POLITICS

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday faced federal lawmakers for the first time since September as he sought to defend a more than 12% proposed cut to his department’s budget and dodge arrows from angry Democrats along the way.

In his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, kicking off an expected sprint of seven budget hearings he’ll attend across congressional committees and subcommittees over the next week, Kennedy emphasized the administration’s work to reform dietary guidelines and crack down on waste, fraud and abuse.

Republicans on the committee praised Kennedy as a “breath of fresh air” and asked him to promote his department’s recent actions. Democrats, who have been furious over Kennedy’s sweeping overhaul of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, largely had a different agenda.

They needled Kennedy on what they viewed as the Trump administration’s hypocrisy on fraud, demanded to know why he was cutting budgets for various programs and slammed his efforts to pull back vaccine recommendations and messaging, which they said have caused unnecessary deaths.

Kennedy fired back, often raising his voice as he accused the Democrats of misrepresenting his work and past statements.

Here are three standout moments from Thursday’s hearing:

A standoff over measles

One heated exchange early in the hearing came between Kennedy and Rep. Linda Sanchez. The California Democrat decried recent measles outbreaks across the U.S. and asked Kennedy to answer for the fact that under his leadership, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pulled back public health messaging supporting vaccination.

“As a mother, this horrifies me,” Sanchez said. “Did President Trump approve your decision to end CDC’s pro-vaccine public messaging campaign?”

Kennedy repeatedly refused to answer, saying first he wanted to respond to the “misstatements that you’ve made” and later praising the Trump administration’s record on preventing measles, although protections against the disease have eroded in some parts of the country as vaccination rates have dropped.

“That’s not answering my question,” Sanchez said as the two talked over each other.

But Sanchez also got Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist before he entered politics, to acknowledge that a 6-year-old who died of measles last year in West Texas could have potentially been saved with vaccination.

“Do you agree with the majority of doctors that the measles vaccine could have saved that child’s life in Texas?” she asked.

“It’s possible, certainly,” Kennedy said.

RFK Jr. denies talking about Black children being ‘re-parented’

A fight erupted between Kennedy and Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama, when Kennedy vehemently denied making remarks he’d said in 2024.

The comments dated back to when Kennedy was a presidential candidate. On the “High Level Conversations” podcast last July, he said, “Psychiatric drugs — which every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence, and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented to live in a community where there’ll be no cellphones, no screens, you’ll actually have to talk to people.”

“Have you ever re-parented, or parented, I should say, a Black child?” Sewell asked, as her staff held up a poster featuring an abbreviated version of the quote.

“I don’t even know what that phrase means,” Kennedy said. “I’m not going to answer something I didn’t say.”

“You’re making stuff up,” he later claimed.

A recording of the podcast shows he made the comments during a conversation about free rehabilitation facilities he was proposing opening at the time in rural areas around the country.

Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard said Kennedy before joining the administration was referring to spaces where young people facing alienation, mental health challenges and despair could get re-parented, which she said was a psychotherapy term for “developing the emotional regulation, discipline, boundaries, and self-worth that may not have been established in childhood.”

For Kennedy and his former party, civility is the exception

Kennedy spent most of his life as a Democrat, the scion of one of the nation’s most famous political families. Both Republicans and Democrats during the hearing began their remarks by expressing their admiration of Kennedy’s relatives, among them former President John F. Kennedy.

But again and again throughout Thursday’s hearing, the fraying of bonds between Kennedy and his former party was on full display as spiteful comments were passed back and forth.

The Health secretary grew defensive and visibly agitated. He repeatedly criticized Democratic lawmakers for not giving him a word in edgewise.

“They’ve all shut me up,” Kennedy said at one point. “They give a little speech that they can go and market, you know, for fundraising, and they don’t allow me to answer the question.”

On a few rare occasions, the exchanges were civil. One representative, Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, used humor to make that happen.

“I promise to give you easy, comfortable questions if you don’t yell at me and hurt my feelings,” she told Kennedy. He promised he wouldn’t.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump railed against a federal judge’s decision on Thursday that continues to block above-ground construction of a $400-million White House ballroom, allowing only below-ground work on a bunker and other “national security facilities” at the site.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s latest ruling comes in response to an appeals court’s instruction to clarify an earlier decision on the 90,000-square-foot ballroom planned for the site where the East Wing of the White House once stood.

Trump on social media called Leon, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President George W. Bush, a “Trump Hating” judge who “has gone out of his way to undermine National Security, and to make sure that this Great Gift to America gets delayed, or doesn’t get built.”

The administration filed a notice that it will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review Leon’s latest decision, too.

Carol Quillen, president and chief executive of National Trust for Historic Preservation, whose group sued to challenge the project, said in a statement that the group is pleased with the court’s ruling.

Leon said that below-ground work on security measures is exempt from his order suspending above-ground construction. Government lawyers have argued that the project includes critical security features to guard against a range of possible threats, such as drones, ballistic missiles and biohazards.

Leon’s latest ruling comes several days after a three-judge panel from the D.C. appeals court instructed him to reconsider the possible national security implications of stopping construction.

In his previous order, Leon barred above-ground work on the ballroom from proceeding without congressional approval. The judge also ruled on March 31 that any construction work that’s necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House is exempt from the scope of the injunction. Leon said he reviewed material that the government privately submitted to him before concluding that halting construction wouldn’t jeopardize national security.

Leon had suspended his March 31 order for two weeks. He stayed his latest decision for another week, which gives the administration more time to seek Supreme Court review.

Leon said he is ordering a stop only to the above-ground construction of the planned ballroom, apart from any work needed to cover or secure that part of the project. Otherwise, the Trump administration is free to proceed with the construction of any excavations, bunkers, military installations, and medical facilities below the ballroom.

“Defendants argue that the entire ballroom construction project, from tip to tail, falls within the safety-and-security exception and therefore may proceed unabated,” the judge wrote. “That is neither a reasonable nor a correct reading of my Order!”

On Saturday, the appeals court panel said it didn’t have enough information to decide how much of the project can be suspended without jeopardizing the safety of the president, his family or the White House staff.

Leon said he recognizes the safety implications of the case, but stressed that “national security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity.” He also said he has “no desire or intention to be dragooned into the role of construction manager.”

On April 2, two days after Leon’s previous ruling, Trump’s ballroom won final approval from the 12-member National Capital Planning Commission, which is charged with approving construction on federal property in the Washington region.

The preservation group sued in December, a week after the White House finished demolishing the East Wing to make way for a ballroom that Trump said would fit 999 people. Trump says the project is funded by private donations, although public money is paying for the bunker construction and security upgrades.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday nominated Erica Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general, to be the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a social media post, Trump described Schwartz as “incredibly talented” and said, “She is a STAR!”

The Atlanta-based CDC, which is charged with protecting Americans from preventable health threats, has been in turmoil since Trump returned to office more than a year ago, with a succession of mostly temporary leaders.

The agency is overseen by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had promised not to change the nation’s vaccination schedule. But shortly after taking office, Kennedy said he was going to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule and went on to attempt a substantial rewrite of vaccine recommendations for kids. Some of those efforts were put on hold recently by a federal judge.

The administration’s first pick to run the CDC was former Florida congressman Dr. David Weldon, but his March 2025 Senate confirmation hearing was canceled an hour before it was to begin. Weldon said at the time that he’d been told not enough senators were willing to vote for him.

The White House then moved on to Susan Monarez, who had been serving as the CDC’s acting director. Monarez was confirmed by the Senate, but she was ousted in less than a month. Trump administration officials said she wasn’t aligned with their agenda so they terminated her.

Several key CDC scientific leaders resigned in protest, saying Monarez’s dismissal dashed their hopes that a CDC director would be able to guard against political meddling in the agency’s scientific research and health recommendations.

Since then, there’s been a revolving door in agency leadership, with the short-term role of acting director being passed from one Washington-based Health and Human Services official to another. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya has been overseeing the CDC the past several weeks.

During a House Appropriations Committee hearing Thursday, Kennedy said the new CDC team was “extraordinary.”

“I think this new team is really going to be able to revolutionize CDC and get it back on track,” he said.

Schwartz holds multiple academic credentials, including both medical and law degrees. Her career has largely been spent in military uniform, including in a leadership position at the U.S. Coast Guard where she oversaw the organization’s system of 41 clinics and 150 sick bays.

She later served as deputy surgeon general, where she helped lead uniformed medical and health professionals posted at the CDC and government health agencies that serve the general public.

Schwartz could not be reached for comment.

Trump also announced the appointment of Sean Slovenski, a former Walmart executive, as CDC deputy director and chief operating officer. Dr. Jennifer Shuford, Texas health commissioner, was named the CDC’s deputy director and chief medical officer. And Dr. Sara Brenner, a former Food and Drug Administration administrator, was designated as a senior counselor for public health to Kennedy.

In a social media post Thursday, Kennedy congratulated Schwartz and the other appointees and said he looks “forward to working together to restore trust, accountability, and scientific integrity” at the CDC.

But Aaron Siri, a lawyer and ally of Kennedy in attacking vaccines and pharmaceutical companies, criticized Schwartz’s selection. In a social media post, Siri lambasted Schwartz’s past promotion of vaccinations and said “she lacks the basic ethics and morals to lead the CDC.”

Schwartz’s nomination comes as Dr. Casey Means, Trump’s pick for another key health-related role, U.S. surgeon general, has had difficulty getting confirmed.

Means’ languishing nomination after appearing for a confirmation hearing in February reflects the skepticism that lawmakers of both parties have expressed toward the direction in which Kennedy has taken his department.

Stobbe writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Ali Swenson contributed to this report.

On Sunday night, tens of thousands of Hungarians packed the banks of the Danube waving flags, crying of joy, popping bottles. Celebrating something that political analysts had spent years telling them was almost impossible: the electoral defeat of Viktor Orbán, the autocrat whose ploys and manipulations made him a uniquely disturbing force in the European Union. After 16 years in power, Hungary’s self-proclaimed architect of “illiberal democracy” conceded defeat within hours of the polls closing.

His rival, Péter Magyar (the equivalent of Pedro Veneco), had won 137 seats in a 199-seat parliament, a two-thirds supermajority that gave him not just a government, but the ability to rewrite the very constitution Orbán had rigged to protect himself. This appears to be the plan.

Venezuelans watching from afar could be forgiven for feeling two things at once: genuine joy, and a familiar, creeping doubt. 

Sure, but that’s Hungary.

The doubt is understandable. It’s also, at this particular moment in Venezuelan history, worth interrogating.

To understand whether Hungary provides a useful lesson, we need to venture farther than our diasporic links, like La Danubio, Catherine Fulop and Shirley Varnagy. You first need a category distinction that political scientists call the difference between a closed authoritarian regime and a competitive one. A closed autocracy doesn’t bother with the pretense of real elections. Or when it does, it simply invents the results. Especially after July 2024, Venezuela had become exactly this: we all know what happened. Politically, there was no game to play unless you played by the regime’s rules. The game was a charade. 

Orbán’s Hungary was something different, more insidious. Similar to what Chávez did to the institutions in the 2000s, while using hyper-ideological and reactionary rhetoric. The European Parliament had classified it as a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.” Orbán bent every institution he could reach: the judiciary, the media, the electoral rules themselves.

The scene on the Danube on Sunday night was a piece of great news in a political era that doesn’t offer many of them. The scenes in Budapest matter to us. But it shouldn’t be mistaken for a mirror.

He gerrymandered the system to favor the largest single party, confident that party would always be his. But he never quite crossed the line into fabricating vote counts, à la Maduro or Lukashenko. The game was still real, even if the playing field was tilted.

That distinction is now relevant because Venezuela’s political reality has shifted in ways that were unimaginable five months ago. The current regime Delcy Rodríguez leads is not identical to that of 2024 and 2025. Under US pressure, a few hundred political prisoners have been released and an amnesty law was approved in February. albeit with mixed results (more than 500 political prisoners are still behind bars, and amnesty has been formally denied to high-profile politicians and NGO leaders like Javier Tarazona). Overall, we see gestures that try to transmit magnanimity, but are moves meant to look like compliance while chavismo waits for Washington’s attention to wander.

But here’s the thing: even performative openings create real cracks, and the cracks are showing. In February alone, Venezuela has recorded dozens of protests, an exponential increase compared to the same month in 2025. Workers and students have taken to the streets of Caracas four times this year demanding salary increases, openly calling on the Rodríguez siblings to answer for their pleas. Last weekend in Valencia, in a football game between Carabobo and Universidad Central (a game which has enough backdrop to make a book about it), football fans directed chants against the son of Alexander Granko Arteaga (who plays for UCV): “¡Dónde están que no se ven, los enchufados de la UCV,” loud enough so it could be hear transmission (that would translate roughly to “nowhere to be seen, the UCV cronies are nowhere to be seen”). In 2025, that chant would have landed them in jail. That was exactly the outcome in the last domestic football final.

Waiting for the opportunity

Venezuela is still not a democracy. But the differences remain significant: a regime slowly, reluctantly slipping out of its authoritarian fortress, coming to terms with the fact that it will eventually have to face a reckoning at the ballot box. That’s what happened to Orbán. He controlled the courts, the media, the electoral geometry, and still got swept out because of the accumulated weight of economic failure, corruption, and sheer exhaustion that eventually overwhelmed the machinery he had built.

The lesson is not that rigged systems are beatable through optimism. It is that rigged systems have structural limits, and that opposition alliances which survive long enough, and build broad enough coalitions, tend to be standing when those limits are reached. In our case, we’ve seen all possible iterations of what an opposition can be. In 2024, the Maria Corina-led movement became the most formidable electoral force the country has seen in a while. That should have been our Orbán down moment. Nonetheless, the inertia we have seen since the beginning of the year is too good to let it slip away.

Political scientist Yascha Mounk, writing about Magyar’s victory, made an interesting observation that some might believe applies to Venezuelan democratic forces: the Hungarian opposition ousted Orbán on its fourth try, after years of humiliation, internal divisions and strategic errors. Patience, he argues, is its own form of political discipline.

This is Mounk’s post-populist dilemma, live, and a miniature preview of what a potential democratic government in Caracas would have in front of itself.

Again, the Venezuelan opposition doesn’t need that lesson. It already learned it, the hard way, and on a harder playing field. In 2015, it won a supermajority in the Asamblea and watched its powers get neutered one by one. In July 2024, it beat Maduro overwhelmingly and proved its victory with the official tally sheets. Edmundo González Urrutia did not become president because the movement backing him lacked organization, or coalition-building, or the kind of credible leadership that Magyar built from scratch since leaving Orban’s party two years ago. González Urrutia failed to take power because the regime decided that electoral results were optional.

The question was never whether the Venezuelan opposition could win an election. They already did in a way that should clarify the terrain for future opportunities. The actas and the popular support are powerful symbols that should endure. The question is whether they can repeat that performance, seizing the minimal opening they have in front of them whatever the broader circumstances. Then yes, the patience Mounk mentions is relevant.

The post-autocracy trap

Mounk is right to poop the party a little bit with a warning he calls the “post-populist dilemma.” Even with his supermajority, Magyar inherits a State that Orbán hollowed out and refilled with loyalists. He has two options: either fire them and bring about an anti-Fidesz purge; or leave them in place and be sabotaged from within. In his first week in power, Magyar is showing he wants to go for the first option. He has already called for the resignation of several key ministers of the Orban regime.

Venezuela would face this dilemma on steroids. Chavismo has had 27 years to embed itself across nearly everything. Rodríguez herself operates within a questionable agency on security forces (a certain someone remains interior minister and vice president for security). Any future Venezuelan government elected under competitive conditions would inherit an institutional landscape far more captured and complex than anything Magyar faces in Budapest.

This is not a reason for despair, but it does require confronting an uncomfortable asymmetry. When Magyar navigated Hungary’s post-populist transition, he did so with the EU at his back, a bloc that had spent years dangling billions in frozen funds as an incentive for democratic reform, and whose membership gave Hungarian voters a concrete, tangible alternative to Orbán’s model. Venezuela’s external anchor is the Trump administration, which has been explicit about its priorities: oil first, stability second, elections somewhere further down the list. Rubio’s three-phase roadmap (stabilization, economic recovery, reconciliation and transition) is not an explicit democratic transition plan. It is a business plan with democracy on the side.

Preparation, then, means the opposition must be the one holding the democratic line demanding verifiable electoral conditions, refusing to let institutional reform become a performance to please DC, and cementing a coalition broad enough that can translate the popular inertia and mood towards a margin so big it can’t be tweaked. The EU didn’t save Hungary. Hungarians did. The lesson travels.

Magyar won because Hungarians were organized, patient and ready when the moment arrived. Venezuelans have already proven they can do the same.

Magyar isn’t waiting. Within 72 hours of his victory, he demanded that Hungary’s president resign immediately, and sent the same message to the heads of the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the State Audit Office and the media authority calling them “puppets who have been in power for the past 16 years.” On Wednesday morning, in his first radio interview in over a year and a half, he told the State broadcaster its news operation would be shut down and relaunched as a true public service. Some are already calling it a witch hunt. Others call it the bare minimum required to transform the country.

This is Mounk’s post-populist dilemma, live, and a miniature preview of what a potential democratic government in Caracas would have in front of itself. If Magyar, armed with a two-thirds supermajority and the EU at his back, is already navigating accusations of overreach on day three, imagine what a Venezuelan opposition government would face trying to dismantle 27 years of institutional occupation in the police, intelligence agencies, the military, the public media, the judiciary. The task ahead is massive, and solving the dilemma probably requires an orderly phase-out agreed before the next presidential vote.

The scene on the Danube on Sunday night was a piece of great news in a political era that doesn’t offer many of them. The scenes in Budapest matter to us. But it shouldn’t be mistaken for a mirror.

Venezuela is not Hungary. Delcy is not Orbán, she is arguably more pragmatic, but also more constrained. Orbán was a standalone autocrat who built his system around his own political survival. Rodríguez governs by a permanent balancing act: between Washington’s demands, the military high command, the hardline faction and other peripheral actors. The competitive opening, if it comes, will be narrower, more fragile and more dangerous than anything Magyar navigated.

These are reasons to take the Hungarian lesson seriously without taking it literally. Magyar won because Hungarians were organized, patient and ready when the moment arrived. Venezuelans have already proven they can do the same. The question now is simpler, and harder: when the moment comes again, can the popular will (and not just the results) be allowed to stand?

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, leading a Pentagon prayer meeting, quoted a fictional bible verse taken from a violent monologue in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film “Pulp Fiction,” originally delivered by actor Samuel L. Jackson just before his character shoots a helpless man to death.

The secretary used the prayer to frame the war in Iran as an act of divine justice, the same justification Jackson’s character cites in the film before pulling the trigger.

Hegseth told the audience at a monthly Pentagon worship service held Wednesday that he learned the prayer from the lead mission planner of a team called “Sandy 1,” which recently rescued downed Air Force crew members in Iran.

Hegseth said the verse is frequently spoken by combat search-and-rescue crews, who call the prayer “CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17” from the Bible.

“And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother,” Hegseth recited. “And you will know my call sign is Sandy 1, when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

The infamous Ezekiel 25:17 speech from “Pulp Fiction” is almost entirely a screenwriter’s creation; only the final refrain is loosely inspired by the actual biblical verse. The majority of the monologue in Tarantino’s film is adapted from the opening of the 1976 Japanese martial arts film “The Bodyguard,” with action star Sonny Chiba.

Hegseth’s minute-long prayer closely followed those scripts, with only the last two lines resembling language from the Bible. In Hegseth’s version, he replaced “and they shall know that I am the Lord,” from the book of Ezekiel with the call sign for a U.S. A-10 Warthog aircraft.

Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said some outlets accused Hegseth of mistaking Jackson’s Golden Globe-winning performance with actual scripture, and called that narrative “fake news.”

“Secretary Hegseth on Wednesday shared a custom prayer, referenced as the CSAR prayer, used by the brave warfighters of Sandy-1 who led the daylight rescue mission of Dude 44 Alpha out of Iran, which was obviously inspired by dialogue in Pulp Fiction,” Parnell wrote on X. “However, both the CSAR prayer and the dialogue in Pulp Fiction were reflections of the verse Ezekiel 25:17, as Secretary Hegseth clearly said in his remarks at the prayer service. Anyone saying the Secretary misquoted Ezekiel 25:17 is peddling fake news and ignorant of reality.”

Hegseth has frequently used his prayer sessions to call for violence in the ongoing Iran war. In last month’s sermon, he asked God to “grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence.”

The services are not mandatory, a senior defense analyst with knowledge of Pentagon operations told The Times, but some who work closely with Hegseth’s office feel an “implied pressure” to attend and “fill seats.”

The effect — some feel — is less attention on the Pentagon’s wartime efforts, and more on supporting political stunts, according to the source, who is not authorized to speak to the media and requested anonymity.

“We have managers and leaders that are missing mission critical work to go listen to ‘Pulp Fiction’ quotes,” the source said. “It delays our ability to make operational, mission related war-fighting decisions.”

The prayer came amid an ongoing clash between the Trump administration and Pope Leo XIV, who has spoken out in recent weeks against the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. Statements from the Vatican were met with a series of reprisals from President Trump, who said he doesn’t “want a pope” who criticizes the president of the United States.

On Thursday, the pope released a statement against military leaders who conflate war with divinity.

“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” he said.

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration will hold a meeting in the summer to consider easing restrictions on more than a half-dozen peptide injections, a group of unapproved therapies that have become popular among wellness influencers, fitness gurus and celebrities.

The meeting announcement Wednesday follows repeated pledges by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to loosen regulations on peptides, which are often pitched as a quick way to build muscle, heal injuries or appear younger. There’s little research behind those claims and most peptides have not been reviewed for safety by the FDA.

Kennedy has discussed using peptides for his own injuries. And some major supporters of his Make America Healthy Again movement are big proponents of them, including Gary Brecka, a self-described “longevity expert” who sells various peptide formulas through his website.

The FDA said in a federal notice Wednesday that it will ask a panel of outside advisors to review seven peptides at a meeting in July, specifically whether they should be added to a list of substances that can be safely produced by pharmacies. In the meantime, the agency said it would soon remove the chemicals from a restrictive list reserved for unapproved, high-risk drugs. The peptides under discussion include some of the most popular among influencers, such as BPC-157, which is marketed to heal injuries and reduce inflammation.

“The Wild West is about to become wilder,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, a former FDA official who now leads the Center for Science in the Public Interest. In an interview, Lurie said allowing peptides on the market without clinical testing poses a “profound threat” to FDA’s decades-old system for vetting drugs.

“I don’t see why one would take the path of a proper drug approval if there is now this less rigorous, alternative path to market,” he said.

Under President Biden, the FDA added nearly 20 peptides to the federal list of substances that should not be produced by compounding pharmacies — businesses that mix medications that aren’t available from drugmakers.

At the time, the FDA’s panel of pharmacy advisors voted overwhelmingly that the peptides did not meet the criteria for substances that can be safely compounded. And FDA regulators agreed, saying later that the substances “present significant safety risks,” because most have not been extensively tested in humans.

Many of the FDA advisors and internal staff who oversaw those decisions no longer work for the agency. The FDA’s pharmacy panel currently has a number of vacancies, which Kennedy could fill before the July meeting.

Kennedy previewed Wednesday’s move in an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan. Both men have repeatedly spoken about peptides and claimed to have benefited from their use.

RFK Jr. claims personal benefit from peptides

“I’m a big fan of peptides,” Kennedy told Rogan. “I’ve used them myself and with really good effect on a couple of injuries.”

Given Kennedy’s statements, Lurie said it was doubtful the drugs would receive real scrutiny from FDA.

“Everybody knows the outcome that the secretary wants,” Lurie said. “I don’t believe for one moment that what’s going on here is an honest investigation of whether these products should be compounded.”

Scott Brunner of the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding said the coming meeting will be the start of a “protracted process.” Even if the panel votes to make the peptides available, and the FDA agrees, the agency will still have to draft and publish rules on the change, he noted.

Peptides are essentially the building blocks of more complex proteins. Inside the human body, peptides trigger hormones needed for growth, metabolism and healing.

In recent years peptides have become widely known through the blockbuster success of GLP-1 medications, which the FDA has approved for treating obesity and diabetes. Other FDA-approved peptides include insulin for diabetics and hormone-based drugs for several medical conditions.

But many of the peptides promoted online have never been approved, making them technically illegal to market as drugs. Several peptides, such as BPC-157 and TB-500, are banned by international sports authorities as doping substances.

But that has not stopped them from gaining a foothold in the burgeoning marketplace for wellness hacks and alternative remedies.

“I think this is a disaster in the works,” said Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research Translational Institute, who has studied the issue. “These peptides have no data to support their safety and efficacy.”

Meanwhile, some dietary supplement makers have begun mixing peptides into capsules, protein powders and gummies. At a recent FDA meeting, the industry argued for expanding the federal definition of supplements to permit the use of newer ingredients such as peptides in their products.

Safety risks were cited previously

When the FDA added a number of injectable peptides to its list of restricted substances in 2023, it cited safety risks including cancer and liver, kidney and heart problems.

That triggered pushback from wellness entrepreneurs, compounding pharmacies and their allies in Washington.

Last year several members of Congress, including Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, sent letters to Kennedy asking him to lift limits on peptide production.

Some in the compounding industry argue that FDA restrictions have given rise to an illicit market of imported chemicals from China and other countries, which are not subject to U.S. drug standards.

Kennedy has echoed those concerns.

“With the gray market you have no idea if you’re getting a good product,” Kennedy told Rogan. “And a lot of this stuff that we’ve looked at is just very, very substandard.”

Perrone writes for the Associated Press.

MINNEAPOLIS — An ICE agent is charged with assault for allegedly pointing his gun at people in a car while driving on a Minneapolis highway, prosecutors in Minnesota said Thursday.

An arrest warrant in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, says Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. is charged with two counts of second-degree aggravated assault. The warrant says Morgan was working as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in the Minneapolis area on Feb. 5 when he pointed a gun at the occupants of a vehicle on Minnesota State Highway 62.

Hennepin County Atty. Mary Moriarty said she believes it is the first criminal case brought against a federal immigration officer involved in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration enforcement that surged federal authorities into cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland and New Orleans.

Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department officials didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment. The Associated Press called a number associated with Morgan and sent a message to his possible email address but did not receive any immediate response.

Moriarty said during a news conference that Morgan was driving a rented, unmarked SUV on the shoulder of the highway when a car on the road moved into the shoulder to try to slow Morgan down, not knowing he was a federal officer. After the car returned into the legal lane, Morgan pulled up alongside and pointed his service weapon at the people in the car.

Morgan, 35, and his partner, who was not charged, were on their way to the federal building to end their shift when they were caught in traffic. Charging documents note Morgan did not say the incident occurred during an enforcement action.

According to the charging documents, Morgan told a Minnesota State Patrol officer that he pulled up alongside the victim’s vehicle, drew his firearm and yelled “Police Stop.” The warrant says the victims couldn’t hear him because their windows were up.

Morgan is charged with two counts of assault because he threatened both people in the vehicle, and there is a warrant out for his arrest, Moriarty said.

The charges could intensify a clash between the Trump administration and Minnesota officials over the crackdown. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, has warned that the Justice Department could investigate and prosecute state or local officials who arrest federal agents for performing their official duties.

Moriarty said she is not concerned about blowback from the Trump administration and that her office’s goal is to “hold people accountable if they violate the laws of the state,” she said.

She said Morgan’s actions were beyond the scope of a federal officers’ authority.

“There is no such thing as absolute immunity for federal agents who violate the law in the state of Minnesota,” she said.

In Minnesota, felony second-degree assault is punishable by up to seven years in prison, or up to 10 years imprisonment if the assault inflicted “substantial bodily harm.”

The Department of Homeland Security deployed about 3,000 federal officers to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area from December through February in what the agency called its “largest immigration enforcement operation ever.” The Minnesota operation led to thousands of arrests, angry mass protests and the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens.

Backlash over the aggressive tactics mounted, and two of the crackdown’s most high-profile leaders were soon gone. Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March shortly after the Minnesota surge ended. That same month, Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol sector chief who led immigration operations in several large cities, announced his retirement.

In a letter to California officials last year, then-Deputy Atty. Gen. Blanche wrote that “the Justice Department views any arrests of federal agents and officers in the performance of their official duties as both illegal and futile.”

“Numerous federal laws prohibit interfering with and impeding immigration or other law-enforcement operations,” Blanche wrote. “The Department of Justice will investigate and prosecute any state or local official who violates these federal statutes (or directs or conspires with others to violate them).”

Sullivan and Bynum write for the Associated Press. Bynum reported from Savannah, Ga. AP reporter Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — If the U.S. and Iran aren’t able to soon come to a deal to end the war or extend the ceasefire that expires next week, the Trump administration is setting the stage to shift its war campaign toward a more economic-focused effort aimed at choking Tehran into submission rather than relying on bombs alone.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters at a White House briefing Wednesday that the U.S. plans to ramp up economic pain on Iran, and said the new moves will be the “financial equivalent” of a bombing campaign.

The threat of secondary economic sanctions on countries doing business with people, firms, and ships under Iranian control — including allies like the United Arab Emirates and competitors like China — represents an escalation of sanctions that the U.S. is already employing.

Bessent said the administration has “told companies, we have told countries that if you are buying Iranian oil, that if Iranian money is sitting in your banks, we are now willing to apply secondary sanctions, which is a very stern measure. And the Iranians should know that this is going to be the financial equivalent of what we saw in the kinetic activities.”

Treasury Department warns China, Hong Kong, the UAE and Oman

The warning comes the day after the Treasury Department sent a letter to financial institutions in China, Hong Kong, the UAE, and Oman, threatening to levy secondary sanctions for doing business with Iran, and accusing those countries of allowing Iranian illicit activities to flow through their financial institutions.

It’s part of an economic playbook that President Trump still can use to pressure Iran to accept U.S. proposals to limit its nuclear ambitions, a person familiar with the administration’s thinking told the Associated Press. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private discussions on the record.

Privately, the argument being made to Trump is that the Iranians think they can weather the storm — but if they cannot pay their loyalists, that could pressure Iran to the table.

And some in the administration believe there are still more economic targets that can be hit that would put the economic hurt on Iran, including bonyads, the charitable trusts that account for a significant percentage of the Iranian economy.

Bessent told reporters that two Chinese banks have received warnings about handling Iranian money. Trump is preparing to visit Beijing next month for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Bessent also said that Iran’s Gulf neighbors are now willing to look at freezing Iranian money in their banks because of Iran’s aggression during the war.

Daniel Pickard, a sanctions attorney, said imposing secondary sanctions could result in “diplomatic and economic blowback” from allies that could hurt efforts to build coalitions against Tehran.

“A lot of our trading partners have been outspoken in regard to their opposition to the conflict in Iran,” Pickard said. “Most economic sanctions professionals would agree that when you get more people on the team, the chances of your economic sanctions being effective are greater.”

On Wednesday, the U.S. imposed sanctions on an oil smuggling network connected to the deceased senior Iranian security official Ali Shamkhani, who was a close advisor to the former Supreme Leader of Iran. Sanctions include dozens of individuals, companies, and vessels involved in secretly transporting and selling Iranian and Russian oil through front companies, many of which are in the UAE.

“Treasury will continue to cut off Iran’s illicit smuggling and terror proxy networks,” Bessent said in a statement. “Financial institutions should be on notice that Treasury will leverage all tools and authorities, including secondary sanctions, against those that continue to support Tehran’s terrorist activities.

The administration believes the momentum has shifted

Trump administration officials have also signaled growing confidence that the ceasefire and a blockade of shipments from Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz have shifted momentum in Trump’s favor.

Iran has endured tens of billions of dollars in damage during the bombardment to the country’s infrastructure — including setbacks to its oil industry, the heart of its fragile and long-isolated economy — that could take years to repair.

Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday said Trump “doesn’t want to make, like, a small deal. He wants to make the grand bargain.”

“That’s the trade that he’s offering,” Vance said. “If you guys commit to not having a nuclear weapon, we are going to make Iran thrive.”

The president’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, offered a more caustic assessment of the moment, suggesting that Trump had “played the checkmate move” on Iran by implementing the blockage in the strait.

“If Iran chooses the path of a deal that’s great for the world, that’s great for everybody. If Iran chooses the path of economic strangulation by blockade, then the world will pass Iran by,” Miller said in a Fox News appearance Tuesday evening. “New energy routes will be established. New supply chains will be established. Other nations throughout the region — throughout the world, and especially America — will power the world and Iran will become a footnote.”

Some Republicans are skeptical that more sanctions will work

Some Republicans believe that any tactic to exert more pressure on Tehran is worth trying.

“I would support anything,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). “If the administration came up with the ideas, I would support all of the above. More pressure, the better.”

Others were skeptical, noting that Tehran was already facing a litany of economic penalties that had little impact on its behavior.

“I’m not sure if it’s sanctions that’ll do it. I think we’re putting some pretty heavy sanctions on right now,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a member of the Banking and Armed Services Committees. “I personally am just not optimistic that we actually can fix this thing without a regime change.”

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a think tank that has been critical of Trump’s decision to launch the war, says that Trump had been “politically cornered and strategically constrained” before he announced the ceasefire. But now, Parsi argues, Trump may have altered the difficult dynamic and created a situation where “Iran now appears to need an agreement more than the United States does.”

“The window now open offers Tehran a chance to convert battlefield leverage into lasting strategic gain,” Parsi wrote in a new analysis. “To let it close would mean forfeiting not just incremental progress, but the possibility of reshaping its economic and geopolitical position. By contrast, the United States, having already secured a tenuous exit ramp through the ceasefire, has less at stake in the short term.”

Hussein, Madhani, Weissert and Kim write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s design for the Triumphal Arch he wants built at an entrance to the nation’s capital moved a step forward Thursday after a key agency reviewed the proposal for the first time. One commissioner suggested changes, including losing the Lady Liberty-like statue and pair of eagles that would sit on top of the arch and add to its height.

The arch is one of several projects that the Republican president is pursuing alongside a White House ballroom to leave his lasting imprint on Washington.

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts voted to approve the concept design for the arch. The seven commissioners, all appointed by Trump, will review an updated version of the design before taking a final vote at a future meeting.

Trump said last week on social media that the arch “will be the GREATEST and MOST BEAUTIFUL Triumphal Arch, anywhere in the World” and a “wonderful addition to the Washington D.C. area for all Americans to enjoy for many decades to come!”

Also on the agenda for the commission’s monthly meeting was his plan to paint the gray granite exterior of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is next to the White House, white.

A third White House-related project, construction of an underground center to conduct security screenings of tourists and other guests, was also up for consideration.

Triumphal Arch

The arch would stand 250 feet tall from its base to a torch held aloft by a Lady Liberty-like figure atop the structure. That figure would be flanked up top by two eagles and guarded at the base by four lions — all gilded. The phrases “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice for All” would be inscribed in gold lettering atop either side of the monument.

The commission’s vice chairman, architect James McCrery II, said he preferred the arch without the figure and eagles on top. McCrery also objected to the lions on the base.

The arch would be built on a human-made island managed by the National Park Service on the Virginia side of the Potomac River at the end of Memorial Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. The arch would dwarf the Lincoln Memorial, which is 99 feet tall, and be close to half the height of the Washington Monument, an obelisk that is about 555 feet tall.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that the arch’s 250-foot height will honor America’s 250 years of existence.

A group of veterans and a historian has sued in federal court to block construction on the grounds that the arch would disrupt the sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House at Arlington National Cemetery, among other reasons.

Underground screening center for White House visitors

The U.S. Secret Service, Interior Department, National Park Service, and the Executive Office of the President want to start construction in August on a 33,000-square-foot (3,066-square-meter) center to screen tourists and other visitors to the White House.

It would be built beneath Sherman Park, federal land southwest of the White House, to provide a more secure place to screen those going on White House tours or attending events. The new facility would have seven lanes to ease processing and reduce wait times.

Officials want it operating by July 2028, six months before Trump’s term ends.

Eisenhower Executive Office Building paint job

Trump said the Executive Office Building is beautiful, but he does not like its gray exterior.

“It’s one of the most beautiful buildings anywhere in Washington,” Trump said in August. “I think it’s just incredible, but you have to get past the color because the stone they used was a really bad color.”

Two proposals were given to the commission: Cover the entire building in bright white or paint most of it white while leaving untouched the granite on the exposed basement and subbasement.

In written materials, the White House said the building has been largely neglected since its construction. It said the building’s color, design and massing do not “align visually with the surrounding architecture” and lack ”any symbolic cohesion with the White House.”

The paint job is also the subject of litigation in federal court.

The building sits across a driveway from the West Wing. It was completed in 1888 after 17 years of construction, and its granite, slate, and cast iron exterior makes it one of America’s best examples of the French Second Empire style of architecture.

It originally housed the departments of State, War and Navy. It currently houses offices for the vice president and the National Security Council, among others.

The building is a National Historic Landmark and is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Guards severely beat and pepper-sprayed detainees at a state-run immigration detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades this month, according to a lawyer for two detainees.

The guards targeted Katherine Blankenship’s clients and other detainees at the facility after they complained about not having phone access on April 2, Blankenship said in a court declaration.

The phones, which weren’t functioning, are the primary way for detainees to communicate with family and their attorneys while in the detention center. The guards began taunting the detainees, who were in a cell, then became “more aggressive and were yelling and threatening to enter the cage,” Blankenship wrote.

When one detainee approached a guard, he was punched in the face. The guards then started beating other detainees in the cell. One of Blankenship’s clients was punched in the right eye, thrown to the floor and beaten by several guards. He was kicked in the head and his shoulder and arm were injured. A guard put his knee on the detainee’s neck while restraining him, according to the attorney’s declaration, which included a photo made during a video call almost a week later showing the detainee with a bruised eye.

“The officers beat several people during this incident and broke another detained individual’s wrist,” Blankenship wrote. The detainee whose wrist was broken is not one of her clients.

Phone service was restored the next day without any explanation for why it was cut off.

The Florida Department of Emergency Management didn’t respond to questions emailed Wednesday about the incident.

Blankenship’s declaration was included in a court filing accusing state and federal officials of failing to comply with a federal judge’s preliminary injunction last month ordering detention center officials to provide access to timely, free, confidential, unmonitored and unrecorded outgoing legal calls. U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell in Fort Myers, Florida also said facility officials must provide at least one operable telephone for every 25 people held in the facility.

The judge’s order came in a response to a lawsuit that claimed detainees’ First Amendment rights were being violated.

State officials have denied restricting detainees’ access to their attorneys and cited security and staffing reasons for any challenges. Federal officials who also are defendants denied that detainees’ First Amendment rights were violated. State officials last week filed a notice that they plan to appeal the judge’s order.

The Everglades facility was built last summer at a remote airstrip by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to support President Trump’s immigration policies. Florida also has built a second immigration detention center in north Florida.

During a visit last week to the detention center, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, said she wasn’t given the chance to talk to detainees. She described conditions at the detention center as “inhumane.”

“The way the detainees are housed is cruel and unnecessary,” she said.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press. AP journalist Gisela Salomon in Miami contributed to this report.

Brian Williams, the veteran former anchor for NBC News and MSNBC, is joining Netflix where he will host a weekly podcast.

Netflix announced Thursday that “We’re Back! With Brian Williams” will debut later this year. The format will feature Williams in extended interviews with pop culture figures and newsmakers in a casual setting.

“With scientists predicting that every American will have a podcast by 2030, I thought it was time to get in the game,” Williams said in a statement.

Williams – long a stalwart of traditional TV news – will be the biggest name from that arena to join a major video streaming platform.

Williams has been off TV since he departed MSNBC (now MS NOW) in 2021. He the anchor of the nightly program “The 11th Hour” and handled major breaking news coverage for the network.

Before joining MSNBC in 2015, Williams spent 10 years as anchor of “NBC Nightly News.” He left the broadcast after being suspended for making false statements about his experiences covering the Iraq war.

Williams tested the streaming waters when he anchored extended coverage of the presidential election in 2024 on Amazon Prime Video. While Amazon was said to be pleased with the program, which earned an Emmy, but the company has made no further commitment to live news programming.

“We’re Back!” will likely emphasize the playful side of Williams, who once hosted “Saturday Night Live” during his NBC years. He occasionally told colleagues he harbored a desire to become a late night talk show host or a forum where he could work in a more conversational style.

“After 40 years in the news business whee an in-depth interview gets four minutes of airtime at best, I just want to have interesting conversations with creative, funny, smart, talented and consequential people – like the shows we all grew up watching and listening to,” he said. “Netflix is the perfect home.”

jonathan Wald, a veteran TV news executive who worked with Williams at NBC and MSNBC, will be the executive producer for “We’re Back!”

Netflix has moved aggressively into the podcast business. Sports columnist Bill Simmons, who helped popularize the format, recently moved his podcasts to the platform in January as part of a deal with Spotify. Currently Netflix is carrying 51 video podcasts.

A powerful dust storm disrupted the first weekend of the Coachella music festival as blustery winds swept over the sprawling grounds and enveloped concertgoers in a whirlwind of desert sand.

Several social media videos from last Friday night showed attendees navigating the festival grounds amid wind-tossed tents and wearing face masks to guard against the airborne dust.

The weather conditions prompted the South Coast Air District to issue dust advisories for parts of the Coachella Valley, warning that strong winds could expose people to unhealthy dust levels. The dust storm caused festival organizers to cancel a highly anticipated performance by Italian EDM artist Anyma, who had been scheduled to perform Friday at midnight on the main stage.

“I don’t have many words other than to say I’m truly devastated and deeply sorry to everyone who showed up to the main stage, and to those watching the livestream at home,” he posted on X. “The dangerous winds not only prevented us and Coachella from building our stage, but also made it impossible for my entire live setup and performance to operate safely.”

It was the latest instance in which dusty conditions hampered one of the nation’s largest and most profitable music festival, which has been called “Dustchella.” But it is just one fragment of the economy disrupted by this natural phenomenon.

Wind-driven dust is an overlooked environmental hazard — and one that carries a hefty price tag. A recent study estimated that dust storms cost more than $154 billion in the U.S. in 2017, alone. The evaluation puts dust events on par with natural disasters in terms of economic costs, eclipsing, for example, the 2017 wildfire season but shy of that year’s hurricane season, according to Irene Feng, the lead author of the 2024 study, who researched dust at the University of Texas at El Paso.

“Dust is kind of a big deal,” said Feng, now a post-graduate student at George Mason University. “The fact that it was even comparable to hurricanes … was a huge surprise to me.”

Since researchers last attempted to calculate the costs associated with dust pollution in the 1990s, the numbers overall numbers essentially quadrupled.

Some of the greatest costs calculated in the new study include:

• $100 billion related to dust-related deaths and lost productivity from health issues, as inhaling dust particles can lead to serious respiratory illness and trigger heart attacks.
• $40 billion from additional household costs from cleaning, painting and property damage.
• $9.6 billion for damages to agriculture from lost water and weaker crop yields.
• $4 billion in lost value of weakened renewable energy generation, because dust obscures solar panels and gum up wind turbines.
• $280 million for traffic crashes caused by reduced visibility due to dust storms.

Among one of the most grave conditions Feng analyzed was a potentially life-threatening respiratory infection known as “valley fever.” Throughout much of Southwest, desert soil can be laced with Coccidioides fungus spores. When inhaled, this fungus can propagate in the lungs, potentially causing scarring and collapse of lungs.

In many cases, valley fever symptoms can mirror the flu or COVID, leading doctors to misdiagnose patients, and to not provide proper treatment.

Coachella, which is hosted at an irrigated polo field surrounded by desert, is particularly susceptible.

“When I heard that there was a dust event at Coachella, I was actually really concerned about the valley fever cases that might come out of that,” Feng said. “Because there’s so many people traveling from outside the state, and they don’t necessarily know what valley fever is.”

But devastating dust-related effects, like valley fever, can be mitigated, at least to some degree, according to environmental experts.

In California, state and local government agencies have launched dust-mitigation efforts by installing windbreaks, such as cultivating native plants or reshaping the topography with more ridges. About 200 miles north of Los Angeles, at the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Owens Lake, a critical and controversial source of water for Angelenos, city officials say they have drastically reduced dust near the dry, exposed lake bed in recent years after implementing some of these measures.

Scientists say global warming is causing warmer temperatures and more intense droughts, paving the way for more dust emissions. Feng said that could require more innovative solution, more action and more money.

“From what I’ve seen, it’s projected to be dustier in the future,” Feng said. “So, all these effects, all these costs, they’re just only going to get worse.”

More recent air news

The NAACP sued Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company this week, claiming xAI (the creator of Grok) violated federal clean air laws. The lawsuit, reported by CNBC’s climate tech reporter Lora Kolodny, accuses the company of installing and operating 27 natural gas-fired turbines to power its data center in Memphis without the necessary air permits.

Recent far-flung wildfire smoke has led to air quality risks in unlikely places. Now, Michigan, my beloved home state, is overhauling its air quality alerts system after having endured heavy smoke from Canadian wildfires in 2023 and 2025, per Planet Detroit’s senior reporter Brian Allnutt.

New research suggests methane emissions have been drastically underestimated in the country’s largest cities. An satellite analysis of 12 urban areas, including New York City and Los Angeles, found up to 80% more methane emissions than previously thought, according to ABC reporter Julia Jacobo.

Because methane warms the atmosphere far more than carbon dioxide, the findings underscore the need to investigate large emitters, such as landfills, gas pipelines and wastewater treatment facilities. One other, underreported source is California’s man-made lakes that we tap for drinking water, L.A. Times water reporter Ian James writes. Environmental groups are urging environmental regulators to investigate why.

A few last things in climate news

Sales of new electric vehicles have slumped as Trump has eliminated federal incentives for car buyers. But, as oil prices have spiked due to the war in Iran, used EV sales have jumped 20%, signaling a renewed willingness by Americans to ween themselves off fossil fuels, according to Bloomberg senior correspondent Kyle Stock.

Stingrays injuries in Southern California have been on the rise. LAist climate reporter Erin Stone, who was recently wounded by stingray’s barb herself, writes that warming waters attract more rays and make these painful encounters more likely.

Under an ambitious proposal, the Bay Area could host the world’s largest floating wind farm, taking California closer to its 100% renewable energy goal, L.A. Times climate reporter Hayley Smith writes. The plan would involve building hundreds of Eiffel Tower-sized wind turbines and towing them into the deep, breezy waters of the Humboldt Bay, where they could generate up to 15% of the state’s electricity.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more air quality news, follow me at @_TonyBriscoe on X and on LinkedIn.

Americans could be forgiven if they’re unaware that President Trump recently performed one of his most essential tasks and sent his annual budget request to Congress, though months late and stunningly incomplete.

After all, so much else has been dominating the news lately: the Mideast war that Trump promised not to start. Price rises he’d vowed to end. His repeated insults of Pope Leo XIV. His portraying himself as Jesus Christ, then lying about having done so. An incompetent attorney general to fire. And the president’s actual priorities — plans for a $400-million White House ballroom and a massive “Triumphal Arch” nearby!

It’s a lot.

Once again, as in Trump’s first term, the public and press are inattentive to the nation’s fiscal health relative to past years. But that reflects the president’s own disengagement with reconciling spending and revenue — this from a president many Americans voted for based on his purported prowess as a businessman. For decades back to Ronald Reagan’s time, so-called deficit wars in Washington were a big story. Now, even Republicans in Congress complain of Trump’s absence from the fiscal fray as they struggle to belatedly finish this year’s budget work that was due last fall, and to end a weeks-old partial government shutdown, before turning to the budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.

Yet it’s worth paying attention to U.S. budgets even if Trump won’t, for the sake of our children and grandchildren who’ll inherit the bills. In one document, a federal budget reflects the nation’s priorities. And these days, in the perennial guns-versus-butter debate, Trump has made his feelings all too plain.

“We’re fighting wars,” he told a group at the White House on April Fools’ Day. “We can’t take care of day care … Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.”

Forget that Trump swore to end wars. Or that last year, long before he went to war against Iran, he cut $1 trillion over 10 years from Medicaid and other healthcare programs in his misnamed “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Yes, budgets can be boring, especially to a president with a famously short attention span. Trump and many of us Americans are distracted constantly by all the shiny objects he throws at the national consciousness by his words, acts and social media postings at all hours.

Yet the budgetary trend is clear to anyone bothering to look: As president, Trump is once again exacerbating the nation’s unsustainable course of piling up debt. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, among other credible sources, debt is now approaching the highest level in U.S. history, which was reached during World War II. It already surpasses the size of the entire economy and threatens higher borrowing costs and reduced investments.

For all the achievements Trump likes to claim — ending eight wars in a year! — here’s one that’s real: He is on a path to break his own record for the most debt in a single presidential term, $8.4 trillion in Trump 1.0, which was nearly double the increase under President Biden.

Need further proof of Trump’s brazen mendacity? Of course you don’t, but here it is: In the face of the well-documented budget record, Trump declared both this year and last year to a joint session of Congress, on national television, that he would balance the federal budget —“overnight,” he said in February.

The inequitable tax cuts and big spending increases for the military and immigration crackdowns that Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress enacted last year are significantly greater than in his first term, and are driving up the debt despite Republicans’ deep healthcare cuts. Just months after Trump took office, the ratings firm Moody’s downgraded the nation’s sterling credit rating for the first time in more than a century.

And now, in his new budget request, Trump seeks to inflate military spending from under $1 trillion when he regained office to $1.5 trillion, for the biggest year-to-year increase in military budgets since World War II.

This fiscal irresponsibility is happening at the worst possible time. For the last quarter of the 20th century, presidents and Congresses of both parties annually debated how to reduce deficits and several times reached consequential multi-year deals, culminating during the second Clinton term in four straight years of surpluses. (Those surpluses ended — wait for it — with Republicans’ tax cuts and war spending during the George W. Bush administration.)

Politicians back then were moved not just by the deficits of their time — deficits that, as a share of the economy, were less than half what they are now. They also were responding to experts’ warnings of a demographic tsunami by the 2020s: With the aging of the huge baby-boomer population, spending for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would greatly increase even as the workforce whose payroll taxes support those programs shrank. Today the number of people 65 or older is almost three times what it was 50 years ago, and rising.

This reckoning is upon us, though you wouldn’t know it as Trump keeps calling for cutting revenue and spending more for lawless wars, immigration raids and monuments to himself. Barring bipartisan action, in 2033 Social Security’s retirement fund and Medicare’s hospital fund will no longer be able to cover beneficiaries’ full claims, according to their trustees’ annual report, necessitating reduced benefits or shifts of money from other worthy programs.

Trump did put Vice President JD Vance in charge of a “war on fraud.” But that holds about as much promise as Elon Musk’s fiscal fiasco — remember DOGE? — that cost money instead of cutting $2 trillion as promised.

Like other problems, Trump likely will leave the fiscal follies to his successor, who, should he or she win two terms, would preside as Social Security and Medicare become insolvent. I’ve yet to hear any of the early 2028 presidential aspirants — or Trump — address or be asked about that.

Let the debate, belatedly, begin.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
Threads: @jkcalmes
X: @jackiekcalmes

It seems like a simple ask that male politicians don’t sexually harass or even rape women, but also, it seems like an open secret in Congress that sexual misconduct is too common.

Take Eric Swalwell, whose epic political immolation has captivated this week’s national political news, including a TMZ-obtained video of the then-congressman bleary-eyed in a bathrobe on a yacht that was literally the least-worst revelation.

For years “there were swirling rumors about Eric,” former Rep. Jackie Speier told me. Speier in 2018 thought she’d put in place tough new rules to stop sexual misconduct among her former colleagues, and the type of backroom shrugs that allowed men to prowl unchecked.

But despite her efforts, Speier, who represented a part of the Bay Area near Swalwell’s district until 2023, said the problem remains Congress itself, and the “crippling” power that elected officials have over their staffs. Don’t get her started on how that power imbalance is even worse for young lobbyists.

“I’ve always said that Congress is Hollywood for ugly people,” she said. “It’s a whole environment that becomes, I think, toxic.”

But also one that, she added, isn’t inevitable.

The 2018 change

In 2017, the #MeToo movement had swept into the public consciousness and ignited calls for change.

Armed with that outrage and the roiling fire of public opinion, Speier set out to change archaic rules that governed how sexual misconduct was handled in Congress.

“I’ll just run through what it was like,” she told me. “If you wanted to file a complaint, you had to be prepared to go through some period of counseling; to have a cooling off period; to participate in mandatory mediation; and sign an NDA, and then the taxpayers picked up the tab if there was a settlement. It was kind of jaw dropping to think that that was the policy.”

It wasn’t just policy, it was culture. Speier herself had been the victim of an assault when she was a young staffer — a senior staffer pushing her against a wall and forcibly kissing her. And like so many women, she put the episode aside and went on with her career because speaking out would have likely brought her more grief than justice.

But by 2017, she realized the public was at a “tipping point,” and, as she said then, “Congress has been a breeding ground for a hostile work environment for far too long.”

With Rep. Bradley Byrne, a Republican from Alabama, they passed the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 Reform Act.

It did away with the weird and coercive requirement for counseling and a cooling off period and most significantly, forced sexual harassers to pay for their own settlements instead of pinning the cost on taxpayers.

But even with the new rules, some colleagues didn’t seem to get it. Speier recalled one man who, informed of possibility he would have to pay sexual harassment settlements out of his own pocket, asked if he could purchase insurance to cover those costs.

“How about you keep your zipper up?” Speier wondered.

The bigger problem

Still, Speier said she thought the law made a difference not just in how claims of misconduct were handled, but in the culture of Capitol Hill.

But, “over time it just was relaxed,” she said.

When Speier left office in 2023, Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) was under investigation for sexual harassment — a claim Congress deemed unfounded, but bounced Santos from its ranks for a bunch of other misconduct.

Let’s be real — Congress has never been without scandal.

But Speier said that doesn’t mean sexual abuse can’t be stopped. She just thinks the rules she put in place need to be even tougher: A zero-tolerance approach similar to what corporate America often enforces.

“I’m thinking now that the way to fix this may be something more direct and straightforward and simple, much like they do in the private sector,” she said.

“When the CEO is having an affair with a subordinate and it becomes known, he’s history. He’s relieved of his duties, and if we made it clear that if you sexually harass a staff member, or you have an affair with a staff member, you will be expelled, or you will be subject to expulsion of Congress, that will change their behavior.”

I love her enthusiasm and I support tossing out miscreant members, but I’m not sure even that will keep the zippers up. But there is always hope.

And something has to be done.

“These cases underscore the fact that these women do not feel comfortable coming forward,” she pointed out. “So we’ve got to figure out why and close that hole.

“Is it because they’re fearful that they’ll be retaliated against or that they’ll be ostracized or blackballed? I don’t know the answer, but I’m really urging my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to fix this, and part of fixing it is talking to these women who were, in fact, sexually harassed and assaulted and find out why they didn’t feel comfortable coming forward.”

That’s the real issue, and the real demand we should be making. From the Oval Office to district offices, too many elected leaders have proven they’ll use their power to obtain sex — by coercion or even force.

And too many women remain afraid to speak out because they still suffer both career and social consequences — a realistic fear that coming forward could end their own ambitions, or at least leave them battling to not be defined by the abuse.

Yes, Swalwell and others have been shamed into resigning.

But it’s past time to make sexual abuse a one-strike-you’re-out offense — for the perpetrator, not the survivor.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Swalwell supporters scramble after he drops out of governor’s race. Who will benefit?
The deep dive: ‘Rebuilding After Fires, L.A. Neighbors Join Forces and Innovate
The L.A. Times Special: In L.A. County, many homeless people enter shelters, only to end up back on the streets

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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The votes are in, and it’s bad news for John McCain. Barack Obama has a big lead in the sale of campaign buttons and other election paraphernalia, outselling McCain 3 to 1 on one memorabilia website.

An Obama victory could make some of those pieces more valuable, experts say, given the historic nature of his candidacy. A button from the launch of Obama’s presidential campaign sold for $150 in August at the American Political Items Collectors National Convention.

If you think there’s no redeeming value to the interminable exercise known as the American presidential campaign, you are not a collector. The stock market may have tanked, but the longest presidential season in U.S. history has stimulated a different kind of investment opportunity.

“This year more than any other, people are collecting political memorabilia,” says Adam Gottlieb, a spokesman for the California Energy Commission and a presidential-item junkie whose extensive Teddy Roosevelt collection is on exhibit through the end of the year at the California Historical Society in San Francisco. “People are yearning for nostalgia, something meaningful in their lives.”

On Monday, the PBS series “Antiques Roadshow” gets into the act with “Politically Collect,” a program that pulls back the appraisal curtain on presidential artifacts worth considerably more than the paper or tin on which they’re printed — up to $75,000, for instance, for a photograph of Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office after President Kennedy was shot in 1963.

“Political items have really gone up in price,” says Jeffery Daar, an attorney and Democratic Party activist whose Northridge home overflows with buttons and other memorabilia from the last 40 years of electioneering.

Presidential paraphernalia has long been the domain of hard-core political fans such as Daar, who live to unearth an obscure invitation or rare tchotchke. But in the last decade, the field has also become a place to make a tidy profit. A 1920 button of Democratic presidential candidate James Cox and his running mate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, can sell for as much as $30,000. Last month, a signed photo of John F. Kennedy was going for $4,200 on Politics-Now.com. EBay and political memorabilia auction sites have made it possible for anyone to click their way into the game.

The collecting impulse is driven by something the afflicted say you can’t get from stamps or Cabbage Patch stockpiles.

“It’s not just a button, but an item in a political campaign. It’s a piece of living history,” says Daar, former head of the Democratic Party in the San Fernando Valley and a longtime delegate to his party’s conventions, where he scoops up all the mementos he can.

“Every collector of political memorabilia is also a frustrated historian,” says Steve Ferber, who sells mementos of presidents and hopefuls with his wife, Lori, through LoriFerber.com.

Tom Morton, a Los Angeles accountant specializing in pre-1930s items, recently landed clay smoking pipes puffed by Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce.

“It’s one thing to read about it in a history book,” he says. “It’s quite another to hold it in your hands.”

But not all candidates inspire collectors to reach out and acquire. Tom French, a leading dealer and owner of Politicalheritage.com in Santa Cruz, says it’s hard to give away a Nixon button. It’s also tough unloading Michael Dukakis, Bob Dole and George W. Bush fare.

Not surprisingly, the most in-demand figures tend to be the most charismatic and popular presidents — Abraham Lincoln, FDR and Theodore Roosevelt, JFK, Ronald Reagan. Harry Truman also vaults into the ranks of the most valuable because scant artifacts were produced for the candidate who was a long shot to win in 1948.

Scarcity, popularity and age are major factors in the pricing of political memorabilia. An abundance of items were produced for 1940 Republican candidate Wendell Wilkie, including some fabulous Wilkie nylons ($40) and buttons that said, “No Man Is Good Three Times,” all to no avail against the popular FDR. So many Wilkie items are in circulation, they’re cheap — not like the Cox-FDR button, valued at $30,000 because only a few dozen are known to exist. Some scarce Truman items can run about $10,000.

For collectors, a crucial consideration is whether the material was produced by the campaign. Daar says 95% of the buttons and T-shirts available for sale in the current cycle were made by outside vendors and won’t be worth much. Look for official items created by the Obama and McCain campaigns and materials with specific dates and events attached to them, such as an Obama button from the rural caucus, something Daar likes for future value.

Collectors recommend buying things you like — favorite candidates or graphics that catch your eye. And if you want to buy for investment, do the research to make sure the item is authentic. You can get help by joining American Political Items Collectors ($28 a year, www.apic.us), a national organization founded in 1945 that sponsors dozens of button meets every year and authenticates artifacts.

Avid collectors, however, are drawn to the outsized characters who seek the highest office in the land and the creative wiles used to get them there.

“There’s got to be something behind the item — the personality, the election, the historical context, or you might as well be collecting nails,” says Neal Machander, an Orange County collector and past president of American Political Items Collectors.

The exploits of rough-riding, big-game-hunting Teddy Roosevelt have captivated Gottlieb since he was in grade school. “It’s like he lived six lives,” Gottlieb says.

His collection contains mementos of Roosevelt’s whistle stop in Los Angeles on his trip through California in 1903. When it comes to straight talk, it’s hard to top this line from a Roosevelt button in 1912: “If You’re Against Me, You’re a Crook.”

The sedate catch phrases of modern elections are as exciting as a phone book next to the raucous sloganeering of the early 20th century. Take, for instance, the 1928 rallying cry on an anti-prohibition button: “Vote for Al Smith and Make All Your Wet Dreams Come True.” Last year, it sold at auction for $9,560.

“Collectors really eat up the hoopla,” says French, who adds that he’d kill on “Jeopardy” in the VP category. “It’s an important representation of what democracy and politics are all about. We’re just in awe of the office.”

—

home@latimes.com

Re “Asian Population Surges in County,” Feb. 12: Assemblywoman Carol Liu (D-La Canada Flintridge) suggests that the reason Asian Americans lack political influence in the U.S. is Asian American cultural characteristics. Although I have the greatest respect for Liu and her work in the Legislature, I disagree. The culprit is not culture but many Asian Americans’ ineligibility to vote as they make their way through the citizenship process, and parties’ and candidates’ failure to mobilize the Asian American community.

Contrary to a public image of political complacency, Asian Americans have a long history of participation in American politics. They have participated through lobbying, litigation, petitioning, protesting, boycotting, civil disobedience and contributing to political campaigns. Liu herself is an example of such involvement. In a multi-city, multiethnic, multilingual survey of Asian Americans, my colleagues and I find that, contrary to assumptions of political apathy, Asian Americans are not culturally disadvantaged when it comes to politics. In fact, they are not at all apathetic. Only 13% express a lack of interest in American politics.

Janelle Wong

Asst. Prof., Political

Science, Program

in American Studies

and Ethnicity, USC

Secretary of State Bill Jones, lagging in the polls for the Republican gubernatorial primary, on Monday asked the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento to investigate possible conflicts of interest between energy companies and the administration of Gov. Gray Davis.

For months, Jones has criticized Davis for hiring consultants during last year’s energy crisis who owned stock in companies that the governor alleged were gouging the state. Davis’ spokesman held $12,000 of stock in Calpine, a firm that won state contracts.

On Monday, Jones said the state Fair Political Practices Commission and the attorney general’s office, both controlled by Democrats, were not investigating aggressively enough.

Seizing upon recent reports that Davis met with then-Enron Chairman Kenneth L. Lay during the crisis, Jones called for a federal investigation.

“It is now time that the U.S. attorney’s office actively engage in this scandal and open an investigation into the conflicts of interest and insider dealings of Gov. Gray Davis and his administration,” Jones said at a Sacramento news conference. “Because we cannot get to the truth and we cannot get the entities entrusted by the people to do their jobs, we must now go to a higher authority.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined comment.

Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the Davis campaign, said the governor had taken appropriate action against consultants who had conflicts, dismissing four last summer.

The chairwoman of the FPPC responded coolly to Jones’ allegations. “We do not comment on complaints or any investigative actions taken in response to those complaints,” Karen Getman said. “Nor do we allow the timing of our activities to be influenced by upcoming elections.”

Though Jones called for more disclosure into Davis’ contacts with the energy industry, he has different standards for the Bush administration.

Spokeswoman Beth Pendexter said Jones believes Vice President Dick Cheney does not have to disclose whom he met with while forming the national energy policy last year.

The California Supreme Court ordered attorney and former law school dean John Eastman disbarred on Wednesday for his role aiding the Trump administration’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

The court ordered Eastman’s name be “stricken from the roll of attorneys” and that he pay $5,000 to the State Bar of California.

Eastman’s attorney, Randall A. Miller, told the Associated Press that the court’s decision “departs from long-standing United States Supreme Court precedent protecting First Amendment rights, especially in the attorney discipline context.” Miller did not immediately return an after-hours phone call seeking comment from The Times.

State Bar Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said in a statement that the ruling “underscores that Mr. Eastman’s misconduct was incompatible with the standards of integrity required of every California attorney.”

“Today’s California Supreme Court order disbarring John Charles Eastman from the practice of law in California affirms the fundamental principle that attorneys must act with honesty and uphold the rule of law, regardless of the client they represent or the context in which that representation occurs,” said Cardona said.

The Supreme Court’s decision affirms a 2024 ruling from State Bar Judge Yvette Roland that Eastman be prohibited from practicing law.

In a marathon trial that lasted off and on from June to November 2024, the State Bar, which regulates lawyers in California, argued that Eastman was unfit to practice law for peddling bogus claims that fraud cost Trump the election and for promoting a fake-elector scheme to block the electoral count.

“It is true that an attorney has a duty to engage in zealous advocacy on behalf of a client,” Roland wrote in 2024 in a 128-page ruling. “However, Eastman’s inaccurate assertions were lies that cannot be justified as zealous advocacy.”

Roland found Eastman culpable of 10 of 11 counts of misconduct.

Eastman fomented “predictable and destructive chaos” when he stood beside fellow Trump adviser Rudolph W. Giuliani on Jan. 6, 2021, and told an enormous crowd at the Ellipse that the election had been fraudulent, the bar argued.

Eastman claimed he was acting in good faith, and as a vigorous champion of his client. But State Bar attorneys argued that “the evidence, including his often not-credible trial testimony, shows that he held — and still holds — truth and democracy in contempt.”

Despite Eastman’s repeated assertions that Joe Biden’s victory was illegal, Roland ruled, Eastman’s own words showed he knew that proof was lacking.

The judge cited an email that Eastman sent to a friend, Cleta Mitchell, on Nov. 29, 2020, acknowledging that fraud serious enough to sway the results could not be proved.

“It would be nice to have actually hard documented evidence of the fraud in the areas to which the analyses pointed,” Eastman wrote.

After the 2024 ruling Eastman responded on his Substack writing that he hoped the California Supreme Court or U.S. Supreme Court would “step in to put a stop to this lawfare that has become a serious threat to the First Amendment, the right of controversial clients and causes to legal representation, and more broadly to our adversarial system of justice.”

Eastman has a long history in California’s conservative legal circles. He was hired by Chapman’s law school in 1999 and was dean from June 2007 to January 2010, then continued to teach courses in constitutional law, property law, legal history and the 1st Amendment.

He retired in early 2021 after more than 100 Chapman faculty and others affiliated with the university signed a letter calling on the school to take action against him for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Wednesday’s decision is a bookend in a lengthy investigation into Eastman’s actions that began in 2021. In October of that year, the nonpartisan legal group States United Democracy Center filed an ethics complaint calling on the State Bar to investigate Eastman’s Jan. 6 actions.

Christine P. Sun, senior vice president of legal at the States United Democracy Center, said on Wednesday that the court’s decision is “part of a broader reckoning for those who seek to undermine the rule of law.”

“Eastman played a central role in the plot to overturn the 2020 election—pressuring state officials, advancing baseless claims in court, and promoting a fringe theory that the vice president could reject certified electoral votes,” Sun said in a statement. “His unethical actions have had real, lasting consequences for our democracy, and we applaud the California Supreme Court’s decision to disbar him.”

Staff writer Christopher Goffard contributed to this report

WASHINGTON — Reviews to detect Medicare overpayments were done on fewer than 1% of the doctors who bill the federal health insurance program, a congressional investigator said Wednesday.

The reviews by Medicare’s private contractors are an important way to identify physicians who have been paid too much to treat the elderly and disabled, auditor William Scanlon said at a House Budget Committee hearing.

In the 2000 budget year, those private contractors reviewed the medical claims of 1,891 physicians out of more than 600,000 who billed Medicare that year, said Scanlon, who covers health issues for the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Most Medicare payments are proper, Scanlon said. But the program “faces a difficult task in finding an appropriate balance between ensuring that Medicare only pays for services allowed by law and making it as simple as possible for providers to treat Medicare beneficiaries and bill the program.”

In 1999, payments made in error amounted to $11.9 billion, the government has reported.

At the hearing, government and academic experts said Congress should pay more attention to the financial health of the 36-year-old program. Government projections earlier this year predicted Medicare, a $240-billion program, would start running short of cash in about 15 years.

An official at the agency that runs Medicare promised a turnaround on all counts.

“In no way will we diminish our interest in fighting waste, fraud and error in the Medicare program,” said Ruben J. King-Shaw Jr., the chief operating officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“For the small percentage of people who take advantage of the system, we will continue our aggressive efforts to protect the funds that taxpayers have entrusted to us.”

Financial experts also told Congress that the goals of overhauling Medicare and adding a popular prescription drug benefit could be too much all at once.

“Medicare’s future will likely be written numerous times as health care changes and baby boomers move through the system,” said Marilyn Moon, a health economist at the nonpartisan Urban Institute.

There were also warnings about encouraging private health plans to compete with the federal program. President Bush promoted the idea this month.

Bush said he wants more health maintenance organizations and private health plans to compete for seniors’ business within the underlying Medicare program; 15% of the 40 million enrollees use private plans. Bush said such competition could bring better service, lower premiums and extra benefits, such as complete drug coverage.

But the government would have to make sure it helps all seniors, regardless of which plan they are in, said Comptroller General David Walker, head of the GAO.

“Separating winners from losers is a basic function of competition,” Walker said in a report to Congress.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department recovered $2.3 million in cryptocurrency ransom that Colonial Pipeline paid to hackers whose cyberattack last month shut down its major East Coast pipeline, leading to gas shortages up and down the East Coast, authorities said.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Lisa Monaco said the FBI on Monday seized the majority of the ransom that Colonial Pipeline paid to hackers who used malware developed by DarkSide, a Russia-linked hacking group, to encrypt and lock up the company’s computer systems. The company, which Monaco credited with quickly alerting the FBI to the attack, said it paid the hackers $4.4 million in bitcoin to regain access to its systems.

“Today we turned the tables on DarkSide,” Monaco said, calling such ransomware attacks an “epidemic” that poses a “national security and economic threat” to the U.S. “This was an attack against some of our most critical infrastructure.”

Though the malware did not affect systems that operate the company’s pipelines, which stretch from New Jersey to Texas, Colonial discovered the hack on May 7 and closed its spigots for five days out of an abundance of caution. The pipeline supplies about 45% of the jet fuel, gasoline and heating oil consumed on the East Coast, and the shutdown sparked panic from drivers, who raced to top off tanks, leading gas stations to run out of fuel.

The Justice Department did not disclose how much Colonial paid in ransom, but the company’s chief executive told the Wall Street Journal last month that it made a $4.4-million payment in bitcoin. Colonial CEO Joseph Blount said the company paid the extortion demand because he was concerned a prolonged disruption of the pipeline would hurt the nation.

“I know that’s a highly controversial decision,” Blount told the newspaper. “I didn’t make it lightly. I will admit that I wasn’t comfortable seeing money go out the door to people like this.”

Ransomware hackers typically trick unwitting employees into opening an email and clicking on an attachment or a link, which then infects computer servers with malware that encrypts data and locks the systems. Victims must pay a ransom to the hackers to obtain a decryption key to unlock and recover the information. DarkSide’s malware poses a double whammy — it can also siphon out information, giving hackers more leverage because they can threaten to disclose sensitive data if they are not paid.

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said DarkSide produces ransomware that it sells to hackers who conduct cyberattacks and share a percentage of their proceeds with the malware’s developers. DarkSide’s product is one of about 100 ransomware variants the FBI is investigating, Abbate said.

The bureau has been investigating DarkSide since last year, Abbate said, and has identified more than 90 victims of its ransomware in manufacturing, legal, insurance and healthcare industries. Working with other U.S. government agencies, the FBI identified “a virtual currency wallet” that the DarkSide hackers were using to collect payment from a victim, Abbate said.

The Justice Department then obtained a warrant to seize those bitcoins, officials said.

“The old adage ‘follow the money’ still applies,” said Monaco, the deputy attorney general. “That’s exactly what we do.”

The Colonial Pipeline attack was the latest in a series of ransomware assaults that has crippled government agencies, hospitals and businesses, including a major meat producer that was forced last week to idle plants, sparking concerns about potential increases in meat prices and shortages. A task force of more than 60 experts from industry, government and nonprofits issued a report in April that calls ransomware “a flourishing criminal industry that not only risks the personal and financial security of individuals, but also threatens national security and human life.”

The report, published by the nonprofit Institute for Security and Technology, estimates that nearly 2,400 governments, healthcare facilities and schools were victims of ransomware attacks last year. Ransom payments rose to $350 million last year, a 300% increase over 2019, the report says. The average such payment topped $300,000.

Cybersecurity experts and former federal prosecutors and agents blamed several trends for the increase. The rise of difficult-to-trace cryptocurrency has made it far easier for criminal gangs to collect payments, the experts said. Cybercriminals have also begun to increasingly operate within the borders of U.S. adversaries, particularly Russia. The Kremlin, for example, allows hackers to operate with impunity if they do not target Russian businesses or citizens and focus their energy on sowing chaos and confusion in the West.

The Biden administration is seeking to find ways to combat the rise. President Biden said he will discuss ransomware attacks this week with U.S. allies during a European trip, and bring up the subject during a June 16 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Justice Department has launched a task force to better coordinate its approach to the crime wave. Justice Department officials said the Colonial Pipeline ransom seizure was the first such payment recovery by the task force. Justice Department officials could not say how many other ransoms they have recovered.

“This is a big deal,” said Scott Jasper, a lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School and author of “Russian Cyber Operations: Coding the Boundaries of Conflict.” “The question is: Will this be big enough to change the behavior of DarkSide or of other cyber actors? It’s too early to tell. It’s a slow game, a long-term game. This is a significant, big business. This is a big enterprise.”

ATLANTA — An Atlanta man has been charged in a string of attacks over a matter of hours that left two women dead and a man in critical condition, drawing the Trump administration’s attention after one of the victims was identified as a Department of Homeland Security employee who was walking her dog.

The killing of the Homeland Security worker, Lauren Bullis, and shootings of the two other victims on Monday led Homeland Secretary Markwayne Mullin to issue a statement raising concerns that the 26-year-old defendant, U.K.-native Olaolukitan Adon Abel, was granted U.S. citizenship in 2022, when Democrat Joe Biden was president.

“These acts of pure evil have devastated our Department and my prayers are with the families of the victims,” Mullin wrote in a statement posted on social media, cataloging a litany of the defendant’s previous alleged crimes but not specifying whether they happened before he was granted citizenship.

Authorities have said they believe at least one of the victims, the man who was wounded, was targeted at random. They said they were still looking into whether the other two victims were also picked randomly.

A morning of violence

The first victim was found with multiple gunshot wounds near a restaurant in the Decatur area around 1 a.m. Monday. She was taken to a hospital but died, DeKalb County Police Chief Gregory Padrick said at a news conference. Police have not publicly identified her.

About an hour later in Brookhaven, another Atlanta suburb less than 15 miles northwest of the first attack, a 49-year-old homeless man who was sleeping outside a grocery store was shot multiple times, city Police Chief Brandon Gurley said. The man, whose name hasn’t been released, remains hospitalized in critical condition.

“It is apparent to us that it was a completely random attack on a member of our unhoused community,” Gurley said.

Just before 7 a.m. and more than 10 miles away in the suburb of Panthersville, officers responding to a call found a woman with gunshot and stab wounds, Padrick said. The woman, Bullis, died at the scene. Investigators in Brookhaven determined that the three attacks were connected, Gurley said.

Adon Abel was taken into custody later Monday during a traffic stop in Troup County, which borders Alabama. He is charged with two counts of malice murder, aggravated assault and firearms counts, court records show. He waived an initial court appearance Tuesday. Court records don’t list an attorney who might speak on his behalf.

Reached by phone Wednesday, Toyin Adon Abel Jr. said he didn’t want to talk about his brother. But he expressed sympathy for the victims: “I feel terrible for the victims, their families and their connections. It’s a horrible thing,” he said.

Remembered for her warmth and compassion

Bullis served in multiple roles at Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, including as an auditor in the Office of Audits and as a team leader in the Office of Innovation, the department posted on social media, saying she brought “warmth, kindness, and a genuine sense of care to her colleagues each day.”

In a statement, Bullis’ family remembered her as “selfless, kind and compassionate.”

“She deeply loved her family and found joy in running, reading and traveling,” the family said. “Her warmth and generosity touched everyone surrounding her.”

Fellow Homeland Security auditor Ashley Toillion of Denver said she met Bullis at a work conference last year. The two became fast friends as they bonded over running and quickly made plans for Bullis join Toillion in a race at Walt Disney World.

“You couldn’t meet her and not be her friend,” Toillion said, choking back tears. “She was just the nicest, sweetest, most encouraging person I’ve ever met.”

Mullin, who took over Homeland Security last month after Kristi Noem was fired, said in his statement that Olaolukitan Adon Abel has a criminal record that includes a sexual battery conviction, though he didn’t say which year he was convicted. Online court records show that someone listed as Adon Olaolukitan, who has the same birth date as Adon Abel, pleaded guilty in June in Chatham County, Ga., to four misdemeanor counts of sexual battery.

In his statement, Mullin noted that since President Trump took office, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which Homeland Security oversees, has worked to ensure that people with criminal histories don’t attain citizenship. But the U.S. has long barred people convicted of most violent felonies from becoming citizens, and it wasn’t immediately clear whether Adon Abel — or Adon Olaolukitan, if it’s the same person — had a criminal record that predated him becoming a citizen in 2022.

In response to a request for further details about the case and the defendant’s criminal history, Homeland Security referred the Associated Press to its post about Bullis and her death.

Brumfield and Rico write for the Associated Press. Brumfield reported from Cockeysville, Md. AP writer Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.

NEW ORLEANS — The French government is pressing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to release the 86-year-old French widow of a military veteran from immigration custody after she was detained this month.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Marie-Therese Ross in Alabama on April 1 after she overstayed her 90-day visa, according to Homeland Security. Ross is now held at a federal immigration detention facility in Louisiana.

She is among the thousands of people targeted by the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda that has led to the detentions of the spouses of U.S. troops and military veterans who previously received greater leniency under scrapped policies.

Rodolphe Sambou, the consul general of France in New Orleans, told the AP that the French government has “fully mobilized” to push for her release. He said he has visited her in detention twice so far.

“Given her age, we really want her to get out of this situation as soon as possible,” Sambou said. “We want to get her out of jail.”

Sambou said that he has been communicating frequently with Ross’ family and French officials in Washington, Atlanta and Paris to try and coordinate Ross’ release and ensure she has access to sufficient food and healthcare. He said the French government has also contacted Homeland Security.

He declined to comment on her legal status or other details of her case.

Ross married Alabama resident William Ross last April, Calhoun County marriage records show. Ross died in January, according to an obituary from his family, which says he was a former captain in the U.S. Army.

A lawyer who is representing Ross in a separate legal matter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ross’ family did not respond to requests for comment.

Brook writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Samuel Petrequin in France contributed to this report.