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  • As a doctor, here’s my simple, science-backed schedule for a healthier day | Expert Opinion

    As a doctor, here’s my simple, science-backed schedule for a healthier day | Expert Opinion

    How can I organize my day so I can feel as good as possible?

    The morning routines and “biohacks” you see on social media can seem extreme and often oversell the science. But consistent daily routines do matter.

    Routines are linked to better health, academic success, and even resilience. We can all take simple steps to synchronize our activities with our circadian rhythms and biology. Small tweaks in the timing of things can pay off.

    I analyzed dozens of studies to separate hype from science, and here’s my straightforward advice for a healthier day: Maximize your efforts in the morning — that’s when much of the magic can happen for your health and productivity. And be consistent with your nighttime rituals. The quality of your sleep, and your subsequent day, depend on it.

    Here’s a science-backed daily schedule to try. Think of it as a template to help you plan a healthier day.

    Early morning

    Goal: Get sunlight or light exposure early, engage in physical activity, and fuel up with protein and fiber. It may not be possible to pull all these off each morning — like if you’re a caregiver or have a long commute — but try to check as many of these boxes as possible.

    7 a.m.: Outdoor exercise then shower. If getting outside for an early walk or run is a nonstarter for you, think about investing in a light box to boost sunlike exposure and trying a quick and easy routine indoors to get your blood moving, like the 7-minute workout.

    8 a.m.: Eat a high-fiber, high-protein breakfast (aim for 25-30 grams of protein). Studies have found that when people pump up the protein at breakfast — think eggs, yogurt, and whole grains — they feel fuller and snack less later in the day. And getting in your daily coffee in the morning, before noon, is linked to a 16% lower risk of dying from all causes compared with people who sip throughout the day.

    8:30-9 a.m.: Morning commute or settle in for the day if you work from home.

    Why this works: Going outside first thing is key. Exposure to blue light halts melatonin production (the sleep hormone) and has been shown in randomized controlled trials to improve alertness, productivity, and depression.

    You’ll get bonus points if you exercise with a friend: A workout buddy boosts accountability, and social connectedness is an underappreciated key to longevity and happiness.

    And about those cold showers that are all the hype on social media: If you enjoy them, sure. But the data on cold water immersion isn’t slam dunk, and cold plunges may actually undo the benefits of strength training.

    Late morning

    Goal: This is the most productive window of your day, so tackle activities requiring greatest focus.

    9 a.m.-noon: Write the essay, read the stack of scientific papers piled on your desk, or finish working on that budget you’ve been procrastinating. Personally, this is when I leave my smartphone in another room and nix notifications.

    Why this works: Our alertness and intellectual performance peak as we approach midday. Riding the high of your early morning cortisol (and your first coffee), this is the window when you’re bringing your A-game.

    While you’re working, set a 50/10 timer for micro-breaks. A meta-analysis showed that a 10-minute or less break every hour — to stretch, stroll around the cubicles, or do a brief meditation exercise — can enhance, not hurt, performance.

    Afternoon

    Goal: Counter that post-lunch inertia with a brisk walk — not more caffeine. Then tackle simple tasks.

    Noon: Eat with a friend, family member, or colleague if you can, then take a 15-30-minute walk.

    1-4 p.m.: Now’s the time to get those mindless errands (or worse, mind-numbing meetings) out of the way.

    Why this works: Decision fatigue builds as the day goes on. We’re all susceptible: A 2019 study published in JAMA Network Open found that as the afternoon wears on, primary care doctors are less likely to order breast and colorectal cancer screening tests for their patients than in the morning — and perhaps more interestingly, patients are also less likely to follow through with future screenings if that first appointment is in the afternoon.

    High-stakes moments are better scheduled earlier, but you can help counter the fatigue with a post-lunch walk outdoors. Pro-tip: If the weather is bad, a 10-minute walk inside will help control your blood sugar after the meal, so still prioritize movement.

    Evening

    Goal: Eat early and start winding down.

    5 p.m.: Pick up the kids, drive home, prep dinner, and pair your evening grind with a joy snack. I enjoy a fun podcast, calling my mom, or even just doing random acts of kindness for my fellow commuters like pausing to allow someone to cut in.

    5:30 p.m.: Aim to eat within an 8 to 10-hour window each day, so chow down on the earlier side. If this time frame isn’t doable, try to eat ideally at least two hours before bedtime.

    8 p.m.: Think of this as your digital sunset — minimize screens and dim household lights, which can suppress melatonin.

    Why this works: Evidence for intermittent fasting is most promising when we’re talking about an eating window of 8-10 hours within a day. The exact same meal can raise your blood sugar more at night than if you ate it early in the morning due to circadian effects.

    Bedtime

    Goal: Avoid alcohol and vigorous exercise, and build in a nightly ritual to quiet the mind.

    9 p.m.: Take a warm bath one hour before bed or slip on some cozy socks.

    9:30 p.m.: Engage in a short mindfulness or journaling exercise.

    10 p.m.: Lights out. The next seven to nine hours are for you and your pillow. Nighty-night.

    Why this works: In my ideal schedule, I would have showered after my morning workout, so if you already bathed once, no need to repeat. Instead, wear some warmer clothes to start getting your body ready to sleep. This trick can be as effective as melatonin to help you fall asleep quicker by helping your core temperature drop.

    A randomized controlled trial found that mindfulness exercises — even starting with just five minutes daily — helped improve sleep quality compared with standard sleep hygiene education offering tips such as dimming lights and avoiding alcohol or caffeine at night. Journaling can also help the mind unwind: Studies have found that actually writing a gratitude letter to someone specific (regardless of whether you send it) is more effective than making a simple gratitude list.

    I also love to write a specific to-do list about the coming days. It helps alleviate nighttime worry, and a 2018 study found that people who do this fall asleep faster.

    What I want my patients to know

    New routines don’t stick overnight. A classic study found that it takes on average 66 days of practicing a new dietary or physical behavior each day before it becomes a habit. This routine is a great goal. But some days, with my two toddlers in the mix, work deadlines, and ruthless Boston traffic, I don’t nail it.

    You need to make it easy to make it last. So choose one habit and list every barrier that will keep you from hitting the mark. Then presolve each one. Is it too cold to go for a jog early in the morning? Find a good 30-minute cardio routine on YouTube that you can do in your bedroom.

    Don’t have time for a 15-minute walk after lunch? Turn one of your afternoon calls into a walking-and-talking meeting (a personal favorite), or take a smaller win with a 5-minute lap around the building.

  • National Guard can stay in D.C. for now, appeals court says

    National Guard can stay in D.C. for now, appeals court says

    The Trump administration will be allowed to continue its National Guard deployment in D.C. at least temporarily, pending another appeals court decision, a panel of U.S. Court of Appeals judges said Thursday.

    The ruling means the deployment of troops to the nation’s capital could persist beyond Dec. 11, the date a lower-court judge had previously set as a deadline for the administration to halt the mission.

    Judges with the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals granted an administrative stay in the case, meaning the drawdown of troops in the capital will be delayed at least until the appeals court makes an additional ruling. The court emphasized that Thursday’s decision had nothing to do with the merits of the Trump administration’s arguments in the case.

    “The purpose of this administrative stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the motion for stay pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion,” the judges wrote.

    The appeals court ruling comes the week after an attack in which prosecutors say a man targeted National Guard members, killing one and critically injuring another in a busy downtown area of D.C. blocks from the White House. For Trump administration officials, the attack – allegedly carried out by a lone gunman who was resettled in the United States from his native Afghanistan after work for a CIA-backed counterterrorism squad – only deepened their resolve to keep the troops in the capital city.

    Trump called for an additional 500 troops; South Carolina’s governor said this week he would send up to 300 members of his state’s National Guard in response.

    “Our warriors are strong and we will not back down until our capital and our cities are secure,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said at a news briefing Tuesday.

    For D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, who sued the Trump administration in September over the National Guard deployment, the shooting and its aftermath offered further proof that the deployment of troops was ill-advised and unsafe. D.C. police officers have since paired up with National Guard troops for the troops’ safety, potentially diverting officers from other public safety tasks, he said in a court filing this week.

    “The deployment impinges on the District’s home rule, requires the diversion of scarce police resources, and exposes both the public and Guard members to substantial public safety risks, as Defendants themselves acknowledged at the outset of the deployment, and as the horrific attack on two National Guard members last week tragically underscored,” Schwalb wrote.

    President Donald Trump deployed the D.C. National Guard to city streets on Aug. 11 as part of a broader crime crackdown he initiated in the city. He also took temporary control of the D.C. police department and launched a surge of federal law enforcement into D.C. neighborhoods. Multiple Republican governors heeded Trump’s call for reinforcements and sent troops from their National Guards to the District. As of Wednesday, about 2,300 National Guard members were stationed in the city – about 100 more than the previous day.

    The National Guard members have stood watch at Metro stations and picked up trash at national parks. They also carry weapons and have been instructed to use them only as a last resort.

    Unlike in states, where governors control their National Guards, the president is commander in chief of the D.C. National Guard – a role the administration argues gives Trump vast power over the deployment and legally authorizes his actions in the District. But Schwalb, in his lawsuit, has argued that the president’s power over the Guard has limits. Schwalb also has alleged that the troops in D.C. have been illegally engaged in law enforcement, in violation of a federal law that prohibits military troops from engaging in domestic policing.

    In November, U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb sided with D.C. in a preliminary ruling, writing that the National Guard deployment was illegal and that Trump lacked the authority to activate the Guard for the mission. Cobb ordered the Trump administration to halt the deployment in D.C. while litigation continued over whether the troops should be permanently withdrawn. However, she delayed her order from going into effect until Dec. 11 to give the Trump administration time to appeal.

    In response, the administration asked an appeals court for an emergency ruling to allow the deployment to continue while litigation continues, arguing in court documents that Cobb’s order “impinges on the President’s express statutory authority as Commander-in-Chief of the D.C. National Guard and impermissibly second-guesses his successful efforts to address intolerably high crime rates in the Nation’s capital.” The appeals court on Thursday did not rule on that request; the administrative stay means the deployment can continue while the appeals court considers it.

    The Trump administration has argued that the troops have not been engaged in city law enforcement and merely deter crime through their presence, freeing up police for other tasks.

    Questions of the mission’s safety implications have taken on new weight in the aftermath of last week’s attack, but each party in the lawsuit has argued that the city would be safer if the court sided with them.

    A group of retired senior military officers and the Vet Voice Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization representing veterans and their supporters, filed a brief in the appeals court that they said was “in support of neither party.” They argued that the use of the National Guard in D.C. “threatens to undermine the apolitical reputation of the military as an institution, places service members in situations for which they are not specifically trained, and pulls the Guard away from its critical missions.”

    But attorneys general from 24 Republican-led states – including some that sent their troops to D.C. – argued that crime is high in D.C. and while the mission “has already produced strong results,” there is more to be done. Violent crime is down 28 percent in D.C. compared to last year, although crime in the city began to fall steeply well over a year before Trump surged federal law enforcement in August.

    “Danger still lingers,” the states’ attorneys general wrote in their brief, filed in support of the Trump administration. “Just last week, an Afghani national committed a heinous terror attack, shooting two National Guardsmen at close range and murdering one.”

    In arguing that the Guard troops should stay, they also cited a few actions that Guard members had taken to keep the city safe.

    “National Guard troops have stopped at least one fight near the metro,” they wrote, “helped provide first aid to elderly residents of the district, and aided in the successful search for a missing child.”

  • Trump hires new White House ballroom architect

    Trump hires new White House ballroom architect

    President Donald Trump has replaced the architect he handpicked to design his White House ballroom, according to three people familiar with the project, ending the involvement of a boutique firm whose selection raised questions from the start about whether it had the capacity to complete the massive, high-profile endeavor.

    For more than three months, James McCrery II and his architecture firm led the effort to design Trump’s $300 million ballroom building — until late October, when he stopped working on the project, one of the people said. It is unclear whether McCrery stepped back voluntarily, but the men parted on good terms and remain so, according to one of the people familiar with the project, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

    Trump and McCrery had clashed over the president’s desire to keep increasing the size of the building, but it was the firm’s small workforce and inability to hit deadlines that became the decisive factor in him leaving, one of the people said.

    Trump has chosen architect Shalom Baranes, who’s been designing and renovating government buildings in Washington for decades, to pick up the mantle, according to two of the people. Baranes’ firm has handled a number of large Washington projects dating back decades, including projects involving the main Treasury building near the White House and the headquarters of the General Services Administration.

    “As we begin to transition into the next stage of development on the White House Ballroom, the Administration is excited to share that the highly talented Shalom Baranes has joined the team of experts to carry out President Trump’s vision on building what will be the greatest addition to the White House since the Oval Office — the White House Ballroom,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a written statement. “Shalom is an accomplished architect whose work has shaped the architectural identity of our nation’s capital for decades and his experience will be a great asset to the completion of this project.”

    The White House and McCrery’s representative have continued to say that McCrery remains involved in the project in a “consulting” role.

    The ballroom building — at 90,000 square feet and estimated to hold nearly 1,000 guests and cost $300 million — was from the start a herculean task for McCrery, said people familiar with his firm’s operations. That might have been true for any firm given Trump’s rushed timeline, but it was especially difficult for the head of a small firm better equipped to design churches, libraries, and homes.

    Trump’s selection of the firm raised eyebrows of architects and planning experts worried that a shop as small as McCrery’s couldn’t complete such a large project in little more than three years. One architect said federal officials tasked with awarding contracts would normally consider only firms four times bigger than McCrery’s to take on projects of that scale.

    Those concerns grew almost immediately, according to one of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the project.

    “Everybody realized he couldn’t do it,” the person said.

    McCrery’s spokesman did not respond to requests for an interview.

    The renovation represents one of the biggest changes to the White House in its 233-year history, and has yet to undergo any formal public review. The administration has not publicly provided key details about the building, such as its planned height. The structure also is expected to include a suite of offices previously located in the East Wing. The White House has also declined to specify the status of an emergency bunker located beneath the East Wing, citing matters of national security.

    In the weeks since the switch from McCrery to Baranes, crews of dozens of workers have continued to prep the site for construction, driving piles, stockpiling materials such as reinforced concrete pipes and amassing an array of cranes, drills and other heavy machinery, photos obtained by The Post show. On Wednesday, they erected a towering crane anchored into a concrete paddock.

    On Tuesday, Trump said during a Cabinet meeting that the pile drivers operate “all night” and have created a disagreement in his marriage. The president said he loves the sound while first lady Melania Trump has asked him to make the constant pounding stop, a request he’s denied.

    “Sorry, darling, that’s progress,” Trump said he told her.

  • A seal walks into a bar … and we don’t mean the Navy kind

    A seal walks into a bar … and we don’t mean the Navy kind

    A seal waddled into a bar — and ordered a drink on the rocks.

    So went one of the many jokes made by patrons at Sprig + Fern, The Meadows, a craft beer pub in New Zealand’s South Island, after a young fur seal walked in the front door on a rainy Sunday, sparking excitement and disbelief.

    Co-owner Bella Evans said she was working behind the bar, putting up Christmas decorations, when the young seal entered shortly after 5 p.m.

    “Everyone was pretty shocked,” Evans said in a phone interview Thursday. “A lot of people thought it was a dog at first, because we are a dog-friendly establishment.”

    “It was a mix of shock, excitement and everything all at once,” she said.

    The seal seemed “pretty relaxed” and was in the pub for around 25 minutes, including visiting the bathroom, Evans said. Video posted online by the bar — and set to the Mission Impossible theme tune — shows the seal waddling between tables as a customer tries to usher it outside.

    “Today we had the cutest unexpected visitor,” the business wrote on Facebook. “It wandered in all on its own for a little look around, absolutely stealing the show.”

    Evans said she was initially worried about the seal getting frightened and the safety of customers, but the pup seemed “really mellow.”

    The seal eventually settled under a dishwasher before staff members managed to lure it into a customer’s dog crate — with the help of some salmon from a pizza special on the menu. Conservation rangers then came to collect it.

    “Everyone was joking it was so popular that even the seal’s heard,” Evans said about the pub’s pizza.

    Helen Otley, a principal ranger for the New Zealand Department of Conservation, said the agency received “numerous” calls Sunday about the young fur seal, known as kekeno in Maori, which had been spotted in the area.

    “The pub staff did a great job keeping the seal safe until the DOC ranger could get there,” she said in a statement to The Washington Post.

    Otley said it was “not unusual” to see young fur seals in the Tasman Bay area, at the top of New Zealand’s South Island, as they explore their environment after being weaned. The pub is about a mile from the coast.

    “Seals can wander up to 15 km (9.3 miles) inland, often following rivers and streams. They can turn up in unusual places — like this pub — but this is normal exploratory behavior,” she said, adding that the department generally takes a “hands off” approach to seals.

    “They are capable and resilient and, given time and space, they usually find their way back to the shore,” she said.

    Evans said the surprise visitor delighted customers and staff, and sparked a flurry of jokes about drinks served “on the rocks” and the pub having the “seal of approval.” The seal has also left an intriguing scent for local dogs who have been “sniffing the trail” where it roamed, she said.

    Otley said the seal has since been released at Rabbit Island, a small island in the Tasman Bay area, which she described as “a safe location due to its dog-free status.”

    It’s not the first time animals have turned up in unexpected places in the past couple of weeks, with a raccoon passing out in a bathroom after ransacking a Virginia liquor store and a bear squeezing into a crawl space in a California home.

    For Evans, who took over the pub around three months ago, the animal visitor was followed up by another surprise this week: a customer bringing their bearded dragon for a drink.

    “We’re turning into a zoo,” she joked.

  • Steve Cropper, Memphis soul guitarist with Booker T. & the MG’s, dies at 84

    Steve Cropper, Memphis soul guitarist with Booker T. & the MG’s, dies at 84

    Steve Cropper, an internationally renowned, Grammy-winning guitarist and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee who played with luminaries such as Otis Redding, B.B. King, Booker T. & the MG’s and the Blues Brothers, died Dec. 3 in Nashville. He was 84 years old.

    Mr. Cropper’s death was announced on his social media accounts in a statement that called him “a beloved musician, songwriter, and producer.” The cause of death was not disclosed.

    In the earliest days of his decades-long career, Mr. Cropper played guitar as a founding member of the Memphis band the Mar-Keys, which had a national hit with “Last Night” in 1961. He formed the band with his childhood friend, Donald “Duck” Dunn, who became a well-known bassist. The two continued to collaborate for years afterward, notably with the famed Booker T. & the MG’s — a groundbreaking, racially integrated R&B/soul studio band formed by Mr. Cropper in 1962.

    Mr. Cropper performed on many enduring hits, including with Otis Redding on “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” which the two co-wrote, and with Sam & Dave on “Soul Man.”

    He also played on two albums with the Blues Brothers and co-wrote hits such as “In the Midnight Hour” with Wilson Pickett, “Knock on Wood” with Eddie Floyd, and “Green Onions” as part of Booker T. & the MG’s.

    Stephen Lee Cropper was born on a farm near Dora, Mo., on Oct. 21, 1941. He recalled falling in love with music after his family moved to Memphis when he was 9 years old and he started hearing Black gospel songs on local radio stations.

    “I really enjoyed that music. I don’t know what it was. At such a young age, it impressed me,” he recalled in a 1984 interview. “The Black spiritual music … it gave me a whole different attitude about music.”

    At about age 14, he decided he wanted to play guitar and scraped together $20 to order one from a catalog by setting pins at a bowling alley in Memphis — earning about 10 cents a game. He recalled his shock when he opened the box and found that the instrument had not been strung.

    “I went, ‘Wait a minute, isn’t it supposed to be all tuned and all that stuff?’” he said with a laugh. “I really didn’t have a musical background in the family.”

    He taught himself how to play, recalling: “I liked the sound of it. I liked the ring of the notes.”

    In his acceptance speech when Booker T. & the MG’s was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, Mr. Cropper said he was honored to play “with some of the greatest musicians on the planet.”

    “It’s been a great career and it’s been a lot of fun,” he said.

    Mr. Cropper was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005. He won two Grammy Awards, in 1968 for “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” with Redding and in 1994 for “Cruisin’” as part of Booker T. & the MG’s. He was nominated for a Grammy nine times.

    In 1996, British magazine Mojo ranked him as the second-greatest guitarist of all time, behind only Jimi Hendrix.

    “Steve’s influence on American music is immeasurable,” his family said on social media.

    “Every note he played, every song he wrote, and every artist he inspired ensures that his spirit and artistry will continue to move people for generations.”

    Mr. Cropper is survived by his wife, Angel Cropper, and his four children.

  • Admiral says there was no ‘kill them all’ order in boat attack, but video alarms lawmakers

    Admiral says there was no ‘kill them all’ order in boat attack, but video alarms lawmakers

    WASHINGTON — A Navy admiral commanding the U.S. military strikes on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean told lawmakers Thursday that there was no “kill them all” order from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but a stark video of the attack left grave questions as Congress scrutinizes the campaign that killed two survivors.

    Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley appeared for a series of closed-door classified briefings at the Capitol as lawmakers conduct an investigation after a report that he ordered the follow-on attack that killed the survivors to comply with Hegesth’s demands. Legal experts have said such a strike could be a violation of the laws of military warfare.

    “Bradley was very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, as he exited a classified briefing.

    While Cotton (R., Ark.) defended the attack, Democrats who were also briefed and saw video of the survivors being killed questioned the Trump administration’s rationale and said the incident was deeply concerning.

    “The order was basically: Destroy the drugs, kill the 11 people on the boat,” said Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

    Smith, who is demanding further investigation, said the survivors were “basically two shirtless people clinging to the bow of a capsized and inoperable boat, drifting in the water — until the missiles come and kill them.”

    The classified sessions with Bradley, alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, provided fresh information at a crucial moment as Hegseth’s leadership comes under scrutiny. But they did little to resolve growing questions about the legal basis for President Donald Trump’s extraordinary campaign to use war powers against suspected drug smugglers. So far more than 80 people have been killed in some 20 strikes.

    Lawmakers have not yet specifically authorized the use of military force against the alleged drug boats, and the Republican-controlled Congress has turned back attempts to put a check on Trump’s power to engage in the missile campaign, which Hegseth has vowed will continue. Several Democrats have called for Hegseth to resign.

    Congressional investigation gets underway

    Lawmakers want a full accounting of the Sept. 2 strike, which was the first in what has become a monthslong series of U.S. military attacks on vessels near Venezuela believed to be ferrying drugs. The Washington Post had reported that Bradley ordered the follow-on attack on the survivors.

    But lawmakers who lead the House and Senate’s national security committees in Congress came away with different descriptions of what the two survivors were doing when they were killed.

    Cotton said he saw them “trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for United States back over so they could stay in the fight.”

    He said there were “several minutes” between the first and second attacks, which consisted of four missile strikes. He said it was “gratifying” that the U.S. military was taking “the battle” to cartels.

    But Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said, “what I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”

    “You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel,” he said, and who “were killed by the United States.”

    The survivors did not issue any distress call or other communications, though lawmakers were told it appeared the people had a hand raised, “waving” at one point during the attacks, Smith said.

    Smith acknowledged there was likely cocaine on the boat, but he objects to the Republican administration’s rationale for continued attacks on alleged drug runners who may or may not be heading to the United States. “That’s really the core of the problem with all of this,” he said. “That incredibly broad definition, I think, is what sets in motion all of these problems about using lethal force and using the military.”

    Meanwhile, the U.S. conducted yet another strike on Thursday. The U.S. military said it killed four men in a strike on a suspected drug vessel in international waters in the Eastern Pacific, the 22nd such strike.

    “Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known narco-trafficking route in the Eastern Pacific,” the U.S. military said in a statement on Thursday.

    Who is Adm. Bradley?

    At the time of the attack, Bradley was the commander of Joint Special Operations Command, overseeing coordinated operations between the military’s elite special operations units out of Fort Bragg in North Carolina. About a month after the strike, he was promoted to commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.

    His military career, spanning more than three decades, was mostly spent serving in the elite Navy SEALs and commanding joint operations. He was among the first special forces officers to deploy to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. His latest promotion to admiral was approved by unanimous voice vote in the Senate this year, and Democratic and Republican senators praised his record.

    Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) has described Bradley as among those who are “rock solid” and “the most extraordinary people that have ever served in the military.”

    But lawmakers like Tillis have also made it clear they expect a reckoning if it is found that survivors were targeted. “Anybody in the chain of command that was responsible for it, that had vision of it, needs to be held accountable,” he said.

    What else are lawmakers seeking?

    Underpinning Trump’s campaign against suspected traffickers is his argument that drug cartels amount to armed combatants because their cargo poses a threat to American lives.

    Democrats are demanding the release of the full video of the Sept. 2 attack, as well as written records of the orders and any directives about the mission from Hegseth. None of the written orders or audio of verbal commands was shared with the lawmakers.

    A White House Office of Legal Counsel memo providing a rationale for the strikes was dated after the fact, on Sept. 5. That memo remains undisclosed, and Democrats want it released.

    Obtaining further information, though, will largely depend on action from Republican lawmakers, who have majority control of the committees, a potentially painful prospect for them if it puts them at odds with the president.

    Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said that he and the Senate Armed Services Committee chair, GOP Sen. Roger Wicker, have formally requested the executive orders authorizing the operations and the complete videos from the strikes, among other items. The Trump administration has repeatedly denied their requests for basic information about the operation, Reed said.

    Republican lawmakers who are close to Trump have largely stood by Hegseth and the administration’s decision to conduct the strikes.

    Elsewhere, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and others see the U.S. military operation as part of an effort to prompt a government change in the South American country. Maduro on Wednesday acknowledged speaking last month by phone with Trump, who confirmed the call days earlier.

  • How Palantir shifted course to play key role in ICE deportations

    How Palantir shifted course to play key role in ICE deportations

    For years, Alex Karp, Palantir’s CEO, had declared the data-management company to be “involved in supporting progressive values,” saying he has repeatedly “walked away” from contracts that targeted minorities or that he found otherwise unethical. Even as Palantir took on extensive data-management contracts for the federal government, the company said it was not willing to allow its powerful tools to broadly track immigrants across America.

    That commitment no longer holds. Palantir’s software is helping U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement track undocumented immigrants and deport them faster, according to federal procurement filings and interviews with people who have knowledge of the project and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details. The software, Immigration OS, plays a key role in supporting the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.

    Karp, formerly an outspoken Democrat who a decade ago said that he respected “nothing” about Donald Trump and that a deportation drive made “no sense,” has staunchly defended the president’s immigration policies. Declaring Palantir to be “completely anti-woke,” he has repeatedly praised Trump’s ongoing crackdown on immigrants, thrusting the company into one of the country’s most contentious issues.

    That shift in political alliances in no way signals a change in his core beliefs, Karp said in a statement to The Washington Post, portraying his commitment to controlling immigration as of a piece with his long-standing devotion to social justice.

    “For over two decades, I have implored our political elite to take seriously the truly progressive position on immigration: one of extreme skepticism. To no avail,” Karp said. “Unfettered immigration in Europe, where I lived for well over a decade, has been a disaster — depressing wages for the working class and resulting in mass social dislocation. I remain an economic progressive, isolated among self-proclaimed progressives that are anything but.”

    The changes at Palantir have been driven by multiple factors, according to five of the people familiar with the company’s project. Palantir executives saw Trump’s election to a second term as a mandate from voters for stricter border control, the people said, and, like many other companies, Palantir has changed some policies in response to executive orders targeting diversity in hiring and other issues. They added that Karp’s support of Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack has drawn him closer to Republican national security hawks.

    Palantir’s federal contracting business has bloomed during the Trump administration. Its September tally of new federal contracts was $128 million, its largest monthly sum on record, according to USASpending.gov. The company’s stock price is up more than 120 percent this year, as it rides its contracting wave and the boom in companies that, like Palantir, are centered on the development and use of AI.

    Palantir has long defied simple political characterization. For years, it has worked with administrations of both parties on projects other Silicon Valley firms shunned, such as the Pentagon’s Project Maven AI target identification system. But its support for ICE on a deportation crackdown punctuated by violent clashes and stiff court challenges has sparked debate among current and former employees over whether it runs afoul of the company’s values and endangers its bipartisan profile.

    Seven months into the project, which was renewed in late September, some Palantir employees still harbor concerns about Immigration OS, according to two of the people familiar with the matter. They say some Palantir staff members have been discussing whether the contract should be discontinued if ICE’s use of the technology veers into extrajudicial actions or violate the company’s civil liberties principles. It couldn’t be determined whether the company’s senior executives are involved in those discussions. A Palantir spokeswoman declined to comment.

    ICE and its parent department, the Department of Homeland Security, declined to answer questions about Immigration OS. DHS said in a statement that Palantir has been a contractor for 14 years, providing “solutions for investigative case management and enforcement operations” to ICE. “DHS looks holistically at technology and data solutions that can meet operational and mission demands,” it said.

    ICE awarded Palantir a $30 million contract on April 11 to build an “Immigration Lifecycle Operating System,” or Immigration OS for short. Its aim, according to procurement filings by the agency, is to facilitate the “selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens” based on ICE priorities, minimize “time and resource expenditure” in deportations, and track in “near real-time” which individuals leave the country voluntarily. Palantir won the contract without a competitive bidding process, with ICE citing an “urgent and compelling need” and stating that “Palantir is the only source that can provide the required capabilities … without causing unacceptable delays.” ICE renewed the contract on Sept. 25, bringing its total value to about $60 million — a relatively small amount in the context of Palantir’s$2.87 billion revenue in 2024.

    In an internal communication to employees in the spring, Palantir presented the project as a “prototype” and said “longer-term engagements” were “TBD,” according to a copy obtained by 404 Media. The company said it was “pursuing this effort because we believe it is critical to national security and that our software can make a meaningful difference in the safety of all involved in enforcement actions.”

    ICE and Palantir have declined to disclose how many people the system tracks, which agencies it pulls data from, and whether there are safeguards against mistaken identity or overcollection of surveillance data. Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer, told the New York Times in a recent interview that Immigration OS tracked encounters at the border, asylum applications and applications for benefits. Immigration OS does not track information of U.S. citizens who are relatives of undocumented immigrants, Palantir said in a statement.

    ICE adopted Immigration OS this year as it rolled out a campaign to identify and detain what it calls the “Worst of the Worst.” The agency has cited cases of undocumented immigrants committing serious crimes as justification for broad deportation sweeps through Chicago, Charlotte and Portland, Oregon, and other cities. ICE and Palantir declined to say whether Immigration OS played a role in helping compile ICE’s “Worst of the Worst” lists.

    Trump said on Thanksgiving Day that he would “permanently pause” migration from “Third World Countries,” broadly deport undocumented immigrants, and end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens. That would mark an escalation of a campaign that federal judges have repeatedly ruled exceeds the administration’s legal authority, with one Chicago judge saying last month that the use of force involved “shocks the conscience.” The Department of Homeland Security has decried the rulings as coming from “activist judges” and said its actions have been lawful.

    In an interview with Wired published in November, Karp said he had previously “pulled things” that he believed were being deployed in violation of the company’s code of conduct, while rejecting contentions that its immigration software is. Asked whether he needed to take a closer look at how Palantir’s products were being used in the United States, he called it “exactly the right question,” adding: “I’m telling you that I have done this, and I will continue to do it.”

    Wendy R. Anderson, who was Palantir’s senior vice president for national security until May, said Karp has never wavered in his conviction that tech companies working in defense have a duty to the country, not to politics.

    “Alex starts from a single, nonnegotiable premise: America has to win,” she said, speaking generally and not in reference to Immigration OS. “Not in a partisan sense, but in the enduring one — the survival of the United States and the Western institutions that make free societies possible.”

    Palantir, founded by Karp and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel in 2003 in the wake of 9/11, has long drawn criticism from civil rights activists over the powerful data-management tools it sold to the likes of the Pentagon, CIA and ICE.

    Karp is the son of a Jewish father and African American mother, who brought him along to civil rights protests as a child. He grew up in Philadelphia, graduated from Central High School in 1985 and earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Haverford College. Karp has long been outspoken in his self-identification as a Democrat and his beliefs in privacy protections. “We as a company, and I as an individual, always have been deeply involved in supporting progressive values and causes,” Karp said in 2011.

    In summer 2015, shortly after Trump announced his first major presidential run, Karp told his staff that he had turned down an opportunity to meet Trump, as “it would be hard to make up someone I find less appealing,” according to a leaked video published by BuzzFeed. Karp said he opposed Trump’s broad deportation platform, saying it made “no sense” to throw out hardworking people. He said blaming immigrants for the nation’s ills would bring up “the worst that a society can bring up.”

    During Trump’s first presidency, Palantir said it would not work directly with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations arm on deportations, citing the risk of human rights violations. The company limited its contracts to the agency’s Homeland Security Investigations division, which worked on issues such as terrorism, sex trafficking and drug smuggling, though in practice there was at least some crossover with raids on undocumented immigrants.

    Palantir had made that distinction, Courtney Bowman, the company’s director of privacy and civil liberties, wrote in a 2020 letter to Amnesty International, “because we share your organization’s concern with the potential serious human rights violations against migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border and risks of disproportionate immigration enforcement inside the U.S.”

    Critics say Immigration OS represents a breach of those principles. The project has drawn public backlash, including from Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham, who wrote on X that Palantir was “building the infrastructure of the police state.” In a public letter, 13 of the company’s former employees accused Palantir’s leadership of being “complicit” in “normalizing authoritarianism” in America.

    Within Palantir, executives defended the project by citing changing voter sentiment on the border issue and changes to ICE’s structure. In one of his first executive orders in January, Trump had ordered ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations to prioritize immigration enforcement instead of national security.

    “The national conversation around immigration enforcement, both at the border and in the interior of the United States has shifted,” the company wrote in an internal communication to employees, according to a copy obtained by 404 Media. Palantir said it had realized that “to really support the agency’s immigration enforcement mission, we must expand our aperture … this means supporting workflows that are substantially distinct from our historical scope and into Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).”

    The policy reversal prompted some employee resignations. Brianna Katherine Martin, who had been a U.S. government strategist for the company for almost three years, left in May, citing the recent expansion of the company’s work with ICE.

    “For most of my time here, I found the way that Palantir grappled with the weight of our capabilities to be refreshing, transparent, and conscionable,” Martin wrote on LinkedIn. “This has changed for me over the past few months.” She did not respond to requests for comment.

    The deepened partnership with ICE has come amid other changes at the company.

    Palantir revised its employee code of conduct in March, removing pledges to avoid biased decision-making and eschew unfair action based on race or national origin. The “Protect the Vulnerable” section of the code previously said: “We will not create or perpetuate the unfair treatment and/or stigmatization of individuals or groups, particularly when such unfair action is based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, disability, age, ancestry, marital status, citizenship, or sexual orientation.” The new version pledges more generally to avoid unfair action “based on any characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.”

    Palantir also deleted a section that said employees should strive to overcome conscious and unconscious biases in their decision-making. The section now says employees should engage with one another with respect.

    The code-of-conduct changes were made in response to Trump executive orders unrelated to the company’s ICE business, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the shift. Trump had forbidden federal contractors from “illegal” diversity practices in January.

    Karp biographer Michael Steinberger, whose book “The Philosopher in the Valley” was published last month, said his interviews revealed Karp’s increasing exasperation with what he saw as the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to control the border and preoccupation with identity politics.

    “He has definitely moved to the right,” Steinberger said. “Though I suspect he would be more inclined to say that he thinks the left left him.”

    An important factor in Karp’s rightward shift has been the Oct. 7 attack on Israel two years ago, Steinberger wrote in his book. “I’m now very willing to overlook my disagreements with Republicans on other issues because of the position they have taken on this one,” he quotes Karp there as saying.

    In a letter in July to Amnesty International, responding to questions about its ICE contracts, Palantir said that while it took the human rights risks of its work with governments seriously, its role was to serve as a responsible federal contractor and uphold the law, not to set U.S. government policy.

    “Palantir is not an oversight authority entrusted with scrutinizing or questioning executive branch actors,” the company wrote.

  • Making friends as an adult is hard. Here’s the secret.

    Making friends as an adult is hard. Here’s the secret.

    On a recent Thursday evening in downtown Washington, I took a deep breath and walked into a bar. I joined a couple dozen other women who were milling around making small talk and ordering drinks, waiting for the more formal portion of the evening to begin.

    I was there to make friends.

    When I first moved to D.C. at age 23, I immediately met lots of new people who were in the same boat. Many of my fellow interns were new to the city, and we were all game for adventures. These days I still have close friends, but many of us have busy jobs and young children. Some have moved away. It can be hard to even schedule a phone call to catch up.

    I find myself craving the easy friendships of my early 20s. Could I find that again?

    The meetup I was attending was organized by RealRoots, one of a number of startups aimed at making us less lonely. Even before the pandemic, Americans were spending less time with friends. By 2023, the U.S. surgeon general warned we were in a loneliness epidemic and that the health risks of isolation were akin to smoking.

    The good news is there’s now less stigma in admitting you want to make friends, especially since the pandemic, RealRoots CEO and co-founder Dorothy Li told me.

    “We were all lonely together for two years,” she said, and many of us have begun rebuilding social lives at the same time.

    I consulted experts about how to both make new friends and reconnect with old ones. Here’s what I learned.

    Be vulnerable

    I went into the RealRoots event with a healthy dose of skepticism. I was told that I would be matched with a curated group of women based on my responses to a personality quiz and an interview with an artificial intelligence assistant named Lisa who detected my “social vibe.” (I was “grounded, thoughtful, and warm” — thanks, Lisa!)

    “I totally get it,” Li said when I told her about my doubts. “Human connection needs to be in real life.” But the planning and logistics of matching people who are similar and finding times on their calendars? That, she said, “can be done seamlessly by AI.”

    The women at my meetup included a former professional ballroom dancer, a nurse who loves her work with dementia patients, and an aid worker about to leave for a work trip to Sudan.

    Everyone had different reasons for being there. One woman worked from home and felt isolated, especially since becoming pregnant. Another wanted to push out of her comfort zone and meet new people. A third said she had social anxiety and felt this took the pressure off.

    After mingling, moderators led us through a series of questions, which started like corporate icebreakers (what are your hobbies?) but got progressively more personal (what’s something you’re good at?), finally building to the last question: What’s something you’re struggling with right now?

    I searched my mind for something that wouldn’t feel too revealing. These were basically strangers, after all. But then someone talked about her fertility issues. Another was going through a difficult divorce. Another had a serious illness. I quietly reassessed. When it was my turn, I no longer felt the need to hold back. I talked about my insecurities as a mom. I felt myself starting to cry as I explained my fears about how my anxiety would affect my daughter. I was met with so much empathy.

    When I told Li I felt close to all the women by the end of the night, she told me that’s the point.

    “When you start talking about the things that are actually on your mind, everyone can relate,” Li said.

    Vulnerability invites vulnerability. This rule also applies when trying to deepen friendships.

    For journalist Billy Baker, after getting married, having kids and relocating to the suburbs, he realized that many of his high school and college friends couldn’t be part of his daily life anymore. He set out to build a community where he lived, and the first step was to reach out to people he felt a connection to, and to tell them that. It was intentional and a little scary, but worth it, he said.

    “Vulnerability for me was always rewarded,” said Baker, author of the book We Need to Hang Out: A Memoir of Making Friends.

    Do things you want to do anyway

    When Baker was working on his book about friendship, he was trying to nail down exactly what draws us to other people. He found that a shared interest or activity worked particularly well as a first step. For instance, he would often run into a guy at the gym, so he started asking him to meet up there to work out together.

    “Pickleball has changed senior friendship,” he said. “Is it pickleball they love or is it having this activity that they enjoy, and finding others who also enjoy it and then they’re off for coffee?”

    Baker says if you choose something you want to do anyway, you’ll probably meet people with a shared interest, and even if you don’t you’ll still have a good time.

    Put friendship on the to-do list — near the top

    Baker learned that he couldn’t just assume friendships would happen to him — he needed to take initiative.

    “We were never taught to prioritize friendship,” Baker said. For him, this journey began when his editor asked him to write about how many men let friendships lapse in middle age. Even though Baker had always been social, he realized he had been prioritizing his work and family and neglecting to make time for friends.

    “The gift I gave myself is to put friendship on the to-do list every day alongside eating well, taking care of my family, taking out the trash, all those things,” Baker said. “It needs to be a part of our daily life if you really are going to reap the benefits.”

    Baker’s solution was to take inspiration from a group of men in his town with a tradition called “Wednesday nights” — a weekly promise of getting together. Baker created his own version of it, and said it was awkward at first. But eventually, genuine connections formed.

    At the end of my conversation with Baker, he gave me a challenge: Was there anyone I could think of who I wanted to be closer to?

    I thought of a colleague I have been casual friends with for a few years. I always delighted in running into her in the hallways or at parties, but we had never gotten together just us. Baker encouraged me to ask her to hang out.

    I felt a familiar creeping fear as I reached out to her — what if she was too busy, or didn’t feel the same friendship vibe I did? What if we did hang out and had nothing to say?

    I asked her, my colleague Rachel Kurzius, to get lunch on a Sunday. We chatted for two hours that felt like 20 minutes. We bonded over talking about books and our kids and the surprising number of things we had in common, and it really feels like the start of a friendship. Similar to Baker, I was rewarded by vulnerability.

    If you’re contemplating taking the first step, just do it. The odds are stacked in your favor.

    “We like people who like us,” Baker said. So make the first move.

    After my RealRoots meetup, I declined to join RealRoots’ six week series — like a kickball league, there was a cost, and it didn’t fit into the budget this month — but I was still grateful for the opportunity to meet people. A few days later, I ran into one of the women from the group at a workout class, and we greeted each other like old friends.

  • Federal judge limits warrantless immigration arrests in D.C.

    Federal judge limits warrantless immigration arrests in D.C.

    The Trump administration’s escalating use of warrantless immigration arrests in D.C. this year probably violated federal law, a judge ruled Tuesday in a decision that prohibits such arrests for all migrants in the city except those at risk of escaping.

    U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell granted a preliminary injunction sought by the immigrant-rights group CASA Inc. and four migrants who were arrested without administrative warrants in August amid President Donald Trump’s law enforcement surge in the capital. All four had pending immigration applications at the time of their arrests and were eventually released after spending time in detention facilities.

    “They were arrested while going about unavoidable, lawful activities of daily life,” Howell said.

    The judge, in an 88-page opinion, took Trump administration officials to task for depriving migrants of their rights and basic necessities as they languished in cramped detention facilities before being released. She criticized immigration authorities’ “systemic failure” to follow the law and said top administration officials, including Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino, had repeatedly misstated the legal requirements for warrantless arrests in public comments.

    Bovino and a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security had asserted that officers needed “reasonable suspicion” to conduct such arrests, but Howell said the legal standard was more stringent: probable cause. Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

    Trump ordered a renewed crackdown on illegal immigration this year, and top administration officials set targets as high as 3,000 daily arrests of migrants. Attorneys for CASA and the four plaintiffs in the case argued that authorities began to work under an “arrest first, ask questions later” policy to comply with the high daily quotas — and began ignoring a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that authorizes warrantless arrests only when a migrant “is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.”

    One of the plaintiffs, Jose Escobar Molina, a scaffolder from El Salvador, described in a court filing how he was picked up at 6 a.m. as he headed to work one morning by a group of plainclothes officers who shoved him into a black SUV, making him think he was being kidnapped. Another plaintiff, from Venezuela, said he showed his arresting officers his driver’s license, work permit and asylum application paperwork, which they disregarded.

    Warrantless arrests have skyrocketed since Trump’s surge began in August, Howell found. By one count, she said, officials conducted 943 immigration arrests over a month-long period that ended Sept. 9, which represented 40 percent of all D.C. arrests. The judge noted that being present in the country without legal authorization is not a criminal offense, but a civil violation. Entering the United States without legal authorization is a misdemeanor under federal law, and a felony for repeat offenders.

    “Viewing all immigrants potentially subject to removal as criminals is, as a legal matter, plain wrong,” Howell said, before quoting a Supreme Court ruling from 2012: “Perceived mistreatment of aliens in the United States may lead to harmful reciprocal treatment of American citizens abroad.”

    At a court hearing last month, an assistant U.S. attorney argued that an injunction would slow the Trump administration’s deportation efforts by allowing the court to micromanage arrests. As part of her ruling Tuesday, Howell ordered that immigration authorities document every warrantless immigration arrest in D.C. with “specific, particularized facts” establishing probable cause “that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.”

    The Justice Department in a legal filing denied that immigration authorities had instituted a new policy of warrantless arrests and argued that the court did not have jurisdiction to rule on the case.

    “Plaintiffs identify no written policy authorizing the arrests that they complain of because there is none,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Bardo said. Howell said approximately 40 migrants had submitted court declarations attesting to the warrantless arrests and said Bovino’s comments defending those arrests with inaccurate information proved that the policy existed.

    “This is a victory for the rule of law and for the people across the city, who have avoided going to work, to church, to school, to grocery stores — out of fear of being unlawfully arrested, detained, and deported,” said Joanne Lin, an official with the Washington Lawyer’s Committee, one of the groups representing the plaintiffs.

    The ruling describes some circumstances in which immigration agents can establish a migrant’s likelihood of escaping before a warrant may be obtained, but Howell said those factors could vary.

    “Some courts have found the likelihood of escape to be higher when, for example, the noncitizen presented ‘conflicting documents,’ ‘had been “picked up before,” ’ admitted that he had previously been removed, or appeared ‘extremely nervous’ as if ‘looking for an opportunity to run,’” the judge wrote. “Courts have also made the self-evident finding that the likelihood of escape is lower when the individual has resided in the country for a lengthy period of time and has strong community ties.”

    Aditi Shah, an attorney involved in the case from the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C., welcomed those conditions.

    “This requires the government to take some extra steps that it’s required to under the law before it can just grab people off the streets and lock them away in detention centers,” she said.

    Ama Frimpong, CASA’s legal director, said the ruling was a powerful memorial to one of the migrants who described his warrantless arrest and detention in a legal filing, using a pseudonym, Elias Doe. He died last week, Frimpong said. His health had worsened after he missed a dialysis treatment while detained, she said.

    “This is now part of his legacy,” Frimpong said. “It is important for impacted community members to lead this fight and show that they are not afraid.”

  • House Judiciary issues subpoena to force Jack Smith to testify in private

    House Judiciary issues subpoena to force Jack Smith to testify in private

    House Republicans have upped their demands for Jack Smith to testify behind closed doors, issuing a subpoena on Wednesday to the former special counsel that calls on him to meet with members of the House Judiciary Committee and answer questions about his two federal prosecutions of President Donald Trump.

    Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said in his letter to Smith — which he posted on social media — that Smith would be deposed on Dec. 17. Smith must hand over materials related to the investigations by Dec. 12, he said.

    The demand is the latest in a string from Republican lawmakers aimed at getting Smith to testify privately and hand over materials related to the probes. In October, Jordan wrote Smith requesting that he sit for a private interview with lawmakers about the investigations, though did not issue a subpoena.

    “Due to your service as special counsel, the Committee believes that you possess information that is vital to its oversight of this matter,” the letter from Jordan reads.

    Smith repeatedly has said he would sit for an interview with lawmakers in a public setting, but does not want to do it behind closed doors. His supporters have expressed concern that a private interview would be subject to selective leaks by committee members.

    Public testimony, however, could put Republicans and the Trump administration in a tricky position. Smith has said he collected ample evidence showing that Trump committed the alleged crimes for which he was indicted. By calling Smith to testify, Republicans risk giving him a platform to air the evidence he collected against the president and failing to elicit testimony that would portray him as a corrupt prosecutor out to get Republicans.

    The former special counsel has also said that, under long-standing protocol, he needs Justice Department guidance to tell him what he is allowed to testify about and what materials he is allowed to hand over. Smith, who is now a private citizen, says he does not have access to the investigatory materials, which are now in the Justice Department’s possession.

    The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request asking if it had provided Smith with that guidance.

    “Nearly six weeks ago Jack offered to voluntarily appear before the House Judiciary committee in an open hearing to answer any questions lawmakers have about his investigation,” Smith’s attorney, Peter Koski, said in a statement.

    “We are disappointed that offer was rejected, and that the American people will be denied the opportunity to hear directly from Jack on these topics. Jack looks forward to meeting with the committee later this month to discuss his work and clarify the various misconceptions about his investigation.”

    If Smith failed to comply with the subpoena, he could risk prosecution. If a person defies a congressional subpoena, lawmakers could refer that person to the Justice Department for prosecution.

    The back-and-forth over the terms of Smith’s testimony highlights the Trump administration’s contentious relationship with Smith and the large team of agents and prosecutors involved in investigating the president. The administration has fired multiple prosecutors and agents who worked on the cases and has portrayed Smith and his team as corrupt and politicized. The committee has also called some of Smith’s deputies on the special counsel team for testimony.

    Smith oversaw two federal investigations into Trump during the Biden administration. One examined Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified materials after he left office, and the other probed his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

    Neither case made it to trial, and both were dismissed before Trump took office in January. Smith has said that he did nothing wrong and that he followed all investigatory protocols when overseeing the cases.