facing

A transcript from an employment discrimination lawsuit filed by former JSerra girls’ basketball coach Chyanne Butler indicates the school could be facing a Southern Section investigation for CIF rules violations.

“We are aware of the transcripts and the trial,” Southern Section spokesman Thom Simmons said Friday.

JSerra has “no comment” while the case continues, a school spokesman said.

Butler alleged employment discrimination after being dismissed in January of 2025. A jury trial earlier this year resulted in a hung jury over an allegation of gender discrimination and a new trial is scheduled for Aug. 24 in Orange County Superior Court with Judge David O Carter presiding. Allegations of race discrimination and a sexual harassment claim against an assistant coach were dismissed.

JSerra has not self-reported any CIF violations even though in the first trial, an assistant coach testified under oath about recruiting a player from another school and then providing family expenses including “medical insurance, medical bills, groceries, toiletries, incidentals, basketball shoes.”

That would be a violation of CIF rules.

The Southern Section usually sends allegations of rules violations back to the school to investigate.

Butler is represented by attorney Tim Lawson, who deposed JSerra officials.

July 22 (UPI) — The man who rushed a stage to attack author Salman Rushdie will face federal terrorism charges in a trial that began Wednesday in New York.

Hadi Matar, 28, was found guilty of murder in state court last year and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the August 2022 attack that left Rushdie blind in one eye and without use of one hand.

The federal case will determine if the attack was an act of terrorism and if he was carrying out a fatwa against Rushdie, set by the former Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, or if it was for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, or neither.

Khomeini, then the ayatollah of Iran, created the fatwa in 1989 because of Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, published in 1988. Hardline Muslims considered the book blasphemous because of the way it portrayed the Prophet Muhammad.

The attack on Rushdie happened at the Chautauquah Institution in Chautauquah, N.Y., as he was delivering a speech for more than 1,000 people on writers in political exile. Matar rushed the stage and stabbed Rushdie more than a dozen times.

Matar is a U.S. citizen of Lebanese origin who was raised in New Jersey and California. His friends and relatives said that after some professional and academic frustration, he became religious. His mother told The New York Times that she could not support him.

Rushdie, 79, wrote and published in 2024, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, a memoir about the attack and his recovery.

Matar had written in his notebook a list of pros and cons to attacking Rushdie. The Times reported that a page provided by prosecutors showed that he wrote one reason not to do it was: “Could make life worse. But I doubt that. It kind of sucks already.”

Andy Burnham, who becomes the United Kingdom’s next prime minister on Monday, faces a roster of challenges as the country’s seventh leader in a decade.

Burnham was overwhelmingly backed as Labour leader on Friday after current Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned last month.

It has been a whirlwind month for the former Greater Manchester mayor, with his vision for the country and his cabinet still unclear.

“This has gone faster than he thought. It’s only been four weeks since he won the by-election. I don’t think he knows all of the answers yet; he hasn’t had the thinking time,” Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future think tank, told Al Jazeera.

Experts say the incoming prime minister will inherit an economy that has barely grown in two decades and a challenging geopolitical environment. He also has to deal with a marked decrease in Labour’s popularity, with the party trailing the right-wing Reform UK in the polls for 18 months.

“Burnham has relatively little fiscal room for manoeuvre,” said Anand Menon, director of UK in a Changing Europe.

New spending will have to be raised via taxation rather than borrowing, though there may be scope for “hypothecated spending” tied to a clear purpose, such as defence bonds, Menon said.

“If you make it absolutely clear what these things are for, the markets will be more permissive. But the fiscal situation is tight,” he noted.

Manchester model

The government spent around 110 billion British pounds ($148bn) on debt interest in 2025-26 alone, about eight percent of all public spending. Borrowing has run higher than planned this year, and taxes are forecast to reach their highest share of the economy since World War II by the end of the decade.

Gareth Dale, associate head of Social and Political Sciences at Brunel University, points to Burnham’s record in Manchester, including the city’s fare-capped bus network, as proof that “meaningful reforms needn’t always come with a big price tag”.

Whether that scales up nationally will hinge on his willingness to confront the bond markets.

“What Burnham did in Manchester might be harder to do at a national level,” warned Menon. “He’s got to get the balance right between showing he’s aware of the fact that there’s a country outside of London and that isn’t just Manchester.”

Menon doubts fiscal manoeuvring alone will shift the public mood. He says that living standards have stagnated and services have eroded since 2008 so “people don’t just want to listen to what you’re saying, they want to see changes for the better in their lives”.

Burnham’s in-tray is complicated further by a diplomatic dispute that flared days before he is slated to take office. The government fully nationalised British Steel’s Scunthorpe works, a year after taking control of the loss-making plant when Chinese owner Jingye Group said it planned to close it.

Jingye has vowed to pursue “full compensation through legal means,” while China’s Ministry of Commerce accused London of undermining Chinese investor confidence.

It leaves Burnham managing a strained relationship with China from day one, after Starmer went to great efforts to reset relations between the two countries.

Beyond borders

Menon argues that much of what shapes a prime minister’s fortunes lies outside their control and outside Britain’s borders.

“Sometimes the drivers of political success and failure are utterly out of your hands,” he said. He cited the war in Ukraine, Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic as reminders that a “medium-sized open economy” is exposed to forces it cannot direct.

That extends to Washington, where personal chemistry with US President Donald Trump will matter “at least for a while, until he goes off people”, Menon said.

Dependence on the US for defence and technology rules out any dramatic reconfiguring of British-US ties.

Menon expects European Union relations to get less attention than under Starmer, predicting Burnham to be “more avowedly domestic” focused.

This could still be tested by Gaza, where Burnham has apologised for the previous government’s stance. Menon cautions that turning words into policy “depends heavily on events”.

“He’s given some hints he’ll be less knee-jerkly supportive of Israel than Starmer was, but whether that carries over into power, we’ll have to wait and see,” explained Menon.

He also doubts whether Burnham would risk a rupture with Washington regarding US bases in Britain, which could be used, indirectly, in US-Israel war on Iran.

Defence first

Reports suggest that Burnham is likely to put defence above welfare spending, which will again rankle some in his party.

“He’ll probably prioritise arms spending over welfare… while dialling down the ‘net zero’ programme,” warns Dale, with Burnham expected to allow for new North Sea oil and gas drilling.

“And he voted to make the asylum system more brutal. If he does set policy in these directions, it’ll put wind in the sails of the far right, and probably accelerate the shift of voters from Labour to Green,” Dale said.

Burnham has moved from Labour’s Blairite wing to its soft left, but “commands widespread support among Labour MPs” and “gets on with various factions”, he noted.

But that unity masks deeper erosion: Labour’s vote fell from 12.9 million in 2017 to 9.7 million under Starmer.

The centre-left party’s support base is also “narrowing towards wealthier, less diverse parts of the electorate, with the Greens now drawing disillusioned voters on the left”, said Dale.

Political divides

That erosion is bound up with a wider polarisation in the country that Katwala says no government can avoid.

“I don’t think it’s enough to say we’d like to talk about jobs and devolving power and therefore we won’t talk about identity, immigration, race,” says Katwala.

He argues that fairness should be framed as universal rather than a concession to certain groups of society.

“Whether it’s tackling anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or racism generally, these are issues for everybody in society. It’s not for the minority group itself to work out how to challenge the prejudice it faces,” Katwala said.

“The people who are hostile to Muslims are the people who know the least Muslims and live furthest away. It’s the government’s job to get to that really tough end of attitudes and perceptions that are making people feel less safe.”

Menon sees a narrow opening on the right-wing narratives popularised by the Reform UK party.

Labour entered government in 2024 with 33 percent of the vote against Reform’s 14 percent, a gap that has since collapsed following the right-wing party’s links to George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster.

Recent polls put Reform around 24-26 percent and Labour close behind it, a marked turnaround from polling earlier this year.

By-election results also suggest a broad anti-Reform coalition and tactical voting exist, which should strengthen Labour.

“Even if 30 percent of people are willing to vote Reform, almost 70 percent are willing to do whatever it takes to stop them being elected,” Menon noted.

Whether that holds, he said, depends on how Burnham performs once the difficulties of government set in.

“It becomes a very different game when things are going badly, and if he ends up being a lucky general, then Reform self-destructs,” Menon said.

Experts have warned parts of Southern Europe could exceed 50C this summer or next, with holidaymakers urged to rethink holiday destinations or could be forced to spend their vacation indoors

A sweltering 50C heatwave could hit parts of Europe as experts warned British holidaymakers to prepare for dangerous conditions this summer.

Holidaymakers heading to the Mediterranean have been warned temperatures could soar to 50C, with experts saying the record-breaking heat seen across southern Europe may only be the beginning. Large parts of Spain have already endured temperatures of 44C in recent days, while the heat has fuelled wildfires across Spain and France, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes.

Professor Bill McGuire, Emeritus Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at UCL said even hotter weather could be yet to come. He said: “It would be no surprise if 50C was exceeded, either later this summer or next year, when the heating impact of the unprecedented El Niño building in the Pacific will be at its greatest.”

He urged anyone travelling to the Mediterranean to be prepared to spend far more time indoors than they might have planned. He told the Daily Mail: “I wouldn’t say that they would be a total write-off, but I think holidaymakers will need to be prepared to spend a lot of time in air-conditioned hotel rooms, due to it simply being too hot to do anything outside.”

The highest air temperature ever officially recorded in Europe is 48.8C, set in Sicily in 2021. Before that, the record stood at 48C, recorded in Elefsina and Athens in 1977.

Professor Hanna Cloke, Regius Professor of Meteorology and Climate Science at the University of Reading, said parts of Spain and Portugal could see temperatures climb into the high 40s. She said: “Temperatures in the high 40s are possible in the hottest parts of Spain and Portugal. And where humidity is high it can feel even hotter than that, well above what the thermometer says. That’s the kind of heat that kills.”

She urged holidaymakers to take extra care if temperatures continued to climb. She said: “The old and vulnerable need to be very careful; keeping out of the sun and drinking plenty of water, as they can easily suffer and become ill in 40C+ temperatures.”

Professor McGuire said there was “no doubt whatsoever” climate change was driving the extreme heat. He said: “Europe is heating faster than any other continent as we continue to add more than 40 billion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere every year – equivalent to the weight of 800,000 Titanics.

“The average temperature of Europe is now more than 2°C hotter than it was 100 years ago, and high temperature extremes are going up even faster. Heatwaves are getting hotter and longer, and taking many thousands of lives every year.

“But this isn’t the new normal, this is just the beginning. Summers across the Mediterranean region are just going to keep on getting hotter as long as we continue to do next to nothing in terms of reining in carbon emissions.”

Two men have been shot dead by ICE agents in separate incidents in Maine and in Texas – raising questions about the tactics used by immigration officers and bringing back a big political problem for President Donald Trump.

BBC’s North America Editor Sarah Smith explains the backlash the president is facing on one of the biggest issues he ran his election campaign on.

Video produced by Cai Pigliucci, filmed by Ian Druce, edited by Meiying Wu

Reporting from Sacramento — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday pardoned seven former felons, including two Cambodian refugees the Trump administration wants to deport, in his first acts of clemency since the Democrat took office in January.

Newsom adopted a policy of his predecessor, former Gov. Jerry Brown, to use his state constitutional authority to issue pardons to shield immigrants targeted by federal immigration officials.

The pardons are an unmistakable rebuke to President Trump, whose fiery anti-immigrant rhetoric and demands for a giant wall along the U.S.-Mexico border have been central to the escalating political feud between Newsom and the White House.

Newsom took another shot at Trump just hours before announcing the pardons while speaking to members of the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Assn., a national nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization based in Sacramento. Newsom compared Trump to the anti-immigrant “demagogues” in San Francisco who championed the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 — the nation’s first immigration ban on a specific group of people.

“I’m constantly trying to understand the moment we’re living in, the xenophobia, the nativism that marks the populism of this moment,” Newsom said. “Any of us who are students of history know that it’s not without precedent. It’s not novel. It’s hardly new. It’s very familiar.”

Trump restricts asylum further but faces legal and financial limits »

One of the Cambodian refugees pardoned by Newsom, Hay Hov of Oakland, was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in March. He has since been released.

Hov, a naturalized citizen who arrived in the United States in 1985 as a legal refugee when he was 6, was convicted of solicitation to commit murder and participation in a criminal street gang in 2001, when he was 21, according to the Newsom administration.

The other refugee, Kang Hen of San Francisco, like Hov, fled to the Bay Area with his family to escape the Cambodian genocide in the 1980s. Hen was convicted of grand theft in 1994 when he was 18. Hen, who has a 4-year-old son and a partner with kidney and heart problems, was taken into custody by ICE in April.

Both Hov and Hen are being processed for deportation to Cambodia. The pardons do not automatically end a deportation effort but remove the underlying criminal offense that triggered the federal removal actions.

The pardons come as the federal government continues a crackdown on the Cambodian community that began in 2017 when Trump forced Cambodia to agree to take back more deportees. Many of the Cambodians facing deportation were refugees from the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that killed thousands, and came to the United States legally as children. They have few memories or ties to the country. But because they committed crimes, even if convicted decades ago, they can be deported.

In the 2016 fiscal year, ICE reported removing 74 Cambodians. In 2017, 29 Cambodians were removed. In 2018, that number has jumped to 110 thus far.

ICE reported that, as of March 26, there were 1,784 non-detained Cambodians nationals in the United States with a final order of removal. Of those, 1,294 had criminal records.

All seven of the people Newsom pardoned on Monday had completed their prison sentences.

“By granting these pardons to people who are transforming their lives, the Governor is seeking to remove barriers to employment and public service, restore civic rights and responsibilities and prevent unjust collateral consequences of conviction,” the governor’s office said in a statement released Monday afternoon.

The other five people pardoned committed offenses that varied from selling or possessing drugs to forgery.

Brown granted a historic 1,332 pardons and 283 commutations during his last two terms as governor. However, the California Supreme Court rejected 10 grants of clemency issued by Brown, the first time the high court has blocked a pardon or commutation in more than 50 years.

The court did not issue an explanation for the action. Under the California Constitution, the governor cannot grant a pardon or commute a sentence of anyone convicted of two separate felonies without the approval of the state Supreme Court.

None of the people whom Newsom pardoned on Monday had multiple felonies, according to a governor’s office spokesperson.

phil.willon@latimes.com

Twitter: @philwillon

Rams offensive lineman Alaric Jackson is not facing charges related to his arrest last month on suspicion of domestic violence, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office confirmed.

“Charges are not filed against the respondent at this time, however, the case stays open throughout the length of the statute of limitations. It can be re-evaluated if there are further developments,” said Ivor Pine, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office.

Pine said the matter has been assigned for a City Attorney hearing, a pre-filing diversion that is an alternative to misdemeanor prosecution.

Jackson was arrested on June 9 after police responded to a call at a West Hills home involving Jackson and a pregnant woman.

Jackson, 27, could still face discipline from the NFL if the league determines that he violated its personal conduct policy for the second time.

In 2024, Jackson served a two-game suspension. If the league finds he committed another violation, Jackson could face a six-game suspension or possible banishment for at least one year.

The Rams are scheduled to report to training camp on July 25 in preparation for their Sept. 10 season opener against the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, Australia.

Staff writer Gary Klein contributed to this report.

ROME — President Trump’s attacks on Italy’s premier have had an unintended consequence.

After Trump questioned Italy’s reliability as a wartime ally and claimed Giorgia Meloni had groveled for his attention, European leaders rallied to Meloni’s side, thawing what had been a frosty relationship over her hard-right political roots.

It is the latest example of how the often divisive American president is helping to draw Europe closer together.

European leaders are finding more reasons to coordinate on defense, tariffs and foreign policy as they confront wars in Ukraine and Iran, a ballooning trade deficit with China, and threats from Russia. That leaves Trump, who has often preferred to negotiate with European countries individually, with less ability to do so, analysts say.

“Most of the mainstream leaders realize that Europe is getting squeezed between China and America, and so, if not now, then when?” said Sudha David-Wilp, vice president at the German Marshall Fund. “They need to act as a bloc in order to maintain Europe’s place in the world.”

This newfound European unity could be tested next week at a NATO summit in Turkey.

European leaders rally around Meloni

Meloni’s spat with Trump has helped her strengthen ties with European leaders once wary of her party’s post-fascist roots.

A pivotal moment came in March when she wouldn’t allow U.S. bombers headed to the Middle East to use a base in Sicily without parliamentary approval.

For years before then, France and Germany often kept Meloni outside the small-group talks that helped shape Europe’s response to major foreign policy crises. That persisted into 2026 amid disagreements over the Russian war on Ukraine, including Meloni’s rejection of a proposal by Britain and France to send European troops there following a possible ceasefire.

But Trump’s escalating attacks on Meloni — who called Trump’s criticism of Pope Leo “unacceptable” — helped shift the dynamic, prompting European leaders to rally around her.

After all, they, too, have been on the receiving end of Trump’s barbs.

Meloni was firmly in the fold at a late June meeting in Berlin with the leaders of Germany, France, Britain and Poland. And she met the next day with French President Emmanuel Macron in southern France — the first bilateral summit since the pandemic.

Europe’s nationalist parties are adjusting

Even nationalist parties across the continent once aligned with Trump are recalibrating their stances because his trade policies and war with Iran are proving unpopular with voters.

In France, far-right leader Jordan Bardella recently blasted U.S. actions as “foreign interference” and described Trump as “erratic” and “extremely unsteady.” Bardella had previously welcomed Trump’s brand of nationalism as a “wind of freedom.”

In Germany, leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany party have criticized the U.S. military campaign against Iran. The co-leader of the party, Tino Chrupalla, said in March he was “extremely disappointed” with Trump, whom he had viewed as a politician who would avoid new conflicts.

The changing rhetoric comes as elections approach, putting more focus on domestic issues.

“This pushes everyone to consider a European horizon more than an international one,” said Lorenzo Castellani, a political analyst and professor at Rome’s LUISS University,

Beyond Europe’s biggest powers

These dynamics are playing out beyond the European Union, from the Arctic Ocean to the Balkans.

When Trump threatened to take Greenland by force, protests erupted in its capital, Nuuk, and in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. Leaders across the political spectrum bristled at the threatened infringement of European sovereignty and feared it could shatter the already stressed NATO military alliance.

In Albania, a luxury development being planned that is linked to Trump’s family business has become a major political issue, drawing protests in June.

The political risks of close alignment with Trump were perhaps most clearly illustrated in Hungary. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — long regarded as Trump’s closest ally in the European Union — was voted out of office in April despite support from the U.S. president and prominent figures in the MAGA movement.

An analysis by the consultancy Maplecroft suggested that negative perceptions of the Trump administration may have weighed on Orbán politically.

Meloni’s balancing act

Though Meloni remains closely aligned with Trump on issues like immigration and security, she has long diverged from him on Ukraine. Her steadfast support for Kyiv made her more palatable for European leaders and has been a key factor in forging a more united European front toward the U.S.

During their public spat last month, Meloni said her friendship with Trump came with a heavy political cost.

In her response to his accusation that she had “begged” to be photographed with him while at the recent G7 summit in France, she wrote on social media: “As for my popularity, being your friend has certainly not helped it, nor does it depend on my relationship with you.”

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that Trump is deeply unpopular in Italy. According to the survey, 83% of Italians have no confidence in Trump’s ability to do the right thing regarding foreign affairs. His handling of a range of issues — including Iran, tariffs, and U.S. immigration policies — received a low level of support.

With a national election due by 2027 — and possibly as early as next spring — Meloni faces mounting political pressures, including fallout from the unpopular Iran war and her former ties to Trump.

Voters across Europe could hold their own politicians accountable for the actions of an American president beyond their control, said Castellani, the political analyst.

“At a certain point, when voters see the price of gasoline rising because of a war perceived as distant, they ask Meloni for the bill, not Trump.”

Zampano and McNeil write for the Associated Press. McNeil reported from Brussels. AP writers Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Geir Moulson in Berlin, and Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary, contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has spent months waging an unusually aggressive campaign to reshape how states run elections, leveraging federal agencies in ways no previous president has attempted.

He has pushed the Department of Homeland Security to compile a list of citizens in each state to help determine voter eligibility. He is seeking to give the Postal Service a role in deciding who can receive mail ballots. He has threatened to withhold federal funding from states unless they phase out electronic voting machines. And he is pressuring Republican lawmakers to overhaul voting laws, claiming without evidence that elections are being rigged.

The efforts have run into resistance in court and within his own party. They have also left postal workers and local election officials bracing for an election cycle marked by deepening doubts about election integrity, and uncertainty about how the federal government may challenge the post-election results.

“It’s an unprecedented power grab to reshape how our elections work so that he and his allies can maintain and expand power,” said Eric Kashdan, director of federal advocacy at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan government ethics organization.

The White House defends the effort as fulfilling a campaign promise, and argues the administration is “lawfully enacting the agenda President Trump was elected to enact.”

One of Trump’s defining efforts to assert some federal control over state elections has been his insistence on passing the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register, require Americans to show identification when casting a ballot and require states to send voter data to the Department of Homeland Security.

His relentless push for the measure has prompted him to derail a bipartisan housing bill and threaten to forgo signing any piece of legislation unless the voting measure is approved. He says he considers the matter a “national emergency.” Despite the pressure campaign, Senate Republican leaders maintain there is not enough support to pass the measure.

The political stakes ahead of the midterms have been laid out more bluntly by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), whose chamber has approved the SAVE America Act. Last month, Johnson warned conservatives gathered at the Faith & Freedom Coalition that if Democrats win back control of the House, they will “go after the president’s family, the Cabinet, his donors, friends,” and supporters.

“I run the protection program,” Johnson said. “I will take care of you.”

Setbacks in court

The administration’s ambitions have hit numerous snags in court in the last month, with judges reaffirming in many cases that the Constitution gives states — not the federal government — primary authority over elections.

In one case, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who was appointed by President Biden, went further.

She said a federal immigration database the Department of Homeland Security was compiling to determine voter eligibility violated privacy laws. She added that the database has resulted in states actively removing U.S. citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.

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

James Percival, the general counsel for Homeland Security, said the ruling was the latest example of “how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist.”

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority this week also dealt a blow to the GOP and upheld state laws that allow for counting mail ballots that are postmarked by election day but arrive late.

The decision left Trump fuming. He said it was a “a little bit surprising” to see the court’s decision, claiming without evidence that the result will inevitably give “people more time to vote illegally.”

Democrats, in turn, saw the ruling as a necessary check on the Trump administration’s efforts.

“While we continue to see unprecedented efforts to interfere with elections from the Trump administration, it is a relief to see federal courts make clear that these attacks on mail and absentee voting are clearly illegal and unconstitutional,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Los Angeles) said in a statement after the ruling.

Trump is still eyeing changes to voting by mail. In March, he issued an executive order that seeks to limit who can receive mail ballots. Under the proposed rule, the Postal Service would not deliver mail ballots to states that don’t turn over sensitive voter data to the federal government, Postmaster General David Steiner told a Senate panel last month.

The admission drew immediate condemnation from Democratic lawmakers. They argued the regulation is an illegal attempt to coerce states into handing over their voter rolls.

“Please push back on being a pawn in this authoritarian playbook,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told Steiner. “The Postal Service is one of the most important institutions in our country. Don’t taint it with the obsession of this one man.”

A day after that back-and-forth, U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, who was nominated by President Obama, blocked those plans — at least for now.

“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” the judge wrote, while adding that the Postal Service does not have the legal authority to determine who can vote by mail and how.

The White House said Wednesday that the administration remains confident the executive order will be in place by the November election.

Taken together, the administration’s efforts are unprecedented, UCLA law professor Rick Hasen said. That’s because the Constitution puts control over elections in the hands of the states and grants Congress the ability to pass laws, he said.

“The president really only has authority through federal statutes that have already been passed,” Hasen said. “It’s not surprising that many courts have struck down or stopped him from doing things to try to interfere with how elections are being run.”

Postal workers waiting for clarity

The legal setback for the Postal Service proposed rule was welcome news to the union representing postal workers.

“We believe that what we’re being asked to do is in violation of the oath that we took,” said Jonathan Smith, the president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents more than 200,000 postal workers.

Following the ruling, the union called on the agency to abandon the rule, arguing it “will crush mailers’ trust in the Postal Service” and undermine “one of the most important functions the Postal Service and postal workers perform in service of the United States and its remarkable democracy.”

In several states, the union has run ads promoting mail voting as safe and a needed option for Americans. The ads were planned before Trump signed his executive order in March seeking to limit who can receive mail ballots, Smith said.

Now, the ads are taking a different meaning. Smith argued that “sometimes God works in mysterious ways.”

“The ad was then and is now intended as a piece to educate America about how good vote by mail is, how much it has been working out,” Smith said. “It’s an educational piece, not a response to the White House.”

Ahead of the election, Smith said postal workers are waiting for clarity on how their duties may change. But right now, he says, there isn’t much.

Orange County Registrar Bob Page said his office is monitoring any changes to existing federal and state election laws to ensure any changes, if needed, are implemented without disruptions. But he acknowledged the timing crunch could create some hurdles the closer the election gets.

“In many ways, any change to how California voters cast their ballots made between now and election day would create a challenge and may even be disruptive,” Page said.

He said many counties have ordered outgoing and return ballot envelopes for the election to ensure envelopes for more than 23 million California voters are ready to use by the Oct. 5 mailing deadline. Any change to how ballots should be prepared or mailed could present an issue.

“Our office has received calls from voters asking about potential changes to vote-by-mail procedures usually tied to media coverage about proposed changes,” he said. “We inform these voters that our procedures have not changed because the law has not changed and that we will mail their 2026 General Election ballots by Oct. 5.”

L.A. County prepares for possible voting changes

In Los Angeles County, election officials are also in a battle to bring clarity to the process as the administration ushers in a series of proposed changes to the election.

Dean Logan, the head of the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office, said his office is fighting to contain a wave of election misinformation, including some that is amplified by the White House.

“It’s not something that we’ve seen happen before, and certainly not at the level we’ve seen,” Logan said.

Rather than respond to every claim, Logan says his office picks its battles, intervening only when a falsehood appears likely to reach a wide audience. Even then, the office tries to avoid engagement with whoever is spreading it.

If the administration imposes a new rule closer to the election, Logan said his office is ready to follow the law.

“It’s really been about finding this balance of staying alert and prepared for the possibility [of change] but also not getting sucked into the political distraction,” he said.

Last month, Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats have cheated to win California’s primary elections, and boasted about federal prosecutors in Los Angeles investigating the matter.

Trump has also continued to claim Democrats are trying to rig or cheat in the upcoming election, remarks that have faced rebukes from members of his own party.

“I think it is ironic that we control the House, Senate, Supreme Court and the White House and we are yelling election fraud. I mean, we won all the damn elections,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told reporters last month.

At the national level, Senate Democrats have said they plan to send election observers to polling places on behalf of Congress in reaction to Trump’s efforts.

“We are not waiting for chaos to arrive,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said last month. “We are preparing now.”

Times staff writer Justine McDaniel contributed to this report from Washington.

Under plans by the local authority, work on the link road was expected to finish this year and open to traffic in early 2027 – eight years after the junction was originally built

The opening of a £50m ‘dead-end’ motorway junction near Bristol that was built seven years ago and has never been used could face further delays, it has been announced.

National Highways completed the bulk of the work on the two-bridge junction off the M49 – a stretch of road between Avonmouth and Severnside – in 2019. But plans to link the junction with a nearby industrial estate used by companies such as Tesco and Amazon stalled after a dispute arose over who was responsible for building the connecting road.

Now “defects” have been identified at the junction, National Highways has revealed. The body responsible for England’s roads said it was looking at options for remedial work following an engineering survey carried out by independent specialists.

“Discussions with our contractor are ongoing,” National Highways said in a statement. “We expect this will impact the opening of the South Gloucestershire Council link road, which is in construction.

“We remain committed to opening the junction as this will benefit the regional economy and communities. For safety reasons these defects must be addressed before we can connect it to local authority roads.

“We realise how frustrating this news will be to communities and businesses and we are working with the council and other partners on next steps.”

A spokesperson for South Gloucestershire Council said the news was “incredibly frustrating”.

“We share the anger and disbelief felt by local residents and businesses,” they said. “The council has committed to deliver the link road to connect to the M49 junction, and we remain on track to do so by the end of 2026.

“However, the opening of the junction once the link road is complete is solely a matter for National Highways.”

Under plans by the local authority, work on the link road was expected to finish this year and open to traffic in early 2027 – eight years after the junction was originally built.

But, according to South Gloucestershire Council, National Highways has not confirmed a programme or timeline for resolving issues affecting the junction and does not expect to provide an update until the autumn of this year.

“This uncertainty is deeply concerning for residents in nearby communities, who are affected by significant numbers of large vehicles using local roads,” the council spokesperson said.

“The delay is also a problem for businesses in Severnside, an area we all want to see grow and which needs to be properly connected to the strategic road network as soon as possible, in order to attract the investment to create jobs.

“We are pressing National Highways to provide as much information as possible, as soon as possible, about how and when they will make the junction ready for traffic and when we can expect the link road to be connected to the motorway in the way we have long planned. We will continue to press for answers and share updates as soon as further information becomes available.”

When the M49 junction was first proposed, it was hoped it would create an economic boost for the region and ease congestion on local roads by connecting the Port of Avonmouth and the Avonmouth and Severnside Enterprise Area.

But the project, which secured another £7m from the Department for Transport last year, has been hampered by delays, much to the chagrin of local residents and businesses.

Landownership issues, disagreements over responsibilities and navigating ecological challenges have all contributed to slowing up the opening of the so-called “ghost junction”, reports BusinessLive.

‘It is farcical’

The MP for Thornbury and Yate, Claire Young, has slammed National Highways for taking so long to disclose the issue.

“It is farcical that National Highways has waited until now to tell us there is a problem with the M49 junction they built,” she said.

Ms Young said National Highways was “unable” to reveal what the problem was.

“It means that the opening of this long awaited ‘ghost junction’ will almost certainly be delayed. My thoughts are with the long suffering local residents who will have to continue to deal with lorries thundering down their roads from massive warehouses that were located specifically to use this motorway junction.

“The surrounding roads are being ripped to shreds by lorries they were never designed to carry. Communication throughout has been poor; businesses and some local people are only now being told about the issue. I will continue to press National Highways and the government to sort out this mess as quickly as possible.”

Peter Tyzack, chair of Pilning and Severn Beach Parish Council, said it was “very disappointing and frustrating”. “Residents and businesses have waited a long time for the junction to open,” he said. “The parish council has made clear that, while safety must come first, the local community cannot simply be expected to absorb the impact of further delay without support.”

The land owner of the distribution park, Delta, has also been contacted for comment.

KATIE Price has made a cryptic post about the hardship couples who are meant to be together sometimes face.

The TV star, 48, took to Instagram to share a quote for her followers and left it standing alone with no extra input on her story.

The quote reads: “Sometimes the two people who are truly meant for each other will face the hardest battles.”

Upon clicking on the post the quote expands to share more detail, continuing to say: “Not because they are wrong for each other. But because the world will test everything real.

“Love like that doesn’t come easy. It’s built through pain. Distance. Misunderstandings. Growth.

“But if they can hold on through the chaos. If they choose each other over and over again. They’ll find something most people only dream of.

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“A love that didn’t just survive the storm. But became unbreakable because of it.”

The post comes shortly after Katie’s husband Lee Andrews was released from Dubai’s Al Awir prison.

After being accused of spying Lee claimed he was captured at gunpoint and ‘slapped around’ before Katie managed to save him.

He then praised his wife for her help in getting British authorities involved in his release.

Posting a video of himself on social media, Lee said: “Hi everyone, this is Lee. I’ve been missing now for several weeks. I can tell you I’m now safe and healthy and with my wife.

“I was taken close to the Hatta-Oman border by men at gunpoint and then I was captured by men with assault rifles.

“They did slap me around a little bit, little s***s, and I was hand-tied, shackled and also had a hood over my head.

“From there I was taken to a black site and I had no use of my phone and from what I know it was an extended arm of the National Guard and that’s all I can reveal at the moment.

“I have signed disclaimers now with state security and from there I was put into the system.

“At no point have I faced anything to do with fraud allegations or any criminal activities such as that.

“So thank you to Katie for making such a noise where the UAE actually listened and let me go.”

However, UAE officials debunked his claims he was in jail for spying and confirmed he has spent the past four weeks behind bars on suspicion of fraud.

Katie appeared to accept his story, sharing Lee’s video on Instagram saying: “My husband is back. I love you.”

The Competition and Markets Authority is investigating whether Ryanair’s practice of charging parents around £8 each way to sit with their children on flights is a breach of the law

Budget airline Ryanair is being investigated over its practice of charging parents to sit with their children on flights.

Watchdog the Competition and Markets Authority said it will decide whether it is “in line with consumer law”. Ryanair responded by branding the probe “bogus” and a “failed effort by the Starmer Government to pretend it cares about consumers”.

The Irish carrier requires at least one parent to sit with their children aged between two and 11, according to the watchdog. But it does this through what the airline calls a mandatory family seat, which typically costs about £8 each way. Paying to reserve a seat is optional for other passengers.

The CMA is investigating whether Ryanair’s approach means “parents are being charged for the airline to meet its child safety and disability-related obligations as set out under aviation rules”. Ryanair is “the only major airline flying out of the UK to impose this charge”, according to the watchdog.

Other carriers offer to seat children flying with a parent without the need for a paid reservation, or automatically allocate seats together during booking, the CMA said.

The investigation will also examine whether Ryanair’s mandatory family seat fee is dripped in during the booking process, which is when a business does not initially present customers with all unavoidable charges. The CMA added it is at the beginning of its investigation and has “reached no conclusions about whether Ryanair has broken the law”.

Hayley Fletcher, senior director of consumer protection at the CMA, said: “Lots of families save up to afford a summer holiday and we know that extra charges can quickly bump up the price. Our investigation will consider Ryanair’s approach to family seat reservations and how the cost is presented to consumers, to determine whether they comply with consumer law.

“For the past year, we’ve told businesses to ensure their customers are shown the total price upfront – those who don’t face the very real possibility of action from the CMA.”

Ryanair said in a statement: “Ryanair’s family seating policy fully complies with all relevant laws and regulations, and saves families money when travelling on the UK’s lowest fare airline.”

It said it “does not charge any fee for children to sit beside their parent”, and “parents travelling with children pay for only one (adult) reserved seat”.

It added: “This bogus CMA investigation is a failed effort by the Starmer Government to pretend it cares about consumers when it has failed to abolish APD (air passenger duty) which would immediately deliver lower fares for all consumers and growth for the UK aviation, tourism and wider economy. Ryanair looks forward to disproving these false CMA claims.”

Two years ago, Bashir Muhammad received an invitation to attend a journalism summit in Niamey but declined. That decision, and the argument it provoked, told him everything he needed to know.

He runs one of the growing number of Hausa-language digital news platforms that have emerged across northern Nigeria in the past decade, serving local audiences that legacy English-language media have largely ignored. That profile made him a target. In 2024, Bashir was approached by Mariam Laouali – a woman known across West African Hausa media circles as Sarkin Abzin. She is a prominent Nigerien broadcaster and, as he would come to understand, a committed supporter of the military regime that had seized power in Niamey the previous year.

In July 2023, the military junta, led by General Abdurrahman Tchiani, overthrew the democratically elected President Muhammad Bazoum. The coup met with strong resistance from the international community, particularly the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), under the leadership of Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu. This led to severe diplomatic tensions between ECOWAS and the new military regime in Niger, culminating in threats of invasion from Nigerian leaders and ultimately the division of ECOWAS and the formation of the Alliance of the Sahel States (AES). While some diplomatic efforts have been restored, tensions remain, and the Niger Republic, supported by Russia and its AES allies, has been engaged in information efforts to attack ECOWAS countries, particularly Nigeria and Benin Republic. Bashir felt this approach could be part of the recruitment efforts. 

The pitch sounded professional. Sarkin Abzin told him of a pan-African summit of Hausa-language journalists to be convened in Niamey. It was the first of its kind, according to her. She described it as an exercise in cross-border media cooperation and a chance for journalists from across the continent’s Hausa-speaking belt to build something together. 

Bashir had questions, but he did not like the answers, so he declined.

Sarkin Abzin pushed back, insisting that he should consider it, but he became more suspicious. The conversation escalated. By the end, she was visibly frustrated. It ended there. 

“She didn’t take it well,” Bashir told HumAngle, sitting in his home office while casually scrolling on his computer, searching for her Facebook page. “The way she reacted told you this wasn’t just about journalism.”

He was right. It was not all about journalism. The summit in Niamey was just bait. What Sarkin Abzin and her sponsors in the Niger Republic seemed to want was access to northern Nigeria’s forty million Hausa speakers and to exploit their grievances and distrust of Nigerian leaders.

Many Nigerians were consumed by anxiety and bitterness over the country’s dire economic pressures. Many also harboured deep anger toward their leaders – particularly President Bola Tinubu, against whom protests erupted in August 2024, during which some demonstrators raised Russian flags and called for a coup. For that reason, this was a country where recruiting the discontented would come easily, because the grievances were already there, waiting.

Pro-junta actors and AES-aligned influence networks have been weaponising TikTok’s virality to erode confidence in Nigerian democratic leadership, particularly targeting President Tinubu and the broader ECOWAS establishment.

Online influencers and sympathetic media outlets, including some based within Nigeria itself, have circulated claims accusing Nigerian politicians of backing insurgent networks and conspiring with foreign powers to destabilise the AES states.

The recruitment drive

Sarkin Abzin’s tour of northern Nigerian newsrooms and radio stations in 2024 was, in retrospect, the visible edge of something much larger. She moved through Kano, through the northwest, knocking on the doors of editors and station managers, carrying the same pitch: come to Niamey, meet your counterparts, and build solidarity. Several journalists, like Bashir, declined quietly. A general manager at a prominent radio station in Kano, who pleaded anonymity, told HumAngle that Sarkin Abzin had reached him, but that he had turned her down.

“Looking at the timing when there was a diplomatic rift between Nigeria and Niger, and the suspicion of foreign influence, I felt it was unwise to join,” he said.

However, not everyone had the luxury of that suspicion, or the will to act on it. Musa Abba (not real name), a journalist at a private radio station in Kebbi State, saw a conference invitation and a chance to connect with Hausa journalists beyond Nigeria’s borders. His station was invited and the managers nominated him. Accommodation and food were covered by the organisers. The journey, according to him, was arranged through the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), in a vehicle shared with other attendees and, notably, with some politicians and government officials who had also been invited.

What he found in Niamey, however, upended the premise of the invitation entirely.

He concluded that “it was a sophisticated plan to form Hausa journalists who will be promoting the Nigerien junta and anti-West sentiment across Hausa-speaking countries.”

On her TikTok page, Sarkin Abzin does not hide her bias. She promotes Sahel juntas and specifically asks her followers to promote Tchiani. 

In a social media exchange with Fati Niger, a Kannywood musician originally from the Niger Republic who had called for a return to democratic rule, Sarkin Abzin’s response betrayed her sentiments. “We don’t care about entertainment,” she mentioned in a TikTok video. What mattered, she said, was building their country and confronting those she described as “hypocrites and oppressors within the West,” as well as “hypocrites among us here, those in exile in every country in the world, including Nigeria, and those Nigerians who support the old system [of democracy] and do not stand behind these soldiers under Abdourahamane Tchiani.”

The summit Sarkin Abzin organised had state backing, institutional cover, and a well-hosted programme. It had everything, in other words, that a genuine journalism conference would have – except genuine journalism at its centre.

The irony is that the junta in Niger has been repressing and arresting journalists in the country. Moussa Ngom, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)’s Francophone Africa representative, explained that “arrest and detention have become tools of choice for Nigerien authorities to try to control information they find undesirable.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that in October 2025 six journalists were arrested in Niamey – Moussa Kaka and Abdoul Aziz of Saraounia TV; Ibro Chaibou and Souleymane Brah from the online publication Voice of the People; Youssouf Seriba of Les Échos du Niger; and Oumarou Kané, founder of the magazine Le Hérisson – over their alleged role in circulating a government press briefing invitation on social media, criticising the introduction of the mandatory payment for “Solidarity Fund for the Safeguarding of the Homeland”, a form of security levy in Niger. 

The conference that wasn’t

The organisation behind the summit, Kungiyar Yan Jarida Na Afrika Masu Magana Da Harshen Hausa or, in French, Résegu Africain des journalistes en langue Haoussa (Association of Hausa-speaking Journalists in Africa), was founded by Sarkin Abzin herself. She held a senior position at RTN, the Nigerien state broadcaster. Her organisation, she told prospective attendees, had the backing of the Nigerien government institutions. 

Inside the hall at the Centre International de Conférences Mahatma Gandhi in Niamey, when the summit was opened on Aug. 24, 2024, the keynote speakers were not press freedom advocates, editors or media economists. They were politicians. Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine appeared as Tchiani’s representative, delivering a speech whose original French had been translated into Hausa. He spoke about Niger’s exit from ECOWAS as a show of sovereignty.

The junta had, by this point, accused ECOWAS countries, particularly Nigeria and Benin, of colluding with France to destabilise Niger and sabotage its economy- allegations that, according to independent fact-checkers, had no credible evidentiary basis but which had proven effective at consolidating domestic support by replacing accountability with external threat. The Niamey summit was the moment that the narrative was offered to Nigerian voices who could carry it home.

Among those who spoke was Hamza Almustafa, a Nigerian retired general and a politician who used the platform to denounce the West. Najaatu Muhammad, a prominent northern Nigerian political figure, delivered what several attendees described as the most incendiary address of the proceedings. She told her audience that the Nigerian federal government was conspiring to sever Niger from Nigeria – to cut through bonds of religion and culture that no colonial border had ever truly divided. Abuja, she suggested, served Paris and Washington before it served Kano or Sokoto.

“It was not really a journalists’ meeting,” Musa told HumAngle, “By the time the politicians started speaking, those of us who understood what was happening knew we had made a mistake.”

Sarkin Abzin’s organisation had achieved, in a single day, what overt propaganda rarely manages: it had placed legitimate reporters in a room and given the junta’s narratives the texture of a press conference. The journalists went to Niamey to cover something. They came back as part of it. 

HumAngle reached out to Sarkin Abzin for comment. She did not respond. 

The Hausa messages 

The Niamey summit was not the opening move in this campaign. 

On Christmas Day of 2024, General Tchiani sat before the cameras of Radio-Télévision du Niger and delivered what a casual viewer might have mistaken for a holiday address. Although French had been Niger’s official language, he spoke in Hausa – a lingua franca in both Niger and most of northern Nigeria, spoken by millions across West Africa. 

His choice of language was deliberate. The message was not addressed to Niamey alone. It was addressed to Kano and other Hausa-speaking states, particularly in Northern Nigeria, where there is an already visible pro-Russian and anti-West sentiment, as reflected in 2024 when Russian flags were raised during a nationwide protest against insecurity and economic hardship.

The claims Tchiani made were engineered to sound verified. He alleged that France had paid Nigerian authorities to establish a military base in Borno State with the sole aim of destabilising Niger and its Sahel Alliance partners. He also accused France of supplying Boko Haram fighters in the Lake Chad basin with anti-aircraft weapons. He claimed that France and ISWAP had struck an agreement to establish a Lakurawa training camp in the Gaba forest near Sokoto, and that Nigerian leaders were aware. He named Nigerian security officials by name. He cited dates and operational specifics to express the grammar of verified intelligence, though deployed in the service of disinformation.

The hook embedded in the allegations was not entirely invented, which is precisely what made it effective. Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters had classified Lakurawa as a terrorist organisation with jihadist affiliations just weeks earlier, in November 2024. HumAngle’s own investigations had revealed the group had operated in the northwest for around six years, with local security authorities having previously and dangerously dismissed it as a harmless faction of herders from across the border. The name was already known. The fear was already settled. Tchiani simply attached a culprit to both.

In Sokoto and Zamafara, where communities had been facing terrorist violence for years, the allegation did not sound outlandish.

“People said, ‘We always knew France was behind this,’” a civil society worker in Kano who monitors social media, Muhammad Hamza, told HumAngle. “Tchiani just confirmed what they already believed.”

When BBC Hausa published testimonies refuting Tchiani’s claims, the reaction was contemptuous. “We know you won’t agree because you’re all on the same side,” one commenter wrote. “But we believe what he said. We have seen the signs.”

A survey conducted by HumAngle in Kano State found that 50 per cent of the respondents believed Tchiani’s claims, 30 per cent were undecided, and only 20 per cent rejected them outright. Many pointed to President Tinubu’s perceived closeness to France as a reason for suspicion. 

One respondent, Abubakar Saidu, explained his reasoning, “President Tinubu has been close to France since he assumed power, and we all know that France can create terrorists to attack Niger due to their diplomatic fallout.”

Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria’s National Security Advisor, had attempted to refute the claim, but it was unsuccessful. According to him, “Nigeria has never given its land to any foreign troops—not even Britain. When the [United States] requested a military base, we denied them, but Niger gave them.”

In a country with an audience that receives official rebuttals as confirmation of the original charge, its psyche could easily be captured. Nigerians didn’t believe Ribadu. 

“This is the new reality of information warfare. It is no longer just about truth versus falsehood. It is about who controls the language in which truth is told. It is about who defines the enemy—and, ultimately, who is believed,” Kano-based security analyst Balarabe Ismail told HumAngle in April 2025.

Tchiani returned to the theme in June 2025, this time in a three-hour televised address delivered in Hausa, Zarma, and French, in which he again accused Nigeria of conspiring with France and the United States to sponsor terrorism, alleging a covert meeting in Abuja in December 2024 attended by CIA agents and Nigerian security officials who discussed arming groups targeting Niger. 

The headquarters of disinformation 

Analysts had already identified increased activity from disinformation networks affiliated with Russia in Niger following the coup in Niger. 

According to a report by Al Jazeera, since the July 2023 coup, Niger had become the latest hotbed of disinformation in the Sahel, with social media inundated by false rumours, misleading videos, and manipulated audio clips. The template, according to the report, was borrowed from Mali and Burkina Faso, where Wagner-linked networks had deployed online assets, locally cultivated contacts, and Russian state media to produce a sustained information environment that preceded, accelerated, and then legitimised military takeovers. In Niger, the same playbook ran faster because the infrastructure was already warm.

Following the death of Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023, these operations were absorbed into two successor structures: the Russian Africa Corps, which provides military presence on the ground, and the Africa Initiative news agency, connected to Russian intelligence services and overseen from Moscow. Africa Initiative is an upgrade and institutional legitimacy that Wagner never possessed. With press credentials, cultural programming, and regional language capacity, it successfully dressed influence as media development.

The three Alliance of Sahel States junta leaders — in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso — have converged around a shared political project. They launched a joint television channel to promote a unified narrative across their territories, a regional media infrastructure whose audience mandate extends explicitly beyond their borders — into the Hausa-speaking communities of northern Nigeria, who share language, faith, and enough legitimate frustration to make the narratives land without the need for fabrication in every detail. 

Sarkin Abzin’s journalist recruitment initiative sits within this structure. The goal may not have been to turn Nigerian journalists into salaried agents but to create a class of northern Nigerian media voices who feel a degree of solidarity with the junta’s framing. 

A security analyst who works on influence operations in West Africa and spoke to HumAngle on condition of anonymity offered some insight. “What Niger and Russia are doing is not complicated,” he said. “They are creating the conditions under which Nigerian citizens begin to see their own government as the enemy.”

The operation has not yet achieved its full objective. Bashir Muhammad’s refusal was one of the resistance points among others. Some journalists who attended the Niamey summit have since spoken, cautiously, about the gap between what they were promised and what they found. The WhatsApp group formed after the summit, according to Musa Abba, the journalist who attended, had almost collapsed. 

“They promised to continue communicating via WhatsApp and to organise more summits in other countries, but more than a year later they said nothing and group members didn’t say anything either,” he said. Even Sarkin Abzin’s Facebook page is no longer active.  

This article was produced by HumAngle with support from the African Academy for Open Source Investigations (AAOSI) and the African Digital Democracy Observatory (ADDO) as part of an initiative by Code for Africa (CfA). Visit https://disinfo.africa/ for more information.

NEW YORK — Kamala Harris “wrote off rural America” during the 2024 presidential campaign and failed to attack Donald Trump with sufficient “negative firepower,” according to a long-awaited post-election autopsy released on Thursday by the Democratic National Committee.

The committee’s chair, Ken Martin, shared the 192-page report only after facing intense internal pressure from frustrated Democratic operatives concerned with his leadership. Martin had originally promised to release the autopsy, only to keep it under wraps for months because he was concerned it would be a distraction ahead of the midterms as Democrats mobilize to take back control of Congress.

On Tuesday, Martin apologized for his handling of the situation and conceded that the report was withheld because it “was not ready for primetime.”

Although the autopsy criticizes Democrats’ focus on “identity politics,” it sidesteps some of the most controversial elements of the 2024 campaign. The report does not address former President Joe Biden’s decision to seek reelection, the rushed selection of Harris to replace him on the ticket or the party’s acrimonious divide over the war in Gaza.

“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards,” Martin wrote in an essay on Substack on Thursday. “I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it. But transparency is paramount.”

A spokesperson for Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The initial reaction from Democratic operatives was a mix of bafflement and anger over Martin’s handling of the situation.

“Why not say this in 2024, or bring in more people to finish it, instead of turning this into the dumbest media cycle for 7-8 months?” Democratic strategist Steve Schale wrote on social media.

Report says Democrats don’t ‘listen to all voters’

The postelection report, which was authored by Democratic consultant Paul Rivera, calls for “a renewed focus on the voters of Middle America and the South, who have come to believe they are not included in the Democratic vision of a stronger and more dynamic America for everyone.”

“Millions of Americans are suffering from poor access to healthcare, manufacturing and job losses, and a failing infrastructure, yet continue to be persuaded to vote against their best interests because they do not see themselves reflected in the America of the Democratic Party,” the report says.

The autopsy points to a reduction in support and training for Democratic state parties, voter registration shifts and “a persistent inability or unwillingness to listen to all voters.”

Thursday’s release comes as Martin confronts a crisis of confidence among party officials who are increasingly concerned about the health of their political machine barely a year into his term. Some Democratic operatives have had informal discussions about recruiting a new chair, even though most believe that Martin’s job wasn’t in serious jeopardy ahead of the midterm elections.

Were Democrats too nice?

The report found that Harris and her allies failed to focus enough on Trump’s negatives, especially his felony convictions. This was part of a broader criticism that Democrats’ messaging is too focused on reason and winning arguments, “even in cycles when the electorate is defined by rage.”

“There was a decision in the 2024 Democratic leadership not to engage in negative advertising at the scale required,” the report states. “The Trump campaign and supportive Super PACs went full throttle against Vice President Harris, but there was not sufficient or similar negative firepower directed at Trump by Democrats.”

The report continues: “It was essential to prosecute a more effective case as to why Trump should have been disqualified from ever again taking office. The grounds were there, but the messaging did not make the case.”

Trump’s attack on Harris’ transgender policies were cited as a key contrast.

Specifically, the report suggested the Democratic nominee was “boxed” in by the Trump campaign’s “very effective” ad that highlighted Harris’ previous statement of support for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries for prison inmates.

Democratic pollsters believed that “if the Vice President would not change her position – and she did not – then there was nothing which would have worked as a response,” the report said.

‘The math doesn’t work’

The report criticized Harris’ outreach to key segments of America while condemning the party’s focus on “identity politics.”

“Harris wrote off rural America, assuming urban/suburban margins would compensate. The math doesn’t work,” the report says. “You can’t lose rural areas by overwhelming margins and make it up elsewhere when rural voters are a significant share of the electorate. If Democrats are to reclaim leadership in the Heartland or the South, candidates must perform well in rural turf. Show up, listen, and then do it again.”

The report also references Democrats’ underperformance with male voters of color.

“Male voters require direct engagement. The gender gap can be narrowed. Deploy male messengers, address economic concerns, and don’t assume identity politics will hold male voters of color,” it says.

Peoples writes for the Associated Press.

With domestic football in Iran suspended because of the ongoing conflict, Nazon is following an individual training programme to prepare for the World Cup.

The Haiti squad have become heroes for leading the nation back to football’s grandest stage, where they will make just their second appearance at the finals.

Nazon acknowledges that the players are now “part of the country’s history” but insists they will play without “extra pressure”, starting with their opener against Scotland.

“We are ambassadors of our country and we know we have a responsibility,” he says. “We know the young people also see us as examples.

“But we don’t have to put extra pressure on ourselves and, when we play for our country, it’s more a mission and we do it with passion and with love.”

On loan at St Mirren from Belgian club Sint-Truiden for the second half of the 2018-19 season, Nazon “had a story” in Scotland. It was short-lived, though.

The forward played 12 games, scoring twice, but said he was “not ready for this kind of aggression and fight” in Scottish football, while the weather also played a part.

“I remember one game we had sun, snow and rain,” he recalls. “After this, I was like, OK, I’m done.”

Weather is unlikely to be an issue for Nazon this summer in North America. The striker, a friend of Scotland defender Dominic Hyam – with whom he played at Coventry – did, however, voice concerns about inflated ticket prices for the upcoming World Cup matches.

“There is only one thing that starts to go in my brain – it’s the ticket prices,” he says. “Hopefully this is not going to affect the crowd and people coming to the stadium, because we want this atmosphere.

“We want this energy around us. I’m looking forward to seeing Scottish people and Haitian people in the stadiums. This is going to be important.”