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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The U.S. Treasury is trying to claw back COVID-19 relief funds from hundreds of local governments that received millions of dollars but never complied with requirements to report how the funds were spent.

The federal government is allocating $350 billion to state, local, territorial, and tribal governments as part of the American Rescue Plan approved by Congress and President Joe Biden in 2021. More than 30,000 governments, from the largest states to the smallest towns, will receive a portion of the funds.

Governments must disburse funds for specific projects by the end of 2024 and should submit quarterly or annual progress reports, depending on their population and the amount allocated. Most governments have complied. However, according to a GAO analysis, as of January of this year, approximately 1,000 major smaller governments had failed to submit any reports to the Treasury Department detailing how they had spent a total of $139 million in funds.

The Treasury Department has sent notices to local governments demanding the money be reclaimed, according to a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office.

In a letter accompanying the GAO report, the U.S. Treasury Department stated that as of June 24, 740 local governments had subsequently submitted reports and would no longer be required to repay their funds. Thirteen of these local governments had already returned the funds to the Treasury Department. However, 235 local governments still had never submitted reports or returned the pandemic relief funds.

The Government Accountability Office told the AP it does not have a specific list of governments that have failed to comply with the reporting requirements. The Treasury Department has not yet responded to AP’s request for a list of the 13 governments that have returned the funds and those that still haven’t reported on their use of the funds.

This isn’t the first time there have been concerns about the government’s failure to disclose how it is spending pandemic relief funds.

In October 2023, the Government Accountability Office reported that the Treasury Department had issued violation notices to more than 3,500 local governments that had failed to submit progress reports on pandemic relief funds. At the time, the Treasury Department refused to provide these violation letters to the Associated Press. Consequently, the AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request in January 2024 for copies of the violation notices and related letters. The Treasury Department has yet to comply with the request.

In its latest report, the Government Accountability Office said local governments’ failure to submit regular progress reports has limited the Treasury Department’s ability to determine whether funds are being used for permitted purposes.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris will not run for California governor in 2026, after months of considering the prospect of being the chief executive of her home state.

“In recent months, I have given serious thought to asking the people of California for the privilege to serve as their Governor. I love this state, its people, and its promise. It is my home. But after deep reflection, I’ve decided that I will not run for Governor in this election,” she said in a statement released Wednesday.

The decision could give Harris greater leeway for a presidential run in 2028, an option she has yet to rule out. Harris said she would share “more details in the months ahead” about her plans.

“I have extraordinary admiration and respect for those who dedicate their lives to public service—service to their communities and to our nation. At the same time, we must recognize that our politics, our government, and our institutions have too often failed the American people, culminating in this moment of crisis,” Harris said. “As we look ahead, we must be willing to pursue change through new methods and fresh thinking — committed to our same values and principles, but not bound by the same playbook.”

Harris announced this decision after months of reflecting how to best contribute to the Democratic Party after her presidential election loss, she said.

“I am a devout public servant, and from the earliest days of my career, I have believed that the best way I could make a difference in people’s lives and fight for a better future was to improve the system from within. And it has been a profound honor to do that work and serve the people of California and our nation — as a prosecutor, Attorney General, United States Senator, and Vice President,” said Harris.

Over the past several months Harris has waded back into politics, appearing virtually at a young voters summit earlier this month and an abortion rights advocacy group in June. Her joint fundraising committee with the Democratic National Committee, the Harris Victory Fund, has begun fundraising on behalf of former North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s new Senate bid as well.

Harris said despite not running for governor, she was finding other ways to “remain in that fight” for “freedom, opportunity, fairness, and the dignity of all.”

“I look forward to getting back out and listening to the American people, helping elect Democrats across the nation who will fight fearlessly, and sharing more details in the months ahead about my own plans,” Harris said.

President Donald Trump this week spoke at length about his relationship with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, but his accounts raise new questions about when exactly the two fell out and why.

Trump said on Monday that his relationship with Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women, soured because Epstein poached some employees after he explicitly warned him not to do so.

Trump on Tuesday went on to say that Epstein “stole” young women who worked at the spa at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. “People were taken out of the spa, hired by him. In other words, gone,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.

One of those workers, Trump said, was Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein accuser who said she was recruited by his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, when Giuffre was an underage teenager working as a locker-room attendant at Mar-a-Lago in 2000. Maxwell, convicted of sex trafficking minors and now serving a 20-year prison sentence, has denied the allegations. Giuffre died by suicide this past April at age 41.

“I don’t know. I think she worked at the spa, I think so, I think that was one of the people,” Trump first said when asked about Giuffre before going on to say more definitively, “Yeah, he stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, none whatsoever.”

According to Social Security records submitted to the court during Giuffre’s defamation case against Ghislaine Maxwell, Giuffre was employed at Mar-a-Lago Club LLC in 2000 and earned $1,866.50 during that calendar year. The duration and precise dates of her employment at Trump’s club remained in dispute when the lawsuit settled in 2017.

Giuffre — then known as Virginia Roberts — subsequently went on to travel extensively around the world with Epstein and Maxwell over the next two years, according to flight logs kept by one of Epstein’s pilots that have been entered into court records in civil and criminal cases.

Trump’s comments came after the White House last week said Epstein was kicked out of Mar-a-Lago for being a “creep.”

Asked about the discrepancy between the White House’s reasoning for his split with Epstein and his own that it was over Epstein stealing his employees, Trump said on Tuesday “it’s sort of a little bit of the same thing.”

As he told reporters that Epstein poached young female staff, Trump said “people would come and complain, ‘this guy is taking people from the spa.’ I didn’t know that.”

“And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people, whether it was spa or not spa.’ I don’t want him taking people. And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again and I said, ‘Out of here,'” Trump said.

But previous comments from Trump suggested his falling out with Epstein occurred several years later than that.

In 2002, Trump praised Epstein in a New York magazine profile of the now-deceased financier and convicted sex offender.

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told the magazine. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Then in 2004, the two men were rivals over a property in Florida as reported by the Washington Post. Trump ultimately won the property at auction.

In 2019, when Epstein was arrested on federal charges, Trump said he hadn’t spoken with Epstein in 15 years.

“I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him. I mean, people in Palm Beach knew him. He was a fixture in Palm Beach,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn’t a fan. I was not, yeah, a long time ago, I’d say maybe 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you. I was not a fan of his.”

Asked at the time for the reason behind their falling out and why Epstein was banned from Mar-a-Lago, Trump responded: “The reason doesn’t make any difference, frankly.”

ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment on Trump’s explanations of his fallout with Epstein.

A 9-year-old Canadian girl whose father had reported she had been kidnapped in upstate New York was found dead Sunday afternoon, with investigators saying she had not been abducted and they were now questioning inconsistencies in her dad’s story, according to authorities.

The body of the girl, identified by the Warren County Sheriff’s Office as Melina Galanis Frattolin, was discovered in Ticonderoga, New York, near the New York-Vermont border, about 15 miles from Lake George, where her father initially claimed she had been kidnapped on Saturday by a man driving a white van.

The report from the father led the New York State Police to issue an Amber Alert earlier on Sunday. A massive search was launched, involving State Police K-9 and aviation units, New York State Park Rangers, the Essex and Warren County sheriff’s offices, the New York State Department of Conservation, and the Ticonderoga Police Department.

“As the case progressed, law enforcement identified inconsistencies in the father’s account of events and the timeline he provided,” according to a statement from the State Police.

The investigation was ongoing Sunday afternoon as State Police took over the investigation from the Warren County Sheriff’s Office.

There was no immediate comment from the State Police on whether Melina’s father, who police identified as 45-year-old Luciano Frattolin, also of Canada, had been arrested in his daughter’s death.

State police did not disclose how Melina died.

“At this time, there is no indication that an abduction occurred, and there is no threat to the public,” the State Police said in its statement.

Luciano Frattolin called 911 in Warren County late Saturday night, claiming his daughter had been abducted by a stranger, according to police. The father claimed the girl was kidnapped around 9:40 p.m. at a rest stop off Interstate 87 near Lake George, where he allegedly claimed they pulled over to use the restroom, according to police radio dispatches provided by Broadcastify.

The father told police his daughter was wearing light colored shorts, a blue-and-white striped shirt and white Adidas sneakers, police said.

“The child was taken under circumstances that lead police to believe that they are in imminent danger of serious bodily harm and/or death,” authorities said in an initial statement that accompanied the Amber Alert.

Ukraine’s security agency said Sunday it tracked down and killed Russian agents suspected of shooting one of its senior officers to death in the Ukrainian capital.

The Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, said in a statement that the suspected Russian agents were killed in the Kyiv region after they offered resistance to arrest. A video released by the agency showed two bodies lying on the ground.

The agency said earlier that a man and a woman were suspected to be involved in Thursday’s assassination of Ivan Voronych, an SBU colonel, in a bold daylight attack that was caught on surveillance cameras.

Media reports claimed that Voronych was involved in covert operations in Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine and reportedly helped organize Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region last year.

Ukrainian media posted what appeared to be security camera footage showing a man walking through a parking lot with bags being attacked by another man who ran towards the victim.

The suspect fired five times at the victim with a silenced pistol, Ukrainska Pravda reported, citing SBU sources. The SBU said the alleged assassins were given the coordinates of a hiding place where they found a pistol with a suppressor, according to the Reuters news agency.

The team that killed Voronych had spent time getting to know his daily schedule and routes, the SBU statement said.

Police in Kyiv previously released video from the crime scene and said that “criminal investigation officers, dog handlers and other services are working at the scene.”

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine continued to rage on. After a series of massive attacks across Ukraine involving hundreds of exploding drones, Russia launched 60 drones overnight, Ukraine’s air force said. It said 20 of them were shot down and 20 others were jammed.

The Ukrainian authorities reported that four civilians were killed and 13 others injured in Russian attacks on the Donetsk and Kherson regions since Saturday.

High-profile Russians previously targeted

Moscow has accused Kyiv of orchestrating a spate of high-profile killings of Russian military officials or pro-Kremlin commentators since the Kremlin launched its invasion in February 2022.

In April, an explosive device ripped through a parked car near Moscow, killing a senior Russian general. Images from the scene posted on social media showed a blaze that gutted a car.

That attack came four months after another Russian general was killed along with his deputy in an explosion in Moscow.

The blast appeared to be similar to previous attacks on Russians linked to Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.

Kyiv has in some cases claimed responsibility for previous attacks.

Last year, Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military’s chemical weapons unit, was killed by a bomb planted in a scooter in Moscow in December. Ukrainian security sources told CBS News the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) killed Kirillov in a special operation.

After Kirillov’s killing, Putin made a rare admission of failings by his powerful security agencies, saying: “We must not allow such very serious blunders to happen.”

In December 2023, Illia Kiva, a former pro-Moscow Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia, was shot and killed near Moscow. The Ukrainian military intelligence lauded the killing, warning that other “traitors of Ukraine” would share the same fate.

Other attacks include the August 2022 car bombing of nationalist Darya Dugina and an explosion in a Saint Petersburg cafe in April 2023 that killed high-profile military correspondent Maxim Fomin, known as Vladlen Tatarsky. A Russian woman, who said she presented the figurine on orders of a contact in Ukraine, was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison.