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Category: Wires

Nigerian children pay the price for the Iran war as malnutrition and poverty surge

SOKOTO, Nigeria — Maryam Aminu was hardly surprised when the last of her six children was diagnosed with malnutrition in April for a second time. She was barely feeding the 18-month-old regularly, let alone with nutritious foods.

Although the family in northwest Nigeria has struggled with economic hardship, their situation deteriorated after February, when her husband, Shehu Aminu, lost his job as a taxi driver due to a spike in the retail price of petrol caused by the war in Iran.

“When she was diagnosed the second time, even though I suspected it, I was sad and angry because I knew why,” Aminu said in the living area of their unvarnished two-bedroom house in the quiet town of Kware, Sokoto, as ash from the coal stove billowed into the room. “Times are tough, and the food is not consistent.”

Children relapsing into malnutrition has become an increasingly common occurrence in the state and across northern Nigeria, according to local health and aid workers, who cite knock-on effects from the Iran war.

Northern Nigeria, one of the world’s poorest regions, is already under pressure from an insurgency crisis. Now, the conflict in the Middle East has worsened food security for millions of people living in poverty, especially children.

At the same time, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s vast economic reforms sparked high inflation after fuel subsidies were removed three years ago and the currency was devalued. A World Bank technical report this week stated that 139 million Nigerians are now poor or vulnerable to poverty.

If the war in the Middle East continues, up to 23.4 million additional children could fall into monetary poverty — meaning a lack of income or consumption — by the end of the year, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said in a report this week. It warned that at least 80% would be in Africa and Asia.

“Children are paying the price for the escalating conflict in the Middle East, including children far beyond the region,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “The longer this continues, the worse the consequences will be.”

Dangers ahead for children

Amid the Iran war, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passed before the war — sent a ripple effect across the world. A worldwide fuel shock drove up the prices of everything from gas and groceries to fertilizer and airline tickets.

In Nigeria, fuel pump prices jumped from 800 naira ($0.58) per liter in February to 1,400 naira ($1.02) in April, with a corresponding effect on the prices of food and necessities.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been trying to force Iran to fully reopen the route for months, turning to everything from airstrikes and naval blockades to negotiations and threats.

In Sokoto, where the soaring prices have brought more hardship for families, health workers told the Associated Press that they’ve been seeing more children returned to health facilities this year after falling back into malnutrition.

At a hospital in Sokoto, records shared with AP show nearly 40 children previously treated for malnutrition since February are currently under treatment again, in addition to those not documented.

“I am worried and sometimes angry about the increasing numbers we are seeing,” said health worker Halimah Muhammad.

Beyond current realities, soaring prices and economic hardship mean that children in poor households are more likely to be stunted in the long term, UNICEF’s Russell said in an interview with the AP as she was visiting Sokoto this week.

“Their development will be compromised. They are less likely to stay in school because their parents are under so much financial stress. So the long-term implications for children are absolutely terrible,” said Russell.

The war has also affected fertilizer supplies and prices, threatening the planting season and worsening the fate of farming communities in northern Nigeria who have struggled to access their farmlands amid a deadly conflict with armed groups.

“I wake up every morning unhappy, seeing I can no longer provide for my family,” said Shehu, Maryam’s husband. “Then, 2,000 naira could buy you a nutritious meal for the whole family. Now, you need 5,000 naira to buy what 2,000 naira would buy.”

Most of their meals are pap, a kind of corn pudding, and rice. “There is no way to feed the children,” he said.

‘I wish she were excited and full of life’

People in northwest Nigeria are caught between regular attacks by bandit groups who specialize in kidnapping for ransom and Islamist militants who have been expanding their territory. The Iran war, analysts say, compounds the impact.

“This distant war offers no relief for the north’s vulnerable,” Ikemesit Effiong, a partner at SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based geopolitical risk advisory, said.

Larai Malami, a 35-year-old mother of 10, gave birth to her last child in December, but the infant has already been diagnosed with malnutrition twice.

Her family has been struggling after her husband lost his job as a motorcycle rider and crossed the border into neighboring Niger to look for work.

Malami worries about the fuel price because it keeps the price of food high and her husband away. “I worry that the child might never be fully well,” she said.

That is a sentiment shared by Aminu, too. “I wish she were excited and full of life,” she said.

July 19, 2026
How presidential travel is the ultimate expression of political power

WASHINGTON — He was like a kid with a new toy. As President Donald Trump began flying the new Air Force One, he raved about the luxury plane donated by Qatar. “Truly magnificent,” he said. “Truly spectacular,” he added. “There’s just nothing like it,” he emphasized.

And in a sense he was right. The new plane, with its gold fixtures and reclining massage chairs, was unlike the old one that presidents have traveled in for generations: It is believed to lack the same defensive countermeasures that the old model had to keep the flying commander in chief safe, as the New York Times has reported.

The furor over the new plane and its security drawbacks serves as a reminder of the evolution in presidential travel and efforts to keep the country’s leaders safe when they leave the fortresslike confines of the White House.

The modern president rides in an armored limousine nicknamed “the Beast” that in theory could survive explosions, and flies in specially designed Marine helicopters designed to defend against attacks from the ground.

But nothing has projected the political majesty that Air Force One has over the years. With its blue-and-white design and the words “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” emblazoned on the side, the plane has become a grand symbol of American power, recognized around the world. It’s even the star of its own action-adventure movie named after it.

When they have left office, presidents as disparate as George W. Bush and Barack Obama have lamented that one of the things they miss most about their time in power was the plane. (“Never lost my baggage,” Bush noted. No TSA lines and “taking your shoes off and all that,” Obama pointed out.)

But none fixated on the aircraft as much as Trump. In his first term, he was so intent on replacing it with a new, splashier plane that he had a model of what it would look like in the Oval Office, then took the model with him when he left and displayed it in the lobby at Mar-a-Lago. Now in his second term, he finally has the real thing, which he had painted red, white, and blue.

What would George Washington have thought? The first president, after all, had only a horse at his disposal. Here is a short history of presidential travel.

Washington enjoyed a little pomp at his first inauguration, arriving for the ceremony in a horse-drawn carriage. But by the end of the day, when he was trying to return to the presidential mansion to rest, the streets were so crowded that he had to abandon the carriage and walk the rest of the way.

When Trump arrived at the White House on the first day of his first term, by contrast, he was carried in a hermetically sealed, bulletproof limousine. Officially code-named Stagecoach by the Secret Service, the car is more commonly called the Beast, the nickname bestowed by the news media when the first version of it was introduced in 2001 for Bush’s first inauguration.

The latest version came into service in 2018 during Trump’s first term. And in situations where the terrain is more rugged, the president rides in an SUV version of the Beast, called the “Camp Package” after Camp David. A new version was introduced this year.

The history of presidential travel has a long arc bent toward isolation and heightened security measures. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln often commuted alone by horse from the Soldiers’ Home retreat to the White House; at some point Mary Todd Lincoln grew concerned and insisted that soldiers ride along with him.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt loved to drive himself in a car using special hand controls because of his polio. Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, open presidential motorcades were a thing of the past, and with few exceptions, modern presidents never drive themselves.

A turning point in presidential security was the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley, who was gunned down at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y. After that, the Secret Service, which had only protected the president part time, took on the duty of guarding him full time.

But this was also a time of immense change on the presidential travel front. McKinley was the first president to ride in a motor vehicle and President Theodore Roosevelt the first to ride in an automobile owned by the government. His successor, President William Howard Taft, bought a few cars for the White House and converted the stables into a garage.

Woodrow Wilson was the first president to visit Europe while in office, crossing the Atlantic on the SS George Washington twice to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended World War I.

Many Americans might be surprised that presidents had their own yacht for about a century. From 1880 to 1977, a succession of ships acted as the “Floating White House.” The 273-foot-long USS Mayflower was the first luxury version, and Theodore Roosevelt used it during his efforts to broker an end to the Russo-Japanese War.

His distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt discussed D-Day plans with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower aboard the USS Sequoia. But President Jimmy Carter sold the Sequoia shortly after taking office as a gesture to presidential modesty following Watergate.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first sitting president to travel by plane, a Douglas VC-54C Skymaster nicknamed “the Sacred Cow.” He flew to overseas summit meetings with Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain and, eventually, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, including in Casablanca, Morocco; Tehran, Iran; and Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula.

But it was Kennedy who made the president’s plane an international icon. It was he who directed that a Boeing 707 reserved for presidential use be painted blue and white. He also wanted the lettering of “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” to mirror the look of the words on the Declaration of Independence.

Every president since then flew in planes with the same design, but Trump did not like it and insisted on the red, white, and blue paint job.

Air Force One is actually the official code name for any plane in which the president flies, but for decades there have been two primary planes, specially equipped Boeing 747-200Bs that presidents flew, until Trump’s donated Qatari luxury jet. They were delivered in 1990 during President George H.W. Bush’s administration.

Trump complains that the current planes are old and not as impressive as the luxury jets flown by Arab royals. “It’s like from a different planet,” he said.

White House officials have tried for years to replace them with newly converted modern aircraft, but the $3.9 billion project has been repeatedly delayed. The first of the new pair of Boeing 747-8s is scheduled to be delivered in mid-2028. Rather than wait, Trump accepted the Qatari jet as a bridge until they are finally ready.

Many critics, including Republicans, have found it unseemly or even corrupt for a U.S. president to accept a plane as a gift from a foreign country, deeming it to be an obvious payoff to curry favor and an embarrassment that the United States could not provide its own aircraft.

But Trump cares little about such complaints. He wants a plane that he can show off and that he considers befitting of the most powerful person in the world.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

July 19, 2026
U.S. announces another troop death as Israel warns Tehran’s attacks are coming close

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United States announced another death of a service member as it launched more airstrikes at Iran on Sunday in response to the killing of U.S. troops, and Iran fired missiles toward Jordan that risked widening the conflict into neighboring Israel.

Step by step, the U.S. and Iran have returned closer to all-out war as last month’s interim deal meant to permanently end the fighting has crumbled and shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has largely stalled. Both sides have targeted civilian infrastructure relied on by millions of people.

The U.S. military said the service member was killed in Iraq on Saturday during the “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone.

Earlier, the military said its strikes targeted Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to retaliate for Friday’s killing of troops in Jordan. One service member was missing after that attack, and the military’s new statement said “unidentified remains” were found Sunday and were being examined. Since the war began, 17 U.S. service members have been killed.

The renewed exchanges of fire, now in their second week, have seen the U.S. target bridges, water desalination plants, and electrical facilities in Iran. Tehran has hit U.S.-allied countries throughout the Middle East.

Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain again activated air defenses for incoming Iranian drones and missiles. Israel warned that missiles launched toward neighboring Jordan could cause fire to spill over into Israeli territory for the first time in weeks.

Iran says a nuclear site under construction was hit

The U.S. military’s Central Command said it hit “Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, maritime capabilities, and missile and drone storage sites.” It said the attack was designed to degrade Iran’s ability to control the strait and “swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces,” a power base in Iran’s theocracy that controls its ballistic missile arsenal.

Footage released by the U.S. military appeared to show strikes carried out by fighter jets and by Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from the sea. One target site appeared to be in a valley of a mountainous region. The Guard often has missile bases and other military equipment tucked into mountain ranges.

Iran’s atomic energy agency said U.S. strikes targeted the construction site of a planned nuclear power plant in the southwest, state television reported.

Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC of the Darkhovin nuclear plant site showed earth clearing but little construction as of July 9. Iran did not previously announce it as being targeted.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the site, in the “very early stages of construction,” contained no nuclear material when the U.N. watchdog last visited.

Jordan and nearly every Gulf Arab state have been targeted

Jordan’s military said it shot down several Iranian missiles. The country hosts major U.S. bases and relies on U.S. air-defense systems. The missiles did not cause casualties or damage, according to Jordan’s military.

Jordan later summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires to protest, state-run television reported.

Israel’s military said Iranian missiles launched toward the Jordanian port city of Aqaba just across the border could spill over, warning Israelis to expect the first air-raid sirens in weeks.

Eilat, the Israeli city that neighbors Aqaba, cited security officials as saying two interceptors were launched from its outskirts to prevent the fall of debris.

During the latest fighting, Iran has focused attacks on U.S.-allied Arab states rather than Israel, which launched the war with the U.S. on Feb. 28. “We are prepared to immediately resume combat,” the Israeli military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, said.

Kuwait said one of its power and water desalination plants was attacked for the second time in two days, causing fires. Its Ministry of Electricity, Water, and Renewable Energy said the power grid remains stable. In Kuwait, about 90% of drinking water comes from desalination.

The secretary-general of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Jasem Mohamed al-Budaiwi, has accused Iran of war crimes for strikes on infrastructure and civilian facilities.

International humanitarian law generally protects civilian infrastructure such as bridges and power plants from attack, but such sites can lose protections if used for military purposes. In such cases, attacks must be proportionate and minimize civilian harm.

Strait of Hormuz remains key to the conflict

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to target Iran’s power stations and bridges to try to compel Tehran to loosen its hold on the Strait of Hormuz, which saw one-fifth of global oil supplies transit before the war. Recent attacks suggest the U.S. military is carrying out that plan.

The U.S. in the past week reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil. The military on Saturday said it had redirected six ships and disabled one since then.

A maritime organization overseen by the U.S. Navy said Sunday that the threat to mariners is severe after previous Iranian attacks, “with deliberate hostile action considered highly likely.” It said traffic remained low, with eight transits on Saturday and three on Friday. The daily average before the war was almost 140.

Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, in a statement Saturday, warned of “unforgettable lessons” if the U.S. keeps attacking the Islamic Republic. An Iranian negotiator said Tehran was suspending its commitments to the interim deal and accused the U.S. of violating it.

The halfway point has passed in the 60 days the deal set out to negotiate the permanent end of the war and other issues, including Iran’s nuclear program.

Iranian authorities on Sunday said at least 50 people have been killed and 517 wounded in the latest U.S. strikes. Iran has provided no overall information on its materiel losses.

Far from the region, the war’s effects on the prices of fuel and other goods have hit some of the world’s most vulnerable areas hard.

July 19, 2026
Trump blasts ‘sanctuary’ states, but many still aid deportations

As part of its full-court press on immigration, the Trump administration has increasingly sought to punish Democratic-led states that have tried to curtail their cooperation with federal immigration agencies.

Trump officials argue that the policies of “sanctuary jurisdictions” have enabled the release of sex offenders, killers, and other criminals — the “worst of the worst” — and President Donald Trump has gone so far as to call the actions of blue-state leaders a “lawless insurrection.” The administration has threatened federal funding cuts, lawsuits, and travel restrictions if state and local authorities don’t fall in line.

But the very states the Trump administration is pillorying — from California and Minnesota to New York and Massachusetts — already cooperate closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on tens of thousands of criminal cases a year, regularly turning over people charged with or convicted of serious and violent offenses for detention and deportation.

A New York Times review of policies, statutes, and practices in the 18 states targeted by Trump shows extensive cooperation and coordination with federal immigration agencies when it comes to people convicted of serious crimes. Data shows all but one of these states have sharply increased the number of people they have moved each month from local and state authorities’ custody into federal immigration custody during Trump’s second term, as compared with the last year of former President Joe Biden’s term.

In 12 of them, the number of custodial arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement more than doubled, according to a Times analysis of ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project.

The Trump administration has suggested that “sanctuary” states refuse to cooperate with ICE agents and deny them entry into jails. But by and large, these blue states have been assisting in federal efforts targeting violent offenders, while pushing back on the federal dragnets across the country that have ensnared immigrants without criminal records.

At the height of a federal crackdown in Minneapolis earlier this year, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accused ICE of targeting people of color with no criminal background while failing to pick up hardened criminals in state custody ready to be transferred to the agency.

The tensions have only been rising as federal immigration officials have received an infusion of dollars to carry out more operations and, in recent weeks, more than doubled their daily arrests, often with the help of local authorities in red states.

State officials from blue and red states agree that cooperation with federal authorities is critical to criminal investigations, and none would dispute that the release of dangerous people into communities is bad for public safety or politically unpalatable.

But governors and top law enforcement officials in Democratic-led states say they are trying to disentangle their role in criminal investigations from federal immigration enforcement. That delicate balance, they say, preserves their time and resources and engenders trust from immigrant communities.

So-called sanctuary laws enacted in Democratic-led states do limit cooperation with immigration authorities in many ways. Most largely bar state and local officers from assisting federal agents on civil immigration violations and put parameters around ICE’s access to jails and prisons as well as designated protected zones, such as schools, churches, and courthouses. A slate of state court rulings and policies have also prohibited local and state agencies from holding people for immigration officers beyond their release dates. And many prohibit authorities in most cases from alerting ICE that an inmate is about to be released, though release dates for all offenders are publicly available online.

Of all the states targeted, California, perhaps, has become the administration’s most prominent adversary. The state, which emerged as a battleground over “sanctuary” policies well before Trump first took office in 2017, barred state and local law enforcement agencies — including school police and security departments — from using public funds or personnel for civil immigration enforcement during his first term.

But the Trump administration’s criticism has focused heavily on the idea that serious criminals are being allowed to walk free — something California has specifically sought to avoid.

State lawmakers and law enforcement officials negotiated a list of exceptions to allow greater coordination when those wanted by ICE have criminal records or face serious criminal charges. Since 2019, the state’s corrections department has coordinated with the agency to transfer nearly 13,000 people convicted of murder, sexual assault, child molestation, or other grave felonies into federal custody.

“Not all sanctuary policies are created equal,” said John Sandweg, a senior Department of Homeland Security official under the Obama administration.

Many states or local jurisdictions with progressive politics “may not hand over someone convicted of driving without a license or some petty misdemeanor,” he added, “but would work collaboratively with ICE to ensure that individuals with violent criminal histories were not released in the streets.”

Democratic officials have argued that local limitations on ICE cooperation ensure that victims of crimes can approach police without worrying about being swept up in unrelated immigration actions.

“People need to feel comfortable talking to police,” said Ronnell Higgins, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, the state’s top law enforcement agency. “Wherever you go, the police need the public’s help in preventing crimes and in solving crimes as well.”

At the crux of this sanctuary debate has been a push for partnerships with ICE under a program known as 287(g). The initiative, a central pillar of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, trains sheriff’s deputies, police, and highway patrol officers to act as immigration agents in the course of their daily duties, and the program has become a force multiplier for enforcement.

Fifteen of the 18 states reviewed by the Times have passed laws that restrict their local and state law enforcement agencies from entering into contracts to help enforce civil immigration laws. The other three limit participation in the program under governor’s executive orders and state court rulings. But no states prohibit their officers from assisting federal agencies on criminal violations.

All allow the transfer of inmates into federal custody if authorities present a criminal warrant signed by a judge.

Trump’s fight with Democratic leaders over “sanctuary” policies dates to his first term. Since his return to the White House, his administration has only ramped up the stakes further. Last month, Republicans passed a sweeping immigration package signed by Trump. It includes $31 billion for ICE activities, such as supporting local and state authorities that have signed 287(g) partnerships with the agency, and earmarks another $350 million to expand enforcement operations in jurisdictions that refuse such partnerships.

During budget negotiations in late May, Markwayne Mullin, Trump’s new Homeland Security secretary, floated the idea of pulling customs officers from airports in major liberal hubs, which business groups warned would lead to chaos for travelers and harm the economy. In recent weeks, Tom Homan, his border czar, has repeatedly vowed to flood New York with agents.

Although neither of the plans has transpired, the administration’s strikes have turned Democratic-led cities and states into political foils in the rhetorical fight over immigration policy. That fight has played out in the public sphere and in the courts, where the Trump administration has had less success. Last month, federal judges dismissed, for now, federal government lawsuits challenging a Los Angeles ordinance and executive orders in several New Jersey cities that prohibit the use of city resources for federal immigration enforcement. (The decisions followed similar rulings last year in favor of Rochester, New York, and the state of Illinois.)

In June, the Department of Justice and New York State sued and countersued each other over expansive immigrant protections the state passed a month earlier. The new rules, among other provisions, banned partnership agreements with ICE, barred all local, state, and federal officers from wearing masks and ended ICE contracts to house inmates with federal civil immigration violations.

Testifying before the House Appropriations Committee days later, Mullin said “sanctuary governors and sanctuary mayors” were advising their local and state authorities to not cooperate with ICE. He argued that this hampered federal authorities’ immigration efforts, as well as investigations into human trafficking and retail theft.

“And so it really handcuffs us,” he said.

Asked whether exceptions or carve-outs for violent and serious offenders in state laws helped offset their restrictions on civil immigration enforcement, officials at DHS, the parent agency of ICE, suggested they had broader latitude under federal law to carry out immigration arrests than state statutes allow.

In a statement, Lauren Bis, a Homeland Security spokesperson, suggested that the agency’s partnerships with law enforcement justified the surges in arrests.

“When politicians bar local law enforcement from working with DHS, our law enforcement officers have to have a more visible presence so that we can find and apprehend the criminals let out of jails and back into communities,” she said.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

July 19, 2026
DOGE was supposed to be dead. Its remnants are everywhere.

When Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy were initially tapped to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency at the end of 2024, the billionaire duo promised DOGE’s last act would be to delete itself by a mandated end date: July 4, 2026.

Numerous lawsuits filed by federal workers, states, and activists attempted to halt DOGE’s radical cost cutting effort, arguing Musk’s allies operated with little transparency and targeted agencies, grants, and programs enshrined by law.

Now, DOGE’s website, built to house “receipts” documenting its attempt to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, lies dormant, while posts from the DOGE X account have slowed to a trickle.

But weeks after its 18-month end date has elapsed, DOGE has proved remarkably hard to kill.

Instead, DOGE has evolved from its radical cost-cutting mission, with some of its members and agenda embedded across the government, continuing to reshape the federal bureaucracy behind the scenes.

“DOGE is a way of life. … It never terminates,” former DOGE staffer Katie Miller said on X on July 4, the day of its supposed expiration.

Nearly two dozen people hired or vetted through DOGE remain in government, including an influential diaspora filtered throughout the executive branch, according to a Washington Post analysis of court records and government documents.

This includes Gavin Kliger, chief data officer at the Pentagon, and Jeremy Lewin, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Lewin, who oversaw much of the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, now directs the State Department’s foreign assistance programs.

Meanwhile, the National Design Studio, which is run by former DOGE lieutenant Joe Gebbia, is seen by many of its members as the spiritual successor to DOGE, according to two people familiar with the organization, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Its chief engineer is Edward Coristine, the staffer known as “Big Balls,” who as a 19-year-old DOGE employee gained access to agencies including the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

DOGE’s membership rolls were never made public, so it’s impossible to tally the total number of alumni sprinkled throughout the government. The Trump administration fought lawsuits to make DOGE staffers’ identities public, and some information has only come out recently through public records requests and legal challenges.

Administration officials have retreated from DOGE’s plans, reversing cuts and bringing back workers.

But the upheaval unleashed by the U.S. DOGE Service has left an imprint on the federal government, with consequences still rippling through Washington. DOGE forcibly reworked the operations at agencies such as the Social Security Administration, where staff members were reorganized to make up for losses on the front lines. Unemployment is up in the D.C. metro area since Donald Trump returned to the White House. Federal workers remain fearful of retaliation.

Musk hinted that he hoped DOGE would outlive its initial wave of cuts. “Is Buddha needed for Buddhism?” Musk said as his time in government wound down last year. “Was it not stronger after he passed away?”

Among a Republican caucus typically in lockstep, there is internal stratification over DOGE, even as several Trump administration officials have started DOGE-like initiatives. Late last year, the Office of Personnel Management launched a Tech Force to recruit young Silicon Valley types to government.

When Vice President JD Vance introduced an anti-fraud task force, he did not associate it with Musk’s work.

“I think that’s unfortunate that nobody has ever tried to take a systematic look at how much fraud there is in the federal government,” Vance said in a Fox News interview in February.

The White House and Musk did not return requests for comment for this story.

Democrats have continued to capitalize on anger over DOGE, demanding investigations into its staffers’ access to sensitive data and the fallout from cuts. Meanwhile, the debate remains — even among some Republicans — whether the effort was worth its dramatic fallout.

“There were a lot of claims of billions and billions of dollars in savings,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.) said in a hearing this month with Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget. “I simply want to know where you booked them and where I can see it.”

Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, said the government is continuing to bear the costs of DOGE’s work, such as the rehiring of federal workers, legal expenses from actions such as the sudden closure of the USAID and paying severance, and diminishing employee morale, resulting in productivity losses.

DOGE and other Trump administration-led cuts have resulted in an economic cost of more than $165 billion, or more than $1,028 per taxpayer, according to Stier’s organization’s estimates. The costs include the loss of estimated economic benefits from terminated grants, the effect of severance payments, estimated legal expenses, and money spent on rehiring workers, for example.

Contrary to the promises Musk offered during the early days, federal spending as a whole actually increased over the past year. Agencies are ramping up hiring plans after hundreds of thousands of federal workers left last year.

For the first six months of Trump’s second term, DOGE was central to the administration. Musk frequently appeared in the Oval Office beside Trump, while his closest associates showed up at federal agencies with little to no warning and made consequential decisions, overruling career staff and even Trump officials. Musk touted cuts that he said would amount to a $2 trillion reduction in federal spending.

Several of DOGE’s more limited priorities remain, including an ongoing effort to digitize federal retirement records that are housed in a Pennsylvania mine. At the end of June, the Office of Personnel Management announced it will no longer send anymore paper to the mine after DOGE engineers built a website to replace the paper forms.

Inside some agencies, meanwhile, DOGE maintains a presence. There “are still an exceptional number that remain today and are more quietly operating behind the scenes,” said one staffer at the Transportation Department, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

At the General Services Administration, Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who at one point led Technology Transformation Services, has not left, even though he no longer appears to have any official job at the agency and is listed as a special government employee, according to a GSA employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

Many of those aligned with DOGE who remain in government are working at the National Design Studio, which the White House created to modernize government websites and take on other brand initiatives. The National Design Studio says its mission entails “making the services Americans rely on easier to understand, access, and use,” a focus that echoes DOGE’s aim to upgrade outdated tech and the mandate of DOGE’s predecessor, the U.S. Digital Service. Its work, however, is more narrowly focused than either of those bodies.

Two people close to DOGE, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said the design outfit, led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, serves as the spiritual successor to its work. With about 100 people and weekly meetings focused on efforts such as TrumpRx and the design of the new food pyramid, they represent an evolution of the DOGE mission, but a significant culling of its mandate.

Before the National Design Studio, Gebbia initially focused on redesigning the federal retirement online portal after previous administrations had not been able to fully digitize the process of leaving government. Although the young technologists had hoped to be done with the project in a few months, it took them longer than expected.

At the tech- and politics-focused Hill and Valley Forum earlier this year, Gebbia and Coristine described work that was a far cry from Musk’s chainsaw-wielding approach to government transformation. Gebbia, for example, described pitching Trump and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on the idea for the National Design Studio, saying there might not be another president who cares as deeply “about design, about aesthetics, about architecture,” as Trump.

Not a single reference to the DOGE controversies was uttered during their 20-minute talk, and the friendly moderator, the CEO of the cloud-based design platform Figma, did not ask about it.

While DOGE did not complete its far-fetched goal to cut $2 trillion, the slashing of foreign aid, research, and humanities grants has continued to have lasting effects. Health organizations in Africa said aid cuts hampered the global response to a deadly Ebola outbreak. And the administration had to ramp up a response to a screwworm reemergence after cuts at the Agriculture Department.

The Post previously found that children in Congo had died awaiting lifesaving drugs after U.S. aid cuts under Trump. An Oxfam analysis found that the cuts to aid from the United States would lead “to the first rise in under-five child mortality this century.”

Musk has denied such catastrophic impacts, even amid evidence of their occurrence. “There is not even a single dead child!” he said on X in June. “If there were, it would be worldwide headline news!”

In some parts of the government, there is a dispute over whether DOGE is still there or not.

At the Social Security Administration, as DOGE team members sought to find savings in the massive mandatory spending program, they were given access to the government’s most sensitive databases, which include the personal information of all Americans living and dead. They ultimately did not find the fraud Musk claimed was there.

In an ongoing court case about DOGE’s access to agency data, the administration has reported that all DOGE members have left the agency and that it has no plans to bring the organization back to Social Security.

Democracy Forward, a legal group challenging DOGE’s access to data, rebutted that and pointed to testimony that Social Security Administration chief information officer Michael Russo had previously identified himself as DOGE, and SSA general counsel Mark Steffensen fought to get DOGE members into sensitive databases. The two are still at the Social Security Administration.

“Rumors of DOGE’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, and DOGE personnel remain at SSA,” plaintiffs told the court.

The Trump administration also sought to get the case dismissed, citing that DOGE wouldn’t exist after July 4. But U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander didn’t buy it.

“Akin to a company that goes out of business,” Hollander wrote in a June 26 opinion, “the DOGE Temporary Organization cannot escape responsibility for the conduct it undertook while it existed simply by reaching its expiration date.”

July 19, 2026
Trump immigration officials seek to mend frayed ties with business as arrests spike

The Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Markwayne Mullin is cultivating a relationship with business groups whose concerns about losing workers to aggressive immigration enforcement had been rebuffed by former secretary Kristi L. Noem.

Earlier this month, DHS officials met at the agency’s Washington headquarters with the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, which represents the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and major trade associations that depend on immigrant labor, according to several people with knowledge of the meeting, which has not been previously reported.

It was the first such meeting to be reported since President Donald Trump reentered the White House. Business groups say they have been trying to gain a foothold at the agency since Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests began to spike last year.

Mullin did not attend the early July meeting — which included officials from ICE and Customs and Border Protection, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly — and the gathering did not produce an immediate change in policies. But two of the people said DHS officials said they want to meet regularly with the group to assess the impact of Trump’s mass deportation campaign and business needs.

“It was cordial, it was constructive,” one of the people said. “It’s actually very welcome because the last secretary was absent, and her proxies were not very responsive.”

A DHS spokesperson declined to comment on the meeting; coalition members declined to comment publicly.

Immigration arrests have more than quadrupled since Trump took office, driven by a dramatic increase in traffic and neighborhood stops, workplace sweeps, and other public arrests, according to the Deportation Data Project. As a result, industries including agriculture, manufacturing, construction, healthcare, and elder care say they are reeling from shortages in jobs critical to the economy.

Noem was dismissive of those concerns while overseeing chaotic enforcement operations that drew bipartisan outrage, especially after agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota in January. Trump fired her in March and turned to Mullin, a U.S. senator from Oklahoma and former plumbing company owner.

Mullin brought Senate staffers with ties to the business community to DHS, business lobbyists said, and his staff quickly set about trying to mend relations.

“It’s important to note that Mullin comes from the business community,” said Jennie Murray, president and CEO of National Immigration Forum, which represents Fortune 500 companies on Capitol Hill and was not part of the July meeting. “Under his leadership the agency does seem much more open to working with businesses and industry to focus on how their enforcement priorities and worksite compliance efforts can be better aligned [and] not negatively impact American businesses and the economy.”

DHS officials declined to acknowledge a shift in approach but said they are trying to keep an open line to business and other moderate wings of the GOP.

“Under Secretary Mullin, DHS is ensuring it remains a strong partner to American communities across the country by engaging stakeholders and industry partners that advance our mission to protect the homeland,” an agency spokesperson said.

However, the spokesperson said, “Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to protect public safety, national security, and economic stability while rescuing individuals who may be victims of labor trafficking or exploitation.”

The outreach to business comes as Mullin faces the first crisis of his brief tenure at DHS: ICE agents shot and killed two people in less than a week — a 52-year-old Mexican man in Houston and a young Colombian man in Maine. Outrage over the shootings, including from Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), led Mullin to pause traffic-stop arrests last week, a decision Trump swiftly overrode the following day.

Mullin now faces the challenge of proving that he can deliver on Trump’s core campaign pledge to deport a million people a year while avoiding the widespread backlash that helped sink Noem’s tumultuous reign.

In recent weeks, DHS has sought to appease business groups even as it has dramatically ramped up arrests. Through the first 12 days of July, ICE is on pace to arrest the most people in a single month since Trump reentered the White House, with an average of more than 1,400 people a day. Meanwhile, the agency has agreed to partially walk back a plan to force green-card applicants to return to their countries of origin, which tech leaders said would severely impact their workforce. And it has agreed to open a guest-worker visa program to the dairy industry. Both actions followed intense lobbying by industry groups.

This month, the Trump administration also extended the timeline for canceling work permits for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Haiti and six other countries who are losing long-standing humanitarian protections after a Supreme Court ruling. Business groups — which had swamped the Trump administration with calls, letters, and other outreach warning of the potential fallout of the ruling on nursing homes and hospitals — rushed to take credit for that decision as well.

“They listened to business and GOP lawmakers on the extension of work permits instead of terminating them immediately,” said Rebecca Shi, head of the American Business Immigration Coalition, a bipartisan group that represents 1,700 employers.

While Noem’s advisers spoke occasionally with business leaders, they often dismissed requests, emphasizing that they were laser focused on removing undocumented workers, several business lobbyists said.

“They were unapologetic about [their agenda],” said a lobbyist who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Trump, who is known to take phone calls with and host dinners for business executives, hasn’t been immune to business backlash since immigration arrests exploded in 2025.

Last June, during high-profile operations targeting worksites, the administration announced that farms, restaurants, and hotels would be spared further raids. The policy change — aimed at blunting potentially severe economic and political fallout — appears to remain largely intact a year later, pushing ICE agents toward neighborhood arrests and traffic stops to meet their deportation goals.

But while certain industries have been shielded from workplace raids, other are being pummeled. In South Texas, raids on construction sites have mushroomed since Mullin replaced Noem, builders say.

“It’s the highest it’s ever been,” said Mario M. Guerrero, a homebuilder and executive director of the South Texas Builders Association. “We got builders saying like, ‘Look, I’m done.’ These agents are showing up to jobsites, following work trucks, and going to Home Depots and picking up everyone.”

It remains to be seen whether the budding relationship between DHS and business leaders will produce more far-reaching policy changes. Goals of the business community include expanding guest-worker visas and restoring protections for Haitians — demands that are staunchly opposed by much of Trump’s political base.

Business leaders also ardently desire a path to legal status for the nation’s estimated 8 million undocumented workers (though they stress their support for removing those with criminal records). That politically fraught target has eluded policymakers in Washington for decades.

On Friday, as he met with reporters about Trump’s campaign to force states to purge alleged noncitizens from their voting rolls before this fall’s midterm elections, Mullin continued to walk a fine line between reassuring a skeptical public and satisfying the president’s desire for maximum impact.

While “I turn down the temperature with you guys,” Mullin told reporters, “we’re turning up the heat on the streets.”

July 19, 2026
JD Vance is moving to a wealthy enclave outside D.C. Cue the gossip (and complaints).

MIDDLEBURG, Va. — No one in town has seen the new neighbors perusing the cucumbers at the Safeway, or dining on $98-an-ounce caviar at the restaurant down the street, or browsing the main drag’s array of well-appointed antique stores, one of them displaying a $4,600 gold-laden mirror fit for a palace.

For now, Vice President JD Vance is visible in the usual places, on television and social media, where powerful newsmakers are typically found.

But word that Vance and his wife, Usha, are making a second home in Middleburg is dominating local chatter, the focus of which is less about MAGA and more about him bringing too much Washington — motorcades, helicopters, Secret Service — to an old-money enclave that views itself as an escape from Washington.

“I can’t even paint my building without a permit — you’d think they would’ve had a town meeting to discuss it, but it just got dumped on us,” said Kenna Day, 35, a gift shop manager whose shoulder tattoo is the scripted French version of “Hell Is Other People.”

“I worry it will be disruptive to the calm we have here,” Day said. “It’s why people come. It’s like walking into a Hallmark card. We all get along so well.”

A couple of blocks away, Vladimir Maldonado, 24, a server at a Mexican restaurant owned by his family, said a patron had told him she had seen a caravan of 50 black SUVs in the area that she assumed was transporting the Vances to Middleburg.

“She said, ‘Did you hear about the vice president moving down the street?’” Maldonado said. “I was like, ‘That’s crazy!’” Serving chips and salsa to the country’s second-in-command, he said, would be a thrill even though he doesn’t agree with Vance or President Donald Trump on most issues.

“If he walks in here, I’d ask him so many questions, like tell me everything,” he said. “His picture would definitely go on the wall.”

The White House did not respond to emails seeking confirmation of published reports that the Vances, who are expecting their fourth child later this month, are moving into a second residence at Wolver Hill Farm, a nearly 500-acre estate a mile from the Safeway on Middleburg’s main thoroughfare.

Chuck Kuhn, whose JK Moving Services has relocated presidents and vice presidents, including Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Trump, purchased the property six years ago for $8.5 million. Kuhn, reached on his cell phone, declined to answer whether the Vances are living at Wolver Hill, saying, “My formal comment is no comment.”

A person familiar with the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to talk about the matter, confirmed the vice president is leasing two of the farm’s four homes and said the Secret Service is expected to be a visible presence on the road leading to the property.

The Vances also reside at the vice president’s official residence, the U.S. Naval Observatory, in Northwest Washington. The mansion, on 12 acres that are part of the observatory compound, includes 33 rooms, a pool, and hot tub.

A town with one traffic light and a history of attracting dignitaries

Set in Virginia’s rolling countryside an hour west of Washington, Middleburg has one traffic light and roughly 750 residents, a majority of whom voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. The town is known for horseback riding and hunting, fences made of stacked stone and long winding driveways leading to multimillion-dollar homes.

It is a world away from the hardscrabble Appalachian life Vance chronicled in his best-selling Hillbilly Elegy memoir.

At any given time, an array of dignitaries — senators, congressional leaders, diplomats — can be spotted window shopping on Washington Street, Middleburg’s main commercial corridor, where decorative lawn jockeys stand sentry outside a few businesses. The well-heeled can also be found at the Salamander Resort, next door to Wolver Hill, where suites go for as much as $1,100 a night.

Over the years, at least four presidents have owned homes or visited the town, including Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and Obama. The Kennedys built a home in Middleburg in the early 1960s, a 167-acre estate they called Wexford that Jackie Kennedy sold after the president’s death, though she still visited after leaving the White House to ride horses with her children. Elizabeth Taylor and her husband Sen. John Warner lived in Middleburg until their divorce. Robert Duvall resided on a 360-acre farm in the area for several decades until his death earlier this year. In April, Queen Camilla visited a horse farm in town during King Charles III’s trip to the United States.

Trowbridge Littleton, the town’s $400-a-month part-time mayor whose family’s local roots stretch back eight generations, said he had no firsthand knowledge of the Vances’ move to Middleburg, though he did see a cluster of black SUVs on the road leading to Wolver Hill the other day.

Middleburg’s residents and seven-member police force, the mayor said, are accustomed to famous names coming and going, and predicted that the Vances would not disrupt life. “Everyone is welcome. We’re an open and friendly community, and we’ll manage it,” he said.

Vances become a lively topic at cocktail hour

Punkin Lee, 80, the owner of Journeymen Saddlers, a leather repair shop, has lived in Middleburg her entire life and can recall when Jackie Kennedy came into her place “and waited her turn, no different than anyone else.”

“A lot of celebrities who have friends here come and visit, then you hear about it when you run into someone at the post office a couple of weeks later and they’ll say, ‘Did you see so and so?’” Lee said. “They came and went, and it was all quiet and nice.”

The vice president and his family may be another matter, though, given his security detail and entourage, she said. “I don’t see how it can’t be different,” she said. “I haven’t seen them, and I don’t need to see them.”

A place where residents have vented about the potential disruption is a private Facebook page known as “Middleburg Uncensored,” which became fodder for a recent Daily Beast article headlined, “Vance’s New Neighbors Rage as VP Brings Chaos to Horse Country.”

Carol Henson, 81, a bookkeeper who has lived on the edge of town for more than three decades, was among those who complained about what she characterized as the “vile daily upset” the vice president would cause “our lovely little burg.”

Henson, in a phone interview, said the “inconvenience is not what this is really about.” Referring to Trump’s policies, she said, “It’s just awful what they have been doing.” She described the vice president as “abhorrent.”

“People don’t want to be mean,” she said of town residents. “They don’t want to be mean to outsiders. But there’s a big difference between JD Vance and Robert Duvall.”

Where some in town see the Vances as a reason to rage, Christian Puccio, owner of an Italian restaurant, envisions opportunity.

“For them to be out here is pretty cool,” said Puccio, who opened the Oak and Ember Tasting Room and Market six months ago just outside town. “If they’re around, I’d say come over. It would be cool to have anyone from public office in here. There’s no such thing as bad publicity. The guy is helping to run the country.”

A computer repairperson, a guy everyone knows as Gomer Pyles (his birth name is Dennis), said he sees Vance’s presence as possibly catalyzing a different sort of opportunity.

“If he comes into a restaurant, and we can talk to him, maybe he will change his ways,” said Pyles, 74, who moved to the area from California in 1981. “You can attack it, but you can also say, ‘What can I do to make this a benefit?’ I see it as an opportunity for change.”

The change that Chris Gore, a retired CIA analyst, has observed in recent days is that his social circle has a fresh subject to enliven their cocktail hour.

An 18-year resident who has voted for Republicans and Democrats, Gore said he listens “more than I talk” as his friends fret that Vance’s arrival will link Middleburg to Trump.

The one consolation in Vance’s choice of real estate, Gore said, is that he’s renting. “That’s a relief,” he said. “If he bought, then we’d have to deal with him indefinitely.”

July 19, 2026
Vance’s remarks on Epstein and Israel echo conspiracy theories

Vice President JD Vance embraced claims that there were ties between convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the “highest levels” of Israeli intelligence, echoing conspiracy theories that have been a source of tension among conservatives.

During an episode of his popular podcast, Joe Rogan said there was a widespread perception that Epstein’s financial support and drive to influence thinking at American universities stemmed from links to Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service. Vance agreed that such a view exists, before asserting his own perspective.

“Most people think he was Mossad,” Rogan, a frequent promoter of conspiracy theories, said of Epstein in an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience released Wednesday.

“Yeah, Mossad or CIA, or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country,” Vance replied.

“He clearly had connections to the upper — the highest — levels of American intelligence,” the vice president added. “He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence.”

Although Epstein did have ties to a top Israeli leader, the millions of files released by the U.S. government related to Epstein have not turned up any conclusive proof that he was an intelligence agent or asset for Mossad, as Vance acknowledged.

“I’ve asked, Were there like, were there documents connecting Jeffrey Epstein directly to our intelligence agencies or anybody else’s, and the answer is no,” Vance said. “But if that s— existed, it wouldn’t exist in 2026.”

The comments, made during a nearly three-hour episode that covered a broad range of issues, marked a striking embrace of conspiracy theories from an official in one of the highest perches of the U.S. government. Such claims have been promoted by some powerful conservative figures, including Tucker Carlson, a longtime ally of Vance. They’ve also drawn accusations of antisemitism.

Former Rep. Peter T. King (R., N.Y.), who strongly supports Israel, described Vance’s remarks as a “dog whistle” to a wing of the Republican Party that he said “is antisemitic, is anti-Israel, is conspiratorial, and is unhinged.”

“It’s not like you’re a junior congressman,” King said in an interview on Saturday, referring to Vance. “You’re the vice president of the United States. Unless you know what you’re talking about, unless you have absolute facts to back it up, before you undermine an ally — before you undermine your own intelligence agencies — you better know what you’re talking about.”

Asked for comment, Vance’s office provided a statement, attributed to an unnamed White House official, asserting that everything the vice president had said was true and to suggest otherwise was “in bad faith, stupidity, or both.” Aides from his office declined to clarify his remarks.

The Israeli prime minister’s office, which also oversees the Mossad intelligence agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Vance’s remarks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed back in the past on the idea that Epstein had worked for Israel.

Some Republicans have wanted to see Vance take a more aggressive approach to denouncing antisemitism and show stronger support for Israel. His latest comments appeared to intensify concerns about his posture.

Ben Shapiro, a prominent conservative podcaster who is Jewish and strongly supportive of Israel, wrote in a newsletter that Vance’s appearance on Rogan’s podcast had left him “concerned.”

On his own show, Shapiro said Vance’s commentary had been “unworthy of the office” of vice president and had undercut core tenets of conservatism.

“Conservatives, generally, are not in favor of baseless conspiracy theorizing,” Shapiro said, “because that undermines the idea that you have capacity in the world to act.”

The online publication Tablet, which focuses on Jewish news and culture, published a column headlined “JD Vance’s Big Crashout” by journalist Lee Smith. It said the vice president had “attacked Jews and spread baseless rumors, for which he admits to having zero evidence, about some kind of dark plot involving Jeffrey Epstein.”

Epstein, who cultivated associations with powerful people, including officials, from across the globe, had a yearslong friendship and business relationship with Ehud Barak, the center-left former Israeli prime minister.

“Epstein seemed to be connected to the elements of the Israeli deep state that were left of center,” Vance told Rogan. “I’ve always found that fascinating.”

Barak has said that Israeli leader Shimon Peres first introduced him to Epstein in 2002. Barak attended lunches and dinners at Epstein’s New York City town house and received some $2.3 million in payments from a foundation associated with Epstein. Epstein also invested a reported $1 million in a limited partnership established by Barak in 2015.

Barak has said he did not witness or take part in any sexual abuse. “I now deeply regret having any association with him,” he said.

And top Israeli officials have staunchly denied any formal relationship between the Israeli government and Epstein.

“Jeffrey Epstein’s unusual close relationship with Ehud Barak doesn’t suggest Epstein worked for Israel. It proves the opposite,” Netanyahu posted on social media in February, after disclosures of emails between Epstein and Barak.

Naftali Bennett, the former Israeli prime minister, denounced the theories of a clandestine relationship even more forcefully last year, after Carlson promoted them at a conference hosted by Turning Point USA, a major conservative organization. From the stage, Carlson said the question of whether Epstein had worked for Mossad was one “that every U.S. citizen has a right to an answer on.”

At the time, Bennett wrote on social media, “The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false.”

Bennett added: “Epstein never worked for the Mossad. This accusation is a lie being peddled by prominent online personalities such as Tucker Carlson pretending they know things they don’t.”

In his recent podcast appearance, Vance did not entertain all of the ideas about Israeli influence suggested by Rogan.

Vance pushed back when Rogan raised an unfounded theory that the Epstein files had been used to blackmail the Trump administration into going to war.

The vice president also cast himself as a “reasonable moderate” in the debate over Israel’s relationship with the United States, expressing confusion over why “many people” have accused him of being antisemitic.

“I’ve never heard a good compelling argument for why I am an antisemite, even though I’ve been accused of being an antisemite by many people,” he said.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

July 19, 2026
Mamdani says he is looking into whether he can order Netanyahu’s arrest

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani says his administration is still weighing whether to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in the city in September for the U.N. General Assembly.

But the mayor told the New York Times podcast The Interview that he was still working with his staff to determine if ordering the New York Police Department to detain Netanyahu would be legal. He emphasized that he would follow the law.

“That’s an active conversation with our legal department. … What we’ve seen at the national level is a desire sometimes to write your own laws, to go outside of the bounds of legality. That’s not something we have an interest in,” Mamdani said.

“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in the Hague,” the mayor said, referring to the home of the International Criminal Court.

The ICC, a tribunal that investigates genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

President Donald Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, have blasted the ICC for the warrant. The positions of both administrations has been to support Netanyahu during the war in Gaza, which Israel launched after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by Hamas militants who killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostage.

Before a ceasefire last year, Israel’s retaliatory offensive killed 73,250 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says the majority of casualties are women and children.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, wrote on X on Saturday that Mamdani’s comments “will not change a thing.”

Netanyahu, Danon said, “will come to New York, address the United Nations General Assembly with pride, and stand before the world to state Israel’s truth and its unwavering right to defend its citizens.

Mamdani, who became mayor in January, said during his campaign that he intended to arrest Netanyahu if elected.

When the ICC issued arrest warrants targeting Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, in 2024, the prime minister called the decision an “antisemitic move with one goal: to deter me, to deter us, from exercising our natural right to defend ourselves against our enemies who seek to destroy us.”

And since Trump returned to office for a second term, he has targeted the ICC for its actions against Israel over the country’s war on Gaza. His administration has levied sanctions against the ICC, including sanctions targeting ICC officials for their role in the Israeli probe. He also issued an executive order last year accusing the ICC of engaging in “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.”

America’s support for Israel has been a divisive issue for Democrats.

Earlier this week, 103 House Democrats voted to cut off military aid to Israel for the next fiscal year. Though the vote signaled a growing disconnect between the Democratic leadership’s long-standing support for Israel, the amendment failed.

July 19, 2026
Justice Department activates untested court for ‘alien terrorist’ deportations

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has filed a first-ever petition to a secretive and dormant court created 30 years ago to consider government requests to deport so-called “alien terrorists” from the United States.

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court was established in 1996 but had never received a petition until this past Wednesday, when the Justice Department filed an application seeking the removal of an individual whose name is withheld from the single-page document posted on the court’s website.

The chief judge of the five-member court, Joan Ericksen, said in a written response to the petition that a hearing was held on Thursday during which the court had “questions about the nexus that the government alleges between the actions of the respondent and the specific sections and subsections it invokes with respect to those actions.

“The answers persuaded the Court that the Government could benefit from the opportunity for more thoughtful consideration,” wrote Ericksen, a federal judge in Minnesota.

She directed the Justice Department to provide more information by Wednesday.

The court’s authorities emerged from the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which permits the attorney general to file under seal applications for the deportation of a suspected “alien terrorist.” If an application is granted, the court must hold a public hearing at which the government has the burden to prove that the individual satisfies that definition. Applications must be approved by the attorney general or deputy attorney general.

Federal law says that an individual could qualify as an “alien terrorist” by, among other factors, having “engaged in a terrorist activity,” endorsing or espousing terrorist activities, and by belonging to a political or social group that encourages terrorist activity.

The court has been dormant since its creation, having received — until last week — no applications and conducting no hearings, according to a summary posted on the Federal Judicial Center website. It is comprised of five judges selected by Chief Justice John Roberts.

The Trump administration has moved aggressively over the last year to carry out deportations, including invoking a 1798 wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to remove Venezuelan migrants who officials accuse of being part of a terrorist gang. During a hearing in that case last year, the Washington judge presiding over it, James Boasberg, indicated that the Alien Terrorist Removal Court would be the natural forum to consider a request for deportation on national security grounds.

“In fact, Congress has an answer for us, doesn’t it? Because they created the Alien Terrorist Removal Court,” he said. “So if there’s a national security concern with having these hearings…you can always go to the ATRC, which would be a first, but that’s what it’s there for, right?”

The petition was first reported by Court Watch, an independent news site.

July 19, 2026