Plus: A push to amend the Constitution could help Trump expand presidential power.
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The Big Story

March 17, 2025 · View in browser

In today’s newsletter: Trump’s halted Agent Orange cleanup risks poisoning local residents; the consequences of a push to amend the Constitution; migrants deported from the U.S. speak out; and more from our newsroom.

Trump Halted an Agent Orange Cleanup. That Puts Hundreds of Thousands at Risk for Poisoning.

Diplomats in Vietnam warned Washington that halting USAID’s efforts to clean up the massive deposit of postwar pesticides would be a catastrophe for public health and relations with a key strategic partner in Asia.

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The New Immigration

 
Hayatullah Omagh, a 29-year-old immigrant from Afghanistan, in a parking lot surrounded by other men and cars

Hayatullah Omagh, a 29-year-old immigrant from Afghanistan, tries to figure out what to do after Panamanian authorities released him from detention. (Matias Delacroix/AP Images)

I am Hayatullah Omagh, from Afghanistan, 29 years old.

I arrived in February, 07 in USA.

They took me to the San Diego detention center and on Feb, 12 they deported to Panama.

Now we are like prisoners.

The text came from inside a Panamanian government outpost, on the edge of the Darien jungle. It was written by a migrant who’d managed to smuggle a cellphone into the facility by hiding it in his shorts. 

He was one of the lucky ones. Most of the hundred or so other migrants who were being detained with him had no way to communicate with the outside world. They’d been sent to Panama as part of President Donald Trump’s high-profile campaign to ramp up deportations.

Three flights, carrying a total of 299 migrants, including children as young as 5, landed in Panama in mid-February. For the following three weeks, amid an international outcry over what critics described as a stunning breach of U.S. and international law, the migrants who had not committed any crimes were held against their will.

As public pressure on Panama mounted and immigrant advocates filed suit against that country, authorities there released the migrants —  including Omagh — last weekend, on the condition that they agree to make their own arrangements to leave within 90 days. Their release has hardly settled matters, however, among groups that consider themselves part of the international safety net for migrants.

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Quoted

 
 

“Fear is the problem. Fear of prosecution. And even if it doesn’t occur, it doesn’t fix the jeopardy that is actively eroding our system of care”

 

– Dr. Jim Souza, the chief physician executive of the St. Luke’s Heath System in Idaho, at an April 2024 press conference explaining why his hospital system was sending patients to nearby states when certain pregnancy complications meant termination might be necessary. 

Less than a year later, St. Luke’s is the one major institution — other than advocacy groups — standing in the way of restrictions on emergency abortion care in Idaho, a state with one of the most absolute abortion bans in the country. But this is not the first time the health system has taken a stand on controversial issues.

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More from the newsroom

 

How a Push to Amend the Constitution Could Help Trump Expand Presidential Power

The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram: Inside a Global Online Hate Network

Who’s Running the DOGE Wrecking Machine: The World’s Richest Man or a Little-Known Bureaucrat?

Parents Sue Trump Administration for Allegedly Sabotaging Education Department’s Civil Rights Division

Texas Lawmakers Want a Charter School Network to Stop Paying Its Superintendent Nearly $900K. The School Board Says No.

 
 
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