Joseph R. Biden Jr. forcefully defended Social Security in a speech to disability advocates in Chicago on Tuesday, condemning the Trump administration for “taking a hatchet” to the Social Security Administration.
In his first expansive public comments since leaving the White House, Mr. Biden said that President Trump had taken aim at Social Security, doing “damage and destruction” to a program that millions of Americans depend on.
“Social Security deserves to be protected for the good of the nation as a whole,” Mr. Biden said, adding that Trump officials are applying a Silicon Valley mantra of “move fast and break things” to the government. “Well, they’re certainly breaking things. They’re shooting first and aiming later.”
Mr. Trump has promised not to cut Social Security benefits for the 73 million Americans enrolled, but offices around the country have been flooded with calls and questions from Americans who are worried that changes to their benefits and to their local Social Security offices may be imminent.
The Trump White House is proposing to eliminate most federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and issued a statement yesterday alleging that NPR and PBS "spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'"
"The NPR, PBS grift has ripped us off for too long," the White House statement said.
White House budget director Russ Vought drafted a memo for a rescission plan that would eliminate funding already approved by Congress, according to multiple news reports. This includes $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), or about two years' worth of funding for the nonprofit group that provides money to public broadcasting stations.
The Vought memo accused CPB of a "lengthy history of anti-conservative bias," according to The New York Post. The memo also reportedly proposes an $8.3 billion cut for USAID.
The $1.1 billion accounts for most of the federal money that goes to CPB. "The Trump administration isn't planning to ask Congress to claw back about $100 million allocated for emergency communications," The New York Times wrote. The NYT wrote that CPB "is 'forward-funded' two years to insulate it from political maneuvering, and a sizable chunk of the money for 2025 has already been paid out to public broadcasters in the United States."
CNN: Judge in Abrego Garcia case says there’s no evidence Trump administration is following her orders by Devan Cole and Angelica Franganillo Diaz
The federal judge overseeing the case of a man mistakenly deported to El Salvador said she would allow for expedited fact-finding to help her figure out whether the Trump administration is complying with her order that it “facilitate” his return from one of the country’s notorious mega-prisons.
“I do need evidence in this regard because to date what the record shows is nothing has been done,” US District Judge Paula Xinis said in a tense hearing Tuesday afternoon in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Xinis said she was unsatisfied with the sworn statements she’s been getting each day from Trump administration officials detailing what the government has been doing to carry out her directive.
She wants discovery, she told a Justice Department attorney, “to determine whether you are abiding by the court order. My court orders.”
BBC News: Paramilitaries declare rival government in Sudan by Yang Tian
Sudan's paramilitaries have declared the formation of a rival government to the country's armed forces, two years into a war that has become the world's largest humanitarian crisis.
The leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Mohamed Hamdan "Hemedti" Dagalo, said the group was "building the only realistic future for Sudan".
The announcement came as London hosted an high-level conference to mark the second anniversary of the conflict, where the UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy called for "a pathway to peace".
Fighting raged on, with the army saying it had bombed RSF positions outside the city of el-Fasher, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee the Zamzam refugee camp.
DW: Russia jails former DW journalists over Navalny ties by Dmytro Hubenko and Sergei Satanovskii
A court in Moscow on Tuesday convicted journalists Antonina Favorskaya, Konstantin Gabov, Sergey Karelin, and Artyom Kriger, on charges of extremism.
They were sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison.
They were accused of being part of an "extremist organization," in reference to the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), founded by Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who died under unclear circumstances in an Arctic prison in February 2024.
Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin previously worked for DW's Moscow bureau.
All four journalists denied the charges, saying they did not work for the foundation but merely reported on its activities.
The closed-door trial was part of a crackdown on dissent that has reached an unprecedented scale after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Guardian: Millions tune in for three-week live stream of Sweden’s moose migration by Jon Henley
Most of the time, nothing much happens. A wide Nordic river, melting snow still lining its banks, meanders peacefully through a pristine forest of spruce and pine. But this spring, as every spring for the past six years, a lot of people will be glued to it.
When Den stora älgvandringen – variously translated as The Great Moose Migration or The Great Elk Trek – first aired on the public broadcaster SVT’s on-demand platform in 2019, nearly a million people tuned in. Last year, it was 9 million.
This year, who knows? Given the state of the world, a three-week-long, round-the-clock live stream of a few hundred moose gingerly crossing the Ångerman River in northern
Sweden to reach their summer pastures could be just what viewers need.
Try to have the best possible evening that you can!
