Government

WASHINGTON — Former Trump administration national security advisor John Bolton has agreed to plead guilty to a single count of retaining classified information under a deal with the Justice Department that could allow him to avoid prison time, a person familiar with the matter said Thursday.

The deal would resolve a criminal case filed in October that charged Bolton with 18 counts of either retaining or disseminating classified information, including diary-like notes from his time in government that officials say he shared with his family members as he was preparing a memoir about his time in office.

Under the agreement, Bolton would also face a $2.25-million fine, said the person, who insisted on anonymity to discuss a deal that had not been made public. Any prison sentence would be capped at five years, but the agreement allows for him to avoid time behind bars, though the punishment will ultimately be up to a judge.

The case against Bolton, filed weeks after prosecutors secured indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, unfolded against the backdrop of concerns that the Justice Department was using its law enforcement powers to pursue perceived adversaries of President Trump. The investigation burst into public view last August when FBI agents served search warrants at his Maryland home and Washington office, but it had been well underway by the time Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.

Bolton is a longtime fixture in Republican foreign policy circles who became known for his hawkish views on U.S. power. He served for more than a year in Trump’s first administration before being fired in 2019 and publishing a critical book that portrayed the Republican president as deeply misinformed, an unflattering portrait of his leadership and decision-making.

Trump’s administration fought unsuccessfully to block the publication of “The Room Where it Happened” on the grounds that the book risked disclosing classified information. The plea deal that Bolton will enter covers the notes he shared with relatives as opposed to information published in the tell-all book.

A rearraignment, which typically signals a plea agreement, is scheduled for June 26 in federal court in Greenbelt, Md.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

The indictment’s 18 counts carried a threat of a substantial prison sentence in the event of conviction.

Court documents alleged that he shared with two family members “diary-like” entries with information classified as high as top secret that he had learned from meetings with other U.S. government officials, from intelligence briefings or talks with foreign leaders. After sending one document, Bolton wrote in a message to his relatives, “None of which we talk about!!!” In response, one of his relatives wrote, “Shhhhh,” prosecutors said.

The indictment said that among the material shared was information about foreign adversaries that in some cases revealed details about sources and methods used by the U.S. government to collect intelligence. One document related to a foreign adversary’s plans for a missile launch, while another detailed U.S. government plans for covert action and included intelligence blaming an adversary for an attack, court papers say.

In a statement released after his indictment, Bolton described the charges as part of an “intensive effort” by Trump to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he alone determines what is said about his conduct.”

Bolton also served in the Department of Justice during President Reagan’s administration and was a State Department point person on arms control during George W. Bush’s presidency.

Bolton was nominated by Bush to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but the strong supporter of the Iraq war was unable to win Senate confirmation. He resigned after serving 17 months through a recess appointment that allowed him to hold the job on a temporary basis without Senate approval.

In 2018, Bolton was appointed to serve as Trump’s third national security advisor. His brief tenure was characterized by disputes with the president over North Korea, Iran and Ukraine.

Those rifts ultimately led to Bolton’s departure, with Trump announcing on social media in September 2019 that he had accepted Bolton’s resignation.

Bolton subsequently criticized Trump’s approach to foreign policy and government in his book, alleging that Trump directly tied providing military aid to Ukraine to that country’s willingness to conduct investigations into Joe Biden, who was soon to be Trump’s Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential election, and members of the Biden family.

Trump responded by slamming Bolton as a “washed-up guy” and a “crazy” warmonger who would have led the country into “World War Six.”

Tucker writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

A congressional panel in the United States has rejected an effort to revoke a provision from the defence budget that would further integrate the US and Israeli militaries.

An amendment to sink the pro-Israel measure, introduced by Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, failed in a voice call on Thursday in the House Armed Services Committee.

That defeat paves the way for the proposal to advance to the floor of the House of Representatives.

Khanna had argued that the provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), formally called Section 224, rewards Benjamin Netanyahu at a time when the Israeli prime minister is trying to dictate US policy in the Middle East.

The progressive Democrat cited recent reports that President Donald Trump is angry at Netanyahu over Israel’s escalation in Lebanon.

“Everyone in America — whether you’re a Republican, an independent or a Democrat — says that we need to tell Netanyahu that America calls the shots, not the prime minister of any other country,” Khanna said.

“They want less cooperation and blank checks to Israel, not more. Only the United States Congress would dream up at this moment, ‘Let’s actually do more for Israel.’”

The vote on the amendment was taken by calling on committee members to say aloud either “yes” and “no”, and the “nays” clearly were more numerous. It was not recorded as a roll-call vote, which would require each member’s preference to be logged.

Section 224 would require the Pentagon chief “to designate an executive agent responsible for synchronising cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel”.

That official would be in charge of overseeing several joint initiatives, “including bilateral defence technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation”, the NDAA reads.

Netanyahu’s endorsement

Critics have raised concern that Section 224 may make US military aid to Israel more opaque, concealing the assistance as cooperation rather than a separate expense.

The measure also risks tethering the US military to its Israeli counterpart technologically at a time when the American public is rapidly turning against Israel, according to recent public opinion polls.

“As political pressure builds to reduce US military assistance to Israel, Section 224 provides the framework for continuing — and expanding — US-Israel military ties by entrenching Israeli technology within the US defense supply chain in a way that would shield it from the annual appropriations process,” the nonprofit lobbying group A New Policy said in a brief last week.

“The use of must-pass legislation as the NDAA as a mechanism of integration speaks to the plummeting popularity of continuing unconditional support to Israel.”

The measure comes as Netanyahu pushes to transform US aid to Israel from direct assistance to military “cooperation”.

The Israeli prime minister wrote a letter to Republican Congressman Marlin Stutzman endorsing a bill facilitating that transition.

In the letter, Netanyahu said, “The time has now arrived for us to move from aid recipient to partner.”

He added he supported Stutzman’s plan for a “new framework of joint defense cooperation, codevelopment, coproduction and mutual investment in areas including advanced missile defense, artificial intelligence … and next generation military platforms”.

Referencing the letter on Thursday, Khanna argued that Section 224 “directly” follows Netanyahu’s language.

“I am for Team America. I am for the interests of this country, and I believe that when Donald Trump ran, he ran ‘America First’,” the Democrat said.

“That includes American interests against any foreign country. We should have American sovereignty and make it clear that we strike 224. If we want to give aid to Israel, if we want to sell them weapons, that should be a vote for the entire Congress.”

But both Democrats and Republicans pushed back against his argument, saying that the provision aims to streamline existing cooperative programmes that benefit the US.

Key Democrat backs Section 224

Congressman Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the panel, said he was “very sympathetic” to Khanna’s frustration with Netanyahu.

“Mr Netanyahu insisted on this war with Iran that has strengthened Iran and weakened our position. I do not like his leadership of Israel or where he is going,” Smith said.

But he added that it is in the US’s interests to have deep military ties with Israel, a country accused by leading rights groups and United Nations investigators of committing genocide in Gaza.

“The reason that we have these partnerships with Israel, where we may not have as many developed partnerships with other NATO countries, is because Israel has actually been having to fight,” Smith said.

“They have faced drone attacks and missile attacks. They have had to develop new technologies, technologies that we’ve benefitted from.”

Rights advocates often decry the promotion of Israel’s weapons as “battle-tested” — because they have been tested on the Palestinian and Lebanese communities that they devastated, killing tens of thousands of people along the way.

Earlier on Thursday, Palestinian rights advocates warned against approving Section 224 during a news conference on Capitol Hill.

“It is unfathomable that this is the American response to a country that has, over the past two and a half years, carried out a genocide against Palestinians and started wars in both Iran and Lebanon,” said Margaret DeReus, the executive director at the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU).

Republican Congressman Thomas Massie has promised to introduce an amendment to revoke Section 224 when the NDAA goes to a full House vote.

While it might be true that the cases are progressing, families of the missing argue they are moving at a snail’s pace.

Since early December, Fault Lines has spent time with families who are pushing for accountability and pleading with the government to learn what happened to their loved ones.

In some cases, they have spent years without receiving any direct response.

“It gets harder every time my nephew asks when his father will come home and I don’t have any answers,” said Rosario Villon, whose brother, Jonathan Villon, has been missing for almost a year and a half.

The 31-year-old father of three was last seen on December 9, 2024, when he left to pick up groceries in his hometown of Guayaquil.

Addressing a vigil for Jonathan last December, Rosario explained the toll his disappearance has taken on her family.

“Seeing my mother cry for her son, not knowing what to do next to bring him home — it isn’t easy,” she said.

Fault Lines has reviewed footage of the day Jonathan was detained. Security cameras show soldiers patrolling Jonathan’s neighbourhood, Nueva Prosperina.

A neighbour’s mobile phone video also captures the moments after Jonathan was forced into the truck’s bed, under a wooden bench. The truck then drives off, and he has not been seen since.

The family recorded the licence plate numbers of the municipal vehicle the soldiers were using, but the military has refused to respond to requests about Jonathan’s case.

“We have the evidence, we have videos, we have the licence plates of the truck, and they won’t give us a concrete and exact answer. What happened to my husband?” asked Jonathan’s partner, Yadira Bohorquez.

Lawyers representing the family say the military simply declared that it had no operations in that area on that date, despite the video evidence.

“The case of Jonathan Villon is completely paralysed by the refusal of the Ministry of Defence to cooperate in handing over information that the Prosecutor’s Office has already requested,” said Fernando Bastias, a lawyer with CDH Guayaquil, a human rights nonprofit representing the family.

HAVANA — Spanish hotel chain Meliá has joined a growing list of companies with a long-standing presence in Cuba that are withdrawing or limiting their operations on the island after the U.S. announced new sanctions while upholding an oil embargo.

Meliá will cease operations at 15 of the 34 hotels it manages on the island, according to state website Cubadebate, dealing a blow to Cuba’s vital tourism sector, which has plummeted since its 2018 peak.

The report on Wednesday stated that Meliá’s decision was based on “a sense of corporate responsibility and external factors that have significantly affected the operation, legality and security of these establishments.”

The decision was announced May 26, just weeks after President Trump signed an executive order expanding sanctions against the island. Most of the sanctions targeted Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A., a business conglomerate operated by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, with the U.S. asserting it was a threat to its national security.

The executive order freezes the assets of foreign companies, seizes their accounts in the United States and prohibits travel by their shareholders, investors and employees— virtually eliminating their activity in the U.S. financial system.

GAESA, a Cuban conglomerate created in the 1990s, owns a wide range of businesses, from car rentals and retail stores to transportation companies. It is Meliá’s partner in hotel management through one of its subsidiaries, Gaviota.

Meliá deals new blow to Cuba’s crumbling tourism sector

Meliá is one of Cuba’s most important partners in its vital tourism sector. Until its partial withdrawal, it operated some 14,000 rooms.

Spanish and Canadian firms are the biggest investors in Cuba’s hotel sector, noted Lee Schlenker, a research associate at the Quincy Institute’s Global South program, a Washington think tank.

“With the lack of international tourism, the fuel shortages, and just the broader decline since COVID…I’m sure that these companies will be rethinking their operations in Cuba with major implications for the people of Cuba, not just GAESA,” he said. “There are thousands of Cubans who work in these hotels.”

Several of the hotels that Meliá abandoned in idyllic destinations like the resorts of Varadero, Cayo Santa María and Jardines del Rey “were already closed and inactive due to energy problems and the drop in demand in Cuba,” according to Cubadebate.

Cuba’s government has blamed the U.S. energy blockade for prolonged blackouts, water shortages, supply problems, deficiencies in the healthcare system and disruptions in all aspects of daily life.

Those who work in Cuba’s crumbling tourism sector lamented Meliá’s announcement.

“It’s going to affect us, our families, and everyone involved in tourism. Our pay and income depend on this,” said Erich López, a driver of a green 1950s Dodge who has been driving for two decades to support his family.

For Carlos Luis Carbonel, a 62-year-old parking attendant who works in front of the giant Meliá Cohiba hotel in Havana, the situation “is going to be a blow.”

“This is terrible for everyone: for tour guides, for parking attendants, for hotel workers, for everyone,” he said.

Other major hotel chains including Canadian-owned Royalton and Spain’s Iberostar have limited or suspended operations in Cuba in the past week.

Tourism in Cuba, which reached a peak of 4.3 million visitors in 2019, saw a significant drop in the number of tourists arriving in the first quarter of this year, 48% lower than in the same period in 2025.

Only 298,000 tourists arrived in Cuba in January, February and March, compared to 573,300 international visitors during the same period last year, according to government data.

Cuba struggles to breathe

On Wednesday, the enormous and iconic sign of the Royalton Paseo del Prado hotel at the entrance of Old Havana was removed, as confirmed by The Associated Press during a visit. Meanwhile, the 500-room Iberostar Selection — also known as Tower K — the most modern and luxurious of the hotels slated to open in 2025, standing over 490 feet tall, has remained closed for days.

Airlines including World2Fly, Air France and Iberia have canceled flights to and from Cuba.

Also on Wednesday, Cuba’s Central Bank announced that Visa and MasterCard operations on the island would be suspended following the termination of relationships between foreign entities and FINCIMEX S.A., a Cuba-based agency affiliated with GAESA.

Last month, Canadian miner Sherritt International Corp. signed a non-binding agreement with Gillon Capital LLC, a family office linked to a former Trump adviser, to sell its stake in a mining business in Cuba.

In late January, Trump threatened tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba, as his administration pressures for a change in its political system and government. The move has deepened a crisis caused by seven decades of U.S. sanctions.

While U.S. and Cuban officials held talks earlier this year, tensions have risen. In late May, former President Raúl Castro was charged in a U.S. indictment for his alleged role in the downing of two civilian aircraft operated by Miami-based exiles in 1996 in Cuban waters.

Rodríguez writes for the Associated Press.

This is the moment the Republican-led US House of Representatives passed a resolution to reign in President Donald Trump’s ability to keep attacking Iran, unless Congress declares war or approves the use of military force. But it’s unlikely to become law as Trump can veto it even if it passes the Senate.

Kuwait’s defence ministry has labelled an attack on the country’s international airport as ‘heinous Iranian aggression’. One person was killed and dozens were injured after Iranian drones struck a terminal on Wednesday, causing ‘significant material damage’.

United States President Donald Trump has appointed businessman and federal housing regulator Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence (DNI).

Trump made Tuesday’s surprise announcement on social media that Pulte would replace Tulsi Gabbard, the former Hawaii congresswoman who has served as the director of national intelligence until recently.

Trump said Pulte will keep his other positions in addition to taking over from Gabbard, who resigned last month after revealing her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

Who is Bill Pulte?

Pulte, 38, a graduate of Northwestern University, has been director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) since March 2025.

He is heir to his family’s residential development firm – one of the US’s largest homebuilders, PulteGroup, which was founded by his grandfather in the 1950s. He previously founded a private equity firm, Pulte Capital, and is involved in large-scale philanthropic activity.

Pulte is seen as a loyal Trump supporter and has encouraged prosecutions of the president’s perceived political enemies, accusing New York Attorney General Letitia James and California’s US Senator Adam Schiff, both Democrats, and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, of mortgage fraud.

A federal grand jury refused to indict James in a Justice Department prosecution in December 2025 after Pulte wrote a criminal referral to the Justice Department, accusing her of listing a home she owned in Virginia as her primary residence to secure more favourable loan terms. Officials have also not brought charges against Schiff, who denies the allegations against him.

Trump attempted to fire Cook – an unprecedented move by a president against a US central bank official – over Pulte’s unsubstantiated accusations, but courts allowed her to remain in the role. She, too, denied the allegations. The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the coming weeks in her case.

In response to Pulte’s actions, Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer called the newly appointed director of national intelligence a “partisan thug” on Tuesday.

“A guy who can file such baseless, political and outrageous charges against political office holders he doesn’t like can’t be entrusted to protect our national security,” Schumer said.

Pulte’s views on whether the 2020 election was rigged against Trump – a claim many of his appointees have backed despite a lack of any evidence – are not immediately clear. He is understood to have deleted 25,000 social media posts before Trump nominated him to serve as FHFA head in January 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, said during his vetting process for the position.

Trump said Pulte will continue as FHFA director and chair of federally supported mortgage banks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“William has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets, and over 10 Trillion Dollars at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, a substantial increase from where it was just 12 months ago,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Pulte, who has no experience in intelligence operations, will oversee 18 intelligence departments including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), which monitors foreign communications and helps defend the US against cyberattacks.

Could Pulte become the permanent intelligence chief?

Pulte can serve in the job for up to 210 days without being confirmed by the Senate. That timeframe would allow him to stay in the post through the November midterm elections, in which Trump’s fellow Republicans are seeking to retain control of Congress.

This is significant, as Republican Senator John Thune said Pulte might have trouble winning confirmation in the narrowly divided chamber if Trump decides to nominate him to the post beyond the current temporary appointment.

“If he’s somebody we want in that position permanently, he’s got a lengthy road ahead of him,” Thune was quoted by news agency Semafor as saying.

What have the reactions to Pulte’s appointment been?

Pulte’s appointment has drawn scepticism from lawmakers and intelligence officials.

“We don’t need a weaponised DNI. We need professionals there,” Senate Majority Leader Thune told reporters on Tuesday. “I’m trying to get more information about the current state of their thinking about that position. And, again, if he’s somebody they want in that position permanently, he’s got, as you all know, a lengthy road ahead of him.”

“I don’t see any evidence of qualifications for that job,” Republican Senator John Cornyn told reporters. Cornyn, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, lost a primary election last week to a Trump-backed challenger.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in response to questions about Pulte’s national security credentials: “I have no observations on the matter.”

Republican Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Cornyn of Texas, all of whom are leaving the chamber after this year’s elections, joined the chorus against Pulte.

“Doesn’t seem qualified,” Cassidy said.

“When we looked at his background for the current confirmation, I thought most of his experience was in the building industry,” Tillis said. “I didn’t know he had any national security experience.”

Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia and the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday: “The concern is not only that Mr Pulte lacks the ‘extensive national security experience’ required by statute for the job, which was created after intelligence failures led to the deaths of thousands of Americans on 9/11. It is that he appears to have been selected precisely because the White House believes he will provide the narrative it wants, not the intelligence we need.”

Senator Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said in a written statement on Tuesday that Trump is now “rewarding his lackey – who has no national security experience – with a perch atop our nation’s intelligence community. What could go wrong?”

June 2 (UPI) — Two supporters of President Donald Trump who were injured during an assassination attempt during Trump’s 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pa., are suing the federal government for negligence.

James Copenhaver and David Dutch, both of Pennsylvania, attended the rally in July 2024 and were shot by Thomas Crooks, whom authorities say tried to assassinate Trump. Copenhaver was struck twice and received injuries to his abdomen, spine and left arm, his lawsuit says, while Dutch was shot and suffered “severe, serious, permanent and grievous injuries” according to his lawsuit.

Crooks killed one person, attendee Corey Comperatore, in the attack. Trump received a minor wound to his ear. Secret Service members killed Crooks on site.

The two lawsuits say the Secret Service failed to properly secure the rally, leading to their injuries. Copenhaver’s wife, Marianne Copenhaver, is also part of his lawsuit. The plaintiffs are seeking at least $150,000 in damages each, Politico reported.

“The events which led to [Dutch’s] grievous and permanent injuries were shocking and preventable, should not have happened, and the failures, as highlighted herein, exposed President Trump and all Butler Rally attendees … to grave, mortal danger,” Dutch’s lawsuit says. It says the security failures at the rally were “rampant.”

A House of Representatives task force and a Senate committee on homeland security both found that the Secret Service had “significant failures” in security at the event, including failures to act on tips about the shooter before the rally. The Secret Service suspended six agents for their actions.

In January 2024, the publication Axios reported that the United States president at the time, Joe Biden, was “running out of patience” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza had been raging for months by that point, and Biden was facing public backlash over US support for the conflict.

The assault would continue for the rest of Biden’s term and bleed into the first 10 months of Donald Trump‘s second presidency.

Since then, media outlets have continued to publish anonymous accounts of rifts and “frustrating” calls between Trump and the Israeli prime minister. But US support for its Middle East ally has never wavered.

Another anonymously sourced report about a furious, expletive-laden call between US and Israeli leaders came out this week, and it spread rapidly across international media.

Axios reported on Monday that Trump called Netanyahu “f***ing crazy” and berated him over Israel’s escalation in Lebanon.

Around the same time, an Israeli attack killed six people, including two children, in the southern Lebanese town of al-Marwaniyah.

Experts say that despite leaks of feuds and harsh words between US leaders and Netanyahu, policies are ultimately what matters, and they have changed very little.

Ryan Costello, the policy director at the National Iranian American Council Action (NIAC), said political observers have grown to “mock” reports of closed-door anger from US presidents against Netanyahu.

“What’s really important is what actually happens in practice,” Costello told Al Jazeera.

Two administrations, same reports

Though there are reports of Trump giving Netanyahu a dressing-down, Isabelle Hayslip, an advocacy manager at the US-based rights group DAWN, said that US policy remains aligned with Israeli interests.

“Single-source reporting of Trump as a strongman who picks up the phone and yells at Netanyahu for undermining US policy is contradicted by the actual policy outcomes where Netanyahu gets exactly what he wants,” Hayslip told Al Jazeera.

“Trump has no final say over Israeli actions. Like his predecessors, the president has proved completely unable to prioritise American interests, instead catering to Israel’s expansionist whims.”

The latest report comes as Trump faces increasing pressure from his Democratic rivals and segments of his base over his handling of the war on Iran, which he launched jointly with Netanyahu on February 28.

The conflict, which saw Iran close the Strait of Hormuz, has sent gasoline prices soaring in the US and fuelled inflation.

Critics have accused Trump of allowing Israel to drag the US into a war that does not advance Washington’s priorities.

With negotiations to end the war stagnating, Israel’s escalation in Lebanon and its threat to bomb Beirut risks derailing the fragile truce that came into effect in April.

Iranian officials have suggested that they cut off contact with the US over the Israeli attacks in Lebanon.

Before the Axios report, Trump announced he had spoken to Netanyahu and an unidentified Hezbollah representative, and both sides agreed that “all shooting will stop”.

But Netanyahu was quick to assert that the Israeli military “will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon”, where it is deepening its invasion and turning entire towns into rubble.

Advocates say Israeli atrocities in Lebanon and across the region could not have happened without US backing.

Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, the US has provided Israel with nearly $25bn in military aid, helped fend off retaliatory Iranian attacks against the country and vetoed several ceasefire resolutions at the United Nations Security Council.

Nonetheless, anonymous accounts that the US president is angry at Netanyahu have become a regular feature in the media.

Such reports are attributed to US officials, but it is unclear how leaks with a similar message on the same topic have continued across two administrations from different political parties.

‘Moderating the anger’

Publicly, aides of both Biden and Trump have largely refrained from criticising Israel.

Trump has regularly praised the Israeli prime minister, arguing on more than one occasion that Israel would have ceased to exist without Netanyahu’s leadership.

In December, the US president also called the Israeli prime minister a “hero” during a meeting in Florida.

“We’re with you, and we’ll continue to be with you,” Trump told Netanyahu.

Two weeks earlier, Axios reported that the White House had “scolded” Netanyahu over Israel’s ceasefire violations in Gaza.

“The White House message to Netanyahu was: ‘If you want to ruin your reputation and show that you don’t abide by agreements, be our guest, but we won’t allow you to ruin President Trump’s reputation after he brokered the deal in Gaza,” the publication quoted a US official as saying.

Few people know the exact content of high-level calls at the White House. Sometimes, top officials, including members of the National Security Council, sit in on conversations between the president and world leaders after briefings.

Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, a research nonprofit, said the leak about the tense call between Trump and Netanyahu may be aimed at making Trump look tough on Israel to quell outrage over the war.

“It could be sort of a way of moderating the anger or the blame at the US for continuing this unpopular, illegal, unnecessary war,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera.

She added that the message it sends is, “Look, we’re very angry at Israel. We yell at them. We call them names.”

But Mortazavi stressed that policy is more important than rhetoric: “Does that change the facts on the ground?”

Information war

For his part, Costello argued that the leak was likely directed at Iran.

“I see this one primarily as a signal to the Iranians that Trump is serious, and he wants to insulate what’s happening in Lebanon and Israel’s attacks from the Iran negotiations,” Costello said.

“It remains to be seen the extent to which that excoriation has actually led to a change in Israel’s policies, and I think there is a strong incentive for continued defiance from Netanyahu.”

Axios, meanwhile, has defended its coverage.

“We stand by our reporting, which by the way noted ‘Trump and Netanyahu have had several tense calls in the past but have still coordinated closely on Iran and other issues,’” Jake Wilkins, a spokesperson for the publication, told Al Jazeera in an email.

Mortazavi warned that all sides of the war on Iran are trying to influence public perceptions of the conflict.

She pointed to recent reports that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had resigned, a rumour that was promptly denied by his office.

“This is a very hybrid war. It’s a war on the battlefield. It’s an intelligence war. It’s a war of narratives,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera. “And then there’s also an information war, which includes disinformation, half-truths and strategic leaks.”

NEW ORLEANS — A sharply divided Louisiana Supreme Court on Monday signed off on abolishing an elected office won by a New Orleans exoneree who had spent nearly 30 years in prison for murder before his conviction was vacated.

The 4-3 decision leaves Calvin Duncan with little path forward to try assuming the role of Orleans Parish clerk of criminal court, a job he won in a landmark election last year before Republican lawmakers raced to eliminate the office this spring.

In a blistering dissent, the court’s Democratic justices said the ruling opened the door to allowing Louisiana lawmakers to subvert the will of voters. The court’s conservative majority disagreed, writing that “this change was entirely within the authority of the Legislature.”

The court also rejected the New Orleans City Council’s attempt to hold a special election, which would have given Duncan the option to run again.

“At a time when our voting rights are under unprecedented attack, this decision clarifies that if we want to live in a democracy, we have to fight for it with every tool our system of government provides,” Duncan said in a statement.

Signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, the bill eliminating the New Orleans clerk’s office was championed by GOP lawmakers as a necessary step toward government efficiency. Supporters denied that it had anything to do with Duncan or his past.

Democrats blasted the change as overreach from a largely white, conservative Legislature that they accused of seeking to thwart the will of a predominantly Black city. Those tensions surfaced again last month when Landry signed a new congressional map that eliminated one of the state’s two majority-Black House districts.

Duncan was convicted of a 1981 murder and was released from prison in 2011. In 2021, an Orleans Parish district judge vacated Duncan’s sentence, finding he had been unjustly convicted and the charges against him were dropped. Duncan is listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.

Brook writes for the Associated Press.

Less than two hours after polling stations closed on Sunday, it was clear that Colombia’s presidential race would be settled in a run-off between two finalists: hard-right political outsider Abelardo de la Espriella and leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda.

Though the overall result surprised few, de la Espriella’s strong showing upended pollsters’ predictions.

Cepeda, President Gustavo Petro’s chosen successor, had been expected to win the most votes, based on public opinion surveys.

But instead, de la Espriella came in first place, winning 43.74 percent of the vote. Cepeda trailed with 40.90 percent.

Supporters of de la Espriella, a criminal defence lawyer, held rapturous celebrations in the coastal city of Barranquilla, where the candidate has an office.

“Colombia won, and with more than 10 million votes, democracy won,” said Elsa Suarez, a de la Espriella voter living in Bogota.

The far-right candidate has modelled himself after politicians like Donald Trump in the United States and Javier Milei in Argentina, flamboyant media personalities who won the presidency despite having little to no political experience.

Like them, de la Espriella has pledged a return to “law and order”, as well as a pared-back national government and policies to support traditional family values.

Notably, he promises to use an “iron fist” to stamp out crime and build megaprisons to jail criminals, mimicking the policies of Salvadoran strongman Nayib Bukele.

Analysts say de la Espriella’s populist messaging resonated with voters in Colombia’s interior, where urban crime is a growing concern.

Electoral maps show de la Espriella besting Cepeda in 16 of the country’s 32 departments, primarily in the heart of Colombia and along the border with Venezuela.

“In more central areas and closer to the capitals, people prioritise security,” explained Laura Bonilla, the deputy director at the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (PARES), a Bogota-based research nonprofit.

By contrast, de la Espriella’s security messaging failed to sway voters along the coast and in border areas afflicted by rebel violence.

Bonilla argues that people in these regions instead place greater value on the socioeconomic issues that Cepeda represents, as the continuity candidate for Petro’s Historic Pact party.

“Over the past four years, they have received constant attention from the government,” said Bonilla, citing state development projects under the Petro administration.

A blow to the conservative establishment

De la Espriella’s success also highlights growing anti-establishment sentiment in Colombia, according to experts.

The lawyer, who has never run for public office before, comfortably beat his main rival on the right, Senator Paloma Valencia, who was backed by former President Alvaro Uribe, the figurehead of Colombian conservatism.

Initially, Sunday’s election was predicted to be a close race between Valencia and de la Espriella, both of whom lagged behind Cepeda in the polls.

But as Sunday’s ballots were tallied, Valencia flopped with less than 7 percent of the vote.

Miguel Silva, a Colombian political consultant, credited some of de la Espriella’s success to his campaign messaging.

De la Espriella, he explained, used his campaign to draw a distinction between the haves and the have-nots, those who have benefitted from the government and those who feel ignored.

“He [succeeded] by portraying himself and the people he represents as ‘Los Nunca’ and by portraying Paloma and her followers as ‘Los Siempre’,” Silva said, using the Spanish words for “The Nevers” and “The Always”.

Pollsters predicted the right would be divided in the first round, paving the way for Cepeda to win the most votes, but de la Espriella captured millions of votes from traditional conservatives, marking a shift in Colombia’s political landscape.

In Bogota, the only province in the country’s interior to vote for Cepeda, the left-wing candidate’s supporters were shocked by Sunday’s results.

“Everyone is a little surprised,” said Juan Camilo Rodriguez, who voted for Cepeda. “These results don’t match the polls.”

Petro himself had hammered his base to flood the polls, warning that the left’s chances of success could be hampered by electoral fraud.

The outgoing president rejected last night’s results, which were based on the “pre-conteo”, or preliminary count, a non-legally binding process.

Instead, Petro called on the public to wait for the official, scrutinised count, which will be released in the coming days.

Cepeda echoed the president’s scepticism in a speech on Sunday night. “Only once the vote-counting committees have fully, clearly, and thoroughly clarified this matter, will we comment on tonight’s results,” he told supporters.

But the candidate appeared to mellow his stance this morning, acknowledging that there was no evidence of irregularities in the vote. He trailed de la Espriella by more than 670,000 votes.

Experts warn that Cepeda is losing precious time by focusing on fraud allegations and should instead concentrate on swaying moderate voters.

“By crying fraud so early, it’s hard to bring more voters to the table,” said Silva.

A second round of voting, between Cepeda and de la Espriella, is scheduled for June 21.

Up for grabs are more than a million votes for centrist candidate Sergio Fajardo and 1.6 million for Paloma Valencia. While Valencia endorsed de la Espriella, her running mate, moderate politician Juan Daniel Oviedo, did not.

Miguel Jaramillo Lujan, a Colombian political strategist, said the final two candidates must tread carefully in the next three weeks to prevail.

“As the saying goes, whoever makes fewer mistakes will be the winner.”

Far-right outsider Abelardo de la Espriella will face left-wing Senator Ivan Cepeda in the run-off for Colombia’s presidential election next month. Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo explains what this means for Colombians.

Far-right outsider Abelardo de la Espriella will face left-wing Senator Ivan Cepeda in the run-off for Colombia’s presidential election next month.

After polls closed on Sunday, the two candidates quickly surged ahead in the vote tally, extinguishing the hopes of right-wing Senator Paloma Valencia, a former frontrunner.

As of Sunday afternoon, with 99 percent of the votes tallied, de la Espriella took the lead, with 43 percent of the ballots cast in his favour.

Cepeda trailed him by more than 600,000 votes, earning 40 percent support.

Neither candidate breached the 50-percent threshold needed to avoid a head-to-head match-up on June 21. But the results are likely to buoy de la Espriella’s campaign going into the final round.

Cepeda had consistently topped public opinion polls in the final weeks before the vote. A May 24 poll from the National Consulting Centre (CNC) showed him with more than 33 percent support, ahead of de la Espriella’s 30.9 percent.

De la Espriella’s ‘outsider’ campaign

Questions about security were at the forefront of voters’ concerns going into Sunday’s election.

De la Espriella, a businessman and lawyer who has never held elected office, leaned heavily into fears of crime as he launched an outsider campaign, similar to the dark-horse bid of Argentinian President Javier Milei.

By contrast, Cepeda is a well-known quantity in Colombian politics. His father was a senator, too, before he was assassinated in 1994, in what was widely considered to be an act of political violence.

Cepeda himself has served as a senator since 2014. Before that, he served in the Chamber of Deputies, representing the capital, Bogota.

During his political career, he became embroiled in a long-running legal dispute with former right-wing President Alvaro Uribe, whom he accused of complicity with right-wing paramilitaries.

Uribe initially sued Cepeda for defamation, but in a dramatic twist, Colombia’s Supreme Court dismissed the charge and instead investigated Uribe for witness tampering.

While Uribe was initially found guilty and sentenced to 12 years of house arrest, an appeals court ultimately struck down the verdict, citing procedural errors, including insufficient evidence.

Security a top concern

Central to the rift in Colombia’s politics is the country’s six-decade-long internal conflict.

Since 1964, criminal networks, government forces, left-wing rebels and right-wing paramilitaries have all jockeyed against one another for power and territory.

Cepeda has been critical of right-wing efforts to solve the conflict through military might alone.

Instead, he has allied himself with Colombia’s outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing figure ever elected to the country’s highest office.

A former rebel fighter, Petro has championed a policy he calls “Total Peace”, which actively seeks negotiated solutions to the fighting.

While critics have questioned the efficacy of “Total Peace”, pointing to a recent uptick in violence, Cepeda has nevertheless pledged to carry it forward. He represents Petro’s left-wing Historic Pact party in this year’s election.

In an interview this month with CNN, Cepeda acknowledged the policy’s “immense challenges”, saying: “We cannot continue to develop conversations that do not yield clear results.”

But he rejected overly militaristic solutions, as well as the prospect of intervention by the United States. The US-led “war on drugs”, Cepeda said, has “failed spectacularly”.

De la Espriella, meanwhile, has embraced the kind of hardline security platform commonly associated with El Salvador’s leader, Nayib Bukele.

His platform includes a pledge to crack down on crime and build 10 megaprisons in Colombia.

Nicknamed “The Tiger”, he founded the Defenders of the Homeland political party and is known to rally with the slogan, “Stand firm for the nation”.

“The only peace process I believe in is one imposed by the force of arms and the laws of the republic,” de la Espriella told The Associated Press news agency this month.

Like US President Donald Trump, de la Espriella has also threatened to launch a bombing campaign to disrupt drug-trafficking, killing suspects by downing planes and shooting boats.

But such campaigns have been widely denounced as a form of extrajudicial killing, effectively denying suspects the chance of defending themselves in a court of law.

Narrowing odds for Colombia’s left

More than 23.6 million Colombians voted in Sunday’s election, though there was a high number of blank or nullified ballots.

Early estimates, with 99 percent of ballots tallied, indicate that 245,342 voting sheets were null, and another 406,830 were left blank.

The second round is likely to be an uphill battle for Cepeda. Colombia’s right-wing is expected to consolidate behind de la Espriella in the second round.

In Sunday’s vote count, more than 10.3 million ballots were cast for de la Espriella, compared with roughly 9.7 million for Cepeda.

A victory for the right would continue a regional trend in Latin America. Last year alone, left-wing governments in Chile, Honduras and Bolivia were all replaced by right-wing presidential contenders.

De la Espriella signalled his optimism about the second round in a social media post as the results rolled in.

“We are going to defeat tyranny and absolutism,” de la Espriella wrote. “We have advanced to the run-off thanks to the more than 10 million Colombians who answered the roar. In 21 days, we will make history!”

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill has imposed a curfew and deployed state police outside Newark’s Delaney Hall immigration detention centre after nights of clashes between protesters and ICE agents.

Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark in New Jersey, has imposed a curfew on the area surrounding Delaney Hall, the immigration detention centre that has become a flashpoint in the debate over United States President Donald Trump’s mass deportation drive.

The Sunday morning announcement came amid a flare-up in tensions outside the detention centre, which is run by the private contractor GEO Group, as part of a 15-year deal with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“Due to the escalating situation at Delaney Hall and the increasing need for police intervention, immediate action is required to protect public safety,” Baraka wrote in a statement.

“Multiple individuals have already been arrested and found in possession of weapons, underscoring the seriousness of the threat.”

As part of the curfew, movement will be restricted within half a mile (0.8km) of the detention centre between the hours of 9pm and 6am US Eastern time (1:00 to 10:00 GMT).

A nearby road, Doremus Avenue, will also be closed to pedestrians and vehicles that cannot verify their need to be in the area.

Since the reopening of Delaney Hall as an immigration detention facility last year, it has been the site of confrontations between law enforcement and protesters, including Mayor Baraka himself.

The month of May has seen more than a week of daily protests outside Delaney Hall, after lawyers for the detainees at Delaney Hall announced a hunger strike was unfolding inside.

Detainees have denounced the living conditions to human rights groups, reporting expired food, a lack of medical care and abuse at the hands of authorities.

The Trump administration has justified its mass deportation campaign as an effort to rid the US of “the worst of the worst”, framing undocumented immigrants as a criminal threat.

But critics point out that many of those detained have no criminal record, and some who do have only been cited for minor offences.

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data-tracking service from Syracuse University, found that, as of April, roughly 71 percent of those in ICE detention had no criminal conviction.

To show solidarity with the hunger strike, protesters have been gathering outside Delaney Hall, locking arms to form human chains and creating barricades to prevent access.

But that has led to tense confrontations with law enforcement, who have used batons and pepper spray to try to clear roads to the facility.

Governor Mikie Sherrill called for the establishment of designated protest zones, to mitigate the likelihood of conflict between officers and demonstrators.

But clashes have continued. Overnight on Wednesday, six protesters were arrested.

Politicians themselves have encountered tense interactions at Delaney Hall.

A year ago, one protest resulted in trespassing charges against Mayor Baraka and assault charges against US Representative LaMonica McIver, after a disagreement over which officials could enter the facility for an inspection.

While the charges against Baraka were dropped, McIver continues to face legal proceedings. She has denied the charges and called the prosecution politically motivated.

“One year ago, the Trump administration threw baseless charges against me for conducting oversight to protect immigrants at Delaney Hall,” McIver wrote on social media on Saturday.

“Have they tried to silence me? Yes. Have the stakes risen? Yes. Am I backing down from speaking up for you? Never.”

This past week, Governor Sherrill was also denied access to the facility. She has since issued a statement calling for Delaney Hall to be shut down.

At a news conference on Saturday, she blamed “national extremist groups” for arriving from out of state and escalating tensions. She added that the current precautions were designed to protect the safety of peaceful protesters.

“I urge those protesting outside of Delaney Hall to bring the temperature down, so we can focus on the detainees and their families,” Sherrill said.

She suggested that the actions of state and local officials would help head off any expanded ICE operations in New Jersey.

“I will not give ICE a pretext to expand operations at Delaney Hall or across our state. I will not put lives at risk,” she said. “I’m grateful to the vast majority of protesters who have assembled peacefully and raised their voices about Delaney Hall’s conditions.”

Walt Disney Co.’s ABC has filed renewal applications with the Federal Communications Commission “under protest” after an order mandating a years-early review of the network’s eight television station licenses.

The criticism was part of the network’s applications for the FCC review, which were filed ahead of a deadline Thursday. In an objection to the early renewal, Disney’s New York station WABC called the FCC order “unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional” and said it was “legally indefensible.”

“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades,” the station wrote in its filing. “And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The order has no legitimate purpose.”

The licenses for the eight ABC-owned TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031.

The FCC order came shortly after ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about First Lady Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow” days before a gunman tried to breach the White House Correspondents’ Assn. gala last month that President Trump attended.

Trump has frequently threatened to have TV station licenses pulled when he is unhappy with their coverage, but the order is the first time the government has acted on his wishes, sparking anger from free speech advocates. The FCC has said the order is part of an investigation into whether Disney’s diversity and inclusion policies violate federal law and the agency’s rules against “unlawful discrimination.”

In its response, WABC said the “only plausible reason” to issue the order was to “punish the station for speech the government does not like.”

“The ultimate injury here is not to the station or its parent company. It is to the public,” WABC wrote. “When a broadcaster must weigh regulatory retaliation before making editorial decisions, the public loses access to journalism that is free from government influence.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement Thursday that Disney filed its applications to renew its broadcast licenses only after the company was told its previous answers were “disingenuous, deficient and improper.”

“Contrary to Disney’s claim that the FCC called in their broadcast licenses for early renewal for no reason, the record shows something very different,” Carr said. “Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead.”

FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, the panel’s only Democrat who has backed Disney in its fight, cheered the Burbank media and entertainment company’s filing, saying in a post on X that she was “glad to see them expose the FCC’s actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.”

Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.

A provision in a bill before the United States Congress could tie the American and Israeli militaries far more closely together, deepening their cooperation on weapons research, production and technology.

The proposal, titled the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” appears as Section 224 of the House Armed Services Committee’s version of the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual US defence policy bill.

The measure is still at an early stage. The NDAA is passed by Congress each year to set US military policy and authorise defence programmes and spending levels.

If enacted, the provision could mark a major change in one of the world’s closest military relationships, shifting the two countries from a partnership centred largely on American military aid towards one in which their defence industries are more deeply intertwined.

Section 224 would require the US defence secretary to appoint an “executive agent”: a single official to coordinate military cooperation between the US and Israel.

That work would cover joint research and development, the shared production of weapons, and the linking of military systems and data.

“What Congress is trying to do now is find different ways of entrenching the relationship so deep in America’s own defence industrial base that it’s impossible to root it out,” Josh Paul, a former US State Department official and founder of the advocacy group A New Policy, said about the controversial provision.

“A new section of law in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would give Israel unprecedented access to American technology and would force the United States military to integrate Israeli defence technologies into our own critical military supply chain, giving Israel incredible leverage over America’s own defence priorities,” he added in a video posted on social media on Friday.

The two countries already build missile defence systems together, such as the Iron Dome.

The bill would extend their joint work into many more areas of modern warfare, from artificial intelligence (AI) to drones and cyber operations.

The provision comes amid turmoil in the Middle East following the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran earlier this year.

In February, US and Israeli forces attacked Iran together, triggering five weeks of war; Iran struck back at Israel and at US bases in the Gulf before a ceasefire took hold in April.

Israel is also facing genocide allegations in a case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, the UN’s top court, over its war on Gaza.

Decades of support

The bill must first clear the House Armed Services Committee, which is due to take it up in early June, and then pass the full House and the Senate.

It was proposed by the committee’s Republican chairman, Mike Rogers, and its most senior Democrat, Adam Smith, giving it support from both main parties, even as opinion polls suggest growing opposition among American Democrats and some Republicans to further military support for Israel.

The US has supported Israel’s military for decades.

Since 2008, US law has required Washington to protect Israel’s “qualitative military edge”, keeping its forces stronger and more advanced than those of any rival in the region, on the grounds that a small country must rely on better weapons rather than greater numbers.

Under the current aid deal signed during the administration of former President Barack Obama, Washington provides Israel with about $3.8bn a year in military assistance. The 10-year agreement runs through 2028.

Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid since 1948, almost all of it now military and worth well over $300bn when adjusted for inflation. 

The nature of that support may now be changing. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recently that he wants to end Israel’s reliance on US military aid within 10 years, saying his country had “come of age”.

Closer cooperation between the two defence industries, rather than cash, would likely fit that goal.

Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman bin Hassan bin Ali Al Thani has told the Shangri-La Dialogue that his country would oppose a permanent toll for passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

He added that Qatar would find a temporary fee negotiable, if it was to be used to help reopen the waterway, by removing sea mines, for example.

NEW YORK — American businesses big and small have started receiving tariff refunds after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President Trump lacked the constitutional authority to impose higher import taxes on goods from nearly every other country.

The process could grind to a halt, however, after the Trump administration said Friday that it intended to appeal a federal judge’s order to allow all companies that paid the illegal import taxes to seek refunds, not just the ones that filed lawsuits.

Until the Department of Justice informed the judge of its planned appeal, the refund system overseen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection had been working fairly smoothly. Refunds reached the bank accounts of the first successful applicants on May 12, about three weeks after American importers and their customs brokers could start submitting claims through an online system, according to CBP.

Applications for refunds totaling $85 billion — more than half of the $166 billion the agency estimated the government owes to companies that paid the illegal tariffs on imported goods — were accepted for processing as of May 22, CBP reported in a legal filing earlier in the week. It said it had so far directed the Treasury Department to issue $20.6 billion in refunds.

The administration revealed its appeal preparations while objecting to a demand by Judge Richard K. Eaton for CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott to appear in the U.S. Court of International Trade to answer questions about how long it would take to repay all 330,000 importers that might be eligible for refunds. The judge has scheduled a June 9 hearing on why he shouldn’t require the government do whatever it takes to speed up the process.

Justice Department lawyers asked Eaton to allow one or two of Scott’s deputies to appear in his place, arguing that as a high-ranking presidential appointee, the CBP chief could not be compelled to testify in court. They also argued that Eaton exceeded his own authority when he determined in March that the Supreme Court’s ruling entitled “all importers of record’’ to refunds.

“For that reason, defendants intend to appeal the court’s universal injunction,” the lawyers wrote, adding that CBP would continue to move “as quickly as it can to process refunds in a phased approach” for businesses that filed some 485 pending trade court complaints to assert their rights to refunds.

In a terse reply Friday, Eaton said he needed to hear directly from Scott whether the government would return all of the money it collected between when Trump imposed what he called “reciprocal” tariffs on goods from most countries in April 2025 and when the Supreme Court struck them down in late February.

“This case involves $166 billion,” the judge wrote. “It is undisputed that the remedy for this unlawful collection is for the United States government to refund the unlawfully collected duties.”

Some national retail chains said they planned to use their tariff refunds to lower customer prices on some items. Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey told analysts last week that the company would implement price cuts even though the maximum refund it might be eligible for represented less than half of 1% of Walmart’s $483 billion in annual U.S. sales.

Some smaller companies told the Associated Press that the partial refunds they’ve received so far would go toward paying remaining or future tariffs, reducing debt or just keeping the lights on after more than a year of uncertainty and additional import costs.

Jay Foreman, chief executive of toy company Basic Fun, said he received about $450,000, or 7% of his total claim, over two consecutive days this month. He took the initial repayment as a positive sign but said that after having less than $10,000 refunded since then, the process seemed like a “total slow roll.”

“It’s time to release the funds back into the economy, especially given how much we and others need these funds to support our businesses and fund our operations,” Foreman said.

Anderson writes for the Associated Press.

US President Donald Trump has announced he plans to withdraw his leadership from the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, after a federal judge ruled he could no longer have his name on the building.

On Friday, in a 580-word post, Trump blasted Judge Christopher Cooper as reckless. He also painted the performing arts centre as a dilapidated structure only he could restore.

“Unfortunately, Judge Cooper and the Radical Left would rather see it DIE than have President Trump transform it into something that everyone could be proud of,” Trump wrote, referring to himself in third person.

But Trump’s interventions at the Kennedy Center, a national performing arts centre in Washington, DC, have been controversial from the start.

Construction on the building began in 1964, shortly after President John F Kennedy was assassinated.

That year, his successor, Lyndon B Johnson, signed into law an act of Congress that established the site as a “living memorial” to the slain leader.

But since starting his second term, Trump has sought to reshape Washington, DC, in his own image, undertaking construction projects and erecting banners with his photograph.

Within weeks of his inauguration, in February 2025, he fired Democratic members of the Kennedy Center’s bipartisan board and replaced them with his picks.

He also terminated the leadership of the centre’s longtime president, Deborah Rutter. The board quickly elected Trump as chair instead.

But some of the biggest backlash came in December, when the board went a step further and voted to rename the building “The Donald J Trump and the John F Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts”.

Within a day, construction crews were seen outside the arts centre, adding Trump’s name to the outside of the edifice.

Critics immediately denounced the effort as a violation of the 1964 law, not to mention a sign of disrespect towards the late Kennedy.

Amid public pressure and a string of cancellations from performers, Trump announced in February he would shutter the arts centre for two years, starting in July. He cited renovations as his rationale for the sudden closure.

US Representative Joyce Beatty, a Kennedy Center trustee, sued to stop the closure from happening. She also sought the removal of Trump’s name.

Inside the court’s ruling

In Friday’s ruling, Judge Cooper — an appointee of former President Barack Obama — sided with Beatty’s requests.

He ordered that Trump’s name must be removed from the theatre’s facade, as well as any other signage or official materials, within 14 days, citing the 1964 law.

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” Cooper wrote.

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

Cooper also overturned the Trump-led board’s decision to strip trustees like Beatty of the right to vote on Kennedy Center matters. Beatty is one of several bipartisan trustees who have a seat on the board by virtue of an act of Congress.

“If trustees presumptively possess the right to vote, what, if anything, authorizes the Board to unilaterally strip certain trustees of voting rights?” Cooper asked in his decision, striking down the Trump-era policy.

“Absent Congressional authorization, the Board may not deprive a duly-appointed Kennedy Center trustee of her right to vote on Board matters on which all other trustees are entitled to vote.”

In the last part of his 94-page decision, Cooper turned his attention to the Kennedy Center’s imminent closure.

He pointed to statements and plans from Trump administration officials touting the use of the performing arts facility before the July closure date, saying they undermined the assertion that the building was somehow hazardous.

“Former Kennedy Center President [Richard] Grenell emphasized that the Center would be one of the ‘premiere spots’ for America’s 250th celebration — quite a concerning idea if the Center is as dangerous as the Defendants now represent,” Cooper wrote, alluding to events scheduled for the coming weeks.

He later added, “Up until February 1, the Center was planning to proceed apace with some form of phased construction and cited no safety concerns about that plan.”

While closing the Kennedy Center is within the board’s powers, Cooper concluded that the board had likely violated its duty to administer the centre “as a prudent person would” under the law.

He therefore issued a temporary injunction against the centre’s closure. “The trustees might have assessed the propriety of closure in a number of prudent ways. This was not one,” he wrote.

Reactions to the ruling

The ruling prompted an incensed rebuttal from Trump on his Truth Social platform. The president pledged to transfer oversight of the facility to Congress, under whose mandate the centre already operates.

“We are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it,” Trump wrote.

He also blasted Cooper as a partisan actor who had treated him “unfairly”, echoing similar criticisms he had levied against other judges.

“Judge Cooper should be ashamed of himself! I cannot be involved with a situation where danger to the Public is allowed to flourish in plain and open sight,” Trump said.

“Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND.’”

Beatty, meanwhile, applauded the ruling as a victory against unchecked power, unfettered by the law.

“The Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump,” she wrote.

“He has desecrated this sacred memorial for his own vanity. I am proud to have fought for the rule of law and to protect this sacred institution.”

Louisiana lawmakers have passed a new map of congressional districts designed to help Republicans pick up a seat in the United States House of Representatives.

But to do so, the map eliminates one of the state’s two majority-Black districts, both of which are represented by Democrats.

Approval in Louisiana’s legislature came on Friday. It follows an April decision from the US Supreme Court striking down Louisiana’s current map as an illegal racial gerrymander because it was drawn to include two majority-Black districts.

That ruling, in the case Louisiana v Callais, weakened the landmark 1965 federal Voting Rights Act, meant to prevent discrimination against minorities at the ballot box.

It also intensified a national redistricting battle fuelled by President Donald Trump’s efforts to protect the Republicans’ slim House majority in the midterm elections. Louisiana is one of several Southern states now redrawing their maps to help Republicans.

Louisiana Republicans had considered drawing a map giving the party a shot at winning all six of the state’s US House seats. But that would have required adding more registered Democrats to Republican-held districts, which could have potentially backfired with Republican losses.

Republicans currently hold four of Louisiana’s six congressional seats, and they are slated to pick up a fifth with the newly passed map.

It was approved on Friday by the Louisiana state Senate in a 28-to-10 vote.

‘Vicious race to the bottom’

Republican Governor Jeff Landry is expected to sign the new map into law, even as threats of more litigation emerged Friday.

A half-hour Senate floor debate revolved around Democrats contending that the proposed map is racially gerrymandered to squeeze more Black voters, who tend to be registered Democrats, into a single district.

Democratic state Senator Royce Duplessis pointed out that some fellow Southern states, such as South Carolina, had refused to redraw their maps in the middle of an election year.

He warned that Louisiana is participating in a “vicious, vicious race to the bottom” by participating in the redistricting push.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Senator Jay Morris, repeatedly insisted that party affiliation, not race, drove the new district boundaries.

“I purposely put more Democrats into District 2 to make the remaining districts better performing for Republicans,” Morris said at one point.

Morris said he instructed the map demographers to avoid including any data on race or including those statistics in information shared with lawmakers before the vote.

Democratic state Senator Sam Jenkins told Morris, “I think it’s a racially gerrymandered district that’s going to get us into a lot of trouble here.”

“Agree to disagree,” Morris told Jenkins.

More litigation expected in Louisiana

Louisiana is currently using a map ordered by a lower court in 2024 to comply with the Voting Rights Act. It includes a second district with a majority-Black population.

That map, however, was challenged in court, and the Supreme Court responded on April 30 by striking it down as an illegal racial gerrymander.

Landry has postponed the state’s closed US House primary slated for May 16 to allow for the new congressional map to be implemented.

He later signed a law making the US primary open and shifted the date to November 3 to allow time for Republican lawmakers to draw and pass a new map. All candidates, regardless of party affiliation, will be on the ballot for voters in their district.

The proposed map redraws a district currently represented by Democratic Representative Cleo Fields, clustering it around predominantly white communities in the Baton Rouge area and southern Louisiana.

It also adds part of Baton Rouge to a heavily Democratic, majority-Black district based in New Orleans, represented by Democratic Representative Troy Carter.

More lawsuits are expected over the new map.

Democrats say the proposed map could draw a legal challenge over racial gerrymandering, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana suggested Friday that it could sue, calling the map a “racial gerrymander hiding behind the thin veneer of partisanship”.

“This fight is just beginning,” the ACLU branch added.

Meanwhile, the victorious plaintiffs in the US Supreme Court’s decision criticised the legislature’s map for leaving a majority-Black district in place.

Nationwide battle over district lines

In the weeks following the Supreme Court’s decision, other Republican-controlled Southern states have seized upon the weakened federal Voting Rights Act to redraw their own congressional districts.

So far, Republicans are winning the nationwide redistricting contest, passing more partisan maps to gain House seats than Democrats.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean they will win in the narrowly divided US House in November.

Republicans think they could gain as many as 15 seats from their redistricting efforts so far, while Democrats think they could gain six seats from new districts in California and Utah.

Meanwhile, a court decision in Wisconsin on Friday could give Democrats a new avenue to pick up seats in 2028.

The liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court said it would hear an appeal of a case filed by a bipartisan coalition of business executives that seeks to redraw the state’s Republican-friendly congressional districts. Republicans hold six of the state’s eight House seats, but only two are considered competitive.

A three-judge panel dismissed the case in April. Those who filed the lawsuit weren’t seeking a ruling in time for the 2026 election. Instead, they asked the state Supreme Court to send the case back to the lower court for a trial on their claims, which would likely not take place until 2027.