump’s name from the facade. In a filing, Floca said the board of trustees and the center had removed “all physical signage on the Kennedy Center building and grounds, including the front portico, that purports to rename the Kennedy Center after President Trump.”

    But for onlookers who have gathered on the plaza in front of the center over the past day hoping to witness a dramatic moment symbolizing the limits of Trump’s power, it was virtually impossible to see whether the signage was gone. A tarp hung over the scaffolding constructed for workers to perform that task. It was unclear when the tarp might be removed to reveal the original lettering that had endured for decades: “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

    A reporter was able to peer through a slight opening in the tarp, which was pulled tightly against the wall, and saw that the letters for Trump’s name were no longer affixed to the building.

    By the end, the Kennedy Center’s leadership had dug in against a federal judge’s order to erase Trump’s name from the building. Two courts rejected the institution’s last-minute request to retain Trump’s name pending an appeal. After severe thunderstorms raked Washington on Friday evening, the Kennedy Center sought one more extension before complying with a noon Saturday deadline.

    Those who pushed for the scrubbing of Trump’s name were in a celebratory mood. Rep. Joyce Beatty (D.,Ohio), an ex officio member of the board who sued to remove references to the president from the building and the center’s operations, was spotted in the plaza late Friday and Saturday morning. She posted a video to social media that purported to show her performing the “Trump dance” in one of the Kennedy Center’s great halls.

    “Today’s victory is the beginning of returning the Kennedy Center to the American people,” Beatty said in a statement. “The rule of law prevailed, and that is worth celebrating.”

    Leo Bartholomaus, a recent graduate of Syracuse University who lives in Virginia, said he was walking by the Kennedy Center on Friday afternoon after visiting the National Mall to see events related to this weekend’s UFC match at the White House. He said he was not happy that Trump added his name to the building.

    “My grandmother had a big love of the arts,” he said. “I’ve been here to see The Lion King. I wasn’t a fan of Donald Trump putting his name on it. I thought it was better as the Kennedy Center.”

    Closing an unusual chapter

    The removal of Trump’s name closes one of the more unusual chapters in the history of the Kennedy Center, which began construction in 1964 and was dedicated to the memory of the slain president, Democrat John F. Kennedy. At what is typically one of the few relatively nonpartisan spaces in Washington, Trump has wielded tremendous influence over the venue during his second term.

    Though he rarely discussed the Kennedy Center during his 2024 campaign, Trump moved quickly to oust the institution’s leadership when he returned to office in January 2025 and replaced it with a board of trustees that named him chairman. His name was quickly added to the building.

    While the removal of his name marks a setback for Trump, he is moving forward with plans to reshape the physical landscape of the nation’s capital in ways that have few modern parallels.

    He demolished the East Wing of the White House and is building a controversial ballroom in its place. He remodeled the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and plans extensive renovations of a golf course in East Potomac Park, moves that could significantly reduce the public’s access to running and biking paths. He is also moving forward with a triumphal arch that will sit near Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac River in Virginia.

    Indeed, as Trump’s name was being removed from the Kennedy Center, the South Lawn of the White House has been transformed into a venue for a UFC match intended to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence but also coinciding with Trump’s birthday on Sunday.

    Questions linger about the Kennedy Center’s future

    Back at the Kennedy Center, there are many questions about the institution’s future. The same May court decision that ordered Trump’s name to be removed from the building also blocked a planned two-year closure for renovations that was set to begin next month.

    The Kennedy Center’s calendar for the weeks ahead include performances of Moulin Rouge! The Musical and Bluey’s Big Play. Comedian Bill Maher is to be awarded the Mark Twain Award for American Humor during a ceremony on June 28.

    But little is scheduled for the stages beyond that and, after substantially reducing staff, it is unclear how quickly the Kennedy Center could build out a robust performance list. Trump, angered by the court’s order to remove his name, has said he would turn the Kennedy Center over to Congress and has suggested it might simply shutter because of public safety concerns.

    In its unsuccessful appeal on Friday seeking a pause on the order removing Trump’s name, the Kennedy Center’s leadership argued, in terms that seemed similar to the president’s speech patterns, that the lower court was interfering with needed renovations.

    “The District Court is not allowing us to close in order to properly fix up and repair the Building, including potentially life threatening structural damage like beams and parking garage ceilings that are rusted, and in serious danger of falling onto people below,” according to the appeal. “Indeed, total collapse!”

    The institution also suggested that the president’s name could return to the building if the Kennedy Center later wins its appeal.

    If the court denied the venue’s request for a pause, the Kennedy Center argued it would “be forced to squander time and money — by both removing the signage and then potentially returning it after appeal.”