(The Center Square) – More than 200,000 fentanyl pills have been taken off the streets in Utah in two law enforcement actions.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is approximately 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. Two milligrams is considered a lethal dose.

One pill is considered to contain two milligrams. The volume of pills seized in these actions was enough to kill 200,000 people.

The announcement was made ahead National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day, Friday, August 21.

Two Mexican nationals were indicted for their role in unrelated fentanyl trafficking cases. One was in the U.S. illegally, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Both were indicted by a federal grand jury after they were arrested and charged in two separate and unrelated cases that led to the seizure of approximately 204,000 fentanyl pills in one week, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah. They are each charged with possession of fentanyl with intent to distribute.

Jesus Alexis Cecena Cota, 22, illegally living in West Jordan, and Ricardo Verduzco Bernal, 54, of West Valley City, were charged in two separate complaints on August 13, announced on Thursday. Their indictments were the outworking of investigations led by members of the FBI’s Wasatch Metro Drug Task Force (WMDTF).

In Cota’s case, FBI WMDTF agents investigated Cota and co-conspirators, “both known and unknown, associated with a drug trafficking organization believed to be distributing large quantities of fentanyl and other narcotics” in Utah, according to court documents. After executing a search warrant, during a vehicle search, they found and seized approximately 1.44 grams of field-tested positive methamphetamine. At the storge unit, they found and seized approximately 9,351.45 grams worth of 93,000 pills that field-tested positive for fentanyl. At Cota’s residence, they found and seized 21.7 grams of field-tested positive fentanyl, U.S. currency, and a suspected drug ledger, according to prosecutors.

In a separate case, FBI WMDTF agents investigated Bernal and co-conspirators, “both known and unknown, associated with a drug trafficking organization believed to be distributing large quantities of fentanyl and other narcotics” in Utah. They conducted an undercover controlled purchase of fentanyl from Bernal, which led to obtaining and executing a search warrant on a hotel room in Salt Lake County. They found and seized approximately 11,160.65 grams worth of 111,000 pills that field-tested positive for fentanyl, according to prosecutors.

Their trials are scheduled for next week in Salt Lake City.

The announcement was made ahead of the DEA joining Facing Fentanyl on Friday to unite families, communities, and organizations nationwide to recognize National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day.

This is the fifth year of the national observance, which pays tribute to the lives lost to fentanyl poisoning. It also serves as a nationwide “call to action to increase awareness to the highly addictive and dangerous drugs containing fentanyl that continue to drive the opioid epidemic and take lives,” the DEA says.

The DEA’s Faces of Fentanyl memorial exhibit, located in Arlington, Virginia, displays more than 7,000 photos of Americans who have died from the opioid crisis. It also launched a new, interactive online exhibit: dea.gov/facesoffentanyl.

Multiple congressional hearings have been held where parents testified about how their children took pills they thought were Xanex or Percocet but were laced with fentanyl and died, The Center Square reported.

As the border crisis worsened under the Biden administration, the DEA issued public alerts about fentanyl laces with other drugs like Xylazine.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation into law to increase penalties for fentanyl related crimes, including charging distributers with murder. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed similar legislation into law; 18 attorneys general called on the former president to classify fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. Members of Congress introduced bills to address the fentanyl crisis, including increasing penalties. The FDA fast tracked NARCAN, which has been found to reverse opioid overdoses, for over the counter access.

Through Abbott’s border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, law enforcement seized 879 million lethal doses of fentanyl, The Center Square reported.

Under the Trump administration, law enforcement officers are continuing to seize large quantities of fentanyl. In six months this year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 100 million lethal doses of fentanyl.

The Trump administration also designated Mexican cartels and other transnational criminal organizations as foreign terrorist organizations in order to bring greater enforcement actions against them. Authorities found that fentanyl precursors were being shipped from China to Mexico, where cartels made them into pills to traffic into the U.S.

They were also mixing fentanyl powder with cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine, creating a more lethal dose, authorities found.

While fentanyl-related deaths have declined under the Trump administration, fentanyl remains the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18-45 years old.

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(The Center Square) – Ahead of the weekend’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix race in Washington, D.C., First Lady Melania Trump hosted an event Thursday to highlight her Fostering the Future initiative as IndyCar and Fox Corporation donated $2 million to fund scholarships at Indiana University and Purdue University.

Joining the first lady were President Donald Trump, Roger Penske, founder and chairman of the Penske Corporation, Doug Boles, president of IndyCar, and Eric Shanks, CEO and executive producer of Fox Sports.

The first lady touted the mission of one of her top initiatives of her husband’s second term, the Fostering the Future program.

“Our mission is simple yet transformational: provide every young person from the foster care community the chance to earn a college education, launch a meaningful career and achieve lasting financial independence,” Mrs. Trump remarked during the event in the Rose Garden Thursday afternoon.

The first lady argues that the program provides foster youth with independence, ultimately helping graduates break free of government assistance.

“Fostering the Future is more than an educational initiative, it is a generational investment in America’s talent pipeline. Every student who graduates strengthens our workforce, accelerates innovation, expands economic opportunity, and reduces long-term dependence on government assistance. The return on this investment is measured not only in lives changed for the better, but in stronger communities, a more competitive nation, and a future powered by American ingenuity,” she added.

Currently, 26 colleges and universities have established the Fostering the Future program, including Indiana University and Purdue University.

Boles delivered remarks during the event, highlighting the program and Indiana’s important role in expanding educational opportunities for foster youth.

“This partnership with Fostering the Future will open doors for our youth and honor two great educational institutions in our home state, Indiana University and Purdue University, by providing scholarships to allow these young adults to continue their education,” said Boles.

The White House event comes as tens of thousands are expected to descend on the nation’s capital for the historic car race scheduled for Aug. 22 and 23.

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(The Center Square) – Flock, a video surveillance company, is working to build privacy legislation in the United States based on the company’s policies.

An emerging license-plate-reading camera company, Flock has faced intense scrutiny from lawmakers and the public in recent years over its tactics to monitor law enforcement and public safety incidents. However, representatives for the company said Flock has kept these privacy concerns at the forefront of its business model.

Dan Haley, chief legal officer at Flock, said surveillance technology is not new for deterring public safety incidents. However, he said Flock is seeking to pioneer the guardrails with which the technology is used.

The U.S. does not have a single, comprehensive uniform privacy law for Flock and companies like it to follow, Haley said. However, he said Flock is working to have the company policies serve as the basis of future privacy law, including data audits and retention rates.

“When you have built your technology to comply with laws that don’t exist yet, it is absolutely in your interest competitively to have the rules require it because you have a head start,” Haley said. “But I like to think of it as a noble head start.”

He pointed to Flock’s policy of creating a permanent record anytime license plate images are collected.

“If you abuse it, the evidence of that abuse goes right there in the audit log and it’s a public record,” Haley said.

Haley also pointed to Flock’s policy that only holds data for 30 days and allows communities to set specific defaults. Recently, the policy changed to allow only seven days of data holding after increased controversy. The policy change follows several adjustments the camera company is attempting after intense public scrutiny.

Flock brought in independent security firm Bishop Fox for a review of its products and capabilities, The Center Square previously reported. The report is expected to be released next month.

Haley also said Flock adheres to a strict policy where the company’s data can only be used if an officer reasonably suspects a crime has been committed.

“99.99% of the images taken are deleted automatically and permanently, never having been viewed by a single human being,” Haley said.

Recently, Flock implemented an automated review of its captured data. He said the system will automatically flag certain suspicious behavior for further analysis.

Over the last few weeks, officers across the country have been fired for an alleged misuse of Flock cameras following review. Haley acknowledged that Flock can be misused but equated it to controversy over other tools used by law enforcement.

In South Carolina, Officer Ellie Anna Hammond was fired after using the Flock camera technology to track the license plate of a previous love interest, according to documents.

“If you think about all the tools that we give law enforcement, any one of them can be abused,” Haley said. “Very few of them create a record of that abuse and hold people accountable.”

He pointed to Flock’s ability to solve criminal cases, rescue kidnapped individuals and provide assistance to law enforcement as a case for its inclusion in the landscape. Haley pointed to a Flock report that showed more than 10,000 missing individuals were returned safely with assistance from Flock cameras in 2025.

West Virginia State Delegate Tristan Leavitt voiced concerns over the risks of a breach in Flock’s database in an interview with The Center Square.

“There are obviously concerns about these cameras from really across the political spectrum,” Leavitt said. “And so as lawmakers trying to decide what level of involvement the state legislature should have, it’s very difficult if you are not getting straight information directly from Flock themselves.”

Haley called on members of the public and lawmakers to educate themselves on the legal boundaries of surveillance technology and how the Fourth Amendment protects Flock’s activities. He said the recent visibility of Flock cameras in public spaces have spurred additional public fury toward the technology.

“Often very smart people, because they’re proceeding from a core set of misunderstandings of what the technology is and what it does, they come to the conversation with a whole ton of established positions,” Haley said. “We have not done a good enough job educating people.”

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(The Center Square) – Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday called the $166 billion in court-ordered tariff refunds a “corporate bonanza,” as the money flows to the importers that paid the duties rather than the consumers who bore most of the cost.

By law, the refunds go to the importers of record who paid the duties at the border, not directly to the consumers who absorbed the cost through higher prices. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in February that consumers face price increases equal to 95% of tariff costs, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that U.S. firms and consumers, not the foreign exporters the administration says pay, bore nearly 90% of the tariffs’ economic burden.

Bessent, speaking to reporters outside the White House, said the refunds amounted to “corporate welfare” and dismissed calls to send the money to consumers.

“The American people had the money in the U.S. Treasury, and we were forced to give it back,” he said Thursday.

Bessent made a similar point the day of the February ruling, telling an audience in Dallas, “I got a feeling the American people won’t see it.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection had accepted about $128.68 billion of that total for processing as of July 31, a CBP spokesperson told The Center Square.

About $100 billion had been certified and sent to the Treasury for disbursement as of that date, Brandon Lord, CBP’s executive director of trade programs, said in an Aug. 4 court filing, up from about $20.6 billion in late May. The government has not said how much Treasury has actually paid out.

The refunds reach consumers only if the companies that paid pass them along. For parcel shipments, that is often the carrier. FedEx and UPS both said they have begun issuing refunds with interest, though UPS first applies each one to any past-due balance on a customer’s account. Neither would say how much it has paid out, or whether it will keep the fees it charged to collect the duties.

Earlier this year, a consumer sued warehouse retailer Costco in a proposed class action arguing that any refund should reach shoppers, not the company. Costco has asked a judge to dismiss the case, which remains pending.

The judge overseeing the refunds has said the money is not reaching everyone. In a May order, U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Richard Eaton wrote that “most of the refunds that have been processed so far have gone to large importers, not small,” and that the government had “not proposed a method” to refund some importers whose entries had already been finalized. As of late May, more than 3 million entries had been rejected from the refund system, most because they fell outside the government’s 90-day window to reprocess them.

The refunds stem from tariffs the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Feb. 20, ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not authorize the president to impose the tariffs.

The administration replaced the IEEPA tariffs first with a temporary 10% tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act, then, after that expired, with Section 301 duties now being challenged by small businesses and states in the same court. Bessent said the government would recover the lost revenue through the new tariffs.

Outside analysts say the new tariffs will not bring in as much. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the replacement duties will cover less than 60% of the revenue lost to the court ruling. CBO reached a similar conclusion, projecting Thursday that changes in trade policy will widen deficits by $900 billion over 2027 through 2036, driven largely by the removal of the IEEPA tariffs and the smaller revenue from the ones replacing them.

The administration has not published an estimate of what its tariffs cost U.S. households or what share of imports they cover. Nor has it said how much of the $166 billion will ultimately reach consumers who bore much of the tariffs’ economic cost.

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(The Center Square) – “No serious dispute” is possible against an arrangement of seashells spelling out 86 47 on a North Carolina beach as a potential threat against President Donald Trump, says the U.S. Department of Justice.

Former FBI Director James Comey posted a photograph from the Outer Banks on social media in May of last year. While his counsel has sought to dismiss the case, the government’s Tuesday filings in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina defended against such a move.

Comey is facing two federal counts of threats against the president.

Comey said he discovered the arrangement while walking the beach. He took down the social media post soon after putting it up, with an explanation that he didn’t know the numbers could be taken as a promotion of violence.

Prosecutors say two minutes before his post, Comey’s wife texted him a screenshot of the definition of 86 – to get rid of or refuse service.

The filing from prosecutors says, “There is no serious dispute that an objective viewer of Comey’s post could read it to mean ‘Kill President Trump.’”

The arrangement was 4 miles down from beachfront property where Comey stayed. Prosecutors say text messages between Comey and his agent after the social media post included the former FBI director’s assertion he didn’t mean for a viral post, yet said, “I’ll be OK if it sells books.”

Comey’s Instagram account had an estimated 200,000 followers at the time, prosecutors say, and the reach to secondary users would be in the millions.

Judge Louise Flanagan has set arraignment for Sept. 30 in New Bern and a trial to begin Oct. 21.

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(The Center Square) – More than a dozen Republican candidates have lost their elections this year after being endorsed by President Donald Trump. The overwhelming majority of candidates he’s endorsed have won their state and federal primary and runoff elections.

Of the dozens of Republican congressional candidates Trump has endorsed, four lost races this month.

On August 18, two lost in Florida.

In Florida’s Congressional District 7, incumbent U.S. Rep. Cory Mills was defeated by former news anchor Ryan Elijah. Mills is under criminal investigation and under House Ethics Committee investigation for alleged sexual misconduct, domestic abuse and campaign finance violations.

In CD 19, Florida transplant Catalina Lauf lost to media mogul Jim Schwartzel.

On August 4, in Michigan’s CD 8, Trump-endorsed Amir Hassan lost by 17 points to Thomas Smith after Smith suspended his campaign three weeks before Election Day and was still on the ballot.

On August 6, in Tennessee’s CD 5, Trump-backed incumbent U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles lost to former state Agricultural Commissioner Charlie Hatcher.

So far, five of Trump’s gubernatorial picks have lost and one is headed to a runoff.

In Wyoming, on August 18, state Sen. Eric Barlow beat Trump-endorsed Megan Degenfelder by 15 points in the Republican primary race for governor.

In Minnesota, on August 11, state House Speaker Lisa Demuth defeated Trump-endorsed Mike Lindell by 11 points in the Republican primary race for governor. Lindell refused to concede and on Tuesday announced he would fund a recount and audit every paper ballot, claiming election irregularities occurred.

In South Carolina, on June 9, Trump-endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette came out ahead of Attorney General Alan Wilson by two points in a multi-candidate primary race for governor. Trump then endorsed both candidates. She lost the June 23 runoff election by 37 points.

In Georgia, on June 16, Trump-endorsed Burt Jones advanced in a crowded May primary race for governor. He lost the runoff election to billionaire Rick Jackson by five points.

In Iowa, on June 2, Trump-endorsed state Rep. Randy Feenstra lost to businessman Zach Lahn by one point in the Republican primary race for governor.

In Texas, three Trump-endorsed candidates have seen losses.

In Texas’ Republican primary race for Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Trump-endorsed incumbent Sid Miller lost.

Although Trump-endorsed incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales advanced in a March 3 primary race, he was forced to drop his reelection bid after sex scandals with staffers were exposed and one of the women killed herself. Gonzales refused to resign.

Although not a primary race, Trump’s first-endorsed candidate’s loss this year was in January in Texas. Trump-endorsed Republican Leigh Wambsganss lost a special election in what used to be considered a safe Republican state Senate seat, SD 9, in north Texas. In a major upset, Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped the seat, which had been held by Republicans for 30 years. They are running against each other in November.

In two state senate races in Indiana and North Carolina, Trump-endorsed candidates lost.

On May 5, Trump-endorsed Brenda Wilson lost her race in Indiana’s SD 8.

On March 3, Trump-endorsed incumbent North Carolina Senate Leader Phil Berger lost his primary race by 23 votes in what is considered one of the greatest upsets in state history.

In several battleground races, Trump-endorsed candidates face uphill battles.

In Texas, Trump-endorsed Attorney General Ken Paxton is trailing in the polls to Democrat state Rep. James Talarico in the U.S. Senate race.

In Michigan, Trump-endorsed incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers is trailing Democrat Abdul El-Sayed by double digits, according to several polls.

On August 25, two Trump-endorsed candidates head to runoff elections in tight races: incumbent U.S. South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham and Oklahoma gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazzei.

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(The Center Square) - A Texas Business Court judge threw out charges of anti-competitive behavior against ExxonMobil’s carbon pipeline subsidiary Denbury in a ruling last week while allowing a broader lawsuit over unfair business practices to move forward.

The Texas Business Court, a specialized trial court system created in 2024 to adjudicate complex, high-stakes commercial disputes, ruled on August 12 that it lacked the territorial authority to address antitrust injuries occurring outside the state’s borders, including Louisiana.

Clean Hydrogen Works, which plans to build a $7.5 billion clean fuels plant in Ascension Parish, contends control of Denbury’s 620-mile-long CO₂ pipeline network in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi effectively makes Exxon a gatekeeper for blue hydrogen and ammonia projects at industrial hubs in an area stretching from Lake Charles to the Mississippi River corridor.

The ruling by Houston Division Judge Sofia Adrogué gives Exxon a partial win on antitrust charges without ending the broader dispute over unfair trade practices.

Clean Hydrogen Works alleges that shortly after the acquisition of Denbury in late 2023, the Spring, Texas-based energy giant “weaponized” the pipeline operator’s infrastructure by abruptly revoking a contract for a connection to the developer’s planned Ascension Parish ammonia export hub, stalling the project.

ExxonMobil’s lawyers rejected accusations of market sabotage, persuading the court that a 20-year-old Texas Supreme Court precedent involving the Coca-Cola Company strips Texas courts of the authority to adjudicate antitrust claims.

“Exxon is essentially thinking like a regulated utility, operating on the stance that they bought the network, paid a heavy premium for it, and have an internal use for it,” said Dr. Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute. “Their message to independent developers is that while they cannot outright refuse access, the entry price is going to be steep,” Smith told The Center Square.

Smith said building high-pressure CO2 pipelines with 12-to-20-inch diameters is “extraordinarily expensive,” noting Clean Hydrogen Works’ estimate of $1 billion to build an alternative connection to a Denbury competitor showed the financial barrier faced by independent clean fuel producers.

Clean Hydrogen Works executives maintain the project remains active, unlike the nearby $4.5 billion Air Products blue hydrogen plant proposed in the same parish that was abandoned by developers in June after intense local opposition to carbon pipelines and storage beneath Lake Maurepas in South Louisiana.

Exxon maintains that the contract termination was a routine corporate response to localized project delays, missing engineering schematics, and timeline breaches committed by the developer rather than an intentional strategy to defeat a clean energy rival.

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods announced late last year a pause in the development of the company’s own $7 billion blue hydrogen production hub in Baytown, Texas, citing a lack of long-term buyer agreements and a sluggish global carbon sequestration market.

Although the Texas court backed away from the monopoly claims, an analysis of the lawsuit by energy industry law firm Dowd Bennett concluded the Lone Star state will adjudicate the claims of unfair business practices while the antitrust and pipeline monopoly litigation would be heard in Louisiana.

“When you are totally realistic, it does not matter what the United States thinks about carbon dioxide removal; all that matters is what the international customer thinks,” said Tulane Energy Institute’s Smith.

“European buyers face strict carbon mitigation rules that they must abide by to even purchase Gulf Coast gas, and if American developers cannot meet those constraints due to infrastructure bottlenecks, global competitors in Qatar, Mozambique, and Trinidad will happily step in. The jury is still out on whether ExxonMobil violated unfair trade practices, but there’s a disconnect between Louisiana’s role as an exporter and people’s preferences in terms of what takes place before you can export the product,” said Smith.

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(The Center Square) – Mississippi, Wyoming and Arkansas lead the nation in car crash fatalities, according to a new report.

The Welcome Law Firm, a personal injury and immigration legal clinic, analyzed fatal crash data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration between 2020 and 2024 in order to determine which states recorded the highest number of fatal crashes across the country.

The report found Mississippi recorded the highest rate of fatal crashes with 22.28 per every 100,000 residents. Wyoming followed with 19.12 per 100,000, and Arkansas ranked third with 19 per 100,000 from 2020 to 2024.

Authors of the report noted that population sizes in various states may skew the results. For example, South Carolina ranked fifth in highway fatalities but recorded 1,000 more incidents than Mississippi.

“A state with 40 million residents and 4,000 yearly fatal crashes represents a very different level of danger than a state with far fewer residents and a similar number of crashes,” the report reads.

Mississippi reported 3,371 fatal crashes between 2020 and 2022, whereas South Carolina, ranked fifth, reported 5,019.

The law firm said Southern and rural states tend to make up the largest share of areas where fatal crashes are more common. Rural road networks, limited emergency response, remote locations and higher travel speeds accounted for the greater share of fatalities, according to the report.

Among the top 10 states, Tennessee recorded the highest number of fatal crashes with 5,874. The average rate was 16.6 per 100,000 residents.

“Reducing road deaths will demand targeted infrastructure improvements, enhanced safety measures, and sustained policy intervention,” the report reads.

Louisiana ranked eighth in car crash fatalities with 3,980 across a period of five years.

Authors of the report pointed out that many crashes involve more than one fatality. Fatalities ranged between an average 1.08 and 1.09 per incident from 2020 to 2024.

Alcohol-impaired driving accounted for 63,069 fatalities between 2020 and 2024, the deadliest factor of all those recorded. Speeding led to 58,284 fatalities between 2020 and 2024 while distracted driving accounted for 16,482 fatalities.

“Recording distraction usually relies on enforcement officer observation as opposed to phone records or vehicle data,” the report reads.

The law firm said increased penalities for driving under the influence of alcohol seem to have produced little effect on the outcome of road fatalities. The report found New Mexico ranked highest in the nation for distracted driving fatalities.

Wyoming ranked highest for speeding fatalities and third for drunk driving and Louisiana was the only state in the top 10 across the three categories of speeding, drunk driving and distracted driving.

“As such, rural networks may need a significantly higher level of attention regarding road safety,” the report reads. “The consequences of indulging poor and dangerous driver behavior may need to be much more serious to preempt a sadly steady fatality rate on our national roads.”

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(The Center Square) – The Pentagon has notified 30 higher education institutions that they must review their academic and research ties to foreign entities or risk losing federal funding.

This week, the U.S. Department of War sent notifications to 30 universities across the country that, to “maintain eligibility for future federal research funding,” the universities must complete a “comprehensive audit” of all foreign relations and collaborations that may have exposed sensitive information.

Following the audit, the universities must implement strict mitigation plans and report their findings to the department by Aug. 31, according to the Pentagon.

“The Department of War has zero tolerance for academic partnerships that compromise our national security,” Emil Michael, under secretary of war for research and engineering, said in a statement. “Institutions that receive funding from American taxpayers must uphold the highest standards of research security, and these mandated audits will ensure accountability across the board.”

The White House told The Center Square that it defers to the Department of War. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.

The notifications seek to address “active institutional ties and collaborations with foreign entities,” according to the Pentagon, as well as organizations associated with Confucius Institutes.

Confucius Institutes are educational partnerships funded by the Chinese government to promote Chinese language and culture abroad. They have faced criticism and closures in several countries over concerns about academic freedom and political influence.

The department did not initially list the 30 universities, but according to The Guardian, the list includes top universities like Harvard and Cornell University.

“We have received the request and will respond to the department’s questions,” Cornell University spokesperson Lindsey Knewstub told The Center Square.

The Center Square reached out to Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins University for a comment but did not receive a response.

Although Stanford University is not among the universities on the Pentagon’s list, concerns about foreign influence on the California campus emerged in 2025. Stanford’s student newspaper reported on what it described as growing influence by the Chinese Communist Party on campus, The Center Square previously reported.

The new Pentagon move comes as the Trump administration and the Department of War increasingly scrutinize how American research and technology could be used to enhance China’s military capabilities.

“Esther is an education reporter for The Center Square. Please email her at ewickham@thecentersquare.com for tips or questions.”

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(The Center Square) – The United States government passed a sobering milestone Wednesday as the national debt topped $40 trillion, up from $39 trillion only five months ago.

Government spending watchdogs are calling the amount “staggering,” noting that the debt has doubled over the past decade alone and is now larger than the entire U.S. economy.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, warned that “$40 trillion of debt doesn’t exist solely on the government’s ledgers; it is felt throughout the economy and finds its way to the pocketbooks of people one way or another.”

“The more we borrow, the more we exacerbate inflation, squeeze out other priorities in the budget, and leave ourselves vulnerable to emergencies at home and turmoil abroad,” she added.

In the immediate term, rising debt worsens affordability by spiking interest costs on Americans’ credit card debts, mortgages, car loans, student loans and more.

In the long term, it can jeopardize U.S. national security. The U.S. government currently spends more paying interest on its national debt than it does on national defense.

Carolyn Bourdeaux, executive director at Concord Action, said the $40 trillion debt “should stop Washington in its tracks” and amounts to “intergenerational theft.”

“Young Americans did not create this debt: they did not benefit from the tax cuts; they did not enjoy the generous payouts or programs; they did not support the wars or foreign interventions that have cost us trillions,” Bordeaux said.

“But they will be expected to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives through higher borrowing costs, more pressure from inflation, fewer resources available for education, housing, infrastructure, defense and other priorities, and quite likely higher taxes as this country is forced to address the ballooning debt.”

Aside from some Republican lawmakers acknowledging the problem – U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, called the debt “an existential threat to the future of our nation” – Congress has largely disregarded it.

Congress sidestepped the automatic spending cuts to Medicare and other programs that are triggered by unpaid-for federal borrowing by wiping $3.4 trillion from the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) scorecard last November.

In March, the House tanked a balanced budget resolution. The resolution would have capped federal spending each year at the average annual revenue of the previous three years, with exceptions for emergencies.

U.S. lawmakers have introduced balanced budget proposals hundreds of times over the past 50 years and over 100 times since 1999 alone. Only twice in American history has any balanced budget proposal passed either chamber of Congress; the Senate in 1982 and the House in 1995.

“Every day that goes by makes the problem worse and more difficult to solve,” Bordeaux warned. “We owe the next generation better than this crushing debt and another hollow promise that someone else will deal with it later. Both parties helped bring us here, and both parties now have a responsibility to change course.”

The U.S. government is currently adding more than $90,000 per second to the national debt, according to the most recent estimates by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee. Deficit spending in fiscal year 2026 is projected to hit $2 trillion.

“Whatever motivation our elected officials need to find to finally take action – whether the worries of their constituents back home, the alarm signaled by financial markets, competition from abroad, or the consequences of failing to act – they ought to find it soon,” MacGuineas added. “No one knows how many more of these milestones America can take.”

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(The Center Square) – Home building associations are losing skilled trades workers to data center construction, advocates said.

As artificial intelligence data center expansion explodes across the country, technology executives have placed a greater emphasis on recruiting workers in the skilled trades. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicted the next wave of six-figure jobs would come from tradespeople who help build datacenter infrastructure.

“Everybody should be able to make a great living,” Huang said. “You don’t need to have a PhD in computer science to do so.”

However, Ed Brady, CEO of the Home Builders Institute at the National Association of Home Builders, said the investment in skilled trades is not the full picture. He told The Center Square skilled trades jobs have been declining for over a decade and data center construction is only exacerbating the problem.

Brady estimates the skilled trades industry is short 300,000 skilled workers and the few that are available have gone toward data centers. He said five tradespeople retire from the field for every two that enter.

“The market is not as strong, and so today many of those people that were in housing are going to these data centers,” Brady said.

Brady emphasized that investments from data center executives are only short term while while worker shortages in homebuilding have been mounting since at least the 2007 financial crisis. He said the housing market is cyclical, but pointed out concerns that data centers would leave home construction at a loss due to high demand.

“This problem is going to get even more and more exaggerated and acute to the housing industry because of the data center construction, and we’re not putting enough money into training the future generations of skilled labor,” Brady said.

Skilled trades workers moving into data center construction are seeing pay jumps of 25% to 30%, according to analysis by the Wall Street Journal. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation estimates the sector’s worker shortage is around 439,000 in 2026 alone.

Brady acknowledged that scarcity in the skilled trades sector has already led to increasingly competitive wages. However, he said technology companies like Meta, Amazon and Google have inflated prices as part of a push to recruit more workers.

“They’re putting dollars into training skilled trades because they need the infrastructure, they need energy, they need water, they need buildings, they need infrastructure,” Brady said.

Brady is optimistic workers who joined the data center boom will return to the homebuilding sector. However, he called on government and industry leaders to invest in infrastructure to support skilled trade workers.

He said the Trump administration’s efforts to incentivize apprenticeship programs are a step in the right direction but do not make up enough of the trade workforce to have a meaningful effect. Brady called on Congress to appropriate funds for programs with long-lasting impacts on the workforce.

Brady pointed to the ROAD to Housing Act, which put restrictions on institutional investors from purchasing single family homes. He said the legislation was good policy in practice but did not fund jobs or other opportunities for affordable housing.

“Congress could play a role in incentivizing through taxes through incentives of many different items,” Brady said. “State legislatures and municipalities, big cities, they have to take the appropriate actions to provide policy and legislation.”

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(The Center Square) – Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are blocked from entering churches of Cooperative Baptists, Quakers and Sikhs to carry out enforcement operations unless they have a warrant, or in certain specified circumstances, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.

Upholding last year’s preliminary injunction, the appellate court’s unanimous decision from a three-judge panel also applies to other agents in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The injunction restored part of a sensitive location policy that had been revoked by Homeland Security.

Many churches within CBF since have posted signage letting everyone, including immigrants to America who broke the law when entering the country, know that their location is protected by the injunction. To enter America from another country, if not a U.S. citizen, a visa or some other travel authorization is required to be presented at a port of entry.

In a statement, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley said in part, “We remain steadfast in our commitment to religious liberty, local church autonomy and the clear separation of church and state. For decades, our congregations have faithfully engaged in ministry among immigrants and refugees, offering a bold and courageous witness to the remarkable and relentless love of Christ. We give thanks that the court has preserved these protections while the case moves forward, allowing our congregations to worship and minister freely.”

Prior guidelines from 2021 in the Biden administration are to be followed. Requests for comment by the government from multiple outlets were declined or not answered.

The panel of judges included Barbara Keenan, Steven Agee and Pamela Harris. They were nominated by, respectively, Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Obama.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was born in Atlanta in 1991, bringing together moderate and progressive Baptists. While first stating it was not to rival the more entrenched Southern Baptist Convention, CBF did begin as a response to fundamentalism and conservative surges in the SBC. Issues prompting divide included inerrancy in Scripture, the role of women, and a route for global missions and ministry in line with moderate values.

Many churches have, or had, dual alignment with both organizations for years. Headquartered in Decatur, Ga., there are more than 1,800 member and partner churches and approximately 750,000 members of CBF.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has organizations mostly in the South and mid-Atlantic, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas.

The Catholic Church, at roughly 61.8 million members, is the largest faith-based group or denomination in America. Southern Baptists are the largest protestant denomination at 17.6 million.

There are an estimated 500,000 or more Sikhs. Quakers number about 100,000 or less nationwide.

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(The Center Square) - Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has signed a pair of executive orders that fast-track environmental permitting for critical minerals and rare earth production as part of an effort to attract heavy industries to the state.

Landry’s Expedited Environmental Permitting order gives the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and other state agencies 90 days from the August 12 signing to submit comprehensive reports providing details on categories of permits that can be permanently expedited.

A companion executive order, JML 26-079, Securing Louisiana’s Critical Minerals Supply Chain, identifies heavy rare earth extraction and advanced chemical processing as vital to local job creation and national defense.

When he signed the orders, Landry described them in a Facebook video as tools to help small and large businesses navigate a “labyrinth of regulatory permitting.”

Landry said, “For decades now, the federal government has basically bogged down both small and large businesses into a ‘labyrinth of regulatory permitting bureaucracy.’ And really and truly, it has killed businesses and jobs across the country.”

In one of the two orders signed on Aug. 12 but announced on Aug. 17, Landry declares it is Louisiana policy to “aggressively pursue, support, and expand the domestic production, refinement, and processing of critical minerals, with a specific focus on alumina and its byproducts.”

The nation’s only active alumina refinery in Gramercy holds large amounts of bauxite residue. The governor’s executive order mandates that state agencies accelerate the permitting review process for ElementUSA, which is building an $850 million facility to refine this industrial byproduct—often referred to as “red mud”—so it can be processed into metals needed for national defense like gallium, scandium, iron, and titanium.

In June 2025, the Atlantic/Atalco Alumina refinery in Gramercy was cited for 23 environmental violations after its earthen levees breached, spilling toxic red mud containing arsenic and chromium directly into public waterways that empty into the Blind River Swamp.

Landry said in one of the orders that “by harnessing state-level resources, aggressively cutting bureaucratic red tape, and prioritizing world-class industrial infrastructure, Louisiana will drive the American resurgence in critical minerals and materials production, creating thousands of high-paying jobs for our citizens.”

“We’re in a race to beat China,” Landry said in the Facebook video. “And China has been beating us for decades, but all of a sudden under the Trump administration, he’s made national security an important and integral part of America’s economy. And you do that by securing our critical minerals supply chain.”

Syrah, the only commercial-scale supplier of refined, battery-grade natural graphite outside of China, is in the early stages of $586 million expansion of a plant in Vidalia along the Mississippi River that began production in 2024. The Phase 3 expansion project requires construction of six large buildings and three power distribution centers on previously undeveloped land adjacent to the river.

Australia-based critical minerals producer Syrah signed contracts with Tesla and Ford in 2021 and 2022 to supply 99.9% pure graphite for EV batteries.

Natural graphite was officially designated a critical mineral in May 2018 by the Department of the Interior, following President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13817. The directive cited a dangerous domestic dependency on foreign adversarial nations—specifically China—for 100% of the United States’ natural graphite supply as a strategic vulnerability to the nation’s defense industrial base.

The Governor said in one of the executive orders that development of critical mineral and rare earth production in Louisiana could place additional strain on the state’s electrical grid, and he strongly encouraged the Louisiana Public Service Commission to further evaluate grid reliability in major industrial corridors. The governor urged the PSC to explore “special industrial power rates” to lower operational costs for large-scale critical minerals and rare earth processors.

Consumer advocates contend granting discounted energy rates to large industrial users often force everyday residential utility ratepayers to pay for upgrading utility grids and power generation capacity.

Aclara Resources is planning a late-2026 groundbreaking on a $277 million heavy rare earth separation facility at the Port of Vinton in southwest Louisiana. In June, Louisiana awarded Aclara a five-year, $20.8 million local property tax exemption under the state’s revamped Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP). In central Louisiana, Ucore Rare Metals is now scaling up its Strategic Metals Complex at Alexandria’s England Airpark with initial production expected to begin in the first half of 2027.

Environmental watchdogs emphasize that rare earth element processing is historically one of the world’s most toxic industrial sectors. In China, which dominates 90% of global refining, rare earth processing has relied on open-air chemical leaching ponds that left behind radioactive waste lakes and severely contaminated regional groundwater.

While the emerging U.S. critical mineral and rare earth processors tout themselves as a cleaner alternative to Chinese producers – claiming that their use of closed-loop recycling and chemical waste reclamation reduces environmental harms – environmental advocacy groups have argued fast-tracking state permits risks creating blind spots in Louisiana’s oversight of fragile wetland ecosystems.

The Center Square reached out to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and did not receive a response.

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(The Center Square) – The Trump administration unveiled a proposed rule clarifying that hundreds of thousands of noncitizen taxpayers are ineligible for refunds from four individual income tax credits. The move could save the U.S. up to $2.6 billion in 2026.

The Treasury Department and IRS said Wednesday that the refundable portions of the adoption tax credit, the Child Tax Credit, the American Opportunity Tax Credit for undergraduate education costs, and the Earned Income Tax Credit qualify as “federal public benefits” under the pending rule.

That means only U.S. citizens and “qualified aliens” could claim the refundable portion of those tax credits, which an estimated 29 million taxpayers receive each year.

“Under President Trump, the days of illegal aliens collecting taxpayer-funded benefits are over. The federal law is clear, and Treasury is enforcing it,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

“American taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for benefits going to those who are barred by law from receiving them. These proposed regulations end the abuse, protect the integrity of the tax system, and put Americans first.”

If enacted, the rule would disqualify 200,000 to 700,000 noncitizens from claiming the credit refunds, saving anywhere from $700 million to $2.6 billion in 2026, the rule draft estimates.

The term “qualified aliens” includes permanent residents; asylees; refugees; migrants residing in the U.S. on parole for at least one year; migrants whose deportation is withheld due to the dangers of returning to their home country; and certain Cuban, Haitian, and Pacific Islander migrants.

That means many migrants who illegally entered the U.S. and were admitted on parole under the Biden administration would still be eligible for the tax credit refunds. The rule also specifies that only one spouse on joint tax returns must be a U.S. citizen or “qualified alien” in order to claim the four tax credit refunds.

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(The Center Square) – Other states should take note after the Maryland Tax Court recently struck down that state’s digital advertising tax and ordered refunds to be paid to taxpayers for more than five years worth of collections, according to The Tax Foundation.

“You see Illinois, Utah, Washington officials, they’re looking very closely at this decision because they see a preview of what might be coming for them,” Tax Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Jared Walczak told The States by The Center Square Wednesday.

Maryland’s tax court struck down the first-in-the-nation digital advertising tax on Aug. 14. The court issued the ruling in response to challenges brought by technology companies like Google, Apple and Peacock TV.

The court ruled “that Congress could not have been any clearer that it did not want internet services of any kind taxed unless other similar services in the broader sense were taxed.”

The tax has been in effect for over five years. The court also ordered taxes paid as part of the law be refunded back to those who were impacted by the tax.

“They had originally projected about $250 million a year in revenue. They’ve been lower than that, but it’s been over $100 million each year,” Walczak said. “So we’re talking probably $500-700 million dollars that they have to refund in one year because this had been collected for all these years when they knew it was likely unconstitutional, but kept collecting it.”

Signaling a potential appeal, Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman responded to the court’s ruling with a statement reported by MarylandMatters.org.

“I respect but strongly disagree with the decision,” the statement said. “I will continue to work with the Attorney General of Maryland in defending this important law, which aligns Maryland’s tax code with the reality of today’s economy, ensures that the country’s biggest tech companies pay their fair share, and provides essential support to Maryland’s public school systems.”

On Tuesday, the Maryland Chamber of Commerce said Friday’s ruling raises bigger questions about the state’s overall finances.

“Maryland is already confronting a projected multibillion-dollar structural budget deficit – approximately $3.1 billion and expected to grow in the years ahead,” the group said in a statement. “If the digital advertising tax revenue ultimately disappears, it adds another challenge to a fiscal outlook that is already unsustainable.”

For other states that have either enacted similar laws or are thinking about it, Walczak has a warning.

“Utah and Illinois just adopted digital advertising taxes this year. And then Washington does it a little differently,” he said. “But they did put digital advertising within their sales tax. So those three states very much have exposure here if this ruling is replicated elsewhere, as I think it very much could be.”

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(The Center Square) – A hurdle to adding the final country to the list of temporary protected status terminations has been eliminated as the Trump administration continues to crack down on immigration, with refugee numbers at a record low.

A Boston judge, Brian Murphy, lifted a final administrative stay, ending TPS for over 5,000 Ethiopians in the U.S. under the program, marking the 13th country with TPS status to be terminated in President Donald Trump’s second term.

Those countries include Afghanistan, Burma, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security argued in a social media post that the program “was used as a defacto amnesty program,” adding “those days are over” as the agency warns those with terminated TPS status are now in the country “illegally” and “they must leave now or be swiftly deported.”

The news comes as the Pew Research Center released a new report showing that the U.S. government has admitted the fewest refugees, potentially eclipsing COVID-era figures.

During the first 10 months of fiscal year 2026, the government has admitted 10,258 refugees: 10,255 from South Africa and three from Afghanistan. It’s down from 38,102 in fiscal year 2025 and 100,034 in fiscal year 2024. In fiscal year 2025, the majority of refugees were from Afghanistan; in 2024, the majority came from the Congo, followed by Afghanistan.

In addition to the lower numbers. The Trump administration has lowered the ceiling set for admissions to 17,500, meaning the administration could still admit over 7,000 refugees before the fiscal year ends Sept. 30. Pew notes the “ceiling is the lowest that the U.S. government has had since at least the turn of the century.”

Pew added that the U.S. has been the world leader in accepting refugees since World War II, with the U.S. “consistently ranked among the world’s top two countries for resettling refugees.”

However, the U.S. now admits fewer refugees than Canada and Australia, according to Pew, citing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

According to a 2018 report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, at the time, the annual cost to taxpayers was $1.8 billion, ballooning to $8.8 billion over five years, attributing those numbers to refugees’ access to welfare and other government assistance programs, estimating the cost per refugee coming under $79,600 during their first five years as a refugee in the U.S.

The Center Square previously reported that many refugees qualified for over a dozen costly federal benefits, highlighting that hundreds of thousands of refugees admitted during the Biden administration from countries such as Afghanistan and Somalia resulted in skyrocketing funding for the Refugee and Entrant Assistance programs.

The funding rose from less than $2 billion in fiscal year 2021, the last year of President Donald Trump’s first term, to nearly $9 billion the next fiscal year – the first year of former President Joe Biden’s administration. The influx of Afghan refugees contributed significantly to the substantial increase in refugee funding.

The benefits refugees are eligible to receive include: Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Women, Infants and Children (WIC), HUD Public Housing and Section 8 housing vouchers, emergency Medicaid, Affordable Care Act health plans and subsidies, full-scope Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), federal student aid and Pell grants, REAL ID, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act services, refugee resettlement programs through the Office of Refugee Resettlement and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), according to the National Immigration Law Center.

For those who didn’t qualify for SSI or TANF, refugees were eligible for up to 12 months of Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) through the ORR.

In addition, many refugees qualified for employment assistance through Refugee Support Services, which included: childcare, transportation, “employability services,” job training and preparation, job search assistance, placement and retention, English language training, translation and interpreter services, and case management, according to the Administration for Children and Families Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The ORR also noted that “some clients may be eligible for specialized programs such as health services, technical assistance for small business start-ups and financial savings.” Many refugees also qualified for “immigration-related legal assistance” to assist them “on their pathway to obtaining a permanent status.”

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(The Center Square) – Gov. Greg Abbott is pushing back against a request to extradite a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in custody in Texas, saying he doesn’t trust Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Abbott has been critical of Walz over the past year in response to extensive welfare fraud being investigated and prosecuted in Minnesota.

Walz issued an extradition request in June for ICE officer Christian Castro, who is in custody in Cameron County, Texas. The Texas Rangers arrested him in May after Minnesota prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest. Castro faces four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime after being accused of firing into a Minneapolis home, striking a Venezuelan national’s leg.

Abbott didn’t respond to the extradition request, prompting Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to sue. A lawsuit filed on Tuesday requests a federal judge to require Abbott to sign the extradition order. It also asks the judge to issue a temporary restraining order to require Cameron County Sheriff Manuel Trevino not to release Castro until he’s in custody in Minnesota.

“Gov. Abbott’s withholding of the rendition warrant threatens to deprive Minnesota of its constitutional right to Castro’s return,” Ellison’s office said in a statement, The Center Square reported. “Furthermore, because Texas law mandates Castro’s discharge from custody after 90 days, Abbott’s continued refusal to extradite creates a substantial risk that Castro will be released from custody and flee Texas to avoid prosecution in Minnesota.”

At a campaign event in Austin on Tuesday, Abbott said he wasn’t going to comply or respond.

“Well, first of all, I don’t trust Tim Walz on anything, let alone something like this. While they’re making demands, I have a demand of my own: it’s time for Minnesota to step up and repay the United States of America and Americans for all the fraud that they’ve committed in their state through federal programs,” he said. “I will not respond to them at all until they step up and do what’s right and they acknowledge their fault and the fraud that took place and they fully repay The United States of America for the fraud they committed.”

In January, Abbott directed state agencies to investigate the potential misuse of taxpayer money in Texas’ Child Care Services Program after billions of dollars worth of welfare fraud had been perpetrated against 14 Minnesota Medicaid-funded welfare programs, The Center Square reported.

At the time, at least 98 people had been charged, including 85 Somalians. Sixty were previously found guilty resulting from a multi-agency and multi-year federal investigation, The Center Square reported.

In another Minnesota fraud case, Haitian and Yemeni nationals were charged with stealing tens of millions of dollars from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the Biden administration, The Center Square reported.

In response, Texas Republican U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn filed a bill to make federal benefit fraud a deportable offense, including requiring citizenship revocation, The Center Square reported. The Trump administration began this process last year. The State Department has revoked more than 175,000 visas in 20 months, including for those who committed welfare fraud, The Center Square reported.

Earlier this year, Abbott directed state agencies to investigate potential Medicaid fraud in Texas “given the recent allegations of Medicaid benefits fraud” in Minnesota and other states. He also directed state agencies to assist with federal housing program fraud.

While several state-administered welfare programs in Texas do accept Medicaid funding, Texas does not have Medicaid-funded housing or similar programs that were created by the Walz administration. Texas is also one of several Republican-led states that chose not to expand Medicaid provisions.

After the fraud cases broke, Walz dropped his reelection bid for governor.

Minnesota has sent 11 extradition requests to Texas in the last five years, which Abbott has signed, according to the lawsuit.

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(The Center Square) – Despite crime down across the country, antisemitic crimes remain high as 2025 marked the “third highest year on record” for hate crimes targeting Jewish people, according to a new FBI report.

The FBI reported that 1,528 anti-Jewish hate crimes were reported in 2025, down from 1,938 in 2024. Though nearly two-thirds of the 2,408 religiously based hate crimes in 2025 were attributed to antisemitism.

The Anti-Defamation League says the “recent data marks the third-highest year on record of anti-Jewish hate crimes, which markedly increased since October 2, 2023,” when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel.

The group conducts an annual national audit of antisemitic incidents, compiling a list of assault, harassment and vandalism, concluding last year was the third highest on record “for reported incidents.”

Despite the high numbers of antisemitic incidents, hate crimes overall decreased from 11,679 to 10,881 from 2024-2025, in line with a nationwide decline in crime.

The group warns that the alarming numbers are a symptom of a growing problem around the world, adding that a slight decline in numbers should not distract from combatting antisemitic hate.

“Behind every one of these numbers is a person who was targeted simply for being Jewish, whether through vandalism, intimidation, or violence. In 2025, that hate turned deadly, not just here at home, but around the world. 2025 was the deadliest year for antisemitic attacks in the Jewish diaspora in more than three decades, with 20 people murdered globally simply for being Jewish,” Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer of the ADL, said. “We cannot allow a modest yet positive decline in the topline domestic numbers to obscure the reality that antisemitism remains one of the most persistent and dangerous forms of hate in this country and beyond.”

In July, the New York Police Department was investigating an attack after two people, including a Jewish male and an Asian male, were stabbed in separate attacks in New York City as possible hate crimes.

Witnesses told police the suspect yelled “Allahu Akbar” or “God is Great” in Arabic during both attacks.

City Council Speaker Julie Menin said she was “absolutely sickened and furious by what appears to be an antisemitic stabbing.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul also commented on the attack via social media, saying she was “disgusted by what appears to be another senseless attack on New Yorkers simply because they’re Jewish.”

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(The Center Square) – In Michigan, center of the U.S. auto manufacturing, just a week can make a dime’s worth of difference in the price of a gallon of gas these days.

Michigan’s average gasoline price is $4.21 per gallon, according to GasBuddy, a website that tracks prices nationally.

That is 9.1 cents higher than it was just a week ago and $1.13 higher than a year ago.

The record high for Michigan was $5.21 a gallon in 2022.

Michigan currently has the 20th most expensive gas in the U.S., GasBuddy said.

Prices are rising across the country, topping $4 a gallon for the national average, also more than a dollar from a year ago.

“Average gasoline prices climbed back above $4 per gallon over the last week, with prices rising in slightly more states than they fell, as rebounding oil prices driven by the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz and ongoing Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries kept upward pressure on the market,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at the website, GasBuddy. “While the seasonal transition to cheaper winter-blend gasoline in the coming month could bring some relief, the two dominant challenges facing motorists – the closed Strait and the ongoing refinery strikes – show no signs of resolving anytime soon. Until they do, the path for gas and diesel prices remains tilted to the upside.”

Louisiana, South Carolina and Alabama had the lowest averages with California, ($5.56), Hawaii ($5.43), and Washington with the highest.

The American Automobile Association had a similar outlook for fuel prices.

“Drivers are seeing some relief at the pump as earlier declines in crude oil prices filter through the market,” AAA spokeswoman Montrae Waiters said in a statement. “However, ongoing uncertainty surrounding global oil supplies could shift the trend and put upward pressure on gas prices in the coming weeks.”

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(The Center Square) – The state of Minnesota filed criminal charges against two people for $1.5 million in alleged Medicaid Fraud, the state’s attorney general said, including one who was reportedly honored by the state as an “outstanding refugee.

Minnesota charged Salman Ahmed Elmi with eight felony counts, Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a news release.

“From 2024 through 2026, Elmi operated Reva Health in Golden Valley,” Ellison said. “Reva claimed to provide adult rehabilitative mental health services to Medicaid recipients. In fact, Elmi and other co-conspirators at Reva falsified documentation to obtain Medicaid reimbursement, instructed employees to pay recipients illegal kickbacks in exchange for those recipients’ permission to use their personal information in support of false claims for Medicaid reimbursements, utilized ineligible providers to provide ARMHS to recipients, and falsely claimed to have provided ARMHS with adequate supervision when there was little to no, in fact.”

In 2021I, Elmi was honored by the state of Minnesota as an “outstanding refugee,” according to local media reports.

Ellison alleges Elmi and others at the company also created false documents to get Medicaid reimbursements and told employees to pay illegal kickbacks to use personal information to support false claims.

In another case, Mohamed Haji Rashid has been charged with nine felonies for billing for Medicaid services that never provided or were ineligible for Medicaid reimbursement, Ellison said.

Rashid operated Liberty Home Health Care in Minneapolis and Columbia Heights.

“Liberty provided personal care assistant services and home and community based services to Medicaid recipients in the Twin Cities,” Ellison said. “Liberty billed for PCA services that its PCAs did not provide on over 3,300 separate occasions.”

In one instance, according to Ellison, Rashid told a PCA to report more hours than she worked.

The Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission recently approved a higher classification for a new Medicaid fraud offense created under a recently passed law, moving theft of more than $1 million from Severity Level 7 to Severity Level 8.

“Medicaid fraud steals money meant to provide healthcare to our low-income friends and neighbors,” Ellison said. “It is illegal, and it makes my blood boil, which is why I’m filing these charges and why I’ve built a strong record of holding fraudsters accountable. My team and I have won over 340 Medicaid fraud convictions so far, which is an average of one fraud conviction every eight days since I’ve been your Attorney General.”

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