Agencies https://washingtonsun.com/agencies Agencies en-US Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:47:00 GMT How Trump Unleashed an Existential Fight Over America's Dinosaurs https://washingtonsun.com/climate-environment/grand-staircase-escalante-dinosaurs-trump-national-monument Anna Kramer In Utah, Trump resurfaced a decades-long dispute over how to protect some of the country’s crown jewels. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:47:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/climate-environment/grand-staircase-escalante-dinosaurs-trump-national-monument Katja Knoll
Katja Knoll, a paleontology technician, recovers fossils from an excavation site inside Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 2020. (Courtesy of Christian Venhuizen/Bureau of Land Management Utah)
Seventy five million years ago, a long-necked creature resembling an oversized ostrich curled into a ball to die.

In June, the dinosaur’s still-curled body took flight over the barren, jagged rocks of southeastern Utah, suspended from the base of a double-rotored military helicopter usually used to airlift tanks.

It was the second helicopter called upon to pull the ornithomimid into the sky. First came a Black Hawk, which struggled to lift the nearly 5,000 pounds of rock and bones. When it failed, state officials sent the far more powerful Chinook, armed with a cadre of soldiers on loan from the National Guard.

Few could see the camouflaged helicopter carrying its bobbing white package for what it was: an animal that once lived among tyrannosaurs and hadrosaurs, set free. Its once marshy wetlands had long since been subsumed by the cliffs that Americans knew until very recently as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

“Nearly all of the dinosaurs and other fossils preserved in the region have been found nowhere else,” said Joe Sertich, a paleontologist who has studied in Utah for more than a decade.
IMG_3215 copy.jpg (1200x1500, AR: 0.80)Dangling hundreds of feet in the air that summer day was a perfect capsule of that land before time.

Then, just a few weeks after the ornithomimid flew, President Donald Trump declared the dinosaur fossils of Grand Staircase-Escalante “common” and “not unique,” stripping protections from the place where this particular creature had slept for millenia. 


***

Trump shrank the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by more than 90% on July 13, removing almost 900,000 acres of geologic layers home to unusually complete dinosaur fossils.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and the entirety of the state’s congressional delegation stood behind him in the Oval Office as he signed the proclamation. They applauded, smiled and posed for photographs.

Back home, the scientists and paleontologists who have worked on that land for years sat in disbelief.

“It’s just an absolute distortion of reality to say that the fossils of Grand Staircase are common and can be found anywhere, and therefore don't need any special consideration or protection,” said Alan Titus, who served as Grand Staircase-Escalante’s official monument paleontologist for the Bureau of Land Management until the fall of 2025.

“I so vehemently disagree with that perspective, and I can guarantee the people that wrote it did not talk to a qualified paleontologist about it,” Titus said.

Most of the region’s local leaders disagree with Titus. They love dinosaurs, they say, but the national monument has been a burden. Trump’s order was a long-fought victory, finally giving them more control over the future of both the land — and dinosaurs — they see as theirs.

“The fossils don’t disappear because the boundaries change. That basin is still one of the richest Late Cretaceous ecosystems ever discovered,” said Kaden Figgins, Garfield County’s planning and economic development director.

Figgins believes both that the dinosaurs are an extraordinary resource and that the dramatic cuts to the national monument are a boon for his community.

There are indisputable facts. The fossilized bodies found in Grand Staircase-Escalante are unique. They have inspired massive movie franchises and even amusement parks. The most recent “Jurassic World” featured dinosaurs only known to scientists because of excavations there. Dinosaur species have been found for the first time in this desert.

For the last 15 years, paleontologists and local leaders have been working in tandem to bring that Hollywood attention to their backyard. They want to make Utah a dinosaur capital and build a world-class dinosaur museum — an international destination for scientists and tourists alike.

Trump (8640x5760, AR: 1.50)Monumental Day of Action: Utah based public land rally (4800x3202, AR: 1.50)Then there is the debate. Trump’s proclamation has brought to the surface in Utah a long-simmering and existential disagreement about the future of this land, what it holds and who should control it. The same people who for so long have been united in their belief that the dinosaurs are among the nation’s greatest crown jewels are now fundamentally at odds with each other over what is required to protect them.

In his order, the president did not just dismiss the value of the monument’s scientific resources. He went further, suggesting that the lands could be opened for mining minerals and coal, perhaps helping make the U.S. less dependent on foreign sources of critical minerals.

While the local leaders are excited about what comes with the shrinking of Grand Staircase-Escalante’s boundaries, the researchers are warning that its still-pristine time capsule could be disrupted by industrial development. The dinosaur bones themselves are at greater risk of being stolen and sold on the black market. And without the prestige of a national monument, money for research, a museum or scientific infrastructure will be far harder to secure, they said.

“There needs to be a national dialogue about public lands, and what we want to do with them,” Titus said. “Is this really what we want to do with our public lands? Open them all up to extraction? Or do we want to balance this with conservation, protection, and scientific research?”

Paleontologists believe that this remote corner of southern Utah could be home to the next great undiscovered dinosaur — and the next, and the one after that.

That faith is so strong that one local official is willing to break publicly with his leaders.

State Paleontologist James Kirkland found himself at a loss for words when first asked about Trump’s presidential proclamation. He said that Democrats have sometimes gone too far in their defense of Grand Staircase-Escalante’s massive size. But for the president to attack the monument’s boundaries wholesale? That’s a decision so far beyond his personal red line that he’s willing to risk the consequences of speaking out.

“Yeah we need common sense, but we don’t want to just throw out the baby with the bathwater,” he said. “It’s just sad. We had so much to offer, and this is not going to help anybody.”

"We are talking gigantic dinosaurs,” he went on. “This is the story, the age of dinosaurs in Utah. It could be ground shaking."

***

President Bill Clinton designated Grand Staircase-Escalante as a national monument in 1996. Ever since, researchers in Utah have been discovering new dinosaurs at such a rapid pace they haven’t been able to name them all.

And every year, they dig out at least one especially well-preserved dinosaur. Last year’s dig produced the ornithomimid that scientists airlifted out this summer. The year before it was a tyrannosaur.

“It’s just every year we get something special, like a little baby hadrosaur covered in skin impressions,” said Titus, who retired last year, taking the early resignation offer the Trump administration used to dramatically cut the size of the federal workforce. “It always has a treasure every year. And you don't know what's out there until you go out and look for it.”
IMG_1271 (4032x2688, AR: 1.50)51121918048_68f690813f_o copy.jpg (1620x1080, AR: 1.50)Unlike many of the better-known dinosaur hotspots in China, and even in North America, Grand Staircase-Escalante is still in the early stages of investigation, paleontologists said.

Even researchers from China — often credited with the most interesting dinosaurs yet known to man — have come to see the fossils of Grand Staircase-Escalante.

“The Chinese admit we have the best Mesozoic age of dinosaurs record anywhere in the world,” Kirkland said.

Discoveries have come thick and fast in recent years only because researchers finally had access to modern tools and transportation. The region, known as the Kaiparowits Plateau, is so remote that it was the last part of the contiguous United States reached by cartographers.

The Chinook that carried the ornithomimid in June was merely the most recent helicopter deputized for dinosaur transport. The fossils are so massive that in previous years, paleontologists have paid federal wildland firefighting teams to swing by with their helicopters at the end of a deployment to pick up bones.

“We’ll fly a camp deep into the backcountry and camp out there for two or three weeks,” Sertich said.

Because the digs are especially expensive, funding them has become increasingly difficult as research dollars grow scarce. Paleontologists have relied heavily on the Grand Staircase-Escalante name to help get the limited dollars flowing over the last two decades, they said. Without that monument status to attract attention, they predicted that resources that were already hard to tap will likely grow dry.

“The new executive order cuts us off at the knees in that effort” to make Utah a new epicenter for dinosaur study and tourism, Titus said. The Interior Department has not hired anyone to replace him as the monument paleontologist at the Bureau of Land Management.

A BLM spokesperson told The Washington Sun that paleontological resources and protection "is not limited to areas with monument designation.”

“BLM Utah will move forward with advertising the position as opportunity and funds become available,” the spokesperson said.

The region’s local leaders share Titus’ passion for the dinosaurs. Several told The Sun that no other place on Earth can compete with what’s been found in their backyards.

One official went so far as to say that the county’s great exports are twofold: “our children and our dinosaurs.”

But they don’t have Titus’ fear for the future. In fact, these local leaders said that they don’t believe there’s any risk at all in cutting the monument.

***

The contours of today’s fight trace back to at least 1976, when a group of power companies abandoned plans to build what at the time would have been the largest coal power plant in the country on the edge of the Kaiparowits Plateau. The plant would have been powered by coal blasted out of the same rocks that hold the fossils.

Back then, no one understood that there was an expansive dinosaur boneyard in those rocks. The plan fell apart because mining in the region was plagued with problems.

Mining the region was just as fraught in the 1990s, when another plan coalesced to build a coal mine in the middle of the plateau. But that time, the project died because Clinton established the national monument, effectively making it impossible to move forward. In the process, Utah Republicans grew increasingly angry with the federal government’s power over public lands; on the day of the monument designation ceremony, both Clinton and then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt were hung in effigy from lampposts in Escalante.
PRESIDENT CLINTON (1790x1430, AR: 1.25)Exactly 30 years after they sent black balloons into the sky and told The New York Times that “We’ve had it up to here with the federal government,” Utah’s local Republicans have freed the land from the monument.

But now they face a new challenge. The intervening three decades’ worth of research have irrevocably altered understanding of what’s inside those rocks in Grand Staircase-Escalante. Even if mining the plateau today is economically justifiable and technically feasible — questions as yet unanswered — any new mining effort would have to confront what could be lying on top of a possible uranium deposit.

Federal laws like the National Paleontological Resource Preservation Act, which prohibits anyone from taking fossils with vertebrae from federal lands, will remain in effect. The Bureau of Land Management's “legal responsibilities for paleontological resources did not change with the monument’s boundaries,” the BLM spokesperson said. “Vertebrate fossils are protected across all BLM‑administered lands, regardless of monument designation,”

But those laws are rarely enforced, Titus and Sertich said.

It is the land’s monument status, and the special protections that come with it — like the complete prohibition on taking anything out of the monument — that do far more to guarantee the safety of the dinosaurs in the long term, Sertich insisted.

Utah’s local leaders who advocated shrinking the monument say the dinosaurs aren’t at all at risk; if anything, they say, Trump’s order will boost their push for a regional museum.

“We hope it does bring attention to what’s there,” said Dave Dodds, the Garfield County public works director, arguing that shrinking the monument would lead to greater focus on what remains. “We hope that this can focus in on the dinosaurs down there.”

Garfield County Commissioner Jerry Taylor has been trying to get the museum off the ground for a long time; he had a feasibility study commissioned, he consulted experts who helped design North America’s most famous dinosaur museums, and he even recently persuaded the Utah State Legislature to provide a small amount of seed funding.

The presence of the monument has not helped advance those efforts, Dodds and Figgins said.

“We’ve never received federal funding for this, and we’ve been begging for 20 years,” Figgins said. “The museum does not exist because it was the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The museum exists because it’s one of the most significant dinosaur discovery regions in North America.”

The Bureau of Land Management said the government’s existing partnerships with universities and museums, and its work to “expand statewide capacity for preparation, curation, and research,” would be “unaffected by monument boundary changes.”

The government currently has partnerships with Utah State University Eastern’s Prehistoric Museum and the Natural History Museum of Utah.

***

The most legendary dinosaur quarry in Grand Staircase-Escalante is called “Rainbows and Unicorns.”

It’s there that in 2014 Titus discovered a family of tyrannosaurs that drowned in a flood together, all of them unusually intact. Paleontologists are still studying these massive creatures, hoping to answer the many questions that arose from their discovery more than a decade ago: Were tyrannosaurs actually social creatures, traveling in groups with their relatives? Are these fossils an entirely new species of tyrannosaur?

Rainbows and Unicorns is the single fossil-rich area that Trump protected when he shrank the monument in July, calling it “a globally important paleontological resource.”
IMG_1167.JPG (4032x2863, AR: 1.41)IMG_0388.JPG (4032x3024, AR: 1.33)There was a deep irony in that for Sertich: The president kept protections for the one place where the most impressive fossils had already been found and largely removed from the site.

“Of course there are still bones in the ground, but you know the important stuff has already been excavated and removed, so now they're preserving largely a hole in the ground,” he said.

There are hundreds of thousands of acres across the Kaiparowits Plateau with the potential for equally impressive finds, paleontologists said — and now they are no longer protected by monument status.

The researchers who have devoted their lives to this work have a nagging fear that if they don’t find and study these bones themselves, the fossils could end up one day on display in a private compound instead of a museum in Utah.

“We’ve cracked the door on the safe over the last 30 years, and now people want fossils for themselves. There’s a whole underground market for illegal fossils, and I see these things pop up on Instagram and eBay all the time. That’s going to become rampant,” Sertich said.

Enthusiasm for dinosaurs is exploding globally, with or without Utah riding along. A tyrannosaurus known as Gus sold for $50 million in an official auction in July, and the black market is growing quickly in response to the demand.

The Bureau of Land Management’s “law enforcement responsibilities remain in place,” the agency’s spokesperson said.

Titus has in the past been involved in efforts to prosecute the thieves. But in certain parts of the Western United States, black market collectors have grown systematic and organized in their dinosaur looting, Titus said.

That level of sophistication has not yet reached Grand Staircase-Escalante. Still, he wonders if that’s only a matter of time in a world increasingly obsessed with the best possible fossils.

“The bad guys know that now they can go out there and just pretend they are looking for clamshells,” he said.]]> Duffy Scolds Ford Over Deals With China in Urging More American Manufacturing https://washingtonsun.com/trump-white-house/transportation-duffy-ford-china-warning Gavin J. Quinton Ford called the transportation secretary’s letter a “wrongheaded attempt to capture headlines” and said it contains numerous factual errors. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:32:47 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/trump-white-house/transportation-duffy-ford-china-warning Earns Ford
Ford said it supports the Trump administration’s vision for advancing American innovation and manufacturing. (Charles Krupa/AP File)
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has warned Ford Motor Company about maintaining “questionable foreign alliances” with Chinese companies amid calls from the Trump administration to reshore its manufacturing operations.

In a recent letter to Ford CEO Jim Farley, Duffy derided the company’s recent deals with China-backed auto manufacturers, and said Ford “fails to act as [a] reliable partner” to the American public.

“The company’s recent strategic decisions paint a troubling picture of a foundational American brand actively intertwining its future with Chinese state-backed enterprises,” Duffy wrote in the letter sent Sept. 3 and released publicly Tuesday.

Ford pushed back sharply in a statement to NOTUS on Tuesday, calling Duffy’s letter an error-filled and “wrongheaded attempt to capture headlines.”

The company said it produces more vehicles in the United States and employs more American workers than any other automaker.

Ford has been under continued pressure from the White House to return to domestic supply chains and manufacturing, and recently announced it would relocate manufacturing operations of its Lincoln models from China to the United States by 2030.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently celebrated the announcement as a tariff success, but Duffy asserted the four-year timeline “leaves an unacceptable, multi-year window of reliance on Chinese manufacturing while depriving skilled American workers of vital manufacturing jobs.”

Duffy went on to highlight Ford’s dependence on licensed technology from Chinese battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited — a company that appears on the Defense Department’s list of banned companies. He also criticized Ford over a new deal with Chinese automotive company Geely Auto to build zero-emission vehicles at a Ford factory in Spain.

Ford defended its arrangement with Chinese battery makers, saying its Michigan battery hub is owned and operated by Ford and can’t be classified as a foreign-owned manufacturing operation. The company said Duffy’s assessment of its operations in Spain are also fraught.

“Ford supports the Trump administration’s vision for advancing American innovation and manufacturing,” Ford’s response states. “Had Secretary Duffy reached out before issuing his letter to the press, we would have been happy to share more details about Ford’s U.S. commitment.”]]> Trump Is Quietly Planning to Majorly Change How National Parks Are Run https://washingtonsun.com/agencies/trump-quietly-plan-national-parks-run Anna Kramer, Eric Katz All Interior Department bureaus are considering major shake-ups under an edict from leadership. Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:31:02 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/agencies/trump-quietly-plan-national-parks-run Donald Trump,Chris Wright,Doug Burgum
The Interior Department intensified its reorganization process in early 2026, with upper management telling leadership at each bureau that the dramatic staffing reductions opened the door to rethink how they are organized. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
The Trump administration is planning to significantly reorganize the National Park Service and other bureaus of the Interior Department, the second major shake-up of the nation’s public lands infrastructure in less than two years.

The agency is looking to reshape its most public-facing offices, according to draft internal agency planning documents from late August obtained by NOTUS and confirmed by an Interior executive involved in the reorganizations who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The reorganization plans across Interior were developed in a “very hush hush” manner, the executive said, noting that no one aside from the very top leadership of each subagency has been involved in the discussions. That secrecy has created a culture of fear and anxiety in the agency and among National Park advocates, who have been cautioning against another reorganization, as NOTUS reported last week.

The Interior Department has already lost more than 10,000 employees since President Donald Trump retook office, largely through voluntary resignation programs directed by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the White House. Last year’s reorganization moved support staff into Burgum’s office.

In its draft documents, NPS said that it anticipated it would avoid layoffs “in the short term,” but in prepared talking points tells officials to “avoid categorical promises; explain notification process” if asked about staff reductions.

The country’s 430 park units would experience a significant change under the proposed plans. The documents describe transitioning the park service to a new “hub and spoke” model, with some “hub” parks given the power to manage priorities, leadership and direction for “spoke” parks that would report them, according to the documents.

Currently park superintendents report to regional leadership. While the regional system will remain in place, the draft documents indicate that Interior intends for power to be centralized in the “hub” parks: They would direct priorities and vision, while “spoke” parks would be responsible for implementation.

The documents also indicate that the park service intends for resources to be shared more widely between the spoke and hub parks, with the hub carrying more responsibility for the management of those resources. (The draft plans included a visual representation of the reorganization created with Anthropic’s Claude AI tool, according to an internal note in one of the documents.)

The new organization is intended to “build a more efficient and effective operation, optimize resource sharing across parks and programs, and enhance accountability and supervision,” the draft documents read.

The Interior Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Details of the plan are still subject to change, according to the documents and people familiar with the plans. The Interior executive said last week a career official overseeing the effort introduced a new framework for bureaus to use to rearrange themselves. Previous deadlines were pushed back or removed altogether.

Rachel Borra, Interior’s human resources chief, who previously helped spearhead layoffs at the department last fall that were ultimately blocked in federal court, has been meeting with management in recent weeks to go over details of the various “realignments,” according to documents reviewed by NOTUS. She is scheduled to hold a progress meeting on realignment efforts on Tuesday.

Changes at National Parks could have disparate impacts, where functions range from the preservation of natural wonders in Yellowstone to the protection of rare ecosystems in Channel Islands to the preservation of historical and cultural memory at Valley Forge. While currently superintendents are largely responsible for ensuring that mission is met within their individual park, the new structure appears to centralize some management with the “hub” superintendent.

That centralization could come at the cost of each individual park’s needs, former officials said.

“It’s remarkable from A to Z how different units in the National Park Service are and how they have to adapt to location conditions, and that can drive people in D.C. crazy because they really like it when everything fits in neat boxes,” said Jeff Mow, the former superintendent of Glacier National Park and a 40-year veteran of the Park Service. “And there’s a whole lot about the National Park Service that doesn't fit into neat boxes.”

“Any time you see these top-down initiatives come through — almost never in my career did I ever see one that can encompass the diversity within the organization,” he continued.

Russell Galipeau, who served as superintendent of Channel Islands National Park for 15 years, said that it is already difficult for the country’s smaller and lesser-known parks to advocate on behalf of their needs and priorities.

“We want to reorganize. We want to make things more efficient. You know what? We can do all those things, but how is that actually helping us be a leader and setting an example of how we protect our nation's natural and cultural resources?” he asked.

The draft documents detailing the agency’s reorganization plans were not meant to be made public and stress the importance of delivering information to employees and stakeholders on the department’s own timeline.

While Interior in its internal communications insisted its plans represented common-sense solutions, declining to fully rule out layoffs, phrasing such as “reducing duplication” and demands that supervisors “not speculate about effects on specific employees,” coupled with previous efforts to slash staff and ongoing hiring restrictions, are likely to have staff and public lands advocates on edge about the administration’s intentions.

“National parks do not operate in a bubble, they are intrinsic parts of local communities. And if this proposed reorganization plan moves forward, it is going to jeopardize park relationships with communities, stakeholders, and partners,” said Emily Thompson, the executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.
America 250 Trump Roosevelt Library (4104x2736, AR: 1.50)The documents also lay out details of how individual offices within NPS are set to be restructured. The agency tentatively plans to remake its culture and science division into an office called Resource Stewardship. Employees have raised concerns that the administration would seek to de-emphasize its scientific and cultural work. A new Law Enforcement, Safety and Health Division would replace a Visitor and Resource Protection office.

The agency has been planning how to announce this reorganization since July 2026 but has not yet notified Congress of its intention to reorganize, according to the documents and a Senate aide. The Interior Department is legally obligated to notify Congress of any planned reorganization.

The secrecy of these plans have frustrated advocates, former officials and current staffers alike.

“This reorganization could fundamentally change how our national parks operate, without any clear communication about what ‘problem’ might be solved. It can't possibly be addressing budgets or efficiency,” Thompson said. “There are going to be countless issues and challenges involving park funding, travel and other logistics — this will waste taxpayer dollars and further contribute to the chaos that already exists.”

The implementation of the plan has already changed in at least one regard from the schedule laid out in documents obtained by NOTUS: While planning meetings were scheduled with senior officials for this week and superintendents for the middle of September, those meetings have been canceled, according to multiple sources familiar with the change. NPS planned to begin implementing the changes this year, though it is not clear if that timeline remains operative.

The Interior Department intensified its reorganization process in early 2026, with upper management telling leadership at each bureau that the dramatic staffing reductions opened the door to rethink how they are organized. At least at some bureaus, internal leadership maintained autonomy in developing plans and new organizational structures. They then worked with the Office of Personnel Management on implementation of those ideas.

Department officials made clear to individual bureau leadership that “This is the time to take a big swing,” the Interior executive said.

While Interior was on the verge of laying off thousands of employees at multiple points last year, they never took effect due to various court orders. The department still successfully upended some parts of its workforce. Last month, top agency officials reassigned more than two dozen of its top career executives, requiring many people to move into new jobs with limited relationship to their background and expertise.

The Park Service has already been “bleeding,” both because Burgum directed national park resources toward D.C. beautification efforts and because of last year’s reorganization, said one current employee. Bureaus across Interior are still paying Burgum’s office to house employees it subsumed as part of that reorganization, employees said.

Through the renewed reorganization efforts, Burgum is continuing to exert his influence over the shape of the department. He has already merged the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, undoing a change under former President Barack Obama. The secretary has also merged all the department’s firefighters into a new component over some bipartisan reservations from Congress.

Between those changes and the staffing losses from the Trump administration’s push to reduce the federal workforce, advocates are already concerned what another round of changes will portend.

“We find a way to say it's more efficient, and what we end up doing is finding out we have less and less resources to work with,” Galipeau said.

“Perhaps reorganization wouldn’t be necessary if these unnecessary cuts weren’t made.”]]> Federal Appeals Court Declines to Revive DHS’s Overhauled Voter Database https://washingtonsun.com/courts/dhs-save-voter-database-appeals-court Marissa Martinez The SAVE system has been subject to a tangled legal process for months. Sat, 05 Sep 2026 15:28:48 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/courts/dhs-save-voter-database-appeals-court DHS Logo
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against the Department of Homeland Security, saying the department had not properly made its argument to defend use of the SAVE database. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
A federal appeals court refused to allow the federal government to revive its recently overhauled citizenship database after a lower court had ruled the changes violated privacy laws earlier this summer.

At the heart of the case is a tangled legal process over the government’s overhaul of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database. It was originally intended to track the status of immigrants in the country but was revamped after a March 2025 executive order aimed at rooting out potential noncitizen voters.

Expanding the database by adding personal data and new features prompted a lawsuit in D.C. over concerns that the Social Security number search feature constituted a privacy violation — amid broader concerns that the database could have inaccuracies that would lead to American citizens being erroneously flagged as ineligible to vote. But it also prompted four states to file a separate lawsuit, in which another federal judge in Florida ruled the government had to reinstate those very features for their use.

Late Friday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against the Department of Homeland Security, saying the department had not properly made its argument to defend use of the SAVE database. The modified system is still disabled nationally as a result.

The panel said they were denying the government’s motion based on forfeiture, rather than whether the department had violated the Social Security Act, because DHS’s new argument leaned on the Florida ruling, which was issued just a day before the judge in D.C. rejected it.

“Only after the district court had already granted summary judgment for plaintiffs did the government raise what are now its central arguments regarding plaintiffs’ Social Security Act claim,” the judges wrote, saying the government had sought a stay based on forfeited arguments, or issues they had failed to raise in time.

“At any rate, even considering the forfeited arguments as they are presented in the necessarily constrained context of an expedited stay motion, we cannot conclude that the government has made the requisite strong showing of a likelihood of success,” they continued in their denial.

The cases represent the complexities behind implementing President Donald Trump’s aggressive — and often legislatively fallible — push to cut down on noncitizen voting, which is already an extremely rare occurrence. The higher court’s Friday ruling marked yet another defeat for the administration, which is also dealing with legal battles over a U.S. Postal Service rule to tamp down mail-in voting ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms, as well as a so-far-unsuccessful attempt to obtain copies of states’ voter rolls.

As for the Florida case — in which Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Indiana sought to restore access to the features in question as part of a separate DHS settlement agreement — the appeals court downplayed that the two cases presented “conflicting legal determinations” at all. The 11th Circuit appeal of that order is still pending.

The panel’s Friday decision allows for a merits panel to reconsider DHS’s forfeited arguments. The federal government also has the option to appeal to the Supreme Court.]]> Mullin Requests a DOJ Probe Into Voting Systems https://washingtonsun.com/agencies/mullin-requests-doj-probe-voting-systems Gavin J. Quinton The Homeland Security secretary called into question the country’s ballot-marking devices as well as nonprofits’ access to private voter data. Fri, 04 Sep 2026 23:25:52 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/agencies/mullin-requests-doj-probe-voting-systems Early voting centers
Mullin’s request for a DOJ investigation is the latest development in the administration’s attempt to cast doubt on voting machines as part of a wider crackdown on alleged voter fraud. (Kainaz Amaria/NOTUS)
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin asked the Justice Department this week to probe the reliability of a widely used digital voting system, as well as whether election nonprofits had improperly obtained private voter data.

Mullin’s concerns center around a multistate voter data collective — called the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC — which is designed to prevent the sharing of any records “indicating an individual is a non-citizen,” Mullin wrote in a Wednesday letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche. Determining if the devices can cause problems has “direct implications” for efforts to tamp down illegal voting, the DHS secretary said.

Mullin’s request for a Justice Department investigation is the latest development in President Donald Trump’s administration’s attempt to cast doubt on voting machines as part of a crackdown on what the president calls widespread election fraud.

His letter also included assertions that ERIC collects or shares sensitive personal voter data, like DMV records, with the election nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research and called for an investigation into the group.

CEIR Executive Director David Becker on Friday denied the accusations raised in Mullin’s letter.

“CEIR takes seriously the concerns raised in Secretary Mullin’s letter but firmly rejects any suggestion that it receives motor-vehicle or voter data on an ongoing basis, conditions grants on access to sensitive information, or uses such information for partisan purposes,” he wrote in a statement.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning law organization, has asserted that ERIC allows for “more precise matching than what states can do on their own,” calling efforts to discredit the system “conspiracy theories.”

Mullin’s letter also asked the DOJ to ensure that ballot-marking devices, which tally votes through bar codes or QR codes, comply with federal law, claiming that some electronically cast or counted ballots could be inaccurate.

DHS has found some systems that separate printed text and its identifying barcode, meaning the final paper record “may not be a reliable record for a manual audit,” Mullin wrote.]]> Judge Declines to Block Pentagon From Firing Stars and Stripes Staffers https://washingtonsun.com/defense/judge-declines-to-block-pentagon-from-firing-stars-and-stripes-staffers Associated Press U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden said the military newspaper's editorial independence “is not at stake here.” Fri, 04 Sep 2026 22:39:25 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/defense/judge-declines-to-block-pentagon-from-firing-stars-and-stripes-staffers Pentagon building generic
The Pentagon recently purged the newspaper's leadership, as the site has been at odds with Defense Department brass since President Donald Trump returned to office last year. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
By Michael Kunzelman

A federal judge refused Friday to block the Pentagon from firing three Stars and Stripes staff members who claim they were illegally disciplined for speaking out about the military news outlet's need to maintain its editorial independence.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President Donald Trump, ruled that the journalists are unlikely to successfully prove that the Pentagon violated their First Amendment free speech rights. He said Stars and Stripes' editorial independence “is not at stake here.”

"Plaintiffs argue that their termination will chill the protected expression of themselves and others at Stripes," McFadden wrote. “Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate a chill here.”

Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer, editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and Middle East reporter Lara Korte sued last Thursday in Washington, D.C., to challenge their firings by the Pentagon, which partially funds the news outlet.

Slavin says he was dismissed for insubordination after giving an interview to CBS News in which he objected to potential censorship by the U.S. military. Korte participated in the same interview. Their lawsuit says they were punished in retaliation for publishing a report on deteriorating conditions aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.

McFadden, however, concluded that Slavin and Korte gave the interviews as part of their official duties as public employees and not as private citizens.

“They are being fired for giving pre-approved interviews on their paper’s behalf in which they largely toed the company line. Whatever else such a scheme may violate, it does not clearly offend the First Amendment,” the judge wrote.

Lederer was dismissed shortly after announcing his impending retirement. He said the Pentagon had installed a new deputy publisher — an active-duty service member — under him at the newspaper without his knowledge.

The Defense Department and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are among the lawsuit's named defendants.

The suit’s plaintiffs are represented by attorneys from Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers for Good Government, Government Accountability Project and a Yale Law School clinic.]]> Hegseth Vows to Protect Religious Greetings at an Air Force Base https://washingtonsun.com/defense/hegseth-protect-religious-greetings-air-force-base Angie Orellana Hernandez Multiple people, including practicing Christians, had complained that guards at a New Mexico base were greeting them with religious phrases. Fri, 04 Sep 2026 21:04:31 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/defense/hegseth-protect-religious-greetings-air-force-base US Australia Hegseth
Secularism in the military has been dramatically upended under Hegseth, who has sought to enjoin the department and the conservative evangelical movement. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signaled Friday that he would challenge a nonprofit’s attempt to halt religious greetings by military personnel at the front gates of a New Mexico Air Force base.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for the separation of church and state within the military, said in a press release Thursday that it received 34 complaints — 24 of which were sent by practicing Christians — regarding guards saying “Have a blessed day” or “God bless you” to people arriving at the base’s gates.

Hegseth called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation a “radical anti-Christian, pro-atheist group that attacks any/all faith” inside the Defense Department in a Friday X post.

“We will never cave to them. The Air Force will confront this,” Hegseth wrote.

The foundation said the greetings ran afoul of the Air Force’s “Balance of Free Exercise of Religion and Establishment Clause.” The branch’s rulebook states that leaders at all levels must ensure “their words and actions” do not discriminate against any individual because of “their faith, belief, or absence of belief, or extend preferential treatment for the same.”

“It is exhausting, infuriating, and frankly alienating to be reminded every morning that some people on this base feel entitled to inject their religion into official interactions,” read one complaint sent to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. “I shouldn’t have to brace myself at the gate wondering what religious phrase I’m going to be hit with today.”

The religious greetings stopped once the foundation’s founder and president, Mikey Weinstein, contacted the base’s leadership, according to the press release.

The Kirtland Air Force Base did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it will continue to permit religious greetings at its gates.

Secularism in the military has been dramatically upended under Hegseth, who has sought to enjoin the department and the conservative evangelical movement. Hegseth has hosted monthly evangelical worship services at the Pentagon, attacked the press using biblical references and framed military operations in religious contexts.

Weinstein told NOTUS in an interview that his organization was ready to legally challenge Hegseth in court over the greetings. He also denied that the foundation was anti-Christian, saying that Christians make up 95% of the organization’s more than 100,000 members, which include veterans, active-duty service members and civilian personnel.

Weinstein said Hegseth’s claims to “never cave” are a “blatant example of fundamentalist Christian nationalism” that is “completely immoral. It is unconstitutional. It is hateful. It is prejudiced, and it is bigoted.”

“If the gate guards wearing the uniform of the U.S. Air Force happen to say, ‘Allah bless you this day,’ there would be blood in the streets,” Weinstein said, “which is why in America we don't judge the value or honorable service of someone in the military by whether or not they adhere to a particular radicalized version of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We don't show any favoritism whatsoever.”]]> Trump Is Proposing Cutting Protections for More Bodies of Water https://washingtonsun.com/climate-environment/trump-proposing-cut-protections-water Mara Hoplamazian The EPA proposal would limit protections to water that flows every day of the year, with limited exceptions. Fri, 04 Sep 2026 20:31:42 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/climate-environment/trump-proposing-cut-protections-water Lee Zeldin of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency’s goal is a “durable” definition of “waters of the United States” that “follows the law and ends burdensome regulatory uncertainty.” Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP
Waters that dry up for more than 30 days a year could lose federal protections under a new proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The move comes as the Trump administration works to redefine which bodies of water are regulated under the Clean Water Act and would require federal permits for activities like dumping pollution.

The Biden administration excluded a majority of the country’s wetlands from protections after a 2023 Supreme Court decision, Sackett v. EPA, narrowed the definition of waters under federal jurisdiction. That decision said the federal government could only regulate wetlands with a continuous surface connection to a “relatively permanent” body of water.

Last winter, the Trump administration proposed going further, removing protections for waters based on whether they cross state lines, and only applying protections to waters that flow at least during the “wet season.”

In the document released Friday, the EPA is proposing an even stricter definition. A water body would only be “relatively permanent” if it had standing or flowing water every day of the year, with limited exceptions.

"The Trump Administration's initial proposal placed vast swaths of federal waters at risk of losing their federal protections, and this new proposal enormously increases that risk,” said Maggie Nivison, a senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation.

In the proposal, the EPA said it could not calculate how many miles of streams would lose federal protections, though the agency estimated that most of the nation’s roughly 3.5 million miles of “intermittent streams” would not be federally protected.

Most of the impact, the agency said, would be in regions where intermittent streams are important parts of the water system. The arid West would be expected to see a “significant reduction” in waters under federal jurisdiction.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency’s goal is a “durable” definition of “waters of the United States” that “follows the law and ends burdensome regulatory uncertainty.”

In the past, Zeldin has emphasized the importance of saving landowners from having to hire lawyers and consultants to understand whether federally protected waters are on their property.

Under Friday’s proposal, waters would not lose their federal protection if they dried up for a short period of time — 30 days in any given year. But if a stream or river dried up for longer than 30 days, it would no longer be considered a “water of the United States.”

Extreme or exceptional droughts would count as extenuating circumstances, but the supplemental proposal would kick water bodies out of federal jurisdiction after five continuous years of drought.

Nícola Ulibarrí, an urban planning and public policy professor at the University of California, Irvine, said the impact of the rule could be exacerbated by more drought as global temperatures heat up. That could affect not only small streams, but also major rivers.

“We’re starting to see parts of the Rio Grande drying out and no longer having continuously flowing water on a somewhat more regular basis,” she said. “Right now it would still meet the federal standard, but that could change, and that’s a river that supplies drinking water to many, many people.”

The agency said it could not quantify potential savings from easing permitting and compliance if fewer waters were protected — though it estimated that both would increase with this latest proposal.

In the supplemental proposal, the EPA argues that the change would simplify the implementation of the federal water rule, because members of the public could see a body of water drying up and make a determination based on observations, instead of requiring professional consultation.

But Nivison, with the Conservation Law Foundation, said determining whether individual bodies of water are running or not is complicated.

“Distinguishing between a damp creek bed and a dry creek bed is still a huge challenge for any layperson,” she said.

Waters that aren’t under federal protection are under state jurisdiction. State regulators are often resource-strained, or have more permissive systems than the federal government, Nivision said.

That could lead to more pollution in waters across the country. Requirements for disclosing which pollutants are flowing into bodies of water would also be dropped if they no longer qualify under federal jurisdiction, creating an “information blackout,” she said.

“We’re tying our future selves' hands behind our back,” Nivison said. “We’re going to be facing these water quality problems without even having access to the information as to what’s being added to these waters.”

After the supplemental notice is posted in the Federal Register, federal agencies will accept public comment for 30 days.]]> HHS Cancels Infant Mortality, Postpartum Grants to Focus on Sperm Counts, ED https://washingtonsun.com/health-science/hhs-cancels-infant-mortality-postpartum-grants-focus-infertility Paige Winfield Cunningham, Eric Katz Officials at the Office of Minority Health told grantees that they’re prioritizing “root causes” of infertility and promoting exercise. Fri, 04 Sep 2026 18:04:34 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/health-science/hhs-cancels-infant-mortality-postpartum-grants-focus-infertility pregnancy
All of the cancelled funds came from the Office of Minority Health, which the administration tried to shutter last year. Rogelio V. Solis/AP
The Health Department’s office to improve the health of minorities has abruptly terminated more than half its existing grants, saying they didn’t focus on the Trump administration’s new priorities of addressing infertility and encouraging exercise.

Some grantees provided cancer screenings or postpartum home visits. Others worked to reduce first-responder suicide or decrease obesity among Native American youth. All of the funds came from the Office of Minority Health, which the administration tried to shutter last year.

Administration officials wrote to grantees that going forward, awards should directly advance “reducing overmedicalization in health care by addressing the root causes of infertility” including hormonal imbalances, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, low sperm count, low testosterone levels and erectile dysfunction as root causes.

Grants should also support programs that promote “regular physical activity and exercise,” according to the Aug. 25 letters obtained by NOTUS.

The termination letters were sent to 16 county, state and nonprofit grantees, according to a list from a source familiar with the agency’s decision and an online database. The 16 grants totalled $38 million over four years. The grantees had received the first two years of funding.

Several grantees told NOTUS they had been fully expecting to receive their third funding installment for the four-year grants and were caught entirely by surprise. They’d worried last year, when President Donald Trump’s budget proposed cutting Office of Minority Health grants by 40%, but thought their funding was safe after that never transpired.

“We thought we had weathered the storm,” said Christopher Joseph, the executive director of EngageWell, which was administering a grant awarded to Brooklyn-based nonprofit Housing Works.

Joseph said his group was using its grant to help hypertension patients monitor their blood pressure from home and deliver boxes of fresh produce and eggs to 150 New Yorkers every other week as part of a program called “Food as Medicine.”

He’d assumed the food-delivery program would be safe from cuts, because it dovetails with the focus on preventive health in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement.

“When MAHA came about we thought great, this aligns with their priorities,” Joseph said.

Many of the termination letters contained virtually identical language. They said the awards being canceled no longer advance “current agency priorities.”

The letters were signed by Eric West, acting chief grants officer at the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, and Mahyar Mofidi, deputy assistant secretary for minority health.

The administration wrote to several grantees working on maternal health that while “maternal and infant health are important issues,” their work “does not advance minority health with regards to OMH’s current priority areas.”

One of those grantees, the Denver-based nonprofit Illuminate Colorado, sends nurses to the homes of minority women in the days after they give birth, checking to make sure they’re able to care for themselves and their newborns.

“It was news to us that maternal and infant fatality prevention wasn’t a priority,” said the group’s co-executive director Jillian Fabricius.

The Department of Health and Human Services didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The cuts are just the latest example of grants abruptly terminated by the Trump administration as it seeks to put its own stamp on the aid and research being funded by the federal government. Over the summer it canceled 150 awards funding health delivery research and previously delayed hundreds of millions of dollars in grants for additional political review.

Under the Biden administration, the Office of Minority Health funded dozens of grants every year. Now the agency’s website lists only two funding opportunities for fiscal year 2026, one for lupus research and the other to address chronic disease among Native Americans.

The office was created under President Ronald Reagan. Its grant awards surged during President Joe Biden’s first year but last year declined back to 2019 levels. The Trump administration appears to be further slashing funding; in addition to the 16 canceled grants, 13 that were funded last year appear to be unfunded this year, according to a public database.

Last year, Kennedy tried to eliminate the Office of Minority Health entirely as he reorganized the department and shed around 20,000 employees, though Congress ultimately declined to go along with the plan.

Trump has continued to target minority-focused offices within HHS: In his fiscal 2027 budget, he proposed eliminating the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, zeroing out the Minority HIV/AIDS office and slashing the Office of Minority Health funding by 40%.

One grantee, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said its program to reduce infant and maternal mortality among Black families in the Arkansas Delta will likely end without the grant.

Spokesperson Leslie Taylor said she was not sure why the grant was canceled, though she said "it's certainly a big issue in our state considering we're number one in the country,” referring to the high infant and maternal mortality rates in Arkansas.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colorado), the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee, asked the administration to explain the grant terminations and its new funding priorities.

“It is shocking that OMH under any leadership would prioritize erectile dysfunction over the health and wellbeing of infants and new mothers, yet that is precisely what you are doing,” she wrote Thursday to Brian Christine, the assistant secretary for health.]]> HUD Is Rolling Back Accessibility Under the Guise of Cutting Red Tape https://washingtonsun.com/housing/housing-and-urban-development-accessibility-report-limit-policy-change Raymond Fernández, Eric Katz A new Housing and Urban Development policy could cause big problems for disabled tenants. Fri, 04 Sep 2026 16:38:45 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/housing/housing-and-urban-development-accessibility-report-limit-policy-change HUD building AP-24242829254512
Housing and Urban Development has taken multiple steps to narrow its fair housing enforcement. (Aaron M. Sprecher via AP)
The Trump administration is making it harder to hold builders who violate accessibility requirements accountable.

A new policy furthers the administration’s push to roll back fair housing laws, shortening the time period to address violations. The Housing and Urban Development's fair housing laws’ enforcement arm told employees on Monday that complaints alleging housing law violations must be filed with the office within one year of the “allegedly unlawful” construction of a building being completed.

They framed the change as a means to cut red tape. Housing advocates say it would incentivize builders to neglect accessibility requirements that are already underenforced and, in most instances, undiscovered within the now-required one-year limit.

“This is a strong signal that HUD — and this administration — is going to turn a blind eye if you build a building not in conformance with the accessibility requirements,” Sasha Samberg-Champion, special civil rights counsel at the National Fair Housing Alliance and a former deputy general counsel for HUD, told NOTUS.

The new guidance effectively eliminates HUD’s Obama-era interpretation of the Fair Housing Act, the law that Congress amended in 1988 to require developers to build certain multifamily units with accessible features for disabled people. The statute of limitations to report violations prior to the Obama administration varied by region due to an array of court decisions.

In 2013, HUD and the Department of Justice formalized a policy allowing individuals to file a complaint “at any time until the violation” was corrected in most cases.

The Trump administration justified its policy change in a memo, first reported by Fox News, saying the expanded interpretation of the law shifted the burden of accessibility violations onto subsequent owners. Under the 2013 policy, those new owners could be forced to pay for costly violations years after a building was completed — even if they had nothing to do with its design or construction.

A spokesperson for HUD said the guidance follows Congress’ original intent and the courts’ interpretation of the Fair Housing Act.

“Under President Trump’s and Secretary [Scott] Turner’s leadership, HUD is upholding and enforcing the civil rights of all Americans, especially the most vulnerable among us,” the spokesperson said in a statement to NOTUS. “Changes to this statute of limitations must come from Congress, not HUD.”

The department did not provide any guidance or warning to staff before issuing the new memo, which was sent at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.

A HUD employee who was granted anonymity to discuss internal policy said the department previously could assist a tenant newly moving into a building that was out of compliance with the fair housing law, even if the building was constructed 30 years ago. The department will no longer be able help in such a case, and the building owner will be shielded from any enforcement action.

To maintain a similar level of oversight going forward, the employee said, the department would have to dramatically increase staffing to make sure accessibility issues are caught immediately. The agency would also have to aggressively prosecute developers that create inaccessible housing and immediately impose rebuilding requirements within a year of completion. The department was highly unlikely to take those steps, the employee said.

“What HUD has done is say the harm is caused at the point of the construction, but from a realistic lens, the harm is really caused at the point that someone experiences the harm,” a former HUD official, granted anonymity to discuss the policy freely, told NOTUS.

Housing advocates say the change creates a massive issue for disabled tenants, who under the new policy cannot challenge violations even if they weren’t aware of the infractions within the one-year period.

“The idea that a person is not harmed by inaccessible housing because they encountered it 366 days after a certificate of occupancy is issued versus 365 days afterwards is ludicrous,” said Kate Scott, executive director of the Equal Rights Center. “It is already extremely difficult for people who have been discriminated against to enforce their fair housing rights. This memo from HUD will only make it harder.”

The guidance is the latest effort by HUD to narrow its fair housing enforcement. In September 2025, the agency withdrew eight guidance documents focused on fair housing, including criminal-records screening directives, and told staff to deprioritize disparate impact cases, which the department had used to prosecute discrimination. Earlier this year, HUD proposed eliminating the disparate impact regulations altogether.

Frank Cassidy, a former federal housing commissioner under the Trump administration, framed the policy change as a major affordability win for the administration and the lenders and developers who will no longer be “burdened” by the previous interpretation.

“HUD is restoring the statute of limitations Congress actually wrote, giving owners, lenders and developers certainty, removing barriers to FHA multifamily financing, and ultimately making it easier and less expensive to preserve and build housing,” he said.

Turner said in a statement that the change “rescinds unnecessary and expensive liabilit[ties] created by legal theories that have no basis in law.”

Housing policy experts are skeptical.

“It's cynical that they're eliminating a core fair housing right, and they're trying to paint it as an affordability measure because it just won't accomplish that,” Samberg-Champion said.]]>