By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press

BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — Melania Trump on Wednesday celebrated an early Valentine’s Day with children and young adults being treated for rare and serious diseases, joining them in holiday-themed craft-making and chatting about their lives, health and other interests.

After they finished making flower bouquets and lanterns out of construction paper and other materials, they stepped over to a festively decorated dessert bar laid out with mini cupcakes and jars of mini chocolates and other candies.

The first lady then made a somewhat sour confession days before a holiday famous for heart-shaped boxes filled with chocolates.

“I don’t eat much sweets,” she said. “Sugar is not that healthy for us.”

It was her first visit of the second Trump administration to The Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health, and her fourth as first lady. She visited three times in the first term.

One of the young men told the first lady he did not know how to address her and wondered whether “your highness” was an option.

Her answer?

“Melania,” she said with a smile.

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The Children’s Inn is a nonprofit that provides support to children and young adults receiving treatment through clinical trials for rare and serious diseases.

Under President Donald Trump, the NIH has cut billions of dollars in research projects, bypassing the usual scientific funding process. The cuts included clinical trials testing treatments for cancer, brain diseases and other health problems that a recent report said impacted over 74,000 people enrolled in the experiments.

Congress recently approved a $47 billion budget for NIH this year, giving it a small raise and rejecting the Trump administration’s call for a nearly 40% cut to the agency’s funding.

AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of several New Yorkers who had their EBT accounts drained through skimming—a type of electronic fraud in which card data is stolen.

A storefront on East Gun Hill Road in the Bronx, Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

One morning in January, Crystal Carrero went to her usual grocery store in Crown Heights. But when she went to pay, the cashier told her there was no money on her Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card.

“It was impossible,” she remembered saying, because she hadn’t used any of the funds, and she had recently checked the balance: $923, her monthly benefits from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps low-income households afford groceries.

Carrero, 38, was still stunned when she got back to her apartment and checked her account. In six different transactions early in the morning, her SNAP benefits were drained. The money she used to feed her two kids and support her granddaughter was gone.

Her EBT card had been “skimmed”—a type of electronic fraud in which card data is stolen. Thousands of New Yorkers have been victims of it in recent years, with no recourse to recover what was lost. The federal government no longer refunds stolen benefits after the legislation that authorized those reimbursements ended in 2024.

Despite an uptick in EBT card skimming across the country in recent years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees SNAP regulations, only reimburses physical card thefts, not skimming fraud. In 2023, a group of New Yorkers who had their SNAP benefits stolen through electronic skimming filed a class action lawsuit against the USDA.

A federal judge dismissed the case in August, but the two organizations representing New Yorkers affected by the EBT card data theft, Legal Aid Society and Freshfields—a global law firm—filed an appeal on Monday.

At the heart of the case is whether rules that were created when paper SNAP coupons were still being issued apply to new forms of electronic benefit theft, and how the protections stipulated by Congress when it made the transition from paper to cards apply in this new era. Under the paper regime, USDA would only replace benefits that were stolen in the mail, before they were received.

“But if you had the coupons in your pocket and you were on your way to the store and they got stolen, those would not be replaced,” explained Ed Josephson, a supervising attorney at Legal Aid. “The theory was that at least you know if they’re in your pocket, you have some control over your coupons, and you can take care with them, but you obviously have no control when they’re in the mail.”

Today, skimming lets scammers access a compromised account remotely, even as soon as the account receives funds. The lawsuit argues that this modern scam is similar to mail theft, because the benefits are stored in a government account and are stolen before the recipient can exercise control over them.

The plaintiffs also say that the USDA’s EBT regulation doesn’t follow the law’s “similar rights” requirement from the paper era. When Congress changed SNAP from paper coupons to EBT cards decades ago, it said recipients should maintain the same rights and that the rules for getting money back should be “similar” to the rules for paper coupons.

“So what we’re arguing is that what Congress intended was that no group of SNAP recipients would lose out as a result of the transition from paper to EBT,” Josephson said. “And what USDA has done is they’ve excluded this huge category of people, which is the people who lose benefits before they have them, before they receive them.”

The USDA didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Josephson also said that the agency’s current refund policy is too narrow and ignores skimming altogether. One of the goals of the lawsuit, he explained, is for USDA to update or put out a new rule that properly accounts for skimming-type losses.

Congress previously passed a bill that allowed for some reimbursement for skimming losses occurring between Oct. 1, 2022, and December 2024. But it’s since expired.

Josephson said it will take several more months for their case to play out. In the meantime, many people continue to fall victim to skimming, and must rely on food pantries to make ends meet to make up the difference, including Carrero.

In the absence of federal changes, some states have stepped in to implement the use of modern chip cards, which are more secure. Last month, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the long-awaited upgrade of New York’s EBT cards to a chip-based technology, something advocates have long pressed for.

The state’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA), which administers SNAP in New York, put out a request for proposals last year for a new EBT card vendor to carry out the switch. The agency did not provide a timeline or estimated costs for the change, but said the governor wants to implement it as quickly as possible, with more information expected soon.

“As federally funded nutrition programs like SNAP are under attack in Washington, Governor Hochul has been laser-focused on protecting the dollars that New Yorkers depend on and ensuring they can access resources necessary to uplift them and their families,” an OTDA spokesperson said in a statement.

OTDA urges EBT users to be aware of skimming fraud when using their cards, change PINs often, check store terminals for loose keypads or card readers, freeze the card when it’s not in use and block out-of-state transactions through the app (available in Apple App Store and Google Play Store) or the ebtEDGE website.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Daniel@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post Legal Groups Appeal in Push for Feds to Replace Stolen SNAP Benefits appeared first on City Limits.

By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Activists planned protests at more than two dozen Target stores around the United States on Wednesday to pressure the discount retailer into taking a public stand against the five-week-old immigration crackdown in its home state of Minnesota.

ICE Out Minnesota, a coalition of community groups, religious leaders, labor unions and other critics of the federal operation, called for sit-ins and other demonstrations to continue at Target locations for a full week. Target’s headquarters are located in Minneapolis, where federal officers last month killed two residents who had participated in anti-ICE protests, and its name adorns the city’s major league baseball stadium and an arena where its basketball teams plays.

“They claim to be part of the community, but they are not standing up to ICE,” said Elan Axelbank, a member of the Minnesota chapter of Socialist Alternative, which describes itself as a revolutionary political group. He organized a Wednesday protest outside a Target store in Minneapolis’ Dinkytown commercial district.

Demonstrations also were scheduled in St. Paul, Minnesota, Boston, Chicago, Honolulu, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, North Carolina, San Diego, Seattle and other cities, as well as in suburban areas of Minnesota, California and Massachusetts. Target declined Wednesday to comment on the protests.

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Target first became a bulls-eye for critics of the Trump administration’s surge in immigration enforcement activity after a widely-circulated video showed federal agents detaining two Target employees in a store in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield last month. Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos Minnesota, an immigrant-led social justice advocacy organization that is part of the CE Out Minnesota coalition, said his group is focusing its protests on the Richfield store.

One of the demands of Wednesday’s protests is for Target to deny federal agents entry to stores unless they have judicial warrants authorizing arrests.

Some lawyers have argued that anyone, including U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customers Enforcement agents without signed warrants, can enter public areas of a business as they wish. Public areas include restaurant dining sections, open parking lots, office lobbies and shopping aisles, but not back offices, closed-off kitchens or other areas of a business that are generally off-limits to the public and where privacy would be reasonably expected, those lawyers say.

Target has not commented publicly on the detention of the store employees. CEO Michael Fiddelke, who became Target’s chief executive on Feb. 2, sent a video message to the company’s 400,000 workers two days after a Border Patrol agent and a Customs and Border Protection officer shot and killed Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti on Jan. 24.

Fiddelke said the “violence and loss of life in our community is incredibly painful,” but he did not mention the immigration crackdown or the fatal shootings of Pretti, an ICU nurse at a medical center for U.S. veterans in Minneapolis, and Renee Good, a mother of three fired on in her car by an ICE agent.

Fiddelke was one of 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies who, in the wake of Pretti’s death, signed an open letter “calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.”

The protests over its alleged failure to oppose the immigration crackdown in Minnesota come a year after Target faced protests and boycotts over the company’s decision to roll back its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. At the time, critics said the decision marked a betrayal of Target’s philanthropic commitment to fighting racial disparities and promoting progressive values in liberal Minneapolis and beyond.

The retail chain also is struggling with a persistent sales malaise. Critics have complained of disheveled stores that are missing the budget-priced flair that long ago earned the retailer the nickname “Tarzhay.”

While Wednesday’s protests targeted a tiny fraction of the company’s nearly 2,000 stores, the negative attention serves as another distraction from Target’s business, according to Neil Saunders, managing director of the retail division of market research firm GlobalData.

“The agenda has been hijacked by this,” Saunders said. “And it is a bit of a distraction for Target that they’d rather not have.”

In recent days, a national coalition of Mennonite congregations organized roughly a dozen demonstrations inside and outside of Target stores across the country, singing and urging Target to publicly call Congress to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement among other demands.

A spokesperson for Mennonite Action said the coalition was not formally connected to Ice Out but following the lead of organizers in Minneapolis.

The Rev. Joanna Lawrence Shenk, associate pastor at First Mennonite Church of San Francisco, said the group did not plan any actions on Wednesday but was mapping out weekend singalong events at Targets in a handful of towns and cities, including Pittsburgh and Harrisonburg, Virginia. She estimated that by the end of the weekend more than 1,000 congregation members will have participated.

Shenk noted that the Mennonites sing “This Little Light of Mine” and other gospel songs and hymns.

“The singing was an expression of our love for immigrant neighbors who are at risk right now and who are also a part of our congregation,” she said. “For us, it’s not just standing in solidarity with others but it’s also protecting people who are vulnerable.”

By DAVE COLLINS

Yale University says a prominent computer science professor will not teach classes while it reviews his conduct, after newly released documents show he sent Jeffrey Epstein an email describing an undergraduate as a good-looking blonde while recommending her for a job.

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Messages between David Gelernter — who made headlines in 1993 when he was wounded by a mail explosive sent by “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski — and the late, disgraced financier were among the trove of Epstein-related documents released by the U.S. Justice Department in late January. The documents show Gelernter and Epstein corresponding on a variety of topics including business and art.

In an email to Epstein in October 2011 — several years after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl — Gelernter wrote that he had an “editoress” in mind for a job — a Yale senior whom he described as a “v small good-looking blonde.”

Gelernter defended that message in an email last week to Jeffrey Brock, dean of Yale’s School of Engineering & Applied Science, according to the Yale Daily News, which reported that Gelernter also forwarded the email to the student newspaper.

He noted that Epstein was “obsessed with girls” — “like every other unmarried billionaire in Manhattan; in fact, like every other heterosex male” — and he was keeping “the potential boss’s habits in mind.”

“So long as I said nothing that dishonored her in any conceivable way, I’d have told him more or less what he wanted,” Gelernter wrote to Brock, the paper reported. “She was smart, charming & gorgeous. Ought I to have suppressed that info? Never!”

He added: “I’m very glad I wrote the note.”

Students in Gelernter’s computer science class were notified that he would not be teaching on Tuesday.

“The university does not condone the action taken by the professor or his described manner of providing recommendations for his students,” Yale said in a statement. “The professor’s conduct is under review. Until the review is completed, the professor will not teach his class.”

Gelernter, 70, did not immediately respond to emails and a message left at a phone listing for him in public records. A message to Brock was returned by Yale’s Office of Public Affairs & Communications, which provided the statement by the university and a letter to students by Brock. Yale declined to provide a copy of Gelernter’s email to Brock.

Gelernter joins a list of people in the U.S. and Europe, including prominent politicians, facing scrutiny because of the Epstein files.

In a message to students on Tuesday, Gelernter again defended his emails to Epstein and said they were the reason he was suspended from teaching the class. The message, sent on Yale’s course management system, was first reported by Hearst Connecticut Media Group.

Professor David Gelernter sits in his office at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., on Aug. 28, 1997. (Brad Clift/Hartford Courant via AP)

In the message, Gelernter discussed his 2011 email to Epstein about the undergraduate student, saying he was recommending the student for a job with Epstein’s private bank and the student wanted the recommendation, Hearst Connecticut Media Group reported. He said he and the student did not know at the time that Epstein was a convicted sex offender.

“The university’s Smoking Gun is a personal, private email, dug out of the dump of Epstein files,” Gelernter wrote, according to Hearst. “(If someone handed you a stack of other people’s private correspondence, would you dive in and read them? Of course not. Gentlemen and ladies don’t read each other’s mail. (Courtesy 101.)”

In 2008 and 2009, Epstein served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. He died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019, while awaiting trial in New York on U.S. federal charges accusing him of sexually abusing dozens of girls.

On the Yale faculty since 1982, Gelernter is known for his work in parallel computation — the use of multiple computer processes to solve complex problems — and for helping develop the Linda computer programing system, beginning when he was a doctoral candidate in the late 1970s. His 1991 book “Mirror Worlds” foreshadowed the World Wide Web and inspired the Java programming language, according to his biography on the Yale website.

On June 24, 1993, he suffered extensive wounds to his abdomen, chest, face and hands when he opened a package that exploded in his Yale office. Authorities later determined the package was mailed by Kaczynski, who ran a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others.