On past deployments Army National Guard Spc. Michael Stockwell surveilled a desolate section of the U.S.-Mexico border during a migrant surge, and guarded a ring of checkpoints and fences around New Mexico’s state Capitol after the January 2021 insurrection in Washington.

On his current mission, Stockwell helps students with assignments as a substitute science teacher at Alamogordo High School.

“You can’t act Army with these kids. You can’t speak the same way you would with another soldier with these kids. You can’t treat them the same way. You have to be careful with corrective actions,” he said with a laugh.

Dozens of National Guard Army and Air Force troops in New Mexico have been stepping in for an emergency unlike others they have responded to before: the shortage of teachers and school staff members that has tested the ability of schools nationwide to continue operating during the coronavirus pandemic.

U.S. President Joe Biden warned Thursday that Russia could still invade Ukraine within days and Russia expelled the No. 2 diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, as tensions flared anew in the worst East-West standoff in decades.

NATO allies accused Russia of misleading the world by saying it was returning some troops to their bases but instead moved in thousands of new ones. The pullout pledge was among Russian gestures this week that briefly cooled temperatures. Russia is believed to have some 150,000 military forces around Ukraine’s borders, raising fears of a new war in Europe.

Tensions also spiked along the line separating Ukrainian forces from Russia-backed separatists in the country’s east, with both sides trading accusations of intensive shelling in a long-simmering conflict that has killed 14,000 people.

The U.S. Justice Department has tapped a seasoned computer crimes prosecutor to lead its new national cryptocurrency enforcement team and announced on Thursday that the FBI is launching a unit for blockchain analysis and virtual asset seizure.

The creation of the FBI’s “virtual asset exploitation” unit comes after the Justice Department’s largest-ever financial seizure earlier this month. It charged a married New York couple with allegedly laundering bitcoins now valued at over $4.5 billion that were stolen in the 2016 hack of the digital currency exchange Bitfinex.

U.S. regulators under President Joe Biden have been ratcheting up their scrutiny of the crypto industry in the wake of a series of high-profile cyberattacks last year on the largest U.S. fuel pipeline network and the world’s largest beef supplier. Ransomware groups often demand their fees in bitcoin.

U.S. President Joe Biden flew to Ohio on Thursday to tout $1 billion in funding from the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed last November aimed at cleaning up and restoring environmentally damaged areas in the Great Lakes region.

The trip, which came amid rising risks of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, is part of the White House’s efforts to showcase the benefits of the infrastructure bill ahead of crucial midterm elections where the Democrats hope a results-oriented message will allow them to retain power in Washington.

“This is a shot in the arm of the 25 sites along the Great Lakes that are listed as areas of concern,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan told reporters aboard Air Force One. Biden will visit sites in Cleveland and Lorain.

In Lorain, which sits on Lake Erie, Biden will provide more details on how the funding will help remove toxic sediment and restore habitats in the Great Lakes region, a senior administration official said.

The Oregon Supreme Court ruled Thursday that former New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is not eligible to run for governor because he does not meet the state’s three-year residency requirement.

The justices upheld a decision by Oregon election officials that Kristof did not meet the qualifications to run for Oregon’s highest office, citing in particular that Kristof voted in New York in the 2020 election.

Questions about Kristof’s residency had dogged him even before he announced his candidacy in October, the same month that The New York Times announced he had resigned. According to Oregon law, candidates for governor must have been a residents of this state for at least three years before elections.

Florida’s House of Representatives passed a bill to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy late on Wednesday, a measure several Republican-led states are pushing as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of such limits.

The approval on a party-line 78-39 vote moments before midnight sent consideration of the legislation to the state Senate, which is expected to pass the measure in the near future. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has likewise signaled his support for the bill.

Enactment in the Tallahassee statehouse would significantly reduce access to late-term abortions for women across the U.S. Southeast, many of whom travel hundreds of miles to end pregnancies in Florida because of stricter abortion laws in surrounding states.