Missouri quarterback Beau Pribula dislocated his left ankle and will have an MRI exam Sunday, coach Eli Drinkwitz said Saturday after the No. 15-ranked Tigers’ 17-10 loss to No. 10 Vanderbilt.
Following the injury, the Tigers turned to freshman Matt Zollers. Zollers entered the game having completed all six of his pass attempts for a total of just 40 yards and a touchdown. He also has a rushing touchdown this season.
The former Spring-Ford standout gave Missouri a chance until time expired, throwing a 6-yard TD pass to Jude James, tying the game at 10-10 early in the fourth quarter. Zoller moved the Tigers down the field and connected with Kevin Coleman Jr. for a 36-yard pass as time expired, only to have the receiver ruled on review short of the goal line.
Zollers would finish 14 of 23 for 138 yards passing.
As for Pribula, the former Penn State quarterback, Drinkwitz said he didn’t have any broken bones but needed his ankle popped back into joint.
“Don’t have a timetable for his return, but it could be a while,” Drinkwitz said.
Missouri quarterback Beau Pribula is driven off the field after being injured during the second half of the Tigers’ game against Vanderbilt on Saturday.
Pribula was hurt early in the third quarter, running out of the shotgun on fourth-and-goal at the Vanderbilt 2. Miles Capers and Bryan Longwell stopped Pribula after a 1-yard gain with 11 minutes, 15 seconds left in the third quarter. One defender landed on Pribula’s ankle as he was folded backward from defenders coming the other direction.
The quarterback didn’t get up, and trainers quickly brought a bag out and placed an air cast over his left ankle. Then he was put on a cart and taken for further treatment.
“He’s a guy that’s been such a playmaker for them, and outside of defending him was so much fun to watch on film,” Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea said. ”And so we just hope for the best prognosis, and speedy recovery.”
LOS ANGELES — The Department of Justice is preparing to send federal election observers to California and New Jersey next month, targeting two Democratic states holding off-year elections following requests from state Republican parties.
The DOJ announced Friday that it is planning to monitor polling sites in Passaic County, New Jersey, and five counties in southern and central California: Los Angeles, Orange, Kern, Riverside, and Fresno. The goal, according to the DOJ, is “to ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.”
“Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement to the Associated Press.
Election monitoring is a routine function of the Justice Department, but the focus on California and New Jersey comes as both states are set to hold closely watched elections with national consequences on Nov. 4. New Jersey has an open seat for governor that has attracted major spending by both parties and California is holding a special election aimed at redrawing the state’s congressional map to counter Republican gerrymandering efforts elsewhere ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The DOJ’s efforts are also the latest salvo in the GOP’s preoccupation with election integrity after President Donald Trump spent years refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election and falsely railing against mail-in voting as rife with fraud. Democrats fear the new administration will attempt to gain an upper hand in next year’s midterms with similarly unfounded allegations of fraud.
The announcement comes days after the Republican parties in both states wrote letters to the DOJ requesting their assistance. Some leading Democrats in the states blasted the decision.
New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin called the move “highly inappropriate” and said the DOJ “has not even attempted to identify a legitimate basis for its actions.”
Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic Party, said in a statement that “No amount of election interference by the California Republican Party is going to silence the voices of California voters.”
California’s House districts at stake
The letter from the California GOP, sent Monday and obtained by the AP, asked Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, to provide monitors to observe the election in the five counties.
“In recent elections, we have received reports of irregularities in these counties that we fear will undermine either the willingness of voters to participate in the election or their confidence in the announced results of the election,” wrote GOP chairwoman Corrin Rankin.
Each of the counties named, they alleged, has experienced recent voting issues, such as sending incorrect or duplicate ballots to voters. They also take issue with how Los Angeles and Orange counties maintain their voter rolls.
California is one of at least eight states the Justice Department has sued as part of a wide-ranging request for detailed voter roll information involving at least half the states. The department has not said why it wants the data.
Brandon Richards, a spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said the DOJ has no standing to “interfere” with California’s election because the ballot contains only a state-specific initiative and has no federal races.
“Deploying these federal forces appears to be an intimidation tactic meant for one thing: suppress the vote,” he said in an email.
Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page said he welcomes anyone who wants to watch the county’s election operations and said it’s common to have local, state, federal and even international observers. He described Orange County’s elections as “accessible, accurate, fair, secure, and transparent.”
Los Angeles County Clerk Dean Logan said election observers are standard practice across the country and that the county, with 5.8 million registered voters, is continuously updating and verifying its voter records.
“Voters can have confidence their ballot is handled securely and counted accurately,” he said.
Most Californians vote using mail ballots returned through the Postal Service, drop boxes or at local voting centers, which typically leaves polling places relatively quiet on Election Day. But in pursuit of accuracy and counting every vote, the nation’s most populous state has gained a reputation for tallies that can drag on for weeks — and sometimes longer.
In 2024, it took until early December to declare Democrat Adam Gray the winner in his Central Valley district, the final congressional race to be decided in the nation last year.
Passaic County the target in New Jersey
California’s request echoed a similar letter sent by New Jersey Republicans asking the DOJ to dispatch election monitors to “oversee the receipt and processing of vote-by-mail ballots” and “monitor access to the Board of Elections around the clock” in suburban Passaic County ahead of the state’s governor’s race.
The New Jersey Republican State Committee told Dhillon that federal intervention was necessary to ensure an accurate vote count in the heavily Latino county that was once a Democratic stronghold, but shifted to President Donald Trump’s column in last year’s presidential race.
The county could be critical to GOP gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli’s hopes against Democrat Mikie Sherrill. But the letter cited previous voter fraud cases in the county and alleged a “long and sordid history” of vote-by-mail shenanigans.
In 2020, a judge ordered a new election for a city council seat in Paterson — the largest city in Passaic County — after the apparent winner and others were charged with voter fraud.
Platkin said the state is committed to ensuring its elections are fair and secure. With the DOJ’s announcement, he said the attorney general’s office is “considering all of our options to prevent any effort to intimidate voters or interfere with our elections.”
Election observers are nothing new
Local election offices and polling places around the country already have observers from both political parties to ensure rules are followed. The DOJ also has a long history of sending observers to jurisdictions that have histories of voting rights violations to ensure compliance with federal civil rights laws.
Last year, when the Biden administration was still in power, some Republican-led states said they would not allow federal monitors to access voting locations on Election Day.
Trump has for years railed against mail voting as part of his repeated false claims that former President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was rigged. He alleges it is riddled with fraud, even though numerous studies have found no evidence of widespread fraud in U.S. elections.
Earlier this year, Trump pledged to ban vote-by-mail across the country, something he has no power to do under the U.S. Constitution.
The DOJ’s effort will be overseen by Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division, which will deploy personnel in coordination with U.S. attorney’s offices and work closely with state and local officials, the department said
The department also is soliciting further requests for monitoring in other jurisdictions.
David Becker, a former DOJ attorney who has served as an election monitor and trained them, said the work is typically done by department lawyers who are prohibited from interfering at polling places.
But Becker, now executive director of the Center for Election Integrity & Research, said local jurisdictions normally agree to the monitors’ presence.
If the administration tried to send monitors without a clear legal rationale to a place where local officials didn’t want them, “That could result in chaos,” he said.
A lawsuit by online message board Reddit gives you a glimpse at the knockdown boxing match behind chatbot conversations.
In one corner are artificial intelligence services that gobble information from across the internet to help you plan a vacation or create silly videos. In the other corner are companies that are sometimes unwilling or overwhelmed sources of that data.
In its lawsuit, similar to ones against AI companies by news organizations, Hollywood studios, book authors, and others, Reddit alleges that the start-up Perplexity benefited from improperly using its website as AI fuel.
The claims are an example of warnings from Reddit, Wikipedia, and others that say if the boxing match continues as is, AI services may kill the websites and other source material that we love.
Dating back at least to the death of Napster a quarter-century ago, there have been constant fights over technology upstarts that remix media and information or deliver it in new ways. AI could be the most intractable fight of all.
AI ‘bank robbers’ vs. Reddit
The 20 years of our Reddit debates about the best Welsh restaurants and quiet air conditioners are gold for AI services. They typically need truckloads of online information like that to “train” their computers and serve up responses to your AI queries.
Reddit knows how valuable it is and laid out ground rules for AI companies that wanted to profit from siphoning Reddit message boards in bulk: AI companies needed a paid contract with Reddit and to respect its guardrails.
Some companies, including Google and ChatGPT parent company OpenAI, agreed to Reddit’s terms. For AI companies that didn’t agree, Reddit put up digital walls to block AI companies’ spiderlike software that crawls over websites to harvest their information.
According to Reddit, Perplexity’s CEO promised Reddit’s top lawyer more than a year ago to respect Reddit’s digital walls. Perplexity, which makes what it calls an AI “answer” engine and an AI-specialized web browser, instead found another way to siphon Reddit pages, the company says.
(The Washington Post has partnerships with Perplexity and OpenAI.)
Reddit’s lawsuit, filed Wednesday in a New York federal court, said that Perplexity hired at least one data-siphoning middleman to grab many billions of pages of Reddit material indirectly, from Google search results.
Those middlemen allegedly used technically sophisticated tactics to get around Google’s digital defenses against unwanted siphoning by bots. Reddit said that it obtained this information from a subpoena to Google in a different, secret lawsuit.
Reddit’s lawsuit compared what Perplexity and the bot-for-hire middlemen did to “bank robbers” who know they can’t get into the bank vault and “break into the armored truck carrying the cash instead.”
In a post on Reddit, Perplexity said that Reddit is after money. The lawsuit is a “sad example of what happens when public data becomes a big part of a public company’s business model,” Perplexity said.
Google said that it has “strong technical measures to prevent this type of malicious abuse, because it undermines the choices websites make about who can access their content.”
What this means for you
Experts have said that the law generally protects technology companies that take copyrighted materials like news articles, books, and movies and put them to a new, creative use. Many AI companies say that their products meet that legal standard.
Blake Reid, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School, said that Reddit’s case adds an extra wrinkle: The company doesn’t hold the copyright to Reddit posts. The people who created those posts do. Reid said that helps make the lawsuit’s outcome unpredictable.
Regardless, AI keeps running into a paradox: To be useful, new forms of AI rely on ingesting vast swaths of the past, present, and future internet. But doing so can increase costs and divert users from websites, which imperils the internet we use.
We’ve heard similar complaints before. Entertainment companies sued YouTube for giving you free access to their creations. Music companies have howled over TikTok letting you create dance videos to Taylor Swift tunes. News organizations have groused that Google and Facebook let you browse the news without buying newspapers or visiting news websites.
The content companies have typically found ways to grudgingly live with, and even profit from, the technology upstarts. AI is different, said Toshit Panigrahi, CEO of TollBit, which helps websites get paid for AI data collection.
AI services grab information at warp speed and at industrial scale from so many places, including news and entertainment sites, cruise operators, and furniture sellers. Panigrahi said that the old pattern — technology changes are good for us and the owners of digital creations — may no longer apply.
“This is changing how the internet works fundamentally,” he said.
After seven rounds of grueling interviews, an offer for a recruiting job seemed within reach for David Daniels IV. Until a reference check that Daniels learned had involved wary discussions of his background in diversity, equity, and inclusion. The offer never came.
Having DEI experience on a resume can feel like a scarlet letter in an already difficult job market, said Daniels, who lives in New York and held roles at companies including yoga wear retailer Lululemon Athletica Inc. “There’s this sense of, if you did DEI, we don’t want to hire you,” he said. For Daniels and others like him, working in diversity made them hot commodities in corporate America just a few years ago. Now it’s a liability. Conservatives have lambasted diversity work as exclusionary, while President Donald Trump’s ire against what he has termed “illegal DEI” has spurred a retrenchment in many companies. Fearing lawsuits and the loss of government contracts, businesses quickly pivoted, downsizing or dismantling their diversity groups.
That left DEI professionals who lost their jobs stranded, competing for roles in a tight job market. Among the jobless population in the broader economy, about a quarter have been unemployed for a half-year or longer — the highest share since the mid-2010s, excluding the pandemic-era years. DEI specialists say they’re getting less interest from recruiters than they did several years ago and fewer interviews from companies. To bolster their chances, professionals have stripped the three letters from resumes and sought roles in adjacent departments such as in human resources, public affairs, and marketing. Others have weighed changing careers.
One job hunter is Josue Mendez in New York, who used to work in the diversity group at Ogilvy, an advertising agency owned by WPP PLC. In June, weeks after his team won an industry award for a leadership program for its Black male employees, he was among those let go. Since then, Mendez spends his days scouring job listings and attending job fairs.
A conversation with a recruiter was going well, he said, until Mendez mentioned his experience in diversity. “It suddenly went very cold,” Mendez recalled. “The second they see any previous work specifically in DEI, they want to stay away.” The call ended ahead of schedule. The recruiter later told Daniels he was out of the running for the job.
A handful of large corporations remain publicly committed to workplace diversity. Delta Air Lines Inc., Southwest Airlines Co. and Coca-Cola Co. have kept the DEI label on their websites. And others are now emphasizing veterans and disabled employees.
But there’s been a wave of reversals in the past year. Amazon.com Inc. halted some of its programs, McDonald’s Corp. stopped setting “representation goals” and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ended a policy of only taking some companies public if they had diverse board members. Corporate fears around legal risks earlier this year overshadowed everything else, said Tynesia Boyea-Robinson, whose firm CapEQ advises companies on diversity and other social issues. “A lot of people basically looked to their legal counsel and asked: What is the way we can protect ourselves from being sued?” Job ads reflect the changed landscape. New postings for diversity roles have approximately halved this year to about 1,500 from 2019 levels, according to Revelio Labs, a firm that analyzes workforces. Postings had almost quadrupled to about 10,000 during the height of the DEI boom in 2022 compared with 2019.
Since losing her position at a firm advising clients on their diversity efforts late last year, Victoria Person in New Orleans has been attending networking events held by the local Chamber of Commerce to help find clients for her new consulting business while she searches for a job. The moment Person mentions her 15-year career working in diversity, people give an uncomfortable laugh, change the subject or look over her shoulder to find someone else to talk to, she said. “I see and feel people reel back,” Person said. “There’s a lot of fear around this, people don’t want to be associated with it.” Still, in spite of the current malaise, Person said she hopes that diversity programs will reemerge stronger and more inclusive, serving all demographics rather than specific groups.
Marie — who didn’t want her full named published because she fears online attacks from DEI critics — lost her role as a diversity manager, making $150,000, following Trump’s election win. Her job hunt initially yielded call backs and interviews. Now, responses have all but disappeared. Marie said she noticed some companies had posted the same diversity role multiple times over the course of months only to pull them later on. And in one interview, a chief diversity officer told her that the executive team wasn’t fully sold on workplace diversity, even though the company had posted a role. Given the scarcity of roles in diversity, Marie said she’s considering leaving the field. But returning to public education, her previous field, would mean risking cutting her income in half. In the meantime, she’s joined a group dedicated to professionals laid off from their diversity jobs. Its founder, Michael Streffery, who was let go from his job as director of DEI at Realtor.com earlier this year, says the group’s members have skills that are applicable to many other positions. “They’re systems thinkers, culture shapers, and crisis navigators,” he said.
Before leaving his job earlier this year, Carlos Ayala experienced a slide. Once a chief diversity and inclusion officer at an energy company, his title was changed and his role downgraded. He stayed at the company for several months to help “de-risk” the department he once ran. That meant watering down or removing diversity policies to help reduce legal risks.
Ayala quickly experienced firsthand the liability of having worked in DEI. He said he had applied for a role overseeing diversity efforts at a company that appeared, at least publicly, to be sticking with the strategy. Midway through his interviews, Ayala got an email from the recruiter who said the business was “reframing the role’’ and shifting it to a generalist human resources position. “I thought, God, that’s disappointing, they’ve been stringing me along,” said Ayala, whose based in the Chicago area. Weeks later, he’s still waiting to hear whether he got the job. Back in New York, Daniels is continuing his job search. He’s picked up some consulting work including a client in the United Kingdom, where the political backlash to diversity is less severe. He said he’s got more interviews after removing the DEI label from his online profile. In some interviews, Daniels said he’s repeatedly had to reassure hiring managers that he’s still comfortable working for a company even if it’s not focused on diversity. Despite the DEI retrenchment, Daniels is taking the long view. There’s an ebb and flow when it comes to social justice issues, he said. “America has always been this way.”
In 2022, Jake Clay started an Amazon delivery firm in Odessa, Texas, after hearing about the company’s program from a friend. He sank $75,000 into the business and earned more than $200,000 in the first year. An Air Force veteran, Clay, 50, felt like he’d joined an elite unit.
The feeling didn’t last. Before long, rising insurance and other costs began eating into his profit. One of Clay’s drivers was badly bitten by a dog and went on workers’ compensation for a year, while his annual vehicle insurance rates soared fivefold to almost $500,000. Clay mulled laying off all his managers and running the business on his own, figuring he would clear about $75,000. In the end, he decided it wasn’t worth it. He quit last month.
“I earned significantly less as I got more seasoned, which is the most upside-down business I’ve ever heard of,” Clay said. “Amazon wants a bunch of pawns and they keep a bunch of extra pawns on the bench to replace anyone who leaves.”
Clay said he rejected an offer to sign an exit contract with Amazon that would have paid him $75,000, but ban him from speaking publicly about the program.
Amazon.com Inc. launched its Delivery Service Partner program in 2018, offering aspiring entrepreneurs an opportunity to run their own businesses. The world’s biggest online retailer pledged to use its negotiating clout to help them lease vans and hire drivers. All they needed, the company said at the time, was can-do spirit and as little as $10,000 up front to earn as much as $300,000 (now $400,000) in yearly profit.
Today, some who answered the call fear the best days are behind them. While many prospered during the pandemic-era e-commerce boom, they say their profits are dwindling owing to rising costs for insurance and vehicle maintenance even as Amazon tightens performance metrics that determine how much they earn. Like Clay, several delivery owners told Bloomberg that making money has become so hard they’re getting out — a wrenching decision with the economy slowing and unemployment rising.
Amid the mounting discontent, Amazon recently announced a 20% hike to 12 cents for each package the firms deliver. It was the first such increase since the company launched the Delivery Service Partner program and an acknowledgment that inflation has driven up costs. But many contract delivery firms said the gesture was too little, too late. And because it doesn’t take effect until January, some saw it as a carrot to keep them working through the holidays when Amazon needs them most.
Still, they recognize they have little leverage because Amazon can simply replace them. Last month, during the annual Ignite conference for delivery service partners, the company touted its “Road to Ownership” program, which is designed to persuade drivers to start their own delivery companies. Many owners saw the presentation as a reminder that there are plenty of people eager to step in. And a number of newbies attended the Las Vegas conference, looking for tips on how to run their businesses.
Bloomberg interviewed 23 delivery partners who operate in 11 states around the U.S. Five said they quit the program because they were making less money each year, and several others are contemplating getting out. Four owners said they were happy with the program and that their income was growing. In online forums, delivery contractors have debated how to negotiate larger exit packages with Amazon and tried to establish how many have already quit. One chat room was set up specifically for contractors thinking of shuttering their firms and features more than 100 mostly anonymous members.
Most of the delivery partners interviewed, including those who quit and one who liked the program, spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions from Amazon.
“The anecdotes shared by a small number of DSPs don’t reflect the experience of the vast majority,” Amazon spokesperson Dannea DeLisser said in an emailed statement. “Interest in the program continues to grow as entrepreneurs recognize the opportunity to build their own businesses with Amazon’s support, and we’re proud of the thousands of DSPs that are doing well and making a positive impact in their communities.” Amazon has invested $16.7 billion in the program, which currently encompasses more than 4,400 firms — most of them in the U.S.
Inflationary pressure
Contract delivery firms have tangled with Amazon for years, often over what they consider unreasonable delivery targets that are monitored by artificial intelligence. Those concerns remain, but business owners trace their current woes to the inflationary environment and the company’s unwillingness to provide sufficient support at a time when Amazon is focused on cutting costs and boosting profits.
Tension between the company and its delivery businesses flared earlier this year when the company passed along big bills to repair aging delivery vans. Some contractors said they were getting hit with repair bills of up to $20,000 per vehicle that they couldn’t afford to pay. The delivery firms used an app called Pave to estimate damages based on photos of the vehicle, but Amazon instituted a more rigorous inspection process this year that resulted in repair bills as much as 10 times higher than the app estimate.
With delivery contractors balking, Amazon in September backpedaled and told them it would cover 20% of van repairs estimated in the Pave app going back to April and that it would send out revised invoices this month.
The delivery firms are also grappling with the rising cost of insurance. Typically when they start out, insurance rates are reasonable. But the longer they are in business, the more chance there is for accidents, dog bites, and other issues, which in turn push up the costs of covering their operation.
A person checks an address before making an Amazon delivery in Chicago in January 2025.
One owner who started an Amazon delivery business in 2019 blames skyrocketing premiums for slashing his annual profit from $400,000 to $150,000. He mostly employs young male drivers, whom insurers consider high-risk. His premiums soared after one driver was involved in a crash with serious injuries. When the case settled out of court for $1.4 million, the owner realized the risk wasn’t worth the reward.
He went to the Amazon delivery station one Saturday evening to tell them he’d cease operating the next day, leaving the company scrambling to reassign thousands of packages to other firms. “They weren’t happy,” he said.
Another delivery contractor who started when Amazon launched the program in 2018 said his yearly profits have been trending downward from about $200,000 to $160,000, which he expected to continue. His problems started when Amazon switched 10-hour delivery routes to begin later in the day at 11 a.m., meaning drivers made more deliveries in the dark when it’s harder to see street signs, addresses, and potential hazards like muddy puddles on dirt roads. That drove up his costs since he had to pay drivers overtime to complete routes and hire tow trucks to free vans stuck in mud. Amazon never increased his payments to reflect the increased costs associated with later deliveries.
Amazon said it conducted a financial performance of 648 delivery contractors last year and found that about 80% of them generated annual profits of at least $100,000. The company said their profits, on average, increased each year. The average business has been operating for five years and fewer than 10% of them quit the program, according to Amazon.
Some owners accept that running an Amazon delivery firm isn’t necessarily a long-term bet and prepare by diversifying. One delivery contractor in the Midwest started a plumbing franchise and encouraged his hardest-working delivery drivers to work there and learn a trade. Fred Vernon, 36, said starting an Amazon delivery business in 2019 in Houston has been life-changing. It’s hard work and he emphasizes driver safety to keep his insurance costs in line. Meanwhile, Vernon is using his proceeds to pay for law school.
“We’re doing very well and I’m grateful for the opportunity to pursue other goals,” he said.
Amazon delivery contractors quickly learn that bailing is no panacea. Unlike many small business owners, they have no hard assets to sell. They lease the vans, and the packages are stored in Amazon facilities. They could try to sell the business but it’s tied to a one-year contract with Amazon, which has veto power over any prospective buyer. So they can either quit with nothing or keep limping along with the knowledge that they could be replaced once the contract expires — perhaps with someone like Shannon Joseph.
A former driver, Joseph launched her own delivery business in Austin in 2022. She says her experience hauling packages has helped build rapport with her 92 employees. Joseph has heard the complaints from other delivery firms, but is confident she’ll keep making money and growing by outperforming the pack.
“I want to be one of the delivery partners who makes it for 10 years,” she said.
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon confirmed Friday that it has accepted an anonymous $130 million gift to help pay members of the military during the government shutdown, raising ethical questions after President Donald Trump had announced that a friend had offered the gift to defray any shortfalls.
While large and unusual, the gift amounts to a small contribution toward the billions needed to cover service member paychecks. The Trump administration told Congress last week that it used $6.5 billion to make payroll. The next payday is coming within the week, and it is unclear if the administration will again move money around to ensure the military does not go without compensation.
“That’s what I call a patriot,” Trump said during a White House event Thursday when he disclosed the payment from the donor.
The president declined to name the person, whom he called “a friend of mine,” saying the man didn’t want the recognition.
The Pentagon confirmed it had accepted the donation on Thursday “under its general gift acceptance authority.”
“The donation was made on the condition that it be used to offset the cost of Service members’ salaries and benefits,” said Sean Parnell, chief spokesman for the Pentagon. “We are grateful for this donor’s assistance after Democrats opted to withhold pay from troops.”
Congress is at a stalemate over the government shutdown, now on track to become one of the longest federal closures ever, in its 24th day. Neither Republicans, who have control of the House and Senate, nor Democrats, in the minority, are willing to budge in their broader standoff over health care funding.
Payment for service members is a key concern among lawmakers of both parties as well as a point of political leverage. The Trump administration shifted $8 billion from military research and development funds to make payroll last week, ensuring that military compensation did not lapse.
But it is unclear if the Trump administration will be willing — or able — to shift money again next week as tensions rise over the protracted shutdown.
While the $130 million is a hefty sum, it would cover just a fraction of the billions needed for military paychecks. Trump said the donation was to cover any “shortfall.”
What’s unclear, however, is the regulations around such a donation.
“That’s crazy,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization focused on the federal government.
“It’s treating the payment of our uniformed services as if someone’s picking up your bar tab.”
He questioned the legality of the donation and called for more transparency around it.
Pentagon policy says authorities “must consult with their appropriate Ethics Official before accepting such a gift valued in excess of $10,000 to determine whether the donor is involved in any claims, procurement actions, litigation, or other particular matters involving the Department that must be considered prior to gift acceptance.”
WASHINGTON — The Social Security Administration’s annual cost-of-living adjustment will go up by 2.8% in 2026, translating to an average increase of more than $56 for retirees every month, agency officials said Friday.
The benefits increase for nearly 71 million Social Security recipients will go into effect beginning in January. And increased payments to nearly 7.5 million people receiving Supplemental Security Income will begin on Dec. 31.
The cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for retirees and disabled beneficiaries is financed by payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers, up to a certain annual salary, which is slated to increase to $184,500 in 2026, from $176,100 in 2025.
Some seniors say the cost-of-living adjustment won’t help much in their ability to pay for their daily expenses. Linda Deas, an 80-year-old Florence, South Carolina, resident said “it does not match the affordability crisis we are having right now.”
Deas, a retired information systems network operations specialist, moved to South Carolina from New York in 2022 to be closer to family. She says her monthly rent has increased by $400 in the past two years.
She listed other items that have become more expensive for her in the past two years, including auto insurance and food. “If you have been into the supermarkets lately you will notice how prices are going up, not down,” she said.
Deas is not alone in feeling that costs are getting out of control. Polling from the AARP shows that older Americans are increasingly struggling to keep up in today’s economy. The poll states that only 22% of Americans over age 50 agree that a COLA of right around 3% for Social Security recipients is enough to keep up with rising prices, while 77% disagree. That sentiment is consistent across political party affiliations, according to the AARP.
In Deas’ case, the MIT Living Wage Calculator estimates that an adult living alone in Florence, South Carolina, would spend per year $10,184 for housing, $3,053 for medical expenses and $3,839 for food.
AARP CEO Myechia Minter-Jordan said the COLA is “a lifeline of independence and dignity, for tens of millions of older Americans,” but even with the annual inflation-gauged boost in income, “older adults still face challenges covering basic expenses.”
Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano said in a statement Friday that the annual cost-of-living adjustment “is one way we are working to make sure benefits reflect today’s economic realities and continue to provide a foundation of security.”
Emerson Sprick, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s director of retirement and labor policy, said in a statement that cost-of-living increases “can’t solve all the financial challenges households face or all the shortcomings of the program.”
The agency has been in turmoil in recent months
The latest COLA announcement comes as the Social Security Administration has been navigating almost a year of turmoil, including the termination of thousands of workers as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce. Trump administration officials have also made statements they later walked back that raised concerns about the future of the program.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in July that the Republican administration was committed to protecting Social Security hours after he said in an interview that a new children’s savings program President Donald Trump signed into law “is a back door for privatizing Social Security.”
And in September, Bisignano had to walk back comments that the agency is considering raising the retirement age to shore up Social Security. “Raising the retirement age is not under consideration at this time by the Administration,” Bisignano said at the time in an e-mailed statement to The Associated Press.
“I think everything’s being considered, will be considered,” Bisignano said in the statement when asked whether raising the retirement age was a possibility to maintain the old age program’s solvency.
Efforts to boost benefits for seniors
In addition, the Social Security Administration faces a looming bankruptcy date if it is not addressed by Congress. The June 2025 Social Security and Medicare trustees’ report states that Social Security’s trust funds, which cover old age and disability recipients, will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034. Then, Social Security would only be able to pay 81% of benefits.
Social Security benefits were last reformed roughly 40 years ago, when the federal government raised the eligibility age for the program from 65 to 67.
While a permanent solution for shoring up the benefits program has not been passed into law, both the Trump and Biden administrations have recently signed into law new benefits for retirees, which are expected to boost their finances.
The Trump administration, as part of Republicans’ tax and spending bill, gave tax relief to many seniors through a temporary tax deduction for seniors aged 65 and over, which applies to all income — not just Social Security. However, those who won’t be able to claim the deduction include the lowest-income seniors who already don’t pay taxes on Social Security, those who choose to claim their benefits before they reach age 65 and those above a defined income threshold.
Additionally, former President Joe Biden in 2024 repealed two federal policies — the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset — that previously limited Social Security payouts for roughly 2.8 million people, including largely former public workers.
These measures have accelerated the insolvency of the old-age benefits program.
Sprick at the Bipartisan Policy Center said “there have been longstanding questions about whether benefits are adequate for low-income seniors, which should inspire urgency among policymakers to work toward broader reforms instead of ignoring Social Security’s long-term solvency.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune earlier this week announced the measure, Senate Bill 3012, as hundreds of thousands of federal workers will miss their paychecks, while the military, while paid Oct. 15, face missing their Oct. 31 paychecks. This as families face food security issues, with SNAP benefits stretched thin.
Senate Bill 3012, known as the S. 3012, is a measure that would pay federal employees who are working through the shutdown, including members of the military and contractors who support “excepted” work.
Majority Whip Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, said live on the Senate floor on Thursday, Oct. 23, that there was “no single argument against passing it immediately” since it would pay the troops, Coast Guard, Border Patrol, members of ICE, air traffic controllers, TSA agents at airports, and Capitol police officers in Washington, D.C.
The bill would provide “such sums as are necessary” to pay non-furloughed workers; however, Democrats have argued that all federal workers, including those on furlough, should be paid.
The bill, sponsored by GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, applies only to “excepted” federal employees whose work is considered essential during a period of prolapsed funding. Those employees continue to work but cannot get back pay until the shutdown is over. Nonessential workers are placed on furlough, and also get back pay.
The bill was first proposed by Senate Majority Leader John Thune this week. The legislation requires the backing of Democrats, but some have warned the bill would give power to President Donald Trump.
“We know what will happen — any agencies that he doesn’t like won’t get paid,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told reporters earlier this week, per CBS News.
NEW YORK — The head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers and a player for the Miami Heat were arrested Thursday along with more than 30 other people in a takedown of two sprawling gambling operations that authorities said leaked inside information about NBA athletes and rigged poker games backed by Mafia families.
Portland coach Chauncey Billups was charged with participating in a conspiracy to fix high-stakes card games tied to La Cosa Nostra organized crime families that cheated unsuspecting gamblers out of at least $7 million. Heat guard Terry Rozier was accused in a separate scheme of exploiting private information about players to win bets on NBA games.
The two indictments unsealed in New York create a massive cloud for the NBA — which opened its season this week — and show how certain types of wagers are vulnerable to massive fraud in the growing, multibillion-dollar legal sports-betting industry. Joseph Nocella, the top federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of New York, called it “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States.”
“My message to the defendants who’ve been rounded up today is this: Your winning streak has ended,” Nocella said. “Your luck has run out.”
Both men face money laundering and wire fraud conspiracy charges. Also charged was former NBA assistant coach and player Damon Jones, who stands accused of participating in both schemes.
“The fraud is mind boggling,” FBI Director Kash Patel told reporters. “We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery across a multiyear investigation.”
The alleged fraud, however, paled in comparison to the riches the athletes earned on the court. Billups, who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year, had about $106 million in earnings over his 17-year career. Rozier made about $160 million in his stops in Boston, Miami and Charlotte.
Billups and Rozier have been placed on leave from their teams, according to the NBA, which said it is cooperating with authorities.
“We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority,” the NBA said in a statement.
Hours after his arrest, Rozier appeared in a federal court in Orlando, Florida, wearing a Charlotte Hornets sweatshirt, handcuffs and shackles. Billups appeared before a judge in Portland, Oregon. Both men were ordered released from custody on certain conditions.
Billups’ attorney, Chris Heywood, issued a statement Thursday evening denying the allegations, calling his client a “man of integrity.” “To believe that Chauncey Billups did what the federal government is accusing him of is to believe that he would risk his Hall-of-Fame legacy, his reputation and his freedom. He would not jeopardize those things for anything, let alone a card game,” Heywood said.
Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, said in a statement that his client is “not a gambler” and “looks forward to winning this fight.” Trusty criticized authorities for not allowing his client to surrender on his own and accused officials of wanting “the misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk.”
Messages were left Thursday at a phone number and email address listed in public records for Jones.
Roughly 20 other defendants appeared in federal court in Brooklyn, where most of them pleaded not guilty. Many of those charged with violent crimes or with lengthy criminal records and ties to organized crime were detained.
Mafia families profited off gambling scheme, officials say
The poker scheme lured unwitting players into rigged games with the chance to compete against former professional basketball players like Billups and Jones. The games were fixed using sophisticated cheating technology, such as altered card-shuffling machines, hidden cameras in poker chip trays, special sunglasses and even X-ray equipment built into the table to read cards, authorities allege.
The scheme often made use of illegal poker games run by New York crime families that required them to share a portion of their proceeds with the Gambino, Genovese and Bonnano crime families, according to court papers. Members of those families, in turn, also helped commit violent acts, including assault, extortion and robbery, to ensure repayment of debts and the continued success of the operation, officials said in court documents.
Athletes accused of leaving games early
In the sports betting scheme, Rozier and other defendants are accused of accessing private information from NBA players or coaches that could affect a player’s performance and giving that information to others so they could place wagers. Players sometimes altered their performance or took themselves out of games early to rig prop bets — a type of wager that allows gamblers to bet on whether a player will exceed a certain statistic, such as a total number of points, rebounds or assists, according to the indictment.
In one instance, Rozier, while playing for the Charlotte Hornets in 2023, told people he was planning to leave the game early with a supposed injury, allowing gamblers to place wagers earning them tens of thousands of dollars, authorities said. That game against the New Orleans Pelicans raised eyebrows at the time. Rozier played the first 9 minutes and 36 seconds of the game before leaving, citing a foot issue. He did not play again that season.
Posts still online from March 23, 2023, show that some bettors were furious with sportsbooks that evening when it became evident that Rozier was not going to return to the game after the first quarter, with many turning to social media to say that something “shady” had happened regarding the prop bets involving his stats for that night.
The indictments contain the descriptions of several unnamed NBA players whose injury status and availability for certain games were the source of betting activity. Those players are not accused of any wrongdoing, and there is no indication that they would have even known what was being said about their status for those games.
Those players include LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Damian Lillard. Their identities are clear based on a review of corresponding injury reports surrounding games mentioned in the indictment. The indictments show that certain defendants shared information about the availability of those players in a game on March 24, 2023, involving the Portland Trail Blazers, and two games in 2023 and 2024 involving the Los Angeles Lakers.
The NBA had investigated Rozier previously. He was in uniform as the Heat played the Magic on Wednesday in Orlando, Florida, in the season opener for both teams, though he did not play in the game.
JERUSALEM — U.S. Vice President JD Vance criticized on Thursday a symbolic vote in Israel’s parliament the previous day about annexing the occupied West Bank, saying it amounted to an “insult” and went against the Trump administration policies.
Hard-liners in the Israeli parliament had narrowly passed a preliminary vote in support of annexing parts of the West Bank — an apparent attempt to embarrass Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while Vance was still in the country.
The bill, which required only a simple majority of lawmakers present in the house on Wednesday, passed with a 25-24 vote. But it was unlikely to pass multiple rounds of voting to become law or win a majority in the 120-seat parliament. Netanyahu, who is opposed to it, also has tools to delay or defeat it.
Before departing Israel, Vance also unveiled new details about U.S. plans for Gaza, saying he expected reconstruction to begin soon in some “Hamas-free” areas of the territory. But he warned that rebuilding the territory after a devastating two-year war could take years.
“The hope is to rebuild Rafah over the next two to three years and theoretically you could have half a million people live (there),” he said, speaking of the strip’s southernmost city.
That would account for about a quarter of Gaza’s population of roughly 2 million, 90% of whom were displaced from their homes during the war. Out of every 10 buildings that stood in Gaza prewar, eight are either damaged or flattened. An estimated cost of rebuilding Gaza is about $53 billion, according to the World Bank, the U.N. and the European Union.
The Israeli parliament’s vote has stirred widespread condemnation, with over a dozen countries — including Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — rebuking it in a joint statement that called all Israeli settlements in the West Bank a violation of international law.
Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the “vote on annexation was a deliberate political provocation by the opposition to sow discord.”
Netanyahu is struggling to stave off early elections as cracks grow more apparent between factions in Israel’s right-wing parties, some of whom were upset over the ceasefire and the security sacrifices it required of Israel.
Vance said that if the Knesset’s vote was a “political stunt, then it is a very stupid political stunt.”
“I personally take some insult to it,” Vance said. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.”
The deputy Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Majed Bamya, told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that Palestinians “appreciate the clear message” the Trump administration has sent in opposition to annexation.
While many members of Netanyahu’s coalition, including his Likud Party, support annexation, they have backed off those calls since U.S. President Donald Trump said last month that he opposes such a move.
The Palestinians seek the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, for a future independent state. Israeli annexation of the West Bank would all but bury hopes for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians — the outcome supported by most of the world.
Analysts like Amichai Cohen, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, say that a “de-facto annexation of very large parts” of the West Bank is already underway, referring to the growing number of Israelis living in settlements in the Palestinian territory — even without any law supporting annexation.
Intense U.S. push toward peace
Earlier this week, Vance announced the opening of a civilian military coordination center in southern Israel where some 200 U.S. troops are working alongside the Israeli military and delegations from other countries planning the stabilization and reconstruction of Gaza.
The United States is seeking support from other allies, especially Gulf Arab nations, to create an international stabilization force to be deployed to Gaza and train a Palestinian force.
“We’d like to see Palestinian police forces in Gaza that are not Hamas and that are going to do a good job, but those still have to be trained and equipped,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said ahead of his trip to Israel.
Rubio, who was meeting with Netanyahu on Thursday evening, has also criticized Israeli far-right lawmakers’ effort to push for the annexation of the West Bank.
Israeli media referred to the nonstop parade of American officials visiting to ensure Israel holds up its side of the fragile ceasefire as “Bibi-sitting.” The term, utilizing Netanyahu’s nickname of Bibi, refers to an old campaign ad when Netanyahu positioned himself as the “Bibi-sitter” whom voters could trust with their kids.
Gaza’s dire need for medical care and aid
In the first medical evacuation since the ceasefire began on Oct. 10, the head of the World Health Organization said Thursday the group has evacuated 41 critical patients and 145 companions out of the Gaza Strip.
In a statement posted to X, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on nations to show solidarity and help some 15,000 patients who are still waiting for approval to receive medical care outside Gaza.
His calls were echoed by an official with the U.N. Population Fund who on Wednesday described the “sheer devastation” that he witnessed on his most recent travel to Gaza, saying that there is no such thing as a “normal birth in Gaza now.”
Andrew Saberton, an executive director at UNFPA, told reporters how difficult the agency’s work has become due to the lack of functioning or even standing health care facilities.
Another major challenge since the ceasefire began has been getting enough aid into Gaza — and distributed — to the meet the huge demand.
“We expected Gaza to be flooded with aid the moment the ceasefire began. But that’s not what we’re seeing,” said Bushra Khalidi, who oversees the Palestinian territories division at Oxfam, a nonprofit focused on global poverty.
More crossings into Gaza need to be opened in order to allow in more trucks, said Antoine Renard, head of the World Food Program in the Palestinian territories.
“With only two crossings that are open, you are facing clearly congestion,” he said.
The WFP has 36 distribution centers operating in Gaza, and aims to increase that to 145. Since Oct 11, the U.N. tracking system has recorded 949 aid trucks that were offloaded in Gaza.
