Roughly 5.3 million borrowers are in default on their federal student loans and soon could be subject to having their wages garnished.

Referrals for collection had been put on hold since March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the U.S. government also paused federal student loan payments and interest accrual as a temporary relief measure. That grace period was extended multiple times by the Biden administration and ended in October.

One of the borrowers facing more severe consequences is Kat Hanchon, who works in higher education information technology in Michigan.

“My stomach dropped immediately as soon as I read (the news),” said Hanchon, 33. “I wanted to throw up because I already live paycheck to paycheck.”

Hanchon said she owes nearly $85,000 in debt between their undergraduate and master’s degrees. And even with an income-driven repayment plan, Hanchon said she could not afford to pay those loans off on top of other expenses including a mortgage and medical bills.

The last time Hanchon remembers being able to make a student loan payment was September 2024. “I couldn’t even afford the like $55 that they were trying to charge me … because it’s that tight of a budget,” she said.

The department says it will soon begin sending notices on collection efforts, but there are options for borrowers to get out of default.

Here are some key things to know.

How Will Involuntary Collection Work?

Beginning May 5, the department will begin involuntary collection through the Treasury Department’s offset program. Borrowers who have student loans in default will receive communication from Federal Student Aid in the upcoming weeks with information about their options, according to the Education Department.

Involuntary collection means the government can garnish wages, intercept tax refunds and seize portions of Social Security checks and other benefit payments to go toward paying back the loan.

What Is the Difference Between Delinquent and Default in My Student Loans?

A student loan becomes delinquent when a borrower doesn’t make a payment 90 days after its due date. If you continue to be delinquent on your loan for 270 days — or roughly nine months — then your loan goes into default.

While being delinquent affects your credit score, going into default has more serious consequences such as wage garnishment.

What Happens When a Loan Goes Into Default?

When you fall behind on a loan by 270 days, the loan appears on your credit report as being in default. Once a loan is in default the government will send the borrower into collections.

What Can I Do Right Now if My Student Loan Is in Default?

The Education Department is recommending borrowers visit its Default Resolution Group to make a monthly payment, enroll in an income-driven repayment plan, or sign up for loan rehabilitation.

Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute for Student Loan Advisors, recommends loan rehabilitation as an option.

Borrowers in default must ask their loan servicer to be placed into such a program. Typically, servicers ask for proof of income and expenses to calculate a payment amount. Once a borrower has paid on time for nine months in a row, they are taken out of default, Mayotte said. A loan rehabilitation can only be done once.

What Does Forbearance Mean?

Student loan forbearance is a temporary pause on your student loan payments granted to borrowers who are experiencing financial difficulties. To apply for forbearance, borrowers must contact their loan servicer.

Borrowers can be granted forbearance by their loan servicer for up to 12 months but interest will continue to accrue during this period.

Forbearance is not an option for borrowers whose student loans are in default. However, they are an option if you are delinquent on your loan.

How Can a Borrower Find the Status of Their Student Loans?

Borrowers need to know the status of their student loans in order to find out if they are in default, said Kate Wood, student loans expert at NerdWallet.

To find the status of a student loan and their loan servicer information, borrowers need to access their studentaid.gov account. Since the Education Department is going to send notices about involuntary collections through email, borrowers want to make sure all their personal information is updated such as email and physical address, Wood recommended.

Can Involuntary Collections Affect My Supplemental Security Income?

Yes, benefits from Social Security are considered income and can be affected by involuntary collections.

How Does Delinquency Affect My Credit Score?

Borrowers who are delinquent on their student loans take a massive hit on their credit scores, said Wood. Those who are delinquent on their student loans might see a drop of one hundred points or more to their credit score. A delinquency stays on your credit report for seven years.

Credit scores are used in many aspects of people’s financial lives such as access to credit cards, buying a house or renting an apartment.

Can I Apply to Income-Driven Repayment Plans?

Income-driven repayment plans applications are currently open. These plans base your monthly student loan payment amount on your income and family size.

The Biden administration’s SAVE program is no longer open for applications since it was challenged in court. However, those who got accepted into the SAVE program are currently in administrative forbearance, meaning they don’t have to make payments.

To review income-driven repayment plan options, you can check the loan simulator at studentaid.gov.

The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.

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One proposal shared with aides would reserve 30% of scholarships for the Fulbright program, the prestigious, government-backed international fellowship, for applicants who are married or have children.

Another would give a $5,000 cash “baby bonus” to every American mother after delivery.

A third calls on the government to fund programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles — in part so they can better understand when they are ovulating and able to conceive.

Those ideas, and others, are emerging from a movement concerned with declining birthrates that has been gaining steam for years and now finally has allies in the U.S. administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk.

Policy experts and advocates of raising the birthrate have been meeting with White House aides, sometimes handing over written proposals on ways to help or persuade women to have more babies, according to four people who have been part of the meetings who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Related Story: California’s Aging Population Will Test Whether Its Demography Is Destiny

A New Cultural Agenda

Administration officials have not indicated what ideas — if any — they might ultimately embrace. But advocates expressed confidence that fertility issues will become a prominent piece of the agenda, noting that President Donald Trump has called for a “baby boom” and pointing to the symbolic power of seeing Vance and other top officials attend public events with their children.

“I just think this administration is inherently pronatalist,” said activist Simone Collins, referring to the movement to reverse declining birthrates.

The behind-the-scenes discussions about family policy suggest Trump is quietly building an ambitious plan to promote the issue, even as he focuses much of his attention on higher-profile priorities such as federal cuts, tariffs and mass deportations. Project 2025, the policy blueprint that has forecast much of Trump’s agenda so far, discusses family issues before anything else, opening its first chapter with a promise to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life.”

Much of the movement is built around promoting a very specific idea of what constitutes a family — one that includes marriage between a man and a woman and leaves out many families that don’t conform to traditional gender roles or family structures. In contrast to the intense emphasis on cost cutting so far during Trump’s second term, this focus on families could result in spending more money to back a new set of priorities.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump “is proudly implementing policies to uplift American families.”

“The president wants America to be a country where all children can safely grow up and achieve the American dream,” she added. “As a mother myself, I am proud to work for a president who is taking significant action to leave a better country for the next generation.”

Concerns Over Declining Birthrates

Trump, Vance and Musk have cultivated the movement by publicly highlighting issues related to family policy and “pronatalism” — both in the lead-up to the election, and since Trump took office. Speaking to a crowd in January at the March for Life, an anti-abortion rally, Vance said he wanted “more babies in the United States of America” and more “beautiful young men and women” to raise them.

Last month, Trump pledged to be “the fertilization president.”

The coalition of people who want to see more babies born is broad and diverse. They are unified in their concerns about the U.S. birthrate, which has been falling since 2007, warning of a future in which a smaller workforce cannot support an aging population and the social safety net. If the birthrate is not turned around, they fear, the country’s economy could collapse and, ultimately, human civilization could be at risk.

But many in the movement have different reasons for wanting people to have more children — and often disagree on how to get there. Many Christian conservatives see declining birth and marriage rates as a cultural crisis brought on by forces in politics and the media that they say belittle the traditional family, encouraging women to prioritize work over children. They are pushing for more committed marriages and large families, while some who identify strictly as “pronatalists” are interested in exploring a variety of methods, including new reproductive technologies, to reach their goal of more babies.

“Pronatalism strictly speaks to having more babies,” said Emma Waters, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that led Project 2025. Waters, who says she is concerned about the birthrate but does not identify as a pronatalist, added: “Our ultimate goal is not just more babies but more families formed.”

Related Story: Trump Admin Reverses Course, Allows Idaho to Enforce Strict Abortion Ban

Focus on IVF and Infertility

The next major development on these issues is widely expected to come directly from the White House. Trump aides are preparing a highly anticipated report, to be released no later than mid-May, recommending ways to make in vitro fertilization more readily available and affordable. The White House pledged to produce the document in a February executive order reaffirming the president’s commitment to reducing the costs of IVF, a promise Trump made on the campaign trail without offering specific policy details on how he would do so.

Discussions around what the report should contain have highlighted divisions within the pro-family and pronatalist movement, according to several advocates involved in the conversations. While some in the movement — including Musk, who has fathered multiple children through in vitro fertilization — are extremely supportive of IVF, many anti-abortion Christian conservatives have serious misgivings about the procedure, which fertilizes a woman’s egg outside the body, and often leads to the loss of human embryos.

The Trump administration “is listening to a lot of different ideas and soliciting input on all of this,” said Lyman Stone, director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, who has pitched several policy ideas to the White House. “I think they’re still having a conversation about what they want to do.”

The most ambitious plans for family formation will not materialize right away, many movement leaders said. That is partially because, while other countries have tried a variety of approaches, it’s not yet clear what kind of policies will best incentivize people to have more babies — or whether those kinds of policy incentives are effective at all. Many ideas, like an expanded child tax credit or a “baby bonus,” would require an act of Congress.

The Heritage Foundation has been researching the question for over two years and is preparing to release a report in the coming weeks on how it believes the administration and Congress should counter declining birth and marriage rates, said Jay Richards, the director of the foundation’s DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family. The “newest and boldest” idea, Richards said, is a plan that offers tax credits to married couples with children, in which families receive more money back from the government for each additional child they have.

Heritage has also been prominent in efforts to shape what the White House might do on infertility and IVF. The group, which heralds its commitment to “protecting the unborn,” is skeptical of the procedure. Leaders at Heritage hope the administration will take a broader approach to combating infertility in line with the Make America Healthy Again movement largely led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary. The idea, called Restorative Reproductive Medicine, revolves around treating the “root causes” of infertility, and leaving IVF as a last resort.

“We need to channel the MAHA spirit and really dive deep into infertility,” said Waters, who recently co-wrote a Heritage report on infertility. “If the executive order’s goal is to increase access to infertility care, and keep costs down, the solution is not to push IVF for everyone.”

Waters has proposed directing the National Institutes of Health to expand its study of infertility and reproductive health conditions, including endometriosis. She has also proposed using government funds to promote programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles and their “natural fertility,” such as cycle-charting courses that many conservative Christian women use to try to prevent pregnancy without using birth control.

These kinds of programs could both help women identify the reasons for their infertility, Waters said, and also teach them when they’re able to conceive. They could be facilitated through school sex education programs, she added, or independent courses designed for adults.

Leading medical associations have been skeptical of this approach, calling it “political” and not based in science.

“These ideologies have been around for a long time, and they’re always rooted in religion,” said Eve Feinberg, a medical director of fertility and reproductive medicine at Northwestern University. “It’s not actual medicine.”

Still, there are opportunities for bipartisanship on these issues, which bring together unlikely coalitions to push for better family policies or more funding for infertility issues. While Feinberg took issue with Waters’ explanation of infertility challenges as far too simplistic, she agrees with some of her recommendations. More federal funding for infertility and reproductive health issues is a “wonderful idea,” Feinberg said, adding that women’s health “has been underfunded for so long.”

But the desire to increase funds to help mothers and babies could collide with other administration priorities. For instance, this month, the health department made large cuts to the Division of Reproductive Health, which handled issues related to in vitro fertilization and maternal health outcomes.

An official speaking on behalf of the department said its maternal and reproductive health programs would continue. “Under President Trump’s executive order to establish the MAHA Commission, Secretary Kennedy is determined to find the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic, including the toxins in our environment and food supply,” the official said.

Beyond the issue of fertility, the White House has received a wide range of policy recommendations designed to incentivize people to marry and have more children.

In an attempt to influence highly educated couples, Stone proposed that the government impose a quota for married applicants or applicants with children across all of its fellowship programs, including the Fulbright fellowship. The recipients are largely recent college graduates, many of whom are single and travel abroad alone.

“What the government is doing with these programs is conferring status,” Stone said. “That being the case, it’s bad for the government to blindly confer status on people for their singleness.”

Some within the administration and on Capitol Hill are interested in more sweeping legislative ideas for reversing declining birthrates. Several lawmakers are exploring legislation to offer new parents a “baby bonus,” a one-time payment of a few thousand dollars to the mother of the child, to be issued soon after her delivery, according to people familiar with the discussions. The “baby bonus” could also take the form of a young child or newborn supplement to the existing child tax credit.

Trump himself weighed in on the issue at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2023, with a statement that has become a rallying cry for many in the movement.

“We will support baby booms and we will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom,” Trump said.

“I want a baby boom.”

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Caroline Kitchener/Charity Rachelle
c. 2025 The New York Times Company

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The visit was the latest bid by Democrats in Congress to amplify the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man whom Trump administration officials have admitted to erroneously sending back to his home country, and hundreds of other immigrants the administration has hastily deported.

Reps. Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Maxine E. Dexter of Oregon met with William H. Duncan, the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, at the embassy in San Salvador on Monday morning. They urged the ambassador to raise the issue with Salvadoran officials and to press for transparency about Abrego Garcia’s detention.

Meeting With US Ambassador

The lawmakers said they had not been permitted by Salvadoran officials to meet with Abrego Garcia.

After their meeting, a U.S. Embassy official said the lawmakers’ concerns had been relayed to the Salvadoran government.

Related Story: Supreme Court Blocks, for Now, New Deportations Under 18th Century Wartime Law

Concerns Relayed, Meeting Denied

The official said it was the first time the embassy had raised questions to President Nayib Bukele’s administration about the treatment of more than 250 Venezuelan migrants now being held in Salvadoran custody.

At a news conference after the meeting, the Democrats denounced the Trump administration’s failure to comply with court orders, including a Supreme Court decision instructing the administration to take steps to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States.

“We left that meeting with absolutely zero indication that this administration is going to facilitate, or wants to facilitate, the return of Abrego Garcia back to the United States so he can go through due process,” Frost told reporters.

The lawmakers’ visit follows that of Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who traveled to El Salvador last week. After two days of resistance from Bukele’s government, Salvadoran officials allowed Van Hollen to meet with Abrego Garcia face-to-face, delivering him unexpectedly to the senator’s hotel for a meeting that appeared staged to emphasize how well he was being treated.

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Robert Jimison and Annie Correal/Daniele Volpe
c. 2025 The New York Times Company

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The S&P 500 was 2.8% higher in afternoon trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1,071 points, or 2.8%, as of 12:24 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 3.3% higher. Every major index has so far recovered from their sharp drop on Monday.

The value of the U.S. dollar also stabilized after sliding against the euro and other competitors, while Treasury yields held steadier. Sharp, unusual moves in those markets have recently raised worries that Trump’s policies are making investors more skeptical that U.S. investments still deserve their reputations as the world’s safest.

Related Story: Fed’s Powell: Economy Slowing in Q1, Can Wait for Greater Clarity

Economic Worries Persist Despite Rally

The only prediction many Wall Street strategists are willing to make is that financial markets will continue to jerk up and down as hopes rise and fall that Trump may negotiate deals with other countries to lower his tariffs. Otherwise, many investors expect the economy to fall into a recession.

The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday slashed its forecast for global economic growth this year to 2.8%, down from 3.3%. But Vice President JD Vance also said he made progress with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, on trade talks Monday.

Some signs of nervousness remain in financial markets. Gold continued to rise, for example, as it holds onto its reputation as a safer investment when fear is dominating markets.

Strong Corporate Earnings Boost Stocks

A suite of better-than-expected profit reports from big U.S. companies, meanwhile, drove U.S. stocks higher.

Equifax jumped 14.5% after reporting better profit for the first three months of 2025 than analysts expected. It also said it would send more cash to its shareholders by increasing its dividend and buying up to $3 billion of its stock over the next four years.

3M climbed 8.1% after the maker of Scotch tape and Command strips said it made more in profit from each $1 of revenue during the start of the year than it expected. The company also stood by its forecast for profit for the full year, though it said tariffs may drag down its earnings per share by up to 40 cents per share.

Homebuilder PulteGroup rose 8.2% after it likewise delivered a stronger profit for the start of 2025 than analysts expected.

It’s been benefiting from the sharp moves in the bond market. The unusual drops for Treasury yields recently are translating into lower rates for mortgages for potential customers. The drops for stock prices that are happening at the same time, though, are likely also scaring potential buyers.

CEO Ryan Marshall said buyers “remain caught between a strong desire for homeownership and the affordability challenges of high selling prices and monthly payments that are stretched.”

Related Story: Wall Street Tumbles, Nvidia Slumps After New US Chip Export Controls

Tariffs Impact Individual Company Performance

Tesla rose 6.5% ahead of its earnings report, which is scheduled to arrive after trading ends for the day. That trimmed its loss for the year so far roughly 40%.

Elon Musk’s electric car company has already reported its first-quarter car sales dropped by 13% from the year before. It’s been hurt by vandalism, widespread protests and calls for a consumer boycott amid a backlash to Musk’s high-profile role in the White House overseeing a cost-cutting purge of U.S. government agencies.

Stocks also showed how Trump’s tariffs could create winners and losers in a remade global economy.

First Solar jumped 12.6% after the U.S. Department of Commerce finalized harsher-than-expected solar tariffs on some southeast Asian communities.

Defense contractors had some of the market’s sharpest losses after RTX said U.S. tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports, along with other products, could mean an $850 million hit to its profit this year. RTX, which builds airplane engines and military equipment, fell 8.7% even though it reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter.

Kimberly-Clark lost 1.8% even though the maker of Huggies and Kleenex likewise reported a better-than-expected profit.

CEO Mike Hsu said that “the current environment will now mean greater costs across our global supply chain” versus what it expected at the start of the year, and the company lowered its forecast for an underlying measure of profit this year.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.38% from 4.42% late Monday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in modest moves across Europe and Asia.

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.

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The latest turmoil threatens to engulf the Pentagon, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has pushed out top advisers and faces fresh controversy over sharing sensitive information about airstrikes in Yemen outside of classified channels. A former Pentagon spokesperson who was ousted last week wrote in Politico that Trump should fire Hegseth for presiding over a “full-blown meltdown.”

Hegseth lashed out on Tuesday on Fox News Channel, where he was a weekend host before joining Trump’s administration, by faulting the people who used to work for him.

“Those folks who were leaking, who have been pushed out of the building, are now attempting to leak and sabotage the president’s agenda,” he said.

The interpersonal drama is not — at least yet — a dominant plot line of Trump’s return to the White House. But its reemergence after a period of relative discipline in his ranks reflects a turbulent management style that has been suppressed or papered over, not reformed.

Trump’s national security team was recently rattled by an Oval Office visit from Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has been questioning his staff’s trustworthiness. The Republican president fired some of the officials, emboldening Loomer to continue scrutinizing people across the administration.

In an interview with independent journalist Tara Palmeri released on Monday, Loomer mocked the idea that the White House is “one big happy family.”

“The advisers don’t get along with each other,” she said. “The heads of agencies don’t get along with each other.”

Related Story: Trump Stands Behind Hegseth After Attack Plans Shared in Second Signal Chat

Tariff Trouble Causes Friction for the Trump Team

Much of the tension is connected to Trump’s determination to use tariffs to rebalance the global economy, with officials often contradicting each other and occasionally turning to insults. Trump adviser Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur whose companies could suffer from higher costs brought on by import taxes, sharply criticized Peter Navarro, Trump’s top counselor on trade, as “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the idea of growing dissension within the administration, saying there are “far more examples of the president’s team working together enthusiastically and collaboratively to advance the administration’s goals.”

“The numbers and results of this administration speak for themselves,” she said. “The president and his team are getting work done.”

Trump has always had a high tolerance for chaos, shunning traditional policy deliberations to entertain divergent opinions and viewing unpredictability as a negotiating tool. He’s spent years fostering a competitive atmosphere among his staff members, who are often chosen for their devotion and penchant for aggression.

But now the increasing strife underscores the risks for more turmoil in the months ahead, as Trump presses forward with a dramatic overhaul of the federal bureaucracy, international trade, foreign policy and more.

John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in Trump’s first term before writing a tell-all book critical of the president’s inner circle, said the drama reflects the lack of a consistent ideology and the inexperience of many administration officials.

“The only thing they have in common is the belief that they should show personal fealty to Trump,” Bolton said. “That got them the job. That may in fact keep them in the job. But it shows how fundamentally unserious they are.”

The situation is a test for Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, who helped run Trump’s presidential campaign last year. She earned a reputation for imposing an unusual level of order on Trump’s chaotic orbit — though she carefully avoided trying to control Trump or his impulses — and he praised her as “the ice maiden.”

During Trump’s first term, he had four chiefs of staff — one of them serving in an acting capacity for more than a year. The second, former U.S. Marine Gen. John Kelly, became a sharp critic of the president after he left the job, describing him as a fascist during the 2024 election.

Related Story: Judge Extends Ban on Musk’s DOGE Access to Private Social Security Data

White House Closes Ranks Around Hegseth

With his new administration, Trump has surrounded himself with loyalists, and he’s been reluctant to throw anyone overboard in response to negative coverage from the mainstream media, which he considers to be an enemy. Allies say the hesitance to make personnel changes in this term is meant to deny giving a win to critics, even if it means leaving troubled officials in place.

On Monday, the president brushed off reports that Hegseth participated in a second group chat to talk about pending airstrikes in Yemen last month. The first chat, which used the encrypted messaging application Signal, involved top administration officials as well as the editor of The Atlantic, who was accidentally included in the discussion.

The second, first reported by The New York Times on Sunday, included Hegseth’s wife, who does not have a government job, and his brother and his personal lawyer, both of whom work at the Pentagon.

“Same old stuff,” Trump said when reporters questioned him about it during the White House Easter egg roll. He said Hegseth is “doing a great job” and “it’s just fake news.”

Leavitt, in an appearance on Fox News Channel, defended Hegseth with a swipe at the people who work for him.

“This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and against the monumental change that you are trying to implement,” she said. Leavitt’s comment was shared by an official Defense Department social media account.

Related Story: What if There’s No Way to Stop Trump’s Approach to Power?

Trump Loyalists — Not Just Democrats — Are Pointing Fingers

However, some of those speaking out were among Hegseth’s top advisers.

John Ullyot, who served as a Pentagon spokesperson until he was asked to resign, wrote in Politico that “it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.” He added that “the president deserves better” and “many in the secretary’s own inner circle will applaud quietly” if Hegseth is fired.

The disorder extends through the Pentagon’s senior ranks. Three officials — Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick — were recently pushed out, and they issued a statement saying people “have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.”

Hegseth did not deny the reports about his use of Signal. But he added: “What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out.”

Trump’s tariff plans have also been a source of stress inside the administration, often leading to mixed messages and policy confusion. Navarro insisted there weren’t going to be any negotiations, contradicting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s insistence that import taxes were about strengthening the White House’s negotiating position.

The president partially retreated from his plans, but not before Navarro and Musk began openly feuding. Navarro said Musk was “protecting his own interests” by opposing tariffs, and he described Musk’s electric automaker Tesla as a “car assembler” that’s dependent on importing parts from overseas.

Musk, who advises Trump on ways to downsize the federal bureaucracy, responded by saying that Navarro was “truly a moron.”

Leavitt downplayed the dispute by saying “boys will be boys.”

“We will let their public sparring continue,” she told reporters. “And you guys should all be very grateful that we have the most transparent administration in history.”

Trump often appears more interested in fealty than veracity. During part of last year’s campaign, he traveled with Loomer, who has a history of making racist attacks on Trump’s opponents and once claimed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were an inside job.

After Trump won, Loomer became frustrated that she wasn’t allowed to help vet administration personnel. She eventually secured an Oval Office meeting with the president, bringing research on national security officials whom she believed were disloyal.

After Trump fired some of them, Loomer has continued her work. Last week, she accused Bessent of inviting a “Trump hater” to work with him on financial literacy efforts.

“I am going to personally tell President Trump and personally show him these receipts,” Loomer wrote on social media, adding “shame on” Bessent.

Musk shared her post and chimed in with his support — “troubling,” he wrote.

The post As Controversies Pile Up, Trump Allies Increasingly Turn on One Another appeared first on GV Wire.

The disparate events ranged from a march through midtown Manhattan and a rally in front of the White House to a demonstration at a Massachusetts commemoration marking the start of the American Revolutionary War 250 years ago. In San Francisco, protesters formed a human banner reading “Impeach & Remove” on the sands of Ocean Beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Echoes of Revolution

Thomas Bassford was among those who joined demonstrators at the reenactment of the Battles of Lexington and Concord outside of Boston. “The shot heard ’round the world” on April 19, 1775, heralded the start of the nation’s war for independence from Britain.

The 80-year-old retired mason from Maine said he believed Americans today are under attack from their own government and need to stand up against it.

“This is a very perilous time in America for liberty,” Bassford said, as he attended the event with his partner, daughter and two grandsons. “I wanted the boys to learn about the origins of this country and that sometimes we have to fight for freedom.”

Concerns Over Civil Rights and Government Actions

Elsewhere, protests were planned outside Tesla car dealerships against billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk and his role in downsizing the federal government. Others organized more community-service events, such as food drives, teach-ins and volunteering at local shelters.

The protests come just two weeks after similar nationwide protests against the Trump administration drew thousands to the streets across the country.

Organizers say they’re protesting what they call Trump’s civil rights violations and constitutional violations, including efforts to deport scores of immigrants and to scale back the federal government by firing thousands of government workers and effectively shutter entire agencies.

Some of the events drew on the spirit of the American Revolutionary War, calling for “no kings” and resistance to tyranny.

Specific Fears Voiced in Major Cities

Boston resident George Bryant, who was among those protesting in Concord, Massachusetts, said he was concerned Trump was creating a “police state” in America as he held up a sign saying, “Trump fascist regime must go now!”

“He’s defying the courts. He’s kidnapping students. He’s eviscerating the checks and balances,” Bryant said. “This is fascism.”

In Washington, Bob Fasick said he came out to the rally by the White House out of concern about threats to constitutionally protected due process rights, as well as Social Security and other federal safety-net programs.

The Trump administration, among other things, has moved to shutter Social Security Administration field offices, cut funding for government health programs and scale back protections for transgender people.

“I cannot sit still knowing that if I don’t do anything and everybody doesn’t do something to change this, that the world that we collectively are leaving for the little children, for our neighbors is simply not one that I would want to live,” said the 76-year-old retired federal employee from Springfield, Virginia.

And in Manhattan, protesters rallied against continued deportations of immigrants as they marched from the New York Public Library north towards Central Park past Trump Tower.

“No fear, no hate, no ICE in our state,” they chanted to the steady beat of drums, referring to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Marshall Green, who was among the protesters, said he was most concerned that Trump has invoked the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 by claiming the country is at war with Venezuelan gangs linked to the South American nation’s government.

“Congress should be stepping up and saying no, we are not at war. You cannot use that,” said the 61-year-old from Morristown, New Jersey. “You cannot deport people without due process, and everyone in this country has the right to due process no matter what.”

Meanwhile Melinda Charles, of Connecticut, said she worried about Trump’s “executive overreach,” citing clashes with the federal courts to Harvard University and other elite colleges.

“We’re supposed to have three equal branches of government and to have the executive branch become so strong,” she said. “I mean, it’s just unbelievable.”

Associated Press reporters Claire Rush in Oregon, Joseph Frederick in New York, Rodrique Ngowi in Massachusetts and Nathan Ellgren in Washington contributed to this story.

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Starting with Saturday’s anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the country will look back to its war of independence and ask where its legacy stands today. Just after dawn on the Lexington Battle Green, militiamen, muskets in hand, took on a much larger contingent of British regulars. The battle ended with eight Americans killed and 10 wounded — the dead scattered on the grounds as the British marched off.

The regulars would head to Concord but not before a horseman, Dr. Samuel Prescott, rode toward the North Bridge and warned communities along the way that the British were coming. A lone horseman reenacted that ride Saturday, followed by a parade through town and a ceremony at the bridge.

The day offers an opportunity to reflect on this seminal moment in history but also consider what this fight means today.

“It’s truly momentous,” said Richard Howell, who portrayed Lexington Minute Man Samuel Tidd in the battle.

“This is one of the most sacred pieces of ground in the country, if not the world, because of what it represents,” he said. “To represent what went on that day, how a small town of Lexington was a vortex of so much.”

Among those watching the Lexington reenactment was Brandon Mace, a lieutenant colonel with the Army Reserve whose ancestor Moses Stone was in the Lexington militia.

He said watching the reenactment was “a little emotional.”

“He made the choice just like I made and my brother made, and my son is in the Army as well,” Mace said. “… He did not know we would be celebrating him today. He did not know that he was participating in the birth of the nation. He just knew his friends and family were in danger.”

The 250th anniversary comes with President Donald Trump, scholars and others divided over whether to have a yearlong party leading up to July 4, 2026, as Trump has called for, or to balance any celebrations with questions about women, the enslaved and Indigenous people and what their stories reveal.

What Happened at Lexington and Concord?

Historians can confidently tell us that hundreds of British troops marched from Boston in the early morning of April 19, 1775, and gathered about 14 miles (23 kilometers) northwest, on Lexington’s town green.

Witnesses remembered some British officers yelled, “Throw down your arms, ye villains, ye rebels!” and that a shot was heard amid the chaos, followed by “scattered fire” from the British. The battle turned so fierce that the area reeked of burning powder. By day’s end, the fighting had moved to about 7 miles (11 kilometers) west to Concord and some 250 British and 95 colonists were killed or wounded.

But no one knows who fired first, or why. And the revolt itself was initially less a revolution than a demand for better terms.

Woody Holton, a professor of early American history at the University of South Carolina, said most scholars agree that the rebels of April 1775 weren’t looking to leave the empire, but to repair their relationship with King George III and go back to the days before the Stamp Act, the Tea Act and other disputes of the previous decade.

“The colonists only wanted to turn back the clock to 1763,” he said.

Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose books include biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams, said Lexington and Concord “galvanized opinion precisely as the Massachusetts men hoped it would, though still it would be a long road to a vote for independence, which Adams felt should have been declared on 20 April 1775.”

But at the time, Schiff added, “It did not seem possible that a mother country and her colony had actually come to blows.”

A Fight for the Ages

The rebels already believed their cause was bigger than a disagreement between subjects and rulers. Well before the turning points of 1776 — before the Declaration of Independence or Thomas Paine’s boast that “We have it in our power to begin the world over again” — they cast themselves in a drama for the ages.

The so-called Suffolk Resolves of 1774, drafted by civic leaders of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, prayed for a life “unfettered by power, unclogged with shackles,” a fight that would determine the “fate of this new world, and of unborn millions.”

The revolution was an ongoing story of surprise and improvisation. Military historian Rick Atkinson, whose book “The Fate of the Day” is the second of a planned trilogy on the war, called Lexington and Concord “a clear win for the home team,” if only because the British hadn’t expected such impassioned resistance from the colony’s militia.

The British, ever underestimating those whom King George regarded as a “deluded and unhappy multitude,” would be knocked back again when the rebels promptly framed and transmitted a narrative blaming the royal forces.

“Once shots were fired in Lexington, Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren did all in their power to collect statements from witnesses and to circulate them quickly; it was essential that the colonies, and the world, understand who had fired first,” Schiff said. “Adams was convinced that the Lexington skirmish would be ‘famed in the history of this country.’ He knocked himself out to make clear who the aggressors had been.”

A Country Still in Progress

Neither side imagined a war lasting eight years, or had confidence in what kind of country would be born out of it. The founders united in their quest for self-government but differed how to actually govern, and whether self-government could even last.

Americans have never stopped debating the balance of powers, the rules of enfranchisement or how widely to apply the exhortation, “All men are created equal.”

That debate was very much on display Saturday — though mostly on the fringes and with anti-Trump protesters far outnumbered by flag-waving tourists, locals and history buffs. Many protesters carried signs inspired by the American Revolution including, “Resist Like Its 1775,” and one even brought a puppet featuring an orange-faced Trump.

“It’s a very appropriate place and date to make it clear that, as Americans, we want to take a stand against what we think is an encroaching autocracy,” Glenn Stark, a retired physics professor who was holding a “No Kings” sign and watching the ceremony at the North Bridge.

Massachusetts’ Democratic governor, Maura Healey, who spoke at the North Bridge ceremony, also used the event to remind the cheering crowd that many of the ideals fought for during the Revolutionary War are again at risk.

“We see things that would be familiar to our Revolutionary predecessors — the silencing of critics, the disappearing people from our streets, demands for unquestioned fealty,” she said. “Due process is a foundational right. if it can be discarded for one, it can be lost for all.”

Italie reported from New York.

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Greenblatt is the president and owner of Marlin Steel Wire Products in Baltimore, Maryland, which makes baskets and racks for medical device manufacturers, aerospace companies, food processing companies and others. It has 115 employees and makes its products in three locations in Maryland, Indiana and Michigan. The steel is sourced from Tennessee, Illinois and Michigan.

Currently, it’s hard to compete with baskets made overseas., Greenblatt says, because the countries he competes against have an “unfair advantage.” For example, due to European tariffs and taxes, it costs much more for a German consumer or company to buy Marlin wire baskets than it does for Americans to buy a German-made basket, creating an uneven playing field, Greenblatt said.

“It’s wildly unfair to the American worker,” he said. “And this has, by the way, been going on for decades.”

What Trump Is Doing

The Trump administration has called U.S. manufacturing an “economic and national security” priority. U.S. manufacturing has been declining for decades. In June 1979, the number of manufacturing workers peaked at 19.6 million. By January of 2025, employment was down 35% to 12.8 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Small manufacturers, which make up 99% of all American manufacturing, have been hit particularly hard.

The administration has implemented some tariffs against major U.S. trading partners, while putting a hold on other tariffs pending negotiations. The Trump administration says tariffs will force companies to have more products made in the U.S. to avoid steep price increases on their imports, which will mean “better-paying American jobs,” for people making cars, appliances and other goods.

Greenblatt agrees, saying he could double his staff if “parity” in tariffs becomes a reality.

Uncertainty for Businesses

While other small manufacturing businesses also support the tariffs, other owners have concerns. The Trump tariffs threaten to upend the existing economic order and possibly push the global economy into recession. And the uneven rollout of the policy has created uncertainty for businesses, financial markets and U.S. households.

For Corry Blanc, the injection of uncertainty around the economy outstrips any potential benefit.

He started his business, Blanc Creatives in Waynesboro, Virginia, in 2012. He makes handcrafted cookware such as skillets and other kitchenware and bakeware with American steel and wood and employs 12 staffers. He gets his steel from a plant in South Carolina and a distributor in Richmond. Wood comes from local regional sawmills near the company’s headquarters in Waynesboro, Virginia.

He said he’s been fielding worried calls from customers in Canada and overseas. And he says the infrastructure isn’t in place to increase production if more people do start buying American-made goods.

Blanc said he survived the pandemic and other tough times, but conditions now are the hardest they’ve ever been.

“There’s so much uncertainty and not a lot of direction,” he said.

Michael Lyons is the founder of Rogue Industries, a company that makes wallets and other leather goods in a workshop in Standish, Maine, with a staff of nine. He uses leather from Maine and the Midwest. About 80% of his products are made in Maine and 20% are imported.

He said the uncertainty around the tariffs is outweighing any potential long-term benefit. A long-time customer from Canada recently told Lyons that he would no longer be buying from Rogue Industries because of the friction between the two countries.

“Hopefully this will pass, and he’ll be able to come back,” he said. “But I did think that was kind of an interesting indicator for him to reach out.”

Lyons would like to expand his business, but says, “at the time being, it’s probably going to be, we hold with what we have.”

Hoping for More American-Made Products

American Giant CEO Bayard Winthrop takes a more positive view. He founded his clothing company in 2011 after watching the textile industry go offshore, and seeing a lack of quality, affordable American-made clothing. He started by selling one sweatshirt, and now sells a wider range of clothing, mostly direct-to-consumer, but he also has a contract with Walmart.

He sources cotton from Southeastern states like Georgia, Florida and North Carolina and has a factory in North Carolina and a joint partnership facility in Los Angeles.

“People forget that in about 1985 that all the clothing that Americans bought was made in America,” he said. “It is only in the last 40 years that that we really pursued as a country a very aggressive approach to globalization.”

In 1991, more than half of U.S. apparel, about 56%, was made in the U.S., according to statistics from the American Apparel and Footwear Association. By 2023 that number had shrunk to less than 4%.

Winthrop hopes the tariffs will bring about a return to more American-made products.

“The imbalances between our trading, in particularly with China, particularly the textiles, it’s just shocking, to be honest with you,” he said, adding that he hopes Trump’s policies “put domestic manufacturers on a bit more of a competitive footing.”

Winthrop understands people’s concerns but said it’s important to think longer term.

“Americans are worried about tariffs, and I think there’s a lot of justification for the worry because I think the administration can be volatile and unpredictable,” he said. But he added that people should put that aside.

“The idea that we’re going to be more protective of our domestic marketplace and have an industrial policy that includes manufacturing jobs is, an old idea. It’s not a new idea,” he said.

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On Sundays, I used to stand in front of my Mormon congregation and declare that it all was true.

I’d climb the stairs to the pulpit and smooth my long skirt. I’d smile and share my “testimony,” as the church calls it. I’d say I knew God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, prayer, spirits and miracles were all real. I’d express gratitude for my family and for my ancestors who had left lives in Britain, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway to pull wagons across America and build a Zion on the plains. When I had finished, I’d bask in the affirmation of the congregation’s “Amen.”

In that small chapel by a freeway in Arkansas, I knew the potency of believing, really believing, that I had a certain place in the cosmos. That I was eternally loved. That life made sense. Or that it would, one day, for sure.

I had that, and I left it all.

I never really wanted to leave my faith. I wasn’t interested in exile — familial, cultural or spiritual. But my curiosity pulled me away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and toward a secular university. There, I tried to be both religious and cool, believing but discerning. I didn’t see any incompatibility between those things. But America’s intense ideological polarity made me feel as if I had to pick.

My story maps onto America’s relationship to religion over the past 30 years. I was born in the mid-1990s, the moment that researchers say the country began a mass exodus from Christianity. About 40 million Americans have left churches over the past few decades, and about 30% of the population now identifies as having no religion. People worked to build rich, fulfilling lives outside of faith.

That’s what I did, too. I spent my 20s worshipping at the altar of work and, in my free time, testing secular ideas for how to live well. I built a community. I volunteered. I cared for my nieces and nephews. I pursued wellness. I paid for workout classes on Sunday mornings, practiced mindfulness, went to therapy, visited saunas and subscribed to meditation apps. I tried book clubs and running clubs. I cobbled together moral instruction from books on philosophy and whatever happened to move me on Instagram. Nothing has felt quite like that chapel in Arkansas.

America’s secularization was an immense social transformation. Has it left us better off? People are unhappier than they’ve ever been, and the country is in an epidemic of loneliness. It’s not just secularism that’s to blame, but those without religious affiliation in particular rank lower on key metrics of well-being. They feel less connected to others, less spiritually at peace, and they experience less awe and gratitude regularly.

Now, the country seems to be revisiting the role of religion. Secularization is on pause in America, a study from Pew found this year. This is a major, generational shift. People are no longer leaving Christianity; other major religions are growing. Almost all Americans — 92% of adults, both inside and outside of religion — say they hold some form of spiritual belief, in a god, human souls or spirits, an afterlife or something “beyond the natural world.”

In Washington, religious conservatives are ascendant. President Donald Trump claims God saved him from a bullet so he could make America great again. The Supreme Court has the most pro-religion justices since at least the 1950s. Nearly half of Americans believe the United States should be a Christian nation. And singer Grimes recently said, “I think killing God was a mistake.”

The Rise of the ‘Nones’

I remember the first time I saw Richard Dawkins’ book “The God Delusion.” I was in middle school, at a Barnes & Noble in a strip mall down the street from my church. I stopped in front of the shelves, confronted with an astonishing possibility: It was an option not to believe.

Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, intended to provoke. He was one of the patriarchs of New Atheism, a movement that began around the turn of the century. Disruptive forces — technological change, globalization and 9/11 — invited people to question both their relationship to faith and the role of religion in society. The New Atheists’ ideas helped make that interrogation permissible.

Religion was no longer sacrosanct, but potentially suspect. By 2021, about 30% of America identified as “nones” — people who have no religious affiliation.

But even as people left religion, mysticism persisted. More people began identifying as “spiritual but not religious.” In 2015, researchers at Harvard University began studying where these Americans were turning to express their spirituality. Reporters did, too. The answers included: yoga, CrossFit, SoulCycle, supper clubs and meditation.

“Secularization in the West was not about the segregation of belief from the world, but the promiscuous opening of belief to the world,” said Ethan H. Shagan, a historian of religion at the University of California, Berkeley.

Related Story: Trump Tells Prayer Breakfast He Wants to Root Out ‘Anti-Christian Bias’ and Urges ‘Bring God Back’

Happier, Healthier, More Fulfilled

Religion provides what sociologists call the “three B’s”: belief, belonging and behaviors. It offers beliefs that supply answers to the tough questions of life. It gives people a place they feel they belong, a community where they are known. And it tells them how to behave, or at least what tenets should guide their action. Religious institutions have spent millennia getting really good at offering these benefits to people.

“There is overwhelming empirical support for the value of being at a house of worship on a regular basis on all kinds of metrics — mental health, physical health, having more friends, being less lonely,” said Ryan Burge, a former pastor and a leading researcher on religious trends.

Pew’s findings corroborate that idea: Actively religious people tend to report they are happier than people who don’t practice religion. Religious Americans are healthier, too. They are significantly less likely to be depressed or to die by suicide, alcoholism, cancer, cardiovascular illness or other causes.

Answering Hard Questions

In a country where most people are pessimistic about the future and don’t trust the government, where hope is hard to come by, people are longing to believe in something. Religion can offer beliefs, belonging and behaviors all in one place; it can enchant life; most important, it tells people that their lives have a purpose.

People also want to belong to richer, more robust communities, ones that wrestle with hard questions about how to live. They’re looking to heady concepts — confession, atonement, forgiveness, grace and redemption — for answers.

Erin Germaine Mahoney, a 37-year-old in New York City, was an evangelical Christian for most of her life. She left her church in part because she disagreed with its views on women but said she has struggled to find something to fill the void. She wants a place to express her spirituality that aligns with her values.

She hesitated before saying, “I haven’t found satisfaction.”

“That scares me,” she added, “because I don’t want that to be true.”

Like Mahoney and many other “nones,” I, too, feel stuck. I miss what I had. In leaving the church, I lost access to a community that cut across age and class. I lost opportunities to support that community in ways that are inconvenient and extraordinary. I lost answers about planets, galaxies, eternity.

But I don’t feel I can go back. My life has changed: I enjoy the small vices (tea, wine, buying flowers on the Sabbath) that were once off-limits to me. Most important, though, my beliefs have changed. I’ve been steeped in secularism for a decade, and I can no longer access the propulsive, uncritical belief I once felt. I also see too clearly the constraints and even dangers of religion. I have written about Latter-day Saints who were excommunicated for criticizing sexual abuse, about the struggles faced by gay people who want to stay in the church.

I recognize, though, that my spiritual longing persists — and it hasn’t been sated by secularism. I want a god. I live an ocean away from that small Arkansas chapel, but I still remember the bliss of finding the sublime in the mundane. I still want it all to be true: miracles, souls, some sort of cosmic alchemy that makes sense of the chaos.

For years, I haven’t been able to say that publicly. But it feels like something is changing. That maybe the culture is shifting. That maybe we’re starting to recognize that it’s possible to be both believing and discerning after all.

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Lauren Jackson/Haiyun Jiang
c. 2025 The New York Times Company

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Decades of Secrecy End

Kennedy was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after giving his victory speech for winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website. Many files related to the senator’s assassination had been previously released, but others had not been digitized and sat for decades in storage facilities maintained by the federal government.

Related Story: Trump to Release Records on the Assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King

Transparency and Scrutiny

“Nearly 60 years after the tragic assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the American people will, for the first time, have the opportunity to review the federal government’s investigation thanks to the leadership of President Trump,” Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement.

Gabbard also said the files release “shine a long-overdue light on the truth.”

The release of the RFK files comes a month after unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy were disclosed. Those documents gave curious readers more details about Cold War-era covert U.S. operations in other nations but didn’t initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK.

Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he’s also been deeply suspicious for years of the government’s intelligence agencies, and his administration’s release of once-hidden files opens the door for additional public scrutiny and questioning about the conclusions and operations of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.

Commendation for Release

Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of governmental documents related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., who were killed within two months of each other.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a son of the Democratic New York senator who now serves as the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, commended Trump and Gabbard for their “courage” and “dogged efforts” to release the files.

“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” the health secretary said in a statement.

AP writer Eric Tucker contributed.

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