KATHMANDU, Nepal — Rescuers in Nepal pulled two workers alive from an underground tunnel at a hydropower plant Friday, raising hopes of reaching dozens of others believed to be trapped nine days after deadly floods swept away villages and submerged the Himalayan region in mud and debris.
Search teams first heard voices from inside the tunnel in the morning, allowing them to locate the two men, Nepalese lawmaker Shri Ram Neupane said. Images showed a rescuer carrying one of the workers, covered in mud, on his back, while soldiers on either side helped.
One of those rescued said more people are alive inside the tunnel, according to army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet, and the search is ongoing.
“I can’t explain what we are feeling at the moment. We are just grateful to god,” Amir Maharjan, the brother of one of those rescued, told the Associated Press.
Basnet confirmed the first trapped worker’s rescue, and Neupane posted about the second on his Facebook page shortly after.
Both men were flown to a hospital in Kathmandu, and Maharjan said his family was on its way there. One of the survivors was in critical condition, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.
Officials identified the men as a mechanical foreman and a mechanical supervisor. They were rescued from a tunnel at the Trishuli 3A plant.
About 900 workers are missing from 12 hydropower projects in Nepal, with roughly 500 believed to be trapped in various tunnels, according to authorities.
About 115 are believed trapped in the tunnel at Trishuli 3A alone, according to the Independent Power Producers Association of Nepal.
Nepal’s Communication Minister Bikram Timilsina wrote on his Facebook page that officials “are waiting for the rescue of more and more people.”
At least 1,287 people were killed in the Aug. 26 floods, likely caused by a glacier collapse, and more than 5,000 remain missing, according to Nepal’s disaster management agency. China said Friday 31 people were killed and 531 were missing on the Tibet side of the border, according to Chinese official news agency Xinhua.
Nepal’s disaster agency estimated Friday that flooding caused at least 387.5 billion Nepalese rupees ($2.5 billion) in damage to infrastructure and property.
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert is retiring at the end the year, bringing to a close her seven-plus years at the helm of the league and a stewardship that has been transformative and at times tumultuous.
Engelbert is the second-longest tenured WNBA president or commissioner, and she helped negotiate a lucrative collective bargaining agreement this past spring that resulted in the league’s first set of million-dollar player salaries. Philly-based lawyer Deb Willig helped lead negotiations for that CBA.
“Cathy has presided over the WNBA through the most significant period of growth in the league’s 30-year history,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Friday when announcing Engelbert’s decision. “We are grateful for Cathy’s leadership and unwavering commitment to the advancement of women’s basketball.”
Engelbert, a Collingswood native who turns 62 in November, told the Associated Press that she has been thinking about retiring for months.
“When I first came to the league, I intended to do this for 3½ years,” she said in a phone interview. “The 7½ years exceeded that time. This is a really good time, given the financial transformation journey we’ve been on. Getting the collective bargaining agreement done, getting a long-term media rights deal done, getting expansion done.”
Engelbert insists that the decision to leave was her own and that she did not feel any pressure to step down from NBA or WNBA stakeholders.
Who’s next?
The commissioner said she has been working on a succession plan over the last few years. While she didn’t give any specifics on who might be considered for the position, Engelbert did say there are both internal and external potential candidates on the league’s radar.
“It’s a good time to hand it off to the next leader to take the ‘W’ into a better phase,” she said. “I’m proud of the team we built and everything we accomplished. A leader knows when it’s time to drop the mic and move on after building a powerhouse team in the league office.”
Engelbert said she has mixed emotions about leaving.
“I love women’s basketball, and am not going anywhere yet,” said Engelbert, who was a point guard for Muffet McGraw at Lehigh. “We’ll run a real succession process in the remaining four months. If we don’t find someone, I’ll stay on. I had no transition. I walked in the door, and I was by myself as no one transitioned me into this role.
“Hopefully I can help this next leader transition in especially considering the elevation of this league.”
The WNBA has grown at an exponential rate during Engelbert’s tenure as commissioner, with record television ratings, strong attendance, a new long-term media rights deal and expansion to 18 teams by the end of the decade. That run of expansion will be capped by a team coming to Philadelphia in 2030.
“I was brought in as a business leader to transform the business,” she said. “I look at revenue and merchandise, viewership and attendance,” she said, noting how they’ve all improved. “A great leader senses when it’s time for someone else to come in. When I came in, this league was facing questions about our long-term viability and sustainability.”
Cathy Englebert announces that she will retire as WNBA commissioner at the end of the year. She took over in 2019, and next 2 team sales in 2021 were for $2-3M (Las Vegas) and $5M (Atlanta). W average value is now $427M, and No. 1 based on avg revenue multiple. pic.twitter.com/Mf3CmaqgNl
Engelbert said the growth of the league has “blown away her expectations” since she stepped into her role after leaving her previous position as president of Deloitte in 2019.
Besides the new CBA, the list of things she is most proud of includes getting charter travel for players, keeping the league going during the coronavirus pandemic, the historic media rights deal and exponential increase in the value of WNBA franchises. In 2019, the average value of a WNBA franchise was $10 million; in 2026, it is about $460 million.
Along with the financial gains, however, turmoil and tension have accompanied the WNBA’s growth.
Players say they have seen more social media vitriol directed toward them over the last few years, and some don’t feel the league has done enough to ensure their safety. The league also has been at the center of discussions about transgender athletes playing in the league.
Engelbert has repeatedly said the online attacks of players are unacceptable and she backs league initiatives to protect players. She also said there should be no confusion on the transgender question.
“We have no current eligibility issues in the WNBA,” Engelbert said, adding that “if we did, we would have a thoughtful policy discussion with the [players’ association] and the players.”
While there was a strained partnership between the commissioner and players during the recent CBA negotiations, Engelbert insists she has a good relationship with them.
Talks between the commissioner and players have been complicated.
New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart, who’s vice president of the WNBA players’ union executive committee, said before the All-Star Game that there is a respect for Engelbert among the players, just not much of a relationship.
New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart (30) defends as Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark looks to pass in the first half of a game on Aug. 11 in Indianapolis.Michael Conroy
Engelbert’s future
Engelbert said she is ready to do what most retirees plan: spend more time with family.
She also admitted that the online hate she receives has affected her family as well, though she did not share details of the impact.
“There have been some hard parts of that on my family with the vitriol and hate I get online,” Engelbert said.
Sixers majority owner Josh Harris (left), Detroit Pistons vice chairman Arn Tellem, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, and Cleveland Cavaliers CEO Nic Barlage celebrate the announcement of three new teams, including a franchise coming to Philly.Jonathan Tannenwald
Her retirement will make her mother happy. Her father, Kurt, was a Hall of Fame basketball player at St. Joseph’s who died in 1987. Her parents were from Northeast Philly, and five of her siblings attended Villanova, according to a 2019 Inquirer article.
“My mom is turning 90 this year, and she said that ‘it would be good if you were retired to spend more time with me,’” Engelbert said, laughing. “I have two children, one I barely see.
“I’m one of eight kids [and I] have five brothers. They always say can you retire so you can spend more time with us.”
Dubbed America’s best singer by Time magazine in 2001, Ms. Wilson was best known for her genre-bending voice, which expanded the boundaries of traditional blues-based jazz and worked effortlessly across folk, pop, R&B, country, and beyond. At the heart of all her work was her idiosyncratic contralto, a soulful sound distinctly tied to her roots.
As Jon Batiste put it in a eulogy on Wednesday, Ms. Wilson sounded like the South.
She died in her native Jackson, Mississippi, on Tuesday morning, the Hinds County Coroner Jeramiah Howard confirmed.
“It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Cassandra Wilson, the Grammy Award-winning and legendary jazz artist. Cassandra Wilson transitioned peacefully at home, surrounded by family, close friends, and her manager,” said a statement from her manager to jazz radio station WBGO.
From Jackson to the world
Born and raised in Jackson to musician Herman B. Fowlkes and teacher Mary Fowlkes, Ms. Wilson showed an early love of music listening to Motown, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk. At 6, she started piano lessons. She played clarinet in marching bands. She performed at coffeehouses and in cover bands while studying at Millsaps College and Jackson State University.
In the early ‘80s, she mentored under jazz greats in New Orleans before moving to New York City and joining Steve Coleman’s M-Base Collective — eventually becoming its main vocalist.
Her instantly recognizable voice earned her four Grammy nominations and two wins for best jazz vocal album. Those were in 1997 for New Moon Daughter and 2009 for Loverly.
In 2015, it was Ms. Wilson who gave a special concert at the famed Apollo Theater to commemorate the 100th birthday of blues singer Billie Holiday, the legendary American jazz vocalist who died in New York City at age 44. That same year, Ms. Wilson released her last album, Coming Forth by Day, an homage to Holiday.
In 2022, Ms. Wilson was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, one of the highest honors awarded to jazz musicians in the United States.
Tributes pour in
“She had an unmistakable vocal tone, phrasing, and her approach of weaving folkloric, R&B, and diasporic music together with experimental and popular genres had a major impact on me,” Batiste said in his tribute to Ms. Wilson on Instagram.
“Her Mississippi heritage was always present in everything no matter how expansive her artistry evolved,” he wrote in the caption of a clip showing them together on Brazilian TV in 2009. “She was one of the first people to take me on tour around the world, the great Cassandra Wilson.”
Jackson Mayor John Horhn said the city “has lost an extraordinary native daughter, and the world has lost a singular musical voice.”
“Cassandra Wilson carried the sound, spirit and history of Mississippi with her wherever her music reached,” said the mayor’s statement, shared with WJTV. “Her work had rare depth of character and a profound understanding of how music moves people, tells stories and connects generations.”
BILLINGS, Mont. — The U.S. Forest Service is closing 23 research and development stations in more than a dozen states as part of an organizational overhaul under President Donald Trump that is intended to trim costs and concentrate the agency’s resources in Western states, officials said Thursday.
The work being done at the research stations will continue at other sites, Forest Service Associate Chief Chris French said in an interview. An additional 41 research facilities that faced possible closure will remain open after local officials and members of Congress raised concerns about the reorganization, which was announced in March.
“Our primary goal was to get our facilities costs under control,” French told The Associated Press. “We’re not closing any ongoing science activities. We’re not closing any of the experimental forests that are important to our researchers.”
Research by forest service employees ranges from studies on invasive species and protecting water resources to how wildfires are changing as climate change dries out and heats up forests.
Bill Avey of the National Associated of Forest Service Retirees, an advocacy group, said the forest service has long struggled to pay for all its facilities and some opportunities for consolidation exist. But Avey, who worked at the service for four decades, said its current leaders including Chief Tom Schultz need to defend the importance of forest research more vocally.
“He should be doing a much better job of pushing back and justifying and explaining some of the research work,” Avey said. He added that the 41 facilities being retained likely would have closed as well if not for pushback from his group and others.
The 95 employees at the research stations slated for closure will be shifted to other sites within their commuting areas, Forest Service Communications Director Chad Douglas said. The closures — along with previously announced plans to shut regional offices in Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Portland — will save about $16 million, officials said.
The reorganization also includes moving the agency’s headquarters from Washington to Salt Lake City. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has said the move, expected to be completed by next summer, will bring leaders closer to the landscapes they manage and the people who depend on them.
Conservation groups have criticized the changes, warning that they could reduce access to forests and threaten wildlife habitat and clean air and water.
Federal data shows that the Forest Service has lost about 6,000 employees, or about 15% of its workforce, during Trump’s second term as part of the Republican administration’s sweeping cuts to agencies that oversee the nation’s natural resources.
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors have charged a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer with lying to investigators about the events leading up to the shooting of a Venezuelan man during the Minneapolis immigration crackdown earlier this year, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
Christian Castro, the officer who authorities say shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg in January, has been charged with making false statements to federal investigators, according to the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The federal charges, which remain under seal, follow Castro’s release from jail last week after Texas’ governor refused to immediately sign an extradition warrant to hand him over to Minnesota authorities, who have charged him separately with assault and false reporting of a crime related to the same shooting.
Federal authorities had initially accused Sosa-Celis and another man of beating an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel during the confrontation. But federal prosecutors dropped charges against the men after video evidence showed the officers may have lied about the encounter, and officials opened an investigation.
Charges stem from nonfatal shooting during Operation Metro Surge
Castro is the first federal immigration officer to be prosecuted by the Trump administration related to actions taken during the massive Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities that began in January 2026. No attorney is listed for Castro in the case brought by Minnesota, and it was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer to speak on his behalf.
Thousands of officers were sent to the Minneapolis and St. Paul area by the Department of Homeland Security in what was its largest immigration enforcement operation ever. The shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers drew condemnation and raised questions over officers’ conduct, prompting changes to the operation.
Earlier this week, a federal prosecutor working on the case told lawyers for Sosa-Celis and other victims that Justice Department officials blocked the prosecutor’s push to bring a more serious civil rights charge against the officer for the shooting, ProPublica reported on Wednesday.
But the person familiar with the investigation disputed the prosecutor’s characterization, saying the civil rights probe is continuing and there has been no final decision on whether to bring additional charges. The prosecutor, Matthew Evans, has been fired and is under investigation for alleged obstruction of a grand jury probe, the person said.
An automatic email response from Evans’ Justice Department account said he was on leave. Other attempts to reach him were not immediately successful.
An attorney for Sosa-Celis said the Justice Department has “grossly undercharged this case,” adding that Castro’s statements were made to “cover up the fact that he shot my client through the door of an occupied house without a self-defense justification.”
“Mr. Sosa Celis wants Mr. Castro to be held fully accountable for his crimes,” said the attorney, Robin Wolpert. The American Liberties Union of Minnesota said Thursday that Sosa-Celis also plans to seek damages from the federal government.
Castro is also facing charges from Minnesota authorities
Castro was initially arrested in May in the Minnesota case, and he was held in custody in Brownsville, Texas, a city bordering Mexico, while Minnesota officials sought his extradition. But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott refused to immediately sign off, citing continuing investigations of fraud in government social service programs in Minnesota, which Trump used to justify his immigration crackdown there.
Minnesota officials had sought to stop the sheriff in Cameron County, Texas, from releasing Castro, out of fear that he would flee to Mexico. According to a lawsuit filed by Minnesota, Castro had a conversation with a woman, while he was incarcerated, where he spoke about marrying her and buying a house in Mexico after his release.
But Castro was released a week ago after a federal judge refused to order Texas to extradite him.
The Department of Homeland Security previously called Minnesota’s prosecution of Castro “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt,” saying only federal authorities have jurisdiction in the case.
Castro was placed on leave during the federal probe
Castro was suspended from ICE without pay in February while federal authorities conducted the investigation.
“The men and women of ICE are entrusted with upholding the rule of law and are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethical conduct,” ICE’s acting director at the time, Todd Lyons, said then. “Violations of this sacred sworn oath will not be tolerated. ICE remains fully committed to transparency, accountability, and the fair enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws.”
Minnesota officials alleged that Castro, 52, fired through the front door of a home and shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh.
Castro and another officer had chased a different man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, to the Minneapolis apartment duplex where he and Sosa-Celis lived. Minnesota prosecutors said the officer then falsely accused Sosa-Celis and another man of attacking an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.
Attorneys for Sosa-Celis and Aljorna didn’t immediately respond to emails Thursday from the AP.
A man convicted over a “Texas Killing Fields” death was sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday in a rare trial related to the bodies of dozens of women found near Houston beginning in the 1970s.
James Dolphs Elmore Jr. was given the maximum sentence by a jury in Galveston County a day after they found him guilty of manslaughter in the death of 16-year-old Laura Miller. Elmore, 61, was arrested earlier this year and accused of preparing the dose of cocaine that killed Miller. Her body was found in the infamous area in 1986.
Investigators believe multiple people may be responsible for the deaths of more than 30 girls and young women, whose bodies were found in a stretch of land along Interstate 45 southeast of Houston. The “Texas Killing Fields” have inspired books, movies and a Netflix documentary.
Miller was one of four young women whose bodies were found between 1984 and 1991 in a rural field off a desolate dirt road in League City, located about 28 miles southeast of Houston.
Elmore was accused in an indictment of preparing a vial of cocaine that was administered to Miller by Clyde Hedrick, who authorities have alleged was the person responsible for the deaths of the four women and had been Elmore’s longtime friend. The district attorney’s office said in March that they had decided to seek grand jury indictments against Hedrick in the deaths, but the 72-year-old Hedrick died by suicide before the grand jury presentation.
Hedrick was convicted of manslaughter in 2014 in the death of Ellen Beason, a young woman whose body was found in 1985 after going missing the previous years. He was released in 2022 and was still on parole at the time of his death, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
After Laura Miller’s death, her father, Tim Miller, founded Texas EquuSearch, a nonprofit that helps look for missing people.
Most of the deaths associated with the “Texas Killing Fields” remain unsolved.
In 2022, William Reece, an Oklahoma death row inmate, pleaded guilty to three murders in Texas, including those of 12-year-old Laura Smither and 17-year-old Jessica Cain in Galveston County, and 20-year-old Kelli Cox, who was from Denton in North Texas but whose body was found hundreds of miles away in Brazoria County, located next to Galveston County. He received life sentences for all three murders.
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.
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.
