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Nov. 6 (UPI) — The Trump administration has moved to end deportation protections for those from South Sudan as the United Nations warns the country is on the brink of war.

Amid President Donald Trump‘s crackdown on immigration, the Department of Homeland Security has targeted countries that have been given Temporary Protected Status, which is granted to countries facing ongoing armed conflict, environmental disasters or other extraordinary conditions.

TPS enables eligible nationals from the designated countries to live and work in the United States legally, without fear of deportation.

DHS announced it was ending TPS for South Sudan on Wednesday with the filing of a Federal Register notice.

The termination will be in effect Jan. 5.

“After conferring with interagency partners, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem determined that conditions in South Sudan no longer meet the TPS statutory requirements,” DHS said in a statement, which explained the decision was based on a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services review of the conditions in South Sudan and in consultation with the Department of State.

South Sudan was first designated for TPS in November 2011 amid violent post-independence instability in the country, and the designation has been repeatedly renewed since.

The Trump administration has sought to end TPS designations for a total seven countries: Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal, Venezuela and now South Sudan. Court challenges have followed, with decisions staying, at least for now, the terminations for all of the countries except for Afghanistan and Cameroon, which ended July 12 and Aug. 4, respectively.

The move to terminate TPS for South Sudan is also expected to be challenged in court.

The announcement comes a little more than a week after the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan warned the General Assembly that the African nation is experiencing escalating armed conflict and political crisis, and that international intervention is needed to halt mounting human rights violations.

A civil war erupted in South Sudan in December 2013, just two years after the country gained independence — a conflict that came to an end with a cease-fire in 2018.

Barney Afako, a member of the human rights commission in South Sudan, said Oct. 29 that the political transition spearheaded by the cease-fire agreement was “falling apart.”

“The cease-fire is not holding, political detentions have become a tool of repression, the peace agreement’s key provisions are being systematically violated and the government forces are using aerial bombardments in civilian areas,” he said.

“All indicators point to a slide back toward another deadly war.”

The DHS is urging South Sudanese in the United States under TPS to voluntarily leave the country using the U.S. Customs and Border Protection smartphone application. If they do, they can secure a complimentary plane ticket, a $1,000 “exit bonus” and potential future opportunities for legal immigration.

With the second bye behind them and USC’s season at a crossroads, Lincoln Riley has spent the better part of two weeks focusing his team on what’s in front of them — a stretch of three winnable games — and not behind them — a demoralizing defeat at Notre Dame.

In doing so, the Trojans coach borrowed a well-worn rallying cry, one that traces back 2,000 years. Riley told his team, they had to “burn the boats.”

“We’ve put ourselves in great position, and we’ve got to be a really forward-focused team right now,” Riley said. “Things can get pretty fun from here if you really get on a run. This team is capable of that. They know it. We know it.”

Considering the stakes, it’s an apt enough metaphor. Any hope of USC staying alive in the College Football Playoff conversation hinges on leaving Lincoln, Neb., with a win. And that will, at the very least, require presenting a much better product than before the bye, when USC’s defense gave up over 300 yards on the ground to Notre Dame.

That loss has left a notably bitter taste with the Trojans — especially on defense. This week, sophomore linebacker Jadyn Walker said he felt the group “didn’t come out ready to play” and wasn’t “hungry” enough against Notre Dame. Defensive tackle Jide Abasiri said fixing USC’s issues on defense meant “having our minds right.” For the second time in three weeks, USC returned to the basics on defense during the bye in an effort to iron out those issues.

“You study for a test, you’re not gonna be nervous,” Abasiri said. “Just keep studying, I guess.”

The time for studying is over. The final exam for USC and its defense is a five-game gauntlet, starting on the road in one of the Big Ten’s more hostile environments. It’s just as much a critical test for the team as its coach, who has won just two true road games — at Purdue and at UCLA — during the last two calendar years.

“We continue to put ourselves in position to win these, and I feel like we’re doing the things on a daily basis that ultimately lead to winning,” Riley said. “We’re here and we’re pushing that notion, and I just see us getting closer and closer to that as we go on. That’s where my confidence is.”

Here’s what you should watch for when No. 23 USC (5-2 overall, 3-1 Big Ten) faces Nebraska (6-2, 3-2) on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. PDT (NBC, Peacock).

A heavy dose of Emmett Johnson

Nebraska running back Emmett Johnson carries the ball against Northwestern on Oct. 25.

(Bonnie Ryan / Associated Press)

After watching Notre Dame’s duo of Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price steamroll USC’s defensive front, Nebraska offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen surely smells blood in the water. In Emmett Johnson, he has one of the Big Ten’s best backs, a bruising tackle-breaker who has become a bigger part of the Husker offense as the season has worn on.

He’ll no doubt be a huge part of the plans for Holgorsen, who knows Riley better than most any other coach in college football, save maybe his brother, Garrett, at Clemson. Presumably, Holgorsen will hope to keep the ball out of USC’s hands, grinding out long drives with Johnson.

“We set ourselves up the rest of the season to see a lot of run game,” safety Bishop Fitzgerald said. “This week, making sure we can stop that will be huge for us.”

Johnson isn’t easy to bring down. His 44 missed tackles forced, per PFF, ranks third in the Power Four among running backs.

“He runs really hard,” Fitzgerald said. “He’s usually always going to break the first tackle. He just plays with an edge. He’s not necessarily a blazer, but once he hits that edge, he can make a guy miss and he can get a lot of yards. So I think it’s about stopping him and surrounding the ball.”

It’s just that easy. Or maybe not.

Pick up the pressure

USC defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn stands on the sideline during the third quarter of a win over Michigan State on Sept. 20.

(Luke Hales / Getty Images)

USC led the nation in sacks through the first month of the season. But in both of the Trojans’ losses, the pass rush — or lack thereof — was part of the problem. After producing 24 pressures in a win over Michigan State, USC tallied just 25 in its next three games combined.

Nebraska offers a golden opportunity to get that right. The Huskers have allowed 26 sacks, second-most in the Big Ten.

“I do think we’ve shown growth and we’ve gotten better,” defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn said of the pass rush. “But we’re not satisfied.”

Nebraska quarterback Dylan Raiola has been sharper this season than when he came to the Coliseum in 2024. His completion rate is up almost 6%, and he already has 17 passing touchdowns, compared to just 13 last season.

But Raiola has a tendency to hold the ball too long. At times, that has paid off with big plays. Other times, it has derailed drives.

“It puts a lot of pressure on us,” Lynn said. “When he’s holding onto the ball, he’s not looking to scramble. He’s keeping his eyes downfield.”

The key to counteracting that for USC? Putting as much pressure on him as possible.

Something has gotta give

USC has the top passing offense in the nation, averaging 10 yards per attempt and 326 yards per game. Nebraska boasts one of the nation’s best pass defenses, with just one opposing quarterback even reaching the 160-yard mark against them.

The Huskers have yet to face a quarterback quite like Jayden Maiava. Maiava’s first start at USC came last season against Nebraska, and he has improved leaps and bounds since — notably in his ability to avoid crippling mistakes.

That’ll be at a premium against a Nebraska defense that has swallowed up quarterbacks this season.

“He’s making a lot of right decisions right now,” Riley said this week of Maiava. “If he keeps doing that, we’re going to have a chance to win every game.”

Tuesday is election day, and, as usual, the pundits are breathless, the predictions are dubious and the consultants are already counting their retainers. But make no mistake: Off-year elections matter. Tuesday’s results will shape the political landscape for 2026 and beyond.

Let’s start in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom has decided to fight Texas Republican gerrymandering with a little creative cartography of his own.

Proposition 50, which began as the “Election Rigging Response Act,” wouldn’t just help level the playing field by handing Democrats five House seats; it would also boost Newsom’s presidential ambitions. Polls suggest it’ll pass.

When it comes to elections involving actual candidates, the main attractions are in New York, New Jersey and Virginia.

In the New York City mayoral contest, Zohran Mamdani — a 34-year-old democratic socialist who seems like the kind of guy who probably buys albums on vinyl — is leading both former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (running as an independent) and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

National Republicans are already making Mamdani the avatar of everything Fox News viewers fear.

President Trump went so far as calling Mamdani a “communist” and threatening to send in the troops if he wins.

One thing is for certain: Mamdani is already a symbol. If he wins, he’ll be evidence for progressives that politics can still be interesting, exciting and revolutionary. To conservatives, he’ll be evidence that Democrats have gone insane.

If you’re paying attention, these arguments are not mutually exclusive.

Across the Hudson, New Jersey Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill (whose resume includes having been a naval officer and a federal prosecutor) is a very different kind of politician — the “I’m a competent adult, please clap” variety.

Her gubernatorial opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, is an ex-state legislator who radiates the kind of energy usually found at bowling alleys and diners. He’s the grandson of Italian immigrants, the son of blue-collar workers and the spiritual heir of every guy in a tracksuit yelling at a Jets game.

Ciattarelli came dangerously close to winning the governorship in 2021, which should be cause for concern for Sherrill, who’s sitting on a slim lead.

The main problem for Ciattarelli is Trump, who, despite his bridge-and-tunnel aesthetic, does more harm than good in a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican president since 1988.

Trump’s termination of the Gateway Tunnel project didn’t help either. It’s one thing to be loud and populist; it’s another to cancel something that would make voters’ commutes slightly less horrible.

Speaking of commutes, a few hours south, down I-95, Virginia will also elect a new governor. Here, Democrat Abigail Spanberger — former CIA officer, former U.S. representative, professional moderate — is coasting toward victory against Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the lieutenant governor.

Earle-Sears, a Marine, trailblazer and gadfly, is about to add “failed gubernatorial candidate” to her resume.

Her biggest headline was firing her campaign manager (a pastor who had never run a campaign before), which sounds like a metaphor for today’s GOP. Her best attack on Spanberger involved attempting to tie her to something someone else (the Democratic attorney general nominee) did (sending a violent text about a Republican politician).

Virginia has a history of electing governors from the party that opposes the sitting president, and Trump’s DOGE cuts (not to mention the current government shutdown) have outsize importance in the commonwealth.

Depending on how things shake out in these states, narratives will be set — storylines that (rightly or not) will tell experts and voters which kinds of candidates they should nominate in 2026.

For example, if Mamdani, who represents the progressive wing, wins, but Sherrill and/or Spanberger lose, the narrative will be that cautious centrism is the problem.

If the opposite occurs, the opposite narrative (radicalism is a loser!) will take root.

The postmortems write themselves: “Progressive Resurgence,” “Year of the Woman” and/or “The Return of the Center.” The problem? It’s unwise to draw too many conclusions based on Tuesday’s election results.

First, it’s misguided to assume that what works in New York City could serve as a national model.

Second, even if Sherrill and Spanberger both win, it’s impossible to know if they simply benefited from 2025 being a good year for Democrats.

Still, what happens on Tuesday will have major repercussions. Within a day of the election, everyone with a stake in the midterms and future elections will claim the outcome means what they want it to mean. Within a week, narratives will have congealed, while heroes and scapegoats will have been assigned.

And the rest of us will be right here where we started — anxious, exhausted — and dreading the fact that the 2026 midterm jockeying starts on Wednesday.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Trump described his face-to-face with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday as a roaring success, saying he would cut tariffs on China, while Beijing had agreed to allow the export of rare earth elements and start buying American soybeans.

The president told reporters aboard Air Force One that the U.S. would lower tariffs implemented earlier this year as punishment on China for its selling of chemicals used to make fentanyl from 20% to 10%. That brings the total combined tariff rate on China down from 57% to 47%

“I guess on the scale from 0 to 10, with ten being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12,” Trump said. “I think it was a 12.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said China agreed to purchase 25 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans annually for the next three years, starting with 12 million metric tons from now to January. U.S. soybean exports to China, a huge market for them, had come to a standstill in the trade dispute.

“So you know, our great soybean farmers, who the Chinese used as political pawns, that’s off the table, and they should prosper in the years to come,” Bessent told Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria.”

Trump said that he would go to China in April and Xi would come to the U.S. “some time after that.” The president said they also discussed the export of more advanced computer chips to China, saying that Nvidia would be in talks with Chinese officials.

Trump said he could sign a trade deal with China “pretty soon.”

Xi said Washington and Beijing would work to finalize their agreements to provide “peace of mind” to both countries and the rest of the world, according to a report on the meeting distributed by state media.

“Both sides should take the long-term perspective into account, focusing on the benefits of cooperation rather than falling into a vicious cycle of mutual retaliation,” he said.

Sources of tension remain

Despite Trump’s optimism after a 100-minute meeting with Xi in South Korea, there continues to be the potential for major tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Both nations are seeking dominant places in manufacturing, developing emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, and shaping world affairs like Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs since returning to the White House for a second term, combined with China’s retaliatory limits on exports of rare earth elements, gave the meeting newfound urgency. There is a mutual recognition that neither side wants to risk blowing up the world economy in ways that could jeopardize their own country’s fortunes.

When the two were seated at the start of the meeting, Xi read prepared remarks that stressed a willingness to work together despite differences.

“Given our different national conditions, we do not always see eye to eye with each other,” he said through a translator. “It is normal for the two leading economies of the world to have frictions now and then.”

There was a slight difference in translation as China’s Xinhua News Agency reported Xi as telling Trump that having some differences is inevitable.

Finding ways to lower the temperature

The leaders met in Busan, South Korea, a port city about 47 miles south from Gyeongju, the main venue for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

In the days leading up to the meeting, U.S. officials signaled that Trump did not intend to make good on a recent threat to impose an additional 100% import tax on Chinese goods, and China showed signs it was willing to relax its export controls on rare earths and also buy soybeans from America.

Officials from both countries met earlier this week in Kuala Lumpur to lay the groundwork for their leaders. Afterward, China’s top trade negotiator Li Chenggang said they had reached a “preliminary consensus,” a statement affirmed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who said there was “ a very successful framework.”

Shortly before the meeting on Thursday, Trump posted on Truth Social that the meeting would be the “G2,” a recognition of America and China’s status as the world’s biggest economies. The Group of Seven and Group of 20 are other forums of industrialized nations.

But while those summits often happen at luxury spaces, this meeting took place in humbler surroundings: Trump and Xi met in a small gray building with a blue roof on a military base adjacent to Busan’s international airport.

The anticipated detente has given investors and businesses caught between the two nations a sense of relief. The U.S. stock market has climbed on the hopes of a trade framework coming out of the meeting.

Pressure points remain for both U.S. and China

Trump has outward confidence that the grounds for a deal are in place, but previous negotiations with China this year in Geneva, Switzerland and London had a start-stop quality to them. The initial promise of progress has repeatedly given way to both countries seeking a better position against the other.

“The proposed deal on the table fits the pattern we’ve seen all year: short-term stabilization dressed up as strategic progress,” said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Both sides are managing volatility, calibrating just enough cooperation to avert crisis while the deeper rivalry endures.”

The U.S. and China have each shown they believe they have levers to pressure the other, and the past year has demonstrated that tentative steps forward can be short-lived.

For Trump, that pressure comes from tariffs.

China had faced new tariffs this year totaling 30%, of which 20% were tied to its role in fentanyl production. But the tariff rates have been volatile. In April, he announced plans to jack the rate on Chinese goods to 145%, only to abandon those plans as markets recoiled.

Then, on Oct. 10, Trump threatened a 100% import tax because of China’s rare earth restrictions. That figure, including past tariffs, would now be 47% “effective immediately,” Trump told reporters on Thursday.

Xi has his own chokehold on the world economy because China is the top producer and processor of the rare earth minerals needed to make fighter jets, robots, electric vehicles and other high-tech products.

China had tightened export restrictions on Oct. 9, repeating a cycle in which each nation jockeys for an edge only to back down after more trade talks.

What might also matter is what happens directly after their talks. Trump plans to return to Washington, while Xi plans to stay on in South Korea to meet with regional leaders during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which officially begins on Friday.

“Xi sees an opportunity to position China as a reliable partner and bolster bilateral and multilateral relations with countries frustrated by the U.S. administration’s tariff policy,” said Jay Truesdale, a former State Department official who is CEO of TD International, a risk and intelligence advisory firm.

Boak, Megerian and Schiefelbein write for the Associated Press. Boak reported from Tokyo and Megerian reported from Busan, South Korea. Ken Moritsugu in Beijing and Seung Min Kim and Michelle Price in Washington contributed to this report.

TOKYO — President Trump treated his time in Japan on Tuesday as a victory lap — befriending the new Japanese prime minister, taking her with him as he spoke to U.S. troops aboard an aircraft carrier and then unveiling several major energy and technology projects in America to be funded by Japan.

Sanae Takaichi, who became the country’s first female prime minister only days ago, solidified her relationship with Trump while defending her country’s economic interests. She talked baseball, stationed a Ford F-150 truck outside their meeting and greeted Trump with, by his estimation, a firm handshake.

By the end of the day, Trump — by his administration’s count — came close to nailing down the goal of $550 billion in Japanese investment as part of a trade framework. At a dinner for business leaders in Tokyo, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced up to $490 billion in commitments, including $100 billion each for nuclear projects involving Westinghouse and GE Vernova.

“You’re great business people,” Trump told the gathered executives before the dinner. “Our country will not let you down.”

It was not immediately clear how the investments would operate and how they compared with previous plans, but Trump declared a win as he capped off a day of bonding with Takaichi.

Trump and Japanese PM swap warm words

The compliments started as soon as the two leaders met on Tuesday morning. “That’s a very strong handshake,” Trump said to Takaichi.

She talked about watching the third game of the U.S. World Series before the event, and said Japan would give Washington 250 cherry trees and fireworks for July 4 celebrations to honor America’s 250th anniversary next year.

Takaichi emphasized her ties to the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, her archconservative mentor who had forged a friendship with Trump during his first term through their shared interest of golf.

“As a matter of fact, Prime Minister Abe often told me about your dynamic diplomacy,” she said, later gifting Trump a putter used by Abe.

Trump told her it was a “big deal” that she is Japan’s first woman prime minister, and said the U.S. is committed to Japan. While the president is known for not shying away from publicly scolding his foreign counterparts, he had nothing but praise for Takaichi.

“Anything I can do to help Japan, we will be there,” Trump said. “We are an ally at the strongest level.”

Takaichi laid out a charm offensive, serving American beef and rice mixed with Japanese ingredients during a working lunch, where the two leaders also discussed efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Takaichi would be nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The two leaders signed black “Japan is Back” baseball caps that resembled Trump’s own red “Make America Great Again” caps.

Reporters arriving for the meeting were hustled past a gold-hued Ford F-150 outside the Akasaka Palace, which is Tokyo’s guest house for visiting foreign leaders.

Trump has often complained that Japan doesn’t buy American vehicles, which are often too wide to be practical on narrow Japanese streets. But the Japanese government is considering buying a fleet of Ford trucks for road and infrastructure inspection.

They vow a ‘golden age’ for alliance and cooperation on critical minerals

Both leaders signed the implementation of an agreement for the “golden age” of their nations’ alliance, a short affirmation of a framework under which the U.S. will tax goods imported from Japan at 15% while Japan creates a $550 billion fund of investments in the U.S.

Later, at a dinner at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo packed with CEOs including Apple’s Tim Cook, Trump reveled in the deals. Trump and Takaichi also signed an agreement to cooperate on critical minerals and rare earths.

Trump has focused his foreign policy toward Asia around tariffs and trade, but on Tuesday he also spoke aboard the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier docked at an American naval base near Tokyo. The president brought Takaichi with him and she also spoke as Japan plans to increase its military spending.

The president talked about individual units on the aircraft carrier, his political opponents, national security and the U.S. economy, saying that Takaichi had told him that Toyota would be investing $10 billion in auto plants in America.

Trump arrived in Tokyo on Monday, meeting the emperor in a ceremonial visit after a brief trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Trump is scheduled to leave Japan on Wednesday for South Korea, which is hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Trump plans to meet with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.

On Thursday, Trump is expected to cap off his Asia trip with a highly anticipated meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. There were signs that tensions between the U.S. and China were cooling off before the planned meeting in South Korea. Top negotiators from each country said a trade deal was coming together, which could prevent a potentially damaging confrontation between the world’s two largest economies.

Boak and Megerian write for the Associated Press. Megerian reported from Seoul, South Korea. Mayuko Ono and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

This is the moment East Timor was officially declared ASEAN’s 11th member, what Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao called a ‘historic moment’. East Timor, which gained independence from Indonesia in 2002, is Asia’s youngest nation.

WASHINGTON — The Navy admiral who oversees military operations in the region where U.S. forces have been attacking alleged drug boats off Venezuela will retire in December, he and the Defense Secretary announced Thursday.

Adm. Alvin Holsey became the leader of U.S. Southern Command only in November, overseeing an area that encompasses the Caribbean Sea and waters off South America. These types of postings typically last between three and four years.

The news of Holsey’s upcoming retirement comes two days after the U.S. military’s fifth deadly strike in the Caribbean against a small boat accused of carrying drugs. The Trump administration has asserted it’s treating alleged drug traffickers as unlawful combatants who must be met with military force.

Frustration with the attacks has been growing on Capitol Hill. Some Republicans have been seeking more information from the White House on the legal justification and details of the strikes, while Democrats contend the strikes violate U.S. and international law.

Holsey said in a statement posted on the command’s Facebook page that it’s “been an honor to serve our nation, the American people and support and defend our Constitution for over 37 years.”

“The SOUTHCOM team has made lasting contributions to the defense of our nation and will continue to do so,” he said. “I am confident that you will forge ahead, focused on your mission that strengthens our nation and ensures its longevity as a beacon of freedom around the globe.”

U.S. Southern Command did not provide any more information beyond the admiral’s statement.

In a post on X on Thursday afternoon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth thanked Holsey for his “decades of service to our country, and we wish him and his family continued success and fulfillment in the years ahead.”

“Admiral Holsey has demonstrated unwavering commitment to mission, people, and nation,” Hegseth wrote.

Officials at the Pentagon did not provide any more information and referred the Associated Press to Hegseth’s statement on social media.

The New York Times first reported on Holsey’s plans to leave his position.

Toropin and Finley write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A new round of layoffs at the Education Department is depleting an agency that was hit hard in the Trump administration’s previous mass firings, threatening new disruption to the nation’s students and schools in areas including special education, civil rights enforcement and after-school programs.

The Trump administration started laying off 466 Education Department staffers on Friday amid mass firings across the government meant to pressure Democratic lawmakers over the federal shutdown. The layoffs would cut the agency’s workforce by nearly a fifth and leave it reduced by more than half its size when President Trump took office Jan. 20.

The cuts play into Trump’s broader plan to shut down the Education Department and parcel its operations to other agencies. Over the summer, the department started handing off its adult education and workforce programs to the Department of Labor, and it previously said it was negotiating an agreement to pass its $1.6-trillion student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department.

Department officials have not released details on the layoffs and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. AFGE Local 252, a union that represents more than 2,700 department workers, said information from employees indicates cuts will decimate several offices within the agency.

All workers except a small number of top officials are being fired at the office that implements the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal law that ensures millions of students with disabilities get support from their schools, the union said. Unknown numbers are being fired at the Office for Civil Rights, which investigates complaints of discrimination at the nation’s schools and universities.

The layoffs would eliminate or heavily deplete teams that oversee the flow of grant funding to schools across the nation, the union said. They affect the office that oversees Title I funding for the country’s low-income schools, along with the team that manages 21st Century Community Learning Centers, the primary federal funding source for after-school and summer learning programs.

It will also hit an office that oversees TRIO, a set of programs that help low-income students pursue college, and another that oversees federal funding for historically Black colleges and universities.

In a statement, union President Rachel Gittleman said the new reductions, on top of previous layoffs, will “double down on the harm to K-12 students, students with disabilities, first generation college students, low-income students, teachers and local education boards.”

The Education Department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office. After the new layoffs, it would be down to fewer than 2,000. Earlier layoffs in March had roughly halved the department, but some employees were hired back after officials decided they had cut too deep.

The new layoffs drew condemnation from various education organizations.

Although states design their own competitions to distribute federal funding for 21st Century Community Learning Centers, the small team of federal officials provided guidance and support “that is absolutely essential,” said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance.

“Firing that team is shocking, devastating, utterly without any basis, and it threatens to cause lasting harm,” Grant said in a statement.

The government’s latest layoffs are being challenged in court by the American Federation of Government Employees and other national labor unions. Their suit, filed in San Francisco, said the government’s budgeting and personnel offices overstepped their authority by ordering agencies to carry out layoffs in response to the shutdown.

In a court filing, the Trump administration said the executive branch has wide discretion to reduce the federal workforce. It said the unions could not prove they were harmed by the layoffs because employees would not actually be separated for an additional 30 to 60 days after receiving notice.

Binkley writes for the Associated Press.

Former President Obama, speaking on stand-up comedian Marc Maron’s final podcast on Monday, said the Trump administration’s policies are a “test” of whether universities, businesses, law firms and voters — including Republicans — will take a stand for the nation’s founding principles and values.

“If you decide not to vote, that’s a consequence. If you are a Hispanic man and you’re frustrated about inflation, and so you decided, ah, you know what, all that rhetoric about Trump doesn’t matter. ‘I’m just mad about inflation,’” Obama said. “And now your sons are being stopped in L.A. because they look Latino and maybe without the ability to call anybody, might just be locked up, well, that’s a test.”

In a more than hourlong discussion with Maron on the wildly popular “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast, the former Democratic president said current events could jolt Americans.

“It’d be great if we weren’t tested this way, but you know what? We probably need to be shaken out of our complacency,” he said.

Obama also criticized some Democrats’ messaging as he touched on significant issues facing Californians and discussed the state of the nation’s democracy, core convictions and the weakening of institutional norms.

After Los Angeles-based Maron joked, “We’ve annoyed the average American into fascism,” Obama responded, “You can’t just be a scold all the time.

“You can’t constantly lecture people without acknowledging that you’ve got some blind spots too, and that life’s messy,” Obama said in the interview, which recently took place in the former president’s Washington, D.C., office.

Faulting language used by some liberals as “holier than thou,” Obama argued that Democrats could remain true to their principles while respecting those with whom they disagreed.

“Saying, ‘Right, I’ve got some core convictions [and] beliefs that I’m not going to compromise. But I’m also not going to assert that I am so righteous and so pure and so insightful that there’s not the possibility that maybe I’m wrong on this, or that other people, if they don’t say things exactly the way I say them or see things exactly the way I do, that somehow they’re bad people,’” he said.

Obama’s remarks come as the Democratic Party faces a reckoning after losing the presidential election in 2024, in part because of declining support from the party’s base, notably minority voters.

Maron, a comedian and actor, launched his “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast and radio show in 2009. Interviews with guests such as actor Robin Williams, comedian Louis C.K., filmmaker Kevin Smith and “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels often took place at his Highland Park home.

Obama’s 2015 interview in Maron’s garage became the podcast’s most popular episode at the time — downloaded nearly 740,000 times in the first 24 hours after it was posted.

On Monday, the former president criticized institutions for capitulating to President Trump’s demands. His words come as USC leaders are debating whether to agree to a White House proposal to receive favorable access to federal funding if they align with Trump’s agenda.

“If you’re a university president, say, well, you know what? This will hurt if we lose some grant money in the federal government, but that’s what endowments are for,” Obama said. “Let’s see if we can ride this out, because what we’re not going to do is compromise our basic academic independence.”

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Unlike eight previous attempts to remove the president, almost all legislative factions expressed support for the move.

Peru’s Congress has voted to remove President Dina Boluarte, among the world’s most unpopular leaders, in a late-night session called hours after political parties from across the spectrum called for her impeachment, as the nation fights an intensive crime wave.

Politicians voted late Thursday into Friday to debate her removal from office on grounds of “moral incapacity” and summoned her to defend herself before Congress an hour later.

The stunning turn of events came just hours after a shooting at a concert in the capital inflamed anger over crime roiling the South American nation.

Legislators had voted to accept four requests for a vote to remove Boluarte from office over what they said was her government’s inability to stem crime. They exceeded the minimum 56 votes required for each request, setting up a debate and impeachment trial in the 130-member unicameral Congress.

They then requested that Boluarte come before them on Thursday shortly before midnight to defend herself, but when she did not appear, they immediately voted to oust her. In short order, 124 lawmakers voted just past midnight to impeach Boluarte.

Unlike eight previous attempts to remove her, almost all legislative factions expressed support for the latest requests.

A TikTok has named the top five countries that Brits are moving to – and you’d be surprised to find out that it’s not Australia in the top choice

Spain has been revealed as the top choice for Brits looking to relocate abroad, according to a TikTok video. The reason is quite typical, but it makes a lot of sense.

The laid-back lifestyle, warmer temperatures and stunning beaches are among the main reasons why Brits are choosing Spain over other countries.

While Australia might seem like an obvious choice for many, the long distance from the UK often deters people from making the move. Spain, on the other hand, offers similar benefits to Australia but without the lengthy journey, making it easier for Brits to return home when needed.

READ MORE: ‘I visited UK’s chocolate box village that’s just like Stars Hallow in Gilmore Girls’READ MORE: Greek island that’s 24C in October but without the Santorini crowds

In 2023, approximately 93,000 Brits decided to move abroad, the TikTok video revealed. The top five destinations for Brits included Italy, France, Australia, America and of course, Spain.

Italy just made it into the top five, welcoming 6,231 Brits in 2023. The country’s beautiful coastlines, stunning scenery and delicious cuisine are among the top reasons why it’s a favourite relocation destination.

France, which is one of the closest European countries to the UK, ranked fourth, with 9,393 Brits moving there. Despite its proximity, France offers a variety of landscapes that are notably different from those in the UK, including countryside and beaches.

In third place, Australia has attracted 10,416 Brits to its shores. It’s no surprise that this far-flung destination is a favourite among Brits, with its unique culture and stunning landscapes making it a dream relocation spot.

The United States takes the second spot, with 12,648 Brits choosing to call it home. The vast landscapes and endless opportunities of this English-speaking nation are a major draw for many. The rumours of British hating Americans, and vice versa, might be a myth after all.

And bagging the top spot is Spain, with 13,113 Brits swapping their UK homes for the sunny European country. According to the latest available data, there are around 293,000 to 300,000 registered British expats in Spain. Popular cities include Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Tenerife and Benidorm.

With its enviable lifestyle and proximity to the UK, it’s no wonder Spain is the number one choice for Brits looking to relocate – and it’s totally understandable!

Jewells Chambers, an American expat who originally hails from Brooklyn, New York, detailed how she felt a “magnetic” pull towards the stunning “Land of Fire and Ice”

An expat who abandoned life in the US and relocated to a remote European nation has revealed one particular disadvantage she’s encountered. Jewells Chambers, an American expat originally from Brooklyn, New York, explained how she felt a “magnetic” attraction to the breathtaking “Land of Fire and Ice,” with its striking landscapes filled with volcanoes and glaciers.

Jewells, who currently makes $73,000 (approximately £54,200), first relocated to Iceland in 2016, after marrying an Icelander (they divorced in 2023) and securing a position in the marketing department at a local travel company.

Alongside this role, the 38-year-old also established the YouTube channel and podcast All Things Iceland in 2018, which offers viewers the “inside scoop” on the Nordic country, with Jewells making the brand her full-time focus in 2020.

However, despite appearing to relish her life in the nation, she did acknowledge one downside of residing there; Iceland is a famously costly country (eighth most expensive globally in 2023), with a cost of living allegedly 15.8 per cent higher than the US, according to Business Insider.

Speaking to CNBC Make It, Jewells revealed her living costs: “In general, Iceland is expensive, and in particular, when it comes to eating out, it definitely can be expensive.

“It is normal to pay somewhere between $25 to $30 (about £18 to £22) for one course at a restaurant, a main course. Often, when I’ve gone out and I had a three-course dinner, that would be somewhere around $100 to £120 (about £74 to £89).

“A cup of coffee also varies, depending on where you get it. It could cost you as much as $7.50 to almost $8 (about £5.60 to £6).”

Previously in the clip, the creators revealed a pie chart detailing Jewells’ monthly expenditure for June 2024.

Her total outgoings reached $4,667 (about £3,400), with $2,030 (about £1,500) going towards accommodation and utilities, plus $545 (about £400) on groceries.

However, her expenses have been mitigated somewhat thanks to a contract with a local vehicle hire company, which means she only covers petrol costs. She also takes advantage of Iceland’s free healthcare provision.

Iceland, a sparsely populated island in the North Atlantic, is known for its geothermal hot springs and geysers, as well as such natural attractions as the famous Blue Lagoon spa.

The country boasts 376,000 residents as of 2024, and this year secured third place as the world’s happiest nation in the 2025 World Happiness Report (just behind Finland in first place and Denmark).

The BBC reported that Iceland achieved the top score globally for social support whilst also earning impressive rankings for freedom and generosity, placing third and fifth.

Another element that allegedly adds to residents’ happiness is the country’s breathtaking scenery. US geologist Jessica Poteet, who also relocated to Iceland, discussed the matter with the corporation.

She revealed that living somewhere blessed with volcanoes, Northern Lights, “cotton candy-pink” skies, and snow-capped peaks during winter feels like a “dream” and something she “never” takes for granted.

WASHINGTON — Plunged into a government shutdown, the U.S. is confronting a fresh cycle of uncertainty after President Donald Trump and Congress failed to strike an agreement to keep government programs and services running by Wednesday’s deadline.

Roughly 750,000 federal workers are expected to be furloughed, some potentially fired by Trump’s Republican administration. Many offices will be shuttered, perhaps permanently, as Trump vows to “do things that are irreversible, that are bad” as retribution. His deportation agenda is expected to run full speed ahead, while education, environmental and other services sputter. The economic fallout is expected to ripple nationwide.

“We don’t want it to shut down,” Trump said at the White House before the midnight deadline.

But the president, who met privately with congressional leadership this week, appeared unable to negotiate any deal between Democrats and Republicans to prevent that outcome.

This is the third time Trump has presided over a federal funding lapse, the first since his return to the White House this year, in a remarkable record that underscores the polarizing divide over budget priorities and a political climate that rewards hard-line positions rather than more traditional compromises.

Plenty of blame being thrown around

The Democrats picked this fight, which was unusual for the party that prefers to keep government running, but their voters are eager to challenge the president’s second-term agenda. Democrats are demanding funding for health care subsidies that are expiring for millions of people under the Affordable Care Act, spiking the costs of insurance premiums nationwide.

Republicans have refused to negotiate for now and have encouraged Trump to steer clear of any talks. After the White House meeting, the president posted a cartoonish fake video mocking the Democratic leadership that was widely viewed as unserious and racist.

What neither side has devised is an easy offramp to prevent what could become a protracted closure. The ramifications are certain to spread beyond the political arena, upending the lives of Americans who rely on the government for benefit payments, work contracts and the various services being thrown into turmoil.

“What the government spends money on is a demonstration of our country’s priorities,” said Rachel Snyderman, a former White House budget official who is the managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank in Washington.

Shutdowns, she said, “only inflict economic cost, fear and confusion across the country.”

Economic fallout expected to ripple nationwide

An economic jolt could be felt in a matter of days. The government is expected Friday to produce its monthly jobs report, which may or may not be delivered.

While the financial markets have generally “shrugged” during past shutdowns, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis, this one could be different partly because there are no signs of broader negotiations.

“There are also few good analogies to this week’s potential shutdown,” the analysis said.

Across the government, preparations have been underway. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, headed by Russ Vought, directed agencies to execute plans for not just furloughs, as are typical during a federal funding lapse, but mass firings of federal workers. It’s part of the Trump administration’s mission, including its Department of Government Efficiency, to shrink the federal government.

What’s staying open and shutting down

The Medicare and Medicaid health care programs are expected to continue, though staffing shortages could mean delays for some services. The Pentagon would still function. And most employees will stay on the job at the Department of Homeland Security.

But Trump has warned that the administration could focus on programs that are important to Democrats, “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”

As agencies sort out which workers are essential, or not, Smithsonian museums are expected to stay open at least until Monday. A group of former national park superintendents urged the Trump administration to close the parks to visitors, arguing that poorly staffed parks in a shutdown are a danger to the public and put park resources at risk.

No easy exit as health care costs soar

Ahead of Wednesday’s start of the fiscal year, House Republicans had approved a temporary funding bill, over opposition from Democrats, to keep government running into mid-November while broader negotiations continue.

But that bill has failed repeatedly in the Senate, including late Tuesday. It takes a 60-vote threshold for approval, which requires cooperation between the two parties. A Democratic bill also failed. With a 53-47 GOP majority, Democrats are leveraging their votes to demand negotiation.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said Republicans are happy to discuss the health care issue with Democrats — but not as part of talks to keep the government open. More votes are expected Wednesday.

The standoff is a political test for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who has drawn scorn from a restive base of left-flank voters pushing the party to hold firm in its demands for health care funding.

“Americans are hurting with higher costs,” Schumer said after the failed vote Tuesday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers home nearly two weeks ago after having passed the GOP bill, blaming Democrats for the shutdown.

“They want to fight Trump,” Johnson said Tuesday on CNBC. “A lot of good people are going to be hurt because of this.”

Trump, during his meeting with the congressional leaders, expressed surprise at the scope of the rising costs of health care, but Democrats left with no path toward talks.

During Trump’s first term, the nation endured its longest-ever shutdown, 35 days, over his demands for funds Congress refused to provide to build his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.

In 2013, the government shut down for 16 days during the Obama presidency over GOP demands to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Other closures date back decades.

Mascaro, Jalonick and Groves write for the Associated Press. Associated Press writers Matt Brown, Joey Cappelletti, Will Weissert, Fatima Hussein and other AP reporters nationwide contributed to this report.

Through four games this season, Jayden Maiava has done just about all he could to dispel any lingering doubts about him as USC’s starting quarterback.

Maiava is averaging 12.7 yards per pass attempt this season, higher than any other quarterback in college football. His completion percentage has risen more than 11 points since last season (to 70.8%). He has thrown nine passing touchdowns, plus added four on the ground, and has yet to turn the ball over after throwing nine picks during the same number of starts in 2024.

Granted, during the Trojans’ 4-0 start, Maiava has yet to face a pass defense that ranks inside the top 100 in passing yards allowed per attempt. Nor has he or anyone on USC’s offense faced much in the way of adversity. The Trojans have scored more than 52 points per game and won their first four by an average margin of 32.

But the level of competition ratchets up this week. Each of USC’s next three opponents are ranked in the top 25, while three of its next four games come on the road, beginning Saturday with No. 23 Illinois, which was ranked in the top 10 before it was trounced by Indiana last weekend.

If USC has any hope of making the College Football Playoff, it’ll need Maiava to prove his fast start in September wasn’t a fluke. USC coach Lincoln Riley doesn’t want Maiava to change much from his first four weeks.

“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Riley said.

USC quarterback Jayden Maiava evades a tackle attempt by Michigan State defensive back Armorion Smith at the Coliseum on Sept. 20.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

“He’s been steady. He’s been in a good head space. There will be different challenges. You’re gonna have mistakes here and there. That’s where your experience is going to show up. We just need him to be the steady, efficient leader he’s been and keep playing really good, efficient ball. I think he’s in a really good head space to do that.”

Illinois hasn’t had much success rattling capable quarterbacks this season. Duke’s Darian Mensah threw for 356 yards and two touchdowns in Week 2, while Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza dropped five scores on the Illini secondary last Saturday. Injuries have only made matters worse for the Illini secondary as it lost All-Big Ten slot corner Xavier Scott to a potential season-ending injury, have one safety in concussion protocol and another cornerback in a walking boot. Two other defensive backs also exited Illinois’ last game with some sort of injury.

The stage is set for Maiava to make a major statement Saturday, in one of the marquee matchups of the week. Here’s what else you should watch for when USC plays to Illinois.

Four of America’s nominally closest allies — Britain, Australia, France and Canada — disgraced themselves this week by recognizing a so-called Palestinian state. In so doing, these nations didn’t merely betray their Western civilizational inheritance. They also rewarded terrorism, strengthened the genocidal ambitions of the global jihad and sent a chilling message: The path to international legitimacy runs not through the difficult work of building up a nation-state and engaging in diplomacy, but through mass murder, the weaponization of transnational institutions and the erasure of historical truth.

The Trump administration has already denounced this craven capitulation by our allies. There should be no recognition of an independent Palestinian state at this moment in history. Such a recognition is an abdication not only of basic human decency, but also of national interest and strategic sanity.

The global march toward recognition of an independent Palestinian state ignores decades of brutal facts on the ground as well as the specific tide of blood behind this latest surge. It was less than two years ago — Oct. 7, 2023 — that Hamas launched the most barbaric anti-Jewish pogrom since the Holocaust: 6,000 terrorists poured into Israel, massacring roughly 1,200 innocent people in acts of unconscionable depravity — systematic rape, torture, kidnapping of babies. The terrorists livestreamed their own atrocities and dragged more than 250 hostages back to Gaza’s sprawling subterranean terror dungeons, where dozens remain to this day.

Many gullible liberal elites wish to believe that the radical jihadists of Hamas do not represent the broader Palestinian-Arab population, but that is a lie. Polls consistently show — and anecdotal videos of large street crowds consistently demonstrate — that Hamas and like-minded jihadist groups maintain overwhelming popularity in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria (what the international community refers to as the West Bank). These groups deserve shame, scorn and diplomatic rebuke — not fawning sympathy and United Nations red carpets.

The “government” in Gaza is a theocratic, Iranian-backed terror entity whose founding charter drips with unrepentant Jew-hatred and whose leaders routinely celebrate the wanton slaughter of innocent Israelis as triumphs of “resistance.” Along with the kleptocratic Palestinian Authority dictatorship in Ramallah, this is who, and what, Group of 7 powers like Britain and France have decided to reward with an imprimatur of legitimate statehood.

There is no meaningful “peace partner,” and no “two-state” vision to be realized, amid this horrible reality. There is only a sick cult of violence, lavishly funded from Tehran and eager for widespread international recognition as a stepping stone toward the destruction of Israel — and the broader West for which Israel is a proxy.

For decades, Western leaders maintained a straightforward position: There can be no recognition of a Palestinian state outside of direct negotiations with Israel, full demilitarization and the unqualified acceptance of Israel’s right to exist in secure borders as a distinctly Jewish state. The move at the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state torches that policy, declaring to the world that savagery and maximalist rejectionism are the currency of international legitimacy. By rewarding unilateralism and eschewing direct negotiation, these reckless Western governments have proved us international law skeptics right: The much-ballyhooed “peace process” agreements, such as the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, are not worth the paper they were written on.

In the wake of Oct. 7, these nations condemned the massacre, proclaimed solidarity with Israel and even briefly suspended funding for UNRWA, the U.N. aid group for the Palestinian territories, after agency employees were accused of participating in the attack. Yet, under the relentless drumbeat of anti-Israel activism and diplomatic cowardice, they have now chosen to rehabilitate the Palestinian-Arab nationalist cause — not after the leaders of the cause renounced terrorism, but while its most gruesome crimes remained unpunished, its hostages still languish in concentration camp-like squalor and its leaders still clamor for the annihilation of Israel.

Trump should clarify not only that America will not join in this dangerous, high-stakes charade, but also that there could very well be negative trade or diplomatic repercussions for countries that recognize an independent Palestinian terror state. The reason for such consequences would be simple: Undermining America’s strongest ally in the Middle East while simultaneously creating yet another new terror-friendly Islamist state directly harms the American national interest. There is no American national interest — none, zero — in the creation of a new Palestinian state in the heart of the Holy Land. On the contrary, as the Abraham Accords peace deals of 2020 proved, there is plenty of reason to embolden Israel. Contra liberal elites, it is this bolstering of Israel that fosters genuine regional peace.

The world must know: In the face of evil, America does not flinch, does not equivocate and does not reward those who murder our friends and threaten the Judeo-Christian West. As long as the Jewish state stands on the front lines of civilization, the United States must remain at its side, unwavering, unbowed and unashamed. Basic human decency and the American national interest both require nothing less.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday called Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip a “genocide,” marking a decisive shift in her government’s stance on the conflict — and putting it at odds with the United States.

Sheinbaum, who is one of a handful Jewish heads of state, has come under increasing pressure from members of her leftist coalition to more forcefully condemn Israel’s assault on the small Palestinian enclave, where at least 65,000 people have died and more than half a million are trapped in famine.

Speaking to journalists at her daily news conference, Sheinbaum said Mexico stands “with the international community to stop this genocide in Gaza.”

Claudia Sheinbaum, 63, is the first Jewish leader of Mexico, a nation that is overwhelmingly Catholic.

Her comments came amid a meeting in New York of the United Nations General Assembly, where several countries, including France, Britain, Canada and Australia, have formally recognized Palestine as a state. Mexico has formally supported Palestinian statehood for years.

Sheinbaum, 63, is the first Jewish leader of Mexico, a nation that is overwhelmingly Catholic. She grew up in a secular household and rarely talks about her Jewish identity.

Sheinbaum, who entered politics from the world of leftist activism, has long supported the Palestinian cause. In 2009, she wrote a letter to Mexican newspaper La Jornada fiercely condemning Israel’s actions in an earlier war with Gaza, where 13 Israelis and more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians and militants had been killed.

Sheinbaum evoked the Holocaust, saying “many of my relatives … were exterminated in concentration camps.”

“I can only watch with horror the images of the Israeli bombing of Gaza,” she wrote. “Nothing justifies the murder of Palestinian civilians. Nothing, nothing, nothing, can justify the murder of a child.”

The latest conflict broke out in 2023 after Hamas fighters broke through a border fence encircling Gaza and killed more than 1,000 Israelis, most of them civilians.

Israel responded with a punishing assault on Gaza from air, land and sea, displacing nearly all of the strip’s 2 million people and damaging or destroying 90% of homes.

Since taking office last year, Sheinbaum has repeatedly called for a cease-fire and reiterated Mexico’s support for a two-state solution in the region, but until Monday she had refrained from categorizing what is unfolding in Gaza as a genocide.

That was possibly to avert conflict with the United States, which has given more foreign assistance to Israel than any other country globally in the decades since World War II, and which has supported the war on Gaza with billions of dollars in weapons and other military aid.

Sheinbaum, whose nation’s economy depends heavily on trade with the U.S., has spent much of her first year in office seeking to appease President Trump on the issues of security and migration in order to avoid the worst of his threatened tariffs on Mexican imports.

Her comments on Gaza come amid growing global consensus that Israel is committing genocide.

The world’s leading association of genocide scholars has declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The International Assn. of Genocide Scholars recently passed a resolution that says Israel’s conduct meets the legal definition as spelled out in the United Nations convention on genocide.

And this month, a U.N. commission of inquiry also found Israel has committed genocide.

An Israeli flag waves over debris in an area of the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel last month. Israel’s assault on the Palestinian enclave has killed at least 65,000 people.

(Maya Levin / Associated Press)

“Explicit statements by Israeli civilian and military authorities and the pattern of conduct of the Israeli security forces indicate that the genocidal acts were committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a group,” the commission wrote.

It added that under the Genocide Convention, other nations have an obligation to “prevent and punish the crime of genocide.”

Israeli officials dismissed the report as “baseless.”

After years of weathering the #AfterDark absurdity of the Pac-12 Conference, USC hoped moving to the Big Ten might help kick most of those bizarre midnight romps from its calendar.

Of course, geographic sense only matters so much in college football when there’s millions to be made from broadcast rights. Fox had the third choice this week among the networks and chose the best available game. That’s why USC and Michigan State will kick off at 8 p.m. Saturday. Which means, in East Lansing, Mich., the game should wrap somewhere around 2:30-3 a.m.

There were two such kickoffs in the Big Ten last season, and only one that included a team hopping three time zones to the west. USC won that 8 p.m. game against Rutgers in quarterback Jayden Maiava’s debut.

The Spartans arrived in L.A. on Thursday to give them plenty of time to acclimate. Jonathan Smith, who previously coached at Oregon State, understands what such a late kickoff requires. Still, you could understand why Michigan State might not be thrilled at the prospect of playing so late.

USC will have its own time-zone trouble to deal with next week, when it kicks off at 9 a.m. PDT in a road matchup with Illinois. This weekend, the bigger question for USC will be if the fans arrive well-rested — or at all.

“Both teams gotta deal with it,” coach Lincoln Riley said. “We gotta handle it well, our crowd needs to handle it well. At the end of the day, it’s a game, it’s being played, it’s being played in the Coliseum, and we expect to win and we expect to have a really good crowd behind us. We’re not going to make excuses about it.”

Here are four things to watch as USC takes on Michigan State:

Trojans take to the air

Few quarterbacks in college football have started the season at the breakneck pace that Jayden Maiava has managed through three weeks. Maiava is averaging more than 14 yards per attempt — the most of any quarterback in the nation by three full yards — while completing 68% of his passes, almost a 10% improvement from last season.

There’s no reason to think that trend won’t continue against Michigan State.

The Spartans rank 118th in the nation — and worst in the Big Ten — in pass defense, and that’s after playing teams like Youngstown State and Western Michigan. They haven’t seen anything yet like USC’s passing offense, and especially receiver Makai Lemon, who ranks behind only Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith in receiving yards (315-311) this season in the Big Ten.

Michigan State has been stingy this season against the run, so it could be tough to find much of a rhythm on the ground. That means a potential big game for Maiava.

Will USC’s pass rush keep rolling?

Through three games, USC’s rejuvenated pass rush actually leads the nation in sacks with 14. Michigan State, meanwhile, has allowed the second-most sacks of any Big Ten team this season.

That formula could mean a long afternoon for Spartan quarterback Aidan Chiles, who Riley said this week poses “the biggest challenge we’ve faced up to this point” at the position. The Long Beach native appears to be putting it all together as a passer, but it’s Chiles’ dual threat ability that could be especially dangerous against a front four that’s been aggressive early in the season..

He’s tied for the conference lead in rush attempts among quarterbacks at 10 per game.

“When you add in Chiles’ athleticism, that definitely adds an entirely new element,” Riley said. “So it’ll be a big focus point for us to be able to keep him in the pocket, to contain him in there.”

When under heavy pressure, Chiles has been much less effective. His completion percentage drops from 79% in a clean pocket to 48% in a pressured one.

Stud receiver status

Both teams could be without their most dynamic pass catcher on Saturday.

USC wideout Ja’Kobi Lane, last year’s Big Ten leader in touchdown receptions, is questionable after he sat out practice on Wednesday. Riley wouldn’t comment on whether he’d be available for the game.

Similarly, the status of Spartan receiver Nick Marsh was up in the air as of Friday. Marsh made the trip to L.A., in spite of dealing with a lower leg injury. He’s by far Michigan State’s most dynamic weapon on offense and his absence would be significant, if he’s unable to go.

Tanook Hines breakout game incoming?

With Lane hobbled, keep a close eye on freshman Tanook Hines, who pulled down a stunning acrobatic catch last Saturday at Purdue.

Riley raved about the freshman earlier this week.

“He goes after the ball with a unique mindset for a freshman,” Riley said. “You talk about a guy who really attacks the ball. He’s played physical. He’s a really good blocker. He’s done a good job of picking up our system. … He’s an all-ball guy. There’s no fluff to this guy. He’s an edgy, tough competitor.”

More than a dozen names are on the ballot, but analysts say the race is between President Lazarus Chakwera and his predecessor Peter Mutharika.

Polls have opened in Malawi with the incumbent president and his predecessor vying for a second chance to govern the largely poor southern African nation, battered by soaring costs and severe fuel shortages, in a closely and fiercely contested election where a run-off is widely expected.

Polls opened at 6:00am (04:00 GMT) on Tuesday with 17 names on the ballot.

Analysts say the race is between President Lazarus Chakwera, 70, and his predecessor, law professor Peter Mutharika, 85, both of whom have campaigned on improving the agriculture-dependent economy battered by a series of climate shocks, with inflation topping 27 percent.

Tuesday’s elections mark Malawi’s first national elections since the 2019 presidential vote was nullified and ordered to be redone in 2020 because of widespread irregularities.

However, both of the men have been accused of cronyism, corruption and economic mismanagement during their first presidential terms, leaving voters a choice between “two disappointments”, political commentator Chris Nhlane told the AFP news agency.

Though both drew large crowds to colourful final rallies at the weekend, many younger Malawians were reportedly uninspired.

With about 60 percent of the 7.2 million registered voters aged less than 35, activists have been mobilising to overcome apathy and get young voters to the polls.

“We are frustrated,” said youth activist Charles Chisambo, 34. “If people vote for Mutharika, it is just to have a change,” told AFP.

“We don’t need a leader, we need someone who can fix the economy.”

The cost of living in one of the world’s poorest countries has surged 75 percent in 12 months, according to reports citing the Centre for Social Concern, a nongovernmental organisation.

Two seasons of drought and a devastating cyclone in 2023 have compounded hardships in a country where about 70 percent of the 21 million population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank.

Chakwera, from the Malawi Congress Party that led the nation to independence from Britain in 1964, has pleaded for continuity to “finish what we started”, flaunting several infrastructure projects under way.

Days earlier, he announced a huge drop in the high cost of fertiliser, a major complaint across the largely agricultural country.

Lydia Sibale, 48, a hospital administrator who had been in a petrol queue in Lilongwe for an hour, told AFP she still had confidence in Chakwera. “The only challenge is the economic crisis, which is worldwide,” she said.

Chakwera was elected with about 59 percent of the vote in the 2020 rerun, but, five years later, there is some nostalgia for Mutharika’s “relatively better administration”, said analyst Mavuto Bamusi.

“Chakwera’s incumbency advantage has significantly been messed up by poor economic performance,” he said.

“I want to rescue this country,” Mutharika told a cheering rally of his Democratic Progressive Party in the second city of Blantyre, the heartland of the party that has promised a “return to proven leadership” and economic reform.

“I will vote for APM (Mutharika) because he knows how to manage the economy and has Malawians’ welfare at heart,” 31-year-old student Thula Jere told AFP.

With a winner requiring more than 50 percent of votes, a run-off within 60 days is likely.

Two assassination attempts on President Trump. The assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and the wounding of others. The shooting death of a top healthcare executive. The killing of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington. The storming of the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob intent on forcing the nation’s political leaders to their will.

And, on Wednesday, the fatal shooting of one of the nation’s most prominent conservative political activists — close Trump ally Charlie Kirk — as he spoke at a public event on a university campus.

If it wasn’t already clear from all those other incidents, Kirk’s killing put it in sharp relief: The U.S. is in a new era of political violence, one that is starker and more visceral than any other in decades — perhaps, experts said, since the fraught days of 1968, when two of the most prominent figures in the civil rights movement, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, were both assassinated in a matter of months.

“We’re very clearly in a moment where the temperature of our political discourse is extremely high,” said Ruth Braunstein, an associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University who has studied religion and the far right in modern politics. “Part of what we see when that happens are these outbursts of political violence — where people come to believe that violence is the only solution.”

While the exact motives of the person who shot Kirk are still unknown, Braunstein and other experts on political violence said the factors shaping the current moment are clear — and similar to those that shaped past periods of political violence.

Intense economic discomfort and inequity. Sharp divisions between political camps. Hyperbolic political rhetoric. Political leaders who lack civility and constantly work to demonize their opponents. A democratic system that many see as broken, and a hopelessness about where things are headed.

“There are these moments of great democratic despair, and we don’t think the political system is sufficiently responsive, sufficiently legitimate, sufficiently attentive, and that’s certainly going on in this particular moment,” said Jon Michaels, a UCLA law professor who teaches about the separation of powers and co-authored “Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy.”

“If we think there are no political solutions, there are no legal solutions, people are going to resort to forms of self help that are really, really deeply troubling.”

Michaels said the country has been here before, but also that he worries such cycles of violence are occurring faster today and with shorter breaks in between — that while “we’ve been bitterly divided” for years, those divisions have now “completely left the arena of ideas and debate and contestation, and become much more kinetic.”

Michaels said he is still shaken by all the “defenses or explanations or rationalizations” that swirled around the country after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City in December — which some people argued was somehow justified by their displeasure with UnitedHealthcare’s policies or frustration with the American healthcare system.

That the suspect, Luigi Mangione, would attract almost cult-like adoration in some circles seemed like an alarming shift in an already polarized nation, Michaels said.

“I understand it is not the beliefs of the typical person walking down the street, but it’s seeping into our culture slowly but surely,” he said — and in a way that makes him wonder, “Where are we going to be in four or five years?”

People across America were asking similar questions about Wednesday’s shooting, wondering in which direction it might thrust the nation’s political discourse in the days ahead.

How will Kirk’s many conservative fans — including legions of young people — respond? How will leaders, including Trump, react? Will there be a shared recognition that such violence does no good, or fresh attempts at retaliation and violence?

Leaders from both parties seemed interested in averting the latter. One after another, they denounced political violence and defended Kirk’s right — everyone’s right — to speak on politics in safety, regardless of whether their message is uplifting or odious.

Democrats were particularly effusive in their denunciations, with Gov. Gavin Newsom — a chief Trump antagonist — calling the shooting “disgusting, vile, and reprehensible.” Former President Obama also weighed in, writing, “We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.”

Many seemed dismissive of such messages. In the comments on Obama’s post, many blamed Obama and other Democrats for rhetoric demonizing Republicans — and Trump and his followers in particular — as Nazis or racists or fascists, suggesting that the violence against Kirk was a predictable outcome of such pitched condemnations.

Trump echoed those thoughts himself Wednesday night, blaming the “radical left” for disparaging Kirk and other conservatives and bringing on such violence.

Others seemed to celebrate Kirk’s killing or suggest it was justified in some way given his own hyperbolic remarks from the past. They dug up interviews where the conservative provocateur demonized those on the left, suggested liberal ideas constituted a threat to Western civilization, and even said that some gun violence in the country was “worth it” if it meant the freedom to bear arms.

Experts said it is important to contextualize this moment within American history, but with an awareness of the modern factors shaping it in unique ways. It’s also important to understand that there are ways to combat such violence from spreading, they said.

Peter Mancall, a history professor at USC, has delved into major moments of political violence in early American history, and said a lot of it stemmed from “some perception of grievance.”

The same appears to be true today, he said. “There are moments when people do things that they know are violating their own sense of right or wrong, and something has pushed them to it, “ he said. “The trick is figuring out what it is that made them snap.”

Braunstein said that the robust debate online Wednesday about the rhetoric of leaders was a legitimate one to have, because it has always been true that “the way our political leaders message about political violence — consistently, in public, to their followers and to those that don’t support them — really matters.”

If Americans and American political leaders truly want to know how we got here, she said, “part of the answer is the intensification of violent political rhetoric — and political rhetoric that casts the moment in terms of an emergency or catastrophe that requires extreme measures to address it.”

Democrats today are talking about the threats they believe Trump poses to democracy and the rule of law and to immigrants and LGBTQ+ people and others in extremely dire terms. Republicans — including Kirk — have used similarly charged rhetoric to suggest that Democrats and some of those same groups, especially immigrants, are a grave threat to average Americans.

“Charlie Kirk was one of many political figures who used that kind of discourse to mobilize people,” Braunstein said. “He’s not the only one, but he regularly spoke about the fact that we were in a moment where it was possible that we were going to see the decline of Western civilization, the end of American society as we know it. He used very strong us-vs.-them language.”

Particularly given the wave of recent violence, it will be important moving forward for politicians and other leaders to reanalyze how they speak about their political disagreements, Braunstein said.

That’s especially true of Trump, she said, because “one of the most dangerous things that can happen in a moment like this is for a political leader to call for violence in response to an act of violence,” and Trump has appeared to stoke violence in the past, including in the lead-up to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and during racist marches through Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.

Charlie Kirk speaks during a town hall meeting in March in Oconomowoc, Wis.

(Jeffrey Phelps / Associated Press)

Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the Centers for Violence Prevention at UC Davis, agreed messaging is key — not just for responding to political violence, but for preventing it.

Since 2022, Wintemute and his team have surveyed Americans on how they feel about political violence, including whether it is ever justified and, if so, whether they would personally get involved in it.

Throughout that time frame, a strong majority of Americans — about two-thirds — have said it is not justified, with about a third saying it was or could be.

An even smaller minority said they’d be willing to personally engage in such violence, Wintemute said. And many of those people said that they could be dissuaded from participating if their family members, friends, religious or political leaders urged them not to.

Wintemute said the data give him “room for hope and optimism,” because they show that “the vast majority of Americans reject political violence altogether.”

“So when somebody on a day like today asks, ‘Is this who we are?’ we know the answer,” he said. “The answer is, ‘No!’”

The job of all Americans now is to reject political violence “out loud over and over and over again,” Wintemute said, and to realize that, if they are deeply opposed to political policies or the Trump administration and “looking for a model of how to resist,” it isn’t the American Revolution but the civil rights movement.

“People did not paint over how terrible things were,” he said. “People said, ‘I will resist, but I will resist without violence. Violence may be done to me, I may die, but I will not use violence.’”

Charlie Kirk, the conservative millennial influencer who galvanized young Americans to support the GOP and was assassinated this week in Utah, was the most influential modern-day catalyst of shifting voting trends among fledgling voters, according to Republican and Democratic strategists.

Kirk founded the nonprofit Turning Point USA in 2012 at the age of 18, and it grew into a force that promoted conservative views on high school and college campuses across the nation.

“He found something among young people that none of us identified,” said Shawn Steel, a member of the Republican National Committee from Orange County who knew Kirk for nearly a decade and invited him to speak before the RNC’s conservative steering committee.

“He found an entire movement in America that conservatives were not even aware they could find. Not only that, he nurtured and created an entire new generation of conservative activists,” said Steel, the husband of former Rep. Michelle Steel. “His legacy will endure.”

The admiration for Kirk’s political organizing skills and mental acuity cut across political lines.

“Whether you agreed with him or not — and to be clear, I didn’t — he was one of the most brilliant political organizers of his generation, and probably generations before that,” said Stephanie Cutter, a veteran Democratic strategist who served as an advisor to Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris. “He could be controversial, but he struck a nerve with people who were likely disengaged in politics prior to Turning Point and built a powerful movement.”

In addition to appealing to young voters about the economic headwinds they faced as they sought to climb the career ladder and tried to buy a house, Kirk also espoused sharply conservative views.

Beyond espousing traditional conservative views — being anti-abortion, pro-gun rights and dubious of climate change — Kirk was critical of gay and transgender rights, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, saying last year that if he saw a Black airplane pilot, he hoped he was qualified. He was accused of being an anti-Semite because of repeated comments about the power of Jewish donors in the United States, and of being Islamophobic because of comments such as describing “large dedicated Islamic areas” as “a threat to America.”

Kirk, 31 and a father of two, died Wednesday after being shot in the neck while speaking at Utah Valley University. Kirk’s assassination was the latest instance of political violence in an increasingly politically polarized country.

In June, Democratic Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, while state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife survived a shooting at their home, roughly five miles away, the same day. In 2022, a home invader bludgeoned the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). In 2017, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot during a practice session for an annual congressional baseball game. In 2011, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) barely survived an assassination attempt as she met with constituents in a Tucson strip mall.

President Trump survived two assassination attempts in 2024 as he successfully sought reelection to the White House.

Kirk’s “mission was to bring young people into the political process, which he did better than anybody ever, to share his love of country and to spread the simple words of common sense on campuses nationwide,” Trump said Wednesday.

On Thursday, Trump told reporters on the White House’s South Lawn that Kirk was partly responsible for his victory in the 2024 presidential election and repeated that he would posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Turning Point USA, created a month before Kirk graduated from high school, became the new face of conservatism on college campuses and had chapters at more than 800 schools. Prominent conservatives heavily funded the group; in the fiscal year that ended in June of 2024, Turning Point reported $85 million in revenue.

Longtime GOP activist Jon Fleischman, the former executive director of the California Republican Party and the former chairman of the state’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom in the early 1990s, said Kirk was pivotal to Trump’s election.

“Charlie Kirk was probably the single most prominent and successful youth organizer in the Trump movement,” Fleischman said, adding that Kirk superseded any other GOP organizer he knew at increasing conservative prospects among young voters.

“As somebody who cut their teeth as a youth organizer, I have nothing but awe for the level of sophistication he brought to that field of work,” he said.

Support for Trump among young voters exponentially increased in the 2024 presidential election, according to data compiled by Tufts University. While President Biden had a 25-point edge over Trump among voters ages 18 to 29 in the 2020 election, Harris had a four-point advantage among this cohort last year.

“This last election was the best performance Republicans have had with the youth vote, particularly male voters, in 20 years, maybe even going back to the ’80s,” said Steve Deace, a conservative radio host in Iowa who had known Kirk for a decade.

He gave credit for that success partly to work Kirk did on the ground at colleges across the country, notably being willing to amicably debate with people who disagreed with his beliefs.

“Charlie was basically a Renaissance man who was comfortable in a lot of settings. He wasn’t hoity-toity,” he said.

Deace and others added that this moment could be a turning point for the nation’s democracy and the split between the left and the right.

“We’re going to have a real conversation about whether we can share a country or not. The answer may be we can’t,” Deace said. “We have to decide if we are capable of the fundamental differences between us being adjudicated at the ballot box…. We have to decide if we can share a country. If we truly want to, we’ll figure it out. If we don’t, we won’t. That’s the conversation that needs to happen.”

Bombastic conservative commentator Roger Stone went further, arguing that modern-day Democrats are a greater threat to the nation than terrorists, drug cartels and foreign spies.

“The rot is too deep to reverse our course with mere rhetoric,” Stone wrote to supporters. “Sept. 10, 2025 was the day we crossed the Rubicon, lost our innocence and realized only one path remains to ensure humanity’s survival. The time for American renewal is at hand, and the tree of liberty shall germinate in warp speed with Charlie Kirk serving as the martyr of our glorious refounding.”