Headline: Governor Stein Announces Boards and Commissions Appointments
Governor Stein Announces Boards and Commissions Appointments lsaito
Raleigh, NC
Today, Governor Josh Stein announced Boards and Commissions appointments.
Governor Stein has appointed the following individual to the MyFutureNC Board of Directors:
Kindl S. Detar of Mecklenburg as the Governor’s Office Designee. Detar is currently a Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Governor Josh Stein. Previously, Detar served as the Special Deputy Attorney General & Director of the Public Protection Section for the North Carolina Department of Justice.
Governor Stein has appointed the following individual to the North Carolina Real Estate Commission:
The Honorable James Beaty, Jr. of Forsyth as a Public Member. Beaty Jr. is a retired United States District Court Judge for the Middle District of North Carolina. He has remained active in his community, serving on the Board of Deacons at United Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church of Winston-Salem. James Beaty Jr. further remains an active member of the North Carolina Chapter of the National Association of Guardsmen.
Governor Stein has appointed the following individual to the State Board of Refrigeration Contractors:
Professor Srinath Ekkad of Wake as the Engineering School of the UNC System. Ekkad is the Department Head of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and the Special Advisor to the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at North Carolina State University. Ekkad has over 25 years of experience in research, teaching and administration.
(COLUMBIA, S.C.) – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson announced that his office’s Vulnerable Adults and Medicaid Provider Fraud unit (VAMPF) has arrested Tierra Chawntell Moody, 42, of Moncks Corner, S.C., on one count of Exploitation of a Vulnerable Adult {43-35-0085 (D)} and one count of Financial Transaction Card Fraud, value more than $500 in a six-month period {16-14-0060(a)(1-5)}. Moody was booked into the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center on February 21, 2025.
An investigation by VAMPF revealed that, between May 9, 2024 and June 24, 2024, Moody is alleged to have knowingly made unlawful and unauthorized use of the funds or assets of a vulnerable adult. Specifically, it is alleged that Moody, while working as the victim’s caregiver, converted the victim’s funds for her own personal use by using the victim’s debit card to obtain money via ATM cash withdrawals without the authorization of the victim. The victim, a vulnerable adult under South Carolina law, resided in Charleston County, S.C., at the time of the alleged misconduct.
This case was referred to VAMPF by the Charleston Police Department and will be prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office.
Exploitation of a Vulnerable Adult is a felony and, upon conviction, has a penalty of up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $5,000, or both. Financial Transaction Card Fraud, value more than $500 in a six-month period, is a felony and, upon conviction, has a penalty of up to five years in prison, a fine of between $3,000 and $5,000, or both.
Pursuant to federal regulations, VAMPF has authority over Medicaid provider fraud; abuse and neglect of Medicaid beneficiaries in any setting; and the abuse, neglect, and exploitation of individuals residing in assisted living facilities or nursing homes.
Attorney General Wilson stressed all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until they are proven guilty in a court of law.
The South Carolina Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, dba VAMPF, receives 75 percent of its funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under a grant award totaling $2,889,252 for federal fiscal year 2025. The remaining 25 percent, totaling $963,084 for FFY 2025, is funded by South Carolina.
Source: United States Senator for Wyoming John Barrasso
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) recently introduced legislation that would end handouts to China funded by American taxpayers by removing China’s outdated designation as a “developing country” in international treaties.
The Ending China’s Unfair Advantage Act would prohibit any American taxpayer dollars from funding a United Nations treaty known as the Montreal Protocol and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) until China is no longer defined as a developing country. China’s current designation as a developing nation under these treaties allows it to abide by a different set of rules and access funding – including American taxpayer dollars – from the multilateral funds.
“American tax dollars have been funneled to China for decades because of special treatment from the United Nations,” said Senator Barrasso. “By maintaining its classification as a developing country, China keeps getting handouts from American taxpayers and gets to play by a different set of rules. This ridiculous and outdated policy must end now. This bill forces the United Nations to end China’s unfair advantage once and for all.”
Cosponsors of this legislation include U.S Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Jim Justice (R-W.Va), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.)
Full text of the legislation can be found here.
Background:
Under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, developing countries are eligible for financial assistance through a special multilateral fund. The U.S. is the largest contributor to the fund, giving almost $1 billion.
China has received nearly $1.4 billion from this multilateral fund over the years, due to their classification as a developing country under the Montreal Protocol.
The U.S. is required to phase down production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, by 85% by 2036 and China has until 2045 to reduce HFC use by 80%. China is given an extra decade, under the Kigali Amendment, to produce HFCs. It is also allowed an extra 5% in HFC production and consumption.
In 2023, the U.S. delegation at the 35th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol (MOP35) proposed removing the PRC from the Protocol’s list of “developing countries.” Objections from the PRC and its supporters prevented its inclusion in the agenda.
In 2022, the Senate passed an amendment declaring that China is not a developing country and that the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations should not treat China as such. It also conditioned the Senate’s ratification on the administration submitting a proposal to remove China as a developing country before the next meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol.
Senator Barrasso introduced this bill in the 117th and 118th Congresses.
Crimea is Ukraine, and the EU stands with Ukraine in restoring its territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence. The security of Ukraine is the security of the European Union, and we support Ukraine throughout this journey.
Ukraine is a democracy, and President Volodymyr Zelensky was elected through a democratic process. No solution should be imposed on Ukraine without Ukraine or without the European Union.
Thumbnail title: Ukraine is a democracy Crimea is Ukraine
Source: United States Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF)
Jacksonville, Florida – Senior United States District Judge Timothy J. Corrigan has sentenced Jeremy Leonardo Roldan (52, Lake City) to 10 years and 4 months in federal prison for selling 50 grams or more of a substance or mixture containing methamphetamine. Roldan pleaded guilty on October 3, 2024.
According to court documents, on December 11, 2023, Roldan sold methamphetamine to an undercover law enforcement officer. Roldan previously sold methamphetamine to the undercover officer at least two prior times. Roldan was responsible for selling 59 grams of pure methamphetamine. While selling narcotics, Roldan was on supervised release for the same offense.
The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, and the Lake City Police Department. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney John Cannizzaro.
Source: United States Senator for Louisiana Bill Cassidy
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), John Cornyn (R-TX), and 28 Republican colleagues today sent a letter to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) Deputy Director Marvin Richardson urging him to align the agency with President Trump’s Second Amendment priorities as laid out in his recent Executive Order and calling on him to identify and rescind former President Biden’s unlawful firearms regulations, including the “Engaged in the Business” rule, pistol brace rule, so-called “ghost gun” rule, and “zero tolerance” policy under which ATF has revoked the licenses of federal firearm licensees (FFLs) over minor bookkeeping violations.
“On Friday, February 7, 2025, President Donald J. Trump took decisive action to reaffirm law-abiding Americans’ Second Amendment rights in issuing his Executive Order, Protecting Second Amendment Rights. We urge you to immediately align ATF’s rules and policies with the President’s strong support for the Second Amendment,” wrote the senators.
“Under former President Joe Biden, ATF adopted numerous policies and rules that infringed upon Americans’ Second Amendment protections. President Trump’s Executive Order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to review and develop a plan of action regarding President Biden’s unlawful firearms regulations. We ask that you work with the Attorney General to quickly identify and rescind these policies,” continued the senators.
Cassidy and Cornyn were joined by U.S. Senators John Thune (R-SD), Thom Tillis (R-NC), John Barrasso (R-WY), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Jim Justice (R-WV), Jim Risch (R-ID), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Steve Daines (R-MT), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Crapo (R-ID), James Lankford (R-OK), John Hoeven (R-ND), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Rick Scott (R-FL), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ted Budd (R-NC), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Tim Sheehy (R-MT), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Todd Young (R-IN), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Jim Banks (R-IN), and Jerry Moran (R-KS) in sending the letter.
Read the full letter here or below:
Dear Deputy Director Richardson:
Thank you for your service in leading the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) during the presidential transition. On Friday, February 7, 2025, President Donald J. Trump took decisive action to reaffirm law-abiding Americans’ Second Amendment rights in issuing his Executive Order, Protecting Second Amendment Rights. We urge you to immediately align ATF’s rules and policies with the President’s strong support for the Second Amendment.
Under former President Joe Biden, ATF adopted numerous policies and rules that infringed upon Americans’ Second Amendment protections. President Trump’s Executive Order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to review and develop a plan of action regarding President Biden’s unlawful firearms regulations. We ask that you work with the Attorney General to quickly identify and rescind these policies. In particular, we call your attention to the following anti-Second Amendment regulations and policies, which must be immediately rescinded:
The engaged in the business rule, which is an unconstitutional attempt to move ATF to do all it can to impose universal background checks on law-abiding Americans. ATF has been enjoined, at least temporarily, from enforcing the rule because it violated the text of the Gun Control Act.
The pistol brace rule, which improperly reclassifies pistols equipped with stabilizing braces as “short-barreled rifles” (SBRs), thereby subjecting them to stringent regulations and serious criminal penalties under the National Firearms Act and the Gun Control Act. We are troubled by the fact that ATF promulgated this rule after it previously determined that attaching a stabilizing brace to a pistol did not render the pistol an SBR. This rule threatens to put stabilizing braces out of reach of millions of gun owners, including disabled combat veterans who rely on them to be able to shoot heavy pistols. Furthermore, the rule made law-abiding Americans felons overnight for having lawfully purchased stabilizing brace equipped pistols. Multiple courts have already found the rule to be arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act, and it was ordered vacated by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. We appreciate the Government’s recent motions to hold ATF’s 5th and 11th Circuit appeals defending the rule in abeyance and to postpone oral argument, and ATF should work quickly to accede to the vacatur given the ongoing litigation.
The so-called “ghost gun” rule, which cracks down on law-abiding hobbyists who are exercising their Second Amendment rights to privately build firearms—a longstanding tradition that traces back to the Colonial Era. The regulations are currently before the Supreme Court, but ATF should act immediately to rescind this rule.
The “zero tolerance” policy, under which ATF has revoked the licenses of federal firearm licensees (FFLs) over minor bookkeeping violations. This policy violates a decades-long precedent of ATF working with FFLs to address these minor, unintentional violations and revoking FFL licenses only in cases of major, willful violations that threaten public safety. ATF should develop a program to restore the federal firearms licenses of those FFLs whose licenses were unfairly revoked—or surrendered under duress—where they did not engage in willful conduct (as understood prior to June 23, 2021, when the policy was announced) and do not represent at threat to public safety.
In addition to promptly rescinding these rules and policies, we urge you to immediately destroy the hundreds of millions of ATF Form 4473 firearm transaction records and other licensee records that are over 20 years old. These records have no particular law enforcement value but do contain the sensitive information of millions of law-abiding gun owners. ATF should likewise return to the policy of allowing FFLs to destroy Form 4473 in their possession that are over 20 years old, which the Biden Administration initiated in violation of the federal prohibition on gun registration. Ending the policy of retaining these very old records will save money for the American taxpayer and counteract ATF’s unconstitutional rule change.
Furthermore, we urge you to “continue collaboration to improve the process for” National Firearms Act applications. Congress recently instructed ATF to make these improvements. While NFA wait times have improved significantly, ATF must continue to “address ongoing delays in application processing times” until the archaic process is at least as efficient as the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. There is no reason that the right to purchase a firearm should be so greatly delayed; a right delayed is a right denied.
The foregoing should not be considered a full accounting of every action or policy for which ATF may be held responsible under President Trump’s Executive Order but represent obvious and high priority places for ATF to initiate compliance.
We look forward to working with you through the transition as you implement President Trump’s agenda and reorient ATF toward protecting Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
A federal jury in Miami convicted a Colorado man yesterday for sexually abusing numerous boys at the orphanage he founded and directed in Haiti.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Michael Karl Geilenfeld, 73, most recently of Littleton, founded St. Joseph’s Home for Boys — a home for orphaned, impoverished, and otherwise vulnerable children in Haiti — in 1985 and operated it for more than two decades. During this time, Geilenfeld repeatedly traveled from the United States to Haiti, where he sexually abused the boys entrusted to his care.
The jury convicted Geilenfeld of one count of traveling in foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct and six counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place, between 2005 and 2010. Each of the six counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place relates to a particular victim who was a child at the time of the offense. Each of the six victims testified about the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of Geilenfeld, as did four other victims who were not the subject of the charged offenses. Geilenfeld is scheduled to be sentenced on May 5 and faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison on each of the seven total counts. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations Miami and the FBI Miami Field Office investigated the case.
Trial Attorneys Jessica L. Urban and Eduardo Palomo of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Lacee Monk for the Southern District of Florida are prosecuting the case.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit www.justice.gov/psc.
Saad Enterprises Inc., doing business as Saad Healthcare, has agreed to pay $3 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by knowingly submitting false claims for the care of hospice patients in Alabama who were ineligible for the Medicare hospice benefit because they were not terminally ill.
Hospice care is special, end-of-life care intended to comfort terminally ill patients. Patients admitted to hospice care generally stop receiving traditional medical care designed to cure their terminal condition and instead receive medical care focused on providing them with relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress of a terminal illness. Medicare patients are considered to be terminally ill and hospice-eligible when they have a life expectancy of six months or less if their illness runs its normal course.
“Respectful and appropriate end-of-life care is the crux of the hospice benefit under Medicare,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “The Department will hold accountable those who exploit this benefit for their own gain.”
“Caring for terminally ill people is a responsibility the United States and the Medicare program take seriously,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Keith A. Jones for the Southern District of Alabama. “Patients and taxpayers deserve not to be cheated, and the Department of Justice will continue to protect them.”
The settlement resolves allegations that between 2013 and 2020 Saad submitted, or caused the submission of, false claims to Medicare for 21 patients who did not meet the eligibility requirements for the Medicare hospice benefit as defined by statute and regulation, despite Saad knowing the patients were ineligible for the Medicare hospice benefit.
The civil settlement resolved a lawsuit filed under the qui tam or whistleblower provision of the False Claims Act, which permits private parties to file suit on behalf of the United States for false claims and share in a portion of the Government’s recovery. The qui tam lawsuit was filed by Melissa Wolff and Whitney Sims, former Saad employees, and is captioned United States ex rel. Wolff & Sims v. Saad Enterprises, Inc., Case No. 1:19-cv-00040 (S.D. Ala.). Ms. Wolff and Ms. Sims will receive $540,000 in connection with the settlement.
The resolution obtained in this matter was the result of a coordinated effort amongst the Justice Department’s Civil Division, Commercial Litigation Branch, Fraud Section; the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Alabama; and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.
The investigation and resolution of this matter illustrates the government’s emphasis on combating healthcare fraud. One of the most powerful tools in this effort is the False Claims Act. Tips and complaints from all sources about potential fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, can be reported to the Department of Health and Human Services at 800-HHS-TIPS (800-447-8477).
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nina Herring for the Southern District of Alabama and Trial Attorney Rory Skaggs of the Civil Division handled the matter.
The claims resolved by the settlement are allegations only and there has been no determination of liability.
Alberta Immigration and Multiculturalism has released its second annual report, highlighting numerous government actions taken over the past year to combat racism, celebrate diversity and advance the implementation of recommendations outlined in Alberta’s Anti-Racism Action Plan.
Launched in 2022, Alberta’s Anti-Racism Action Plan included 28 recommendations to be undertaken over a three-year period. Although the plan identifies 28 distinct actions, the scope of work under each continues to expand. To date, 28 specific recommendations have been worked on and of those, 27 have been completed.
“This report showcases the steps our government is taking to implement measures that tackle systemic barriers and discrimination. I am proud of the significant progress we’ve made so far. Together, government’s actions are helping to foster a more welcoming province.”
Achievements outlined in the report include creating Alberta’s first Black Advisory Council to support the ongoing work of the Alberta Anti-Racism Advisory Council and the Premier’s Council on Multiculturalism. These councils engage with communities on an ongoing basis to garner feedback and insight that inform efforts on anti-racism and cultural collaboration.
In addition to the work of the councils, in 2024 the Ethnocultural Grant program provided $5.1 million in funding to 182 projects to increase cross-cultural awareness, while the Anti-Racism Grant program provided $424,000 in funding to 49 anti-racism initiatives.
“The Council is so pleased to see the progress on the Action Plan and the government’s commitment to combatting racism through public education, empowering communities, data and measurement, systems change and taking action on hate incidents. There is much more work needed to be done, still, as racism and inclusion remain integral issues in our province. The Council is working hard on further recommendations in line with the Action Plan and is grateful for the opportunity to do so”.
Working to address racism requires cross-government action. Since the Action Plan was implanted, all departments have been tackling the issue. In Seniors, Community and Social Services, actions undertaken in the past year support First Nations and Métis groups in identifying and addressing systemic and social barriers, and in developing affordable housing supports.
“We know Indigenous peoples can face discrimination when trying to access affordable housing and available housing options may not always suit their needs. That’s why we have continued to work with Indigenous governments and organizations through our Indigenous Housing Capital Program to ensure housing meets communities’ needs and provides culturally appropriate supports.”
Indigenous Relations is committed to reducing disparities through implementing programs and initiatives that support Indigenous education, employment, emergency shelters, healthcare improvements and fostering cultural awareness.
“Alberta’s government is committed to honouring the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action by addressing systemic bias and racism across the province. We continue to work with Indigenous leaders to ensure policies and programs include Indigenous perspectives so that our work remains culturally appropriate and effective.”
The Alberta Security Infrastructure Program (ASIP) supports faith-based and community groups at risk of hate or bias-motivated violence by funding security assessments, security infrastructure improvements, training, equipment and immediate security response measures. In response to hate sentiment, the government has expanded eligibility for this program to include Islamic and Jewish faith-based alternative schools, as well as Arabic bilingual programs in Alberta, until the end of 2025. In addition, Alberta’s Hate Crimes Coordination Unit continues to work with law enforcement groups across the province to help reduce and respond to hate-driven occurrences by facilitating training opportunities, inter-agency intelligence gathering and investigative supports.
“It doesn’t matter where you are from – in Alberta, everyone deserves to feel safe and respected in their community. Acts of harassment and vandalism have no place on our streets, schools or places of worship. Alberta’s government will do whatever it takes to end these types of crimes and to build safer communities for everyone.”
In addition, Alberta Education is updating curriculum to ensure opportunities to address anti-racism, pluralism and related topics are available across all subjects and grades, including English language arts and literature, social studies and physical education and wellness.
“Every student deserves to feel welcomed, respected and seen at school. That’s why our curriculum provides opportunities for students to explore and learn about diversity across Canada and the world. For example, our new K-6 social studies curriculum includes knowledge to help address racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism.”
Alberta’s government strongly condemns all forms of racism. Work continues across government ministries to address discrimination through many actions and initiatives to foster a more welcoming province.
Quick facts
Alberta’s Anti-Racism Annual Report covers government actions under five themes:
public education/cultural awareness
government as a catalyst for system improvements
empowering communities
responding to hate incidents and crimes
data and measurement
Alberta’s Anti-Racism Action Plan’s first annual report, published in December 2023, highlighted the 26 actions taken across 25 ministries.
The Alberta Anti-Racism Advisory Council was created in 2019 to provide insight and advice on addressing racism. Its 48 recommendations helped inform Alberta’s Anti-Racism Action Plan.
Related information
Taking Action on Racism: Building Momentum
Ethnocultural Grant Program
Anti-Racism Grant Program
Alberta Security Infrastructure Grant
Related news
A new road map for combating racism Alberta’s Anti-Racism Plan (July 18, 2022)
Saad Enterprises Inc., doing business as Saad Healthcare, has agreed to pay $3 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by knowingly submitting false claims for the care of hospice patients in Alabama who were ineligible for the Medicare hospice benefit because they were not terminally ill.
Hospice care is special, end-of-life care intended to comfort terminally ill patients. Patients admitted to hospice care generally stop receiving traditional medical care designed to cure their terminal condition and instead receive medical care focused on providing them with relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress of a terminal illness. Medicare patients are considered to be terminally ill and hospice-eligible when they have a life expectancy of six months or less if their illness runs its normal course.
“Respectful and appropriate end-of-life care is the crux of the hospice benefit under Medicare,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “The Department will hold accountable those who exploit this benefit for their own gain.”
“Caring for terminally ill people is a responsibility the United States and the Medicare program take seriously,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Keith A. Jones for the Southern District of Alabama. “Patients and taxpayers deserve not to be cheated, and the Department of Justice will continue to protect them.”
The settlement resolves allegations that between 2013 and 2020 Saad submitted, or caused the submission of, false claims to Medicare for 21 patients who did not meet the eligibility requirements for the Medicare hospice benefit as defined by statute and regulation, despite Saad knowing the patients were ineligible for the Medicare hospice benefit.
The civil settlement resolved a lawsuit filed under the qui tam or whistleblower provision of the False Claims Act, which permits private parties to file suit on behalf of the United States for false claims and share in a portion of the Government’s recovery. The qui tam lawsuit was filed by Melissa Wolff and Whitney Sims, former Saad employees, and is captioned United States ex rel. Wolff & Sims v. Saad Enterprises, Inc., Case No. 1:19-cv-00040 (S.D. Ala.). Ms. Wolff and Ms. Sims will receive $540,000 in connection with the settlement.
The resolution obtained in this matter was the result of a coordinated effort amongst the Justice Department’s Civil Division, Commercial Litigation Branch, Fraud Section; the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Alabama; and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.
The investigation and resolution of this matter illustrates the government’s emphasis on combating healthcare fraud. One of the most powerful tools in this effort is the False Claims Act. Tips and complaints from all sources about potential fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, can be reported to the Department of Health and Human Services at 800-HHS-TIPS (800-447-8477).
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nina Herring for the Southern District of Alabama and Trial Attorney Rory Skaggs of the Civil Division handled the matter.
The claims resolved by the settlement are allegations only and there has been no determination of liability.
A federal jury in Miami convicted a Colorado man yesterday for sexually abusing numerous boys at the orphanage he founded and directed in Haiti.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Michael Karl Geilenfeld, 73, most recently of Littleton, founded St. Joseph’s Home for Boys — a home for orphaned, impoverished, and otherwise vulnerable children in Haiti — in 1985 and operated it for more than two decades. During this time, Geilenfeld repeatedly traveled from the United States to Haiti, where he sexually abused the boys entrusted to his care.
The jury convicted Geilenfeld of one count of traveling in foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct and six counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place, between 2005 and 2010. Each of the six counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place relates to a particular victim who was a child at the time of the offense. Each of the six victims testified about the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of Geilenfeld, as did four other victims who were not the subject of the charged offenses. Geilenfeld is scheduled to be sentenced on May 5 and faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison on each of the seven total counts. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations Miami and the FBI Miami Field Office investigated the case.
Trial Attorneys Jessica L. Urban and Eduardo Palomo of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Lacee Monk for the Southern District of Florida are prosecuting the case.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit www.justice.gov/psc.
Just ahead of the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the conflict has taken a dramatic and unexpected turn. The US is abruptly disengaging from its support of Ukraine, having previously promised that they would stand with Kyiv for “as long as it takes”.
Europe is in panic mode, while Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is having public spats with the freshly installed US president, Donald Trump.
At this stage, it seems that Vladimir Putin is firmly on top. But Trump is not the main cause of the current crisis, he merely reflects a more serious problem for Ukraine.
When war broke out in the early hours of February 24 2022, the world was shocked, but not entirely surprised. Warnings of Russia’s attack on Ukraine had the advantage of preparing a united western front against Russia.
Western resolve strengthened as expectations of a quick Moscow victory faded and Ukraine’s self-confidence grew. This mood was reflected in Josep Borrell’s statement the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs on April 9 that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield.
Two weeks earlier, US president Joe Biden declared that Putin “cannot stay in power”. In September 2022, when the Ukrainian army recaptured a large part of the territory occupied by Russia in the Kharkiv region, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, told the EU parliament that “Russia’s industry is in tatters,” and that Moscow was using dishwashing machine chips for its missiles.
In an atmosphere of euphoria on October 4, Zelensky issued an official ban on negotiations with Putin. There would be only one outcome to this war: Putin’s defeat.
Indeed, Putin’s original plan had failed. Russia was retreating in Kharkiv and abandoning its strategic foothold on the right bank of the Dnieper in Kherson. On September 21 Putin had to declare a partial mobilisation, the first since the second world war, because Russia’s professional army was running out of men.
Fortunes of war
How things have changed: as the war approaches its three-year mark the west’s triumphalist mood is now a distant memory. Mark Rutte, secretary general of Nato, warned on January 13 that “what Russia now produces in three months, that’s what the whole of NATO from Los Angeles to Ankara produces in a year”. It’s a far cry from von der Leyen’s “Russian economy in tatters” jubilation of 2022.
In its dying days, the Biden administration rushed more weapons to Ukraine and imposed ever harsher sanctions on Moscow. This could not hide the fact that the US could not continue to fund Ukraine as it had for the first three years. Any US president would now struggle to get another Ukraine funding bill through Congress.
And Donald Trump is not just any US president. In his first month he has changed his country’s Ukraine policy in a characteristically dramatic and abrupt way.
But the underlying problem was always there: what to do with this war that Ukraine is not going to win and in which Russia is slowly getting the upper hand. It’s been clear since the failure of Ukraine’s much touted counteroffensive in summer 2023 that Ukraine can’t win militarily. So continuing to supply Ukraine at current levels can only prolong the fight, not change the course of the war.
From Trump’s perspective, this is a Biden war that has already been lost. And politically, it’s much easier for Trump to seek peace than his European counterparts because he campaigned on an anti-war message, repeatedly blaming Biden for the war and saying it would never have happened if he were president. Trump wants to find a quick fix and move on. If it fails, he can wash his hands of it and let the Europeans deal with it.
Europe clearly doesn’t know what to do now: it can’t accept defeat, but neither can it pretend that Ukraine can win the war without US support. It is a sign of their desperation that in “emergency meetings” called by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, they spend so much time discussing hypothetical and, frankly, highly unlikely scenarios for sending European troops into Ukraine.
After talks with the US in Saudi Arabia, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov made clear the Russian position: “The troops of Nato countries [in Ukraine] under a foreign flag – an EU flag or any national flag … is unacceptable.” And the Europeans are simply not in a position to impose conditions on the Kremlin.
The best that the EU can do on the third anniversary of the invasion is to unveil yet another sanctions package: number 16. But now that the US has changed its mind about its war aims, there’s no hiding the fact that Europe’s war strategy is in tatters.
The end point
Russia is under no pressure to rush into a deal it doesn’t like. Moscow’s terms are known: formal recognition that the four regions it annexed in September 2022 plus Crimea are now part of Russia, and withdrawal of the remaining Ukrainian troops from those regions. Kyiv must pledge permanent neutrality, limits on its armed forces. It must recognise and establish Russian language rights in Ukraine and ban far-right parties.
But these terms are completely unacceptable to Kyiv. And while there’s no good way out for Ukraine, it’s not yet in a desperate enough position to accept such a deal.
The only way to force it on Kyiv is either a complete military collapse by Ukraine’s forces, which is not looking likely at the moment, or concerted pressure from a united west to accept Russia’s unpalatable terms. But the west is divided on this issue, with the Europeans insisting that Ukraine should keep fighting until it can negotiate “from a position of strength”.
It’s a heroic assumption that Ukraine will be in a stronger position by this time next year. After the peak of confidence in early 2023, when Zelensky declared that “2023 will be the year of our victory!” each subsequent anniversary of the invasion saw Kyiv’s position weaker. But still, on current trends, it would take Russia until the end of the year to capture the rest of the eastern province of Donbas, without which an end to the war is unlikely anyway.
For these reasons, there is no guarantee that the US-Russian talks will lead to a resolution of the conflict. Unfortunately, this means that the bloodiest battles of the war are yet to come, as the Russian military pushes to maximise its military advantage.
In keeping with the wishes of Josep Borrell, the outcome of this war is still likely to be decided on the battlefield.
Alexander Titov does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Analysis of phone data and CCTV by Met officers has led to the conviction of a man who planned a robbery at a jewellers in Richmond.
Two men tied up a member of shop staff before stealing around £1.3 million worth of luxury watches during the raid in May 2024.
Flying Squad detectives, who specialise in investigating robberies, recovered and trawled through hundreds of hours of CCTV from across the country to piece together what happened.
As a result, Mannix Pedro, 37, who organised the raid, was found guilty of conspiracy to rob at Woolwich Crown Court on Wednesday, 19 February. He will be sentenced at a later date.
Detective Sergeant Matt Hollands, who led the investigation, said: ”This was an audacious robbery that was several months in the planning. I’m pleased our investigation has resulted in a dangerous offender being convicted.
“Our work is far from over, and our focus remains finding the three other men involved and putting them before the courts.”
On the afternoon of 25 May 2024 two men visited the jewellers in Kew Road after making an appointment with the owner.
After initially appearing to be normal customers, they tied up a member of staff before filling a rucksack with high-value watches.
The Met was called and officers began an investigation. They recovered CCTV from the jewellers which had captured the incident. By working back, they were able to identify the car the men had arrived in.
Along with phone data, officers used this evidence to link the two men to three others they believed had been involved in planning the robbery.
Sadly, the day after the incident occurred, the member of staff assaulted during the robbery was found dead. He was identified as Oliver White, who was 27 and from Surrey. A full inquest into his death is yet to take place, however it was not treated as suspicious.
Detective Sergeant Hollands added: “Throughout this investigation Oliver has been in our thoughts and we have remained committed to securing justice for his family. His death is a tragic reminder that crimes such as robbery have a significant impact on victims.”
In a statement paying to tribute to her son, Oliver’s mother, Amy Keane, said: “I would describe Oliver as a huge character, very warm and a brilliant person. He lit up the room when he entered it and was incredibly kind and caring, he would go above and beyond for anyone. He cared deeply for his family, was a wonderful role model for his little brother, as well as his two sisters.
“Oliver really wanted to make something of himself, he aspired to buy a house, have a family and was planning for his future and this influenced his decision to work 24/7 as he saw his friends doing well in a business they enjoyed.
“We know Oliver to be trustworthy and honest. Given the jury have convicted a man of planning and organising the robbery of Oliver, we take this as vindication of our firmly held belief he played no role in this offence and was not implicated in any involvement.
“We are all absolutely devastated with the loss of our funny, thoughtful and kind son Oliver, our lives will never be the same and we feel this loss every minute of every day.”
Further enquiries are ongoing to locate the three other members of the group and anyone with information about their whereabouts is asked to call 101 quoting the reference 01/MP/11200/24.
Information can also be shared anonymously with the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Samaritans are here day or night, 365 days a year. You can call them for free on 116 123, email them at jo@samaritans.org, or visit www.samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.
Conviction details
Mannix Pedro, 37 (18.10.87), of Cobbetts Close, Woking, was found guilty of conspiracy to rob at Woolwich Crown Court on Wednesday, 19 February, and will be sentenced at a later date.
The jury failed to reach a verdict in relation to another man. A re-trial will take place in due course.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A former Kansas City, Mo., police officer who ran an anti-crime charity has been convicted in federal court of a scheme in which he spent more than $200,000 in donations for his own personal expenses.
Aaron Wayne McKie, 47, was found guilty on Thursday, Feb. 20, of nine counts of wire fraud and one count of money laundering. McKie worked as a police officer for the Kansas City, Mo., Police Department for 24 years, assigned as a police officer to the Crime Free Multi-Housing section from 2002 through 2023.
McKie served from 2009 to 2023 as president of Mid-America Crime Free, Inc. (MACF), a non-profit organization that claimed to provide training to persons in the rental housing industry and promote anti-crime programs. He was an officer of the charity for three years prior, from 2006 to 2009.
Evidence produced during the trial indicated that McKie devised a scheme to defraud MACF and its donors that began in July 2009 and lasted until October 2023. Individuals and businesses contributed $387,620 to MACF, not including in-kind donations. McKie spent at least $200,060 for his own personal purposes.
The biggest source of MACF funds was an annual golf tournament, “Fairways 4 Fuzz Golf Tournament.” Individuals and businesses donated both money and in-kind donations, such as food and beverages, to MACF via the golf tournament. At least 121 donors have been identified.
From 2009 to 2023, the flyers soliciting donations and players for the tournament claimed the funds raised would enable MACF to provide free seminars to owners of rental properties and train police officers. In reality, those claims were false. The Kansas City Police Department paid the salaries and expenses of Crime Free Multi-Housing unit officers who may have provided training to landlords; McKie used the majority of MACF funds for personal spending; and the IRS had revoked the organization’s tax-exempt status in 2010.
Under federal statutes, McKie is subject to a sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison without parole on each of the 10 counts on which he was convicted. The maximum statutory sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes, as the sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court based on the advisory sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation by the United States Probation Office.
Following the presentation of evidence, the jury in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., deliberated for nine hours before returning guilty verdicts to U.S. Chief District Judge Beth Phillips, ending a trial that began Monday, Feb. 10.
This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathleen D. Mahoney and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Hanson. It was investigated by the FBI and the Kansas City, Mo., Police Department.
The Scottish Government is launching a consultation on its plans to end the two-child cap on benefits.
Eradicating child poverty is the government’s top priority and ministers have committed to ending the limit by April 2026, or sooner if possible. The Child Poverty Action Group estimate that scrapping the two-child cap in Scotland could lift 15,000 children out of poverty.
The consultation is seeking views from the public and stakeholders about the most effective ways to put systems in place to mitigate the effects of the two-child cap. It asks for views on questions such as whether Social Security Scotland should administer top-up payments.
Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said:
“The UK Government has failed to scrap the two child cap despite it being a key driver of child poverty. In the face of such inaction the Scottish Government is determined to end the impact in Scotland. If we can safely get the systems up and running earlier than April 2026, then we will make our first payments earlier – helping to lift thousands more children out of poverty.
“We have launched a consultation calling for people to respond as we look to put the necessary systems in place to achieve our goal. We have made clear to the UK Government what is needed for us to end the impact of this policy and I would urge people and organisations across Scotland to contribute to make their views known.
“The draft 2025-26 budget continues to invest more than £3 billion to policies which tackle poverty and the cost of living for households – and I would hope that would command widespread support across Parliament.
“There is irrefutable evidence that the two child limit is increasing poverty and hardship across the UK. We have repeatedly called on the UK Government to end the two-child cap, and we have been just one of many voices saying the same thing. Until they do so, the Scottish Government will do everything in its power to mitigate the policy, which helps create child poverty.”
On 20 and 21 February 2025, experts from law enforcement authorities, academia and non-governmental organisations gathered at Europol headquarters for the first ‘Fundamental Rights at the Heart of Policing’ conference, organised by Europol’s Fundamental Rights Officer.Over 130 participants from 25 EU Member States and 11 non-EU countries joined the event, as well as representatives from the EU Fundamental Rights Agency…
Source: United States Senator for Arkansas – John Boozman
WASHINGTON––U.S. Senators John Boozman (R-AR), Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) introduced the bipartisan Family Farm and Small Business ExemptionAct to reverse changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) process that threaten to reduce or even eliminate access to need-based student aid for farm families and small business owners.
Specifically, the legislation would amend the FAFSA Simplification Act to restore the original exemption of all farmland, machinery, other operational materials and small businesses with fewer than 100 employees from being declared as assets on the FAFSA form.
“We rely on our farm families to feed, clothe and fuel the world,” said Boozman. “Supporting agriculturalists by ensuring their children have the opportunity to access an affordable education is commonsense. As Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I am proud to champion a bipartisan solution that helps rural America’s future generations pursue higher learning.”
“No one should have to sell off the farm – or their small business – to afford college. As a farm kid myself, I know the enormous impacts grants and financial aid have on rural students’ decision to go to college,” said Ernst. “I’m fighting for Iowa families, so unfair policies don’t hold them back from investing in their child’s education.”
“From Colorado to Iowa, federal financial aid helps ensure more students can afford college – including students from farm families, whose businesses are vital to our communities and economies,” said Bennet. “Our bipartisan bill will help ensure these students receive the financial aid they need.”
This legislation is also cosponsored by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-KS), Jim Justice (R-WV), Jerry Moran (R-KS), John Hoeven (R-ND), Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Thom Tillis (R-NC).
Congressman Tracey Mann (R-KS-01) introduced companion legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Family Farm and Small Business Exemption Act is endorsed by several stakeholders including the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs, Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, SchoolHouse Connection, National Milk Producers Federation, United Egg Producers, Land O’Lakes and Farm Credit Council.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) State Crime Alerts (b)
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – A Springfield, Illinois, man, Derrick Bailey, 44, was sentenced on January 30, 2025, by Senior U.S. District Judge Sue Myerscough to 180 months in prison, to be followed by 10 years of supervised release, for his role in a wide-spread drug conspiracy involving a Springfield street gang, Boss Playas, lasting from approximately May 2020 through November 2020.
At the sentencing hearing, Bailey was held accountable for trafficking over 10 kilograms of cocaine as a member of the conspiracy. Also during the hearing, Judge Myerscough noted that the group of conspirators were responsible for distributing large amounts of controlled substances in the Springfield area, which had a negative effect on the community.
Co-defendants in the case have received the following sentences of imprisonment: Denziel Witherspoon, 240 months; James Cooper, 180 months; Christopher Wallace 120 months; Isadore Montgomery, 120 months; Rashaud Brown, 84 months; Paul Davis, 40 months; and Taylor Cockrell, 36 months. Additional defendants Dorothy Jackson, Shelton Witherspoon, Lavar Maney, Haley Riley, and Haylee Vaughn have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
Bailey was indicted on December 15, 2020, and pleaded guilty on September 18, 2024. He has remained in the custody of the United States Marshal since his arrest on December 1, 2020.
The statutory penalties for the most serious charge of conviction include up to life in prison, up to a $20,000,000 fine, and up to a life term of supervised release.
This case was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Springfield Field Office; Illinois State Police; and Springfield Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Z. Weir represented the government in the prosecution.
The case against Bailey was part of an investigation of the Springfield-based Boss Playas street gang and was part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) investigation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level drug traffickers, money launderers, gangs, and transnational criminal organizations that threaten the United States by using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach that leverages the strengths of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies against criminal networks. Additional information about the OCDETF Program can be found at https://www.justice.gov/OCDETF.
In the nearly three years since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the country’s people have endured continuous attacks, “psychological terror…displacement and hardship”, top UN aid coordinator Matthias Schmale said on Friday.
Briefing from Ukrainian capital Kyiv after another night of “air sirens and more loud explosions”, Mr. Schmale noted that the crisis began in 2014, with Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. “So, all children that were born since – all children up to the age of 11 – have never experienced their country at peace,” he said.
According to the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, 2024 saw a 30 per cent increase in civilian casualties compared to 2023. “The humanitarian situation is worsening, especially in frontline areas,” it said in an update, highlighting that a full 36 per cent of Ukraine’s population – 12.7 million people – needs humanitarian aid this year.
“There are very strong pushes by the armed forces of the Russian Federation along the front line and evacuations are ongoing,” Mr. Schmale explained. “We are supporting people with essential goods, including cash assistance, as they are on the move to transit centres, collective sites and wherever they end up being.”
Speaking from Zaporizhzhia in southeast Ukraine, Toby Fricker from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that more than 2,520 children have been killed or injured since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion.
“The real number is likely far higher and it’s getting worse”, said Mr. Fricker, chief of communication in Ukraine. “There was a more than 50 per cent increase in child casualties in 2024 compared to 2023 and what we see is no place is safe: schools, maternity wards, children’s hospitals, all have been affected by attacks.”
Behind battle lines
Underscoring the essential role played by women in Ukraine “beyond the battlefield”, UN Women Geneva Director Sofia Calltorp explained that “there is another story unfolding, and that is the story of all those women and girls who are bearing the brunt of this war.”
In 2024, the number of people killed and injured in Ukraine increased by 30 per cent, Ms. Calltorp noted. “Of them, 800 women lost their lives and more than 3,700 women were injured last year in Ukraine. We also know that the vast majority of Ukrainian refugees and displaced persons are women, and 6.7 million women are in need of lifesaving humanitarian assistance.”
Funding crisis
Responding to questions about the impact of the US funding freeze on humanitarian work, Ukraine Humanitarian Coordinator Mr. Schmale expressed “hope that US funding will become part of the equation. Last year, it made up 30 per cent of what we spent on the humanitarian side, 10 per cent on the development side.”
The UN’s top aid official in Ukraine added: “We are of course worried about the funding freezes; as we all know, it’s not the end of the day yet, there are a lot of discussions going on. We have some of our partners, including within the UN, that have received some exemptions from the general freeze of funding, but so far, no money has been flowing as a result of those exemptions.”
In addition to repeated attacks on energy infrastructure across Ukraine, other public facilities have also been targeted, with 780 health centres and more than 1,600 schools damaged or destroyed, according to the UN World Health Organization (WHO).
“In Odessa this week we saw a health clinic providing care for 40,000 children and a kindergarten serving 250 of the youngest children were severely damaged in an attack,” said Dr Jarno Harbicht, WHO Country Representative for Ukraine. “When a children’s hospital is hit, a school shelled or electric grid destroyed, children suffer even when they survive.”
Haunted by drones
The mental stress faced by millions of Ukrainians because of the war is real and debilitating, the WHO official continued: “Imagine a young mother in Kharkiv region in Ukraine, her days interrupted by air raid sirens and her nights haunted by drones. Each day is a struggle balancing her children’s safety with their anxiety that has become her constant companion.”
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission (HRMMU) has confirmed the killing of more than 12,654 civilian men, women, girls, and boys since the full-scale Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, with nearly 30,000 injured. Eighty-four per cent of the casualties happened in territory controlled by the Ukrainian government and 16 per cent in territory occupied by Russia.
“Three years of full-scale conflict in Ukraine have wrought persistent and escalating human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law,” said Danielle Bell, Chief of HRMMU. “As the civilian toll grows heavier, the human rights of all those affected must remain at the forefront of any negotiations for sustainable peace.”
Rising toll
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission (HRMMU) has confirmed the killing of more than 12,654 civilian men, women, girls, and boys since the full-scale Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, with nearly 30,000 injured. Eighty-four per cent of the casualties happened in territory controlled by the Ukrainian government and 16 per cent in territory occupied by Russia.
“Three years of full-scale conflict in Ukraine have wrought persistent and escalating human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law,” said Danielle Bell, Chief of HRMMU. “As the civilian toll grows heavier, the human rights of all those affected must remain at the forefront of any negotiations for sustainable peace.”
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) State Crime News
RICHMOND, Va. – A North Carolina man was sentenced today to 25 years in prison for possession with intent to distribute parafluorofentanyl and fentanyl.
According to court documents, on the evening of September 17, 2023, Jaron James Starkey, 35, of Charlotte, and formerly of New Castle County, Delaware, was driving erratically southbound on I-95 in Caroline County. Other drivers traveling on I-95 called 911 to report the erratic driving. Virginia State Police (VSP) responded to the area and upon arrival observed that Starkey had crashed his Jeep. Starkey, who was alone in the car, was speaking incoherently and his eyes were bloodshot. He was transported to the Mary Washington Hospital emergency room.
Upon approaching the vehicle, the responding VSP officers also observed thousands of glassine baggies, each of which appeared to contain a white powder, scattered throughout Starkey’s car. A total of 4,497 blue glassine baggies collected contained Parafluorofentanyl, with a net weight of over 122 grams. Also in the vehicle were 120 white glassine baggies containing fentanyl.
Starkey has 21 prior convictions as an adult, including two previous drug trafficking convictions, convictions for possessing firearms as a convicted felon, and conspiracy to commit burglary, among others.
Erik S. Siebert, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Stanley M. Meador, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Richmond Field Office; Lt. Colonel Matt Hanley, Virginia State Police Interim Superintendent; and Brian Layton, Chief of Fredericksburg Police, made the announcement after sentencing by Senior U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson. The Fredericksburg Regional Narcotics Task Force assisted in the investigation of this case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Angela Mastandrea prosecuted the case.
A copy of this press release is located on the website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Related court documents and information are located on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia or on PACER by searching for Case No. 3:24-cr-58.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) State Crime News
RICHMOND, Va. – A federal jury convicted a Maryland man today of conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute over 500 grams of cocaine hydrochloride, over 40 grams of fentanyl, and a detectable amount of p-fluorofentanyl.
According to court records and evidence presented at trial, from at least July 1, 2022, through June 8, 2023, Sean Shaka Myles Sr., 50, of Baltimore, supplied Omar Jermel Dixon, 48, of Fredericksburg, with cocaine, fentanyl and p-fluorofentanyl, which Dixon then supplied to a number of individuals for redistribution in and around Fredericksburg.
Myles faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and up to life in prison when sentenced on June 18. Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Erik S. Siebert, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Stanley M. Meador, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Richmond Field Office; Ibrar A. Mian, Special Agent in Charge for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Washington Division; and Jason S. Miyares, Attorney General of Virginia, made the announcement after U.S. District Judge David J. Novak accepted the verdict. The Fredericksburg Regional Narcotics Task Force assisted in the investigation of this case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Olivia L. Norman and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Gilliland, an Assistant Attorney General with the Virginia Attorney General’s Office are prosecuting the case.
This effort is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach. Additional information about the OCDETF Program can be found at https://www.justice.gov/OCDETF.
A copy of this press release is located on the website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Related court documents and information are located on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia or on PACER by searching for Case No. 3:24-cr-95.
Four men have been sentenced to a total of 67 years in prison following a Met Police investigation into the death of 22-year-old Lavaun Witter in Croydon.
On 5 February 2021, officers were called to Wisbeach Road at around 20:08hrs, after a member of the public found Lavaun collapsed and seriously injured.
He sadly died at the scene after sustaining a stab wound to the leg.
An investigation was launched by the Met’s Specialist Crime South Unit. Enquiries revealed that prior to his death, Lavaun’s flat had been broken into by four men. The men, who were armed with long knives and swords, demanded drugs and slashed through an internal door.
Lavaun and a 16-year-old boy were stabbed before running from the scene but Lavaun collapsed a short distance away.
CCTV enquiries quickly identified the suspects as Tyreece Riggon, Julian Russell, Tyreece Wolfries-Parkin and Alex Pasley.
On 18 February 2021, officers raided an address linked to Riggon and he and Russell were arrested. A subsequent search of an address linked to Russell recovered a Louis Vuitton bag belonging to Lavaun.
Wolfries-Parkin and Pasley were also arrested in the following weeks.
All were charged with Lavaun’s murder as well as attempted murder and attempted grievous bodily harm of the 16-year-old.
Detective Chief Inspector Mike Nolan, Senior Investigating Officer in the case said:
“These men were prepared to use extreme levels of violence and take Lavaun’s life to gain possession of drugs they believed were inside the property.
“Lavaun was defenceless against the four men who were each armed with large knives, including a Samurai sword.
“Levaun’s death devastated his family and his community. I commend the bravery and strength they have shown throughout this lengthy investigation.”
A trial at the Old Bailey began on 17 July 2023 and Julian Russell (18.09.1998) of Sanfield Road, CR7 and Tyreece Wolfries- Parkins, (06.10.2002) were found guilty of murder. Alex Pasley (01.10.1995) of Paxton Grove, Coulsdon was found guilty of manslaughter.
A re-trial began on 4 November 2024 and on Thursday, 12 December, Tyreece Riggon, 24 (29.09.2000) of Armistice Gardens, SE25 was found guilty of attempted GBH. Pasley was also found guilty of attempted GBH in relation to the attack on the 16-year-old boy.
The group appeared at the Old Bailey on Wednesday, 19 February for sentencing.
Julian Russell was sentenced to life in prison, to serve a minimum of 24 years in prison minus the four years spent on remand.
Tyreece Wolfries- Parkins was sentenced to life imprisonment to serve a minimum term of 20 years minus the time spent on remand.
Alex Pasley was sentenced to 17 years in prison and Tyreece Riggon was sentenced to six years, both minus four years spent on remand.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News (b)
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – A former official with the Taney County Health Department pleaded guilty in federal court today to a scheme to embezzle approximately $260,000 from the agency.
Hugo Ricardo Huacuz, 51, waived his right to a grand jury and pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge David P. Rush to a five-count federal information. Huacuz pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, two counts of stealing federal funds, one count of money laundering and one count of aggravated identity theft.
Huacuz was the chief operating officer and the chief financial officer of the Taney County Health Department until he resigned on Nov. 14, 2023. Huacuz had been employed by the health department since 2011.
By pleading guilty today, Huacuz admitted that he stole from the Taney County Health Department in a scheme that lasted from March 23, 2022, to Nov. 14, 2023. Huacuz caused the health department to write checks to Argon Investments, LLC, a company organized by Huacuz and his wife. Huacuz forged the signatures of health department members, using their identities without their permission. Huacuz caused the health department to issue 15 checks totaling approximately $259,000, which were deposited into the bank account of Argon Investments.
Huacuz used the stolen funds for personal expenses charged to his personal credit card, including automobile insurance, maintenance, repair and parts; restaurants; home construction items; gasoline; airline tickets and travel, including to Chicago, Illinois, New York State, San Diego, California, College Station, Texas, Nashville, Tennessee, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Portland, Oregon; utilities; dry cleaning; clothing; dental and medical care; and payments to the Missouri Secretary of State’s office for Argon’s LLC fees.
Health board members were not aware of the existence of Argon Investments or that any checks had been issued to Argon Investments. In order to conceal his scheme from the board, Huacuz caused these checks to be coded as payments to Sanofi Pasteur, Inc., a multinational pharmaceutical company. Huacuz falsely reported to the health department’s board that some of the checks written to Argon Investments were for items purchased from Sanofi, and created false invoices from Sanofi purportedly for the purchase of pharmaceutical and medical items, including COVID-19 testing kits.
In November 2023, the director of the Taney County Health Department received information concerning Huacuz’s job performance. The information stated that Huacuz was frequently absent from his job and that he had other businesses he was operating independent from his job at the health department. After reviewing the information, the director met with Huacuz on Nov. 13, 2023, and placed him on administrative leave. Huacuz went to the bank immediately afterward and withdrew more than $24,000 from the Argon bank account, leaving a balance of $100 in the account.
Under the terms of today’s plea agreement, Huacuz agrees that he embezzled at least $258,976 and, at the very least, this amount is subject to forfeiture and restitution. The government will recommend a sentence of no more than four years and six months in federal prison without parole while Huacuz will seek a sentence of three years in federal prison without parole. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation by the United States Probation Office.
This case is being prosecuted by Supervisory Assistant U.S. Attorney Randall D. Eggert. It was investigated by the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News (b)
AUSTIN, Texas – An Indian national was sentenced in a federal court in Austin today to 97 months in prison for conspiracy to commit money laundering.
According to court documents, Moinuddin Mohammed, 34, engaged in a conspiracy to launder proceeds of a scheme to defraud elderly victims out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold. Mohammed was a courier who picked up the cash and gold from vulnerable elderly people. The international conspiracy originated from India and involved the impersonation of government officials in order to convince the victims to turn over millions of dollars from their retirement and savings accounts.
Multiple victims were contacted by a person claiming to be the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, who told the victims that they were under investigation or at risk of financial loss. The victims were told that they would need to deposit cash, gold or other items of financial value in order to resolve the investigation or prevent the loss. One victim was defrauded of more than $300,000, another was defrauded of approximately $151,500, and a third victim lost a total of approximately $470,000 to the fraud scheme. Nationwide, investigators identified 21 victims who lost a total of nearly $6 million to the scheme.
In addition to his imprisonment, Mohamed will pay full restitution in the approximate amount of $960,000, forfeits $20,000 in cash that was seized by investigators, and forfeits a money judgement in the amount of $16,000.
“The significant sentence of this courier for an international fraud scheme sends a strong message that we will investigate and prosecute those at every level of the organization,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Margaret Leachman for the Western District of Texas. “Mohammed illegally used the likeness of government officials to prey on and victimize the vulnerable, elderly people in our community, and fraudsters like him will be held accountable.”
“Mohammed targeted some of our most vulnerable elderly citizens in an effort to line his own pockets and the pockets of foreign fraudsters,” said Special Agent in Charge Aaron Tapp for the FBI’s San Antonio Field Office. “The FBI continues to see an uptick in financial scams targeting our elderly population and we work every day to bring awareness to our victims and justice to those who perpetuate these devastating schemes. We want to thank our U.S. Attorney’s Office for aggressively pursuing justice for those who fell victim to this scammer. Cases like this are a priority for the FBI and we encourage anyone who has been a victim of a financial scam to contact your local FBI office or go to www.IC3.gov. We also encourage the public to review the FBI’s last report on Elder Fraud to educate yourselves and protect those you love.”
The FBI investigated the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Keith Henneke prosecuted the case.
LONDON, UK, Feb. 21, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Jeton, global payment services provider, announces a three-year partnership with global football icon Alexis Mac Allister. The 25-year-old Argentine football player is a midfielder for Premier League Club Liverpool and represents Argentina’s national team. The agreement between the global payment services provider and the footballer will appoint Mac Allister to serve as Jeton’s brand ambassador and represent the brand in various marketing campaigns. Jeton will be authorised to use Mac Allister’s professional name, image, likeness, and biography as part of the partnership.
“I’m pleased to be Jeton’s brand ambassador,” stated Alexis Mac Allister. ‘I look forward to representing the brand and sharing its values with my fanbase and football lovers worldwide.”
‘We are very happy and excited to work closely with Mac Allister. We have strategized these partnerships based on what our customers expect from Jeton and how we can exceed their expectations. We hope to build stronger relations among the football community and reach out to football lovers all around the world through partnerships they desire. As exemplified by our recent partnership with Japanese football player Kou Itakura, we believe we are one step closer to achieving our objectives. We can’t wait to embark on this journey alongside Alexis Mac Allister.’ said Executive Director of Jeton.
Jeton is known for its ongoing partnerships, marketing activities and close relations with football clubs and the community. The global payment services brand has a long-lasting relationship with West Ham United FC as their official e-Wallet partner and have previously partnered with other notable football clubs such as Aston Villa FC and Hull City AFC. Jeton has recently expanded its reach into the Asian market by partnering with Japanese football player Kou Itakura.
About Jeton
LA Orange CY Limited, trading as Jeton, is authorised by the Central Bank of Cyprus under the Electronic Money Law of 2012 and 2018 (Law 81(I)/2012) for distributing or redeeming electronic money (e-money), with Licence No: 115.1.3.66. LA Orange CY Limited has been incorporated in the Republic of Cyprus under the provisions of the Companies Law (Cap 113) with registration number HE 424807, with its registered office address at 116 Gladstonos, M. Kyprianou House, 3rd and 4th Floor, 3032, Limassol, Cyprus.
Jeton Bank Limited is licensed and authorised by the Financial Services Unit, Ministry of Finance of the Commonwealth of Dominica, licensed as a banking institution under the international Banking Act, fully authorised to provide services to clients worldwide, under the prudential supervision of the Financial Services Unit. Jeton Bank Limited is registered in the Commonwealth of Dominica, Company Number 2022/C0175, with its registered address at 1st Floor, 43 Great George Street, Roseau, Commonwealth of Dominica, Post Code: 00109-8000. – LEI Code: 894500XGIX3R4HCIOC29.
A woman has been convicted of murder after her two young children were found dead in their east London home.
Kara Alexander, 47 (23.12.77), of Cornwallis Road, Dagenham was found guilty at Kingston Crown Court on Friday, 21 February.
She will be sentenced on Friday, 11 April.
Detective Chief Inspector Paul Waller, who led the investigation, said: “Our thoughts are with the family, especially the boys’ father who found them dead when he went to collect them for the weekend after Kara Alexander had failed to return his messages.
“No parent should have to go through such a horrific experience, and then have to listen to the detailed evidence highlighting what led up to these events.
“I would also like to praise those who were first on scene – our colleagues and the paramedics – who also experienced this traumatic event first hand.
“This has been a difficult investigation for everyone involved. This guilty verdict cannot turn back the clock but it does provide the children’s family with some form of resolution.”
Emergency services were called at around 14:00hrs on 16 December 2022, after the bodies of two young children were found by their father in their shared bunkbed inside the house in Dagenham.
Alexander ran from the address following the discovery but was arrested nearby a short time later.
Two-year-old Elijah Thomas and five-year-old Marley Thomas were both pronounced dead at the scene.
Post-mortem examinations established that both boys’ cause of death was interference with the normal mechanics of breathing, through smothering and/or immersion in water.
An investigation was launched, led by detectives from the Specialist Crime Command.
A search of the house and garden found no evidence of forced entry. The curtains were closed and the house was in darkness.
Detectives reviewed footage from local CCTV cameras and doorbells which showed Alexander and the children running a number of errands in the days before 16 December 2022. The last time all three were captured together was on the afternoon of 15 December 2022.
Forensic analysis of Alexander’s phone, which had been found in a filled sink, showed that it had been in regular use up until 16 December but on the day the children were found, no calls were made or messages sent. This led detectives to believe that she had intentionally been avoiding people following their deaths.
Alexander was charged on 19 December 2022 with two counts of murder.
RESTON, Va., Feb. 21, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — SADA, An Insight company, a leading services and solutions Google Cloud consultancy driving transformative change for its customers, has received five Google Public Sector Partner Expertise Badges in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI and ML), Data Analytics, Maps & Geospatial, Security, and Work Transformation.
In 2024, SADA achieved significant milestones in these badge areas, demonstrating its commitment to driving impactful results for public sector organizations. These accomplishments include helping state governments centralize and modernize online services with cloud-native applications, enhancing digital infrastructure for executive offices, optimizing government technology ecosystems, and supporting cutting-edge research capabilities.
Notably, SADA helped the Chicopee Police Department (CPD) to modernize its operations and enhance public safety. By implementing Google Workspace, SADA helped CPD reduce paperwork, achieve 100% compliance with CJIS standards, streamline communication, and enable real-time alerts, ultimately freeing up officers to focus on core policing activities and better serve their community. This success story highlights SADA’s ability to use Google Cloud’s technology to help drive meaningful change in the public sector.
SADA is being recognized for its proven delivery capabilities within these five solution areas across Google Public Sector. These achievements underscore SADA’s commitment to helping public sector organizations modernize their operations, enhance citizen services, improve their security posture, and transform how they work. SADA’s expertise in these key areas translates to tangible benefits for organizations, including:
AI/ML:SADA can help agencies leverage AI/ML to improve decision-making, automate processes, and personalize citizen experiences. Examples include predictive analytics for resource allocation, AI-powered chatbots for citizen inquiries, and machine learning models for fraud detection.
Data Analytics: SADA empowers public sector organizations to unlock the power of their data with advanced analytics solutions. This includes data warehousing, business intelligence, and data visualization, enabling agencies to gain valuable insights, improve operational efficiency, and make data-driven decisions.
Maps & Geospatial: SADA’s geospatial expertise enables agencies to leverage location data for enhanced planning, improved emergency response, and better management of critical infrastructure. SADA serves organizations with Google Maps solutions. Its teams have foundational technical knowledge in Maps APIs, providing services to organizations needing support in analyzing spatial data and developing location-based services.
Security: SADA helps public sector organizations strengthen their security posture with comprehensive solutions that protect sensitive data, prevent cyberattacks, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. These solutions include security assessments, vulnerability management, and incident response planning.
Work Transformation: SADA enables public sector agencies to modernize their workplaces and improve employee productivity with Google Workspace solutions. This includes streamlining communication and collaboration and automating workflows.
“These Google Public Sector Partner Expertise badges validate our team’s dedication to providing cutting-edge solutions that address the unique challenges faced by public sector organizations and the meaningful outcomes we’re helping drive for those organizations who are committed to serving their constituents,” said Michelle Ambrose, SVP Strategic Partnerships and International GTM at SADA.
SADA will share how it has helped the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development spearhead a groundbreaking digital transformation to enhance services for employers and job seekers in an upcoming session at Google Cloud Next, which will take place April 9-11 in Las Vegas, NV. To learn more and register for the event, visit sada.com/next.
About SADA, An Insight company SADA, An Insight company, is a market leader in professional services and an award-winning solutions provider of Google Cloud. Since 2000, SADA has been committed to helping customers in healthcare, media, entertainment, retail, manufacturing, and the public sector solve their most complex challenges so they can focus on achieving their boldest ambitions. With offices in North America, India, and Armenia providing sales and customer support teams, SADA is positioned to meet customers where they are in their digital transformation journey. SADA is a 7x Google Cloud Partner of the Year award winner with 11 Google Cloud Specializations and was recognized as a Niche Player in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Public Cloud IT Transformation Services. Learn more at www.sada.com.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Brittany Friedman, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California
Black and Latino communities are disproportionately affected by mass surveillance, studies show.Vicente Méndez/Getty Images
Mass surveillance is the widespread monitoring of civilians. Governments typically target specific groups – such as religious minorities, certain races or ethnicities, or migrants – for surveillance and use the information gathered to “contain” these populations, for example by arresting and imprisoning people.
We are experts in social control, or how governments coerce compliance, and we specialize in surveillance. Based on our expertise and years of research, we expect Trump’s second White House term may usher in a wave of spying against people of color and immigrants.
Trump is already actively deploying a key tactic in expanding mass surveillance: causing moral panics. Moral panics are created when politicians exaggerate a public concern to manipulate real fears people may have.
Building on his rhetoric about crime and immigration, Trump frequently connects the two issues. He has said that migrants murder because they have “bad genes,” echoing beliefs expressed by white supremacists. During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s coinage “bad hombre” invoked stereotypes of dangerous migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to steal jobs and sell drugs.
The president has similarly connected Black communities with crime. At an August 2024 rally in Atlanta, Georgia, Trump called the majority-Black city “a killing field.” The month prior, he said the same thing about Washington, D.C.
Another early form of moral panics escalating to spying and mass surveillance were southern slave patrols, which emerged in the early 1700s after pro-slavery politicians proclaimed that Black escapees would terrorize white communities. Slave patrols tracked down and captured not only Black escapees but also free Black people, whom they sold into bondage. They also imprisoned any person, enslaved or not, suspected of sheltering escapees.
Once a group of people becomes the subject of moral panics and targeted for government surveillance, our research shows, the effects are felt for generations.
These 21st-century numbers reflect decades of targeted surveillance.
In the 1950s, the FBI under Director J. Edgar Hoover created the counter-intelligence programs COINTELPRO, allegedly for investigating communists and radical political groups, and the Ghetto Informant Program. In practice, both programs broadly targeted people of color. From Martin Luther King Jr. to U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Black activists were identified as a threat, spied on, investigated and sometimes jailed.
President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on crime,” a sweeping set of federal changes that militarized local police in urban communities, continued this mass surveillance in the 1960s. Later came the “war on drugs,” which an aide to President Richard Nixon later said was designed explicitly to target Black people.
These early examples of mass surveillance lacked the technology that enables spying today, such as CCTV and hacked laptop cameras. Nonetheless, past U.S. administrations have been remarkably effective at achieving social control by creating moral panics then deploying mass surveillance to contain the “threat.” They enlisted droves of police officers, recruited informants to infiltrate groups and locked people away.
These textbook surveillance methods are still routinely used now.
Police fusion centers
For many Americans, the term “mass surveillance” evokes the Department of Homeland Security, which was founded after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This national agency, which forms part of a federal intelligence apparatus of more than 20 agencies focused on surveillance, has played a key role in mass surveillance since 2001, especially of Muslim Americans.
But it has local help in the form of police units known as fusion centers. These units feed identification information and physical evidence such as video footage to federal agencies such as the FBI and CIA, according to a 2023 whistleblower report from Rutgers Law School.
The New Jersey Regional Operations Intelligence Center, for example, is a police fusion center overseeing New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. It employs advanced military technology to gather massive amounts of personal data on people perceived as potential security threats. According to the Rutgers report, these “threats” are highly concentrated in Black, Latino and Arab communities, as well as areas with a high concentration of political organizing, such as Black Lives Matter groups and immigrant aid organizations.
The New Jersey police fusion approach leads to increased arrest rates, according to the report, but there’s no real evidence that it prevents crime or terrorism.
Guantanamo and black sites
Given Trump’s pledges to further militarize border enforcement and expand U.S. jails and prisons, we anticipate a rise in spending on fusion centers and other tools of mass surveillance under Trump. The moral panics he’s been stirring up since 2015 suggest that the targets of government surveillance will include immigrants and Black people.
Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event on April 2, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Mich. Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The Guardian reported in 2015 that Chicago police had been temporarily “disappearing” people at local and federal police “black sites” since at least 2009. At these clandestine jails, under the guise of national security, officers questioned detainees without attorneys and held them for up to 24 hours without any outside contact. Many of the victims were Black.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
For decades, many U.S. immigrants have received subpar health care, and asking about immigration status can make those disparities worse.Maskot via Getty Images
Since arriving in the United States four years ago, Alex has worked at a primary care office. He has witnessed firsthand how difficult it was for immigrants to access preventive care.
When he heard of the implementation of Florida’s Senate Bill 1718, Alex feared it would have dire consequences for the patients he served.
Alex is a pseudonym for one of our research subjects.
SB 1718, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in May 2023, imposed sweeping restrictions aimed at discouraging unauthorized immigration. Among its provisions, it requires hospitals that accept Medicaid funds to question patients about their immigration status and share data about how many immigrants they are serving within the state.
After the law passed, Alex told his patients that they could refuse to divulge their legal status when asked on hospital forms. But he says his reassurances didn’t work. He watched as many immigrant patients hesitated to access necessary medical care for themselves and their children – or even left the state.
Alex had legal documentation to be in the country, but as his immigrant community shrank, he wondered if he, too, should leave Florida.
“I was very sick recently and needed medical care, but I was scared,” one survey participant told us.
While hospitals cannot deny care based on a patient’s immigration status, our data shows that anticipating they would be asked deterred not only immigrants lacking permanent legal status but also those with legal status, including U.S. citizens, from seeking care.
We believe U.S. citizens are affected by spillover effects because they are members of mixed-status families.
Our survey took place during the intense 2024 presidential election season when anti-immigrant rhetoric was prevalent. The immigrants we surveyed also reported experiencing discrimination in their everyday lives, and these experiences were also associated with a reluctance to access health care.
Laws like SB 1718 amplify preexisting racial and structural inequities. Structural inequities are systemic barriers within institutions — such as health care and employment — that restrict access to essential resources based on one’s race, legal or economic status.
Supporters of immigrants’ rights protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies on Feb. 7, 2025 in Homestead, Florida. Joe Raedle via Getty Images
Elizabeth Aranda is affiliated with American Sociological Association.
Deborah Omontese is affiliated with American Sociological Association
Elizabeth Vaquera is a member of the American Sociological Association and has previously received funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health,
Emely Matos Pichardo is affiliated with the Southern Sociological Society.
Liz Ventura does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Conversation U.S. politics editor Jeff Inglis spoke to James Perry, a scholar of public affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington, to understand what the order is trying to achieve and how it would affect federal workers, the government and the American public. What follows is an edited transcript of the discussion.
Andrew Jackson, depicted here giving a speech, believed the president should be in control of most federal workers. PHOTOS.com / Getty Images Plus
What is the standard situation for government employees?
In the 1820s and 1830s, President Andrew Jackson popularized the idea that the president could, and should, hire supporters into government jobs. But by the early 1880s, there was concern on the parts of both Democrats and Republicans that the victor would control a lot of workers who would serve the president, not the American people whose tax dollars paid their salaries.
So the parties came together in 1883 to pass the Pendleton Act stipulating that government workers are hired based on their skills and abilities, not their political views. That law was updated in 1978 with the Civil Service Reform Act, which added more protections for workers against being fired for political reasons.
Those rules cover about 99% of staff in the federal civil service. Currently, there are just about 4,000 political appointees. I’ve seen various estimates that this new executive order would shift at least 50,000 positions from career positions to the political-appointments list.
This argument is not backed by strong evidence. The evidence supporters offer is that human resources directors, who are often appointees of the governor who changed the statute, claim no one has complained about the change in policy. But that doesn’t include people who are likely to have a different perspective.
It could be that nobody is talking about people being fired for political reasons in these states because they are afraid of getting fired themselves.
What does this executive order change, and why?
The rationale for the new policy is that the administration wants to get rid of federal workers whom leaders perceive as either intransigent or insubordinate – or who they fear might oppose Trump’s policy initiatives. This sets up a conflict between how government workers see their duties and how Trump appears to view them.
But taking action against only 50,000 of the 2 million-plus federal employees isn’t going to address such a wide problem.
There’s a stereotype that in government it can be hard to discipline or fire workers who are not competent at their jobs. The flip side of that stereotype is, however, false: Private businesses are not better at holding poor performers accountable. Survey evidence shows the private sector has just as much difficulty as the government with getting workers to perform effectively.
There’s room for legitimate disagreement about how far federal employees have to go to comply with presidential directives. The people who think loyalty is the key to merit still might not agree on whether that loyalty is owed to the person sitting in the Oval Office or to the Constitution.
Protests against the Trump administration have been widespread, including against its policies aimed at federal workers. AP Photo/Sejal Govindarao
In the first round of this effort under the first Trump administration, it seemed that most of the people affected would be at the top of the federal hierarchy, probably mostly based in Washington, D.C.
Most of the workers in the federal civil service, though, are not there. They work for the Social Security Administration, giving out checks in Bloomington, Indiana, or other departments and offices around the country. It would be very difficult to classify them as influencing political policy or advocating for policies.
But there are people who are not Senate-confirmed who do have an influence on policy. For instance, at the Department of Justice, assistant and deputy assistant secretaries have influence on civil rights policy or other policies that affect the president’s ability to pursue his agenda. The February 2025 resignation of Danielle Sassoon from her role as U.S. attorney in New York is an example of legitimate divergence between an appointee and the president’s policy direction.
Any workers who lost their protections would likely feel threatened with losing their job and their livelihood. They might, out of fear, be more responsive to the dictates of their superiors.
That might sound good – that if you do what your boss says, you’re doing a good job. But it’s different if your obligations are to the public interest and the Constitution.
The U.S. has attracted to government service workers who are good at their jobs and able to remain politically neutral at work. Saying that’s no longer important would change the relationship between government workers and their jobs. And it would hurt the nation as a whole if government cannot attract the best and the brightest, or if it sends the best and the brightest packing because they are not comfortable with their work situation, or if they stay but their performance declines.
James L. Perry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
