WASHINGTON — The United States said Wednesday that it is moving into the next phase of a Gaza ceasefire plan that involves disarming Hamas, rebuilding the war-ravaged territory and establishing the group of Palestinian experts that will administer daily affairs in Gaza under American supervision.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in a post on X that the deal that the Republican president helped broker was entering its second phase following two years of war between Israel and Hamas, including the establishment of a technocratic government in Gaza.
While Wednesday’s announcement indicates a key step forward, a new government in Gaza and the ceasefire agreement face a number of huge challenges — including the deployment of an international security force to supervise the deal and the difficult process of disarming Hamas.
Witkoff did not offer any details about who would serve on the new transitional Palestinian administration that would govern Gaza. The White House did not immediately offer any more information, either.
The other mediators of the ceasefire deal — Egypt, Turkey and Qatar — welcomed the establishment of the Palestinian technocratic committee and said it would be led by Ali Shaath, a former deputy minister in the Palestinian Authority.
In a joint statement, the three countries called it an “important development … aimed at consolidating stability and improving the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.”
Shaath is a Gaza native who served as a deputy minister for transportation with the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. Shaath, an engineer, is an expert in economic development and reconstruction, according to his biography on the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute’s website.
Witkoff said the U.S. expects Hamas to immediately return the final Israeli hostage as part of its obligations under the deal, noting that “failure to do so will bring serious consequences.”
A Hamas spokesperson, Hazem Qassem, told Al-Jazeera Live on Wednesday that Witkoff’s announcement is an important and positive development, adding that the group is ready to hand over the administration of Gaza to the independent technocratic committee and facilitate its work.
“Hamas is ready to engage in internal Palestinian approaches to discuss the issue of the resistance weapons,” said Qassem in the statements that he shared on his Telegram channel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke Wednesday evening to Gvili’s parents, Tali and Itzik Gvili, and told them that the return of their son’s remains a top priority, his office said in a statement.
“The declarative move to establish a technocratic committee will not affect efforts to return Ran to Israel’s grave,” the statement said.
The statement added that Israel will act on any information the mediators receive and said Hamas is required under the ceasefire agreement to do all it can to return each and every hostage.
The ceasefire reached under Trump’s 20-point plan took effect in October and stopped much of the fighting. Under the first phase of the three-phase deal, Hamas released all but one hostage it was holding in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians who were held by Israel.
Appointees to a technocratic committee that Witkoff said would be established under the second phase are part of a broader plan to end Hamas’ 18-year rule of Gaza. The appointees will run day-to-day affairs in Gaza, under the oversight of a Trump-led “Board of Peace,” whose members have also not yet been named.
The technocratic committee will be tasked with providing public services to the more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, but it faces towering challenges and unanswered questions, including about its operations and financing.
There also is the more immediate challenge of figuring out how to take over basic services after nearly two decades of Hamas-led rule in Gaza and repeated rounds of conflict with Israel.
As President Donald Trump threatens to acquire Greenland, Sen. Chris Coons is boarding a plane to Denmark to push back.
Coons (D., Del.), who opposes the president’s takeover proposal, is bringing a bipartisan group of House and Senate members on a mission to highlight the longstanding relationship between the U.S. and Denmark, which has control over defense and foreign policy in the semi-autonomous territory,located northeast of Canada.
Coons said in an interview Wednesday that the delegation will meet with Danish and Greenlandic government and business leaders to discuss issues including Arctic security and strengthening trade relations.
“Denmark has been a strong close and trusted ally for decades and this is a chance for a bipartisan and bicameral delegation from Congress to go and communicate our respect and appreciation for their close partnership,” he said.
He said he hopes the visit clarifies “there are folks in Congress who do not support an aggressive engagement.”
Coons noted Danish soldiers fought alongside Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffered some of the highest casualties per capita. The delegation will lay a wreath to commemorate that sacrifice on their trip.
Joining Coons will be Democratic U.S. Reps. Sarah McBride of Delaware, Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, Gregory Meeks of New York, and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis from North Carolina. The delegation will be in Copenhagen Friday and Saturday. Some members of the delegation will continue on to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Coons called that rationale “puzzling,” given leaders of Greenland and Denmark have assured him on previous visits that they are happy to collaborate with the U.S. to amp up American military presence in the country and work together on arctic security issues or to explore investments in mineral resources.
“I asked are you aware of any foreign threats, cyber, or other incursions?” Coons said of a previous conversation with Denmark Minister of Foreign Affairs Lars Løkke Rasmussen. “Nope, none.”
Leaders in Greenland this week said they wanted the territory to remain part of the kingdom of Denmark.
“Greenland does not want to be owned by the USA,” Greenland’s Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen said at a news conference Tuesday in Copenhagen. “Greenland does not want to be governed by the USA. Greenland will not be part of the USA. We choose the Greenland we know today, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark.”
Denmark officials have warned an attack on Greenland, which is part of Denmark and thus under the protection of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, would destroy the alliance, which has been a pillar of U.S.-European relations since 1949.
Trump has been seemingly undeterred by foreign protestations. He said on social media Wednesday that “anything less” than U.S. control of Greenland is “unacceptable,” arguing the United States needs the territory for national security purposes, which could in turn strengthen NATO.
“NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Anything less than that is unacceptable.”
Dean, who also went on a trip to Denmark in April, said in an interview she hopes to convey “the president’s notion is wrongheaded, dangerous, inane and not something we support.”
Dean said if the president wants to boost security in Denmark he might consider increasing the number of U.S. military bases there, which has precipitously declined, rather than trying to take control of the country.
Dean also encouraged her Republican colleagues to speak out against the president’s comments.
“If somehow this president unleashes military action against Greenland, against the kingdom of Denmark — it will destroy 80 years of a NATO partnership that has kept the world in a more peaceful place,” she said. “It’s just a sick irony that this is the same president who so wishes he could win the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Coons and Dean’s trip comes as tensions have risen internationally.
The government of Greenland and Denmark’s Ministry of Defense said there would be an increased military presence in the territory starting Wednesday due to “security tensions,” CNN reported.
Elsewhere, European leaders continue to reject Trump’s calls to control the semi-autonomous territory. French President Emmanuel Macron warned Wednesday that the consequences of the US trying to seize Greenland from Denmark would be “unprecedented.”
Days before protests erupted in Iran in late December, Israeli officials notified the Iranian leadership via Russia that they would not launch strikes against Iran if Israel were not attacked first. Iran responded through the Russian channel that it would also refrain from a preemptive attack, diplomats and regional officials with knowledge of the exchange said.
The communications between Israel and Iran — and the role Russia played as the intermediary — were unusual given the hostility between the two Middle Eastern rivals, which engaged in a 12-day war in June.
But the contacts reflected Israel’s desire to avoid being perceived as escalating tensions toward Iran or spearheading any new attacks against it at a time when Israel was preparing a significant military campaign against Hezbollah, the Iran-aligned militia in Lebanon, according to the diplomats and regional officials. The private reassurances contrasted with Israel’s public rhetoric late last year, when its officials openly hinted at the possibility of carrying out renewed strikes on Iran to roll back what they said was the country’s rapidly replenishing ballistic missile stockpile.
Although Iranian officials responded positively to the Israeli outreach, they were wary of Israel’s intentions, said two officials with knowledge of the message exchange. Iran believed that even if the Israeli assurances were genuine, they left open the possibility that the U.S. military would carry out attacks on Iran as part of a campaign coordinated by the two allies, while Israel was training its firepower strictly on Hezbollah, the officials said.
Still, “for Iran, it was a good deal” to stay out of any Israel-Hezbollah clash, said a senior official in the region who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive communications. U.S. officials have said that Iran’s substantive support for Hezbollah, in any case, has already decreased as Tehran grapples with domestic upheaval.
It’s not clear now how the furious protests in Iran in recent weeks, which have challenged the government’s grip on power, have changed Israel’s and Iran’s calculations and whether the two countries will still abide by their private agreement. President Donald Trump has been weighing attacks against Iranian regime targets in response to the crackdown on the protest movement, and any strikes could provoke Iran to retaliate against Israel, a U.S. ally, analysts say.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters that if attacked, Iran would retaliate against U.S. military bases in the Middle East, the news agency reported Wednesday, without mentioning Israel as among the potential targets.
Nor is it clear whether Israeli officials would renege on their December reassurances and join in a U.S.-led attack if they sensed an opportunity to topple the Iranian government. As protests flared in Iran, Israeli officials described their military preparations as defensive in nature, and Israeli government and security officials have avoided overtly bellicose language. In June, Israel launched an elaborate surprise attack against Iran even as nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran were underway.
“Israel is giving the U.S. the leading role [in any potential strikes against Iran], but there is no question Israel would love to see regime change because that would change the Middle East — as well as Hezbollah,” said Sima Shine, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv and a former head of research at the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. “But Israel could be a target for the Iranian response, and therefore Israel has already taken a lot of steps to be better defended and prepared.”
For Israel, the outreach to Iran was designed to keep Tehran on the sidelines and leave Hezbollah isolated if Israel were to attack. The “same logic” may hold today, with Israel seeking to prevent the two countries from trading direct blows, at least initially, an Israeli official said. The official added that a military campaign against Hezbollah was not off the table, regardless of what transpires with Iran. Israel has warned that it continues to face a threat from Hezbollah because the group has not disarmed.
“The [Lebanon] campaign will take place, and Hezbollah will be heavily targeted,” the official added. “The question is if it’s during or after the Iran war.”
The most recent exchange of messages between Israel and Iran came in late December, shortly after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi visited Moscow, the senior regional official said. It was not the first time that Russia has sought to serve as an intermediary between the two countries or bolster its standing with Trump as a mediator to win concessions in negotiations over the war in Ukraine.
The Kremlin previously raised to Trump the idea of serving as an intermediary between Israel and Iran, according to a Russian academic close to senior Russian diplomats. Trump declined the offer, this person said, telling the Russians “to deal with Ukraine first.” It’s not clear whether the December exchanges took place with Washington’s knowledge or participation.
The Israeli public broadcaster KAN reported last week that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had recently asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to relay messages to Iran that Israel did not intend to attack it.
A spokesman in Netanyahu’s office and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not respond to requests for comment.
BOSTON — The Trump administration apologized in court for a “mistake” in the deportation of a Massachusetts college student who was detained trying to fly home to surprise her family for Thanksgiving, but still argued the error should not affect her case.
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, 19, a Babson College freshman, was detained at Boston’s airport on Nov. 20 and flown to Honduras two days later. Her removal came despite an emergency court order on Nov. 21 directing the government to keep her in Massachusetts or elsewhere in the United States for at least 72 hours.
Lopez Belloza, whose family emigrated from Honduras to the U.S. in 2014, is currently staying with grandparents and studying remotely. She is not detained and was recently visiting an aunt in El Salvador.
Her case is the latest involving a deportation carried out despite a court order. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador despite a ruling that should have prevented it. The Trump administration initially fought efforts to bring him back to the U.S. but eventually complied after the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in. And last June, a Guatemalan man identified as O.C.G. was returned to the U.S. after a judge found his removal from Mexico likely “lacked any semblance of due process.”
At a federal court hearing Tuesday in Boston, the government argued the court lacks jurisdiction because lawyers for Lopez Belloza filed their action several hours after she arrived in Texas while en route out of the country. But the government also acknowledged it violated the judge’s order.
In court filings and in open court, government lawyers said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer mistakenly believed the order no longer applied because Lopez Belloza had already left Massachusetts. The officer failed to activate a system that alerts other ICE officers that a case is subject to judicial review and that removal should be halted.
“On behalf of the government, we want to sincerely apologize,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Sauter told the judge, saying the employee understands “he made a mistake.” The violation, Sauter added, was “an inadvertent mistake by one individual, not a willful act of violating a court order.”
In a declaration filed with the court Jan. 2, the ICE officer also admitted he did not notify ICE’s enforcement office in Port Isabel, Texas, that the removal mission needed to be canceled. He said he believed the judge’s order did not apply once Lopez Belloza was no longer in the state.
The government maintains her deportation was lawful because an immigration judge ordered the removal of Lopez Belloza and her mother in 2016, and the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed their appeal in 2017. Prosecutors said she could have pursued additional appeals or sought a stay of removal.
Her lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, countered that she was deported in clear violation of the Nov. 21 order and said the government’s actions deprived her of due process. “I was hoping the government would show some leniency and bring her back,” he said. “They violated a court order.”
U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns said he appreciated the government acknowledging the error, calling it a “tragic” bureaucratic mistake. But appeared to rule out holding the government in contempt, noting the violation did not appear intentional. He also questioned whether he has jurisdiction over the case, appearing to side with the government in concluding the court order had been filed several hours after she had been sent to Texas.
“It might not be anybody’s fault, but she was the victim of it,” Stearns said, adding at one point that Lopez Belloza could explore applying for a student visa.
Pomerleau said one possible resolution would be allowing Lopez Belloza to return to finish her studies while he works to reopen the underlying removal order.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he’s been told “on good authority” that plans for executions in Iran have stopped, even as Tehran has indicated fast trials and executions ahead in its crackdown on protesters.
The president’s claims, which were made with few details, come as he’s told protesting Iranians in recent days that “help is on the way” and that his administration would “act accordingly” to respond to the Iranian government. But Trump has not offered any details about how the U.S. might respond and it wasn’t clear if his comments Wednesday indicated he would hold off on action.
“We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping — it’s stopped — it’s stopping,” Trump said at the White House while signing executive orders and legislation. “And there’s no plan for executions, or an execution, or executions — so I’ve been told that on good authority.”
The president on Tuesday consulted with his national security team about next steps after telling reporters he believed the killing in Iran was “significant.”
Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and key White House National Security Council officials began meeting last Friday to develop options for Trump, ranging from a diplomatic approach to military strikes.
The Iranian security force crackdown on the demonstrations has killed at least 2,586, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported.
On Wednesday, Iranian officials signaled that suspects detained in nationwide protests would face fast trials and executions while the Islamic Republic promised a “decisive response” if the U.S. or Israel intervene in the domestic unrest.
The threats emerged as some personnel at a key U.S. military base in Qatar were advised to evacuate by Wednesday evening following Trump’s escalated warnings of potential military action over the killing of peaceful demonstrators.
Mohammad Pakpour, commander of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, reiterated Iranian claims, without providing evidence, that the U.S. and Israel have instigated the protests and that they are the real killers of protesters and security forces who have died in the turmoil, according to Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency.
He added that those countries will “receive the response in the appropriate time.”
Earlier Wednesday, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, Iran’s judiciary chief, said the government must act quickly to punish more than 18,000 people who have been detained through rapid trials and executions. Mohseni-Ejei’s comments about rapid trials and executions were made in a video shared by Iranian state television online.
“If we want to do a job, we should do it now. If we want to do something, we have to do it quickly,” he said. “If it becomes late, two months, three months later, it doesn’t have the same effect. If we want to do something, we have to do that fast.”
The comments stand as a direct challenge to Trump, who warned Iran about executions in an interview with CBS aired Tuesday. “If they do such a thing, we will take very strong action,” Trump said.
“We don’t want to see what’s happening in Iran happen. And you know, if they want to have protests, that’s one thing. When they start killing thousands of people, and now you’re telling me about hanging — we’ll see how that works out for them. It’s not going to work out good.”
One Arab Gulf diplomat told the AP that major Mideast governments had been discouraging the Trump administration from launching a war with Iran, fearing “unprecedented consequences” for the region that could explode into a “full-blown war.” The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to journalists.
Satellite internet service offer
Iran’s government cut off the country from the internet and international telephone calls on Jan. 8.
Activists said Wednesday that Starlink was offering free service in Iran. The satellite internet service has been key in getting around the internet shutdown. Iran began allowing people to call out internationally on Tuesday via mobile phones, but calls from people outside the country into Iran remain blocked.
“We can confirm that the free subscription for Starlink terminals is fully functional,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, a Los Angeles-based activist who has helped get the units into Iran. “We tested it using a newly activated Starlink terminal inside Iran.”
Starlink itself did not immediately acknowledge the decision.
Security service personnel apparently were searching for Starlink dishes, as people in northern Tehran reported authorities raiding apartment buildings with satellite dishes. While satellite television dishes are illegal, many in the capital have them in homes, and officials broadly gave up on enforcing the law in recent years.
Death toll continues to rise
The Human Rights Activists News Agency said 2,417 of the dead were protesters and 147 were government-affiliated. Twelve children were killed, along with 10 civilians it said were not taking part in protests.
More than 18,400 people have been detained, the group said.
Gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult, and the AP has been unable to independently assess the toll given the communications being disrupted in the country.
WASHINGTON — A top Danish official said Wednesday that a “fundamental disagreement” over Greenland remains with President Donald Trump after talks in Washington with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The two sides, however, agreed to create a working group to discuss ways to work through differences as Trump continues to call for a U.S. takeover of the Denmark’s Arctic territory of Greenland.
“The group, in our view, should focus on how to address the American security concerns, while at the same time respecting the red lines of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen told reporters after joining Greenland’s foreign minister, Vivian Motzfeldt, for the talks.
Trump is trying to make the case that NATO should help the U.S. acquire the world’s largest island and says anything less than it being under American control is unacceptable.
Denmark has announced plans to boost the country’s military presence in the Arctic and North Atlantic as Trump tries to justify his calls for a U.S. takeover of the vast territory by repeatedly claiming that China and Russia have their designs on Greenland.
Vance and Rubio met with Løkke Rasmussen and Greenlandic Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt for roughly an hour to discuss Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.
But a few hours before the officials sat down, Trump reiterated on his social media site that the U.S. “needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security.” He added that “NATO should be leading the way for us to get it” and that otherwise Russia or China would — “AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!”
“NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES,” Trump wrote. “Anything less than that is unacceptable.”
Løkke Rasmussen told reporters that it remains “clear that the president has this wish of conquering over Greenland.”
“And we made it very, very clear that this is not in the interest of the kingdom,” he said after the meeting, citing a “fundamental disagreement” with the Trump administration but willing to keep talking.
Both Løkke Rasmussen and Motzfeldt offered measured hope that the talks were beginning a conversation that would lead to Trump dropping his demand of acquiring the territory and create a path for tighter cooperation with the U.S.
“We have shown where our limits are and from there, I think that it will be very good to look forward,” Motzfeldt said.
Denmark bolstering presence in Arctic
In Copenhagen, Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen announced an increase in Denmark’s “military presence and exercise activity” in the Arctic and the North Atlantic, “in close cooperation with our allies”.
Poulsen said at a news conference the stepped-up military presence was necessary in a security environment in which “no one can predict what will happen tomorrow.”
“This means that from today and in the coming time there will be an increased military presence in and around Greenland of aircraft, ships and soldiers, including from other NATO allies,” Poulsen said.
Other NATO allies were arriving in Greenland along with Danish personnel, he said. Poulsen declined to name the other countries contributing to increased Arctic presence, saying that it is up to the allies to announce their own participation.
Earlier, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson wrote on X that “some officers from the Swedish Armed Forces are arriving in Greenland today” as part of a group from several allied countries. “Together, they will prepare events within the framework of the Danish exercise Operation Arctic Endurance,” Kristersson said. Two Norwegian military personnel also will be sent to Greenland to map out further cooperation with allies, the country’s Defense Minister Tore O. Sandvik told newspaper VG.
Greenlanders want the U.S. to back off
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said Tuesday that “if we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark. We choose NATO. We choose the Kingdom of Denmark. We choose the EU.”
Asked about those comments, Trump replied: “I disagree with him. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know anything about him. But, that’s going to be a big problem for him.”
Greenland is strategically important because, as climate change causes the ice to melt, it opens up the possibility of shorter trade routes to Asia. That also could make it easier to extract and transport untapped deposits of critical minerals which are needed for computers and phones.
Trump says Greenland is also “vital” to the United States’ Golden Dome missile defense program. He also has said he wants the island to expand America’s security and has repeatedly cited what he says is the threat from Russian and Chinese ships as a reason to control it.
“The only Chinese I see is when I go to the fast food market,” heating engineer Lars Vintner said. He said he frequently goes sailing and hunting and has never seen Russian or Chinese ships.
His friend, Hans Nørgaard, agreed, adding “what has come out of the mouth of Donald Trump about all these ships is just fantasy.”
Denmark has said the U.S, which already has a military presence, can boost its bases on Greenland. The U.S. is party to a 1951 treaty that gives it broad rights to set up military bases there with the consent of Denmark and Greenland.
For that reason, “security is just a cover,” Vintner said, suggesting Trump actually wants to own the island to make money from its untapped natural resources.
Mikaelsen, the student, said Greenlanders benefit from being part of Denmark, which provides free health care, education and payments during study, and “I don’t want the U.S. to take that away from us.”
Løkke Rasmussen and Motzfeldt, along with Denmark’s ambassador to the U.S., met Wednesday with senators from the Arctic Caucus, a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers is also heading to Copenhagen this week to see Danish and Greenlandic officials.
Women working at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey were required to wear tight uniforms that were too small and told to “smile more,” as they endured “sexist remarks about their bodies and menstruation,” according to two lawsuits by former employees.
Both complaints describe a similar pattern: A female employee at the Bedminster club, working in a culture hostile to women, reported safety issues and was penalized for doing so.
Maria Hadley, a former banquet server who worked at the private club, owned by President Donald Trump, from February until she resigned in August, says she suffered from a retaliation campaign after she reported a manager who spiked the drink of an underage employee with vodka. And Justine Sacks, who was hired as clubhouse manager in 2023, says that she was demoted and ultimately fired in May for reporting health and safety violations, including maggots and mold in the soft-serve machine.
The lawsuits describe a hyper-sexualized work environment, in which female staffers were expected to endure sexual harassment from workers and guests.
Both Hadley and Sacks are represented by the New Jersey-based McOmber McOmber & Luber law firm. Their attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.
The Bedminster club is operated by the Trump Organization, which is led by the president’s sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Neither the club nor general manager David Schutzenhofer responded to requests for comment.
In this July 15, 2017 file photo, President Donald Trump turns to wave to the people gathered at the clubhouse as his walks to his presidential viewing stand during the U.S. Women’s Open Golf tournament at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.
Vodka-spiked Shirley Temple
Hadley, a banquet server, says women were treated as “a prop” and “were expected to look pleasing, work without complaint, and stay quiet,” according to the lawsuit filed Monday in New Jersey Superior Court in Camden. Male managers and coworkers harassed their female peers, and called teenage guests “sexy.” When a guest inappropriately touched Hadley, a manager advised “they pay a lot of money to come here, just ignore it.”
Hadley reported in June that a bartender poured vodka into the Shirley Temple of an underage employee without the employee’s consent, saying it would give her energy.
The bartender was temporarily fired, but the club’s management launched a retaliation campaign against Hadley, the complaint says. She was denied a $1,000 bonus, isolated by her peers, and received worse hours and assignments.
Hadley resigned via email in August, the suit says, writing to the club’s human resources representative that her employment became “unbearable.” The club accepted her resignation, which the suit calls “effectively forcing her out,” and rehired the fired bartender.
That man went on to make sexual comments about 12-year-old guests with braces in September, according to a message Hadley sent to Eric Trump, the executive vice president of Trump National, which is included in the complaint.
Maggots and mold
Sacks joined Trump National in January 2023 and was told from the onset to expect “gender differences” in treatment, according to the suit, which was filed last month in Monmouth County Superior Court. She was instructed to hire women based on their looks, and received complaints from multiple direct reports about offensive, gender-based comments from male managers and peers.
The complaints were dismissed by Schutzenhofer, who told Sacks to “vote the mean girls off the island,” the suit says.
The club’s management slowly stripped Sacks’ authority and stopped inviting her to leadership meetings, in what the suit says was retaliation for elevating the complaints of female staffers.
People play golf next to the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster’s clubhouse in Bedminister on Friday, June 9 , 2023, in New Jersey.
Sacks was also retaliated against for reporting unsanitary conditions at the club’s kitchens, which included expired and unlabeled food, and the bistro operating without running water, the complaint says. There were flies all over the clubhouse in the fall of 2023, which even Donald Trump complained about, according to the lawsuit.
Management told Sacks that she was new to working at golf clubs and was “wrapped too tight” when she complained about the sanitation conditions, as well as employees drinking and vaping on the job. But even Eric Trump asked the club’s management team to make sanitation a “huge focus” because a few health inspectors are “eager and politically motivated to try and embarrass us,” according to a copy of an email sent by the executive vice president in January 2024.
The clubhouse’s bistro-area became more unsanitary, and by September 2024 the soft-serve machine was filled with maggots and mold, the suit says.
Sacks was placed on a 90-day performance improvement plan in December 2024 for, among other issues, being “off-putting,” the complaint says. In April, Sacks was reassigned from clubhouse manager to managing the bistro, which the lawsuit calls a clear demotion.
Schutzenhofer terminated Sacks in May, the lawsuit says, shortly after the club “failed miserably” a state health inspection.
Melanie Smith pulled grueling hours alongside FBI agents and other prosecutors as she prepped dozens of witnesses to prove that a Virginia sheriff had accepted $75,000 in bribes from wealthy business owners and undercover agents. Just over a year ago, the jury returned a guilty verdict against former Culpeper County sheriff Scott Jenkins in an astounding 90 minutes.
V. Grady O’Malley built one of the most complicated cases of his 47-year Justice Department career to prove that a New York businessman who owned a chain of nursing homes had failed to pay more than $38 million in employment taxes, then laundered the money by bouncing it from account to account. The defendant, Joseph Schwartz, pleaded guilty.
Just months after the defendants were sentenced, President Donald Trump pardoned them as he wielded his executive power to grant clemency to a host of convicts — many of them politically connected — outside of the traditional pardon-application process.
Jenkins was pardoned the day before he was set to begin his prison sentence, his entire punishment erased and the restitution he owed taxpayers wiped out.
“The president has the authority to grant a pardon, but when you have a strong case, and it is a good case, and you are holding elected officials accountable for wrongdoing, it is frustrating,” Smith said in an interview. “You put a lot of time and energy into these cases. It was a righteous case. The fact that the pardon happened before he went to prison, it undermines one of the purposes of the criminal justice system.”
White-collar and public corruption cases are among the most resource-intensive for the Justice Department to pursue. Prosecutors, FBI agents, and other specialists often work for years to build such cases, following money trails and interviewing scores of witnesses before they even file an indictment.
More than half a dozen experienced prosecutors interviewed for this story, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation, said Trump’s clemency acts have eroded faith among current and former Justice Department employees that the cases they devote years to prosecuting will lead to accountability.
Calculating the amount of government resources poured into prosecuting a single case is next to impossible. But the cost can often run to millions of dollars when factoring in salaries and travel expenses, prosecutors said. On top of that, witnesses might require transportation to court and accommodation for the duration of the trial, paid for by taxpayers, the prosecutors noted.
Some complex cases can take years to investigate before charges are filed, with prosecutors interviewing dozens of witnesses before grand juries to build their cases. Years typically pass before those cases reach a trial date.
And once the trial arrives, prosecutors can spend upward of 80 hours a week preparing witnesses and getting exhibits ready. A long trial can involve more than 1,000 exhibits that need to be prepped and reviewed.
“To bring a case to trial is just an incredible effort and use of department resources,” said John Keller, the former acting head of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section. “There’s an intensity of experience and effort and emotion that doesn’t come at any other stage of the case. It’s the pinnacle of the practice.”
During Trump’s two terms, multiple defendants whose cases Keller has tried and supervised have received pardons. He said the pardons sting, but prosecutors are focused on their cases and trials, and do not allow a potential presidential act of clemency to influence how they approach a case.
“There’s a feeling that, if a jury or judge has reached a verdict after hearing all the evidence, it’s even more of a slap in the face to have clemency handed down,” he said.
During the first year of his second term, Trump has pardoned some of the most high-profile public corruption and white-collar defendants prosecuted during President Joe Biden’s administration, as well as some prosecuted during his own first term and some under earlier administrations.
Among them: former Republican congressman George Santos of New York, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, former Tennessee state senator Brian Kelsey, and Trevor Milton, the former executive chairman of electric trucking company Nikola. One of the defining acts of Trump’s return to office has been his sweeping pardons of more than 1,500 people convicted in connection with the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, including those who assaulted police officers.
Trump has defended his use of the pardons, saying the people to whom he granted clemency had been pursued by what he considers a corrupt and overzealous Justice Department under Biden. But the attorneys interviewed said they investigated each case scrupulously and apolitically to ensure a fair prosecution.
“It’s personally upsetting because of how much time I invested in this case — the time traveling, the late nights looking through documents and prepping for witness interviews,” said Jacob Steiner, a former Justice Department employee who prosecuted the Santos case. “Beyond and more important than the personal aspect, it’s really disheartening that someone who lied to the public and stole a lot of money just gets to walk free and not have to pay back his victims.”
Reality television star Todd Chrisley speaks as his daughter Savannah Chrisley looks on during a news conference on May 30, 2025, in Nashville. Todd Chrisley and his wife, Julie, were pardoned in May after being convicted in 2022 of bank fraud and tax evasion.
In Atlanta, prosecutors and federal agents spent years investigating reality stars Todd and Julie Chrisley. The couple were found guilty of bank fraud and tax evasion in 2022 after a nearly three-week jury trial. The Justice Department then defended the conviction during appeals. But after a public campaign from the Chrisleys’ daughter, who spoke at the Republican National Convention and socialized at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, the president granted the reality stars a pardon in May.
In New York, prosecutors and federal agents spent roughly two years investigating the online black market Silk Road before indicting its creator, Ross Ulbricht, on charges related to the sale of drugs and other illegal goods on the platform. It took another two years before the case went to trial in 2015, resulting in convictions on seven counts and a sentence of life in prison. Trump pardoned Ulbricht on his first full day in office.
“I couldn’t believe it was a complete and total pardon,” said one law enforcement official who worked on the Silk Road case.
Santos, the Chrisleys, Ulbricht, and others who received pardons from Trump have said they deserved forgiveness because they were prosecuted at the hands of a corrupt Justice Department or were innocent and wrongly convicted.
Every recent president has exercised the pardon power to benefit his allies, but legal experts say that Trump’s use of clemency has bucked every norm of a largely undefined process. Typically, Justice Department employees vet tens of thousands of applications, only recommending to the president people who have completed their sentences and showed contrition. Trump, however, has pardoned criminals without any such vetting, people familiar with the process said, sometimes granting clemency to convicts who have not started their sentences or admitted wrongdoing. Trump and his allies have pointed to Biden’s pardoning of his son Hunter as an example of how Trump’s predecessors politicized the pardon.
O’Malley, who retired in 2023 and described himself as a supporter of the president, said he was flummoxed over Trump’s pardoning of Schwartz, the nursing home magnate. He said that sifting through the more than 100 accounts Schwartz set up to evade taxes had required a lot of effort, and that the prosecutors and agents assigned to the case did “yeoman’s work.”
The Washington Post reported that Schwartz paid two lobbyists, right-wing provocateurs Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, $960,000 to help secure a pardon from Trump. (Schwartz must still complete a sentence on state charges in an Arkansas prison.)
“I think the president was misled as to the reasons why [Schwartz] should be pardoned,” O’Malley said. “I can’t see anyone accepting an application and alleging that he somehow deserves to be pardoned unconditionally and completely in this case. Something had to be said to the president. Whether he was paying attention to it or not, I don’t know.”
O’Malley continued: “I was stunned and angered. The $5 million in restitution was vacated. It was a strong case. I do not indict cases on a wing and a prayer.”
In December — less than a month after Trump pardoned Schwartz — the Internal Revenue Service decided to present O’Malley with an award for his work on the Schwartz case. O’Malley said he declined to attend.
Raquel Pacheco began recording on her phone Monday as she opened her front door to the pair of police officers standing outside.
They told her they had questions about a Facebook comment she had written.
“Is that your account?” one officer asked. The other held out his phone, showing a message Pacheco had written days earlier about the mayor of Miami Beach, where she lives.
Pacheco had left the comment about a post from Mayor Steven Meiner, calling his city a “safe haven for everyone.” Meiner, who is Jewish, contrasted Miami Beachwith “places like New York City,” where he accused officials of discriminating against Jews and “promoting boycotts” of Jewish and Israeli-owned businesses.
In a series of replies, Pacheco called him racist and criticized his actions toward a number of communities, including Palestinians and LGBTQ people. She said she felt his words of welcome were superficial.
At her door, the officers told Pacheco they were looking for the commenter because that person’s words could “probably incite somebody to do something bad,” her video shows. Pacheco refused to answer their questions without an attorney present, and the officers left within minutes.
Heart racing, Pacheco shut her door and texted her recording of the exchange to three friends who practice law. She struggled to comprehend why the officers were sent to question her – a private citizen who once ran for elected office, knew the mayor and other local officials, and had deep faith in American values. Where the officers saw a comment that could incite violence, Pacheco saw an expression of her right to free speech, she said.
“If we can’t hold this line, we are screwed,” Pacheco, 51, told The Washington Post.
The Miami Beach Police Department on Tuesday evening told The Post that detectives had “conducted a brief, consensual encounter” to make sure there was no safety threat to the mayor or the community. They assessed the social media posting, the department said, to be cautious, citing “recent national concerns regarding antisemitism.”
Meiner said in a statement Tuesday evening that the situation was “a police matter,” adding that he was “a strong supporter of the State of Israel” and its “right to defend its citizens.”
“Others might have a different view and that is their right,” Meiner wrote. “In this situation, our police department believed that inflammatory language that is false and without any factual basis was justification for follow-up to assess the level of threat and to protect the safety of all involved.”
The now-public tussle over Pacheco’s Facebook comment, which was first reported by the Miami Herald, is another salvo in a battle between activists across the country and authorities whom they accuse of stifling speech about divisive political topics, all against the backdrop of political violence that has rocked the country. In recent years, people have faced suspensions, firings and other punishments for social media posts about the Israel-Gaza war, the assassination attempts against President Donald Trump and the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Pacheco, who has lived in Miami Beach since 2004 and has run for local elected office three times as a Democrat, said she voted for Meiner in 2023. But she started speaking out against the mayor when he began addressing issues such as crime and homelessness by taking a page from “the Trump playbook,” using measures that she saw as laden with cruelty, Pacheco said. Her criticism often took the form of Facebook posts and comments, alongside advocacy work in the community.
Miami Beach voters elected Meiner to his office, which is nonpartisan, a month after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel in which about 1,200 people were killed. Since then, the city has experienced a deepening rift among residents, including between Meiner and his constituents.
In March, the mayor tried to end the lease of a local cinema after it screened “No Other Land,” a movie made by Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers that shows Israelis bulldozing a town in the West Bank. Meiner described the documentary at the time as a “false one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people.” He backpedaled his efforts against the theater after a fraught, nine-hour city commission meeting.
Pacheco referenced the incident in the comment that led police to her doorstep.
On Jan. 6, Meiner’s official Facebook account published the post about Miami Beach being a welcoming place. It featured a photo of the mayor with the following text: “Miami Beach is a safe haven for everyone. We will always stand firm against any discrimination.”
Pacheco replied: “‘We will stand firm against any discrimination’ – unless you’re Palestinian, or Muslim or you think those people have a right to live.” She added: “Careful your racism is showing.”
The next day, the mayor’s post was shared on a community Facebook page, where Pacheco again responded.
“The guy who consistently calls for the death of all Palestinians, tried to shut down a theater for showing a movie that hurt his feelings, and REFUSES to stand up for the LGBTQ community in any way (even leaves the room when they vote on related matters) wants you to know that you’re all welcome here,” she wrote, alongside three clown emojis.
It was this comment that police showed her when she opened her door Monday, Pacheco said.
“This is freedom of speech, this is America, right? I’m a veteran,” she told the officers, according to her recording of the two-minute conversation.
“And I agree with you 100 percent,” one officer responded. “We’re just trying to see if it’s you, because if we’re not talking to the right person, we want to go see who the right person is.”
Pacheco, who said she served in Connecticut’s Army National Guard from 1993 to 1999, said the officers told her she was not going to jail and that they were “just here to have a conversation.” Later in the video, anofficer tells Pacheco: “I would think to refrain from posting things like that, because that can get something incited.”
After the brief exchange, Pacheco sat in disbelief.
“There were cops at my door because of something I said,” Pacheco told The Post on Tuesday. “It felt like such a foreign, alien feeling.”
In the day since the officers’ visit, she has retained an attorney and made public records requests about the situation. Should it escalate, she said she was “prepared to sue.” While she described herself as progressive, she said she is “conservative when it comes to the Constitution,” a document she had come to revere since moving to the United Statesfrom Portugal in the 1980s. She said she strongly sees Monday’s interaction at her home as a violation of the rights guaranteed by it.
“I’m not one to stand down,” Pacheco said. “I don’t do well with bullies.”
And the next time she sees a social media post from her mayor, or other elected officials for that matter, Pacheco said she knows what she will do: open the comment section, type her thoughts and hit send.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that starting Feb. 1 he will deny federal funding to any states that are home to local governments resisting his administration’s immigration policies, expanding on previous threats to cut off resources to the so-called sanctuary cities themselves.
Such an action could have far-reaching impacts across the U.S., potentially even in places that aren’t particularly friendly to noncitizens.
Two previous efforts by Trump to cut off some funding for sanctuary jurisdictions were shut down by courts.
Trump unveiled the concept this time late in a speech Tuesday at the Detroit Economic Club, without offering specifics.
“Starting Feb. 1, we’re not making any payments to sanctuary cities or states having sanctuary cities, because they do everything possible to protect criminals at the expense of American citizens and it breeds fraud and crime and all of the other problems that come,” he said. “So we’re not making any payment to anybody that supports sanctuary cities.”
Back in Washington, Trump was asked by reporters what kind of funding would be affected on Feb. 1: “You’ll see,” he said. “It’ll be significant.”
There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Courts have rejected the idea before
In an executive orders last year, the president directed federal officials to withhold money from sanctuary jurisdictions that seek to shield people in the country illegally from deportation.
A California-based federal judge struck it down despite government lawyers saying it was too early to stop the plan when no action had been taken and no specific conditions had been laid out.
In Trump’s first term in office, in 2017, courts struck down his effort to cut funding to the cities.
Some of the details are tricky
The Justice Department last year published a list of three dozen states, cities and counties that it considers to be sanctuary jurisdictions.
The list is overwhelmingly made up of places where the governments are controlled by Democrats, including the states of California, Connecticut and New York, cities such as Boston and New York and counties including Baltimore County, Maryland, and Cook County, Illinois.
That list replaced an earlier, longer one that was met with pushback from officials who said it wasn’t clear why their jurisdictions were on it.
The administration has been threatening funding in specific places
The federal government has moved to halt funding for a variety of programs in recent weeks and is already facing legal challenges.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has warned states that have refused to provide data on recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program money that they’ll be docked administrative funds. A court fight over the request for information was already underway before the threat came. Money hasn’t been stopped yet.
The U.S. Department of Health and Social Services said last week that it was halting money from five Democratic-led states for daycare subsidies and other aid to low-income families with children over unspecified suspicions about fraud. A court put that on hold
The administration has tried to use additional financial pressure against Minnesota, a state where it has also sent a wave of federal officers in an immigration crackdown. The Agriculture Department has said it’s freezing funding in the state — but without laying out many details.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also told Minnesota last week that it intends to withhold $515 million every three months from 14 Medicaid programs that were deemed “high risk” after rejecting a corrective action plan it demanded because of fraud allegations. The amount is equivalent to one-fourth of the federal money for those programs. State officials said Tuesday that they’re appealing.
