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.
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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.
UN rights chief condemns worsening repression in Nicaragua, urging the restoration of freedoms and the rule of law.
Published On 22 Jul 202622 Jul 2026
The United Nations human rights chief has condemned Nicaragua’s escalating crackdown on civil and political rights, days after President Daniel Ortega announced a plan to block elections and shut out the opposition.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said on Wednesday that the “latest developments further deepen the severe restrictions on fundamental freedoms, the dismantling of civic space, and the steady erosion of the rule of law” in the Central American country.
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Ortega, a former leftist fighter who has ruled Nicaragua for almost two decades alongside his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, said on Sunday that “there won’t be elections” in the country, a move that would remove any prospect of a challenge to the couple’s rule.
General elections were due in November, but constitutional reforms passed 18 months ago extended the presidential term from 5 to 6 years, pushing the vote back to 2027.
Turk said power in Nicaragua was increasingly being concentrated “under the co-presidency”, with the ruling Sandinista party already holding full control over parliament, all municipalities and the regional councils on the North and South Caribbean Coast.
He called on the authorities to “reopen civic space, and restore the rule of law”, warning that “independent expression of thought or opinion is systematically suppressed”, urging that “people of all political viewpoints must be allowed to vote and run for office, in line with the State’s international human rights obligations”.
The statement also cited the government’s abrupt revocation of several lawyers’ credentials earlier this month, which it said had no legal justification, and noted that at least 46 people remain arbitrarily detained on political grounds.
Turk further raised concern over the treatment of religious groups, pointing to the unclear whereabouts of Bishop Abelardo Mata Guevara, 80, who was detained on June 29, and urged Managua to release all those held arbitrarily “with humanity and dignity”.
Since a deadly crackdown on protests in 2018 – in which more than 300 people were killed, according to UN figures – Ortega and Murillo have tightened their grip on Nicaraguan society.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn (R) and his husband Daniel Funke (L) arrive for a state banquet in honor of the queen and crown prince of Denmark at Bellevue Palace in Berlin on November 10, 2021. On Saturday, Spahn, now a member of the Bundestag, resigned his post after the couple used a surrogate in the United States to have a baby. File Photo by Clemens Bilan/EPA
July 19 (UPI) — Jens Spahn, a member of Germany’s Bundestag, has resigned his post amid uproar over his use of a surrogate to have a baby.
The leader of the center-right Christian Democrats in parliament quit abruptly Saturday, The New York Times reported. The move came three days after he announced the birth of his child, Georg, with husband Daniel Funke.
“Georg is our greatest joy,” Spahn, 46, told the German newspaper Bild. “This feeling is almost impossible to put into words.”
The couple faced criticism for the decision to use surrogacy to have a baby because the practice is outlawed in Germany — a law Spahn and fellow Christian Democrats voted to keep in place in February. Spahn and Funke used a surrogate in the United States to welcome their son.
In 2015, Spahn wrote that “as a gay man and a Christian, I find it personally very hard to warm to the idea of a rented womb,” The Guardian reported.
In an appearance on a podcast, Spahn said he struggled with the decision to use surrogacy but ultimately put his family first, the Times reported.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, also a member of the Christian Democratic Union, called on Spahn to step down Saturday. Other regional members of the party also sought his ouster.
NEW YORK — The Dodgers’ game against the New York Yankees on Saturday in the Bronx was rained out and rescheduled as the first game in a split doubleheader Sunday.
It was the Dodgers’ first postponement of the season.
They are set to play Game 1 at 9:35 a.m. PDT Sunday, followed by Game 2 at 4:20 p.m.
Saturday’s game was originally scheduled to air on Fox at 5:08 p.m. PDT. But with persistent showers in the forecast, the decision to postpone was made official more than three hours before game time.
Dodgers right-hander Emmett Sheehan (4-6, 4.81 ERA) was scheduled to take the mound opposite Yankees lefty Ryan Weathers on Saturday. The Dodgers didn’t immediately announce how the doubleheader might affect their starting pitching plans.
The state has rescinded a $73.4-million grant for a new mental health and drug treatment facility in San Pedro, putting the future of the controversial project in jeopardy.
Neighbors had picketed outside the property at 2100 S. Western Avenue and packed a town hall in April to oppose the project, with some expressing fears about drug users coming to the area.
The nonprofit Fred Brown Recovery Services was seeking to acquire the five-acre property and turn it into a 106-bed inpatient recovery center for “veterans, the justice-involved, the unhoused, and those with co-occurring conditions.” The facility also would serve about 200 outpatients a day.
About 70 elderly residents who live in a nursing home on the property would have had to move, some opponents of the project said. Others said they supported mental health treatment in general but argued that the proposed center would be too close to nearby schools, day cares and churches.
The grant, which would have covered most of the project’s cost, was funded partially by Proposition 1, a $6.4-billion bond measure approved by California voters in 2024 to improve mental health and addiction treatment.
In a letter dated July 15, the California Department of Health Care Services said it rescinded the grant because Fred Brown Recovery Services failed to meet a cash match requirement and did not address discrepancies in an appraisal document.
The matching funds cannot come from the seller of the property, and the match documentation was signed by Brian Dror, a manager for the current property owner, 9 Gem Capital Group, said the letter, which was addressed to Fred Brown Recovery Services. The letter also noted that there is no process to appeal the decision.
Dror, a partial owner of the property, said that state bond guidelines do not prohibit an owner from providing matching funds.
In a statement Thursday, Fred Brown Recovery Services said it is “reviewing the Department’s decision and evaluating next steps. Regardless of the future of this particular project, our commitment to serving individuals and families struggling with substance use disorders remains unchanged, and we will continue looking for opportunities to expand access to treatment for those who need it most.”
Los Angeles City Councilmember McOsker, who represents the coastal neighborhood, opposed the project and rallied community members to send letters to elected officials and state decision makers, urging them to review the grant application.
In a Facebook post, McOsker said he had raised concerns to the Department of Health Care Services for months over the project’s financial structure and lack of transparency.
Previously, McOsker had applauded Fred Brown for its work on recovery group homes elsewhere in San Pedro. But he said he was doubtful that the nonprofit could scale up from 20-person homes to the larger one proposed for the South Western site.
“I am grateful to the many residents, neighborhood organizations, and community leaders who remained engaged throughout this process,” McOsker wrote in the Facebook post. “Today’s action demonstrates why thorough review, public scrutiny, and accountability matter.”
L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who lives in the neighborhood and was booed at the April town hall for saying that rehab facilities like the proposed one are sorely needed, said Thursday that halting the project “might be for the best.”
“There was so much opposition in San Pedro, I don’t think this proposal was ever going to work,” she said.
Richard Scandaliato, president of San Pedro’s South Shores Community Assn., said the reversal was “unbelievable” after months of near-weekly picketing and hundreds of letters that neighbors wrote to state officials.
The most important thing, he said, is that the senior citizens living on the property can stay there. He said he’s gotten at least a hundred phone calls from neighbors since the grant was rescinded.
“It really shows what a community can do,” he said.
Folarin Balogun insists that the red card controversy surrounding him during the World Cup was not the reason the U.S. lost 4-1 to Belgium in the round of 16.
But, the breakout American star said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show, “it didn’t help.”
“As an athlete, you go into a game that’s already difficult enough with everything that goes on, the pressure,” Balogun said. “So to have more pressure, not just internally [but also] from almost the whole footballing world, was difficult. But it’s not an excuse. We were disappointed with the way it ended, but there’s still a lot to be proud of.”
Balogun, a birthright U.S. citizen whose Nigerian parents live in England, scored his third goal in four World Cup games during a 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina on July 1 in Santa Clara. But he also received a straight red card for stomping on the ankle of Bosnian center back Tarik Muharemović, meaning the top-scoring American player would have to miss the next game.
It was a controversial call, with some feeling the red card was unwarranted since Balogun’s action didn’t seem intentional.
The only other time a red-card suspension was overruled during a World Cup was in 1962, when Brazilian attacker Garrincha was allowed to play in the final after Brazil’s prime minister lobbied on his behalf.
“My initial reaction was, I was happy to be back in the team,” Balogun said Tuesday on “CBS Mornings.” “But when I kind of started to reflect, I knew it was going to cause a lot of controversy.”
He was correct about that. Although Infantino insisted that the FIFA Disciplinary Committee makes its decisions independently, the reversal caused outrage among many in the soccer world. Belgium submitted an appeal, but it was rejected hours before the game.
Amid all that, the U.S. had to prepare for Belgium — first without and then with Balogun in the mix. He told CBS the situation was “confusing” for all involved.
“I could almost see within my teammates a bit of nerves, because it’s something that is so unique,” Balogun said. “But the closer we got to the game, I tried to just focus as best as I could, but it was difficult. A lot of outside noise, and that’s hard to avoid.”
He added, though, that he and his teammates were “able to separate the emotion from the job at hand,” and the distractions didn’t contribute to the disappointing loss.
“We’re all professionals, so it’s not something I think was too difficult to be separate once we kind of got over the initial announcement that I’d be back in the team,” Balogun said. “I think you saw definitely it was a difficult game against Belgium, and that can kind of overshadow whether we were focused or not. … I know we had full concentration going into the game.”
Croatia’s World Cup was seconds away from being over and Portugal was seconds away from the round of 16 when Ivan Perisic sent a long, desperate cross into the penalty area. The ball bounced off bodies like a pinball before magically, unbelievably, caroming into the net.
Gooooooallllllll!!!!
Fate had given Croatia a reprieve.
But as pandemonium broke out in the stands and on the pitch, Norwegian referee Espen Eskas stood in the middle of the celebration in Toronto, hand to his ear, listening to a voice half a continent away in Dallas.
So Eskas trotted over to a TV monitor, watched a video replay over and over again, and more than 2½ minutes after the goal was recorded, he took it off the board. Perisic’s cross had brushed the hair of teammate Igor Matanovic, leaving Mario Pasalic in an offside position when the ball reached him near the far post. The contact was imperceptible to the naked eye, but a space-age sensor in the ball had confirmed it.
A VAR review led a referee to overturn a Croatia goal during its 2-1 World Cup loss to Portugal in Toronto, eliminating Croatia from the tournament.
(Dan Mullan / Getty Images)
Croatia’s World Cup was over, another victim of VAR, which has had an outsized influence on this summer’s tournament.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When VAR was introduced to soccer nine years ago, its mission was clear: to alert the head referee to potential clear and obvious errors or serious missed incidents. At least that’s what Major League Soccer, one of the first leagues to use the system, wrote in the news release introducing it.
“It was really to stop the headlines,” said Mark Geiger, who helped implement VAR as an MLS referee. “These super-egregious errors in a game that impact the outcome. The mantra for VAR was always minimum interference but maximum benefit.”
Under the VAR system, officials sitting before a bank of monitors in a centralized control room review match footage in real time and advise the on-field referee of potential errors. If the video assistant referees believe a mistake has been made, they communicate that through an earpiece the match referee is wearing. If the match official agrees, they will stop play, signal a review by motioning their hands in the shape of a rectangular TV screen, then watch the play themselves on a pitch-side monitor before either confirming or reversing the original decision.
It is comparable to the Automated Ball-Strike review added this year in Major League Baseball, tennis’ Hawk-Eye line-calling system and long-standing centralized instant replay review in the National Football League and National Basketball Assn., systems that have both corrected errors and stoked debate.
But VAR has morphed into something far greater. In this World Cup, there have been more than 100 VAR interventions, encompassing both confirmed on-field calls and overturned decisions, through the end of the round of 16, according to Antonio Vuksanovic, a publication relations and communications professional at Sofascore, a Croatian technology company and sports statistics website.
“When it comes to actual overturned decisions, we’re looking at roughly 0.5 per match, which is higher than the last World Cup and higher than what we saw across the most recently completed club season,” Vuksanovic said.
Even though the officials have gotten most of those calls right, many of the infractions reviewed have been so imperceptible yet so consequential, it has raised a question: if human error on the part of players and coaches is part of the sport, is allowing a game to be decided by electronic evidence of a touch detectable only through NASA-level technology violating the spirit of the game?
Iran’s Shoja Khalilzadeh shoots past Egypt’s Mostafa Shobeir, but the goal was overturned after VAR review during a World Cup match in Seattle on June 26.
(Maddy Grassy / Associated Press)
Christina Unkel, a former FIFA referee, state referee administrator in Florida and a rules of the game analyst for multiple TV networks, believes it does.
“Football is an art. And that’s why we love it,” she said. “It truly isn’t the referee’s fault. We’re not the ones seeking more advanced technology. We don’t want to look like robots out there. But the stakeholders are like ‘more, more, more.’
“When you do pursue black and white — objectivity is what they’re trying to get to, and I get it; they want to eliminate as much subjectivity as possible — what everyone is hating is this perfection thing.”
FIFA, the major stakeholder in the World Cup, declined multiple requests to answer questions about the officiating, but it has clearly doubled down on the technology for this tournament, introducing the semi-automated offside system which uses player-tracking cameras, computer-generated offside lines and, in some cases, data from a measuring instrument inside the match ball, to identify everyone’s position on the pitch when the ball is played.
“The whole genesis of VAR was not to fix every mistake or to make the referees perfect,” said Geiger, the first American to officiate a World Cup knockout game and now general manager of the Professional Referees Organization (PRO), which oversees referees for MLS and the NWSL. “Is the referee correct? That’s not the right question. They should be asking themselves, ‘is the referee clearly and obviously wrong?’”
Geiger, however, remains a huge proponent of the system and was careful not to criticize how it’s been used in this World Cup.
Belgium’s Youri Tielemans on a penalty kick that sails by Senegal goalkeeper Mory Diaw during a World Cup round of 32 match in Seattle on July 1. The game-deciding penalty kick was awarded after VAR review.
(Manu Fernandez / Associated Press)
Still, the frequent use of VAR and other technologies has clearly robbed the World Cup of much as its drama, with spontaneous celebrations of game-winning goals turning to grief moments later when the referee steps away from the monitor and takes away a score.
Reviews not only ended Croatia’s tournament, but they showed Shoja Khalilzadeh was a toe offside when he scored the goal that would have sent Iran to the knockout stages, one of three goals Iran had disallowed by VAR in the tournament; it gave Belgium a late penalty, based on light contact, that Youri Tielemans converted to end Senegal’s World Cup; and it cost Egypt a goal for a perceived foul that took place nearly 100 yards away from the ball in its 3-2 loss to Argentina.
“What happened to us wasn’t fair,” Egypt coach Hossam Hassan said.
Unkel agreed with that sentiment too.
“Everyone hates it,” she said. “According to VAR, that’s correct to take that goal away. That’s not the spirit of the game. But it’s the correct decision by law.”
What Unkel would prefer — and she believes a majority of officials are on her side — is for referees to have discretion to ignore or even overrule VAR if common sense and their understanding of the game suggest they should, just as judges have discretion to use common sense in applying the law.
“A lot of our game, the majority of it, is very subjective,” she said. “When we’re all sitting there saying, ‘No, that doesn’t gain an unfair advantage,’ then that’s when we have to start reconsidering things back to the spirit of the law. That’s the catchall loophole for saying, ‘Do we want this to be part of our game?’
“And I think everyone’s universally saying there a lot of different kinds of decisions we do not want part of our game. Toenail offsides, hair follicle arguments.”
Without the use of video replays, its unlikely any of those calls would have been made and the World Cup quarterfinals would probably look quite different.
England players react as referee Alireza Faghani shows a red card to England’s Jarell Quansah during a World Cup match against Mexico on July 5.
(Natacha Pisarenko / Ap Photo/natacha Pisarenko)
England coach Thomas Tuchel, upset about a penalty call on captain Harry Kane and a red card given to defender Jarell Quansah, both following video reviews in his team’s round-of-16 win over Mexico, said rulings were being overturned in the tournament “in a very questionable way.”
“The referees can send any team out in any moment,” he added. “It’s just not good enough. It’s just erratic. It’s just unreliable.”
An apparent misuse of the technology also led to the most controversial incident in the tournament. In the second half of an elimination game between the U.S. and Bosnia-Herzegovina, American Folarin Balogun stomped on the ankle of Bosnia’s Tarik Muharemovic, something Brazilian referee Raphael Claus initially decided did not merit even a caution. But after VAR official Juan Soto of Venezuela urged him to watch a replay, Claus flashed a red card at Balogun, expelling him from the game and banning him from the next match in the round of 16.
Claus had watched the replay in slow motion, allowing him to see what wasn’t apparent at game speed. FIFA later intervened by lifting Balogun’s one-game suspension, igniting ever greater controversy because it was just the second time that has happened in a World Cup.
U.S. forward Folarin Balogun steps on Bosnia-Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemovic’s foot and received a red card after VAR review during the World Cup.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
The heavy use of VAR has also interrupted the flow of games by halting matches that weren’t meant to be halted, leaving everyone standing on the field while the referee goes off to watch TV, sometimes for minutes at a time.
“When calls are reviewed and when goals are reviewed, sometimes it could take away from the momentum,” U.S. defender Chris Richards said. “Look under anything with a microscope, you could probably find something. But ultimately it was meant to be helpful for the game.”
And it has been. Because if officials have become over-reliant on VAR to review decisions that were not, or could not, be seen in real time, at least they’re getting those decisions right.
“I wish we had it in the 2002 World Cup,” said Bruce Arena, who coached the U.S. in that tournament. “We might have made it to the semifinals.”
In the quarterfinals of that tournament, with Germany leading 1-0 in the 40th minute, an obvious handball by Germany’s Torsten Frings kept out a shot from American Gregg Berhalter. If VAR had been available, Scottish referee Hugh Dallas could have corrected the missed call, awarding a penalty and giving Frings a red card, expelling him for the final 40 minutes.
“Look at every sport now in the world,” said Arena, coach of the San José Earthquakes. “They have some version of VAR. Why not make decisions correct?”
“There are still plenty of opportunities for the referees to control the game and make mistakes and not make mistakes,” he continued in reference to the human element. “It’s not like every moment is evaluated. But key moments are.”
As for interrupting the flow of play, Arena says the three-minute hydration breaks FIFA has introduced each half — ostensibly for player welfare, but in practice to give the TV networks additional commercial breaks — have been more disruptive.
“You don’t want VAR to officiate the game completely,” Arena said. “You have to pick your spots. For the most part, I think VAR is good.”
The Trump administration finalized a rollback of the Endangered Species Act on Friday, paving the way for drilling, mining and other human development across protected wildlife habitats.
The move redefines “harm” under the Endangered Species Act, the landmark conservation law that protects threatened and endangered plants and animals. For years, “harm” meant actions that injure or kill wildlife, as well as actions that destroy protected habitats.
Under the new rule, destroying those habitats is no longer illegal.
The decision aligns with the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to slash regulations in the name of economic growth. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose department finalized the move, said the prior definition of harm “interfered with private property rights” and “turned routine activity into a regulatory trap.”
Environmental groups called the decision a disaster, saying it puts protected species on a path to extinction.
The move seems especially poised to hit California, the most biodiverse state in the country, where more than 6,700 species are spread across mountains, forests, deserts and oceans. Of the roughly 2,300 species protected by the Endangered Species Act, nearly 300 are found in California.
These species include amphibians such as tiger salamanders and Yosemite toads; birds such as California condors and northern spotted owls; fish such as Little Kern golden trout and Santa Ana suckers; insects such as Franklin’s bumble bees and Mission blue butterflies; mammals such as gray wolves and Santa Catalina Island foxes; and reptiles such as desert tortoises and green sea turtles.
The Endangered Species Act is widely credited with saving the California condor, which almost went extinct in the 1980s due to several factors, including habitat destruction. Thanks to a recovery program under the act, the condor population has since soared to several hundred. But under the new law, the logging and human development that led to their near demise is now allowed.
A handful of California species recoveries have been championed as success stories under the Endangered Species Act, including southern sea otters, peregrine falcons, humpback whales, bald eagles and green sea turtles.
According to a report from the Center for Biological Diversity, the El Segundo blue butterfly lost 90% of its oceanside habitat due to the construction of LAX and beachfront housing developments. The population dwindled to about 1,000 butterflies in the 1970s, when it was named an endangered species. Now, the population has climbed above 120,000.
In California, the rollback could pave the way for more farming, mining, logging and drilling in areas that were once forbidden due to the potential for wildlife habitat destruction. A report from Earthjustice estimates that expanded oil drilling in California could threaten five marine species including humpback whales, sea otters, leatherback sea turtles, marbled murrelets and wild salmon.
Several environmental groups are planning legal challenges to the ruling.
“For the first time ever, a presidential administration now claims that species protected by the Endangered Species Act shouldn’t be safe from habitat modification that destroys where they live, raise their young, or search for food,” Kristen Boyles, attorney for the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, said in a statement. “Let’s be clear: there is no support for the Trump administration’s rule — no scientific support, no legal support, no public support. We will see the Trump administration in court.”
Ben Greuel, wildlife campaign manager at the Sierra Club, called the decision “an unlawful attempt to open the door for corporate polluters to degrade vitally important habitats.”
“For more than four decades, the definition of ‘harm’ recognized a simple truth: if you destroy the places wildlife need to survive, you are putting species on a path to extinction,” Greuel said in a statement.
It’s not the first time Trump has taken aim at California environmental regulation.
Earlier this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom, along with the governors of Washington and Oregon, submitted a formal opposition to the Trump administration’s plans to expand drilling off the Pacific Coast, with Newsom saying it leads to “dead wildlife.” In June, the Trump administration ordered a review of the California Coastal Commission, claiming the state’s “environmental extremism” obstructs spaceport development and offshore oil production.
A day before the Endangered Species Act decision, the Trump administration signed off on a controversial plan to use an old oil pipeline to pump water from the Mojave Desert into cities. Environmental groups said the plan threatens springs and local wildlife, since six pumps would need to be built in desert tortoise habitats.
WASHINGTON — President Trump did not like what he saw. So, once again, he picked up the phone.
Trump said Monday that he called FIFA President Gianni Infantino after he disagreed with the World Cup referee who gave a red card to U.S. men’s soccer team star Folarin Balogun. The discipline, which Trump called “very unfair” and a “stain” on the World Cup, would have barred Balogun from playing in Monday’s elimination game against Belgium.
“I asked for a review because I didn’t think it was a foul,” Trump told reporters during an event in the Oval Office. “I am good at this stuff. I didn’t think it was a foul. I thought it was two great athletes that crashed into each other and got entangled.”
Trump said he initially didn’t know “what the hell a red card was” or what it meant. “When I found out, I said, ‘You gotta be kidding!’” he said.
Trump’s involvement in soccer’s disciplinary process created an international uproar.
UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, said FIFA “crossed a red line” with the reversal. Belgium’s football association appealed the ruling, which FIFA denied during a hearing Monday. Belgian coach Rudi Garcia mocked the decision as an April Fools’ joke.
“This decision clearly raises many questions,” Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot said in a statement Monday, according to the New York Times.
“If a phone call really is what explains this incomprehensible decision, it would amount to undermining the most basic rules of soccer and sports,” added Prévot, a former soccer referee.
Trump’s close relationship with Infantino also has drawn new scrutiny.
In December, Infantino presented Trump with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, an award the governing body created after Trump was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize. That decision is now the subject of an ethics complaint, backed by members of the European Parliament, who argue it compromised FIFA’s political neutrality.
Trump said he did not ask Infantino to reverse the call. But that was the outcome reached by FIFA’s disciplinary committee, which, in 64 years, has reversed a red-card penalty only once during a World Cup tournament.
The episode serves as a reminder of a pattern of behavior the president has exhibited when he doesn’t get his way, regardless of the rules of the game. For Trump, a deal-maker who has described the world as “a casino,” often pushes the boundaries of long-standing norms.
After FIFA reversed course, Trump called the decision “brilliant” and said Belgium can now “be really proud” if they were to beat the U.S. team on Monday night.
“The other way, if they beat us, we’ll say, or I’ll say it was rigged, just like the election was rigged in 2020, but I won’t get into that,” Trump said.
Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of “How Democracies Die,” said Trump’s action are “perfectly consistent with how Trump has behaved on the world stage.”
“He has no interest in or no respect for any kind of international rules or norms,” he said.
Levitsky said the events illustrate the Trump administration’s worldview, one that, he argues, revolves around the ethos that “if we’re strong enough, we can leverage our way to whatever the hell we want.”
As examples, he pointed to the administration’s military strikes on boats in the Caribbean and efforts to acquire Greenland, both of which have led to diplomatic tensions.
Trump also has a history of using phone calls to pressure officials to reach an outcome he wants.
In a 2019 call, he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rival, a moment that became the catalyst of his first impeachment. And after losing the 2020 election, he pressed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” the margin he needed to flip the state, a move that ultimately led to a criminal indictment.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino presents President Trump with the FIFA Peace Prize in December.
(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)
Trump defended his call with Infantino to reporters and appeared to downplay how much it may have contributed to the red card penalty being reversed.
“I can’t tell [Infantino] what to do, and I don’t believe he made the decision,” Trump said. “I think it was a committee that made the decision, and they made the right decision, because No. 1, it wasn’t a foul, and you want to see a game with your best players.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who was in the Oval Office when Trump acknowledged the call with Infantino, made reference to the Peace Prize as he thanked Trump for “getting rid of the ridiculous red card” ahead of the knockout game.
“There was a reason the FIFA trophy sat here for as long as it did,” Cruz told Trump.
Infantino, for his part, issued a statement Monday insisting that the decision came from FIFA’s independent disciplinary committee and that he told Trump the case would be decided by the body. Bill White, the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, also defended Trump, saying he “would never interfere with the inner workings of FIFA.”
Norman Eisen, co-founder of Democracy Defenders Action, said Trump’s decision to get involved in soccer’s disciplinary process is a “classic example of achieving a right outcome through wrong means.” He added that he believes the Trump administration and FIFA showed to be “two of the most corrupt entities around.”
“Like many Americans who are following the World Cup and rooting our team on, I thought it was a bad call,” Eisen said. “But I would never have chosen to bring that about in this fashion.”
Levitsky argued that given the popularity of the World Cup, which hundreds of millions of people around the world are tuning into to watch, Trump is opening himself up for more scrutiny on the global scale.
“People across the world who don’t give a damn about politics are following the World Cup, and they’re seeing the United States behave this way, taking what it can take at the expense of others unfairly,” he said. “Of course it is going to hurt the U.S. image abroad.”
The California Supreme Court is poised to rule in a lawsuit that has pitted the state’s court reporters — the workers who create transcripts of court proceedings — against victims of domestic violence and other vulnerable litigants.
The case will determine whether to end a long-standing prohibition on the electronic recording of most civil court proceedings, enabling the use of modern technology to create a “verbatim record,” which is crucial to appeals and other legal challenges.
Advocates say a decision in favor of electronic recording could end a years-long judicial crisis virtually overnight, producing legal records and preserving the right to appeal in tens of thousands of cases in civil, family and probate hearings where court reporters are rarely provided. Participants in the civil proceedings can hire private stenographers to maintain a record of what’s said, but their services can run thousands of dollars a day.
“In many, many courtrooms throughout the state today, there is nobody there, and there’s not going to be anybody there,” attorney Sonya Winner told the high court during oral arguments in Los Angeles last month. “The court reporters the court has on staff are off doing felony trials,” making electronic recording the only alternative for most civil litigants.
Everyone agrees the lack of court reporters is a crisis. Lawyers on both sides have urged the high court to establish a clear right to a verbatim record in civil hearings.
The divergence is over whether the worker shortage is improving slowly or still getting worse, and what the Supreme Court should do about it.
California’s largest public sector union and the court reporters it represents warn the decision could allow the state’s court systems to stop hiring stenographers.
Court reporters say their duty to maintain an accurate record is a profound public trust that can only be performed by a human being, who can intervene to ensure everyone is heard and who bears responsibility if a transcript is missing or incomplete.
Despite California’s sluggish job market, hiring for court reporters remains brisk, bolstered by tens of millions in funding from Sacramento, a recent change in state law and aggressive recruitment by some of the country’s largest court systems, including Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.
Lila Scott, a TV writer, is among those seeking to join the profession. Like a lot of Hollywood talent, she had been struggling to find steady work in recent years.
The “Unicorn Academy” writer was trolling government job sites when she stumbled across a listing for court reporters in Los Angeles — and then another, and another.
“I thought, ‘What the heck is this?’” Scott recalled as she set up for a class at Downey Adult School.
Scott is now in training to become a “voice writer,” a form of note-taking that relies on a device called a stenomask — something like a cross between a podcast mic and a nebulizer — to produce a transcript. Voice writers repeat every word spoken in court along with a sequence of formatting commands to voice recognition software.
“You use your mom voice when you’re dictating,” said another Downey student, 40-year-old Wanda Port. “That stern mom voice, that’s the one you use.”
Traditionally, court reporters have used 22-key steno machines to rapidly take down every word said by lawyers, judges and anyone else who speaks on the record during an official proceeding. The licensing process for these stenographers is significantly longer and more difficult than what voice writers undergo.
A change in state law in 2024 allowed voice writers to become licensed as “certified shorthand reporters,” opening a new pipeline for court staff.
About half of the court reporters hired in California since 2024 have been voice writers, data show.
“Of the 300-plus students we have, it’s about 50/50,” said Jennifer Shenbaum, who directs the Downey program.
The current hiring blitz follows more than a decade of decline, after California’s court systems shed about a third of their reporters amid a protracted budget crisis in 2012. Labor leaders say new licenses have jumped ninefold in recent years, and court reporting classrooms across the state are full.
Diana Van Dyke, a Los Angeles County Superior Court reporter and a shop steward in Service Employees International Union Local 721, credits much of that growth to the expansion of paid internships, signing bonuses and other aggressive recruitment tactics funded by the Legislature and promoted by the union.
Students training to become court reporters practice on stenotypes and stenomasks during a speed-building class at Downey Adult School.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
At Orange County’s Cypress College, which offers court reporter training, job fliers boasting six-figure salaries paper the walls. A pamphlet from the Central District of California that touted “front-page Federal cases” hung in the window of a court reporting classroom, where students practiced typing 200 words per minute.
“By the end of the third test I can’t feel my fingers — but it’s worth it!” said Asia Mendez, a trainee-stenographer.
While advocates for court reporters say humans can still do the job better than machines, the fact that many hearings occur without any official transcript at all has drawn concern from top state officials.
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has called the situation “untenable.”
“This is the rare case in which the current application of a statute violates procedural due process,” Bonta’s office said in a brief urging the state’s high court to allow recordings.
Such a ruling would be especially important for survivors of domestic violence, who often find the family court system weaponized against them, said Jennafer Dorfman Wagner, director of programs at the Family Violence Appellate Project, which brought the suit that is now before the California Supreme Court.
“People who want to exert power and control over an ex-partner will find whatever foothold they can and use it,” Wagner said.
Without a record of their proceedings, litigants can’t prove what happened in the courtroom, or appeal if a judge denies a restraining order or approves a custody arrangement that leaves them vulnerable to further violence.
California’s court systems have also thrown their weight behind the plaintiffs in the case.
“California has long led in areas of access to justice and technology, but in this area, it lags far behind the rest of the country, and behind the federal courts that are in this state,” said Mark Yohalem, an attorney representing the state’s superior courts.
The justices, too, seemed eager to embrace electronic recording in cases where no court reporter is available and litigants cannot afford to pay for one on their own, repeatedly pressing lawyers on exactly how such a ruling might be written.
Although the decision would not affect criminal proceedings, the high court judges have expressed concern that court systems may use their ruling to roll back the broader recruitment push as a cost-cutting measure — a worry labor leaders share.
“Electronic recording is cheaper,” said Justice Joshua P. Groban. “It allows any court to just say, for example, that no more court reporters are needed.”
When advocates for the Family Violence Appellate Project told Groban and the other justices hearing the case that such a move by the courts would amount to “bad faith” and should not weigh on their decision, the judge appeared skeptical.
“Either bad faith or fiscal responsibility, depending on the budget that year,” Groban said.
Under Fifa’s disciplinary code, Ronaldo should have received a three-match ban for elbowing Dara O’Shea during Portugal’s 2-0 qualifying defeat by the Republic of Ireland in November.
He served one match in the final qualifier against Armenia – but the remaining two games of the ban were suspended.
Ronaldo’s red card, though, was received in qualifying. It was not a red card at a World Cup.
There have been many cases of players being shown some leniency before a tournament, not just Ronaldo.
See France’s Laurent Koscielny in 2014, or Ecuador’s Moises Caicedo and Argentina’s Nicolas Otamendi before this World Cup.
At least with Ronaldo, we were given some justification, with Fifa saying it had taking into account that “he had no red cards in his other 225 international appearances”.
With Balogun, we did not even get that.
It has left a vacuum of information which can only lead to speculation.
Why was this a special case? What factors were taken into account? Who made the decision?
BBC Sport has been told there are no suggestions that the referee asked for the suspension to be removed, or that video assistant referee protocol was not respected.
In England, the Football Association would publish the full written reasons.
The United States have the right to ask Fifa to publish them, Belgium do not.
BBC Sport pundit Micah Richards, a former England defender, said it was a farce.
“To have it suspended for a year makes a mockery of the whole tournament,” he said.
“It is to keep the big stars in the competition. How can that happen? Fifa needs to do better.
“It has left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths.”
Belgium are, of course, furious. They issued a statement on Sunday saying they were “astonished” that Balogun had been cleared to play.
The Belgian FA referenced several regulations, workshop presentations and pre-tournament co-ordination meetings.
They are adamant that the decision contradicts the tournament regulations which state that a player “will automatically be suspended from their team’s subsequent match”.
In effect, they say Fifa used its disciplinary code to override the competition regulations.
Belgium head coach Rudi Garcia, speaking at a news conference, went further. He said: “I didn’t know that [at] the Fifa World Cup 5 July is now 1 April, and that is April Fool’s.
“We are not defending the national team or the federation, we’re defending football.”
What must the other players sent off at this tournament be thinking?
Take Qatar’s Assim Madibo, involved in an unfortunate incident which led to a broken leg for Canada’s midfielder Ismael Kone.
There is a clear case here that Madibo did not even make a challenge, that the injury happened by chance and not because of the nature of the tackle.
Yet Fifa handed Madibo a five-game ban – an extra three on top of the standard punishment for serious foul play.
A Jangbogo-III Batch-II submarine built by Hanwha Ocean. Photo courtesy of Hanwha Ocean
July 5 (Asia Today) — Canada is nearing a decision on a major submarine program that could open the North American defense market to South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean or strengthen Germany’s naval defense ties with Ottawa.
The Canadian Patrol Submarine Project is intended to replace Canada’s aging fleet of four Victoria-class submarines with as many as 12 new conventionally powered submarines. Industry estimates put the program at as much as 60 trillion won, or about $39.3 billion, when shipbuilding and long-term maintenance are included.
Canada is expected to select a preferred bidder soon, with the timing drawing attention because Prime Minister Mark Carney is scheduled to attend the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, from Monday to Wednesday.
A decision near the summit could carry a political message about Canada’s defense cooperation with allies. Germany has been pressing its case through government-level support for TKMS, while Hanwha Ocean is emphasizing delivery speed, pricing and proven South Korean submarine technology.
German Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil recently visited a TKMS site and said Berlin was making a broad push to support defense cooperation with Canada. He said Germany’s high production standards and submarine-building capacity put TKMS in a strong position.
TKMS CEO Oliver Burkhard has also expressed confidence that the company can win the contract. The German company is stressing its more than 100 years of submarine experience and interoperability with NATO navies.
Hanwha Ocean is offering a model based on the KSS-III Batch-II submarine, a 3,000-ton-class hybrid diesel-electric submarine developed for the South Korean Navy. The submarine uses fuel-cell air-independent propulsion and lithium-ion batteries, allowing it to remain submerged for more than three weeks, according to the company.
The submarine has a range of more than 7,000 nautical miles, or about 8,055 miles.
Hanwha Ocean has proposed delivering the first submarine in 2032 if a contract is signed in 2026. The company has said it could deliver four submarines by 2035 and then supply one additional submarine each year.
Delivery timing is considered a key factor because Canada’s Victoria-class submarines are expected to retire in the mid-2030s.
Hanwha Ocean is also seeking to strengthen its bid through long-term maintenance, repair and overhaul plans, as well as industrial partnerships in Canada. The company has promoted cooperation in shipbuilding, steel, artificial intelligence, space and defense technology.
If Hanwha Ocean is selected as the preferred bidder, it would mark a major breakthrough for South Korea’s shipbuilding and defense industries in North America. It would also expand South Korea’s submarine exports beyond Asia and Europe.
But TKMS remains a strong competitor because Canada may value closer defense industrial cooperation with Germany and other NATO partners at a time of heightened security concerns in the Arctic and North Atlantic.
New Jersey is launching a new fee on companies whose workers have Medicaid health coverage instead of being covered by their employers. Other states are considering it, too.
Democratic lawmakers and governors see it as a way to help pay for the joint federal and state insurance program that covers low-income residents as federal policy changes are expected to make the program more expensive for states and may lead to a reduction in the number of people with coverage.
Proponents also say it’s about fairness because employers benefit from having some lower-income workers with taxpayer-funded health coverage.
Business groups object. So do some liberal policy organizations.
New Jersey is putting the fee in place
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed a measure Tuesday night to charge employers that have at least 50 workers covered by Medicaid, and the state budget she approved earlier in the week counts on raising $145 million this year from the program.
Under the plan, companies will be billed for each employee and employees’ dependent receiving Medicaid, the joint state-federal insurance program.
The fees per person would start at $325 a year for companies with 50 to 249 Medicaid beneficiaries and top out at $725 annually for employers with at least 500 recipients.
A bill passed this week in California doesn’t impose a charge now, but it does direct the state administration to present lawmakers options for doing so next year.
Finishing the job would fall to the successor of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is leaving office in January. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra has made an employer charge part of his election platform.
State Sen. John Laird, a Democrat who sponsored the California proposal, said the big tax and policy law President Trump signed a year ago was a major factor in the need for action because it could prompt the state to spend more on Medicaid to plug holes left by federal changes.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office expects more than 10 million people will be uninsured because of the law by 2034. It requires some beneficiaries to work, be in school or volunteer — and requires even more to document whether they meet the requirements.
Most employees at the bigger companies would not be at risk of losing Medicaid coverage as long as they’re working at least 20 hours a week.
Laird also said there’s an equity issue involved.
“If you’re a small business person in California, you are quite likely paying for health insurance for your employees. And through your taxes, you’re paying for health insurance for some of the biggest employers in California,” he said. “And that’s not fair.”
Legislation with similar intents passed one legislative chamber in both Colorado and Oregon this year, but neither made it to law. A measure was also introduced in Washington.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat who is seeking a third term in November’s election, has called for the same move there with the idea of making it a part of the state budget that would kick in two years from now.
Opposition comes from business and some liberal groups
It’s no surprise that business organizations have criticized the approach, which would add to their expenses.
“The fact remains that many job-creators are still going to be penalized for something they have no control over,” Christopher Emigholz, the chief government affairs officer at the New Jersey Business and Industry Assn., said in a statement. “If an employee declines an employer-provided health plan because they’d rather be on Medicaid, it is unfair to penalize the employer for that employee’s decision.”
Some left-leaning policy organizations also oppose the charges.
Gideon Lukens, who analyzes health policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that while the idea may be well-intentioned, it could lead companies to employ fewer people from low-income household or single parents. He said companies could also consider the policy in decisions about whom to hire or lay off — and also on where to locate or how many workers to employ.
And, he said, it could make employees — or potential employees — less likely to enroll in Medicaid knowing it would make them less attractive to employers.
“Usually, when I see a tax on something it’s going to discourage whatever being taxed,” he said in an interview.
New Jersey’s legislation tries to address some of the concerns. It would exempt temporary, seasonal and part-time employees. It would also bar employment decisions based on a workers’ Medicaid status.
Charging companies whose workers are covered by Medicaid isn’t a new idea. At least two states have previously enacted it, and it’s been proposed in Congress.
Massachusetts lawmakers in 2017 adopted a charge on employers up to $750 per nondisabled worker who was covered through Medicaid or a state-subsidized health exchange plan. The program began in 2018 was not renewed when it expired the next year.
An even earlier policy in Maryland, in 2006, immediately affected only Walmart. An industry group challenged it in court and won, stopping the fees.
The latest generation of proposals may avoid that legal pitfall by not referencing those health plans in the legislation.
