fund

The former head of UCLA’s football name, image and likeness collective on Thursday denied any impropriety related to a report that revealed efforts by the school’s athletic department to funnel NIL donations through his non-profit charity.

The story published by the muckraking college football website foiaball.com showed email communications from UCLA athletic department officials directing payments intended for Bruins for Life, the onetime NIL collective of the school’s football program, through Shelter 37 Inc., a tax-exempt charity that purports to empower home ownership and help local youth through a variety of activities.

Donating through Shelter 37 would provide a tax deduction not available to those giving directly to Bruins for Life — a standard practice in the NIL sphere — but it also raised questions about a potential conflict of interest and the control of funds given James Washington ran Bruins for Life until recently and remains the president of Shelter 37.

The story also questioned Shelter 37’s charitable endeavors and suggested that UCLA athletic department officials encouraged the evasion of Internal Revenue Service guidance regarding so-called donor-advised funds, directing money to Shelter 37 that couldn’t go to other firms taking a more conservative approach with regard to NIL rules.

Emails obtained by foiaball.com through a public records request showed nearly a half million dollars of donations intended for Bruins for Life going through Shelter 37, with school officials requesting that anyone who sent their money through the latter organization to specify that it be earmarked for football NIL.

Washington said there was nothing untoward about an arrangement that was approved by UCLA and involved full transparency.

“There’s nothing that’s happening between Shelter 37 and UCLA and Bruins for Life that’s in the closet,” Washington, a former UCLA safety who went on to win two Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys, told The Times. “Everything has been discussed, every move, every act that I’ve taken toward the NIL, every step — bookkeeping and everything — has been handled and handed over to UCLA.”

In a statement, a UCLA athletic department spokesperson said that “UCLA athletics operates with integrity and transparency, in a manner that is consistent with industry best practices. Our development team educates potential donors on a range of giving opportunities, including avenues to support our student-athletes.”

In what Washington described as an unrelated move confirmed by an athletic department official, UCLA recently shifted its football NIL operations to new leadership, allowing Bruins for Life to pivot into an alumni club for football. Washington said the Bruins for Life website was temporarily inactive as part of that transition and that it would still have an NIL component providing community outreach opportunities for football players.

Alongside longtime UCLA donor John Manuck, James had spearheaded the fundraising efforts of Bruins for Life when it debuted in October 2024 as the new NIL arm of UCLA football.

“It’s really exciting,” UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond said at the time, “because it’s going to support our football student-athletes in a real positive way.”

The foiaball.com story contended that the Bruins for Life website stated that it was not a 501(c)(3) organization, meaning that any donations it accepted were not tax deductible. The website directed those wishing to donate to Shelter 37, a 501(c)(3) organization that said it could receive tax-deductible contributions.

The story reported that Shelter 37’s 2024 IRS 990 tax form, published by ProPublica, showed a revenue jump to $4.8 million in 2024, up from $800,000 the previous year. The document stated that $3.6 million had been raised for the Bruins for Life NIL program but only $200 for scholarships for at-risk youth.

Washington said that latter number was misleading because Shelter 37 was not a scholarship-based organization, even though it assisted at-risk children through a variety of community services. The Times reviewed one Shelter 37 tax document reporting nearly a combined seven figures spent on scholarships, education programs and housing.

“This is when people are not fact-checking,” Washington said, “and they’re just putting stuff out there and they’re just trying to make the story bigger than what it needs to be.”

Over the years, Washington said, Shelter 37 has held many community-based events such as turkey drives, football camps for inner-city kids and “I’m going to college” days in which the organization paid for buses to transport students to football games at the Rose Bowl.

The foiaball.com story contended that Shelter 37 was used as a workaround for donor-advised funds that were in limbo. One UCLA athletic department employee, informed of a denial of one donor-advised fund, forwarded the message to other internal fundraisers, along with a message saying, “Just as an FYI. Here is info for Shelter 37 for DAF gifts.”

A new home for donor-advised funds was needed after another NIL firm, Blue Print Sports, ceased its charitable operations in the wake of the IRS recommendation, its legal counsel citing “no path forward.” According to the documents reviewed by foiaball.com, a UCLA athletic department official sent an email to Washington not long after the IRS guidance was issued, informing him of a $15,000 donation through Bank of America that should be directed to Bruins for Life.

Washington said there was nothing illegal about accepting donor-advised funds and that every move made by his organizations was within the rules.

“Any dollar that was given to me, there’s a track record and we have a communication document that shows what came out and how it was received,” Washington said. “They [UCLA athletic officials] know exactly what came into accounts, they know exactly what came out because everything was disclosed and we were communicating and I was acting as a vessel during the time of the Wild, Wild West to try to help UCLA’s football program succeed in this new era of what we call the NIL.”

SINGER Louis Tomlinson has donated £4,000 to help fund life-saving surgery for a bodyguard who looked after One Direction. 

The Lemonade singer, 33, pitched in hours after learning former minder Preston Mahon, 54, was staring down the barrel without urgent help. 

Preston, who texted Louis his thanks, told The Sun: “I’m so appreciative. It means the world to me.” 

Close protection officer Preston — who guarded Louis and bandmates Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Niall Horan — was forced to end his 27-year security career owing to deteriorating mobility.

Doctors discovered a clogged artery in his left thigh and he had angioplasty to clear it at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham.  

He was told he could have the procedure every two years but the rules changed after Covid, he said. 

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On his last visit, he says a doctor told him: “Both arteries are blocked in both legs and there’s nothing I can do.

“The next time I see you will be for bypass and amputation.” 

Preston used all his savings and borrowed from relatives and friends to pay for a private op in Spain to have stents fitted and is now £16,000 in debt.

He hopes to raise £35,000 to pay for the same procedure on his troublesome right leg.  

Preston, now a machine operator for Cadbury, said: “My dad organised for me to see an expert in Madrid who did his knees. 

“He phoned my father after the op and told him, ‘We just did life-saving surgery on your son’. 

“After the operation it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders but now I desperately need this second operation to have a chance of living out my years without pain.  

“I’ve never asked for money but I’ve got nothing left.

“My family finances have been exhausted.”

Grandad Preston, of Birmingham, who also looked after Simon Cowell, Westlife, Boyzone and Leona Lewis, is raising money through GoFundMe and, with the help of ID fans, already has more than £6,300. 

On Louis’ donation on Wednesday, he said: “I can’t thank him enough.

“Wow. I wasn’t expecting that.  

“I sent Louis a text personally saying thank you.

“All the boys from One Direction mean the world to me.

“I met up with all the lads again at Liam’s funeral exactly a year ago.  

“It was the saddest time ever but a lovely reunion.” 

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He added: “I also previously worked with Freddie Starr and went to his funeral. 

“It’s hard seeing people you cared for go and I don’t want to join them yet.” 

Indian-administered Kashmir – On the night of September 2, Shabir Ahmad’s home was swallowed by mud and swept into the river after relentless rains triggered a landslide in Sarh village in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Reasi district.

“I had been building my house brick by brick since 2016. It was my life’s work. Only less than a year ago, I had finished constructing the second floor, and now there is nothing,” the 36-year-old father of three children told Al Jazeera.

Ahmad’s was among nearly 20 houses in Sarh lost to the Chenab River that night, including one belonging to his brother, as dozens of families helplessly watched their farmlands, shops and other properties worth millions of rupees vanish without a trace.

“We don’t even have one inch of land left to stand on,” said Ahmad from a government school in Sarh, where his family and other villagers were sheltering after the deluge.

The tragedy at Sarh was among the latest of increasingly frequent climate disasters across India that destroy lives and livelihoods, and displace millions of people to an uncertain future.

According to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), climate-related disasters forced more than 32 million people from their homes in India between 2015 and 2024, with 5.4 million displacements recorded in 2024 alone – the highest in 12 years. This makes India one of the three nations most affected by internal displacements due to climate change in that period, with China and the Philippines being the top two.

Moreover, in the first six months of 2025, more than 160,000 people were displaced across India due to natural disasters, as the country received above-average rainfall, triggering huge floods and landslides, and submerging hundreds of villages and cities.

Zero adaptation money for two years

To help millions of people like Ahmad who are vulnerable to the climate crisis, India’s Ministry for Environment, Forest and Climate Change launched a National Adaptation Fund on Climate Change (NAFCC) in 2015. Its goal was to finance projects that help communities cope with floods, droughts, landslides, and other climate-related stresses across India.

Managed by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), the flagship scheme supported interventions in agriculture, water management, forestry, coastal protection, and climate-resilient infrastructure. Between 2015 and 2021, it financed more than two dozen projects, benefitting thousands of vulnerable households.

During a roundtable in Brazil’s Belem city last month – before the 30th United Nations climate change conference, or COP30, which officially opened on Monday – India’s minister for environment, forest and climate change, Bhupender Yadav, said the global meet should be the “COP of adaptation”.

“The focus must be on transforming climate commitments into real-world actions that accelerate implementation and directly improve people’s lives,” he said, according to a statement released by the Indian government on October 13. He highlighted “a need to strengthen and intensify the flow of public finance towards adaptation”, said the statement.

In another statement last Tuesday, a day after COP30 opened, India said climate “adaptation financing needs to exceed nearly 15 times current flows, and significant gaps remain in doubling international public finance for adaptation by 2025”.

“India emphasised that adaptation is an urgent priority for billions of vulnerable people in developing countries who have contributed the least to global warming but stand to suffer the most from its impacts,” said the statement.

But the actions of the Indian government back home do not match those words at the climate summit.

Government records show NAFCC received an average of $13.3m annually in the initial years of its launch. But the allocation steadily declined. In the financial year 2022-2023, the fund’s spending was just $2.47m. In November 2022, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change moved NAFCC from the category of a government “scheme” to a “non-scheme”, providing no clear outlay for funds.

Since the financial year 2023-2024, zero money has been earmarked for the crucial climate adaptation fund.

As a result, several climate adaptation projects in areas prone to floods, cyclones and landslides have been stalled even as widespread climatic devastation continued to kill and displace people. While presenting the federal budget in parliament in February this year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman did not even include the words “climate change” and “adaptation” in her hour-long speech.

“Announcing lofty adaptation goals abroad while starving the fund that safeguards our own citizens is misleading and a moral failure,” Raja Muzaffar Bhat, an environmental activist in Indian-administered Kashmir, told Al Jazeera, calling Yadav’s statements in Brazil “a gross distortion of reality and a dangerous distraction”.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for their comments on cutting NAFCC funds, but has not received any response.

An official in the Environment Ministry, however, defended the government’s shift in funding priorities, claiming the authorities have not abandoned climate adaptation efforts.

“Funds are now being channelled through broader climate and sustainability initiatives rather than standalone schemes like the NAFCC,” the official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

‘Climate injustice at its most blatant’

Meanwhile, climate crises continue to kill and displace people across India.

In the Darbhanga district of Bihar, India’s poorest state, 38-year-old Sunita Devi has been displaced five times in seven years as floods in the nearby Kosi River repeatedly destroyed her mud house built on bamboo stilts.

“We live in fear every monsoon. My children have stopped going to school because we shift from camp to camp,” she said, holding on to the family’s only lifeline: A government ration card that allows them to buy food grains at subsidised rates or get them for free.

This year saw one of the worst monsoons across India, as above-average rains killed hundreds and displaced millions. In Bihar alone, floods affected more than 1.7 million people, killed dozens and submerged hundreds of villages.

In Odisha, another impoverished eastern state, fisherman Ramesh Behera*, 45, watched his house in Kendrapara district’s Satabhaya village collapse into the Bay of Bengal in 2024, as rising seas continue to erase entire hamlets. “The sea swallowed my home and my father’s fields. Fishing is no longer enough to survive,” he told Al Jazeera.

Behera was forced to give up his family’s traditional livelihoods – fishing and farming – and was driven into distress migration to survive. He now works as a manual labourer in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir.

In West Bengal state’s Sundarbans Islands, one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, rising seas and coastal erosion have consumed lands and homes, forcing thousands of families in the fragile ecosystem to relocate.

In the southern state of Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam district, 29-year-old Revathi Selvam says saltwater intrusion from the Bay of Bengal has poisoned her farmland and their paddy harvest has collapsed.

“The soil is no longer fertile. We cannot grow rice any more. We may have to leave farming altogether,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that many in her village are considering migrating to the state capital, Chennai, to work as construction workers.

In the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, 27-year-old hotel worker Arjun Thakur saw his livelihood vanish when a cloudburst in 2024 buried the small tourist lodge where he worked. “The mountain broke apart. I saw houses collapse in seconds,” he recalled.

Thakur now stays with his relatives in the state capital Shimla, unsure if he can ever return to his native place.

Yet, with funds for NAFCC gone, people like Devi, Behera, Selvam and Thakur have no access to a government scheme that helps them cope with their tragedies.

A government official, who previously worked with NAFCC, told Al Jazeera several schemes approved by the government under NAFCC were never implemented after funds began to dry up as early as 2021, exposing thousands of households to a recurring climate crisis.

“The fund was created to help vulnerable communities adapt before disasters struck, and to reduce the kind of repeated displacement we are now witnessing,” the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

“Once the allocations stopped, states lost a key channel to protect people living on the front lines of floods, landslides, and droughts. Now, these families are left to rebuild on their own, again and again.”

Activist Bhat said the government’s attitude to the NAFCC “signals that adaptation is no longer a priority, even as India faces record internal displacement from climate extremes”.

“People are losing homes, farms, and livelihoods, and the government has left them entirely to their fate. If this continues, the next generation will inherit a country where climate refugees are a daily reality,” he said.

“This is climate injustice at its most blatant.”

‘Migration no longer a choice but a survival strategy’

Climate Action Network South Asia is a Dhaka-based coalition of about 250 civil society organisations, working in eight South Asian countries to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change. Its estimate says roughly 45 million people in India could be forced to migrate by 2050 due to the climate crisis – a threefold increase over current displacement figures.

“We are a vast nation with hot and cold deserts, long coastlines, and Himalayan glaciers. From tsunamis on our shores to flash floods, cloudbursts, and landslides in the mountains, we face the entire spectrum of climate extremes,” Bhat told Al Jazeera.

Bhat said it is not just nature causing displacement, but also unchecked “development” of vulnerable areas.

“Earlier, floods or cloudbursts were occasional, and population density was low. Now, haphazard construction around mountain passes, waterways and streams, along with rampant deforestation, has amplified these disasters,” he said.

“People who once fled New Delhi’s air pollution to settle down in [the Himalayan states of] Himachal Pradesh or Uttarakhand now find themselves living under a constant threat of landslides. Migration is no longer a choice but a survival strategy.”

Bhat warned that neglecting people affected by climate-related displacement could cause the world’s largest climate migration crisis.

“We are no longer behaving like the welfare state promised in our constitution. We pay taxes like a developed country but get services that leave people to die in a climate crisis… We are utterly unprepared for the mass migrations that will inevitably come from both our mountains and our plains,” he said.

Back at the temporary government shelter in Kashmir’s landslide-hit Sarh village, Ahmad fears an uncertain future for him and his family.

“If land and shelter are not provided, we will not merely be homeless; we will become refugees in our own land, cast aside without place or protection,” he said.

“When the state neglects the consequences of climate change, it issues a declaration: You are free to drown, but not free to rebuild.”

Billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer announced Wednesday that he is running for governor of California, arguing that he is not beholden to special interests and can take on corporations that are making life unaffordable in the state.

“The richest people in America think that they earned everything themselves. Bulls—, man. That’s so ridiculous,” Steyer said in an online video announcing his campaign. “We have a broken government. It’s been bought by corporations and my question is: Who do you think is going to change that? Sacramento politicians are afraid to change up this system. I’m not. They’re going to hate this. Bring it on.”

Protesters hold placards and banners during a rally against Whitehaven Coal in Sydney in 2014. Dozens of protesters and activists gathered downtown to protest against the controversial massive Maules Creek coal mine project in northern New South Wales.

(Saeed Khan / AFP/Getty Images)

Steyer, 68, founded Farallon Capital Management, one of the nation’s largest hedge funds, and left it in 2012 after 26 years. Since his departure, he has become a global environmental activist and a major donor to Democratic candidates and causes.

But the hedge firm’s investments — notably a giant coal mine in Australia that cleared 3,700 acres of koala habitat and a company that runs migrant detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — will make him susceptible to political attack by his gubernatorial rivals.

Steyer has expressed regret for his involvement in such projects, saying it was why he left Farallon and started focusing his energy on fighting climate change.

Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer addresses a crowd during a presidential primary election-night party in Columbia, S.C.

(Sean Rayford / Getty Images)

Steyer previously flirted with running for governor and the U.S. Senate but decided against it, instead opting to run for president in 2020. He dropped out after spending nearly $342 million on his campaign, which gained little traction before he ended his run after the South Carolina primary.

Next year’s gubernatorial race is in flux, after former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla decided not to run and Proposition 50, the successful Democratic effort to redraw congressional districts, consumed all of the political oxygen during an off-year election.

Most voters are undecided about who they would like to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who cannot run for reelection because of term limits, according to a poll released this month by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times. Steyer had the support of 1% of voters in the survey.

In recent years, Steyer has been a longtime benefactor of progressive causes, most recently spending $12 million to support the redistricting ballot measure. But when he was the focus of one of the ads, rumors spiraled that he was considering a run for governor.

In prior California ballot initiatives, Steyer successfully supported efforts to close a corporate tax loophole and to raise tobacco taxes, and fought oil-industry-backed efforts to roll back environmental law.

His campaign platform is to build 1 million homes in four years, lower energy costs by ending monopolies, make preschool and community college free and ban corporate contributions to political action committees in California elections.

Steyer’s brother Jim, the leader of Common Sense Media, and former Biden administration U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy are aiming to put an initiative on next year’s ballot to protect children from social media, specifically the chatbots that have been accused of prompting young people to kill themselves. Newsom recently vetoed a bill aimed at addressing this artificial intelligence issue.

The most insulting thing about the success of Breaking Rust, an artificial intelligence “artist” that topped Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales Chart this week, is the titles of the hits.

“Walk My Way.”

“Living on Borrowed Time.”

The EP — which is also on the charts — is called “Resilient,” as if Breaking Rust spent years playing for tips in empty bars. And maybe Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor, who is credited for writing the songs, did. But the bluesy voice we hear singing about pain and suffering did not overcome anything.

In fact, you could say this completely computer-generated country singer found chart success by mocking people. A year ago, a handful of loud industry folks in Nashville questioned whether Beyoncé, who was born and raised in Texas, was country enough to do a country album. Good times. Today AI-generated “performers” such as Breaking Rust and Xania Monet, which hit the Billboard R&B charts, are suggesting you don’t even need to be human to fit into those genres.

Eric Church, whose latest release “Evangeline vs. the Machine,” was nominated this month in the best contemporary country album category at the Grammys, told me he’s not too worried because fans still want to see live shows and “AI algorithm is not going to be able to walk on stage and play.” He says that the best thing the industry can do is establish AI music as its own genre and that award shows should establish a separate category.

“I think it’s a fad,” he said, adding that he finds it fun. “When people like a song or connect with an artist the ultimate thing for them is then to go experience that artist with people who also like that artist, that’s the ultimate payoff. You’re not going to be able to do that with AI.”

Church wraps up touring on Saturday at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood. In addition to promoting the new album, this year his foundation began providing housing for victims of Hurricane Helene using funds from a benefit concert. The North Carolina native also released a single to raise funds to help his neighbors. You know, things only a flesh-and-blood artist can do. Regarding Breaking Rust, he said: “The better thing we should be doing is making the general public aware that it’s AI because … I don’t think they know that.”

“The biggest problem is the ability to deceive people or manipulate people because it looks real, it sounds real, it’s pretty disingenuous if you didn’t say it,” Church told me. “I’ve seen stuff from me that is online.… They take my face and they put it on another body.… My mom sent me one and I was like, ‘Mom, that’s not me.’

“That’s where it gets dangerous and that’s where it gets scary.”

If AI-generated “musicians” like Breaking Rust are a passing fad, as Church suggests, it’s one that’s been 50 years in the making. While use of the voice box on recordings goes back to the 1960s, it was the 1975 recording of Peter Frampton’s double live album, “Frampton Comes Alive,” that popularized its use. In the 1980s Zapp had a string of gold albums with front man Roger Troutman using the voice box technology to make his voice sound futuristic, and in the 1990s AutoTune went from being a tool producers use to fine-tune a singer’s pitch on a recording to being the featured sound on a recording. This gave us Cher’s global chart-topper “Believe.”

Over the decades, technology in the studio has made it possible for the vocally challenged to usurp craftsmanship and talent.

Before MTV debuted in 1981, we were warned that video was going to kill the radio star. That obviously didn’t happen. And now, AI-generated video can theoretically replace filmed human performances. But even that should not be a threat to real stars.

As with most things in life, when expertise is devalued, it’s easier to pass trash off as treasure. AutoTune and AI are enabling people who lack musical talent to game the system — like audio catfish.

When an artist like Church sings of heartbreak, listeners can identify with his lived experience. However, Breaking Rust is on the top of the charts with a song called “Walk My Way” … and the entity singing those words has never taken a step.

That’s not to say an AI ditty can’t be catchy. It most certainly can be. I just wonder: If the artist isn’t real, how can the art be?

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

Nov. 11 (UPI) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Harris County for allocating $1.35 million to help fund legal defense of those facing immigration deportation hearings.

Harris County, which includes Houston and forms the core of the Greater Houston Area, has historically ranked among the top U.S. counties for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers, according to reporting by The Texas Tribune.

Paxton accused the Harris County Commissioners Court of illegally allocating more than $1.35 million in taxpayer funds to “radical-left organizations” that use the money to “oppose the lawful deportations of illegal aliens.”

He called the fund “blatantly unconstitutional” and “evil and wicked” in a news release announcing the lawsuit Tuesday.

“We must stop the left-wing radicals who are robbing Texans to prevent illegals from being deported by the Trump administration,” Paxton said Tuesday in a news release.

“Millions upon millions of illegals invaded America during the last administration,” Paxton said. “They must be sent back to where they came from.”

He said the Harris County Commissioners Court recently voted 4-1 to allocate $1.35 million to several non-governmental organizations that are “dedicated to fighting the deportation of illegal aliens.”

Recipients include the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, Justice for All Immigrants, Kids in Need of Defense, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, and BakerRipley.

The allocations serve no public purpose and amount to illegal grants of taxpayer dollars to pay for the legal defense of those who should not be in the country, Paxton said.

He said the Texas Constitution prohibits allocating taxpayer funds to individuals or groups that do not serve the public interest and filed the lawsuit in the Harris County Judicial District Court on Monday.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said the county will oppose the state’s lawsuit in court, The Texas Tribune reported.

“This lawsuit is a cheap political stunt,” Menefee said in a prepared statement.

“At a time when the president has unleashed ICE agents to terrorist immigrant neighborhoods, deport U.S. citizens and trample the law, it’s shameful that Republican state officials are joining in instead of standing up for Texans.”

Although Menafee accused the Trump administration of deporting U.S. citizens, the Department of Homeland Security said that is a false accusation and no U.S. citizens have been deported.

“We have said it a million times: ICE does not arrest or deport U.S. citizens,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Oct. 1 in response to a New York Times article accusing ICE of deporting citizens.

Before becoming the Harris County attorney, Menafee’s biography says his private practice “focused heavily on pro bono work, including advising the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, advising immigrants and their families at Bush Intercontinental Airport during the ‘Muslim ban’ and working with Texas Appleseed on expanding alternatives to involuntary commitment for the mentally ill.”

A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration Thursday to find the money to fully fund SNAP benefits for November.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. gave President Trump’s administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, though it’s unlikely the 42 million Americans — about 1 in 8, most of them in poverty — will see the money on the debit cards they use for groceries nearly that quickly.

The order was in response to a challenge from cities and nonprofits complaining that the administration was only offering to cover 65% of the maximum benefit, a decision that would have left some recipients getting nothing for this month.

“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund SNAP,” McConnell said in a ruling from the bench after a brief hearing. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial SNAP payments and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

McConnell was one of two judges who ruled last week that the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely because of the federal shutdown.

The Trump administration chose partial payments this week

Last month, the administration said that it would halt SNAP payments for November if the government shutdown wasn’t resolved.

A coalition of cities and nonprofits sued in federal court in Rhode Island and Democratic state officials from across the country did so in Massachusetts.

The judges in both cases ordered the government to use one emergency reserve fund containing more than $4.6 billion to pay for SNAP for November but gave it leeway to tap other money to make the full payments, which cost between $8.5 billion and $9 billion each month.

On Monday, the administration said it would not use additional money, saying it was up to Congress to appropriate the funds for the program and that the other money was needed to shore up other child hunger programs.

The partial funding brought on complications

McConnell harshly criticized the Trump administration for making that choice.

“Without SNAP funding for the month of November, 16 million children are immediately at risk of going hungry,” he said. “This should never happen in America. In fact, it’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here.”

Tyler Becker, the attorney for the government, unsuccessfully argued that the Trump administration had followed the court’s order in issuing the partial payments. “This all comes down to Congress not having appropriated funds because of the government shutdown,” he said.

Kristin Bateman, a lawyer for the coalition of cities and nonprofit organizations, told the judge the administration had other reasons for not fully funding the benefits.

“What defendants are really trying to do is to leverage people’s hunger to gain partisan political advantage in the shutdown fight,” Bateman told the court.

McConnell said last week’s order required that those payments be made “expeditiously” and “efficiently” — and by Wednesday — or a full payment would be required. “Nothing was done consistent with the court’s order to clear the way to expeditiously resolve it,” McConnell said.

There were other twists and turns this week

The administration said in a court filing on Monday that it could take weeks or even months for some states to make calculations and system changes to load the debit cards used in the SNAP program. At the time, it said it would fund 50% of the maximum benefits.

The next day, Trump appeared to threaten not to pay the benefits at all unless Democrats in Congress agreed to reopen the government. His press secretary later said that the partial benefits were being paid for November — and that it is future payments that are at risk if the shutdown continues.

And Wednesday night, it recalculated, telling states that there was enough money to pay for 65% of the maximum benefits.

Under a decades-old formula in federal regulations, everyone who received less than the maximum benefit would get a larger percentage reduction. Some families would have received nothing and some single people and two-person households could have gotten as little as $16.

Carmel Scaife, a former day care owner in Milwaukee who hasn’t been able to work since receiving multiple severe injuries in a car accident seven years ago, said she normally receives $130 a month from SNAP. She said that despite bargain hunting, that is not nearly enough for a month’s worth of groceries.

Scaife, 56, said that any cuts to her benefit will mean she will need to further tap her Social Security income for groceries. “That’ll take away from the bills that I pay,” she said. “But that’s the only way I can survive.”

The next legal step is unclear

This type of order is usually not subject to an appeal, but the Trump administration has challenged other rulings like it before.

An organization whose lawyers filed the challenge signaled it would continue the battle if needed.

“We shouldn’t have to force the President to care for his citizens,” Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement, “but we will do whatever is necessary to protect people and communities.”

It often takes SNAP benefits a week or more to be loaded onto debit cards once states initiate the process.

Mulvihill and Casey write for the Associated Press. AP writers Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, La.; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn.; and Gary Robertson in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.

Nov. 4 (UPI) — Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits will not be distributed until the federal government is funded and reopened, despite federal court orders to do so.

Two federal judges on Friday ordered the Trump administration to access contingency funds and distribute SNAP benefits despite the lack of funding for the federal government.

President Donald Trump on Saturday said his administration would do so, but he changed course and said SNAP benefits will not be distributed until the federal government is funded again.

“SNAP benefits, which increased by billions and billions of dollars during crooked Joe Biden‘s disastrous term in office, will be given only when radical-left Democrats open up the government and not before!” Trump said Tuesday in a Truth Social post.

U.S. District Court of Rhode Island Judge John McConnell Jr. on Saturday ordered the Trump administration to fund SNAP benefits no later than Wednesday, which the president initially agreed to do.

McConnell ordered the Trump administration to apprise him of efforts to fund SNAP, but White House officials on Monday said doing so would create an “unacceptable risk,” The Hill reported.

A contingency fund for SNAP benefits has about $4.65 billion, which is slightly more than half of the $9 billion spent monthly to provide SNAP benefits for about 42 million recipients.

Administration officials on Monday told McConnell that half of the cost of SNAP benefits would be covered for November, but the president on Tuesday changed course, according to CNBC.

Holding up the matter is an insistence by Congressional Democrats that a continuing resolution also include an extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits that expire at the end of the year, plus expanded Medicaid funding.

Congressional Republicans say they are willing to negotiate with Democrats on those matters, but only in the fiscal year 2026 budget.

The Senate on Tuesday again failed to gain the 60 votes needed to overcome the Senate’s filibuster rule and approve the funding resolution.

Instead, the measure was supported by a simple majority, 54-44, which was the 14th vote on the bill.

Senate Democrats John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, along with independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, for the 14th time, were the only members of the Senate Democratic Party Caucus to support passage of the funding measure.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only dissenting vote among Senate Republicans for the 14th time.

Congressional leaders did not immediately respond to questions from UPI as to whether House and Senate members are continuing to negotiate a Fiscal Year 2026 budget or if all efforts are focused only on trying to pass a continuing resolution.

The House-approved continuing resolution favored by most GOP members of Congress would fund the federal government through Nov. 21, which is a little more than two weeks from Tuesday.

A continuing resolution introduced by Senate Democrats would have funded the federal government through Oct. 31 and no longer would be in effect.

President Donald Trump’s razing of the White House’s East Wing to build a ballroom has put some news organizations following the story in an awkward position, with corporate owners among the contributors to the project — and their reporters covering it vigorously.

Comcast, which owns NBC News and MSNBC, has faced on-air criticism from some of the liberal cable channel’s personalities for its donation. Amazon, whose founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, is another donor. The newspaper editorialized in favor of Trump’s project, pointing out the Bezos connection a day later after critics noted its omission.

It’s not the first time since Trump regained the presidency that interests of journalists at outlets that are a small part of a corporate titan’s portfolio have clashed with owners. Both the Walt Disney Co. and Paramount have settled lawsuits with Trump rather than defend ABC News and CBS News in court.

“This is Trump’s Washington,” said Chuck Todd, former NBC “Meet the Press” host. “None of this helps the reputations of the news organizations that these companies own, because it compromises everybody.”

Companies haven’t said how much they donated, or why

None of the individuals and corporations identified by the White House as donors has publicly said how much was given, although a $22 million Google donation was revealed in a court filing. Comcast would not say Friday why it gave, although some MSNBC commentators have sought to fill in the blanks.

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle said the donations should be a concern to Americans, “because there ain’t no company out there writing a check just for good will.”

“Those public-facing companies should know that there’s a cost in terms of their reputations with the American people,” Rachel Maddow said on her show this week, specifically citing Comcast. “There may be a cost to their bottom line when they do things against American values, against the public interest because they want to please Trump or buy him off or profit somehow from his authoritarian overthrow of our democracy.”

NBC’s “Nightly News” led its Oct. 22 broadcast with a story on the East Wing demolition, which reporter Gabe Gutierrez said was paid for by private donors, “among them Comcast, NBC’s parent company.”

“Nightly News” spent a total of five minutes on the story that week, half the time of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” though NBC pre-empted its Tuesday newscast for NBA coverage, said Andrew Tyndall, head of ADT Research. There’s no evidence that Comcast tried to influence NBC’s coverage in any way; Todd said the corporation’s leaders have no history of doing that. A Comcast spokeswoman had no comment.

Todd spoke out against his bosses at NBC News in the past, but said he doubted he would have done so in this case, in part because Comcast hasn’t said why the contribution was made. “You could make the defense that it is contributing to the United States” by renovating the White House, he said.

More troubling, he said, is the perception that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts had to do it to curry favor with the Trump administration. Trump, in a Truth Social post in April, called Comcast and Roberts “a disgrace to the integrity of Broadcasting!!!” The president cited the company’s ownership of MSNBC and NBC News.

Roberts may need their help. Stories this week suggested Comcast might be interested in buying all or part of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that would require government approval.

White House cannot be ‘a museum to the past’

The Post’s editorial last weekend was eye-opening, even for a section that has taken a conservative turn following Bezos’ direction that it concentrate on defending personal liberties and the free market. The Oct. 25 editorial was unsigned, which indicates that it is the newspaper’s official position, and was titled “In Defense of the White House ballroom.”

The Post said the ballroom is a necessary addition and although Trump is pursuing it “in the most jarring manner possible,” it would not have gotten done in his term if he went through a traditional approval process.

“The White House cannot simply be a museum to the past,” the Post wrote. “Like America, it must evolve with the times to maintain its greatness. Strong leaders reject calcification. In that way, Trump’s undertaking is a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere.”

In sharing a copy of the editorial on social media, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote that it was the “first dose of common sense I’ve seen from the legacy media on this story.”

The New York Times, by contrast, has not taken an editorial stand either for or against the project. It has run a handful of opinion columns: Ross Douthat called Trump’s move necessary considering potential red tape, while Maureen Dowd said it was an “unsanctioned, ahistoric, abominable destruction of the East Wing.”

In a social media post later Saturday, Columbia University journalism professor Bill Grueskin noted the absence of any mention of Bezos in the Post editorial” and said he wrote to a Post spokeswoman about it. In a “stealth edit” that Grueskin said didn’t include any explanation, a paragraph was added the next day about the private donors, including Amazon. “Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post,” the newspaper said.

The Post had no comment on the issue, spokeswoman Olivia Petersen said on Sunday.

In a story this past week, NPR reported that the ballroom editorial was one of three that the Post had written in the previous two weeks on a matter in which Bezos had a financial or corporate interest without noting his personal stakes.

In a public appearance last December, Bezos acknowledged that he was a “terrible owner” for the Post from the point of view of appearances of conflict. “A pure newspaper owner who only owned a newspaper and did nothing else would probably be, from that point of view, a much better owner,” the Amazon founder said.

Grueskin, in an interview, said Bezos had every right as an owner to influence the Post’s editorial policy. But he said it was important for readers to know his involvement in the East Wing story. They may reject the editorial because of the conflict, he said, or conclude that “the editorial is so well-argued, I put a lot of credibility into what I just read.”

Bauder writes for the Associated Press.

Nov. 1 (UPI) — The nation’s 42 million recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits will have to wait for them to be restored after losing them on Saturday, which might take weeks.

The ongoing federal government shutdown has shut off funding for the SNAP program that enables recipients to buy food, but two federal judges on Friday ordered the Trump administration to continue it.

President Donald Trump on Friday night announced he is seeking ways to access funds to keep the program going as the federal government shutdown continues at least through Monday.

“I do not want Americans to go hungry just because the radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and reopen the government,” Trump said Friday in a Truth Social post.

Trump said the two federal judges issued conflicting rulingsand he does not think the federal government legally can access available funds to cover SNAP costs.

“I have instructed our lawyers to ask the court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible,” he said.

“Even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while states get the money out.”

U.S. District Court of Rhode Island Judge John McConnell Jr.was one of the two judges who ordered the SNAP benefits to continue despite the shutdown.

On Saturday, he responded to the president’s post by ordering the Trump administration to access $6 billion in contingency funds for SNAP benefits.

“There is no question that the congressionally approved contingency funds must be used now because of the shutdown,” McConnell wrote Saturday in a seven-page order.

The contingency fund is too little to cover the full $9 billion monthly cost of providing SNAP benefits, but SNAP is an entitlement that the federal government must provide to all eligible households, he said.

“To ensure the quick, orderly and efficient implementation of the court’s order … and to alleviate the irreparable harm that the court found exists without timely payment of SNAP benefits, the government should … find the additional funds necessary to fully fund the November SNAP payments,” McConnell ruled.

He ordered the Trump administration to make at least a partial payment of SNAP benefits by Wednesday and to report how it intends to do so by noon EST on Monday.

The Trump administration said it will take several days and possibly longer to get funds to the respective states and cover the benefits for those who don’t receive them this month.

If the government shutdown continues into December, the problem starts over again with no contingency funds available.