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  • New dietary guidelines urge Americans to avoid processed foods and added sugar

    New dietary guidelines urge Americans to avoid processed foods and added sugar

    Americans should eat more whole foods and protein, fewer highly processed foods and less added sugar, according to the latest edition of federal nutrition advice released Wednesday by the Trump administration.

    Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins issued the 2025-2030 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which offer updated recommendations for a healthy diet and provide the foundation for federal nutrition programs and policies. They come as Kennedy has for months stressed overhauling the U.S. food supply as part of his Make America Healthy Again agenda.

    “My message is clear: Eat real food,” Kennedy said at a White House briefing.

    The guidelines emphasize consumption of fresh vegetables, whole grains and dairy products, long advised as part of a healthy eating plan. Officials released a new graphic depicting an inverted version of the long-abandoned food pyramid, with protein, dairy, healthy fats and fruits and vegetables at the top and whole grains at the bottom.

    But they also take a new stance on “highly processed” foods, and refined carbohydrates, urging consumers to avoid “packaged, prepared, ready-to-eat or other foods that are salty or sweet, such as chips, cookies and candy.” That’s a different term for ultraprocessed foods, the tasty, energy-dense products that make up more than half the calories in the U.S. diet and have been linked to chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.

    The new guidance backs away from revoking long-standing advice to limit saturated fats, despite signals from Kennedy and Food and Drug Commissioner Marty Makary that the administration would push for more consumption of animal fats to end the “war” on saturated fats.

    Instead, the document suggests that Americans should choose whole-food sources of saturated fat — such as meat, whole-fat dairy or avocados — while continuing to limit saturated fat consumption to no more than 10% of daily calories. The guidance says “other options can include butter or beef tallow,” despite previous recommendations to avoid those fats.

    Guidelines were due for an update

    The dietary guidelines, required by law to be updated every five years, provide a template for a healthy diet. But in a country where more than half of adults have a diet-related chronic disease, few Americans actually follow the guidance, research shows.

    The new recommendations drew praise from some prominent nutrition and medical experts.

    “There should be broad agreement that eating more whole foods and reducing highly processed carbohydrates is a major advance in how we approach diet and health,” said Dr. David Kessler, a former FDA commissioner who has written books about diet and nutrition and has sent a petition to the FDA to remove key ingredients in ultraprocessed foods.

    “The guidelines affirm that food is medicine and offer clear direction patients and physicians can use to improve health,” said Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, president of the American Medical Association.

    Other experts were relieved that the guidelines didn’t go against decades of nutrition evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease, but they were critical of the guidelines’ focus on meat and dairy as a primary source of protein instead of plant-based sources.

    “Overall, if people eat the way these are recommended, they will be eating more calories, not less,” said Marion Nestle, a nutritionist and food policy expert who advised previous editions of the guidance.

    The new document is just 10 pages, upholding Kennedy’s pledge to create a simple, understandable guideline. Previous editions of the dietary guidelines have grown over the years, from a 19-page pamphlet in 1980 to the 164-page document issued in 2020, which included a four-page executive summary.

    The guidance will have the most profound effect on the federally funded National School Lunch Program, which is required to follow the guidelines to feed nearly 30 million U.S. children on a typical school day.

    The Agriculture Department will have to translate the recommendations into specific requirements for school meals, a process that can take years, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association. The latest school nutrition standards were proposed in 2023 but won’t be fully implemented until 2027, she noted.

    Science advisers didn’t make ultraprocessed food recommendations

    The new guidelines largely rejected the advice of a 20-member panel of nutrition experts convened by the Biden administration, who met for nearly two years to review the latest scientific evidence on diet and health. Kennedy had criticized the expertise of the panel members and suggested that they had ties to the food industry that influenced their advice.

    Instead, the new guidance relied on a new set of experts revealed Wednesday in supporting documents. Of the 10 experts who led the new scientific review under Kennedy, five reported financial ties to beef, pork or dairy industries or to makers of infant formula or supplements.

    The new group rejected more than half the recommendations of the previous panel, the documents showed.

    That previous panel didn’t make recommendations about ultraprocessed food. Although a host of studies have shown links between ultraprocessed foods and poor health outcomes, the nutrition experts had concerns with the quality of the research and the certainty that those foods, and not other factors, were causing the problems.

    The recommendations on highly processed foods drew cautiously positive reactions. The FDA and the Agriculture Department are already working on a definition of ultraprocessed foods, but it’s expected to take time.

    Not all highly processed foods are unhealthy, said Dr. David Ludwig, an endocrinologist and researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital.

    “I think the focus should be on highly processed carbohydrates,” he said, noting that processing of protein or fats can be benign or even helpful.

    More protein recommended

    The guidelines made a few other notable changes, including a call to potentially double protein consumption.

    The previous recommended dietary allowance called for 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight — about 54 grams daily for a 150-pound person. The new recommendation is 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. An average American man consumes about 100 grams of protein per day, or about twice the previously recommended limit.

    Makary said the new advice supersedes protein guidance that was based on the “bare minimum” required for health.

    Ludwig also noted that the earlier recommendation was the minimum amount needed to prevent protein deficiency and said higher amounts of protein might be beneficial.

    “A moderate increase in protein to help displace the processed carbohydrates makes sense,” he said.

    Officials with the American Heart Association, however, called for more research on protein consumption and the best sources for optimal health.

    “Pending that research, we encourage consumers to prioritize plant-based proteins, seafood and lean meats and to limit high-fat animal products including red meat, butter, lard and tallow, which are linked to increased cardiovascular risk,” the group said in a statement.

    Avoid added sugars

    The guidelines advise avoiding or sharply limiting added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners, saying “no amount” is considered part of a healthy diet.

    No one meal should contain more than 10 grams of added sugars, or about 2 teaspoons, the new guidelines say.

    Previous federal guidelines recommended limiting added sugars to less than 10% of daily calories for people older than 2, but to aim for less. That’s about 12 teaspoons a day in a 2,000-calorie daily diet. Children younger than 2 should have no added sugars at all, the older guidance said.

    In general, most Americans consume about 17 teaspoons of added sugars per day, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Alcohol limits removed

    The new guidelines roll back previous recommendations to limit alcohol to one drink or less per day for women and two drinks or less per day for men.

    Instead, the guidance advises Americans to “consume less alcohol for better health.” They also say that alcohol should be avoided by pregnant women, people recovering from alcohol use disorder and those who are unable to control the amount they drink.

  • Rubio plans to meet with Danish officials next week to talk about U.S. interest in Greenland

    Rubio plans to meet with Danish officials next week to talk about U.S. interest in Greenland

    U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he plans to meet with Danish officials next week after the Trump administration doubled down on its intention to take over Greenland, the strategic Arctic island that is a self-governing territory of Denmark.

    Since the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump has revived his argument that the United States needs to control the world’s largest island to ensure its own security in the face of rising threats from China and Russia in the Arctic.

    Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenland counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, had requested a meeting with Rubio, according to a statement posted Tuesday to Greenland’s government website. Previous requests for a meeting were not successful, the statement said.

    Rubio told a select group of U.S. lawmakers that it was the Republican administration’s intention to eventually purchase Greenland, as opposed to using military force.

    The remarks, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were made in a classified briefing Monday evening on Capitol Hill, according to a person with knowledge of his comments who was granted anonymity because it was a private discussion.

    On Wednesday, Rubio told reporters in Washington that Trump has been talking about acquiring Greenland since his first term. “That’s always been the president’s intent from the very beginning,” Rubio said. “He’s not the first U.S. president that has examined or looked at how we could acquire Greenland.”

    European leaders express concern

    The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in issuing a statement this week reaffirming that the mineral-rich island, which guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America, “belongs to its people.” Frederiksen warned that a U.S. takeover would amount to the end of NATO.

    “The Nordics do not lightly make statements like this,” Maria Martisiute, a defense analyst at the European Policy Centre think tank, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “But it is Trump whose very bombastic language bordering on direct threats and intimidation is threatening the fact to another ally by saying, ‘I will control or annex the territory.’”

    Rubio, who was on Capitol Hill for a classified briefing Wednesday with the entire U.S. Senate and House, did not directly answer reporters’ questions about whether the administration was willing to risk the NATO alliance by potentially moving ahead with a military option regarding Greenland.

    “I’m not here to talk about Denmark or military intervention, I’ll be meeting with them next week, we’ll have those conversations with them then, but I don’t have anything further to add to that,” Rubio said. He added that every president retains the option to address national security threats to the United States through military means.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that using the military to acquire Greenland was an option, though she told reporters Wednesday that “the president’s first option always has been diplomacy.”

    Some Republican senators said they saw strategic value in Greenland, but they stopped short of supporting military action to acquire it.

    Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall said he hoped “we can work out a deal,” while North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven said some of the discussion about taking Greenland by force has been “misconstrued.”

    “One of the things about President Trump, you may have noticed, is he keeps our adversaries off balance by making sure they don’t know what we’re going to do,” Hoeven said.

    But Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she hated “the rhetoric around either acquiring Greenland by purchase or by force,” adding, “I think that it is very, very unsettling.”

    Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group, said the U.S. needs to honor its treaty obligations to Denmark.

    “Any suggestion that our nation would subject a fellow NATO ally to coercion or external pressure undermines the very principles of self-determination that our Alliance exists to defend,” the senators said in a joint statement.

    ‘This is America now’

    Thomas Crosbie, an associate professor of military operations at the Royal Danish Defense College, said an American takeover would not help Washington’s national security.

    “The United States will gain no advantage if its flag is flying in Nuuk versus the Greenlandic flag,” he told the AP. “There’s no benefits to them because they already enjoy all of the advantages they want. If there’s any specific security access that they want to improve American security, they’ll be given it as a matter of course, as a trusted ally. So this has nothing to do with improving national security for the United States.”

    Denmark’s parliament approved a bill in June to allow U.S. military bases on Danish soil. It widened a previous military agreement, made in 2023 with the Biden administration, in which U.S. troops had broad access to Danish air bases in the Scandinavian country. Denmark’s foreign minister has said that Denmark would be able to terminate the agreement if the U.S. tries to annex all or part of Greenland.

    In the event of military action, the U.S. Department of Defense operates the remote Pituffik Space Base, in northwestern Greenland, and the troops there could be mobilized.

    Crosbie said he believes the U.S. would not seek to hurt the local population or engage with Danish troops.

    “They don’t need to bring any firepower. They don’t need to bring anybody,” Crosbie said Wednesday. “They could just direct the military personnel currently there to drive to the center of Nuuk and just say, ‘This is America now,’ right? And that would lead to the same response as if they flew in 500 or 1,000 people.”

    The danger in an American annexation, he said, lies in the “erosion of the rule of law globally and to the perception that there are any norms protecting anybody on the planet.”

    He added: “The impact is changing the map. The impact I don’t think would be storming the parliament.”

  • Fewer than a dozen homes have been rebuilt a year after being burned down in LA-area wildfires

    Fewer than a dozen homes have been rebuilt a year after being burned down in LA-area wildfires

    LOS ANGELES — On the first anniversary of the most destructive wildfires in the LA area, the scant home construction projects stand out among the still mostly flattened landscapes.

    Fewer than a dozen homes have been rebuilt in Los Angeles County since the Jan. 7, 2025, Palisades and Eaton fires erupted, killing 31 people and destroying about 13,000 homes and other residential properties. The fires burned for more than three weeks and clean-up efforts took about seven months.

    For those who had insurance, it’s often not enough to cover the costs of construction. Relief organizations are stepping in to help, but progress is slow.

    Among the exceptions is Ted Koerner, whose Altadena home was reduced to ash and two chimneys. With his insurance payout tied up, the 67-year-old liquidated about 80% of his retirement holdings, secured contractors quickly, and moved decisively through the rebuilding process.

    Shortly before Thanksgiving, Koerner was among the first to finish a rebuild in the aftermath of the fires, which were fueled by drought and hurricane-force winds.

    But most do not have options like Koerner.

    The streets of the coastal community of Pacific Palisades and Altadena, a community in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, remain lined with dirt lots. In the seaside city of Malibu, foundations and concrete piles rising out of the sand are all that’s left of beachfront homes that once butted against crashing ocean waves.

    Neighborhoods are pitch black at night, with few streetlamps replaced. Even many homes that survived are not inhabited as families struggle to clear them of the fire’s toxic contaminants.

    Koerner was driven in part by fear that his beloved golden retriever, Daisy Mae, now 13 years old, might not live long enough to move into a new home, given the many months it can take to build even under the best circumstances.

    He also did not have to wait for his insurance payout to start construction.

    “That’s the only way we were going to get it done before all of a sudden my dog starts having labored breathing or something else happens,” Koerner said.

    Once construction began, his home was completed in just over four months.

    Daisy Mae is back lying in her favorite spot in the yard under a 175-year-old Heritage Oak. Koerner said he enjoys his morning coffee while watching her and it brings tears to his eyes.

    “We made it,” he said.

    Many fear they can’t afford to rebuild

    About 900 homes are under construction, potentially on pace to be completed later this year.

    Still, many homeowners are stuck as they figure out whether they can pay for the rebuilding process.

    Scores of residents have left their communities for good. More than 600 properties where a single-family home was destroyed in the wildfires have been sold, according to real estate data tracker Cotality.

    “We’re seeing huge gaps between the money insurance is paying out, to the extent we have insurance, and what it will actually cost to rebuild and/or remediate our homes,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, a group of 10,000 fire survivors mostly from Altadena.

    By December, less than 20% of people who experienced total home loss had closed out their insurance claims, according to a survey by the Department of Angels, a nonprofit that formed after the disaster to advocate for recovery efforts.

    About one-third of insured respondents had policies with State Farm, the state’s largest private insurer, or the California FAIR plan, the insurer of last resort. They reported high rates of dissatisfaction with both, citing burdensome requirements, lowball estimates, and dealing with multiple adjusters.

    In November, Los Angeles County opened a civil investigation into State Farm’s practices and potential violations of the state’s Unfair Competition law. Chen said the group has seen a flurry of substantial payouts since then.

    State Farm spokesperson Tom Hartman said in an email to the Associated Press on Wednesday that the company has addressed more than 13,500 claims and issued more than $5 billion in payments. He called the investigation a “distraction” and said the company is committed to helping.

    Without answers from insurance, households can’t commit to rebuilding projects that can easily exceed $1 million.

    “They’re worried about getting started and running out of money,” Chen said.

    An uncertain future

    Jessica Rogers discovered only after the Palisades fire destroyed her home that her coverage had been canceled.

    The mother of two’s fallback was a low-interest loan from the Small Business Administration, but the application process was grueling. After losing her job because of the fire and then having her identity stolen, her approval for $550,000 came through last month.

    She is still weighing how she’ll cover the remaining costs and says she wonders: “Do I empty out my 401(k) and start counting every penny in a penny jar around the apartment?”

    Rogers — now executive director of the Pacific Palisades Long Term Recovery Group — estimates there are hundreds like her in Pacific Palisades who are “stuck dealing with FEMA and SBA and figuring out if we could piecemeal something together to build our homes.”

    Also struggling to return home are the community’s renters, condo owners, and mobile homeowners. Meanwhile, many are also dealing with their trauma.

    “It’s not what people talk about, but it is incredibly apparent and very real,” said Rogers, who still finds herself crying at unexpected moments.

    A slow start

    That so few homes have been rebuilt a year after the wildfires echoes the recovery pattern of a December 2021 blaze that erupted south of Boulder, Colo., destroying more than 1,000 homes.

    “At the one-year mark, many lots had been cleared of debris and many residents had applied for building permits, said Andrew Rumbach, co-lead of the Climate and Communities Program at Urban Institute. “Around the 18-month mark is when you start to see really significant progress in terms of going from handfuls to hundreds” of homes rebuilt.

    Time will bring the scope of problems into focus.

    “You’re going to start to see some real inequality start to emerge where certain neighborhoods, certain types of people, certain types of properties are just lagging way far behind, and that becomes the really important question in the second year of a recovery: Who’s doing well and who is really struggling and why?” Rumbach said.

    That’s a key concern in Altadena, which for decades drew aspiring Black homeowners who otherwise faced redlining and other forms of racial discrimination when they sought to buy a home in other LA-area communities. In 2024, 81% of Black households in Altadena owned their homes, nearly twice the national Black homeownership rate.

    But recent research by UCLA’s Latino Policy & Politics Institute found that, as of August, 7 in 10 Altadena homeowners whose property was severely damaged in last year’s wildfire had not begun taking steps to rebuild or sell their home. Among these, Black homeowners were 73% more likely than others to have taken no action.

    Al and Charlotte Bailey, who lost their home in the Eaton Fire, have been living in an RV parked on the property where their house once stood in Altadena, Calif.

    Determined to rebuild

    Al and Charlotte Bailey have been living in an RV parked on the empty lot where their home once stood.

    The Baileys are paying for their rebuild with funds from their insurance payout and a loan. They’re also hoping to receive money from Southern California Edison. Several lawsuits claim its equipmentsparked the wildfire in Altadena.

    “We had been here for 41 years and raised our family here, and in one night it was all gone,” said Al Bailey, 77. “We decided that, whatever it’s going to cost, this is our community.”

  • House takes step toward extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, overpowering GOP leadership

    House takes step toward extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, overpowering GOP leadership

    WASHINGTON — Overpowering Speaker Mike Johnson, a bipartisan coalition in the House voted Wednesday to push forward a measure that would revive an enhanced pandemic-era subsidy that lowered health insurance costs for roughly 22 million people, but that had expired last month.

    The tally of 221-205 was a key test before passage of the bill, which is expected Thursday. And it came about because four GOP centrist lawmakers joined with Democrats in signing a so-called discharge petition to force the vote. After last year’s government shutdown failed to resolve the issue, they said doing nothing was not an option as many of their constituents faced soaring health insurance premiums beginning this month.

    Rep. Mike Lawler (R., N.Y.), one of the Republicans who crossed party lines to back the Democratic proposal, portrayed it as a vehicle senators could use to reach a compromise.

    “No matter the issue, if the House puts forward relatively strong, bipartisan support, it makes it easier for the senators to get there,” Lawler said.

    Republicans go around their leaders

    If ultimately successful in the House this week, the voting would show there is bipartisan support for a proposed three-year extension of the tax credits that are available for those who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The action forcing a vote has been an affront to Johnson and GOP leaders who essentially lost control of their House majority as the renegade lawmakers joined Democrats for the workaround.

    But the Senate is under no requirement to take up the bill.

    Instead, a small group of members from both parties are working on an alternative plan that could find support in both chambers and become law. One proposal would be to shorten the extension of the subsidy to two years and make changes to the program.

    Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) said any plan passing muster in the Senate will need to have income limits to ensure that it’s focused on those who most need the help and that beneficiaries would have to at least pay a nominal amount for their coverage.

    That way, he said, “insurance companies can’t game the system and auto-enroll people.” Finally, Thune said there would need to be some expansion of health savings accounts, which allow people to save money and withdraw it tax-free as long as the money is spent on qualified medical expenses.

    Democrats are pressing the issue

    It’s unclear the negotiations will yield a bill that the Senate will take up. Democrats are making clear that the higher health insurance costs many Americans are facing will be a political centerpiece of their efforts to retake the majority in the House and Senate in the fall elections.

    Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who led his party’s effort to push the healthcare issue forward, particularly challenged Republicans in competitive congressional districts to join if they really wanted to prevent steep premium increases for their constituents. Before Wednesday’s vote, he called on colleagues to “address the healthcare crisis in this country and make sure that tens of millions of people have the ability to go see a doctor when they need one.”

    Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan, and Ryan Mackenzie, all from Pennsylvania, and Lawler signed the Democrats’ petition, pushing it to the magic number of 218 needed to force a House vote. All four represent key swing districts whose races will help determine which party takes charge of the House next year.

    Johnson (R., La.) had discussed allowing more politically vulnerable GOP lawmakers a chance to vote on bills that would temporarily extend the subsidies while also adding changes such as income caps for beneficiaries. But after days of discussions, the leadership sided with the more conservative wing of the party’s conference, which has assailed the subsidies as propping up a failed program.

    Lawmakers turn to discharge petitions to show support for an action and potentially force a vote on the House floor, but they are rarely successful. This session of Congress has proven an exception.

    A vote requiring the Department of Justice to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, for instance, occurred after Reps. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R. Ky.) introduced a petition on the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The signature effort was backed by all House Democrats and four Republicans.

  • Driver shot in Minneapolis is at least the fifth person killed in U.S. immigration crackdown

    Driver shot in Minneapolis is at least the fifth person killed in U.S. immigration crackdown

    The fatal shooting Wednesday of a woman by an immigration officer in Minneapolis was at least the fifth death to result from the aggressive U.S. immigration crackdown the Trump administration launched last year.

    The Department of Homeland Security said the officer fired in self-defense as the woman tried to run down officers with her vehicle. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said video of the incident showed it was reckless and unnecessary. It occurred as the federal agency escalates immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota by deploying an anticipated 2,000 agents and officers.

    Last September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement shot and killed another person outside Chicago. Two people have died after being struck by vehicles while fleeing immigration authorities. And a California farmworker fell from a greenhouse and broke his neck during an ICE raid last July.

    No officers or agents have been charged in the deaths.

    Cook from Mexico shot during a traffic stop

    ICE agents fatally shot Silverio Villegas González during a traffic stop Sept. 12 in suburban Chicago. Relatives said the 38-year-old line cook from Mexico had dropped off one of his children at day care that morning.

    At the time, the Department of Homeland Security said federal agents were pursuing a man with a history of reckless driving who entered the country illegally. They alleged Villegas González evaded arrest and dragged an officer with his vehicle.

    Homeland Security said the officer opened fire fearing for his life and was hospitalized for “serious injuries.” However, local police body camera videos showed the agent who shot Villegas González walking around afterward and dismissing his own injuries as “nothing major.”

    Homeland Security has said the death remains under investigation.

    Another shooting, this one nonfatal, occurred in Chicago last fall. Marimar Martinez survived being shot five times by a Border Patrol agent but was charged with a felony after Homeland Security officials accused her of trying to ram agents with her vehicle. The case was dismissed after videos emerged that Martinez’s attorneys said showed an agent steering his vehicle into Martinez’s truck.

    Farmworker fell from greenhouse roof during ICE raid

    Immigration authorities were rounding up dozens of farmworkers July 10 at Glass House Farms in southern California when Jaime Alanis fell from the roof of a greenhouse and broke his neck. The 57-year-old laborer from Mexico died at a hospital two days later.

    Relatives said Alanis had spent a decade working at the farm, a licensed cannabis grower that also produces tomatoes and cucumbers, located in Camarillo about an hour east of Los Angeles. They said he would send his earnings to his wife and daughter in Mexico.

    During the raid, Alanis called family to say he was hiding. Officials said he fell about 30 feet from the greenhouse roof.

    The Department of Homeland Security said Alanis was never in custody and was not being chased by immigration authorities when he climbed onto the greenhouse.

    Man struck on California freeway after running from Home Depot

    A man running away from immigration authorities outside a Home Depot store in southern California died after being hit by an SUV while he tried to cross a nearby freeway on Aug. 14.

    Police in Monrovia northeast of Los Angeles said ICE agents were conducting enforcement operations when the man fled on foot to Interstate 210. He was running across the freeway’s eastbound lanes when an SUV hit him while traveling 50 or 60 mph. He died at a hospital.

    The man killed was later identified by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network as 52-year-old Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez of Guatemala.

    The Department of Homeland Security said Montoya Valdez wasn’t being pursued by immigration authorities when he ran.

    Gardener from Honduras killed on Virginia interstate

    A pickup truck fatally struck Josué Castro Rivera on a highway in Norfolk, Virginia, as he tried to escape immigration authorities during a traffic stop Oct. 23.

    Castro Rivera, 24, of Honduras, was heading to a gardening job with three passengers when ICE officers pulled over his vehicle, according to his brother, Henry Castro.

    State and federal authorities said Castro Rivera ran away on foot and was hit by a pickup truck on Interstate 264.

    The Department of Homeland Security said Castro Rivera’s vehicle was stopped as part of a “targeted, intelligence-based” operation and that Castro Rivera had “resisted heavily and fled.”

    His brother said Castro Rivera came to the U.S. four years earlier and worked to send money to family in Honduras.

  • Gov. Ron DeSantis calls for special session in April to redraw Florida’s congressional districts

    Gov. Ron DeSantis calls for special session in April to redraw Florida’s congressional districts

    ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday he plans to call a special session in April for the Republican-dominated legislature to draw new congressional districts, joining a redistricting arms race among states that have redrawn districts mid-decade.

    Even though Florida’s 2026 legislative session starts next week, DeSantis said he wanted to wait for a possible ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The ruling in Louisiana v. Callais could determine whether Section 2, a part of the Voting Rights Act that bars discrimination in voting systems, is constitutional. The governor said “at least one or two” districts in Florida could be affected by the high court’s ruling.

    “I don’t think it’s a question of if they’re going to rule. It’s a question of what the scope is going to be,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Steinhatchee, Fla. “So, we’re getting out ahead of that.”

    Currently, 20 of Florida’s 28 congressional seats are held by Republicans.

    Congressional districts in Florida that are redrawn to favor Republicans could carry big consequences for President Donald Trump’s plan to reshape congressional districts in GOP-led states, which could give Republicans a shot at winning additional seats in the midterm elections and retaining control of the closely divided U.S. House.

    Nationwide, the unusual mid-decade redistricting battle has so far resulted in a total of nine more seats Republicans believe they can win in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio — and a total of six more seats Democrats expect to win in California and Utah, putting Republicans up by three. But the redrawn districts are being litigated in some states, and if the maps hold for 2026, there is no guarantee the parties will win the seats.

    In 2010, more than 60% of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment prohibiting the drawing of district boundaries to unfairly favor one political party in a process known as gerrymandering. The Florida Supreme Court, however, last July upheld a congressional map pushed by DeSantis that critics said violated the “Fair Districts” amendment.

    After that decision, Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez last August announced the creation of a select committee to examine the state’s congressional map.

    Florida Senate Democratic Leader Lori Berman said in a statement that what DeSantis wants the Legislature to do is clearly illegal.

    “Florida’s Fair Districts Amendment strictly prohibits any maps from being drawn for partisan reasons, and regardless of any bluster from the governor’s office, the only reason we’re having this unprecedented conversation about drawing new maps is because Donald Trump demanded it,” Berman said. “An overwhelming majority of Floridians voted in favor of the Fair Districts Amendment and their voices must be respected. The redistricting process is meant to serve the people, not the politicians.”

    In a statement, the Florida Democratic Party called the move by DeSantis “reckless, partisan and opportunistic.”

    “This is nothing more than a desperate attempt to rig the system and silence voters before the 2026 election,” the statement said. “Now, after gutting representation for Black Floridians just three years ago, Ron is hoping the decimation of the Voting Rights Act by Trump’s Supreme Court will allow him to further gerrymander and suppress the vote of millions of Floridians.”

    Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, said the state already has a fairly strong Republican gerrymander, so it would be difficult for Republicans to pick up additional seats, unless they’re planning to draw “noncompact districts that squiggle all over the place” and then hold the election before a judge can throw out the map. McDonald said DeSantis also could be trying to shore up Republican strongholds to mitigate the losses generally experienced by the party in power during midterm elections.

    “Trump’s approval ratings are pretty low,” McDonald said. “And so looking at what we would expect to happen in November, unless something fundamentally changes in the country between now and then, we expect the Democrats to have a very good year.”

  • U.S. vows to control Venezuela oil sales ‘indefinitely’

    U.S. vows to control Venezuela oil sales ‘indefinitely’

    Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced Wednesday that the Trump administration will take control of all existing flows of oil from Venezuela for the foreseeable future as it struggles to persuade U.S. firms to invest in expansive drilling operations there.

    Speaking at a Goldman Sachs energy industry event in Miami, Wright said the United States will allow Venezuelan oil under U.S. sanctions to flow again, but only to U.S. refineries. He said the sales will be “done by the U.S. government and deposited into accounts controlled by the U.S. government.”

    “From there, those funds can flow back into Venezuela to benefit the Venezuelan people,” Wright said. “We need to leverage and control those oil sales to drive the changes that must happen in Venezuela.”

    Wright’s comments followed an announcement from President Donald Trump on Tuesday night that tens of millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil currently blocked by a U.S. embargo will be shipped to refineries in the U.S. The directive enables revenue to start flowing to Venezuela, but even that arrangement could be complicated because those refineries get abundant oil from North America.

    On Wednesday, Wright framed the effort as crucial to re-establishing a viable oil industry in Venezuela. He said the revenue generated could be used to help rebuild the badly rotting oil infrastructure in that country and to help lure U.S. firms to invest there. He said the U.S. will control Venezuelan oil flows “indefinitely.”

    The unorthodox arrangement puzzled some analysts. The reason oil had not been flowing to the U.S. refineries was that U.S. sanctions prohibit it. If the sanctions were lifted, they say, market forces would already guide most of the Venezuelan oil to the U.S., which has refineries specially equipped to handle the heavy type of crude pumped there.

    “So much Venezuelan oil is exported to China, India, and other markets because of sanctions,” said Ben Cahill, an energy markets scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. “If the goal is to redirect it to U.S. refiners, sanctions relief could do that on its own.”

    The Venezuelan oil will be flowing at a time forecasts project the U.S. refining market will have more than enough oil.

    “I don’t see how this benefits the American people,” said Amos Hochstein, managing partner at the investment holding company TWG Global, who was a senior economic and national security adviser in the Biden White House. “If anything, we may have an oversupply, which is why oil prices are in multiyear lows and declining. Nor do I see how this helps the people of Venezuela.”

    An oil tanker is docked at El Palito Port in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, last month.

    The effort is underway as Wright also runs point on the White House effort to coax U.S. oil companies to invest in Venezuela, according to industry officials. As the companies express reticence, the White House is working aggressively to try to lure them.

    Trump has started telling reluctant oil company leaders that he might make it worth their while.

    Within days after sending Special Operations forces into Venezuela to arrest Nicolás Maduro, Trump suggested that U.S. taxpayers could help foot the bill to drill the vast reserves of the Latin American nation.

    “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent, and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue,” he told NBC on Monday.

    Using taxpayer-funded cash subsidies to incentivize oil companies to pump abroad would be unprecedented, industry analysts say. But the White House faces a steep challenge persuading firms to drill in a politically and economically unstable country that has burned them in the past by expropriating assets worth billions and then leaving U.S.-built oil infrastructure to rot.

    The firms themselves are still working out what they want to request from the White House, according to a half-dozen individuals close to the companies who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk speak frankly.

    Since Monday, Wright has talked with the CEOs of the three major oil companies that would be positioned to drill there: Chevron, the sole remaining U.S. firm that has operations in Venezuela; ConocoPhillips, which is still owed some $8 billion after its assets were taken when it exited nearly two decades ago; and ExxonMobil, which also previously operated in Venezuela and is owed about $1 billion. The Energy Department said in an email that Wright would meet privately with executives from the firms at the Goldman Sachs event Wednesday.

    ConocoPhillips said in a statement that “it would be premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments.” The other companies did not respond to requests for comment.

    The White House declined to answer detailed questions.

    According to one lobbyist close to the conversations, some company officials have been pondering the possibility of proposing a joint venture with the U.S. government, in which American taxpayers would invest in drilling in return for a stake in any profits.

    The conversations are focused on how to make it viable to invest tens of billions of dollars in such a high-risk country at a time when oil prices are low and there are many other safer, more attractive places for them to drill, such as nearby Guyana.

    “The companies are scrambling right now,” said a senior oil industry executive who has been involved in conversations with the administration. “I don’t think this was on anybody’s bingo card when they were making their [corporate] budgets for 2026.”

    “I have talked to all of the CEOs at companies that could be in a position to engage there,” said the executive. “There were no conversations between the industry and the White House or the president about what would happen. Maybe the president said something to somebody, like ‘be ready’ at some casual conversation. If it happened, it happened months and months ago.”

    The executive was also skeptical that companies would want subsidies, because partnering with the U.S. government carries its own risks. The next administration could be hostile to fossil fuels, and the companies would find themselves tied to it financially, as these agreements would pencil out only if they were in place for at least a decade or two. “We are a free-market industry,” the executive said. “We have benefited from not having state control of oil companies.”

    Still, the firms, indebted to a White House that has been a relentless booster of the industry, are under considerable pressure to deliver in Venezuela, even as company officials warn privately that Trump’s vows that expanded pumping will begin in as soon as 18 months are out of touch with reality.

    Despite other corporate partnerships undertaken by the administration around the world, it’s unclear how serious officials are about providing financial help for oil producers. Involving U.S. taxpayers is politically fraught and would probably confront opposition in Congress, industry analysts said.

    “These companies being asked by the Trump administration to dive into Venezuela are confronting enormous risks,” said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, a research firm that serves the industry. “It is like walking into a factory left to rot for 2 1/2 decades, or like asking yourself, ‘How bad is this house we just bought?’ I imagine they would want to mitigate those risks however they can.”

    The administration has offered financial incentives elsewhere around the world to entice companies and countries to align with the White House. In Ukraine, it struck a deal to create a Reconstruction Investment Fund, through which companies that invest in that country can tap into a fund generated with the help of natural-resource revenue from Ukraine.

    Ted Posner, a partner at Baker Botts, a global law firm that advises major oil companies, said the Trump administration could do something similar for U.S. corporations investing in Venezuela “as a way of demonstrating that the U.S. government has skin in the game. It’s here by your side.”

    But the levels of industry investment the White House wants to see in Venezuela — estimated at as much as $100 billion — dwarf what is being considered in Ukraine, and it is unclear if such partnerships would help sway oil company executives and their reluctant shareholders.

    “There are carrots available” to entice companies to drill, Posner said. “What I don’t know is if there are enough.”

    One oil company executive who has firsthand experience with the challenges in Venezuela warned that the administration’s rosy projections ignore realities on the ground.

    Even the firms that are owed billions of dollars, the executive said, will be reluctant to return, because recouping their investments would almost certainly require them to spend billions more.

    The reimbursement for seized assets would be the obligation of the Venezuelan state oil company, and it won’t have the funds if Venezuela does not restore its production capacity, which has collapsed after decades of neglect.

    “The only way to recoup that funding is through [pumping] crude oil,” the executive said. “But that will not happen overnight. Will you be fully compensated at the end of the day? Maybe. Maybe not.”

    “The U.S. government is going to have a hard time making this sales pitch,” this individual said. “Some companies are going to say, ‘We appreciate this, but we have our shareholders to think about and just cannot do it.’ Other companies will make demands to the U.S. that they want to be made whole if something happens. … How can you commit the U.S. Treasury to backstop these issues in Venezuela? Think about all the geopolitics around that. That alone could be tied up with lawyers for a year.”

    As oil executives grapple with all of this uncertainty, Trump continues to indicate that he expects all of them to align with his plans.

    On Tuesday he told reporters that he will personally be meeting with companies. “You know what that’s about,” he said, alluding to Venezuela. “We got a lot of oil to drill, which is going to bring down oil prices even further.”

  • NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani defends tenant official facing backlash for ‘white supremacy’ posts

    NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani defends tenant official facing backlash for ‘white supremacy’ posts

    NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is standing behind a newly appointed housing official as she faces backlash for years-old social media posts, including messages that called for the seizure of private property and linked homeownership to white supremacy.

    Cea Weaver, a longtime tenant activist, was tapped by the Democrat last week to serve as executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. The mayor has vowed to expand and empower the office to take “unprecedented” steps against negligent landlords.

    But in a sign of the high-level scrutiny on Mamdani’s administration, Weaver’s since-deleted posts have sparked condemnations from officials in the U.S. Department of Justice and the editorial board of The Washington Post.

    The posts, which were circulated on social media in recent days by critics of Mamdani, included calls to treat private property as a “collective good” and to “impoverish the *white* middle class.” A tweet sent in 2017 described homeownership as “a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building public policy.’”

    Eric Adams, the city’s former mayor and a fellow Democrat, said the remarks showed “extreme privilege and total detachment from reality.”

    Asked about the controversy on Wednesday, Mamdani did not address the substance of Weaver’s posts but defended her record of “standing up for tenants across the city and state.”

    Weaver said in an interview with a local TV station that some of the messages were “regretful” and “not something I would say today.”

    “I want to make sure that everybody has a safe and affordable place to live, whether they rent or own, and that is something I’m laser-focused on in this new role,” she added.

    The discussion comes after Mamdani last month accepted the resignation of another official, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, after the Anti-Defamation League shared social media posts she made over a decade ago that featured antisemitic tropes.

    While Mamdani had said he was unaware of Da Costa’s messages, Weaver’s past social media posts were known to the administration, according to a mayoral spokesperson, Dora Pekec.

    Weaver previously led the Housing Justice for All coalition, which was widely credited with helping to convince state lawmakers to pass a sweeping package of tenant protections in 2019.

    As leader of the city’s tenant protection office, she would play a key role in achieving one of Mamdani’s most polarizing campaign pledges: identifying negligent landlords and forcing them to negotiate the sale of their properties to the city if they are unable to pay fines for violations.

    The “public stewardship” proposal has drawn consternation from landlord groups and skepticism from others in city government.

    But the early days of his administration have brought signs that the new mayor is not backing off on the idea.

    In a press conference immediately following his inauguration last week, Mamdani said the city would take “precedent-setting” action against the owner of a Brooklyn apartment building that owed the city money and was currently in bankruptcy proceedings.

    He then announced Weaver’s appointment, drawing loud cheers from the members of a tenants union gathered in the building’s lobby.

    “It is going to be challenging,” Weaver acknowledged. “New York is home to some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Everything about New York politics is about that fact.”

  • Bolsonaro leaves Brazilian prison to undergo medical examinations after fall from his bed

    Bolsonaro leaves Brazilian prison to undergo medical examinations after fall from his bed

    RIO DE JANEIRO — Former President Jair Bolsonaro was granted a brief leave Wednesday from his 27-year prison sentence for a coup attempt so that he could undergo medical tests at a hospital in the capital after he fell from his bed.

    Police escorted Bolsonaro, 70, from the federal police’s headquarters in Brasilia to the nearby DF Star hospital where he arrived at around midday for three brain tests.

    At about 4:30 p.m. local time, Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle, said on Instagram that the exams had been carried out and that they were awaiting results. Her husband went back to prison, she said.

    Later, DF Star hospital said in a brief statement that the tests showed “mild soft-tissue thickening in the frontal and right temporal regions” due to the trauma, but that no additional treatment was needed.

    Bolsonaro fell in his cell overnight from Monday to Tuesday while sleeping. His wife, and Bolsonaro’s son Carlos, said on social media Tuesday that the far-right politician needed medical attention and expressed frustration that Bolsonaro hadn’t been sent to the hospital on Tuesday.

    In his decision authorizing the trip to the hospital Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes cited a health report conducted by the federal police on Tuesday. Bolsonaro reported mild head trauma, according to the report. Upon examination, the former Brazilian leader was found to be conscious and lucid, with a superficial cut to his face.

    De Moraes authorized a tomography, brain scan and a brain wave test requested by Bolsonaro’s lawyers. The Supreme Court justice said that his transfer to the hospital should be conducted in a “discreet manner,” and that federal police were responsible for Bolsonaro’s security and his return to prison.

    Bolsonaro had previously left the hospital and returned to prison last Thursday, a week after undergoing double hernia surgery.

    Bolsonaro has been hospitalized multiple times since being stabbed at a campaign event before the 2018 presidential election.

    Bolsonaro and several of his allies were convicted in September by a panel of Supreme Court justices of attempting to overthrow Brazil’s democratic system following his 2022 election defeat.

    The plot included plans to kill Lula, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and de Moraes. There was also a plan to encourage an insurrection in early 2023.

    Bolsonaro was also convicted on charges that include leading an armed criminal organization and attempting the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law. He has denied any wrongdoing.

  • CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames, who sold U.S. secrets to the Soviets, dies in prison at 84

    CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames, who sold U.S. secrets to the Soviets, dies in prison at 84

    WASHINGTON — CIA turncoat Aldrich Mr. Ames, who betrayed Western intelligence assets to the Soviet Union and Russia in one of the most damaging intelligence breaches in U.S. history, has died in a Maryland prison. He was 84.

    A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Mr. Ames died Monday.

    Mr. Ames, a 31-year CIA veteran, admitted being paid $2.5 million by Moscow for U.S. secrets from 1985 until his arrest in 1994. His disclosures included the identities of 10 Russian officials and one Eastern European who were spying for the United States or Great Britain, along with spy satellite operations, eavesdropping and general spy procedures. His betrayals are blamed for the executions of Western agents working behind the Iron Curtain and were a major setback to the CIA during the Cold War.

    He pleaded guilty without a trial to espionage and tax evasion and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Prosecutors said he deprived the United States of valuable intelligence material for years.

    He professed “profound shame and guilt” for “this betrayal of trust, done for the basest motives,” money to pay debts. But he downplayed the damage he caused, telling the court he did not believe he had “noticeably damaged” the United States or “noticeably aided” Moscow.

    “These spy wars are a sideshow which have had no real impact on our significant security interests over the years,” he told the court, questioning the value that leaders of any country derived from vast networks of human spies around the globe.

    In a jailhouse interview with The Washington Post the day before he was sentenced, Mr. Ames said he was motivated to spy by “financial troubles, immediate and continuing.”

    Mr. Ames was working in the Soviet/Eastern European division at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va., when he first approached the KGB, according to an FBI history of the case. He continued passing secrets to the Soviets while stationed in Rome for the CIA and after returning to Washington. Meanwhile, the U.S. intelligence community was frantically trying to figure out why so many agents were getting discovered by Moscow.

    Mr. Ames’ spying coincided with that of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who was caught in 2001 and charged with taking $1.4 million in cash and diamonds to sell secrets to Moscow. He died in prison in 2023.

    Mr. Ames’ wife, Rosario, pleaded guilty to lesser espionage charges of assisting his spying and was sentenced to 63 months in prison.