By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge in Florida is pushing for a resolution in a lawsuit over whether detainees at an immigration center in the Florida Everglades are getting adequate access to attorneys.

Related Articles

Justice Department says full grand jury in Comey case didn’t review copy of final indictment

What to know about expanded work requirements about to kick in for SNAP

US stocks climb ahead of a crucial couple of tests for Wall Street

Ford recalls more than 200,000 Bronco and Bronco Sports for instrument panel failure

Jurors hear closing arguments in trial of Ohio officer charged in the killing of Ta’Kiya Young

U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell last Friday ordered a two-day conference to be held next month in her Fort Myers courtroom, with attorneys present who have the authority to settle. The judge asked for an update at a hearing next Monday.

“The court will not entertain excuses regarding leaving early for flights or other meetings,” the judge wrote about next month’s conference.

The lawsuit filed by detainees against the federal and state governments over legal access is one of three federal cases challenging practices at the immigration detention center that was built this summer at a remote airstrip in the Florida Everglades by the administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

In a separate environmental lawsuit, a federal appellate court panel in September allowed the center to continue operating by putting on hold a lower court’s preliminary injunction ordering the facility to wind down by the end of October. The appeal was put on hold during the government shutdown but resumed last week.

A third lawsuit claims immigration is a federal issue and Florida agencies and private contractors hired by the state have no authority to operate the facility.

President Donald Trump toured the facility in July and suggested it could be a model for future lockups nationwide as his administration pushes to expand the infrastructure needed to increase deportations. While the facility was built and operated by the state and its private contractors, federal officials have approved reimbursing Florida for $608 million.

In the legal access case, attorneys representing detainees at the Everglades facility are seeking a preliminary injunction that will make it easier for their clients to meet and communicate with their individual attorneys.

They claim that detainees’ attorneys must make an appointment to visit three days in advance, unlike at other detention facilities where the lawyers can just show up during visiting hours; that detainees often are transferred to other facilities after their attorneys have made an appointment to see them; and that scheduling delays have been so lengthy that detainees are unable to meet with attorneys before key deadlines.

Florida officials said in a motion to dismiss that the case is now moot since the concerns initially raised by the detainees and their attorneys have been addressed. Any delays were due to trying to construct a facility for thousands of detainees in a remote area with little infrastructure, they said.

“In other words, there is no longer a live controversy,” Florida officials said in their court filing.

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social.

By COLLIN BINKLEY and ANNIE MA, AP Education Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Education Department is breaking off several of its main offices and giving their responsibilities to other federal agencies, an early look at how President Donald Trump could fulfill his campaign pledge to close the department entirely.

Related Articles

Education Department offloads some work to other agencies as Trump presses for its closure

Foreign enrollment at US colleges holds steady, for now, despite Trump’s visa crackdown

Tribal college leaders are uneasy about US financial commitments despite a funding increase

Judge indefinitely bars Trump from fining University of California over alleged discrimination

Critics warn Florida’s new teaching standards rehabilitate aspects of the anti-communist Red Scare

Offices that serve the nation’s schools and colleges would go to departments ranging from Labor to Interior. Education officials say the moves won’t affect the money Congress gives states, schools and colleges. They didn’t say whether current department staff would keep their jobs.

Since he took office, Trump has called for the dismantling of the Education Department, saying it has been overrun by liberal thinking. Agency leaders have been making plans to parcel out its operations to other departments, and in July the Supreme Court upheld mass layoffs that halved the department’s staff.

In recent days, Education Secretary Linda McMahon has started a public campaign for the end of her department, making the case on social media that Education’s grantmaking and question-answering functions could be better handled by states and other federal agencies.

While the necessity of the department is up for debate, it’s also unclear how well-equipped other state and federal departments are to take over the Education Department’s responsibilities. The department sends billions of dollars to schools and colleges and helps decipher complex federal laws. It will be a test for the administration: Can the department be shut down smoothly, or will rural and low-income kids and students with disabilities — the populations that most rely on federal education support — be impacted?

Here’s what the Education Department currently handles, where its responsibilities will go to other federal agencies and what will stay the same.

Money for schools and colleges

While American schools are funded primarily by state and local money, the Education Department serves as a conduit for billions of dollars of federal aid going to state and local education agencies.

Education officials say that money will continue to be awarded as allocated by Congress, but much of it will flow from another federal agency. Most notably, the Department of Labor will oversee some of the largest federal funding streams for schools and colleges, including Title I money for schools serving low-income communities. Adult education programs already were moved to Labor in June.

Another deal will put Health and Human Services in charge of a grant program for parents who are attending college. The State Department will take on money to fund foreign language programs. Interior will oversee programs supporting Native American education.

Federal student loans

One of the department’s major roles is management of the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio. Student aid so far will be largely unaffected, although McMahon and Trump have suggested it could be better handled by a different federal department.

Pell Grants and federal loans will continue to be disbursed, and student loan borrowers must continue making payments on their debts.

The website for the Free Application for Student Aid, or FAFSA, remains open — a key piece of how colleges and universities provide aid packages to incoming students. The Education Department will continue to handle support for people navigating the complicated form.

The Education Department also will continue to oversee another major part of higher education: accreditation, which allows colleges to accept students’ federal financial aid.

Students with disabilities

For now, the department will continue to distribute money to schools to provide educational support for students with disabilities, though McMahon has suggested this function could move to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Education Department also oversees investigations into schools and universities alleged to have violated disability rights law, along with other civil rights violations such as discrimination involving sex, race and shared ancestry.

Those responsibilities will remain with the department for now, although McMahon has suggested sending them to the Department of Justice.

In any case, since the mass layoffs in March, the Office for Civil Rights has operated under a significantly reduced footprint. The department’s civil rights branch lost about half of its staff. The cuts raised questions about whether the office would be able to shrink a backlog of complaints from students who allege they have experienced discrimination on the basis of race, sex or disability status.

The department’s own data has shown a decline in resolving civil rights cases, while new complaints from families have increased.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By ERIC TUCKER and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — The Justice Department acknowledged in court Wednesday the grand jury that charged former FBI Director James Comey was not presented with a copy of the final indictment, a concession that may further imperil a prosecution already subject to multiple challenges and demands for its dismissal.

Related Articles

Judge pushes for resolution in lawsuit over legal access at Everglades detention center

What to know about expanded work requirements about to kick in for SNAP

US stocks climb ahead of a crucial couple of tests for Wall Street

Ford recalls more than 200,000 Bronco and Bronco Sports for instrument panel failure

Jurors hear closing arguments in trial of Ohio officer charged in the killing of Ta’Kiya Young

The revelation is the latest indication of a troubled presentation of the case to the grand jury by an inexperienced and hastily appointed U.S. attorney named to the job just days earlier by President Donald Trump.

Concerns about the process surfaced earlier in the week when a different judge in the case said there was no record in the transcript he had reviewed of the grand jury reviewing the indictment that was actually presented against Comey.

Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney in charge of the case, said under questioning that only the foreperson of the grand jury and a second grand juror were present for the returning of the indictment.

Comey has pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of making a false statement and obstructing Congress and has denied any wrongdoing.

The Justice Department has denied that the prosecution was vindictive or selective and insists that the allegations support the indictment.

Trump fired Comey as FBI director in May 2017 as Comey was overseeing an FBI investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. The two have been publicly at odds ever since, with Trump deriding Comey as “a weak and untruthful slime ball” and calling for his prosecution.

By MELISSA GOLDIN, Associated Press

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that military strikes on suspected drug boats his administration has been carrying out for more than two months in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean are saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S.

He most recently cited these numbers on Monday while answering questions from reporters after announcing a new initiative that will allow foreigners traveling to the U.S. for the World Cup next year to get interviews for visas more quickly.

But experts say that this is a grossly simplistic interpretation of the situation.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

TRUMP: “Every boat we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives.”

THE FACTS: The numbers to support Trump’s claim don’t add up, and sometimes don’t exist. For example, people in the U.S. who die from drug overdoses each year are far fewer than the amount Trump suggests have been saved by the boat strikes his administration has carried out since September.

“The statement that each of the administration’s strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats saves 25,000 lives is absurd,” said Carl Latkin, a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University who studies substance use. “The evidence is similar to that of the moon being made of blue cheese. If you look carefully, you will see a resemblance. However, a close analysis of this claim suggests that it lacks all credibility.”

According to the latest preliminary data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, there were about 97,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. during the 12-month period that ended June 30. That’s down 14% from the estimated 113,000 for the previous 12-month period.

Final CDC data reports 53,336 overdose deaths in 2024 and 75,118 in 2023.

The U.S. military has attacked 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since strikes began on Sept. 2, most recently on Nov. 15. Using Trump’s numbers, that would mean the strikes have prevented 525,000 fatal drug overdoses in the U.S — far more than the number of overdose deaths that have occurred in recent two-month periods. This essentially implies that the administration is saving more lives than would have ever been lost.

Lori Ann Post, the director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern University, explained that “there’s no empirically sound way to say a single strike ‘saves 25,000 lives,’” even if the statement is interpreted more broadly to mean preventing substance use disorders and resulting ripple effects. Among the issues she pointed to are a lack of verifiable cargo data or published models linking such boat strikes to changes in drug use, as well as markets that will adapt to isolated supply losses.

“The math and the data are not there,” said Post, who studies drug overdose deaths and economic drivers of the opioid crisis.

Latkin added that claiming one lethal dose of a drug automatically translates to one death is a “very simple way of looking at it,” as different people have different tolerances.

Trump has justified the attacks by saying the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and claiming the boats are operated by foreign terror organizations that are flooding America’s cities with drugs. Neither Trump nor his administration have publicly confirmed the amount of drugs allegedly destroyed in the strikes.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly reiterated Trump’s numbers when asked for evidence to support his claims about how many lives are being saved. She wrote in an email: “President Trump is right — any boat bringing deadly poison to our shores has the potential to kill 25,000 Americans or more. The President is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding in to our country and to bring those responsible for justice.”

Latkin noted that this estimate also ignores the reality that even if the Trump administration manages to shut off one source of illegal drugs with its boat strikes, there will still be others. He offered a comparison to the fast food industry, explaining that getting rid of a couple of restaurants would not greatly improve Americans’ health since there are so many other sources where consumers could get the same or similar products.

“It’s incredibly naive to think that reducing the supply in one place will eradicate the problem because it’s such a massive business,” he said.

Related Articles

The Education Department is dismantling. Here’s what that means

Justice Department says full grand jury in Comey case didn’t review copy of final indictment

What to know about expanded work requirements about to kick in for SNAP

U.S. trade deficit drops 24% in August as Trump’s tariffs reduce imports

New sanctions target Russian web hosting service over suspected ransomware operations

Opioids accounted for 73.4% of drug overdose deaths in 2024, according to the CDC. That includes 65.1% from illegally made fentanyl. But while the boat strikes have targeted vessels largely in the Caribbean Sea, fentanyl is typically trafficked to the U.S. overland from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.

Overdose death rates began steadily climbing in the 1990s because of opioid painkillers, followed by waves of deaths led by other opioids like heroin and — more recently — illicit fentanyl. New numbers from the CDC show that a decline that began in 2023 has continued. Experts aren’t certain about the reasons for the decline, but they cite a combination of possible factors. Among them are the end of the COVID-19 pandemic; years of efforts to increase the availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone and addiction treatments; and changes to the drugs themselves.

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck