A letter obtained exclusively by The Appeal says Trump’s Department of Justice has cut all funding to the Prison Rape Elimination Act Resource Center.

Authorities launch inspection of school rabbit pens, ahead of army’s founding anniversary.

Eli Lilly, the drugmaker behind the blockbuster weight loss drug Zepbound, is suing four telehealth companies for allegedly selling illegal copies of the drug made by compounding pharmacies.

When Yolanda Tinajero told the man that killed her brother Arturo Benavides that she felt a desire to hug him but knew it wasn’t allowed, District Judge Sam Medrano felt a personal connection.

“The first thing that moved me about her was her true faith in trying to forgive. And I’ll be honest with you, she reminded me of my mom. My mom would do the same thing,” Medrano said in an interview with El Paso Matters on Wednesday, a day after two women who lost loved ones to gunman Patrick Crusius in the 2019 Walmart mass shooting chose to forgive and hug him.

So Medrano, who has presided over the 409th District Court for 29 years, asked Tinajero: “Ma’am, would it truly bring you peace and comfort if you were to hug him?” She said yes, and Medrano granted permission for the hug.

Adriana Zandri of Ciudad Juárez, whose husband, Ivan Filiberto Manzano, was among the 23 people killed by Crusius on Aug. 3, 2019, had given her victim impact statement Monday. But she remained in El Paso to listen to the statements of other victims’ families, and was moved by Tinajero’s hug.

She asked to do the same, and Medrano and defense attorneys agreed. So she returned to the courtroom Tuesday afternoon and gave her hug of forgiveness, moments before the proceedings in the 5½-year-old criminal case ended.

In February, without any public announcement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) removed from its website the vast majority of investigative records by the department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), an internal watchdog. Most of those records include recommendations “aimed at addressing any civil rights or civil liberties concerns” identified by CRCL’s investigations, according to the online repository where those records could previously be found. Those probes “involve a range of alleged abuses, including violation of rights while in immigration detention.” The records stretch from October 2014 through December 2024, spanning the Obama, Biden, and first Trump administrations.

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) saved the web addresses for many of these records, which were backed up by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, and has recreated CRCL’s repository below with over 160 CRCL memos and other related documents.

The U.S. Department of Education has announced the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) will resume collections of federal student loans that are in default on May 5.

Cities nationwide are facing a dual challenge when it comes to public safety. The place-based assets proven to keep communities safe—including employment, housing, and education—are under threat at the same time that punitive measures shown to exacerbate crime, recidivism, and taxpayer costs are being championed.

As the Trump administration is ramping up detentions and deportations of immigrants living in the United States, it is also revising and expanding contracts with private prison facilities. Prison companies can earn millions from the federal government by building and operating the facilities used to hold people before they are removed from the country.

• Pipeline: A Chinese prison is part of the pipeline that delivers fentanyl to the U.S., ProPublica found in a review of U.S. and Chinese documents and interviews with investigators.
• Fallout: Opioid overdoses have killed more Americans than the number of U.S. deaths in several wars combined.
• Permissive: Veteran federal agents told ProPublica that China has failed to cooperate and even interfered with drug investigations; China insists it has cracked down.