National

(CALIFORNIA) — A cousin of the Menendez brothers said she’s “thrilled” that California Gov. Gavin Newsom is addressing the brothers’ request for clemency and ordering the parole board to investigate further.

“I certainly gasped in relief,” cousin Anamaria Baralt, one of at least 20 relatives in support of the brothers’ release, told ABC News at a virtual news conference Thursday. “This is huge.”

Lyle and Erik Menendez — who are serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 1989 murders of their parents — have “cautious optimism” they’ll be released, Baralt said.

“They are the first life without parole prisoners on this path,” added another cousin, Tamara Goodell. “So when we look at any advancements … it’s definitely with hope, but also understanding that there are no promises.”

Newsom announced Wednesday that he’s ordering the parole board to conduct a 90-day “comprehensive risk assessment” investigation into whether the brothers pose “an unreasonable risk to the public” if they’re granted clemency and released.

“There’s no guarantee of outcome here,” Newsom said Wednesday on his new podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom.” “My office conducts dozens and dozens of these clemency reviews on a consistent basis. But this process simply provides more transparency, which I think is important in this case, as well as provides us more due diligence before I make any determination for clemency.”

Baralt called Newsom’s decision a “positive step forward” and said she’s confident the parole board will determine Lyle and Erik Menendez are not a risk to public safety.

“We have seen their rehabilitation over the last three decades,” Baralt said.

She said the parole board’s investigation will find: the brothers’ repeated and sincere remorse; their work to improve prison culture and run several programs to help inmates reenter society; and how they’ve spent most of their lives in prison but still built meaningful lives helping others. The board will also consider their age at the time of the crime and their lack of criminal history outside of “making a horrific decision” as a direct result of the abuse they endured, Baralt said.

“We understand that this is not without professional risk for him,” Baralt said of Newsom.

Though the cousins praised Newsom, they were disappointed and frustrated by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman’s announcement last week that he’s asked the court to deny the brothers’ habeas corpus petition.

Lyle and Erik Menendez filed the petition in 2023 for a review of two new pieces of evidence not presented at trial: a letter Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin, Andy Cano, eight months before the murders detailing his alleged abuse from his father Jose Menendez; and allegations from a former boy band member, Roy Rossello, who revealed in 2023 that he was raped by Jose Menendez.

Hochman argued the letter failed the credibility test, saying if it existed, the defense would have used it at the brothers’ trials in the 1990s.

Hochman said Rossello’s allegation failed the admissibility test, because the brothers didn’t know about his claims until recent years, so it couldn’t have influenced their state of mind during the crime and “play a role in self-defense or premeditated murder.”

After Hochman’s announcement, Erik Menendez said to the family, “We need you strong,” Goodell recalled. “They both really mirrored our frustration, but they also said, ‘Let it go. We need to focus on moving forward.’ And so that is our focus.”

Baralt stands by the new evidence.

The letter to Cano, while received in December 1988, was not discovered until recent years, according to the brothers’ attorney.

Baralt stressed that Cano was 14 or 15 at the time Erik Menendez sent him that letter.

“It’s only natural for a teenage boy to not realize he is sitting on critical evidence. Andy wasn’t a lawyer. He wasn’t even an adult,” she said. “To pose the question now, decades later, after he passed, of why wasn’t the letter submitted back then? It’s like asking a teenager who got in a fender bender why didn’t you call the police to file a report — because a teenager doesn’t know any better. He didn’t realize how vital that letter would be to the case.”

And as for Rossello’s admission in 2023, Baralt stressed that it’s common for abuse victims to not disclose for years.

“Roy coming out to share his story in his own time is new evidence” that should be considered admissible, she said.

Baralt said Hochman’s decision “felt extra hurtful, because it was only a few weeks ago that dozens of [relatives] sat in his office and described the horror of being in this victim family, with 35 years of being retraumatized.”

“We have become victims in this process,” she said. “We have been laughed at, ridiculed and forced to relive the pain over and over again.”

Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted in 1996 of the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez. The defense claimed the brothers acted in self-defense after enduring years of sexual abuse by their father, while prosecutors alleged they killed for money.

Besides clemency and the habeas corpus petition, another possible path to freedom is resentencing.

In October, then-LA County District Attorney George Gascón announced he supported resentencing for the brothers. Gascón recommended their sentences of life without the possibility of parole be removed, and said they should instead be sentenced for murder, which would be a sentence of 50 years to life. Because both brothers were under 26 at the time of the crimes, they would be eligible for parole immediately with the new sentence.

The DA’s office said its resentencing recommendations take into account many factors, including rehabilitation in prison and abuse or trauma that contributed to the crime. Gascón praised the work Lyle and Erik Menendez did behind bars to rehabilitate themselves and help other inmates.

Weeks after Gascón’s announcement, he lost his race for reelection to Hochman.

Hochman, who came into office on Dec. 3, has yet to announce if he is in support of or against resentencing for the brothers. He’s expected to decide in the coming weeks.

A hearing regarding the resentencing case is set for March 20 and 21.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Newly-installed FBI Director Kash Patel, whose proclaimed plans to overhaul the nation’s premier law enforcement agency have rattled many within the bureau, has proposed enhancing the FBI’s ranks with help from the United Fighting Championship, the martial-arts entertainment giant whose wealthy CEO, Dana White, helped boost President Donald Trump’s reelection, according to sources who were told of Patel’s proposal.

On a teleconference Wednesday with the heads of the FBI’s 55 field offices, Patel suggested that he wants the FBI to establish a formal relationship with the UFC, which could develop programs for agents to improve their physical fitness, said sources who had been briefed on Wednesday’s call.

The virtual meeting with each field office’s special-agent-in-charge has long been a weekly occurrence, but this week’s call was the first led by Patel, who was sworn in as director on Friday.

Within hours of Wednesday’s call, word of Patel’s UFC proposal spread to current and former FBI officials around the country.

“If they’re trying to up their physical fitness, the UFC is very specific in their fitness,” said ABC News contributor Rich Frankel, the former special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark, New Jersey, office.

It’s not clear exactly what Patel would want UFC to do or provide to help improve fitness among FBI ranks.

Though Patel’s UFC proposal stood out to some who heard about the meeting, Patel addressed a range of issues on the call, according to sources.

The new director tried to calm some of the concerns among FBI agents after the Justice Department last month demanded a list of the thousands of agents who aided investigations stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol and suggested that even those just following orders could be fired, the sources said.

There were also concerns about Patel’s recent announcement that as many as 1,500 employees at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C, would be reassigned to field offices and to an FBI office in Huntsville, Alabama. And last week’s controversial email from the Office of Personnel Management demanding that all federal employees list what they had accomplished over the previous week or face termination only added to concerns within the FBI, sources said.

During Wednesday’s call, Patel expressed his own concerns about that email and with confusing follow-up messages from the Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency, which has been guided by billionaire businessman Elon Musk, sources said.

Patel, on the call, also touted the FBI’s work fighting crime and national security threats, and he asked the FBI officials to give him a chance to prove himself as their new leader, sources said. But he also warned them that he would not tolerate “leaks” or what he sees as other forms of insubordination.

Nevertheless, it was Patel’s proposal to ask the UFC for help that quickly created some buzz within the FBI community. UFC is based in Las Vegas, where Patel now lives.

White, who is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, has long been friends with Trump and last year became a big donor to Trump’s presidential campaign. He joined Trump on stage in Florida during Trump’s victory speech in November just hours after polls closed on Election Day.

During the speech, Trump recalled how he “helped [White] out a little bit” years earlier when no one else was willing to host UFC fights, claiming that UFC is now “one of the most successful sports enterprises anywhere at any time.”

Trump also said that UFC “is the roughest sport I’ve ever seen,” featuring fighters who “really go at it.”

Just days after Trump won the election in November, Trump attended a heavily-promoted UFC fight at Madison Square Garden in New York City, where he sat in the front row between White and Musk.

Frankel, who spent more than two decades with the FBI, said the FBI may benefit from increasing its physical fitness standards — so the idea of the UFC helping with the FBI’s training regimen may not be as unusual as it sounds.

He said some FBI offices have previously brought in martial arts experts and others to offer tips to agents.

But, said Frankel, “I don’t want UFC to take over the gym.”

Asked about Patel’s proposal to collaborate with the UFC, an FBI representative declined to comment to ABC News.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(MATTHEWS, N.C.) — A North Carolina woman is charged with attempted murder after allegedly locking her boyfriend in a storage unit, where he was stuck for several days with no food or water before being rescued, police said.

Robin Deaton, 52, of Matthews, North Carolina, has been arrested on attempted murder and kidnapping charges, the Monroe Police Department said. She was booked into jail early Thursday after a manhunt by police.

Her 51-year-old boyfriend had been locked in the unit on Thursday, police said. Deaton allegedly convinced him to crawl to the back of the unit to get her something, then slammed it shut and said, “This is what you get,” according to police.

He had no food, water or power source, and there were two locks on the storage unit, police said.

The man called 911 on Monday and told the dispatcher that his girlfriend had locked him in her storage unit at Cooper Storage in Monroe.

“I’ve been locked in a storage unit for about a week now, and I’ve just now found my phone,” he said in the 911 call, released by Union County Emergency Services. “My girlfriend locked me in here. She doubled up my lock, and I don’t know how she put me in it but she put me in here.”

He said he was in unit 43 and his phone was about to die. When asked if he needed emergency services, he said, “I just need to get out of here.”

“I just can’t breathe. I haven’t had nothing to drink or anything,” he said.

Officers responded to the facility around 1:15 p.m. Monday, according to the incident report.

The man was taken to an area hospital but has since been released, Charlotte, North Carolina, ABC affiliate WSOC reported.

The incident report listed the crime as false imprisonment, though detectives sought higher charges for Deaton’s arrest warrant based on the investigation, the police spokesperson said.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — A Food and Drug Administration vaccine advisory committee meeting that was set to discuss what flu strains to include in next season’s flu vaccine has been canceled, multiple sources told ABC News, leaving some to wonder if the meeting cancelation will delay next year’s flu vaccine delivery schedule.

The meeting was canceled in an email sent from the FDA to members who were planning to attend the annual meeting in about two weeks.

The high-profile, public meetings of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee are where independent experts review scientific data and vote on a variety of vaccine related issues. Members of the March 13 meeting were set to vote on which flu strains would offer the most protection in next season’s flu shot.

“Influenza vaccines aren’t perfect and to get the best influence vaccine each year requires predicting the strain as best we can,” said Dr. Andrew Pavia, professor of pediatrics and medicine at the University of Utah and a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “There’s a lot of complex data that needs to be reviewed and having a number of experts do it gives us the best chance of making the best prediction.”

The meeting typically takes into consideration recommendations from WHO. It also receives input and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Defense and vaccine manufacturers.

The timing of this meeting aligns with the six-month lead time typically required for vaccine manufacturing to ensure vaccines are ready for distribution in the fall — before peak flu season hits in the United States.

“I can’t think of any rational reason to do this other than to throw a hand grenade into vaccine production,” Pavia said. “The impact is going to be felt in terms of our ability to reduce flu hospitalizations and flu deaths.”

Earlier in the week, officials and specialists at the CDC virtually joined the annual WHO meeting to discuss the upcoming flu vaccine strain for next year, despite being previously ordered to halt all communication with the global health organization.

Typically, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meets after the WHO meeting to finalize recommendations.

It remains unclear what impact the meeting cancellation may have on next season’s flu vaccine. But experts are concerned about the timing because flu vaccines are made using chicken eggs to grow and harvest the virus before processing it into a vaccine.

“It’s a very very tight timeline because it takes a long time to create the template viruses and then grow them in eggs,” Pavia said. “It is a many months long process and any delay means it will be difficult to have vaccine in time for the next season.”

U.S. vaccine strains are usually picked by April. Manufacturing is completed over the summer and delivered for vaccination starting in September.

Sanofi, one manufacturer of flu vaccines, told ABC News the company has already started the initial steps of manufacturing.

“Just as every year, we have already begun production for the 2025-2026 flu season in the Northern Hemisphere and will be ready to support final strain selections in time for the season,” a spokesperson for Sanofi told ABC News.

However, the FDA must approve the final strains for the shots to be legally marketed and distributed in the U.S.

ABC News has reached out to both the FDA and Health and Human Services for comment.

Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s independent committee who was planning on attending the meeting said, “Who canceled this meeting? Why did they cancel it? Will the vaccine makers turn to the World Health Organization to determine which strains to include in this year’s vaccine?”

“It’s very concerning with regard to the ability to produce enough vaccine in time for next year’s flu season,” Pavia added. “Hopefully, there will be workarounds that could be developed. But what they are — we don’t know yet.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Immigrant rights groups and immigration law experts are raising concerns after the Department of Homeland Security announced that it is creating an online database designed to keep track of migrants over the age of 14 who are living in the country illegally.

Migrants who are in the United States without authorization must register their information in a database that tracks them in an effort to “compel” self-deportation, the DHS said in a press release on Tuesday.
However, the registry had not been set up as of Wednesday. A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services webpage instructed migrants who are required to register to create an online account with the agency.

Vowing to “use every available tool to compel illegal aliens to self-deport,” a DHS statement said people who fail to register and submit fingerprints could face fines and imprisonment.

“President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [of Homeland Security Kristi] Noem have a clear message for those in our country illegally: leave now. If you leave now, you may have the opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American dream,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday. “The Trump administration will enforce all our immigration laws—we will not pick and choose which laws we will enforce. We must know who is in our country for the safety and security of our homeland and all Americans.”

The DHS said it’s invoking a decades-old section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that requires registration from migrants over the age of 14 who are in the United States, who have not been fingerprinted or registered, and who have been in the country for more than 30 days.

“Historically, we know that we have to sit up and pay attention anytime a government says it’s going to set up a registry on the basis of national origin or race or religion or any other immutable characteristic, because dramatic losses of civil liberties and civil rights are sure to follow and potentially worse,” said Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center.

Following the 9/11 attack, President George W. Bush’s administration set up a system known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, which required registration from certain noncitizens — mostly from Muslim-majority countries and North Korea.

“Like the registry system that Trump is envisioning here, it was set up under a guise of national security or public safety concerns that, in the end, only served to eviscerate civil rights for the communities that were targeted and to separate communities,” Altman said. “There were about 83,000 people who were forced to register through NSEERS and many thousands of them were put in deportation proceedings.”

Parents and legal guardians of undocumented immigrants who are under 14 years of age and have not previously registered would also have to sign up to the database.

Under the Trump administration’s registry, immigrants over the age of 18 would be issued proof that they’ve registered that they “must carry and keep in their possession at all times,” the USCIS website said.

That requirement is stoking fears that this would be a new “show me your papers” type of law, said Michelle Lapointe, legal director for the American Immigration Council.

“There are some real civil liberties issues here,” Lapointe told ABC News. “It will end up ensnaring people based on law enforcement’s perceptions of their race and assumptions that law enforcement makes about people’s immigration status based on that.”

“So, there’s real opportunity for abuse, because this is essentially setting up a system where people have to produce their papers — show their papers to law enforcement to prove their status,” she continued.

Lapointe said that the DHS is also threatening jail time for failing to register, even though being in the country without authorization isn’t always punishable by imprisonment.

“An alien’s failure to register is a crime that could result in a fine, imprisonment, or both,” Tuesday’s press release said.

In many cases, being in the country without authorization is a civil offense and would typically be punishable by removal instead of incarceration.

As the Trump administration continues to ramp up its deportation efforts, Greg Chen, senior director of Government Relations for American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that few people may choose to register.

“I don’t think many people are going to come forward and register, because they’re going to be too afraid that if they register, they’re simply going to be deported rapidly, given the aggressive mass deportation plan that administration is setting up,” Chen said.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily delayed a court-mandated deadline requiring the Trump administration to pay nearly $2 billion to contracted aid organizations for work they already completed.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in an order Wednesday night, stayed a lower court order that the administration pay out $1.9 billion by midnight. In his order, Roberts asked the aid groups that sued the Trump administration to provide a response by noon Friday after which the court will decide its next steps.

Roberts’ order came after the Trump administration sought emergency intervention by the high court after a panel of federal appeals court judges denied the administration’s earlier request to push the deadline.

Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris asked the justices to impose an administrative stay — freezing the status quo for a short time.

“What the government cannot do is pay arbitrarily determined demands on an arbitrary timeline of the district court’s choosing or according to extra-contractual rules that the court has devised,” Harris wrote in the emergency request, saying the deadline created “an untenable payment plan” at odds with the president’s obligations.

“The order appears to contemplate the immediate outlay of nearly $2 billion. And the government has no sure mechanism to recover wrongfully disbursed funds delivered to entities that claim to be near insolvency,” Harris said in the request.

In proceedings earlier Wednesday denying a request to stay his deadline, U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali, a Biden-era appointee, balked at the government’s insistence that it couldn’t meet the midnight payout deadline and criticized the Trump administration for waiting until Tuesday to raise the argument that they lack the ability to restart the funding.

“This is not something that Defendants have previously raised in this Court, whether at the hearing or any time before filing their notice of appeal and seeking a stay pending appeal. That is so even though Plaintiffs’ motion to enforce explicitly proposed compliance on this time frame,” Ali wrote.

On Tuesday, Ali had ordered the Trump administration to dole out delayed payments that could total nearly $2 billion, according to a USAID official, to multiple nonprofit groups, determining the Trump administration violated the terms of a temporary restraining order issued two weeks ago regarding freezing foreign aid.

A top official with the United States Agency for International Development claimed that complying with Tuesday’s court order would require paying foreign aid groups nearly $2 billion, arguing the payments “cannot be accomplished” in the timeframe set by the court.

Lawyers with the Department of Justice asked Ali in a late-night filing on Tuesday to issue a stay of his order that requires the Trump administration to pay by Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. any outstanding debts to foreign aid groups for work completed prior to Feb. 13. The Trump administration initially tried to freeze the payments via an executive order before Judge Ali ordered the payments to resume two weeks ago.

DOJ lawyers argued that fulfilling the payments is not only technically impossible but would also prevent the Trump administration from ensuring the payments are “legitimate.”

“The order apparently requires the Government to expend taxpayer dollars without regard to any processes for ensuring that the expenses are legitimate—even though Executive Branch leadership harbors concerns about the possibility of waste and fraud and is in the process of developing revised payment processing systems to address those concerns,” DOJ attorney Indraneel Sur wrote in a late-night filing.

According to Peter Marocco, the deputy administrator of USAID and director of foreign assistance at the State Department, complying with the court order would require dispersing $1.5 billion between 2,000 payment requests at USAID and an additional $400 million in payments at the State Department.

Earlier this week, Judge Ali excoriated Trump administration attorneys during a lengthy hearing over its failure to pay the groups for work they conducted prior to President Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order, which froze all foreign aid for 90 days. Ali also signed an order to enforce a temporary restraining order he signed on Feb. 13, ruling the groups must be paid by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.

“Plaintiffs submitted evidence that defendants have not lifted the suspension or freeze of funds as the [temporary restraining order] required. Defendants have not rebutted that evidence, and when asked today, defendants were not able to provide any specific examples of unfreezing funds pursuant to the Court’s TRO,” Judge Ali said after a two-hour hearing today.

Lawyers with the Department of Justice acknowledged that the Trump administration ignored the temporary restraining order, which prohibited them from freezing foreign aid funds since the order was issued. Instead, they argued that they should not be required to pay back the money because of “sovereign immunity.”

During an extended exchange with Ali, a DOJ lawyer struggled to answer basic questions about the Trump administration’s compliance with the temporary restraining order, which prevented the administration from freezing funds.

“I’m not sure why I can’t get a straight answer from you on this. Are you aware of an unfreezing of the disbursement of funds for those contracts and agreements that were frozen before February 13?” Ali asked. “Are you aware of steps taken to actually release those funds?”

“I’m not in a position to answer that,” DOJ attorney Indraneel Sur said.

“We’re 12 days in and you’re here representing the government…and you can’t answer me whether any funds that you’ve kind of acknowledged or covered by the court’s order have been unfrozen?” Judge Ali responded.

“All I can do, really, is say that the preparations are underway for the joint status report on compliance,” Sur said.

At one portion of the lengthy court hearing, Sur attempted to offer a legal justification for the Trump administration’s noncompliance, prompting a stern response from the judge about his order, the terms of which he said were “clear as day.”

“The purpose of this hearing is to understand and to hear arguments on the motion to enforce TRO. It is not an opportunity to re-litigate the TRO,” Ali said.

A lawyer representing the nonprofits who brought the case argued that the lack of a response from the Trump administration amounts to defiance of the court order.

“What the court’s colloquy with the government has revealed is that the government has done nothing to make the flow of payments happen,” he said. “As far as we are aware, there’s been zero directives from the agency with respect to the unfreezing of funds.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A Tajik national living in Brooklyn was arrested Wednesday on charges he conspired to support the Islamic State and its offshoot in Central Asia, ISIS-K, by providing tens of thousands of dollars to ISIS followers in Turkey and Syria.

Mansuri Manuchekhri is also charged with possessing a firearm while unlawfully in the United States and immigration fraud. The FBI said he entered the United States in June 2016 on a nonimmigrant tourist visa and remained after his visa expired in December 2016

According to the criminal complaint, Manuchekhri facilitated $70,000 in payments to ISIS-affiliated individuals in Turkey and Syria, including to an individual who was later arrested by Turkish authorities for his alleged involvement in a January 2024 terrorist attack on a church in Istanbul for which ISIS-K publicly claimed responsibility.

The complaint said the individual sent a photo of Syrian currency to Manuchekhri to confirm it had been received.

Manuchekhri also frequently trained on firearms and sent videos of himself firing assault rifles to an ISIS affiliate in Turkey, on one occasion with the message, “Thank God, I am ready, brother,” and on another occasion with the message, “Praise be upon God. . . . Brother, I go for training at least once or twice a week,” the complaint said.

A close relative called the New York State Terrorism Tips Hotline to express concern Manuchekhri might commit acts of violence, the FBI said.

In an arraignment in federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy ordered Manuchekhri held pending trial.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A woman in Colorado has been arrested after police caught her with explosives at a Tesla dealership, police said.

The 40-year-old suspect, Lucy Grace Nelson, was arrested on Monday after the Loveland Police Department launched an “extensive investigation” on Jan. 29 following a series of vandalizations with incendiary devices at the Tesla Dealership in Loveland, Colorado, according to a statement from the police released on Wednesday.

“On Monday evening, Nelson returned to Loveland Tesla while in possession of additional incendiary devices, along with materials attributed to vandalism,” the Loveland Police Department said. “Detectives apprehended Nelson prior to further damage occurring.”

Nelson was immediately arrested and booked into the Larimer County Jail after being charged with explosives or incendiary devices use during felony, criminal mischief and criminal attempt to commit a Class 3 felony, authorities said.

She was issued with a $100,000 cash surety bond following the charges.

“The Loveland Police Department continues to work closely with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Denver Field Division, with Federal charges likely to follow,” police said.

The investigation is currently open and ongoing.

 

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — The Trump administration has instructed New York City to end its congestion pricing program, the first of its kind in the nation, by March 21 in a newly released letter.

The Federal Highway Administration said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority must stop collecting tolls by that date to allow for an “orderly cessation.”

The letter is dated Feb. 20, a day after the U.S. Department of Transportation said it pulled federal approval of the plan following a review requested by President Donald Trump.

New York officials have said they will not turn off the tolls without a court order.

“We have said that you may have asked for orderly cessation, which was the phrase that came in the letter to us. I will propose something in the alternative — orderly resistance,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said during remarks before the MTA board on Wednesday.

The MTA said it is challenging the Trump administration’s reversal in federal court, seeking a declaratory judgment that the DOT’s move is not proper.

The congestion pricing plan, which launched on Jan. 5, charges passenger vehicles $9 to access Manhattan below 60th Street during peak hours as part of an effort to ease congestion and raise funds for the city’s public transit system. During peak hours, small trucks and charter buses are charged $14.40 and large trucks and tour buses pay $21.60.

Hochul called the program’s early success “genuine” and “extraordinary” in her remarks to the MTA board.

The toll generated nearly $50 million in revenue in its first month, the MTA said this week.

From Jan. 5 to Jan. 31, tolls from the congestion pricing program generated $48.66 million, with the net revenue for that period $37.5 million when taking into account expenses to run the program, the MTA said.

The program is on track to generate $500 million in net revenue by the end of this year, as initially projected, the MTA said.

Congestion has also “dropped dramatically” since the program went into effect, Hochul said last week.

ABC News’ Clara McMichael contributed to this report.

 

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — U.S. District Judge Amir Ali denied the Department of Justice’s request to push the midnight deadline by which the Trump administration needs to pay more than $1.9 billion in foreign aid.

The case is now in the hands of a panel of three appellate judges – each nominated to the bench by Democratic presidents – who will decide whether to issue an emergency stay of the deadline.

In his decision denying the request to stay his deadline, Judge Ali criticized the Trump administration for waiting until Tuesday to raise the argument that they lack the ability to restart the funding.

“This is not something that Defendants have previously raised in this Court, whether at the hearing or any time before filing their notice of appeal and seeking a stay pending appeal. That is so even though Plaintiffs’ motion to enforce explicitly proposed compliance on this time frame,” Ali wrote.

Ali ordered the Trump administration on Tuesday to dole out delayed payments that could total nearly $2 billion, according to a USAID official, to multiple nonprofit groups, determining the Trump administration violated the terms of a temporary restraining order issued two weeks ago regarding freezing foreign aid.

A top official with the United States Agency for International Development claims that complying with Tuesday’s court order would require paying foreign aid groups nearly $2 billion, arguing the payments “cannot be accomplished” in the timeframe set by the court.

Lawyers with the Department of Justice asked Ali in a late-night filing on Tuesday to issue a stay of his order that requires the Trump administration to pay by Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. any outstanding debts to foreign aid groups for work completed prior to Feb. 13. The Trump administration initially tried to freeze the payments via an executive order before Judge Ali ordered the payments to resume two weeks ago.

DOJ lawyers argued that fulfilling the payments is not only technically impossible but would also prevent the Trump administration from ensuring the payments are “legitimate.”

“The order apparently requires the Government to expend taxpayer dollars without regard to any processes for ensuring that the expenses are legitimate—even though Executive Branch leadership harbors concerns about the possibility of waste and fraud and is in the process of developing revised payment processing systems to address those concerns,” DOJ attorney Indraneel Sur wrote in a late-night filing.

According to Peter Marocco, the deputy administrator of USAID and director of foreign assistance at the State Department, complying with the court order would require dispersing $1.5 billion between 2,000 payment requests at USAID and an additional $400 million in payments at the State Department.

Judge Amir Ali, a Biden-era appointee, excoriated Trump administration attorneys during a lengthy hearing on Tuesday over its failure to pay the groups for work they conducted prior to President Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order, which froze all foreign aid for 90 days. Ali also signed an order to enforce a temporary restraining order he signed on Feb. 13, ruling the groups must be paid by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.

“Plaintiffs submitted evidence that defendants have not lifted the suspension or freeze of funds as the [temporary restraining order] required. Defendants have not rebutted that evidence, and when asked today, defendants were not able to provide any specific examples of unfreezing funds pursuant to the Court’s TRO,” Judge Ali said after a two-hour hearing today.

Lawyers with the Department of Justice acknowledged that the Trump administration ignored the temporary restraining order, which prohibited them from freezing foreign aid funds since the order was issued. Instead, they argued that they should not be required to pay back the money because of “sovereign immunity.”

During an extended exchange with Ali, a DOJ lawyer struggled to answer basic questions about the Trump administration’s compliance with the temporary restraining order, which prevented the administration from freezing funds.

“I’m not sure why I can’t get a straight answer from you on this. Are you aware of an unfreezing of the disbursement of funds for those contracts and agreements that were frozen before February 13?” Ali asked. “Are you aware of steps taken to actually release those funds?”

“I’m not in a position to answer that,” DOJ attorney Indraneel Sur said.

“We’re 12 days in and you’re here representing the government…and you can’t answer me whether any funds that you’ve kind of acknowledged or covered by the court’s order have been unfrozen?” Judge Ali responded.

“All I can do, really, is say that the preparations are underway for the joint status report on compliance,” Sur said.

At one portion of the lengthy court hearing, Sur attempted to offer a legal justification for the Trump administration’s noncompliance, prompting a stern response from the judge about his order, the terms of which he said were “clear as day.”

“The purpose of this hearing is to understand and to hear arguments on the motion to enforce TRO. It is not an opportunity to re-litigate the TRO,” Ali said.

The DOJ filed a notice of appeal Tuesday.

A lawyer representing the nonprofits who brought the case argued that the lack of a response from the Trump administration amounts to defiance of the court order.

“What the court’s colloquy with the government has revealed is that the government has done nothing to make the flow of payments happen,” he said. “As far as we are aware, there’s been zero directives from the agency with respect to the unfreezing of funds.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.