A federal judge in San Francisco appeared ready to temporarily block the Trump administration’s sweeping overhaul of the federal government.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, a Clinton appointee, held a hearing Friday in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions, nonprofits and local governments, who argue in their complaint that President Trump’s efforts to “radically restructure and dismantle the federal government” without any authorization from Congress violate the Constitution.

Illston appeared to agree with the plaintiffs, asserting in the hearing that Supreme Court precedent makes clear that while the president does have the authority to seek changes at agencies, he must do so in lawful ways. She went on to say that critical transformations of the type Trump is attempting to carry out “must have the cooperation of Congress.”

Plaintiffs were seeking a temporary restraining order to pause further implementation of the administration’s planned mass layoffs. Temporary restraining orders cannot be appealed, but the government would be expected to appeal any injunction the judge could issue later on.

Illston said a temporary restraining order was likely necessary “to protect the power of the legislative branch.” She noted that in his first term, Trump did in fact seek Congress’ approval for similar restructuring plans.

“He could have done that here, but he didn’t,” Illston said.

The case is just the latest in a string of court battles testing the limits of Trump’s executive authority.

In court filings, his administration has argued that he has “inherent authority” to exercise control over those executing the nation’s laws.

The government argued a temporary restraining order was inappropriate

In court on Friday, the Trump administration’s lawyer, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton, argued the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order was inappropriate given how much time has lapsed since Trump first signed an executive order to reshape the government.

“Plaintiffs are not entitled to any TRO because they waited far too long to bring this motion and any ’emergency’ is thus entirely of their own making,” he and other attorneys wrote in an earlier court filing.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys have argued that only now have they been able to ascertain what agencies are doing to carry out Trump’s directives, given the secrecy with which his administration has been operating.

“They’re trying to insulate from judicial review an unlawful set of instructions by not making public how they’re being implemented,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Danielle Leonard told the court on Friday.

Hamilton also argued — as the government has in numerous other cases involving federal employees — that the court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case. Instead, matters involving personnel issues within the federal government must be brought to the bodies Congress created to hear such complaints, he said.

Judge Illston appeared unpersuaded by that argument, questioning Hamilton over whether the matter at hand — a radical overhaul of the entire government — was one Congress intended to go through those administrative channels.

Seeking a halt to mass layoffs and shuttering of programs

The plaintiffs — which include the American Federation of Government Employees and several of its local branches, the American Public Health Association and the cities of Chicago, Baltimore and San Francisco — had asked the court to find Trump’s Feb. 11 executive order directing agencies to prepare for mass layoffs and shutter programs unlawful, and to temporarily stop agencies from implementing their restructuring plans — including issuing reduction-in-force (RIF) notices and closing offices.

Already, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued, agencies including the Departments of Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs are executing plans “not based on their own independent analysis or reasoned decision-making” but instead in accordance with the president’s executive order and accompanying instructions from Elon Musk’s DOGE team, the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget.

The Trump administration has defended the executive order, arguing it merely provides direction in very broad terms, while making clear any actions taken must be “consistent with applicable law.”

“This type of directive is a straightforward way for a President to exercise his undoubted authority to require a subordinate agency to determine what the law allows and then take whatever action is legally available to promote the President’s priorities,” the government’s attorneys wrote in court filings.

In court, Leonard said the government’s take was not an accurate description of the executive order.

“This is a mandatory order instructing agencies to begin RIFs now and to do so in the manner the president is directing,” she said.

The Democratic members of an independent agency dedicated to protecting Americans from dangerous products and issuing recalls and safety warnings were fired by President Trump via an overnight email.

It’s the latest instance of Trump seeking to replace high-ranking officials at independent federal agencies — efforts that have drawn legal challenges.

These firings come as consumer protection groups and lawmakers warn that Trump may be attempting to dismantle the entire Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

Congressional Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, issued a letter Friday condemning purported plans by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to eliminate the agency and to absorb its functions and staff into what the lawmakers describe as a “currently nonexistent staff division within the Department of Health and Human Services.”

It’s unclear if the Trump administration would pursue such a plan. The White House didn’t immediately respond to NPR’s request for comment, but when asked about changes at the CPSC during her press briefing Friday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president “has the right to fire people within the executive branch.”

Richard Trumka Jr., one of the three Democratic commissioners sacked by Trump, said in a statement posted on social media: “I’ll see him in court.”

Trumka and Commissioner Mary Boyle received an email Thursday night informing them Trump was firing them — with no reason stated. Boyle confirmed her termination to The Washington Post.

Alexander Hoehn-Saric, the third Democratic commissioner, said in a statement that he received no communications from the White House, but that CPSC Acting Chairman Peter Feldman “is preventing me from executing my duties as Commissioner based on an assertion that the President is also seeking my removal.”

Feldman told CPSC employees in an email that he was informed of Hoehn-Saric, Trumka and Boyle’s removal.

“Both the Constitution and the Consumer Product Safety Act grant the President authority to remove members of CPSC. President Trump has exercised this authority, and he has done so lawfully,” Feldman wrote. “CPSC remains committed to our important safety mission: protecting American consumers from the unreasonable risk of injury associated with consumer products. The Commission will continue to carry out its duties with diligence and integrity.”

Trumka said his firing and Hoehn-Saric’s presumed termination at the panel follows their refusal to follow demands from members of DOGE, Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s government-slashing informal Department of Government Efficiency. The two commissioners maintain their removals are against the law.

“The illegal attempt to remove me from CPSC happened immediately after my colleagues and I took steps to advance our safety work and protect our staff from arbitrary firings,” Hoehn-Saric wrote in his statement.

Termination by email

The email to Trumka, reviewed by NPR, says simply: “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position on the Consumer Product Safety Commission is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.”

CPSC, an agency formed in 1972, works to protect Americans from dangerous items that pose a safety hazard or even risk death, like adult portable bed rails and unsafe children’s toys. It also seizes hazardous products at the nation’s ports. The agency is led by five commissioners, one who serves as chairman, that serve for multi-year terms. All of the Democrats fired by Trump still had from several months to years left on their term.

The panel’s website still lists Acting Chairman Feldman and Republican Commissioner Douglas Dziak, whose term ended in October 2024. The Democrats are now categorized under “past commissioners.”

Like Dziak, Trumka, Boyle and Hoehn-Saric were nominated by former President Joe Biden. Boyle was a longtime staff member of the CPSC before being nominated to serve as a commissioner.

Trumka, whose father was powerful labor leader and Democratic Party ally Richard Trumka, had a background in law with a career working as an assistant attorney general in the consumer protection division in Maryland and as general counsel and staff director of the House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy.

Hoehn-Saric similarly has a background in law and working on consumer protection oversight as chief counsel with the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Trumka says since Trump took office, the CPSC has been pressured to fire many of its staff — which he had refused to do. And for that, DOGE came knocking on the agency’s door on Thursday afternoon, he said.

“By 3:45 pm, CPSC’s Acting Chair, Peter Feldman sent an email to Commissioners seeking approval to bring aboard two DOGE detailees to the agency: Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh. He set a 6:00 pm deadline to respond,” Trumka wrote.

They were refused. Trumka said, “If these people are allowed in to govern our agency, they will gut it and the result will turn back the clock on product safety. Two of my colleagues said no as well, forming a majority to block the move. Rather than respect the democratic process, soon after, I received the email purporting to fire me.”

The CPSC is the latest independent federal agency facing pressure from the Trump administration, and its DOGE counterparts, to slash staff and acquiesce to White House control.

In February, Trump signed an executive order which intended to give him more power over other independent agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees markets, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which insures bank deposits. He wants all of those agencies to put regulatory work through his administration.

In addition to the thousands of federal workers ousted by DOGE, Trump fired high-ranking officials at independent agencies and any other offices that he perceives as opposing his administration’s agenda. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and, most recently, the Library of Congress were hit by high-level firings.

Many of those firings are being challenged in court over the claim those firings were illegal.

Trumka and Hoehn-Saric say their firings are illegal. Trumka is promising his own legal action.

“I will continue protecting the American people from harm through that time. The President would like to end this nation’s long history of independent agencies, so he’s chosen to ignore the law and pretend independence doesn’t exist. I’ll see him in court,” Trumka wrote. “CPSC’s lifesaving work is far too important to take this lying down.”

MUMBAI India — Vice President Vance said that the current escalation between India and Pakistan was “fundamentally none of our business,” as they traded blows overnight Thursday and early Friday evening using drones and projectiles, reaching places that have not been targeted in decades on either side.

Vance spoke on Fox News late Thursday, in response to a question about if the Trump administration was worried about nuclear conflict. “We want this thing to de-escalate as quickly as possible,” and added: “We can’t control these countries though.”

“What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit, but we’re not going to get involved in the middle of a war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it.”

Vance said the administration was pursuing de-escalation through diplomatic channels and said he did not think nuclear war was a likely scenario. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday he spoke to the Indian foreign minister and the Pakistani prime minister.

“This might embolden both sides,” Praveen Donthi, an India analyst for the International Crisis Group, said of Vance’s comments. He said the escalation between India and Pakistan has been “breaching a new threshold every day, and we don’t know when it is going to stop.”

Vance’s comments signaled a more hands-off foreign policy, said Arifa Noor, a columnist for the liberal newspaper Dawn. During previous escalations in 2019 and 1999, Washington worked intently to dial down tensions.

The problem, she said, is “I do not think that there is another power that can step into this vacuum” even as the two countries had long relied on the U.S. for “stepping in and talking the two countries off the ledge.” Now more than ever, she described them as “two nuclear powers that are inherently in a very unstable situation.”

She said Pakistan often sought international intervention because it saw itself as the weaker party in its decades-long crisis with India, largely over the disputed region of Kashmir. This Himalayan territory is divided between both countries, and claimed by both in its entirety.

The current round of tensions began after gunmen killed 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, in Indian-administered Kashmir in late April. India insisted the gunmen were proxies for the Pakistani military. Pakistan denies any connection to the attack.

Overnight Wednesday, India launched missile strikes across Pakistan, in what it said was retaliation. Pakistan said it downed five Indian aircraft. The two sides have traded drone strikes and projectiles since then.

Donthi, of the Crisis Group, said Vance’s comments suggested that Washington may be sympathetic to India’s grievances, which “seems to have come to the conclusion that letting this play out a bit more is actually contributing to that effort to confront the threat of terror.”

Locals stand on the debris of destroyed structures at a government health and education complex in Muridke, Pakistan, on Wednesday, after Indian strikes.

Farooq Naeem/AFP via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Farooq Naeem/AFP via Getty Images

On Friday, at least two projectiles landed near a military cantonment in the Pakistani city of Okara. Residents filmed one careering to the ground, spinning across a field while emitting plumes of smoke as young men dashed out of the way. Two residents independently described the incident to NPR, but both requested anonymity because they did not want to anger Pakistani authorities, which have not commented on the incident.

In a briefing Friday, an Indian military officer said her country responded to what she termed an “escalation” by its rival by sending drones to four locations in Pakistan. The escalation was a reference to Pakistani drones targeting Indian towns overnight along a 760-mile stretch of border, from the desert town of Jaisalmer in India’s northwest, to Poonch and Jammu in the Himalayan peaks of Indian-held Kashmir — places that have not been targeted in conflict for decades.

“There were dozens of fireballs in the sky,” said Gowher Ahmad, 43, of Jammu city, of the overnight barrage. Friday was quiet, but Ahmad said he feared the night.

Jaspreet Kaur, from the border village of Ajote, said most of the 10,000 residents had fled. “The rest of us are huddled up in the basement of a three-story building,” she said. Karamat Hussain, from another border village, Khari, said many residents couldn’t flee, because they had to care for their livestock, like his elderly parents.

As violence continues, India appears to be cracking down more intently on critics. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a prominent Kashmiri preacher who advocates independence for the territory, said on X that he was not allowed to attend communal Muslim Friday prayers in Indian-held Kashmir. He shared a video of his previous Friday sermon, and wrote, “I urge both the countries to urgently de-escalate and not to tread on this dangerous path, which can only lead to destruction.”

The social media network X also said it had received “executive orders” from the Indian government to block more than 8,000 accounts, including news organizations, it said in a message on its global affairs account. Those blocked appeared to include Anuradha Bhasin, a prominent Kashmir-based journalist, and The Wire, an independent news site based in New Delhi. Indian authorities did not respond to requests for comment.

Bilal Kuchay contributed reporting from Srinagar, in India-administered Kashmir.

The Trump administration has tightened its control over the independent agency responsible for overseeing America’s nuclear reactors, and it is considering an executive order that could further erode its autonomy, two U.S. officials who declined to speak publicly because they feared retribution told NPR.

Going forward, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must send new rules regarding reactor safety to the White House, where they will be reviewed and possibly edited. That is a radical departure for the watchdog agency, which historically has been among the most independent in the government. The new procedures for White House review have been in the works for months, but they were just recently finalized and are now in full effect.

NPR has also seen a draft of an executive order “ordering the reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.” The draft calls for reducing the size of the NRC’s staff, conducting a “wholesale revision” of its regulations in coordination with the White House and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, shortening the time to review reactor designs and possibly loosening the current, strict standards for radiation exposure.

“It’s the end of the independence of the agency,” says Allison Macfarlane, director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Canada who was nominated by President Obama to serve as Chair of the NRC from 2012 to 2014. Macfarlane believes the changes will make Americans less safe.

“If you aren’t independent of political and industry influence, then you are at risk of an accident, frankly,” Macfarlane says.

The draft executive order was marked pre-decisional and deliberative. It was one of several draft orders seen by NPR that appeared to be aimed at promoting the nuclear industry. Other draft orders called for the construction of small modular nuclear reactors at military bases, and for the development of advanced nuclear fuels. Axios first reported on the existence of the executive orders.

It remains unclear which, if any, will be signed by President Trump.

In a statement, the NRC said it was working with the White House “as part of our commitment to make NRC regulatory processes more efficient. We have no additional details at this time.”

“The President of the United States is the head of the executive branch,” a spokesperson for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget wrote to NPR in an email. “The President issued an independent agencies executive order which aligns with the president’s power given to him by the constitution. This idea has been talked about for nearly 40 years and should not be a surprise.”

A worker dons safety equipment at the Peach Bottom nuclear plant in Delta, Pennsylvania, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019. The NRC sets radiation safety standards for nuclear workers and the public.

Melissa Lyttle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Melissa Lyttle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Safety first

The NRC was established by Congress in 1974 with the explicit goal of strictly regulating nuclear reactors and protecting Americans from exposure to radiation. It stepped up enforcement after a partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979.

The NRC is run by five commissioners who are appointed by the president to five-year terms and confirmed by the Senate. The commission is a mix of Democrat and Republican appointees that formulate policy, develop regulations for nuclear reactors and nuclear materials, issue orders to licensees and adjudicate legal matters.

The NRC has been considered a rigorous regulator. It conducts lengthy scientific reviews of new reactor designs, and keeps resident inspectors in house at each of America’s operating nuclear reactors.

At times, some say, the agency has been too hidebound. Historically, the NRC has “taken an extremely conservative view of its responsibility to safeguard public safety,” says Ted Nordhaus, executive director of the Breakthrough Institute, a California think tank that advocates for the development of new nuclear power. Nordhaus testified before Congress in 2023 about reforming the NRC, and last year Congress passed a bipartisan law designed to accelerate the development of new reactor designs. Part of the law specified several reforms at the NRC.

Going nuclear

The NRC has been working to respond to the new law, but it has historically operated largely outside the purview of the White House. That began to change with an executive order signed by the president in February that called for independent agencies to begin reporting directly to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, has rejected the idea that any agency in the executive branch should be allowed to operate outside the influence of the president.

“There are no independent agencies,” he told Tucker Carlson in an interview in November of last year. “The whole notion of an independent agency should be thrown out.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February that was designed to limit the power of independent agencies, including the NRC.

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AP/Pool

hide caption

toggle caption

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AP/Pool

The new directive seems in line with that view. Previously, the NRC’s five commissioners would vote on draft rules and final rules for nuclear reactors. Their votes would be publicly recorded as would the reasoning for their decision. But now, the commissioners will carry out their votes in a closed session and pass the rule to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which sits within the Office of Management and Budget. The White House will have up to 90 days to review the proposed and final rules, and make changes, before handing them back to the NRC.

Only after the rule is finalized will the commissioners’ votes be made public. It was not immediately clear how the public would know whether the White House had changed a safety rule for a nuclear reactor.

Some questioned what the White House could gain from reviewing abstruse rules for nuclear safety.

“Who has the technical knowledge to actually do a substantive review?” asks Edwin Lyman, a nuclear physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit that has been critical of the nuclear industry. “To have political appointees meddling in these technical decisions is just a recipe for confusion and chaos.”

The extra review also has the possibility of working against the White House’s goal of speeding reactor approval, adds Nordhaus. The commission already struggles to create new rules quickly, he says. “I’m not sure that sending [them] off to further review at OMB is going to expedite the timely and efficient licensing of reactors.”

A Radioactive Order

The new review is a major change, but it is the draft executive order that promises a radical overhaul of the agency. According to the order, the NRC would look at repealing the Linear No Threshold standard for radiation safety. That standard presumes that radiation exposure can cause harm, even at levels where the harm is not easily detectable through scientific study. It also calls on the agency to review its standard requiring worker exposure be kept “as low as reasonably achievable.”

Nordhaus, who has advocated for changing the standards, says reviewing them is not a bad idea. He says the NRC should set minimal radiation exposure levels it considers “safe”. “As a matter of public policy, you need to set a threshold,” he says.

Reactor operators work in the control room at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania, U.S., on April 11, 2018. A new draft executive order could shrink the size of the NRC while overhauling its regulations.

Michelle Gustafson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Michelle Gustafson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

But Macfarlane says the current standards are “accepted science.” If they were removed, she says, there probably “would be political pressure to push up the exposure limitations.”

The order would also call on the NRC to undergo a restructuring to speed licensing of new reactors. Along with that reorganization, the NRC would “undertake reductions in force.”

It would also “undertake a wholesale revision of its regulations,” working with DOGE and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Both Lyman and Nordhaus say shrinking the NRC would be counterproductive. “If you go and lay off half the staff, you’re going to lay off a bunch of the people you need to license new reactors in an expeditious fashion,” Nordhaus says.

Ripping up the rulebook also won’t help, adds Lyman. “It’ll throw a monkey wrench in the works and it’ll be completely counter to whatever this order is trying to achieve.”

Former Justice David Souter, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush in 1990 but surprised Republicans by joining the court’s more liberal wing, has died in his home in New Hampshire, the court announced Friday. He was 85.

“Justice David Souter served our Court with great distinction for nearly twenty years,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in the statement from the court. “He brought uncommon wisdom and kindness to a lifetime of public service.”

At the time of his retirement from the court, Souter was 69 and nowhere near the oldest member of the court. But he had made clear to friends at the time that he wanted to leave Washington, a city he never liked, and return to his native New Hampshire.

Souter was a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He also attended Magdalen College at Oxford University. But his academic pedigree was only one reason he had been regarded as a thinking man’s jurist and a highly thoughtful conservative prior to his elevation to the nation’s highest bench.

Once appointed and confirmed, he soon became a “surprise justice.” He bucked the expectation that he would join the court’s conservative wing — then led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who was appointed to the court by President Richard Nixon and elevated to chief by President Ronald Reagan, and featuring Reagan appointees Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.

The appointing president had been assured of Souter’s credentials by the White House chief of staff, John Sununu, who had known Souter as a conservative member of the New Hampshire Supreme Court when Sununu was that state’s Republican governor.

But when confronted by the ideological debates and partisan landscape of Washington, Souter surprised both Sununu and Bush by aligning himself with the court’s more moderate wing, which also included Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor.

Later on, Souter became a full-fledged member of the court’s unabashedly liberal caucus, featuring yet another Republican, John Paul Stevens (appointed by President Gerald Ford in 1975).

Souter was unconventional in other ways beyond his ideological independence. He moved to Washington to attend court sessions, but he returned to his beloved roots in New Hampshire whenever possible, including for the court’s long summer hiatus each year.

Rather than fly home, Souter preferred to drive. He also resisted other forms of contemporary technology and convenience, holding out against the cellphone and email and continuing to write his opinions and dissents in longhand, using a fountain pen.

Once engaged but never married, Souter was once listed among the capital’s 10 “most eligible bachelors.”

He was never a creature of the capital city’s social scene, living in a spartan apartment in the city not far from the Supreme Court offices on Capitol Hill. Although he served nearly two decades on the high court, he made no secret of his preference for the lifestyle and pace of his native rural New Hampshire.

David Steiner will lead the U.S. Postal Service as the next postmaster general, as the federal mail agency faces an uncertain future under the Trump administration.

Amber McReynolds, chair of the USPS Board of Governors, announced the pick Friday at an open session of a board meeting. She said Steiner is set to start in July.

Steiner, a former Waste Management CEO, has served on the board of FedEx, a top USPS competitor that had collaborated with the Postal Service for “last-mile” package deliveries in hard-to-reach rural areas and on air transportation. Those partnerships, however, have ended in recent years.

Steiner is now preparing to take the helm of a beleaguered government agency that millions around the U.S. rely on for sending and receiving medication, payments, ballots and other mail.

The board’s appointment comes amid concerns that Trump officials remain determined to exert more control over an agency that Congress established to be independent decades ago.

After Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s swearing-in ceremony in February, President Trump suggested a “form of a merger” between the Commerce Department and the Postal Service, sparking a series of protests organized by USPS employee unions.

Trump has also announced plans to nominate Anthony Lomangino, a Republican donor, to join the USPS governing board, which currently has four postal governors nominated by former President Joe Biden and one Trump-nominated governor who is set to leave by December. With four current vacancies, Trump has an opportunity to dominate the board with more of his own nominees.

In a USPS release announcing his position, Steiner said, “I deeply admire the public service and business mission of this amazing institution, and I believe strongly in maintaining its role as an independent establishment of the executive branch.”

The appointment already has some critics, though.

In response to a Washington Post report on the board’s plans to appoint FedEx’s Steiner with Trump’s support, Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement that the move is “a blatant conflict of interest and an attempt by President Trump to install a handpicked loyalist who he believes will put his interests over what may be best for the Postal Service and the American people.”

Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, the union representing carriers in cities, also opposes Steiner’s appointment.

“His selection isn’t just a conflict of interest—it’s an aggressive step toward handing America’s mail system over to corporate interests,” Renfroe said in a statement. “Private shippers have been waiting to get USPS out of parcel delivery for years. Steiner’s selection is an open invitation to do just that.”

Congress set up USPS, previously a cabinet-level agency, to be independent of the White House through the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. The mail service has since been run by a politically appointed board of governors, which has the authority under federal law to appoint and remove the postmaster general.

Louis DeJoy stepped down from that top post in March, while USPS continues to carry out a 10-year reorganization plan he established in 2021. His resignation came shortly after entering into an agreement that allows the DOGE team of Trump’s billionaire adviser Elon Musk to help find “further efficiencies” at USPS.

Since 1982, the agency has generally received no tax dollars to fund its operations, relying instead on stamp sales and other service fees. While it posted a surplus in this fiscal year’s first quarter, it posted a net loss of $3.3 billion in the second quarter, Luke Grossmann, USPS chief financial officer, said at the open session of the governing board meeting on Friday. The mail service has been struggling to balance its books for years, losing $9.5 billion last year.

As president, Trump has been a vocal critic of the Postal Service’s finances since his first administration, when USPS also became entangled in his unfounded claims of widespread fraud involving mail-in voting.

At a December press conference, Trump said that privatizing the USPS was “not the worst idea” he’s ever heard. Such a move would likely further reduce mail service in rural communities and faces bipartisan opposition among members of Congress.

Editor’s note: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR.

Edited by Benjamin Swasey

When President Trump hosted Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the Oval Office, conversation turned not only to the relationship between the two countries, but to the border itself.

Echoing a phrase he has used in recent months, Trump described the U.S.-Canada border as an “artificially drawn line” — and suggested it should be erased.

“Somebody drew that line many years ago … like with a ruler, just a straight line right across the top of the country,” Trump said at Tuesday’s meeting. “When you look at that beautiful formation, when it’s together — I’m a very artistic person — but when I looked at that beaut, I said, ‘That’s the way it was meant to be.’ “

Trump has set his sights on Canada since taking office, talking repeatedly of making it the 51st U.S. state. He also hit the country — one of the U.S.’ top trading partners — with a 25% tariff on most goods, further antagonizing Canadians. That backlash is credited with propelling Carney — who campaigned on standing up to the president — to an unexpected election victory last month.

Carney told Trump that Canada is not for sale, and “won’t be for sale, ever.”

But by describing the boundary line as artificial, Trump seems to suggest otherwise, says Jon Parmenter, a history professor at Cornell University. He says the president’s characterization of the border downplays “the fact that it has a complex, deep history and that it is an important part of everyday life on the North American continent.”

“It’s a real thing,” says Parmenter, who teaches a class on the U.S.-Canada border. “And it concerns me, as a historian, to hear people dismissing it as something that’s artificial … or in a sense, illegitimate.”

Carney later told reporters he was “glad you could not tell what was going through my mind” during that conversation.

The U.S.-Canadian border is the longest international border in the world, stretching 5,525 miles across North America. Much of the border looks like a straight line because it essentially is: The line mostly follows the 49th parallel (of latitude north of the equator), while a smaller swath traces the 45th parallel.

The border is technically man-made: It was drawn on a map by the governments of America and Britain, which controlled Canada until 1867. In that way, Parmenter says, it — like all borders — is a construct.

“These are things that people decide makes sense at a particular moment in time,” he says.

But just because it’s not a naturally occurring border — like a mountain range or an ocean — doesn’t mean it’s not legitimate.

“The border is artificial in the sense that it’s not something that … people living in proximity to it had any kind of role in making,” he explains. “But it’s not artificial in the sense that it’s not real, and that it doesn’t matter, and there aren’t real-world consequences for traversing it in a manner that is deemed to be illicit.”

How the border came to be 

This 1861 illustration shows the boundary line between the United States and Canada.

The Print Collector/Heritage Images via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

The Print Collector/Heritage Images via Getty Images

The U.S.-Canada boundary was shaped by a series of treaties that took place between 1783 and 1925.

The first was the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution, recognized American independence and set the Mississippi River as the western border of the new U.S. — which continued to expand throughout the 19th century.

Years later, the Convention of 1818 officially established the border between the U.S. and British North America — later Canada — at the 49th parallel, from Lake of the Woods, Minn., to the Rocky Mountains. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 extended the border to the Pacific Ocean.

“People sort of sat down and were going back and forth, and lines of latitude became the easiest way to resolve a dispute over who got what,” Parmenter says.

Stephen Hornsby, a professor of geography and Canadian studies at the University of Maine, says the choice of the 49th parallel in particular was no coincidence.

The British wanted to preserve the northern part of the continent for the fur trade, while the U.S. wanted as much of the Mississippi basin as possible for agricultural settlement, Hornsby explains. They decided to split the land up based on the river systems, which at the time were the main way of traveling around the continent. 

The 49th parallel, Hornsby says, made for an “extraordinarily convenient dividing line.” Almost all of the rivers to the north flow out through the St. Lawrence River system or the Hudson Bay, while rivers to the south flow into the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico.

“Although it seems like a straight line across the land, when you start to look at the river systems and the larger watersheds, it’s basically a dividing line between the watersheds north and south of that line,” Hornsby says, adding that “it all makes perfect sense” on a map of North American river systems.

It didn’t necessarily make perfect sense in real life, however. Parmenter says lines of latitude didn’t take into account geographical formations or the traditional territories of Indigenous people already living there.

“There are Indigenous nations whose territories actually spanned what became the U.S.-Canada border, who come to find out when the survey happens, ‘Oh, guess what, this is going right through the middle,’ ” he says. The Mohawk community of Akwesasne, in northern New York, is one example.

How the border is demarcated 

Over the ensuing decades, as people moved westward and north, the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Russia negotiated some two dozen agreements, conventions and treaties to redefine the border, according to the International Boundary Commission (IBC) — which itself was created by treaty in 1908 to survey and map the border.

“It’s a very piecemeal process,” Parmenter says. “It sort of essentially is progressively drawn in a westward direction, but over time. So the Great Lakes area gets resolved, the prairie area gets resolved. The Pacific Coast and Alaska get resolved. And what you have left over is the longest international boundary on the face of the Earth, one that’s a very diverse border.”

Parmenter says there are various levels of “intensity and frequency of crossing as you go east to west.” Some stretches of the border are actively monitored, including with helicopters and drones. But others, especially in remote areas, are marked only by monuments, like an obelisk or strategically placed rocks.

“In many places, it is a very permeable border,” he says.

As part of its mission to tend the border, the IBC says it inspects and maintains over 8,000 monuments and reference points and 1,000 survey control stations. It also keeps a 20-foot wide treeless zone — called the vista — along the land boundary line.

“To make the boundary visible and unmistakable, we clear and maintain a swath called a vista that extends 10 feet on either side of the line through dense forests, over mountain ranges, across wetlands and highlands and some of the most rugged terrain North America has to offer,” its website reads.

The vista, also called the Slash, mostly spans remote areas but is visible from certain land crossings, as well as Google Earth.

A U.S. border patrol agent rides an ATV along “the Slash”— the boundary marker cut into the forest — marking the line between Canadian territory on the right and the U.S., near Beecher Falls, Vt.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Where things stand

Parmenter, a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen, says, “People are on alert in Canada about this.”

He says there is much more awareness of the border in Canada because such a high percentage of the population — by some estimates, as much as 90% — lives within 150 miles of it.

Proportionally, far fewer Americans deal with the northern border on a daily basis — and until recently have been much more focused on its southern border with Mexico, he says.

While the U.S.-Canada border has been stable for a century, it’s also true that it was renegotiated multiple times in its early years. But Parmenter doesn’t think that means a change is likely now, especially given Trump’s tariffs and the overall state of affairs.

“It’s always the case that in any relationship, things can get better, and I think that both sides would agree that there are some ways in which the management of this particular border could be improved,” he says. “But the way to go about it is through sober and thoughtful negotiations, not ultimatums, not extreme rhetoric, not talk of annexation, because all that’s done is to alienate Canadian people.”

Republican divisions over changes to Medicaid — the federal health care program for poor, elderly and disabled Americans — are becoming the chief hurdle to getting President Trump’s major tax, immigration and energy agenda through Congress.

GOP lawmakers who represent swing districts insist they will not vote for any proposal that strips benefits. But conservatives are demanding deep cuts in spending and say restructuring Medicaid is one of the clearest ways to achieve that goal.

Driving this discussion is a math issue. To get the bill through Congress, House Republicans are working with a budget blueprint that forces them to find $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to help offset the cost of extending President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. They are also hoping to add new tax cuts that Trump campaigned on, like exempting taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits.

Republicans want to finalize their plans next week in hopes of sending the package over to the Senate by Memorial Day. But in addition to the fight over Medicaid, the party is grappling with a host of other issues, including whether all of the Trump tax cuts will be renewed, food-assistance for low-income families and a controversial deduction for state and local taxes, or SALT.

On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., admitted that negotiators were still sussing out the specifics. But when it comes to Medicaid, he insisted that those who depend on the program will retain their benefits.

“Our true and honest intention is to ensure that every Medicaid beneficiary who is in that traditional community of folks, you’re talking about young pregnant mothers and young single mothers and the elderly and disabled, those folks are covered, and no one loses their coverage,” Johnson said.

That could be a hard promise to keep, according to health policy experts, who note that nearly 82 million people in the U.S. rely on Medicaid and the related Children’s Health Insurance Program for their health coverage.

“While these federal cuts, in many cases, might not directly cut Medicaid coverage and benefits, they would indirectly have that result because states would be left holding the bag,” said Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health policy organization.

“I think there’s always been this perception in Washington that Medicare and Social Security are political third rails,” Levitt said. “But I think what we’re discovering is [that] Medicaid might be a third rail as well.”

What Republicans are considering and what they’ve dropped

Johnson, under pressure from his own vulnerable members, has already pulled back on one proposal to restructure how states pay for an expansion to the Medicaid program that was included as part of the Affordable Care Act. The proposal would have decreased the percentage of costs that the federal government takes on — known as the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, or FMAP — but in doing so would have shifted more costs onto already strapped state budgets.

Moderates insisted the option was a nonstarter and a new Congressional Budget Office report found it would have forced 2.4 million people to lose health care coverage by 2034.

Protect Medicaid signs light up at a demonstration outside the Capitol on Wednesday.

Leigh Vogel/Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Leigh Vogel/Getty Images

But Republicans are still considering several other options, including:

Potential caps on spending. Some Republicans want to cap the amount that the government sends to states for Medicaid. Moderates have ruled this out for the full Medicaid population. However, some are entertaining caps for those who get coverage through the Medicaid expansion program. The expansion extended benefits to childless adults without disabilities — a group that some Republicans say is less in need than the program’s traditional population.

Levitt says that capping spending would still shift costs to the states, albeit more slowly than other proposals, like FMAP changes.

“A per capita cap is almost more of a slow boil,” Levitt said. “It would gradually reduce how much the federal government contributes for expanded Medicaid over time. So, you know, in the end they amount to the same thing. They just kind of roll out differently.”

According to the CBO, placing caps on the Medicaid expansion population would lead to 1.5 million people losing health insurance over the next decade.

Work requirements. This idea has widespread support from Republican lawmakers who argue that able-bodied adults should have to meet some requirements to receive coverage. They say Democratic policies have significantly expanded the population covered by Medicaid. They maintain too many recipients now are working-age adults who should be required to show they are working or in training or education programs to be covered. Pregnant women, elderly people and children would not face the same requirements.

By enacting work requirements, the federal government is estimated to save $109 billion over 10 years, according to a CBO report commissioned in 2023 looking at able-bodied recipients, with no children, between the ages of 19 to 55. It also found that roughly 600,000 people would lose health insurance, but that the policy would not boost employment.

Adjusting the Medicaid enrollment period. The GOP proposal would shift Medicaid from an annual enrollment process to one that requires recipients to enroll every six months. It would also undo a Biden-era policy designed to ease enrollment and renewal for eligible Americans.

Cutting “waste fraud and abuse.” Republicans have made this messaging key to their discussions on Medicaid, arguing that the government needs to ensure that resources are not misused.

The exact bounds of what policies and changes may fall under the category of “waste, fraud and abuse” is unclear. Some lawmakers, including Johnson, have pledged to remove Medicaid coverage for individuals living in the U.S. without legal status, but immigrants who are undocumented are not eligible to enroll in federally funded coverage.

Edwin Park, a research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, says GOP messaging on Medicaid is not new. He notes that proposals like expanded work requirements and per capita caps were all part of the Republican fight to repeal the ACA in 2017.

“These proposals are largely targeted at reducing coverage and enrollment, not trying to combat the very rare situation where there may be ineligible people enrolled,” said Park.

“This fraud, waste and abuse message is just being used as a label for all these Medicaid cuts, which are long standing priorities, particularly for more conservative members of the Republican caucus,” he said.

Internal divides and key deadlines

Hard-line conservatives see the $1.5 trillion in proposed cuts in the budget framework as merely a floor. They inserted language in the plan requiring smaller tax cuts if spending cuts end up below that level.

This week more than 30 House conservatives sent a letter to the speaker noting that the budget resolution the House approved set a target that’s not up for negotiation.

“The House reconciliation instructions are binding. They set a floor for savings, not a ceiling. We must hold that line on fiscal discipline to put the country back on a sustainable path,” the letter states.

To reach those cuts, Republicans should press for the broadest reforms possible to Medicaid, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told reporters on Thursday.

“The math has to add up. Very clear that we need to actually get the transformations we need in Medicaid so that you don’t have the able bodied getting greater benefits than the vulnerable.”

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, speaks on the phone before a House Republican Caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol on April 8. Roy is among a group of fiscal conservatives pushing for changes to Medicaid to bring down federal spending.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The speaker has set a goal of getting a package through the House by Memorial Day, and top GOP leaders say they believe they can negotiate a final package with the Senate and get it to the president by July 4.

Many swing state House Republicans say they need to coordinate final details on any Medicaid changes with the Senate, because requiring them to vote for something that is a nonstarter in the upper chamber opens them up to political attacks in the midterms.

New Jersey GOP Rep. Jeff Van Drew told reporters the discussion has to center on finding a deal that the president and the Senate can pass.

“What we don’t want to do — I’ve been clear — is pass a bill through the House of Representatives that doesn’t even have a shot with the president or with the United States Senate,” he said. “That would be insane. It’s stupid.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has already been vocal about his opposition to large changes to Medicaid.

“Everybody’s got to make their own judgment and some folks are probably fine with cutting Medicaid,” he told NPR last week. “They view that as a feature, not a bug, but I view it as a bug. I mean, I’m not going to vote for Medicaid cuts.”

Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington told reporters that when Republicans last tried to make significant changes to Medicaid in 2017, “it didn’t work out so well.” Newhouse said that in his own district, almost 40% of his constituents are on Medicaid.

“It’s a huge issue. We want to make sure those people who need it have it available to them.”

Oklahoma GOP Rep. Tom Cole says he supports proposals to increase the share that states pay for Medicaid. He says while he won’t agree with every decision about every piece of the bill, the central question Republicans will have to answer is will they vote no and “trigger the largest [tax] increase in American history.”

He says the way it’s worked since President Trump took office in January is that the speaker “adroitly gets us to about the 10 yard line, and then you turn the ball over to Donald Trump” to lock up the votes to get over the goal line.”

OMAHA, Neb. — Raven Connelly flew from London. Katherine Schaaf took Amtrak from San Francisco. And Bill and Carol Thatcher drove several hours from Fort Dodge, Iowa — population 26,000.

They were just a few of the tens of thousands of people who descended on Omaha last weekend to pay tribute to the billionaire investor Warren Buffett — and, it turned out, to witness his retirement announcement on Saturday.

“One of the great pleasures in this business is having people trust you,” Buffett told his rapt audience during a lengthy Q&A, hours before announcing his retirement: “Why [else] work at 90, when you’ve got more money than anybody could count?”

At age 94, the “Oracle of Omaha” has earned that trust — along with returns for his shareholders. He’s one of the giants of American capitalism, in part for making common-sense “value” investing accessible to people outside Wall Street.

Buffett bought Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, when it was a struggling textile mill. Sixty years later, he has turned it into one of the world’s largest companies, operating businesses ranging from insurance and railroads to Dairy Queen and Duracell batteries. Its success has made Buffett, now worth some $162 billion according to Bloomberg, one of the wealthiest people in the world.

He also seems to be one of the most well-liked — at least according to his loyal shareholders. They come from all over the world to attend the annual Berkshire Hathaway party nicknamed Woodstock for Capitalists.

Buffett’s Q&A session, where he answers shareholder questions for hours, is the centerpiece.

“It’s spiritual and morally uplifting,” said Rosalyn Trumm of Omaha, who has been attending the annual meeting since 1995. “I think it’s remarkable to hear Warren talk about what business and society and values should be.”

That sort of devotion is a remarkable accomplishment today, especially considering the widespread public distrust of many other billionaires. For example, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is wielding unprecedented political power in the United States as a close adviser to President Trump — and becoming widely unpopular for it.

Buffett “is a capitalist, but he’s also a responsible citizen and a decent human being,” says analyst Cathy Seifert, who covers Berkshire for CFRA Research.

“When the general public bashes billionaires,” she adds, “I don’t think they’re bashing Buffett.”

Buffett is famously humble. He’s also very media savvy

Buffett’s decision to retire as CEO was both surprising and not. He has spent years preparing Berkshire for life after him, and in 2021 he publicly designated Vice Chairman Greg Abel as his eventual successor. In 2023, Buffett also lost his longtime business partner and close friend, Charlie Munger, who died at age 99.

Yet his news still stunned the crowd on Saturday. Perhaps it was meant to: Buffett had at that point answered shareholder questions for almost five hours, while flanked onstage by Abel and his beloved cans of Coca-Cola.

Buffett had started the day by promising shareholders that his 60th annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting would be “the biggest, and I think it’ll be the best yet.”

And then, with under five minutes left in his promised speaking time, he revealed his news with a flourish. “The time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at year end,” he declared — later adding that the news was also a surprise to Abel himself.

The delivery was pure Buffett: both media savvy and relatably human.

The billionaire is famous for his humility, as oxymoronic as that sounds. He has lived in the same five-bedroom house since 1958, and he claims to subsist on Coke, See’s Candies and McDonald’s drive-through.

Buffett has also spent decades giving away his fortune and publicly encouraging other billionaires to do the same, including through the Giving Pledge, which he started with Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates.

Just this week, Bill Gates said that he wants to “give away virtually all my wealth” in the next 20 years. He also called Buffett “one of my biggest influences … who remains the ultimate model of generosity.”

But Buffett has also been very deliberate about marketing himself as a folksy, humble Midwesterner. During this gigantic three-day party he throws in his own honor every year, his hours of televised commentary are the main event. He has a close relationship with business-news channel CNBC, which set up an entire pavilion in this year’s exhibit hall to cover the weekend. And he draws both shareholders and journalists from around the world, to hang on his every word.

So Buffett has been extremely shrewd about both wielding his billionaire bully pulpit and crafting his public image. And he’s not fully relinquishing either, despite his planned retirement as CEO: This week, the company said that Buffett would remain chairman.

When asked why they traveled to Omaha last weekend, several Berkshire shareholders brought up the contrast between Buffett and the current generation of high-profile billionaires.

“Even with the money that he has, he knows how to give back to the world. And you don’t see that with people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos,” said Jeff Pollak, a Berkshire shareholder who traveled from Orange County, Calif., for the weekend.

Around the corner from the arena hosting the festival, a local shop was selling T-shirts, coffee mugs and records. Most of the slogans embossed on its products were decidedly progressive, including critiques of Trump and Musk. Yet one T-shirt on prominent display crowed that “the nicest billionaire lives in Omaha.”

A sign next to the shirts made the connection to another famously nice billionaire who also works hard to control her own image: “Warren Buffett: The Taylor Swift of the stock market,” it declared.

Nebraska Public Media’s Arthur Jones contributed reporting.