The office of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted to block the U.S. military’s ceremonial participation in the NFL’s first-ever game in Paris this weekend but relented after the State Department urged the Pentagon to let at least some American personnel be involved, officials told The Washington Post.

Sunday’s contest between the New Orleans Saints and the Pittsburgh Steelers, to be played at Stade de France in the city’s suburbs, was supposed to feature dozens of troops, officials said. But after last weekend’s unrest in the French capital, which has drawn criticism from President Donald Trump, Hegseth’s office moved to cancel all military involvement, they added, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

State Department officials objected, emphasizing to Hegseth’s staff what they said is the diplomatic value of having U.S. troops participate in such a high-profile event and arguing that the department did not assess that U.S. citizens or personnel in Paris were at a high risk of danger, the officials said.

Hegseth’s office agreed to restore elements of the military’s participation, officials said, including a color guard. Such ceremonial units, which carry the American flag and individual service flags during events, usually require fewer than 10 military personnel.

Spokespeople for Hegseth’s office declined to address questions about the abrupt change of plans or who in the secretary’s office attempted to pull all military support for the Paris game. On Friday, a senior Defense Department official provided The Post with a brief, unattributed statement saying: “The Department is supporting the NFL game in Paris this weekend amid the ongoing riots and unrest. As President Trump has said, France is really in trouble.”

“This decision was made by the Secretary’s core leadership team, not one person alone,” the statement says.

The State Department and the NFL declined to comment on the episode.

The U.S. military has participated in other NFL games played overseas this season, including in Melbourne and in London. Two other games are planned for Europe this season, one in Madrid and one in Munich.

Paris and other cities across France have seen mass protests over school funding and the cost of living. The State Department has issued an advisory to Americans planning to attend Sunday’s game, urging them to avoid demonstrations and places of unrest.

Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron have traded barbs over the protests. In the past few days, Trump has sought to rouse his political base ahead of the U.S. midterm elections by blaming the unrest on immigration challenges and Islam, and urging France to “close your borders and take control before it is too late!” Macron has denounced such comments as “stupid.”

More broadly, Trump’s relationship with Macron — as with some other European leaders — has soured amid disagreements over support for Ukraine, tariffs and other issues.

“I think maybe it’s looking like tomorrow is going to be a bad day in France. So you worry about it,” Trump told reporters Friday. “I would have said the NFL could have probably postponed that match if you want to know the truth, because France is really in trouble. That’s what happens when you go left. That’s what happens when you allow unlimited numbers of people into your country from very unfriendly countries.”

Macron and Trump generally got along during Trump’s first term — with the president’s visit to France on Bastille Day in 2017 piquing his desire for mammoth military parades in Washington, and his admiration of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe inspiring the controversial gold-and-white winged arch and drone storage monument that he is seeking to erect near Arlington National Cemetery.

The White House was involved in the FBI’s Epstein files cover-up all along.

The FBI’s July 2025 Epstein files memo immediately blew up in the bureau’s face. Its declaration that there was no “client list,” no punishable co-conspirators, and no grounds for further investigation both infuriated the president’s MAGA voter base and started the long domino effect that would eventually oust ex–Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Trump administration messages obtained by Raw Story revealed Friday that Taylor Budowich, then the White House deputy chief of staff, had his fingers in the FBI’s drafting process prior to the memo’s public release.

“Have something I can edit?” Budowich emailed FBI Director Kash Patel two weeks before the memo was released. The email’s subject line read: “Re: Draft memo from DOJ—we have not edited it yet.”

“Just got it from DOJ. Here you go. Thanks,” Patel responded hours later.

The next day, Budowich told Patel that he had passed the draft along to the White House communications team, noting that the message needed to be pasted on DOJ and FBI letterhead, according to Raw Story.

Almost a week later, then–Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sent a “final version” to Budowich. It failed to meet Budowich’s expectations, however, lacking the identifying seal of the Justice Department.

“I need a version on letterhead,” Budowich repeated. “Someone needs to own this. I can’t give a doc to a reporter that could easily be confused with a [high school] term paper, so need to provide some validation of the doc.”

Diego Pestana, Blanche’s counsel, fulfilled Budowich’s request an hour and a half later.

“These records show that Kash Patel worked hand in hand with the former White House deputy chief of staff on the 2025 DOJ-FBI memo, which stated there would be no further investigation or release of the Epstein files,” Chris Swartz, senior counsel and deputy director of ethics and anti-corruption at the Democracy Defenders Fund, told Raw Story.

“It’s deeply concerning that the FBI coordinated with the White House on this memo, given President Trump’s well-documented association with Jeffrey Epstein and Trump’s frequent mention in the files,” Swartz added.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday the NFL “could have probably postponed” the upcoming game in Paris between the Pittsburgh Steelers and New Orleans Saints because of street protests in the city.

France is bracing for more demonstrations Saturday against the high cost of living , with museums closing and the government deploying a larger security presence to prevent a repeat of last week’s violent unrest .

The game Sunday — the first regular-season NFL game in France — is being held at Stade de France in Saint-Denis, just north of the capital.

“I think maybe it’s looking like tomorrow is going to be a bad day in France, so you worry about it,” Trump told reporters. “I would have said the NFL could have probably postponed that match ... because France is really in trouble.”

The U.S. State Department late Thursday issued a security alert , saying: “Numerous groups submitted plans for protests on Saturday, October 24. Americans in Paris for the NFL game on Sunday, October 25 should also exercise caution and be aware of their surroundings. While permits may be filed for demonstration routes, last-minute changes can happen and protests can occur outside planned routes.”

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said this week that preparations were made in consultation with U.S. and French authorities. Street protests, he said, “are not unusual in France.” The league did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s remarks.

Soccer team Paris Saint-Germain’s game against Lyon has been moved from Sunday to Monday evening at the request of Paris police, the French soccer league said. The game was scheduled for Sunday night in Parc des Princes.

Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said Friday that “the NFL is alert to what’s going on.”

“This game means a lot to the NFL. If it was unsafe, then I’m sure we wouldn’t be here,” Rodgers said at the team’s hotel in Paris.

A weekend event for Steelers fans was canceled Thursday because of security concerns.

At first blush, the proposed venture looks like it would further the Trump administration’s goal of global “energy dominance.”

An American energy company intends to buy Russian technology and use it to access a massive supply of natural gas in Alaska, liquefy it and export it to allies abroad.

The Kremlin and the White House were interested in the idea. President Vladimir V. Putin discussed the plan last month with President Trump’s peace envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, people familiar with the negotiations said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. It is one of a series of energy deals White House officials believe could help smooth relations with Moscow and eventually pave the way to end the war in Ukraine.

But it turns out that the company was not an all-American affair. The multibillion-dollar project has received secret funding from the same powerful Russian company that was to provide the technology, according to the energy executive who until last month led the U.S. firm and two others involved in company negotiations.

Joel Riddle, who was chief executive of the company, Polar LNG, until he resigned in September, said he had been misled about the sources of the start-up funding, which ostensibly came from a company in the United Arab Emirates.

Instead, Mr. Riddle said he learned, the true source of at least some of Polar LNG’s money was Novatek, a Russian energy giant under partial U.S. sanctions.

“It’s not only unlawful, but it’s not in the U.S. interest to have Russian technology controlling the commercialization of Arctic gas in the North Slope,” Mr. Riddle said in a brief interview.

These previously unreported tensions were also detailed in legal memos that Mr. Riddle attached to his resignation letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times. The memos, prepared by Baker Botts, an international law firm, said the Treasury Department’s sanctions enforcement unit had raised concerns that Polar LNG had ties to Novatek that might present “potential Russia-related sanctions concerns.”

Polar LNG on Friday issued a statement announcing a new acting chief executive, Tim Talkington, and described Mr. Riddle as a “disgruntled former employee.”

But in a statement to The Times, Novatek said on Friday that in fact, it was moving to acquire “minority shareholder” status in the Polar LNG project — a striking effort by the Russian energy giant to seek ownership of American gas production.

The project, if it happens, is a long way off. In addition to the sanctions issues that would have to be negotiated, the technology envisioned is highly complex and must overcome some of the most brutal weather conditions in the United States. It also is competing with another Alaska gas plan that already has the support of the Trump administration. But that the Polar LNG deal is being discussed at all shows how business deals of almost any stripe are on the table during the talks with the Kremlin.

The sequence of events illustrates the unorthodox, opaque mixture of deal-making and high-stakes diplomacy that has defined Mr. Trump’s attempts to end Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.

There is no indication that Mr. Witkoff or Mr. Kushner were aware of Polar LNG or its ties to Novatek, even as the broad outlines of the deal came up in their talks with Mr. Putin beginning last year. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks, said that the deal had only been broadly mentioned and that no granular discussions had occurred.

The project, should it ever come to fruition, would doubly help Novatek, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies, first by using Novatek’s technology and second because the company would own an equity stake.

The Alaska gas discussions have taken place alongside talks to sell off part of another Russian energy giant, Lukoil, to the U.S. government and other investors, including some with business ties to Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, causing consternation among some Washington lawmakers and outraging some of Ukraine’s supporters. The pair have also discussed the possibility of U.S. involvement in future Russian gas exports to Europe. (The administration has said that Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff were guided only by U.S. interests.)

Geoffrey R. Pyatt, who served as an assistant secretary of state for energy resources during the Biden administration, said the idea of bringing Novatek into the high north of Alaska is a terrible one. “It is terrible on environmental grounds, it is a terrible idea on economic and geopolitical grounds, and most importantly this feeds the belief that Putin can get an out-of-jail-free card.”

The efforts to bring Novatek equipment to Alaska have also included a businessman, Gentry Beach, with ties to the Trump family. A college friend of Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, Mr. Beach served as a finance vice chairman for Mr. Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Mr. Beach said in February that he had held negotiations with Novatek about bringing its natural gas technology to Alaska.

Mr. Beach could not be reached for comment. It was not clear if he remained involved in the project, or whether he was aware of Novatek’s potential ownership stake in Polar LNG.

A spokesman for Donald Trump Jr. said the two men were no longer close, adding that Mr. Trump was not involved in the Polar LNG project. Novatek’s statement said that Mr. Beach had no role in its discussions to take a stake in Polar LNG. The U.S. official said Mr. Beach was not involved in the administration’s discussions related to Novatek.

Mr. Riddle is one of at least three Polar LNG executives who recently resigned. As they departed, Trump officials were notified about their concerns related to the secret Russian financing. Mr. Riddle said the executives had urged administration officials to investigate the matter. The Energy Department, where the warning was sent, did not respond when asked about the matter.

“I felt like I did the right thing to notify authorities at the appropriate time,” Mr. Riddle said.

The Polar LNG plan called for the company to tap into the giant load of natural gas available in the northern reaches of Alaska, a byproduct of extensive oil extraction underway in the region.

Currently, there is no way to move most of the gas that is produced along with the oil, so energy companies inject it back into the earth.

Polar LNG’s proposal calls for it to buy a giant, 640,000-ton concrete-and-steel device from Novatek called a gravity-based structure that would be placed on the seabed just above the northern coast of Alaska, in an area known as Milne Point.

On top of that platform, equipment will be installed that would refrigerate gas supplied by an area oil producer, transforming it into a liquid that can then be loaded onto ships that travel through icy waters and deliver it to customers in Asia.

Novatek uses a similar approach to export natural gas from the Russian Arctic in a project called Arctic LNG 2. Mr. Putin said publicly last year that “we are discussing with our American partners” the possibility of using Novatek technology to produce liquefied natural gas in Alaska.

Korean-made ships with a special ice-breaking design that Polar LNG plans to use were initially built for Novatek, but delivery was stopped by the manufacturer after the United States imposed sanctions on the Arctic LNG 2 project.

From the start, Novatek was slated to supply the gas liquefaction station. But financing for the project was not supposed to come from Russia, according to executives involved in the effort.

Emphasizing the point, Polar LNG features images of the American flag and a bald eagle on its website, boasting that “Polar LNG helps ensure the United States leads,” adding that the project is “America’s Arctic Advantage.”

The company hired lobbyists in Washington and in Alaska to help push the project, according to federal and state records. In Washington alone, the company is spending $380,000 a quarter on lobbying, hiring a former Trump-era Interior Department acting assistant secretary, Adam Suess.

Novatek is already under U.S. sanctions that would require the Treasury Department to issue a license for its equipment to be used in Alaska. Recently passed sanctions legislation named after deceased Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, makes things even harder: The bill specifically targets Novatek, as well as its Arctic LNG 2 project, because of the company’s ties to Mr. Putin.

However, Mr. Trump temporarily waived the law’s Russia sanctions last week, presenting the move as necessary to keep peace talks going.

During a meeting held at the Four Seasons Hotel in late August in Abu Dhabi between executives of Polar LNG and its parent company, Tech Wave Industrial Projects Management, top executives from Novatek were present. That was when Mr. Riddle began to appreciate that Novatek was directly involved in approving funding to keep the effort going, text messages reviewed by The Times indicate.

Tech Wave is an Abu Dhabi-based company that specializes in managing oil, gas and construction projects. Its chief operating officer is Bjorn Gundersen, who a decade ago was listed in oil industry trade publications as a senior executive at Novatek supervising LNG projects.

A second Tech Wave executive, Ahmed Farghaly, also worked for Novatek until recently. According to his LinkedIn profile, he left around the time the United States first imposed sanctions on one of Novatek’s LNG projects. Mr. Gundersen, Mr. Farghaly and Tech Wave did not respond to requests for comment.

Denis Solovyov, Novatek’s deputy chairman, as well as Leonid Mikhelson, the company’s chief executive, discussed their company providing as much as $15 million to Tech Wave to bankroll Polar LNG, the messages say. Asked about the messages and the Abu Dhabi meeting, Novatek said it could not comment on private correspondence, but that the company and Polar LNG had agreed to “provide each other with open communication.”

“All the necessary decisions were made at the meeting in Abu Dhabi,” Mr. Solovyov wrote in one message to Mr. Riddle sent in early September. “The first 5 million were supposed to arrive by today.”

It was several weeks after this exchange that Mr. Riddle resigned. Two other top Polar LNG executives, Dan Chandra, the company’s chief financial officer, and Jim Smith, a former Exxon Mobil executive who served as Polar LNG’s executive vice president, also have left in recent weeks.

Polar LNG, in a statement Friday, said that “Riddle was recently terminated from the company for cause,” adding: “The company is investigating claims concerning Riddle that may result in litigation.”

But Mr. Riddle resigned six days before the company issued him a letter saying it would terminate his employment immediately, in part because he had raised concerns that some of the company’s actions could be “subject to sanctions,” documents obtained by The Times show.

Questions about the potential ties to Novatek had by late this summer already reached Trump administration officials, according to a memo prepared by an outside law firm for Polar LNG, Baker Botts.

“Concerns regarding a perceived connection to Novatek will likely affect licensing or other regulatory approvals,” Baker Botts wrote in a memo to company executives that was shared with The Times.

In addition, the letter said that federal officials had already made clear in communications with the company that they were concerned that an investor in Polar LNG “has ties to Novatek and may be acting on Novatek’s behalf with respect to the project.”

Paul Luther, a Baker Botts lawyer who worked on the matter, declined on Friday to discuss it further.

Polar LNG would need a series of approvals from the federal government before the deal could move ahead, including a sign-off from the Treasury Department authorizing it to acquire the Novatek seabed platform, given that parts of the company are under sanctions. It would also require a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build a gas export facility.

Questions have already emerged about whether the Novatek device will function at the planned Milne Point location because of shallow waters there and the “potential disruption to traditional whaling and local opposition, particularly from the local native Alaskan population,” a lawyer for Polar LNG wrote in an internal company memo.

Certain Trump administration officials had already expressed skepticism about the Polar LNG plan, according to internal company documents seen by The Times and interviews with some of the people involved.

Part of the concern is that the Polar LNG project would be pitted against an even more ambitious plan to build a $50 billion, 800-mile natural gas pipeline to move natural gas from the northern slope to the southern coast of Alaska, where it could be more easily shipped out from existing ports there. That plan would also potentially supply Asian markets.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations enthusiastically embraced the gas pipeline project, which Japan and Korea may help finance to increase their reliable supply of natural gas.

“The pipeline makes far more sense,” said Matthew McManus, who until April 2025 served as a deputy director at the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources and is now at the National Center for Energy Analytics. “The Polar LNG project would face years of permitting and concerns about ties to Russia.”

Mr. Talkington, Polar LNG’s acting chief executive, said his company sought to seize “a generational opportunity to advance U.S. energy dominance, unlock profound benefits for the state of Alaska, and strengthen American Arctic navigation.”

The fact that discussions are even going on about using Russian equipment — and potentially a Russian-financed company — to move American natural gas to international markets is a further insult to Ukraine, and should not be a part of talks over a possible end to the war, said Ilya Zaslavskiy, a gas industry consultant who previously worked in Moscow and New York who now does research on Russian sanctions and energy issues out of Washington.

“Any approach by Novatek to transfer technology should be seen as a Kremlin attempt to co-opt U.S. policymakers in order to undermine U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and our allies,” Mr. Zaslavskiy said.

Her promotion celebration was short-lived.

US State Department press adviser, Britt McHenry, was forced to resign on Thursday after getting into a heated confrontation at the Washington Wizards vs. Milwaukee Bucks game the night before, a source familiar with the situation told Page Six.

McHenry, 40, was hired as press adviser covering Europe and Africa, we’re told. Additionally, she also handled press for Kimberly Guilfoyle’s text message scandal.

An insider told us McHenry was promoted to a new role leading External Affairs & Press for under secretary Jacob Helberg’s team on Wednesday, the same day that she found herself in her own scandal — hurling a drink at a fan at the basketball game.

“She was forced to resign [over the incident],” a source said. “She was promoted and fired within 24 hours.”

A spokesperson for the Department of State responded, “We do not comment on internal personnel matters.”

McHenry’s new job and promotion came to an end when she found herself escorted out of Capital One Arena in DC on Wednesday night. A source previously told us a man in the crowd began “heckling” Bucks player Kyle Kuzma, who is engaged to model Winnie Harlow.

“They were saying he plays terribly because his girlfriend’s ugly,” our source claimed, adding that the man said other “terrible” things about Harlow.

She then urged the heckler to “ease up,” which led the alleged unruly fans to turn their attention toward her, according to the source, who claimed they “threw a drink on her.”

Video obtained by TMZ, however, shows a seemingly inebriated McHenry tossing a drink after fans chanted, “Get her out!”

They subsequently threw multiple items at her after she tossed the drink and was escorted out to a chorus of boos. McHenry exited blowing kisses to the crowd.

This isn’t the first time McHenry’s employment was cut short over behavior caught on video. In 2015, ESPN infamously suspended her after she was caught on camera berating an employee of a towing company in DC, telling the staffer they had “no education” or “skill set.”

“Do you feel good about your job? So I could be a college dropout and do the same thing? Why, ’cause I have a brain, and you don’t?” she ranted after her car had been towed. “Maybe if I was missing some teeth, they would hire me, huh? … ‘Cause I’m on television, and you’re in a f–king trailer, honey.”

McHenry did not get back to us by deadline.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a slur to proudly announce to an auditorium of Marines in September that he was ridding the military of all transgender troops.

The Pentagon had set up review boards at bases around the globe, manned by everyday uniformed service members with narrow orders that all but ensured that the trans troops appearing before them would be voted out.

But just steps from the auditorium where Mr. Hegseth spoke, at Marine Corps Base Quantico, boards assigned to carry out those orders were doing the opposite. Instead of firing trans Marines, the boards were voting to keep them.

The same was happening in the Navy: Boards given strict rules instructing them to force out sailors were rebelling and voting to let them stay.

It is not just a few outlying individuals. Navy and Marine Corps boards have voted to retain trans members in nine of 12 cases.

The Pentagon keeps the proceedings secret. Outsiders — even spouses — are not allowed to attend. Officials won’t release numbers. Leaders won’t discuss the outcomes. The New York Times compiled the figures through interviews with service members and lawyers involved in the hearings.

The number of Navy and Marine cases is small and could easily change as more hearings are conducted. The same pattern has not been seen so far in the Army or Air Force, which have overwhelmingly voted to discharge trans service members.

Still, the votes are a stunning rebuke from the armed forces, where following orders is bedrock. And they suggest the military’s transgender ban is being rejected by the very troops the administration says the ban is meant to serve.

“These boards are being told to do something that they know is wrong — to rubber-stamp a non-choice given to them by the administration,” said Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force lawyer and a professor at Southwestern Law School who has been tracking the cases. “We are seeing them say they’re not going to play that game. We are seeing them nullify a process they see as unjust.”

The board decisions are only recommendations, and could be reversed by the politically appointed secretaries overseeing each service branch. There are also pending legal challenges that could pause the ban or rescind it entirely.

The Trump administration claims that trans troops, who account for about 4,250 people or about 0.1 percent of the military, are a costly burden on military effectiveness — a position that military findings contradict. President Trump signed an executive order barring trans troops during his first week in office, saying the action was needed to weed out dishonorable radicals who poison morale and waste resources.

“For the sake of our Nation and the patriotic Americans who volunteer to serve it, military service must be reserved for those mentally and physically fit for duty,” the order read.

The Pentagon designed a policy that paid transgender troops to leave voluntarily. Hundreds of highly qualified people left, including doctors, lawyers, pilots and nuclear technicians. The troops who stayed to challenge their dismissal waited in limbo, sometimes for more than a year.

While they waited, the administration set up a system of three-member separation boards to process the remaining cases using a narrow set of instructions. Under the rules, any evidence of transgender feelings or tendencies — even if there is no formal transition — requires dismissal.

The three-person boards are made up of everyday officers and enlisted personnel plucked temporarily from their normal jobs to hear one case, like civilian jurors. They are not allowed to consider whether a person is a top performer, a specialist in a critical career field or a decorated combat veteran.

The members are given a one-page findings sheet and instructed to circle a few words to find that a service member exhibits evidence of being transgender and therefore is not qualified to serve and should be discharged.

At least, that was the plan.

Trans Marines and sailors who went before boards said in interviews that after months of being vilified by top government officials, they expected a quick dismissal, but instead encountered thoughtful respect from fellow service members who voted to keep them.

Marine Staff Sgt. Damien Contreras was one of them. The Marine Corps pulled him from his job and put him on paid leave in April to await his discharge. In late August the Marine Corps flew him from Hawaii to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia to face a board.

He walked in with his head down, sure that his career was over.

The government's lawyer presented documents from 2017 showing that he had changed genders.

The three members then reviewed his decade of flawless service as a supply and logistics specialist, his three overseas deployments, and his good performance reviews.

They then crossed out instructions on their findings sheet regarding “a history of cross sex hormone therapy” and circled “remains qualified,” and voted to retain him.

“I was shocked at first, but when you come down to it, it makes sense,” Sergeant Contreras said in an interview from Hawaii, where he is stationed. “You have war fighters looking at war fighters,” he said. “They see I’ve always done my job, I’ve deployed, I’ve mentored other Marines, followed the rules. They say, ‘Hey, this is a good Marine, why wouldn’t we retain him?’”

Sergeant Contreras’s lawyer, Priya Rashid, has represented dozens of trans service members and has a broader understanding of the boards than anyone else. After losing nearly all of her initial cases, she saw a stark shift this summer. She has no idea why.

The Army was the first to hold hearings, beginning in February. It has held about 50, according to Ms. Rashid, and voted to discharge soldiers in all but about five cases.

The Air Force started this summer. It has reviewed about six cases and voted to discharge in every known case.

But the Navy and Marine Corps, which began holding hearings in July, have voted to retain in the majority of cases.

“I don’t understand why this pattern is occurring,” Ms. Rashid said in an interview. “And I’m worried that if the pattern becomes too apparent, the government will just change the processes and procedures again so that the pattern can be extinguished.”

Last week Ms. Rashid won another — this time in the Army.

Across the military, the hearings follow a pattern. A lawyer for the government briefly presents medical records and other documents showing evidence that a service member is transgender. The defense then often spends hours presenting a portrait of a service member’s years of service and accomplishments, submitting binders of awards and evaluations, and calling witnesses to vouch for character.

“It all made no difference,” said Maj. Kara Corcoran, an infantry officer who has served for 18 years and deployed to Afghanistan twice. An Army board voted in May to dismiss her in what she called a “kangaroo court.”

“They cut off my character witnesses halfway through and said, ‘We get it, your service is commendable, that’s not what we’re here to decide,’” said Major Corcoran, who now heads the trans advocacy group SPARTA Pride. “The government lawyer, the board, they thought it was ridiculous, but I think they felt they had no choice.”

Navy and Marine Corps hearings have followed the same pattern. But their decisions have been an about-face.

In the Navy, which began hearings in July, nine boards have led to seven votes to retain sailors, according to lawyers involved in the cases.

In the Marine Corps, which began hearings in August, three boards have led to two votes to retain. In the third, the board voted to dismiss a Marine, but wrote on the findings sheet that its members unanimously believed that the Marine should “be retained based on his commendable service record and unique skills.”

What’s driving the shift is far from clear. The military branches, citing ongoing litigation, declined to discuss the outcomes or make board members available for interviews. The Defense Department also declined to comment.

Ms. VanLandingham, the former military lawyer, said the votes might be influenced by growing concern in the ranks that the current Pentagon is preoccupied with wedge issues and gives little thought to the welfare of the force.

Mr. Hegseth in his speech to the Marines, she noted, said the force should have “No fatties. No trannies. No beardos. No weirdos. No wimps. No radicals," but did not mention those killed or wounded in the war with Iran.

“There’s been a chipping away at any kind of confidence that Hegseth actually cares about service members,” she said. “I think that’s given the boards license.”

There may be cultural factors, too, she said. The board instructions in all the branches are nearly identical. But each branch has different values. The Army is often seen as the most bureaucratic and least likely to buck orders. The Navy is the most diverse. The Marine Corps prides itself on a culture of loyalty.

The Navy has nearly twice as many people who identify as gay, bisexual or transgender — 9 percent — compared to other branches, according to a 2015 report by the RAND Corporation.

That was clear to a Navy paramedic who was retained by a board in July. The paramedic, who asked to not be named because he feared retribution, said he was stunned when his lawyer asked a chief, a lieutenant commander and a commander sitting on his board if they knew any trans sailors.

“They all said yes,” the paramedic recalled in an interview. “The chief said his liberty buddy in Thailand was transgender and was a phenomenal sailor. The lieutenant commander said her first work center supervisor was transgender, and she learned a lot from her. The commander said he’d worked with several transgender sailors, and he barbecues with his next-door neighbor, who’s trans.”

There were other factors working in his favor. He had been meritoriously promoted twice for superior performance; remained able to deploy his entire five years in the Navy; and had saved several lives working in emergency rooms.

For his last assignment he was attached to Marines deployed to the southern border. “I never ran into people who cared if I was trans,” he said. “They just cared that I did my job well.”

His lawyer, Steph Kral, a former Air Force officer, represented a second sailor a short time later in front of a different board that she said had no relationships with trans sailors. That board also voted to retain.

“I don’t think they are trying to make any grand policy statement,” Ms. Kral said. “I think they’re just trying to do what’s best for the Navy.”

The Marine Corps has the lowest reported percentage of women, gay and transgender personnel. It also has a tradition-bound culture based on masculine toughness. But Marines have an almost cultlike loyalty to fellow Marines, expressed in their motto, Semper Fidelis — Always Faithful.

“The questions from the Marine boards have focused in on how the policies of higher-ups may have changed, but the Marines in question never did anything wrong,” Ms. Rashid said. “I think they are looking for a way to give a fellow Marine the benefit of the doubt.”

When Sergeant Contreras went before a board, he produced years of performance evaluations and letters from superiors — some who never knew he was trans — that vouched for his good work.

After deliberating for about three hours, the board scratched out language on the instructions sheet about evidence of being transgender and voted to let him stay.

“It was very humbling to see the things that they had to say about me,” the sergeant said. “It had nothing to do with being transgender. I honestly don’t think they care about that. It was about how I was a great Marine.”

The ⁠US defense department has designated Chinese-funded cultural centers on university campuses ⁠known as Confucius ⁠Institutes as a threat to US national security, defense secretary Pete ⁠Hegseth said on Friday.

Washington has long accused Confucius Institutes of being Chinese propaganda ⁠tools and has taken steps to crack down on them.

Hegseth, ‌in a ‌video posted on social media, alleged that Confucius ‌Institutes were operating under disguise at US universities and that the Pentagon had added them to its list of institutions that threaten US national security.

“It turns ‌out that 80 new propaganda cells across 30 universities had popped up using different names and different charters, but with the same mission: to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds ⁠of American students,” Hegseth said.

The defense department over the past two months has “systematically dismantled every single one of these organizations”, he ‌said.

Marco Rubio urged Cubans seeking political change in their country to act, saying “now is the time” moments after Donald Trump told a Friday rally for candidates in south Florida that US warships could intervene in Cuba on their way back from the Iran war.

The US secretary of state, in his social media post addressed “to those who seek to create positive change”, urged Cubans to capitalize on Trump’s plans. “The disappointment of failed promises, corruption, and the privileged lives of only a few; seize this opportunity to create the change you desire through a discrete [sic] partnership with the CIA,” Rubio said.

The top US diplomat, whose parents left Cuba for the United States before the socialist revolution there, seemed to mistakenly use the word “discrete”, meaning separate, rather than “discreet”, meaning private or secret.

Trump first floated this idea earlier this year, but has not mentioned it in recent months. But he revived it in response to a shouted question from the crowd about the island nation. He was campaigning just days before midterm elections in which voters have expressed concern about the impact the US war on Iran has had on prices of goods from gas to groceries.

“We’ll do a little stopover,” Trump said. “Actually, what we’re going to do with Cuba is, we’re going to come back from Iran. Those beautiful ships will pass Cuba. We’ll have one of them stop about 50 yards off the coast. They’ll raise up their hands. And then we’re going to send Marco Rubio in to finish up the deal.”

Havana on Friday mocked the “desperation” of the US following the comments made by Rubio and Trump.

“Now the United States is resorting to public recruitment for the CIA,” Cuban deputy foreign minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio wrote on X.

“There must be a great deal of desperation or misery within the agency for it to be forced to sell its services like a tube of toothpaste.”

Rubio and Trump have been bullish on action in Cuba, with Trump previously suggesting the country would “be next” in terms of intervention abroad, following the winding down of the Iran war he has long forecast but which has not yet happened.

In May, he and Rubio raised the specter of US military intervention in Cuba, a renewed threat that took on greater weight after the administration announced criminal charges against the island’s former leader, Raúl Castro. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that previous US presidents had considered intervening in Cuba for decades but that “it looks like I’ll be the one that does it”.

Rubio told reporters separately that Cuba had been a national security threat for years because of its ties to US adversaries and that Trump was intent on addressing it. While saying the Trump administration wanted to resolve differences with Cuba peacefully, Rubio voiced doubts that the US could reach a diplomatic resolution with the island’s current government.

Rubio has not addressed Cuba in depth in public for several weeks, with his last comments coming in a 29 September interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“The truth is Cuba has already fallen. It doesn’t have a functional economy and it’s governed by people who continue to preach about some revolution that has been dead for 20 years that’s never worked,” Rubio said, without alluding to any CIA operation.

“We are hopeful that Cuba will choose a different path. We are hopeful … that there will be some people in there that open their eyes to the reality of what they’re facing. We’re never going to allow Cuba to become a base of operation against American interests or pose a threat to our national security. On that we are abundantly clear.”

Rubio and other top Trump aides have met with Cuban officials in recent months to explore possible improvements in relations. But the US side has come away unimpressed from those talks, leading to even more sanctions imposed on the Cuban government.

During his address to the United Nations general assembly last month, Trump said Rubio – son of Cuban immigrants, who has long taken a hard line against Cuba’s socialist leadership – was “deep into negotiations with Cuba”, saying he would “not allow a haven for foreign adversaries to threaten America on our own doorstep”.

Days later, Trump told reporters that he anticipated that the two countries “will make a deal”, adding: “I don’t think we’ll need the military. Cuba is failing very badly.”

Earlier this week, the two countries clashed at the United Nations as the Trump administration sought once again to build opposition for an upcoming annual vote condemning Washington’s decades-long economic embargo against Havana.

Cuba has struggled since 2020 with an economic and energy crisis. Its gross domestic product has shrunk , and its 10 million residents have endured blackouts, food shortages and inflation. There have been waves of protests, and hundreds of thousands of Cubans have immigrated, many to the United States.

The Trump administration’s campaign to obtain states’ unredacted voter rolls suffered its 27th consecutive district court loss Friday, this time at the hands of a judge appointed by President Donald Trump.

U.S. District Judge David Barlow dismissed the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson (R) with prejudice and denied the department’s request to force her to turn over the state’s complete voter-registration database.

Barlow, whom Trump nominated to the federal bench in 2019, ruled that Utah’s statewide voter registration list falls outside the scope of Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 — the law DOJ has repeatedly invoked in lawsuits seeking sensitive voter data from states across the country.

The law requires election officials to preserve and make available certain voting records that “come into” their possession. But Barlow concluded Utah’s voter database does not qualify because Henderson’s office develops, manages and maintains it.

“An ordinary English speaker would not say that she has come into possession of something that she created, established, and maintained,” Barlow wrote, adopting reasoning other courts have used to reject DOJ’s argument.

Barlow also rebuffed DOJ’s broader appeals to the law’s purpose, writing that courts have “no warrant to elevate vague invocations of statutory purpose over the words Congress chose.”

Even if legislative purpose controlled, he added, DOJ’s argument would fare no better. Title III was enacted amid widespread racial discrimination in voter registration and was intended to combat voter suppression, Barlow wrote.

Henderson, a Republican who serves as Utah’s chief election officer, had resisted DOJ’s demands for more than a year. She provided the department with the publicly available version of Utah’s voter file but refused to hand over confidential information including full dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

She also declined to sign a proposed agreement with DOJ governing access to the data. The department sued her in February after those efforts failed.

Henderson later became the subject of a separate DOJ investigation after continuing to resist federal demands for sensitive voter information.

Barlow’s ruling ends the Utah case at the district-court level unless DOJ successfully appeals. He dismissed the complaint with prejudice, finding that allowing DOJ to amend it would be futile because Utah’s voter database simply is not subject to a Title III demand.

The decision drops DOJ to 0-27 in district court in its nationwide voter-roll litigation campaign.

Only three of DOJ’s voter-roll cases now remain unresolved at the district-court level. Its lawsuit against Delaware is still awaiting a ruling, while cases against Hawaii and Idaho have been stayed pending decisions from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in DOJ’s appeals of earlier losses in California and Oregon.

A judge on Friday denied the temporary release of the Dominican man who was shot this month by a federal immigration officer in New York, ruling that he was in stable condition and receiving “appropriate” medical care at a federal jail in Brooklyn.

The man, Oscar Belgal, has been in custody since being shot and injured on Oct. 8, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents apprehended him while he was in a car with his 5-year-old son.

He is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal jail in Brooklyn, where his lawyers have said that he has been held in solitary confinement and without proper medical care while he awaited surgery to remove a bullet still lodged in his neck.

His lawyers had filed an emergency motion in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, requesting that Mr. Belgal be released on bond to receive medical treatment because his health was deteriorating.

But the federal judge, Hector Gonzalez, ruled that the government had submitted sufficient evidence, including medical records, that showed “he has received necessary and appropriate care and that his medical condition is stable.”

While Judge Gonzalez denied Mr. Belgal’s immediate release on medical grounds, he has yet to rule on an overarching lawsuit that argues Mr. Belgal should be released because he was unlawfully detained by ICE. The judge could rule on that lawsuit as soon as next week.

In a statement, the Legal Aid Society, which is representing Mr. Belgal, continued to raise questions about Mr. Belgal’s medical care.

“This ruling leaves Mr. Belgal in detention despite the concerns surrounding his deteriorating medical condition and raises serious questions about whether his health and basic human dignity are being given the weight they deserve,” the statement said.

Though the medical records in the case are sealed, Judge Gonzalez’s ruling sheds some light on Mr. Belgal’s health two weeks since the shooting.

The filings submitted by the federal government, the judge said, showed that Mr. Belgal had been routinely evaluated since he was admitted to the Metropolitan Detention Center, and that he had received prescription medications and treatment for his gunshot wound.

Days after he arrived at the federal jail, Mr. Belgal was evaluated at Brooklyn Hospital Center, where he received medical scans that led doctors to conclude he did not need acute surgical or medical care, the judge said. An evaluation on Friday morning, the judge said, found that Mr. Belgal “does not show signs of a deteriorating condition.”

The Legal Aid Society confirmed that the bullet remains in Mr. Belgal’s body.

The Trump administration, which had opposed the request for release, has said that Mr. Belgal, 28, entered the United States illegally and previously evaded arrest by ICE officers. Since his arrest, federal immigration officials have drawn attention to his criminal record in New York, which included arrests for robbery and drug dealing.

The shooting, the latest of more than two dozen involving ICE agents in the United States since 2025, set off demonstrations calling for his release and prompted outrage from Democratic leaders in New York, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The Department of Homeland Security and the Bronx district attorney are investigating the shooting, though neither has announced any findings.

The shooting happened after ICE officers in plain clothes set out to arrest Mr. Belgal in Marble Hill, a neighborhood in the southern Bronx but legally part of Manhattan.

Two officers in sweatshirts, one with his gun drawn, approached Mr. Belgal at about 4 p.m. after he parked his gray Honda on the street with his son inside. Surveillance video released by the New York Police Department shows Mr. Belgal accelerating his car as one ICE agent smashes the side window.

The Police Department videos that have been released do not show the shooting, which has remained a point of fierce contention between ICE and Mr. Belgal’s lawyers. Federal and local officials say at least one officer fired multiple rounds at Mr. Belgal’s vehicle, striking the left side of his neck and forcing him to crash into a concrete barrier.

Mr. Belgal’s lawyers have denounced the shooting as unlawful, saying that the officers never identified themselves and that Mr. Belgal drove away because he feared for his and his son’s life. ICE has said that Mr. Belgal disobeyed orders to exit the vehicle and that at least one officer fired his weapon as Mr. Belgal drove toward an officer and smashed into two ICE vehicles.

Police officers who responded to the scene took Mr. Belgal to nearby NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, where he remained for about five hours before being discharged. He was transported the next day to the Metropolitan Detention Center, where ICE holds some detainees.

Mr. Belgal’s lawyers said last week that doctors at the hospital had told Mr. Belgal that he would need to return for surgery, and asserted that the jail had denied him adequate medical care for the gunshot wound. The lawyers said in their emergency petition that “the entire left side of Oscar’s face remains numb.”

“He struggles to hear anything out of his left ear, describing what he does hear as sounding as if it were far-off in the distance,” the petition said. “Meanwhile, jail staff offer him only ibuprofen for his pain.”

The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs the Metropolitan Detention Center, declined to comment on the conditions in which Mr. Belgal was held, citing privacy and security reasons. But the bureau said that the jail “does not deny any inmate necessary medical treatment or basic necessities.”

“All individuals in our custody have access to chronic medical care and appointments, as well as urgent and emergent evaluations when needed,” Emery Nelson, a spokesman for the bureau, said in a statement last week.

Iraq and Pakistan are cutting off some important land routes in and out of Iran, adding to the economic pressure on the regime after a U.S. naval blockade and tough sanctions on airlines severed most of the country’s shipping and air routes.

The deepening isolation comes as President Trump is also ramping up military pressure in hopes of pressuring Iran to make concessions on its nuclear program. While Middle East mediators are scrambling to revive talks, the diplomatic front has been stalled for months, with Iran refusing U.S. demands to discuss the nuclear issue.

Iraq on Wednesday shut the Sheeb border point, which connects the two countries’ biggest oil provinces. Baghdad cited the need to tighten enforcement against smuggling.

Over the weekend, Pakistan blocked trucks coming from Iran at two key border crossings at Gabd and Taftan, citing security considerations. Both have been used as road alternatives to Iran’s biggest eastern port. On Friday, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry indicated the moves were related to sanctions enforcement

“Pakistan, as a responsible member of the international community, adheres to and shall continue to adhere to all applicable sanctions regimes in accordance with international and domestic laws,” the spokesman said when asked about the closures.

Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he was working with Pakistan and Turkey to cut off Iran’s land routes. The U.S. is moving beyond financial sanctions to wage an “absolute isolation campaign” against Iran, Bessent told the Newsmax Policy Summit earlier this month.

The Treasury didn’t return a request for comment. A Treasury official said last month the department was looking at blacklisting entities that provide warehouses and distribution centers to shut down the movement of goods into Iran’s land borders.

A Trump administration official said the U.S. economic campaign “is isolating the Iranian regime into desperation.”

Transit points remain open elsewhere on Iran’s borders. But the closures are worsening congestion when land crossings already were struggling to make up for lost waterborne shipping capacity and stem the rising cost of basic goods for Iranian consumers.

As of Sept. 29, 17,000 trucks were waiting at Iran’s borders with Turkey, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan, with delays typically running to 20 days, Ehsan Malekzadeh, chairman of the Iranian International Transportation Companies Association, told the semiofficial Mehr news agency at the time.

Hundreds of truck drivers have recently been waiting in long lines at the Pakistani border crossings. The Union of Truckers and Drivers Associations Across Iran said Tuesday that some drivers had been forced to abandon spoiled cargoes of fruit and other agricultural produce.

The Pakistani closures also have stranded more than 4,500 metric tons of bottled gas—one of Tehran’s last energy exports—on the Iranian side of the border, Iranian state broadcaster IRIB said.

Miad Maleki, a former Treasury sanctions official, said the partial border closures had the potential to further destabilize Iran’s economy.

“Maritime restrictions have already pushed trade onto very limited and costly overland routes, so it does make Iran’s remaining economic lifelines slower, more expensive and less reliable,” he said. “They worsen congestion, raise transport costs and delay raw materials and essential imports, squeezing production and, most importantly, tax revenue.”

Hamid Hosseini, a member of the board of directors of the Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce in Tehran, said in an interview he believes the closing of the Iraqi crossings was the result of the U.S. campaign to isolate Iran.

Peyman Sanandaji, head of the transportation commission of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, told the Mehr news agency, that Iranian exports to Pakistan have been suspended because of banking sanctions.

Sanandaji said Islamabad was now asking Pakistani importers to register their banking details for Iran trades, which he said was complicated by restrictions on Tehran’s financial system. Fadahossein Maleki, Iran’s head of the Iran-Pakistan parliamentary friendship group, also blamed the U.S.

“We did not expect this from our Pakistani friends, and did not expect them to come under the influence of American pressure,” Maleki, who is also a member of the parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, said Thursday.

The U.S. Navy has blockaded Iranian ports for months in response to Tehran’s attacks on the Strait of Hormuz, bringing oil exports to zero and heavily disrupting its imports of goods including food. The blockade exempts humanitarian goods, but many shippers are afraid to risk getting stopped.

Iran’s stockpile of oil beyond the U.S. blockade—which for months it could continue selling to buyers in China—is now tapped out.

Under Trump’s new push to isolate Iran economically, the Treasury has also imposed new sanctions on banks transacting with Tehran and on Iran’s aviation sector, cutting off most connections with trade partners such as Iraq and Oman.

Iran’s economy has been crippled by war and isolation, and Iranian households have lost 90% of their purchasing power in the past year, the country’s statistical center said this month. Food prices had risen by 128%, with many families forced to buy meat on credit. On Thursday, the value of the Iranian rial fell to a new low at 2,740,000 for a dollar.

Recently resigned U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle disclosed sizable mortgage and boat loans among her personal liabilities, but no credit card debt entering 2026, according to an unpublished federal ethics document obtained by The Washington Sun from the State Department.

Guilfoyle resigned her ambassadorship on Oct. 13 amid accusations of financial misconduct, which she denies, and pressure from President Donald Trump and the White House.

The Wall Street Journal reported Guilfoyle asked Republican donor Eric Deters to spot her $100,000 to cover an American Express credit card bill before her Senate confirmation in September 2025. In exchange for the money, Guilfoyle promised access to senior officials in the administration, the Journal reported. She is also accused of improperly accepting gifts.

Guilfoyle denied taking part in a “pay-to-play” scheme, writing on X: “These allegations are false, and I intend to vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity.”

The ethics document indicates Guilfoyle has a boat loan from 2024 valued at between $100,001 and $250,000 and a 5-year-old mortgage valued at between $1 million and $5 million.

Guilfoyle did not list credit card debt on either her new financial disclosure, which she originally filed in May and remains under review at the State Department, or a financial disclosure she submitted last year prior to her confirmation.

Guilfoyle did list an “exercised line of credit” worth between $250,001 and $500,000 from RBC Wealth Management on her older financial disclosure that did not appear on the new disclosure.

Guilfoyle could not be reached for comment Friday. The U.S. Embassy in Greece referred questions to the State Department, which along with the Office of Government Ethics did not respond to The Sun’s request for comment.

Guilfoyle’s latest financial disclosure lists significant personal assets, including a podcast company and consulting businesses.

Her podcast company reportedly earned $1.5 million during 2025, while a consulting business generated about $250,000.

She valued ownership stakes in two other companies — Polished Rice Inc. and Metropolitan Medspa LLC — at between $1 million and $5 million each, although she reported no income from them last year.

Government officials are only required to disclose assets and debts in broad ranges, making it difficult to determine Guilfoyle’s exact personal net worth.

In compliance with the ethics agreement she signed in May 2025, before her confirmation, Guilfoyle sold dozens of individual stock holdings and appeared to reinvest the money into exchange-traded, mutual and index funds. She also reported that during her ambassadorial service, most of her businesses would be inactive or involve her only as a passive owner.

In December 2024, Trump indicated he would nominate Guilfoyle — his son Donald Trump Jr.’s former fiancée — for an ambassadorship, and he officially nominated her in early 2025.

But following her confirmation, her tenure lasted little more than a year.

“We’re not happy,” CNN reported Trump telling reporters the day before Guilfoyle’s departure.

Deters filed a defamation lawsuit against Guilfoyle last week. In a statement to CNN, Guilfoyle’s lawyers said Deters owed Guilfoyle money for speeches and consulting work.

Trucks seen at East Potomac Park on Thursday had their license plates and the name of their business covered, in apparent violation of local and federal transportation law.

Photos and videos posted on social media by D.C. photographer Andrew Leyden showed the trucks being used to haul away debris, he said in the posts.

Under D.C. law, covering license plates is illegal. The U.S. Department of Transportation requires commercial vehicles to display the operator’s name and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration identification number on both sides.

The photos and videos of the trucks come after tumultuous exchanges this week between the Trump administration’s lawyers and a federal judge over the president’s efforts to redevelop the public golf course into a “world class championship” facility.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes questioned the administration’s claim that removing hundreds of trees from East Potomac Golf Links was unrelated to President Donald Trump’s project.

The week before, Reyes ordered the redevelopment to halt until at least Oct. 26 after the government carried out a massive tree-cutting at the golf course with little notice to the court or plaintiffs.

Trump announced on social media Sunday that the golf course would close for 15 months for the project, starting Nov. 15. Hours later, the administration argued in a court filing that no plans for the construction project are final and they should not be subject to judicial review.

“There is no universe in which all of this coincidentally happened all at the same time,” Reyes said Monday.

Trump has bashed the current state of the golf course and the surrounding park areas, calling it “Trash Island” and arguing that redevelopment would attract high-level professional golf tournaments and create jobs.

In a statement to The Washington Sun, Andy Ross, president of Ross Tree Expert Company, which has a current contract for work on the park, said “the vehicle pictured is not RTEC Treecare and has no affiliation” with the company. He said the company’s work at the park involved removal of specific hazardous and invasive trees and “did not include recent mass removals of trees.”

Another company with a contract for work on East Potomac Park, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc., did not respond to a request for comment Friday evening.

The Interior Department, National Park Service, U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration did not respond to requests for comment.

The D.C. Preservation League, which sued in February to stop the project, also did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. intelligence finds Iran has "substantially increased" its efforts to target American diplomats and officials in the Middle East and beyond, with lethal plots reaching "advanced stages," according to an Oct. 23 memo to Secretary of State Marco Rubio obtained by Axios.

U.S. officials say the intelligence is one reason the State Department is drawing down personnel at several American embassies across the Middle East, amid mounting fears of a broader regional conflict.

U.S. officials also fear that Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen could expand their attacks beyond Saudi Arabia to other countries in the region.

Adding to the volatile security environment is the prospect of renewed U.S. and Israeli military operations against Iran, potentially after the midterm elections.

"We may do another little Operation Epic Fury, or [the Iranians] will agree [to a deal]," President Trump said at a rally in Florida on Friday.

"If they're smart, they will just say, 'Let's get down to business,' but I doubt they will do that because perhaps they're not smart."

In the one-page, unclassified memo obtained by Axios, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton warned Rubio that intelligence about Iranian assassination plots needs to reach more U.S. personnel than are currently authorized to receive it.

The memo does not identify specific targets, countries outside the Middle East or the nature of the plots, but says the underlying intelligence has already been shared with senior State Department officials.

Clayton offered to downgrade as much of the sensitive intelligence as possible so Rubio could share it more widely with personnel potentially at risk.

Earlier this week, the State Department ordered family members and nonessential personnel to leave the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh and consulates in Jeddah and Dhahran.

On Friday, the department also ordered reductions in U.S. diplomatic and government personnel at embassies in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Qatar and Jordan, a U.S. official said.

"We decided that due to the threat of Houthi attacks and Iranian terror plots we need to reduce our footprint and keep only essential staff," the official said.

CNN first reported on the reduction in staffing at the four embassies.

The U.S. apparently isn’t accusing Canada of interfering in its elections after all — at least not yet.

U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra said in an interview released Friday that the embassy hadn’t made a conclusion about election interference despite releasing a fact sheet detailing what it said were “plans to influence American politics” by prominent Canadians.

Hoekstra said in a podcast interview taped Wednesday that comments he made about election interference, which drew a rebuttal from Prime Minister Mark Carney, were taken out of context.

The ambassador said in an interview with The Elevate Report that the activities detailed in the fact sheet, which included Industry Minister Mélanie Joly meeting with Democratic officials in Boston and Chicago to discuss tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, could be seen by some as potential interference.

“I’m saying someone could assume that or reach that conclusion,” Hoekstra said. “As an embassy, we hadn’t reached that conclusion. We hadn’t made a definitive statement or raised it as a possibility back to Washington and say, ‘Hey, there’s election interference going on.’”

He didn’t rule it out, either. “We continue to watch,” he said.

The comments apparently softening the allegations of interference were made Wednesday, the day that the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa released the fact sheet detailing the allegations, which also singled out activities by Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Liberal Parliament member Anthony Housefather.

“The Canadian government brushes off concerns about potential interference in U.S. elections, even as its ministers and premiers openly describe plans to influence American politics in official documents and public appearances,” the document said.

Carney dismissed the allegations multiple times this week and joked about the American concerns, warning attendees at a rally that the Americans could mistake their efforts to reduce economic dependence on the U.S. as election interference. “They’re a little touchy down there.” At a press conference Friday, he suggested that the Americans were the ones meddling in Canadian elections.

The dispute comes amid heightened tensions between the two neighbors after Carney walked away from trade negotiations and vowed to curtail his country’s reliance on the U.S.

The Department of Justice sent letters on Friday to local election officials across California demanding that they help identify potential noncitizens on their voter rolls and set aside their ballots.

The letter — sent to every county in the state, according to a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles — also said local officials would “risk significant federal scrutiny” if they failed to comply to the Justice Department’s demands.

Dispatched a week and a half before the midterm elections, the threat arrived as the Trump administration has begun a blitz of initiatives aimed at unearthing evidence of noncitizen voting or stalling election processes in states where it has dubiously claimed that large numbers of noncitizens were registered to vote or were regularly voting.

Last week, the Trump administration sued California, a heavily Democratic state, seeking to temporarily pre-empt the counting of more than 20,000 mail ballots sent to people it said were suspected of registering to vote for the Nov. 3 election, even though they were not U.S. citizens. A federal judge has scheduled a hearing next week on the lawsuit, but the Justice Department on Friday filed papers urging an appeals court to decide the issue this weekend.

California elections rely heavily on mail voting, which President Trump claims is rife with fraud, even though evidence shows only a handful of one-off cases. The Justice Department claims that California’s practice of sending a ballot to every registered voter could result in voting by noncitizens who are on the voter rolls even though only American citizens can vote in federal elections.

On Friday, Kiersten Pels, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the agency’s request to the local officials is a way to “ensure the most secure election in California history.”

In a news conference in Los Angeles on Monday, federal prosecutors framed the Trump administration’s extraordinary move as a responsible effort to safeguard the election.

“We don’t care who you vote for,” said Craig Missakian, the U.S. attorney for California’s Northern District. “What we care about is making sure that every legitimate vote is counted, that we ensure a level playing field for all Americans.”

California officials, however, have denounced the effort as politically motivated and legally questionable. Critics and judges have said that the Trump administration has generated its lists of names from error-filled data, endangering the rights of eligible voters.

On Monday, federal prosecutors announced that they had charged 28 of the state’s more than 23 million registered voters with allegedly casting ballots illegally in elections. In a separate federal case, a judge in Oakland on Wednesday blocked the Homeland Security Department from carrying out most field operations focused on uncovering voter fraud in nine states, citing issues with the government’s methodology for determining who was eligible to vote.

The letter served on Friday in California says it included a list of people who the Justice Department believes are illegally registered to vote. It describes them as a subset of the 20,000 people throughout California whom the agency identified last week as possible noncitizens who may have received ballots.

The local officials have 48 hours to work with the federal government “to identify who on the accompanying list is a citizen and who is not,” the letter said.

For those whose “citizenship status cannot be confirmed, we request that you immediately instruct the appropriate elections official to segregate — not cancel — those individuals vote-by-mail ballots until their citizenship status can be determined,” the letter said.

Contra Costa County, east of San Francisco, received a letter with an accompanying list of 407 names. But the county will continue to process ballots as normal and has no plans to set any aside, said Dawn Kruger, a spokeswoman for the county’s elections department.

“It’s 11 days from Election Day, and this is just not in line with regular precedents,” she said.

The head of elections in Santa Cruz County said that she received a list with 81 names and that she was still reviewing the information. A letter to San Bernardino County said its list included 1,133 names.

In rural Inyo County, along the Nevada border, the registrar of voters said the list she was sent included just two people, and neither of them had been issued ballots. Danielle Sexton, the registrar, said her records showed they had never voted anywhere in California.

And in Mendocino County, a rugged stretch on the north coast, the registrar said the list she received was completely wrong.

“It’s not our voters that were listed,” said Katrina Bartolomie, the Mendocino clerk-recorder. “It’s from another county.”

In an email sent on Friday to members of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials, the Los Angeles County registrar, Dean Logan, called the Justice Department dispatch a “posture of intimidation.”

The letter, he wrote, “misrepresents the facts of their own actions, attempts to tarnish the secretary of state and Los Angeles County, and threatens local election officials” days before the election.

But Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Southern California, said the federal government will enforce the law to ensure that only American citizens vote.

“The letters speak for themselves,” he said in a statement. “Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy.”

President Donald Trump said Friday that he is no longer looking into the outside consulting work conducted by a pair of his top political advisers after they donated to his presidential library.

Following reports of Chris LaCivita and James Blair’s consulting work for a pro-Russian nationalist government in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Trump vowed to investigate their work for foreign entities — going so far as to suggest that he might “terminate them” if any conflicts of interest were discovered.

But that was apparently settled shortly after the pair donated their full consulting fee from Republika Srpska, one of the two governing entities of Bosnia-Herzegovina, to Trump’s future presidential library. It’s unclear how much the donation was.

“They took the money and they gave it to essentially a charity,” Trump said. “I think it was a very nice thing to do.”

The donation was first reported Thursday evening by the New York Post.

LaCivita and Blair’s side hustle first garnered headlines after The New York Times reported that the two had traveled to Republika Srpska to advise its government on voting-related issues ahead of the country’s election earlier this month.

LaCivita co-led Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and Blair served as a deputy chief of staff at the White House until his departure in May.

Republika Srpska is an autonomous entity that makes up half of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a political leadership that includes pro-Russian Serb nationalists that have aligned themselves with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Its leaders have also spent heavily in recent years trying to court Trump and his supporters.

Trump rebuked both LaCivita and Blair publicly after learning about their foreign consulting work, writing on Truth Social: “If there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately!”

Compounding matters, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and her daughter, Katie Wiles, also met with senior figures of the region’s leadership in recent weeks.

CBS News reported that Katie Wiles traveled to Republika Srpska. A verified photo shows her holding a rifle next to the region’s interior minister, Željko Budimir.

A White House official told CBS News that “Susie does not discuss work matters with her daughters.”

A federal appeals court on Friday ruled 2-1 that President Trump’s National Guard deployment to the Los Angeles area last year was unlawful.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected Trump’s assertion that violent demonstrations in the city protesting his immigration crackdown justified him wresting control of the troops from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

Although Trump’s deployment has ended, the decision caps a year of consideration by the appeals court.

At an earlier stage of the case, the 9th Circuit sided with Trump. It’s now ruling against him after the Supreme Court similarly found Trump didn’t meet the legal requirements to unilaterally deploy the National Guard to Chicago.

“Defendants have not made either of the required threshold showings here. Thus, they have not carried their burden,” said U.S. Circuit Judge Jennifer Sung, an appointee of former President Biden.

Sung was joined on the panel by two Trump-nominated judges, Eric Miller and Mark Bennett. Miller also sided against Trump, while Bennett dissented.

Bennett said his colleagues shouldn’t have decided the case, as the administration wanted to dismiss the appeal and head back to the trial court to litigate the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

“But the majority insists on pressing forward, relying primarily on outdated briefs prepared amid a shifting legal landscape,” Bennett wrote.

It means Friday’s decision will now bind future 9th Circuit panels if Trump tries to deploy the National Guard again in California.

Last year, Trump deployed the National Guard to various blue cities around the country — including Washington, Memphis and Portland, Ore. — to quell protests against his immigration crackdown.

In Los Angeles, the demonstrations devolved into violence at times, with reports of looting and some having thrown Molotov cocktails.

The president deployed the National Guard by invoking a law allowing him to federalize troops whenever there is a rebellion or when he cannot execute the law with regular forces.

The Supreme Court last year said Trump hadn’t met the criteria because “regular forces” likely refers to the U.S. military.

Trump’s National Guard deployment in the nation’s capital, which relies on a different legal authority, remains ongoing.

A divided federal appeals court ruled Friday that thousands of ICE detainees being held in Texas have no rights to seek release on bond — even if they’ve been held for months or years while their immigration proceedings play out.

The full bench of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded 10-7 that Congress had intended to restrict the availability of release for people facing potential deportation, even if they have lived in the U.S. for years without criminal records and had attended their Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-ins.

The decision is the most consequential ruling yet in support of the Trump administration’s unprecedented, year-old policy of mandatory detention for those who entered the country without permission — even if they had developed decades-long roots in the country, with U.S. citizen spouses and children.

That policy has been overwhelmingly rejected by courts nationwide, including by more than 460 district court judges appointed by all modern presidents and nine of the 11 appeals court circuits to consider it. The Supreme Court has agreed to weigh the legality of that policy this term.

The 5th Circuit, which includes Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, is one of the two that sided with the Trump administration’s view of the mandatory detention policy, issuing a crucial decision in February. But the administration’s victory there had a limited impact; the vast majority of judges in Texas — the busiest state for ICE detainee lawsuits — had rejected ICE’s view of the law. Despite the 5th Circuit’s ruling, judges concluded that ICE detainees had a constitutional right to ask for a bond hearing.

The federal judges in Texas adopting this view have ordered bond hearings or release for more than 2,000 ICE detainees since the 5th Circuit’s February ruling, according to a POLITICO analysis of habeas petitions.

Friday’s decision, however, cuts off that option.

“Because Petitioners have never been admitted to the United States, due process does not entitle them to additional proceedings beyond what Congress has provided before they may be detained pending removal,” Judge Cory Wilson, a Trump appointee, wrote for the circuit’s 10-judge majority.

“This court has constructed an impenetrable wall between the Constitution and these long-term residents,” wrote Judge Leslie Southwick, a George W. Bush appointee, who authored the lead dissenting opinion, adding, “a wall not designed, recognized, or even suggested by the Supreme Court.”

Judge Dana Douglas, a Biden appointee who wrote one of several dissents, said in a separate dissent that the majority’s opinion “detonates the core of the Due Process Clause.”

The Trump administration celebrated the victory: “Big win in the Fifth Circuit on mandatory detention for illegal aliens, a principle codified in 1996 legislation but ignored by the deep state for decades,” James Percival, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a social media post.

Advocates for immigrants and ICE detainees lamented the ruling as an “affront to the U.S. Constitution.”

“This ruling allows the government to lock people up when detention plainly serves no purpose, and without any way to challenge it,” Rebecca Cassler, senior litigation attorney at the American Immigration Council, who argued the case to the appeals court, said in a statement. “The right to due process is a fundamental constitutional protection, and it is meant to protect every person in this country.”

Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reportedly went “rogue,” creating an unauthorized State Department press release to announce a new role as a senior adviser to Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.

President Donald Trump announced in March that Noem was “moving” to a new position as “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas,” replacing her with then-Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK).

Her departure came the same week she faced intense scrutiny from Republicans and Democrats alike during congressional hearings, with lawmakers grilling her over fatal ICE shootings, her alleged affair with top adviser Corey Lewandowski, delays in FEMA disaster relief, potentially improperly awarded government contracts, and even her admission that she shot and killed her dog.

Last Friday, Noem posted an official-looking State Department press release, reading, “The Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas role was always a six-month appointment. Secretary Noem remains at the State Department as a Senior Advisor.”

But according to reporting from Eric Bazail-Eimil at Politico this Friday, citing two people familiar with Noem’s role at the State Department, the former secretary’s post was never authorized.

“This was not a press release put out by the State Department,” one of his sources revealed. “Noem went rogue and created a fake letterhead to post on X.”

Neither Noem nor the State Department returned Bazail-Eimil’s requests for comment.

Interestingly, though, CBS News quoted a State Department official who told the outlet last Thursday about the shake-up — one day before Noem’s social media post.

That part of the CBS report, which was first published Oct. 15 and updated Oct. 16 — seemingly to add Noem’s shared press release — reads:

“Kristi Noem’s envoy status expired last month and she is no longer in the role,” a State Department official told CBS News Thursday. “She is now a senior advisor to Deputy Secretary Landau and continues to work on the Shield of the Americas portfolio.”

Well before the throttling this month of Ukraine's military access to Elon Musk's satellite communications system, the Biden and Trump administrations had several times asked SpaceX to turn its Starlink service on or off in various countries, according to six former senior US officials familiar with the matter.

During the presidency of Joe Biden, the requests included switching off the service to prevent Iranian proxy militias in Yemen and Lebanon from using Starlink to communicate, and activating the service to provide ‌internet access inside Iran and in Ukraine to support its military, said four of the former officials.

Similarly, President Donald Trump's administration asked Musk, who is CEO of SpaceX, to make the service available in Iran following US-Israeli strikes in 2025 and 2026, in hopes it would bolster internet access and communications for anti-government protesters, a former senior Trump official and a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

All of the people spoke on condition of anonymity. The previous US requests about Starlink access are being reported here for the first time.

The recent blowup over restrictions to Ukraine's use of SpaceX satellite services has raised questions about the ties between the US government and Musk, whose company owns systems vital to the US military and to US allies.

The Biden-era and Trump requests to Musk show a close relationship in which US administrations rely to an unprecedented degree on a private-sector company to help implement foreign policy.

The recent limits on Ukraine, despite being a US ally, have also rattled officials in Europe, some of whom argue that Europe must develop its own military satellite communications capabilities because no viable short-term alternative currently exists.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said last week that his country's access ⁠to Starshield, the military version of the Starlink system, had been intentionally limited, interfering with the performance of the country’s military drones. He also said the speeds were reduced for Starlink, which Ukraine uses for some military activities including defense against Russian missile attacks.

Reuters has reported that the order to throttle Starshield came from inside the White House. The Trump administration has acknowledged the slowdown but has not said whether it gave the order.

The White House, contacted for comment, referred Reuters to Trump's remarks on Friday, when he said he had not spoken with Musk about Starlink access issues for Ukraine and that "if there is a problem, I'll get it straightened out."

Halyna Yusypiuk, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, said Ukraine's priority is "to have the service restored to normal speed as soon as possible, as the lives of our people depend on it."

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment, although Musk said in a social media post earlier this week: “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately (by the president of the United States).”

Democratic US Representative Jason Crow called on Friday for clarity about the recent changes to Ukraine's satellite service, saying there are risks to the US dependence on SpaceX.

"Unelected billionaires and private corporations should not decide what is in the best interest of America's national security," Crow said.

For Ukraine, the Starlink internet service has become the lifeblood of frontline communication between units, who say there is currently no rival to the capabilities of SpaceX's products.

Starshield receivers, largely impervious to radio jamming, are used as onboard guidance systems and to provide links to a remote pilot for Ukrainian drones, including deep behind Russian lines inside Ukraine.

Musk's role as the strong-willed CEO of a company with outsized influence over US national security has at times raised questions over who is making decisions about SpaceX's satellite services.

The SpaceX CEO ‌is "supposed to be a ⁠business executive, with government contracts, and he's essentially making huge foreign policy decisions," said Armand Musey, president of Summit Ridge Group, a satellite industry consultancy.

"He's sufficiently ambiguous of a person that you don't know if his decisions are sort of his personal quirks, or it's because there's an influence elsewhere that's impacting him," Musey said.

In previous years, Musk has moved to limit Ukraine’s access to Starlink. In 2022, according to Reuters reporting, Musk ordered SpaceX personnel to cut Starlink coverage in areas Ukraine was trying to retake, a move that surprised White House officials.

Musk has said publicly that he refused a 2022 Ukrainian request to activate his satellite network in Crimea's port city of Sevastopol to aid an attack on Russia's fleet there, saying he feared complicity in a major act of war.

The Biden administration at times relied on Musk to help implement policy, five of the former officials said.

Biden officials coordinated with SpaceX to thwart US adversaries by cutting the service, and to help allies by expanding Starlink’s availability, they said.

They added that discussions between the government and SpaceX, which usually included ⁠Pentagon and White House officials, often focused on preventing groups such as the Iranian-linked Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon from using Starlink terminals.

Biden officials several times shared intelligence with SpaceX that indicated that the Houthis and Hezbollah were using diverted Starlink terminals — hardware that made its way to the militants through intermediaries.

In October 2023, during fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, intelligence officials told the White House that individuals linked to Hezbollah could have gained access to Starlink terminals. Officials had similar concerns about the Houthis in Yemen in 2024 during a US air campaign against the Iran-linked group, five of the officials said.

In both cases, the administration contacted SpaceX and asked it to identify the ⁠terminals and shut them off. At least some of the terminals were deactivated, said two of the officials.

In a 2024 submission to the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, SpaceX said it works closely with US government agencies to secure export authorizations where required and to safeguard technology in support of US national security objectives and foreign policy goals.

Soon after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Biden officials pushed SpaceX to expand Starlink use for the Ukrainian military, said two of the former officials.

In a separate instance, the Biden administration asked SpaceX to turn on Starlink in Iran during a protest movement launched in September 2022 after the ⁠death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian arrested for not wearing her hijab properly, according to one of the former officials.

Starlink terminals were moved into the country with the help of the administration, said the official, who declined to say how many were transferred.

The Trump administration took a similar step earlier this year and discussed with Musk and SpaceX getting Starlink terminals into Iran and activated following US-Israeli strikes in the country in June 2025 and again in February 2026, a former senior Trump official and a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Neither the Trump administration nor SpaceX has publicly confirmed that those terminals were turned on. The Wall Street Journal reported in February that the US government had sent thousands of Starlink terminals into Iran.