BILLINGS, Mont. — President Trump is withdrawing his nomination of a hospitality company executive to lead the National Park Service, the White House announced Monday.
The withdrawal of nominee Scott Socha comes as the park service has been shaken by widespread firings as part of the Trump administration’s pledge to sharply reduce its size.
The park service is currently overseen by an acting director, agency comptroller Jessica Bowron. It did not have a Senate-confirmed director during Trump’s first term, when it was led by a series of acting directors.
Socha is president for parks and resorts at Buffalo, N.Y.-based Delaware North, which has service contracts with numerous parks and describes itself as one of the world’s largest privately owned entertainment and hospitality companies. A White House spokesperson had said when he was nominated in February that Socha was “totally qualified” to execute Trump’s plans for the park system.
But some conservation groups had questioned whether Socha’s private sector work provided the experience he would need to oversee hundreds of national parks and monuments that range from the Statue of Liberty and other cultural sites to remote sites in the Utah desert.
The Associated Press sent email messages to the White House and the Interior Department seeking comment on Socha’s withdrawal.
Thousands of employees have been fired or otherwise left the park service since Trump took office.
Emily Douce with the National Parks Conservation Assn., an advocacy group, said Monday that the next director for the service needs to “undo the damage.”
“It’s very unfortunate that our parks have gone more than a year without a permanent director at a time when they need strong, steady leadership the most,” Douce said.
The Republican administration’s proposed budget for next year would reduce staffing to 9,200 employees. That’s down almost 30% compared to 2025 levels.
The park service’s operating budget would be cut by more than $1 billion, to $2.2 billion, for the 2027 fiscal year that starts in October.
Similar cuts proposed for 2026 were blocked by lawmakers in Congress after park supporters and former employees warned the administration’s proposal would have effectively gutted the agency.
The administration also has faced blowback for the removal or planned removal of national park exhibits about slavery, climate change and the destruction of Native American culture. In February, a federal judge said an exhibit about nine people enslaved by George Washington must be restored at Washington’s former home in Philadelphia after the Trump administration had taken it down.
Administration officials have said they are removing “disparaging” messages under an order last year from Trump. Critics accuse it of trying to whitewash the nation’s history.
Under Trump’s interior secretary, Doug Burgum, the park service has started charging millions of international tourists who visit U.S. parks each year $100 each to visit sites including Yellowstone and Grand Canyon. The service also has put Trump’s image onto its annual passes for U.S. citizens, drawing a lawsuit from environmentalists who said the move was illegal.
MINNEAPOLIS — Federal agents executed multiple searches in Minnesota on Tuesday, seizing records and other evidence in an ongoing fraud investigation by the Trump administration of publicly funded social programs for children, authorities said.
Few details were released, though armed agents were seen at child-care centers in the Minneapolis area. KSTP-TV said one crew even had a battering ram.
Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who has been on the defensive amid Trump administration claims that he hasn’t done enough to root out fraud, welcomed the raids. The state child welfare agency said it shared key information with law enforcement to “hold bad actors accountable.”
“We catch criminals when state and federal agencies share information. Joint investigations work, and securing justice depends on it,” Walz said.
The searches were being conducted at daycares, businesses and some residences, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.
Tensions between Minnesota officials and the federal government were high during an extraordinary immigration crackdown that led to the deaths of two people before Operation Metro Surge was eased in February.
Before that crackdown, the government had brought fraud charges against dozens of people, many of them Somali Americans, who were accused of fleecing a federal program that was meant to provide food to children. The investigation began during the Biden administration. More than 60 people have been convicted.
Various state and federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, participated in searches Tuesday. Officers from Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension were removing boxes at some sites.
“The American people deserve to know how their taxpayer money was abused. … No stone will be left unturned,” DHS said.
Jason Steck, an attorney who represents childcare centers, said the names of targeted businesses that were shared with him show they’re operated by Somali immigrants. They were not his clients.
“A few childcare centers, a few autism centers, a few healthcare agencies of some type,” Steck said, adding that it appeared to be a “particular sweep for fraud.”
The executive director of Child Care Aware of Minnesota, a nonprofit that serves childhood educators, said the publicity will be unflattering.
“The majority are in business to do good business. You’re going to come across individuals who try to capitalize on systems that are broken and need to be fixed,” Candace Yates said.
Right-wing influencer Nick Shirley posted a video in December that caught the attention of the Trump administration. He alleged that members of Minnesota’s Somali community were running fake child care centers so they could collect federal subsidies, fueling suspicions on top of the food aid scandal. The claims were disproven by inspectors.
President Trump, meanwhile, has used dehumanizing rhetoric, calling Somali immigrants “garbage” and “low IQ.”
In February, Vice President JD Vance said the government would temporarily halt $243 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota over fraud concerns. Minnesota sued in response, warning it may have to cut healthcare for low-income families, but a judge on April 6 declined to grant a restraining order.
Walz told Congress in March that he wanted to work with the federal government in fraud investigations, but that the immigration surge had made it more difficult.
“The people of Minnesota have been singled out and targeted for political retribution at an unparalleled scale,” he said at the time.
Vancleave and Richer write for the Associated Press. Durkin Richer contributed from Washington. AP reporters Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis and Corey Williams and Ed White in Detroit contributed to this story.
WASHINGTON — When families flocked to Yosemite National Park during their recent spring breaks, some met two-hour waits at the entrance gates. At a lakeside spot in the North Cascades in Washington state, there hasn’t been enough staff to open the visitors center. And in Death Valley, water was shut off at two campgrounds.
National parks staff and advocates fear that such issues could only worsen this summer, as the park system faces the busy season with a dramatically reduced staff. At Yosemite, concerns are compounded by the National Park Service’s recent elimination of the park’s timed-entry reservation system, which led to the long spring-break lines.
“We’re definitely really nervous and anxious about the upcoming season, especially with the staff shortage we already have,” said a National Federation of Federal Employees union member at Yosemite who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
The National Park Service has lost nearly a quarter of its staff to buyouts, early retirements and other departures since the Trump administration took office last year, according to an estimate by the National Parks Conservation Assn. This month, the administration proposed cutting nearly 3,000 more positions in its 2027 budget. It also offered a recent new round of buyouts.
The push to cut the park system even further — ahead not only of peak season but of America’s 250th birthday, which the Trump administration has promoted in relation to national parks — has underscored ongoing questions about how smoothly parks can operate as warm weather and summer vacations draw tourists.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the budget proposal on Capitol Hill last week, telling senators that the visitor experience to parks can be improved even while spending and staff reductions are made.
He said the agency plans to hire 5,500 seasonal workers and asked Congress to approve funding for those employees to work for nine-month stints rather than six months.
“All of that’s going to help us get this thing in shape, even with an overall reduction,” Burgum said Wednesday.
He was met with skepticism by Democrats, who confronted him over the spending proposal.
“That is just a recipe for disaster,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told Burgum.
Congress will have the final say on the proposed cuts, but in the meantime, the reductions that have already occurred presented challenges last season and appear likely to do so again, said Cheryl Schreier, a retired superintendent of Mount Rushmore National Memorial and chair of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.
Whether the parks will get enough qualified candidates to hire the number of seasonal workers needed is also “a really big concern,” she said. “It’s really important to have all of those individuals to be able to operate a park in a good fashion.”
Campers prepare food in Yosemite Valley last December. 9, 2025 in Yosemite, CA.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
The lower staffing has prompted worry about parks’ capacity for emergency response, protection of the natural landscape and custodial maintenance. Fewer rangers could mean, for instance, fewer people to reach dehydrated, stranded or lost hikers, said Chance Wilcox, California desert director for the National Parks Conservation Assn.
A park service spokesperson said Friday that staffing decisions are made based on local conditions at each park and that the agency is “focused on ensuring parks remain open, accessible, and safe for visitors.”
About 323 million people visit America’s national parks annually, according to the Interior Department. While the parks can expect heavy traffic, a drop in international tourism and the rise in gas prices has injected additional uncertainty into the tourism industry this year.
The number of Canadians visiting the United States has dropped since Trump took office, according to the Canadian government — with the number of Canadians making car trips to the United States this March declining by 35% compared with March 2024.
The Interior Department also instituted a new $100-per-person fee for non-Americans entering 11 of the most popular parks, a move to raise money for the parks but an extra squeeze for Canadians coming across the border and other international visitors.
At the Senate and House hearings on the Interior budget, Burgum presented a vision of the national parks system as one where most employees should be working at a park and interacting with visitors, and said he was more focused on filling those roles than jobs in regional offices.
“Our goal is to have more people actually working in the parks,” he told senators.
An Interior Department spokesperson said the agency was “advancing high-priority improvements” across the system.
“Secretary Burgum has been clear that resources should be prioritized toward visitor-facing services, public safety, maintenance, and projects that improve the experience for the American people,” an Interior Department spokesperson said in a statement Friday.
Critics say that strategy displays a misunderstanding of how the 109-year-old agency functions. Employees who work on contracts, human resources, IT, communications and other organizational and administrative jobs are essential to keeping the parks running, Wilcox said.
“If everything were visitor- or front-facing, the entire agency would collapse from behind,” said Wilcox, of the National Parks Conservation Assn.
The decision to discontinue the reservation system at Yosemite — as well as at Arches and Glacier national parks — is another part of Interior’s mission to bring more people into the parks. The concept was “designed to expand public access” this summer, the park service said in announcing the policy in February. It kept the timed-entry reservation system in Rocky Mountain National Park for the peak season.
Visitors take pictures while walking through Muir Woods National Monument on July 24, 2025 in Muir Woods National Monument, California.
(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
In addition to causing long lines, cramming too many people into the parks at once could lead to environmental damage, particularly if people park cars in natural areas, said Don Neubacher, a retired Yosemite superintendent and member of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.
“It’s going to be mass chaos,” he said.
On a Saturday at the end of March, Jon Christenson of Coarsegold, Calif., drove to the park with his 38-year-old son. They were surprised to encounter a two-hour wait to get into the park, plus at least a half-hour hunt for parking after they made it through the gates, he said.
“It was almost like Disneyland. It was really uncomfortable from the standpoint of just so many people,” said Christenson, 82. “It’s kind of troubling to see that they’ve opened up the floodgates and now it’s kind of ruining the experience for everybody.”
Rangers there are doing multiple jobs, and last summer they helped clean bathrooms in the absence of custodial staff, the Yosemite union member said. Now they, too, are concerned about the potential for gridlock.
The worker asked summer visitors to bring patience: “The folks at the National Park Service … they will be grateful for any compassion and empathy.”
The Trump administration’s historic move to reclassify state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug was cheered by some advocates but for others, it fell far short for the thousands still incarcerated on federal cannabis-related convictions.
The executive order, which acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche signed Thursday, does not address current penalties for possessing and selling marijuana or those jailed with yearslong sentences.
“While this is a victory, the fight is far from over,” said Jason Ortiz, director of strategic initiatives for the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit focused on cannabis criminal justice reform.
Proponents of legalizing marijuana as well as overhauling prison sentencing say this order, which does not completely decriminalize the drug, benefits only cannabis researchers, growers and others in Big Weed. Meanwhile, thousands — many of whom are people of color — are stuck serving harsh sentences for marijuana-related offenses. Or they have served their time but having a conviction on their record has made life difficult.
Now, advocates are calling on Congress and state lawmakers to take concrete steps to ensure those with marijuana-related convictions receive fair treatment or be forgiven altogether.
Prisoners and their families look for hope
Blanche’s order reclassifies state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug. The major policy shift, which both Presidents Obama and Joe Biden had considered, means cannabis won’t be grouped with drugs like heroin.
But it does not legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use. It shifts licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I — reserved for drugs without medical use and with high potential for abuse — to the less strictly regulated Schedule III. This will likely give licensed medical marijuana operators and cannabis researchers a major tax break and less stringent barriers to doing normal business.
Virtually no one imprisoned at the federal level is there solely for marijuana possession. But many are there for large-scale possession, trafficking offenses or both.
Hector Ruben McGurk, 66, has been serving life without the possibility of parole since 2007 for transporting thousands of pounds of marijuana and money laundering. He is currently imprisoned in Beaumont, Texas, over 800 miles from his son’s El Paso home. His incarceration has been hard on his son, said McGurk’s daughter-in-law, Ferna Anguiano. And the distance makes visits logistically difficult.
So it’s tempting to see this order as a glimmer of hope, given that the family believes McGurk’s punishment far outweighs his crimes. But Anguiano has no idea how to navigate lobbying for his release.
“His release date is death,” Anguiano said. “I mean, we see all this stuff on the news — bigger cases, fatal cases — and people are going in and out of prison and coming out to their families.”
They try to keep in touch through phone calls and a prison texting service. They’re concerned about McGurk’s health and his diabetes management. It would be a dream come true for him to come home.
“He deserves a second chance,” Anguiano said. “Yes, it was a poor decision he did in his lifetime. He was younger. But he is not a bad person. I think it’s fair to say he has served enough time for it.”
It’s not clear whether punishments would be different had marijuana always been scheduled differently, drug policy experts say.
“In addition to schedule-specific penalties, there are marijuana-specific penalties that have nothing to do with the schedule,” said Cat Packer, director of drug markets and legal regulation at the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. “Even if marijuana were to be moved to Schedule V, those criminal penalties would still exist and there are mandatory minimums for simple possession.”
Racial disparities exist in convictions and Big Weed
Destigmatizing marijuana has long been an issue for both political parties. Obama commuted the sentences of about 1,900 federal prisoners, almost all of whom were incarcerated for nonviolent drug crimes. Biden pardoned 6,500 people convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia. President Trump’s administration has taken far fewer drug clemency actions and does not have an overarching policy directing such actions.
“What many people on the right and the left would like is to move marijuana from this ‘just as bad as heroin’ category and to just sort of de-schedule it entirely,” said Marta Nelson, director of sentencing reform at the Vera Institute of Justice. “Regulate it like you do alcohol or tobacco.”
Studies show Black Americans are roughly 3.7 to 4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white Americans, despite usage rates being roughly the same across racial groups. Federal-level marijuana cases are pretty small today, but those serving sentences for federal drug offenses are overwhelmingly Hispanic and Black, according to Justice Department and Bureau of Justice Statistics data.
The racial disparity with drug convictions is reminiscent of 2010 legislation Obama signed reducing the gap between mandatory sentences for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. In 2018, Trump made it apply retroactively.
Because business owners with state medical marijuana licenses are predominantly white, the tax relief created by the rescheduling will also likely give a leg up to mostly white businesses, Packer said. A lot of equity programs won’t apply.
“This is going to, in my mind, widen the gap, the financial disparities, the business disparities that currently exist between Black and brown, Latino and white owners in the cannabis industry because licenses were not distributed equitably,” Packer said.
Possible next steps for marijuana convictions
In theory, Trump could issue a blanket pardon like he did for Jan. 6 rioters. But Nelson thinks that is highly doubtful.
“Having marijuana convictions on the record for things like mass immigration enforcement is helpful to the administration,” Nelson said.
An impactful next step would be for Congress to outline very comprehensive legislation addressing existing marijuana-related convictions, expungements and industry regulations, she added.
The Last Prisoner Project and other organizations are planning to renew a dialogue with federal lawmakers, including the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, which includes Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Republican Rep. David Joyce of Ohio. They will also continue to lobby for Trump to conduct a large-scale act of commutation and clemency.
Advocates are also hoping Trump’s order will prompt every state to rethink their marijuana classification and penalties.
“It is imperative that every state review their situation, as a lot of their controlled substances at the state level are tied to the federal government,” Ortiz said. “We’re gonna see other states that are going to need a little help from the public to remind them what the right thing to do is.”
LOGAN, Utah — President Trump’s administration took the unusual step this week of sending a government plane to Cuba to return a 10-year-old from Utah who is at the center of a complicated and contentious custody fight involving the child’s gender identity.
The child’s parent, Rose Inessa-Ethington, a transgender woman, is accused of taking the child to Cuba without the permission of the biological mother. Federal and state authorities sought the return of the child after a family member expressed concern that Inessa-Ethington went to Havana to get the child gender transition surgery.
Inessa-Ethington, who had run a popular Utah political blog in the 2010s, was arrested along with her partner, Blue Inessa-Ethington, and charged in the U.S. with international parental kidnapping.
The couple traveled with the child to Canada ostensibly for a camping trip in late March with Blue’s 3-year-old child. However, the two adults turned off their phones after telling the older child’s mother they had arrived in Canada. They flew from Vancouver to Mexico and then to Cuba on April 1, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in federal court in Utah.
The charges don’t say if the couple actually planned on getting the child gender-affirming surgery in Cuba or how they would get it because that surgery isn’t legal for children in Cuba.
The FBI said that Blue Inessa-Ethington withdrew $10,000 from her checking account before leaving. Agents also found at their home a note with instructions from a mental health therapist in Washington, D.C., “to send the therapist the $10,000.00 and instructions on gender affirming medical care for children.” That note didn’t mention Cuba.
The use of the Department of Justice plane in a parental kidnapping investigation comes after the Trump administration sought to block access to gender-affirming care for minors and pressured healthcare providers over the issue.
The Associated Press left telephone and email messages with the court-appointed attorneys who represented Blue and Rose Inessa-Ethington in Virginia. The defendants will be returned to Utah to face one count each of international parental kidnapping, according to court filings.
Search began after child wasn’t returned as scheduled
The search for the child began on April 3 when they were not returned to the mother in Utah as scheduled, court documents show.
The 10-year-old’s mother, who was divorced from Rose Inessa-Ethington and had shared custody of the child, filed a missing-person report with police in Logan, Utah, a college and dairy farming town about 70 miles north of Salt Lake City.
Logan City Police Chief Jeff Simmons said his department’s initial focus was on the custodial interference allegations in the case, and he said investigators did not learn until later about concerns over gender-affirming surgery.
Logan police spokesperson Sgt. Brandon Bevan said those concerns were raised by one family member. He declined to say who.
“They just had the concern about it, no actual physical evidence,” Bevan said.
A Utah state judge ordered the return of the 10-year-old to the child’s mother on April 13. Three days later, a federal magistrate judge issued an arrest warrant for the Inessa-Ethingtons. On the same day, Cuban law enforcement located the group. They were deported to the U.S. aboard the government plane Monday and arraigned in federal court in Richmond, Va.
The 10-year-old was returned to the child’s biological mother, First Assistant U.S. Atty. Melissa Holyoak in Utah indicated in a statement. Representatives of the FBI and U.S. attorneys office in Utah declined to say what happened to the 3-year-old child who had been with the group.
Parents engaged in custody dispute
The custody dispute between the parents does not appear to be a new development. An online fundraiser created five years go by Blue Inessa-Ethington titled “Help a Trans Mother Keep Custody of Her Child” raised $9,766.
“Last week, Rose’s ex relocated several counties away, negatively impacting Rose’s parent-time with the child,” she wrote on the fundraising page. She said the money would be used to seek a court order that would keep the child “safe and stable throughout this process.”
Anyone who has spent time with Rose knows “how much care and thought she puts into parenting her gender open child,” she wrote.
Family members said the child was assigned male at birth but identifies as a girl because of what they believed to be “manipulation” by Rose Inessa-Ethington, according to an April 16 affidavit from FBI Special Agent Jennifer Waterfield.
Gender-affirming care for minors has been limited
The Trump administration moved in December to cut off gender-affirming care for minors, prompting a third of states to sue.
It was the latest in a series of clashes between an administration that says transgender healthcare can be harmful to children and advocates who say it’s medically necessary.
Gender-affirming surgery is rare among U.S. children, research shows. Guidance from several major medical organizations calls for caution around surgery for minors and says decisions about treatments are case-by-case. Fewer than 1 in 1,000 U.S. adolescents receive gender-affirming medications, such as hormones or puberty blockers.
In Cuba, gender-affirming surgeries are banned for minors and performed only for adults through the public health system under strict supervision in designated public hospitals for Cuban citizens. They must be authorized by a medical commission after a comprehensive review of the patient’s file. That process often takes years because it requires a wide range of medical and psychological evaluations.
Brown, Boone and Schoenbaum write for the Associated Press. Brown reported from Billings, Mont., and Boone from Boise, Idaho. AP journalists Eric Tucker in Washington, Cristiana Mesquita in Havana and Devi Shastri in Milwaukee contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials said Friday.
The Justice Department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration — more than under any president in modern history. The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering.
The moves were announced as part of a broader push to step up federal executions after a moratorium under the Biden administration. Only three defendants remain on federal death row after Democratic President Biden converted 37 sentences to life in prison, though the Trump administration has so far authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.
“The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said in a statement. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”
The federal government has not previously included firing squad as a method of execution in its protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states currently allow executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.
The pentobarbital protocol was adopted by William Barr, attorney general during Trump’s first term, to replace a three-drug mix used in the 2000s, the last time federal executions were carried out before Trump’s first term in office.
Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland in the final days of the Biden administration withdrew the pentobarbital lethal injection policy after a government review of scientific and medical research found there remains “significant uncertainty” about whether its use causes unnecessary pain and suffering.”
In 2020, under Barr’s leadership, the Justice Department published a rule in the Federal Register to allow the federal government to conduct executions by lethal injection or use “any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed.”
A number of states allow other methods of execution, including electrocution and inhalation of nitrogen gas.
The Trump administration, in a report released Friday, said the Biden administration “got the standard and the science wrong.” The Biden administration’s findings, among other things, “failed to address the overwhelming evidence” that a person injected with pentobarbital “quickly loses consciousness — rendering him unable to experience pain,” the report said.
Currently on death row are are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.
WASHINGTON — The criminal indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center this week was met with much outrage but little surprise from civil rights leaders, who have for more than a year prepared for heightened legal scrutiny from the Trump administration, and how to mount a coordinated response.
In rounds of calls immediately following the indictment, civil rights leaders discussed how to support the SPLC, a Montgomery, Ala.-based civil rights group founded in 1971 that has tracked white supremacist groups and been outspoken on voting rights, immigration and policing. Organizers on one call agreed that winning in the court of public opinion would be crucial as judicial proceedings began, leading to dozens of public statements of support and planned rallies.
And legal advisors to civil rights groups urged organizers to prepare themselves for similar criminal indictments, protracted legal action that may exhaust their resources and audits of their staff and internal documents.
The flurry of behind-the-scenes coordination represented a marked escalation and mobilization of plans for activist groups that have been at odds with the Justice Department since President Trump’s return to the White House last year. Organizers say they are prepared to back the SPLC in its legal fight.
“It’s a blatantly obvious attack on civil rights and civil liberties to whitewash the foot soldiers of the great replacement theory and other extremists. This coalition isn’t going silent,” said Maya Wiley, president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an umbrella organization of hundreds of civil rights groups.
Without addressing the indictment, a coalition of more than 100 activist groups on Tuesday published a letter vowing solidarity with groups that are “unjustly targeted” by the federal government. SPLC was a signatory to the pact.
“An attack on one is an attack on all,” the coalition declared. “We will share knowledge, resources, and support with any organization threatened by abuses of power.”
DOJ alleges criminal conduct in SPLC’s longtime informant network
The Justice Department alleges that the SPLC, which rose to prominence for its work prosecuting and tracking hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, violated federal law through its network of paid informants in extremist groups. The DOJ claims the payments funded hate groups and misled the SPLC’s donors.
The SPLC now faces charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the case brought in the federal court in Alabama, where the organization is based.
“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” said acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche at a news conference announcing the charges. Blanche promised the department “will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable.”
Longtime civil rights activists found the claims to be a disingenuous and partisan move that may empower extremist groups.
“The indictment is nakedly political and represents the Justice Department turning on itself,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League. “It places the Justice Department in the posture of, in effect, defending white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and others.”
Advocates also view the indictment as part of the administration’s broader upending of civil rights law and the Justice Department’s prosecution of Trump’s political opponents.
The SPLC in recent years became a bogeyman among conservatives who resented that the watchdog designated several rightwing organizations that engage in Republican politics as hateful or extremist.
In October, FBI Director Kash Patel canceled the agency’s longtime anti-extremism partnerships with the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League, which combats antisemitism. Patel at the time called the SPLC a “partisan smear machine.”
The Justice Department and SPLC did not respond to requests for comment.
Indictment represents marked shift for civil rights work
Advocates dispute the DOJ’s characterization of the SPLC’s work, which civil rights activists credit to combating extremist groups across the country.
“The problem is that the indictment essentially claims that it was a fraud on SPLC’s donors to use their funds to fight the Klan, the neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups, when that is exactly why people gave to the organization,” said Norm Eisen, founder of Democracy Defenders Action, a legal group that works with organizations in legal disputes with the Trump administration.
Eisen added: “The notion that there’s something wrong with using informants and protecting their identities to prevent white supremacist violence is belied by the fact that that is not only what the SPLC did, but it is also the stock and trade of the FBI itself.”
Civil rights organizations are now preparing for further legal action against other organizations that disagree with or actively oppose the Trump administration. Organizations have reviewed their document retention, tax compliance and auditing policies over the last year to safeguard against any probes or lawsuits.
Some civil rights organizations have also floated creating new organizational structures that may better withstand legal scrutiny. On another recent call, activists floated restructuring some groups into for-profit entities, or potentially crafting new financial conduits for donors to give through to ensure that staff could receive pay if an organization’s assets were seized or frozen.
The preparations represent a marked shift for many civil rights leaders, who in recent years counted the Justice Department under both Democratic and Republican administrations as a reliable ally in key civil rights battles.
“What we are seeing in real time is an administration seeking to leverage its position to target individuals and organizations that do not agree with its political thought,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who said the Justice Department has been “weaponized by dangerous forces.”
But for other leaders, the SPLC indictment raised the specter of a return to a previous era, when the Justice Department monitored — and at times prosecuted — civil rights leaders to disrupt their activities.
“We’re not backing down, but we are clear-eyed. Everyone could be in some form of jeopardy if you’re in the crosshairs of this administration,” said Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights group suing the Trump administration over executive orders addressing birthright citizenship and mail-in voting.
“That’s what they’re looking for; they want this to have a chilling effect,” Proaño said.
WASHINGTON — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger met privately with President Trump and administration officials Wednesday to press for federal support and yet-unpaid wildfire recovery funding as the region continues to rebuild from the 2025 fires.
“This afternoon we met with President Trump and Administration officials to advocate for families who lost everything,” Bass and Barger said in a statement. “We had a very positive discussion about FEMA and other rebuilding funds as well as the support of the President to continue joining us in pressuring the insurance companies to pay what they owe — and for the big banks to step up to ease the financial pressure on L.A. families.”
Barger said the two leaders had a “high-level discussion” with the president in the Oval Office, sharing stories about what fire survivors are experiencing day to day. She added that “we left details behind with the President,” but did not specify whether Trump made any funding or policy promises during the meeting.
“First and foremost, today’s meeting was to thank the President for his initial support of infusing federal resources to expedite debris removal, as well as his recent tweet about insurance companies, which have already proven fruitful,” she said in a statement provided to The Times.
Bass was similarly reserved about the discussions, telling reporters that “we will follow up with the details,” but signaled progress is being made on federal support.
“I think what’s important is that we certainly got the president’s support in terms of, you know, what is needed, and then the appropriate people were in the room for us to follow up. And that was Russ Vought, who is the head of the Office of Management and budget,” Bass told KNX on Wednesday.
The meeting comes on the heels of a yearlong standoff between California leaders and the Trump administration over wildfire recovery funding, disaster response and whether the federal government should have a say in local rebuilding permitting.
California leaders, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, have accused the Trump administration of withholding billions in critical wildfire aid, prompting a lawsuit over stalled recovery funds. Officials allege political bias in the delay of billions of dollars from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Newsom visited Washington in December. When he made his rounds on Capitol Hill, he met with five lawmakers, including three who serve on the Senate and House appropriations committees, to renew calls for $33.9 billion in federal aid for Los Angeles County fire recovery.
But the governor said he was denied a meeting with FEMA and would not say whether he had attempted to meet with Trump to discuss the issue.
Bass, meanwhile, appears to have found a path to the president on a subject that has been paramount for her community.
The fruitful meeting comes after Trump lobbed insults at the mayor at a news conference earlier this year, where he called her “incompetent” for how she handled last year’s wildfire recovery efforts. He alleged that under Bass’ leadership, the city’s delay in issuing local building permits will take years when it should have taken “two or three days.”
California officials, including Newsom, have urged the Trump administration to send Congress a formal request for the $33.9 billion in recovery aid needed to rebuild homes, schools, utilities and other critical infrastructure destroyed or damaged when the fires tore through neighborhoods more than 15 months ago.
What Bass and Barger’s meeting with the president ultimately produces remains to be seen.
The billions in recovery aid have not yet materialized, but the meeting could potentially give those discussions new momentum.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment about the meeting.
Earlier this month, Trump criticized insurance provider State Farm on Truth Social for its handling of the devastating Los Angeles County wildfires. He accused the insurance giant of abandoning its policyholders when tragedy struck.
“It was brought to my attention that the Insurance Companies, in particular, State Farm, have been absolutely horrible to people that have been paying them large Premiums for years, only to find that when tragedy struck, these horrendous Companies were not there to help!” Trump wrote.
But the rebuke didn’t come out of the blue. It stemmed from a controversial February visit to Los Angeles by Trump administration officials.
Trump tapped Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin in an effort to strip California state and local governments of their authority to permit the rebuilding of homes destroyed in the Eaton and Palisades fires.
Within the week, Zeldin was in Los Angeles, bashing Newsom and Los Angeles officials at a roundtable with fire victims and reporters, saying that residents were suffering from “bureaucratic, red tape delays and incompetency” and that leadership was “denying them … the ability to rebuild their lives”.
After these meetings, Trump directed Zeldin to investigate the insurers’ responses. State Farm, facing roughly $7 billion in fire-related claims, is also under formal investigation by California’s insurance commissioner over its handling of the crisis.
Despite tensions with the administration, Bass and Barger appeared confident that progress was being made on the insurance and funding issues.
“Our job is to fight for our communities,” their joint statement concluded. “When it comes to this recovery, our federal partners are essential, and we are grateful for the support of the President.”
Bill Cassidy’s roles as a lawmaker, a doctor and a political candidate will collide on Wednesday as he questions Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in two high-stakes Senate hearings.
The Louisiana Republican chairs one of the Senate committees that oversees Kennedy’s department and sits on another, giving him two chances to interrogate the secretary about his plans for an agency responsible for public health programs and research. As a doctor, Cassidy has clashed with Kennedy’s anti-vaccine ideas even though he provided crucial support for the health secretary’s nomination last year.
At the same time, Cassidy is fighting for his political future in next month’s primary in Louisiana, where President Trump has endorsed one of his opponents in an unusual attempt to oust a sitting senator from his own party.
How Cassidy handles the hearings could affect his chances at a pivotal moment of his reelection campaign and set the tone for how Congress oversees the nation’s health agenda at a time of rampant distrust and misinformation.
Cassidy hasn’t faced Kennedy in public since September. In the subsequent months, Kennedy has attempted a dramatic rollback of vaccine recommendations that, if not blocked by an ongoing lawsuit, could undermine protections against diseases like flu, hepatitis B and RSV.
After a backlash, Kennedy has also pivoted to spending more time talking about less controversial topics like healthy eating — albeit with his own spin, including sharing exaggerated claims that various ailments can be cured by diet alone.
Cassidy will have to decide on Wednesday whether to grill Kennedy on vaccines, an issue deeply important to him, or put their differences aside and prioritize loyalty to the Trump administration.
“He’s taken a risk showing any sort of resistance to RFK,” said Claire Leavitt, an assistant professor at Smith College who studies congressional oversight. “He may pay an electoral price for that.”
Cassidy has long advocated for vaccines
Cassidy has spent years walking a political tightrope. He’s one of the few Republican senators who voted to convict Trump during an impeachment trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
As a liver doctor, he advocated for babies to receive hepatitis B vaccines shortly after birth, a step that could have prevented the disease in his patients. But when Trump nominated Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, Cassidy supported him. He did so after securing various commitments, including that Kennedy would work within the current vaccine approval and safety monitoring system and support the childhood vaccine schedule.
The vote for Kennedy did not appear to mollify Trump. The president endorsed U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, one of Cassidy’s two primary opponents.
Cassidy also faces opposition from Kennedy’s allies in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, a group that includes both anti-vaccine activists and a wide variety of other crusaders for health and the environment. The MAHA PAC, aligned with Kennedy, has pledged $1 million to Letlow’s campaign. While the organization hasn’t publicly said so, some have questioned whether the support is partly in retaliation against Cassidy for criticizing Kennedy’s vaccine policy agenda.
“I’m not really sure what MAHA’s beef is,” Cassidy told reporters earlier this month. “Let me point out that I am the reason that Robert F. Kennedy is now the secretary of HHS. He would not have gotten there otherwise.”
Cassidy argues that he has “strongly supported” the MAHA agenda, especially when it comes to the fight against ultraprocessed foods. However, the physician-turned-senator acknowledged that he and MAHA have “disagreed on vaccines.”
“We’ve seen, frankly, that I am right,” Cassidy added, pointing to recent measles-related deaths of children who were not vaccinated.
At a hearing in September, he slammed Kennedy’s decision to slash funding for mRNA vaccine development. He interrogated Kennedy over his attempt to replace members of a vaccine committee, suggesting the new members could have conflicts of interest. He also raised concerns that Kennedy’s vaccine policy decisions could be making it harder for Americans to get COVID-19 shots.
Later that month, Cassidy convened a hearing featuring former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez, who was ousted by Kennedy less than a month into her tenure after they clashed over vaccine policy, and former CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, who resigned in August citing an erosion of science at the agency.
“I want to work with the president to fulfill his campaign promise to reform the CDC and Make America Healthy Again. The president says radical transparency is the way to do that,” Cassidy said at the time.
Experts say Cassidy’s vaccine stance might not hurt him
Political consultants said they expect Cassidy’s primary opponents, Letlow and Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming, to seize on any sound bites from Wednesday’s hearings that can make Cassidy seem at odds with the Trump administration.
But Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert at UC Law San Francisco, said the political risk of advocating for vaccines may not be as strong among Republicans as some people assume.
“He’s probably not alienating voters by focusing on the issue and calling it out,” she said.
Louisiana political consultant Mary-Patricia Wray said she thinks most diehard MAHA voters already know who they are voting for, and it’s probably not Cassidy.
Instead, she said, he may still be able to appeal to Democrats who switch their party registration to vote in the primary, as well as a wide swath of still-undecided Republican voters who care about the same health care affordability issues he advocates for every day in Congress.
“If I was advising Bill Cassidy, I would tell him your goal here is not to get out unscathed,” Wray said. “Your goal is to prove that your consistency on issues regarding public health is an asset in your campaign, not a detriment.”
Election outcome will shape future oversight of HHS
Also at stake if Cassidy doesn’t make it to November’s general election is what will happen to his responsibility to oversee the massive U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.
Leavitt, the Smith College professor, said seniority typically plays the most important role in who chairs Senate committees. She said another Republican in today’s increasingly hyperpartisan Congress may not be as willing as Cassidy to check Kennedy’s power.
Reiss, the vaccine law expert, said she wishes Cassidy had done more hearings or introduced legislation to rein in Kennedy. And she said the senator bears the blame for allowing Kennedy to bring unfounded vaccine fears into the government in the first place.
“His original sin, of course, was voting for Kennedy at all,” Reiss said.
Swenson writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Sara Cline contributed to this report.
