By JESSE BEDAYN and MICHAEL BIESECKER

A grand jury on Wednesday rejected indictments over the fatal shooting last year of a U.S. citizen by a federal immigration agent during a traffic encounter in Texas, prosecutors said.

Federal workplace safety regulators have issued citations and fines against three businesses for violations in the deaths of six people last year at a Colorado dairy.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Tuesday announced fines including penalties for failing to protect workers against hazardous gases against the dairy owner and a dairy service provider. The deaths of five men and a teenager on Aug. 20, 2025, sent shockwaves through the rural communities in and around Keenesburg, 35 miles (55 kilometers) northeast of Denver.

Previously, the Weld County coroner’s office determined from autopsies and toxicology tests that all the people who died were exposed to hydrogen sulfide gas.

Those autopsy reports gave little indication of the circumstances of the deaths, describing only an industrial accident in a confined space at a dairy farm.

In August 2025, federal regulators opened initial investigations of the dairy, owned by Prospect Ranch as well as Johnstown, Colorado-based Fiske Inc, whose subsidiary High Plains Robotics services dairy equipment and employed some of those who died.

The hazards of confined spaces on farms and dairies are a well-known and persistent cause of death in agriculture across the U.S. — often from exposure to odorless and colorless noxious gases, or due to asphyxiation in closed spaces where oxygen has been depleted.

First responders from a rural fire district in Weld County were dispatched around 6 p.m. on Aug. 20 to Prospect Ranch and took their own safety precautions as they entered a confined space.

All those who died in Colorado were Latino, ranging in age from 17 to 50. Four of them, including the teenage high school student, were from the same extended family.

Alejandro Espinoza Cruz, of Nunn, was found dead along with his 17-year-old son Oscar Espinoza Leos and a second son, 29-year-old Carlos Espinoza Prado.

The Espinozas are related by marriage to a 36-year-old from Greeley who died — Jorge Sanchez Pena, according to the Weld County coroner’s office.

The other two men — Ricardo Gomez Galvan, 40, and Noe Montañez Casañas, 32 — lived in Keenesburg.

The remains of Montañez Casañas, a veterinarian who was employed under a U.S. visa, were repatriated to the central Mexican state of Hidalgo, according to the Mexican consulate in Denver.

___

Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE agents in Minnesota rightly sparked outrage over the misconduct of federal agents. But these abuses don’t have to lead to death to be grave violations of constitutional rights.

In October, ProPublica published a list of 170 documented cases of American citizens detained by ICE, and what those individuals endured in the process. One such case is that of George Retes, and it serves as a microcosm of some of what the mass deportations agenda is doing to Americans. 

On July 10, 2025, George Retes was driving to his job as a security guard on a Southern California farm when he encountered an ICE roadblock surrounded by protestors. Next thing he knew, his car was filled with tear gas and swarmed by federal agents who broke his windows and pepper-sprayed him. They proceeded to drag him out of the car, push him to the ground and put their knees on his body to immobilize him. From there he was transported to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.

George says he was detained in an isolation cell for three days, incommunicado, without being presented to a judge or being allowed to contact legal representation. He was denied access to a shower to wash away the tear gas and pepper spray. Eventually, he was released without being charged with a crime and with no explanation for what happened.

George’s detention came in the midst of a raid in Camarillo, California, on a marijuana farm as part of the government’s “mass deportations” agenda. But George isn’t an immigrant to be deported — he is a U.S. citizen born and raised in Ventura, Calif., and an Iraq war veteran. 

Soon after his detention, George would find out how challenging it is to hold the federal government accountable. He decided to try anyway and filed a complaint against the federal agencies involved in his detention under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which he was required to do before he could sue. On February 18, he was finally able to file a lawsuit.

Retes argues that his detention violated his constitutional rights—including his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. “Any detention has to comply with the demands of the U.S. Constitution,” said Marie Miller, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, who’s representing him. “For any detention, you need reasonable suspicion to stop someone, and probable cause to arrest them,” Miller further explained. “There’s not really evidence that officers could [reasonably] believe this U.S. citizen had broken the law, much less immigration law.”

Regardless of what authority ICE may claim to have to detain George, they have none that can trump the U.S. Constitution.

How could federal agents have known that George is a U.S. citizen? He told them, explicitly, and even told them he’s a veteran. 

“I’m a [U.S.] citizen, I’m just trying to get to work,” he said. Miller says George even told the agents where his ID was inside the car. “No one seemed interested,” she stated. “They didn’t seem to disbelieve him. They just seemed to not care.”

This seeming indifference from federal agents regarding the questionable legality of their purported actions — not to mention their brutality — should alarm every American.

George has been using his First Amendment right to free speech to raise awareness about his case— and the federal government reacted to that. In September, the Department of Homeland Security posted on X that George “became violent” when federal agents confronted him for “blocking” their route. “CBP arrested Retes for assault,” the post reads, and denied that U.S. citizens were wrongfully arrested. But if this is true, why didn’t they charge him with a crime? And why didn’t they address George’s claims that he was held incommunicado for three days?

The tactics employed by federal agents against George and against other individuals—some of which we’ve seen with the killings of Good and Pretti— are unacceptable for anyone, whether they’re here with government permission or not. We cannot normalize this behavior in America.

As Miller poignantly pointed out, “No one is above the law. . . If federal officers can violate our basic rights with impunity, then those rights are just words on a page.”

Subsidies. Love ’em or hate them, they dominated the news during the Affordable Care Act’s sign-up season, and their reduction is now hitting many enrollees in the pocketbook.

While lawmakers continue to disagree on a way forward, and the politics of affordability keeps the issue front and center, it would be understandable to think these are the only taxpayer-funded health insurance subsidies in the U.S. system.

But that would be wrong.

“The vast majority of people with health insurance get some kind of federal subsidy for it, from Medicaid to Medicare to the ACA to employer-sponsored insurance,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

These broad taxpayer supports are rarely discussed, though, as they apply to work-based coverage. So, let’s take a look.

Adding up the tax breaks

Nearly half of the more than $1.1 trillion annual spending on Medicare, the second-largest program in the federal budget behind Social Security, comes from general federal funds. The rest comes from payroll taxes and the monthly premiums paid by enrollees, who number more than 66 million.

Medicaid — the nation’s largest health insurer, covering more than 70 million low-income people — costs more than $918 billion annually. It’s jointly financed by the federal government (65%) and states (35%).

For both programs, expenses are partially funded with taxpayer dollars. A less obvious form of federal support comes through employer-sponsored health coverage. Here, the impact on the federal bottom line is less visible, as hundreds of billions of dollars never reach the U.S. Treasury because it takes the form of tax breaks for employers and workers.

“It’s a world apart from Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare — from the government writing checks to people,” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Job-based insurance provides coverage for at least 154 million people under age 65. (By comparison, about 22.9 million people enrolled in Affordable Care Act plans for this year, generally because they don’t have job-based insurance. Extending the enhanced ACA subsidies that expired at the end of 2025 would cost about $350 billion over a decade, or roughly $35 billion annually.)

In fact, contributions to employer-sponsored health plans are the single-largest “exclusion” — a tax policy that allows certain income to be exempt from taxes — in the federal budget. For this fiscal year, the estimated amount is $451 billion, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office.

The money employers spend to offer health coverage to their employees can be written off as a business expense. And workers who receive this benefit don’t have to pay income or payroll taxes on its value.

Those tax savings can be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year for workers. The amount varies, with the biggest breaks going to those with the most expensive health plans and those whose wages put them in the upper tax brackets. Contributions to health savings accounts are among other tax breaks related to health insurance.

But the exclusion can be a difficult concept for insured workers to wrap their heads around, as most employees still contribute a portion of their pay to health coverage.

Even though they’re not taxed on that, “it doesn’t necessarily feel like a subsidy to people,” Levitt said. “They do feel like they’re paying.”

Baked into the tax system

The tax treatment evolved along with work-based health insurance policies in the U.S., fueled during World War II, when wage and price controls spurred interest in offering health coverage to lure workers. It was enacted into tax law in 1954.

Backers, which often include labor unions and employers, say it encourages companies to offer health insurance, as most large companies do. Because of the cost, smaller companies are less likely to do so, even with the tax incentive. Also, for workers, getting $1 of health care coverage is worth more than an extra dollar in wages, which would be taxed and, thus, worth less.

Opponents of the tax break, however, note the lost revenue to the Treasury and that the tax exclusion, according to some economists, leads employers and workers to choose the most generous — and expensive — health insurance offered, which they say drives up health care spending. The tax break benefits wealthier workers more than those in lower-income tax brackets, and economists also say the amounts employers pay for health insurance might otherwise be spent on boosting workers’ wages.

While there is currently no pending legislation to modify the tax break, the growing federal deficit has some employer groups worried the policy will change. Benefit experts say the outcome would vary.

“It’s not clear that it would wind up in increased wages for everyone,” said KFF’s Levitt. “Some workers have more negotiating leverage than others.”

Decades of efforts to cap or eliminate the exclusion have all failed.

“It’s had a bipartisan target on its back for 40 years,” said Paul Fronstin, a director at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

Any change, however, “would raise some revenue, but it’s also a tax increase for workers,” Fronstin noted. “What would that mean, if their taxes go up? Do wages go up because they’re not getting the same tax breaks? There will be winners and losers in that equation.”

Still, because job-based coverage is the way so many Americans get health insurance, some policy experts warn that eliminating or even lowering the exclusion could remove an incentive for employers to offer coverage. While some employers would likely keep offering coverage even without the tax break — because it is a benefit that helps attract and retain workers — it is a huge expense, so others might drop it. Average family premiums cost an employer nearly $27,000 last year, according to KFF.

“These are businesses, which weigh the costs of offering insurance, which have gone up dramatically,” said Elizabeth Mitchell, CEO of the Purchaser Business Group on Health, an organization of large public and private employers that offer health insurance to their workers. “If there’s not some sort of tax incentive, I would expect them to revisit whether they would bear those costs.”

Cannon, of the Cato Institute, considers the tax policy bad because it takes choice away from workers, who might rather have increased wages, even if they are taxed. Those additional wages, he argues, could then be invested in tax-advantaged health savings accounts, used to pay medical costs.

Under the current tax break approach, “you are effectively saying let the employer control a huge chunk of your earnings and enroll in the plan the employer chooses,” he argues.

Employers counter by saying they are better able to negotiate higher-quality, lower-cost health insurance packages than individuals could on their own.

Mitchell, at the employer group, said, “It is challenging for an enormous employer to negotiate fair prices with the large consolidated systems. So it’s hard to imagine how an individual would be able to navigate our current system.”

She also disputes arguments that the tax break leads to higher health care prices, driven by overly generous employer plans that lead insured workers to use more health services.

“That’s a tired economic theory that doesn’t apply in health care,” she said. “People don’t shop for health care because they want more of it. They use health care because they need it. It’s fundamentally different.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

Edited by

Paula Cohen

In:

By STEVE KARNOWSKI

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A former federal prosecutor who quit amid a dispute with the Trump administration is now representing former CNN host Don Lemon, who was one of nine people indicted for their alleged roles in disrupting a service at a Minnesota church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official was a pastor.

MedPage Today story.

Erica Hayes, 40, has not felt healthy since November 2020 when she first fell ill with COVID.

Hayes is too sick to work, so she has spent much of the last 4 years sitting on her beige couch, often curled up under an electric blanket.

“My blood flow now sucks, so my hands and my feet are freezing. Even if I’m sweating, my toes are cold,” said Hayes, who lives in Western Pennsylvania. She misses feeling well enough to play with her 9-year-old son or attend her 17-year-old son’s baseball games.

Along with claiming the lives of 1.2 million Americans, the COVID-19 pandemic has been described as a mass disabling event. Hayes is one of millions of Americans who suffer from long COVID. Depending on the patient, the condition can rob someone of energy, scramble the autonomic nervous system, or fog their memory, among many other symptoms. In addition to the brain fog and chronic fatigue, Hayes’ constellation of symptoms includes frequent hives and migraines. Also, her tongue is constantly swollen and dry.

“I’ve had multiple doctors look at it and tell me they don’t know what’s going on,” Hayes said about her tongue.

Estimates of prevalence range considerably, depending on how researchers define long COVID in a given study, but the CDC puts it at 17 million adults.

Despite long COVID’s vast reach, the federal government’s investment in researching the disease — to the tune of $1.15 billion as of December — has so far failed to bring any new treatments to market.

This disappoints and angers the patient community, who say the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should focus on ways to stop their suffering instead of simply trying to understand why they’re suffering.

“It’s unconscionable that more than 4 years since this began, we still don’t have one FDA-approved drug,” said Meighan Stone, executive director of the Long COVID Campaign, a patient-led advocacy organization. Stone was among several people with long COVID who spoke at a workshop hosted by the NIH in September where patients, clinicians, and researchers discussed their priorities and frustrations around the agency’s approach to long COVID research.

Some doctors and researchers are also critical of the agency’s research initiative, called RECOVER, or Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery. Without clinical trials, physicians specializing in treating long COVID must rely on hunches to guide their clinical decisions, said Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, chief of research and development with the VA St. Louis Healthcare System.

“What [RECOVER] lacks, really, is clarity of vision and clarity of purpose,” said Al-Aly, saying he agrees that the NIH has had enough time and money to produce more meaningful progress.

Now the NIH is starting to determine how to allocate an additional $662 million of funding for long COVID research, $300 million of which is earmarked for clinical trials. These funds will be allocated over the next 4 years. At the end of October, RECOVER issued a request for clinical trial ideas that look at potential therapies, including medications, saying its goal is “to work rapidly, collaboratively, and transparently to advance treatments for long COVID.”

This turn suggests the NIH has begun to respond to patients. This has stirred cautious optimism among those who say that the agency’s approach to long COVID has lacked urgency in the search for effective treatments. Stone calls this $300 million a down payment. She warns it’s going to take a lot more money to help people like Hayes regain some degree of health. “There really is a burden to make up this lost time now,” Stone said.

The NIH told KFF Health News and NPR via email that it recognizes the urgency in finding treatments. But to do that, there needs to be an understanding of the biological mechanisms that are making people sick, which is difficult to do with post-infectious conditions.

That’s why it has funded research into how long COVID affects lung function, or trying to understand why only some people are afflicted with the condition.

Good Science Takes Time

In December 2020, Congress appropriated $1.15 billion for the NIH to launch RECOVER, raising hopes in the long COVID patient community.

Then-NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, explained that RECOVER’s goal was to better understand long COVID as a disease and that clinical trials of potential treatments would come later.

According to RECOVER’s website, it has funded eight clinical trials to test the safety and effectiveness of an experimental treatment or intervention. Just one of those trials has published results.

On the other hand, RECOVER has supported more than 200 observational studies, such as research on how long COVID affects pulmonary function and on which symptoms are most common. And the initiative has funded more than 40 pathobiology studies, which focus on the basic cellular and molecular mechanisms of long COVID.

RECOVER’s website says this research has led to crucial insights on the risk factors for developing long COVID and on understanding how the disease interacts with preexisting conditions.

It notes that observational studies are important in helping scientists to design and launch evidence-based clinical trials.

Good science takes time, said Leora Horwitz, MD, the co-principal investigator for the RECOVER-Adult Observational Cohort at New York University (NYU). And long COVID is an “exceedingly complicated” illness that appears to affect nearly every organ system, she said.

This makes it more difficult to study than many other diseases. Because long COVID harms the body in so many ways, with widely variable symptoms, it’s harder to identify precise targets for treatment.

“I also will remind you that we’re only 3, 4 years into this pandemic for most people,” Horwitz said. “We’ve been spending much more money than this, yearly, for 30, 40 years on other conditions.”

NYU received nearly $470 million of RECOVER funds in 2021, which the institution is using to spearhead the collection of data and biospecimens from up to 40,000 patients. Horwitz said nearly 30,000 are enrolled so far.

This vast repository, Horwitz said, supports ongoing observational research, allowing scientists to understand what is happening biologically to people who don’t recover after an initial infection — and that will help determine which clinical trials for treatments are worth undertaking.

“Simply trying treatments because they are available without any evidence about whether or why they may be effective reduces the likelihood of successful trials and may put patients at risk of harm,” she said.

Delayed Hopes or Incremental Progress?

The NIH told KFF Health News and NPR that patients and caregivers have been central to RECOVER from the beginning, “playing critical roles in designing studies and clinical trials, responding to surveys, serving on governance and publication groups, and guiding the initiative.” But the consensus from patient advocacy groups is that RECOVER should have done more to prioritize clinical trials from the outset. Patients also say RECOVER leadership ignored their priorities and experiences when determining which studies to fund.

RECOVER has scored some gains, said JD Davids, co-director of Long COVID Justice. This includes findings on differences in long COVID between adults and kids. But Davids said the NIH shouldn’t have named the initiative “RECOVER,” since it wasn’t designed as a streamlined effort to develop treatments.

“The name’s a little cruel and misleading,” he said.

RECOVER’s initial allocation of $1.15 billion probably wasn’t enough to develop a new medication to treat long COVID, said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, co-director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Healthcare Transformation Institute.

But, he said, the results of preliminary clinical trials could have spurred pharmaceutical companies to fund more studies on drug development and test how existing drugs influence a patient’s immune response.

Emanuel is one of the authors of a March 2022 COVID roadmap report. He notes that RECOVER’s lack of focus on new treatments was a problem. “Only 15% of the budget is for clinical studies. That is a failure in itself — a failure of having the right priorities,” he told KFF Health News and NPR via email.

And though the NYU biobank has been impactful, Emanuel said there needs to be more focus on how existing drugs influence immune response.

He said some clinical trials that RECOVER has funded are “ridiculous,” because they’ve focused on symptom amelioration, for example to study the benefits of over-the-counter medication to improve sleep. Other studies looked at non-pharmacological interventions, such as exercise and “brain training” to help with cognitive fog.

People with long COVID say this type of clinical research contributes to what many describe as the “gaslighting” they experience from doctors, who sometimes blame a patient’s symptoms on anxiety or depression, rather than acknowledging long COVID as a real illness with a physiological basis.

“I’m just disgusted,” said long COVID patient Hayes. “You wouldn’t tell somebody with diabetes to breathe through it.”

Chimére L. Sweeney, director and founder of the Black Long COVID Experience, said she’s even taken breaks from seeking treatment after getting fed up with being told that her symptoms were due to her diet or mental health.

“You’re at the whim of somebody who may not even understand the spectrum of long COVID,” Sweeney said.

Insurance Battles Over Experimental Treatments

Since there are still no long COVID treatments approved by the FDA, anything a physician prescribes is classified as either experimental — for unproven treatments — or an off-label use of a drug approved for other conditions. This means patients can struggle to get insurance to cover prescriptions.

Michael Brode, MD, medical director for UT Health Austin’s Post-COVID-19 Program — said he writes many appeal letters. And some people pay for their own treatment.

For example, intravenous immunoglobulin therapy, low-dose naltrexone, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy are all promising treatments, he said.

For hyperbaric oxygen, two small, randomized controlled studies show improvements for the chronic fatigue and brain fog that often plague long COVID patients. The theory is that higher oxygen concentration and increased air pressure can help heal tissues that were damaged during a COVID infection.

However, the out-of-pocket cost for a series of sessions in a hyperbaric chamber can run as much as $8,000, Brode said.

“Am I going to look a patient in the eye and say, ‘You need to spend that money for an unproven treatment’?” he said. “I don’t want to hype up a treatment that is still experimental. But I also don’t want to hide it.”

There’s a host of pharmaceuticals that have promising off-label uses for long COVID, said microbiologist Amy Proal, PhD, president and chief scientific officer at the Massachusetts-based PolyBio Research Foundation. For instance, she’s collaborating on a clinical study that repurposes two HIV drugs to treat long COVID.

Proal said research on treatments can move forward based on what’s already understood about the disease. For instance, she said that scientists have evidence — partly due to RECOVER research — that some patients continue to harbor small amounts of viral material after a COVID infection. She has not received RECOVER funds but is researching antivirals.

But to vet a range of possible treatments for the millions suffering now — and to develop new drugs specifically targeting long COVID — clinical trials are needed. And that requires money.

Hayes said she would definitely volunteer for an investigational drug trial. For now, though, “in order to not be absolutely miserable,” she said she focuses on what she can do, like having dinner with her family. At the same time, Hayes doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life on a beige couch.

RECOVER’s deadline to submit research proposals for potential long COVID treatments is Feb. 1.

This article is from a partnership that includes NPR and KFF Health News. KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

The water that flows down irrigation canals to some of the West’s biggest expanses of farmland comes courtesy of the federal government for a very low price — even, in some cases, for free.

In a new study, researchers analyzed wholesale prices charged by the federal government in California, Arizona and Nevada, and found that large agricultural water agencies pay only a fraction of what cities pay, if anything at all. They said these “dirt-cheap” prices cost taxpayers, add to the strains on scarce water, and discourage conservation — even as the Colorado River’s depleted reservoirs continue to decline.

“Federal taxpayers have been subsidizing effectively free water for a very, very long time,” said Noah Garrison, a researcher at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “We can’t address the growing water scarcity in the West while we continue to give that water away for free or close to it.”

The report, released this week by UCLA and the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, examines water that local agencies get from the Colorado River as well as rivers in California’s Central Valley, and concludes that the federal government delivers them water at much lower prices than state water systems or other suppliers.

The researchers recommend the Trump administration start charging a “water reliability and security surcharge” on all Colorado River water as well as water from the canals of the Central Valley Project in California. That would encourage agencies and growers to conserve, they said, while generating hundreds of millions of dollars to repair aging and damaged canals and pay for projects such as new water recycling plants.

“The need for the price of water to reflect its scarcity is urgent in light of the growing Colorado River Basin crisis,” the researchers wrote.

The study analyzed only wholesale prices paid by water agencies, not the prices paid by individual farmers or city residents. It found that agencies serving farming areas pay about $30 per acre-foot of water on average, whereas city water utilities pay $512 per acre-foot.

In California, Arizona and Nevada, the federal government supplies more than 7 million acre-feet of water, about 14 times the total water usage of Los Angeles, for less than $1 per acre-foot.

And more than half of that — nearly one-fourth of all the water the researchers analyzed — is delivered for free by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to five water agencies in farming areas: the Imperial Irrigation District, Palo Verde Irrigation District and Coachella Valley Water District, as well as the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District in Nevada and the Unit B Irrigation and Drainage District in Arizona.

Along the Colorado River, about three-fourths of the water is used for agriculture.

Farmers in California’s Imperial Valley receive the largest share of Colorado River water, growing hay for cattle, lettuce, spinach, broccoli and other crops on more than 450,000 acres of irrigated lands.

The Imperial Irrigation District charges farmers the same rate for water that it has for years: $20 per acre-foot.

Tina Shields, IID’s water department manager, said the district opposes any surcharge on water. Comparing agricultural and urban water costs, as the researchers did, she said, “is like comparing a grape to a watermelon,” given major differences in how water is distributed and treated.

Shields pointed out that IID and local farmers are already conserving, and this year the savings will equal about 23% of the district’s total water allotment.

“Imperial Valley growers provide the nation with a safe, reliable food supply on the thinnest of margins for many growers,” she said in an email.

She acknowledged IID does not pay any fee to the government for water, but said it does pay for operating, maintaining and repairing both federal water infrastructure and the district’s own system.

“I see no correlation between the cost of Colorado River water and shortages, and disagree with these inflammatory statements,” Shields said, adding that there “seems to be an intent to drive a wedge between agricultural and urban water users at a time when collaborative partnerships are more critical than ever.”

The Colorado River provides water for seven states, 30 Native tribes and northern Mexico, but it’s in decline. Its reservoirs have fallen during a quarter-century of severe drought intensified by climate change. Its two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are now less than one-third full.

Negotiations among the seven states on how to deal with shortages have deadlocked.

Mark Gold, a co-author, said the government’s current water prices are so low that they don’t cover the costs of operating, maintaining and repairing aging aqueducts and other infrastructure. Even an increase to $50 per acre-foot of water, he said, would help modernize water systems and incentivize conservation.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Interior Department, which oversees the Bureau of Reclamation, declined to comment on the proposal.

The Colorado River was originally divided among the states under a 1922 agreement that overpromised what the river could provide. That century-old pact and the ingrained system of water rights, combined with water that costs next to nothing, Gold said, lead to “this slow-motion train wreck that is the Colorado right now.”

Research has shown that the last 25 years were likely the driest quarter-century in the American West in at least 1,200 years, and that global warming is contributing to this megadrought.

The Colorado River’s flow has decreased about 20% so far this century, and scientists have found that roughly half the decline is due to rising temperatures, driven largely by fossil fuels.

In a separate report this month, scientists Jonathan Overpeck and Brad Udall said the latest science suggests that climate change will probably “exert a stronger influence, and this will mean a higher likelihood of continued lower precipitation in the headwaters of the Colorado River into the future.”

Experts have urged the Trump administration to impose substantial water cuts throughout the Colorado River Basin, saying permanent reductions are necessary. Kathryn Sorensen and Sarah Porter, researchers at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy, have suggested the federal government set up a voluntary program to buy and retire water-intensive farmlands, or to pay landowners who “agree to permanent restrictions on water use.”

Over the last few years, California and other states have negotiated short-term deals and as part of that, some farmers in California and Arizona are temporarily leaving hay fields parched and fallow in exchange for federal payments.

The UCLA researchers criticized these deals, saying water agencies “obtain water from the federal government at low or no cost, and the government then buys that water back from the districts at enormous cost to taxpayers.”

Isabel Friedman, a coauthor and NRDC researcher, said adopting a surcharge would be a powerful conservation tool.

“We need a long-term strategy that recognizes water as a limited resource and prices it as such,” she wrote in an article about the proposal.

Washington — Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned to his Maryland home Thursday night, after a judge ordered the immediate release of the Salvadoran national who was mistakenly deported to his home country earlier this year.

Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told CBS News on Thursday that he was officially out of Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Pennsylvania. Hours later, he was spotted arriving at his home in Maryland.

Abrego Garcia has been instructed to check in at an ICE field office in Baltimore at 8 a.m. Friday, his legal team told CBS News. When he was given similar instructions over the summer, following his release from pretrial detention, he was taken into ICE custody, and there are concerns he could be rearrested Friday on different legal grounds.

Earlier Thursday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis granted Abrego Garcia’s habeas corpus petition seeking release from custody. It’s a significant victory for Abrego Garcia, whose immigration case became a major flashpoint in President Trump’s mass-deportation campaign when he was removed to El Salvador earlier this year. An earlier order had prohibited the U.S. from removing him to his native country because of possible persecution by local gangs.

Xinis, in her order, found that there was no final order of removal from the government to deport Abrego Garcia from the United States, despite the Trump administration’s repeated attempts to remove him. 

“Because respondents have no statutory authority to remove Abrego Garcia to a third country absent a removal order, his removal cannot be considered reasonably foreseeable, imminent, or consistent with due process,” Xinis wrote in Thursday’s order. 

“Although respondents may eventually get it right, they have not as of today,” the judge continued. “Thus, Abrego Garcia’s detention for the stated purpose of third country removal cannot continue. Respondents’ conduct over the past months belie that his detention has been for the basic purpose of effectuating removal, lending further support that Abrego Garcia should be held no longer.”

Assistant Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the judge’s decision “naked judicial activism by an Obama-appointed judge.”

“This order lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” McLaughlin said. 

The Trump administration has been attempting to re-deport Abrego Garcia to the African nations of Uganda, Eswatini or Ghana, but none of the countries have agreed to accept him.

In October, however, the administration informed the court that Liberia had agreed to take Abrego Garcia and was making “final necessary arrangements” for his deportation there.

Sandoval-Moshenbergsaid at the time that unless Liberia guaranteed it would not send Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, deporting him to the West African nation “is no less unlawful than sending him directly” to his home country again.

In November, the Trump administration argued that Abrego Garcia had received significant due process in the U.S. In a court filing, the Justice Department said a U.S. government asylum officer had interviewed Abrego Garcia, who has been in federal immigration detention since late August, and determined he had failed to prove he would face persecution or torture in Liberia.

Xinis heard testimony in October from John Schultz, an ICE official, about the Trump administration’s efforts to remove Abrego Garcia. Schultz said the administration remains in active discussions with Eswatini about removing him there, though the east African country rejected a request to take him.

Schultz said that once the administration has been informed that a third country is willing to accept Abrego Garcia, it could deport him within 72 hours if allowed by the court.

Abrego Garcia has said he is willing to go to Costa Rica and designated the country as his preferred country of removal, and Costa Rica has indicated it would provide him refugee status or residency. But during the hearing Oct. 10, a Justice Department lawyer said there had not been discussions about deporting him there.

Lawyers for Abrego Garcia accused the Trump administration of gamesmanship and deliberately seeking to remove him to countries where he could raise claims of reasonable fear of persecution, with the goal of keeping him detained for longer.

Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. from El Salvador in 2011 and has lived in Maryland with his wife and children. But he was arrested by immigration authorities in March and deported there, though he’d been granted the legal status in 2019 that should have prevented his removal to that country.

As part of a civil case Abrego Garcia and his wife brought against the Trump administration, Xinis ordered DHS to facilitate his return to the U.S. But immigration officials resisted doing so for months. Abrego Garcia was brought back to the U.S. in June, but only after a federal grand jury in Tennessee indicted him on two charges of human smuggling, stemming from a November 2022 traffic stop.

Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty, and a judge in Tennessee ordered him to be released on bail ahead of a criminal trial set to begin in January. But he remained in criminal confinement for several more weeks because of concerns from his lawyers that immigration authorities would arrest him upon his release and deport him from the U.S.

He was released from jail in Tennessee in August and returned to Maryland. But days later, he was taken into custody by immigration authorities after being summoned for an interview at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore. The Trump administration notified Abrego Garcia’s lawyers he could be deported to Uganda, though Abrego Garcia expressed fear of persecution and torture, as well as a concern that the Ugandan government would send him back to El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia also filed a new legal challenge to his confinement and the Trump administration’s efforts to deport him for a second time, which Xinis is presiding over. She has blocked immigration officials from removing Abrego Garcia from the U.S., and he had since remained in detention at a facility in Pennsylvania.

At the heart of Abrego Garcia’s challenge is a 2001 Supreme Court case, in which the high court said the government cannot indefinitely detain a person in the U.S. illegally if there is no significant likelihood of removal in the “reasonably foreseeable future.”

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argued that he has been in near-continuous confinement since March, when he was deported to El Salvador and held in prisons there. His only period of freedom was for a weekend in August, in between his release from criminal custody in Tennessee and his arrest by immigration authorities in Maryland.

NEW YORK — The U.S. stock market remains largely quiet on Wednesday as Wall Street waits to hear what the Federal Reserve will say in the afternoon about where interest rates may be heading.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% but remains near its all-time high, which was set in October. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 118 points, or 0.2%, as of 10:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% lower.

Among the market’s big movers was GE Vernova, which flew 9.2% higher after the energy company raised its forecast for revenue by 2028, doubled its dividend and increased its program to buy back its own stock. Palantir Technologies added 1.7% after saying the U.S. Navy will use its artificial-intelligence technology as part of a $448 million program.

On the losing end of Wall Street was GameStop, which fell 6.1% after reporting weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The video-game retailers’ profit toppped forecasts, though.

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store slipped 0.3% after swinging between gains and losses. The restaurant chain caught up in a furor around its logo design reported better results for the latest quarter than analysts expected but also cut its forecast for revenue this fiscal year, as well as for an underlying measure of earnings.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased a bit as the countdown ticks toward the Fed’s announcement at 2 p.m. Eastern time. The widespread expectation is that it will cut its main interest rate for a third time this year in hopes of bolstering the job market.

That expectation is so strong that U.S. stock prices have already run to the edge of their records because of it. The more important question for Wall Street will be what Fed officials will say about where they see interest rates potentially heading in 2026.

Wall Street has been bracing for Fed officials to imply fewer cuts to rates in 2026 than this year, and potentially fewer than the two that many traders are expecting now, even after they downgraded their forecasts.

While lower interest rates can boost the economy and send prices for investments higher, they can also worsen inflation.

With inflation remaining stubbornly above the Fed’s 2% target, Fed officials are notably split about whether high inflation or the slowing job market is the bigger threat to the economy.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.17% from 4.18% late Tuesday. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, dipped to 3.60% from 3.61%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed amid mostly modest movements across Europe and Asia.

___

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.

By Susan Jaffe, KFF Health News

Along with the occasional aches and pains, growing older can bring surprise setbacks and serious diseases. Longtime relationships with doctors people trust often make even bad news more tolerable. Losing that support — especially during a health crisis — can be terrifying. That’s why little-known federal requirements are supposed to protect people with privately run Medicare Advantage coverage when contract disputes lead their health care providers and insurers to part ways.

Robert Dear, the man who was charged with killing three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015 because it offered abortion services, has died in federal custody, the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed Tuesday.

Dear died Saturday at a medical center for federal prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, the Bureau of Prisons said. Dear, 67, died of natural causes, said Kristie Breshears, a spokesperson for the agency.

Dear, who was charged in 2019 in federal court, became entangled in a legal battle over whether he could be medicated for his mental illness, delusional disorder, against his will. He had been repeatedly found incompetent to stand trial, stalling his prosecution. He was most recently civilly committed with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said 4th Judicial District Attorney Michael J. Allen, whose office tried to prosecute Dear in state court.

The Associated Press left a voicemail for the federal public defender’s office in Colorado seeking comment. A spokesperson for U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment Tuesday.

Last year, a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld a federal judge’s order from 2022 allowing Dear to be forcibly medicated in order to be well enough to stand trial. Dear’s lawyers had contended that side effects could worsen Dear’s health issues, such as untreated high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Dear had called himself a “warrior for the babies.” Federal prosecutors alleged that he armed himself with several guns, propane tanks and 500 rounds of ammunition and shot outside the clinic before shooting his way through the door.

Ke’Arre Stewart, 29, an Army veteran who served in Iraq and was a father of two, and Jennifer Markovsky, 36, a mother of two who grew up in Oahu, Hawaii, were accompanying friends to the clinic before they were killed. Garrett Swasey, a campus police officer at a college nearby, responded after hearing of an active shooter and was also killed. Nine others were injured.

“All three victims, and this community, deserved the full measure of justice in this case but they are now denied that possibility,” Allen said.

The U.S. Department of Transportation introduced a new female crash dummy as it seeks to step up safety for women, who face a higher injury risk in car crashes than men. 

The U.S. government has used a dummy model for decades that is based almost entirely on male proportions.

The new dummy, known as THOR-05F, is more human-like and contains female-specific proportions, according to the Transportation Department. The new model could potentially replace the Hybrid III dummy, which has previously been utilized for crash testing. 

“Advances in technology now make it possible to more accurately account for the biological differences between male and female anatomy in crash testing,” the Department of Transportation said in a statement Thursday.

Women are 73% more likely to be injured in a head-on crash, and they are 17% more likely to be killed in a car crash, than men.

Transportation officials will consider using the new dummy in the government’s vehicle crash test five-star ratings once a final rule is adopted, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Thursday in a news release.

The department also noted that THOR-05F will be available to manufacturers to build models and to the automotive industry, which can begin testing the model in their vehicles.

The road to THOR-05F

The standard crash test dummy used in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration five-star vehicle testing was developed in 1978 and was modeled after a 5-foot-9 (175-centimeter), 171-pound (78-kilogram) man. 

The female dummy is smaller and has a rubber jacket to represent breasts. It’s routinely tested in the passenger or back seat but seldom in the driver’s seat, even though the majority of licensed drivers are women.

But the change is not guaranteed to happen. Some American automakers have been skeptical and a group representing auto insurers has already said it thinks the current crash test dummies are fine.

The new female dummy endorsed by the department more accurately reflects differences between men and women, including the shape of the neck, collarbone, pelvis, and legs. It’s outfitted with more than 150 sensors, the department said.

Maria Weston Kuhn, a law student at New York University, started lobbying members of Congress to pass a law requiring the new female dummy after surviving a 2019 crash in Ireland in which her seat belt slid off her hips and ruptured her intestines. She welcomed Duffy’s support but said she won’t celebrate until NHTSA incorporates the new model into its testing — a step that has been delayed numerous times.

“I fear that with this announcement everybody will throw up their hands and say we’ve won,” Kuhn said Friday. “But we are far from crossing the finish line.”

Some American automakers have been skeptical, arguing the new model may exaggerate injury risks and undercut the value of some safety features such as seat belts and airbags.

Despite Duffy’s announcement, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research arm funded by auto insurers, continues to advocate for the current line of dummies used to represent women and has seen dramatic improvements in safety as a result, spokesperson Joe Young said.

“Certainly, we are going to continue to monitor the new tools and perhaps do some additional research,” Young said. “But for now, our researchers are content and confident that the dummies we’re using are doing a good job.”

Lawmakers and transportation secretaries from the past two presidential administrations have expressed support for new crash test rules and safety requirements, but developments have been slow.

U.S. Sens. Deb Fischer, a Republican from Nebraska, and Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, both released statements welcoming the female crash test dummy announcement.

“Any progress here is good because there’s simply no good reason why women are more likely to be injured or die in car crashes,” Duckworth said.

Fischer introduced legislation, the She Drives Act, that would require the most advanced testing devices available, including a female crash test dummy. Duckworth is a co-sponsor.

“It’s far past time to make these testing standards permanent, which will help save thousands of lives and make America’s roads safer for all drivers,” Fischer said.

The U.S. Department of Justice has unsealed a federal grand jury indictment that charges former Olympian Ryan Wedding with ordering the murder of a federal witness in January 2025.

Wedding, 44, a Canadian national residing in Mexico, is the lead defendant in the newly unsealed indictment that charges him with two additional counts of witness tampering and intimidation, murder, money laundering and drug trafficking. Several other individuals were also named in the indictment.

According to court documents, Wedding is accused of issuing a “multimillion-dollar bounty” on a federal witness who was involved in a 2024 federal narcotics case against him. Court documents claim Wedding enlisted the services of other defendants to allegedly locate and kill the witness, identified as Victim A, in Colombia. 

“The murder of a witness in Colombia earlier this year was a cruel, cold-blooded act that could not and did not go unanswered,” said Acting United States Attorney Bill Essayli at a news conference on Wednesday morning. 

Essayli also announced the arrest of 10 individuals as part of the government’s second phase of a law enforcement action entitled “Operation Giant Slalom.”

“‘Operation Giant Slalom’ is a dynamic international investigation and involves dedicated partners collaborating in multiple countries with the shared goal of capturing Wedding, finding justice for several murder victims – including a cooperating witness – and ridding communities in North America of deadly drugs,” said Akil Davis, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.

Wedding is also wanted for crimes, including allegedly running a transnational drug trafficking network that would routinely ship hundreds of kilograms of cocaine. Wedding’s network would ship the cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and Southern California to Canada and other parts of the U.S., federal officials said. In March, he was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.

Wedding competed for the Canadian national team in the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games before he was convicted in 2010 for attempting to buy cocaine from a U.S. government agent.

At the news conference, Attorney General Pamela Bondi described Wedding as the leader of one of the “most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in this world.” She claimed that Wedding’s alleged organization is responsible for “importing about 60 metric tons of cocaine a year into LA via semi-trucks from Mexico.”

She said over the course of the federal government’s investigation into Wedding’s alleged drug organization, 35 individuals have been indicted, 2,000 kilos and numerous weapons have been seized and $3.2 million in cryptocurrency has been recovered.

If convicted of charges in connection with the witness’s murder, Wedding and the other defendants could face a maximum sentence of life in federal prison, the DOJ said.

“No one, not even a former Olympian, is above the law,” said Senior Bureau Official Chris Landberg of the Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

The U.S. Department of State’s Narcotics Rewards Program is offering a reward of up to $15 million for information that leads to the Wedding’s arrest or conviction.

Anyone with any information regarding Wedding or his associates is urged to contact the FBI via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram (neither government-operated nor government-controlled platforms) at (424) 495-0614. People may also contact their local FBI office, the nearest American Embassy or Consulate, or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov.

WASHINGTON — The Labor Department said Wednesday that it will not be releasing a full jobs report for October because the 43-day federal government shutdown meant it couldn’t calculate the unemployment rate and some other key numbers.

Instead, it will release some of the October jobs data — most importantly the number of jobs that employers created last month — along with the full November jobs report, now due a couple of weeks late on Dec. 16.

The department’s “employment situation” report usually comes out the first Friday of the month. But the government shutdown disrupted data collection and delayed the release of the reports. For example, the September jobs report, now coming out Friday, was originally due Oct. 3.

The monthly jobs report consists of two parts: a survey of households that is used to determine the unemployment rate, among other things; and the “establishment” survey of companies, nonprofits and government agencies that is used to track job creation, wages and other measurements of labor market health.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that the household survey for October could not be conducted because of the shutdown and could not be done retroactively. But it was able to collect the hiring numbers from employers, and those will come out with the full November report.

Wednesday’s announcement means the September jobs numbers will likely get extra scrutiny Friday. They are the last full measurement of hiring and unemployment that Federal Reserve policymakers will see before they meet Dec. 9-10 and decide whether to cut their benchmark interest rate for the third time this year.

The jobs numbers have lately been contentious. After the July jobs report proved disappointing, President Donald Trump abruptly fired the official responsible for collecting the data, Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer.

McEntarfer herself was quick to say there was nothing suspicious about Wednesday’s announcement. “No conspiracy here, folks,” she posted on the social media site Bluesky. “BLS was entirely shutdown for six weeks. Payroll data from firms can be retroactively collected for October. The household survey cannot be conducted retrospectively. This is just a straightforward consequence of having all field staff furloughed for over a month.”

____

AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.

Washington — The more than 1.4 million federal employees who have gone without pay during the 43-day government shutdown could begin getting paychecks as soon as this Sunday, while others will have to wait until next Wednesday, Nov. 19. 

The pay schedule was laid out in an agency-by-agency projection by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. The memo was first reported by Semafor, and an OMB official confirmed its contents to CBS News. 

Hundreds of thousands of essential employees continued working during the shutdown without pay, while nonessential employees were furloughed. Both groups are entitled to back pay for the paychecks they missed while the government was closed. 

The administration has a goal of completing its list of backlogged payments by Nov. 19. 

Differing dates among agencies are due to different pay schedules and payroll providers, an OMB official said. The official added that the original projected pay dates were supposed to be later, but the White House urged agencies to get checks out “expeditiously and accurately to not leave anyone waiting longer than necessary.”

Most of the first post-shutdown paychecks to employees will only include pay from Oct. 1 to Nov. 1. They will be limited to base pay, meaning no bonuses, overtime or benefits. Pay for days after Nov. 1, as well as for overtime or bonuses, will be issued in the next pay period. 

Up first are Army and non-Army civilian employees at the Defense Department, as well as staffers at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Energy and Health and Human Services. Their paychecks are projected to be processed on Sunday, Nov. 16. The checks will include base pay and payments for overtime and hazard pay.

More than 150,000 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, National Science Foundation, Social Security Administration, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Departments of Education, State, Interior and Transportation are expected to get their paychecks on Monday, Nov. 17. This only includes base pay, with corrections set to be made in the next pay cycle.

Employees at the General Services Administration and Office of Personnel Management are set to receive their paycheck on Saturday, Nov. 15. These checks will only include base pay.

Small Business Administration employees as well as those at the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor and Treasury are expected to receive their back pay payments on Wednesday, Nov. 19. These checks cover the entire period of the shutdown, including from Nov. 1 to Nov. 13.

Federal employees going without pay became a major pain point during the Senate’s fight over funding the government, and was one of several factors that ultimately pushed eight Senate Democrats to join Republicans to end the stalemate. The package cleared the House on Wednesday evening, and President Trump quickly signed it into law, ending the shutdown.

The legislation extended most government funding until Jan. 30, raising the prospect of another shutdown fight in the new year. Other parts of the government are funded through September 2026.

WASHINGTON — Two Federal Reserve officials expressed opposition Wednesday to another interest rate cut at the central bank’s next meeting in December, further muddying the outlook for the Fed’s next steps.

The remarks by Susan Collins, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and Raphael Bostic, president of the Atlanta Fed, suggest that the central bank’s rate-setting committee could be tilting against what had been an expected third straight cut next month.

The officials cited several reasons for keeping rates unchanged, after a reduction in September and in October. They argued that inflation is stubbornly elevated and has been above the Fed’s 2% target for nearly five years, while the economy is resilient and doesn’t appear to need more rate cuts. The job market is stumbling, with hiring nearly at a standstill, but layoffs still seem muted, they said.

Another factor has been the government shutdown, which has cut off the economic data the Fed relies on to discern the economy’s path. On Wednesday White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that the jobs and inflation reports for October would likely never be released.

“Formulating an economic outlook is challenging — and the limited data compounds the difficulty,” Collins said in a speech in Boston.

“It will likely be appropriate to keep policy rates at the current level for some time … in this highly uncertain environment,” she added.

That is a shift from her previous speech in October, when she expressed support for at least one more rate cut.

Earlier Wednesday, Bostic said he remains concerned inflation is too high, and added that, “I … favor keeping the funds rate steady until we see clear evidence that inflation is again moving meaningfully toward its 2% target.” Bostic said earlier Wednesday that he will retire when his current term ends on Feb. 28, 2026.

Their remarks come at an unusually challenging time for the Fed, with the economy facing both weak hiring and elevated inflation. Typically, the Fed would reduce its rate to encourage borrowing, spending and job gains, while it would keep it unchanged — or even raise it — to combat inflation.

The 19 officials on the Fed’s rate-setting committee narrowly supported three rate cuts this year at their September meeting, but Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference late last month that the committee remains divided and another cut in December was not a “foregone conclusion.”

David Seif, chief economist for developed markets at Nomura Securities, expects the Fed will skip a rate cut in December and won’t reduce borrowing costs again until March.

“There is a large segment of the Fed that is uncomfortable with a December cut,” Seif said.

Collins also said that additional reductions to the Fed’s rate could, by boosting the economy, accelerate inflation.

“Absent evidence of a notable labor market deterioration, I would be hesitant to ease policy further, especially given the limited information on inflation due to the government shutdown,” she said.

Bostic, meanwhile, said the Atlanta Fed’s surveys of businesses show that many companies intend to raise prices next year, a sign that inflation may not cool anytime soon.

“We cannot breezily assume inflationary pressures will quickly dissipate after a one-time bump in prices from new import duties,” Bostic said, referring to President Donald Trump’s tariffs. “Across all our information sources, I see little to no evidence that we should be sanguine about the forward trajectory of inflation.”

Some Fed officials, such as Fed governor Stephen Miran, have argued that the tariffs will only temporarily lift prices and outside those one-time increases, inflation is cooling.

You’ve seen the videos in newscasts and social feeds: Federal agents employing chokeholds, firing pepper spray at close range, and even using vehicle maneuvers to control immigration protests.

These videos have spurred debate over whether agents have violated federal policies on use of force, which is authorized “only when no reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternative appears to exist,” according to Department of Homeland Security policies.

A review of hundreds of videos, most recorded on cellphones by protesters and posted online, shows repeated instances that don’t appear to meet that standard.

We asked Eric Balliet, a career federal agent who worked under both Democratic and Republican administrations for more than two decades, to review some of the tactics used in these videos. Balliet led internal investigations into use of force misconduct for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement until last year.

“This isn’t policing and law enforcement as I practiced it for 25 years,” he said.

Customs and Border Protection commander Gregory Bovino, who is leading the federal agents responding to protests in Chicago, disagrees.

“If someone strays into a pepper ball, then that’s on them,” Bovino said in an interview with CBS News. “Don’t protest and don’t trespass.”

Protesters and media organizations in Chicago have filed a complaint in federal court about the tactics employed under Bovino’s command, as well as those captured on video recordings in Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles and other cities. Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Sara L. Ellis issued an order blocking federal agents from deploying chemical spray, tear gas or any other less-lethal weapon “unless such force is necessary to stop the immediate threat of physical harm to another.” The Trump administration has filed an appeal.  

DHS is now racing to file its implementation guidance in response to the judge’s order. Revised directives informing DHS personnel of banned use-of-force tactics must be issued by the end of the day Tuesday.

“I see little reason for the use of force that the federal agents are currently using,” Ellis said in her ruling from the bench.

“The use of force shocks the conscience,” Ellis said.

But President Trump said in an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” earlier this month that the tactics employed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement “haven’t gone far enough.” 

“I don’t know where the leadership is here,” said Balliet. “It seems to be non-existent. Any oversight and justification for the use of force seems to be absent across the board.”

Balliet reviewed dozens of videos at the request of CBS News, and he identified several clear areas of concern with the tactics he saw in use against demonstrators.

Firing less than lethal munitions at protesters’ heads and torsos

Videos taken outside the ICE facilities show federal agents standing several stories above protesters and shooting less than lethal munitions towards their heads and torsos. 

One cellphone video from September, taken outside the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, shows a priest looking up toward agents standing several stories above him. In the video, agents fire pepper balls that land nearby him, and explode on the ground. One agent then fires a pepper ball that strikes the man in the head, and he crumbles to the ground.

Agency policy prohibits agents from firing at anyone above the waist, stating they “shall not intentionally target the head, neck, groin, or female breast.” 

Balliet says such incidents show a lack of proper training.

“They are elevating the force to a degree that is excessive,” Balliet said.

During an interview, CBS News showed Bovino the September video and asked him if the agent had breached department policy. He said the agent had not — because the protesters were “trespassing” on federal grounds and the use of pepper balls didn’t deviate from policy.

“The use of that less lethal device, a pepper ball, was absolutely in line with policy. And I applaud them for protecting that federal facility there.” He said use of force outside of the Broadview facility has been “exemplary.”

Tear gas and pepper spray at close range

Videos collected from Portland, Chicago and Los Angeles show agents deploying large amounts of tear gas and pepper spray at protesters, sometimes at close range.

In one October cellphone video from Portland, a federal agent can be seen spraying a form of tear gas called “oleoresin capsicum” spray directly at an individual protester at close range and in high volume. 

The protester can be seen verbally confronting two agents in the street. Another agent then walks up to the protester and sprays her directly in the face with a large can of pepper spray. 

“If you take direct shots to the eye, it can scratch or prick your cornea,” said Balliet. In his experience, agents have gone to the emergency room for eye damage after being sprayed at similar ranges with this type of munition. 

DHS policy allows the deployment of chemical irritants only in cases when subjects offer “active resistance.” The footage shows protesters yelling but not physically threatening the agents, which Balliet said was not a sufficient provocation for this level of response.

“For this particular one, it’s a little disturbing because there does not appear to be any sort of de-escalation attempt,” Balliet said. 

Vehicle maneuvers used as deadly force

Cellphone videos have also caught federal agents in several cities using vehicles to push or move  demonstrators.

In one video from Chicago, an agent in an unmarked federal vehicle slowly drives into a protester. The agent can be heard yelling, “I’m gonna slam you on the f****** ground,” as the vehicle makes contact with the demonstrator.

Balliet says driving a vehicle into a protester constitutes “deadly force,” or what the DHS use of force policy defines as “action that carries a substantial risk of causing death or serious bodily injury.”  

“Anytime you introduce a vehicle into an already volatile situation, it drastically changes the dynamics,” Balliet said. “It rises into that deadly force arena.”

The fact that the vehicle was unmarked and the lack of communication created further risk, he said. A protester in the video can be heard saying, “Who are you?” as the car continues to push into the demonstrator. 

“I can’t stress enough the significance of markings,” Balliet said. “When you blur the line in that world, it presents a danger to everyone involved.”

Prohibited chokeholds and hand-on contact

Videos received by CBS News reveal agents using aggressive hands-on tactics, including chokeholds, which DHS policy forbids unless the “deadly force” is authorized. 

“Chokeholds and carotid restraints must not be used as a means to control non-compliant subjects or persons resisting arrest,” states a 2023 DHS Use of Force policy.

But in two videos from Chicago, federal agents are seen putting their hands or arms directly around the necks of protesters during tense encounters. In one Broadview incident, agents surround a female protester who is attempting to block a car from leaving the facility. An agent, who is masked but not wearing a helmet, even as other agents fire pepperballs from an elevated location, puts his arm around her throat. Another officer then pulls the man off the woman and she is released. 

“It’s considered lethal force for a reason,” Balliet said. “If I were the commander, that individual would be off the team 30 seconds after it happened.”

In another Chicago video, a Border Patrol agent places his hands around the neck of a protester and slams him onto the ground. As the agent engages in the hands-on approach, he swings his rifle behind him, leaving the muzzle of his potentially loaded gun unprotected.

“The fact that that weapon, that M4, is just flailing around muzzling the agents, muzzling the crowd, is basically begging some bad actor to grab it,” said Balliet. “It’s good that somebody didn’t get extremely hurt or killed in this.”

Agents commended by commander, despite alleged violations of DHS policy

Bovino confirmed no one has been disciplined in Chicago in connection to incidents documented during Operation Midway Blitz.

“Absolutely not,” Bovino said when asked if anyone acted outside policy.

But Balliet said he believes the lack of accountability could have long-term negative consequences for federal law enforcement.

“This is gonna have an irreparable harm to the trust and faith that the general public has in its law enforcement officers,” he said. “It is creating a divide that is going to take years — if it can ever be fully repaired.”

In a statement to CBS News, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said federal agents are “trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and themselves.”

The agency argued that protesters have “thrown rocks, bottles, and fireworks” at agents, “slashed the tires of their vehicles, rammed them, ambushed them, and …destroyed multiple law enforcement vehicles.” 

“Despite these real dangers, our law enforcement shows incredible restraint in exhausting all options before force is escalated,” the agency statement said.

After 40 days of a standoff, the Senate on Sunday night voted to advance a deal that would move toward funding the government.

The bill advanced by a vote of 60-40, just barely meeting the 60 votes needed to keep it moving forward.

The vote was gaveled down to applause in the chamber at 10:49 p.m. ET.

Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine, Dick Durbin, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, Jacky Rosen were the Democrats who flipped to vote for this bill. They join Democrats Catherine Cortez Masto, John Fetterman and Independent Angus King, who have been voting in favor of a government funding bill for weeks. Sen. Rand Paul was the only Republican to vote against it.

-ABC News’ Allison Pecorin, Rachel Scott and Isabella Murray

Chicago police officers responded to a call of gunshots fired at federal agents Saturday amid immigration enforcement operations that drew residents to protest in the streets, the department said.

There were no reports of anyone being hit by gunfire, according to police, and the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on the social platform X that the shots were fired by a man in a black Jeep who was targeting the agents.

The suspect and the vehicle have not been located, according to DHS.

Tensions are high as federal enforcement has grown increasingly aggressive some two months into an immigration operation in Chicago dubbed Operation Midway Blitz. Some residents have protested, at times following and confronting heavily armed agents.

A federal judge issued an extensive injunction this week restricting agents’ use of force after saying a top Border Patrol official repeatedly lied about threats posed by protesters.

Saturday’s Border Patrol operation in Little Village, a largely Mexican neighborhood, attracted protesters who blew whistles, honked car horns and yelled at agents to leave. Some confronted police officers they viewed as helping the federal agents.

One police vehicle had its taillight smashed and windshield damaged. DHS said some protesters threw a paint can and bricks at agents’ vehicles.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

WASHINGTON — The head of the Food and Drug Administration’s drug center abruptly resigned Sunday after federal officials began reviewing “serious concerns about his personal conduct,” according to a government spokesperson.

Dr. George Tidmarsh, who was named to the FDA post in July, was placed on leave Friday after officials in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of General Counsel were notified of the issues, HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard said in an email. Tidmarsh then resigned Sunday morning.

“Secretary Kennedy expects the highest ethical standards from all individuals serving under his leadership and remains committed to full transparency,” Hilliard said.

The departure came the same day that a drugmaker connected to one of Tidmarsh’s former business associates filed a lawsuit alleging that he made “false and defamatory statements,” during his time at the FDA.

The lawsuit, brought by Aurinia Pharmaceuticals, alleges that Tidmarsh used his FDA position to pursue a “longstanding personal vendetta” against the chair of the company’s board of directors, Kevin Tang.

Tang previously served as a board member of several drugmakers where Tidmarsh was an executive, including La Jolla Pharmaceutical, and was involved in his ouster from those leadership positions, according to the lawsuit.

Messages placed to Tidmarsh and his lawyer were not immediately returned late Sunday.

Tidmarsh founded and led a series of pharmaceutical companies over several decades working in California’s pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Before joining the FDA, he also served as an adjunct professor at Stanford University. He was recruited to join the agency over the summer after meeting with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary.

Tidmarsh’s ouster is the latest in a string of haphazard leadership changes at the agency, which has been rocked for months by firings, departures and controversial decisions on vaccines, fluoride and other products.

Dr. Vinay Prasad, who oversees FDA’s vaccine and biologics center, resigned in July after coming under fire from conservative activists close to President Donald Trump, only to rejoin the agency two weeks later at the behest of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The FDA’s drug center, which Tidmarsh oversaw, has lost more than 1,000 staffers over the past year to layoffs or resignations, according to agency figures. The center is the largest division of the FDA and is responsible for the review, safety and quality control of prescription and over-the-counter medicines.

In September, Tidmarsh drew public attention for a highly unusual post on LinkedIn stating that one of Aurinia Pharmaceutical’s products, a kidney drug, had “not been shown to provide a direct clinical benefit for patients.” It’s very unusual for an FDA regulator to single out individual companies and products in public comments online.

According to the company’s lawsuit, Aurinia’s stock dropped 20% shortly after the post, wiping out more than $350 million in shareholder value.

Tidmarsh later deleted the LinkedIn post and said he had posted it in his personal capacity, not as an FDA official.

Aurinia’s lawsuit also alleges, among other things, that Tidmarsh used his post at FDA to target a type of thyroid drug made by another company, American Laboratories, where Tang also serves as board chair.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court of Maryland, seeks compensatory and punitive damages and “to set the record straight,” according to the company.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Millions of Americans are sliding toward a financial cliff as the government shutdown stretches into a second month, with four federal assistance programs for low-income families set to run out of funding on Nov. 1.

Some families could lose access to multiple sources of government support. Ashley Trent, a 37-year-old single mother of six, expressed concern she could soon be without aid provided under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, and the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which provides food aid for mothers of young children.

“I’m wondering how I’m going to be able to afford everything,” Trent, a Bloomington, Ill., resident who works full-time as a housing navigator, told CBS News. “It’s very stressful — what bills will I have to put off? I have a car note, I have insurance, I have clothes I have to get my kids because it’s getting colder.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which funds SNAP and WIC, has said it will halt payments for the anti-hunger programs on Nov. 1 due to the government shutdown. Head Start programs serving 65,000 low-income children will also lose federal funding on Saturday, potentially disrupting preschool for thousands of families, according to the National Head Start Association.

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps struggling households heat their homes, could be next to run short of funding. 

Halting funding for these programs — which help cover food, education, and energy costs — could have lasting consequences for poor families already strained by high grocery and utility prices, said Ailen Arreaza, executive director of the advocacy group ParentsTogether Action. 

Although funding will resume once Congress passes legislation to reopen the government, she warned that the damage to households could persist.

“What we are hearing from parents is desperation — parents going without meals, making impossible decisions about not paying bills or going without medication,” Arreaza told CBS News. “This has so many implications, because these kids need these programs to get ahead.”

Experts note that hunger can hinder children’s ability to learn, while parents who fall behind on bills may face utility shutoffs or other lasting setbacks.

Food stamps

The USDA is set to halt SNAP payments on Nov. 1, leaving about 42 million Americans uncertain how they’ll afford groceries next month. Recipients receive an average of about $187 a month on prepaid cards that can be used to buy food at grocery stores, farmers’ markets and other retailers.

A prolonged cessation in food-stamp funding isn’t guaranteed. Two federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled on Friday that the Trump administration is required by law to use contingency funds to pay at least partial SNAP benefits. The government must respond by Monday on whether it plans to allocate money to continue payments. 

Meanwhile, more than a dozen states are trying to fill the gap by using state funds to support food aid or local food banks. But food bank leaders say charities can’t make up for a cutoff in food stamps. 

“It’s going to hurt us really bad,” said Taylour Grant, 29, a Tampa medical assistant who relies on $970 a month in SNAP benefits to feed her four children, plus WIC support for her youngest, who is 1-year-old. “It’s really scary because I know I’ll go without to make sure my kids are fed.”

Grant said many people misunderstand who relies on SNAP. “We’re not on it because we want to be — no one makes enough to live off these days. That help is really needed,” she said.

WIC

Nearly 7 million low-income pregnant women, new mothers and children under 5 who receive WIC could lose federal aid in November because of the government shutdown. 

Unlike food stamps, WIC provides funds specifically to purchase formula and nutritious foods for pregnant women and young children, though many families rely on both programs, said Georgia Machell, CEO of the National WIC Association.

“None of these programs operate in a vacuum,” she said. “Often, if a family is participating in WIC, they’re also participating in SNAP.”

WIC continued paying benefits in October after the Trump administration tapped $300 million in leftover tariff revenue from the previous fiscal year. But with the stalemate in Congress continuing into November, that funding could run out. 

The USDA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about whether it could tap additional tariff revenue to fund the program. At this point, the program is set to delay payments on Nov. 1, according to the National WIC Association.

WIC has been able to maintain funding during previous shutdowns in its 50-year history, according to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), a nonprofit group focused on stopping hunger. “The disruptions we’re concerned about would be fairly historic,” Machell said.

Some states have pledged to use their own funds to keep WIC running, but many lack the budget, according to FRAC. 

Head Start

About 140 Head Start programs in 41 states and Puerto Rico will lose federal funding with the shutdown set to extend past Nov. 1, affecting roughly 65,000 children, according to the National Head Start Association. Nationwide, about 750,000 children are enrolled in Head Start.

Some programs may not be able to stay open, regional program directors warn.

“Everybody is trying to do everything they can to keep children in classrooms and families at work,” Michelle Haimowitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Head Start Association, told CBS News Boston. “But it is incredibly difficult to operate without those federal funds.” 

Minnesota mother Jaycee Chrudimsky said she fears that the closure of her local Head Start program could force her to miss work and affect her 4-year-old daughter.

“It would impact her, and that’s the thing I worry about the most, because she looks forward to coming to school every single day and seeing her friends and being a part of the program,” Chrudimsky told CBS News Minnesota this week. 

LIHEAP

Another program threatened by the shutdown is the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA). The program helps about 6 million low-income households pay their energy bills.

“We are now at a point where the government shutdown is going to cause serious delays in the release of LIHEAP funds,” Wolfe told CBS News.

The delay could leave millions of families behind on utility bills and facing power shutoffs just as energy prices are skyrocketing, he added.

NEADA projects the average cost for people to heat a home this winter will rise nearly 8%.

“It’s a perfect storm of misery for low- and middle-income households,” Wolfe said.

Edited by

Alain Sherter

Diane Reynolds said she was caught off guard when someone contacted the Maryland retiree online and said access to her computer had been blocked for safety reasons. 

“There was a voice message that was coming on with this that said, ‘Don’t turn your computer on, don’t turn your computer off,'” she told CBS News. 

Reynolds was also instructed to call a phone number she was led to believe would provide her with tech support. Instead, she was connected to a scam artist who claimed that hackers had obtained access to her bank account. The only way to protect her money was to convert the funds into bitcoin, the person told Reynolds.

She withdrew her entire bank account balance, which totaled $13,100, and followed the scammer’s directions to go to a bitcoin ATM at a nearby gas station. The ATM was operated by Athena Bitcoin, which has more than 4,000 such terminals across the U.S. 

Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb said such incidents highlight the surge in cryptocurrency scams linked to bitcoin ATM providers, resulting in the theft of millions of dollars.

“Bitcoin ATMs are a tool that scammers, that criminals, are using to separate people, including D.C. residents, from their hard-earned money,” Schwalb told CBS News. “Athena, as a bitcoin operator, knows that its kiosks are being used by this element, and yet [has] failed to put proper anti-fraud prevention systems in place to keep it from happening.”

He added, “What makes it worse is they are profiting from this because they’re charging very substantial fees.”

Schwalb in September filed a lawsuit against Athena, alleging that it charges “undisclosed fees on deposits that it knows are often the result of scams, and for failing to implement adequate anti-fraud measures.”

In a statement to CBS News, Athena Bitcoin said it “strongly disagrees with the allegations” and that it will contest the charges in court.

“We employ aggressive safety protocols to protect the financial interests of our customers. …Our kiosks employ multiple safeguards, from prominent warnings and daily transaction limits to five separate verification screens designed to stop coerced transactions,” the company said. 

Reynolds is also suing Athena Bitcoin. Her attorney, Vaught Stewart, accused the company of “not just allowing the fraud to happen — they’re profiting from it.” 

In Washington, D.C., Athena Bitcoin charged fees of up to 26% per transaction, while 93% of all deposits made through the company’s ATMs are linked to scams, Schwalb alleged in his suit. 

 For her part, Reynolds wants to help others avoid losing their savings. “Now I’m an advocate for just telling people this is real,” she said. “Be aware.”

Financial scams connected to bitcoin ATMs are on the rise, according to the Federal Trade Commission. 

The Better Business Bureau, which ranks crypto-related fraud as one of the most common types of financial scams, notes that fraudsters tend to target the senior population. 

Claims from an unknown source that your computer has been hacked is one major tip-off that someone is trying to swindle you, according to the organization. 

Edited by

Alain Sherter

By MARGERY A. BECK and GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press

Food banks and pantries were already struggling after federal program cuts this year, but now they’re bracing for a tsunami of hungry people if a pause in federal food aid to low-income people kicks in this weekend as the federal government shutdown persists.

A federal judge overseeing Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s criminal case in Tennessee has ordered Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice officials to refrain from making prejudicial statements about him.

“DOJ and DHS employees who fail to comply with the requirement to refrain from making any statement that ‘will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing’ this criminal prosecution may be subject to sanctions,” wrote U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw.

In his memorandum opinion on Monday, Judge Crenshaw stated that government officials, including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, have made “extrajudicial statements that are troubling, especially where many of them are exaggerated if not simply inaccurate,” specifically citing statements that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13. 

Prejudicial statements include comments about Abrego Garcia’s character, reputation, and criminal record, Crenshaw said. He added that Trump officials violated a local court rule limiting comments from government employees relating to an ongoing criminal case and ordered the U.S. attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee to notify DOJ and DHS employees about the rule.

In a separate order, the federal judge ordered the government to produce documents under seal to the court about its change in position from “deport but not prosecute” to “prosecute and then deport.”

Crenshaw acknowledged that in an ordinary case, the government would be correct that internal documents revealing the motivations behind a prosecution would be non-discoverable. But, he said, “this is not an ordinary case.”

“Abrego has established a reasonable likelihood that his prosecution was motivated, at least in part, in retaliation for him exercising his constitutional rights in his Maryland immigration case,” Judge Crenshaw wrote.

The judge went on to say that Robert McGuire, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, failed to answer certain questions about Abrego Garcia’s prosecution in a supplemental affidavit he submitted.

“How did Abrego’s case arrive on his desk and why did it show up on April 27, 2025, when the case had previously been closed by DHS on April 1, 2025?,” Crenshaw wrote on Monday in a filing. “Cases do not magically appear on the desks of prosecutors.”

Judge Crenshaw added that the motivations of the people who “place the file” on the prosecutor’s desk are “highly relevant” when considering a motion to dismiss for vindictive prosecution.

The Tennessee judge also ordered the government to produce any emails between the Deputy Attorney General’s Office and McGuire’s office from earlier this year about Abrego Garcia’s prosecution.

Two days of hearings are scheduled in the case next week.

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who had been living in Maryland with his wife and children, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution — after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which his family and attorneys deny.

He was brought back to the U.S. in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

After being released into the custody of his brother in Maryland pending trial, he was again detained by immigration authorities and is currently being held in a detention facility in Pennsylvania.

Judge Xinis, who has been overseeing Abrego Garcia’s immigration case in Maryland, had earlier banned the government from removing him from the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a court notice on Friday that the West African nation of Liberia had agreed to accept Abrego Garcia, after the agency previously indicated it was planning to deport Abrego Garcia to Eswatini or Uganda.

Some federal workers who are not being paid during the government shutdown have a nagging fear: They might not receive retroactive pay once the impasse is resolved.

Roughly 1.4 million federal employees whose wages are being withheld during the government shutdown are hunkering down and cutting all nonessential spending, as they missed their first full paychecks on Friday. 

Here’s what to know about retroactive pay for those workers when the shutdown ends. 

Do all federal workers get back pay?

Both furloughed workers and so-called “excepted” government employees, who must continue to show up to work during the shutdown without compensation, are entitled to back pay under a federal law called the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019.

The law makes clear that both classes of federal employees affected by a lack of funding will eventually be paid in full. They “shall be paid for the period of the lapse in appropriations, and each excepted employee who is required to perform work during a covered lapse in appropriations shall be paid for such work, at the employee’s standard rate of pay.”

Legal challenges

However, a draft memo from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget suggests that furloughed workers are not guaranteed back pay, an administration official confirmed to CBS News. When asked on Oct. 7 about furloughed workers getting back pay, President Trump said, “I would say it depends on who we’re talking about.”

Legal experts insist that federal employees are unequivocally protected under the 2019 law. In an Oct. 7 statement, Max Stier, CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, said the act “is very clear in its mandate to give automatic back pay to furloughed workers during a lapse in appropriations.”

Dan Meyer, a partner at Tully Rinckey in Washington, D.C., said the law appropriates, not authorizes, back pay for workers. 

“If this came to a judge, I think the appropriations language would speak heavily that they were required to pay the federal employees based on that legislation,” he told CBS News. 

The memo also contradicts previous guidance published in September by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

“The Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 (Public Law 116-1) provides that upon enactment of appropriations to end a lapse, both furloughed and excepted employees will be paid retroactively as soon as possible after the lapse ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates,” the agency’s notice read. However, an updated version of guidelines strikes that language. 

“Excepted employees will be paid for any earned overtime pay or holiday premium pay when appropriations are enacted,” the OPM now states in its guidance.

The White House did not immediately respond to CBS News’ question about whether or not federal workers will be paid once the shutdown ends.

When would back pay arrive?

The short answer is as soon as the government shutdown ends. 

The Government Employee Fair Treatment Act stipulates that federal workers are owed back pay “at the earliest date possible after the lapse in appropriations ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates.”

Michael LeRoy, professor of labor and employment relations at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign college of law, told CBS News, “The law makes clear that they are entitled to back pay, and it preferences automatic payment.” 

Federal workers’ last partial paycheck arrived on Oct. 10. Their next pay day was scheduled for Oct. 24. Workers were not paid. Paychecks have yet to be issued, as the second-longest government shutdown in history entered its 27th day Saturday, with no resolution on the horizon.

What about government contractors?

In addition to federal employees, the government contracts with private sector firms who employ millions of workers in custodial, information technology and other roles. They are not similarly guaranteed back pay. 

“Contract workers are simply not covered by the statute,” LeRoy said. 

They may, however, continue to work and receive paychecks if their assigned contracts are fully funded. 

What about workers who collect unemployment during the shutdown?

Federal employees may be eligible for unemployment compensation during the shutdown. The Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees program provides benefits to federal workers “who lost their employment through no fault of their own,” according to a fact sheet.

Benefits are available for 26 weeks, with maximum amounts varying by state law, according to an Office of Personnel Management memo. 

When workers are paid retroactively, the funds are applied against any unemployment benefits they received to avoid overpayment, the memo states. Excepted workers are not considered unemployed and therefore are not eligible for unemployment benefits in most states, Tom Spiggle, employment attorney and founder of the Spiggle Law Firm, told CBS News. 

Edited by

Anne Marie D. Lee

The Federal Reserve is set to make its next interest rate decision on Wednesday, even as a near-total blackout of federal economic data continues amid the government shutdown.

The Labor Department, however, on Friday released one key report ahead of its meeting: the Consumer Price Index. That report showed that the inflation rate rose at a pace of 3% last month, cooler than expected, as the impact of President Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs have so far been more muted than economists have forecast. 

Economists say the softer inflation report likely opens the door to a rate cut on Wednesday.

“Concerns about tariffs driving prices higher are still not showing up in most categories,” Scott Helfstein, Global X’s head of investment strategy, said Friday in an email. “Nothing in the inflation print should stop the Fed from cutting rates next week. Yes, prices are higher, but not enough to keep them from helping the economy,” he added.

There’s a 96.7% probability that the Fed will cut its benchmark rate by 0.25 percentage points on Wednesday, according to CME FedWatch, which bases its predictions on 30-Day Fed Funds futures prices. 

A quarter-point cut would bring down the benchmark rate to a range of between 3.75% to 4%, down from its current range of between 4% to 4.25%, and mark the Fed’s second rate cut this year. 

What’s the argument for cutting rates?

The Federal Reserve has a so-called dual mandate to keep both inflation and unemployment low. When inflation is soaring — such as when it hit a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022 — the Fed ratchets rates higher to make borrowing more expensive, which in turn dissuades consumers and businesses from spending, tempering inflation. 

But a weak labor market can be bolstered by lower interest rates, because it’s easier for businesses to expand and hire more workers if it’s less expensive to borrow money.

When Powell last month announced the Fed’s first rate cut of 2025, he signaled the central bank was growing increasingly concerned about a sharp slowdown in the labor market. “In this less dynamic and somewhat softer labor market, the downside risks to employment appear to have risen,” he said in September.

However, the monthly jobs report for September wasn’t released earlier this month due to the federal shutdown. In an Oct. 14 speech, Powell acknowledged the data halt, yet added that the central bank has access to “a wide variety of public- and private-sector data that have remained available.”

According to those sources of information, “the outlook for employment and inflation does not appear to have changed much since our September meeting,” Powell noted. 

Friday’s CPI report “should keep the Fed focused on the labor market in terms of the near-term policy trajectory. In the absence of the September jobs report, an October cut appears to be a done deal,” Bank of America economists noted in a Friday research report. 

How would a rate cut impact your money?

While a quarter-point rate cut is relatively small, it would come after September’s reduction — and economists are also expecting the Fed to usher in a third cut at its December meeting. Together, that means the benchmark rate by year-end could sit 0.75 percentage points lower than it was in January. 

That would help reduce rates for credit cards and loans such as home equity lines of credit, or HELOCs. Those types of credit products are based on the prime rate, or the interest rate that banks charge each other, and which in turn is based on the Fed’s benchmark rate. 

Mortgage rates, meanwhile, have already dipped ahead of the Fed’s rate decision. While mortgage rates aren’t set by the Fed, they’re heavily influenced by its policy moves, as well as bond market investors’ expectations for economic growth and inflation.

The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped to 6.19% as of Oct. 23, marking their lowest level in a year, according to Freddie Mac. Homebuyers might not see much more of a break, at least in the near-term, economists said.

“Mortgage rates have moved down notably in advance of the Fed’s meeting, hitting their lowest level in more than a year, but further declines will depend on new developments,” noted Realtor.com’s chief economist Danielle Hale in an email. “The Fed’s decisions are anticipated by the market, which means that the upcoming rate cut and several more over the next few months are already largely priced in.”

Edited by

Anne Marie D. Lee

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has posted a notice on its website saying federal food aid will not go out Nov. 1, raising the stakes for families nationwide as the government shutdown drags on.

The new notice comes after the Trump administration said it would not tap roughly $5 billion in contingency funds to keep benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as SNAP, flowing into November. That program helps about 1 in 8 Americans buy groceries.

“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” the USDA notice says. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.”

The shutdown, which began Oct. 1, is now the second-longest on record. While the Republican administration took steps leading up to the shutdown to ensure SNAP benefits were paid this month, the cutoff would expand the impact of the impasse to a wider swath of Americans — and some of those most in need — unless a political resolution is found in just a few days.

The administration blames Democrats, who say they will not agree to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate with them on extending expiring subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Republicans say Democrats must first agree to reopen the government before negotiation.

Democratic lawmakers have written to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins requesting to use contingency funds to cover the bulk of next month’s benefits.

But a USDA memo that surfaced Friday says “contingency funds are not legally available to cover regular benefits.” The document says the money is reserved for such things such as helping people in disaster areas.

It cited a storm named Melissa, which has strengthened into a major hurricane, as an example of why it’s important to have the money available to mobilize quickly in the event of a disaster.

The prospect of families not receiving food aid has deeply concerned states run by both parties.

Some states have pledged to keep SNAP benefits flowing even if the federal program halts payments, but there are questions about whether U.S. government directives may allow that to happen. The USDA memo also says states would not be reimbursed for temporarily picking up the cost.

Other states are telling SNAP recipients to be ready for the benefits to stop. Arkansas and Oklahoma, for example, are advising recipients to identify food pantries and other groups that help with food.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., accused Republicans and Trump of not agreeing to negotiate.

“The reality is, if they sat down to try to negotiate, we could probably come up with something pretty quickly,” Murphy said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We could open up the government on Tuesday or Wednesday, and there wouldn’t be any crisis in the food stamp program.”

A planned increase in federal immigration enforcement in the Bay Area is now on pause throughout the region and in major East Bay cities, not just in San Francisco, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said Friday.

Lee said in a statement that Alameda County Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez had “confirmed through her communications” with federal immigration officials that the planned operations were “cancelled for the greater Bay Area — which includes Oakland — at this time.”

The announcement followed lingering concerns about ramped up immigration enforcement among East Bay leaders after President Trump and San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced Thursday that a planned “surge” had been called off in San Francisco.

Trump and Lurie had very specifically addressed San Francisco, even as additional Border Patrol agents were being staged across the bay on Coast Guard Island, which is in the waters between Alameda and Oakland.

At a press conference following Trump’s annoucement about San Francisco, Lee had said the situation remained “fluid,” that she had received no such assurances about the East Bay and that Oakland was continuing to prepare for enhanced immigration enforcement in the region.

Alameda County Dist. Atty. Ursula Jones Dickson had previously warned that the announced stand down in San Francisco could be a sign the administration was looking to focus on Oakland instead — and make an example of it.

“We know that they’re baiting Oakland, and that’s why San Francisco, all of a sudden, is off the table,” Jones Dickson said Thursday morning. “So I’m not going to be quiet about what we know is coming. We know that their expectation is that Oakland is going to do something to cause them to make us the example.”

The White House on Friday directed questions about the scope of the pause in operations and whether it applied to the East Bay to the Department of Homeland Security, which referred The Times back to Trump’s statement about San Francisco on Friday — despite its making no mention of the East Bay or Oakland.

In that statement, posted to his Truth Social platform, Trump had written that a “surge” had been planned for San Francisco starting Saturday, but that he had called it off after speaking to Lurie.

Trump said Lurie had asked “very nicely” that Trump “give him a chance to see if he can turn it around” in the city, and that business leaders — including Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Marc Benioff of Salesforce — had expressed confidence in Lurie.

Trump said he told Lurie that it would be “easier” to make San Francisco safer if federal forces were sent in, but told him, “let’s see how you do.”

Lurie in recent days has touted falling crime rates and numbers of homeless encampments in the city, and said in his own announcement of the stand down that he had told Trump that San Francisco was “on the rise” and that “having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery.”

In California and elsewhere, the Trump administration has aggressively sought to expand the reach and authority of the Border Patrol and federal immigration agents. Last month, the DOJ fired its top prosecutor in Sacramento after she told Gregory Bovino, chief of the Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, that he could not carry out indiscriminate immigration raids around Sacramento this summer.

In Oakland on Thursday, the planned surge in enforcement had sparked protests near the entrance to Coast Guard Island, and drew widespread condemnation from local liberal officials and immigrant advocacy organizations.

On Thursday night, security officers at the base opened fire on the driver of a U-Haul truck who was reversing the truck toward them, wounding the driver and a civilian nearby. The FBI is investigating that incident.

Some liberal officials had warned that federal agents who violated the rights of Californians could face consequences — even possible arrest — from local law enforcement, which drew condemnation from federal officials.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche responded with a scathing letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and others on Thursday in which he wrote that any attempt by local law enforcement to arrest federal officers doing their jobs would be viewed by the Justice Department as “both illegal and futile” and as part of a “criminal conspiracy.”

Blanche wrote that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution precludes any federal law enforcement official to be “held on a state criminal charge where the alleged crime arose during the performance of his federal duties,” and that the Justice Department would pursue legal action against any state officials who advocate for such enforcement.

“In the meantime, federal agents and officers will continue to enforce federal law and will not be deterred by the threat of arrest by California authorities who have abdicated their duty to protect their constituents,” Blanche wrote.

The threat of arrest for federal officers had originated in part with San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins, who had written on social media that if federal agents “come to San Francisco and illegally harass our residents … I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day.”

In his own remarks on the Senate floor, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized the president as Americans brace for a spike in health insurance premiums and the government remains closed.

“We are staring into the abyss of the health care crisis here in America, and what is Donald Trump doing as we stare into the abyss of the health care crisis?” Schumer said. “He’s flying off yet again to another corner of the world while people’s premiums are set to skyrocket here at home.”

The New York Democrat accused Mr. Trump of “bulldozing” the East Wing of the White House and seeking a $230 million settlement from the Justice Department for claims stemming from earlier federal investigations into him.

“We’re in the middle of a health care crisis that will decimate tens of millions of Americans,” Schumer said. “But Donald Trump doesn’t seem to want to touch the topic with a 10-foot pole and has decided to fly off to another country yet again without negotiating with Democrats.”

The president is set to leave Friday for a trip to Asia, where he said he will make stops in Malaysia, Japan and South Korea.

“It’s hard to fathom someone more out of touch and oblivious to our nation’s struggles than the current president,” Schumer said.

The Senate minority leader accused the president of using the presidency to enrich himself, pointing to the claims brought against the Justice Department. 

“While Americans are agonizing over their health care, Donald Trump is using the presidency to reach into the taxpayers’ till and put money in his own pocket,” he said.

While Republicans are blaming Democrats for the shutdown, Democrats are pointing to Republicans as responsible.

“The shutdown is on Donald Trump’s back, and the American people know it,” Schumer said. “They know that Republicans have the presidency, the House and the Senate, and the shutdown is on them.”

Schumer called Sen. Ron Johnson’s bill to pay essential workers a “ruse,” and said Democrats “will not give Donald Trump a license to play politics with people’s livelihoods.”

“It doesn’t end the pain of the shutdown. It extends it,” he said. “The only way to pay every federal worker is for Republicans to get serious, sit down with Democrats, avert their health care crisis and reopen the government.”

Frozen meals served to students across the United States as part of federally-funded school breakfast and lunch programs may be contaminated with listeria and have been recalled, officials announced on Saturday. 

The recall applied to approximately 91,585 pounds of prepackaged breakfast burritos and wraps, manufactured by the California company M.C.I. Foods between Sept. 17 and Oct. 14, said the Food Safety and Inspection Service, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that focuses on public health regulations. 

Its announcement cited seven different types of frozen breakfast products that could be tainted. They are distributed to low-income students around the country as part of the National School Breakfast and Lunch Programs, which the Department of Agriculture administers. The breakfast program served more than 14 million children in 2016, and close to 30 million children participated in the lunch program in 2019, according to the department.

There are no confirmed reports of illnesses tied to the recalled products, which include burritos and wraps sold by the brands El Mas Fino, Los Cabos and Midamar and contain egg, cheese and various meats like beef, ham, sausage and turkey, according to the Food Safety and Inspection Service. The agency said it recalled those products after the manufacturer discovered listeria while conducting routine testing on egg ingredients from its external suppliers.

“FSIS is concerned that some product may be in institutional refrigerators of freezers,” said the agency. “Institutions are urged not to serve these products. These products should be thrown away.”

Listeria is an infection caused by bacteria of the same name that spreads through food. Fever, headache, stiff neck, muscle aches, confusion, loss of balance and a range of gastrointestinal problems are some of the symptoms brought on by the illness, according to the Mayo Clinic. The clinic warns that pregnant women, newborns, older adults and people with weakened immune systems are at the highest risk of developing a harmful infection. 

People can be infected with listeria without becoming seriously ill, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency has estimated that listeria is the third leading cause of death from foodborne illness in the U.S., with 1,250 people contracting the infection and 172 dying from the infection each year. 

Public health officials note that flu-like symptoms caused by listeria can signal an “invasive” infection, meaning one that has spread from the gastrointestinal tract, where symptoms may start, to other parts of the body. These invasive infections typically develop within two months of eating contaminated food, according to the CDC.

Multiple listeria outbreaks have been reported just this month. One impacted meal kits from the food subscription service HelloFresh and another forced the recall of nearly 245,000 pounds of precooked pasta, from the California company Nate’s Fine Foods, which turned deadly and potentially contaminated dozens of different products sold in grocery stores nationwide

The National Labor Relations Board has sued California to block a law that empowers a state agency to oversee some private-sector labor disputes and union elections.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 288 into law last month in response to the Trump administration’s hampering of federal regulators. It gives the state’s Public Employment Relations Board the ability to step in and oversee union elections, charges of workplace retaliation and other issues in the event the federal labor board is unable, or declines, to decide cases.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, argues the law usurps the NLRB’s authority “by attempting to regulate areas explicitly reserved for federal oversight.”

The lawsuit echos the NLRB’s challenge to a recent New York law that similarly seeks to expand the powers of its state labor board.

NLRB attorneys contend in the lawsuits that the laws create parallel regulatory systems that conflict with federal labor law.

The NLRB is tasked with safeguarding the right of private employees to unionize or organize in other ways to improve their working conditions.

Lawmakers in New York and California said they passed their bills to fill a gap, because the NLRB has been functionally paralyzed since January, when President Trump fired one of its Democratic board members. The unprecedented firing of that member, Gwynne Wilcox, left the board without the three-member quorum it needs to rule on cases.

Wilcox has challenged her firing in court, arguing that appointed board members can only be fired for “malfeasance or neglect of duty.” But her removal was upheld by the Supreme Court for now, until her case can make its way through lower courts.

Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, last month called AB 288 “the most significant labor law reform in nearly a century.”

The California Public Employment Relations Board typically has authority only over public sector employees. But when the new law goes into effect on Jan. 1, workers in the private sector who are unable to get a timely response at the federal level can also petition the state board to take up their cases and enforce their rights.

The state’s labor board can choose to take on a case when the NLRB “has expressly or impliedly ceded jurisdiction,” according to language in the law. That includes when charges filed with the agency or an election certification have languished with a regional director for more than six months — or when the federal board doesn’t have a quorum of members or is otherwise hampered.

The NLRB’s paralysis has put hundreds of cases in limbo, with the agency currently lacking the ability to compel employers to bargain with their workers’ unions, or to stop unfair treatment on the job.

However, the agency’s acting general counsel — Trump appointee William Cowen — has said that only a fraction of cases require decisions from the typically five-member board and that the agency’s work has been largely unaffected, with regional offices continuing to process union elections and unfair labor practice charges.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Wednesday issued a sweeping emergency order directing all federal agencies to immediately patch critical vulnerabilities in certain devices and software made by F5, a technology vendor, after confirming a nation-state cyber actor gained unauthorized access to F5’s source code. 

CISA — a part of the Department of Homeland Security that manages risks to the U.S.’s cyber and physical infrastructure — issued Emergency Directive 26-01 following the company’s disclosure that a foreign threat actor had maintained long-term, persistent access to its internal development and engineering environments using source code.

Officials warned that attackers could exploit the vulnerabilities to steal credentials, move laterally through networks, and potentially take full control of targeted systems. F5 said it first discovered the attack in August but did not disclose exactly when it began.

“This directive addresses an imminent risk,” Nick Anderson, CISA’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said during a news briefing Wednesday. “A nation-state actor could exploit these flaws to gain unauthorized access to embedded credentials and API keys. That’s an unacceptable risk to federal networks.”

F5 is a publicly traded American technology company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. 

Justice Department delayed breach announcement

Earlier Wednesday, F5 disclosed the breach in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In the SEC 8-K report, F5 said the Justice Department on Sept. 12 “determined that a delay in public disclosure was warranted.” It’s one of the first times a company has publicly acknowledged DOJ intervention under the SEC’s cybersecurity disclosure rules.

The rules were adopted in July 2023 and require companies to report cybersecurity incidents within four business days of determining that a material event has occurred.

“Under item 1.05(c), the Department may grant a delay after finding that a disclosure required by Item 1.05 would pose a substantial risk to national security or public safety,” a Department of Justice spokesperson told CBS News in a statement.

F5 CEO François Locoh-Donou signed the filing, which said the company learned of the attack on Aug. 9 and launched an investigation alongside cybersecurity firms CrowdStrike, Mandiant and others, with assistance from federal law enforcement and unnamed “government partners.”

“During the course of its investigation, the Company determined that the threat actor maintained long-term, persistent access to certain F5 systems, including the BIG-IP product development environment and engineering knowledge management platform,” F5 wrote in its filing.

What’s in the CISA emergency order

CISA’s order directed federal civilian executive branch agencies — which include the Department of Justice, Department of State, Department of the Treasury and the Federal Trade Commission, among others — to inventory F5 BIG-IP products, which are application delivery and security services. 

The federal agencies need to evaluate if their networks are accessible from the public internet, and apply newly released updates from F5 by Oct. 22, the emergency order stated. They must also complete scoping reports identifying affected devices by Oct. 29.

There are currently thousands of F5 devices in use across federal networks, Anderson told CBS News. The cybersecurity agency said it expects to know more about the scope of exposure by the end of the month.

CISA Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala said in a statement that the agency remains “steadfast” in its mission to defend U.S. networks, even amid the ongoing government shutdown and the lapse of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015.

“The alarming ease with which these vulnerabilities can be exploited demands immediate and decisive action,” Gottumukkala said. “These same risks extend beyond federal systems — to any organization using this technology.”

No confirmed compromises yet, but broader campaign underway

Anderson confirmed that CISA is not aware of any current data breaches within federal agencies, though the directive is designed to uncover any potential compromises. He said the campaign appears to be part of a broader nation-state effort targeting elements of the U.S. technology supply chain, not just one vendor.

“The broader goal here is persistent access — to gather intelligence, hold infrastructure hostage, or position themselves for future attacks,” Anderson told CBS News during Wednesday’s briefing.

CISA declined to name the country behind the attack, citing ongoing investigations.

“The U.S. government is not making a public attribution at this time,” said Marcy McCarthy, CISA’s director of public affairs.

In a statement to CBS News, the head of threat intelligence for Unit 42, a team of cybersecurity experts and researchers at Palo Alto Networks, said the theft of F5 BIG-IP source code is “significant, as it potentially facilitates rapid exploitation of vulnerabilities.”

“Generally, if an attacker steals source code, it takes time to find exploitable issues,” Unit 42 Chief Technology Officer Michael Sikorski said. “In this case, they also stole information on undisclosed vulnerabilities that F5 was actively working to patch. This provides the ability for threat actors to exploit vulnerabilities that have no public patch, potentially increasing speed to exploit creation.”

Working through the government shutdown

Pressed on the government’s ability to respond amid furloughs and staffing reductions at CISA, Anderson acknowledged the agency’s challenges but said it remains operational.

“We’re sustaining essential functions and providing timely guidance like this to mitigate risk,” he said. “This is core mission work for CISA — exactly what we should be doing.”

Anderson also said the lapse of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, a law that had governed federal-private sector cyber information sharing before sunsetting, did not delay coordination with F5 or impact the agency’s response.

While the directive applies only to federal agencies, CISA is strongly urging state, local and private sector organizations using F5 technologies to follow the same patching and mitigation steps. F5’s products, including its BIG-IP line, are widely used in both government and commercial networks to manage internet traffic and security.

The man accused of starting a fire that eventually became the deadly blaze that devastated the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles earlier this year has been indicted by a federal grand jury, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, was charged in a three-count indictment with one count of destruction of property by means of fire, one count of arson affecting property used in interstate commerce and one count of timber set afire.

He now faces up to 45 years in federal prison.

The indictment adds two additional charges. When he was arrested, authorities said the maximum punishment Rinderknecht faced was 20 years in prison.

Rinderknecht, a former LA resident living in Florida, was arrested Oct. 7 — several months after the Palisades Fire leveled neighborhoods in Los Angeles County and left 12 people dead.

Federal prosecutors said Rinderknecht, who was working as an Uber driver at the time, ignited a brush fire in the Pacific Palisades on Jan. 1.

Despite being suppressed by fire crews, the fire continued to smolder until it surfaced again nearly a week later amid high winds in the Los Angeles area, eventually becoming the Palisades Fire, one of the most destructive wildfires in LA’s history, according to officials.

In a criminal complaint, authorities allege Rinderknecht caused the fire by lighting a combustible material, such as vegetation or paper, with an open flame, likely a lighter.

Authorities haven’t described a motive, but during a news conference after Rinderknecht’s arrest, acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli pointed to digital evidence included in the complaint of an image Rinderknecht allegedly generated in July 2024 using ChatGPT, showing in part “a burning forest and a crowd fleeing from it.”

Rinderknecht is due to appear for an arraignment in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles, which is expected in the coming weeks, federal prosecutors said.

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge blocked the Trump administration Wednesday from firing thousands of government workers based on the ongoing federal shutdown, granting a request from employee unions in California.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston issued the temporary restraining order after concluding that the unions “will demonstrate ultimately that what’s being done here is both illegal and is in excess of authority and is arbitrary and capricious.”

Illston slammed the Trump administration for failing to provide her with clear information about what cuts are actually occurring, for repeatedly changing its description and estimates of job cuts in filings before the court, and for failing — including during Wednesday’s hearing in San Francisco — to articulate an argument for why such cuts are not in violation of federal law.

“The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, and the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them anymore,” Illston said — which she said was not the case.

She said the government justified providing inaccurate figures for the number of jobs being eliminated under its “reduction in force” orders by calling it a “fluid situation” — which she did not find convincing.

“What it is is a situation where things are being done before they are being thought through. It’s very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs,” she said. “And it has a human cost, which is really why we’re here today. It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.”

Illston also ran through a string of recent comments made by President Trump and other members of his administration about the firings and their intentionally targeting programs and agencies supported by Democrats, saying, “By all appearances, they’re politically motivated.”

The Trump administration has acknowledged dismissing about 4,000 workers under the orders, while Trump and other officials have signaled that more would come Friday.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said Wednesday on “The Charlie Kirk Show” that the number of jobs cut could “probably end up being north of 10,000,” as the administration wants to be “very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy, not just the funding,” and the shutdown provided that opportunity.

Attorneys for the unions, led by the American Federation of Government Employees, said that the figures were unreliable and that they feared additional reduction in force orders resulting in more layoffs, as promised by administration officials, if the court did not step in and block such actions.

Illston, an appointee of President Clinton, did just that.

She barred the Trump administration and its various agencies “from taking any action to issue any reduction in force notices to federal employees in any program, project or activity” involving union members “during or because of the federal shutdown.”

She also barred the administration from “taking any further action to administer or implement” existing reduction notices involving union members.

Illston demanded that the administration provide within two days a full accounting of all existing or “imminent” reduction in force orders that would be blocked by her order, as well as the specific number of federal jobs affected.

Elizabeth Hedges, an attorney for the Trump administration, had argued during the hearing that the order should not be granted for several procedural reasons — including that the alleged harm to federal employees from loss of employment or benefits was not “irreparable” and could be addressed through other avenues, including civil litigation.

Additionally, she argued that federal employment claims should be adjudicated administratively, not in district court; and that the reduction in force orders included 60-day notice periods, meaning the layoffs were not immediate and therefore the challenge to them was not yet “ripe” legally.

However, Hedges would not discuss the case on its actual merits — which is to say, whether the cuts were actually legal or not, which did not seem to sit well with Illston.

“You don’t have a position on whether it’s OK that they do what they’re doing?” Illston asked.

“I am not prepared to discuss that today, your honor,” Hedges said.

“Well — but it’s happening. This hatchet is falling on the heads of employees all across the nation, and you’re not even prepared to address whether that’s legal, even though that’s what this motion challenges?” Illston said.

“That’s right,” Hedges said — stressing again that there were “threshold” arguments for why the case shouldn’t even be allowed to continue to the merits stage.

Danielle Leonard, an attorney for the unions, suggested the government’s positions were indefensible and directly in conflict with public statements by the administration — including remarks by Trump on Tuesday that more cuts are coming Friday.

“How do we know this? Because OMB and the president relentlessly are telling us, and other members of the administration,” Leonard said.

Leonard said the harm from the administration’s actions is obvious and laid out in the union’s filings — showing how employees have at times been left in the dark as to their employment status because they don’t have access to work communication channels during the shutdown, or how others have been called in to “work without pay to fire their fellow employees” — only to then be fired themselves.

“There are multiple types of harm that are caused exactly right now — emotional trauma. That’s not my word, your honor, that is the word of OMB Director Vought. Let’s cause ‘trauma’ to the federal workforce,” Leonard said. “And that’s exactly what they are doing. Trauma. The emotional distress of being told you are being fired after an already exceptionally difficult year for federal employees.”

Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, which is co-counsel for the unions, praised Illston’s decision in a statement after the hearing.

“The statements today by the court make clear that the President’s targeting of federal workers — a move straight out of Project 2025’s playbook — is unlawful,” Perryman said. “Our civil servants do the work of the people, and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful and a threat to everyone in our nation.”

Illston asked the two parties to confer on the best date, probably later this month, for a fuller hearing on whether she should issue a more lasting preliminary injunction in the case.

“It would be wonderful to know what the government’s position is on the merits of this case — and my breath is bated until we find that,” Illston said.

After the hearing, during a White House news conference, Trump said his administration was paying federal employees whom “we want paid” while Vought uses the shutdown to dismiss employees perceived as supporting Democratic initiatives.

“Russell Vought is really terminating tremendous numbers of Democrat projects — not only jobs,” Trump said.

A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday to decide whether maneuvers used by the Trump administration to install Bill Essayli as acting United States attorney in Los Angeles are improper — and, if so, what should be done about it.

During a Tuesday hearing in downtown L.A., Senior Judge J. Michael Seabright — who flew in from Hawaii for the proceeding — wondered how to proceed after defense attorneys sought to dismiss indictments against three clients and to disqualify Essayli “from participating in criminal prosecutions in this district.”

Essayli, a former Riverside County assemblyman, was appointed as the region’s interim top federal prosecutor by U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in April.

His term was set to expire in late July unless he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate or a panel of federal judges. But the White House never moved to nominate him to a permanent role, instead opting to use an unprecedented legal maneuver to shift his title to “acting,” extending his term for an additional nine months without any confirmation process.

Seabright was selected from the District of Hawaii after L.A.’s federal judges recused themselves from the proceedings. He questioned the consequences of dismissing any charges over Essayli’s title.

“If I did this for your client, I’ll have to do it for every single defendant who was indicted when Mr. Essayli was acting under the rubric of acting U.S. attorney, correct?” Seabright said to a deputy federal public defender.

“I don’t think you will,” replied James A. Flynn. “This is a time-specific, case-specific analysis and the court doesn’t need to go so far as to decide that a dismissal would be appropriate in all cases.”

“Why not? You’re asking for a really draconian remedy here,” Seabright said, before questioning how many indictments had been made since Essayli was designated acting U.S. attorney at the end of July.

“203, your honor,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Alexander P. Robbins responded.

In a court filing ahead of the hearing Tuesday, lawyers bringing the challenge against Essayli called the government’s defense of his status a handbook for circumventing the protections that the Constitution and Congress built against the limitless, unaccountable handpicking of temporary officials.”

During the nearly two-hour hearing, Flynn cited similar legal challenges that have played out elsewhere. A federal judge ruled in August that Alina Habba has been illegally occupying the U.S. attorney post in New Jersey, although that order was put on hold pending appeal. Last month, a federal judge disqualified Nevada’s top federal prosecutor, Sigal Chattah, from several cases, concluding she “is not validly serving as acting U.S. attorney.”

The judges who ruled on the Nevada and New Jersey cases did not dismiss the charges against defendants, instead ordering that those cases not be supervised by Habba or Chattah.

Flynn argued that the remedies in other states “have not been effective to deter the conduct.”

“This court has the benefit of additional weeks and has seen the government’s response to that determination that their appointments were illegal and I submit the government hasn’t gotten the message,” Flynn said.

Flynn said another option could be a dismissal without prejudice, which means the government could bring the case against their clients again. He called it a “weaker medicine” than dismissal with prejudice, “but would be a stronger one than offered in New Jersey and Nevada.”

The hearing grew testy at times, with Seabright demanding that Assistant U.S. Atty. Robbins tell him when Essayli’s term will end. Robbins told the judge the government believes it will end on Feb. 24 and that afterward the role of acting U.S. attorney will remain vacant.

Robbins noted that Essayli has also been designated as first assistant U.S. attorney, essentially allowing him to remain in charge of the office if he loses the “acting” title.

Bondi in July also appointed him as a “special attorney.” Robbins told the judge that “there’s no developed challenge to Mr. Essayli’s appointment as a special attorney or his designation as a first assistant.”

“The defense challenge here, the stated interest that they have, is Bill Essayli cannot be acting,” Robbins said. “But they don’t have a compelling or strong response to Bill Essayli is legitimately in the office and he can be the first assistant … he can supervise other people in the office.”

Seabright asked both sides to brief him by Thursday on “whatever hats you believe [Essayli’s] wearing now” and “whether I were to say he wasn’t legitimately made acting U.S. attorney … what hats does he continue to wear.”

“If I understand the government’s proposed remedy correctly … it would essentially be no remedy at all, because they would be re-creating Mr. Essayli as the acting United States attorney, he’d just be wearing a first assistant hat,” Flynn said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

When asked by a Times reporter last month about the motion to disqualify him, Essayli said “the president won the election.”

“The American people provided him a mandate to run the executive branch, including the U.S. attorney’s office and I look forward to serving at the pleasure of the president,” he said during a news conference.

Since taking office, Essayli has doggedly pursued Trump’s agenda, championing hard-line immigration enforcement in Southern California, often using the president’s language verbatim at news conferences. His tenure has sparked discord in the office, with dozens of prosecutors quitting.

NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Lawyers for Luigi Mangione asked a New York federal judge Saturday to dismiss some criminal charges, including the only count for which he could face the death penalty, from a federal indictment brought against him in the December assassination of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive.

In papers filed in Manhattan federal court, the lawyers said prosecutors should also be prevented from using at trial his statements to law enforcement officers and his backpack where a gun and ammunition were found.

They said Mangione was not read his rights before he was questioned by law enforcement officers, who arrested him after Brian Thompson was fatally shot as he arrived at a Manhattan hotel for an investor conference.

They added that officers did not obtain a warrant before searching Mangione’s backpack.

Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges in the fatal shooting of Brian Thompson on Dec. 4 as he arrived at a Manhattan hotel for his company’s annual investor conference.

The killing set off a multi-state search after the suspected shooter slipped away from the scene and rode a bike to Central Park, before taking a taxi to a bus depot that offers service to several nearby states.

Five days later, a tip from a McDonald’s about 233 miles (375 kilometers) away in Altoona, Pennsylvania, led police to arrest Mangione. He has been held without bail since then.

Last month, lawyers for Mangione asked that his federal charges be dismissed and the death penalty be taken off the table as a result of public comments by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. In April, Bondi directed prosecutors in New York to seek the death penalty, calling the killing of Thompson a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”

Murder cases are usually tried in state courts, but prosecutors have also charged Mangione under a federal law on murders committed with firearms as part of other “crimes of violence.” It’s the only charge for which Mangione could face the death penalty, since it’s not used in New York state.

The papers filed early Saturday morning argued that this charge should be dismissed because prosecutors have failed to identify the other offenses that would be required to convict him, saying that the alleged other crime — stalking — is not a crime of violence.

The assassination and its aftermath has captured the American imagination, setting off a cascade of resentment and online vitriol toward U.S. health insurers while rattling corporate executives concerned about security.

After the killing, investigators found the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose,” written in permanent marker on ammunition at the scene. The words mimic a phrase used by insurance industry critics.

When House Speaker Mike Johnson fielded questions about the shutdown on C-SPAN Thursday, a self-described GOP mother and military wife said the health of her two children was in jeopardy and urged him to call the House back into session to pass a bill to pay service members. 

“I have two medically fragile children,” said the caller, who identified herself as Samantha from Northern Virginia. “I have a husband who actively serves this country. He suffers from PTSD from his two tours in Afghanistan. If we see a lapse in pay come the 15th (of October), my children do not get to get the medication that’s needed for them to live their life, because we live paycheck to paycheck.”

She pointed out that President Trump has supported the idea of passing a standalone bill — although the president said Wednesday Congress has plenty of time to do so: “One week for me is a long time,” he said. “We’ll take care of it.” 

For now, however, military members are poised to miss their paycheck next Wednesday. 

The caller told Johnson “you have the power” to call the House back and pass a standalone bill. 

“And as a Republican, I am very disappointed in my party, and I’m very disappointed in you,” she said. 

“I am begging you to pass this legislation,” she continued. “My kids could die. We don’t have the credit because of the medical bills that I have to pay regularly. You could stop this.”

Johnson listened quietly as she spoke, nodding his head at times. 

“Samantha, I’m so sorry to hear about your situation,” Johnson said, adding stories like hers keep him “up at night.” 

The speaker so far hasn’t expressed a willingness to pass a separate bill to continue paying the military.

Federal workers who are either furloughed or required to keep working without pay during the ongoing U.S. government shutdown express concern about the impact on their finances, their colleagues and the American public.

Roughly 750,000 of the more than 2 million federal workers are furloughed during the government closure, which began on Oct. 1, when Congress failed to agree on a spending bill, leading to the first lapse in funding in nearly seven years.

Here is what three federal workers — who shared their personal views with CBS News and were not speaking on behalf of their respective agencies — describe as their biggest concerns as the shutdown continues. 

“No pay has me anxious”

James Kirwan, an attorney with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the legislative affairs director for the agency’s union, is currently furloughed and does not expect to be paid until lawmakers resolve the dispute and pass a government funding bill. 

“No pay has me anxious because none of us have any idea how long the shutdown is going to go on for. It could be weeks, or it could be a short shutdown,” Kirwan, who has been with the NLRB for three years, told CBS News. “The longer it gets, the more debt people will have to incur to survive during the interim period.”

“It’s certainly scary, especially for federal workers making under $50,000 a year, and for federal contractors who have no guarantee of backpay whatsoever under the law,” he added. 

Kirwan, 31, said that if the shutdown drags on for weeks or months, he would likely have to lean on credit cards to afford the basics, and perhaps take out a loan for any larger expenses. 

“Like many Americans, I have very little in the way of emergency funds and savings, and I know I would not be able to hold on if it’s a very long shutdown,” he told CBS News. 

Kirwan, who said he had aspired to work in government since his youth, also emphasized his commitment to public service despite the political turmoil. 

“While taking on that additional debt and loans is certainly painful, if it results in jobs and my agency being saved and strengthened, I’ll take that deal any day,” he said. 

Asked for comment regarding government workers’ concerns about the impact of the shutdown on their finances, the White House blamed congressional Democrats for the stalemate. 

“The Trump Administration is encouraging the Democrats to stop the pain and reopen the government with the bipartisan funding proposal they supported just six months ago and 13 times under Biden — but Chuck Schumer thinks every day of the shutdown ‘gets better.’ How dismissive to countless Americans struggling because of his party’s decision,”  White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to CBS News. 

The office for Schumer, the Senate minority leader and a Democrat from New York, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. 

The Republic National Committee and Democratic National Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the impact of the shutdown on federal workers. 

“People aren’t able to get justice”

MT Snyder, who also works for the NLRB as a field examiner and is a member of the agency’s union, said the shutdown is hampering the board’s efforts to investigate employee claims of unfair labor practices and other workplace disputes.

“Everything is stopped, so workers who were illegally fired don’t have any recourse because there is nowhere else to go beside the NLRB,” Snyder, whose work involves investigating such complaints, told CBS News. “So it’s really frustrating that I am not able to do my job, and people aren’t able to get justice.” 

Snyder, 30, also said the uncertainty around when she can return to work amounts to a “huge psychological toll” that weighs on her and other government employees.

“As federal workers, we don’t have any say. We are not in Congress making choices, but we get the outcome of it and feel those effects,” she told CBS News. 

The NLRB did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a notice posted on the agency’s website on Sept. 30, before the shutdown began, the NLRB stated that unfair labor practice hearings scheduled for Oct. 1 or later would be postponed indefinitely. 

“There is a moral injury”

Another federal employee — who works for the Department of Veterans Affairs but who didn’t want to be identified by name because she fears potential retribution — is among those employees who is still on the job during the shutdown. 

She expects to be paid on time because her department has already allocated funds for her position, but also said the shutdown is further sapping workers’ morale.

“We deserve job security, dignity and respect, and this just feels like an extension of what was already occurring,” she said, referring to the mass government layoffs that have taken place under the Trump administration. “It is not a good way to live, and there is a moral injury that comes with being a federal worker right now. People are stressed.”

Like Kirwan, however, she also underlined her belief in the value of government service. “In no way am I considering leaving the federal government. I entered to retire from the federal government and I intend to do just that.”

A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to federalize and deploy the Oregon National Guard to Portland.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut issued a temporary restraining order late on Saturday barring the deployment of the troops for at least 14 days, saying Trump’s basis to federalize the Guard fell short of high bar required to justify a deployment without the approval of the state’s governor.

While there have been protests in Portland, the judge said in her decision, they are “not significantly violent or disruptive” to justify the deployment.

“These incidents are inexcusable, but they are nowhere near the type of incidents that cannot be handled by regular law enforcement force,” the judge, who was nominated to the federal bench by Trump, wrote.

The decision covers 200 soldiers who have been training on Oregon’s coast.

The Trump administration is expected to appeal the decision to Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned a similar ruling that sought to block Trump’s deployment of troops in Los Angeles over the summer.

What the judge said in decision

Trump took social media last month to declare that he was sending National Guard troops to “war-ravaged Portland,” citing the need to protect immigration facilities there.

But the judge said Trump’s determination about the purported chaos in Portland was “simply untethered to the facts,” and said he likely exceeded his authority under the Constitution. 

The judge also warned the Trump administration’s actions risk blurring the line between civil and military rule. 

“This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,”  Immergut wrote. “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power—to the detriment of this nation.” 

 Despite Trump’s claims, Immergut said that the protests in Portland have not been “significantly violent or disruptive” and are insufficient to federalize the National Guard.

While the president is usually entitled to “a great level of deference,” she said that “is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground.” 

She said Trump’s own statements regarding the deployment of federalized National Guardsmen “further support that his determination was not ‘conceived in good faith.'” 

Immergut concluded that Trump’s attempt exceeds his authority under the federal law and violates the Tenth Amendment, infringing on the state of Oregon’s sovereignty.

“Put simply, the issues at stake in this case are important, and the consequences of this Court’s decision are far-reaching. As soon as the federalized National Guard deploys to Portland, the state of Oregon will suffer an injury to its sovereignty,” she wrote. 

“This case involves the intersection of three of the most fundamental principles in our constitutional democracy,” the judge wrote, describing them as the relationship between the federal government and the states; the relationship between the U.S. armed forces and domestic law enforcement; and the role of the courts.

“Whether we choose to follow what the Constitution mandates with respect to these three relationships goes to the heart of what it means to live under the rule of law in the United States,” Immergut wrote.

How Oregon officials reacted

Oregon officials celebrate the judge’s decision.

Gov. Tina Kotek issued a statement, saying “justice has been served, and the truth has prevailed.”

In a news conference following the judge’s decision, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, whose office had challenged the deployment in court, said the ruling should be a “wake-up call” for Trump.

“No president is allowed to make up facts or rely on social media trolling or posts when deploying the United States military in our cities,” Rayfield said. “It’s an incredibly dangerous precedent to set in America, and today’s ruling halts what appears to be the President’s attempt to normalize the United States military and our cities.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said the ruling shows the federal government overstepped its authority and said local authorities are capable of maintaining peace.

“The number of federal troops that are needed or wanted is zero,” he said.

The mayor called for protesters to “de-escalate and disengage” from the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, saying “Today was a good day. Peace wins today … Facts matter. That’s what we need to focus on today.”

A government shutdown could begin within days, halting pay for hundreds of thousands of federal workers and delaying services, as lawmakers remain deadlocked over funding past Sept. 30.

The financial impact of a shutdown typically depends on the length of the disruption, with each week costing the U.S. economy about $7 billion, according to a new analysis from EY-Parthenon Chief Economist Gregory Daco. A suspension could also weigh on investor and consumer confidence at a time when the U.S. economy is already facing headwinds, he told CBS News.

Government shutdowns aren’t new: The U.S. has experienced 14 of them since 1980, with the longest occurring over 34 days from December 2018 into January 2019, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. They’re triggered when Congress fails to pass a full-year spending bill or a continuing resolution to fund the government for the pending fiscal year, which begins on Wednesday. Oct. 1. 

“We’ve been to this picnic before, unfortunately,” Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in business and economics at Pacific Research Institute, told CBS News. Pacific Research is a think tank that focuses on free trade. 

“In general, things like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, those will continue to go out, and we’ll continue to pay interest on the debt,” Winegarden said.

But, he added, “The general rule is that the longer it goes on, the bigger the disruption.”

What happens if there is a government shutdown?

Without congressional approval for new spending, federal agencies are typically prohibited from doling out money. Activities at many agencies will be suspended until lawmakers agree on a new funding bill, with hundreds of thousands of federal workers likely to be furloughed during that time.

Yet because the government must continue to provide services that protect life and property, agencies will determine which essential workers must continue working, although they won’t receive pay until lawmakers resolve the funding gap. 

And while some federal employees would eventually receive back pay, others could experience financial strain while their paychecks are suspended, Daco noted.

During the shutdown of 2018-2019, about 800,000 government workers missed several weeks of pay, creating financial hardships for many. Some turned to online fundraising campaigns for assistance, while others relied on food banks to help them get through the period.

What is the economic impact of a government shutdown? 

While the biggest direct hit would be on government workers, followed by federal contractors who would also be shut off from funding, delayed federal procurement on goods and services could also ripple through the broader economy, Daco told CBS News.

A shutdown could also undermine confidence in the economy at a time when some sectors, such as the labor market, are facing headwinds, he added. Markets could be rattled by the disruption, as well as consumer sentiment, some economists noted.

“We need more certainty in the rules of the game of the economy,” Winegarden said. “Uncertainty, at this moment, is the last thing we need.”

A halt in government functions could also complicate monetary policy decisions, potentially resulting in delays for key economic data next month, such as the Oct. 3 jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the labor market stalling out over the summer, Federal Reserve officials are expected to closely scrutinize the latest jobs data when they make their next rate decision at the central bank’s Oct. 29 meeting.

“A government shutdown at this economic juncture represent a graver risk than when the economy is running at full steam,” Daco said. 

Would Social Security benefits be impacted? 

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are covered by mandatory spending, which means that funding for these programs has been approved by Congress to continue without an expiration date.

Social Security benefits would be paid on time, while health care payments for seniors in Medicare and low- and middle-income Americans enrolled in Medicaid would continue.

However, Social Security’s administrative budget needs to receive approval from Congress, which means that some of its services could be impacted in a shutdown, some experts note.

“In the event of a government shutdown … customer service at the Social Security Administration may be disrupted, including benefit verifications, earnings record corrections and updates, overpayments processing and replacing Medicare cards,” Max Richtman, CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare, said in a Friday email.

Would other federal functions like the TSA be impacted? 

Air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration agents would be required to work without pay because they provide essential services. 

Unlike other government agencies. the U.S. Postal Service operates as a self-funded, independent agency. That means mail, packages and other shipments would still be delivered and post offices would remain open in the event of a shutdown. 

But there could be other impacts for consumers and businesses. For one, some mortgage processing could face delays because the flood insurance program would be closed to new policies until Congress agrees to a new spending deal, according to TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg. 

“That means no mortgages which require federal flood insurance will be originated,” he noted. 

In previous shutdowns, other services were also suspended, such as the Food and Drug Administration’s inspections, as well as the entry to the National Parks, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. 

The shooter who attacked the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas was targeting ICE agents, federal officials said at a news conference Thursday.

Nancy Larson, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said a collection of notes found at Joshua Jahn’s residence showed an animus toward ICE agents and that he had been planning the attack for some time. Jahn legally purchased the 8mm bolt-action rifle used in the shooting last month, officials said.

Larson said that early Wednesday morning, Jahn was seen driving his car with a long ladder. Officials believe he used the ladder to access the roof of an office building near the Dallas ICE facility, from where he started firing at about 6:30 a.m. 

Larson said he fired rounds the length of the building and intended to damage property, as well as hurt or kill ICE personnel.

The three victims were detainees inside one of the vans Jahn targeted, Larson said. One of them died, and the others are in critical condition. Officials did not provide any more specifics about the victims’ identities.

On Saturday, Sept. 27, the man fatally shot was identified as 37-year-old Norlan Guzman-Fuentes by the Dallas Medical Examiner.  The two injured men have been identified by ICE as Jose Andres Bordones-Molina and Miguel Angel Garcia-Hernandez.

Larson said law enforcement personnel from multiple federal agencies put themselves at risk to move other detainees who were in the vans to safety.

The Dallas ICE office will remain closed on Monday, September 29, ICE said.

Dallas ICE shooting suspect worked alone, authorities say

Another note found at the suspect’s residence said, “Yes, it was just me,” Larson said.

She and Joseph Rothrock, the FBI special agent in charge of the Dallas field office, both said all of the evidence indicates that Jahn acted alone. Larson also said there was no indication that Jahn was a member of any group.

Rothrock said it was officers from the Dallas Police Department and Dallas County Sheriff’s Office who found Jahn on the rooftop. He was dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Gunman used apps that track ICE agents

Marcos Charles, the ICE executive associate director for enforcement and removal operations, blamed “wild rhetoric” for what he said was a 1,000% increase in assaults on ICE officers.

Charles also said that Jahn used apps that track ICE agents as part of his planning for the attack. 

“Anyone who creates or distributes these apps that is designed to spot, track and locate ICE officers, are well aware of the dangers they are exposing to law enforcement,” Charles said.

Multiple apps have sprung up in recent months to warn migrants of potential ICE operations and help them avoid arrest as the Trump administration increased its crackdown on undocumented immigrants. 

MADISON, Wis. — Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin will stop scheduling patients for abortions starting next week as it works to find a way to provide the service in the face of Medicaid funding cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill, the nonprofit said Thursday.

Abortion funding across the U.S. has been under siege, particularly Planned Parenthood affiliates, which are the biggest provider.

The organization warned earlier this year that about half its clinics that provide abortion could be closed as a result of a ban on Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood for services other than abortion.

The measure was part of the tax and spending law President Donald Trump signed in July. Initially, a judge said reimbursements must continue, but a federal appeals court this month said the government could halt the payments while a court challenge to the provision moves ahead.

Planned Parenthood services include cancer screenings and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment. Federal Medicaid money was already not paying for abortion, but affiliates relied on Medicaid to stay afloat.

The remaining Planned Parenthood clinics in Louisiana – where abortion is banned – are scheduled to shut down at the end of this month.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin said in a statement that it is trying to see as many patients as possible between now and Tuesday. The federal law takes effect Wednesday. It is not scheduling patients beyond that date and the organization believes the move will allow it to continue seeing other Medicaid patients. The organization said it was working with providers across the state to make sure patients are referred quickly and receive timely care.

It is also considering taking legal action, the group said.

“Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin will continue to provide the full spectrum of reproductive health care, including abortion, as soon and as we are able to,” Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin President and CEO Tanya Atkinson said in the statement. “In the meantime, we are pursuing every available option through the courts, through operations, and civic engagement.”

The abortion landscape has been shifting frequently since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that allowed states to ban abortion. Currently, 12 states do not allow it at any stage of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four more ban it after about six weeks’ gestation.

The bans have resulted in more women traveling for abortion and an increased reliance on abortion pills. Prescribers in states where they’re allowed have been shipping the pills to places where abortion is banned, a practice that is facing some legal challenges and is expected to attract more.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court in July struck down the state’s 1849 near-total ban on abortion, saying it was superseded by newer state laws regulating the procedure. The same day it ruled in that case, the court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin asking it to find the law unconstitutional.

Wisconsin’s abortion ban was in effect until 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide nullified it. Legislators never officially repealed it, however, and conservatives argued that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe reactivated it.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin stopped providing abortions after that ruling for 15 months before resuming them as the lawsuit over the state law played out. It has been providing abortions at three clinics in Wisconsin for the past two years.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin serves about 50,000 people across the state. About 60% of them are covered by Medicaid, the organization said.

___

Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

For car buyers interested in electric vehicles, the clock is ticking to take advantage of federal tax credits on new and used EVs before they expire on Sept. 30.

Introduced in 2022 under the Inflation Reduction Act signed, the federal tax credits — $7,500 for new and $4,000 for used — are being phased out due to President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is also ending a series  of other clean energy credits over the next several months. 

With just one week to go until the expiration date of the Biden-era EV credit, customers are flocking to dealerships to cash in. EV sales reached a record high in August, with new EV sales up 17.7% year over year and used EV sales up 59% for the same period, data from Cox Automotive shows. 

“As we approach the sunset of the IRA tax credit, we expect September to mirror August’s elevated sales activity, driven by time-sensitive purchase and lease offers,” Cox Automotive said in its report.

The findings jibe with data from Cars Commerce — whose holdings include Cars.com — that shows  a 33% surge in EV demand since last year as shoppers rush to take advantage of the credits. The automotive tech company also found that used EVs are on dealers’ lots for 46 days on average, a nearly 30% decrease from last last year that indicates the sector of the EV market is rising in popularity.

Deals to be had

Anxious to clear out EV inventory before the arrival of new models in November, dealerships have been offering their own incentives, such as monthly lease rates that are are as little as 1% of the car’s sticker price. 

The Emich Volkswagen dealership in Denver has lowered EV lease rates to $40 a month. “This deal is absurd and it’s never gonna happen again,” Philip De Jong, the marketing director at Emich, told CBS MoneyWatch.

One customer at the Denver dealership, Stephen Hynes, told CBS News’ senior transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave that that he would save as much as $400 a month compared with his last car payment.

“I’m getting an electric vehicle now; it’s because of this tax credit,” said Hynes.

A chart below from Cars.com shows which vehicles are still eligible for the federal tax credit, based on information from Environmental Protection Agency.

What will happen after the tax credit ends? 

September 2025 could end up being the “single biggest EV month in history,” Tim Horvick, owner of the San Tan Ford dealership outside of Phoenix, told CBS’ Van Cleave. But come October, when the EV credit is no longer in effect, the sales landscape could shift.

“It is the concern,” Horvick said. “It could be challenging.”

As a result of the coming end of the tax credit, along with other policy changes introduced by the Trump administration, automakers have already slowed their production of electric vehicles, shifting their attention to more popular gas and hybrid models, CBS News reported. 

But not all experts believe the expiration of the tax credit will have a huge effect on future EV sales, and that’s simply because sales were low to begin with.

EV sales “can’t fall off a cliff because they’re not very high,” Patrick Anderson, CEO of Anderson Economic Group, a Michigan-based economic consultancy, told CBS News’ Van Cleave. “They’re gonna fall off a small hill because that’s as high as they got.”

Electric vehicles make up about 7% of new car sales, according to Anderson Economic Group. A recent analysis from Kelley Blue Book shows EV sales in August accounted for a record 9.9% of total car sales, up from 9.1% in July.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s appointee to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors said Monday that the central bank’s key interest rate should be much lower than its current 4.1% level, staking out a position far different than his colleagues.

Stephen Miran, who is also a top economic adviser to Trump, said in remarks to the Economic Club of New York that sharp declines in immigration, rising tariff revenue, and an aging population all suggest that the Fed’s rate should be closer to 2.5% instead. According to projections released last week, that’s almost a full percentage point lower than any of his 18 colleagues on the Fed’s rate-setting committee, an unusually high divergence.

Miran’s comments underscore the different perspective he brings to the Fed’s deliberations over interest rate policy. His appointment has been controversial because he has kept his position as the head of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers while taking unpaid leave, raising concerns about the Fed’s traditional independence from day-to-day politics.

His term on the Fed’s board expires in January, and Miran has said he expects to return to the White House after that, and is keeping his position because his Fed term is so short. But he could remain on the board until a successor is appointed. There hasn’t been a member of the executive branch on the Fed’s board since the 1930s.

Concerns about the Fed’s independence are heightened because Trump has also repeatedly attacked Chair Jerome Powell and has called for the Fed to reduce its rate to as low as 1.2%. He he is now seeking to fire Lisa Cook, a Fed governor, who has fought her removal in the courts. It is the first time that a president has tried to fire a Fed governor.

So far, courts have ruled that Cook can keep her job while her suit seeking to overturn her firing is considered. The Trump administration has appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.

During a question and answer session Monday, Miran said he would operate independently, and that Trump had not pushed him to follow any specific policy.

“At the end of the day, I make my own analysis based on my own understanding of economics and how the economy works,” Miran said. In his conversations with Trump, the president “never asked me to set policy in a specific way.”

In his speech, Miran said, “it should be clear that my view of appropriate monetary policy diverges from those of other” members of the committee. “I view policy as very restrictive,” he added, meaning that it is holding back the economy and “poses material risks” to the Fed’s congressional mandate of seeking maximum employment.

Miran said that fewer immigrants should free up more housing and lower rental costs, reducing inflationary pressures. And tariff revenues — which may top $300 billion a year, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates — should reduce the deficit, he added. Over time, that would mean the Fed doesn’t have to keep its benchmark interest rate as high as it is now to bring inflation down.

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s appointee to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors said Monday that the central bank’s key interest rate should be much lower than its current 4.1% level, staking out a position far different than his colleagues.

ATLANTA — A federal watchdog reported Thursday that Georgia’s program requiring able-bodied adults to document low-paying work to get Medicaid has spent much more on administrative costs than on providing health care.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office report on Georgia Pathways comes after Republicans mandated similar work requirements throughout the U.S. as part of the “big, beautiful bill” signed into law by President Donald Trump.

Starting in 2027, most adults who seek Medicaid coverage must first show they are working, taking classes or performing community service for at least 80 hours a month. And they must be extremely poor, earning incomes no higher than the federal poverty line.

The report attributes most of the administrative costs to the implementation of changes in determining eligibility and enrolling people, along with duplicative technology, training and coordination while the state litigated to overcome Biden administration objections.

“Now the entire country can see what we in Georgia already know — Georgia’s Medicaid work reporting requirement program is the real waste, fraud, and abuse,” Sen. Raphael Warnock, one of the Georgia Democrats who requested the report. “This report shows that Pathways is incredibly effective at barring working people from health coverage and making corporate consultants richer,” his statement said.

A spokesperson for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp countered that Democrats are responsible for the extra spending.

“Now, as other states prepare to adopt our model and reject one-size-fits-none big government healthcare, Democrats like Senators Ossoff and Warnock are trying to rewrite history after four years of inaction and blame the State for costs associated with their own stonewalling.”

Millions of eligible people will lose coverage due to the Trump law because the administrative process will make it too difficult for them to repeatedly document their work, critics say, pointing to what happened in Georgia, which is so far the only state that imposes work requirements.

Georgia has among the highest rates of uninsured and is one of 10 states that refused to expand Medicaid to all adults with incomes of up to 138% of the federal poverty level, as envisioned by President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

Instead, Kemp heralded his July 2023 launch of Georgia Pathways to Coverage, which limits Medicaid for adults to those who earn no more than poverty-level wages, now set at $15,650 a year. Georgia’s traditional Medicaid still covers poorer children, disabled adults, poor people in nursing homes and a handful of other adults.

Nationally, most adults on Medicaid in states that expanded it are already working, and in Georgia, an estimated 246,365 adults are potentially eligible for traditional Medicaid or Pathways. But a year after it launched, Pathways had enrolled around 4,300. As of this spring, there were 6,514 adults enrolled, according to the state Department of Community Health.

Republicans have defended the low enrollment, saying Medicaid should be temporary for people who can get insurance through an employer.

The GAO analysis shows that from fiscal year 2021 through the second quarter of 2025, Georgia reported $54.2 million in administrative spending and $26.2 million on health care. The administrative portion declined more recently, from 96.5% in fiscal year 2023 to 58.8% in fiscal year 2024. It is expected to drop more in 2025.

Nearly 90% of this spending has been federal money, and Georgia used $20 million in other federal grants to help implement the program, trying to make it easier for people to apply. More spending is planned this year on improvements, publicity and staff training, the report notes.

“There’s incredibly wasteful public spending on systems of red tape,” said Joan Alker a health policy researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. “And spending money on corporate consultants to set up complicated systems of red tape that people can’t navigate, that keeps them out of health coverage, is one of the worst uses of taxpayer dollars I can think of.”

Kemp announced that he now wants to let low-income parents with young kids enroll without meeting work requirements, as part of an extension of Pathways that has required Trump administration approval.

___

Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

WASHINGTON — President Trump appealed to the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from the independent board that can raise or lower interest rates.

This appeal “involves yet another case of improper judicial interference with the President’s removal authority — here, interference with the President’s authority to remove members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for cause,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote.

The appeal is the second this month asking the court to give Trump broad new power over the economy.

The first, to be heard in November, will decide if the president to free to impose large import taxes on products coming into this country.

The new case could determine if he is free to remake the Federal Reserve Board by removing a Democratic appointee who he says may have broken the law.

Trump’s lawyers argue that a Fed governor has no legal right to challenge the president’s decision to fire her.

“Put simply, the President may reasonably determine that interest rates paid by the American people should not be set by a Governor who appears to have lied about facts material to the interest rates she secured for herself — and refuses to explain the apparent misrepresentations,” Trump’s lawyer said.

This week, Stephen Miran, one of Trump’s top economic advisors, was confirmed to serve a temporary term on the seven-member Federal Reserve Board. He joined two other Trump appointees. If Cook is ousted, Trump could soon have a majority.

The president has chafed at the Federal Reserve board for keeping interest rates high to fight inflation, and he threatened to fire board Chairman Jerome Powell, even though Trump appointed him to that post in 2018.

But last month, Trump turned his attention to Cook and said he had cause to fire her.

Congress wrote the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 intending to give the central bank board some independence from politics and the current president.

Its seven members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and they serve staggered terms of 14 years, unless “removed for cause by the president.”

The law does not define what amounts to cause.

President Biden appointed Cook to a temporary term in 2022 and to a full term a year later.

In August, however, Bill Pulte, Trump’s director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, alleged Cook committed mortgage fraud when she took out two housing loans in 2021. One was for $203,000 for a house in Ann Arbor, Mich., and the second was for $540,000 for a condo in Atlanta. In both instances, he said she signed a loan document saying the property would be her primary residence.

Typically, borrowers obtain a better interest rate for a primary residence. But lawyers say charges of mortgage fraud are extremely rare if the borrower makes the required regular payments on the loan.

About 30 minutes after Pulte posted his allegations, Trump posted on his social media site: “Cook must resign. Now!!!”

Cook has not responded directly to the allegations, but her attorneys pointed to news reports that said she told the lender her Atlanta condo would be a vacation home.

Trump, however, sent Cook a letter on Aug. 25. “You may be removed, at my discretion, for cause,” citing the law and Pulte’s referrral. “I have determined that there is sufficient cause to remove you from your position,” he wrote.

Cook filed a suit to challenge the decision. She argued the allegation did not amount to cause under the law, and she had not been given a hearing to contest the charges.

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, agreed she made a “strong showing” the firing was illegal and blocked her removal.

She said Congress wrote the “for cause” provision to punish “malfeasance in office,” not conduct that pre-dated her appointment. She also said Cook had been denied “due process of law” because she was not given a hearing.

The U.S. appeals court in Washington, by a 2-1 vote, refused to lift her order Monday.

Judges Bradley Garcia and J. Michelle Childs, both Biden appointees, said Cook had been denied “even minimal process — that is, notice of the allegation against her and a meaningful opportunity to respond — before she was purportedly removed.”

Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, dissented. He said the “for cause” removal provision was broader than misconduct in office. It means the president may remove an officer for “some cause relating to” their “ability, fitness, or competence” to hold the office, he said.

And because a government position is not the property of office holders, they do not have a “due process” right to contest their firing, he said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking into reports that faulty electronic door handles on 2021 Tesla Model Y SUVs prevented owners from entering and exiting the vehicles, according to filing on the regulator’s website. In several cases, parents describe situations in which they were unable to access children inside the car.

The Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) received nine reports on “inoperable door handles,” with the most commonly reported issues involving parents’ inability to reenter the car after placing their child in the back seat before going on a drive, or to remove their child from the back seat at the end of a drive. 

Some Tesla owners reported having to break a vehicle’s window to regain entry, the NHTSA documents state. (NHTSA’s number for the preliminary examination is PE25010 and can be viewed here.)

“Entrapment in a vehicle is particularly concerning in emergency situations, such as when children are entrapped in a hot vehicle. For awareness, NHTSA has a Child Heatstroke Campaign that highlights the dangers to children entrapped in hot vehicles,” the agency states.

While Tesla vehicles have internal manual door releases, they cannot be operated by small children, according to the safety watchdog.

According to the regulator’s preliminary review, the handles on some Model Y vehicles appear to become inoperable “when the electronic door locks receive insufficient voltage from the vehicle.” However, no warnings prior to the exterior door handle failures — such as a low voltage battery warning — have been reported by owners, according to NHTSA.

The investigation involves 174,290 Tesla Model Y SUVs from model year 2021 and is focused on the functionality of the electronic door locks from outside of the vehicle. The agency said it “will continue to monitor any reports of entrapment involving opening doors from inside of the vehicle, and ODI will take further action as needed.”

Anne Marie D. Lee

Anne Marie D. Lee is an editor for CBS MoneyWatch. She writes about topics including personal finance, the workplace, travel and social media.

A megachurch leader has been federally charged for allegedly victimizing members of the Mexico-based church for decades, authorities announced Wednesday. 

Naasón Joaquín García, 56, is already serving more than 16 years in a California prison for sexually abusing young followers. The federal charges against him include counts of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking, the U.S. Attorney for New York’s southern district said in a news release.

A federal grand jury in New York returned the indictment alleging that García and five others exploited the church for decades to enable the systemic sexual abuse of children and women for the sexual gratification of García and his father, who died in 2014.

The newly unsealed indictment said the criminal activity included the creation of photos and videos of child sexual abuse.

García was taken into federal custody early Wednesday in Chino, California, where he is serving a more than 16-year sentence after pleading guilty in 2022 to two state counts.

His lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

García is the head of La Luz del Mundo (The Light of the World), which claims to have 5 million followers worldwide. Believers consider him to be the “apostle” of Jesus Christ.

Prosecutors in California have said that he used his spiritual sway to have sex with girls and young women who were told it would lead to their salvation — or damnation if they refused.

“The defendants and their coconspirators used the LLDM Church as a vehicle to commit sex trafficking of women and children; to induce victims, including children, to travel to engage in forced and unlawful sex acts; to produce, receive, distribute, and possess child pornography; to employ forced labor of Church members; to illegally structure cash transactions and bulk cash smuggling; and to obstruct justice to hide their crimes,” the indictment said.

Besides García, one defendant charged in the case was taken into custody in Los Angeles while another was arrested in Chicago, authorities said. Three others were at large.

According to the indictment, two of the defendants and others tried to destroy evidence and prevent victims of the sexual abuse from speaking to law enforcement after García was arrested.

It said they pressured victims to sign false declarations disclaiming that any abuse occurred, drafted and distributed sermons stating that all sexual abuse victims were lying and reinforced church doctrine that doubting the apostle was a sin punishable by eternal damnation.

In a release, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said García and the others “exploited the faith of their followers to prey upon them.”

He added: “When they were confronted, they leveraged their religious influence and financial power to intimidate and coerce victims into remaining silent about the abuse they had suffered.”

Ricky J. Patel, the head of the New York office of Homeland Security Investigations, said the charges resulted from a “yearslong investigation that spanned the country and involved the support of dozens of courageous victims.”