The federal Housing Choice Voucher Program — also known as Section 8 — helps low-income families, elderly individuals, veterans and those with disabilities afford housing in the private market. Program participants have their rent partially covered by a subsidy paid directly to the landlord. The family pays the difference between the actual rent charged by the landlord and the amount subsidized by the program.

The program, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and administered by Colorado’s over 68 public housing agencies, has never been able to meet the needs of all the people in the state who are eligible to receive vouchers. Residents can languish on waiting lists for years. Others throw their names in a lottery year after year, hoping their numbers will be drawn this time.

But this year, many local housing departments say they can’t give out a single new voucher — and haven’t issued any so far in 2025 — mainly due to rising rents and not enough federal dollars.

The Denver Housing Authority, which manages roughly 8,000 current voucher participants, spent more than $167 million on the Housing Choice Voucher program in 2025 — nearly half of DHA’s annual budget. One hundred percent of the program’s funding comes from the federal housing department.

In September, the agency held its annual voucher lottery for the coming year. Every fall, up to 30,000 people enter applications.

Seven months later, however, HUD informed the housing authority that it projected a funding shortfall for DHA. This prompted the federal government to impose a series of cost-cutting measures to bring the numbers back in line, DHA announced for the first time in its summer newsletter.

The Denver Housing Authority, under this plan, agreed to:

• Not give out new vouchers in 2025
• Impose a 60-day limit to use existing vouchers
• Not accept out-of-town vouchers
• Not allow existing voucher-holders to move to more expensive areas of the city
• Not allow existing voucher-holders to move to more expensive units within Denver

DHA also asked landlords to forgo rent increases or keep their increases low this year. About half of housing providers who requested to bump up their rents are cooperating with this request, said Loretta Owens, the Denver Housing Authority’s director of the Housing Choice Voucher Program. The other half declined the appeal.

“We’re hoping that all our efforts are successful and we can avert a funding shortfall,” Owens said in an interview.

On top of these new restrictions, recent federal changes mean DHA won’t be able to spend as much to help people with their rent.

The federal government in the fall lowered the Fair Market Rent for metro Denver, the average rent used to figure out how much vouchers can cover. As a result, DHA changed its Voucher Payment Standard — the most the agency can pay toward someone’s rent — to align with the new federal figures. The new limit will match 100% of HUD’s Fair Market Rent — down from 114%.

“This could affect which homes you can afford with your voucher,” DHA said in the newsletter outlining these changes.

For example, a one-bedroom under the 2025 Fair Market Rent is pegged at $1,789 a month, compared to $1,835 last year. A two-bedroom this year goes for $2,140, compared to $2,201 last year. The decrease means DHA may cover less of your rent. If rent stays the same, the agency said, you might have to pay more yourself.

These adjustments do not affect existing lease agreements, DHA said. New voucher holders and those looking to move, however, will need to look for units within the new monetary limits.

Funding shortfalls across Colorado

Denver is hardly the only Colorado city battling funding issues for its affordable housing programs.

Colorado Springs, the state’s second-most-populated city, says its housing authority received directives from HUD in December to pause issuance of new Housing Choice Vouchers.

The Colorado Springs Housing Authority opened its voucher waiting list in July to “maintain consistency and expectations in our community” and ensure the waiting list is current when vouchers can once again be issued, said Paul Spencer, the agency’s deputy director, in an email.

Arvada’s housing authority has a projected budget shortfall of nearly $1 million, the city said in its 2025 annual report, and will not issue new vouchers this year. The agency attributed the shortfall to HUD not including an inflation factor in its 2025 budget, as well as rising rents.

“HUD has made it clear that they have very limited funds to address (Housing Choice Voucher) shortfalls in 2025, and housing authorities should not operate their programs under the assumption that such funds will be available,” the city said in its annual report. “HUD has encouraged housing authorities to decrease the number of households served in anticipation of future funding cuts.”

Arvada, based on federal recommendations, needs to prepare for a reduction of approximately 55 households in the program, housing officials said.

Housing Catalyst, the housing authority covering Fort Collins and northern Colorado, hasn’t opened its voucher waiting list since 2023, a spokesperson said. People typically spend two to five years on the list before receiving a voucher.

“We continue to issue vouchers as funds are available, but with rising rents and uncertain federal funding, our opportunity to issue new vouchers is limited,” said Rachel Gaisford, an agency spokesperson, in an email.

Foothills Regional Housing, which covers Jefferson County, said it hasn’t pulled from its 5,884-family waiting list since 2022 and won’t be taking anyone new this year. Boulder Housing Partners says it won’t be opening its lottery. Englewood’s housing department also is not issuing new vouchers.

The Colorado Division of Housing, which serves over 8,000 households every year through its voucher program, said it has paused issuing new vouchers since last year as a result of “funding limitations.”

The state continues to issue Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing turnover vouchers and fill vacant Project-Based Voucher units, as these are not affected by the current voucher freeze, said Chynna Cowart, a Division of Housing spokesperson, in an email.

The only city polled by The Denver Post that said it would issue new vouchers this year: Sheridan. The 6,000-person Denver suburb plans to serve between 10 and 15 new families this year, a spokesperson said.

Federal changes loom

Colorado public housing officials are bracing for even further upheaval at the national level.

President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal government could include massive changes to HUD and its rental assistance programs. One of the biggest proposed moves: a two-year limit for individuals using housing vouchers.

HUD Secretary Scott Turner, at a June congressional hearing, argued that policies like time limits will fix waste and fraud in public housing and Section 8 voucher programs.

“It’s broken and deviated from its original purpose, which is to temporarily help Americans in need,” Turner said. “HUD assistance is not supposed to be permanent.”

If families were cut off after two years, 1.4 million households — largely working families with children — could lose their vouchers and public housing subsidies, according to research from New York University.

Turner and three other cabinet members in May called on Congress to enact work requirements across a bevy of welfare programs, including federal housing assistance.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations on July 24 approved its fiscal year 2026 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development spending bill, which would provide HUD $73.3 billion next year — over $5.5 billion more than the funding level proposed in the House’s bill. The proposal rejects the substantial spending cuts and drastic policy changes included in the Trump administration’s funding request, including the proposal to redesign rental assistance.

Appropriators will now work to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate bills and come to a final funding agreement by Oct. 1.

The budget outlook for public housing agencies in Colorado and around the country is not likely to get better anytime soon, said Deborah Thrope, deputy director of the National Housing Law Project, a nonprofit housing and legal advocacy center.

She’s seeing local housing authorities across the country deal with budget shortfalls and widespread uncertainty, making it difficult to know what’s coming down the pike.

“The challenges facing public housing agencies are unprecedented,” she said.

Ultimately, Thorpe said, it’s the people who receive federal assistance for their housing who will bear the brunt of policy changes such as time limits for vouchers and work requirements. Those two proposals will do nothing but cut people from the program, she said.

“Time limits don’t help people afford housing,” Thorpe said. “These are very harmful proposals.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Thursday announced that construction on a new $200 million ballroom will begin in September and be ready before President Donald Trump ‘s term ends in early 2029.

It will be the latest change introduced to what’s known as “The People’s House” since the Republican president returned to office in January. It also will be the first structural change to the Executive Mansion since the addition of the Truman balcony in 1948.

Trump has substantially redecorated the Oval Office through the addition of golden flourishes and cherubs, presidential portraits and other items and installed massive flagpoles to fly the American flag on the north and south lawns. Workers are currently finishing a project to replace the lawn in the Rose Garden with stone.

Trump for months has been promising to build a ballroom, saying the White House doesn’t have space big enough to hold large events and scoffing at the notion of hosting heads of state and other guests in tents on the lawn as past administrations have done for state dinners attended by hundreds of guests.

The East Room, the largest room in the the White House, can accommodate about 200 people.

As he and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen held talks in the ballroom of the hotel on his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, on Sunday, Trump praised the space and said it was what he envisioned adding to the White House.

“The White House has wanted a ballroom for 150 years, but they never had a real estate person. You know, nobody, no president knew how to build a ballroom,” he said, harkening back to his early career in real estate and construction.

He said the Turnberry ballroom had been “quite the success” since it opened a short time ago. That ballroom “boasts a generous capacity of up to 500 guests,” according to the hotel’s website.

“I was just saying I could take this one, drop it right down there and it would be beautiful,” Trump said. “This is exactly what they’ve wanted.”

The 90,000-square-foot ballroom, announced on Thursday, will be built where the East Wing currently sits and will have a seated capacity of 650 people. The East Wing is home to several offices, including the first lady’s. Those offices will be temporarily relocated during construction while that wing of the building is modernized and renovated, said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“Nothing will be torn down,” she said.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said the president and his White House are “fully committed” to working with the appropriate organizations to preserve the mansion’s “special history.”

“President Trump is a builder at heart and has an extraordinary eye for detail,” Wiles said in a statement.

Leavitt said at her briefing Thursday that Trump and other donors have committed to raising the approximately $200 million in construction costs. She did not name any of the other donors.

Renderings of what the future ballroom will look like were posted on the White House website.

Trump has chosen McCrery Architects, based in Washington, as lead architect on the project. The construction team will be led by Clark Construction. Engineering will be provided by AECOM.

In 2020, a disgruntled litigant posing as a deliveryman opened fire at the New Jersey home of District Judge Esther Salas, killing her 20-year-old son Daniel Anderl. Five years later, as President Donald Trump steps up his criticism of federal judges who have blocked some of his agenda, dozens of judges have had unsolicited pizzas delivered to their homes, often in Daniel Anderl’s name.

District Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. of Rhode Island, who stalled Trump’s initial round of across-the-board spending cuts, is among those who received pizzas in Anderl’s name. His courtroom also has been flooded by threatening calls, including one profanity-laced one that called for his assassination.

McConnell, Jr. played a recording of the call during an unusual discussion Thursday where multiple federal judges discussed threats they have received — a notable conversation because judges usually only speak publicly from the bench and through their rulings, and rarely if ever, about personal threats and attacks. Salas and others said the number of attacks has escalated in recent months.

Without using his name, Salas called on Trump and his allies to tone down the rhetoric and stop demonizing the judiciary, for fear of what more could happen.

“We’re used to being appealed. But keep it on the merits, stop demonizing us,” Salas said. “They’re inviting people to do us harm.”

Thursday’s event was sponsored by Speak up for Justice, a nonpartisan group supporting an independent judiciary. District Judge John C. Coughenour of Washington recalled having a police SWAT team called to his home to respond to a false report of an attack after Coughenour in January halted Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children of people in the country illegally.

District Judge Robert S. Lasnik of Washington also had pizzas delivered in Anderl’s name to both his home and those of his two adult children, each in different cities, after an article in which he was quoted as being critical of attacks on judges was picked up by a television station in the Pacific Northwest, where he hears cases.

“The message to me was ‘we know where you live, we know where your kids live, and they could end up dead like Daniel Anderl did,’” Lasnik said in an interview.

Salas says U.S. Marshals have told her of more than 100 cases of so-called “pizza doxings,” unwanted deliveries to the homes of federal judges and their families, since 2024, with most occurring this year. Salas added that she’s heard of additional cases targeting state judges in states ranging from Colorado to Florida, incidents that wouldn’t be tracked by Marshals, who protect federal judges.

“This is not some random, silly act, this is a targeted, concentrated, coordinated attack on judges,” Salas said in an interview, “and yet we don’t hear any condemnation from Washington.”

Salas, nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, in 2022 was critical of protests at the homes of Republican-nominated Supreme Court justices who revoked women’s right to have an abortion, which were followed by the arrest of a man at the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh who said he was there to assassinate the justice. Salas said both sides of the political aisle have used worrying rhetoric about judges, but it’s reached a new peak since Trump took office.

“I’ve often referred to it as a bonfire that I believe the current administration is throwing accelerants on,” Salas said.

Trump himself has led the charge against judges, often going after them by name on social media. He’s said judges who’ve ruled against his administration are “sick,” “very dangerous” and “lunatic.” Trump’s allies have amplified his rhetoric and called for impeaching judges who rule against the president or simply disobeying their rulings. Earlier this year, several judges at the panel noted, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee had a “wanted” poster of judges who’d crossed the president hanging outside his congressional office.

Lasnik said many judges appointed by presidents of both parties have told him of concerns but are nervous about discussing the issue openly.

“A lot of them don’t know how to speak up and are afraid of crossing a line somewhere where they would get a judicial complaint like judge Boasberg did,” Lasnik said, referring to District Judge James E. Boasberg of D.C., who infuriated the Trump administration by finding they likely committed criminal contempt by disobeying his order to turn around a deportation flight to El Salvador.

Though Chief Justice John Roberts has come to Boasberg’s defense, Trump’s Department of Justice this week filed a complaint against Boasberg over comments he made at a judicial conference that other judges worry the Trump administration won’t obey their orders. Last month, Trump’s Justice Department took the extraordinary step of suing every federal judge in Maryland over rules governing how they handle immigration cases.

More than five dozen judges who’ve ruled against Trump are receiving enhanced online protection, including scrubbing their identifying information from websites, according to two Trump-appointed judges who wrote Congress urging more funding for judicial security. In 2022, Congress passed a law named after Daniel Anderl allowing judges to sue internet sites to take down identifying information.

President Donald Trump rode to reelection last fall on voter concerns about prices. But as his administration pares back federal rules and programs designed to protect patients from the high cost of health care, Trump risks pushing more Americans into debt, further straining family budgets already stressed by medical bills.

Millions of people are expected to lose health insurance in the coming years as a result of the tax cut legislation Trump signed in July, leaving them with fewer protections from large bills if they get sick or suffer an accident.

At the same time, significant increases in health plan premiums on state insurance marketplaces next year will likely push more Americans to either drop coverage or switch to higher-deductible plans that will require them to pay more out-of-pocket before their insurance kicks in.

Smaller changes to federal rules are poised to bump up patients’ bills, as well. New federal guidelines for COVID-19 vaccines, for example, will allow health insurers to stop covering the shots for millions, so if patients want the protection, some may have to pay out-of-pocket.

The new tax cut legislation will also raise the cost of certain doctor visits, requiring copays of up to $35 for some Medicaid enrollees.

And for those who do end up in debt, there will be fewer protections. In July, the Trump administration secured permission from a federal court to roll back regulations that would have removed medical debt from consumer credit reports.

That puts Americans who cannot pay their medical bills at risk of lower credit scores, hindering their ability to get a loan or forcing them to pay higher interest rates.

“For tens of millions of Americans, balancing the budget is like walking a tightrope,” said Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. “The Trump administration is just throwing them off.”

White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not respond to questions about how the administration’s health care policies will affect Americans’ medical bills.

The president and his Republican congressional allies have brushed off the health care cuts, including hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid retrenchment in the mammoth tax law. “You won’t even notice it,” Trump said at the White House after the bill signing July 4. “Just waste, fraud, and abuse.”

But consumer and patient advocates around the country warn that the erosion of federal health care protections since Trump took office in January threatens to significantly undermine Americans’ financial security.

“These changes will hit our communities hard,” said Arika Sánchez, who oversees health care policy at the nonprofit New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.

Sánchez predicted many more people the center works with will end up with medical debt. “When families get stuck with medical debt, it hurts their credit scores, makes it harder to get a car, a home, or even a job,” she said. “Medical debt wrecks people’s lives.”

For Americans with serious illnesses such as cancer, weakened federal protections from medical debt pose yet one more risk, said Elizabeth Darnall, senior director of federal advocacy at the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network. “People will not seek out the treatment they need,” she said.

Trump promised a rosier future while campaigning last year, pledging to “make America affordable again” and “expand access to new Affordable Healthcare.”

Polls suggest voters were looking for relief.

About 6 in 10 adults — Democrats and Republicans — say they are worried about being able to afford health care, according to one recent survey, outpacing concerns about the cost of food or housing. And medical debt remains a widespread problem: As many as 100 million adults in the U.S. are burdened by some kind of health care debt.

Despite this, key tools that have helped prevent even more Americans from sinking into debt are now on the chopping block.

Medicaid and other government health insurance programs, in particular, have proved to be a powerful economic backstop for low-income patients and their families, said Kyle Caswell, an economist at the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Caswell and other researchers found, for example, that Medicaid expansion made possible by the 2010 Affordable Care Act led to measurable declines in medical debt and improvements in consumers’ credit scores in states that implemented the expansion.

“We’ve seen that these programs have a meaningful impact on people’s financial well-being,” Caswell said.

Trump’s tax law — which will slash more than $1 trillion in federal health spending over the next decade, mostly through Medicaid cuts — is expected to leave 10 million more people without health coverage by 2034, according to the latest estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The tax cuts, which primarily benefit wealthy Americans, will add $3.4 trillion to U.S. deficits over a decade, the office calculated.

The number of uninsured could spike further if Trump and his congressional allies don’t renew additional federal subsidies for low- and moderate-income Americans who buy health coverage on state insurance marketplaces.

This aid — enacted under former President Joe Biden — lowers insurance premiums and reduces medical bills enrollees face when they go to the doctor or the hospital. But unless congressional Republicans act, those subsidies will expire later this year, leaving many with bigger bills.

Federal debt regulations developed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Biden administration would have protected these people and others if they couldn’t pay their medical bills.

The agency issued rules in January that would have removed medical debts from consumer credit reports. That would have helped an estimated 15 million people.

But the Trump administration chose not to defend the new regulations when they were challenged in court by debt collectors and the credit bureaus, who argued the federal agency had exceeded its authority in issuing the rules. A federal judge in Texas appointed by Trump ruled that the regulation should be scrapped.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The family of Virginia Giuffre, who was among Jeffrey Epstein’s most well-known sex trafficking accusers, said that it was shocking to hear President Donald Trump say the disgraced financier “stole” Giuffre from him and urged that Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell remain in prison.

Giuffre, who had accused Britain’s Prince Andrew and other influential men of sexually exploiting her as a teenager trafficked by Epstein, has been a central figure in conspiracy theories tied to the case. She died by suicide this year.

Her family’s statement is the latest development involving Epstein, who took his own life in a New York jail in 2019 while facing federal sex trafficking charges, and the Republican president, who was his one-time friend. Trump denied prior knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and said he cut off their relationship years ago, but he still faces questions about the case.

Trump, responding to a reporter’s question on Tuesday, said that he got upset with Epstein over his poaching of workers and that Epstein had stolen Giuffre from his Palm Beach, Florida, club.

“It was shocking to hear President Trump invoke our sister and say that he was aware that Virginia had been ‘stolen’ from Mar-a-Lago,” the family’s statement said.

“We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this,” it continued.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt noted the president was responding to a reporter’s question and didn’t bring up Giuffre himself.

“The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club for being a creep to his female employees,” she said.

The family’s statement comes shortly after the Justice Department interviewed Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 on sex trafficking and other charges and is serving a 20-year sentence in Tallahassee, Florida. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed Maxwell in a Florida courthouse, though details about what she said haven’t become public.

Maxwell’s lawyers have said she testified truthfully and answered questions “about 100 different people.” They have said she’s willing to answer more questions from Congress if she is granted immunity from future prosecution for her testimony and if lawmakers agree to satisfy other conditions.

A message seeking comment about the Giuffre family’s statement was sent to Maxwell’s attorney Thursday.

A Trump administration official said the president is not currently considering clemency action for Maxwell.

Giuffre said she was approached by Maxwell in 2000 and eventually was hired by her as a masseuse for Epstein. But the couple effectively made her a sexual servant, she said, pressuring her into gratifying not only Epstein but his friends and associates.

Giuffre said she was flown around the world for appointments with men including Prince Andrew while she was 17 and 18 years old.

The men, including Andrew, denied it and assailed Giuffre’s credibility. She acknowledged changing some key details of her account.

The prince settled with Giuffre in 2022 for an undisclosed sum, agreeing to make a “substantial donation” to her survivors’ organization.

The American-born Giuffre lived in Australia for years and became an advocate for sex trafficking survivors after emerging as a central figure in Epstein’s prolonged downfall.

Her family’s statement said she endured death threats and financial ruin over her cooperation with authorities against Epstein and Maxwell.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that set new tariffs on a wide swath of U.S. trading partners to go into effect on Aug. 7 — the next step in his trade agenda that will test the global economy and sturdiness of American alliances built up over decades.

The order was issued shortly after 7 p.m. on Thursday evening. It came after a flurry of tariff-related activity in the last several days, as the White House announced agreements with various nations and blocs ahead of the president’s self-imposed Friday deadline. The tariffs are being implemented at a later date in order for the rates schedule to be harmonized, according to a senior administration official who spoke to reporters on a call on the condition of anonymity.

The order capped off a hectic Thursday as nations sought to continue negotiating with Trump. It set the rates for 68 countries and the 27-member European Union, with a baseline 10% rate to be charged on countries not listed in the order. The senior administration official said the rates were based on trade imbalance with the U.S. and regional economic profiles.

On Thursday morning, Trump engaged in a phone conversation with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on trade. As a result of the conversation, the U.S. president said he would enter into a 90-day negotiating period with Mexico, one of the nation’s largest trading partners, with the current 25% tariff rates staying in place, down from the 30% he had threatened earlier.

“We avoided the tariff increase announced for tomorrow and we got 90 days to build a long-term agreement through dialogue,” Mexican leader Claudia Sheinbaum wrote on X after a call with Trump that he referred to as “very successful” in terms of the leaders getting to know each other better.

The unknowns created a sense of drama that has defined Trump’s rollout of tariffs over several months, with the one consistency being his desire to levy the import taxes that most economists say will ultimately be borne to some degree by U.S. consumers and businesses.

“We have made a few deals today that are excellent deals for the country,” Trump told reporters on Thursday afternoon without detailing the terms of those agreements or nations involved. The senior administration official declined to reveal the nations that have new deals during the call with reporters.

Trump said that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had called ahead of 35% tariffs being imposed on many of his nation’s goods, but “we haven’t spoken to Canada today.”

Trump imposed the Friday deadline after his previous “Liberation Day” tariffs in April resulted in a stock market panic. His unusually high tariff rates unveiled in April led to recession fears, prompting Trump to impose a 90-day negotiating period. When he was unable to create enough trade deals with other countries, he extended the timeline and sent out letters to world leaders that simply listed rates, prompting a slew of hasty deals.

Trump reached a deal with South Korea on Wednesday, and earlier with the European Union, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines. His commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” that there were agreements with Cambodia and Thailand after they had agreed to a ceasefire to their border conflict.

Going into Thursday, wealthy Switzerland and Norway were still uncertain about their tariff rates. EU officials were waiting to complete a crucial document outlining how the framework to tax imported autos and other goods from the 27-member state bloc would operate. Trump had announced a deal Sunday while he was in Scotland.

Trump said as part of the agreement with Mexico that goods imported into the U.S. would continue to face a 25% tariff that he has ostensibly linked to fentanyl trafficking. He said autos would face a 25% tariff, while copper, aluminum and steel would be taxed at 50% during the negotiating period.

He said Mexico would end its “Non Tariff Trade Barriers,” but he didn’t provide specifics.

Some goods continue to be protected from the tariffs by the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which Trump negotiated during his first term.

But Trump appeared to have soured on that deal, which is up for renegotiation next year. One of his first significant moves as president was to impose tariffs on goods from both Mexico and Canada earlier this year.

U.S. Census Bureau figures show that the U.S. ran a $171.5 billion trade imbalance with Mexico last year. That means the U.S. bought more goods from Mexico than it sold to the country.

The imbalance with Mexico has grown in the aftermath of the USMCA, as it was only $63.3 billion in 2016, the year before Trump started his first term in office.

Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

It is with the humility that comes with having been mistaken that I view the controversy surrounding Rep. Gabe Evans’ claims about his Mexican-born grandfather. On the campaign trail last year for Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, Evans described his abuelito, Cuauhtemoc Chavez, as a man who “did it the right way” when he immigrated to America.

The truth is more complex, an investigation by Colorado Newsline revealed. Chavez came to the U.S. illegally as a young child. He was arrested as a teen and subject to deportation proceedings. At some point in his youth he was arrested but not convicted of attempted burglary. He later served in World War II and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. The article suggests that Chavez was granted citizenship, not because of his service to the nation as Evans has stated, but because a 1944 law made it so candidates for naturalization no longer had to show proof of lawful entry.

Did Evans’ grandfather become a citizen “the right way?” The answer is not black and white. He came here illegally but was ultimately naturalized through a legal process that is no longer available to immigrants who first arrive illegally.

As for my family, my dad’s kin emigrated from Germany and the Russian Empire decades after the Civil War. My mom’s family immigrated to Pennsylvania, one of the first states to abolish slavery, and Maryland from England and Central Europe beginning in the 17th century. My mom’s great-great-grandfather, Joseph Lopez, born Joseph Getward, deserted from the Royal Navy to come to the U.S. He later joined the New York Volunteer Infantry, was captured, and ended up at Andersonville, the notorious Confederate prisoner-of-war camp. Adding all this up, odds seemed good that my family lacked a connection to the horrors of human bondage.

That was until last weekend, when I learned that Joseph Lopez’s daughter-in-law (my great-great-grandmother) had a great-great-grandfather who owned slaves and with one of them fathered a son, her great-grandfather, my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Guarding against the deeply racist attitudes of the day, my relatives of mixed ethnic heritage started a family rumor that their darker skin tone must have come from a Native American ancestor.

Turns out my assumptions about my family were incorrect. The truth is far more complex; my family tree includes at least one slaveholder and at least one slave. If I weigh in on a political issue like racial reparations and choose to invoke my family history, I cannot simply say “my whole family did it right.” In fact, if I searched further, I would find other slave owners and slaves even on my dad’s side. Pre-Christian Germanic tribes practiced slavery, too. It was an abhorrent practice throughout human history. No one’s family is a paragon of virtue.

It’s with that perspective that I can offer Evans grace for his mistake. Colorado Newsline produces some excellent investigative journalism, but as a far-left news organization, don’t expect any grace for Republicans from them. Rightwing media reacted the same way, accusing Sen. Elizabeth Warren of insincerity when she overstated her Native American heritage. How do we know she wasn’t relying on family lore? I have never met Evans, but it seems more likely he didn’t know the nuances of his grandfather’s case than that he deliberately misspoke. Knowing how I was wrong about my own family history, I’m going to give them both the benefit of the doubt.

The fact that Evans has been more circumspect in recent interviews suggests that once he knew the truth, he course-corrected. Give him credit for cosponsoring H.R. 4393, which would enable people working in the U.S. illegally to receive legal status and continue to work here, if they meet certain conditions. It would also speed up the asylum process and allow immigrants brought here illegally as young children and those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to obtain legal status. It is the kind of practical, humanitarian, compromise immigration reform we need. Similar legislation was blocked in 2024 by then-candidate Donald Trump, who wanted to keep the contentious issue bleeding throughout the election year. There is no reason it should not pass now.

But Evans should go a step further. He should use his unique family background to champion humane treatment of illegal immigrants, even though it risks the ire of the president and the far right. Every person, citizen or immigrant, here legally or not, deserves due process. Too few Republicans are willing to champion this constitutional guarantee. If Evans can lead on this issue, maybe others will follow.

Krista Kafer is a Sunday columnist for The Denver Post.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, on Wednesday evening as Republicans looked past his connections to right-wing extremists and support for conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Kent won confirmation on a 52-44 vote tally with Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina the only Republican nay vote. Kent had already been working for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. As the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, he will oversee an agency tasked with analyzing and detecting terrorist threats.

In the role, he plans to devote agency resources to targeting Latin American gangs and other criminal groups tied to migration. He is the latest Trump loyalist to win Senate confirmation to the upper echelons of U.S. national security leadership at a time when Trump is stretching his presidential wartime powers to accomplish his goals.

“President Trump is committed to identifying these cartels and these violent gang members and making sure that we locate them and that we get them out of our country,” Kent said at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee in April.

Kent enters the top role at the counterterrorism center after two unsuccessful campaigns for Congress in Washington state, as well as a military career that saw him deployed 11 times as a Green Beret, followed by work at the CIA. His first wife, a Navy cryptologist, was killed by a suicide bomber in 2019 while fighting the Islamic State group in Syria.

Yet Democrats strongly opposed his confirmation, pointing to his past ties to far-right figures and conspiracy theories. During his 2022 congressional campaign, Kent paid Graham Jorgensen, a member of the far-right military group the Proud Boys, for consulting work. He also worked closely with Joey Gibson, the founder of the Christian nationalist group Patriot Prayer, and attracted support from a variety of far-right figures.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Kent also refused to distance himself from a conspiracy theory that federal agents had somehow instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, as well as false claims that Trump won the 2020 election over President Joe Biden.

Democrats grilled him on his participation in a group chat on Signal that was used by Trump’s national security team to discuss sensitive military plans.

They also raised grave concerns over a recent incident where Kent, as Gabbard’s chief of staff, told an intelligence analyst to revise an assessment of the relationship between the Venezuelan government and a transnational gang. The revisions supported Trump’s assertions that members of the gang could be removed under the Alien Enemies Act — a wartime provision.

Democrats said it showed Kent cannot be trusted to handle some of the nation’s most important and sensitive intelligence.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said any counterterrorism director “must be trusted to tell the truth and to uphold the core principles of the intelligence community: Objectivity, nonpartisanship and fidelity to fact.”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Kent has shown time and again that he cannot meet the standard,” Warner added.

Still, Republicans have praised his counterterrorism qualifications, pointing to his military and intelligence experience.

Sen. Tom Cotton, the GOP chair of the intelligence committee, said in a floor speech that Kent “has dedicated his career to fighting terrorism and keeping Americans safe.”

A federal judge on Wednesday essentially accused the Trump administration of ignoring his orders to restore Voice of America’s operations and explain clearly what it is doing with the government-run operation that provides news to other countries.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth of the District of Columbia gave the administration until Aug. 13 to explain how it will get VOA working again. The outlet that dates back to World War II has been largely dark since March.

Lamberth said the administration needs to show what it is doing with the $260 million Congress appropriated for VOA’s operations this year.

Kari Lake, the adviser appointed by Trump to run the government news agencies, said in June that 85% of employees at VOA and its overseers at the U.S. Agency for Global Media had lost their jobs. She called it a “long overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.”

Lamberth said there’s a process for eliminating funding that had previously been appropriated — Congress must vote on it, as it recently did for NPR and PBS funding. But that hasn’t happened here, he said.

He scolded the administration for providing “cagey answers” and omitting key information when asked for it in previous court orders.

“Without more explanation, the court is left to conclude that the defendants are simply trying to run out the clock on the fiscal year, without putting the money Congress appropriated toward the purposes Congress intended,” Lamberth wrote. “The legal term for that is ‘waste.’”

There was no immediate comment from the White House.

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.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is pushing an initiative for millions of Americans to upload personal health data and medical records on new apps and systems run by private tech companies, promising that will make it easier to access health records and monitor wellness.

President Donald Trump is expected to deliver remarks on the initiative Wednesday afternoon in the East Room. The event is expected to involve leaders from more than 60 companies, including major tech companies such as Google and Amazon, as well as prominent hospital systems like the Cleveland Clinic.

The new system will focus on diabetes and weight management, conversational artificial intelligence that helps patients, and digital tools such as QR codes and apps that register patients for check-ins or track medications.

The initiative, spearheaded by an administration that has already freely shared highly personal data about Americans in ways that have tested legal bounds, could put patients’ desires for more convenience at their doctor’s office on a collision course with their expectations that their medical information be kept private.

“There are enormous ethical and legal concerns,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University law professor who specializes in public health. “Patients across America should be very worried that their medical records are going to be used in ways that harm them and their families.”

Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who will be in charge of maintaining the system, have said patients will need to opt in for the sharing of their medical records and data, which will be kept secure.

Those officials said patients will benefit from a system that lets them quickly call up their own records without the hallmark difficulties, such as requiring the use of fax machines to share documents, that have prevented them from doing so in the past.

“We have the tools and information available now to empower patients to improve their outcomes and their healthcare experience,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for CMS, said in a statement Wednesday.

Popular weight loss and fitness subscription service Noom, which has signed onto the initiative, will be able to pull medical records after the system’s expected launch early next year.

That might include labs or medical tests that the app could use to develop an AI-driven analysis of what might help users lose weight, CEO Geoff Cook told The Associated Press. Apps and health systems will also have access to their competitors’ information, too. Noom would be able to access a person’s data from Apple Health, for example.

“Right now you have a lot of siloed data,” Cook said.

Patients who travel across the country for treatment at the Cleveland Clinic often have a hard time obtaining all their medical records from various providers, said the hospital system’s CEO, Tomislav Mihaljevic. He said the new system would eliminate that barrier, which sometimes delays treatment or prevents doctors from making an accurate diagnosis because they do not have a full view of a patient’s medical history.

Having seamless access to health app data, such as what patients are eating or how much they are exercising, will also help doctors manage obesity and other chronic diseases, Mihaljevic said.

“These apps give us insight about what’s happening with the patient’s health outside of the physician’s office,” he said.

CMS will also recommend a list of apps on Medicare.gov that are designed to help people manage chronic diseases, as well as help them select health care providers and insurance plans.

Digital privacy advocates are skeptical that patients will be able to count on their data being stored securely.

The federal government, however, has done little to regulate health apps or telehealth programs, said Jeffrey Chester at the Center for Digital Democracy.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and those within his circle have pushed for more technology in health care, advocating for wearable devices that monitor wellness and telehealth.

Kennedy also sought to collect more data from Americans’ medical records, which he has previously said he wants to use to study autism and vaccine safety. Kennedy has filled the agency with staffers who have a history of working at or running health technology startups and businesses.

CMS already has troves of information on more than 140 million Americans who enroll in Medicare and Medicaid. Earlier this month, the federal agency agreed to hand over its massive database, including home addresses, to deportation officials.

The new initiative would deepen the pool of information on patients for the federal government and tech companies. Medical records typically contain far more sensitive information, such as doctors’ notes about conversations with patients and substance abuse or mental health history.

“This scheme is an open door for the further use and monetization of sensitive and personal health information,” Chester said.