Just months after being freed through a pardon from President Trump, two men convicted of felonies for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol scored visits to the secure grounds of the White House.

During their visit, the men took turns posing for pictures and videos behind the lectern in the White House press briefing room.

“Thank you so much President Trump, if you’re seeing this, we appreciate you setting us free,” said Shane Jenkins, in a video he posted on social media.

Jenkins, who had a criminal record before Jan. 6, was sentenced to seven years in prison for assaulting police protecting the Capitol and using a metal tomahawk to try to smash a window. The day after the attack, Jenkins wrote in a text message, “I have murder in my heart and my head.”

“Never would have thought in only a few short months I would be going from the big house to the White House,” said another pardoned Jan. 6 defendant, Dominic Box, who also recorded a video from the briefing room.

Dominic Box appeared exuberant as he recorded videos for social media in the White House press briefing room this month. Box was convicted of felony civil disorder and other nonviolent misdemeanors in connection with Jan. 6. His case was dismissed by the Justice Department before he was sentenced.

Screenshot by NPR/@DomFreePress

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Screenshot by NPR/@DomFreePress

Box was convicted of felony civil disorder and nonviolent misdemeanor charges related to the Capitol breach. He had not yet been sentenced when Trump returned to office and issued mass clemency to all Jan. 6 defendants, including the most violent offenders. Separately, in 2023, Box was arrested in Florida on a DUI charge. According to the police report, while in the back of the squad car, Box used “various racial slurs,” including the n-word. In a message to NPR, Box said , “I am not racist,” and noted that he did not use “the hard r” when he said the n-word.

The circumstances of the visit to the White House were somewhat murky.

“An individual within the Trump Administration extended the invitation,” Box told NPR, “but I am not at liberty to disclose their identity.”

In a message to NPR, Jenkins said he was also “not at liberty to discuss” how the tour was arranged, adding, “but of course J6 Hostages were wronged and will be welcomed to the White House.”

The two men said that, in addition to the press briefing room, they saw the Oval Office and the Roosevelt Room, though they did not post any videos or photos of those areas.

The White House did not respond to NPR’s messages seeking comment.

Since taking office, Trump has continued to embrace Jan. 6 defendants as “political prisoners.”

“I pardoned J6 people who were assaulted by our government,” Trump told reporters in February. The Department of Justice estimated that 140 police officers were injured in the attack.

The Trump administration is also currently negotiating a settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the estate of Ashli Babbitt, the rioter who was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer while trying to climb through a broken window.

Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger condemned the news of the pending settlement.

“I am extremely disappointed and disagree with this settlement,” Manger said in a written statement. “In 2021, the DOJ investigation determined no wrongdoing by police. This settlement sends a chilling message to law enforcement nationwide, especially to those with a protective mission like ours.”

Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys, also said he briefly met with Trump while visiting the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this month. Tarrio was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6 attack and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

According to Tarrio, Trump called him over while he was dining at the resort.

“I thanked him for giving me my life back,” Tarrio wrote on social media. “He replied with…I Love You guys.”

There is no indication that Jenkins or Box met with Trump when they visited White House. (Trump spent most of the day at his golf club in Virginia, according to his public schedule.) Both men have declined to disclose the precise details of their visit.

“Thank you to our friend, who shall go unnamed, for giving us that opportunity,” Box said on a video live stream.

The visit occurred on a Sunday – outside of the regular public tour schedule, which typically runs from Tuesday through Saturday, according to the White House website. In a break with the Biden administration, the Trump White House has stopped releasing visitor logs.

Jenkins, who also had a criminal record before Jan. 6, smiled and posed for photos and videos behind the lectern in the White House press briefing room. Months earlier, he was serving a seven-year prison sentence for his actions during the Capitol riot.

Screenshot by NPR/TheRealJ6Shane

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Screenshot by NPR/TheRealJ6Shane

Jenkins’ appearance at the White House was especially striking given his convictions for assaulting police on Jan. 6, and his extensive criminal record, which stretches back to the late 1990s.

“I was in and out of prison from 23 on,” Jenkins said at his sentencing hearing.

Prosecutors said Jenkins assaulted police officers on Jan. 6 using nine different objects, including “a flagpole, a metal walking stick, and a broken wooden pole with a spear-like point on one end which he launched like a javelin.” At his trial, prosecutors pointed out his large neck tattoo reading “MAMA TRIED.”

In his defense, Jenkins’ lawyer said he was a victim of “the poisonous propaganda of a former president.”

“[Trump] cares nothing about his supporters, nor anyone else,” defense attorney Dennis Boyle said in closing arguments. “To him they’re just cannonfodders [sic] to serve his needs and his needs alone.”

Jenkins told NPR he disagrees with his lawyer’s remarks. He maintains that he did not injure any police officers on Jan. 6, and said his actions were justified.

“We were standing not for Trump but in opposition to a stolen election,” Jenkins said in a message. “It was my duty as a citizen to object. In the process we were assaulted and responded in kind.”

“I’m thankful no one was hurt by what I did but am I sorry, f[***] no!” he wrote.

Jenkins’ legal troubles began long before Jan. 6. According to court documents filed by the Department of Justice, he had prior convictions for assault, resisting arrest, drug possession, making a “terroristic threat” and driving while intoxicated.

When he was 20 years old, Jenkins shot and killed his stepfather. At his sentencing, he testified that he acted in self defense and murder charges against him were ultimately dropped.

Like Jenkins, Box has also faced criminal charges unrelated to Jan. 6.

In Aug. 2023, while awaiting trial for his Capitol riot case, Box was arrested in Florida for driving under the influence. According to the police report, a witness saw Box back into a pole and pass out. When officers arrived, they found Box slurring his speech, along with an open can of Natural Light beer and a bottle of Skol vodka in the car.

NPR asked Box about the allegation that he used “various racial slurs” after the arrest.

“At one point, in an admittedly & regrettably intoxicated state after being woken up while in the back of the squad car I said, ‘what’s up n[****]?'” Box wrote. “I am not a racist, have dated women of all racial backgrounds & the majority of my friends in both Jacksonville & Savannah are black.”

Following the DUI arrest, Box was jailed for violating the terms of his pretrial supervision orders in the Jan. 6 case. He later pleaded no contest to the Florida DUI charge, and said he is “actively working a program of recovery” from substance abuse.

In a statement to NPR, the Secret Service said it followed standard protocol when they allowed Jenkins and Box to enter the White House.

“Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Box were subject to a rigorous security screening prior to their entry being approved,” the agency wrote. “In all cases, the U.S. Secret Service works in conjunction with White House staff to review pertinent visitor information and develop plans to ensure a safe and secure visit for all.”

“Secret Service knew who we were and they were cool,” Box said in a livestream video. “They weren’t looking at us like we were suspicious.”

The United States has officially accepted a Boeing 747-8 luxury jetliner as a gift from the Qatari government, and the Air Force has been tasked with upgrading it to be used as a new plane for President Trump, according to an Air Force spokesperson.

The spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, told NPR that the Air Force is currently “preparing to award a contract to modify a Boeing 747 aircraft for an executive airlift,” saying further details about the contract are classified.

The plane — worth hundreds of millions of dollars — is a gift that Trump said he would be “stupid” to turn down, suggesting that it could be converted quickly to be ready for use as the presidential aircraft.

But experts warn that no matter how luxurious the plane is, it would take years to rework it to meet the current standards set for Air Force One.

Democratic lawmakers and independent watchdogs say the gift violates the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause.

The White House said the plane was a gift to the Department of Defense, and would go through the legal protocols required when something is given to the government. Trump has said he would not use it after leaving office and wants to keep it in his presidential library at that point.

There are currently two new Boeing 747-8 planes being customized to become the next generation of Air Force One. Trump announced a $3.9 billion deal with Boeing during his first term for the project. The planes were supposed to be ready by last year, but the project has been marred by setbacks, and now the customized aircraft aren’t expected for several more years.

“Some of that is due to poor execution. But some of that is just due to the huge amount of requirements and work needed to take a commercial jet and wire it up,” for the extensive security measures standard in Air Force One planes, said Richard Aboulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory and an aviation analyst, speaking to NPR’s Morning Edition.

He called Trump’s plan for the plane from Qatar to be converted quickly a “fantasy.”

The current Air Force One fleet has been in use for over three decades

Technically, “Air Force One” is the call signal used for any plane carrying the president of the United States. But more commonly it’s used to refer to the specific specialized planes — currently Boeing 747-200B models — outfitted with state-of-the-art communications and defense systems, along with lots of other (often highly classified) features.

The two Boeing planes currently serving as Air Force One have been in operation since 1990. A plan to replace them has been in the works for years, with Boeing winning the contract back in 2016 under then-President Obama.

“It’s a mobile White House,” says Doug Birkey, executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “All the functions of the president have to be executed in it, no matter what circumstances, including warfare.”

Birkey says that includes requiring an “incredibly robust command and control suite” and defenses against anything from surface-to-air missiles to a nuclear blast and warfare.

He says in terms of luxury, the plane from Qatar probably looks and feels better than the current or planned Air Force One planes — but it’s unlikely that it has any of the communications or defense systems needed.

“And installing those is not an easy thing. I mean, you have to deconstruct the aircraft a fair amount to do that,” Birkey says.

Trump has repeatedly stressed that the plane from Qatar was free, but several experts NPR talked to agreed that it will likely end up costing a significant amount of money — up to a billion dollars by Aboulafia’s estimate — to outfit it properly to current standards to become Air Force One.

A U.S. official who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter told NPR the conversion would likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

NPR’s Tom Bowman contributed to this report. 

“We have a team in Milwaukee,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified to senators in a hearing on Tuesday.

He was speaking about a lead exposure crisis in the public schools there. The city health department had requested support from experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to address it. “We’re giving laboratory support to the analytics in Milwaukee and we’re working with the health department in Milwaukee,” Kennedy added.

But Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, from Wisconsin, had a different story. “There are no staff on the ground deployed to Milwaukee to address the lead exposure of children in schools,” she said. Six schools in the city have had to close because of lead, she said, displacing 1,800 students.

So is there a team of federal lead experts in Milwaukee or not?

“There is no team in Milwaukee,” Milwaukee Health Commissioner Mike Totoraitis tells NPR. “We had a single [federal] staff person come to Milwaukee for a brief period to help validate a machine, but that was separate from the formal request that we had for a small team to actually come to Milwaukee for our Milwaukee Public Schools investigation and ongoing support there.”

Totoraitis says Secretary Kennedy may have been misinformed.

The contradictions about this program that were on display on Capitol Hill Tuesday are emblematic of Kennedy’s approach to the health agencies. He speaks passionately about the health of children and the threats of environmental toxins to Americans’ health, but he’s struggled to explain specific actions his agency has taken to downsize and restructure even in those areas that he says are his priority.

Fired staff, but the program’s ‘continuing’

Lead is a neurotoxin that is common in older buildings, especially in paint and pipes. It can cause developmental problems in children.

On April 1, the staff of the CDC’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program was fired as part of the agency’s reduction in force. The program included epidemiologists, statisticians and advisors who specialized in lead poisoning — from detecting the source of exposure to planning an effective response.

At an event a few days after that, an ABC News reporter asked Kennedy about that lead team being cut. “There were some programs that were cuts that are being reinstated. I believe that that’s one of those,” he said.

Not so, CDC staff that had worked on that team told NPR, as none of them had heard anything about being reinstated. Kennedy’s own communications staff at HHS also told ABC, “The personnel for that current division, of how it exists now, are not being reinstated. The work will continue elsewhere at HHS.”

Last week in a congressional budget hearing, Kennedy was asked about the cuts by Baldwin. “Do you intend to eliminate this branch at CDC?” she asked.

Kennedy responded, “No, we do not.” He also said he thought lead poisoning in children was an “extremely significant concern.”

On Tuesday, Kennedy appeared before a different Senate committee, and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., asked Kennedy to clarify what was going on. “As far as we can tell, staff has not yet been hired, and I’ve seen no statements reversing your decision to eliminate the program.” 

So, Reed said, “Which is it?”

Kennedy responded: “We are continuing to fund the program.” He later added, “my understanding is that program is continuing,” and he offered to talk to Reed after the hearing to “find out what the details are.”

NPR asked HHS whether any of the firings for the CDC staff that had worked on that team had been revoked. In a statement, HHS responded: “As HHS finalizes its detailed reorganization plans, the Department will be looking into all strategic programs and priorities for the Secretary and the nation. The work of this program will continue.”

HHS did not answer a follow-up question to clarify whether that means rehiring staff or doing the work with contractors or something else.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard wrote, “CDC is assisting with validating new lab instrumentation used for environmental lead testing” at the request of the Milwaukee Health Department.

Kennedy said throughout his testimony before three different congressional panels that he cannot speak in detail about the reorganization because of ongoing litigation. He has previously said that CDC had “mission creep” and will only address infectious diseases going forward.

Kennedy intends to open a new agency called the Administration for a Healthy America — AHA — to work on chronic diseases, mental health, and other health issues, but details of the timeline for when it will be active and who will staff it have not been made public.

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D.-Wis., speaks with the press after the Democrats’ policy luncheon on Tuesday.

Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

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Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

“You can’t just slash funding, fire everyone, slap a slogan on a new agency and say that work will continue,” Baldwin told Kennedy in the hearing. “Your decision to fire staff and eliminate offices is endangering children, including thousands of children in Milwaukee. If you have a proposal to make these programs work better, present it and justify it.”

Milwaukee says it still needs support

Totoraitis, Milwaukee’s health commissioner, says it’s strange that the local lead response has been the center of this national story about the restructuring of federal health agencies.

“I see this crisis, unfortunately, as this canary in the coal mine of what is being dismantled and what could potentially become really catastrophic for our country,” he says.

At this point, several school-aged children have been found to have high levels of lead in their blood, which has been traced back to schools. In the past, the health department has dealt with lead poisoning happening in residential homes. “This is a huge pivot for our department to have to now be investigating schools,” he says. “The district has over 140 school buildings that all have some varying levels of lead paint hazards.”

They wanted CDC expertise to help manage this crisis and had worked for months on a formal request for CDC staff support, he says.

“They were going to send that team to Milwaukee to help us with the investigation, screening, data management,” he says. Once the federal staff was all laid off, the request was formally denied, he explains, “because they didn’t have any subject matter experts within the entire CDC to support the childhood lead investigation that we were doing.”

Totoraitis says the public school lead crisis in his city hasn’t stopped, and now his local team is scrambling to figure out how to manage without the expert support from CDC.

Have a tip? NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin can be contacted through encrypted communications at selena.02 on Signal.

NPR’s Yuki Noguchi contributed to this report.

TEL AVIV, Israel — The new U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told NPR he is “outraged” at the leaders of Britain, France and Canada for condemning Israel’s new military offensive in Gaza.

“ The prolonged suffering for everybody is on Hamas, and I’m outraged that the U.K., Canada, France, they’re blaming the wrong perpetrator,” Huckabee, the former Republican governor of Arkansas, said in an interview Wednesday at a U.S. Embassy office in Tel Aviv.

Israel launched an intensified offensive in Gaza on Sunday, ordering mass evacuations, stepping up airstrikes throughout the territory and killing hundreds of Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. Under intense international pressure, Israel has begun to allow a small amount of aid into the enclave this week after imposing a total blockade on the entry of food, medicine and other goods for nearly three months — but the new aid has not yet been distributed to civilians in Gaza.

The leaders of United Kingdom, France and Canada say they strongly oppose the expansion of the war, issuing a joint statement this week that called Israel’s actions in Gaza “wholly disproportionate” and “egregious” and said the basic amount of food Israel has allowed in “wholly inadequate.”

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the government is suspending trade talks with Israel. The European Union is reviewing all political and economic agreements with the country, its foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced, saying, “The situation in Gaza is catastrophic.”

Huckabee said, “ I’m not in the position to tell the Israelis how to conduct their war. … My family members weren’t murdered and massacred, mutilated,” referring to the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed around 1,200 people in Israel.

Citing the Allied bombings at the end of World War II, Huckabee said, “What a hypocrisy to say that those bombings that ultimately ended World War II and stopped the threat of the Nazis into all of Europe was somehow OK. But if the Israelis, you know, 70 years later, try to defend themselves from an existential threat, that we ought to be mad at them.”

He further said, “I just find that so disgustingly hypocritical on the part of some of these European nations that forget their own history and it wasn’t that long ago, and they ought to just go back and maybe take 10th grade civics and refresh themselves.”

More than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to health authorities in the territory.

Huckabee also denied media reports that President Trump was growing frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for renewing the Gaza offensive in March, after a two-month ceasefire that Trump himself had called for in the run-up to his inauguration this year.

“I think he’s more frustrated with Hamas. I don’t see the frustration with the prime minister, and I’ve talked to the president, I’ve talked to the vice president, talked to the secretary of state,” Huckabee said.

As European leaders urged Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, Pope Leo XIV also lent his voice to the appeal, calling the situation there “worrying and painful.”

“I renew my fervent appeal to allow for the entry of fair humanitarian help and to bring to an end the hostilities, the devastating price of which is paid by children, the elderly and the sick,” the newly appointed U.S.-born pontiff said.

Last week on Morning Edition, Representative Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), one of the House Republicans pushing to restore the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes, known as the SALT deduction, said any tax bill without a fix for SALT wouldn’t get his support.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump traveled to Capitol Hill to personally rally House Republicans behind a sweeping bill meant to advance his entire legislative agenda, from tax and spending cuts to border security. Trump brushed off internal Republican divisions, saying the party is “very unified.” But a key sticking point in the negotiations has been the cap on state and local tax deductions. Rep. Lawler remains one of the GOP holdouts.

On Wednesday, Lawler spoke with NPR’s Steve Inskeep about his push for SALT deductions, the balancing act within the GOP over Trump’s stance, and how some Republicans plan to defend cuts to Medicaid and other safety net programs.

Interview highlights

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Steve Inskeep: The President doesn’t sound like he’s interested at all in your priority anymore. What does that mean for your vote?

Mike Lawler: Well, I think the President obviously is anxious to get a bill passed. We are in the final stages of negotiating that through the House, and then, as your report just mentioned, it goes to the Senate. So the President wants us to come to agreement. We spent the better part of yesterday afternoon and into the evening meeting with the Speaker and coming to terms on an agreement. But we are still working through some of the finer points, and I suspect today we’ll be in a much stronger position.

Inskeep: Do you mean to say that you think you’re going to get the SALT tax deduction, or some variant of it, or some portion of it?

Lawler: We are going to get it, as I said, and I said again yesterday, after the meeting with the President, as it currently stands, I was a no. And so we spent the better part of the day negotiating over SALT and getting parameters that we could come to an agreement on that addresses major parts and really provides the level of relief that we need.

Inskeep: I’m listening carefully here, it sounds like you’re going to get part of what you want, maybe not everything you want. Is that where you’re at?

Lawler: Well, that’s true of anything in life, and certainly anything in government. You’re not going to get everything. We made very clear we needed significant improvements on what was proposed. And I believe we will get there today.

Inskeep: I want to just ask about the President’s terminology. He didn’t want to do anything that would benefit “Democrat states.” Do you view your state, the state of New York, as a “Democrat state” that should not get things from the President and from Congress that they need?

Lawler: I think what he’s referencing is a very simple truth, which is that most of the high-tax states in the country are run by Democratic governors and state legislatures that continue to spend and tax at high levels. New York is the worst among them. New York’s tax burden is the highest in the country. The governor just increased state spending by double-digit billions, up 100 billion in a decade. These are unsustainable levels, and that’s what the President was referencing.

Inskeep: I just want to get one more thing in here. We heard earlier today from Greg Casar, one of your Democratic colleagues. He’s from Texas, and he’s talking about this budget bill, talking about the Medicaid cuts or savings, and he asserts that the cuts will affect health care for real people, including in a red state like his. He said: “What they’re talking about is closing rural hospitals, closing addiction treatment centers, leaving 4 million school-aged kids without food assistance. It’s horrible, but we can still stop it.” When he says rural hospitals, I immediately think of one that I know about in upstate New York that’s forever in danger of closing. This is a constant problem across the United States. How would you protect rural hospitals as you cut back, scale back Medicaid, which many of them depend on?

Lawler: Again, the focus with the reforms in the bill is to slow the rate of growth and make sure that those who are not eligible do not receive benefits, i.e. illegal immigrants. People who are no longer eligible should not remain on the program for up to a year, which is what the Biden administration allowed, as well as work requirements for able-bodied adults. When it comes to food assistance, it’s a cost-share. It is having the states have some skin in the game, starting with, you know, a 5% share. Right now, they pay 0% share for the cost. So this is about slowing the rate of growth. Medicaid is going to expand by 24% over the 10-year window of this bill. So it is not a major cut, but in fact, slowing the rate of growth.

The Trump administration is doubling down on its decision to send migrants to countries that aren’t their own following a legal challenge to a flight allegedly headed toward South Sudan.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons told reporters on Wednesday that the eight people on the flight out of the U.S. had been convicted of crimes in the United States and that ICE was not able to return them to their home countries.

Lawyers for at least one of the men on board say the flight is headed to South Sudan, but the government hasn’t disclosed the destination, saying it’s classified.

“We found a nation who was willing to take custody of these vicious illegal aliens,” said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, about the Asian men on the flight. “Now, a local judge in Massachusetts is trying to force the United States to bring back these uniquely barbaric monsters who present a clear and present threat to the safety of the American people and American victims.”

The comments came after a federal judge in Massachusetts ordered the Department of Homeland Security to keep custody of migrants sent to South Sudan, or any third country, until he can verify they received proper due process.

The order was in response to an emergency filing from lawyers who said their Vietnamese client was given little notice before being put on a plane to the African country, one of the world’s poorest and most politically unstable.

Lawyer says client “has been disappeared”

Jonathan Ryan, a lawyer with the legal nonprofit Advokato, told NPR that what is striking is the complete lack of information the group is working with. Ryan said he does not know the full name or criminal background of his client, who he believes was sent to South Sudan, and simply knows him as “M.N.”

They spoke briefly on May 16, but M.N. does not speak English. Ryan began looking for an interpreter, but by the next day, was informed his client had been moved to another facility, further away. In a second phone call, despite background noise and his client’s broken English, he was able to discern that his client had been given paperwork, which he’d refused to sign.

By Monday afternoon, Ryan was perplexed when he received an email from ICE saying his client was being sent to South Africa. Shortly thereafter he received another notification from ICE: his client was being sent to South Sudan.

Attorney Jonathan Ryan says he was perplexed to receive this notice on May 19th, stating his client – whom he hadn’t been able to have a meaningful conversation with- was being deported to South Africa.

Courtesy of Jonathan Ryan./Jonathan Ryan

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Courtesy of Jonathan Ryan./Jonathan Ryan

Shortly after receiving a notice that his client, “M.N” was being sent to South Africa, Ryan received another notice: his client was being sent to South Sudan.

Courtesy of Jack Ryan./Jack Ryan.

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Courtesy of Jack Ryan./Jack Ryan.

“No meaningful opportunity at all was provided to him to express a fear of being sent to South Sudan,” Ryan said. “And let’s be honest, it’s quite possible that my client has never heard of South Sudan.”

Still, because he has been unable to contact him, Ryan is unclear about M.N.’s actual location.

“Let’s be clear: my client has been disappeared. I do not know where he is. The federal judge does not know where he is,” Ryan said.

Government officials in a late-Tuesday hearing said that ultimately N.M. was being sent to Burma, even after being notified he was being sent to two other countries first.

But Ryan is skeptical of those claims.

“I want to speak with my client. I want him to tell me that he is in Burma,” Ryan said. “Because I don’t know. As far as I’m concerned, he’s sitting in South Sudan with a guard potentially of the United States, potentially of South Sudan, hovering over him, telling him to tell me that he is in Burma. We simply don’t know what’s happening.”

South Sudan pushes back against being a third country

The Trump administration has aimed to use third country destinations to remove individuals that cannot be sent back to their home countries for a variety of reasons.

McLaughlin told reporters that it was possible South Sudan was not the final destination for the eight men on the flight. The department referred questions about third-country negotiations to the State Department and doubled down on saying they are adhering to court orders.

The State Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about where a recent plane full of migrants was sent, and what their ultimate destination was.

South Sudan’s police spokesman told NPR the country will not accept migrants deported from the United States unless they are South Sudanese nationals.

The spokesman denied any arrival of flights of deportees from the U.S. by Wednesday evening local time. He said any non-South Sudanese migrants arriving in the country would be re-deported to their correct country of origin.

The government spokesman also denied there’s any deal with the U.S to accept deportees.

South Sudan is not the first country to voice an opposition to being a so-called third country. Earlier this month, Libyan officials also rejected reports that they would take in deportees from the U.S. if they were not Libyan nationals.

Other countries such as El Salvador and Mexico have served as these third country destinations for migrants who cannot be sent back to their home countries, as the U.S. seeks more destinations for people it wants to deport from the U.S.

If you have immigration tips you can contact our tip line, on Whatsapp and Signal: 202-713-6697 or reporters Jasmine Garsd: [email protected]  and Ximena Bustillo [email protected]

Emmanuel Igunza contributed to this report.

The Justice Department is backing away from cases against police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Kentucky, reversing course on the use of consent decrees to help ensure accountability for law enforcement agencies.

The move comes only days before the anniversary of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota nearly five years ago by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer.

Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, announced the plan to dismiss the lawsuits and retract findings by the Biden Justice Department about alleged constitutional violations by police.

“Today, we are ending the Biden Civil Rights Division’s failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees,” Dhillon said in a written statement.

The Justice Department said it would also close investigations of police in six other jurisdictions, listed below:

• Phoenix, Arizona

• Trenton, New Jersey

• Memphis, Tennessee

• Mount Vernon, New York

• Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

• Louisiana State Police

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Adriana Smith, a 30 year-old nurse and mother, was about nine weeks pregnant in February when doctors declared her brain dead after she suffered a medical emergency.

But Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told Atlanta TV station WXIA that doctors at Emory University Hospital have been keeping her organs functioning since then until the fetus can be delivered, citing Georgia’s law banning most abortions after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, or roughly six weeks into pregnancy.

Smith is now roughly 22 weeks into the pregnancy and has been on life support for more than 90 days.

“My grandson may be blind, may not be able to walk, we don’t know if he’ll live once she has him,” Newkirk told WXIA last week. “And I’m not saying we would have chose to terminate her pregnancy. What I’m saying is we should have had a choice.”

Case sparks legal questions

Democratic State Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes wrote a letter to Georgia’s Republican Attorney General Chris Carr asking for clarity about how Georgia’s abortion law should be applied in this context.

“Let me be plain: this is a grotesque distortion of medical ethics and human decency,” Islam Parkes wrote. “That any law in Georgia could be interpreted to require a brain-dead woman’s body to be artificially maintained as a fetal incubator is not only medically unsound — it is inhumane.”

The law, known as the LIFE Act, was narrowly passed and signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019, but was not in force until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022. A legal challenge to Georgia’s abortion law is still working its way through the state courts.

“There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,” Carr’s office responded in a statement. “Removing life support is not an action ‘with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.”

Emory Healthcare seems to have come to a different conclusion. The hospital has not addressed the attorney general’s legal opinion and has not responded to repeated requests for comment, but the health system did provide a statement to several outlets last week.

“Emory Healthcare uses consensus from clinical experts, medical literature, and legal guidance to support our providers as they make individualized treatment recommendations in compliance with Georgia’s abortion laws and all other applicable laws,” the health system wrote. “Our top priorities continue to be the safety and wellbeing of the patients we serve.”

Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California-Davis, says this disconnect is not uncommon in the post-Roe era, as medical providers in states with restrictive abortion laws have become more risk-averse. Running afoul of the law can carry criminal penalties in many states.

“This scenario in Georgia right now is an example of that where you have the attorney general who says, ‘No problem, go ahead,’ and you have doctors and their lawyers reading the law and saying, ‘We’re not so sure,” Ziegler says.

Ziegler also pointed to two other Black women in Georgia, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, whose deaths drew national attention. ProPublica reported last year that a state panel ruled their deaths preventable and likely the result of doctors being slow or unwilling to provide abortion care because of Georgia’s law. Top Republicans in Georgia have disputed whether the state’s abortion law played any role.

The cases also highlighted Georgia’s maternal mortality crisis disproportionately affecting Black women.

Debate over personhood

In the case of Adriana Smith, Ziegler says one reason Emory may be interpreting Georgia law in this way is because of a provision in the abortion law establishing what is known as “fetal personhood.”

Fetal personhood is the idea that embryos and fetuses are people and have legal rights. In Georgia, for example, residents can claim a fetus as a dependent on state taxes.

Ziegler, author of the book Personhood, the New Civil War over Reproduction, says establishing fetal personhood has long been a goal of the anti-abortion movement.

Republican State Sen. Ed Setzler, who sponsored Georgia’s 2019 abortion law, said in a statement that he believes Emory is interpreting the law correctly.

“I think it is completely appropriate that the hospital do what they can to save the life of the child,” Setzler wrote in a statement to the AP. “I think this is an unusual circumstance, but I think it highlights the value of innocent human life. I think the hospital is acting appropriately.”

After the fall of Roe v. Wade, existing state personhood laws could be enforced, resulting in consequences, both intended and unintended, such as in the Georgia case. Ziegler says the debate could open up an array of new legal questions for areas like in-vitro fertilization, the census or child support.

As these cases spur more legal challenges, the issue could eventually land at the U.S. Supreme Court.