SAN DIEGO (AP) — Dozens of Marines unfurled coils of concertina wire — one on the ground and one slightly above — making it more difficult to climb a border wall separating Tijuana from San Diego. They worked with speed and efficiency amid a weekend rush of cars nearby at the busiest border crossing between the U.S. and Mexico.

Fortifying barriers has long been a military task on border missions that date back to the administration of George W. Bush. But President Donald Trump has hinted strongly at the unprecedented use of the armed forces to repel what he calls a “disastrous invasion.”

Until now, the military has limited itself to a supporting role at the border — surveilling for illegal crossings by ground and air, repairing vehicles, building barriers — adhering to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 to keep the armed forces away from civilian law enforcement.

The Associated Press toured the border in San Diego with Marines and saw a military operating similar to past missions. But some scholars and advisers close to Trump argue there are legal grounds to summon the military to combat narcotics and mass migration.

Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border indicates he may redirect money, as he did during his first term, to get billions of dollars for border wall construction.

His inaugural day orders raise the possibility of invoking wartime powers, including the Insurrection Act of 1807, allowing him to deploy active-duty troops to suppress a rebellion. He gave Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem 90 days to deliver recommendations.

The Insurrection Act “is just all-purpose. The regular military can do anything on U.S. soil,” said Adam Isacson, who follows the role of military at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research and advocacy organization.

Trump has already broken from predecessors. While the military has housed migrants at times, its deportation flights to Guatemala, Ecuador and Colombia mark a departure from previous administrations. Trump said he would use a detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold tens of thousands of the “worst criminal aliens,” though it hasn’t happened yet.

There is a sense among Border Patrol agents and others that there is more to come. Isacson believes the administration may see a model in Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star,” which thrust the state’s National Guard into a central role in border enforcement.

The Defense Department deployed 1,600 active-duty troops to the border during Trump’s first week in office. U.S. officials said Friday that they are preparing to deploy at least 1,000 more in Trump’s immigration crackdown, about half to the border and half to Guantanamo Bay.

So far, the military has maintained low visibility in San Diego. The Marines laid concertina wire Friday at the bottom of an 18-foot-high (5.5-meter-high) border wall that already had wire on top. Migrants who manage to get over or through the wire face a second, 30-foot-high (9.1-meter-high) wall.

A tour in Osprey military transport aircraft, which have been used to bring concertina to Brown Field Municipal Airport in San Diego, showed Border Patrol vehicles staged at various lookouts. They stretched about 70 miles (112 kilometers) from the Pacific Ocean through boulder-strewn ranches east of San Diego and a treacherous mountain range where few migrants cross.

Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks said Thursday that arrests for illegal crossings averaged 654 a day over the previous week, down from a daily average of 1,527 in December.

San Diego has been the busiest corridor for illegal crossings over much of the last year. Arrests averaged 222 a day in a seven-day period through Jan. 25, down from 237 the previous week.

Elliot Spagat, The Associated Press

Federal authorities have arrested a former Federal Reserve senior adviser for allegedly giving inside economic information to China.

A grand jury indictment accuses John Harold Rogers, 63, of Vienna, Virginia, of stealing Federal Reserve trade secrets and selling them to Chinese intelligence officials for at least $450,000 by posing as a university professor in China. He is also accused of lying to Federal Reserve investigators and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officials.

The Department of Justice announced Rogers’ indictment and arrest on Friday, the same day he made his first appearance before a Washington court. Rogers is being held without bond and is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday, according to court records.

“As alleged in the indictment, Rogers betrayed his country while employed at the Federal Reserve by providing restricted U.S. financial and economic information to Chinese government intelligence officers,” said Assistant Director Kevin Vorndran of the FBI Counterintelligence Division in an announcement of Rogers’ indictment and arrest.

“This information could allow adversaries to illegally gain a strategic economic advantage at the expense of the U.S. This indictment sends a clear message that the FBI and our partners will hold accountable those who threaten our national security,” Vorndran said.

A public defender listed in court records as being assigned to Rogers’ case did not immediately respond Saturday to a request for comment.

The Justice Department said the information “could allow China to manipulate the U.S. market … in a manner to insider trading.” The department noted that China, as of October 2024, held about $816 billion in U.S. foreign debt and that Chinese financial players could benefit from inside knowledge of U.S. economic policy, such as advance notice of federal funds rate changes, when making decisions about buying and selling U.S. debt instruments.

Rogers, a U.S. citizen with a doctorate in economics, worked for the Federal Reserve from 2010 until 2021, according to the indictment.

According to the indictment, Rogers, a U.S. citizen with a Ph.D. in economics, worked as a Senior Adviser in FRB’s Division of International Finance of the FRB from 2010 until 2021, where he would have had access to a range of classified information.

Prosecutors allege that Rogers and two Chinese co-conspirators began communicating as early as 2013. The indictment asserts that Rogers later forwarded protected information to his personal email or made print copies to pass along to his co-conspirators. The cache allegedly included proprietary economic data and analysis, briefing books written for Federal Reserve governors, details of Federal Open Market Committee deliberations and future announcements, and accounts of conversations about tariffs targeted at China, according to the indictment.

Rogers is accused of meeting co-conspirators in China for multiple visits, under the guise of him being an academic instructor teaching them as students. The indictment alleges that in 2023, Rogers received $450,000 as a part-time professor at a Chinese university. ___

Bill Barrow, The Associated Press

OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Democrats, desperately seeking a new message and messengers to push back against the Trump administration, are electing a new party leader Saturday in a low-profile race that could have big implications for their future.

The new Democratic National Committee chair will succeed Jaime Harrison, who did not seek another term after a tumultuous 2024 election in which Trump became the first Republican to win the popular vote in two decades and made modest gains with core Democratic constituencies — African Americans, Latinos and working-class voters, among them.

“The world needs the Democratic Party to get up off the mat,” said Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin state party head who is a top candidate, before the vote. He said the nation is facing a “moment of Trumpian terror.”

More than 400 DNC members from every state and U.S. territory were in suburban Washington for the election, which featured a group of candidates dominated by party insiders.

The leading contenders, Wikler and Minnesota’s Ken Martin, are low-profile state party chairs. They have promised to refocus the Democratic message on working-class voters, strengthen Democratic infrastructure across the country and improve the party’s anti-Trump rapid response system.

They have pledged not to shy away from Democrats’ dedication to diversity and minority groups, a pillar of the modern-day party. But if Martin, 51, or Wikler, 43, were elected, as expected, either would be the first white man to lead the DNC since 2011.

Also in the race: former Maryland governor and Biden administration official Martin O’Malley, and Faiz Shakir, who managed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ last presidential campaign.

Candidate Marianne Williamson, an activist and author, surprised DNC members before voting began by endorsing Martin as “our best chance to cut the court with the billionaire funded corruption that will otherwise obstruct and limit our possibilities.”

Most of the candidates acknowledge that the Democratic brand is badly damaged, but few are promising fundamental changes. Indeed, nearly three months after Donald Trump won the popular vote and gained ground among key Democratic constituencies, there is little agreement on what exactly went wrong.

The election comes less than two weeks after Trump’s inauguration as Democratic leaders struggle to confront the sheer volume of executive orders, pardons, personnel changes and controversial relationships taking shape in the new administration. The next DNC chair would serve as a face of the Democratic response, while helping to coordinate political strategy and repair the party’s brand.

Just 31% of voters have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released this week that offers a dramatic contrast with Trump’s GOP. Forty-three percent of voters have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party.

Shakir has called for sweeping changes within the party, such as more coordination with labor unions and less focus on minority groups sorted by race and gender. The only Muslim seeking the chairmanship, Shakir was alone during a candidate forum this week in opposing the creation of a Muslim caucus at the DNC.

But he has struggled to gain traction.

Shakir declined to raise money for the contest, decorating his modest booth at this week’s gathering with pictures drawn by his young children with crayons. By contrast, Martin and Wikler hosted would-be supporters in large hotel suites adorned with dozens of professionally printed signs and offered T-shirts, sunglasses and food.

Wikler has faced questions about his relationship with Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, the billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn. But he cast his fundraising connections as an asset. Indeed, the DNC chair is expected to raise tens of millions of dollars to help Democrats win elections.

Some Democratic leaders remain concerned about the direction of their party.

“As positive as I am and as hopeful as I am, I’m watching this in real time, thinking to myself, ‘We’re in real trouble because I don’t see a desire to change,’” said Kansas Democratic Chair Jeanna Repass, a candidate for DNC vice chair.

___

Steve Peoples, The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — In Boston, Northeastern University renamed a program for underrepresented students, emphasizing “belonging” for all. In New Jersey, a session at Rutgers University catering to students from historically Black colleges had to be abruptly canceled. And around the U.S., colleges are assessing program names and titles that could run afoul of a Trump administration crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

New White House orders ban DEI policies in programs that receive federal money. Across higher education, institutions rely on federal funding for research grants, projects and contract work.

As they figure out how to adapt, some schools are staying quiet out of uncertainty, or fear. President Donald Trump has called for compliance investigations at some schools with endowments over $1 billion.

Others have vowed to stand firm.

The president of Mount Holyoke College, a liberal arts school in Massachusetts, said she hopes colleagues in higher education will not capitulate to Trump’s vision for the country. Danielle Holley said she believes Trump’s orders are vulnerable to legal challenges.

“Anything that is done to simply disguise what we’re doing is not helpful,” said Holley, who is Black. “It validates this notion that our values are wrong. And I don’t believe that the value of saying we live in a multiracial democracy is wrong.”

Trump has said DEI amounts to discrimination. To get colleges to shutter diversity programs, he said during the campaign he would “advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.”

Efforts by colleges to build the diversity they seek on campuses already had been constrained by the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that struck down affirmative action in higher education. Many colleges have said they are no less committed to recruiting students of color and helping all students succeed, even if strategies change or go by a different name.

Northeastern changed the name of what had been called “The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” to “Belonging in Northeastern,” which it described as a “reimagined approach” that embraces everyone at the school.

“While internal structures and approaches may need to be adjusted, the university’s core values don’t change. We believe that embracing our differences — and building a community of belonging — makes Northeastern stronger,” university spokesperson Renata Nyul said.

The orders are having a chilling effect at many colleges, said Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education.

“We are also seeing institutions preemptively reevaluating courses, programs and even administrative positions,” she said. “The long-term consequences of such shifts could be profound, both for higher education and for the broader workforce and society.”

Some changes are outside the control of the colleges.

At Rutgers University, professor Marybeth Gasman awoke Jan. 23 to a contractor’s email telling her to cancel an upcoming conference on student internships. The funding, from the Department of Labor, was coming through the contractor and earmarked for DEI programs that were put on hold. About 100 students and staff from historically Black colleges and universities had planned to attend the online session.

“It feels like a punch in the gut,” said Gasman, who runs Rutgers’ Center for Minority Serving Institutions, which was completing its final project on a $575,000 grant. With the grant frozen, she now hopes to raise the remaining $150,000 from other sources so they can finish the work and retain staff.

Beyond scrutiny of their own policies and programs, many universities and faculty members also are worried about research grants.

The White House this week paused federal grants and loans to conduct an ideological review to uproot progressive initiatives. It later reversed itself, but uncertainty remains over the future of research touching on issues related to diversity.

California Polytechnic professor Cameron Jones said he is worried whether he would still get a $150,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to study the history of African descendants in early California, even though it’s not a DEI grant. He also worries about the ban’s effect on his students, especially students of color.

“We’re worried that even indirect pressure might lead administrators to back off on programs that benefit students of color (and) first generation students,” Jones said, “and I’m a white, cisgender, church-going man.”

Colleges already had experience with DEI restrictions in several Republican-led states, including Oklahoma, where Shanisty Whittington, 33, is studying political science at Rose State College.

Compared to her first stint in college, more than a decade ago, she notices some concern “about being able to speak freely,” along with “just a lot of confusion.”

One effect of the Oklahoma ban was the loss of a long-running networking program for female students interested in politics. Whittington, who is juggling work, school and parenting, recently applied for two jobs at the statehouse, but her applications went nowhere.

“It would be great to have a tool that would help me be able to kind of get into that world and start introducing myself to people and getting to know them,” she said.

Sheldon Fields has been through a time like this before. He was a post-doctoral student studying AIDS/HIV prevention in the early 2000s when the conservative tide put his federally funded program on the chopping block. Instead of abandoning the work, he and his colleagues got creative.

“I had to write a whole grant about AIDS prevention without even talking about sex. We were able to do it because we shifted some language,” said Fields, president of the National Black Nursing Association and associate dean for equity and inclusion at Penn State University’s nursing school.

Others will not be discouraged in the the current political climate, Fields said.

“People have spent their entire careers working on certain areas,” said Fields, who has worked to diversify the nursing profession, which is overwhelmingly white and female. “They’re not going to completely abandon them.”

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Maryclaire Dale, The Associated Press

OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Democrats, desperately seeking a new message and messengers to push back against the Trump administration, will elect a new leader Saturday in a low-profile Democratic National Committee election that could have big implications for the party’s future.

More than 400 DNC members from every state and U.S. territory have gathered in suburban Washington for the election, which features a slate of candidates dominated by party insiders. Outgoing Chair Jaime Harrison is not seeking reelection.

Most of the candidates acknowledge that the Democratic brand is badly damaged, but few are promising fundamental changes. Indeed, nearly three months after Donald Trump won the popular vote and gained ground among key Democratic constituencies, there is little agreement on what exactly went wrong.

Facing an emboldened Trump presidency, however, the leading candidates are talking tough.

“As we reel with shock at the horror that Trump is visiting on communities across this country, we need a DNC and a DNC chair who’s ready to bring the intensity, the focus and the fury to fight back,” said Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic chairman and a top candidate for DNC chair.

The election comes less than two weeks after Trump’s inauguration as Democratic leaders struggle to confront the sheer volume of executive orders, pardons, personnel changes and controversial relationships taking shape in the new administration. The next DNC chair would serve as a face of the Democratic response, while helping to coordinate political strategy and repair the party’s brand.

Just 31% of voters have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released this week that offers a dramatic contrast with Trump’s GOP. Forty-three percent of voters have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party.

The leading candidates for DNC chair, Wisconsin’s Wikler and Minnesota’s Ken Martin, are low-profile state party chairs. They’re promising to refocus the Democratic message on working-class voters, strengthen Democratic infrastructure across the country and improve the party’s anti-Trump rapid response system.

They have promised not to shy away from the party’s dedication to diversity and minority groups, a pillar of the modern-day Democratic Party. But if Martin, 51, or Wikler, 43, is elected, as expected, either would be the first white man to lead the DNC since 2011.

Also in the race: Marianne Williamson, the activist and author; former Maryland governor and Biden administration official Martin O’Malley; and Faiz Shakir, who managed Bernie Sanders’ last presidential campaign.

Shakir has called for sweeping changes within the party, such as more coordination with labor unions and less focus on minority groups sorted by race and gender. The only Muslim seeking the chairmanship, Shakir was alone during a candidate forum this week in opposing the creation of a Muslim caucus at the DNC.

But he has struggled to gain traction.

Shakir declined to raise money for the contest, decorating his modest booth at this week’s gathering with pictures drawn by his young children with crayons. By contrast, Martin and Wikler hosted would-be supporters in large hotel suites adorned with dozens of professionally printed signs and offered T-shirts, sunglasses and food.

Wikler has faced questions about his relationship with Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, the billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn. But he cast his fundraising connections as an asset. Indeed, the DNC chair is expected to raise tens of millions of dollars to help Democrats win elections.

Some Democratic leaders remain concerned about the direction of their party.

“As positive as I am and as hopeful as I am, I’m watching this in real time, thinking to myself, ‘We’re in real trouble because I don’t see a desire to change,’” said Kansas Democratic Chair Jeanna Repass, a candidate for DNC vice chair.

___

Steve Peoples, The Associated Press

President Donald Trump has targeted transgender and nonbinary people with a series of executive orders since he returned to office.

He has done it with strong language. In one executive order, he asserted “medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex.”

That’s a dramatic reversal of the policies of former President Joe Biden’s administration — and of major medical organizations — that supported gender-affirming care.

American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Sruti Swaminathan said that to be put into effect, provisions of the orders should first go through federal rulemaking procedures, which can be years long and include the chance for public comment.

“When you have the nation’s commander-in-chief demonizing transgender people, it certainly sends a signal to all Americans,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director at Human Rights Campaign.

Things to know about Trump’s actions:

Recognizing people as only men or women

On Trump’s first day back in office, he issued a sweeping order that signaled a big change in how his administration would deal with transgender people and their rights.

It questions their existence by saying the government would recognize only two unchangeable sexes: female and male.

The stated purpose is to protect women. “Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” the order says.

The document calls on government agencies to use the new definitions of the sexes, and to stop using taxpayer money to promote what it calls “gender ideology,” the idea broadly accepted by medical experts that gender falls along a spectrum.

Federal agencies have been quick to comply. Andrea Lucas, the acting chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for example, announced this week that she would remove identity pronouns from employees’ online profiles and disallow the “X” gender marker for those filing discrimination charges.

“Biology is not bigotry. Biological sex is real, and it matters,” Lucas said in a statement.

On Friday, information about what Trump calls “gender ideology” was removed from federal government websites and the term “gender” was replaced by “sex” to comport with the order. The Bureau of Prisons stopped reporting the number of transgender incarcerated people and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed lessons on building supportive school environments for transgender and nonbinary students.

Researchers have found less than 1% of adults identify as transgender and under 2% are intersex, or born with physical traits that don’t fit typical definitions for male or female.

Requests denied for passport gender markers

In the order calling for a new federal definition of the sexes, Trump included some specific instances in which policy should be changed, including on passports.

The State Department promptly stopped granting requests for new or updated passports with gender markers that don’t conform with the new definition.

The agency is no longer issuing the documents with an “X” that some people who identify as neither male nor female request and will not honor requests to change the gender markers between “M” and “F” for transgender people.

The option to choose “X” was taken off online passport application forms Friday.

The ACLU says it’s considering a lawsuit.

Transgender women moved into men’s prisons

Trump’s initial order called for transgender women in federal custody to be moved to men’s prisons. Warbelow, from Human Rights Campaign, said her organization has received reports from lawyers that some have been.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to requests for information about such moves.

There have been at least two lawsuits trying to block the policy. In one, a federal judge has said a transgender woman in a Massachusetts prison should be housed with the general population of a woman’s prison and continue to receive gender-affirming medical care for now.

Opening the door to another ban on transgender service members

Trump set the stage for a ban on transgender people in the military, directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to come up with a new policy on the issue by late March.

In the executive order, the president asserted that being transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

Trump barred transgender service members in his first term in office, but a court blocked the effort.

A group of active military members promptly sued over the new order this week.

Defunding gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth

Trump called for halting the use of federal money to support gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth under 19 years old.

The care in question includes puberty blocking drugs, hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgery, which is rare for minors.

If fully implemented, the order would cut off government health insurance including Medicaid and TRICARE, which serves military families, for the treatments.

It also calls on Congress to adopt a law against the care, though whether that happens is up to lawmakers.

Twenty-six states already have passed laws banning or limiting gender-affirming care for minors, so the change could be smaller in those places.

Some hospitals have paused some gender-affirming care for people under 19 following the executive order while they evaluate how it might apply to them.

Barring schools from helping student social transitioning

Another executive order this week seeks to stop “radical indoctrination” in the nation’s school system.

It calls on the Education Department to come up with a policy blocking schools from using federal funds to support students who are socially transitioning or using their curriculum to promote the idea that gender can be fluid, along with certain teachings about race.

The order would block schools from requiring teachers and other school staff to use names and pronouns that align with transgender students’ gender identify rather than the sex they were assigned at birth.

Some districts and states have passed those requirements to prevent deadnaming, the practice of referring to transgender people who have changed their name by the name they used before their transition. It is widely considered insensitive, offensive or traumatizing.

Geoff Mulvihill, The Associated Press