Storm Timing

We remain cloudy and dry with temps in the 20s prior to the snow heading in. This is cold enough to support all snow with the onset of precipitation this evening. By 6 p.m., light snow develops in Boston, with steady snow through midnight for all of New England. Some 0.5 to 1 inch per hour snowfall rates are expected at times.

A nose of warm air aloft moves in from the south as the parent low pressure center moves over northwestern New England. This flips southern New England to sleet, then freezing rain around Sunday sunrise. We keep freezing rain in the forecast outside of Interstate 495 and where cold air damming keeps temps from warming at the surface. This ice may add up to .2 to .3 inches of accumulation on top of the snow from overnight. Boston experiences ice mixing then, flipping to rain by Sunday afternoon with heavy rain around 1 inch the rest of the day.

Meanwhile, the ice and snow remains steady inland through Sunday evening. Another thing to note is that a surface low develops around Long Island Sunday morning and this helps to inject a dry slot into southern New England. Light mist or freezing drizzle to fog may cut down on accumulations of ice. That surface low eventually takes over from the parent low pressure center and strengthens as it heads to the Canadian Maritimes Monday.

Totals, Precipitation Type

Overnight, we pick up 2-4 inches of snow for Boston, Providence, Hartford and Worcester. Less than 2 inches of snow on the South Coast, Cape Cod and the islands. About 4-6 inches of snow and sleet for the Merrimack Valley to Manchester, New Hampshire, and Brattleboro, Vermont. And we’re looking at 6-10 inches of steady snow the whole event, from Saturday night to Sunday night for the mountains. Ice of 0.2-0.3 inches Sunday midday for interior Massachusetts, Connecticut, to southern Vermont and New Hampshire on top of the overnight snow. Any winter accumulation in Boston gets washed away by the Sunday afternoon rain.

Wind & Coast

The wind won’t be much of an issue in terms of damaging wind speeds, but nuisance wind — yes. Saturday night will be east 10-20 mph, increasing to 20-30 mph by Sunday afternoon. The wind flips more northerly Sunday late day and picks up to 40 mph. While on Sunday night into Monday our westerly wind may get damaging as numbers approach 50-60 mph.

High wind warnings and watches are up for Sunday night into Monday for difficult travel and damaging wind that will lead to scattered outages. This is a result of the storm system pulling away during Monday and a large difference in pressure change between the deepening low across the Canadian Maritimes and high pressure west. The wave heights aren’t an issue until Monday too. As we see offshore winds churn up waves of 10-15 feet.

Another Snowstorm on Thursday?

Colder temps take over for Monday through Tuesday with highs in the low 20s and overnight lows around zero. We have a significant storm showing up on forecast guidance for the roughly Wednesday into Thursday timeframe. The track of the storm is not locked in, but there is a strong signal for heavy snowfall and a coastal storm setting up. Stay tuned to our First Alert Weather Team for further updates.

We’re waiting for a band of snow, sleet and rain to hit here in Greater Boston starting Saturday night. Highway departments and power crews are already gearing up for the severe weather.

Eversource has crews stationed across Massachusetts, ready to respond to any outages due to downed trees from ice accumulation or wind gusts.

Towns like Shrewsbury — in Worcester County — have ensured that they’re stocked with enough salt and are readying crews to treat the roads.

Like the past couple of storms, this system is expected to bring a bit of everything, including a wintry mix, which can pose an additional challenge for crews working to keep the roads safe.

“Freezing rain uses a lot of material, a lot of salt, a lot of deicing material,” said Nick Repekta, highway division manager for the town of Shrewsbury. “Once it gets put down and applied to the road it gets diluted and washes out, so reapplication is necessary, which makes a lot of turns on the routes for our drivers.”

Make sure you’re driving slowly and carefully in the snow and ice. Maybe this is another chance to enjoy a quiet Sunday at home.

The exact number of judges impacted by the firings is unclear. The terminations were enacted by the Acting Director of the Executive Office of Immigration Review at the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts.

A union representing immigration judges has indicated that since the start of the Trump administration, more than two dozen immigration judges, managers and new hires have been fired. 

Five mid-level assistant chief immigration judges and 13 candidates to become new judges received termination notices on Friday, according to the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers.

“You have a president now who campaigned on immigration and removing people from the country on the one hand. And on the other hand, he’s actually firing the very judges that have to hear these cases and make those decisions. So, it makes no sense. It’s a head scratcher,” said Matt Biggs, the president of the IFPTE.

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Since Trump’s inauguration, the administration has fired at least four top managers in the Executive Office of Immigration Review as well as a fifth senior manager, the union said. 

Kerry Doyle, a recently appointed immigration judge, said on LinkedIn she and others appointed by former President Joe Biden received an email on Friday telling them they had been fired. Doyle previously served as deputy general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security during the Biden administration.

“This firing occurred despite the fact that the Immigration Court currently has in the neighborhood of 3.5 MILLION pending cases and DOJ is asking Congress for more money to hire more people at EOIR!” Doyle said in a statement on LinkedIn, referring to the Executive Office of Immigration Review. 

Doyle alleged that the “firing was political,” noting that she and colleagues who were fired had been hired during the Biden administration. NBC News cannot independently verify the claims as the number of fired judges remains unclear.

The Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The decision to fire the immigration judges risks adding to a case backlog that reached record levels during each of the last three years, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Record high levels of enforcement encounters at the Southwest border last year resulted in more than 1.8 million new cases being filed, according to the CRS. The new cases boosted the total immigration case backlog to 3.6 million by the end of 2024, despite an effort by the Biden administration to hire more immigration judges and decrease processing times.

“There’s bipartisan support across the board to actually hire more immigration judges. I mean, there’s a backlog of almost 4 million cases as it is, so this administration, with these firings, they’ve been very successful in increasing the backlog,” Biggs said.

The Trump administration has focused its efforts on hiring staff to aid in mass deportations rather, which Trump has promised will result in “millions and millions” of people being removed from the country.

Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan has recruited staff from several federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to aid ICE in making immigrant arrests.

“It’s just not ICE. We had DEA, FBI, ATF, US Marshal Service, DOJ is all in,” Homan told NBC News following a mass deportation operation in Chicago in January.

The Department of Homeland Security has asked the Internal Revenue Service to target businesses believed to be hiring immigrants working illegally in the country and investigate human trafficking, per a memo by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

NBC News previously reported the administration is considering using Defense Department funding to hire contractors that would vastly expand the scale of immigrant arrests and deportations. The new funding would go towards paying civilian-run companies to expand and staff temporary detention facilities. 

The firings also come on the heels of a series of terminations at the Department of Justice, which marked a departure from the typical turnover between administrations. During previous administrations, the Department of Justice has asked politically appointed U.S. attorneys to resign. But this time, the administration fired as many as 12 U.S. attorneys immediately. The total number of U.S. attorneys impacted was not immediately clear.

Last month, the Justice Department also fired multiple career lawyers who had been involved in federal cases surrounding President Donald Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and alleged mishandling of classified documents. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges, and the cases were dropped after Trump was elected to a second term. 

Trump’s first few weeks in office have been marked by the mass upheaval of the federal workforce, with the administration initiating large-scale firings across the government. A federal judge gave a green light earlier this week to Trump’s mass buyout plan, allowing the administration to persuade millions of people to resign their positions but get paid through September. The Office of Personnel Management also advised agency leaders this week to terminate probationary employees who have been in their positions for a short period of time. 

The Department of Government Efficiency, spearheaded by Elon Musk, has also led Trump’s efforts to reshape the federal workforce, taking aim at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, among other departments. 

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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Shortly before 5 p.m. Friday, state police said they responded to a 3-car crash on I-95 south prior to Exit 23B with serious injuries.

Preliminary information indicates that a driver suffered a medical event that caused his vehicle to go off the roadway into the median and veer back into the roadway where it hit the two other vehicles. First responders delivered medical aid to the driver and took him to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. 

He has been identified by state police as William Martindale, 57, of Attleboro.

One of the other operators suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was also taken to the hospital. 

The highway reopened to normal traffic around 7:40 p.m. following the on scene investigation.

Wellesley police said the crash occurred on Route 9 east near School Street around 12:30 a.m. Saturday.

They said the driver was flown by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital. No update on their condition was immediately available.

The crash remains under investigation.

Meryl Streep just went viral for a NSFW reason. That’s all.

During Peacock‘s livestream of the “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert” at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall Feb. 14, the Oscar winner was shown sitting beside Martin Short and giving the camera the middle finger.

Streep, who has stirred romance rumors with her “Only Murders in the Building” costar for more than a year, made the gesture as part of a gag. Ana Gasteyer and fellow “SNL” alum Will Ferrell had just reprised their roles of fictional Altadena Middle School music teachers Marty and Bobbi Mohan-Culp, with the actor offering a life update about their ’90s characters.

“We have pretty significant floaters right now,” he said, “but it doesn’t stop us from seeing so many middle fingers peppered in both the upper mezzanine and orchestra section. It’s just unbelievably rude.”

Gasteyer added, “We’re talking about you, Meryl. We see you,” after which the 75-year-old flipped the bird, prompting Short, 74, and scores of fellow audience members to burst into laughter.

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During the sketch, the “SNL” alumni, both 57, performed a satirical medley of several songs, including Kendrick Lamar‘s “Not Like Us,” Britney Spears‘ “Work B—h,” Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” and Doechii’s “Denial Is River.”

Gasteyer, Ferrell, Streep and Short are among a long list of celebs who took part in the event, one of several celebrating “SNL”‘s 50th anniversary.

Other performers included Miley Cyrus, Bad Bunny, Eddie Vedder, DEVO and the Backstreet Boys, as well as Jelly Roll, Ms. Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear, who were joined by Post Malone for a performance of their former band Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

In addition, Lady Gaga, who and “SNL” alum Andy Samberg performed medley of popular digital “SNL” shorts, including “D–k in a Box.”

In addition to Streep and Short, celebs spotted in the audience included SNL alumni such as Chevy Chase, Pete Davidson, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Nealon, Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, plus Chris Pine, Alix Earle, Emma Stone, Amy Schumer, Brendan Fraser, Jason Momoa, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Hamm, Kevin Costner, Paul Rudd, Pedro Pascal and Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson.

Streep and Short’s joint appearance comes more than a year after they first sparked romance rumors.

The actor debunked the dating speculation in January 2024. “We’re not a couple,” he said on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast at the time. “We are just very close friends.”

Then in August, Short addressed the rumors again. “It’s been a friendship that always grows,” he told “Extra,” “if you work with someone and love that person.”

Last October, after the two were spotted grabbing dinner at a Los Angeles restaurant, their “Only Murders in the Building” costar Steve Martin cryptically shared a screenshot of a photo of all three of them together, with a giant red circle with a cross through it placed over his face.

(E! News and Peacock are part of the NBCUniversal family.)

Packard was hurt when when he was improbably engulfed by, then spit out, by a humpback whale while diving.

“I’m vindicated!” he told NBC10 Boston Friday, after the new whale encounter. “There were so many doubters out there.”

In the latest incident, the whale breaches the water’s surface around a man in a yellow kayak, which vanishes under the waves. The incident was got on camera by his father, who can be heard yelling at his son in Spanish to stay calm and grab his kayak. The kayaker ended up unharmed.

Asked about the incident while on vacation, Packard told us, “I thought, well, there you go. It can happen.”

He noted that, of course, “it brought back the scary memories” — for a moment he thought a great white shark had eaten him, then realized it didn’t have teeth. But he was worried he could be stuck inside the coffin-like mouth until he ran out of air.

But the whale spit him out, just like the man in Chile. His knee was dislocated, and he had soft tissue damage, but he was still back in the water within weeks.

His whale of a tale is the subject of a documentary, and while he’s happy the kayaker made it out alive, he’s saying this situation is like an I-told-you-so to all the nay-sayers.

“I thought of it as, ‘Local experts have said these encounters are rare and the swallowing is accidental, as these humpbacks are not aggressive animals,'” Packard said.

The coverage of the Chile incident brought up something else that “still drives me crazy to this day,” he noted: the word “swallowed” in all the coverage of what happened to him.

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Humpback whales eat tiny fish, and their throats are only the size of grapefruits, so he wasn’t actually swallowed by the animal, Packard said, suggesting “engulfed” as a better term.

“We were both engulfed in the giant jaws of a whale, which is pretty darn scary,” he said.

Gathering on Boston Common at noon, the organizers called on state and federal leaders to oppose the “Musk-Trump agenda.” They admonished the administration’s recent actions targeting the transgender community and immigrants.

“It’s a class fight, quite frankly,” said rallygoer Rudy Lautner. “People want a hold on the power and it’s always been time but now more than ever it’s time to keep fighting against that.”

Trump signed a series of executive orders in the first few weeks of his new term on a wide range of topics from immigration to climate change. With Democrats voicing their objects to Trump’s agenda, protests have multiplied.

The president has also faced legal challenges to some of his actions as the administration pushes the limits on what’s traditionally expected of the office. Recent polls have shown that Trump is still enjoying relatively high approval ratings.

The “Stop the Coup” protest was organized by nearly 100 organizations, ranging from the ACLU to the Sierra Club. The rally will also feature speakers from TransResistance, the Brazilian Workers Center, and the Palestinian Youth Movement, among others.

After the rally, the groups marched through the Common and down to a federal office building in Government Center.

“We know that the only way that we are able to defeat fascists, historically speaking, has been with the power of love, community and unity,” said Estefani “Tefa” Galvis of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Massachusetts Republican Party Chair Amy Carnevale, who did not take part in the rally, believes that Trump’s plan will ultimately bring greater affordability and freedoms to Bay Staters, and invited those who did rally to find compromise.

“Think about reaching out and having a conversation with the Trump administration about your priorities and perhaps thinking about different ways to achieve shared objectives,” she said.

Friday’s event came after hundreds of people gathered for a “Stop the Coup” protest in Boston Common last week. Similar protests were held across the country to denounce Trump’s policies and Musk’s role as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency.

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“I have thousands of examples of customers who have been really monitoring their usage and their usages have been lower,” said DeSousa, who lives in New Bedford. “The crux of it is the delivery charges, and when you look at the prices, I mean, nobody understands what they’re looking at.”

He created a Facebook group called Citizens Against Eversource, where customers discuss their energy bills.

“$2.43 in gas, $23 in delivery. I mean it would be cheaper for a guy to bring that gas to the house, you could DoorDash $2 worth of gas,” he said laughing while showing a screenshot of a bill a group member shared with him.

Another showed a larger difference: “We’ve got a supply for gas of $374 dollars and a delivery fee of $776.”

He said those kinds of amounts make him angry.

“It was getting to a boiling point where I started seeing all these bills, and then I started hearing some of the stories too online where, you know, somebody who may be 81 and on retirement talking about, ‘We have to decide between heating the house to 55 degrees or eating dinner,’ you know, on a daily basis, which, it sounds crazy to me that this is happening in America,” DeSousa said.

Eversource spokesman William Hinkle said bills are being impacted by a sharp increase in usage coupled with recent rate adjustments that took effect on Nov. 1, a 20-30% increase depending on the location of the customer.

“There was an increased participation in the state’s energy efficiency programs by natural gas customers which lead to an increase in the component of the delivery rate that is related to the energy efficiency programs,” said Hinkle.

The energy efficiency programs run by Mass Save include heat pump adoption, weatherization, air sealing and insulation.

“This is something that everyone shares the cost in in Massachusetts and that’s why it’s so important that, if you are not participating in these programs, take advantage of them,” said Hinkle. “If you are participating in these programs, you are ultimately using less energy, so your bill is lower than it otherwise would have been even though energy efficiency did impact your delivery costs.”

Supply rate changes on May 1 and Nov. 1, implementing a six-month rate. Hinkle explained there is also a requirement that if the supply rate fluctuates by more than 5% in any given month, the supply cost also has to be adjusted.

“With that significant increase in the cost of gas in January, that 5% threshold was reached and there was an increase in the cost of gas that took effect Feb. 1,” Hinkle said.

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“The vast majority of the delivery charge is the vast pipeline network that we have,” said Kyle Murray, director of state program implementation at clean energy research and advocacy organization Acadia Center. “Unfortunately, maintaining this sprawling gas pipeline network that we have is very expensive and unlikely that costs are going to go down in the near future.”

He added that “it’s important that the state do everything in its power to kind of transition off of the gas system as soon as we can for heating.”

As for customers who are still seeing expensive bills, despite making an effort to keep the heat down, Hinkle says usage is also impacted by the temperature outside.

“Even if you don’t do anything differently, you don’t change your thermostat — say you keep it set at a very brisk 66 degrees in the winter and you don’t change it no matter how cold it is outside — it takes more energy to get to that setting as the temperature decreases. So, if it’s 10 degrees outside, you’re going to use more energy to get to that setting than if its 30 degrees outside.”

DeSousa is encouraging members of his Facebook group to speak up and reach out to their state representatives. He started a petition calling for the state to halt and review the rate hikes.

Eversource urges anyone who needs help paying their energy bill to call 866-861-6225 or 800-688-6160 or visit eversource.com/BillHelp to learn more about assistance programs and payment plans. The company is also holding free webinars (advanced registration required) about the options on Tuesday and Thursday from 1 to 2 p.m.

Parts of the state are now at a critical stage of drought.

“We’re seeing these droughts are a lot more common, almost every year, and it hasn’t mattered whether it’s summer or winter,” said Vandana Rao, director of water policy at the state’s Executive Office of Environmental Affairs.

December snow and rain eased some of the dry conditions, but there was very little precipitation in January.

The state’s central and northeast regions are at critical drought stages. The rest of Massachusetts is experiencing either mild or significant conditions.

“We are in quite a deficit of precipitation, so anything we get will move us in the right direction of getting back to normal conditions,” Rao said.

Lexington Community Farm is not overly concerned right now, but hoping things in improve since the water used to irrigate in the summer comes from wells.

“The amount of water we get in the winter influences the amount of water we have available in the spring,” Matt Schector, a manager at the farm.

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Airman First Class Nicholas Sweetser, a 30-year-old from Eastham, Massachusetts, was arrested Thursday by Massachusetts State Police, the Cape & Island District Attorney’s Office said Friday.

Detectives began looking into allegations of sexual assault detailed in an Air Force investigative report shared with state police, prosecutors said. They are bringing two counts each of charges of rape and photographing an unsuspecting nude person.

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It wasn’t immediately clear if Sweetser, who was ordered held without bail tunil a hearing on Tuesday, had an attorney who could speak to the charges.

Police asked in a statement that anyone with “relevant information regarding Mr. Sweetser” contact them at 508-790-5796. They didn’t share details about the allegations that led to his arrest.

NBC10 Boston has reached out to the Department of Defense for more information Sweetser and any comment on the case.

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Employees at Trucchi’s Supermarket on East Center Street in West Bridgewater at keypads in aisles 1 and 2. The devices were first noticed on Feb. 10, but investigators believe they have been in place since Feb. 8. Anyone who used a card to pay at the store recently should monitor their accounts and report anything suspicious to the financial institution immediately.

The person suspected of placing the skimmers is described as a man around 5-foot-10, 195 to 200 pounds. he was wearing a dark tan Carhartt-style winter jacket and gray winter hat with a square logo on the front.

Abington police say they are investigating a similar crime at the Trucchi’s store in their town – those devices were found in aisles 3, 7 and 8.

Skimmers have also been found in stores in Taunton and New Bedford recently, according to police. Skimmers are illegal devices that allow thieves to steal personal information from cards to use it for their own purposes.

Credit card skimmers are often found in places like grocery stores, gas station pumps and ATMs. Consumer protection officials suggest shoppers use “tap to pay” options whenever possible to avoid inserting cards into payment machines, reducing the risk of having data stolen by a skimmer. If you have to insert or swipe your card, first check the card reader for anything off like loose parts, mismatched colors or materials, or damage to tamper-evident measures like stickers.

Desi Forte and Marlee Robinson made it to Denmark with no issues. But they say on their return flight to Boston via Scandinavian Airlines, they were told five minutes before takeoff that they had to get off because of their wheelchairs.

After a successful tournament, mingling with other athletes with disabilities, they say pure joy turned to physical and mental exhaustion, and they hope this doesn’t happen to other travelers with disabilities.

Boarding a plane is far from simple for these two women.

“Desi and I both have to dehydrate ourselves before the flight, so we had prepared that the day before,” Robinson said.

“To get all the way onto the plane, I mean, we were sitting in our seats, ready for takeoff,” explained Forte. “Everyone had boarded the plane.”

That’s when they were told they had to get off. They say they were not initially told why, but they later learned it was due to the weight of their wheelchairs.

The airline put them up in a hotel, and hours later, it reached out with new flight information for the next day.

But they still don’t understand why there was an issue on the return flight after an uneventful flight to Europe.

“We literally took the same exact flight over to Copenhagen from Boston, no issues,” Robinson said.

The women spent 10 days overseas, playing in a volt hockey tournament. Their team, the first in the country, is the Boston Whiplash.

“It’s played in specialized, low-to-the-ground powerchairs where paddles are fixed to them, it’s three on three,” Forte said.

They took home the bronze medal, but their first attempt to get home left a bad taste.

“That’s kind of the memory you’re left with, and so the impact is huge,” said their coach, Laura Calderon.

She says she personally got an explanation from Scandinavian Airlines after the chaos.

“They specifically told us that they messed up in Boston, that we shouldn’t have flown in the first place,” Calderon said.

The airline told NBC10 Boston this was a misunderstanding regarding a special permit required for heavier wheelchairs. It said it deeply regret how this impacted the women’s travel and it is reviewing its procedures immediately.

“They were very apologetic today, and we appreciate it,” Robinson said. “But I mean, we shouldn’t have to go through this.”

The women are happy to be home, but since Scandinavian Airlines has the only direct flight to Copenhagen, they are already expressing concern about a future trip.

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Trump announced last week that he was firing members of the cultural institution’s board and naming himself its chairman. After appointing himself and others associated with his administration to the board Tuesday, it voted Wednesday to remove billionaire David Rubenstein as the chair’s board, replacing him with Trump.

Blumberg was also appointed Wednesday, the White House said in a press release Thursday, noting she would fill the remainder of Carlos Elizondo’s term, ending Sept. 1, 2030. Elizondo served as White House social secretary under former President Joe Biden.

Other board members appointed by Trump this week include second lady Usha Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, and Alison Lutnick, the wife of Trump commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick.

Lee Greenwood, a country singer who has been a fixture at Trump’s campaign rallies, was also named to the board.

The Kennedy Center’s former president, Deborah Rutter, announced that she was departing her position “proud of all we accomplished” toward the goal of living up to the center’s namesake, former President John F. Kennedy.

The center said in a press release that Rutter’s contract had been “terminated.”

Rubenstein also posted on social media after his removal.

“I am sorry that I could not be in Washington yesterday with Deborah Rutter and all of you,” he wrote. “The Kennedy Center team, led by Deborah, has done an extraordinary job supporting the Kennedy Center over many years and through a number of difficult times, thereby helping to make the Center the beacon for the performing arts its founders intended.”

Blumberg and Kraft have been married since 2022.

The Kennedy Center’s website lists Blumberg’s name as well as a Dana Kraft. It was not immediately clear whether the latter referred to Blumberg.

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The couple had just appeared before a judge on multiple criminal charges of larceny, forgery and fraud.

Meantime, about 10 minutes down the road, constable Allan Gordon knocked on the door and began eviction proceedings at the Callahans’ latest unwanted extended stay.

There was no need for the moving truck waiting outside. Gordon found the inside of the unit completely cleaned out, almost as if professionals had been there.

“Who gets into the mentality of somebody who would do something like this?” Gordon wondered. “Most of the people in society pay the bills and do the right thing. But then you have people who do just what they have to do to get away with it.”

Our NBC10 Boston investigation showed how the Callahans are a unique brand of professionals. For more years, they have made a living by scamming property owners.

Over the past two decades in Massachusetts — and a short stint in Florida — our investigation discovered the Callahans have been evicted more than 20 times and have judgements for unpaid rent surpassing $100,000.

Victims we spoke with include a single mom, a couple saving to have their first child, and a veteran who was overseas on his first deployment with the Navy.

Our investigation also found the legal system repeatedly brushed aside the alleged crimes as “housing court matters.”

The pending charges in Westborough District Court stem from our reporting about what allegedly happened to Sitanshu Sinha and his wife, Shilpi Gupta. The Shrewsbury couple rented to their home to the Callahans in late 2023 when they showed up with a stack of fake paperwork like credit reports, background checks and pay stubs.

To avoid detection, the couple — known in housing circles as “professional tenants” — listed their name as “O’Callagham” on the documents.

Once the rent checks bounced, Sinha and Gupta drained $30,000 on evictions proceedings and moving expenses to get the Callahans out of their property. The savings had been meant for their kids’ college funds.

“It was financially very stressful for us,” Gupta said. “[The Callahans] know how to get away with it.”

We finally found the Callahans last summer and confronted them with the allegations outside the residential complex in Westborough.

Housing court records show the couple racked up more than $12,000 in unpaid rent before Thursday’s eviction.

Inside the courtroom, Worcester County prosecutor Maureen McNally told the judge that the case remains under investigation and detectives are awaiting records that should arrive soon.

McNally said the DA’s office is considering presenting the case to a grand jury for criminal indictment. For the moment, the Callahans next court date is scheduled for April 25.

From the courthouse, the Uber took the Callahans along Route 9 and eventually dropped them off at a hotel in Worcester.

With the legal system finally catching up, NBC10 Boston asked one last time why the couple chooses not to pay for housing.

Linda Callahan shouted an expletive, while Russell closed the door to the hotel entrance.

Gordon, the constable who previously served as Westborough’s police chief until retirement, weighed in on the couple’s pattern of behavior.

“This has been going on for so long, it’s almost a criminal enterprise,” Gordon said. “They need to pay the price for what they’ve done.”

Natanael Defarias, a 23-year-old from Brockton, was in Plymouth Superior Court Friday to face charges of murder, motor vehicle homicide, reckless driving and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon over the Jan. 13, 2024, crash, according to the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors allege Defarias was driving more than 100 mph before crashing on Belair Street, in a residential part of Brockton. There were four people in the car, all of whom were rushed to the hospital, and 22-year-old Nestor Velasquez later died, according to prosecutors.

Defarias pleaded not guilty and was held on $5,000 cash bail, with the requirement he not drive if he’s released; prosecutors said they had requested $100,000 bail.

Defarias is due back in court March 21.

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Trump moved immediately after his Jan. 20 inauguration to deliver on promises to shrink government and tailor federal policies to suit his political agenda. Opponents have successfully tied up some orders in court, and the president has continued to identify and eliminate spending he sees as fraudulent or wasteful.

In Democrat-heavy Massachusetts, where voters preferred Kamala Harris over Trump, elected officials charged with balancing budgets and delivering on their own agendas have elevated levels of concern about the federal revenues they have long counted on, as well as trepidation about impacts of policy-related executive orders.

“The things that we are changing are shoring up and protecting against risks that are coming from the federal government,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said during an interview Wednesday on GBH Radio. “We have had to look at all the funding that we’ve been allocated and really ensure that the legal language is there in contracts to protect them and to work with the Attorney General [Andrea] Campbell and other colleagues to push back in places where those executive orders have already crossed the line.”

Wu mentioned discussions about education and public health spending and executive orders on transportation and research and medical funding, a longstanding cornerstone of the state’s identity and economy.

“We are looking to do what we can do and to identify the places where we can continue expanding our work through partnerships,” Wu said. “We’ve had just a very, very strong relationship with state government and the Healey administration and our partners on how we will stand as a united front. We’ve had a very strong partnership with local philanthropic and private sector institutions who also understand their obligation and their opportunity to stand in the gap now.”

Trump’s executive order pace and volume has also caught the attention of Massachusetts House Speaker Ron Mariano, who declared earlier this month that “we’ve lost our federal partner.”

“The speed with which these changes keep firing out of Washington, it’s at a speed that is far faster than my simple brain can comprehend,” Mariano told reporters Feb. 3.

Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that the president’s team is focused on “further action to make our federal government more efficient and effective,” noting the signing of an executive order to implement a Department of Government Efficiency Workforce Optimization Initiative.

“Agency heads will coordinate and consult with DOGE to significantly shrink the size of the federal workforce and limit hiring to essential positions only,” she said. “The unaccountable bureaucracy will finally be reined in.”

Wu said Boston plans to “lean on our resources here, locally, the authority that we have within the city level and within city government” to pursue the city’s climate resilience, housing and public education goals.

The city has “so far” not encountered situations that it is most worried about, the mayor said.

“What we’ve learned in the last several weeks since the inauguration is that it’s one thing to issue a statement that seems to fulfill a campaign promise or something that was within Project 2025, and it’s another thing to have that actually have legal force to be able to be implemented,” Wu said.

She added, “Many of the most intense executive orders have already been stopped in the courts, and every day is a new set of actions that are taken in the legal and judicial system to be able to sort out what is real and what is not real. So far, we have not had direct impacts on the types of funding that we’re most worried about because of the legal processes that are still playing out. Now, as those get resolved, we’re monitoring very closely to see if anything needs to be adjusted to the realities of what’s happening.”

While opponents have argued the president is exceeding his executive authority, the White House has pointed back at judges who have ruled against the Trump administration.

“The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges in liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump’s basic executive authority,” Leavitt said Wednesday, according to a transcript. “We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law, and they have issued at least 12 injunctions against this administration in the past 14 days, often without citing any evidence or grounds for their lawsuits.”

Leavitt added: “As the president clearly stated in the Oval Office yesterday, we will comply with the law and the courts, but we will also continue to seek every legal remedy to ultimately overturn these radical injunctions and ensure President Trump’s policies can be enacted.”

In a seven-page letter Wednesday to the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, U.S. Sens. Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren wrote that “funding freezes and cuts at NIH and NSF have caused chaos and confusion at Massachusetts research institutions.”

The senators said the agencies are the largest public funders of research in the U.S. and fuel the development of medical breakthroughs and lifesaving disease treatments. In fiscal 2023 alone, the senators wrote, the NIH awarded $3.5 billion “in grants in contracts in Massachusetts that directly supported 28,842 jobs and nearly $7.5 billion in economic activity.”

“After weeks of illegal and unprecedented funding cut offs, communication pauses, and cuts to indirect cost rates, patients, medical workers, researchers, and residents throughout the states are scared and confused about the future of research programs and clinical trials at their local hospitals and universities,” the senators wrote. “The chaos caused by the Trump administration is unacceptable — and you owe researchers and patients in Massachusetts and beyond an explanation about what is going on at your agencies.”

Boston’s focus on contracting with minority-owned businesses is also “not at all” at risk, Wu said.

“When you look at the reality of our communities, when you look at disparities that exist between outcomes on health and longevity, or household income or home ownership, it’s very clear that, historically, policies have led us to this point, and that policies are needed to ensure that we’re all benefiting from the full participation of our entire community, economically and otherwise,” the mayor said. “And so our city is known as the safest city in the country. We have been seeing job growth and a desire to be part of Boston, and major companies moving here like Lego and others, because of what Boston represents, and it’s because of the policies that really focus on closing gaps and including everyone.”

Wu also previewed some of her messaging as she prepares to testify in Washington, D.C. on March 5. Wu has been called to testify with the mayors of Denver, Chicago and New York on immigration issues.

In a Jan. 27 letter to Wu, U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer of Kentucky said his panel was “investigating sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States and their impact on public safety and the effectiveness of federal efforts to enforce the immigration laws of the United States.”

Comer wrote that Boston is a sanctuary jurisdiction under the Boston Trust Act and said the city “is also subject to Massachusetts’s judicial precedent finding ICE detainers an unlawful exercise of state power.” He requested that Wu confirm her plans to testify and to produce an array of documents and communications.

“These [sanctuary] jurisdictions take it upon themselves to decide what laws they will and will not abide by all for the purpose of shielding removable aliens, especially criminals, from federal law enforcement,” Comer wrote. “There are about 12 states and hundreds of cities and counties with sanctuary laws or policies across the country. Four cities, however, stand out in their abject failure to comply with federal law: Chicago, New York City, Denver, and Boston. Citizens of all four cities have suffered due to sanctuary policies.”

Panel members “could be screaming at you for 45 minutes,” GBH co-host Margery Eagan said to Wu.

“Or six hours I hear,” the mayor responded.

“It really was not presented as an optional choice for us to go or not go,” Wu said. “And I gladly am taking the opportunity to go down to D.C. and defend our city, defend our policies and values that have led us to become the safest city in the country.”

The mayor said “framing” around the event has focused on how immigration policies are “somehow creating opportunity for dangerous and violent behavior to thrive in our cities.”

“In fact, we represent the opposite,” she said. “If you look at the facts, gun violence has been at the lowest levels every single year during our administration, and Boston has had policies on the books that allow us to ensure that everyone is part of keeping our community safe, knowing that you can reach out to call 911 when you need help, knowing that you can report information that you have safely, and knowing you can bring your child to school, be part of our community where immigration status is neither a barrier to receiving services, nor a shield to behavior” involving violence “where you will be held accountable, regardless of immigration status as well. I think we are the clear example and proof on both counts that this is a community that represents, in fact, what many other cities are asking us, what they should do on public safety.”

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The Fortune 500 company intends to house more than 600 employees at 275 Grove St. when it moves in late 2026. It signed a 12-year lease for just over 100,000 square feet.

More on this story from Boston Business Journal

Dr. Kumait Jaroje says he’s gotten plenty of attention for the electric vehicle, but lately it’s become very aggressive.

”People will not just point and give us thumbs down,” he said. “It became, like, people screaming at the car, some more middle fingers, you know, trying to cut us off.”

The Worcester doctor says he wrapped the truck in gold to promote his medical spa, Sculpting MD.

At first, the $100,000 vehicle attracted the kind of comments you might expect. But he says things changed when Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump for president.

It’s been down hill since, with Tesla’s CEO now in charge of cutting government costs, after stirring controversy with a straight-armed gesture at an inaugural event some interpreted as a Nazi salute.

“The salute happened, Musk, during the inauguration of Trump, and that’s when everything went crazy,” Jaroje said.

Last Friday, Jaroje found a sticker on his truck referring to Nazis, he said. Clients are canceling appointments, his social media is tough to look at and he received a voice message that said, “Please do the world a favor put a bullet right between your tiny brain.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.

The doctor says he escaped the violence of his native Syria and started his business here. He’s now thinking about leaving Massachusetts with his wife and three children.

“I remember President Trump saying, ‘Fight, fight, fight,’ you know. Is it fair for me to just eradicate my roots from here and take my kids away?” Jaroje said.

He says he tried to get rid of his truck, but nobody will take it, including Tesla.

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In an email sent to employees at NNSA and obtained by NBC News, officials wrote, “The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel.”

The individuals the letter refers to had been fired on Thursday and lost access to their federal government email accounts. NNSA, which is within the Department of Energy and oversees the nation’s nuclear stockpile, cannot reach these employees directly and is now asking recipients of the email, “Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people’s personal contact emails.”

The Department of Energy did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment.

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President Donald Trump‘s administration has acted with unprecedented speed — and in some cases, questionable legality — in seeking to cut large portions of the federal government, laying off staff and ending contracts. But that speed has resulted in complications, including firing people agencies actually want to keep.

The emails come after multiple staff — all civil servants — at the NNSA received termination notices late Thursday, according to a source with direct knowledge of the notifications. NBC News reviewed the termination notification, which included the subject line: “Notification of Termination During Probationary/Trial Period.”

The NNSA is tasked with designing, building and overseeing the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.

The termination notices, which read “effective today,” came within hours of a Russian drone striking the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine. NNSA tracks nuclear risks in Ukraine, including through sensor systems.

The NNSA saga comes as the Trump administration executed mass firings throughout the federal government this week, primarily slashing the jobs of employees categorized as “probationary.”

Some departments saw massive numbers of layoffs, like the Department of Homeland Security, where over 400 people were told that their jobs were cut.

The move comes as President Donald Trump and one of his top advisers, tech mogul Elon Musk, seek to slash the size of the federal government.

The federal cuts have been met with pushback from Democrats, labor unions and progressive organizations. More than 60 lawsuits against the Trump administration alleging executive overreach and other violations are pending. 

Kevin Collier contributed.

This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News:

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The Americans defeated the across-the-border rivals 4-2 in the preliminary round at the 2022 Beijing Olympics before being stunned in the quarterfinals by Slovenia.

Sweden also bounced Canada in the quarterfinals en route to a fourth place finish overall in the tournament. Finland took home the gold medal in a 2-1 win over the ROC.

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Prior to Beijing, the North American rivals hadn’t met at an Olympics since Canada defeated the United States in the semifinals of the 2014 Sochi Games.

Now, back on the ice for the second time this week, Team Canada and Team USA are set to meet again.

Both clubs are coming off wins in Montreal, with the Canadians dispatching Sweden in overtime while the Americans took care of Finland 6-1 in a contest that was close until the middle of the second frame.

How to watch Team USA vs. Canada tonight

Puck drops for the 4 Nations Face-off contest between the United States and Canada at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT.

On broadcast TV, the game can be seen on ABC. For those streaming, the contest will be available on ESPN+.

Team USA hockey head coach

Two-time Stanley Cup champion head coach in Mike Sullivan of the Pittsburgh Penguins leads Team USA on the bench for this week-long international tournament.

Team Canada hockey head coach

Two-time Stanley Cup champion Jon Cooper of the Tampa Bay Lightning is coaching Team Canada.

Players to watch in the 4 Nations Face-off

Two-time Hart Trophy winner Sidney Crosby dons the “C” on his sweater for Team Canada.

Crosby shares the ice with three-time Hart Trophy winner Connor McDavid and Cale Maker, a Norris and Conn Smythe Trophy winner. McDavid and Maker are serving as Canada’s alternate captains.

On the other bench, three-time Richard Trophy winner Auston Matthews is America’s captain. Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk and Boston Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy are Team USA’s alternate captains for the 4 Nations Face-off.

Who does Team USA play after Canada?

The Americans play their third game in five days when they take on Sweden at 8 p.m. on President’s Day (Monday, Feb. 17).

That game will be played at Boston’s TD Garden. Puck drops at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT.

On TV, fans can watch on either truTV or TNT. For the streaming hockey fans, the contest will run live on MAX.

Who does Canada play after tonight’s contest vs. Team USA?

Canada gets Finland in its final scheduled game in the 4 Nations Face-off.

The contest is set to begin at 1 p.m. Monday, Feb. 17, and will also take place at TD Garden.

When is the 4 Nations Face-off Championship?

The final game of the tournament takes place at TD Garden Thursday, Feb. 20. The NHL’s 2024-25 regular season begins again two days later on Saturday, Feb. 22.

Militants in the southern Gaza Strip paraded the three hostages — Iair Horn, 46, a dual citizen of Israel and Argentina; American-Israeli Sagui Dekel Chen, 36; and Russian-Israeli Alexander (Sasha) Troufanov, 29 — before a crowd before releasing them.

All had been abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a community that was hard-hit in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war. They appeared pale and worn, but seemed in better physical condition than the three men released last Saturday, who had emerged emaciated from 16 months of captivity.

The truce that began nearly four weeks ago had been jeopardized in recent days by a tense dispute that threatened to renew the fighting.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to remove more than two million Palestinians from Gaza and settle them elsewhere in the region has cast even more doubt on the future of the ceasefire.

But Hamas said Thursday it would move ahead with the release of more hostages after talks with Egyptian and Qatari officials. The group said the mediators had pledged to “remove all hurdles” to ensure Israel would allow more tents, medical supplies and other essentials into Gaza.

As with previous exchanges, the hostage release was heavily choreographed, with the captives made to walk onto a stage and speak into microphones before the crowd. Dozens of masked, armed Hamas fighters lined up near the stage festooned with Palestinian flags and banners of militant factions.

In Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, a huge cheer went up as the hostages were transferred to the Red Cross. “Iair, Sagui and Sasha are on their way home!” an announcer said.

In return for the hostages’ release, Israel began releasing 369 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including 36 serving life sentences over deadly attacks. A bus carrying the first released prisoners arrived in the occupied West Bank town of Beitunia and were greeted by a cheering crowd of relatives and supporters. Some appeared gaunt, and the Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service said four were immediately taken for medical treatment.

It is the sixth swap since the ceasefire took effect on Jan. 19. Before Saturday, 21 hostages and over 730 Palestinian prisoners were freed during the first phase of the truce.

Who are the hostages and prisoners being released?

Horn was abducted along with his brother, Eitan Horn, who had been staying with him at the time. Eitan, 37, remains in captivity and is not on the list of hostages expected to be released in the ceasefire’s first stage.

“Now, we can breathe a little. Our Iair is home after surviving hell in Gaza,” his family said in a statement. “Now, we need to bring Eitan back so our family can truly breathe.”

Dekel Chen had been working outside when militants stormed the kibbutz. His pregnant wife, Avital Dekel Chen, hid in a safe room with their two daughters. She gave birth to their third daughter two months later. Speaking to Israeli media Saturday, she said she was overwhelmed with happiness to see Sagui back in Israel, where he will meet his youngest daughter, Shachar, for the first time.

Troufanov, whose father was killed during the Oct. 7 attack, was taken hostage along with his grandmother, mother and girlfriend. The three women were released during a brief ceasefire in November 2023. Troufanov was informed of his father’s death after his release, shortly before being reunited with his family, who said they were “overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude” as he crossed into Israeli territory.

Of the 369 Palestinians who were being released from Israeli prisons, 36 were serving life sentences, according to the Hamas-linked Prisoners’ Information Office.

Israel-Hamas War Feb 8

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Among the most prominent is Ahmed Barghouti, 48, a close aide of militant leader and iconic Palestinian political figure Marwan Barghouti.

Israel sentenced Ahmed Barghouti to life on charges that he dispatched suicide bombers during the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in the early 2000s to carry out attacks that killed Israeli civilians. He was arrested alongside Marwan Barghouti in 2002.

Concerns are high about the remaining hostages’ condition

Of the 251 people abducted during the Oct. 7 attack, 73 remain in Gaza, around half of whom are believed to be dead. Nearly all the remaining hostages are men, including Israeli soldiers.

Concern has been growing about their condition, particularly after the release of three last Saturday, who emerged looking emaciated and frail.

One of them, 65-year-old Keith Siegel, said Friday in a video message addressed to Trump that his captors treated him worse as the 15-month war intensified, kicking him, spitting on him and holding him without water or light.

The truce remains very fragile

The ceasefire appeared dangerously close to collapse in recent days.

Hamas had said it would delay the release of the hostages after accusing Israel of not adhering to their agreement by not allowing in enough shelters, medical supplies, fuel and heavy equipment for clearing rubble. Israel said it would resume fighting Saturday unless hostages were freed.

While the immediate crisis may have been averted, the truce faces a much bigger challenge with the deal’s first phase set to conclude in early March. There have not yet been substantive negotiations over the second phase, in which Hamas would release all remaining hostages in return for an end to the war.

At its height, the fighting displaced 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million. Hundreds of thousands have since returned to their homes as the ceasefire took hold, though many found only rubble, buried human remains and unexploded ordnance.

The war has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

Trump’s plan increases uncertainty

Trump’s proposal to remove some two million Palestinians from Gaza and settle them elsewhere in the region has thrown the truce’s future into further doubt.

The idea has been welcomed by Israel’s government. But it has been strongly rejected by Palestinians and Arab countries. Human rights groups say it could amount to a war crime under international law.

Trump has proposed that once the fighting ends, Israel would transfer control of Gaza to the United States, which would then redevelop it as the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right allies are already calling for a resumption of the war after the first phase with the goal of destroying Hamas and implementing Trump’s plan. The militant group remains in control of the territory after surviving one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history.

Hamas may be unwilling to release any more hostages if it believes the war will resume. The captives are among the only bargaining chips it has left.

___

Bwaitel reported from Beitunia, West Bank, and Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Waafa Shurafa from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed.

We expect the first band of snow to arrive by 6-8 p.m. as it comes in from western Massachusetts. This will be a light band, and through the course of the night, we don’t expect the snow to be very intense. This will limit accumulations, and come morning, as warmer air moves in aloft, you may hear the ping of sleet on your stoops, windowsills, and decks.

What time is the snow starting?

Going deeper into the day on Sunday, our temperatures will continue to “warm” through the 30s and we’ll see any mix/sleet turn to rain along the coast. Away from the coast, the changeover will be slower, and that will allow some glaze on some objects.

Although this does NOT look like a big icing event, even a little bit will create very slippery conditions through the afternoon.

The precipitation will wrap into Sunday evening, and the spots that rose above freezing during the day will see a refreeze as the winds turn to the northwest and the skies clear.

Snowfall totals

Gusty winds will increase late Sunday night and carry into Monday. We could see winds top 50 mph during the day, and that could cause some isolated/scattered power outages – especially if we have glaze ice on the trees and power lines from Sunday.

Major snowstorm possible Thursday

Next up… a big ol’ storm next week. A coastal storm will form late Tuesday in the Gulf and head off the Eastern Seaboard by Wednesday. We’ll watch it closely as it nears on Thursday. This has the potential to be a major snowstorm if it hits New England.

Be safe and enjoy the holiday weekend.

Track the storms with live radar

Rather than pay for the minerals, the ownership agreement would be a way for Ukraine to reimburse the U.S. for the billions of dollars in weapons and support its provided to Kyiv since the war began in February 2022, two of the officials said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented the proposal for the U.S. to own half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a draft contract he brought to their meeting on Wednesday in Kyiv, according to eight U.S. officials briefed on the meeting.

After that meeting, Bessent said the draft of a U.S.-Ukraine rare earth minerals agreement reflected the president’s goal, but he did not provide details of what the administration had proposed.

Zelenskyy declined to sign the document when Bessent presented it during their meeting, saying he needed to study it and consult others about it, the eight U.S. officials briefed on the meeting said.

The Ukrainian leader said at the time that he and his team “will do everything to review all details of the document” before his arrival in Munich, where he met Friday with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as U.S. lawmakers on the sidelines of a global security conference.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington and a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

Zelenskyy said during his speech Friday at the security conference that his lawyers would weigh in on the document Bessent presented to him in Kyiv with advice and some changes. He referred to the proposal as memorandum between the U.S. and Ukraine, not a security agreement.

President Donald Trump in recent months has expressed interest in striking a deal with Ukraine that would grant the U.S. significant access to its rare earth minerals, which are used to make a variety of technology products.

In a recent interview with Fox News, Trump said he wants the U.S. to get $500 billion worth of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, and signaled Kyiv had “essentially agreed to do so.”

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office this month that he would view access to the minerals as a form of “security.”

“I want to have the security of rare earth. We’re putting in hundreds of billions of dollars. They have great rare earth, and I want security of the rare earth, and they’re willing to do it,” Trump said.

Many of Ukraine’s minerals are in areas now controlled by Russian troops, three U.S. officials said.

Ukrainian officials have said Zelenskyy has long backed the idea of exchanging “critical resources” for continued U.S. support, calling the idea part of the “Victory Plan” that he presented to Trump during a meeting last fall.

In an exclusive interview Friday at the Munich Security Conference, Zelenskyy told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker that it would be “very, very difficult” for Ukraine to survive without U.S. military support.

“In all the difficult situations, you have a chance. But we will have low chance — low chance to survive without support of the United States. I think it’s very important, critical,” Zelenskyy said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said this week that U.S. troops would not be deployed to Ukraine as part of any security guarantees for the country. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Vance said in an interview with the newspaper that the U.S. sending troops to Ukraine is “on the table” if Russia does not negotiate a peace agreement in good faith.

Trump has long bristled at the amount of American support for Ukraine, referring to Zelenskyy at a past campaign event as “the greatest salesman of all time.”

“Every time Zelenskyy comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion,” Trump said in September. “I think he’s the greatest salesman on Earth. But we’re stuck in that war unless I’m president.”

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

• Zelenskyy’s warning about Ukraine’s future: From the Politics Desk
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The court order came in response to a lawsuit by the National Treasury Employees Union and the CFPB Employee Association, among other groups, that sued the agency and its acting director Russell Vought this week. They had asked the judge to “declare unlawful and set aside the defendants’ actions and intended further actions to dismantle the CFPB.”

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson prevents any mass firings at the agency and prohibits the deletion of agency data.

“Defendants shall not terminate any CFPB employee, except for cause related to the specific employee’s performance or conduct; nor shall Defendants issue any notice of reduction-in-force to any CFPB employee,” the judge wrote.

Follow live politics coverage here

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The CFPB media team also did not respond to a request for comment, though Vought issued a directive to employees last week not to issue public communications, among other instructions.

The court docket indicated that both parties agreed to the order.

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The judge also ordered Vought and the CFPB not to “take steps to reduce the amount of money available to the CFPB.”

Vought had previously sought to cut off additional CFPB funding. He said last week in a post on X that he notified the Federal Reserve that the bureau “will not be taking its next draw” of funding, arguing it was not necessary to carry out the bureau’s duties.

“This spigot, long contributing to CFPB’s unaccountability, is now being turned off,” he said in the post.

Last week, Vought issued a series of directives to CFPB employees, instructing them to “cease all supervision and examination activity,” “cease all stakeholder engagement,” and not “approve or issue any proposed or final rules or formal or informal guidance,” among other directives. CFPB staffers were also instructed this week not to work.

Trump had previously laid out his aim to get rid of the bureau entirely. When asked this week if he could confirm whether it was his goal to completely eliminate the bureau, Trump said, “I would say yeah.”

“Because we’re trying to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse,” he said. The administration has not provided evidence to back up allegations of fraud at the agency.

Similarly, tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk has slammed the CFPB, writing “CFPB RIP” in a post on X with a gravestone emoji.

Musk is spearheading Trump’s advisory Department of Government Efficiency, which has been working to cut government spending. DOGE has played a key role in the administration’s push to cut programs and dramatically reduce a government workforce that it deems wasteful.

Friday’s court order marks the latest in a series of setbacks to the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the federal government.

On Thursday, a judge ruled that the administration must temporarily allow the disbursement of foreign aid. A separate judge temporarily halted plans to slash certain federal research funding.

But the administration also notched a win this week. On Wednesday, a judge ended a temporary pause on the White House’s “deferred resignation” offer program that incentivized federal employees to resign.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Senate Republicans slow-walk Elise Stefanik’s confirmation to be U.N. ambassador
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While much of the administration’s attention was focused on disrupting bureaucracy in Washington, the broad-based effort to slash the government workforce was impacting a far wider swath of workers. As layoff notices were sent out agency by agency, federal employees from Michigan to Florida were left reeling from being told that their services were no longer needed.

In a sign of how chaotic the firings have been, some who received layoff notices had already accepted the administration’s deferred resignation offer, under which they were supposed to be paid until Sept. 30 if they agreed to quit, raising questions about whether others who signed the deal would nonetheless be fired. On Friday evening, the Office of Personnel Management, which serves as a human resources department for the federal government, acknowledged that some employees may have received termination notices in error and said the buyouts agreements would be honored.

“This has been slash and burn,” said Nicholas Detter, who had been working in Kansas as a natural resource specialist, helping farmers reduce soil and water erosion, until he was fired by email late Thursday night. He said there seemed to be little thought about how employees and the farmers and ranchers he helped would be impacted.

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“None of this has been done thoughtfully or carefully,” he said.

The White House and OPM declined to say Friday how many probationary workers, who generally have less than a year on the job, have so far been dismissed. According to government data maintained by OPM, 220,000 workers had less than a year on the job as of March 2024.

OPM has given agencies until 8 p.m. Tuesday to issue layoff notices, according to a person familiar with the plan who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The probationary layoffs are the latest salvo in the new administration’s sweeping efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce, which are being led by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. Trump, in an executive order Tuesday, told agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions” after their initial attempt to downsize the workforce — the voluntary buyout – was accepted by only 75,000 workers.

The layoffs begin

On Thursday night, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced the dismissal of more than 1,000 employees who had served for less than two years. That included researchers working on cancer treatment, opioid addiction, prosthetics and burn pit exposure, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat, said Thursday.

Dozens were fired from the Education Department, including special education specialists and student aid officials, according to a union that represents agency workers.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1,300 probationary employees — roughly one-tenth of the agency’s total workforce — are being forced out. The Atlanta-based agency’s leadership was notified of the decision Friday morning, according to a federal official who was at the meeting and was not authorized to discuss the orders and requested anonymity.

The new Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Friday that her agency had invited Musk’s DOGE team with “open arms” and that layoffs “will be forthcoming.”

“Clearly, it’s a new day,” Rollins said at the White House. “I think the American people spoke on November 5th, that they believe that government was too big.”

Workers impacted

Andrew Lennox, a 10-year Marine veteran, was part of a new supervisor training program at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He said he received an email “out of the blue” Thursday evening informing him that he was being terminated.

“In order to help veterans, you just fired a veteran,” said Lennox, 35, a former USMC infantryman who was deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

Lennox had been working as an administrative officer at the VA since mid-December and said he “would love nothing more” than to keep working.

“This is my family, and I would like to do this forever,” he said.

In a post on its website, the VA announced the dismissal of more than 1,000 employees, saying the personnel moves “will save the department more than $98 million per year” and be better equipped to help vets.

“I was like: ‘What about this one?’” Lennox said

David Rice, a disabled Army paratrooper who has been on probation since joining the U.S. Department of Energy in September, also learned Thursday night that he had lost his job.

Rice, who has been working as a foreign affairs specialist on health matters relating to radiation exposure, said he’d been led to believe that his job would likely be safe. But on Thursday night, when he logged into his computer for a meeting with Japanese representatives, he saw an email saying he’d been fired.

“It’s just been chaos,” said Rice, 50, who had just bought a house in Melbourne, Florida, after he got the job.

Rice said he agrees with the Trump administration’s goal of making the government more efficient, but objects to the random, scattershot approach being taken.

Fired despite agreeing to the buyout

Some of those impacted had already signed the buyout agreements offered by the administration that were supposed to protect them from dismissal.

Detter, 25, who had worked for the Agriculture Department’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, said he had accepted the buyout because he knew that, as a probationary employee, he’d likely be first on the chopping block if he didn’t accept.

But late Thursday night, Detter received an email saying he had been laid off effective immediately, even though he had received “completely positive” evaluations during his time on the job.

He said the decision left him feeling “disrespected” and a “a little bit helpless.”

“You’re just kind of a pawn in a much bigger struggle that Elon Musk — in particular, I feel like — is his kind of battle he’s decided to take on to shrink the government,” Detter said.

Detter said two of the four employees in the Kansas county where he worked were laid off even though they were already struggling with their workload helping farmers manage their land to prevent soil erosion and water pollution, a program that was created in the wake of the 1930s Dust Bowl to help keep America’s farmland healthy and productive.

Challenging the administration

The National Treasury Employees Union and a group of other unions filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging what they call unlawful terminations.

Terminating probationary employees who have gone through extensive training “will have a devastating impact on agency missions and government operations,” NTEU President Doreen Greenwald wrote in a Thursday letter to union members. She said many federal agencies are already “severely understaffed due to years of frozen or slashed budgets that prevented them from replacing retiring employees.”

On Friday evening, the advocacy group Democracy Forward filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, the federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers, asking for an investigation into whether the mass firings violated federal personnel practices and asking that they be halted while the inquiry is being conducted.

Labor activists and government workers rallied outside the Hubert H. Humphrey Building in Washington Friday morning, to protest the cuts.

“They’re picking us off, one by one,” said one federal contractor who has not yet lost her job, but who, like others, declined to identify herself for fear of reprisal. “First, it’s the probationary workers, then we’re next,” she said.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, issued a statement Friday evening on X, formerly Twitter, saying, in part, “indiscriminate workforce cuts aren’t efficient and won’t fix the federal budget.”

She said her office has attempted to get answers from various agencies, but “the response so far has been evasive and inadequate.”

Will the cuts reduce the deficit?

The layoffs are unlikely to yield significant deficit savings. The government spends about $270 billion annually compensating civilian federal workers, according to the Congressional Budget Office, with about 60% going to workers at the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.

Even if the government cut all of those workers, it would still run a deficit of over $1 trillion.

But Trump’s mass layoffs of federal workers could come back to bite him in economic data. The monthly jobs reports could start to show a slowdown in hiring, if not turn negative at some point after the February numbers are released.

The last time the economy lost jobs was in December 2020, when the United States was still recovering from the coronavirus pandemic.

“Given everything that is happening in the federal government, it is very plausible that job growth could turn negative at some point,” said Martha Gimbel, executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale University. She noted that employers that rely on government grants and contracts would also show declines.

Those who have been fired say the people they serve will soon feel the impact, too. Rice, the disabled paratrooper working on radiation exposure at the Department of Energy, said the work he was doing made a difference.

“We’re just out here trying to do something that we actually believe in, that matters,” he said. “I really believe that we’re actually out there helping people.”

___

Colvin and Price reported from New York, Witte from Annapolis, Maryland, and Householder from Detroit. Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein, Josh Boak, Will Weissert and Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed to this report.

The filing does not immediately end the high-profile case. A federal court judge must approve the decision to drop the charges.

According to two former DOJ officials, both of whom remain in contact with lawyers at the department, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove convened a meeting with the remaining lawyers in the Public Integrity Section Friday morning in order to determine who would sign the motion to dismiss Adams’ case. Both officials told NBC News that Bove expressly promised leadership positions to those who agreed to sign and file it.

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The meeting was described as a video call during which Bove gave them a deadline of one hour to provide two names, a source told NBC News.

According to three former DOJ lawyers, all of whom are in touch with current department lawyers, the motion to dismiss Adams case was signed by two officials, one of whom is a trial attorney with the Public Integrity Section and is nearing retirement.

The motion seeking dismissal without prejudice — meaning the case could potentially be prosecuted in the future — was filed Friday evening.

Read the document submitted by the DOJ to the judge to dismiss the case against Mayor Adams below:

The court paperwork comes after the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, quit on Thursday after she received similar orders from Bove to dismiss the case against the mayor. She refused, and in a letter to newly minted U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, urged her to reconsider directive to dismiss, which she wrote “raises serious concerns that render the contemplated dismissal inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts.”

Bove’s memo said federal prosecutors needed to drop the case in part because it impacted Adams’ ability to tackle “illegal immigration and violent crime.”

In her letter to Bondi, Sassoon said Adams’ attorneys in a meeting with the DOJ in January essentially proposed a “quid pro quo.”

“I attended a meeting on January 31, 2025, with Mr. Bove, Adams’ counsel, and members of my office. Adams’s attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed. Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting’s conclusion,” Sassoon.

Adams’ attorney, Alex Spiro, denied Sassoon’s recounting of the meeting and her allegation of a “quid pro quo” proposal.

“The idea that there was a quid pro quo is a total lie. We offered nothing and the department asked nothing of us,” Spiro said in a statement to NBC New York. “I don’t know what ‘amounted to’ means. We were asked if the case had any bearing on national security and immigration enforcement and we truthfully answered it did.”

In a statement Friday, Mayor Adams also rejected the notion.

“I want to be crystal clear with New Yorkers: I never offered — nor did anyone offer on my behalf — any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never,” the mayor’s statement read in part. Adams also said he was “solely beholden” to the city’s residents’ whom he urged to “put this difficult episode behind us so that trust can be restored.”

Sassoon also said in the letter that her office was preparing to file additional charges against Adams “based on evidence that Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the FBI.”

Spiro dismissed that allegation as well, saying if prosecutors had proof the mayor destroyed evidence, they would have brought those charges, slamming her claim as “the parting shot of a prosecution exposed as a sham.”

In a tersely worded letter to the DOJ, an assistant U.S. attorney with the SDNY who worked on the Adams case also resigned from his position less than a day after Sassoon, according to an email shared with NBC New York.

Hagan Scotten wrote to Bove on Friday, saying he was never asked by Sassoon to dismiss the Adams case “and I therefore never had an opportunity to refuse. But I am entirely in agreement her decision not to do so.” Bove had placed Scotten on leave on Thursday, after Sassoon said in her letter that the prosecution team agreed with her decision not to comply with Bove’s order.

When the Southern District of New York refused to drop the case, it was reassigned to the Public Integrity Section, two sources told NBC News. John Keller, the acting head of the section, refused to drop the case and resigned, along with two other members of the section, according to sources. Kevin Driscoll, the acting head of the Criminal Division, which oversees federal criminal cases nationwide, also refused to drop the charges before resigning, sources said.

In all, five other high-ranking Justice Department officials resigned Thursday in addition to Sassoon, a stunning escalation in a dayslong standoff over accusations the Trump administration is prioritizing political aims over criminal culpability.

Adams had pleaded not guilty to the charges and has denied any wrongdoing, saying the case was politically motivated. A number of New York Democrats have started calling for the mayor to step down or be removed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, State Sen. Michael Gianaris, NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado.

New York Attorney General said on Friday that there are “discussions going on on the state level, a number of discussions going on on the local level, and private discussions” regarding Adams. She added that she did not want to comment further until talks are over “and we determine the fate of the mayor of the City of New York.”

Hochul has said she’s weighing her options, including her constitutional authority to remove the mayor.

“This just happened. I need some time to figure out the right approach,” the governor said Thursday night.

Other state lawmakers acknowledged that even if the governor acts, it could take time.

“A removal is not as simple as snapping her fingers. There is a process and opportunity for the person being removed to be heard,” said State Sen. Michael Gianaris.

Bove said the Justice Department will now take over the Adams case from the SDNY.

“I take no pleasure in imposing these measures, initiating investigations, and requiring personnel from the Justice Department to come to your District to do work that your team should have done and was required to do,” Bove said.

Asked by reporters Thursday whether he asked that the charges be dismissed, President Donald Trump said, “No, I didn’t. I know nothing about it.”

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Aerial footage showed police near a damaged vehicle. Only one lane of traffic appeared to be open.

NBC10 Boston has reached out to Massachusetts State Police for information, but has not heard back.

No further details were immediately available.

After a three-week hiatus, the iconic comedy show is back for a weekend packed with commemoratory content celebrating its 50th anniversary, culminating in a three-hour-long live episode Sunday night.

Here’s what to know about the anniversary special:

Is there a new episode of ‘SNL’ this week?

There is no new episode of “Saturday Night Live” on Saturday. Instead, NBC is re-broadcasting the show’s first-ever episode from Oct. 11, 1975, starring comedian and host George Carlin and musical guests Billy Preston and Janis Ian.

The rerun will air on NBC and Peacock during the show’s regular time slot on Feb. 15 — 11:30 p.m. EST.

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When does the ‘SNL’ 50th anniversary special air?

“SNL’s” 50th anniversary special will air Sunday, Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. EST.

Before the show, “SNL” alum Leslie Jones, “Sunday TODAY” host Willie Geist and comedian Matt Rogers will interview some of the program’s biggest stars as they get ready.

“SNL50: The Red Carpet” will begin at 7 p.m. EST.

Where can I watch the “SNL” 50th anniversary special?

Sunday’s special will air on NBC and Peacock.

Red carpet festivities will air on NBC. A livestream of the event, hosted by creator and host of viral chat show “Chicken Shop Date” Amelia Dimoldenberg, will be available on all “SNL” social media platforms.

Who is performing in the “SNL” 50th anniversary special?

The special will offer a star-studded group comprising current and former cast members, as well as hosts and musical guests.

Of the surviving original cast members, Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman are expected to return, according to NBC News.

Among the other anticipated alumni are Adam Sandler, Amy Poehler, Andy Samberg, Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Fred Armisen, Jason Sudeikis, Jimmy Fallon, Kate McKinnon, Kenan Thompson, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Molly Shannon, Pete Davidson, Seth Meyers, Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, Will Ferrell and Will Forte.

Though the entire celebrity guest list isn’t confirmed, some other familiar faces will include: Adam Driver, Ayo Edebiri, Bad Bunny, Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Kim Kardashian, Martin Short, Miley Cyrus, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Pedro Pascal, Peyton Manning, Quinta Brunson, Robert De Niro, Sabrina Carpenter, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks and Woody Harrelson.

What is “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert”?

To kick off the weekend, “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon will host “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert,” a live concert from Radio City Music Hall.

Produced by SNL creator Lorne Michaels and music producer Mark Ronson, the three-hour musical event will celebrate the show’s musical legacy.

Among the confirmed performers are Arcade Fire, Backstreet Boys, Bad Bunny, Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Brittany Howard, Cher, Chris Martin, Dave Grohl, David Byrne, Devo, Eddie Vedder, Jack White, Jelly Roll, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Mumford & Sons, Post Malone, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Robyn, Snoop Dogg, St. Vincent, the B-52s, the Roots and Wyclef Jean.

The concert will air Friday, Feb. 14 at 8 p.m. EST, on Peacock.

What else is ‘SNL’ doing to celebrate?

On top of all the live programming planned for this weekend, Peacock also has several documentaries on the show’s history.

The four-part series “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night” offers a behind-the-scenes look at the show’s production over the years.

“Ladies and Gentleman… 50 Years of SNL Music” takes viewers through the history of the show’s musical guests and most memorable performances.

Valentine’s Day

Temps stay in the 20s through sunset, but it will feel like the upper teens thanks to a persistent gusty northwest wind. Gusts up to 50 mph subside around sunset and we have only a light breeze by overnight.  Lows drop to 10-20 degrees for much of New England as we start off nice and calm Saturday morning.

Snowstorm Timing

Saturday morning and afternoon looks cloudy, with temps in the 20s but dry. This is cold enough to support all snow with the onset of precipitation Saturday evening. 

By 6 p.m., light snow develops in Boston, with steady snow through midnight for all of New England. Some 0.5 to 1 inches per hour snowfall rates are expected at times. 

A nose of warm air aloft moves in from the south as the parent low pressure center moves over northwestern New England. This flips southern New England to sleet, then freezing rain around Sunday sunrise. 

We keep freezing rain in the forecast outside of Interstate 495 and where cold air damming keeps temps from warming at the surface. This ice may add up to .2 to .3” of accumulation on top of the snow from overnight. Boston experiences ice mixing then, flipping to rain by Sunday afternoon with heavy rain around 1 inch the rest of the day. 

Meanwhile, the ice and snow remains steady inland through Sunday evening. 

Another thing to note is that a surface low develops around Long Island Sunday morning and this helps to inject a dry slot into southern New England. Light mist or freezing drizzle to fog may cut down on accumulations of ice. That surface low eventually takes over from the parent low pressure center and strengthens as it heads to the Canadian Maritimes Monday. 

Snowfall totals in Massachusetts, ice accumulation expected

Saturday night we pick up 2-4 inches of snow for Boston, Providence, Hartford and Worcester, and less than 2 inches of snow on the South Coast, Cape Cod & Islands. About 4-6 inches of snow and sleet for are expected for the Merrimack Valley to Manchester, New Hampshire, and Brattleboro, Vermont. We’re looking at 6-10 inches of steady snow for the whole event, from Saturday night to Sunday night for the mountains. 

Ice of 0.2-0.3 inches Sunday midday for interior Massachusetts, Connecticut, to southern Vermont and New Hampshire on top of the overnight snow. 

Any winter accumulation in Boston gets washed away by the Sunday afternoon rain. 

Wind and coastal issues

The wind won’t be much of an issue in terms of damaging wind speeds, but nuisance wind — yes. Saturday night will be east 5-10 mph, increasing to 20-30 mph by Sunday afternoon. The wind flips more northerly Sunday late day and picks up to 40 mph. On Sunday night into Monday our westerly wind may get damaging as numbers approach 50-60 mph. This is a result of the storm system pulling away during Monday and a large difference in pressure change between the deepening low across the Canadian Maritimes and high pressure west. 

The wave heights aren’t an issue until Monday either, as we see offshore winds churn up waves of 5-10 feet.    

Another snowstorm Thursday?

Colder temps take over for Monday through Tuesday with highs in the low 20s and overnight lows around zero. 

We have a significant storm showing up on forecast guidance for the roughly Wednesday into Thursday timeframe. The track of the storm is not locked in, but there is a strong signal for heavy snowfall and a coastal storm setting up. 

Stay tuned to our First Alert weather team for further updates. 

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National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said the recording from the Black Hawk helicopter cockpit suggests the crew may have missed the key instruction just before the Jan. 29 collision, in which all 67 aboard the two aircraft were killed.

Homendy said the helicopter was on a check flight that night when the pilot was being tested on the use of night vision goggles and flying by instruments. Investigators believe the crew was wearing night vision goggles throughout the flight.

Homendy said the Black Hawk crew never heard the words “pass behind the” during the transmission from the controller because the helicopter’s microphone key was depressed right then.

At one point during the flight before the collision the helicopter pilot being tested called out that the Black Hawk was at 300 feet, but the instructor pilot said the helicopter was at 400 feet, Homendy said.

“At this time we don’t know why there was a discrepancy between the two,” Homendy said.

Homendy said it’s possible the pilots might have had “bad data” in the cockpit before the collision.

“We do believe that there’s inconsistency with data from the altimeters in the cockpit. So it’s possible that what they were seeing is not matching up with what’s recorded on the flight data recorder,” Homendy said during an interview with NBC News’ Tom Costello after the news conference.

Evidence suggests the American Airlines jet crew saw the helicopter right before impact, Homendy said.

“Yes, there was an indication, and that is, we see a pitch up of the aircraft. So it was nine degrees up, maximum elevator deflection. So there was an indication that they may have seen something,” she said.

The collision was the deadliest plane crash in the U.S. since 2001, when a jet slammed into a New York City neighborhood just after takeoff, killing all 260 people on board and five more on the ground.

The crash

American Airlines Flight 5342 was coming in from Wichita, Kansas, carrying 60 passengers and four crew members, as it approached Reagan National to land on a clear Wednesday night. Nearby, a U.S. Army Black Hawk with three soldiers on board was on a training exercise, practicing emergency evacuation routes that would be used to ferry out key government officials in case of an attack or catastrophe.

A few minutes before the twin-engine jet was to land, air traffic controllers asked if it could use a shorter runway. The pilots agreed, and flight-tracking sites show the plane adjusted its approach.

Shortly before the collision, a controller got an alert that the plane and Black Hawk were converging and asked the helicopter if it had the plane in sight. The military pilot said yes and asked for “visual separation” with the jet — allowing it to fly closer than otherwise may have been allowed if the pilots didn’t see the plane. Controllers approved the request.

Roughly 20 seconds later, the aircraft collided.

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The investigation

Since the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board has recovered all the flight data recorders and pulled the wreckage of both aircraft from the Potomac.

It will take more than a year to get the final NTSB report on the crash, but officials have been providing regular updates as investigators learn more and they plan to publish a preliminary report in the coming weeks.

Almost immediately after the crash, President Donald Trump publicly faulted the helicopter, which had a flight ceiling of 200 feet (61 meters), for flying too high. He also blamed federal diversity and inclusion efforts, particularly regarding air traffic controllers. When pressed by reporters, the president could not back up those claims. A few days later, Trump placed the blame on what he called an “obsolete” air traffic control system.

Army officials have said the Black Hawk crew was highly experienced and familiar with the crowded skies around Washington.

Air travel remains overwhelmingly safe in the U.S., but there have been a string of incidents in recent weeks, including a fiery explosion on Jan. 31 when a medical transport jet crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood, killing seven people. Last week, a small commuter aircraft crashed off western Alaska, killing 10 people.

Even Monday’s Presidents Day holiday looks to be impactful, with strong winds of 40-45 mph in the forecast.

Because of the warm nature of this storm, there remains some uncertainty with the ice forecast, but roads could be very slippery on Sunday.

Here’s a closer look at the timing and impacts from this winter storm:

When will it start snowing in Massachusetts?

Snowstorm impacts by region

Snowfall maps: How much will it snow in Mass., NH?

Strong winds possible this weekend

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As the sketch show marks its 50th anniversary with a bevy of celebrations, its cast members and alumni look back on their favorite sketches and the enduring legacy of “Saturday Night Live.”

Fred Armisen, cast member 2002-2013, one-time host

FAVORITE SKETCH: “The Wizard of Oz”

“There’s a ‘Wizard of Oz’ one that we did that actually John Mulaney wrote, where there’s like this new footage of ‘Wizard of Oz,’ of a character that got cut out of a movie, and it’s a weather vane,” said Armisen, who played Weathervane alongside Anne Hathaway’s Dorothy. “Something about it, I just I really love that sketch.”

Chloe Fineman, cast member 2019-present

FAVORITE SKETCH: “Everything is amazing,” the current cast member said, but she seemed to hope the anniversary special would see a reprise of “The Californians.”

“All of it are sort of ‘pinch me’ moments and I feel like it’ll be even bigger than the 40th,” she said of the upcoming special.

Will Forte, cast member 2002-2010, one-time host

FAVORITE SKETCHES: “More Cowbell,” with Christopher Walken fixated on adding that signature sound to Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” Forte named a few, but “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer” was another favorite. Then, of course, there’s Adam Sandler’s classic “The Chanukah Song.”

“I hadn’t seen ‘The Chanukah Song’ in a long time. … It just happened to be on the other day,” said Forte, who was freshly reminded: “It’s so good.”

Seth Meyers, cast member 2001-2014, former head writer, one-time host

FAVORITE SKETCH: “More Cowbell,” perhaps a universal favorite.

“I think ‘Cowbell’ would work if English was your like 10th language. … I think that’s a safe pick,” he said. “It’s Will Ferrell at the height of his powers. … It’s an all-time host Christopher Walken doing a thing that only Christopher Walken could do.” (Of the last 12 months, Meyers is also partial to Nate Bargatze’s “Washington’s Dream” sketches.)

WHY “SNL” ENDURES: To Meyers, who now hosts “Late Night” in Studio 8G, “Saturday Night Live” is like sports. It’s live. No one knows what’s going to happen.

“It’s so beautifully uneven. I’ve always said the worst show has something great and the best show has something terrible,” Meyers said. “And there’s no there’s no host that can guarantee consistency. … If you laid all the Alec Baldwin-hosted episodes out there, there’s a huge gap between the best one and the worst one. And there’s no real reason to explain that, other than just everybody sort of had a bad week.”

Bobby Moynihan, cast member 2008-2017

FAVORITE SKETCHES: “Haunted Elevator,” with Tom Hanks as the spooky-yet-goofy David S. Pumpkins; “Calculator Christmas Gift,” where Fred Armisen and John Malkovich have their odd holiday wish list fulfilled; “Tennis Talk with Time-Traveling Scott Joplin,” which is somehow exactly what it sounds like.

“David Pumpkins always comes to mind as just, like, the weirdest thing we ever got on. And I love the idea of future generations trying to figure it out, as well,” said Moynihan, who added that he was drawn to “amazing, weird sketches.”

John Mulaney, writer 2008-2013, six-time host

FAVORITE SKETCHES: “Toilet Death Ejector,” an infomercial flogging an “elegant” solution to avert the indignity of dying on the commode, and “Monkey Trial,” featuring, yes, a monkey but not one on trial — one presiding over it.

“Those are two quality Simon Rich premises executed,” said Mulaney, who wrote the former with frequent collaborators Rich and Marika Sawyer and the latter with Rich. Both sketches date to Mulaney’s hosting stints.

Laraine Newman, cast member 1975-1980

FAVORITE SKETCH: “Plato’s Cave” from the Not Ready for Prime Time Players era, where Steve Martin plays a beatnik, and “The Swan,” a parody of a 2000s reality show.

“I remember seeing there was a horrible reality show called ‘The Swan’ where they did this massive plastic surgery on people. And I think they did a parody of that with Amy Poehler and a bunch of other people. And it was the first time I’d seen her and I was like, ‘My God, this girl is so good,’” Newman said. “But as far as our show, I think that this one sketch called ‘Plato’s Cave’ or the beatnik sketch, is, I think, a really good representation of our show. And it’s the whole cast.”

WHY “SNL” ENDURES: There’s a long list of people responsible, she says, but atop that list? Show creator Lorne Michaels.

“The fact that the show has remained relevant is because of the approach that Lorne has, which is that he always has new people, whether they be writers or performers with new perspectives and original ideas and characters,” Newman said. “And that’s, I think, what moves the show along in terms of tone and relevance.”

Jason Sudeikis, writer 2003-2005, cast member 2005-2013, one-time host

FAVORITE SKETCH: “What’s Up With That?” a recurring series with Kenan Thompson as a game show host.

“Part of the reason I put it in there is because I feel very proud of the group, the generation I came up on and through the show … both on camera and behind the scenes,” Sudeikis said, noting the “real wild” cameos like Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.

Kenan Thompson, cast member 2003-present

WHY “SNL” ENDURES: It has good people, and they know where the line is.

“We work with brilliant people. I think we all have a pretty solid sensibility, where we kind of know where the offense is and we work really hard trying not to tread in places that are uncomfortable or whatever without warrant,” the longtime cast member said. “But at the same time, I can’t please everybody and we’re still trying to like, like lighten the mood, if you will. So, you know, we’re doing that as long as we’re not like overly stepping — like if you step on a toe, you say, ‘I’m sorry. Excuse me.’ Then that should be OK. … We should be able to just move on and continue to explore or continue conversations that may or may not be uncomfortable. That’s kind of our job.”

Bowen Yang, writer 2018-2019, cast member 2019-present

WHY “SNL” ENDURES: At its heart, it’s a variety show.

“I think with a show like ‘SNL,’ we have the latitude to be a little variety show and give you different sensibilities and different parts of that, different perspectives. I love it,” the current cast member said. “It’s a very pluralistic place for comedy because it’s one of the last places where you can sort of have a grab bag of different kinds of stuff.”

“Saturday Night Live” has come a long way since its debut in October 1975 as a rag-tag sketch show trying to make a name for itself amid the political chaos of a presidential resignation and the end of the Vietnam war.

In the 50 years since “Saturday Night Live’s” inception, countless sketches have become common slang, cast members have become mainstream celebrities and the show, a weekly staple for many.

Read on to see who is set to perform at “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert,” airing on Peacock at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on Feb. 14. Peacock is owned by TODAY.com’s parent company, NBCUniversal.

What, exactly, is ‘SNL50: The Homecoming Concert’?

It’s a live concert aimed at honoring 50 years of musical and comedy performances on “SNL.” It will showcase “legendary ‘Saturday Night Live’ hall-of-famers and surprise special guests,” according to a Peacock press release.

It’s produced by Lorne Michaels and Mark Ronson.

While it will be live on Peacock on Feb. 14, it will also screen in certain IMAX theaters.

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Who will be performing?

• Arcade Fire
• Backstreet Boys
• Bad Bunny
• Bonnie Raitt
• Brandi Carlile
• Brittany Howard
• Cher
• Chris Martin
• Dave Grohl
• David Byrne
• DEVO
• Eddie Vedder
• Jack White
• Jelly Roll
• Lady Gaga
• Miley Cyrus
• Ms. Lauryn Hill
• Mumford & Sons
• Post Malone
• Preservation Hall Jazz Band
• Robyn
• Snoop Dogg
• St. Vincent
• The B-52s
• The Roots
• Wyclef Jean

More special guests will also be involved but have yet to be announced.

This article originally appeared on TODAY.com. Read more from TODAY:

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The red-haired, powerful dancer spotted next to Lamar during the show is known professionally as FaceOff, and he grew up in Dorchester.

“I think I was lucky enough to be put in a position right next to Kendrick Lamar,” he told NBC10 Boston.

He explained what Lamar is for Black culture.

“He is a beacon of hope, change and represents what a Black man is supposed to be.”

FaceOff’s talent earned him a spot on Lamar’s dance squad many times over the years.  The intense rehearsals for Super Bowl LIX started in January. And now social media is crazed trying to decode the message Lamar and his team are trying to send. Was it political, cultural, or crafted for his rap rival Drake? FaceOff didn’t reveal the answers.

“That’s one thing I don’t want to do, given that I was a part of it. I think I want to maintain the integrity of the art and let people feel whatever they want. I don’t want to give my two cents,” FaceOff said.

FaceOff began dancing in the sixth grade to gain the admiration of middle school crushes, but soon found he exceled in hip hop, ballet and contemporary movement at Origination Cultural Arts Center in Boston.

“They’ve definitely taught me character, discipline, and they also taught us about our roots,” he said.

He earned the moniker FaceOff during lunchtime dance battles at Boston Arts Academy.

“I used to make a lot of facial expressions when I danced,” he explained.

It’s come full circle because when FaceOff is not performing, he’s teaching the next generation in Los Angeles. He has advice for Boston kids with sky high aspirations.

“In your dreams if you see yourself where you want to be, so I think because you’ve seen yourself in that space, the dream has the ability to become real.”

How cold will it feel on Friday?

While high temperatures are a respectable 30 or so, the wind chill will make it feel like teens all day long. If you’re stepping out for dinner with your main squeeze, keep in mind that there will still be a steady wind streaming well into the night.

Sunday snowstorm timing

Winds GRADUALLY settle by midnight, allowing us to fall back to the single digits and teens by Saturday morning. We’ll hold onto a few hours of sunshine before the clouds take over in the late morning or early afternoon.

Snow will break out by late afternoon and early evening, heralding the arrival of our next storm system. We’ve issued a First Alert for Sunday.

This one is stronger and wetter than the last. While we may see a widespread 2-5” of snow areawide, there is the possibility of up to 6” of snow in northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.

How much snow will we get Sunday?

The snow is only a part of this storm, however. The transition to ice will be swift in the early morning hours of Sunday and carry into Sunday afternoon away from the coast. Some towns and cities in central Massachusetts/southern New Hampshire may pick up a thick glaze of ice. This is the bigger concern in this event and travel will be very tricky in spots.

Storm wraps Sunday evening, with winds kicking in shortly thereafter. Bigger storm = stronger winds by Monday. Some gusts top 50mph.

Be safe this weekend!

Bristling at media coverage of the Legislature’s productivity last session, Senate President Karen Spilka vowed on the first day of this session to introduce reforms to make Beacon Hill more transparent and to help the public better understand the work underway in the Legislature. Senate Republicans also viewed the debate around the rules package as an opportunity to advance their priorities for how the Legislature should operate.

The rules dictate how the individual branches are run but also how the House and Senate interact and work jointly as one General Court. But despite talk from in and outside the building about transparency-focused reforms, legislative Democrats have been unable since 2019 to agree to a new set of joint rules and the calls for a greater openness have grown to the point that more than 70% of voters last year gave the state auditor the power to dig into House and Senate operations, an audit lawmakers have resisted every step of the way.

Sen. Joan Lovely of Salem, the Senate Rules Committee chair of recent sessions, said the package “aims to create a transparent and efficient Legislature that meets our current moment.”

“We want to create a framework for increased productivity during legislative sessions,” Lovely said while introducing the bill Wednesday, before senators put it aside to focus on a shelter funding bill first. “These changes would provide more opportunity for residents to participate in the Legislature’s work.”

Senators voted 39-0 in favor of the joint rules reforms.

The Senate on Thursday also unanimously approved a package of rules applying only to Senate business (S 14), which contain modest reforms.

Senators adopted a few changes over the course of debate, including one that sets a default amendment deadline of 2:30 p.m. Monday for any bill the Senate Ways and Means Committee reports on a Thursday to be teed up for the following Thursday.

But they also rejected others that would have more dramatically reformed the way the chamber operates.

Senators voted 5-32 to reject a Sen. John Keenan of Quincy plan that would have set in-person voting during formal sessions as the default, with exceptions allowed in cases of illness or family care. In the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, some senators have continued to participate in debate and cast votes remotely.

Keenan said during the prior two-year term, the Senate only had 45 days that involved roll call votes, suggesting that is a load his colleagues should be able to manage in person.

Fellow Democrats defended the status quo, arguing that it works well and gives flexibility to lawmakers who live further away from Beacon Hill.

Republican Sen. Ryan Fattman later proposed adding a disclaimer to roll call vote records that would indicate whether a senator cast that vote in the chamber or remotely. He suggested the “public has a right to know” their lawmaker’s method of voting.

Democrats again disagreed, arguing that constituents could review archived livestreams of Senate sessions — which often stretch for several hours — to determine the means a senator used to vote. They rejected the amendment 6-31.

If the House goes along with the Senate joint rules package (S 15), the joint committee structure that the Senate clerk has traced to back at least 1807 would remain, but the process for advancing legislation through it would change. Joint panels of 11 representatives and six senators (or in some cases 13 reps and seven senators) would continue to take testimony on bills during joint hearings, but only senators would vote on Senate bills (those filed by senators or in the Senate, given bill numbers that begin with S) and only representatives would vote on House bills.

The change is intended to give senators, who are less influential on joint committees due to their numbers, more power to move priority Senate bills out of committees and to the full Senate for consideration. Letting senators freely move Senate bills (and representatives move House bills) would eliminate situations in which disagreement between the House and Senate co-chairs leaves legislation in limbo.

Senate leadership did not include in its original proposal any directions for how joint committees should vote on bills that weren’t filed by a representative or senator. The “corrective” amendment that was adopted Thursday inserted new language to make clear that bills filed by anyone other than a member of the House or Senate, like the governor, “shall have a hearing and a vote scheduled upon agreement of the co-chairs of the committee” and that a majority vote of the joint committee is sufficient to refer a bill back “to the branch in which the matter was originally introduced except that reports on money bills shall be made to the House.”

The Senate rules package would also tighten the timeline for committees to take action on legislation, require lawmakers to submit comprehensive and public summaries of the legislation they file, and carve out a new exemption from Beacon Hill’s biennial end-of-July deadline to allow formal votes to continue on controversial matters into autumn of election years.

The Senate proposal also calls for the Legislature to move up the date for joint committees to report out legislation — from the current deadline of the first Wednesday in February of the second year of the session to the first Wednesday in December of the first year of the two-year session.

Changing so-called Joint Rule 10 Day had support among Senate Republicans, though that caucus pitched the third Wednesday in October of the first year. Lovely has said changing the deadline — at which committees must choose to favorably or unfavorably report out a bill, seek an extension order or send it to study — would “help guard against a backlog of bills in the second year of a session.”

Senate Democrats are seeking some flexibility from the July 31 deadline to wrap up formal lawmaking, following two sessions in which Democrats have failed to finish their priority legislation by the deadline. The Senate plan, similar to a temporary allowance they gave themselves in the fall, would allow conference committee reports to be filed and debated “at any time throughout the two-year legislative session.”

The usual July 31 deadline would remain intact for bills that have not already cleared both the House and Senate to make it to the conference committee stage by that point.

Lawmakers last session circumvented the rules as they have existed since the mid-1990s that call for only informal sessions after July 31 in even years, as they tackled major conference committee accords on health care, economic development and clean energy well into the fall, including after Election Day when all 200 legislative seats were on the ballot.

Once conference committee agreements are reached, the joint rules proposed by the Senate would require lawmakers to wait a full calendar day before taking action, though similar rules in place now are routinely cast aside. Senate Democrats said the change would give lawmakers and the public more time to read through the reports, which currently must be filed at 8 p.m. before lawmakers tackle them after 1 p.m. the next day.

Legislators over the years have routinely suspended their rules to accomplish their goals.

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Goldberg fired O’Brien in September 2024 after considering about 19 hours of meetings held last summer as well as two outside investigations, various documents, case law and policies. The treasurer had not released any document outlining her decision, but said she fired O’Brien because she “committed gross misconduct and demonstrated she is unable to discharge the powers and duties of a CCC commissioner.” O’Brien is contesting her firing and has appealed it through Suffolk Superior Court.

The treasurer laid out four instances of “conduct in which you engaged that may warrant your removal” in a letter to O’Brien last spring. That included claims that O’Brien “made rude and disrespectful comments, remarks, statements, and presumptions to Commission staff and colleagues that were or were perceived to be race-based or, at minimum, to be racially, ethnically, and culturally insensitive;” made comments about the parental leave of former CCC Executive Director Shawn Collins, a one-time Goldberg deputy, “that deprived him of assurances that he could exercise his rights to take additional job-protected parental leave, and those statements, combined with other conduct … created a hostile work environment;” and “communicated with and about the Commission’s Executive Director in a threatening, abusive, and humiliating manner that, in combination with the totality of behavior described … constituted bullying.”

The redacted version of her removal decision shows that Goldberg found nearly all of the claims to be creditable and concerning.

“I am removing Chair O’Brien as a commissioner because the sum and totality of her conduct described below amounts to gross misconduct, and because many of the instances described below individually constitute gross misconduct,” Goldberg wrote early in the decision. “Chair O’Brien also has demonstrated through her actions that she is unable to discharge the powers and duties of a commissioner.”

It also details a pattern of O’Brien making indelicate comments, including some that some people present viewed as being based in ethnicity or demographic background. Goldberg’s decision says those comments were made to members of the CCC, to one of the investigators interviewing O’Brien about a separate allegation of racial insensitivity, and during one of the hearings on her dismissal last year.

O’Brien is herself a former state treasurer and was the Democratic Party nominee for governor in 2002.

On Wednesday, the treasury filed a five-volume administrative record of the case with the court. The first volume consists of the redacted version of the 83-page explanation Goldberg wrote of her decision to fire O’Brien, a public document that the attorney general’s office provided at the News Service’s request Thursday morning. The treasurer asked the judge to impound the four remaining volumes, which are thought to contain transcripts of testimony given in closed-door hearings, investigative reports, emails detailing employee complaints at the CCC, written testimony submitted in connection with the hearings, and more.

A spokesman for O’Brien said Goldberg’s attempt to keep thousands of pages of information related to O’Brien’s firing private “is making a mockery of the public’s right to know.”

“When the Treasurer insisted on a secret hearing, Shannon O’Brien objected because she predicted that Treasurer Goldberg would make totally biased findings and conceal the evidence that proved the opposite. This is exactly what Treasurer Goldberg has done. She has released her partisan and unproven findings and concealed the evidence,” Joe Baerlein said on O’Brien’s behalf. He added, “While transparency is spoken of as a needed remedy for state government, the Treasurer continues to hide the facts, creating mischief and hoping no one will notice her behavior. The public should take notice of the State Treasurer’s proclivity to operate in the shadows of darkness.”

Goldberg’s office referred questions about the filing to Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office, which is representing Goldberg in the suit. Campbell’s office said volumes two through five of the administrative record are subject to a provisional motion to impound and as such are not available to the public.

Assistant Attorney General John Hitt, who has argued on Goldberg’s behalf in court, wrote in a filing late last year that Goldberg “acknowledges that this case … is of great interest to the public, and the public has a right to know as many of the facts and circumstances regarding the Treasurer’s decision as possible.”

“The Treasurer supports public disclosure of as much as the underlying record of proceedings before her as is possible,” Hitt wrote.

Judge Robert Gordon last month struck from the record the entirety of a 1,733-page appendix O’Brien filed alongside her appeal in an attempt to put information about her firing into the public realm. But the judge made clear in his ruling that he was skeptical the administrative record Goldberg was to file would contain large amounts of personal information that is protected under the “narrow definition” being used.

“Here, to the extent the Treasurer seeks to impound any portion of the administrative record, she must do so by accompanying motion in accordance with Standing Order 1-96. In such motion, the Treasurer must identify the specific information she seeks to withhold, and, as to each piece of information so referenced, she must cite the specific statutory or common law basis of the claim that the material is protected from public disclosure,” the judge declared.

But the motion Goldberg filed to impound most of the administrative record instead seeks more of a blanket impoundment without specifying any specific information to be withheld.

“Significant portions of the administrative record here reference such protected information concerning Plaintiff and third parties. The confidential information cannot feasibly be segregated or redacted from the voluminous record without extraordinary effort. Doing so would render the administrative record confusing and unusable,” the filing from Goldberg says. It adds, “Additionally, the effort and time that would be required to provide the notice to third-party data subjects identified in the administrative record and the opportunity for those third-party data subjects to potentially seek judicial relief … would likely slow down prompt judicial review of the final decision at issue here.”

An affidavit filed by Hitt this week said the administrative record is more than 2,940 pages long, plus audio and visual files.

“Attempting to do pinpoint redactions of the protected information is hampered by the fact that many of the references are not easily captured by PDF redaction software and would require hand review and re-review to ensure that all protected personal data had been removed from the record,” Hitt wrote.

Baerlein said O’Brien “looks forward to her day in court and the opportunity to finally and publicly clear her good name.” No future hearing had been scheduled as of Thursday afternoon.

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The court order came in response to a lawsuit filed by nonprofit groups that work on international aid projects, as well as other organizations.

They had asked that the judge block the executive order President Donald Trump signed last month that implemented a blanket pause on U.S. foreign aid. Secretary of State Marco Rubio subsequently ordered an immediate halt to nearly all U.S. foreign assistance.

Rather than rule against the entire executive order, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali made a narrower decision Thursday, saying the administration for now could not suspend or cancel foreign assistance that was in place before Trump took office.

Ali said, however, that “the Court does not find it appropriate or necessary to enjoin the President or the Executive Order itself.”

The judge said in his ruling that the administration has not yet “meaningfully contested detailed and credible evidence of harm to countless American businesses, ranging from shutting down programs, to furloughing and laying off employees, to shuttering altogether.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night.

Global Health Council, one of the plaintiffs, praised the ruling in a news release. Its president, Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, said the ruling was “a vital first step toward restoring U.S. foreign assistance programs.”

“It clears the path for organizations to resume their life saving work, showcasing the best of American values: compassion, leadership, and a commitment to global health, stability, and shared prosperity,” Dunn-Georgiou said.

The judge instructed the parties to file a joint status report by 5 p.m. Friday regarding further legal proceedings.

The White House had targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development shortly after Trump’s executive order pausing foreign aid. Thousands of employees and contractors were fired, furloughed or placed on administrative leave.

USAID delivers billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid, but Trump and Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency, have argued it is wasteful. Musk has called USAID a “criminal organization.”

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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Last Saturday, Adrián Simancas was kayaking with his father, Dell, in Bahía El Águila near the San Isidro Lighthouse in the Strait of Magellan when a humpback whale surfaced, engulfing Adrián and his yellow kayak for a few seconds before letting him go.

Dell, just meters (yards) away, captured the moment on video while encouraging his son to stay calm.

“Stay calm, stay calm,” he can be heard saying after his son was released from the whale’s mouth.

“I thought I was dead,” Adrián told The Associated Press. “I thought it had eaten me, that it had swallowed me.”

He described the “terror” of those few seconds and explained that his real fear set in only after resurfacing, fearing that the huge animal would hurt his father or that he would perish in the frigid waters.

Despite the terrifying experience, Dell remained focused, filming and reassuring his son while grappling with his own worry.

“When I came up and started floating, I was scared that something might happen to my father too, that we wouldn’t reach the shore in time, or that I would get hypothermia,” Adrián said.

After a few seconds in the water, Adrián managed to reach his father’s kayak and was quickly assisted. Despite the scare, both returned to shore uninjured.

Located about 1,600 miles (3,000 kilometers) south of Santiago, Chile’s capital, the Strait of Magellan is a major tourist attraction in the Chilean Patagonia, known for adventure activities.

Its frigid waters pose a challenge for sailors, swimmers and explorers who attempt to cross it in different ways.

Although it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere, temperatures in the region remain cool, with minimums dropping to 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) and highs rarely exceeding 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius.)

While whale attacks on humans are extremely rare in Chilean waters, whale deaths from collisions with cargo ships have increased in recent years, and strandings have become a recurring issue in the last decade.

David Lavender’s family is planning to send his ashes up on a rocket.

It’s part of Celestis, a space flight program that gives those mourning a loss a unique way to celebrate life.

“We celebrate everyone that is important to us, whether they’re still on this earth or not,” said Nick Johnson of Plaistow, New Hampshire.

Johnson has photos displayed on his Christmas tree of late family members, including that of Lavender, his stepfather, next to a Star Trek ornament of his — one of many things that the 38-year-old has to remember him.

“After 30 years, it still works,” he said of the ornament.

Lavender was a career photojournalist from Cape Cod who loved a good thrill and to bring his children along for the ride.

“We were very, very close, and he just instilled those values of exploration, and just that wonder of whatever is out there beyond us,” said Lavender’s daughter, Melanie Sharrow, who lives in Austin, Texas.

Lavender’s adventures suddenly ended at age 65 when he died by suicide in early 2021.

“[He] lost his battle to mental health,” she said. “I’m bound by the pain that he felt on this planet.”

Sharrow said wants to spread more awareness about suicide, especially with men, “because it’s such a horrible thing that people deal with.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.

With the support of Johnson and the rest of the family, Sharrow found a way to send him off on a trip of a lifetime, fulfilling a dream of going to space by sending a part of his ashes on a secondary payload of a spacecraft that will stay in orbit about a decade.

His loved ones will be able to track a satellite carrying his ashes as it flies by.

“We encapsulate those in what we call flight capsules, individual containers that have the person’s name on it, and then we aggregate those flat capsules, and we put them on a rocket,” said Celestis cofounder and CEO Charles Chafer.

Chafer started Celestis 30 years ago and says the company has sent people’s ashes on 24 space flights.

“It gives you the closure that you did what your loved one wanted,” Chafer added.

“I know he’s already up there,” said Sharrow of her late father. “I’m just putting his body up there too.”

From stardust to ashes and back, Lavender’s life comes full circle, in a way.

“We don’t know when our last day on earth it’s going to be,” noted Johnson. “Or when we’re going to be circling this earth, should you decide to make that trip.”

The satellites launched will eventually burn when returning from orbit, said Chafer.

Lavender’s ashes are set to launch with a rocket out of Cape Canaveral later this year.

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The owner of Eva’s Farm Butcher Shop, a family business in North Andover, says he hasn’t been able to pay rent this month and doesn’t know what else to do.

“It’s hard, it’s hard,” said Roberto Alonzo. “That’s when I get emotional, because you don’t do that.”

Alonzo says the scam began with a group of men placing what he called an unusual order right before the holidays.

“They said they were going to be cooking for shelter homes during the holiday season,” Alonzo said. “They showed me a paper, that they had approval from the government and that the government was going to pay for it.”

He said the men asked for 700 lbs. of oxtail and 700 lbs. of short ribs, paying for that order with a credit card that cleared.

“We charged the credit card, we got the meat the next day, they came to pick it up… perfect,” Alonzo said.

Less than a week later, Alonzo said, they requested more, this time 2,000 lbs. of meat. He took the next payments through the phone.

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Alonzo said the men made a total of four orders and, on that final order, the credit card didn’t go through. At that point, the shop was out $62,000 and more than 5,000 lbs. of meat.

Alonzo said he feels betrayed, saying the men shook his hand — “They were Hispanic just like us.”

The butcher shop’s insurance claim was rejected, so he’s trying to find other ways to make up for the loss. North Andover police are investigating, but no arrests have been made so far.

Paula Fleming with the Better Business Bureau encouraged businesses to put protections in place: “Verify the cardholder’s identity, it can protect you in the long run.”

Onlookers stare and point. Drivers pull over for better looks, snapping pictures, recording videos and trying to line up the perfect selfie. For some, it’s nostalgic. For others, it’s a glimpse at a larger-than-life advertising icon.

At 100 years old, the blimp is an ageless star in the sky. And the 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 on Sunday — roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its latest and greatest anniversary tour.

Even though remote camera technologies — drones, mostly — are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.

“It’s great to show the pack racing,” Fox Sports director Artie Kempner said, adding that he expected to use aerial shots from the blimp about 50 times during Sunday’s race.

The Goodyear Blimp has been a regular at major sporting events since flying above the 1955 Rose Bowl. A few years later, it became a service vehicle for television coverage while simultaneously functioning as a highly visible advertising platform. It’s been at every Daytona 500 since 1962.

During that streak, blimps have undergone wholesale changes and improved dramatically: steering technology, safety innovations, high-definition cameras, gyro-stabilized aerial views and much quieter rides thanks to relocated engines and propellers.

Nowadays, riding on the blimp isn’t much different from traveling on a small plane. The 12-seater comes with reclining seats, tray tables, seatbelts, a safety briefing and a bathroom with amazing views. A few windows serve as the only air conditioning onboard. The blimp offers a smooth ride even at top speed, creeping along at 73 mph — well below the cars pushing 200 mph on the track.

“It’s an iconic symbol for our nation, a floating piece of Americana,” blimp pilot Jensen Kervern said. “There’s nothing like it in the world.”

The blimp has covered more than 2,500 events and taken more than 500,000 passengers for rides, according to Goodyear. Former President Ronald Reagan might be the most famous passenger, and rapper Ice Cube raised the blimp’s street cred when he included a line about it in his 1992 song titled “It Was A Good Day.”

But not just anyone can climb aboard. Rides are invitation only even though phones at blimp headquarters — the three U.S.-based airships are housed in California, Florida and Ohio — ring off the hook with people inquiring about buying a ride.

As part of the blimp’s 100-year anniversary celebration, however, Goodyear is giving three U.S. residents a chance to join the exclusive club and win a ride. The sweepstakes will provide each winner a certificate for two to fly on the blimp. The prize also includes $3,000 for travel expenses to one of Goodyear’s airship hangars.

It would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, no doubt.

The blimp flies low enough to spot pods of dolphins or flotillas of sea turtles in the Atlantic Ocean. The view over Daytona International Speedway is equally stunning, with the ability to see every inch of the famed track while watching (and hearing) race cars turning laps.

Already in 2025, the Goodyear fleet has flown over the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Pro Bowl and Pebble Beach. Its upcoming schedule includes the Academy Awards, Coachella and WrestleMania.

But will the blimp survive another 100 years?

Drone imagery and resolution continue to improve along with maneuverability, stability and flight longevity. And where drones can be flown by one person, the Goodyear Blimp crew at Daytona tops 20 staffers.

But given the blimp’s longevity, adaptability and celebrity, no one should bet against it sticking around for generations to come.

“Despite changes in technology and our environment, people still get so excited to see the blimp,” Kervern said. “It’s just an iconic symbol for our nation.”

___

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

That source knew of no federal agency that was exempt.

The Department of Veterans Affairs then announced it was letting go of 1,000 probationary employees.

There are at least 216,000 probationary employees that could be impacted, the I-Team confirmed. That is 9.4% of the total federal workforce.

Federal workers can be on probation anywhere from one to two years — before all their civil service protections kick in.

“The probationary period is a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment,” an OPM spokesperson said. “Agencies are taking independent action in light of the recent hiring freeze and in support of the president’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government to better serve the American people at the highest possible standard.”

“This administration has abused the probationary period to conduct a politically driven mass firing spree, targeting employees not because of performance, but because they were hired before [President Donald] Trump took office,” American Federation of Government Employees President Everett Kelley said in a statement.

He said AFGE will fight the firings.

“These firings are not about poor performance — there is no evidence these employees were anything but dedicated public servants,” Kelley said. “They are about power. They are about gutting the federal government, silencing workers and forcing agencies into submission to a radical agenda that prioritizes cronyism over competence.”

Johanna Hickman, senior litigation counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since 2023, lost her job when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was shuttered Tuesday.

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“Around nine o’clock on Tuesday night, all the probationary employees, as far as we know, folks in their first year of two depending what type of job they have, all probationary employees lost access to their computers, and then around 9 p.m., the termination notices started going out.”

The union representing CFPB employees filed a request for a temporary restraining order.

Less than 5% of the federal workforce took the deferred resignation offer, OPM said. The Trump administration set a higher expectation, hoping that 5% to 10% of the federal workforce would accept its offer.

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The investigation started on June 11 when a man called 911 and said a 4-month-old baby was choking on formula and he had done CPR for several minutes.

The baby was taken to Norwalk Hospital, where she died, police said.

Norwalk detectives took over the investigation and worked with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the Department of Children and Families, Children’s Connection Norwalk and the Yale New Haven Hospital DART Team (Detection, Assessment, Referral and Treatment).

Police said the investigation revealed that complications of medical and nutritional neglect with necrotizing appendicitis and chronic malnutrition contributed to her death, which was determined to be homicide.

Police obtained a warrant for 27-year-old Kyle Vigneault and took him into custody at his home on Thursday.

He was charged with manslaughter in the first degree, risk of injury to a child and cruelty to persons.

Police identified him as the baby’s father.

His bond was set at $125,000 and he is due in court on Feb. 27.

The woman’s body was discovered on Salisbury Beach, near 17th Street, about 8 a.m., according to the Essex County District Attorney’s Office.

She was identified Friday as Maureen Pascucci, 64.

State and local police were investigating what happened; prosecutors didn’t say whether it’s believed the death is considered suspicious.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.

Wintry weather was hitting the area Thursday morning.

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“I’ve decided for purposes of fairness that I will charge a reciprocal tariff,” Trump said in the Oval Office at the proclamation signing. “It’s fair to all. No other country can complain.”

Trump’s Republican administration has insisted that its new tariffs would equalize the ability of U.S. and foreign manufacturers to compete, though under current law these new taxes would likely be paid by American consumers and businesses either directly or in the form of higher prices.

The politics of tariffs could easily backfire on Trump if his agenda pushes up inflation and grinds down growth, making this a high stakes wager for a president eager to declare his authority over the U.S. economy.

The tariff increases would be customized for each country with the partial goal of starting new negotiations. But other nations might also feel the need to respond with their own tariff increases on American goods. As a result, Trump may need to find ways to reassure consumers and businesses to counteract any uncertainty caused by his tariffs.

Trump’s proclamation identifies value added taxes — which are similar to sales taxes and common in the European Union — as a trade barrier to be included in any reciprocal tariff calculations. Other nations’ tariff rates, subsidies to industries, regulations and possible undervaluing of currencies would be among the factors the Trump administration would use to assess tariffs.

A senior White House official, who insisted on anonymity to preview the details on a call with reporters, said that the expected tariff revenues would separately help to balance the expected $1.9 trillion budget deficit. The official also said the reviews needed for the tariffs could be completed within a matter of weeks or a few months.

The possible tax increases on imports and exports could be large compared to the comparatively modest tariffs that Trump imposed during his first term. Trade in goods between Europe and the United States nearly totaled $1.3 trillion last year, with the United States exporting $267 billion less than it imports, according to the Census Bureau.

The president has openly antagonized multiple U.S. trading partners over the past several weeks, levying tariff threats and inviting them to retaliate with import taxes of their own that could send the economy hurtling into a trade war.

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Trump has put an additional 10% tariff on Chinese imports due to that country’s role in the production of the opioid fentanyl. He also has readied tariffs on Canada and Mexico, America’s two largest trading partners, that could take effect in March after being suspended for 30 days. On top of that, on Monday, he removed the exemptions from his 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs. And he’s mused about new tariffs on computer chips and pharmaceutical drugs.

But by Trump’s own admission his separate tariffs for national security and other reasons would be on top of the reciprocal tariffs, meaning that the field would not necessarily be level.

In the case of the 25% steel and aluminum tariffs, “that’s over and above this,” Trump said. Autos, computer chips and pharmaceutical would also be tariffed at higher rates than what his reciprocal plan charges, he said.

The EU, Canada and Mexico have countermeasures ready to inflict economic pain on the United States in response to Trump’s actions, while China has already taken retaliatory steps with its own tariffs on U.S. energy, agricultural machinery and large-engine autos as well as an antitrust investigation of Google.

The White House has argued that charging the same import taxes as other countries do would improve the fairness of trade, potentially raising revenues for the U.S. government while also enabling negotiations that could eventually improve trade.

But Trump is also making a political wager that voters can tolerate higher inflation levels. Price spikes in 2021 and 2022 severely weakened the popularity of then-President Joe Biden, with voters so frustrated by inflation eroding their buying power that they chose last year to put Trump back in the White House to address the problem. Inflation has risen since November’s election, with the government reporting on Wednesday that the consumer price index is running at an annual rate of 3%.

The Trump team has decried criticism of its tariffs even as it has acknowledged the likelihood of some financial pain. It says that the tariffs have to be weighed against the possible extension and expansion of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts as well as efforts to curb regulations and force savings through the spending freezes and staff reductions in billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative.

But an obstacle for this approach might be the sequencing of the various policies and the possibilities of a wider trade conflict stifling investment and hiring amid the greater inflationary pressures.

Analysts at the bank Wells Fargo said in a Thursday report that the tariffs would likely hurt growth this year, just as the extended tax cuts could help growth recover in 2026.

“Tariffs impart a modest stagflationary shock to an economy,” the report said. “The U.S. economy entered 2025 with a fair amount of momentum, but we look for real GDP growth to downshift a bit over the next few quarters as the price-boosting effects of tariffs erode growth in real income, thereby weighing on growth in real consumer spending.”

Owner Molly Goodwin explained in a statement Thursday that the team’s business model is “no longer sustainable” and calling the decision to suspend operations difficult.

“To promote the growth of the sport, we need to secure additional investment, forge new partnerships and capitalize on new opportunities. The upside potential for women’s professional sports is exploding, and we intend to be a part of that movement,” Goodwin wrote.

The team’s staff is made up of volunteers, and it’s been reported that players end up paying hundreds of dollars to participate.

Started in 2015, the Renegades played in the Women’s Football Alliance national championship seven straight times, winning the middle five — the most in the league’s 15-year history. They lost the 2024 championship to the St. Louis Slam by three points.

For their fourth consecutive win, in 2022, they flew to the game on the Patriots’ private plane in 2022. It was the first WFA game to be broadcasted nationally, on ESPN2.

The Renegades have also hosted football clinics for young girls in the Boston area and were the subject of a 2020 documentary, “Born to Play.”

“We are excited to emerge even stronger and to provide an outstanding experience both on and off the field,” Goodwin stated, offering thanks to the team’s supporters.

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Here’s a look at snowfall totals from across the region as of 1:30 p.m., according to the National Weather Service:

Massachusetts

Forest Hills: 3″

Ashburnham: 2.6″

Westminster: 2.4″

Lunenberg: 2.1″

Pepperell: 2″

Fitchburg: 2″

Conway: 2″

Ayer: 1.9″

Lancaster: 1.9″

Hawley: 1.9″

Buckland: 1.9″

Bedford: 1.8″

Westhampton: 1.8″

Granville: 1.8″

Colrain: 1.8″

Acton: 1.7″

Westfield: 1.6″

Merrimac: 1.5″

Arlington: 1.5″

Dracut: 1.5″

Littleton: 1.5″

Princeton: 1.5″

Sterling: 1.5″

Boylston: 1.5″

Hudson: 1.4″

Grafton: 1.4″

Ashfield: 1.4″

Lexington: 1.3″

Westborough: 1.3″

New Hampshire

Mount Washington: 3.9″

Pinkham Notch: 3″

Milford: 3″

Maine

Blaine: 6″

Madrid: 5.4″

Caribou: 5.3″

Rockwood: 4.5″

Presque Isle: 3.8″

Patten: 3.3″

Madawaska: 3″

Moosehead: 3″

Rangeley: 3″

Sangerville: 2.5″

Vermont

Burlington: 3″

Wardsboro: 3″

Morrisville: 2″

Milton: 1.5″

Maidstone: 1.4″

Connecticut

North Granby: 1.8″

Simsbury: 1.5″

Bristol: 1.5″

Seven people from the Building Blocks Learning Center on Route 236 were hospitalized Wednesday afternoon but none were seriously injured.

The Maine Fire Marshal’s Office said staff at the day care noticed an odor and made the decision to evacuate after people inside started feeling unwell, and that decision might have saved lives.

“It is important to note that daycare providers of the Building Blocks Learning Center recognized a problem and took action,” State Fire Marshal Shawn Esler said in a statement. “They evacuated children and staff to safety and notified the fire department as soon as they recognized something was wrong. Their quick response, the professionalism of the Kittery Fire Department, and the medical expertise of the Portsmouth Regional Hospital helped prevent a tragedy.”

The fire marshal’s office said when firefighters arrived at the day care around 3:19 p.m. Wednesday, there was no carbon monoxide alarm activation and no issues were found with the building’s heating system.

The source of the carbon monoxide has been determined to have been a propane-powered concrete saw that was being used in an adjacent suite and was not affiliated with the day care, fire officials said. The space was under construction and the concrete saw had been in use throughout the day.

Propane-powered gas saws are not intended to be used indoors and are often labeled to prevent use in unventilated spaces, the fire marshal’s office said.

Investigators believe that carbon monoxide from the saw’s exhaust likely infiltrated the day care through an HVAC air intake duct that services other parts of the building. It also might have gotten into the day care through a suspended ceiling that had been removed as part of the construction.

The fire marshal’s office said a construction permit was obtained through local code enforcement for the suite where the concrete saw was operated.

The building where the incident occurred does have a fire alarm system, and the fire marshal’s office said it was showing normal status when firefighters arrived at the scene on Wednesday. But the detectors in the area where the construction was happening had been covered.

The investigation is ongoing, the fire marshal’s office said, and they are still working to determine whether carbon monoxide detectors were present, because some smoke alarms and combination smoke and carbon monoxide alarms are similar in appearance.

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