The massive spending bill pushed by Trump and passed by Congress this summer increased immigration enforcement by $170 billion, part of a broader push to reach the administration's goal of deporting 1 million immigrants each year. The new round of immigration spending includes $75 billion over four years for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, on top of the $10 billion the agency had already been allocated for 2025.
In just the past 11 months, his administration has canceled billions of dollars in foreign aid, frozen billions of dollars in research grants, imposed new conditions on other grants and contracts, slashed agency staffs, and even sought to claw back certain prior grant payments. At the same time, it has employed military resources to assist immigration enforcement, offered civil-service buyouts without statutory authority, and reportedly used a private donation to help pay military salaries during this fall's government shutdown.
The monkey jailbreak went viral: it was the day after the election, and the divided nation was eager for distraction. How did the macaques make it out? The escape quickly became politicized. In a new investigation, the New Yorker staff writer Ava Kofman reports from the small town of Yemassee, South Carolina, about the macaque mass exodus-which fuelled an unlikely alliance between animal-rights proponents and the MAGA movement.
