Thursday Briefing – The New York Times

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The White House yesterday walked back President Trump’s order to freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans. A federal judge had on Tuesday temporarily blocked the order after it caused mass confusion across the country.

The Trump administration had struggled to explain the funding freeze, a decision that interrupted the Medicaid system, which provides health care to millions of low-income Americans.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, wrote on social media that “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze.” She said the president’s executive orders on federal funding “remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”

The decision by the Trump administration to pull the directive was a significant reversal. Democratic leaders celebrated the announcement.

Grilling: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for health secretary, faced tough questions and struggled to convince senators that he was not against vaccines during confirmation hearings in Washington. Kennedy — who has been vocally skeptical of vaccines, supports unorthodox diets and has spouted conspiracy theories — is one of Trump’s most polarizing choices.

Guantánamo Bay: Trump has ordered his administration to prepare to house 30,000 “criminal aliens” at the Navy base. In recent weeks, about 40,000 immigrants have been held in private detention centers and local jails around the country.

Building on their momentum, Russian forces have seized control of yet another small town in eastern Ukraine, military experts say — another step in their grinding push to conquer the entire Donetsk region.

Battlefield maps from independent groups show that the town, Velyka Novosilka, is now under Russian control, and the Kremlin claimed its capture on Sunday. Ukraine’s military acknowledged its withdrawal from most of the town but said that its troops maintained a foothold on the northern outskirts.

Context: The gain, though modest, underscores the effectiveness of a Moscow’s tactics in eastern Ukraine: using its overwhelming personnel advantage to attack relentlessly, gradually trapping Ukrainian forces in a pincer movement and forcing them to retreat to avoid encirclement.

An American Airlines passenger plane collided with an Army helicopter before crashing in the Potomac River yesterday evening near Washington, D.C., the authorities said. All takeoffs and landings were halted at Ronald Reagan National Airport nearby.

Dozens of people were reported to have been on the flight, but there was no immediate information about casualties.

Seuk Kim left behind a finance career to chase his dream of becoming a pilot. Late last year, he took off with four shelter dogs on board — a trip that would see only some of its passengers make it home safely.

Lives lived: Mauricio Funes, a former president of El Salvador who fled to Nicaragua to escape corruption investigations, died at 65.

As DeepSeek rattled markets this week with its new chatbot, my colleague Vivian Wang had a question: Given that the start-up is from China, how does it navigate Beijing’s censorship?

“I was absolutely fascinated by the way the chatbot talked to itself during the reasoning process as it tried to negotiate with itself what was and wasn’t acceptable to share,” Vivian said, after testing it out. “It felt a little like watching someone argue with themselves.”

DeepSeek was far less censored than most Chinese platforms, but it also couldn’t answer questions like, “Who is Xi Jinping?” Read more about Vivian’s test.

Other news about DeepSeek:

That’s it for today’s briefing. And a correction: Yesterday’s briefing incorrectly identified a tourist destination in a photo as being in Croatia. It was in Copenhagen.

See you tomorrow. — Natasha

Reach Natasha and the team at briefing@nytimes.com.


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