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  • Inside school investigations frozen under Trump: Racial slurs, sexual harassment, and more

    Inside school investigations frozen under Trump: Racial slurs, sexual harassment, and more

    By the time Black History Month arrived at Chesaning Middle School in central Michigan in 2024, the only Black girl in the fifth grade had already endured a string of racial slurs. On the bus, she was called a “monkey,” she said. Students hurled the n-word at her and said her skin was “burnt like a piece of chicken.”

    Then, apparently inspired by a February lesson about slavery, a white boy asked her, “Hey slave, where are your tools so you can get back to working?”

    School officials told the girl’s mom that they were dealing with the situation, but the harassment continued, the mother and daughter said in an interview. Frustrated and angry, the mother picked up her iPhone one day, searched for “civil rights” and landed on a federal website.

    She found a complaint form and filled it out.

    “She’s being bullied to where she can’t even focus on schoolwork,” the mother wrote. She detailed racial harassment and said her daughter had been mentally and emotionally scarred. “I have to get my child help.”

    Her complaint was forwarded to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, the office responsible for ensuring that students can attend school free of racial harassment and that for decades has investigated discrimination claims in schools across the country. Originally created to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the office pressured Southern schools to dismantle segregation and later was tasked with investigating discrimination in schools based on sex, disability, and other factors, in addition to race.

    In June 2024, the office launched an investigation of Chesaning Union Schools. By that fall, investigators had documented the allegations of harassment and expressed their concern that the district had failed to properly respond, according to an investigative document obtained by the Washington Post and two people familiar with the situation. In early January 2025, federal officials opened negotiations with the district on an improvement plan that would settle the case.

    What happened next marked a break with decades of federal practice. Instead of resolving such investigations, the Trump administration indefinitely froze them, according to eight current and former employees, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about their work publicly. The administration gutted the Office for Civil Rights and prioritized investigations into transgender athletes and other conservative priorities.

    More than three dozen investigations were complete, including this one in Michigan, and at the final stage — negotiations that could have required remedies such as training, better accountability systems, and, in some cases, compensation for students.

    But those agreements were never finalized, school district officials and other people familiar with the matter said. When President Donald Trump’s second term began, there were thousands of pending investigations. In the 18 months since then, the civil rights office has completed only three settlements, known as resolution agreements, involving racial harassment and no agreements regarding sexual harassment or violence, according to the department’s online database. By contrast, in 2024, the office completed 25 resolution agreements related to racial harassment and 47 related to sexual harassment or violence.

    The details of pending investigations are typically cloaked in secrecy. But documents and interviews with current and former officials offer a rare look at allegations that are pending inside the agency.

    Among them: Black students were called the n-word, “monkey,” and other racial slurs. Children from the Middle East were called terrorists. Video of a sexual encounter between students was dropped into a group chat without consent. And a principal was accused of inappropriately touching girls.

    Because of the inaction, there have been no federally mandated protections for students, consequences or accountability for the schools involved.

    “The Department of Education’s role is literally to ensure that students don’t experience discrimination at school so they can access their education. What you have here is the Department of Education saying, ‘We won’t do that,’” said Michael Pillera, who worked for a decade at the Office for Civil Rights.

    In a statement, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey pointed to a backlog of about 19,000 cases inherited from the Biden administration and said that former President Joe Biden had failed students.

    “Any implication that there was a purposeful decision to allow important cases to linger is dishonest,” she said in an emailed statement. “We are utilizing every tool at our disposal to resolve the backlog and return common-sense to our schools.”

    But several current and former staffers said they were barred from working on certain types of cases. One former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals directed at his new employer, said his office was close to wrapping up two cases of serious racial harassment in the final days of the Biden administration only to see the cases ignored after Trump arrived and changed the office’s priorities.

    “There are real people and real lives at the end of these cases,” he said. “There are consequences for people emotionally, educationally. That story has somehow got lost.”

    In response to the Michigan case, Erin H. Walz, an attorney for Chesaning Union Schools, said in an email that the district “categorically denies” the alleged harassment as described by the Post but declined to say what was inaccurate, citing student privacy laws.

    Mike McGough, Chesaning’s superintendent, expressed frustration with the Office for Civil Rights.

    “The diminished capacity of OCR serves neither party,” he said in an interview. “Complainants haven’t been able to get their claims heard. We don’t get to defend ourselves. We would have continued the process and I believe would have reached a fair and equitable resolution.”

    Two months after Trump returned to the White House, the Cleveland office overseeing the Chesaning case was closed. Meanwhile, the racial harassment would only grow worse for one Black girl trying to survive middle school.

    A change in priorities

    The inaction on racial and sexual harassment cases stems from two decisions by the Trump administration: It cut the staff at the Office for Civil Rights by more than half and closed seven of 12 regional offices, overwhelming the remaining staff. (Some workers who were terminated returned following litigation.)

    The administration also has prioritized investigating other types of cases, such as schools that allow transgender girls to compete on girls’ sports teams, antisemitism on college campuses, and colleges that promote race- or gender-based scholarships. Executive orders issued on the day Trump returned to office took aim at diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and policies that help transgender students.

    In 2026, the office reached 31 resolution agreements enforcing Title VI, the federal law that bars discrimination based on race. All of them involved university partnerships with the PhD Project, which sought to recruit Black and Hispanic students to business school. The Education Department said these partnerships discriminated against people of other races.

    Meantime, it was virtually impossible to get the go-ahead for the type of racial and sexual harassment cases that once made up some of the agency’s highest-profile work, several current and former employees said.

    At the start of the Trump administration, work on all civil rights cases was halted, as is typical with a new administration, they said. But while some work was eventually unfrozen, they said cases that were pending from the Biden administration were not. Although staffers are officially allowed to work on new racial and sexual harassment cases, they need approval from headquarters to proceed with them. And that’s difficult if not impossible to get, partly because there is such a backlog, those people said.

    There’s “no point” in working on these racial or sexual harassment cases because they won’t advance, said one of the staffers in the civil rights office who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “My team leader is just like, `No. We’re letting it sit.’”

    That’s what happened in eight cases of racial or sexual harassment examined by the Post. Each case has been ignored for the past 18 months, according to people familiar with the cases.

    In Ludlow, Mass., a draft letter of findings noted widespread reports of racial harassment at the middle school between 2021 and 2024. White students reportedly called Black students the n-word and “monkeys,” remarked negatively on their hair or skin color, and more.

    In January 2025, an attorney with the Office for Civil Rights informed Ludlow Public Schools that the agency had concluded that the district failed to appropriately respond to harassment of one student and had concerns about treatment of others, emails obtained from the district through a public records request show. The parties opened negotiations toward a voluntary agreement that would close the case.

    The district tentatively agreed to take a range of steps including paying tuition for a student who left the district, conducting mandatory trainings for all district employees on racial discrimination law, and retaining a consultant to help the district implement “inclusive policies and procedures.”

    They were close to an agreement on Jan. 21, 2025. Then the government stopped communicating with the district, and the case has been dormant since, people familiar with the case said.

    Becky Bouchard, the district’s legal compliance officer, told the Post that Ludlow has taken some steps on its own, including providing guidance and support to students and staff and addressing concerns “as they arise.” She said the district takes all reports of discrimination and harassment seriously, investigates concerns consistent with law and policy, and is committed to providing students with a “safe, respectful and inclusive” environment.

    There has also been no action since early 2025 in Grand Junction, Colo., where the civil rights office found that two students of Middle Eastern descent were bullied on the playground, in the hallways, and in bathrooms. Other students allegedly called them “camel humpers” and “terrorists,” advised them to “go back to where you’re from,” and said “you’re the reason my sister can’t sleep at night,” an investigation document shows.

    A spokesperson for the school system, Mesa County Valley School District 51, said that not all of the allegations are accurate but declined to specify what she believed to be inaccurate, citing laws that protect student privacy. She said the district aims to make decisions based on all available facts and to ensure the process is “fair for everyone involved.”

    And at Phoenix Union High School in Arizona, an investigation into racial harassment of a pair of Black siblings showed that the academic performance and mental health of one sibling declined, while the other missed class and felt unable to communicate with teachers as a result. Schools may be in violation of the law if they fail to adequately respond to harassment that is so severe that it denies a student’s ability to benefit from their education. It is unclear whether this case was determined to have reached that level of severity.

    Federal officials were negotiating a resolution with the school system in late December 2024 and early January 2025. Then the federal government stopped communicating, a district official said. A spokesperson added, “We remain committed to creating welcoming environments that provide respectful treatment” for all.

    Stalled sexual harassment cases detailed in documents obtained by the Post include allegations that a student in Arizona climbed over a bathroom wall to record other students, then shared the photos and videos with others; that a principal in Texas touched a student in a way that made her uncomfortable, commented on the attractiveness of cheerleading uniforms, and chest-bumped a cheerleader during a football game; and that a Louisiana college student secretly taped himself having sex with a woman and then shared the video with his fraternity brothers.

    In each case, negotiations over resolutions were abruptly curtailed in early 2025 and remain unresolved, according to officials at each school.

    Now the future of the Office for Civil Rights is uncertain.

    The Trump administration announced in June that it would transfer much of the office’s work to the Justice Department, part of its effort to hollow out the Education Department in hopes of eventually shutting it down. Staffers at the Education Department say they have not been told how investigations will be conducted after the change takes effect.

    At the Education Department, the civil rights office is obligated to look into every complaint filed. But at the Justice Department, attorneys pick and choose their cases.

    ‘Hey slave’

    The harassment of the Black girl in Michigan persisted long after the complaint was filed and long after it was shelved, according to the mother and daughter, with mounting educational and emotional consequences.

    The mother’s younger siblings had attended Chesaning schools without experiencing harassment, and her older children did not have problems either, she said. It was different for her youngest.

    It began in fall 2023, when the girl entered the fifth grade, the mother and daughter said in interviews. Many of the allegations are also detailed in an investigative document, and others allegedly occurred after the civil rights office stopped engaging on the case. The mother spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns that telling her story could impact her job. She is legally the girl’s guardian and also her godmother, and they refer to each other as mother and daughter.

    Students harassed the girl all over campus, she said: Sometimes she was insulted on the bus. Sometimes students would push her in the hallways and mutter the n-word under their breath. Once, a classmate told her she could not play with her group on the playground because she was Black. Naturally quiet and shy, she didn’t argue back.

    During Black History Month, her class watched a documentary about the civil rights movement. When a protester in the film recounted a racist police officer using the n-word, it seemed to the girl that everyone in class snapped their heads to look at her. The girl asked her teacher for permission to sit in the hallway and begged her mother to let her stay home altogether.

    Both said no.

    “I scooched down in my chair because I didn’t want to be there,” the girl said in an interview.

    She was in line for lunch in the cafeteria when she heard a white boy say “hey slave,” she recalled.

    “Go get digging,” he continued, “I need some cotton.”

    She felt herself starting to cry. The girl went to see the lunch monitor, who told her to go to the office, where she was asked why she didn’t tell the lunch monitor. The school said it would handle the matter, though the mother said officials would not tell her what punishment the boy received.

    McGough, the superintendent, said he could not comment on this specific case due to privacy laws but, in general, cases of persistent harassment are dealt with using significant and progressive discipline.

    Over winter and spring 2024, the mother documented her frustration and complaints in a long Facebook post and in emails sent to school and federal officials and reviewed by the Post.

    In one example, another student called the girl a “Black monkey.” When called out by a school police officer, he defended himself this way: “I said ‘Black monkey,’ but I didn’t say it to her.’” The officer made him apologize, according to an email her mother sent to the federal official investigating the case.

    By fall 2024, the federal investigation was complete. Officials concluded that the district knew about the harassment, according to a draft letter of findings reviewed by the Post.

    The evidence “raises compliance concerns that the District did not consistently take prompt and effective steps to determine if the harassing conduct was occurring, remedy its effects, and prevent recurrence,” the letter said.

    A proposed resolution agreement was sent to the school district in January 2025. It would have required Chesaning to better track incidents of harassment; train teachers, staff, and students about racial harassment; conduct a climate survey to gauge the presence and impact of racial harassment; and provide counseling and tutoring to the girl who was harassed. The agreement also proposed that the district develop a plan so the girl would not be subjected to future harassment.

    But the district and the government never reached an agreement, and the attorney working on the case was laid off from the agency.

    Walz, the district’s attorney, declined to say whether Chesaning has taken any steps to address school climate.

    The harassment continued, and, according to the family, school officials knew it.

    Once, the girl reported use of the n-word to officials in the school office, she said, and they asked her whether she thought that was an accurate word to describe her. When the girl said no, a school official replied, “If you don’t think you’re that, why are you coming down here and complaining about it?” she recalled.

    “They were trying to put the blame on me,” she said.

    In May of this year, the mother found a boxcutter that belonged in the laundry room in her daughter’s room and questioned her about it. The girl confessed that the bullying was too much to handle and that she had considered hurting herself.

    A meeting at the school left the mother unsatisfied that things would improve. She began considering other school districts for eighth grade. The girl is still traumatized, her mother said, and is in counseling.

    For a time, the mother had felt sure the government would address the harassment. She believes the lawyer working on the case cared. “I could hear it in her voice,” she said.

    But it’s been so long since she heard from the lawyer. More than a year since she heard from anyone at the Office for Civil Rights.

    She no longer expects them to help.

  • Window closes for Ohio GOP to replace Rep. Max Miller on the ballot

    Window closes for Ohio GOP to replace Rep. Max Miller on the ballot

    Rep. Max Miller, the embattled Ohio Republican who faces accusations of domestic violence from his ex-wife, appears almost certain to remain on the ballot in November after a key deadline in the process to replace him passed Saturday.

    Miller, who denies any wrongdoing, has resisted growing calls to drop his bid for a third term and resign from Congress.

    Under Ohio law, the deadline to fill a vacancy for the November general election is Monday at 4 p.m. But there are earlier steps in the process that seemingly would have necessitated Miller withdrawing already.

    Most notably, the leaders of the local Republican parties in all four counties that are part of the district must meet to choose the replacement nominee. The statute requires that the chairperson from the most populous county provide at least two days’ notice to participants to convene the meeting.

    That means Miller would have had to withdraw his candidacy by Saturday to leave enough time for the selection process before Monday’s deadline. He did not.

    A spokesperson for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R), who oversees elections in the state, said the office could not confirm that interpretation of the law because of the potential for litigation.

    If Miller were to end his campaign after Monday, his name could still be removed from the ballot until 70 days before the November election — that deadline is Aug. 25 — but there would be no Republican nominee for the office.

    Some Republican officials, fearful of putting a conservative-leaning seat at risk as the GOP fights to hold its narrow House majority, have maneuvered to pressure Miller to drop out of the race. Withdrawing after he won the Republican nomination for Ohio’s 7th Congressional District would have allowed local GOP officials to select a replacement.

    Following their divorce last year, Miller’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno, accused him in court filings of throwing hot water on her from a pan of eggs he had just cooked, once holding a gun to her head, and hurting their daughter, who suffered a fractured collarbone in February. Miller claims his ex-wife fabricated those allegations because she is mentally ill, which she denies.

    Public scrutiny of the abuse accusations increased in recent weeks after Moreno filed for a new restraining order, leading Miller to post a lengthy video statement online in which he blamed a custody battle for souring their relationship and vowed to press ahead with his reelection.

    Last Sunday, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio), Emily Moreno’s father, broke months of silence about the situation, calling Miller “a danger” who is unfit to serve in Congress and urging him to step aside.

    That set off a scramble over Miller’s fate. Some Senate colleagues, including Sen. Jon Husted (R., Ohio), and conservative organizations in Ohio joined Moreno to push Miller to end his campaign and resign from Congress.

    But prominent Republicans, including President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), have stood by Miller. Most of his GOP colleagues in the House refuse to discuss the allegations against him.

    Privately, Republican campaign officials express little concern about losing Miller’s seat because of the conservative tilt of this area stretching south from the Cleveland suburbs.

    The Washington Post interviewed dozens of voters in the district this week and found that the scandal was barely registering.

    Many were unfamiliar with the accusations against Miller, and even those Republicans who had heard were largely wary of wading into what they considered a family matter and reluctant to abandon the congressman. Only a handful of conservative voters told the Post that they were even open to considering his Democratic opponent, Brian Poindexter.

  • Blanche’s confirmation fight was tough. Being Trump’s AG may be tougher.

    Blanche’s confirmation fight was tough. Being Trump’s AG may be tougher.

    With his bruising confirmation battle behind him, Todd Blanche will soon be sworn in as the Senate-backed head of the Justice Department.

    But the hardest part may be what comes next.

    Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, will officially assume the title of attorney general and take command of an agency he has led on an acting basis since April.

    But he will do so under competing pressures from a president intent on seeing his enemies put on trial, a federal judiciary increasingly skeptical of those efforts, and a Republican-led Congress harboring growing doubts about Blanche’s ability to say “no” to his boss.

    The Justice Department’s career staff has been ravaged by firings, departures, and low morale over the past year and a half, as its traditional independence from the White House has evaporated. And its to-do list has only grown longer, including stepped-up efforts to prosecute fraud, illegal immigration, and violent crime while pursuing the sweeping, politically charged investigations of foes that the president has demanded.

    Blanche acknowledged those challenges and the difficulty of meeting Trump’s expectations as he spoke to reporters ahead of his confirmation last week.

    “It’s not as if I remain blissfully unaware of what will happen if I am confirmed,” he said. “When President Trump talks about what he expects this department to do to make this country safe, I don’t think the American people should look at that as some sort of threat to me or warning to me. He wants this country to be safe.”

    But as Blanche assumes his new role, now with the imprimatur of Senate backing, walking a tightrope between satisfying Trump and fulfilling an attorney general’s obligations to the rule of law is likely to only grow more perilous.

    Over the next several months, the Justice Department is expected to make a number of charging decisions in sensitive cases of keen interest to the president.

    Prosecutors in Florida have been at work for months on what Trump allies have referred to as a “grand conspiracy” investigation of former Obama- and Biden-era officials, including former CIA director John Brennan, who they say engaged in a long-running scheme to violate the president’s civil rights through efforts to undermine his presidency — allegations Brennan denies.

    Meanwhile, department investigators continue to seek evidence to back Trump’s unproven assertions that the 2020 election was stolen, that there exist broad left-wing conspiracies to oppose his second-term agenda, and that his critics, including former FBI director James B. Comey, deserve to be put in prison.

    Despite concerns raised by lawmakers about Trump’s role in those probes, Blanche has repeatedly defended the president’s “right” to intervene in Justice Department business — a significant departure from long-standing norms.

    “If we have discussions where we have to talk about a case and whether we’re going to charge a case or whether we have charged a case, that’s OK,” Blanche told reporters last week. “I’m not concerned about that.”

    The Senate’s 50-49 vote to confirm Blanche early Saturday came in spite of reservations expressed by some Republicans over the growing politicization of the department under Trump.

    In casting the pivotal votes, Sens. John Cornyn (R., Texas), Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R., La.) each said they worried about Blanche’s ability to put the interests of the American people above those of his former client.

    But each said Blanche had provided them with personal assurances that had assuaged their doubts about his ability to effectively counsel Trump when the president’s instincts run contrary to the rule of law.

    “I am realistic that President Trump can be unrelenting,” Cassidy said Friday, but added: “This will be true no matter who the attorney general is. And this is the rationale for having a Senate-confirmed attorney general with more leverage to push back.”

    Yet, even as Blanche was making those promises to the senators last week, Trump continued to pick at some of the very issues that had stoked lawmakers’ concerns.

    He threatened to revive the controversial proposal for a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate those who claim they were victims of political prosecutions, casting doubt on Blanche’s pledge to Congress that the fund was officially dead.

    He insisted the U.S. attorney in D.C., Jeanine Pirro, should refile cases that she withdrew against four people previously accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, even after she determined that there was no evidence to support the charges and that a government contractor was to blame for the damage.

    And, in a letter this week, the White House revived its efforts to oust Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board over unproven allegations of mortgage fraud, despite a Supreme Court ruling in June blocking that move and the fact that the Justice Department has not filed any charges despite months of investigation. Cook has denied any wrongdoing.

    Publicly, Blanche has pointed to the unique relationship he built with Trump while defending him against the four criminal cases he faced in his years out of office, saying it gives him a base of trust from which to advise the president on issues tied to the Justice Department.

    But Blanche has also acknowledged that he can only do so much.

    “President Trump trusts me to give him counsel,” he said during his confirmation hearing in July. “Counsel does not mean a ‘yes man,’ and that’s true in my case like it should be in any attorney general’s.”

    He added, though, that “the Department of Justice, like every single department in the executive, is part of the executive” branch.

    Current and former members of the department’s career workforce have said they, too, once hoped that Blanche could serve as a moderating check on Trump’s most aggressive impulses, only to see those expectations dashed.

    When he was confirmed last year as the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, under then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche brought to the job experience as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and, later, as a partner at a prestigious law firm.

    Career officials said they expected that background had instilled in Blanche a recognition of the department’s tradition of independence and respect for the rule of law.

    Their optimism quickly faded, they said, as Blanche publicly embraced Trump’s calls for disruptive change in the department and pursued legally questionable cases against the president’s rivals.

    Behind the scenes, Blanche has at times demonstrated a willingness to gently push back against the president, though not always with success.

    The Washington Post reported last year that he joined Bondi in advocating to save the job of Erik S. Siebert, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who concluded in September that there was insufficient evidence to charge two top Trump targets — former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — with crimes.

    Trump ousted Siebert anyway, replacing him with Lindsey Halligan, who secured the indictments Trump wanted against both. Those cases were later thrown out by a federal judge who ruled Halligan had been appointed illegally.

    And on Wednesday, as Trump suggested Pirro’s job could be in jeopardy over her decision to withdraw the Reflecting Pool cases, Blanche offered her his full endorsement.

    “Judge Pirro is doing a great job, and our city, Washington, D.C., is a lot safer in no small part to her effort and the prosecutors’ efforts that she works with,” he said.

    Still, Blanche added: “Hypothetically, if the president chose to fire a U.S. attorney, he’s allowed to do that because he’s the president of the United States.”

    The same applies to attorneys general — and Trump’s relationships with those who have previously occupied the role under him have been famously fraught.

    He fired Jeff Sessions two years into his first presidential term, following months of acrimony over Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign — a move that cleared the way for the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

    William P. Barr, Trump’s second Senate-confirmed attorney general, resigned after publicly contradicting Trump’s claims about the 2020 election being stolen.

    Trump fired Bondi in April over frustrations with her slow pace and limited success in bringing cases against his adversaries.

    Blanche, speaking to reporters soon after the president chose him to replace her, contemplated that he, too, could one day find himself on the wrong end of Trump’s expectations.

    If that day comes, Blanche said at the time, he would thank the president for the opportunity to serve, adding: “I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’”

  • Netanyahu rejects Trump-backed Gaza plan for Hamas disarmament, Israeli withdrawal

    Netanyahu rejects Trump-backed Gaza plan for Hamas disarmament, Israeli withdrawal

    TEL AVIV — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a U.S.-backed plan Sunday for Hamas to lay down its weapons in Gaza in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the territory — a proposal President Donald Trump recently touted as a breakthrough toward ending the conflict there.

    Netanyahu, at the start of a government meeting, said that “Israel does not accept the 15-point document” and that an Israeli withdrawal will be carried out only after “genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament.” His demands included that the Palestinian militant group give up all weapons: “Heavy weaponry, lighter weaponry, all weaponry,” he said.

    Israel is “talking with the Americans about this issue,” Netanyahu said. “They have ideas, some of which are acceptable to us and some of which are unacceptable, and we know how to stand firm against these things.”

    Hamas said in a statement Sunday that it reaffirms its commitment to the 15-point plan that it agreed on with the Board of Peace, calling on parties to help ensure its implementation. However, the militant group and Israel disagree as to which should come first: Israeli withdrawal or Hamas disarmament.

    “The existence of Israel and the security of all Israeli citizens are not up for negotiation. We stand firm on these interests,” Netanyahu said in his remarks Sunday. “Unlike all those who lecture us, we do what needs to be done for Israel’s security, and we can and know how to stand our ground, even against our best friends when necessary.”

    The Board of Peace, the State Department, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Netanyahu’s stance on the Hamas deal was another setback for Trump’s efforts to address Middle East conflicts.

    With Trump’s unpopular war on Iran now in its sixth month, comments from Iranian officials Saturday cast further doubt on an end to hostilities that have driven up global oil prices and dragged down the president’s approval ratings.

    Iranian officials on Saturday laid out a list of demands they are seeking from the United States in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, including withdrawing U.S. forces from the region, paying war damages, and lifting sanctions.

    Former defense secretary Mark Esper told ABC News’s This Week that Iran’s aggressive demands showed that they have been “emboldened” and feeling “confident about their position in the world.”

    However, in an interview with Axios on Sunday, Trump suggested that pressure on Iran was building because of the toll that U.S. strikes and a naval blockade have taken on its economy.

    Trump said the U.S. is “only semi-negotiating” with Tehran and “low-keying it.”

    “We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump told Axios’ Barak Ravid, “It will work out. It always works out. It’s like a chess game.”

    The Hamas plan was unveiled on July 30 by Trump’s Board of Peace. It gave Hamas and Israel two weeks to agree on a timetable and process for implementing the disarmament of Hamas and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

    There was almost immediate disagreement on the order in which each should happen. Hamas said Israel must end its military campaign in Gaza as a first step; Israel’s position has been the complete disarmament of Hamas and removal of weapons from Gaza as a prerequisite. That disarmament would see Hamas surrender its weapons, which would be held by the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, run by Palestinian technocrats.

    Trump, in announcing the plan late last month, said on Truth Social that the Board of Peace — a group that was set up in the aftermath of the 2025 deal to release the remaining hostages that Hamas seized during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel — “reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza.”

    He called it “a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY.”

    Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a video on X, “There is no Hamas in Gaza, that is the goal of the war, and we are committed to it.” He added that “the IDF cannot withdraw a single millimeter from the Gaza Strip … prior to the disarmament of Hamas.”

    The 15-point plan also “shall create appropriate conditions for a credible pathway towards achieving Palestinian self-determination and statehood,” the framework states.

    But Netanyahu on Sunday reiterated: “As long as I am prime minister, a Palestinian state will not be established.”

  • Pentagon presses defense firms to build weapons as Iran war depletes stocks

    Pentagon presses defense firms to build weapons as Iran war depletes stocks

    The Pentagon is asking the U.S. defense industry to rapidly escalate the production and delivery of weapons, including munitions that are in extreme shortage due to the war with Iran, according to a Defense Department memo obtained by the Washington Post.

    Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg wrote to industry leaders on Wednesday, saying they had no more than 21 days to submit plans to “drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities,” according to the memo, which is previously unreported.

    “Yearslong development cycles are not acceptable,” Feinberg wrote. “We must dramatically accelerate our program schedules and expand our production capacity now.”

    The directive comes as the weapons shortage has been a source of tension between President Donald Trump and the Defense Department, two people familiar with the issue recently told the Washington Post. It is also the latest in a series of actions the Pentagon and the White House have taken to address an issue that may largely remain unsolved until a gridlocked Congress releases additional defense spending, according to industry experts.

    Trump on Thursday said that the United States has “massive amounts” of munitions, posting on Truth Social that “large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed.”

    Feinberg’s note comes after efforts by the White House to enlist the defense industry to unlock military funds.

    In late July, legacy defense contractors and Silicon Valley weapons startups were summoned to the White House to meet with Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and White House Legislative Affairs Director James Braid, according to three people familiar with the event, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

    In the meeting — which included firms such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, autonomous weapons firm Anduril, and data analytics company Palantir — company executives were asked to directly lobby lawmakers to increase defense spending through congressional reconciliation, the people said. Fox News earlier reported this meeting.

    The Pentagon has in recent months announced several “framework agreements” with the largest U.S. defense contractors and emerging startups to increase its supply of both low-cost munitions and sophisticated air defense weapons, like the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Patriot missile interceptors.

    These framework arrangements are legal, nonbinding contracts between the U.S. government and private sector partners that signal the Defense Department’s intent to purchase weapons but rely on congressional funding to become final, industry experts said.

    “They are agreements to agree, and so they’re not contracts,” said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the think-tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Almost nothing has been contracted, and that’s the problem.”

    “Working directly with industry leaders to accelerate production is not new. It has been the clear intent of the President and this Secretary from the start,” Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement.

    He added that the Feinberg memo “is real” and “will inform the fiscal year 2028 budget submitted to Congress for funding, and it is entirely consistent with our ongoing push to rebuild the defense industrial base.”

    An empty arsenal

    In the first month of the Iran war alone, the U.S. fired off more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles and more than 1,000 Patriot and THAAD interceptors, the Post previously reported. The U.S. also used more than 1,300 of the Army’s tactical ballistic missiles in the initial weeks of fighting.

    As of last week, the global inventory of Patriot missiles has fallen from 2,200 before the war to fewer than 827, and THAAD missiles from 452 to fewer than 278, according to an analysis by CSIS.

    The depleted U.S. stockpile of munitions and defense systems has increased the risk to U.S. service members and forced the White House to back away from escalating attacks, the Post previously reported.

    The Pentagon has made efforts over the past few months to increase its weapons supply. On Aug. 3, the Defense Department announced a framework agreement with Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to increase production of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) and THAAD missiles. Last week, the Pentagon awarded Lockheed Martin a contract worth up to $58.6 billion to triple production of PAC-3s by 2030.

    In May, the Pentagon announced several framework agreements with defense tech companies, including Anduril, Castelion, CoAspire, Leidos, and Zone 5, to “aggressively expand” the U.S. military’s strike capabilities and purchase their low-cost missiles. The department in late June also hosted leaders from various Silicon Valley startups, indicating they will be crucial in resupplying the U.S. with weapons.

    Speaking in November at the National War College in Washington, Hegseth outlined his vision to overhaul the Pentagon’s acquisition process in partnership with U.S. industry to ensure it can operate on a wartime footing.

    “American industry and its innovative spirit are begging to be unleashed to solve our most complex and dangerous warfighting problems,” he said. “We need to get out of our own way, out of your way, and enter into real partnership with you rather than overprescribe and decelerate your natural progress.”

    ‘The dilemma’

    The Pentagon has brought in former Silicon Valley business leaders such as former Uber executive Emil Michael to serve as the Defense Department’s under secretary for research and engineering, and to overhaul the defense innovation and procurement process.

    But moving forward with the Pentagon’s framework agreements to purchase weaponry, crucial to Defense Department strategy to expedite acquisition, depend on congressional passage of a $1.15 trillion defense spending bill, which remains deadlocked as Democrats object to massive spending increases.

    “That’s the dilemma, that’s the danger,” Karako said. “This really, really critical thing is in jeopardy because of congressional inability to appropriate.”

    In the memo, Feinberg said the Defense Department is “fundamentally shifting how [it] develops, produces, and fields military capabilities to meet current and future challenges.”

    Feinberg deemed several weapons programs critical and “under consideration for acceleration or increased procurement” during the 2028 fiscal year budget review. It included the Next Generation Interceptor missile defense program, the National Advanced Surface-to-air Missile System, a mobile air defense radar system, an advanced pilot training system, and a space-based system for missile tracking.

    The Feinberg memo tasked “industry leaders” to plan for “accelerated delivery” that would “provide the fastest production schedule to deliver projected orders and increase capacity.”

    It also asked defense firms to “propose specific capital investments and facility expansions … to support the Department’s commitment to higher volume, sustained orders,” Feinberg added.

    “Address how we will collaborate as partners and demonstrate your willingness to put skin in the game,” he wrote.

    Karako said some defense contractors are spending their own money to fund production costs while Congress is in gridlock and framework agreements await approval. But he said that comes with a risk for industry.

    “It’s a little bit of a gamble because they’re sticking their neck out,” he said. “They’re publicly traded companies, and you’re not supposed to really stick your neck out on a promise.”

  • The advice about rooftop solar panels is changing. Do this instead.

    The advice about rooftop solar panels is changing. Do this instead.

    For a decade, it was a better deal to own, not lease, rooftop solar panels. The end of solar tax credits for homeowners may flip that on its head.

    New subscription offerings are making solar more like subscribing to a cellular or streaming service: Pay monthly to reap the benefits, and cancel when it no longer suits you. If you don’t like the deal you’re getting, the company will remove the panels free of charge.

    The solar industry has long used the word subscription to describe something rather different: long-term, often 25-year leases or power purchase agreements, known as PPAs, that could be canceled only by paying fees or penalties.

    But a new model from an upstart company called Terra Energy is shaking things up in Florida, Texas, and soon California. After subscribing for three years, customers can cancel and have the panels removed from their roof free of charge. If they keep them, they lock in a low, predictable electricity rate relative to their local utility, like any other leasing model.

    Bankrupt companies litter the solar industry. An estimated 50% of residential solar systems in the U.S. are “orphaned,” installed by companies that no longer exist, said Sam Thompson of the solar and home electrification marketplace EnergySage. Although most solar systems deliver on their promises to homeowners, shady sales practices and bankruptcies have plagued the market.

    But industry analysts and some of Terra Energy’s customers say this subscription model might just be the future.

    Here’s why the loss of federal tax credits means that leasing now dominates new home solar sales, and why subscribing to the sun can now be a better bet than owning those rooftop panels.

    When renting beats owning

    Bob Scheeler, 65, had been interested in going solar for years. But as a retired real estate agent in Cape Coral, Fla., he had seen homeowners run into trouble with leased solar panels when securing insurance coverage, qualifying for financing, or reselling their property.

    Then he ran across Terra Energy’s subscription offer and signed up. Earlier this year, the company installed about two dozen panels on his roof, with the option to add more. His typical $250 utility bill has since fallen by about 40%: He pays $120 to Terra and $30 to his utility.

    Scheeler said the subscription offered the most appealing package. “This actually came out the least expensive and the best bet,” he said. “I think it’s great.” He has no plans to remove the panels once he reaches the three-year mark, when Terra would do it for free.

    Solar deals typically come in three flavors: leases, purchase power agreements (PPA), or ownership.

    Leases get panels onto your roof for a fixed monthly payment, often 25 years, but the company you’re leasing from owns the solar array (some let you purchase them after a fixed period).

    PPAs are similar, but a homeowner pays only for the electricity that the panels on their roof produce, generally for less than what the utility charges.

    Finally, homeowners can finance or purchase their own solar systems. Self-financed ownership is still likely to deliver the best return on investment in the long term: a cash purchase of a home solar system averages $30,500 before any incentives, with average savings of $61,093 over 25 years, EnergySage estimates, a roughly 10-year payback period.

    But the elimination of a 30% tax credit for homeowners in the One Big Beautiful Bill last year effectively raised the cost of the average home solar system by $8,000.

    While homeowners lose out, businesses enjoy the solar investment tax credit through 2027, making leases and PPAs more attractive. That’s scrambling two decades of “own, don’t lease” advice because only businesses like Terra and others can pass on the tax credit to homeowners.

    Third-party ownership now makes up the majority of new residential solar sales, according to Wood Mackenzie, an energy research firm, up from a minority share last year.

    “Our view has historically been that ownership is the best path,” said Thompson of EnergySage. “But not everyone can pony up $30,000 or get a loan. New leasing models are a vehicle that gives people the opportunity.”

    Free of commitment

    Terra Energy, which was founded in Mexico in 2016 and started operating in the United States in 2023, placed a bold bet as its home country began deregulating its electricity market. It offered to remove its solar panels at company expense if customers weren’t happy after the first few years.

    Terra faced huge bills if many customers canceled. But founder and CEO Jaime Martinez said the promise eliminated one of new customers’ biggest fears: commitment. “We’re going to be your best energy provider,” Martinez argued when I asked about the strategy. “We’re proving that by allowing customers to cancel. They almost never do.”

    Terra says that its retention rates beyond the three-year mark are 98% in Mexico and 100% in Florida, where it launched in 2023 and is now one of the largest residential solar providers. When people do cancel, Martinez said, it tends to be because the home is no longer occupied. The company runs sales, financing, and installation under one roof, so it can deliver good customer service with electricity prices 20% to 60% below utility rates where it operates.

    In Texas, where Terra launched in June, it offers a package of rooftop solar panels, a 40-kWh whole-home battery backup system, and retail electricity in a single monthly bill.

    The company is now adding about 1,000 new customers per month, said Martinez, with plans to expand to California later this year and then across the South.

    Can you trust a subscription?

    I asked EnergySage to review a sample Terra Energy contract. “The customer opt-out options are more consumer-friendly than typical. Otherwise, most contents are fairly standard,” wrote EnergySage energy adviser Matt Schuler. “[But] every homeowner should evaluate the contract to see if the subscription costs pencil out with their electric rates and usage.”

    The major difference was the option to cancel free anytime after three years. Terra will remove the panels and then repair the roof so it remains “watertight” at no cost.

    Otherwise, the 10-year lease continues and then renews annually at the customer’s discretion once the decade is up. Terra repairs and maintains the system, and will remove and reinstall the panels for free if roof repairs are needed. (Doing that triggers a 36-month extension of the contract.)

    Buyers of a home that already has a Terra system may assume the contract, if they pass a credit check, or choose to end it free of charge. Martinez said the company ensures that annual cost increases, or escalators, are under 2%. Escalators above 3% risk negating the energy bill savings from solar.

    The primary restriction is that you can’t buy the system even if you want to. While that could cut into long-term returns, Terra says it has historically upgraded customers’ solar panels over the course of their 10-year contract as technology improves.

    The home solar market, researchers said, is maturing. Residential solar remains more expensive in the United States than almost anywhere else in the developed world. It’s one of the reasons that utility and community solar is a more cost-effective way for society to deploy panels and electrify.

    But for most individual homeowners, subscribing pencils out as a positive and should only get more attractive as utility rates surge. After a wild-west period, the solar industry will keep consolidating into something more professional and profitable, even after the remaining tax credits expire.

    For homeowners on the sidelines, subscriptions prioritize flexibility and convenience over maximizing long-run savings, a deal many are willing to make.

    “It has the potential to be the national model,” says EnergySage’s Thompson.

  • Pirro, Trump’s longtime champion, is on the outs over Reflecting Pool move

    Pirro, Trump’s longtime champion, is on the outs over Reflecting Pool move

    Jeanine Pirro swept into Washington last year as a camera-ready prosecutor and staunch ally of President Donald Trump. Suddenly she was everywhere: crime scenes and community forums, court hearings and TV interviews, TikTok-style videos and black-tie dinners.

    But after more than a year in office as U.S. attorney in the nation’s capital, Pirro now finds herself at odds with Trump — with her job at risk — over scraps of blue liner that peeled off the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

    Pirro, who left her job as a Fox News host to become the top federal prosecutor in D.C., immediately began seeking the toughest charges possible for violent crimes. She launched criminal probes of more than a half-dozen public officials who had drawn Trump’s ire — then punted the blame to judges and juries when those efforts collapsed.

    But her moves to drop several cases of alleged vandalism at the newly renovated pool contradicted Trump and blamed the administration’s handpicked contractor for botching a project the president had championed. And in the end, they exposed a crack in Pirro’s ability to balance Trump’s demands with her legal responsibilities.

    “She thought she had covered all of her bases — that’s what she thought — and then, of course, things went south,” a person who has known Pirro for decades said of her current predicament with the president.

    People who have followed Pirro’s trajectory as a judge, district attorney, conservative author, and TV personality say she is a prosecutor at heart who has long been passionate about fighting crime and protecting victims, and who found a renewed sense of purpose when Trump tapped her to run one of the busiest U.S. attorney’s offices in the country.

    Her detractors say few in the Justice Department have been as willing as Pirro to gin up prosecutions or test the boundaries of the system in pursuit of Trump’s fixations and antagonists.

    This account of Pirro’s tumultuous time as U.S. attorney, and how she has handled being the prosecutor in Trump’s backyard, is based on court records and interviews with 11 people familiar with key events. Almost all spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid assessments of Pirro while her job is seemingly on the line. Pirro, through a spokesperson, declined an interview request.

    Her troubles began after the Trump administration installed a coat of blue sealant at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in anticipation of this year’s July Fourth festivities. Pieces of paint quickly started coming apart and floating to the surface, and some visitors who reached out to grab them were arrested, court records show.

    Trump claimed vandals had torn up the pool’s “beautiful facade,” and Pirro initially filed criminal charges against four people, including a former Olympic canoeist who was indicted on a felony count of destruction of property. In her booming New York brogue, Pirro castigated that defendant at a news conference and said her office was “committed to protecting our national resources, our monuments, and our parks from vandals.”

    But Pirro abruptly dropped all four cases weeks later, blamed the Interior Department for misleading prosecutors into filing unsupported criminal charges, and was soon inside the Oval Office to explain herself.

    A former judge and district attorney who served for decades in Westchester County, N.Y., Pirro arrived at the White House on Monday with boxes of evidence showing that the Interior Department had awarded a no-bid contract to a company that misapplied the liner, according to people familiar with the matter. That evidence is detailed in an explosive, 20-page court filing that the U.S. attorney’s office submitted last week, which stated that “the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism.”

    Pirro had personally reviewed and signed off on the filing, and it conveyed her frustration that the documents from Interior were not quickly turned over to prosecutors, as well as her view that they “demolished” any chance of building a winning case against the alleged vandals, according to people with knowledge of her thinking. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum pushed back, writing on X that the “evidence is clear” that vandalism was what damaged the pool.

    One person familiar with Pirro’s thinking described her approach to the White House meeting as: “Stand her ground, be focused, make her case, and do the right thing.”

    The rift between Trump and Pirro, over peeling bits of paint at a national monument, came after she had launched criminal probes into six Democratic lawmakers who criticized the administration’s military actions, as well as the Federal Reserve chair at the time, Jerome H. Powell, who refused Trump’s demands to resign or institute lower interest rates.

    A federal judge rejected Pirro’s attempts to issue subpoenas in the Fed investigation, and she later closed that probe without seeking criminal charges, but Trump praised her doggedness in taking the case as far as she could. A grand jury declined to indict the Democratic lawmakers, and Trump soon moved on to other issues.

    This time, Pirro’s office said in the Reflecting Pool court filing, prosecutors were voluntarily dismissing the charges. Trump said Pirro “folded like an umbrella.”

    “I just think she was totally wrong,” Trump told reporters Wednesday, noting that National Park Service employees had told authorities they saw vandals in action. He described problems with the contractor as “a couple of little things” and said he hadn’t made a determination on whether to keep Pirro on the job.

    Trump continued his criticism Friday, saying on social media that “U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro should revisit her hastily made decision.”

    Pirro had befriended Trump decades ago in New York’s social circles, but they had never worked together, and one dynamic underlying their rare public break is that both are more comfortable calling the shots than deferring to others, said the longtime friend, who has seen them together.

    “She has a lot of respect for the president,” this person said, adding, “They have a relationship that for the first time has now transformed into a professional subordinate situation.”

    Pirro, 75, leads the only U.S. attorney’s office in the country with the dual mandate to prosecute local crimes and complex federal cases. Trump named her interim U.S. attorney in May 2025. She was later confirmed by the Senate, earning support from Republicans that Trump’s first pick for the job, Ed Martin, couldn’t muster.

    She came into a deep-blue city where only 6.5% of D.C. voters cast ballots for Trump in the 2024 election. Protests flared when immigration raids and street arrests swept up hundreds of people after Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C. last year, bringing in teams of federal officers and National Guard troops to patrol city streets. Pirro has often been the one absorbing the blowback from heated community meetings and in court, where juries have voted down felony charges for some defendants and acquitted others of assaulting federal officers.

    “The truth is that with the federal surge — whether you like it or you don’t like it — crime is down,” Pirro told the dozens of community members in the D.C. police’s Fifth District office in Northeast Washington after a tense weekend last October in which 12 people were shot.

    Homicides last year declined by roughly one-third, totaling 127, according to D.C. police statistics. They have dropped another 32% this year, and stood at 66 as of Thursday. Robberies and property crimes also have declined, but assaults with dangerous weapons have risen 42% this year, to 758 instances, according to the police data.

    “President Trump said, ‘I’m going to make D.C. safe and beautiful,’” Pirro added at the October meeting. “And you know what? He’s going to do it. … Every day we’re pushing. Pushing against juries, pushing against judges.”

    On social media, she frequently repeats a similar message, crediting the president with making the city safer.

    Those who have worked with Pirro describe her as a decisive boss, quick to grasp legal nuances and less abrasive than her brash TV persona. She has taken a particular interest in a new task force to disrupt international cryptocurrency scams, and she has called on the D.C. Council to toughen sentencing laws for juvenile crimes and partnered with Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on efforts to strengthen domestic violence legislation. Pirro, according to those who know her, is meticulous about her fashion choices, known for her sweet tooth, and on friendly terms with some of her staff, attending trivia night at a brewery/pizzeria this year.

    Pirro has attempted to rebuild the U.S. attorney office’s ranks, which were decimated by staff departures and Martin’s purge of prosecutors who had investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Justice Department is now offering $25,000 bonuses to lawyers who sign a commitment to stay at the office for two years, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.

    “I think that U.S. Attorney Pirro, over the past year and a half that she’s been there, has led an unprecedented effort to literally turn this city on its head to be a safe place for all of us to live and eat,” acting attorney general Todd Blanche said at a news conference Wednesday, a notable show of support that buoyed Pirro’s allies. Blanche added that Trump was allowed to dismiss any U.S. attorney.

    Although Pirro’s office has had a mixed record with jury trials in U.S. district court over the past year, there have been no major setbacks in the office’s biggest cases. Those include the prosecutions in the killing of a 21-year-old congressional intern; the fatal shooting of a young couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum last year; the ambush-style attack in which one National Guard member was killed and another wounded; and the case of Cole Tomas Allen, who has been charged with attempting to assassinate Trump at the White House correspondents’ dinner this year. The trial of an alleged terrorist behind the infamous bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, is scheduled for this year in D.C., with Pirro’s office running the prosecution.

    But critics say Pirro has curtailed prosecutors’ autonomy and jacked up their workloads by ordering them to seek the maximum possible charges in every case. Judges and public defenders have criticized Pirro’s office for bringing cases during Trump’s federal law enforcement surge that were based on incomplete or shoddy investigations, leading to multiple instances in which the U.S. attorney’s office dismissed charges after the defendants spent time in jail.

    “I think many Americans have a sense that in Trump 2.0, prosecutions are being brought for reasons other than public safety,” Paul Butler, a Georgetown University law professor, said in an email assessing Pirro’s record as U.S. attorney. “We are now seeing many jurors more carefully scrutinizing cases, and that’s a good thing in terms of how the system is supposed to work.”

    Longtime defense attorney Joe Flood, who practices in the D.C. area, recalled that he first encountered Pirro in the 1990s when she was the Westchester County district attorney, and he was defending people facing the death penalty in New York. She made death-penalty cases central to her political ambitions, he said, as she geared up for a potential run for state attorney general or governor, but she never got a defendant sentenced to death and eventually left elected office for her television career.

    In Trump’s second term, Flood said, some U.S. attorneys in key offices have discovered that being a responsible prosecutor is sometimes a fireable offense. He noted that Erik S. Siebert, whom Trump had appointed as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was forced out last year after declining to seek criminal charges against former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Career prosecutors in both cases had said the evidence was too flimsy to take to court.

    “The reality is if you’re an ethical U.S. attorney, and you won’t be bent to Trump’s will, you’re gone,” Flood said. Of Pirro’s decision to drop the Reflecting Pool cases, he added: “She gets some credit for standing up to Trump.”

    Judges have also criticized Pirro’s office for wiping out the most serious convictions from the Jan. 6 riot — the seditious conspiracy cases against the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

    Members of the extremist groups stockpiled firearms and led the charge into the Capitol, according to the evidence presented at their trials. Pirro this year signed on to key court filings to clear those charges as a matter of loyalty to Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. But she declines to take questions about those moves, even as federal judges bemoan the historical consequences of undoing convictions for crimes against the country.

  • Hunter Biden opens up about his pardon and Joe Biden’s cancer

    Hunter Biden opens up about his pardon and Joe Biden’s cancer

    Hunter Biden, son of former President Joe Biden, opened up about his father’s prostate cancer, saying he has been in a lot of pain as the disease has spread.

    In a wide-ranging interview Friday with BBC Newsnight, Biden said that it has been “really sad to watch” his father suffer. The cancer has spread and “metastasized into his bones and further,” he said.

    He said that despite that, Joe Biden has continued to speak out in public about issues that he cares about.

    “He so believes in this country,” Hunter Biden said. “And as long as he is alive, I promise you, he is going to continue to fight.”

    He also discussed his feelings about receiving a presidential pardon from his father, saying that it was not good for the country.

    BBC correspondent Paddy O’Connell pressed Biden on whether he thought his father went “too far as a dad” in issuing a pardon to his son. In December 2024, as one of his final acts as president, Joe Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son despite having previously promised not to intervene in Hunter Biden’s legal problems.

    Hunter Biden said it was “not fair” and that he is “the most privileged person in the world” as it related to getting that kind of treatment from a father and president.

    “Was it good for our constitution? Was it good for the American people? Was it good for my dad’s legacy?” he asked. “No. On all counts.”

    However, Biden said they did not discuss the pardon before it happened. He is “eternally grateful for it because I think Donald Trump has proven to be exactly who my dad thought he was going to be, as it relates to revenge and retribution.”

    Critics had a good reason to lambaste the move, Hunter Biden said. But then he asked: “What would you have thought of my dad if he did not do it for me?”

    After steering clear of the spotlight during much of his father’s presidency, Hunter Biden has in recent months taken on a higher public profile, including engaging on social media with critics and supporters alike and granting media interviews, including one with right-wing podcaster Candace Owens.

    In the BBC interview, O’Connell also asked the former president’s son if his yearslong descent into drugs, alcohol, and legal issues “precipitated more decline” for Joe Biden’s health.

    “This is a very difficult thing to talk to you about,” O’Connell said. “But do you think you made life worse and the health worse for Joe Biden?”

    After a pause, Biden responded: “Of course I did.”

    The former president refused to shut the door on him or let him go, his son said, but the stress took a toll.

    “My dad never let me off the hook,” he said. “But what my dad did was always make it clear that, when I was ready to come back, the door was open.”

    In response to questions about his father’s controversial decision to seek a second term, Biden said that he wielded no influence over Joe Biden, nor did anyone. He was, however, just as shocked as everyone at the former president’s state during the June 2024 debate with Trump, during which Joe Biden struggled to finish sentences.

    “I could tell as soon as my father came out that something was wrong,” Hunter Biden said. “I have never seen him with kind of the hundred-yard stare that he had.”

    In May 2025, Joe Biden’s office revealed that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer that had metastasized to his bones.

  • Voter turnout surges in Tennessee after Black-majority district is erased

    Voter turnout surges in Tennessee after Black-majority district is erased

    Democratic turnout for House primaries in a majority-Black Tennessee county surged to the highest level in a decade Thursday, the latest sign that redistricting may be energizing Black voters across the South.

    A fifth of active registered voters cast a ballot in three Democratic U.S. House primaries held Thursday in Shelby County, which includes Memphis. That’s more than double the turnout percentage for similar contests in 2024.

    Organizers said the outpouring was motivated by anger over the Republican-led legislature’s action to break up the state’s only majority-Black congressional district after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated minority voter protections in the Voting Rights Act this year. Lawmakers dispersed the Black voters of Shelby County into three separate districts that stretch into rural white communities.

    “People are pissed off,” said Kristal Knight, chairperson of the voting rights group Organize Tennessee. Memphis is “the densest part of the African American vote in the state, and people really took it personally — you are trying to come into our county, break up our county, and split our vote? And what better way to push back than to say we’re going to turn out.”

    President Donald Trump has pushed red states to draw new congressional districts to help the GOP maintain control of the House in elections this fall. The Supreme Court’s gutting of protections in the Voting Rights Act made that easier. Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee quickly drew new maps that dilute Black voting power, raising fears that the civil rights gains of the past 60 years are being destroyed.

    But the actions have galvanized Black voters, who have mobilized protests in many states and turned out in historic numbers in primaries in South Carolina. That turnout helped prompt the South Carolina legislature to abandon plans to dissolve a majority-Black district. The Georgia legislature also opted not to act after an outpouring of opposition.

    “People are really amped up about … what is happening across the South,” Knight said. “People need to show the rest of America, this is not the way you treat voters.”

    Democrats and voting rights organizers had worked overtime in Tennessee over the past few weeks to ensure a big presence in primary elections there for governor, a U.S. Senate seat, and the state’s nine House districts, even though Republicans are heavily favored to win those races in November.

    “A night like last night lets you know it’s not all in vain,” said the Rev. Earle Fisher, pastor at Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church in Memphis, who was among an outspoken, ardent group of faith leaders in the city who ramped up turnout efforts after redistricting.

    Memphis resident Harmony Lucas, 26, was one of the young voters who helped to boost turnout — urging friends, family, and even co-workers to join her at the polls. Lucas said she has voted in the past, but the GOP effort to break up the state’s only majority-Black district “made me realize I had to get more serious that my voice is heard. It matters.”

    Ian Randolph, who founded the Shelby County Voter Alliance to boost voter participation, attributed the jump in turnout in part to such efforts, including by unions and other civic organizations. In recent months, they have had poll parties, done texting and phone banking, and gone door to door to canvass voters.

    “Everything that touches a voter, we are involved in,” Randolph said. “Working those things got us a better turnout.”

    Rep. Steve Cohen, Tennessee’s lone Democratic congressman, decided not to seek reelection after the 9th District, which he represents, was overhauled. Justin Pearson — a charismatic Black preacher who received national attention in 2023 for his expulsion from the state legislature after protesting at the Capitol in Nashville — won the Democratic nomination to wage the uphill battle to replace Cohen.

    In his victory speech Thursday night, Pearson depicted his candidacy as an act of defiance against redistricting and the undermining of the Voting Rights Act, calling those steps “a blatant attempt to keep people like us out of power and an attempt to make us quit.”

    GOP strategist Ward Baker, who is working in the 9th District with Republican nominee Brent Taylor, disputed the idea that Black voters are turning out in bigger numbers out of anger over redistricting.

    “It’s the first time there’s a contested primary in a long time, and several people are running,” Baker said. He pointed out that Republican voters overall still outnumber Democrats by a wide margin.

    Beyond redistricting, Randolph said voters in the majority-Black county have been energized by other issues including an attempted state takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools and the presence of federal immigration agents and the National Guard in the city.

    Democrats’ task gets harder heading into general elections this fall. Tennessee’s 9th District, which had been the state’s only blue seat, is now rated Solid Republican by the Cook Political Report and went for Trump by 21 points in 2024.

    “Everyone that came out last night — that needs to double for November,” Knight said.

    Fisher said he and other pastors have been planning another “Souls to the Polls” rally like the one that drew more than 1,000 people this spring. Thursday’s show of force gives him cautious optimism for November.

    “At least some of what we did worked,” Fisher said. “It’s one of those instances where you can log it as a win and build on it, but it’s not like a victory lap.”

  • Senate passes bill to avert government shutdown before midterm elections

    Senate passes bill to avert government shutdown before midterm elections

    The Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure early Saturday to fund the government through Dec. 11 and temporarily block the White House from giving political appointees more control over federal grants.

    The 90-6 vote came after Republican leaders worked for hours through the night to reach an agreement that would allow them to vote on multiple priorities before leaving town for the five-week August recess.

    Just 6 senators — Bill Cassidy (R., La.), Tim Kaine (D., Va.), Ed Markey (D., Mass.), Rand Paul (R., Ky.), Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) — opposed the funding measure, which would avoid a politically perilous shutdown ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections. But it still must be approved by the Republican-controlled House, where the appetite for rebuking the White House on grant funding was unclear.

    The bill, like a similar House measure passed last month, would fund the government past a Sept. 30 deadline. The Senate bill also would finance a number of requests from the White House, including funds for housing and nutrition programs. And it would extend expiring authorization for veterans’ healthcare programs.

    But the big difference between the House and Senate bills is the Senate’s decision to include a provision regarding federal grants. That provision would temporarily block the White House budget office from adopting a rule change to give political appointees more power over discretionary grant funding, diminishing the power of independent peer reviewers.

    Proposed in May, the rule change would require political appointees to review grants before they are awarded to ensure they advance the president’s priorities and do not support projects the administration opposes, including those that “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” diversity, equity, and inclusion principles or “deny the biological reality of … the sex binary.” It also would give agencies the power to end grants at any time.

    Trump administration officials say the rule would add needed oversight to federal grant-making, ensuring federal funds aren’t wasted or misused. But Senate Appropriations Committee Chairperson Susan Collins (R., Maine) said it has the “potential to politicize grants and harm small, rural communities, families, and biomedical research.”

    Collins and Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the lead Democratic appropriator, worked together to craft the bipartisan Senate measure. House lawmakers could take it up after they return from recess at the end of August.

    If the provisions added by the Senate draw backlash, however, lawmakers could quickly find themselves in a rush to negotiate a compromise before the government runs out of funding on Sept. 30.

    Senate Republicans also initially hoped to hold a vote on a separate $150 billion budget framework to help fund the Iran war and impose new restrictions on voting ahead of the midterm elections, but Republicans scrapped that plan late Friday night.

    Republicans grappled during a two-hour closed-door meeting Friday night with whether to take up the budget framework, with which several Republicans had expressed concerns.

    A small group of Republicans spoke with Trump after the meeting and agreed to push off the vote until September, according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), the chairperson of the Senate Budget Committee.

    “We’re in total agreement,” Johnson told reporters. “There was no argument about it.”

    The Senate also agreed early Saturday morning to vote in September on legislation to regulate college sports led by Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.). The back-and-forth over whether to vote on the bill before leaving for recess was one of several interlocking issues that kept the Senate in session late into the night.

    Senate Democrats blocked a bill during the early Saturday vote series that would require voters to show photo identification. Senate Republicans held a procedural vote on the measure in lieu of voting on the Save America Act, a more expansive bill that would impose stricter election rules which President Donald Trump had demanded the Senate pass before leaving Washington. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) has said repeatedly that the Save America Act does not have enough support to pass.

    The decision to postpone the vote on the budget resolution came hours after Republicans unveiled the $150 billion spending framework, which was significantly larger than a $95 billion plan approved last month by the House. Johnson said Senate leaders intend to spend only about $105 billion.

    The smaller number tracks closely with the House package. Both would allot $60 billion to the Pentagon, which faces an urgent budget shortfall caused largely by the war with Iran, and $13 billion for intelligence needs related to the war. They also would provide $12 billion for farmers struggling to keep pace with inflation.

    Senate Republicans will seek to use up to $20 billion for election-related measures, Johnson told the Washington Post. That’s twice the amount provided in the House package. Republicans hope to use that money to pass some parts of the Save America Act, although it’s unclear how much of it would be allowed under reconciliation, the special process Republicans would use to pass the bill without Democratic votes.

    The delay in considering the measure will give Republicans time to revise their plan and win over skeptical senators.

    Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) has said he will not support a package that included elements of the Save America Act. Sens. Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) also signaled opposition to the budget resolution, while Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) complained about the lack of budget cuts to cover the cost of the new spending and avoid adding to the nation’s $39.9 trillion debt.

    Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), the chairpersons of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and other Republicans, meanwhile, have called for increasing the amount of funding for the Pentagon.

    The budget framework is the first step in the reconciliation process, which would allow Republicans to evade a Democratic filibuster and move the bill with a simple majority instead of 60 votes. But both chambers must approve identical budget frameworks to set funding levels before beginning work on the actual legislation — and time is running out before the midterms.

    The Senate is set to recess until Sept. 14 and is scheduled to be in session for only three weeks before recessing again. Congress already faces a towering agenda during those weeks.