At least 61 people have been killed in 14 U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since early September. President Donald Trump has said he is targeting “narcoterrorists” who threaten American lives with lethal substances, and the administration has told Congress the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels operating in South America.
But Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona called the strikes “sanctioned murder.” And without any evidence from the administration for its claims about the cargo or the identities and affiliations of the people on the boats, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said the strikes are “extrajudicial killings.”
Some legal experts, meanwhile, have said the U.S. actions were “not lawful.”
Here, we will address what is known about the targets of the strikes, the trafficking of illicit substances from South and Central America to the U.S., and what experts are saying about the legality of the Trump administration’s escalation of the war on drugs.
On the first day of his second term in office, Trump signed an executive order designating drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations” who “present an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” He declared a national emergency “to deal with those threats.”
Since the summer, the U.S. has been building up its military presence in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela, including the deployment of 6,000 sailors and Marines and eight warships, as well as aircraft based in Puerto Rico.
On Sept. 2, Trump announced in a Truth Social post the first strike by his administration on what he said were members of one of the cartels. “Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists,” Trump said. The attack in the Caribbean “occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States. The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action,” he said in the post, which included black-and-white video of an open, manned boat being blown up.
Trump also said in the post that the cartel operates “under the control” of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The administration did not provide any details regarding the U.S. military operation, the identities of the people killed, or what specific drugs were on the boat.
The New York Times has tracked the strikes and the number of people killed in each attack.
The Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy organization, reported the Sept. 2 strike occurred between Venezuela and the islands of Trinidad and Tobago. WOLA also has tracked the subsequent strikes on boats in the Caribbean, near the Dominican Republic, off the coast of Venezuela, and strikes in the eastern Pacific near Colombia.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said one of the U.S. strikes had killed a fisherman, not a drug cartel member, whom he identified as Alejandro Carranza. Trump responded on Truth Social by calling Petro an “illegal drug leader” and cutting funds to Colombia to battle narcotics trafficking.
More recent U.S. strikes have been announced on social media by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who posted on Oct. 28 that “four vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations (DTO) trafficking narcotics in the Eastern Pacific” had been hit and “14 narco-terrorists were killed during the three strikes, with one survivor.”
As in the aftermath of the other boat strikes, Hegseth did not provide the identities of the people on the boats, evidence of what drugs they were transporting, or other details. He wrote, “We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”
Hegseth has repeatedly said in his posts that the boats were “transiting along known narco-trafficking routes.” He has also compared drug traffickers to al Qaeda terrorists, saying: “Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people.”
Hegseth said Mexican authorities were looking for the survivor of the Oct. 28 strike. Two survivors of an earlier strike on a boat in October were returned to their home countries rather than held for prosecution in the U.S.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Oct. 18, “It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route. U.S. Intelligence confirmed this vessel was loaded up with mostly Fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics. There were four known narcoterrorists on board the vessel. Two of the terrorists were killed. … The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution.”
We reached out to the White House to ask why the survivors of the boat strikes were not arrested for prosecution in the U.S., but we did not receive a response.
Trump’s Oct. 18 Truth Social post about a vessel in the Caribbean “loaded up with mostly Fentanyl” is a rare instance in which the administration identified specific drugs it said were aboard a targeted boat.
It would also be a rare example of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, being trafficked by sea, and it is unlikely that it came from Venezuela or Colombia.
The State Department’s 2025 “International Narcotics Control Strategy Report” said the department, “in consultation with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other relevant agencies, has identified Mexico as the only significant source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogues significantly affecting the United States during the preceding calendar year.”
A DEA fact sheet says fentanyl is “primarily manufactured in foreign clandestine labs and smuggled into the United States through Mexico.”
According to reporting by the Times, Venezuela “plays essentially no role in the production or smuggling of fentanyl.”
Boats from Venezuela and Colombia do smuggle cocaine through the Caribbean and the Pacific en route to other countries, including the U.S., the Times reported.
A 2023 report by the Government Accountability Office said the State Department “described Venezuela as a preferred drug trafficking route, predominately for moving cocaine to global markets.”
Venezuela’s neighbor, Colombia, “produces about 90 percent of the cocaine powder reaching” the U.S., according to a DEA fact sheet. But “most of the cocaine entering the United States comes through Mexico,” the fact sheet also says.
Both drugs continue to take a toll on American lives. Nearly 73,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2023 involved the use of synthetic opioids — primarily fentanyl — though the number declined about 2% from 2022 to 2023, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of overdose deaths involving cocaine has risen steadily since 2012 to nearly 30,000 deaths in 2023. Those deaths often involved a combination of cocaine mixed with fentanyl.
Trump has repeatedly overstated the number of drug overdose deaths in the U.S., as we’ve written. Provisional overdose death data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics indicated that overdose deaths had declined more than 24% from 105,007 deaths in 2023 to 79,383 in 2024, CDC spokesperson Gabriel Alvarado had told us.
The Trump administration has not provided many details regarding its legal justification for attacking the boats off the coasts of South America.
Days after the first strike, Hegseth told a reporter, “We have the absolute and complete authority to conduct that. First of all, just the defense of the American people alone.”
The U.S. Naval Institute News reported that the administration “describes the strikes as military self-defense operations under U.S. Title 10,” the code that describes the president’s authority regarding the armed forces.
The administration sent a confidential notice to Congress saying that Trump had decided that the U.S. was engaged in an “armed conflict” with the drug cartels and that suspected drug traffickers are “unlawful combatants,” the Times reported in early October.
The administration also has cited the president’s powers to take defensive actions as commander in chief under Article II of the Constitution. Members of Congress have argued that Article I grants them the power to declare war.
Sen. Paul, in an Oct. 26 interview on Fox News, said, “We haven’t had a briefing, to be clear. We’ve got no information. … The Constitution says that when you go to war, Congress has to vote on it.”
“So far, they have alleged that these people are drug dealers,” Paul said. “No one said their name. No one said what evidence. No one has said whether they’re armed. And we’ve had no evidence presented. So, at this point I would call them extrajudicial killings.”
The same day, in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Sen. Gallego said, “It’s murder. It’s very simple. If this president feels that they’re doing something illegally, he should be using the Coast Guard. If it’s an act of war, then you use our military, and then you come and talk to us first,” he said, referring to Congress. “But this is murder. It’s sanctioned murder.”
On CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on the same day, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina defended the boat strikes, saying Trump “has all the authority in the world” to order military strikes on drug boats. “This is not murder,” Graham said, “this is protecting America from being poisoned from narco-terrorists coming from Venezuela and Colombia.”
John B. Bellinger III, adjunct senior fellow in international and national security law at the Council on Foreign Relations, told us, “Although the scope of presidential authority to order the use of military force is hotly debated, presidents of both parties have long used military force without congressional approval for a wide array of purposes they deem to be in the national interest. The better legal argument is that President Trump does have authority under Article II of the Constitution to order the strikes.”
But while Trump “arguably has authority under the Constitution to order the strikes, as a matter of international law, the boats are not lawful military targets,” Bellinger, who served as senior associate counsel to President George W. Bush, said in an email.
“There has been no evidence that the boats and their occupants were planning armed attacks against the United States justifying the use of military force in self-defense,” he said. “The Trump Administration has claimed that the United States is in an ‘armed conflict’ with unspecified drug trafficking groups but the drug traffickers’ actions to traffic drugs do not fit the accepted international definition of an armed conflict.
“Most Americans will recognize that comparing drug cartels to Al Qaida is a false comparison. Al Qaida was directly responsible for killing over 3,000 Americans on [Sept. 11, 2001] and in prior terrorist attacks against American soldiers and civilians. Drug cartels commit violent acts and supply drugs that have resulted in the tragic deaths of thousands of Americans, but unlike Al Qaida, these groups are not engaged in an armed conflict with the United States and their members are not combatants,” Bellinger said.
“The goal of these drug cartels is to make money, not to terrorize Americans. The appropriate way to deal with suspected drug traffickers is not to blow them up but rather to arrest and prosecute them, either in the United States or in their own countries,” he said.
Michael Becker, an assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin School of Law, told BBC Verify, “The fact that U.S. officials describe the individuals killed by the U.S. strike as narco-terrorists does not transform them into lawful military targets. … The U.S. is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela or the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.”
Defending Chicago in a recent Fox News interview, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said it was “not in the top 30” of “big cities” with the highest rates of murder. But in 2024, Chicago had the 15th highest murder rate among U.S. cities with at least 250,000 residents, according to FBI data. It ranked higher if limiting to cities with even larger populations.
Pritzker, a potential Democratic presidential contender in 2028, made that claim on Oct. 23 while being questioned about crime in Chicago by Fox News anchor Bret Baier. Crime in the city has received a lot of attention this year, as President Donald Trump falsely labeled Chicago the world’s “murder capital” and called for sending National Guard troops there over the objection of local officials.
In their sit-down interview last week, Pritzker and Baier were discussing federal immigration enforcement in Chicago when Baier switched to talking about the city’s murder rate.
“Why does Chicago have the highest murder rate of all the big cities?” Baier asked. The governor quickly responded by saying, “We are not in the top 30 in terms of our murder rate.”
He continued, “Our murder rate has been cut in half over the last four years. And every year it’s gone down by double digits.” Pritzker then started to say something about violent crime in Chicago overall when Baier interrupted to provide a visual.
“Here’s a map,” Baier said, before describing a graphic that appeared on screen. “Most populous U.S. cities, 17.47 per 100,000 population. Chicago is No. 1, over Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix, Los Angeles, New York and San Diego.”
But where Chicago ranks depends on the definition of a “big” city, and Fox News used a narrow one.
When we asked, Pritzker’s office did not tell us how he defined “big cities,” or determined that Chicago was not among the 30 of them with the highest murder rates. What viewers also may not have known, because neither Baier nor the graphic made it clear, is that Fox News defined “big cities” as municipalities with a population exceeding 1 million. (Chicago itself is home to roughly 2.7 million people.)
We previously analyzed 2024 FBI data for a September article about crime in Chicago and found that Chicago did have the highest murder rate last year — almost 17.5 incidents per 100,000 people — among those same nine cities. A spokesperson for Fox News told us that the network also relied on the FBI’s data for 2024.
But for our prior story, Jeff Asher, co-founder of the consulting firm AH Datalytics, which compiles an aggregation of crime data provided by law enforcement agencies across the U.S., told us that just using cities with 1 million or more residents was “an arbitrarily tight comparison group.”
When we expanded the list, Chicago ranked 10th out of 37 cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants, and it ranked 15th among 87 cities with more than 250,000.
Asher told us that such comparisons are “usually” made among cities of 250,000 or more. Based on that criteria, St. Louis, Memphis, Baltimore, Detroit and Cleveland topped the list, all with murder rates of between 30 and 54 per 100,000.
However, Chicago was still in the top 30 on that list, contrary to what Pritzker said.
Pritzker does have a point about murders in Chicago being down significantly since 2021 — although his office did not provide evidence that the city’s “murder rate,” specifically, “has been cut in half,” as he said.
But we found some support for the claim.
Because the FBI does not have 2021 and 2025 data for Chicago, we turned to homicide figures kept by an independent think tank that tracks crime trends in a sampling of U.S. cities, the Council on Criminal Justice. A CCJ spokesperson told us that homicides and murders are closely related, although homicide includes “some non-murder cases, such as non-negligent manslaughter.” The FBI data also include murder and non-negligent manslaughter.
In late August, CCJ reported that Chicago’s homicide rate through the first six months of 2025, from January to June, was 7 incidents per 100,000 residents. That was down from 12.8 per 100,000 during the same period in 2021, for a decrease of 45% — which is approaching half.
On a calendar-year basis, CCJ’s figures from its “Year-End 2024 Update” show Chicago’s homicide rate went down from 30.1 in 2021, to 27.5 in 2022, to 23.6 in 2023 and to 21.8 in 2024. (These figures don’t support Pritzker’s claim that the rate has dropped “by double digits” each year.)
We don’t know what Chicago’s final rate will be for 2025, but the city appears to be headed for a significant drop, as the number of reported murders and homicide victimizations had declined by about 29% through Oct. 26, year over year, according to Chicago Police Department data.
An ad campaign from the government of Ontario featured audio of former President Ronald Reagan denouncing tariffs on foreign goods. The video rearranges what Reagan said in a 1987 radio address, and it ignores some of the context. But it does not alter the former president’s sentiments, contrary to President Donald Trump’s claim that Canada “lied.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced on Oct. 14 that $75 million would be spent to air the ad to “every Republican district there is” across the U.S.
“It’s not a nasty ad; it’s actually just very factual,” Ford said, adding that the TV spot uses the words of Reagan, “the best president the country’s ever seen, in my opinion.”
In a Truth Social post on Oct. 23, Trump denounced the ad as “FAKE” and said that it was intended to “interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court,” which is set to hear arguments on Nov. 5 in cases from businesses and states that have challenged some of Trump’s tariffs. As a result of the “egregious” ad, Trump said he terminated all trade negotiations with Canada.
In posts and comments to the media the following day, Trump said the ad was “a fraud” and claimed Canada “lied.”
Trump even suggested Reagan’s words had been created by artificial intelligence.
“They cheated on a commercial,” Trump said in remarks to reporters on Oct. 24. “Ronald Reagan loved tariffs and they said he didn’t. And I guess it was AI or something. They cheated badly. Canada got caught cheating on a commercial, can you believe it?”
On Oct. 24, Ford announced via X that the ad would be paused on Oct. 27 — after it had aired during the first two World Series baseball games — “so that trade talks can resume.”
“Our intention was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses,” Ford stated. “We’ve achieved our goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels.”
In a Truth Social post the following day, Trump stated, “Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.” As we’ve explained before, tariffs on foreign goods are paid by importers in the U.S., not the foreign countries.
The one-minute ad quotes Reagan as saying the following: “When someone says, ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while, it works. But only for a short time. But over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs. Throughout the world, there’s a growing realization that the way to prosperity for all nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and free competition. America’s jobs and growth are at stake.”
On Oct. 23, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute posted a statement on X saying the government of Ontario “created an ad campaign using selective audio and video” of Reagan’s radio address on April 25, 1987.
“The ad misrepresents the Presidential Radio Address,” the group said, adding that the government of Ontario “did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks” and that the foundation was “reviewing its legal options in this matter.”
The foundation and institute invited readers to watch and listen to the full five-minute video.
As the video of the full remarks shows, the ad rearranged the order of several of Reagan’s comments, though it left sentences largely intact. With the exception of a “but” added at the beginning of one sentence, Reagan uttered the sentences in question, though at different parts of the address. The question, then, is whether the ad’s splicing of Reagan’s comments altered his meaning.
In this video, we show how the ad used different parts of Reagan’s address:
We reached out to the foundation for clarification about how it believes the ad “misrepresents” Reagan’s address, but we did not get a response.
There is some missing context from Reagan’s remarks. Reagan’s comments came as he was announcing “new duties on some Japanese products in response to Japan’s inability to enforce their trade agreement with us on electronic devices called semiconductors.” Reagan said that “imposing such tariffs or trade barriers and restrictions of any kind are steps that I am loath to take” but “the Japanese semiconductors were a special case.”
“We had clear evidence that Japanese companies were engaging in unfair trade practices that violated an agreement between Japan and the United States,” Reagan said.
“But you know, in imposing these tariffs, we were just trying to deal with a particular problem, not begin a trade war,” Reagan said, before launching into his thoughts on the benefits of free trade, the remarks that were used in the Canadian ad.
Those kinds of free trade comments were not a one-off. Reagan often spoke about the benefits of trade.
“The record is clear that when America’s total trade has increased, American jobs have also increased, and when our total trade has declined, so have the number of jobs,” Reagan said in one of his final radio addresses as president on Nov. 26, 1988. “Part of the difficulty in accepting the good news about trade is in our words. We too often talk about trade while using the vocabulary of war. In war for one side to win, the other must lose. But commerce is not warfare. Trade is an economic alliance that benefits both countries. There are no losers, only winners, and trade helps strengthen the free world. Yet today, protectionism is being used by some American politicians as a cheap form of nationalism, a fig leaf for those unwilling to maintain America’s military strength and who lack the resolve to stand up to real enemies, countries that would use violence against us or our allies. Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies. They are our allies. We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends, weakening our economy, our national security and the entire free world, all while cynically waving the American flag.”
But historians and economists say Reagan’s rhetoric on trade did not always match his actions.
“Like most post-war presidents, Reagan championed free trade while selectively deviating from it,” Daniel Griswold, then of the Cato Institute, wrote in 2004.
“Critics of trade note correctly that Reagan negotiated ‘voluntary’ import quotas for steel and Japanese cars and imposed Section 201 tariffs on imported motorcycles to protect Harley-Davidson. All true,” Griswold wrote. “But those were the exceptions and not the rule. They were tactical retreats designed to defuse rising protectionists pressures in Congress.”
Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University who served as a senior economist on Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, noted some of the tariffs Reagan placed on Japanese goods and quotas set on imported Japanese cars, and acknowledged in a 2024 ABC News story, “There was a huge gap between rhetoric and reality.”
In a 1985 interview, a Washington Post reporter said that for a long time Reagan had been “theoretically strongly committed to the idea of free trade,” but asked Reagan if he would actively oppose “the protectionist legislation that now appears to be building in the Congress.”
Reagan said he would, citing the negative effect of tariffs that he said extended and worsened the Great Depression. But Reagan said he also would not tolerate unfair trade practices from U.S. trading partners.
“What we’re trying to cure is unfair competition, to see that the markets are free to each other, both ways; that we’re not competing with subsidized products, government subsidized and so forth. And all of these things we’re doing our best to change,” Reagan said.
Trump has argued repeatedly that his tariffs are in response to unfair treatment by other countries on trade for decades.
However, Hanke told ABC News that the contrast between Reagan’s and Trump’s positions on tariffs is significant. Trump has repeatedly claimed tariffs would make the U.S. “a very rich country,” and he has touted tariffs as one of his favorite words. “I made it my fourth favorite word as you know, because love, religion, wife, family, et cetera,” Trump said on Sept. 18.
“Trump is not talking about free trade,” Hanke said. “Trump’s rhetoric is completely different.”
Asked this week about Trump’s comments that Reagan loved tariffs, Hanke told Canada’s CTV News, Trump “doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.”
On Oct. 24, Hanke posted a clip of Reagan’s radio address on X and commented, “Watch my old boss, Pres. Reagan, DESTROY TARIFFS with clarity and conviction. Trump is no Reagan.”
In a Sept. 30 address to military leaders and an Oct. 9 Cabinet meeting, President Donald Trump made false claims about military pay raises and recruitment.
During Sept. 30 remarks addressing military leadership, Trump announced “a hard-earned pay raise of 3.8% to every soldier, sailor, airman, Coast Guardsman, Space Guardsmen and Marines,” falsely claiming such a raise was “something you weren’t getting from the past administration.” Trump added: “They did not treat you with respect.”
Despite Trump’s claim, the 2026 pay raise falls short of recent years, as military pay increased by 4.6%, 5.2% and 4.5% in 2023, 2024 and 2025, respectively. Military raises are automatically determined by a formula set by law. The president can propose a different figure, which Congress can agree to or override.
The 3.8% pay raise for 2026 is included in both the Senate and House versions of the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA serves as the basis for the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, which is stalled in the Senate amid the government shutdown.
As we have written before, federal law mandates that military pay raises be equal to the change in the Labor Department’s annual Employment Cost Index, or ECI, that measures the increase in private sector wages. However, as the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service explains, the president can propose a higher or lower pay raise, and Congress can set the figure in legislation, overriding the automatic increase or a presidential proposal if the legislation becomes law.
According to the Office of Military Compensation and Financial Readiness, the September ECI figures, which are released in October, are “used to determine the pay raise for the next fiscal year.” The federal government’s fiscal year is from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. This means that when the September ECI figure comes out later this month, it will determine the 2027 military pay raise. The pay raises take effect on Jan. 1 each year.
Trump followed the legal formula in his FY 2026 discretionary budget request, which proposed a 3.8% military pay raise. The budget request appendix notes that the figure “is equal to the increase in the Employment Cost Index.”
During President Joe Biden’s term, he proposed military wage increases of 2.7%, 4.6%, 5.2% and 4.5% for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. These raises exactly corresponded to the September ECI figures in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, and weren’t changed by Congress.
Similarly, during Trump’s first term, he proposed military wage increases of 2.6%, 3.1% and 3% for 2019, 2020 and 2021, which matched the ECI figures and weren’t changed by Congress. However, for 2018, Trump requested a 2.1% raise even though the ECI would have automatically set the raise at 2.4%. Despite Trump’s request, Congress approved a 2.4% raise in the FY 2018 NDAA.
During a Cabinet meeting on Oct. 9, Trump repeated a claim we’ve written about before regarding military recruitment.
Trump touted “record numbers of recruitment” in fiscal year 2025 and falsely claimed that “one year ago, there were stories, front page stories that we couldn’t get anybody to join” the military, calling it “embarrassing.” Trump also said that he thought the increase in recruitment “all started on Nov. 5,” when he was elected president.
It remains to be seen whether FY 2025 will set a “record” for military recruitment, as we only have data through August and the fiscal year runs through September. But the figures for active-duty armed forces recruits were slightly higher over the same period in FY 2019.
Regardless, FY 2025 recruitment has been robust and has recovered following shortfalls caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force reached their recruiting goals at least three months early, while the Marines met its recruitment goal by the end of the fiscal year, on Sept. 30. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll attributed the Army’s impressive recruiting numbers to “a resurgence of pride in our country” and a generation “inspired by purpose and patriotism.”
But the recruitment turnaround started before the election. Every military branch, except for the Navy, which improved its recruiting rate, also reached recruiting goals for FY 2024. The Defense Department announced at the end of October last year that it had recruited 12.5% more people in fiscal 2024 than it had in 2023.
Contrary to Trump’s claim that front page stories a year ago stated that “we couldn’t get anybody to join” the military, one news story from October 2024 reported that “after years of shortfalls, nearly all of the U.S. military’s active-duty components met their recruiting goals this year—and plan to increase those goals in 2025.” While other articles noted “tough challenges” to recruiting in the future, they said that nearly all military branches reached their FY 2024 recruiting goals.
According to the Department of Defense, FY 2023 “was without a doubt the toughest recruitment year for the Military Services since the inception of the All-volunteer Force.” That year, only the Marines and Space Force were able to meet their recruitment goals, while the Army, Navy and Air Force were only able to recruit about 77%, 80% and 89% of their annual goals, respectively.
The Center for Naval Analyses explains that military recruiting was hampered by the pandemic, as recruiters typically “maximize the chances of meeting their monthly targets” by going to “high-traffic locations such as malls or organized events at schools.” As pandemic restrictions closed these venues, it became harder for the military to meet prospective recruits.
Also, the Hoover Institution describes how several factors, including a strong economy and reduced enthusiasm for military service among American youth, have increasingly hindered military recruitment. The Department of Defense’s Office of People Analytics found in May 2023 that only 23% of American youth aged 17-24 are eligible to enlist in the military without a waiver due to a variety of reasons, including being overweight, medical/physical issues or drug abuse.
In an April commentary piece, Beth J. Asch, a senior principal economist at RAND, said that the military turned to “new marketing and advertising campaigns,” “programs aimed at increasing enlistment eligibility, such as the Future Soldier Prep Courses,” and the increased use of waivers. The Future Soldier Prep Courses expanded the pool of qualified recruits by training potential soldiers to improve their physical and academic skills before entering basic training.
Asch noted that while “some have speculated that the improvement in recruiting is linked to the election … no rigorous statistical analysis has yet been conducted to assess the impact of the election or other factors on recruiting outcomes.”
We asked the White House about both of the president’s military claims, but we did not get a response.
Q: Is President Donald Trump paying in full for the new ballroom at the White House, and what is the cost?
A: The White House said Trump and “other patriot donors” would pay for the ballroom, which the president estimated would cost $300 million. So far, $200 million has been pledged, according to the White House, which did not say how much the president would donate. Democratic leaders and ethics experts have questioned the project and what influence donors would have on federal policies.
The White House announced on July 31 that a 90,000-square-foot ballroom to serve as an “event space” for state dinners and special occasions would be built at a cost of $200 million, and that Trump and “other patriot donors” would pay for the structure. The president has said repeatedly that he would pay for the ballroom. In mid-September, he also increased the estimate of its cost, telling reporters, “I’m paying for it. The country is not – and that’s an expensive ballroom. I think it’ll cost $250 million.”
On Oct. 22, Trump increased the estimated cost of the ballroom to $300 million.
We’ve received many emails from readers asking about the cost and the source of funding for the ballroom being constructed as part of the White House complex.
On Oct. 15, the president hosted a dinner at the White House to raise funds for building the ballroom. Among those attending the affair were representatives from Amazon, Apple, Caterpillar, Coinbase Global, Comcast, Google, Lockheed Martin, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Palantir Technologies and T-Mobile, as well as “wealthy supporters” of Trump’s presidential campaign, the New York Times reported.
The day after demolition began on the East Wing where the ballroom will be located, a White House spokesperson told us in an Oct. 21 email that “nearly $200 million has so far been pledged to fund the new ballroom.” The spokesperson did not answer a question regarding how much Trump himself had pledged.
The defense technology firm Lockheed Martin has pledged $10 million to the project, CBS News reported, citing anonymous sources. A legal settlement by YouTube with Trump — who sued the platform for removing his account following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot — will direct $22 million toward the ballroom, the Hill reported. Google will reportedly donate at least $5 million.
On Oct. 23, the White House released the list of 37 companies and individuals who have donated so far, but did not reveal how much each has donated or pledged.
The ballroom project and the fundraising process have come under criticism from Democrats and experts in government ethics.
“The project at the White House is a gigantic boondoggle,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told Fox News. “The important question is not only the damage that it could do to the architecture of the White House, but also what contributors would have over Trump if they are giving to this project.”
Rep. Darren Soto of Florida said on X, “Trump is building a fancy White House Ballroom for his rich buddies.”
Ethics and legal experts raised other concerns about the ballroom project. Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Axios that the White House fundraising dinner could affect public trust in government. “All of this money that they’re giving for something that’s important to the president could influence his decision making, and he could be thinking about that instead of thinking about what’s best for the American people,” Bookbinder said.
Richard W. Painter, a professor at Minnesota Law who served as the chief ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office under President George W. Bush, told us that Trump’s ballroom fundraising crosses several ethical lines.
“First,” Painter said in an email, “this is use of public office for private gain in violation of federal ethics rules.” He cited the Code of Federal Regulations, which says government employees “may not use or permit the use of their Government position or title, or any authority associated with their public office, in a manner that is intended to coerce or induce another person, including a subordinate, to provide any benefit, financial or otherwise, to the employee.”
Painter also said the ballroom project raises a “problem under the Antideficiency Act.” The act “prohibits federal agencies from receiving voluntary services or other gifts from outside sources to ‘top off’ funds appropriated by Congress,” Painter explained.
“Of course the White House will argue that it is not an ‘agency’ subject to this law, but in the past the White House abided by this law. We did during the Bush Administration. The White House did not have authority to receive gifts,” he said.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the Antideficiency Act “requires agencies to generally stop their operations” during a government shutdown. “This protects Congress’s power over federal spending by preventing the executive branch from operating without funding. This act prohibits agencies from incurring obligations or making payments in advance or in excess of an appropriation.”
“Bottom line is,” the companies making donations for the ballroom construction “want something from the government and they are paying 1) for access to the President and other high ranking officials, and 2) Hoping it will buy them what they want. Many such as Lockheed Martin want big defense department contracts, so our now trillion dollar defense budget … will grow even more, all so we can save taxpayers $200 million building a ballroom the White House doesn’t need,” Painter said.
“Finally the ballroom will be used to entertain big campaign donors by this and future presidents, perpetuating White House pay to play,” he said.
Claire Finkelstein, a University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School professor and director of the school’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law, said she has “a lot of concerns” about the ballroom project.
She noted that donations for the ballroom are being coordinated through a nonprofit charitable organization, the Trust for the National Mall, which then will fund the project. “But I don’t see how adding a ballroom to the White House grounds benefits the public. So it’s not clear to me how a 501(c)(3) should be funding this. That’s one serious problem I have with it,” Finkelstein told us in a phone interview.
“There is also a potential violation of the Emoluments Clause, depending on what Trump would use” the ballroom for, Finkelstein said. The Constitution’s foreign and domestic Emoluments Clauses “exist to prevent U.S. officials from selling influence or favors,” the Brennan Center for Justice explains on its website.
“Is he really going to use it for the duties of his office, or will he entertain a lot of individuals trying to curry favor with the administration or him personally?” Finkelstein asked, adding, this could be “a misuse of public real estate.”
The White House ballroom is not the first structure funded, at least partly, through private donations in Washington, D.C.
For example, the $8.4 million needed for the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, completed in 1984, was donated by more than 250,000 individuals and corporations. The Martin Luther King Memorial, completed in 2011, was funded with $110 million in private donations and $10 million in federal funding. Other monuments were funded through the efforts of independent commissions and advisory boards, according to the Trust for the National Mall.
The trust has worked with the National Park Service to provide various improvements to the National Mall, Finkelstein said. “But it’s very important that those projects are publicly oriented. A White House ballroom is not open to the public,” she said, “so it’s not of any obvious public benefit.”
Update, Oct. 23: We updated this article to include Trump’s latest estimated cost of the ballroom of “about $300 million.”
Update, Oct. 23: We updated this story to add that on Oct. 23 the White House released the list of those who have made or pledged donations so far.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. further added to the Trump administration’s problematic claims about Tylenol and autism on Oct. 9, alleging during a Cabinet meeting that circumcision-related studies provide evidence that the drug causes the condition when given to children. The studies, however, do no such thing.
Weeks earlier, as part of a promised announcement on the causes of autism on Sept. 22, President Donald Trump had repeatedly admonished pregnant women not to take Tylenol, also known as acetaminophen. He also recommended that children avoid the medicine, saying, “Don’t give Tylenol to the baby after the baby’s born.”
As we’ve written previously, some studies show an association between using acetaminophen during pregnancy and an increased likelihood of having a child with autism. However, this does not mean that use of the drug — which can be necessary for treating fever or pain during pregnancy — causes autism. Research has increasingly shown there are likely other explanations for the findings, and expert groups continue to recommend that pregnant people take acetaminophen when needed in consultation with their doctors.
There is even less of a basis for the idea that giving children Tylenol causes autism. But at the Cabinet meeting, Kennedy elaborated on the justification for this claim. “There’s two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism, and it’s highly likely because they’re given Tylenol,” he said.
He doubled down the next day with a post on X, saying an Aug. 1 preprint, which was posted without peer review, provided a “rigorous scientific framework” substantiating his claim. Kennedy also complained that some had represented him as arguing that circumcision rather than Tylenol caused autism, accusing mainstream media of choosing “to character assassinate me instead of educating Americans by digging into the science.”
Digging into the science does not support Kennedy’s claim about Tylenol. The preprint was a review paper that mentioned two studies involving circumcision and autism, neither of which provided any direct evidence linking acetaminophen to autism. The authors of one of the studies, done in Denmark, explicitly wrote in their paper that they did not measure acetaminophen use and were “unable to address the [acetaminophen] hypothesis directly.”
The Danish study, which was published in 2015, did find an association between circumcision and autism, speculating on pain as a cause. But as we will discuss, researchers have argued that the study based its conclusions on a very small number of circumcised boys with autism and that other factors, and not circumcision or pain, explain the study’s results.
We asked HHS which two studies Kennedy was referring to in his comments at the Cabinet meeting, and a spokesperson sent us a link to the X post.
“I don’t think either study provides any substantial evidence that [acetaminophen] use increases risk of autism,” Jeffrey S. Morris, director of the biostatistics division at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, told us in an email, referring to the two papers on autism and circumcision cited in the preprint.
The Aug. 1 manuscript Kennedy cited, published on a preprint server, has not been peer reviewed or published in a journal, nor does it provide new data on Tylenol and autism. A preprint is simply an unpublished document that a researcher posts online. Preprints vary widely in quality and may or may not ever go on to be published in a scientific journal.
The senior author of the preprint, William Parker, is an immunologist and biochemist who has long argued that acetaminophen is behind rising autism rates, despite a lack of good evidence for this claim. Parker spoke repeatedly with Kennedy leading up to the autism announcement in September, according to reporting from the Atlantic.
Parker and his co-authors started by taking as fact a sweeping conclusion not supported by the scientific literature. “Overwhelming evidence shows that exposure of susceptible babies and children to acetaminophen … triggers many if not most cases of autism spectrum disorder,” the authors wrote. The review then set out to “understand why the conclusions have not been widely accepted.”
That is to say, the preprint did not look into whether autism and acetaminophen are causally linked, but rather why other scientists had not accepted the authors’ beliefs.
The researchers classified statements other scientists made in papers about autism and acetaminophen as “helpful,” “futile” or “harmful” depending on whether they endorsed a change in acetaminophen use, expressed possible concern without recommending change, or “reduced or assuaged” concerns about the drug, respectively.
“Sec. Kennedy holds up this non-peer-reviewed preprint as a ‘rigorous scientific framework that substantiates’ his interpretation,” Morris said in a post on X. “But it is not a mechanistic paper, but an explicitly biased narrative review that evaluates studies primarily by agreement with its hypothesis and the extent to which they endorse sweeping changes in acetaminophen use, rather than by established, transparent criteria for study quality.”
“This is not science,” David S. Mandell, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and director of the Penn Center for Mental Health, told us in an email when asked about the preprint.
A scientific paper, he said, would provide further information about its methods. And rather than setting out to prove a point, it would ask a question, “like ‘what is the evidence for and against the role of acetaminophen in causing autism’ or ‘is there systematic bias that may lead to inaccurate conclusions about this association?'”
In his X post, Kennedy referenced a 2015 Danish study, saying the preprint had called it “the most compelling ‘standalone’ evidence that acetaminophen triggers autism in susceptible babies and children.” (The preprint in fact called out the study as one of three studies meeting that description; another was a study in mice, and the third was a 2008 study on acetaminophen use after vaccination, whose flaws we have written about previously.)
The Danish study does not support Kennedy’s claim. “This study didn’t examine use of acetaminophen at all,” Mandell said. “Their hypothesis is that the pain associated with ritual circumcision causes autism. RFK is making a leap unsupported by their analysis.”
Looking at Danish health records for boys born between 1994 and 2003, the researchers found that boys circumcised in the hospital or clinics using public funding were 46% more likely to be diagnosed with autism before age 10 than uncircumcised boys, and around twice as likely to be diagnosed with a form of autism called infantile autism by age 5. This latter statistic may be the source for Kennedy’s statement that studies show “children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism.” Kids who were circumcised were not more likely to get an autism diagnosis between ages 5 and 9.
Out of nearly 343,000 boys born in Denmark during the study period, just 3,347 were circumcised in medical settings and around 5,000 were diagnosed with autism before age 10. There were just 57 circumcised boys diagnosed with autism before age 10.
In the discussion section of their paper, the authors of the Danish study said that it was “questionable” to assume all boys getting circumcised would be given Tylenol. Their study lacked information on whether babies were given acetaminophen and therefore could not be used to address whether Tylenol causes autism, they added.
Various expert groups over the years have recommended acetaminophen or mentioned it as an option for helping with circumcision pain. However, acetaminophen on its own is not effective for managing pain during circumcision, and it’s recommended that babies get local anesthesia, typically in the form of an injected anesthetic or numbing cream, as the main source of pain management.
In discussing acetaminophen, the Danish authors were responding to another study, published in 2013 by U.S. researchers, which attempted to link acetaminophen and autism by comparing male autism and circumcision rates in eight countries, as well as among 14 U.S. states. The preprint Kennedy relied on also cited the 2013 study. However, experts we spoke to again did not find the evidence compelling, and the paper itself only concluded that research into acetaminophen and autism was warranted.
The researchers in the 2013 study found that regions with higher autism rates also tended to have higher circumcision rates. They said higher rates of circumcision were a proxy for acetaminophen exposure. This was based on the assumption that some children getting circumcised got acetaminophen following a 1994 study, which showed giving acetaminophen possibly helped with pain during the recovery period but did not ease pain during the procedure or immediately after it.
Studies that compare data on populations — such as data on entire countries or states — rather than data at the individual level are called ecological studies. This sort of study “is considered the weakest form of scientific evidence,” Mandell said. He said that there are many reasons other than acetaminophen use that autism rates and circumcision rates could be correlated in a region, “the way that ice cream eating and shark attacks are correlated” even though one does not cause the other.
Brian Lee, a professor of epidemiology at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health, pointed out via email that the study authors were not always even able to find circumcision rates for the regions being studied. Instead, they relied on the percentage of Jewish and Muslim populations as a proxy. “If well-done [randomized controlled trials] are the gold standard, even well-done ecological studies are on the other end of the scale,” he said. “And this ecological paper can’t really be seriously discussed.”
Kennedy is likely correct to dismiss circumcision itself as an autism cause, and there are possible alternate explanations for the Danish study result that do not involve Tylenol.
Circumcision in Denmark is rare and is mainly chosen for sons by immigrants from Muslim countries, Lee said. Past research has shown an association between migration from a low-income country or being a child of an immigrant from one of these countries and a diagnosis of autism combined with intellectual disability, which Lee called the “most visible kind of autism.” These cases are more likely to be caught early in life, he said, possibly explaining the Danish study’s finding that circumcision is associated with early-life autism diagnoses but not with diagnoses in older children.
The researchers attempted to take cultural background into account in their analysis, but experts said that confounding factors remained.
Mandell explained that studying only circumcisions done in medical settings also likely influenced the results. Most Muslim and Jewish circumcisions occur in the community, he said. The babies in the study who got circumcised in the hospital likely had medical problems, such as being premature or having experienced obstetric complications, he said, and these factors are known to increase the likelihood of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.
In addition, “people who seek health care to get a circumcision in a hospital (as opposed to a private/religious setting) are also very likely to seek health care for their children,” Lee said. These parents might also be more likely to get their children evaluated for autism.
A federal grand jury in Maryland on Oct. 16 returned an indictment against former National Security Adviser John Bolton for mishandling classified national defense information obtained during his tenure in the first Trump administration. He became the third prominent critic, and perceived opponent, of President Donald Trump to be indicted in the last month.
Following his indictment, Bolton, whom Trump let go in September 2019 after 17 months as his national security adviser, said in a statement that he is the “latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those” Trump “deems to be his enemies.”
But some legal analysts have said that the government appears to have a strong case against Bolton – more so than it does against two other Trump rivals who were indicted by federal grand juries recently: former FBI Director James Comey, who was charged with lying to Congress, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was charged with committing mortgage fraud.
Here, we’ll provide information about what’s in the indictment and Bolton’s response.
The 26-page indictment alleges that Bolton “abused his position” as national security adviser “by sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities,” including national defense and classified information, with two unauthorized individuals.
And after he was no longer permitted to do so, “Bolton also unlawfully retained documents, writings, and notes relating to the national defense, including information classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level, in his home in Montgomery County, Maryland,” the indictment says. SCI is an abbreviation for “sensitive compartmented information,” which only people with proper security clearances can access.
For the alleged conduct, Bolton faces 18 criminal charges, including 10 counts of unlawful retention of classified defense information and eight counts of transmitting it.
Although not named in the indictment, the people with whom he supposedly shared the classified material are reportedly his wife and daughter, who may have been helping Bolton with his 2020 memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” about his time as Trump’s national security adviser. The indictment accuses Bolton of using personal, non-governmental email accounts and messaging applications to send his relatives “diary-like entries” that included top secret or sensitive details, which he was not allowed to do.
In addition, some entries with classified information “were printed and stored” at Bolton’s home, and digital copies of some entries “were also stored on personal electronic devices” belonging to Bolton and others at that residence, the indictment says. The FBI recovered some of those materials when conducting a court-ordered search of his home on Aug. 22.
Also, according to the indictment, Bolton’s personal email was hacked by someone “believed to be associated with” Iran who “gained unauthorized access to the classified and national defense information in that account.” While a representative for Bolton informed the FBI of the hack in July 2021, the indictment says his representative did not tell authorities that same email account had been used to transmit classified defense material.
After he was charged, Bolton called his indictment political.
In a statement to reporters, he said, referring to Trump, “Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts.”
Bolton noted that the FBI was previously made aware that his email account was hacked and that no charges were filed against him during the Biden administration. He also said that federal officials had reviewed in advance his 2020 memoir.
However, the indictment says that none of the classified material that is the basis for the charges against Bolton was featured in that book.
Trump had repeatedly claimed that there was classified information in Bolton’s book and that “he should go to jail for that for many, many years.” Trump’s Justice Department also sued Bolton in June 2020 to delay the book’s publication and collect any profits Bolton had received.
The DOJ under Trump later opened a criminal investigation into whether classified material had been published, but the investigation was dropped in June 2021, during Joe Biden’s presidency.
CNN reported that it was the email hack investigation that was initiated in 2022, also under Biden, that ultimately led to Bolton being indicted this year.
A team of career prosecutors at the Justice Department, led by Thomas Sullivan, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland, presented the case against Bolton to the grand jury. That’s a key difference from the cases against Comey and James, in which the indictments were obtained by Lindsey Halligan, a former personal attorney for Trump whom Trump named interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after Erik Siebert was forced out of that position. Halligan, who had no prior experience as a prosecutor, obtained the Comey and James indictments in her first three weeks on the job.
“This indictment stands in stark contrast to the indictments against James Comey and Letitia James in its detailed recitation of the allegations and the serious nature of the charges,” Barbara McQuade, a professor from practice at the University of Michigan Law School, and a former U.S. attorney, told us in an email about the Bolton indictment. “The 26-page indictment quotes from email messages and Bolton’s ‘diary,’ which allegedly contain classified information. If these allegations are true, this is a serious breach of public trust.”
In an Oct. 20 Substack post, McQuade said that the charges against Bolton “appear to be based on strong evidence.”
Andrew Weissmann, a professor of practice at New York University Law School, and a former FBI lawyer, told NPR something similar about the Bolton case in an Oct. 17 interview.
“In many ways, it is unlike the Comey case and Letitia James case because it appears on the face of it to be stronger and more merited to bring,” he said. “And one indication of that is that career people signed this. So it is – we don’t have that unusual confluence of events that was true of the other two.”
But in his statement to the press, Bolton argued that his indictment is about Trump’s “intensive effort to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he alone determines what is said about his conduct.” He said he would defend his “lawful conduct” in court and “expose” Trump’s “abuse of power.”
In his own statement to media, Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, wrote that the charges against his client “stem from portions” of “personal diaries over his 45-year career – records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021.” Bolton “kept diaries – that is not a crime,” Lowell said.
But McQuade told us “it is a crime to transmit or mishandle classified information, in any form.”
Bolton pleaded not guilty to all 18 charges in an Oct. 17 court appearance.
After departing the Trump White House six years ago, over differences about foreign policy, Bolton became one of Trump’s harshest critics – saying publicly, and in his book, that Trump was not fit for office. Trump punched back, calling Bolton “grossly incompetent,” “a liar” and a “wacko” who “was not liked.”
When a reporter asked Trump on Oct. 16 about Bolton’s indictment, Trump said he had not reviewed the case but called Bolton a “bad person.”
“Yeah, he’s a bad guy,” Trump said. “It’s too bad, but it’s the way it goes.” Then, in a Fox News interview that aired Oct. 19, Trump called Bolton’s indictment “a good thing.”
Trump himself was indicted in June 2023 for mishandling classified national defense documents after he left office. But a Trump-appointed judge dismissed the indictment in July 2024, based on the Trump legal team’s motion that Jack Smith, the special counsel who obtained the indictment against Trump, was unlawfully appointed without congressional approval.
After Trump won the election in November, Smith filed a motion to drop his appeal of the judge’s dismissal based on the legal interpretation that the Constitution does not allow a sitting president to be prosecuted.
If convicted, Bolton could get up to 10 years in prison for each criminal count.
Donald Trump made crime a centerpiece of his 2024 presidential campaign. But he has surprised even himself, he said at an Oct. 15 press conference, with the intensity of federal efforts he has directed at cities, in what he says is an effort to fight crime, most controversially by sending military troops into cities such as Portland and Chicago, over the objection of local elected officials.
“I didn’t realize I was going to make this such a big factor,” Trump said. “And now it’s like a passion for me. … I did get elected for crime, but I didn’t get elected for what we’re doing. This is many, many steps above.”
Trump had said for weeks that he would send National Guard troops to Chicago, wrongly claiming on social media that the city is the “MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD.” As we’ve written, the city has a high number of murders among U.S. cities, but not the highest murder rate in the U.S., let alone the world. The homicide rate has been declining this year, mirroring the general trend among U.S. cities.
As for Portland, Trump claimed the city has been overrun by “antifa thugs” who have “repeatedly attacked our officers and laid siege to federal property in an attempt to violently stop the execution of federal law.” And, he said, the city “is burning to the ground,” which is false.
On Sept. 28, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a memo mobilizing 200 Oregon National Guard troops for 60 days. And on Oct. 4, Hegseth federalized 300 Illinois National Guard members and later deployed more than 200 members of the Texas National Guard in Chicago. Mayors in both cities and the state governors have opposed the deployments, accusing the president of exacerbating conflict. Their lawyers have called the administration’s claims of a crisis “manufactured” and “wildly hyperbolic.” Courts have since temporarily delayed deployment of federal troops in both cities.
While Trump’s rhetoric has largely focused on overall crime, the deployments are specifically targeted at protecting federal immigration operations and facilities.
Here, we’ll unravel some of the rhetoric with a Q&A about what’s happening in Portland and Chicago, what the Trump administration is doing and under what authority, and what the courts have had to say about it so far.
Under what authority can the president mobilize National Guard troops in states?
Why does the Trump administration say troops are needed?
What’s the Insurrection Act?
What’s happening in Portland?
What have the courts said in the Portland case?
What’s happening in Chicago?
What have the courts said in the Chicago case?
Each state, three territories (Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands) and the District of Columbia have National Guard organizations. With the exception of Washington, D.C., where the guard unit is under federal control, the guard is under each state’s or territory’s control, as the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has explained. However, in certain circumstances, state guard units can be federalized and placed under the president’s control.
Under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, section 12406, the president can federalize any state’s National Guard if the country “is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation,” if there’s “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion” against the federal government’s authority, or if the president “is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
Such an order “shall be issued through the governors of the States,” the law says.
The administration has cited Title 10, section 12406 in federalizing National Guard troops for deployment to California, Illinois and Oregon, over the objection of the states’ governors. In a June 7 memo prior to deploying troops to Los Angeles in response to protests against federal immigration policy, Trump pointed to the statute’s provisions about countering a rebellion and executing U.S. laws. (See “Q&A on Federalizing the National Guard in Los Angeles.”)
William Banks, a professor at Syracuse University College of Law, and Mark P. Nevitt, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law, wrote in a piece for Just Security that the last time this statute had been invoked prior to June was in 1970, when then President Richard Nixon used the National Guard to deliver mail during a postal strike.
Under the Posse Comitatus Act, federal military forces, including the federalized National Guard, can’t perform civilian law enforcement tasks. In Los Angeles, this meant that the guard troops could protect federal property and personnel but not engage in law enforcement activities. However, the Insurrection Act provides an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, and Trump has said he could invoke the law (see below for more on that).
Banks and Nevitt wrote that “the last time the National Guard was federalized over a governor’s objection was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson deployed the Guard to Selma, Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators.” Johnson invoked the Insurrection Act.
The National Guard can be deployed for federal purposes but remain under state control under Title 32 of the U.S. Code, section 502(f). In Trump’s first term, his administration invoked this section of law to bring National Guard troops from other states to Washington, D.C., in response to protests in the city following the killing of George Floyd. But again, the president already has control of the National Guard in Washington, D.C.
This statute also has been used recently to mobilize guard troops in Memphis, where Republican Gov. Bill Lee agreed to the deployment. Since the troops are under state control, they are not subject to the Posse Comitatus Act’s restriction against engaging in civilian law enforcement. But the city of Memphis says on its website that the guard troops will act in a support role to local police and won’t make arrests.
Trump has said National Guard troops should be deployed in Chicago and Portland to help fight crime. But in court filings and official correspondence, the administration has said the guard is needed to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and federal property.
“These are unsafe places. We’re going to make them safe,” Trump said of both cities in Oct. 6 remarks. He said people in Chicago “want the guard to come in or they don’t care who comes in, they just want to be safe. … And we’re going to stop this crime. Then we’re going to go to another one. And we’re going to go city by city.” The president has repeatedly made similar remarks about sending National Guard troops to cities to combat crime.
In an Oct. 4 presidential memo federalizing Illinois National Guard troops and in court proceedings in Oregon, the administration and its lawyers have cited Title 10, section 12406 of the U.S. Code, saying the president was authorized to federalize the guard because of an inability to execute the laws of the U.S. with regular forces. The lawyers also cited “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion” in Portland.
Lawyers for Oregon, Portland, Illinois and Chicago have disputed the necessity of guard troops to quell protests or execute U.S. law.
The president has repeatedly said that he could invoke the Insurrection Act to override the objections of the Illinois and Oregon governors to National Guard troop deployments, if the administration doesn’t prevail in court. As we said, the act provides an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibition on using federal military as civilian law enforcement.
Under the Insurrection Act, a state legislature or governor could request that the president send federal military forces to suppress an insurrection, or the president could invoke the act himself “[w]henever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings,” the statute says.
The president also can invoke the act to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in two scenarios: if it “hinders the execution” of state and federal laws and deprives people’s constitutional rights or protections and state authorities “are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity”; or if the insurrection/violence “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”
Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program, wrote in an explainer on the Insurrection Act that, in theory, it “should be used only in a crisis that is truly beyond the capacity of civilian authorities to manage,” but the statute “fails to adequately define or limit when it may be used.” Nunn, who has written about limiting the use of the military for law enforcement purposes, said the statute “needs a major overhaul,” calling it “dangerously overbroad and ripe for abuse.”
On Oct. 6, Trump said he would invoke the act if it was necessary. “If I had to enact it, I’d do that. If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I do that,” he said, again framing it as an issue of crime in cities. “We have to make sure that our cities are safe.”
A week later, Trump told reporters, “I don’t have to go there yet because I’m winning on appeal,” referring to the Insurrection Act. Citing an ABC News interview that included former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Trump said, “He said 50% of the presidents that served in office have used the Insurrection Act and the Insurrection Act, according to all of them, said it can’t even be challenged.”
In the ABC “This Week” interview on Oct. 12, Christie, who is also a former U.S. attorney, said that if Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, “you can’t stop him if you’re the governor.” But the governor “could always bring a court action and then the courts could decide whether the facts are there to support his [Trump’s] invocation of the Insurrection Act,” Christie said.
Eighteen of 45 presidents, or 40%, have invoked the act for crises such as rebellions, labor disputes and enforcing civil rights federal court orders. The most recent instance was in 1992, when the California governor asked President George H.W. Bush to do so in order to send federal troops to assist with civil unrest that erupted in Los Angeles following the acquittal of white police officers charged for beating Rodney King, a Black motorist. The Brennan Center for Justice has a list of all times the Insurrection Act has been used for 30 crises, dating back to 1794 under George Washington. Troops have not always been deployed. “Sometimes the mere threat of military intervention has been enough to resolve a crisis,” the Brennan Center said.
There’s “little case law” on the act, Nevitt, with Emory University School of Law, told us. Nevitt said in an email that the “leading case is from the War of 1812 (Martin v. Mott), where the Supreme Court suggested that the president has broad discretion in interpreting the act’s statutory language.”
Nevitt said there’s no judicial review in the statute and “courts have been reluctant to second-guess presidential authority in using the military,” but several courts are now addressing such authority in the cases in California, Oregon and Illinois. “A court challenge is likely,” if Trump uses the Insurrection Act, “but it remains to be seen whether a federal judge will find the case justiciable,” Nevitt said.
Nunn wrote that the high court “has suggested that courts may step in if the president acts in bad faith, exceeds ‘a permitted range of honest judgment,’ makes an obvious mistake, or acts in a way manifestly unauthorized by law” and “that courts may still review the lawfulness of the military’s actions once deployed.”
Protests in Portland against ICE began in June, when small demonstrations were cropping up in cities across the country following the Trump administration’s increased focus on immigration arrests.
As tension escalated in Los Angeles and the administration sent military troops there, the protests in Portland became larger.
“After June 25, 2025, however, the protests were generally peaceful in nature with only sporadic incidents of violence and disruptive behavior. By late September, these protests typically involved twenty or fewer people,” U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut wrote in an Oct. 4 opinion.
“[T]he protests are nowhere near city-wide,” Portland Police spokesman Mike Brenner told us in an email on Oct. 16.
But on Sept. 27, Trump announced that he was “directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” The next day, Hegseth issued a memo calling into federal service 200 members of the Oregon National Guard.
State and local officials challenged the move in federal court, leading Immergut — a Trump appointee — to block the administration by granting a temporary restraining order.
Although news reports and police accounts have characterized the protests as largely peaceful and contained to the area around the ICE facility located in the south end of the city, Trump continued to exaggerate the situation in Portland.
At an Oct. 8 roundtable, Trump said, “You look at Portland and you see fires all over the place.”
But according to Portland Fire & Rescue, that’s not the case.
Between June 6 and Sept. 30, there were four calls from the 911 center about potential fires “near the federal building where folks are gathered to share their views,” Rick Graves, spokesman for Portland Fire & Rescue, told us in an email. “Two of these were reports of a flag burning, a third was a smoke grenade device thrown under a vehicle which was perceived to be a car fire, and the last was someone who had seen a TikTok video of what they believed to be an active fire at this location but was not an active fire at this time.”
There was a 15% increase in fires around the city during that time period compared with the same time frame in 2024, Graves said, but that’s the “result of a drier year and more vegetation, bark dust, and dumpster fires. The building fire component (fires that tend to be more noticeable) is down 33% this year over last year for the same time period.”
The president has also claimed that those protesting his administration are “professional anarchists and agitators.”
But Benner told us that the Portland Police Bureau “has not found evidence that protesters are professional agitators or anarchists.” His department has made a total of 50 arrests since protests started in June, including charges of “disorderly conduct, harassment, arson and interfering with a peace officer.”
“Please remember that [the Portland Police Bureau] makes arrests based on criminal behavior, not ideologies,” Benner said.
Since Trump’s attention focused on the city in late September, demonstrators have embraced the use of large, inflatable animal costumes as a means of protest.
Although California had challenged Trump’s action in Los Angeles, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that he had met the requirements for exercising his authority under Title 10, section 12406 to federalize troops when regular forces can’t execute federal law. The three-judge panel ruled that the president’s action under that law is subject to review by the courts, but that review “must be highly deferential.”
Immergut, the judge handling the Oregon case, cited heavily from the 9th Circuit opinion, but found that the president had not met his burden in this case.
“[T]he President is certainly entitled ‘a great level of deference,’ in his determination that he ‘is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.’ But ‘a great level of deference’ is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground,” Immergut wrote. “As the Ninth Circuit articulated, courts must ‘review the President’s determination to ensure that it reflects a colorable assessment of the facts and law within a ‘range of honest judgment.’ Here, this Court concludes that the President did not have a ‘colorable basis’ to invoke § 12406(3) to federalize the National Guard because the situation on the ground belied an inability of federal law enforcement officers to execute federal law. The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”
Immergut granted the temporary restraining order sought by the state, blocking the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard.
The Trump administration appealed that decision, and the appeals court has yet to rule.
Trump has railed for years about crime in Chicago. Even in his first term in office, Trump floated the idea of bringing in National Guard troops to stem the city’s violent crime.
Trump ramped up those threats this year, arguing on Aug. 25 that Chicago “is a killing field right now” and that it only made sense to “send in troops.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker have pushed back on the president’s narrative, saying that crime is down significantly over the last year. Chicago’s overall homicide rate declined more than 30% in the first six months of this year as compared with last year, experts told us.
“We’re moving in the right direction because we’re making critical investments that actually work,” Johnson said in an interview with NPR published on Aug. 25.
Amid an immigration crackdown, Trump posted an ominous meme to Truth Social on Sept. 6, reading, “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
Two days later, the Department of Homeland Security announced the launch of Operation Midway Blitz, vowing ICE would “target the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets.”
Clashes between protesters and federal agents have escalated as immigration enforcement in the city has intensified, with multiple violent incidents and more than a dozen arrests. Many of the protests have been focused in suburban Broadview at an ICE processing facility, where federal agents erected an 8-foot fence to protect it. Demonstrators have attempted to block access to the facility, and federal agents have, at times, responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.
“Arrests [of immigrants by ICE] are taking place all over the Chicago area, but some of the biggest flash points have occurred on the South and West Sides, which are home to many of the city’s largest Black and Latino communities,” the New Yorker reported. “Conflict has occurred in homes, migrant shelters, city streets, courtrooms, a detention center, and even the areas around churches, schools, and hospitals.”
Although Trump’s comments about Chicago are usually about reducing crime in general — particularly murder — the actions to deploy the National Guard are more narrowly targeted to protect federal activities, particularly immigration enforcement.
“The situation in the State of Illinois, particularly in and around the city of Chicago, cannot continue,” a memo issued by Trump on Oct. 4 said. “Federal facilities in Illinois, including those directly supporting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Federal Protective Services (FPS), have come under coordinated assault by violent groups intent on obstructing Federal law enforcement activities. These groups have sought to impede the deportation and removal of criminal aliens through violent demonstrations, intimidation, and sabotage of Federal operations. These violent activities appear to be increasing, and the situation in the State of Illinois, particularly in and around the city of Chicago, cannot continue.”
The memo directed the mobilization of 300 National Guard troops to “any locations at which violent demonstrations prevent the execution of Federal law.”
Pritzker, meanwhile, blames the deployment of federal troops for exacerbating violence in the city.
“The Trump administration is following a playbook, cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protestors are a mob, by firing gas pellets and teargas canisters at them. Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act, so that he can send military troops to our city,” Pritzker said at a press conference on Oct. 6.
“There was never an insurrection or an invasion on the ground that justified the deployment of the military to our American city,” Pritzker said. “Donald Trump’s deranged depiction of Chicago as a hellhole, a war zone, and the worst and most dangerous city in the world, was just complete BS.”
On Oct. 6, the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago filed a complaint in federal court seeking to block National Guard members from Illinois and Texas from deploying in Chicago.
“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the complaint stated.
Trump’s attempts to deploy the National Guard in Chicago are part of the president’s “long-declared ‘War’ on Chicago and Illinois” and “are unlawful and dangerous,” it said.
On Oct. 9, U.S. District Judge April Perry, an appointee of President Joe Biden, issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration “from ordering the federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois.”
Speaking from the bench, Perry said the Trump directive was unconstitutional and would “only add fuel to the fire that the defendants themselves have started,” according to NBC News.
Perry also criticized the Department of Homeland Security for relying on “unreliable evidence” that cast “significant doubt on DHS’ credibility on what is going on in the streets of Chicago.”
Two days later, on Oct. 11, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals granted part of the Trump administration’s request to halt the lower court’s ruling. The appeals court allowed Trump to federalize the National Guard in Illinois. However, the court also denied the administration’s request to actually be able to deploy the National Guard in the state. That included hundreds of National Guard troops brought up from Texas. “Members of the National Guard do not need to return to their home states unless further ordered by a court to do so,” the order said.
In a subsequent order released Oct. 16, the federal appeals court denied the administration’s effort to lift the block on deployment pending its appeal. The court determined that there was “insufficient evidence of a rebellion or danger of rebellion in Illinois” and that there was “insufficient evidence that protest activity in Illinois has significantly impeded the ability of federal officers to execute federal immigration laws.”
“The spirited, sustained, and occasionally violent actions of demonstrators in protest of the federal government’s immigration policies and actions, without more, does not give rise to a danger of rebellion against the government’s authority,” the court wrote.
In addition, the court noted, “Federal facilities, including the processing facility in Broadview, have remained open despite regular demonstrations against the administration’s immigration policies. And though federal officers have encountered sporadic disruptions, they have been quickly contained by local, state, and federal authorities. At the same time, immigration arrests and deportations have proceeded apace in Illinois over the past year, and the administration has been proclaiming the success of its current efforts to enforce immigration laws in the Chicago area.”
The Trump administration has said while the federal government is shut down, tariff revenue will be used to fund a key federal program that provides food aid and other services to nearly 7 million low-income women and young children. But as the shutdown entered its second week last week, Republicans and Democrats blamed each other for that program being in a financial bind.
U.S. residents are divided on which political party deserves blame for the government being partially shut down, but politicians on both sides are right that the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, will remain in jeopardy the longer the shutdown continues.
“There’s a low-income food program, the WIC program, that my mom actually used when I was a baby. That program is about to be underfunded and it’s about to get cut off because Chuck Schumer won’t open the government,” Vice President JD Vance said in an Oct. 9 Cabinet meeting, blaming the Senate Democratic leader for the program’s finances.
Meanwhile, some Democratic lawmakers have used social media to counter claims such as Vance’s, placing the blame on Republicans.
“Funding for WIC is running out because of the government shutdown. American women and children will lose food assistance as a direct result of Republicans’ partisan policies,” Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware wrote in an Oct. 9 Facebook post highlighting the potential impact for people in her state. “Cruelty knows no bounds in this administration,” she said.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts also assigned blame to the GOP.
“WIC is a lifeline that helps new parents keep their babies fed. But thanks to Republicans’ government shutdown, WIC funds could run out in a matter of weeks,” she said in a Facebook post that same day. She demanded Republicans “re-open the government NOW and stop playing with people’s lives.”
Most federal operations stopped after Sept. 30 because Congress failed to pass funding legislation for the 2026 fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
House Republicans, along with one Democrat, passed a continuing budget resolution that would keep the government running through Nov. 21, allowing time for further negotiations on a long-term spending package. But most Senate Democrats repeatedly rejected that plan, opting to hold out for a funding deal that would also extend expiring subsidies for health insurance plans purchased through Affordable Care Act marketplaces as well as reverse certain Medicaid changes in Republican legislation that became law in July.
WIC provides healthy food, breastfeeding support and nutritional services to eligible low-income pregnant, breastfeeding and postpartum women, as well as children under 5 years old who are at nutritional risk. About 6.9 million individuals were receiving WIC benefits as of May, according to the most recent monthly USDA data.
Unlike some mandatory spending programs like Social Security, which continues to pay beneficiaries during a shutdown, the WIC program is run using discretionary federal funds appropriated by Congress and allocated to state and tribal agencies by the USDA. WIC cost the federal government about $7.3 billion in fiscal year 2024, and Congress approved another $7.6 billion for fiscal year 2025, which ended Sept. 30.
Without more federal financing, state governments, if they have money to spare, would have to decide whether to use state resources to finance the program in their areas and then request federal reimbursement when the government reopens.
News outlets reported that states were already burning through $150 million in federal WIC contingency funding for the shutdown when the White House said Oct. 7 that it had come up with a “creative solution” to provide additional money for the program. Citing authority under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1935, administration officials reportedly told congressional staffers that $300 million in unused revenue from tariffs on imported foreign goods would be distributed to states to help keep WIC funded through the end of October.
“The Trump White House will not allow impoverished mothers and their babies to go hungry because of the Democrats’ political games,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, according to Axios. A USDA spokesperson told us in a statement that the department “will utilize tariff revenue to fund WIC for the foreseeable future.”
Although he said he was unfamiliar with the plan, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the leader of House Democrats, told reporters on Oct. 9 that the White House needed to act.
“What we’ve seen in prior shutdowns is that presidential administrations have continued to provide support for women, infants and children, and that needs to continue right now,” Jeffries said. “And to the extent that anything different happens, it will be another example of the Trump administration using the shutdown to continue to inflict cruelty on the American people.”
But that statement overlooks notable differences for WIC in this shutdown compared with earlier ones.
WIC historically has been largely unaffected during past shutdowns but is facing a more challenging situation this year, Nell Menefee-Libey, senior public policy manager for the National WIC Association, told us.
“We’re at the beginning of a new fiscal year, so Congress has not yet appropriated any FY26 funds to support continued operations,” she said in an email, noting that during the shutdown that lasted 35 days between December 2018 and January 2019, WIC was able to keep operating without issue because the program had received some funding through a continuing resolution that had already been passed.
Menefee-Libey also said that participation in WIC has been growing, meaning that state WIC agency budgets “were already tight,” and “generally everything is really expensive right now, so food funds aren’t going as far.”
When the government shut down for 16 days at the beginning of fiscal year 2014 in October 2013, she said participation in WIC “was decreasing, leaving states with more money on hand.” USDA contingency funding also helped states continue to provide services during that 2013 shutdown, the NWA said at the time.
The organization said it welcomes the Trump administration’s use of tariff revenue to keep WIC going this month, but it also emphasized that the short-term funding, however long it lasts, is not a permanent solution.
“There is no substitute for Congress doing its job,” Georgia Machell, president and CEO of the NWA, said in an Oct. 7 statement. “WIC needs full-year funding, not just temporary lifelines. It’s imperative that leaders in Washington come together and act immediately to ensure that millions of families can continue to access the critical nutrition, care, and support they count on every day.”
In a press conference on Oct. 13, the 13th day of the shutdown, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that Congress is “barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history” unless Democrats drop their health care demands and pass a “clean, no-strings-attached budget to reopen the government and pay our federal workers.”
For now, House Democrats have proposed another legislative option: a bill that would fund WIC and make it a mandatory federal program protected from future shutdowns.
The legal clashes between New York Attorney General Letitia James and President Donald Trump took a U-turn with a federal indictment on Oct. 9 charging James with mortgage fraud. The government says when James bought a house in Norfolk, Virginia, she told the mortgage broker it would be a second home in order to get a lower interest rate, but she then used it as a rental property.
James called the charges in the indictment “baseless.” News reports say the house was purchased for her great-niece who lived in the home rent-free, though James has listed a few thousand dollars in income from the property.
Legal experts have questioned the merits of the indictment. “In my experience, federal prosecutors would not have seriously pursued something this minor,” James Kainen, a professor with expertise in real estate and white collar crime at Fordham University School of Law, told us in an email. “The indictment is disproportionate and inconsistent with established prosecutorial norms.”
Here, we’ll look at the allegations and facts surrounding the case, the history of animosity between Trump and James, and what experts say about the weight of the charges.
The case was brought by the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia amid pressure from Trump to pursue his longtime political adversaries. In a Sept. 20 post on Truth Social, apparently addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump cited social media posts calling for the prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff and James. “They’re all guilty as hell,” Trump’s post said, adding, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” (Comey was indicted Sept. 25 on charges of lying to Congress.)
James is scheduled for an initial court appearance on Oct. 24 on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. A press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said James “faces penalties including up to 30 years in prison per count, up to a $1 million fine on each count, and forfeiture.” The release also noted, “Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties.”
The case against James was brought by Lindsey Halligan, a former personal lawyer for Trump who was appointed interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in September after her predecessor, Erik Seibert, was pushed out of the position for failing to file charges against James after five months of investigation, according to an ABC News report that cited anonymous sources. Halligan had advised Trump following the FBI seizure of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 and has worked as a White House special assistant, but she has no experience as a prosecutor.
The five-page indictment filed against James on Oct. 9 alleges she attempted to “defraud” two financial institutions, OVM Financial, the mortgage broker, and First Savings Bank, when she purchased a three-bedroom house in Norfolk for $137,000 in August 2020, financed with a mortgage loan of about $109,600.
The loan required that James use the property as her “secondary residence” and “prohibited its use as a timesharing or other shared ownership arrangement or agreement that requires her either to rent the property or give any other person any control over the occupancy or use of the property,” the indictment says.
“Despite these representations,” the indictment continues, the property “was not occupied by James as a secondary residence and was instead used as a rental investment property, renting the property to a family of (3).”
“This misrepresentation allowed James to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties,” including an interest rate of 3% instead of 3.8% and resulting in “total ill-gotten gains of approximately $18,933 over the life of the loan,” according to the indictment.
The indictment charges James with one count of “bank fraud” and one count of “false statements to a financial institution.”
According to reporting by the New York Times, the house in Norfolk was purchased by James for her great-niece, Nakia Thompson, and Thompson’s children. Thompson testified in June to a grand jury — not the one in Alexandria, Virginia, which charged James — that Thompson had “lived in the house for years and that she did not pay rent,” the Times reported.
“Under the terms of a document that amended Ms. James’s mortgage agreement, she was expected to use the Norfolk property as a second home, with the exception of occasional, short-term rentals, according to the documents and to real-estate experts who analyzed” the documents, the Times also reported.
The indictment says “James filed Schedule E tax form(s),” treating the property as “rental real estate” and reporting “thousand(s) of dollars in rents received.”
James reported on annual financial disclosure statements filed in New York state in 2020 that she had made $1,000 to $5,000 in income on the “investment real property” in Norfolk, but did not report income on that property in other years. She listed the single-family house in Norfolk as an “investment” valued at $100,000 to $150,000 on the financial disclosure statements for the years 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. On her 2024 disclosure statement, James listed the the Virginia house as “real property.”
The day after the indictment was announced, James’ lawyer, Abbe Lowell, issued a statement saying, “We are deeply concerned that this case is driven by President Trump’s desire for revenge. When a President can publicly direct charges to be filed against someone — when it was reported that career attorneys concluded none were warranted — it marks a serious attack on the rule of law.”
James released her own statement and posted a video on X on the day of the indictment, saying, “These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost.”
We reached out to Lowell’s office for comment on the financial disclosure forms that show James had received some income from the Norfolk home and described it as an investment property, but we did not receive a response.
The hostility between James and Trump dates back to 2018 when she ran for attorney general on a promise to prosecute Trump for “defrauding Americans” and referred to him as an “illegitimate president.” Trump lambasted what he called James’ “GET TRUMP agenda.”
James’ investigation of Trump eventually led to his conviction in a 2024 civil fraud case. He was found guilty of deceiving banks and insurers for years by misrepresenting his wealth on financial statements he used to secure loans. The court fined Trump $450 million in penalties and barred him for three years from serving as the executive of the Trump Organization or any New York company.
During that trial, Trump used his social media platform to claim, in part, “The only Fraud was committed by A.G. Letitia James … She should be prosecuted!”
The staggering fine against Trump was tossed out by a New York appeals court in August, though the fraud charge was upheld.
Allegations against James surfaced in April, when William Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and a Trump ally and donor, sent a letter to Bondi accusing James of mortgage fraud in Virginia and New York. James has not been charged in the real estate dealings referred to the Justice Department by Pulte, however. The Norfolk house at issue in the indictment was not cited in Pulte’s letter.
As we said, after the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia didn’t pursue any charges against James, he was replaced by Halligan.
The strength of the mortgage fraud case brought against James has been questioned by legal experts.
Paul Schiff Berman, a law professor at the George Washington University School of Law, told the Associated Press, “It is very uncommon for prosecutors to bring these sorts of claims absent a pattern of malicious activity or evidence that the individual has actually harmed the bank by not paying their mortgage or if it’s part of a much larger fraudulent scheme.”
In James’ case, “the claim is that she said that the house was going to be used as her second home but she also used it as a rental property sometimes,” Berman said, adding that could be a use for a second home that doesn’t violate a mortgage contract.
Kainen, the Fordham law professor, told us, “The claimed mortgage fraud alleges a maximum savings to Ms. James” of about $18,933 “and no loss to the bank. … By comparison, prosecutors overlooked potential mortgage fraud cases involving applicants who lied about thousands of dollars in income and then defaulted on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt during the Great Recession.”
The James case “is hardly an investigation that would have resulted in an indictment for two federal felonies,” Kainen said. “Winning this case at trial requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. James had, in the words of the indictment, ‘no intention to make personal use of the property’ when she applied for the loan. If she changed her mind, thought she might use it, or even had any reason to spend time in Virginia, it would be difficult to convict her. Responsible prosecutors do not spend their time on minor cases that are hard to win.”
The indictment “does not appear to be an attempt to enforce the law with integrity,” Kainen also said. He said that strengthens James’ argument to have the case dismissed due to “selective prosecution,” which refers to prosecution for arbitrary reasons, such as political motivation.