2025-12-14 03:38:07
The Transportation Security Administration is forwarding passenger lists to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in order to detain and deport travelers while denying them the chance to challenge the process, according to documents obtained by the New York Times.
A Times report Friday revealed that information furnished by TSA provided the basis of ICE’s high-profile detention of university student Any Lucía López Belloza, who was deported following her arrest at Boston’s Logan airport en route to visit her family for Thanksgiving.
On a near-daily basis since March, the agency has been sending files to ICE that include photographs of the person targeted for deportation, and flight information that ICE employs to detain people before they board.
The TSA’s participation in immigration enforcement is unprecedented, as is that of ICE with domestic travel; the program, kept secret until Friday’s report, represents yet another means of inducing collective fear en masse in travelers and other residents.
It’s a widespread problem—other travelers have been detained at airports.
In the case of many immigrants like López, a student with no criminal record, those attacks defy orders by federal judges not to deport the people targeted—defiance facilitated by ICE’s collaboration with TSA, which prevents timely challenges.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the TSA’s collaboration with ICE and the secrecy around it.
As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote earlier this week about the second Trump administration’s immigration policy, “the US government is using its prosecutorial discretion—it is choosing—to normalize casual cruelty and overt racism. And it’s doing so ostensibly in the name of “protecting” the American people.”
2025-12-13 20:30:00
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Changes in polar bear DNA that could help the animals adapt to warmer climates have been detected by researchers, in a study thought to be the first time a statistically significant link has been found between rising temperatures and changing DNA in a wild mammal species.
Climate breakdown is threatening the survival of polar bears. Two-thirds of them are expected to have disappeared by 2050 as their icy habitat melts and the weather becomes hotter.
Now scientists at the University of East Anglia have found that some genes related to heat stress, ageing, and metabolism are behaving differently in polar bears living in southeast Greenland, suggesting they may be adjusting to warmer conditions.
The researchers analysed blood samples taken from polar bears in two regions of Greenland and compared “jumping genes”: small, mobile pieces of the genome that can influence how other genes work. Scientists looked at the genes in relation to temperatures in the two regions and at the associated changes in gene expression.
“We cannot be complacent, this offers some hope but does not mean that polar bears are at any less risk of extinction.”
“DNA is the instruction book inside every cell, guiding how an organism grows and develops,” said the lead researcher, Dr Alice Godden. “By comparing these bears’ active genes to local climate data, we found that rising temperatures appear to be driving a dramatic increase in the activity of jumping genes within the south-east Greenland bears’ DNA.”
As local climates and diets evolve as a result of changes in habitat and prey forced by global heating, the genetics of the bears appear to be adapting, with the group of bears in the warmest part of the country showing more changes than the communities farther north. The authors of the study have said these changes could help us understand how polar bears might survive in a warming world, inform understanding of which populations are most at risk and guide future conservation efforts.
This is because the findings, published on Friday in the journal Mobile DNA, suggest the genes that are changing play a crucial role in how different polar bear populations are evolving.
Godden said: “This finding is important because it shows, for the first time, that a unique group of polar bears in the warmest part of Greenland are using ‘jumping genes’ to rapidly rewrite their own DNA, which might be a desperate survival mechanism against melting sea ice.”
Temperatures in northeast Greenland are colder and less variable, while in the south-east there is a much warmer and less icy environment, with steep temperature fluctuations.
DNA sequences in animals change over time, but this process can be accelerated by environmental stress such as a rapidly heating climate.
There were some interesting DNA changes, such as in areas linked to fat processing, that could help polar bears survive when food is scarce. Bears in warmer regions had more rough, plant-based diets compared with the fatty, seal-based diets of northern bears, and the DNA of southeastern bears seemed to be adapting to this.
Godden said: “We identified several genetic hotspots where these jumping genes were highly active, with some located in the protein-coding regions of the genome, suggesting that the bears are undergoing rapid, fundamental genetic changes as they adapt to their disappearing sea ice habitat.”
The next step will be to look at other polar bear populations, of which there are 20 around the world, to see if similar changes are happening to their DNA.
This research could help protect the bears from extinction. But the scientists said it was crucial to stop temperature rises accelerating by reducing the burning of fossil fuels.
Godden said: “We cannot be complacent, this offers some hope but does not mean that polar bears are at any less risk of extinction. We still need to be doing everything we can to reduce global carbon emissions and slow temperature increases.”
2025-12-13 19:00:00
Karen Gleason, a veteran reporter, lit a cigarette as she steps out of her white sports car into the sweltering dry heat of the South Texas summer. It took her a few minutes to reach the border wall then recently expanded by Gov. Greg Abbott to deter migrants from Central America. The wall, despite having gaps throughout, is daunting and monstrous. But it does not impede migrants, nor does it resolve the political divide of Del Rio, the city where Gleason lives.
Del Rio sits on the banks of the Rio Grande River in Val Verde County in southwestern Texas. The small border city of 34,000 people has been at the center of the migrant crisis, most notably when thousands of Haitian migrants made headlines in September 2021 as they sheltered under a bridge outside of town.
This crisis was just one of several incidents during which residents of Del Rio and surrounding communities received a slew of misinformation and disinformation. The Del Rio News-Herald, a longstanding daily newspaper, closed in November 2020, making the city part of a growing trend of news deserts across the country.
With the paper closing, community members rely on other, sometimes unchecked, sources for information about immigration, crime, and politics, like the local radio station (which at times gets information from Fox News), right-wing individuals who stand in as citizen journalists with a growing Facebook platform, and social media accounts with anonymous contributors.
A popular Facebook account run by former Border Patrol agent Frank Lopez Jr. consistently associates immigrants with heightened crime in the area, often calling recent border crossers “terrorists, criminals, and rapists.” Lopez occasionally uploads videos of himself on location in front of migrants, telling his nearly 50,000 followers how tax dollars are being funneled to support them.
“This is one of the many misconceptions that has been magnified throughout different media,” says Tiffany Burrow, director of operations at Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition (VVBHC). “We don’t receive federal funding. So people say, ‘My taxes are paying for the work that you’re doing…’ We are a faith-based organization; there’s other ways to raise funding besides the federal government. [We receive] no federal funding.”
As a short-term respite center, the VVBHC is the first stop in the United States for migrants after being released by the Border Patrol. In 2023, VVBHC had 57,139 individuals walk through their door. During their brief stays at the center, migrants are offered small snacks, water, and hygiene kits. “Our mission is to help others in their time of need,” Burrow says. “If individuals are going to spew whatever they want without validating it, that’s a way bigger problem than one person is able to deal with.”
“Here, you have a lot of our elderly and a lot of people that don’t rely on their phone, so where do they get their news from? [They] don’t.” –Judge Lewis G. Owens
Another hot topic in Del Rio is crime—and the notion that it’s on the rise. For example, an anonymous Facebook account called Rio del Rio listens to the police scanner to post daily about incidents in the city. The posts often feature fear-mongering headlines, including one that claimed the Biden administration was letting ISIS-linked migrants into the country. “I don’t see myself as a journalist, more like a community activist trying to make their hometown better…having an impact on local government by bringing things to people’s attention is quite rewarding, as well,” the person behind the Rio del Rio account told me via Facebook messenger. The account holder believes maintaining anonymity is important “in order to post the things I post and get away with it.”
According to a study co-led by Northwestern University economist Elisa Jacome, there is no data to show that immigrants contribute to a higher crime rate. In fact, her study found that over a 150-year period, immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than those born in the United States.
For a city like Del Rio, and other news deserts across the country, there is a lot at stake when it comes to this type of misinformation and disinformation. What we saw weeks before the 2024 presidential elections far surpassed anything we have seen before, according to disinformation researchers. As Americans tuned into one of the most closely followed elections in history, limited options for local news, advancements in Artificial Intelligence, and a lack of oversight on platforms like X left many voters vulnerable to falsehoods and smear campaigns. “If people don’t do their own fact-checking from serious, and from really solid resources…it’s going to be really hard to go forward,” Burrow says.
While traditional media–once the bedrock of how Americans stayed informed–continues to shift, legacy and start-up news outlets, with different business models and platforms, have new opportunities to enter the news industry.
Gleason, who was a long-time employee of the Del Rio News-Herald, now works for a weekly tabloid-sized newspaper started by a veteran, Joel Langton. The newspaper operates out of Langton’s home. They meet in his living room, sip sparkling water and eat cookies while discussing the most important stories Gleason should dig into. Langton then personally delivers the newspaper every Friday morning to local establishments.
While Gleason makes a fraction of what she once made at the Del Rio News-Herald, since the 1980s, she has believed strongly in her mission as a journalist and keeping the people of Del Rio informed. Her role has not changed, and perhaps, has become even more vital.
2025-12-13 16:01:00
Chicago has been one of the latest stops on the Trump administration’s deportation tour. “Operation Midway Blitz” started in September and, for months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents have been roaming the streets and detaining hundreds of people.
This week on Reveal, host Al Letson and producer Ashley Cleek visit Chicago to see “Operation Midway Blitz” in action, and find out what it’s been like for those targeted by it. Letson and Cleek found citizens detained, Chicago police officers pepper-sprayed, and communities terrified. Most Chicagoans arrested by federal agents in the operation had no criminal record, not even a traffic ticket.
Letson and Cleek also see how communities are mobilizing to protect each other, and how some of the tensions over immigration raids stretch back to decisions made by the city back in 2022. They also learn from 404 Media’s Joseph Cox about face-scanning apps used by federal agents in Chicago—and how the use of this kind of surveillance points to a broader shift in how the US government deploys its technologies against people inside the country.
2025-12-13 08:11:28
A former Los Angeles County district attorney who was put on administrative leave in 2022 after he based a prosecution around tips from a right-wing group that has promoted election fraud conspiracy theories is now the top voting rights official at the Department of Justice, according to a legal filing reviewed by Mother Jones.
Recently, Eric Neff’s name began showing up in emails to state election officials and on DOJ legal filings, which referred to him as a “trial attorney.” But a new lawsuit filed against Fulton County, Georgia, on Thursday showed Neff got an apparent promotion. The legal complaint, which seeks 2020 ballot and signature envelopes to search for irregularities, refers to Neff as “Acting Chief, Voting Section.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Working as a California prosecutor in October 2022, Neff led efforts to accuse Eugene Yu, the CEO of Michigan-based election management company Konnech, of storing sensitive data about California poll workers on Chinese servers—an alleged violation of his contract with Los Angeles County. The county charged Yu with embezzlement and conspiracy.
Neff’s boss at the time, District Attorney George Gascón, emphasized there was no evidence Yu’s alleged misconduct affected the legitimacy of the 2020 election results, but the charges nonetheless fed into right-wing conspiracies that China was somehow involved in stealing Donald Trump’s reelection. Both Trump and the late Charlie Kirk celebrated Yu’s arrest at the time.
Less than two months later, Gascón dropped the charges because there was “potential bias” in the “presentation” of evidence. According to the Los Angeles Times, Neff’s investigation into Yu was apparently spurred by a tip from one of the co-founders of True the Vote, a right-wing group that has promoted baseless allegations that the 2020 election was stolen. Neff was placed on administrative leave, and the county subsequently paid Yu $5 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit.
True the Vote is most notable for its false claims about people committing mass fraud in 2020 through ballot drop boxes; Dinesh D’Souza based his now-debunked 2022 film, 2000 Mules, around the group’s work.
Neff’s career advancement comes as the DOJ voting section attempts to compile a national voter roll in a purported effort to uncover examples of voter fraud. As my colleague Ari Berman and I reported last week, Trump and his allies could use this voter registration information to challenge election outcomes, or even to illegally cull voters from voter rolls.
“This administration is abandoning the congressional mandate that the division has to stamp out discrimination and protect vulnerable populations,” Chiraag Bains, a former high-ranking official in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, told us. “They’re not just abandoning it. They’re actually weaponizing the power of the federal government to try to cut off access to the ballot.”
2025-12-13 06:02:42
When Gina got a call that she owed money to a car financing company, it didn’t make sense. At the time, she did not have a driver’s license. In fact, she did not even know how to drive. But, the debt collector explained, her name was on the document.
Gina came to New York City from Haiti almost two decades ago. A few years after she arrived, she met a man, and they began a romantic relationship that quickly turned physically abusive. Within a month, he was sitting her down at a car dealership and telling her to sign her name. Gina didn’t understand that she’d be on the hook for his missed payments.
“When I found out about this debt issue, I couldn’t sleep. I was crying all the time. I lost a lot of hair. I was stressing,” Gina, who asked to use a different name due to safety concerns, told me through a translator. “It was the most terrible and horrible experience I’ve ever gone through in my life.”
Gina is a victim of coerced debt, a kind of financial abuse where bad actors either take out lines of credit in another person’s name without them knowing or pressure someone into accruing debt under threat. It’s an especially challenging legal hurdle when those experiencing financial abuse have to prove that the debt in their name wasn’t amassed consensually.
Across the country, forty-three percent of survivors report being pressured to take out credit in their own name when they did not want to, and 52 percent reported that an abusive partner put debt in their name through a fraudulent or forced transaction.
Right now, there’s a bill on New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk to provide a remedy for victims of coerced debt. The bill, which passed back in June, has been in the works for several years and would allow victims of coerced debt to petition creditors to have the debt in their name removed and transferred to their abuser—who debt collectors would then, in turn, be able to hold civilly liable for whatever money is still owed.
Hochul has until December 19, one more week, to sign the bill. But advocates worry it won’t get done, and fear the financial industry is stalling to alter the bill in the meantime. (In an email, Hochul’s office said, “The Governor will review the legislation.”)
“The debt collectors have exceptionally deep pockets. They are well connected in ways that our survivors simply are not,” Lauren Schuster, vice president of government affairs at Urban Resource Institute, the largest provider of domestic violence shelter services in the country, told me.
Months after the assembly passed Rep. Linda Rosenthal’s bill in June, the American Financial Services Association wrote a letter to Hochul’s office, detailing their “grave concerns” about the legislation. While the association’s members are “highly sympathetic” to victims’ “extremely difficult” situations, Christian O’Connor, the AFSA’s State Legislative and Regulatory Counsel, wrote that the bill as it was passed is “open to exploitation by bad actors.”
In another document shared with the legislature showing notes on a 2024 version of the coerced debt bill, an industry trade group was more direct in a comment: “It is important to remember that there are two victims in a coerced debt scenario – first and foremost the consumer. But the creditor is also a victim who was taken advantage of by the abuser who caused the coerced debt.”
As the New York bill is currently written, in order to receive this relief, victims would need to acquire and submit official documentation that helps to prove the debt was coerced—like a police report, a Federal Trade Commission report, or a sworn certification from a qualified third party professional who has helped them, like a domestic violence counselor, a lawyer, or a social worker. The survivor would also need to submit a statement, sworn to be true, that the debts in their name were accrued through abuse or without their knowledge.
While coercing someone into debt is not currently illegal in New York, falsifying the kind of information survivors would need to submit is illegal—lying about this debt could amount to fraud or result in legal action, a reality that advocates say provides protection to creditors.
Currently, the executive office and both houses of the state legislature are going back and forth with negotiations to finalize the law over various proposed amendments. Some members of the credit industry, which did not make much noise during the voting process, are now petitioning Hochul’s office to change the legislation and introduce several provisions that advocates say would increase hurdles for victims of coerced debt.
“I understand the Governor has many, many bills,” said Rosenthal, who sponsored the legislation. “But I believe the way the bill was drafted, receiving input from all sides—from banks, from creditors, debt collectors, and of course from survivors of domestic violence and advocate groups—that the way we crafted it is the way it should be signed into law.”
Still, she continued, “well-heeled interests with deep pockets figure, ‘I don’t have to talk to the legislators, I will just go to the governor’s office.’” Rosenthal told me of the campaign to change the law. “I’ve gotten word to some of them, ‘You’re not skipping my office and my cosponsor in the senate’s office.’ So then they have to come back and say, ‘Oh we thought we called you, blah blah blah, we sent you an email,’ I’m like, ‘No you didn’t, but let’s talk now.’”
If Hochul signs the bill, New York will join a growing number of states that are introducing and passing coerced debt legislation. Texas, Maine, California, Minnesota, and Connecticut have all passed bills adding protections for victims of coerced debt—all to varying degrees. One thing that both the creditors and the advocates agree on is that this New York bill is more comprehensive than some of the other pieces of similar legislation that have been passed across the country. (Movement on the federal level to address this form of financial abuse has stalled in President Donald Trump’s administration.)
The advocates I spoke to called on Hochul’s past support and personal connection to those experiencing domestic violence and remained optimistic that she would sign the bill—and do so without introducing potentially burdensome concessions from debt collectors.
“I’m hoping that the voices of the survivors that we worked with, and all of the advocates and professionals who’ve been working on this, I hope that those voices matter in Albany,” Naomi Mo Chee Young, another lawyer who helps survivors, said.
The AFSA outlined several edits to the bill that they urged Gov. Hochul to consider, including increasing penalties for false claims of coerced debt, removing physicians, religious leaders, attorneys, employee of a court of the state, and law enforcement officers from who is considered a “qualified third party” that can submit documentation for the victim, and excluding “secured debt” from monies that survivors can seek relief for, among other provisions.
The latter point on secured debt, if included, would make it so vehicle debts would be unavailable for relief. So victims like Gina would still be out of luck.
After several years and repeated threats from her abuser, Gina’s lawyers were able to get the creditors to dismiss the case based on a technicality, but not all victims are able to escape this kind of financial abuse. “She got lucky,” Divya Subrahmanyam, a lawyer with the Brooklyn-based nonprofit CAMBA who helped Gina, told me. “Most survivors are not getting lucky.”
