WASHINGTON — The Trump administration spent at least $40 million to deport roughly 300 migrants to countries other than their own as immigration officials expanded the practice over the last year to carry out President Donald Trump’s goals of quickly removing immigrants from the U.S., according to a report compiled by the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The Democrats on the Foreign Relations panel, led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, criticize the practice of third country deportations as “costly, wasteful and poorly monitored” in the report and call for “serious scrutiny of a policy that now operates largely in the dark.”
The State Department, which oversees the negotiations to implement the programs, has stood behind the practice of third country deportations and defended it as a part of Trump’s campaign to end illegal immigration.
“We’ve arrested people that are members of gangs and we’ve deported them. We don’t want gang members in our country,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded when asked about some of the third country deportations at a Senate hearing last month.
The report, which is the first congressional review of the agreements, found lump sum payments ranging between $4.7 million and $7.5 million to five countries – Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini and Palau – to deport migrants to those nations. El Salvador has received about 250 Venezuelan nationals in March last year, while the other nations received far fewer deportees, ranging from 29 sent to Equatorial Guinea to none sent to Palau so far, according to the report.
The nations examined in the report are just a fraction of the Trump administration’s overall work to deport migrants to third countries. According to internal administration documents reviewed by The Associated Press, there are 47 third-country agreements at various stages of negotiation. Of those, 15 have been concluded and 10 are at or near conclusion.
The administration is also negotiating agreements with countries that will accept U.S. asylum seekers while their asylum claims are processed, according to the internal documents. There are 17 that are at various stages of negotiation, including 9 that have formally taken effect, although the administration claims that the agreements do not necessarily need to be concluded for people to be sent there.
Immigration advocacy groups have criticized the “third country” policy as a reckless tactic that violates due process rights and can strand deportees in countries with long histories of human rights violations and corruption.
During a visit to South Sudan, Democratic committee staff found a gated house with armed guards where deportees were held, including migrants from Vietnam and Mexico.
The Democrats also largely take aim at how wasteful and ineffective the policy may be. It details several instances of migrants being deported to a third country, only for the U.S. to later pay for another flight to return the migrant to their home country.
“In many cases, migrants could have been returned directly to their countries of origin, avoiding unnecessary flights and additional costs,” said Shaheen in a statement also signed by Democratic Sens. Chris Coons, Tammy Duckworth, Tim Kaine, Jack Rosen and Chris Van Hollen.
It also remains unclear what benefits the countries may receive – or expect – in return for accepting third-country nationals.
After an agreement was in place last year, South Sudan sent a list of requests to Washington that included American support for the prosecution of an opposition leader and sanctions relief for a senior official accused of diverting over a billion dollars in public funds, according to diplomatic communications made public by the State Department in January.
Shaheen has also questioned a $7.5 million payment sent to Equatorial Guinea that came at the same time the Trump administration was developing ties with the country’s vice president, Teodoro “Teddy” Nguema Obiang. He is notorious among world leaders accused of corruption for a lavish lifestyle that has attracted the attention of prosecutors in several countries.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is suing Harvard University, saying it has refused to provide admissions records that the Justice Department demanded to ensure the Ivy League school stopped using affirmative action in admissions.
In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Massachusetts, the Justice Department said Harvard has “thwarted” efforts to investigate potential discrimination. It accused Harvard of refusing to comply with a federal investigation and asked a judge to order the university to turn over the records.
Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the department’s Civil Rights Division, said Harvard’s refusal is a red flag. “If Harvard has stopped discriminating, it should happily share the data necessary to prove it,” Dhillon said in a statement.
A statement from Harvard said the university has been responding to the government’s requests. It said Harvard is in compliance with the Supreme Court decision barring affirmative action in admissions.
“The University will continue to defend itself against these retaliatory actions which have been initiated simply because Harvard refused to surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights in response to unlawful government overreach,” the university said.
The suit is the latest salvo in President Donald Trump’s standoff with Harvard, which has faced billions of dollars in funding cuts and other sanctions after it rejected a list of demands from the administration last year.
Trump officials have said they’re taking action against Harvard over allegations of anti-Jewish bias on campus. Harvard officials say they’re facing unconstitutional retaliation for refusing to adopt the administration’s ideological views. The administration is appealing a judge’s orders that sided with Harvard in two lawsuits.
The Justice Department opened a compliance review into Harvard’s admissions practices last April on the same day the White House issued a series of sweeping demands aligned with Trump’s priorities. The agency told Harvard to hand over five years of admissions data for undergraduate applicants along with Harvard’s medical and law schools.
It asked for a trove of data including applicants’ grades, test scores, essays, extracurricular activities and admissions outcomes, along with their race and ethnicity. It asked for the data by April 25, 2025. The lawsuit said Harvard has not provided that data.
Justice Department officials said they need the data to determine whether Harvard has continued considering applicants’ race in admissions decisions. The Supreme Court barred affirmative action in admissions in 2023 after lawsuits challenged it at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
Trump officials have accused colleges of continuing the practice, which the administration says discriminates against white and Asian American students.
The White House is separately pressing universities across the U.S. to providing similar data to determine whether they have continued to factor race into admissions decisions. The Education Department plans to collect more detailed admissions data from colleges after Trump signed an action suggesting schools were ignoring the Supreme Court decision.
Trump’s dispute with Harvard had appeared to be winding down last summer after the president repeatedly said they were finalizing a deal to restore Harvard’s federal funding. The deal never materialized, and Trump rekindled the conflict this month when he said Harvard must pay $1 billion as part of any deal, double what he previously demanded.
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SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom told world leaders Friday that President Trump’s retreat from efforts to combat climate change would decimate the U.S. automobile industry and surrender the future economic viability to China and other nations embracing the transition to renewable energy.
Newsom, appearing at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, urged diplomats, business leaders and policy advocates to forcefully stand up to Trump’s global bullying and loyalty to the oil and coal industry. The California governor said the Trump administration’s massive rollbacks on environmental protection will be short-lived.
“Donald Trump is temporary. He’ll be gone in three years,” Newsom said during a Friday morning panel discussion on climate action. “California is a stable and reliable partner in this space.”
Newsom’s comments came in the wake of the Trump administration’s repeal of the endangerment finding and all federal vehicle emissions regulations. The endangerment finding is the U.S. government’s 2009 affirmation that planet-heating pollution poses a threat to human health and the environment.
Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin said the finding has been regulatory overreach, placing heavy burdens on auto manufacturers, restricting consumer choice and resulting in higher costs for Americans. Its repeal marked the “single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America,” he said.
Scientists and experts were quick to condemn the action, saying it contradicts established science and will put more people in harm’s way. Independent researchers around the world have long concluded that greenhouse gases released by the burning of gasoline, diesel and other fossil fuels are warming the planet and worsening weather disasters.
The move will also threaten the U.S.’s position as a leader in the global clean energy transition, with nations such as China pulling ahead on electric vehicle production and investments in renewables such as solar, batteries and wind, experts said.
Newsom’s trip to Germany is just his latest international jaunt in recent months as he positions himself to lead the Democratic Party’s opposition to Trump and the Republican-led Congress, and to seed a possible run for the White House in 2028. Last month Newsom traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and in November to the U.N. climate summit in Belém, Brazil — mocking and condemning Trump’s policies on Greenland, international trade and the environment.
When asked how he would restore the world’s confidence in the United States if he were to become president, Newsom sidestepped. Instead he offered a campaign-like soliloquy on California’s success on fostering Tesla and the nation’s other top electric vehicle manufactures as well as being a magnet for industries spending billions of dollars on research and development for the global transition away from carbon-based economies.
The purpose of the Munich conference was to open a dialogue among world leaders on global security, military, economic and environmental. Along with Friday’s discussion on climate action, Newsom is scheduled to appear at a livestreamed forum on transatlantic cooperation Saturday.
Andrew Forrest, executive chairman of the Australia-based mining company giant Fortescue, said during a panel Friday his company is proof that even the largest energy-consuming companies in the world can thrive without relying on the carbon-based fuels that have driven industries for more than a century. Fortescue, which buys diesel fuel from countries across the world, will transition to a “green grid” this decade, saving the company a billion dollars a year, he said.
“The science is absolutely clear, but so is the economics. I am, and my company Fortescue is, the industrial-grade proof that going renewable is great economics, great business, and if you desert it, then in the end, you’ll be sorted out by your shareholders or by your voters at the ballot box,” Forrest said.
Newsom said California has also shown the world what can be done with innovative government policies that embrace electric vehicles and the transition to a non-carbon-based economy, and continues to do so despite the attacks and regressive mandates being imposed by the Trump administration.
“This is about economic prosperity and competitiveness, and that’s why I’m so infuriated with what Donald Trump has done,” Newsom said. “Remember, Tesla exists for one reason — California’s regulatory market, which created the incentives and the structure and the certainty that allowed Elon Musk and others to invest and build that capacity. We are not walking away from that.”
California has led the nation in the push toward EVs. For more than 50 years, the state enjoyed unique authority from the EPA to set stricter tailpipe emission standards than the federal government, considered critical to the state’s efforts to address its notorious smog and air-quality issues. The authority, which the Trump administration has moved to rescind, was also the basis for California’s plan to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
The administration again targeted electric vehicles in its announcement on Thursday.
“The forced transition to electric vehicles is eliminated,” Zeldin said. “No longer will automakers be pressured to shift their fleets toward electric vehicles, vehicles that are still sitting unsold on dealer lots all across America.”
But the efforts to shut down the energy transition may be too little, too late, said Hannah Safford, former director of transportation and resilience at the White House Climate Policy Office under the Biden administration.
“Electric cars make more economic sense for people, more models are becoming available, and the administration can’t necessarily stop that from happening,” said Safford, who is now associate director for climate and environment at the Federation of American Scientists.
Still, some automakers and trade groups supported the EPA’s decision, as did fossil fuel industry groups and those geared toward free markets and regulatory reform. Among them were the Independent Petroleum Assn. of America, which praised the administration for its “efforts to reform and streamline regulations governing greenhouse gas emissions.”
Ford, which has invested in electric vehicles and recently completed a prototype of a $30,000 electric truck, said in a statement to The Times that it appreciated EPA’s move “to address the imbalance between current emissions standards and consumer choice.”
Toyota, meanwhile, deferred to a statement from Alliance for Automotive Innovation president John Bozzella, who said similarly that “automotive emissions regulations finalized in the previous administration are extremely challenging for automakers to achieve given the current marketplace demand for EVs.”
Rumors of an affair between Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump administration political adviser Corey Lewandowski have been flying for months.
And all that flying, it turns out, might come with a big price tag for taxpayers.
The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday that Noem and Lewandowski have recently been traveling together aboard a luxury Boeing 737 MAX jet that includes a private cabin in the rear. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is “leasing the plane but is in the process of acquiring it for approximately $70 million,” the Journal reports, citing people familiar with the plane.
That is just one small detail amid the explosive and deeply reported piece, which details a pattern of behavior that is both self-aggrandizing and petty. In one incident, Lewandowski reportedly fired a Coast Guard pilot for leaving Noem’s blanket on a plane (it is unclear whether that was the 737 MAX or a different plane), only to reinstate the pilot when a replacement could not be found. The report comes at a time when Noem is under intense scrutiny for her role in ordering the high-profile and aggressive immigration enforcement tactics in Minneapolis that led to the deaths of two American citizens at the hands of federal officers.
The salacious rumors of an affair between Noem and Lewandowski—both of whom are married to other people—surface repeatedly in the Journal’s article but have been denied by the two officials.
The deeper, indisputable truth is that taxpayers are being forced to support an aircraft-buying binge at the DHS that goes beyond the alleged adultery airplane used by Noem and Lewandowski.
Last year, the department purchased a fleet of six commercial jets, ostensibly to carry out deportation flights, at a cost of $140 million. It is unclear whether Noem’s plane with the private cabin is one of those or an additional plane.
The aircraft in question was apparently identified last year by The War Zone, a blog covering the national security state. The plane has a cabin configuration designed to accommodate 17 passengers and was being marketed at the time for its “extremely luxurious interior layout that includes two suites with full-size beds and a master bathroom with a shower stall, among many other amenities,” according to a brochure reviewed by The War Zone.
Even if Noem and Lewandowski are not using the plane for, um, activities that go beyond their official duties, there ought to be hard questions asked about whether taxpayers are getting screwed.
Indeed, there was a time—not even a year ago—when the Trump administration was promising to cut wasteful spending and hold government officials accountable to taxpayers. If the Journal‘s reporting turns out to be accurate, the mess at DHS looks a lot like the complete opposite of that.
After last week’s launch of TrumpRx, President Trump described the discounted drug platform as “one of the most transformative health care initiatives of all time.” But experts and health care advocates said that limitations with the new service could undermine its value to consumers.
“The prices are absolutely cheaper than list prices, but only for cash patients or patients whose insurance does not sufficiently cover these drugs,” Yunan Ji, a health policy expert at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, told CBS News. “For a small share of the market, it will deliver meaningful savings, but it is not going to change the whole drug pricing landscape for most Americans.”
Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, an advocacy group for health care consumers, applauded the Trump administration’s effort to lower drug prices for Americans. But he said TrumpRx doesn’t serve as a “one-stop shop” for consumers who want to compare drug prices and secure the lowest costs, describing the system as more of a “catalog of coupons from existing programs from drug companies.”
Wright also said he’d like to see TrumpRx offer a broader range of drugs, including those used to treat cancer and other diseases (see below for a list of all drug discounts available through TrumpRx.)
The White House told CBS News that such discounts only exist because the Trump administration negotiated so-called “most-favored-nation” agreements with pharmaceutical firms to lower prices. Under that policy, drugmakers must sell meds to U.S. customers at the same prices available in other countries, including those with lower drug costs.
TrumpRx is also focused on offering the lowest prices on branded products, the White House noted, acknowledging that more affordable generic versions of the drugs may be available elsewhere.
Who is TrumpRx for?
A drawback of TrumpRx is that discounts are available only to patients who buy drugs in cash, Wright said. That means people must pay for prescriptions out of pocket and can’t use their health insurance, while those expenses will not count toward meeting a consumer’s health plan deductible.
“It is focused pretty narrowly on people who are uninsured and are buying prescription drugs with cash rather than through a health plan,” Wright told CBS News.
When TrumpRx launched on Feb. 5, the site listed more than 40 brand-name drugs, with the Trump administration saying that more discounted medications will be added over time.
Merith Basey, CEO of Patients For Affordable Drugs Now (P4ADNow), a national patient organization that works to lower drug prices, said the coupons TrumpRx offers are not unique to the platform, noting that similar discounts are already available in the marketplace.
To assess the savings available through TrumpRx, the group compared the service with what consumers can find for the same drugs via GoodRx, a Santa Monica, Calif., company that offers discounted meds. TrumpRx’s pricing was superior for only eight drugs, P4ADNow found, as follows:
Bevespi (chronic bronchitis) — 89% discount through TrumpRx
Cetrotide (fertility) — 93% discount through TrumpRx
Farxiga (Type 2 Diabetes) — 52% discount through TrumpRx
Genotropin (human growth hormone) — 60% discount through TrumpRx
Insulin Lispro (blood sugar control) — 65% discount through TrumpRx
Ovidrel (fertility) — 67% discount through TrumpRx
Xigduo XR (Type 2 Diabetes) — 70% discount through TrumpRx
Zepbound (weight loss) — 72% discount through TrumpRx
GoodRx offered equally steep discounts on 33 of the drugs listed on TrumpRx, while cheaper generic alternatives were available for 15 TrumpRx medications, according to the group’s analysis.
For example, Colestid, a drug that lowers cholesterol for people at risk of heart disease, costs $67.20 if purchased through TrumpRx, while a generic version of the drug costs $21.70.
Most insurers don’t cover weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. TrumpRx and GoodRx both offer Ozempic for $199 for a 0.25 milligram pen, which has a list price of over $1,000.
The same is typically true of fertility drugs, including Gonal-F, which costs $252 with a TrumpRx or GoodRx coupon and which has a list price of nearly $1,200.
Drug discounts available through TrumpRx
For now, TrumpRx offers discounts on a total of 43 drugs, as follows:
Several Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee held a hearing in Fairfax County, Virginia, on Thursday, taking a broad look at the impact DOGE had on the federal government.
The nation is more than a year removed from the start of President Donald Trump’s second administration, which came to D.C. with the idea of major cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
The result, Democrats claim, is a hollowed out civil service system.
Several Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee held a hearing in Fairfax County, Virginia, on Thursday, taking a broad look at the impact DOGE had on the federal government.
“We know the Trump-Vance administration has taken a wrecking ball to our civil service and decimated the federal workforce,” Rob Shriver, the managing director of civil service and good government initiatives at Democracy Forward, said. “In so doing, it has harmed everyone in America who relies on essential government functions.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat representing California’s 42nd District and the ranking member of the committee, said a new report showed how DOGE failed to eliminate waste and its “incompetence” endangered federal workers and Americans as a whole.
The first months of the program, lead by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, saw the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, the decision to cancel the U.S. media agency Voice of America, the cancellation of thousands of government grants, contracts and programs and the departure of more than 300,000 federal employees and contractors in 2025.
The Trump administration has repeatedly defended DOGE and the changes, arguing they needed and have enhanced “efficiency” within the federal workforce.
But former and current federal employees testifying at the hearing say that’s hardly been the case. They point to figures from the Brookings Institute and others that show there are roughly three million federal employees today, and that is about the same size as it was 60 years ago, but the nation’s population has soared by more 100 million. They say they were already doing excellent work and at a high level of efficiency.
On its website, DOGE claims to have saved taxpayers upward of $200 billion initially. But some experts have pushed back, suggesting the savings are closer to between $1 billion and $7 billion, which is far lower than the $2 trillion Elon Musk said in 2025 that DOGE would save American taxpayers.
Rep. James Walkinshaw, a Democrat representing Virginia’s 11th District, said the cuts hit several critical agencies deeply.
“This administration has hollowed out the cybersecurity agency through RIFs (Reductions in Force) and politically driven reassignments, weakened NOAA by indiscriminately firing staff critical to public safety, and undermined our national security by dismantling USAID,” he said, noting the high number of federal workers who live in his district.
Many Republicans have defended DOGE saying government had grown too large, was bloated and was trying to do many missions the states should undertake.
But former GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock, who has become a vocal Trump Administration critic said the White House behavior and treatment of civil servants has been “egregious.”
“I apologize to you, as a Republican, for what has happened over the last year because it’s been so egregious and so traumatic,” Comstock said. “It’s the only promise kept by this administration.”
The more than two hour hearing included testimony from former federal employees, watchdog groups and others who described what they said were illegal activities, including the firing of the Inspector Generals and the disorganized way the job cuts were performed by DOGE.
Doreen Greenwald, the President of the National Treasury Employees Union testified how tens of thousand of federal employees who want to leave the government have been unable to get their retirements finalized and the process is taking three to four times as it normally does.
“Federal retirees are stuck in limbo as agencies slow walk their retirements, and once those make it to OPM (U.S. Office of Personnel Management), they are waiting six to nine months for their first annuity payment.”
But there was a small sliver of optimism among the speakers. They said Elon Musk is no longer in government and DOGE was officially disbanded in November 2025, instead of the summer of 2026.
Faith Williams, the director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program, Project on Government Oversight (POGO) said her group and others will be there to help rebuild what they say are the depleted government ranks.
“POGO has several solutions Congress can implement to restore the merit based civil service, strengthen whistleblower protections, protect inspectors general and other watchdogs, combat corruption, abuse of power and strengthen congressional oversight,” she said.
Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents Maryland’s 4th District, a suburban area in Prince George’s County that is home to thousands of federal workers, said he believes there is a place in government for many of the employees who were let go.
“We’ve got cases that run the gamut of people in the government who’d been doing great work, who’ve been forced out. We’ve got to make sure we find ways to get them back so they can pick up where they left off,” Ivey said.
Ivey pointed to the hundreds, if not thousands of employees who were dismissed, only to be rehired weeks and months later, when government officials determined their positions were essential.
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AL KAWD, Yemen — In the cramped examination room of this tiny village clinic, Rania Moussa lay on her side and covered her eyes with a pillow, her slight, childlike-frame belying the fact she is 13 years old. It had been days since she had taken an injection of the powerful antibiotics she needs to manage her condition, a type of anemia.
But the clinic, which used to give them for free, now had none to offer; and aid cuts since the U.S. froze assistance last year meant it was unlikely to get them anytime soon. Without the medication, Rania’s mother said, her daughter couldn’t do anything.
“She can’t walk; she can barely move. I had to carry her here. We could get the shots before, but now none of the clinics have them, so I have to buy them from pharmacies,” said Jamilah Omar, Rania’s mother. “We can barely afford food, let alone medications.”
Somehow, Omar scraped together money for the antibiotics, which the clinic staff administered.
In the year since the evisceration of U.S. Agency for International Development at the hands of Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, discussions on its shuttering can devolve into political point-scoring, with advocates and opponents of the Trump administration shouting over each other about the savings made or lack thereof.
Remnants of signage for the U.S. Agency for International Development on the facade of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 29, 2025.
(Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)
But it’s here, in places like the dust-swept grouping of cinder-block houses and dilapidated buildings that make up Al Kawd, where the real-world impact of those cuts can be most clearly felt.
“You feel helpless,” said Areeda Fadhli, the 53-year-old medical assistant managing the clinic, as she shifted the pillow away to look at Rania’s face.
“Imagine your son, your daughter, fading in front of you,” she said. “How do you think that feels?”
Fadhli pointed to some boxes of basic medical supplies squirreled away in a corner.
“It’s the last shipment and it came more than nine months ago,” she said. “We’re trying to stretch them as much as possible.”
The contractions in Yemen reflect a wider ravaging of foreign assistance worldwide. In 2025, the U.S. pledged $3.4 billion in global aid, a fraction of the $14.1 billion funded under President Biden. That includes funds from USAID and other U.S. entities.
And that amount is getting only smaller: Late last year, the Trump administration announced in 2026 it would provide $2 billion to U.N. programs in 17 countries, while pointedly excluding Afghanistan and Yemen.
Rabii Nasr, a nurse, cleans a child’s wound at a hospital in Yemen’s Abyan province. Her injury did not require stitches, which was fortunate because the hospital had run out of stitches and surgical thread.
(Nabih Bulos/Los Angeles Times)
Other wealthy nations are following suit, with Germany more than halving its humanitarian budget for 2026 compared with last year. France is planning to reduce development assistance by nearly 40%, and the U.K. is shrinking aid expenditures from 0.5% to 0.3% of its gross national income by 2027.
The Trump administration offered different justifications for cutting foreign assistance. President Trump alleged there were “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse” while DOGE officials boasted about the cost savings. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said USAID did not serve, and in some cases harmed, the “core national interests of the United States.”
Administration officials brought no evidence of corruption and cited examples of waste that proved to be inaccurate, such as Trump’s assertion that $100 million was spent on condoms to the militant group Hamas in Gaza.
In any case, observers say the funds earmarked for foreign development assistance in the Biden era amounted to less than 1% of the federal budget.
Last year, the U.S. slashed funding for Yemen from USAID and other sources from $768 million — amounting to half of the country’s humanitarian response budget in 2024 — to $42.5 million. The result, the U.N. says, is that 453 health facilities have faced partial or imminent closure across the country, including hospitals, primary health centers and mobile clinics.
The Lancet, the esteemed British medical journal, published a study in July that estimated the cuts to USAID could result in 14 million otherwise preventable deaths worldwide by 2030. The estimates were based in part on the lifesaving effects of USAID’s past work on food security, HIV treatment, medical care and other services.
The cuts already deeply hit Yemen, a country that is no stranger to tragedy. A calamitous civil war — which began in 2014 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital and spurred a furious assault from a Saudi-led coalition — made Yemen in years past the site of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes.
Though Yemen has since been surpassed in devastation by other conflict spots, 19.5 million people — slightly less than half of the population — needed humanitarian assistance in 2025, with the majority of them food insecure, the U.N. says.
This year, with political upheaval persisting throughout the country, the expectation is that number will increase to 21 million; it’s a situation made more difficult by the Trump administration’s 2025 designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization.
A soldier walks by the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, on Wednesday.
(Osamah Abdulrahman / Associated Press)
The designation, humanitarians say, in effect outlaws aid deliveries to areas under Houthi control, where 70% of the population resides. At the same time, the Houthis have detained 73 U.N. staff members and confiscated vehicles and telecommunications equipment, leaving the U.N. unable to operate.
“You have the perturbations of the conflict and increased humanitarian needs at the same time as a challenging funding environment constrained the delivery environment,” said Julien Harneis, the U.N.’s resident coordinator in Yemen. “So all the conditions are coming together for a very difficult year.”
For aid organizations in Yemen that relied on U.S. largesse, the aim has shifted to preserving whatever remains of their operations.
An aid worker who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing remaining assistance flows said the organization he worked for had shut down one of its two offices, fired 250 out of 300 employees and suspended support to dozens of health centers. The organization’s portfolio had shrunk from roughly $32 million to $2 million.
“Yes, we have other donors from Europe and Canada, but it doesn’t equal even 5% of what the Americans would give,” he said.
Some organizations have tried tailoring proposals to fit Washington’s regional priorities, including countering Iran and Al Qaeda, or by excluding terms that under the Trump administration have in effect become verboten.
“Anything focusing on gender, feminism, or LGBT protection: A statement with any of those concepts wouldn’t get sign-off,” he said.
To get a sense of what a difference a year makes, last January, before the aid cuts, Fadhli was about to extend the operations of the Al Kawd clinic from 12-hour shifts to 24.
Three doctors — an OB-GYN specialist and two general practitioners — already made the daily 52-mile journey from Aden, the main city in Yemen’s south, to Al Kawd to treat about 300 patients every day. Medical assistants, chosen from local village women, received $100 a month and training sessions to work in the clinic and help serve the community’s needs.
The clinic had enough basic medications for three months, and there was funding to procure specialized medicine for patients with complicated illnesses.
“People come here because they have no money, but before we could offer them solutions to their problems,” said Dr. Umayma Jamil, the 37-year-old OB-GYN specialist who is the last remaining physician in the clinic. She comes only once a week, paid for by whatever funds the clinic can cobble together.
Now, Jamil said, she will give a diagnosis, prescribe medicine and then see the patient return with the same complaint.
“I ask them, ’Did you get medicine?’ And they say they can’t because there’s no money,” Jamil said.
“It’s natural to be frustrated, but I don’t know what to do. It’s not in my hands.”
The effects of such a drastic scaling down of aid aren’t restricted to smaller facilities; they extend even to major medical institutions such as Al-Razi, the main hospital in Abyan province, serving more than 30,000 people every year.
Children are dying, and more children will die later this year
— Julien Harneis, U.N. resident coordinator in Yemen
Dr. Muhsen Abdullah, the surgeon who heads the emergency room, spoke with a weary tone of a ward without surgical thread or stitches, and anesthesiologists forced to ask patients to purchase their own anesthetic.
“Surgical perishables, antibiotics, even iodine and rubbing alcohol — all this the patient has to buy from the outside before they come in for surgery. It’s ridiculous,” he said, adding that some patients postponed procedures because they couldn’t afford postoperative treatment.
Around him were additional signs of disrepair: an X-ray examination board without a functioning backlight, and a dust-covered ultraviolet sterilization machine that hadn’t worked in months.
With humanitarian groups operating under extremely tight budgets, there’s little they can do when epidemics hit — assuming they can detect them in the first place, because much of that information relied on health centers reporting outbreaks.
“Now we have no reports. Zero,” the aid worker said. For example, he said, cholera cases in Yemen would appear to be fewer than last year, although suspected numbers are far larger.
“How can they tell you anyway? There are no kits to test.”
In Al Kawd, Fadhli and Jamil have already detected a few cases of cholera in the village. It’s a terrifying prospect, they said, because the disease transmitted by infected water killed a few dozen people — most of them children — last year. But with no money for quarantine or medications, there isn’t much they can do, so they expect the outbreak to get worse.
That’s in line with predictions from Harneis, the U.N. resident coordinator, who said aid groups in Yemen were anticipating an increase in epidemics “which we won’t be able to control, and an increase in mortality and morbidity, particularly affecting young children.”
“Children are dying, and more children will die later this year,” he said. And once such outbreaks hit, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay within the confines of Yemen, he added. “Epidemics don’t stop at the border.”
This month, the U.S. completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, a decision, the group said, that made “both the United States and the world less safe.”
Many in the aid community acknowledge USAID wasn’t perfect and understand complaints that it could be used to promote ideas the Trump administration denounces as “woke.”
But they nevertheless lament the rollback of their work. One person likened it to America’s abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan and leaving the field open for the Taliban to destroy all of USAID’s projects.
“OK, you could say USAID was unsustainable, but there’s an argument to be made you shouldn’t close the tap completely,” said the aid worker, adding his employer has been operating in Yemen since 1994.
“With this move, you’ve destroyed the work of decades.”
So has Earth Justice, one of the leading environmental law nonprofits in the country.
“We plan to sue them in court as soon as the rule is filed in the public register,” Senior Attorney Marvin Brown with Earth Justice told CBS News San Francisco.
Brown is concerned about how the repeal will increase the pollution from cars and trucks, which he says accounts for nearly 30% of all greenhouse emissions in the United States.
“It’s incredibly dangerous,” he said. “We’re talking about people’s lives here. Not just the lives of people here today but thinking about future generations that are going tobe affected by the actions we take today.”
President Trump has dismissed those health concerns, referring to climate change as a hoax.
“I tell them don’t worry about it because it has nothing to do with public health,” Mr. Trump said. “This was all a scam.”
Environmental law professor Holly Doremus from UC Berkeley says as legal challenges mount, she feels that in the courtroom, it’s not the science of climate change that will come into question, but the role of the EPA.
“They’re claiming that even if the science of global warming is correct, the EPA does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases,” Professor Holly Doremus with UC Berkeley Environmental Law said. “I think that’s where the core of the legal argument is going to be.”
The administration is also ending a credit for automakers to add start-stop features that shut off gas engines when cars idle, a move companies like Ford and Stellantis praised. The EPA says it will save drivers an average of $2,400 when they buy a new car, though one analysis by S-A-E International found the feature can improve fuel economy and save drivers money.
“They are only concerned about the apparently about the economic impacts of regulations, like limitations on greenhouse gas emissions,” Professor Doremus said.
“That is very dangerous because what it means is, the implication is anything that’s economically valuable can go ahead no matter how much it hurts people.”
California may be sheltered from some of the federal government’s actions since state law requires 100% of the electricity to come from renewable or carbon-free sources. Brown says while federal regulations may be up in the air, people can take steps to protect the environment.
“This is a big blow,” Brown said. “This is an agency abandoning its mission to protect public health. That doesn’t mean we still can’t fight back that there are things that we all can be doing to reduce this type of pollution.”
A federal judge on Thursday blocked a Trump administration order slashing $600 million in federal grant funding for HIV programs in California and three other states, finding merit in the states’ argument that the move was politically motivated by disagreements over unrelated state sanctuary policies.
U.S. District Judge Manish Shah, an Obama appointee in Illinois, found that California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota were likely to succeed in arguing that President Trump and other administration officials targeted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for termination “based on arbitrary, capricious, or unconstitutional rationales.”
Namely, Shah wrote that while Trump administration officials said the programs were cut for breaking with CDC priorities, other “recent statements” by officials “plausibly suggest that the reason for the direction is hostility to what the federal government calls ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’ or ‘sanctuary cities.’”
Shah found that the states had shown they would “suffer irreparable harm” from the cuts, and that the public interest would not be harmed by temporarily halting them — and as a result granted the states a temporary restraining order halting the administration’s action for 14 days while the litigation continues.
Shah wrote that while he may not have jurisdiction to block a simple grant termination, he did have jurisdiction to halt an administration directive to terminate funding based on unconstitutional grounds.
“More factual development is necessary and it may be that the only government action at issue is termination of grants for which I have no jurisdiction to review,” Shah wrote. “But as discussed, plaintiffs have made a sufficient showing that defendants issued internal guidance to terminate public-health grants for unlawful reasons; that guidance is enjoined as the parties develop a record.”
The cuts targeted a slate of programs aimed at tracking and curtailing HIV and other disease outbreaks, including one of California’s main early-warning systems for HIV outbreaks, state and local officials said. Some were oriented toward serving the LGBTQ+ community. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office said California faced “the largest share” of the cuts.
The White House said the cuts were to programs that “promote DEI and radical gender ideology,” while federal health officials said the programs in question did not reflect the CDC’s “priorities.”
Bonta cheered Shah’s order in a statement, saying he and his fellow attorneys general who sued are “confident that the facts and the law favor a permanent block of these reckless and illegal funding cuts.”
Almost all of President Trump’s tariffs last year were passed on to U.S. consumers and businesses in the form of higher costs, according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
As the average U.S. tariff on imports jumped to 13% in 2025, up from less than 3%, “nearly 90% of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers,” the researchers wrote.
Who bears the burden of tariffs?
The Trump administration maintains that foreign companies and other exporters pay the lion’s share of tariffs.
In a Jan. 30 Wall Street Journal op-ed defending his tariff agenda, for example, Mr. Trump said that “data shows that the burden, or ‘incidence,’ of the tariffs has fallen overwhelmingly on foreign producers and middlemen, including large corporations that are not from the U.S.”
“In many cases, nations that are heavily dependent on exports have had no choice but to ‘eat’ the tariffs to avoid even worse losses from their excess capacity,” he added.
The New York Fed’s findings, which align with those of most mainstream economists, challenge that view. For the eight-month period from January through August, U.S. importers bore 94% of tariff costs. By November, exporters were shouldering slightly more of the burden, but U.S. importers remained on the hook for 86% of tariffs, according to the analysis.
“In sum, U.S. firms and consumers continue to bear the bulk of the economic burden of the high tariffs imposed in 2025,” the report concluded.
Defending tariffs
The White House on Thursday defended Mr. Trump’s tariffs, touting the economic gains.
“America’s average tariff rate has increased nearly sevenfold in the past year, yet inflation has cooled and corporate profits have increased,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement to CBS News. “The reality is that President Trump’s economic agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, tariffs, and energy abundance [is] reducing costs and accelerating economic growth.”
Recent data point to solid economic growth. The nation’s gross domestic product expanded at a robust 4.3% annual pace in the third quarter, the strongest growth in two years.
The job market also remains healthy, with employers adding a stronger-than-expected 130,000 jobs in January, according to employment figures released earlier this week.
Tariffs could be struck down
Economists predicted last year that elevated tariffs on imports were likely to drive up inflation. For the most part, those price hikes have failed to materialize.
In December, the Consumer Price Index rose at an annual rate of 2.7%, unchanged from November. The Department of Labor is scheduled to release the January CPI data on Friday.
The Treasury Department collected $287 billion in tariffs in 2025, up 192% from the previous year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
Yet President Trump’s scope to wield tariffs in future is uncertain, with the Supreme Court expected to rule soon on his authority to impose levies under a federal emergency powers law.
If those tariffs are struck down, the U.S. government could owe businesses as much as $168 billion in refunds, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
The Trump administration said it’s ending a credit for automakers that install a so-called “start/stop feature” in the vehicles, part of a broader rollback of environmental regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The start/stop feature, which is today widely used in newer vehicles, shuts off gas engines when cars idle, such as when they’re stopped at a red light or stuck in traffic. The Environmental Protection Agency described the technology as “almost universally hated” in its Thursday announcement about the broader overhaul.
About two-thirds of cars are now manufactured with the start/stop feature, which is aimed at making internal combustion engines more fuel efficient while reducing carbon emissions. One analysis found that the feature can improve fuel economy by between about 7% and 26%, depending on driving conditions.
While that may seem like a benefit to drivers who want to cut down on fuel costs, the Trump administration has linked such features to a sharp rise in automobile prices in recent years. In comments at the White House on Thursday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the regulatory overhaul will help save consumers an average of $2,400 when they purchase a new car.
“There will be no more climate participation trophies awarded to manufacturers for making Americans’ cars die at every red light and stop sign,” Zeldin said. “It’s over, done, finished.”
What’s happening with auto start/stop?
The Trump administration on Thursday said it will no longer regulate greenhouse gases emitted from sources such as cars, trucks and power plants.
The action formally repeals what is known as the “endangerment finding,” which provides the legal and scientific underpinning for the federal government to regulate the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.
As part of the action, the EPA said it would eliminate credits given to automakers that install the start/stop functionality.
Most cars allow drivers to turn off the start/stop feature, but not shut it off permanently, notes Consumer Reports. That means drivers must turn off the feature each time they drive.
Has the start/stop feature increased vehicle costs?
The Trump administration’s action pushes back on a broader range of environmental regulations that it says has pushed up car prices.
The average new vehicle currently costs almost $50,000, up nearly 43% from a decade ago, according to Cox Automotive.
The rise in auto prices stems from several factors, including a shift to more luxurious models and showroom markups, rather than more stringent fuel-efficiency standards, according to the National Consumers League, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group.
“Federal safety and fuel economy standards save households thousands of dollars over the life of their vehicle while having a marginal effect on vehicle prices,” Daniel Greene, the group’s senior director of consumer protection and product safety, said in a Feb. 3 statement.
What do automakers say?
Automakers largely applauded the Trump administration’s overhaul, with Ford saying in a statement that it appreciated the effort “to address the imbalance between current emissions standards and customer choice.”
Stellantis said it welcomed the decision “because it enables us to continue offering Americans a broad range of cars, trucks and SUVs – including BEVs, REEVs, hybrids and efficient internal combustion engines – that they want, need and can afford.”
Culver City community members and business owners criticized — and made fun of — U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi Thursday after she briefly discussed Culver City during a fiery Capitol Hill hearing over the Jeffrey Epstein case files.
Bondi Wednesday repeatedly clashed with Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee during her testimony at a Justice Department oversight hearing as they questioned her about the Trump administration’s handling of the case involving the late convicted sex offender.
When U.S. Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove, whose district includes the Westside, questioned Bondi, the attorney general shot back by mentioning Culver City’s crime.
“Her district includes Culver City, and she’s not talking about any crime in her district,” the attorney general said.
But local officials disputed Bondi’s claim after no homicide was reported in the city in 2025. The city’s overall crime was down 9.7% in 2024, and it was reduced by another 6.1% in Quarter 3 of 2025, according to Culver City Mayor Freddy Puza.
“It was news to me that Culver City is full of crime and criminals. That’s not the case,” Puza said as he welcomed people to come, walk or bike around the city. “We have a great inclusive, welcoming city, so I just don’t see what they are talking about.”
The Department of Justice did not respond to NBC Los Angeles’ request for comment. It was not immediately clear why Bondi brough up Culver City.
Comedians like Heather Gardner poked fun at the comment, saying the crimes in the city involved coffee, bagel and ice cream.
“The worst crime in Culver City is that my favorite Mexican restaurant used to serve $3 margaritas, and now they’re $5 margaritas,” the comedian said.
Jennifer Casper, who owns Village Books and Coffee, agreed that Culver City is a great place to raise a family as it is a “lovely place to do business.”
“I hate to put down Los Angeles because I live in Los Angeles and I love it, but two blocks away in Los Angeles, there’s a much bigger crime problem,” Casper said.
One proud Culver City resident named Colin Miller even took a step further by inviting Bondi to visit the area, offering to be her tour guide.
“Pam, I would love to (show you around),” he said. “I have a girlfriend, but I can do it as a friendly thing, just to help her out.”
Pam Bondi snaps at Congressmen. Over the course of five hours of testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Pam Bondi gave increasingly agitated responses to members’ questions about the Epstein files her department recently released.
She called ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D–Md.) a “washed-up loser lawyer” and Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) a “failed politician” with “Trump derangement syndrome.”
At the hearing, members pressed Bondi on a range of things related to Jeffrey Epstein and her department’s release of documents related to the dead, disgraced financier. In particular, representatives pressed Bondi on why material on Epstein’s associates was redacted, but the names, pictures, and other sensitive information of victims were not.
For the most part, Bondi did not give direct answers, preferring instead insults and odd nonsequiturs about how the stock market was at record heights.
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On the one hand, one can understand some of Bondi’s frustrations. Committee hearings like yesterday’s are largely political theater.
A lot of Democrats’ “questions” were really just partisan grandstanding, like when Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D–Wash.) asked Epstein victims in the audience to stand so that Bondi could apologize to them for failing to redact their names.
Bondi wasn’t wrong when she said several times that Democrats did not care that much about Epstein when Joe Biden was president and Merrick Garland was attorney general.
Still, even when Democrats asked more measured, substantive questions, like when Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D–Calif.) pressed Bondi on whether some of Epstein’s emails suggested that there were still coconspirators left to prosecute, the attorney general still resorted to evasions and insults.
A problem of one’s own making. Generally, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for Bondi at all. The debacle over the Epstein files is one of her own making.
It was Bondi who seemed to say in an interview that she had Epstein’s (probably mythical) client list sitting on her desk waiting to be released, before walking it back. It was Bondi who made a big show of giving right-wing influencers binders labeled “Epstein files” filled with redacted or already public documents.
That game of promising more transparency on Epstein while offering none has spectacularly backfired. In the end, Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in a near-unanimous vote. When asked follow-up questions about those files, Bondi broke down.
Even in the face of partisan, showy committee questions, it would be nice to have an attorney general who was modestly professional and interested in transparency.
Scenes from D.C.:The latest war of religion has broken out on X about whether America’s youth is becoming more Christian and, more specifically, more Catholic.
Researcher and former pastor Ryan Burge says not really. Per Burge, 2023’s surge in Catholicism was an outlier. Every year since then has shown a steady, stagnant percentage of Catholic Zoomers.
There is no surge of Catholicism among Gen Z.
The 2023 Cooperative Election Study showed a surge in Catholic numbers.
I’d really encourage everyone to listen to Burge’s recent appearance on Ross Douthat’s podcast, where he breaks down America’s religiosity in more detail.
But a stagnating church is not the case in Washington, D.C., says Robert Schmad in response to Burge’s post.
We have a lot of data points confirming there is no national mass Catholic conversion among American youths.
Staffers in DC, however, certainly think it’s happening. That’s because – among them specifically – there absolutely is an ongoing conversion movement.
My own anecdotal experience matches Schmad’s take. My 150-year-old D.C. parish has welcomed record numbers of converts in recent years. Long-time parishioners tell me that Mass attendance has exploded.
Perhaps that’s just more evidence of Catholic decline: A shrinking number of faithful are concentrating in fewer, more vibrant parishes.
Or maybe not. The next Great Awakening has to start somewhere. Perhaps centralized nodes of intense religiosity are what’s necessary to revive true religion in America.
California and three other states sued the Trump administration Wednesday over its plans to slash $600 million from programs designed to prevent and track the spread of HIV, including in the LGBTQ+ community — arguing the move is based on “political animus and disagreements about unrelated topics such as federal immigration enforcement, political protest, and clean energy.”
“This action is lawless,” attorneys for California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota said in a complaint filed in federal court in Illinois against President Trump and several of his officials.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding had been allocated to disease control programs in all four states, though California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office said his state faces “the largest share” of the cuts.
That includes $130 million due to California under a Public Health Infrastructure Block Grant, which the state and its local public health departments use to fund their public health workforce, monitor disease spread and respond to public health emergencies, Bonta’s office said.
“President Trump … is using federal funding to compel states and jurisdictions to follow his agenda. Those efforts have all previously failed, and we expect that to happen once again,” Bonta said in a statement.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the named defendants, repeatedly has turned his agency away from evidence-backed HIV monitoring and prevention programs in the last year, and the Trump administration has broadly attacked federal spending headed to blue states or allocated to initiatives geared toward the LGBTQ+ community.
The White House justified the latest cuts by claiming the programs “promote DEI and radical gender ideology” but did not explain further. Health officials said the cuts were to programs that did not reflect the CDC’s “priorities.”
Neither the White House nor Health and Human Services immediately responded to requests for comment.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said the cuts would derail an estimated $64.5 million for 14 county grant programs, resulting in “increased costs, more illness, and preventable deaths,” the department said.
Those programs focus on response to disasters, controlling outbreaks of diseases such as measles and flu, preventing the spread of diseases such as West Nile, dengue and hepatitis A, monitoring and treating HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, fighting chronic illnesses such as diabetes and obesity, and supporting community health, the department said.
Those cuts also would include about $1.1 million for the department’s National HIV Behavioral Surveillance Project, which is focused on detecting emerging HIV trends and preventing outbreaks.
Dr. Paul Simon, an epidemiologist at the UCLA Fielding School and former chief science officer for the county’s public health department, said slashing the program was a “dangerous” and “shortsighted” move that would leave public health officials in the dark as to what’s happening with the disease on the ground.
Considerable cuts also are anticipated to the City of Long Beach, UCLA and nine community health providers who provide HIV prevention services, including $383,000 for the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s community HIV prevention programs, local officials said.
Leading California Democrats railed against the cuts. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said the move was an unlawful attempt by Trump to punish blue states that “won’t bend to his extremist agenda.”
“His message to the 1.2 million Americans living with HIV is clear: their lives are not a priority, political retribution is,” Padilla said in a statement.
The states argue in the lawsuit that the administration’s decision “singles out jurisdictions for disfavor based not on any rational purpose related to the goals of any program but rather based on partisan animus.”
The lawsuit asked the court to declare the cuts unlawful and to bar the administration from implementing them or “engaging in future retaliatory conduct regarding federal funding or other participation in federal programs” based on the states exercising their sovereign authority in unrelated matters.
Greg Pirio bought his home in the northern Virginia suburbs more than a dozen years ago, never imagining a massive data center would be his neighbor.
It’s one of around 200 such facilities in Loudoun County, considered the data center capital of the world.
President Trump has signed executive action to fast-track federal data center permitting and try to limit regulations in an effort to bolster infrastructure in the AI race.
“There’s only going to be one winner here, and that’s probably going to be the U.S. or China,” Mr. Trump said as he signed an executive order in December aimed at limiting AI regulations at the state level.
“We have the big investment coming, but if they had to get 50 different approvals from 50 different states, you can forget it, because it’s not possible to do, especially if you have some hostile. All you need is one hostile actor and you wouldn’t be able to do it. So it doesn’t make sense,” the president said.
Pirio compares the data centerconstruction boom to a second Industrial Revolution, but he says it’s not without impacts to neighboring homeowners. He and his community have concerns about constant noise from the center, air pollution from an on-site power plant and rising electricity costs.
Long-term, he worries about property values.
“Like so many other people in the country, you know, that’s where our savings are, where we have our generational wealth,” he said.
It’s an issue that John McAuliff believes helped him get elected to the state House last fall, representing parts of Fauquier and Loudoun counties. He flipped the seat from Republican to Democratic.
“Folks are waking up,” said McAuliff. “I think that it is something that if you have these in your community, you’re starting to realize the impacts.”
He says it emerged as a top issue for voters he talked to while door-knocking in neighborhoods, and he made it a prominent issue in his campaign ads.
As a newly sworn-in delegate, McAuliffe is now pushing for legislation aimed at making sure residents don’t foot the bill for electricity costs.
“I think it’s an important industry. I’m not saying they should all get out and leave, but I am saying that if you’re going to come into a community and you’re going to take resources out of that community, then you have to be willing to give back to that community,” he said.
He also has proposed bills to address zoning and environmental concerns stemming from the data centers’ backup generators on site.
Dan Diorio of the Data Center Coalition, which advocates for the industry, says the industry is committed to covering its costs and working to mitigate community impacts.
“The data center industry is committed to being a responsible partner,” said Diorio.
He also points to significant community benefits from job creation and local revenue raised. Loudoun County describes the industry as an important part of the local economy, generating almost half of the county’s property tax revenues.
Diorio also argues the demand isn’t going away.
“Digital infrastructure is the backbone of the 21st century economy. Increasingly, it is an essential part of ensuring the United States’ global economic competitiveness,” he said. “It’s a national security imperative. This is all of our data. We want it stored here.”
The U.S. Census Bureau says data center construction spending increased over 55% between 2023 and 2024. The top states for that spending include Louisiana, Virginia, Mississippi, Texas and Arizona, according to ConstructConnect.
However, many of those living closest to the issue are pleading for more oversight.
“Let’s slow things down so that we can do it in a way that’s gonna help communities, not damage them,” said Pirio.
Democratic U.S. Reps. Angie Craig and Betty McCollum of Minnesota said Friday that they were denied entry to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility at the Whipple federal building in Minneapolis.
McCollum, of Minnesota’s 4th Congressional District, said she was told by federal officials that, because of a lawsuit, only 13 people are allowed in the facility, though she did not expand on the lawsuit she was referring to.
McCollum added that there’s language in the last appropriations bill that was passed that allows members of Congress to “fulfill their Congressional obligation for life, health and safety, and to make sure that people are treated in humane conditions.”
CBS News has reached out to federal agencies for clarity about why members of Congress were not allowed in, but has not yet heard back.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” McCollum said. “No president has ever behaved this way, breaking the law, breaking the constitution, and having his administration just decide what they wanna do and what they don’t wanna do. Whether it’s the Defense Department or the Department of Homeland Security, it’s out of control.”
Friday marked the second time Craig, who represents Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District, was denied access to the facility. She, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, and Rep. Kelly Morrison, D-Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District, were denied entry last month.
“We are bound by our duties as members of Congress to be able to check on their health, on their safety,” Craig said.
She added that she’s received reports from her constituents that some of the people detained have “serious medical issues” and that family members aren’t able to give prescription drugs to them.
Craig and McCollum in a joint written statement, said, “This will not be the last time we show up to conduct our oversight duties.”
Morrison calls for facility’s closure
Morrison, who was granted access to the Whipple building facility on Friday afternoon, says she saw about 40 people inside.
She says she’s worried about the spread of measles at the building and couldn’t get any information on plans to limit exposure.
“People are sleeping on concrete floors. They don’t have real blankets. They have those kind of tinfoil, temporary blankets. It’s a very, it’s a very disheartening scene and I think it’s beneath what we should expect in the United States of America,” Morrison said on Friday afternoon.
She said the facility should be shut down.
“People are very dejected. It’s horrifying to be present in that place,” Morrison said.
She added she was let in because she’s one of 13 members of Congress suing the Trump administration over policies restricting unannounced visits to ICE facilities.
California doesn’t need a governor who “wins” a two-hour TV show. We need a leader who can fix the budget, steady our economy and make government actually work.
I was at the debate. Six men thought the job description includes mansplaining, not being the best-prepared steward of a $300 billion budget. The men on stage were eager to interrupt, lecture and score points.
Meanwhile, only one candidate has already managed the state’s books, uncovered waste and abuse, and protected pensions for millions of Californians: former Controller Betty Yee. She didn’t mug for the cameras. She did what women leaders so often do: Show up prepared, focus on solutions and let the work speak for itself.
If we are serious about solving California’s problems on Day One, it’s time to look past the male theatrics and choose the adult in the room: Betty Yee.
Jill Stegman clearly highlights real challenges facing California’s public school populations. But by insisting that test scores won’t rise until societal issues are fixed, she does a disservice to students.
Some schools are beating the odds with the populations they serve. Some districts are shrinking achievement gaps. The data is out there. Curriculum and teaching does matter. In the case of literacy, adopting evidence-based approaches can lead to gains even for students facing multiple challenges in the Central Valley. For math, centering practice around examining student data, research-based teaching, and early intervention has boosted performance in districts with high levels of poverty and multilingual learners.
The systemic issue is that these wins are scattered. California is still struggling to deploy evidence-based instruction and intervention at scale. Until that is in place, simply blaming society and implying there is little schools can do ignores the clear steps that districts can take now.
Katie Chin Fremont
Emotional intelligence can help curb violence
California is in the crosshairs of Donald Trump’s politics. As America spins in political and policy turmoil, California must stand up.
Initiate Justice has created an innovative program at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga. The Initiate Justice Bill Clinic is teaching policy to incarcerated residents. The clinic is writing three pieces of proposed legislation. The bills are directed toward criminal justice, rehabilitation models and implementation of social-emotional learning in California schools.
The social-emotional learning bill is tentatively titled the Shaw-Scott Act. The legislation is dedicated in part to Otis Scott III of Oakland, who at 19 lost his life at the hands of a friend in 1995. One of the bill’s authors was convicted of the crime and wants to show the importance of emotional intelligence in our schools. Social-emotional learning in our schools will help reduce violence.
Oversight is more essential today than ever. Without its transparency and accountability, constitutional human liberty is overrun by tyranny. Such tyranny tops our daily news documenting excessive force by masked, unidentified swarms who break down doors and smash car windows, detaining, teargassing, shooting and even killing residents.
Too often fatally, those firing bullets or “less lethals” — steel balls, wooden blocks, pepper-balls or blinding/deafening flashbangs in multi-munition grenades — act with impunity.
Police oversight restrains impunity. Decades ago, Berkeley established the first Police Review Commission, strengthened by 2020 voters to a Police Accountability Board, for civilian review of police misconduct and transparency and accountability standards.
The article gives a needed wake-up call. In-depth investigation and reporting are essential to expose transparency erosions. Call on the Berkeley City Council to recommit to the accountability necessary to preserve the 250-year-old balance Americans call democracy.
Thank you, David Brooks, for telling us why We the People must urge the removal of Donald Trump from the presidency. In addition to Brook’s analysis, the facts are compelling.
Trump is a convicted felon and the leader of an attempt to overthrow our government, making him a traitor. He is an uninhibited liar and promises retribution against his perceived enemies. He is destroying our long-standing relationship with our allies, including our closest ally, Canada, and crippling our health system. He is pushing the Supreme Court and Republican Congress to support unconstitutional and law-breaking acts. He is menacing blue cities and states with the equivalent of a Gestapo-like atmosphere for immigrants, citizens or not. He has threatened Greenland and overthrown the leadership in Venezuela. He has attacked our higher-education system.
I believe Trump gets up every morning and thinks, ”Who can I hurt today?” You’ve hurt us enough. Out.
The Republican leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees have rejected a top-secret complaint from an anonymous government insider alleging that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard withheld classified information for political reasons.The responses this week from Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Rick Crawford mean the complaint is unlikely to proceed further, though Democratic lawmakers who also have seen the document said they continue to question why it took Gabbard’s office eight months to refer the complaint to Congress as required by law.Gabbard’s office has rejected any allegations of wrongdoing as well as criticism of the timeframe for the referral, saying the complaint included so many classified details that it necessitated an extensive legal and security review. Select lawmakers were able to view the complaint this week.Cotton wrote Thursday on X that he agreed with an earlier inspector general’s conclusion that the complaint did not appear to be credible. He said he believes the complaint was prompted by political opposition to Gabbard and the Trump administration.“To be frank, it seems like just another effort by the president’s critics in and out of government to undermine policies that they don’t like,” wrote the Arkansas Republican, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.When asked about the complaint, Cotton’s office referred to his social media post.Crawford, the House Intelligence Committee chairman, also of Arkansas, said he believes the complaint was an attempt to smear Gabbard’s reputation.Democrats are pushing for explanations about why it took Gabbard’s office months to refer the complaint to the required members of Congress. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the law requires such a report to be sent within 21 days.“The law is clear,” Warner said Thursday at the Capitol. “I think it was an effort to try to bury this whistleblower complaint.”Warner said he also still has questions about the details of the complaint, noting that it was heavily redacted.The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said in a written statement that he will keep looking into the matter.In a memo sent to lawmakers this week, the intelligence community’s inspector general said the complaint also accused Gabbard’s office of general counsel of failing to report a potential crime to the Department of Justice. The memo, which contains redactions, does not offer further details of either allegation.Last June, then-inspector general Tamara Johnson found that the claim Gabbard distributed classified information along political lines did not appear to be credible, according to the current watchdog, Christopher Fox. Johnson was “unable to assess the apparent credibility” of the accusation about the general counsel’s office, Fox wrote in the memo.Fox said he would have deemed the complaint non-urgent, unlike the previous inspector general, but respected the decision of his predecessor and therefore sent it to lawmakers.Copies of the top-secret complaint were hand-delivered this week to the “Gang of Eight” — a group comprised of the House and Senate leaders from both parties as well as the four top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees.Andrew Bakaj, the attorney for the person who made the complaint, has said that while he cannot discuss the details of the report or the identity of its author, there is no justification for keeping it from Congress since last spring.A former CIA officer and now the chief legal counsel at Whistleblower Aid, Bakaj said he has heard significant redactions were made to the complaint before it was given to members of Congress.“Given the extensive redactions we understand exist, even in the version provided to the Gang of Eight, it seems unlikely anyone could reasonably and in a non-partisan manner reach the conclusions issued by Sen. Cotton,” Bakaj wrote in a statement to The Associated Press.Gabbard coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies. She has recently drawn attention for another matter — appearing on site last week when the FBI served a search warrant on election offices in Georgia that are central to Trump’s disproven claims about fraud in the 2020 election.
WASHINGTON —
The Republican leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees have rejected a top-secret complaint from an anonymous government insider alleging that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard withheld classified information for political reasons.
The responses this week from Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Rick Crawford mean the complaint is unlikely to proceed further, though Democratic lawmakers who also have seen the document said they continue to question why it took Gabbard’s office eight months to refer the complaint to Congress as required by law.
Gabbard’s office has rejected any allegations of wrongdoing as well as criticism of the timeframe for the referral, saying the complaint included so many classified details that it necessitated an extensive legal and security review. Select lawmakers were able to view the complaint this week.
Cotton wrote Thursday on X that he agreed with an earlier inspector general’s conclusion that the complaint did not appear to be credible. He said he believes the complaint was prompted by political opposition to Gabbard and the Trump administration.
“To be frank, it seems like just another effort by the president’s critics in and out of government to undermine policies that they don’t like,” wrote the Arkansas Republican, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.
When asked about the complaint, Cotton’s office referred to his social media post.
Crawford, the House Intelligence Committee chairman, also of Arkansas, said he believes the complaint was an attempt to smear Gabbard’s reputation.
Democrats are pushing for explanations about why it took Gabbard’s office months to refer the complaint to the required members of Congress. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the law requires such a report to be sent within 21 days.
“The law is clear,” Warner said Thursday at the Capitol. “I think it was an effort to try to bury this whistleblower complaint.”
Warner said he also still has questions about the details of the complaint, noting that it was heavily redacted.
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said in a written statement that he will keep looking into the matter.
In a memo sent to lawmakers this week, the intelligence community’s inspector general said the complaint also accused Gabbard’s office of general counsel of failing to report a potential crime to the Department of Justice. The memo, which contains redactions, does not offer further details of either allegation.
Last June, then-inspector general Tamara Johnson found that the claim Gabbard distributed classified information along political lines did not appear to be credible, according to the current watchdog, Christopher Fox. Johnson was “unable to assess the apparent credibility” of the accusation about the general counsel’s office, Fox wrote in the memo.
Fox said he would have deemed the complaint non-urgent, unlike the previous inspector general, but respected the decision of his predecessor and therefore sent it to lawmakers.
Copies of the top-secret complaint were hand-delivered this week to the “Gang of Eight” — a group comprised of the House and Senate leaders from both parties as well as the four top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Andrew Bakaj, the attorney for the person who made the complaint, has said that while he cannot discuss the details of the report or the identity of its author, there is no justification for keeping it from Congress since last spring.
A former CIA officer and now the chief legal counsel at Whistleblower Aid, Bakaj said he has heard significant redactions were made to the complaint before it was given to members of Congress.
“Given the extensive redactions we understand exist, even in the version provided to the Gang of Eight, it seems unlikely anyone could reasonably and in a non-partisan manner reach the conclusions issued by Sen. Cotton,” Bakaj wrote in a statement to The Associated Press.
Gabbard coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies. She has recently drawn attention for another matter — appearing on site last week when the FBI served a search warrant on election offices in Georgia that are central to Trump’s disproven claims about fraud in the 2020 election.
With the Trump administration reportedly in talks to create an anti-fraud task force for California, state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Thursday vehemently denounced what he described as the administration’s “reckless” and “false” rhetoric about fraud plaguing the state.
At a news conference at the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles, Bonta said the Trump administration’s claims that state programs are overrun by fraud and that its government was itself perpetrating or facilitating this fraud was “outrageous and ridiculous and without basis.”
Bonta said most states struggle with some fraud from outside actors, saying that “anywhere there’s money flowing there’s a risk” and that the state’s Department of Justice has thrown immense resources into cracking down on illicit activities and recovering funds for taxpayers.
As a politicized national fight over waste, fraud and abuse led by Republicans have targeted California and its Democratic leadership, Bonta and other state officials have moved swiftly to combat the claims.
In California, Bonta said, authorities have recovered nearly $2.7 billion through criminal and civil prosecutions since 2016, including some $740 million through Medi-Cal fraud related prosecutions, about $2 billion under the state’s False Claims Act, and an additional $108 million from a task force focused on rooting out tax fraud in the underground economy.
State authorities have frequently partnered with the federal government in the past on such investigations and welcome a good-faith partnership in the future, Bonta said.
CBS News reported on the creation of a California-focused fraud task force earlier this week, citing multiple unnamed sources familiar with the plans. The outlet, whose new editor in chief, Bari Weiss, has been aligned with Trump and spearheaded a major overhaul of the news organization, reported that the president plans to soon sign an executive order naming Vice President JD Vance as head of a group that would also include the head of the Federal Trade Commission as vice chairman.
Trump’s rhetoric fueled doubts about California programs and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s leadership at the start of the year, when he declared that “the fraud investigation of California [had] begun.”
On the president’s social media platform, in formal letters and in recent news conferences, officials in the Trump administration have alleged fraud in child care, hospice funding and unemployment benefits.
Last week, the topic took center stage again when Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, posted a video accusing Armenian crime groups of carrying out widespread hospice fraud in Los Angeles.
That viral video received more than 4.5 million views on X.
Oz’s video received fierce backlash from California politicians and the local Armenian community, who collectively alleged that it contained baseless and racially charged attacks on Armenians.
The video shows Oz being driven around a section of Van Nuys where he says that about $3.5-billion worth of medicare fraud has been perpetrated by hospice and home-care businesses, claiming that “it’s run, quite a bit of it, by the Russian Armenian mafia.”
He also points to Armenian language signs, incorrectly referring to them as written in a cerulean script, and saying “you notice that the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect and it also highlights the fact that this is an organized crime mafia deal.”
Newsom filed a civil rights complaint against Oz on Jan. 29, asking the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the “racially charged and false public statements” made in the video.
On Monday, California Sen. Adam Schiff followed suit, demanding an independent review of Oz’s alleged targeting of Armenian American communities.
“To suggest markers of Armenian culture, language, and identity are indicative of criminality underscores a discriminatory motive that could taint any investigation into fraud and incite the further demonization of the community,” Schiff said in a statement.
Glendale City Councilmember Ardy Kassakhian said in an interview that Oz’s statements feed into the Trump administration’s playbook of using allegations of fraud to sow racial divisions.
“This time the focus just happens to be the Armenians,” he said. “In places like Minnesota, it’s the Somali community.”
California has been investigating healthcare fraud since a 2020 Los Angeles Times investigation uncovered widespread Medicare fraud in the state’s booming but loosely regulated hospice industry.
From 2010 to 2020, the county’s hospices multiplied sixfold, accounting for more than half of the state’s roughly 1,200 Medicare-certified providers, according to a Times analysis of federal healthcare data.
Scores of providers sprang up along a corridor stretching west from the San Gabriel Valley through the San Fernando Valley, which now has the highest concentration of hospices in the nation.
The state Department of Justice has charged more than 100 people with hospice-related fraud since 2021 and shuttered around 280 hospices in the last two years, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.
But those shuttered hospices barely represent a dent in the massive hospice home healthcare industry. There are 468 hospice facilities in the Van Nuys area alone, according to the state database of medical facilities.
There are 197 licensed medical practices, including 89 licensed hospices, in a single two-story building located at 14545 Friar St. in Van Nuys — suggesting a concentration of fraudulent businesses.
When asked why the number of licensed medical practices in Van Nuys and at that address are so high, a spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health said that the department is committed to fighting fraud and unable to comment on pending investigation.
Recent turmoil in Minnesota has demonstrated the potential ripple effects of allegations levied by the Trump administration.
Ahead of sending in thousands of immigration enforcement agents into the Midwest state, Trump had repeatedly cited a fraud case involving funds for a child nutrition program involving COVID-19 pandemic relief funds.
He used the case, which involved a nonprofit where several Somali Americans worked, to vilify the immigrant community, even though the organization was run by a white woman. After the state became a lightning rod, Gov. Tim Walz dropped his reelection plans.
At Thursday’s news conference, Bonta described major cases in other states, such as $11.4 million healthcare fraud and wire fraud conspiracy involving a nursing assistant in Florida and a $88.3 million Medicaid fraud case in in Ohio involving over billing by a pharmacy benefit manager — to show abuse of state programs is not unique to California — or to blue states.
“We know Vance hails from Ohio, so maybe he should take a look in his own backyard before leading an unnecessary political stunt focused on California,” Bonta said. “We thought we should set the record straight.”
Times staff writers Melody Gutierrez and Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
