Americans

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Wednesday he would not sign the landmark housing bill Congress passed this week as scheduled, in a striking decision to jeopardize a rare bipartisan success in order to demand that lawmakers pass voter ID legislation.

It escalated tension between Trump and Senate Republicans, which had already neared a breaking point this week over the proof-of-citizenship bill, dubbed the SAVE America Act. GOP leaders have told Trump the bill does not have the votes to pass.

“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” Trump wrote online.

The president’s willingness to threaten a bill that he could have framed as a win on affordability ahead of the midterm elections is a remarkable gamble as Republicans fight to keep House control.

The reversal also underscored Trump’s fixation on asserting some federal control over elections processes and his apparent indifference to the cost-of-living issues that voters are most focused on. He has repeatedly dismissed affordability as a “fake” concept, and inaccurately claimed on Sunday that the U.S. has the “BEST ECONOMY EVER.”

Last week, polls from NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll and Fox News poll showed record dissatisfaction with the economy among Americans and Trump’s support slipping among key demographics. Trump also lashed out about that on Truth Social on Wednesday morning, writing without evidence: “MY REAL POLL NUMBERS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN. THANK YOU!!!”

The housing bill, which passed with overwhelming support in the House on Tuesday evening and the Senate on Monday, aims to boost housing supply. It is the most significant legislation Congress has passed on housing in more than 30 years, and it contains a host of provisions aimed at removing regulatory barriers, improving federal programs and incentivizing new building.

As president, Trump has 10 days to sign or veto bills after they are presented. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) indicated to reporters Wednesday that a signing could still be on the table, saying he had spoken to Trump about “delaying” the housing bill before the president announced the cancellation.

Johnson said he had promised an effort to advance the SAVE America Act.

“He decided — I didn’t announce it, I wanted him to announce it — but we’re delaying this,” Johnson said. “As you know, he has a window of time before he has to sign a bill and he’s going to use a little bit more of that window of time and we’re gonna go through this together.”

Bill Owens, chairman of the National Assn. of Home Builders, telegraphed hope that the legislation would be signed at some point.

“Although there was no bill signing today, we are confident the 21st Century Road to Housing Act will eventually become law,” said Owens, a home builder and remodeler from Worthington, Ohio.

Democrats were shocked, angry and confused when they found out about the cancellation Wednesday morning, according to a source within the House Committee on Financial Services, which led the legislation.

Lawmakers believed the bill was a done deal and are now scrambling, the person said. A stage for the bill signing had already been set up in the Capitol when Trump posted online. The night before, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had posted on X: “Tomorrow’s historic bill signing is another promise made, promise kept.”

Frustration with the president has been steadily mounting among Senate Republicans for more than a month, triggered by a host of issues including Trump’s endorsement of Republican primary challengers to sitting lawmakers. On Tuesday, four Republican senators joined with Democrats to approve a war powers resolution seeking to block U.S. military action in Iran.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has told Trump the SAVE America Act doesn’t have enough support to pass, the Associated Press reported this week.

The legislation would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register, require Americans show identification when casting a ballot and require states to send voter data to the Department of Homeland Security. Voting rights advocates say it would create unnecessary barriers to voting for citizens.

The effort is rooted in Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud and cheating by Democrats. He has said the bill would “guarantee” the midterms for Republicans.

Trump has previously called for the federal government to “nationalize” elections and “take over” voting in some states. He renewed accusations against Democrats of cheating in California this month.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) said Trump was holding the bill hostage in a bid “to control California’s elections.”

“The stage was set both physically and metaphorically for the president to sign a historic housing bill for the American people,” said Sherman, who contributed a provision to the housing bill that would help disabled veterans get rental assistance. “Trump must put his ego aside and put the American people first and sign this bill into law.”

Less than an hour before Trump posted online that he had canceled the bill signing, he labeled the legislation “the Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren centric housing bill” in a Truth Social post, and railed about the SAVE America Act.

“That is what Americans, both Dumocrats, Republicans, and everyone else, care about. Get the bad Republicans to approve it or, better yet, Terminate the Filibuster and approve it, AND EVERYTHING ELSE REPUBLICANS HAVE EVER DREAMED OF,” Trump wrote.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was one of the four bipartisan lawmakers leading the deal across the two chambers, said Wednesday morning on CNBC that Trump’s reversal “doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s a complete indifference to the cost squeeze on American families and to genuine efforts to do something about it,” Warren said. “He could be over here claiming a victory lap and instead he’s saying no, no, he doesn’t want anything to do with it.”

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration’s election integrity strategy is unlawful and can no longer be used.

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan said in an order explaining the decision. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

She said Congress had expressly prohibited the government from centralizing Americans’ personal identifying information and that the federal agencies that created the SAVE program “knew that the database violates those statutory protections.”

The decision is a major legal setback for President Trump in his efforts to use federal agencies to encourage a nationwide crackdown on noncitizens illegally on state voter rolls. The modified SAVE system, which critics had referred to as an unlawful centralized federal database of voter information, had been a key pillar of the second election executive order the Republican president signed earlier this year. The ruling leaves its future uncertain.

“It’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist,” James Percival, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, said of the ruling in a social media post.

The department referred to his post as its comment on the ruling. The Department of Justice did not immediately return a request for comment.

The SAVE program was created under an immigration law mandating that Homeland Security help federal, state and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens. At least 25 states used it to check their voter rolls since April 2025, after the Trump administration significantly expanded its search abilities. Since then, at least 67 million registrations have been scanned through the program, but critics worry it could end up purging valid voters from the rolls.

The plaintiffs, including the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and five unnamed U.S. citizens, had alleged the revamped SAVE program violated Americans’ privacy and voting rights. The groups also alleged the Trump administration violated federal privacy laws by ignoring transparency requirements about the changes to the system.

“The agencies were scrambling to comply with an Executive Order aimed at reshaping federal elections, which directed them to create a system for mass voter verification,” the judge wrote. “So they haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.”

Plaintiffs attorney Nikhel Sus told the court during the October hearing that naturalized citizens face a greater risk of unlawfully being purged from voter rolls.

“They are uniquely vulnerable to errors in the database,” said Sus, an attorney for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Sus said Monday he sees Sooknanan’s ruling as an “across the board victory” and noted the plaintiffs were pleased the judge’s ruling reinforced their argument that the federal government doesn’t have implied authority to freely share sensitive data across agencies.

Swenson and Hussein write for the Associated Press. Swenson reported from New York.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said he is exploring ways to ensure Americans benefit directly from the rapid growth of artificial intelligence, raising the possibility of the government acquiring stakes in leading AI companies. The idea comes as firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic pursue valuations that could make them among the most valuable companies in the world, fueling debate over whether the public should share in the wealth generated by AI technologies.

Why the Idea Is Gaining Attention

The AI boom is expected to create enormous wealth for technology companies, investors and founders. Policymakers and advocates argue that because AI development relies heavily on public infrastructure, government research and vast amounts of publicly generated data, ordinary citizens should receive some of the financial benefits.

The debate has intensified as major AI developers seek billions of dollars to build data centers, chip infrastructure and advanced computing systems.

Option One: Taxing AI Companies Through Equity

One proposal would require AI companies to pay part of their taxes in shares rather than cash.

Under this approach, the government would gradually accumulate ownership stakes in AI firms without directly investing taxpayer money. Supporters argue that it would allow the public to benefit from future growth while avoiding large government expenditures.

Some advocates have gone further, proposing substantial government ownership stakes and board representation to give the public a direct voice in how AI companies operate.

Option Two: Equity in Exchange for Government Support

Another model would involve the government receiving equity stakes in return for financial assistance or incentives.

This approach mirrors previous arrangements in strategic industries where federal funding was provided in exchange for ownership interests. Given the enormous capital requirements of AI infrastructure, government funding could potentially become a source of financing for companies building advanced computing facilities, semiconductor plants and other critical projects.

Supporters argue this would allow taxpayers to benefit if publicly supported companies become highly profitable.

Critics contend that such arrangements could blur the line between regulation and investment, potentially creating conflicts between public policy goals and financial interests.

Option Three: Public Wealth Funds and Citizen Dividends

A third proposal focuses less on government ownership and more on distributing AI-generated wealth directly to citizens.

Under this model, revenue generated through AI-related taxes or investments would flow into a public wealth fund, which would then distribute dividends to Americans.

The concept resembles Alaska’s Permanent Fund, which uses energy revenues to provide annual payments to residents. Advocates argue a similar system could ensure that AI-driven economic gains are shared more broadly across society rather than concentrated among a small number of technology firms and investors.

Some AI companies have expressed interest in versions of this idea, including proposals for digital dividends funded by taxes on the sector.

Why AI Companies Matter

The debate carries major financial implications because leading AI developers are becoming increasingly valuable.

OpenAI and Anthropic have both reportedly taken steps toward potential public listings, while companies across the sector are raising unprecedented sums to fund AI expansion. Some analysts believe the industry could generate trillions of dollars in economic value over the coming decade.

As a result, even relatively small government stakes could potentially produce significant long-term returns.

Challenges and Obstacles

Any effort to give the government ownership in AI companies would face significant legal, political and economic hurdles.

Questions remain over:

• How ownership stakes would be valued
• Whether companies would voluntarily participate
• The impact on private investment
• Potential conflicts of interest for regulators
• How revenues would be distributed to citizens

There is also likely to be strong opposition from free-market advocates who argue that government ownership could discourage innovation and distort competition.

What Happens Next

Trump has not outlined a specific mechanism for acquiring stakes in AI companies, and no formal proposal has been introduced.

However, the discussion highlights a growing debate over who should benefit from the AI revolution and whether existing economic structures are sufficient to distribute the gains from one of the most transformative technologies in modern history.

Analysis

The significance of Trump’s proposal lies less in whether the government ultimately acquires stakes in AI firms and more in what it signals about the future political debate surrounding artificial intelligence. As AI companies approach trillion-dollar valuations, pressure is likely to grow for policymakers to ensure that the economic gains extend beyond investors and technology executives.

The discussion mirrors earlier debates over natural resources, where governments sought ways to ensure that public assets generated public benefits. In this case, supporters argue that AI is built on public research, public infrastructure and publicly generated data, creating a rationale for broader wealth sharing.

At the same time, the proposal raises fundamental questions about the relationship between government and the private sector. Direct ownership stakes could provide taxpayers with financial upside, but they could also create tensions between the government’s role as regulator and its role as investor.

The debate is likely to become more prominent as AI companies grow larger, seek additional funding and exert greater influence over economic growth, employment and national competitiveness. Whether through equity ownership, taxation or public wealth funds, the central political question is increasingly becoming not whether AI will generate enormous wealth, but who will ultimately receive it.

With information from Reuters.

SEATTLE — The World Cup is only a little more than a week old, but it’s already a historic one for the U.S.

With Friday’s 2-0 win over Australia, the U.S. matched its best World Cup performance ever with two victories. Their six goals match the most the U.S. has ever scored in the group stage and its goal differential of plus-five is also its best ever in the tournament. The U.S. also clinched a spot in the round of 32.

Most impressive of all, however, is how the U.S. achieved most of that without their best player, Christian Pulisic, who had an electric first half in the U.S. opener against Paraguay but hasn’t seen the field since. And while Pulisic, who is nursing a calf injury, was missed Friday, he wasn’t needed, with the U.S. outpossessing, outpassing and outshooting Australia by wide margins.

The Americans hardly needed any help, but Australia gifted the U.S. its first goal anyway when defender Cameron Burgess deflected in a cross from Folarin Balogun in the 11th minute. The sequence started with Antonee Robinson pushing the ball forward for Balogun from just inside the halfway line. Balogun ran onto the ball then turned on the jets, making a dash up the left wing before turning toward the penalty area and bending a pass toward Sergiño Dest in the six-yard box.

Australian goalie Patrick Beach, guarding the post, reached out his left hand but missed the ball, allowing it to strike Burgess’ left foot and carom into the roof of the net igniting a red, white and blue-clad crowd of 66,925 inside Seattle Stadium (Lumen Field) and tens of thousands more who gathered outside the stadium and at viewing parties spread throughout the city.

The first U.S. score in its opener with Paraguay came on an almost identical own goal, with Paraguayan midfielder Damián Bobadilla getting his right foot on a pass Weston McKennie had aimed at Balogun.

Australia tried to deal with the Americans’ superior speed and technical abilities by getting physical, rough play that German referee Felix Zwayer largely allowed. But Australia paid dearly for that just before the intermission when Alex Freeman, who was leveled by Australia’s Paul Okon-Engstler moments earlier, climbed off the turf to head in a loose ball to give the U.S. a 2-0 lead at the break.

A look at how the U.S. scored its goals in a 2-0 win over Australia.

That sequence started with a free kick following a foul by Burgess. Robinson left-footed the ball to an unmarked Dest at the top of the box, a shot that was blocked in the wall, then arced toward the goal. Freeman and Balogun raced Beach to the ball, with Freeman getting there just ahead of the Australian goalie to nod it in.

The goal was originally negated by an offside that was quickly overturned by the VAR official.

Australia tried to make a game of it in a second half that turned increasingly chippy, but the U.S. defense held firm.

The U.S. — and Pulisic — have five days to prepare for their group-stage finale with Turkey on Thursday at SoFi Stadium, where the potential for even more history awaits.

U.S. fans react after a 2-0 win over Australia at Seattle Stadium (Lumen Field) on Friday in World Cup Group D play.

(Ted S. Warren / Associated Press)

WASHINGTON — Most Americans continue to disapprove of how President Trump is handling Iran, while his overall presidential approval holds steady, according to a new AP-NORC poll that was conducted as he suggested a deal with Iran had been reached.

The poll points to just how unpopular the war, which began Feb. 28, has been with Americans even as the Republican president turned abruptly from threatening Iran to reopening negotiations. Support for his handling of the war remains lopsidedly partisan. About two-thirds, 65%, of U.S. adults disapprove of how Trump is handling issues with Iran. But while the vast majority of Democrats and independents view Trump’s actions negatively, only 28% of Republicans are unhappy.

Americans’ views on how the president is handling Iran are roughly in line with his overall job approval, which stands at 37%, unchanged from an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in May.

The new survey was conducted June 11-17, just after Trump called off threats to escalate the war with Iran. The poll was fielded as Trump announced a deal with Iran and authorized an end to the U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, concluding just before the deal was signed Wednesday.

Approval of Trump’s actions on Iran has been low over the past few months. But in interviews, some Republicans also weren’t pleased with the outcome of this week’s agreement, which gives Iran an immediate benefit, allowing it to sell its oil freely again.

The deal also reopens the strait without tolls for two months, restarts talks between the U.S. and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program and calls for Tehran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

David Farrington, a 79-year-old Republican-leaning independent in Fort Worth, Texas, “doesn’t have any love lost” for Iran, but he’s frustrated the agreement focused on the strait and didn’t deliver more on the country’s nuclear weapons program.

“Any agreement regarding the strait is hardly what I would consider a recognizable concession on the part of Iran,” Farrington said. “So, I consider that some fluff that attempts to make this agreement look better when it’s not.”

Trump’s approval on Iran remains flat

Only about one-third of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling Iran in the new poll, in line with May.

Donald McBride, a 28-year-old independent in Plano, Texas, is frustrated that Trump has not maintained his campaign promise to keep America out of foreign wars. McBride voted for Trump but he opposed going to war with Iran.

“I would like the war to end,” he said. “The original objective of the war was to end the Iranian regime, and that’s just not possible. I don’t really know why we’d continue fighting.”

The poll suggests most Americans want action in Iran to wrap up. Even with an agreement on the horizon, 53% of U.S. adults said American military action against Iran had “gone too far,” only a slight decline from 59% in March.

About 4 in 10 Republicans, though, said in the latest poll that action has been “about right,” and 37% said it had not gone far enough.

Joan Jones, a 64-year-old independent in northwest Florida, believes the United States’ actions in Iran have been necessary to address the threat Iran posed.

“Those attacks are ultimately to protect us from nuclear attacks,” Jones said. “I think we have to go through that … and eliminate that worry so we don’t have that hovering over us.”

Few approve of Trump’s approach on Israel

About one-third, 34%, of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling Israel.

Tensions have been rising between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump as the president criticizes recent Israeli attacks in Lebanon, which jeopardized negotiations between Washington and Tehran.

James Huffman, a 69-year-old Republican in Medway, Ohio, thinks Trump is taking the wrong strategy when it comes to Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu is not going to do everything Trump wants. He’s going to do what he wants,” Huffman said. “I just don’t think it’s effective.”

Only about one-third approve on the economy

About one-third of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s approach to the economy. That’s in line with last month, and continues a challenging stretch for Trump on the issue.

Jones, the Florida independent, is more optimistic than most. She said she can hardly leave the house some hours without getting stuck in the traffic of tourists headed to the beach on vacation. She also spots lines around the block for Starbucks, McDonalds and Chick-fil-A in her community — all signs to her that the economy is doing well overall.

“I think President Trump’s policies are contributing to a better economy,” Jones said.

Other Republicans are more skeptical, a troubling sign for a president who prides himself on his business acumen. Only 69% of Republicans approve of how he’s handling the economy, slightly lower than the 78% who approve of how he’s handling the presidency overall.

Patricia Bailey, a 42-year-old Republican in Parkersburg, West Virginia, sees an economy where prices have gotten out of control. “I just said the other night, ordering pizza is for rich people,” she said. Bailey voted for Trump but added, “He’s kind of let me down a little bit.”

Even if high prices preceded Trump, Bailey doesn’t think he’s lived up to his pledge to improve the economy.

“I think he got so distracted with the war that he forgot some old promises,” she said.

Sanders and Thomson-Deveaux write for the Associated Press.

The AP-NORC poll of 3,040 adults was conducted June 11-17 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

The U.S. men’s soccer team chose an incredible day to have an incredible day.

Crucially, the United States aced its only chance to make a first impression, kicking off this colossal World Cup it’s co-hosting with Mexico and Canada with a 4-1 victory over Paraguay.

Consider it a save for the tournament, three points for soccer in America and maybe even a win for uniting the States.

The Americans on the pitch did all that, including making sure a sellout crowd of 70,492 fans got their money’s worth for their exorbitantly high-priced seats to watch football under Friday Night Lights at SoFi Stadium.

U.S. forward Folarin Balogun, right, celebrates with Sergino Dest and Chris Richards after scoring during a World Cup win over Paraguay on Friday at SoFi Stadium.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

It was not a clean sheet. And it wasn’t an elixir for all the issues — visas, tickets, transportation — that ailed the tournament in its buildup.

But the opening statement by the United States confirmed what we thought might be true. Only one thing could save this soccer tournament: soccer.

The U.S. delivered a performance to change the conversation — for the next few weeks and maybe longer.

Making history to alter history.

The United States scored multiple goals in a World Cup first half for the first time since 2002.

It got two of them from Folarin Balogun, the Brooklyn-born, England-raised forward of Nigerian descent who became just the second USMNT player to score two goals in a World Cup game and the first since 1930.

Got a perfect match from Chris Richards, the afro-rocking defender with the long, loping strides, who was 83 for 83 on his passes. That’s better than any player at a World Cup since 1966.

And if possession is nine-tenths of the law of attraction, know that the Americans possessed the ball 71% of the first half, most in the first half of a World Cup game in the modern era.

Landon Donovan, star of the 2002 team that reached the World Cup quarterfinals — a record that still stands — posted on X: “From start to finish, that was the most enjoyable day of soccer I’ve ever experienced.”

That’s the stuff that will get the American people going. Get us invested, get us behind them. That could convert even devout casuals.

Americans love a good underdog story. We also want the best, the finest, the biggest — and this, with its expanded field of 48, is the biggest version of the biggest and best tournament in the world.

And the only thing we love more than winning is dominating. The United States did that Friday against a Paraguayan team that had allowed only 10 goals in 18 World Cup qualifying matches, and whom the United States beat 2-1 in a tense match in November.

Fans cheer during the U.S. win over Paraguay in their World Cup opener Saturday at SoFi Stadium.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

That was Mauricio Pochettino and his players helping us help them.

“The fans, amazing,” said Pochettino, the team’s accomplished Argentine coach. “On behalf of the whole team, a massive thank you to the fans. Because the energy that they [gave] to the team was amazing. We can do amazing things if the fans are in this as well.”

Friday was so good for soccer in America.

And so good for America. The kind of butt-kicking that’s chicken soup for a nation’s soul.

Maybe it’s idealistic and naive, or apple-pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, but I believe that they can win. (And by win, I mean make the quarterfinals again.)

There’s no removing politics from this World Cup, but wouldn’t it be fun to all rally behind a team together? Can’t you see the country coalescing behind the right wingers and left wingers on the pitch? Picture people celebrating the freedom inherent in Pochettino’s system? Cheering the all-for-one and one-for-all of this team of dual nationals and Americans raised abroad — or in Alabama?

Postmatch, Pochettino refused to single out any one player, instead giving reporters a recitation of his roster: “[Christian Pulisic] was amazing [setting up two goals]. Balogun was amazing, of course. Tim Ream was amazing, of course. Chris Richards was amazing, yes. Weston McKennie, he was amazing, amazing. Antonee Robinson, Alex Freeman, amazing. Sergiño Dest, amazing …”

Like they put it on the @USMNT Instagram account: “Together as Won.”

U.S. soccer, amazing.

June 11 (UPI) — Police in the Bahamas arrested five U.S. nationals at a port after an altercation with cruise passengers and law enforcement earlier this week.

The five people were involved in a physical altercation on Monday with passengers on a cruise ship in the Nassau Cruise Port area and, after they were arrested, started a second altercation with police officers, the Royal Bahamas Police Force said in a news release.

Four police officers were injured in the second melee, with one hospitalized with a “serious injury” to his left shoulder.

One person who informed police about the initial altercation with the ship’s passengers was asked to come to the police station to give a statement but declined the interview, police said.

“Due time constraints related to their cruise ship’s scheduled departure, the complainants were unable to provide official statements,” the RBPF said in the release.

“Nevertheless, the five suspects remain in police custody and are being investigated in connection” with the initial altercation and the violence while they were being arrested, the police force said.

Law enforcement was called when the five people — three women and two men — got into some type of altercation with passengers from a cruise ship that was in port, with officers intervening in the scene and detaining them.

At the police station, while searching the five suspects, a “violent struggle” started between the officers and suspects — one of the women reportedly threw a chair through a glass door and one of the men then kicked out the rest of the glass before trying to escape.

During the confrontation, two officers were hit in the body, a third was cut near the mouth and a fourth officer’s shoulder was seriously injured, the RBPF said.

The five Americans remain in police custody on charges of assaulting a police officer, fighting in a public place, resisting arrest, malicious damage and disorderly behavior in a police station.

WASHINGTON — As the U.S. prepares for an extravagant celebration of its founding principles, fewer Americans see their country as exceptional, a new poll finds.

The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research highlights many Americans’ feeling of unease over the future of its representative government — particularly among young people. It presents a jarring contrast as communities around the country commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Only about one-quarter of Americans say the U.S. stands above all other countries in the world, the new poll found, while 44% say it’s one of the greatest countries in the world, along with some others. About 3 in 10 say there are better countries than the U.S., an increase from 19% in an AP-NORC poll conducted in June 2016.

Americans remain divided about whether diversity is an essential feature of the U.S.’s identity, and agreement about other aspects of the country’s underlying character appears to be eroding, the survey found. Americans are less likely to see a democratically elected government as “extremely” or “very” important to the United States’ identity as a nation than they were just a few years ago. About two-thirds of U.S. adults now say a democratically elected government is highly important to the U.S.’s identity as a nation, down from 80% in 2021.

“It’s not that the democracy part is not working,” said Derricka Wall, 24, of Chickasaw, Alabama. “It’s the people that are actually being put in office that is the problem.”

Wall believes politicians have damaged America’s governing system, which was designed to ensure representation and guard against government misuse.

America, she said, “is not what it used to be. I feel like our founding fathers would be kind of disappointed with how it is now.”

Rising belief that democracy is not essential to American identity

Young adults are much less likely than older Americans to believe the U.S. is special, compared with other nations, the poll found.

About 4 in 10, 44%, of U.S. adults under 30 say there are other countries better than the U.S., compared with 22% of U.S. adults ages 60 and older.

Fewer, too, see democracy as a key element of the U.S.’s identity. Only about half of Americans under 30 believe this, compared with 81% of those 60 and older.

Wall said the people who established the government with co-equal branches thought they were erecting safeguards to keep any one person or group from attaining too much power. But she believes they didn’t foresee how easily those guardrails would crumble if the people in the system stopped enforcing them.

“I feel like they would actually roll out of their graves,” she said. “I feel they would be very disappointed in us.”

The belief that politics isn’t working for everyday people extends beyond the youngest generations. Kent Stage, 62 and a retired senior enlisted man in the Army, is a registered Republican in Indiana. He does not think the current political system addresses the country’s problems. He’d like to see term limits on politicians and more working-class people serving.

“I’ll trust the ambulance-chasing lawyer and a shady used car salesman before I trust the politician,” he said.

Stage, who is also a former Marine, believes public servants make self-serving choices for their families “while mine and yours still got to hit the old grindstone.”

Many feel it’s harder to get ahead in the U.S.

The survey also finds widespread cynicism about America as the land of opportunity. About half of U.S. adults, 51%, say the American Dream — the idea that if you work hard, you’ll get ahead — once held true but does not anymore. About one-third say it “still holds true” while 15% say it never held true.

Jack Hermanson, a 27-year-old software developer in Denver, said his belief in the American Dream changed when he saw his engineer husband struggle to find a job. “That really shattered my impression that if you work hard, you get what you deserve,” Hermanson said.

Only 22% of Americans under 30 say the American Dream still holds true, compared with 46% of Americans ages 60 and older.

Angela Toombs, 31, works at a senior living facility in Atlanta where her clients talk about how easy it was to buy a house while working their first regular jobs in their 20s and are incredulous about the obstacles facing Toombs’ generation. Toombs recently gave up her own apartment to rent a room in order to save money.

Skepticism about the American Dream is more widespread among Democrats and independents, compared with Republicans. Most Republicans, 57%, say the American Dream still holds true, compared with about one-quarter of independents and 17% of Democrats.

Republicans are also much likelier than Democrats to see the U.S. as exceptional. About half of Republicans say the U.S. stands above all other countries in the world, compared with only 7% of Democrats.

Quintin Sharpe, 28, lives in a resort town on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. A financial planner who is Republican, he said the American Dream remains accessible and he is proud of the country. “It’s been a great experiment.”

“The opportunity is there for those who want to work for it,” he said. Sharpe believes the country is “a meritocracy, and the best ideas, the best work ethic, those with the best succeed regardless of race, skin color, any of those factors.”

He and his wife will celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary watching the fireworks over the lake.

Divides on whether diversity is essential to U.S.

Just over half of U.S. adults — 56% — say a shared American culture and set of values are “extremely” or “very” important to the country’s identity, down from 65% in 2017. Younger Americans are less likely than older ones to say a singular set of values is important to U.S. identity.

But Americans remain sharply divided on the centrality of welcoming diverse perspectives: About half of adults, 51%, say the ability of people to come from other places in the world to escape violence or find economic opportunities is “extremely” or “very” important to American identity, while 55% say this about the mixing of cultures and values from around the world.

Only about 4 in 10 Republicans see the mixing of cultures and values from around the world as central to the country’s identity, compared with 76% of Democrats.

Rose Nunez, 70, of San Antonio, was a small business owner but now is a caregiver for family members. Nunez, who tends to vote for Democrats, said there is an unease and tension that are just beneath the surface, especially focused on Hispanics. She said some people have started carrying their papers showing their immigration status in case they are challenged.

“It is hard to celebrate when the feelings towards immigrants and communities of color are so strong,” she said of the upcoming America 250 celebrations.

She said even citizens are questioned now. If it gets to a point where being naturalized is challenged, “guess what, my mom would be leaving. She’s been living in this country since she was maybe four years old. She’s 93.”

Fields, Sanders and Riccardi write for the Associated Press. The AP-NORC poll of 2,596 adults was conducted April 16-20 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

WASHINGTON — The congressman returned home last Fourth of July to startling stories in Southern California as immigration patrols swept through communities, and one constituent told him about starting to carry a passport as proof of the right to be in the country.

Rep. Mark Takano, whose American-born parents were both incarcerated as young children with their families during the forced relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II, could not help but see the parallels between that chapter of American history and this one.

“I do feel like there’s a similarity of circumstance of my own 2-year-old father and my 1-year-old mother being labeled as enemy aliens and they’re considered a danger to national security,” the Riverside Democrat told the Associated Press in a recent interview.

“They’re put into these incarceration camps,” he said. “Similar arguments have been made by this administration — that immigrants pose a grave danger to our country and it’s for the security of our country that we’re doing this.”

Echoes of history

President Trump’s campaign to achieve the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history is at an inflection point. Americans are seeing what it looks like to round up, detain and deport thousands of people, particularly in the aftermath of the deaths this year of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, U.S. citizens protesting the federal crackdown in Minneapolis.

The White House changed the leadership at the Department of Homeland Security as it reframes its approach. New Secretary Markwayne Mullin promised to keep the department off the front pages.

But Trump is also under mounting pressure from conservative groups not to let up on the goal of deporting 1 million people a year. The president’s Republican allies in Congress are fueling the immigration and deportation actions with billions of dollars in special funds.

Takano, the ranking Democrat on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, has drawn from his own family history — and the country’s eventual redress to Japanese Americans who were detained — to challenge Trump’s approach.

“We look back on that era of history as a shameful one, as a time when our political leaders failed the Constitution, failed the American people,” he said.

One family’s story among many

A high school history teacher before being elected to Congress in 2012, Takano grew up in Southern California and came to understand the family stories.

His grandfather Isao Takano arrived in the U.S. from Hiroshima and married Kazue Takahashi, a U.S.-born citizen. Together they settled in Bellevue, Wash., and started a business growing tomatoes, strawberries and chrysanthemums for the marketplace in Seattle.

When the U.S. entered the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, they were among some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, immigrants and those born in the U.S., forcibly relocated.

His father, William, was 2 years old when his family was sent in 1942 to the incarceration camp at Tule Lake in Central California. His mother, Nancy Tsugiye Sakamoto, born in California to American-born parents, was a year old when she was relocated to the detention facility in Heart Mountain, Wyo.

Then, as now, he said, people are being swept up in the anti-immigrant detentions.

“Will Americans generations from now visit ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ and think to themselves, how could our government do this?” Takano said during a House floor speech, referring to the Trump administration’s immigration detention facility in Florida.

“These future generations of Americans will look to us, the Congress, to see what we did to try to stop it.”

A Reagan-era law seen as model

Takano remembers his father taking him to see the land the family once owned. He learned about his great-uncles who served in the Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team of Japanese American soldiers; one was killed in action in Italy. He recalls his own father later collected donations for the national redress campaign.

In 1988 Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which sought to apologize for the “grave injustice” that had been done and provide $20,000 to each person detained. President Reagan signed it into law.

Takano’s parents were among those who received a letter of apology from the federal government, he said, and a payment.

Talks are underway among some in Congress, he said, for a similar redress to the people who have had their car windows smashed in, their homes raided and livelihoods upended as part of Trump’s immigration enforcement operations.

“Remarkably the country did come to realize the mistake,” he said. “I believe we’re living through one of those eras of mistakes, and I believe we can come out of this moment stronger.”

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — The proportion of Americans without health insurance held steady at around 8% of the population in 2025, according to new findings from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The national survey results, released Thursday, show the all-ages uninsured rate has stayed significantly down from where it was several years ago, but the ranks of the uninsured could soon expand as the Trump administration’s sweeping changes to the health landscape begin to take hold.

Massive changes to Medicaid, the government’s safety-net health program for low-income Americans, passed into law last year could result in 10 million more uninsured individuals over a decade, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.

And the expiration this year of certain Affordable Care Act subsidies — which had offset premium costs — is also contributing to reduced participation in marketplace health programs. Around 5 million fewer people are expected to enroll in those plans in 2026 compared with 2025, according to the healthcare research nonprofit KFF.

The government has multiple programs for tracking Americans’ insurance status, which can give different numbers depending on factors like timing and question wording. Many researchers consider the U.S. Census Bureau to be “the official scorekeeper,” said David Howard, an Emory University health policy and management professor.

But the CDC survey results tracks closely with that, and they offer the first complete data for all of 2025 — the first year of President Trump’s second term in office.

The Trump administration has sought to expand access to low-premium catastrophic health insurance plans and lower drug prices for Americans who don’t have health insurance. It has also suggested that projected insurance enrollment declines indicate a drop-off of fraudulent and ineligible enrollees, rather than eligible Americans.

Although the share of insured and uninsured stayed roughly the same in 2025 as the year before, the number of uninsured grew by about 800,000 — 300,000 of them children. The growth of the overall U.S. population helps explain that.

The survey results also suggest a possible increased insured rate among Hispanic Americans. But that may in part reflect the effects of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, if uninsured members of that group left the country, Howard said.

Most Americans 65 and older have health insurance through the federal Medicare program. It’s different for younger Americans, many of whom are covered through a patchwork of public and private insurance programs.

The percentage of Americans under 65 who were uninsured rose in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s — from 12% in 1980 to more than 18% in 2010. It fell following passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, which expanded Medicaid programs and enacted measures to make affordable health insurance available to more people.

By 2016 it dropped nearly to 10%, before rising to 11 to 12% during Trump’s first administration, according to historical survey data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

The COVID-19 pandemic saw the rate of uninsured fall again, as a result of government policies put in place to preserve coverage as people faced disruptions related to the pandemic. The rate hit an all-time low in 2023, falling below 9%.

It’s not clear yet how big the increase in uninsured Americans will be this year, but experts agree it will likely rise in the coming years as a result of changes to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid.

“The decisions being made now — in Congress, state legislatures and state Medicaid agencies — will determine what happens next,” Nancy Brown, chief executive officer of the American Heart Association, said in a statement Thursday.

“Policymakers should act immediately to protect and expand access to affordable coverage, strengthen Medicaid and maintain pathways that make coverage and care accessible,” she said. “Without deliberate action, including reversing dramatic cuts to coverage, uninsured rates will continue to rise, putting quality health care further out of reach.”

Stobbe and Swenson write for the Associated Press.

May 27 (UPI) — The United States and Kenya are in talks to create a quarantine facility in Kenya for Americans exposed to Ebola, unnamed officials told multiple media outlets Wednesday.

The U.S. Public Health Service would staff the planned field hospital and isolate and monitor Americans exposed to or at risk of the ongoing outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and South Sudan.

The Kenyan government has not yet approved the plan, The Star, Kenya, reported.

The plan is to have the facility built with 50 beds within a week, with the potential to expand to 250 beds later, The Washington Post reported.

The staff at the Public Health Service has begun training at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to staff the Kenya facility, two people familiar with the response told The Post. But one person said they were concerned that the training was only three days.

The plan could keep U.S. citizens from re-entering the United States, a former official from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who has worked on the Ebola response told CBS News.

“It would be unbelievably unethical and irresponsible to maroon Americans, given Kenya doesn’t have a proper Level 4 containment facility or much experience” in dealing with Ebola.

Nahid Bhadelia, director of Boston University’s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases who has cared for Ebola patients in multiple outbreaks, told The Post that creating a makeshift quarantine hospital overseas brings risks.

“My biggest concern would be that you cannot re-create the same quality of care or training among healthcare staff at an ad hoc center that you would at any of the well-trained and established hospitals that the U.S. has set up since 2014 to take care of these types of patients,” Bhadelia said. “I’m also concerned what this does is effectively discourage Americans and American organizations from working in the area if they know it will be difficult for them to come back in case of an emergency.”

Bhadelia added that if quarantined people contract the disease, staff “would need to be able to provide ICU-level care.”

Meanwhile, the American Foreign Service Association is calling on the State Department to send affected Foreign Services workers and their families home, saying they can be repatriated and monitored at the same U.S. facilities where Americans exposed during previous outbreaks were admitted.

“Those facilities still exist, and the government has the ability to transport people safely and without endangering other travelers,” the AFSA said in a statement.

“Foreign Service employees are there because the U.S. government sent them. They are entitled to the same standard of care that has always applied, including the right to come home.”

More than 220 people have died in the DRC in the latest outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola. The World Health Organization has declared it a public health emergency of international concern. WHO and partner agencies have reported more than 900 suspected cases in Congo and Uganda as of Tuesday.

The WHO reported Wednesday that fighting in Congo is also making it difficult for aid workers to respond to the outbreak.

Baltimore, United States – Muslim Americans are grieving after two gunmen last week opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego, killing three people.

But at the annual conference for the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) in Baltimore, community leaders stressed the urgency of turning the sorrow into action.

Nearly 25,000 people turned out for the annual event, held on Saturday and Sunday. Speakers addressed the recent shooting, pointing to the courage of the three victims as examples for the broader community in a time of heightened Islamophobia.

“We owe them more than condolences. We owe them resolve,” said Lena Masri, a lawyer at the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

She explained how the victims — a security officer, a caretaker and a neighbour — sacrificed their lives to save others. The security officer, Amin Abdullah, exchanged fire with the shooters, while the other two victims, Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad, rushed to help and called for emergency services.

“They protected the physical space of our community: the masjid [mosque], the school, the children, the teachers, the worshippers,” Masri explained.

“Our responsibility is to protect the civic space of our community: the right to worship, the right to speak, the right to organise, the right to defend Palestine, the right to build institutions.”

That was the recurring theme of the conference: that the Muslim American community cannot afford to be passive and must draw on its strength to push back against bigotry and hate.

Speakers emphasised voting, organising and donating to community institutions and candidates who align with Muslim Americans. They also underscored the need to hold officials accountable and push for an end to Israel’s atrocities in Palestine.

“We owe Gaza more than grief. We owe Gaza advocacy that cannot be intimidated into silence,” Masri said.

Islamophobia and Palestinians’ dehumanisation

Symbols of Palestine could be seen everywhere at the conference, from bags emblazoned with watermelons and flags to keffiyeh-patterned scarves, shirts and water bottles.

At a bazaar featuring dozens of vendors, conference-goers left messages of solidarity on a tent that will be sent to Gaza by the charity Life for Relief and Development (LIFE).

In speeches and on panels, advocates drew a link between anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States and Israel’s abuses in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.

Some of the loudest promoters of Islamophobia in the US are also staunch Israel supporters, among them right-wing commentator Laura Loomer and Congressman Randy Fine.

Both Loomer and Fine are allies of US President Donald Trump, whose administration has unleashed a crackdown to deport critics of Israel who live in the US but are not citizens.

Altaf Husain, a professor at the Howard University School of Social Work, said anti-Palestinian voices are trying to “scare” Muslims as a means of silencing criticism of Israel.

“They want to shut this down, so it’s a direct connection,” Husain told Al Jazeera.

He said the large turnout at the ICNA conference shows that the community is not intimidated and will not back down.

In the response to the shooting in San Diego, Husain pointed out that the community raised more than $3.5m for the victims’ families and moved to bolster security around Muslim institutions.

Layers of security

Saad Kazmi, the president of ICNA, said the organisation relied on three layers of protection to secure this weekend’s event: its own security guards, an outside firm and local law enforcement agencies in Baltimore.

While there is anxiety in the community over the rise of Islamophobia and Trump’s immigration crackdown, he said Muslim Americans must take matters into their own hands and work with “sensible” people across the political spectrum to defeat hate.

“We are very thankful that we live in a country that is ruled by the Constitution and law,” Kazmi told Al Jazeera.

Kazmi added that the shooting in San Diego only added to the community’s determination to assert and protect its rights. The Islamic centre in the city, he noted, did not shut down after the attack.

“If anything came out of this, it is that there are more attendees to the masjid, more people who believe that the way forward is to strengthen ourselves, strengthen our community and march on,” Kazmi said.

After the shooting, Loomer doubled down on her anti-Muslim rhetoric, calling on immigration authorities to target the Islamic Center of San Diego.

She also called for the deportation of all Muslims from the US, describing them as an “invasive species”. But few Republicans disavowed Loomer, who maintains close ties to the White House.

Rather, more than 60 Congress members have joined the Sharia-Free America Caucus since it was established in December. CAIR has designated the caucus a hate group.

At the state level, governors and local legislators have disparaged Islam while also pushing to penalise Palestinian rights activism.

Texas and Florida, for example, have labelled CAIR a “terrorist” group, while implementing measures against “Sharia law” that critics consider anti-Muslim dog whistles.

Rights under attack

In March, after CAIR sued Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over its “terrorist” designation, a federal court blocked the label from being imposed.

In his ruling, Judge Mark Walker wrote that DeSantis’s executive order (EO) targets the Muslim community as a whole.

“It should be lost on no one that Defendant’s EO targets one of America’s largest Muslim civil rights organizations for indirect suppression of speech. But, as we all know, it is easy for those in power to target minority groups with little pushback,” Walker wrote.

“Sadly, history teaches that it is often minority religious groups who find themselves in the crosshairs.”

On Saturday, several panels praised the US legal system and the laws that protect freedom of religion and speech. But the panellists argued that human rights do not defend themselves; people must step up to protect them.

“You’ve got to imagine rights are a territory, and you have to occupy that territory. If you do not actively occupy that territory, that territory will be taken from you. And that is exactly what has been happening,” Tom Facchine, an imam from New Jersey, said.

Last year, Palestinian immigrant Leqaa Kordia found her rights in jeopardy when immigration agents knocked on her door and detained her over her activism against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

Kordia spent more than a year in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention before an immigration judge ordered her to be released in March.

But Kordia — who is still fighting deportation — told ICNA conference attendees on Saturday that she has no regrets, encouraging them to remain politically active and engaged.

“Speaking up, it comes with a cost … It cost me my health, my life, literally my freedom, and I’m living in uncertainty that tomorrow I’m going to be here, or I’m going to be deported,” she said.

“It comes with a cost, but it’s worth it. It’s worth it because silence, it costs even way more than speaking.”

May 23 (UPI) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday added two more airports that travelers to the United States can be routed through for Ebola screening when entering the country.

The enhanced travel screening announced earlier this week by the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security is meant to screen people for the virus on entry to the country if they have been in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan or Uganda.

The outbreak, which started in the DRC and has spread to neighboring South Sudan and Uganda, is estimated to have 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths, the World Health Organization on Friday said, adding that the “real scale of the outbreak is likely far larger.”

The CDC first issued restrictions on Thursday for Americans returning to the United States to be screened at Washington Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., before continuing on to their final destinations.

The two additional airports will be Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which started to accept travelers at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Friday, and George W. Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, which will start to accept travelers on Tuesday, May 26, at 11:59 p.m. EDT, the CDC said on Saturday.

“These travelers will have their air travel re-routed to arrive at select airports,” CDC officials said in the update.

The enhanced health screening includes being escorted to a designated screening area; completing a questionnaire about their travel history and symptoms; having their temperatures checked using non-contact thermometers; and observation by CDC staff for signs of illness.

“Travelers with fever or other symptoms that could be Ebola will receive additional evaluation by a CDC public health officer,” the agency said.

“If the assessment shows that a traveler may be sick with Ebola, the traveler will be transferred to a hospital for further medical evaluation,” it said.

The WHO on Friday raised the national risk assessment during the outbreak in the DRC to “very high,” but officials said that global risk for infection with the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, for which there is no approved vaccine.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus during a meeting on Friday thanked the efforts of neighboring nations in Africa who have assisted during the outbreak, as well as the various regional and global health agencies that also have done so.

Although the United States last year pulled out of the WHO, the U.S. State Department said on Saturday that it has activated a dedicated Ebola Response Task Force that is led by “senior experts with direct experience managing prior Ebola outbreaks” in 2014 and 2018.

The department also has deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team and provided $32 million in assistance to U.S. partners in the region, it said in a press release.

[kicker]

WASHINGTON — For much of President Trump’s second term, Republican senators have largely stayed in line, wary of the consequences of defying a president with a history of targeting those who cross him. This week, that dynamic noticeably shifted.

Senate Republicans blocked two of Trump’s legislative priorities, angered by the push to create a $1.8-billion federal fund to compensate people who claim to have been politically persecuted, including rioters who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The revolt forced Republican leaders to pull a planned vote on legislation to fund the president’s immigration crackdown and security features for the president’s White House ballroom project.

In response, the president defended the fund and lashed out at its critics.

“I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE”!

The president also called Republican senators who broke with him quitters who are “screwing the Republican Party.”

The friction, which has been building for weeks, is being watched as potential test to the limits of Trump’s grip on his party amid an already tense political environment heading into the midterm elections.

“This is kind of a perfect storm,” former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It may be that this time you can point to it and say this is when the great migration begins, away from some of the president’s policies and away from the fear that the president can target you.”

Whether this week marks the beginning of that moment — or simply another episode of political turbulence that fades — is the central question now handing over Trump’s second term.

Not the first break — but an escalation

This is not the first time Republicans have broken with the president. In November, Congress overwhelmingly voted to force the Justice Department to release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, an effort that Trump unsuccessfully tried to thwart for months.

The Epstein vote showed that on the right issue, under the right circumstances, Republicans could be moved to defy Trump. This week, the creation of the fund changed the circumstances again, and the number of Republican senators willing to act quickly grew.

This moment comes after months of rising costs during the war in Iran, efforts by the president to oust members of his own party and now a set of proposals that are proving hard to defend in an election year.

“What you have is basically a bunch of people who feel a bit under siege,” said Bob Olinksy, the senior vice president of Structural Reform and Governance at the Center for American Progress. “At the same time, they know that most of what the president is doing is unpopular, and they’re the ones who are going to be standing for reelection in November.”

Republicans push back

Senate Republicans leaders are now asking the Department of Justice to reconsider the terms of the fund, underscoring just how politically toxic the idea has become within the president’s own party.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told reporters that the politically speaking, the fund is “unexplainable.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told the New York Times the fund should be in real trouble. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) called the fund “utterly stupid” and “morally wrong.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican whom Trump has singled out for going against him, was equally unsparing, saying he opposed “using billions of taxpayer dollars to compensate convicted felons and thugs who attacked police.” He also criticized the administration for pushing domestic and foreign policy issues that he says are bad for housing and the military.

“If opposing these things makes me a RINO [Republican In Name Only], then I gladly accept that nickname,” Tillis wrote on X. “We need Republicans to do well in November, but the stupid stuff is killing our chances!”

The Republican push back comes as the concern about self-dealing runs deep across the electorate.

A recent poll Economist/YouGov poll found that 59% of Americans believe Trump is using his office for personal gain, though that belief is sharply divided among partisan lines. A CNN poll found that 37% of Americans say Trump puts the good of the country above his personal gain, while 32% say he is in touch with the problems of ordinary Americans.

Asked if the political environment influenced the actions this week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters that there is a “political component to everything we do around here.”

Funds and tax immunity clauses

Senate Democrats are wondering if the fund will mark a watershed moment for Republicans.

“Have Republicans finally found a bridge too far?” Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters after Republicans left Washington without funding Trump’s priorities.

Democrats have called the fund an illegal abuse of power designed to line the pockets of Trump’s allies with taxpayer dollars. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called it a “pure theft of public funds.”

The fund was created as part of a settlement resolving a $10-billion lawsuit Trump personally brought against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. Alongside it, the deal says the IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing any tax claims against Trump and his businesses.

Under the tax immunity clause, Trump and his family could save more than $600 million, according to an analysis by Forbes.

The fund, however, has been the target of most of the bipartisan ire. Mostly because Trump and administration officials have not ruled out that it could stand to benefit people who carried out violence during the Jan. 6 riot.

The public funds, if disbursed, would come from the federal judgment fund, which is a Congress-approved ongoing appropriation that allows the Justice Department to settle cases and make payouts. In the past, Republicans have taken issue with the fund. The GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee characterized it an abuse in 2017.

Several of the president’s allies have already talked about tapping into the fund.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney who served prison time in relation to campaign finance violations, said he plans to apply for compensation.

Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and later pardoned by Trump, told CBS News he would seek a payout from the fund.

“I was targeted,” Tarrio said. “And I do believe that this fund does apply to me.”

Americans always say they want politicians with backbone — men and women of principle who will stand up for what they believe in, even when it’s unpopular.

And every so often, the American people prove their commitment to this noble aspiration by firing anybody who actually tries it.

Take Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who just lost a reelection bid by double digits after President Trump’s affiliated committees dumped enough money into Kentucky to purchase, well, Kentucky.

Massie committed the cardinal sin of modern Republican politics: He behaved as though Congress were a coequal branch of government instead of the warm-up act before a Trump rally.

He bucked Trump on spending, Iran and — in what apparently qualified as political suicide — whether or not to release the Epstein files. For this display of independent thought, Massie was summarily retired by what can only be described as the Trump cult (formerly known as the Republican primary electorate).

Before anybody accuses me of hyperbole, consider the remarkably revealing example presented recently on the New York Times podcast, “The Daily.”

At a town hall in Burlington, Ky., one voter explained to Massie that Trump is basically omniscient.

“As I see it,” the voter said, “the one person in the whole United States, maybe the world, that understands everything and has input to everything is Donald Trump.”

Not content with mere earthly wisdom, Trump also possesses universal awareness, superior intelligence and perhaps even low-level clairvoyance. The voter continued that Trump “gets more information, more meetings, more everything” than anybody else in government.

When Massie noted that Trump opposed releasing the Epstein files, the man calmly explained that if Trump changed positions, “there was a reason” — one too profound for ordinary mortals to comprehend.

Massie’s reply deserves to be bronzed and mounted over the entrance to the U.S. Capitol: “I don’t give anybody but God that kind of trust.”

Unfortunately, for a large portion of the Republican electorate (about 55%, based on the Kentucky primary results), those words constitute sacrilege against their earthly savior.

As South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham cheerfully boasted on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, “This is the party of Donald Trump.” Which is true in much the same way North Korea is the party of Kim Jong Un.

The one ironic twist in all of this is that Americans finally managed to punish somebody over the Epstein files — only it turned out to be the guy who wanted them released.

There’s American justice for you.

Massie isn’t the only Republican currently being fitted for concrete shoes. Trump also helped finish off Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, whose unforgivable crime was voting to convict Trump during the impeachment trial following Jan. 6. And Trump has endorsed controversial Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, which in today’s GOP primary environment is roughly the equivalent of finding a horse head in your bed.

Now, to be fair, Cassidy and Cornyn are no Massie, who openly opposed Trump and paid the price standing upright. Cassidy and Cornyn demonstrated brief moments of independence, only to spend years vainly performing political interpretive dance routines in hopes of regaining Trump’s favor.

Still, there may be a silver lining here for students of political irony.

Trump’s endorsement of Paxton will force Republicans to spend enormous sums defending a deep red state that would ordinarily require little more than a campaign sign and a pickup truck.

Meanwhile, Trump is creating resentful lame-duck Republicans in Congress who now possess the most dangerous attribute in politics: nothing left to lose.

But the broader message is unmistakable. Trump wants Republicans to understand that disagreement will not be tolerated. No criticism. No distancing. No independent branding.

The party line is whatever Trump said five minutes ago, amended by whatever he says five minutes from now. By now, everyone knows this to be true.

Which would be excellent news for Trump, if not for one small complication: The rest of the country appears to be tiring of his act. Recent polling shows Trump’s approval slipping to 37%, while Democrats gain major ground, surging to a +11 on the generic congressional ballot.

Trump, it seems, has created a situation in which Republicans can either oppose him and be destroyed in a primary, or they can embrace him and risk losing the House and the Senate in November’s general election. It’s the old “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” conundrum.

The point is this: With the midterms approaching, Trump is making sure Republicans are ensnared in the gravitational pull of his unpopularity.

That may satisfy the president’s desire for complete loyalty. It may also hand Democrats control of both chambers of Congress.

Trump is settling all family business this week, by purging those pesky disloyal Republicans. Only time will tell whether he’s also purging America’s non-Republican “swing” voters, as well.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

President Trump on Thursday announced that grocery stories and air conditioning companies will be allowed to keep using high-polluting refrigerants for longer than they would have under a law he signed during his first administration.

“This was a tremendous burden, a tremendous cost,” said Trump, surrounded in the Oval Office by executives from supermarket chains including Kroger, Fairway, Neimann Foods and Piggly Wiggly. “It was making the equipment unaffordable, and the actual benefit was nothing.”

The move loosens rules meant to restrict hydroflourocarbons, a class of climate-damaging chemicals used in cooling equipment. HFCs are known as “super pollutants” because their impact on climate change can be tens of thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide during their shorter lifespans.

In the move Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency extends the deadline for companies to comply with a 2023 rule transitioning refrigerators and air conditioners off HFCs and onto new cooling technologies. Reducing these chemicals and moving to cleaner refrigerants has long been a bipartisan issue.

Trump is also proposing exemptions from a rule requiring leak repairs on large-scale refrigeration systems.

The administration framed the changes as part of its effort to bring down high grocery costs. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said the actions will save $2.4 billion for Americans and safeguard 350,000 jobs.

“Americans who wanted to be able to fix their equipment were instead being required to buy far more costly new equipment and that just doesn’t make any sense,” said Zeldin.

David Doniger, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the move will not only harm the climate, but U.S. competitiveness in global refrigerant markets as well.

“The EPA is catering to a small group of straggling companies by derailing the shift away from these climate super-pollutants,” he said. “The industry at large supports the HFC phasedown and has already invested in making new refrigerants and equipment, currently installed in thousands of stores.”

Danielle Wright, executive director of the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council, an environmental nonprofit, said any perceived near-term savings from the rollbacks will be outweighed by the future costs.

“Business owners are far more worried about the escalating cost of keeping aging, high‑global-warming-potential equipment running than they are about the cost of installing new, compliant systems,” she said.

Trump dismissed the climate concerns, saying his changes “are not going to have any impact on the environment.”

He said he wants to get rid of the technology transition rule entirely in the future.

May 21 (UPI) — Americans traveling back to the United States who have recently been in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda or South Sudan will be required to enter the country through Washington, D.C.

Citizens and lawful permanent residents who have been in any of the countries in the last 21 days will be required to fly to Washington Dulles International Airport for enhanced health screenings before continuing on to their final destination, the U.S. Department of State announced.

The announcement follows an Air France flight bound for the United States on Wednesday afternoon being redirected to Montreal Trudeau International Airport after a passenger on board was determined to be from the DRC.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday already had blocked non-U.S. passport holders from entering the United States if they had been to any of the three African nations in the last 21 days.

An American doctor, one of several exposed in the DRC, was also confirmed to be infected with the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola on Tuesday and flown to Germany for treatment.

“The Dulles requirement applies to all passengers, including U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, who were present in those countries,” the State Department said in a travel advisory.

“Please be prepared for flight changes or cancellations,” the department said.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference that there have 51 confirmed cases of Ebola among the three countries, with nearly 600 suspected cases and 139 suspected deaths.

Tedros said the scale of the epidemic is “much larger” in the DRC, and that there have been deaths reported among health care workers, which suggests health care-associated transmission.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that the doctor whose case was confirmed this week, with officials flying him to Germany because of their previous experience in handling Ebola cases.

Although contacts linked to the doctor also have been moved to Germany and Czechia for observation, there have been no additional cases in Americans, the CDC said.

As someone who is “not the best person with bugs and stuff,” Stephanie Bernaba never imagined herself becoming an outdoorsy mom.

But the mother of three is getting more daring as gas prices and other travel costs make vacations more expensive. Bernaba, 47, has been steering her family toward local beaches, bike rides and hiking trails near their home in coastal Rhode Island instead of the faraway trips they once took.

“I’ve been trying to do more of that because one, it’s quality time. Two, it’s fresh air. And three, we’re not spending an arm and a leg,” she said.

That kind of calibration is shaping the summer travel season, which gets its traditional start in the U.S. with the long Memorial Day holiday weekend. Higher fuel prices resulting from the Iran war and other inflationary pressures are making most forms of travel costlier as people in many parts of the world form their plans.

The U.S. Travel Assn. expects annual travel spending to grow by a modest 1% this year, powered largely by domestic leisure travel despite the FIFA World Cup giving soccer fans from other countries a reason to visit the U.S. Airfares have climbed around the world along with the price of jet fuel as the war constrains global oil supplies.

Sticking closer to home may not cushion the sticker shock. The nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated Americans would collectively spend an extra $3.5 billion on gasoline over the holiday weekend. The average price for a gallon of regular gas in the U.S. was $4.56 on Thursday compared to $3.18 a year ago, according to the motor club AAA.

Other travel expenses have gone up too. The latest consumer price index showed airfares were 20.7% higher in April from a year earlier, the cost of intracity transit, such as buses and subways, rose 5.6%, lodging cost 4.3% more, and eating out got 3.6% pricier.

Changing travel patterns

Despite elevated prices, industry forecasts suggest Americans still want to get away, even if it means replacing long trips with long weekends, choosing destinations closer to home and finding ways to cut costs by cooking meals or using buses and trains instead of driving.

AAA predicted that 45 million U.S. residents would travel at least 50 miles from home between Thursday and Monday. The Transportation Security Administration said it expects to screen 18.3 million passengers from Thursday to next Wednesday.

Many households are planning summer vacations but making tradeoffs such as shorter trips or cheaper lodging, according to Bank of America analysts. Mastercard said in a recent report that consumers appeared increasingly focused on value and were adjusting their destinations and timing instead of not going away at all.

“Generally, it’s certainly more of a demand reshuffling than a demand softening,” David Tinsley, a senior economist at Bank of America Institute, said.

For the Bernaba family, that has meant trading a big vacation for a shorter trip nearby this summer. Their scaled-back itinerary still is pricey: more than $400 for a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard for their car and passengers, and about $800 a night for each of the two hotel rooms the family of five needs.

Another family that had planned to join them backed out after seeing the price tag.

“The pinch is being felt all the way around,” Bernaba said.

Analysts have increasingly described travel spending as “K-shaped,” with higher-income households continuing to spend while lower-income families pull back or opt out entirely. Bank of America said lower-income households were significantly more likely to report having no summer travel plans this year.

Travelers are confronting other stressors besides cost.

Airlines around the world have canceled flights and trimmed routes to save on fuel and operating costs, leaving passengers with fewer options. Recent U.S. government shutdowns — which caused major flight disruptions and long security lines — are likely still fresh in travelers’ minds. The conflict in the Middle East and broader geopolitical tensions add another layer of concern, especially for those considering trips abroad.

The various factors impacting travel right now have made planning trips more mentally taxing and may be pushing people toward simpler and more accessible vacations that feel easier to manage, said Marta Soligo, a tourism sociologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“The keyword here is unpredictability,” Soligo said. “Tourists don’t like unpredictability.”

Quality over quantity

Jim Wang, a personal finance blogger who lives in Maryland with his wife and four children, said his family’s original plan to travel to Spain to see a full solar eclipse in August began to unravel once they looked at the logistics.

Beyond thousands of dollars in airfare, the trip would have required multiple connecting flights, plus a car rental to reach northern Spain, where the path of totality is expected to pass.

“It’s like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I want to see the eclipse that much,’” Wang said.

Instead, Wang’s family plans to head this summer to the Lake Tahoe area straddling California and Nevada, where they can stay at a relative’s cabin for free, hike and enjoy a slower pace with limited cellphone service. His wife’s parents and sister expect to join them.

“We’re still going to travel. It’ll just be different,” Wang said. “The vacations are no longer as grand for the adults. But for our kids, it’s still exciting.”

Nancy McGehee, a Virginia Tech hospitality professor who studies consumer behavior, said travelers are increasingly focusing more on the “why than the where” when it comes to vacations.

“What we’re seeing is people are saying, ‘All right, we can’t do that big splashy trip we wanted to do, but what else can we do?’” McGehee said. “It’s more quality over quantity that we’re seeing people go for.”

Back in Rhode Island, Bernaba has accepted that travel may look different for her family for a while.

“I think that’s probably why my mind has gone to doing more nature-y things,” she said. “Let’s learn how to use the earth to enjoy ourselves because that’s not going to cost as much money.”

Yamat writes for the Associated Press.

The race for the 34th Congressional District in the core of Los Angeles was supposed to be a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. The two dozen hopefuls vying for a spot in the top-two primary were full of self-proclaimed fighters ready to oppose President Trump and establishment Democrats.

Instead, it’s shaping up to be a contest between the powerful group of Latinos who make up a majority of the district’s voters and the small but politically potent Korean American community, as Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez and former city planning Commissioner Robert Lee Ahn grabbed the runoff spots that will determine L.A.’s next member of Congress.

“This is really ethnic politics 101,” said Matt Barreto, a UCLA professor of political science who helps run the polling firm Latino Decisions.

Ahn, an attorney and a relative unknown in the crowded primary field, surprised many with a victory that vaulted him ahead of multiple Latino candidates in a district where more than half the voters are Latino. If elected in the June 6 runoff, he would be the only Korean American member of Congress and the first in nearly 20 years.

But it wasn’t surprising to anyone who studies the intricacies of identity politics in Los Angeles, or to those who had been paying attention to Ahn’s aggressive focus on Korean American voters.

Ahn’s campaign staff spent dozens of hours registering voters at malls and outside restaurants in Koreatown, signing up hundreds of new voters. Ahn made his pitch at multiple Korean churches in the district, and a large portion of his donor base was from the Korean American community, which helped him raise more money than Gomez in the latter part of the campaign despite a deluge of cash Gomez received from political committees.

And when Virginia state legislator Mark Keam, also a Korean American, flew to Los Angeles to endorse Ahn, a bank of TV cameras from Korean American news stations was there.

Robert Lee Ahn raised the most money by far in latest campaign finance reports »

Daniel Hong, a 38-year-old who works in the film industry, voted for the first time Tuesday even though he’s been a citizen for about 20 years. Hong, who is Korean American, said he read numerous articles about Ahn and received multiple phone calls from his campaign.

“That was the first time anybody has ever reached out to me for my vote,” said Hong as he stood outside a polling place set up in a Korean Presbyterian church.

Deborah Choi, 62, said she voted for Ahn so “he can speak for Korean Americans here.” The first wave of Koreans immigrated to the U.S. “so many years ago,” Choi said, but their representation in the highest elected offices remains low. She hopes her 36-year-old son will one day run for office too.

Though county election officials have yet to process more than 13,000 ballots, the 41-year-old Ahn remains thousands of votes ahead of the third-place candidate, fellow former planning Commissioner Maria Cabildo.

With turnout expected to hover around 15% of registered voters, preliminary returns show Ahn’s strategy paid off big. The biggest strongholds of votes for Ahn centered on Koreatown, Westlake and Chinatown, while the 42-year-old Gomez was ahead in neighborhoods throughout the northeast part of the district.

In early absentee ballot returns headed into primary election day, Korean Americans made up nearly a quarter of votes even though they comprise just 6% of registered voters.

Few Korean Americans have come this close to winning a seat in Congress since 1998, when Republican Jay Kim of Diamond Bar lost to a primary challenger after three terms in office. (David Min, a UC Irvine professor, announced a challenge to GOP Rep. Mimi Walters of Orange County this week.)

“Korean Americans in Southern California have been hungry for political representation for a very long time,” said Taeku Lee, a professor of politics and law at UC Berkeley. Lee said the recent campaign that helped propel David Ryu, the first Korean American elected to the L.A. City Council, may have also helped the community learn on-the-ground skills that mobilized voters in the congressional race.

The symbolism of Ahn’s win was not lost on his supporters Tuesday night.

“It’s very significant,” said Jinha Park, a radiologist who attended Ahn’s election night party at a Mexican restaurant in Westlake. “The Korean American community has always felt voiceless at the federal level.”

The question now, as the two Democrats ready for what could be a costly runoff, is whether Ahn, the son of Korean immigrants, can broaden his appeal beyond the Korean American voters who are motivated to send him to Washington.

He faces a fierce challenge: While progressive candidates to his left spoke passionately about fighting for “sanctuary cities” that protect undocumented immigrants and single-payer healthcare, Ahn emphasized the “business sensibility” he would bring to the office and argued there was room to negotiate with Republicans on certain issues, an idea that could prove unpopular in a district where just 9% of voters are Republican, and where Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in last year’s presidential primary.

Ahn will also have to make a case to Latino voters, who make up more than half of registered voters in the district, why they should choose him over Gomez. The three-term assemblyman is the son of Mexican immigrants, has amassed dozens of establishment endorsements from Democratic elected officials, labor unions and environmental groups, and touted his progressive record in the Legislature.

Among his backers is Xavier Becerra, who rose to become the highest-ranking Latino U.S. congressman and vacated the seat to become California’s attorney general.

Votes that went to the remaining Latino candidates in the primary made up more than 38% of voters at last count, and the district has sent a Latino to Congress for more than half a century.

“When [Ahn is] running against a guy named Gomez, as good as his outreach might be in the Latino community, Latinos’ gut and heart is going to be more with Gomez,” said UCLA professor Barreto.

Ahn dismissed the idea. “The notion that Latinos will only vote for a Latino … I think we’re really going to transcend that with our campaign,” Ahn said in an interview Wednesday. He appears to be positioning himself as an outsider, which would be similar to the campaign Ryu ran when he made his successful council run in 2015. Ahn called Gomez a “professional politician that is powered by special interests.”

Gomez’s camp shot back, saying voters will see through Ahn’s formidable fundraising and realize his credentials don’t match with the district.

“More than anything, he’s ideologically out of step with the district,” said Parke Skelton, a campaign consultant for Gomez. Skelton said Ahn, who changed his registration from Republican to Democrat in 2012, “has taken positions that really put him out of the mainstream Democratic base in this district.”

christine.maiduc@latimes.com

For more on California politics, follow @cmaiduc.

ALSO

Half the candidates in L.A.’s latest congressional race have their own immigrant story. With Trump, this contest is personal.

Results from L.A.’s congressional primary

Updates on California politics

Sign up for our free Essential Politics newsletter

Ahead of President Trump’s arrival in Beijing on Wednesday for his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, longtime China expert Kurt M. Campbell offered a novel way of watching the two leaders’ high-stakes faceoff. Think of it not as nation-versus-nation or army-versus-army, but as the sort of “single combat” celebrated in ancient literature, along the lines of David and Goliath in the Bible or Achilles and Hector in “The Iliad.”

“This one has the feel of a geopolitical heavyweight matchup,” Campbell, chairman of the Asia Group strategic consulting firm, wrote in Foreign Affairs this week.

Unlike in their initial get-together early in Trump’s first term, both men now are seasoned leaders in their separate ways — Xi an unchallenged dictator, and an envious Trump seeking to be. Both act with few immediate checks on their power, though Xi acts strategically and Trump impulsively and transactionally. And both, as leaders of super-powers, have the capability to shape the economic and security fates of a wary world.

That world, Campbell concluded in his essay, is “eager to see whether the two leaders emerge driving together in the chariot, or with one dragging the other behind,” as Achilles did the vanquished Hector.

However the Trump-Xi meeting ends, Trump is no Achilles going into this match. In fact, in the six decades of U.S.-China relations, perhaps no American president has entered the summit arena in a weaker position than Trump, the would-be strongman and artiste of the deal. Worse, his weakness — and by extension his country’s — is mostly self-inflicted.

Trump had postponed what was intended as an early April meeting in hopes of striding triumphantly into Beijing as the conqueror of Iran, a China ally. Instead China is receiving him as a “giant with a limp,” in the phrase of its Communist Party-controlled Global Times newspaper.

Trump’s Mideast war, the sort he’d promised never to start, lingers for a third month in a costly stalemate — $29 billion and counting — that has humiliated the president in the public words of Germany’s chancellor and the private thoughts of many more global leaders, Xi likely among them. Trump can’t “project the same arrogance” as he did visiting China in 2017, a former Chinese army officer, Yue Gang, told the New York Times.

At home, the conflict has caused gasoline prices and inflation to spike while tanking Trump’s already depressed polls. A newly released CNN poll conducted April 30 to May 4 had 65% of Americans disapproving of his overall job performance and a whopping 70% against his handling of the economy — the issue that arguably got him elected. With experience, American consumers and soybean farmers now know that they, not the Chinese, have paid for Trump’s beloved tariffs.

The president’s standing at home could hardly have been helped by his parting words to reporters at the White House. Asked “to what extent are Americans’ financial situation motivating you to make a deal” with Iran, Trump blithely replied, “Not even a little bit.” He added, in the sort of political gaffe that journalist Michael Kinsley defined as telling the truth: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”

He’s already a loser in the negotiations with Xi. For weeks the Trump administration has unsuccessfully urged China to use its leverage to goad Iran to accept a peace on Americans’ terms or, at a minimum, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, given China’s self-interest as Iran’s biggest oil customer by far. As China scholar Henrietta Levin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the Associated Press, “I don’t think China has any interest in solving the problems the U.S. has created for itself in the Middle East.”

Not least, perhaps, because China has seen that, by the Pentagon’s own reckoning, the war has depleted U.S. stockpiles of weaponry after thousands upon thousands of strikes against Iran. And that has further raised questions in China and beyond about whether Trump would have the United States come to the defense of Taiwan, the self-governing, U.S.-armed island that China claims as its own.

After all, the thinking goes, if the United States can’t bring a lesser power like Iran quickly to heel, how might it fare against a near-peer such as China, especially with a diminished U.S. arsenal and Mideast distractions?

It’s mostly a mystery what the leaders’ talks might yield. In a break with diplomatic tradition, though not with Trump’s seat-of-the-pants style, apparently little planning went into this super-power summit — another reflection of a distracted U.S. side. Still, with a number of tech, agribusiness, finance and aerospace chieftains in tow, Trump and his team are hoping for a few politically appealing deliverables, such as sales of U.S. soybeans and Boeing aircraft, to give the president a lift back home.

But don’t look for progress on the longstanding issues dividing the United States and China over trade and military dominance in the Pacific region. And as for another of those perennial issues — climate change and clean-energy technology — the U.S. under Trump has willfully surrendered global preeminence to China, ceding markets for solar, wind energy, electric vehicles, grid storage and more in his backward-looking, ostrich-like obsession with drilling oil and mining coal.

Whatever hyperbolic claims Trump makes for his China trip, the outcome of the summit (on top of his quagmire in Iran) should at least be this: retiring the myth of Trump the deal-maker and savvy businessman.

If he were such a visionary, Trump would be prodding the nation to global leadership in technology and clean-energy investments, not reversing past progress and paying companies billions of taxpayers’ dollars to stop clean-energy projects. In markets worldwide, the future is now and America is forfeiting the game to China.

In this contest, Trump is letting Xi drive the chariot. Unfortunately, average Americans are the ones being dragged through the dust as China rides into the 21st century.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
Threads: @jkcalmes
X: @jackiekcalmes

May 11 (UPI) — AAA estimates that 45 million Americans will be traveling at least 50 miles from home over Memorial Day weekend, a slight uptick over last year.

AAA reported its estimate on Monday, forecasting an uptick in travel between Thursday, May 21 and Monday, May 25. Last year about 44.8 million people traveled for Memorial Day weekend.

About 39.1 million people are estimated to be hitting the road while another 3.66 million will fly and 2.22 million will take other forms of travel.

“Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer, and for most Americans, it’s a three-day weekend,” Stacey Barber, AAA vice president, said in a statement. “Travel demand remains strong, and despite higher fuel prices, many people are prioritizing leisure travel during holiday breaks.”

AAA said last year the average gallon of regular gasoline cost $3.17 on Memorial Day.

Fuel prices remain high across the United States as the war in Iran drags on. The average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States is $4.52. That is up from $4.45 last week, $4.13 last month and $3.13 a year ago.

Oil prices climbed again on Monday, following President Donald Trump‘s statement that Iran’s response to the United States’ latest peace proposal was “totally unacceptable.”

Brent crude oil increased by 4% to $105.50 per barrel and West Texas Intermediate rose 4.4% to $99.80.

NEW YORK — No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.

In the midst of a hantavirus outbreak that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the U.S. government’s top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been uncharacteristically missing in action, according to a number of experts.

To President Trump, “we seem to have things under very good control,” as he told reporters Friday evening.

To experts, the situation aboard a cruise ship has not spiraled because, unlike COVID-19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily. It has been health experts in other countries, not the United States, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the last week.

“The CDC is not even a player,” said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I’ve never seen that before.”

Not until late Friday did CDC actions accelerate.

Health officials confirmed the deployment of a team to Spain’s Canary Islands, where the ship was expected to arrive early Sunday local time, to meet the Americans onboard. They said a second team will go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska as part of a plan to evacuate U.S. passengers from the ship to a University of Nebraska quarantine center for evaluation and monitoring. Also, the CDC issued its first health alert to U.S. doctors, advising them of the possibility of imported cases.

At their first briefing, held Saturday by telephone only for invited reporters, officials pledged to be transparent in updating the public but said the media could not cite the speakers by name under rules set by aides to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They did not directly answer a question about whether the U.S. passengers could leave the university medical facility when they wanted.

The CDC’s diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said.

The hantavirus outbreak is “a sentinel event” that speaks to “how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I’m very sorry to say that we are not prepared,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

How the outbreak unfolded

Early last month, a 70-year-old Dutch man developed a feverish illness on a cruise ship traveling from Argentina to Antarctica and some islands in the South Atlantic. He died less than a week later. More people became sick, including the man’s wife and a German woman who both died.

Hantavirus was first identified as a cause of sickness of one of the cases on May 2. The World Health Organization swung into action and by Monday was calling it an outbreak. About two dozen Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked last month and 17 who remained on board.

It’s WHO taking center stage

For decades, the CDC partnered with the WHO in such situations. The CDC acted as a mainstay of any international investigation, providing staff and expertise to help unravel any outbreak mystery, develop ways to control it and communicate to the public what they should know and how they should worry.

Such actions were a large reason why the CDC developed a reputation as the world’s premier public health agency.

But this time, the WHO has been center stage. It made the risk assessment that has told people the outbreak is not a pandemic threat.

“I don’t think this is a giant threat to the United States,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center. But how this situation has played out “just shows how empty and vapid the CDC is right now,” she said.

Tumult under Trump

The current situation comes after 16 tumultuous months during which the Trump administration withdrew from the WHO, has restricted CDC scientists from talking to international counterparts at times and embarked on a plan to build its own international public health network through one-on-one agreements with individual countries.

The administration has laid off thousands of CDC scientists and public health professionals, including members of the agency’s ship sanitation program.

As this was playing out, Kennedy said he was working to “restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, invest in innovation, and rebuild trust through integrity and transparency.”

Waiting to hear from the CDC

The CDC has not been completely silent on hantavirus.

The agency on Wednesday issued a short statement that said the risk to the American public is “extremely low,” and described the U.S. government as “the world’s leader in global health security.”

Said Nuzzo: “Not only was that not helpful, it actually does damage because a core principle of public health communications is humility.”

The CDC’s acting director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, posted a message on social media that the agency was lending its expertise in coordinating with other federal agencies and international authorities. Arizona officials this week said they learned from the CDC that one of the Americans who left the ship — a person with no symptoms and not considered contagious — had already returned to the state. WHO officials said the CDC has been sharing technical information.

The CDC also is “monitoring the health status and preparing medical support for all of the American passengers on the cruise,” Bhattacharya wrote.

But federal health officials have mostly been tight-lipped, declining interview requests.

COVID-19 comparison

In interviews this week, some experts made a comparison with a 2020 incident involving the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship docked in Japan that became the setting of one of the first large COVID-19 outbreaks outside China.

The CDC sent personnel to the port, helped evacuate American passengers, ran quarantines, shared genetic data on the virus, coordinated with the WHO and Japan, held public briefings and rapidly published reports “that became the world’s reference data on cruise ship COVID transmission,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director.

Some aspects of the international response to the Diamond Princess were criticized, and it did not halt the outbreak or stop COVID-19’s spread across the world. But some experts say it was not for the CDC’s lack of trying.

“The CDC was right on top of it, very visible, very active in trying to manage and contain it,” Gostin said, while the agency’s work now is delayed and subdued.

Instead of working with nearly all of the world’s nations through the WHO, the Trump administration has pursued bilateral health agreements with individual nations for information sharing, public health support, and what it describes as “the introduction of innovative American technologies.” Roughly 30 agreements are currently in place.

That’s not sufficient, Gostin said. “You can’t possibly cover a global health crisis by doing one-on-one deals with countries here and there,” he said.

Stobbe writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Ali Swenson in New York, Darlene Superville in Washington and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque contributed to this report.