Nature, Published online: 27 November 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-03891-yDespite advances, AI models continue to be geared towards the needs of English-speaking people in high-income countries.

Nature, Published online: 27 November 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-03778-yThe European country has long been recognized as a model of efficiency and innovation heres how its research ecosystem is organized.

Nature, Published online: 27 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09955-3Author Correction: Inhibiting membrane rupture with NINJ1 antibodies limits tissue injury

Nature, Published online: 27 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09947-3Author Correction: Matrix viscoelasticity promotes liver cancer progression in the pre-cirrhotic liver

Nature, Published online: 27 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09953-5Author Correction: Nasal delivery of an IgM offers broad protection from SARS-CoV-2 variants

Denver Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain II, a two-time first-team All-Pro and the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, said he feels a little "anxious," but is more than ready to return to the lineup for Sunday's contest against the Washington Commanders.

After missing the past two games while in concussion protocol, rookie Jaxson Dart has reclaimed his spot as the Giants' QB1 and will return to face the Patriots on Monday night.

Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold wasn't in an overly reflective mood while answering questions about facing his former team but expressed gratitude for his resurgent season in Minnesota.

Stanford hired Tavita Pritchard as the school's next head coach, the school announced Friday.

Denver Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain II, a two-time first-team All Pro and the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, said he feels a little "anxious," but is more than ready to return to the lineup for Sunday's contest against the Washington Commanders.

It was Friday, June 6, and the rent was due. As soon as she finished an errand, Imelda Carreto planned on joining her family as they gathered scrap metal to earn a little extra cash. Her fianc, Julio Matias, and 15-year-old nephew, Carlos, had set out early, hitching a trailer to the back of their beat-up gray truck.Shortly after 8 a.m., Carretos phone rang. It was Carlos, telling her an officer with the Florida Highway Patrol had pulled over the truck on Interstate 4 near Tampa. The stated reason: cracks in their windshield. But Carreto was worried. She knew Florida police were collaborating with federal immigration authorities. Her fianc was undocumented. She says she rushed to the scene and made it there just before the immigration officers.As she feared, Matias had been detained. But to her surprise, so had Carlos. He was just a kid. (ProPublica is only identifying Carlos by his first name because he is a minor.) Carlos was in high school. Hed been living in the United States for over two years and was working toward applying for legal status to stay long term. The government had given her, a legal resident, custody of him. Now he was in handcuffs. Why would they take him too?Carreto didnt carry any proof that she had custody of the boy. She had left it in another car in her rush. She recalls officers saying her nephew would likely be released to her in a few days once she presented the proper documents. Before they drove him away, Carlos started to tear up. Carreto told him, Dont cry. I dont know how, but Ill get you back. Understand?A cracked windshield, a waiting officer, a forgotten document: The new family separations often start in the most mundane ways.Seven years ago, during the first administration of President Donald Trump, children were taken from their families the moment they crossed the border into the United States. Under a policy of zero tolerance for illegal crossing, Customs and Border Protection officers detained adults while children were sent into the federal shelter system. The aim: to deter other families from following. But after widespread public outcry and a lawsuit, the administration ended it.Today, family separations are back, only now they are happening all across the country. The lawsuit against the zero tolerance policy resulted in a 2023 settlement that limits separations at the border, but it does not address those that occur inside the country after encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Advocates fear the administration is conducting the new separations for the same reasons as before: to deter new immigrants from coming and to terrify those who are here into leaving.Since the start of this year, some 600 immigrant children have been placed in government shelters by ICE, according to government data. That figure, which has not been previously reported, is already higher than the tally for the previous four years combined. And it is the highest number since recordkeeping began a decade ago.ProPublica pieced together additional information for around 400 children sent to shelters by examining state and federal records and conducting dozens of interviews with current and former government officials, advocates, attorneys and immigrant families.Around 160 of the cases that we learned about involved child welfare concerns, which current and former officials say is typical of the children ICE has sent to shelters in the past. These cases include instances of kids who were encountered alone inside the country or were considered potential victims of domestic abuse or trafficking, or instances where minors or the adults they were with had been accused of committing a crime.But in a majority of the cases we examined, kids ended up in shelters in ways government officials say they never would have in the past: after routine immigration court hearings or appointments, or because they were at a home or a business when immigration authorities showed up to arrest someone else.In South Carolina, a Colombian family of five went to a government office for a fingerprinting appointment, only to have the parents detained while the children ages 5, 11 and 15 were sent into the shelter system for four months. In South Florida, a 17-year-old from Guatemala was taken into custody because officers couldnt make contact with his dad after a traffic stop; his dad is deaf. In Maryland, a 17-year-old from Mexico ended up in a shelter after making a wrong turn onto military property.In around 150 cases, children were taken into federal custody after traffic stops. The trend is especially noticeable in states like Florida, where thousands of state and local police, including highway patrol, have been deputized to enforce immigration laws.Whats happening to kids now is like many small zero tolerances, said Marion Mickey Donovan-Kaloust, director of legal services at the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center. This and other changes affecting immigrant children are adding up to a huge trauma.Most of the cases we found involve teenagers, and many of them had been in the United States for years. In those cases, being sent to a shelter can mean separation not only from their families but from schools, friends, churches, doctors and daily routines.Once children are in shelters, the government is making it harder and harder for relatives or other adults who act as sponsors to get them back. The average length of stay has grown to nearly six months, up from one month during the presidency of Joe Biden, public data shows.White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a written statement that the Biden administration released immigrant kids to sponsors too quickly and without proper vetting, sometimes into unsafe situations. The Trump Administration is ensuring that unaccompanied minors do not fall victim to the same dangerous conditions, Jackson said.Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, speaking for ICE, said the agency does not separate families and instead offers parents the choice to have their children deported with them or to leave the children in the care of another safe adult, consistent with past practices.Asked about Carlos detention in Florida, McLaughlin said that traffic stops by officers trained to partner with ICE have prevented abuse of immigrant children and resulted in arrests of human traffickers, abusers, and other criminals.ProPublica found no evidence of Carreto or Matias, her fianc, being accused or convicted of serious crimes. Carreto had been found guilty of driving without a license at least twice and had gotten a speeding ticket. Matias pleaded guilty to a 2011 taillight infraction. He now has an ongoing case for driving without a license from the traffic stop with Carlos, and he has been returned to Guatemala.Shelter Network Turned on Its HeadWhat is happening now is not what the system was set up for.The nations network of roughly 170 federal shelters for unaccompanied immigrant children is run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The office is tasked with temporarily housing vulnerable children who cross the border alone, holding them in the least restrictive setting possible until they can be released to a sponsor in the United States. Typically that means placing kids with a parent or other family member. The office finds and vets the sponsors and is required to release children to them without delay. Once kids are out, they can apply to remain here permanently.Under Biden, when border crossings surged to record highs, around 470,000 children were released to sponsors after going through the shelter system. Republicans said the releases incentivized smugglers to endanger kids on the long journey north and encouraged parents to send their children across the border alone.The White House called the previous administrations sponsor-vetting process abysmal, and said that many records pertaining to minors released under Biden were either fraudulent or never existed to begin with.Biden officials deny these claims. But some kids have indeed ended up working in dangerous jobs.The Trump administration has placed former ICE officials in charge of the refugee resettlement office and has made it a priority to locate children who were released from custody in previous years. To facilitate the effort, ICE plans to open a national, 24-hour call center meant to help state and local officials find them. The government says it says it has already checked on more than 24,400 children in person, and it cited more than a dozen examples of sponsors and immigrant minors arrested for crimes ranging from murder to drug trafficking, rape and assault. One of the cases the White House highlighted was of a 15-year-old Guatemalan girl the government says was released in 2023 to a man who falsely claimed to be her brother and allegedly went on to sexually abuse her.Under Trump, the government has introduced new vetting requirements, including expanded DNA checks, fingerprinting for everyone in the sponsors household and heightened scrutiny of family finances.In response to questions from ProPublica, the refugee resettlement office said it was legally required to care for all unaccompanied kids who came through its doors and defended the new vetting process. The enhanced sponsorship requirements of this administration help keep unaccompanied alien children safe from traffickers and other bad, dangerous people, a spokesperson said.Because so many children are now being sent into shelters in ways they hadnt been before, though, lawyers and advocates worry the administrations efforts have another motive: to more broadly target and deport immigrant kids and their families. They also say the new requirements are creating so much fear that some undocumented family members are hesitant to come forward as sponsors.Around half of the kids that ICE sent into the shelter system this year have been there before. When they arrived years ago, after crossing the border alone, they were released as soon as possible. This time, back in the system, theyre languishing.I think that theyre using a clearly vulnerable, clearly sympathetic population in a way that sends a powerful message to literally every other population, said Jen Smyers, who was an official at the Office of Refugee Resettlement during the Biden administration. If theyre going to go after these kids who have protections and say we care about them, and then treat them like this, that shows everyone that no one is safe.This month, attorneys suing the government over its treatment of children in the shelter system recovered a government document being provided to unaccompanied minors who cross the border. It warns them that if they do not choose to leave the country within 72 hours they will be detained in the custody of the United States Government, for a prolonged period of time. The document also warned that if the person who sought to sponsor the minors was undocumented, they would be subject to arrest and removal or to criminal penalties for aiding your illegal entry.Customs and Border Protection told ProPublica that the document is used to ensure immigrant children understand their rights and options.There have already been cases of prospective sponsors who have shown up at government offices for in-person interviews and been detained for being in the country illegally, said Marie Silver, a managing attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago.They are using the kids as bait, and then the kids are stuck, Silver said. They are creating unaccompanied children this way.Separation in the Sunshine StateIn Florida, we found two dozen kids arrested in traffic stops who went on to spend weeks or months in federal shelters. Some are still there.Gov. Ron DeSantis and the states Republican majority have spent years crafting policies that allow local police officers to seamlessly operate as federal immigration enforcers. They aim to be a model for how states can help the Trump administration reclaim Americas sovereignty.Across Florida, almost 5,000 officers even those from its Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission are empowered to detain people over their immigration status and to call in federal authorities to come pick them up. ProPublica obtained state data revealing that Florida police have arrested at least 47 children on federal immigration charges since late April, with the Florida Highway Patrol leading the tally.In cases like that of Carlos, children were sent to a federal shelter despite having a parent or legal custodian caring for them. Five current and former federal officials said this could be a violation of ICEs own policy. The policy dictates that officers should let primary caregivers like Carreto take them home or find a safe place to send them. (It does not clearly require caregivers to show any documentation.) If they cant find a safe place, or if there are signs the child is in danger, officers are supposed to alert local law enforcement or child-welfare officials and wait for them to arrive.Florida has its own laws governing how state and local officers should interact with children. If a kid is found alone or in danger, state police must call a hotline run by Floridas Department of Children and Families. The call is supposed to trigger a process in which state judges review any decision to place a child in the care of someone other than their family within 24 hours.Its not clear if Florida officers are calling the state hotline when encountering immigrant children. But it is clear that this year they have often called ICE.State police contacted immigration officials directly about Carlos, Florida records show. Carlos went into federal custody without a state shelter hearing, according to his attorney, who said the same thing has happened to three other clients following traffic stops.State Rep. Lawrence McClure, the Republican who introduced legislation this January that supercharged Floridas cooperation with ICE, promised during debate on the bill that nothing would change about how the state treated immigrant children. McClure did not respond directly to questions from ProPublica about the transfers to ICE.Boundaries between state and federal policy are being blurred in an unprecedented way, said Bernard Perlmutter, co-director of the University of Miamis Children and Youth Law Clinic.The collaboration with local police in Florida and elsewhere comes as ICE has worked increasingly with other federal agencies that may have their own policies for handling encounters with kids.In response to detailed questions from ProPublica, DeSantis press secretary emailed a list of more than a dozen links from the video platform Rumble in which the governor speaks about immigration enforcement, writing: Governor DeSantis has made immigration enforcement a top priority to keep Florida communities safe.Other state officials, including from the Florida Highway Patrol and Department of Children and Families, either did not respond or declined our requests for comment on the states partnership with ICE and its impact on immigrant children.It was Floridas cooperation with federal authorities that landed Carlos in the federal shelter system this June his second time there.In December 2022, Carlos, then 13 years old, came to the United States from Guatemala, where his single mother made him work or beg for money, according to court records. He thought he would be better off in the U.S. with her sister, according to records provided by his attorney. He made the journey without his parents, the documents say.After he crossed near Donna, Texas, he was picked up by border agents and spent three weeks in a federal shelter before being released to his aunt. Carreto said she had no idea Carlos was making the journey until she received a 2 a.m. phone call from immigration authorities. She welcomed the boy into her sprawling Guatemalan American family and insisted that he go to school.Two and a half years into his stay with Carreto came the traffic stop.Carlos was first taken across the state to the Broward Transitional Center, a for-profit detention facility operated by the GEO Group, an ICE contractor. He was transferred later in the day to an Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter in Tampa run by Urban Strategies, another government contractor, records show. The GEO Group declined to comment and referred ProPublica to ICE. Lisa Cummins, president of Urban Strategies, wrote in an email: We remain deeply committed to the care and well-being of the children we serve.Carreto launched into weeks of confusing phone calls and paperwork to get her nephew back. She had to send in a 10-page application. She turned over information about her finances, her adult sons finances, her lack of criminal history. She submitted samples of her DNA. She sent photos of the smoke alarms in her house.Shortly after Carlos was detained, Carreto said, immigration officers paid an unannounced visit to her home. Her son Ereson, who is 18, says federal agents came onto the property without permission and asked if any immigrants were living there. The visit scared the family.Carretos daughters eventually managed to pinpoint Carlos location by asking him over the phone to name landmarks he could see, then searching for them on Google. In video calls home, Carreto said, Carlos was visibly sad. She said he sometimes skipped meals. Why are they keeping me here? she recalled him asking, I didnt do anything wrong.Carreto visited the offices of Homeland Security Investigations in Tampa with three of her children. She said agents asked how much she paid to have Carlos smuggled across the border and how much she was getting paid to try to get him out of detention. They threatened her with federal charges if she didnt tell the truth, she said.I told them that nobody is paying me, she said. Im doing this because hes my nephew. Hes like a son to me.Carlos was released after two and a half months.He was one of the lucky ones: His aunt was a legal resident who had custody of him, and the family had the resources and determination to fight for him.The government this year has moved to slash legal services for children and offered cash to kids who give up their cases and go home. (The Office of Refugee Resettlements statement to ProPublica said it is fully complying with a court order requiring that minors be provided with legal representation.) Attorneys who represent children said they have seen a spike in cases of self-harm and behavioral problems as kids lose hope of being released.Of the kids that ProPublica learned about, around 140 were still stuck in federal shelters as of last month. Close to 100 were ordered to be deported or had signed papers agreeing to leave the country.The post ICE Sent 600 Immigrant Kids to Detention in Federal Shelters This Year. Its a New Record. appeared first on ProPublica.

In recent days, five U.S. senators and two representatives requested documents from the Department of Homeland Security and a formal investigation into how a firm closely tied to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem ended up receiving money from a $220 million, taxpayer-funded ad campaign.The demands came in response to a ProPublica story this month that revealed that the Republican consulting firm had been secretly working on the ads, which star Noem. The company, called the Strategy Group, has long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS. Its CEO is married to Noems chief spokesperson at DHS.Under Noem, DHS bypassed the normal competitive bidding process when awarding the contracts allocating the majority of the money to a mysterious Delaware LLC that was created days before the deal was finalized. The Strategy Group does not appear on public documents about the deal.The public deserves to know that government officials are not using taxpayer dollars to enrich themselves and their friends on the backs of hardworking Americans, four Senate Democrats on the homeland security committee wrote in a letter to the DHS inspector general. They called for the inspector general to investigate whether DHS officials had violated federal laws and contracting regulations designed to prevent self-dealing.The senators who signed the letter were Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.; Gary Peters, D-Mich.; Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; and Andy Kim, D-N.J. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., separately sent his own letter to the inspector general.In their own letter, Reps. Bennie Thompson and Robert Garcia the ranking members of the House homeland security and oversight committees demanded copies of all communications between Noem and her aides and anyone associated with the Strategy Group or the Delaware LLC. They wrote that they intended to investigate Noem for lining your friends pockets at the taxpayers expense.Other Democrats in Congress have also criticized Noem for the ad deal. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called for Noem to resign following the ProPublica report. This is what corruption looks like, Rep. Jasmine Crockett said at a congressional hearing. Theyre stealing money from the American peoples pockets and depositing it into their bank accounts.ProPublica found that the Strategy Groups undisclosed work for DHS included running a shoot for a recently aired ad that featured Noem on horseback at Mount Rushmore, delivering a message to immigrants. Among the firms ties to Noem: It played a central role in her last gubernatorial campaign in South Dakota, and it has worked closely with Noems top aide at DHS, Corey Lewandowski. The office funding the ad contracts is listed as the DHS Office of Public Affairs, which is run by Tricia McLaughlin; McLaughlin is married to the CEO of the Strategy Group, Ben Yoho.Multiple federal contracting experts previously told ProPublica that the extensive ties between DHS leadership and the Strategy Group suggested major potential violations of ethics rules.Watch the DHS Ad Filmed at Mount RushmoreAsked about the Strategy Groups work for DHS, McLaughlin previously told ProPublica, I dont know who theyre a subcontractor with, but I dont work with them because I have a conflict of interest and I fully recused myself. She added, We dont have visibility into why they were chosen.DHS did not address questions about the calls for an IG investigation. In a statement, the agency reiterated its response to the original story, saying that DHS does its contracting by the book and that the agency is not involved in the selection of subcontractors.A spokesperson for the DHS inspector general told ProPublica that as a matter of policy, it does not confirm or deny investigations.The Strategy Group did not respond to questions.Read MoreFirm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad ContractsThe post Lawmakers Call for Probe of How Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Got Piece of $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts appeared first on ProPublica.

Just last year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined a bipartisan chorus of governors in denouncing a Biden administration plan they said would strip states of powers guaranteed to them under federal law.The plan would have transferred Air National Guard units from six states to the U.S. Space Force, the newly created military branch, stoking concerns about federal overreach and the erosion of governors control over their own guard forces. Texas wasnt among the affected states, but Abbott made his opposition unmistakable in an open letter to the president.He called the plan an intolerable threat that would set a dangerous precedent.I strongly oppose any attempt to sideline governors when it comes to their respective National Guards, he wrote.A year later, Abbott helped Donald Trump do just that. He said that he fully authorized the presidents plan to send Texas National Guard members to Illinois and Oregon to protect federal law enforcement personnel who are executing immigration laws. Those states governors vigorously objected, saying such action was an unnecessary escalation that interfered with state sovereignty.Abbott defended the deployment on Fox News. The president, he said, has the authority to mobilize guard members to preserve public safety.President Trump and I have a good, longstanding working relationship, and there is a substantive reason behind that, Abbott said. He added that he and the president were operating very closely aligned on ensuring that our country is going to be safe.Abbott, the leader of the largest state led by Republicans, has emerged as one of Trumps most important allies as the president tests the limits of executive power. While governors often align with their parties presidents, Abbotts support for Trumps expansion of federal powers is a striking departure from his own historical and ardent defenses of state sovereignty.That, constitutional experts say, sets a risky example that may be difficult to reverse.What hes doing is short-term gain for his political positions, and Texas political positions, but not for Texas as a state moving forward, said Georgetown University Law Center professor Victoria Nourse. You might like this president, but youre not necessarily going to like what happens to Texas with the next one.There are myriad examples of Abbott bending his views on state sovereignty to accede to the wishes of the new administration, including directing state agencies to assist the administrations immigration enforcement an action that constitutional law experts said essentially deputized the Texas government into federal service as well as providing data on voters and redrawing legislative boundaries to net more GOP-friendly seats in the U.S. House.Abbotts arguments then and actions now are an example of what Jessica Bulman-Pozen, a constitutional law professor at Columbia University, calls partisan federalism, a term describing how state leaders fervor for defending their sovereignty increasingly depends on whether their party is in power in Washington. She said Abbotts support of the guard deployments is particularly alarming because it diminishes the traditional power of governors to manage law enforcement in their states.Abbott did not respond to interview requests or written questions from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. But Robert Henneke, general counsel for the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, and James Peinado, chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas, which advocates for limited government, said they saw no contradiction between Abbotts historic defense of states authority and his support of Trumps actions. Trump is following the law, Henneke said, and the states dont have the power to block the lawful exercise of authority of the federal government.Abbotts actions, however, have drawn rebuke from fellow governors, including at least one from his own party.Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, told The New York Times that he was surprised Abbott sent Texas guard members to Illinois. We believe in the federalist system thats states rights. Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration, said Stitt, who did not respond to interview requests.Ron Beal, a retired law professor at Baylor University, said Abbotts actions not only violate the historic spirit of cooperation among states, but provide Trump cover to unlawfully interfere in state matters.Trumps reason for sending troops is clearly a total fabrication of reality and I believe a constitutional violation, Beal said. It is simply outrageous that Abbott would participate and cooperate with such activity.Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks at a Chicago No Kings protest against President Donald Trumps policies on Oct. 18. Jim Vondruska/ReutersShifting View of Federal PowerAbbotts devotion to state sovereignty has long been central to his political identity.In January 2016, entering his second year as governor, he published a 92-page essay defending states rights and decrying what he called the Obama administrations executive overreach. In a speech that month to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he accused President Barack Obama of bypassing Congress by enacting climate change and immigration policy through unilateral executive orders. Abbott also lambasted the Supreme Court for upholding the Affordable Care Act, arguing the justices invented a legal basis for it.State leaders were supposed to have the power and opportunity to check any attempt by federal officials to overstep their bounds, Abbott wrote. Indeed, the entire structure of the Constitution was premised on the idea that the states would be stronger than the national government.Abbott proposed the Texas Plan, a set of nine constitutional amendments that he said would restore the balance of authority between the federal government and states. Among them was one that would make clear that the president, Congress and judges have no powers beyond those expressly mentioned in the Constitution.The essay offered a well-reasoned critique of growing federal power, said Sanford Levinson, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas, who has assigned it as required reading for his students.Levinson said Abbotts recent actions mark a complete reversal.He condemned presidents for overreach, particularly in executive orders, and said we had to do something to rein that in. Theres much to be said for that, but that is certainly not his view in 2025, Levinson said. Most of what Trump does is through executive order.Trump has sought to use executive orders to force changes to elections and voting. He has also pressured state leaders to make changes on his behalf, and Abbott has obliged.Over the summer, Abbott became the first governor to comply with Trumps demand that Republican-led states break from the traditional 10-year cycle of redrawing congressional districts to create more GOP-friendly seats for the 2026 midterm election.Initially sympathetic to incumbent Republican House members worries that the strategy could weaken solid GOP seats by spreading the partys voters across too many districts, Abbott ultimately called a special session of the Texas Legislature to draft new congressional boundaries.Texas lawmakers in 2003 similarly conducted a rare mid-decade redistricting, but that was not directed by then-President George W. Bush, said Karl Rove, one of Bushs senior advisers. The White House and RNC didnt provoke or lead the effort, Rove said in a text message.A governor allowing a president to influence when a state redistricts cedes the historical power of states to run their own elections, said Mimi Marziani, who teaches election law at the University of Texas.She said Trumps request for more GOP-friendly seats has everything to do with national party interests and nothing to do with state interests. And she warned that if governors give in, they will be vulnerable to future presidential meddling.Earlier this month, Trump endorsed Abbott for reelection, citing redistricting as one of the governors key accomplishments. A week later, a panel of three federal judges blocked the states newly drawn congressional map from taking effect, finding that it discriminated against voters based on race. On Tuesday, Abbott said Texas would swiftly appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.Abbotts cooperation has extended to sharing voter registration data with Washington.Texas joined more than a dozen states in turning over voter roll information to the Justice Department, despite long-standing resistance to federal oversight of state elections.The Constitution allows states to run elections, subject to oversight by Congress. But Trump sought greater control over the process, issuing an executive order in March that prioritized enforcing the federal laws that bar noncitizens from voting.Voters cast ballots at the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center in Houston. Michael Stravato for the Texas TribuneTrump has repeatedly claimed that noncitizens are voting en masse to sway U.S. elections in favor of Democrats, while research has shown this not to be true.A recent voter roll audit by the Texas secretary of state, using a federal citizenship database, flagged 2,724 voters or 0.015% as potential noncitizens. Preliminary investigations by county voter registrars, however, found that some of those voters are citizens.Acting on Trumps order, the Justice Department requested from states their entire voter rolls, including dates of birth, addresses, drivers license numbers and partial Social Security numbers, according to a letter sent to Texas and obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune under public records laws.Records show that Texas provided voter roll information to the Justice Department in October.Texas secretary of state spokesperson Alicia Pierce told ProPublica and the Tribune that the secretary of state provided only the publicly available version of its voter roll, which redacts information such as drivers license and Social Security numbers.The Justice Department is suing eight states, six of which had provided or offered publicly available versions of their voter rolls because they did not include all the information the federal government sought. One such state is Pennsylvania.This request, and reported efforts to collect broad data on millions of Americans, represent a concerning attempt to expand the federal governments role in our countrys electoral process, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a Republican, wrote to the Justice Department in August.Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre declined to comment on why the federal government had not included Texas among the states it was suing for failing to share all the information the government sought.But the same month that Texas quietly handed over the limited voter roll, Secretary of State Jane Nelson, an Abbott appointee, announced her office had finished running the full roll, along with Social Security numbers, through a federal database to check voters citizenship status.The Department of Homeland Security stores voter data uploaded by state officials, DHS records obtained by ProPublica found.Nelsons office did not answer questions about whether doing so essentially provided the federal government with even more data on Texas voters than it had initially sought.Members of the Texas National Guard assemble at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, on Oct. 7. Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/ZUMA Press/ReutersIn LimboAbbott embraced Trumps deployment of Texas National Guard troops under a novel interpretation of a federal law that authorizes the mobilization of troops to quell a rebellion or threat of rebellion, or if regular forces are unable to enforce federal law. No modern president has invoked the law to assist in carrying out immigration policy.Despite Abbotts support, the 400 Texas National Guard troops mobilized by Trump are still not on the streets of Illinois or Oregon.Federal judges temporarily halted the deployments after Oregon and Illinois sued the Trump administration, arguing that its actions violate the 10th Amendment, which gives the states all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government by the Constitution.The states arguments echo those Abbott made in his 2016 essay, in which he warned that Washington too often ignored that amendment to impose its will on states. He proposed making it easier for states to sue the federal government over alleged abuses of power.The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is handling the Illinois case, had a similar take. In an Oct. 16 ruling, the court said the Texas troop mobilization was an incursion on Illinoiss sovereignty and likely a violation of the 10th Amendment.The litigation kept Texas Guard members who were deployed to the Chicago area more than a month ago in limbo, unable to carry out what Trump wanted them to but unable to leave. A U.S. Defense Department spokesperson said the 200 guard members who were training at a base in Illinois returned to Texas last week. The rest, bound for Oregon, remain at Fort Bliss in El Paso.The U.S. Supreme Court has placed the Illinois case on its emergency docket and is considering the parties written arguments. The courts pending ruling would likely apply to the Oregon case as well.Despite the uncertainty regarding the deployments legality, Trump suggested in an October speech to U.S. military members that he was prepared to send troops, including active-duty units, into more cities.Abbotts cooperation thus far will make it harder for other states to resist Trump in future deployments, said James Gardner, a constitutional law professor at the University at Buffalo. The framers of the Constitution intended for states to stand with one another to ensure officials in Washington never accumulated too much power, Gardner said.He said that while Abbott, who is seeking a record fourth term next year, would likely rediscover his passion for states rights if a Democrat were elected president, the governor may struggle to regain power he helped take away from the states.By altering the Constitutions contemplated balance of power, it makes it easier for the central government to crush dissenting states, Gardner said.The post Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Long a Defender of States Rights, Embraces Trumps Push to Expand Presidential Power appeared first on ProPublica.

One by one, the prisoners all immigrants appeared briefly over video before a special panel of the Louisiana parole board.The August hearings were unusual in a state that, under Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, has made it increasingly difficult for most prisoners to get early release.Unlike normal parole hearings, the board didnt grill the prospective parolees about their crimes ranging from car theft to vehicular homicide to gauge their remorse. Nor did it review their disciplinary records to determine if they posed a threat to public safety. And no one was present to represent or speak on behalf of their victims.In fact, most of the nine men, clad in black-and-white-striped jumpsuits or plain orange ones, did not say a word besides their names and inmate numbers. Only one was even eligible for parole.But in each case, the three-member panel voted unanimously for release after just a few minutes of consideration.Today youve been paroled, panel chair Steve Prator said at the end of every hearing, to go straight into an ICE facility for deportation from the United States.Some thanked the board. Others sat stone-faced or simply nodded.These days, a 100% grant rate is unheard of for the Louisiana Board of Parole. Where annual parole rates previously stood around 50%, in the two years since Landry became governor, less than a quarter of those eligible have been paroled.Landry, a former police officer and sheriffs deputy who served as Louisiana attorney general until 2024, has blasted early release programs as an insult to crime victims, insisting that anyone who is convicted in Louisiana should serve the entirety of their sentence. He pushed Republican lawmakers to eliminate parole entirely for those arrested after Aug. 1, 2024, and to impose strict eligibility requirements for those already in prison.But this year the same Legislature tossed all of that aside for one category of prisoner: immigrants without legal status. With mass deportations a key policy priority for President Donald Trump, Republican-led state and local governments have taken aggressive steps to deliver. In May, Landry signed an order seeking to crack down on criminal illegal aliens by granting the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections and other state agencies the authority to conduct certain Immigration and Customs Enforcement duties. In June, Louisiana lawmakers created an expedited alien removal process through the special parole panel that passed with little notice during the last legislative session.They have the ability to release a lot of people to parole, and theyre choosing to only do it for this specific group because its politically popular, said Bridget Geraghty, senior counsel with the MacArthur Justice Center, a Chicago-based legal nonprofit focused on prison reform.At least two other Republican-led states have recently put in place similar initiatives to parole and deport prisoners without legal status. South Dakota paroled 10 immigrant prisoners to be deported over the summer. In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt announced in February that the state had identified about 525 prisoners subject to deportation.Since the Aug. 27 hearings in Louisiana, at least two of the nine men paroled have been deported, while two others from Vietnam are being held at a newly designated immigration detention facility on the grounds of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, according to ICE. Neither ICE nor the Landry administration would answer questions about the locations of the five other parolees or whether they are being deported to their home countries of Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua.On Sept. 21, ICEs regional office in New Orleans posted a photo of one of the parolees, Samuel Lara Garcia, handcuffed in front of a staircase leading to a plane. The agency identified Garcia as a citizen of Honduras.HOMICIDE DEPORTATION, the X post blared.Garcia, 36, had pleaded guilty to negligent homicide and obstruction of justice in a 2022 shooting after an argument at a Baton Rouge house party. He was sentenced to 13 years in 2024 but had served less than two years in prison before being paroled.Immigration and Customs Enforcements regional office in New Orleans posted a photo of Samuel Lara Garcia. He pleaded guilty to negligent homicide and obstruction of justice and was sentenced to 13 years in 2024, but had served less than two years in prison before being paroled. Screenshot by Verite NewsA U.S. citizen convicted of the same crime or any crime in Louisiana today would not be eligible for release under the new parole laws championed by Landry.ICE declined an interview request with Madison Sheahan, a former Landry administration official who as deputy ICE director signed the partnership agreement between the agency and the corrections department. The Landry administration did not respond to questions about the new parole panel or the governors broader executive order, which was named Operation Geaux.One member of that task force is Keith Conley, police chief of Kenner, a New Orleans suburb and one of the first Louisiana cities to formally partner with federal immigration authorities during Trumps second term. He praised the legislation that created the deportation panel in a recent interview. Paroling and deporting prisoners who are illegally in the United States frees up jail space and saves tax dollars, Conley said, so it just seems like a win, win.Under the new law, the deportation panel operates unbound by the restrictions and responsibilities placed on the regular parole process. A parole board is normally tasked with deciding whether prisoners are ready for release based on a number of factors including their behavior behind bars, efforts to rehabilitate, whether they pose a risk to the public and victims opinions.During the August hearings, however, the board was not required to abide by the eligibility restrictions imposed by the Legislature last year, including the requirement that prisoners have clean disciplinary records for at least three years and low-risk scores as determined by an algorithm.Parole granted for the purpose of deportation is fundamentally different from discretionary parole granted to individuals who have demonstrated readiness for community supervision, Francis Abbott, executive director of the parole board, told Verite News and ProPublica. In these cases, the individuals are present in the United States unlawfully and have been convicted of criminal offenses.To be eligible to appear before the new panel, prisoners must have a federal deportation notice and not have been convicted of a sex offense or a violent crime that carries a sentence of more than 10 years. (Louisiana law does not consider negligent homicide to be a violent crime.)Christopher Walters, deputy executive counsel with the Landry administration, said at a May legislative hearing that the state has identified about 390 prisoners who might be eligible to be paroled and deported. The corrections department would not verify or update that number.Its an ongoing process to determine eligibility for this specific legislation, Derrick Ellis, the departments deputy secretary, said in a recent interview.There are no more hearings scheduled for the remainder of the year, according to the parole board.Unlike typical parolees, who are required to check in regularly with their parole officers and prohibited from unauthorized travel, those paroled to be deported are not placed under any supervision. Once deported, they are released with one stipulation: Do not return to the United States.Louisiana law says those who do return will be forced to serve the remainder of their sentences. But that may not be enough of a deterrent. Margaret Hay, first assistant district attorney with the Jefferson Parish District Attorneys Office, which prosecuted one of the deported men, said prosecutors are concerned parolees convicted of violent crimes may, very quickly, just be right back in this country.Theres no guarantee that our border will remain as secure as I believe that it might be right now, said Hay, who nevertheless said she supports the initiative.ProPublica and Verite News contacted the embassies and consulates for Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras and Vietnam to learn how those countries manage the repatriation of deportees whose U.S. prison sentences were cut short. None responded to multiple phone calls and emails.Another issue at play is that Louisiana law requires the parole committee to notify victims about upcoming parole hearings, provided they are registered with the Louisiana Victim Outreach Program, a state initiative that provides support services. Many victims of crime, especially those who are undocumented, fail to register for or are unaware of the state program. The parole board said there were no registered victims in the nine cases that appeared before the deportation panel in August.Several local prosecutors said they tried reaching the families of the six victims who had been killed by four of the paroled men, three of whom were charged with vehicular homicide, but had trouble making contact. ProPublica and Verite News could not reach any of the victims or family members of deceased victims in the cases involving the nine men.Landry, a Trump ally, has long been an immigration hard-liner. During his eight years as attorney general, which began a year before Trumps first term as president, Louisianas capacity for detaining immigrants expanded from two facilities in 2016 to eight. That positioned the state to become a key partner in Trumps mass deportation agenda during his second presidency.Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, center, and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, left, tour a facility to house immigration detainees at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in September. Gerald Herbert/APIn September, Landry and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem unveiled a ninth immigration detention facility, known as the Louisiana Lockup, located in the former solitary confinement wing of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. That is where Hoang Huy Pham, one of the nine men paroled in August, is being held as he awaits deportation to Vietnam, the country his family said he fled as a child refugee during the Vietnam War.Phams daughter Theresa, who asked to be referred to by only her first name because she works for the federal government and fears retaliation, said her father called her in June to tell her he was going to be paroled at the end of August after spending 20 years in prison for a long history of car theft. He told her he would live in a halfway house before rejoining the family in Baton Rouge, Theresa recalled. She said her elderly grandfather Phams father was looking forward to him finally getting out of prison to help with his care.Then in September, Theresa received another call from her father. This time, he told her he had been transferred to Angola to await deportation. That five-minute call was the last time Theresa said she heard from him.You finally got out, but youre going somewhere else where youre not supposed to be, Theresa said. Its a false hope.Hervin Pineda was the only prisoner to tell the parole board in August that he wanted to be deported back home. He wished to return to Nicaragua to be with his ailing, elderly mother in her final days, he told the board through an interpreter.Pineda, who had previously been deported while on probation, had served less than a year of a seven-year sentence on charges of cocaine possession.Nevertheless, the board granted his request.Youre a serious dope dealer, Prator, the panel chair, told him. We dont want you back.ICE took him into federal custody that day and deported him to Nicaragua on Sept. 12.The post Louisiana Made It Nearly Impossible to Get Parole. Now Its Releasing Prisoners to Deport Them. appeared first on ProPublica.

Our investigation of a little-known church community in northeastern Minnesota started with something that has become depressingly familiar: child sex abuse.ProPublica and the Minnesota Star Tribune found that some members of the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church community in Duluth enabled Clint Massie, who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing young girls. Massie is currently in prison in Faribault, Minnesota.The Old Apostolic Lutheran Church which has no affiliation with mainstream Lutheran denominations and is known as the OALC is an insular community with many old-world traditions. There is no official count, but one academic study estimated 31,000 members worldwide as of 2016, with most in the United States.We examined hundreds of pages of criminal records, conducted more than a dozen interviews with alleged victims across the country, reviewed video and audio of police interviews with Massie, victims and church leaders, and attended a service at the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in Duluth.Read MoreYoung Girls Were Sexually Abused by a Church Member. They Were Told to Forgive and Forget.Daryl Bruckelmyer, an OALC preacher, declined to comment or answer a detailed list of questions for this story. But in a 2023 interview with a St. Louis County detective, he acknowledged knowing about Massies sexual abuse. He said at the time that it was up to victims to report the crimes to police, a clear misreading of the law for mandated reporters doctors, teachers and others who are required to report crimes against children.We dont protect either one, Bruckelmyer said of sexual abusers and their victims.You can read the investigation here, but here are five takeaways from our reporting:Church leaders knew about the abuse: Leaders of Bruckelmyers church didnt report Massie to police though they knew hed sexually abused girls for years and Bruckelmyer had been told by police that reporting it was their duty. It was an open secret in the congregation: Mothers warned their children to stay away from Massie, victims said. Church leaders also sent Massie to a therapist who specialized in sex offender treatment. In December 2024, Massie pleaded guilty to four felony counts of sexual conduct with a victim under the age of 13. In March, a judge sentenced him to 7 1/2 years in prison.Victims were told to forgive and forget: Church leaders held meetings where children were told to forgive the man who sexually abused them and forget the abuse. If they spoke of it, the sin would be theirs. The meetings, described by victims to the police and confirmed through our reporting, ended in one case with a church leader allowing Massie to hug the victim. An internal church document also outlines guidelines for handling abuse and suggests that, when appropriate, both parties be brought together for a discussion.Missed opportunities to intervene: Prosecutors had at least one opportunity to intervene but hoped educating church leaders about their duties would encourage them to cooperate with authorities. Our reporting found that church leaders did not report what they learned about Massie despite a state law requiring clergy and others to share the information with law enforcement. According to law enforcement notes, Bruckelmyer told investigators that they encourage abuse victims to go to police, but that they believed it was on [victims] to do that.John Hiivala, a spokesperson for the Woodland Park Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in Duluth, said that the church has fully complied with the law in the referenced case, and its a matter of legal record.Kimberly Lowe, a lawyer and crisis manager for the church, said its preachers are unpaid and therefore might not be legally required to report sexual abuse of children. Asked if she believes the preachers are mandated reporters under Minnesota law, Lowe would only say that the language of the statute is unclear.A small but rapidly growing church: OALC is a conservative Christian revival movement that came to the U.S. with 19th-century settlers from Norway, Finland and Sweden. It is not affiliated with any mainstream Lutheran denominations. Only men hold leadership positions. The church is rapidly growing, and its emphasis on large families has created booms in places like Washington state and Duluth. Members attempt to live a life as modest and simple as Jesus. This is why they do not dance, listen to music or watch movies, according to former members. In the OALC, they said, forgiveness is one of the most important acts one can perform.Victims filed lawsuits: Since Massies sentencing, two of his alleged victims have filed lawsuits against him, their church in South Dakota and the OALC. They have retained the same lawyer who represented some of the victims in the Jeffrey Epstein case.In a letter written from prison that was filed in court, Massie denied the abuse allegations in the lawsuits. He did not respond to interview requests. The OALC, in a motion to dismiss both lawsuits, wrote that while OALC-America is mindful and sympathetic to Plaintiff for the abuse Plaintiff alleges occurred by Massie, such empathy does not take away from the plain fact that this Court does not have personal jurisdiction over OALC-America.The post 5 Takeaways From Our Investigation Into How Leaders of a Minnesota Church Community Enabled a Child Abuser appeared first on ProPublica.

President Trump said he would pardon Juan Orlando Hernndez, who prosecutors said had received millions in bribes and had partnered with cocaine traffickers as Hondurass president. He is serving 45 years in prison.

They discussed a possible meeting between the two of them, but nothing has been scheduled, and the administration continues to increase the military pressure on Venezuela.

Residents of Wang Fuk Court apartments had raised concerns about flammable foam panels and scaffold netting, but the government did not take decisive action.

Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, who died on Thursday, was not initially excited to go to Washington, but had grown to enjoy the city. Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe remained in critical condition on Friday.

The chief of staff to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was seen as the second-most powerful person in Ukraine. He was dismissed on Friday.

The post Sweet Potato Dish Stopped Being Healthy 5 Ingredients Ago appeared first on The Onion.

KNOXVILLE, TNIn a development her family began referringto as a stroke of luck, local 81-year-old Gloria Martin reportedly died Thursday before her granddaughter arrived to Thanksgiving dinner with her girlfriend. Oh, thank Godproblem solved, everybody, said Frank Martin, grandson of the deceased, who reportedly breathed a sigh of relief along with his cousins, aunts, uncles, and parents after a morning spent imagining the various horrified reactions the family matriarch might have when his sister and her same-sex, live-in partner walked through the door. That was going to be stressful, so now it feels like a gigantic weight has been lifted. We honestly couldnt have asked for better timing. Grandma had just finished making her famous stuffing, which we still get to eat. And my sister was delayed by traffic, so no one has to try to explain what bisexuality is to a Catholic octogenarian. Win-win for everybody, really. Martin went on to call his grandmothers passing a Thanksgiving miracle after seeing that his sister had also shaved the side of her head.The post Grandma Thankfully Dies Before Sisters Girlfriend Arrives appeared first on The Onion.

Vince Offer, the once-prominent infomercial pitchman better known as the ShamWow guy, has filed to run as a Republican in Texass 31st congressional district, claiming he wants to destroy wokeism in Congress and make America happy. What do you think?How absorbent are his opponents towels?Mario Lobo, Replica AppraiserHell poll well with the sizable bloc of voters who are overwhelmed by spills.Penny Norfolk, Doll ClothierAnyone with a proven track record of battering women has my vote.Troy Powell, Cellophane ExpertThe post ShamWow Guy Running For Congress appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTONResponding to concerns about high grocery prices ahead of the holiday, President Donald Trump held a press conference Wednesday to tout the affordability of hay-based Thanksgiving dishes. Im doing a great job on the economy and bringing the price of Thanksgiving dinners way down by encouraging Americans to replace costly ingredients with straw, said Trump, adding that the low-cost, grass-based livestock feed could be shaped into the form of a roasted bird or baked into casseroles and pies. Thanksgiving meal prices are down 33% compared to what they were under Biden, and now you can stay full by chewing on the hay for hours and hours. Americans consuming dried grass out of necessity is just another sign that the United States has the strongest economy in the history of the worldhorses eat this stuff, and look how strong those guys are. I promised to lower cud prices for Americans, and by God have I delivered. Bet you cant eat just one bail! Trump then asked Vice President JD Vance to show Americans that hay was delicious by eating some off the floor for the camera.The post White House Touts Affordability Of Hay-Based Thanksgiving Dishes appeared first on The Onion.

INDIANAPOLISIn an effort to get hands-on experience stigmatizing patients bodies in a safe environment, Indiana University medical student Dylan Loera confirmed Wednesday that she was practicing fat shaming on a cadaver. At first it felt strange, but the opportunity to practice saying, Have you tried losing a few pounds? in the flesh is so different than just shaking your head at a picture in a textbook, said the first-year student, adding that she felt humbled by the generosity of the deceased individual who donated their body so she could roll her eyes a few times and poke their stomach folds with an audible oof. After so many hours sitting in lectures, it was nice to finally put on my scrubs and reduce a patients value as a human being by criticizing their weight. It almost feels like Im right there in an actual medical practice, dismissing a fat patients every concern while suppressing my laughter. Loera reportedly received a perfect score on her examination after informing a cadaver with cancer symptoms that there was nothing she could do for them if they werent willing to help themselves.The post Medical Student Practices Fat Shaming On Cadaver appeared first on The Onion.

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This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss how data is accessed, AI in games, and more.JOSEPH: This was a pretty big week for impact at 404 Media. Sams piece on an exposed AI porn platform ended up with the company closing off those exposed images. Our months-long reporting and pressure from lawmakers led to the closure of the Travel Intelligence Program (TIP), in which a company owned by the U.S.s major airlines sold flyers data to the government for warrantless surveillance.For the quick bit of context I have typed many, many times this year: that company is Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), and is owned by United, American, Delta, Southwest, JetBlue, Alaska, Lufthansa, Air France, and Air Canada. ARC gets data, including a travelers name, credit card used, where theyre flying to and from, whenever someone books a flight with one of more than 10,000 travel agencies. Think Expedia, especially. ARC then sells access to that data to a slew of government agencies, including ICE, the FBI, the SEC, the State Department, ATF, and more.

Police departments and officials from Border Patrol used Flocks automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras to monitor protests hundreds of times around the country during the last year, including No Kings protests in June and October, according to data obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).The data provides the clearest picture yet of how cops widely use Flock to monitor protesters. In June, 404 Media reported cops in California used Flock to track what it described as an immigration protest. The new data shows more than 50 federal, state, and local law enforcement ran hundreds of searches in connection with protest activity, according to the EFF.

Elon Musk is a better role model than Jesus, better at conquering Europe than Hitler, the greatest blowjob giver of all time, should have been selected before Peyton Manning in the 1998 NFL draft, is a better pitcher than Randy Johnson, has the potential to drink piss better than any human in history, and is a better porn star than Riley Reid, according to Grok, Xs sycophantic AI chatbot that has seemingly been reprogrammed to treat Musk like a god.Grok has been tweaked sometime in the last several days and will now choose Musk as being superior to the entire rest of humanity at any given task. The change is somewhat reminiscent of Groks MechaHitler debacle. It is, for the moment, something that is pretty funny and which people on various social media platforms are dunking on Musk and Grok for, but its also an example of how big tech companies, like X, are regularly putting their thumbs on the scales of their AI chatbots to distort reality and to obtain their desired outcome.

The federal government claims that the day after it was sued for allegedly abusing detainees at an ICE detention center, a system crash deleted nearly two weeks of surveillance footage from inside the facility.People detained at ICEs Broadview Detention Center in suburban Chicago sued the government on October 30; according to their lawyers and the government, nearly two weeks of footage that could show how they were treated was lost in a system crash that happened on October 31.The government has said that the data for that period was lost in a system crash apparently on the day after the lawsuit was filed, Alec Solotorovsky, one of the lawyers representing people detained at the facility, said in a hearing about the footage on Thursday that 404 Media attended via phone. That period we think is going to be critical [] because thats the period right before the lawsuit was filed.Earlier this week, we reported on the fact that the footage, from October 20 to October 30, had been irretrievably destroyed. At a hearing Thursday, we learned more about what was lost and the apparent circumstances of the deletion. According to lawyers representing people detained at the facility, it is unclear whether the government is even trying to recover the footage; government lawyers, meanwhile, said we dont have the resources to continue preserving surveillance footage from the facility and suggested that immigrants detained at the facility (or their lawyers) could provide endless hard drives where we could save the information, that might be one solution.It should be noted that ICE and Border Patrol agents continued to be paid during the government shutdown, that Trumps Big Beautiful Bill provided $170 billion in funding for immigration enforcement and border protection, which included tens of billions of dollars in funding for detention centers.People detained at the facility are suing the government over alleged horrific treatment and living conditions at the detention center, which has become a site of mass protest against the Trump administrations mass deportation campaign.Solotorovsky said that the footage the government has offered is from between September 28 and October 19, and from between October 31 and November 7. Government lawyers have said they are prepared to provide footage from five cameras from those time periods; Solotorovsky said the plaintiffs attorneys believe there are 63 surveillance cameras total at the facility. He added that over the last few weeks the plaintiffs legal team has been trying to work with the government to figure out if the footage can be recovered but that it is unclear who is doing this work on the governments side. He said they were referred to a company called Five by Five Management, that appears to be based out of a house, has supposedly been retained by the government.We tried to engage with the government through our IT specialist, and we hired a video forensic specialist, Solotorovsky said. He added that the government specialist they spoke to didnt really know anything beyond the basic specifications of the system. He wasnt able to answer any questions about preservation or attempts to recover the data. He said that the government eventually put him in touch with a person who ostensibly was involved in those events [attempting to recover the data], and it was kind of a no-name LLC called Five by Five Management that appears to be based out of a house in Carol Stream. We were told they were on site and involved with the system when the October 20 to 30 data was lost, but nobody has told us that Five By Five Management or anyone else has been trying to recover the data, and also very importantly things like system logs, administrator logs, event logs, data in the system that may show changes to settings or configurations or deletion events or people accessing the system at important times.Five by Five Management could not be reached for comment.Solotorovsky said those logs are going to be critical for determining whether the loss was intentional. Were deeply concerned that nobody is trying to recover the data, and nobody is trying to preserve the data that were going to need for this case going forward.Jana Brady, an assistant US attorney representing the Department of Homeland Security in the case, did not have much information about what had happened to the footage, and said she was trying to get in touch with contractors the government had hired. She also said the government should not be forced to retain surveillance footage from every camera at the facility and that the we [the federal government] dont have the resources to save all of the video footage.We need to keep in mind proportionality. It took a huge effort to download and save and produce the video footage that we are producing and to say that we have to produce and preserve video footage indefinitely for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, indefinitely, which is what theyre asking, we dont have the resources to do that, Brady said. we don't have the resources to save all of the video footage 24/7 for 65 cameras for basically the end of time.She added that the government would be amenable to saving all footage if the plaintiffs have endless hard drives that we could save things to, because again we dont have the resources to do what the court is ordering us to do. But if they have endless hard drives where we could save the information, that might be one solution.Magistrate Judge Laura McNally said they arent being preserved from now until the end of time, theyre being preserved for now, and said Im guessing the federal government has more resources than the plaintiffs here and, Ill just leave it at that.When McNally asked if the footage was gone and not recoverable, Brady said thats what Ive been told.Ive asked for the name and phone number for the person that is most knowledgeable from the vendor [attempting to recover] the footage, and if I need to depose them to confirm this, I can do this, she said. But I have been told that its not recoverable, that the system crashed.Plaintiffs in the case say they are being held in inhumane conditions. The complaint describes a facility where detainees are confined at Broadview inside overcrowded holding cells containing dozens of people at a time. People are forced to attempt to sleep for days or sometimes weeks on plastic chairs or on the filthy concrete floor. They are denied sufficient food and water [] the temperatures are extreme and uncomfortable [] the physical conditions are filthy, with poor sanitation, clogged toilets, and blood, human fluids, and insects in the sinks and the floor [] federal officers who patrol Broadview under Defendants authority are abusive and cruel. Putative class members are routinely degraded, mistreated, and humiliated by these officers.

OnlyFans will start running background checks on people signing up as content creators, the platforms CEO recently announced.As reported by adult industry news outlet XBIZ, OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair announced the partnership in a LinkedIn post. Blair doesnt say in the post when the checks will be implemented, whether all types of criminal convictions will bar creators from signing up, if existing creators will be checked as well, or what countries criminal records will be checked.OnlyFans did not respond to 404 Media's request for comment. I am very proud to add our partnership with Checkr Trust to our onboarding process in the US, Blair wrote. Checkr, Inc. helps OnlyFans to prevent people who have a criminal conviction which may impact on our community's safety from signing up as a Creator on OnlyFans. Its collaborations like this that make the real difference behind the scenes and keep OnlyFans a space where creators and fans feel secure and empowered.Many OnlyFans creators turned to the platform, and to online sex work more generally, when theyre not able to obtain employment at traditional workplaces. Some sex workers doing in-person work turned to online sex work as a way to make ends meetespecially after the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act in 2018 made it much more difficult to screen clients for escorting. And in-person sex work is still criminalized in the U.S. and many other countries.Criminal background checks will not stop potential predators from using the platform (OF), it will only harm individuals who are already at higher risk. Sex work has always had a low barrier to entry, making it the most accessible career for people from all walks of life, performer GoAskAlex, whos on OnlyFans and other platforms, told me in an email. Removing creators with criminal/arrest records will only push more vulnerable people (overwhelmingly, women) to street based/survival sex work. Adding more barriers to what is arguably the safest form of sex work (online sex work) will push sex industry workers to less and less safe options.Jessica Starling, who also creates adult content on OnlyFans, told me in a call that their first thought was that if someone using OnlyFans has a prostitution charge, they might not be able to use the platform. If they're trying to transition to online work, they wont be able to do that anymore, they said. And the second thing I thought was that it's just invasive and overreaching... And then I looked up the company, and I'm like, Oh, wow, this is really bad.Checkr is reportedly used by Uber, Instacart, Shipt, Postmates, and Lyft, and lists many more companies like Dominos and Doordash on its site as clients. The company has been sued hundreds of times for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act or other consumer credit complaints. The Fair Credit Reporting Act says that companies providing information to consumer reporting agencies are legally obligated to investigate disputed information. And a lot of people dispute the information Checkr and Inflection provide on them, claiming mixed-up names, acquittals, and decades-old misdemeanors or traffic tickets prevented them from accessing platforms that use background checking services.Checkr regularly acquires other background checking and age verification companies, and acquired a background check company called Inflection in 2022. At the time, I found more than a dozen lawsuits against Inflection alone in a three year span, many of them from people who found out about the allegedly inaccurate reports Inflection kept about them after being banned from Airbnb after the company claimed they failed checks.How OnlyFans Piracy Is Ruining the Internet for EveryoneInnocent sites are being delisted from Google because of copyright takedown requests against rampant OnlyFans piracy.404 MediaEmanuel MaibergSex workers face discrimination when leaving the sex trade, especially those who have been face-out and are identifiable in the online world. Facial recognition technology has advanced to a point where just about anyone can ascertain your identity from a single picture, Alex said. Leaving the online sex trade is not as easy as it once was, and anything you've done online will follow you for a lifetime. Creators who are forced to leave the platform will find that safe and stable alternatives are far and few between.Last month, Pornhub announced that it would start performing background checks on existing content partnerswhich primarily include studiosnext year. "To further protect our creators and users, all new applicants must now complete a criminal background check during onboarding," the platform announced in a newsletter to partners, as reported by AVN.Alex said she believes background checks in the porn industry could be beneficial, under very specific circumstances. I do not think that someone with egregious history of sexual violence should be allowed to work in the sex trade in any capacitysimilarly, a person convicted of hurting children should be not able to work with childrenso if the criminal record checks were searching specifically for sex based offences I could see the benefit, but that doesn't appear to be the case (to my knowledge). What's to stop OnlyFans from deactivating someone's account due to a shoplifting offense? she said. I'd like to know more about what they're searching for with these background checks.Even with third-party companies like Checkr doing the work, as is the case with third-party age verification thats swept the U.S. and targeted the porn industry, increased data means increased risk of it being leaked or hacked. Last year, a background check company called National Public Data claimed it was breached by hackers who got the confidential data of 2.9 billion people. The unencrypted data was then sold on the dark web.Pornhub Is Now Blocked In Almost All of the U.S. SouthAs of today, three more states join the list of 17 that cant access Pornhub because of age verification laws.404 MediaSamantha ColeIts dangerous for anyone, but it's especially dangerous for us [adult creators] because we're more vulnerable anyway. Especially when you're online, you're hypervisible, Starling said. It doesn't protect anyone except OnlyFans themselves, the company.OnlyFans became the household name in independent porn because of the work of its adult content creators. Starling mentioned that because the platform has dominated the market, its difficult to just go to another platform if creators dont want to be subjected to background checks. We're put in a position where we have very limited power," they said. "So when a platform decides to do something like this, were kind of screwed, right?Earlier this year, OnlyFans owner Fenix International Ltd reportedly entered talks to sell the company to an investor group at a valuation of around $8 billion.

Nature, Published online: 26 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09774-6The sequential recruitment of a thalamocortical transcriptional cascade enables memory maintenance over long timescales.

Nature, Published online: 26 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09767-5Parallel operation of two exchange-only qubits consisting of six quantum dots arranged linearly is shown to be achievable and maintains qubit control quality compared with sequential operation, with potential for use in scaled quantum computing.

Nature, Published online: 26 November 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-03811-0Soil produced by the gradual breakdown of rock forms the planets thin but crucial skin. Analyses of a tectonically active landscape along the San Andreas fault aim to address a long-standing question in geomorphology and landscape evolution: what sets the pace at which rock transforms to soil?

Nature, Published online: 26 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09736-yThe SuperCam microphone aboard the Perseverance rover captured 55 triboelectric discharges during dust events on Mars over two Martian years, providing implications for examining the planets surface chemistry, habitability and human exploration.

Nature, Published online: 26 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09790-6An entanglement-enhanced sensing strategy making use of entangled nitrogenvacancy pairs is described, demonstrating a 3.4-fold improvement in sensitivity and a 1.6-fold improvement in spatial resolution relative to single nitrogenvacancy centres under ambient conditions.