DETROIT (AP) — Cade Cunningham had 13 of his 29 points in the fourth quarter and the Detroit Pistons rallied to beat the Portland Trail Blazers 122-116 on Friday night.

Cunningham also had three assists in the quarter and finished

with nine. Jalen Duren added 18 points and eight rebounds.

Detroit allowed 22 points off turnovers. The Pistons averaged only 15.0 points off turnovers in their 15-2 start, but have been over 20 in seven straight games while going 4-3.

Deni Avdjia had 35 points for Portland. Jeremi Grant had 29, and Shaedon Sharpe 28 — and the rest of the team had 24.

Detroit took a 112-110 lead on Cunningham’s steal and layup with 2:22 to play, and Duncan Robinson scored five points in the next two possessions to make it a seven-point game.

Avdija had 29 points in the first three quarters, helping Portland to an 85-84 lead. The Pistons scored 65 in the first half, but only got 19 points in the third.

When Pontiac Notre Dame Prep senior quarterback Sam Stowe’s injury prevented him from finishing last weekend’s D5 state championship, it gave those unfamiliar with the Irish a chance to see one of the other cannons at the team’s disposal.

Fellow senior Drake Roa, one of Stowe’s most-preferred targets this season, let it rip for another, classmate Brody Sink, for a 60-yard touchdown reception on the first play of the fourth quarter of the 42-14 loss to Grand Rapids West Catholic.

It’s not the first time the pair have played pass and catch this year, either. The Irish opted for some trickery in the first quarter of their Week 3 loss against Gibraltar Carlson and Roa found Sink on a crossing route for a 35-yard gain.

Baseball knowers are aware of the arm that Roa has. Earlier in the fall, he committed as a shortstop to Michigan.

But Irish head coach Pat Fox has had the scouting report long before most, and indicated that at one point, it looked like it would be Roa, not Stowe, who would lead offensive coordinator Jason Whalen’s unit.

“Initially when (Drake) and Sam came in, we thought Sam was going to be a tight end and Drake was gonna quarterback,” Fox said.

“After about two weeks, we figured out that’s probably not how it’s gonna roll.”

It worked out pretty well for both. Stowe led the Irish to the state title in his first year as starter in 2024, completing over 71% of his passes for 2,751 passing yards and 37 passing touchdowns (to go with seven rushing TDs).

This season, Stowe tossed over 40 TDs, with Roa hauling in 16 scores as he also accounted for nearly 1,000 of Stowe’s passing yards.

The injury suffered late in the first half at Ford Field marked an unfortunate ending to a brilliant two-year run for Stowe.

“Sam’s a tremendous quarterback, so fantastic of a young man,” Fox said. “It was hard to see him get hurt. He wanted to come back in and he couldn’t. We couldn’t let him come back in. We didn’t want to put him at risk, and he’s going to be shooting 3-balls in two weeks playing basketball.”

West Catholic head coach Landon Grove was very complimentary of Notre Dame Prep’s QB1, too, saying, “I don’t know how Sam Stowe doesn’t have a scholarship somewhere. He’s one of the better quarterbacks we’d seen on film. He’s a fantastic player and it was a testament to our defense (how we) defended him.”

Fox was choked up once or twice when elaborating on the legacy that this year’s senior team has left considering how far he’s watched them come, or perhaps more appropriately, watched them grow.

“I remember Sam whipping off his sweater and dancing at the Christmas concert and his sister tackling him trying to get it back on him when he was four years old,” Fox said. “I’ve known Brody since he was in fifth grade. Anthony Tartaglia, Ben Liparoto, Jack Williams, and Logan Tuttle, I’ve known all of them since they were little boys, little teeny kids.”

Fox has boasted about being one of Oakland County’s winningest programs over the past seven years, and the senior class specifically helped ND Prep compile a 39-9 record over the last four seasons, including that coveted title win last year over Frankenmuth, who Fox admitted he was glad not to face again in the final.

“My sophomore season, we had a great team,” Sink said following the championship loss. “We had a great quarterback, some great players, and we ended up losing to a really good Corunna team. But I knew. Because we have a strong senior class, I didn’t hang my head. I knew we’d come back the next year. We had a great senior class last year, and at the beginning of last year we started rolling, and I was like, ‘This is going to be something special the next two seasons.’ We stayed the course and it was a very special past two years.”

Asked whether the next generation of Irish who witnessed this group accomplish all it did might be more inclined to dream big, Fox responded, “You would hope they do. But every group is different. Every challenge is great. We have great kids.”

Replacing the current bunch becomes Fox’s next task, but one he knows won’t come easy.

“We’ve got five juniors,” Fox said. “We’ve got work to do.”

By COLLIN BINKLEY

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is bringing back dozens of Education Department staffers who were slated to be laid off, saying their help is needed to tackle a mounting backlog of discrimination complaints from students and families.

The staffers had been on administrative leave while the department faced lawsuits challenging layoffs in the agency’s Office for Civil Rights, which investigates possible discrimination in the nation’s schools and colleges. But in a Friday letter, department officials ordered the workers back to duty starting Dec. 15 to help clear civil rights cases.

A department spokesperson confirmed the move, saying the government still hoped to lay off the staffers to shrink the size of the department.

“The Department will continue to appeal the persistent and unceasing litigation disputes concerning the Reductions in Force, but in the meantime, it will utilize all employees currently being compensated by American taxpayers,” Julie Hartman said in a statement.

In the letter to employees, obtained by The Associated Press, officials said the department needs “all OCR staff to prioritize OCR’s existing complaint caseload.” The office handles everything from complaints about possible violations of disability rights to racial discrimination.

More than 200 workers from the Office for Civil Rights were targeted in mass layoffs at the department, but the firings have been tied up in legal battles since March. An appeals court cleared the way for the cuts in September, but they’re again on hold because of a separate lawsuit. In all, the Education Department workforce has shrunk from 4,100 when President Donald Trump took office to roughly half that size now, as the president vows to wind down the agency.

The department did not say how many workers are returning to duty. Some who have been on administrative leave for months have since left.

The Office for Civil Rights had a backlog of about 20,000 discrimination cases when Trump took office in January. Since then, with a significantly reduced workforce, the backlog has grown to more than 25,000, AP reporting has shown using department data.

Trump officials have defended the layoffs even as complaints pile up, saying the office wasn’t operating efficiently, even at full staff.

The Office for Civil Rights enforces many of the nation’s laws about civil rights in education, including those barring discrimination based on disability, sex, race and religion. It investigates complaints from students across the country and has the power to cut funding to schools and colleges that violate the law, though most cases are resolved in voluntary agreements.

Some former staffers have said there’s no way the office can address the current backlog under the staffing levels left after the layoffs. Families who have filed discrimination complaints against their schools say they have noticed the department’s staffing shortages, with some waiting months and hearing nothing.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN

A federal law enforcement operation at an Arizona taco shop resulted in a fracas on Friday, with agents deploying pepper spray as a group of protesters tried to stop authorities.

Two agents were injured, and U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva was in the vicinity as protesters were sprayed. The Democratic congresswoman from Arizona took to social media, claiming she was sprayed in the face and accused immigration enforcement officers of operating without transparency or accountability.

“While I am fine, if that is the way they treat me, how are they treating other community members who do not have the same privileges and protections that I do?” she said in a statement.

It was less than a month ago that Grijalva was sworn in as the newest member of Congress. She won special election in September to fill the House seat last held by her late father.

In a video posted to social media, Grijalva said she, two members of her staff and members of the media were harassed and sprayed by agents during a federal immigration raid that local residents had interrupted “because they were afraid that they were taking people without due process, without any kind of notice.”

The video shows a man stepping in front of Grijalva, raising his arm and turning the congresswoman away as a federal agent sprays nearby protesters. Later in the video, as Grijalva continues walking in the street, a projectile is seen landing near her foot.

She said she did not know what substance she was sprayed with, but it was “still affecting” her with a cough.

Federal officials confirmed that Grijalva was not pepper sprayed and that agents with Homeland Security Investigations were targeting multiple Tucson restaurants as part of a years-long investigation into immigration and tax violations. Several search warrants were served across southern Arizona on Friday as part of the operation.

In a statement, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin described the group gathered in Tucson as a mob. She said two agents were seriously injured during the clash and took issue with Grijalva’s account of what happened.

“If her claims were true, this would be a medical marvel. But they’re not true. She wasn’t pepper sprayed. She was in the vicinity of someone who (asterisk)was(asterisk) pepper sprayed as they were obstructing and assaulting law enforcement,” McLaughlin wrote. “Presenting one’s self as a ‘Member of Congress’ doesn’t give you the right to obstruct law enforcement.”

Authorities used yellow tape to cordon off the restaurant and its parking lot as agents removed boxes from the building early Friday. By mid-morning, protesters had gathered outside with signs and whistles. Some in the group were hit with pepper spray as they tried to keep federal vehicles from leaving the area.

Tucson police said federal tactical agents responded to extract investigative special agents from the area where the protesters were gathered. After deploying chemical munitions, police said federal agents then requested emergency support from local authorities to help with exiting the area.

Grijalva thanked officers from the Tucson Police Department for “making sure everyone is safe” and stressed that the local officers had not interrupted traffic or harassed local residents. They did not make any arrests. “They were not the aggressors here,” she said.

The Arizona Democrat’s experience is the latest incident this year of members of Congress being stonewalled by or put in physical altercations with federal law enforcement officers while attempting to conduct congressional oversight. The incidents have typically involved congressional Democrats appearing at federal immigration facilities or at immigration raids.

U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democrat, is in an ongoing legal dispute with the Trump administration after a May altercation at a Newark immigration facility in her district. And Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, was thrown to the ground and detained by federal agents in June after appearing at a press conference for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Associated Press writer Matt Brown contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.

By RIO YAMAT

U.S. airlines were notified this week that an investigation is underway into whether they complied with an emergency order requiring flight cuts at 40 major airports during the record government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday.

The FAA warned in letters sent Monday that the airlines could face fines of up to $75,000 for each flight over the mandated reductions, which fluctuated between 3%, 4%, and 6%. The airlines have 30 days to provide documentation showing they complied with the order, the agency said Friday in a statement.

The 43-day shutdown that began Oct. 1 led to long delays as unpaid air traffic controllers missed work, citing stress and the need to take on side jobs. The FAA said requiring all commercial airlines to cut domestic flights was unprecedented but necessary to ensure safe air travel until staffing at its control towers and facilities improved.

After the shutdown ended Nov. 12, airlines seemed to anticipate that the FAA would lift or relax the restrictions. With the order still in place on Nov. 14 requiring 6% cuts, just 2% of scheduled U.S. departures that day were canceled, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

More than 10,000 flights were canceled between Nov. 7, when the order took effect, and Nov. 16, when the FAA announced it was lifting all flight restrictions. Delta Air Lines said Wednesday it lost $200 million, the first disclosure by a major airline regarding the shutdown’s financial impact.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy hasn’t shared the specific safety data that he and the head of the FAA said prompted the cuts, but Duffy cited reports during the shutdown of planes getting too close in the air, more runway incursions and pilot concerns about controllers’ responses.

Large hubs in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta were impacted by the cancellations. The FAA originally had a 10% reduction target.

By JOSH FUNK and RIO YAMAT

The government picked a company with little experience working with the Federal Aviation Administration called Peraton to oversee the roughly $31.5 billion overhaul of the outdated air traffic control system.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Thursday evening that Peraton was chosen in the hope that its innovative approach will make it possible to complete the upgrades within the next three years before the end of President Donald Trump’s term in office ends. Peraton was chosen over Parsons Corp., which does have extensive experience with FAA contracts.

“Working together, we are going to build on the incredible progress we’ve already made and deliver a state-of-the-art air traffic control system that the American traveling public — and our hard-working air traffic controllers — deserve,” Duffy said in the announcement.

Here’s what to know about the modernization project and the company hired to oversee it:

A $12.5 billion down payment on the project

Earlier this year, Congress approved $12.5 billion as a down payment on the project after technical problems twice knocked out the radar for air traffic controllers managing planes around Newark Liberty International Airport. This year began with the worst American aviation disaster in years when an airliner collided with an Army helicopter over Washington D.C., killing 67 people.

Duffy has said he’ll need roughly $20 billion more to complete the upgrade.

This effort to upgrade the technology controllers use is on a much more aggressive timeline than the previous NextGen effort that began shortly after the turn of the century and failed to deliver all the benefits it promised even after an investment of $36 billion. The Biden administration had estimated that upgrading the system might take more than a decade.

The FAA hasn’t yet released the details of how much Peraton will be paid for this contract, but the agency said it includes incentives to reward good performance and penalties for shortcomings.

Upgrades needed to avoid delays and prepare for drones and flying taxis

The technical problems that disrupted flights at the Newark airport in the spring demonstrated just how fragile the nation’s aging air traffic control system is. And Duffy has said those kind of technical failures in a system that too often still relies on copper wires and floppy discs could happen anywhere unless the system is upgraded.

Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed in Newark. After the radar outages, the facility in Philadelphia that controls the flights in and out of Newark had a half dozen controllers go on leave, which forced the reductions in flights.

The number of flights across the country each day that the FAA has to safely manage is expected to continue growing in the years ahead. And drones will continue to proliferate across the country as flying taxis start to take to the air.

Everyone agrees that the air traffic control system must be modernized to be able to handle those future demands.

Ambitious timeline for the upgrades

John Rose, chief risk adviser for global travel management company ALTOUR, said the three-year timeline is “extremely aggressive” but partially realistic. He said it’s plausible for the FAA to build the foundation for a modern air traffic control network in its tight timeline, with more advanced capabilities layered on later.

“You need to build the base before you can have all the bells and whistles,” he said. “If the project gets to the core structure in three years, I think we’ve accomplished the mission.”

He likened it to an iPhone where once you have a robust base system you can upgrade the software like when the phone gets an iOS update. “If they build the infrastructure, then as things change from a technology capability, it’s almost like a plug and play,” he said.

Air Traffic Control Association President and CEO Stephen Creamer represents the companies that make the gear that Peraton and the FAA will use to complete the upgrades. He said it helps that the new system won’t have to be built from scratch.

“The technology that’s needed in the system is not cutting edge technology. It’s been tested and trialed all over the world in various places. We know what the capabilities of it are. We know what the risks of those installations are in a way that we wouldn’t know if we were trying to do it and be the first one out of the gate,” Creamer said.

Why is this contract needed?

Duffy said that putting a private company in charge should help this project get done more quickly, and Peraton’s expertise with complex technical systems and artificial intelligence will help.

Peraton has said the fact that it doesn’t have a history of work at the FAA might actually help because it won’t be biased to working with the same companies that have failed in the past.

And after all the cuts to the federal workforce Trump made this year and the early retirements. Creamer said that FAA needs the help to complete this project because it no longer has the staff to do it.

The expectation is that Peraton will be able to award contracts to other companies more quickly than FAA would be able to because it won’t be limited by the same process. That does introduce the possibility that mistakes could be made, but Creamer said “I think there’s plenty of checks and balances in the administrative system to ensure that there’s not gonna be substantial waste or fraud or abuse.”

Peraton has worked on other government tech upgrades

Peraton has worked on multibillion-dollar technology contracts for the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Special Operations Command and the National Park Service along with the military and other agencies.

The company is owned by Veritas Capital private equity firm, so it doesn’t have shareholders. Its board of advisers is full of an assortment of former military and intelligence officials. A Peraton spokesman said the company was too busy getting started on the contract to do any interviews Friday, but its CEO Steve Schorer promised in a statement that his team is committed to completing this project.

“Our highly-skilled, dedicated, and talented team of engineers, technologists, and mission experts stands ready to hit the ground running to deliver a system Americans can count on — one that is more secure, more reliable, and a model for the world to follow,” Schorer said.

The company’s political action committee donated a quarter-million dollars to politicians last year with a little over half of that going to Republicans, according to www.opensecrets.org.

Improvements already underway

Duffy said that the FAA has already been working on making improvements and more than one-third of the old copper wires that air traffic controllers were relying on have been replaced with fiber optic lines or other modern connections.

But some of the advancements like installing new systems to help controllers keep track of planes on the ground at 44 airports began during the last administration.

And significant work remains ahead to install more than 27,600 new radios and 612 new radar systems. The old connections still need to upgraded at thousands of additional facilities, and six new air traffic control centers are scheduled to be built.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK

NEW YORK (AP) — The clock is ticking for the U.S. government to open up its files on Jeffrey Epstein.

After months of rancor and recriminations, Congress has passed and President Donald Trump has signed legislation compelling the Justice Department to give the public everything it has on Epstein — and it has to be done before Christmas.

A federal judge on Friday took one step toward making this happen by giving the department permission to release transcripts of a grand jury investigation into Epstein’s abuse of underage girls in Florida. The judge said the new law overrode the usual rules about grand jury secrecy.

While there’s sure to be never-before-seen material in the thousands of pages likely to be released in the Florida transcripts and other Epstein-related records, a lot has already been made public, including by Congress and through litigation.

And don’t expect a “client list” of famous men who cavorted with Epstein. Though such a list has long been rumored, the Justice Department said in July that it doesn’t exist.

Here’s a look at what’s expected to be made public, what isn’t, and a refresher on how we got to this point:

Who is Jeffrey Epstein?

Epstein was a millionaire money manager known for socializing with celebrities, politicians, billionaires and the academic elite who was accused of sexually abusing underage girls.

His relationships with powerful men, including Trump, former President Bill Clinton and the former British prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, have been the subject of endless fascination and speculation. Neither Trump nor Clinton has been accused of wrongdoing. Andrew has denied abusing anyone.

Police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein in 2005 after he was accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex. The FBI then joined the investigation, but Epstein made a secret deal with the U.S. attorney in Florida to avoid federal charges, enabling him to plead guilty in 2008 to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge. He served 13 months in a jail work-release program.

In 2019, during Trump’s first term, Manhattan federal prosecutors revived the case and charged Epstein with sex trafficking, alleging he sexually abused dozens of girls. He killed himself in jail a month after his arrest.

In 2021, a federal jury in Manhattan convicted Epstein’s longtime confidante and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

What’s in the Justice Department’s Epstein files?

Records related to the aborted Florida investigation, the Manhattan investigations, and anything else the Justice Department did to examine Epstein’s dealings in the time in between.

They could include notes and reports written by FBI agents; transcripts of witness interviews, photographs, videos and other evidence; Epstein’s autopsy report; and some material that may already be public, such as flight logs and travel records.

The law, dubbed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, mandates the Justice Department to release all unclassified documents and investigative materials, including files relating to immunity deals and internal communications about whom to charge or investigate.

The transcripts that will be released after Friday’s ruling by a Florida federal judge could shed more light on federal prosecutors’ decision not to go forward with their case from two decades ago. It’s not known when the transcripts will be made public.

What isn’t authorized for release under the law?

Anything containing a victim’s personally identifiable information.

The law allows the Justice Department to withhold or redact records that, if made public, would constitute “a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” It also bars the release of any materials depicting the sexual abuse of children, or images of death, physical abuse, or injury.

That means that if videos or photos exist of Epstein or anyone else sexually abusing underage girls, they can’t be made public.

However, the law also makes clear that no records shall be withheld or redacted — meaning certain parts are blacked out — solely because their release would cause embarrassment or reputational harm to any public figure, government official or foreign dignitary.

When will the files be available to the public?

The legislation requires the Justice Department to make the documents public in a searchable and downloadable format within 30 days of Trump signing it into law. That means no later than Dec. 19.

However, the law also allows the Justice Department to withhold files that it says could jeopardize an active federal investigation. That’s also longstanding Justice Department policy. Files can also be withheld if they’re found to be classified or if they pertain to national defense or foreign policy.

While investigations into Epstein and Maxwell are long over, Attorney General Pam Bondi last week ordered a top federal prosecutor to lead an investigation into people who knew Epstein and some of Trump’s political foes, including Clinton.

That investigation, taken up at Trump’s urging despite the Justice Department previously finding no evidence to support such a probe, could give the government grounds to temporarily withhold at least some of the material.

What about the so-called client list?

Epstein’s so-called “client list” — a purported collection of his famous associates — has been the white whale of Epstein sleuths, skeptics and conspiracy theorists alike.

Even Bondi got in on the act, telling Fox News in February that the “client list” was “sitting on my desk right now to review.”

The only problem: the Justice Department concluded it doesn’t exist, issuing a letter in July saying that its review of Epstein-related records had revealed no incriminating “client list.” Nor was there credible evidence that Epstein had “blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions,” the unsigned memo said.

Why are these records being released now?

Congress is forcing the government to act after Trump reneged on a campaign promise last year to throw open the files. The Justice Department did release some records earlier this year — almost all of them already public — but suddenly hit the brakes in July after promising a “truckload” more.

That prompted a small, bipartisan group of House lawmakers to launch what was initially seen as a longshot effort to compel their release through legislation. In the meantime, lawmakers started disclosing documents they’d received from Epstein’s estate, culminating in a 23,000-page release last week.

As public and political pressure mounted, including from some Trump allies, Congress swiftly passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act on Nov. 18 and Trump signed it into law the following day.

Haven’t some Epstein files already been made public?

Yes. Before Congress got involved, tens of thousands of pages of records were released over the years through civil lawsuits, Epstein and Maxwell’s public criminal case dockets, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests.

Many documents — including police reports written in Florida, state grand jury records, depositions of Epstein’s employees, his flight records, his address book — are available already. In July, the Justice Department released surveillance video from the jail on the night Epstein died.

Even the FBI has previously released some Epstein-related files, posting more than 1,400 pages to its website, though much of the material was redacted and some hidden because it was under seal.

EAST LANSING – Michigan State has received a historically large financial commitment from an East Lansing husband and wife that university leaders say position the school’s athletic department to become – and remain – one of the best in the nation.

Michigan State announced Friday a commitment of $401 million from East Lansing’s Greg and Dawn Williams, including a $301 million gift – making it, by nearly 10 times, the largest private donation in the university’s history.

The gift includes $290 million earmarked specifically for the athletic department. Another $100 million is an investment by the couple in the coming-soon Spartan Ventures initiative, which, among other interests, aims to significantly boost NIL offers for student-athletes.

The $290 million donation to MSU’s athletic department was the big seed that was used to launch Michigan State’s FOR SPARTA campaign, which was announced earlier this week, and has set an ambitious goal of raising $1 billion from donors, with plans to use that money to significantly upgrade the university’s athletic arenas, including Spartan Stadium and Breslin Center.

“This tremendous gift will serve as a catalyst to return Michigan State athletics to the top 10 athletic department that it can be and where it belongs,” Michigan State athletic director J Batt said in an interview with The Detroit News. “The vast majority of this will support FOR SPARTA. … And it really answers the question of if Michigan State athletics will be able to realize its ambitious goals.

“This answers the question emphatically: Yes.”

Batt and Williams told The News there are no set naming rights associated with the gift, and Batt said the gift isn’t being used to pay the $30-million-plus buyout for fired head football coach Jonathan Smith. That money, Batt said, is coming from other athletic department resources, including other donors.

Friday’s announcement came during a pep rally on the floor of the Breslin Center, where Greg Williams regularly sits courtside for men’s basketball games. Coaches, administrators, athletes and donors were all in attendance, including Tom Izzo, a longtime friend of the Williams family who was visibly choked up by the donation. It adds to an already big week for MSU athletics, after new head football coach Pat Fitzgerald was introduced Tuesday. Fitzgerald, too, was in attendance Friday.

Greg Williams, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Grand Rapids-based fintech and insurance giant Acrisure, met Fitzgerald on the tarmac at the Lansing airport on Tuesday morning, and sat near the front during Fitzgerald’s press conference later that day.

In an interview with The News, Williams said there have been discussions about the financial commitment and historic gift for several months, and the decision was made by the family in recent days. He said a big reason for the commitment: His comfort with the new leadership at Michigan State, including president Kevin Guskiewicz, hired two years ago, and Batt, hired six months ago.

“You want to contribute in a meaningful way, and we’re fortunate enough that we’re in a position to do that,” said Williams, who founded Acrisure in 2005, and has seen it balloon to more than $5 billion in annual revenues. “This is something you don’t do without an awful lot of thought. And part of that is, we are aligning ourselves, personally, with the right people, the right causes, the right institution, and we couldn’t have any higher conviction about doing just that. We feel very good about the whole thing.”

Batt and Williams, in interviews with The News, didn’t specify how the money would be disbursed, other than Williams saying some will be short-term and some will be long-term. Some is expected to be a part of estate planning for Greg and Dawn Williams, both 64.

The donation will become the largest in Michigan State history, by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The previous record donation was from former basketball player Mat Ishbia, CEO of United Wholesale Mortgage and owner of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, who donated $32 million to the athletic department in 2021. The record before that was $30 million, donated by alum and real-estate developer Edward J. Minskoff in 2018, for the Eli Broad College of Business.

For the entire fiscal year 2024-25, Michigan State athletics took in $44 million, from 6,919 individual donors.

New athletics era

The gift couldn’t come at a better time for Michigan State, given the arms race that is college athletics, and given the athletic department’s money crunch – it has run a deficit in recent years, and is carrying a debt of more than $100 million.

“This is a gift and an investment that will shape the future of our athletic and academic programs for generations to come,” Guskiewicz told a crowd of coaches, donors, athletes and media Friday. “Not only is it the largest in our university history, it is one of the largest to any athletic program in the nation and one of the largest to any university in the nation. It reflects Greg and Dawn’s belief in what Michigan State stands for: opportunity, grit and a shared responsibility to lift one another.”

The money isn’t just appreciated by Michigan State athletics, it’s much-needed, for a school that was among 16 in the Big Ten on board with the conference taking on a $2.4 billion investment from West Coast-based pension fund in exchange for a 10% stake in the league. That deal – recently paused and possibly dead without Michigan and Southern Cal on board – would have resulted in a cash infusion of more than $100 million per school.

The nine-figure debt Michigan State athletics is carrying includes a loan for the lion’s share of the first round of $20.5 million revenue sharing with student athletes, COVID relief loans, and a significant donor shortfall on the $26.7 million Munn Ice Arena renovation project, as well as personnel buyouts.

Smith, fired two years into a seven-year contract, will be paid through 2031; that money is offset if he finds employment elsewhere. MSU just signed Fitzgerald to a five-year contract worth at least $30 million, which could grow to an eight-year deal worth at least $54 million if he reaches multiple but attainable victory benchmarks in the incentive-laden contract.

MSU remains in litigation with former head football coach Mel Tucker, who is claiming wrongful termination as he seeks the $80 million remaining on his contract when he was fired. MSU also remains in litigation with Brenda Tracy, who is suing the Board of Trustees for allegedly mishandling her 2022 sexual-misconduct claims that led to Tucker’s firing early in the 2023 season.

Batt declined to get specific when asked by The News if this gift would be a cure-all for the department’s recent and serious money issues.

“What I would just say is that this represents a transformative moment for the future of Michigan State athletics,” Batt told The News this week. “However, for us to continue to drive forward and reach our rightful place as a top-10 athletic department, we need every Spartan in the Spartan athletic family to step up and follow Greg and Dawn’s lead, and do what they can to help us drive forward.”

The big focus of the $401 million commitment – there’s no meaning behind it being $401 million, as opposed to $400 million, Williams said, other than that’s what the needs called for during the family’s discussion with Guskiewicz and Batt – is football. Batt and Guskiewicz have made no bones about the fact that football is the engine for any big-time college athletics department, even one with a blue-chip men’s basketball program like Michigan State.

“They didn’t attend Michigan State University. Yet, they recognize their position in this community and what this community is all about,” Izzo told the crowd Friday. “Michigan State is a big thing in this community. They certainly recognize the ability to impact people, and particularly students across our great campus. And in supporting Michigan State today, they’re supporting students for decades. Making an impact on somebody is nice when they come into your office and you feel that they’ve left your office in a better place. You’re leaving decades of people in a better place.”

‘Incredible, inspiring’ gift

FOR SPARTA, a wing of the university-wide $4-billion capital campaign, will address the needs of all Michigan State teams, Batt said, but the most significant renovations will be for 102-year Spartan Stadium, including the long-needed replacement of the east tower, after west tower renovations were finished and new scoreboards were installed before the 2025 season. There also are plans to upgrade Breslin Center, which opened in 1989. Renderings were released Tuesday.

The $100 million toward Spartan Ventures is considered a financial stake, or investment, and not a traditional gift. That will help launch that initiative, similar to one pioneered by Clemson of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Batt was hired away from Georgia Tech, also in the ACC.

Spartan Ventures is a third-party corporation that Michigan State announced in late October, and will launch mid-2026. Its focus will be generating revenues, via a non-profit, tax-exempt entity that also is designed to consolidate NIL opportunities for student-athletes. Michigan State will maintain compliance oversight of over the corporation, with a board of directors likely to be led by Guskiewicz. Spartan Ventures lifts some of the red tape by which public universities must abide.

Batt declined to be specific about Spartan Ventures when it comes to media rights or corporate partnerships, other than to say, “It’s simply helping us to modernize and optimize all of our revenue generating opportunities.”

Said Guskiewicz, in a recent interview with The News: “It will allow us to … bring a structure that looks like a private-sector, world-class (organization). Competitive advantages are going to come to us as a result.”

The additional $11 million from Greg and Dawn Williams will be a gift, to be used for academic and extracurricular initiatives, including the Spartan marching and pep bands, the Sparty program, the MSU Burgess Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and the Eli Broad College of Business’ Risk Management and Financial Insurance Program.

“As we were kind of debating what we were going to do and what programs,” Greg Williams said Friday at the pep rally, “I will just tell you whether you know it or not, Dawn was going to say the Spartan marching band and Sparty are the ones that are non negotiable in her mind.”

Greg and Dawn Williams are long-time Michigan State athletics donors, having previously donated more than $25 million, including a $10 million gift in 2021 that went toward the football building project. That project was completed and dedicated in 2024, and their names are on the Greg and Dawn Williams Lobby in the Tom Izzo Football Building. Fitzgerald was introduced in that lobby Tuesday.

Izzo described the meeting that led to that big donation: He saw Dawn Williams mowing the grass of their Walnut Hills Country Club estate with a brush hog, and he got to use the machine. After Izzo parked the mower, Greg and Dawn Williams pledged the donation, and Izzo could hardly contain his emotions. Nor could he Friday, when Greg Williams called him “our national treasure.”

“I’ve gotten a chance to meet a lot of important people in my days here,” Izzo said. “Never has one impacted me the way he (Greg) has.”

Acrisure, which reportedly is planning an initial public offering (IPO) in 2026, has a lengthy resume of sports investments, especially when it comes to naming rights. Acrisure is the name on the stadium for the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers, and the coming-soon amphitheater in downtown Grand Rapids, among several other venues.

That’s business. Friday’s announcement was much more personal for Greg and Dawn Williams, who grew up together in Laingsburg, northeast of Lansing. Williams recalled attending his first MSU sporting event in seventh grade, on a school trip to watch men’s basketball at Jenison Fieldhouse – another building, opened in 1940, that will get significant renovations, after MSU recently scaled back its plans for the Spartan Gateway project, and scrapped plans for a new arena.

“When this first got discussed, there’s moments you have where my wife and I look at each other and say, ‘Are we really going to do this?’” Williams said. “And the more we talked about it and explored the whole thing, again, we just got more and more committed to the whole thing.

“The whole thing’s been exciting, and it’s the kind of impact that were looking to make.”

Batt, hired to replace former athletic director Alan Haller in June on a six-year contract that pays him more than $2 million a year, was Guskiewicz’s choice in part for his reputation as an elite fundraiser.

Batt has been an athletics administrator since 2005, at eight different schools.

He’s had his fair share of successes, but nothing quite like this.

“I would just say, incredible, inspiring, humbling, when somebody – Greg and Dawn – make that sort of commitment. It’s incredible,” Batt, whose department operates on a $192 million budget, told The News. “And that moment when they shared with us what they were going to do is probably one of the most incredible moments in my college athletics career, and something that I’ll never forget.”

By NOAH TRISTER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The president of the United States danced to the Village People, Wayne Gretzky struggled to pronounce the names of underdog soccer nations from Europe and the Caribbean — and the head of FIFA declared his governing body to be humanity’s official provider of happiness.

And yes, teams were divided into groups for next year’s World Cup. That was, after all, the stated purpose of the gathering.

After Friday’s ceremony began, it took about 90 minutes — the length of a regulation soccer match — for the draw to begin in earnest. By then, casual fans who tuned in out of curiosity had learned that FIFA doesn’t really do understatement. Not for an event like this, at least.

President Donald Trump loomed over the proceedings, as expected, receiving a peace award from FIFA that seemed to have been created specifically for him. FIFA President Gianni Infantino called his group “the official happiness provider for humanity” — which is certainly one way of describing an institution that’s been in the middle of any number of corruption allegations through the years.

In addition to Trump, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — who drew their countries into predetermined World Cup groups before the rest of the spots in the 12 four-team groups were filled — Friday’s festivities included plenty of big names.

Comedian Kevin Hart co-hosted the broadcast alongside Heidi Klum. Gretzky, Tom Brady, Shaquille O’Neal and Aaron Judge helped with the draw itself. Singers Robbie Williams, Nicole Scherzinger and Lauryn Hill performed.

Over the top? Yes. One can only imagine the fan revolt if, for example, the selection shows for the NCAA basketball tournaments were handled this way. But there was no denying how many fans were tuning in — and FIFA was determined to make this a full-fledged entertainment event.

The Trump show

When the U.S. last hosted the men’s World Cup in 1994, then-president Bill Clinton didn’t even attend the draw. But Trump is no usual politician, and the former real estate mogul and reality show host ensured — with plenty of backup from FIFA — that he was the effective star of the event.

First, the event was held at the Kennedy Center, the longstanding arts institution in Washington whose leadership was ousted earlier this year and replaced with Trump loyalists. The president has jokingly called it the “Trump-Kennedy Center.”

Then the U.S. president was awarded the inaugural FIFA peace prize from soccer’s governing body.

“You definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action for what you have obtained in your way,” Infantino told Trump, who wore the prize’s gold medal around his neck.

The draw even opened and closed with some Trump musical favorites. Opera legend Andrea Bocelli, set to perform at the White House on Friday night, began the draw with a rendition of Puccini’s “Nessun dorma.”

Near the end, organizers brought the Village People on stage to perform “YMCA,” which, like “Nessun dorma,” is often performed at Trump campaign rallies. From his seat at the Kennedy Center, Trump stood up and did his signature dance.

Quite a production

FIFA looked to elevate the ceremony with comedy, music and star-driven moments. The organization packed the two hour-plus event with comedians, music stars, sports legends, roving interviews and commercials featuring popular actors Matthew McConaughey and Salma Hayek.

Some moments dazzled, others drifted. But together they signaled FIFA’s growing effort to turn the draw into entertainment.

Williams and Scherzinger earned a standing ovation with a rousing performance of FIFA’s official hymn, “Desire.” Hill followed with full-band renditions of “Lost Ones” and “Doo Wop (That Thing),” pausing to acknowledge Bob Marley’s deep connection to the game before bringing out his grandson, YG Marley, for a reggae-soul collaboration.

Klum and Hart introduced a rotation of sports legends as part of the extended broadcast. Hart welcomed Gretzky and Judge. Klum followed by introducing O’Neal, whose 7-foot-1 frame provided an instant visual contrast to Hart, before rounding out the sequence with Brady.

Expanded field

Gretzky stumbled over the pronunciations of North Macedonia and Curaçao, two teams whose qualification hopes — North Macedonia isn’t actually in yet — were boosted by the fact that the World Cup expanded from 32 teams to 48. That meant the number of groups increased from eight to 12.

It also made for an even more complex draw, with six of the 48 teams not even known yet. Those six will come from March playoffs, which forced the draw to use placeholders.

Then there was FIFA’s policy of not putting multiple teams from the same continental confederation in the same group, with the exception of Europe. For an avid fan who’d studied the process, it wasn’t too hard to follow. For the uninitiated, there was probably a fair amount of confusion.

Nuts and bolts

The expanded field also meant there was little chance of multiple powerhouses ending up in the same group. However, France has to contend with goal-scoring star Erling Haaland and Norway in Group I. Senegal is also in that group. In 2002, Senegal beat France as the French fell apart trying to defend the title they’d won four years earlier.

Scotland has never made it past the group stage, and it won’t be easy this year. Group C also includes Brazil — the fifth time in its last seven appearances Scotland has been drawn with Brazil — and Morocco, which is No. 11 in the FIFA rankings.

The U.S., meanwhile, is in Group D with Australia (the lowest-ranked team in pot 2 of the draw) and Paraguay (the lowest-ranked South American team in the field so far). The Americans also avoided the possibility of facing Italy or Denmark from out of the European playoffs.

AP Entertainment Writer Jonathan Landrum Jr. and Associated Press Writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

By HOWARD FENDRICH

WASHINGTON (AP) — If you listened to the words spoken after the World Cup draw by the various coaches who were at the Kennedy Center on Friday, it would seem impossible for any of them to win next year’s tournament.

Everyone got thrown into the toughest group — or the “Group of Death,” in soccer parlance.

Everyone was burdened with talented foes for their first three matches — even if a half-dozen participants are yet to be determined and the expanded field means some lesser-quality teams will get in.

And everyone needs to avoid overlooking any other team and be ready for whatever is to come during the tournament from June 11 to July 19 in the United States, Canada and Mexico during the largest World Cup yet, the first with 48 countries participating (there were 32 last time).

“We need to respect all of the opponents. It’s always going to be difficult,” said U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino, whose squad is in Group D and starts off against Paraguay on June 12, then also will face Australia and a still-undetermined playoff qualifier.

“My message to the players is: We need to compete better than Paraguay; that is going to be difficult. Australia is going to be difficult,” Pochettino said. “And the team that is going to join us is going to be difficult.”

Hmmm. Sense a theme?

There is some version of what is often referred to as “coach speak” under nearly every circumstance and in nearly every sport. Just pay attention to what the men in charge of NFL clubs say day after day during that sport’s season.

It’s the classic playbook: Build up opponents. Don’t let your players get complacent. Don’t let your fans — or the people who hired you and can fire you — think success is guaranteed.

Didier Deschamps, a player on France’s championship team in 1998 and the coach of its title winners in 2018 and runners-up to Argentina in 2022, sounded as worried as anyone else.

Doesn’t matter that the French are considered one of the favorites — not merely to get out of the round-robin stage but also to once more appear in the final.

“We know this is a very tough group,” Deschamps said Friday. “We cannot rest.”

His country was dropped into Group I alongside Senegal, Norway and a playoff team (those won’t all be set until March).

A little later, Norway’s coach, Ståle Solbakken, for his part, praised the French team as “maybe the strongest in Europe,” and in the next breath — as though perhaps worried someone from another nation might take offense — pointed out: “But there’s two other teams in the group.”

One of which won’t even be known for another three months.

Luis de la Fuente, who led Spain to the 2024 European Championship, finds his team among the World Cup favorites but insisted there is parity in the sport these days.

Spain’s Group H includes Uruguay, Saudi Arabia and Cape Verde.

“People think there are easy groups, but it is a very similar level,” the coach said. “This will be a historic World Cup, because there’s an exceptional level all-round. These games force you to play at your best.”

Players can be just as liable to these sorts of pronouncements.

U.S. midfielder Tyler Adams, speaking to reporters on a video call Friday, said it plainly: “There’s no easy game in the World Cup.”

And then he pointed out that during the last World Cup, when the Americans were eliminated in the round of 16, their two hardest games came “against two of the lesser opponents.”

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

By MICHELLE L. PRICE and GARY FIELDS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace after President Donald Trump and has planted the president’s name on the organization’s headquarters despite an ongoing fight over the institute’s control.

It’s the latest twist in a seesaw court battle over who controls the U.S. Institute of Peace, a nonprofit think tank that focuses on peace initiatives. It was an early target of the Department of Government Efficiency this year.

On Wednesday, the State Department said it renamed the organization to the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace to “reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history.” The new name could be seen on its building, which is near the State Department.

Trump has spent months openly lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize even though he was passed over for this year’s installment — arguing he had a hand in easing a series of conflicts around the world. But Trump has also ordered strikes on suspected drug vessels off the coast of Venezuela and repeatedly threatened that attacks on land could be coming, which would be an act of war against that country.

The takeover of the Peace Institute was also anything but peaceful, with his administration seizing the independent entity and ousting its board before actually affixing his name to the building.

Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said: “The United States Institute of Peace was once a bloated, useless entity that blew $50 million per year while delivering no peace. Now, the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, which is both beautifully and aptly named after a President who ended eight wars in less than a year, will stand as a powerful reminder of what strong leadership can accomplish for global stability.”

She added, “Congratulations, world!”

George Foote, a lawyer for the former Institute leadership and staff, said the renaming “adds insult to injury.”

“A federal judge has already ruled that the government’s armed takeover was illegal. That judgment is stayed while the government appeals, which is the only reason the government continues to control the building,” Foote said.

Since March, the headquarters has switched hands multiple times in court actions related to the DOGE takeover. A final decision on its fate is pending in federal appeals court.

USIP has maintained the organization is an independent creation of Congress and outside the president’s executive authority. The administration argues it is an executive branch organization.

After Trump fired the institute’s board in the the spring, the staff was fired as well and the building was turned over to the General Services Administration.

A federal district court overturned the action in May, putting the headquarters back into the hands of USIP leadership. But that action was reversed weeks later by a federal appeals court.

Employees at this juncture have been fired twice and the building is in GSA’s possession.

The building is expected to be the backdrop for the signing of a peace agreement Thursday between Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame. High-ranking officials from the African Union, Angola, Burundi, Kenya, Togo, Qatar, Uganda and the United Arab Emirates are also expected to attend the signing, according to Yolande Makolo, a senior adviser to Kagame.

The USIP website remained unchanged Wednesday night, but its lead item was headlined, “President Donald J. Trump to Sign Historic Peace Agreement at USIP Headquarters,” followed by a write-up of the deal between Congo and Rwanda that Trump was overseeing at the institute on Thursday.

The Institute of Peace was created by Congress in the 1980s. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law in 1985. Described as an independent, nonprofit think tank funded by Congress, its mission has been to work to promote peace and prevent and end conflicts while working outside normal channels such as the State Department. It was operating in 26 conflict zones, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mali and Burkina Faso, when DOGE shut the operation down.

There is also broad speculation that Trump will be awarded a new peace prize from FIFA on the sidelines of the World Cup draw, happening in Washington on Friday.

Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Will Weissert contributed to this report.

By MATT BROWN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met separately with President Donald Trump and Republican senators Wednesday as tech executives work to secure favorable federal policies for the artificial intelligence industry, including the limited sale of Nvidia’s highly valued computer chips to U.S. rivals like China.

Huang’s closed-door meeting with Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee came at a moment of intensifying lobbying, soaring investments and audacious forecasts by major tech companies about AI’s potential transformative effects.

Huang is among the Silicon Valley executives who warn that any restrictions on the technology will halt its advancement despite mounting concerns among policymakers and the public about AI’s potential pitfalls or the ways foreign rivals like China may use American hardware.

“I’ve said repeatedly that we support export control, that we should ensure that American companies have the best and the most and first,” Huang told reporters before his meeting at the Capitol.

He added that he shared concerns about selling AI chips to China but believed that restrictions haven’t slowed Chinese advancement in the AI race.

“We need to be able to compete around the world. The one thing we can’t do is we can’t degrade the chips that we sell to China. They won’t accept that. There’s a reason why they wouldn’t accept that, and so we should offer the most competitive chips we can to the Chinese market,” Huang said.

Huang also said he’d met with Trump earlier Wednesday and discussed export controls for Nvidia’s chips. Huang added that he wished the president “a happy holidays.”

The Trump administration in May reversed Biden-era restrictions that had prevented Nvidia and other chipmakers from exporting their chips to a wide range of countries. The White House in August also announced an unusual deal that would allow Nvidia and another U.S. chipmaker, Advanced Micro Devices, to sell their chips in the Chinese market but would require the U.S. government to take a 15% cut of the sales.

The deal divided lawmakers on Capitol Hill, where there is broad support for controls on AI exports.

A growing battle in Congress

Members of Congress have generally considered the sale of high-end AI chips to China to be a national security risk. China is the main competitor to the U.S. in the race to develop artificial superintelligence. Lawmakers have also proposed a flurry of bills this year to regulate AI’s impact on dozens of industries, though none have become law.

Most Republican senators who attended the meeting with Huang declined to discuss their conversations. But a handful described the meeting as positive and productive.

“For me, this is a very healthy discussion to have,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican. Rounds said lawmakers had a “general discussion” with Huang about the state of AI and said senators were still open to a wide range of policies.

Asked whether he believed Nvidia’s interests and goals were fully aligned with U.S. national security, Rounds replied: “They currently do not sell chips in China. And they understand that they’re an American company. They want to be able to compete around the rest of the world. They’d love to some time be able to compete in China again, but they recognize that export controls are important as well for our own national security.”

Other Republicans were more skeptical of Huang’s message.

Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican who sits on the upper chamber’s Banking Committee, said he skipped the meeting entirely.

“I don’t consider him to be an objective, credible source about whether we should be selling chips to China,” Kennedy told reporters. “He’s got more money than the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and he wants even more. I don’t blame you for that, but if I’m looking for someone to give me objective advice about whether we should make our technology available to China, he’s not it.”

Some Democrats, shut out from the meeting altogether, expressed frustration at Huang’s presence on Capitol Hill.

“Evidently, he wants to go lobby Republicans in secret rather than explain himself,” said Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.

Warren added that she wanted Huang to testify in a public congressional hearing and answer “questions about why his company wants to favor Chinese manufacturers over American companies that need access to those high-quality chips.”

By STELLA MARTANY

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — The United States inaugurated a massive new consulate compound Wednesday in Irbil, the capital of northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.

The move highlighted Washington’s diplomatic and strategic engagement in the Kurdish region, particularly as the U.S. moves troops that had been stationed elsewhere in Iraq as part of a mission against the Islamic State group, under an agreement with the central government in Baghdad.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Michael Rigas joined Kurdish leaders for the inauguration of the sprawling complex — planned as the largest U.S. consulate in the world — built on a 206,000-square-meter (50-acre) site along the Irbil–Shaqlawa highway at a cost of $796 million.

“America’s investment in this new consulate provides a secure platform to advance the interests of the United States,” Rigas said. “It demonstrates the value that a sovereign, secure and prosperous Iraq, in mutually beneficial partnership with the United States can deliver for its own people and for America.”

The opening comes amid ongoing challenges in Iraq, including regional tensions and attacks on energy infrastructure. A drone strike last week on the Kormor natural gas field caused widespread power outages.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Rigas appeared to cast blame on Iraq’s politically powerful Iran-backed militias.

He urged both Baghdad and Irbil to “disempower and dismantle Iran-aligned militias that continue to engage in violent and destabilizing activities and only serve to harm Iraqi sovereignty.”

Kurdish regional President Nechirvan Barzani referred to the consulate as a “clear political message regarding the importance of Irbil and the Kurdistan region.”

He said the facility underscores the deep partnership between the U.S. and the Kurdish authorities and will serve as a hub for diplomatic, economic and security cooperation.

Follow AP’s Middle East coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/middle-east

By LAURAN NEERGAARD and LAURA UNGAR

WASHINGTON (AP) — A dozen prior leaders of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — appointed by Republicans and Democrats alike — issued a scathing denunciation of new FDA assertions casting doubt on vaccine safety.

The former officials say the agency’s plans to revamp how life-saving vaccines for flu, COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases are handled — outlined in an internal FDA memo last week — would “disadvantage the people the FDA exists to protect, including millions of Americans at high risk from serious infections.”

“The proposed new directives are not small adjustments or coherent policy updates. They represent a major shift in the FDA’s understanding of its job,” the officials, former FDA commissioners and acting commissioners, wrote Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The internal memo by FDA vaccine chief Dr. Vinay Prasad hasn’t been publicly released but a source familiar with the document confirmed its authenticity. The document claimed — without providing evidence — that COVID-19 vaccines caused 10 children’s deaths. It went on to outline planned agency changes in handling those and certain other vaccines, and said that FDA staff who disagreed should resign.

Among Prasad’s plans were revising how yearly flu shot updates are handled and focusing more on “the benefits and harms of giving multiple vaccines at the same time.” A common message of vaccine skeptics is that too many shots may overwhelm kids’ immune systems or that ingredients may build up to cause harm — although scientists say repeated research into those claims has turned up no concerns.

On Wednesday, the former FDA leaders wrote that Prasad’s claim about child deaths related to COVID-19 vaccines had been reported to a surveillance system that doesn’t contain medical records or other information sufficient to prove a link — and that government scientists had carefully combed through those reports in previous years, reaching different conclusions. They also noted that “substantial evidence” shows COVID-19 vaccines reduce children’s risk of severe disease and hospitalization.

But the bigger picture, the former FDA leaders argued, is that the new proposals would reject long-standing science about how to evaluate vaccines being updated to better match virus strains, slow innovation to replace older vaccines with newer, potentially better ones, and make the process less transparent to the public.

An administration spokesman didn’t immediately comment.

Many doctors and public health experts also have expressed alarm about the memo.

“Vaccines save lives, period,” Dr. Ronald Nahass, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said in a statement. “It is a sad day when FDA creates confusion and mistrust without supplying evidence, spreading propaganda that makes lifesaving vaccines harder to access and that creates additional confusion and mistrust for the public.”

The FDA’s planned vaccine changes come at a time when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who helped lead the anti-vaccine movement for years — is seeking to broadly remake federal policies on vaccines.

Kennedy already ousted a committee that advised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine recommendation and replaced it with handpicked members. And in August, he fired Susan Monarez 29 days into her tenure as CDC chief over vaccine policy disagreements. The CDC’s vaccine advisory committee will meet Thursday and Friday to discuss h epatitis B vaccinations in newborns and other vaccine topics.

Ungar reported from Louisville, Kentucky. Associated Press writer Ali Swenson contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) — One of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell ‘s most vocal accusers urged judges on Wednesday to grant the Justice Department’s request to unseal records from their federal sex trafficking cases, saying “only transparency is likely to lead to justice.”

Annie Farmer weighed in through her lawyer, Sigrid S. McCawley, after the judges asked for input from victims before ruling on whether the records should be made public under a new law requiring the government to open its files on the late financier and his longtime confidante, who sexually abused young women and girls for decades.

Farmer and other victims fought for the passage of the law, known as the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Signed last month by President Donald Trump, it compels the Justice Department, FBI and federal prosecutors to release by Dec. 19 the vast troves of material they’ve amassed during investigations into Epstein.

The Justice Department last week asked Manhattan federal Judges Richard M. Berman and Paul A. Engelmayer to lift secrecy orders on grand jury transcripts and other material from Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case and a wide range of records from Maxwell’s 2021 case, including search warrants, financial records and notes from interviews with victims.

“Nothing in these proceedings should stand in the way of their victory or provide a backdoor avenue to continue to cover up history’s most notorious sex-trafficking operation,” McCawley wrote in a letter to the judges.

The attorney was critical of the government for failing to prosecute anyone else in Epstein and Maxwell’s orbit.

She asked the judges to ensure that the orders they issue do not preclude the Justice Department from releasing other Epstein-related materials, adding that Farmer “is wary” that any denial could be used “as a pretext or excuse” to withhold information.

Epstein, a millionaire money manager known for socializing with celebrities, politicians, billionaires and the academic elite, killed himself in jail a month after his 2019 arrest.

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 by a federal jury of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of Epstein’s underage victims and participating in some of the abuse. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

In a court filing Wednesday, Maxwell’s lawyer again said that she is preparing a habeas petition in a bid to overturn her conviction. The lawyer, David Markus, first mentioned the habeas petition in court papers in August as she fought the Justice Department’s initial bid to have her case records unsealed. The Supreme Court in October declined to hear Maxwell’s appeal.

Markus said in Wednesday’s filing that while Maxwell now “does not take a position” in the wake of the transparency act’s passage, doing so “would create undue prejudice so severe that it would foreclose the possibility of a fair retrial” if her habeas petition succeeds.

The records, Markus said, “contain untested and unproven allegations.”

Engelmayer, who’s weighing whether to release records from Maxwell’s case, gave her and victims until Wednesday to respond to the Justice Department’s unsealing request. The government must respond to their filings by Dec. 10. The judge said he will rule “promptly thereafter.”

Berman, who presided over the Epstein case, ordered victims and Epstein’s estate to respond by Wednesday and gave the government until Dec. 8 to reply to those submissions. Berman said he would make his “best efforts to resolve this motion promptly.”

Lawyers for Epstein’s estate said in a letter to Berman on Wednesday that the estate takes no position on the Justice Department’s unsealing request. The lawyers noted that the government had committed to making appropriate redactions of personal identifying information for victims.

Last week, a lawyer for some victims complained that the House Oversight Committee had failed to redact, or black out, some of their names from tens of thousands pages of Epstein-related documents it has released in recent months.

Transparency “CANNOT come at the expense of the privacy, safety, and protection of sexual abuse and sex trafficking victims, especially these survivors who have already suffered repeatedly,” lawyer Brad Edwards wrote.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday released never-before-seen photos and videos of Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous private island, offering what they called a “disturbing look” into the world of the late convicted sex offender.

The newly released material includes dozens of short videos and still photographs of the compound, including one showing a particularly bizarre room filled with an old-fashioned dental chair, Ikea-style metal cabinets and nearly a dozen caricature-like male face masks arranged irregularly on its walls.

Other images show a desktop computer displaying surveillance footage of the property; a bedroom in the compound; a shower room with several pillows; a room with a chalkboard with the words “power” and “deception” written on it; and a desk telephone with four names that appear to have been redacted.

Members of the Oversight Committee received the images in response to a Nov. 18 request to the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Justice for information to aid the ongoing investigation into the disgraced financier, who died by suicide in his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

“We are releasing these photos and videos to ensure public transparency in our investigation and to help piece together the full picture of Epstein’s horrific crimes,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat in the committee.

The images offer a “harrowing look behind Epstein’s closed doors,” Oversight Democrats said on social media, inviting the public to “see for yourself.”

The committee also received records from J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank, lawmakers said, adding that those files will be reviewed and should be made available to the public “in the days ahead.”

“We won’t stop fighting until we deliver justice for the survivors,” Garcia said. “It’s time for President Trump to release all the files, now.”

Last month, in a stunning show of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans in both chambers voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill to force the Justice Department to release all of its unclassified files on Jeffrey Epstein within 30 days.

Trump signed the bill on Nov. 19, but it remains unclear how much of the files will be released to the public, as the Justice Department can withhold or redact certain information under the law’s provisions.

By LISA MASCARO

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon knew there were survivors after a September attack on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea and the U.S. military still carried out a follow-up strike, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The rationale for the second strike was that it was needed to sink the vessel, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly. The Trump administration says all 11 people aboard were killed.

What remains unclear was who ordered the strikes and whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was involved, one of the people said. That will be part of a classified congressional briefing Thursday with the commander that the Trump administration says ordered the second strike, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley.

Hegseth has defended the second strike as emerging in the “fog of war,” saying he didn’t see any survivors but also “didn’t stick around” for the rest of the mission.

Hegseth is under growing scrutiny over the military strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Legal experts and some lawmakers say a strike that killed survivors would have violated the laws of armed conflict.

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s decision to build a big ballroom where the East Wing once stood has significantly altered the visitor experience at the White House. Tourists enter through a different door now, and the tour is shorter because there are fewer historic rooms to see.

But some people who took the self-guided tour on Wednesday were just happy to glimpse the White House all decked out in its Christmas glory by first lady Melania Trump.

Tours resumed Tuesday after being suspended in September because of the ballroom construction, including October’s leveling of the East Wing.

“I’m glad they started it up again,” Kevin Heins, of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said about the tours. He and his wife visited the White House, and he said a highlight of the tour was the Red Room, which has been decorated with more than 10,000 blue butterflies.

A symbol of transformation, the butterflies celebrate young people the first lady tries to help through Fostering the Future, which is part of the Be Best child-centered initiative she launched during the first Trump administration.

Susan Bare, of Kannapolis, North Carolina, also liked the butterflies because they remind her of her late son, who planted a butterfly bush before a car accident took his life.

“My Christmas tree has butterflies on it,” Bare said.

Other visitors commented on how quickly they were able to finish the tour, which has been limited to just the State Floor, which includes the East Room; the Green, Blue and Red Rooms; the State Dining Room; the Cross Hall; and the Grand Foyer.

“The tour was significantly longer last year,” said Amiah Henry, a student at Sulphur High School in Sulphur, Louisiana. “It got cut down a lot.”

Rooms one level below on the ground floor, such as the China and Vermeil Rooms, are now off-limits to the public because of the construction. Additionally, some staff displaced by the loss of the East Wing are using some of those spaces as temporary offices.

“It’s definitely a big change. There was a lot of, like, beauty in the East Wing, and that was my favorite part of the tour,” said Henry, who spoke as noise from the construction could be heard in the distance. “I’m sad I didn’t get to see it today, but, you know, what can I do?”

Heins, who is retired after a career in law enforcement and the military, said the ballroom construction would ultimately add value to the White House.

“The tour was a little bit shorter, but I think in the long run, with the extension of the ballroom, I think it’s going to be a good thing because you won’t have to wait outside in tents for events and all that,” Heins said. “I just think that, with our country, we should have something nice to host events at the White House.”

By Jonathan Shorman, Stateline.org

Four Republican states have agreed to help the Trump administration gain access to state driver’s license data through a nationwide law enforcement computer network as part of the administration’s hunt for alleged noncitizen voters.

The Trump administration said as recently as October that federal officials wanted to obtain driver’s license records through the network.

The commitment from officials in Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio comes as part of a settlement agreement filed on Friday in a federal lawsuit. The lawsuit was originally brought by the states last year alleging the Biden administration wasn’t doing enough to help states verify voter eligibility.

The settlement, between the states and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, requires the federal department to continue its development of a powerful citizenship verification program known as SAVE. Earlier this year, federal officials repurposed SAVE into a program capable of scanning millions of state voter records for instances of noncitizen registered voters.

In return, the states have agreed to support Homeland Security’s efforts to access the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, an obscure computer network that typically allows law enforcement agencies to search driver’s license records across state lines. Nlets — as the system is known — lets police officers easily look up the driving records of out-of-state motorists.

The Trump administration and some Republican election officials have promoted the changes to SAVE as a useful tool to identify potential noncitizen voters, and Indiana had already agreed to provide voter records. Critics, including some Democrats, say the Trump administration is building a massive database of U.S. residents that President Donald Trump or a future president could use for spying or targeting political enemies.

Stateline reported last week, before the settlement agreement was filed in court, that Homeland Security publicly confirmed it wants to connect Nlets to SAVE.

A notice published Oct. 31 in the Federal Register said driver’s licenses are the most widely used form of identification, and that by working with states and national agencies, including Nlets, “SAVE will use driver’s license and state identification card numbers to check and confirm identity information.”

A federal official also previously told a virtual meeting of state election officials in May that Homeland Security was seeking “to avoid having to connect to 50 state databases” and wanted a “simpler solution,” such as Nlets, according to government records published by the transparency group American Oversight.

The new settlement lays out the timeline for how the Trump administration could acquire the four states’ records.

Within 90 days of the execution of the agreement, the four states may provide Homeland Security with 1,000 randomly selected driver’s license records from their state for verification as part of a quality improvement process for SAVE.

According to the agreement, the states that provide the records will “make best efforts to support and encourage DHS’s efforts to receive and have full use of state driver’s license records from the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System” and state driver’s license agencies.

The language in the agreement is open-ended and doesn’t make clear whether the pledge to help Homeland Security obtain access to Nlets is limited to drivers from those four states or is intended to require the states to help the agency acquire the records of drivers nationwide.

An agreement to help

The agreement could pave the way for Republican officials in other states to provide access to license data.

Nlets is a nonprofit organization that facilitates data sharing among law enforcement agencies across state lines. States decide what information to make available through Nlets, and which agencies can access it. That means the four states could try to influence peers to share Nlets data with the Trump administration.

“They’re not just talking about driver’s license numbers, they’re talking about the driver’s records. What possible reason would DHS have in an election or voting context — or any context whatsoever — for obtaining the ‘full use of state driver’s license records,’” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, said in a statement to Stateline that the settlement agreement provides another layer of election integrity and protection as officials seek to ensure only eligible voters are registered. He didn’t directly address questions about Nlets access.

“The SAVE program provides us with critical information, but we must also continue to utilize information from other state and federal partners to maintain clean and accurate lists,” Pate said in the statement.

Two weeks before the Nov. 5, 2024, election, Pate issued guidance to Iowa county auditors to challenge the ballots of 2,176 registered voters who were identified by the secretary of state’s office as potential noncitizens. The voters had reported to the state Department of Transportation or another government entity that they were not U.S. citizens in the past 12 years and went on to register to vote, according to the guidance.

In March, Pate said his office gained access to the SAVE database and found 277 of those people were confirmed to not have U.S. citizenship — just under 12% of the individuals identified as potential noncitizens.

Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

Matthew Tragesser, a spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — the agency under Homeland Security that oversees SAVE — told Stateline last week that USCIS was committed to “eliminating barriers to securing the nation’s electoral process.”

“By allowing states to efficiently verify voter eligibility, we are reinforcing the principle that America’s elections are reserved exclusively for American citizens,” Tragesser said in a statement.

The SAVE program — Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements — was originally intended to help state and local officials verify the immigration status of individual noncitizens seeking government benefits. In the past, SAVE could search only one name at a time. Now it can conduct bulk searches; federal officials in May also connected the program to Social Security data.

“It’s a potentially dangerous mix to put driver’s license and Social Security number and date of birth information out there … where we really don’t know yet how and when and where it’s going to be used,” Minnesota Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon said in an interview on Monday.

Democratic states object

As the Trump administration has encouraged states to use SAVE, the Justice Department has also demanded states provide the department with unredacted copies of their voter rolls. The Trump administration has previously confirmed the Justice Department is sharing voter information with Homeland Security.

The Justice Department has sued six, mostly Democratic, states for refusing to turn over the data. Those lawsuits remain pending.

On Monday, 12 state secretaries of state submitted a 29-page public comment, in response to SAVE’s Federal Register notice, criticizing the overhaul. The secretaries wrote that while Homeland Security claims the changes make the program an effective tool for verifying voters, the modifications are “likely to degrade, not enhance” states’ efforts to ensure free, fair and secure elections.

“What the modified system will do … is allow the federal government to capture sensitive data on hundreds of millions of voters nationwide and distribute that information as it sees fit,” the secretaries wrote.

The secretaries of state of California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington signed on to the comment.

The settlement agreement purports to make this year’s changes to SAVE legally binding.

The agreement asks that a federal court retain jurisdiction over the case for 20 years for the purposes of enforcing it — a move that in theory could make it harder for a future Democratic president to reverse the changes to SAVE.

But Becker, of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said he doesn’t expect the settlement agreement would make it more difficult for a future administration to undo the overhaul.

“Should a different administration come in that disagrees with this approach,” Becker said, “I would expect that they would almost certainly completely change how the system operates and how the states can access it and what data the federal government procures.”

Iowa Capital Dispatch reporter Robin Opsahl contributed to this report. Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

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