By MICHAEL PHILLIS and JENNIFER McDERMOTT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge Thursday cleared the way for a New York offshore wind project to resume construction, a victory for the developer who said a Trump administration order to pause it would likely kill the project in a matter of days.

Related Articles

Trump announces outlines of health care plan he wants Congress to consider

Press freedom advocates worry that raid on Washington Post journalist’s home will chill reporting

Final day to select ACA health plans arrives in most states, with no subsidy deal yet

Trump set to meet Venezuelan opposition leader after cozying up to Maduro’s successor

Democrats propose state laws to limit ICE after Minneapolis shooting of Renee Good

District Judge Carl J. Nichols, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled construction on the Empire Wind project could go forward while he considers the merits of the government’s order to suspend the project. He faulted the government for not responding to key points in Empire Wind’s court filings, including the contention that the administration violated proper procedure.

Norwegian company Equinor owns Empire Wind. It’s the second developer to prevail in court against the administration this week.

The Trump administration froze five big offshore wind projects on the East Coast days before Christmas, citing national security concerns. Trump has targeted offshore wind from his first days back in the White House, most recently calling wind farms “losers” that lose money, destroy the landscape and kill birds.

Developers and states sued seeking to block the order. Large, ocean-based wind farms are the linchpin of plans to shift to renewable energy in East Coast states that have limited land for onshore wind turbines or solar arrays.

On Monday, a judge ruled that the Danish energy company Orsted could resume its project to serve Rhode Island and Connecticut. Senior Judge Royce Lamberth said the government did not sufficiently explain the need for a complete stop to construction. That wind farm, called Revolution Wind, is nearly complete. It’s expected to meet roughly 20% of the electricity needs in Rhode Island, the smallest state, and about 5% of Connecticut’s electricity needs.

Orsted is also suing over the pause of its Sunrise Wind project for New York, with a hearing still to be set. Dominion Energy Virginia, which is developing Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, plans to ask a judge Friday to block the administration’s order so it can resume construction, too.

The fifth paused project is Vineyard Wind, under construction in Massachusetts. Owners Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners have not indicated publicly whether they plan to join the rest of the developers in challenging the administration.

Empire Wind is 60% complete and designed to power more than 500,000 homes. Equinor said the project was in jeopardy due to the limited availability of specialized vessels, as well as heavy financial losses.

During a hearing Wednesday, Judge Nichols said the government’s main security concern seemed to be over operation of the wind turbines, not construction, although the government pushed back on that contention.

In presenting the government’s case, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr. was skeptical of the perfect storm of horrible events that Empire Wind said would derail their entire project if construction didn’t resume. He disagreed with the contention that the government’s main concern was over operation.

“I don’t see how you can make this distinction,” Woodward said. He likened it to a nuclear project being built that presented a national security risk. The government would oppose it being built, and it turning on.

Molly Morris, Equinor’s senior vice president overseeing Empire Wind, said in an interview that the company wants to build this project and deliver a major, essential new source of power for New York.

McDermott reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental 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 DAVID BAUDER, AP Media Writer

If the byproduct of a raid on a Washington Post journalist’s home is to deter probing reporting of government action, the Trump administration could hardly have chosen a more compelling target.

Related Articles

Trump announces outlines of health care plan he wants Congress to consider

Judge hands offshore wind industry another victory against Trump in clearing way for NY project

Final day to select ACA health plans arrives in most states, with no subsidy deal yet

Trump set to meet Venezuelan opposition leader after cozying up to Maduro’s successor

Democrats propose state laws to limit ICE after Minneapolis shooting of Renee Good

Hannah Natanson, nicknamed the “federal government whisperer” at the Post for her reporting on President Donald Trump’s changes to the federal workforce, had a phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch seized in the Wednesday search of her Virginia home, the newspaper said.

A warrant for the raid said it was connected to an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials, said Matt Murray, the Post’s executive editor, in an email to his staff. The Post was told that Natanson and the newspaper are not targets of the investigation, he said.

In a meeting Thursday, Murray told staff members that “the best thing to do when people are trying to intimidate you is not be intimidated — and that’s what we did yesterday.”

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said Thursday it has asked the U.S. District Court in Virginia to unseal the affidavit justifying the search of Natanson’s home.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the search was done at the request of the Defense Department and that the journalist was “obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.”

“If the attorney general can describe the justification for searching a reporter’s home on social media, it is difficult to see what harm could result from unsealing the justification that the Justice Department offered to this court,” the Reporters Committee said in its application.

Government raids to homes of journalists highly unusual

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, has been working on press freedom issues for a decade and said a government raid on a journalist’s home is so unusual he couldn’t remember the last time it happened. He said it can’t help but have a chilling effect on journalism.

“I strongly suspect that the search is meant to deter not just that reporter but other reporters from pursuing stories that are reliant on government whistleblowers,” Jaffer said. “And it’s also meant to deter whistleblowers.”

In a first-person piece published by the Post on Christmas Eve, Natanson wrote about how she was inundated with tips when she posted her contact information last February on a forum where government employees were discussing the impact of Trump administration changes to the federal workforce.

She was contacted by 1,169 people on Signal, she wrote. The Post was notably aggressive last year in covering what was going on in federal agencies, and many came as a result of tips she received — and was still getting. “The stories came fast, the tips even faster,” she wrote.

Natanson acknowledged the work took a heavy toll, noting one disturbing note she received from a woman she was unable to contact. “One day, a woman wrote to me on Signal, asking me not to respond,” she wrote. “She lived alone, she messaged, and planned to die that weekend. Before she did, she wanted at least one person to understand: Trump had unraveled the government, and with it, her life.”

Natanson did not return messages from The Associated Press. Murray said that “this extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work.”

The action “signals a growing assault on independent reporting and undermines the First Amendment,” said Tim Richardson, journalism and disinformation program director at the advocacy group PEN America. Like Jaffer, he believes it is intended to intimidate.

Sean Spicer, Trump’s press secretary at the beginning of his first term, said the concerns are premature. If it turns out that Natanson did nothing wrong, then questions about whether the raid was an overreach are legitimate, said Spicer, host of the political news show “The Huddle” on streaming services.

“If Hannah did something wrong, then it should have a chilling effect,” he said.

A law passed in 1917 makes it illegal for journalists to possess classified information, Jaffer said. But there are still questions about whether that law conflicts with First Amendment protections for journalists. It was not enforced, for example, when The New York Times published a secret government report on U.S. involvement in Vietnam in 1971.

“It’s the government’s prerogative to pursue leakers of classified material,” the Post said in an editorial. “Yet journalists have First Amendment rights to gather and publish such secrets, and the Post also has a history of fighting for those freedoms.”

Not the first action taken against the press

The raid was made in context of a series of actions taken against the media during the Trump administration, including lawsuits against The New York Times and the BBC. Most legacy news organizations no longer report from stations at the Pentagon after they refused to sign on new rules restricting their reporting set by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Funding for public broadcasting has been choked off due to Trump’s belief that its news coverage leaned left.

Some news outlets have also taken steps to be more aligned with the administration, Jaffer said, citing CBS News since its corporate ownership changed last summer. The Washington Post has shifted its historically liberal opinion pages to the right under owner Jeff Bezos.

The Justice Department over the years has developed, and revised, internal guidelines governing how it will respond to news media leaks. In April, Bondi issued new guidelines saying prosecutors would again have the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make “unauthorized disclosures” to journalists.

The moves rescinded a policy from President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations.

“Leaking classified information puts America’s national security and the safety of our military heroes in serious jeopardy,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X. “President Trump has zero tolerance for it and will continue to aggressively crack down on these illegal acts moving forward.”

The warrant says the search was related to an investigation into a system engineer and information technology specialist for a government contractor in Maryland who authorities allege took home classified materials, the Post reported. The worker, Aurelio Perez-Lugones, is accused of printing classified and sensitive reports at work and some were found at his Maryland home, according to court papers.

Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

By ALI SWENSON

NEW YORK (AP) — Thursday was the final day to select an Affordable Care Act health insurance plan across much of the country, as the expiration of federal subsidies drives up health costs and lawmakers remain locked in a debate over how to address the issue.

Related Articles

To knock down health-system hurdles between you and HIV prevention, try these 6 things

Public mistrust linked to drop in deceased donor organ donations and kidney transplants

Trump administration slashes funding for substance abuse and mental health programs nationwide

Trump signs a law returning whole milk to school lunches

Trump administration restores federal funding for family planning after ACLU lawsuit

That’s when the open enrollment window ends in most states for plans that start in February. About 10 states that run their own marketplaces have later deadlines, or have extended them to the end of the month to give their residents more time.

The date is a crucial one for millions of small business owners, gig workers, farmers, ranchers and others who don’t get their health insurance from a job and therefore rely on marketplace plans. A record 24 million Americans purchased Affordable Care Act health plans last year.

But this year, their decisions over health coverage have been more difficult than usual as clarity over how much it will cost is hard to come by. And so far, enrollment is lagging behind last year’s numbers — with about 22.8 million Americans having signed up so far, according to federal data.

Last year, for months, it was unclear whether Congress would allow for the end-of-year expiration of COVID-era expanded subsidies that had offset costs for more than 90% of enrollees. Democrats forced a record-long government shutdown over the issue, but still couldn’t get a deal done. So the subsidies expired Jan. 1, leaving the average subsidized enrollee with more than double the monthly premium costs for 2026, according to an analysis from the health care nonprofit KFF.

Still, the question of whether Congress would resurrect the tax credits loomed over Washington. Several enrollees told The Associated Press they have either delayed signing up for coverage or signed up with a plan to cancel as they anxiously watch what’s happening on Capitol Hill.

Last week, the House passed a three-year extension of the subsidies after 17 Republicans joined with Democrats against the wishes of Republican leaders. But the Senate rejected a similar bill last year.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, has been leading a bipartisan group of 12 senators trying to devise a compromise and said this week that he expects to have a proposal by the end of the month. The contours of the senators’ bipartisan plan involves a two-year deal that would extend the enhanced subsidies while adding new limits on who can receive them. The proposal would also create the option, in the second year, of a new health savings account that President Donald Trump and Republicans prefer.

Under the deal being discussed, the ACA open enrollment period would be extended to March 1 of this year to allow people more time to figure out their coverage plans after the disruption.

Still, Republicans and Democrats say they have not completed the plan, and the two sides have yet to agree if there should be new limits on whether states can use separate funds for abortion coverage.

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro contributed from Washington.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Federal prosecutors charged 20 people on Thursday, including 15 former college basketball players, in what they called a betting scheme to rig NCAA and Chinese Basketball Association games.

Of the defendants, 15 played basketball for Division 1 NCAA schools as recently as the 2024-25 season.

The other five defendants were described by authorities as fixers.

They include two men who prosecutors say worked in the training and development of basketball players. Another was a trainer and former coach, one was a former NCAA player and two were described as gamblers, influencers and sports handicappers.

The charges, filed in federal court in Philadelphia, include wire fraud.

In the 70-page indictment, authorities say the fixers recruited the college basketball players with “bribe payments” usually ranging from $10,000 to $30,000 per game.

The indictment follows a series of NCAA investigations that led to at least 10 players receiving lifetime bans this year for bets that sometimes involved their own teams and their own performances. And the NCAA has said that at least 30 players have been investigated over gambling allegations.

More than 30 people were also charged in last year’s sprawling federal takedown of illegal gambling operations linked to professional basketball.

Related Articles

Grok blocked from undressing images in places where it’s illegal, X says

Verizon says hourslong outage that disrupted calling and data services has been resolved

Wall Street steadies as Big Tech bounces back and oil prices ease

Court ruling jeopardizes freedom for pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil

US seizes another sanctioned oil tanker it says has ties to Venezuela

Concerns about gambling and college sports have grown since 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on the practice, leading some states to legalize it to varying degrees. The NCAA does not allow athletes or staff to bet on college games, but it briefly allowed student-athletes to bet on professional sports last year before rescinding that decision in November.

More broadly, one betting scandal after another has rocked the sports world, where gambling revenue topped $11 billion for the first three-quarters of last year, according to the American Gaming Association. That’s up more than 13% from the prior year, the group said.