MINNA, Nigeria — At least 30 villagers have been killed and several others are missing after gunmen raided a village in northern Nigeria’s Niger state, police said Sunday, the latest in a cycle of deadly violence in the conflict-hit region.
The gunmen stormed the Kasuwan-Daji village in the Borgu local government area on Saturday evening and opened fire on residents. They also razed the local market and several houses, state police spokesperson Wasiu Abiodun said in a statement.
At least two residents put the death toll at 37 and said it could be much higher as some people remained missing as of Sunday. Locals also said the security forces are yet to arrive in the area, contradicting a police claim that they have deployed officers to search for those kidnapped.
Stephen Kabirat, a spokesperson for the Catholic Church of Kontagora Diocese where the attack happened, told local media that the gunmen killed more than 40 people and abducted several others, including children.
Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu condemned the attack and said he has directed security officials to hunt down the gunmen and rescue the hostages.
“These terrorists have tested the resolve of our country and its people,” Tinubu said in a statement. “They must face the full consequences of their criminal actions. No matter who they are or what their intent is, they must be hunted down. In addition, those who aid, abet, or enable them will also be brought to justice.”
The gunmen had been lurking around nearby communities for about a week before the attack, according to one resident who asked not to be named for fear of his safety. Now survivors are too afraid to go recover the bodies.
“The bodies are there (in Kasuwan-Daji village). If we don’t see any security, how can we go there?” the resident said, adding that the attack lasted for up to three hours.
Such attacks are common in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, where dozens of rogue gangs seeking control often target remote communities with limited security and government presence.
The attack on Kasuwan-Daji village happened near the Papiri community, where more than 300 schoolchildren and their teachers were kidnapped from a Catholic school in November.
The attackers who raided Kasuwan-Daji arrived from the National Park Forest along Kabe district, according to the police, pointing to a usual trend where abandoned expansive forest reserves act as hideouts for armed gangs.
WASHINGTON — As Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time on Jan. 20, 2025, former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell put his phone on “do not disturb” and left it on his nightstand to take a break from the news.
That evening, after Gonell spent time with family and took his dog on a long walk, his phone started to blow up with calls. He had messages from federal prosecutors, FBI agents, and the federal Bureau of Prisons — all letting him know that the new president had just pardoned about 1,500 people who had been convicted for their actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The pardons included rioters who had injured Gonell as he and other officers tried to protect the building.
“They told me that people I testified against were being released from prison,” Gonell said. “And to be mindful.”
Gonell was one of the officers who defended the central West Front entrance to the Capitol that day as Congress was certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory and hundreds of Trump’s supporters broke into the building, echoing his false claims of a stolen election. Gonell was dragged into the crowd by his shoulder straps as he tried to fight people off. He almost suffocated. In court, he testified about injuries to his shoulder and foot that still bother him to this day.
“They have tried to erase what I did” with the pardons and other attempts to play down the violent attack, Gonell said. “I lost my career, my health, and I’ve been trying to get my life back.”
Five years after the siege, Gonell and some of the other police officers who fought off the rioters are still coming to terms with what happened, especially after Trump was decisively elected to a second term last year and granted those pardons. Their struggle has been compounded by statements from the Republican president and some GOP lawmakers in Congress minimizing the violence that the officers encountered.
“It’s been a difficult year,” said Officer Daniel Hodges, a Metropolitan Police Department officer who was also injured as he fought near Gonell in a tunnel on the West Front. Hodges was attacked several times, crushed by the rioters between heavy doors, and beaten in the head as he screamed for help.
“A lot of things are getting worse,” Hodges said.
An evolving narrative
More than 140 police officers were injured during the fighting on Jan. 6, which turned increasingly brutal as the hours wore on.
Former Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger took over the department six months after the riot. He said in a recent interview that many of his officers were angry when he first arrived, not only because of injuries they suffered but also “they resented the fact that they didn’t have the equipment they needed, the training they needed ” to deal with the unexpectedly violent crowd.
Trump has called the rioters he pardoned, including those who were most violent toward the police, “patriots” and “hostages.” He called their convictions for harming the officers and breaking into the building “a grave national injustice.”
“I think that was wrong,” Adam Eveland, a former District of Columbia police officer, said of Trump’s pardons. If there were to be pardons, Eveland said, Trump’s administration should have reviewed every case.
“I’ve had a hard time processing that,” said Eveland, who fought the rioters and helped to push them off the Capitol grounds.
The pardons “erased what little justice there was,” said former Capitol Police Officer Winston Pingeon, who was part of the force’s Civil Disturbance Unit on Jan. 6. He left the force several months afterward.
Pushback from lawmakers and the public
Hodges and Gonell have been speaking out about their experiences since July 2021, when they testified before the Democratic-led House committee that investigated Jan 6. Since then, they have received support but also backlash.
At a Republican-led Senate hearing in October on political violence, Hodges testified again as a witness called by Democrats. After Hodges spoke about his experience on Jan. 6, Sen. Peter Welch (D., Vt.) asked the other witnesses whether they supported Trump’s pardons of the rioters, including for those who injured Hodges. Three of the witnesses, all called by Republicans, raised their hands.
“I don’t know how you would say it wasn’t violent,” says Hodges, who is still a Washington police officer.
It has not just been politicians or the rioters who have doubted the police. It also is friends and family.
“My biggest struggle through the years has been the public perception of it,” Eveland said, and navigating conversations with people close to him, including some fellow police officers, who do not think it was a big deal.
“It’s hard for me to wrap my head around that, but ideology is a pretty powerful thing,” he said.
Improvements in safety and support
As police officers struggled in the aftermath, Manger, the former Capitol Police chief, said the department had to figure out how to better support them. There were no wellness or counseling services when he arrived, he said, and they were put in to place.
“The officers who were there and were in the fight — we needed to make sure that they got the help that they needed,” Manger said.
Manger, who retired in May, also oversaw major improvements to the department’s training, equipment, operational planning, and intelligence. He said the Capitol is now “a great deal safer” than it was when he arrived.
“If that exact same thing happened again, they would have never breached the building, they would have never gotten inside, they would have never disrupted the electoral count,” Manger said.
Pingeon, the former Capitol Police officer, said he believes the department is in many ways “unrecognizable” from what it was on Jan. 6 and when he left several months later.
“It was a wake-up call,” he said.
Pressing on
Pingeon, who was attacked and knocked to the ground as he tried to prevent people from entering the Capitol, said Jan. 6 was part of the reason he left the department and moved home to Massachusetts. He has dealt with his experience by painting images of the Capitol and his time there, as well as advocating for nonviolence. He said he now feels ready to forgive.
“The real trauma and heartache and everything I endured because of these events, I want to move past it,” he said.
Gonell left the Capitol Police because of his injuries. He has not returned to service, though he hopes to work again. He wrote a book about his experience, and he said he still has post-traumatic stress disorder related to the attack.
While many of the officers who were there have stayed quiet about their experiences, Eveland said he decided that it was important to talk publicly about Jan. 6 to try to reach people and “come at it from a logical standpoint.”
Still, he said, “I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that just because something happened to me and was a major part of my world doesn’t mean that everyone else has to understand that or even be sympathetic to that.”
He added: “The only thing I can do is tell my story, and hopefully the people who respect me will eventually listen.”
CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland — Hundreds marched in silence Sunday to honor the victims of the New Year’s Eve fire at a bar in the Swiss Alpine resort of Crans-Montana, which left 40 dead and many severely injured.
Somber mourners, many with reddened eyes, filed silently out of the chapel to organ music after the hourlong Mass at the Chapelle Saint-Christophe in Crans-Montana. Some exchanged hugs before marching up a hill to Le Constellation bar.
Many hundreds of people walked in the dense snaking procession in the bright sunlight past shuttered stores. Up on the mountain overlooking the town, snow machines sent plumes of white flakes into the air.
At the top of the street, in front of Le Constellation — which is still largely shielded from view by white screens — the swelling crowd stood in near total silence, some weeping.
Then they broke out into sustained applause for the rescue teams and police who rushed to the scene of horror, their hands in gloves and mittens against the cold. Mourners and well-wishers deposited bouquets at a makeshift memorial piled with flowers, cuddly toys, and other tributes. Some firefighters wiped their eyes too.
“They went there to party”
“Through this tragic event, I believe we must all remember that we are all brothers and sisters in humanity,” Véronique Barras, a local resident who knows grieving families, said. “It’s important to support each other, to hug each other, and to move forward towards light.”
Cathy Premer said her daughter was out celebrating her 17th birthday on New Year’s Eve when she called in the early hours of the morning to say she was stuck because Le Constellation was cordoned off.
“For the young — but even for adults — it’s hard to understand things that seem inexplicable,” she said. “They went there to party, it’s a destination for Dec. 31, it’s very festive, there were people of many nationalities … and it all turned into a tragedy.”
In the crowd, Paola Ponti Greppi, an 80-year-old Italian who has a house in Crans-Montana, called for safety checks in bars. “We need more safety in these places because it’s not the only place like this. Why didn’t the town do the proper checks? For me that’s terrible.”
A Mass for the victims
During the Mass, the Rev. Gilles Cavin spoke of the “terrible uncertainty” for families unsure if their loved ones are among the dead or still alive among the injured.
“There are no words strong enough to express the dismay, anguish, and anger of those who are affected in their lives today. And yet, we are here, gathered because silence alone is not enough,” he said.
In the crowded pews, a grieving woman listened intently, her hands sometimes clasping rosary beads, as speakers delivered readings in German, French, and Italian.
Forty people died and 119 were injured in the blaze that broke out around 1:30 a.m. on Thursday at Le Constellation bar. Police have said many of the victims were in their teens to mid-20s.
By Sunday morning, Swiss authorities identified 24 out of the 40 fatalities. They include 18 Swiss citizens — aged as young as 14 — two Italians 16 years old, one dual citizen of Italy and the United Arab Emirates also 16 years old, an 18-year-old Romanian, a 39-year-old French person, and a Turkish citizen, 18.
A grieving mother
One of the victims was 16-year-old Arthur Brodard, whose mother had been frantically searching for him.
“Our Arthur has now left to party in paradise,” a visibly shaken Laetitia Brodard said in a Facebook story posted on Saturday night, speaking to a camera. “We can start our mourning, knowing that he is in peace and in the light.”
Brodard’s frenzied search for her son reflected the desperation of families of the young people who disappeared during the fire, who did not know whether their loved ones were dead or in the hospital.
Swiss authorities said the process of identifying victims was particularly hard because of the advanced degree of the burns, requiring the use of DNA samples. Brodard also had given her DNA sample to help in the identification process.
In her Facebook post, she thanked those who “testified their compassion, their love” and to those who shared information as she anxiously searched and waited for news of her son. Other parents and siblings are still waiting in anguish.
Bar managers face a criminal investigation
Swiss authorities have opened a criminal investigation of the bar managers.
The two are suspected of involuntary homicide, involuntary bodily harm, and involuntarily causing a fire, the Valais region’s chief prosecutor, Beatrice Pilloud, told reporters Saturday. The announcement of the investigation did not name the managers.
Regional police said Sunday there were no legal grounds so far that would require the managers to be held pending the legal process. They have not been deemed to be a flight risk.
Investigators have said they believe festive sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited the fire when they came too close to the ceiling of the crowded bar.
Authorities are looking into whether sound-dampening material on the ceiling conformed with regulations and whether the candles were permitted for use in the bar. The investigation also centers on other safety measures on the premises, including fire extinguishers and escape routes, and whether previous work at the site was up to code.
“Initial witness accounts cited a fire that spread quickly, generating a lot of smoke and a huge wave of heat,” the police statement Sunday said. “Everything happened very fast.”
Swiss President Guy Parmelin announced a national day of mourning for the victims on Jan. 9.
France’s Health Minister Stéphanie Rist said 17 patients have received care in France, out of a total of 35 transferred from Switzerland to five European countries. Other patients were planned to be transferred to Germany, Italy, and Belgium.
In early November, hours before the Republican-led Senate rejected bipartisan legislation to block the Trump administration from conducting a military attack on Venezuela, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to reassure lawmakers it didn’t intend to.
He told them that the U.S. lacked legal authority to invade the South American country and oust its president, Nicolás Maduro, and said that doing so would carry major risks, according to two people who attended the classified briefing.
In the aftermath of Saturday’s raid to capture Maduro and his wife at a fortified military compound in Caracas, top Democrats are accusing Rubio of deliberately misleading Congress.
During a news conference at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, Rubio, who also serves as White House national security adviser, told reporters that he and other top officials had planned the Maduro operation for months. The acknowledgment led some on Capitol Hill to conclude that the administration was readying assets for the assault while having told lawmakers that the military buildup in the region was not meant to force a regime change.
“Rubio said that there were not any intentions to invade Venezuela,” Rep. Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s top Democrat, told the Washington Post. “He absolutely lied to Congress.”
In an interview with the Post later Saturday, Rubio rejected the assertion. He argued that Maduro is under indictment from a U.S. court, and neither the United States nor the European Union recognized him as the legitimate leader of Venezuela. So rather than an invasion, he cast the attack as a “law enforcement operation” that required military assets to conduct.
Lawmakers previously asked whether the administration “would be invading Venezuela,” Rubio said. “This was not that,” he added.
Democrats were incredulous at the argument.
“It absolutely is one hundred percent regime change,” said Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
Smith said that he had asked Rubio directly whether the administration’s military buildup in the region would result in attacks on Venezuelan territory and that the secretary had said no.
The Trump administration did not notify key members of Congress of the operation until late Saturday morning, sending a short notice that said the president had approved a “military operation in Venezuela to address national security threats posed by the illegitimate Maduro regime.”
The operation, the notice said, came in response to the Justice Department’s warrant against Maduro, who was transported to New York to await trial.
Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Rubio tried to reach him after the raid had begun in the early morning hours but that they were unable to connect.
Warner, who has had multiple briefings with Rubio over the past few months, declined to say whether he felt the administration had misled Congress but noted that the timing for the operation — with lawmakers days away from returning to Washington after a holiday break — was not “idle chance.”
“Doing this during a congressional break raises huge questions,” he said in an interview.
Senior Republicans called on the administration to brief lawmakers even while expressing near-unified support for the operation. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said in separate statements that they had spoken with senior officials early Saturday and wanted the administration to brief Congress in the coming week.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D., N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) demanded far more information.
“We want to know the administration’s objectives, its plans to prevent a humanitarian and geopolitical disaster that plunges us into another endless war — or one that trades one corrupt dictator for another,” Schumer told reporters.
The Senate is set to vote this week on another war powers resolution that, if passed, would block the administration from conducting further military action in Venezuela. Trump said Saturday that the U.S. could carry out a larger “second wave” of attacks but that he did not think doing so would be necessary because Venezuela’s interim leader was cooperating with U.S. demands.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) said he hoped the new measurewould get more Republican support. He, too, accused the administration of lying to lawmakers and the public.
At least two of the Republicans who considered supporting the measure that was narrowly defeated in November received calls from Rubio on Saturday, according to their public statements.
“Congress should have been informed about the operation earlier and needs to be involved as this situation evolves,” said Susan Collins (R., Maine), one of the lawmakers who signaled that they might support the last resolution but ultimately opposed it.
Shortly after news of the attack broke Saturday morning, Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), a skeptic of expansive U.S. military commitments abroad, posted on social media that he wanted to know “what, if anything, might constitutionally justify this action in the absence of a declaration of war or authorization for the use of military force” from Congress.
Hours later, Lee posted again that he had spoken with Rubio and was satisfied that the attack “likely” was within the president’s authority.
President Donald Trump’s intervention in Venezuela will test Americans’ appetite for regime change, inserting a new and unpredictable element ahead of midterm elections this year that have so far been dominated by domestic issues.
Democrats immediately began arguing that overnight action on Saturday was an abandonment of Trump’s promise to focus on improving lives at home, while manyRepublicans insisted it was an expansion, rather than a shift, in Trump’s “America First” mantra.
Trump on Saturday said the United States had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and planned to “run the country” during a transition period, an action Trump cast as part of a new era of “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere.” The president touted the operation as a boost to U.S. interests: a blow to the drug trade, an opportunity for American oil companies, and a show of strength.
But his argument drew skepticism on both the right and the left, as critics warned against dragging the U.S. into regime change and costly wars. Recent polls suggest there is significant political risk for Trump, who is already facing discord within his base. A CBS News poll in November found that 70% of Americans opposed U.S. military action in Venezuela and that the vast majority did not view the South American country as a major threat to national security. Americans in both parties have grown increasingly skeptical of foreign intervention in recent decades.
Republican leaders mostly backed the president, but some expressed doubts as Trump outlined a potentially expansive U.S. role in Venezuela and said he is “not afraid of boots on the ground.” Many Democrats framed the attack as a violation of Trump’s campaign promises to “get rid of all these wars starting all over the place” and toavoid the type of foreign entanglements that bedeviled many of his predecessors and bred cynicism within his base.
While foreign policy does not always play a central role in domestic elections, it often informs broader opinions about competence and focus. President Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan undermined his argument that he was restoring faith and effectiveness in government that had been hampered by the COVID-19 epidemic. President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq with faulty intelligence claims, and the attempts at nation-building that followed, damaged his party’s credibility and helped pave the way for Trump’s takeover of the GOP.
“What Americans want is an American president that’s going to care about them … and I think what this shows is the president’s more concerned about what’s going on in Venezuela, what’s going on in Argentina than he is on what’s going on in Pennsylvania and Ohio,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) in an interview.
The politics of the intervention are hard to assess immediately, some strategists said, as details of the U.S.’s plans remain unclear and the situation in Venezuela is still unfolding. The issue’s relevance to voters could change based on the ultimate extent of the U.S.’s involvement and Venezuela’s stability in the months to come. Trump on Saturday said Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, appeared “willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great,” but she later criticized the U.S.’s actions as “barbarity.”
Trump had been ramping up pressure on Maduro for months, but the action in Venezuela probably caught many Americans off guard, given that it did not follow a provocation like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Republicans embracing his latest action in Venezuela are betting that the fallout there will be limited, and even some staunch critics of foreign intervention on the right declined to criticize Trump on Saturday. But a few echoed the concerns from Democrats.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), a proponent of America First policies who has become one of Trump’s biggest critics from the right, questioned his justifications for the attack — noting that the fentanyl responsible for most U.S. drug deaths comes primarilyfrom places other than Venezuela — and reiterated her worry that he is veering from principles on which he campaigned.
“This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end,” she wrote on X. “Boy were we wrong.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), who has long been at odds with Trump,said the president, at his news conference, had undercut earlier suggestions from administration officials that the action in Venezuela was a limited effort to apprehend Maduro. Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser turned MAGA commentator, initially hailed Maduro’s capture as a “stunning overnight achievement” on his show — but after Trump’s news conference expanding on the U.S. role in Venezuela, he wondered if the plan would “hark back to our fiasco in Iraq under Bush.”
Sen. Todd Young (R., Ind.) called the Venezuela operation “successful” but added in a statement online, “We still need more answers, especially to questions regarding the next steps in Venezuela’s transition.”
Other Republicans echoed Trump’s points about U.S. interests in the region. Raheem Kassam, a political strategist who is editor of the conservative National Pulse, suggested Trump’s MAGA base will “warm” to the idea that the Venezuela action is America First and noted that many supporters also embraced Trump’s long-shot ambitions to annex Greenland.
Kassam doesn’t see the issue playing into the midterms much yet — but “if it turns into a disaster, certainly.”
“These things are very risky,” he acknowledged.Trump “willknow what risk he’s taking and people know what it means if Caracas suddenly overnight turns into a complete powder keg.”
Some Republicans were skeptical that the U.S. would be as involved as Trump suggested Saturday was possible. “The president gets a lot of leeway up to a certain point,” said GOP strategist David Urban, “and I think that point would be, having U.S. soldiers in some meaningful capacity in Venezuela. I don’t think you’ll see that.”
Democrats, meanwhile, questioned the legality of the military action in Venezuela. Some also sought to use it to build their longtime case that Trump is distracted from the issues that matter most to voters.
“The American people don’t want to ‘run’ a foreign country while our leaders fail to improve life in this one,” wrote Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary and potential Democratic 2028 presidential candidate, on social media, arguing that Trump was “failing on the economy and losing his grip on power at home.”
Buoyed by victories in November’s elections in New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats are focusing intensely on the issue of affordability heading into the 2026 midterms. Trump’s advisers signaled after those elections that they would be refocusing on the economy, and Trump began to tout his economic achievements at rallies. Now, many Democrats say the operation in Venezuela could undercutthat effort.
“His biggest problem is that costs are continuing to go up, and he promised people they would go down, and whenever people see him creating some other kind of a problem, rather than buckling down and trying to un-break that key promise, they turn against him more,” argued Andrew Bates, a Democratic strategist and former White House communications official under Biden.
Whit Ayres, a longtime GOP pollster, emphasized that it’s hard to predict the politics of Trump’s actions in Venezuela without more data.
“What I can say based upon polling is that one of Trump’s strengths in public opinion polls is that he’s viewed as strong, and not indecisive or weak, and in that sense this plays to his strength,” he said of the Venezuela operation.
Bucks County has agreed to pay $950,000 to a woman with a serious mental illness who was pepper-sprayed and left strapped for hours in a chair while at Bucks County Correctional Facility over five years ago.
Kimberly Stringer’s parents hope the settlement draws attention to the country’s ongoing mental health crisis, and the need for alternatives to arresting and jailing people who need psychiatric care.
Martha and Paul Stringer of Lower Makefield Township sued Bucks County prison guards and officials in 2022, asserting that their daughter’s civil rights were violated while she was jailed for 64 days during the spring and summer of 2020.
Martha Stringer has since become an advocate for programs to keep people with serious mental illnesses out of jails. She said that, along with the settlement, the county agreed to work to implement one such program. Known as assisted outpatient treatment, it involves regular court appearances and close supervision for people with a history of hospitalizations who struggle to follow treatment plans.
“My only hope would be that this story resonates beyond Bucks County,” because county jails all around the country are frequently where people with mental health issues end up, she said.
By April 2020, her 27-year old daughter already had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychotic features and had been involuntarily committed twice, Martha Stringer said.
“She was well known, particularly in Falls Township, where she was arrested,” Martha Stringer said.
It was then, while in the midst of a rapidly worsening mental health crisis, that Kimberly Stringer struck and threatened her neighbor, according to the Stringers’ attorney, David Inscho. She was arrested and taken to Bucks County Correctional Facility, where, as a pretrial detainee, she was pepper-sprayed twice by prison guards, Inscho said.
Stringer was also placed in a “restraint chair,” which prohibits movement, several times, for as long as four hours, Inscho said. At no point did she pose a threat to guards, and her inability to comply with orders was because she was “in a state of catatonia.”
“In that state she was not able to process and comply with the rules of that correctional facility — and that led to uses of force” by prison guards, Inscho said.
The settlement agreement between the Stringers and Bucks County, which was reached Dec. 17, includes a requirement that video footage of the incidents recorded by prison guards be destroyed. The agreement notes one remaining copy of the videos may be kept in a password-protected file for 10 years and then deleted.
Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia during a meeting on May 21, 2024.
“The videos were difficult to watch,” Inscho said. “It was clear that Kim was in a mental health crisis. The tools available to the guards were clearly not the tools Kim needed.”
Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia said she believes prison guards were trying to keep Stringer safe, but she shouldn’t have been in jail to begin with.
“She and the millions of Americans who likewise struggle with mental illness deserve access to high-quality, intensive treatment, with intervention that begins long before they are misdirected to the criminal justice system,” Ellis-Marseglia said in a statement.
Ellis-Marseglia said that Bucks County has made strides in helping people with serious mental illness. In 2023, the board of commissioners voted unanimously to fund a behavioral health center in Doylestown, the Lenape Valley Foundation’s Bright Path Center, Ellis-Marseglia noted. Last August, commissioners voted to add $5 million more to fund the facility, a county spokesperson said.
Bucks County in 2023 also voted to build a Diversion Assessment Restoration and Treatment Center at the jail, which is set to open this year, the spokesperson said, and in 2021, it added a separate housing area for women and a mental health unit in the jail.
“These programs and facilities will help bridge critical gaps in mental health services and move us in the direction of improving the mental health treatment environment,” Ellis-Marseglia said.
Martha Stringer, parent of Kim Stringer, at her home in Yardley. When Kim Stringer was having an acute psychotic episode, local police charged her with harassment and placed her in the Bucks County jail. Her parents sued in 2022, and have become advocates for prison reform after their daughter’s mistreatment.
The Stringers applauded these changes, which they attributed in part to the public outcry over their daughter’s mistreatment. Their daughter’s story became public after several inmates notified the media of Kimberly Stringer’s condition in jail; days later, the county relocated her to a state mental institution.
Still, Martha Stringer said, most of Bucks County’s new interventions are for people who have already been arrested.
“And that’s where we’re going to come to the table with Bucks, to see if we can implement assisted outpatient treatment,” Martha Stringer said.
The money from the settlement will go into a special needs trust that the parents set up years ago, Paul Stringer said. The trust has strict rules on what money can be spent on, and is designed to provide for their daughter even after he and his wife, both in their 60s, have died.
“She’s doing quite well,” Paul Stringer said. “But she requires, probably, a lifetime of supports.”
Their now-33-year-old daughter is living in Brooke Glen Behavioral Hospital under a long-term involuntary commitment, Martha Stringer said. Their hope is that she’ll be able to move to a less-restrictive setting and gain more independence, while still getting the support she needs.
“These past five years, she’s missed a lot,” Martha Stringer said. “She’s missed her sister’s wedding. Recently she’s become an aunt. She’s missed a lot. We struggled with that.”
One thing that’s given some comfort, she added, is that people often reach out for advice on how they can help their children, who are in similar situations.
“I learned so much the hard way, that I felt like, if I could give families a better understanding of what we learned, then I could help them.”
A 40-year-old man has been charged by the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office with the shooting death of a woman Saturday morning in Paulsboro.
Authorities say Ramon Luis Acevedo of Paulsboro shot the woman in the head while she was at a home on Elizabeth Avenue. They say he also shot a minor who fled.
Acevedo was charged with first-degree murder and second-degree aggravated assault after the prosecutor’s office said he called 911 on Saturday. During the call, authorities allege, Acevedo identified himself and said he shot both people.
Police found an adult female dead in a bedroom at the home. The minor received medical treatment for a gunshot wound.
Acevedo said in a statement to police that he intentionally shot the woman, according to the prosecutor’s office. He then accidentally shot the second person after being startled while holding a handgun, according to the statement.
Neither victim has been identified by the authorities.
Acevedo faces a sentence of 30 years to life for the charge of first-degree murder, 5 to 10 years for second-degree aggravated assault, and 5 to 10 years for possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife could appear in federal court in Manhattan within days to face narco-terrorism charges, which, if accepted by a jury, could put them behind bars on American soil for decades.
A plane carrying Maduro arrived at a suburban airport outside New York on Saturday evening. He was expected to be processed by Drug Enforcement Administration officials and will be held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn until a court appearance, most likely on Monday, according to people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
Maduro’s capture and indictment have drawn protests from some lawmakers and scholars, who say international law does not allow President Donald Trump to unilaterally attack a foreign country and bring its leader to the U.S. to face charges.
Even those critics, however, concede that under Supreme Court precedent, those arguments are unlikely to have much impact on federal legal proceedingsonce Maduro gets to U.S. court.
Trump and his top aides defended the decision to capture Maduro. They noted that the U.S. and many other countries have long viewed Maduro as an illegitimate leader who has remained in power despite losing the country’s most recent election. Officials sought to portray the extraordinary military action against Venezuela as a straightforward law enforcement operation, with the military backing up the Justice Department as they sought to bring someone to U.S. court.
“At its core, this was an arrest of two indicted fugitives of American justice,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a news conference with Trump on Saturday.
A sweeping four-count indictment against Maduro was unsealed in the Southern District of New York on Saturday. It alleged that he, his wife, Cilia Flores, and members of their inner circle illegally enriched themselves as they conspired to flood the United States with cocaine. Among the charges: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, and possession of machine guns and destructive devices.
“The defendants, and other corrupt members of the regime facilitated the empowerment and growth of violent narco-terrorist groups fueling their organizations with cocaine profits,” the indictment reads. “These narco-terrorist organizations not only worked directly with and sent profits to high-ranking Venezuelan officials, but also reaped the benefits of the increased value of that cocaine at each transshipment point along the way to the United States, where demand and thus the price of cocaine is highest.”
The remarkable prosecution of a foreign leader in American federal court was the result of Trump’s deployment of the U.S. military to strike Venezuela overnight and capture Maduro and his wife, bringing them to New York to face charges.
Trump at the Saturday news conference gave reporters a more expansive set of reasons for Maduro’s capture, saying that the U.S. attack was justified, in part, because Venezuela stole U.S. oil — claims that are not included in the indictment. He also said the United States will “run” the South American country until a succession plan is determined.
Critics said Trump’s arguments raised more legal questions.
“If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership?” Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement. “What stops Vladimir Putin from asserting similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president? Once this line is crossed, the rules that restrain global chaos begin to collapse, and authoritarian regimes will be the first to exploit it.”
International law experts, however, said that while those issues may be debated in Congress and international bodies, they are unlikely to affect the legal proceedings against Maduro and his co-defendants in U.S. court.
A line of Supreme Court cases starting in the late 19th century makes clear that “you can’t claim that you were abducted and therefore the court should not be allowed to assert authority over you,” said Geoffrey Corn, who heads the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University and is a former top legal adviser to the U.S. Army.
“Maduro is not going to be able to avoid being brought to trial because he was abducted so to speak, even if he can establish it violated International law.” Corn said, adding that in his view the administration’s overnight military operation lacked any “plausible legal basis.”
Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor who previously headed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the George W. Bush administration, noted on Substack that similar arguments were raised after U.S. forces deposed Panamanian leader Manuel Antonio Noriega on Jan. 3, 1990. Courts upheld the government’s right to try Noriega, who was convicted on drug charges in 1992 and sentenced to 40 years in federal prison.
The charging document against Maduro unsealed Saturday — known as a superseding indictment — is an update to charges filed against him and his associates during the first Trump administration in 2020. At the time, U.S. leaders conceded that they couldn’t go into Venezuela and arrest Maduro. The charges essentially made him an international fugitive, who risked arrest if he traveled outside his country.
The superseding indictment contains the same four charges as the original 2020 indictment. But the new indictment also names Flores, who was not a co-defendant in the 2020 case. Some of the other co-defendants — all part of Maduro’s inner circle — are also different, including Maduro’s son, Nicolás Ernesto Maduro.
The younger Maduro does not appear to have been captured.
U.S. authorities have alleged that Maduro and his inner circle worked with international drug trafficking groups to transform Venezuela into a transshipment hub for moving massive amounts of cocaine to the United States. Maduro and his associates created a culture of corruption in which the Venezuelan elite made themselves rich through drug trafficking, the indictment alleged. Drug traffickers, the document said, gave these leaders a portion of their profits in exchange for protection and aid.
“In turn, these politicians used the cocaine fueled payments to maintain and augment their political power,” the indictment states.
Jeremy Paul, a law professor at Northeastern University, said the Trump administration had no legal authority to stage the military intervention, but he agreed that it probably would not derail Maduro’s prosecution.
The administration’s justification is “a terrifying theory, because, as I have been saying to people, you’re basically saying that U.S. prosecutors and a grand jury is all you need as justification for sending the military into another country,” Paul said. “That can’t be the law.”
Trump also faced criticism Saturday from Democratic lawmakers for striking Venezuela and capturing Maduro just a month after he pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in a U.S. court last year on drug trafficking charges.
Maduro’s case in the Southern District of New York was randomly assigned to U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a 92-year-old jurist appointed by President Bill Clinton and who last year was among a group of judges who prohibited the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan immigrants. Those findings are under appeal.
Hellerstein did not take any action in the case against Maduro on Saturday, and an appearance in court has not yet been publicly announced. But public officials, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, have said that officials are arranging this weekend to transport Maduro and his wife to New York.
China strongly condemned the overnight U.S. strike on Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro, which came just hours after a Chinese special envoy met with the Venezuelan leader to reaffirm Beijing’s support for the imperiled regime, calling the action “deeply shocking” and a serious violation of international law.
Shortly before the surprise U.S. attack unfolded, a delegation of Chinese officials arrived in Caracas, led by Beijing’s special envoy for Latin American and Caribbean affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi, and met with Maduro to discuss the rising tensions with the United States. It was Maduro’s last publicly reported official meeting before he and his wife were captured by U.S. forces and flown out of the country.
President Donald Trump on Saturday said that the United States will now “run” Venezuela for an unspecified amount of time, following the operation that saw over 150 U.S. military aircraft marshal for a spectacular extraction mission.
Maduro’s exit marked an abrupt end to a monthslong effort by China to support the embattled leader, as fears grew in Beijing that the United States would soon attempt to seize Chinese-flagged oil tankers as part of its blockade of the country. Beijing has been the regime’s most influential global ally and Venezuela’s primary financial lifeline through loans and oil purchases, accounting for around 80% of the country’s total oil exports.
At 7:30 p.m. Friday, Maduro shared a final message on his Telegram channel, lauding his meeting with Qiu as reaffirming “the strong bonds of brotherhood and friendship between China and Venezuela. A relationship that stands the test of time!” It was accompanied by a video set to triumphant music showing Qiu — a vice-minister level diplomat — and his team walking through what appeared to be the hallways of the presidential palace and shaking hands with Maduro.
Just 6½ hours later, Chinese officials in Caracas were stunned when the U.S. strike began, setting off a furious string of missives back to Beijing, according to one Chinese diplomat familiar with the situation. “It was completely shocking,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to media.
On Saturday, China’s Foreign Ministry issued a sharp rebuke, strongly condemning the U.S. raid. “Such hegemonic acts of the U.S. seriously violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty, and threaten peace and security in Latin America,” it said in a statement. Separately, the Foreign Ministry and China’s embassy in Venezuela warned citizens to avoid traveling to the country.
“China employed rare, forceful language previously reserved for political assassinations and mass casualty events,” sail Neil Thomas, a fellow at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.
According to Venezuelan reports and the Chinese official, Qiu met with Maduro to review the roughly 600 political and economic agreements between the two countries and address concerns over the rising threat of a U.S. military intervention and potential threats to Chinese oil tankers.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Maduro in May last year on the sidelines of Russia’s Victory Day celebrations. According to the Chinese readout of the meeting, Xi described the two countries’ relationship as an “all-weather strategic partnership” and reaffirmed China’s support for Venezuela’s sovereignty.
Asked on Saturday how the takeover would affect U.S. relations with major oil buyers including China, Trump said that “in terms of other countries that want oil, we’re in the oil business, we’re going to sell it to them. We’re not going to say we’re not going to sell it to them.”
China has long viewed Venezuela as a key political ally in Latin America as it seeks to expand its influence in the region. This month, Beijing released its first major Latin America strategy update in nearly a decade, more explicitly incorporating security cooperation — including military exchanges — into its framework and reaffirming support for the sovereignty of regional partners.
Republican lawmakers focused on China policy welcomed the move Saturday, saying it curtailed Chinese influence in the region. “The Trump Administration’s decisive action against Nicolás Maduro removes a Chinese ally from power and makes the world a safer place. China’s partnership with Maduro propped up an authoritarian ruler who worked with our nation’s adversaries and hurt the American people,” said Rep. John Moolenaar (R., Mich.), chairperson of the House Select Committee on China.
Analysts say that the potential seizure of Venezuela’s government by the United States is unlikely to seriously undercut Beijing’s broader efforts to expand its regional presence.
“Left-leaning governments in the region will likely lean further toward Beijing as a preferred economic partner and diplomatic alternative to Washington. This strike is unlikely to dissuade China’s regional trade and investment; Beijing requires booming exports to sustain growth, and Washington currently lacks a competitive economic diplomacy strategy to match its security presence,” said Thomas.
Trump on Saturday lambasted Maduro’s regime for facilitating the growing influence of U.S. adversaries in the region, but stopped short of naming China explicitly. “Venezuela was increasingly hosting foreign adversaries in our region and acquiring menacing offensive weapons that could threaten us,” said Trump. “They used those weapons last night.”
In recent months, Maduro has called on China, as well as Russia and Iran, to provide weapons and other assistance amid rising U.S. pressure. According to documents obtained by the Washington Post, Maduro drafted a letter appealing to Xi for “expanded military cooperation” in the face of U.S. escalation, including a request to expedite the production of radar detection systems by Chinese companies.
MINNEAPOLIS — Just a few months ago,Larissa Laramee would have encouraged Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to run for president. She admired the man who helped lead the Democratic presidential ticket in 2024 — and who once taught her social studies.
But Laramee’s feelings have changed as a yearslong welfare fraud probe in Minnesota becomes a national maelstrom. Prosecutors say scammers stole brazenly from safety net programs,taking hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding — potentially billions — for services they never provided while Walz led the state.
“I like him as a person. He’s fantastic,” said Laramee, 40, who works at a Minnesota nonprofit for people with disabilities. Walz, as her high school teacher, helped inspire her career, she said. “But with all of this that’s happened, I’m struggling with seeing a path forward for him.”
Laramee’s doubts show how the sprawling fraud cases in Minnesota now hang over Walz — even as it’s too soon to tell how they will ultimately affect his political future. A year and a half after he vaulted onto the national stage as Kamala Harris’ running mate, Walz is back in the spotlight, this time for acontroversy that Republicans around the country view as political gold.
Republicans are betting the fraud saga will hurt Walz, a staunch liberal and potential 2028 presidential candidate who is seeking a third term as governor this year. GOP officials say it will be one of their top campaign issues in Minnesota as they try to reverse many years of statewide losses and navigate through tough national headwinds in the midterms.
But many of the attacks on Walz are geared just as much toward riling the GOP’s national base, using the issue and Walz’s prominence to validate broader anger within the party over immigration and a social welfare system that President DonaldTrump and others have long argued is out of control.
How much blame Walz should bear forthe state’s response to the fraud is a matter of a debate. He has said that, as state executive, he takes ultimate responsibility. Walz has said officials have “made systematic changes to state government” over the past few years as prosecutions were underway. The governor’s critics say the changes were insufficient and came too late.
Democrats say Republicans are risking a backlash by fixating on the fraudsters’ nationality — most people charged in the schemes are of Somali descent — and by freezing some federal childcare funding in response. Trump has lobbed broad attacks on Somali immigrants that Walz denounced as “racist lies,” and many on the right have called for deportations, even though officials say most of the fraud defendants are U.S. citizens.
Maria Snider, director of the Rainbow Development Center and vice president of advocacy group Minnesota Child Care Association, speaks as people gather for a news conference at the state Capitol on Wednesday in St. Paul.
Democrats are favored to win the governor’s race in 2026; Republicans have not won a statewide election in Minnesota since 2006. Walz won reelection by about 8 percentage points in 2022, when some of the fraud cases had already surfaced, and it’s not clear that the new attention to the issue has affected his approval in the state. There are no clear recent shifts in available surveys.
Some Democrats remain worried the falloutthreatens to blunt Walz’s attacks on Trump, as well as the economic issues the party has sought to highlight.
“The anti-fraud message is going to be very strong. …I fear that message will dominate or drown out the affordability message,” said Ember Reichgott Junge, a former Minnesota state senator who is now a Democratic political analyst.
Junge said she’s heard many Democrats express concern about Walz’s reelection campaign and noted thathis performance couldaffect lower-profile races on the ballot. Democrats are defending a one-vote majority in the state Senate and trying to retake the House, where Republicans hold a two-seat advantage amid two vacancies.
“He is a riskier candidate than any other Democrat” would have been, she said of Walz, who has not drawn primary challengers so far.
Walz has accused Trump of politicizing the probes. Walz appointed a statewide “director of program integrity” to prevent fraud in mid-December, among other changes, and the state shut down one fraud-plagued housing program this fall.
“We have made significant progress. We have much more to do. And it’s my responsibility to fix it,” Walz wrote in a recent op-ed for the Minnesota Star Tribune.
His office did not make him available for an interview.
Other Democrats dismissed Republicans’ chances in the governor’s race, said the GOP response to the fraud has overreached and accused Trump — who has pardoned people convicted on fraud charges — of hypocrisy. Trump and others on the right have also attacked Walz in highly personal terms that many call cruel; Trump recently called Walz “seriously retarded,” and videos of people yelling “retard” outside Walz’s house have circulated online. (Walz has spoken about his son’s learning disability).
“Republicans are overplaying their hand, and this is what’s going to turn off a lot of voters,” said Abou Amara, a former adviser to Democratic leadership in the state legislature. “They have made this not just about fraud, but they’ve made it about xenophobia.”
President Donald Trump on Dec. 16 at the White House.
Federal authoritiesin Minnesota have been investigating the sweeping abuse of safety net programs for years and brought many of the charges in 2022, accusing 47 people of misusing $250 million — meant to feed children during the pandemic — on luxury cars and property as far away as Kenya and Turkey.
News reports, a viral video and a flood of criticism from right-wing influencers and politicians have drawn new national attention to the issue in recent weeks. Federal investigators also suggested last month that the problem could be much bigger than previously known.
Joe Thompson, a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, said at a news conference last month that authorities have identified “significant fraud” in14 state Medicaid programs — and said fraud may account for more than half of the $18 billion that went to those programs since 2018.
“Every day we look under a rock and find a new $50 million fraud scheme,” Thompson said.
Republican leaders including Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) have weighed in this past week, sharing a video posted on social media on Dec. 26 by a 23-year-old YouTuber, Nick Shirley, who joined a roundtable with Trump last year. In the 42-minute video, Shirley claimed daycare centers were not caring for children because he could not see them on-site. Regulators, however, saw children on their visits within the last 10 months, according to officials and records.
Shirley’s video has accumulated more than 130 million views on X and triggered a flood of GOP interest — and criticism of Walz. House Republicans said they would call Walz to testify before Congress next month. Right-leaning billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, suggested Walz should go to prison.
“Minnesotans are finally much more aware of the extent of the fraud and how deep it is and how it’s gone unchecked, and it is going to play favorably for Republicans on every level of government in the ’26 election,” said state House speaker Lisa Demuth, one of many candidates seeking the GOP nomination to challenge Walz.
Another GOP gubernatorial candidate, Minnesota Rep. Kristin Robbins — who chairs a House committee on fraud — called it the top issue in the race. “We are still, sadly, at the tip of the iceberg,” she said.
A 2024 report from the nonpartisan Minnesota LegislativeAuditor found that the state education department, which administered nutrition programs at the center of many fraud cases, “failed to act on warning signs” and “created opportunities for fraud.”It did not point specifically at Walz.
Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota GOP who has crossed the aisle in the past to vote for Walz, said he isn’t sure how he’ll vote in the coming gubernatorial race, and argued that the Walz administration could have been more responsive. Voters, he said, will have to decide if state officials “have the credibility to be a part of the solution when maybe a lot of Minnesotans think they’re part of the problem.”
But he also warned that Trump’s rhetoric isn’t helping local Republicans. The president railed against Somali immigrants in a cabinet meeting last month, saying “they contribute nothing” and declaring, “Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country.”
Some Republicans in Minnesota want to leave race out of the debate — though they argue sensitivities about racism helped enable the fraud. (A nonprofit behind much of the fraud once accused a state agency of racial discrimination while pushing back on skepticism).
“We want to stay focused on the fraud and just the act itself, not on the culture or the people behind it,” Minnesota GOP chair Alex Plechash said in an interview, adding later, “I’m not at all into dividing the people by race or by socioeconomic status or any other way.”
At a Somali mall in Minneapolis, Kadar Abdi, a student at a nearby mosque, said he believes Trump is trying to turn attention away from his own political challenges. “Because of these failures, as a distraction tactic, you want to blame a marginalized group” he said. “It’s as old as American society.”
An hour away in Owatonna, an exurb of the Twin Cities, diners at the Kernel represented the full gamut of opinions. Trump voter Michael Haag, 54, said Walz “should be in prison” and that he plans to leave the state if Walz is reelected.
He “should resign, and I also think he should be charged, because he’s for the Somalis,” Haag said. “He should have been looking out for us, vs. them.”
Another patron wearing a pink Carhartt hat and sipping coffee disagreed.
“I find him honest,” said Joan Trandem, who is retired. “He cares about the small guy.”
Given the drama that’s surrounded Walz, Trandem said she’s surprised he wants to run fora third term. But if he continues with the campaign, she plans to vote for him. In the rural part of Minnesota where Trandem lives, the fraud probe doesn’t get much play anymore, she said. “I’m tired of talking about it.”
