A former top official at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a storied civil rights organization at the center of a Justice Department prosecution, was indicted Wednesday in an escalation of the case against the nonprofit, officials said.
Federal prosecutors in Alabama accused Heidi Beirich, the nonprofit’s ex-chief financial officer, of overseeing payments to informants working with a variety of hate groups, Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters.
A lawyer for Beirich denounced the allegations as an attempt by the Justice Department to “silence political opponents” and vowed she would fight the charges.
“Violent extremists have not stopped or intimidated Dr. Beirich from her vital work during her time at the SPLC or in the six and a half years after she left the SPLC,” defense lawyer Michael Proctor said in a statement. “Dr. Beirich won’t be silenced or intimidated by the government’s false and politicized allegations now. She welcomes the opportunity to present the truth in court.”
In April, Blanche unveiled an 11-count indictment against the SPLC charging it with bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering, saying it misled donors by using their money to secretly fund informants in extremist groups.
The organization’s leadership denounced the case as an effort to weaponize the Justice Department against groups unfriendly to President Donald Trump. The SPLC’s donors intended their money to be used to combat extremist groups, they said, and that’s exactly what the informant program did.
The indictment alleged the SPLC had defrauded its donors by paying more than $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to at least eight individuals working inside groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Movement. In some cases, prosecutors said, the source of the money was disguised through accounts associated with fictitious businesses.
Beirich, in her role as chief financial officer, oversaw some of those payments, Blanche said.
“She was part of the effort to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies’ names and make payments to individuals for reasons that were not accurate or described,” the attorney general said Wednesday.
Attorneys for the organization have said the SPLC began paying informants to help infiltrate those organizations as a means to protect its staff and gather intelligence on hate groups that posed a threat. Often the information they learned was shared with federal and local law enforcement to advance their investigations, they said.
A spokesperson for the SPLC said earlier this year that the informant program has been discontinued.
The nonprofit has rejected the claim that payments to informants amounted to fraud, saying that donors were well aware of the organization’s work and that the payments to informants furthered that mission.
The SPLC was founded in Montgomery, Ala., in 1971 with the goal of ensuring that civil rights laws passed by Congress and enshrined by the courts would become a reality on the ground. It is known for its efforts to monitor and take legal action against white supremacist groups.
In recent years, the SPLC has become a frequent target of Republican-led congressional inquiries, with conservative critics accusing it of coordinating with the Biden administration to unfairly malign Christians and conservatives exercising their First Amendment rights.
That criticism reached its peak following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last year. The SPLC had described the organization he led, Turning Point USA, as emblematic of the “hard right” in a 2024 report on hate and extremist groups. FBI Director Kash Patel announced in October that the bureau was severing ties with the organization, which had long worked with federal agents to identify and provide tips on domestic extremist groups.
Under Trump, the Justice Department has launched criminal investigations of several people and organizations viewed as politically opposed to the president. That includes groups such as ActBlue, Democrats’ main fundraising platform, as well as outspoken critics from Trump’s first administration and law firms that have represented Trump’s political adversaries.
Proctor, Beirich’s attorney, described her Wednesday as a “renowned authority on white supremacist and far-right extremist movements in the United States and abroad” who has testified before Congress and served as an expert witness in prominent court cases.
“Heidi Beirich has dedicated her life to fighting hate groups and extremist movements like the KKK, neo-Nazis, and other white supremacists,” Proctor said in a statement, adding, “Her decades-long record of success dismantling hate groups — and the resulting threats to her life — speak volumes.”
CENTERVILLE, Texas — Nikki Meador grew up here in East Texas. She’s a lifelong conservative and a three-time Trump voter unaccustomed to activism. That’s mostly because there’s never been much to protest in rural Leon County.
That changed when the nurse practitioner heard data centers were coming.
“We are the people who built this community, and we intend to pass it down to our children. We deserve protection, not to be sacrificed for outside investment. Industrialization is irreversible,” said Meador, 43.
Meador, wearing a camo green T-shirt bearing the state’s unofficial motto, “Come and take it,” was among several dozen attending the county commissioners’ regular meeting on a recent Monday.
“We’re asking you to consider the long-term cost to taxpayers, the environmental and safety risks, the permanent loss of what makes this place home,” she said.
Ann McCoslin (from left), her cousin Daniel McCoslin, and Nikki Meador walk on Meador’s Leon County property, which is next to the proposed site of a power plant expected to fuel a proposed data center. Antranik Tavitian
Texas conservatives love free markets, the energy industry, development, and small government. But in scores of deep-red Texas communities such as Leon County, longtime Republican voters are setting aside those principles to battle an onslaught of data center projects that pro-business GOP leaders initially welcomed.
Opposition to data centers has been notably bipartisan in communities across the country. But the fierce pushback from conservatives in Texas has required no help from liberal groups, and it has been felt everywhere from the state GOP’s new party platform to the campaigns of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott, Republicans who now support varying degrees of increased data center regulation.
At the GOP convention in June, the platform included a new plank that would require data centers to disclose and finance infrastructure needs without shifting costs to residents; prioritize the use of reclaimed water; and protect aquifers and the state’s electrical grid.
Patrick, a staunch Trump ally, has made AI regulation a priority for the next legislative session in January.
On the campaign trail, Abbott and other elected officials speak openly about restraining data centers. On Aug. 3, Abbott announced he is requiring audits of every data center seeking power from the Texas grid before they can connect. On Aug. 6 and 7, he announced that several data center companies had agreed to state audits.
“I established clear guardrails to ensure data centers protect our electric grid, conserve our water, respect our neighborhoods and pay their own way,” Abbott said in a Monday post on X, noting OpenAI had agreed to comply with the new Texas standards. “They must not pass costs on to Texas families or interfere with their quality of life.”
Still, Meador said Abbott has not done enough to stop data centers.
“He’s just trying to scramble because he realizes he’s basically making rural Texas mad, and that’s where a lot of his votes come from,” she said, dismissing the governor’s audits as “very vague.”
Meador said she won’t vote for Abbott and instead might vote for a Democrat for the first time — Gina Hinojosa, a state representative from Austin and South Texas — because “she’s against data centers in rural areas.”
Donna Hull stakes an anti-data-center sign on her property, which is next to a proposed data center, in Leon County. Antranik Tavitian
In Leon County, population 17,000, where 88% of voters like Meador chose Donald Trump last election, residents have been frustrated to learn how little their local GOP elected officials can do to stop the projects being proposed. Until now, the largest industries Leon County had were oil and gas, a steel plant, and chicken farms, which drew much less opposition.
Last month, commissioners refused an application from Crusoe Technologies for tax breaks for its proposed 800-acre, $34 billion data center, citing an incomplete submission. But Crusoe can reapply or build without the tax breaks, and commissioners said they’ll be helpless to block the project because the county — unlike many cities — has only narrow zoning authority to regulate places like landfills, liquor stores, and adult video stores.
Commissioners attempted to reassure residents that they, too, were troubled by the Crusoe project, which is expected to break ground within a year and cost the county $4 million to $5 million in added services.
Commissioner Thomas Jefferson “T.J.” Foley noted that he is responsible for the volunteer fire department, lives within 600 feet of one of the proposed power plants expected to fuel the data center, and worries about how the county will cope with their increased demand for resources and services, especially if there’s a disaster at the massive sites.
“Leon County and no rural county is prepared to handle this,” he said. “Until there is a catastrophe and one of these things blows up, there’s probably nothing we can say.”
“That’s not very comforting,” a man shouted from the audience.
Residents listen during a town hall meeting about data centers at the Jewett Civic Center in Leon County last month.Antranik Tavitian
Leon County GOP Chair Carol Milder is emblematic of the shift among conservatives when it comes to opposition to data centers.
The retired real estate appraiser’s father worked on an oil rig. Growing up in Houston, she saw the oil and gas industry build the middle class. But attending a panel on data centers at the state GOP convention in June in Houston awakened her to the differences between the industries.
Panel experts, including her neighbor Michael Rice, 46, who used to work at an Austin data center, explained that unlike oil rigs and refineries, data centers bring few jobs — 40 proposed so far in Leon County — and even those are often staffed by workers from elsewhere. Milder and others at the commissioners’ meeting said they resented paying taxes only to see data centers initially get tax exemptions, effectively subsidized by residents the way manufacturing and solar industries have been.
She told the commissioners: “We’re being held hostage for the money for them to build.”
“We’re trying to be as prepared as we can,” said Commissioner Kyle Workman, a construction consultant. He said that unlike in Texas cities, the unincorporated community’s limited government — which many in the audience historically favored — left commissioners with few tools to block the data centers. “Leon County has kept government down over the years,” Workman said. “There’s limits to what we can do.”
Michael Rice points out proposed data center sites during the town hall meeting at the Jewett Civic Center last month.Antranik Tavitian
Residents said they thought that was precisely why data center companies were targeting rural areas. Of the nearly 248 data center projects proposed statewide, nearly half are in unincorporated rural areas where zoning and other restrictions cannot be used to block them.
And residents worried that any state legislation that might help defend against the projects would not pass until late next year — too late to block the data center proposed by Crusoe and others expected to follow. Belltown Power has proposed building a 900-acre data center in Leon County, and Black Mountain — another North Texas-based company — bought property and announced plans to build a massive power plant there.
Milder said she alerted an adviser to the governor this year about growing local opposition in counties such as Leon. She reminded him that a majority of the state’s 254 counties are rural and that they are a key part of Abbott and the GOP’s conservative base.
“Texas is red because of rural Texans, and we need to be listened to,” Milder told him. “You need to be concerned with what concerns us. And we’re being raped and pillaged.”
Leon County GOP Chair Carol Milder. Antranik Tavitian
Texas is poised to overtake Virginia as the nation’s top data center hub by 2030. A recent poll found 56% of Texans oppose data centers being built in their communities.
“They love our farmland because it’s flat, it’s clear, there’s water and electricity there, and they can just come in and start building,” GOP Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said at an anti-data-center protest outside the state Capitol in Austin recently. The small crowd chanted, “Special session now!”
After hailing Texas as “the epicenter of AI development” last fall, Abbott recently reversed course as he campaigns for reelection to a record fourth term, urging state lawmakers to repeal the centers’ sales tax exemptions and regulate where they can be built. Last month, he ordered the state Public Utility Commission and council managing the electrical grid that covers most of the state to enforce restrictions on data centers, including requiring them to “fully fund the costs of electric infrastructure.”
“We must prohibit them from building AI data centers in rural Texas neighborhoods,” Abbott said at a campaign stop about 90 miles north of Centerville on June 30.
By the end of July, the governor announced that the state had “begun sweeping changes to how data centers pay for the infrastructure needed to serve them, ensuring data centers do not shift those costs onto everyday Texans or place unnecessary strain on our state’s resources.”
But Miller and Leon County conservatives said those stepped-up regulations are not enough. They want Abbott to call a special legislative session — as he has in recent years for conservative priorities such as school vouchers, congressional redistricting and property tax cuts — to pause data center development and increase regulations and oversight.
A spokesman for the governor declined to comment about whether Abbott will call for a special session on data centers.
“Governor Abbott has been clear that data centers cannot come before Texas families,” spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement, noting that the state regulators’ new requirements “protect Texans from higher costs and negative impacts on their communities.”
Andrew Schmitt, a spokesman for Crusoe, said: “Crusoe is committed to protecting the natural resources and character of every community where we operate, while ensuring local families benefit from our economic investment for generations to come. We are working closely with local leaders as we evaluate development in Leon County to address community needs and deliver jobs for local workers along with significant new tax revenue for schools, public safety, and infrastructure.”
Daniel McCoslin stands next to family photos dating back to when his ancestors settled Texas. Antranik Tavitian
Daniel McCoslin, 48, is a retired railroad engineer who fought with the Marines in Iraq. He ranches land that’s been in his family since the 1800s and that abuts the proposed Belltown data center site. A relative’s ranch borders the Crusoe site. That’s why McCoslin — a libertarian who voted for Trump three times — organized a local anti-data-center group to educate neighbors.
McCoslin dismissed Abbott’s recent data center regulations as “pandering.” In November he plans to vote for a Democrat for the first time in his life. Clayton Tucker, a rancher running for agriculture commissioner as the anti-data-center candidate, has called for a data center moratorium.
When data center companies started offering neighbors up to $50,000 an acre — “life-changing money” — McCoslin recalls talk at the feed store turning to whether folks would take the millions. McCoslin was adamant he would not.
“Family means a lot more than money,” he said.
The evening after the commissioners’ meeting, McCoslin helped organize a town hall to update neighbors. The crowd that settled into folding chairs at a local community center included plenty of retirees, at least one of them in a MAGA hat. There were also workers, some in volunteer firefighter T-shirts, others in straw cowboy hats and boots with spurs.
Mandy Williams holds onto her daughter Violet as she gets out of a hay harvester in Centerville. Antranik Tavitian
Organizers used a projector to display maps of the proposed data centers and power plant, and fielded questions about potential environmental and economic effects: How many jobs will they bring, and for whom? Will they pollute the ground and water? Are they expected to decrease property values? Can they be stopped?
Organizers displayed phone numbers and emails for Abbott and other state and local GOP lawmakers. They urged residents to contact the officials with data center concerns.
“We’ll be calling,” said Mandy Williams, 46, as she left the meeting with her husband and towheaded 4-year-old daughter, Violet, in a “Cowgirl forever” T-shirt.
The couple live on the eastern side of the county on a cattle ranch of more than 200 acres. Stephen Williams’s ancestors settled the land when Texas gained independence from Mexico in 1836, nine years before it became a state. Like many other Texans, owning land is part of his identity, a birthright he feels a duty to steward.
“Hopefully we get enough pressure on him,” Stephen Williams, 46, said of the governor.
When commissioners met Monday, they did not take action on the tax breaks and told residents that Crusoe had yet to reapply, Milder said.
Back at his modest ranch house, McCoslin pointed to turn-of-the-century black-and-white portraits of his ancestors taken under the oaks just steps away.
“At night, you can hear how quiet it is and see so many stars,” he said, describing his evening routine of settling outside to smoke a cigar and sip bourbon, his only soundtrack the crickets, frogs and occasional coyote. “We don’t want 24-hour industrial hum and lights destroying the sky. If I wanted that, I’d live in Houston.”
The U.S. Treasury Department permanently repealed a rule Tuesday that required businesses formed in the United States to report who owns them to federal financial-crimes investigators.
Foreign companies and pooled investment vehicles (such as mutual funds or hedge funds) must still report information about foreign owners. But they will no longer have to identify Americans who help them register to do business in the United States, according to a Treasury Department advisory. And Treasury will delete any information it has already collected about U.S. business owners, the advisory said.
In a statement, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the new rule eliminates “a burdensome reporting requirement for millions of law-abiding business owners without compromising our national security.”
Senate Banking Committee Republicans quickly thanked Treasury for “standing up for job creators.” But Democrats and some national security experts criticized the move, which they said would make it easier for drug cartels, human traffickers and money launderers to use anonymous shell companies to avoid detection.
Richard Nephew, who led anti-corruption efforts at the State Department during the Biden administration, called the move “a terrible decision that opens up the U.S. to financial crime, money laundering and corruption.”
The reporting requirements were implemented in January 2024 during the Biden administration as part of an effort to curb illicit finance. It stemmed from the Corporate Transparency Act, which was included in the National Defense Authorization Act and enacted into law in 2021 after Congress overrode President Donald Trump’s veto. It required U.S. and foreign companies doing business in the country to report information about “beneficial owners” — people who have “substantial control” over the company or own at least 25% of it — to Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
The CTA was supported by law enforcement officials, the American Bankers Association, and human rights advocates, who said it would combat the corrupt use of anonymous companies, known as shell companies. But it immediately drew fire from the National Small Business Association, which pushed Congress to repeal the act and sued the Treasury Department, arguing that the reporting requirements disproportionately affected small-business owners.
In March 2025, the Trump administration announced that it would temporarily suspend reporting requirements for U.S. businesses and American owners of foreign companies. On Tuesday, Treasury made that decision permanent. In a FAQ on the new rule, Treasury said FinCEN and federal law enforcement agencies have multiple alternative sources of information to prevent domestic companies from engaging in money laundering or financing terrorism that it does not have for foreign companies.
Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler praised the decision, writing on social media that it will save American businesses $6.7 billion in compliance costs over the next decade.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, called the decision “a gift to cartels, criminals, and U.S. adversaries that exploit shell companies to move millions through our financial system.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the background of the implementation of the Corporate Transparency Act.
NAQOURA, Lebanon — As the cars advanced down the coastal road here at the southwestern tip of Lebanon, the flags came into view. The yellow and green banner of Hezbollah. The red, white, and green tricolor of Iran. Finally, a few miles from the border, the blue and white standard of Israel.
“Turn back,” an Israeli soldier warned, in English, through a megaphone. “You don’t have authorization.”
The convoy of church officials and humanitarian workers, approved by United Nations peacekeepers to visit three towns inside Israeli-occupied Lebanon, retreated to seek new authorization.
For the few inhabitants who have remained in southern Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israel renewed fighting in March, such incidents have become common. Israeli officials say they need to occupy the 75-mile-long, 6-mile-wide buffer zone to dismantle Hezbollah’s infrastructure and prevent the group from launching drone and missile attacks into northern Israel.
The announcement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in June of a preliminary deal in which Lebanon would disarm Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces would gradually withdraw from the country has had little impact on daily life here. Instead, Israeli officials have indicated they are unlikely to end the occupation soon, and residents are seeing parallels to the Israeli security protocols that vex Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
“We are trapped in a prison,” said Ayoub Khreish, mayor of Ain Ebel, a predominantly Christian town an hour east of Naqoura. Even ambulances need permission to enter and leave, he said. “We drive and we pray.”
President Donald Trump is attempting to keep the peace here in part to advance talks with Iran. Tehran has repeatedly tied a ceasefire with the United States and Israel to an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Israeli strikes on Beirut in June almost derailed a deal, and Iran signaled over the weekend that it would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz unless attacks in Lebanon stopped.
A damaged and abandoned Lebanese military checkpoint just north of the Israeli buffer zone in Naqoura, Lebanon.Guy Peterson
Trump, hosting Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the Oval Office last month, pledged support for the war-torn country, including an easing of flight restrictions. When asked about the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon, he said, they were “in the process of redeployment.”
Under a U.S.-brokered deal, Israel has carried out a small, phased withdrawal in “pilot zones” and ceded control to the Lebanese Army. But there have been no indications of a more substantial redeployment on the horizon.
In a visit to occupied south Lebanon on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed to maintain the buffer zone. He asked troops to prepare for a “long-term presence on the ground.”
The IDF has increased strikes elsewhere in southern Lebanon in response to what it says are ceasefire violations by Hezbollah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News last month that some Lebanese Christian towns had “asked to be annexed to Israel” for protection against Hezbollah militants. He did not name the towns or provide evidence. Last week, a map published by the Israeli Foreign Ministry appeared to incorporate southern Lebanon into Israeli territory. (It was later deleted.)
Officials in several Christian towns quickly refuted Netanyahu’s claim. “We do not want to be part of Israel,” Sandy Diab, a native of Ain Ebel, told the Washington Post. “We are very proud to be Lebanese.”
The aid convoy was organized by L’Oeuvre d’Orient, a Catholic nonprofit based in Paris, which coordinated with U.N. peacemakers and the U.S.-led mechanism monitoring the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel.
A convoy of aid vehicles drives just north of the Israeli buffer zone in Naqoura, Lebanon, last month. Guy Peterson
Most of the 15 convoys the group has sent here since the fighting resumed in March have reached their destination uninterrupted, its director said, but conditions on the ground are fluid. The Christians who have remained in southern Lebanon, the Rev. Hugues de Woillemont said, ”are showing remarkable courage and determination.”
Like many in southern Lebanon, Christians have been caught in a war they did not choose. The conflict has cut them off from the rest of the country; at its height in March and April, fuel and internet interruptions left many dependent on outside aid.
The continuing scarcity of basic goods in Ain Ebel is driving up prices, Khreish said. “Everything here is 25 percent more expensive than Beirut.”
Farmers leaving their homes to tend to their crops in the countryside need prior approval, the mayor said, and ongoing airstrikes by both sides have scared away the honeybees that produced honey.
The aid convoys have been escorted by U.N. peacekeepers. Their term expires at the end of the year; who will take over their role is unclear.
“What [the people here are] saying, and you don’t need a diploma to understand, is that they want to live, live in peace” said Col. Maxime Laudet, an officer with the French contingent to the decades-old U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.
The Rev. Hugues de Woillemont meets with the French captain of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. Guy Peterson
Laudet’s troops worked with L’Oeuvre d’Orient to help renovate a sports facility here to give local youth more recreational opportunities and to prevent a further decline in the population. “They’re a bit upset because ties with the north are complicated.”
Only a few towns in the buffer zone remain inhabited. Katz has said the IDF had destroyed 24 Lebanese villages and currently occupies 270 square miles of Lebanese territory.
The majority Shia population, which Hezbollah claims to represent, has mostly fled.
The people who remain, De Woillemont said, are “exhausted and anxious.”
“Their request is very simple,” he said. “To be able to live safely and with dignity on their own land, without being forced to leave.”
The Justice Department has convened a special grand jury in Washington, a rare legal body that officials say could pave the way for federal prosecutors in the nation’s capital to investigate some of its biggest and most controversial cases.
Unlike a typical grand jury, a special grand jury can release a potentially critical report about the subject of an investigation, even if prosecutors do not find enough evidence to bring the person to trial.
D.C.’s special grand jury is to be overseen by Steven Vandervelden, one of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s top allies in her office, according to three government officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a matter that has not been made public.
Pirro has relied on Vandervelden to investigate some of her office’s most controversial cases, including a probe into then-Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell and an inquiry into allegations that the D.C. police force purposely skewed its crime statistics.
It is unclear what the new special grand jury will be tasked with probing, but those interviewed said it is a notable move, especially given President Donald Trump’s interest in prosecuting his adversaries.
Special grand juries, on the rare occasions when they are convened, are typically used to pursue investigations of government officials or probe broad conspiracy cases and organized criminal activity. (A group of corruption cases that prosecutors deem to be linked could qualify as the latter.)
Steve Friedland, a law professor at Elon University, said strict procedures govern how special grand juries can be used — but that there is also flexibility.
“This could be very interesting,” Friedland said. “Each administration has its own approach to how it enforces the law and how it uses the tools available to it.”
The U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. declined to comment.
There is no known recent precedent for a special grand jury in Washington, legal experts said, although they said they could not entirely rule out that one has escaped public notice.
They are more common in larger jurisdictions home to more than 4 million people, including in New York and Texas, where federal guidelines says one must always be available, under the belief that organized crime is more common in larger areas.
On the state level, Georgia prosecutors convened a special grand jury to investigate alleged interference in the 2020 presidential election by Trump allies in the state. On the federal side, a special grand jury was empaneled in Houston more than 20 years ago to investigate Enron, a powerful energy company that was engulfed in a massive fraud scandal.
“They are very unusual,” said Niki Kuckes, a professor at Roger Williams University with expertise in the grand jury process. “Sometimes they can issue a report, which a regular grand jury can’t do.”
The convening of the special grand jury comes as Pirro and top Justice Department officials face pressure to deliver on cases that Trump wants prosecuted. Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, was recently confirmed as attorney general, solidifying his position atop the department.
Pirro’s record in moving against the administration’s perceived enemies has been mixed at best. Her office has failed to successfully prosecute a man accused of throwing a Subway sandwich at a federal agent; six Democratic lawmakers who released a video advising service members to reject illegal orders; and Powell, whom Trump accused of mishandling a renovation project.
Last week, the president suggested Pirro’s job was in jeopardy after she dismissed charges against a former Olympian who had been accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The officials familiar with the convening of the special grand jury said that prosecutors submitted the paperwork for it before Pirro dropped the Reflecting Pool-related charges.
In general, grand jury proceedings are a secretive part of the legal process in which prosecutors present evidence and jurors vote on whether there is evidence to charge someone with a crime.
A special grand jury has several unique characteristics. The 23 members focus only on a single case — or a string of cases that prosecutors present as related — instead of juggling a variety of matters like most grand juries. And a special grand jury’s ability to issue a report at the end of an investigation sets it apart.
That report can name specific individuals even if prosecutors do not find enough evidence to bring the people to trial, as long as the report shows that there is a “preponderance of evidence” of wrongdoing. That is a significantly lower standard than the “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” that is needed to convict someone.
Anyone named in a report has the opportunity to testify before the special grand jury and present witnesses for their defense. And according to Kuckes, a judge must sign off on the report before it is publicly released, ensuring the report meets the requirements for citing someone by name.
“It’s a very protective scheme. A majority of the grand jurors have to decide to issue the report,” Kuckes said. “And a special grand jury has to be set up to investigate some criminal wrongdoing. You can’t just have one to issue a report.”
In other ways, special grand juries resemble ordinary ones. To win an indictment, prosecutors must convince a simple majority of the jurors that there is “probable cause” to believe a crime was committed. Grand jury proceedings also take place in private, to protect the privacy of those who are interviewed but not implicated in a crime.
The law recognizes that special grand juries are only to be convened in unusual cases. In most jurisdictions, including D.C., they must be requested by the U.S. attorney general or their designee. Paperwork to establish them must go through the district’s chief judge; in Washington’s case, that is James E. Boasberg.
A special grand jury generally runs for 18 months, although it can wrap up its work sooner — or its tenure can be extended in six-month increments by a judge, with the total time not to exceed 36 months.
Pirro has regularly found herself caught between Trump, who has publicly demanded that his adversaries be prosecuted, and the liberal Democrats who live in Washington and populate its legal system. The flash point has often been grand juries, whose members in the Trump era have sometimes declined to indict people despite prosecutors urging them to do so, something that traditionally is very unusual.
Those people include the six Democratic lawmakers who appeared on the video about illegal orders, as well as several defendants whom Pirro tried to charge with felonies during last year’s federal law enforcement surge.
If you’ve spent any time with dogs, it’s probably not news to you that they can sense the difference between positive and negative human emotions. A pup may match your excited energy when it’s time for a walk or check on you if you appear glum. But canine brains might have a deeper understanding of human emotions than you might think, a new study suggests.
Researchers put dogs (awake and unrestrained) in MRI scanners to see the activity in different regions of their brains while the pooches looked at images of human facial expressions.
They found one thing they already knew: Dogs can tell the difference between joy and a blank stare, and between happy and angry faces.
But then the brain scans showed something novel: The dogs were making distinctions between fear and anger, and fear and sadness, showing they can tell the difference between somewhat nuanced negative emotions.
“As far as we know, it’s the first time there is proof that dogs can distinguish between faces expressing two [similar] emotions,” said Laura V. Cuaya, a co-author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at the SCAN-Unit, University of Vienna.
The study, which included two separate experiments, was published this month in the Cell Press journal iScience. It was started at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, then expanded to Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary.
In the first experiment, eight pet dogs were shown images of happy and neutral human faces that were unfamiliar to them. Happy faces elicited a stronger response in a part of the brain known as the right temporal cluster extending to the caudate nucleus, which is notable because it’s associated with rewards, Cuaya said.
“Other studies show, for example, that this activation is related when the dog is expecting a snack or a food reward, but also when they hear praise,” she said.
The team was interested in learning whether the same brain regions would be activated if dogs were exposed to images of negative human emotions as well as happy ones.
They designed the second experiment with 12 pet dogs, comparing brain regions where happy faces as well as those exhibiting sadness, anger, and fear were processed.
The results suggested “there is a distinction between happiness and the negative emotions,” said Raúl Hernández-Pérez, a postdoctoral researcher at the SCAN Unit and lead author of the study.
The researchers ran a whole-brain analysis to look at patterns of response for those three negative emotions. “We found that in a different part of the brain, there can be a distinction between fear and anger and between fear and sadness,” Cuaya said.
She added that there did not seem to be a difference in processing between sadness and anger.
The researchers stressed that these findings do not mean dogs understand or experience emotions in the same way humans do.
“What they have demonstrated here is that the dog brain can distinguish human faces that are showing different emotions, but it does not show that the dog brain is perceiving, processing those emotions,” said Clive Wynne, founding director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University, who was not involved with this study.
The study’s limitations
Undergoing an MRI is hard enough for a human who understands why they need to remain still, so “the dogs that are able to do this MRI work are very specific types,” said Molly Byrne, principal investigator of the Dog Lab at Pace University. The researchers worked mostly with border collies, and they pointed out that this breed is highly skilled at following social cues and particularly willing to interact with humans.
More studies are needed to determine whether other breeds show similar brain activity, the researchers said.
“A border collie is bred for a job like herding,” said Byrne, who was not involved in this study. “Over the course of many generations, they selected the dogs that listen the best and pay the most attention to what humans have to say.”
It’s also notable that the dogs studied are family pets, Wynne said. “These are dogs who are around people more or less 24/7 and have to keep paying close attention to people.”
The dogs in this study were shown a static photograph of a human face, but in real life, whole-body cues probably help canines gauge human mood. “People look at faces to find emotion,” said Wynne, noting that as a species, we have flexible, expressive faces. Dogs are known to use different signals for emotional expression, wagging their tails to show happiness or raising their hackles in anger.
“If you imagine the world from the dog’s perspective, the body is more important,” Cuaya said. With this in mind, she and Hernández-Pérez are running an experiment in which the dogs watch videos of people acting out various emotions with faces digitally obscured.
Unanswered questions about how dogs perceive human emotions
Dog cognition is a relatively new field, and very few labs in the world do these kinds of studies. The hope, experts said, is that future research can address bigger questions not only about how dogs perceive us but the nature of animal minds in general.
While we can peer into a dog’s brain using an MRI, for example, we don’t know whether they’re thinking about our emotions with real meaning.
“We know how we feel when we see a lot of happy faces,” Cuaya said. “But we are not sure if for them it is a happy face.” An interesting next step, Byrne said, would be to see whether dogs behave differently after exposure to human emotions: Are they more eager to cooperate with a smiling face than a frowning one?
There’s also some debate among experts about how big a role domestication has played in a dog’s ability to pay such close attention to humans, noted Evan MacLean, director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center at the University of Arizona. Have domesticated dogs evolved to be fundamentally tuned in to us? Or would other species behave similarly if they had the same opportunities to observe and interact with humans?
Either way, it’s clear that dogs are able to make “some pretty fine distinctions with respect to human emotions,” MacLean said. “Certainly, their behavior suggests that they can discriminate between emotional states in people, but this is a rare look inside the brain at what’s going on.”
Amid a summer when wildfire smoke has often filled the skies, a new study is adding to the body of research about the growing impact of fire-fueled air pollution, this time raising the alarm about prenatal health.
Wildfire pollution has become an increasing proportion of the pollution that pregnant mothers and their unborn babies are exposed to, according to a study published this month.
The new study by University of Maryland researchers found that out of the air pollution unborn babies are exposed to, the share of exposure to wildfire-generated microscopic air pollution more than doubled between 2003 and 2019.
The study did not discuss specific health outcomes for the prenatal exposure and births it analyzed, but previous studies have suggested that fine-particulate-matter pollution, known as PM 2.5, caused by wildfires can be more harmful than other forms of air pollution.
Studies have linked wildfire smoke to poor pregnancy outcomes and a variety of early-childhood health issues. The particles are small enough to enter the lungs and bloodstream, and they have also been linked to lung damage, respiratory disease, and cancers.
“We know that if we prevent PM 2.5 exposure in the prenatal period, these infants are going to grow to be healthier, more productive adults,” said Michel Boudreaux, an associate professor of health policy and management at the University of Maryland and one of the study’s authors.
The research also refers to the continued way pollution from wildfires cuts into improvements made in the United States’ air quality in the past two decades.
Researchers credit the Clean Air Act for reducing pollution from cars and industrial facilities.
But wildfire smoke has cut into those gains, according to several studies in recent years. A 2023 study found that, since 2016, wildfire smoke has eroded the equivalent of around four years of air quality progress in most of the country.
Wildfire pollution occurs inconsistently, Boudreaux said, flaring up when mega-fires break out in different regions.
It remains a small share of the PM 2.5 Americans are exposed to, but annual levels of wildfire smoke stayed consistent as other sources of pollution declined over the past two decades, the new study found.
Boudreaux’s study modeled air pollution across the country from 2003 to 2019, both including and excluding pollution created by wildfires, and used birth records to estimate the air pollution exposure to prenatal infants over this period. Researchers also analyzed the regions they studied by demographics and access to healthcare services.
The study found that the proportion of wildfire smoke in annual air pollution has increased by several percentage points from 2003 to 2019.
The greatest increase was in the Northwest, where around 13% of prenatal PM 2.5 exposure could be attributed to wildfires by the end of the decade. Regions with poor access to hospital facilities and maternal care, which were largely rural, had lower average PM 2.5 levels but faced the largest proportion of pollution from wildfires.
The new study also found that wildfires accounted for more than 70% of “exceedance days” — days where PM 2.5 levels exceeded 35 micrograms per cubic meter, an Environmental Protection Agency standard — by 2017 and 2018. Wildfire-attributable exceedance days stayed constant over the period studied, while exceedance days from other sources declined sharply.
“Because we’ve done such a good job of decreasing these non-wildfire sources, the share of ‘exceedance days’ that are due to wildfire smoke has increased,” Boudreaux said. “If we want to continue making progress on this … we have to start thinking about, how do we protect people from wildfire smoke?”
Academics not involved in the study said the work was limited by its scope and that the 2020s have seen a larger increase in wildfires after the study’s time frame. The five-year period from 2020 to 2025 was the smokiest on record in the United States, a study last year found.
“The last six years have just looked fundamentally different,” said Marshall Burke, a global environmental policy professor at Stanford University.
Michael Brauer, a professor at the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, said further research is needed on the health risks of wildfire smoke, such as the effect of spikes in wildfire pollution at different stages of a pregnancy.
Burke said the study’s focus on prenatal exposure highlighted the breadth of air pollution’s impact across the population.
“We typically think of vulnerability to air pollution in terms of people with respiratory or other preexisting conditions,” Burke said. “But here, this is showing that pregnancy … really widens the lens of who we think as vulnerable.”
President Donald Trump issued last week a sweeping executive order aimed at changing how and when American children are vaccinated, defying guidance from major medical groups and sparking confusion among parents.
The directive calls for reducing the number of recommended childhood vaccines, spacing out the shots, and splitting up the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine. The White House says the effort is to align the United States with its peer nations. The potential changes would diverge from long-standing federal guidance around immunizations, which medical experts credit with halting the spread of deadly preventable diseases in the United States.
But the bottom line is that federal vaccine recommendations have not changed yet.
Implementing Trump’s directives would require a lengthy administrative process and probably a legal battle, even as Trump has privately urged his deputies to move faster.
“An executive order is not an automatic change to the schedule, because that’s not the legal way it’s done,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California College of the Law at San Francisco whose research focuses on public health law.
States, not the federal government, generally set vaccination requirements for school attendance.
The order has drawn opposition from major medical organizations, such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
In January, federal health officials reduced the number of vaccines recommended for children, but a federal judge halted those changes in March, citing a flawed process.
Has the childhood vaccine schedule changed since Trump’s executive order?
No, there have been no changes to the childhood immunization schedule.
Executive orders are documents guiding federal agencies to pursue policies important to the president.
The White House is calling for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines to craft proposed changes within 90 days. The long-defunct panel was revived last year after a push from anti-vaccine activists. That task force makes recommendations to improve vaccine safety, not to recommend what should be the optimal vaccine schedule, Reiss said.
Legal experts say that’s not how vaccine changes are typically made. Usually, vaccine recommendations come from an independent vaccine advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency then decides whether to sign off on recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
“The task force isn’t the entity Congress designated to make vaccine recommendations,” said Richard H. Hughes IV, an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown and attorney at Epstein, Becker & Green who also represents plaintiffs suing the administration over previous vaccine changes.
What should I do about getting my children ready for school?
Medical experts say parents are likely to be confused by the latest announcement. They should talk to their pediatricians.
The immunization schedule from the American Academy of Pediatrics, endorsed by major medical organizations, has not changed.
The timing of shots, and how they are grouped, has been well studied so they are given when the immune system is best able to be trained to recognize and make the body stronger to fight off an infection from a particular disease if it is exposed to one, said Andrew Racine, president of the AAP and a pediatrician who has been treating children for more than 40 years.
“When parents have questions about vaccines or about any other aspect of their children’s health, we encourage them to speak with their pediatricians because pediatricians are best positioned to give parents sound advice about vaccines or anything else,” he said.
Will insurers cover the shots?
Insurers probably would still cover childhood vaccines even if Trump administration officials change the schedule.
“If this EO were to withstand legal scrutiny, it appears insurers should still cover recommended vaccines for free,” Jennifer Kates, a senior vice president at KFF, a health policy research and news organization, wrote in an email. She added that spacing the shots over multiple visits is already an option for parents.
Major insurers have also previously indicated they would continue to cover vaccines even in the face of potential changes. White House officials told reporters on Monday that they believed health insurers would continue to cover vaccines currently on the childhood immunization schedule regardless of whether recommendations change.
What changes does Trump want?
Taken together, Trump’s proposed changes would mark his most significant attempt to fundamentally alter vaccine policy in the United States.
Here are some of the order’s main directives:
Fewer universally recommended shots: Vaccines against 11 diseases — including measles, mumps, rubella, polio and whooping cough — would remain recommended for all children. Immunizations for other diseases, such as hepatitis A and B, would be recommended for certain high-risk groups or through shared decision-making between parents and doctors. Both the flu and the coronavirus shots would be included in the shared decision-making category.
Break up the MMR shot: Trump wants the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine replaced with three individual shots, which are not currently available in the United States. Such a shift would diverge from the practices of several peer nations federal health officials have cited as models for change.
Alternative adjuvants to aluminum: The order seeks alternatives to aluminum-containing ingredients used to strengthen the body’s immune response to some vaccines. Some high-level Food and Drug Administration officials believed last year that it would be infeasible to take aluminum adjuvants out of vaccines.
Space out immunizations: The order states that “to the maximum extent feasible, all childhood immunizations should be administered at separate medical visits.”
Should I be getting my child individual shots of the MMR vaccine?
Individual shots are not available in the U.S., so practically speaking, that is not an option.
And making them available would not be as simple as splitting the existing MMR vaccine into three shots. Merck, which makes one of the MMR vaccines used in the U.S., said each individual vaccine would essentially be considered a new investigational product and would require development, clinical trials, and FDA review to demonstrate its safety and effectiveness.
The process could take years — potentially as many as 10 — before the vaccines could be approved and manufacturing and commercialization could begin, a Merck spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday. White House officials said Monday they plan to work with the private sector to make that option available.
Splitting up the MMR vaccine would also differ from the approach taken by several comparable countries the Trump administration has cited as models for U.S. vaccine policy. Denmark, Australia, and Canada give MMR immunizations in a combination vaccine. Britain this year began replacing the MMR shot with a four-in-one vaccine that also protects against chicken pox.
Major medical organizations strongly recommend the combination MMR vaccine, the safety and effectiveness of which has been well studied.
Two doses of the vaccine are 97% effective in preventing measles, which can result in serious complications, including pneumonia, swelling of the brain, and, in rare cases, death from respiratory and neurological complications.
Medical experts and public health officials have already seen a drop in the percent of parents willing to give the MMR vaccine to their children, and as a consequence, U.S. measles cases are at a 35-year high.
Merck said there is no published scientific evidence showing a benefit from separating the MMR vaccine into three individual shots. Combination vaccines can also make it easier for children to receive all their recommended vaccines on schedule, the company said; giving the components individually would require more injections and could lead to delayed or missed immunizations.
Why is this happening now?
Trump has long questioned whether the number of childhood vaccines can cause autism, in defiance of decades of research finding no link. The president’s musings have become more prominent during his second term with the selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the nation’s health department. Kennedy, the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, has a lengthy history of disparaging vaccines and has sought to reshape the nation’s immunization system, to the alarm of public health experts who say he is eroding confidence in long-standing measures.
Medical and public health groups say there is no new scientific evidence that would justify the changes Trump is seeking. Instead, they say the executive order comes amid a broader push by the administration to overhaul federal vaccine policy.
“There’s nothing that has changed. The science about vaccines and their efficacy has not changed,” the AAP’s Racine said. “The distribution of viruses and other pathogens in our environment has not changed. The children in this country have not changed in the last 48 hours.”
House Democrats are pushing the Trump administration to release records related to the felony prosecution of a former Olympian who had been accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, questioning whether prosecutors were misled in an attempt to conceal a “botched” renovation.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee made the move days after a judge granted federal prosecutors’ request to drop a felony charge against David Hearn, attributing the pool damage to faulty installation.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) sent a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro requesting the release of all documents related to the decision to prosecute Hearn and any communications between the agencies and the White House about the case.
The letter called on the departments to answer whether President Donald Trump exerted pressure to “retaliate against and scapegoat an American citizen.”
“How did this debacle happen?” wrote Raskin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “The conclusion seems inescapable that at least one, if not both, of you have misled the American public about the evidence and used it to corrupt and weaponize our justice system against an innocent 67-year-old American citizen.”
Pirro’s office maintains it didn’t know about the widespread damage at the Reflecting Pool until after the indictment, accusing the Interior Department of withholding documents indicating the peeling was caused by flawed installation. But Hearn’s attorneys say there’s evidence that they knew of problems before indicting him.
Raskin is also seeking evidence presented to the grand jury, including transcripts of testimonies.
Asked for comment on the letter, the White House referred the Washington Post to Trump’s previous Truth Social posts alleging vandalism.
The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The Department of Justice follows the evidence when determining if crimes have been committed,” the federal agency said in a statement. “We always evaluate any case based on the facts and the law.”
Raskin’s letter comes after Hearn’s attorneys alleged that prosecutors may have misled jurors to secure an indictment against him. In a filing last week, the attorneys alleged that a key government witness testified that repairs would have been necessary regardless of Hearn’s actions but that prosecutors recalled the witness and “elicited” them to say that damage “attributable to Mr. Hearn” would be more than $1,000.
The attorneys are asking the judge to ensure federal prosecutors can’t charge Hearn again in the future.
Pirro, a longtime Trump ally, has faced intense public scrutiny over the decision to prosecute Hearn and others alleged to have damaged the pool and again after abruptly dropping the cases.
In the letter, Raskin points to Trump’s repeated comments about renovating the Reflecting Pool. Raskin also questioned the noncompetitive process in awarding a contract and referred to reporting from CNN that another company declined the July 4 deadline.
“President Trump’s ‘highly sophisticated’ and slapdash paint job didn’t even last 100 days, much less a century,” Raskin said.
Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the contractor, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A Post analysis of satellite imagery and photos and videos taken during the Reflecting Pool renovation found that the basin’s peeling was probably caused by application errors.
Despite reports of Reflecting Pool renovation failures before June 19, when Hearn touched a piece of the detached liner, Raskin said Trump and Burgum latched on to the claim that vandalism was to blame. Pirro followed with a felony charge against Hearn in July. He was initially charged with a misdemeanor count of destruction of government property.
The case collapsed the same month. Pirro’s office said in a court filing that the Interior Department did not provide sufficient information ahead of the indictment, including an email from an engineer on June 11 detailing the peeling of the liner.
“After DOJ’s filing, President Trump went off the deep end of the Reflecting Pool, you might say,” Raskin said in the letter.
Trump has blasted Pirro for dropping the vandalism charge against Hearn and three others and has continued to blame the former Olympian.
On Sunday, Trump again accused Hearn of “‘violently’ ripping and tugging at the Pool’s somewhat delicate coating” in a social media post. He conceded that there was “some contractor error” due to the rushed job but that it damaged only a small area.
Raskin poked jabs at Trump in the letter, referencing “local vandalism crimes,” including the East Wing demolition and the affixing of Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center. A judge later ordered the removal of the name.
The letter requests that the records in the pool case be shared by Aug. 25.
In a statement Tuesday, attorneys for Hearn said they “welcome any Congressional oversight that seeks the truth.”
“As we have stated from the beginning, the indictment of Davey Hearn was a clear miscarriage of justice and an egregious misuse of government power,” Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann, and Steve Levin said in the statement. “Our client and the American public deserve the truth, so it won’t happen again.”
A judge has ordered the Kennedy Center to pay more than $250,000 to a jazz musician who pulled out of a performance after the venue’s board voted to rename the building for President Donald Trump.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Tanya Jones Bosier on Monday ordered the center to pay $252,000 in legal fees and costs to lawyers for Chuck Redd, who for years had played at the center’s annual Christmas Eve concert.
Last year, Redd had been in talks with the venue’s staff to perform but declined to sign a contract. He told the center he chose to bow out because of “the defiant and illegal name change happening to the Kennedy Center.”
The Kennedy Center sued in March, alleging Redd had breached his contract by withdrawing from the concert. But in June, Jones Bosier tossed the lawsuit, determining that center officials failed to show they had made a legally binding agreement with him.
The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
