U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) is calling on the Department of Homeland Security to hit the brakes on its plan to develop two Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in Pennsylvania, saying they would have a negative impact on local communities.
“While I have been clear in my support for the enforcement of federal immigration law, this decision will do significant damage to these local tax bases, set back decades-long efforts to boost economic development, and place undue burdens on limited existing infrastructure in these communities,” Fetterman wrote in a letter addressed to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and posted online Saturday.
A 1.3-million-square-foot former Big Lots warehouse in Tremont, Pa., has been bought by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for $119 million. The agency plans to detain up to 7,500 immigrants there.
The Tremont Township detention center would house as many as 7,500 people, Fetterman noted, while the Upper Bern Township one would be capable of detaining 1,500 people.
Upper Bern Township has 1,606 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and is about 30 minutes northwest of Reading. The facility is near an Amazon warehouse and the Mountain Springs Camping Resort.
Tremont Township — where the much larger detention center is set to be built — has just 283 residents and is next to the 1,670-resident Tremont Borough. Tremont is in a rural area northeast of Harrisburg, near the Appalachian Trail, state game lands, and Fort Indiantown Gap, an Army National Guard training center.
In his letter, Fetterman said local and state officials did not have a chance to weigh in on how these massive facilities would affect everything from sewer systems and the electrical grid to hospitals and emergency medical services.
“Both townships do not currently have the capacity to meet the demands of these detention centers, with Tremont Township officials specifically stating the proposed 7,500-bed detention facility would quadruple the existing burden on their public infrastructure system,” Fetterman said.
A warehouse in Upper Bern Township, Berks County, Pa., was purchased by ICE and the Trump administration.
The letter maintains Fetterman’s stance as someone who supports ICE operations in general while criticizing the federal government’s recent handling of them. After federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis last month, Fetterman called on the Trump administration to fire Noem. A few days later, Fetterman said he supports ICE agents wearing face masks.
Fetterman was among 23 Senate Democrats to cross the aisle last month to vote for a compromise bill funding the federal government through September, while granting just two weeks of funding for DHS.
Fetterman said the Pennsylvania facilities would result in a tax loss of $1.6 million to the communities. He asked DHS to agree to several conditions before proceeding further with the sites.
He requested an “impact assessment,” details on the criteria used to select these facilities, an agreement that federal funds be used to upgrade them, and “a commitment to a period of public engagement and dialogue with these communities.”
“Due to these significant concerns, it is my fear that DHS and ICE did not perform any due diligence, spending more than $200 million in tax dollars for warehouses that cannot be adequately converted and further eroding trust between Pennsylvanians and the Federal government,” Fetterman wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This story has been updated to correct the location of one of the proposed detention centers to Upper Bern Township.
SUVA, Fiji — The methamphetamine drop-offs to a squatter settlement here followed a routine.
Once a week, according to residents, a black Dodge truck with tinted windows pulled up to a tent on the edge of the community, a dense maze of tiny shacks connected by muddy paths, slick from the persistent summer rain. A man stepped out, swapped drugs for cash with his local contact, and drove off. Dealers repacked the white crystals into tiny zip-top bags, no bigger than a child’s pinkie, before doling them out for about $22 each.
The settlement does not have plumbing or formal electricity. Even food is scarce. But the drugs were everywhere, according to community workers and one former user who lives here, a 17-year-old boy. Given that almost all his friends were on meth, he said, getting addicted was “only a matter of time.”
For years, law enforcement partners and the United Nations had warned Fiji that international criminal syndicates were exploiting its geography as a South Pacific island, using it as a transshipment point for drugs originating in Southeast Asia and Latin America and destined for New Zealand, Australia, and North America.
Those drugs — principally methamphetamines — have seeped into Fiji itself, devastating families and scarring this small society. Community workers say they have seen users as young as 10.
Compounding the problem is how meth is used in Fiji: injected, rather than smoked, snorted or taken orally, according to interviews with current and former methamphetamine users and an assessment of drug use in Fiji’s capital, Suva, commissioned by the World Health Organization and U.N. Development Program (UNDP). Poor education around drugs and a deeply ingrained communal culture have meant that needles are routinely shared among users, who lack knowledge of or ignore safe sex practices — igniting an HIV public health crisis, health workers said in interviews.
A sex worker waits outside the Survival Advocacy Network, a safe haven for the LGBTQ+ and sex worker community in Fiji that in recent years has also served injecting drug users and provides free HIV testing.
Fiji — a tourist destination known for its exclusive resorts, pristine waters, and white-sand beaches — now has one of the fastest-growing rates of HIV infection in the world, overburdening its donor-dependent public health system. More than 1,583 new HIV infections were recorded in 2024 in a country with a population of less than 1 million — the highest ever in Fiji’s history, and a 500% increase from 2018.
That number, according to preliminary assessments from the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and Fiji’s Health Ministry, is expected to double again this year to more than 3,000. And public health officials believe the true number of those infected is closer to double that, as many exposed Fijians have not yet been tested, especially on more remote islands.
Conditions here “were a recipe for an explosive epidemic,” said Jason Mitchell, who leads the Fijian government’s HIV task force. “We have a long way to go … before we see the end of this.”
A majority of these new cases have been recorded among young people between ages 15 and 34, while a growing number of mothers are passing the infection on to their babies, according to local health statistics; half of the new infections are linked to drug use.
The Reproductive and Family Health Association of Fiji (RFHAF) gives free HIV tests at a sporting event. Isoa Fou, 26, wasn’t ashamed to be getting a test and feels concerned about what’s going on in the country.
Experts in both public health and transnational crime believe that Fiji is the starkest example of a phenomenon that is taking hold across the Pacific region: Rising HIV infections track drug shipment routes across islands that are smaller, more isolated and have significantly less testing for the virus, including in Tonga, Samoa, and the Solomon Islands.
Those islands “all have the early signs that Fiji had in 2019,” said Renata Ram, UNAIDS’ country director in Fiji. Ram raised alarm bells of an impending HIV crisis in a 2022 article, warning that risky behaviors commonplace in Fiji were spreading to other parts of the Pacific.
Law enforcement officials, customs agencies, U.N. officials and others who investigate drug syndicates believe that the groups operating in and around Fiji are working with each other, bringing together Chinese triads, Mexican cartels, Australian biker gangs, and other syndicates with connections as far away as Nigeria.
Criminal organizations are targeting our region “because they understand our enforcement limitations to monitor across vast maritime territories using traditional enforcement methods,” said the Oceania Customs Organization Secretariat, a 24-member association that helps coordinate customs and border enforcement for Pacific nations, in a response to questions from the Washington Post. “We’re witnessing unprecedented coordination between drug cartels, organized criminal groups and regional networks.”
That cooperation presents a huge challenge and has “thrown traditional narcotics work out the window,” according to one U.S. law enforcement official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss counternarcotics operations. Criminal organizations from different countries, rather than violently seeking to secure turf, are working together in Fiji, law enforcement officials say, much like a diversified multinational corporation.
“Those guys are going to make deals along the chain, even though they technically would be looked at as adversaries,” the U.S. law enforcement official said, “because at the end of the day they are going to do what it takes to succeed.”
At the same time, international law enforcement agencies have been reticent to share intelligence with their Fijian counterparts, prosecutors said, because of allegations that drug syndicates have infiltrated the police and other agencies.
In December, leaked chats on Viber, a messaging app commonly used in Fiji, allegedly showed police officers texting with traffickers about moving drugs. Seven senior officers are now under investigation in connection with that case, according to Fiji’s Ministry of Policing. Between January 2023 and October of last year, before the Viber investigation, 27 police officers were charged with drug-related offenses, the ministry said.
John Rabuku, Fiji’s deputy director of public prosecutions, who last year secured convictions up to life in prison in connection with the Pacific’s largest-ever drug bust, acknowledged in an interview that these were only “middle-level people … involved in the logistics.” Even at trial, he said, prosecutors were unable to show the drugs came from a particular group. The syndicate had brought in 4.1 metric tons (about 4.5 U.S. tons) of methamphetamine worth over a billion dollars into Nadi, Fiji’s main tourist area, on a yacht in December 2023.
“No one would give us that information,” Rabuku said. “The offshore intelligence community … just didn’t want to tell us.”
Guests wait outside a nightclub in Suva in December.
White money
Joseph was a singer in a reggae band, performing for tourists at beach bars, when a contact he knew approached him about selling marijuana. The 47-year-old, who spoke on the condition that only his first name be used because of security concerns and ongoing criminal cases against him, started dealing, mostly selling locally grown product to foreigners.
A few years before the COVID pandemic, he and others said, meth started hitting the streets, first as a party drug for tourists and wealthy Fijians. The drugs, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and law enforcement officials, were from shipments transiting to Australia and New Zealand, where meth is growing in demand and exceptionally lucrative, selling for 18 times what it retails for in the United States, according to law enforcement officials and other experts on the drug trade.
When COVID-19 hit, putting a freeze on tourist arrivals and complicating the transport of drugs in and out of Fiji, traffickers started paying runners in the drug itself — “white money,” as it is called on the streets. Joseph and experts on organized crime said dealers started selling meth locally to turn their pay into cash.
“That payment in kind became the origin of the domestic market,” said Virginia Comolli, head of the Pacific program at the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. There was so much that dealers “didn’t know how to price it,” she said, while users themselves had no idea how addictive the drug could be.
As supply exploded and prices fell, meth quickly spread among the urban poor, sex workers and other marginalized communities.
“It was the ‘in thing’ for us,” said Rochelle Naulunimagiti, a 37-year-old transgender sex worker and activist. “All the girls were on it.”
Rochelle Naulunimagiti, 37, a trans sex worker and community activist, shared a needle with a friend one night when she was desperate to get high, amid an especially tough period in her life. A few months later, she tested positive for HIV, a diagnosis that initially crippled her.
In Fiji, just as a single cigarette is often shared among a group of smokers and as the traditional psychoactive drink, kava, is passed around in a single cup, needles too were shared, community workers and users said.
Friends would sit and inject in a group, using shared bottle caps or other mixing paraphernalia to dissolve the crystals into an injectable liquid. Often, just one person — called the “doctor” — would be in charge of administering the drug, injecting the others, users and community workers said. In rare cases, addicts injected themselves with the blood of a person who was already high to get a residual hit. But the high was never as strong. On one evening, reporters from the Post observed a user injecting “raw,” as it is called here: using their own blood, instead of water, to dilute the crystals, and then injecting the mixture back into their veins.
Ben Morrison, who co-founded Inspire Pacific, which runs a camp for boys who are grappling with drugs and violence, said about 30% of those in the cohort are HIV-positive, most through needle-sharing.
For them, “HIV is like, what’s that? OK, I got a sickness, but look at my life. I don’t have a dad, I don’t have a home, I don’t eat on a daily basis,” Morrison said. “So what’s another diagnosis from a doctor to me?”
Sometimes, though, the risks were clear to users. Naulunimagiti knew better, she said. But one night in 2023, grappling with depression, she said she “really needed that feeling.” She took a needle from a friend and injected herself. Several months later, she tested positive for HIV.
“I was a leader in the community,” Naulunimagiti said through tears. “I thought, what would people think of me?”
Laundry hangs on a line in an urban squatter community in Suva.
Culture of silence
Mark Shaheel Lal, a 24-year-old student, was walking through the streets of Suva one afternoon when a driver rolled down his window and shouted, “he has AIDS!” before speeding off. It wasn’t the first time, he said. Just a few months earlier, someone pointed at him and called out, “HIV.”
Just weeks before Fiji’s government officially announced there was an HIV outbreak in the country, Lal, a gay man who is not a drug user, came out as HIV-positive. In a nation where a culture of silence still exists around the diagnosis, Lal’s declaration made him a face of the epidemic, as well as a source of information for many HIV-positive Fijians. Through his Facebook page, Living Positive Fiji, Lal has counseled more than 100 newly diagnosed HIV patients over the past year, helping them navigate their diagnosis.
Mark Shaheel Lal, 24, came out as a HIV-positive in 2024, hoping to break the “culture of silence” around the diagnosis.
“I know how I felt when I got that note,” Lal said. “I thought my world was ending. It even came to a point where I thought I should take my own life because I was going to die anyway.”
Some who have reached out to him have been hesitant to get treatment, believing that since they are not showing any signs of sickness, the diagnosis must be incorrect. Advances in antiretroviral therapy mean HIV is no longer the death sentence it once was — but only if detected early and if someone is receiving treatment. Fiji’s public health officials are also pushing for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PReP) medication for high-risk groups, which can prevent people from contracting HIV altogether.
Of the more than 120 people who died of HIV-related causes in Fiji in 2024, more than half found out their status the same year, according to data from the Health Ministry, long after their immune system had already been fatally compromised.
Lal holds his HIV medication pills.
Accessing critical medication has also not always been straightforward. At one point in late 2024, Lal and Naulunimagiti said, there were no antiretroviral pills in the country. There was also a shortage of specimen bottles for further testing, which Lal raised money for and then donated to the local reproductive health clinic.
In recent months, both Australia and New Zealand have pledged millions to Fiji’s effort to get the HIV epidemic under control. The Fijian government was separately in discussions with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for additional funding and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for help investigating the origins of the epidemic and the specific strain of HIV the country was dealing with, according to people familiar with the conversations. Both discussions did not progress under the Trump administration, which took office soon after Fiji declared its epidemic. USAID had just reopened its regional mission in Fiji in late 2023 after more than a decade.
A spokesperson for the CDC, in response to questions from the Post, referred queries to the Department of Health and Human Services, which referred the Post on to the State Department. The U.S. Embassy in Suva did not respond to a request for comment.
Ships in the waters off Fiji.
New year, new bust
On a recent afternoon in Fiji, a community worker sitting in a taxi rolled down the window, stuck out their hand and brandished a handful of new syringes, still wrapped in sterile packaging, to a group of zombielike men, scar tissue marking their forearms, sitting outside an alcohol store.
It took them a minute to register that the syringes were free handouts. They rushed to the car, grabbed the syringes and asked for more.
Needles have now become almost as valuable as the drug itself, as awareness of safe injecting practices grows in the country. Providing needles remains illegal, however. Participants in the WHO- and UNDP-commissioned assessment on drug use said they “without exception … reported difficulties accessing sterile needles and syringes for injection,” particularly in pharmacies, which are reluctant to give them out without a prescription.
“Carrying the syringes sometimes feels just as risky as carrying weed or dope,” Joseph said.
Needles have become almost as valuable in Fiji as meth itself, as awareness of safe injecting practices grows in the country.
A needle and syringe program, where sterile needles are distributed free with no questions asked, is in the pipeline and likely to be implemented later this year after cabinet approval. The WHO, in its assessment, identified it as one of the highest priorities for Fiji.
Meanwhile, the drugs keep coming. On Jan. 16, Fijian police raided a vessel off a wharf in the northwest of the country and found more than 2 metric tons of cocaine, packed in over 100 sacks. Prosecutors have charged six — four Ecuadoran nationals and two locals — in connection with the trafficking case. The drugs, prosecutors said, came in through semisubmersible vessels known as “narco subs.” Also so far this year, two senior police officers, who have since been suspended, were charged with illegally importing and possessing meth.
“A culture of participation” in the drug trade has “seeped into our police force, our institutions and our society,” said Rabuku, the deputy public prosecutor, undeterred even by recent life sentences. As long as that does not change, he added, Fiji will “always remain a transit point for drugs.”
Some yarn shops around Philadelphia are running low on skeins of red wool, as local knitters and crocheters turn out scads of “Melt the ICE” caps in solidarity with protesters in Minnesota.
The hats don’t feature a patch or logo that says “Melt the ICE.” In fact, they carry no written message at all. What they offer is a deep scarlet hue, a dangling tassel, and a connection to an earlier, dangerous time, when a different people in another land sought to silently signal their unity.
“The hat is really a symbol and reminder,” said knitter Laura McNamara of Kensington, who is making two caps for friends. “People are looking for a sense of community.”
She refused her friends’ offers of payment, asking instead that they not let their involvement start and end with a hat ― but find a means to stand up for civil rights in some specific way.
The original hat was a kind of conical stocking cap, known as a nisselue, worn in Norway during the 1940s as a sign of resistance to the Nazi occupation. The Germans eventually caught on to the symbolism and banned the caps.
Amanda Bryman works on a red wool hat known as a “Melt the ICE” hat, during Fiber Folk Night at Wild Hand yarn shop in Philadelphia on Wednesday.
Now the new version that originated in a suburban Minneapolis yarn shop is spreading across the country. The hats signal opposition to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which surged thousands of agents into Minneapolis, and sadness and anger over the deaths of Minnesotans and U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were shot to death by federal agents.
Today, comparisons of ICE agents to Nazis have become both frequent and contentious in American politics, with even some Democrats, including Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, rejecting that equivalence as wrong and unacceptable.
ICE officials did not respond to a request for comment.
This is not the first time that the Philadelphia region’s craftivist movement, as it is known, has brought its knitting needles and crochet hooks to bear.
On the eve of Donald Trump’s first inauguration, artisans here turned out scores of cat-eared headgear known as pussy hats, a feline symbol of protest worn at the Women’s March on Washington. The hats aimed to tweak the then-president-elect over his comment about grabbing women by their genitals.
The Melt the ICE caps carry some controversy within the fiber community, as it calls itself. There have been online complaints that it’s easy to tug a red cap over one’s ears, but unless that is accompanied by action it holds no more significance than clicking a “Like” button on Facebook.
“It is just preening,” one person wrote in an internet forum.
Another said that “if your resistance is only this hat, then you have not actually accomplished anything except make a hat.”
Law enforcement officers detain a demonstrator during a protest outside SpringHill Suites and Residence Inn by Marriott hotels on Jan. 26 in Maple Grove, Minn.
Liz Sytsma, owner of Wild Hand in West Mount Airy, has heard the criticism.
But “the people in our community who are participating in making the hats, this is one of many things they are doing,” she said. That includes taking part in protests, calling elected leaders, and giving money to causes they support.
On Wednesday, more than a dozen people gathered at Wild Hand for the weekly Fiber Folk Night, where crafters gather to knit, crochet, and chat ― and, now, to work on hats.
Damon Davison traveled from Audubon, Camden County, having developed his own hat pattern, with sale proceeds to go to the activist group Juntos in South Philadelphia.
He wants to show solidarity with people “who are expressing resistance to what has been happening in Minneapolis, but also what’s happening here in Philly,” he said. “The idea is to make it a little bit more local.”
The shop has seen a rush on red, sought by about 70% of customers whose purchases have depleted stocks during the last couple of weeks.
“We’re really low,” said store manager Yolanda Booker, who plans to knit and donate a hat. “I want to do whatever small part I can do to help out.”
A single hat can take two or three days to make, though the best and fastest knitters can complete one in a couple of hours.
Store Manager Yolanda Booker, standing, laughs with attendees during Fiber Folk Night at Wild Hand yarn shop in Philadelphia on Wednesday.
In West Mount Airy, Kelbourne Woolens closed its physical doors during the national “ICE Out” strike in late January and donated its onlineprofits of $4,000 to Asian Americans United, Juntos, and New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, said team member Bailey Spiteri. She estimated the store has sold enough red yarn to retailers to make 500 or 600 hats.
At Stitch Central in Glenside, customers donated $1,000 during the strike and the store matched it, with the $2,000 going to Nationalities Service Center in Philadelphia.
“Sometimes people are skeptical. How does wearing a hat or even making a hat make a difference?” asked Allison Covey of Drunken Knit Wits, a local knitting and crocheting organization. “But look at the donations. It does make a difference.”
Veteran knitter Neeta McColloch of Elkins Park thinks the same. She has ordered enough yarn to make eight hats. And she is curious to see how the phenomenon will develop.
“This is probably bigger than I think,” she said. “Knitters tend to be the type of people who in my experience have a strong moral compass. If they can combine something they love to do with something in which they can make a statement, that’s important to them.”
TUCSON, Ariz. — Savannah Guthrie told the potential kidnappers of her mother, Nancy Guthrie, on Saturday that the family is prepared to pay for her safe return.
“We received your message, and we understand. We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her,” Guthrie said in the video, flanked by her siblings. “This is the only way we will have peace. This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.”
It was not immediately clear if Guthrie was referring to a new message from someone who might have kidnapped Nancy Guthrie. The Associated Press reached out to the Pima County Sheriff’s department seeking additional details.
The frantic search for the 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie has entered a seventh day. Authorities have not identified any suspects or ruled anyone out, Sheriff Chris Nanos said this week.
Authorities think she was taken against her will from her home just outside Tucson over the weekend. DNA tests showed blood on Guthrie’s front porch was a match to her, Nanos said.
President Donald Trump’s administration can continue to detain immigrants without bond, marking a major legal victory for the federal immigration agenda and countering a slew of recent lower court decisions across the country that argued the practice is illegal.
A panel of judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday evening that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to deny bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country is consistent with the constitution and federal immigration law.
Specifically, circuit judge Edith H. Jones wrote in the 2-1 majority opinion that the government correctly interpreted the Immigration and Nationality Act by asserting that “unadmitted aliens apprehended anywhere in the United States are ineligible for release on bond, regardless of how long they have resided inside the United States.”
Under past administrations, most noncitizens with no criminal record who were arrested away from the border had an opportunity to request a bond hearing while their cases wound through immigration court. Historically, bond was often granted to those without criminal convictions who were not flight risks, and mandatory detention was limited to recent border crossers.
“That prior Administrations decided to use less than their full enforcement authority under” the law “does not mean they lacked the authority to do more,” Jones wrote.
The plaintiffs in the two separate cases filed last year against the Trump administration were Mexican nationals who had both lived in the United States for over 10 years and weren’t flight risks, their attorneys argued. Neither man had a criminal record, and both were jailed for months last year before a lower Texas court granted them bond in October.
The Trump White House reversed that policy in favor of mandatory detention in July, reversing almost 30 years of precedent under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Friday’s ruling also bucks a November district court decision in California, which granted detained immigrants with no criminal history the opportunity to request a bond hearing and had implications for noncitizens held in detention nationwide.
Circuit Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote the lone dissent in Friday’s decision.
The elected congress members who passed the Immigration and Nationality Act “would be surprised to learn it had also required the detention without bond of two million people,” Douglas wrote, adding that many of the people detained are “the spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens.”
She went on to argue that the federal government was overriding the lawmaking process with DHS’ new immigration detention policy that denies detained immigrants bond.
“Because I would reject the government’s invitation to rubber stamp its proposed legislation by executive fiat, I dissent,” Douglas wrote.
Douglas’ opinion echoed widespread tensions between the Trump administration and federal judges around the country, who have increasingly accused the administration of flouting court orders.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the decision as “a significant blow against activist judges who have been undermining our efforts to make America safe again at every turn.”
“We will continue vindicating President Trump’s law and order agenda in courtrooms across the country,” Bondi wrote on the social media platform X.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said his department will cut academic ties with Harvard University, claiming it is no longer the right place to develop military personnel, in the latest flash point in the Trump administration’s long-running battle with the Ivy League institution.
“For too long, this department has sent our best and brightest officers to Harvard, hoping the university would better understand and appreciate our warrior class,” Hegseth said in a statement Friday. “Instead, too many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard — heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks.”
The Pentagon will end graduate-level professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs at the school in the 2026-2027 school year, Hegseth said. Those who are currently attending courses would be able to finish them, he added.
The Pentagon would also review all graduate programs for active-duty service members at Ivy League and other civilian universities.
“The goal is to determine whether or not they actually deliver cost-effective strategic education for future senior leaders when compared to, say, public universities and our military graduate programs,” he said.
Hegseth’s announcement mentioned graduate programs and students but not Harvard College, the university’s undergraduate program. A department official declined to respond to a question Saturday about whether undergraduates in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps would be affected, saying the department had nothing to add beyond the secretary’s video at this time. Harvard declined to comment on Hegseth’s remarks Saturday.
Harvard has a long history with the military, with people connected to the school serving in militias more than 100 years before the country’s founding. In 1776, students were sent home early, the campus was given over to the Continental Army, and 1,600 soldiers moved into the school’s five buildings. Later, more than 1,600 soldiers with ties to Harvard fought in the Civil War; the campus hosted the first Army ROTC in the country starting in 1916; and the U.S. Navy Reserve began training officers at Harvard during World War II.
Some Harvard students also protested the school’s military ties during the Vietnam War.
As of September 2025, Harvard had more than 100 cadets and midshipmen enrolled, as well as 78 veterans, according to the university. This summer, Harvard Kennedy School announced a fellowship providing a scholarship for at least 50 military veterans or public servants to attend a fully funded one-year master’s degree program.
Friday’s move is the latest rupture in the Trump administration’s relations with universities and Harvard in particular. President Donald Trump ran on a platform of making colleges and universities “sane,” alleging antisemitism in response to pro-Palestinian campus protests over the Israel-Gaza war. Since he took office, the government has used federal funding as leverage in an attempt to force changes on issues such as admissions,campus protests, and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Tieswith Harvard have been particularly fraught, with the government threatening to withhold billions in federal grants and contracts, ordering sweeping changes and opening numerous investigations into the nation’s oldest university.
Harvard has rejected allegations of antisemitism and sued the Trump administration over the funding freezeand, separately, actions to block international students from enrolling at Harvard. In September, a judge ruled the Trump administration violated the Constitution by blocking more than $2 billion in research grants, and funding has now been restored, though the final outcome is far from clear. Both cases have been appealed by the Trump administration.
Last week, Trump said on social media that Harvard must pay $1 billion and that the administration wanted nothing more to do with the university, escalating tensions further.
Hegseth highlighted the military’s long-standing relationship with Harvard in his statement, saying “there are more recipients of our nation’s Medal of Honor who went to Harvard than any other civilian institution in the United States.” But he also accused Harvard of becoming “one of the red-hot centers of ‘hate America’ activism … all while charging enormous tuition. It’s not worth it.”
“We train warriors, not wokesters,” he said. “Harvard, good riddance.”
Hegseth went to Harvard himself, earning a master’s in public policy in 2013 from the Harvard Kennedy School. In a segment on Fox News in 2022, where he worked as co-host at the time, he repudiated the degree, scribbling “return to sender” on his diploma.
Since becoming defense secretary over a year ago, Hegseth has purged the military of DEI programs and “woke” student courses, and pushed out transgender service members. This week, the Pentagon warned Scouting America that it risks losing its partnership with the military unless it institutes “core value reforms” thathave not been made public.
KYIV — Days after negotiations to halt Russia’s war in Ukraine ended inconclusively in Abu Dhabi, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia and the United States were discussing bilateral economic agreements worth some $12 trillion, including deals that would affect Ukraine.
Zelensky said intelligence sources showed him documents that laid out a framework for U.S.-Russian economic cooperation that he called the “Dmitriev package” — named for Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who has been a central figure in negotiations over a potential ceasefire.
President Donald Trump previously has dangled the possibility of sanctions relief and renewed economic cooperation with Russia as inducements for Moscow to agree to halt the war. Putin, however, has insisted that Russia would achieve its objectives in Ukraine one way or another.
Dmitriev drafted a 28-point peace plan with Trump’s envoy to the talks, Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — first revealed by Axios last November — which included sections for gradually lifting sanctions and creating long-term economic development projects between Russia and Ukraine.
However, Zelensky, backed by European leaders and some members of Congress, has insisted that the sanctions regime against Russia must instead be tightened, to starve the Russian war machine of revenue and Western technological components.
“We are not aware of all their bilateral economic or business agreements, but we are receiving some information on the matter,” Zelensky said during a briefing with journalists Friday, according to a transcript released Saturday.
“There are also various signals, both in the media and elsewhere, that some of these agreements could also involve issues related to Ukraine — for example, our sovereignty or Ukraine’s security,” Zelensky said. “We are making it clear that Ukraine will not support any such even potential agreements about us that are made without us.”
Zelensky’s concerns were made public as Moscow launched another major airstrike on Ukraine’s energy sector, plunging large portions of the country into darkness and cold Saturday. The attack also caused Ukraine’s nuclear power plants to reduce their power output as the “military activity affected electrical substations and disconnected some power lines,” the International Atomic Energy Agency wrote on X.
Dmitriev apparently presented the package while meeting with American officials in the U.S., but Zelensky did not say when.
Zelensky’s remarks come as talks to halt Russia’s war increasingly appear to be at an impasse, in particular over the question of who will control Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The U.S. has proposed creating a free economic zone in Donetsk, while Putin has demanded that Ukraine surrender the entire region, including areas Russia has failed to capture militarily even as it nears the fourth anniversary of its full-scale invasion.
Zelensky, according to the transcript, said that Washington had proposed bringing the war in Ukraine to an end “by June” and that he expected that “they will probably pressure the parties according to this timeline.”
The main concern for the Americans, Zelensky said, was the midterm congressional elections later this year.
“We understand that they will devote all of their time to domestic processes — elections, a shift in the attitudes of their society,” Zelensky said. “The elections are, for them, definitely more important. Let’s not be naive. They say they want to achieve everything by June, and they will do everything possible to ensure the war ends that way.”
Separately, U.S. and Ukrainian officials have discussed a goal of March for reaching a deal, with national elections and a referendum on the proposed peace agreement taking place in May, Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources.
“The Americans are in a hurry,” Reuters quoted one of its sources as saying, adding that U.S. negotiators had warned that Trump will shift his focus to the elections.
U.S., Ukrainian, and Russian officials have met in Abu Dhabi twice in recent weeks to try to forge an agreement, but there has been no breakthrough. Still, Ukrainian negotiators say that the tone and substance of the talks have markedly improved.
Zelensky said that Washington proposed that the parties meet in a week for the first time in the U.S. — “likely in Miami.”
“We have confirmed our participation,” he said.
Meanwhile, Russia’s strikes overnight Friday into Saturday marked a continuation of its relentless aerial onslaught against Ukraine’s power plants and electrical grid.
Ukraine’s air force said that Russia had launched 29 missiles and 408 attack drones at locations across the country — and that 13 missiles and 21 drones struck in 19 locations.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement Saturday that its armed forces had carried out a “massive strike using precision-guided sea and air-launched long-range weapons” at energy and transport facilities “used in the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ interests” and “defense industry enterprises.”
However, the barrage left large swaths of the civilian population without light and heat as temperatures remained well below freezing — a regular occurrence this winter as Russia has targeted the energy infrastructure supplying the entire country.
Ukraine’s state energy grid operator, Ukrenergo, in a post on social media said that the assault was the second major attack on the entire energy system since the beginning of the year and that “energy facilities in eight regions” were struck.
Power outages occurred across the country, Ukrenergo said.
Zelensky, posting on X, said that the bombardment “deliberately targeted … energy facilities on which depends the operation of Ukrainian nuclear power plants.”
“This puts at risk not only our security in Ukraine, but also the shared regional and European security,” he wrote. “We believe that partners in America, in Europe, and in other states who want peace must view this with a clear head and act accordingly.”
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — When the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt finally reopened this week, Palestinian officials heralded it as a “window of hope” after two years of war as a fragile ceasefire deal moves forward.
But that hope has been sidetracked by disagreements over who should be allowed through, hourslong delays, and Palestinian travelers’ reports of being handcuffed and interrogated by Israeli soldiers.
Far fewer people than expected have crossed in both directions. Restrictions negotiated by Israeli, Egyptian, Palestinian, and international officials meant that only 50 people would be allowed to return to Gaza each day and 50 medical patients — along with two companions for each — would be allowed to leave.
But over the first four days of operations, just 36 Palestinians requiring medical care were allowed to leave for Egypt, plus 62 companions, according to United Nations data. Palestinian officials say nearly 20,000 people in Gaza are seeking to leave for medical care that they say is not available in the war-shattered territory.
Amid confusion around the reopening, the Rafah crossing was closed Friday and Saturday.
Hours of questioning
The Rafah crossing is a lifeline for Gaza, providing the only link to the outside world not controlled by Israel. Israel seized it in May 2024, though traffic through the crossing was heavily restricted even before that.
Several women who managed to return to Gaza after its reopening recounted to the Associated Press harsh treatment by Israeli authorities and an Israeli-backed Palestinian armed group, Abu Shabab. A European Union mission and Palestinian officials run the border crossing, and Israel has its screening facility some distance away.
Rana al-Louh, anxious to return two years after fleeing to Egypt with her wounded sister, said Israeli screeners asked multiple times why she wanted to go back to Gaza during questioning that lasted more than six hours. She said she was blindfolded and handcuffed, an allegation made by others.
“I told them I returned to Palestine because my husband and kids are there,” al-Louh said. Interrogators told her Gaza belonged to Israel and that “the war would return, that Hamas won’t give up its weapons. I told him I didn’t care, I wanted to return.”
Asked about such reports, Israel’s military replied that “no incidents of inappropriate conduct, mistreatment, apprehensions or confiscation of property by the Israeli security establishment are known.”
The Shin Bet intelligence agency and COGAT, the Israeli military body that handles Palestinian civilian affairs and coordinates the crossings, did not respond to questions about the allegations.
The long questioning Wednesday delayed the return to Gaza of al-Louh and others until nearly 2 a.m. Thursday.
Later that day, U.N. human rights officials noted a “consistent pattern of ill-treatment, abuse and humiliation by Israeli military forces.”
“After two years of utter devastation, being able to return to their families and what remains of their homes in safety and dignity is the bare minimum,” Ajith Sunghay, the agency’s human rights chief for the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a statement.
Numbers below targets
Officials who negotiated the Rafah reopening were clear that the early days of operation would be a pilot. If successful, the number of people crossing could increase.
Challenges quickly emerged. On the first day, Monday, Israeli officials said 71 patients and companions were approved to leave Gaza, with 46 Palestinians approved to enter. Inside Gaza, however, organizers with the World Health Organization were able to arrange transportation for only 12 people that day, so other patients stayed behind, according to a person briefed on the operations who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Israeli officials insisted that no Palestinians would be allowed to enter Gaza until all the departures were complete. Then they said that since only 12 people had left Gaza, only 12 could enter, leaving the rest to wait on the Egyptian side of the border overnight, according to the person briefed on the operations.
Crossings picked up on the second day, when 40 people were allowed to leave Gaza and 40 to enter. But delays mounted as many returning travelers had more luggage than set out in the agreement reached by negotiators and items that were forbidden, including cigarettes and water and other liquids like perfume. Each traveler is allowed to carry one mobile phone and a small amount of money if they submit a declaration 24 hours ahead of travel.
Each time a Palestinian was admitted to Egypt, Israeli authorities allowed one more into Gaza, drawing out the process.
The problems continued Wednesday and Thursday, with the numbers allowed to cross declining. The bus carrying Wednesday’s returnees from the crossing did not reach its drop-off location in Gaza until 1:40 a.m. Thursday.
Still, some Palestinians said they were grateful to have made the journey.
As Siham Omran’s return to Gaza stretched into early Thursday, she steadied herself with thoughts of her children and husband, whom she had not seen for 20 months. She said she was exhausted, and stunned by Gaza’s devastation.
“This is a journey of suffering. Being away from home is difficult,” she said. “Thank God we have returned to our country, our homes, and our homeland.”
Now she shares a tent with 15 family members, using her blouse for a pillow.
NEW YORK — A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore funding to a new rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey on Friday, ruling just as construction was set to shut down on the massive infrastructure project.
The decision came months after the administration announced it was halting $16 billion in support for the project, citing the then-government shutdown and what a top federal budget official said were concerns about unconstitutional spending around diversity, equity, and inclusion principles.
U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas in Manhattan approved a request by New York and New Jersey for a temporary restraining order barring the administration from withholding the funds while the states seek a preliminary injunction that would keep the money flowing while their lawsuit plays out in court.
“The Court is also persuaded that Plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiffs have adequately shown that the public interest would be harmed by a delay in a critical infrastructure project.”
The White House and U.S. Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment Friday night.
New York Attorney General Letitia James called the ruling “a critical victory for workers and commuters in New York and New Jersey.”
“I am grateful the court acted quickly to block this senseless funding freeze, which threatened to derail a project our entire region depends on,” James said in a statement. “The Hudson Tunnel Project is one of the most important infrastructure projects in the nation, and we will keep fighting to ensure construction can continue without unnecessary federal interference.”
The panel overseeing the project, the Gateway Development Commission, had said work would stop late Friday afternoon because of the federal funding freeze, resulting in the immediate loss of about 1,000 jobs as well as thousands of additional jobs in the future.
It was not immediately clear when work would resume. In a nighttime statement, the commission said: “As soon as funds are released, we will work quickly to restart site operations and get our workers back on the job.”
The new tunnel is meant to ease strain on an existing tunnel that is more than 110 years old that connects New York and New Jersey for Amtrak and commuter trains, where delays can lead to backups up and down the East Coast.
New York and New Jersey sued over the funding pause this week, as did the Gateway Development Commission, moving to restore the Trump administration’s support.
The suspension was seen as a way for the Trump administration to put pressure on Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, whom the White House was blaming for a government shutdown last year. The shutdown was resolved a few weeks later.
Speaking to the media on Air Force One, Trump was asked about reports that he would unfreeze funding for the tunnel project if Schumer would agree to a plan to rename Penn Station in New York and Dulles International Airport in Virginia after Trump.
“Chuck Schumer suggested that to me, about changing the name of Penn Station to Trump Station. Dulles Airport is really separate,” Trump responded.
Schumer responded on social media: “Absolute lie. He knows it. Everyone knows it. Only one man can restart the project and he can restart it with the snap of his fingers.”
At a hearing in the states’ lawsuit earlier in Manhattan, Shankar Duraiswamy, of the New Jersey attorney general’s office, told the judge that the states need “urgent relief” because of the harm and costs that will occur if the project is stopped.
“There is literally a massive hole in the earth in North Bergen,” he said, referring to the New Jersey city and claiming that abandoning the sites, even temporarily, “would pose a substantial safety and public health threat.”
Duraiswamy said the problem with shutting down now is that even a short stoppage would cause longer delays because workers will be laid off and go to other jobs and it’ll be hard to quickly remobilize if funding becomes available. And, he added, “any long-term suspension of funding could torpedo the project.”
Tara Schwartz, an assistant U.S. attorney arguing for the government, disagreed with the “parade of horribles” described by attorneys for the states.
She noted that the states had not even made clear how long the sites could be maintained by the Gateway Development Commission. So the judge asked Duraiswamy, and he said they could maintain the sites for a few weeks and possibly a few months, but that the states would continue to suffer irreparable harm because trains would continue to run late because they rely on an outdated tunnel.
LONDON — A prince, an ambassador, senior diplomats, top politicians. All brought down by the Jeffrey Epstein files. And all in Europe, rather than the United States.
The huge trove of Epstein documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice has sent shock waves through Europe’s political, economic, and social elites — dominating headlines, ending careers, and spurring political and criminal investigations.
Former U.K. Ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson was fired and could go to prison. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces a leadership crisis over the Mandelson appointment. Senior figures have fallen in Norway, Sweden, and Slovakia. And, even before the latest batch of files, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, brother of King Charles III, lost his honors, princely title, and taxpayer-funded mansion.
Apart from the former Prince Andrew, none of them faces claims of sexual wrongdoing. They have been toppled for maintaining friendly relationships with Epstein after he became a convicted sex offender.
“Epstein collected powerful people the way others collect frequent flyer points,” said Mark Stephens, a specialist in international and human rights law at Howard Kennedy in London. “But the receipts are now in public, and some might wish they’d traveled less.”
The documents were published after a public frenzy over Epstein became a crisis for President Donald Trump’s administration and led to a rare bipartisan effort to force the government to open its investigative files. But in the U.S., the long-sought publication has not brought the same public reckoning with Epstein’s associates — at least so far.
Rob Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said that in Britain, “if you’re in those files, it’s immediately a big story.”
“It suggests to me we have a more functional media, we have a more functional accountability structure, that there is still a degree of shame in politics, in terms of people will say: ‘This is just not acceptable, this is just not done,’” he said.
British repercussions
U.K. figures felled by their ties to Epstein include the former Prince Andrew — who paid millions to settle a lawsuit with one of Epstein’s victims and is facing pressure to testify in the U.S. — and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, whose charity shut down this week.
Like others now ensnared, veteran politician Mandelson long downplayed his relationship with Epstein, despite calling him “my best pal” in 2003. The new files reveal contact continued for years after the financier’s 2008 prison term for sexual offenses involving a minor. In a July 2009 message, Mandelson appeared to refer to Epstein’s release from prison as “liberation day.”
Starmer fired Mandelson in September over earlier revelations about his Epstein ties. Now British police are investigating whether Mandelson committed misconduct in public office by passing on sensitive government information to Epstein.
Starmer has apologized to Epstein’s victims and pledged to release public documents that will show Mandelson lied when he was being vetted for the ambassador’s job. That may not be enough to stop furious lawmakers trying to eject the prime minister from office over his failure of judgment.
American associates
Experts caution that Britain shouldn’t be too quick to pat itself on the back over its rapid reckoning with Mandelson. The U.S. has a better record than the U.K. when it comes to declassifying and publishing information.
But Alex Thomas, executive director of the Institute for Government think tank, said, “There is something about parliamentary democracy,” with its need for a prime minister to retain the confidence of Parliament to stay in office, “that I think does help drive accountability.”
A few high-profile Americans have faced repercussions over their friendly ties with Epstein. Most prominent is former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who went on leave from academic positions at Harvard University late last year.
Brad Karp quit last week as chairperson of top U.S. law firm Paul Weiss after revelations in the latest batch of documents, and the National Football League said it would investigate Epstein’s relationship with New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, who exchanged sometimes crude emails with Epstein about potential dates with adult women.
Other U.S. Epstein associates have not yet faced severe sanction, including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who exchanged hundreds of texts with Epstein; Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who accepted an invitation to visit Epstein’s private island; and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who discussed visiting the island in emails, but says he never made the trip.
Former President Bill Clinton has been compelled by Republicans to testify before Congress about his friendship with Epstein. Trump, too, has repeatedly faced questions about his ties to Epstein. Neither he nor Clinton has ever been accused of wrongdoing by Epstein’s victims.
European investigations
The Epstein files reveal the global network of royals, political leaders, billionaires, bankers, and academics that the wealthy financier built around him.
Across Europe, officials have had to resign or face censure after the Epstein files revealed relationships that were more extensive than previously disclosed.
Joanna Rubinstein, a Swedish U.N. official, quit after the revelation of a 2012 visit to Epstein’s Caribbean island. Miroslav Lajcak, national security adviser to Slovakia’s prime minister, quit over his communications with Epstein, which included the pair discussing “gorgeous” girls.
Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland have set up wide-ranging official investigations into the documents. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said a team would scour the files for potential Polish victims, and any links between Epstein and Russian secret services.
Epstein took an interest in European politics, in one email exchange with billionaire Peter Thiel calling Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union “just the beginning” and part of a return to “tribalism.”
Grégoire Roos, director of the Europe program at the think tank Chatham House, said the files uncover Epstein’s “far-reaching” network of contacts in Europe, “and the level of access among not just those who were already in power, but those who were getting there.
“It will be interesting to see whether in the correspondence he had an influence in policymaking,” Roos said.
Norwegian revelations
Few countries have been as roiled by the Epstein revelations as Norway, a Scandinavian nation with a population of less than 6 million.
The country’s economic crimes unit has opened a corruption investigation into former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland — who also once headed the committee that hands out the Nobel Peace Prize — over his ties with Epstein. His lawyer said Jagland would cooperate with the probe.
Also ensnared are high-profile Norwegian diplomat couple Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul, key players in the 1990s Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Juul has been suspended as Norway’s ambassador to Jordan after revelations including the fact that Epstein left the couple’s children $10 million in a will drawn up shortly before his death by suicide in a New York prison in 2019.
Norwegians’ respect for their royal family has been dented by new details about Epstein’s friendship with Crown Princess Mette-Marit, who is married to the heir to the throne, Prince Haakon. The files include jokey exchanges and emails planning visits to Epstein properties, teeth-whitening appointments, and shopping trips.
The princess apologized Friday “to all of you whom I have disappointed.”
The disclosures came as her son from a previous relationship, Marius Borg Høiby, stands trial in Oslo on rape charges, which he denies.
