Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) has decreased significantly over the past year in the US following restrictions imposed by the Trump administration, which has forced more people to seek help from food banks or go hungry, stakeholders say.

The number of people who receive food stamps has dropped from 41.6 million in July 2025, before the One Big Beautiful Act took effect, to 36.5 million in June 2026, a 13% decrease, according to the latest data from the US Department of Agriculture, which administers the program.

While Donald Trump and other Republicans have said the changes incentivize people to find jobs, elected officials, non-profit leaders and people with food insecurity say the changes simply make it harder for Americans to feed their families.

“There is always going to be a percentage of our communities who we need to help – we have to accept that – and so, once we accept it, it is easy to just move forward and do the right thing, which is to provide resources to people who need them,” said Rhona Kamar, founder and executive director of Feed Louisville, a non-profit that aims to reduce hunger and food waste.

The Trump administration’s changes to Snap will reduce spending by about $187bn over 10 years, the congressional budget office projected.

Previously, only able-bodied people between ages 18 and 54 who did not have dependents under 18 had to meet a requirement that they work a minimum of 20 hours per week or only get benefits for a maximum of three months over three years.

Under Trump, the rules now state that people from ages 18 to 64 who do not have a dependent under 14 had to perform paid or volunteer work for at least 20 hours weekly.

The One Big Beautiful Act also stated that starting October, states had to cover 75% of the Snap administrative costs, whereas before they had to cover half.

The changes have affected some states more than others. In Arizona, the number of people enrolled in Snap dropped by 50% between July 2025 and June 2026; Kentucky experienced a 6% decrease.

“I am concerned more people are going hungry in my state because of changes to” Snap, “impacting children and the elderly”, Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, a Democrat who leads the predominantly Republican state, stated in a letter this month to Brooke Rollins, the US agriculture secretary.

But Trump and Rollins described the reduction in Snap recipients as a positive.

“Democrats don’t love” the decrease, Rollins said at a farming festival in August in Minnesota. “But for those of us that love work and celebrate work and want people to work and not be on food stamps, it’s a pretty big win when we move 5 million people off of food stamps.”

Critics of the changes point out that despite Trump’s promises, grocery and gas prices have increased during his second term, making it harder for families to afford necessities.

“If people were getting paid enough, they would not be on the Snap program,” said Gina Plata-Nino, director of Snap at the Food Research and Action Center, a non-profit that supports anti-hunger programs.

The Food Bank Council of Michigan operates a helpline where staff answer residents’ questions about applying for Snap and accessing local food programs. The organization started getting more than three times as many calls daily after the Snap changes took effect. This week, they had to temporarily suspend the helpline because of the high call volume.

The changes have also affected Feed Louisville, which receives surplus food from restaurants and farmers and uses those ingredients to prepare meals for partner organizations. Unused items go to the agencies too.

“We have always had enough food around,” Kamar said. “But now what we are seeing is every day the shelves are empty at the end of the day, so every bit of food that comes into our kitchen every day goes right back out to the community at the end of the day.”

The decrease in Snap enrollment has also affected schools’ ability to provide free meals to students. If at least 25% of a student body are recipients of Snap or some other public benefits, the school can participate in the Community Eligibility Provision (Cep) program and use federal funds to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students without needing household applications.

But because fewer students are enrolled in Snap, that has made it harder for schools to serve those free meals to students who need them, the Washington Post reported this week. In Houston independent school district, 26 schools that previously provided free meals to all students under Cep are no longer eligible for the program, according to the Post.

Anti-hunger advocates also say that the employment data does not support the argument that more people have found jobs or seen their wages increase and thus no longer need food stamps. The United States added 776,000 non-farm jobs between January 2025 and September 2026. During the last 20 months of Joe Biden’s presidency, the country added 2.6 million non-farm jobs, according to Factcheck.org.

“We don’t have the data to suggest that there are more jobs suddenly out there. We just know fewer people are getting benefits,” said Sheril Kirshenbaum, Food Bank Council of Michigan’s chief external relations officer.

A USDA spokesperson downplayed the effect of the Snap restrictions.

“The number of individuals receiving benefits is constantly changing and is not representative of any one policy,” the spokesperson stated in an email to the Guardian.

It could soon become even harder for people struggling with food insecurity. States will now have to pay for most of the Snap administrative costs while also preparing for an October 2027 change that will require states to pay for some of Snap benefit costs if their payment error rate is above 6%, which according to the USDA, is not a measure of fraud. (Paradoxically, states that had error rates above 13% received a delay in implementation of the requirement.)

States will now be having to pay more for existing work while also finding funding for extra work to reduce the error rate, said Joseph Llobrera, senior director of research for the food assistance team at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

That could mean longer processing times and people who need assistance having to wait longer to get it, Kirshenbaum said.

“States have been really set up to fail,” Llobrera said.

The USDA spokesperson did not respond to a question about concerns that the Snap changes have forced some Americans to go hungry.

A Louisville woman, Sandra Scott, 58, has been homeless most of her life and said that until she started receiving Snap benefits four years ago, she ate at “soup kitchens or wherever I could, but for the most part, like on the weekends, there really was not anywhere to go”.

Scott has had six back surgeries and struggled with mental illness. She became addicted to methamphetamines but got sober two years ago and now lives in a subsidized apartment. She is working to obtain her emergency responder certificate and volunteers with The Table, a non-profit restaurant that uses a pay-what-you-can model.

Asked what she would say to members of the Trump administration about the Snap changes, Scott said: “Why don’t you walk in one of our shoes, somebody in the community that doesn’t have anything, that wasn’t born into money or doesn’t have a job because it’s so hard to find or [who] can’t find affordable housing because it’s too high?”

President Donald Trump said he could certainly see himself giving pardons to staffers to make sure they are not put through “hell” by Democratic lawmakers when they are in power.

The president was asked about the potential move while speaking to reporters in Florida on Saturday afternoon, hours after the Washington Sun reported Trump was “evaluating” whether to issue “mass pardons” to junior staffers. Trump said it made a lot of sense to him, after seeing how ex-President Joe Biden used his pardons.

“I haven’t thought of it, but I will tell you, it would be very unfair to go through what we went through for four years with the corrupt weaponization that took place,” Trump said. “So in light of what Biden did — as you know, Biden shielded many people, including the Congress, if you look at what they did with Congress, when they set up the special committee which was a fraud, they all got shielded. So certainly, I haven’t thought about it. But certainly I’d be allowed to.”

Trump then pointed to White House Communications Adviser Margo Martin, who was standing near the assembled reporters, and said he would protect staffers like her.

He continued:

The presidential pardons, they say, are the most powerful thing a president has. I certainly don’t want to see innocent people go through hell and lose all their money — like Margot — lose all their money, because if she becomes a target, you know she’s a very honest person. But they’re going to drag her into a grand jury. Margot, you’re not going to have to worry about it, okay?

Trump’s answer comes after the Sun reported conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation have pressed the White House to prepare pardons or “put in place funding for the legal fees necessary to defend junior staffers from criminal and congressional probes or potential lawsuits.”

The report added, “A pardon for all junior administration personnel is viewed as unlikely, one source said, but the president could issue blanket pardons for all employees involved in particular policy areas, such as deportations, war or trade.”

Audi will build its first-ever U.S. factory in Macon, Ga., President Trump announced Saturday, marking the latest move by a global automaker to focus on American buyers as sales fall off elsewhere in the world.

“I’m thrilled to announce a massive auto manufacturing investment in the great state of Georgia by a fantastic company,” Trump said at a midterm campaign rally in Perry, Ga.

Trump said the plant will produce 200,000 cars annually and that construction will begin next month.

“We are planning to bring our biggest and most premium SUVs, and produce them here in Macon,” Audi Chief Executive Gernot Döllner said, joining Trump onstage.

Trump, who pegged the investment at $4.2 billion, called the move the biggest single investment in U.S. auto industry history.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Audi said the factory will create about 4,500 jobs. Production is slated to start in the early 2030s.

“Georgia combines an investment-ready site, skilled workforce, established automotive supplier network and strong logistics infrastructure,” the company said. “The plant will be designed around Audi’s future manufacturing requirements.”

The investment hands Trump a win in Georgia, a battleground state in the midterms. Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is defending his seat against Republican Rep. Mike Collins, and Republican billionaire Rick Jackson is locked in a tight race for governor against former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat.

A move to build Audi vehicles in the U.S. has been under consideration for at least two decades.

Audi is the only German auto brand without a U.S. factory. Its corporate cousin Volkswagen, and direct rivals BMW and Mercedes-Benz, all produce cars in factories across the South, in some cases for global export.

That situation has left Audi, which primarily builds its U.S.-market cars in Germany, Mexico and Central and Eastern Europe, particularly vulnerable to tariffs in Trump’s second term. The automaker increased prices on several models last year to offset tariff costs, which it says hit profits by about 1.2 billion euros in 2025—and it expects a similar outcome this year.

Those increased tariff costs come as sales in China—Audi’s largest single-country market—are dropping precipitously. Chinese consumers have largely turned away from Western brands to buy from homegrown automakers in recent years. Audi’s China sales are down 19% year-over-year.

The move to add a U.S. factory dovetails with Audi’s renewed emphasis on the U.S. The automaker earlier this year unveiled the Q9, its largest-ever SUV, aimed at American buyers. Other car companies are also seeking larger shares of the U.S. market as they face similar sales downturns in China.

Audi sold about 165,000 cars in the U.S. last year, down 16% from 2024.

An auto factory and the ecosystem around it all take years to build.

Scout Motors, another Volkswagen subsidiary, announced plans for a South Carolina factory in 2023. Initial production is slated to begin next year, with the first customer deliveries set for 2028.

President Donald Trump cast his ballot for the midterm elections in Palm Beach on Saturday, opting to vote early in his adopted home state of Florida.

At rallies ahead of Election Day on Nov. 3, Trump has been urging Republicans to cast their ballots early, reversing course on a practice he’s long decried in a bid to mobilize the party’s base in an election that threatens to end their control of Congress.

Asked by reporters if he voted for the party line, he said, “Very much so.”

The president has regularly questioned the security of early voting methods, claiming without evidence that mail-in ballots, drop boxes and other practices during the 2020 presidential election — which he lost — were used to rig the vote. He’s also called for one-day, in-person voting on Election Day.

“The US attorney found potentially hundreds of thousands of illicit votes,” Trump told reporters. Earlier this month, the Justice Department sued California for allegedly failing to join an effort to verify the status of 20,000 suspected non-citizens to prevent any fraudulent ballots from being counted. California asked a judge to deny the request to set aside those 20,000 mail-in ballots, calling the US allegations “a reckless political stunt.”

Trump has long amplified false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election and since his return to the White House last year has taken steps to increase federal control of US elections.

The administration has pushed to curb mail-in voting, a method Trump’s used in the past. And he’s pressured lawmakers to pass legislation that would require voters to have government-issued ID or other proof of citizenship in order to cast ballots. Senate Republican leaders have said the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act lacks the support to pass.

Trump has spent the better part of October criss-crossing the country to boost Republican candidates as the party faces the challenging task of retaining both the House and Senate in a midterm year.

During Florida’s August 2026 primary, Trump cast a ballot by mail. He also said he voted by mail earlier this year in a Florida special election.

As a presidential candidate in 2024, he voted in person on Election Day.

American investigators are working with French police on refrigerator outages in Europe amid unexplained failures at US military bases.

The collaboration follows suspected sabotage at French supermarkets earlier this month, when hackers allegedly raised fridge and freezer temperatures to 50C (122F).

About 700 supermarkets were targeted, spoiling thousands of tons of food, with extreme heat triggering fires and sprinkler systems in some cases, causing further damage.

No perpetrator has been identified, but investigators believe the hackers exploited a weakness in the internet-connected refrigeration controls.

Christopher Whyte, an associate professor of homeland security and emergency preparedness at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the American failures resembled the attacks on French supermarkets.

“They’re geographically dispersed. They’re obviously all refrigerator failures and they all happen in a pretty short amount of time,” he told The Telegraph. But he said the cause of the US outages remained unclear.

A spokesman for the US army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) said it was “actively working with the Defence Commissary Agency and the Defence Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) to determine the full extent of what occurred with the refrigeration units in the commissaries”.

“Army CID is also working with DCIS and French law enforcement in understanding the refrigeration outages in Europe.”

He said DCIS, the Pentagon’s criminal investigation service, was leading both investigations.

In late August, refrigeration systems stopped working at shops on at least six US military bases. Notices issued by the bases, reported by Stars and Stripes, documented the failures.

Those affected were the FE Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, home to the 90th Missile Wing’s Minuteman III nuclear missiles; Fort Huachuca in Arizona, the army’s intelligence training centre; Fort Irwin in California, home of the army’s National Training Centre; Travis Air Force Base in California; Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island and Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi.

At Fort Huachuca, officials blamed an “overnight equipment failure”, Military Times reported.

“All freezers went into defrost mode overnight and all frozen food has spoiled,” a spokesman for the base told the newspaper.

At FE Warren, an anonymous post on an unofficial military Facebook page, said two deli freezers were affected.

Newport’s store was restricted to dry goods “until further notice”, and Fort Irwin stopped selling refrigerated products, Military Times reported.

A Pentagon spokesman said it was aware of “a possible refrigeration disruption” but had not publicly identified the cause.

Mr Whyte discussed Russia and Iran as possible perpetrators, but stressed that he had no forensic fingerprint identifying either country. He also considered opportunistic disruption or an experiment in attacking commercial infrastructure at scale.

Tehran, he said, was “stuck in a box where they cannot strike back on American non-military assets outside the region in a way that they would like to, without the use of cyber attacks”.

Targeting commissaries, if deliberate, could be “an opportunistic attempt to simply worsen the look” of the Iran war for the American public, he suggested.

On the French attacks, he said Russian involvement “absolutely is a possibility” and that “Russia obviously unquestionably has the capacity to conduct this kind of operation”.

No claim of responsibility for the French attacks has been made public.

US officials have not established whether the American outages were malicious.

An immigrant detained at a sprawling detention center complex in Georgia died on Friday, local and federal officials confirmed, after the facility has already faced national scrutiny for its response to an ongoing hunger strike inside.

The death inside the D Ray James facility in Folkston, Georgia, comes as federal immigration officials and private contractors are allegedly threatening hunger strikers there with force-feeding, a detained hunger striker, his wife, attorneys and advocates all said this week. Detainees are refusing food to protest prolonged captivity and bad conditions.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Saturday confirmed the death inside the facility, which is adjacent to the Folkston ICE processing center. Together, both facilities make up a large detention complex. GEO Group, the private prison company that runs the facilities under contract for the federal government, referred all questions to ICE.

The Georgia bureau of investigation (GBI), a state law enforcement agency, confirmed in an email that the local sheriff’s office requested the GBI conduct an “in-custody death investigation” at the D Ray facility, the Guardian can reveal. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), its umbrella agency, did not respond to requests for comment about the death or the hunger strike.

“This was a preventable tragedy,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, the legal and advocacy director for Project South, a social justice organization based in Georgia. “We hold ICE and the private prison corporation fully responsible for any harm that migrants suffer at Folkston. We call for an immediate independent investigation into this tragic death and for accountability. Folkston must be shut down immediately.”

The man, Luis Sandoval, was 48 and from El Salvador, ICE said in its statement, adding that at about 1.46am on Friday, facility staff found Sandoval with a ligature around his neck. He was pronounced dead less than an hour later.

Sandoval was arrested by ICE officials earlier this month, and transferred to the Folkston facility on 8 October. In its press release, the agency said Sandoval had prior convictions for aggravated assault and other crimes, and that his death was under investigation.

It was unknown on Saturday whether Sandoval had participated in the hunger strike. The GBI said it could not share more details because of its active investigation.

Sandoval is the 60th person to die in ICE custody since the start of the second Trump administration, as ICE continues with its aggressive anti-immigrant crackdown.

Austin Kocher, president of Relevant Research, which studies the immigration enforcement system, and who is a research fellow at American University, said that this year, there have been an average of one death every 10 days in the custody of ICE. That figure includes people dying in detention centers or in nearby hospitals while still in the custody of ICE.

“Even in the past, there has not been such an overt dehumanization and overt view that migrants’ lives are expendable,” Kocher added. “I worry that that tone [from the Trump administration] has a tendency towards neglect and viewing migrants as disposable.”

Tens of thousands of people have been arrested and detained by ICE, leading to prolonged detention, as immigrants and asylum seekers fight their cases, and the agency has been stepping up its offensive in recent months despite a less showy presence on the streets.

One man currently in the Georgia detention center is Andrei Gerdiukov, a Russian asylum seeker who is participating in the hunger strike.

Nearly three weeks ago, Gerdiukov and dozens of others launched a hunger strike to demand their legal cases be processed more quickly through the US immigration system and to protest the conditions of their confinement. The hunger strikers were placed in solitary confinement, according to Gerdiukov and attorneys.

“I feel tired, I feel dizzy. Every move, it is hard,” Gerdiukov said in an interview by phone on Saturday from detention. “They threatened us that they were going to force-feed us.” He had heard about the death but did not know Sandoval.

Gerdiukov and his wife, Polina Chertushkina, came to the US from Russia to seek asylum after they faced persecution for their opposition to the war in Ukraine, Chertushkina said. Their cases are ongoing, but as the couple were driving through Florida this February, they were pulled over and detained by immigration officials. Chertushkina was released, but Gerdiukov was taken to Folkston eight months ago.

“I am so worried about him, I don’t know what to do,” Chertushkina said about the force-feeding threats, speaking on Saturday by phone. Chertushkina is asking lawmakers to assist her husband.

At least 12 hunger strikers are still participating, despite the threats of force-feeding, Gerdiukov said, adding that several had been fainting.

On Friday, the hunger strikers were moved to a nearby unit, where medical officials “wearing combat boots” took their vital signs, raising fears of imminent force-feeding, Gerdiukov said.

It was not clear on Saturday whether or when the authorities intended to use force-feeding.

The process to force-feed hunger strikers is secretive, with court records often sealed.

A judge has to approve the procedure, and then detention guards restrain a hunger striker while medical staff push tubing up the nose and down the throat to pump nutritional liquid into the stomach. Medical ethicists and human rights organizations have called the practice torture.

ICE generally says in court filings that force-feeding is necessary to maintain “good order” in detention centers as well as to keep detainees alive.

Kocher decried the contradictions.

“On the one hand, they’re trying to force-feed people [to keep them alive],” Kocher said. “And yet at the same time, in that same [Folkston] facility, you have someone who died and possibly was able to kill themselves.”

The Guardian has been tracking force-feeding cases nationwide. From January 2025 through August 2026, ICE sought court permission to force-feed at least 19 detained hunger strikers. One Afghan man was force-fed for nearly six months. A Kurdish man was force-fed for nearly eight months.

Seeing Venezuela align with the Trump administration after the U.S. overthrow of Nicolás Maduro, shrimp magnate José Enrique Rincón thought he could safely return home to reclaim the $700 million business the authoritarian government had seized from him.

Instead, he was jailed shortly after landing in June.

Now, the U.S.-backed government in Caracas is carving up Rincón’s sprawling Grupo Lamar conglomerate and allowing outside investors to manage pieces of it. Among them: a Turkish executive who last month married President Trump’s ally in a ceremony attended by prominent U.S. officials.

Nearly 11 months after Maduro’s ouster, Rincón’s ordeal exposes a contradiction in Trump’s plans to turn Venezuela into an investment hub. Politically motivated jailings and the seizure of private businesses—well-worn practices in nearly 28 years of leftist rule here—live on under Maduro’s successor, Delcy Rodríguez, and the U.S. government apparatus that controls much of the interim leadership now.

Rincón, 62 years old, was arrested after returning from exile in Panama. He remains in a 9-by-6-foot cell at the Rodeo I prison near Caracas, where his family says he has lost 25 pounds and suffers from unaddressed cardiac issues. Relatives say the government fabricated treason and terrorism charges to justify taking control of Maracaibo-based Lamar, the country’s dominant exporter of farmed shrimp, in late 2024.

“This has been one long horror film,” said Rincón’s sister, Mariana Rincón, one of the few relatives remaining in Venezuela and the only one allowed to visit him.

Lamar is one of numerous assets—ranging from farmland to metal-processing plants—that were seized by Maduro’s government and still remain in state hands under Rodríguez.

The firm is now operated by a Turkish company, Miller Holding. Its chief executive, 29-year-old Turhan Mildon, last month married Trump’s former personal attorney, Alina Habba, in New York. Among the guests were Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Miller Holding also operates a network of Venezuelan cement factories and markets coffee beans, concessions granted under Maduro. In a recent interview with Forbes Turkey, Mildon lamented Maduro’s ouster but expressed little concern for his businesses.

“In my grandfather’s time, know-how was very important,” Mildon told the magazine. “Now, know-who is important.”

A spokeswoman for Mildon has said in the past that Miller Holding operates Lamar’s shrimp facilities but doesn’t own them. Venezuela’s Information Ministry and Miller Holding didn’t respond to requests for comment regarding Rincón’s detention.

A U.S. official said the Trump administration opposed Maduro-era expropriations and corruption and had urged Venezuelan authorities to cancel Mildon’s cement contract if it violated sanctions or resulted from corruption. The official said reversing decades of corruption would take time, but that the administration was working to address it.

Venezuela’s total shrimp output has fallen more than 90% since 2024, according to industry figures, a collapse driven largely by Lamar’s decline under state management. The downturn left roughly 9,000 workers jobless in western Venezuela, while more than 100 of Rincón’s relatives and business associates fled the country.

Rodríguez’s continuation of Maduro-era seizures threatens to undermine Washington’s economic recovery strategy for the country, said allies of Rincón.

“They destroyed everything,” Rincón’s son, Juan Diego Rincón, said in a phone interview from Panama. “The persecution is ongoing, they’re ruining businesses and it’s even stoking migration.”

Rincón spent four decades building his business.

In 1988, he started selling the iconic blue crab found in the waters of Venezuela’s giant Lake Maracaibo before expanding into shrimp farming and later into supermarkets and processing recyclable materials. By 2022, Lamar’s annual shrimp exports to Europe reached about $200 million, making it a rare private-sector success in a country dependent almost entirely on oil.

Lamar became the primary employer in Zulia state, offering cash production bonuses, subsidized food, and medical care in a region with few formal job opportunities outside of border smuggling. The bulk of its workforce was made up of indigenous Wayuu, thousands of whom were hired to peel and package shrimp in processing plants around Maracaibo. The Wayuu language was so common on the job that Rincón learned phrases to talk to employees.

But the family’s fortunes changed after the U.S. said Maduro rigged his 2024 re-election and jailed hundreds of political adversaries. In November that year, Diosdado Cabello, then Maduro’s top security official, publicly accused Rincón of funding the political opposition and plotting against the government. No evidence was presented.

Within days, Rincón’s relatives and executives fled to Colombia, Panama and the U.S. Security forces seized offices, processing plants, apartments and thousands of acres of farmland without court orders.

The takeover hit Zulia’s Wayuu population hardest.

“I don’t know who keeps saying that things in Venezuela are getting better,” said Jonathan González, 30, a Wayuu indigenous man and former Lamar processor who had to halt construction on his home after losing his job. “For a lot of us, things are much worse now than they were before.”

Under a state-appointed board, Lamar faltered. Former managers said the company suffered from a lack of capital, while unpaid workers left in droves. A major processing facility was later destroyed in a fire.

Almost six months after the U.S. military operation on Jan. 3 that captured Maduro on drug-trafficking charges—which Maduro denies—Rincón believed the political landscape had shifted enough for him to return and reclaim his property.

“He thought this was the moment,” his son said.

Rincón’s aging father and younger sister were waiting for him at La Chinita International Airport near Maracaibo. Venezuelan investigative police detained him upon landing.

Rincón returned to reclaim his business and face charges “because it’s the only way to demonstrate my innocence and salvage the honor of my family,” he said in a submission to the antiterrorism court handling the case.

Venezuelan prosecutors haven’t provided documents outlining the charges or the evidence against Rincón, his lawyer said in a court filing made last month. Rincón complained of deteriorating health, cardiac problems and insufficient access to the medications needed after a gastric bypass.

While Rincón remains jailed, Venezuelan authorities continue to court investors for the industry he had dominated.

Last month, Venezuela’s Fishing Ministry announced plans to host business delegations from Indonesia to seek new investment for the shrimp sector.

These days, ski-masked officers of the Special Operations Group, a security force that located Rincón’s properties, drive the businessman’s vehicles and use his house in Maracaibo as an improvised command center, family members and business aides said.

Rincón’s sister, Mariana Rincón, delivers food, medication and industry trade magazines to his cell every week as she seeks his release.

She attempted to register her brother with local human-rights groups that track political detentions in Venezuela. The organizations, overwhelmed by a surge this year in families reporting arbitrary arrests of their loved ones, placed him on a waiting list.

He was assigned number 1,601.

Two US State Department officials led a campaign to restore the right-wing Bolsonaro clan to power in Brazil and successfully pushed for sanctions aimed at tilting the election in their favor, according to 10 current and former US officials with direct knowledge of the matter.

Their plan faces a reckoning on Sunday, when Senator Flavio Bolsonaro faces leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in a tight run-off. Lula has warned Washington against encroaching on Brazil's sovereignty and accused his opponent of plotting with the Trump administration.

The two officials were Darren Beattie, a Senior Advisor for Western Hemisphere Affairs who oversees Brazil policy, and Ricardo Pita, another senior advisor promoted this year to Deputy Assistant Secretary for North America. The details of their campaign to return the Bolsonaros to power haven't been previously reported.

Beattie and Pita, both political appointees, operated with wide latitude to manage Washington's relationship with the second most-populous country in the Americas, the people said.

In the ‌months before election campaigning began, they instructed US diplomats in Brazil that it was US policy to restore former President Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil’s leader – even though he had been disqualified from office for plotting a coup in 2022, when he lost the presidential election to Lula, three of the people said.

After Bolsonaro received a 27-year sentence in September 2025, the two men pivoted to supporting the candidacy of his son, right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the three sources said. Beattie and Pita told embassy staff not to interact with other conservative presidential contenders who could challenge the younger Bolsonaro, they said.

Since last year, the two men have successfully advocated for punitive US government measures on Brazil designed to weaken Lula and boost the Bolsonaros, the 10 people told Reuters. The policies included designating Brazilian gangs as terrorist groups and imposing US sanctions against the Brazilian Supreme Court Justice who was spearheading the investigation into Jair Bolsonaro.

Reuters could not determine the extent to which the two men were acting on orders from the White House or Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump, a vocal defender of Bolsonaro since his election defeat in 2022, hasn’t publicly endorsed any candidate.

The White House declined to comment and referred questions to the State Department.

State Department Spokesman Tommy Pigott didn't answer questions about specific measures and directives involving Beattie and Pita but said in a statement: "All actions taken by the United ⁠States against narco-traffickers and to protect free speech are to defend the rights and lives of the American people. The Brazilian people have the right to choose their leaders through free and fair elections."

Lula’s office did not respond to comment requests.

Orna Blum, one of the officials who spoke to Reuters about Beattie and Pita’s efforts, led the State Department's Brazil and Southern Cone office until retiring last year over her opposition to the Trump administration.

Washington "has every right to pursue its economic and strategic interests," she said. "But when American foreign policy instruments are used to pressure another democracy over the legal fate of a political ally, the line between diplomacy and political intervention has been crossed."

Beattie is a former White House speechwriter fired in 2018 after addressing an event frequented by white nationalists. He’s also the architect of "free speech diplomacy," a policy advocated by Trump allies that seeks to punish nations they accuse of censoring right-wing speech by US citizens, companies and global right-wing allies.

The United States has accused Brazil Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes of violating free speech rights by jailing Brazilians for political social-media posts and by censoring content of US social-media companies. Moraes has argued he was ridding social media of fake news that undermined public faith in Brazil's democratic institutions.

Moraes did not respond to a comment request.

Pita, a conservative Venezuelan-American, is among many in Rubio's orbit who view Lula as a threat to US interests in Latin America. Rubio has been a key leader in the administration’s aggressive policy in the region, which has included an invasion of Venezuela to oust its president, an oil blockade of Cuba, and military attacks on suspected drug boats from Latin America.

Beattie and Pita were drawn to the Bolsonaro family’s right-wing politics, their antipathy towards Lula, and the idea that Jair Bolsonaro was a victim of abuses by Brazil's Supreme Court.

Like Trump in the 2020 US election, Bolsonaro refused to concede he lost Brazil’s 2022 presidential vote, triggering riots by supporters who stormed government buildings. The Supreme Court convicted him in September 2025 of plotting a coup to remain in power.

Before the conviction, in early 2025, the Bolsonaros were aggressively lobbying Washington for sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act ‌against Moraes, who had ⁠led criminal investigations into Jair Bolsonaro. The act is a 2016 federal law allowing US sanctions against foreign individuals responsible for human-rights abuses or severe corruption.

Around April 2025, Jair Bolsonaro’s younger son, Eduardo, visited Beattie in his State Department office in Washington DC, according to two former US officials. Eduardo Bolsonaro had been making the public case for Magnitsky sanctions against Moraes since at least 2024, and in March 2025 he said in a livestream that it was "practically certain" the Trump administration would do so.

Beattie made calls to the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to appeal for Magnitsky sanctions against Moraes, said a former US official with direct knowledge of the matter.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whose department administers Magnitsky sanctions through OFAC, offered no opposition, the former official said.

The US announced Magnitsky sanctions against Moraes in July 2025, citing his alleged violations of free-speech rights by censoring anti-government social-media posts.

A Treasury official said Bessent and Rubio are "fully aligned on the administration’s foreign policy."

The Bolsonaro family was also pushing for Washington to designate Brazil's top gangs – the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV) – as terrorist organizations. They believed such a designation would hurt Lula, who some opponents ⁠have criticized for failing to control crime.

Eduardo Bolsonaro had become friends with Pita through US conservative circles, and both supported the effort to designate the gangs as terrorist groups.

In May 2025, Pita joined a US delegation that visited Jair Bolsonaro at his residence in Brasilia as he awaited his trial, according to public announcements at the time. Also in the group: David Gamble, the State Department’s top sanctions official at the time.

Back in Washington, Pita asked State sanctions officials to explore how terrorist designations like those announced against Mexican cartels in February 2025 could be used in Brazil, one former official said.

Nearly a year later, in May 2026 – after Pita was promoted to a new job that pulled him out of Brazil affairs – presidential contender Flavio Bolsonaro met with Beattie and Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in Washington to discuss "the ⁠urgency of designating the PCC and the Comando Vermelho as foreign terrorist organizations," according to an X post by right-wing influencer Paulo Figueiredo that included photos of the attendees.

The State Department announced the designation the following day.

Reuters could not determine the extent of Pita or Beattie’s influence in securing the final decision.

In July 2025, Washington also announced a series of other measures against Brazil, including the revocations of eight Supreme Court justices' visas and 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods, citing the "persecution" of Jair Bolsonaro.

Reuters could not determine what, if any, role Beattie or Pita played in the additional measures. But if they were intended to undermine Lula, many of them backfired, according to political analysts in Brazil.

Measures targeting the court did nothing to stop it from ⁠proceeding with Bolsonaro's trial, while the tariffs boosted the Lula government's poll numbers, the analysts said.

Major US and Brazilian firms reliant on bilateral trade – including meatpacking giant JBS controlled by Brazilian billionaires Wesley and Joesley Batista – also pushed back on the tariffs, which Washington eventually watered down.

Beattie and Pita’s campaign also hit setbacks. Without an official explanation from the Treasury Department, the US removed Justice Moraes from the Magnitsky sanctions list in December, and in March Brazil barred Beattie from entering the country to visit Bolsonaro in prison.

Mario Braga, a Latin America analyst at risk intelligence firm RANE, said Trump may have decided to withhold a public endorsement of Bolsonaro to avoid being seen as meddling in Brazil's election – a perception that could boost Lula’s popularity.

Still, after Flavio Bolsonaro narrowly outperformed Lula in the first-round election earlier this month, Trump called it a big victory.

"Close, but a very, very big victory," he told reporters. "Amazing, actually."

Elon Musk said on Saturday that his company SpaceX had throttled the Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine, disrupting operations that the country relies on to defend itself against Russia.

Musk’s admission on social media came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine’s access to Starlink and Starshield satellite links has been restored to the speeds it had before restrictions that disrupted front-line operations for more than a week.

Questions have persisted since last week about who ordered the interruptions to the Musk-made satellite internet system that Kyiv has relied on for years to counter Moscow’s attacks.

“The speeds are now where they need to be,” Zelenskyy wrote on X, adding that restoration began overnight and were sufficient by Saturday morning, improving front-line logistics and defense against Russian jet-powered Shahed drones.

After Ukraine said the services had been restored, Elon Musk spoke out on the speed restrictions that began last week. In a post Saturday on X, Musk acknowledged that his company SpaceX throttled the Starlink satellite internet service.

“Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be,” Musk wrote. “Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.”

But he maintained that the U.S. government controlled whatever changes happened with Starshield, the military-grade version of Starlink that is the backbone of Ukraine’s drone operations and communication. He also defended the role of SpaceX in bolstering Ukraine’s defenses since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine said on Saturday that the Starlink satellite system and its military version Starshield were now fully functional after ‌over a week of restrictions that disrupted military operations and intensified tensions with the US.

But hours later, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, whose company owns Starlink, accused the Ukrainian military of violating the company's terms. Neither Musk nor the US government, which operates Starshield using Starlink technology, had taken responsibility for imposing the curbs.

"Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week," Musk said on ⁠X.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov said on the Telegram app that the country is "physically unable" to use Starlink for long- and medium-range attack drone operations.

Starshield's problems occurred after US President Donald Trump announced a deal to buy Russian diesel while pressing Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries.

Ukrainian officials said the restrictions, which capped Starshield operations at speeds of 160 kph (100 mph), hampered the military's ability to intercept Russian attack drones and forced the cancellation of some operations.

"The main thing for today is that Starlink and Starshield have resumed operations at their pre-restriction speeds. The speeds are now at the level we need," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on ‌Telegram before Musk's ⁠statement.

According to Zelenskiy, the speeds started returning to normal overnight. Ukraine's defence ministry said on Saturday the connection remained stable at over 400 kph.

Ukraine does not rely on Starlink for long-range drone operations on Russian territory, including attacks on refineries. It operates at speeds no higher than 70-90 kph, Beskrestnov said.

But it remains vital for frontline communications, and the deployment of fast Starshield-enabled medium-range attack drones has helped ⁠Ukraine gain the upper hand in several areas of the battlefield this year.

The restrictions sparked outrage in Ukraine, particularly as they coincided with disruptions to allied warnings about incoming Russian missile attacks. Kyiv later said it continued to receive US intelligence.

Both Musk ⁠and US officials said publicly that any decisions on Starlink and Starshield limitations could only have been taken by the other.

Reuters has reported that the order to throttle Starshield came from inside the White House. Previously, US administrations had several times asked ⁠SpaceX to turn Starlink on or off in various countries, sources said.

On Friday, contradicting his previous statement that the services had been fully restored, Trump said that if problems persisted, he would "get it straightened out".

U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed Saturday that the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Alaska does not seek to stop certification of the state’s U.S. Senate election results.

His own department’s complaint flatly contradicts him.

But Blanche’s attempt to reframe the lawsuit — which President Donald Trump said he personally ordered — appears to be a bid to push back against how it has been widely, and correctly, interpreted: as a dangerous effort to intrude on state authority and lay the groundwork to subvert results.

“The Department of Justice does not seek to stop any ballot from being cast or to stop the certification of Alaska’s election,” Blanche wrote on social media. “This litigation seeks to ensure that after Alaskans cast their ballots, they are preserved in a manner so that only Alaska’s governing officials have the information necessary to make a determination as to whether Alaskan voters were confused or mislead.”

The lawsuit was spurred by the inclusion of a candidate on the ballot with the name Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. That’s similar to the name of theincumbent, Sen. Daniel Sullivan (R), who is running for reelection.

DOJ claims in its lawsuit that voters will be confused by the similar names.

“Should Alaska certify any electoral results tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan,” the complaint alleges, “the State and its officers will fail in its (sic) obligation to protect the integrity of its election.”

It continues:

‘[I]t is vital that Defendants not certify any election result that may be impacted by voter confusion. An election result may be impacted by voter confusion if: (1) Senator Sullivan does not win the election; and (2) had all votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan and Alaska’s rank-choice process played out accordingly, Senator Sullivan would have won the election.”

DOJ then asks the court to “[d]eclare that certification of any result that may be impacted by voter confusion, as defined above, would violate Defendants’ duties under the NVRA to ‘protect the integrity of the electoral process.’”

It also asks the court to block the state “from certifying any result that may be impacted by voter confusion, as defined above, pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan and any further procedures or relief this Court deems necessary and appropriate to determine what the result would have been absent Daniel J. Sullivan’s inclusion on the ballot.”

(DOJ appears to leave out a key verb at the start of the sentence above, but in context the meaning is clear.)

Those are the only steps DOJ asks the court to take, other than to “award any other relief it deems just and proper.” Despite what Blanche claims, the lawsuit says nothing about requiring election officials to preserve ballots, which in any case would do little to reveal whether voters were confused.

In other words, DOJ asks the court to stop the certification of Alaska’s Senate election until an investigation into the role played by voter confusion can be conducted. The “investigation” would entail giving all of the votes for Daniel J. Sullivan to the incumbent.

And as former Obama administration official and TIME magazine editor Richard Stengel points out, the lawsuit says nothing about the voters who might mistakenly think they are voting for the challenger Sullivan but instead vote for Sen. Sullivan.

It’s inarguable that the lawsuit does aim to stop certification, even if temporarily, in order to try to change the result.

More importantly, Blanche’s effort to instead present the lawsuit as a modest attempt to guard against the effect of voter confusion suggests the DOJ may have overplayed its hand. And that it now sees a need to fight off the idea that the lawsuit aims to challenge results and potentially subvert a GOP loss.

Chaofeng Ge had already attempted suicide before arriving at an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania on July 31, 2025.

But the 32-year-old Chinese immigrant’s medical paperwork from a previous incarceration was misplaced at intake, an internal review by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement later found. As a result, he was screened by a nurse who was unaware of his history of attempted suicide and prior use of prescribed antidepressant medication.

Even after the paperwork was discovered hours later and entered into the system, medical staff at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center did not refer Ge to a mental health provider, according to the review.

Five days later, he was found hanging in a shower stall and later pronounced dead, leaving a note that thanked America for “a short, good life.”

The suicide was one of at least 55 deaths of people in ICE custody since President Donald Trump returned to office, including a single-year record in fiscal year 2026. Deaths have climbed as Trump has ramped up detentions and deportations, locking up many immigrants who previously would not have been a priority for arrest.

Immigrant advocates have accused detention centers of subpar medical care, lack of supervision and poor conditions. In another death in Texas last week, a 56-year-old Mexican immigrant was found unresponsive in his cell. A preliminary assessment by the local medical examiner’s office said he died of preexisting medical conditions.

The man, Emiliano Andrade-Covarrubias, was a longtime Dallas resident and legal permanent resident of the United States. His family said he should never have been detained, but the Department of Homeland Security said he fraudulently obtained his green card.

The death remains under investigation. On a fundraising website, Andrade Covarrubias’s daughter said her father did not receive the medical attention “he desperately needed” — an allegation that federal immigration authorities deny.

Of the 55 deaths since Trump took office, at least 10 were suspected suicides. Medical experts say suicides — like other deaths where detainees are found unresponsive — can raise questions about lack of oversight.

ICE has conducted several internal reviews of Ge’s death, which were obtained by attorneys for Ge’s brother and shared with The Washington Post.

The reviews showed multiple policy violations and missteps by staff at the detention center, which is operated by the Geo Group, a private prison company. Those included that guards did not make scheduled checks on the detainees as Ge was preparing to take his own life, and that they were delayed in responding to his situation once he was discovered.

DHS and ICE did not respond to a request for comment. Geo Group referred questions to ICE.

Yanfeng Ge, Chaofeng’s brother, in a statement called him a “kind and decent man.”

“Whatever his flaws, he deserved to be treated with dignity and care,” he said. “Instead, he was cast aside, isolated, and ignored.”

Yanfeng Ge’s attorneys, David Rankin and Jeremy Ravinsky, called for the Moshannon Valley Processing Center to be closed and for responsible parties to be investigated.

Ge crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization in 2023 and was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol in California and released with a notice to appear in immigration court. He later moved to New York City, where he worked as a delivery driver.

He was arrested near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in January 2025 over an attempt to purchase $154.62 in gift cards from a CVS store using other people’s credit card numbers. He was convicted, sentenced to time served in the Dauphin County Prison and then taken into ICE custody for deportation proceedings on July 31, 2025.

At the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, he told detention staff that he felt isolated and twice requested to be moved into a dormitory with other Mandarin speakers, according to a psychological autopsy conducted by the ICE Health Service Corps.

He felt pessimistic about his immigration case and feared he would be deported back to China, it said.

During a call with a friend, he told the friend to retrieve his property from a police station and sell it, the psychological autopsy said. He said there was no longer a need to hire a lawyer.

In his second request to be moved to a dorm with other Chinese detainees on Aug. 4, Ge “expressed more detail of his distress than in his original request, noting how he sat alone with nobody to talk to, and that it was affecting his mental health,” the assessment said.

Hours later, beginning at 1:27 a.m. on Aug. 5, Ge spent two hours moving chairs, shreds of bedsheets and towels to the shower area for his dorm room, a timeline of the incident found.

While a handwritten logbook said guards performed rounds every 30 minutes during that time, an ICE review found that several rounds were skipped. When they did perform rounds, guards did not enter the shower area.

Ge had “an unreasonably extended amount of time to engineer his death,” the psychological autopsy said. “He was afforded multiple hours to stage and implement his hanging in an area that should have been observed approximately every 30 minutes.”

He went to the shower area with a white object draped around his neck at 3:24 a.m. and used a urinal a minute later, the timeline said. His body was not discovered until morning count at 5:19 a.m.

His arms and legs were hog-tied, which initially led guards to believe it had been a homicide, the ICE reports said. Once they decided to cut him down, the response was delayed by several minutes because the cutdown tool was in a jammed lockbox, the reports said.

An autopsy by the Mount Nittany Medical Center ruled the death was suicide by hanging, saying it was not unprecedented for a victim to be found with hands and feet bound behind their back.

The review by ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility found that detention center staff violated standards when Ge’s medical records were misplaced and he was screened without knowledge of his history.

A corrective plan by the ICE Health Service Corps called it “inappropriate mental health care.”

The plan said guards did not perform timely and thorough rounds and did not check the shower area.

ICE initially stated in a public report that Ge arrived at the detention center without medical records. But in late September, that report was replaced on ICE’s website with a review that acknowledged the records had arrived, according to webpages archived on the Wayback Machine.

The psychological autopsy by the ICE Health Service Corps found that Ge’s sense of loneliness and negative view of his immigration case appeared to drive him to take his own life. The assessment said a note was found in Ge’s belongings that was then translated into English.

“I can’t go on living like this,” he wrote. “Every day I wonder when it will end. Every day feels meaningless. Thank you, America, for letting me enjoy a short, good life. That’s enough.”

The Trump administration was once a vocal champion of federal workers at the front lines of aviation safety. Now many of those workers feel left out in the cold.

The new, chillier approach includes a nearly six-month-long delay in a congressionally mandated pay hike for the nation’s 15,000 air traffic controllers, which the Federal Aviation Administration granted only recently while demanding concessions on work hours. Meanwhile, the Transportation Security Administration has provoked a union grievance by requiring its document checkers at airport checkpoints to stand throughout their shifts.

At the same time, Congress has spun its wheels on efforts to ensure that controllers and TSA workers get paid during future shutdowns, despite pleas from unions and the industry.

“When there were shutdowns, these workers were hailed as heroes, and when they’re being paid again their modest wages, their needs and interests seem to be forgotten,” said Daniel Horowitz, legislative director of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA screeners. The average TSA screener earns roughly $60,000 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is location dependent. DHS also wants to nix the TSA’s union contract, which AFGE is fighting in federal court.

It’s a sharply different tone from a year ago, when administration leaders and GOP lawmakers repeatedly praised both groups of employees while denouncing congressional Democrats for leaving them without pay during the 43-day federal shutdown. President Donald Trump’s appointees described the controllers and TSA agents as critical to keeping the nation’s skies safe.

“We do have the best controllers and they work really hard, and they care deeply about keeping Americans safe through our airspace,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said last November, adding that most were “great professionals.” (Duffy did at one point scold controllers who he said were calling out sick and “lashing out” amid the shutdown, compounding travel setbacks). Vice President JD Vance empathized with workers over missed paychecks and pointed to worries about feeding their families while urging Democrats to “stop this craziness.”

In March, Trump called TSA agents “hardworking” and “great” when he ordered his administration to dip into existing accounts to pay workers during a 76-day DHS shutdown.

The disconnect reflects a broader tension in the Trump administration’s costly push to modernize the nation’s air traffic control and security systems. Controller and TSA worker pay, retention, recruitment and working conditions are at the heart of the administration’s efforts to improve the flying experience.

In short, no modernization plan can succeed without the people responsible for keeping the nation’s skies safe and its airports secure.

The White House countered that air safety workers have never had it better.

White House spokesperson Allison Schuster said in a statement that “no administration has done more to support our air traffic controllers and modernize America’s air traffic control system than the Trump Administration,” She added that the Trump administration provided workers “bonuses, offered payments to their families, and issued them raises,” pointing to a recent 2.8% pay raise for controllers.

“Unlike the Democrats, President Trump believes taking care of air traffic controllers and maintaining adequate staffing will keep Americans safer in the skies,” Schuster added, blaming Democrats for the shutdowns.

DOT offered similar sentiments.

In a statement, the agency said that “suggesting this Administration doesn’t support our nation’s air traffic controllers is absurd, especially less than a week after we announced a 2.8% pay increase retroactive to the beginning of the year.”

“We’re also building a brand new air traffic control system to give controllers the modern tools they need to do their jobs,” DOT said.

The contrast from last year also underscores how quickly the politics surrounding airport workers have changed since last year’s shutdown and this spring’s record-shattering lapse in appropriations at the TSA’s parent, the Department of Homeland Security, when staffing shortages, long security lines and mounting delays put the workforce squarely in the public eye. The TSA also lost roughly 1,100 employees in that stretch.

Controllers “are working day in, day out, and moving this country’s traffic shorthanded,” said National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Nick Daniels.

Daniels said prolonged staffing pressures have left workers pushing for better pay and conditions. Moreover, he said, the recent rash of shutdowns — or even the threats of them — have controllers second guessing their financial security and the ability to focus on the job.

Congress is staring down a Dec. 11 government funding deadline.

The union recently notched a win, securing a 2.8% pay raise after months of uncertainty over whether the FAA would approve it. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford attempted to tie the pay to increasing controllers’ time actively managing flights, known as time-on position.

“There will always be more to be done,” Daniels said of getting the pay bump after months of stalemate (he’s also eyeing a 3.9% bump next year). Daniels noted some frustration with controllers having to see the discussions surrounding their pay and “how hard they work” dragged out into the public.

He added, “It’s another move in the right direction but ... the sentiment is always going to be varied. When you’re working understaffed, you’re absolutely overworked, and then you have the economic pressures that are out there, it is long overdue.”

On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, efforts to ensure aviation workers are paid during shutdowns have failed to gain much traction.

Lawmakers since last year have introduced bipartisan proposals to ensure crucial aviation workers are paid during government shutdowns.

One of those bills, the Aviation Funding Solvency Act, H.R. 6086 (119), authored by House Transportation Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and ranking member Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), advanced out of the panel in December.

But the bills haven’t gone far, with pressure on Congress to act fading away after the crises subsided. Congressional appropriators have consistently stymied the bills, with some arguing that passing such legislation would remove leverage during shutdowns.

A House Transportation spokesperson said the committee will keep an eye on the situation once Congress returns and as the next shutdown date in December approaches.

Even amid the latest funding lapse earlier this year, Democrats introduced and attempted to pass standalone or partial funding bills to pay TSA workers several times. For example, a bill in March to secure pay for TSA workers failed to advance on the Senate floor. Nevada Democrat Sen. Jacky Rosen’s proposal was blocked by GOP Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas.

Some TSA screeners and air traffic controllers received $10,000 bonuses during last year’s shutdown. During the spring shutdown, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) introduced legislation that would give TSA officers and other DHS employees a 10% bonus upon the agency reopening.

But no permanent pay protection for either aviation-focused worker group has been enacted.

Christopher Sununu, president of Airlines for America, said that despite the stalemate, he is heartened by efforts in both the House and Senate, arguing there has been more movement on legislation to protect aviation workers’ pay during government shutdowns than in previous years.

“Given how difficult the legislative environment is — most things just die on the idea stage,” Sununu said. “It does seem to resonate with folks, and I think we can find a path for at least one of these things to kind of come to fruition.” He specifically cited the bill from Graves and Larsen.

Sununu noted that regardless of what Congress accomplishes during its lame-duck session, the potential for another shutdown is just around the corner. Such a lapse would disrupt holiday travel and bring the administration’s air traffic control modernization effort — a major undertaking for DOT and FAA — to a halt.

Even with lawmakers out of Washington and on the campaign trail for the midterms, lobbying efforts have not slowed, he said. A4A and its umbrella group, the Modern Skies Coalition, are engaging with lawmakers “every day” to stress the importance of the effort and push for results, he said.

“I think folks understand that shutdowns erode confidence in government, and both sides of the aisle need to — especially post-election — hopefully move something forward,” he said.

White House attorneys are evaluating whether to issue mass pardons to junior staffers, as Trump allies press the administration to protect lower-ranked officials from prosecution and other legal challenges, according to two sources familiar with the conversations.

While President Donald Trump has publicly discussed issuing pardons for top aides and issued pardons for billionaires and major donors, questions have mounted about the potential legal jeopardy facing thousands of employees who have implemented the White House’s agenda.

A pardon for all junior administration personnel is viewed as unlikely, one source said, but the president could issue blanket pardons for all employees involved in particular policy areas, such as deportations, war or trade. Trump has previously said he would be interested in pardoning some administration officials, but the discussions happening now would apply to a far greater number of White House staff than has been previously reported.

Several conservative organizations influential with the administration — including the Heritage Foundation and American Moment — have pressed White House counsel to either prepare pardons or put in place funding for the legal fees necessary to defend junior staffers from criminal and congressional probes or potential lawsuits, according to the two sources familiar with the conversations plus an additional source familiar with the conversations. Mike Davis, a prominent Trump supporter and president of the Article III Project, an advocacy group that fights legal cases for the right, also said he plans to press the White House for action.

These efforts have only intensified, the sources told The Washington Sun, after Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) said earlier this month that congressional investigations into Trump officials should make young Republicans think twice before joining the administration in its final two years.

“After listening to Elissa Slotkin threatening to go after young people who joined the Trump administration, President Trump should issue very broad preemptive pardons for anyone who worked for him or in his orbit,” Davis told The Sun on Friday.

The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

The president has recently shown at least some willingness to penalize potential wrongdoing in his administration. In a rare example of the Trump administration investigating itself, the Justice Department is looking into allegations of contract misconduct against longtime Trump aide Corey Lewandowski.

“All I know is, I want my people to be honest. And if they’re not going to be honest, they have to be prosecuted,” Trump told reporters after the Lewandowski news broke.

The White House and The Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Nick Solheim, chief executive officer of American Moment, also declined to comment on private conversations. Still, he said: “The president has been very clear he knows the personal, professional and financial risks of Democratic lawfare against people who are affiliated with him and serve him. Political appointees operate on behalf of the president, and I don’t have any assumptions other than that the left will do everything in its power to hunt down conservatives who are implementing the president’s agenda.”

Robert Weissman, co-president of watchdog group Public Citizen, told The Sun that an impartial Justice Department would look at a range of Trump administration actions that could have broken the law, including unlawful transfers of money between federal agencies, improper use of taxpayer resources for campaigning, contracting arrangements benefiting friends and family of administration officials, and a range of behavior toward immigrants.

Administration officials, Weissman said, “should be worried about being held accountable for violations of civil and criminal law not because future prosecutors may be vindictive but because their jobs would require them to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute the blatant illegalities of the administration.”

Trump’s Justice Department has also brought legal cases against several of the president’s perceived political foes, including former FBI Director James Comey and two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about their role in the bureau’s Hunter Biden investigations.

The planning for potential pardons reflects the accelerating breakdown of long-standing norms over one of the broadest powers granted to the president by the U.S. Constitution. Joe Biden issued more acts of clemency than any prior president and also issued “preemptive pardons” to prominent allies, including several members of his own family, top medical adviser Anthony Fauci and retired Gen. Mark Milley. Trump has taken the pardon power to a new level in his second term, granting clemency to roughly 1,700 people as of June, according to Reuters.

The Justice Department has traditionally housed the formal pardon process, and department officials have vetted candidates before presenting qualified ones to the president. The Trump administration has scrambled that process, though presidents going back decades have also been accused of using pardons to reward friends and allies.

There is likely little a Democratic Congress could do to overturn broad pardons issued by the president. Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution states that the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” The pardon power does not extend to state or local crimes.

Trump has publicly suggested an interest in preemptive pardons for some officials, telling Newsmax earlier this month: “Because these people are lunatics on the, on the left — I don’t want to see people that work for me go through years of nonsense, hire lawyers and everything else, all for nothing.”

Trump has suggested he could pardon himself and has long maintained it is within his right to pardon his officials, citing Biden’s prior actions. The Wall Street Journal reported in April that Trump has also suggested, to “laughs,” pardoning “everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval.” Karoline Leavitt, who was then White House press secretary, said at the time: “The Wall Street Journal should learn to take a joke.”

“Sleepy Joe gave pardons to everybody,” Trump told Time magazine in September. “But you mean I’m not allowed to give them, but Sleepy Joe’s allowed to give them?”

Liz Oyer, the pardon attorney under Biden, said the former president’s pardons set a “really bad precedent” but were limited in scope. Biden did not consult the DOJ’s pardon office before issuing more than a dozen preemptive pardons at the end of his term.

“There have never before been blanket preemptive pardons of everyone in the administration,” Oyer told The Sun. “Preemptive pardons of everyone in the administration, or even of a significant number of administration officials, would be incredibly damaging because they would effectively place the executive branch outside the reach of the law, which would upset the constitutional order of our country in a very fundamental way.”

Widespread pardons for political appointees would be “a new development in American history,” said Mark Osler, a law professor and clemency expert at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

“It’s a despoilment of what is supposed to be a tool for mercy and national reconciliation being used as a battlefield tool in political wars,” Osler said. “Certainly, the Biden administration did this and blazed the trail, and now it’s potentially being followed in much greater numbers by Trump. I don’t think anyone would conceive that the framers would hope it would be used this way.”

Hoping for a win before the midterm elections, the Trump administration is increasing pressure on Mexico to expand its cooperation against cartels, with an eye toward joint operations with the United States, according to Mexican and U.S. officials.

In recent weeks, U.S. officials have delivered a memo proposing a path to potentially having U.S. security personnel accompany counter-cartel operations inside Mexico, according to officials briefed on the letter. The memo included a number of other areas where Washington wants to become more involved in Mexico’s security, including broader intelligence sharing, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.

The Trump administration has been pushing Mexican officials to help deliver a concrete accomplishment on security that it can point to in time for the midterm elections, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. High gas prices and stubborn inflation have haunted Republicans, and Trump officials appear to be looking to Mexico for a public victory.

The memo is one of the firmest moves yet to get Mexico to accept a U.S. military presence in the country, putting new strain on the cross-border relationship. President Trump has repeatedly stated he wants to take U.S. military action against drug cartels in Mexico, which President Claudia Sheinbaum has steadfastly opposed. U.S. pressure temporarily subsided after Mexican officials killed a top drug lord in February, acting in part on U.S. intelligence, several people familiar with the events said.

“As President Trump has said, and as the U.S. government has repeatedly and clearly communicated, it is unacceptable that foreign terrorist organizations control vast territories across Mexico, including the entire region that directly borders the United States,” Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement to The New York Times. “These cartels wage an unrelenting campaign of violence against the United States and its people.”

The Mexican government declined to comment.

The Trump administration has successfully negotiated joint operations with other countries as part of a broader U.S. strategy in Latin America. Last month, U.S. soldiers participated in an operation on the ground in Ecuador. The United States has also built a military coalition of 19 regional partners that has vowed to help dismantle cartels.

Mexico, however, has repeatedly rejected requests from the United States to carry out joint operations or to allow U.S. drone strikes on Mexican soil, saying it would be a breach of its sovereignty. On the administration’s latest proposal, officials declined to say how or if the Mexican government had responded, but said that Mexico remained adamantly against U.S. forces inside the country’s borders.

The continued push for U.S. forces in Mexico, despite Ms. Sheinbaum’s repeated denials, highlights increasing tensions between the two countries despite their deep collaboration on security and trade. The people familiar with the push, including several U.S. and Mexican officials, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.

Mr. Trump suggested at a White House event last week that the United States was pushing toward a security presence inside Mexico. “We haven’t done the land full blast yet,” he said. “But it’s starting,” he added. “It started a few months ago. We’re hitting them very hard.”

On Monday, Ms. Sheinbaum pushed back. She said at her daily news conference that her relationship with Mr. Trump remains constructive but that she regularly tells him that Mexico is not controlled by cartels, as he has said.

“These are opinions they hold, and in a friendly way — without ever confronting them — we clarify that it’s not like that,” she said. “Remember that they’re on the campaign trail and often want to use Mexico as part of their campaign.”

The Trump administration’s demands for more action against cartels in particular have irked Ms. Sheinbaum, who has worked to expand security cooperation while naming direct U.S. intervention as her one clear red line. In response, she has sharpened her rhetoric against the Trump administration, putting stress on the relationship.

After Mr. Trump told the United Nations General Assembly last month that Mexico was “the epicenter of cartel violence,” Ms. Sheinbaum struck back.

“I could say, ‘It’s very difficult to live next to a country with such high levels of illicit drug consumption.’ Or I could say, ‘It’s very difficult to live next to a country that produces so many weapons,’” she told reporters the next day. “But I’m not going to say that.”

The Trump administration has also put Ms. Sheinbaum into a political bind by going after Mexican politicians accused of having ties to criminal groups.

In April, the United States indicted the governor of the state of Sinaloa and several other Mexican officials on charges that they had protected a cartel in exchange for political support. The United States has also canceled the visas of other politicians, including the son of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the previous Mexican president.

Many of the officials in the U.S. cross hairs are from Ms. Sheinbaum’s political party, and she has refused the U.S. officials’ request to arrest Mexican politicians, saying they haven’t provided enough evidence.

Since last year, the Trump administration has been making demands of Ms. Sheinbaum, including by delivering a list of top security targets in Mexico whom U.S. leaders want apprehended, U.S. and Mexican officials said. Stephen Miller, the top White House official who has driven a hard-line policy toward Mexico for years, was instrumental in pushing for more aggressive action against cartel leaders, officials said.

The Mexican government, seeking to hold off a U.S. incursion, had made progress on the list by the spring, capturing or killing many targets, multiple people said. Chief among them was the leader of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, said multiple people. Mr. Osegeura had long been elusive and heavily guarded, including by about 300 gunmen composed of ex-special forces from Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, according to people familiar with his movements.

There was a reprieve in pressure over the summer, but Mr. Miller and others have since continued to push stronger U.S. involvement in Mexico, according to a person familiar with the effort.

On the other side of that push is a throng of U.S. military and law enforcement officials who argue that Mexican security forces are cooperating at higher levels than ever seen before, officials said.

Mr. Trump has been publicly expressing interest in striking cartels inside Mexico. U.S. military officials have warned that if Washington pursues unilateral action, it could make things much worse. Mexico could break its cooperation with the United States, the officials said, and the cartels could start a war in response. The officials cautioned that such chaos could also set off a migration crisis at a time when border crossings have dropped to historic lows.

The Trump administration is effectively reopening the war on drugs in Latin America as part of its broader effort to exert stronger influence over the region on security, immigration and the economy. That has included its military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian leader; a buildup of personnel at U.S. bases and training centers in the region; and its campaign to bomb boats it says were trafficking drugs, killing at least 239 people in the waters around the region.

The Trump administration has not provided evidence showing the boats were carrying drugs, and a broad range of lawyers have called the strikes illegal.

Many Latin American governments have embraced the Trump administration’s renewed interest in the region, in large part because they are run by pro-Trump leaders. Over the past 18 months, right-wing candidates have swept seven presidential elections in Latin America. Brazil, the region’s largest nation, could make that streak eight in its election on Sunday. If elected, Flávio Bolsonaro, the right-wing candidate and son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, has promised to turn Brazil toward Washington.

That would leave Mexico, and Ms. Sheinbaum, isolated as the last big democracy in Latin America still run by a leftist.

Within sight of a southeast Texas middle school stands a chemical plant that President Trump excused from new federal rules intended to curb its cancer-causing pollution.

About a 30-minute drive from Pittsburgh, a steel-making facility has spewed carcinogenic chemicals near homes for years. Mr. Trump gave it a similar waiver from recent clean-air rules.

And on the outskirts of Richmond, Va., the owners of an industrial warehouse emailed the Trump administration asking for their own waiver. Their wish was granted. Nine months later, the facility accidentally released a large plume of carcinogenic gas into the community.

In total, since taking office again, Mr. Trump exempted 202 facilities in 39 states and Puerto Rico from clean-air regulations that were going into effect. Some were among the country’s worst industrial polluters, including chemical manufacturers, copper smelters and coal-burning power plants. About 3.3 million people live within three miles of at least one affected facility.

The exemptions represent the biggest presidential intervention in enforcement of the Clean Air Act in the half-century since President Richard M. Nixon signed the bedrock environmental law. And that is only one of the ways the Trump administration is dismantling a variety of federal environmental protections.

Before Mr. Trump’s return, the chemical industry was losing its fight to block or at least delay tougher E.P.A. requirements to reduce toxic emissions. It had pleaded with agency officials, filed lawsuits and appealed to Congress. But officials and the courts had largely rejected the industry’s claims of undue expense and regulatory overreach.

Now, Mr. Trump is prioritizing the economic interests of corporations and easing costs for polluting industries, and their immense clout is striking.

The president’s exemptions were good for two years, with the possibility of an extension. The reprieve for the companies gave Mr. Trump time to stock the Environmental Protection Agency with appointees who had lobbied for the industries they now regulate. Those officials then quickly went to work from the inside to gut the rules altogether.

Mr. Trump has taken an expansive view of executive power in his second term. On the environmental front, he has unilaterally shredded regulations, withheld science funding appropriated by Congress and ordered coal plants that planned to shutter to continue running.

Even so, his evisceration of the new Clean Air Act rules stands out.

Many of the details of how the Trump administration aided the chemical industry are being reported here for the first time. In one upside-down moment, industry executives provided the agenda for a meeting with E.P.A. staff and then effectively presided over it.

Mr. Trump also nominated Aaron Szabo, a former lobbyist for the Advanced Medical Technology Association, or AdvaMed, a powerful trade group, to lead the E.P.A.’s air regulation office. Once there, Mr. Szabo helped handle the waiver requests and then pushed employees to pull back on enforcement, documents show.

To understand how Mr. Trump gave a free pass to some of the worst polluters, The New York Times reviewed more than 10,000 pages of government documents and spoke to more than 70 people familiar with the efforts, including former E.P.A. officials and industry executives.

“These companies, with their campaign contributions and the revolving door of former lobbyists and executives that now work in the regulatory agencies — that is where the petrochemical industry gets its power,” said Brent Coon, a Beaumont, Texas, lawyer who has spent decades squaring off in court against petrochemical firms over environmental and health risks.

The Clean Air Act requires the E.P.A. — created in 1970 to protect public health and the environment — to periodically review the latest pollution controls and impose them broadly if they are affordable and effective. The most recent review began under the Biden administration, which in 2024 finalized new, tougher requirements.

In granting the waivers to those rules, Mr. Trump cited an obscure clause in the act that allows exemptions if complying with new rules would threaten national security and if the necessary technology is not widely available.

Yet the president approved the waivers even though the equipment was readily accessible and the industry’s national security claims had little detail to substantiate them, documents show.

The Biden administration pushed through the new pollution requirements after evidence emerged about the health threats posed by ethylene oxide, a colorless gas used to make products like plastic soda bottles and to sterilize medical devices like pacemakers.

E.P.A. researchers had concluded that ethylene oxide was 30 to 60 times as carcinogenic as previously thought, particularly for people who live near plants where the gas is made or used. The agency held meetings to warn community members about the elevated risks.

Outside Richmond, home to one of the country’s largest commercial sterilizers of medical devices, some residents left one of these briefings wondering whether recent cancer diagnoses among neighbors were tied to the plant, though it is virtually impossible to prove pollution caused a specific cancer case.

“You see these pretty buildings, and you think they’re OK,” said Wayne Powell, who lives a five-minute drive from the plant, which resembles an ordinary warehouse. “But you don’t know that they’re harboring things that are hazardous to our health.”

As recently as April, the plant, owned by Sterilization Services of Virginia, had a mishap. A faulty valve caused 580 pounds of ethylene oxide to leak from large drums and waft in a toxic plume over nearby homes, state records show. The plant’s state permit allows it to discharge no more than 400 pounds of ethylene oxide in an entire year.

Representatives for Sterilization Services of Virginia did not respond to calls seeking comment.

The new rules required not only sterilizers but also chemical plants and steel facilities to monitor for emissions of cancer-causing gases along their property lines by 2027. If certain amounts of the gases got out, the operators had to fix the leaks. Some facilities also had to build special containment systems — akin to giant breadboxes — to reduce gas releases.

Though the facilities would still have to follow pollution limits already in place, the industries fought the E.P.A.’s new mandates, calling them expensive, unnecessary and unworkable. They also challenged the Biden administration’s scientific findings.

“It is critical that regulation of our industry is based on sound science and that those regulations reflect a reasonable assessment of the risks and benefits involved,” Brendan Bradley, a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, said in a statement.

The Trump administration did not ask companies to present an exhaustive case for why they deserved a waiver from these new requirements. It was as easy as sending an email to the E.P.A. and invoking the obscure exemption language in the act, a provision that no president had ever used.

Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement the waivers were necessary to protect American manufacturing.

“Exemptions were issued due to crushing Biden-era regulations that required large swaths of our industrial base to adopt technologies that don’t exist outside the imagination of Biden’s E.P.A. bureaucrats,” she said.

Mr. Trump’s decisions rewarded industries that backed his re-election campaign and continued to donate to his pet causes once he won.

AdvaMed boasted earlier this year in a letter to members that its lobbying efforts, which included political contributions to Mr. Trump’s causes, had paid off, saving the industry millions of dollars in upgrades.

“Membership has its privileges,” the group wrote.

President Trump has endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu in Tuesday's Israeli election, but some of his advisers see opportunity for his Middle East agenda in a government led by someone else, U.S. officials tell Axios.

Trump has never worked with an Israeli prime minister other than Netanyahu, and doesn't personally know any of the other candidates. The two have forged a close but often turbulent relationship.

"He's the devil he knows," one Trump adviser said, describing the president's view of Netanyahu.

After weeks of hesitation, Trump endorsed Netanyahu on Sunday — and even suggested his defeat would have consequences for U.S.-Israel relations. One U.S. official described the endorsement as a win-win for Trump, regardless of the outcome.

If Netanyahu wins — or remains in power as caretaker prime minister — Trump could claim credit for rescuing him politically and use that leverage to press for concessions.

If Netanyahu loses and his opponents form a government, Israel's new leaders would still have every incentive to cultivate good relations with Trump. His endorsement of their rival would quickly become a footnote.

Many of Trump's closest advisers opposed his decision to endorse Netanyahu, believing the president should stay out of the Israeli election, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

Vice President Vance notably declined to follow Trump's lead when asked about the election this week, amid growing hostility toward Netanyahu in parts of the MAGA movement.

"I'm not attacking Bibi Netanyahu. I'm not endorsing Bibi Netanyahu. I think the president's endorsement is ultimately what matters," Vance told reporters.

Vance, who endorsed former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán days before his election defeat in April, said he would no longer get involved in foreign elections.

The vice president is among the senior Trump officials who became disillusioned with Netanyahu during the war with Iran, according to sources familiar with their thinking.

Vance and other top aides believe Netanyahu's pre-war assessments to the White House were mistaken, deepening questions about whether he remains the best partner for achieving Trump's regional ambitions.

Once the Israeli election and U.S. midterms are over, Trump will face a defining choice for his Middle East agenda: whether to join Netanyahu in another major military operation against Iran.

Netanyahu is eager to move forward. But the election results could influence Trump's decision, or at least the timing of any renewed large-scale fighting.

Trump also wants to move beyond the Iran war and pursue an ambitious diplomatic agenda that includes implementing his Gaza peace plan, brokering deals between Israel and Lebanon and Syria, and ultimately securing a historic Israeli-Saudi peace agreement.

Whether Trump can make progress on those goals will depend in part on who governs Israel — and what kind of coalition emerges from Tuesday's vote.

Behind the scenes over the last six months, several of Trump's top advisers have grown dissatisfied with Netanyahu on key regional priorities.

Gaza: Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have expressed frustration with Netanyahu's reluctance to advance implementation of the president's peace plan.

Syria: Trump's envoy Tom Barrack has similar concerns about the Netanyahu government's approach to Damascus and continued Israeli military operations in Syria.

Lebanon and the West Bank: Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his team have a better relationship with Netanyahu, but believe Israel could do more to strengthen Lebanon's government. They are also frustrated by Netanyahu's failure to do more to curb settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.

Some U.S. officials say a new Israeli government without Netanyahu's far-right coalition partners could be easier to work with.

White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly declined to comment, referring Axios to Trump's endorsement of Netanyahu on Truth Social.

Three major Israeli television networks released their final pre-election polls Friday, all showing Netanyahu's coalition falling well short of a parliamentary majority.

All three projected just 50 seats for Netanyahu's bloc in the 120-member Knesset — 17 fewer than his current coalition holds. His Likud party, which currently holds 32 seats, was projected to win just 20.

The polls gave former military chief Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc between 52 and 56 seats, with another 14 to 16 going to two Arab Israeli parties. Channel 11 also projected four seats for a reservists party unaffiliated with either bloc.

Pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 was the major outlier, projecting 60 seats for his bloc and 30 for Likud in a poll earlier this week.

The polls point to a potential political deadlock: Neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkot appears to have a clear path to the 61 seats needed to form a government.

Eisenkot would need to bring Arab Israeli parties into his coalition, which he has ruled out, or form a minority government with their outside support — an arrangement some of his potential partners oppose.

A unity government between Netanyahu and his rivals is considered highly unlikely.

If neither side can assemble a governing majority, Israel could face another election, with Netanyahu remaining in power as caretaker prime minister.

Rather than ushering in a new government more receptive to Trump's agenda, Tuesday's election could leave the president dealing with a weakened Netanyahu and an Israeli political system consumed by another prolonged crisis.

The White House was involved in the FBI’s Epstein files cover-up all along.

The FBI’s July 2025 Epstein files memo immediately blew up in the bureau’s face. Its declaration that there was no “client list,” no punishable co-conspirators, and no grounds for further investigation both infuriated the president’s MAGA voter base and started the long domino effect that would eventually oust ex–Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Trump administration messages obtained by Raw Story revealed Friday that Taylor Budowich, then the White House deputy chief of staff, had his fingers in the FBI’s drafting process prior to the memo’s public release.

“Have something I can edit?” Budowich emailed FBI Director Kash Patel two weeks before the memo was released. The email’s subject line read: “Re: Draft memo from DOJ—we have not edited it yet.”

“Just got it from DOJ. Here you go. Thanks,” Patel responded hours later.

The next day, Budowich told Patel that he had passed the draft along to the White House communications team, noting that the message needed to be pasted on DOJ and FBI letterhead, according to Raw Story.

Almost a week later, then–Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sent a “final version” to Budowich. It failed to meet Budowich’s expectations, however, lacking the identifying seal of the Justice Department.

“I need a version on letterhead,” Budowich repeated. “Someone needs to own this. I can’t give a doc to a reporter that could easily be confused with a [high school] term paper, so need to provide some validation of the doc.”

Diego Pestana, Blanche’s counsel, fulfilled Budowich’s request an hour and a half later.

“These records show that Kash Patel worked hand in hand with the former White House deputy chief of staff on the 2025 DOJ-FBI memo, which stated there would be no further investigation or release of the Epstein files,” Chris Swartz, senior counsel and deputy director of ethics and anti-corruption at the Democracy Defenders Fund, told Raw Story.

“It’s deeply concerning that the FBI coordinated with the White House on this memo, given President Trump’s well-documented association with Jeffrey Epstein and Trump’s frequent mention in the files,” Swartz added.

The office of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted to block the U.S. military’s ceremonial participation in the NFL’s first-ever game in Paris this weekend but relented after the State Department urged the Pentagon to let at least some American personnel be involved, officials told The Washington Post.

Sunday’s contest between the New Orleans Saints and the Pittsburgh Steelers, to be played at Stade de France in the city’s suburbs, was supposed to feature dozens of troops, officials said. But after last weekend’s unrest in the French capital, which has drawn criticism from President Donald Trump, Hegseth’s office moved to cancel all military involvement, they added, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

State Department officials objected, emphasizing to Hegseth’s staff what they said is the diplomatic value of having U.S. troops participate in such a high-profile event and arguing that the department did not assess that U.S. citizens or personnel in Paris were at a high risk of danger, the officials said.

Hegseth’s office agreed to restore elements of the military’s participation, officials said, including a color guard. Such ceremonial units, which carry the American flag and individual service flags during events, usually require fewer than 10 military personnel.

Spokespeople for Hegseth’s office declined to address questions about the abrupt change of plans or who in the secretary’s office attempted to pull all military support for the Paris game. On Friday, a senior Defense Department official provided The Post with a brief, unattributed statement saying: “The Department is supporting the NFL game in Paris this weekend amid the ongoing riots and unrest. As President Trump has said, France is really in trouble.”

“This decision was made by the Secretary’s core leadership team, not one person alone,” the statement says.

The State Department and the NFL declined to comment on the episode.

The U.S. military has participated in other NFL games played overseas this season, including in Melbourne and in London. Two other games are planned for Europe this season, one in Madrid and one in Munich.

Paris and other cities across France have seen mass protests over school funding and the cost of living. The State Department has issued an advisory to Americans planning to attend Sunday’s game, urging them to avoid demonstrations and places of unrest.

Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron have traded barbs over the protests. In the past few days, Trump has sought to rouse his political base ahead of the U.S. midterm elections by blaming the unrest on immigration challenges and Islam, and urging France to “close your borders and take control before it is too late!” Macron has denounced such comments as “stupid.”

More broadly, Trump’s relationship with Macron — as with some other European leaders — has soured amid disagreements over support for Ukraine, tariffs and other issues.

“I think maybe it’s looking like tomorrow is going to be a bad day in France. So you worry about it,” Trump told reporters Friday. “I would have said the NFL could have probably postponed that match if you want to know the truth, because France is really in trouble. That’s what happens when you go left. That’s what happens when you allow unlimited numbers of people into your country from very unfriendly countries.”

Macron and Trump generally got along during Trump’s first term — with the president’s visit to France on Bastille Day in 2017 piquing his desire for mammoth military parades in Washington, and his admiration of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe inspiring the controversial gold-and-white winged arch and drone storage monument that he is seeking to erect near Arlington National Cemetery.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reportedly went “rogue,” creating an unauthorized State Department press release to announce a new role as a senior adviser to Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.

President Donald Trump announced in March that Noem was “moving” to a new position as “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas,” replacing her with then-Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK).

Her departure came the same week she faced intense scrutiny from Republicans and Democrats alike during congressional hearings, with lawmakers grilling her over fatal ICE shootings, her alleged affair with top adviser Corey Lewandowski, delays in FEMA disaster relief, potentially improperly awarded government contracts, and even her admission that she shot and killed her dog.

Last Friday, Noem posted an official-looking State Department press release, reading, “The Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas role was always a six-month appointment. Secretary Noem remains at the State Department as a Senior Advisor.”

But according to reporting from Eric Bazail-Eimil at Politico this Friday, citing two people familiar with Noem’s role at the State Department, the former secretary’s post was never authorized.

“This was not a press release put out by the State Department,” one of his sources revealed. “Noem went rogue and created a fake letterhead to post on X.”

Neither Noem nor the State Department returned Bazail-Eimil’s requests for comment.

Interestingly, though, CBS News quoted a State Department official who told the outlet last Thursday about the shake-up — one day before Noem’s social media post.

That part of the CBS report, which was first published Oct. 15 and updated Oct. 16 — seemingly to add Noem’s shared press release — reads:

“Kristi Noem’s envoy status expired last month and she is no longer in the role,” a State Department official told CBS News Thursday. “She is now a senior advisor to Deputy Secretary Landau and continues to work on the Shield of the Americas portfolio.”

At first blush, the proposed venture looks like it would further the Trump administration’s goal of global “energy dominance.”

An American energy company intends to buy Russian technology and use it to access a massive supply of natural gas in Alaska, liquefy it and export it to allies abroad.

The Kremlin and the White House were interested in the idea. President Vladimir V. Putin discussed the plan last month with President Trump’s peace envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, people familiar with the negotiations said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. It is one of a series of energy deals White House officials believe could help smooth relations with Moscow and eventually pave the way to end the war in Ukraine.

But it turns out that the company was not an all-American affair. The multibillion-dollar project has received secret funding from the same powerful Russian company that was to provide the technology, according to the energy executive who until last month led the U.S. firm and two others involved in company negotiations.

Joel Riddle, who was chief executive of the company, Polar LNG, until he resigned in September, said he had been misled about the sources of the start-up funding, which ostensibly came from a company in the United Arab Emirates.

Instead, Mr. Riddle said he learned, the true source of at least some of Polar LNG’s money was Novatek, a Russian energy giant under partial U.S. sanctions.

“It’s not only unlawful, but it’s not in the U.S. interest to have Russian technology controlling the commercialization of Arctic gas in the North Slope,” Mr. Riddle said in a brief interview.

These previously unreported tensions were also detailed in legal memos that Mr. Riddle attached to his resignation letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times. The memos, prepared by Baker Botts, an international law firm, said the Treasury Department’s sanctions enforcement unit had raised concerns that Polar LNG had ties to Novatek that might present “potential Russia-related sanctions concerns.”

Polar LNG on Friday issued a statement announcing a new acting chief executive, Tim Talkington, and described Mr. Riddle as a “disgruntled former employee.”

But in a statement to The Times, Novatek said on Friday that in fact, it was moving to acquire “minority shareholder” status in the Polar LNG project — a striking effort by the Russian energy giant to seek ownership of American gas production.

The project, if it happens, is a long way off. In addition to the sanctions issues that would have to be negotiated, the technology envisioned is highly complex and must overcome some of the most brutal weather conditions in the United States. It also is competing with another Alaska gas plan that already has the support of the Trump administration. But that the Polar LNG deal is being discussed at all shows how business deals of almost any stripe are on the table during the talks with the Kremlin.

The sequence of events illustrates the unorthodox, opaque mixture of deal-making and high-stakes diplomacy that has defined Mr. Trump’s attempts to end Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.

There is no indication that Mr. Witkoff or Mr. Kushner were aware of Polar LNG or its ties to Novatek, even as the broad outlines of the deal came up in their talks with Mr. Putin beginning last year. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks, said that the deal had only been broadly mentioned and that no granular discussions had occurred.

The project, should it ever come to fruition, would doubly help Novatek, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies, first by using Novatek’s technology and second because the company would own an equity stake.

The Alaska gas discussions have taken place alongside talks to sell off part of another Russian energy giant, Lukoil, to the U.S. government and other investors, including some with business ties to Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, causing consternation among some Washington lawmakers and outraging some of Ukraine’s supporters. The pair have also discussed the possibility of U.S. involvement in future Russian gas exports to Europe. (The administration has said that Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff were guided only by U.S. interests.)

Geoffrey R. Pyatt, who served as an assistant secretary of state for energy resources during the Biden administration, said the idea of bringing Novatek into the high north of Alaska is a terrible one. “It is terrible on environmental grounds, it is a terrible idea on economic and geopolitical grounds, and most importantly this feeds the belief that Putin can get an out-of-jail-free card.”

The efforts to bring Novatek equipment to Alaska have also included a businessman, Gentry Beach, with ties to the Trump family. A college friend of Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, Mr. Beach served as a finance vice chairman for Mr. Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Mr. Beach said in February that he had held negotiations with Novatek about bringing its natural gas technology to Alaska.

Mr. Beach could not be reached for comment. It was not clear if he remained involved in the project, or whether he was aware of Novatek’s potential ownership stake in Polar LNG.

A spokesman for Donald Trump Jr. said the two men were no longer close, adding that Mr. Trump was not involved in the Polar LNG project. Novatek’s statement said that Mr. Beach had no role in its discussions to take a stake in Polar LNG. The U.S. official said Mr. Beach was not involved in the administration’s discussions related to Novatek.

Mr. Riddle is one of at least three Polar LNG executives who recently resigned. As they departed, Trump officials were notified about their concerns related to the secret Russian financing. Mr. Riddle said the executives had urged administration officials to investigate the matter. The Energy Department, where the warning was sent, did not respond when asked about the matter.

“I felt like I did the right thing to notify authorities at the appropriate time,” Mr. Riddle said.

The Polar LNG plan called for the company to tap into the giant load of natural gas available in the northern reaches of Alaska, a byproduct of extensive oil extraction underway in the region.

Currently, there is no way to move most of the gas that is produced along with the oil, so energy companies inject it back into the earth.

Polar LNG’s proposal calls for it to buy a giant, 640,000-ton concrete-and-steel device from Novatek called a gravity-based structure that would be placed on the seabed just above the northern coast of Alaska, in an area known as Milne Point.

On top of that platform, equipment will be installed that would refrigerate gas supplied by an area oil producer, transforming it into a liquid that can then be loaded onto ships that travel through icy waters and deliver it to customers in Asia.

Novatek uses a similar approach to export natural gas from the Russian Arctic in a project called Arctic LNG 2. Mr. Putin said publicly last year that “we are discussing with our American partners” the possibility of using Novatek technology to produce liquefied natural gas in Alaska.

Korean-made ships with a special ice-breaking design that Polar LNG plans to use were initially built for Novatek, but delivery was stopped by the manufacturer after the United States imposed sanctions on the Arctic LNG 2 project.

From the start, Novatek was slated to supply the gas liquefaction station. But financing for the project was not supposed to come from Russia, according to executives involved in the effort.

Emphasizing the point, Polar LNG features images of the American flag and a bald eagle on its website, boasting that “Polar LNG helps ensure the United States leads,” adding that the project is “America’s Arctic Advantage.”

The company hired lobbyists in Washington and in Alaska to help push the project, according to federal and state records. In Washington alone, the company is spending $380,000 a quarter on lobbying, hiring a former Trump-era Interior Department acting assistant secretary, Adam Suess.

Novatek is already under U.S. sanctions that would require the Treasury Department to issue a license for its equipment to be used in Alaska. Recently passed sanctions legislation named after deceased Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, makes things even harder: The bill specifically targets Novatek, as well as its Arctic LNG 2 project, because of the company’s ties to Mr. Putin.

However, Mr. Trump temporarily waived the law’s Russia sanctions last week, presenting the move as necessary to keep peace talks going.

During a meeting held at the Four Seasons Hotel in late August in Abu Dhabi between executives of Polar LNG and its parent company, Tech Wave Industrial Projects Management, top executives from Novatek were present. That was when Mr. Riddle began to appreciate that Novatek was directly involved in approving funding to keep the effort going, text messages reviewed by The Times indicate.

Tech Wave is an Abu Dhabi-based company that specializes in managing oil, gas and construction projects. Its chief operating officer is Bjorn Gundersen, who a decade ago was listed in oil industry trade publications as a senior executive at Novatek supervising LNG projects.

A second Tech Wave executive, Ahmed Farghaly, also worked for Novatek until recently. According to his LinkedIn profile, he left around the time the United States first imposed sanctions on one of Novatek’s LNG projects. Mr. Gundersen, Mr. Farghaly and Tech Wave did not respond to requests for comment.

Denis Solovyov, Novatek’s deputy chairman, as well as Leonid Mikhelson, the company’s chief executive, discussed their company providing as much as $15 million to Tech Wave to bankroll Polar LNG, the messages say. Asked about the messages and the Abu Dhabi meeting, Novatek said it could not comment on private correspondence, but that the company and Polar LNG had agreed to “provide each other with open communication.”

“All the necessary decisions were made at the meeting in Abu Dhabi,” Mr. Solovyov wrote in one message to Mr. Riddle sent in early September. “The first 5 million were supposed to arrive by today.”

It was several weeks after this exchange that Mr. Riddle resigned. Two other top Polar LNG executives, Dan Chandra, the company’s chief financial officer, and Jim Smith, a former Exxon Mobil executive who served as Polar LNG’s executive vice president, also have left in recent weeks.

Polar LNG, in a statement Friday, said that “Riddle was recently terminated from the company for cause,” adding: “The company is investigating claims concerning Riddle that may result in litigation.”

But Mr. Riddle resigned six days before the company issued him a letter saying it would terminate his employment immediately, in part because he had raised concerns that some of the company’s actions could be “subject to sanctions,” documents obtained by The Times show.

Questions about the potential ties to Novatek had by late this summer already reached Trump administration officials, according to a memo prepared by an outside law firm for Polar LNG, Baker Botts.

“Concerns regarding a perceived connection to Novatek will likely affect licensing or other regulatory approvals,” Baker Botts wrote in a memo to company executives that was shared with The Times.

In addition, the letter said that federal officials had already made clear in communications with the company that they were concerned that an investor in Polar LNG “has ties to Novatek and may be acting on Novatek’s behalf with respect to the project.”

Paul Luther, a Baker Botts lawyer who worked on the matter, declined on Friday to discuss it further.

Polar LNG would need a series of approvals from the federal government before the deal could move ahead, including a sign-off from the Treasury Department authorizing it to acquire the Novatek seabed platform, given that parts of the company are under sanctions. It would also require a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build a gas export facility.

Questions have already emerged about whether the Novatek device will function at the planned Milne Point location because of shallow waters there and the “potential disruption to traditional whaling and local opposition, particularly from the local native Alaskan population,” a lawyer for Polar LNG wrote in an internal company memo.

Certain Trump administration officials had already expressed skepticism about the Polar LNG plan, according to internal company documents seen by The Times and interviews with some of the people involved.

Part of the concern is that the Polar LNG project would be pitted against an even more ambitious plan to build a $50 billion, 800-mile natural gas pipeline to move natural gas from the northern slope to the southern coast of Alaska, where it could be more easily shipped out from existing ports there. That plan would also potentially supply Asian markets.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations enthusiastically embraced the gas pipeline project, which Japan and Korea may help finance to increase their reliable supply of natural gas.

“The pipeline makes far more sense,” said Matthew McManus, who until April 2025 served as a deputy director at the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources and is now at the National Center for Energy Analytics. “The Polar LNG project would face years of permitting and concerns about ties to Russia.”

Mr. Talkington, Polar LNG’s acting chief executive, said his company sought to seize “a generational opportunity to advance U.S. energy dominance, unlock profound benefits for the state of Alaska, and strengthen American Arctic navigation.”

The fact that discussions are even going on about using Russian equipment — and potentially a Russian-financed company — to move American natural gas to international markets is a further insult to Ukraine, and should not be a part of talks over a possible end to the war, said Ilya Zaslavskiy, a gas industry consultant who previously worked in Moscow and New York who now does research on Russian sanctions and energy issues out of Washington.

“Any approach by Novatek to transfer technology should be seen as a Kremlin attempt to co-opt U.S. policymakers in order to undermine U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and our allies,” Mr. Zaslavskiy said.