The question: Is red wine healthier than white wine?
The science: Many people think red wine is better for youthan white wineor other types of alcohol.
The notion was partly born from studies — some of which have been disputed — that suggested that certain compounds found in red wine could improve cardiovascular health.
Now the evidence suggests that any type of alcohol — including red wine — is unlikely to make you any healthier than drinking no alcohol at all.
“There’s no isolated health benefit of red wine over white wine over any other beverage containing alcohol,” said George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. And, he added, “There’s no physical health benefits of which we can attribute to alcohol.”
While it’s long been known that heavy alcohol consumption can cause serious health problems, the potential benefits and risks of moderate drinking — defined as up to two drinks per day for men and one for women — have been murkier. In the past, some research suggested that people who drank small amounts of alcohol in general might have a health advantage compared with those who didn’t drink at all.
But as research has evolved over the years, we nowknow that even modest drinking is linked to a higher risk of developing certain cancers such as breast, colorectal, and esophageal cancers, as well as brain changes and dementia, heart problems, and sleep problems.
Dietary guidance has also changed. Current guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture state that “emerging evidence suggests that even drinking within the recommended limits may increase the overall risk of death from various causes.” The American Heart Association recommends limiting or abstaining from alcohol, even though the association published a scientific review in 2025 that concluded that light drinking poses no risk for coronary artery disease, stroke, sudden death, and possibly heart failure, and may even reduce the risk of developing such conditions — though not all experts agreed with that conclusion.
The argument in favor of red wine used to focus on certain compounds.
Red wine contains more polyphenols — plant compounds with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties — because the grape juice is fermented with the grape skins, where these compounds are concentrated. (White wine grapes are pressed, and the skins removed, before the fermentation process.)
These polyphenols include procyanidins, flavonoids, and resveratrol, which is often mentioned in cancer research.Another type, anthocyanins, helps give red wine its rich color and has been studied for potential cardiovascular benefits.
Most of the health benefits associated with these polyphenols have been observed in studies at much higher doses than what you would get from a couple glasses of wine, so there’s no real advantage,experts said.
“The concentrations are sufficiently low that you would have to drink more than moderate amounts to truly get that much more benefit from the polyphenols in red wine,” which could lead to health issues, said Eric Rimm, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who has studied the health effects of alcohol.
Instead, you could add stronger sources of anthocyanins into your diet, including darker berries such as blueberries, apples, onions, black or green tea, and dark chocolate, Rimm said.
As for other risks and benefits, some people may avoid red wine because it can stain teeth and cause headaches and even allergy-like symptoms. Whilered wine headaches are not fully understood, some people may be especially sensitive to the tannins in the grapes, histamines, or sulfites produced through fermentation, or the additional sulfites added to preserve wine. Some research suggests quercetin, an antioxidant found in grapes, may be responsible.
In one study, people who had a wine intolerance were more likely to report allergy-like symptoms such as nasal congestion, itching, flushed skin, and stomach upset more often after drinking red wine than white wine.
What else you should know
While drinking alcohol probably won’t lead to any positive health effects, you may be able to reduce potential negative effects by how you drink it.
First, speak with your healthcare provider about whether drinking alcohol is safe for you.People who are pregnant, have certain medical conditions, take medications that interact with alcohol, or have or are recovering from an alcohol-use disorder should not drink, according to USDA. Also, teetotalers, people who don’t already drink, should not start drinking for any health reasons, health officials said.
Assuming you’re of legal drinking age — 21 years or older in the United States — here are some tips from experts:
Eat first. Food, particularly foods with some protein, fats, and carbohydrates, slows the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream, reducing potential ill effects.
Understand drink sizes. A standard alcoholic drink has 0.6 ounces of pure alcohol. That’s equal to 5 ounces of wine with 12% alcohol, 12 ounces of beer with 5% alcohol, or a shot — 1.5 ounces — of an 80-proof liquor. When buying alcohol at a store, check the alcohol content. “Beer used to be 4 or 5% alcohol. There are a lot of beers now that are 8 to 10%. So you may want to drink a little bit less if you have a higher alcohol-containing beer or a higher alcohol-containing spirit,” Rimm said.
Keep in mind that men and women may process alcohol differently. Women generally don’t produce as much of an alcohol-metabolizing enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, which means they break down alcohol more slowly and are at a higher risk of alcohol-related health problems.
Drink in moderation, which is defined as up to two drinks per day for men and one for women.Also, space out drinks throughout the week — meaning don’t drink all 7 or 14 drinks in one weekend.
The bottom line
While red wine has more polyphenols, which are associated with cardiovascular benefits, than white wine, they aren’t in a high enough concentration to provide a health advantage. In addition, red wine may be more likely than white wine to cause headaches and allergy-like symptoms in people who are susceptible.
The landscape for financial aid is about to change.
In 2026, the federal government will curb access to billions of dollars in student loans, reconfigure how borrowers repay their debt, and provide new grant money for short-term career training programs.
All of these changes are slated to take effect in July and are the result of the One Big Beautiful Bill signed into law in summer. The financial aid provisions in the law, which extend tax cuts from President Donald Trump’s first term, will affect how families pay for higher education. Since November, the Education Department has been negotiating the terms of the policies with a panel of experts, as required by Congress. Terms for the new rules will be finalized early this year, with few anticipated changes.
While some higher-education experts say the changes will deliver commonsense reforms, others worry they could discourage college enrollment and persistence. Either way, students entering college in fall 2026 will encounter a very different federal financial aid system.
Here’s what you need to know.
Student loan limits
In one of the largest revisions to federal student loan policy in decades, the Education Department will impose new caps on the amount of money graduate students and parents can borrow from the government.
The Grad Plus program, which lets students borrow up to the full cost of attendance to pay for graduate degrees, will sunset on July 1 for new borrowers. At the same time, people pursuing a master’s degree will have their borrowing capped at $20,500 a year and $100,000 over a lifetime. Those working toward a professional degree — say, an aspiring doctor or lawyer — will be capped at $50,000 a year and $200,000 in total from the federal government.
In all, students will now face a lifetime maximum borrowing limit of $257,500 for undergraduate and graduate school federal loans combined. If those amounts are not enough to cover costs, students will have to pay the rest themselves or turn to private lenders.
The distinction between graduate and professional degree programs has been a lightning rod for controversy. Nurses and others have railed against the Education Department’s proposal to exclude their fields from the higher loan limits. They worry the agency’s move to restrict the professional degree classification to 11 fields will discourage people from enrolling in other advanced degree programs.
The proposal must still be published for public comment before it can be finalized, which allows its detractors to fight for a broader classification.
Researchers say a substantial number of students pursuing master’s degrees will be affected by the new limits. An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that one-third of graduate students with federal loans have borrowed more than the new limits will allow. Research from the Postsecondary Education & Economics Research at American University found that students in professional programs are more likely to borrow in excess of the new limit.
Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said she suspects that many people will be caught off guard by the new constraints on graduate borrowing, and she said colleges are not doing enough to prepare.
“There could be a private-sector solution that covers the gap,” Akers said. “But I suspect that the coordination that’s necessary for that to happen by next fall will probably not happen.”
There have been a lot of conversations among schools about offering institutional loans to help graduate students in need, said Scott Z. Goldschmidt, a partner at the law firm Thompson Coburn who works with higher-education clients. He said colleges are also exploring private loan alternatives and trying to identify scholarship opportunities.
Limits on parents
While the tax bill left undergraduate loan limits intact, it will affect how much parents can borrow to support students working toward an associate’s or bachelor’s degree.
Parents and caregivers could previously take out as much as their child needed to attend college through the Parent Plus program, which is designed as a supplement when other types of student aid have been exhausted. Starting July 1, the program will set new limits of $20,000 a year, or a total of $65,000 per student.
Because relatively few families use Parent Plus loans, researchers at the think tank Urban Institute estimate that the new limits will affect just 2% of students. Still, among families who rely on the loans, nearly a third will be affected by the annual cap, and 17% will run up against the $65,000-per-child total cap.
“It will have a significant impact on a small number of people, and it will be people who we’re particularly concerned about, like disadvantaged populations who tend to use those resources the most,” Akers said.
She hopes that colleges will provide more financial aid to lower the cost for students.
Current borrowers are exempt from both of the new caps for three years.
Fewer repayment plans
The federal student loan repayment system is notoriously complex, with a multitude of options and terms that can be difficult to navigate. Instead of having seven repayment plans, new borrowers will have just two options after July 1: one standard plan and one new income-driven repayment (IDR) plan, called the Repayment Assistance Plan.
The new standard plan will stretch monthly payments out from 10 to 25 years. The larger the debt, the longer the repayment term. Someone with an outstanding principal of less than $25,000 will repay the debt for no more than 10 years, while a borrower with more than $100,000 in federal loans will be in repayment for up to 25 years.
Payments on the new income-driven plan will be based on a borrower’s total adjusted gross income, ranging from 1% to 10% depending on earnings. The plan cancels the remaining balance after 30 years of payments, instead of the current 20 or 25 years.
Borrowers have to make a minimum monthly payment of $10. Those who make timely monthly payments will have their unpaid interest waived to prevent negative amortization, which happens when payments are not enough to cover the principal and interest. The plan also provides a monthly subsidy of up to $50 to ensure borrowers pay down their principal balance by at least that amount.
An analysis from American University suggests that the principal subsidy could result in faster loan forgiveness for low-income, low-balance borrowers. Still, researchers said they worry that higher payments and a longer time before forgiveness for many low-income borrowers is likely to increase the rate of loan defaults.
People who are currently repaying their loans can remain in any of the three existing plans that are not tied to income. Current borrowers on an income-driven plan can stay put until July 1, 2028, at which time they can switch to RAP or the original Income Based option. That income-based plan will give Parent Plus borrowers, who are barred from the new IDR plan, a repayment option tied to their earnings.
There are some complications in consolidating the repayment plans. Congress gave borrowers enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education plan three years to exit, but a proposed settlement could speed up the timeline. The Education Department struck a deal in December with seven states to resolve a lawsuit challenging the legality of the Biden-era repayment plan. The agency stressed that enrollees would have a limited time to find another option to repay their debt, but it has not provided an explicit timeline.
“Given what we’ve seen with folks not being able to enroll in plans and being stuck in a backlog … I’m really concerned there’s going to be even more chaos and confusion,” said Michele Zampini, associate vice president of federal policy and advocacy at the Institute for College Access & Success.
Other student advocates worry about whether the Education Department will have revamped the repayment system to reflect all of the changes in time for the graduating class of 2026.
People entering repayment for the first time will need an updated loan simulator, for instance, to select the best repayment plan, said Melanie Storey, president and chief executive of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. Although newly minted graduates have a six-month grace period before repayment kicks in, she said colleges need to start communicating to students about their options long before then.
“We need information and we need clarity,” Storey said. “My members are the people on the ground who have to answer questions for students, and I’m concerned that given the schedule, we won’t have answers until well into the spring.”
Pell Grant eligibility
There are some significant changes ahead for the Pell Grant, the largest federal grant program for low- and middle-income college students. Chief among them is the expansion of the program to include students enrolling in career training programs that range from eight to 15 weeks in duration. Those programs, which are mainly offered at community and technical colleges, must provide at least 600 hours of instruction.
In December, the Education Department reached a consensus with negotiators on the framework of the policy, dubbed Workforce Pell. The proposal must still be published and finalized, but higher-education experts expect few, if any, changes. It calls for governors to work with state advisory boards to determine program eligibility, with a focus on courses that are in high-demand fields such as nursing aides or emergency medical technicians.
Other new policies could change the number of students eligible for Pell Grants. This summer, the Education Department will exclude assets from family farms, small businesses, and family-owned commercial fisheries from the calculation of the Student Aid Index, or SAI — a figure used to determine a student’s ability to pay for college and the amount of aid they receive.
And some people may no longer be able to get a Pell Grant. The Education Department will begin including foreign income in the calculation of a student’s Pell eligibility, which could reduce eligibility. Furthermore, anyone who receives enough scholarship dollars to cover their full cost of attendance will no longer be eligible to receive Pell.
Students will also be ineligible if their families have lots of assets but appear to have little income in the calculation of SAI. A student previously could qualify for Pell despite their family having a lot of assets if their parents generated business losses that lowered their adjusted gross income. Starting July 1, an SAI that is equal to or exceeds twice the amount of the maximum Pell award will be disqualifying.
After a year of rolling policy shocks, the U.S. economy is set to get a lift from President Donald Trump’s tax-cuts package to keep the expansion on track in 2026.
American taxpayers will get bigger refunds in the first half of this year as a result of Trump’s signature bill, economists say, with estimates for the aggregate boost ranging from $30 billion to $100 billion. Incentives for companies to invest in plants and equipment are also likely to bolster growth while lower borrowing costs, and steadier trade policy should help too.
Still, forecasters see grounds for caution. Any burst of consumer spending from Trump’s fiscal stimulus is expected to fade as the year goes on, while tariffs will continue to weigh on small businesses especially. Unemployment is on the rise, as are concerns about affordability and inequality. The AI boom may not deliver the kind of broad-based growth its advocates promise, and the U.S. attack on Venezuela shows the potential for geopolitical instability.
Adding it all up, economists surveyed by Bloomberg in mid-December expected growth of 2% in 2026 — the same as their forecast for 2025. That would likely be enough to extend America’s streak of outperforming its developed-world peers, though it’s a modest pace by past U.S. standards.
“2026 is shaping up to be a decent year — not a boom, not a bust, just solid trend growth,” said Olu Sonola, head of U.S. economic research at Fitch Ratings.
Federal Reserve officials were slightly more optimistic than Wall Street at their meeting last month, penciling in an increase of 2.3% in gross domestic product this year. The central bank’s economic staff cited fiscal policy, easier financial conditions, and a dissipation of the tariff impact as growth drivers through 2028, minutes of the meeting released recently show.
The world’s largest economy weathered the shocks of 2025 better than most pundits predicted. After an initial slump driven by tariff front-running, growth bounced right back — and unexpectedly accelerated to 4.3% in the third quarter, according to numbers eventually published on Dec. 23 after a long delay due to the government shutdown.
“President Trump’s economic agenda unleashed historic job, wage, and economic growth in his first term,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. “The Trump administration is implementing this same agenda of rapid deregulation, working-class tax cuts, full equipment expensing, and energy abundance — accelerating GDP growth and trillions in investment commitments are proof that the best is yet to come in President Trump’s second term.”
‘Helps us invest’
Trump’s legislation extended income-tax reductions and added new exemptions for tips and overtime pay. Refunds will average $300 to $1,000 more than in a typical year, according to the Tax Foundation. In aggregate, economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. anticipate an extra $100 billion for consumers in the first half, while Citigroup Inc. put the figure at $30 billion to $50 billion.
A longer-lasting impact will likely come from business incentives, some economists say.
Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, expects the fiscal package to lift GDP by 0.3% this year. He says some elements of the bill, like cuts in Medicaid and food-aid programs, will be a drag on growth — but reckons they’ll be outweighed by others including higher defense and border-enforcement spending, and measures to help businesses deduct the cost of investments.
Among those anticipating a boost is Gat Caperton, who runs furniture-maker Gat Creek in West Virginia.
“It helps us invest in our business,” Caperton said. “There’s really good high-end technology equipment that’s very competitive and very productive for us. And we will spend aggressively to buy that type of material.”
‘Faster gear’
Investments like these and the Fed’s easing of monetary policy will cushion a slowing job market, according to Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. The unemployment rate rose to 4.6% in November, the highest in more than four years, and economists predict it will average 4.5% this year.
“Labor demand should shift into a faster gear by mid-year as businesses increase investment in response to lower interest rates and tax incentives,” Bostjancic said.
Fed policymakers including Chair Jerome Powell have said inflation linked to higher tariffs will likely be a one-off and eventually fade. Still, the cost of living was a major issue in November’s off-year elections, where Trump’s Republicans suffered losses. Companies remain concerned about tariffs and are projecting price increases of more than 3% in 2026, according to one recent survey.
Jonathan Echeverry’s coffee business in Montclair, N.J., had to pay out an additional $150,000 in tariffs on beans, packaging, and other imports — just as his customers are becoming choosier in their spending.
“People are opting to buy beans to brew at home rather than to buy beverages,” said Echeverry, who co-owns Paper Plane Coffee Co. “I doubt this year will be better.”
Most forecasters anticipate a quieter year on the trade policy front compared with the chaos of 2025 — but there’s plenty of uncertainty still. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the legitimacy of some of Trump’s import taxes. The president has floated the prospect of $2,000 tariff rebate checks, which would offer another boost to growth — and further pressure on the U.S. budget deficit.
AI spillovers
Another unknown is artificial intelligence. The rush to build and equip data centers helped lift business investment in 2025, and the AI-led equity boom amplified the purchasing power of wealthier Americans, but there’s also concern that the technology will replace human workers.
There’s a disconnect between multibillion-dollar announcements of new data centers and the amount of hiring they generate, according to Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
“It’s not creating as many jobs as the big nominal numbers might imply and that’s in contrast to past capex booms,” he said. “Labor demand continues to look soft, and that leaves us worried about downside risks.”
BOGOTÁ— Two days after publicly weighing an invasion of Colombia, President Donald Trump appeared to call it off on Wednesday night.
He said he had spoken to an erstwhile nemesis, Colombian President Gustavo Petro. Trump had previously called Petro a “drug leader” who “better watch his ass.” But after the Wednesday night call, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “I appreciated his call and tone.” The two men agreed to meet in Washington.
It was the most recent jolt to one of the Western Hemisphere’s closest relationships. Days earlier, when Trump said that invading Colombia “sounds good to me,” he was threatening to attack a top recipient of U.S. military assistance.
On Thursday morning, as tensions appeared to ease, Petro reflected on the call, which he said in an X post was brokered by Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) and lasted for 55 minutes.
“I know that President Trump doesn’t agree with me, but it’s more convenient to start a dialogue … than to settle it on battlefields,” he wrote.
No country in Latin America has a closer partnership with the Pentagon. The two countries share intelligence daily; U.S. military liaisons are fixtures in Colombia’s Defense Ministry; and the United States has vetted specialized units within Colombia’s military and police, according to past statements by both governments.
Yet, as the relationship between Trump and Petro deteriorated, the countries found themselves in the bizarre position of historic partners whose leaders were acting as if preparing for war.
In the wake of the U.S. seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, analysts and Colombian officials said they couldn’t entirely discount Trump’s threats to Colombia, even though they seemed profoundly unlikely. Trump called Petro a “sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it.”
In response, Petro said he was preparing his “people” to defend him “from any illegitimate violent act.” A former rebel, he said in a post on X that “for the sake of the fatherland I will take up weapons again.” He sent 30,000 troops to the Venezuela border.
Colombia’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. On Tuesday, the country’s foreign minister, Rosa Villavicencio, said at a news conference that it would respond militarily to any U.S. “aggression.”
“For that, we have a very well-trained army,” Villavicencio said.
The threat of war between the two allies “boggles the mind,” said Adam Isacson, the head of the defense oversight program at the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank.
“These two countries have had an intimate relationship going back to the Korean War,” Isacson said. “Colombia modeled its joint military structures after [the] U.S. It’s hard to imagine closer relations.”
Trump has frequently pointed to Colombia’s failure to crack down on cocaine exports. In 2023, a U.N. report said coca was being cultivated on 253,000 acres in Colombia, a record high. It was more than half of the global coca crop. On the Wednesday night call, Petro said he “laid out my policy against the narcos that spans nearly 20 years.”
While experts say Petro’s drug policy does bear some responsibility for that growth, there is no evidence that he is complicit in the trafficking of drugs. Still, Trump had appeared to be modeling his accusations against Petro after the drug case the Justice Department built against Maduro, which culminated in a 25-page indictment.
“He better wise up or he’ll be next,” Trump said of Petro last month, suggesting to target Colombia in a possible expansion of the military buildup and antidrug trafficking operations directed at Venezuela.
Petro had been seen by some as having gone out of his way to antagonize Trump over the past year. In September, he spoke at a protest in New York City about the immorality of some U.S. military missions.
“I ask all soldiers in the United States Army not to point their rifles at humanity,” Petro said through a megaphone. “Disobey Trump’s order! Obey the order of humanity!” The U.S. said it later suspended his visa.
It was the kind of spectacle that many Colombians saw as a political stunt — an effort by Petro to use his vocal opposition to Trump to animate his leftist base. Petro has announced a national demonstration in Bogotá on Wednesday in response to Trump’s comments and “to defend national sovereignty.”
Petro’s term expires later this year, and Colombia’s constitution does not allow him to seek a second consecutive term — another reason many here had doubted that Trump would attempt to capture him. In his Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump said the White House meeting between the two men would take place in the “near future.”
Petro wrote on X: “Now we have to see the consequences of the reestablishment of diplomatic conversation.”
If that meeting goes poorly — which some experts expect it might — Trump’s threats against Petro could affect the next Colombian election, which will take place in May. Already, opponents of Petro’s coalition are arguing that the next president should be someone who won’t antagonize the U.S., given the political and economic risks.
“Right and center-leaning candidates are telling voters that Petro has been derelict in managing the country’s most important bilateral relationship,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, the deputy director for Latin America at International Crisis Group.
Iván Cepeda, the candidate who will represent Petro’s coalition, has rebuffed Trump’s comments about Petro, writing on X that Colombia is not “a colony or a protectorate of the United States.”
In addition to targeting Maduro, Trump has proved increasingly willing to intervene in Latin American elections to prevent leftist candidates from winning. The candidate he endorsed in Honduras, Nasry Asfura, won the election there by a razor-thin margin after Trump suggested that he would cut aid to the country if Asfura lost.
On Monday, as if to summarize Trump’s evolving foreign policy in the region, the State Department posted on X a photo of Trump with the words: “THIS IS OUR HEMISPHERE.”
Chinese crackdowns on chemicals used to make illicit fentanyl may have played a significant role in the sharp reduction of U.S. overdose deaths, according to research published Thursday.
The paper suggests that the illicit fentanyl trade — which drove a historic surge in drug deaths during the past decade — experienced a large-scale decline in supply. Overdose deaths had surpassed 100,000 annually during the Biden administration, but began to decline in mid-2023 and plunged further in its final year. They have kept falling under President Donald Trump, who invokes drug trafficking as he imposes steep tariffs on other countries and unleashes missile strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean.
The research, published Thursday in the journal Science, adds to debates among government officials, public health researchers, and addiction experts over the complex reasons for the precipitous drop in deaths.
They have also pointed to billions spent onaddiction treatment, the overdose reversal drug naloxone and law-enforcement actions that disrupted traffickers domestically and abroad. Researchers in the Science paper stressed that those factors have been crucial in saving lives but emphasized the importance of efforts to prevent fentanyl from even being manufactured.
In suggesting a major disruption in the fentanyl trade “possibly tied to Chinese government actions,” researchers also analyzed death trends in Canada, the purity of seized fentanyl and online posts about shortages of the drugs.
“This demonstrates how influential China can be and how much they can help us — or hurt us,” said Keith Humphreys, a co-author of the paperand former White House drug policy adviser under President Barack Obama.
U.S. government and law enforcement agencies have long scrutinized the role China’s chemical and pharmaceutical industries played in the international fentanyl trade.
China agreed to internal restrictions on fentanyl-related substances during the first Trump administration. But that led to Mexican criminal groups synthesizing illicit fentanyl in secret labs in Mexico with precursor chemicals bought from companies in China. Since 2023, the Chinese government has shut down some of those companies as part of a broader crackdown.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, in its latest annual drug intelligence report, noted that some China-based chemical suppliers are wary of supplying them to international customers, “demonstrating an awareness on their part that the government of China is controlling more fentanyl precursors.”
According to state data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimated drug deaths plummeted in 2024 to about 81,711, of which 49,241 involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. Estimates for 2025 won’t be published for several months, but researchers believe the decline is continuing.
The Science researchers caution that the precise scope of China’s crackdown is difficult to assess, given the opacity of enforcement in the country. China’s cooperation with U.S. drug authorities on fentanyl has long been fragile, often collapsing when broader tensions flare.
That changed ahead of a November 2023 summit between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, when the two governments agreed to launch a multiagency crackdown on Chinese chemical suppliers tied to the fentanyl trade. Chinese authorities subsequently arrested about 300 people and moved to restrict roughly 55 additional synthetic substances — steps Beijing had previously resisted.
The summit, however, happened months after overdose deaths had already begun to fall — a timing mismatch the researchers acknowledge. Humphreys theorizes China may have begun crackdowns months earlier before the agreements were announced.
Other researchers are skeptical. Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution specializing in security and counternarcotics, noted that when overdoses began to fall, tensions between Washington and Beijing remained high over issues of trade, technology and security. Beijing would want to trumpet its enforcement, she said.
In a statement, the Chinese embassy said the country’s broad efforts to combat the spread of deadly synthetic drugs has achieved “remarkable results.”
The embassy said that between October 2023 and August 2025, the Chinese government has shut down 286 companies and forced more than 500 to delete information on chemical sales. About 160,000 ads have been removed in that time, the statement said.
“China has been helping the U.S. tackle the fentanyl issue and is willing to continue the cooperation on the basis of equality and mutual respect,” the embassy said.
The Science paper does not account for how overdose death rates fell in parts of the U.S. first, or how fatalities in more populous states can skew national statistics, said Nabarun Dasgupta, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He said fentanyl habits have been changing as fewer people start using it, and many users are cutting back or no longer using alone.
“It’s not a straight line between drug supply and overdose deaths because of protective behaviors that have been adopted in between,” Dasgupta said.
In trying to determine reasons for the sharp decrease in deaths, researchers pointed out that purity of fentanyl seizures tested by the DEA dropped around the same time U.S. deaths were falling. Seizures fell too, an indication of reduced supply, they said.
Researchers also analyzed posts on Reddit, the online forum where users often post about the illicit drug market. They noted a spike in mentions of fentanyl shortages in the middle of 2023, “roughly coinciding with the beginning of the decline in fatal overdoses,” researchers wrote.
Researchers also analyzed fentanyl trends in Canada, where criminal groups also secure precursor chemicals from China.
Canada has typically embraced a more public-health-centered approach to combating the opioid epidemic than the U.S. — for example, authorizing numerous centers where users can consume drugs under supervision. Still, deaths began falling around the same time, researchers said. Chinese crackdowns may explain the “parallel mortality declines,” the authors of the Science paper said.
“What’s really striking is that parallel across the two countries, even though the two countries have very different domestic policies,” Jonathan Caulkins, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who researches the criminal drug trade and was a study co-author.
Inside China, sellers of chemicals have offered mixed message on the impacts of the 2023 measures. They said there is heightened oversight of scheduled substances and online advertising but enforcement varies widely by locality.
Some companies left the business after 2023, said one Hubei-based employee at a chemical manufacturer, whose products can be used to make fentanyl and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the industry.
Asked whether the company is still able to sell controlled chemicals to customers, including those in Mexico, the employee said those sales persist.
“We don’t sell much anymore because the company focus has changed,” the person said, but “it’s not much trouble to do that.”
Rep. Steny H. Hoyer announced Thursday he will not run for reelection and will end a nearly six-decade career in elected office that spanned his rising-star days in Maryland government to a two-decade run as the No. 2 U.S. House Democrat.
Hoyer, the third-longest-serving member of the House, said he reached the decision over the holidays with his family, feeling content with a career that never brought the brass ring of the House speaker’s gavel but put him at the center of this century’s biggest debates.
“At this young age, it’s probably premature,” the 86-year-old quipped in a two-hour interview Tuesday at his sprawling home on the Patuxent River in St. Mary’s County.
Now three years out of leadership, Hoyer remains an active legislator but feared ending up like many other elderly lawmakers, becoming physically or mentally frail in their final days in office.
“I did not want to be one of those members who clearly stayed, outstayed his or her ability to do the job,” said Hoyer.
He delivered a formal announcement in a House floor speech Thursday morning, with dozens of colleagues from both sides of the aisle on hand to cheer.
In his remarks, Hoyer made clear he was not like the more than 40 other House members who, largely fed up with Congress, are running for other offices or retiring. Hoyer said he still loves the institution, while recognizing that his style of extending a courteous hand to the political opposition is outdated.
Hoyer spent decades on the Appropriations Committee, helping to pour billions of dollars into a congressional district that begins just a few miles east of the Capitol. But Hoyer’s final years on the panel have seen it snarled in partisan gridlock.
In the Tuesday interview,Hoyer saidhis constituents, more reliant on the federal government than most, ask when Congress will work in a more functional way, a question that Hoyer puts back on those voters.
“As long as the people of America elect angry, confrontational people, don’t be surprised that democracy works and you get an angry, confrontational Congress,” Hoyer said.
Hoyer said American politics are in a state of decades-long deterioration. But he blamed President Donald Trump for makingbipartisan comity harder than ever, pointing out the pardons of those convicted for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack during his interview with The Washington Post, which took place on the fifth anniversary of the insurrection.
“His greatest strength, he has no shame, does not,” Hoyer said of Trump. “And his people don’t care whatever he does, pardoning 1,600 people who committed treason. Just astounding, and then he gets away with it.”
Hoyer will go down in history behind only Leslie C. Arends (R., Ill.) for length of leadership service in the No. 2 post for a House caucus without ever getting promoted to the top spot. From the early 1940s until 1974, Arends totaled almost 30 years as the GOP’s first deputy.
Hoyer’s list of legislative accomplishments is long — including authoring the Americans With Disabilities Act and the election law responding to the disputed 2000 presidential race — but his biggest contribution may have been serving as a cooling agent when partisan temperatures ran hot in the raucous House.
Many Republicans viewed him as an honest broker and a lighter touch than Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), who led the caucus for the 20 years Hoyer served as her deputy.
In his Thursday speech, Hoyer lamented the decay of bipartisan relationships and a House that produces less legislation than in years past.
“I am deeply concerned that this House is not living up to the Founders’ goals,” Hoyer told his colleagues. “I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to examine their conscience, renew their courage.”
Hoyer lost a 2001 race for minority whip to Pelosi, a contest that highlighted the party’s pivot away from the South and Midwest and toward the more professional class of voters along the coasts. When Pelosi took charge in January 2003, the caucus unanimously elected Hoyer as her top lieutenant.
Hoyer said he understands why “tough-as-nails” Pelosi remained leader so long, calling her the best of 10 speakers he served under in nearly 45 years in the House.
“Sure, I would have loved to have been speaker. Who wouldn’t love to be speaker? But they’re not deep regrets,” he said in the interview.
Hoyer and Pelosi, along with Rep. James E. Clyburn (D., S.C.), are together linked for their historically long runs as the top three lawmakers running the caucus. They notched victories such as the 2008 financial rescue, the 2010 Affordable Care Act and several trillion dollars worth of pandemic relief this decade.
When Republicans won the House majority in the 2022 midterms, all three decided to step down and let a younger generation take the reins of the caucus. Pelosi announced in November that she will not run for reelection, while Clyburn has so far signaled he will run again.
“Ironically, Nancy, Jim and I have not talked about any one of our actions or any one of our retirements. So I haven’t talked to Nancy. I haven’t talked to Jim,” Hoyer said.
Pelosi, 85, and Hoyer are retiring as their party is still in a heated debate over whether its elder statesmen have stayed too long in Washington, particularly after President Joe Biden’s late exit from the 2024 presidential campaign.
Hoyer’s wife, Elaine C. Kamarck, a Brookings Institution political scholar, dubbed the trio of Pelosi, Hoyer, and Clyburn as “super-agers” for their ability to effectively run the Democratic caucus while in their 80s, but Hoyer is conscious of passing the baton to the next generation.
Pelosi, Hoyer, and Clyburn carved out different responsibilities and represented a new, diverse 21st-century caucus: a liberal woman from California’s tech center; a White man with close ties to the shrinking ranks of Democrats from the South and Midwest; and the highest-ranking Black member of Congress.
Hoyer said he considers passage of the Affordable Care Act a prototype for when their leadership style worked. Pelosi — who has “a spine of steel,” he said — led the effort and had the bona fides to tell liberals what the best deal possible was. Hoyer served as sounding board for dozens of Democrats in competitive districts worried about their 2010 elections.
“A number of people would say I played an important part in bringing along people who had concerns about it from their district’s standpoint,” he said.
Democrats lost a stunning 63 seats in those midterms and spent eight subsequent years in the minority, leading some to question whether new, younger leadership was needed.
Pelosi and Hoyer have had a sometimes strained relationship — dating at least to the late 1990s when they began a several-year campaign against one another for a leadership post — but the caucus seemingly wanted that balance.
“We were put together by the caucus,” Hoyer said. “And what I mean by that, Nancy was elected, I was elected and Clyburn was elected. We weren’t elected as a team.”
The current House Democratic leadership team — Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Minority Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.) and Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.) — effectively ran together three years ago trying to replicate the ideological and diverse balance of the old team.
Hoyer had not yet drawn a top primary challenge in his congressional district, but his exit will undoubtedly prompt many younger Maryland politicians to consider running in a race where Hoyer said he will not make an early endorsement.
His early endorsement of Wes Moore, helped elevate the then-long-shot candidate to victory in the 2022 Maryland governor’s race. Now running for reelection at 47, Moore is mentioned as a future presidential candidate — a campaign Hoyer said he hopes to play a role in.
“His true genius resides not simply in the grand American story he has helped to write, but in the many quiet moments of service and support he has given,” Moore said in a statement.
A vast majority of House members have no idea Hoyer’s first image in politics was as a young man in a hurry. Just 27when he took office in the Maryland state Senate in 1967, Hoyer became the chamber’s president at 35 and plotted a run for governor in 1978, with his ultimate ambition being the U.S. Senate.
“I was a little ahead of myself,” he recalled Tuesday. He eventually accepted a spot as lieutenant governor candidate on a ticket that lost the party nomination badly.
His start in politics was launched when, as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, he attended a campus rally for Sen. John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960.
Following a file clerk job at the Central Intelligence Agency, Hoyer began working for Rep. Daniel Brewster (D., Md.), would move with him to the Senate in 1963 and meet a young Pelosi as a co-worker.
In 1981, after the local congresswoman suffered a heart attack and fell into a coma, Hoyer narrowly won a crowded primary and was on his way up the ladder in the U.S. House.
The family of his first wife bought land in St. Mary’s County on the Patuxent in 1989, and the Hoyers built their getaway home well outside his district.
The 1992 redistricting brought this rural territory into Hoyer’s 5th Congressional District, and the couple turned it into a permanent home. An educator in Prince George’s County schools, Judith Hoyer died in 1997 and the congressman passed legislation creating “Judy Centers” for early-childhood programs.
The home, dubbed “Hoyer’s Point of View,” hosted his wedding to Kamarck in 2023. A proud Dane who’s looked out for Nordic interests on the Helsinki Commission, Hoyer flies the flag of Denmark alongside those of Maryland and the U.S.
Hoyer said he’s not sure how he will handle life outside elective politics, but he has a ready answer when people ask him about Congress.
“How do we make this better?” he said. “You do. You’re a voter. You send the right people there, it’ll get better.”
In many households, it’s a forbidden four-letter word. It can’t be uttered aloud, only spelled, so those within earshot don’t get too worked up.
“Can you take the dog for a W-A-L-K?”
Many dog owners know their pets excel at learning words such as “walk,” “sit,” “stay,” and even their own names. But researchers have discovered the word-acquisition ability of certain canines can rival that of toddlers.
A study published in the journal Science on Thursday found that some dogs can learn words simply by overhearing conversations, even when the pets are not directly addressed, an ability humans begin to acquire at about 18 months old.
“This can really give us more appreciation to how exceptional dogs can be,” said lead author Shany Dror, a comparative cognition researcher at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna and Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.
For their experiments, Dror and her team recruited 10 dogs and their owners from around the world. The breeds included a miniature Australian shepherd, a German shepherd, a Labrador retriever, and several border collies — all herding or sporting breeds known for their trainability.
Dogs tend to be better at learning words for actions — think “fetch” or “roll over” — than at retaining the names of objects. So Dror sought out what she called “gifted” dogs that had previously demonstrated an ability to learn the names of their toys.
Basket, a 7-year-old border collie in New York, was among them.
“I noticed she started to actually know the names of her toys without me giving her assistance when she was about 8 months old,” said one of her owners, Elle Baumgartel-Austin.
The researchers instructed the dog owners to discuss two toys that their dogs had never seen before. The dogs were present for those conversations. But the owners never directly addressed their pets.
“It was very funny watching the video after the fact, just to see what she was doing,” Baumgartel-Austin said. Basket had followed the toy with her eyes as they talked. “She got a little frustrated. It was not very fun to see two humans play with a toy that she wanted.”
To assess what the dogs learned by eavesdropping, a day or more later the owners were guided to place the toys in a different room among other plushies and then ask their dog to retrieve one of the two new toys by name. Seven of the 10 dogs, including Basket, regularly fetched the correct toy. Although the sample size was small, the results were statistically significant.
The discovery not only reveals a previously unknown cognitive ability of canines, but it could also offer clues to how human language may have evolved.
Overhearing the conversations of parents and other adults is part of how toddlers learn to talk. That some dogs are able to do so as well suggests that an ability to read social cues needed to follow a conversation predates language itself.
“This is something that came before language,” Dror said. “Because dogs don’t have language, and yet they do have these abilities.”
Gabriella Lakatos, a researcher at Britain’s University of Hertfordshire who also has studied human-dog interactions, said the findings “extend the list of behaviors and abilities previously described in dogs as analogous to those of young children.”
Among other animals, the ability to eavesdrop has also been documented in bonobos. Canine researchers have known since the early 2000s that some dogs can recognize more than 200 items by name and can even infer the names of new toys by excluding ones they already know.
But Juliane Kaminski, a comparative psychology associate professor at Britain’s University of Portsmouth who conducted that early research, cautioned against overinterpreting the results to say dogs can deeply learn language the same way people do. “The interpretation in terms of ‘word learning’ in the linguistic sense seems a little too strong for me,” she said. “What the study shows is that dogs can learn labels without being explicitly directed toward” an object.
She added it is still unclear why only a handful of dogs are able to learn the names of their toys. Her own work with label-learning dogs suggests they are more curious and focused than their less-gifted canine counterparts.
“However, what we do not know is what comes first,” Kaminski said. Are some dogs born better learners? Or do they simply get used to fetching objects when asked?
“It’s a chicken-and-egg problem, and we need further research to explore this,” she said.
Dror tried for years in vain to train other less gifted but still very good dogs — including her own German shepherd, Mitos — to associate names with toys. “Nothing worked. It was very frustrating.”
Still, Mitos nuzzled his way into the new paper. He died last year at 15, just as Dror was submitting the research for publication, and she dedicated the paper to him. “It’s definitely hard to lose someone that’s been such a huge part of your life for so long,” she said.
Now, Dror has a new puppy — a schipperke named Flea. She is introducing her to toys and hoping she can learn.
MORGANTOWN, Pa. — The Trump administration says it is focused on protecting unaccompanied migrant children. It imposed strict new background checks on those seeking custody of young migrants and cut ties with a chain of youth shelters accused of subjecting children in its care to pervasive sexual abuse.
“This administration is working fearlessly to end the tragedy of human trafficking and other abuses of unaccompanied alien children who enter the country illegally,” saidHealth Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, which cares for unaccompanied migrant children.
But for the last three months, that office has also locked some teenage migrant boys inside a secure juvenile prison about 50 miles west of Philadelphia with a long and publicly documented history of staff physically and sexually abusing juvenile offenders in its care, a Washington Post investigation has found.
“ORR is sending children to a juvenile detention center who should not be there,” said Becky Wolozin, a senior attorney at National Center for Youth Law.
ORR awarded $9 million to Abraxas Alliance in August to hold up to 30 young immigrants deemed a danger to themselves or others in its facility in Morgantown, Berks County. At various times since early October, between five and eight migrant teenage boys have been held inside a dedicated wing of the juvenile detention center, sleeping inside locked cells the size of walk-in closets, according to lawyers who met with them.
Pennsylvania state inspectors have documented at least 15 incidents since 2013 in which they said staff physically mistreated minors at the Morgantown facility, which holds principally juveniles facing or convicted of criminal offenses. In at least two incidents, officials documented allegations of staff sexually harassing or sexually abusing young residents. The most recent reported abuse occurred in November.
In a lawsuit filed in 2024, six former residents of the facility allege they were sexually abused by staff between 2007 and 2016, accusing management of enabling a “culture of abuse.”
A spokesperson for Abraxas Alliance, the Pittsburgh nonprofit that operates the facility,did not respond to a long list of questions about its treatment of children. After some of the incidents cited by inspectors, Abraxas suspended or fired staff members and submitted correction plans to state regulators, promising to retrain workers on proper restraining techniques and install more surveillance cameras.
ORR has wide latitude over the types of facilities it uses to house children, though federal rules require it to use “the least restrictive setting that is in the best interests of the child.” The rules say ORR may place minors in secure facilities if they have been charged with a crime, or if the agency determines they could harm themselves or others.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said decisions on where to place migrant children “are based on each child’s specific circumstances, behavior-based risk assessments, and legal criteria.” All the teens at the Morgantown facilitywere provided a notice with “specific details as to why they are placed there,” he added.
Some of the migrant boys have no pending criminal charges, and several have parents or close relatives in the U.S. asking to be reunited with them, said Becky Wolozin, a senior attorney at National Center for Youth Law who visited the facility and spoke to some of the boys in November.
The Post was unable to identify any of the boys or verify Wolozin’s claims about their circumstances, because neither their immigration lawyers nor government officials would share details about their cases due to strict rules protecting the records of minors.
License revoked
In November, Pennsylvania revoked one ofthe three licenses held by different units within the Morgantown facility, Abraxas Academy. The state accused Abraxas of “gross incompetence, negligence, and misconduct” following a Nov. 4 incident of staff violence against a child, state records show. According to those documents, a staff member put his hand on a child’s neck andshoved his face into a table, an incident the facility’s operatordid not report to local authorities.
Ali Fogarty, a spokeswoman for Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services, said state law prevented her from commenting on the incident, includingwhether the child was a migrant placed by ORR or another juvenile held in the facility. The state increased its monitoring of the Morgantown facility and reduced its maximum capacity under one license by 25 residents whilethe companyappeals the revocation. Its two other licenses were unaffected, and it is still permitted to hold more than 100 individuals, Fogarty said.
Nixon, the HHS spokesman, saidORR “will make any necessary adjustments to its use of the facility based on the outcome of the state’s licensing process” and its own review of the incident,adding that “ORR has zero tolerance for sexual abuse and harassment of children in our care.”
The problems at the nation’s only secure jail for migrant youths are unfolding as the Trump administration pushes measures it says are aimed at safeguarding the 2,300 unaccompanied migrant children in its custody, as well as those it releases to sponsors within the country.
In March, ORR ended its use of shelters operated by Southwest Keys — a Texas nonprofit which the Justice Department sued in 2024, alleging its workers repeatedly sexually abused children in the nonprofit’s shelters from 2015 to at least 2023. The company said in a 2024 statement that the lawsuit did not “present the accurate picture of the care and commitment our employees provide to the youth and children.” The department dropped the lawsuit last year.
Around the same time, ORRalso began requiring people to provide income documents and submit to DNA testing, fingerprinting and interviews before regaining custody of young migrants, including their own children, which agency officials say will help ensure they are not being claimed by traffickers.
The Trump administration said President Joe Biden had released tens of thousands migrant children to sponsors with little or no vetting, including to some adults with a history of violent crimes. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcementsays it’s enlisting the help of local law enforcement agencies to locate the children and verify their safety.
Jen Smyers, a former deputy director of ORR under Biden, said this population has faced abuse for decades, across several administrations. She said stricter vetting cannot always prevent mistreatment.
Partly as a result of the Trump administration’s new vetting procedures, the average child remains in ORR custody about six months —nearly three times longer than at the beginning of 2025, government data shows.
A history of abuse allegations
By jailing migrant children in a secure detention center, especially one with a recent history of abuse, the administration is exposing these young people to some of the same risks it says it wants to eliminate, said Jonathan White, a former career HHSofficial who managed the unaccompanied children program during part of Trump’s first term.
Under any previous administration, a track record of physical or sexual abuse would be “instantly disqualifying” for federal contracts involving the care of minors, White said. “This is the kind of thing under Republican and Democratic administrations you terminate existing grants for — you don’t give new grants to places like that.”
Abraxas Academy, part of a chain of 10 youth detention and treatment centers, holds dozens of teenage boys from surrounding areas, many of whom are serving sentences for violent crimes or awaiting court hearings. Rob Monzon, a former director of the Morgantown facility, calls it “the most extreme setting in juvenile detention.”Its young inmates, some who claim to be from gangs, frequently lash out at one another, vandalize the building and attack staff members, he said.
State inspection records show that staff members have at times responded with violence.
One staff member“picked up[a child] by the shirt and threw the child to the ground, holding the child down with a knee, and banging the child into the wall,” a 2013 report on the state’s website said. Another threw punches at a different minor and yet another bit an incarcerated child in the abdomen, other reports said.The reports noted that one staff member “frequently escalates situations” by applying restraint holds that are “known to cause pain to the child.”
Workers have been trained to defend themselves by placing inmates into restrictive holds, waiting for them to calm down and calling for help from other employees, according to Shamon Tooles, who worked as a supervisor at Abraxas Academy for eight months in 2023. But due to a lack of training, supervision, and frequent short-staffing, he said, some workers resorted to fighting back.
“A lot of the staff were just scared,” said Tooles, who said he does not condone any mistreatment of children.
In December 2016, Pennsylvania state inspectors said they found “a preponderance of evidence” that a staff member sexually harassed a child at the Morgantown facility. The staff member, who was not identified, was put on leave and subsequently resigned.
One of the former detainees who is suing AbraxasAllianceclaimed a staff membertook away his food or gym privileges or locked him in his room if he did not comply with sexual requests.
In court records, attorneys for Abraxas Alliance denied any wrongdoing and said they would need the names of all the abusers to confirm details of the alleged abuse. The lawsuit, which covers allegations lodged by 40 former residents from fiveAbraxas facilities, is still active and no trial date has been set.
Nixon,the HHS spokesman, saidAbraxas Academy was the only state-licensed facility that submitted a bid on the ORR contract that “operated a secure care facility for youth between the ages of 13 to 17.” He said the contract is part of an effort to “restore” the government’s capacity to hold “children whose needs cannot be safely supported” in less restrictive settings.
Fresh paint
Abraxas Academy sits at the end of a three-mile road, deep in the farmlands of Amish country. It’sso remote that when nine boys escaped through a hole in the barbed wire fence in 2023, they were quickly discovered a few miles away, lost and shivering in the rain, ready to go back,according to Paul Stolz, the police chief of nearby Caernarvon Township.
When Wolozin visited Nov. 5, she said the walls smelled like fresh paint and workers were still renovating the floors of the wing designated for immigrant boys, separate from the teens serving criminal sentences. At that time, there were eight migrant boys; at least two have since been transferred to less restrictive facilities, and another was moved to an adult detention center upon turning 18, according to their lawyers. At least two new detainees arrived in December.
Wolozin’s group advocates for children in the foster care, juvenile detention and immigration detention systems and has special permission to meet with them per the terms of a landmark 1997 legal agreement. She has personally supported Democratic politicians and causes.
According to Wolozin, the conditions for migrant boys at Abraxas Academy mirror those of children serving criminal sentences. The boys are woken from their cells and counted every morning. Their use of a “family room,” with TVs, board games and bean bag chairs, is restricted to certain times, as is their access to an outdoor recreation area with farm animals and an indoor gym. Some have told lawyers and advocates they have been limited to two 15-minute phone calls to family members per week. Federal rulesrequire at least three calls per week.
Wolozin, who interviewed five of the migrant boys but has not reviewed their files, said one appeared to have severe cognitive disabilities. Another had completed his sentence for a criminal charge and was set to be released to his familybut was instead transferred to ORR custody. Others had never been in jail before.
“What became very apparent to me is that ORR is sending children to a juvenile detention center who should not be there,” she said.
The vast majority of the migrant children in government custody live in shelters where they move freely around a campus. But the government can place children in more restrictive settings if they are deemed a risk — a broad authority that former child welfare officials say ORR has misused.
In 2018, ORR found it had “inappropriately placed” 18 of the 32 minors who were in secure facilities at the time, according to the court deposition of a former agency official. One child, the official said, had been placed in a jail because they were an “annoyance” and not an actual danger.
ORR had moved away from juvenile detention centers since 2023, after the government settled lawsuits that claimed children in these facilities were subjected to inhumane punishments or illegally locked up based on being mislabeled gang members. As part of the settlements, ORR agreed to implement new rules providingstronger legal protections for migrant children in custody.
Now, the administration is expanding the practice of secure detention once more. Along with the 30 beds for migrant teens at Abraxas Academy, ORR is exploring a second secure facility that would hold up to 30 additional migrant children in Texas, government procurement records show.
Advocates for migrant youths say these jails are unnecessary and harmful — and evident from the government’s tumultuous history with ORR detention centers before the Abraxas contract.
‘I just went on myself’
Young peopledetained at Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center said in 2018 court declarations that they had been locked in small rooms for most of the day. Some said they were beaten by guards. If they acted out, some said, they were put in a restraint chair, with straps around their head, elbows, legs and feet, and wheeled into a room where they were left to sit alone for hours with their head covered in a white mesh hood so they couldn’t spit on the guards.
“This is embarrassing, but on one occasion, I had to pee, and they wouldn’t let me, so I just went on myself,” a child identified as “R.B.”said in a court filing. “I know one or two other kids this happened to as well; they peed on themselves while they were in the chair.”
Shenandoah’s operators said their use of the restraint chair was not abuse. ORR policies permit such restrains as a last resort. A federal judge ruled in 2018 that the government had improperly placed minors in secure facilities including Shenandoah but did not determine whether its use of restraints constituted abuse.
California’s Yolo County Juvenile Detention Center commonly used chemical agents and physical force to control children, the state’s attorney general found in 2019. A spokeswoman for Yolo County said in an emailed statement that the facility took measures to reduce its reliance on chemical agents, including staff training on nonviolent crisis intervention.
Community activists pressured city and state officials to stop jailing migrant children there, citing lawsuits and the growing costs of defending against them. One Salvadoran teen alleged in court papershe was shipped across the country to the facility simply because New York police claimed he was a member of MS13. A federal judge found no unequivocal evidence of the boy’s ties to any gang.
By 2023, Shenandoah, Yolo and another juvenile detention center in Alexandria, Va., had all opted not to renew their contracts with ORR.
“Nobody wants these contracts,” said Holly S. Cooper, co-director of the Immigration Law Clinic at UC Davis, who was involved in the effort to end the Yolo contract. “There was a massive public outcry.”
According to Smyers, ORR’s No. 2 official at the time, the agency in late 2023 solicited proposals for a new kind of facility where children could have restrictions increased or reduced depending on their behavior. ORR has not awarded this contract, but Nixon said it is still a priority.
Fights, an escape attempt
The Abraxas chain of youth detention and treatment centers has changed ownership at least twice. At the time of many of the abuse incidents in the inspection reports, it was owned by private prison firm Geo Group, which purchased the chain for $385 million in 2010. Geo has said in court records it is not aware of any sexual abuse.
The company sold parts of the Abraxas business to a nonprofit group run by Jon Swatsburg, the unit’s longtime executive, for $10 million in 2021.At the time, Geo was losing federal contracts and being shunned by major banks in response to community activism against its business. Geo still owns the building in Morgantown and leases it out to Abraxas Alliance, securities filings show.
A spokesman for Geo did not respond to requests for comment.
Swatsburg, who has overseen the properties for more than two decades, was paid $752,000 by Abraxas and related entities in 2022, according to the most recent tax filings available. Inperium, an investor in the nonprofit group, said Swatsburg was departing in 2023, but he continued to list himself as president and chairman of Abraxas in corporate filings in 2024 and 2025. As of last year, Swatsburg was also listed as a vice president of Geo Group.
Last year alone, police responded to at least 34 incidents at the facility, local records show, including inmate fights, at least one attempted escape,a suicidal detainee, an incident that left three police officers with minor injuries and another incident in which a staff member’s finger was partly amputated by a door.
Meanwhile, the migrant boys at Abraxis havetold advocates that they feel stuck.
“They had plans and family, and lives and school and girlfriends, and things going on that they planned to do,” Wolozin said. “Instead, they are in this place.”
Thousands of people pause their cocktail consumption and embrace Dry January every year. The percentage of Americans who say they drink alcohol has hit new lows. And more and more, researchers warn we should stay away from drinking all together.
But the ongoing debate over the health harms of alcohol took a turn Wednesday after the United States dropped its long-standing guidance to consume no more than one or two drinks per day. It marks a pull back in messaging for the federal government — under President Joe Biden, the U.S. surgeon general recommended adding cancer warnings to alcohol products, and reassessing limits on alcohol consumption.
During a news conference rolling out new U.S. dietary guidelines on Wednesday, Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said people should drink judiciously. Then he added it is a “social lubricant that brings people together” and “there’s probably nothing healthier than having a good time with friends in a safe way.”
Critics scoffed at the characterization, saying Oz was echoing talking points from the alcohol industry. Mike Marshall, CEO of the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance, called the statement irresponsible and said the pared-down guidelines fly in the face of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make American Healthy Again movement.
“Alcohol is a toxic, addictive carcinogen,” Marshall said. “The fact the guidelines are going backward is disappointing and alarming.”
The new guidelines call for people to “consume less alcohol for better overall health” while cautioning pregnant women, those recovering from alcohol use disorder and patients taking certain medications to avoid alcohol all together.
Previous U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines were significantly more detailed, defining moderate consumption as no more than two drinks a day for men, and one drink for women — while explaining the risks associated with heavy drinking, such as heart disease, liver disease, and some types of cancer. They also defined binge drinking as five drinks within two hours for men, and four for women.
Public health advocates said the government’s new messaging was vague and glossed over the harms of alcohol.
The new guidelines do not allow “Americans to really have any sort of sense of where the risks begin,” said Marissa Esser, a public health consultant who headed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Alcohol Program until it was disbanded by the Trump administration in April. “Americans deserve to be informed about this information in order for them to be able to make their own decisions about their drinking and their health.”
The language on alcohol was included as part of broader overhaul of dietary guidelines under Kennedy, which included calls for Americans to limit intake of processed foods while endorsing products such as whole milk, butter, and red meat.
The release of the new guidelines comes as Americans have become increasingly wary of the well-studied harms of drinking, which apart from diseases can include violence, domestic strife, and car crashes. Last year, a Gallup poll found that 53% of Americans say drinking in moderation is bad for health, the first time the polling company found a majority who feel that way.
Americans’ alcohol consumption surged during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, causing even more deaths. The number of adult drinkers also grew: Gallup found in 2022 that 67% of Americans reported drinking, the highest number in decades. Rates have since decreased, as researchers have noted a steep decline in drinking among young people.
The industry and some Republican lawmakers had pushed back against federally funded studies, including the one published in January 2025 that concluded even moderate drinking could carry health risks.
Tim Naimi, one of the co-authors of that report, noted that males who consume two drinks per week have a 1 in 25 chance of dying prematurely from alcohol. Naimi said he had hoped that guidelines would be tighter, calling for no more than a few drinks per week, or no more than one per day for men and women.
But Naimi said he appreciated that the guidelines still espouse limiting alcohol for better health. “I think that’s what the public now understands — when it comes to alcohol, the less is better,” said Naimi, director of the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research.
Countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom have pushed citizens to drink less, reflecting the broader scientific consensus about the harms of alcohol, said David H. Jernigan, a Boston University professor of health law and a critic of alcohol industry marketing.
“The human body is the same no matter what country you’re in,” Jernigan said, adding: “With these vague guidelines, the alcohol industry got a really nice New Year’s present.”
The alcohol industry has struggled amid tariffs and Americans prioritizing wellness, drinking less, or embracing nonalcoholic options. Nearly 30% of U.S. consumers said they planned to spend less money on alcoholic drinks during the next three months amid tighter budgets and economic unease, McKinsey & Company reported in December.
A coalition of alcohol industry groups on Wednesday issued a cautious statement, emphasizing that guidelines have long stressed moderation and that the new version is “underpinned by the preponderance of scientific evidence.” The Beer Institute, a trade group, added that the nation’s beer industry has “championed responsible consumption for decades” and encourages moderation in drinking.
The alcohol industry worried that under Kennedy and Trump — who famously doesn’t drink — guidelines could have been stricter, said Dave Williams, president of Bump Williams Consulting, an analytics research firm that specializes in the alcoholic beverage industry.
“The latest guidelines came as more of a relief, but aren’t necessarily a fix” for the industry’s troubles, he said.
In the aftermath, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said the woman had committed an act of “domestic terrorism,” first disobeying officers’ commands and then weaponizing her SUV by attempting to “run a law enforcement officer over.” President Donald Trump said the woman “violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer.”
A frame-by-frame analysis of video footage, however, raises questions about those accounts. The SUV did move toward the ICE agent as he stood in front of it. But the agent was able to move out of the way and fire at least two of three shots from the side of the vehicle as it veered past him, according to the analysis.
Video taken by a witness shows Renee Nicole Good’s vehicle, a burgundy Honda Pilot SUV, stopped in the middle of a one-way road in a residential area of south Minneapolis on Wednesday morning. That footage and other videos examined by The Washington Post do not show the events leading up to that moment.
The agent, who has not been publicly identified, can be seen standing behind Good’s SUV, holding up a phone and pointing it toward a woman who also has her phone out. The two appear to be recording each other.
The agent then walks around the passenger side of Good’s vehicle.
A pickup truck pulls up, and two additional agents exit the vehicle and approach Good, the video shows. A voice can be heard saying to “get out” of the car at least two times. One of the agents puts a hand on the opening of the driver’s side window and with his other hand tugs twice quickly on the door handle, but the driver’s door does not open.
That same agent puts his hand farther in the opening of Good’s window, and almost simultaneously, the SUV begins to back up.
The agent who was first seen behind Good’s SUV reemerges in front of the vehicle, still appearing to hold up a phone. The SUV quickly pulls forward, and then veers to the right, in the correct direction of traffic on the one-way street.
As the vehicle moves forward, video shows, the agent moves out of the way and at nearly the same time fires his first shot. The footage shows that his other two shots were fired from the side of the vehicle.
Videos examined by The Post, including one shared on Truth Social by Trump, do not clearly show whether the agent is struck or how close the front of the vehicle comes to striking him. Referring to the officer, Trump wrote in his post that it was “hard to believe he is alive.” Video shows the agent walking around the scene for more than a minute after the shooting.
Good’s SUV travels a short distance before crashing into a car parked on the opposite side of the street.
The FBI and Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension are investigating the shooting. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment for this story.
