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  • Adolescence lasts into your 30s, and other surprises about the brain

    Adolescence lasts into your 30s, and other surprises about the brain

    The human brain has four distinct turning points where its structure changes, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications, demonstrating that brain development is not as linear as you might think.

    “It’s easy to fall into this belief that there’s a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ way for a brain to be structured,” said lead study author Alexa Mousley at the University of Cambridge. “And that’s not really the case. What this study is emphasizing is the brain is expected to be doing something different at different ages.”

    In the new study, Mousley and colleagues looked at around 4,000 scans from healthy people ages 0 to 90 and analyzed their brains. They found four major times when the brain underwent developmental changes, around ages 9, 32, 66, and 83, dividing the life span into five distinct phases.

    “It’s yet another very nice example of how the brain and its global interactions change across the life span,” said Seth Grant, a neuroscientist at The University of Edinburgh who wasn’t involved in the new research. “The message is, there is continuous change from birth until old age. It’s not as if you suddenly build a brain and it stays the same and then just drops off at old age. It’s always changing.”

    Mousley and her co-authors identified five epochs during which the brain is wired in different ways.

    1. Childhood

    From infancy to 9 years old, the brain is busy. There is a lot of consolidation of neural connections happening, competitive elimination of synapses, and rapid increases in gray and white matter. But interestingly the brain is becoming less efficient during this time — so it takes longer for information to get from one region of the brain to another. The researchers don’t fully understand why this would be the pattern, but they have some theories.

    “We know that in very early life, the brain makes more connections than it needs, and then it prunes them away,” Mousley said. “It’s unclear if that is kind of what’s happening here, but it is potentially what’s happening.”

    Whatever the reason for the brain becoming less efficient during childhood, it is a time when a lot of learning happens — language, motor skills, speech — and there is likely a reason that the brain is structured the way that it is during this period.

    “It could be that this decreasing efficiency is potentially related to this incredible moment of learning,” Mousley said.

    2. Adolescence

    There is a dramatic turning point that the researchers saw occurring around the age of 9 on average — a time when many children begin to enter puberty. The brain switches gears and starts rewiring to become more efficient.

    The adolescence phase the researchers identified lasts for two decades, into the early 30s on average. This is when people are most vulnerable to developing a mental health disorder, but it’s also a critical time for brain development.

    “It is really important to think about adolescence as this protracted window,” said Katie Insel, a psychologist at Northwestern University who studies how the brain changes over the course of adolescence. She said that while in our society we may think of 18- or 21-year-olds as adults, this research adds to a growing body of work suggesting that the brain isn’t fully developed or stable until our late 20s or even early 30s.

    “Something that sets us apart as humans from other animals is how slowly we develop,” Mousley said. “A giraffe can stand up very soon after being born, but human babies just take a very long time to learn to walk, to eat.”

    Mousley suggested that this slower development might give humans the opportunity to develop more complex brain connections, and could be related to the things that humans can do that other animals can’t.

    3. Adulthood

    Adulthood is the longest phase — lasting for more than three decades from around 32 years old until around 66 years old.

    “It does seem to be this kind of period of relative stability,” Mousley said. “It’s consistent for a very long period of time.”

    That doesn’t mean that the brain isn’t changing during this period, but the changes are less dramatic than during other phases. This is also a period of stability in terms of intelligence, behavior, and personality.

    “If you just think about what an adult is compared to a teenager, you kind of assume there’s kind of a level of stability there in terms of how people are behaving. And that’s aligning with this three-decade period of consistent brain rewiring from our study,” Mousley said.

    4. Early aging

    Around 66 years old on average, the researchers saw another turning point. This is a time when the brain seems to become more vulnerable to age-related diseases — but the news isn’t all bad for the aging brain.

    “There’s an expected and healthy, typical way for the brain to shift,” Mousley said.

    Insel noted that in addition to some of the negative changes people might associate with aging, like memory loss, there are also positive changes. Older adults tend to be wiser and better at emotional regulation.

    “There are pros and cons to every developmental stage,” Insel said. “I think with every phase of life, there are trade-offs where some types of cognition and behavior are privileged because of how the brain is responding to the environment.”

    5. Late aging

    From 83 onward, the researchers identified a “late aging” phase.

    “What we’re seeing during that late aging phase is something called ‘increasing centrality,’” Mousley said. Particular regions of the brain become more important than others during this time. There is reduced connectivity, but there seems to be a pattern to that change.

    The metaphor Mousley used was that of changing bus routes. If you had a direct bus to work, but one day it stopped running and you had to take two buses, the transfer station would suddenly become very important. She theorized that the brain might be prioritizing important connections if other connections drop off.

    What it means

    The word “development” is often associated with childhood or the teenage years — but what this new research demonstrates is that the brain develops continually throughout our lives.

    “We often ascribe certain brain changes to negative outcomes in adulthood or later life,” Insel said. “But actually there’s certain cognitive features that can be really helpful and useful in aging.” By zooming out and looking at how the brain changes over the course of our lifetimes, Insel hopes that we can have a better understanding of what to expect at these different ages, and why our brains might be more vulnerable to certain disorders in adolescence or older age respectively.

    Yaakov Stern, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, noted that a good next step would be to try to understand exactly how these measures of the brain might be related to cognitive processes — essentially connecting the dots between this research and other work that has looked at the way our brains function throughout our lives.

    He added that many of the things that affect brain development are within our control — such as diet, exercise and social connection.

    “The brain changes with aging. We know that,” Stern said. “What interests me, is there are exposures that seem to be associated with more successful aging.”

  • Delaware’s acting U.S. attorney resigns amid fight over Trump’s appointees

    Delaware’s acting U.S. attorney resigns amid fight over Trump’s appointees

    President Donald Trump’s U.S. attorney in Delaware abruptly resigned Friday amid a growing standoff over the administration’s authority to install loyalists in powerful prosecutorial roles while bypassing Senate confirmation and the courts.

    Julianne Murray, a former chair of the Delaware Republican Party whom the Justice Department had appointed as interim U.S. attorney in the state this summer, announced her departure in a statement posted to social media. She said a recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit disqualifying Trump’s U.S. attorney in New Jersey, Alina Habba, had made it clear to her she could no longer stay in her role.

    Habba resigned from her post on Monday after the court ruled she had been unlawfully appointed through a process that administration officials had also used to keep Murray in her role. The Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit handles appeals arising from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and its rulings extend throughout that jurisdiction.

    Alina Habba steps down as U.S. attorney in New Jersey

    “I naively believed that I would be judged on my performance and not politics,” Murray said in her statement. “Unfortunately that was not the case.”

    Murray said she will continue to work for the Justice Department in a different capacity but did not indicate what her new job might be. Her former office will now be overseen by her first assistant U.S. attorney, Ben Wallace, who has worked as a prosecutor in the office since 2023.

    Murray’s initial appointment in July drew controversy given her lack of prosecutorial experience and the fact that she was still serving as head of the Delaware Republican Party when she was named interim U.S. attorney. She resigned from that role shortly afterward.

    Her statement Friday saying she would step down as U.S. attorney used many of the same turns of phrase as the resignation letter she submitted to the state party five months earlier. In both, she said she refused to allow her office “to be used as a political football.”

    While the nation’s 93 U.S. attorneys are appointed through a political process and are often affiliated with the president’s party, their jobs have traditionally been viewed as largely apolitical. Most come from traditional legal backgrounds, not openly partisan roles.

    Since Trump’s return to the White House, his administration has made installing loyalists in these position a priority.

    In addition to Murray and Habba, his former personal lawyer, the Justice Department has appointed other controversial allies to U.S. attorney roles on an interim basis. They included Bill Essayli, a former GOP state assemblyman named U.S. attorney in Los Angeles; Sigal Chattah, a former GOP committeewoman in Nevada; and Lindsey Halligan, another former Trump lawyer, in Eastern Virginia.

    Federal law limited each of their interim appointments to a period of 120 days and empowered the federal courts to appoint a replacement if there was no Senate-confirmed nominee by that deadline. But when the terms of Murray, Habba and the others expired, the Justice Department sought to keep Trump’s picks in their roles through complex maneuvers that the 3rd Circuit has ruled were illegal.

    In Murray’s case, Delaware’s chief U.S. district judge, Colm Connolly, a Trump appointee, began soliciting applications for her replacement weeks before her 120 days were up. The move drew a sharp rebuke from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, another former Trump attorney who now serves in the Justice Department’s No. 2 position.

    When Murray’s interim term expired in November, Delaware’s judges declined to reappoint her but did not immediately name a replacement. The Justice Department responded by changing Murray’s title to “acting” U.S. attorney and maintained that the president had the authority to keep her in her job indefinitely.

    Within hours of Murray’s resignation, the judges on Friday posted notice that they were appointing Wallace as acting U.S. attorney.

    Unlike Habba, Chattah, Essayli, and Halligan, whose appointments federal courts have all ruled to be unlawful, Murray had not drawn a legal challenge questioning her legitimacy. In her statement Friday, she blamed Delaware’s U.S. senators — Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester, both Democrats — of sinking her prospects in the job.

    Normally, the president must formally nominate his U.S. attorney picks, and they must be approved in a Senate vote. In the case of Murray and the others, their home-state senators — all Democrats — had said they would withhold their support should Trump formally nominate them to the role.

    That decision effectively killed any chance of their nominations moving forward under a Senate custom known as the “blue slip,” which allows senators to veto judicial and U.S. attorney nominees for their states.

    Trump has railed against the blue slip tradition, saying it interferes with his ability to install his chosen candidates. Sen. Chuck Grassley — the Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee — has resisted pressure from the president to abandon the custom, saying it gives senators of both parties an important voice in deciding who will fill powerful law enforcement roles in their states.

    Coons and Blunt Rochester said they had concluded Murray “was not the right person” for the job after interviewing her and a number of other potential candidates.

    “I look forward to working with the District Court’s appointed U.S. Attorney, Ben Wallace, and remain willing to work with the Trump administration to identify and confirm a mutually agreeable candidate,” Coons said in a statement.

    Murray called the blue slip process “highly politicized” and “incredibly flawed,” saying it cost Delaware a U.S. attorney.

    “The people that think they have chased me away will soon find out that they are mistaken,” she wrote. “I did not get here by being a shrinking violet.”

  • George Washington’s living quarters back on display after restoration

    George Washington’s living quarters back on display after restoration

    Only keen-eyed visitors will notice some of the subtle changes to George Washington’s Mount Vernon home, like a new finishing on the mantle in the former president’s study or the reworked underground framing of the house.

    But curators say each minuscule change to the sprawling Virginia estate can help visitors better understand the nation’s past, and therefore their place in the world today.

    Construction fences have lined the back of the mansion for the better part of two years as work continues on a $40 million project to restore the building to its 18th century integrity. Though work is ongoing, the first and second floor of the home are now open to the public for the first time since January 2024.

    A worker at the estate Wednesday, the day of an event marking the reopening of the first and second floors to the public.

    Heading into America’s 250th anniversary, Mount Vernon President and CEO Doug Bradburn said bolstering authenticity at the estate is more important than ever.

    “You cannot understand the United States of America’s founding without the indispensable George Washington,” Bradburn said. “You can’t understand him without Mount Vernon.”

    Washington lived at the estate along the Potomac River with his wife, Martha, for the last 45 years of his life. When he inherited the mansion, it stood at about 3,500 square feet. The serene view of the Potomac welcomed Washington home after he led American forces to victory in the Revolutionary War. He retired to Mount Vernon after serving as the nation’s first president.

    By the time Washington died in 1799, he had expanded the dwelling to more than triple that size, with more than 20 rooms. Most of the work was performed by people enslaved on the estate, officials have said.

    A bust of George Washington at the estate.

    The estate passed down through family members after Washington’s death until the Mount Vernon Ladies Association secured it in 1860. Since then, the nonprofit has worked to restore the remaining 500 acres of property to how it appeared when Washington died. The association has never accepted any government funding, and it solely relies on earned income and donations.

    Nearly 1 million people visit Washington’s home, located about 20 miles south of the nation’s capital, each year.

    “We believe in the power of place,” said Anne Neal Petri, regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. “We want to engage the visitor in ways that the history books just can’t achieve.”

    This bout of rehabilitation is the largest in Mount Vernon’s history. Born from necessity after centuries of termite damage detached the building from its foundation, there wasn’t a single piece of original 18th century woodwork left underground, said Thomas Reinhart, director of the estate’s preservation.

    Only parts of Mount Vernon closed during the restoration. The extensive grounds, Washington’s tomb and the quarters for enslaved people remained open. The renovations focused only on Washington’s living quarters, called the mansion.

    To rebuild the mansion’s wooden frame, workers harvested white oak from the property, similar to how Washington would have sourced wood for the original construction. Only now, every piece of wood that touches masonry has added termite shields.

    “Termites are quite tenacious,” Reinhart said.

    From preservation carpenters, engineers, archaeologists and collection curators, it’s estimated about 350 people have worked on the restoration so far. Besides the structural changes, specialists throughout the house restoration performed paint analysis on doorframes and trims to make them accurate.

    Painters at Mount Vernon on Wednesday.

    The most noticeable visual differences are on the second floor, in the most intimate area of the house.

    Step into Washington’s bedroom, and visitors will see walls newly enveloped by a soft blue wallpaper with a bright floral design featuring a birdbath and two bright orange lovebirds.

    After referencing preserved documents, Amanda Isaac, a curator at the estate, said historians chose a replica 1790s French wallpaper based on a design that existed when Washington remodeled the home.

    She said with the most recent changes — which also included tearing the walls down to the studs and replastering them with historically accurate techniques — is a room that most resembles how the home looked when the Washingtons lived at Mount Vernon. It has nine of the original furnishings of the room, including the exact bedframe Washington died on.

    George and Martha Washington’s bedroom.

    Perhaps the largest undertaking is still ongoing.

    Underground, droves of people are still working to restore a cellar spanning the entire footprint of the house. That part of the home is being refinished to look like it did when it housed the enslaved Lee family, who served the Washingtons as valet, cook and butler. The estate is also adding an underground bunker to store an upgraded HVAC system created to better preserve and maintain the home.

    Though it’s been centuries since Washington walked the property, signs of his life are still littered around the land. While excavating the cellar, archaeologists discovered 35 glass bottles of preserved berries, 20 of which are still intact and now on display at the Mount Vernon museum.

    As the country looks to the future, Mount Vernon serves as a fixture of the past, forever reminding the nation how far it has come.

    “You can’t go to Rome without seeing the Colosseum, and you can’t go to Washington, D.C., without seeing Mount Vernon,” Bradburn said.

    Today’s rehabilitation is the largest in Mount Vernon’s history.
  • Secret meetings between FBI and Ukraine negotiator spark concern

    Secret meetings between FBI and Ukraine negotiator spark concern

    Secret meetings between Ukraine’s top peace negotiator and FBI leaders have injected new uncertainty into the high-stakes talks to end the war there, according to diplomats and officials familiar with the matter.

    Over the last several weeks, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, flew to Miami three times to meet with President Donald Trump’s top envoy, Steve Witkoff, and discuss a proposal to end the nearly four-year conflict with Russia.

    But during his time in the United States, Umerov also held closed-door meetings with FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, according to four people, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations.

    The meetings have caused alarm among Western officials who remain in the dark about their intent and purpose. Some said they believe Umerov and other Ukrainian officials sought out Patel and Bongino in the hopes of obtaining amnesty from any corruption allegations the Ukrainians could face. Others worry the newly established channel could be used to exert pressure on Zelensky’s government to accept a peace deal, proposed by the Trump administration, containing steep concessions for Kyiv.

    Ukrainian Ambassador to Washington Olha Stefanishyna confirmed Umerov’s meeting with the FBI and told the Washington Post he “only covered national security related issues” that could not be disclosed publicly.

    An FBI official said the Umerov meetings included discussion of the two countries’ shared law enforcement and national security interests. The topic of white collar corruption in Ukraine came up in one of the meetings but was not the main focus, the official said. Any suggestion that Patel’s discussions were inappropriate is “complete nonsense,” the official added.

    The two FBI leaders have criticized Ukraine in various public comments. Patel in March questioned the scale of U.S. aid to Ukraine and urged Congress to investigate whether any U.S. funds sent there were misused. Bongino has accused Zelensky of covering up the allegedly corrupt activities of President Joe Biden’s son, whose board seat on a Ukrainian energy company has faced intense scrutiny. Trump “is very suspicious of Zelensky, because of what he and some of the people in his government did to sweep under the rug the Joe Biden madness,” Bongino said in February.

    A White House official said “U.S. officials regularly communicate with world leaders about national security issues of shared interest.” The official added that Trump’s national security team has been “speaking with both the Russians and the Ukrainians to facilitate a deal to end the war” and that anyone raising concerns about the FBI meetings “are not privy to these diplomatic conversations and have no idea what they are talking about.”

    A representative of Zelensky’s office declined to comment on any specific meetings but insisted that “it is stupid to link everything to ‘corruption.’”

    The New York Post noted Umerov’s meeting with Patel in an article published Nov. 28. Bongino’s meeting with Umerov has not been previously reported.

    The discussions are happening at a critical moment for Ukraine. It is under pressure by the Trump administration to agree to an end-of-war proposal with huge implications for the country’s borders and territorial integrity.

    It is also facing its most far-reaching corruption scandal since Zelensky took office in 2019. Ukrainian investigators alleged last month that $100 million had been stolen from the country’s energy sector through graft and kickbacks.

    Eight people, including Zelensky’s former business partner, are accused of embezzlement, money laundering and illicit self-dealing. Zelensky’s top aide, Andriy Yermak, the second most powerful person in Ukraine, resigned in late November after his house was raided. Another close former ally of Zelensky, Oleksiy Chernyshov, who served as deputy prime minister, is accused by Ukrainian authorities of receiving $1.3 million in kickbacks.

    “They do have a massive corruption situation going on there,” Trump told reporters this week, noting that the scandal was generating calls for elections in Ukraine. “People are asking this question: When do they have an election?”

    Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted Kyiv to enact martial law, including the postponement of presidential and parliamentary elections.

    There is speculation inside and outside Kyiv over whether Umerov, who also serves as Ukraine’s national security adviser, may be implicated in the expanding embezzlement investigation, particularly as the country’s anti-corruption officials expand their probe into the defense sector. Umerov previously served as Ukraine’s defense minister.

    “I was surprised they sent him to negotiate given what’s being said about his potential involvement in the scandal,” said Angela Stent, a former intelligence officer in the George W. Bush administration and scholar at Georgetown University.

    Ukrainian opposition lawmaker Volodymyr Ariev told the Post that it was irresponsible to keep Umerov on as top negotiator while he’s under a cloud of suspicion. “A person who has grown a tail with corruption allegations shouldn’t chair fateful negotiations until they cut the tail,” Ariev said.

    Umerov’s defenders say he is an asset to Kyiv: His easygoing demeanor and proficient English have created a better rapport with U.S. officials than they had with Yermak, whom Zelensky relied on heavily before he resigned.

    But his FBI meetings have raised suspicion among Ukraine’s Western backers given the presence of Patel, who became a focal point of Trump’s first impeachment, which centered on the president’s threat to revoke U.S. aid to Ukraine to extract information on Hunter Biden’s activities in the country. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.

    Fiona Hill, a former Trump administration official, testified before Congress that Patel had involved himself in Ukraine issues in a manner that went beyond the scope of his job as a White House adviser, according to what she was told by colleagues. The impeachment report released by House Democrats also highlighted Patel’s discussions with Rudy Giuliani before the Trump administration’s suspension of $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.

    Hill told the Post for this report that Patel’s reemergence is “likely to be viewed with even more concern and consternation in Europe.”

    Patel has always denied he had a back channel with Trump on Ukraine during his first term and said his discussions with Giuliani were unrelated to Ukraine.

    FBI officials have worked for years with Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, or NABU, to help the government in Kyiv overcome endemic corruption stemming from its Soviet past. But high-level meetings between a top Ukrainian negotiator and the director of the FBI are not common.

    “It is unusual for someone in that job to have a meeting with the leadership of the FBI,” said Sam Charap, a former State Department official and scholar at the Rand Corporation.

    A common theme of Trump’s Ukraine diplomacy, particularly as he has expressed frustration about delays in getting to a deal, is expanding the number of aides assigned to work on the issue. Besides Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Witkoff, a real estate magnate and longtime friend, Trump has also enlisted his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, an ally of Vice President JD Vance.

    The growing number officials involved in the talks has caused miscommunication and confusion surrounding the deal’s terms and what the United States supports.

    Several U.S. officials support a proposal in which Ukraine withdraws from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine in exchange for other areas under Russian control, such as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

    Earlier this week, Zelensky pushed back against the idea of Ukraine relinquishing any territory. “Under our laws, under international law — and under moral law — we have no right to give anything away,” Zelensky said after meeting with top European leaders. “That is what we are fighting for.”

    But as negotiations have stalled, Russian forces have made advances in the East, exploiting Ukraine’s shortages in ammunition and fighters. It also continues to bomb Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure, triggering rolling blackouts and raising fears of widespread outages this winter.

    Trump has made clear his patience is wearing thin, and that if Ukraine doesn’t negotiate for land it could end up losing even more on the battlefield.

    “You’re losing thousands of people a week,” Trump said. “It’s time to get that war settled.”

  • National Trust sues to stop Trump’s ballroom construction

    National Trust sues to stop Trump’s ballroom construction

    Historic preservationists begged President Donald Trump in October not to rapidly demolish the White House’s East Wing annex for his ballroom project, urging him to wait for federal review panels and allow the public to weigh in. Now a group charged by Congress with helping to preserve historic buildings is asking a judge to block construction until those reviews occur, arguing that the ongoing project is illegal and unconstitutional.

    The lawsuit from the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation, which was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, represents the first major legal challenge to Trump’s planned 90,000-square-foot addition and is poised to test the limits of his power. The organization argues that the administration failed to undergo legally required reviews or receive congressional authorization for the project, which Trump has rushed to launch in hopes of completing it before his term ends in 2029.

    “No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever — not President Trump, not President Joe Biden, and not anyone else,” the complaint says.

    Comcast is one of 37 ‘patriot donors’ paying for Trump’s $300 million White House ballroom

    The administration in October rapidly demolished the East Wing to make way for the ballroom over the objections of the National Trust and other historic preservationists who urged the White House to pause its demolition, submit its plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, and seek public comment.

    Officials responded by saying they would work with the commission, a board that oversees federal building projects and is now led by Trump allies, “at the appropriate time.” It has yet to do so, even as regular work continues on the former East Wing site.

    The White House did not immediately respond Friday morning to questions about the lawsuit. The administration has maintained that Trump has authority over White House grounds and is working to improve them at no cost to taxpayers, dismissing critics as “unhinged leftists” who seized on the imagery of bulldozers tearing down what has been called “the People’s House” as a metaphor for the opening year of his term.

    “The lawsuit is our last resort,” Carol Quillen, National Trust’s CEO, said in an interview. “We serve the people, and the people are not being served in this process.”

    Nothing about Trump’s ballroom benefits us | Jenice Armstrong

    The National Trust is seeking a temporary restraining order on construction as the court reviews its claims, its lawyers said. One of those lawyers is Greg Craig, a Foley Hoag lawyer who previously served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama, and who is working pro bono on the case. Craig also served as President Bill Clinton’s lawyer during Republicans’ efforts to impeach Clinton in the late 1990s.

    Trump has made the ballroom a focus and frequent talking point in the opening year of his second term, and administration officials have acknowledged that he is involved to the point of micromanagement.

    “In a very short period of time — like about a year and a half — you’re going to have the best ballroom anywhere in the country,” Trump told lawmakers at the White House on Thursday night.

    The president has also maintained that he is not bound by typical building restrictions or the need to seek construction approvals, citing conversations with advisers and experts.

    “They said, ‘Sir, this is the White House. You’re the president of the United States, you can do anything you want,’” Trump said at an October dinner to celebrate the ballroom’s donors.

    Jeffrey Yass, Pa.’s richest man, donated at least $2.5 million to Trump’s White House ballroom

    Several polls have shown that the ballroom project is broadly unpopular, and Democrats have consistently attacked it, eager to contrast the president’s focus on a luxurious ballroom against many Americans’ concerns about affordability. Some conservatives have also questioned Trump’s plans and pace, asking why the administration did not undergo a formal review process before tearing down part of the symbolic seat of government. The president and his original handpicked architect battled over Trump’s desire to expand the ballroom’s size before Trump replaced him, the Washington Post previously reported.

    The $300 million project is being funded by wealthy individuals and large companies that have contracts with the federal government, including Amazon, Lockheed Martin, and Palantir Technologies. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Post.) The administration has released a partial list of contributors but granted some anonymity — eliciting concerns from Democratic lawmakers and others, some of which are reflected in the complaint.

    The National Trust, for example, alleges that the Trump administration violated the Constitution’s property clause, which authorizes Congress to oversee property on federal land.

    The National Trust’s lawsuit names Trump and other administration officials, including at the National Park Service and the General Services Administration, as defendants. The National Trust argues that the ballroom plans are legally required to be reviewed by the NCPC and the Commission on Fine Arts, another federal panel, which is without members after Trump fired them in October. The organization also contends that the White House has failed to fulfill its obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act to conduct and publish an assessment of the environmental impact of tearing down the East Wing and disposing of the debris, particularly given concerns about environmental contamination.

    White House officials have previously dismissed criticism from the National Trust, arguing that its leaders are “loser Democrats and liberal donors” who oppose Trump on political grounds. The National Trust has a decades-long association with Trump: In 1995, he donated easements to the organization that made his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida a historic property in exchange for tax breaks. National Trust officials have said they subsequently worked with the Trump organization on “collaborative” construction projects at the resort, including its ballroom.

    The White House also has defended the project by drawing a distinction between construction on the White House grounds, which administration officials say is covered by federal review panels, and demolition and site prep, which they maintain is not.

    However, the National Trust says that this is a distinction without a difference. Recent photos have shown that heavy construction machinery and teams of people are working regularly on the site, and Trump has said that pile drivers are operating “all day, all night.”

    The group’s lawsuit also cites the White House’s own public timeline for the project, which includes a section that says “construction commences” and that it “kicked off in September 2025.”

    Quillen said she did not have a “hard objection” to a White House ballroom — so long as its size, materials and design were consistent with the White House and did not overshadow the main building. It is the National Trust’s job, she said, to preserve American history, particularly at the White House, given the building’s iconic status and central role. She noted that the organization has also brought legal challenges to past administrations’ construction projects.

    “Following the process and enabling public input often results in a better project outcome,” Quillen said.

  • This musician taught an octopus to play the piano

    This musician taught an octopus to play the piano

    The white package that arrived at Mattias Krantz’s home in Sweden after a five-hour flight contained an octopus that Krantz saved from becoming someone’s meal.

    Krantz’s hopes for the octopus, which he named Takoyaki, were high — maybe unreasonably so. Within about six months, Krantz wanted Takoyaki to play the piano so well that the animal could perform “Under the Sea” and the theme from the movie Jaws.

    Krantz, who typically makes YouTube videos playing instruments he modifies, had long wanted to teach piano to an animal. Krantz said octopuses, whose eight arms can each act somewhat independently because of the neurons inside them, had the most potential.

    But the task proved more difficult — and fulfilling — than Krantz imagined, requiring hundreds of hours and a wealth of patience. His YouTube video detailing the teaching process has more than 6 million views.

    “It was probably the worst thing I’ve ever done, and maybe the coolest thing, but also the worst ever,” Krantz, 28, told the Washington Post. “I never pushed myself to such limits.”

    Takoyaki, an octopus, played piano keys while Mattias Krantz played an acoustic guitar.

    Krantz purchased Takoyaki from a Portuguese fishery in March; he did not buy the octopus from a Korean market as is depicted in his YouTube video. Once Krantz got the octopus into his home, he dumped the creature into a roughly 110-gallon tank containing rocks, sand, and dog toys. The tank was connected to machines that filtered water and removed octopus waste.

    “You’re going to be the greatest pianist the sea has ever known,” Krantz told Takoyaki, which he nicknamed Tako.

    Mattias Krantz bought Takoyaki, an octopus, from a Portuguese fishery in March.

    But first, Krantz had to earn Tako’s trust.

    On the first day in its tank, Tako hid behind rocks and didn’t eat the small crabs and mussels Krantz had fished off Sweden’s southern coast. Tako began eating on the second day, and soon Krantz gave Tako a simple task to judge whether the octopus was up for the piano challenge: Take a plastic lid off a glass jar containing crab and shrimp. Tako passed the test after about three days.

    Krantz then designed a piano key on his computer, 3D-printed it and set it down in the tank. When Tako touched the key on the second day, Krantz gave the octopus a treat. But Krantz wanted Tako to push the key to play a note, so he added a white lever that Tako wrapped its arms around and pulled to make a sound (Tako also broke the key off its mount a few times and hid it under rocks).

    After that first success, Krantz built Tako a 15-key piano — a process Tako seemed to watch closely by pressing its body against the glass. But when Krantz placed the piano in the tank, Tako sat on it instead of playing it.

    One of Takoyaki’s first tasks was to open a plastic lid off a glass jar.

    So Krantz tried different approaches.

    First, he added a blue underwater speaker that allowed Tako — whose species has poor hearing — to feel a vibration when the octopus played a key. Tako began playing random notes, Krantz said, but he wanted Tako to play particular keys to form a melody.

    Krantz added symbols to the keys he wanted Tako to play — circles, crosses, and stripes — which Tako didn’t respond to. Krantz even added pictures of an orange crab to the keys. The octopus was interested in the pictures but not in playing the keys.

    Takoyaki took the piano key Mattias Krantz made.

    But one thing seemed to grab Tako’s attention: movement. When a bubble formed in the tank, Tako chased it.

    So, with fishing wire, Krantz wiggled the lever on the keys he wanted Tako to play. It worked — despite Tako also spending time playing the wires like a harp. (Marine scientist Jenny Hofmeister said octopuses are attracted to movement because it might signal prey.)

    After a week, Tako played two notes in a row. After two weeks, Tako played a pair of notes simultaneously.

    After Mattias Krantz built Takoyaki a 15-key piano, the octopus seemed to resist Krantz pointing to the keys from inside the tank.

    But in the following weeks — after about four months of training — Tako plateaued.

    Plus — as expected from an octopus — Tako wasn’t focused on learning the instrument. Tako wrapped its arms around the GoPro camera in its tank, squirted water at Krantz, and, once, escaped the tank and hid in a cupboard.

    Krantz lost hope that Tako could learn to play.

    Takoyaki sometimes squirted water outside of the tank.

    But Tako stared at the piano, which sat on the ground beside the tank, throughout the day, appearing to want to play at the usual 6 p.m. training time, Krantz said. So Krantz experimented with a new strategy.

    “The one thing I’m really good at is insane stubbornness,” Krantz said.

    In early August, he placed an acrylic tube inside the tank and inserted a crab — Tako’s favorite treat — at the top. When Tako played a key, Krantz lowered the crab closer to the bottom of the tube. Krantz called his device the “crab elevator.”

    Mattias Krantz built a “crab elevator” for his octopus, Takoyaki.

    Tako initially tried to retrieve the crab by swimming into the tube and attempting to pull the crab down. But once Tako saw the crab inch closer after playing a note, the octopus became more motivated to play. After a few weeks, Krantz gave Tako the crab once the octopus played seven or eight keys.

    In mid-August, Krantz began playing chord progressions on his acoustic guitar and simultaneously wiggled keys for Tako to play so they could perform together. Krantz fed Tako after each recital.

    Krantz never taught Tako to consistently play the right keys at the right times. Sometimes the piano sounded good; other times, not so much. Tako played the keys to “Baby Shark” — even if it was off tempo, Krantz said.

    “I can’t believe I sit here and play with an octopus,” Mattias Krantz said.

    But the fact that Tako could play keys at all was like a “fever dream,” Krantz said.

    Hofmeister, the marine scientist, said Tako probably didn’t know he was playing the piano; he was motivated by food.

    Octopuses are smart in their own ways: They change colors based on their surroundings, build dens with stones, use makeshift weapons, throw objects at targets, and eject ink clouds when they’re in danger.

    Takoyaki, an octopus, seemed to enjoy playing piano keys.

    “The octopus is not perceiving rhythm,” Hofmeister said. “It’s not perceiving, you know, tempo. It wants to do the steps it has to do to get the crab.”

    She said teaching an octopus to play the piano perfectly is nearly impossible.

    But in addition to creating music, Krantz received another benefit from the process: a friend. He has kept Takoyaki — the name means grilled octopus — as a pet.

    Takoyaki still plays the piano about every other day.

    Octopuses typically live for a year or two, and Krantz said Tako, which he estimated to be about 14 months old, now sleeps most of the day. But that hasn’t stopped Tako from continuing to practice its unique skill; the octopus plays piano about every other day.

    The recitals still leave Krantz in awe.

    “I can’t believe I sit here,” Krantz said last week, “and play with an octopus.”

  • Silver prices just smashed a new record. What does this mean for the economy?

    Silver prices just smashed a new record. What does this mean for the economy?

    Silver is giving gold a run for the money.

    The precious metal has more than doubled in value since the start of the year and broke a fresh record on Tuesday, rising above $60 per troy ounce on New York’s Commodity Exchange for the first time ever. Now it’s up 102% for 2025 — far outpacing the record-building rush that has lifted gold 59%.

    A mix of forces are boosting silver, including the weakened dollar, tariff politics, and supply shortages. Especially critical in recent weeks, though, was the growing expectation that the Federal Reserve would announce another rate cut, which it did on Wednesday, as the U.S. economy continues to slow down. Analysts say that’s likely to further pressure the dollar lower while lifting silver — a classic safe-haven asset — even higher.

    In light of Fed concerns, “precious metals prices are rising as a bit of a hedge,” said Michael Farr of the D.C.-based investment firm Farr, Miller & Washington, ahead of the meeting.

    But silver’s rise is also a global story with a combination of forces at play. Here’s what you need to know about its soaring popularity.

    Dollar weakness and the ‘debasement trade’

    The softening of the greenback — which depreciated about 8.5% since the start of the year — is a big part of the story. Most of this drop occurred in the first half of the year, after the Trump administration unleashed steep tariffs on trading allies and competitors alike and reduced U.S. attractiveness as a reliable trade and investment partner. At the same time, rising U.S. debt and lingering concerns about inflation have also diminished the dollar’s value.

    The weakened dollar, in turn, has been driving what’s known as the “debasement trade”: Investors are looking for other assets — which include gold as well as silver — because the dollar is no longer seen as ultrasafe as it used to be, said Collamore Crocker of the economic consultancy New Century Advisers.

    “‘Concern’ is a big piece of the trade‚” Cocker said. “If you’re worried about governments undermining the value of their own currencies, you might buy precious metals.”

    The Fed rate decision could very well push the dollar down even more. Typically, lower interest rates make a currency less attractive for investors because there’s a lower return on assets in that currency.

    “Lower rates are bullish for precious metals,” said Bob Gottlieb, an independent consultant who previously worked at JP Morgan and other financial institutions.

    The tariff factor

    Traditionally, silver tends to be more volatile compared to gold and more sensitive to policy changes, say analysts. Tariffs are a good example. Recently, concerns spiked that the U.S. could add tariffs specifically for silver after it was added to the U.S. Geological Survey’s list of critical minerals last month, along with copper, lead, and other rare metals.

    The list allows the federal government to “understand where strategic domestic investments or international trade relationships may help mitigate risk to individual supply chains,” USGS acting director Sarah Ryker said in a statement.

    Adding a metal to the list can signal tariffs to come, and many investors reacted accordingly, pushing silver higher. The threat of additional tariffs has also led metals traders to shift silver to the United States and out of London or Shanghai, as a way to preempt the hit from new import taxes on the precious metal.

    Demand and supply squeeze

    The tariff uncertainty and dollar weakness are coinciding with a long-running silver shortage. A recent report from the Silver Institute estimated industrial demand for silver has soared about 18% over the past four years, due in part to India — now the world’s second-largest market for silver investment, according to Kitco News, a metals publication.

    Silver is culturally seen as a “poor man’s gold,” said Hiren Chandaria, managing director at the financial firm Monetary Metals. “With gold prices rising so high, many households and smaller investors have shifted toward silver as a more affordable precious metals store of value, so investment and gifting demand has shot up alongside traditional jewelry and silverware buying.”

    Investor demand from India is also spurred by a recent decision by the country’s central bank that allowed for regulated silver-backed loans. The Silver Institute has reported roughly a doubling in silver-backed exchange-traded fund price in India since January 2023, amid a surge of investment.

    Beyond India, broader supply crunches are in play. The world’s mines are expected to produce only about 813 million ounces of silver this year, slightly less than they did in 2021, according to the Silver Institute. Mines can only produce so much each year, and it takes many years to get a new one up and running — something that puts a cap on supply.

    Industrial demand

    The buying frenzy for silver and resulting shortage are also driven by technological change across the industrial world that has unfolded over the past five years.

    While gold has relatively little practical use aside from jewelry, silver is a high-quality conductor of electricity and heat and holds a range of industrial applications — “at the cusp of precious metals and industrial metals,” as Chandaria describes it.

    Surging investments in electric vehicles and artificial-intelligence data centers, for example, are among the sectors driving demand. Silver is laced throughout electric vehicles and their batteries, which is one reason for its surge during the electric-vehicle investment boom by major automakers in recent years. It’s also used in AI semiconductors.

    “There is an inherent tightness still in the silver market … demand is greater than supply every year,” said Bob Gottlieb, a former metals trader with leading financial institutions.

    Meanwhile, the silver boom is lifting mining companies. Canada’s Wheaton Precious Metals, the largest silver mining company by market capitalization, has seen its stock price rise close to 85% year-to-date. Fresnillo, a Mexico City-based mining company that bills itself as the world’s leading producer of silver ore, is up 365% since the start of the year, while Mexico’s Industrias Peñoles has risen around 230%. Canadian mining conglomerate Pan-American Silver rose 105%.

    Gottlieb, the metals trader, says he believes silver will settle between $50 and $75 an ounce over the next year, adding that he views India’s demand as grounds to stay bullish. But he also urged caution. “I learned a long time ago that whenever you forecast a price, the real movement is not from what you forecasted,” Gottlieb said.

  • Trump seeks to cut restrictions on marijuana through planned order

    Trump seeks to cut restrictions on marijuana through planned order

    President Donald Trump is expected to push the government to dramatically loosen federal restrictions on marijuana, reducing oversight of the plant and its derivatives to the same level as some common prescription painkillers and other drugs, according to six people familiar with the discussions.

    Trump discussed the plan with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) in a Wednesday phone call from the Oval Office, said four of the people, who, like the others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The president is expected to seek to ease access to the drug through an upcoming executive order that directs federal agencies to pursue reclassification, the people said.

    The move would not legalize or decriminalize marijuana, but it would ease barriers to research and boost the bottom lines of legal businesses.

    Trump in August said he was “looking at reclassification.” He would be finishing what started under President Joe Biden’s Justice Department, which followed the recommendation of federal health officials in proposing a rule to reclassify marijuana; that proposal has stalled since Trump took office.

    “We’re looking at it. Some people like it, some people hate it,” Trump said this summer. “Some people hate the whole concept of marijuana because it does bad for the children, it does bad for the people that are older than children.”

    Trump cannot unilaterally reclassify marijuana, said Shane Pennington, a D.C. attorney who represents two pro-rescheduling companies involved in the hearing. But he can direct the Justice Department to forgo the hearing and issue the final rule, Pennington said.

    “This would be the biggest reform in federal cannabis policy since marijuana was made a Schedule I drug in the 1970s,” Pennington said.

    The president was joined on the Wednesday call with Johnson by marijuana industry executives, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Mehmet Oz, three of the people said.

    Johnson was skeptical of the idea and gave a list of reasons, including several studies and data, to support his position against reclassifying the drug, two of the people said.

    Trump then turned the phone over to the executives gathered around his desk, who rebutted Johnson’s arguments, the people said.

    Trump ended the call appearing ready to go ahead with loosing restrictions on marijuana, the people said, though they caution the plans were not finalized and Trump could still change his mind.

    A White House official said no final decisions have been made on rescheduling of marijuana.

    The Department of Health and Human Services referred questions to the White House. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A representative from Johnson’s office declined to comment.

    Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I substance, the same classification as heroin and LSD. Federal regulations consider those drugs to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted use for medical treatment.

    Trump would move to classify marijuana as a Schedule III substance, which regulators say carry less potential for abuse and are used for certain medical treatments, but can also create risks of physical or psychological dependence.

    Other Schedule III drugs include Tylenol with codeine, as well as certain steroid and hormone treatments.

    Democrats and Republicans alike have been interested in reclassifying marijuana, with some politicians citing its potential benefit as a medical treatment and the political popularity of the widely used drug.

    Marijuana has become easier than ever to obtain, growing into an industry worth billions of dollars in the United States. Dozens of states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical marijuana programs, and 24 have approved recreational marijuana.

    The Biden administration pursued efforts to ease access to the drug, with health officials recommending reclassification to Schedule III in 2023. But health officials have said that those recommendations were slowed down by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which took months to undergo required administrative reviews and were not completed before the end of Biden’s term.

    The Drug Enforcement Administration was supposed to hold an administrative hearing on the proposal, with a judge hearing from experts on the health benefits and risks of marijuana. But the hearing has been in legal limbo since Trump took office, amid allegations from cannabis companies that the DEA was working to torpedo the measure.

  • Why these red state Republicans are resisting Trump’s efforts to expand GOP power

    Why these red state Republicans are resisting Trump’s efforts to expand GOP power

    INDIANAPOLIS — In 44 years in Indiana’s legislature, Vaneta Becker had never before had a call with the White House.

    President Donald Trump was on the line that day in October, urging her and her GOP colleagues to redraw the state’s congressional map to help Republicans in next year’s midterm elections. She told the White House she opposed the idea, and a week or so later got a voice message from an aide asking for a follow-up conversation. Becker called back to leave a message of her own.

    “I’m not going to change my position,” Becker, 76, recalled saying. “You’re wasting your time on me, so just focus on somebody else.”

    Indiana, a state Trump won by 19 percentage points last year, is serving up an unusual amount of resistance to his plan to carve up congressional districts around the country. Since this summer, Republicans in four other states have rejiggered their maps to give their party as many as nine more seats – part of a larger plan aimed at retaining power in Congress after next year’s elections.

    But in Indiana, a contingent of GOP state senators has politely but persistently said no. The GOP opponents told Trump and Gov. Mike Braun (R) they weren’t on board and last month 19 of them voted with Democrats to end a legislative session without acting on redistricting. Trump and his allies kept pressing, and the state House passed a plan last week that would likely give Republicans all nine of the state’s congressional districts, two more than they have now.

    The leader of the State Senate, Rodric Bray, agreed to bring the senators back to the state capitol to take up the issue even though he was among those who had voted to end the session. They are expecting to vote Thursday.

    Opponents include longtime Republican lawmakers like Becker who got involved in politics years before the rise of Trump and his Make America Great Again movement. Hoosiers bristle at meddling from Washington, even when it comes from allies, the opponents say.

    The state senators have been increasingly on edge in recent weeks as they endured intimidation — political and physical — and a stream of hoax police reports that seemed designed to draw large law enforcement responses to their homes.

    States draw their congressional districts after the census, and lawmakers from both parties often try to maximize their advantage. Years of litigation sometimes follow, but state lawmakers typically don’t redraw their lines in the middle of the decade unless a court orders it. Trump has rejected the usual way of doing business, demanding Republican-led states make immediate changes.

    So far, Republicans have not netted as many seats as they’d hoped because Democrats have counteracted them by adopting a new map in California and are trying to do the same in Virginia and other states. Opponents of a new GOP-friendly map in Missouri submitted more than 300,000 signatures to the state to try to block it from going into effect until a referendum on it can be held.

    But the GOP resistance in Indiana stands apart, in large part because Republicans across the country have readily acquiesced to Trump’s demands and threats on a range of issues.

    Trump may yet prevail. But the rare instance of pushback here could offer warning signs to Trump that his grip on the party may be loosening amid slides in his public approval rating. A vote against a new map in Indiana would add to his woes as Republicans fret over their ability to hold onto the House next year.

    What happens in Indiana will have effects elsewhere. If Republicans reject the map here, Trump may put more pressure on officials in other states. If they go along with the plan, Democrats in Illinois and Maryland who have resisted redistricting may feel they need now to jump into the fight.

    Time is running short because election officials, candidates and voters need to know where the lines are well ahead of next year’s primaries. But the fight over maps will continue for months. Republicans in Florida are poised to draw a new map and GOP lawmakers in Utah are trying to reverse a court decision that is expected to give Democrats one of the state’s districts.

    In Indiana, lawmakers have been debating whether to redraw the lines since August, but they didn’t see the proposed map until the House unveiled it last week. The map would break Marion County, the home to Indianapolis and the state’s largest African American population, into four districts, diluting Democratic votes. It would likely doom the reelection chances of Democratic Reps. Frank J. Mrvan and André Carson, the only Black member of Indiana’s congressional delegation.

    Trump has hosted Indiana officials at the White House. He’s dispatched Vice President JD Vance to the state twice. In October, he and his aides held their conference call with Indiana state senators to talk up redistricting. At the end of the call, the senators were told to press a number on their phone to indicate whether they supported redrawing the map, even though they were yet to see how the lines would change.

    On Wednesday night, Trump lashed out at the State Senate leader on Truth Social, calling Bray “the only person in the United States of America who is against Republicans picking up extra seats” and warning that lawmakers who oppose the changes were at risk of losing their seats.

    A White House official said earlier that Trump’s team is “not arm twisting. Just outlining the stakes and reminding them western civilization stands in the balance of their decision.”

    About 800 of Becker’s constituents in southwestern Indiana have told her they are against the plan and about 100 have told her they’re for it, she said. Sitting in her wood-paneled cubicle Tuesday in the state capitol, she slid a constituent’s letter out of its envelope.

    “Mid-decade redistricting at the request of President Trump will unnecessarily intensify the already deep partisan divisions in our country,” the man wrote. “Even bringing this topic up in the Indiana legislature will ratchet up the antagonism.”

    Voters know the push is coming from Trump, and many are not afraid to criticize him for it, even if they otherwise support the president, she said. Becker declined to say whether she’d voted for Trump but said she’s “not crazy about him,” especially after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    Trump is not letting up on his push. Last month the president called out State Sen. Greg Goode (R) in a post on Truth Social, saying he was “very disappointed” that he opposed redistricting even though Goode had not taken a position. Later that day, Goode said, someone falsely told police he had murdered his wife and barricaded himself in his house. Police kicked in the door just after Goode got out of the shower, while his wife and son were getting Christmas decorations in the basement, and officers pointed their guns at Goode’s chest, he said.

    Goode, who serves as the state director for U.S. Sen. Todd Young (R., Ind.), said he didn’t blame Trump for the incident. He got a call from Trump the next day, which he described as polite. Trump called Goode again on Monday, as the state senator was listening to the redistricting debate in committee.

    “It was not a pressured call at all,” Goode said. “The overarching message really from day one is the importance for the Republican Party to maintain control of the United States House of Representatives.”

    Goode said he won’t decide how he’s voting until he hears the final debate among the senators. He’s voted for Trump three times and takes his opinion seriously, but also is listening closely to his constituents, who have overwhelmingly told him they oppose redistricting, he said.

    On Friday, hours after the State House passed the map, Trump named Goode and eight other state senators in a social media post as needing “encouragement to make the right decision.” The conservative group Turning Point Action has claimed it will team up with other Trump-aligned organizations to spend $10 million or more on primaries in 2026 and 2028 against GOP state senators in Indiana who vote against the map. Several Republicans, including Becker, said they’re skeptical the groups would spend so much against members of their own party.

    State Sen. Travis Holdman (R) got a call from the White House a couple of weeks ago asking if he would come to Washington to talk about redistricting, but he declined because he couldn’t miss work as a banking consultant. Adopting a new map now would be unfair, he said, and he doesn’t think the president’s team could change his mind.

    “I voted for Donald Trump in every election,” he said. “I really agree with his policies. We just disagree on this issue.”

    Republicans control the State Senate 40-10, and at least 16 of them would need to vote with Democrats to sideline the map.

    Supporters of the altered map said they want to ensure Republicans hold onto Congress and are responding to districts Democrats drew favoring their party years ago in states they control. Indiana State Sen. R. Michael Young told his colleagues on Monday that the Supreme Court had blessed letting states draw districts for partisan advantage, holding up a recent decision that upheld a new map in Texas.

    “For all those people who think they’re lawyers in Indiana, who think it’s against the law or wrong, the Supreme Court of the United States says different,” he said.

    Others have made their opposition clear, with some saying they’re pushing back on what they call bullying. State Sen. Mike Bohacek (R) grew incensed last month when Trump called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) “seriously retarded” in a social media post. Bohacek, who has a daughter with Down syndrome, said in a social media post that Trump’s “choice of words have consequences.”

    “I will be voting NO on redistricting, perhaps he can use the next 10 months to convince voters that his policies and behavior deserve a congressional majority,” Bohacek wrote in his post.

    In the State House, Rep. Ed Clere was among 12 Republicans to vote against the map. He believes Trump’s MAGA movement is starting to crack, but doesn’t think that’s what’s behind the GOP resistance to redistricting in Indiana. It stems from a sense of independence that is, he said, “part of Indiana’s DNA.”

    Becker agrees.

    “Hoosiers are very independent,” she said. “And they’re not used to Washington trying to tell us what to do.”

    GRAPHIC

    https://washingtonpost.com/documents/2234b663-f69c-45fa-876d-e937e9bb1854.pdf
  • How a U.S. admiral decided to kill two boat strike survivors

    How a U.S. admiral decided to kill two boat strike survivors

    In the minutes after U.S. forces attacked a suspected drug smuggling boat near Trinidad, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the commander overseeing the operation, faced a choice.

    A laser-guided bomb had killed nine of the 11 people on board, sunk the boat’s motor and capsized the vessel’s front end, according to people who have viewed or been briefed on a classified video of the operation. As smoke from the blast cleared, a live surveillance feed provided by a U.S. aircraft high overhead showed two men had survived and were attempting to flip the wreckage.

    Ahead of the Sept. 2 mission, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given an order to U.S. forces to kill the passengers, sink the boat and destroy the drugs, three people familiar with the operation said. It appeared to Bradley that none of those objectives had been achieved, the admiral would later recount for lawmakers.

    The video feed showed that the two men were struggling to stay atop the flotsam, which people who’ve seen the footage described as roughly the size of a dining room table. Bradley turned to the military lawyer advising him and requested input, according to members of Congress who spoke with him privately last week and people later briefed on those conversations. Under the law of armed conflict, were the men now “shipwrecked” and therefore out of the fight, rendering them unlawful targets?

    The admiral decided that definition did not apply, these people said. Instead, what Bradley explained to lawmakers left some with the impression that there was a prevailing lack of certainty — about the existence of any drugs beneath the wreckage and whether the survivors had a means to call for help or intended to surrender — when he concluded that further action was warranted.

    He ordered a second strike, killing both men. Moments earlier, the video feed had shown them waving their arms and looking skyward, people who saw the footage said. It was unclear, they added, why they were doing so.

    The 30-plus minutes that elapsed between the first strike and the second has become the most consequential moment in Bradley’s three-decade military career — one that includes direct involvement in more than 1,000 lethal strikes governed by the law of armed conflict central to understanding the events of Sept. 2 and whether the strike survivors were lawful targets. The episode has put the admiral and his advisers under a spotlight alongside Hegseth, who has expressed support for Bradley while attempting to distance himself from the fallout.

    Bradley defended his actions when summoned to Capitol Hill last week, telling lawmakers he weighed the fate of the survivors with the understanding that the Trump administration has argued illicit drugs are weapons responsible for killing Americans, and that those who traffic them are not criminals but enemy combatants. U.S. intelligence, he said, showed that everyone on the boat was a “narco-terrorist,” consistent with the administration’s definition, which allowed for deadly force. His testimony provided lawmakers with the fullest account of the operation since the publication of a Washington Post report on Nov. 28 revealing Hegseth’s authorization ahead of the first attack to kill the entire crew and Bradley’s order of a second strike that killed the two survivors.

    Law of war experts and some lawmakers have challenged the admiral’s reasoning and cast doubt on the lawfulness of using the military to kill alleged criminals.

    The military lawyer who advised the admiral, whom The Post is not identifying because they serve in a secretive unit, explained to Bradley how the law of armed conflict defines “shipwrecked,” these people said. International law defines “shipwrecked” persons as those who “are in peril at sea” as a result of a mishap affecting their vessel “and who refrain from any act of hostility.” Combatants who are shipwrecked receive special protection because, unlike troops on land, they cannot take refuge, experts note.

    Bradley spent about eight hours meeting with more than a dozen lawmakers Dec. 4. Four people familiar with those sessions said that he affirmed having sought real-time legal advice, but that he did not say whether his military lawyer considered the survivors shipwrecked and out of the fight.

    There was dissent in the operations room over whether the survivors were viable targets after the first strike, according to two people. What the lawyer advised, though, and whether they rendered a definitive opinion remains unclear.

    A spokesperson for U.S. Special Operations Command, where Bradley is the top commander, declined to comment. The military attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

    Former military lawyers said that in such situations a commander’s top legal adviser would be expected to offer an assessment, but their role is only to advise, not to approve a strike.

    This report is based on the accounts of 10 people who either spoke directly with Bradley on Capitol Hill last week, were briefed on his conversations afterward or are otherwise familiar with the operation. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is highly sensitive and Bradley’s communication with lawmakers occurred in classified settings.

    The chain of command

    Two Republican-led committees in Congress have opened inquiries into the Sept. 2 operation, though on Tuesday, Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), who heads the House Armed Services Committee, said that he was satisfied with the information he had received and planned to end his probe once other members of the panel are given an opportunity to see unedited video of the operation, as he has. A separate Senate inquiry continues.

    President Donald Trump appeared to support releasing video footage of the operation before abruptly backtracking this week and deferring to Hegseth on whether to do so. Hegseth has been noncommittal, saying the Pentagon is “reviewing” the footage to ensure it would not expose military secrets.

    Democrats have demanded fuller investigations and called on the administration to share more evidence with lawmakers. Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), the Senate Intelligence Committee’s senior Democrat, said after meeting with Hegseth and other officials Tuesday that he was seeking written documentation of the opinion rendered by Bradley’s military lawyer.

    The first strike Sept. 2 was carried out with a laser-guided GBU-69, according to people familiar with Bradley’s briefings. The munition exploded just above the crew, a setting designed to maximize the blast and the spread of shrapnel fragments. The follow-on strike was taken with a smaller AGM-176 Griffin missile, which killed the two men on impact, people familiar with the video footage said. U.S. forces then fired two additional Griffins at the wreckage to sink it.

    While Bradley made the decision to conduct the follow-on strike that killed the two survivors, Hegseth was the operation’s target engagement authority, meaning he authorized the use of force and ultimately was responsible for the strikes ordered, people familiar with the matter said.

    Hegseth has said that he watched live video of the initial attack but left for other meetings minutes later and was unaware initially that the first strike had left two men alive. It was a couple of hours, Hegseth has said, before he learned that Bradley ordered the second strike.

    Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Hegseth, said in a statement, “We are not going to second-guess a commander who did the right thing and was operating well within his legal authority.”

    Gen. Dan Caine, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the military’s top officer, saw the full video of the Sept. 2 strike for the first time Dec. 4, when he joined Bradley’s meetings with lawmakers, two U.S. officials said. In a statement for this report, a spokesman for Caine said the chairman has “trust and confidence” in Bradley and military commanders “at every echelon.”

    The admiral’s defense

    The Sept. 2 operation was the first in what has become an extended campaign to target suspected drug runners in the waters around Latin America. In strikes on more than 20 boats, U.S. forces have killed nearly 90 people to date, according to public notices from the Trump administration.

    At the core of Bradley’s defense of the second strike, according to several people familiar with his conversations on Capitol Hill, was his assertion that the attack was not directed at the two survivors but at the boat wreckage and any cocaine it may have sheltered.

    The laws of war stipulate that military commanders must consider the collateral damage of a strike only if the action could pose a threat to civilians, said Geoffrey Corn, a retired Army lawyer. By labeling suspected drug smugglers as combatants in an armed conflict against Americans, as the Trump administration has done, the Defense Department can argue that the military did not need to consider the harm to survivors when striking again, Corn said.

    But many experts, Corn among them, dispute that the U.S. is in an “armed conflict” with cartel groups. Corn also noted that even if they are combatants, once shipwrecked, feasible measures must be taken to try to rescue them before attacking the target again, he said. “That to me is the most troubling aspect of the attack,” he said.

    Bradley’s contention that he was targeting the boat rather than the people, Corn said, fails to explain why the admiral deemed it necessary to launch the second strike rather than first trying to rescue the survivors.

    The admiral told lawmakers that intelligence gathered ahead of the operation indicated the boat being targeted was expected to transfer its cargo to another vessel while both were at sea. After the first strike, Bradley explained, he and his team were unable to rule out whether the men, who were shirtless, had a communications device either on their person or somewhere under the vessel’s wreckage that could have been used to call for help.

    U.S. forces did not intercept any communications from the two survivors after the first strike, Bradley told lawmakers.

    The admiral also theorized, multiple people said, that the two survivors could have drifted to shore or found a way to sail the wreckage to their intended rendezvous point. When the U.S. aircraft providing the live video feed scanned the surrounding area, it did not find another vessel coming to the boat’s aid. And the admiral conceded to some lawmakers that the survivors probably would not have been able to flip the wreckage, said one lawmaker and a U.S. official familiar with Bradley’s conversations.

    The doubts that have emerged

    Todd Huntley, a former director of the Navy’s international law office, which handles law of the sea matters, said in an interview with The Post that the legal definition for being shipwrecked does not require that people are drowning or wounded.

    “They just have to be in distress in water,” said Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces.

    Huntley also said that the potential presence of a communications device should have been irrelevant. “You can’t kill somebody in the water merely because they have a radio,” he said. The prospect of a rendezvous with another vessel does not indicate an intent to engage in hostilities or prove the survivors posed a threat, he added. “That is such a far-out theory,” Huntley said.

    Trump and other Republicans have framed the administration’s counternarcotics campaign as a necessary measure to defend Americans from fentanyl, the leading cause of drug overdoses in the United States. But the Sept. 2 strike — and most of those that have followed — targeted a boat believed to be ferrying cocaine. Fentanyl smuggled into the U.S. mostly comes through border crossings.

    People familiar with Bradley’s account to lawmakers said that the cargo in this case was heading next to Suriname, a small country east of Venezuela, not the United States. As The Post and others have reported, most of the narcotics that move through the Caribbean are headed toward Europe and Western Africa rather than the U.S.

    “That further underscores that this boat was not a threat to the United States and not a lawful target,” Huntley said.

    While speaking with lawmakers, Bradley said he looked for signs the men were surrendering, such as waving a cloth or holding up their arms. The admiral noted that he saw no such gesture, and did not interpret their wave as a surrender, people familiar with his interviews said.

    To legal experts, Bradley’s assertion that he scanned for a sign of surrender reflected a foundational flaw with the Trump administration’s lethal force campaign: The laws of war weren’t written to address the behavior of criminal drug traffickers, they said.

    On Sept. 2, the 11 passengers on board the targeted boat were almost certainly unaware the Trump administration had declared “war” on them, people familiar with the operation said. It’s unclear whether the strike survivors even realized a U.S. military aircraft was responsible for the explosion that had occurred, these people familiar said, or whether they knew how to indicate surrender — or that surrender was even an option.

    In the weeks leading up to the attack, the Defense Department ran simulations that showed there was the potential for people to survive a first strike, three people familiar with the matter said. That did not appear to affect military planning for this operation. On the day of the attack, the U.S. military had no personnel or equipment on hand to rescue anyone.