The decision stems from a lawsuit filed in Manhattan in 2022 after New York state instituted a one-year window for people to file lawsuits over sexual assault claims even if they took place decades ago.

It marks one of the largest jury awards since the advent of the #MeToo movement, as well as in New York state history, said attorney Brad Beckworth, of the law firm Nix Patterson LLP, in an interview. The plaintiffs, he said, believe such a large verdict will send a message to powerful individuals “who don’t treat women appropriately.”

The court had not yet released documentation of the verdict as of Wednesday night. Beckworth said the verdict included $280 million in compensatory damages and $1.4 billion for punitive damages to the plaintiffs.

“This verdict is about justice,” Beckworth said in a statement. “But more importantly, It’s about taking power back from the abusers — and their and enablers — and returning it to those he tried to control and silence.”

Beckworth said the abuse took place between 1979 and 2014.

Toback was nominated for an Oscar for writing 1991′s “Bugsy,” and his career in Hollywood has spanned more than 40 years. Accusations that he engaged in years of sexual abuse surfaced in late 2017 as the #MeToo movement gained attention. They were first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

In 2018, Los Angeles prosecutors said the statutes of limitations had expired in five cases they reviewed, and declined to bring criminal charges against Toback.

The plaintiffs then filed a lawsuit in New York a few days after the state’s Adult Survivors Act went into effect. The lawyers said they discovered a pattern of Toback attempting to lure young women on the streets of New York into meeting him by falsely promising roles in his films and then subjecting them to sexual acts, threats and psychological coercion.

Mary Monahan, a lead plaintiff in the case, called the jury award “validation” for her and the other women.

“For decades, I carried this trauma in silence, and today, a jury believed me. Believed us. That changes everything,” she said in a statement. “This verdict is more than a number — it’s a declaration. We are not disposable. We are not liars. We are not collateral damage in someone else’s power trip. The world knows now what we’ve always known: what he did was real.”

Toback, 80, who most recently had represented himself, denied numerous times in court documents that he “committed any sexual offense” and that “any sexual encounter or contact between Plaintiffs and Defendant was consensual.”

He also argued that New York’s law extending the statute of limitations on sexual abuse cases violated his constitutional rights.

A message sent to an email address listed for him seeking comment was not immediately answered.

In January, the judge in the case entered a default judgment against Toback, who had failed to appear in court when ordered to do so. The judge then scheduled a trial for only damages last month to determine how much Toback had to pay the women.

Former ballerina Ksenia Karelina was born in Russia but had built a new life as an aesthetician at a Los Angeles spa after immigrating to the United States over a decade ago. She “is on a plane back home to the United States,” having been “wrongfully detained by Russia for over a year,” Rubio said on in a post on X. He credited President Donald Trump with securing her release.

Karelina’s lawyer, Mikhail Mushailov, confirmed her release in a statement on Instagram. “Two hours ago she was in touch with her relatives and took off from Abu Dhabi to the U.S.,” he wrote, adding that he had known about her release since Tuesday.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) detained Karelina in January 2024 while she was visiting her parents and young sister in the city Yekaterinburg. It did not provide further details or evidence of her alleged crime.

At the time, Russian legal group Perviy Otdel said it had information that Karelina had donated just over $51.80 from her U.S. bank account on Feb. 24, 2022 — the day that Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine — to a charity that sends aid to Ukraine. A spa where she had previously worked confirmed this in a statement on Facebook.

Although Russia’s FSB did not confirm that figure, it said Karelina’s donation “was subsequently used to purchase tactical medical supplies, equipment, weapons, and ammunition for the Ukrainian armed forces.”

She was sentenced in August to 12 years in a penal colony for “high treason,” having “fully admitted her guilt” at a closed trial in the southwestern Russian city of Yekaterinberg, Sverdlovsky Region Court said in a news release at the time.

The sentence came against the backdrop of Russia’s 3-year-long war with Ukraine during which President Vladimir Putin’s government has cracked down on dissent. Any perceived criticism of the military is banned.

Her release was first reported by The Wall Street Journal which said she was freed in exchange for the release of Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023 at the request of the U.S. for allegedly exporting sensitive microelectronics.

NBC News could not independently confirm this and Rubio did not mention this in his tweet.

Karelina’s freedom comes almost exactly two months after American teacher Marc Fogel returned to the U.S. after he spent 3½ years in prison for a minor medical cannabis infraction.

Fogel had been teaching in Russia before authorities picked him up while he was carrying 17 grams of the drug at Sheremetyevo International Airport near Moscow. 

He had been prescribed medical cannabis in the U.S. for backpain, but the drug is illegal in Russia and he was sentenced to 14 years.

Fogel had remained in Russian custody even as U.S. authorities won freedom for other high-profile American detainees, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former-Marine Paul Whelan and WNBA star Brittney Griner.

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Trump’s announcement sent stocks surging following days of volatility and losses. Follow along for live updates.

It was the first known meeting since the pope’s return to the Vatican after five weeks in the hospital for life-threatening double pneumonia. Francis had planned to have an audience with Charles, but the official state visit to the Vatican was postponed due to the pope’s health.

The pope issued a new invitation for a private audience, but it was subject to his health and only confirmed Wednesday morning. The mid-afternoon visit lasted about 20 minutes and included a private exchange of gifts. Discussions continue about a future visit by the monarch to the Vatican.

The Vatican statement said the pope wished Charles and Camilla a happy anniversary, and the king and queen in return wished the pope a speedy recovery. Buckingham Palace said “their majesties were delighted the pope was well enough to host them, and to have had the opportunity to share their best wishes in person.”

Catholic Church Mar 23

Pope arrives home at Vatican after 5-week hospital stay to beat life-threatening bout of pneumonia

The royal couple previously saw Francis during an April 2017 visit to the Vatican. King Charles, then Prince of Wales, also met Pope Francis during the 2019 canonization of St. John Henry Newman.

The pope has been convalescing at the Vatican since March 23 and made an appearance to the faithful in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday. He was pushed in a wheelchair, wearing nasal tubes for supplemental oxygen, and wished the crowd a good Sunday from the front of the altar before being greeted by participants in the Mass, some of whom leaned to kiss his hands.

Charles addresses Parliament

Earlier on Wednesday, Charles stressed the need for close ties between Italy and the UK in a historic speech in the Italian parliament, calling for unity in defense of common values at a time of war in Europe.

Charles, the first British monarch and fourth foreign leader to address a joint session of the Italian parliament, highlighted the long history between the U.K. and Italy and their shared culture, going back to the ancient Romans.

“Our younger generations can see in the news every day on their smartphones and tablets that peace is never to be taken for granted,” Charles said.

The British king was on the third day of his visit to Italy, seen as part of an ongoing effort by London to strengthen ties with its European allies amid global turbulence and rising instability.

“Our countries have both stood by Ukraine in her hour of need and welcomed many thousands of Ukrainians requiring shelter,” he said in his speech, warning that images of wars were now reverberating again across the continent.

Charles added that Italian and British armed forces “stand side by side” as part of the NATO alliance, noting the two countries’ joint plans to develop with Japan a new fighter jet.

“It will generate thousands of jobs in our countries and speaks volumes about the trust we place in each other,” he said.

During the Italian trip, King Charles and Queen Camilla also marked their 20th wedding anniversary, which was to include a state dinner later Wednesday hosted by President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinale palace.

The queen marked her anniversary by wearing her wedding dress, which had been modified by its designer Anne Valentine, with additional embroidery by King’s Foundation artisan Beth Somerville. The garment was originally worn for the civil ceremony, when Camilla paired the outfit with a hat made of natural straw, overlaid with ivory French lace designed by Philip Treacy.

On her wedding day, Camilla later wore a separate chiffon dress embroidered pale blue and gold coat for the wedding blessing at St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

Earlier on Wednesday, Charles met Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni at Rome’s Villa Doria Pamphili, enjoying a walk in the 17th Century palace’s gardens.

In a few weeks, he will mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe together with Mattarella.

Climate change warnings

Charles also spoke passionately in his address about threats facing the planet, recalling another speech he gave in Italy 16 years ago and how the “warnings” he made at the time about the urgency of the climate challenge were “depressingly being borne out by events.”

He noted extreme storms “normally seen once in a generation” are now an issue every year, and “countless precious plant and animal species face extinction in our lifetimes”.

Sections of the speech were delivered in Italian, with the King prompting the applause of Italian lawmakers when he noted: “And by the way, I hope I’m not ruining Dante’s language so much that I’m no never invited to Italy again.”

Charles was on his first trip abroad this year after being taken to hospital over side effects related to his ongoing cancer treatment.

___

Kirka reported from London.

The wife of a Weezer band member was shot by police as officers searched for three people involved in a hit-and-run crash on a freeway in a residential Los Angeles neighborhood.

Jillian Shriner, wife of Weezer bassist Scott Shriner, was injured in the shooting, which unfolded during a neighborhood police search.

The chain of events began after authorities responded to a three-vehicle crash on the 134 Freeway in Eagle Rock near Figueroa Street just after 3 p.m. in the San Gabriel Valley community east of Los Angeles. The California Highway Patrol said a driver and passengers abandoned the car following the crash and ran into a neighborhood near Eagle Vista Drive and Figueroa Street.

During the search for the other individuals, an armed woman came out of her home on Eagle Vista Drive. Police officers fired at the woman, identified Wednesday by the LAPD as Jillian Shriner, who was struck in the shoulder.

Shriner was arrested about an hour later and booked on suspicion of attempted murder. She allegedly pointed a handgun at officers and did not abide by police commands to drop the weapon, the LAPD said.

According to Det. Megan Aguilar, public information officer for the LAPD, the woman did not know the subjects of the search.

She was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

The identities of those who were arrested have not been released. Details about whether the two other individuals sought by police were not immediately available.

The weather service has “paused” the translations because its contract with the provider has lapsed, NWS spokesperson Michael Musher said. He declined further comment.

Lilt, an artificial intelligence company, began providing translations in late 2023, replacing manual translations that the weather service had said were labor-intensive and not sustainable. It eventually provided them in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Samoan. The contract lapse comes as President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to slash spending in federal agencies, including cuts within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that have led to high employee vacancy rates at NWS offices.

NOAA referred questions about the contract to a message on its website announcing the contract had lapsed. Lilt did not respond to requests for comment.

Nearly 68 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home, including 42 million Spanish speakers, according to 2019 Census data.

Not being able to read urgent weather alerts could be a matter of life or death, said Joseph Trujillo-Falcón, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has worked with NOAA researching how to translate weather and climate information to the public, including the use of artificial intelligence.

He said translated weather alerts saved lives during a deadly tornado outbreak in Kentucky in 2021. A Spanish-speaking family interviewed afterward said they got a tornado alert on their cellphone in English but ignored it because they didn’t understand it, he said. When the same alert came in Spanish, they quickly sought shelter, he said.

“It saved their life,” said Trujillo-Falcón.

Trujillo-Falcón said weather alerts used to be translated by forecasters that spoke more than one language, a task that could be “completely overwhelming” on top of their forecasting duties.

The translations are important for more than extreme weather events, said Andrew Kruczkiewicz, a senior researcher at the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University. General weather forecasts are essential for a number of sectors including tourism, transportation and energy. Families and businesses can make more informed decisions when they can get weather information that often includes actions that should be taken based on the forecast.

Norma Mendoza-Denton, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said there are many people in the U.S. that function with limited English relevant to their daily routines. For example, a shopkeeper might be able to have short conversations with customers, but might not have the same understanding when it comes to reading weather or climate terminologies.

“If they don’t have access to that National Weather Service information in the different languages, that could be the difference between life and death for somebody,” said Mendoza-Denton.

___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

President Donald Trump pulled back Wednesday on a series of harsh tariffs targeting friends and foes alike in an audacious bid to remake the global economic order.

Trump’s early afternoon announcement followed a harrowing week in which Republican lawmakers and confidants privately warned him that the tariffs could wreck the economy. His own aides had quietly raised alarms about the financial markets before he temporarily suspended a tariff regime that he had unveiled with a flourish just one week earlier in a Rose Garden ceremony.

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The stock market rose immediately after the about-face, ending days of losses that have forced older Americans who’ve been sinking their savings into 401(k)s to rethink their retirement plans.

Ahead of Trump’s announcement, some of his advisers had been in a near panic about the bond markets, according to a senior administration official. Interest rates on 10-year Treasury bonds had been rising, contrary to what normally happens when stock prices fall and investors seek safety in treasuries. That unusual dynamic meant that at the same time the tariffs could push up prices, people would be paying more to buy a home or pay off credit card debt due to higher interest rates. Business looking to expand would pay more for a new loan.

Two of Trump’s most senior advisers, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, presented a united front on Wednesday, urging the president to suspend the tariffs in light of the bond market, the administration official said.

In a social media post, Trump announced a 90-day pause that he said he’ll use to negotiate deals with dozens of countries that have expressed openness to revising trade terms that he contends exploit American businesses and workers. One exception is China. Trump upped the tariff on the nation’s biggest geopolitical rival to 125%, part of a tit-for-tat escalation in an evolving trade war.

Trump’s reversal came one week after an appearance in the Rose Garden where he unveiled his plan to bring jobs back to the U.S. Displaying a chart showing the new, elevated tariffs that countries would face, Trump proclaimed, “My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day.”

It proved short-lived.

Markets plunged in anticipation of heightened trade wars, wiping out trillions of dollars in wealth. Democrats seized on the issue, looking to undercut a source of Trump’s popular appeal: the view that he can be trusted to steer the nation’s economy. 

“Donald Trump’s market crash has vaporized a whopping $104,000 from the average retirement account,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday in a speech on the Senate floor, hours before Trump’s reversal.

The episode laid bare the rifts within Trump’s team of senior advisers as the White House struggled to offer a clear, consistent argument about the duration of the tariffs. While Bessent seemed open to negotiations, Peter Navarro, a senior trade adviser, appeared to take a more hardline posture. 

Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO who has been advising Trump on the government workforce, called Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks,” while Navarro described Musk as someone who is merely “a car assembler, in many cases.”

But the week-long drama also underscored the peril of a policy-making process that is often tied to the wishes and vagaries of one man: Trump.

Asked about the dustup between Musk and Navarro, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a golf partner of the president, said: “I don’t think it matters. The only one who matters is Trump.”

Markets tend to favor predictability, as do business leaders deciding where to build new plants. When Trump sets a course, however, there are bound to be detours.

One friend of his who spoke to him in recent days said that Trump gave no sign he was about to “back down quickly on this stuff.”

Trump believes that other countries trade unfairly and sees tariffs as a tool to make the U.S. more competitive, the person said.

“He’s very confident it’s going to work for him,” the person added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

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Experts, critics question Trump's social media posts before pausing tariffs

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And yet in the runup to Wednesday’s announcement, Trump and his aides were also hearing from GOP lawmakers and outside allies urging an alternate path.

One was Larry Kudlow, who hosts a show on Fox Business Network and was a senior economic adviser in Trump’s first term.

Kudlow told NBC News that he has had “ongoing” talks with friends inside the West Wing about the need to negotiate with other countries before slapping them with tariffs that stand in perpetuity.

Describing Trump’s move Wednesday as “fabulous,” Kudlow added: “Dealmaking is the best thing to do. In the last 48 hours, Trump has gone from non-negotiating to negotiating. It’s very clear that Bessent is now the point man on trade. Very clear.”

Anxious GOP lawmakers also weighed in.

Graham said he spoke to Trump at length Tuesday night and told him he’s been hearing from car manufacturers who are worried about how the tariffs would affect their business. BMW operates a plant in Graham’s home state and is one of the companies the senator said he has spoken to.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., was also a lawmaker in touch with the administration, saying on Tuesday that he planned to have lunch with Bessent. On Wednesday, he told NBC News he was also talking to the White House. Kennedy likened Trump to the “pitbull who caught the car.” Now, he said, the question becomes: “What are you going to do with the car?”

After more market losses this week, and with pressure mounting from Republicans on Capitol Hill, Trump began having second thoughts. In his first term, he often viewed the ups and downs of the stock market as a kind of report card on his presidency, celebrating its rise. The downturn had gotten his attention.

“People were getting a little queasy,” he acknowledged Wednesday during an event with NASCAR racing champions.

“Over the last few days,” according to Trump, he began to more seriously consider pausing the additional tariffs, he told reporters later in the day in an Oval Office appearance. One prospect that intrigued him was personally negotiating new trade deals with the countries looking to get out from under the tariffs, the senior administration official added.

He’d made up his mind. Sitting with Bessent and Lutnick, he crafted the note announcing the 90-day postponement and ending, for the time being, the biggest economic crisis of his young presidency.

“We wrote it from our hearts, right?” Trump said. “It was written as something that I think was very positive for the world and for us, and we don’t want to hurt countries that don’t need to be hurt, and they all want to negotiate.”

The day closed with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up nearly 8%, erasing some — but not all — of the post-“Liberation Day” losses.

Messy as it all may have seemed, his administration insisted that all is unfolding as planned.

“You have been watching the greatest economic master strategy from an American President in history,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted Wednesday afternoon.

NBC News’ Katherine Doyle and Ryan Nobles contributed.

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“I want to hold this person accountable for what they did to me,” Jo Ellis, a pilot who has served more than 15 years in the Virginia Army National Guard, said in a statement to NBC News. “It’s become too common that people can say horrible things about someone, profit at their expense, and get away with it.” 

On Jan. 30, less than 24 hours after the crash, conservative influencer Matt Wallace, who has 2.2 million followers on the social media platform X, shared a post from another account he operates stating that the helicopter pilot was transgender, according to the lawsuit. Wallace included a photo of Ellis, and the post went viral, the lawsuit states.  

Wallace deleted that original post, according to the lawsuit, and then shared two others linking Ellis to the crash. One referred to an interview that Ellis did with The Smerconish Podcast, in which she said President Donald Trump’s executive order barring trans people from serving and enlisting in the military made her nervous. 

The second post included photos of Ellis and said she might have participated in “another trans terror attack,” according to the lawsuit. That post received 4.8 million views on X, the suit states.  

Wallace did not immediately return a request for comment regarding the allegations in the lawsuit. 

On Jan. 31, after Ellis learned about the rumors, she shared a “proof of life” video on Facebook.  

“I understand some people have associated me with the crash in D.C., and that is false,” Ellis said in the Facebook video. “It is insulting to the families to try to tie this to some sort of political agenda. They don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve this. And I hope that you all know that I am alive and well, and this should be sufficient for you all to end all the rumors.” 

Soon after Ellis’ statement on Facebook, Wallace shared another X user’s post with Ellis’ video, writing that it was an “Important Update!” and adding that Ellis was not piloting the helicopter and is still alive. Wallace also wrote in another X post that the original rumor that Ellis had been flying the helicopter involved in the crash came from another account with the handle @FakeGayPolitics, which is no longer active. Wallace said the rumor “seemed credible” because Ellis, whom Wallace misgendered in his posts, “wrote an article calling out Trump’s trans military ban only a few days ago.”  

Ellis was not involved in the midair collision, the lawsuit states, did not write an article “calling out” Trump’s trans military ban and did not engage in “another trans terror attack.” 

Equality Legal Action Fund, an LGBTQ legal organization representing Ellis, argues in the complaint that Wallace “concocted a destructive and irresponsible defamation campaign” against Ellis. 

“The damage caused to Plaintiff by Defendant was instantaneous and immense,” the lawsuit continues. “Prior to Defendant’s campaign, Plaintiff was a private citizen who led a private life away from social media and the limelight. When Plaintiff awoke on January 31, 2025, she discovered she was the second most-trending topic in the United States on X with more than 90,000 posts mentioning her name or her likeness. Plaintiff was forced into the public sphere and can no longer remain a private citizen due to Defendant’s lies.” 

Ellis said her life was “turned upside down” by Wallace’s posts.  

“I feared for the safety of my family and myself and had to arrange private armed security,” she said in her statement to NBC News. “I’m now recognized in public and forever associated with that terrible tragedy over the Potomac. When I go out in public I have to look over my shoulder now.” 

Ellis’ suit seeks damages for the injury to her reputation, though Ellis said she plans to donate any money that she wins from the suit to the families of the people who died in the crash.   

Trans people have increasingly been falsely blamed for tragedies and violence in recent years, particularly after mass shootings. Since 2022, false or unconfirmed claims have linked trans people to mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; Philadelphia; Madison, Wisconsin; and Des Moines, Iowa.  

In addition, since January, the Trump administration has enacted several policies targeting trans people, including the trans military ban, which states that being openly trans “is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” Two judges have temporarily blocked that policy from taking effect.

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OpenAI on Wednesday filed suit against Elon Musk, claiming the world’s richest person has “tried every tool available to harm” the artificial intelligence company.

The lawsuit, filed in a federal district court that last month blocked Musk’s attempt to stop the nonprofit from transforming into a for-profit entity, is asking for punitive damages from Musk’s actions and an injunction to stop him from interfering further in its operations.

Musk is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and owns social media site X as well as OpenAI rival xAI, which he started in 2023.

“Through press attacks, malicious campaigns broadcast to Musk’s more than 200 million followers on the social media platform he controls, a pretextual demand for corporate records, harassing legal claims, and a sham bid for OpenAI’s assets, Musk has tried every tool available to harm OpenAI,” OpenAI said in Wednesday’s filing.

Along with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Musk helped to form OpenAI as a research lab in 2015 but later had a public break with the project and has consistently criticized OpenAI’s close alliance with Microsoft.

In February, a Musk-led group offered to buy control of OpenAI for $97.4 billion, a bid that was swiftly rejected. Last month investors backed OpenAI in a round that valued the startup at $300 billion.

“Had OpenAI’s Board genuinely considered the bid as they were obligated to do they would have seen how serious it was,” Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff, said in an emailed statement. “It’s telling that having to pay fair market value for OpenAI’s assets allegedly ‘interferes’ with their business plans.”

Musk established xAI months after OpenAI introduced ChatGPT in late 2022. OpenAI said last month that 500 million people use its ChatGPT assistant each week, and the company is on pace for nearly $13 billion in 2025 revenue.

“Musk could not tolerate seeing such success for an enterprise he had abandoned and declared doomed,” OpenAI said in the filing.

Musk said in March that X had acquired xAI in what amounts to a stock swap.

OpenAI asked the court to force Musk to cease his public attacks on the company.

“Musk’s continued attacks on OpenAI, culminating most recently in the fake takeover bid designed to disrupt OpenAI’s future, must cease,” OpenAI said. “Musk should be enjoined from further unlawful and unfair action, and held responsible for the damage he has already caused.”

WATCH: OpenAI closes $40 billion funding round, largest private tech deal on record

DHS officials also announced Wednesday that the department would begin considering what it deems to be antisemitic activity on social media and “physical harassment of Jewish individuals” as grounds to revoke or deny immigration benefits. 

“This will immediately affect aliens applying for lawful permanent resident status, foreign students and aliens affiliated with educational institutions linked to antisemitic activity,” the announcement said. 

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said the new policy was a return to “McCarthyism,” referring to the tactics used to identify alleged communists in the Cold War that violated privacy rights.

“The spirit of Joseph McCarthy is alive and well in the Trump administration, which has spent months dishonestly mischaracterizing legitimate criticism of the Israeli government’s war crimes in Gaza as antisemitic, pursuing witch hunts into American colleges, and threatening the free speech rights of immigrants,” CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement Wednesday.

The data analytic tools now being used to scour social media were enhanced during the Biden administration, a former Biden administration DHS official said. But to use them to search social media of nonviolent students, the official said, is different from what the previous administration intended.

“We were not targeting political activity or speech. We would only review them if they were inciting violence,” the former Biden administration official said. 

The tools the DHS task force is using are run by Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center and National Vetting Center, both of which are typically tasked with using software and data to keep potential security threats from entering the United States. Any potential red flags about a student are shared with Citizenship and Immigration Services, which in turn asks the State Department to make a determination about whether the student’s visa should be revoked.

If the State Department decides it should be revoked, the task force informs Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in local field offices to arrest and deport the student, the sources said. 

Before the task force was created, much of the investigative work would have been done at the field office level and shared with local ICE officers, the sources said. Now, according to the sources, agents are taking orders from people they may not know from the task force in Washington about whom to arrest without clear guidance about why they are being targeted.

Over the last month, nearly 300 international students have been stripped of their visas, according to media reports and universities that have reviewed their systems.  

ICE, which is part of DHS, runs the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which oversees foreign students on visas to study at U.S. academic institutions.

ICE’s critic

ICE Chief of Staff Jon Feere had been a vocal critic of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program before he joined the Trump administration this year.

Feere wrote dozens of articles for the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that advocates for reduced immigration into the United States, many of which pointed to cases of fraud he alleged was rampant in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program.  

“Blatant, widespread fraud has become a central part of America’s foreign student program, and the government agencies responsible for putting an end to it have been asleep at the wheel for far too long,” Feere said in an article he published with the Center for Immigration Studies in August.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement: “There is no room in the United States for the rest of the world’s terrorist sympathizers, and we are under no obligation to admit them or let them stay here. Secretary [Kristi] Noem has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-Semitic violence and terrorism — think again. You are not welcome here.”

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Christopher Krebs, the former head of the federal government’s top cybersecurity agency, said the 2020 elections were won by Joe Biden, contradicting Trump’s claim that the election was stolen.

Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official, wrote an anonymous memoir that criticized Trump’s handling of classified documents and other conduct during his first term.

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One memorandum signed by Trump directed the Attorney General and the Homeland Security secretary to “take all appropriate action to review” the activities of Krebs. Another directed the Homeland Security secretary to review Taylor’s activities as a government employee.

The memo relating to Krebs described him as a “significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority.”

The other memo said Taylor “stoked dissension by manufacturing sensationalist reports on the existence of a supposed ‘resistance’ within the Federal Government.”

Krebs declined to comment. Taylor said on X that he wasn’t surprised by the president’s actions.

“I said this would happen,” Taylor wrote. “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path.”

He added: “Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”

Taylor wrote an anonymous op-ed while he was working at the Department of Homeland Security in which he said many senior administration officials were trying to limit Trump’s impulses and frustrate his agenda. 

In his memoir, Taylor describes having heard about Trump’s interest in “tapping” the phones of White House aides in a bid to stanch media leaks.

Krebs was the first director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, of CISA, which under the Trump administration began offering cybersecurity and physical security help to state and local election officials.

Trump fired Krebs in a tweet in November 2020 over the agency’s Rumor Control website, which corrected falsehoods about election integrity, many of which Trump and his allies promoted.

Krebs was among the most vocal government officials debunking baseless claims about election manipulation, particularly addressing a conspiracy theory centered on Dominion Voting Systems machines that Trump’s lawyers have pushed.

As a prominent critic of Trump’s false claims that the election 2020 was stolen, Krebs has been a consistent target for Trump.

NBC News’ Chloe Atkins contributed.

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Not long after trading opened at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, Trump took to his Truth Social platform and wrote:

“BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!”

Four minutes later, he wrote:

“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT”

Just before 1:30 p.m., Trump announced the pause, sending stocks soaring. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index saw its biggest one-day gain since 2008, rising nearly 12%; while the S&P 500 climbed 9.5% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 8% or about 2,800 points.

Trump could have been generally urging people to buy into the market while prices were relatively low. That was the response Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick gave when asked about the posts Wednesday evening on CNBC.

“Donald Trump understands that … America is the greatest country, all right? We are the greatest country, and we have the capacity for incredible greatness. But someone needs to take the shackles off.”

But on social media, some users raised the prospect — without evidence — of market manipulation, while others began referring to the market’s sharp turn upwards as the “Trump Pump.”   

There is no evidence to suggest the president was seeking to manipulate markets or that he or any of his advisers acted on inside information

For Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer for former President George W. Bush who now teaches government ethics and security regulation at the University of Minnesota’s law school, the morning posts, at a minimum, leave Trump open to questions about his intentions.  

“This is a scenario that could expose the president to accusations that he engaged in market manipulation,” Painter said. 

Even before he’d been sworn in for his second term, Trump faced insider-trading criticisms amid the launch of his $TRUMP meme coin. In that incident, the Trump organization was explicit that a group of investors who were helping launch the coin stood to benefit from its release assuming its price went up. Still, reports showed other investors reaping outsized profits from the launch, including one crypto-wallet owner or owners who earned $109 million according to a New York Times analysis.

Some Democrats were quick to blast the president’s actions on Wednesday.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, told NBC News Wednesday that the Trump administration was “replete with grifters” and that “corruption was its middle name.” 

“Insider trading is a real threat, and I hope there will be a surge of penetrating investigations into the potential for manipulation and insider trading of securities,” Blumenthal said. “Since the knowledge of what Trump’s plans have been and may be is widely spread.”

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Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California — a frequent object of Trump’s scorn — also suggested an inquiry was warranted.

“Trump is creating giant market fluctuations with his on-again, off-again tariffs,” Schiff wrote on social media. “These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading. Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell  stocks, and profit at the public’s expense? I’m writing to the White House — the public has a right to know.”

A White House spokesman rejected the Democrats’ assertions.

“It is the responsibility of the President of the United States to reassure the markets and Americans about their economic security in the face of nonstop media fearmongering,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “Instead of grasping at straws to try landing a punch on President Trump, Democrats should focus on working with the administration to restore American Greatness.” — WH Spokesman Kush Desai

A Department of Justice spokesperson declined to comment. The Securities and Exchange Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Painter said the incident could result in investigations “into who knew what and when before [Trump] announced he was going to postpone the tariffs on all the countries except for China.”

“This was a terrible idea to make those posts,” Painter said of Trump’s suggestion that it was “a great time to buy.” 

Painter further admonished Trump, saying “I would hope that he would focus on doing his job  — and try to calm the markets and have a predictable trade policy and let the markets do their thing without the White House giving what appears to be investment advice,” he said.

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Here’s a look at the facts.

CLAIM: “I call it beautiful, clean coal. I told my people, never use the word coal unless you put beautiful, clean before it.”

THE FACTS: The production of coal is cleaner now than it has been historically, but that doesn’t mean it’s clean.

Planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from the coal industry have decreased over the past 30 years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Energy lobbyist Scott Segal said that “the relative statement that coal-fired electricity is cleaner than ever before is true, particularly when emissions are measured per unit of electricity produced.”

And yet, coal production worldwide still needs to be reduced sharply to address climate change, according to United Nations-backed research.

Along with carbon dioxide, burning coal emits sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that contribute to acid rain, smog and respiratory illnesses, according to the EIA.

Over the past 15 years, the U.S. has seen a major shift from coal to natural gas for electricity use, a key reason U.S. carbon emissions have declined over that period.

Coal once provided more than half of U.S. electricity production, but its share dropped to about 16% in 2023, down from about 45% as recently as 2010. Natural gas provides about 43% of U.S. electricity, with the remainder from nuclear energy and renewables such as wind, solar and hydropower.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright acknowledged during his confirmation hearing in January that the burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas — causes climate change. That’s because the combustion of fossil fuels is drastically increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, warming the planet.

___

TRUMP: “It’s cheap, incredibly efficient, high density and it’s almost indestructible.”

THE FACTS: Coal is one of the most expensive sources of new power generation. New coal plants would produce electricity at nearly $90 per megawatt hour on average, though no one in the U.S. is currently building or planning to build a new coal plant, according to estimates from the EIA.

Standalone solar without battery storage is the cheapest source of new power generation at about $23 per megawatt hour on average for new projects connecting to the grid in 2028, the EIA estimates. That includes tax credits and other subsidies under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which help reduce the cost of renewable energy.

New natural gas plants are expected to produce electricity at nearly $43 per megawatt hour, according to the estimates.

A nonpartisan climate policy think tank, Energy Innovation, found that 99% of existing U.S. coal plants are more expensive to keep running than if they’re replaced with local solar, wind, and battery storage. Americans immediately begin saving money when coal plants retire and communities transition to clean energy, according to Energy Innovation’s 2023 report.

“Trump has promised to cut American energy bills in half – this is yet another way he’s forcing Americans to pay more,” Greg Alvarez, a spokesperson with Energy Innovations, wrote in an email Tuesday.

Coal plants operated at full power about 42.4% of the time in 2023, according to EIA’s most recent data. In comparison, nuclear and geothermal plants ranked highest, at about 93% and 69.4%, respectively.

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___

CLAIM: “The value of untapped coal in our country is 100 times greater than the value of all the gold at Fort Knox.”

THE FACTS: Although the U.S. does have an abundance of coal, its estimated value is not nearly as high as Trump claims.

There are currently about 147.3 million troy ounces of gold stored at Fort Knox with a book value of approximately $6.2 billion, according to the U.S. Treasury. Gold closed on the open market Tuesday, trading at $2,990.20 per troy ounce, making its market value much higher, at about $440.6 billion. A troy ounce, a weight measurement for precious metals, is approximately 31.1 grams.

There were about 469.1 billion short tons of coal in U.S. reserves as of Jan. 1, 2024, according to the EIA, though only about 53% of that was available for mining. EIA estimates its value at approximately $598.3 billion. That’s more than all of the gold at Fort Knox, but far short of 100 times that amount. A short ton, also known as a U.S. ton, is equivalent to 2,000 pounds.

___

TRUMP: “They’re opening up coal, coal plants all over Germany.”

THE FACTS: That’s not accurate. According to Germany’s economy ministry, 18 coal-fired power plants were shut down in 2024. “No new coal-fired power plants will be built,” a spokesman for the ministry said Wednesday in response to a question about Trump’s claims. The spokesperson noted the country plans to phase out coal-fired power generation by 2038 at the latest.

Germany did bring some coal-fired plants back online in 2022 and 2023 to deal with natural gas shortages after Russia invaded Ukraine. The government allowed up to six gigawatts of coal-fired power plants to return from the reserve to the market for a limited period of time. They were taken offline by the end of March 2024, according to Agora Energiewende, a Berlin-based climate policy think thank.

___

Associated Press climate, environment and energy writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

___

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

The request was made Wednesday to the Postal Regulatory Commission, which must OK the proposal. If approved, the 5-cent increase for a “forever” stamp and similar increases for postcards, metered letters and international mail would take effect July 13.

The proposed changes would raise mailing services product prices approximately 7.4%.

The Postal Service contends, as it did last year when it enacted a similar increase, that it’s needed to achieve financial stability.

Former U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy previously warned postal customers to get used to “uncomfortable” rate hikes as the Postal Service seeks to become self-sufficient. He said price increases were overdue after “at least 10 years of a defective pricing model.”

DeJoy resigned in March after nearly five years in the position, leaving as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had floated the idea of privatizing mail service.

Deputy Postmaster General Doug Tulino has taken on the role of postmaster general until the Postal Service Board of Governors names a permanent replacement for DeJoy.

Trump has said he is considering putting USPS under the control of the Commerce Department in an effort to stop losses at the $78 billion-a-year agency, which has struggled at times to balance the books with the decline of first-class mail.

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Ahead of Friday’s court hearing, during which the District Attorney’s office is set to ask a judge to withdraw the resentencing recommendation for the brothers, DA Nathan Hochman filed a response motion, saying “the Menendez brothers are still lying” nearly 35 years after gunning down their parents.

“They still falsely maintain that on Aug. 20, 1989, their parents were going to rush out of the family den with firearms and murder them,” Hochman said in the motion, saying the brothers still have not fully accepted their responsibility for the killings.

“Though this pathway to resentencing has been offered to the Menendez brothers, they have chosen to stubbornly remain hunkered down in their over 30-year-old bunker of lies, deceit, and denials,” Hochman added.

While bashing his predecessor George Gascon for failing to conduct the thorough review of the case before recommending the brothers be resentenced, the district attorney has maintained the prerequisite of any sentence reduction is complete accountability.

“To be truly rehabilitated, they must understand and acknowledge the lies they told to cover up and mitigate their murderous conduct,” the DA’s motion said.

As he listed out some of the lies that he said the brothers have yet to acknowledge, Hochman said “Erik and Lyle have not changed,” therefore not rehabilitated.

Hochman also pushed back against the defense’s claim that the new DA’s move was “political,” saying his office came to a different conclusion after a “substantial reevaluation of the entire case.”

“(The DA’s office reviewed) most of the over 50,000 pages of trial transcripts, thousands of pages of exhibit pleadings and prison records, hundreds of hours of videotaped testimony and interviews with the Menendez family members, defense counsel, prior prosecutors and law enforcement.”

The resentencing hearing is set to take place Friday morning.

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The three final flavors “are hitting the shelves near you,” Lay’s contest website reads. Voting kicks off on April 21 and runs through June 13.

During that time, chip snackers can visit local stores to taste and vote on the three finalist flavors, each created by snack lovers from across the country with the help of Lay’s experts.

The finalists are:

• Valentina & Lime — a flavor made from Valentina hot sauce and lime juice
• Korean-Style Fried Chicken — a spicy and sweet chip inspired by South Korean street food
• Bacon Grilled Cheese — a chip inspired by the nostalgic sandwich recipe of the finalist’s father

The flavor with the most votes at the end of the contest will be crowned the winner and the creator will walk away with the million-dollar grand prize. The two runners-up won’t leave empty-handed either, each earning $50,000.

While the chips are only available for a limited time, one lucky flavor may become a permanent part of the Lay’s lineup. As Lay’s put it: “The future of snacking is up to you!”

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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday touted two particular medications that have not been shown to work as first-line treatments for measles: the steroid budesonide and the antibiotic clarithromycin.

Although experts say there are no specific treatments proven to help people recover faster from measles, Kennedy claimed on X that the medications had been instrumental in treating around 300 children in Texas, and told Fox News that doctors prescribing them had seen “very, very good results.” Kennedy has been sharply criticized by medical experts for weeks for spreading misinformation about the measles vaccine and failing to encourage parents to vaccinate their children. (He has since said that the vaccine is the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles, and on Wednesday said that people should get it.)

Since January, measles has taken off in a primarily Mennonite community in Gaines County, Texas, where vaccine hesitancy is prevalent. Families in the community have turned to questionable remedies like budesonide to treat their illnesses — in some cases, at the recommendation of two Texas doctors, Dr. Ben Edwards and Dr. Richard Bartlett. 

On Sunday, Kennedy called Edwards and Bartlett “extraordinary healers” who have “treated and healed” hundreds of children with budesonide and clarithromycin, sharing a photo of himself and the doctors with three Mennonite families whose children had become ill. Two of the families had each recently lost a daughter to measles: 6-year-old Kayley Fehr died in February and 8-year-old Daisy Hildebrand died last week. Neither child was vaccinated.

Edwards, a conventionally trained doctor who has shifted to promoting natural remedies and prayer, has been operating a makeshift clinic in Seminole, offering children these unproven treatments — including, according to a video posted by an anti-vaccine group, while he said he was sick with measles. Edwards has allied himself with the anti-vaccine movement in recent months, hosting influencers and activists on his podcast, including Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center, Brian Hooker of Children’s Health Defense and Andrew Wakefield, the discredited British doctor behind a retracted study that fraudulently linked autism to the MMR vaccine.

In addition to the two measles deaths in Texas, an adult in New Mexico died in early March. While the death is still under investigation, the individual tested positive for measles after death. There have been 657 measles cases so far this year, the highest total since 2019 when there was a major outbreak in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York, according to NBC News’ tally of state health department data. Most are tied to the Texas outbreak, which has spilled into several neighboring states. The vast majority of patients were not vaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status. 

There are no treatments for measles itself, although children may need medical care to treat complications, such as pneumonia. Because of this, public health experts emphasize the importance of getting two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, which are 97% effective at preventing the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

“There is no evidence to support the use of either aerosolized budesonide or clarithromycin for treatment of children with measles,” said Dr. Adam Ratner, a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Prescribing treatments that have not been vetted in clinical trials amounts to experimenting on patients, added Dr. Susan McLellan, a professor in the infectious diseases division at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

“It is very understandable that people want to grasp onto a hopeful remedy,” McLellan said. “It is unfortunate when trusted providers of advice, such as those in higher levels of our government, are not very clearly stating what is upheld by scientific evidence and what is not.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said Kennedy has offered clear guidance that vaccines are the most effective way to prevent measles.

Edwards declined to comment. Bartlett did not respond to requests for comment.

The misinformation playbook

During the Covid pandemic, fringe doctors hyped unproven cures like ivermectin — an antiparasitic drug typically used for worm infections — while making unsubstantiated claims about the dangers of mRNA shots. Kennedy himself told podcaster Joe Rogan in 2023 that ivermectin was discredited because various groups stood to make money off Covid vaccines.

Edwards and Bartlett, the doctors treating measles patients in Texas, have a similar history of questioning vaccine safety. Edwards shared dubious claims about injuries and deaths related to Covid vaccines at a Texas state legislative hearing in 2021. And Bartlett touted budesonide as a “silver bullet” to treat Covid during the pandemic.

During the measles outbreak, they have each warned of risks associated with the MMR vaccine: Edwards claimed, falsely, that it causes “potentially” hundreds of deaths a year and Bartlett has said that the complications caused by measles, including brain swelling and pneumonia, can also be caused by the vaccine. In reality, the MMR vaccine, which is only given to children with healthy immune systems, has been overwhelmingly safe since its approval more than five decades ago, and has saved an estimated 94 million lives worldwide. Some people may experience temporary side effects such as a fever, rash or joint pain, which are expected after vaccination.

Measles, on the other hand, is highly contagious and can be life-threatening for the unvaccinated. On average, measles kills almost 3 out of every 1,000 people diagnosed. 

But anti-vaccine activists have tried to link the two recent pediatric deaths to medical malpractice instead, which NBC News could not verify. On an episode of Edwards’ podcast, “You’re the Cure,” on Monday, Bartlett attributed at least one measles death in the U.S. to “medical error,” claiming that a child had not been treated with the appropriate antibiotic for a secondary bacterial infection.

Covenant Children’s Hospital, which treated the first child who died, called such claims circulating online “misleading and inaccurate.” University Medical Center Children’s Hospital, which treated the second child, said in a statement Sunday that the patient had no known underlying health conditions and was receiving treatment for complications of measles while hospitalized.

Dr. Robert Malone, an anti-vaccine activist, similarly suggested in his newsletter over the weekend that the two pediatric deaths were due to medical error, and that budesonide could have saved at least one child’s life. 

What the science actually says

Budesonide is normally used to treat inflammatory diseases. In capsule form, it’s an effective treatment for Crohn’s disease. And its inhaled form can reduce asthma symptoms. 

Bartlett said on Edwards’ podcast that he realized, through divine intervention in March 2020, that budesonide could help save the lives of people who were critically ill with Covid. 

“While I was asleep, an answer to prayer came to me,” he said. “It will shut down the release of the cytokines, the inflammatory chemicals from the lung lining.”

He pointed to trials out of the University of Oxford that he said supported that claim. The trials showed that budesonide could shorten recovery times in nonhospitalized patients, but there’s no firm evidence that it can reduce the risk of hospitalization or death from Covid. 

Steroids should not be given early in the course of a viral infection like measles, because they inhibit the immune system, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“That’s not what you want to do,” he said. “Your immune system works for you” to fight measles.

Doctors do use steroids in people with Covid who have late-stage pneumonia if their immune system has become overactive, Offit said. 

Doctors prescribe budesonide, administered by either an inhaler or nasal spray, to reduce wheezing in people with asthma, he added. While people with measles develop a cough, they don’t really wheeze.

Kennedy’s suggestion that measles patients could benefit from clarithromycin similarly lacks context, pediatricians and infectious disease doctors said. 

Antibiotics are designed to kill bacteria, not viruses, so they don’t work against measles itself. But measles can weaken the body so much that people develop a bacterial infection such as staphylococcus or streptococcus. 

Offit said doctors typically treat such infections with a combination of antibiotics called vancomycin and ceftriaxone. These medications are given intravenously, he said, whereas clarithromycin usually comes in pill form. Studies show it’s more effective to treat severe infections, such as bacterial pneumonia or sepsis, with intravenous antibiotics, which help ensure that adequate levels of the antibiotics make it into the bloodstream. Patients who take antibiotics by mouth may not receive a high enough dose to combat a serious infection, because the medication has to go through the intestines, where it may not be fully absorbed.

“You don’t treat severe infections orally,” Offit said. “It would be too risky.”

Clarithromycin is also a broad-spectrum antibiotic, meaning it targets a wide range of bacteria, said Dr. Paul Kilgore, a professor at Wayne State University’s Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

“If we treat with broad-spectrum antibiotics, we don’t know exactly what we’re treating [and] we run the risk of increasing antibiotic resistance,” he said.

Public health experts said touting these medications as first-line treatments sends the wrong message. 

“By mentioning such treatments without that context, RFK Jr. continues to distract away from the prevention measure that incontrovertibly works — the vaccine,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

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“Y’all, we have been up since 5:15,” Ronsina Ray — mother to a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old — began a recent TikTok video. “Can somebody please explain to me why the stuff for kids opens at 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning?”

“I’ve lived five different lives. I’ve cooked two meals. I’ve watched 16 hours of TV. I have showed my head, shoulders, knees and toes. I done labeled every body part. I done shapes, colors, letters,” Ray, 31, continued. “We done went to the potty three times. We’ve had four snacks. We went outside for an hour — and you’re still not open? … By the time y’all open, we done made it to high school graduation.”

During an interview with TODAY.com, Ray points out another issue: the hours clash with many nap schedules.

“By the time we get there, my kids, who’ve been awake since 5, are cranky and fighting and it’s time to leave,” Ray says.

Jokingly, she suggests creating her own “little space” for parents and children to gather first thing in the morning. 

“I’m picturing the old McDonald’s with an indoor play area,” she says. “I can drink some coffee, my kids can play and we can have some breakfast. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

If the comments on Ray’s TikTok are any indication, she may have the beginnings of a successful new business venture. 

• “10am is DINNER TIME,” one person wrote.
• “The library opening at 10am is seriously criminal.”
• “And then I take you at 10 but you fall asleep in the car for 5 minutes on the way home and ruin my whole goddamn day.”
• “I have been asking this question since becoming a mom. I mean by the time they open, 1/2 my day is done!”
• “Lowe’s opens at 7. Used to take the kids and let them explore the model kitchens and appliances.”
• “Don’t have kids but one time I saw a LINE of parents and kids waiting at the door of the indoor playground at 9:58AM. They looked STRESSED.”
• “At this point give me the keys and we can get it set up early and popping. My kids would be free employees in exchange for early fun.”
• “We have a new play place that opens at 7am and I was like welp you get all my money.”

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KFC announced the fried chicken dental concoction on April 1. While many assumed it was a joke, the house Colonel Sanders built was adamant the collaboration with Hismile was no laughing matter.

“Not a prank. It’s here. And it’s Finger Lickin’ Good,” KFC wrote on Instagram.

Many commented on the post sharing disappointment — seemingly because they failed to read the caption or do some follow-up research.

“I’m too tired. I thought this was real. How dare u kfc,” one Instagram user commented.

“Awh man I wish this was real 💔,” another user wrote.

KFC wanted to reassure its followers by replying: “It’s real we promise 🤞 visit the link in our caption 😊”

“This toothpaste is like biting into a crispy, hot, juicy piece of KFC Original Recipe Chicken. Bring the unmistakable taste of crispy, golden perfection straight to your toothbrush for a full-on flavour takeover,” Hismile’s website reads.

But as the toothpaste that cost $13 and the separate toothbrush that cost $59 recently sold out, the disappointment will continue for many who wished to brush their teeth with the iconic flavor blend of 11 herbs and spices.

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KFC is known for eye-catching marketing stunts. A Colonel Sanders look-alike breached United Nations security in 2009, and met with former UN General Assembly President Ali Treki.

While the idea of fried chicken-flavored toothpaste may be good for laughs, the novelty paste doesn’t contain fluoride — an important naturally occurring mineral that helps prevent cavities and strengthen enamel for healthy teeth.

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The decision comes a day after the Supreme Court also sided with the Trump administration in another lawsuit filed over mass firings.

A split panel for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the terminations of federal workers should probably be appealed through a separate employment process rather than fought out in federal court. Two judges appointed by Republican presidents sided with the administration, while a third Democratic appointed judge dissented.

The decision comes in a lawsuit filed by nearly two dozen states, who said the mass firings will cause irreparable burdens and expenses to support recently unemployed workers. They said at least 24,000 probationary employees have been terminated since Trump took office.

The states could still seek further review as the lawsuit continues to play out.

The Republican administration has argued that the states have no right to try to influence the federal government’s relationship with its own workers, but also had already reinstated some 15,000 workers to full duty or paid leave as the lawsuits played out, according to court documents.

The appeals court order halts a decision from U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore, who was one of two judges appointed by Democratic presidents who found that the Trump administration violated federal laws in carrying out the terminations at 20 agencies in the states that sued.

The Supreme Court blocked another order from U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco on Tuesday, finding that nonprofit groups lacked legal standing to sue over the firing of probationary workers. The case still has additional plaintiffs, however, and Alsup was weighing Wednesday whether to again order reinstatement on behalf of the state of Washington and labor groups.

Probationary workers have been targeted for layoffs across the federal government because they’re usually new to the job and lack full civil service protection.

The states suing the Trump administration in the Baltimore case are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin, along with Washington, D.C.

___

Associated Press writer Janie Har in San Francisco contributed to this report.

A record number of medals will be awarded when the Olympics come to Los Angeles in 2028.

The medal events program for 2028 approved Wednesday by the International Olympic Committee features six new mixed gender team events in what the LA28 organizing committee called a “monumental step forward.”

“Today marks a monumental step forward in LA28’s pursuit to welcome the greatest collection of athletes ever assembled on the world’s biggest stage in sport,” said LA28 Chief Athlete Officer Janet Evans. “We are opening the door for more athletes to compete, win, and live out their Olympic dream at the LA28 Games where athletes have always been, and always will be, the heart of the Games. We are proud to champion an athlete-centric vision that celebrates excellence, diversity and the unifying spirit of the Olympic Movement.”

The program approved for 2028 has 22 more medal events than Paris 2024 at 351.

See the full list of medal events here.

What are the 2028 Olympics mixed team events?

Mixed team events added for 2028 include artistic gymnastics, athletics (4×100 mixed gender relay), golf, archery (compound bow), coastal rowing beach sprint and table tennis. The competition format for the new artistic gymnastic mixed team event will be finalized and announced at a later date.

Other medal event changes for LA 2028

• Soccer: The women’s field will be expanded to a record 16 teams. The men’s tournament will feature 12 teams.
• Water polo: The women’s competition will grow to 12 teams.
• Boxing: A new weight class will be added to the women’s competition, bringing the number of weight classes to seven for both men’s and women’s.
• 3×3 basketball: The tournament will expand to 12 women’s and men’s teams.
• Swimming: Additional medal events approved by the IOC include the 50m distance swim for both women and men in backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly, joining the 50m freestyle, which adds six medal opportunities for swimmers.
• Sport climbing: Two medal opportunities were added by separating the previous combined boulder and lead event. Three new events — speed, boulder and lead — will be part of LA 2028.

Five additional Olympic sports were earlier proposed by LA28. Flag football will make its Olympic debut in 2028 and lacrosse will return to the lineup of medal sports for the first time in more than a century. Baseball and softball will make their Olympic comeback, and cricket also will be part of the lineup.

2028 Olympics venues plan

Los Angeles also received a clearer picture Wednesday of where Olympians will compete in Southern California in 2028. LA28 presented its proposed list of 2028 Olympics venues when members of the organizing committee met with the International Olympic Committee.

Several venues were proposed months ago, but LA28 needed the IOC to sign off on a final list. No new permanent venues will be built for the 2028 Olympics.

Details of the plan presented to the IOC were not immediately available, but Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area in the San Fernando Valley, the Convention Center and Crypto.com Arena in downtown LA, the sports complex in Carson and several sites outside the city of Los Angeles, including canoe slalom and softball, which are set for Oklahoma City.

See the most current venues list here.

The Los Angeles City Council in March approved changes to the original proposed venue plan for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympic Games. The city approved an intial venue plan in 2017, but revisions were announced during the summer. Any amendments require consent by the city, which cleared the way for the IOC presentation.

Among the changes proposed in the summer and approved Friday: Basketball would move to the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, gymnastics to Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles and swimming to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Equestrian events appear to be headed for the Riverside County community of Temecula. This week, the city of Santa Monica announced talks to host beach volleyball in the coastal city fell apart.

More information on the updated Olympic venue plan will be shared by LA28 in the coming days, according to a news release.

The LA 2028 Olympics Opening Ceremony is July 14, 2028 with competition through July 30, 2028. The LA28 Paralympic Games will kick off Aug. 15, 2028 and close Aug. 27, 2028. 

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Celebrities do it all the time — many for their whole lives. Wednesday is “National Name Yourself Day,” a lighthearted but thought-provoking holiday each April 9 that encourages people to adopt a new name to reflect on identity and self-perception.

While it may seem like harmless fun, names carry psychological weight. Studies suggest names influence how we see ourselves, how others perceive us and even the paths we take in life. Researchers have dubbed this the “Dorian Gray effect” — the idea that names, like Oscar Wilde’s fictional portrait, subtly shape who we become.

In “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Oscar Wilde tells the story of a man whose portrait ages and deteriorates in response to his unethical actions while he remains outwardly youthful and untouched. The story explores themes of vanity, identity, and the divide between appearance and reality — making it a fitting metaphor for how external markers, like names, might influence or reflect internal transformation.

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Cesar Wurm, an author and recovery advocate, says he sees the day as more than just make-believe.

“Our names may shape how we view ourselves and how others see us. They can carry weight, power, expectations — or maybe even offer an opportunity to lighten things up,” Wurm said. “What do you love about your life right now? Double down on it. What’s not quite clicking? Rename it. Reframe it. Take the first step to change it.”

Whether you wish to be reborn and name yourself Phoenix or Joy to perhaps feel more of it, the day is about one thing: checking in with yourself. A new name might not change everything, but it could change your perspective.

Worm believes some people often wait too long for a major milestone moment, such as a new job or a new year to reassess their lives.

“Why not use this random, quirky holiday as your personal check-in? As a mirror held up to your own life portrait?” he said.

Tami Radabaugh, the deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for strategic engagement and a direct adviser to Hegseth, has been lobbying other senior officials to suspend the Pentagon’s decades-old relationship with the group, including arguing that when Hegseth was a host on Fox News, he decried Scouting America as an organization that had “lost what they stand for,” the people familiar said.

It is not clear where Hegseth and the people around him stand on the issue.

Though the Pentagon has not yet decided whether to cut off that relationship and whether it would be a total severing of ties or something more limited, such as Hegseth’s not being involved, Radabaugh recommended that Hegseth not participate in a video for the group because of the concern, and he has not so far, according to the people familiar with the discussions.

In a statement, Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said, “Secretary Hegseth and his Public Affairs team thoroughly review partnerships and engagements to ensure they align with the President’s agenda and advance our mission.”

In May, when Boy Scouts of America announced it would officially change its name to Scouting America, Hegseth denounced the organization on Fox News, blaming “the left” for supposedly wanting to destroy it. 

“This is an institution the left didn’t control. They didn’t want to improve it. They wanted to destroy it or dilute it into something that stood for nothing. So, five years ago, the Boy Scouts let in girls, which was basically the end of Boy Scouts,” he said at the time. 

Hegseth said government gets more powerful when organizations and youth groups like the Boy Scouts lose what they stand for.

“This is a tragedy,” he said. “Young kids won’t have the opportunity to learn these skills, but more importantly, the values. And they did it to themselves.”

The U.S. military has supported scouting for decades, according to Gordon Shattles, Scouting America’s national director for corporate communications. That includes allowing the organization to hold all of its National Jamborees at Fort A.P. Hill, now known as Fort Walker, from 1981 until 2010, after which the event was moved to Bechtel Reserve, a new facility owned by Scouting America. 

Shattles said the group has “a long and celebrated history of collaboration with the United States military” and added that the “enduring relationship spans decades.” 

Scouts attend U.S. military academies every year, including more than 3,516 Eagle Scouts who have enrolled at the U.S. Military Academy West Point since 2003, according to statistics provided by Scouting America.

About 20% of this year’s graduating class at the U.S. Air Force Academy were in the Boy Scouts or the Girls Scouts, and about 10% of the cadets had earned the prestigious Eagle Scout Gold Award, for extraordinary contributions to their communities, according to Scouting America. 

Shattles said the military supports scouting every year by allowing its units to conduct meetings, campouts and other activities on bases, by having military color guards participate in scouting ceremonies and events, and by participating in or supporting national scouting events like the jamborees. 

He said many active-duty and retired military personnel serve as scout leaders and as merit badge counselors, particularly for badges related to outdoor skills, citizenship and emergency preparedness.

Shattles also reinforced that Scouting America does not receive funding from the Defense Department or any other federal agency.

The scouts have also helped with military recruiting, according to two defense officials.

While U.S. Army Recruiting Command does not have an official affiliation with Scouting America, recruits who enlist with certain awards from scouting, like Eagle Scout Certificates or Girl Scout Gold Awards, can enter the Army with higher ranks upon enlistment, according to a spokesperson for the command. 

And U.S. Army Cadet Command “conducts marketing and recruiting activities with Scouting America to educate Scouts and their parents on opportunities available in Army ROTC,” the spokesperson said in an email. 

The West Virginia National Guard has supported the Jamboree in recent years and is expected to provide a military band and colors for the next gathering in 2026 at Bechtel Reserve, according to a defense official and Scouting America. 

Chartered by Congress, the organization was known as Boy Scouts of America for more than 100 years until February, the month of its 115th anniversary, when the name officially became Scouting America. The name change is part of a larger effort to make the organization more inclusive that also included permitting girls to join. The organization had filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020 after it faced lawsuits from tens of thousands of sexual abuse survivors, which led to a nearly $2.5 billion trust to compensate victims. 

President Donald Trump spoke at the Jamboree on July 25, 2017, saying, “You are the young people of character, integrity who will serve as leaders of our communities and uphold the sacred values of our nation.” 

“The United States has no better citizens than its Boy Scouts,” he told the crowd, adding, “The scouts believe in putting America first.” He also pointed out that 10 members of his Cabinet had been scouts.  

Radabaugh, who advises Hegseth on Defense Department engagement with outside groups, is a former producer at Fox News Channel and Fox Business Channel, according to her LinkedIn profile, including a stint at “Fox & Friends,” the morning show whose weekend edition Hegseth co-hosted before he became defense secretary.

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The two pieces of evidence were not enough to keep Abrego Garcia in federal immigration custody in 2019, when authorities in Maryland arrested him, according to a court filing last month.

They appear to be the basis for shipping him to a foreign megaprison with no legal recourse nearly six years later.

‘Administrative error’ leads to deportation

Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three and protected legal resident who has lived in Maryland since 2011 and is originally from El Salvador, was deported to a high-security jail in El Salvador on March 15. The Trump administration admitted last week that his deportation was an “administrative error” due to his protected status, but refused to commit to bringing him home.

The administration challenged a judge’s Friday ruling that the government bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States. It argued that Garcia was a member of MS-13, citing the accusation from 2019, and said he posed a threat to national security.

“While there is no doubt a ‘public interest in preventing aliens from being wrongfully removed,’ there is an overwhelming public interest in not importing members of violent transnational gangs into this country,” lawyers for the Justice Department wrote in a filing on Friday.

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The argument echoed claims made repeatedly by some of the administration’s highest-ranking officials in recent days, including Vice President JD Vance.

“What is it about congressional Democrats that get more angry at deporting violent gang members than they do at the victims of those violent gang members?” Vance said on Fox News last week. “I don’t even understand where they’re coming from. They’ve gone off the deep end, and they’ve got to come back to reality.”

Reality appears to be more nuanced.

Arrest in 2019 based in part on Chicago Bulls hat

On March 28, 2019, Abrego Garcia and three other noncitizens were apprehended by local authorities while soliciting work outside of a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland, according to Abrego Garcia’s initial petition filed last month.

The court document states that upon his arrest, authorities with the Prince George County Police Department accused Abrego Garcia of being affiliated with MS-13. After he repeatedly denied being affiliated with the notorious international crime group and did not provide officers with information about other gang members, authorities turned Abrego Garcia over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the petition states.

Prince George’s County police officers then produced a Gang Field Interview Sheet for ICE that “explained that the only reason to believe Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was a gang member was that he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie; and that a confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique,” the court document states.

Abrego Garcia then made multiple attempts to obtain additional information from local authorities to support the allegation that he was a gang member but was denied several times, the court document states. He simultaneously applied for asylum, arguing that gang members would torture or kill him if he was sent back to his home country, according to the court document.

The Prince George’s County Police Department declined to comment.

Judge issues protective order

While in custody, he married his wife, a U.S. citizen, at a Maryland immigration detention center, and was unable to be with her for the birth of their son, the court document states.

An immigration judge granted him a deportation protection order on Oct. 10, 2019, and he was released shortly afterward, according to the document. A more recent filing from Abrego Garcia’s attorney quotes the judge as describing Abrego Garcia as “credible.”

ICE never appealed the judge’s decision.

Nearly six years later, they apprehended Abrego Garcia in an IKEA parking lot while his 5-year-old son, who is autistic, was in the backseat of their car. ICE did not return a request for comment.

The Trump administration sent Abrego Garcia and nearly 300 others to a notorious megajail in El Salvador, defying a court order blocking the effort. The administration claimed the men were all Venezuelan gang members.

Court documents show that immigration officials relied on tattoos and social media activity to justify the gang affiliations.

Judge calls government claims ‘chatter’

Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said in a phone call that the administration’s repeated accusations that his client is a gang member “endangers his life.”

He argued that, regardless, the administration did not have the right to deport him.

“A: We totally deny that it was true in 2019. B: There’s no allegation even from them that he’s done anything since 2019,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “And then C: Even if you believed that all of those things about him were true, they still concede that they can’t do what they did.”

At a hearing for Abrego Garcia’s case in U.S. District Court on Friday, Judge Paula Xinis chalked up the government’s claims to “just chatter.”

“In a court of law, when someone is accused of membership in such a violent and predatory organization, it comes in form of indictment or criminal proceeding so we can assess facts,” she said. “I haven’t seen any of those.”

Xinis then ruled in favor of Abrego Garcia, ordering the government to bring him back to the U.S.

Supreme Court intervenes

But on Monday, at the request of the Trump administration, the Supreme Court issued an administrative stay that temporarily paused the order.

The Supreme Court also tossed out a lower court’s order blocking the Trump administration’s deportation of the 300 men. The administration did so without any legal process, citing the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law that allows the government to detain noncitizens during a period of war or invasion.

“It is a bad day to be a terrorist and criminal alien in the United States of America,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on X in the hours afterward.

In a post on his social media company Truth Social, President Donald Trump described the court’s decisions as “a great day for justice in America!”

In similarly unprecedented fashion, the Trump administration has been apprehending foreign students en masse, most of whom are Muslim, arguing that they pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy.

In response the Supreme Court’s ruling, Sandoval-Moshenberg again noted in a filing on Monday that Abrego Garcia has lived in the U.S. for years and has never been charged with a crime.

“The Government’s contention that he has suddenly morphed into a dangerous threat to the republic is not credible,” he wrote.

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Prosecutors and the defense for suspect Bryan Kohberger, 30, have clashed in court filings over what should be admissible, sharing new information that has filled in some gaps since the killings in late 2022 stunned the college town of Moscow. A sweeping gag order in the wake of the students’ deaths has prevented many attached to the case from speaking publicly.

Kohberger is accused of fatally stabbing housemates Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; and Xana Kernodle, 20; as well as Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20, with a large fixed-blade knife at an off-campus home on Nov. 13, 2022.

Latah County prosecutors have said they intend to seek the death penalty if Kohberger is convicted. In recent days, the state has also added another member to its team: Josh Hurwit, the U.S. attorney for the District of Idaho under former President Joe Biden.

Among the revelations in recent weeks is that Kohberger has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. His lawyers wrote that his autism has “significant impact on his daily life,” and that jurors may unfairly scrutinize his reactions in court as he maintains a “flat affect” and “does not show emotion on his face,” among other attributes.

“Due to his ASD, Mr. Kohberger simply cannot comport himself in a manner that aligns with societal expectations of normalcy,” his legal team argued in calling for the death penalty to be stricken as a sentencing option. “This creates an unconscionable risk that he will be executed because of his disability rather than his culpability.”

Prosecutors responded in a filing that Kohberger was shown to be diagnosed with the least severe form of autism that comes “without accompanying intellectual or language impairment,” and that he has failed to show his diagnosis “would in any way make him less culpable for murder.”

Experts have said challenging the death penalty can be difficult in Idaho, where the law does not allow defendants to mount an insanity defense in criminal cases.

But defendants in other high-profile trials have been successful in getting the death penalty dismissed, including “doomsday mom” Lori Vallow, who was convicted in 2023 in the deaths of her two children and her husband’s first wife. A judge removed the death penalty in her case due to late disclosure of evidence by state prosecutors.

Idaho has not executed anyone since 2012, but legislators legalized death by firing squad as an option in 2023 amid a shortage of lethal injection drugs.

Both prosecutors and the defense are also expected to spar over descriptions of Kohberger that they want avoided at trial.

Prosecutors intend to show a smiling selfie of Kohberger, which they say was taken roughly six hours after the students were killed, in order to help jurors determine whether the suspect has “bushy eyebrows.”

That facial feature was provided to police by one of two housemates who survived the night of the killings and said she saw a masked intruder dressed in black walking past her.

But Kohberger’s defense team is seeking to exclude any evidence referring to “bushy eyebrows,” arguing it would be “unfairly prejudicial” to jurors.

The defense also doesn’t want the state to refer to Kohberger as a “psychopath” or “sociopath,” or use the term “murderer” or other variations of that word.

In turn, prosecutors want Ada County Judge Steven Hippler to prohibit the defense from presenting testimony on the neurological and psychiatric evaluation of Kohberger; bar the defense from providing alibi evidence that isn’t given directly by Kohberger; and disallow the defense from offering “alternative perpetrator” evidence or argument without first proving that it is relevant.

Another key element at trial may be text messages the surviving roommates sent to one another prior to calling 911. That call wasn’t made until eight hours after the killings. The texts highlight a chaotic early morning in which the two roommates tried unsuccessfully to call the others who were on separate floors of the home.

“I’m so freaked out,” one of them wrote.

The defense said in a filing that the messages the prosecution wants to include are selective, and that the surviving roommates were also on social media and “were not asleep for 8 hours,” according to phone records.

The defense had previously said in court filings that there is “no connection” between Kohberger and the students, and that other men’s DNA was also found at the scene.

How DNA evidence may be used at trial could also emerge at Wednesday’s hearing. Authorities say DNA was found on a knife sheath at the crime scene and is a statistical match to Kohberger’s.

In a court filing, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson wrote that a defense expert’s disclosure revealed that Kohberger’s lawyers won’t challenge that the DNA found on the sheath belongs to the suspect. Instead, Thompson wrote, “the defense plans to argue the DNA on the knife sheath does not prove Defendant was ever at the crime scene and the knife sheath itself could have been planted by the real perpetrator.”

Prosecutors said in recent court documents that Kohberger purchased a Ka-Bar knife from Amazon eight months prior to the murders, and it was that same type of knife sheath found on the bed next to Mogen’s body. The murder weapon had not been recovered, Moscow police have said.

Other motions surrounding Kohberger’s online purchases, the apparent capturing of his car on surveillance videos and the prosecution’s planned use of a 3-D model of the victims’ home may also be discussed Wednesday. The hearing could also continue into Thursday.

Shanshan Dong reported from Boise and Erik Ortiz from New York.

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Rescuers could be seen surrounding the car involved, which came to rest next to the bus. They appeared to be focused on that car, eventually pulling an 18-year-old woman from it.

The “extensive extrication” took nearly two hours, New Castle County Paramedics spokesperson Jamielee Majewski said in a news release.

“She was treated by the New Castle County Paramedics for extremity and internal injuries,” the news release said. “She was transported to Christiana Hospital on board Delaware State Police Helicopter in critical condition.”

None of the students — ages 14 to 17 — on the bus were hurt, paramedics said.

However, the 75-year-old bus driver was treated for neck, back and possibly internal injuries, medics said. He was listed in serious condition after being medevac’d from the scene.

Both directions of Route 896 appeared to be closed. DelDOT’s traffic advisory website said to expect lane closures from the crash that was first reported around 8:10 a.m.

The cause of the crash remained under investigation.

The cause of the massive collapse at the Jet Set nightclub remains unclear as rescue efforts enter their second day. Giant cranes were seen removing pieces of the destroyed roof.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Wednesday post on X that at least one U.S. citizen and U.S. legal resident were killed in the club roof collapse and that “rescue efforts remain ongoing.”

Juan Manuel Méndez, director of the country’s Emergency Operations Center, said in a press conference Wednesday that the Dominican navy and fire service were involved in the rescue.

“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones affected by this devastating event. The U.S. stands ready to support our Dominican allies amid this difficult time,” Rubio added.

Athletes, government officials and fans were at the club to see popular merengue singer Rubby Pérez. The Associated Press reported that dust from the ceiling started falling into people’s drinks minutes before the roof came down.

Over 100 calls quickly flooded the country’s 911 system, many from people who said they were trapped under concrete slabs, the AP reported.

Among the victims in the deadly collapse were two former MLB players, Octavio Dotel and Tony Enrique Blanco Cabrera, as well as Nelsy Cruz, governor of the Montecristi province. Cruz called President Luis Abinader while trapped to tell him about the disaster, according to the AP.

“His energy, positivity and zest for life were infectious to all who had the pleasure of knowing him,” Dotel’s agent, Dan Horwits, said in a statement Tuesday. “We pass along our thoughts and prayers to his entire family as well as everyone affected by the tragedy.”

Fray Luis Rosario, owner of Terra Luna Cafe in Massachusetts, was also killed, according to NBC Boston.

Méndez confirmed on Wednesday that Pérez’s body was pulled from the rubble by rescuers.

Méndez said a timeline of what happened remains unclear, but investigators have seen “videos of the situation at the moment” Pérez was singing.

The number of injuries is also unknown. At least 145 people were rescued within the first 24 hours of the collapse, according to Méndez.

There were 155 ambulance transfers to local hospitals. Authorities said that some of the ambulances took as many as three people at a time.

One of the people desperate to find his loved ones, Wilson Casado, said he’s been waiting for news about his nephew, cousin and his nephew’s wife since Tuesday morning. He said they had posted videos from inside the club before the collapse.

“We don’t have any news,” he said. “We don’t know anything yet. We don’t know anything about where they could be yet.”

Casado said officials told the family that his nephew’s wife was taken to the hospital, but they have not been able to locate her.

“We just hope they’re at a hospital, to be able to see them again,” he said.

Aneudy Ortiz Sajiun, a Dominican senator, posted an Instagram video showing him and a group of officials praying at the site of the Jet Set nightclub.

Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez said some of his family members were in the club when the roof collapsed. Martinez said he doesn’t know what happened to them, but he’s going “to be strong.”

“We’re all sad. We’re all affected by the tragedy,” he said in an Instagram video.

Global music stars Juan Luis Guerra, Daddy Yankee and Marc Anthony all took to social media to offer prayers to everyone impacted.

Jet Set opened in 1973 as a club and restaurant, according to the local newspaper Listín Diario. The paper reports that it underwent renovations in 2010 and 2015.

There was a fire in 2023 after a power plant was struck by lightning.

“There are no words to express the pain this event has caused,” the club said in a statement.

“What happened has been devastating for everyone. We want you to know that we are with you and that we share your anguish,” the club said in a translated statement. “As the Jet Set family, we are with you. To you, mothers, fathers, siblings, children, and loved ones of those affected: you can count on us.”

Joe Kottke, Natalie Obregon and Brittany Kubicko contributed.

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The bodies of a 37-year-old woman and her three children, ages 2, 5 and 7, were found in Cornelius, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Portland, after someone called 911 to report finding their bodies, according to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff’s office spokesperson Deputy David Huey told KATU-TV that the bodies were found in a building attached to the home.

“This is a pretty tragic event,” he said. “This is a small community between Cornelius and North Plains, and it’s going to hit them hard.”

No additional information about the victims or their cause of death was immediately available.

No arrests have been made, according to local reporting. Investigators don’t believe there is a danger to the public, according to the sheriff’s office.

The mere announcement of the duties last week sent shock waves through global markets and caused trillions of dollars in paper losses. Now, consumers and investors alike will begin to gauge the actual impact on the U.S. economy as the cost of the import taxes starts to flow through supply chains and into businesses and household budgets.

The average tariff faced by the dozens of nations Trump targeted is 29%, with many as high as 40%. The White House posted the full list here. Chinese imports will carry a cumulative rate of 104% because of new tariffs Trump imposed this year, on top of levies he had already enacted during his first term. Those took effect late Tuesday. 

Trump is seeking to reshape the global world economic order by reducing America’s reliance on foreign imports. Amid debate about how the country-by-country tariffs were calculated, Trump has acknowledged that his goal all along was to effectively erase or even reverse the U.S. trade deficit, which most economists say serves little purpose and is likely to lead to higher prices and potentially slower economic growth.

Already, Trump has instituted a 10% baseline tariff on goods brought into the United States. And while he said he would negotiate over trade, he gave little sign of relenting, only posting a note in the morning that he believed China would seek a deal alongside other potential agreements his administration is discussing with Japan, South Korea and other countries.  

Tariffs are nothing new, and many business leaders have long argued that the United States must do more to prevent some low-cost goods, especially from China, from flooding its markets. 

But Trump shocked the world with his attempt to bring to the United States the production of a vast array of goods that are, in most cases, produced more affordably overseas. 

“It’s too much too fast,” said Craig Fuller, founder and CEO of FreightWaves, a logistics consultancy. Businesses — especially small ones — are simply not equipped to alter their supply chains at the speed and scale Trump desires, he added, and will face enormous cost increases in the meantime while they try to reckon with them.  

“It’s not realistic,” Fuller said. 

Trump has shown little appetite for taking “no” for an answer, even as financial markets plunged.

On Monday, he told reporters at the White House that “I don’t mind going through it because I see a beautiful picture at the end,” because “tariffs will make this country very rich.”

Economists are not as sanguine about the tariff program. Many are sounding alarms about what could be next. In a note to clients ahead of Wednesday’s deadline, analysts with Wells Fargo said the tariffs would be likely to cause a “modest” stagflationary “shock” to the U.S. economy: As prices go up, they will contribute to eroding real income growth, causing spending and overall economic activity to contract, they said.

And if other countries retaliate with tariffs that are equivalent to the levies the United States has already slapped on them, they wrote, “then the contraction in real GDP is even deeper.” 

“The downturn in the economy causes the unemployment rate to rise from its current level of roughly 4% to about 5%,” they wrote.

That 5% unemployment figure echoes similar projections last week from analysts with JPMorgan, who said “the pinch from higher prices that we expect in the coming months may hit harder than in the post-pandemic inflation spike,” given that income growth was already slowing. 

“Moreover, in an environment of heightened uncertainty, consumers may be reluctant to dip too far into savings to finance spending growth.”

Several countries are already retaliating. With the tariffs’ taking effect Wednesday, Canada said it was instituting 25% duties on some U.S.-made automobiles and all U.S.-made auto parts. 

“President Trump caused this trade crisis — and Canada is responding with purpose and with force,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote Tuesday on X.

China has already hit back with 34% tariffs on American products — mostly energy and agricultural products — prompting Trump to say new duties on Chinese goods would go into effect Wednesday. China is also considering a ban on U.S. cultural exports like movies. 

Perhaps most worrisome is that lower borrowing rates Trump sought to better grapple with his budget plans have not materialized. Late Tuesday, the yield, or interest rate, that investors demand to lend money to the government had surged back above the level it had hit before Trump’s tariffs rollout last week.

For all the massive moves in financial markets that have already taken place, one expert says it may only be the beginning. 

“A historical shift in trade policy … will not be digested that quickly,” Jens Nordvig, founder and CEO of Exante Data financial consultancy, wrote late Tuesday on X. “It could take weeks and months and even quarters, before we have their full effects embedded.”

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Felipe Zapata Velasquez, 27, was cited for illegal license plate/attached mobile home sticker, driving with a license suspended or revoked with knowledge, having an expired tag after he was arrested the night of March 28, records showed.

Police bodycam released Tuesday showed the moments Zapata Velasquez was stopped by a police officer.

The officer asks Zapata Velasquez for his license and if he goes to school at the University of Florida.

“I’m an international student,” he tells the officer. “I just came from Colombia.”

The officer runs his information and finds out Zapata Velasquez’s license is suspended.

“What’s up with your license, man?” the officer asks. “Your license is suspended.”

Zapata Velasquez tells the officer he is in the middle of renewing his license as well as his student visa.

Officers then put him in handcuffs, telling him he is being arrested for driving with a suspended license.

“You already got a citation for this before, this is now your second citation; however, now you’re gonna go to the courts for it,” the officer says.

Zapata Velasquez is a third-year undergrad student, majoring in Food and Resource Economics at the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at UF, university officials said.

Nuestra Tele Noticias, a TV station in Latin America, spoke to his mother, Claudia Velasquez, who said her son was forced to sign documents that allow his deportation.

In a statement Tuesday, Claudia Velasquez said her son had returned to Colombia.

“They pulled him over, told him his license was suspended. They took him to the station and at the station is where they started to do the process to pay his bond. Obviously, they knew they were gonna hold him. Once he was done with the whole process, ICE was waiting for him,” she said.

She said he had been in the process of renewing his F-1 student visa.

“They knew it was a mistake. It was an error, but that doesn’t make him a criminal,” the mother said.

In a statement Wednesday, ICE officials said Zapata Velasquez was released to their custody on March 31 and transferred to Jacksonville before he was taken to Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade.

“Felipe Zapata-Velasquez, 27, of Colombia, was admitted into the U.S. on Feb. 12, 2023, in Orlando, Florida, as a F-1 student to attend Sante Fe College. On Oct. 4, 2024, Zapata’s student status was terminated from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System after failing to enroll,” the ICE statement read. “The Alachua County Sheriff’s Office arrested Zapata for driving with a suspended license and the license plate attached to the car he was driving was not assigned to that car.”

On April 6, ICE said they verified Zapata’s voluntary departure to Colombia.

The beating took place at around 8 p.m. Friday as the restaurant was winding down for the day.

“I feel rage, primarily because something like this has never happened, and for it to be over $50 just doesn’t make any sense,” El Taco Azteca owner Carlos García said.

The assault, all caught on surveillance video, allegedly stemmed over a $50 check. Restaurant owners and employees claim the customers ate most of their takeout order when they returned to the restaurant and demanded a refund. When the waitress did not comply, the situation escalated.

Before fists flew, one of the attackers made her way behind the bar. She grabbed the waitress’ cellphone and threw it into a bucket filled with water before damaging items inside the business.

When the waitress, who is remaining anonymous, threatened to call 911, she became the target of the customers’ anger.

Surveillance video shows two customers punch, kick, stomp and drag the waitress for around two minutes as employees tried to break up the attack.

“I came in when I heard what was going on and I was able to pull off one of her attackers. When I finally got them separated, one of them then turned to me and started swinging,” Marta Garcia said.

The waitress, who suffered several bruises and cuts as well as a broken finger, is now recovering as El Taco Azteca employees call on police to find her assailants.

The restaurant’s manager, not mincing words, said she has a message for the attackers.

“I want them to know, we’re going to find you whatever it takes, I’m putting everything I have into this … I have no doubt about it, we’re going to find them,” Garcia said.

Melanie Krause, who had served as acting head since February, will step down over the new data-sharing document signed Monday by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The agreement will allow ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.

Two people familiar with the situation confirmed Krause was resigning and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The IRS has been in upheaval over Trump administration decisions to share taxpayer data. Acting Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell announced his retirement from the agency after roughly 40 years of service in February as furor spread over Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency gaining access to IRS taxpayer data. Krause replaced him.

Acting chief counsel William Paul was removed from his role at the agency last month and replaced by Andrew De Mello, an attorney in the chief counsel’s office who is deemed supportive of DOGE, according to two other people familiar with the plans who were also not authorized to speak publicly.

Immigration Apr 8

IRS to share info with ICE about some undocumented immigrant taxpayers

Immigration Apr 7

Supreme Court lifts order blocking deportations under 18th century wartime law

The Treasury Department says the agreement will help carry out President Donald Trump’s agenda to secure U.S. borders and is part of his larger nationwide immigration crackdown, which has resulted in deportations, workplace raids and the use of an 18th century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants.

Advocates, however, say the IRS-DHS information-sharing agreement violates privacy laws and diminishes the privacy of all Americans.

The basis for the agreement is founded in “longstanding authorities granted by Congress, which serve to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans while streamlining the ability to pursue criminals,” said a Treasury official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to explain the agency’s thinking on the agreement.

Tom Bowman, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, said disclosing immigrant tax records to DHS for immigration enforcement “will discourage tax compliance among immigrant communities, weaken contributions to essential public programs, and increase burdens for U.S. citizens and nonimmigrant taxpayers. It also sets a dangerous precedent for data privacy abuse in other federal programs.”

Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, told reporters at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix on Tuesday that the agreement will help ICE find people who are collecting benefits they aren’t entitled to and are “kind of hiding in plain sight” using someone else’s identity.

Working with Treasury and other departments is “strictly for the major criminal cases,” Lyons said.

The IRS had already been called upon to help with immigration enforcement earlier this year.

Noem in February sent a request to Bessent to borrow IRS Criminal Investigation workers to help with the immigration crackdown, according to a letter obtained by the AP. It cites the IRS’ boost in funding, though the $80 billion infusion of funds the federal tax collection agency received under the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act has already been clawed back.

A collection of tax law experts for the NYU Tax Law Center wrote Monday that the IRS-DHS agreement “threatens to violate the rights that many more Americans have under longstanding laws that protect their tax information from wrongful disclosure or dissemination.”

“In fact, it is difficult to see how the IRS could release information to DHS while complying with taxpayer privacy statutes,” they said. “IRS officials who sign off on data sharing under these circumstances risk breaking the law, which could result in criminal and civil sanctions.”

The memo states that the IRS and ICE “will perform their duties in a manner that recognizes and enhances individuals’ right of privacy and will ensure their activities are consistent with laws, regulations, and good administrative practices.”

Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat contributed to this report from Phoenix.

The 64-year-old Long Island man was the third of four children, but he always felt like something was off. It wasn’t until a shocking discovery that the true reason behind his feelings became clear.

After his niece took an over-the-counter DNA test, McMahon learned that he wasn’t actually related to his family at all.

It was his sister, Carol Vignola, who first learned about the DNA test results and did some research before speaking to him. She found birth records at New York’s Jamaica Hospital where McMahon was born, which revealed something shocking: another baby boy with the last name McMahon was born on the same day, within hours of Kevin. His name was Ross, and Carol’s DNA result said Ross was a direct relative.

“Two Caucasian mothers with the same last name, both giving birth to baby boys on the same day. They were switched before the birth certificates were even signed,” explained Jeremy Schiowitz, McMahon’s attorney.

The error went undetected for decades, with no one realizing the mistake until the DNA test exposed it.

“There’s no mystery as to what happened,” Schiowitz continued. “Jamaica Hospital switched the babies. The DNA proves it. The mystery is, how did they let this happen?”

In response to the discovery, McMahon filed a civil lawsuit against Jamaica Hospital. The hospital declined to comment on the case.

As a child, McMahon faced difficulties in his early life. His mother, an alcoholic, struggled with providing consistent care for her children. His three siblings were often cared for by their paternal grandmother, while McMahon was sent to live with a family friend. He often felt the sting of being treated differently by his grandmother, which he now believes may have been a result of the mix-up.

“I was treated differently by my grandmother,” McMahon recalled. “She didn’t like me, and in time, I took that to mean I wasn’t likable.”

While McMahon loves his siblings dearly, he can’t help but wonder how his life might have been different had he grown up with his birth parents, both of whom passed away years before he discovered the truth.

“I feel I could have shared so much with my birth parents, and I didn’t get to do that,” McMahon shared. “It certainly would have changed the whole course of my life.”

McMahon, of Selden, New York, recently was able to meet his blood family. He connected with Ross, the boy he was switched with at birth, and Keith, the younger brother he never had the chance to grow up with. McMahon’s sister, Carol, also met Ross, the brother she is now getting to know. The two families, brought together by a tragic mistake, are now learning to cope with the pain that was inflicted upon them decades ago.

“They are completely responsible,” McMahon said. “They made one calamitous mistake, and they totally changed the course of my life.”

As the legal battle continues, McMahon and his newfound family try to make sense of a story that, until recently, seemed impossible. For now, they’re left to rebuild what was lost — and what can never be replaced.

NBC New York reached out to Ross McMahon for comment, but he did not immediately return calls.  

Are the new tariffs, scheduled to take effect on Wednesday, a bargaining chip to reach better trade deals? Or are they etched in stone in a mission to revamp the global economy?

Investors around the world were hanging on Trump’s every word, but he did little to clear up the situation.

“It can both be true,” he said. “There can be permanent tariffs, and there can also be negotiations.”

The markets skidded to a close. At a time when foreign leaders and business executives are desperate for clarity, the White House is sending mixed messages as it pursues conflicting goals.

Advisers have tried with some success to tamp down a days-long stock selloff by talking up tariffs as a starting point for negotiations, which could mollify Wall Street and jittery Republicans in Congress. But the president continues to insist that he can raise hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue with his new taxes on foreign imports, and he’s shown no willingness to back down from an agenda that he’s advocated for decades, even before entering politics.

The ongoing paradox could erode confidence in Trump’s leadership at home and abroad after he promised a booming economy and tax cuts, not depleted retirement accounts and fears of a recession. For now, as the tariffs are set to kick in, there’s no clear resolution for what could be the most significant overhaul of international trade in a generation.

When reporters asked Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, whether he understood the White House’s plan, he responded with a question of his own — “Does anybody?”

As a result, the U.S. stock market has been extremely volatile. The S&P 500 stock index initially posted gains on Tuesday morning on the possibility of negotiations, only to close down 1.57% as the White House said that the combined tariffs on China would be 104% starting on Wednesday.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, urged the White House to “settle the situation.”

He said the “perception as to whether or not there’s an end game is very important.” Tillis said he is “giving the administration the benefit of the doubt” for now. But he added that “you’ve got to get it done as quickly as you can get it done.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Trump was causing economic chaos with the back-and-forth over tariffs.

“Who makes long term investments based on that?” she said. “Who hires people and trains workers based on the hope that Donald Trump will not change his mind again and again and again?”

Trump claimed on Tuesday that “America’s going to be very rich again very soon” and said his team was negotiating with other countries.

“I call them tailored deals,” he said. “Not off the rack. Highly tailored deals.”

The administration has yet to articulate its goals for any talks with trading partners, other than to suggest that negotiations could take several months and that nations might also need to dramatically overhaul their tax systems and regulations to satisfy Trump’s demands. Canadian and European officials are unsure about how to proceed, even as Trump administration officials insist that as many as 70 nations are looking to start negotiations.

Trump insists that he wants to erase trade deficits that have developed as the U.S. buys more products from other countries than it sells. On Tuesday morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that he spoke with South Korea’s acting president, Han Duck-soo, about “their tremendous and unsustainable” surplus.

“We have the confines and probability of a great DEAL for both countries,” he wrote. “Their top TEAM is on a plane heading to the U.S., and things are looking good.”

But on Monday, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would “eliminate the trade deficit with the United States,” Trump appeared unmoved.

Asked if he would hold off on new tariffs on Israel, the president said, “maybe not.”

“Don’t forget, we help Israel a lot,” he said, citing billions of dollars in military assistance to the country.

Trump has long advocated for tariffs as the solution to economic challenges, and his insistence that other countries are ripping off the United States is one of his most consistently expressed beliefs over the years.

Last Thursday, while flying to Florida aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters that “the tariffs give us great power to negotiate.”

On the flight back to Washington on Sunday, Trump described the tariffs as a necessity and said he was undeterred by the cratering stock market, adding that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”

Peter Navarro, a leading trade adviser, has also taken a hard line.

“This is not a negotiation,” Navarro wrote in the Financial Times. “For the U.S., it is a national emergency triggered by trade deficits caused by a rigged system.”

But other officials like Kevin Hassett, the top White House economic adviser, and Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said scores of countries are lining up to negotiate with Trump over tariffs.

“It’s going to be a busy April, May, maybe into June,” Bessent told Fox News. He said Trump “gave himself maximum negotiating leverage, and just when he achieved the maximum leverage, he’s willing to start talking.”

Speaking Monday at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, Stephen Miran, chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, said the mixed messages over the purpose of the tariffs reflected a “healthy” internal debate.

“There are conflicting narratives because everybody has got an opinion,” he said. “And that’s fine. Disagreement is how you can enhance your arguments and avoid groupthink, and I think that’s very healthy.”

As for whether any deals could be reached before the tariffs take effect, Miran said, “that choice will ultimately remain with the president.”

Michael Strain, an economist at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said Trump is pursuing incompatible goals.

“These tariffs cannot both be an instrument to reshape the global trading order, to shift the U.S. economy away from services and toward manufacturing … and also be a tool to negotiate lower trade barriers,” he said at a panel discussion at the Bipartisan Policy Institute.

Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, blamed Trump’s aides for the ambiguity, saying some of them “just like to talk.”

“There’s some uncertainty about what the president’s objective is and I think that’s a product of some of his aides, who gave conflicting reports on TV this weekend,” he said.

Kennedy said he supports Trump’s trade goals. But he’s also getting calls from businesses in his state, and he’s had no answers for them on what to expect.

Bessent visited with Republican lawmakers on Friday and told them that the tariffs were a “high level mark with the ultimate goal of getting them reduced” unless other countries retaliated, according to Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming.

“The president is a dealmaker if nothing else, and he’s going to continue to deal country by country with each of them,” Barrasso said.

But China already retaliated with plans for its own 34% tariffs, prompting Trump on Monday to threaten additional 50% tariffs against the country, for a total of 104%.

The U.S. president had a positive enough conversation with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba that the Nikkei stock index jumped 6% on Tuesday, yet it was still unclear how a deal would work.

Trump placed a 24% tariff on Japan and a separate 25% tariff on auto imports, much higher than the 1.9% average tariff rate charged by Japan, according to World Trade Organization data. Trump has called the auto tariffs “permanent” and also installed a permanent 10% baseline tariff on most countries, suggesting a limit as to how much rates could fall through negotiations.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said Americans understand Trump is trying to address trade imbalances, and he emphasized his trust in the president.

“We are going to give him the space necessary to do it,” he said Monday.

Associated Press writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.

“Given the current measles outbreak, anything less than a wholehearted full-court press to get many more children vaccinated against measles, above 90% across the country, is a public health failure,” Dr. Peter Marks, the former director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, who was ousted last month, told NBC News in an interview.

At a press briefing Tuesday, Texas health officials said the state’s outbreak had spread to 22 counties and continues to spread in Lubbock, where cases had jumped from 10 to 36. As of Tuesday, the number of measles cases in the state reached 505, up from 481 cases Friday. About 70% of the cases are children, said Katherine Wells, Lubbock’s director of public health. Six or seven kids at a day care in Lubbock have tested positive for measles, she added.  

At least 57 people have been hospitalized in the area. On Saturday, a school-age girl being treated for measles-related complications died in Lubbock, becoming the second pediatric death in the fast-growing outbreak. Both children were unvaccinated.   

More than 650 cases of measles have been reported in 21 states and the District of Columbia this year, more than double the number of U.S. cases in all of 2024, according to an NBC News tally. 

Health Apr 7

The US has three measles-related deaths and hundreds of cases. Here's what to know

Vaccines Apr 4

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On Sunday, Kennedy, who went to Texas to visit with the family of the child who died, posted on X that growth rates for new cases and hospitalizations had flattened. 

However, the case count is likely an underestimate, experts say, since many people are likely not getting tested and illnesses are going undetected.

During the Tuesday press call, Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said, “If you already have two deaths in Texas, it tells you it’s in the thousands.”

“I suspect this is probably one of the biggest on record,” Adalja said.  

Wells said on the call, “We’re in this for the long haul.” 

“We’re constantly adding more counties that have been exposed to Texas; we’re seeing this grow outside of Texas and other states,” Wells said.   

A ‘blow to our achievements’

Marks said Kennedy needs to push parents to get their children vaccinated more than ever, which he says Kennedy isn’t doing. 

In a post on X, Kennedy wrote, “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.”  

Kennedy did not, however, encourage people to get vaccinated. He also pushed remedies, including a steroid called budesonide, an antibiotic called clarithromycin and cod liver oil, a supplement high in vitamin A. None are proven treatments for the measles, experts say. High doses of vitamin A can cause nausea, vomiting and liver damage, especially in small children.  

“He comes out with the most tepid endorsement of vaccination he possibly could,” Marks said. 

Gaines County, the epicenter of the outbreak, has one of the state’s highest vaccine exemption rates, at nearly 18%, compared to 3% nationally, according to state data.

If more children don’t get vaccinated, more of them will die, Marks said, and the U.S. will lose the measles elimination status it’s held since 2000. 

A country loses its status once an outbreak extends longer 12 months, he said. The Texas Department of State Health Services issued its first alert on measles in January. Adalja, of Johns Hopkins, said the outbreak is going to be “really something that pushes us to the deadline for elimination for the United States, as well as the Americas.”

“I think we’re well on our way,” said Marks, referring to the nation’s measles status.

An official at the Department of Health and Human Services said Mark’s suggestion that the administration’s endorsement of vaccination has been “tepid” is inaccurate.

“Contrary to Dr. Mark’s claims, the department has been aggressively working to address the current outbreak, increase vaccination rates, and provide support to states in need,” the official said.

Losing elimination status doesn’t actually carry any legal force, according to Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy expert at the University of California, San Francisco.  

“It’s a blow to our achievements,” Reiss said. “Measles still comes into our country and always has from people from abroad, but we don’t have domestic grown outbreaks. Losing the status means that’s no longer true.”  

Without it, Marks said, people may find they need to prove their immunization status before traveling outside the U.S. 

“Although that is trivial, it underlies the importance of getting this outbreak under control and protecting our children,” Marks said. 

Two doses of the MMR vaccine are 97% effective in preventing infection. 

Dr. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, said communities with low vaccination rates have been previously spared from outbreaks, as the U.S. hasn’t experienced the same level of measles activity seen 50 or 60 years ago, thanks to the MMR vaccine. 

However, with the disease starting to spread again in the U.S., people may need to reconsider the risks of not getting vaccinated. 

“I think that’s where people are challenged right now,” Creech said. “People haven’t thought about measles for maybe a generation or two, and they made a calculus about vaccines because they heard or read something.” 

Measles is dangerous, Reiss said — a fact that should be repeatedly acknowledged by government health officials. 

“We need a clear message from our leaders that people should get vaccinated,” she said.  

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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“All suspects are in custody and there is no threat to public safety,” Spotsylvania Sheriff Roger L. Harris said. He didn’t share the names or ages of the suspects but said more information is forthcoming.

Officials did not immediately release the names of those who died.

The public was asked to avoid the area of the shooting.

Spotsylvania County Public Schools and Fredericksburg City Public Schools were set to open two hours late on Wednesday in the wake of the shooting.

Police were first informed about the shooting at about 5:30 p.m. ET, according to the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office, when the 911 calls started coming in reporting several gunshots.

Hours later at the scene, windows could be seen shattered and several bullet holes were left behind in a red Mercedes-Benz.

A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office described the investigation as fluid. Investigators blocked off most of the neighborhood.

Several agencies are lending a hand as detectives spent Tuesday night collecting evidence and searching for the person or people who pulled the trigger. Investigators have not said much yet about what led to the mass shooting or who is responsible.

“My son was actually outside walking the dog, and he said he heard what he thought was a car backfiring, but it was gunfire. And he actually saw one of the suspects running in the street and he got the dog in the house and he told everybody to go to the basement to get out of, you know, trajectory of the bullets because he didn’t know where the gunfire was going …” she said. “The sound that they heard they thought a car was backfiring, but then they heard the rapid gunfire and that’s when they realized they were shooting an automatic rifle or some type of gun.”

“We have nearly all of our detectives out right now looking for the suspects, and we will stay looking for these suspects,” Maj. Elizabeth Scott said earlier. “We have multiple other agencies assisting with us, the city of Fredericksburg, the police department is also assisting as well as Virginia State Police. We will stay out here until the suspects are caught.”

Fredericksburg City and Spotsylvania schools said they opted to open late to prepare to help support their communities.

“This delay will allow us the necessary time to prepare our buildings and staff to welcome students with the care and support they may need during this difficult time,” Fredericksburg City Public Schools said in a statement.

At a hearing Tuesday in Louisiana, Judge Jamee Comans gave the government 24 hours to provide evidence showing that Khalil, a 30-year-old legal permanent resident, should be expelled from the country for his role in campus protests against Israel and the war in Gaza. If the evidence does not support his removal, she said, “then I am going to terminate the case on Friday.”

Khalil has been held in a remote detention facility in Jena, Louisiana since his March 8 arrest by federal immigration authorities, the first in a growing number of attempted deportations against foreign-born students who joined pro-Palestinian protests or expressed criticism of Israel.

While the Trump administration has suggested that Khalil’s role as a spokesperson for protesters proved that he was “aligned with Hamas,” they have yet to produce evidence for the claim.

At Tuesday’s hearing, an attorney for Khalil, Marc Van Der Hout, said he had “not received a single document” in response to his request for “evidence and assertions” in the case. “We cannot plead until we know what the specific allegations are,” Van Der Hout said.

“I’m like you Mr. Van Der Hout, I’d like to see the evidence,” the judge replied.

Trump administration Apr 5

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Trump administration Mar 21

Under threat from Trump, Columbia University agrees to policy changes

Protests Mar 15

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Khalil, who wore a navy blue T-shirt over a beige sweatshirt, spoke only briefly to request that his wife be permitted remote access to the hearing. The judge obliged, noting that more than 600 people were awaiting access to the proceeding in a virtual lobby. “This is highly unusual,” Comans said.

Khalil’s detention has sparked fury among free speech advocates, who accuse the Trump administration of seeking to squelch criticism of Israel by labeling peaceful activists as terror-supporters. Khalil, an international affairs graduate student, served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student protesters at Columbia, but was not among those arrested and has not been accused of any crime.

In seeking to deport Khalil and other student activists, the Trump administration has relied on a rarely-used statute that authorizes the Secretary of State to expel noncitizens who pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

They have alleged, without offering evidence, that Khalil’s prominent role in anti-Israel protests amounted to support for Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza and attacked Israel in October 2023.

Khalil and others involved in the protests have repeatedly denied claims of antisemitism.

In a letter dictated from jail last month, Khalil said his detention was a “direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”

As Khalil’s immigration case plays out in Louisiana, his attorneys have also challenged his detention and potential deportation before a federal judge in New Jersey. That judge last week rejected the Trump administration’s effort to transfer jurisdiction of the legal battle to Louisiana, but has yet to rule on the petition for his release.

She enrolled them at Apple Blossom Childcare in Falmouth, Maine, when they were 1 and 2 years old. She said she hasn’t given them melatonin and hasn’t granted anyone else permission to give them the supplement, which mimics a hormone produced in the brain that makes people sleepy.

But in August, Putnam said, she learned from a former employee at the day care center that he and others had given melatonin gummies to children, including her older son, who was 4 years old at the time. She said she saw text messages between the former employee and the day care center’s owner about melatonin use.

Putnam asked her older son about it. “He said, ‘Oh, it makes the babies go’ — and then he made a snoring sound,” she said. “He told me he got them when he was younger and they made him very sleepy. And then I asked if his younger brother got them, and he looked at me and said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘How often does he get them?’ And he said, ‘Every day.’”

Putnam showed her younger son a photo of a bottle of melatonin gummies. “He immediately saw it and said, ‘That’s’ — and then he inserted the name of the day care provider,” she said.

Lindsay Corcoran said her daughter was also at Apple Blossom from ages 15 months to nearly 4. She said she also learned from texts between the former employee and the owner that her daughter received melatonin. “I was shocked to see her name and that there was this substance given to her without my consent,” she said.

Several parents, doctors and lawmakers nationwide are raising concerns, saying giving melatonin to young kids isn’t well-studied and shouldn’t be done without parental permission. Last year, child care staff members in New Hampshire and Washington made headlines for dispensing melatonin to children. An Indiana day care center’s director was sentenced to six months in jail after having pleaded guilty to giving melatonin gummies to kids without their parents’ consent.

Oct 19, 2022

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Crime and Courts Feb 14, 2023

Daycare Director Charged With Giving 17 Children Melatonin Without Parents' Consent

In Maine, it isn’t illegal for day care centers to give children melatonin or other nonprescription medications, but they need parental consent. In August, after it received a complaint, Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services launched an investigation into allegations of abuse, neglect and licensing violations at Apple Blossom Childcare. Four months later, Putnam said, the agency informed her in a letter that her older son was “a victim of abuse/neglect.”

“I think I felt that, you know, I let my kids down,” Putnam said. “Anyone who is a parent, your No. 1 job is to protect your kids above all else. And getting that letter that said my son has been named on the record as a victim of abuse slash neglect, I feel like I let him down.”

Apple Blossom’s owner, Alison Lakin, appealed the December findings. Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services overturned its findings of abuse and neglect, indicating “there is insufficient information in the case record to support” them.

Lakin told NBC News, in part, “Apple Blossom Childcare has earned and enjoyed an impeccable reputation for years, which has been and always will be based on conscientious care and a love of helping children unlock their unique potential.”

Lakin is also appealing the findings that she violated day care licensing rules.

Putnam is frustrated with the reversal: “How is giving a nonverbal toddler melatonin in the middle of the day without parental consent not abuse or neglect? It doesn’t make any sense in my mind.”

Researchers say melatonin use in kids is on the rise. Calls to poison control centers from kids taking too much melatonin have also steadily increased over the last 10 years, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2022 found. While low doses of melatonin supplements may be given to children safely, Dr. Rebecca Fisk, a pediatrician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, doesn’t recommend melatonin use in kids under 5.

“We’re putting something unknown in a toddler’s body,” Fisk said. “We have no long-term studies on what is going on with melatonin in children, especially that young. We don’t know what it does to growth and development.”

Maine state Sen. Teresa Pierce is introducing a bill that would require day care operators to notify parents if their centers are under investigation.

“We need to protect kids, and parents need to be informed,” said Pierce, a Democrat. “My bill will create more transparency when an investigation starts at a day care or a child care area so that the parents that are in that day care can be informed of the investigation going forward.”

Putnam is pushing for stiffer penalties. 

“I would like to see some repercussions for mistreating children, and I don’t feel like that has happened in my case,” she said.

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The directive served as a basis for a series of subsequent orders that called for defunding medical or educational institutions that have protections for transgender students, provide gender-affirming medical care to transgender youth or allow transgender girls or women to participate in women’s sports. Another order attempted to ban transgender people from the military. 

But some of those orders — and Trump’s later comments — lack context or include incorrect or misleading statements.

“For four long years, we had an administration that tried to abolish the very concept of womanhood and replace it with radical gender ideology,” Trump said on March 26 at a Woman’s History Month event at the White House.

“No matter how many surgeries you have or chemicals you inject, if you’re born with male DNA in every cell of your body,” he continued, presumably referring to the presence of a Y chromosome, “you can never become a woman — you’re not going to be a woman. And that’s why last month, I proudly signed a historic executive order to ban men from competing in women’s sports. … I also banned puberty blockers — can you believe I’m even saying this — and the sexual mutilation of minor youth.”

Trump’s first transgender-related order declared that people are either male or female at “conception.” But scientists say that excludes certain people and sex is not fully determined at conception.

His executive order targeting gender-affirming medical treatments for trans youth — which is not a ban — claimed that health care providers are “maiming and sterilizing” children and referred to gender-affirming care as “chemical and surgical mutilation.” That language is misleading and wrong. Gender-affirming care is supported by professional medical associations under specific guidance, and surgeries typically take place after age 18. Gender-affirming care is associated with improved mental health, and some medical interventions are reversible. 

Trump’s policies were followed by a series of lawsuits across the country. Federal judges have already blocked some orders from taking effect while the cases move through the courts, or questioned the administration’s plans. Two separate restraining orders and a preliminary temporary injunction have been issued to prevent the government from withholding or conditioning funding for medical institutions providing gender-affirming care.

A transgender person identifies with a gender that does not match their sex assigned at birth. Nearly 1.6 million people over the age of 13, or about 0.5% of the U.S. population, identify as transgender, according to a 2022 report by the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law’s Williams Institute. 

We reached out to the White House to ask for support for some of the statements in the executive orders, but we didn’t get a response.

‘Two Sexes, Male and Female’

In an order titled “defending women from gender ideology extremism,” signed by Trump on his first day in office, the administration declared that the U.S. will now officially only “recognize two sexes, male and female,” on all federal documents, statements, regulations, forms, communications or other messages. The order also called for banning transgender women, who are referred to as “men,” from “intimate single-sex spaces,” such as bathrooms, single-sex shelters, women’s prisons and sports.

Sex, the order dictated, should be understood as a person’s “immutable biological classification as either male or female,” and not as “a synonym for” gender. The order specifically directs agencies and federal employees acting in an official capacity to “use the term ‘sex’ and not ‘gender’” — yet Trump himself regularly conflates the terms, including in his inaugural address and his March 4 address to Congress.

Although one of the order’s stated purposes is to restore “biological truth,” it used a limited definition of how sex is understood by scientists, declaring that female means a person who “at conception” belongs “to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell” and male is someone who “at conception” belongs “to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.” 

Scientists told us that although biological sex can be defined by the size of a person’s reproductive cells, or gametes, that definition doesn’t always work given there are multiple factors that define sex in humans.

“Sex is a catch-all phrase that actually refers to a constellation of features, not just one as they’ve defined it here,” Margaret M. McCarthy, a neuroscientist and pharmacology professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told us. 

Sex definitions typically refer to a construct based on genetic, physiological and anatomic traits. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, referencing the American Psychological Association, has defined sex as a person’s “biological status as male, female, or something else,” which is “assigned at birth and associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes.” A 2022 consensus study report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine defined it as “a multidimensional construct based on a cluster of anatomical and physiological traits that include external genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, gonads, chromosomes, and hormones.”

In most cases, all facets of sexual development are congruent, McCarthy, who has studied sex differentiation for decades, told us. Typically, she said, an X and Y chromosome will lead to the development of testes, the production of testosterone, the development of a penis and the production of sperm. And typically, two X chromosomes will lead to ovaries, the production of estrogen and progesterone, the development of a uterus and a vagina, and the production of eggs.

But this is not always the case. According to the Pediatric Endocrine Society, about 1 in 4,500 people each year are born in the U.S. with a collection of medical conditions known as Differences of Sex Development that interfere with the typical male or female sex development described above. The definition in the executive order “should not and cannot apply” to people with a DSD, according to a statement from the organization. That’s because some people with a DSD, which is also called intersex, don’t produce sperm or eggs, produce both of them, or produce a reproductive cell that doesn’t match their biological sex development.

“Some people may have genitals that look typical for a male – with a penis – but have XX (‘female’) chromosomes and female body parts – a uterus and ovaries – due to medical conditions that affect the hormones. On the other hand, some people may have genitals that look typical for a female – with a vagina and no penis – but have XY (‘male’) chromosomes and testes on the inside of their bodies,” the statement reads.

Other professional and advocacy organizations, such as the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and interACT, which advocates for intersex people, have also said the definitions in Trump’s executive order are not accurate and exclude intersex people. 

In addition, the inclusion of “at conception” in the executive order’s definition of female and male is “technically incorrect,” McCarthy said. (The Department of Health and Human Services’ definitions, created in response to the order, do not include that language.)

Sexual differentiation is not complete when the sperm fertilizes the egg, or at conception, as the order may suggest — it occurs progressively during gestation and beyond. “The only thing that’s happened at conception is a transfer of an X or a Y chromosome to the ova. The gonads haven’t differentiated yet,” McCarthy explained, referring to the glands that could eventually produce reproductive cells.

Experts also objected to the administration’s description and erasure of gender and gender identity. Gender identity, the order declared, can’t be used as “a meaningful basis for identification” and reflects a “fully internal and subjective sense of self” that’s “disconnected from biological reality and sex.”

“A person’s gender is associated with but cannot be reduced to either sex assigned at birth or specific sex traits,” the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine report says.

The CDC has defined gender as “cultural roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes expected of people based on their sex” and gender identity as a “person’s inner sense of being a boy/man/male, girl/woman/female, another gender, or no gender,” which comes about “as a result of a combination of inherent and extrinsic or environmental factors.”

“Nobody thinks that [gender] identity is ‘disconnected from biological reality,’” Anne Fausto Sterling, a professor emerita of biology at Brown University who is an expert in gender development, told us, adding that most scholars think it is “inborn and thus must have a biological origin.”

Finally, McCarthy said, the definitions in the executive order are not practical either. In our daily lives, when interacting with people, doing research or filling out a form, people are usually asked to self-identify. “You ask a person, are you male or female? You don’t say, show me your gametes or what size are your gametes,” she said. Sex assigned at birth, which ends up on birth certificates and passports, isn’t based on gamete size or “the biological function of their reproductive system,” as HHS guidelines recommend either, she said — it is typically assigned by doctors based on external genitalia.   

Medical Gender Transition Treatments

In a separate executive order issued on Feb. 28, Trump directed the federal government to take a series of actions to no longer “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support” gender-affirming care for people under 19. The order used misleading language to refer to treatments that are supported by professional medical associations under specific guidance, and were previously considered beneficial by the federal government.

“Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions,” the order said. It later defined children as “individuals under 19 years of age.”

But experts have told us that gender-affirming surgeries typically take place after age 18, the legal age of adulthood in most states, and after a case-by-case assessment by a medical team. 

The majority of transgender children do not receive any medical treatments to transition. Instead, they may change their name, pronouns, or hair and dress as part of a social transition. When medical treatments do occur, they’re rarely surgical and begin during adolescence or after, as we’ve explained. Families with a child who identifies with a gender that doesn’t match their sex assigned at birth are offered counseling.

Guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recommends care at different ages. Puberty blockers, or medications that delay the beginning of puberty, are the first medical intervention and are typically offered between ages 8 to 13 for girls and 9 to 14 for boys. Gender-affirming hormone therapy is typically offered around age 16, when adolescents are capable of making an informed decision that weighs the potential risks and benefits.

Trump’s executive order referred to gender-affirming care as “chemical and surgical mutilation” and said it does “blatant harm” to children. “Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated,” it continued. The order directed the attorney general to enforce laws against female genital mutilation, or cutting, which is illegal in the U.S. and other countries and refers to a cultural practice of removing or injuring female genitalia for no medical reason. The order also called for “ending reliance on junk science,” directing agencies to stop using guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, female genital mutilation has no health benefits and can lead to serious complications. It is considered a human rights violation. Practiced primarily in Africa and the Middle East, FGM is mostly performed on girls under 15 by people who are not health care providers. Gender-affirming surgery is always carried out in a medical setting, is consensual and is rarely performed on minors.

“[T]he Executive Order promotes misinformation, including that large shares of youth are seeking gender affirming medical care, which is not the case, that regret rates among those who do seek care are high, when regret rates are very low, and erroneously conflating ‘female genital mutilation’ and gender-affirming care,” Lindsey Dawson, associate director of HIV Policy and director of LGBTQ Health Policy at KFF, a health policy research organization, said in a report about the order.

In a cross-sectional study among insured people in the U.S., Harvard researchers and colleagues found that in 2019 there were no gender-affirming surgical procedures in transgender and gender diverse, or TGD, minors under 12 years of age — and that those in minors older than 12 “were rare and almost entirely chest-related.” Based on those findings, the researchers wrote, “concerns around high rates of gender-affirming surgery use, specifically among TGD minors, may be unwarranted.”

A separate study by some of the same Harvard researchers, published in JAMA Pediatrics in January, used insurance claims data and found that less than 0.1% of minors ages 8 to 17 with private insurance are transgender or gender diverse and received puberty blockers or hormones between 2018 and 2022. No child under 12 years of age received a hormone prescription.

“There’s not some massive wave of folks accessing care,” Landon D. Hughes, co-author of both Harvard studies and a fellow at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told NBC News earlier this year.

Studies suggest that gender-affirming care can improve the well-being and mental health of transgender youth, who have an increased risk of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. While some of these findings have been criticized, there isn’t good evidence that gender-affirming care is harmful, as Trump’s executive order claimed.

“Although President Trump’s executive order describes gender-affirming care as ‘junk science,’ access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth is supported by a consensus of major medical associations in the U.S.,” Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute at UCLA’s School of Law, said in a brief following the order. “The order does not acknowledge any benefits of gender-affirming care, instead making unsubstantiated statements of widespread harm and disregarding decades of science that form the foundation of the services that are currently available to transgender youth.”

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Not All ‘Irreversible’

It’s important to note that not all medical gender-affirming interventions are “irreversible” nor do they make it impossible for someone to “conceive children of their own,” as the executive order said. 

As guidance from the AAP explains, only gender-affirming surgeries are fully irreversible and not all of them affect fertility. The effects of medications that suppress puberty are reversible, but the AAP notes that their impact on fertility is unknown and that fertility could be impacted if followed by the use of sex hormones.

The changes brought by gender-affirming hormone therapy can be reversed if hormones are stopped before these changes are fully developed, but they become irreversible after that happens, potentially impacting fertility, according to the guidance. 

The guidance sets a number of steps and criteria to make sure that individuals offered gender-affirming care are not what the executive order refers to as “impressionable children.” A multidisciplinary team of medical and mental health providers should screen, assess and monitor patients and make sure they are capable of fully understanding the risks and benefits of each intervention and discuss, when applicable, options to preserve fertility. 

There is very little reliable data on how often transgender people regret going through gender-affirming interventions or opt to “detransition.” Many studies have a short follow-up period and rely on patients reporting back to providers.

But the scientific literature doesn’t support the notion that “[c]ountless children soon regret that they have been mutilated,” as the order said.

As PolitiFact has reported, recent studies of medical gender-affirming interventions in adolescents show that rates of young people stopping or regretting treatment or detransitioning range from 1% to 9%, with most on the lower end.

A study by Princeton University researchers published in 2024 in JAMA Pediatrics that looked at the experiences of 220 young people using puberty blockers or hormones found that nine of them regretted the interventions, with four of them stopping treatment.

Another study looking at the outcomes of 1,089 young people who were assessed by the National Health Service Gender Identity Development Service in England from 2008 to 2021 found that 5.3% stopped treatment with puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones and reverted to identifying with their birth gender.

As scientists have explained, people detransition for multiple reasons and not all people who stop treatment regret that care. Some stop due to undesired side effects of hormones or of transitioning, such as discrimination, and some stop when they’ve reached the results they wanted. Similarly, a person who regrets transitioning may still consider themselves transgender, and someone who stops identifying as transgender may not regret gender-affirming care.

Regret rates are typically even lower in adults, and studies show adults regret other plastic surgeries more often than gender-affirming surgery.

Correction, April 8: We misquoted a Pediatric Endocrine Society statement and incorrectly said that 4,500 people in the U.S. are born with a Difference of Sex Development every year. The correct statistic is 1 in 4,500 people.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

The nation’s sports minister Kelvin Cruz confirmed the 51-year-old Dotel, who pitched for 13 teams, was among the victims.

“We deeply regret the passing of former Major Leagues and Immortal of Dominican Sport, Octavio Dotel,” Cruz said in a statement.

“His legacy on and off the field leaves an indelible mark on national baseball history. Peace to his soul and strength to his family and loved ones.”

Dotel broke into the big leagues with the New York Mets in 1999.

“We mourn the passing of Octavio Dotel,” the Mets said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the tragedy in the Dominican Republic.”

The right-hander’s best years were in Houston, where he pitched from 2000 through half of 2004.

The workhorse appeared in 302 games, logged 449 innings and compiled a 3.25 ERA, a particularly effective record while pitching in a hitter-friendly park during one of baseball’s most offense-dominant eras.

Dotel won a World Series ring with the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals.

“We are heartbroken to learn the tragic news that former Astros pitcher Octavio Dotel was one of several individuals that passed away when a roof collapsed in his native Dominican Republic last night,” the Astros said.

“While in Houston, he was one of the top relievers in all of baseball and was a significant part of a dominant bullpen that included Hall of Famer Billy Wagner and All-Star Brad Lidge.”

Nelsy Cruz, governor of the Montecristi province and sister of long-time MLB slugger Nelson, was also among those killed in the roof collapse, family and authorities said.

Cruz, who played for eight teams, announced his sister’s death on his Instagram story and said her remains “will be on display at the Provincial Government of Montecristi” Tuesday afternoon and a funeral will be held in the evening.

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Brenda Deutsch, who reportedly has fostered more than 200 children, was charged with two counts of abuse or neglect of a child and one count of endangering the welfare of a child, according to NBC St. Louis affiliate KSDK.

“Two things that really stood out was the number of children that had been fostered through that home and then the allegations that these types of abuse and emotional neglect had been going on for what seemed to be perhaps a decade,” Mike Wood, the Lincoln County prosecuting attorney, told KSDK.

The investigation began Nov. 21 after Deutsch requested to take the female victim to Deutsch’s friend in Texas, according to the probable cause statement. The Missouri Department of Social Services Children’s Division then received an anonymous tip alleging mental and physical abuse of the victim. 

Deutsch, according to the probable cause statement, arranged for the girl to stay with Deutsch’s friend in Texas.

KSDK reported that investigators were told by the victim that Deutsch told her friend that they could keep the girl, but Deutsch would “be keeping the check.”

A witness told police the girl was left alone in the Texas house, which had dirty living conditions and contained exotic animals.

Deutsch, who collects exotic animals, is being investigated for having potentially exchanged the child for a monkey. 

“A witness who had come forward with some information regarding the systemic abuse that was going on in the home, had said that they had been asked to bring the child down to Texas and bring the monkey back in return,” Wood said. “Obviously we have to do more investigation to see if that’s actually credible or if that’s true.”

KSDK reported the victim told police that Deutsch hit her with a paddle, wooden trim, shoes and an open hand. The victim also said she was taken by Deutsch to a psychiatric hospital and later admitted to a residential facility for nine months.

The victim has been placed in protective custody in Texas.

Deutsch was taken into custody over the weekend. Her bond was set at $250,000 and her initial court appearance could be as early as Tuesday, per KSDK.

“As we broke it open,” Wood said, “it seems like apparently it was a very well-known residence that cycled through this abuse, which is really disturbing and problematic.”

The nearly 2,700-mile Keystone oil pipeline was shut down Tuesday morning after it ruptured in North Dakota, halting the flow of millions of gallons of crude oil from Canada to refineries in the U.S. and potentially leading to higher gasoline prices.

South Bow, a liquid pipeline business that manages the pipeline, said it shut down the pipeline after control center leak detection systems detected a pressure drop in the system. The spill is confined to an agricultural field in a rural area, about 60 miles southwest of Fargo.

“The affected segment has been isolated, and operations and containment resources have been mobilized to site,” the company said. “Our primary focus right now is the safety of onsite personnel and mitigating risk to the environment.”

The pipeline transported an average 624,000 barrels — or more than 26 million gallons — per day in 2024, according to Canadian regulators. It stretches 2,689 miles from Alberta, Canada, to Texas.

Prices at the gas pump could rise in the coming days

The pipeline’s shutdown could quickly lead to higher gasoline prices in the Midwest, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president for energy and innovation at the University of Houston.

It could raise prices at the pump within one or two days, but will have a greater impact on diesel and jet fuel, Krishnamoorti said. The Keystone pipeline transports a large amount of a unique, heavy crude that only is available from limited sources, he said.

“The refineries run on blends of crude so that they can get the product line that they want to deliver, whether it is gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc., and not having the supply of heavy crude is going to tilt their ability to make diesel and jet fuel,” he said. “They will make less of diesel and jet fuel when they have less of the heavy crude.”

Higher diesel costs could lead to grocery price increases because diesel trucks transport those products, he said.

The lead petroleum analyst at gasoline price tracker GasBuddy, Patrick De Haan, said that typically refineries have at least a few days supply of crude oil on hand that will insulate them from immediate impacts from the shut down. But if the shutdown continues more than a few days or a week it could become problematic.

Mark LaCour, editor-in-chief of the Oil and Gas Global Network, said he doesn’t expect gas prices to immediately increase because the major refineries served by the Keystone pipeline have millions of barrels in storage.

“Even if the pipeline gets cut off completely for, say, 2 or 3 weeks, they have enough crude to continue refining for gasoline,” LaCour said.

The pipeline was shut down within two minutes of a ‘bang’

It wasn’t clear what caused the rupture of the underground pipeline. An employee working at the site near Fort Ransom heard a “mechanical bang” and shut down the pipeline within about two minutes, said Bill Suess, spill investigation program manager with the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality.

Oil surfaced about 300 yards south of a pump station in a field and emergency personnel responded, Suess said.

No people or structures were affected by the spill, he said. A nearby stream that only flows during part of the year was not affected but was blocked off and isolated as a precaution, he said. The Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is sending a team to investigate the cause of the leak.

Fort Ransom, a city of less than 100 people, is in a hilly, forested area of southeastern North Dakota known for scenic views and outdoor recreation. A state park and hiking trails are nearby.

It’s unclear at what rate the 30-inch pipeline was flowing, but even at two minutes “it’s going to have a fairly good volume,” Suess said. “But … we’ve had much, much bigger spills,” including one involving the same pipeline a few years ago in Walsh County, North Dakota, he said.

“I don’t think it’s going to be that huge,” Suess said.

The pipeline has a history of past ruptures

The Keystone Pipeline was constructed in 2010 at a cost of $5.2 billion and carries crude oil across Saskatchewan and Manitoba through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas. Though the pipeline was constructed by TC Energy, it is now managed by South Bow as of 2024.

A proposed extension to the pipeline called Keystone XL would have transported crude oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast, but it was ultimately abandoned by the company in 2021 after years of protests from environmental activists and Indigenous communities over environmental concerns.

After a spill, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is responsible for investigating the root cause of the issue and any lack of compliance. The agency, which regulates liquid and natural gas pipelines, lost several senior-level executives earlier this year as part of President Donald Trump’s federal cuts.

PHMSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bill Caram, executive director at industry watchdog Pipeline Safety Trust, said the organization already was “an under-resourced, underfunded agency.”

“To lose anyone will have an impact on safety,” he said.

After the last major Keystone pipeline spill in Kansas in December 2022, sections of the pipeline were offline for a little over three weeks before it resumed operating at a lower pressure.

That spill of nearly 13,000 barrels of oil flowed into a creek traversing a pasture. An engineering consulting firm said the bend in the pipeline at the site had been “overstressed” since being installed in 2010, likely because of construction activity altering the land around the pipe. TC Energy said a faulty weld in the line’s bend caused a crack that exacerbated over time.

The Pipeline Safety Trust said this latest leak adds to the troubled history of the Keystone pipeline, which has had 13 significant incidents in the 15 years it has been operating.

Raza reported from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Associated Press writer Josh Funk contributed from Omaha, Nebraska.

Made from lablab beans, the gum was found to neutralize herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2, as well as two strains of influenza. According to the study, 40 mg of a two-gram bean gum tablet reduced the amount of virus in a person’s blood by more than 95% and defended the body against the disease for up to 823 days when the gum was stored at room temperature.

Citing shrinking vaccination rates for the flu and the lack of a herpes vaccine, researchers at UPenn Dental have been looking for a way to combat transmission of the two viruses, and one that does so at the primary point of transmission: the mouth. Their study, conducted with collaborators in Finland, was published in Molecular Therapy.

According to the World Health Organization, HSV-1 affected 64% of the world’s population in 2020. Another 520 million people aged 15–49 years were affected by HSV-2 that same year. The National Library of Medicine lists the disease as the leading cause of infection-induced blindness worldwide.

Lablab beans, also known as hyacinth beans, naturally contain an antiviral trap protein (FRIL) which binds to viruses and prevents them from spreading throughout the body. A similar study conducted in 2020 found the beans to successfully prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2, a strain of the coronavirus, as well as several strains of human and avian influenza.

Now, Penn Dental Medicine professor Henry Daniell and his colleagues are hoping to use their research to combat the influx of bird flu cases across the U.S. that began earlier this year.

Indeed, Girl Scouts used to bake and sell their own cookies — and the recipe’s history is a look into the enterprising spirit that drives the organization in the modern age.

“Me and my mom love to do different recipes to start cookie sales and stuff, to tell people it’s cookie time,” McKenna, who has been a Girl Scout for five years, tells TODAY.com.

Her mom chimes in to list all the recipes McKenna has made online to drum up sales, including Thin Mint cookie pie and cookie dip. McKenna speaks about camping, working with therapy dogs and other badges she’s sewn onto her sash, showing she has much more than cookies on her plate — but they’re an important facet of Scouting.

“You get to meet new people all the time,” McKenna says. “It’s just really amazing talking and hearing what people love about Girl Scout Cookies so much.”

Girl Scout Cookies are ubiquitous: Whether they’re called Samoas or Caramel deLites in your neck of the woods, the chance of running into a local troop set up outside stores or your door is likely — and that’s by design.

According to the Girl Scouts of the USA, the very first Girl Scout Cookie fundraiser took place in 1917, in Muskogee, Oklahoma when the Girl Scouts of the Mistletoe Troop baked homemade cookies and sold them out of their high school cafeteria.

Five years later, a recipe was first published in the July 1922 issue of the American Girl magazine, submitted by Miss Florence E. Neil, a Girl Scout director from Chicago, Illinois.

“Homemade, simple sugar cookies became a popular fundraising method for Girl Scouts across the country for the next decade,” Girl Scouts historian Shannon Browning-Mullis tells TODAY.com.

“All troops are asked to bake and sell cookies,” page 26 of the American Girl magazine reads above a recipe for six to seven dozen cookies. “Material will cost from 26 to 36 cents. These cookies will sell for 25 or 30 cents a dozen, depending on your neighborhood.”

Several troops planned to use the money they made to start a camp fund, which the magazine said was “an excellent idea,” encouraging others to take part.

“Think it over. Is there any scout who is not willing to do her share?” the publication asked. The headline over the recipe shouts, “ATTENTION SCOUTS! MARCH! BAKE! SELL!”

“When I started looking into those first few years in the newspapers, Calvin Coolidge’s wife, Grace Coolidge, kept coming up over and over,” Max Miller, YouTuber and author of “Tasting History,” tells TODAY.com.

Miller, who made the recipe for his viewers, learned that when first lady Grace Coolidge personally received a five-pound bag of cookies from Girl Scouts on Oct. 17, 1923, it became national news, proving just how popular the concept had become.

“Something that would never become national news today, might maybe appear on page 50, was a big thing at that time,” he says. “So it’s just interesting to see kind of where our priorities are now.”

Browning-Mullis says, in 1934, the Girl Scouts of Greater Philadelphia Council was the first group to use a commercial bakery to supply their cookie sales. “The popularity of commercially baked cookies prompted the national organization to license the nationwide commercial bakeries in 1936.”

Sugar and butter rationing in World War II temporarily paused cookie sales, according to Browning-Mullis, but the postwar economic boom led to a surge in popularity for the Girl Scouts, and cookie sale operations expanded dramatically.

First ladies, including Bess Truman and Laura Bush, continued the tradition of welcoming Girl Scouts to Washington over the years.

“Over the next several decades, new cookie flavors, new bakeries and a standardized program focusing on entrepreneurship were introduced,” Browning-Mullis says, and the Scouts evolved their sales strategy from door-to-door sales to tables and booths in shopping malls to a Digital Cookie platform, which launched in 2014.

“The method of Girl Scout Cookie sales has changed over the last one hundred years, but the spirit of community, local outreach, and entrepreneurship remains the same,” she adds.

Back in 1913, when the Girl Guides of America changed its name to the Girl Scouts of the United States of America, head of the Boy Scouts James E. West criticized use of the term “scouts” by an all-girls group, saying it “trivialized” and “sissified” his organization.

He wrote many letters and even brought legal challenges in an attempt to stop the name change, but ultimately failed.

“In the past, for Girl Scouts, it’s like, you can do something even though you’re apparently not supposed to,” McKenna says. “It’s like, ‘Girls can’t go hiking or outside and do all these activities and stuff.”’

“History tells you, ‘Yes, you can,’” she declares. “No matter what other people tell you.”

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The announcement of the agreement came in a document filed late Monday in a case challenging the legality of the IRS sharing tax information with other agencies. The document was filed with several key parts blacked out.

“There is an agreement that calls for information sharing, which is a reversal of what IRS said in the past it would not share,” said Alan Morrison, an attorney at Georgetown School of Law who is of counsel on the case challenging the lawsuit. The attorneys in the lawsuit are asking the DHS to file a clean copy, without redactions.

The DHS has sought to use tax filing information to find people in the United States without legal status in support of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation.

Many people without legal status pay billions in taxes, filing under tax identification numbers. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated that undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022. According to its analysis, $59.4 billion went to the federal government and $37.3 billion to state and local governments.

It is illegal to release personal tax information and the IRS has long refused to share identities of undocumented taxpayers with other agencies.

But the law provides some specific exceptions, including information for investigations not related to taxes and involving claims the individual is in violation of or suspected of being in violation of federal criminal law.

Morrison said “so far as we can tell,” the deal is limited to that exception.

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“We are challenging whether they can share the information (by) trying to claim exception for criminal investigations,” he said. “But we think what they really want is location information and you need a court order for that.”

For months, IRS officials have resisted disclosing what has long been guarded information, but Trump has replaced the agency’s leadership with staff more friendly to his taxpayer information sharing plan.

“The government filed this at 11:10 last night. We have three days to respond. They hatched the agreement that they say is complete, but it is significantly redacted. It is impossible to tell what the impact is without knowing more,” Morrison told NBC News.

He said that when he first tried to read the DHS’ filing, “I couldn’t figure out what kind of words were missing … How can we possibly know what they are doing if we have not seen this?” he asked.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to an NBC News request for comment and for information on the redacted portions of the agreement.

According to the DHS’ court filing, ICE, in its requests to the IRS, must ask for the name and address of the person whose information it wants, the tax periods relating to its request, the federal criminal statute under which the individual is being investigated or relating to any nontax-related criminal proceeding involving the individual, and reasons why disclosing the information might be relevant to the nontax-related criminal investigation or proceeding.

He said the DHS has identified two possible crimes that would authorize the IRS to share the information with ICE. But he said the DHS hasn’t said what crimes it has identified or whether it has names of people who have committed or are suspected of committing those crimes, which it must have to get the information.

“One thing they said, so far at least as of yesterday, there were no pending requests for this information and if they do request it, they have to go through some processing,” he said.

The agreement was reached only after several months of upheaval at the IRS and pressure from the administration, including by Elon Musk’s DOGE operation.

The agreement is certain to generate more terror among immigrants, many of whom have paid taxes for years to ensure they were not violating U.S. law and jeopardizing potential future opportunities for legal status.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., a member of the House Ways and Means Committee which has jurisdiction over taxes, said in a news release that “the IRS should never be weaponized to target immigrant families … No one should fear that filing their taxes puts their family at risk.” Gomez, whose parents are Mexican immigrants, added that he’ll try to stop the measure through the committee.

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The man who crashed into a police cruiser, killing a Hartford, Connecticut, police detective, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and other charges on Tuesday.

Richard Barrington, 20, was fleeing other police officers during a traffic stop when he struck a cruiser that was responding to a different call on the night of Sept. 6, 2023.

The crash killed Detective Robert “Bobby” Garten and injured his partner, Officer Brian Kearney.

Barrington said he took off because he was scared because his car was not registered and he had marijuana in the car. He also told investigators he smoked marijuana about an hour before the crash.

Barrington pleaded guilty to manslaughter, first-degree assault and interfering with an officer.

“We know that we’re not going to get what we really want back, which is Bobby,” Bobby’s Garten’s brother, Will Garten, said in an interview.

According to Det. Garten’s family, the state’s attorney is recommending a 20-year-sentence, but they said they don’t agree with that decision.

“That’s not justice. That’s not even close. Bobby wasn’t just a cop. He was a son. A brother. An uncle. A partner. A friend. He showed up for everyone — on duty and off. He lived with heart, and he served with honor,” the family said in a statement. “The system should’ve stood up for him. Instead, it feels like we got hit all over again — this time by the courtroom that was supposed to protect him.”

“I think 20 years is devastating to our family. Some people will say it’s enough. It’s not enough. We don’t think it’s enough. We want to continue to fight for Bobby and Brian,” Will Garten said.

An attorney for Barrington confirmed the guilty plea, but declined to comment.

Barrington is scheduled to be sentenced in June.

“It was a long process … a year and almost a year and a half now. And he he finally admitted what we kind of already knew, because there’s so much evidence,” Will Garten said.

A growing body of evidence has linked certain food additives to cancer, diabetes, heart disease and changes to the gut microbiome. Many of these studies, however, were focused on single ingredients.

“In real life, we ingest a mixture of additives,” said Mathilde Touvier, director of the nutritional epidemiology research team at Université Sorbonne Paris Nord. Touvier holds the same role on the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, the new study’s co-author. 

Touvier and her team looked at about eight years of data from more than 108,000 adults from the French NutriNet-Santé cohort, a long-running study that looks at the links between food and health.  

Poring over the participants’ reported diets, the researchers identified five mixtures of additives people commonly consumed together. The combinations don’t look unlike an ingredient list you might find on the label of an ultra-processed food. 

• Mixture 1: Sodium carbonates; diphosphates; glycerol; ammonium carbonates; potassium carbonates; sorbitol
• Mixture 2: Modified starches; pectins; guar gum; carrageenan; polyphosphates; potassium sorbate; curcumin; xanthan gum
• Mixture 3: Magnesium carbonates; riboflavin; alpha-tocopherol; ammonium carbonates
• Mixture 4: Ammonium carbonates; sodium carbonates; diphosphates; alpha-tocopherol; DATEM; magnesium carbonates; lecithins
• Mixture 5: Citric acid; sodium citrates; phosphoric acid; sulphite ammonia caramel; acesulfame K; aspartame; sucralose; arabic gum; malic acid; carnauba wax; paprika extract, capsanthin, and capsorubin; anthocyanins; guar gum; pectins 

“It’s relatively uncommon for all of them to appear in a single product, however, it’s entirely possible to consume all of them across different foods throughout the day, especially when eating a variety of processed or ultra-processed foods,” said Mengxi Du, a research associate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who studies nutrition and health and wasn’t involved with the study.

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Carrageenan and potassium sorbate, two additives in Mixture 2, are found together in sweetened condensed milk. Xanthan gum is commonly found in mayonnaise and gluten-free prepared foods. Pectin is in cream cheese. 

“These are pretty common products in someone’s fridge and a lot of times we combine them,” Du said. 

Two groups — Mixture 2 and Mixture 5 — were linked to an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, the researchers found. People with more of these combinations in their diet were more likely to develop the disease, regardless of how healthy their diet was overall.

Mixture 2 was heavy in emulsifiers and thickening agents, including carrageenans, which are found in plant-based milks and processed meats, and modified starches, which thicken and stabilize packaged sauces, soups and baked goods. Mixture 5 contained ingredients commonly found in sugary and artificially-sweetened drinks, and included artificial sweeteners, natural dyes and acidifiers.

Still, the study was observational, meaning it doesn’t show cause and effect. Studies that require participants to recall their diets are also notoriously tricky. The limitations make it difficult to draw strong conclusions from the study, which Touvier and her team said will require more research.

“The additives may be markers of something else, rather than causing Type 2 diabetes themselves,” said Dr. Tom Rifai, an internal and lifestyle medicine doctor in Cleveland Clinic’s department of endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism. Rifai owns a lifestyle coaching company that includes nutrition counseling. “These could be a marker for what we call calorie density.”

Food additives are ubiquitous in ultra-processed foods, which usually pack in many more calories in much smaller amounts of food than minimally and unprocessed foods. 

“At the very least, these additives are markers of ultra-processing, which we know makes people eat more without realizing they are taking in a lot more calories,” Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said in an email.

The same is true for the three groups of additives that were not found to be linked to diabetes risk. Nestle said that while the study cannot show causation, the results are consistent with “present thinking that additives may well be anything but benign.”

Some food additives do play an important role in food safety. Potassium sorbate, for example, stops yeast and fungus from growing in packaged food. Others — including emulsifiers, which create certain textures, and artificial dyes — have come under scrutiny. 

Last month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. directed the Food and Drug Administration to review its rule on “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, ingredients. The rule allows manufacturers to add certain additives to food without FDA review. It was originally intended for common ingredients such as salt or vinegar but has come to cover an expansive range of additives.

In 2023, California became the first state to ban four food additives: brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and Red Dye No. 3. In March, West Virginia banned seven food dyes. 

In the first three months of this year, 20 states — including Illinois, Missouri, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania — introduced similar bans, but not on any of the additives included in the new study. 

It’s too early to tell whether food additives, when eaten together, can have a synergistic effect, Du said. It’s possible that one ingredient, safe on its own, may be linked to health problems when combined with other ingredients, for example. Or an ingredient’s mild health effects could be amplified when mixed with other additives. 

Given that ultra-processed foods account for more than half of the calories an average American eats in a day, research that further investigates such an effect is worthwhile, she said.

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Suzanne Laprise walked into the Bristol police department in October 2023 distraught, under the influence of alcohol, and carrying a 9 mm pistol, police said. She fired three shots at the windows of the front desk and two more at an interior door, which officers were standing behind as they tried to talk with her.

An officer fired two shots at Laprise from behind the door, but its glass windows also were bulletproof, police said. After Laprise put her gun down, officers rushed into the lobby, shot her with a Taser and took her into custody.

Laprise, of nearby Plainville, appeared briefly in New Britain Superior Court on Tuesday, when a judge imposed the prison sentence she agreed to when she pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree assault in February. She was initially charged with attempted murder and other crimes.

Neither Laprise nor any police officers spoke at the sentencing.

“She’s a 53-year-old with no prior record who had a lot of stressors in her life,” her public defender, Christopher Eddy, said in a phone interview after the court hearing. “She had financial stress. She had mental health stress. She has a disabled child. And she wanted to kill herself that night, and she’s lucky that the Bristol police were so professional in how they apprehended her.”

The shooting came a year after two Bristol police officers were shot to death in an ambush while responding to a call.

State Inspector General Robert Devlin Jr. investigated the shooting involving Laprise and issued a report that included video from police department surveillance cameras and officers’ body cameras. Devlin ruled that the officer who fired at Laprise was justified.

Police said Laprise used a gun that belonged to her boyfriend at the time, who was a retired New York City police officer.

The former MLB player confirmed on Instagram Tuesday that his sister, Nelsy Cruz, the governor of the Monte Cristi province, was among the victims and that her remains would be on display at the Provincial Government of Monte Cristi on Tuesday afternoon and that a funeral would be held at the family’s residence on Tuesday night.

“With deep sorrow, the Cruz Martinez family reports the passing of our beloved sister, mother, daughter, and friend: Nelsy M Cruz Martinez. Who in life served with dedication, commitment, and love for her people and her community,” the Cruz Martinez family wrote in Spanish. “We thank all those who have expressed their love and solidarity during this difficult time. Her legacy of service and love for others will live forever in our hearts.”

Dominican Minister of Culture Roberto Ángel Salcedo expressed his condolences in a post on X.

“I deeply regret the passing of my dear friend and colleague, Nelsy Cruz, governor of Montecristi province, which occurred in the tragic event at the Jet Set nightclub,” Salcedo wrote in Spanish. “Her death is an irreparable loss for her community and for the entire country. Nelsy was a committed public servant, a woman of steadfast leadership, and an unwavering ally in initiatives aimed at strengthening our identity and development.”

Officials have confirmed 113 dead and more than 150 hospitalized when the roof of the Jet Set nightclub, a renowned club in the National District, collapsed. The search for survivors is ongoing and officials have not yet confirmed what caused the roof to cave in.

Two former MLB players, Octavio Dotel and Tony Enrique Blanco Cabrera, were also killed in the collapse. Dotel played for 13 major league teams, the second-most teams of any player in history. Cabrera played for the Washington Nationals during the 2005 MLB season.

The disaster unfolded during a performance by merengue singer Rubby Perez, local media reported.

Perez’s manager, Enrique Paulino, whose shirt was spattered with blood, told reporters at the scene that the merengue concert began shortly before midnight, with the roof collapsing almost an hour later and killing the group’s saxophonist, The Associated Press reported.

On Tuesday afternoon, Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader declared three national days of mourning, ending on Thursday.