Corewell Health is accused of failing to address a nurse practitioner who publicly described herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and shared social media posts calling for discrimination against Muslims, according to a complaint with the state.
The post Corewell Health accused of ignoring Islamophobic posts by nurse practitioner appeared first on Detroit Metro Times.
By Lauren Gibbons BRIDGEMI.COM
This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. Visit the newsroom online: bridgemi.com.
In Oakland County’s Waterford Township, concern over the use of automatic license plate readers by law enforcement agencies escalated to a 24-year-old man smashing several of the devices to bits.
Police credit one of the cameras he’s accused of breaking with helping track him down. The license plate reader, Sheriff Scott Underwood said, captured his license plate data before it was damaged.
Underwood highlighted that incident as one of many examples where the readers have assisted in solving crimes quickly, but the damaged cameras and subsequent arrest highlight the tension many communities are experiencing as local officials grapple with how and whether to use automatic license plate readers in policing.
At least 16 states have adopted policies aimed at regulating the use and retention of data collected by license plate readers, which capture pictures of vehicle license plates every time a car drives by.
A group of lawmakers led by Republican state Rep. Doug Wozniak of Shelby Township and Democratic state Rep. Jimmie Wilson of Ypsilanti are suggesting it’s time for Michigan to do the same.
“Michiganders deserve to know that new technology is being used responsibly, not in ways that invade privacy or erode public confidence,” Wozniak said in a statement announcing bipartisan bills to regulate the devices, arguing their plan would protect driver privacy and help maintain public trust in law enforcement.
Absent a statewide policy, decisions on the use of license plate readers have fallen to local law enforcement agencies and municipal governments.
In communities where license plate reader contracts are being considered, concerned residents have increasingly spoken up at public hearings about the possibility of data being used to surveil lawful activity or the possible sharing of data with federal law enforcement agencies.
At least 125 Michigan agencies contract with the Atlanta-based company Flock Safety, one of the largest providers nationwide of automatic license plate reader technology.
Law enforcement agencies using the devices tout the technology as a speedy way to help locate missing people or catch criminals, and some police groups are concerned the proposed statewide regulations as written would go too far.
“We’re not against any regulations — we just don’t want it to weaken what a good investigative tool the license plate readers are,” said Matt Saxton, executive director of the Michigan Sheriff’s Association.
If the proposed legislation became law, the biggest change would be a restriction on how long any data collected by license plate readers is stored.
Lawmakers supporting the bills are pushing for a 14-day limit on data retention, as well as limiting use of the license plate reader system to specific law enforcement actions, including:
Finding missing peopleLocating stolen vehiclesLocating people with outstanding arrest warrantsIdentifying uninsured or unregistered vehiclesParking and tolling enforcementCriminal investigations
The legislation also calls for publicly available reports from agencies using the readers on how the data is used and would offer a path for legal recourse if a driver believes his or her data was used improperly.
State and local governments can support effective policing “while still demanding safeguards that protect civil liberties,” Wilson said in a statement announcing the bills.
“This legislation creates clear limits on how … data is collected, stored and shared, ensuring these tools are used to improve public safety, not to enable routine mass surveillance,” he continued.
In most communities with license plate readers, the devices are placed at or near major public intersections. As vehicles pass by, the reader takes a photo of the back of the car, collecting the license plate number that can be used to look up the vehicle registration.
Photos are typically stored by the contractor for 30 days, though locals can elect to keep them for more or less time. The law enforcement entity can then cross-check those images with “hot lists” of license plates connected to suspected criminals or missing people.
Critics contend that 24-hour surveillance of drivers, the vast majority of whom will never be charged with a crime, poses major privacy concerns — especially considering the 30-day standard for storing the data also means anyone with access could gain insight into a driver’s daily routines.
Saxton, the executive director of the Sheriff’s Association, said law enforcement criminal investigations or missing person searches can take longer than two weeks to complete. He’s concerned cutting the timeline short could limit the effectiveness of the tool.
Flock plate reader use ends in two Silicon Valley communities
“If that data was gone after 14 days, we couldn’t use that as a tool to help that family find out answers about their missing loved ones,” he said.
The proposed legislation is pending in the House Judiciary Committee and would need to earn majority support in the politically divided House and Senate to become law.
ACLU of Michigan policy strategist Gabrielle Dresner, whose organization worked closely with lawmakers on crafting the proposal, is optimistic about the chances of meaningful reform.
“In conversations we’ve had with the vast majority of the representatives, we’ve had a lot of support from both sides of the aisle … the most left of left and right of right,” she said. “It’s really a popular issue among everyone.”
In the meantime, communities around the state are reaching differing conclusions about how to balance law enforcement requests with increased pushback from citizens.
After weeks of opposition from residents, Lapeer County Sheriff Scott McKenna recently pulled back a request for license plate readers.
He told county commissioners that he personally believes foregoing the readers “leaves us in a vulnerable position,” but, after taking stock of the situation, he “felt it was my duty at that point to pull it off the agenda.”
Some cities, including Bay City and Ferndale, have in recent months backed out of contracts with Flock and have reassessed their license plate reader policies or switched to a different provider in response to community concerns.
In Detroit, city council members recently requested a report on how data collected from the city’s more than 500 license plate readers is used, expressing concerns about the possibility of data sharing.
But other communities are still considering getting their own license plate readers or adding onto existing contracts as local police credit the technology with helping locate stolen vehicles, bust human trafficking rings, solve serious crimes like rapes and murders and fill coverage gaps in short-staffed departments.
Local officials in Trenton and Taylor this week considered renewing existing contracts with Flock Safety. Taylor police credit the tool with arrests in a 14-year-old’s shooting death and a sting operation involving possible child predators, among other things.
In Waterford Township, where police began using license plate readers in 2022, law enforcement was recently approved to add additional readers and Flock-powered drones to its repertoire, despite concerted pushback from locals.
After several cameras were destroyed — including the camera that led to an arrest in the crime — Underwood, the Waterford police chief, in a press release said the public is entitled to their opinions regarding the readers, but aren’t entitled to maliciously interfere.
The license plate readers “collect only images of vehicles and license plates,” he said in the release. “Those images, coupled with a number of other investigative techniques, led to a successful resolution in this case, that being the arrest of a person who committed three felonies.”
Can Michigan block new ICE facilities? How officials are fighting back
Federal agencies gained access to car owners’ information from El Cerrito license plate readers
Michigan man accused of smashing license plate readers — including the one that recorded his vehicle
By The Washington Post
Three U.S. service members were killed in action and five were seriously wounded, Central Command said Sunday morning, the first reported U.S. casualties in the joint attack with Israel on Iran.
The military also said several other service members suffered minor shrapnel injuries and concussions. After the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, in the operation, strikes across the Middle East continued Sunday, with Israel saying it launched a fresh wave in “the heart of Tehran” and Iran mounting attacks on Israel and across the Persian Gulf.
A strike from Iran killed at least nine people near Jerusalem, according to Israel’s national emergency service, and injured at least 28. Iran’s state broadcaster, citing figures from the Iranian Red Crescent Society, reported 201 dead and 747 injured in the country. The Washington Post could not independently verify the report.
Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader and a vocal opponent of Israel and the West since coming to power in 1989, was killed in U.S.-Israeli attacks Saturday along with other top Iranian leaders.
Social media showed scenes of both grief and celebration in Iran, where the government declared 40 days of mourning and announced a temporary leadership structure.
Israeli defense officials said Sunday that their initial strikes on Iranian leaders, launched in two locations, eliminated 40 military commanders and that they would continue to dismantle Iranian military infrastructure. Iran’s retaliatory attacks included for the first time a strike against Oman, which had served as a mediator in nuclear discussions between Washington and Tehran.
By JON GAMBRELL, KONSTANTIN TOROPIN, JOSH BOAK and AAMER MADHANI The Associated Press
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.S. and Israel launched a major attack on Iran on Saturday, and President Donald Trump called on the Iranian public to “seize control of your destiny” by rising up against the Islamic leadership that has ruled the nation since 1979.
Some of the first strikes appeared to hit areas around the offices of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Iranian media reported strikes nationwide. Smoke could be seen rising from the capital. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the 86-year-old leader was in his offices at the time of the strike.
“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations,” Trump said in a video announcing “major combat operations” were underway. “For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed that sweeping goal. “Our joint operation will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their fate into their own hands,” Netanyahu said.
The strikes opened a stunning new chapter in U.S. intervention in Iran and marked the second time in eight months that the Trump administration has used military force against the Islamic Republic. They also came just weeks after Trump ordered a military operation to capture Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and bring him and his wife to New York to face federal drug conspiracy charges.
The targets included members of Iran’s leadership, according to a U.S. official and another person briefed on the attacks who both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified information on an ongoing operation. There was no immediate information on whether top officials had been killed.
Tensions have soared in recent weeks as American warships moved into the region. Trump said he wanted a deal to constrain Iran’s nuclear program at a moment when the country is struggling at home with growing dissent following nationwide protests.
The immediate trigger for Saturday’s strikes appears to be the unsuccessful latest round of nuclear talks. But they also reflect the dramatic changes across the region that have left Iran’s leadership in its weakest position since the Islamic Revolution nearly half a century ago.
Israeli and American strikes last June greatly weakened Iran’s air defenses, military leadership and nuclear program. A regionwide war, sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, has left Iran’s network of proxies across the Middle East greatly weakened. U.S. sanctions and global isolation, meanwhile, have decimated Iran’s economy.
Iran responded to the latest strikes as it had been threatening to do for months — first launching a wave of missiles and drones targeting Israel. It followed with strikes targeting U.S. military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. The United Arab Emirates and Iraq shut down their airspace.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a defiant statement, saying the country “will not hesitate” in its response. In a statement posted on X, the ministry said: “The time has come to defend the homeland and confront the enemy’s military assault.”
At least 57 people were reported killed at a girls’ school in southern Iran in the Israeli-U.S. strikes, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency. At least 45 others were wounded in the attack in Minab in Iran’s Hormozgan province. The White House and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on reported strike on the school.
In an indication of the scope of the conflict, flights across the Middle East were disrupted and air defense fire thudded over Dubai, the commercial capital of the United Arab Emirates, Saturday afternoon. Associated Press journalists saw the aftereffects of the blast from an interceptor.
Shrapnel from an Iranian missile attack on the capital of the UAE killed one person, state media said.
The U.S. military has for weeks amassed forces in the region, even as U.S. and Iranian envoys held talks in Switzerland and Oman aimed at finding a diplomatic solution.
“Active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined,” Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi said in a post on X. Al-Busaidi, a key mediator in the nuclear talks, traveled to Washington on Friday to meet with Vice President JD Vance.
“Neither the interests of the United States nor the cause of global peace are well served by this,” al-Busaidi said. “And I pray for the innocents who will suffer. I urge the United States not to get sucked in further.”
Israel said the operation has been planned for months between the Israeli and U.S. militaries.
Trump, in justifying the military action, claimed that Iran has continued to develop its nuclear program and plans to develop missiles to reach the U.S.
He also acknowledged that there could be American casualties, saying “that often happens in war.”
It was a notable call on Americans to brace themselves from a U.S. leader who swept into office on an “America First” platform and vowed to keep out of “forever wars” that had bogged down his recent predecessors.
Trump’s statement indicated the U.S. was striking for reasons far beyond the nuclear program, listing grievances stretching back to the beginning of the Islamic Republic following a revolution in 1979 that turned Iran from one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East into a fierce foe.
The U.S. president said he was aiming to “annihilate” the Iranian navy and destroy regional proxies supported by Tehran.
He also called on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to lay down its arms, pledging that members would be given immunity, while warning they would face “certain death” if they didn’t.
Trump had threatened military action — but held off — following Iran’s recent crackdown on protests spurred by economic grievances and evolved into a nationwide, anti-government push against the ruling clerics.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency says it confirmed more than 7,000 deaths in the crackdown and that it is investigating thousands more. The government has acknowledged more than 3,000 killed, though it has undercounted or not reported fatalities from past unrest.
Iran has said it hasn’t enriched since June, but it has blocked international inspectors from visiting the sites America bombed during a 12-day war then. Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press have shown new activity at two of those sites, suggesting Iran is trying to assess and potentially recover material there.
Iran currently has a self-imposed limit on its ballistic missile program, limiting their range to 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles). That puts all the Mideast and some of Eastern Europe in their range.
Iran had hoped to avert a war, but maintains it has the right to enrich uranium and does not want to discuss other issues, like its long-range missile program or support for armed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
The strikes could rattle global markets, particularly if Iran is able to make the Strait of Hormuz unsafe for commercial traffic. More than 14 million barrels per day of oil passed through the strait in 2025, about a third of total worldwide oil exports transported by sea.
Iranian media reported strikes nationwide. Roads to Khamenei’s compound in downtown Tehran had been shut down by authorities as other blasts rang out across the capital.
Khamenei has not made a public appearance in recent days and wasn’t immediately seen after. During the 12-day war in June, he was believed to have been taken to a secure location away from his Tehran compound.
Targets in the Israeli campaign included Iran’s military, symbols of government and intelligence targets, according to an official briefed on the operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information on the attack.
Hours after the strikes, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it launched a “first wave” of drones and missiles targeting Israel, where a nationwide warning was issued as the military said it was working to intercept incoming Iranian missiles. There was no immediate word on any damage or casualties from the ongoing attack.
Meanwhile, Bahrain said that a missile attack targeted the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters in the island kingdom. Witnesses heard sirens and explosions in Kuwait, home to U.S. Army Central. Explosions could be also be heard in Qatar.
The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen vowed to resume attacks on Red Sea shipping routes and on Israel, according to two senior Houthi officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no official announcement from the Houthi leadership.
U.S. embassies or consulates in Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Israel posted on social media that they told staffers to shelter in place and recommended all Americans “do the same until further notice.”
___
Toropin and Madhani reported from Washington and Boak from West Palm Beach, Florida. Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman and Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Samy Magdy in Cairo, and Farnoush Amiri in New York contributed to this report.
___
This story has been corrected to show that IRNA reported 40 people were killed in the school strike, without specifying students.
A pair of social media trolls — including one who sports a “Make America Great Again” red hat — have been arrested for trying to light a Black woman’s boots on fire during a clash on a Manhattan street filled with racist insults, police said Thursday.
The demented duo, known online as “ScrubsNYC,” were nabbed late Wednesday, just a few hours after cops released their images and asked the public’s help tracking them down. They were wanted for a bizarre hate crime on W. 26th St. and Seventh Ave. in Chelsea on Feb. 19.
Michael Santiago, 31, and Michael James, 33, were hit with a slew of charges including attempted assault, criminal mischief and menacing, all as hate crimes, as well as aggravated harassment, arson and criminal tampering. The two suspects live in the same apartment building on the Upper East Side, according to cops.
The two approached the 54-year-old victim about 2:50 p.m. and were chatting her up when the provacateur in the MAGA hat began spewing a racist tirade that was caught on camera and posted online.
“I want to f— you right up your n—– a–,” the man in the MAGA hat screamed. “I want to f— a slave. You’re my slave. You’re my slave.”
The woman casually pulled out her own phone and began recording the creeps, throwing insults right back at them.
“Of course you do,” she said of their comments about bedding her. “I could never ’cause you’re a slave — you’re a slave to my Blackness.”
The suspect told the woman, “kiss me,” and she replied saying she “would never.”
“That’s your bitch, not me,” the woman said casually, motioning to the camera man recording the entire exchange.
At one point, one of the provacateur’s asked to kiss the victim’s pair of boots. She agreed, but when he knelt down he set one of her boots on fire with a hand-held blowtorch.
The hair on the boots were singed but the flames quickly petered out, the video shows. Cops say the $89 pair of boots were ruined.
The woman didn’t appear to notice as she continued to trade insults with the creep.
“I just burned your boot,” the provocateur said.
“Of course you did,” the victim replied.
“I want to impregnate you, let’s f—,” the MAGA hat sporting suspect said.
“Of course you want to impregnate me and contaminate my race,” she replied. “Your mother’s a f——.”
The victim reported the incident to police after she realized her $89 boots were damaged. She also gave cops images of the two suspects from her recording of the bizarre exchange.
Scrubsnyc boasts about being the “biggest streamers in New York right now” in one of their online videos.
One video shows the pair lying in traffic and angering strangers with their bizarre rants.
“Yeah, right here bro! Do something!” one angered resident screams at them on the sidewalk in one clip. “Do something! Then don’t f—ing run your mouth! Get the f— out of here!”
Many of the videos show the MAGA hat-wearing provocateur being forced to leave an apartment building or a bodega. In one quick clip, a bodega patron throws a drink at him. In another, a woman knocks the red hat off his head.
“They tell you that the city never sleeps,” Scrubsnyc wrote in the opening of one video. “But they don’t tell you about the ones who keep it awake.”
A former Cherry Creek School District teacher was arrested Monday on suspicion of child sex assault after a former student came forward, police said.
Robert Combs, 56, was arrested on investigation of five counts of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust and three misdemeanor counts of abusing public trust as an educator, according to Arapahoe County court records.
Combs was a CTE Engineering and Technology Teacher at Grandview High School, 20500 E. Arapahoe Road, between 2002 and late 2025, according to a letter sent to parents and families by the Cherry Creek School District.
The school district placed Combs on administrative leave in October 2025, when Grandview Principal Lisa Roberts was first made aware of the sexual assault allegations by the Aurora Police Department, police wrote in his arrest affidavit. Combs was officially “separated” from the school district on Nov. 13, according to the letter sent to parents.
“The safety and security of our students and staff is our highest priority,” school district officials wrote in the letter. “We appreciate your partnership in these critical efforts. We are committed to keeping you informed about all aspects of your child’s education.”
Aurora officers responded to Grandview High School on Oct. 30, after a former student reached out to Roberts to apologize for lying to her in 2022 and said they were considering reporting Combs, according to the affidavit.
The student previously denied having an inappropriate relationship with Combs to Roberts in 2022 after a security guard and other teachers came forward with suspicions about the nature of the two’s relationship, the affidavit stated. At that time, the student said Combs was “like a father.”
Roberts encouraged the student to report Combs and also contacted the Aurora Police Department in October to report the incident on her own, according to the affidavit.
The unidentified victim first met Combs in August 2021 when the student joined a high school club the man advised, the Technology Student Association, according to Combs’ arrest affidavit.
Other teachers at Grandview High School also recommended that the student reach out to Combs for assistance with getting into a military academy, police wrote in the affidavit. Combs helped the student with interview preparation, essay writing and physical training.
In February 2022, Grandview students and staff attended the association’s state conference in Denver, according to the affidavit. Combs allegedly encouraged the then-underage student to come back to his hotel room, where they kissed and he “expressed romantic feelings” for them.
The victim told Aurora Police they “felt shocked and unsure how to respond,” according to the affidavit.
Combs’ interactions with the student after the conference “became more frequent and increasingly inappropriate,” police wrote in the arrest affidavit.
The student would meet Combs after school to work on applications, and those meetings often turned intimate, the student told police. Combs also sent the student inappropriate photos and text messages.
Combs and the student had sex in classrooms, offices and closets at the high school almost every day between March 2022 and May 2022, according to the arrest affidavit. They would also drive to empty parking lots and have sex in cars.
The student told police that it felt like they “owed” Combs for his help, the affidavit stated.
Combs and the student’s relationship ended in December 2022, according to the affidavit. The student blocked his number and “ceased all contact” with Combs in February 2023, but didn’t come forward about the relationship until October 2025.
Police advised Roberts of the specific sexual assault allegations made toward Combs late that month, at which point Combs was suspended and escorted out of the school, according to the affidavit.
Combs is next scheduled to appear in court on March 20 for a preliminary hearing, court records show. He posted a $50,000 surety bail on Monday.
A new report examining fraud risk in Minnesota government programs describes longstanding vulnerabilities dating back to the 1970s and repeated inaction by state leaders despite nearly a half-century of warnings.
Gov. Tim Walz’s director of Program Integrity, Tim O’Malley, on Monday released what he described as a “roadmap” to address those vulnerabilities, which he said were driven in large part by a culture in state agencies “more based on compassion than compliance.”
“That’s misplaced. If state workers want to provide services, want to directly help people in need, then they should go work for a provider. They should deliver the wheelchairs. They should do the bed baths. They should take people to medical appointments,” he said at a news conference announcing the report’s findings. “The state has a responsibility to make sure those things happen by protecting state (taxpayer) money.”
Every governor and Legislature had been made aware of problems in programs for the last 50 years, according to the review, but plans to strengthen protections against fraud in state welfare programs were never executed effectively.
The review can be read at https://tinyurl.com/4z3ufffv.
O’Malley’s report comes after allegations of hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud at the Department of Human Services and Department of Education, and speculation that the fraud could reach the billions. Overall, he found that “inadequate accountability” in agencies was largely to blame.
“Recent events have revealed longstanding vulnerabilities in multiple facets of state administration and leadership and priority setting to specific elements such as enrollment, oversight, data sharing and investigative capacity,” the report said. “These weaknesses have been exploited repeatedly over decades by organized networks of providers, intermediaries and recipients, resulting in significant financial losses, erosion of public trust and inadequate delivery of essential services to vulnerable Minnesotans.”
Questions remain about who exactly has been held responsible for fraud in state agencies — if anyone. Past reports from the nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor have pointed to issues with “inadequate oversight” and “pervasive noncompliance” in how the state handles payments and grants.
In December, Walz said there were state employees who should have “done more” and that they were “no longer working in the state.”
Former Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead resigned in January this year, before federal prosecutors brought charges in connection with significant fraud in children’s autism programs and housing stabilization services supported by the agency.
In late 2022, Education Commissioner Heather Mueller announced she would not seek reappointment in Walz’s second term, months after the first charges in the $250 million Feeding Our Future case.
And days before federal prosecutors announced charges tied to housing stabilization in September, it emerged that the assistant commissioner with the program was no longer working with the agency.
Neither DHS nor Walz has said whether Eric Grumdahl, assistant commissioner of Homelessness and Housing Supports, lost his job due to fraud in the program, which was expected to cost $2.6 million a year when it launched but ballooned to over $105 million in 2024.
Walz, a Democrat, appointed O’Malley in December as scrutiny mounted on his administration’s handling of widespread fraud in state government programs. As program integrity director, O’Malley was tasked with creating fraud prevention measures across agencies and working with the outside financial audit firm WayPoint.
O’Malley was superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension under Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. He’s a former FBI agent and interim chief judge for the state Court of Administrative hearings, and for a decade handled allegations of sexual misconduct by clergy in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
When Walz announced his appointment of O’Malley as state fraud czar on Dec. 12, federal investigators estimated Minnesota had lost hundreds of millions of dollars to fraud in recent years, with former assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson speculating total theft could top more than $1 billion.
That estimate ballooned to at least $9 billion just a week later when Thompson announced another round of criminal charges in Medicaid fraud cases. Thompson told reporters he believed more than half of the $18 billion in federal money the state distributed through “high-risk” Medicaid programs since 2018 could have been lost to fraud.
Officials with the Minnesota Department of Human Services have disputed that estimate. Walz, who suspended his campaign for a third term in office just weeks after Thompson’s remarks, described the $9 billion figure as speculative and defamatory.
The report recommends changing agency culture, boosting accountability measures, modernizing technology and oversight.
It also recommends that state lawmakers, who returned to the state Capitol last Tuesday for the 2026 legislative session, pass several bills to support a “modern fraud‑prevention infrastructure.”
They include ending direct appropriations — which present a high risk of fraud — as well as ending grants without dedicated fraud prevention funding and requiring bills that create or modify programs to have a fraud prevention component.
O’Malley told reporters Monday that he had “independence and autonomy” to go where the facts took him and that the governor had not tried to influence his work.
Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, called the report an example of Walz “lip service” on fraud, saying it was little more than a compendium of existing public issues in state programs.
“They don’t have to wait for the Legislature. They have the tools to really get started if they need help,” he said. “We’re happy to figure out a bipartisan way forward. But the response has been so lackluster. We need to get going on this.”
O’Malley’s hiring was the latest in a series of moves Walz has made to address fraud allegations in state agencies.
In January 2025, the governor directed the creation of a fraud investigation unit at the BCA. The Department of Human Services moved to shut down a Medicaid-funded housing stabilization program beset by fraud after news emerged in July of a federal investigation into several providers.
Earlier this month, a Walz-ordered third-party audit assessing the 14 Minnesota Medicaid programs at high risk for fraud found the state could safeguard $1 billion in the next four years by changing its policies on payment reviews.
State officials described the report as the “first phase” of developing a payment review process for the high-risk programs.
Before O’Malley shared the findings of his report on Monday, Walz announced the permanent appointment of Shireen Gandhi as commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services, which has been the subject of significant fraud allegations recently.
The post had been vacant for more than a year. Gandhi had served as interim commissioner since the resignation of former Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead in January 2025, before federal prosecutors brought charges in connection with significant fraud in children’s autism programs and housing stabilization services supported by the agency.
Walz praised Gandhi for her leadership during troubled times at the agency.
“Over the past year, she has demonstrated steady, decisive leadership at the Minnesota Department of Human Services, strengthening program integrity, rooting out fraud, and ensuring taxpayer dollars reach the Minnesotans who rely on these services,” he said in a news release.
Gandhi will serve in the remaining months of the Walz administration. The governor, who is no longer seeking a third term, leaves office next January.
Republicans welcomed the appointment, calling it “long overdue,” though they expressed skepticism about the governor’s choice.
“Commissioner Gandhi has worked at DHS for years, including in compliance and oversight, while billions of taxpayer dollars were lost to fraud. For the past 13 months, she has served as interim commissioner as Minnesota’s fraud epidemic has made international news,” House Republican Floor Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, said in a statement. “That’s not accountability. That’s failure rewarded.”
By ILLIA NOVIKOV The Associated Press
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared Tuesday that Russia has not “broken Ukrainians” nor triumphed in its war, four years after an invasion that has severely tested the resolve of Kyiv and its allies and fueled European fears about the scale of Moscow’s ambitions.
In a show of support, more than a dozen senior European officials headed to the Ukrainian capital to mark the grim anniversary of the conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of people, upended life for millions of Ukrainians, and created instability far beyond its borders.
Zelenskyy said his country has withstood the onslaught by Russia’s bigger and better equipped army, which over the past year of fighting captured just 0.79% of Ukraine’s territory, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. Russia now holds nearly 20% of Ukraine.
“Looking back at the beginning of the invasion and reflecting on today, we have every right to say: We have defended our independence, we have not lost our statehood,” Zelenskyy said on social media, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “not achieved his goals.”
“He has not broken Ukrainians; he has not won this war,” Zelenskyy said.
Despite the show of defiance, Ukraine has struggled to hold off Russia’s onslaught, and the war has brought widespread hardship for Ukrainian civilians. Russia’s aerial attacks have devastated families and denied civilians power and running water.
As the war of attrition enters its fifth year, a U.S.-led diplomatic push to end the largest conflict on the continent since World War II appears no closer to finding compromises that might make a peace deal possible.
Negotiations are stuck on what happens to the Donbas, eastern Ukraine’s industrial heartland that Russian forces mostly occupy but have failed to seize completely, and the terms of a postwar security arrangement that Kyiv is demanding to deter any future Russian invasion.
At a makeshift memorial in Kyiv’s central square, where thousands of small flags and portraits show photos of fallen soldiers, Zelenskyy said he would like U.S. President Donald Trump to visit and witness for himself Ukrainian suffering.
“Only then can one truly understand what this war is really about,” Zelenskyy said.
Trump, who once vowed to end the war in a day, has repeatedly changed his tone toward Putin and Zelenskyy over the past year: sometimes criticizing the Ukrainian leader’s negotiating position while reaching out to the Russian leader and at others lashing out at Putin for heavy barrages and appearing more sympathetic to the Ukrainian predicament.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the invasion would continue in pursuit of Moscow’s goals. They include a demand that Ukraine renounce its bid to join NATO, sharply cut its army, and cede vast swaths of territory.
Zelenskyy said he expected a fresh round of U.S.-brokered talks with Russia within the next 10 days.
The number of soldiers killed, injured or missing on both sides could reach 2 million by spring, with Russia sustaining the largest number of troop deaths for any major power in any conflict since World War II, a report last month from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated.
European leaders see their countries’ own security at stake in Ukraine amid concerns that Putin may target them next.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote on X that “for four years, every day and every night has been a nightmare for the Ukrainians — and not just for them, but for us all. Because war is back in Europe.”
“We will only end it by being strong together, because the fate of Ukraine is our fate,” he added.
Putin believes that time is on the side of his bigger army, Western officials and analysts say — and that Western support will trail off and that Ukraine’s military resistance will eventually crumble. Already Trump has ended new military aid to Ukraine — though other NATO countries now buy American weapons and give them to Kyiv.
But French President Emmanuel Macron described the war was “a triple failure for Russia: military, economic, and strategic.”
The war “has strengthened NATO — the very expansion Russia sought to prevent — galvanized Europeans it hoped to weaken, and laid bare the fragility of an imperialism from another age,” Macron said on X.
The European Union has also sent financial aid, but has sometimes met with reluctance from members Hungary and Slovakia.
While NATO countries have come to Ukraine’s aid, Russia has been helped by North Korea, which has sent thousands of troops and artillery shells; Iran, which has provided drone technology; and China, which the United States and analysts say has provided machine tools and chips.
Among the European officials visiting Kyiv on Tuesday were the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and Finnish President Alexander Stubb, as well as seven prime ministers and four foreign ministers.
The only American listed among the official guests in Kyiv ceremonies was Lt. Gen. Curtis Buzzard, a U.S. officer who represents NATO in Ukraine.
British Armed Forces Minister Al Carns said Russia’s war on Ukraine was “the most defining conflict” in decades.
The war has brought a “revolution in military affairs,” especially through the rapid development of drone technology by both sides, according to Carns. Drones now cause the vast majority of battlefield casualties, he said.
Both sides face challenges in finding enough troops and are increasingly turning to uncrewed aerial drones that take the killing to areas far from the front lines, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said in its annual report on the global military situation.
“Given both sides’ reliance on external support for materiel, decisions taken in foreign capitals will play an important role in shaping the war’s trajectory,” the think tank added.
The United Kingdom on Tuesday announced a new package of military and humanitarian support for Ukraine, including sending teams of British military medics to instruct their Ukrainian counterparts.
The cost of rebuilding war-battered Ukraine would amount to almost $588 billion over the next decade, according to World Bank, the European Commission, the United Nations and the Ukrainian government.
That is nearly three times the estimated nominal GDP of Ukraine for last year, they said in a report Monday.
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Associated Press reporters across Europe contributed to this story.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM
An exhibit about nine people enslaved by George Washington must be restored at his former home in Philadelphia after President Donald Trump’s administration took it down last month, a federal judge ruled on Presidents Day, the federal holiday honoring Washington’s legacy.
The city of Philadelphia sued in January after the National Park Service removed the explanatory panels from Independence National Historical Park, the site where George and Martha Washington lived with nine of their slaves in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation’s capital.
The removal came in response to a Trump executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks. It directed the Interior Department to ensure those sites do not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe ruled Monday that all materials must be restored in their original condition while a lawsuit challenging the removal’s legality plays out. She prohibited Trump officials from installing replacements that explain the history differently.
Rufe, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, began her written order with a quote from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” and compared the Trump administration to the book’s totalitarian regime called the Ministry of Truth, which revised historical records to align with its own narrative.
“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims — to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts,” Rufe wrote. “It does not.”
She had warned Justice Department lawyers during a January hearing that they were making “dangerous” and “horrifying” statements when they said Trump officials can choose which parts of U.S. history to display at National Park Service sites.
The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling, which came while government offices were closed for the federal holiday.
The judge did not provide a timeline for when the exhibit must be restored. Federal officials can appeal the ruling.
The historical site is among several where the administration has quietly removed content about the history of enslaved people, LGBTQ+ people and Native Americans.
Signage that has disappeared from Grand Canyon National Park said settlers pushed Native American tribes “off their land” for the park to be established and “exploited” the landscape for mining and grazing.
Last week, a rainbow flag was taken down at the Stonewall National Monument, where bar patrons rebelled against a police raid and catalyzed the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. The administration has also removed references to transgender people from its webpage about the monument, despite several trans women of color being key figures in the uprising.
The Philadelphia exhibit, created two decades ago in a partnership between the city and federal officials, included biographical details about each of the nine people enslaved by the Washingtons at the home, including two who escaped.
Among them was Oney Judge, who was born into slavery at the family’s plantation in Mount Vernon, Virginia, and later escaped from their Philadelphia house in 1796. Judge fled north to New Hampshire, a free state, while Washington had her declared a fugitive and published advertisements seeking her return.
Because Judge had escaped from the Philadelphia house, the park service in 2022 supported the site’s inclusion in a national network of Underground Railroad sites where they would teach about abolitionists and escaped slaves. Rufe noted that materials about Judge were among those removed, which she said “conceals crucial information linking the site to the Network to Freedom.”
Only the names of Judge and the other eight enslaved people — Austin, Paris, Hercules, Richmond, Giles, Moll and Joe, who each had a single name, and Christopher Sheels — remained engraved in a cement wall after park service employees took a crowbar to the plaques on Jan. 22.
Hercules also escaped in 1797 after he was brought to Mount Vernon, where the Washingtons had many other slaves. He reached New York City despite being declared a fugitive slave and lived under the name Hercules Posey.
Several local politicians and Black community leaders celebrated the ruling, which came while many were out rallying at the site for its restoration.
State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Philadelphia Democrat, said the community prevailed against an attempt by the Trump administration to “whitewash our history.”
“Philadelphians fought back, and I could not be more proud of how we stood together,” he said.
By Danielle Paquette
The Washington Post
CROAKER, Va. – George Washington’s chin is crumbling. His cheeks are streaked with sooty grime. His blackened nose is peeling, an apparent victim of frostbite and sunburn. Still, America’s first leader looks nicer than usual. In the winter months, wasps aren’t nesting in his eyes.
“Just beautiful,” observed Cesia Rodriguez, a 32-year-old massage therapist gazing up at the Founding Father – or what remained of him.
She’d pulled on rain boots, driven about an hour and trudged through the mud of what her tour guide called “an industrial dump” early Saturday with dozens of other tourists to see “The Presidents Heads,” a private collection of every ex-POTUS’s sculpted likeness from Washington to George W. Bush. They’re arranged in haphazard rows, with Andrew Jackson occupying a prime front spot simply because the owner likes his hair. The vibe is Stonehenge-meets-“The Walking Dead.”
Before they started sinking into the ground, the busts fashioned from concrete, plaster and rebar – was that Styrofoam poking through some cranial holes? – stood about twice the height of a basketball hoop. They each weighed at least five tons. Time has not been kind. Chester A. Arthur’s entire jaw is missing. Ulysses S. Grant has lost a chunk of his right eyebrow. And Franklin D. Roosevelt was “scalped” in transit, the tour guide noted, by a Route 199 overpass.
These commanders in chief weren’t supposed to spoil. They were carved with patriotic love by a Texas sculptor who studied in Paris under a French modern master. They were the polished centerpieces of a $10 million park that in 2010 went bankrupt after six years. Not enough admirers wanted to see them back when they were pristine.
Now the wait list stretches into the hundreds. Demand didn’t spike, their owner said, until the heads were rotting. Not that their misfortune attracted haters. Quite the opposite. In the wreckage, guests said they could see their country and themselves with more tenderness than judgment. “That one’s me,” a 20-something chirped at jawless Arthur.
Rodriguez didn’t mull the symbolism when she learned about the spectacle on Facebook. Seeing spooky historical art, she figured, was a fun way to spend Presidents’ Day weekend. Up close, though, the oddities stirred something familiar.
She thought of the America she loved: her clients, who came from everywhere with stiff necks and bad backs. The nurses, teachers, soldiers and everyone else on her massage table, resting up to go at it again.
“It’s the imperfections, for me,” she said.
The late sculptor, David Adickes, was an Army veteran who’d wanted his stony visages to gleam. On an early-aughts trip to Mount Rushmore, he’d contemplated the granite mugs of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln and thought: Why stop at four?
Adickes, who died last year at 98, hoped the 42 statues he chiseled at his Houston studio would land in the nation’s capital, he said on a 2022 podcast, but real estate was too costly. So in 2004, he and a business partner settled on a plot near Colonial Williamsburg, aiming to draw history buffs and stroller-pushing families. The Great Recession, overpriced tickets and poor marketing dashed that vision.
After the busts went bust, a rental car company purchased Presidents Park and hired local builder Howard Hankins to help flatten it into a parking lot.
“I just couldn’t see crushin’ ’em,” Hankins recalled.
Instead, he loaded the abandoned dignitaries onto a fleet of flatbed trucks and escorted them (minus their pedestals) to his farm-slash-industrial dump. Storing them in a muddy field was meant to be temporary, he insisted. A presidential fanatic, Hankins envisioned building a new museum. But the 11-mile move alone cost him $50,000, he said. A decade and a half later, the idea exists only on drawings.
By 2019, Virginia photographer John Plashal caught wind of what was disintegrating on Hankins’ out-of-the-way acres. He pitched himself as a tour guide to the introverted contractor, and the two hatched a fresh back-road attraction. A few times per year, guests can pay $28.35 to marvel at what the website deems “neglect and decay.” As word spread on social media, Ozzy Osbourne stopped by. So did producers of a certain hit zombie series (though they filmed nothing on-site). And the heads just kept deteriorating.
“Now they look like they’ve got leprosy,” Plashal told the Saturday crowd. “In the summer, they all have an active wasp nest in their eyeballs.”
Yet the place, he continued, has only grown more popular. Nearly 600 people showed up over the weekend, coming from as far as Germany and the Dominican Republic.
So what, he asked the group, is the rationale for rolling in now?
Up shot the arm of 10-year-old Evelyn Price.
“Because they are falling apart,” the Norfolk fourth-grader offered, “but, um, life is kinda like that.”
Mess is part of our heritage, her mother added, so wading through muck to engage with the past felt right.
“America is really, really good at getting things very, very wrong,” mused 41-year-old Treloar Price, a clinical psychologist, “and then working hard to try to fix it.”
The behemoth noggins reflected the transience of American power to Doug Tempest, a 46-year-old Navy veteran from Richmond.
Dictators overseas have clung to power for decades, but here, so far – though our current leader has riffed about a third term – no president has defied the Constitution or the will of voters to stay in the White House. Every four years, a new victor can shake things up, while the old Oval Office occupant’s influence tends to fade.
“One of the superpowers that our country has is we can change direction,” Tempest said.
For Caren Bueshi, a 62-year-old retired teacher from Naples, Florida, witnessing the sculptures sag into the dirt conjured what she feared the nation was losing. Constitutional literacy, for one. Recent reports of federal agents detaining immigrants with the right papers and clean criminal records disturbed her.
“We’re forgetting the foundation,” she said, wandering past Jackson’s splintering mane. “It’s a challenging time.”
“It always is,” interjected her mother, 91-year-old Pat Duke, clutching her arm. “From the beginning.”
Mom leaned right. Daughter leaned left. But they didn’t want to get into politics. The nonagenarian looked at the presidents and saw men. She saw mortality.
“My life is getting short now,” she said, “so I’m just enjoying it.”
A few heads over, Andrea Cote, a 44-year-old consultant, tried to turn the eerie scene into a history lesson for her 9-year-old daughter, June.
“This is Chester A. Arthur missing his jaw,” she said, pausing in front of the gaping mouth. The rebar inside looked like rusted braces without teeth.
“Scary,” June said.
“And Thomas Jefferson was the one who didn’t like to publicly speak,” Cote deadpanned.
Jokes aside, the derelict skulls touched her. So many families braved the chill that day, she noticed, for a glimpse at American history, no matter what shape it was in. They were interested. They cared. They were coming together.
So Cote smiled when a fellow tourist with a fancy camera approached.
“If you squat right here,” he told her kid, “you can get a picture of the sun coming right through his mouth.”
June grabbed her mom’s phone and aimed it just so.
“Whoa!” she squealed.
“See,” he said, “now there’s something positive.”
Authorities are investigating eerie new footage from the days leading up to the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy.
The roughly 20-second Ring camera footage, from the early morning hours of Jan. 23, was published Friday by TMZ, which says the video was recorded roughly 6.5 miles from 84-year-old Guthrie’s home in Tucson, Ariz.
The clip shows a dark-haired man whose face is blurred, though a goatee is somewhat visible. His back is toward the camera as he leans over, holding what appears to be a towel, then moves his hands over the camera.
The homeowner, who initially posted the video on Ring’s Neighbors app, said the man in the video rang their doorbell at around 5 a.m. but ran off at the sound of the their dogs barking, according to TMZ.
Both the FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department know of the video’s existence and are treating it as a lead, a source with knowledge of the investigation told the outlet.
Nancy Guthrie was last seen at her home on the evening of Jan. 31 and was reported missing the following day, with authorities quickly treating the case as an abduction. The FBI on Thursday doubled their reward to up to $100,000 for information leading to Guthrie’s recovery or the conviction of her captor.
The agency’s Phoenix bureau has also released additional details about the male suspect, believed to stand between 5-foot-9 and 5-foot-10. He was wearing a 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Backpack, according to forensic analysis of doorbell camera footage taken from Guthrie’s home.
Earlier this week, the FBI released photos and video of Guthrie’s potential kidnapper. He can be seen outside her home in the early morning hours of Feb. 1, wearing a ski mask with a goatee visible underneath.
That footage was a “huge, huge break” in the case, as retired Phoenix Homicide Sergeant Troy Hillman told Us Weekly.
Neighbors within a 2-mile radius of Guthrie’s home have been asked to scour last month’s security camera footage and report anything out of the ordinary to authorities.
The PCSD on Friday said there no press briefing scheduled for the day but said they’d alert the public of “any significant developments” in the case.
By SUSAN HAIGH
NORWICH, Conn. (AP) — The U.S. State Department has ordered certain public libraries nationwide to cease processing passport applications, disrupting a long-standing service that librarians say their communities have come to rely on and that has run smoothly for years.
The agency, which regulates U.S. passports, began issuing cease and desist orders to not-for-profit libraries in late fall, informing them they were no longer authorized to participate in the Passport Acceptance Facility program as of Friday.
“We still get calls daily seeking that service,” said Cathleen Special, executive director of the Otis Library in Norwich, Connecticut, where passport services were offered for 18 years but ceased in November after receiving the letter. “Our community was so used to us offering this.”
A State Department spokesperson said the order was given because federal law and regulations “clearly prohibit non-governmental organizations” from collecting and retaining fees for a passport application. Government-run libraries are not impacted.
The spokesperson did not respond to questions as to why it has become an issue now and exactly how many libraries are impacted by the cease and desist order. In a statement, they said, “passport services has over 7,500 acceptance facilities nationwide and the number of libraries found ineligible makes up less than one percent of our total network.”
The American Library Association estimates about 1,400 mostly non-profit public libraries nationwide could potentially be affected, or about 15% of all public libraries, depending on how many offer passport services.
Democratic and Republican members of Congress from Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Maryland are pushing back, sending a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio this month asking him to extend the existing program until Congress finds a permanent solution.
“In a time when demand for passports is surging, libraries are among the most accessible passport acceptance facilities, particularly for working families and rural residents,” the members wrote.
The lawmakers’ letter said people will have to travel long distances, take unpaid time off from work or forgo getting a passport when demand is surging due to Real ID requirements. If Republicans in Congress impose strict new voting rules, citizens could need their passport or birth certificate to register. People fearing immigration agents are also increasingly carrying passports to confirm their citizenship.
They said the change is particularly disruptive to their states, where many public libraries are structured as nonprofit entities. They predicted some libraries, which benefit financially from passport processing fees, will have to lay off staff, cut programs or close their doors if not allowed to continue providing passport services.
Public libraries are organized differently in each state. In Pennsylvania 85% of public libraries are non-profit organizations, versus being a department of a local municipal government. In Maine, it’s 56%; Rhode Island, 54%, New York, 47% and Connecticut, 46%, according to the American Library Association.
Pennsylvania Reps. Madeleine Dean, a Democrat, and John Joyce, a Republican, have proposed bipartisan legislation that would allow 501(c)(3) non-profit public libraries to continue to serve as passport acceptance facilities by amending the Passport Act of 1920. A similar companion bill is pending in the Senate.
Dean, who first learned about the policy change from a library in her district that has provided passport services for 20 years, called the State Department’s interpretation of the law “nonsense.”
In Joyce’s rural, south-central Pennsylvania district, the Marysville-Rye Library is one of only two passport facilities serving the 556-square-mile Perry County, according to the letter to Rubio. Now the county courthouse will be the only remaining option.
The State Department noted that 99% of the U.S. population lives within 20 miles of a designated passport processing location, such as a post office, county clerk’s office or government-run library authorized to accept in-person passport applications.
“Should the removal of an ineligible facility affect passport services, we will work to identify new eligible program partners in the impacted area,” the agency spokesperson said.
But Special said the Norwich post office had often referred people to her library for passports when someone needed service outside regular hours or had children who needed to be watched and entertained while their parent filled out the paperwork. Library staff also assisted applicants with language barriers.
“And now the burden falls on them to do all of it and that’s tough on them,” she said of the post office down the street. “I don’t know how they’re keeping up, to be honest, because it was such a popular service with us.”
By STEPHEN GROVES
WASHINGTON (AP) — Under questioning from Democrats Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick acknowledged that he had met with Jeffrey Epstein twice after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a child, reversing Lutnick’s previous claim that he had cut ties with the late financier after 2005.
Lutnick once again downplayed his relationship with the disgraced financier who was once his neighbor in New York City as he was questioned by Democrats during a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He described their contact as a handful of emails and a pair of meetings that were years apart.
“I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with him,” Lutnick told lawmakers.
But Lutnick is facing calls from several lawmakers for his resignation after the release of case files on Epstein contradicted Lutnick’s claims on a podcast last year that he had decided to “never be in the room” with Epstein again after a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife.
The commerce secretary said Tuesday that he and his family actually had lunch with Epstein on his private island in 2012 and he had another hour-long engagement at Epstein’s home in 2011. Lutnick, a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, is the highest-profile U.S. official to face bipartisan calls for his resignation amid revelations of his ties to Epstein. His acknowledgement comes as lawmakers are grasping for what accountability looks like amid the revelations contained in what’s known as the Epstein files.
In countries like the United Kingdom, the Epstein files have triggered resignations and the stripping of royal privileges, but so far, U.S. officials have not met the same level of retribution.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Democrat who questioned Lutnick, told him, “There’s not an indication that you yourself engaged in any wrongdoing with Jeffrey Epstein. It’s the fact that you believe that you misled the country and the Congress based on your earlier statements.”
Meanwhile, House members who initiated the legislative effort to force the release of the files are calling for Lutnick to resign. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky called for that over the weekend after emails were released that alluded to the meetings between Lutnick and Epstein.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, joined Massie in pressuring Lutnick out of office on Monday.
“Based on the evidence, he should be out of the Cabinet,” Khanna said.
He added, “It’s not about any particular person. In this country, we have to make a decision. Are we going to allow the rich and powerful people who are friends and (had) no problem doing business and showing up with a pedophile who is raping underage girls, are we just going to allow them to skate?”
By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, Oona Zenda, KFF Health News
Lydia Romero strained to hear her husband’s feeble voice through the phone.
A week earlier, immigration agents had grabbed Julio César Peña from his front yard in Glendale, California. Now, he was in a hospital after suffering a ministroke. He was shackled to the bed by his hand and foot, he told Romero, and agents were in the room, listening to the call. He was scared he would die and wanted his wife there.
“What hospital are you at?” Romero asked.
“I can’t tell you,” he replied.
Viridiana Chabolla, Peña’s attorney, couldn’t get an answer to that question, either. Peña’s deportation officer and the medical contractor at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center refused to tell her. Exasperated, she tried calling a nearby hospital, Providence St. Mary Medical Center.
“They said even if they had a person in ICE custody under their care, they wouldn’t be able to confirm whether he’s there or not, that only ICE can give me the information,” Chabolla said. The hospital confirmed this policy to KFF Health News.
Family members and attorneys for patients hospitalized after being detained by federal immigration officials said they are facing extreme difficulty trying to locate patients, get information about their well-being, and provide them emotional and legal support. They say many hospitals refuse to provide information or allow contact with these patients. Instead, hospitals allow immigration officers to call the shots on how much — if any — contact is allowed, which can deprive patients of their constitutional right to seek legal advice and leave them vulnerable to abuse, attorneys said.
Hospitals say they are trying to protect the safety and privacy of patients, staff, and law enforcement officials, even while hospital employees in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Portland, Oregon, cities where Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted immigration raids, say it’s made their jobs difficult. Hospitals have used what are sometimes called blackout procedures, which can include registering a patient under a pseudonym, removing their name from the hospital directory, or prohibiting staff from even confirming that a patient is in the hospital.
“We’ve heard incidences of this blackout process being used at multiple hospitals across the state, and it’s very concerning,” said Shiu-Ming Cheer, the deputy director of immigrant and racial justice at the California Immigrant Policy Center, an advocacy group.
Some Democratic-led states, including California, Colorado, and Maryland, have enacted legislation that seeks to protect patients from immigration enforcement in hospitals. However, those policies do not address protections for people already in ICE custody.
Peña is among more than 350,000 people arrested by federal immigration authorities since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. As arrests and detentions have climbed, so too have reports of people taken to hospitals by immigration agents because of illness or injury — due to preexisting conditions or problems stemming from their arrest or detention.
ICE has faced criticism for using aggressive and deadly tactics, as well as for reports of mistreatment and inadequate medical care at its facilities. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told reporters at a Jan. 20 news conference outside a detention center he visited in California City that he spoke to a diabetic woman held there who had not received treatment in two months.
While there are no publicly available statistics on the number of people sick or injured in ICE detention, the agency’s news releases point to 32 people who died in immigration custody in 2025. Six more have died this year.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not respond to a request for information about its policies or Peña’s case.
According to ICE’s guidelines, people in custody should be given access to a telephone, visits from family and friends, and private consultation with legal counsel. The agency can make administrative decisions, including about visitation, when a patient is in the hospital, but should defer to hospital policies on contacting next of kin when a patient is seriously ill, the guidelines state.
Asked in detail about hospital practices related to patients in immigration custody and whether there are best practices that hospitals should follow, Ben Teicher, a spokesperson for the American Hospital Association, declined to comment.
David Simon, a spokesperson for the California Hospital Association, said that “there are times when hospitals will — at the request of law enforcement — maintain confidentiality of patients’ names and other identifying characteristics.”
Although policies vary, members of the public can typically call a hospital and ask for a patient by name to find out whether they’re there, and often be transferred to the patient’s room, said William Weber, an emergency physician in Minneapolis and medical director for the Medical Justice Alliance, which advocates for the medical needs of people in law enforcement custody. Family members and others authorized by the patient can visit. And medical staff routinely call relatives to let them know a loved one is in the hospital, or to ask for information that could help with their care.
But when a patient is in law enforcement custody, hospitals frequently agree to restrict this kind of information sharing and access, Weber said. The rationale is that these measures prevent unauthorized outsiders from threatening the patient or law enforcement personnel, given that hospitals lack the security infrastructure of a prison or detention center. High-profile patients such as celebrities sometimes also request this type of protection.
Several attorneys and health care providers questioned the need for such restrictions. Immigration detention is civil, not criminal, detention. The Trump administration says it’s focused on arresting and deporting criminals, yet most of those arrested have no criminal conviction, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and several news outlets.
According to Peña’s wife, Romero, he has no criminal record. Peña came to the United States from Mexico in sixth grade and has an adult son in the U.S. military. The 43-year-old has terminal kidney disease and survived a heart attack in November. He has trouble walking and is partially blind, his wife said. He was detained Dec. 8 while resting outside after coming home from dialysis treatment.
Initially, Romero was able to find her husband through the ICE Online Detainee Locator System. She visited him at a temporary holding facility in downtown Los Angeles, bringing him his medicines and a sweater. She then saw he’d been moved to the Adelanto detention center. But the locator did not show where he was after he was hospitalized.
When she and other relatives drove to the detention facility to find him, they were turned away, she said. Romero received occasional calls from her husband in the hospital but said they were less than 10 minutes long and took place under ICE surveillance. She wanted to know where he was so she could be at the hospital to hold his hand, make sure he was well cared for, and encourage him to stay strong, she said.
Shackling him and preventing him from seeing his family was unfair and unnecessary, she said.
“He’s weak,” Romero said. “It’s not like he’s going to run away.”
ICE guidelines say contact and visits from family and friends should be allowed “within security and operational constraints.” Detainees have a constitutional right to speak confidentially with an attorney. Weber said immigration authorities should tell attorneys where their clients are and allow them to talk in person or use an unmonitored phone line.
Hospitals, though, fall into a gray area on enforcing these rights, since they are primarily focused on treating medical needs, Weber said. Still, he added, hospitals should ensure their policies align with the law.
Numerous immigration attorneys have spent weeks trying to locate clients detained by ICE, with their efforts sometimes thwarted by hospitals.
Nicolas Thompson-Lleras, a Los Angeles attorney who counsels immigrants facing deportation, said two of his clients were registered under aliases at different hospitals in Los Angeles County last year. Initially, the hospitals denied the clients were there and refused to let Thompson-Lleras meet with them, he said. Family members were also denied access, he said.
One of his clients was Bayron Rovidio Marin, a car wash worker injured during a raid in August. Immigration agents surveilled him for over a month at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a county-run facility, without charging him.
In November, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to curb the use of blackout policies for patients under civil immigration custody at county-run hospitals. In a statement, Arun Patel, the chief patient safety and clinical risk management officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, said the policies are designed to reduce safety risks for patients, doctors, nurses, and custody officers.
“In some situations, there may be concerns about threats to the patient, attempts to interfere with medical care, unauthorized visitors, or the introduction of contraband,” Patel said. “Our goal is not to restrict care but to allow care to happen safely and without disruption.”
Thompson-Lleras said he’s concerned that hospitals are cooperating with federal immigration authorities at the expense of patients and their families and leaving patients vulnerable to abuse.
“It allows people to be treated suboptimally,” Thompson-Lleras said. “It allows people to be treated on abbreviated timelines, without supervision, without family intervention or advocacy. These people are alone, disoriented, being interrogated, at least in Bayron’s case, under pain and influence of medication.”
Such incidents are alarming to hospital workers. In Los Angeles, two health care professionals who asked not to be identified by KFF Health News, out of concern for their livelihoods, said that ICE and hospital administrators, at public and private hospitals, frequently block staff from contacting family members for people in custody, even to find out about their health conditions or what medications they’re on. That violates medical ethics, they said.
Blackout procedures are another concern.
“They help facilitate, whether intentionally or not, the disappearance of patients,” said one worker, a physician for the county’s Department of Health Services and part of a coalition of concerned health workers from across the region.
At Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, nurses publicly expressed outrage over what they saw as hospital cooperation with ICE and the flouting of patient rights. Legacy Health has sent a cease and desist letter to the nurses’ union, accusing it of making “false or misleading statements.”
“I was really disgusted,” said Blaire Glennon, a nurse who quit her job at the hospital in December. She said numerous patients were brought to the hospital by ICE with serious injuries they sustained while being detained. “I felt like Legacy was doing massive human rights violations.”
Two days before Christmas, Chabolla, Peña’s attorney, received a call from ICE with the answer she and Romero had been waiting for. Peña was at Victor Valley Global Medical Center, about 10 miles from Adelanto, and about to be released.
Excited, Romero and her family made the two-hour-plus drive from Glendale to the hospital to take him home.
When they got there, they found Peña intubated and unconscious, his arm and leg still handcuffed to the hospital bed. He’d had a severe seizure on Dec. 20, but no one had told his family or legal team, his attorney said.
Tim Lineberger, a spokesperson for Victor Valley Global Medical Center’s parent company, KPC Health, said he could not comment on specific patient cases, because of privacy protections. He said the hospital’s policies on patient information disclosure comply with state and federal law.
Peña was finally cleared to go home on Jan. 5. No court date has been set, and his family is filing a petition to adjust his legal status based on his son’s military service. For now, he still faces deportation proceedings.
©2026 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
By PATRICK WHITTLE The Associated Press
KENNEBUNK, Maine (AP) — It just wouldn’t feel like the Super Bowl for them if they weren’t all there. And this might be the last time they all do it.
That’s what three old friends were coming to grips with just before this year’s Super Bowl. The trio of octogenarians are the only fans left in the exclusive “never missed a Super Bowl” club.
Don Crisman of Maine, Gregory Eaton of Michigan and Tom Henschel of Florida were back for another big game this year. But two of them are grappling with the fact that advancing years and decreasing mobility mean this is probably the last time.
This year’s game pits the Seattle Seahawks against the New England Patriots at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, on Sunday. Crisman, a Patriots fan since the franchise started, was excited to see his team in the game for a record-setting 12th time.
“This will definitely be the final one,” said Crisman, who made the trip with his daughter, Susan Metevier. “We made it to 60.”
Crisman, who first met Henschel at the 1983 Super Bowl, turns 90 this year. Meanwhile, Henschel, 84, has been slowed by a stroke. Both said this is the last time they’ll make the increasingly expensive trip to the game, although members of the group have said that before. For his part, Eaton, 86, plans to keep going as long as he’s still physically able.
Eaton, who runs a ground transportation company in Detroit, is the only member of the group not retired. And he’d still like to finally see his beloved Detroit Lions make it to a Super Bowl.
Even so, all three said they’ve scaled back the time they dedicate each year to the trip. Crisman used to spend a week in the host city, soaking in the pomp and pageantry. These days, it’s just about the game, not the hype.
“We don’t go for a week anymore, we go for three or four days,” Crisman said.
Eaton, too, admits the price and hype of the big game have gotten to be a lot.
“I think all of them are big, they’re all fun. It’s just gotten so commercial. It’s a $10,000 trip now,” he said.
Henschel said this year’s Super Bowl would be the most challenging for him because of his stroke, but he was excited to see Eaton and Crisman one more time.
Eaton met Crisman and Henschel in the mid-2010s after years of attending the Super Bowl separately. And Henschel and Crisman have a long-running rivalry: Their respective favorite teams — the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots — are AFC rivals.
The fans have attended every game since the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game, as the first two Super Bowls were known at the time, in 1967. They have sometimes sat together in the past, but logistics make it impossible some years.
But this year it was just about being able to go to the game at all, Henschel said.
“I don’t talk or walk good,” he said.
The club of people who have never missed a Super Bowl once included other fans, executives, media members and even groundskeepers, but as time has passed, the group has shrunk. Photographer John Biever, who has shot every Super Bowl, also plans to let his streak end at 60.
The three fans spin tales of past games that often focus less on the action on the field than on the different world where old Super Bowls took place. Henschel scored a $12 ticket for the 1969 Super Bowl the day of the game. Crisman endured a 24-hour train ride to Miami for the 1968 Super Bowl. Eaton, who is Black, remembers the many years before Doug Williams became the first Black quarterback to win a Super Bowl in 1988.
Metevier, Crisman’s daughter, was born the year of the first Super Bowl and grew up with her dad’s streak as a fixture in her life. She’s looking forward to going to one last game with him.
“It’s kind of bittersweet. It’s about the memories,” Metevier said. “It’s not just about the football, it’s something more.”
Crisman’s son, Don Crisman Jr., said he’s on board with his dad making the trip for as long as he’s still able, too.
“You know, he’s a little long in the tooth, but the way I put it, if it was me and I was mobile and I could go, I would damn sure go,” he said.
By REBECCA SANTANA and ELLIOT SPAGAT
WASHINGTON (AP) — White House border czar Tom Homan’s announcement that enforcement in Minnesota was being unified under U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement followed months of internal grumbling and infighting among agencies about how to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
Since it was created in 2003, ICE has conducted street arrests through “targeted enforcement.” Homan uses that phrase repeatedly to describe narrowly tailored operations with specific, individual targets, in contrast to the broad sweeps that had become more common under Border Patrol direction in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minnesota and elsewhere.
It is unclear how the agency friction may have influenced the leadership shift. But the change shines a light on how the two main agencies behind Trump’s centerpiece deportation agenda have at times clashed over styles and tactics.
The switch comes at a time when support for ICE is sliding, with a growing number of Americans saying the agency has become too aggressive. In Congress, the Department of Homeland Security is increasingly under attack by Democrats who want to rein in immigration enforcement.
While declaring the Twin Cities operation a success, Homan on Wednesday acknowledged that it was imperfect and said consolidating operations under ICE’s enforcement and removal operations unit was an effort toward “making sure we follow the rules.” Trump sent the former acting ICE director to Minnesota last week to de-escalate tensions after two U.S. citizens were fatally shot by federal immigration officers — one with ICE and the other with Customs and Border Protection.
“We made this operation more streamlined and we established a unified chain of command, so everybody knows what everybody’s doing,” Homan said at a news conference in Minneapolis. “In targeted enforcement operations, we go out there. There needs to be a plan.”
The Border Patrol’s growing role in interior enforcement had fueled tensions within ICE, according to current and former DHS officials. Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official who was reassigned from Minneapolis last week, embraced a “turn and burn” strategy of lightning-quick street sweeps and heavy shows of force that were designed to rack up arrests but often devolved into chaos.
“Every time you place Border Patrol into interior enforcement the wheels are going to come off,” Darius Reeves, who retired in May as head of ICE’s enforcement and removal operations in Baltimore, said in an interview last year as Bovino’s influence grew.
ICE has also engaged in aggressive tactics that mark a break from the past, especially in Minnesota. An ICE officer fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. Trump administration officials said she tried to run over an officer with her vehicle, an account that state and local officials have rejected. ICE has asserted sweeping power to forcibly enter a person’s home to make arrests without a judge’s warrant, among other controversial tactics.
But ICE’s traditional playbook involves extensive investigation and surveillance before an arrest, often acting quickly and quietly in predawn vehicle stops or outside a home. An ICE official once compared it to watching paint dry.
Bovino, in a November interview, said the two agencies had different but complementary missions and he compared the relationship to a large metropolitan police department. The Border Patrol was akin to beat cops on roving patrols. ICE was more like detectives, doing investigative work.
Asked about the friction, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said, “There is only page: The President’s page. Everyone’s on the same page.”
“This is one team, and we have one fight to secure the homeland. President Trump has a brilliant, tenacious team led by Secretary (Kristi) Noem to deliver on the American people’s mandate to remove criminal illegal aliens from this country.”
Michael Fisher, chief of the Border Patrol from 2010 to 2015, said last year that his former agency’s tactics were more in line with the Republican administration’s goal of deporting millions of people who entered the United States while Democrat Joe Biden was president.
“How do you deal with trying to arrest hundreds and hundreds of people in a shift?” Fisher said. “ICE agents typically aren’t geared, they don’t have the equipment, they don’t have the training to deal in those environments. The Border Patrol does.”
The Border Patrol’s high-profile raids, including a helicopter landing on the roof of a Chicago apartment building that involved agents rappelling down, rankled ICE officials. A U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity said at the time that ICE often gets blamed for Border Patrol’s tactics.
Meanwhile, Scott Mechowski, who retired in 2018 as ICE’s deputy field office director for enforcement and removal operations in New York, said separately that the Border Patrol was essentially doing roving operations and blanketing an area to question anyone or everyone about their legal status. He considered that an unwelcome contrast to ICE’s traditionally more targeted approach, based on deep surveillance and investigation of suspects.
“We didn’t just park our cars and walk through Times Square going, ‘OK, everybody. Come over here. You’re next, you’re next.’ We never did that. To me, that’s not the way to do your business,” Mechowski said.
As the Border Patrol’s influence grew last year, the administration reassigned at least half of the field office directors of ICE’s enforcement and removals operations division. Many were replaced by current or retired officials from CBP, the Border Patrol’s parent agency.
Homan’s arrival in Minnesota and his emphasis on “targeted enforcement” mark a subtle but unmistakable shift, at least in tone. He said authorities would arrest people they encounter who are not targets and he reaffirmed Trump’s commitment to mass deportation, but emphasized a narrower approach steeped in investigation.
“When we leave this building, we know who were looking for, where we’re most likely to find them, what their immigration record is, what their criminal history is,” Homan said.
On the ground, the mood has not changed much in Minneapolis since Bovino’s departure and Homan’s consolidation of operations under ICE. Fewer CBP convoys are seen in the Twin Cities area, but with ICE still having a significant presence, tensions remain.
On Thursday, The Associated Press witnessed an ICE officer in an unmarked vehicle tail a car and then pull over its driver, only to appear to realize he was not their target. “You’re good,” they told him, after scanning his face with their phones. They then drove off, leaving the driver baffled and furious.
Associated Press writer Mark Vancleave in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
By GRAHAM LEE BREWER, SAVANNAH PETERS and STEWART HUNTINGTON
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flooded Minneapolis, Shane Mantz dug his Choctaw Nation citizenship card out of a box on his dresser and slid it into his wallet.
Some strangers mistake the pest-control company manager for Latino, he said, and he fears getting caught up in ICE raids.
Like Mantz, many Native Americans are carrying tribal documents proving their U.S. citizenship in case they are stopped or questioned by federal immigration agents. This is why dozens of the 575 federally recognized Native nations are making it easier to get tribal IDs. They’re waiving fees, lowering the age of eligibility — ranging from 5 to 18 nationwide — and printing the cards faster.
It’s the first time tribal IDs have been widely used as proof of U.S. citizenship and protection against federal law enforcement, said David Wilkins, an expert on Native politics and governance at the University of Richmond.
“I don’t think there’s anything historically comparable,” Wilkins said. “I find it terribly frustrating and disheartening.”
As Native Americans around the country rush to secure documents proving their right to live in the United States, many see a bitter irony.
“As the first people of this land, there’s no reason why Native Americans should have their citizenship questioned,” said Jaqueline De León, a senior staff attorney with the nonprofit Native American Rights Fund and member of Isleta Pueblo.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to more than four requests for comment over a week.
Since the mid- to late 1800s, the U.S. government has kept detailed genealogical records to estimate Native Americans’ fraction of “Indian blood” and determine their eligibility for health care, housing, education and other services owed under federal legal responsibilities. Those records were also used to aid federal assimilation efforts and chip away at tribal sovereignty, communal lands and identity.
Beginning in the late 1960s, many tribal nations began issuing their own forms of identification. In the last two decades, tribal photo ID cards have become commonplace and can be used to vote in tribal elections, to prove U.S. work eligibility and for domestic air travel.
About 70% of Native Americans today live in urban areas, including tens of thousands in the Twin Cities, one of the largest urban Native populations in the country.
There, in early January, a top ICE official announced the “largest immigration operation ever.”
Masked, heavily armed agents traveling in convoys of unmarked SUVs became commonplace in some neighborhoods. By this week, more than 3,400 people had been arrested, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At least 2,000 ICE officers and 1,000 Border Patrol officers were on the ground.
Representatives from at least 10 tribes traveled hundreds of miles to Minneapolis — the birthplace of the American Indian Movement — to accept ID applications from members there. Among them were the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Ojibwe of Wisconsin, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of South Dakota and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa of North Dakota.
Turtle Mountain citizen Faron Houle renewed his tribal ID card and got his young adult son’s and his daughter’s first ones.
“You just get nervous,” Houle said. “I think (ICE agents are) more or less racial profiling people, including me.”
Events in downtown coffee shops, hotel ballrooms, and at the Minneapolis American Indian Center helped urban tribal citizens connect and share resources, said Christine Yellow Bird, who directs the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation’s satellite office in Fargo, North Dakota.
Yellow Bird made four trips to Minneapolis in recent weeks, putting nearly 2,000 miles on her 2017 Chevy Tahoe to help citizens in the Twin Cities who can’t make the long journey to their reservation.
Yellow Bird said she always keeps her tribal ID with her.
“I’m proud of who I am,” she said. “I never thought I would have to carry it for my own safety.”
Last year, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said that several tribal citizens reported being stopped and detained by ICE officers in Arizona and New Mexico. He and other tribal leaders have advised citizens to carry tribal IDs with them at all times.
Last November, Elaine Miles, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon and an actress known for her roles in “Northern Exposure” and “The Last of Us,” said she was stopped by ICE officers in Washington state who told her that her tribal ID looked fake.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe this week banned ICE from its reservation in southwestern South Dakota and northwestern Nebraska, one of the largest in the country.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota said a member was detained in Minnesota last weekend. And Peter Yazzie, who is Navajo, said he was arrested and held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix for several hours last week.
Yazzie, a construction worker from nearby Chinle, Arizona, said he was sitting in his car at a gas station preparing for a day of work when he saw ICE officers arrest some Latino men. The officers soon turned their attention to Yazzie, pushed him to the ground, and searched his vehicle, he said.
He said he told them where to find his driver’s license, birth certificate, and a federal Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood. Yazzie said the car he was in is registered to his mother. Officers said the names didn’t match, he said, and he was arrested, taken to a nearby detention center and held for about four hours.
“It’s an ugly feeling. It makes you feel less human. To know that people see your features and think so little of you,” he said.
DHS did not respond to questions about the arrest.
Mantz, the Choctaw Nation citizen, said he runs pest-control operations in Minneapolis neighborhoods where ICE agents are active and he won’t leave home without his tribal identification documents.
Securing them for his children is now a priority.
“It gives me some peace of mind. But at the same time, why do we have to carry these documents?” Mantz said. “Who are you to ask us to prove who we are?”
Brewer reported from Oklahoma City and Peters from Edgewood, New Mexico.
By MICHAEL BIESECKER, REBECCA SANTANA and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has opened a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis resident killed Saturday by Border Patrol officers, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Friday.
“We’re looking at everything that would shed light on what happened that day and in the days and weeks leading up to what happened,” Blanche said during a news conference.
Blanche did not explain why DOJ decided to open an investigation into Pretti’s killing, but has said a similar probe is not warranted in the Jan. 7 death of Renee Good, who was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis. He said only on Friday that the Civil Rights Division does not investigate every law enforcement shooting and that there have to be circumstances and facts that “warrant an investigation.”
“President Trump has said repeatedly, ‘Of course, this is something we’re going to investigate,’” Blanche said of the Pretti shooting.
Steve Schleicher, a Minneapolis-based attorney representing Pretti’s parents, said Friday that “the family’s focus is on a fair and impartial investigation that examines the facts around his murder.”
The Department of Homeland Security also said Friday that the FBI will lead the federal probe into Pretti’s death.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem first disclosed the shift in which agency was leading the investigation during a Fox News interview Thursday evening. Her department previously said Homeland Security Investigations, a departmental unit, would head the investigation.
“We will continue to follow the investigation that the FBI is leading and giving them all the information that they need to bring that to conclusion, and make sure that the American people know the truth of the situation and how we can go forward and continue to protect the American people,” Noem said, speaking to Fox host Sean Hannity.
Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Homeland Security Investigations will support the FBI in the investigation. Separately, Customs and Border Protection, which is part of DHS, is doing its own internal investigation into the shooting, during which two officers opened fire on Pretti.
DHS did not immediately respond to questions about when the change was made or why. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It was not immediately clear whether the FBI would share information and evidence with Minnesota state investigators, who have thus far been frozen out of the federal investigation.
In the same interview, Noem appeared to distance herself from statements she made shortly after the shooting, claiming Pretti had brandished a handgun and aggressively approached officers.
Multiple videos that emerged of the shooting contradicted that claim, showing the intensive care nurse had only his mobile phone in his hand as officers tackled him to the ground, with one removing a handgun from the back of Pretti’s pants as another officer began firing shots into his back.
Pretti had a state permit to legally carry a concealed firearm. At no point did he appear to reach for it, the videos showed.
The change in agency comes after two other videos emerged of an earlier altercation between Pretti and federal immigration officers 11 days before his death.
The Jan. 13 videos show Pretti yelling at federal vehicles and at one point appearing to spit before kicking out the taillight of one vehicle. A struggle ensues between Pretti and several officers, during which he is forced to the ground. Pretti’s winter coat comes off, and he either breaks free or the officers let him go and he scurries away.
When he turns his back to the camera, what appears to be a handgun is visible in his waistband. At no point do the videos show Pretti reaching for the gun, and it is not clear whether federal agents saw it.
Schleicher, the Pretti family attorney, said Wednesday the earlier altercation in no way justified the shooting more than a week later.
In a post on his Truth Social platform early Friday morning, President Donald Trump suggested that the videos of the earlier incident undercut the narrative that Pretti was a peaceful protester when he was shot.
“Agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist, Alex Pretti’s stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle, so hard and violent, in fact, that the taillight broke off in pieces,” Trump’s post said. “It was quite a display of abuse and anger, for all to see, crazed and out of control. The ICE Officer was calm and cool, not an easy thing to be under those circumstances!”
Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker contributed from Washington.
By ERIC TUCKER, MICHAEL R. SISAK and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
NEW YORK (AP) — The Justice Department said Friday that it was releasing many more records from its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, resuming disclosures under a law intended to reveal what the government knew about the millionaire financier’s sexual abuse of young girls and his interactions with rich and powerful people including Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents in the latest Epstein disclosure, as well as more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. The files, which were being posted to the department’s website, include some of the several million pages of records that officials said were withheld from an initial release of documents in December.
The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act,” Blanche said at a news conference announcing the disclosure.
The prospect of previously unseen records tying Epstein to famous figures has long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have clamored for a full accounting that even Blanche acknowledged might not be met by the latest document dump.
“There’s a hunger, or a thirst, for information that I don’t think will be satisfied by review of these documents,” he said.
He insisted that, “We did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect — or not protect — anybody,” Blanche said.
After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all of the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needs to be redacted, or blacked out.
Among the materials being withheld from release Friday is information that could jeopardize any ongoing investigation or expose the identities of potential victims of sex abuse. All women other than Maxwell have been redacted from videos and images being released Friday, Blanche said.
The number of documents subject to review has ballooned to roughly six million, including duplicates, the department said.
The Justice Department released tens of thousands of pages of documents just before Christmas, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs and court records. Many of them were either already public or heavily blacked out.
Those records included previously released flight logs showing that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, before they had a falling out, and several photographs of Clinton. Neither Trump, a Republican, nor Clinton, a Democrat, has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and both have said they had no knowledge he was abusing underage girls.
Also released last month were transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who said they were paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.
In 2008 and 2009, Epstein served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. At the time, investigators had gathered evidence that Epstein had sexually abused underage girls at his home in Palm Beach, but the U.S. attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute him in exchange for his guilty plea to lesser state charges.
In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Texas, after being moved there from a federal prison in Florida. She denies any wrongdoing.
U.S. prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse of girls, but one of his victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, accused him in lawsuits of having arranged for her to have sexual encounters at age 17 and 18 with numerous politicians, business titans, noted academics and others, all of whom denied her allegations.
Among the people she accused was Britain’s Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after the scandal led to him being stripped of his royal titles. Andrew denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
Giuffre died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia last year at age 41.
Tucker and Richer reported from Washington.
Follow the AP’s coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.
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