By MORIAH BALINGIT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorneys general in five Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit Thursday against President Donald Trump’s administration after it said it would freeze money for several public benefit programs, citing concerns about fraud in the programs designed to help low-income families.

The states — California, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois and New York — called the move an unconstitutional abuse of power. The Trump administration announced earlier this week it was withholding their social safety net funding. The funding went toward three federal programs, two of which focus on lifting families with children out of poverty.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the lawsuit, said the Trump administration is overstepping its authority by freezing billions of dollars in funds that were already approved for the states by Congress.

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York asks the courts to order the administration to halt the freeze and release the funds.

“Once again, the most vulnerable families in our communities are bearing the brunt of this administration’s campaign of chaos and retribution,” James said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this week told the five states it was freezing their money for the Child Care and Development Fund, which subsidizes child care for children from low-income families; the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides cash assistance and job training; and the Social Services Block Grant.

HHS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

About half of the $10 billion in funding targeted by the Trump administration supported California programs, said the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta.

In letters to the states, Alex J. Adams, assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, wrote that HHS had “reason to believe” the states were providing benefits to people who were in the U.S. illegally, offering no further details about the allegations. They requested reams of data, including the names and Social Security numbers of everyone that had received some of the benefits.

“The letters requested that California turn over essentially every document ever associated with the state’s implementation of these federal programs and do so within 14 days, by Jan. 20, including personally identifiable information about program participants,” Bonta said. “That is deeply concerning and also deeply frustrating.”

The government intensified its focus on the child care subsidy program after a conservative YouTuber released a video claiming day care centers in Minneapolis had committed up to $100 million in fraud. The child care centers were run by members of the city’s Somali community, which has been frequently maligned by Trump and targeted by immigration authorities.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has defended his state’s response and said his state is taking aggressive action to prevent further fraud.

MINNEAPOLIS — The federal immigration agent who fatally shot a woman in her car this week was dragged about 100 yards by a different driver in Minnesota last year during an immigration operation, interviews and court records show.

The agent, described by a spokesperson as a 10-year veteran of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, was treated for a gash on his forearm that required 20 stitches after the dragging incident, for which the driver was convicted of assault last month.

Now that same agent is at the center of a growing backlash over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts, after he shot and killed Renee Good, 37, in the driver’s seat of her car Wednesday.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noeme said at a news conference Wednesday that the agent, whom she did not name, had feared for his life during the encounter, and noted that he had been dragged by a car in June. Two law enforcement officers with knowledge of the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly, identified the ICE agent as Jonathan Ross.

It is unclear when the agent, who is part of a division called Enforcement and Removal Operations, returned to work following the June incident, which took place in Bloomington, a Minneapolis suburb.

Ross and other agents were trying to apprehend a Guatemalan man who had been convicted of sexual abuse in Minnesota, according to court records. The agents followed the man, Roberto Carlos Muñoz, as he drove away from his house, and later pulled him over.

A photo provided by the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota shows the officer who shot Renee Good on Wednesday Jan. 7, 2026, at the hospital after the dragging incident in June 2025, where he was treated for his injuries. (New York Times via U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota)

When Ross told the driver to lower his window and open his door, Muñoz refused, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit. Ross then pulled his Taser, shattered the rear driver’s side window of Muñoz’s car and reached in with one arm to try to unlock a door. At that point, Muñoz shifted into drive and pulled away.

While being dragged, Ross fired his Taser at Muñoz, shocking him twice, the affidavit said, but Muñoz continued to drive for about 100 yards, weaving back and forth in an apparent effort to shake the agent from the car, which he finally did.

The agent landed on the street, bleeding from his right arm, and photographs taken later and included in court documents show a wound to his arm and blood on his pants and left hand. The cut to his arm required 20 stitches, according to court records.

Muñoz, meanwhile, had called 911 to say that he was assaulted by an immigration agent — a phone call that ultimately helped officers find and arrest him about a mile away.

His trial took place over several days in Minnesota last month. On Dec. 10, a jury deliberated for about two hours before convicting him of assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous or deadly weapon, resulting in injury.

Muñoz has not yet been sentenced, and his lawyer, Eric Newmark, declined to comment on his case.

The Wednesday shooting of Good, an American citizen, in South Minneapolis has resulted in sharply different interpretations of the event from local and federal officials. President Donald Trump and other federal officials have said that the agent acted in self-defense, while state and local officials described those accounts with terms like “propaganda” and “garbage.”

Tricia McLaughlin, the Homeland Security spokesperson, said in a statement that the agent who killed Good, whom she also did not name, had extensive experience, including in marksmanship and as a member of ICE’s special response team, and that he had “acted according to his training” on Wednesday.

Minnesota law enforcement officials said Thursday that they were being denied access to evidence from the shooting by federal agencies, and could no longer participate in the investigation as a result.

Footage of the shooting shows one federal agent grabbing the handle of Good’s vehicle, which is partially blocking a street in South Minneapolis, while Ross walks around the front of her car. Good reverses slightly, then shifts into drive, moving the car toward the agent before turning the wheels to the right, away from him.

Ross fires one shot, then continues firing as the vehicle moves past him. It appears from the videos that he fired once through the front windshield and twice through the driver’s side window, killing Good.

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This month, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago is scheduled to announce whether the hands of its famous Doomsday Clock will move closer to midnight. It feels like a safe bet that Armageddon is drawing nearer today than it has in a long, long time.

The Doomsday Clock started almost 80 years ago, when physicists who developed the Bomb grew alarmed at its use against Japan to end World War II.

Between the late 1940s and the early 1990s, nuclear war wasn’t a remote possibility: It almost happened, repeatedly, as America and the Soviet Union fought the Cold War. Chicago’s atomic scientists moved the hands of their clock from seven minutes to midnight at its start in 1947 to just two minutes to midnight as of 1953, when the U.S. and Soviets started testing enormously powerful hydrogen bombs.

Fortunately for humanity, the 1990s ushered in a period of relative peace and proactive disarmament. In 1991, after the U.S. and Soviet Union signed the START treaty reducing strategic nuclear stockpiles, the clock was turned back to 17 minutes before the hour. The stockpile of nuclear warheads shrunk from more than 60,000 in the mid-1980s – an insane level of overkill – to an estimated 12,000. Test explosions became increasingly rare.

Today, unfortunately, the world is entering a new, more dangerous phase. The number of doomsday weapons and the number of countries wielding them threatens to grow. The clock gives humanity just 89 seconds to reverse course, its most perilous setting ever. Yet fewer people are paying attention,

The de-escalation that started in the early 1990s never would have happened without intense public pressure. That included mass demonstrations demanding an end to the arms race. And don’t underestimate the impact of 1980s movies such as “Threads” and “The Day After,” with their plausible depictions of death and horror after a nuclear exchange.

People in those days were scared, and rightfully so. Now, the fear factor is way down. It shouldn’t be.

New START, one of the landmark disarmament treaties that helped to pull the world back from the brink, is set to expire in February with barely a whisper of acknowledgement. In April, the United Nations will host a non-proliferation conference, and it appears likely that short-sighted national interests will outweigh concerns about the common good. Nuclear-weapons testing could make a destabilizing comeback in 2026.

Countries across the world are re-arming, as they recognize increased threats to their security. People forget that South Africa once had the bomb, and Ukraine was rife with atomic weapons after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Russia’s war on Ukraine is especially troubling. Drone incursions, sabotage and the vulnerability of nuclear reactors to attack are turning Europe into a dangerous flashpoint. The militarization of space, expanded anti-missile defenses and the potential risks of AI could create additional instability.

Proliferation is a red-alert risk again. One of arms control’s greatest successes — keeping the so-called nuclear club to nine countries — could fall by the wayside in short order.

When Ukraine agreed to give up the nuclear weapons on its soil in the mid-1990s, Russia provided a security guarantee that proved worthless. Now Europe has reason to doubt President Donald Trump’s commitment to NATO’s nuclear defense, forcing a reassessment among countries that depend on the U.S. for deterrence.

In Asia, South Korea and Japan are widely viewed as capable of producing nuclear weapons on short notice. With China and North Korea expanding their nuclear arsenals, and the U.S. increasingly viewed as unreliable, regional rivals may decide they need nuclear weapons for self-defense.

In the Middle East, Iran has flirted with joining the nuclear club for years. The joint U.S.-Israeli bombing of its nuclear facilities over the summer has driven the Iranian program farther underground, beyond the reach of international inspectors. If Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia probably will want one too.

None of this is inevitable. It would be madness to resume nuclear testing, let treaties lapse and expand arsenals that already could wipe out the planet. Diplomacy worked for decades, mainly because of an understanding that avoiding nuclear war was essential to humanity’s future. Today’s global leaders need to start acting accordingly.

— The Chicago Tribune

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Santa Claus will continue delivering bundles of joy in the new year to U.S. taxpayers, who will receive whopping tax refunds during 2026’s first half. Some $100 billion will flow from a retroactive tax cut contained in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed in July. And there are some special gifts for corporate America still waiting in Santa’s sled as well. Along with cash for consumers, the legislation brings large reductions in corporate taxes.

Some think the fiscal effects of all this will be large enough to add half a point to America’s GDP growth in the first quarter of 2026. But then there’s another, more ominous, possibility: a new surge of inflation. The price of gold, long understood to be the investor’s refuge against a deteriorating dollar, is sounding an alarm. It soared from $2,400 an ounce in January 2025 to nearly $4,500 now.

Will this time be different? There’s a lot to consider.

If the story sounds familiar, it’s because not long ago — when President Joe Biden was doling out generous piles of emergency funds to taxpayers — the price of gold reacted mildly, and inflation shot through the roof a couple of years later. Now, it seems, investors may be on higher alert.

Of course, there’s more to consider. First and perhaps foremost, the Biden administration was dealing with an economy suffering from a pandemic shutdown. The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Board were in cahoots. Unheard-of quantitative easing had been introduced in an effort to curtail financial panics and protect the U.S. banking system. The Fed was directly purchasing new Treasury debt to the tune of $3.5 trillion; together, they were printing money to cover costs.

Obviously, some circumstances have changed. In December, the United States had $36 trillion in public debt on the books and holding. Because of President Donald Trump’s efforts to gain tariff-fueled revenues and reduce the scope and pace of public-sector spending, the nation has just reached an operating point where we are spending less than we take in. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, the federal government’s cumulative deficit for fiscal year 2026 through November was $439 billion — 19% lower than the same time the previous year. Revenues increased by 18% and outlays increased by 1% from fiscal year 2025.

This may not last, but it at least offers the prospect of less debt and therefore less need to print money and fuel more inflation.

If so, why the runaway price of gold? We must remember that gold is ultimately money, a store of value universally accepted to extinguish debt. It’s also the ultimate disaster hedge. When economies and life itself become disrupted, as in the Middle East, Ukraine, Nigeria and Venezuela, people convert assets to gold as they reorganize. There is also a sizable and growing industrial demand for gold to be used in the production of computers and other electronic devices. Taken together, these rising demand forces are pushing the price of gold higher.

So, will the soon-to-be received fresh bundles of cash be vaporized by inflation? Or will inflation’s forces be cowed by America’s reduced need for printed money?

For the next couple of years, at least, I am betting against surging inflation. But looking farther out and considering that America has yet to definitively get its fiscal house in order, I fear that the printing press will again become a policy tool and inflation will continue to be a constant threat against prosperity.

Bruce Yandle is a distinguished senior fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, dean emeritus of the Clemson College of Business and Behavioral Sciences, a former executive director of the Federal Trade Commission, and a former senior economist on the President’s Council on Wage and Price Stability. He wrote this column for Tribune News Service.