When Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine surpassed 1,418 days last month, it officially exceeded a historic milestone ' the same span of time it took Moscow to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II.

And unlike the Red Army that pushed all the way to Berlin eight decades ago in what it called the Great Patriotic War, Russias 4-year-old, all-out invasion of its neighbor is still struggling to fully capture Ukraines eastern industrial heartland.

After Moscow failed to seize the capital of Kyiv and install a puppet government in February 2022, the conflict turned into trench warfare with tremendous cost. By some estimates, nearly 2 million soldiers are dead, wounded or missing on both sides in Europes most devastating conflict since World War II.

Russia has occupied about 20% of Ukrainian territory since illegally annexing Crimea in 2014, but its gains after the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion have been slow. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte this month likened Moscows advance to 'the speed of a garden snail.'

Russian troops have moved only about 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) into the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine in the past two years in a grinding battle for control of a few strongholds.

Despite the slow pace and high cost, President Vladimir Putin has maintained his maximalist demands in U.S.-mediated peace talks, saying Kyiv must pull its forces from the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed but never fully captured. He has repeatedly brandished his nuclear arsenal to prevent the West from boosting military support for Kyiv.

A war of attrition

Initially involving quick movements of large numbers of troops and tanks in Russias opening blitz and Ukraines counteroffensive in fall 2022, the fighting morphed into bloody positional warfare along the 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) front line.

The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated Russian military casualties at 1.2 million, including 325,000 killed. It put Ukrainian troop casualties at up to 600,000, including up to 140,000 killed.

'Russia has suffered the highest casualty rate of any major power in any war since World War II, and its military has performed poorly, with historically slow rates of advance and little new territory to show for its efforts over the last two years,' it said, noting Russian troops were advancing an average of 70 meters (76 1/2 yards) a day in two years to capture the transport hub of Pokrovsk.

For the first time in military history, drones are playing a decisive role, making it effectively impossible for either side to covertly mass significant numbers of troops.

Since early in the conflict, Ukraine has relied on drones to offset Moscows edge in firepower and stem its advances, but Russia has drastically expanded drone operations and introduced longer-range optical fiber-tethered drones to avoid electronic jamming. They widened the kill zone to 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) from the front, leaving the terrain tangled in strands of filament.

The mixture of high-tech drones and World War I-style trench fighting has seen small groups of infantry ' often just two or three soldiers ' try to infiltrate enemy positions into towns flattened by Russian heavy artillery and glide bombs. Ferrying supplies and evacuating the wounded is a major challenge as drones target supply routes.

Long-range attacks

Ukrainian officials described this winter as the most challenging of the war. Russia exponentially increased its strikes on the countrys energy system, causing blackouts in Kyiv where power supplies to many were cut to a few hours a day amid bitter cold.

Russia also has increasingly targeted power lines aiming to halt energy transfers and split Ukraines power grid into isolated islands, increasing pressure on the grid.

Ukraine retaliated with long-range drone attacks on oil refineries and other energy facilities deep inside Russia, aiming to drain Moscows export revenues.

Its drones and missiles sank several Russian warships in the Black Sea, forcing Moscow to redeploy its fleet from Russia-occupied Crimea to Novorossiysk. And in an audacious attack code-named 'Spiderweb,' Ukraine used drones from trucks to hit several air bases hosting long-range bombers across Russia in June, a humiliating blow to the Kremlin.

US pressure, conflicting demands

U.S. President Donald Trump, who once promised to end the war in a day, has pushed to end the fighting, but mediation efforts have run into sharply conflicting demands.

Putin wants Ukraine to pull its troops from the part of the Donetsk region it still controls, abandon its bid to join NATO, curb its military and grant official status to the Russian language, among other demands Ukraine has rejected.

Russia left the door open to Kyivs prospective European Union membership, but it firmly ruled out any European peacekeepers deployed to Ukraine as part of a settlement.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants a ceasefire along the existing line of contact, but Putin rules out a truce, demanding a comprehensive peace agreement.

'The territorial issue is important to the Kremlin, but the war has a more ambitious goal: to create a Ukraine that would be entirely within Russias sphere of influence and not perceived by Moscow as ‘anti-Russia,' observed Tatiana Stanovaya of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

Ukraine and its allies accuse Putin of dragging out talks while he seizes more territory. The Kremlin accuses Kyiv and its European supporters of trying to undermine a tentative agreement reached by Trump and Putin at their Alaska summit.

While sticking to their positions, Putin and Zelenskyy have praised U.S. mediation and tried to curry favor with Trump.

After a disastrous White House meeting a year ago, Zelenskyy has adopted a more practical negotiating stance, emphasizing Ukraines goodwill.

After Trump called for a presidential election in Ukraine, Zelenskyy signaled readiness for it even though its banned under martial law. The election could be coupled with a referendum on a peace deal, he said, but insisted the vote was only possible once a ceasefire is established and Ukraine gets security guarantees from the U.S. and other allies.

Elusive settlement

Zelenskyy said the White House has set a June deadline for the wars end and will likely pressure both sides to meet it. But even as Trump appears eager for a peace deal before the U.S. midterm elections, challenges remain.

With Putin insisting on Ukraines pullback from Donetsk and Zelenskyy ruling it out, a quick deal appears unlikely. Zelenskyy also expressed skepticism about a compromise U.S. proposal to turn the eastern region into a free economic zone.

The Kremlin expects its attacks eventually will force Kyiv to accept Moscows terms. Ukraine hopes it can hold on until Trump loses patience and increases sanctions on Russia, forcing Putin to halt his aggression. But Trump often appears to be losing patience with Zelenskyy instead.

The war and Western sanctions have increasingly strained Russias economy. Growth has slowed to a near halt, due to persistent inflation and labor shortages. The latest U.S. sanctions on Russian oil exports have added to the strain.

But even with the economic challenges, Russias defense plants have increased weapons output and its government has shielded key social groups like soldiers and industrial workers from hardship.

'Its economy is poorer, less efficient and less promising than it might otherwise have been,' wrote Richard Connolly of the Royal United Services Institute. 'But it remains capable of sustaining the war. Its elites are more dependent on the regime, not less. Its political system is insulated from the transmission of economic discontent into pressure for regime change.'

Trump has lashed out at the court decision and said Saturday that he wants a global tariff of 15%, up from the 10% he announced a day earlier.

The European Commission said the current situation is not conducive to delivering 'fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial' trans-Atlantic trade and investment, as agreed to by both sides and spelled out in the EU-U.S. Joint Statement of August 2025.

American and EU officials sealed a trade deal last year that imposes a 15% import tax on 70% of European goods exported to the United States. The European Commission handles trade for the 27 EU member countries.

A top EU lawmaker said on Sunday he will propose to the European Parliament negotiating team to put the ratifying process of the deal on pause.

'Pure tariff chaos on the part of the U.S. administration,' Bernd Lange, the chair of Parliaments international trade committee, wrote on social media. 'No one can make sense of it anymore ' only open questions and growing uncertainty for the EU and other U.S. trading partners.'

The value of EU-U.S. trade in goods and services amounted to 1.7 trillion euros ($2 trillion) in 2024, or an average of 4.6 billion euros a day, according to EU statistics agency Eurostat.

'A deal is a deal,' the European Commission said. 'As the United States largest trading partner, the EU expects the U.S. to honor its commitments set out in the Joint Statement ' just as the EU stands by its commitments. EU products must continue to benefit from the most competitive treatment, with no increases in tariffs beyond the clear and all-inclusive ceiling previously agreed.'

Jamieson Greer, Trumps top trade negotiator, said in a CBS News interview Sunday morning that the U.S. plans to stand by its trade deals and expects its partners to do the same.

He said he talked to his European counterpart this weekend and hasnt heard anyone tell him the deal is off.

'The deals were not premised on whether or not the emergency tariff litigation would rise or fall,' Greer said. 'I havent heard anyone yet come to me and say the deals off. They want to see how this plays out.'

Europes biggest exports to the U.S. are pharmaceuticals, cars, aircraft, chemicals, medical instruments, and wine and spirits. Among the biggest U.S. exports to the bloc are professional and scientific services like payment systems and cloud infrastructure, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, aerospace products and cars.

'When applied unpredictably, tariffs are inherently disruptive, undermining confidence and stability across global markets and creating further uncertainty across international supply chains,' the commission added.

As primarily a trading bloc, the EU has a powerful tool at its disposal to retaliate ' the blocs Anti-Coercion Instrument. It includes a raft of measures for blocking or restricting trade and investment from countries found to be putting undue pressure on EU member nations or corporations.

The measures could include curtailing the export and import of goods and services, barring countries or companies from EU public tenders, or limiting foreign direct investment. In its most severe form, it would essentially close off access to the EUs 450-million customer market and inflict billions of dollars of losses on U.S. companies and the American economy.

MEXICO CITY (AP) ' The Mexican army killed the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, 'El Mencho, ' on Sunday, decapitating what had become Mexicos most powerful cartel and giving the government its biggest prize yet to show the Trump administration its efforts.

Oseguera Cervantes was wounded in an operation to capture him Sunday in Tapalpa, Jalisco about a two-hour drive southwest of Guadalajara and he died while being flown to Mexico City, the Defense Department said in a statement. The state is the base of the cartel known for trafficking huge quantities of fentanyl and other drugs to the United States.

During the operation, troops came under fire and killed four people at the location. Three more people, including Oseguera Cervantes, were wounded and later died, the statement said. Two others were arrested and armored vehicles, rocket launchers and other arms were seized. Three members of the armed forces were wounded and receiving medical treatment.

Roadblocks and burning vehicles

The killing of the powerful drug lord set off several hours of roadblocks with burning vehicles in Jalisco and other states. Such tactics are commonly used by the cartels to block military operations. Jalisco canceled school in the state for Monday.

Videos circulating on social media showed plumes of smoke billowing over the tourist city of Puerto Vallarta in Jalisco, and people sprinting through the airport of the states capital in panic. On Sunday afternoon, Air Canada announced it was suspending flights to Puerto Vallarta 'due to an ongoing security situation' and advised customers not to go to their airport.

In Guadalajara, the state capital, burning vehicles blocked roads. Mexicos second-largest city is scheduled to host matches during this summers soccer World Cup.

The U.S. State Department warned U.S. citizens in Jalisco, Tamaulipas, Michoacan, Guerrero and Nuevo Leon states to remain in safe places due to the ongoing security operations. Canadas embassy in Mexico warned its citizens in Puerto Vallarta to shelter in place and generally to keep a low profile in Jalisco.

Jalisco Gov. Pablo Lemus told residents to stay at home and suspended public transportation.

US had offered up to $15 million for his capture

The U.S. State Department had offered a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest of El Mencho. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known as CJNG, is one of the most powerful and fastest growing criminal organizations in Mexico and was born in 2009.

In February, the Trump administration designated the cartel as a foreign terrorist organization.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, like her predecessor, has criticized the 'kingpin' strategy of previous administrations that took out cartel leaders only to trigger explosions of violence as cartels fractured. While she has remained popular in Mexico, security is a persistent concern and since U.S. President Donald Trump took office a year ago, she has been under tremendous pressure to show results against drug trafficking.

Known as aggressive cartel

The Jalisco cartel has been one of the most aggressive cartels in its attacks on the military ' including on helicopters ' and is a pioneer in launching explosives from drones and installing mines. In 2020, it carried out a spectacular assassination attempt with grenades and high-powered rifles in the heart of Mexico City against the then head of the capitals police force and now federal security secretary.

The DEA considers the cartel to be as powerful as the Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexicos most infamous criminal groups, with a presence in all 50 U.S. states. It is one of the main suppliers of cocaine to the U.S. market and, like the Sinaloa cartel, earns billions from the production of fentanyl and methamphetamines. Sinaloa, however, has been weakened by infighting after the loss of its leaders Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada and Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, both in U.S. custody.

Oseguera Cervantes, 59, was originally from Aguililla in the neighboring state of Michoacan. He had been significantly involved in drug trafficking activities since the 1990s. When he was younger, he migrated to the U.S. where he was convicted of conspiracy to distribute heroin in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 1994 and served nearly three years in prison.

Following his release from custody, Oseguera Cervantes returned to Mexico and reengaged in drug trafficking activity with drug lord Ignacio Coronel Villarreal, alias 'Nacho Coronel.' After Villarreals death, Oseguera Cervantes and Erik Valencia Salazar, alias 'El 85', created the Jalisco New Generation Cartel around 2007.

Initially, they worked for the Sinaloa Cartel, but eventually split and for years the two cartels have battled for territory across Mexico.

Indicted several times in the United States

Since 2017, Oseguera Cervantes has been indicted several times in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

The most recent superseding indictment, filed on April 5, 2022, charges Oseguera Cervantes with conspiracy and distribution of controlled substances (methamphetamine, cocaine, and fentanyl) for the purpose of illegal importation into the United States and use of firearms during and in connection with drug trafficking offenses. Oseguera Cervantes is also charged under the Drug Kingpin Enforcement Act for directing a continuing criminal enterprise.

Last year, people searching for missing relatives founds piles of shoes and other clothing, as well as bone fragments at what authorities later said was a Jalisco cartel recruitment and training site.

AP writer María Verza contributed to this report.

The millions of immigrants who have crossed the border with Mexico since 2020 could change the balance of political power in Congress ' but in a way likely to boost Republican states that emphasize border security, at the expense of more welcoming Democratic states.

Thats because many of the new immigrants joined state-to-state movers gravitating to the fast-growing conservative strongholds of Florida and Texas, boosting those states populations. California and New York also had large influxes from the border but ended up losing population anyway.

The vastly different population changes threaten to scramble the Electoral College map.

California and other Democratic states lost immigration-related population gains when residents moved away during the COVID-19 pandemic or while seeking jobs and housing. Where did those state-to-state movers go? Florida and Texas, in large measure.

Republicans have long accused Democrats of encouraging immigration for their electoral benefit.

But the shift is likely to help Republican-leaning states in the next decade: The Constitution allocates congressional representation by population ' including noncitizens. Every 10 years, the country counts its people and then shuffles the number of U.S. House seats given to each state.

In presidential elections, each state has the same number of electoral votes as it does congressional representatives.

Several experts contacted by Stateline agreed that after the next decennial census in 2030, California is likely to lose four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Texas is likely to gain four.

Adam Kincaid, president and executive director of the GOP-founded American Redistricting Project, said the changes could dramatically alter the Electoral College map, with the Midwest no longer a 'blue wall' against Republican presidential victories if the region loses three seats, by his calculation.

On the plus side for Democrats, he said, immigration helped stem population losses in many blue states.

But its hard to predict the next five years, Kincaid said. Housing is expensive and hard to get in states such as California and New York, he noted, while also blaming Democratic 'policies that drive where people want to live.'

'I dont think anybody rationally expects Florida and Texas to grow as rapidly through the decade as they did during COVID,' Kincaid said. 'Well all be wrong. These are only forecasts and things will change.'

House seats

Three forecasts for 2030 ' one provided to Stateline by Jonathan Cervas, an assistant teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University; one from Kincaids American Redistricting Project; and one from William Frey, a demographer at The Brookings Institution ' all show Democratic states in the Northeast and West losing House seats while fast-growing, mostly Republican states in the South and West gain seats.

In addition to the representation changes in California and Texas, Florida would gain either three or four seats in the U.S. House, depending on the forecast, while Illinois and New York each would lose either one or two seats.

Other possible gains would go to Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Utah, depending on the forecast. Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin might lose seats.

The forecasts were developed from new census population estimates that attempt to show where millions of border migrants went since 2020, based on court records showing ZIP codes of residence.

Florida, Texas and California each got around a million immigrants, many from the border surge of 2022-2024. But Californias gain was offset by 1.7 million people moving away to other states, including Texas, while Florida and Texas gained from both immigration and state-to-state movers.

Similarly, New York gained 750,000 people from immigration but lost 1.1 million as New Yorkers moved out of state.

Party leaders are paying close attention to the details.

Republican states could gain more seats in the U.S. House after decennial redistricting in 2030, assuming heavily Republican states like Florida and Texas remain that way. More people are moving to those states, including immigrants and state-to-state movers from Democratic states.

The new census estimates show the lions share of new immigration since 2020 going to Florida, Texas, California, New York and New Jersey. Hundreds of thousands of migrants also went to other states, including Illinois, Massachusetts, Georgia, North Carolina and Washington.

Its likely that many of the migrants who landed in California and New York ended up moving to Texas and Florida, where there were more jobs and affordable housing available.

The largest single state-to-state migration flow between 2022 and 2024 ' about 171,000 people ' was from California to Texas, according to a Stateline analysis of a separate Census Bureau release. There was another large flow, of about 122,000 people, from New York to Florida.

The February state population estimates, delayed from their usual release in December by the government shutdown in October, also used court records to adjust immigration numbers. The U.S. Census Bureau located millions of asylum-seekers, parolees and other 'humanitarian migrants' who entered the country between 2022 and 2024 based on the ZIP codes they provided to immigration courts.

Thats a change from 2024 estimates, when the Census Bureau added humanitarian migrants to the total but assumed they had gone to places with historically high immigration.

'That assumption was convenient but implausible,' said Jed Kolko, an economist and undersecretary for economic affairs at the U.S. Department of Commerce during the Biden administration.

But as it turned out, Kolko added, 'The humanitarian migrants were more likely to come over the border and then settle in places anecdotally known for providing services, like New York City and Denver.'

The result of sharpening the picture with court records: Some states got more immigration added for 2020-24 (130,000 for New York, 32,000 for Colorado, 30,000 for Texas), and some had it subtracted (104,000 fewer for Florida, 70,000 for California, 39,000 for Michigan) in comparison with older estimates.

Five years and beyond

With border crossings from Mexico at their lowest level in 50 years in fiscal 2025, its hard to chart the next five years and predict 2030 population, which will ultimately decide House representation.

Adding to the uncertainty is the unprecedented nature of the stress on population since 2020: pandemic restrictions and dislocations, followed by large-scale immigration during a labor shortage, a clamping down at the border late in the Biden administration, and then President Donald Trumps mass deportation plan that was just ramping up in mid-2025.

Frey, the Brookings Institution demographer, agreed that 'the second half of the decade could be wildly different from the first half,' noting that state-to-state moves and immigration both dropped off between 2024 and 2025. That diminishes both of the drivers of Southern state population growth.

'My guess is, if this continues, Texas and Florida would benefit less in Electoral College gains,' Frey said. If immigration remains sharply curtailed, Texas could gain only three seats and California could lose only three, he said.

The overall trend would still see fast-growing, mostly Republican states getting more congressional representation, Frey said. But with lower immigration, 'the contrast in red-blue state reallocation is still there but not as sharp as before.'

State demographers in Florida and Texas say theyre uncertain about what kind of growth the states might see in the next five years.

Florida estimates its own population using electricity usage to gauge the number of new residents, which shows more recent growth in the past couple of years than the Census Bureau does, said Richard Doty, a research demographer with the state Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Florida.

In the coming years, Florida growth could stall for various reasons, including higher housing prices and high insurance costs from recent storms.

'Florida is no longer the bargain it once was,' Doty said. 'The cost of housing in particular is driving young people and retirees to other states.'

In Texas, the large drop in immigration between 2024 and 2025 ' down almost 50% from about 355,000 to 167,000 ' will curb future growth, said Texas State Demographer Lloyd Potter.

'If we look at next year, I think were going to see immigration to the United States take a very significant decline, and then thats obviously going to affect Texas because immigration is such a big part of our population change,' Potter said.

That will likely extend to legal immigrants, such as the tech workers on high-skill visas who have moved to Texas cities and suburbs, he said.

'Theres a tendency for potential immigrants, legal immigrants, to perhaps be a little more reticent now, given what seems to be happening in terms of immigration enforcement in the United States,' Potter said.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

©2026 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

In 2020, a northcentral Montana hemp crop was harvested, beginning a trial run by two Montana companies to produce clothing without the material ever leaving the United States.

When the shirt finally went to market last year, it was proof of a concept that had long since moved overseas.

Hemp is often held up as a versatile crop with all sorts of applications: fabrics, home insulation, even edible seed oils, to name a few. But it was illegal to grow or distribute hemp in the U.S. for nearly a century until 2018 when Congress lifted federal restrictions on the marijuana-adjacent plant. So, when a Fort Benton hemp processor and a Great Falls-based apparel company sought to make a line of U.S.-made hemp shirts, they had to scrap together a supply chain to make it happen.

'Honestly, it was just: Can we do it? Because it hadnt happened in, arguably, 100 years,' Morgan Tweet, co-founder and CEO of IND Hemp, told Montana Free Press. 'No one had grown (hemp) fiber and been able to process it to a quality that they were able to spin with in the U.S.'

IND Hemp was formed in 2018 and started producing hemp seed oils from regionally grown crops for various food applications. But hemp-based textiles, known for their sturdiness, were on the companys radar, and after two years of planning, IND started up its fiber production line in 2022.

It was around that time that Great Falls-based apparel company Smith and Rogue approached IND with a proposal. The brand is an offshoot of the North 40 Outfitters chain of farm and outdoors supply stores, which is also based in Great Falls and has 12 stores across the northwestern United States.

Smith and Rogue already had hemp-based clothing lines, but those were produced internationally. Brandon Kishpaugh, apparel merchandiser at Smith and Rogue, was interested in the possibility of a clothing line that didnt leave American borders.

'We saw there was a demand for a more durable, more sustainable, higher quality fiber,' Kishpaugh said. 'And now its how do we get it sourced in the U.S.?'

It was a stroke of luck that a hemp fiber processor opened up less than an hour away in Fort Benton. But that was just one early step in a long manufacturing chain.

FROM PROHIBITION TO PRODUCTION

Despite being illegal for much of the 20th century, hemp is intertwined with American history. Grown by founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson, it was seen not only as a reliable crop but also a source of domestic pride amid boycotts of British goods during the American Revolution.

Hemp is a sibling of marijuana, although modern hemp has tiny levels of the psychoactive chemical thats sought in the recreational drug. But the two were the same in the eyes of Congress, which passed a prohibitive tax in 1937 that outlawed both plants. Aside from a brief U.S. government push for hemp-based rope, parachutes and water hoses during World War II, industrial hemp production shuttered in America for the rest of the century.

The Montana Legislature legalized the cultivation of industrial hemp in 2001, but it didnt spark a green rush. It wasnt until 2009 that the state issued its first industrial hemp license to a Bozeman medical marijuana business.

Like medical marijuana, hemp remained federally prohibited and languished in jurisdictional purgatory. Montanas hemp licenses included language that warned about the plant being federally illegal, and the DEA declined at first to recognize Montanas industrial hemp law. Another licensed hemp farmer near Helena saw her crops die in 2017 because she couldnt get access to federally controlled water.

Congress relaxed its stance in 2018 and lifted the restrictions on industrial hemp through that years farm bill, and Montana farmers harvested 2,400 acres of hemp in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That makes Montana a middling state for hemp production, beaten out by larger producers such as South Dakota, Texas and California.

The prohibition is gone ( at least for now ), but over the preceding decades, the institutional knowledge around hemp production largely disappeared in the United States. In addition, American textile manufacturing of all kinds witnessed precipitous declines around the turn of the century.

Sofi Thanhauser, author of the book 'Worn: A Peoples History of Clothing,' told MTFP that prolonged prohibition made it difficult for hemp to return to American clothing manufacturing. What was left of the industry centered mostly on cotton. Hemp was more like a niche material, sometimes more difficult to process, and U.S. companies werent equipped to handle it.

'Over time, that infrastructure has disappeared,' Thanhauser said. 'And so its really hard for companies who want to do supply chains in the U.S., because a lot of the time the equipment and expertise is not here.'

INDs main fiber-processing equipment was manufactured in France, where a stable European hemp industry has existed. The Fort Benton plant is dedicated to a process called decortication, which separates the outer fiber material, called bast, from the hemp straws woody core, called hurd. The machines are massive and can process five tons per hour.

After hemp cultivation became federally legal in 2018, Tweet said lots of people started growing the plant. Few were getting into fiber processing.

'We are still always optimizing our line,' Tweet said. 'But theres not a playbook. You cant really call up a company and say, ‘We want to make hemp fiber for T-shirts and they say, ‘Ive got you covered.'

THE SHIRT

Smith and Rogues test run for an American-manufactured line of clothing was limited ' initially, 239 mens work shirts. Kishpaugh said he focused on a shirt for this experimental run because it was something his New York sewing contractors could work with.

'I wanted to go with something very heritage, very workwear,' he said. 'I knew our factory could execute.'

The result was the Benton work shirt, a $150 piece of clothing made from a blend of INDs Montana-grown hemp fibers and cotton grown in Arizona. The raw fibers traveled from Fort Benton and Arizona to North Carolina to be refined and blended. The material was then sent to another North Carolina company for spinning before heading to South Carolina for weaving. The fabric was finished in Georgia before being trucked to New York City for cutting and sewing.

The difficult part wasnt finding the companies to work with, because there are few players in American textiles. The challenge was convincing some of the companies to fit a small run of hemp-based material into their schedules.

'We were able to piece this thing together, which made it very costly,' Tweet said. 'The fiber moved probably 10 more times than it had to, and freight is your biggest enemy in all these things.'

More than 97% of clothing sold in the United States is made overseas. The efficiencies of overseas production lie in scale, labor costs and experience in making modern clothing. But there are many examples of exploitative or dangerous conditions for the workers who meet the demands of a quick-turn, affordable fashion industry.

While smaller operations are coming online in the United States, some parts of the process require highly specialized equipment that startups may not be able to afford.

'Its things like the spinning mill that turns the fiber into thread that is hugely capital-intensive and involves huge, complicated machines,' author Thanhauser said. 'And also the weaving, the spinning mills. You cant, as a small business, just buy a couple of those.'

For the Benton shirt, nearly every step required a different company. That affected the cost of the final product, but it also cost time. When Kishpaugh received a prototype in the fall of 2024 that didnt fit right, fixing the issue meant going back through multiple hands to refine the shirt.

The Benton shirt may have debuted early in 2025, but a shipment of finished fabric went missing en route to New York City. The roll of textiles ' one of the first domestic hemp fabric runs since prohibition that was painstakingly coordinated across multiple states ' vanished and hasnt been found.

'So theres 600 yards of this historic fabric thats warehoused somewhere,' Tweet said.

The process was once again delayed, but thankfully, there was enough additional fabric to resume production.

Smith and Rogue debuted the shirt in December, both online and in its affiliated retail stores, along with a marketing plan to showcase the effort put into it.

'You cant just put it on the rack,' Kishpaugh said. 'If you dont know what it is, its just going to look like another button-up shirt. And then you look at the price tag.'

The $150 price reflects the costs of the USA manufacturing chain, Kishpaugh said, adding that Smith and Rogues margin isnt as strong on this shirt as some of the companys other clothing made overseas. He said there is a segment of consumers who respond to marketing about a USA-made shirt, even at that price.

'That is hard for some people to come to grips with,' he said. 'This is $150, and this is why. We have to pay for all those other touch points.'

LINKS IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN

The hemp for the Benton shirt run was grown in 2020 at a Meissner family farm north of Fort Benton. The fiber material was part of a crop primarily meant for other products IND was producing at the time.

'What we probably didnt appreciate then that we most certainly do now is how much agronomic impacts and the variables that happen in the field affect the finished quality,' Tweet said.

Those factors are numerous. The variety of hemp chosen, planting density, harvest timing, soil microbes and annual precipitation all influence the crops suitability for textile production. There are some quality factors that Tweet can control at the Fort Benton processing plant. But if a bad crop comes in, thats what they have to work with.

It took years to refine that process to routinely receive higher-quality hemp fibers, Tweet said. The ability to use those early 2020 crops for a shirt that was released in late 2025 was a proof of concept. Today, IND has more consistent quality fibers for use in textiles.

'No one has at scale been able to decorticate and get fibers to a point that they can be spun,' Tweet said. 'Maybe its a reach to make that claim, but I am hard pressed to find something else.'

Plans for the second-generation Benton shirt are underway, Kishpaugh said. He hopes to scale up the process to produce larger quantities and a wider range of clothing, including outerwear and pants. He said the experience gained from producing the Benton shirt could help bring costs down a bit, but Kishpaugh and Tweet said a hybrid model is also a good avenue for Montana hemp.

'We have good factories overseas that we work with,' Kishpaugh said. 'And if we can get the hemp to them, theyre set up to do the bibs, jackets. Now were just using American-sourced hemp versus overseas hemp.'

The constraints of cost and scale still limit growth in domestic manufacturing.

'Will there always be these opportunities to promote a full domestic supply chain? Absolutely,' Tweet said. 'But theyre never going to be able to serve the larger demand to get it into everyones closet.'

This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

They knew Harvey wasn’t in California when the bullets flew. They knew his finger wasn’t on the trigger. But he was from a neighborhood with gangs, and was friendly with suspected gang members, and had social media posts of same. Thus, unbeknownst to him, Harvey was listed and tracked in the state’s CalGang database.

Under California law at the time ' in this case, Penal Code Section 182.5 ' being in the database was enough. The San Diego District Attorney charged Harvey, potentially locking him up for life.

How can that possibly be? As the new documentary “California Story” by David Kuhn explores (the movie screened at UC Irvine this month, with a bespectacled Harvey in attendance) a person could be charged with criminal street gang conspiracy if they “actively participated” in a gang and “benefitted” from the crime, even if they were not present.

Harvey’s alleged “benefit” from the carnage that occurred in his absence? Beefed up “street cred” in the criminal underworld, prosecutors argued.

‘Future gang member’

Outrage burned bright in the community room at UCI on Feb. 12, where many targets of California’s gang policies ' some exquisitely tattooed and close to earning their doctorates ' gathered for the screening and discussion. The sting of “gang documentation,” wrongful accusations, extra years behind bars layered atop sentences not for the crime, but for being branded gang members/”super-predators,” cut hot and deep, sparking demands for fairness, for equity, for change.

Isn’t there’s something wrong with kids being flagged as “future gang members” when they’re just 9, 10, 11 years old? With Grandma being pulled over and asked if she has gang tattoos? The film explores the humiliation, degradation and rage, which filmgoers said leads to more surveillance, more stops, more searches, more conflict, and the conviction that police are not there to protect and serve ' at least, not to protect and serve them.

It argues that gangs are what happens when young men band together against what they perceive as a common enemy. Cops as sharks; streets as water. Toss in mediocre schools; a lack of jobs, skills and social supports; poverty; and a sprinkling of family turmoil, and the “future gang member” note in a kid’s elementary school file can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For too many, there’s not much besides gang life that provides a sense of belonging and purpose.

Even though it’s a 21st century database, CalGang might be just the latest version of the scarlet letter. Law enforcement can log your name, birth date, race, gender, address, height, weight, hair and eye color, “personal markings” (tattoos, scars), and other details into a statewide database, no arrest or conviction required. These days, you’ll be notified that you’re being added to CalGang, and you can object. But once in the database, the film argues, you’re marked. As was Aaron Harvey.

“It was easy for people to feel bad for Aaron Harvey,” Harvey said at the screening. Harvey came from a two parent household, had no gang tattoos, was well-spoken. His father was right beside him, fighting the injustice all the way.

“I was palatable to people. People heard about our case and they felt sorry for Aaron,” he said.

“But they’re not paying attention to the systemic issue happening to thousands of Black and brown folks.”

Yes, Harvey spent seven months in prison. Yes, the charge against him was tossed. Yes, he successfully sued San Diego and split a $1.5 million settlement with a rapper similarly accused. And yes, he graduated from UC Berkeley.

But most of the 14 people charged alongside him didn’t, or couldn’t, fight. Just two were convicted of felonies at trial. The rest were railroaded, some might say, taking plea deals to avoid worse fates, such as life in prison. Harvey’s brother Alonzo was one of them, accepting three years of probation to end the legal battle.

For some, the battle hasn’t ended. Harvey is working to change that: “It’s a duty for me,” he said. “For all of us.”

Reforms

On the up side, gang laws have changed in an attempt to avoid guilt by association, largely thanks to Assembly Bill 333.

The 2022 law tightens the definition of “criminal street gang.” Narrows what actions qualify as a “pattern of activity.” Requires evidence that crimes provide more than a “common reputational benefit” to the gang. Restricts gang enhancements in sentencing that often layer extra time atop what’s already due for a guilty verdict or plea.

In light of these changes ' and to avoid expensive lawsuits that have plagued other jurisdictions ' the Orange County District Attorneys Office dissolved 13 active gang injunctions against 317 people last year. Those injunctions could snag people for “associating with known gang members and wearing known gang clothing” in specific areas claimed by criminal street gangs. That, critics charged, trampled myriad civil rights.

Some of those injunctions were almost 20 years old. They had targeted the Boys From The Hood in Anaheim; Santa Nita in Santa Ana; Varrio Viejo in San Juan Capistrano; Varrio Chico in San Clemente; Orange County Criminals in Orange; Orange Varrio Cypress in Orange; Hard Times in Garden Grove; Jeffrey Street in Anaheim; Family of Latin Kings in Anaheim; Fullerton Tokers Town in Fullerton; Crow Village in Stanton; East Side Anaheim in Anaheim; and Townsend in Santa Ana.

Unfair? Latino gangs were the only targets of those injunctions, even though Orange County was home to White supremacist gangs as well, the Peace & Justice Law Center noted in demand letters to the DA before the injunctions were lifted.

The film traces all of this back to slavery. Contain, repress, exploit, degrade; structurally, it argues, America needs an underclass. Consider: There has been a 40% reduction in California’s prison population between 2010 and 2024 (from about 165,000 people to about 94,000), but there has been just an 11% drop in what we pay for California Department of Corrections salaries (from an inflation-adjusted $6.5 billion to $5.8 billion).

“We’re still invested in the prison-industrial complex and making sure it has the highest chunk of our budget,” said Ryan Flaco Rising, a critical criminologist working on his doctorate at UCI. Rising founded West Coast Credible Messengers, which works with at-risk youth, runs re-entry programs for formerly incarcerated people, and hosted the movie screening.

‘Abuse … of power’

Civil rights lawsuits over gang policies ' and the resulting judgments and settlements ' have cost California governments tens of millions of dollars.

In 2009, the ACLU sued Orange County over an injunction targeting the Orange Varrio Cypress gang. The injunction forbade scores of suspected Varrio Cypress members from associating with one another, wearing gang clothing or being out after 10 p.m.

An 'egregious abuse of government power' violating the young men’s constitutional right to a court hearing where they might argue they weren’t gang members, the ACLU successfully argued. The county wound up paying some $4 million in attorneys costs to the ACLU in 2015.

The next year, the city of Los Angeles approved a $30 million settlement to end a federal class-action suit alleging that the city’s gang injunction curfews violated the due process rights of nearly 6,000 people. The city was ordered to pay $1.75 million in attorneys’ costs as well.

San Diego’s practice of collecting DNA from minors suspected of gang activity ' no arrest or conviction needed ' led to another ACLU lawsuit and a new law forbidding the practice.

Even though some changes have been made, there’s still a long way to go, many at the screening agreed. Gang injunctions and sentencing enhancements remain available to prosecutors. And while CalGang has been dramatically scaled back ' Orange County police agencies had 5,487 records in CalGang in 2019, and just 235 last year, according to data from the Attorney General ' filmgoers argued the database remains a potent, and pernicious, tool.

“Labeling anyone under 18 as a gang member has to stop,” Rising said. “They can label anyone; it strips people of their rights and treats them as nonhuman subjects.”

The solution to social ills is not badges on chests and guns on hips, the film argues. The “war on drugs” and the “war on gangs” could be far more effectively addressed by serious investment at the front end ' in radically better schools, intensive one-on-one mentoring, comprehensive leadership and job and training and recreation programs ' rather than at the back end, after folks get in trouble with the law.

The back end is where our resources are overwhelmingly focused now. It’s worth noting that it costs about $45,000 a year to send one kid to UC Berkeley, including tuition, food, lodging et al, while it costs about $130,000 a year to incarcerate one prisoner.

How to shift the focus? Rising points to an interesting experiment out of Ecuador. In 2008, the government aimed to increase public safety ' and legalized the countrys largest street gangs.

“The new Ecuadorian approach viewed crime control through the lens of social citizenship, institutional reform and economic development, with efforts to reach higher levels of social control based on policies of social inclusion,” said a research paper published in Critical Criminology in 2020. That meant more resources for youth programs, welfare, health and education.

In essence, a new social contract was written.

“The Ecuadorian approach was successful, producing the most sustained drop in homicide in the world … falling from a peak of 21 per 100,000 in 2008 to 5.6 in 2016, not least because it avoided the problems of coercive social control policies that lead to deviance amplification, i.e., the processes in which state and social agencies are mobilized to eradicate the perceived source of a social problem only to see the targeted behaviors increase,” the study said.

“Indeed, years of iron fist policies of gang policing had seen large increases in the prison population and violence across the region, exemplifying its failure to curtail the growth of gangs.”

Wouldn’t it be revolutionary to see something like that here? Long Beach and Los Angeles have worked to cleave youth development programs from the justice system, Rising said, but O.C. trails them.

The film calls on people to affect similar change by exercising the vote ' “Our vote is our voice!” But some rejected even that. Reforms to California’s gang policies didn’t spring from genuine concern, one man argued. A “birthrate crash” means fewer kids in schools, and Black and Brown people are getting out of prison to fill a labor shortage. “You won’t catch me at voting booth on election day,” he said. “I dont negotiate with terrorists.”

Several people took issue, believing that the universe can, indeed, be bent toward justice. When people see doctoral candidate Rising’s tattoos and ask him which gang he’s from, he laughs, conjures his G.P.A., and says, “The 4.0 gang.”

Trevor Kirk’s separation Friday from the Sheriff’s Department came one day after activists at a Civilian Oversight Commission meeting questioned the deputy’s continued employment despite his decertification by the state in November.

California law requires all sworn peace officers to be certified by the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. Kirk’s certification is listed as “revoked” as a result of his conviction by a federal court jury in February 2025 in connection with a confrontation in which he threw a woman to the ground and pepper sprayed her.

Caree Harper, an attorney who represented the victim in the case, said Kirk should have been fired a year ago when the jury rendered its verdict.

“I’m sure our taxpayer dollars are paying for it,” she said. “There was no justification for what occurred and a jury found that.”

Kirk was relieved of duty without pay in July 2023 after a video spread on social media showing his confrontation with the woman outside a supermarket in Lancaster.

The Sheriff’s Department on Friday declined to answer questions about Kirk beyond confirming his separation. The timing of his departure could not be discussed due to confidentiality laws, the department said.

Kirk’s attorney, Tom Yu, could not be reached for comment.

In an email, Nick Wilson, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Professional Association, said Kirk is actively appealing his case, and his legal team submitted a formal request for a presidential pardon in July.

“While legal communications are confidential, we understand the pardon application is in the approval process, and we are confident it will receive fair consideration,” Wilson said.

In a written statement, the LASPA described the prosecution as “wrongful and politically charged.”

'This isnt just about one deputy ' its an assault on every law enforcement officer who puts their life on the line daily,” said Cesar Romero, the president of LASPA. “We will not back down. Trevor has our full support, and we will fight alongside him and his loved ones until justice is restored.'

A federal grand jury indicted Kirk in September 2024 for “deprivation of rights under color of law” ' a civil rights violation ' for his use of force against the woman in Lancaster.

Kirk and another deputy were responding to a reported robbery involving a male and female suspect. The deputies detained a man matching the first suspect’s description, while a woman fitting the second suspect’s description recorded with her phone.

Federal prosecutors under the Biden administration argued that Kirk approached the woman and tried to grab her phone without first issuing any commands. When she pulled away, he slammed her to the ground, put his knee on her shoulder, then her neck and threatened to punch her if she did not “stop.”

Kirk then pepper sprayed her twice in the face without warning, footage showed. The indictment alleged he later misleadingly reported she had assaulted him and posed a threat to his physical safety.

Jurors found Kirk guilty on the felony charge and he initially faced up to 10 years in federal prison. But when the U.S. attorney prosecuting the case changed under President Donald Trump, Kirk received a post-conviction plea deal that dropped his charge to a misdemeanor and the new prosecutors instead requested a sentence of one year of probation.

Several federal prosecutors resigned over that decision, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna, who had previously described the video as “disturbing,” wrote a letter in Kirk’s support in which he blamed the use of force on training failures within the Lancaster sheriff’s station and asked the judge to consider probation for Kirk due to the “totality of the circumstances.”

In 2023, sheriff’s stations in the Antelope Valley were out of compliance with an 8-year-old settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice meant to resolve prior findings of racial bias and unconstitutional uses of force. The department’s use-of-force policy did not “provide enough emphasis and instruction on de-escalation practices,” according to the letter.

As Kirk’s case progressed, Luna faced significant pushback from within the department. One sign put up by deputies at the time called for others to turn in their pepper spray unless “you want to be convicted too” and described Kirk as being “sacrificed on the altar of social justice.”

Deputies from more than 20 sheriff’s stations boycotted an annual foot race from Baker to Las Vegas in support of Kirk, according to CBS News. In response, the Sheriff’s Department issued a statement acknowledging the frustration and denying that anyone within the department had referred the case to federal investigators. An older statement claimed the department started an internal criminal investigation and then turned it over to the FBI.

Harper said Luna caved to the pressure and his letter served as a “life raft” for Kirk.

“You can’t train people to be human and to treat others like humans,” she said.

Wilson, the LASPA spokesperson, said Kirk’s case has become “symbolic of deeper leadership failures and a department in crisis.”

“This is not just about Trevor Kirk, but it starts with him,” he said. “If systemic training deficiencies were acknowledged, accountability cannot stop with one deputy.”

U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson accepted the misdemeanor plea deal, but then sentenced Kirk to four months in prison after concluding that probation did not “sufficiently reflect defendant’s breach of duty and the manner in which he breached that duty.”

The U.S. attorney’s office, in response, tried to dismiss its charge against Kirk in an effort to keep him out of prison. The judge, calling it a “Hail Mary,” rejected that attempt, too.

Concerns about Kirk’s continued employment and potential transfer to a new role prompted the Los Angeles County Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission to raise the issue at its meeting Thursday.

Chair Hans Johnson said the department does not currently prohibit a decertified officer from shifting to a nonsworn role.

Commissioners unanimously voted to work with the LASD’s Office of Constitutional Policing to develop a clear policy on the decertification and termination of sheriff’s deputies as a result.

Derran Adkins, now 28, of Paramount, was also ordered to register as a sex offender for life as a result of his guilty plea last week to one felony count each of human trafficking of a minor for a commercial sex act and human trafficking of an adult, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

Adkins admitted he inflicted great bodily injury on both victims, who were assaulted if they failed to tried to leave or refused to follow his instructions, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

Adkins met the 17-year-old girl through social media and she was forced into commercial sex trafficking in November 2024, with the defendant mutilating her hand on one occasion, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

The 19-year-old woman worked for Adkins as a commercial sex worker between April 2024 and January 2025, with authorities alleging that he punched the woman in the face, burned her with a heated metal spoon or whipped her with a hanger in some instances.

Earnings that the two made from commercial sex work went entirely to the defendant, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

Adkins was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department in January 2025 and has remained behind bars since then, jail records show.

“A violent sex trafficker and modern-day enslaver has been taken off the streets as a result of the tireless work of our prosecutors and the Los Angeles Police Department,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in a statement announcing the plea and prison sentence.

“The depravity of sex traffickers who prey on the most vulnerable in our community, including children, knows no bounds. This case underscores that there will be dire consequences for sex traffickers under my watch, especially traffickers who brutally torment their vulnerable young victims.”

The theme of the parade was “Unity in the Community.” Among those seen at the parade were Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, the President of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Chester Chong and Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman ' who was named honorary grand marshal.

The chamber estimated that more than 100,000 spectators crowded the streets to celebrate the Year of the Horse. The Year of the Horse represents a period of intense energy, rapid change, and bold and independent movement.

It symbolizes a time to act with conviction, embrace freedom and pursue ambitious goals, while also requiring caution against recklessness and impatience.

A highlight of the annual parade was the dragon dance, a colorful and symbolic dragon figure manipulated on poles with coordinated dance, dexterity and strength by a skilled dance team. The dragon is said to scare away bad spirits and bring good luck.

The temporary injunction, ordered by a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday, Feb. 19, prevents California from enacting Senate Bill 805, which was set to take effect that same day, until the court can weigh the law and make a decision on a preliminary injunction, a process that could begin in March.

The law, called the No Vigilantes Act, was one of two signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September amid ongoing waves of federal immigration enforcement actions across California. It would require all nonuniformed law enforcement officers working in California to wear a visible badge that includes their agency and name or badge number.

A U.S. District Court judge issued a preliminary injunction on Feb. 9 against the another law, the No Secret Police Act,  because it exempted state police. That ruling paved the way for federal immigration officials to continue wearing masks during California operations.

That same day, U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder denied the Trump administrations request for a preliminary injunction against the No Vigilantes Act because it did not exempt state police, leading the U.S. Department of Justice to appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

A temporary administrative injunction is a common practice for an appeals court to issue, holding things at status quo while the court reviews a case and makes a decision.

Both laws were set to take effect on Jan. 1, but California Attorney General Rob Bontas office agreed not to enforce either law while the federal governments lawsuit played out.

Federal officials filed the lawsuit in November to block both laws while arguing that they violate the Supremacy Act of the U.S. Constitution by directly regulating the federal government.

On Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi took to X to celebrate the decision, though she mistakenly said the case was a win against the mask ban, which had been decided 10 days earlier.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli called the temporary decision 'Another win for Team USA.'

A hearing on whether to continue the temporary injunction was set for March 3 in the Richard H. Chambers U.S. Court of Appeals in Pasadena, according to court documents.