control

Iran and Oman are reportedly closing in on a deal that would give the Islamic Republic full control over ships entering the Strait of Hormuz. This comes as a tenuous pause in fighting between the U.S. and Iran enters a sixth day and a day after U.S. President Donald Trump insisted that Iran would fully open the vital chokepoint today or face new and more intense attacks that would include powerplants, other civilian infrastructure and even strikes on leadership. Iran largely closed the Strait after it was hit by the U.S. and Israel on Feb. 28. The American leader is pushing a rekindled effort to find a diplomatic off-ramp to a conflict that has killed 18 American troops, wounded hundreds more, drained U.S. weapons stocks and roiled international relations and global financial markets.

Highlighting the precarious nature of vessel transits through this narrow passage between Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), another ship was struck by Iran overnight as it was leaving the Strait, a maritime security official told TWZ.

The Gulf of Oman, which is the eastern approach to the Strait and the Persian Gulf, is largely controlled by Iran to the north and Oman to the south. Under the emerging agreement between those countries, “vessels heading into the Persian Gulf will transit a channel controlled by Iran, and close to its coast. Ships leaving the Gulf will travel on a channel near Oman,” The New York Times reported.

Both Iran and the U.S. are already following this general traffic pattern, with the U.S. Navy recommending transits close to the Omani coastline and Iran pushing shipping toward its shores. The middle of the Strait has been deemed too hazardous because of the threat primarily from mines. The new plan being pushed by Iran and Oman would expand the use of these traffic patterns. Unless there is some special cutout made in the deal, it could require the U.S. Navy to seek permission to enter the Persian Gulf and then have to make the transit deep in Iranian waters, giving American warships degraded defensive options and putting them in the heart of Iran’s weapons engagement envelope.

While Iranian officials say that they won’t impose tolls, the accord does include a charge for service fees to cover the environmental impact of the shipping, security for the cargo ships and tankers, and staffing, the publication added. Revenues would be divided equally between Iran and Oman, two Iranian officials told the Times.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that “Tehran ​is unlikely to change its position,” because it has already shown flexibility by moving from its initial position of seeking full control over ​traffic in both directions in the strait.

But a U.S. official familiar with the negotiations told the Times on Monday that the Iranian account was “not accurate,” and said that any “temporary” routes established through the strait would not involve approvals or permissions by Iran, and would involve no tolls.

“The Exorcist” star Linda Blair had her property searched by law enforcement officers who were investigating and inspecting her kennel operation with more than 100 dogs.

Friday’s operation was carried out by the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control and the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning, according to a statement shared with People.

“The goal is to inspect this property for buildings and structures associated with a kennel operation reported to have more than 100 dogs,” the department said in the statement.

Blair, whose IMDb site lists dozens of movies and television shows dating back to 1968, founded the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation in 2003 to rehabilitate and rescue abandoned and abused animals.

Blair’s kennel facility’s permits expired in 2023, and she allegedly didn’t respond to attempts by the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control to contact her, People reported.

“The warrant allows us to lawfully access the property and verify compliance with County codes,” the department said. The operation is intended to evaluate “animal care, safety conditions, and overall welfare of the dogs housed on the property.”

County officials could not immediately be reached to comment about the findings of the inspection.

“Our priority is the safety and well-being of both the animals on the property and the people who may be working or residing here,” the department said in the statement. “This inspection will help us determine whether conditions meet required standards.”

Blair wrote about the incident in an July 31 Instagram post, saying that the animals were “good in lieu of our surprise visit in 105° heat.”

“Turns out we just have some paperwork to do and some diagrams but as everybody knows, I’m looking to move so I can be more educational and help more animals,” Blair wrote. “I’d rather move forward.”

Chris Young grew up in Clarksville, Tenn., in the direst imaginable circumstances — unimaginable, in fact, to many of us.

He never knew his father. His mother was a crack addict with a habit of stabbing her romantic partners. While his mom was in prison, Young and his older brother, Robert, mostly fended for themselves, often in a home that lacked electricity and running water. Young, tormented by sickle-cell disease, saw many of those closest to him die by homicide or suicide.

The two boys weren’t totally bereft. They had a grandfather, cousins, friends and a stepfather. A neighbor provided showers, until his water bill got too high; another supplied hot meals. A woman known as Big Mama offered shelter and tough love. But it wasn’t nearly enough. Desperate for money, the teenage Young — smart, entrepreneurial, dreaming of a rap career — became a gun-toting drug dealer.

Young’s searing memoir, “The Wound Is Where the Light Enters,” chronicles this bitter childhood and its devastating consequences. The evocative title is a quotation from the 13th century Persian poet Rumi.

Unlike some prison memoirs, this isn’t an innocence story. But it is no less an indictment of the U.S. justice system — its laws, its courts and its brutal prisons. “The constant state of heightened agitation and awareness that it takes to survive a single day in a federal penitentiary is enough to drive a man insane,” Young writes. “At every turn, the system is designed to crush your humanity. You’re an animal in there and are expected to act like one.”

But not everyone does. “The Wound Is Where the Light Enters” not only reveals the system’s horrors, but also celebrates the redemptive power of hope, intellect and community.

By the time Young was swept up in a federal drug investigation, he already had two felony drug convictions. His involvement in the federal conspiracy case, as he tells it, was marginal. He was no kingpin and had never met most of the people being charged.

But he faced a zealous prosecutor, with only court-appointed attorneys at his side. Worse yet, he was up against a harsh “three-strikes” law that replaced judicial discretion with mandatory minimum sentences.

Young’s own pride and sense of justice also came into play. He could have pleaded guilty, perhaps even cooperated, and received a finite (though still hefty) prison sentence. Instead, determined to argue his case, he opted for a trial at which conviction was all but certain. Then, against advice, he presented a meticulously crafted and rehearsed speech at his sentencing hearing.

The 26-year-old Young, who’d already spent four years behind bars, had used that time productively. A former straight-A student who had dropped out of high school, he had embarked on a program of self-education, reading deeply in African American history, Greek philosophy, finance and other subjects. “Every day,” he writes, “I left the library with new language to put to my thoughts.”

Young told the court about his chaotic upbringing and his recent scholarly pursuits. “He spoke of the things he could do if he did not have to die in prison. He told me of the possibilities that would never be,” the trial judge, Kevin H. Sharp, writes in the book’s foreword. “It was impossible to listen to someone so full of compassion, intelligence, and, above all, promise, and not question the system that had not just allowed this to happen but required it.”

Sharp sentenced Young to life without the possibility of parole, as the law mandated. But two years later, he stepped down from the bench and joined Young’s defense team.

Young describes his childhood mostly from the perspective of a boy — alternately bewildered, hurting, depressed and “mad all the time.” His account of his incarceration, with its mind-numbing routines, gang hegemony and intermittent violence, is equally gripping.

At McCreary, the tense high-security federal prison in Kentucky known as Misery Mountain, Young meditated, adhered to a workout routine, read prodigiously, taught GED classes to fellow inmates and maintained ties to his few surviving loved ones. And he kept hoping. “The system’s control over my body was absolute,” Young writes. “Its control over my mind was not.”

In 2015, the sickle cell-related disintegration of his hips prompted Young’s transfer to a low-security prison, Federal Medical Center Lexington. Here the surroundings are less bleak, the library better, the prisoners friendlier. Young teaches himself to code and envisions an app that will focus on mental health and suicide prevention. Yet he still must fight to obtain the hip replacement surgery he so desperately needs.

By now, his case has attracted sympathetic press attention and more effective lawyers. Even so, his story takes a dark turn. From Lexington, he is sent to his most terrifying prison yet, known as Bloody Beaumont, where COVID-19 adds another layer of threat. A judge reduces his sentence, but, for reasons never entirely clear, he is suddenly thrown into the prison’s “hole,” its barbarous solitary confinement cells.

It is from that hell that Young, more than a decade after his arrest, emerges to freedom — earning a degree in economics and public policy from Southern Methodist University, pursuing a consulting career and writing this indelible book. For his 2021 grant of executive clemency, he has his lawyers and reality-TV star Kim Kardashian to thank — as well as President Trump.

Klein, a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia, has been a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.

LIAM Payne allegedly flew into a drink and drug-fuelled fit of rage in his tragic final hours, according to sex workers who spent the day with the One Direction star.

The troubled singer died after falling 46ft from his third-floor hotel room balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on October 16, 2024.

Sworn statements from call girls Aldana Serrano and Lucila Goitea were taken hours after the tragic fall.

Now the documents, obtained by the Mail on Sunday, detail harrowing accounts suggesting the singer was on a path to destruction that day.

The pair say they were called to the CasaSur Palermo Hotel by Liam, 31, on the morning before he died and had consensual sex with him.

But they claim that the singer, who was worth £21m, became frustrated when it became difficult to pay for an agreed $5,000 (£3,700) fee as he had no cash.

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He allegedly smashed his £30,000 gold Rolex telling them he could “get ten of those,” before punching the hotel room TV three times.

After calming down, he is said to have fallen to his knees and asked the women to stay, claiming that “money didn’t make him happy”.

They say that Liam drunkenly serenaded them with his own songs before asking them for cocaine.

A toxicology report taken after his death revealed that the star had cocaine, alcohol and the powerful sedative Klonopin in his system at the time of the fatal fall.

Hotel worker Ezequiel Pereyra, 22, and waiter Braian Paiz, 26, have been charged with supplying the drugs and are awaiting trial.

They spent months in jail but were later released on bail. They deny the charges.

The singer, who had a history of addiction, arrived in the Argentine capital 16 days earlier to wait for his US visa renewal.

He spent the first two weeks of the trip with girlfriend Kate Cassidy and Argentinian businessman Rogelio ‘Roger’ Nores, 38, and was said to be sober for the entire fortnight.

After Kate returned to Miami on October 14 and Roger also left, Liam is believed to have fallen off the wagon.

He was told to leave the plush five-star Park Hyatt after trashing his room and launching into an alleged drink-fuelled tirade at the staff.

Liam then checked into the more modest, four-star CasaSur Palermo, where he reportedly called the two sex workers.

The women, who investigators treated as key witnesses, alleged Liam contacted one of them via WhatsApp after finding her profile online.

According to their statements, he sent photos of himself in bed at the hotel and a video to prove his identity after one of the women struggled to believe she was speaking to the One Direction star.

They say they arrived at the hotel around 11.30am where they showed their IDs to the front desk before being sent up to Liam’s room.

They said there was a communication barrier as the star only spoke English and they only spoke Spanish, so they relied on a translation app.

They claimed he initially tried to pay by international bank transfer, but they were unable to receive the money.

One woman said: “During our time there, we had sex with him, which was consensual sex, only once, and he wore protection.”

After spending around two hours in the room, the pair said they again asked to be paid the agreed $5,000 (£3,700).

Liam instead offered them his £30,000 gold Rolex, according to the statements.

One woman said: “We told him we only wanted money so he took it and smashed it. He told us he didn’t care about the money.

“And then he broke the TV, he punched it. He made us understand that he could smash everything because he knew he could pay for it.”

The women claimed they decided to leave, but Liam followed them downstairs into the hotel lobby, where they told staff he had smashed the television and refused to pay them.

While waiting in the lobby, they claimed Liam repeatedly paced around the hotel before returning to his room and then coming back downstairs.

The pair later returned briefly to collect belongings they had accidentally left behind.

One recalled: “He apologised for giving us a bad time.”

The women claimed they left shortly before 4pm and where Liam continued to act erratically.

Liam fell to his death at 5.07pm.

Aldana and Lucila only learned of Liam’s death after returning home and scrolling on social media, before police arrived later that evening to take their sworn statements.

It is unclear if they ever received the money.

WASHINGTON — The nation is set to have its least competitive congressional election cycle in years by some measures, with California partly driving the shift.

The redistricting carried out in California and nine other states since 2024 has left the nation with an unusually low number of truly competitive districts, narrowing the battle for U.S. House control in this year’s historically consequential midterms cycle to a few dozen races at best.

In California, that looks like a paradox: The state has both a shrinking number of political battlegrounds and a handful of critical races that could help decide which party controls the House. Both are a result of Proposition 50, the Democratic-led, voter-passed redistricting effort designed to offset new maps drawn by Republicans in Texas and other states.

Only three California races are rated as competitive by Cook Political Report, the nonpartisan analyst, compared with 12 races in 2024 and nine in 2022, according to a Times analysis of Cook data.

California was also the biggest driver in the nationwide decline of competitive seats, according to a separate Cook analysis released Wednesday. Six of the 14 U.S. House seats that dropped out of the swing-seat zone in 2026 were in the Golden State.

“There’s no question that we’re seeing the consequence” of the state’s redistricting, “of having fewer competitive districts,” said Michael Latner, a professor of political science at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

That doesn’t dilute the key role California is expected to play in Democrats’ effort to win the House majority, however. The new map made some blue seats safer and gave the party the chance to flip up to five red seats.

“The path to the House majority still runs through California,” said Anna Elsasser, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who said the party is investing heavily to flip those seats.

‘Not backing off’

The fight for the majority at the halfway point of President Trump’s second term is fierce. Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, face headwinds fueled by voters’ feelings on the economy and the war in Iran. Democrats have built their campaigns around Americans’ economic frustration in an attempt to win the House majority and regain some power in Trump’s Washington.

Having more safe seats positions California to have a greater effect on the election, said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego, and in Congress afterward, where the state is expected to have a large blue delegation.

The less-competitive map is a return to the 2000s for California, when the state’s two parties agreed on a congressional map that created safe districts for both, Kousser said.

That decade saw fewer competitive House races before new maps created more battleground areas in 2010 and 2020, the result of regular redistricting that occurs every decade after the U.S. census.

The shift in the state’s competitive seats caused by Proposition 50’s partisan redistricting was so acute because the existing 2020 map was relatively neutral, Cook senior editor David Wasserman said in the report. In Florida, Missouri and Texas, by contrast, the maps Republicans replaced were already partisan, making the shifts less extreme.

Three of the seats Democrats targeted with Proposition 50 are rated as solidly blue, while two present fights: the Central Valley seat held by Republican David Valadao, the state’s only toss-up race per Cook, and the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Darrell Issa in the San Diego area, where the redrawn district now slightly favors Democrats.

Just one seat Republicans hope to flip is rated competitively by Cook, that of Democrat Adam Gray in the Central Valley. Democrats are slightly more favored there under the new map, but it presents a challenge for both parties.

Both parties view California’s three most competitive races as key to win, and each is putting resources toward a few additional contests.

“We’re not backing off a single seat in California,” said Christian Martinez, spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “We’re on offense.”

Shrinking battlegrounds nationwide

This year’s push by Republicans to redo state maps ahead of the November election — and California’s move to respond in kind — was without precedent. Ten states approved new maps; before this year, only two states had voluntarily redrawn maps between censuses for partisan advantage since 1970, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

It was partly enabled by a spring Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for states to redraw their election maps to eliminate voting districts that were drawn with race as a consideration.

The 10 new maps supercharged an ongoing national trend of polarization that has seen the number of competitive seats shrink over the last 30 years. The country used to see election cycles with as many as 50 seats rated as toss-ups, said Erin Covey, who leads the Cook Political Report’s U.S. House coverage, something that has not happened since 2010. As of this week, just 18 of 435 House districts are rated as toss-ups by Cook.

California is not alone in having fewer battlegrounds; no state has a high concentration of competitive seats this cycle. Michigan had four under Cook’s ratings, and Pennsylvania, Iowa, New York and Texas each had three as of this week.

That could be unhealthy for democracy, experts said. Voters can feel as though their votes matter less, and it may contribute to negative public opinion about how the electoral system functions, Latner said.

“The very premise of a free republic is that you are going to have differences in views,” Latner said. “The way those differences get resolved is through electoral competition.”

The erosion of “free and fair competition … is a threat to all voters, regardless of their partisanship,” he added.

Eyes on key races

In California’s most competitive race, Valadao is being challenged in the redrawn 22nd District by progressive college professor Randy Villegas. Republicans are bullish about their chances to retain the seat.

In the neighboring 13th District, which the new map aimed to make safer for Democrats, Gray faces former Stockton mayor and Marine veteran Kevin Lincoln. Also important for both parties is the battle for the 48th District, the seat vacated by Issa. Republican Jim Desmond, a San Diego County supervisor, faces Democrat Marni von Wilpert, a San Diego City Council member.

Republicans have also targeted Rep. Derek Tran’s Democratic seat in the 45th District, another former battleground that Proposition 50 made safer for Democrats, and three other seats that Cook rates as solidly Democratic.

Democrats’ safer flips target Northern California’s 1st and Sacramento County’s 6th districts. They also expect to gain a seat in the new 41st District, which now covers parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties. The new map gave Democrats a Democratic voter registration edge there and forced Republican incumbent Ken Calvert to run in the newly drawn 40th District against fellow Republican Rep. Young Kim.

This is one pic Telesur picked to try to make Delcy look competent. Draw your own conclusions.

On July 7th, Delcy Rodríguez presented her “Venezuela Reborn” (Venezuela Renace) plan to recover all buildings and areas hit by the earthquakes. The promise is not only rebuilding infrastructure but also offering economic assistance to those affected thanks to funds from the IMF and other multilateral organizations.

This happened just a week after her press conference on July 2nd, in which she faced multiple questions from foreign reporters about the government’s late and disorganized response to the disaster in La Guaira. Rodríguez denied those claims, blaming disinformation from “media labs” while defending the military.

The “media labs” argument was immediately taken up by State outlets and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello on his weekly TV show Con El Mazo Dando, in which he insulted international correspondents who covered the disaster.

The saying “old habits die hard” can be applied here: the Rodrigato has been unable to avoid and hide the public backlash over its management of the earthquakes’ aftermath, which has been front and center of the reporting made by mainstream international media, like when a crew of Norway’s TV2 recorded La Guaira resident Damely Díaz, who lost both her daughter and her home, openly berating Nicolas Maduro Guerra.

Now, the regime is once again blaming the messenger, taking advantage of the actual problem of disinformation on social media to point at “political interests that want to take advantage of the humanitarian tragedy.” 

This comes as the official attempt to establish the narrative that Delcy Rodríguez is in full control has been undermined by self-imposed limitations. TalCual editor Víctor Amaya offered a glimpse: “Outside of fleeting visits to collapsed areas, (Delcy) Rodríguez has appeared almost always indoors, meeting rescue workers who she interrupts in their labor to thank them in from of the camera, decorating government officers, greeting Hernán Gil (a security guard rescued after eight days trapped in Catia La Mar) and more recently, in visits to stokepile centers and shelters. His brother Jorge became the de facto spokesperson for official figures of dead and wounded.”

The Great Mission Venezuela Renace actually merged three existing infrastructure-related government programs: Barrio Nuevo Barrio Tricolor, Juntos Todo es Posible and Venezuela Bella. It also shares its name with an online initiative launched back in May to register young Venezuelans with diverse skills to return and help out. The difference is that the word order changes.

Venezuela Renace doubles down on the “stateswoman” role Delcy tried to carve for herself in her public showings while adapting it to the current circumstances. 

It can be said to some extent that Venezuela Renace works as a reboot of the government’s communicational strategy, even if that’s not its main purpose. And taking in consideration what’s been seen so far, it couldn’t be more different from the previous one: Venezuela Vuela Libre.

While Venezuela Vuela Libre was like a trial balloon of what Delcy’s election campaign could look like in a hypothetical snap presidential election, Venezuela Renace doubles down on the “stateswoman” role that she has tried to carve for herself in her public showings while adapting it to the current circumstances. 

Unlike in Venezuela Vuela Libre, where Delcy’s image was absent, she’s front and center in Venezuela Renace, supervising works or in official meetings. Even their visuals differ drastically: Venezuela Vuela Libre’s iconography was mostly related to peace and faith, while its main logo showed color (with blue, not red, dominating the palette). 

Venezuela Renace is clearer on its communication goals than whatever Venezuela Vuela Libre was trying to achieve (before it was minimized and later unceremoniously dropped after June 24 for quite obvious reasons). But which audience is it going to appeal to? The Venezuelan people? International media? Maybe it targets the biggest supporter of the Rodrigato since January 3 and one of the most (if not the biggest) sources of assistance after the quakes: the Trump administration. No wonder, in their “media labs” response, State propaganda avoided mentioning Trump or the US, instead blaming María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia.

Most probably, Delcy Rodríguez only interested in convincing the Americans that her government is doing things right.

FREDDY Brazier’s grandma Jackiey Budden was spotted struggling to keep control of her dog days after his dog attacked the both of them.

Jackiey — who is the mum of late Big Brother star Jade Goody — was seen in south east London with her Pitbull cross XL Bully called Echo.

She wore a red vest and green top as the large dog dragged her down the street and at one point Echo was seen barking aggressively at another dog on the walk.

Jackiey appeared to be struggling to keep the dog under control just days after the dog of Jade’s son, Freddy, went on a rampage and bit her.

Freddy spent around eight hours in hospital on Monday getting stitches after his dog attacked Jackiey twice in four days.

The alarm was first raised during an attack on July 16 by a concerned neighbour who heard screams of agony as the Pocket Bully, Pablo, gripped onto Jackiey, 68, leaving her requiring medical treatment. The fire brigade was also called out.

ON THE MEND

Freddy Brazier’s nan seen for first time since being bitten by his pocket bully

BRAZIER GRAN MAULED

Freddy Brazier’s pocket bully attacked gran twice days before him

But just four days later the dog struck again, in a more severe attack. Freddy had returned to help his frantic gran before he, too, was launched upon by Pablo.

Troubled Freddy has now moved back in with Jackiey at her flat in Bermondsey, London, following a string of family disputes including a fiery war with his father, TV presenter Jeff Brazier.

He got the dog last summer, and the pup went on to cause him and his now ex- girlfriend problems.

Freddy reportedly dumped his ex Holly Swinburn, 22, after their on-and-off relationship ended in a row involving his dog.

He is said to have called it quits with the blonde before she “tried to take his dog from him” in a furious argument.

Freddy and Holly welcomed a baby daughter in March.

WASHINGTON — President Trump used a rare prime-time address Thursday night to renew his attacks on the security of U.S. elections, telling Americans that the nation’s voting system is “so broken” that “no one can possibly defend it,” an unprecedented effort by a sitting president to undermine public confidence in domestic elections.

Many of the claims he made, which echo those he made after he lost the 2020 election, have been debunked by investigations, audits and court proceedings. Trump did not claim that vote counts were changed or election systems were hacked, and his warnings that the nation’s elections could be vulnerable to foreign influence have long been made by members of both parties.

But the president amplified those claims and others in an effort to cast fresh doubt over what he said was a “stolen” and “rigged” election and renew calls to pass a federal voting law ahead of the November election.

“Addressing this crisis of elections security demands that Congress will pass the SAVE America Act,” Trump said. “How easy is that to do? Unless you want to cheat.”

Trump said he directed the White House to release a tranche of heavily redacted documents that purport to show “vulnerabilities” in the nation’s voting system, with the goal of “correcting them very, very quickly.”

The 26-minute address to the nation — a platform traditionally reserved for rare moments of national importance — was the latest effort by Trump to attempt to assert more federal control over state elections.

Major broadcast networks declined to air Trump’s speech in full, instead reporting on it. Trump complained about NBC and ABC as he spoke, saying they should lose their broadcasting licenses. He falsely claimed that “they and others in the media are part of a plot” to “continue this fraud.”

In his remarks, Trump alleged China carried out what is believed to be the “largest compromise of election data history” starting during the 2020 election cycle and claimed that “members of the deep state” in the American intelligence community covered it up.

He directed the FBI, the director of national intelligence and other agencies led by some of his loyalists to investigate and prosecute the people responsible for the cover up.

Democrats swiftly condemned Trump’s claims as baseless and rehashed ideas that have little to do with actual election administration.

“Donald Trump is releasing unverified, meaningless documents to appease his own delusions about an election he lost resoundingly, all while continuing to withhold 3 million pages of the Epstein files,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on X.

Multiple reviews of the 2020 election have concluded that Democrat Joe Biden won legitimately, and election experts say there is no evidence that widespread fraud affected the outcome of the election.

“It’s been more than half a decade, with numerous audits, recounts, and more than 60 court cases, each finding no evidence of widespread voter fraud,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “Clearly, this is no longer about an election Donald Trump lost six years ago. It’s about him laying the groundwork to try to ‘take over the voting’ in the upcoming midterm elections.”

Ahead of the speech, elections and democracy experts had cautioned that the president may attempt to sow doubt in the security of the nation’s election system or bolster debunked fraud claims.

Trump has taken a series of steps since retaking office aimed at exerting control over elections. Some experts said Thursday’s address could be interpreted as a sign that Trump is running out of moves in the lead up to the midterm elections, where Republican control of the House is at stake.

“The fact that they’re throwing everything up on the walls at this point demonstrates panic,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research. “They are not operating from strength right now. They are operating from weakness.”

Trump delivered the address with his approval rating stagnating at 37%, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll released Thursday, with weakening enthusiasm among Republicans.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Thinking back on the last two years of his life full of album releases, filming schedules and tour dates, Finn Wolfhard requires squint-inducing concentration to keep it all straight.

“Jesus, a lot has happened,” he says, looking surprised. That’s an understatement.

In that time, the 23-year-old not only finished filming the Netflix hit show “Stranger Things,” which catapulted him to global stardom, and promoted the final season upon its premiere. He also released his feature film directorial debut (“Hell of a Summer,” co-directed with Billy Bryk, which hit theaters in April 2025). Then, he starred in another movie (A24’s creature feature “The Legend of Ochi”), directed a posthumous George Harrison stop-motion music video, wrote, recorded and put out his first solo album (“Happy Birthday”), and embarked on a 22-date tour before recording a new album.

On a video call from his family home in Vancouver, Canada, where he lives with his parents and older brother, he’s chatting about the release of that record, the eclectic, guitar-driven “Fire From the Hip,” which dropped Friday.

“I think it’s a nice day?” he offers when I ask what’s happening in Vancouver. “I don’t know. I’ve been in my basement studio all day, so I don’t … I think it’s nice.”

He’s been down in the basement doing press calls like this, he explains, undoubtedly a familiar routine after so many years in the limelight. He wears a baseball cap and an oversize brown sweater, tugging on the sleeves while he ponders.

Even if Wolfhard is exhausted by the press marathon, he doesn’t show it. He’s excited for the chance to be known on his own terms. He never fails to express gratitude for the projects that afforded him recognition and opportunity, but he’s ready to “take control of the narrative.”

“I spent my whole childhood standing on marks that other people told me to stand on and saying lines that other people told me to say,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I want to make my own stuff?”

Being in control also means being the face of the operation. Before “Happy Birthday” and “Fire From the Hip,” Wolfhard released a total of two records and an EP, plus a whole bunch of singles, with his previous bands, Calpurnia and the Aubreys. Being in a band was a natural fit for Wolfhard, who thrives in an ensemble where he can “hide behind the band name.”

Touring last year was his first time seeing his own name on the marquee.

“It’s just straight up me, and if I suck, I suck,” he laughs. “It’s not like I can be like, ‘Oh, man, we’re having disagreements in the band.’ It’s like, no, that’s you. So there was a little more pressure early on.”

Finn Wolfhard released “Fire From the Hip” on Friday.

(Victoria Stevens)

Stepping into the spotlight required Wolfhard, who admits he shies away from conflict, to own both the pressure and the power of being the one audiences came to hear.

When he got sick and had to cancel a show in Portland, Ore., he remembers feeling crushingly sad “letting down” his fans and bandmates — who, of course, assured him it was outside of his control and urged him not to be so hard on himself.

Wolfhard introduced many of the songs that ended up becoming “Fire From the Hip” to his bandmates while they were still on tour, and he says playing them live “cultivated the spirit” of the eventual recordings. Despite his collaborative ethos, there was a moment during the process where he had to learn how to put his foot down in real time.

“I remember suggesting something and people being like, ‘Ah, I don’t know if I want to do that.’ And I was like, ‘No, you don’t get to do that to me. It’s my record,’” he remembers. “It was very innocent — I don’t think there was much ego on either side. But I think I maybe set up too collaborative of an experience that day.”

“I think I sometimes make it feel like a democracy, which it is in a lot of ways,” he adds. “But also, in the end, it is up to me.”

That thought is echoed in the album’s cover art, an image of two miniature Finn Wolfhards facing off, donning colonial garb and brandishing weapons. It’s meant to represent dueling impulses inside of him, he explains.

Wolfhard, a true-blue music nerd, has been described online as an archetypical example of the “child of a Gen X cool dad,” in the same vein as Olivia Rodrigo. (His dad, a former screenwriter turned lawyer and Indigenous rights researcher, does sound cool, but it was his mom who first introduced him to the Beatles. His parents apparently met over a Stone Roses record.)

That sensibility is evident in his musical influences — “I wanted everything [on drums] to sound like the first two Wilco records,” he says — and in his approach to recording. “Happy Birthday” was recorded almost entirely on four-track cassette tapes, while “Fire From the Hip” uses 24-track reel-to-reel.

The album runs the gamut from its cheeky, surf-rock opener “I’ll Let You Finish” (yes, that is a reference to Kanye West’s infamous speech at the 2009 VMAs) to more ’90s alt-inspired tunes to a surprising dose of straightforward country-folk.

Lyrically, Wolfhard divides his songs into two categories: the “very personal” and the story songs written around books he was reading (“Knockemstiff” by Donald Ray Pollock) or quotes that made him laugh. The personal themes he explores are exactly what you would expect from an early-20s rocker raised in the public eye — namely, relationship expectations and existential fears about the future.

On the nostalgic piano ballad “Good Morning,” he imagines what it might be like to settle down somewhere “with a dog and a wife.”

“I haven’t lived that part of my life yet,” he says now. “So I can really easily get lost in thinking about what that looks like.”

When it comes to sharing his music, especially the more vulnerable tracks, Wolfhard knows his “Stranger Things” fame is the elephant in the room. Anything he sings can and might be used against him in the court of public opinion.

“I could either kind of say nothing and be totally private, because it is scary knowing that everything I say, at least one person will take it a certain way that I wouldn’t want them to. But I just don’t have the control,” he says.

“So if I don’t have the control, then there’s nothing really that I can do, other than try to be as truthful and passionate and well-meaning as I possibly can, you know?”

The double-edged sword of fandom hasn’t stopped Wolfhard or his musically-inclined “Stranger Things” co-stars from pursuing this path. Fellow Hawkins alums Joe Keery (who releases music under the moniker Djo) and Maya Hawke are indie darlings in their own right, and Wolfhard has previously referred to Keery as a mentor. None of them face the unique challenge of relatability in quite the same way, however.

“I’m aware that my specific problems are maybe not as relatable because of how specific of a life I have,” he said. “The only thing I can hope for is that some other person out there listens to it and relates to the same things that I do.”

Sometimes an air of wistfulness accompanies these admissions. When asked about how he feels about Los Angeles, he tells me that it’s complicated: “I think if I wasn’t a young actor, it would be a very different situation.” His favorite parts of the city are its repertory cinemas and lush neighborhoods like Mount Washington, where his godfather resides, because they look the most like Vancouver.

That said, he’s not through with Hollywood. He’ll be back in L.A. for an Oct. 13 show at the Fonda Theatre, and acting and directing are still on the agenda. He would like his next film project — other than the Matt Johnson and Bong Joon Ho projects he’s already committed to, of course — to be something more “personal.”

For now, though, the focus is music. Wolfhard launches a new tour this month, and he’s most looking forward to “doing dumb s—” with his friends.

He tells a quick story to illustrate: When he and the band last toured in Glasgow, Scotland, he was trying to leave the venue without being noticed. (“I have a hard time dealing with fan interaction,” he says.)

“We kind of made it into this joke thing, knowing it wouldn’t work, where me and Rand, my guitarist, were like, ‘let’s switch clothes.’ Rand pretended to be me and I pretended to be Rand,” he says. Miraculously, it worked up until the “very last second” before they stepped on the bus.

“I couldn’t help myself,” he says: He instinctively made eye contact with someone in the crowd. “They did a double take, like, ‘Wait, what?’”

It sounds like a scene straight out of “A Hard Day’s Night” — or maybe inspiration for his next film.

“I’m pretty in my head about things and want them to be a certain way,” he says. “The thing that I have to remind myself all the time is that, like, dude, you’re with your friends, you’re playing music — it’s the best.”

A Democratic senator alleges that whistleblowers have detailed several problems stemming from rushed or improper reconstruction of the Kennedy Center, adding a new layer to the travails of the arts complex after President Trump tried to seize control of it and its name.

Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said in a release Saturday that he had received a whistleblower disclosure from the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit whistleblower protection group, alleging that “the Center rushed a series of renovations driven by the President’s aesthetic whims and his desire to star in a series of televised events in December.”

“The Center’s subservience to the President’s desires and its corner-cutting contracting practices have resulted in steel columns that are rusting through fresh paint, a reflecting pool that may have to be torn out and rebuilt, and a brand-new bathroom floor torn out over an offending tile color,” Whitehouse said. “This is waste, and it treats a national memorial to President Kennedy as if it were a private renovation project.”

Whitehouse released a letter he wrote to the Kennedy Center’s executive director, Matt Floca, seeking answers by July 23. He said the whistleblower report included “firsthand accounts of multiple former Center project managers, supported by contemporaneous documents and photographs.” He also included an 83-page appendix full of internal center documents, emails and photos of apparently shoddy construction.

The allegations in the letter include that the center rushed work before it was authorized by Congress because it wanted it to be complete for Trump to accept the so-called FIFA Peace Prize that the soccer federation awarded him.

In doing so, the letter alleges, the center didn’t follow required contracting guidelines and wasted money replacing a bathroom because the president didn’t like the color and inking no-bid contracts. One $8-million contract to replace the concert hall’s floor went to a firm with no experience in concert halls, Whitehouse contended.

The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump seized control of the arts and culture venue named for President Kennedy at the beginning of his second term. Trump ousted the center’s leadership and replaced it with a Board of Trustees that named him chairman and added his name to the building.

Democrats sued to remove it, and a federal judge ruled that Trump’s name must come off the venue, noting that only Congress has authority to rename it. Trump also tried to close the center for two years, only to be ordered by the court to keep it open.

Many artists have boycotted the venue in protest of the president’s actions.

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump dismissed all remaining members of the bipartisan U.S. Elections Assistance Commission this week, his latest move to assert control over national elections in the final months before midterm voting.

The White House defended the move as justified by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision handing the president greater authority to reshape independent government agencies, including by replacing appointed leaders.

Democrats and some independent elections experts blasted it as politically motivated, counter to the interests of voters and foolhardy with the November election so close.

“Purging commissioners just months before the midterm elections and further gutting support for our state and local elections officials is a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees federal elections.

Padilla alleged the dismissals are an attempt by Trump “to dismantle yet another independent guardrail of our democracy designed to keep elections fair and secure.”

A White House official framed the dismissals in starkly different terms, saying the departing commissioners were “not totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted.” It did not say when the president planned to appoint new commissioners.

The four-member commission was created by Congress in 2002 as part of the Help America Vote Act to help states improve their voting systems and voter access. By law, no more than two commissioners may belong to the same political party.

Historically, it has provided voluntary guidance and best practices for voting systems, and served as a sort of clearinghouse for election performance around the country — so that states and localities can learn from each other.

Since 2018, the panel has also disbursed more than $1 billion in election security grants, according to a report by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Those grants are then used to protect IT systems from foreign and domestic cyberattacks, update voting systems, ensure the accuracy of voter rolls and protect the integrity of ballots after they are cast.

Without leadership, the panel cannot take any official action until new members are nominated and confirmed by the Senate.

Benjamin W. Hovland, one of the Democratic commissioners removed by Trump, told NBC News that taking away a key federal agency designed to help state and local election administrators will have a negative effect on already strained elections officials.

“When you’re asking more and more of people without giving them the necessary resources, you know, mistakes happen,” he said.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, in a statement to The Times, said Trump was “injecting unnecessary chaos, confusion and instability into the very systems that Americans rely on to make their voices heard,” but that California “will not be intimidated or deterred” from maintaining elections “in which everyone can fairly and securely participate.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said on X that “Newsom’s election protection efforts become more important by the day” — a reference to his recent push for state legislation that would make it a felony in California for anyone to seize ballots before a vote has been certified.

Newsom had said Thursday that Trump’s efforts to seize control over elections represented a “five-alarm fire” that must be confronted.

“We will lose this country unless we are vigilant about what’s going on in terms of election security,” he said.

Trump’s dismantling of the commission comes as he wages a much broader campaign to rewrite voting rules. He has sought to place new restrictions on mail ballots, to enhance voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements for voters, to subject state voter rolls to federal oversight and purges, and to assert federal control over how and whether the U.S. Postal Service delivers mail ballots.

Much of that agenda, pushed through executive orders and other administrative actions, has been stymied by the courts, while stalling out in Congress, where it lacks support.

Whether Trump’s move to dismantle and reconstitute the commission will prove an effective path to instituting his election agenda — or will face its own court challenges — remains unclear, experts said.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, wrote that Trump could try to illegally direct the commission to “do his bidding” by amending the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship.

“If he tries anything like this, it will be high profile and very important litigation that will end up at the Supreme Court on the emergency docket over the summer,” Hasen wrote.

Michael Waldman, president and chief executive of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, said in a statement that Trump’s terminations were “deeply concerning” in light of his “relentless efforts to try to interfere in elections.”

But he also said that the “guardrails” Congress put on the commission remain intact, require it to be made up of a bipartisan group and preclude Trump from directing it to enforce his voting agenda.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Trump’s firing of the commissioners was part of a broader effort by the president to “sow distrust in our voting system so he can contest the results if they are not to his liking.”

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said the very name of the commission makes it clear that it was “designed to assist states and localities, not dictate what states and localities must do” with elections. She said California has “the most robust standards” for elections in the country, which won’t change with the removal of the commissioners.

Still, she said word of the firings rocketed around a conference of county elections officials in San Diego on Thursday — with some wondering whether the dismissals would threaten federal funding for election administration moving forward, and others lamenting the loss of the current commissioners’ deep experience.

Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, said in a statement to The Times that “any sudden change to the support structure for elections in the middle of an election cycle is concerning,” but that California “has a strong local and state foundation for election administration and voting systems support, and that will minimize any potential disruption caused by this action.”

In recent months, Trump has leveraged federal agencies to overhaul the nation’s voting rules in ways no previous president has attempted. He has repeatedly pressured Republican lawmakers to pass a federal law that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register, show identification when casting a ballot and force states to send voter data to the Department of Homeland Security.

Republican leaders have said the proposed SAVE America Act does not have enough votes to pass in the Senate. The GOP resistance has angered Trump, who on Friday said he was refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill in protest.

The housing bill, which Trump called a “yawn” this month, would become law at midnight Friday without Trump’s signature.

Hundreds of easyJet and Ryanair flights have been hit by delays today following an issue at the National Air Traffic Services, with 30,000 Ryanair passengers said to be impacted

Hundreds of UK flights have been delayed due to an issue at the UK’s air traffic control (ATC).

There was widespread disruption across UK airspace this morning after an issue at the Met Office meant the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) didn’t receive weather information.

As a result, Ryanair saw 155 of its flights delayed, impacting almost 30,000 passengers, with delays of up to three hours. EasyJet was hit harder, with 253 flights delayed – 13% of its total number of planned departures today.

“A Met Office technical issue overnight meant that we were not receiving vital weather information into our NATS systems this morning. Accurate weather information is vital for air traffic controllers and pilots in managing flights safely,” a spokesperson for NATs said

“As a result, some air traffic restrictions were put in place early this morning and these have now been removed. We continue to work with the Met Office, who are working to fully resolve the problem.”

The Met Office has been contacted for comment.

“Nearly three years after NATS catastrophic 2023 system meltdown, UK passengers are once again being delayed because NATS’ systems have failed,” Ryanair Chief Operations Officer, Neal McMahon, said.

“Today’s outage delayed 155 Ryanair flights and disrupted almost 30,000 Ryanair passengers. Families travelling on holiday, people travelling for work and thousands of visitors to the UK have once again paid the price for NATS’ failure.”

Back in August 2023, a technical problem experienced by NATS saw very significant delays and cancellations across the UK. An outage resulted in hundreds of flights being delayed or canceled. In some cases, passengers waited several days for alternative flights. More than 700,000 passengers suffered cancellations and delays.

An investigation into the incident found that an engineer was unable to correct the fault from home, and so arrived at work more than three hours after the incident began in a bid to fix it.

A single flight from Los Angeles to Paris triggered the failure at 8.30am BST on Monday 28 August, the Civil Aviation Authority previously said. The air traffic control system had been confused by a duplicate code – DVL – which represents both Deauville in France and Devil’s Lake in North Dakota, USA.

Despite the engineer’s best efforts to resolve the problem on site, he was unable to do so. The system was eventually restored at 2.30pm after its manufacturer, Frequentis Comsoft, found the fault.

Following an independent review, Jeff Halliwell, Chair of the Independent Review Panel, said: “The incident on 28 August 2023 represented a major failure on the part of the air traffic control system, which caused considerable distress to over 700,000 aviation passengers, and resulted in substantial costs to airlines and airports. Our report sets out a number of recommendations aimed at improving NATS’ operations and, even more importantly, ways in which the aviation sector as a whole should work together more closely to ensure that, if something like this does ever happen again, passengers are better looked after.”

Rob Bishton, Chief Executive of the UK Civil Aviation Authority, added: “This final report gets to the heart of what went wrong in August 2023 and sets out a number of recommendations that are sector-wide in their scope. It is vital that we learn the lessons from any major incident such as this. I would personally like to thank the Panel for all of their efforts in producing a thorough and wide-ranging report, that will help improve the UK’s aviation system for the future.”