LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Cuban immigrant who had built a new life working at a Kentucky scrapyard died on Christmas Day from severe burns suffered in last month’s UPS cargo plane crash, raising the death toll to 15, officials said.
Alain Rodriguez Colina was on the ground when the plane, fully loaded with fuel for a flight to Hawaii, plowed into businesses after departing Louisville’s airport, exploding in a massive fireball. Gov. Andy Beshear and Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg confirmed his death via social media.
“May Alain’s memory be a blessing,” the mayor said late Thursday.
Three pilots and multiple people died after the plane’s left engine detached during takeoff on Nov. 4, and cracks were later found where the engine connected to the wing, the National Transportation Safety Board said. Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport is home to the largest UPS package delivery hub.
Colina had worked since 2023 at the nearby Grade A Auto Parts & Recycling, moving up rapidly to the position of metal buyer, said owner and CEO Sean Garber in a phone interview Friday. Colina embraced the company’s culture and life in Louisville, even becoming a University of Kentucky fan. His mother and siblings lived in the area and he had a daughter in Cuba, he said.
Workers at the scrapyard have described the scramble to help survivors after the crash. Colina had been with a customer and a coworker who died, Garber said. Colina got out but was burned over 50% of his body, and doctors didn’t have much hope for a recovery.
He was in an induced coma, never regaining consciousness. His family visited often. It seemed like he was starting to heal, Garber said, but on Thursday he took a turn for the worse.
Colina was a good man, Garber said, with a big heart who cared about the business, customers, and his family.
“He believed in the opportunity he got in the United States and really made the most of it,” Garber said. “He should still be with us.”
Earlier this month, a lawyer filed two wrongful death lawsuits that allege that the company kept flying older aircrafts without increasing maintenance beyond what’s regularly scheduled. The lawsuit also names General Electric, which made the plane’s engine. Both UPS and GE have said they don’t comment on pending lawsuits but safety remains their top priority as they assist the federal investigation. That litigation does not include Colina.
Local businesses and more than 90 people affected by the crash, including Colina, plan to file another lawsuit in the coming weeks, said attorney Masten Childers III, whose firm is one of two representing those plaintiffs.
“Alain fought hard,” Childers said. “Alain’s passing must be honored by holding those responsible for his death accountable.”
The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded all MD-11s, the type of plane involved in the crash, which have been used only for hauling cargo for more than a decade.
The Trump administration is widening efforts to screen visa applicants for online speech considered dangerous and “anti-American” as the government moves to restrict legal migration and remove people from places the president has called “garbage.”
The State Department earlier this month expanded new regulations requiring foreign students and people on academic and cultural exchange programs to disclose five years of their social media histories and make all of their posts public. All applicants for H-1B employment visas and their dependents will now also be subject to the more rigorous online review.
“A U.S. visa is a privilege, not a right,” officials said in announcing the expansion.
The administration is also considering a similar rule for visitors from countries whose citizens are allowed to enter the United States for up to 90 days without a visa, including France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan.
The increased online screening began with the administration’s crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses and has accelerated in a way that immigrant rights advocates say is chilling public discourse. In September, authorities announced plans to review more than 55 million U.S. visa holders for potential violations that could lead to deportations, raising concerns that the government is leveraging speech for visa approval or denial.
“You never think you would have this here” in the United States, said Suresh Naidu, an economics professor at Columbia University. He said he reduced his own public profile while applying to become a naturalized citizen this year. “The idea that this country would start to think of its visa systems as a privilege that could be revoked arbitrarily — this is supposed to be a democracy.”
Despite a federal judge’s ruling in September that immigrants in the country lawfully are protected by the First Amendment, federal authorities have continued to revoke visas from foreign visitors over statements the administration has called dangerous and un-American. They included six foreigners who the administration said “celebrated” the fatal shooting in September of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and a British news commentator critical of Israel’s war in Gaza whose visa was revoked in late October.
In October, several major labor unions — the United Auto Workers (UAW), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the Communications Workers of America — filed a lawsuit alleging the government is deploying a “vast surveillance apparatus” powered by artificial intelligence and other emerging technology that has stifled participation in public life among noncitizens.
Union members who fear adverse immigration actions have chosen to refrain from expressing “views remotely related to the topics the government disfavors,” according to the lawsuit, which said unions are experiencing a reduction in online organizing activity. The unions cited internal surveys that found many noncitizens have taken steps to reduce their online speech, including erasing posts, hiding their identities and eliminating social media accounts.
“We’re trying to make sure that people still have the right to speak and to engage and to do what America’s known for, which is freedom,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said in an interview.
Trump administration officials said they are acting to protect public safety against terrorist sympathizers and those who wish harm upon Americans. In a statement, Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin disputed the suggestion that the administration is stifling free speech.
“DHS takes its role in addressing threats to the public and our communities seriously, and the idea that enforcing federal law in that regard constitutes some kind of prior restraint on speech is laughable,” she said.
A federal judge disagreed. In September, U.S. District Judge William G. Young of Massachusetts ruled that the Trump administration had misused its sweeping powers in a manner “that continues unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech to this day.”
That case centers on claims by the American Association of University Professors that the targeting of pro-Palestinian campus organizers in the spring left noncitizen students and faculty fearful of attending protests, posting on social media and voicing opinions in class. Young has set a hearing for January to determine remedial measures.
The plaintiffs are asking Young to enjoin the administration from revoking more visas or making “coercive threats” based on pro-Palestinian advocacy; set aside the administration’s policy of arresting and detaining noncitizens “based on pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel speech or association”; and require the State Department to notify individuals if visa revocations are based in part on speech- or protest-related activity.
“Since the start of this litigation, the government has vigorously maintained a willful ability to deport noncitizens over their political expression, and they have doubled down on their legal claims since the court ruling,” said Ramya Krishnan, a lawyer for the plaintiffs who serves as a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
British political commentator Sami Hamdi on Nov. 13, upon his return to the United Kingdom after he was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Oct. 26 while on a speaking tour.
She pointed to the 18-day detention of British commentator Sami Hamdi, a target of far-right Trump supporters for his criticism of Israel. His nonimmigrant visa was revoked by the State Department on Oct. 26 while he was on a U.S. speaking tour.
In a phone interview from his home in London, Hamdi said he entered the country on a 10-year business and tourism visa that he had obtained in 2018. After speaking at a Council on American-Islamic Relations gala in Sacramento, he said, he was detained by federal immigration officers at San Francisco International Airport. They told him he had overstayed his visa, which had been canceled two days earlier, unbeknownst to him.
On their social media accounts, the State Department and DHS accused Hamdi — who maintains that Israel committed genocide in Gaza — of supporting terrorism and “undermining the safety of Americans.” But he was not charged with any crime, such as abetting terrorism, before striking an agreement with the State Department to return home, Hamdi’s lawyers said.
Hamdi believes he was arrested because of pressure from far-right activists, including prominent Trump supporters Dinesh D’Souza, who called him a “Muslim Brotherhood jihadi,” and Laura Loomer and Amy Mek, who posted on social media demanding his removal and celebrating his arrest.
“I did nothing illegal in the U.S.,” said Hamdi, who was released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Nov. 13 after he voluntarily agreed to return to London. “My visa was revoked because of my advocacy for Palestine. It was revoked because an extremist group went to the State Department and leveraged whatever influence it had to specifically target me.”
The State Department declined to comment.
McLaughlin called Hamdi an “illegal alien and terrorist sympathizer” who requested voluntary departure. She said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem “has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-American and anti-Semitic violence and terrorism — think again.”
Trump signed an executive action in January aimed at combating antisemitism on college campuses, but free speech advocates say the campaign is rapidly expanding into broader surveillance.
In August, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said immigrants seeking to become naturalized U.S. citizens would be subject to a “good moral character” review that includes an assessment of their “behavior, adherence to societal norms, and positive contributions.” Also that month, that agency said it would begin considering “anti-American” views in determining whether to provide immigrants benefits.
“People are free to make whatever statements they want on social media or anywhere else, and anyone who does not support the same candidate that I support, that’s not what we’re talking about here,” the agency’s director, Joseph Edlow, told CBS News in October. “We’re talking about beyond the pale. We’re talking about people actively supporting the violent overthrow of this country or otherwise providing material support to terrorist organizations across the world.”
Edlow spoke a day after the State Department revoked the visas of a half-dozen foreign nationals — from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Paraguay, and South Africa — who purportedly “celebrated” Kirk’s death. The department said that “the United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans.”
Nhlamulo Baloyi, a South African music executive, was among them. He wrote on X that “Charlie Kirk won’t be remembered as a hero” and said Kirk led a “movement of white nationalist trailer trash.”
Baloyi, 35, who once worked for a Sony Music subsidiary based in New York, has been outspoken online about anti-Black racism and his country’s history of racial apartheid. In a phone interview, he said right-wing Afrikaners have flagged and reported his posts in an effort to get him banned from X and other social media platforms.
Baloyi suggested that noncitizens in the United States must seriously “consider holding their tongues” or risk being expelled and losing their right to live and work in this country. But he also pointed to virulent online criticism from U.S. citizens aimed at former vice president Dick Cheney after his death this month and suggested foreigners are being held to a double standard.
“I don’t think anything I might have said about Charlie Kirk is remotely equated to the attacks Dick Cheney has faced,” Baloyi said.
Naidu, the Columbia professor, is from Canada and is married to an American. He had been active on X, sharing his thoughts on a range of economic and political topics with more than 16,000 followers. He deleted his account after Trump was elected last year over concerns that discussing political issues could adversely affect his citizenship application. It was approved in July, but he has not rejoined X.
“I’m less nervous about it. But just overall being at Columbia and Columbia being in the crosshairs — my content would not be the most offensive to the administration, but why risk it?” Naidu said.
Nicole M. Bennett, a researcher at Indiana University who studies the federal government’s approach to data governance and digital technologies, called social media the “new front line” in immigration enforcement — one that is expanding into around-the-clock monitoring. Powered by artificial intelligence, new search tools have the potential to vastly expand investigations beyond an immediate target and surveil people around them who had not been suspected of wrongdoing, including family members, friends or co-workers, she said.
“If you’re in a video, you could be pulled into that dragnet, and maybe they find something because they are looking,” Bennett said. “The biggest change is that instead of an investigation being based on evidence, the investigation is based on correlated data.”
Hamdi said his agreement with the State Department to leave the country voluntarily does not prohibit him from applying for reentry to the United States, and he is determined to give it a try. But he acknowledged that other foreigners might think twice. Pointing to soccer’s World Cup in U.S. cities next summer, Hamdi expressed concern for fans who come to root for their teams.
“What happens if a fan waves a Palestinian flag at a stadium — does that mean they will have their visa revoked?” he said. “And if their visa is revoked without notifying the individual, does that mean they could wind up in detention, too?”
Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump has overturned decades of U.S. trade policy — building a wall of tariffs around what used to be a wide open economy.
His double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country have disrupted global commerce and strained the budgets of consumers and businesses worldwide. They have also raised tens of billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury.
Trump has argued that his steep new import taxes are necessary to bring back wealth that was “stolen” from the U.S. He says they will narrow America’s decades-old trade deficit and bring manufacturing back to the country. But upending the global supply chain has proven costly for households facing rising prices. The taxes are paid by importers who typically attempt to pass along the higher costs to their customers. That includes businesses and ultimately, U.S. households.
And the erratic way the president rolled out his tariffs — announcing them, then suspending or altering them before conjuring up new ones — made 2025 one of the most turbulent economic years in recent memory.
Here’s a look at the impact of Trump’s tariffs over the last year, in four charts.
Effective U.S. tariff rate
A key number for the overall impact of tariffs on U.S. consumers and businesses is the “effective” tariff rate — which, unlike headline figures imposed by Trump for specific trade actions, provides an average based on the actual imports coming into the country.
In 2025, per data from the Yale Budget Lab, the effective U.S. tariff rate peaked in April. But it’s still far higher than the average seen at the start of the year. Before finalizing shifts in consumption, November’s effective tariff rate was nearly 17% — seven times greater than January’s average and the highest seen since 1935.
Tariff revenue vs America’s trade deficit
Among selling points to justify his tariffs, Trump has repeatedly said they would reduce America’s longstanding trade deficit and bring revenue into the Treasury.
Trump’s higher tariffs are certainly raising money. They’ve raked in more than $236 billion this year through November — much more than in years past. But they still account for just a fraction of the federal government’s total revenue. And they haven’t raised nearly enough to justify the president’s claim that tariff revenue could replace federal income taxes — or allow for windfall dividend checks for Americans.
The U.S. trade deficit, meanwhile, has fallen significantly since the start of the year. The trade gap peaked to a monthly record of $136.4 billion in March, as consumers and businesses hurried to import foreign products before Trump could impose his tariffs on them. The trade gap narrowed to $52.8 billion in September, the latest month for which data is available. But the year-to-date deficit was still running 17% ahead of January-September 2024.
Import shifts with America’s biggest trading partners
Trump’s 2025 tariffs hit nearly every country in the world — including America’s biggest trading partners. But his policies have had the biggest impact on U.S. trade with China, once the biggest source of American imports and now No. 3 behind Canada and Mexico. U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports now come to 47.5%, according to calculations by Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The value of goods coming into the U.S. from China fell nearly 25% during the first three-quarters of the year. Imports from Canada also dropped. But the value of products from Mexico, Vietnam, and Taiwan grew year-to-date.
Market swings
For investors, the most volatile moments on the stock market this year arrived amid some of the most volatile moments for Trump’s tariffs.
The S&P 500, an index for the biggest public companies in the U.S., saw its biggest daily and weekly swings in April — and largest monthly losses and gains in March and June, respectively.
Top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration posted messages from their government accounts hailing Christmas in explicitly sectarian terms, such as a day to celebrate the birth of “our Savior Jesus Christ.”
The Department of Homeland Security posted three messages on social media Thursday and Friday, twice declaring, “Christ is Born!” and once stating, “We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior.” One DHS video posted on X displayed religious images, including Jesus, a manger and crosses.
The messages sharply diverged from the more secular, Santa Claus-and-reindeer style of Christmas messages that have been the norm for government agencies for years. The posts provided the latest example of the administration’s efforts to promote the cultural views and language of Trump’s evangelical Christian base.
That drew criticism from advocates of a strict separation of church and state.
Those social media posts are “one more example of the Christian Nationalist rhetoric the Trump administration has disseminated since Day One in office,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement. “Our Constitution’s promise of church-state separation has allowed religious diversity — including different denominations of Christianity — to flourish in America.
“People of all religions and none should not have to sift through proselytizing messages to access government information,” she added. “It’s divisive and un-American.”
Administration officials aggressively defended their approach. Asked about the Christmas morning post on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s official X account declaring, “Today we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson provided a one-sentence reply: “Merry Christmas to all, even the fake news Washington Post!”
Conservative Christians make up an important part of Trump’s political support, even as the country has become less Christian in recent decades.
The Pew Research Center’s most recent Religious Landscape Study, released earlier this year, found that 62% of Americans identify as Christian, a 16-point drop since 2007. The share of Americans who said they have no religion — including atheists, agnostics and those who say “nothing in particular” — was 29%, up from 16% in 2007. The share of the population following other religious traditions — Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others — has remained fairly constant, at around 6%.
Just under 1 in 4 Americans identify as evangelical Christians. But those evangelical voters play a central role in Trump’s electoral coalition. He won 81% of white evangelical voters in the 2024 election, according to a separate Pew study of voters. Those voters made up about 3 in 10 of his supporters in the election.
In 2015, as Trump campaigned for president, he told voters, “We’re going to be saying Merry Christmas again.” A decade later, officials in his second term have gone further in overtly seeking to align the administration with Christian advocacy in both language and action.
Most recently, on Thursday, Trump justified airstrikes against alleged Islamic State camps in northwestern Nigeria by saying he was aiming to “stop the slaughtering of Christians.” Nigerian officials said they approved of the strikes but said Trump was wrongly injecting religion into a situation that was primarily about terrorism.
How to celebrate Christmas while respecting the Constitution’s ban on “establishment of religion” has been an issue for federal officials at least since 1870 when President Ulysses S. Grant, seeking to unite the country after a brutal Civil War, designated Christmas — along with Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day — as federal holidays.
Government officials sought to balance the celebration of a federal holiday rooted in a religious tradition with the country’s tradition of pluralism and secular public spaces. The result was often a Christmas message that avoided specific references to Christianity. For decades, it was common for government officials on both sides of the aisle to share celebratory yet secular messages about Christmas with images that did not carry overt religious meanings, like snowflakes and Christmas trees.
Many still do. The State Department, for example, posted a secular Christmas message this year, directed at “all Americans.”
Many of the Trump administration’s officials who are most active on social media, however, took a different approach.
Just before 9 a.m. on Christmas Day, for example, Harmeet K. Dhillon, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, posted a message on X wishing “Christians nationwide” a happy holiday “celebrating the birth of Jesus!”
In the post was a video more than a minute long in which Dhillon said the department uses the principle of “religious liberty” and the First Amendment on “a daily basis to protect Christians.” She did not mention protecting other religions.
About two hours later, DHS’s official account posted on X that “we are blessed to share a nation and a Savior.” A video in the post began with text that said, “Remember the miracle of Christ’s birth,” followed by 90 seconds of religious images, including Jesus, Mary, and a manger, as well as several of Trump.
Just before 3 p.m. the department posted another message on X, stating, “Christ is Born!”
Hegseth posted his message around 8:30 a.m. Less than an hour later, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins posted a video on X in which she stood in front of a Christmas tree and said “the very best of the American spirit … flows from the very first Christmas, when God gave us the greatest gift possible: the gift of his son and our savior, Jesus Christ.”
Just after 10 a.m., Education Secretary Linda McMahon posted on X about how “we celebrate the birth of our Savior.” And just after 1 p.m., the Department of Labor wrote on X, “Let Earth Receive Her King.”
Representatives for the departments of Justice, Agriculture, Education, Labor and Homeland Security did not respond to questions about their posts.
Among the tens of thousands of Jeffrey Epstein files released so far by the Justice Department are documents that provide new details on one of the most discussed aspects of the case — his death in federal custody in 2019.
Epstein, who was indicted in July 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges, had been locked up in the now-closed Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York for five weeks when, on Aug. 10, at roughly 6:30 a.m., he was found dead in his cell.
He had been denied bail and, at age 66, was facing a potential 45-year sentence if convicted on all charges. The day before his death, federal judges in a separate civil lawsuit had unsealed 2,000 pages of records containing allegations of his sexual abuse of girls and young women.
Six days after his death, New York City’s chief medical examiner, Barbara Sampson, whose office had conducted an autopsy of Epstein’s body, issued a finding that he had hanged himself.
Ever since, a wide range of people, including members of Congress and some prominent supporters of President Donald Trump, have challenged that conclusion, asserting with no evidence that Epstein was killed and proffering theories about who might have done it.
The documents released so far provide no support for those theories. They do offer additional evidence for the conclusion reached by previous investigations — both by the Justice Department and media organizations — that jail officials failed to properly monitor Epstein even though they had previously put him on suicide watch.
Two jail staff members were charged after Epstein’s death with failing to watch him. Prosecutors said they slept through part of their shift, whiled away time shopping online and falsified log books to conceal their failure to conduct rounds every 30 minutes. They ultimately reached a deal to avoid trial. Jail officials also left Epstein alone in his cell, despite strict instructions not to do so.
In the early hours of July 23, 2019, a couple of weeks after Epstein arrived at the jail, workers found him semiconscious on the floor of his cell with a makeshift orange noose around his neck, according to an investigative report from the Federal Bureau of Prisons included in Monday’s batch of documents. That previous apparent suicide attempt had been widely reported, but the newly released documents provide new details.
The Bureau of Prisons did not respond to questions about Epstein’s confinement and death.
After struggling to stand him up, staff members put Epstein in hand and leg restraints and carried him out on a gurney, the report said. A medical assessment found redness and abrasions around his neck. Photos in the report, timestamped 1:45 a.m. and labeled “possible suicide attempt,” show a disheveled Epstein in a blue antisuicide smock, his skin faintly red above the collarbone.
Officials placed Epstein on suicide watch. An observation log from the morning of that apparent suicide attempt was also among the documents the Justice Department released this week. It shows handwritten notes from two staffers, entered at 15-minute intervals.
A note from 2:15 a.m. says Epstein “states his cellmate tried to kill him.” The investigative report also states that Epstein told an officer that his cellmate had “attempted to kill him and had been harassing him.”
At the time, Epstein was housed with Nicholas Tartaglione, a former police officer who was later convicted of a quadruple murder and sentenced to life in prison. Tartaglione and Epstein each said later that they did not have problems with each other, according to prison documents. Investigators did not find significant evidence that Tartaglione assaulted Epstein.
A 2:30 a.m. note in the suicide watch log reads: “inmate sitting on bed trying to remember what happened.” Later notes simply read, “inmate sitting on bed” and “inmate standing at door.”
Epstein told investigators in a July 31 interview that he hadn’t slept in “approximately 20 days,” according to the investigative report. He said he had woken up on the floor to the sound of snoring that turned out to be his own.
Tartaglione said he had been asleep on the cell floor when he felt something hit his foot, the report says. He awoke to see Epstein snoring with his eyes open and thought he was having a heart attack, according to the report.
Epstein appeared to recover quickly from the apparent suicide attempt, according to a Bureau of Prisons medical form filled out that morning. A healthcare provider noted that he was breathing normally, didn’t appear distressed and smiled during the visit. He declined to talk about what led to the incident, the document states, saying only that he “went to drink a little water and [woke] up snorting.”
A separate document appears to contain notes from an interview with a prison psychologist who observed Epstein over the following two weeks.
Epstein avoided questions about the incident, according to the notes, and said it was against his religion to kill himself. “E said he doesn’t like pain and didn’t want to hurt himself,” one bullet point read.
“No signs in logbooks showing suicidality, participating in legal meetings,” read another. Other notes indicate Epstein tried to avoid being transferred back to special housing.
Another logbook, dated July 24 through July 30, 2019, shows Epstein was allowed basic comforts while under psychological observation, including regular clothes, newspapers and magazines, books, legal mail, and a “safety toothbrush.” He made small talk with staffers about investment strategies and jail life, visited with lawyers, showered and slept, according to the logs.
The documents also contain correspondence from the same period between a prison associate warden and a Bureau of Prisons regional director who asked for daily updates on Epstein after his apparent suicide attempt.
A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson did not respond to a message seeking comment about those arrangements or other details in the correspondence.
Less than 48 hours after the apparent suicide attempt, the associate warden emailed the regional director to say that Epstein could face a disciplinary hearing for violating the prison’s prohibition on “self-mutilation.”
A doctor had “indicated that most likely he will be found competent because he is not mentally ill,” the email said. “We have supporting memorandums from the responding officers who indicated they observed inmate Epstein with a makeshift noose around his neck.”
Further emails from senders whose names are redacted appear to show prison officials tracking Epstein’s progress in the days leading up to his death in custody.
In a July 26 email, the prison’s chief psychologist indicated that a psychologist in the Bureau of Prisons headquarters in Washington “was concerned I stepped him down to psych obs rather than keeping him on SW,” probably referring to suicide watch.
“I gave my justification and feel it is appropriate, but I just want to make sure I still feel that way when he is interviewed today,” the email read.
Another exchange suggested that Epstein had spent “about 12 hours” with his attorney and had complained about being dehydrated because of limited bathroom breaks.
“He also complained about having to go back up to SHU,” the July 27 email read, referring to the special housing unit, which is used for inmates with psychiatric problems and those requiring extra monitoring.The sender added that Epstein was “anxious about it and not being able to sleep there because of the noise of inmates banging and screaming at night.”
An email dated the following morning read, “Inmate Epstein seems psychologically stable.”
Prison workers sent Epstein back to special housing on July 30.
Over the following days, Epstein’s lawyers wrote to prison officials with complaints about his conditions. They said he had no toilet paper, that his CPAP machine, used for sleep apnea, had been disconnected and that he had been allowed only two 15-minute calls on speaker phone with officers present, according to redacted emails.
On Aug. 10, prison staffers delivering Epstein’s breakfast found him unresponsive in his cell, documents show.
Since taking office for the second time, President Donald Trump has suffered multiple losses in his efforts to strip security clearances from political opponents and prestigious Washington law firms. With several of those cases working through the courts, the issue could become one of the next Supreme Court fights over presidential power.
The president’s latest loss came this week, when a federal judge in Washington temporarily blocked Trump’s efforts to strip a security clearance from national security attorney Mark Zaid. In 2019, Zaid represented the government whistleblower who accused Trump of trying to pressure Ukraine for damaging information about his political opponents. The accusations led to Trump’s first impeachment.
In his Tuesday order, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali found that Zaid was likely to succeed on his claim that revoking Zaid’s security clearance violated the attorney’s constitutional free speech and due process rights. The order notes that Trump has called Zaid a “sleazeball” and said the lawyer should be sued for treason.
“This case involves the government’s retribution against a lawyer because he represented whistleblowers and other clients who complained about the government,” wrote Ali, who was appointed by President Joe Biden.
The case should not have been difficult, Zaid said in an interview. “But it’s surrounded by all sorts of constitutional analysis because of the assertion by the Trump administration that it has the power to do anything it wants without any oversight whatsoever.”
He compared his situation — as well as Trump’s targeting of law firms more generally — to the line from William Shakespeare’s play Henry the VI, Part 2: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” The line, spoken by one of the play’s villains, is about subverting lawyers “fighting for rule of law,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case began with a March 22 presidential memorandum in which Trump revoked the security clearances of Zaid and 14 other individuals, saying that he had determined it was “no longer in the national interest” for the people to hold the clearances.
The individuals included Democrats such as Biden, former vice president Kamala Harris and former secretary of state Antony Blinken. It also included New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), whom Trump’s Justice Department has tried, and so far failed, to indict in a mortgage fraud case. The administration has also revoked clearances of 37 current and former national security officials.
This spring, Trump moved to summarily suspend the security clearances of several large Washington law firms that regularly do work for the government and have ties to his perceived political opponents. Trump argued that the law firms posed national security dangers to U.S. interests and said the firms’ diversity, equity. and inclusion policies resulted in “unlawful discrimination.”
Though some law firms cut deals with the administration to keep their clearances, others successfully sued to block the actions.
This year, federal judges in Washington blocked the administration’s attempts to suspend security clearances from the law firms Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, WilmerHale, and Perkins Coie. In each case, the judges found that the orders were retaliatory and violated the firms’ constitutional free speech rights.
In the case of Jenner & Block, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates wrote that the president was trying “to chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the Executive Branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers.”
The administration has appealed those cases and, depending on the outcomes in the court of appeals, the issue could be decided by the Supreme Court. The high court has heard a number of cases concerning presidential power this term, and it’s unclear how it would rule.
Should his case reach the Supreme Court, Zaid said the issue could transcend judicial ideology. No matter which way they lean, the justices “recognize the importance and role that lawyers play in society,” he said. “And what the Trump administration is doing with clearance revocations … is a direct attack on our ability to enforce exactly what judges enforce: the rule of law.”
Top Nigerian officials said Friday that U.S. attacks in the country on what President Donald Trump called “ISIS Terrorist Scum” could mark the opening salvo in a campaign against militant groups there. But security analysts warned that Trump administration officials appeared to be stepping into a complex, long-running conflict that they may not fully understand.
Trump has in recent months repeatedly warned that he would intervene in Nigeria — which is afflicted by widespread violence — if the killing of Christians does not stop. He made good on that promise Thursday, announcing “numerous perfect strikes” on Christmas night and promising more if the “slaughter of Christians continues.”
Western and Nigerian security analysts said the attacks marked the first time in decades that the United States had launched such strikes in Nigeria, a country of more than 230 million people split about equally between Muslims and Christians. The analysts said that violence, particularly by Islamist militants in the north, has sometimes targeted Christians but that Muslims have also been affected.
Neither Trump nor the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) specified exactly who was killed in the strikes, which both the U.S. and Nigeria’s government said were conducted with the approval of Nigeria’s government. Daniel Bwala, an adviser to Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, said the strikes on Thursday marked only the beginning. Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister Yusuf Tuggar told Nigerian broadcaster Channels Television that his country provided intelligence to the U.S. for the strikes and that cooperation was ongoing.
“There will be more, I can assure you of that,” he told the Washington Post in an interview Friday. “This is part of our struggle against insecurity.”
Trump, as he has done repeatedly in recent months, specifically cited violence against Christians in his Christmas night post on Truth Social, declaring that he had previously warned “these terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay.”
Bwala said that while Nigeria welcomed the U.S. assistance, the government disputed Trump’s claim that Christians were being disproportionately targeted. Sokoto State, where the strikes took place, is a primarily Muslim area.
Analysts said the violence in northwest Nigeria is carried out by a combination of Islamist militants and bandits. Much of the violence in Sokoto in recent years, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), is attributable to a group called Lakurawa. Some analysts, including those with ACLED, link that group to the Islamic State, while others say Lakurawa is affiliated with the rival al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).
Analysts said that U.S. officials seem more focused on their preferred narrative in Washington than on the complex reality on the ground.
“It’s politically convenient,” said Mustapha Alhassan, a security analyst who has worked extensively in northwest Nigeria, referring to Trump’s framing of the strikes. He said that while it is clear there is increasing violence by Lakurawa, the group is more likely linked to al-Qaeda than the Islamic State.
“Nigerians would welcome the help if it was hitting precise targets,” he said. “But that doesn’t seem to be what is happening. All of this is to what end?”
James Barnett, a Nigeria specialist based between Lagos and Britain, said that much remains uncertain about the impact of the strikes and the future of military cooperation between the United States and Nigeria.
“If this is the start of a shift in U.S. policy toward Nigeria, there are a lot of potential challenges and risks, including in terms of how these operations are framed,” he said. “The symbolism of Christmas is hard to miss … there is a clear political angle to it.”
He said it was significant, though unsurprising, that it was Trump, rather than Nigerian officials, who first announced the strikes. Historically, he noted, Nigeria’s government has not welcomed U.S. strikes because of concerns about the country’s sovereignty.
In the typically quiet village of Jabo in northwest Nigeria, three residents said in interviews Friday they were left confused by a strike in their area, which they said had not been especially affected by violence.
“We don’t have any bandits’ camp near our area,” said Sama’ila Mustapha.
He recounted seeing a light and then hearing a loud bang late on Thursday night. Mustapha said he then followed a crowd of people to an onion field just outside of town near a hospital. He and two other residents said there were no casualties.
“We thought it’s a missile or an aircraft,” said another resident, Abdulrahman Mainasara. “God was so kind it landed on the outskirts, in an open place.”
When Raelyn Scholl returned to work after having a baby, it was with a peace of mind foreign to many parents in the United States: She knew her son had a spot in daycare, and for only $400 a month.
That’s because Scholl’s employer, a family-owned Missouri pharmacy, runs a daycare for its workers and subsidizes the cost of childcare. It is “a huge blessing” for Scholl, 25, and her husband, who didn’t have to worry about searching for childcare — the average monthly cost of which is more than $1,200 across U.S. metropolitan areas — during the pregnancy.
Now, more Missouri employers will be able to help their workers pay for childcare thanks to a new state-funded program, approved by lawmakers in May and launched last month. Through the initiative, employers can sign up to offer childcare benefits to workers. The cost is split among the state, parents, and employers, who can claim a tax break.
In Missouri and elsewhere, a growing acknowledgment of the economic and labor concerns related to childcare has fueled political momentum for state-backed initiatives to help parents and providers. Lawmakers in about two dozen states passed new childcare programs this year, often backed by business leaders concerned with recruiting and retaining workers.
Scholl’s boss in southeastern Missouri, Abe Funk, is among the business owners who arguethat childcare is important for a healthy economy. Funk, who is one of the first employers taking part in the new state program, believes that others who sign up will see the same outcome he did when he began footing part of his workers’ childcare bill: better employee retention, happier families and more workers in the labor force.
“A lack of childcare impacts every aspect of the economy,” said Funk, who owns John’s Pharmacy in Cape Girardeau with his wife, Emily, and has five children. “Think of how many people want to work and can’t because they can’t afford childcare. … If they can get childcare, then they can get off the sidelines.”
Across the nation, rising childcare costs and a shortage of spots are squeezing families and pushing parents, especially mothers, out of the workforce. Meanwhile, providers struggle with low wages and high operating costs. Congress allocates some money to childcare annually, but advocates say a much greater investment is needed to solve the system’s problems, and federal cuts to Medicaid and other programs are poised to squeeze state budgets further.
Tens of thousands of children are on voucher waiting lists in states such as Florida and Texas, and other states have frozen such programs. Providershave also shut down: In more than half of states, fewer childcare programs were running in 2024 compared with 2023, according to an analysis by the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank. In Indiana, 10,000 spots are projected to be lost to closures by August, according to one estimate.
That has presented a “mixed bag” for states when it comes to childcare funding — some are in crisis while others are innovating, said Anne Hedgepeth, senior vice president of policy and research at childcare Aware, a national nonprofit.
Though state-level initiatives are limited in scope and cannot fix the nation’s shortage of 4 million childcare spots alone, advocates hope the programs will prompt future investment.
At least 11 states this year allocated millions to subsidy or voucher programs that give families money to pay for childcare. Others approved funding aimed at helping childcare operators, increasing the number of available spots, creating new funding streams for childcare or establishing public-private partnerships such as Missouri’s cost-sharing program.
A $100 million project announced this month in New York will build and expand childcare facilities, aiming to create thousands of new spots. Wisconsin will use $110 million for payments to help childcare providers stay in business, while Oklahoma lawmakers created a subsidy program for childcare employees. New Mexico became the first U.S. state to enact universal childcare, using state oil and gas revenue as funding.
“We have seen more states invest their own dollars in childcare over the last five years than ever before,” said Julie Kashen, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. “We have seen it in red, blue, and purple states. That’s a big deal.”
Momentum around the issue began to mount in the late 2010s, and the strain on the childcare system during the pandemic brought further attention to the need for reform, said Sarah Rittling, executive director of the First Five Years Fund, a national nonprofit. Now, “as we’re having these conversations about cost and affordability” in American life, she said, “you can’t get away from the role childcare plays in that.”
In Ohio, an understanding of childcare as an economic issue and interest from business leaders and chambers of commerce have represented a big win, said Kara Wente, director of the Ohio Department of Children and Youth.
Researchers there found in a May report that the state economy loses $5.48 billion per year because insufficient childcare coverage is keeping parents out of the labor force. In a 2024 statewide survey, 49% of parents said they had to cut back their work hours because of a lack of childcare, and 61% of nonworking mothers with children 5 or younger said they would work if they had access to high-quality, affordable childcare.
“That really resonates when employers are struggling to find enough individuals to fill their positions,” Wente said. “It really changed the conversation, and we’ve had a lot of employers and chambers come to the table.”
The legislature approved funding for a cost-sharing program, similar to Missouri’s, which is now in the process of starting up. State Republicans, touting the program launch, said supporting working families will help businesses retain employees.
That perspective was also at work in Montana, where lawmakers this spring succeeded in adding a childcare component to an infrastructure bill. The state will use a budget surplus to seed a childcare trust with $10 million, which will grow with interest. The governor this month named an advisory board that will determine how to use the funds.
State Sen. Laura Smith (D), who pushed for the legislation, said she saw the bill’s approval as a reflection of the growing understanding of the issue, particularly as Montana businesses suffer from an unstable workforce. As she talked to Senate colleagues about childcare “as an infrastructure issue,” she said it was “one of the first times in the last seven years” that the idea resonated.
“I think the quiet work that caregivers do is becoming more visible,” she said. “It’s become more of a crisis and it’s touching more people — including legislators and their families.”
In Missouri, Funk said he didn’t understand the impact of childcare on the economy until he saw it firsthand at the pharmacy. Only 3% of the state’s counties have enough childcare for infants and toddlers, meaning almost the entire state is considered a “desert” — for every spot available, there are more than three infants or toddlers who could need one.
The cost-sharing initiative was created out of two years of meetings with communities and data analysis led by Kids Win Missouri, a nonprofit. Its success leaned heavily on collaboration between business leaders, chambers of commerce and childcare advocates, plus support from the governor, Republican Mike Kehoe, said Robin Phillips, chief executive of childcare Aware of Missouri, an early-childhood education nonprofit that is helping launch the program.
The program uses a sliding scale based on workers’ incomes, with the employer and state pots covering the remaining costs for each enrolled child. Employers have an additional incentive to participate since a tax credit that Congress expanded this year will reimburse a larger chunk of their costs.
Demand for the program, called childcare Works, has already outpaced the capacity of about 287 seats allowed by the $2.5 million in funding allocated by the state, said Brian Schmidt, executive director of Kids Win Missouri. Within the next month, the first employers that have signed up are slated to start offering the benefit, Schmidt said. He and other proponents hope that the program will grow over time, particularly if it becomes popular with employers, and that it could be a model for other states.
“It’s really exciting,” Schmidt said. “It’s really cool to see something come to fruition.”
Even as Taylor Swift racked up every accolade during her early music career, she received the message loud and clear: Show business has little use for women above a certain age.
At 22, she wrote Nothing New about her fear of aging into irrelevancy, imagining a radiant 17-year-old ingenue ready to take her place. Seven years later, Swift expanded on these anxieties in her Miss Americana documentary. “Women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time they’re 35,” she said, bemoaning the culture’s impossible standards for maturing women. The pop superstar figured her time was almost up.
“As I’m reaching 30, I’m like, ‘I want to work really hard while society is still tolerating me being successful,’” she told the camera.
Now, just turned 36, Swift has released The End of an Era on Disney+, a six-part docuseries that chronicled the behind-the-scenes of her 2023-2024 Eras Tour. Between glimpses of the intensive effort that it took to stage 149 sold-out stadium shows across the world, Swift and her colleagues offered theories about how and why it became the highest-grossing tour in history, breaking records and boosting local economies whenever it visited a new city.At one point, Swift put it in the context of her legacy as an artist, saying that the tour “will live on as probably the pinnacle, foremost important thing that I’ve done” — and again zeroed in on ageism.
“I get very depressed about pop culture’s obsession with youth culture, and [how] we designate extremely young people to be the ones who have to tell us where culture is going,” Swift saysin the final episode, which was released Tuesday. “And then the idea that an artist had, in my case, the privilege of developing to the point where you’re in your 30s and you do know yourself a bit more and then you were able to make the thing that they’ll know you for: There’s something very special about that.”
Although showbiz has plenty of stars well past their 30s still producing relevant work, it’s no surprise that Swift internalized the lessons as she saw female pop stars getting older and subsequently mocked for the way they look or torn apart by the internet for myriad reasons.
But Swift is now in a rarefied spot as she embarks on the third decade of her career, having just closed the books on her self-described peak. And it seems like the astronomical success of the tour, an anomaly that even took her by surprise, may have soothed some of those fears. Because Swift has made it very clear over the last several months: She’s not going anywhere.
This messaging started in earnest this fall while promoting her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, which she announced on her fiancé Travis Kelce’s podcast. Unlike herother recent album releases, Swift hit the TV and radio promotional circuit, sitting down with more than a dozen interviewers in America and the United Kingdom. On BBC Radio 2, host Scott Mills noted that some of her fans were concerned that Swift would soon get married and have children and never make an album again.
Swift looked taken aback. “That’s a shockingly offensive thing to say,” she said, as Mills quickly backtracked and assured her that fans were just panicking. “It’s not why people get married, so that they can quit their job. … I love the person that I am with because he loves what I do and he loves how much I am fulfilled by making art and making music.”
The singer admitted that she was enjoying a break after two exhausting years of 3½-hour concerts; she recoiled when one host asked if she was planning another tour soon. But she emphasized in interviews that she doesn’t do well when her mind is on autopilot, explaining that she recorded The Life of the Showgirl on her few days off from the tour during summer 2024, when she started to feel like she could perform the show in her sleep and needed something to stimulate the creative part of her brain.
So this is not someone who is looking to just sit around, even if she feels pressure from society to step aside. Swift communicates as much in the album’s title track, about the surreal challenges of life in the public eye, and sneeringly sings at rivals who she believes wish she would “hurry up and die.”
“I’m immortal now, baby dolls,” she croons, “I couldn’t if I tried.”
Recently, during an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, she was even more straightforward after the late-night host asked her who she could possibly turn to for career advice. Swift named Fleetwood Mac legend Stevie Nicks and her longtime collaborator, producer Max Martin, and then talked about how she admires people who are constantly evolving.
“I think there are certain corners of our society that really love that and look up to longevity. There’s also corners that are like, ‘Give someone else a turn. Can’t you just go away so we can talk about how good you were?!’” Swift said. “And I’m like — I don’t want to.”
It’s possible Swift was calling out the criticism she’s received in the wake of The Life of a Showgirl, which sold 4 million copies in its first week, shattering records to become the highest-selling album debut since the invention of sales tracking technology. But factions of the internet weren’t pleased that she partially achieved that record by selling quite a few variants of physical CDs, digital versions, and vinyl, some arguing that completist fans buying multiple versions to reflect every format unfairly inflate her numbers. Even her loyal fandom broke out in contentious debates over the quality of the album, which earned mixed reviews from critics, with some Swifties disappointed by what they saw as less-than-introspective songwriting.
The singer seemed to address this during an Apple Music interview, telling Zane Lowe that she welcomed the “chaos” of the initial reactions to the record, and she respected people’s “subjective opinions on art.” Plus, she pointed out, at least people were talking about her.
“The rule of show business is if it’s the first week of my album release and you are saying either my name or my album title, you’re helping,” she said.
Swift has made no secret that she takes criticism about her music to heart, and that she used to let it guide her instincts about her music. Now, after seeing the heights she could achieve — even as (gasp!) a 30-something woman — it appears that she might be ready to start letting all that go. During one radio interview, in which the host fretted that he offended her years ago with a joke about her sweaty appearance after a concert on a hot day, she reassured him that she’s more secure than that.
“People don’t need to bubble wrap me in their minds as much as they do,” Swift said. “I’m a pretty tough broad.”
Swift may have to take even more in stride next year, given that she will almost surely dominate global news with her upcoming wedding to Kelce. While she has repeatedly maintained on this press tour that she doesn’t check social media, her immense stardom means that she can’t escape knowing what people think about her. Near the conclusion of the End of an Era docuseries, she argued that the phenomenal success of the tour also reflected how she happened to fit into the culture at the time. Luck, in other words.
“There’s times, these very rare instances, where you make something and the wind is at your back,” Swift said. “Somehow culture and timing, and whatever mood there is out in the world about you that you can’t control, all lines up for this to go well.”
The film ends on a very deliberate message. After a sequence of text recapping recent milestones and measures of Swift’s achievements comes a final one:
“On October 3, 2025 Taylor released her 12th studio album The Life of a Showgirl, the biggest album of her career.”
A man accused of fatally shooting a Delaware State Police trooper at a DMV office allowed customers to leave and then fired at approaching officers before being killed, investigators said Friday.
State Police Cpl. Matthew Snook was working an overtime assignment at the New Castle DMV reception desk on Tuesday afternoon when Rahman Rose entered as a customer, approached him from behind, and shot him with a handgun, state police said in a news release.
Rose, 44, of Wilmington, continued firing at the trooper, who pushed a DMV employee out of the way and told them to run, investigators said. Rose then allowed customers to leave but fired multiple rounds at law enforcement as they approached the building.
A New Castle county police officer shot Rose through a window from outside the building. Rose later died at a hospital.
Snook, who went by “Ty,” was a 10-year veteran of the state police force. On Wednesday, members of the community lined roadways and displayed messages of gratitude as a procession of troopers, police officers and firefighters escorted his body from the state medical examiner’s office to a funeral home.
William Crotty, superintendent of the Delaware State Police, said the outpouring of support served as a reminder that Snook’s service and sacrifice will not be forgotten.
The shooting remains under investigation, and authorities have asked witnesses or others with relevant information to contact detectives.
