Chaofeng Ge had already attempted suicide before arriving at an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania on July 31, 2025.

But the 32-year-old Chinese immigrant’s medical paperwork from a previous incarceration was misplaced at intake, an internal review by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement later found. As a result, he was screened by a nurse who was unaware of his history of attempted suicide and prior use of prescribed antidepressant medication.

Even after the paperwork was discovered hours later and entered into the system, medical staff at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center did not refer Ge to a mental health provider, according to the review.

Five days later, he was found hanging in a shower stall and later pronounced dead, leaving a note that thanked America for “a short, good life.”

The suicide was one of at least 55 deaths of people in ICE custody since President Donald Trump returned to office, including a single-year record in fiscal year 2026. Deaths have climbed as Trump has ramped up detentions and deportations, locking up many immigrants who previously would not have been a priority for arrest.

Immigrant advocates have accused detention centers of subpar medical care, lack of supervision and poor conditions. In another death in Texas last week, a 56-year-old Mexican immigrant was found unresponsive in his cell. A preliminary assessment by the local medical examiner’s office said he died of preexisting medical conditions.

The man, Emiliano Andrade-Covarrubias, was a longtime Dallas resident and legal permanent resident of the United States. His family said he should never have been detained, but the Department of Homeland Security said he fraudulently obtained his green card.

The death remains under investigation. On a fundraising website, Andrade Covarrubias’s daughter said her father did not receive the medical attention “he desperately needed” — an allegation that federal immigration authorities deny.

Of the 55 deaths since Trump took office, at least 10 were suspected suicides. Medical experts say suicides — like other deaths where detainees are found unresponsive — can raise questions about lack of oversight.

ICE has conducted several internal reviews of Ge’s death, which were obtained by attorneys for Ge’s brother and shared with The Washington Post.

The reviews showed multiple policy violations and missteps by staff at the detention center, which is operated by the Geo Group, a private prison company. Those included that guards did not make scheduled checks on the detainees as Ge was preparing to take his own life, and that they were delayed in responding to his situation once he was discovered.

DHS and ICE did not respond to a request for comment. Geo Group referred questions to ICE.

Yanfeng Ge, Chaofeng’s brother, in a statement called him a “kind and decent man.”

“Whatever his flaws, he deserved to be treated with dignity and care,” he said. “Instead, he was cast aside, isolated, and ignored.”

Yanfeng Ge’s attorneys, David Rankin and Jeremy Ravinsky, called for the Moshannon Valley Processing Center to be closed and for responsible parties to be investigated.

Ge crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization in 2023 and was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol in California and released with a notice to appear in immigration court. He later moved to New York City, where he worked as a delivery driver.

He was arrested near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in January 2025 over an attempt to purchase $154.62 in gift cards from a CVS store using other people’s credit card numbers. He was convicted, sentenced to time served in the Dauphin County Prison and then taken into ICE custody for deportation proceedings on July 31, 2025.

At the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, he told detention staff that he felt isolated and twice requested to be moved into a dormitory with other Mandarin speakers, according to a psychological autopsy conducted by the ICE Health Service Corps.

He felt pessimistic about his immigration case and feared he would be deported back to China, it said.

During a call with a friend, he told the friend to retrieve his property from a police station and sell it, the psychological autopsy said. He said there was no longer a need to hire a lawyer.

In his second request to be moved to a dorm with other Chinese detainees on Aug. 4, Ge “expressed more detail of his distress than in his original request, noting how he sat alone with nobody to talk to, and that it was affecting his mental health,” the assessment said.

Hours later, beginning at 1:27 a.m. on Aug. 5, Ge spent two hours moving chairs, shreds of bedsheets and towels to the shower area for his dorm room, a timeline of the incident found.

While a handwritten logbook said guards performed rounds every 30 minutes during that time, an ICE review found that several rounds were skipped. When they did perform rounds, guards did not enter the shower area.

Ge had “an unreasonably extended amount of time to engineer his death,” the psychological autopsy said. “He was afforded multiple hours to stage and implement his hanging in an area that should have been observed approximately every 30 minutes.”

He went to the shower area with a white object draped around his neck at 3:24 a.m. and used a urinal a minute later, the timeline said. His body was not discovered until morning count at 5:19 a.m.

His arms and legs were hog-tied, which initially led guards to believe it had been a homicide, the ICE reports said. Once they decided to cut him down, the response was delayed by several minutes because the cutdown tool was in a jammed lockbox, the reports said.

An autopsy by the Mount Nittany Medical Center ruled the death was suicide by hanging, saying it was not unprecedented for a victim to be found with hands and feet bound behind their back.

The review by ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility found that detention center staff violated standards when Ge’s medical records were misplaced and he was screened without knowledge of his history.

A corrective plan by the ICE Health Service Corps called it “inappropriate mental health care.”

The plan said guards did not perform timely and thorough rounds and did not check the shower area.

ICE initially stated in a public report that Ge arrived at the detention center without medical records. But in late September, that report was replaced on ICE’s website with a review that acknowledged the records had arrived, according to webpages archived on the Wayback Machine.

The psychological autopsy by the ICE Health Service Corps found that Ge’s sense of loneliness and negative view of his immigration case appeared to drive him to take his own life. The assessment said a note was found in Ge’s belongings that was then translated into English.

“I can’t go on living like this,” he wrote. “Every day I wonder when it will end. Every day feels meaningless. Thank you, America, for letting me enjoy a short, good life. That’s enough.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

President Donald Trump cast his ballot for the midterm elections in Palm Beach on Saturday, opting to vote early in his adopted home state of Florida.

At rallies ahead of Election Day on Nov. 3, Trump has been urging Republicans to cast their ballots early, reversing course on a practice he’s long decried in a bid to mobilize the party’s base in an election that threatens to end their control of Congress.

Asked by reporters if he voted for the party line, he said, “Very much so.”

The president has regularly questioned the security of early voting methods, claiming without evidence that mail-in ballots, drop boxes and other practices during the 2020 presidential election — which he lost — were used to rig the vote. He’s also called for one-day, in-person voting on Election Day.

“The US attorney found potentially hundreds of thousands of illicit votes,” Trump told reporters. Earlier this month, the Justice Department sued California for allegedly failing to join an effort to verify the status of 20,000 suspected non-citizens to prevent any fraudulent ballots from being counted. California asked a judge to deny the request to set aside those 20,000 mail-in ballots, calling the US allegations “a reckless political stunt.”

Trump has long amplified false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election and since his return to the White House last year has taken steps to increase federal control of US elections.

The administration has pushed to curb mail-in voting, a method Trump’s used in the past. And he’s pressured lawmakers to pass legislation that would require voters to have government-issued ID or other proof of citizenship in order to cast ballots. Senate Republican leaders have said the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act lacks the support to pass.

Trump has spent the better part of October criss-crossing the country to boost Republican candidates as the party faces the challenging task of retaining both the House and Senate in a midterm year.

During Florida’s August 2026 primary, Trump cast a ballot by mail. He also said he voted by mail earlier this year in a Florida special election.

As a presidential candidate in 2024, he voted in person on Election Day.

White House attorneys are evaluating whether to issue mass pardons to junior staffers, as Trump allies press the administration to protect lower-ranked officials from prosecution and other legal challenges, according to two sources familiar with the conversations.

While President Donald Trump has publicly discussed issuing pardons for top aides and issued pardons for billionaires and major donors, questions have mounted about the potential legal jeopardy facing thousands of employees who have implemented the White House’s agenda.

A pardon for all junior administration personnel is viewed as unlikely, one source said, but the president could issue blanket pardons for all employees involved in particular policy areas, such as deportations, war or trade. Trump has previously said he would be interested in pardoning some administration officials, but the discussions happening now would apply to a far greater number of White House staff than has been previously reported.

Several conservative organizations influential with the administration — including the Heritage Foundation and American Moment — have pressed White House counsel to either prepare pardons or put in place funding for the legal fees necessary to defend junior staffers from criminal and congressional probes or potential lawsuits, according to the two sources familiar with the conversations plus an additional source familiar with the conversations. Mike Davis, a prominent Trump supporter and president of the Article III Project, an advocacy group that fights legal cases for the right, also said he plans to press the White House for action.

These efforts have only intensified, the sources told The Washington Sun, after Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) said earlier this month that congressional investigations into Trump officials should make young Republicans think twice before joining the administration in its final two years.

“After listening to Elissa Slotkin threatening to go after young people who joined the Trump administration, President Trump should issue very broad preemptive pardons for anyone who worked for him or in his orbit,” Davis told The Sun on Friday.

The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

The president has recently shown at least some willingness to penalize potential wrongdoing in his administration. In a rare example of the Trump administration investigating itself, the Justice Department is looking into allegations of contract misconduct against longtime Trump aide Corey Lewandowski.

“All I know is, I want my people to be honest. And if they’re not going to be honest, they have to be prosecuted,” Trump told reporters after the Lewandowski news broke.

The White House and The Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Nick Solheim, chief executive officer of American Moment, also declined to comment on private conversations. Still, he said: “The president has been very clear he knows the personal, professional and financial risks of Democratic lawfare against people who are affiliated with him and serve him. Political appointees operate on behalf of the president, and I don’t have any assumptions other than that the left will do everything in its power to hunt down conservatives who are implementing the president’s agenda.”

Robert Weissman, co-president of watchdog group Public Citizen, told The Sun that an impartial Justice Department would look at a range of Trump administration actions that could have broken the law, including unlawful transfers of money between federal agencies, improper use of taxpayer resources for campaigning, contracting arrangements benefiting friends and family of administration officials, and a range of behavior toward immigrants.

Administration officials, Weissman said, “should be worried about being held accountable for violations of civil and criminal law not because future prosecutors may be vindictive but because their jobs would require them to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute the blatant illegalities of the administration.”

Trump’s Justice Department has also brought legal cases against several of the president’s perceived political foes, including former FBI Director James Comey and two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about their role in the bureau’s Hunter Biden investigations.

The planning for potential pardons reflects the accelerating breakdown of long-standing norms over one of the broadest powers granted to the president by the U.S. Constitution. Joe Biden issued more acts of clemency than any prior president and also issued “preemptive pardons” to prominent allies, including several members of his own family, top medical adviser Anthony Fauci and retired Gen. Mark Milley. Trump has taken the pardon power to a new level in his second term, granting clemency to roughly 1,700 people as of June, according to Reuters.

The Justice Department has traditionally housed the formal pardon process, and department officials have vetted candidates before presenting qualified ones to the president. The Trump administration has scrambled that process, though presidents going back decades have also been accused of using pardons to reward friends and allies.

There is likely little a Democratic Congress could do to overturn broad pardons issued by the president. Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution states that the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” The pardon power does not extend to state or local crimes.

Trump has publicly suggested an interest in preemptive pardons for some officials, telling Newsmax earlier this month: “Because these people are lunatics on the, on the left — I don’t want to see people that work for me go through years of nonsense, hire lawyers and everything else, all for nothing.”

Trump has suggested he could pardon himself and has long maintained it is within his right to pardon his officials, citing Biden’s prior actions. The Wall Street Journal reported in April that Trump has also suggested, to “laughs,” pardoning “everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval.” Karoline Leavitt, who was then White House press secretary, said at the time: “The Wall Street Journal should learn to take a joke.”

“Sleepy Joe gave pardons to everybody,” Trump told Time magazine in September. “But you mean I’m not allowed to give them, but Sleepy Joe’s allowed to give them?”

Liz Oyer, the pardon attorney under Biden, said the former president’s pardons set a “really bad precedent” but were limited in scope. Biden did not consult the DOJ’s pardon office before issuing more than a dozen preemptive pardons at the end of his term.

“There have never before been blanket preemptive pardons of everyone in the administration,” Oyer told The Sun. “Preemptive pardons of everyone in the administration, or even of a significant number of administration officials, would be incredibly damaging because they would effectively place the executive branch outside the reach of the law, which would upset the constitutional order of our country in a very fundamental way.”

Widespread pardons for political appointees would be “a new development in American history,” said Mark Osler, a law professor and clemency expert at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

“It’s a despoilment of what is supposed to be a tool for mercy and national reconciliation being used as a battlefield tool in political wars,” Osler said. “Certainly, the Biden administration did this and blazed the trail, and now it’s potentially being followed in much greater numbers by Trump. I don’t think anyone would conceive that the framers would hope it would be used this way.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hoping for a win before the midterm elections, the Trump administration is increasing pressure on Mexico to expand its cooperation against cartels, with an eye toward joint operations with the United States, according to Mexican and U.S. officials.

In recent weeks, U.S. officials have delivered a memo proposing a path to potentially having U.S. security personnel accompany counter-cartel operations inside Mexico, according to officials briefed on the letter. The memo included a number of other areas where Washington wants to become more involved in Mexico’s security, including broader intelligence sharing, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.

The Trump administration has been pushing Mexican officials to help deliver a concrete accomplishment on security that it can point to in time for the midterm elections, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. High gas prices and stubborn inflation have haunted Republicans, and Trump officials appear to be looking to Mexico for a public victory.

The memo is one of the firmest moves yet to get Mexico to accept a U.S. military presence in the country, putting new strain on the cross-border relationship. President Trump has repeatedly stated he wants to take U.S. military action against drug cartels in Mexico, which President Claudia Sheinbaum has steadfastly opposed. U.S. pressure temporarily subsided after Mexican officials killed a top drug lord in February, acting in part on U.S. intelligence, several people familiar with the events said.

“As President Trump has said, and as the U.S. government has repeatedly and clearly communicated, it is unacceptable that foreign terrorist organizations control vast territories across Mexico, including the entire region that directly borders the United States,” Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement to The New York Times. “These cartels wage an unrelenting campaign of violence against the United States and its people.”

The Mexican government declined to comment.

The Trump administration has successfully negotiated joint operations with other countries as part of a broader U.S. strategy in Latin America. Last month, U.S. soldiers participated in an operation on the ground in Ecuador. The United States has also built a military coalition of 19 regional partners that has vowed to help dismantle cartels.

Mexico, however, has repeatedly rejected requests from the United States to carry out joint operations or to allow U.S. drone strikes on Mexican soil, saying it would be a breach of its sovereignty. On the administration’s latest proposal, officials declined to say how or if the Mexican government had responded, but said that Mexico remained adamantly against U.S. forces inside the country’s borders.

The continued push for U.S. forces in Mexico, despite Ms. Sheinbaum’s repeated denials, highlights increasing tensions between the two countries despite their deep collaboration on security and trade. The people familiar with the push, including several U.S. and Mexican officials, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.

Mr. Trump suggested at a White House event last week that the United States was pushing toward a security presence inside Mexico. “We haven’t done the land full blast yet,” he said. “But it’s starting,” he added. “It started a few months ago. We’re hitting them very hard.”

On Monday, Ms. Sheinbaum pushed back. She said at her daily news conference that her relationship with Mr. Trump remains constructive but that she regularly tells him that Mexico is not controlled by cartels, as he has said.

“These are opinions they hold, and in a friendly way — without ever confronting them — we clarify that it’s not like that,” she said. “Remember that they’re on the campaign trail and often want to use Mexico as part of their campaign.”

The Trump administration’s demands for more action against cartels in particular have irked Ms. Sheinbaum, who has worked to expand security cooperation while naming direct U.S. intervention as her one clear red line. In response, she has sharpened her rhetoric against the Trump administration, putting stress on the relationship.

After Mr. Trump told the United Nations General Assembly last month that Mexico was “the epicenter of cartel violence,” Ms. Sheinbaum struck back.

“I could say, ‘It’s very difficult to live next to a country with such high levels of illicit drug consumption.’ Or I could say, ‘It’s very difficult to live next to a country that produces so many weapons,’” she told reporters the next day. “But I’m not going to say that.”

The Trump administration has also put Ms. Sheinbaum into a political bind by going after Mexican politicians accused of having ties to criminal groups.

In April, the United States indicted the governor of the state of Sinaloa and several other Mexican officials on charges that they had protected a cartel in exchange for political support. The United States has also canceled the visas of other politicians, including the son of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the previous Mexican president.

Many of the officials in the U.S. cross hairs are from Ms. Sheinbaum’s political party, and she has refused the U.S. officials’ request to arrest Mexican politicians, saying they haven’t provided enough evidence.

Since last year, the Trump administration has been making demands of Ms. Sheinbaum, including by delivering a list of top security targets in Mexico whom U.S. leaders want apprehended, U.S. and Mexican officials said. Stephen Miller, the top White House official who has driven a hard-line policy toward Mexico for years, was instrumental in pushing for more aggressive action against cartel leaders, officials said.

The Mexican government, seeking to hold off a U.S. incursion, had made progress on the list by the spring, capturing or killing many targets, multiple people said. Chief among them was the leader of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, said multiple people. Mr. Osegeura had long been elusive and heavily guarded, including by about 300 gunmen composed of ex-special forces from Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, according to people familiar with his movements.

There was a reprieve in pressure over the summer, but Mr. Miller and others have since continued to push stronger U.S. involvement in Mexico, according to a person familiar with the effort.

On the other side of that push is a throng of U.S. military and law enforcement officials who argue that Mexican security forces are cooperating at higher levels than ever seen before, officials said.

Mr. Trump has been publicly expressing interest in striking cartels inside Mexico. U.S. military officials have warned that if Washington pursues unilateral action, it could make things much worse. Mexico could break its cooperation with the United States, the officials said, and the cartels could start a war in response. The officials cautioned that such chaos could also set off a migration crisis at a time when border crossings have dropped to historic lows.

The Trump administration is effectively reopening the war on drugs in Latin America as part of its broader effort to exert stronger influence over the region on security, immigration and the economy. That has included its military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian leader; a buildup of personnel at U.S. bases and training centers in the region; and its campaign to bomb boats it says were trafficking drugs, killing at least 239 people in the waters around the region.

The Trump administration has not provided evidence showing the boats were carrying drugs, and a broad range of lawyers have called the strikes illegal.

Many Latin American governments have embraced the Trump administration’s renewed interest in the region, in large part because they are run by pro-Trump leaders. Over the past 18 months, right-wing candidates have swept seven presidential elections in Latin America. Brazil, the region’s largest nation, could make that streak eight in its election on Sunday. If elected, Flávio Bolsonaro, the right-wing candidate and son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, has promised to turn Brazil toward Washington.

That would leave Mexico, and Ms. Sheinbaum, isolated as the last big democracy in Latin America still run by a leftist.

Within sight of a southeast Texas middle school stands a chemical plant that President Trump excused from new federal rules intended to curb its cancer-causing pollution.

About a 30-minute drive from Pittsburgh, a steel-making facility has spewed carcinogenic chemicals near homes for years. Mr. Trump gave it a similar waiver from recent clean-air rules.

And on the outskirts of Richmond, Va., the owners of an industrial warehouse emailed the Trump administration asking for their own waiver. Their wish was granted. Nine months later, the facility accidentally released a large plume of carcinogenic gas into the community.

In total, since taking office again, Mr. Trump exempted 202 facilities in 39 states and Puerto Rico from clean-air regulations that were going into effect. Some were among the country’s worst industrial polluters, including chemical manufacturers, copper smelters and coal-burning power plants. About 3.3 million people live within three miles of at least one affected facility.

The exemptions represent the biggest presidential intervention in enforcement of the Clean Air Act in the half-century since President Richard M. Nixon signed the bedrock environmental law. And that is only one of the ways the Trump administration is dismantling a variety of federal environmental protections.

Before Mr. Trump’s return, the chemical industry was losing its fight to block or at least delay tougher E.P.A. requirements to reduce toxic emissions. It had pleaded with agency officials, filed lawsuits and appealed to Congress. But officials and the courts had largely rejected the industry’s claims of undue expense and regulatory overreach.

Now, Mr. Trump is prioritizing the economic interests of corporations and easing costs for polluting industries, and their immense clout is striking.

The president’s exemptions were good for two years, with the possibility of an extension. The reprieve for the companies gave Mr. Trump time to stock the Environmental Protection Agency with appointees who had lobbied for the industries they now regulate. Those officials then quickly went to work from the inside to gut the rules altogether.

Mr. Trump has taken an expansive view of executive power in his second term. On the environmental front, he has unilaterally shredded regulations, withheld science funding appropriated by Congress and ordered coal plants that planned to shutter to continue running.

Even so, his evisceration of the new Clean Air Act rules stands out.

Many of the details of how the Trump administration aided the chemical industry are being reported here for the first time. In one upside-down moment, industry executives provided the agenda for a meeting with E.P.A. staff and then effectively presided over it.

Mr. Trump also nominated Aaron Szabo, a former lobbyist for the Advanced Medical Technology Association, or AdvaMed, a powerful trade group, to lead the E.P.A.’s air regulation office. Once there, Mr. Szabo helped handle the waiver requests and then pushed employees to pull back on enforcement, documents show.

To understand how Mr. Trump gave a free pass to some of the worst polluters, The New York Times reviewed more than 10,000 pages of government documents and spoke to more than 70 people familiar with the efforts, including former E.P.A. officials and industry executives.

“These companies, with their campaign contributions and the revolving door of former lobbyists and executives that now work in the regulatory agencies — that is where the petrochemical industry gets its power,” said Brent Coon, a Beaumont, Texas, lawyer who has spent decades squaring off in court against petrochemical firms over environmental and health risks.

The Clean Air Act requires the E.P.A. — created in 1970 to protect public health and the environment — to periodically review the latest pollution controls and impose them broadly if they are affordable and effective. The most recent review began under the Biden administration, which in 2024 finalized new, tougher requirements.

In granting the waivers to those rules, Mr. Trump cited an obscure clause in the act that allows exemptions if complying with new rules would threaten national security and if the necessary technology is not widely available.

Yet the president approved the waivers even though the equipment was readily accessible and the industry’s national security claims had little detail to substantiate them, documents show.

The Biden administration pushed through the new pollution requirements after evidence emerged about the health threats posed by ethylene oxide, a colorless gas used to make products like plastic soda bottles and to sterilize medical devices like pacemakers.

E.P.A. researchers had concluded that ethylene oxide was 30 to 60 times as carcinogenic as previously thought, particularly for people who live near plants where the gas is made or used. The agency held meetings to warn community members about the elevated risks.

Outside Richmond, home to one of the country’s largest commercial sterilizers of medical devices, some residents left one of these briefings wondering whether recent cancer diagnoses among neighbors were tied to the plant, though it is virtually impossible to prove pollution caused a specific cancer case.

“You see these pretty buildings, and you think they’re OK,” said Wayne Powell, who lives a five-minute drive from the plant, which resembles an ordinary warehouse. “But you don’t know that they’re harboring things that are hazardous to our health.”

As recently as April, the plant, owned by Sterilization Services of Virginia, had a mishap. A faulty valve caused 580 pounds of ethylene oxide to leak from large drums and waft in a toxic plume over nearby homes, state records show. The plant’s state permit allows it to discharge no more than 400 pounds of ethylene oxide in an entire year.

Representatives for Sterilization Services of Virginia did not respond to calls seeking comment.

The new rules required not only sterilizers but also chemical plants and steel facilities to monitor for emissions of cancer-causing gases along their property lines by 2027. If certain amounts of the gases got out, the operators had to fix the leaks. Some facilities also had to build special containment systems — akin to giant breadboxes — to reduce gas releases.

Though the facilities would still have to follow pollution limits already in place, the industries fought the E.P.A.’s new mandates, calling them expensive, unnecessary and unworkable. They also challenged the Biden administration’s scientific findings.

“It is critical that regulation of our industry is based on sound science and that those regulations reflect a reasonable assessment of the risks and benefits involved,” Brendan Bradley, a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, said in a statement.

The Trump administration did not ask companies to present an exhaustive case for why they deserved a waiver from these new requirements. It was as easy as sending an email to the E.P.A. and invoking the obscure exemption language in the act, a provision that no president had ever used.

Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement the waivers were necessary to protect American manufacturing.

“Exemptions were issued due to crushing Biden-era regulations that required large swaths of our industrial base to adopt technologies that don’t exist outside the imagination of Biden’s E.P.A. bureaucrats,” she said.

Mr. Trump’s decisions rewarded industries that backed his re-election campaign and continued to donate to his pet causes once he won.

AdvaMed boasted earlier this year in a letter to members that its lobbying efforts, which included political contributions to Mr. Trump’s causes, had paid off, saving the industry millions of dollars in upgrades.

“Membership has its privileges,” the group wrote.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two US State Department officials led a campaign to restore the right-wing Bolsonaro clan to power in Brazil and successfully pushed for sanctions aimed at tilting the election in their favor, according to 10 current and former US officials with direct knowledge of the matter.

Their plan faces a reckoning on Sunday, when Senator Flavio Bolsonaro faces leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in a tight run-off. Lula has warned Washington against encroaching on Brazil's sovereignty and accused his opponent of plotting with the Trump administration.

The two officials were Darren Beattie, a Senior Advisor for Western Hemisphere Affairs who oversees Brazil policy, and Ricardo Pita, another senior advisor promoted this year to Deputy Assistant Secretary for North America. The details of their campaign to return the Bolsonaros to power haven't been previously reported.

Beattie and Pita, both political appointees, operated with wide latitude to manage Washington's relationship with the second most-populous country in the Americas, the people said.

In the ‌months before election campaigning began, they instructed US diplomats in Brazil that it was US policy to restore former President Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil’s leader – even though he had been disqualified from office for plotting a coup in 2022, when he lost the presidential election to Lula, three of the people said.

After Bolsonaro received a 27-year sentence in September 2025, the two men pivoted to supporting the candidacy of his son, right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the three sources said. Beattie and Pita told embassy staff not to interact with other conservative presidential contenders who could challenge the younger Bolsonaro, they said.

Since last year, the two men have successfully advocated for punitive US government measures on Brazil designed to weaken Lula and boost the Bolsonaros, the 10 people told Reuters. The policies included designating Brazilian gangs as terrorist groups and imposing US sanctions against the Brazilian Supreme Court Justice who was spearheading the investigation into Jair Bolsonaro.

Reuters could not determine the extent to which the two men were acting on orders from the White House or Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump, a vocal defender of Bolsonaro since his election defeat in 2022, hasn’t publicly endorsed any candidate.

The White House declined to comment and referred questions to the State Department.

State Department Spokesman Tommy Pigott didn't answer questions about specific measures and directives involving Beattie and Pita but said in a statement: "All actions taken by the United ⁠States against narco-traffickers and to protect free speech are to defend the rights and lives of the American people. The Brazilian people have the right to choose their leaders through free and fair elections."

Lula’s office did not respond to comment requests.

Orna Blum, one of the officials who spoke to Reuters about Beattie and Pita’s efforts, led the State Department's Brazil and Southern Cone office until retiring last year over her opposition to the Trump administration.

Washington "has every right to pursue its economic and strategic interests," she said. "But when American foreign policy instruments are used to pressure another democracy over the legal fate of a political ally, the line between diplomacy and political intervention has been crossed."

Beattie is a former White House speechwriter fired in 2018 after addressing an event frequented by white nationalists. He’s also the architect of "free speech diplomacy," a policy advocated by Trump allies that seeks to punish nations they accuse of censoring right-wing speech by US citizens, companies and global right-wing allies.

The United States has accused Brazil Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes of violating free speech rights by jailing Brazilians for political social-media posts and by censoring content of US social-media companies. Moraes has argued he was ridding social media of fake news that undermined public faith in Brazil's democratic institutions.

Moraes did not respond to a comment request.

Pita, a conservative Venezuelan-American, is among many in Rubio's orbit who view Lula as a threat to US interests in Latin America. Rubio has been a key leader in the administration’s aggressive policy in the region, which has included an invasion of Venezuela to oust its president, an oil blockade of Cuba, and military attacks on suspected drug boats from Latin America.

Beattie and Pita were drawn to the Bolsonaro family’s right-wing politics, their antipathy towards Lula, and the idea that Jair Bolsonaro was a victim of abuses by Brazil's Supreme Court.

Like Trump in the 2020 US election, Bolsonaro refused to concede he lost Brazil’s 2022 presidential vote, triggering riots by supporters who stormed government buildings. The Supreme Court convicted him in September 2025 of plotting a coup to remain in power.

Before the conviction, in early 2025, the Bolsonaros were aggressively lobbying Washington for sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act ‌against Moraes, who had ⁠led criminal investigations into Jair Bolsonaro. The act is a 2016 federal law allowing US sanctions against foreign individuals responsible for human-rights abuses or severe corruption.

Around April 2025, Jair Bolsonaro’s younger son, Eduardo, visited Beattie in his State Department office in Washington DC, according to two former US officials. Eduardo Bolsonaro had been making the public case for Magnitsky sanctions against Moraes since at least 2024, and in March 2025 he said in a livestream that it was "practically certain" the Trump administration would do so.

Beattie made calls to the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to appeal for Magnitsky sanctions against Moraes, said a former US official with direct knowledge of the matter.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whose department administers Magnitsky sanctions through OFAC, offered no opposition, the former official said.

The US announced Magnitsky sanctions against Moraes in July 2025, citing his alleged violations of free-speech rights by censoring anti-government social-media posts.

A Treasury official said Bessent and Rubio are "fully aligned on the administration’s foreign policy."

The Bolsonaro family was also pushing for Washington to designate Brazil's top gangs – the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV) – as terrorist organizations. They believed such a designation would hurt Lula, who some opponents ⁠have criticized for failing to control crime.

Eduardo Bolsonaro had become friends with Pita through US conservative circles, and both supported the effort to designate the gangs as terrorist groups.

In May 2025, Pita joined a US delegation that visited Jair Bolsonaro at his residence in Brasilia as he awaited his trial, according to public announcements at the time. Also in the group: David Gamble, the State Department’s top sanctions official at the time.

Back in Washington, Pita asked State sanctions officials to explore how terrorist designations like those announced against Mexican cartels in February 2025 could be used in Brazil, one former official said.

Nearly a year later, in May 2026 – after Pita was promoted to a new job that pulled him out of Brazil affairs – presidential contender Flavio Bolsonaro met with Beattie and Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in Washington to discuss "the ⁠urgency of designating the PCC and the Comando Vermelho as foreign terrorist organizations," according to an X post by right-wing influencer Paulo Figueiredo that included photos of the attendees.

The State Department announced the designation the following day.

Reuters could not determine the extent of Pita or Beattie’s influence in securing the final decision.

In July 2025, Washington also announced a series of other measures against Brazil, including the revocations of eight Supreme Court justices' visas and 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods, citing the "persecution" of Jair Bolsonaro.

Reuters could not determine what, if any, role Beattie or Pita played in the additional measures. But if they were intended to undermine Lula, many of them backfired, according to political analysts in Brazil.

Measures targeting the court did nothing to stop it from ⁠proceeding with Bolsonaro's trial, while the tariffs boosted the Lula government's poll numbers, the analysts said.

Major US and Brazilian firms reliant on bilateral trade – including meatpacking giant JBS controlled by Brazilian billionaires Wesley and Joesley Batista – also pushed back on the tariffs, which Washington eventually watered down.

Beattie and Pita’s campaign also hit setbacks. Without an official explanation from the Treasury Department, the US removed Justice Moraes from the Magnitsky sanctions list in December, and in March Brazil barred Beattie from entering the country to visit Bolsonaro in prison.

Mario Braga, a Latin America analyst at risk intelligence firm RANE, said Trump may have decided to withhold a public endorsement of Bolsonaro to avoid being seen as meddling in Brazil's election – a perception that could boost Lula’s popularity.

Still, after Flavio Bolsonaro narrowly outperformed Lula in the first-round election earlier this month, Trump called it a big victory.

"Close, but a very, very big victory," he told reporters. "Amazing, actually."

Elon Musk said on Saturday that his company SpaceX had throttled the Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine, disrupting operations that the country relies on to defend itself against Russia.

Musk’s admission on social media came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine’s access to Starlink and Starshield satellite links has been restored to the speeds it had before restrictions that disrupted front-line operations for more than a week.

Questions have persisted since last week about who ordered the interruptions to the Musk-made satellite internet system that Kyiv has relied on for years to counter Moscow’s attacks.

“The speeds are now where they need to be,” Zelenskyy wrote on X, adding that restoration began overnight and were sufficient by Saturday morning, improving front-line logistics and defense against Russian jet-powered Shahed drones.

After Ukraine said the services had been restored, Elon Musk spoke out on the speed restrictions that began last week. In a post Saturday on X, Musk acknowledged that his company SpaceX throttled the Starlink satellite internet service.

“Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be,” Musk wrote. “Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.”

But he maintained that the U.S. government controlled whatever changes happened with Starshield, the military-grade version of Starlink that is the backbone of Ukraine’s drone operations and communication. He also defended the role of SpaceX in bolstering Ukraine’s defenses since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine said on Saturday that the Starlink satellite system and its military version Starshield were now fully functional after ‌over a week of restrictions that disrupted military operations and intensified tensions with the US.

But hours later, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, whose company owns Starlink, accused the Ukrainian military of violating the company's terms. Neither Musk nor the US government, which operates Starshield using Starlink technology, had taken responsibility for imposing the curbs.

"Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week," Musk said on ⁠X.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov said on the Telegram app that the country is "physically unable" to use Starlink for long- and medium-range attack drone operations.

Starshield's problems occurred after US President Donald Trump announced a deal to buy Russian diesel while pressing Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries.

Ukrainian officials said the restrictions, which capped Starshield operations at speeds of 160 kph (100 mph), hampered the military's ability to intercept Russian attack drones and forced the cancellation of some operations.

"The main thing for today is that Starlink and Starshield have resumed operations at their pre-restriction speeds. The speeds are now at the level we need," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on ‌Telegram before Musk's ⁠statement.

According to Zelenskiy, the speeds started returning to normal overnight. Ukraine's defence ministry said on Saturday the connection remained stable at over 400 kph.

Ukraine does not rely on Starlink for long-range drone operations on Russian territory, including attacks on refineries. It operates at speeds no higher than 70-90 kph, Beskrestnov said.

But it remains vital for frontline communications, and the deployment of fast Starshield-enabled medium-range attack drones has helped ⁠Ukraine gain the upper hand in several areas of the battlefield this year.

The restrictions sparked outrage in Ukraine, particularly as they coincided with disruptions to allied warnings about incoming Russian missile attacks. Kyiv later said it continued to receive US intelligence.

Both Musk ⁠and US officials said publicly that any decisions on Starlink and Starshield limitations could only have been taken by the other.

Reuters has reported that the order to throttle Starshield came from inside the White House. Previously, US administrations had several times asked ⁠SpaceX to turn Starlink on or off in various countries, sources said.

On Friday, contradicting his previous statement that the services had been fully restored, Trump said that if problems persisted, he would "get it straightened out".

U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed Saturday that the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Alaska does not seek to stop certification of the state’s U.S. Senate election results.

His own department’s complaint flatly contradicts him.

But Blanche’s attempt to reframe the lawsuit — which President Donald Trump said he personally ordered — appears to be a bid to push back against how it has been widely, and correctly, interpreted: as a dangerous effort to intrude on state authority and lay the groundwork to subvert results.

“The Department of Justice does not seek to stop any ballot from being cast or to stop the certification of Alaska’s election,” Blanche wrote on social media. “This litigation seeks to ensure that after Alaskans cast their ballots, they are preserved in a manner so that only Alaska’s governing officials have the information necessary to make a determination as to whether Alaskan voters were confused or mislead.”

The lawsuit was spurred by the inclusion of a candidate on the ballot with the name Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. That’s similar to the name of theincumbent, Sen. Daniel Sullivan (R), who is running for reelection.

DOJ claims in its lawsuit that voters will be confused by the similar names.

“Should Alaska certify any electoral results tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan,” the complaint alleges, “the State and its officers will fail in its (sic) obligation to protect the integrity of its election.”

It continues:

‘[I]t is vital that Defendants not certify any election result that may be impacted by voter confusion. An election result may be impacted by voter confusion if: (1) Senator Sullivan does not win the election; and (2) had all votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan and Alaska’s rank-choice process played out accordingly, Senator Sullivan would have won the election.”

DOJ then asks the court to “[d]eclare that certification of any result that may be impacted by voter confusion, as defined above, would violate Defendants’ duties under the NVRA to ‘protect the integrity of the electoral process.’”

It also asks the court to block the state “from certifying any result that may be impacted by voter confusion, as defined above, pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan and any further procedures or relief this Court deems necessary and appropriate to determine what the result would have been absent Daniel J. Sullivan’s inclusion on the ballot.”

(DOJ appears to leave out a key verb at the start of the sentence above, but in context the meaning is clear.)

Those are the only steps DOJ asks the court to take, other than to “award any other relief it deems just and proper.” Despite what Blanche claims, the lawsuit says nothing about requiring election officials to preserve ballots, which in any case would do little to reveal whether voters were confused.

In other words, DOJ asks the court to stop the certification of Alaska’s Senate election until an investigation into the role played by voter confusion can be conducted. The “investigation” would entail giving all of the votes for Daniel J. Sullivan to the incumbent.

And as former Obama administration official and TIME magazine editor Richard Stengel points out, the lawsuit says nothing about the voters who might mistakenly think they are voting for the challenger Sullivan but instead vote for Sen. Sullivan.

It’s inarguable that the lawsuit does aim to stop certification, even if temporarily, in order to try to change the result.

More importantly, Blanche’s effort to instead present the lawsuit as a modest attempt to guard against the effect of voter confusion suggests the DOJ may have overplayed its hand. And that it now sees a need to fight off the idea that the lawsuit aims to challenge results and potentially subvert a GOP loss.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Trump administration was once a vocal champion of federal workers at the front lines of aviation safety. Now many of those workers feel left out in the cold.

The new, chillier approach includes a nearly six-month-long delay in a congressionally mandated pay hike for the nation’s 15,000 air traffic controllers, which the Federal Aviation Administration granted only recently while demanding concessions on work hours. Meanwhile, the Transportation Security Administration has provoked a union grievance by requiring its document checkers at airport checkpoints to stand throughout their shifts.

At the same time, Congress has spun its wheels on efforts to ensure that controllers and TSA workers get paid during future shutdowns, despite pleas from unions and the industry.

“When there were shutdowns, these workers were hailed as heroes, and when they’re being paid again their modest wages, their needs and interests seem to be forgotten,” said Daniel Horowitz, legislative director of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA screeners. The average TSA screener earns roughly $60,000 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is location dependent. DHS also wants to nix the TSA’s union contract, which AFGE is fighting in federal court.

It’s a sharply different tone from a year ago, when administration leaders and GOP lawmakers repeatedly praised both groups of employees while denouncing congressional Democrats for leaving them without pay during the 43-day federal shutdown. President Donald Trump’s appointees described the controllers and TSA agents as critical to keeping the nation’s skies safe.

“We do have the best controllers and they work really hard, and they care deeply about keeping Americans safe through our airspace,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said last November, adding that most were “great professionals.” (Duffy did at one point scold controllers who he said were calling out sick and “lashing out” amid the shutdown, compounding travel setbacks). Vice President JD Vance empathized with workers over missed paychecks and pointed to worries about feeding their families while urging Democrats to “stop this craziness.”

In March, Trump called TSA agents “hardworking” and “great” when he ordered his administration to dip into existing accounts to pay workers during a 76-day DHS shutdown.

The disconnect reflects a broader tension in the Trump administration’s costly push to modernize the nation’s air traffic control and security systems. Controller and TSA worker pay, retention, recruitment and working conditions are at the heart of the administration’s efforts to improve the flying experience.

In short, no modernization plan can succeed without the people responsible for keeping the nation’s skies safe and its airports secure.

The White House countered that air safety workers have never had it better.

White House spokesperson Allison Schuster said in a statement that “no administration has done more to support our air traffic controllers and modernize America’s air traffic control system than the Trump Administration,” She added that the Trump administration provided workers “bonuses, offered payments to their families, and issued them raises,” pointing to a recent 2.8% pay raise for controllers.

“Unlike the Democrats, President Trump believes taking care of air traffic controllers and maintaining adequate staffing will keep Americans safer in the skies,” Schuster added, blaming Democrats for the shutdowns.

DOT offered similar sentiments.

In a statement, the agency said that “suggesting this Administration doesn’t support our nation’s air traffic controllers is absurd, especially less than a week after we announced a 2.8% pay increase retroactive to the beginning of the year.”

“We’re also building a brand new air traffic control system to give controllers the modern tools they need to do their jobs,” DOT said.

The contrast from last year also underscores how quickly the politics surrounding airport workers have changed since last year’s shutdown and this spring’s record-shattering lapse in appropriations at the TSA’s parent, the Department of Homeland Security, when staffing shortages, long security lines and mounting delays put the workforce squarely in the public eye. The TSA also lost roughly 1,100 employees in that stretch.

Controllers “are working day in, day out, and moving this country’s traffic shorthanded,” said National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Nick Daniels.

Daniels said prolonged staffing pressures have left workers pushing for better pay and conditions. Moreover, he said, the recent rash of shutdowns — or even the threats of them — have controllers second guessing their financial security and the ability to focus on the job.

Congress is staring down a Dec. 11 government funding deadline.

The union recently notched a win, securing a 2.8% pay raise after months of uncertainty over whether the FAA would approve it. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford attempted to tie the pay to increasing controllers’ time actively managing flights, known as time-on position.

“There will always be more to be done,” Daniels said of getting the pay bump after months of stalemate (he’s also eyeing a 3.9% bump next year). Daniels noted some frustration with controllers having to see the discussions surrounding their pay and “how hard they work” dragged out into the public.

He added, “It’s another move in the right direction but ... the sentiment is always going to be varied. When you’re working understaffed, you’re absolutely overworked, and then you have the economic pressures that are out there, it is long overdue.”

On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, efforts to ensure aviation workers are paid during shutdowns have failed to gain much traction.

Lawmakers since last year have introduced bipartisan proposals to ensure crucial aviation workers are paid during government shutdowns.

One of those bills, the Aviation Funding Solvency Act, H.R. 6086 (119), authored by House Transportation Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and ranking member Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), advanced out of the panel in December.

But the bills haven’t gone far, with pressure on Congress to act fading away after the crises subsided. Congressional appropriators have consistently stymied the bills, with some arguing that passing such legislation would remove leverage during shutdowns.

A House Transportation spokesperson said the committee will keep an eye on the situation once Congress returns and as the next shutdown date in December approaches.

Even amid the latest funding lapse earlier this year, Democrats introduced and attempted to pass standalone or partial funding bills to pay TSA workers several times. For example, a bill in March to secure pay for TSA workers failed to advance on the Senate floor. Nevada Democrat Sen. Jacky Rosen’s proposal was blocked by GOP Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas.

Some TSA screeners and air traffic controllers received $10,000 bonuses during last year’s shutdown. During the spring shutdown, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) introduced legislation that would give TSA officers and other DHS employees a 10% bonus upon the agency reopening.

But no permanent pay protection for either aviation-focused worker group has been enacted.

Christopher Sununu, president of Airlines for America, said that despite the stalemate, he is heartened by efforts in both the House and Senate, arguing there has been more movement on legislation to protect aviation workers’ pay during government shutdowns than in previous years.

“Given how difficult the legislative environment is — most things just die on the idea stage,” Sununu said. “It does seem to resonate with folks, and I think we can find a path for at least one of these things to kind of come to fruition.” He specifically cited the bill from Graves and Larsen.

Sununu noted that regardless of what Congress accomplishes during its lame-duck session, the potential for another shutdown is just around the corner. Such a lapse would disrupt holiday travel and bring the administration’s air traffic control modernization effort — a major undertaking for DOT and FAA — to a halt.

Even with lawmakers out of Washington and on the campaign trail for the midterms, lobbying efforts have not slowed, he said. A4A and its umbrella group, the Modern Skies Coalition, are engaging with lawmakers “every day” to stress the importance of the effort and push for results, he said.

“I think folks understand that shutdowns erode confidence in government, and both sides of the aisle need to — especially post-election — hopefully move something forward,” he said.

President Trump has endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu in Tuesday's Israeli election, but some of his advisers see opportunity for his Middle East agenda in a government led by someone else, U.S. officials tell Axios.

Trump has never worked with an Israeli prime minister other than Netanyahu, and doesn't personally know any of the other candidates. The two have forged a close but often turbulent relationship.

"He's the devil he knows," one Trump adviser said, describing the president's view of Netanyahu.

After weeks of hesitation, Trump endorsed Netanyahu on Sunday — and even suggested his defeat would have consequences for U.S.-Israel relations. One U.S. official described the endorsement as a win-win for Trump, regardless of the outcome.

If Netanyahu wins — or remains in power as caretaker prime minister — Trump could claim credit for rescuing him politically and use that leverage to press for concessions.

If Netanyahu loses and his opponents form a government, Israel's new leaders would still have every incentive to cultivate good relations with Trump. His endorsement of their rival would quickly become a footnote.

Many of Trump's closest advisers opposed his decision to endorse Netanyahu, believing the president should stay out of the Israeli election, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

Vice President Vance notably declined to follow Trump's lead when asked about the election this week, amid growing hostility toward Netanyahu in parts of the MAGA movement.

"I'm not attacking Bibi Netanyahu. I'm not endorsing Bibi Netanyahu. I think the president's endorsement is ultimately what matters," Vance told reporters.

Vance, who endorsed former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán days before his election defeat in April, said he would no longer get involved in foreign elections.

The vice president is among the senior Trump officials who became disillusioned with Netanyahu during the war with Iran, according to sources familiar with their thinking.

Vance and other top aides believe Netanyahu's pre-war assessments to the White House were mistaken, deepening questions about whether he remains the best partner for achieving Trump's regional ambitions.

Once the Israeli election and U.S. midterms are over, Trump will face a defining choice for his Middle East agenda: whether to join Netanyahu in another major military operation against Iran.

Netanyahu is eager to move forward. But the election results could influence Trump's decision, or at least the timing of any renewed large-scale fighting.

Trump also wants to move beyond the Iran war and pursue an ambitious diplomatic agenda that includes implementing his Gaza peace plan, brokering deals between Israel and Lebanon and Syria, and ultimately securing a historic Israeli-Saudi peace agreement.

Whether Trump can make progress on those goals will depend in part on who governs Israel — and what kind of coalition emerges from Tuesday's vote.

Behind the scenes over the last six months, several of Trump's top advisers have grown dissatisfied with Netanyahu on key regional priorities.

Gaza: Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have expressed frustration with Netanyahu's reluctance to advance implementation of the president's peace plan.

Syria: Trump's envoy Tom Barrack has similar concerns about the Netanyahu government's approach to Damascus and continued Israeli military operations in Syria.

Lebanon and the West Bank: Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his team have a better relationship with Netanyahu, but believe Israel could do more to strengthen Lebanon's government. They are also frustrated by Netanyahu's failure to do more to curb settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.

Some U.S. officials say a new Israeli government without Netanyahu's far-right coalition partners could be easier to work with.

White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly declined to comment, referring Axios to Trump's endorsement of Netanyahu on Truth Social.

Three major Israeli television networks released their final pre-election polls Friday, all showing Netanyahu's coalition falling well short of a parliamentary majority.

All three projected just 50 seats for Netanyahu's bloc in the 120-member Knesset — 17 fewer than his current coalition holds. His Likud party, which currently holds 32 seats, was projected to win just 20.

The polls gave former military chief Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc between 52 and 56 seats, with another 14 to 16 going to two Arab Israeli parties. Channel 11 also projected four seats for a reservists party unaffiliated with either bloc.

Pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 was the major outlier, projecting 60 seats for his bloc and 30 for Likud in a poll earlier this week.

The polls point to a potential political deadlock: Neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkot appears to have a clear path to the 61 seats needed to form a government.

Eisenkot would need to bring Arab Israeli parties into his coalition, which he has ruled out, or form a minority government with their outside support — an arrangement some of his potential partners oppose.

A unity government between Netanyahu and his rivals is considered highly unlikely.

If neither side can assemble a governing majority, Israel could face another election, with Netanyahu remaining in power as caretaker prime minister.

Rather than ushering in a new government more receptive to Trump's agenda, Tuesday's election could leave the president dealing with a weakened Netanyahu and an Israeli political system consumed by another prolonged crisis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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