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Israeli military strikes killed at least 60 people in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, Palestinian medics said, as the United States and Arab mediators pushed for a ceasefire deal and U.S. President Donald Trump visited the Middle East.

Most of the victims, including women and children, were killed in Khan Younis in southern Gaza in Israeli airstrikes that hit homes and tents, they said.

The dead included local journalist Hassan Samour, who worked for the Hamas-run Aqsa radio station and was killed along with 11 family members when their home was struck, the medics said.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has intensified its offensive in Gaza as it tries to eradicate Hamas in retaliation for the deadly attacks the Palestinian militant group carried out on Israel in 2023.

Hamas said in a statement that Israel was making a “desperate attempt to negotiate under cover of fire” as indirect ceasefire talks take place between Israel and Hamas, involving Trump envoys and Qatar and Egyptian mediators in Doha.

Israel carried out the latest strikes on the day Palestinians commemorate the “Nakba”, or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of people fled or were forced to flee their hometowns and villages during the 1948 Middle East war that gave birth to the state of Israel.

With most of the 2.3 million people in Gaza internally displaced, some residents of the tiny enclave say suffering is greater now than at the time of the Nakba.

“What we are experiencing now is even worse than the Nakba of 1948,” said Ahmed Hamad, a Palestinian in Gaza City who has been displaced multiple times.

“The truth is, we live in a constant state of violence and displacement. Wherever we go, we face attacks. Death surrounds us everywhere.”

Palestinian health officials say the Israeli attacks have escalated since Trump started a visit on Tuesday to the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates that many Palestinians had hoped he would use to push for a truce.

The latest strikes follow attacks on Gaza on Wednesday that killed at least 80 people, local health officials said.

Little has come of new indirect ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas led by Trump’s envoys and Qatar and Egyptian mediators in Doha.

Hamas says it is ready to free all the remaining hostages it is holding in Gaza in return for an end to the war, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prefers interim truces, saying the war can only end once Hamas is eradicated.

“At a time when mediators are exerting intensive efforts to put the negotiation back on the right track, the Zionist occupation (Israel) responds to those efforts by military pressure on innocent civilians,” the group said in a statement.

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants an open-ended war and he doesn’t care about the fate of his hostages,” it said.

Israel invaded Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken as hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 52,900 Palestinians, according to local health officials. It has left Gaza on the brink of famine, aid groups and international agencies say.

A U.S.-backed humanitarian organization will start work in Gaza by the end of May under an aid distribution plan, but has asked Israel to let the United Nations and others resume deliveries to Palestinians now until it is set up.

No humanitarian assistance has been delivered to Gaza since March 2, and a global hunger monitor has warned that half a million people face starvation in Gaza.

International criminal groups are stealing as much as a trillion dollars a year from U.S. government programs but DOGE has done little to address the problem, according to a new report by a private anti-fraud firm.

“It’s the government’s dirty little secret—this has been an ongoing effort by nation states and other criminal organizations for years,” said Jordan Burris, vice president of Socure, an identities management firm, a former White House official. “We’ve been able to confirm that these coordinated attacks are pilfering government programs and doing so at a velocity that is relentless.”

Socure’s new report found that U.S. government programs are being attacked by international criminal groups in China, Russia, Egypt, Poland and several other nations—and that international fraudsters were responsible for up to 12% of all applications for government services and loans. The core problem is a failure to properly identify recipients.

“For far too long, fraud has been seen as the cost of doing business in government. But this is a fallacy,” says the new report, which NBC News obtained in advance of its publication. “As Washington prioritizes efficiency, one of the most significant opportunities to reduce government waste, fraud, and abuse remains under-addressed: strengthening our digital identity verification systems.”

A Trump Administration official speaking on behalf of DOGE told NBC News that DOGE is trying to implement new technology and private sector solutions to stop improper payments. But he said those efforts have been met with criticism, such as a plan to modernize computer code in the Social Security Administration.

“Doge is taking common sense approaches that have been done in the private sector and we get criticized for cutting people’s benefits,” the official said. “We are making basic changes to try to prevent fraud, we’ve made tremendous progress and we are well on our way to uprooting fraud in our government once and for all.”

Hundreds of billions stolen

NBC News reported in 2022 that hundreds of billions of dollars were stolen from pandemic relief programs by foreign criminal groups using false identities. They included expanded unemployment relief and the employer loans and grants associated with the Paycheck Protection Program. 

But anti-fraud experts say the same thing has been happening for years to regular government programs, from Federal Emergency Management Agency hurricane relief to Medicare.

A report by the Government Accountability Office last year pegged annual losses to fraud at between $233 billion and $521 billion annually. Burris and other experts say the true number if likely far higher.

“You can only measure what you can see when it comes to identity fraud,” said Burris, who previously worked in the White House as the chief of staff in the Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer from 2017 to 2021. “Frankly, the government does not have the right visibility. And so if you were to ask me, I would say that number–you can double and/or triple it.”

Another fraud expert, Linda Miller, told CBS’s 60 Minutes she believes the losses reach between $550 and $750 billion a year.

DOGE’s work so far

Burris and other experts credit Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency for bringing attention to the issue of fraud in federal programs. But they say Musk has misunderstood the real vulnerabilities—focusing on foreign aid spending with which he disagrees and making baseless allegations of government employees with unexplained wealth.

Experts say the vast majority of fraud in federal programs involves so-called improper payments — money paid in benefits to people or entities who pose as an eligible recipient using a stolen or fake identity. It’s a problem that banks and private companies such as Amazon and Walmart have largely solved. Experts say it persists in government not because of corrupt bureaucrats but due to incompetence and inertia, experts say.

“Criminals are using the stolen identities of Americans to pilfer federal and state government programs at a record pace,” according to the new report from Socure,. “New AI enabled technologies allow bad actors to use increasingly sophisticated fraud tactics to siphon billions away from programs.”

“Researchers from Socure have tracked fraud rings originating in China, Russia, and around the world,” the report adds. “And these criminals are getting more sophisticated, deploying techniques such as the creation of synthetic identities, faster and in greater volume than ever before.”

DOGE has highlighted examples of improper payments by the federal government, but there has so far been no effort to bring in new technology that might stop them, according to Burris and another anti-fraud expert.

“The problem is that no one has actually acted on it, and with the politicization of fraud, I still see no signs of them actually taking any concrete action to change course,” Burris said.

The Socure report highlighted examples of suspected fraud rings defrauding government programs, without naming the specific programs. The criminals—two international and one domestic–used stolen identities to apply for government benefits, fabricated business names and internet domains, disguised their IP addresses through VPN providers, and submitted suspicious or mismatched phone numbers and emails, the report says.

Failure to act

In most cases, Burris said, federal agencies are not using the kinds of techniques employed by private companies to detect such fraud.

“Today, in many agencies, if someone calls into a call center and says that I’m locked out of my account, many of them will allow them to get access to their account by saying `hey, we’ll let you change your name and your password on here,’” Burris said.

“They’ll probably ask them something to the effect of, ‘hey, can you tell me your name? Can you tell me social security number? Can you perhaps answer this question about a car that you probably had once upon a time?’ The person on the other end of the phone will do so,” based on easily obtainable stolen information.

Banks and other private companies, by contrast, use artificial intelligence and analytical tools to check for anomalous behavior. Examples include someone claiming to be calling from Connecticut who is actually in China or asking to add a bank account that has never been associated with the presumed beneficiary.

“DOGE claims that this is something that’s front and center for them,” Burris said. “I look forward to seeing what they actually do to try to curb some of these issues.”

A hotline between military and civilian air traffic controllers in Washington, D.C., that hasn’t worked for more than three years may have contributed to another near miss shortly after the U.S. Army resumed flying helicopters in the area for the first time since January’s deadly midair collision between a passenger jet and a Black Hawk helicopter, Sen. Ted Cruz said at a hearing Wednesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration official in charge of air traffic controllers, Frank McIntosh, confirmed the agency didn’t even know the hotline hadn’t been working since March 2022 until after the latest near miss. He said civilian controllers still have other means of communicating with their military counterparts through landlines. Still, the FAA insists the hotline be fixed before helicopter flights resume around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

The Army said in a statement Wednesday that is it “working with the FAA to resolve the direct communications line between the Pentagon pad tower and the DCA tower and determine what repairs are required to restore services.” DCA is the code for Reagan airport.

It said the Army “continues to restrict flights to the Pentagon pad to only mission essential operations until the line is repaired or improved communication procedures are implemented and accepted by the FAA.”

The FAA said in a statement that the dedicated direct access line between air traffic controllers at Reagan and the Pentagon’s Army heliport hasn’t worked since 2022 because of the construction of a new tower at the Pentagon. But the FAA said “the two facilities continue to communicate via telephone for coordination.”

“The developments at DCA in its airspace are extremely concerning,” Cruz said. “This committee remains laser-focused on monitoring a safe return to operations at DCA and making sure all users in the airspace are operating responsibly.”

The Army suspended all helicopter flights around Reagan airport after the latest near miss, but McIntosh said the FAA was close to ordering the Army to stop flying because of the safety concerns before it did so voluntarily.

“We did have discussions if that was an option that we wanted to pursue,” McIntosh told the Senate Commerce Committee at the hearing.

Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB and FAA accident investigator, said “the fact that they were unaware that this connection was not working for three years is troublesome.” But he is not entirely clear on the purpose of the hotline when controllers had other ways to communicate.

But Guzzetti thinks the Army needs to be more forthcoming about what it is doing to ensure the airspace around Washington remains safe. Since the crash, the Army has at times refused to provide information that Congress has asked for, and officials didn’t answer all the questions at a previous hearing.

“The DCA airspace is under the white hot spotlight. So the Army’s going to have to be more transparent and more assertive in their dealings with this problem,” Guzzetti said.

According to a U.S. official, one course of action under consideration now is to have the Army give 24 hours notice of any flights around National Airport. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions have been made and discussions are ongoing.

January’s crash between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people — making it the deadliest plane crash on U.S. soil since 2001. The National Transportation Safety Board has said there were an alarming 85 near misses around Reagan in the three years before the crash that should have prompted action.

Since the crash, the FAA has tried to ensure that military helicopters never share the same airspace as planes, but controllers had to order two planes to abort their landings on May 1 because of an Army helicopter circling near the Pentagon.

“After the deadly crash near Reagan National Airport, FAA closed the helicopter route involved, but a lack of coordination between FAA and the Department of Defense has continued to put the flying public at risk,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth said.

McIntosh said the helicopter should never have entered the airspace around Reagan airport without permission from an air traffic controller.

“That did not occur,” he said. “My question — and I think the larger question is — is why did that not occur? Without compliance to our procedures and our policies, this is where safety drift starts to happen.”

The NTSB is investigating what happened.

In addition to that incident, a commercial flight taking off from Reagan airport had to take evasive action after coming within a few hundred feet of four military jets heading to a flyover at Arlington National Cemetery. McIntosh blamed that incident on a miscommunication between FAA air traffic controllers at a regional facility and the tower at Reagan, which he said had been addressed.

___

Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump met Wednesday with Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in an effort to forge a new relationship with the country, the first time a U.S. president has met with its leader in decades. But what kind of relationship the U.S. will have with a person they once called an Al-Qaeda terrorist remains unclear. 

“We’re living in a very unusual world where suddenly people who professed hatred of the West and in particular the United States are now being accepted as potential allies and partners,” said Sajjan Gohel, International Security Director at the Asia Pacific Foundation.

Al-Sharaa, whose nom de guerre is Abu Mohammad al-Julani, has long been on the U.S.’ radar because of his associations with al-Qaeda’s former branch in Syria, his efforts to unite that faction (called the “Nusrah Front”) with ISIS, and his initial introduction to the U.S. when he was taken into custody in Iraq. 

Al-Sharaa pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda as part of the Iraq insurgency in 2003 and was jailed at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In the nearly two decades that followed, he shifted his allegiances and alliances to head up Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which after years of stalemate, overthrew the Assad regime last December, according to al-Sharaa’s published statements and experts on the region. 

His dress has changed from wearing military fatigues surrounded by weapons, to a more plain military uniform, and now to business suits standing side-by-side with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, and President Trump, according to publicly available photos. 

Now the U.S. is asking him to recognize Israel, deport Palestinian terrorists, tell foreign fighters to leave Syria, and help the U.S. stop any ISIS resurgence in the region. The U.S. has a history of negotiating over time with leaders once deemed by the US government to be terrorists or associated with terrorists, from PLO leader Yasser Arafat to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Jonathan Schanzer, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that the U.S. had lifted the sanctions on Syria too quickly. “It was too early,” he said in a social media post. “Not enough known.”

But Persian Gulf states, and some Trump administration officials, see Syria’s new president as a leader who can at last deliver stability to a country that has been a source of regional instability for years. They are willing to gamble that the Syrian president will fulfill his pledges to avoid a return to dictatorship and civil war, experts say.

The Saudis say they are ready to cancel Syria’s outstanding debt to international institutions and the Qataris have promised to pay the wages of the country’s civil servants. 

Experts wonder just which version of al-Sharaa will lead Syria and whether his choices for his cabinet foreshadow discriminatory policies against women and minorities in his country. 

“The best analogy to describe al-Sharaa is that he’s like a transistor radio, that he can tune his message,” Gohel said. “He can move from engaging with jihadists who are concerned he is getting to close to the West and he can equally pivot to people in the West who have concerns about his associations with jihadists.”

A pledge to Al-Qaeda

Al-Sharaa’s first introductions to the U.S. in the Middle East occurred in 2003 when he traveled from Syria to Iraq in advance of the U.S. invasion. According to public records and his own statements Al-Sharaa was picked up by Iraqi authorities during the second Gulf War.

He was imprisoned at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison at the same time Omar al-Baghdadi — the now deceased leader of ISIS — was held prisoner there too.

That arrest came, according to al-Sharaa, after he pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and was a part of the Iraqi insurgency against U.S. forces. Ultimately, he fell under the command of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — the notorious terror leader who was responsible for the deaths of over 700 Americans in Iraq (according to previous NBC News reporting) with many lives lost to bombings. 

After leaving Iraq, al-Sharaa spent time fighting the Syrian regime while also fighting alongside and with the different factions fighting against Syria’s regime

In a 2021 interview with a documentary filmmaker which aired on PBS’ “Frontline” al-Sharaa spoke about 9/11 and what he felt after the attacks. Abu Mohammad al-Jolani | FRONTLINE

“First of all, anybody who lived in the Islamic world, in the Arab world at the time who tells you that he wasn’t happy would be lying to you,” he said, “because people felt the injustice of the Americans in their support of the Zionists, their policies towards Muslims in general, and their clear and strong support of the tyrants in the region.” 

He added, “but people regret the killing of innocent people, for sure.”

A new Syria

Since taking power, Al-Sharaa has promised that Syria’s minority groups including women, Christians, and the Alawites would be protected under his government.

“Ahmed al-Sharaa optics matter a great deal,” Gohel said, adding, “he has tried to frame his regime as supportive of women’s rights, he’s keen to get specific perceptions of his intentions that are seen as palatable to the West.”

But a close examination of the people he’s chosen for leadership positions and their views raises questions about the seriousness of those efforts, experts say.

When HTS first took power in Syria, Gohel said there were no single women in leadership positions until al-Sharaa appointed Aisha al-Dibs to be the head of women’s affairs, she is also the only Christian in government. 

An education minister, though, has been accused of instituting a policy that would portray women historical figures from the Levant not as people who lived but as fictional characters. Another minister in al-Sharaa’s government has a history of sentencing women to death on allegations that they made blasphemous statements. 

“There are people in his administration that are extremely misogynistic,” Gohel said.

Based on his experience in studying hundreds of terror attacks and terrorist groups around the world, Gohel said Al Sharaa’s tolerance of misogyny does not portend well for U.S.’s counterterrorism efforts. 

“Any entity that does not condemn misogynistic practices or allows misogyny to become part of the state apparatus are not going to be allies to the counterterrorism effort,” he said. 

Schanzer, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that the stakes are enormous. If al-Sharaa can stabilize Syria, it could aid Syrians, the region and the U.S. If not, Syria could re-emerge as a major security threat.

“If things go badly, Schanzer said, “today paved the way for a Muslim Brotherhood-Sunni jihad state in the heart of the Levant.”

Will Al-Sharaa help the U.S. fight ISIS?

A White House readout of Trump’s meeting with al-Sharaa on Wednesday suggested that for the relationship to strengthen the U.S. would like to see the Syrian assist U.S. count-terrorism efforts.

Syria still has detainee camps filled with large numbers of ISIS prisoners. U.S. and Euoprean counter-terrorism leaders would like to see them imprisoned and monitored so that ISIS does not have a resurgence in Syria and the region and again conduct attacks in the West. 

The U.S. has also asked that Al-Sharaa expel foreign fighters, according to the White House memo. 

 The question for al-Sharaa and for the, U.S. is just where those foreign fighters should go.

“I am really concerned about this foreign fighter dynamic,” Gohel said. 

DENVER — An alligator that appeared in numerous TV shows and films over three decades, most notably the 1996 Adam Sandler comedy “Happy Gilmore,” has died at a gator farm in southern Colorado.

Based on his growth rate and tooth loss, Morris the alligator was at least 80 years old when he died, the Colorado Gator Farm said in a Facebook post Sunday. He was nearly 11 feet (3.3 meters) long and weighed 640 pounds (290 kilograms).

“He started acting strange about a week ago. He wasn’t lunging at us and wasn’t taking food,” Jay Young, the farm’s owner and operator, said in a video as he tearfully stroked Morris’ head in an animal enclosure.

“I know it’s strange to people that we get so attached to an alligator, to all of our animals. … He had a happy time here, and he died of old age,” he said.

Morris, who was found in the backyard of a Los Angeles home as an illegal pet, started his Hollywood career in 1975 and retired in 2006, when he was sent to the Colorado Gator Farm in the tiny town of Mosca. He appeared in several films, including “Interview with the Vampire,” “Dr. Dolittle 2” and “Blues Brothers 2000.” He also appeared on “Coach,” “Night Court” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” featuring the late wildlife expert Steve Irwin.

But his most famous role was in “Happy Gilmore,” a film about a failed and ill-tempered hockey player who discovers a talent for golf. The title character played by Sandler confronts Morris after hitting a golf ball that ends up in the gator’s mouth.

Sandler posted a tribute to Morris on Instagram on Wednesday.

“We are all gonna miss you. You could be hard on directors, make-up artists, costumers — really anyone with arms or legs — but I know you did it for the ultimate good of the film,” Sandler wrote. “The day you wouldn’t come out of your trailer unless we sent in 40 heads of lettuce taught me a powerful lesson: never compromise your art.”

The Colorado Gator Farm, which opened to the public in 1990, said it plans to preserve Morris’ body.

“We have decided to get Morris taxidermied so that he can continue to scare children for years to come. It’s what he would have wanted,” the farm posted on Facebook on Monday.

BOSTON — Harvard University for decades assumed it had a cheap copy of the Magna Carta in its collection, a stained and faded document it had purchased for less than $30.

But two researchers have concluded it has something much more valuable — a rare version from 1300 issued by Britain’s King Edward I.

The original Magna Carta established in 1215 the principle that the king is subject to law, and it has formed the basis of constitutions globally. There are four copies of the original and, until now, there were believed to be only six copies of the 1300 version.

“My reaction was one of amazement and, in a way, awe that I should have managed to find a previously unknown Magna Carta,” said David Carpenter, a professor of medieval history at King’s College London. He was searching the Harvard Law School Library website in December 2023 when he found the digitized document.

“First, I’d found one of the most rare documents and most significant documents in world constitutional history,” Carpenter said. “But secondly, of course, it was astonishment that Harvard had been sitting on it for all these years without realizing what it was.”

Confirming the document’s authenticity

Carpenter teamed up with Nicholas Vincent, a professor of medieval history at Britain’s University of East Anglia, to confirm the authenticity of Harvard’s document.

Comparing it to the other six copies from 1300, Carpenter found the dimensions matched up. He and Vincent then turned to images Harvard librarians created using ultraviolet light and spectral imaging. The technology helps scholars see details on faded documents that are not visible to the human eye.

That allowed them to compare the texts word-for-word, as well as the handwriting, which include a large capital ‘E’ at the start in ‘Edwardus’ and elongated letters in the first line.

After the 1215 original printed by King John, five other editions were written in the following decades — until 1300, the last time the full document was set out and authorized by the king’s seal.

The 1300 version of Magna Carta is “different from the previous versions in a whole series of small ways and the changes are found in every single one,” Carpenter said.

Harvard had to meet a high bar to prove authenticity, Carpenter said, and it did so “with flying colors.”

Its tattered and faded copy of the Magna Carta is worth millions of dollars, Carpenter estimated — though Harvard has no plans to sell it. A 1297 version of the Magna Carta sold at auction in 2007 for $21.3 million.

A document with a colorful history

The other mystery behind the document was the journey it took to Harvard.

That task was left to Vincent, who was able to trace it all the way back to the former parliamentary borough of Appleby in Westmorland, England.

The Harvard Law School library purchased its copy in 1946 from a London book dealer for $27.50. At the time, it was wrongly dated as being made in 1327.

Vincent determined the document was sent to a British auction house in 1945 by a World War I flying ace who also played a role defending Malta in World War II. The war hero, Forster Maynard, inherited the archives from Thomas and John Clarkson, who were leading campaigners against the slave trade. One of them, Thomas Clarkson, became friends with William Lowther, hereditary lord of the manor of Appleby, and he possibly gave it to Clarkson.

“There’s a chain of connection there, as it were, a smoking gun, but there isn’t any clear proof as yet that this is the Appleby Magna Carta. But it seems to me very likely that it is,” Vincent said. He said he would like to find a letter or other documentation showing the Magna Carta was given to Thomas Clarkson.

Making Magna Carta relevant for a new generation

Vincent and Carpenter plan to visit Harvard in June to see its Magna Carta firsthand — and they say the document is as relevant as ever at a time when Harvard is clashing with the Trump administration over how much authority the federal government should have over its leadership, admissions and activism on campus.

“It turns up at Harvard at precisely the moment where Harvard is under attack as a private institution by a state authority that seems to want to tell Harvard what to do,” Vincent said.

It also is a chance for a new generation to learn about the Magna Carta, which played a part in the founding of the United States — from the Declaration of Independence to the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Seventeen states have incorporated aspects of it into their laws.

“We think of law libraries as places where people can come and understand the underpinnings of democracy,” said Amanda Watson, the assistant dean for library and information services at Harvard Law School. “To think that Magna Carta could inspire new generations of people to think about individual liberty and what that means and what self-governance means is very exciting.”

FBI field offices around the country have been ordered to assign significantly more agents to immigration enforcement, a dramatic shift in federal law enforcement priorities that will likely siphon resources away from counterterrorism, counterintelligence and fraud investigations, multiple current and former bureau officials told NBC News.

The orders, given in a series of memos and meetings in FBI offices this week, come at a time when the Trump Administration is proposing to cut 5% of the FBI’s budget, and as the Justice Department is deprioritizing investigating certain types of white collar and corporate crime, according to a memo obtained by NBC News.

The new push is happening as FBI director Kash Patel also approved 667 requests for FBI personnel to take early retirement this week, two people familiar with the matter told NBC News.

“As you know, we have been actively engaged in immigration enforcement efforts in coordination with our DOJ and DHS partners,” said a memo obtained by NBC News from a senior FBI official to managers. “Starting this week, we will need to see an increase in operational tempo in your immigration efforts. DOJ expects a significant increase in the number of agents participating in immigration enforcement operations.”

One federal law enforcement official estimated that the vast majority of agents were uncomfortable with being a part of the immigration operations, saying ICE didn’t meticulously plan out arrest operations the way that the bureau does.

“This is not what we do, these are bad ideas,” said the federal law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation. “If this was a Democrat administration, I’d be saying this is bad, we shouldn’t be doing this.” 

FBI spokesman Ben Williamson defended the move. “The FBI has been committed to supporting our partners in immigration enforcement and will remain so.”

The stepped-up immigration enforcement initiative was first reported by Reuters.

Nationwide shift

The shift in resources spans the country, according to two FBI officials. In a major change, 45% of all agents in the 25 largest FBI field offices will be working on immigration full time.

The bureau’s Atlanta field office will assign 67 agents to work immigration “enforcement and removal operations” full time, seven days a week, the officials said. That is around half of all the agents assigned to the Atlanta Field Office headquarters 

In Los Angeles, the field office is creating 9 squads to address enforcement and removal operations full-time. They will pursue non-citizens who have overstayed their visas, even if they have no criminal history.

And the FBI’s Boston field office was ordered to assign an additional 33 special agents to immigration enforcement 

The FBI and Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The orders intensify what had already been an unprecedented push by the Trump Justice Department to get the FBI involved in immigration enforcement, a task traditionally handled by the Department of Homeland Security.  

One of the memos says the goal is to have 2000 FBI agents across the country working full time on immigration enforcement at any one time. 

Given that FBI resources are finite, current and former officials say a significant increase in immigration enforcement will draw agents away from what have long been top FBI priorities, including counterterrorism, counterespionage, fraud, and violent crime.

Trump and his top aides have been frustrated by the slow pace of deportations. Documents released in the Biden administration showed that hundreds of thousands or illegal immigrants with criminal records were living in the U.S. including more than 10,000 with homicide convictions. Many of those people are still here, according to NBC News reporting.

White collar crime

The moves also come as the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division issued a memo this week ordering a new “appropriate balance” in enforcement of corporate crime. 

“Overbroad and unchecked corporate and white-collar enforcement burdens U.S. businesses and harms U.S. interest,” wrote Matthew Galeotti, the head of the criminal division, adding later, “Not all corporate misconduct warrants federal criminal prosecution.”

The memo orders prosecutors to prioritize schemes to defraud Americans, tariff evaders, sanctions violators, Chinese money launderers and foreign terrorist financiers.  

But it seeks to tap the brakes on what had been a major initiative in the Biden Justice Department to target corporate crime and to begin monitoring of companies found to have broken the law. 

Galiotti ordered prosecutors “to review the length of terms of all existing agreements with companies to determine if they should be terminated early.”

“The work of Criminal Division attorneys to investigate and prosecute white-collar crime is essential to the Department’s efforts to advance American interests, protect victims, and strengthen our national security,” the memo says. 

“But federal investigations into corporate wrongdoing can be costly and intrusive for businesses, investors, and other stakeholders, many of whom have no knowledge of, or involvement in, the misconduct at issue,” Galiotti wrote. “Federal investigations can also significantly interfere with day-to-day business operations and cause reputational harm that may at times be unwarranted.”

Jetlagged but excited, Pope Leo XIV’s brother, John Prevost, is catching up on daily life after a whirlwind few days in the Vatican.

Prevost is freshly arrived home after spending time with his brother following his election to the papacy. He said his priorities when he got home were mowing the lawn, enjoying a beer and letting a wild new reality set in.

“This is as life-altering event for everybody, not just for the Catholic Church,” he said. “I was stunned at how quickly the vote went.”

During his time in Rome, Prevost attended multiple events with his brother, going on two different church trips outside the Vatican, and he said the massive crowds were an incredible sight.

“It was supposed to be secret, but all the way there, both sides, jammed, four or five people deep,” Prevost said. “Screaming and hollering, ‘Papa! Papa! Papa!’ He rolled down his window and shook hands with as many people as he could. It just changed their facial expression.”

There’s been plenty of talk of what the pope’s philosophy will be and whether it will represent a departure from his predecessor or a continuation of his work, but Prevost said his brother recognizes that “people are looking for hope” and that he wants to focus on unity.

“I think he’ll be a second Pope Francis,” he said.

Prevost also shared photos with NBC Chicago of his parents and his siblings, and said he believed his brother was always destined for a critically important role.

“He’s a man of the world. And so what better person to be pope,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, Prevost said that things are still slowly sinking in.

“You also feel a sense of pride, a sense of, ‘Is this for real?’” he said. “It didn’t hit me until last night — that this is for real, life-changing, and then life will go on.”

Prevost also said there was a stack of mail at his home when he returned, but that plenty of it was meant for the new pope.

“People bore their souls, so I’m going to give them something back,” he said.

Prevost said he was amused by the White Sox’s reaction to the news that his brother was a fan of the South Siders, and also answered another critical question for a Chicagoan: thin-crust or deep-dish pizza?

“Thin crust, because that’s what I like too,” he said.

Prevost asked the public to continue praying for his brother, who will be formally inaugurated as pope in a Mass on Sunday.

“Keep watching and keep praying,” Prevost said. “I think this is going to be a great thing for the church and for the country and the world.”

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Six months after Missouri voters approved an abortion-rights amendment, Republican state lawmakers on Wednesday approved a new referendum that would seek the amendment’s repeal and instead ban most abortions with exceptions for rape an incest.

The newly proposed constitutional amendment would go back to voters in November 2026, or sooner, if Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe calls a special election before then.

Republican senators used a series of rare procedural moves to cut off discussion by opposing Democrats before passing the proposed abortion-rights revision by a 21-11 vote. The measure passed the Republican-led House last month.

Immediately after the vote, protesters erupted with chants of “Stop the ban!” and were ushered out of the Senate chamber.

The Senate then blocked further Democratic debate and gave final approval to a separate measure repealing provisions of a voter-approved law guaranteeing paid sick leave for workers and cost-of-living increases to the minimum wage. That measure does not go back to the ballot. It will instead become law when signed by Kehoe, who has expressed his support for it.

After taking the sweeping votes, the Senate effectively ended its annual legislative session — two days ahead of a constitutional deadline to wrap up work.

Democrats were outraged by the legislative actions and vowed to retaliate by slowing down any Senate work next year.

“Our rights are under attack,” Democratic state Sen. Brian Williams said during debate. He accused Republicans of “trying to overturn the will of the voters.”

Republicans contend they are simply giving voters a second chance on abortion — and are confident they will change their minds because of the new rape and incest exceptions.

“Abortion is the greatest tragedy in the world right now,” Republican state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman said while explaining her efforts to repeal the abortion-rights amendment. If someone’s fine with “taking the life of an innocent, then probably you can justify whatever you want.”

Some GOP lawmakers said they needed to repeal the paid sick leave requirement, which kicked in May 1, because it’s adding costs that threaten the financial viability of small businesses. Republicans had been negotiating with Democrats over an alternative to exempt only the smallest businesses before scrapping that and opting for the full repeal.

Missouri lawmakers have a history of altering voter-approved policies. They previously tried to block funding for a voter-approved Medicaid expansion and wrote changes to voter-approved measures regulating dog breeders and legislative redistricting.

Missouri’s abortion policies have swung dramatically in recent years.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ended a nationwide right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, it triggered a Missouri law to take effect banning most abortions. But abortion-rights activists gathered initiative petition signatures to reverse that.

Last November, Missouri voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to abortion until fetal viability, generally considered sometime past 21 weeks of pregnancy. The amendment also allows later abortions to protect the life or health of pregnant women and creates a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” that includes birth control, prenatal and postpartum care and “respectful birthing conditions.”

A limited number of surgical abortions have since occurred in Missouri, but medication abortions remain on hold while Planned Parenthood wrangles with the state over abortion regulations.

The new measure seeks to repeal the abortion-rights amendment and instead allow abortions only for a medical emergency or fetal anomaly, or in cases of rape or incest up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. It also would prohibit gender transition surgeries, hormone treatments and puberty blockers for minors, which already are barred under state law.

Polling indicates “that most voters are opposed to most abortions in Missouri but do want to allow for abortions with limited exceptions,” said Sam Lee, director of Campaign Life Missouri.

The ballot title that voters will see doesn’t explicitly mention repealing Amendment 3. Instead, it says the new measure would “ensure women’s safety during abortions, ensure parental consent for minors” and “allow abortions for medical emergencies, fetal anomalies, rape, and incest.” It also states that it will “protect children from gender transition,” among other provisions.

Democratic state Sen. Tracy McCreery called the measure “an attempt to mislead and lie to the voters,” echoing similar accusations that Republicans had made against the original Amendment 3.

An abortion-rights coalition that includes Planned Parenthood affiliates, the American Civil Liberties Union and others planned a rally Thursday at the Missouri Capitol and vowed a vigorous campaign against the measure.

“Abortion rights won in this state six months ago, and mark my words: Missourians will protect reproductive freedom again,” said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes.

A Victorville, Calif.,  couple and their adult daughter who fostered children were charged Wednesday with child abuse and torture stemming from what authorities described as years of physical, emotional, and mental abuse.

Tina Marie Sheffield Key, 60, Kenneth Michael Key, 60, and daughter Kaitlynn Marresa Key, 23, were charged with six counts of torture — one count for each of the six children in their care — and one count of child abuse.

Arraignment is scheduled for May 15. It was not immediately clear whether the three suspects have an attorney who could speak on their behalf.

Their arrests were announced Tuesday by the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department, which said the children range in age from 4 to 16. They were booked at the Central Detention Center with bail set at $1 million.

In a complaint filed Wednesday, prosecutors said the children were subjected to years of abuse that included daily beatings and strangulation to the point of unconsciousness. Punishments included withholding food and water from the children for days, the district attorney’s office said.

Details about what led to the suspects’ arrests were not immediately available.

Anyone with information regarding the case was asked to contact authorities at 909-890-4904. If you wish to remain anonymous you may leave information on the We-Tip website.