update - YouTube pays Trump $24.5M to settle lawsuit

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New Jersey's closely-watched gubernatorial race was jolted Thursday after the National Archives blamed a technician's mistake for the release of Congresswoman and New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill's unredacted military records.

Sherrill and some Democratic allies are calling for an investigation, saying the release was no mistake but an extension of President Donald Trump's effort to weaponize the federal government against his political opponents.

Responding to a routine records request, the National Archives released Sherrill's unredacted military records that show she had an unblemished career in the Navy, including a 1991 medal for saving the life of a fellow classmate. But the records contained unredacted information such as Sherrill's Social Security number.

MORE: New Jersey governor candidates grapple over whether it's a bellwether
"Well, it's really scary in these times, of course, to have all that private information in the public… But I think what this shows too, is that my opponent and the Trump administration will stop at nothing. They will completely weaponize the federal government to achieve what they want," Sherrill said Friday on MSNBC.

Asked if she suspects anything "nefarious," she said, "I more than suspect."

ABC News has reached out to the White House about Sherrill's claims she's being targeted by the administration.



Noah K. Murray/AP - PHOTO: Democrat Mikie Sherrill responds to questions during the first general election gubernatorial debate with Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli, Sept. 21, 2025, in Lawrenceville, N.J.
ABC News has not obtained or viewed the records.

CBS News, which first reported on the records release, said that it had been investigating if Sherrill was involved in a scandal in 1994 where more than 130 Midshipmen were implicated in a cheating scandal.

No documents released or obtained by news outlets have shown that Sherrill was involved in the cheating, but because she did not report her classmates, she was not permitted to walk at graduation.

Sherrill said this was a 30-year-old widely reported incident that does not reflect on her military service. Her campaign has not provided other documentation about the incident, but other records have shown that her graduation date and commission date were identical, indicating the Navy did not have an issue with her graduating.

Her Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, said her admission raises concerns.

"Today's admission by Congresswoman Sherrill that she was implicated in, and punished for, her involvement in the largest cheating and honor code scandal in the history of the United States Navy is both stunning and deeply disturbing," Ciatterelli's campaign said in a statement on Thursday.



Noah K. Murray/AP - PHOTO: Republican Jack Ciattarelli responds to questions during the first general election gubernatorial debate with Democrat Mikie Sherrill, Sept. 21, 2025, in Lawrenceville, N.J.
"For eight years, Mikie Sherrill has built her entire political brand around her time at the Naval Academy and in the Navy, all the while concealing her involvement in the scandal and her punishment. The people of New Jersey deserve complete and total transparency," Ciatterelli's campaign said.

CBS News reported that the request came from Ciattarelli ally Nicholas De Gregorio, who was tasked with doing so by political operative Chris Russell.

Russell, on Thursday, pointed to the National Archives' apology and said the request error came in response to documents not related to the cheating scandal.

"FACT: The National Archives provided documents in response to a legitimate and perfectly legal FOIA request. Documents, btw, that had NOTHING to do with the cheating scandal," Russell wrote on X on Thursday.

MORE: Sherrill, Ciattarelli win New Jersey gubernatorial primaries – where Trump is front and center
"The National Archives then apologized to the requestor and took full responsibility for their error. Now... it's time for Rep. Sherrill to come clean and authorize release of all of her records."

The National Archives, on its end, admitted in a letter, shared by the Sherrill campaign, it "should have provided only information that is releasable to the public under the FOIA. Unfortunately, however, in responding to the request, we released the comprehensive record, including personal information such as your social security number and date of birth … We have already reached out to the requester, Nicholas De Gregorio, and asked that he not further disseminate the information that was released to him in error."

ABC News has reached out to the National Archives for comment on the record release.



Noah K. Murray/AP - PHOTO: Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli shake hands with Democratic candidate for governor Mikie Sherrill before their debate Sept. 21, 2025, in Lawrenceville, N.J.
The Sherrill campaign said it is considering legal action, and that counsel for Sherrill has already sent letters to the National Archives, Ciattarelli campaign, Russell, and De Gregorio.

"We are calling on Jack Ciattarelli and the Trump administration to immediately stop illegally distributing Mikie Sherrill's military files, with protected personal information like her Social Security Number, and we will explore appropriate legal action," campaign spokesperson Sean Higgins said in a statement on Thursday.


"To have a guy I'm running against who will stop at nothing to illegally obtain records, it's beyond the pale," Sherrill said at an event on Thursday.

The records request, according to CBS News, was done through a routine and legal procedure and recognized the request would redact personal information.

Ciatterelli, in a statement Friday, called for his Sherrill to share more documents from her time in the Naval Academy.

"The real issue at hand is exactly why Congresswoman Sherrill was barred from walking at her graduation? What specific honor concept violations was she punished for… The only way to determine any of these answers is through her authorizing full and immediate release of all academic, disciplinary, and investigatory records related to her time at the Academy and the scandal itself," he wrote.

House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on Thursday called for a criminal investigation.


"Mikie Sherrill is a patriot and a hero who has served this country, graduated from the naval academy, helicopter pilot, tours of duty in dangerous places overseas and the Middle East, came home, served as a federal prosecutor, is a supermom and a great public servant and a member of Congress," Jeffries said. "It is outrageous that Donald Trump and his administration and political hacks connected to them continue to violate the law and they will be held accountable."

Editor's note: This story has been updated.

NJ governor's race jolted after Sherrill's unredacted military records released

 

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A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who was relieved of duty after a viral video showed him slamming an Ecuadorian woman to the ground as she tried to cling to her husband has been given his job back, CBS News reported Monday.

"The officials, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal move that has not been publicly announced, said the ICE officer was placed back on duty after a preliminary review of the incident," said the report. "CBS News reached out to representatives for ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House requesting comment."



Just three days prior, DHS issued a statement saying that the officer's behavior was "unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE," and that "our ICE law enforcement are held to the highest professional standards and this officer is being relieved of current duties as we conduct a full investigation."

According to the report, "The confrontation appeared to have started when the woman and her daughter tried to cling to her husband, whom federal immigration officers were attempting to take into custody. Officials were captured on video trying to separate the family, and one of the officers was seen grabbing the woman's hair. Footage shows the husband was ultimately detained by federal agents."

The woman reportedly begged the agent, "take me too," in Spanish and touched the officer, after which he shoved her to the floor and responded, "adios," in front of her children.

As ICE activity has ramped up under the Trump administration to fill the mass deportation goals, and as agents have been pulled off investigating serious crimes to round up day laborers for easier quotas, incidents like this have become a commonplace flashpoint.

In another incident, ICE agents were accused of lying about the circumstances of a fatal officer-involved shooting in Chicago, with body camera footage contradicting claims that an officer was seriously injured when the suspect dragged them with their car.

ICE agent who slammed woman gets his job back days after DHS called it 'unacceptable

 

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Tom Homan, the White House border czar, became entangled in an FBI sting last year after an associate of his suggested to undercover FBI agents that Homan could facilitate future government contracts in exchange for big money, according to four sources familiar with the investigation and a government document.

Julian “Jace” Calderas, a former U.S. immigration official who worked under Homan in the Obama administration, allegedly proposed to the agents — who were posing as businessmen — that Homan, in exchange for $1 million, could help them win lucrative federal contracts if Donald Trump became president again, according to an internal Justice Department document describing the investigation reviewed by MSNBC.


Calderas, co-owner of a detention services and government contracting firm in Texas, first allegedly proposed the scheme in May 2023. He held several subsequent conversations with the agents about his cash-for-contracts proposal, culminating in a Sept. 20, 2024, meeting in Dallas at which agents recorded Homan accepting $50,000 in cash, according to the document and sources.

At that same meeting, the document shows, Calderas accepted $10,000 from the undercover FBI agents. His alleged proposal to undercover FBI agents, which had not been previously reported, led to a full-blown Justice Department investigation of Homan, who at the time was a private consultant helping clients obtain government contracts.

A former ICE officer and associate of the White House border czar sparked a full-blown criminal investigation of Homan after he proposed a contracts-for-money scheme to undercover FBI agents.
“I know nothing about this,” Calderas told MSNBC by phone last Monday when asked if he was aware of the criminal investigation and his alleged role in it. “If this is the case, I’m going to need to talk to my lawyer.”

Calderas then ended the call. He did not answer whether he had accepted $10,000 or whether he remembered such a meeting with Homan in Texas. He did not respond to follow-up messages or emails seeking comment from him or his lawyer. MSNBC reached out directly to Calderas and to his company, XFed Global, which he founded with fellow former officials from the Department of Homeland Security, according to the firm’s web site.

The White House has criticized the investigation as a politically motivated inquiry started under the Biden administration. Homan said during an interview on Fox News last Monday that he did nothing wrong, but he did not address whether he accepted the $50,000.

On Thursday, the White House dismissed the significance of internal investigative accounts describing Calderas’ role in allegedly suggesting that Homan could influence future contracts in exchange for payment. A spokesperson said the revelations did not change the White House’s view that Homan was unfairly targeted.

“This changes nothing,” White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson said in a statement to MSNBC. She called the now-shuttered federal criminal probe a “blatantly political investigation, which found no evidence of illegal activity” and one she said was driven by Biden Justice Department appointees “to target President Trump’s allies.”

The Justice Department referred questions to the FBI, which declined to comment. Jackson said that Homan “has not been involved with any contract award decisions” and that he is a “doing a phenomenal job on behalf of President Trump and the country.”


Calderas’ role in the Homan investigation, which multiple sources described on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, runs counter to the Trump administration’s narrative since MSNBC published its initial exclusive story this month that the FBI had been investigating Homan for possible bribery.

MSNBC also reported that the investigation stalled after Trump became president for a second time in January. His political appointees at the FBI and Justice Department shut down the case last month.

FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, in an unusual joint statement, said FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors “found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing” by Homan and that “as a result, the investigation has been closed.”

Last Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters from her podium in the briefing room: “Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you’re referring to, so you should get your facts straight.”

Yet Homan, during the Fox News interview, did not specifically deny accepting the cash. “I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal. It’s hit piece after hit piece after hit piece,” he said.


Sources familiar with the probe told MSNBC that the FBI felt duty-bound to begin investigating Homan after Calderas told agents in an unrelated investigation that Homan was willing to influence which companies would win federal contracts in a second Trump administration in exchange for money.

In the fall of 2024, Homan was running his own consulting firm to help contractors win border-related contracts and publicly touting that he would serve in a senior role carrying out Trump’s promised mass deportations if the GOP candidate won the election. Calderas, a former border agent and Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, could stand to benefit from his longstanding ties to Homan as CEO of the San Antonio-based XFed.

Launched in 2016, the company promotes its status as a veteran- and minority-owned business with “insider perspective” on Department of Homeland Security procurement, a lure for prospective clients seeking government contracts.

The company web site of an associate of Tom Homan who proposed a cash-for-contracts scheme to undercover FBI agents, boasts that the firm's "operational expertise, regulatory knowledge, and small business agility makes us the ideal partner for organizations seeking to excel in the federal contracting arena."
“Our leadership team brings unparalleled expertise from senior executive positions within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection,” its web site reads. “This insider perspective, combined with decades of operational experience managing billion-dollar federal contracts, positions XFed Global as the definitive partner for complex government contracting challenges.”

The site says those who partner or seek to consult with XFed will gain “competitive advantages” in large-scale contracts. “XFed Global’s unique combination of operational expertise, regulatory knowledge, and small business agility makes us the ideal partner for organizations seeking to excel in the federal contracting arena,” it reads.

That Calderas attended the meeting at which Homan allegedly accepted $50,000 in exchange for offering to facilitate future government contracts would have been an important factor for prosecutors. A conspiracy charge requires that more than one person enter into a corrupt agreement, and undercover federal agents can’t be part of a conspiracy.

Calderas retired from Immigration and Customs Enforcement as deputy field office director in San Antonio in 2016, when Homan worked in senior ICE leadership as executive assistant director of enforcement and removal operations.

Calderas has expressed support for Homan in public comments and on social media. And Homan served as an advisor to Calderas’ company. In 2019, Calderas publicly praised Homan on a LinkedIn profile bearing his name for “speaking truth to power” at a House Oversight hearing on the U.S. border.

That LinkedIn account, which detailed Calderas’ work experience and promoted XFed Global’s services, was deleted at some point after MSNBC contacted him and his lawyer last week about the contractor’s role in the federal criminal investigation of Homan.

Two years later, on the same LinkedIn page, a posting under Calderas’ name said: “Tom doing a great job of speaking truth to power! We need more of this."

On his company's Facebook account, which remained active on Monday afternoon, Calderas posted on March 30, 2017: “My retired badge arrived today. This is the badge I wore from the time DHS was created in 2003 after 9/11." He added, "If these badges could talk they would tell some incredible stories."

It featured a photo of a hand holding a small blue plaque containing a “retired ICE officer” badge with three lines underneath it: “Julian ‘Jace’ Calderas. Deputy Field Office Director. 30 Years Service To Country.”

How Tom Homan wound up ensnared in an FBI contracts-for-cash sting

A former associate of Trump’s border czar allegedly proposed a $1 million scheme last year that put FBI agents on Homan's trail.

www.msnbc.com

 

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The Supreme Court's likely rulings in its new term are "looming disasters" for voting laws and LGBTQ issues — but also pose a mystery, wrote Vox legal correspondent Ian Millhiser in an analysis Monday.

The mystery, writes Millhiser, is whether the conservative-majority court will strike down President Donald Trump's controversial tariffs regimen. The writer points out that the court had struck down several Biden policies on the basis that they were of "enormous economic and political significance."



"The tariffs are clearly illegal under a doctrine the Republican justices used to halt many of President Joe Biden’s policies," he writes.

The two disasters center on several cases relating to voting laws and LGBTQ issues.



The conservative justices are expected to repeal laws against racial gerrymandering in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and loosen campaign finance laws, writes Millhiser.

Repealing racial gerrymandering laws, he writes, would "devastate Black representation in red states" and "supercharge Trump’s efforts to gerrymander Congress to lock the GOP into power," while loosening laws on campaign finance would "permit wealthy donors to give tens of thousands of dollars directly to candidates."

He adds that the justices are also expected to repeal the ban on so-called "conversion therapy" and uphold state laws requiring high school athletes to play on teams aligning with their sex assigned at birth.

Millhiser notes that the American Psychological Association says that conversion therapy “‘puts individuals at a significant risk of harm’ and is not effective in changing a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation,"' and adds that "trans advocates face a difficult uphill climb" regarding sports teams and gender identity.

He writes that the cases are one of a number that will be heard by the justices, with potentially huge ramifications for America.

The "2025–’26 term is already shaping up to be extraordinarily consequential," he writes.

Supreme Court's new cases include two 'looming disasters': legal analyst

 

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Great, another huge corporation kowtowing to Trump in a case they could have easily won in court. I guess they view this as the prices of doing business so as to not anger Mango Mussolini who might sic his DOJ on the public company....

 

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Great, another huge corporation kowtowing to Trump in a case they could have easily won in court. I guess they view this as the prices of doing business so as to not anger Mango Mussolini who might sic his DOJ on the public company....

It is disgusting how the wannabe dictator is succeeding on his way to becoming a dictator.

 

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Great, another huge corporation kowtowing to Trump in a case they could have easily won in court. I guess they view this as the prices of doing business so as to not anger Mango Mussolini who might sic his DOJ on the public company....

For large tech companies, I suspect they perceive $24.5M as pocket change and as a handy bribe to get favours from the administration next time they want to screw over the public.

 

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana's Republican governor asked for National Guard deployments to New Orleans and other cities, saying Monday that his state needs help fighting crime and praising President Donald Trump's decision to send troops to Washington and Memphis.

Gov. Jeff Landry, a Trump ally, asked for up to 1,000 troops through fiscal year 2026 in a letter sent to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. It comes weeks after Trump suggested New Orleans could be one of his next targets for deploying the National Guard to fight crime.

Trump also sent troops in recent months to Los Angeles and his administration has announced plans for similar actions in other major cities, including Chicago and Portland, Oregon.

Landry said his request “builds on the proven success” of deployments to Washington and Memphis. While Trump has ordered troops into Memphis with the backing of Tennessee's Republican governor, as of Monday night there had yet to be a large-scale operation in the city.

“Federal partnerships in our toughest cities have worked, and now, with the support of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, we are taking the next step by bringing in the National Guard,” Landry said.

Leaders in Democratic-controlled states have criticized the planned deployments. In Oregon, elected officials have said troops in Portland are not needed.

In his request, Landry said there has been “elevated violent crime rates” in Shreveport, Baton Rouge and New Orleans as well as shortages in local law enforcement. He said the state’s vulnerability to natural disasters made the issue more challenging and that extra support would be especially helpful for major events, including Mardi Gras and college football bowl games.

But crime in some of the state's biggest cities has actually decreased recently, with New Orleans, seeing a particularly steep drop in 2025 that has put it on pace to have its lowest number of killings in more than five decades.

Preliminary data from the city police department shows that there have been 75 homicides so far in 2025. That count includes the 14 revelers who were killed on New Year’s Day during a truck attack on Bourbon Street. Last year, there were 124 homicides. In 2023 there were 193.

In Baton Rouge, the state capital, has also seen a decrease in homicides compared to last year, according to police department figures. Data also shows, however, that robberies and assaults are on pace to surpass last year’s numbers.

Louisiana's governor asks for National Guard deployment to New Orleans and other cities

 

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