New Jersey officials are warning people not to feed or engage with coyotes after a surge in sightings of the wily animals in Wildwood.
Wildwood police have received “numerous” reports of coyotes in recent weeks throughout the barrier island, the department wrote on Facebook.
“While coyotes have inhabited our island for years,” the post read, “increased attention surrounding recent sightings has resulted in greater public awareness.”
Wildwood police and a spokesperson for the city did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for more information, including how many coyote sightings have been reported. But residents told NBC10 the number of adults and pups roaming through yards and streets has seemingly increased in recent weeks.
Is there a spike in New Jersey’s coyote population?
New Jersey Fish and Wildlife keeps track of reported sightings but doesn’t maintain localized or statewide estimates on the number of coyotes because “quantifying any wild populations can be challenging,” a spokesperson said in an email. According to 2025 data, coyotes have been reported in 88% of New Jersey’s 568 municipalities.
It’s not unusual for coyotes to be comfortable around human activity, according to the wildlife department: “The coyote is one of the most resilient and prolific canine species in the world – adapting to ever changing habitat conditions while continuing to expand its range,” the spokesperson said.
Coyotes are important members of ecosystems, helping keep rodent populations under control, according to New Jersey Fish and Wildlife. But they can threaten human safety, attack small pets, or cause property damage. The agency says attacks on humans are “extremely rare.”
In Wildwood, officials are concerned people are intentionally feeding the animals, causing them to “lose their natural fear of people” and “become increasingly comfortable in populated areas,” the police department wrote.
“Coyotes are wild animals. Keeping them wild means not feeding them,” the post continued. Feeding wildlife is illegal under a Wildwood city ordinance and punishable by a fine up to $500, according to police.
Wildwood police stressed that people who encounter a coyote should keep a safe distance, control and supervise pets, and report any coyotes exhibiting unusual or aggressive behavior.
WASHINGTON — Billionaire investor Leon Black refused to appear for a sworn deposition before Congress on Thursday and instead sued the House Oversight Committee, asking a federal court to block subpoenas issued as part of its investigation into disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The House Oversight Committee served Black with two subpoenas during a closed-door voluntary interview in June after lawmakers said he refused to answer questions about nondisclosure agreements. One subpoena demanded Black produce nondisclosure agreements and other documents, while the other compelled him to return for a deposition before the committee.
Black’s lawsuit argues the subpoenas exceed the committee’s authority by seeking private information unrelated to Epstein or any legitimate legislative purpose. It asks a federal judge to declare the subpoenas invalid and prevent the committee from enforcing them.
“The Committee is on a fishing expedition that oversteps its authority and completely ignores its responsibility,” Black’s attorney, Susan Estrich, said in a statement. “This is no longer about finding the truth about Epstein. It is about trying to destroy Mr. Black.”
Top Oversight lawmakers threaten to hold Black in contempt
The top Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the committee both criticized Black’s lawsuit and said they planned to discuss later Thursday whether they would hold him in contempt of Congress.
“This is unacceptable. We’re very disappointed,” said House Oversight Chair James Comer. “Of all the powerful billionaires and political people we’ve brought in for interview and depositions, this is the first time anyone’s filed suit.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, called the lawsuit “laughable” and that Black is “trying to slow the process down of getting us the information.”
“Today, the process of contempt has to begin,” Garcia said.
Being held in contempt opens up a witness to criminal prosecution. If the House approves a contempt resolution against Black, it would fall to the Justice Department to decide whether to bring charges against him.
Black paid Epstein over $150 million during their yearslong relationship
Black is the co-founder and former chief executive of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management. He stepped down in 2021 during the fallout over his ties to Epstein.
Lawmakers have alleged that Black paid Epstein $180 million during their yearslong relationship.
A 2021 review commissioned by Apollo found that Black paid Epstein $158 million from 2012 to 2017, after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor. The review said the payments were for “bona fide tax, estate planning, and other related services.”
Black is among a number of influential figures to appear in the investigation into Epstein and the web of wealth and influence around him. Other figures to have appeared for the investigation include former Democratic President Bill Clinton, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Black is mentioned repeatedly in files that the Justice Department has released related to the Epstein investigation. He also appears in a collection of birthday messages sent to Epstein that were released by the House committee last year, including a poem attributed to Black that refers to “Blond, Red or Brunette, spread out geographically.”
Before the June 26 appearance before the committee, Black maintained that he was not aware of Epstein’s “nefarious activity” until 2019 and that he paid Epstein for legitimate purposes, in part due to his “unrivaled network of relationships” with influential figures.
PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The deadlocked jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial went home without a verdict Thursday in a dramatic sixth day of deliberations. Her defense lawyer told the judge that the panel’s foreperson said in a note that a single juror won’t follow the court’s instructions about reasonable doubt and was holding up a verdict.
The jury will return Friday to see if they can reach a decision on whether the Massachusetts mother is criminally responsible for killing her three children.
Before sending the jury home on Thursday, the judge refused the defense’s request to remove one of the jurors following heated discussions among the parties.
Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, doesn’t deny strangling her children in the basement of their home in 2023 before trying to take her own life. Her attorney argues that postpartum psychosis led to her actions, while prosecutors say she knew what she was doing when she killed Cora, Dawson, and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3, and 8 months.
Clancy’s livestreamed trial has generated intense interest, with reporters and spectators packing the courtroom. The case has also sparked deep public divisions over her culpability and the issues around maternal mental health after childbirth.
Lindsay Clancy trial takes a dramatic turn
Judge William Sullivan, after receiving the jury’s note, brought in each juror individually and questioned them in private. The judge then reread his instructions on reasonable doubt before sending them back to continue deliberating on a verdict.
That prompted an angry objection from Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, who demanded that one juror be removed. Sullivan declined. This was the first time the jury indicated possible tension or acrimony in the deliberation room.
Throughout the trial, Clancy has received letters of support “from all over the world,” defense attorney Kevin Reddington said Thursday. “It’s just amazing. She reads them all.”
Lindsay Clancy’s jury twice said they were at an impasse
Sullivan explained to the courtroom on Wednesday that jurors were again at an impasse — a sign there’s a growing chance of a hung jury and the trial ending without a resolution.
Sullivan told the jurors not to abandon their own convictions just to reach a verdict, but urged them to seriously consider opposing views and reassess their positions if appropriate.
No one knows, he said, that another jury would be “more intelligent, more impartial or more competent to decide it than you are.”
Lindsay Clancy could go on trial again
If the jury ultimately can’t agree on a verdict, the judge could declare a mistrial. Prosecutors would then have to decide whether to put Clancy on trial again, drop the charges, or try to negotiate a plea deal with her lawyer.
If the jury decides Clancy was criminally responsible for her actions, it could convict her of either murder or manslaughter. If she is acquitted, a judge could still order her confined to a mental health facility if an evaluation determines that she poses a danger to the public.
The evidence against Lindsay Clancy
Jurors have heard testimony from relatives and doctors about how Clancy’s mental health declined in the months before the killings and how her treatment included several medications and a short stay in a psychiatric hospital.
Medical experts hired by the prosecution and the defense reached sharply different conclusions about her psychiatric state when she killed the children.
Patrick Clancy has said in interviews that he forgives his now ex-wife, whom he views as ill rather than evil.
Clancy strangled the children with exercise bands in their home’s basement, then jumped from a second-floor window. She remains paralyzed from the waist down. Her lawyers say she heard a voice telling her to kill the children so she could end her own life.
The prosecution argues she deliberately sent her then-husband on errands to get him out of the house, and prosecutors have questioned the seriousness of her suicide attempt.
The lawyer for a Guinean man who has lived legally in the United States for nearly 20 years asked a federal judge to free him from ICE detention on Thursday, even as government attorneys described plans to proceed with his deportation.
Mamadou Fadel Cherif, 56, was arrested by immigration officers as he left his West Oak Lane home for work on July 13 and remains in custody at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Central Pennsylvania.
“There’s a human being underlying these proceedings,” attorney Conor Deane told U.S. District Judge Juan Sanchez, as the lawyers debated complicated immigration regulations and law. “An exceptional human being. … He’s the epitome of who you would want to live in this country.”
Fadel Cherif works in dining services at La Salle College High School, the private Catholic boys school in Montgomery County, and also drives for Uber. He’s the main support for his wife, who has legal permanent residency, and for their four American-born sons, one of whom is a Marines reservist.
Deane sought Fadel Cherif’s immediate release, saying he has been illegally detained and denied due process under the law.
Nearly two decades ago, Fadel Cherif was granted what’s called Withholding of Removal, which allows him to live and work in the United States, and bars his deportation to his West Africa homeland, where the U.S. government agrees he could be harmed or killed over his political beliefs.
That status does not shield him from being sent to a third country, however, if ICE can find a nation willing to accept him. Those kinds of third-country deportations are difficult for the agency to achieve, but the Trump administration has pushed to accomplish them.
The Migration Policy Institute estimates that during its first year back in office, the Trump administration carried out about 15,000 removals to third countries, a fraction of the total 396,000 deportations.
Deportations of those who have Withholding of Removal are even more rare, according to the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights in Washington. The center says it is pointless to detain those people while attempting to deport them. If ICE were to release a foreign national and later identify an appropriate third nation, it could simply detain them again.
In court Thursday, the judge noted that authorities plan to deport Fadel Cherif to Ghana — sparking courtroom debate over the West African land’s assurances to the U.S. government that he would be safe there.
Deane said those assertions are not sufficient to deport someone. He described Ghana’s diplomatic assurances as “very boilerplate,” and not barring that nation from sending his client to another country or even back to Guinea.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Landon Jones told the judge he did not have additional information regarding Ghana’s assurances, but the U.S. State Department has deemed them credible.
Abdoulaye Cherif near his West Oak Lane home in July 2026. His father, Mamadou Fadel Cherif, was arrested by ICE and has been detained while the agency tries to deport him.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
Fadel Cherif’s wife and two of his sons, who were in court for the proceedings, declined to comment.
Advocacy groups and immigration lawyers say the Trump administration is increasingly arresting and detaining migrants who have been granted withholding, keeping them in custody while it pursues removal to a third country.
One challenge to deportation is even those nations that willingly accept their own citizens can be disinclined to accept other foreign nationals.
Ricky Palladino, another lawyer for Fadel Cherif, said earlier that there’s no reason for ICE to detain him. He has no criminal record, but does have work authorization, a Social Security number, and a driver’s license.
Fadel Cheriff is nearing the end of his eighth week in detention.
In Guinea, a nation of 12 million people that’s roughly twice the size of Pennsylvania, Fadel Cherif was jailed by the government after protesting the results of his country’s 1998 presidential election, which was marred by irregularities. He later fled in fear of being rearrested, using a document that showed a different Guinean identity to enter the United States in New York in November 2003.
Fadel Cherif was denied asylum — which carries a path to citizenship — when he could not prove that he had filed within a year of entering the United States.
To receive Withholding of Removal, applicants must prove they were persecuted in the past or that their lives would be threatened in the future, that the government harmed or will harm them — or failed to control others who might do so. They also must show that moving to a different part of their home country would not provide safety.
When Withholding of Removal is granted, the immigration judge also enters a deportation order, then tells the government it cannot deport the person to their homeland. In that way the removal is “withheld.”
People with that status cannot leave the United States without triggering deportation, have no path to citizenship, and cannot petition to bring family members to this country.
Fadel Cherif’s lawyers filed what’s called a habeas petition, which asks a judge to order the government to prove it has the lawful authority to detain the person. The term “habeas corpus” translates from Latin as “you have the body,” and such filings are considered crucial constitutional safeguards against wrongful imprisonment.
Habeas petitions, once rare, have dominated the docket at Philadelphia federal court since the Trump administration initiated a policy of mandatory detention last year. That provoked an avalanche of lawsuits by immigrants who challenged their incarceration, demanding their freedom or at least a bond hearing in Immigration Court.
Judge Sanchez gave no indication of when he would issue a ruling.
With early voting about to begin in competitive midterm races, President Donald Trump has kept most of his super PAC money on the sidelines, causing Republican leaders to conclude that it’s too late to fully deploy the cash in the midterms and that he intends to hold on to much of it for his own purposes.
Trump’s political advisers have been assuring anxious allies that MAGA Inc., the president’s super PAC that had more than $400 million on hand as of July 31, will come to the rescue during the peak campaign season after Labor Day. But Republicans are increasingly skeptical and suspicious that Trump — who must personally approve the spending — has other ideas.
The president has not revealed his plans, and his political advisers consistently say they will not share them with reporters. Some people around Trump have concluded that he has little interest in spending the bulk of his super PAC funds on this year’s midterm races, according to a person with knowledge of internal conversations.
Theories about what Trump wants to do with the money cover a broad range of possibilities, including protecting his political influence in the next presidential race by passing on the money to his chosen successor, and saving up for legal fees, postpresidential travel, events, and pet projects, such as his library. Trump’s Miami library is projected to cost at least $1 billion, the most expensive presidential library construction to date.
The person with knowledge of internal discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about those conversations, said Trump and his team believe their ability to rake in massive donations will take a hit after the midterm elections, giving the president an incentive to keep hold of the money he has raised so far.
Fundraising accounts associated with the president — such as his super PAC and funds for his inauguration, White House ballroom and Freedom 250 events — have been inundated with donations from companies looking to get in Trump’s good graces, a dynamic that is likely to change as he becomes a lame duck.
Some donors have started holding back on giving more money to the super PAC while it sits on earlier contributions, according to people familiar with the matter who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
Trump’s reticence surrounding how he will use MAGA Inc. money has caused particular worry for Republicans in this fall’s elections.
GOP candidates and officials still avoid criticizing the president on the record. Privately, however, some operatives have complained that MAGA Inc. has already missed valuable opportunities to lock in airtime at lower advance rates and define candidates before attitudes harden.
Allies have also criticized Trump’s preference for promoting his own record, arguing that super PACs are most effective at attacking opponents, as MAGA Inc. did in 2022.
The nonprofit arm of Trump’s political operation, Securing American Greatness, premiered its first midterm ads on Wednesday, spending just under $1 million, according to the tracking firm AdImpact. The ads, set to air nationwide, feature video clips of Trump talking about tax breaks in his domestic spending legislation and lower prices for eggs and prescription drugs. One spot uses Trump’s friend Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
“Like, they think he’s popular or something,” a Republican ad maker scoffed when shown the videos. “He’s not.”
Multiple public and private polls show Trump’s approval rating mired in the mid-30s, at or near historic lows for a president facing a midterm election.
The ads adhere to Trump’s instruction to advisers to promote his record, and the super PAC could take a different approach with future ad buys, people familiar with the discussions said.
A large lead in available cash has been one of the few bright spots for Republicans in this election cycle, because many of the swing constituencies that helped Trump win back the White House have drifted away amid disappointment with persistent inflation and the Iran war. Leaving a large portion of MAGA Inc.’s money on the sidelines threatens to neutralize that advantage, as individual Democratic campaigns outraise their GOP counterparts.
“I worry about that, for sure,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R, S.D.) told his home state’s CBS affiliate about the possibility of losing the Republican majority in the upper chamber. “I’m a realist, and I just think you — I don’t ever try and sugarcoat things. I think it’s a competitive environment right now.”
While some Republicans have given up on waiting for the MAGA Inc. cavalry, Democrats continue to warn that they expect Trump’s super PAC and Elon Musk’s political outfit to outgun them.
“All of that takes the advantage that Democrats have in terms of individual small-dollar donors, and it really will just swamp it,” said Rep. Chris Pappas (D, N.H.), who is running for an open Senate seat in a tight race against Republican former senator John E. Sununu.
“We are going to get outspent in this race,” he said.
Musk’s super PAC, which spent more than $260 million to back Trump and other Republicans in 2024, just reported $800,000 in midterm spending on GOP candidates, federal campaign filings show. The PAC also started advertising online in the battleground Senate races in Texas, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Maine, according to Meta’s disclosures of political ads on Facebook and Instagram. A spokesman declined to comment.
With the availability of broadcast airtime dwindling, MAGA Inc. may spend more heavily on ads placed on digital streaming services, according to three people familiar with the plans. Those people said streaming services can be more cost-effective for targeting younger and less-frequent voters, like those who helped Trump in 2024, a constituency that Republicans will need to mobilize again this fall.
The PAC is also likely to pay for events and get-out-the-vote operations, one of the people said.
Skeptics of MAGA Inc.’s promises point to Trump’s history of viewing money that he raised as his own and resisting using it to help others. So far this year, the super PAC has spent less than $900,000 supporting Sen. Darline Graham (R, S.C.) in her primary and less than $20,000 sending text messages for Rep. Clay Fuller (R, Ga.), according to federal campaign finance disclosures.
“I’m not affected by the election,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday while discussing the Iran war. “I’m not running. But my party is running, and I’m going to help my party.”
At an event in the Rose Garden with congressional Republicans, Trump on Wednesday night previewed what he described as nonstop travel in the last 30 days before the elections, including a trip to Alaska to stump for Sen. Dan Sullivan (R), but he made no mention of super PAC spending.
“We’re going to be helping you, and I’ll be going around and doing a lot of speeches,” he said. “We’re going to take that little, that final 30 days. You don’t want to go too much before then because people forget.”
The revised outlook “reflects SEPTA’s better-than-expected financial performance” in fiscal 2026 that leaves it with enough liquidity to pay the bills while continuing to try to solve a structural budget gap, Moody’s said in an Aug. 28 statement.
“Our hope is that this external validation supports the message we want to send to our stakeholders in Harrisburg that SEPTA is a sound investment and that we are good stewards of taxpayer dollars,” assistant treasurer Michael Kendall said in an interview.
SEPTA managers pivoted to an increased focus on controlling costs, finding new revenue from advertising, parking, and real estate, and service improvements, Kendall said.
The transit agency says it has found about $30 million in annual savings, as well as increased income from advertising, parking, and real estate. Ridership remained steady and spiked during the summer’s World Cup games, celebrations of America’s 250th birthday, and the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
Overall, SEPTA says its structural budget deficit dropped from $213 million a year to $192 million.
The credit rating for authority bonds remains good, as they are backed by reliable federal and state income streams, not passenger revenue, which can fluctuate.
SEPTA has a $501 million bond for asset improvement and a $42 million bond in the Public Transportation Assistance Fund. Moody’s gave both one of its highest ratings, Aa3. Moody’s also affirmed the A3 ratings on the authority’s $138 million in bonds issued against federal capital grants it has been awarded.
Still, Moody’s warned, “over the long-term, SEPTA’s sizable structural budget gap will be difficult to resolve without further financial support from the commonwealth or significant adjustments to operations.”
In the wake of a hiring surge last summer, an official in charge of evaluating new recruits to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a dire warning.
The Trump administration, he wrote in a memo, was cutting corners, violating the law, and fast-tracking unqualified, “improperly vetted” candidates into ICE’s ranks, part of a dangerous move that exposed the agency — and its law enforcement operations — to “grave national security risks.”
Citing an “unprecedented lowering of standards,” the career ICE official said that “systemic breakdowns” had allowed applicants to receive job offers before they had passed basic fingerprint, identity, or credit checks in a preliminary vetting process. Political appointees had unjustly skirted background investigations and received national security eligibility.
The official, a unit chief who directly oversaw more than 100 employees who evaluated thousands of ICE applicants, was so troubled by what he saw that he outlined these concerns not to his superiors, but in a formal whistleblower complaint to the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security.
In the complaint, he asked for an independent, outside investigation into the matter. He was later interviewed twice by officials with the inspector general’s office and his concerns have become part of an ongoing audit into vetting practices.
The complaint, which has not been previously reported, underscores the rising worries about the suitability — as well as the tactics — of scores of agents who have been rapidly deployed across the country within the past year. It also outlines the extent to which ICE weakened its standards, and points to dissension among the upper reaches of the agency as it was pressed last year to carry out President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The whistleblower, a 17-year ICE veteran who spoke to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his claims, said the agency had cut corners in its rush to fill the ranks.
“We chose as an agency to be more convenient rather than thorough,” he said, describing the agency’s decision to reduce scrutiny of recruits in order to expedite hires. “By doing so, there was a potential to put lives at risk and to jeopardize national security.”
The whistleblower complaint was obtained via a public records request. The concerns within it broadly mirror those made by other current and former ICE employees who said that the agency had abandoned best practices as it rapidly scaled up. An ICE lawyer who worked at the agency’s training center resigned earlier this year and went public as a whistleblower, citing concerns about a “deficient, defective, and broken” training program.
In response to questions, an ICE spokesperson said in a statement that the agency “diligently applies the proper personnel vetting regulations, including guidelines for national security, and evaluates all available information for every applicant based on these factors.”
The agency declined to comment about the whistleblower, who retired from the agency in July, or his complaint.
The scrutiny of ICE’s hiring practices has intensified in recent weeks, spurred in part by the fatal shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian immigrant, in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13.
The two ex-wives of ICE agent David Brouillette, one of whom identified him as the person who fired the fatal shots, have accused him in interviews and court records of being abusive. In a filing for a protection order in December 2019, one ex-wife wrote that he had broken her door down, destroyed her belongings, and dumped her clothes over a bridge.
The women also have said Brouillette, a former military serviceman and Veterans Affairs police officer who was hired amid the recruiting surge last year, had post-traumatic stress disorder related to his deployment in Afghanistan. A local official in Maine told The Portland Press Herald that Brouillette sought jobs with the Hallowell Police Department in 2024 but was denied because there were “too many red flags.” Brouillette could not be reached for comment.
After the shooting, Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said the DHS investigation into the episode will include whether the agent was properly vetted before being hired.
A White House spokesperson referred questions to DHS.
A rush to recruit
The concerns in the August 2025 whistleblower complaint exposed shortcuts in the agency’s preliminary vetting process. No credit checks. Fingerprints unconfirmed. Final job offers absent preliminary vetting.
Before the surge, a recruitment team made documents available to a unit within ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility for each new hire, including fingerprints and a security form with extensive questions. The vetting team would then initiate a preliminary check, running each applicant’s name through law enforcement databases and searching for criminal violations or other major red flags. Some recruits would be sent for a polygraph test if concerns arose.
These recruits then underwent a full background check, conducted by outside contractors, to determine whether the candidate was trustworthy enough to have access to sensitive computer systems, federal facilities, and classified information. It wasn’t unusual for this to occur while recruits were in training.
The preliminary vetting process, which took seven to 10 days, was upended last summer. The vetters were told to make determinations on recruits without having the full security form, fingerprints or any polygraph testing, according to the former unit chief and a former federal official familiar with the process who was granted anonymity to speak freely about it.
That meant new hires were heading to training without having their identities, criminal histories, and other basic information checked and verified, the unit chief said.
The agency also sped up its training program, cutting it from roughly 10 weeks to six. This resulted in agents reporting to their full-time positions while their full background checks were pending.
Meanwhile, recruits with prior law enforcement experience were able to take online courses rather than complete on-site training. They faced even less scrutiny in their background checks.
In July, the agency said, it increased the length of its training program for academy classes, and it instructed past graduates to attend additional training.
Ryan Schwank, the former ICE lawyer who worked at the agency’s training center, testified before Congress this year that new recruits appeared unfit for service.
“We were concerned about ICE recruiting a loose cannon or somebody who was just mentally unfit for the role,” Schwank said in a recent interview. “We knew that kind of person would get through. But the thing that I think kept some of the other instructors up at night was the possibility of organized crime getting access to the agency or penetrating the agency.”
Schwank, who taught recruits during the surge, said that’s exactly what happened. Last fall, several students were removed from the academy in Georgia in the middle of training because officials determined that they were all linked to a criminal gang. Schwank began work at the training academy last September and left the agency in February.
In a statement, an ICE spokesperson said, “ICE has received NO credible evidence that any of its trainees were linked to a common criminal gang.”
In the interview, Schwank said it was rare for students to fail out of the academy before the surge, but that about half of his students flunked out after the hiring push. This was after the academy made its tests open book and no longer failed students who made fatal errors during enforcement simulations.
By this spring, hundreds of new recruits hired amid the surge had already been removed from the force, according to the former federal official who was granted anonymity.
The hiring surge was set in motion in part by the passage of Trump’s domestic policy bill last summer. Congress allocated $30 billion in new money for ICE to hire 10,000 new ICE agents, more than doubling the number of deportation officers.
Concerns about political appointees
The unit chief who filed the whistleblower complaint said he chose to alert the DHS Office of Inspector General because ICE leadership had created these issues and he thought an outside, independent investigation was necessary.
In addition to the vetting concerns, he also mentioned in the complaint that Trump administration political allies had received favorable treatment and obtained security clearances even though troubling information about them had surfaced in background checks. He cited Corey Lewandowski, a former top adviser to DHS.
The concerns about Lewandowski had been outlined in a memo written last year by the DHS head of security and was viewed by the whistleblower, who told the Times that a higher-up had asked him to vet Lewandowski for an ICE credential. The red flags in the memo included allegations that Lewandowski had been paid years earlier for work by a Chinese government agency, according to the whistleblower and a report last year in the Daily Mail. That allegation has not been substantiated outside of that memo.
In a statement, Lewandowski denied he was ever vetted by ICE. He said he had “never worked for the Chinese Communist Party – Full Stop.”
In a follow-up statement, a spokesperson for Lewandowski said any suggestion that he “received favorable treatment in connection with his security clearance is categorically false.”
Ten days after the unit chief filed his whistleblower complaint — and a few days after the Daily Mail article published — a lawyer from the department’s Office of General Counsel reached out to him. This lawyer, who was not from the inspector general’s office, asked to meet the whistleblower at an agency field office in Texas, separate from where he typically worked.
The whistleblower believed he was being interviewed about his security worries, but a different focus of the inquiry became apparent: Had the unit chief talked to the news media about his concerns?
The lawyer grilled him over four hours and seized his laptop, according to the former unit chief and his lawyer. The full contents of the meeting, they said, are protected under a nondisclosure agreement, a common practice for internal investigations.
“My client was of the belief this investigation by the agency’s attorneys was in good faith to vet his disclosure,” said Kevin Owen, a lawyer for the whistleblower. “Instead they threatened him and put him on leave.”
It remains unclear how DHS officials came to target the unit chief.
The agency said it couldn’t comment on personnel matters with people no longer there.
The former unit chief said the inspector general’s office first reached out to interview him in February, about six months after the complaint was filed. Investigators interviewed him again in April for an audit into vetting, he said.
In a statement, the office said it had to delay some of its work due to government furloughs. The office in April opened an audit into the process for giving out security clearances to political appointees.
The inspector general’s office said it couldn’t comment on its investigations, but the agency noted that it did not reveal the name of the whistleblower to anyone outside of its office.
Meanwhile, the whistleblower remained on leave for 10 months for what DHS said were “allegations of serious misconduct,” the unit chief and Owen said.
The alleged misconduct went unspecified, they said, and he was eventually reinstated with no punishment or finding of wrongdoing. He retired immediately after, in July.
He said DHS officials had never told him specifics for why he was on leave for such a long time.
In an effort to learn more, he submitted a records request to ICE for documents related to his case.
The former unit chief said the stress of the investigation weighed heavily on his mental health. He checked himself into a treatment program that lasted several months.
The man, a longtime Republican who voted for Trump in 2020 and 2024, said he grew disillusioned with the agency as it acted in haste to fulfill the president’s immigration enforcement mandate. He said he has always supported ICE’s mission, but was troubled by the way the agency was taking shortcuts in vetting recruits.
“It’s a betrayal of the public trust and everybody’s trust,” he said.
FILE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on patrol at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on March 23, 2026. Amid pressure to hire people quickly, ICE leaders sped up the process, eliminating some of the more thorough checks in place. (Jamie Kelter Davis/The New York Times)JAMIE KELTER DAVISFILE — Ryan Schwank, a former ICE lawyer who worked at the agency’s training center, in Washington on Feb. 23, 2026. In an interview, Schwank said about half of his students flunked out of the academy after the ICE hiring surge. (Kenny Holston/The New York Times)KENNY HOLSTONFILE — An impromptu memorial to Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent, in Biddeford, Maine, on July 14, 2026. The scrutiny of ICE’s hiring practices has intensified in recent weeks, spurred in part by the fatal shooting of Durán Guerrero. (Christopher Capozziello/The New York Times)CHRISTOPHER CAPOZZIELLO
BOSTON — The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to reject an order by a federal judge that halts it from implementing a new rule regulating mail ballots, hours after being unable to tell that judge whether the computer system that would govern the entire project was operational yet.
The administration filed its appeal the afternoon before mail ballots were scheduled to be sent out by North Carolina, which on Friday kicks off a wave of states shipping ballots out for the rapidly approaching midterm election. Its appeal was part of a flurry of last-minute litigation as the federal government struggles to implement President Donald Trump’s restrictions on mail ballots before the midterm elections in November, and came even as legal wrangling over President Donald Trump’s executive order continued in lower courts.
Under Trump’s executive order, the U.S. Postal Service could refuse to deliver ballots from states that do not follow a uniform envelope style and submit lists of eligible voters to an online portal that was apparently still inactive Thursday.
During a hearing in Boston, U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani repeatedly questioned Department of Justice attorney Michael Velchik about whether the Postal Service could actually implement Trump’s plan from an executive order he issued last spring. The key piece is the online portal, which would track tens of millions of mail ballots. States would be required to upload their list of mail voters to the portal to have ballots delivered, and if the data there didn’t match what was on the envelopes, the ballots would not be sent.
Unclear if key system has been set up
“I don’t even have a declaration from the Postal Service: ‘This is how it will work.’ I don’t have it. I have nothing,” Talwani said, adding later that it felt like the government was running an “experiment” to see if the system would work in the upcoming election.
“As you sit here today, you can’t tell me the government has a program ready to go?” Talwani asked.
Velchik repeated that the Postal Service would “fully implement the rule” that it published last month, triggering the latest round of litigation. He argued the main issue is whether Talwani has the legal power to stop it.
“The $64,000 question is, is this authorized by the statute?” Velchik said.
Talwani is considering whether to extend her temporary order barring the Postal Service from requiring use of the system through Sept. 10. The first state to send out all its mail ballots, North Carolina, is scheduled to begin shipping them out Friday, with other states quickly following.
Talwani has been here before. In June, she prohibited the administration from implementing Trump’s executive order for the November election, ruling the changes came too close to voting for the federal government to embark on such a project.
But the Supreme Court late last month ruled that Talwani’s order was premature because the Postal Service had not yet published regulations governing how it would apply Trump’s order. The agency did so just before the high court ruling came down, prompting Democrats and voting rights groups to swiftly re-file their lawsuits.
They counter that the president has no authority to set election rules, which is a power designated by the Constitution to the states and, in some cases, to Congress.
Tangled legal fight goes up to election deadlines
They won an initial victory with Talwani’s 14-day restraining order. In a sign of the pressures on the administration, its lawyers already appealed that order to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, but they added the Supreme Court appeal Thursday and urged the top justices to act quickly.
Election officials say there’s simply no way they can comply with the Postal Service directives, which could require a complete overhaul of their operations. Before it delivers mail ballots for any state, the Postal Service would have to approve the design of the envelopes that contain them and have the state upload a list of voters receiving them to an online portal.
Some ballots have already gone out. A few municipalities in Wisconsin opted to send mail ballots to voters earlier this week, but Friday marks the full kickoff of voting as North Carolina starts shipping its mail ballots to all voters who requested them.
The administration has contended the changes are relatively minor and legal.
“While the States have primary authority to regulate the manner of elections, they cannot choose to use the federal mails to carry out their elections but then insist that their election-related mail is somehow exempt from the Postal Service’s rulemaking authority, conferred by Congress, to regulate envelope design and addressee information,” Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, wrote in the appeal.
No red states have said they’ll use system
Still, the hearing before Talwani focused more on practicalities — especially that the portal was still not active, while most election offices have already printed their envelopes and ballots.
Velchik told the judge that the federal government is offering states the choice to opt into the system, but the Postal Service has yet to identify a single state that has done so. None of the 12 states that intervened in the lawsuit to argue the Trump administration has the right to require the program have announced that they have voluntarily opted into it.
Talwani scolded Missouri Solicitor General Lou Capozzi for arguing on behalf of the project.
“You want the voters in your states to be disenfranchised,” Talwani said. “I don’t understand the interest.”
Capozzi said that was misinformation: “There is no risk that people would be disenfranchised.”
A whistleblower report made public this week warns that the postal system’s requirements could lead to millions of mail ballots never being sent. The new rule requires all ballots to be physically brought to post offices before being mailed to voters. But if a single one’s bar code registers an error, the whole batch gets thrown out, even if it contains tens of thousands of legitimate ballots.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is proposing a new rule that would strip private schools and colleges of their tax-exempt status if they provide targeted help to students based on their race, a significant escalation in the White House’s campaign to eradicate diversity programs directed at Black, Hispanic and other minority students.
The Treasury Department proposed the change Thursday in a new regulation that, if made final, would kick in after May 2027. The rule is broadly aimed at ending any policies or programs that help students because of their race, and it specifically says such benefits in admissions, scholarships, and facilities “would be incompatible” with the rule.
It’s the latest attempt by the Trump administration to pressure schools and colleges to weed out diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that had become common before President Donald Trump returned to the White House with a promise to end them. Trump officials have used Civil Rights-era laws to unwind the policies, saying they discriminate against white and Asian American students.
Higher education leaders criticized the proposal.
“The administration’s latest rules changes are its most blatant attack to keep working class Americans and people of color from accessing higher education and a better life,” Mike Gavin, Alliance for Higher Education president and CEO, said in a statement. “By claiming that efforts to increase fair opportunity for all students are discriminatory, the administration is trying to gaslight the American people into believing that up is down and black is white.”
Thousands of colleges could be affected
Scores of universities have shut down or rebranded their DEI offices and ended scholarships and clubs designed for minority students under pressure from the White House. In a statement announcing the proposal, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that even policies that are no longer under the banner of DEI could be targeted.
“Schools rebranding race-based preferences as equitable, inclusive, or diversity-enhancing does not change their discriminatory nature,” Bessent said.
The Treasury Department and IRS estimate that up to 18,000 private schools, colleges, and other education institutions could be affected by the proposal.
America’s private universities have been exempt from many taxes for more than a century because they provide a public good. The benefit saves many universities millions of dollars every year.
Trump has seen the tax-exempt status as a lever to pull in his pressure campaign against colleges that he describes as hotbeds of “wokeness.” He threatened to cut the benefit for Harvard University last year during his battle with the nation’s oldest college. In a response, Harvard officials said there was no legal basis for doing so and argued it would force cuts to financial aid and crucial medical research.
In the 1970s, a college lost tax-exempt status over a ban on interracial dating
It’s incredibly rare for the federal government to go after a college’s tax-exempt status, but there’s one notable precedent. Bob Jones University, a small Christian school in South Carolina, lost the benefit in the 1970s over a ban on interracial dating and marriage on campus. The Supreme Court upheld the IRS’s decision to deny the school its exemption. The school has since ended the ban and regained tax-exempt status in 2017.
Laws forbid the IRS from targeting individuals and organizations for ideological reasons, and federal officials are not allowed to direct IRS investigations.
To maintain nonprofit status, which allows donations to be tax-deductible, organizations must follow IRS rules on lobbying, political campaign activity, and annual reporting requirements, as well as other obligations.
The Trump administration describes the new proposal as a move toward restoring merit in the nation’s education systems.
Marjorie Hass, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, said the change would most likely impact donations, which are often earmarked for scholarships.
The uncertainty around the proposal also will create challenges for schools, said Tim Powers, a vice president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
“Our institutions are committed to complying with applicable civil rights laws and maintaining safe and supportive campuses free from discrimination,” Powers said. “However, the proposed rule may create new compliance burdens and legal uncertainties for institutions of higher education that are already operating in line with existing nondiscrimination rules.”
The Justice Department has separately opened investigations into several medical schools that it accuses of favoring Black and Hispanic students in admissions. Trump officials say any such favoritism violates Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal law that forbids discrimination in education and was created to fight segregation and its impact.
A statement from IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano said private schools that promote discriminatory practices will no longer be exempt from taxes.
“Today’s proposed regulations put institutions on notice and schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination should expect to lose that status,” he said.
Special education and the student use of electronic devices will likely be two hot topics when candidates for the Cherry Hill Board of Education are questioned at a forum in two weeks.
Jamie Marchese, chair of the Zone PTA for South Jersey’s largest school district, said special education usually comes up at candidate forums and, this year, screen time by students is a big issue.
Cherry Hill schools also are in the midst of a massive renovation program, financed by a $363 million bond referendum passed by voters in 2022.
The forum for the eight school board candidates, sponsored by the parent–teacher association and moderated by the League of Women Voters, will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 15 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Cherry Hill High School West auditorium — the first in-person forum since the pandemic. The audience also can join in remotely by Zoom.
The five-member Zone PTA board represents the school district’s 18 school PTAs and the special education PTA.
Marchese said residents have been asking for a live audience for the annual forum.
“Not everyone likes to sit in front of a screen and watch,” she said.
Voters will cast their ballots in advance or go to the polls on Nov. 3 to select three board members for three-year terms.
The candidates, in the order they are listed on the ballot and their slogans, are:
Melissa Manzano (incumbent), Experience in Education
Darby Malvey, Experience in Education
Renee Cherfane (incumbent), Learn, Then Rebuild
Joseph Lynch, Leadership, Results, Integrity
Harold “Hal” Melleby Jr., Experience-Leadership-Community
Residents have until Sept. 11 to submit their questions for the candidates, said Marchese, who lives in the Windsor Park neighborhood and has three children in Cherry Hill schools. Questions can be submitted via Google form.
Marchese said that some questions may be combined because of the time constraints on the two-hour forum.
The forum will open with candidates spending two minutes each to present their platforms. Each candidate will also get a two-minute closing statement at the end of the forum.
Candidates are also given one minute to respond to each of the questions.
All community members are invited to attend, Marchese said. In November, voters will select Board of Education members “to represent us in our wants and needs for our public schools,” she said.
70and73.com is a hyperlocal news site focused on South Jersey, including the communities of Cherry Hill, Evesham, Mount Laurel, Voorhees, Medford, Medford Lakes, and Moorestown.
