effort

History was made this week on Capitol Hill when a female senator womansplained sports to a male senator, and surprisingly, the gender-shaming reversal did not cause the universe to collapse on itself.

During a Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, MAGA’s manhood cloak was breached when Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) revealed that Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) had mixed up the names of basketball teams in an unsuccessful attempt to perjure former Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Smith was testifying before the committee because he had led the investigations into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and retain classified documents. Several Republican lawmakers have said that Smith overstepped his duties and launched a “witch hunt” against Trump and his allies.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) speaks during a 2020 event in Las Vegas.

(Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

Schmitt was trying to suggest Tuesday that Smith improperly colluded with Fulton County Dist. Atty. Fani Willis on their separate criminal cases against Trump by placing the former special counsel on Willis’ home turf of Atlanta in 2024.

But a watershed Watergate moment this was not. If Schmitt’s effort to ensnare Smith was set to a musical score, it would have been far more “Curb Your Enthusiasm” than “Mission Impossible.”

His gotcha moment became a schooling by Klobuchar on basketball, turning the tables on the age-old art of mansplaining. For those who need a quick definition, it’s when a man explains something to a woman in a patronizing way, with sports usually at the top of that talk-down-to-her list. He assumes she knows less than he does, even if she’s versed on the subject.

Klobuchar is an avowed sports fan and the daughter of respected Minneapolis sportswriter Jim Klobuchar and a former prosecutor known for her sharp questioning. The combination proved unfortunate for Schmitt during the hearing when he tried to catch Smith in a lie.

The Republican senator asked Smith, “Did you go to an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on Feb. 3, 2024?”

Smith, whose normally commanding presence has launched countless memes, appeared genuinely perplexed. “What city would that be in?” he asked.

“Atlanta,” replied Schmitt.

Smith denied he was there.

“So your testimony today is that you did not go to a Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024. Is that correct?” Schmitt said.

“I have no recollection of that,” a bewildered Smith said.

As evidence, Schmitt introduced text messages from Smith’s security detail about seating arrangements for a game, displayed on a poster board that was taken down so quickly that Smith and various senators said they didn’t have time to read it.

“I think you’ve already perjured yourself,” said Schmitt, a former Missouri attorney general who then used the rest of his time to condemn Smith for subpoenaing the communications of Republican lawmakers while investigating Trump.

“You have weaponized the Department of Justice against political enemies to an extent that has never happened in the history of this country,” Schmitt proclaimed. “You will go down as a total dirtbag.”

Klobuchar, who was up next to question Smith, asked if the poster board could be produced again.

“I’m a former prosecutor too, and I have never seen anyone just say, ‘What do you think of this?’ and put it down,” she said.

Schmitt’s evidentiary board was produced again, and this time for more than a few seconds. There was no mention of Atlanta in the text messages.

One could almost hear the sound of Schmitt’s perjury trap crumbling under Klobuchar’s heel.

“Could it then be that it was the University of Iowa, [which] is the ‘Hawkeyes,’ could that be it?” she asked Smith. “That might be the confusion over the names of the team.”

Then she addressed Schmitt: “Perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully. I think people should have their facts straight before they accuse people of being a ‘dirtbag,’ and not get the teams wrong.”

Leave it to a man to confuse the Atlanta Hawks, an NBA team, with the Iowa Hawkeyes of women’s college basketball. Perhaps his emotions got in the way.

Smith said he attended the game in Maryland to see the Hawkeyes’ supremely talented star, Caitlin Clark. Regardless of his whereabouts, Republicans contend that Smith was on a political witch hunt after then-Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland appointed him to oversee the twin investigations into Trump. Smith’s team scrutinized the retention of national defense information and classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, as well as the president and his allies’ efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and impede the peaceful transfer of power.

When Trump won the presidency a second time, Smith moved to dismiss both cases because Department of Justice policy prohibits the criminal prosecution of a sitting president.

Now, it’s game time for Judiciary Committee members who’d like to put Smith on the ropes. There’s just one new rule: Don’t talk sports around the ladies. They deliver a knockout punch.

Sept. 29, 2026 2:56 PM PT

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration was set to issue a last-minute reprieve Tuesday over the planned closure of a camp in Qatar that houses more than 1,000 Afghans who assisted America’s war effort or are the relatives of U.S. service members.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to sign off on a diplomatic note to Qatar extending for nine months the life of Camp As Sayliyah, which had been due to close Wednesday at the end of the U.S. budget year, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The officials spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to offer details before the public announcement.

The decision comes months after Rubio told Congress that the U.S. was still in discussions with several third-party countries to take the 1,039 Afghans who worked as interpreters or in other roles helping the American war effort as well as relatives of U.S. service members who have been stranded in Qatar for more than a year.

Rubio’s testimony in June came after the AP and other outlets reported that war-torn Congo was among the countries where the Trump administration was considering resettlement.

The State Department would not immediately comment on Rubio’s extension for the camp but said it “continues to work toward a positive resolution that provides safety for these remaining people to start a new life outside of Afghanistan while upholding the safety and security of the American people.”

The department also repeated its claim that the camp is a legacy of an attempt by President Biden’s administration “to move as many Afghans to America as possible without properly vetting them” — an assertion that has been denied by former officials and refugee advocates.

The group of Afghans in Camp As Sayliyah includes those who fought or worked alongside the U.S. military between 2001 and 2021, with more than 70% of the camp’s residents being women and children, according to statistics from #AfghanEvac. The group has spent the last five years advocating for Washington to make good on its promise to resettle those whose service has put them at risk since the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s reassertion of control.

“This is a victory for those people, and they’re going to have some semblance of knowing that they’re safe there because they’ve been worried that at any moment somebody’s going to come and rip them out of there,” Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads #AfghanEvac, told the AP.

But he added that there needs to be a permanent solution to this years-long crisis.

Despite the camp’s reprieve, which protects those housed there from possible forcible removal to Afghanistan, residents have little hope of being allowed to enter the United States.

Upon entering his second term, Trump, a Republican, paused his Democratic predecessor’s Afghan resettlement program as part of a series of executive orders cracking down on immigration, including dramatically altering refugee admissions to focus on white South Africans. Only five Afghans have been admitted to the U.S. since October 2025, #AfghanEvac says.

The refugee changes left thousands of people who fled war and persecution — and had gone through a sometimes years-long vetting process to start new lives in America — stranded at places worldwide, including the base in Qatar.

Advocates have warned that if there is no alternative, the only other option for the group of residents would be to go back to Afghanistan, where they face likely reprisal from the Taliban.

In the coming nine months, the State Department said it would “continue to work to identify options for voluntary resettlement of all Camp As-Sayliyah residents.” It gave no additional details.

Lee and Amiri write for the Associated Press. Amiri reported from New York.

DENVER — The office of Colorado’s attorney general is a perch 10 stories above downtown Denver. From his aerie, Phil Weiser has a sweeping view of the city skyline, the gold-domed Capitol and, occasionally, a red hawk on the wing.

But looking toward November, Weiser sees something darker.

Federal agents swarming polling places. Voters intimidated or blocked from casting their ballots. A tyrannical president using his powers, real and imagined, to undermine or try to overturn the Nov. 3 election.

“With this administration what we have seen is it’s important that we not limit our imagination to what … type of harm could happen,” Weiser said during a sunny noon hour in the Mile High City.

For that reason, Colorado’s attorney general and his Democratic peers around the country have spent more than a year strategizing — by phone, via Zoom, sometimes in person — on ways to Trump-proof the midterm election.

They’ve researched history and the law, war-gamed what-ifs, divvied up responsibilities and drafted emergency lawsuits and temporary restraining orders so they can be hurried into court at a moment’s notice.

“We have prepared for a range of contingencies … so that we’re ready to act,” Weiser said.

“We’re not going to be reacting in real time” or pulling all-nighters, he added. “We are going to be following through on plans we’ve made, having looked at what’s possible.”

The efforts of Weiser, California’s Rob Bonta and more than 20 other Democratic attorneys general are part of a mass mobilization aimed at thwarting Trump’s unprecedented efforts to pervert and subvert November’s midterm balloting.

It’s remarkable that kind of man-the-barricades action is needed to preserve and protect the voting franchise in this, the land of the free and home of the brave. But having weighed the threats, Weiser said his greatest fear of election interference comes not from a bad overseas actor or some terrorist group, but rather our own federal government “and what this administration might do.”

So here we are.

To fend off that threat from within, state Democratic parties across the nation are aiming to recruit 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places in the event armed federal agents show up.

Various sponsors have launched education campaigns to explain election rules and offer hotlines for voters who have trouble casting their ballot.

Civil rights groups and democracy-defending organizations have staged their own tabletop exercises brainstorming and rehearsing various scenarios. A group of Democratic U.S. senators has done the same.

“What we’re doing is preparing for the fact that Donald Trump, in 2020, lied about the election in advance, lied about it in the aftermath, went to court … and then he instigated a violent insurrection in this very building,” Marc Elias, a Democratic elections attorney, told MS NOW in a July interview at the Capitol. “So I think we need to take these threats in the 2026 midterm run-up … both seriously and literally.”

In a more courageous, less heedlessly partisan world, Republicans would be working with Democrats to keep the power-drunk Trump in check. (The House and Senate supposedly comprise a separate and equal branch of government, with its own power, prerogatives and such.)

But, as Weiser noted, this Republican-led Congress “has been lacking in backbone, lacking in the role of checks and balances. That has left it to state attorneys general to fill that vacuum, going to court and essentially playing the role of a check on a lawless and often bullying president.”

The nation’s 24 Democratic attorneys general have filed more than 125 lawsuits in Trump’s second term alone, fighting his moves on trade and tariffs, energy and immigration policies and efforts to gut or eliminate programs and whole government agencies. They’ve prevailed in the overwhelming majority of cases that have been adjudicated or settled.

Even before Trump was elected again, some attorneys general began conferring on ways to fight the excesses they anticipated in a second administration. Anyone who didn’t see them coming wasn’t paying attention, said Weiser, who, most likely, will be elected Colorado’s next governor on Nov. 3.

(His victory in Colorado’s Democratic primary stemmed in good part from Weiser’s record battling Trump in court.)

“The worst-case scenario was that a Trump presidency would work to implement Project 2025 and would do things like try to end birthright citizenship, try to interfere with the delivery of ballots in the mail, would seek to use ICE in ways that were a basic affront to the rule of law,” Weiser said. “All those things have happened.”

So why not expect more of the same come November?

Trump is constitutionally (small “c”) incapable of acknowledging the result of any election he didn’t win. He’s openly urged supporters to “cheat like hell.” Thus, one can only assume malign intent when the president tries to wantonly purge voter rolls, hijack the U.S. Postal service to gum up mail balloting and override the Constitution (capital “c”) by federalizing November’s election.

Some might call such fears melodramatic, or overblown.

But as Weiser said, “We need to stay nervous and stay vigiliant because [of] what this president has shown, Jan. 6 being one of the telling examples.”

Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of elections “is historic,” the attorney general said. “It is unique. It’s a threat. And it’s why we have to stand our guard.”

Vote, to bring this rogue president to heel. Stay vigilant, to make sure that vote counts.

Two good watchwords for this midterm election.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration voiced support for the safety of long-established vaccines at a hearing Thursday, even as senators questioned her about the White House’s efforts to upend childhood immunizations.

Dr. Heidi Overton, a physician serving as a White House adviser, has worked on a series of Trump health initiatives, including an executive order last month that called for splitting up and spacing out decades-old childhood vaccinations. Overton stood beside Trump in the Oval Office when he falsely remarked that the combined measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine is “quite lethal.”

Senate Health Committee Chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician from Louisiana, pushed Overton to reject that statement and affirm the safety of FDA-approved vaccines.

“Right now every vaccine that is on the market has been determined to be safe and effective,” including the MMR vaccine, Overton said.

Cassidy repeatedly has tried to extract commitments from Trump health nominees to uphold vaccine standards, including from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., only to see the Republican administration push forward with efforts undermining their use.

“Kennedy gave me guarantees, and he did not keep them,” said Cassidy, a Republican. “If the president asks you to do something that goes against those guarantees you give us today, what will you do?”

Overton said she would “follow the statutory requirements” for FDA commissioners and give Trump her best advice.

If confirmed by the Senate, Overton would inherit a raft of other controversial projects at the agency, including a safety review of the nation’s principal abortion drug and new rules that make it easier to sell flavored electronic cigarettes. Both issues were a focus for Republicans and Democrats on the panel, who will vote on Overton’s nomination.

Overton sidesteps past statements on abortion pill

The FDA approved the abortion pill mifepristone in 2000 and repeatedly has affirmed its safety while broadening access, including allowing it to be sent through the mail. But Kennedy ordered an FDA review of the drug’s safety last year, following calls from antiabortion groups and lawmakers favoring abortion restrictions.

While working at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, Overton called the FDA decision to allow mail delivery of mifepristone “dangerous for women,” referring to the practice as “chemical abortion on demand.”

In response to questions from Washington Sen. Patty Murray, Overton sidestepped her personal views on the drug, stating that it “has met the safety and efficacy determinations of the FDA.” Overton said she didn’t want to “prejudge” the FDA’s safety review of the pill.

“The FDA has said this is safe,” responded Murray, a Democrat. “We need someone in FDA to make sure this is done by science.”

Overton’s abortion views could complicate her efforts to win over two moderate Republicans on the panel: Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Both have bucked their party on the issue, supporting federal access to abortion. Collins is locked in a tight reelection race in which abortion access is a central issue.

But Collins focused her questions Thursday on a different issue: recent FDA decisions allowing new flavored e-cigarettes onto the market. Under previous administrations, including Trump’s first term, the agency had restricted sweet flavors that appeal to kids.

Overton pointed out that approval of the fruit-flavored products had the backing of FDA scientists, who determined the products met the standard of “appropriate for the protection of public health,” by helping adult smokers quit cigarettes.

“They believed that standard was met because so many adult smokers are using flavors preferentially,” Overton said.

To become commissioner, Overton will need a majority of votes from the 21-member health committee, followed by a positive vote from the full Senate.

Under the current administration, leading the agency has involved balancing Trump’s demands for slashing regulations — such as those for vaping products — alongside Kennedy’s interests in scrutinizing vaccines, drugs and food ingredients.

The previous FDA head faced numerous challenges before quitting

Those challenges dogged the tenure of the previous FDA head, Dr. Marty Makary, who resigned in May. Makary’s time at the agency was defined by scientific disputes, leadership changes and a string of media stories detailing low morale and internal dysfunction among staffers. The FDA has lost about 20% of its employees to layoffs, buyouts, retirements or resignations since Trump took office.

Overton studied under Makary at Johns Hopkins University, where she received a doctoral degree in clinical research after earning her medical degree at the University of New Mexico.

Like Makary, Overton has no experience running a large bureaucracy, a critical skill for steering the FDA’s 16,000 staffers spread across numerous U.S. and international locations.

In financial disclosure forms, Overton reported no investments in healthcare or food companies. That’s a stark contrast to Makary and other recent FDA nominees who have had to divest investments or cut other financial ties with companies regulated by the FDA.

Overton reported $50,000 to $100,000 in student loans.

Perrone writes for the Associated Press.

The California Supreme Court excoriated Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco over his seizure of hundreds of thousands of Proposition 50 ballots earlier this year, ordering the former gubernatorial candidate to immediately hand over all remaining material in a pair of scathing decisions on Thursday.

“We hold that the seizure of the ballots was unlawful,” wrote Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero. “While allegations of election improprieties are a very serious matter, our Elections Code contains numerous established mechanisms for investigating and proving misconduct that do not compromise the integrity of voted ballots — contrary to the means employed here.”

The ruling comes less than two weeks before Californians will start casting ballots in the race for governor and a handful of hotly contested congressional midterms — nationally watched elections that would be vulnerable to similar interference unless the court gave clear orders, advocates warned at oral arguments last month.

“It’s bound to be repeated again,” said Chad W. Dunn of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, which led the first of two election interference suits against Bianco, a popular MAGA personality and former Republican candidate for governor.

Bianco has long flirted with President Trump’s election fraud conspiracy movement. Though the ballot seizures in February were widely seen as a campaign stunt, the legal theory behind them — that local lawmen can commandeer voter materials from elections officials, and that sheriffs are unanswerable to officials who outrank them, including attorneys general — belongs to a larger “constitutional sheriffs” ideology.

California‘s seven Supreme Court justices appeared by turns perplexed by and incredulous of those theories during oral arguments last month.

“You are walking into a very dense thicket of very specific laws that govern elections in particular and I think it’s a very established cannon of interpretation that the specific trumps the general,” Justice Goodwin H. Liu said.

The ballot battle emerged from a Riverside County pilot program meant to boost voter confidence, a handwritten tally that ultimately fell about 46,000 votes short of the official count, sparking claims of fraud.

Riverside County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco met with the county board of supervisors and the citizens’ group behind the claim and carefully explained how the discrepancy emerged. Yet, Bianco pursued warrants to seize more than 650,000 ballots, alleging they were evidence in an investigation of wide-ranging election fraud.

When he learned of the warrants, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta ordered Bianco to stand down. Instead, the sheriff accelerated his plans, dispatching armed deputies from Riverside County’s Special Investigations Bureau, Emergency Response Team and SWAT unit to sweep up the votes.

Later, Bianco directed his underlings to begin counting those ballots by hand — a potential felony under state law, which forbids anyone other than an election official from so much as touching a ballot container.

When Bonta again ordered him to stop, Bianco argued the attorney general had no authority to command him, later claiming in court that the law conferred only an “advise and consent” role.

In fact, California courts have spent more than a century delineating power between the state’s attorney general and local sheriffs and prosecutors. Voters took the matter a step further in 1934, endorsing a ballot initiative that clearly named the attorney general as California’s top law enforcement official, and put the state’s other lawmen beneath him.

In a footnote, justices also took a swipe at Bianco’s initial effort to have the case tossed for lack of standing — a move apparently undertaken on the legal advice of an elaborate artificial intelligence hallucination.

“In his preliminary briefing, Bianco challenged petitioners’ standing based on misquoted passages from, and an incorrect recitation of our holding in, Common Cause v. Board of Supervisors,” Guerrero wrote. “We disapprove of the improper use of artificial intelligence tools, which apparently contributed to the significant error that occurred here and remind counsel of attorneys’ professional duties of competence and candor to the court.”

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed legislation to increase security for the state’s voting systems and protect Californians’ ability to cast ballots in an effort to guard against potential interference in the Nov. 3 election, including by the Trump administration.

Newsom pointed to the Trump administration’s recent effort to restrict mail-in voting through the U.S. Postal Service, which was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the presence of federal monitors at California polls last year as evidence that Trump “will continue his efforts to interfere with the November election.”

“Donald Trump won’t stop until he can exert dictatorial control over your free vote and disenfranchise millions of people this November. California will stop him at every opportunity,” Newsom said in a statement.”We have no bigger task than fighting to protect the right to vote from interference and meddling — the future of democracy is on the line. These bills today build upon the wall California has built to safeguard our electoral process.”

The governor signed the package of bills at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, where a year earlier federal agents gathered outside a political rally he was hosting. Then Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, who had been leading the immigration operations in California, was among those outside the event, joined by agents in helmets, camouflage, masks and holding guns. Newsom described their presence as political intimidation.

One bill Newsom signed Saturday cites efforts to “weaponize law enforcement authority for political purposes,” including Republican “Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of ballots in Riverside County,” and the election monitors sent by the U.S. Justice Department to polling sites in five counties during a 2025 special election on redistricting.

Such moves “have given rise to unprecedented concerns about law enforcement interference” in elections and “[demonstrate] that these threats are not merely hypothetical,” the bill by Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) reads.

The law, Senate Bill 884, which takes effect immediately, requires counties to open ballot drop-off locations 30 days before an election — two days earlier than usual — and allows counties to ban electioneering, or trying to influence voters’ decisions, within up to 200 feet of polling sites. It also bans police from making arrests near voting locations except for crimes against people, property, or disrupting the voting process.

Bianco, a GOP candidate for governor who placed fourth in the primary, drew swift condemnation and legal challenges this spring after he ordered deputies to seize more than 650,000 ballots from the Riverside County elections office. Voting rights groups and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta challenged the move, which is being decided by the California Supreme Court.

Bianco carted off truckloads of ballots from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters in February after securing a warrant based on claims that the office allowed fraudulent votes in the special election to redraw California’s congressional districts under Proposition 50 in 2025.

Earlier this year, Newsom signed a bill preventing local and federal law enforcement agencies from taking ballots without a warrant.

On Saturday the Democratic governor signed a bill making it a felony to seize or order the seizure of ballots, election records or voting machines. Future seizures could be punishable by up to four years in prison.

“The federal administration and those seeking to spread lies about our democracy continue to call for interference in elections in ways we have never seen before in this country,” Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz), the bill’s author and a former longtime county elections chief, said last month. “AB 282 helps ensure that every lawfully cast vote can be counted, and that the will of the voters of every political party will be respected.”

Republican lawmakers argued in previous hearings that the bill is unnecessary because it is already a crime to steal ballots.

Another bill, Senate Bill 259, makes it a crime to interfere with a mail ballot on the way to or from a voter or order the seizure of ballots that are in transit to a local elections office.

Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1664, which requires elections officials to immediately notify the attorney general and secretary of state immediately upon learning of any warrants, subpoenas or law enforcement investigations involving election records or voting equipment.

Newsom also signed bills to boost protections under the California Voting Rights Act, including an explicit ban on voter suppression and expanded access to election materials in languages other than English.

The governor also signed legislation to require more transparency from social media influencers who are paid by political campaigns. The measure, Assembly Bill 1130, came in the wake of a controversy in the June primary election when social media influencers took on a more visible role in the campaigns.

Candidates including Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer paid thousands of dollars to influencers who posted videos endorsing Steyer or talking about him in a positive light. These videos did not always disclose that influencers were paid by a candidate’s campaign.

MEXICO CITY — Nicaraguan journalist Luis Galeano fled his country in 2018 after police raided the television station where he broadcasted his popular talk show, arresting two of his colleagues.

Galeano applied for political asylum when he arrived in Florida on a tourism visa, saying he faced grave risks back home for his fierce criticism of Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government, which the U.S. labels a dictatorship. Soon after, Nicaragua declared Galeano a “traitor to the homeland” and confiscated his home and assets in the capital of Managua.

This week, U.S. immigration agents arrested Galeano in Orlando. Despite his ongoing asylum case, he now faces deportation to the country he fled and whose abuses he has spent years documenting.

Journalists, human rights advocates and political dissidents who were persecuted in Nicaragua and sought safety in the United States are increasingly being detained as the Trump administration widens its deportation dragnet and narrows access to asylum and other forms of protection.

Recent targets include activists who fled Nicaragua after a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2018 and opposition leaders critical of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, a married couple who lead Nicaragua as co-presidents.

Some of the exiles arrested by U.S. agents in recent months had been welcomed with open arms by the U.S. government just three years ago under a novel deal negotiated by the State Department.

As part of the 2023 agreement, Nicaragua freed 222 political prisoners and the U.S. hired a charter plane to fly them to Washington, where each person was granted temporary humanitarian parole and the chance to apply for asylum.

One of those former prisoners, Marlon Gerardo Sáenz Cruz, a former Sandinista who said he was tortured in Nicaragua after denouncing government corruption, was arrested during a regular check-in with immigration authorities in Los Angeles on Aug. 17.

Another, Denis Javier Palacios Hernández, who languished for three years in a Nicaraguan jail after participating in pro-democracy marches, was detained by immigration agents Wednesday morning in Virginia.

Human rights advocates say the effort to deport dissidents with no criminal record and a history of persecution puts their lives in danger and is at odds with U.S. foreign policy, which condemns human rights abuses and corruption under Murillo and Ortega, a former Marxist revolutionary who at 80 is now the longest-serving leader in the Americas.

After Ortega said in July that Nicaragua would scrap all future elections, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had recently announced sweeping sanctions on dozens of Nicaraguan leaders, vowed consequences. This week, while celebrating the anniversary of Central America’s independence from Spain, Rubio praised Nicaraguans for pushing for democracy “despite the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship’s brutal efforts to annihilate it.”

“Whether at home or in exile, Nicaraguans’ aspirations for a future free from tyranny cannot be canceled or erased,” Rubio said.

He spoke one day after Border Patrol agents arrested Galeano, who, since moving to Florida, has driven for ride-hailing apps in the mornings to provide for his two children and has spent his afternoons recording episodes of “Café con Voz,” his daily YouTube show.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Galeano was detained because he overstayed his tourist visa, which gave him permission to remain in the U.S. only through 2019, and encouraged Galeano to self-deport. “Being in detention is a choice,” the spokesperson said. “The United States is offering illegal aliens $3,000 and a free flight to self-deport now.”

In the past, people who had filed asylum applications in the U.S. were generally allowed to stay and work while they waited for a ruling in their case, a process that often stretches years because of backlogs in immigration court.

That’s changed under President Trump, who has vowed to deport 1 million people annually, and who complains that the asylum system is abused and used as a back door for economic migrants falsely claiming persecution.

As immigration arrests in the U.S. have soared in recent months, surpassing 51,000 in August, asylum seekers and others who have shared their information with the U.S. in hopes of achieving legal status make up a growing share of detainees, according to the Deportation Data Project.

Removals of Nicaraguans have also surged, with deportation flights to Managua increasing more than fourfold under Trump compared to under President Biden, according to data tracked by Human Rights First.

Nicaraguans are also being shipped to Mexico, Costa Rica and as far away as the Central African Republic. They face unique risks in those countries, said Savi Arvey, director of policy for refugee and immigrant rights at Human Rights First.

In Costa Rica, Sandinista operatives are suspected in a series of shootings, abductions and killings of Nicaraguan exiles in recent years.

“This government is so single-minded in carrying out this vast mass deportation campaign that it blatantly ignores realities on the ground,” Arvey said.

Gerald Chávez, president of the Independent Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua, said that at least one journalist who had sought protection in the U.S. had been sent to Costa Rica, avoiding deportation to Nicaragua thanks to a lengthy legal battle and help from Reporters Without Borders.

Restriction of press freedoms has been a cornerstone of Ortega and Murillo’s efforts to concentrate power in recent years.

Hundreds of journalists fled as government officials jailed colleagues, shuttered dozens of news outlets and passed laws barring reporters from publishing information not authorized by the government. At one point, Ortega even banned newspapers from importing paper and ink.

Galeano — who previously worked as a correspondent for the Associated Press in Nicaragua — believed he had a responsibility to call out what he saw as injustices perpetrated by the government.

“If there is one thing that has distinguished the Sandinista thugs … it is that up until now, they have enjoyed total impunity,” he said on a recent episode of his YouTube show.

Galeano’s arrest has drawn sharp criticism from human rights and press freedom groups and even Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a Trump ally who is seeking reelection in Florida.

Salazar described Galeano as a journalist who had “paid a very high price for telling the world the truth.”

“The United States must always know how to distinguish between a criminal and a political exile,” she wrote on X. “Luis cannot end up in the hands of the very dictatorship that persecuted him.”

Linthicum reported from Mexico City. López, a special correspondent, reported from Orlando.

WASHINGTON — A nonprofit run by Black federal lawmakers launched a multimillion-dollar effort Tuesday to engage lower-propensity voters in key districts in the midterm elections, following years of dissatisfaction over traditional efforts to reach such voters.

The Congressional Black Caucus Institute’s “SO VOTE” campaign will seek to register and mobilize young voters, as well as voters in majority-Black and rural communities, across the South, Midwest and West. The campaign involves partnerships with dozens of local organizations, the institute said, with in-person and online outreach to voters often sidestepped by major political campaigns.

“For decades, as far as I can remember, there are those of us who have always complained about the fact that neither party spends the significant and requisite time with Black and brown and poor and rural communities,” said Marcia Fudge, a former Democratic congresswoman from Ohio who served as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Biden administration.

“So we finally decided to take it upon ourselves to do something that we didn’t think anybody else in the industry was doing,” said Fudge, who is spearheading the new effort alongside former Black Caucus colleagues.

Effort blends old tactics with new technologies to boost turnout

Voter engagement efforts will cover outreach across Georgia and Mississippi, as well as target voters in 16 congressional districts that are likely to determine control of the House.

Instead of traditional television advertising, the campaign will convene local civic groups and houses of worship, as well as fraternities and sororities. The effort will also use some now-widespread techniques in political campaigns, such as geotargeting online ads and partnerships with local content creators for audiences who mainly receive their news online.

While the voter engagement efforts are officially nonpartisan, the Black Caucus’ targeted races are in many regions where Black voter turnout could prove key to whether a Democratic candidate prevails in closely divided House districts. Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana Democratic congressman who served as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden, said the effort would focus on repeatedly engaging voters in rural communities who feel alienated from Democratic campaigns.

“If you’re not happy with the way things are going, then voting is part of the solution, but it takes constant communication,” Richmond said.

The Black Caucus’ institute has raised about $1 million for the campaign, primarily from individual donors, and plans to spend at least $4.5 million in the midterm election cycle.

Campaign responds to GOP redistricting and disappointing turnout in the past

The new outreach effort follows years of disappointment and frustration among some in the Black Caucus at the broader Democratic Party’s efforts to court Black, rural and younger voters.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, an influential South Carolina Democrat who decried the lackluster voter turnout in the 2024 election, said the campaign “allows us to put to practice that which we have been proposing, and we have never had the resources to do it. But this year we do.”

The effort is also a response to Republican-led redistricting efforts in multiple states, said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat.

“These Southern states are trying to minimize Black political participation and ultimately Black political strength,” he said. “So what we have to do is take that low-propensity voter and elevate their participation so they become an additional voice to be reckoned with.”

Brown writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declined to testify Tuesday before a House subcommittee investigating alleged fraud and mismanagement in the region’s homelessness system, but that did not stop her from going after Republican leaders on the panel.

As the hearing began, Bass’ reelection campaign accused “extremist Republicans in Congress” of staging a politically motivated attack on Los Angeles and its efforts to address homelessness, months after the Trump administration attempted to suspend federal funding for the city.

“Los Angeles will not be bullied,” Bass wrote. “Not by this President, and not by this Congress. I’m going to keep doing my job — cleaning up encampments, getting Angelenos inside, and making LA safer.”

Bass had notified Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), the chair of the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, on Sept. 4 that she would not be available to testify, but her absence still drew criticism from Burchett, who told The Times he was willing to use the “fullest extent of the law” and possibly issue subpoenas to compel her to testify.

“I’d like to get her in,” he said after the hearing. “I realize that we have elections coming up and she knows that as well as anybody … but I would hope that she would come up here and answer questions.”

Burchett added that there are “legitimate questions” about how federal homelessness funds were used in Los Angeles and what he believes was their mismanagement. In his opening remarks, Burchett said he was concerned about how the city spent federal funds given the ongoing homelessness issue in the area.

“Los Angeles is at the center of American homelessness,” Burchett said, and specifically pointed to Skid Row as an example of the “abject failure” of the city’s approach to homelessness. “Under Mayor Karen Bass, law and order in the neighborhood has collapsed.”

Burchett added that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority was “ripe for corruption and financial mismanagement,” and raised concerns about contracts that have been doled out to nonprofits in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas.

Bass had served on LAHSA’s 10-member board since 2023 but stepped down last week, in part citing scheduling issues. Burchett suggested she “suddenly removed herself” from the board to dodge accountability after being asked to testify.

In a letter sent this month, Burchett noted that he wanted to scrutinize how homelessness has gotten worse during her tenure as mayor. David Michaelson, the mayor’s attorney at City Hall, pushed back on Burchett’s assertions, saying unsheltered homelessness in L.A. — the number of people living outside or in their vehicles — has dropped by 11% since Bass took office in 2022.

“She has achieved these results by focusing on interim housing, not ‘Housing First,’ and has also challenged certain ‘Harm Reduction’ strategies that are ineffective,” Michaelson wrote. “For example, Mayor Bass ordered that City contractors no longer provide needles to drug users and instead focus on services that encourage rehabilitation and protection of human life.”

Burchett’s effort to force Bass to testify over concerns about “potential misallocation of federal dollars” by LAHSA is the latest example of congressional Republican leaders trying to examine California’s handling of regional issues and finances. In the last year, Republican have launched investigations into the Palisades wildfire preparations as well as the distribution of charity funds for the victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), the top Democrat on the subcommittee, said Tuesday’s hearing was an “unserious and political show targeting” the most vulnerable Americans and the services they need.

“Housing is a human right, and we’re not going to sit here while you use the housing and homeless crisis of this country to try to cough up whatever you’re trying to do politically before the midterms,” Stansbury said.

During the hearing, Burchett showed a short video of Skid Row, filmed by Jonathan Choe, a MAGA-aligned news influencer, who offered testimony during the hearing as well. Choe mostly focused his testimony on his concerns about substance abuse not being enough of a priority in addressing homelessness.

Paul Webster, a senior fellow at the Cicero Institute and executive director of the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, also testified. Prior to the hearing, he testified in writing that LAHSA — the region’s primary Continuum of Care administrator — has been marked by financial mismanagement and fraud even as its federal funding has grown.

“Los Angeles and its utilization of federal homeless assistance policy is not an outlier,” Webster wrote. “It is the leading edge of a system that lacks accountability, effective monitoring, and prioritizes inputs rather than outcomes.”

Burchett said the panel will continue to take a “good hard look” at homelessness in Los Angeles and other “leftists” cities. He added that he intends to file legislation to require federally funded housing services to offer substance abuse treatment.

Also Tuesday, the LAHSA board voted not to compete with the city and county to keep carrying out many of its core duties, such as operating a homeless database and applying for federal funds on behalf of other agencies.

With L.A. city and county agencies preparing their own applications, a decision to compete with them “would only fracture regional collaboration during an already complex time,” LAHSA said in a statement.

The decision comes a few months after the Trump administration sought to suspend LAHSA from applying for and receiving federal funds. The agency sued to block that effort, winning a partial victory in federal court. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that decision on appeal.

In response to the suspension and the ongoing legal battle, the federally mandated board that contracted with LAHSA for those functions put next year’s contract out to bid, forcing the agency to compete.

LAHSA, already diminished by the county’s decision last year to divert its homelessness funds to a new county homelessness department, now retains contracts for programs in the city. But Bass has said the city needs to take over those as well.

Ceballos reported from Washington, Smith from Los Angeles.

MARFA, Texas — Landowners, ranchers and business owners in the Big Bend region of Texas along with a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the region’s landscape and heritage are suing to stop the Trump administration’s plans to build a wall and other border infrastructure through the remote section of the state.

The lawsuit, filed by Conserve Big Bend and with the support of dozens of landowners, comes as the administration is ramping up a $46-billion effort to line the roughly 2,000-mile southern border with a collection of 30-foot steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers and technology intended to keep out smugglers and migrants.

In Texas, the effort has run up against numerous lawsuits and bipartisan opposition from sheriffs, elected officials, tour guides, environmental groups and landowners.

Officials backing the wall “were woefully unprepared for the hornet’s nest they stirred up because they had no idea how much we love this place,” said David Keller, an archaeologist and historian who specializes in the Big Bend and lives in the region.

“For us, the Big Bend is not an empty place on the map,” he said. “It is our home.”

As part of its wall-building efforts, the administration has waived numerous regulations and statutes designed to protect the environment, archaeology or wildlife, on the basis that there’s an urgent need to protect the border in what Homeland Security has called areas of “high illegal entry.”

But in the lawsuit announced Monday, the plaintiffs argue that when it comes to the Big Bend region, that’s not an accurate description. They’ve cited historical statistics issued by Customs and Border Protection showing how few people cross the border in Big Bend compared with other areas along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Big Bend has about 500 miles of border with Mexico — roughly one quarter of the length of the border from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. But the region only accounted for about 1% of arrests, according to the lawsuit’s stats.

The plaintiffs are arguing that the Department of Homeland Security is misusing powers from Congress that allow the secretary broad authority to waive regulations in order to build border walls or other infrastructure in areas where there are large numbers of people trying to cross into the country illegally.

“That determination is legally and factually unsound and unsupported,” the plaintiffs wrote.

The lawsuit filed Monday is the latest in efforts to slow or stop the administration’s plans in Texas and elsewhere.

The biggest outcry has come over Customs and Border Protection’s plans for the Big Bend National Park, which sits in a far southwestern corner of Texas where the Rio Grande separates the U.S. from Mexico.

The park’s remote and rugged location, its steep limestone canyon walls and crystal clear starry night views attract visitors from around the world. The government has said in court hearings that no final plans have been decided for what will be built in the park but plans made public so far have included building a new road, installing detection technology and barriers to stop vehicles from crossing the border.

When bulldozers were spotted clearing land in the park in August, people across the state were outraged. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott temporarily paused construction-related activity in the park but many activists and residents would like to see even more changes to the administration’s plans in the broader Big Bend region.

Native American groups have argued that the construction could inhibit their ability to practice their faith and is damaging important religious sites while environmentalists worry the wall will cause flooding or keep animals from migrating.

Landowners who’ve lived and worked along the Rio Grande for years have questioned how they’ll feed livestock or water their crops if they can’t access the river.

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

California and other Democratic-led states and localities filed a pair of lawsuits Monday challenging new Trump administration rules giving immigration officials more power to deny green cards to applicants whose families have relied on public assistance programs in the past.

The challenge mirrors another by a similar coalition that successfully halted such changes during the first Trump administration.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office is helping lead the states’ challenge, said the rule changes seek to “rewrite more than 100 years of law” by making even brief use of public benefits in years past grounds for the federal government to deny a person’s application for legal permanent residency in the future — which he said was clearly illegal and would push tremendous costs onto states, counties and cities.

“No family should have to choose between accessing healthcare and nutrition assistance today — or protecting their pathway to a green card tomorrow,” Bonta said. “We’re going to court on behalf of the millions of immigrants who call this state home — and we will fight to get this unlawful rule undone.”

San Francisco City Atty. David Chiu, whose office is helping lead a separate challenge from Democratic-led cities and counties, said in a statement that the new Trump administration policies are “a blatant attempt to sow fear and confusion in our immigrant communities and coerce people into withdrawing from critical government services” — which he also said would shift millions in costs to local governments.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which promulgated the new rules, said the lawsuits were proof that immigrants are unlawfully tapping into benefits programs intended for U.S. citizens.

“Sanctuary states are terrified they will lose federal funds because hundreds of thousands of illegals and noncitizens might remove themselves from American welfare programs,” the spokesperson said. “This is the ideological contortion required by left-wing leaders to justify their defrauding of the American taxpayer at the hands of illegal criminals.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

President Trump won office on a promise to rein in illegal immigration. Since taking office, his administration has launched a mass crackdown that has targeted both undocumented and documented immigrants. It has done so in part by targeting federal and state programs that offer immigrant assistance — which Trump has derided as diverting resources away from U.S. citizens.

In their lawsuit, the states acknowledge that federal law enacted by Congress in 1882 allows the U.S. to deny noncitizens entry to the country if they would be a “public charge,” or someone who is unable to support themselves and must rely on the government for assistance.

However, the states argue that Congress, the courts and federal government agencies have for “over 140 years” understood the term “public charge” to mean a person “who has become, or is likely to become, primarily dependent on the government for long-term subsistence” — not someone who has ever taken public assistance of any kind in the past, even in the short term.

And yet, the new policy promulgated by Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services gives immigration officers “unprecedented, sweeping new discretion to deny admission” to families that have tapped any number of public assistance programs for which both Congress and individual states have chosen to make them eligible, the states wrote.

The lawsuit, joined by Bonta, the attorneys general of 19 other states and the District of Columbia, and the governor of Pennsylvania, was filed in federal court in New York.

A separate lawsuit was filed in the same court by San Francisco and Santa Clara County in California, as well as New York City, Chicago, and Seattle and surrounding King County, Wash.

In a morning news conference, Bonta said the Trump administration’s new rules target families in unprecedented ways.

As one example, he said the new rules would potentially allow immigration officials to deny permanent residency to immigrant parents based on their U.S. citizen children accessing public benefits that they are clearly entitled to under the law.

As another, he said the new rules could penalize immigrant families for accessing basic, preventative healthcare that actually helps control the broader public cost of illness to localities and states.

Chiu said federal limits on residency for those who would be a “public charge” have in the past been applied in a “narrow and consistent way,” focusing on certain cash assistance and long-term medical needs. The new rules, he said, make “almost any” kind of government assistance grounds for residency denial.

The states’ lawsuit — California’s 92nd against the current Trump administration — revises a policy battle that began during Trump’s first administration, when it attempted in 2019 to implement similar policies, was sued by California, San Francisco and Santa Clara County, and lost.

The Biden administration later dropped the plans to change the rules.

Tony LoPresti, county counsel for Santa Clara County — which has per capita one of the largest foreign-born populations in the country — said that it was “déjà vu all over again.” and that the Trump administration will lose again because the new “public charge” policy is “outright illegal.”

It “bullies our community members into dropping health insurance, bypassing food assistance and turning their back on critical services out of fear” and constitutes “a wealth test for residents who are lawfully seeking status,” LoPresti said.

WASHINGTON — The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees is planning to propose adding President Trump’s name to the facility’s exterior in recognition of his saving the building from its “precarious fiscal position,” according to a new court filing in a suit aimed at blocking the move.

It’s the latest development in the case revolving around adding the president’s name to the exterior of the cultural and arts facility that sits along the Potomac River in Washington and reflects the Trump-aligned board’s efforts to honor the president.

The new information came out of a court filing made by Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, an ex-officio member of the board. Beatty, who has led an effort to block Trump from putting his name on the building, said in a filing she was alerting the court to the proposal because it could implicate a pending decision before the court.

Both the court and the Kennedy Center board are expected to hold meetings Tuesday.

Beatty’s filing includes two exhibits. One is a draft vote to shut the center down, asserting the building is unsafe for occupancy. That assertion incorrectly cites a consulting group’s finding, “which expressly disclaimed providing any such opinion,” according to Beatty.

The other document asserts the center faces dire financial straits. It specifically calls for Trump’s name to be placed in marble beneath the name of the center on the building’s exterior. It offers 10 options for a possible inscription, including “Renovation and endowment overseen by President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.” Another proposes: “With Gratitude for Support from President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

“The Board understands that without such appropriate recognition it is unlikely that President Trump will provide the fundamental oversight of the renovation of the main building and lead the fiscal rescue of the Center,” the board wrote in the proposed resolution.

Trump has spent much of his second term reshaping Washington, demolishing the East Wing of the White House to make way for a ballroom and planning a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery as well as a renovated golf course along the Potomac River.

The Kennedy Center has been a stumbling block in that effort after a judge ruled in May that Trump’s name was added to the building illegally, ordering it to be removed.

Trump and his allies, however, have continued to fight the ruling.

The board voted last month to inscribe his name on the venue’s facade to read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.”

If the Trump Kennedy Center Fund reached $100 million, another inscription would be added reading: “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

Catalini writes for the Associated Press.