u/John3262005

The White House has reinstated the UK’s access to the latest AI models for safety testing after lobbying from ministers, The Telegraph can reveal.

The UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) will now be able to access the latest models from US tech companies before they are released, allowing British officials to run safety tests.

Last month, the White House asked Anthropic, OpenAI and other major AI companies to stop sharing their models with AISI, in a major blow to Andy Burnham’s attempt to become a world leader in AI regulation.

After the order from Donald Trump’s Office of the National Cyber Director, Anthropic restricted UK officials from reviewing its new Claude Mythos 5.1 model.

The Telegraph understands that decision has been reversed after lobbying from Kanishka Narayan, the AI minister, and AISI will be given pre-release access to models from Anthropic, Google Deepmind and OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

Mr Burnham’s push for international regulation of AI models comes despite Mr Trump’s warning that “globalist” organisations should not interfere with the development of models by American companies.

Mr Trump told the United Nations General Assembly last month that he wanted to “encourage” AI, “not rein it in”.

He said: “Americans have never been a nation that retreats from a frontier or shrinks from a challenge, no matter how great or how daunting that challenge may be.”

However, in a speech on Monday, Mr Narayan will warn that tech companies cannot be left to regulate themselves, and will announce a series of new measures to reduce the risk of AI to the Government, companies and the public.

He will announce changes to Labour’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, which will strengthen the requirement for companies working on critical national infrastructure projects to report to the Government any security breaches using AI.

Ministers are also planning to increase the Government’s use of frontier AI – the most recent and advanced models – to protect Whitehall departments from cyber attacks.

On Sunday, it was reported that the heads of MI6, MI5 and GCHQ had warned ministers that AI had empowered hostile actors and terrorists who could use it to shut down sensitive sites or obtain confidential information.

Mr Narayan will also announce more support from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) – an offshoot of GCHQ – for companies to defend themselves from AI-powered attacks.

Cybersecurity officials in the NCSC, Cabinet Office and Department for Culture, Media and Sport will be given greater resources to investigate and respond to incidents.

A source said the speech would be a “genuinely significant intervention” on the risks posed by AI companies and their products, while signalling that Britain would defend itself using AI where necessary.

Britain has attempted to pitch itself as a global leader on AI regulation through the AISI, which is more advanced than its international competitors.

Mr Burnham said during his speech to the UN that Britain would use its presidency of the G20 next year to press for further global collaboration on AI.

He told world leaders he hoped the UK would act as an “honest broker” to draw up “a single set of global principles and standards” for the development of AI models.

He said: “In a divided world, we have the ability to bring people together – and we will.

“We are going to step into that role. And we are going to start with one of the most significant challenges and opportunities of our age – frontier AI.”

He claimed that the UK was working “hand in glove” with American AI companies – a statement that was undermined when the White House blocked Britain’s regulator from accessing the latest models.

President Donald Trump must cancel any remaining television commercials paid for with millions of dollars in taxpayer money to promote his political message, a federal judge ordered on Sunday night, even as the administration said the ad campaign was coming to an end.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon in New York sided with a coalition, including the nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause, that challenged the ads and called them an illegal misuse of funds. She told the administration to cancel any remaining ads, including any set to air Sunday night, in granting a temporary restraining order.

“Defendants shall not enter into, renew, or expand any agreement authorizing the development, creation, dissemination, placement, or airing of the challenged advertisements” during the two-week duration of her order, the judge said.

The Trump administration is threatening to stop the procurement system that provides Ukraine with weapons in order to press Kyiv to halt its deep strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, according to officials in Europe.

The officials, who received calls from American officials on Saturday and Sunday or were briefed on them, said the US was lobbying European capitals and Kyiv in an attempt to end the attacks on Russian oil refineries. The White House declined to confirm or comment on the calls.

The US message, the officials added, included threats to cut off intelligence sharing and Purl — the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List mechanism for procuring US weapons for Ukraine.

“They are calling Kyiv . . . they are calling everyone [in Europe],” said an official who received a call from a US defence official.

Purl is a Nato-managed initiative through which Kyiv’s allies purchase US-made weapons that are then supplied to Ukraine. The US does not make a financial contribution to the fund. 

One person who said he was contacted by US officials was Pavlo Palisa, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s military adviser and former general of Ukraine’s 93rd mechanised brigade.

US President Donald Trump on Sunday surprised Kyiv and the Europeans his administration had sought to pressure, when he announced on social media that Ukraine and Russia had reached a ceasefire to halt attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure.

“Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said on Sunday evening that Trump’s announcement of an energy ceasefire was “good news for everyone — and it is important that it becomes reality”.

“Unfortunately, Ukrainian skies have been infested with Russian ‘shahed’ [drones] all day today,” he said. “There have been glide-bomb strikes and strikes on our energy infrastructure too. A power plant in Kharkiv was attacked this evening.

“Ukraine has proposed many de-escalatory steps. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin had one answer to all of them – ‘nyet’ [no], Zelenskyy added. “We do hope that he will finally say something to America, Ukraine, and the entire world that will lead to a real and dignified peace . . . and we expect Putin to follow through on what President Trump said.”

It was not immediately clear whether Russia had agreed to the deal.

The White House also declined to say whether Trump would heed Zelenskyy’s proposal to force Putin to accept a total ceasefire for 60 days so that Ukraine could hold elections.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, as America’s newly minted ambassador to Greece, boasted at Davos about her close ties to two Greek tycoons and said they were bankrolling her high-rolling trips around the world.

According to people who heard the conversation and an audio recording reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Guilfoyle was flexing her connections to wealthy Greek businessmen in January as she made an urgent request. She was being blocked from attending an upcoming dinner being held for Eric Trump, and she wanted to enlist an American businessman who was on the guest list to help get her in the door.

“You know, I can deliver the world to you. Which you deserve,” she said, according to the recording. “I’m going to make you a lot of f—ing money,” she said at another point in the exchange with the businessman.

She expressed fury at not being on the list for the dinner, which was being organized by Greek House Davos. “You don’t have the f—ing U.S., you know, ambassador to Greece not come. She should be kissing my f—ing ass,” Guilfoyle said of the event’s organizer.

In the end, Guilfoyle was able to score a last-minute seat. The chairwoman of Greek House Davos, Irene Vantaraki, said that her team “had to manage a small crisis [that] affected a number of high-profile guests” and that “some were disappointed.” Guilfoyle was “gracious and discreet” and left the dinner early, she said.

Guilfoyle had flown to the January 2026 World Economic Forum on a private jet with Alexandros Exarchou, chief executive of the Greek construction company Aktor Group, she acknowledged on the recording.

Governments from Bulgaria to Albania were encouraged by Guilfoyle to do business with Exarchou and buy billions of dollars of American natural gas from his company, the Journal has reported. The Greek businessman was, she said in the recording, “my people.”

He wasn’t the only businessman facilitating Guilfoyle’s travels. She was also planning to fly later that month to Paris, on a jet with a Greek shipping tycoon, Nikolas Tsakos, to attend his wife’s fashion show, she said in the recording. They had spent part of the holiday season together in the exclusive ultraluxury Swiss resort of Gstaad.

“I see Nikos every f—ing day,” she said in the recording. “I’m flying with him to Paris. I’m with him for a f—ing week.… He loves me. Honey, I spent Christmas with him. New Years. OK? Gstaad. Like, everywhere.”

When the ambassador checked into Paris’s Four Seasons Hotel George V—a favored hotel of Hollywood A-listers and African and Middle Eastern leaders—the bill fell to Tsakos, CEO of Tsakos Energy Navigation, according to people familiar with the matter. Guilfoyle would post 20 photos of herself at the event to her two million Instagram followers, dressed in several designer gowns, including two with Tsakos.

Tsakos’s financing of her travel hasn’t been previously reported. Tsakos and his wife didn’t respond to requests for comment. Aktor Group, through lawyers, declined to comment. The lawyers for Aktor have said Guilfoyle wasn’t improperly promoting Aktor’s commercial interests.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Athens said that the ambassador’s “career in and out of public service is guided by deep and abiding values” and that she had “faithfully followed State Department ethics and gift reporting guidelines.”

“The unsubstantiated claims are simply a distraction from the great work she is doing in Greece and the broader Eastern Mediterranean,” the spokesman said.

The new revelations come as top Trump administration officials are deliberating what to do about an ambassador who was once set to marry into the first family, yet is now evolving into a political liability ahead of the 2026 midterms. Administration officials are discussing whether she should be removed, and a decision is expected by President Trump soon, aides said.

The State Department’s inspector general is investigating whether Guilfoyle received gifts or favors from private businessmen, a person familiar with the matter said.

On Wednesday, the Journal published text messages showing Guilfoyle asked a Trump donor to send $100,000 to her American Express account, and in return offered help in getting the Trump administration to look into the donor’s personal tax and legal issues. A lawyer for Guilfoyle disputed the authenticity of the messages but declined to provide specifics.

“I just heard about it. It’s too bad,” Trump told reporters of the reporting on Guilfoyle as he left the White House on Friday. “I mean, I don’t know. She’s an ambassador.… She was always very nice.”

Last week, Guilfoyle came under fire from Democrats on the Senate and House foreign-affairs committees, who urged the State Department to review her conduct after the Journal investigation revealed the ambassador’s efforts to promote Aktor, the Greek firm whose CEO had flown her to Davos.

The revelations have been a disruption for the White House and State Department. Guilfoyle spent several days reaching out to people in and around the administration, denying that she had sent the texts soliciting credit-card relief, and seeking their support.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio learned about her text messages from the Journal’s request for comment as he was on a plane to Athens, where he would deliver a speech standing before the Acropolis, “on whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world.” Aides were frustrated and feared the revelations would overshadow Rubio’s marquee address, according to people familiar with the discussions. Guilfoyle joined Rubio for multiple events during his visit.

Yet as Rubio departed Athens on Thursday, he declined to discuss the text messages reported by the Journal. “We don’t conduct these things in a press conference on a tarmac in a foreign country because you wrote a story,” he told reporters. Guilfoyle was on the tarmac to see him off.

Vice President JD Vance, asked about the Journal’s reporting on Friday, declined to take a stance. “These are accusations,” he said. “Let’s see what the truth is. And obviously, if there was something bad that happened, then people have to suffer consequences.”

Some former Trump officials expressed skepticism that Guilfoyle would face consequences. Stephanie Grisham, first lady Melania Trump’s former spokeswoman, wrote in a post on X: “She knows far too much about the Trump family/inner circle & I imagine they like her as far away as possible. An angry KG stateside would not be a good thing for Trumpworld.”

In recent days, congressional Democrats have intensified their calls for Guilfoyle to face an investigation or be ousted from her role—or both.

In a letter to Guilfoyle on Friday, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called for an “immediate investigation” into whether the ambassador had violated federal bribery and public corruption laws. Meeks also requested the State Department inspector general investigate whether Guilfoyle had violated federal law, department regulations or ethics requirements.

California Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, in a letter to Guilfoyle on Thursday said the reported conduct “raises serious public corruption and national security concerns” and requested she provide financial records and copies of her communications with certain government officials.

President Trump called Saturday for Ukraine to replace President Volodymyr Zelensky with someone willing to make a deal with Russia to end the war.

Trump's attack on Zelensky came after the Ukrainian president criticized his diesel deal with Russia and signals the most serious crisis between the two leaders since their February 2025 meeting exploded in front of cameras.

Trump announced Friday he had reached a deal with Russia to lift sanctions to allow Russian diesel exports to the U.S. and the global energy market.

Zelensky, who was surprised by the deal made behind Ukraine's back, attacked the move and told Axios it was "not fair and not honest" and was a "sign of weakness" by Trump and a "birthday gift" to Putin.

A U.S. official told Axios later that Trump struck the diesel fuel deal after Zelensky ignored half a dozen U.S. requests to stop attacking Russian oil refineries.

Trump said Zelensky could have reached a deal with Russia many times "but chooses not to."

"I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal," Trump told reporters Saturday. "… And I think it's time for Ukraine to get a new president."

He said he asked Zelensky to stop attacking Russian oil refineries and claimed Zelensky's actions harmed American farmers.

"He better damn well stop," Trump said.

Two Democratic governors with presidential aspirations are spending money and time in Tennessee to boost the party’s U.S. House candidates ahead of the November midterm election.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s political action committee, PAC, Ready for the Fight, has purchased around $1.6 million in television advertisements in Nashville and Memphis over the next four weeks, according to a Lookout analysis of Federal Communications Commission public inspection files.

Ready for the Fight has raised $20 million from Pritzker, a Democrat, according to Politico. The group’s ad attacks Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor in his Tennessee 9th U.S. Congressional race against Democratic state Rep. Justin J. Pearson.

“The new ads are part of Ready for the Fight’s commitment to compete aggressively in places Democrats too often write off,” said PAC officials in a news release.

While Pritzker is spending in the state, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear visited Tennessee earlier this week to endorse Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder in his campaign for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District. A Nashville fundraiser Beshear headlined for Molder raised about $130,000.

Both Pritzker and Beshear are considered potential Democratic Party presidential candidates in 2028. They are trying to boost the party’s chances of winning a congressional seat in Tennessee despite an unfavorable map.

Tennessee state lawmakers redrew the state’s U.S. House map in May at President Donald Trump’s urging. The goal was to eliminate the last Democratic-held Tennessee congressional seat in Memphis by splitting the majority Black city across three House seats.

The new map created nine districts that Trump won by 20 percentage points each in the 2024 election, with analysts favoring Republicans to win all nine of the new districts.

Erin Covey, head of the Cook Political Report’s U.S. House rating, previously told the Lookout that even in an environment where the Democratic Party sees a national blue wave, picking up any of Tennessee’s congressional districts would be difficult.

But Covey added that the party’s best shot in Tennessee would be the 5th, where Molder is running against Republican former Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher, and the 9th.

“Democrats are running serious campaigns that have raised a lot of money and have enthusiasm,” Covey said.

The Ready for the Fight advertisement attacks Taylor for supporting Trump’s war in Iran, while praising Pearson.

Taylor said the advertisement showed he’s the frontrunner in the race.

“Justin Pearson is a far-left Democrat Socialist just like Pritzker,” said Taylor. “Pearson’s specialty is communism. Mine is common sense.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, DCCC, has put both the 5th and 9th in its 2026 Red to Blue list of seats it plans to dedicate resources to as the party tries to regain control of the U.S. House.

The DCCC has nearly four dozen House races on its Red to Blue list and would need to flip four seats while holding all its current ones to take the majority.

Cook rates all nine of Tennessee’s congressional districts as solid Republican, the highest GOP favorability rating it gives when classifying the races.

Gov. JB Pritzker joined executives from Viakable Manufacturing, 2969 Chartres St., on Wednesday to announce a $55 million expansion of the company’s La Salle facility, creating 50 new full-time jobs and retaining 65 existing positions.

“I’m proud that Viakable is doubling down on their commitment to Illinois as a key partner in our economic vision and world-class manufacturing ecosystem,” Pritzker said. “Investments like this are helping Illinois build an even stronger foundation for long-term sustainable prosperity that is being felt in communities across the state.”

Viakable, a subsidiary of Mexican industrial conglomerate Xignux, has operated in La Salle since 2018, which was its first manufacturing operation in the United States. Approximately $150 million has been invested in the operation since then, according to remarks by Deborah Phillips, president and CEO of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.

The expansion will construct a 22,000-square-foot addition and install 17 advanced machines, upgrading critical utilities including a new electrical substation to boost capacity in wire drawing, cabling, extrusion and packaging, according to a news release. The EDGE agreement shows approximately 61% of Viakable’s U.S. sales volume will be manufactured in Illinois.

“This investment reflects our long-term commitment to La Salle, Illinois, and to the future of manufacturing in North America,” said Juan Ignacio Garza Herrera, CEO of Xignux. “By strengthening our operation here, we will be better positioned to serve our customers, create quality jobs and expand our capabilities in the U.S.”

The expansion resulted from Pritzker’s trade mission to Mexico, which focused on deepening economic ties and attracting new business investments to Illinois, according to a news release.

The state supported the project through its EDGE incentive program. So far in 2026, companies participating in EDGE have committed to creating nearly 6,000 new jobs and more than $2.6 billion in investments, according to a news release from the governor’s office.

“Continued investment in the Illinois Valley is great news for La Salle and the hardworking men and women who call this region home,” said State Senator Sue Rezin (R-Morris) in a news release. “Manufacturing has long been an important part of our local economy, and I am excited to see another local employer choosing to invest, expand and create opportunities right here in La Salle.”

The executed EDGE agreement, publicly posted by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, was signed by the state on Monday.

The contract commits to no fixed dollar amount. Instead, the annual tax credit is the lesser of 50% of state income tax withholding on newly hired workers plus 10% of training costs or 100% of the withholding on new workers, for up to 100 new employees, which is double the 50 employees Viakable pledged.

The credit runs for 10 consecutive tax years. The company must meet investment and job commitments by a benchmark date of Dec. 31, 2028, according to the agreement.

If Viakable permanently shuts down in Illinois during the agreement term, all credits are recovered. A shortfall in jobs automatically suspends the credit until restored, according to the agreement.

The company said that the investment would not occur without the credit.

A soundstage facility broke ground in Illinois this week, with its owner and Gov. JB Pritzker touting the state’s generous tax credit as a key reason for its existence.

When it’s finished, Hollywood River Studios will feature six soundstages with 144,000 square feet of production space along with an office building and warehouse facilities. The facility is in Wood River, Illinois, about 15 miles north of (and across the Mississippi River from) St. Louis, Missouri.

“Last year, Illinois had more than $700 million in film and television production spending: real dollars going to Illinois businesses and workers, supporting our economy,” Pritzker said at the groundbreaking ceremony. “Hollywood River Studios is adding an important piece to that ecosystem, projecting hundreds of permanent jobs once the development is fully built out, and hundreds more as the campus is developed. That means more people working in the entertainment industry without having to leave the region to tell their stories.”

Pritzker and Hollywood River Studios founder and CEO Christopher Breakwell both touted the state’s production tax credit at the groundbreaking. Illinois offers a 35 percent credit for qualified in-state production spending, plus an additional 5 percent on resident wages outside the Chicago area (Wood River qualifies for that boost) and a further 5 percent for certified green productions.

The possibility of a federal production tax credit also factored into the decision to begin construction on the Wood River facility, the principals noted.

Hollywood River Studios plans to have some facilities ready to house productions by late 2027. Construction firm Spantech is fabricating the stages offsite and will assemble them on location, allowing for a relatively fast build.

Light attack aircraft and military vehicles have arrived at the new China-Laos joint training facility announced last Tuesday, according to satellite images reviewed by Reuters.

The images, taken by commercial satellite provider Vantor, show what security analysts believe are eight K-8 light attack jets ‌and more than two dozen support vehicles on a runway that is still being built — China's latest expansion of its overseas military presence.

Taken on September 30, the day after China's defence ministry announced it had set up the facility at Ban Keun outside the capital Vientiane, the images also show extensive construction work around the runway.

The swift development of the new facility is being closely watched by regional military attaches and security scholars, some of whom say its construction potentially marks China's first fully fledged overseas military base in Southeast Asia.

Despite more than 20 years of intense military modernisation, China is widely perceived to lack a strong network of overseas facilities ⁠beyond the South China Sea, port access in Ream, Cambodia and a logistics base in Djibouti.

Rachel Vandenbrink, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the selection of Ban Keun for a facility that the People's Liberation Army could access "is likely more about a target of opportunity than filling an obvious operational need."

"Laos does have some geostrategic value as an accessible foothold in mainland Southeast Asia, given its shared border with China and infrastructure links, including (its) railway," Vandenbrink said.

The Chinese defence ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

The Lao embassy in Bangkok and the Lao foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Singapore-based security analysts Collin Koh and Alexander Neill, as well as Vantor specialists, said the planes appeared to be Hongdu JL-8 aircraft, which both the Chinese and Lao air forces operate.

Also known as the K-8, the two-seater aircraft is extensively used for training as well as having light attack capabilities. It was jointly developed by ‌China and ⁠Pakistan and is exported to other militaries.

Laos currently has four of the planes, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies' annual assessment of the world's militaries. Koh, a scholar at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, described the Laotian planes as being of "questionable serviceability".

As construction continues, diplomats and analysts are keeping watch for any sign of air defences, ammunition and fuel storage as well as surveillance facilities — all of which could point to the base serving broader military functions beyond training.

Neill said while the airfield looked relatively short and innocuous ⁠at present, it could in future serve larger aircraft, including signals intelligence and electronic-surveillance planes to extend China's reach into Southeast Asia.

"It looks like the airfield has been engineered to accommodate a runway extension allowing larger aircraft to operate," said Neill, an adjunct fellow at Hawaii's Pacific Forum think-tank.

In helping Laos build up Ban Keun, China is now occupying a site the ⁠US used covertly at the height of the Vietnam War.

During the US war against communist forces in Laos in the 1970s, Ban Keun was an airfield known as "Lima Site 44" used by Air America, an airline discreetly owned by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to records shared with Reuters by Ryan Wolfson-Ford, a Southeast Asia specialist at ⁠the Library of Congress.

The airline carried American-backed troops from the country’s Hmong highland minority as well as supplies into rough mountain airstrips known as "Lima Sites".

As early as 1968, Ban Keun was used as a point from where Air America helicopters delivered Hmong troops to other combat zones, said Dr Joachim Leeker, an academic who has written about the history of the airline.

Communities with high birth and marriage rates could soon gain an advantage in securing federal transit money — a long-sought goal of the Trump administration but one that a top Democratic appropriator calls “bizarre and dystopian.”

The Federal Transit Administration wants to revamp a multibillion-dollar program that helps state and local authorities fund infrastructure projects such as rail improvements and new bus lanes. Public feedback on the administration’s plan, which was rolled out Oct. 1, is being accepted through mid-November.

The idea would fulfill a priority of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to steer grant money to parts of the country with birth and marriage rates higher than the national average, a policy initiative he unveiled shortly after being sworn into office early last year.

Under the transit proposal, the FTA would cover up to 10 percentage points more of a project’s costs if an area’s average birth and marriage rates meet, exceed or are just below nationwide thresholds.

“Moving forward, the federal government is focusing on smart, affordable projects with high ridership. If you want federal funding, your project needs to align with where communities and families are actually growing,” the Transportation Department said in a statement.

But the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee had harsh words for the proposal.

“Tying funding for transit projects to marriage rates and how many babies a woman has is the sort of bizarre and dystopian idea you’d expect in a TV show, not actual policy put forth by the U.S. government — yet here we are,” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state said in a statement.

She said President Donald Trump “wants to weaponize federal grants to wage his backward culture wars and punish Democrats.”

A former FTA administrator during the Obama administration also was critical.

“It’s throwing a bone to these ideologues who want to incentivize child rearing and marriage,” said Peter Rogoff, who previously led Sound Transit in the Seattle area and is now a transportation consultant. “But it’s ludicrous on its face to try to achieve that goal through an infrastructure program.

“Does anyone really believe that there are couples out there saying, ‘Hey, sweetheart, you and I should get married and raise a passel of kids because a dozen years from now, maybe they’ll build light rail out to our neighborhood?’” he asked.

Duffy, who has nine children, has urged young people to tie the knot and “have lots of kids.” He’s one of several Cabinet members with big families, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, DHS head Markwayne Mullin and Health and Human Services chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The national fertility rate sank to a record low in 2025 — 53.1 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. Trump has said he will be known as the “fertilization president.”

Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is demanding a retraction from The New York Times over a report that a “windfall” contract for a political donor which was approved by DHS on her last day as its leader.

According to the report, as Noem was preparing to leave DHS, the agency bought five airplanes from the donor’s firm, Daedalus Aviation Corporation, for an astronomical markup. The Times reported Daedalus chairman William Walters donated $10,000 to Noem’s political action committee American Resolve in 2024. They noted that according to the company, “Mr. Walters did not know the group was associated with Ms. Noem at the time,” but an archived look at its homepage shows it solely promoting Noem.

“The Department of Homeland Security agreed to pay the donor’s firm $108 million for a Boeing 737 airliner that had been converted into a massive private jet, complete with a stand-up bar, two bedrooms, marble showers and a table covered in manta ray skin,” the report said, adding that the firm had bought the plane just months earlier for less than $90 million.

In addition, DHS bought two Gulfstream luxury jets and two Boeing 737 passenger planes, all at a hefty markup.

The report said that Noem, who is now a special envoy at the State Department, “declined to answer specific questions about the sale or the prices that her agency had paid.”

But after the fact, Noem raged about the article on X — calling the reporting, “factually incorrect” and “libelous.”

“I write to formally request the retraction entirely or explicit correction of the article titled ‘Kristi Noem’s Agency Gave Her Donor a Lucrative Contract Just Before She Left,'” Noem wrote.

She continued:

The article’s characterization of the individual as a “donor” (confirmed not to be the case) is materially misleading and, as unsupported by the factual record, conveys a false implication of a direct financial relationship obviously intended to influence official action.

Accuracy is fundamental to responsible journalism. If the individual did not personally make political contributions to Secretary Noem, or if the term ‘donor’ instead refers indirectly to unrelated entities or legally distinct contributions, the article simply fails to meet the standards of precision expected of The New York Times.

Numerous times clarifications were made to the journalists responsible for this libelous story. Such wording unfairly prejudices readers and creates an inference of impropriety that is not supported by the underlying facts.

Notably, Noem’s response did not challenge any of the reporting on the contract itself.

Noem was fired from her DHS position in March over controversies involving immigration tactics, as well as “questions about her agency’s awarding of contracts,” the report said. More than $900 million of those contracts went to companies led by Walters.

Noem’s successor, Markwayne Mullin, “explored backing out” of the airplane deal and consulted with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, “who shared his concerns about the possible financial ramifications,” the report said. Despite any reservations, the purchase went ahead as planned.

In a statement to Mediaite, a spokesperson for the Times said, “We stand by the characterization of the political donor and his firm. As our article makes clear, the Department of Homeland Security bought five airplanes from Daedalus at a substantial markup, a deal approved during Ms. Noem’s tenure. Daedalus’s chairman is William Walters, who gave $10,000 to the American Resolve political action committee, a group that existed to support Ms. Noem.”

Kurt Olsen -- an attorney who fought to challenge the results of the 2020 election and was recently appointed by President Donald Trump to serve as the Director of Election Security and Integrity -- sent a referral that sparked last month's raid of a Georgia election site, according to an affidavit unsealed Tuesday.

FBI agents on Jan. 28 seized 700 boxes containing ballots and other materials associated with the 2020 election from Fulton County's Elections Hub and Operations Center after obtaining a search warrant. President Donald Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, that contributed to his election loss.

The raid was the result of allegations of election "deficiencies" on the part of Olsen's referral, according to the court document. Many of these issues were already investigated.

"If these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, it would be a violation of federal law regardless of whether the failure to retain records or the deprivation of a fair tabulation of a vote was outcome determinative for any particular election or race," FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans said in the sworn affidavit, which was the basis for the search warrant that was issued by a magistrate judge.

"Following the November 3, 2020, presidential election, there were many allegations of electoral impropriety relating to the voting process and ballot counting in Fulton County, Georgia. Some of those allegations have been disproven while some of those allegations have been substantiated, including through admissions by Fulton County," Evans said.

Georgia officials audited and certified the results following the election, and numerous lawsuits challenging the election results in the state were rejected by the courts.

Olsen has been involved in the effort to investigate election fraud claims since Trump lost the 2020 election.

He was sanctioned by a federal court in Arizona over an election lawsuit filed there, after the judge found he made "false" statements to the court. Olsen's conduct was also investigated by Special Counsel Jack Smith during his probe into Trump's election interference.

Olsen was appointed a special government employee last fall to investigate fraud claims, sources told ABC News. In his role, Olsen attends frequent meetings at the White House on election security and has been granted access to some classified materials, the sources said.

Among the allegations included in the affidavit were that Fulton County had failed to create a scanned image of each ballot, that some ballots were scanned multiple times, and that some ballot counts were inconsistent.

While the affidavit includes accounts from officials who previously investigated the claims, the application also relies on witnesses with limited direct knowledge who appear to speculate and occasionally contradict one another.

One Georgia resident, whose name is redacted in the affidavit, began "studying" the November 2020 election and filed a state election board complaint in July of 2022, alleging there were 17,852 missing ballot images from the reported results in the Secretary of State's website, the affidavit said.

Some of the witnesses cited in the affidavit are Republican members of the State Election Board and some do not have firsthand accounting of the ballot process, according to the documents.

The Georgia Secretary of State did not take the images of the ballots into account for the recount but instead used the physical copies of the ballots, the affidavit alleges.

"During a Civil Action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections admitted it has not preserved the majority of ballot images from in-person voting for the November 3, 2020, Original Count. This is another impediment to ruling out non-criminal explanations for the activities during the election," the court records say.

The investigation also centers around alleged missing "tabulator tapes" that aren't matching up and witnesses alleging they saw people printing out "random" ballots. It does not appear, based on the witness descriptions, that any were election or voting experts.

The search warrant -- which was approved by a Magistrate judge in the Northern District of Georgia -- covered all the physical ballots from the 2020 election, the tabulator tapes for every voting machine used in Fulton County, the entire 2020 voter roll, and any ballot images from the original vote count.

U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee, a Trump nominee, on Sunday ordered the government to unseal the affidavit that was filed in support of the search warrant, subject to "the redaction of the names of non-governmental witnesses."

In his ruling, Boulee noted that the government did not oppose the unsealing of the affidavit, which could provide more information on the search and the investigation that led to it.

"During a Civil Action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections admitted it has not preserved the majority of ballot images from in-person voting for the November 3, 2020, Original Count. This is another impediment to ruling out non-criminal explanations for the activities during the election," the court records say.

The investigation also centers around alleged missing "tabulator tapes" that aren't matching up and witnesses alleging they saw people printing out "random" ballots. It does not appear, based on the witness descriptions, that any were election or voting experts.

The search warrant -- which was approved by a Magistrate judge in the Northern District of Georgia -- covered all the physical ballots from the 2020 election, the tabulator tapes for every voting machine used in Fulton County, the entire 2020 voter roll, and any ballot images from the original vote count.

Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts filed a motion seeking the unsealing of the affidavit, as well as the return of the election documents that were seized.

Pitt's office said Tuesday it was reviewing the affidavit and that he would hold a news conference in the afternoon.

Pitts had earlier said in a statement he was "pleased" with the judge's ruling.

"Fulton County will continue to pursue every legal option to seek the return of election records and to defend our elections from possible takeover," Pitts said. "Even in the midst of this unprecedented legal action, we will not allow our staff to be deterred or distracted from preparations for the 2026 election, which will be once again free, fair, transparent and legally compliant."

While the judge on Sunday ordered the release of the affidavit that was the basis for the search warrant, the warrant itself authorized the FBI to search for "All physical ballots from the 2020 General Election" in addition to tabulator tapes from voting machines and 2020 voter rolls, according to a copy of the warrant that was obtained by ABC Atlanta affiliate WSB following the raid.

The warrant said the material "constitutes evidence of the commission of a criminal offense."

The warrant listed possible violations of two statutes -- one which requires election records to be retained for a certain amount of time, and another which outlines criminal penalties for people, including election officials, who intimidate voters or to knowingly procure false votes or false voter registrations.

Former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is pulling back the curtain on his tumultuous time working under Pete Hegseth before he resigned in frustration last month.

Driscoll resigned in September after just 18 months in the role, and he has revealed that he and Hegseth had very different views on what a modern military looks like.

Tension between the two was widely reported throughout Driscoll’s year-and-a-half as army secretary, but insiders told Rolling Stone of one incident early on that seemed to trigger Hegseth. According to them, Driscoll had approached Hegseth with what he viewed as a “gift,” telling the defense secretary that they could use his close friendship with Vice President JD Vance to get things done at the Pentagon.

Two sources told the outlet that Hegseth “blew up at him” over that move, fuming that all contact with the White House needed to go through him.

The duo seemed to fail to see eye-to-eye on many issues from that point forward, with Hegseth’s passion for firings and blocking promotions—particularly of DEI candidates—reported to have fueled the tension.

One former senior Army officer told Rolling Stone that Hegseth simply targeted naysayers, particularly those aiming for military modernization over PR opportunities.

“All the guys who had guts and were willing to speak the truth about where we needed to go and what we needed to do, they got rid of, right?” they said.

“Because they want people that are compliant and loyal, not people who think. They’re culture warriors. They care about culture. And it’s only their culture, which is compliance and loyalty above your duty.”

Driscoll was reportedly due for purging before his own resignation, and saw the firing of his pro-modernization ally Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George—who was set to retire in summer 2027—in April this year.

George told the outlet that despite just being down the hall from the secretary of defense, Hegseth fired him in a “15-second call,” and that he was “never really given a reason.”

A former Army official said: “I think [Driscoll] sacrificed any potential he had [for] a good working relationship with Pete to try to protect those guys, because it was the right thing to do for the Army.”

Driscoll told Rolling Stone: “Once he makes a decision, there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t have to like it.”

Despite the rockiness of his 18 months as army secretary, he said it wasn’t all bad: “But I think it’s unfair to describe our relationship so flatly—that every interaction was bad, or that we disagreed on everything.

“If you polled us, we probably agreed on more than 50 percent of things. What’s been reported is all the things we disagree on.”

President Donald Trump’s wild move to publicly post a Republican Senator’s cell phone number is not sitting well with other GOP members of Congress.

In an interview on Meet the Press Sunday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) hit Trump for posting the phone number of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) for blocking a bill that would make daylight savings time permanent.

“Call Tom on his cellphone at, 479-453-0533, and let him know,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday. “‘The Sunshine Protection Act’ was passed in the House by a Vote of 308 to 117. HAVE THE SENATE VOTE, NOW!”

Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker confronted Kennedy about the president’s post.

“How does that help the Republican Party a month out from the midterm, Senator?”

“Every now and then, there are disputes in Congress that have existential significance for the future of Western civilization — Daylight Savings Time is not one of them,” Kennedy said dryly.

Kennedy went on to call Cotton “a rock star senator.” He also referred to Trump as “my friend,” but proceeded to ding Trump for doxxing his Senate colleague.

“The president, as we know, can be sometimes … he exists loudly,” Kennedy said. “He can be tempestuous. He can go from zero to a-hole in about three seconds. I don’t think he should have given out Tom’s cell phone number. I don’t think that’s going to help convince Tom.”

US soldiers tasked with hacking American adversaries and defending the nation’s computers are set to see their incentive pay cut by as much as $12,000 a year as part of a broader overhaul that’s drawn ire from the ranks, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg and people familiar with the situation.

Cyber Command analysts, developers and operators with a basic level proficiency are set to see their incentive pay drop by as much as $1,000 a month, according to US Army documents. Meanwhile, a small group of “masters”-level soldiers who are highly trained and certified will get raises of as much as $3,500 a month, the documents show.

The internal backlash over the plan has proven so strong that senior leaders are drafting talking points to address concerns and lay out the rationale, emails reviewed by Bloomberg show. They’re also considering a grace period to cut incentive pay gradually rather than all at once, according to the people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters.

The debate over incentive pay highlights the US military’s broader challenge of keeping skilled cyber specialists in uniform as the Trump administration puts greater emphasis on offensive operations. The White House’s March cyber strategy calls for using the full range of US offensive cyber capabilities, and an August presidential memorandum directed the creation of a program for vetted companies to conduct cyberattacks against foreign cybercrime groups. Cyber Command needs experienced operators to carry out its mission, but the proposed overhaul could reduce pay for many personnel before they reach the elite ranks the Pentagon is seeking to build.

When reached for comment, a Cyber Command spokesperson referred Bloomberg to the Pentagon. A Pentagon representative acknowledged a request for comment but didn’t respond.

DefenseScoop previously reported on the plan.

Incentive pay is added to the regular salaries of soldiers in critical roles to help recruit and retain them. For many, at Cyber Command it’s been part of their monthly paycheck for years. In late September, the Army’s cyber commander summarized the pay concerns in a message offering advice to other military leaders facing questions from troops, according to emails reviewed by Bloomberg.

Lt. Gen. Christopher Eubank wrote to colleagues on Sept. 25, outlining a scenario in which a soldier asks why their monthly incentive pay was being slashed from $1,000 to zero. Eubank suggested telling troops that the cuts are “just half the picture,” explaining that they could volunteer for additional duties to qualify for more pay and directing them to financial assistance programs.

Cyber Command ranks troops by expertise from basic to master, with the latter working most directly on military hacking missions. The new pay structure is set to take effect this month. The Pentagon and Cyber Command didn’t respond to questions about its current status.

The pay changes are a central part of the Pentagon’s broader effort to remake Cyber Command. “We’re ripping out the bureaucratic debris and replacing one-size-fits-all career paths and incentives with a system built strictly on meritocracy, technical excellence and uncompromising standards,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an August video about the initiative, dubbed “CyberCom 2.0.”

Cyber Command staff has been under intense pressure and heavy workloads driven by the war with Iran, other foreign conflicts and artificial intelligence technology that’s increasingly adept at hacking computer systems. Personnel also are still grappling with a cluster of deaths by suicide among their colleagues over the summer.

Cyber Command has struggled to develop and retain master operators, its most highly skilled specialists, according to people familiar with the matter. Master operators are key to overseeing and executing cyber operations, especially the most important and sensitive missions, while basic operators rarely contribute directly, the people said. Though the command says its core team numbers more than 6,000 people, about two dozen are master operators, according to people familiar with the matter.

Training one master operator can cost more than $1.5 million over several years, according to the people, but the investment may bring little return if those soldiers depart for private sector jobs that can be less stressful and more lucrative. The shortage also puts greater demands on the people who stay, contributing to further burnout.

Among the Cyber Command employees who face incentive pay cuts are basic capability developers who build tools that are used in operations, according to the people.

“I don’t think it will have a positive effect on morale,” said Matt Pearl, the former director for emerging technologies on the Biden White House National Security Council. “They’re not thinking about developing the talent pipeline in a holistic way.”

Pentagon and Cyber Command leaders anticipated blowback after the policy was announced publicly earlier this year, but staff have widely complained that it wasn’t adequately explained, the people said.

In the talking points he circulated, Eubank, the Army cyber commander, also urged leadership to handle “danger areas” in conversations with frustrated soldiers and acknowledged “there is no doubt the execution will inevitably create friction for some of our soldiers.” He told commanders to respond with a message of “optimism and progress.”

The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that would benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

The deal, which is contingent on approval from the U.S. government and the Kremlin, is for a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.

The leading group seeking the deal includes an American investor, Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to President Trump’s political causes; two Middle Eastern groups that have done business with Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff’s family; and an arm of the U.S. government itself.

The monthslong negotiations, which were described by eight people familiar with them, shed new light on Mr. Trump’s latest approach to settling a four-year war that has killed hundreds of thousands. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

There is no indication that Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff themselves stand to profit. But the pending deal represents a striking intermingling of personal business ties with geopolitics, even for an administration that has regularly dismissed concerns about potential conflicts of interest.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia brought up the deal when he met with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner at the Kremlin on Sept. 5, according to three people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Putin proposed it get done as a way of showing Russians that they can do business with the United States, according to one of the people.

The Americans responded that they would work on it, the person said, seeing it as a way to build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices. But the deal is also a lucrative one for the buyers: U.S. approval for the sale would release the assets from American sanctions, instantly increasing their value.

In Moscow, the decision on the deal is widely seen as Mr. Putin’s to make, even though Lukoil is technically a private company. The upshot is that the giant transaction, involving assets as varied as oil fields in Cameroon, refineries in Europe and gas stations in New Jersey, comes down to Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump has been promoting the promise of business deals with Russia since early last year, describing the country as a “tremendous opportunity.” The deal again brings Mr. Trump’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency company — co-founded by Mr. Witkoff — into focus. One of the investors in the Lukoil deal is a part owner of World Liberty.

Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, who have traveled repeatedly to Russia for meetings with Mr. Putin, have argued that the potential to rebuild economic ties with the West could convince the Russian president to compromise in Ukraine. The administration has recently signaled it is open to deals with Russia even before the war ends, as a way of showing it is serious about resetting the United States’ relationship with Moscow.

The Lukoil sale, people familiar with the matter say, is one of those deals.

In a statement, a senior administration official confirmed that Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner played a direct role in helping negotiate the financial terms of the investment by the federal government in the deal to ensure that it included “a substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Witkoff said that he “takes no salary and travels the world on his own plane, at his own expense, working on behalf of President Trump to negotiate peace and bring hostages home to their families.” She added that Mr. Witkoff “has no conflict of interest and no financial stake in this matter.”

Numerous potential bidders expressed interest in at least part of Lukoil’s international holdings when the assets went on the market last fall, including U.S. energy giants like Chevron.

The Washington private equity firm Carlyle reached a tentative agreement in January to buy a large share of the assets, after making the pitch that bringing Lukoil’s international portfolio under U.S. ownership would further the Trump administration’s goal of “energy dominance.”

But in recent months, as U.S. approval for Carlyle’s bid stalled, a different group emerged as the leading bidder: one led by Mr. Boehly, a billionaire supporter of Mr. Trump’s, alongside well-connected figures in the Middle East and the U.S. government itself. The members of the partnership were reported last week by The Financial Times.

Mr. Boehly is a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned political committee, in December 2025. He gave another $1 million through his investment firm, Eldridge Industries, to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

The U.S. government is taking a stake in the deal through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, an agency that invests in and lends to projects overseas. A D.F.C. official said in a statement that the potential Lukoil deal “would advance the Trump administration’s commitment to strengthen U.S. economic security, advance U.S. foreign policy and lower energy prices for everyday Americans.”

But it would not be an all-American purchase.

A major equity holder would be the Qatar-based conglomerate controlled by Moutaz Al-Khayyat and his brother Ramez Al-Khayyat, both of whom attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2025 and have since formed a partnership with Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, one of Mr. Trump’s daughters, to help finance a multibillion-dollar luxury hotel resort project in southern Albania.

Another major stakeholder would be an Abu Dhabi-based investment fund controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates’s top national security adviser, who controls another fund that purchased a large stake in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty, run in part by Mr. Witkoff’s son.

Steve Witkoff was a co-founder of World Liberty, and Mr. Trump’s sons are also involved in the company, which generated $799 million for Mr. Trump last year, in part because of an additional cryptocurrency purchase worth $2 billion that Sheikh Tahnoon’s affiliate made in 2025. Mr. Witkoff himself has sold off his stake in World Liberty, a person close to him said.

Sheikh Tahnoon also helps oversee an Abu Dhabi investment fund called Lunate, which is among the largest stakeholders in the private equity firm Mr. Kushner set up after he left the White House at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term. This means Sheikh Tahnoon is effectively a business partner of Mr. Kushner’s as well.

Hui Chen, a former Justice Department prosecutor and a white collar crime and ethics adviser who served until the start of Mr. Trump’s first term, said the connections between Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner to players in the Lukoil deal illustrated why friends and family members of Mr. Trump’s should not be top foreign policy advisers.

“This is an alarming and very concerning set of entanglements,” said Ms. Chen, who has also worked as a corporate compliance lawyer. “And it means you have to question how the Trump administration is evaluating the different bidders involved here. Are the personal interests involved going to wrongly influence the outcome?”

Lukoil’s international division, which is based in Austria, hired its own Washington-based consultant who is close to Mr. Trump, Bryan Lanza, who served as a senior adviser to Mr. Trump’s 2024 election campaign and now works at Mercury Public Affairs. He is no longer working for Lukoil, a person familiar with the matter said.

The deal is not yet final, and would need to be approved by the Treasury Department, which oversees sanctions enforcement.

But in the case of Lukoil, people involved said, the key decisions are being made at the White House. Asked about its approach to the Lukoil decision, a Treasury Department spokeswoman said that the agency’s Office of Foreign Assets Control “implements foreign policy as determined by the White House.”

The Sept. 5 meeting with Mr. Putin was the first time that Lukoil came up in the Russian president’s conversations with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, one person familiar with the matter said.

But Kirill Dmitriev, Mr. Putin’s economic envoy, has been closely involved, people familiar with the sale process said. He traveled to New York and Washington for meetings last month, and told reporters that “dialogue” with the United States was “continuing across many areas, including energy.”

Lukoil’s refineries in the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Romania play an important role. They produce diesel and jet fuel, which have been in short supply since the start of the Iran war, which has driven up prices and given Mr. Trump an incentive to support a deal that could provide more access to energy.

Lukoil valued its international assets at $20 billion earlier this year, but the price and structure of the proposed deal are not clear.

An official with the D.F.C., the U.S. agency investing in the deal, described participation in the purchase as a way to strengthen the energy security of U.S. allies. The official also said the deal would produce significant profits for the American taxpayer and keep strategic infrastructure away from adversaries.

The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Lukoil a year ago, describing the move as new pressure on Mr. Putin to “stop the killing.” It also created a lucrative opportunity: Lukoil was forced to sell off its sprawling portfolio of international holdings.

Investors around the world scrambled to bid on the assets, but the U.S. government held veto power because it controlled how to enforce its sanctions. Because of Russia’s autocratic system, Mr. Putin was seen as the final decision maker in Moscow .

The bidding frenzy accelerated last November, when the Treasury Department rejected an initial offer by Gunvor, a Swiss-based energy trading company with past ties to Russia, which had moved to buy Lukoil’s foreign assets. The Treasury Department said in a statement that “as long as Putin continues the senseless killings, the Kremlin’s puppet, Gunvor, will never get a license to operation and profit.”

Carlyle secured a “nonexclusive” agreement in January with Lukoil to sell its international assets. It was up to the Treasury Department to then sign off on the deal. As months passed with no final deal, other bidders intensified their efforts to step in.

Mr. Boehly has little experience in the oil and gas industry. He has made most of his money through investment firms such as Guggenheim Partners and Eldridge Industries, as well as sports team and entertainment industry investments, including Bruce Springsteen’s music catalog.

But over the last several years, the billionaire Khayyat brothers, who were born in Syria before moving to Qatar during the Syrian civil war, have begun to amass a collection of oil industry assets and planned projects in Syria, Libya and Iraq.

Even while the Lukoil negotiations were underway, the Khayyats were continuing to work with Mr. Kushner and Ivanka Trump over plans to build the luxury resort in Albania, an effort that included a meeting involving Ramez Al-Khayyat and Ms. Trump earlier this year in Albania, The Times reported.

The decision over Lukoil’s fate has taken so long that the Treasury Department has had to repeatedly issue extensions to its sanctions action, so that Lukoil gas stations in the United States and other businesses around the world could continue to engage with other financial partners. The most recent extension lasts until Oct. 29.

A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Thursday that a police officer violated the Fourth Amendment rights of a woman accused of meth trafficking when he searched her license plate in Flock’s automated license plate reader system simply because her license plate was from California, then used her travel history as part of the reason to search her car. The judge’s opinion is one of the first times a federal judge has decided Flock searches can be unconstitutional, and suggested that Flock’s network is “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance.”

The officer’s “use of the ALPR Systems was an Unconstitutional Warrantless Search,” and “was not supported by probable cause, and it was done without a warrant in violation of [the defendant’s] Fourth Amendment rights,” the judge, Sara Hill, wrote, implying that the law enforcement officer should have obtained a warrant before searching for the vehicle in Flock’s system. There are currently more than a hundred thousand warrantless searches of the Flock system every month, according to audit logs viewed by 404 Media. Hill's decision will not set a binding precedent and there are several other cases throughout the nation considering the legality of warrantless ALPR searches.

Hill argued that previous judge opinions saying Flock searches were not a Fourth Amendment violation because they track cars in public do not consider the context that Flock’s nationwide network is quickly “approaching dragnet-type law enforcement practice,” and that courts should update their understanding of the technology moving forward.

The circumstances of the court case are really interesting and highlight how commonplace Flock searches have become for police, and the depth of the information they can reveal. In May, a Tulsa County Deputy Sheriff named Freddie Alaniz was parked along the side of the highway in Oklahoma when he saw a Mazda SUV driven by a woman named Melisa Kyle with a California license plate pass by. “Alaniz then pulled his vehicle on the highway to follow the Mazda for no apparent reason other than the fact that it had a California license plate. Alaniz also ran a query on the Flock system for the California license plate number on the Mazda SUV,” Hill wrote. Alaniz then ostensibly pulled Kyle over for changing lanes without a turn signal.

Alaniz interrogated Kyle about her travel “while he continued to review the ALPR systems for the car she was driving,” the judge wrote. Alaniz made Kyle recount everything she had done in the last several days, and compared it to the Flock data. He told her that because she was only in California for a short period of time, he suspected her of trafficking drugs. He used her travel history as seen in the Flock system as part of the justification to search her car; she was found to have 91 pounds of meth in the vehicle. Hill ruled that all Flock evidence and all evidence from Alaniz’s search of the car must be thrown out.

“The Fourth Amendment requires courts to draw a line when the cost is too great. Alaniz’s search in just the ALPR system provided him with more than 50 individual records of Kyle’s whereabouts across the country for an entire month,” Hill wrote. “The Court finds that because the ALPR systems Alaniz used to search Kyle’s historical location information intruded on her reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of her physical movements, it was a search under the Fourth Amendment. Based on the information in the record, the only reason Alaniz conducted that search was because he saw her license plate was from California.”

“The factors that the government relies upon are the same type of circumstances that everyday Americans encounter on long road trips for many legitimate reasons. Many of us drive longer than we want to get to a desired destination, or to no destination at all other than the road and sights ahead,” she added.

The decision is a landmark one, and comes in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Chatrie v United States decision that found police accessing a person’s digital data, including cell phone location data, constituted a search.

“The opinion is pretty amazing. It recognizes one thing that courts ignore which is the sheer breadth of these systems, that they collect so much information about so many people in a way that sets them apart. This decision ascribes appropriate weight to the fact police are building out this massive database that can reveal incredibly intimate details of people’s lives,” Michael Soyfer, a lawyer at the Institute for Justice, which has studied Flock camera abuse and is litigating several cases on Fourth Amendment grounds, told 404 Media. “It’s extremely important. The way courts have resolved these cases previously has been way too myopic and has ignored the depths of these systems and the sweeping modes of surveillance that allow police to reconstruct the movements of anyone in the country.”

Hill’s opinion also comes on the back of a decision earlier this week in a case the Institute for Justice brought. In that, a jury found a traffic stop scheme involving license plate reader scans done by U.S. Border Patrol as part of a predictive policing unit were unconstitutional.

The new decision also immediately invalidates the core argument that Flock’s CEO Garrett Langley has made saying that Flock was not a constitutional issue. “You and I don’t get to pick what’s a constitutional violation and what’s not. We have judges, we have elected officials, there’s a process for that. We follow the law, we follow the Constitution. So far, in our belief and what will be for a long time, the courts have deemed this is not a warrantless search; this is a valid product as it relates to the Fourth Amendment. So I don’t see any change there,” Langley told The Drive in July, adding the issue was “pretty cut and dry.”

Notably, Hill suggested that other courts that have ruled Flock searches do not constitute a Fourth Amendment search were likely wrong to do so, and that they have not considered the widespread and automated context of the AI-powered surveillance system.

Previous decisions that ruled ALPR searches do not require a warrant have leaned on a Supreme Court case called United States v Knotts, in which police put a tracking device in a chemical container after being tipped off that an employee of a chemical plant was stealing from their employer. That case was decided in 1983 and found, “[a] person travelling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.” But Hill wrote, “that language exists in the context of the facts presented in the case. Rather than a large-scale, dragnet-type surveillance system like the ALPR technology in this case, the Court in Knotts was confronted with much less sophisticated technology.”

“The Court acknowledges that people, in at least a broad sense, do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their movements on a public roadway,” Hill wrote. “But by virtue of how ALPR technology works, Alaniz and other officers using these systems have access to a continuously updated location history for all vehicles caught on ALPR cameras within the network. This is a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance. It is not targeted on a single individual, as in Carpenter [another Supreme Court case about phone data specifically]. It is a tool that collects information about all vehicles that pass by any network-connected camera at all times, and it serves up the information to law enforcement on demand.”

We have seen several cases in which cops have used Flock data to pull people over because they have crossed state lines, then have worked backward to justify their travel patterns as a reason to search their vehicles.

“We’re seeing that repeatedly with police flagging whatever they’ll call suspicious patterns of movement. Federal agents were using ALPRs to monitor cars making day trips across the border and back to manufacture a basis to stop them, interrogate the drivers and search them,” Soyfer said. “I think Flock is going to automate that using AI where cops can set alerts for those kinds of travel patterns. When we’re arguing these systems are very powerful and can show a lot about people’s movements, cops dismiss this as speculative or not possible, but then they deploy this strategy against people who they stop all the time.”

A Flock spokesperson told 404 Media, "Flock was not a party to this case. The ruling goes against the overwhelming weight of authority in similar cases across the country, including multiple recent decisions in Oklahoma, and we expect it will be appealed and ultimately overturned. This ruling is limited to the specific facts of this case. It does not set controlling precedent and does not affect law enforcement agencies’ continued use of these important public safety technologies."