WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for President Trump to seek new limits on the use of mail ballots, but they are not likely to take effect this year.
Acting by a 6-3 vote, the court’s conservatives granted an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers and set aside a judge’s order that blocked new federal regulations on states and their use of mail ballots.
It’s not clear, however, what happens now, since the midterm elections are less than three months away.
About 30% of the nation’s voters — and 80% of Californians — cast their ballots by mail in 2024. Trump, however, has long maintained the voting by mail leads to fraud, including voting by noncitizens.
The court’s order stressed the new regulations do not put new requirements on the states this year.
Trump’s executive order “is internal directive from the President to his subordinates mandating that certain agencies pursue certain policies. It neither requires nor forbids anything of anyone outside the Executive Branch,” the court said.
The Department of Homeland Security will compile state-by-state lists of citizens who are over 18 and eligible to vote.
“States are not required to use the Lists,” the court said, although they could lead to future prosecutions.
The most disputed provision could have authorized the Postal Service to restrict mail ballots to those who are on the Homeland Security lists, but that is a future proposal, not a rule that will take effect this year.
The unsigned order spoke for the six Republican appointees. The three liberals, all Democratic appointees, dissented into two separate opinions.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Trump’s order was unlawful and should have been struck down. “It needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections,” she said.
“Today’s decision does not address whether the President’s attempts to interfere with States’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Elena Kagan. “Nor does it suggest that the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the President’s directives. Instead, today’s decision merely postpones adjudication of those challenges.”
Trump issued his executive order on March 31 with the aim of “ensuring citizenship verification” in federal elections. California and 22 other Democratic-led states sued a few days later and said Trump sought to use the Postal Service to impose new restrictions on voting by mail. They also argued the Constitution gives states and Congress the power to regulate elections, not the president.
A federal judge in Boston and 1st Circuit Court agreed with the challengers and blocked Trump’s executive order from taking effect for the November elections.
The case on appeal was Trump vs. California because California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta was a leader of the Democratic state attorneys who sued.
NEW YORK — Nearing the six-month mark of the Iran war and facing diminishing stockpiles of key weapons, the Trump administration is touting a crushing financial campaign against Tehran, promising an “economic D-Day” against a country that has withstood nearly five decades of punishing American sanctions.
With sparse details, President Trump announced this week that the U.S. would be imposing an “unprecedented” level of economic warfare and isolation on Iran, aiming to force its leadership to cave to demands to end its nuclear program and fully reopen the crucial Strait of Hormuz to oil and natural gas tankers.
It reflects the dire reality Trump faces with an increasingly unpopular war he can’t seem to end just months before pivotal midterm elections that will decide whether his Republican Party keeps control of Congress. Whether out of desperation or strategy, the president is refocusing America’s might on bringing Iran to its knees through an accelerated sanctions campaign against one of the most economically penalized countries in the world.
In response to the threat, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted Friday on X the history of U.S. sanctions against Iran, saying, “We have seen this movie before. Same bull. Different bullies.”
The immediate reaction from Iran hawks has been praise and a call for patience as it plays out, while other analysts warn that Trump is refusing to learn the lessons of his predecessors.
In an interview Thursday on CNBC, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a small glimpse of what may be ahead, threatening secondary sanctions on nations and companies that conduct business with Iran.
He did not reveal who would be targeted as part of this next phase of the administration’s Operation Economic Fury, which earlier had focused on entities and people who buy oil from or bank with Iran. China and India, however, are major buyers of Iranian oil.
“If you insist on doing business with them, then the U.S. Treasury and U.S. government will put its full might and force against you,” Bessent said. “It’s time for our allies and the rest of the world to make a decision.”
Some experts see ‘uncharted waters’ that could force Iran’s hand
Despite decades of U.S. sanctions against Iran, the Trump administration is arguing that it’s only a matter of time and that striking the right economic target would get Tehran to its breaking point.
Richard Goldberg, who coordinated efforts to put diplomatic pressure on Iran in Trump’s first term, said the consequences of U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites last year, the war this year and the American naval blockade on Iranian ports have created the perfect storm for capitulation — one that didn’t previously exist.
“I think we’re watching a strategy, whether it takes a short time or a long time, that is very much about fundamentally changing the future of the world by seeing the end of this regime,” said Goldberg, who is now at the hawkish Washington think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, or FDD.
“I caution everyone — including myself, who has worked on sanctions, who’s worked on financial warfare — to have the humility to admit that we are in uncharted waters,” he said.
He said the decision this week by the United Arab Emirates — once one of Tehran’s most important trading partners — to suspend trade with Iran over an alleged missile attack will only further isolate the government.
Beyond trade in domestically produced goods, the Emiratis had helped the country absorb some of the shocks caused by sanctions through its re-export hub.
Targeting allies and partners comes at a price
With nearly all of Iran’s energy, financial and transportation sectors already covered by U.S. sanctions, Trump’s aim appears to be to apply secondary sanctions on countries, including allies and partners, that have not cut all ties with Iran to starve the country of any remaining income it may still be receiving.
In many ways, it is a redux of Trump’s first-term maximum-pressure campaign, which he has ramped up during his second term to include military action.
But as Trump and his allies discovered during his first administration, it can be difficult to enforce secondary sanctions without harming U.S. interests and provoking reciprocal measures. There were numerous instances of the administration granting sanctions waivers to countries, particularly those that rely on Iranian oil for their energy needs.
“Trump’s strategy now rests on targeting Tehran directly by impeding its touch points and access to the formal financial system and international economy,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the FDD’s Iran program. “This will require making the Iran issue more important in U.S. bilateral relations with countries in Europe and Asia.”
Iran doesn’t see an ‘open door’ at the end of the sanctions campaign
Iranian officials and analysts have accused the Republican president of flip-flopping with his latest pivot to economic pressure against Tehran. Trump has long derided past leaders who used sanctions to limit Iran’s ability to pay for its military and nuclear development.
In a post last week on X, Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, wrote that Washington’s pattern of retreating to sanctions when it doesn’t want to pursue diplomacy has proven to be futile.
“Iran has demonstrated over decades that it will not be strangled by these exhausted refrains,” he said. “The real risk is that American politicians, clinging to this bad habit, will instead strangle their own remaining chances of a less humiliating exit from a crisis of their own making.”
Ali Vaez, Iran director at the International Crisis Group, said the Trump administration’s decision to take its own maximum-pressure policy to new heights with military action seems to ignore years of U.S. foreign-policy lessons that show Iran does not respond well to pressure.
If anything, he says, the latest economic campaign has only “hardened Iran’s position.”
“I think (Trump’s) blind spot is the fact that the only thing that the Iranian regime views as more dangerous than suffering from U.S. sanctions is surrendering to U.S. terms,” Vaez said.
Plus, the past year of start-stop diplomacy has only worsened the already fragile dynamic between the longtime adversaries, Vaez says, adding that Iranian officials’ lack of trust in Trump and his mediators has created an untenable foundation.
“They believe that even if they capitulate to U.S. terms under economic duress, Trump would move the goalposts and ask for more,” he said. “And this is really the fundamental problem: Pressure without an open door is an exercise in futility.”
Amiri writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Matthew Lee and Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed to this report.
A Los Angeles police officer who faced multiple felonies for recording his colleagues making racist, sexist and homophobic comments will now likely avoid jail time under a new agreement with prosecutors, Los Angeles County’s district attorney said Wednesday.
Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman announced he would reduce 16 felony eavesdropping counts against Officer Daniel Flores to misdemeanors, and that the case would likely resolve in court through a diversion agreement.
The announcement came after Hochman faced backlash for the decision to prosecute Flores, with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and even some of his own prosecutors criticizing the filing as “insane” and a deterrent for police looking to expose corruption and misconduct within their ranks.
The district attorney acknowledged the public reaction to the case as he spoke downtown Wednesday morning, and said he wanted to make “crystal clear” his intentions were to blunt illegal investigative practices by police, rather than discourage cops who want to report bad behavior.
“The message was not being clearly interpreted about us being protective of whistleblowers,” he said.
Flores’ attorney, ex-L.A. County prosecutor Alan Jackson, said he expected to request a diversion agreement for Flores in a downtown courtroom on Thursday.
“Following this disposition, 16 felonies will be dismissed with no plea, no punishment, and no record, because Daniel Flores told the troubling truth about what he heard inside his own department. As the investigators themselves concluded, there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in this open-plan LAPD office,” he said. “That isn’t eavesdropping, it’s being a witness. Mr. Flores has committed no crime.”
If a judge accepts a diversion agreement, Flores would have to satisfy certain terms and conditions for about a year. If he does so, the case would be dismissed.
An LAPD spokesman referred all questions to the district attorney’s office. While misdemeanor prosecutions in Los Angeles are normally handled by the city attorney’s office, the D.A. can keep possession of the case because it was initially filed as a felony, according to a district attorney’s office spokesman.
Flores made more than 100 recordings of his colleagues in the Los Angeles Police Department’s recruitment division last year,capturing other officers making an array of racist, homophobic and sexist remarks. Comments included a joke about a legendary L.A. Dodgers pitcher who was Latino dying because he “ate too many tacos,” and referring to stereotypes about Black people enjoying eating watermelon and playing basketball. One officer was recorded calling a young LAPD recruit “rapeable,” according to court records.
If convicted of the original charges, Flores could have faced up to 13 years in prison.
California is a “two-party consent” state, meaning it is a crime for someone to record a conversation without the permission of other participants, unless there is a court order granting authority to do so. Flores’ attorneys have argued that his actions were allowed under the California Invasion of Privacy Act because he was acting in the course of his duties as a police officer.
Flores lodged a complaint with the LAPD’s inspector general’s office and has said he hoped the officers he taped making inappropriate remarks would face discipline.
The decision to charge Flores drew relentless criticism from a number of groups. Bass said she worried about the potential chilling effect on other police whistleblowers.
Last week, City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez introduced a resolution condemning Hochman for bringing “felony charges against a City employee who reported workplace discrimination through official channels” and urging him to drop the charges.
Hochman told reporters that his office assessed the case with the same rigor as it would any other. In bringing the charges, he said he wanted to thread the needle between punishing the illegal recording and not dissuading whistleblowers from coming forward.
He suggested that he could have technically charged Flores with 122 felony counts, one for each recording that he made. Hochman also reiterated Wednesday that he felt it was important to file the case at a time when new products like Meta Glasses make it even easier to surreptitiously record people.
“If you go ahead and illegally eavesdrop in our community, you will face criminal prosecution for doing it, so don’t take out your cellphones and or your smart glasses or anything else,” he said, while encouraging whistleblowers to work with the D.A.’s office to gather evidence in the future.
Flores had pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in a downtown courtroom last week, with a team of high-powered lawyers in tow. His next court date was set for Sept. 9.
The second-guessing of Hochman’s decision ramped up earlier this month after the D.A., in an unusual move, filed a 27-page motion asking for a lengthy preliminary hearing in the case. The filing alleged Flores deceptively edited the recordings to hide his own insensitive remarks and suggested he was motivated by a desire to win a large legal settlement in court.
Hochman’s motion referred to the officers’ remarks as “locker room talk” — a characterization that was seized on by Flores’ legal team.
Jackson, a former L.A. County prosecutor, accused Hochman of contradicting himself, questioning the D.A.’s efforts to justify the officers’ coarse language.
Several county prosecutors, who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, called Hochman’s decision to file his own motion in the case bizarre and unprecedented. While they privately lauded him for backing down on Wednesday, some said Hochman’s turn from zealously defending the filing to public capitulation in the span of two weeks was embarrassing for the office.
“From charging to doubling down to reducing to misdemeanors, this just makes it worse,” one prosecutor said. “The filing was inappropriate but then to bend to public pressure isn’t appropriate either.”
The motion, Jackson noted, relied heavily on the observations of the officers against whom Flores had leveled claims — and who were under internal investigation by the LAPD.
Flores filed a lawsuit in June accusing the LAPD of retaliating against him after he reported misconduct.
When reached for comment on Flores’ lawsuit, a spokesperson for the LAPD’s inspector general’s office said it was barred by state law from disclosing information about individual cases, but added that its practice is to refer all “complaints of employee misconduct” to Internal Affairs.
WASHINGTON — The only remaining U.S. aircraft carrier patrolling the Pacific departed Asia through Singapore last week en route to the Middle East, marking the latest step in a steady drawdown of American military assets across the region.
An armada of naval forces, alongside a constellation of air-defense and missile capabilities, has been removed from a theater the Trump administration said just last year would be the battleground of the coming century.
And now, President Trump’s surprise decision this week to curtail military exercises with South Korea has further fueled anxiety across Asia, where Washington’s closest allies fear violent consequences from a vacuum of American power.
Trump said his decision to withdraw U.S. participation from the annual military drills was de-escalatory, claiming they would needlessly provoke North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, with whom he has recently been in touch.
But he also blamed Seoul for its decision to not take part in his war with Iran.
“I said, ‘Would you like to give us a little hand?’ ” Trump told reporters. “He said, ‘No thanks,’ and I said, ‘Wait a minute — we have 39,000 soldiers over there, guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next-door neighbor, and you’re not going to help us.’ ”
“That’s strange,” Trump added. “We can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us.”
South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, responded to Trump’s last-minute decision to pull back from the drills with a degree of alarm.
“From now on, we must prepare measures with even the worst-case scenario in mind,” Lee said, “on the premise that the Middle East situation may be prolonged.”
It was the latest jolt to South Korea’s confidence in an alliance that has formed a cornerstone of Washington’s defense strategy in Asia since the end of World War II.
The Pentagon has kept its THAAD missile-defense batteries on the Korean peninsula. But in March, it moved some of the system’s radars and forward-positioned interceptors toward the Middle East, as the Iran war strained U.S. missile-defense stocks. Analysts estimate the conflict has consumed more than 40% of the Pentagon’s THAAD interceptor inventory.
The diversion was accompanied by the redeployment of dozens of combat and dry-cargo ships, mine countermeasure vessels, and guided-missile destroyers out of the region, ahead of the departure of the strike group centered on the nuclear-powered USS George Washington, which is now on its way to the Middle East.
Other U.S. allies in the region reacted swiftly to Trump’s pullback from the Korean exercises.
The Australian government said it remained “deeply concerned” with North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, while Japan’s defense minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, warned of historic stakes.
“As Japan faces the most severe and complicated security environment in the post-war era, the cooperation among Japan, the United States and South Korea is critical to the peace and stability of the region,” Koizumi said in a statement.
And Beijing has been quick to capitalize on the vacuum.
China’s Foreign Ministry mocked that the United States “has become addicted to quitting groups and scrapping treaties,” while its military began installing permanent infrastructure in Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone within days of the George Washington’s departure.
“The current international landscape has once again proven that only by ensuring the effective operation of the multilateral system can we prevent the spread of the law of the jungle,” said Mao Ning, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, “and keep the international order from being dominated by the logic that ‘might makes right and force represents justice.’”
Speaking with journalists in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said that his communication with Kim was “making things safer” in the region.
He did not offer details on their conversations.
“Kim Jong Un has always treated me with great respect,” Trump said, confirming that the North Korean leader had replied to his overtures.
WASHINGTON — Federal regulators have given preliminary approval for a cryptocurrency venture tied to President Trump and his family to operate a digital-asset bank, a decision that has drawn immediate condemnation from Senate Democrats who are now pushing legislation to bar such an action.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and nine other Senate Democrats introduced a bill Saturday that would bar the president, the vice president, their immediate family members and other senior government officials from owning or controlling banks.
The measure was proposed a day after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — which is part of the Trump administration — granted conditional approval for World Liberty Trust Co. to become a trust bank. The firm was founded in 2024 by two of Trump’s sons and the sons of Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East.
If the firm gets final approval, it would not act like a conventional bank and take deposits or make loans. Instead, the chartered bank would be able to issue and manage cryptocurrencies and digital assets. But the move would grant new financial powers to the Trump family’s crypto business, which has already shown to be profitable for the president in his first year back in the White House.
Trump’s financial disclosures show the president has earned more than $1.2 billion from crypto-related projects as he has pushed to deregulate the digital-asset industry. He hauled in more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products and is a significant owner of the firm through an entity called DT Marks DEFI LLC, which holds about a 38% stake.
Aside from World Liberty Financial, Trump last year took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his likeness.
Trump’s crypto windfall has lately fueled Democrats’ argument that the president stands to personally gain from the same regulatory apparatus he oversees, and has led to acrimonious negotiations in Capitol Hill over how to regulate the industry.
The White House said Tuesday “there are no conflicts of interest.” But the recent decision by federal regulators in relation to World Liberty Financial is now giving more ammunition to Democrats, who have pushed for more ethical guardrails to crack down on the Trump family’s crypto ventures.
“This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen — and Congress cannot allow it to stand,” Warren said in a statement. “The Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act will close the door on this kind of unprecedented corruption.”
Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) said the decision to allow a Trump-linked crypto firm to charter its own bank is “injecting risk into our financial system and fueling the Trump family’s business endeavors.”
“It is Congress’ responsibility and duty now to rein in this corruption and ensure that bank charters, deposit insurance, and other banking licenses cannot be handed out to entities influenced or controlled by any President’s family,” Alsobrooks said in a statement.
David Wachsman, a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial, disputed the criticism, saying the preliminary approval is “great news for consumer and investor protection advocates and for the American financial services industry.”
“Critics are missing the point: World Liberty Financial is running towards regulation and continuous oversight, not away from it,” Wachsman said in a statement. “World Liberty Trust Company’s national charter will ensure robust and permanent regulatory supervision from the OCC, a federal banking regulator, that will outlast the Trump administration.”
Wachsman said World Liberty will be required to provide weekly reports about its operations that will be subject to independent reviews. He added that federal banking laws such as anti-money-laundering rules and consumer protection statutes will be “directly applicable and enforceable.”
The White House did not comment directly about the administration’s involvement with the World Liberty application to charter a bank. But in a statement, the White House disputed claims that the president’s decisions in office have financially benefited him and his allies.
“All of President Trump’s investment holdings are in held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement. “The President only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”
Kelly added: “There are no conflicts of interest.”
DES MOINES, Iowa — Paul Grinvalds has completed 114 marathons in all 50 states, but he still wilts when he races in temperatures beyond 60 degrees.
It’s the same for most runners, as the body can’t cool down during exertion, and heat makes that even harder.
“One thing about marathoners is typically we’re kind of stubborn,” said Grinvalds, 68, from West Des Moines, Iowa, who finds even temperatures in the 50s a bit warm. “So if we have a goal and it’s hot, a lot of times we’re still going to try to do that goal, which is just stupid because you’re almost guaranteed to have a very painful experience.”
Such an experience can also be dangerous, a reality that marathon organizers are having to confront as climate change, caused mostly by the burning of fuels like coal and gasoline, pushes temperatures up. To improve the chances of having the 26.2-mile race in cooler weather, organizers are shifting race dates, starting earlier and even giving options for participants to cut their runs short.
Starting in 2027, the Twin Cities Marathon in Minneapolis-St. Paul will shift its more than 40-year tradition of holding the race on the first Sunday in October to later in the month. That decision comes after cancellation of the marathon in 2023 because of record heat and humidity, and starting temperatures near 70 for the 2025 race.
Organizers of the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, marathon last year similarly moved their annual race from August to September after canceling the 2024 race due to hot conditions. And other races, including the Air Force Marathon in Dayton, Ohio, the Little Rock Marathon in Arkansas, and the Long Beach Marathon in Southern California, all moved their start times to earlier in the morning in search of cooler temperatures.
In Los Angeles in March, warm conditions prompted race organizers to give runners the option of stopping after 18 miles and still receiving a finishers medal. Less than 5% of participants opted for the shorter finish and only 14 of roughly 27,000 runners were treated at a hospital, with all released the same day. Still, the move led to some online derision.
“We welcome the feedback and it’s certainly something that caused a lot of discussion, but when we’re grading ourselves on it, it has to do with how safe our runners were on the day of the event and we’re very happy with the outcome,” said Meg Treat, a spokesperson for the marathon.
At the Twin Cities Marathon, race director Ed Whetham called the decision to cancel the 2023 marathon “devastating” for runners and the organization. Whetham said it prompted an extensive analysis of weather patterns that resulted in the decision to permanently delay the race by a couple weeks.
That analysis showed that by holding the race later in October, runners would have a far greater chance of optimal conditions. Given that snow sometimes falls in the Twin Cities in late October, there is a greater chance of chilly conditions, but Whetham said, “We’ll take a 39-degree start over a 70-degree start.”
Temperatures are expected to keep rising
The contiguous U.S. just had its warmest July ever recorded, and the Earth had its hottest year on record in 2024. The World Meteorological Organization forecasts that between 2025 and 2030 the Earth’s average global temperature will likely rise by more than 2.7 compared to the 1800s.
The warming is already making conditions worse for most marathons, according to a study of 221 races by the climate research group Climate Central. By 2045, optimal conditions for recreational runners — in the low 40s — would be less likely at 46 of the 51 U.S. marathons analyzed.
“The ability to go outside, to exercise, to take advantage of your human body and being healthy, that’s something that’s getting challenged by climate change,” said Andy Pershing, who led the Climate Central research.
Jessica Murfree leads a University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill lab studying climate change’s effect on sports. She said organizers of marathons, bicycle races and other competitions — from tennis to college football — increasingly must consider changing event dates and times and adopting other safety measures, as climate change makes the weather hotter and more volatile.
Murfree said the concern extends beyond organized sports to whether people can even get outside on increasingly warm days, pushing people to exercise indoors or opt for activities like swimming.
“If we can’t walk, if we can’t exercise or go for runs, it’s too hot, can we still stay physically active while remaining cool?” she asked.
Marathons are especially hard in warm weather
Any kind of exercising in the heat can be challenging, but running a marathon in warm, humid conditions is especially difficult because it’s hard to prevent overheating when a person keeps pushing themselves for hours. And the faster a person goes, the more heat their body produces.
Chris Minson, a University of Oregon professor who researches how people can adapt to extreme heat and other environmental conditions, said the optimum temperature to run a marathon is about 50 degrees. As the temperature creeps into the upper 50s and 60s, the body has a tougher time supplying blood to muscles while also keeping the body cool.
“As you get to warmer temperatures you end up having a bigger competition between blood supplying your muscles to keep running, to keep nutrition going, and blood flow to your skin for thermal regulation,” Minson said.
Minson said it takes a tremendous amount of energy to run quickly. But of that energy, only about 25% is used to move the body forward. The rest goes to deal with the heat that is created by rapid movement.
Even worse than high temperatures is high humidity, which prevents sweat from evaporating and cooling the body.
Minson adds, though, that by regularly exercising in warm weather, people can acclimate to high temperatures and perform better in the heat, though likely not as well as they would in cooler conditions. Athletes who acclimate to high heat also can perform better in lower temperatures than if they hadn’t exercised in warm weather, he said.
Some athletes like John Seals even run in the midday heat and endure a sauna after a workout to acclimate their bodies. That all forms part of Seals’ training for an annual 135-mile ultramarathon held in July in Death Valley, California.
“We had a heat wave this week and for me, that’s a great thing,” said Seals, of West Des Moines.
Still, running in the heat can be dangerous without taking precautions.
Douglas Casa, a kinesiology professor who leads the Korey Stringer Institute, which studies sudden deaths in sports, said the Twin Cities Marathon’s change was prudent, especially considering the way in which many runners approach races.
“If someone was smart enough to say, ‘OK, it’s a little hotter today than usual, I’m going to run a 7 minute mile instead of a 6:30 mile,’ then they won’t get any hotter than normal,” Casa said. “It’s just that runners are sometimes very locked into what they normally do and what their goals are.”
McFetridge writes for the Associated Press. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has largely ended a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients who marry U.S. citizens.
President Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to end DACA during his first term. This week’s action reflects his administration’s ongoing focus on the Obama-era program that shields from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants, often referred to as Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. as children.
“It was inevitable that what Trump was going to do in office this time was to embark on a massive delegalization mission,” said Karen Tumlin, director of the Justice Action Center in Los Angeles. “That’s what this is.”
Tumlin was referring to a ruling by an administrative immigration court that was published Thursday.
The ruling concerns a travel provision afforded to recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program created in 2012. The provision allowed DACA recipients to travel in ways other people without legal status cannot.
DACA isn’t technically a form of legal status, though its recipients are granted work permits.
For immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally, leaving the country or being deported triggers a penalty — many are banned from coming back into the U.S. for a decade.
Most people who qualify for legal residency, or a green card, have to serve that 10-year ban before they can apply for a green card, which can lead to citizenship.
But DACA recipients, under the travel provision called advance parole, could leave the U.S. for school, work or humanitarian reasons. When they returned through an airport or border, the stain of their original unlawful entry was erased.
With the penalty wiped away, a DACA recipient married to a U.S. citizen or who had another way to obtain legal residency could start that process for a green card without delay.
Thursday’s ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals does away with that benefit.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Zach Kahler said the decision confirms a “straightforward principle” that departing the U.S. has meaning.
“The immigration laws enacted by Congress impose consequences when someone who has accrued unlawful presence, leaves the country and later seeks admission, including when that departure occurs under advance parole,” he said. “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will ensure that immigration filings are decided based on the laws, regulations, and binding legal precedent that govern each case.”
Immigration attorneys and other advocates quickly convened Thursday to determine how the ruling will affect immigrants.
Tumlin said some DACA recipients can still safely travel with advance parole, while for others — particularly those with deportation orders — it would be too risky to leave. She said DACA recipients should consult with an immigration attorney before traveling.
“For over a decade, I could reassure my clients that traveling on Advance Parole was a safe option,” Shilpa Malik, an immigration lawyer in Florida wrote Thursday on X. “What was once a vital protection is now gone.”
Under the ruling, having the travel document may no longer protect certain DACA recipients when they return from their trips abroad, because leaving could expose them to the years-long ban.
The decision also makes obtaining green cards more difficult. Tumlin said some DACA recipients could qualify for waivers that allow them to avoid the years-long reentry ban, but the waivers are granted under limited circumstances.
The latest federal data show there are 455,000 DACA recipients in the U.S. as of March, with about 126,000 in California.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, 45,447 DACA recipients were approved for advance parole as of Aug. 21, 2017.
About 76,000 DACA recipients had become legal residents as of July 31, 2019, most after marrying a U.S. citizen, according to the research service. It’s unclear how many DACA recipients have obtained advance parole or green cards since then.
Path2Papers, a project at Cornell Law School, analyzed 1,600 consults and estimated that around 60% of DACA recipients would be subject to the 10-year ban.
Republicans have viewed advance parole as an abuse of the immigration system.
The office of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) blasted the provision, saying in 2017 that “the Obama administration allowed thousands of DACA recipients to exploit an immigration law loophole to obtain green cards.”
Last year, Grassley introduced a bill to guarantee that it would no longer be used by immigrants seeking to adjust their legal status. This week’s ruling essentially accomplishes that goal.
The immigration appeals board’s decision applies to future travel. People who previously traveled and returned to the U.S. won’t be affected and could still adjust their immigration status.
Tumlin said Thursday’s decision is yet another effort to change the goalposts for DACA recipients by an administration that has resorted to ending the program “through death by a thousand cuts.”
The Department of Homeland Security has arrested hundreds of immigrants with DACA, and in a February letter to U.S. senators, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agency had deported 86 DACA recipients between Jan. 1 and Nov. 19, 2025.
One of those was Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez, a Sacramento mother who was deported a day after her green card interview. A federal judge later ordered the agency to bring her back to the U.S.
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the White House to resume construction on its $400 million ballroom project while it appeals a lower court’s order to halt the work.
Trump’s solicitor general on Friday petitioned the high court to suspend last week’s decision by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The divided panel ruled last week Trump must stop the White House ballroom’s construction because Congress has not approved the project. The panel’s majority said Trump doesn’t have the unilateral authority to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom where the White House’s East Wing stood before he ordered its demolition last fall.
The lower court suspended its own ruling for two weeks to give Trump’s Republican administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court. The solicitor general asked the Supreme Court to rule on its stay petition before the appeals court panel’s decision takes effect on Aug. 21.
“This case involves an extraordinary and unlawful injunction that will halt the ongoing construction of the integrated military complex, including a totally secure ballroom space, at the East Wing of the White House, which is vitally required by national security,” the solicitor general wrote.
The lower court’s 2-1 decision sided with historic preservationists who sued to stop construction of the ballroom.
The administration argues that the president, not Congress or the courts, has unimpeded authority to renovate the White House. The current state of the project, essentially an open construction site, makes it harder to protect the White House, the Justice Department contends.
The administration also says the National Trust for Historic Preservation does not have the legal right, or standing, to sue over the ballroom.
During an appeals court hearing in early June, an administration lawyer defended a broad view of presidential control over iconic public facilities.
The government could bulldoze the Statue of Liberty and the White House, Justice Department lawyer Yaakov Roth said in response to a hypothetical question, and the descendants of immigrants who came through Ellis Island and the enslaved people who built the White House would not have standing to sue.
* Current position: Full-time candidate for governor, on leave from managing his small software company.
* Education: Bachelor’s degrees in physics and history, Harvard University. Phi Beta Kappa. Recipient of a Churchill Science Fellowship to Cambridge University in England, where he studied quantum gravitation under Stephen Hawking.
* Career highlights: In the late 1980s, Unz took a leave of absence from Stanford University, where he was enrolled in a Ph.D. program in theoretical physics. He worked as an associate at a New York City mortgage finance company. In 1988, he founded Wall Street Analytics Inc., a financial services software company.
* Family: Unmarried
The Record
Ron Unz has no public record and brings an unusual, if not unique, background to his quest for California’s top public office. He has a strong record of academic and intellectual achievement. His IQ has been estimated at 214–what one expert calls “one in a million”–and as a teen-ager he won first place in the national Westinghouse talent search competition for a paper on black holes. He is a physicist as well as an expert on the Spartan naval empire.
After working for a New York City mortgage finance company, Unz founded his own small firm that sells specialized computer programs to Wall Street firms. The firm has become highly successful during the last six years and has made Unz a wealthy man.
Although he has no political experience, he says he has long had an interest in politics and has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to conservative think tanks and causes.
Unz says his years in the business world have prepared him well to govern California. “In terms of the sectors of the American economy that create wealth, I have more experience than the other four candidates together, times a factor of a few,” he said.
The Speech: In His Own Words
I believe that the Republican Party stands for clear principles and firm ideas–smaller government, lower taxes, fewer regulations and traditional values–and that Pete Wilson stands for nothing except his political ambition.
Over the past three years, Pete Wilson and the Democrats have enacted the largest state tax increase in American history, deepening our recession and destroying jobs. Pete Wilson and the Democrats have led our Golden State to the brink of ruin. A choice between Pete Wilson and the Democrats means no choice at all for the people of California.
Unlike Pete Wilson, I have not abandoned the mainstream of the Republican Party . . . and its basic principles. . . . Under Ronald Reagan, these were the ideas which swept the nation and the world. I am the Republican candidate for governor.
Unlike Pete Wilson, my affiliation with the Republican Party is not hereditary: I come from a family of Democrats. But when that former Democrat Ronald Reagan transformed the Republican Party into the party of the ordinary working people of America, it became my party.
Unlike Pete Wilson, I didn’t attend an elite prep school, but received my education in the public schools of Los Angeles, back when they still provided an outstanding education for all of our children, rich and poor alike. It was this education which provided me with the tools of opportunity I needed to achieve economic success. But today, I am disgusted by the decay of our school system.
Unlike Pete Wilson, I don’t believe we should raise taxes again and again, until our entrepreneurs and small businesses are faced with some of the highest tax rates in America, driving our jobs and prosperity to other states. . . .
Unlike Pete Wilson, who has been on government and political payrolls for almost 30 years as a lifelong career politician, I come from the private business sector, the part of our economy which actually creates the wealth, provides the jobs and pays the taxes. I understand the value of money and the long hours required to earn it. I reject the waste that is routinely accepted by the special interest politicians who don’t understand what it’s like to earn a living in the real world.
Unlike Pete Wilson, who has little or no comprehension of the industries of tomorrow, I come from a scientific and technological background. I know that California’s future prosperity cannot be based merely upon jobs to build and maintain Pete Wilson’s endless array of future prisons.
I know that the high-technology industries of tomorrow such as computers, telecommunications, biotechnology and the entertainment industry can be the foundation of California’s prosperity. I see that the widespread adoption of telecommuting could make our freeway traffic jams a thing of the past. . . .
My grandparents came to California in the 1920s and 1930s as poor European immigrants, willing to work hard to provide a better life for their children.
I am a native-born Californian who remembers the hope and optimism and endless sense of possibility which the California Dream once meant to us. Our state has the finest climate, enormous natural beauty, and tremendous scientific and technological resources unequaled any place in the world.
The primary obstacle on our road to recovery is the deep failure of our own overgrown state government. Join with me in overcoming this one obstacle, and together we can restore the Golden State which we all remember.
That’s how Iván Barton described the moment he heard his last name called during the 2026 World Cup referee assignment meeting. It wasn’t to ask a question or to correct some administrative detail.
The next sentence changed his career forever: “Barton, your match is France vs. Spain. … After that, I didn’t hear anything else. I didn’t even know who my assistant referees would be.” The World Cup semifinal — one of the biggest matches a referee can officiate — had just been entrusted to the Salvadoran.
“It’s like going into shock, but a good kind of shock. ‘This is happening — it’s really happening.’ Reaching a semifinal is coming within a hair’s breadth of glory, because after a World Cup final, there’s nothing left,” Barton said.
Referee Iván Barton issues a yellow card to France’s Adrien Rabiot during a World Cup semifinal match against Spain on July 14 in Arlington, Texas.
(Lars Baron / Getty Images)
There’s one detail in that scene that captures the magnitude of the moment. While waiting for the meeting to begin, Barton was checking the airline’s app on his phone. His ticket was still scheduled for a return flight to El Salvador the next day. He had already started packing, convinced that his World Cup was over.
“I was already mentally preparing to fly back to El Salvador the next day,” Barton recalled. “When I heard ‘Barton,’ I thought, ‘What happened?’ Then they said, ‘Spain vs. France, semifinal.’ I didn’t even hear the names of my assistants.”
The first thing he did after that was call his wife.
“That’s when the tears of joy came,” he said. “It was also a moment to thank God for what was happening and immediately start preparing for the match.”
For the first time, both World Cup semifinal matches were officiated by CONCACAF referees. Barton officiated the France-Spain match, while American Ismail Elfath refereed the England-Argentina match. The confederation described both appointments as an unprecedented event for the region.
Barton said he fulfilled a dream working during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, but he and other CONCACAF referees were determined to show their ability to call the most important games.
“Qatar meant making a dream come true. Making it to 2026 was a huge challenge because the bar had been set very high,” Barton said. “There were high expectations. We approached it with a great sense of responsibility and humility.”
When the tournament ended, the feeling was different from that of his first World Cup.
“I feel happy, very proud to have placed our little El Salvador flag practically at the very top of world soccer,” he said. “That’s what fills me with the most pride. We continue to open doors not only for my country, but also for the entire region and for CONCACAF refereeing.”
The red card that made history
Among the four matches Barton officiated, the Turkey-Paraguay game went down in history at the 45+3-minute mark.
During a confrontation between Miguel Almirón and Turkey’s Mert Muldur, the Paraguayan star covered his mouth while speaking aggressively to his opponent.
Barton had to review the play via VAR, and as stipulated by the new amendment to Law 12, the incident resulted in a red card, since the situation had elements of confrontation and the gesture served to conceal provocative, derogatory or inflammatory communication.
The review confirmed his interpretation.
Referee Iván Barton issues a red card to Miguel Almirón for covering his mouth while confronting another player during a World Cup match.
(Dean Mouhtaropoulos / Getty Images)
Almirón became the first player sent off in a World Cup under this new provision.
For Barton, however, the story isn’t simply about a player covering his mouth.
“People get confused. It’s not just the act of doing it; it’s doing it in a confrontational situation against an opponent. That’s what changes the picture,” Barton explained.
Clarity is important.
The amendment aims to prevent players from hiding insults or other abuse — including discriminatory remarks — behind their hand, arm or jersey.
In Almirón’s case, Barton believed the conditions were met.
“In that match, it was clear that it had occurred during a confrontational situation in which the players were facing off,” Barton explained. “Seeing it on the VAR footage was clear. It was evident, and at no point was there any doubt about the decision that had to be made.”
The incident occurred shortly before halftime, when Paraguay was leading 1-0. The red card left Paraguay with 10 players for the entire second half, but the team went on to win the match 1-0.
For Barton, the red card illustrates something he believes the public still misunderstands: VAR does not eliminate the need for the referee to interpret the rules.
“VAR isn’t there to eliminate 100% of errors,” he said. “Errors will always be part of soccer because there are many issues open to interpretation, and that’s what the referee is there for — to interpret them.”
Breaks that changed the pace of the matches
There was another major change fans protested during the World Cup — the hydration breaks.
FIFA decided that during the 2026 World Cup, there would be a three-minute break midway through each half, regardless of the temperature or stadium conditions. The referee was required to stop the match around the 22nd minute of each half.
The decision was motivated by concerns about player welfare in some of the hottest venues and a committee agreed it would be best to use the breaks universally rather than whenever the weather conditions required it to assure no teams were hampered by not getting breaks, but the debate did not go away.
In some cases, the breaks interrupted the flow of the game just as a team was starting to take control.
Barton understands that criticism, but he also doesn’t believe the break necessarily has a favorable or unfavorable effect on a team.
“Team A is attacking, attacking, attacking Team B. Obviously, it won’t be beneficial for Team A because they’re at their peak. For Team B, it will be,” he said.
The scenario can change in the second half.
“And what if, in the second half, the roles are reversed and it’s Team B that’s attacking Team A? For Team A, it’ll be beneficial. It’s very relative. I don’t think you can generalize whether it’s positive or not because it depends on the circumstances of the game.”
There’s also a difference between analyzing the break from the spectator’s perspective and doing so from the field.
As a referee, Barton found an immediate benefit.
“For us as referees, it’s beneficial because having a break to rest a bit, regain our strength and get feedback from our colleagues to see if anything needs adjusting — well, of course that’s positive,” said Barton. “In the United States, summers are extreme and it often becomes very difficult to say, ‘In this game, yes; in this game, no,’ because that undermines the consistency that the application of a rule must have.”
The stars’ last names don’t change the rule
What happens when the player who needs to be disciplined is named Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi, Lamine Yamal or James Rodríguez?
In a stadium, those names carry weight. On the lineup sheet, according to Barton, they don’t.
“As a referee — contrary to what many people might think — you detach yourself from many situations, from the noise, from the pressure,” he said.
That doesn’t mean the referee is unaware of who’s on the field. According to him, it means he can’t let a player’s name influence his decision.
“On the field, there are no big names, no big teams. You see 11 players against 11 players,” Barton said.
The Salvadoran had already officiated games featuring Messi during his career in various tournaments and at the 2026 World Cup, he faced some of the most renowned soccer players on the planet.
“At no point do we think, ‘I’m not going to speak to him firmly or show him a card because it’s this player.’ No, absolutely not,” Barton stated.
The rules must apply equally to everyone.
“If you see an incident, a foul or something someone did, you make a decision regardless of who it is,” Barton said.
Barton explains the relationship in a way that makes it clear it’s not about ignoring the players’ status in the sport. It’s about understanding that, for those 90 minutes, roles are clearly defined.
“Obviously, we respect them for what they’ve achieved, for what they represent in soccer, but when it comes to applying the rules of the game, we see 11 players against 11 players — and that’s it,” he said.
Taking El Salvador to the biggest stage
Barton speaks little about himself and a lot about his country. Every assignment, he explains, ceases to be an individual endeavor.
“The higher you climb a mountain, the stronger the wind blows. The harder it is to maintain your balance,” he said.
His philosophy has changed little since he began his career.
“I haven’t achieved these things on my own. There’s a huge team behind me. … My family, CONCACAF, FIFA, the people who have always supported me,” Barton said.
The Salvadoran acknowledges that, during international competitions, he often finds that there are still people who don’t even know where El Salvador is located.
“When you get to competitions at this level, there are people who can’t even locate our country on a map,” Barton noted. “Serving as a means for others to learn about El Salvador and ensuring that representation is dignified is one of my greatest responsibilities.”
There’s a common perception among fans that FIFA assigns the matches each referee will officiate from the very beginning of the tournament.
Instead, each assignment depends on the performance shown during the previous match.
France captain Kylian Mbappe and Spain captain Rodri pose with referee Iván Barton and match officials before a World Cup semifinal.
(Florencia Tan Jun / Getty Images)
“First, you have to earn a spot in the World Cup. Then you have to earn the privilege of officiating a match. And after that, it depends entirely on how you perform in that match,” Barton said. “It’s just like the teams. No one is guaranteed to advance. Game by game, you prove whether you deserve to stay in the competition.”
After each match, there are technical sessions during which every major match decision is analyzed.
“We have debriefing sessions to review what we did well and what we need to improve,” he said. “We also work with a technical staff that conducts tactical analyses of the teams to prepare for the different scenarios a match might present.”
Although the semifinal against France and Spain holds a special place in his heart, Barton recalls other World Cup moments that will likely stay with him forever.
“The four walkouts before the matches were impressive. Hearing the World Cup anthem and walking out of the tunnel was always special,” he said.
“When the final whistle blew in the semifinal, I felt like I’d written my name into soccer history by representing my country. It was one of the most sublime moments of my career.”
Unlike many public figures, Barton decided to stay virtually off social media before and during the World Cup.
“Our minds are what we choose to feed them. If we feed them garbage, we’ll end up thinking that way,” he said.
Barton only opened official accounts after the tournament — and, according to him, not out of personal interest.
“There were too many fake profiles impersonating me,” Barton said. “I’m not swayed by flattery, just as I’m not affected by insults. … I’ve faced the most attacks in my own country, not abroad,” Barton confessed.
Even so, he insists on always responding with the same message.
“Behind the referee is a human being. There’s a father, a husband, a son,” he said. “It’s fine to criticize the work, but don’t cross the line into personal attacks.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she is freezing her eggs as she decides her next political moves ahead of the 2028 presidential election campaign.
“This is a choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life,” Ocasio-Cortez, 36, said on Instagram about her decision regarding her reproductive options.
The New York congresswoman, a leading figure of Democrats’ progressive left flank, did not say explicitly whether she plans to have children. She said in her social media posts that she was taking a “political risk” in talking so personally about her potential family plans.
She said later on ABC “This Week” on Sunday that she has not ruled out running for president or for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrats’ floor leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, in 2028. She explained that she wants to normalize conversations about what women face in their professional and personal lives, while also highlighting the policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.
“In this political environment, where this administration is denying reproductive care to women across the country, from abortion rights to the ability to carry out a healthy pregnancy, I think it’s important for us as leaders to have these conversations,” she said.
Trump’s administration opposes abortion rights, and the Republican president’s first-term appointees to the Supreme Court provided the margins in the 2022 ruling that struck down the Roe v. Wade decision that had established a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.
Separately, however, Trump in 2025 signed an executive order designed to lower the costs of in vitro fertilization.
Ocasio-Cortez sponsored a Democratic bill in 2022, when the party controlled the House, to codify abortion rights into federal law after the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.
As part of her weekend announcement, Ocasio-Cortez noted that women — in politics and other fields — face different standards and scrutiny about their family status.
“Men run for office, or frankly they interview for jobs, and people don’t think in the back of their minds, ‘OK, this guy’s running for office, how old is he? Oh, well, is he going to want to start a family?’” she said.
‘We’re going backwards.’ Palestinians in Gaza say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of the US-backed 15-point plan has deepened uncertainty over an end to the war. Hamas says it remains committed to the agreement.
For the second time in as many weeks, a leading California-based thoroughbred has been retired.
Nysos, who would have been favored in the $1-million Pacific Classic later this month at Del Mar and was a top early contender for the $5-million Breeders’ Cup Classic this fall, won’t race again, Coolmore America announced Monday.
The 5-year-old son of Nyquist is headed to stallion duty next year at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud in Versailles, Ky., the same farm where Journalism, another horse who was being pointed for those two races, was sent last month after his retirement because of injury.
In a statement, Coolmore said Nysos is sound and uninjured but “the decision was made following a routine diagnostic evaluation that revealed subtle imaging changes on a scan.” Trainer Bob Baffert and Nysos’ owners, Baoma Corp. and Coolmore, “unanimously agreed to take a strict precautionary approach, prioritizing the horse’s long-term health and safety above all else.”
Said Baffert: “Nysos is not hurt or injured, but taking a precautionary approach is strictly about doing what is right for the horse. With the minor changes shown on the evaluation, we simply don’t have the time needed to prepare him for the Breeders’ Cup the way we would want to. He has given us everything and retiring him completely sound and at the top of his game is the proper decision.”
Nysos retires after eight wins and two seconds in 10 lifetime races, with earnings of nearly $5.3 million. He was considered a top prospect for the 2024 Kentucky Derby but was injured that winter and didn’t race again for 15 months.
He returned in May 2025 and won four of five starts last year, including the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile at Del Mar. This year Nysos finished second to Forever Young in the Saudi Cup before defeating Journalism in the Met Mile in June at Saratoga, which turned out to be his last race.
TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas voters will decide Tuesday whether to elect state Supreme Court justices rather than have the governor appoint them, a push from conservatives who have chafed for years over court decisions they disagreed with on issues such as abortion, school funding and the death penalty.
If the constitutional amendment passes, supporters hope to elect at least four conservative, antiabortion justices to the seven-member court by 2033.
Kansas is considering the change amid concerns that increasingly contentious and expensive judicial elections in other states are making their courts more partisan and less independent. Spending in a single state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin last year topped $100 million.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a term-limited Democrat who opposes the measure, said gerrymandering and dark money have put the Legislature out of step with the state’s voters, and “to think you can make the judicial branch a part of that dysfunctional system is frightening.”
Rulings the GOP dislikes
GOP lawmakers cite rulings by Kansas courts over the last two decades as reasons a change is needed.
Most recently, a district court judge in July reinstated a three-day grace period for voters to return mail ballots after election day, which GOP lawmakers had eliminated. Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, called the decision “outrageous” and urged people to vote yes on the ballot question.
The same judge — a finalist to fill the most recent Supreme Court vacancy — blocked enforcement of a 2025 law banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors. Masterson described him as “radical.”
The list of rulings Republicans criticize also includes rulings on education funding back to 2004. Supreme Court decisions forced lawmakers to increase funding to comply with the state constitution.
“If we elect our Supreme Court, they won’t force you to spend money on schools,” Masterson said in remarks in November to a conservative group, the Marion County Patriots for Liberty, the Marion County Record reported.
Abortion remains a key issue
Electing state Supreme Court justices gained currency among Republicans after a 2022 public vote affirming the high court’s landmark 2019 decision that Kansas’ Bill of Rights guarantees bodily autonomy and access to abortion. Total spending by both sides has exceeded $12 million.
Legislators who worked to overturn the Supreme Court’s protections, including Masterson, helped write this proposal.
Seven weeks after that 2022 vote, state Atty. Gen. Kris Kobach, then a GOP candidate for the office, told a Republican club in Wichita that electing justices would “slowly and quietly” put antiabortion justices on the high court.
The vote-yes campaign’s biggest donor — providing $1.7 million toward the campaign’s $3.7 million in spending — is a Nashville-based nonprofit that supports Republican candidates, groups and causes. Kansans for Life, the state’s most influential antiabortion group, has spent at least $87,000 in a recent 11-day span on mailers and texts.
“Kansans can bring an end to this reign of abortion by voting ‘yes,’” Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, said in an editorial written by a staffer on the antiabortion group’s website.
Meanwhile, the national and state affiliates for abortion provider Planned Parenthood contributed $1.6 million toward the vote-no campaign’s $8 million-plus in spending.
Jamie Swan, an engineer and college teaching assistant who knocked on doors for abortion rights in 2022, is doing the same to try to halt the proposal.
“I really believe that this is just a power grab,” she said.
Legislators have no say in appointments
Backers of the Kansas proposal brush aside arguments that electing the justices will give wealthy donors control over the Supreme Court.
“Globally and over history, even in its imperfection, the best system is democracy,” said Elizabeth Patton, state director of the low-tax, small-government group Americans for Prosperity, which has spent $935,000 to promote the vote-yes campaign.
Twenty-two states elect their top court’s judges, eight in partisan races. Governors in 26 states appoint them. In South Carolina and Virginia, legislators pick the justices.
Kansas elected justices for nearly 100 years before voters amended the state constitution in 1958. The governor now picks one of three finalists named by a nominating commission controlled by attorneys. Legislators have no role.
A review of every state’s current and past constitutions shows that the last state to add an amendment like the one Kansas is contemplating was Mississippi in 1914. Since then, 18 states’ amendments went the opposite way.
Voters weigh in every six years on whether a justice remains on the bench through a yes-or-no ballot question, but they’ve never booted a sitting justice. Conservatives say that means justices face no consequences for errant decisions.
Retirements and deaths on the bench allowed Kelly to appoint four of the current justices. Recently, the governor picked a district court judge who blocked enforcement of long-standing abortion restrictions in 2023.
“We don’t have a good way to fight back,” said state Sen. Mike Thompson, a conservative Kansas City-area Republican, who backs the measure.
United States President Donald Trump has criticised his own Department of Justice after it decided to drop criminal charges against a former Olympic athlete for the alleged vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC.
Trump voiced his opposition to the decision on Saturday, a day after US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced she was dismissing the charges against 67-year-old competitive canoeist David Hearn.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
Pirro said the damage was the result of “a botched installation and not vandalism”, contradicting both her own previous statements and claims made following Hearn’s June 19 arrest.
On Saturday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social page that he disagreed “100 percent” with Pirro, although he did not directly reference Hearn. Instead, he maintained that vandalism had been committed at the Reflecting Pool.
“To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM,” Trump wrote. “There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”
He followed his statement by posting a video showing an individual, though not Hearn, sticking a hand into the Reflecting Pool.
He also shared a photo of the numbers “86 47” etched into the lawn of the nearby National Mall, which has been interpreted as a call to “86” — or “nix” — the 47th president by removing him from his office.
There is no evidence that the numbers on the lawn are related to the Reflecting Pool, which has become a major political flashpoint for Trump.
Through a series of controversial renovation projects, Trump has sought to physically transform Washington, DC, including by resurfacing the pool.
He initially used the pool’s condition and previous renovation projects to criticise past presidents.
But his own attempt to fix the Reflecting Pool instantly attracted scrutiny, particularly after Trump hand-picked a company he had previously used in a private capacity.
It had never before received a government contract, and the multimillion-dollar deal was awarded without a competitive bidding process, as is standard.
Upon the renovation’s completion, problems soon emerged. The Reflecting Pool’s new lining quickly appeared to peel, and algae blooms sprouted in early June.
Trump repeatedly blamed the situation on “vandals”. The announcement of at least seven arrests connected to the pool sparked accusations of political scapegoating.
Hearn, who represented the US three times at the Olympics, emerged as the most high-profile case.
The athlete said he was bicycling past the Reflecting Pool when he stopped, reached in and felt the peeling sealant. He has denied committing any vandalism, with his lawyers calling his arrest an attempt to distract from the shoddy renovation work.
Pirro, a former Fox News host and Trump loyalist, had initially accused Hearn of “forcefully and violently” ripping the pool’s liner, decrying his actions as “an affront to the dignity of our shared history”.
In their court filings, federal prosecutors alleged that the damage Hearn caused exceeded $1,000, justifying federal charges.
They further claimed that all of the damage done to the Reflecting Pool had been caused by vandals.
Pirro struck a far different tone in her filing on Friday. She claimed she had received new information, leading her to dramatically pivot.
“It was not until after the return of the indictment, that the [Department of Interior] provided additional documents to the [US Attorney’s Office for Washington, DC] indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor,” Pirro wrote.
The Department of the Interior’s documents, she continued, showed “that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism”.
Pirro further blamed the damage on pressure to finish the project by July 4, a date that coincides with US Independence Day and the country’s 250th anniversary.
“The rush to complete the project led to hasty and botched work that was not remediated before the project was finished and the fencing removed,” Pirro wrote.
When Linda’s son Michael (Paul Ready) gets her an AI eldercare robot to help her, it’s clear she’s less than thrilled with the decision.
Although she initially wanted to return her new robot companion, Linda quickly changed her mind, and what follows is a hilarious, unlikely and unconventional relationship.
Appearing on The One Show, actress Diane Morgan spoke to Alex Jones and Vernon Kay about the lengths she went to accurately play the robot.
Diane commented: “It’s really hard! I got an ulcer, did I tell you I got an ulcer? Yeah, I didn’t blink.
“I made the stupid decision to not blink. What an idiot. I was wearing these really thick blue contact lenses.”
Vernon cut in to share her confusion as she highlighted that Diane already has blue eyes.
The BBC star replied: “I know! I got an ulcer, so I stopped wearing them. I said, ‘Oh, how are we going to film the rest of it?’
“They just said, ‘We’ll do it in post’. I was like, ‘Well, what’s the point of me wearing them?!’”
As her co-star shared that he thought it was worth it, Vernon added: “You suffered for your art.”
Since the series was released earlier this month, BBC viewers have had nothing but praise for the show, with many admitting to binge-watching it in one sitting.
One person online commented: “Love ANN DROID.” Another wrote: “This show was amazing!! Sad, happy, funny and emotional.”
Someone else commented: “Absolutely loved it and Diane is just fabulous.” While a fourth wrote: “Binge watched on iplayer… so so good!!!!”
Another added: “Excellent series – funny, poignant and current – congratulations.”
By almost every measure, Latino communities are bearing the brunt of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, according to a new report.
The League of United Latin American Citizens or LULAC, a Latino civil rights organization, found that court-sanctioned racial profiling has contributed to the disproportionate targeting of Latinos regardless of their immigration status.
“The impact of mass deportation is falling on Latinos as an ethnic group, not on undocumented immigrants as a legal category,” the report read in part. “U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, work-authorized immigrants, and multi-generational American families are absorbing measurable harm: economic, physical, and civic.”
Although other immigrant groups have been targeted, LULAC found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have mostly focused on immigrants from Latin America, particularly workers with no criminal history, who are also more likely to face violence or be placed in detention centers with substandard conditions.
Citing a recent UCLA study, LULAC said from January to October, federal immigration agents arrested more than 187,000 Latinos and deported more than 126,000.
In an email response to The Times, a spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security rejected the report’s findings.
“Allegations that DHS law enforcement engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE,” the spokesperson wrote. “What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S.—NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity.”
“Law enforcement officers use ‘reasonable suspicion’ to investigate immigration status and probable cause to make arrests consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” the spokesperson added. “The Supreme Court has already vindicated us on these practices.”
LULAC’s report comes amid recent court filings claiming that federal immigration agents were caught on body camera footage and in text messages using racial slurs when referring to Latinos.
Additionally, Congress recently approved nearly $70 billion in immigration enforcement funding to cover the rest of Trump’s term with at least $38 billion to go to ICE and $26 billion to Customs and Border Protection.
LULAC said in putting the report together it reviewed public data and published studies to provide a fact sheet that paints a broader picture about the impact mass deportations are having on Latinos.
“The people being removed are disproportionately working-age, employed and without criminal records — the demographic core of the workforce in construction, hospitality, agriculture, food processing, and care work,” the report read.
As of July 11, more than 65,000 people were being held in detention and about 70% of the population had no criminal convictions, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering organization.
ICE detention data show that about 40% of detainees were being held for civil immigration violations including visa overstays and work visa violations.
Unless previously deported, living in the country illegally is considered a civil violation rather than a crime and carries penalties such as arrests, fines and deportation proceedings.
The indiscriminate immigration raids that terrorized Latino communities appeared to have worsened after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in September, according to LULAC’s report.
The Supreme Court justices overturned a district court injunction that barred immigration agents in Los Angeles from roving around Home Depots and car washes, stopping brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking day laborers and others from arrest on immigration charges.
But once the injunction lifted, federal immigration agents descended once more on Latino communities, even stopping U.S. citizens, according to LULAC.
This month, the American Civil Liberties Union reviewed more than 1,200 enforcement incidents across eight states, identifying 155 U.S. citizens who were detained, targeted, or experienced law enforcement misconduct, and 437 incidents involving likely racial profiling. It also identified 214 children affected, including 32 Americans.
LULAC said the immigration raids had an economic impact. Citing a recent UCLA study, it said small business and Latino entrepreneurs in Los Angeles County saw foot traffic drop significantly, losing millions in potential revenue in June 2025.
A spokesperson for LULAC could not immediately be reached for comment.
Chair of the Federal Reserve Kevin Warsh looks on during a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on the Federal Reserve’s semi-annual monetary policy report at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on July 15. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
July 29 (UPI) — The stock market opened with the Dow falling 400 points on Wednesday ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee’s latest interest rate decision.
The committee will announce its decision on Wednesday afternoon with Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh making his second address since being appointed. Economic indicators point to the Fed holding interest rates at a target range of 3.5% to 3.75%.
“My colleagues and I recognize that high inflation has been an undue burden on American households and businesses,” Warsh said during a Senate Banking Committee hearing earlier this month. “The members of our committee have no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation and we share a resolute commitment to restore price stability.”
The war in Iran has increased economic pressure, driven by rising fuel costs as the United States and Iran use the crucial Strait of Hormuz as a point of negotiation. The annual inflation rate rose to 4.2% in May on the back of rising gas prices.
The fate of hundreds of clean energy projects hangs in the balance after court documents revealed that the Trump administration targeted California and other blue states solely for political reasons when it slashed funding for the initiatives last year.
Large companies, startups, utilities, universities and other nonprofits were among those that lost out on $7.6 billion in clean energy funding terminated by the White House in October. They include the University of California, the California Energy Commission, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and California’s nascent hydrogen hub, the Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems, or ARCHES.
At the time, Trump administration officials said the grants were terminated because they “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”
But in court documents filed as part of a lawsuit challenging the cuts, the Department of Energy states the selection of grants was “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”
It also concedes that neither the inclusion of ARCHES, nor any other grants in the October tranche, was “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor.”
California and the 15 other states that lost funding did not vote for Trump in the 2024 election.
Legal experts said such an action is unheard of.
“The government has stipulated that grants were cut off to states that voted against Trump. As far as I know, this blatant politics in cutting off grants is unprecedented. It also is illegal,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School and co-counsel in the lawsuit.
More projects were cut in California than any other state, about 79 out of nearly 300. They were all for clean energy, many to address climate change, and include investments in new battery plants, upgrades for the electrical grid and initiatives to take carbon out of the air. About $1.2 billion was slated for the hydrogen hub.
Money was also to go to West Biofuels in Woodland, CALSTART in Pasadena, Charge Bliss in Aliso Viejo, Rejoule in Signal Hill, Southern California Edison, the Imperial Irrigation District and Aera Federal LLC, among many others.
The lawsuit was brought by a group of faculty members and researchers at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, who were among those to lose research grants. A separate lawsuit was filed by California and a coalition of 13 other states in February.
The acknowledgment of political motivation is “startling — and it is particularly so when the administration has had these larger narratives about how they’re canceling grants that are about waste, fraud and abuse,” said Claudia Polsky, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at UC Berkeley and initiating counsel in the university case. “If they want to favor oil, coal and nuclear, and disfavor clean energy innovation, that’s their prerogative as the executive. But here we have stipulations saying that none of those things were true for these staggeringly consequential DOE grants.”
The lawsuit alleges that the government’s actions violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which prevents arbitrary discrimination, as well as the 1st Amendment in that it is targeting researchers for how their state voted.
“None of it was about a change in priorities,” Polsky said, noting that similar grants in red states were not canceled. “None of it was about fiscal stringency. None of it was about anything except punishing people who didn’t vote for Trump.”
Judge Rita F. Lin could order the federal funding to be reinstated, and indeed has already done so through some temporary preliminary injunctions. But many of the grantees are now in “purgatory” as the case proceeds toward a final ruling, Polsky said.
Many of the projects are complex, multi-year efforts that involve a hodgepodge of agencies, experts and partnerships, such as ARCHES, the state’s billion-dollar hydrogen hub awarded under President Biden. Officials with ARCHES could not immediately be reached for comment.
News of the funding cuts first broke last fall in a post on X from Russell Vought, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.
“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled,” Vought wrote. “The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA.”
At a House hearing in June, however, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said decisions were not made based on politics.
The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Secretary Wright looked me in the eye, under oath, insisting the decision to cancel California’s clean energy projects was ‘not political,’” Sen. Alex Padilla said in a statement to The Times on Monday. “The Administration’s own court filings tell a different story. These decisions jeopardize good-paying jobs, undermine American energy innovation, and drive up costs.”
Padilla is among 30 California lawmakers, including Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San José), who separately challenged the funding cuts as unlawful — writing in an October letter to the Energy Department’s independent Office of the Inspector General that the decision targeted blue states “for their perceived lack of support for President Trump.” The office subsequently launched an investigation into the claims.
“Any Trump official who lied and told the nation these clean energy grant cancellations had nothing to do with politics should resign,” Schiff said in a post on X after the latest court filings were revealed. “As the administration has now been forced to concede — these cancellations had everything to do with politics. Of the worst kind.”
A final ruling is expected in early November.
Times staff writer Jaweed Kaleem contributed to this report.
After nearly a month of mulling his options, LeBron James announced in a social media post that he will sign with the Philadelphia 76ers on a two-year, $8-million contract.
James, a small forward, will join guards Tyrese Maxey and V.J. Edgecombe, forward Jaylen Brown and center Joel Embiid in a star-studded 76ers lineup. James’ deal includes a player option, Klutch Sports Group Chief Executive Rich Paul told ESPN.
In a series of X.com posts, James said he contemplated retirement before choosing the 76ers over several other suitors.
“I was honest at that last press conference when I said I needed to look at myself and decide if I still love this game. I still truly love this game, and I have more to give,” he said.
I thought I was done when the season ended. I wasn’t ready to announce it, and I knew I needed some time to really decide, but I was pretty sure I played my last game. I was honest at that last press conference when I said I needed to look at myself and deicide if I still love
James will hope to break a 43-year championship drought for the 76ers, much the same way he erased a 52-year streak without a title for the city of Cleveland when he won a championship with the Cavaliers in 2016.
This likely will be the final free agency decision James will make as the 41-year-old enters a record-breaking 24th season. He said winning a fifth NBA title is his primary motivation.
“This is my last decision. I’m not going for money. I’m not going for family. What am I really playing for at this point?” James wrote on X. “I still want to sacrifice. I still want to work. I still want to grind. I still want to compete, to win and to have a chance at the feeling of winning another championship.
“I believe I can help make the Philadelphia 76ers a championship team and I am so excited to energize a new fan base and start this incredible journey one last time.”
The 76ers finished 45-37 and seventh in the Eastern Conference last season. However, they traded for Brown, a bona fide superstar, sending Paul George, two first-round draft picks and two second-round picks to the Boston Celtics on July 6. Brown, a nine-year veteran, averaged 28.7 points a game last season and helped the Celtics win the NBA title in 2024.
This was the fourth foray into free agency for James, who played the previous eight seasons with the Lakers, his longest continuous stint with any franchise.
It was widely reported that James would accept the $3.9 million veterans’ minimum exception. He will be paid far less than the approximately $57 million new teammates Embiid and Brown each will make, but James has made a record $584 million in career salary and his net worth is an estimated $1.4 billion thanks to endorsements and investments.
Reaction to the signing was swift. Nobody seemed more excited than Dawn Staley, the decorated South Carolina women’s basketball coach and a Philadelphia native. A longtime friend of James and his family, she posted a video while courtside at a game.
“Yo Philly, yo Philly, yo Philly! We got the King, y’all!” Staley said before telling James’ wife, Savannah, that she is available for advice on a school for the James’ daughter. “Savannah, we got you! ‘Bron, ‘Bron, good, great choice. My guy!”
James, an Akron, Ohio, native, played his first seven seasons with the Cavaliers after being the first overall draft pick in 2003 at age 18, spent four with the Miami Heat then returned to Cleveland for an additional four years before signing with the Lakers ahead of the 2018-2019 season. He has won four NBA championships, including one with the Lakers in 2020.
James informed the Lakers on June 30 that he would be signing elsewhere. Since then several teams made pitches for his services, with the Golden State Warriors, Heat, Cavaliers and Minnesota Timberwolves considered favorites along with the 76ers.
Not only were fans of those teams anxious to learn his decision. Last week, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the regular-season schedule had not been set because the league was waiting on James.
“We have to finish up the schedule. And where LeBron plays will affect the schedule,” Silver said at the CNBC Sport x Boardroom Game Plan Summit in New York. “So I would like him to make his announcement already, so we can finish the schedule, because, as you might imagine, the teams are calling us, the networks are calling us, and everybody wants to lock in the schedule. But it will influence how we set the schedule, how we set opening week, Christmas Day, etc. So I need him to make a decision.”
A day later, James stood on stage at Fanatics Fest in New York and said he wanted to join a team that “shares the same model as myself, and that’s like practicing championship [habits] every day, but trusting the process more than anything.”
A false alarm became part of the narrative when the Heat posted a link July 21 to a scheduled livestream titled “LeBron James Introductory Press Conference” to its YouTube channel. A team spokesperson said it was a mistake, that the club’s social media department was preparing for the possibility of James’ signing. The post was deleted.
James has announced his agreements with new teams in various ways. When he left the Cavaliers in 2010 to team with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh on the Heat, he announced his choice on a live television special called “The Decision,” saying “I’m taking my talents to South Beach.” On Friday morning, a thread on X relayed the big news.
Fans in Cleveland burned his jersey, and Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert posted a letter on the team website calling James’ decision a “cowardly betrayal.”
Four years and two NBA championships with the Heat later, James returned to his home state of Ohio to play for the Cavaliers again in 2014. His first-person Sports Illustrated essay written with senior writer Lee Jenkins shared his “I’m Coming Home” choice with the world.
“I always believed that I’d return to Cleveland and finish my career there,” James wrote. “I just didn’t know when. After the season, free agency wasn’t even a thought. But I have two boys and my wife, Savannah, is pregnant with a girl. I started thinking about what it would be like to raise my family in my hometown. I looked at other teams, but I wasn’t going to leave Miami for anywhere except Cleveland.”
James led the Cavaliers to four consecutive NBA Finals and a championship in 2016 when Cleveland overcame a 3-1 deficit to defeat the Warriors. It was the greatest NBA Finals comeback in history and brought the Cavaliers their first title.
But it turns out most of his child-rearing came in Los Angeles. In 2018, James decided not to pick up his player option and signed a four-year, $153.3-million contract to play for the Lakers, choosing them over the 76ers and a return to the Cavaliers. His salary escalated each year, rising to $52.6 million last season.
“LA has welcomed the arrival of Rabbit, Logo, Stumpy, Big Dipper, Captain, Silk, Magic, Big Game, Diesel, Mamba, Spaniard and now welcomes a King!!” Lakers co-owner Joey Buss tweeted.
In James’ second season in L.A., the Lakers won their 17th NBA championship in a bubble at Walt Disney World to cap the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. James notched a triple-double in the clinching Game 6 and earned Finals most valuable player for the fourth time in his career.
James set the league all-time scoring record while wearing the purple and gold, but his eight seasons with the Lakers also included failures. The 2021-2022 season is widely regarded as the most disappointing in team history. The overwhelming favorite in Las Vegas to win the championship when the season began, the Lakers finished 33-49 and missed the playoffs.
The Lakers never made it past the Western Conference finals over the next four seasons, including getting swept in the conference semifinals by the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2026. James averaged 20.9 points, 6.1 rebounds and 7.2 assists last season while adding to his list of NBA records, setting marks for games played, all-time wins and field goals made.
The Lakers pivoted quickly after James announced he wouldn’t return, overhauling the roster to complement star guards Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves. They traded for 7-foot-2 center Walker Kessler and signed free agents Sandro Mamukelashvili, Quentin Grimes, Collin Sexton, Matisse Thybulle, Ziaire Williams and Kevon Looney.
Meanwhile, James methodically listened to pitches from a handful of teams, ultimately settling on the 76ers.
Paul, James’ agent and close friend, said on a podcast Monday that the ample time James took making the decision was necessary because the choice was difficult.
“I think it’s important for people to understand: We’re not making this about attention and a spectacle,” Paul said. “It’s not about a ‘Decision’ or anything like that. He has a choice to make. He has a business choice to make.”
Giving himself the best shot at a fifth title was key. James has played in 302 postseason games, by far the most of any NBA player, and scored 20 or more points in 261 of them. His teams are 42-15 in playoff series and 188-114 in games. He has scored the most points in the playoffs (8,521) in addition to the most points in the regular season (43,440).
“It’s amazing what he’s done for the sport, for the league, and he deserves the opportunities that were presented to him to be able to make his own decision on what’s best for him and his family,” Silver said last week. “So I completely respect that.”
Aaron Donald did not attend a Rams fan event Thursday night, but the crowd at the YouTube Theater in Inglewood featured many people wearing No. 99 jerseys. One waved a large printed cutout of the three-time NFL defensive player of the year’s face.
The Rams are waiting for Donald to decide whether he will come out of a two-year retirement and join a star-studded Rams team that is favored to win the Super Bowl, which will be played in February at SoFi Stadium.
“I think it’s real clear where we can start the GoFundMe to bring Aaron back,” team president Kevin Demoff joked to a raucous crowd that was cheering ‘AD, AD, AD.”
The Rams open training camp Saturday at Loyola Marymount. Donald, 35, helped the Rams win Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium to cap the 2021 season. He has indicated that he is considering a return to a defense that features end Myles Garrett, the reigning defensive player of the year, and All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie.
“We don’t have a ring, or a Lombardi Trophy or a banner if it’s not for Aaron Donald,” Demoff told the crowd, adding that if Donald wants to return, “We will wait with open arms.”
Tony Pastoors, the Rams chief operating officer, said the Rams want Donald to go “through his process” before making a decision.
“Whenever he’s ready, we’ll be ready,” Pastoors told the crowd. “And, ultimately, I would rather have Aaron Donald when we’re playing actual football games than in July.
“So, we’ll all be patient, and if it happens, we’ll be ready.”
Demoff echoed Pastoors.
“The last 10 years don’t happen without Aaron Donald, and if he wants to come help kick off the next 10 years, by all means we’re ready.”
WASHINGTON — The Dodgers arrived at the White House on Thursday to celebrate their 2025 World Series championship following an invitation from President Trump.
The ceremony took place in the Rose Garden, with manager Dave Roberts selected to give a speech on behalf of the team.
It was the back-to-back champions’ second visit in as many years, but this trip came with scheduling complications. The timing for a visit didn’t work out when the Dodgers were in town to play the Nationals in April for a day-game laden series. So, they used their single off day on a three-city East Coast trip to make a pit stop in Washington, wedging the visit between games against the Phillies and Mets.
The decision to again visit the White House raised debate among Dodgers fans, who argue Trump’s anti-immigration policies have harmed many of the team’s supporters. But Roberts has continually tried to downplay the political messaging associated with the visit.
Mookie Betts and Kiké Hernández did not join the team for the visit, with Betts telling reporters he preferred to spend the day with his family and Hernandez saying he had a rehab assignment conflict but wouldn’t have joined the team if he was available. Hernández previously offered his support to fans affected by ICE raids in Los Angeles, while Betts said he didn’t want his decision to be viewed as political.
“This took a long time to get both sides together, and, honestly, like I’ve always said, my company line, my personal line is I hope that we get this invitation every year,” Roberts said when the trip was finalized this month. “Because that’s the goal: to win a championship, to get this invitation to the White House. And I’m not a politician, and I’m doing something that teams have done for decades. And so that’s where I stand, really. I’m a baseball coach. That’s what I do.”
The visit falls days after Bloomberg reported that two insurance companies controlled by Dodgers chairman Mark Walter, as well as Guggenheim Partners, where Walter is chief executive, are being investigated by federal prosecutors for potential financial improprieties.
No charges have been filed. Representatives from the parent company of the insurance firms as well as from TWC Global — the Walter business empire that controls his sporting investments, including the Dodgers and Lakers — have told reporters they are cooperating with the investigation.
