DHS reverses decision to suspend TSA PreCheck and Global Entry due to shutdown

(NEW YORK) — Nearly 70 million Americans are under a severe weather threat heading into the weekend, including the possibility of tornadoes in the central United States, after deadly storms swept through Oklahoma.

A storm system is bringing rain, snow, ice and severe weather from the Rockies to the Upper Midwest and across much of the Plains on Friday.

The severe storm threat stretches from Dallas to Milwaukee, including Des Moines, Iowa, St. Louis and Oklahoma City. Strong winds, hail, and brief tornadoes are all possible. 

A large area stretching from far northeast Texas to southwest Iowa is under an enhanced threat, with tornadoes and very large hail as the main concerns. 

The greatest tornado threat on Friday is from far northeastern Texas to just south of Springfield, Missouri. Tornado watches are in effect across six states into Friday night — Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa.

A large and “extremely dangerous” tornado was also detected in southern Michigan, south of Kalamazoo, on Friday afternoon. There were multiple reports of “significant damage” in Three Rivers, according to the National Weather Service.

Heavy downpours, especially in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri, could also result in localized flash flooding.

The governor of Missouri declared a state of emergency on Friday “in preparation for potentially dangerous severe weather forecasted across the state,” including the threat of damaging winds, large hail and tornadoes, his office said. 

The threat comes after seven reported tornadoes and golf ball-sized hail impacted parts of west Texas and Oklahoma. A mother and daughter were killed in Major County, Oklahoma, on Thursday night after severe weather swept through the area, according to Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt. They were found dead in a vehicle that appeared to have tornado damage, authorities told ABC Oklahoma City affiliate KOCO.

Elsewhere, winter weather advisories are also in effect Friday from Colorado to Minnesota for the cold side of the storm with snow and ice. Denver could see 2 to 4 inches of snow.

Icy conditions are expected across parts of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Minnesota, with heavy rain forecast to move through the upper Midwest through Friday night.

To the South, widespread severe weather is possible through late Friday from Texas to Wisconsin.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff revealed in an interview this week that Iranian negotiators told him in the lead-up to the U.S.-Israeli military operation in Iran that they had enough enriched uranium to “make 11 nuclear bombs.”

But since the major combat operations were launched on Saturday with the intent of crushing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the administration has yet to publicly produce any concrete evidence on the whereabouts of the nuclear material or who is in control of it. The Israel Defense Forces claimed that at least 40 top military commanders were killed in the opening strikes of the conflict.

In an interview on Fox News, Witkoff told host Sean Hannity that as soon as he and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, sat down with the Iranian negotiators for denuclearization talks last month, their counterparts spoke of their stockpile of enriched uranium.

“Jared and I opened up with the Iranian negotiators telling us they had the inalienable right to enrich all the nuclear fuel they possessed,” Witkoff said. “We, of course, responded that the president feels we have the inalienable right to stop you in your tracks.”

Witkoff claimed the Iranian negotiators openly shared details about their supply of nuclear material.

“In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly with, you know, no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enriched uranium] and they’re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs,” Witkoff said.

Witkoff said the 60% enriched uranium can be brought to weapons-grade in about a week and that the 20% enriched uranium can be brought to weapons-grade in three to four weeks.

“They manufacture their own centrifuges to enrich this material,” Witkoff said. “So, there’s almost no stopping them. They have an endless supply of it.”

The statement appears to contradict what the Pentagon said last summer about Iran’s ability to develop weapons-grade uranium following U.S. strikes on its nuclear facilities.

In July 2025, Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, said at a news conference that that the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June set back Iran’s capability to develop a nuclear weapon by “closer to two years.”

“It’s not just … enriched uranium or centrifuges or things like that. We destroyed the components that they would need to build a bomb,” Parnell said at the time.

But on Tuesday, that assessment fell to the wayside as the administration defended the U.S. military operation by insisting Iran posed an imminent threat to Americans. A senior administration official told reporters in a briefing that among the factors in the operation was that Iran had the ability to rebuild those components destroyed in the bombing, including its own centrifuges. 

The official said a lot of the enriched uranium remained mostly in Isfahan with some still at Natanz and Fordo.

“It can be a long and cumbersome process in extracting it and covering it up,” the official said. “I think the first question is, where is it? The second question is, how do we get to it, and how do we get physical control? And then after that, it would be a decision of the president and department, the Department of War, CIA, as to whether we wanted to physically transport it or dilute it on premises.” 

Iran has stated numerous times that it doesn’t want nuclear weapons, but believes it has the right to use nuclear power for civilian purpose. It had also been part of a nuclear deal with the U.S., which Trump withdrew from during his first term.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told ABC’s “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that the attack on his country was “unprovoked and unwarranted.” He said Iran was negotiating with the United States in good faith prior to the attacks.

“A deal was at our reach, and we left Geneva happily with the understanding that we can reach a deal next time we meet,” Araghchi said.

In their two public briefings on “Operation Epic Fury” in Iran, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not address what has become of Iran’s nuclear material since the widespread military strikes began on Saturday.

In several speeches since the attacks commenced, Trump has also not been specific about the status of Iran’s nuclear material.

Hegseth, Caine, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio conducted a closed-door briefing with members of the U.S. Senate and House on the Iran operation on Tuesday afternoon.

In a letter sent on Monday to the administration’s briefers, five top House Democrats — including Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee — asked for information on nuclear security in Iran.

“Who currently controls Iran’s nuclear facilities and materials, and what safeguards are in place to prevent diversion or proliferation, or complete loss of control?” the Democratic lawmakers asked in their letter.

But following the briefing, Meeks said the briefers offered few answers.

“Here we are again without answers. Here we are again without complete transparency,” Meeks said. “Here we are again trying to go around Congress.”

Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said the briefers provided “no additional” information on the imminent threat that prompted the military operation, adding, “There’s nothing that we got that you don’t have.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., challenged any suggestion that the Trump administration was unclear during their briefing with House members about their objectives in Iran. 

“This is really a very simple matter. It’s about the building of ballistic missiles. That’s what Iran was engaged in, and they were doing it at a speed and in a scale that was exceeding the ability of our regional allies to respond appropriately,” Johnson said. “This created an imminent and serious threat. It also gave them cover to continue with their nuclear ambitions.”

Johnson added, “As you know, we tried very hard to negotiate with them about that nuclear enrichment of uranium … and the buildup of their missiles was so important and so serious that the President of the United States, this president, thought that it was a great enough threat that we needed to act.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, said in a social media post on Tuesday that, based on the latest available satellite imagery, it “can now confirm some recent damage to entrance buildings of Iran’s underground Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant [FEP].”

“No radiological consequence expected and no additional impact detected at FEP itself, which was severely damaged in the June conflict,” the IAEA said in the post.

In June 2025, the U.S. and Israeli militaries launched “Operation Midnight Hammer,” targeting three of Iran’s nuclear facilities — Natanz, Fordo and Isfahan — with “bunker-buster” bombs, according to the White House.

At the time, Trump said the operation “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s key uranium enrichment sites.

In a speech on Monday at the White House, Trump said that after “Operation Midnight Hammer,” Iran attempted to rebuild its nuclear facilities in another location, “because they were unable to use the ones we so powerfully blew up.”

“In addition, the regime’s conventional ballistic missile program was growing rapidly and dramatically, and this posed a very clear, colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas,” Trump said. “The purpose of this fast-growing missile program was to shield their nuclear weapon development and make it extraordinarily difficult for anyone to stop them from making these highly forbidden, by us, nuclear weapons.”

The Institute for Science and International Security said in a statement on Tuesday that its analysis of satellite imagery indicates the Natanz nuclear complex, Iran’s main uranium enrichment site, was struck twice during Saturday’s joint U.S.-Israeli attack.

Neither the Trump administration nor the Israeli government have confirmed the alleged strikes on the Natanz complex.

Meanwhile, Israel targeted a compound near Tehran linked to the regime’s nuclear weapons “capabilities,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in statement Tuesday. 

After the U.S. targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, Israel, which participated in the operation under the code-name “Rising Lion,” continued to track scientists connected to the Iran’s nuclear weapons program “and located their new location at this site in a manner that enabled a precise strike on the covert underground compound,” the statement said.

“The strike removes a key component in the Iranian regime’s capability to develop nuclear weapons and joins a series of strikes conducted during Operation ‘Rising Lion’ that were essential to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat,” the IDF said.

-ABC News’ Mary Kekatos and Jordana Miller contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Murat Mayor has no need for an associate’s degree. The 58-year-old business analyst already has a Ph.D. But when he and his son, a high school senior, attempted last fall to apply for federal student financial aid, they learned that an account associated with both of their identities already existed.

Those accounts showed applications to multiple community colleges — and much more.

“We noticed that there [was] a lot of activity” on accounts created in their names, Mayor said in an interview with ABC News. “There are a lot of applications, loan applications, grant applications … then we panicked.”

Mayor knew immediately that something was amiss. He assumed his identity had been stolen. But he had no concept of the breadth of the scheme that had ensnared his and his son’s identity, and he had certainly never heard of the army of digital fraudsters perpetrating the crime.

‘A huge issue’
They are known as “ghost students,” and for thousands of colleges across the country, these sophisticated thieves have a become a scourge. The scammers will use stolen or fake identities to enroll in classes online and sign up for Pell grants and loans, then disappear once they get the money — robbing the federal government of hundreds of millions of dollars and leaving an untold number of victims like Mayor and his son in their wake.

“It’s a huge issue,” said Jason Williams, the assistant inspector general for investigations at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General. “As they’re stealing identities … these loans are not being repaid. They’re being assigned to people [who] don’t even know they have a debt with U.S. Department of Education … [until] the Internal Revenue Service says you owe the Department of Education money.”

Fraudsters have attempted to steal student financial aid for decades, Williams said. But “when the pandemic [hit], everybody went to online learning. Well, by doing that, it really did open the door” for more widespread fraud, said Williams.

Scammers have realized that the move to remote learning at community colleges provides an opportunity to leverage the power of artificial intelligence to expand their reach and circumvent identity verification controls. Almost overnight, experts said, the fraud grew exponentially.

Over the past five years, the federal government has investigated more than $350 million in fraud perpetrated by “ghost student” schemes, Williams said. “And that’s only in the universe of what we know, and what we have adjudicated,” he added. “There’s a lot of stuff that we don’t know that’s out there.”

Williams said his office has more than 200 investigations open nationwide, with some schemes suspected of racking up more than a billion dollars in ill-gotten gains.

Open season on open enrollment
The federal government is on the hook for tuition aid lost to scammers. But it is the community colleges, which accept almost all applicants through open enrollment, that often carry the burden of sniffing out fake applications. And doing so requires the resources, technology and expertise that many institutions do not possess.

Experts say the scope of the fraud is enormous. In California alone, nearly a third of all community college applicants in 2024 were identified as fraudulent, according to the California Community Colleges, the state’s administrative body for the community college system.  

Similar figures exist across the country. ABC News and its nationwide network of owned and operated stations investigated the rise of “ghost students” and found that almost no community college has been spared.

Gina Macklin, a senior administrator at Delaware County Community College, told WPVI-TV in Philadelphia that the school found more than 500 fake students enrolled in its classes in 2023, which she described as “a terrible year” for the school, not least of which because those fraudsters “had taken seats from legitimate students.”

Dr. Beatriz Chaidez, the chancellor of the San Jose Evergreen Community College District, told KGO-TV in San Francisco that at one point, a 50-person online class was booked in minutes and had 100 individuals on its waitlist. The school later learned that just six of those “students” were real people trying to get an education.

“The rest were fraudulent accounts,” she said. “Ghost students.”

Software solutions
The Trump administration last year implemented enhanced fraud controls and identity verification requirements for schools, which experts say helped schools combat fake applicants. But to help root out the fraud, many community colleges have turned to a growing marketplace of identity verification software vendors.

Maurice Simpkins, a retired NFL linebacker, operates one such business. His software is called Student Application Fraudulent Examination, or S.A.F.E.

The platform acts as a firewall for the schools, Simpkins said. “From a football term,” he likes to say, “it’s an offensive line.” He says it catches around 95% of fake applications instantaneously and refers more to the school for additional scrutiny. After just two years on the market, S.A.F.E. is in use in more than 150 schools nationwide, he said.

Administrators at more than a dozen community colleges characterized the rise of “ghost students” as a true crisis. The fraudsters, those administrators say, are taking advantage of a vulnerability created by the degree to which these schools are accessible to students.

Officials say the scammers’ schemes range from the savvy to the sloppy — and all are brazen. One school administrator at a midwestern community college who asked not to be identified shared a “business proposal” he said he received last year from an alleged scammer.

In an email, the alleged scammer, who identified themselves as “Ken from Tanzania,” offered to pay the administrator a share of the proceeds for his help in perpetrating the fraud. “I would really like us to partner and work for 3semesters [sic] and we get something good for us and our families.”  

Scammers who operate from overseas present a special challenge, according to investigators. But many of the “ghost students” operate within U.S. borders.

Before their arrests in 2018 and 2019, a father and son in Arizona made off with more than $7 million from ghost student scams, and both served 12-month prison sentences after pleading guilty. And a Maryland man who used the identities of 60 people to take in more than $6.7 million in fraudulent financial aid was sentenced in 2023 to four years in prison.

Murat Mayor, the 58-year-old business analyst, believes he and his son had their identities stolen as part of a massive hack of their health care provider in 2024. After months of back-and-forth with law enforcement and administrators at community colleges in Maryland and Utah, he finally cleared himself and his son from enrollment records earlier this month.

“He’s a straight-A student, has been very successful — an honor student, so he’s doing well,” Mayor told ABC News regarding his son.

Mayor’s son has applied to study business finance in the fall. And this time, it will really be him.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.