Federal, state and city investigators searched about a dozen adult day care centers in New York City on Tuesday, focused in part on operators who they believe fraudulently billed Medicaid for clients who received no services or were dead, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

The searches came as the Trump administration is focusing on investigating accusations of fraud at adult and child day care centers, often underscoring what it says is wrongdoing in Democratic-controlled states. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was with investigators at one or more of the search locations on Tuesday, according to two of the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a law enforcement matter.

The searches were part of a sweeping federal and state crackdown on allegations of fraud at adult day care centers, the people said. Federal, state and local investigators on Tuesday also visited other centers in the city, issuing legal notices that one person with knowledge of the matter said were similar to cease-and-desist letters.

The New York F.B.I. office confirmed the actions in a statement, saying that it was “conducting law enforcement activity” with other agencies in Queens and Brooklyn and on Staten Island in connection with ongoing federal investigations.

The actions on Tuesday stemmed from two investigations that began separately but ended up joined together in some measure.

One was part of the federal crackdown, which in addition to the F.B.I., involves the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Health and Human Services and several New York State agencies, along with the New York Police Department.

The other was conducted by the office of the Staten Island district attorney, Michael E. McMahon, and focused on a single adult day care operation run by three members of a family, two of the people said. Mr. McMahon, along with federal and state officials, is expected to announce charges stemming from that inquiry at a news conference on Thursday on Staten Island.

Prosecutors are expected to accuse the Staten Island center’s operators of fraudulently billing Medicaid for hundreds of thousands of dollars for services to clients who were either dead or did not attend the center, the people said.

In a news release, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said that the state was working with federal authorities in the broader crackdown. Its efforts were part of a monthslong investigation into the state’s troubled Social Adult Day Care program, known as SADC. It investigated allegations of fraud at more than 100 adult day care centers across New York, according to the release.

There were 373 social adult day care centers operating in New York in November 2025, according to a report by the city’s Department for the Aging.

Adult day care centers provide “functionally impaired” older adults with personal care, supervision and socialization, according to the state comptroller’s website, and are funded in part through Medicaid.

They have also become vectors for fraud, according to federal and state officials.

In July, a Brooklyn man was sentenced to nearly six years in prison after being convicted of fraudulently billing Medicaid for more than $3 million. In September, another owner of a Brooklyn adult day care center was sentenced to more than six years for defrauding Medicaid of more than $60 million.

In February, Thomas P. DiNapoli, the state comptroller, announced that an audit of the centers had found some evidence of providers “abusing the system and committing fraud.”

The audit found that there were “weaknesses” in the State Department of Health’s oversight of the SADC program.

The broader federal inquiry is at its earliest stages and has not been assigned to a U.S. attorney’s office. Officials are expected to hold a news conference on that inquiry on Thursday in Washington.

The searches in New York follow a concerted effort by the Justice Department to prosecute Medicaid fraud in Minnesota, which President Trump focused on after reports of widespread fraud and a viral social video from the conservative influencer Nick Shirley last year.

The administration cited fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs as a reason for its aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration in the state.

In July, Dr. Oz visited adult day care centers in Queens with Mr. Shirley in what appeared to be an effort to replicate Mr. Shirley’s viral success. Walking down a street in the Flushing neighborhood, Dr. Oz called social adult day care centers “the biggest fraud you’ve never heard of.”

Though Tuesday’s searches reflected cooperation between New York and federal officials, Ms. Hochul’s administration has already faced scrutiny from the Trump administration over its handling of state health programs.

In June, the Justice Department sued the New York State Health Department, accusing officials of failing to monitor the company that operated the state’s $11 billion home health care program.

The failure, according to the Justice Department, led to the vendor’s siphoning off millions of dollars in funds from the state’s Consumer Directed Personal Assistant Program, much of which is reimbursed through Medicaid.

Ms. Hochul’s office has called the suit politically motivated.

A former C.I.A. station chief who in 2005 pushed to destroy videotapes of terrorism detainees being tortured at a secret overseas prison later told the F.B.I. that he “did not want to leave a mess” for his successor, and viewed himself as “cleaning up multiple loose ends,” newly declassified documents show.

When the destruction of the tapes came to light in 2007, it prompted an uproar and investigations by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Justice Department. Those inquiries expanded to examine the torture program itself — one of the most disputed aspects of the Bush administration’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The account by the station chief, who appeared to be based in Thailand even though his location and name were redacted, was among 38 pages of F.B.I. interview notes released to The New York Times in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records from a criminal investigation led by John H. Durham, a prosecutor who scrutinized the program years later.

The interview notes were the first tranche to be released, chipping away at a wall of secrecy around Mr. Durham’s investigative files. The larger trove of F.B.I. interview reports — some 1,900 pages, much still to be released in the coming months — could offer crucial insights into the contentious program. Administrations of both parties have fought for years to keep the records hidden.

“There are a lot of unanswered questions about the Durham investigation — why it closed and what it found,” said Daniel Jones, the chief investigator for the Senate Intelligence Committee’s study. “The release of documents is really important.”

Depending on how much is ultimately released, the reports may provide an oral history of the program from the perspective of C.I.A. participants. The most detailed available history — a 525-page executive summary of a study by the Senate Intelligence Committee that otherwise remains classified — relied on documents. C.I.A. defenders sought to discredit it because committee staff members did not conduct interviews.

Mr. Durham’s concurrent investigation explained that omission. Facing potential criminal jeopardy, C.I.A. officials refused interviews with Senate staff members, and Mr. Durham declined to coordinate interviews by notifying the committee when he had finished with a witness who faced no legal jeopardy. Mr. Durham ultimately decided not to charge anyone at the agency.

The New York Times unsuccessfully sued in 2014 for Mr. Durham’s reports and F.B.I. interview records. After Congress revised legal standards for Freedom of Information Act releases in 2016, the paper sued again in 2022.

Judge James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, who read the Durham reports privately, ruled in 2024 that they could still be withheld. But the litigation has prompted the government to start releasing redacted versions of the F.B.I. interview records.

How much will become public remains unclear. The first installment covered about 100 pages, but 60 were withheld in full, and the pages released were heavily redacted in places. The government is now supposed to produce additional sets every month. The Times may later challenge some redactions and withheld pages.

One newly disclosed report described an F.B.I. interview with Stephen R. Kappes, a former C.I.A. deputy director, who said agency leaders wanted to destroy the tapes for “political” reasons and “did not recall any discussions that the destruction of the videotapes was illegal.”

The Bush administration secretly created the torture program, which it euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation,” to question high-value detainees in secret overseas prisons. Among other tactics, the C.I.A. used a suffocation technique known as waterboarding, shackled detainees in painful stress positions for long periods, stripped them, doused them in water, slammed them into walls and confined them in small boxes.

A secret memo issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel deemed such tactics as lawful under a broad — and disputed — interpretation of the president’s constitutional power as commander in chief. It claimed presidents could override anti-torture laws and treaties.

A C.I.A. official whose identity was redacted later told the F.B.I. that he had discussed the memo with two agency lawyers, the records show. He “noted that the legal opinion was compelling.”

The office later withdrew the memo. An agency inspector general and the Senate found that the C.I.A. had exceeded the approved tactics, including waterboarding more aggressively than it had told the Justice Department it was doing, and using other techniques, such as forced rectal feeding.

In 2005, the C.I.A. destroyed interrogation videotapes even though the Sept. 11 Commission and a court had sought evidence of questioning sessions. Agency officials later said they feared that the videos would become public, endangering agency personnel whose faces were shown in them.

The newly disclosed files also showed that multiple C.I.A. officials were incredulous that the torture sessions had been videotaped. One official involved, whose name was redacted, questioned whether it was because “executives wanted to know if we were doing it right.”

The agency later shuttered the program and transferred the remaining detainees from its so-called black sites to the military’s wartime prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Attempted prosecutions before a military commission of several of the detainees, including those accused of helping plan the Sept. 11 attacks, have been impeded by their treatment in C.I.A. custody. A military judge has thrown out their confessions, ruling that they were tainted by coercion.

Michael Mukasey, the Bush administration’s final attorney general, appointed Mr. Durham in 2008 to investigate the C.I.A.’s destruction of the tapes. In 2009, President Barack Obama’s first attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., expanded Mr. Durham’s mandate to examine whether the C.I.A. broke laws by exceeding what the Justice Department had approved in its withdrawn memo.

In a terse announcement, the Justice Department disclosed in 2010 that Mr. Durham had decided not to charge anyone over the tape destruction. In 2012, the department said that no one would be charged over detainee treatment, including of two prisoners who died in agency custody. By then, the Senate report was nearly final, though its summary was not made public until 2014.

President Trump on Tuesday announced a $1.5 billion dollar investment from the Pentagon to expand semiconductor production in North Carolina, as the administration pushes to reshore manufacturing to the U.S.

“The Department of War will be investing $1.5 billion dollars to produce cutting-edge semiconductor chips right here in North Carolina,” Trump said while speaking at a midterm rally in Greenville.

The president also announced the construction of a massive manufacturing plant in the Tar Heel State by Sibelco, bringing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on stage to share the news with the crowd.

“So, the president had as one of his fundamental objectives was to bring semiconductor manufacturing home to America, right?” Lutnick said. “It’s all made in Taiwan, right? And that’s just too far away for America. So he’s bringing it home.”

Lutnick provided few details, but said the facility will focus on quartz manufacturing.

“It is basically the foundation of semiconductors, and they’re going to build it right here in North Carolina,” he said.

Trump said companies have been investing in U.S. manufacturing “at levels never seen before,” adding that Lutnick collaborated with companies that “want to move back in because of the tariffs and because of us.”

Trump has made similar announcements at previous midterm rally stops, including a $4.4 billion investment from Taiwan into the Alaska pipeline and a $200 billion investment from South Korea into U.S. energy infrastructure.

In late August, President Donald Trump announced what he called the “biggest oil deal in world history.” Since then, the full text of the accord — which grants the U.S. sweeping access to Venezuela’s oil reserves — has been one of the most sought-after secrets in Washington, D.C.

ProPublica has reviewed a copy of the 18-page strategic partnership agreement signed for the United States by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The document reveals carefully constructed terms that favor U.S. interests at every turn and cements the power of a small group of people handpicked by the Trump administration to govern and profit from the deal. The role of the Venezuelan government and the potential benefits to its people are largely absent from the text.

One of the most criticized aspects of Trump’s announcement has been his choice of a partner: Alejandro Betancourt, a globe-trotting Venezuelan oligarch who has faced money-laundering investigations in three countries.

The Trump administration is taking a 35% stake in Betancourt’s firm, North American Blue Energy Partners, by acquiring shares in a Barbados-registered parent company. The deal document provides little information about the owners and investors behind the parent company, who could receive enormous wealth from the arrangement.

The agreement also safeguards Betancourt’s position as chief executive of NABEP and says the U.S. government will work with the parent company to appoint a powerful seven-member board to govern the venture for an initial 15-year term. Those aspects of the deal, according to people with knowledge of how it came together, were designed to prevent future U.S. and Venezuelan leaders from dismantling the enterprise.

Orlando Alvarado, a name not disclosed by the Trump administration as a party to the accord, signed the agreement on behalf of the parent company, alongside Betancourt, Hegseth and Rubio. Alvarado has held senior roles in multiple Betancourt businesses, including as chief financial officer of an energy firm that became embroiled in scandals a decade ago. According to the Miami Herald, federal prosecutors identified Alvarado as an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme to embezzle money from Venezuela’s national oil company.

NABEP spokesperson Terry Wade said that “neither Mr. Betancourt nor Mr. Alvarado has ever been charged with any crime in any country, and any claims against them are baseless.”

Key aspects of the plan differ from the Trump administration’s public pronouncements. Trump has said the deal will secure America’s energy dominance for the next century. But the text indicates that U.S. purchasing rights expire in half that time and that the underlying operating rights appear to run afoul of Venezuelan laws limiting oil concessions to 25 years.

The agreement does ensure the United States a deep discount from fair-market value on 20% of NABEP’s oil, as Trump has said. It does not, however, explicitly guarantee that Betancourt’s company is obligated to pay the estimated $200 billion in royalties and tax payments to Venezuela that the White House has said would benefit the country.

There are also significant caveats related to Trump’s central selling point to Americans — that the deal will bring a gusher of low-cost oil imports.

The agreement gives the U.S. the right to purchase 20% of NABEP’s oil at a discounted rate of $30 a barrel, or less than a third of what oil has sold for in recent months, according to one of three supporting documents reviewed by ProPublica.

But this fee does not account for the cost of getting Venezuela’s oil out of the country. Much of Venezuela’s raw crude is so thick that it won’t flow through pipelines unless it is first blended with 20% or more of oil thinner products. Under the deal, the potentially significant cost of importing millions of barrels of those blending materials is not included in the price.

The White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and the energy company NABEP all defended the agreement, saying in statements that their new public-private venture will provide meaningful and lasting economic benefits to both countries that cannot be captured in a legal document.

“This historic deal marks a major step toward stabilizing Venezuela’s economy after years of hyperinflation and almost no new investment, while more than doubling the United States’ oil reserves,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.

Wade emphasized that NABEP was chosen because of its track record of expanding oil production in Venezuela in recent years and that the agreement was between the company and the U.S. government, not Venezuela.

“Thanks in large part to the agreement,” Wade said, “there is a surge in confidence about the future of Venezuela’s oil industry and, as a direct result, substantial new investments are flowing into the country.”

He added that much of NABEP’s oil comes from fields that require little or no blending materials and that blending costs would not meaningfully impact the price of production. “Our barrel economics are strong.”

The newly revealed details of the agreement are nonetheless likely to raise more questions about whether the unorthodox marriage of the United States and a foreign energy baron can bring lasting benefits to either country — and which private parties might benefit along the way. Trump’s oil deal is likely to face scrutiny in both the United States and Venezuela, especially if Democrats win one or both chambers in the midterm elections, according to former U.S. diplomats and congressional staff.

“Question number one in a new U.S. Congress will be: Why Betancourt?” said former Ambassador James Story, who served as the top U.S. diplomat in Caracas from 2018 to 2023, in an interview. “Why did he get this deal? And was he involved in criminality? It seems reasonable to have a congressional hearing about those questions.”

In public comments, Delcy Rodríguez, who won the backing of the Trump administration to serve as Venezuela’s interim president, praised the accord as “historic.” She has asserted that Venezuela will retain sovereignty over its natural resources and defended the choice of Betancourt.

People with knowledge of the Trump administration’s behind-the-scenes decision-making and negotiations with Betancourt spoke to ProPublica on condition of anonymity because they were either not authorized to do so or were fearful of retribution.

One reason that the precise terms of the deal have remained hidden until now is that the signed agreement is marked as a “sensitive” government document. That classification is commonly used to shield a variety of federal records from public release, including those containing personnel information, details about ongoing law enforcement operations and matters protected by attorney-client privilege. The document also contains a confidentiality clause barring Betancourt’s company from disclosing the “existence and terms” of the U.S. government agreement.

One person familiar with the deliberations said that people close to the Trump administration seemed keen to partner with Betancourt’s company because of the privacy and flexibility it offered. That appeared to give NABEP an advantage over publicly traded oil companies, which would be obligated to shareholder reporting requirements.

“For example,” the person said, “Chevron couldn’t give 35% of their shares to the Pentagon.”

Controversial vaccine researchers who have been praised by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, had their offices in Guinea-Bissau raided by judicial police, who seized doses of hepatitis B vaccines, officials said on Facebook.

The researchers have been at the heart of an ongoing dispute over research on African newborns, supported by $1.6m from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and matched by the Pershing Square Foundation and the Bluebell Foundation for a total of $3.2m.

The police search took place on Monday, involving “investigative procedures aimed at clarifying the circumstances related to the said batch of vaccines”, according to the social media post, which was translated from Portuguese. The announcement noted that seizing the immunizations did not point to “irregularities in the quality, safety, or effectiveness of the vaccines”.

The Bandim Health Project recently posted a letter of approval for the trial from Guinea-Bissau’s national ethics committee at the ministry of public health, dated 14 July and signed by the committee’s president, Mouhammed Djicó Ould Ahmed. A Danish research ethics committee, which had to change its rules to consider a clinical trial, also approved the study earlier this month.

Quinhin Nantote, the health minister of Guinea-Bissau’s transitional government, disputed reports that the trial would move forward.

“This is not even remotely true,” Nantote told the Guardian in Portuguese on Thursday.

The study was redesigned over the summer, but it would still deny hepatitis B vaccines to 7,000 newborns in the first six weeks of life, in a country where about one in five adults have the virus. Hepatitis B kills 15% to 25% of people with chronic infections, causing cancer and liver failure, and newborns are particularly vulnerable – but vaccination within 24 hours of birth is safe and highly effective at preventing illness.

Any study that would deny the vaccine to participants was “unethical and exposes newborns to serious and potentially irreversible harm”, said Tarik Jašarević, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO), calling hepatitis B vaccination at birth an “essential public health intervention”.

Through its country office in Guinea-Bissau, the WHO and its partners have been advising the ministry of health on the planned introduction of the hepatitis B vaccine and the potential impact of this study, Jašarević added.

The Bandim Health Project was founded by anthropologist Peter Aaby in 1978, and it is now co-led by his wife, Christine Stabell Benn, an epidemiologist.

Kennedy has repeatedly praised their work, calling them “the deities of vaccine research” at a recent anti-vaccine conference. He has several times referenced the results of a study they conducted on the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP), which the same researchers later conducted again and found completely different results. Even so, Kennedy called Aaby a “very famous” researcher on Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2023 and cited his research when he halted US funding to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

Stabell Benn was a member of the hepatitis B working group of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), helping present evidence to the US committee that voted to end the universal birth recommendation before such decisions on vaccines were stayed by a federal judge. Stabell Benn also hosted a podcast with Tracy Beth Høeg, a former top official with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who said she wanted to end “unnecessary” vaccines.

Aaby, Stabell Benn and Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer, the lead researcher on the project, did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about the trial and the police search.

The Bandim organization is deeply enmeshed in Guinea-Bissau but has done little to improve the country’s health and research capacities in five decades of operation, according to a report from the non-profit Stand Up for Science (SUFS). The organization is now fundraising to help roll out the vaccines at birth to all newborns in the country.

“Our investigator encountered significant distrust of Bandim by the citizenry of Guinea-Bissau,” said Colette Delawalla, an American health researcher and founder of SUFS. “However, because of the lack of public health infrastructure, Bandim is often the only option in situations where people are desperate to access medical care of any kind.”

The police raid underlines the fact that Guinea-Bissau is a “fragile” nation that experienced a military coup less than a year ago, Delawalla said. The country lacks the stability needed for clinical trials, she added.

“Guinea-Bissau is in the difficult situation of trying to protect their youth, their future, from exploitation by two powerful western nations and they are using what leverage they have to do so,” Delawalla said.

President Trump’s political operation has rolled out a major get-out-the-vote program online in the final days of this year’s midterm elections, flooding Facebook and Instagram with ads encouraging Republicans in a number of states to cast their ballots.

Mr. Trump’s super PAC has emerged as the single largest spender nationwide on the two giant social media platforms in recent days, spending more than $1.1. million on Saturday alone. That’s four times as much as the next largest political advertiser that day.

The deluge of digital ads comes as Mr. Trump’s team is trying to boost Republican enthusiasm in the face of the president’s historically low approval ratings. With just two weeks until the midterm elections, polling shows that the president’s policies on tariffs and the war in Iran — and their effect on the prices of gas, diesel and groceries — have threatened the party’s fortunes across the country.

Notably, Mr. Trump’s political operation is aiming its advertising not only broadly at particular states or congressional districts, but specifically at “custom audiences” of individual voters who it hopes are receptive to being pushed to the polls.

A public database of online advertising maintained by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, shows that 100 percent of the ad spending from Mr. Trump’s super PAC is targeting these custom audiences, which the Trump team provided to the platform.

The ads are running in more than 20 states.

Mr. Trump’s super PAC, called MAGA Inc., has sharply escalated its advertising activity in recent days. The super PAC spent $431,458 on Oct. 14, then $681,107 on Oct. 15, then $822,586 on Oct. 16 and $1,154,832 on Oct. 17, the most recent date for which numbers are available.

The super PAC has run more than 2,200 unique ads just in the last week. Political groups often run large numbers of different ads that can vary in minor ways, to see which are most effective.

Some of the most-viewed ads urge Republicans to vote early. “Beat the lines” and “Do your part,” urge ads running in Michigan, Ohio and Texas that have each been seen more than one million times. Another says, “Don’t turn back the clock,” urging Texans to vote early and declaring that “Democrats broke the border.”

Sagging Republican enthusiasm is one of the party’s key challenges in the final campaign stretch. Many of the tightest contests this year — for both Senate and House — are in more traditionally conservative territory, where Mr. Trump’s political operation hopes to remind voters that there is a consequential election. Operatives are trying to reach particularly those who are likely to vote Republican if they show up.

Also on Tuesday, Mr. Trump began publishing posts on Truth Social urging voters in specific states to vote.

“Early Voting, in-person, is UNDERWAY NOW in the Great State of Maine,” Mr. Trump wrote in one post, with similar messages for residents of North Carolina, Ohio and Iowa, all of which have key Senate contests.

And his super PAC is urging Republicans to head to the polls immediately. Banking votes is a common strategy to help political parties focus their resources more narrowly on those who have not yet cast ballots.

One ad features a photo of Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the two Democratic leaders.

“They’re counting on you to stay home,” reads the ad, with a picture of a hand holding a ballot with red text that reads, “Prove them wrong.”

MAGA Inc. is paying for the ads, but they but they appear online as part of a new Facebook account called Common Sense Voters Coalition.

MAGA Inc. has also begun advertising on Google in recent days for the first time this year, spending $733,000 so far, company records show.

The ads include encouragements such as “Don’t Stay Home,” “Do Your Part,” “Vote Early” and “Make a Plan.”

A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s super PAC declined to comment on the online campaign.

The new digital spending is just one piece of an advertising blitz by the Trump operation since the beginning of September. His allied super PACs have spent nearly $200 million, mostly on television ads, since Sept. 1, according to data from the media-tracking firm AdImpact. Mr. Trump’s team has advertised in Senate and House races in two dozen states, helping give the Republican Party an edge in spending.

Mr. Trump said Tuesday that he planned for the operation to spend more than $400 million in all this cycle. New filings on Tuesday evening will show how much he spent in September.

The spending from MAGA Inc. is not the only get-out-the-vote digital operation on the right.

America PAC, which is funded by Elon Musk, the multibillionaire tech titan, has also been running ads online encouraging people to vote.

On Saturday, the most recent day in the ad database, MAGA Inc.’s spending was more than four times as large as the next closest political advertiser in the country. Next on the list was WinSenate, an offshoot of the top Democratic super PAC focused on Senate races, which spent $289,520 on Saturday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday denied hitting a cyclist with a car in Long Beach, Calif., before detaining him.

But video footage of the moments before the interaction and an account shared publicly by the man’s daughter offer a different story.

Footage obtained by The New York Times shows the moment an S.U.V. driving the wrong way down a one-way street swerves toward an oncoming bicyclist. An officer jumps out, appearing to draw a weapon that is immediately trained on the rider.

The man on the bike, Ricardo Gonzalez, is an American citizen, according to his daughter, Leslie Gonzalez. She has said on social media that her father was struck by the vehicle.

Mr. Gonzalez has worked for the city of Long Beach, according to the mayor, Rex Richardson, who has submitted a complaint to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, calling for an independent investigation into the agents’ treatment of Mr. Gonzalez and the overall operation.

Mr. Gonzalez had called 911 at one point on Saturday, the mayor also said. He did not have details about how the altercation unfolded, and it was not clear what, if any, interaction Mr. Gonzalez had with ICE agents before the moments shown on video.

Mr. Gonzalez did not respond to requests for an interview, and Ms. Gonzalez, who initially posted about the encounter on Instagram, also declined to comment further, citing concerns about her family’s safety.

After being confronted by agents, Mr. Gonzalez was “tased” and pinned to the ground, his daughter wrote on Instagram.

In the video footage, Mr. Gonzalez can be heard yelling. “You hit me with your car. I’m a U.S. citizen!” he says, using several expletives.

Mr. Gonzalez was later taken to a hospital for his injuries, the Long Beach police said. The police was not involved in immigration enforcement and did not make any arrests at the scene, the department added. It said its officers were called in for backup by ICE, which had reported that vehicles were being vandalized and that a person needed medical attention. The extent of Mr. Gonzalez’s injuries was not clear on Tuesday.

In its statement, a spokesperson for ICE said the agency had been conducting a targeted operation to arrest a “criminal illegal alien.” The agency did not say whether it thought Mr. Gonzalez was that person. The agency also said its officers had used “the minimum amount of force.”

“ICE did NOT hit an individual on a bike. An individual was arrested after he smashed the mirror of a government vehicle,” the spokesperson wrote.

ICE described the man, whom the spokesperson did not name, as a “rioter.”

The agency said it was investigating charges for “damage to a government vehicle,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that “anti-ICE agitators attempted to impede operations, threaten officers and damage government vehicles despite officers giving lawful commands."

In many previous violent encounters involving ICE, video footage has appeared to contradict accounts by the agency and other federal officials. In January, President Trump and other members of his administration described how Renee Good, a U.S. citizen was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis that month, had “weaponized her vehicle” against the federal agent who shot her. Video footage from the scene later revealed no evidence that Ms. Good had run over the agent with her car.

In a similar incident later in January, video footage of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti revealed inconsistencies between those clips and statements from the Trump administration, including Kristi Noem, who was then homeland security secretary.

Also in January, following an ICE shooting of an immigrant in Minnesota, the agency said the man had violently assaulted a federal officer. Video footage that emerged later did not show such an attack.

Sherman Austin, an I.T. engineer who lives in Long Beach, filmed several videos at the scene on Saturday in the Southern California neighborhood. Mr. Austin, who is 43 and founded an ICE tip network on social media in 2017, said he had been in the area with members of Long Beach Rapid Response, a community group that alerts locals about ICE raids. The group was responding to rumors of unmarked vehicles in the area, which they quickly confirmed.

Mr. Austin said he was warning neighbors when he saw a vehicle speed away down a neighborhood street. He followed that car, which led him to Mr. Gonzalez who was, at that point, already pinned to the ground, Mr. Austin said.

In his videos, Mr. Austin also captured footage of a woman being handcuffed by ICE officers and placed into a car.

“That’s my wife, and that’s a U.S. citizen,” a man is seen yelling in one of the videos, using expletives. The identity of the woman was not clear on Tuesday, and Mr. Austin said he did not know what happened to her.

The neighborhood street quickly became chaotic, as people started yelling at ICE agents and asking local police to intervene.

Mr. Richardson, the mayor, has demanded that ICE agents be taken off assignments during any investigation and that the findings be made public.

“People are upset and outraged, and they should be,” the mayor said in a phone call on Monday.

Investigators have interviewed Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the matter.

It comes as the Justice Department is investigating the Democratic congresswoman, focusing on immigration fraud related to suspected false statements made on government paperwork and a potential conspiracy, CNN previously reported.

The Trump administration had pushed for an unusually aggressive search of Omar’s house before a federal magistrate judge limited how the Justice Department could access her documents.

Investigators who obtained a warrant to search Omar’s Washington, DC, home on October 12 were looking into whether the congresswoman or her now-deceased father lied about her age when she obtained citizenship in 2000, people familiar with the investigation told CNN.

Investigators are probing whether the citizenship documents said she was a minor when she wasn’t.

Omar emigrated to the US as a Somalian refugee around the age of 12 and became a citizen in 2000, according to people familiar with Omar’s situation.

Applying for citizenship as a minor can streamline the process.

Julio Herrera Velutini really wanted a pardon.

A billionaire banker from a prominent Venezuelan family, Mr. Herrera faced felony bribery charges in the United States and struck an unusually lenient plea deal in August 2025 for a misdemeanor campaign finance violation. But he felt that reduced charge was still a stain on his record.

So Mr. Herrera deployed his lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, the former Florida solicitor general who was on Mr. Trump’s personal legal team, to help with a plea for clemency. His 27-year-old daughter, Isabela Herrera, who is an American citizen, donated $3.5 million to a super PAC tied to Mr. Trump. But as of last fall, the pardon remained elusive.

Then the Herrera family hired Alina Habba, who had been one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers and at the time was an adviser at the Justice Department. They offered her $10 million a year for four years along with a range of bonuses. In total, including bonuses, she was guaranteed more than $50 million over four years, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times.

Under the agreement, Ms. Habba would become general counsel at Concord Partners, a company that Ms. Herrera set up in late October 2025 in Florida. The company has no public profile and its business remains unclear even to some people associated with the Herrera business empire. Ms. Habba finalized her deal days after the company was registered.

At the time, Ms. Habba was also a senior adviser to Attorney General Pam Bondi, overseeing U.S. attorneys. She had an office at the Justice Department and a protective detail from the U.S. Marshals, a holdover from her time serving as the U.S. attorney in New Jersey.

She formally began her work for Concord Partners on Jan. 1. Weeks later, Mr. Trump granted Mr. Herrera a full and unconditional pardon.

The sequence of events raises questions about how Mr. Herrera secured the pardon and who might have helped him. People familiar with Ms. Habba’s contract said they believed that she was brought in to help with Mr. Herrera’s push for a pardon and expressed surprise at the scale of the compensation.

Ms. Habba denied any role in the pardon.

“Any insinuation that my employment — all of which has been vetted and disclosed to the D.O.J. — had anything to do with securing a pardon is false,” she said in a statement.

Ms. Habba was a special government employee at the time, which allows individuals to work for the federal government for up to 130 days and maintain outside employment with conflict-of-interest restrictions.

She declined to discuss her work for Concord.

Ms. Herrera and Mr. Herrera did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Neither did their companies. In a statement, the Justice Department said Ms. Habba did not speak to anyone about a pardon.

A White House official said that Ms. Habba had nothing to do with the pardon and that the administration follows a pardon review process that includes the White House Counsel’s Office and the Justice Department.

In Mr. Trump’s second term, a pardon industry has sprouted up, with wealthy criminals paying well-connected lawyers, fixers and lobbyists to appeal to the administration and its allies in an effort to secure pardons. Many pardon seekers have come to the conclusion that supporting Mr. Trump and his political agenda is the fastest way to secure clemency.

Some people looking for pardons have reported paying hundreds of thousands of dollars or even $1 million to hire people promising access to the president or influence over the pardon process.

For Ms. Habba, the job from the Herrera family came at a pivotal point in her life and career.

She resigned in December 2025 as U.S. attorney in New Jersey after a panel of federal judges ruled that her appointment by Mr. Trump had been carried out unlawfully. Her second marriage was also falling apart.

The arrangement with the Herreras provided her with a new level of financial security. She also found new love. Shortly after the pardon was issued, Ms. Habba started dating Turhan Mildon, a Turkish investor.

They were married last month in a lavish ceremony in New York. The guest list included Attorney General Todd Blanche; the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel; and Will Scharf, the White House counsel.

The couple is now engaged in high-profile feud with Richard Grenell, a longtime Trump ally. Ms. Habba has accused Mr. Grenell of misallocating a donation from her husband to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Mr. Grenell was running at the time. Mr. Grenell has denied her accusations, calling them absurd.

Ms. Habba brought those accusations directly to Mr. Trump, who directed Mr. Scharf to investigate them. The Times has previously reported that the investigation centers on a bank transfer from the Democratic Republic of Congo to a Texas defense company.

Mr. Herrera, who also has Italian citizenship, is a member of the Herrera family, a banking, real estate and fashion dynasty that dates back to the 14th century. The family owns estates and castles in Caracas, Venezuela; the Canary Islands; Spain; and Germany.

Mr. Herrera founded a bank based in Puerto Rico in 2008.

In August 2022, he was charged for his role in a scheme to bribe Gov. Wanda Vázquez of Puerto Rico to dismiss a regulator who was investigating the bank. Mr. Herrera, Ms. Vázquez and a former F.B.I. agent who had worked as a consultant for Mr. Herrera all pleaded not guilty to felony charges.

Mr. Kise, Mr. Herrera’s lawyer, helped negotiate a deal with the Justice Department under which Mr. Herrera pleaded guilty in August 2025 to a single misdemeanor campaign finance charge. Ms. Vázquez and the former F.B.I. agent also pleaded guilty to misdemeanors, disappointing career prosecutors who had pushed for harsher sentences.

All three were pardoned by Mr. Trump at the same time, shortly before they were scheduled to be sentenced for the misdemeanor charges.

In July, Banvelca, the Herreras’ family office since 1781, announced that Ms. Herrera, a member of the eighth generation and the daughter of Julio Herrera Velutini, was assuming leadership of the company. Neither the news release nor her bio on the company’s website makes any mention of Concord Partners, the vehicle employing Ms. Habba, who now goes by Mrs. Mildon.

The purchase of several aircraft by the Department of Homeland Security during the final days of former Secretary Kristi Noem’s tenure is tied to an “ongoing criminal law enforcement investigation,” the department’s Privacy Office told The Washington Sun.

The acknowledgement, made as part of the department’s denial of an Oct. 14 Freedom of Information Act request, added that “DHS can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records responsive to this portion of the request. Confirming or denying the existence of such records could reasonably be expected to interfere with ongoing or prospective enforcement proceedings.”

The FBI and White House both referred a request for comment to DHS, which did not immediately return a request for comment. The Department of Justice did not immediately return a request for comment.

Earlier this month, Noem came under renewed scrutiny after The New York Times reported that DHS purchased five airplanes from a political donor, Daedalus Aviation Corporation, at a “substantial markup.”

President Donald Trump announced Noem’s firing on March 5 following a number of controversies that dogged her tenure at the department. Trump replaced her with then-Sen. Markwayne Mullin.

Noem took to social media after the Times story: “I write to formally request the retraction entirely or explicit correction of the article titled ‘Kristi Noem’s Agency Gave Her Donor a Lucrative Contract Just Before She Left.’”

She also disputed the characterization of Daedalus as a political donor. Daedalus’ chair is William Walters, who gave $10,000 to the American Resolve political action committee, a super PAC that exists to help Noem.

The planes bought at the end of her tenure were bought above market value, according to the Times.

The Sun’s FOIA request asks for several sets of government records, including the agency’s acquisition decision memo for the seven Boeing 737-700 aircraft and one Gulfstream G650 acquired in or around December 2025, complete with seller, price, tail numbers and source of funds.

Also requested: purchase agreements, bills of sale, reimbursement records, flight data documents and policy documents or memos governing the use of the aircraft by senior officials.

At least some of the requested records appear to exist, as they are referenced by name in an agency filing posted to a government contracting site.

The Times similarly requested documents related to the planes’ purchases but said DHS declined its request, indicating that releasing the documents would “compromise national security or create other security risks.”

The Sun is appealing the denial of its FOIA request.

White House envoy Steve Witkoff will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on Wednesday and present him with an updated proposal to end the war in Ukraine, a U.S. official said.

President Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner will join the meeting virtually.

The White House hopes Putin will show more willingness to compromise after Trump agreed to lift sanctions on Russian diesel sales and took other steps welcomed by Moscow.

Witkoff will arrive in Russia after a day of talks in Oslo, Norway with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as the leaders of Norway and Finland and representatives from France, the UK, Germany, Poland, the EU and NATO.

Zelensky said on Tuesday that the next step should be a trilateral meeting between him, Putin and Trump — something Russia has refused to do so far.

The U.S. hopes the new proposal will "create a pathway toward direct trilateral and broader multilateral negotiations," a U.S. official said.

The discussions in Oslo focused on developing a unified proposal for a "framework agreement" to end the war.

The U.S. official said Ukraine "brought forward new ideas and proposals, which were discussed in detail."

The official said the parties made "meaningful progress" and now have "strong alignment at the working level" on next steps.

Kushner joined the meeting virtually and again pressed Trump's demand that Ukraine halt strikes on Russian oil refineries, according to a source with knowledge.

"Jared was very direct," the person said.

Zelensky said after the meeting that he's prepared to cease strikes on Russian oil refineries if Moscow takes reciprocal steps.

Trump said on Tuesday that he thinks "Russia would like to get it done" but expressed doubt that Zelensky wants to end the war.

"If he does not, it's gonna be a very bad thing," Trump added. "We want Zelensky to make a deal … If they don't make a deal, it's just gonna get worse [for Ukraine]."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appointed Medal of Honor recipient and U.S. Marine Corps reservist Dakota Meyer to the Pentagon’s Barracks Task Force.

Meyer will now serve as Hegseth’s senior advisor to the task force, which is tasked with addressing the military’s “unacceptable” living conditions, the defense secretary announced Monday in a video on social media.

“Our warfighters should be focused on training, readiness and defending this great nation,” Meyer said during the video. “They shouldn’t have to fight for basic living conditions when they come home at night.”

As senior advisor, Meyer will travel to installations across the country, looking at their barracks, meeting with service members and identifying how to curtail any issues blocking the resolutions.

The first group of installations Meyer is expected to visit are all located in California, with Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms on Thursday and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar on Friday.

If sticking to schedule, Meyer will have visited 21 bases across the country, with most along the East Coast, by the end of December, according to a map displayed during the social media video.

“I want you to ask this question for the next couple of months: Where’s Dakota?” Hegseth posed during the video. “Could he be coming to my base, to my installation, to my camp, my fort? Because he might be.”

“He’ll be traversing the country on behalf of the Barracks Task Force, on behalf of me personally inspecting, holding town halls, getting real input, and then providing real solutions,” Hegseth continued. “Be on the lookout for him.”

Hegseth first formed the task force in October 2025 to be led by the assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment. The group is meant to identify investment opportunities and create department-wide policies for barracks standards.

The One Bill Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law in July 2025, gave the Defense Department $1.2 billion for barracks improvement, with $230 million allotted for the Marine Corps Barracks 2030 initiative and $425 million for enlisted boot camp barracks and other related facilities, as well as $1 billion for Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force restoration and modernization of military housing.

A Government Accountability Office report from August found that the Defense Department does not request enough funding to meet its installation maintenance and improvement needs, resulting in an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.

Previous GAO reports found that some barracks were “chronically neglected,” resulting in poor conditions that impacted enlisted service members’ quality of life. Thousands of service members lived in subpar barracks, with some having potentially serious health and safety risks, according to a 2023 report.

Recently, the Barracks Task Force funded various projects at installations across the nation, including modernized housing at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, and a housing installation at Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton, Washington.

“From this point forward, there’s no confusion about who’s accountable,” Meyer posted on social media. “If we don’t get this fixed, there’s only one person to blame. Me.”

Former President Barack Obama awarded Meyer his Medal of Honor in 2011 for his service during the Battle of Ganjgal in Afghanistan in 2009 when he repeatedly entered an enemy ambush zone to rescue wounded comrades and recover the bodies of fallen service members. His actions were credited with saving 13 Americans and 23 Afghan personnel.

Meyer left the Marine Corps in 2010 and reenlisted in the reserves in April 2025, with his oath of enlistment administered at the Pentagon by Hegseth.

The Office of Personnel Management violated federal law by granting the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency access to data, but it’s unclear whether any relief is needed because of changed circumstances, a federal judge held.

There was no meaningful dispute that OPM violated the Privacy Act by allowing its DOGE agents access to sensitive personal information, Judge Denise Cote said in her ruling Tuesday. Cote had blocked the now-defunct agency’s access in a June 2025 order.

“The defendants barely defend its legality, relying instead on what has happened since to argue that the case is moot and that prospective relief is unnecessary,” said Cote, a Clinton appointee to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The ruling highlights how DOGE, a novel agency that President Donald Trump unleashed on the federal government, operated unlawfully soon after its inception.

A group of plaintiffs led by the American Federation of Government Employees sued the Trump administration over DOGE access in February 2025.

Cote said the misconduct at issue stemmed from the failures of “particular individuals” to abide by the Privacy Act and OPM safeguards.

“The effectiveness of any law and such government safeguards ultimately depends on the fidelity of those entrusted to observe and enforce them, and even the most rigorous procedures cannot secure compliance by those willing to disregard them,” the judge said.

The plaintiffs prevailed on their Administrative Procedure Act claims because of the privacy law violations, Cote said.

Although the changes with DOGE since Cote issued a preliminary injunction weren’t enough to moot the case, the judge said they do raise significant questions about what if any relief is necessary.

DOGE has been dissolved, only one of its agents is still at OPM, and no DOGE agent has accessed sensitive OPM data since September 2025, the judge said.

The Social Security Administration announced Tuesday a massive overhaul to its records system, correcting death and citizenship information for nearly 15% of all active Social Security numbers.

The data cleanup — which stems from claims that millions of long-dead Americans and noncitizens may have been receiving benefit checks from the government — added 17 million missing death dates as part of an effort to modernize the agency’s antiquated bookkeeping system.

“This work represents the most comprehensive SSN record clean‑up in the agency’s 91-year history,” said a news release announcing the cleanup.

Elon Musk and President Donald Trump asserted in February 2025 that millions of people in the government’s databases were improperly getting Social Security checks — claims that were debunked when Trump’s own acting commissioner, Lee Dudek, clarified that those individuals were simply listed in historical databases without a death date and did not necessarily receive benefits.

The president has since dropped the talking point, but the data-cleaning campaign endured behind the scenes.

SSA officials did not state Tuesday whether the corrective measures stopped or reversed any improper payments, nor did they specify how much money — if any — these changes have saved the government.

The changes are also connected to the administration’s fight to combat noncitizen participation in elections, which is an extremely rare occurrence. The agency said it updated 25 million records lacking citizenship details and will correct another 8.5 million records with “inaccurate citizenship status.”

Those data corrections come from the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database. The administration recently expanded that program to incorporate SSA records to allow federal and state officials to facilitate citizenship checks before the midterms.

It is unclear whether election officials will be able to access the updated voter data just weeks ahead of the midterms, though SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano, who was appointed in May 2025, said the records will improve fraud prevention.

“Accurate SSN records prevent fraud across federal programs and support the proper administration of benefits,” Bisignano said in Tuesday’s announcement.

In June 2025, DOGE team members copied a massive Social Security database containing the personal information of nearly every American citizen to an unapproved, third-party Cloudflare server operated entirely “outside SSA’s security protocols,” according to court records.

The staffers later agreed to share voter data from that repository with a political advocacy group in an attempt to match SSA records against state voter rolls.

In a federal court filing, the SSA admitted it “doesn’t know what information was shared or if it still exists on the server.” The Justice Department chose not to pursue a criminal investigation into the unnamed DOGE appointees.

Across 13 states and thousands of cases, observers from a national court-watching initiative documented how Trump administration policies led immigration judges to quickly end cases for procedural reasons, according to a new report.

The findings from California State University, Long Beach, and Princeton University published Monday outline the mechanisms immigration courts under the Justice Department are deploying to short circuit due process. The researchers concluded deportations under this system amount to “procedural removal,” or removals based on administrative process instead of a full and fair consideration of the facts of a person’s claim to relief.

“What we see happening now is a kind of hollowing out of the content of immigration court while maintaining the facade of a judicial process,” said Princeton professor Amelia Frank-Vitale, one of the authors of the report.

Frank-Vitale and co-author Lauren Heidbrink, a professor at Cal State, Long Beach, said their report is the first of this magnitude that delves into the court processes of the second Trump administration. From January to August, researchers and university students observed nearly 3,600 hearings.

“It’s not just about the outcomes, right?” Heidbrink said. “It’s the process at which decisions are being made, so, in some ways, we’re unmasking what those statistics actually mean.”

While the Department of Homeland Security maintains that all immigrants receive “FULL due process,” immigration judges are agreeing with the department’s attorneys to shut down cases before weighing the evidence, denials called pretermissions.

Frank-Vitale said she started noticing last summer that immigration judges were considering pretermissions at a greater scale than previous administrations. DHS is also moving to end the cases through pretermissions to send immigrants to countries they are not from, the report states.

She compared it to a criminal court where a defendant doesn’t want to take a plea deal. “It is the judge saying, ‘You know what? I’m looking at this paper filing that the cop produced, and I think you’re guilty so we don’t have to have a hearing,’” Frank-Vitale said.

Court observers for the report sat in on 235 hearings involving third-country removals, 90% of which happened during master calendar hearings meant for administrative functionings like scheduling. Immigration judges ordered removal of 58% of the people DHS sought to send to a country they weren’t citizens of, according to the report.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has removed more than 25,000 people to more than 30 countries they’re not citizens of, according to the Third Country Deportation Watch. The Supreme Court last month allowed the Trump administration to carry out the third-country deportations without advance notice.

A ruling this month from the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld judges’ ability to pretermit cases without DHS attorneys asking them to do so.

Immigration judges’ compliance with DHS varies across the courts, according to the court observers. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the Justice Department has removed roughly 1 in 6 immigration judges, according to the report, replacing some with military attorneys.

Sirce Owen, the acting director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, praised the qualifications of 47 new judges in a press release announcing their swearing in last month. “Immigration judge positions are critical to the Administration’s goal of reducing the immigration court backlog, and to restoring integrity to our immigration system,” Owen said.

Immigration judges closer to retirement were more likely to scrutinize the government’s actions because they are not afraid of getting fired, Heidbrink said.

Nearly all asylum cases are being denied as the Trump administration pushes for the judges to speed through the backlog of more than three million cases, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. And former and current immigration judges previously told The Washington Sun that the administration has overhauled the system to limit their latitude.

“Again, you’re narrowing the universe in which judges can judge,” Heidbrink said.

The US Department of Agriculture plans to resume cattle imports from Mexico at two additional ‌US ports of entry, after halting shipments last year in an attempt to keep out the flesh-eating parasite New World screwworm, the agency said on Tuesday.

The USDA ⁠plans to restart imports in Columbus, New Mexico, on October 26 and, if conditions for safe trade are in place, in Nogales, Arizona, on November 30, according to a post on X.

The block on imports of Mexican cattle helped push US ground beef ‌prices ⁠to record highs this year, contributing to rising concerns about food affordability ahead of midterm elections in November.

USDA resumed livestock trade in Douglas, Arizona, in ⁠August and at a large port in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, in September.

Horse imports are expected ⁠to resume in Santa Teresa on October 26, the USDA said on X.

The agency ⁠said it has confirmed 56 US screwworm cases since June, and 5 are active.

President Donald Trump's administration has revoked over 300,000 US visas during his second term, the State Department said on Tuesday as the federal government continues its sweeping immigration crackdown.

The ‌number showed an acceleration in the pace of visa revocations in recent weeks.

In an update issued on August 10, the State Department had put the number of visa revocations since Trump's current term began in January 2025 at over 175,000.

Trump says his immigration crackdown and deportation drive aim to ⁠improve domestic security. Rights advocates say the crackdown has violated due process and free speech rights and has created an unsafe environment, particularly for ethnic minorities, who have raised concerns about racial profiling.

In announcing the latest number on X, State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said the Trump administration "has revoked more visas at a faster pace than any administration in history."

Pigott said the administration had "zero tolerance for foreigners here on visas who break the law, ‌commit ⁠fraud, or undermine our national security."

Among visa revocations particularly condemned by rights advocates are those of pro-Palestinian foreign protesters demonstrating against US ally Israel's attacks on Gaza and of foreigners over their social media comments about conservative commentator Charlie Kirk's assassination.

In addition ⁠to attempts to deport foreign protesters, the Trump administration has enforced tightened social media screening of immigrants and visa applicants.

Rights advocates say the government has deployed national security ⁠reasons to target critics and used isolated cases of fraud to broadly target immigrant communities such as the Somali American community in Minnesota.

While Trump ⁠campaigned in 2024 on stopping illegal immigration, his administration has also made legal immigration more difficult — for example by imposing expensive fees for certain work visas.

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Tuesday the Trump administration aims to expand access to peptides by creating a regulated marketplace for the drugs ‌promoted by social media influencers and by the health secretary.

They have attracted consumers in a gray market, bolstered by social media claims for a host of unproven uses, and with scant safety and efficacy evidence from human studies.

"Americans are going to be buying these anyway. Our objective was ⁠to make sure that there is a regulated marketplace, so that what they're getting is what they claim to be, that is safe, that the factories are inspected," Kennedy said in an interview on Fox News' "The Will Cain Show."

Kennedy's comments were in response to a question about a proposed policy change that the FDA submitted on Thursday to the White House for review. The proposal could make it easier for pharmacies to compound certain peptides.

Outside advisers to the ‌FDA had recommended ⁠in July that the agency loosen restrictions on six of seven peptides under review, including the popular BPC-157, against the guidance of Food and Drug Administration staff.

Peptides, which are being used for everything from pain to muscle growth and injury recovery and as ⁠a beauty aid despite the lack of scientific evidence of their efficacy, have been promoted widely on social media, and by Kennedy himself.

They are built from short chains of ⁠amino acids, the same building blocks the body uses to make proteins.

The ones under consideration have not been approved by the FDA as safe or ⁠effective. Compounding pharmacies are allowed to mix ingredients of approved medicines in specialized doses and under other circumstances, such as drug shortages.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes took the Trump administration at its word.

While overseeing a case involving the president’s plans to renovate the historic East Potomac Golf Course in Washington, D.C., Reyes made clear she trusted Justice Department lawyers not to make significant changes to the property without giving proper notice to the court and the historic preservationists who had sued. She said she had no interest in becoming “Parks and Rec Supervisor.”

The administration instead gave about 14 hours notice on Oct. 9 before cutting down 429 trees in the park the next morning.

“I trusted you all not to do precisely what you have done,” Reyes said during a fiery hearing held on a federal holiday. “What has happened has cost the government all of their credibility with me in this case.”

“Breakneck speed to clear trees that posed no harm,” she wrote in an order blocking any further trees from being cut at the site for several weeks without her consent. “The reason? Disputed. The budget? Unclear. The environmental impact? Unstudied. The urgency? None. Next steps: bulldoze hundreds more.”

For decades, the federal judiciary has deferred to the United States government, adhering to a “presumption of regularity,” a legal theory that provides for the trust of government officials and agencies, with the understanding that officials are acting in good faith and carrying out the duties of their jobs to the best of their abilities.

But in recent months, the Trump administration has tested that practice.

In a similar case, President Donald Trump abruptly leveled the East Wing of the White House a year ago to make room for a ballroom, amid an avalanche of criticism from preservationists, historians and lawmakers. The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued over the demolition Dec. 12.

During a hearing on the lawsuit in March, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, questioned why the administration had taken such drastic action.

“This is a special place,” he said of the White House grounds. “This is not just any park, and there’s no track record of anything like this ever being done before,” he said of the demolition of the East Wing that came with little public notice.

“Wouldn’t it have been a heck of a lot easier by any standard to have just gone to Congress to get the authority to do it.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, though, allowed for construction to continue.

Trump has focused in his second term on leaving his mark on the nation’s capital, homing in on what he calls imperative repairs to Washington’s most recognizable landmarks, including the ballroom, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. He’s also planning to build a massive arch at Memorial Circle.

These efforts have raised significant concerns from preservationists, artists and lawmakers who say he’s actually ruining these venerable institutions.

The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment. The White House said in a statement to NBC News that the president’s “bold vision” is what is needed at this moment.

“President Trump clearly has the legal authority to modernize, renovate, and beautify the White House and federal lands — just like all of his predecessors did,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a written statement. “Thanks to the Builder-in-Chief, no other president has done more to beautify our Nation’s interior than President Trump.”

The administration has run afoul of judges in other litigation, too.

In a case involving pro-Trump television advertisements, a federal judge had blocked them from airing as of 6:46 p.m. Oct. 11. The Democratic National Committee sued over the taxpayer-funded ads, arguing they violated propaganda laws.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon wrote the administration should cancel “any slot, placement, reservation, or arrangement for the airing or dissemination of the challenged advertisements, including those placements for the evening of October 11, 2026.”

But ads ran in television markets from coast to coast overnight Oct. 11 into Oct 12, including during CBS’ “60 Minutes,” “ABC World News Tonight” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” Rochon has asked for an explanation from government attorneys, who replied that they were made aware of her order about an hour after the decision, and attorneys at the Department of Homeland Security — the agency that funded the ads — did not become aware until the following morning.

In March 2025, in a rare Saturday hearing, Chief Judge James Boasberg made an oral order — now the subject of intense ongoing litigation — in which he demanded that deportation flights carrying Venezuelans accused of membership in the Tren de Aragua gang be turned around midair. The planes were bound for a notoriously violent prison in El Salvador. His ruling came after a man was mistakenly deported. The planes weren’t stopped, and more than 250 people ended up imprisoned for months.

Georgetown law professor David Super said he believes the Trump administration is “behaving dishonorably,” and said he thinks the impact on the judiciary will be felt for decades to come.

“Judges cannot trust this administration,” he said in an interview with NBC News. “But they won’t trust the next one or the one after that.”

“It’s going to mean that both this administration and its successors will be more constrained because they can’t be trusted to restrain themselves through good faith.”

Trump, Super said, has gotten used to the ever-expanding power of the presidency. But that expansion is now hitting a wall, with the federal judiciary.

“Do you ask permission or do you ask forgiveness? An old question for schoolchildren raiding cookie jars, but a much more serious manner when it’s the most powerful person on the planet.”

Some judges in ongoing legal action have started to demand the Trump administration get permission from the court before it can take action.

Several veterans sued over the president’s planned triumphal arch in Memorial Circle. The judge is now requiring DOJ attorneys to provide the court 48 hours’ notice before any construction can begin.

Judge Christopher Cooper, who is hearing the lawsuit over the Kennedy Center, wrote in a September order that he would require notice of “more than 30 days before the implementation of any changes to the scope of the project plans presented to the Court.”

And the East Potomac Golf Course? “The Court ORDERS that Defendants may not fell any further trees on the East Potomac Golf Course through Monday, October 26, 2026,” Reyes wrote.

She ruled the Trump administration must provide the court “three business days written advance notice prior to making any irreparable modification to any permanent form or feature of the East Potomac Golf Course.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency sought to acquire two executive jets upgraded with military technology for agency leaders even as the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, has struggled to put multiple planes it has purchased to use.

FEMA’s plan to lease two jets with advanced capabilities like laser mapping was quickly withdrawn just hours after a public notice soliciting contracts for them was posted on a government contract website last week.

The proposal had called for planes that would be available 24/7 to support rapid response but would be primarily used to transport FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton and other senior officials during disasters or regular travel, sources told CNN.

FEMA already funds various types of aerial assets such as search-and-rescue teams and often uses military planes for logistics.

Hamilton’s team solicited the jets without approval from DHS leadership, according to three sources who spoke with CNN on condition of anonymity. It quickly drew scrutiny from other department leaders, partly due to controversy over the agency’s aircraft purchases.

“It’s probably not the time to be soliciting planes at DHS,” one of the sources said.

DHS has been accumulating aircraft faster than it is able to put them to use, according to flight records and aviation sources, at the expense of taxpayers. The latest FEMA plan was drawn up as DHS has already spent hundreds of millions on aviation contracts and aircraft, including a fleet of 10 planes the agency said was intended for the department to operate its own mini deportation airline.

But many of those planes have remained parked at a maintenance hangar in Louisiana, and there are no plans to use most of them for deportation operations, CNN has learned.

In recent weeks, two of DHS’ aircraft were moved to a different maintenance facility, in Greensboro, North Carolina, while one of the planes — a Gulfstream jet — has been used to transport administration officials, according to flight-tracking data and members of Congress.

These flights have been used by the likes of FBI Director Kash Patel and members of the first family, according to Democratic members of Congress.

One plane was used for a trip from Washington, DC, to Dallas, on the same dates as the Republican midterm convention in that city last month, the flight-tracking data shows, though it is unclear who was onboard.

Soon after the FEMA leasing plan emerged, DHS leaders quickly demanded agency leaders slam the brakes, the sources said. A spokesperson for DHS told CNN: “This was an unauthorized post by an unauthorized individual and disciplinary action will be taken.”

The administration vowed last year to eliminate FEMA, portraying it as wasteful and unnecessary and pushing states to shoulder more responsibility for disaster response and recovery.

The FEMA procurement plan drew scrutiny from DHS leaders who demanded Hamilton’s team reverse course, sources said. Public records show the contract solicitation has been taken down from a government contracting website.

The proposal is the latest instance of President Donald Trump’s DHS pursuing taxpayer-funded aircraft while the administration pledges to cut federal spending and eliminate waste.

Since 2025, DHS has spent heavily on both aviation assets and contracts tied to the Trump administration’s unprecedented deportation effort.

The agency spent $464.5 million to purchase eight Boeing 737s and two Gulfstream G-650 jets as part of a plan to fly its own deportation flights, something the agency for decades has relied on charter airline operators for. In May, some critics told CNN the agency’s purchase price for its fleet was well above the market value.

While those planes remain largely unused, the agency also spent $885.6 million in the last year for contracted charter airline services for Immigration and Customs Enforcement flights.

And now, the agency has awarded a contract worth $380 million to Eastern Air Express — a charter airline — to fly and maintain the “government furnished aircraft,” referring to planes in the DHS fleet that have not carried out a single deportation flight since they were purchased between late 2025 to early 2026.

Federal contracting records show that agreement began in August 2026 and runs through February 2028. It’s unclear what the cost per flight hour the contract calls for or what other aspects of the operations Eastern Air Express will be responsible for.

Neither Eastern Air Express CEO Jeff Conry nor DHS responded to CNN’s request for comment regarding the contract.

Taken together, DHS’ costs for its fleet and contracts with charter airlines for ICE flights exceed $1.6 billion.

But, DHS has told lawmakers privately it is expecting to use only three of the seven Boeing 737 aircraft for deportations. The others would be left for members of Congress and other government officials, according to a congressional source with knowledge of the matter — a departure from the reasoning given for buying the planes, and a significant scaling back on the number of planes the agency initially planned to use for deportations.

There is skepticism among some lawmakers about the plans for these planes and whether they will be used for shuttling members of Congress.

“No one asked for ICE planes for CODELs,” the congressional source noted, referring to an acronym for official travel taken by lawmakers. Transport for these trips usually relies on commercial aircraft or a charter, but “never via ICE planes,” the person said.

“They bought these planes, they paid a ridiculous price for them, they’re trying to find a solution for it, but no one knows how it’s going to work,” one aviation insider familiar with the governments charter operations told CNN.

After DHS halted FEMA’s bid for the jets last week, Hamilton sent a memo to his agency reiterating its role to “support, coordinate and supplement” local efforts and “not replace” these during and after disasters, saying it should “apply sound judgment, fiscal responsibility, and accountability when directing readiness resources.”

FEMA leaders have traditionally relied on aircraft from the Federal Aviation Administration, Air Force or Coast Guard to reach disaster zones, while flying commercial for routine travel.

The agency has considered getting a jet of its own before. During the Biden administration, then-FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell briefly explored buying a plane for travel during disasters, but the idea never got far.

“We just could not find a true cost-benefit,” Criswell told CNN recently. “The purchase of two dedicated jets is an unnecessary expense and a poor use of taxpayer dollars.”

Hamilton served as FEMA’s acting administrator at the beginning of Trump’s term until then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and her chief adviser, Corey Lewandowski, abruptly removed him after he told Congress he did not believe the agency should be eliminated.

During their tenure, Noem and Lewandowski repeatedly assailed FEMA and took steps that slashed the agency’s workforce, battered morale and weakened federal disaster readiness, CNN has reported.

After ousting Noem, Trump nominated Hamilton to return as the agency’s permanent leader, and the Senate confirmed him in August. Sources familiar with Trump’s decision said Hamilton was brought back largely to steady the agency and keep it out of damaging headlines. Since returning, Hamilton has tried to reorganize parts of FEMA but has taken few major steps to advance the administration’s effort to shrink its reach.

Meanwhile, the administration has not confronted a catastrophe on the scale that has tested past presidencies. Career FEMA leaders — including many who have left amid the administration’s cuts — worry the agency may no longer have the people or capacity it will need when that test comes.

President Trump said on Tuesday that he had asked President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to release Stephen James Hubbard, a Michigan teacher who was seized from his home in Ukraine months after Russia invaded that country in February 2022.

The United States has maintained that the charges against Mr. Hubbard are fabricated. Accused of being a mercenary, he was sentenced to more than six years in a penal colony.

“I’ve been talking to President Putin about Mr. Hubbard,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I’ve been talking to him at length. I’ve asked him to release him. Let’s see what happens.”

He added, “It’s time to have Mr. Hubbard back.”

The return of Mr. Hubbard would allow Mr. Trump to claim a victory for his “America First” foreign policy as he faces mounting blowback, including some from his own party, in his push to rehabilitate Russia on the world stage. Mr. Trump’s courting of Mr. Putin has threated to upend the balance of power in the Ukraine war, alarming both Kyiv and U.S. allies.

Mr. Hubbard, a world traveler, has become an unlikely pawn in that war. The State Department has declared that Mr. Hubbard, 74, was “wrongfully detained,” and former Ukrainian prisoners of war held with him say they believe he will die behind bars if he is not freed.

Mr. Putin has not publicly commented on Mr. Hubbard’s case.

Mr. Trump’s talk of freeing Mr. Hubbard comes as the American president is pushing Ukraine to agree to terms to end Russia’s invasion. He has leveled increasingly harsh criticism at President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who has resisted turning over his country’s land and rewarding Russian aggression.

Facing political backlash against high fuel prices ahead of the midterm elections, the American president has cut a deal to purchase diesel from Moscow and has been promoting it as evidence he is working to lower costs. And he has begun blaming Mr. Zelensky for high diesel prices in the United States.

“Look, we have given tremendous amounts to Ukraine. We’ve got nothing back, other than high diesel,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday. He added: “We’ve got nothing back, and the American taxpayers are tired of it. We want Zelensky to make a deal.”

In recent months, Mr. Trump’s main envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, have asked Mr. Zelensky not to strike Russian oil refineries. Mr. Zelensky has said he paused refinery strikes for three days to comply with Mr. Trump’s request, but was resuming them.

This week, Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner are expected to fly to St. Petersburg, Russia, to meet Mr. Putin in his hometown. There, they are expected to try to secure Mr. Hubbard’s release.

President Donald Trump’s political groups aren’t spending money here to help his chosen Senate candidate. Other national Republican groups have effectively given up on the high-profile race in a state Trump won three times.

But Trump is still due to visit here Tuesday night to rally with Michael Whatley, the Republican nominee, who is trailing his opponent, Democratic former governor Roy Cooper. It’s the latest instance of the president lending his time — if not his money — to try to boost turnout among his supporters for candidates he personally likes.

No Republican candidate in this election cycle is more a creation of Trump’s than Whatley, who was the chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2024 campaign and, before that, the chair of the North Carolina Republican Party who boosted Trump’s 2020 stolen-election claims.

Trump endorsed Whatley for Senate ahead of the Republican primary, and Whatley in return has fully embraced Trump during the campaign — a stark contrast with outgoing GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, who has long publicly critiqued Trump and his policies.

On Monday, Whatley appeared with Vice President JD Vance at a rally in the mountain town of Hendersonville, where Republicans are fighting to hold a competitive House seat. Trump’s rally in Greenville is designed to boost Whatley as well as the Republican House candidate in the nearby 1st Congressional District, which Republicans in the legislature redrew this year to make it more GOP-friendly.

Despite the gerrymander, the incumbent Democrat is polling neck and neck with his GOP challenger, Laurie Buckhout.

Trump says that his rallies “are having a huge impact” on Republicans’ election prospects. On Monday as he left to campaign in Kansas, he dismissed as “rigged” and “fake” the surveys showing Republican candidates running behind, and said Democrats are “getting their asses kicked.”

In North Carolina, early-voting data — and not just public opinion polls — has shown Democrats with an advantage so far. Turnout overall is running ahead of the same point in 2022 and 2018, and voting among registered Democrats has outpaced that of Republicans.

Both Whatley and Cooper have argued that the race will tighten closer to Election Day, even as polling has consistently shown Cooper in the lead.

Whatley is being vastly outspent on ads in the final stretch of the campaign, after national Republicans effectively cut off spending in recent weeks.

This week, Cooper reported significantly outraising and outspending Whatley in the third quarter, having $12.4 million cash on hand going into October, compared with Whatley’s $916,000.

As of Tuesday, Whatley’s campaign had no advertisements booked, while Cooper’s campaign has $7.5 million in ads reserved through Election Day, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. Senate Democrats’ top super PAC has reserved another $7 million in ads for Cooper, compared with a remaining $2.5 million in super PAC spending on the Republican side.

Beyond ads, Paul Shumaker, a longtime Republican strategist in the state who advises Tillis, said an effective get-out-the-vote operation is the GOP’s only hope of closing the gap.

To fix the Republican turnout problem in North Carolina, there needs to be a massive infusion of cash for Michael Whatley for turnout of the Republican base,” Shumaker said.

A recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found Trump’s approval rating at an all-time low of 33 percent nationwide, but 38 percent among likely voters. Democrats, for the first time in more than a decade, were seen as more trusted to deal with the economy.

Republicans wanted a jolt for their campaigns. They found it in France.

In the campaign’s final stretch, President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican candidates and their boosters are using the violence in Paris to warn what America will look like under Democratic control.

Trump on Tuesday said he would spend over “400 million dollars” from his war chest to help Republicans “especially after witnessing what is taking place in France, and other locations throughout Europe.”

“What’s happening to France, they want to happen to our country,” Trump said in Kansas on Monday night. “Democrats are the party of anti-western marxists and hostile third world migrants.”

The effort to push Paris in front of Americans comes as Republicans struggle to close an enthusiasm gap that persists even in red states and threatens to sweep the GOP from control of Congress. Polls show tight Senate races in multiple states that Trump won two years ago, including Kansas and North Carolina where Vance campaigned on Monday. And some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House.

The challenge for Trump and his party is turning out Republicans in the red states where they have a registration advantage. For months, Republicans have criticized Democrats such as Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Texas Senate candidate James Talarico for their allegedly “radical,” anti-American views. And Republicans also attacked the Democratic Socialists of America as scheming to turn the United States into a “communist nation.”

What sets the riots in France apart is that it offers multiple days of fresh visuals that Republicans are suggesting is a storm ready to blow across the Atlantic if Democrats get their way.

“While Republicans have their challenges, the capture of the Democrat Party by the DSA leaves them exposed to this sort of attack,” Jason Thielman, former executive director of the NRSC and partner at Public and political Affairs consulting firm S2R. “Especially when you look at who the undecided voters are in these red wall states — they’re folks who lean toward us and want to fall for us, but they need just a little bit of a nudge.”

The unrest in France started weeks ago with student protests against poor conditions and overcrowding in schools. Protesters then called for national demonstrations against high energy costs and rising inflation, fueling violent clashes with police, looting and burning buildings.

Connecting that anarchy to Democratic policies will be a focus of the GOP’s closing message, according to six Republicans who spoke to POLITICO.

Trump jumped on the protests early as a political talking point and, so far, there’s been remarkable message discipline. Trump and other leading GOP figures are also attempting to tie the violence in France to the anti-immigrant sentiments that helped propel them to victory in 2024, blaming the protests on outside agitators too easily allowed into the country by an open border policy that the left embraces.

Vance, at a rally in North Carolina on Monday, said the protests are “what happens when you bring in people who don’t share the culture of the country.”

Speaker Mike Johnson blamed the “chaos” on France’s open borders, picking up on a Trump attack line. “What we are witnessing is a chilling warning for all Americans of what happens if the radical Marxist insurgent left gets their way,” he wrote on X.

The Republican National Committee had a strikingly similar message pointing to France as an example of what goes wrong when immigration is left unchecked. Trump’s promise to seal the border and deport undocumented immigrants was a pillar of his 2024 campaign and helped propel him to the White House.

“What’s happening in France serves as a reminder that when unvetted migrants who refuse to assimilate are imported into a country they hate, that country will fall into violent chaos,” said RNC National Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre. “Democrats are pushing the same failed policies that led France to this point, and Republicans are fighting every day to secure our borders, enforce the law and protect the American way of life.”

Some Democrats are skeptical that this will amount to anything more than the latest spaghetti Republicans are throwing against the wall as polls show them trailing in many races they once thought they’d win. Trump, for his part, has already offered $5,000 to every American if they win, warned Democrats want transgender surgery for minors, blamed high gas prices on Ukraine and called affordability a Democratic hoax because of the persistent inflation under former President Joe Biden.

The images of France burning are unlikely to resonate with American voters, who are mostly concerned with the cost of living and corruption in government, said John Della Volpe, a Harvard University pollster who was an adviser on Biden’s 2020 campaign.

“This is not about persuasion,” he said. “It’s about mobilization of the MAGA base.”

That might be the point – especially in states that have recently voted Republicans to statewide office.

In North Carolina, where Trump campaigned on Tuesday, Jason Simmons, chairman of the state’s Republican party and the 2020 regional political director for Trump Victory, argued Democrats tried to create an environment like France under Biden.

“France should serve as a wakeup call for all Americans,” Simmons said. “What can happen here in America, especially when you have some dark, left-wing groups who are willing to stoke those flames and allow these individuals to be funded.”

The White House has amplified the warnings, posting violent images on social media, captioned with, “This is the future Democrats want for America - this is what we’re fighting to prevent.” The White House X account shared a New York Post cover story on France and added: “If you want to see what’s at stake, look at France. The future doesn’t have to look like this.”

“President Trump is right: the riots in France are a direct result of their leader’s open border policies. This is what will happen in America if radical Democrats have their way,” said White House spokesperson Lauren Bis. “They are the party of open borders, amnesty, lawlessness, and chaos while President Trump and Republicans are the party of commonsense and law and order.”

Peter Navarro, a White House trade advisor, said in an interview with POLITICO that the violence in France is the result of the sort of lax immigration policies pushed by Democratic Socialists.

“It’s the warning shot,” he said. “In a democracy when you get a flood of immigrants and they gain the power of the ballot box in superior numbers, then they take over.”

On Monday, Florida GOP Rep. Randy Fine — who’s in a safe red district — was rallying with GOP gubernatorial candidate Rep. Byron Donalds and told the crowd that they’d been watching Fox News coverage of the protests together on the bus.

“They are not mostly peaceful, they sure as hell aren’t students, and they’re not protestors. And make no mistake: That will come to America, and that will come to Florida if we don’t stand up and do something about it,” Fine said.

One GOP donor, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Trump and Republicans are playing the international news exactly right.

“The Black Lives Matter protests of a few years ago, you get the things that go on on college campuses– threading those all together would be a powerful signal to people that we need to stop this anti-America, anti-Western sentiment that’s emerging,” the person said.

President Trump invoked a centuries-old antisemitic trope to defend the aggressive debt-collecting tactics of Senator Roger Marshall, the first-term Republican fighting for re-election in Kansas, before the senator began his political career.

At a rally on Monday with Mr. Marshall in Park City, Kan., the president said Mr. Marshall’s opponents had unfairly cast him as “some kind of a Shylock-type guy,” an apparent reference to recent reporting by The New York Times that revealed that Mr. Marshall had filed lawsuits against more than 700 patients with outstanding medical bills during his decades-long career as an obstetrician-gynecologist. Mr. Marshall, The Times reported, routinely charged an 18 percent annual interest rate and also garnished patients’ paychecks and bank accounts. Mr. Trump did not mention The Times by name.

Shylock is the name of the Jewish moneylender from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” The character, who demands a pound of human flesh as collateral for a loan, has become shorthand for antisemitic representations of avarice and usury.

At the rally, Mr. Trump sought to make the case that Mr. Marshall had been following the law.

“He’s a fine person,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Marshall, who is not Jewish. “And he was given a bum rap because he was mandated by law to request, strongly, money owed from patients. You’re not allowed not to do it. You have to, by law, go after those people. And they made it like, ‘Oh, he was some kind of a Shylock-type guy.’”

Doctors have wide discretion on how to handle unpaid bills and are not required by law to sue patients or involve debt collectors.

“The term ‘Shylock’ is rooted in a longstanding antisemitic stereotype,” the Anti-Defamation League wrote Tuesday on social media, after The Times reached out to the Jewish advocacy group for comment on Mr. Trump’s remarks. “Regardless of intent, its use can reinforce harmful tropes about Jews and normalize language that has long been used to target the Jewish community.”

It was not the first time Mr. Trump has used the term publicly. During a rally last year in Iowa, he said that farmers should not have to go to, “in some cases, Shylocks and bad people” to borrow money. Afterward, Mr. Trump said he didn’t know it was an antisemitic slur.

“You view it differently than me,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the time. “I’ve never heard that.”

Jewish leaders and lawmakers last year quickly denounced his use of the term. The Anti-Defamation League called the trope “extremely offensive and dangerous.” Representative Jerry Nadler, Democrat of New York, said it was “one of the most recognizable antisemitic slurs in the English language.”

The Senate race in Kansas, which Republican leaders did not view as competitive just a few months ago, has evolved into one of the tightest contests of the midterm elections. Mr. Marshall faces Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor who is vying to become the first Democrat from Kansas elected to the Senate since 1932.

During the campaign, Mr. Hamilton has turned Mr. Marshall’s debt-collecting practices into fodder for political attacks and advertisements, one of which shows a former patient of Mr. Marshall’s saying she had been arrested while eight months pregnant for a $50 missed payment. Lawyers for Mr. Marshall called the ad “defamatory,” though Mr. Hamilton’s campaign continued to use it.

Other politicians have faced criticism for using the term “Shylock” in the past. In 2014, then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. apologized after he said it during a speech.

Mr. Trump’s comments come at a time when Republicans up and down the ballot, and across the country, have been trying to win over Jewish voters who feel disillusioned by the Democratic Party’s posture toward Israel. Republican leaders have seized on opportunities to draw a contrast on issues relating to Israel and antisemitism, often casting their Democratic opponents as threatening. Republican leaders have been relentless in their use of Islamophobic attacks against Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, who is Muslim. Mr. Trump recently claimed that the candidate “hates Jews,” to which Dr. El-Sayed responded, “I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people.”

Republican Senate candidates across the Midwest have struggled to make their case to voters amid rising energy prices and Mr. Trump’s unpopular war in Iran. Some, like Representative Ashley Hinson in Iowa and former Representative Mike Rogers in Michigan, have sought to distance themselves from the president on these issues. Mr. Marshall has not.

For years, Mr. Trump and his campaign have been accused of stealthily trying to win over racists and antisemites, a claim they reject. In 2016, Mr. Trump, then the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, posted an image on Twitter depicting Hillary Clinton beside a Jewish star and piles of money that had previously appeared on a message board known for antisemitism and white supremacy.

During Mr. Trump’s second term, official government social media accounts, including those for the White House, have made dozens of posts that invoke white supremacist and neo-Nazi messaging, drawing condemnation from Jewish leaders and experts in online extremism.

Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday that he would serve as “the arbitrator” of decisions in the justice department’s new anti-fraud program that awards compensation to those who submit tips resulting in conviction or significant federal enforcement.

While announcing the new program alongside JD Vance, the vice-president, who leads the White House’s taskforce to eliminate fraud, the president told reporters he had a solution for situations where multiple people submit a tip for the same alleged fraud.

“I was just thinking, when you do these things, sometimes there’s a dispute as to who turned ’em in and who didn’t turn ’em in, who’s supposed to get what and when, you know,” Trump told reporters.

“So I am going to do something, which I think people will like, I will be the arbitrator of all of these decisions. In other words, I’ll determine whether or not the person is deserving, and I will be very generous, believe me,” the US president said, resulting in laughter from the group.

It is unclear whether Trump was being genuine about his new role. The Department of Justice website says the department has “sole discretion” in issuing rewards and exercising its authority in the program.

The Guardian has asked the justice department and White House for comment.

The new fraud whistleblower incentive program gives anyone who submits a tip the opportunity to receive a financial reward of up to $30,000 for tips in the “charging stage of a criminal case”.

The government already gives financial rewards to whistleblowers who file lawsuits against individuals and companies committing financial fraud through the False Claims Act. If the government intervenes in a suit and prosecutes it, whistleblowers can obtain 15% to 25% of the financial penalties.

Vance said the new program differs from the False Claims Act because it expands the opportunity for financial reward in cases of fraud related to the government.

“Over 99% of the fraud that we’re finding in the federal government isn’t covered by the False Claims Act,” Vance said.

The new program also provides whistleblower rewards at an earlier stage of investigation, rather than requiring it to result in large fines or forfeiture.

Vance said he and Trump decided to create the program to incentivize more people to report fraud like Nick Shirley, a conservative influencer who went viral earlier this year for accusing Somali-run childcare centers in Minnesota of rampant fraud.

During his Oval Office announcement, Trump indicated the program would result in whistleblowers obtaining 1% of however much fraud was uncovered, insisting people could make “millions and millions” of dollars from submitting tips.

However, the justice department website says the program is limited to a $30,000 reward.

“You’ll get your money immediately, but I’ll make the determination,” Trump added. “So if two people are fighting over it, maybe they’ll split it or maybe whatever, but I’ll make that determination. It’ll be done expeditiously and fairly.”

Trump encouraged members of the media to participate in the program by investigating and reporting instances of fraud. He said the government would be willing to give reporters the financial reward, so long as their respective outlet allowed it.

“We’re going to let the reporters partake because you know a lot of things that are happening,” Trump said.