A timeline of activities of a cultlike group tied to the killing of a Border Patrol agent

Here's a look at the timeline of events in a series of killings that culminated in a Jan. 20 highways shootout that killed a Border Patrol officer in Vermont. It is based on Associated Press interviews and a review of police reports, court records and online postings:

Jack LaSota, who uses feminine pronouns, a computer programmer and transgender woman living in the San Francisco Bay area, starts writing a blog under the online persona “Ziz” with complex and sometimes rambling theories about technology, gender identity and human cognition. She gets involved in the rationalist movement, a community that seeks to understand human cognition and is concerned with the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

LaSota attends programs organized by rationalist groups but splits from them after they reject her theory that the two hemispheres of the brain can hold separate values and genders.

LaSota and three others — Emma Borhanian, Gwen Danielson and Alexander Leatham — are arrested during what they called a protest against sexual misconduct within rationalist organizations.

The U.S. Coast Guard responds to a report that LaSota had fallen out of a boat in San Francisco Bay. No body is found. An obituary is published.

Curtis Lind goes to court seeking to evict LaSota, Borhanian, Leatham and others who have been living in vans and box trucks on his property in Vallejo, California, for nonpayment of rent. On Nov. 15, two days before the eviction deadline, Lind is impaled with a sword and partially blinded in an attack during which he shoots and kills Borhanian.

Concluding that Lind acted in self-defense, officials charge Leatham and Suri Dao with murder. LaSota is not charged but police report having contact with her at the scene.

Rita and Richard Zajko are shot and killed in their home in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania, on New Year's Eve. A neighbor's doorbell camera captures audio and video of a car pulling up to their home, a voice shouting “Mom!” and another voice exclaiming, “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!”

Police question the Zajkos' daughter, Michelle, at her home in Vermont. A few weeks later, officers briefly take her into custody at a Pennsylvania hotel, but release her without charges. LaSota, staying at the same hotel, is arrested and charged with obstructing the homicide investigation and disorderly conduct.

Felix Bauckholt, also referred to in court documents as Ophelia, begins renting half a duplex in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Teresa Youngblut's parents report her missing in Seattle after she sends her mother emails saying she has moved in with a friend and changed her number.

Youngblut and Maximilian Snyder apply for a marriage license in Washington state. Also this month, Youngblut begins renting a condo near Bauckholt's in North Carolina.

Youngblut and Bauckholt check into a hotel in Lyndonville, Vermont, on Jan. 14. Investigators put the pair under surveillance after a hotel worker reports concerns about their all-black tactical clothing and the gun Youngblut was carrying.

On Jan. 17, Lind, the landlord in California is killed. Snyder is charged with murder, and prosecutors allege he was trying to prevent Lind from testifying against his earlier attackers.

On Jan. 20, U.S. Border Patrol officers pull Youngblut and Bauckholt over on Interstate 91 in Coventry, Vermont. Agent David Maland and Bauckholt are killed in a shootout. Youngblut, who is wounded, is charged with firearms charges.

The FBI searches the Chapel Hill property where a landlord says Youngblut, Bauckholt and LaSota had been living earlier this winter.

FBI agents search a neighborhood in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025., where Teresa Youngblut and Felix Bauckholt, who were involved in the shooting death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont, had been renting homes, their landlord told The Associated Press. (WRAL-TV via AP)

In this combination of undated photos provided by the Pennsylvania State Police, Richard Zajko, left, and his wife Rita Zajko, who police say were shot to death in their home in suburban Philadelphia on Dec. 31, 2022, are shown. (Pennsylvania State Police via AP)

Flowers sit outside the property where San Francisco Bay Area prosecutors say Maximilian Snyder killed landlord Curtis Lind in Vallejo, California, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Janie Har)

FILE- Cars are backed up at the US-Canada border in Stanstead, Quebec, after a shooting involving a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Coventry, Vt., on Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Chloe Jones, File)

FILE - This Jan. 29, 2025 photo shows a Chester Heights, Pa., home, the scene of the 2022 killing of Richard and Rita Zajko, (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

FILE - This image taken from video provided by WCAX shows police cars closing off a road after a shooting involving a U.S. Border Patrol agent on Interstate 91 near Coventry, Vt., on Jan. 20, 2025. (WCAX via AP, File)

In this Jan., 2023 booking photo provided by the Delaware County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney's Office, Jack LaSota refused to speak and kept her eyes closed while being photographed after being detained in a hotel in suburban Pennsylvania on Jan. 23, 2023. (Delaware County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney's Office via AP)

Flowers sit outside the property where San Francisco Bay Area prosecutors say Maximilian Snyder killed landlord Curtis Lind in Vallejo, California, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Janie Har)

Maximilian Snyder, who is charged with allegedly killing an 82-year-old Vallejo landlord to prevent him from testifying in a murder case against his former tenants, walks into court for arraignment Thursday, Feb 6, 2025, in Fairfield, Calf. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

FILE - In this undated and unknown location photo released by the Department of Homeland Security shows Border Patrol Agent David Maland posing with a service dog. (Department of Homeland Security via AP, File)

Maximilian Snyder appears in court for arraignment on Thursday in Fairfield, Calif. Snyder is charged with allegedly killing an 82-year-old Vallejo landlord to prevent him from testifying in a murder case against his former tenants. Snyder asked for additional weeks to find proper counsel, moving the case back to Vallejo. (Chris Riley/Times-Herald)/The Times-Herald via AP)

FBI agents search a neighborhood in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025, where Teresa Youngblut and Felix Bauckholt, who were involved in the shooting death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont, had been renting homes in the neighborhood, their landlord told The Associated Press. (WRAL-TV via AP)

Maximilian Snyder, who is charged with allegedly killing an 82-year-old Vallejo landlord to prevent him from testifying in a murder case against his former tenants, walks into court with his hands up for arraignment Thursday, Feb 6, 2025, in Fairfield, Calf. (Chris Riley, Times-Herald via AP)/The Times-Herald via AP)

FILE - Law enforcement follow a hearse carrying fallen border patrol agent David Maland from the UVM Medical Center morgue to a funeral home in Burlington, Vt., Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (WCAX via AP, File)

FBI agents search a neighborhood in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025 where Teresa Youngblut and Felix Bauckholt, who were involved in the shooting death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont, had been renting homes in the neighborhood, their landlord told The Associated Press. (WRAL-TV via AP)

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powellsaid Sunday the Department of Justice has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.

The move represents an unprecedented escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he's repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.

The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project Trump has criticized as excessive.

Here's the latest:

Stocks are falling on Wall Street after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Department of Justice had served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony about the Fed’s building renovations.

The S&P 500 fell 0.3% in early trading Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 384 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.2%.

Powell characterized the threat of criminal charges as pretexts to undermine the Fed’s independence in setting interest rates, its main tool for fighting inflation. The threat is the latest escalation in President Trump’s feud with the Fed.

▶ Read more about the financial markets

She says she had “a very good conversation” with Trump on Monday morning about topics including “security with respect to our sovereignties.”

Last week, Sheinbaum had said she was seeking a conversation with Trump or U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the U.S. president made comments in an interview that he was ready to confront drug cartels on the ground and repeated the accusation that cartels were running Mexico.

Trump’s offers of using U.S. forces against Mexican cartels took on a new weight after the Trump administration deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Sheinbaum was expected to share more about their conversation later Monday.

A leader of the Canadian government is visiting China this week for the first time in nearly a decade, a bid to rebuild his country’s fractured relations with the world’s second-largest economy — and reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, its neighbor and until recently one of its most supportive and unswerving allies.

The push by Prime Minster Mark Carney, who arrives Wednesday, is part of a major rethink as ties sour with the United States — the world’s No. 1 economy and long the largest trading partner for Canada by far.

Carney aims to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports in the next decade in the face of President Trump’s tariffs and the American leader’s musing that Canada could become “the 51st state.”

▶ Read more about relations between Canada and China

The comment by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson came in response to a question at a regular daily briefing. President Trump has said he would like to make a deal to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark, to prevent Russia or China from taking it over.

Tensions have grown between Washington, Denmark and Greenland this month as Trump and his administration push the issue and the White House considers a range of options, including military force, to acquire the vast Arctic island.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO.

▶ Read more about the U.S. and Greenland

Trump said Sunday that he is “inclined” to keep ExxonMobil out of Venezuela after its top executive was skeptical about oil investment efforts in the country after the toppling of former President Nicolás Maduro.

“I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” Trump said to reporters on Air Force One as he departed West Palm Beach, Florida. “They’re playing too cute.”

During a meeting Friday with oil executives, Trump tried to assuage the concerns of the companies and said they would be dealing directly with the U.S., rather than the Venezuelan government.

Some, however, weren’t convinced.

“If we look at the commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable,” said Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company.

An ExxonMobil spokesperson did not immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment.

▶ Read more about Trump’s comments on ExxonMobil

Trump’s motorcade took a different route than usual to the airport as he was departing Florida on Sunday due to a “suspicious object,” according to the White House.

The object, which the White House did not describe, was discovered during security sweeps in advance of Trump’s arrival at Palm Beach International Airport.

“A further investigation was warranted and the presidential motorcade route was adjusted accordingly,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Sunday.

The president, when asked about the package by reporters, said, “I know nothing about it.”

Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesman for U.S. Secret Service, said the secondary route was taken just as a precaution and that “that is standard protocol.”

▶ Read more about the “suspicious object”

Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.

Iran had no direct reaction to Trump’s comments, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking to foreign diplomats in Tehran, insisted “the situation has come under total control” in fiery remarks that blamed Israel and the U.S. for the violence, without offering evidence.

▶ Read more about the possible negotiations and follow live updates

Fed Chair Powell said Sunday the DOJ has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.

The move represents an unprecedented escalation in Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he has repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.

The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project that Trump has criticized as excessive.

Powell on Sunday cast off what has up to this point been a restrained approach to Trump’s criticisms and personal insults, which he has mostly ignored. Instead, Powell issued a video statement in which he bluntly characterized the threat of criminal charges as simple “pretexts” to undermine the Fed’s independence when it comes to setting interest rates.

▶ Read more about the subpoenas

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while in flight on Air Force One to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)