The Trump administration is reducing the number of immigration officers in Minnesota but will continue its enforcement operation that has sparked weeks of tensions and deadly confrontations, border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday.
About 700 federal officersroughly a quarter of the total deployed to Minnesotawill be withdrawn immediately after state and local officials agreed over the past week to cooperate by turning over arrested immigrants, Homan said.
But he did not provide a timeline for when the administration might end the operation that has become a flashpoint in the debate over President Donald Trumps mass deportation efforts since the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have said the surge in Minnesota that ramped up dramatically in early January is its largest immigration operation ever. Masked, heavily armed officers have been met by resistance from residents who are upset with their aggressive tactics.
A widespread pullout, Homan said, will only occur after protesters stop interfering with federal agents carrying out arrests and setting up roadblocks to impede the operations. About 2,000 officers will remain in the state after this week’s drawdown, he said.
Given this increase in unprecedented collaboration, and as a result of the need for less public safety officers to do this work and a safer environment, I am announcing, effective immediately, well draw down 700 people effective today 700 law enforcement personnel, Homan said during a news conference.
He didn’t say which jurisdictions have been cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security.
Trump administration pushed for cooperation in Minnesota
Trump’s border czar took over the Minnesota operation in late January after the second fatal shooting by federal officers and amid growing political backlash and questions about how the operation was being run.
Homan said right away that federal officials could reduce the number of agents in Minnesota, but only if more state and local officials cooperate. He pushed for jails to alert ICE to inmates who could be deported, saying transferring such inmates to ICE is safer because it means fewer officers have to be out looking for people in the country illegally.
The Trump administration has long complained that places known as sanctuary jurisdictionsa term generally applied to local governments that limit law enforcement cooperation with DHShinder the arrest of criminal immigrants.
Minnesota officials say its state prisons and nearly all of the county sheriffs already cooperate with immigration authorities.
But the county jails that serve Minneapolis and St. Paul and take in the most inmates had not previously met ICEs idea of full cooperation, although they both hand over inmates to federal authorities if an arrest warrant has been signed by a judge. It wasnt immediately clear after Homans remarks whether those jails have since changed their policies.
Border czar calls Minnesota operation a success
Homan said he thinks the ICE operation in Minnesota has been a success, checking off a list of people wanted for violent crimes who were taken off the streets.
I think its very effective as far as public safety goes, he said Wednesday. Was it a perfect operation? No.
He also made clear that pulling a chunk of federal officers out of Minnesota isn’t a sign that the administration is backing down. We are not surrendering the presidents mission on a mass deportation operation, Homan said.
Youre not going to stop ICE. Youre not going to stop Border Patrol, Homan said about the ongoing protests. The only thing youre doing is irritating your community
Steve Karnowski, Associated Press
Associated Press reporters Corey Williams and John Seewer contributed to this report.
Jeffrey Epstein’s network of money and influence often intersected with scientific and academic communities. The disgraced financier spent years cultivating relationships with researchers at elite universities, frequently dangling the promise of funding. Some of the work he supported has had, and may still have, direct and indirect impacts on Silicon Valleys most powerful technologies.
Epstein was first convicted in 2008 on charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution, yet he continued to maintain a web of relationships across the worlds of technology and academia until he was indicted on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019. The Department of Justices latest release of the Epstein files includes emails that reveal new names and details about those connections that had not previously been made public.
Joscha Bach
One striking example is Epsteins patronage of German AI scientist and executive Joscha Bach. Known in academic and AI circles for his work on cognitive architectures, computational models that aim to replicate aspects of human cognition, Bach received extensive financial support from Epstein while completing postdoctoral work at MIT.
According to emails reviewed by SFGate, Epstein covered Bachs rent, flights, medical bills, and even private school tuition for his children in Menlo Park between 2013 and 2019.
Bach is now the executive director of the California Institute for Machine Consciousness, a small, independent research organization focused on whether machines could ever become conscious. According to SFGate, Epstein met Bach through other AI and psychology researchers and began financing his work at the MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics in 2013.
The files show no indication of sexual impropriety on Bachs part, and he has never been accused of such conduct. Bach told SFGate that MIT approved the funding and said many prominent scientists maintained relationships with Epstein. He added, The prevailing view was that Epstein, having served his sentence, was complying with the law.
Antonio Damasio
Epstein also corresponded with Antonio Damasio, the director of USCs Brain and Creativity Institute. In 2013, Damasio asked Epstein to fund a new line of robotics and neuroscience research. Damasio, the Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, and another USC researcher hoped to study the origins of emotion in the brain, and sought a nontraditional funding source so they could retain greater control over the direction of the work.
Damasio presented the proposal to Epstein in February 2013 at Epsteins New York City home, but Epstein ultimately declined to fund the research. Damasio told Annenberg Media that he did not know Epstein was a convicted sex offender at the time, and said he would never have contacted him had he known. I was looking for a prestigious philanthropist, not a criminal, Damasio said.
Damasios primary field is neurobiology, though he also teaches psychology and philosophy, with a focus on the neural systems that underlie emotion, decision-making, memory, language, and consciousness. He is best known for an influential theory arguing that emotions and their biological foundations, not just reason, play a central role in decision-making, even when the decision-maker is not consciously aware of it. He also theorized that emotions provide the scaffolding for social cognition, shaping how people process, store, and apply information about others and social situations.
Damasio argues that current AI models that power robots lack a sense of biological “vulnerability” that drives survival instincts and intelligence in living organisms. He theorises that training a robot to be “concerned” about its own preservation might help the robot solve problems more creatively.
David Gelernter
The DOJ document release also revealed that Epstein corresponded between 2009 and 2015 with Yale computer science professor David Gelernter, an early pioneer of concepts now associated with digital twins and metaverse-style overlays, which he calls computed worlds. Gelernter is the author of the book Mirror Worlds, which outlines much of that research. In 2001, Gelernter helped found a company called Mirror Worlds Software based on those ideas, but the venture failed to gain traction and shut down in 2004.
In his correspondence with Epstein, Gelernter sought business advice rather than research funding, according to the New Haven Register. The files also revealed no evidence of wrongdoing by Gelernter. He has said he did not know Epstein was a convicted sex offender and was never aware of Epsteins sex-trafficking operation.
In 1993, Gelernter was severely injured by a mail bomb sent by the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, which destroyed four of his fingers and permanently damaged one of his eyes. He is also known for controversial views, including claims that liberal academia has a destructive influence on American society, that women, especially mothers, should not work outside the home, and for rejecting the scientific consensus that humans are driving climate change.
Marvin Minsky
The most direct link between Epstein and the AI world ran through MIT professor and pioneer Marvin Minsky, who died in 2016. Minsky helped establish artificial intelligence as a formal research discipline in the 1950s and later co-founded the field at MIT with John McCarthy, training generations of AI scientists.
Epstein donated $100,000 to MIT to support Minskys research in 2002, before Epsteins first criminal conviction. That gift was the first in a series of donations to MITs Media Lab that ultimately totaled $850,000 between 2002 and 2017. Minsky died in 2016.
In 2019, court documents from a deposition by victim Virginia Giuffre were unsealed, revealing her allegation that Ghislaine Maxwell directed her to have sex with Minsky during a visit to Epsteins compound. Minskys wife said the allegation was impossible because she was with him the entire time they were on the island. Minsky never faced charges, but the revelations placed his name at the center of a reckoning at MITs Media Lab over the influence of Epsteins money on the labs work.
A gray zone
In many ways, Jeffrey Epstein operated in a gray zone created by shifting funding models for AI research. Long before the current AI boom, private industry had already overtaken the federal government as the primary backer of foundational AI work. In recent years, government funding has become increasingly tied to defense and intelligence priorities, leaving reearchers in less immediately applicable fields with few viable grant options. At the same time, AI research has grown extraordinarily expensive, requiring elite talent and vast computing resources.
As a result, universities and academic labs have become far more dependent on private philanthropy to sustain their work. Funding from wealthy donors often comes with fewer restrictions. It can arrive faster, offer greater flexibility, and require less public disclosure than government grants. This likely explains part of Epsteins appeal to researchers. But the arrangement cuts both ways. Such donations also require little transparency from the donor, meaning beneficiaries may know very little about the source of their funding.
Epsteins case is extreme, but it highlights a broader risk: when public research funding is scarce and the costs of advanced AI are high, private money becomes more attractive, along with the ethical and reputational dangers it can carry. And the problem is not easing. Microsoft chief scientist Eric Horvitz warned that U.S. cuts to National Science Foundation research grants during the Trump administration could undermine the countrys AI leadership, the Financial Times reported, noting that more than 1,600 NSF grants worth nearly $1 billion have been scrapped since 2025.
The Washington Post informed its team on Wednesday morning that it was starting a round of mass layoffs, according to multiple media reports and a memo seen by Fast Company. Multiple sections are being shut down completely, while others are being shrunk significantly.
The papers executive editor, Matt Murray, announced the cuts to the newsroom employees, saying that all sections would be impacted by the layoffs. He said the Post would be making a strategic reset, and is also cutting staff on the business side.
The New York Times reported that approximately 30% of the Posts employees are being laid off, including more than 300 of the around 800 journalists.
News of the layoffs attracted a harsh rebuke from people in the media, including the Post‘s own former editor, who criticized the paper’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the worlds greatest news organizations, Marty Baron, executive editor of the Post from 2013 to 2021, said in a statement. The Washington Posts ambitions will be sharply diminished, its talented and brave staff will be further depleted, and the public will be denied the ground-level, fact-based reporting in our communities and around the world that is needed more than ever.”
Reached for comment, a Washington Post spokesperson sent the following statement: The Washington Post is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company. These steps are designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our focus on delivering the distinctive journalism that sets The Post apart and, most importantly, engages our customers.
Sports and other sections said to be gutted
The sports section will reportedly be eliminated entirely, meaning that Washingtons paper of record will not provide day-to-day coverage for any of the citys professional or college sports teams.
Murray noted that some of the sports reporters will be moved to the features department to cover the culture of sports.
This comes in the wake of controversy surrounding the Posts plans for the Winter Olympics, which start this week. The Times reported on January 24 that the paper axed its plans to send a delegation to the Italy games just two weeks before the opening ceremony, but quickly reversed that decision, sending a team of four after the report came out.
The Olympics arent the only major event looming on the sports calendar, as Super Bowl LX will be played in San Francisco this weekend, NCAA March Madness is just about a month away, and the FIFA World Cup, hosted in North America this year, kicks off in June.
Meanwhile, the Post is reportedly cutting down its Metro desk, which covers Washington, D.C., and its surroundings, from over 40 journalists to well below half of that. The Post is drastically reducing its international coverage as well, although some international bureaus will stay operational
Additionally, the paper is reportedly closing the books section and ending its daily Post Reports podcast.
Weeks of speculation regarding the paper’s future
The announcement comes after weeks of speculation within the newsroom. The Washington Post Guild made a statement last week, directly attacking Bezos, whose holding company, Nash Holdings, bought the paper for $250 million in 2013 and has owned it ever since.
During Donald Trumps first term as president, the Post adopted the slogan Democracy Dies in Darkness and experienced a period of growth thanks to its aggressive coverage of the administration.
In 2023, Bezos hired Will Lewis as publisher of the Post, and these layoffs are just the latest in a line of changes made since then. Notably, the paper did not endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election for the first time in 36 years.
In response to the layoffs, the Washington Post Guild released another statement: These layoffs are not inevitable, its first paragraph reads. A newsroom cannot be hollowed out without consequences for its credibility, its reach and its future.
This story has been updated with the Post‘s response to our inquiry.
Low Earth orbit is already getting crowded. Around 14,500 active satellites are circling Earth, and roughly two-thirds of them are run by SpaceX. Now, in filings connected to Elon Musks plan to fold SpaceX and his AI firm xAI together ahead of an IPO, the company has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to launch up to one million more.
The figure is so large it would dwarf the number of satellites currently in orbit. In fact, it is more than every object ever sent into space by every nation combined. So why is Musk planning it, and what would it mean for the rest of us?
In a public update posted on the SpaceX website as part of the merger process between SpaceX and xAI, Musk wrote that Launching a constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centers is a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization. The Kardashev scale is a measure of technological development first outlined in the 1960s by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, who died in 2019.
While the scale of the proposal may have impressed Kardashev, many experts are far more skeptical. A million new satellites would represent roughly a 67-fold increase over todays orbital population. Proposals on the scale being discussedup to one million satellitesrepresent a step change that deserves the same level of scrutiny we would apply to any other major global infrastructure project,” says Ruskin Hartley, CEO of DarkSky International, a nonprofit focused on preserving night skies and mitigating the impacts of light pollution.
Satellite deployment at such a scale would have huge knock-on effects. The consequences extend well beyond astronomy, Hartley says. They include cumulative impacts on the night sky, increased atmospheric pollution from satellite launches and re-entries, and a sharply elevated risk of orbital congestion and collision cascades that could impair access to low Earth orbit for all nations. When satellites burn up, they release metals such as aluminum into the upper atmosphere, a process scientists and the U.K. Space Agency warn is still poorly understood but likely accelerating as megaconstellations grow.
There is also the question of safety. Space is already crowded with satellites that power communications, enable GPS navigation, and support countless services we rely on every day. Adding vastly more objects increases the chances of close approaches, which, if not monitored and avoided, can result in collisions and cascading debris. SpaceX will say they can do that stationkeeping successfully, but it doesn’t take many failures to have you end up in a bad situation, says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and space sustainability analyst based in London and Boston and formerly at the Center for Astrophysics. The SpaceX satellites will be in the higher part of low Earth orbit where it will take a long time for failed satellites to re-enter.
Hartley, for his part, argues that these risks demand far more scrutiny. Decisions made now will shape the near-Earth environment for generations, he says.
Not everyone believes the million-satellite figure is even realistic. As to the question of if its practical, I would think not, says Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space. Filing for 1 million satellites is probably a way for SpaceX to push the envelope before accepting whatever fraction regulators deem acceptable.
That tactic may already be working. The FCC initially rejected a 2022 SpaceX proposal to launch 30,000 satellites, before later approving it in 25% tranches. The commission authorized another 7,500 satellites this January, for a total approval of 15,000 satellites from that filing, says Henry. SpaceX is also asking the FCC to waive standard deployment milestones, and says the economics of the plan depend on Starship becoming fully reusable, a goal it has not yet reached.
In that sense, the million-satellite request is not a signal of imminent growth, but a bid to stake out spectrum and orbital real estate for a future that Musk is already trying to define.
President Donald Trump’s administration is expected to unveil its grandest plan yet to rebuild supply chains of critical minerals needed for everything from jet engines to smartphones, likely through purchase agreements with partners on top of creating a $12 billion U.S. strategic reserve to help counter China’s dominance.Vice President JD Vance is set to deliver a keynote address Wednesday at a meeting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is hosting with officials from several dozen European, Asian and African nations. The U.S. is expected to sign deals on supply chain logistics, though details have not been revealed. Rubio met Tuesday with foreign ministers from South Korea and India to discuss critical minerals mining and processing.The meeting and expected agreements will come just two days after Trump announced Project Vault, or a stockpile of critical minerals to be funded with a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and nearly $1.67 billion in private capital.Trump’s Republican administration is making such bold moves after China, which controls 70% of the world’s rare earths mining and 90% of the processing, choked off the flow of the elements in response to Trump’s tariff war. The two superpowers are in a one-year truce after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in October and agreed to pull back on high tariffs and stepped-up rare earth restrictions.But China’s limits remain tighter than they were before Trump took office.“We don’t want to ever go through what we went through a year ago,” Trump said on Monday when announcing Project Vault.
Countering China’s dominance on critical minerals
Other countries might join with the Trump administration in buying up critical minerals and taking other steps to spur industry development because the trade war revealed how vulnerable Western countries are to China, said Pini Althaus, who founded Oklahoma rare earth miner USA Rare Earth in 2019.“They’re looking at setting up sort of a buyers’ club, if you will,” said Althaus, who now is working to develop new mines in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as CEO of Cove Capital. “The key producers and key consumers of critical minerals will sort of get together and work on pricing structures, floor pricing and other things.”The government last week also made its fourth direct investment in an American critical minerals producer when it extended $1.6 billion to USA Rare Earth in exchange for stock and a repayment agreement.Seeking government funding these days is like meeting with private equity investors because officials are scrutinizing companies to ensure anyone they invest in can deliver, Althaus said. And the government is demanding terms designed to generate a return for taxpayers as loans are repaid and stock prices increase, he said.
The stockpile strategy
Meanwhile, the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s board this week approved the $10 billion loan the largest in its history to help finance the setup of the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve. It is tasked with ensuring access to critical minerals and related products for manufacturers, including battery maker Clarios, energy equipment manufacturer GE Vernova, digital storage company Western Digital and aerospace giant Boeing, according to the policy bank.Bank President and Chairman John Jovanovic told CNBC that the project creates a public-private partnership formula that “is uniquely suited and puts America’s best foot forward.”“What it does is it creates a scenario where there are no free riders. Everybody pitches in to solve this huge problem,” he said.Manufacturers, which benefit the most from the reserve, are making a long-term financial commitment, Jovanovic said, while the government loan spurs private investments.The stockpile strategy may help spark a “more organic” pricing model that excludes China, which has used its dominance to flood the market with lower-priced products to squeeze out competitors, said Wade Senti, president of the U.S. permanent magnet company AML.The Trump administration also has injected public money directly into the sector. The Pentagon has shelled out nearly $5 billion over the past year to help ensure its access to the materials after the trade war laid bare just how beholden the U.S. is to China.
Efforts get some bipartisan support
A bipartisan group of lawmakers last month proposed creating a new agency with $2.5 billion to spur production of rare earths and the other critical minerals. The lawmakers applauded the steps by the Trump administration.“It’s a clear sign that there is bipartisan support for securing a robust domestic supply of critical minerals that both reduces our reliance on China and stabilizes the market,” Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Todd Young, R-Ind., said in a joint statement Tuesday.Building up a stockpile will help American companies weather future rare earth supply disruptions, but that will likely be a long-term effort because the materials are still scarce right now with China’s restrictions, said David Abraham, a rare earths expert who has followed the industry for decades and wrote the book “The Elements of Power.”The Trump administration has focused on reinvigorating critical minerals production, but Abraham said it’s also important to encourage development of manufacturing that will use them. He noted that Trump’s decisions to cut incentives for electric vehicles and wind turbines have undercut demand for these elements in America.
Didi Tang, Josh Funk and Matthew Lee, Associated Press
The footage was real, verified, and delightful: a security camera clip of a coyote bouncing on a backyard trampoline in Los Angeles. Days after the video went viral, near-identical kangaroos, bears, and rabbits began circulating too, all generated by AI. Millions shared them, believing theyd captured another glimpse of animals behaving hilariously.
It was an amusing mix-up, but it was also a warning.
AI-generated video tools have moved far beyond producing surreal or obviously manipulated clips. They are now convincingly imitating the formats we instinctively trust most: CCTV, dashcams, police bodycams, wildlife cameras, and handheld eyewitness footage. These are the clips that shape public understanding during protests, disasters, violence, and emergencies. And the fake ones are becoming indistinguishable from the real thing.
AI-generated realism has already entered the news cycle
At Storyful, we verify thousands of real-world videos for newsrooms and brands worldwide. This year we ran a test: we fed real breaking-news headlines from our own platform into one of the newest AI video models.
In seconds, we got clips that mimicked the texture and perspective of eyewitness reporting. Not glossy AI experiments, news-like footage that could plausibly land in a newsroom inbox during a breaking story.
Side by side with the original real clips, even trained journalists needed to slow down and scrutinize the details.
Consider this example, inspired by a verified authentic video posted to social media in the wake of heavy monsoon rains in India:
Firefighters Save Man Clinging to Pole Amid Raging Indian Floods
A man was rescued on Tuesday, September 16, in Indias Uttarakhand state after spending more than four hours clinging onto an electricity pole as deadly floodwaters raged around him, local media reported.
Real:
And this fully synthetic video, created by prompting OpenAIs video generator app Sora with the title of the first video.
Fake:
This is no longer a theoretical future. It is happening right now.
Guardrails are already slipping. Tutorials circulate openly on Reddit explaining how to remove the watermark on videos created by one of the most popular AI-video generators, OpenAIs Sora. Restrictions on certain AI prompts can be bypassedwhen they existor models can be run locally without curbs on highly realistic content. And because these tools can create fake CCTV or disaster footage on demand, the question isnt whether AI can generate convincing videos of things that never happened. Its how far will a convincing fake spread before anyone checks it?
Why AI-generated videos feel believable
The most significant shift in AI-generated video is not just its appearance, but also its behavior.
Real eyewitness footage contains the rough edges that come with real life: a shaky hand, the camera pointed at the ground before the action begins, long stretches of nothing happening, imperfect angles and missed details.
AI does not yet replicate these moments. It goes straight to the action, framed center-perfect, lit cleanly, and paced like a scene built for maximum impact. It offers the moment we expect to see, without the messy human lead-up that usually surrounds it.
The reason is simple. Most models are still trained heavily on cinematic material rather than chaotic, handheld user-generated content. They understand drama better than they understand reality. That gap is what allows verification teams to spot the differencefor now.
As models evolve and prompt-writing improves, these behavioral tells will fade. The training data for these video foundation models includes both shaky bystander videos and slick documentaries, allowing them to ably imitate their style and sense of realism.
Public confidence is already eroding
The Reuters Digital News Report finds that 58% of global audiences fear they can no longer tell real from fake online. That fear used to apply mainly to politics and propaganda. Now it applies to harmless backyard videos.
This marks a deeper psychological shift. Once a viewer starts doubting everyday videos, they dont toggle that skepticism on and off. If they question a dog rescue, they will question a protest. If they question a prank, they will question a war zone.
Trust doesnt collapse in a single dramatic moment. It erodes drip by drip, through thousands of small uncertainties. And as AI-generated video becomes abundant, authentic footage becomes scarce.
How to tell when a video is AI-generated
AI detection tools can be a useful part of your workflow, but they are not a replacement for human verification. According to Storyfuls analysis, current tools achieve 6575% accuracy under ideal conditions, but that accuracy drops below 50% within weeks of a new AI model release. These are the signals Storyful’s verification teams use daily, cues the public can learn to recognize quickly.
AI starts at the climax.Real footage almost always includes dead time or fumbling before the action.
Subjects sit perfectly in the center of the frame.Eyewitnesses rarely capture the chaos of breaking news like cinematographers.
Motion is too smoothReal user-generated content stutters, shakes, refocuses, and slips.
Timestamps, signage, and license plates break down under scrutinyAI often approximates these details instead of rendering thm accurately.
Disaster and wildlife clips look too composed.Real life is uncertain. AI often looks staged.
These cues wont hold forever, but right now they offer critical protection.
Authenticity is now an asset
Tech platforms can add more guardrails to their video generator tools, regulators can update frameworks, detection tools can improve, and so can our own critical faculties. And as newsrooms help audiences navigate through the morass of fakery, the most impactful way they can rebuild trust is to be transparent.
Audiences no longer trust sources say. They want to see how a journalist or a newsroom knows something is real.
More news organizations are adopting verification-forward formats, including BBC Verify and CBS News Confirmed, which integrate open-source and forensic checks into reporting, examining provenance, imagery, metadata patterns, and geolocation when relevant. Storyful Newswire equips all of our partners with these basic but essential details about every video on our platform.
This transparency is becoming the primary differentiator in an environment where AI-generated video is cheap, fast, and everywhere. The more AI-generated footage floods the ecosystem, the more credibility belongs to organizations that make showing their work a key part of the story.
The internet’s most unforgettable videos were never perfect. They were unpredictable, flawed, and human, the kinds of moments AI still struggles to imagine. AI-generated footage can now mimic the visual language of truth. But it cannot yet reproduce the randomness of real life. What’s at stake when it does isn’t simply misinformation. It’s the public’s ability to trust what it sees in the moments that matter most.
James Law is Editor in Chief of Storyful, a news agency used by 70 percent of the top 20 global newsrooms specializing in verifying breaking news and viral video.
In procurement documents quietly published last month, Immigration and Customs revealed that the Veterans Affairs administration abruptly cut off its access to vaccines that the agency has historically provided to the people it detains. It was one of a series of medical support services that were suddenly halted, and comes amid long-standing and growing concerns about the health care provided at ICE facilities.
ICE subsequently pursued an emergency procurement to access vaccines in another way, according to the contracting documents released by the government. The Department of Homeland Security, in which ICE is housed, claims there was no gap in the vaccine service provided by the agency. Still, the document is a small window into the state of ICE operations as the agency continues to ramp up immigration enforcement efforts.
ICE had for decades secured what calls seasonal and routine vaccines from the VA Financial Services Center, which provides support to both the veterans agency and other federal departments. Earlier government documents, previously reported by Popular Information, show that the VA suddenly cut off services for the ICE Health Corps back in October, which created subsequent issues for both medical claims processing and the pharmacy benefits management for people detained at ICE facilities. Now, another set of documents show that disintegration of the collaboration between the VA and ICE even extended to vaccines and created what the document, as an absolute emergency.
ICE reveals relatively little about the extent to which it actually provides vaccines to detainees, and the agency did not comment on which particular vaccines it actually provides. The agency did distribute tens of thousands of COVID-19 vaccine doses during the height of the pandemic, but further information isnt available.
There are already serious concerns about the quality and extent of health services provided to ICE detainees. The transmission of illnessesincluding the flu and Hep Aare well documented at ICE facilities, and the risk of an outbreak has grown as ICE has sought to round up and detain more people, overcrowding detention centers. ICE recently paused movement at one detention facility in Texas because of a measles outbreak, and the agency is facing several class action lawsuits over the state of detainees health care.
Over the years, there have been many documented outbreaks of measles, mumps, influenza, chickenpox, and other infectious diseases in detained migrants in ICE detention centers, Nathan Lo, a Stanford professor who studies infectious diseases, tells Fast Company. Many of these outbreaks are quite unusual which underscore that its these conditions that predispose to these outbreaks. Adults are often not even offered vaccines, Lo adds.
ICE claimed in the documents, which were posted publicly in January, that the VA abruptly and instantly terminated the agreement in October, leaving the DHS component with no mechanism to provide vaccines to undocumented people. It is an absolute emergency for ICE to immediately procure vaccine support because lack of this support will delay critical and life-saving vaccines, the procurement justification said. DHS tells Fast Company that there was never a gap in services because they were able to secure a new vendor. ICE did not answer a series of questions about its vaccine provision, including which vaccines the agency offers detainees, or provide further details about its reliance on the VA.
When Fast Company asked the Veterans Affairs Department about the situation, the agencys press secretary Peter Kasperowicz only said that under the new administration, the VA does not provide any services or support to illegal immigrants. We are solely focused on providing the best possible care and benefits to the Veterans, families, caregivers and survivors we serve.
Under the Trump administration, ICE has aimed to deport a record number of people, which has exacerbated existing and serious concerns about the health and safety of detention centers and extremely limited oversight. More than 32 people died in ICE custody last year, making 2025 the deadliest year for the agency in decades, The Guardian reported.
ICE has systematically neglectedand actively harmedthe health and well-being of the people it detains for as long as the agency has existed, just like all the U.S. government agencies throughout history that have caged and deported people, says Ana Linares, a paralegal focused on mental health care at legal access at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, one of the groups leading lawsuits against ICE. The only solution that centers real health and safety is to end ICE detention and allow people to pursue their immigration processes in freedom with the support and care of family and community.”
The VA did not provide any more details over its decision to cut off vaccine support to ICE, but its possible the agency made the decision in the wake of Executive Order 14218, which the Trump Administration announced in February and dubbed the Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders. The order directed agencies to analyze taxpayer-funded funds that went to unqualified aliens and take any appropriate actions to end those programs. In response to the order, several other agencies, including the Department of Education and the Department of Labor, began reviews of their programs. As detailed by Popular Information, the VA had previously faced right-wing backlash for providing this service to ICE, but its not clear if that backlash was related to the VAs decision.
When asked for comment, the Department of Homeland Security said it was a long-standing practice for the agency to provide medical care to people in ICE custody, including various medical and mental health screenings and health assessments. As we transitioned contracts, there were no gaps in medical careincluding access to necessary vaccines, which are being provided. Illegal aliens in ICE custody still have access to vaccines like they always have, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for the agency, told Fast Company.
We live in a world of increasing change. The international order is shifting and political certainties are evaporating day by day. Technological shifts are changing how we experience the world and interact with others. And in the workplace, AI is poised to unleash what might be the most revolutionary set of changes humanity has experienced since the first hunter-gatherers settled down to grow crops and build cities.
But while change is everywhere, we still find it hard to manage. The statistics around organizational change have always been brutal. For at least the last quarter century, corporate transformation efforts have failed at a remarkable rate: only three out of ten are brought to something approaching a successful conclusion. The age of AI will make things even more challenging. We will need to adapt more rapidly and more comprehensively, and we will need to manage multiple layers of continuous change at any one time.
How will we cope? Many different factors contribute to making change hard, but one in particular stands out: change is tiring. At the human level, constant transformation depletes our energy, attention, and commitment. At the organizational level, this depletion translates into stalled initiatives, institutional resistance, and a diminishing capacity for further adaptation.
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To make the process of change navigable for real humansrather than the compliant ideals who often appear in strategy deckswe need to rethink how we understand change. We need to find the stable foundations that persist amidst the maelstrom of transformation.
The adaptation fallacy
The standard response to the reality of ever-increasing change is to insist that individuals and organizations simply adapt to it. Everything flows, as the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is reported to have said. The world is in flux, nothing is fixed, and we should all get used to the idea that the stability of the past was just a temporary illusion.
This ancient wisdom has become something of a cliché, the It is what it is of the business world. It is offered up as a slogan to hold onto, a manifesto that distils the increasingly rapid change of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But it doesnt do much to help people stay afloat.
Human beings are not infinitely malleable. There is a psychological and physical toll to constant, chaotic change that compounds in two distinct ways.
The first is the sheer quantity of simultaneous initiativesthe burden of switching between half a dozen transformation efforts at once. People find themselves juggling competing priorities, each with its own vocabulary, metrics, and demands on their attention. It becomes hard to see the big picture because the parts never stay still long enough to focus. The cognitive overhead of keeping track of everything crowds out the close attention that each single initiative requires.
The second is the exhausting length of individual change processes that can stretch over many months, or even years. The reasons for the change, once vivid and urgent, become abstract and distant. Champions move on, new people arrive who werent part of the original vision, and maintaining momentum becomes harder with each passing quarter.
The demand that team members adapt to the new reality addresses neither problem. The flux pushes and pulls them in different directions with no coherence, giving them no stable ground to stand on. Expecting people to get used to it amounts to expecting people not to be human.
Leaders who demand adaptation without addressing the underlying human experience are not solving the problem. They are adding to it.
The other Heraclitus
Heraclitus has some real wisdom that can help here, but we need to move past the most common versions of his sayings.
Heraclitus most famous aphorism is usually rendered as You cannot step into the same river twice. The idea is that when you step into the river, the water flows on and so it is not the same when you take your next step. Panta rhei. Everything flows.
But there is another version of this saying that comes closer to capturing what Heraclitus actually meant: We step and do not step into the same river twice.
The difference is small, but it matters. Yes, the water flows. Yes, the river is never the same from one moment to the next. But the river itself remains. The river has an identity that persists through its constant flow.
There is an important lesson here for organizations seeking to manage change. Recognizing that things flow is important. But we also have to identify and spotlight what it is that persists through that change.
Finding, defining, and celebrating the order that underlies the chaos is essential if we do not want to be swept away. The task is not to eliminate fluxthat is neither possible nor desirablebut to identify and preserve the stability that gives change its meaning.
Purpose, identity, strategic clarity: these define the organization and give it its identity. They provide the stable vessel that allows people to float happily along on the flowing water rather than being pulled under by the constant motion.
Providing this stability is the leaders responsibility. The constants that allow people to navigate change do not maintain themselves. They must be deliberately established, clearly communicated, and actively protected.
What leaders must do
If change fatigue is not a failure of individual resilience but a failure of organizational design, then leaders must take responsibility for building organizations in which change happens more easily. Here are five principles that can help provide stability in a changing world.
Be discerning about what you change. Not every transformation deserves equal energy. The familiar danger of chasing shiny objectsconstantly running from one initiative to the nextundermines the efforts that actually matter. Every proposed change should be tested against the organizations strategic purpose. If it doesnot clearly advance the core mission, it should not be adding to the cognitive burden on your teams.
Communicate the why, not just the what. Much of change fatigue comes not from the pace of change itself but from the cognitive burden of not understanding how changes connect. When people cannot see how a new process, tool, or structure contributes to an outcome, changes feel arbitrary and exhausting. Often, even C-suite executives are not fully aligned on precisely why things matter. That confusion cascades downward, multiplying fatigue at every level. Leaders must articulate the purpose behind each initiative and show how it fits into a coherent whole.
Build a unified narrative. When organizations pursue multiple change initiatives simultaneously, a unified story smooths the cognitive burden by holding the pieces together. Rather than experiencing six disconnected transformations, people can understand themselves as participating in a single journey with multiple dimensions. The narrative does not eliminate the work, but it reduces the sense of fragmentation.
Create systemic anchors that survive turnover. Long-term change efforts may see key leaders depart before the work is complete. If the change depends entirely on individual champions, it will falter when those individuals leave. There must be a process coregovernance structures, documentation, embedded practicesthat can survive personnel changes and maintain momentum independent of any single person.
Co-design the change with the humans who must live with it. Change fatigue intensifies when transformations are handed down fully formed, only to collide with realities about which leaders were unaware. Co-design reverses this logic. Frontline staff know the constraints they face; customers know what the change feels like on the receiving end. When the people involved help shape the new way of working that will affect them, compliance turns into ownership, and the change arrives already adapted to the world it must survive in.
Principles in practice
A clear illustration of these principles being put into successful practice comes from Gold Coast Mental Health and Specialist Services in Queensland, Australia, which undertook a sustained transformation to support the adoption of a Zero Suicide approach. The case is instructive both for the ambition of the goalto permanently shift the culture of a whole health systemand for the care that was taken to make the change sustainable over time.
From the outset, the program was framed as a system-wide approach rather than as the heroic efforts of individual practitioners. This distinction matters. When success depends on personal endurance, organizations quietly burn through their people. By treating transformation as a collective endeavor supported by organizational structures rather than individual willpower, the program avoided placing impossible burdens on staff already working in an emotionally demanding field.
The new practices were institutionalized, not merely announced. Training reached more than 500 staff and was then embedded into orientation for new hires and supported by online modules, face-to-face sessions, and custom-produced materials designed with the local culture in mind. The change was designed to outlast the people who initiated itthe kind of systemic anchor that keeps momentum alive even as personnel turn over.
Crucially, the service built feedback loops to prevent drift. Staff received timely data on adherence to the new pathway, followed by supervision and coaching to embed skills. This continuous improvement cycle meant that standards did not have to be constantly re-litigated; the system itself kept reinforcing what good practice looked like.
Co-design was an essential component of the Gold Coast approach. The services culture change strategy explicitly integrates suicide attempt and loss survivors in leadership and planning roles, recognizing that effective prevention requires perspectives beyond those of clinicians. The result is that change is shaped by those most exposed to its failure modes.
Gold Coasts transformation success did not depend on asking already-stretched professionals to simply try harder. Instead, the program leaders ensured that their teams could see the unifying structures that provided stability, meaning, and identity through change.
Conclusion
The 70% failure rate is not a law of nature. It is the predictable result of asking people to navigate constant change without giving them anything constant to hold onto.
Purpose, identity, strategic claritythese are not luxuries to be addressed once the real work of transformation is complete. They are the vessel that keeps people afloat. Without that vessel, you are asking your people to swim through every change. And eventually, swimmers tire.
Build the structures. Communicate the purpose. Shine a clear and steady light on what endures. That is how transformation succeedsnot by demanding more adaptation, but by providing stable foundations on which to build something new.
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Much to the chagrin of investors, the value of Bitcoin continues to slide.
As of Wednesday morning, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency was trading around $75,000 per coin. Thats down more than 10% over the past five days, down 18% over the past month, and down a whopping 34% over the past six months.
It’s a far cry from October of last year, when Bitcoins price topped out at nearly $125,000. Values are now roughly where they were in early April 2025, and before that, in November 2024.
From bump to slump
Notably, Bitcoins value is now lower than it was when Trump took office last January, effectively giving up all of the Trump Bump gains that it and other crypto assets saw over much of 2025.
That bump was real, too: Bitcoin returns were down around 12% during Q1 2025, but jumped to nearly 30% during Q2, and then 6.3% in Q3, according to data from Coinglass.
The downturn seemingly took hold at some point during Q4, when returns were down 23%. Ethereum, the second-largest crypto on the market, saw a similar trajectory: It saw huge increases (37% during Q2 and 67% during Q3), followed by a big drop in Q4 (down 28%).
Here are a few notable crypto slumps year to date as of this writing:
Bitcoin (BTC): Down 13.86%
Ether (ETC): Down 25.56%
XRP (XRP): Down 15.13%
Why are crypto values declining?
As for whats causing the sell-off? A lot of things, but mostly, investors looking for off-ramps from riskier assets.
This can partially be blamed on a government shutdown delaying the release of important economic data (the jobs report was supposed to come out on Friday, but has been delayed), geopolitical tensions rising in many parts of the world, on-again off-again tariff threats, and even the fear of increased regulation on the crypto industry, according to reporting from CNBC.
The crypto markets are also caught in the maelstrom of other downturns. The stock market has been flat for the past month, with some earnings announcementsnotably Microsoftscausing fervor and worry among investors.
President Trump has also named a new Fed Chair, who if confirmed will take up the position in mid-May, adding another variable of uncertainty into the mix.
As a cherry on top, precious metals have seen a steep sell-off, too. Gold and silver prices had shot to the moon in recent months, last week, silver experienced its worst day ever, falling nearly 30%.
The confluence of all of these factors is whats led to massive crypto volatility.
This story is developing…
President Donald Trump says history is on his side.He wants to build a towering arch near the Lincoln Memorial and argues that the nation’s capital first clamored for such a monument two centuries ago even going so far as to erect four eagle statues as part of the project before being derailed by the attack on Fort Sumter.“It was interrupted by a thing called the Civil War, and so it never got built,” Trump said aboard Air Force One as he flew to Florida last weekend. “Then, they almost built something in 1902, but it never happened.”Trump’s history is off the eagles he references are actually part of a bridge connecting Virginia and Washington that was built decades after the Civil War. The closest Washington came to an arch was a wood and plaster construction built in 1919 to mark the end of World War I and even that was always meant to be temporary.“For 200 years they’ve wanted to build an arc,” Trump said, meaning an arch. “They have 57 cities throughout the world that have them. We’re the only major city Washington, D.C. that doesn’t.”Chandra Manning, a history professor at Georgetown University, said Washington was fledgling in the 19th century, dealing with a housing shortage, a lack of boarding houses for visitors, roads that went nowhere and an incomplete U.S. Capitol.“Washington coming into the Civil War was still this unfinished city,” Manning said. “There’s no push for decorative memorialization in Antebellum Washington because it’s still such a place that doesn’t even have all the functional buildings it needs yet.”
Trump has offered a similar historical rationale for the $400 million ballroom he demolished the White House’s East Wing to begin building arguing that officials for 150 years have wanted a large event space.That claim, too, is dubious. While space at the White House has indeed long been an issue, there’s no record of public outcry for a ballroom. Trump nonetheless is employing a similar argument to justify the arch.“I think it will be the most beautiful in the world,” he said.
‘Biggest one of all’
The arch would stand near the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which spans the Potomac River.Trump first unveiled the idea at an October dinner for top donors to his ballroom. Without divulging how much the arch would cost, who would pay for it or whether he’d seek approval from planning officials, the president showed off three different-sized arch models, all featuring a statue of Lady Liberty on top.The president acknowledged then that the largest one was his favorite, and The Washington Post reported that Trump is mulling building an arch standing 250 feet (76 meters) tall. Asked about that aboard Air Force One, Trump didn’t confirm the exact height he desires, but offered: “I’d like it to be the biggest one of all.”“We’re setting up a committee, and the committee is going to be going over it,” Trump said. “It’ll be substantial.”The president says he’d like the new structure to be reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe, at the end of the Champs-Élysées in Paris, which was built to honor those who fought for France during the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars.But that monument stands only 50 meters (164 feet) high. A 250-foot Washington arch would dwarf the Lincoln Memorial and White House, and even rival the Capitol, which stands 288 feet (88 meters).The finished arch would be part of a building boom Trump has personally triggered, anxious to use his background as a onetime New York construction mogul to leave a lasting physical mark on the presidency.In addition to the ballroom, Trump is closing the Kennedy Center for two years of renovations amid backlash from artists over changes he’s made at the nation’s premier performing arts venue. He replaced the lawn in the Rose Garden with a patio area reminiscent of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and redecorated the Lincoln Bathroom and Palm Room in the White House’s interior.Trump also installed a Walk of Fame featuring portraits of past presidents along the Colonnade, massive flagpoles on the north and south lawns, and golden flourishes, cherubs and other flashy items to the substantially overhauled Oval Office.The arch would extend the president’s influence into Washington, where he has talked of beautifying “tired” grassy areas and broken signage and street medians and also deployed the National Guard to help break up homeless encampments.Harrison Design, a local firm, is working on the project, though no construction start date has been announced. Trump wants to unveil the new structure as part of celebrations marking America’s 250th birthday.
The bridge actually came after the Civil War
Pressed on what Trump meant by the four eagles, the White House sent a photo showing eagle sculptures at the four corners of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, but no further details.“President Trump is right. The American people for nearly 200 years have wanted an Arch in our Nation’s capital to showcase our great history,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement. “President Trump’s bold vision will be imprinted upon the fabric of America and be felt by generations to come. His successes will continue to give the greatest Nation on earth America the glory it deserves.”The president’s timing is off, though.The Arlington Memorial Bridge was first proposed in 1886, but it wasn’t approved by Congress until 1925. According to the National Park Service, the bridge was conceived after the Civil War and meant to memorialize the symbolic reunification of the North and South.It was originally built to link the site of the Lincoln Memorial with the home of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee where Arlington National Cemetery now stands. At the time, the direction the eagles would face right or left, meant to symbolize inward toward the city or outward facing visitors sparked controversy.The park service says the bridge was constructed between 1926 and 1931, and an engineer’s report lists only slightly different dates still decades after Trump’s timeline.Washington also once had a Victory Arch built near the White House in 1919, to commemorate the end of World War I. It was wood and plaster, however, and meant to be temporary. That structure was torn down in the summer of 1920.A 2000 proposal called for a peace arch in Washington, but those plans were abandoned after the Sept. 11 attacks the following year.Manning, who is also a former National Park Service ranger, said that, Washington aside, “I don’t know of a long U.S. tradition of building arches for things.”“That sounds like an import from elsewhere to me,” she said.
Will Weissert, Associated Press
