HOUSTON — The mayor of Houston on Friday said the city would limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, heralding “a new model” of immigration enforcement after Democrats won power in Texas for the first time in decades.
Mayor John Whitmire said the city would go after immigrants “that pose a danger, not those that are going about their family business, work and education.”
A traffic incident “will not even … you write a citation or you warn them and they go about their way. No contact with (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) over nonviolent, non-jailable offenses. It reduces the fear and anxiety.”
Details of the change were to be spelled out in an executive order but the move by the nation’s fourth-largest city is one of the first steps to curb ICE’s powers since Tuesday’s election.
The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Houston has sparked protests after an ICE officer fatally shot a Mexican homebuilder this summer and another struck a man with a car.
A grand jury last week indicted ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors say Morales intentionally rammed his car into Miguel Parra Hernandez, whose leg was broken. ICE has asserted that Parra Hernandez ran in front of the vehicle, an account that prosecutors say is contradicted by video.
Oyekanmi writes for the Associated Press.
eonardo raises 2026 order outlook as nine-month profit increases 74%
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Sudan accuses Ethiopia of aiding RSF attacks, while Ethiopia claims Sudan backs Tigray rebels.
Published On 4 Nov 20264 Nov 2026
Ethiopia has ordered six Sudanese diplomats to leave the country within 48 hours and closed Sudan’s consulate in the border town of Asosa, according to Ethiopian and Sudanese officials.
The orders on Tuesday came as tensions between the countries rise, with Sudan accusing the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group of using Ethiopian territory to launch drone attacks on civilian infrastructure. Ethiopia claims Sudan backs rebels in its northern Tigray region.
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On Sunday, Sudan lodged a complaint against Ethiopia with both the United Nations Security Council and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, accusing Ethiopia of allowing the RSF to use its territory to launch deadly drone attacks against civilian infrastructure in Sudan.
“The Sudanese government remains committed to its right to defend its territory. Nevertheless, it is making every possible effort to avoid an open war with Ethiopia,” Amjad Farid, political and foreign affairs adviser for Sudan’s Transitional Sovereign Council, said.
A direct military confrontation with Addis Ababa would severely strain an already exhausted Sudanese military apparatus, which is still involved in intense battles with the RSF in the southeast of the country.
Sudan’s military has repeatedly accused Ethiopia of aiding the RSF, which it has been fighting in a civil war since April 2023. Addis Ababa denies it supports the RSF in Sudan’s civil war.
Meanwhile, Ethiopia has accused the Sudanese military of backing rebels linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a charge Khartoum denied.
Ethiopia also accused Egypt and Eritrea of supporting the Tigrayan rebels who launched an offensive against government forces in September. All three countries have rejected the accusations.
The latest expulsions of Sudanese diplomats follow Ethiopia’s decision to expel 10 Eritrean diplomats and close its embassy in Eritrea on October 1. Eritrea responded by severing diplomatic ties.
Ethiopia also expelled an Egyptian diplomat last month. For Egypt, its dispute with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam remains a major strategic concern that has long strained relations between the neighbours.
Halle Berry’s efforts against ex-husband Olivier Martinez’s domestic violence restraining order have proved successful, after two weeks of hearings in Los Angeles.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled to dissolve Martinez’s temporary restraining order against the Oscar winner during a closed hearing on Thursday and denied his request for a protective order, according to a minute order reviewed by The Times. Judge Shelley Kaufman granted Martinez’s restraining order earlier this month after he accused the actor of physically abusing their 13-year-old son Maceo. The court document states that Martinez “did not sustain the applicable burden of proof” in favor of his protective order request.
“We are extremely pleased that the Court has dissolved the [temporary restraining order],” Berry attorney Marina Beck said in a statement to The Times. “As we move forward, Halle is determined to continue to focus on the well-being and best interests of her family.”
While the decision might alleviate some legal tension for the film star, the Thursday filing also stated that Berry’s visitation time remains limited to Monday and Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and every other weekend Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. When Berry and Martinez (married from 2013 to 2015) settled their divorce in August 2023, they agreed to joint physical and legal custody of their son. Kaufman modified the terms of visitation, barring the child from staying overnight with Berry, when she granted Martinez’s temporary restraining order.
Martinez’s attorney Patrick Baghdaserians told The Times his client was “very happy” with the judge’s order keeping Berry’s limited visitation. Thursday’s decision was “really focused on the best interests of the minor child,” he said.
According to the filing, Kaufman decided “all other orders regarding custody and visitation remain in full force and effect including holidays and vacation.” Previous legal custody orders will also remain in full force and effect, Kaufman said.
Berry and her son must attend 12 sessions of “safe haven joint therapy” in six months after a therapist has been appointed, the order said. A hearing to appoint that therapist is scheduled for Nov. 4.
Thursday’s judgment came down weeks after Martinez raised scathing abuse allegations in a request for a domestic violence restraining order against Berry filed Oct. 1. Martinez’s request centered on an alleged Sept. 26 incident involving Berry and their son. Martinez alleged the actor “physically abused our son, Maceo, by jumping on him, putting her hands around his neck, and choking him,” according to court documents. His filing also included a declaration of Berry’s alleged history of abuse, and screenshots of his text conversation with Berry following the alleged September incident in which she appears to have written, “I feel terrible about what happened last night.”
Berry’s legal team downplayed Martinez’s restraining order and allegations, telling The Times in a statement, “to say this filing is entirely meritless and deliberately misleading would be an understatement.”
Her attorney added: “In a way, today’s filing is not entirely unexpected from an individual with a well-documented history of erratic, possessive and violent behavior. Fortunately, Halle is used to this kind of outrageous conduct from Mr. Martinez and, while she is deeply saddened, she will not allow it to deter her from fighting for Maceo’s best interests and providing him with the love and support he needs.”
In his request, Martinez also asked a judge to bar Berry from contacting and coming within 300 feet of him and their son. Additionally, Martinez requested that the judge order Berry to refrain from drinking during her agreed-upon parenting time with their son and that she undergo sobriety testing “before, during and after visitation” at intervals the court deems fit. He requested that the judge order Berry to pay legal fees, grant him sole legal and physical custody of the 13-year-old boy and do away entirely with Berry’s visitation time.
After the restraining order, several of Berry’s loved ones voiced their support for the actor. Nahla Aubry, the 18-year-old daughter Berry has kept largely out of the public eye, was among them. Aubry spoke out against her former stepfather Martinez and said of Berry, “I have never witnessed her act violently toward anyone.” She also pointed to a 2012 brawl between her father, Gabriel Aubry, and Martinez.
Berry’s fiancé, Van Hunt, and her attorneys also filed declarations vouching for the “Monster’s Ball” actor. Hunt accompanied Berry during the past weeks’ hearing. Berry and Martinez’s son also testified on the restraining order, despite Berry’s objections.
Times editorial library director Cary Schneider contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is escalating a criminal investigation over an Alaska Senate candidate who shares a name with the Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan, issuing a raft of new grand jury subpoenas, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Thursday.
Subpoenas seeking grand jury testimony or documents, along with records preservation demands, were issued after the New York Times reported that Democratic candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign appeared to be involved in recruiting Dan J. Sullivan Jr. as part an alleged effort to confuse voters in the highly competitive race.
More subpoenas were expected to be sent Thursday, according to a person briefed on the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing probe. Neither the recipients of the subpoenas nor the number of them were immediately clear.
The Justice Department for months has been looking into allegations that Dan J. Sullivan Jr. entered the race to siphon votes from the incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan.
The potential targets of the Justice Department’s investigation are unclear, but President Trump earlier this week called for the criminal prosecution of Peltola and her campaign.
The new subpoenas were confirmed by a person briefed on the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing probe.
Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche in a Fox News interview on Wednesday said he wouldn’t discuss any criminal investigations but accused Democrats of “cheating.”
“They are trying to take votes away from the incumbent, not by running an election, not by running on issues, but by putting up a person with the same name,” Blanche said.
The race is among a handful of Senate contests this year expected to determine control of the chamber. Trump had previously directed his Department of Justice to sue to block certification of the Senate race should Peltola defeat Sen. Sullivan.
Dan J. Sullivan has long denied he was running at Democrats’ behest and has said he had no contact with Peltola’s campaign. “Zero, none, zilch,” he said in June after announcing his run.
Separately, Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has ordered an investigation into Peltola, saying the newspaper’s reporting “reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates — including one with the same name as an incumbent U.S. Senator — to deliberately confuse voters and misdirect their votes.”
“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” Dunleavy added, noting that the reporting “substantially supports” earlier findings by the state’s elections board into the matter.
Trump on Thursday cast doubt on whether Peltola would be seated in the Senate even if she won the election. “Well, you’re going to have to see what happens,” the president told reporters on his way to a rally in South Carolina. “It’s hard to believe that she could even be allowed to run.”
Later, as he rallied for GOP Sen. Darline Graham, Trump said he felt Peltola “actually should be removed from the ballot and prosecuted.”
Peltola’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a message Thursday seeking comment on Dunleavy’s order. But during a campaign stop in Soldotna, Peltola, a former congresswoman, suggested the Times’ report was a “distraction” from issues such as Sen. Sullivan’s support of the war in Iran.
“This is just another distraction. It’s another diversion,” she said in a video posted online. “This is all stuff to sell newspapers. This is all stuff to get subscriptions.”
And the situation in Alaska isn’t that unusual. Political parties often support extra candidates on ballots to try to pull votes from their rivals. If state courts allow it, legal experts say, the federal government has no role challenging the results.
In Ohio’s Senate race, Republicans have been tied to an effort to boost a socialist on the ballot who would pull votes from the Democratic candidate challenging Sen. Jon Husted.
On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance didn’t go as far as Trump did in calling for Peltola to be prosecuted but said he supported a probe into possible election fraud.
“I mean, she is a person who, for months now, has pretended that she has had nothing to do with the fact that they have put a fraudulent person, a person explicitly designed to confuse Alaska voters, on the ballot,” Vance told reporters ahead of a campaign trip to Texas. “She is trying to steal a Senate seat from the voters of Alaska, and it’s disgraceful.”
Earlier this year, a top state elections official ruled Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired schoolteacher in the small fishing community of Petersburg, ineligible for the primary ballot, concluding that his declaration of candidacy was filed “with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.”
The case went to the Alaska Supreme Court, which ruled he was qualified to run. Alaskan voters will see “Dan S. Sullivan” identified as a “registered Republican” and “incumbent” on their ballots, while “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” will not have a party affiliation.
The New York Times reported that interviews, text messages and documents prepared for a potential lawsuit showed Peltola’s team aimed to coax candidates into the race, with the aim of splitting support for the GOP senator.
Asked about the reporting on Wednesday, Trump told journalists, “I think they should be prosecuted.” He earlier had posted on social media that “Peltola should suffer the Legal and Political consequences for what she has done.”
Kinnard writes for the Associated Press.
President Trump illegally usurped Gov. Gavin Newsom’s command of the California National Guard by ordering a surge troops deployed into Los Angeles and across the state amid protests against the White House’s mass deportation program last year, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday.
The two-one decision split the president’s own appointees to the court, with Judge Eric D. Miller of Seattle siding with Judge Jennifer Sung of Portland, a Biden pick, and Judge Mark J.Bennett of Honolulu dissenting.
“The order exceeded the President’s statutory authority and encroached on Congress’s calling forth power, in violation of the constitutional separation of powers,” Sung wrote for the majority, calling Trump’s order “unconstitutional.”
The decision also appeared to foreclose what California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta called “the Trump Administration’s transparent attempt” to preserve its right to call up California troops again under the same obscure statute — a novel legal maneuver administration lawyers said let the president seize command without invoking the far stronger Insurrection Act.
The 9th Circuit trio was among the first to weigh the law last June, after Trump federalized 4,000 National Guard soldiers in response to unrest over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.
California sued. US District Judge Charles R. Breyer quickly ruled to block the deployment. But Sung, Bennett and Miller stayed his order, finding that the California deployment could go forward under an obscure and virtually untested subsection of the law.
That decision set a “great level of deference” as the standard of review for deployments, meaning courts had very little power to test the president’s rationale for sending troops into American streets.
At the time, the decision represented one of the president’s most sweeping second-term victories: a plug-and-play legal mechanism to deploy soldiers against civilians in cities across the country.
In Portland that fall, another 9th Circuit panel stayed U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut’s order to stand down troops, using the first trio’s precedent.
The Portland decision — based in part on data the Department of Justice later admitted was false — prompted an extraordinary filing by Judge Jay Bybee, who all but pleaded with the court to rehear the case and interpret the law differently.
“There is no greater threat to the sovereignty of the states than an assertion of federal control over their domestic affairs,” Bybee wrote.
The issue quickly found its way to the Supreme Court, after a 7th Circuit panel found the president had provided “insufficient evidence” for deployment even under the 9th Circuit’s deference standard.
On Dec. 23, the Justices adopted a celebrated Georgetown scholar’s academic reading of the statute, saying it only allowed the president to commandeer national guard troops if the situation had already outmatched the standing army.
Federalized troops were ordered to leave Los Angeles in December.
On Friday, the 9th Circuit held that Trump’s claim that Los Angeles was in the grips of a rebellion last June “did not reflect a colorable assessment within a range of honest judgment.”
Using “the plain text of the statute,” and “dictionary definitions of the disputed term,” the majority found the president had not furnished evidence of a “a violent, armed, organized, open and avowed uprising against the government as a whole” — nor anything close to it.
Instead, Justice Department lawyers had relied on subsidiary definitions of “rebellion” that the 9th Circuit warned would allow the president to call up troops to quell almost any resistance, including peaceful protests.
“Resistance that is not violent, armed, organized, and against the government as a whole generally does not require a military response,” Sung wrote.
“Because Defendants have failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to legally execute the laws in California, they have not carried their burden to show that the President had the authority to federalize California’s National Guard,” Sung wrote.
Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) was so concerned about reelection in his heavily Democratic 45th District that he scheduled his wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii in the midst of the campaign.
Margolin was married Sept. 27 to Dr. Laurie M. Post, a Beverly Hills clinical psychologist and daughter of motion picture director Ted Post. The couple is honeymooning in Hawaii, according to Margolin.
The 35-year-old assemblyman, elected in 1982 and reelected in 1984 with more than 60% of the vote both times, said that his marriage and honeymoon a month before the election does not mean that he is overconfident.
‘Do What Is Necessary’
“The key point is that I am not taking anything for granted,” he said in an interview. “I will be back in time to do what is necessary to win reelection. If my opponents mount a campaign, I will be in a position to respond.”
Less than a month before the Nov. 4 election, Margolin could probably just as well spend the rest of the month in the islands.
Jana Olson, the Republican candidate for Margolin’s job, is not optimistic about her chances of defeating him. “The race probably is not winnable, based on the way the district is laid out,” said Olson, a 28-year-old Toluca Lake businesswoman, adding that she expects to raise only $5,000 for the campaign.
By contrast, Margolin has amassed $55,000, none of which is as yet earmarked specifically for his reelection.
Olson’s pessimism is based on, among other factors, the registration figures. Of the 151,846 voters registered as of Sept. 23, 88,630 (58.4%) are Democrats, compared to 45,509 (30%) Republicans.
Long a Democratic stronghold, the 45th Assembly District extends from Hancock Park on the south to Burbank on the north, and includes the Fairfax and Pico-Robertson areas and portions of West Hollywood, Hollywood, the Hollywood Hills, Los Feliz, Universal City, Studio City, Toluca Lake and North Hollywood.
The district has served as the launching pad for and seemingly private reserve of the so-called Berman-Waxman organization, a Democratic political alliance named after U.S. Reps. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles).
In 1968 Waxman was the first member of the organization to win the 45th District seat. He was followed by Herschel Rosenthal, now a state senator, who was succeeded by Margolin.
Margolin was an aide to both Waxman and Berman before winning his first election in 1982. He is a member of the organization and Waxman’s father works as an aide in Margolin’s office, which is just down the hall from Waxman’s district office in the Miracle Mile.
A Progressive Liberal
A self-described progressive Democrat, Margolin said it is not easy for someone of his political background (generally liberal on issues, including opposition to the death penalty) to score victories against the conservative Administration headed by Gov. George Deukmejian.
“Obviously, it is more difficult to get what you want,” he said, “but it is not impossible. I have managed to get results, although they are more modest because of the governor.”
Medi-Cal Improvement
He mentioned a bill, enacted into law, that established perinatal care for low-income women under Medi-Cal. “That is the only significant increase in Medi-Cal to get by the governor,” he said.
He also authored the so-called “bottle bill” that eventually became law and established deposits for beverage bottles and cans to encourage people to return them for recycling rather than discarding them as litter.
Olson said that she “leans to conservatism” and would bring a sense of fairness, sound business practices and help to the “truly needy” if she is elected.
“I oppose rent controls because they create an artificial market whereby rents are forcibly increased,” she said. “I favor free-market principles, whereas my opponent is very liberal on all the issues.”
Like Olson, the other two candidates in the race are not optimistic about their chances. Both Sylvia F. Kushner, the Peace and Freedom Party candidate, and Donald P. Meyer, the Libertarian Party candidate, said in interviews that they do not expect to win.
Kushner, 75, a human rights organizer, said she entered the race to support programs for low-income people and senior citizens and to register her opposition to the country’s foreign policy.
“We need a state jobs program, improved health care programs and state-supported housing for low-income people,” she said. “I have also been in the peace movement for many years.”
Meyer, 36, a courier with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Minnesota, said he would like to see government reduced to the smallest possible size.
“I am opposed to most taxes,” he said. “Government should exist to prevent people from taking your money, rather than assuming the role of taxer.”
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday turned down an appeal from President Trump and rejected his order to end hormone treatments and other gender-affirming care for transgender inmates in federal prisons.
The justices denied Trump’s appeal without comment, over dissents by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito.
The order leaves in a place a decision by a senior judge appointed by President Reagan who had blocked Trump’s new prison policy from taking effect.
The decision is a rare win for trans rights at the Supreme Court.
In June, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, said he would “not wade into the culture war being waged against transgender individuals” and ruled the Trump administration did not have evidence or good reasons for changing the long-standing policy for these inmates.
He cited the Administrative Procedure Act, which forbids abrupt and “arbitrary” changes in federal regulations.
Lamberth said the Bureau of Prisons’ new regulation would “arbitrarily deprive inmates of medications and other lifestyle accommodations that its own medical staff have deemed to be medically appropriate.” The evidence showed that “gender affirming care is the only effective treatment for gender dysphoria and severe harm flows from the cessation of such care,’’ he wrote.
Last month, the D.C. Circuit upheld his decision on a 2-1 vote, prompting the administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued on behalf of three inmates, said the court should not “overturn a three decades-long status quo.” Since 1992, the Bureau of Prisons has “treated people with gender dysphoria with hormone therapy,” their lawyers told the court.
In response to Trump’s order, the “BOP overrode its own medical providers’ clinical judgment and mandated the cessation of treatment for almost 1,000 people in its custody,” they said.
At issue in this latest legal dispute over trans rights was whether the government had evidence to justify a sharp change in its prison regulations.
In the past, the court has often deferred to prison officials on their handling and treatment of inmates.
“If deference to prison administrators means anything, it means that courts cannot second-guess their eminently reasonable choice to treat the mental-health condition of gender dysphoria with psychotherapy rather than physical, sex-rejecting interventions,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said in his appeal.
First Lady Melania Trump has championed the executive action as a ‘transformative moment’ for US women’s health.
Published On 19 Oct 202619 Oct 2026
United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that will establish a dedicated women’s health division within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as a White House task force focused on the subject.
During a signing ceremony in Washington on Monday, First Lady Melania Trump praised the initiative as setting “a new standard for women’s health in America”.
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“This is a transformative moment for women in America. Beginning today, we will change the reality of women’s health,” she said.
“Previous generations fought for women’s rights. Our generation will fight to discover the cures that will ensure a woman can live her life in health and to the fullest.”
The newly minted project, spearheaded by the first lady, requires the new health division to be established within 90 days.
It aims to accelerate scientific discoveries, expand clinical access for women’s health and modernise care throughout every stage of a woman’s life.
The new division at the NIH will not replace the agency’s Office of Research on Women’s Health but will have a broader mandate beyond research, according to the White House.
Melania Trump gestured to “super intelligence, advanced biotechnology and groundbreaking therapies” as tools that offer a “unique chance to reinvent women’s healthcare”.
The first lady’s office has identified “five pillars” for innovation in the field. One involves funding targeted research to develop cures for diseases that affect women, such as endometriosis.
Another calls for a quicker timeline for “promising therapeutics” to reach female patients.
“In 2026, medical advances can do more than just prolong life,” said Melania Trump. “It should give women the freedom to live life to its fullest, to pursue our dreams, experience love, discover, create, travel and lead.”
The White House task force will be co-chaired by the newly cancer-free White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, as well as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.
While Monday’s executive order mandates that the HHS must fund the administrative costs of the task force, the order itself does not include any specific funding targets or dollar amounts.
Experts have noted that Melania Trump has kept a relatively low profile during Trump’s second term.
Her public appearances have been fewer than during Trump’s first term, though she has stepped into the public spotlight to promote improvements to foster care and the role of technology, such as artificial intelligence in education.
During Trump’s first term, the first lady launched the “Be Best” campaign focused on child well-being, safe social media and countering opioid abuse.
But critics have questioned how effective Monday’s executive order might be, given the cuts Trump has made to the federal workforce since his second inauguration.
Thousands of employees have been laid off at the NIH alone, with Kaiser Health News reporting that its workforce is at its lowest level in decades.
The NIH was also given a deadline to slash spending by 35 percent across all of its divisions, amounting to a massive $2.6bn budget reduction.
In April 2025, the HHS drew widespread condemnation and a multi-state lawsuit after abruptly moving to terminate regional contracts for the Women’s Health Initiative, the nation’s largest longitudinal study on older women’s health at the time.
Critics warned that the move would jeopardise life-saving research on cardiovascular disease, cancer and osteoporotic fractures for senior women.
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday directed the federal government to bolster federal research into women’s health, a move pushed by his wife, first lady Melania Trump.
The Republican president signed an executive order that creates a new women’s health division at the National Institutes of Health and a White House task force to focus on the issue. That panel was set to hold its first meeting Monday after the Trumps held a Rose Garden signing ceremony.
“Beginning today we will change the reality of women’s health,” Melania Trump said. “Previous generations fought for women’s rights. Our generation will fight to discover the cures that will ensure a woman can live her life in health and to the fullest.”
The president, who spoke after his wife, said the order will “promote new research and really go after the understudied diseases affecting women.” The order is also intended to promote diagnostic technology and improve treatment.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who recently completed treatment for breast cancer, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will lead the White House task force. Donald Trump said the task force will coordinate with various federal agencies and programs. The order does not include specific funding goals.
The initiative comes after a series of meetings the first lady had with federal health officials.
The president called it a “historic action” and praised the first lady’s work.
“She’s accomplished so much,” he said before pivoting into unscripted commentary on White House renovations, including the patio stone that now covers what was once the Rose Garden lawn.
Shifting back to women’s health, the president expressed surprise that some of the order’s requirements had not already been imposed.
“Who the hell wouldn’t have a women’s health division?” he said, after recalling that he’d asked Melania Trump, “Are you sure they don’t have that?”
The executive order calls for targeting maternal health, mental health and endometriosis. It also mentions other health concerns and diseases, including Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, heart disease and stroke.
Melania Trump helped shape the order and the task force in consultation with physicians, White House officials, Kennedy and the Republican president. The initiative adds a new dimension to her policy portfolio as first lady.
In Donald Trump’s second term, the first lady has focused on improving foster care systems and expanding technology and artificial-intelligence access in education. In Trump’s first presidency, the first lady’s signature initiative, Be Best, focused on child well-being, safe social media use and reducing drug abuse.
The White House ceremony comes weeks before Nov. 3 elections and as Donald Trump’s job approval ratings have declined, including among women.
About 4 in 10 independent women supported Trump during the 2024 election against Democrat Kamala Harris and in the pre-presidency period, according to AP-NORC polls. That dropped to around a quarter in the opening months of this midterm election year, the period marked by Trump’s hard-line immigration crackdown in U.S. cities and the opening weeks of the Iran war.
Barrow writes for the Associated Press.
The four-year legal battle of a former member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. who sued the organization behind the Golden Globes over allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination and breach of contract, has ended.
Husam “Sam” Asi, a long-standing member of the HFPA who had been expelled from the group in 2022, filed to settle and dismiss his lawsuit with prejudice on Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Asi was not immediately available for comment.
“The HFPA is pleased to resolve its litigation with Dr. Asi on mutually agreeable terms and wishes Dr. Asi the best in his future endeavors,” said a spokesperson for the HFPA in a statement to The Times.
Asi sued the HFPA in May 2022, three months after the organization put him on probation following allegations of sexual misconduct that were first reported in the Wrap, prompting a third-party investigation into him.
At the time, he denied the misconduct allegations, calling them baseless. “Of course, I deny them, I deny them all, they are ludicrously absurd,” he told The Times then.
Asi represented the United Kingdom and the Middle East for the association from 2010 to 2022 and was a Palestinian journalist for the BBC Arabic service and a columnist for pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. In his lawsuit, he alleged that the HFPA was “weaponizing false sexual misconduct allegations” in retaliation for “his attempts to hold it accountable.”
According to his lawsuit, Asi said he had “been subjected to and endured a pattern of sexual harassment, hostile behavior, racial epithets and discrimination, and retaliatory conduct, none of which was ever investigated or handled according to HFPA’s bylaws and procedures.”
Asi further alleged that the organization issued a news release announcing that it was putting him on probation “without informing him or communicating with him and contrary to their own bylaws.”
The HFPA denied Asi’s claims.
A flurry of litigation ensued over the next four years.
In July 2022, the HFPA filed a special motion to strike nine of Asi’s 14 causes of action under California’s anti-SLAPP statute, arguing its statements to the press were protected activity.
In October 2023, a year after an L.A. County Superior Court judge denied the HFPA’s anti-SLAPP motion, an appeals court reversed much of that decision and granted the organization’s motion to strike seven of the 14 accusations Asi had filed against it.
The HFPA filed another motion to dismiss Asi’s complaint, based on his “failure to comply with the court’s orders,” in August, stating that it planned to file a motion “to deem Asi a vexatious litigant.”
According to the court docket, a contempt hearing was scheduled for November.
The organization has undergone a series of reforms and changes over the last five years in order to rehabilitate its image and revive its relationship with Hollywood.
NBC had dropped the broadcast of the 2022 Globes and studios including Netflix and WarnerMedia cut ties with the HFPA following a 2021 Los Angeles Times investigation that raised questions about the group’s ethical and financial lapses and revealed that not one of its then-87 members was Black.
Todd Boehly, the billionaire chairman of private equity firm Eldridge Industries, acquired the Golden Globes in 2023, dissolved the nonprofit HFPA and converted the awards show into a for-profit enterprise.
In July, original founding HFPA members filed an antitrust lawsuit in federal court against media mogul Jay Penske, Penske Media Corp., the Golden Globe Foundation and others, alleging the acquisition of the popular awards show was a “sham process tainted by fraud.” The plaintiffs are seeking damages of at least $150 million.
For over five decades, there have existed two types of movie lover: those who have been at least a little corrupted by Ken Russell’s 1971 iconoclasterpiece “The Devils” and those who haven’t seen it. With the release of a newly restored director’s cut, which premiered in Cannes this year to a reception that begs to be described as orgiastic, ejaculatory, lubricious or orgasmic — take your pick — the unjustly deprived inhabitants of the latter category get to be inducted into the former.
Some are going to hate it. Some may affect a “can’t see what all the fuss is about” attitude — that is their right, as it is mine to simply not believe them. But some, witnessing what critic Judith Crist once referred to as a “grand fiesta for sadists and perverts” will find that abandoning themselves to its wantonly grotesque, profane imagery will feel like the giddiest liberation. From what, exactly? The tyranny of tastefulness? The despotism of decency? Whatever it is, blasphemy loves company, so welcome, sickos!
Several honey-roastings beyond hammy and a hundred rows of tents beyond camp, “The Devils” tells the story of a real event: the 1634 heresy trial and execution of Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed), a libertine Catholic priest, who fell afoul of the religious and political establishments when defending the independence of the Protestant-friendly fortified city of Loudon in western France. The torrid tale involves an order of Ursuline nuns led by hunchbacked Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) who accuse Grandier of witchcraft, which provides wily Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) and peevish Louis XIII (Graham Armitage) with the pretext for suppressing dissent.
Aldous Huxley’s 1952 nonfiction account “The Devils of Loudon,” and John Whiting’s 1960 play “The Devils” both formed the source material for Russell’s screenplay, in the sense that he clearly read them, then flung them, along with the Latin bible, the Kama Sutra, a bit of Looney Tunes, a dose of swinging ’60s psychedelia and some of the more stomach-turning passages from the Marquis de Sade onto the pyre of his own unholy, lapsed-Catholic imagination.
The resulting film became infamous almost as soon as it was released and has never been readily available in the U.S, at least not in its full form. The 2026 cut (technically the first release from Clockwork, a distribution arm of the newly merged megacorp Skydance, which is hilarious) reinstates several minutes, including the full “Rape of Christ” sequence, in which a bevy of uninhibited and un-habited nuns writhe atop a statue of the crucified Christ, as well as the scene where Redgrave’s deranged, scoliotic Sister Jeanne apparently begins to masturbate on Grandier’s charred femur bone.
Both of these sequences have long been the Holy Grail for aficionados, but they are not the most impressive thing about this new version: That would be the immaculate re-conception of its visual splendor, which makes the movie dazzlingly sharp and new. The edges of Derek Jarman’s severe, anachronistically abstract sets are crisp and white again, the blood so very bloody and Oliver Reed’s eyes, which in the older, muddier versions look gray-brown, are suddenly so vivid they remind you that the hottest flames — hotter than the screaming orange conflagration that eventually consumes him — actually burn blue.
Hotness defines Reed’s Grandier beyond just his eyes and the smoky baritone in which he delivers his proclamations, prohibitions and occasional jokes. “Do you love the church?” asks Baron de Laubardemont (Dudley Sutton) as mad-eyed hipster Witchfinder Father Barre (Michael Gothard) drives another wedge between his mangled legs. “Not today,” grunts Grandier.
It’s hard to imagine any other actor being convincingly witty under torture and at other times quite silly (as when he fends off an attack using a stuffed crocodile that he happens to have just thrown out of a nearby window) while still radiating such charismatic cocksmanship that the local womenfolk invent sins just to confess to him. The mere mention of his name can send an entire hysteria of nuns into roiling spasms of sexual frenzy.
Vanessa Redgrave, center, in the restored “Ken Russell’s The Devils.”
(Warner Bros. Clockwork)
But to glimpse Reed here, at his most beautiful, is to think: yup, plausible. And yet his towering performance is characterized by restraint, even more so as the ghastly climax arrives, and we realize that all of Reed’s brutish sensuality, all of Russell’s sensationalism and all of “The Devils’” chicanery, buffoonery and primping, preening vanity have been in service of a furious message that is as deadly serious as its presentation is garish.
That message — a howl of righteous anger at state corruption and the perversion of religion to serve the nefarious agendas of cruel, power-mad men — is what makes “The Devils” sacrilegious yet not apostate. It does not scorn God or faith, but the misuse of both by petty manipulators. Sure, Russell has a little dirty fun in doing so — OK, a lot of dirty fun. However, charges of “The Devils” therefore being an inherently sexist piece of work also don’t really stand up, and not only because of Redgrave’s fearlessly creepy, giggly performance of outré erotic obsession.
In fact, there’s a whole feminine tragedy written in one single monologue: “Most of the nuns here are noblewomen who have embraced monastic life because there was not enough money at home to provide them with dowries,” crows Jeanne crookedly, “Or they were unmarriageable because ugly and a burden to the family.” Remembering that the naked nuns are not cloistered because of some vocational dedication to Christ but because of their troublesome uselessness to the patriarchal order, they become that much more sympathetic. These women are just doing what they must to survive another day as the most expendable members of a grossly unequal society; who among us should begrudge them an orgasm or two while they’re at it?
The debauchery is the point. Just as Grandier’s ultimate sacrifice is only made meaningful by his history of repeated, lascivious indulgence in the fleshier sins, so can “The Devils” be an unapologetically maximalist exhibition of carnal depravity that is also quite profoundly moral. And that its morality involves speaking truth to power and resisting authoritarian control makes it shockingly relevant right now. Writing in the Los Angeles Times in 1971, critic Charles Champlin ended his elegant pan with the observation that “you weep not for the evils and the ignorance of the past, but the cleverness and the sickness of the day.” To that, as to many of the negative responses, especially in our peculiarly sickly times, it is possible simply to respond, “Yes, isn’t that great?”
Imagining the movie lying dormant all these years just waiting for the right moment to be reborn, it becomes irresistible to conflate that small section of the public who have been avidly anticipating its return with Sister Jeanne, clamoring for the elusive object of her lust through a barred window. And to once more conflate Grandier — the repentant sinner immolated on the pyre of mass delusion, political machination and religious intolerance only to be rehabilitated as a charismatic martyr for liberty — with “The Devils” itself, as it finally rises from the bone-ash of its contemporary reception to shock, titillate, corrupt and invigorate anew. What you choose to do with its charred femur is between you and your God.
‘Ken Russell’s The Devils’
Rated: NC-17, for sexual content/graphic nudity
Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes
Playing: Opens Friday, Oct. 16 in limited release
Gargolas/iStock via Getty Images
An unusual blast of warm weather across the U.S. Midwest and Mid-Atlantic has coincided with the middle of PJM Interconnection’s fall maintenance season, which prompted the Department of Energy to issue an emergency order for the October 13-16 period
WASHINGTON — U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes on Monday ordered a 24-hour halt to tree-cutting at the East Potomac Golf Course, a historic D.C. golf course that has been part of President Donald Trump’s plans to remake the city.
Reyes issued the order following a tense three-hour hearing in which she blistered the government for having deceived her with its actions over the holiday weekend.
Reyes said the 24-hour temporary order could be extended to 14 days if necessary. It was limited to one day while the government tries to find a key Trump administration official to discuss why a massive tree-cutting at the park needed to occur over the holiday weekend, with little notification to plaintiffs in a lawsuit trying to halt renovation plans or the judge.
It’s the latest example of the erosion of trust between the government and the independent judiciary, as the Trump administration tries to steamroll scrutiny of its actions, from the White House ballroom to immigration enforcement.
The hearing started with a blistering 15-minute statement from Reyes, who has declined repeated motions from the plaintiffs to halt work by the administration out of concern that its strategy has seemed to be move ahead on projects despite court actions.
“I am thoroughly unamused right now,” Reyes said. “I do not know how I could have made it any plainer that I did not want what was to happen, to happen.” The judge added: “I have given the government every single benefit of the doubt that it would not do precisely what it has done.”
She told the government’s lawyers sharply: “I wanted you all to be better than you have been.”
The emergency hearing on a holiday expanded as the judge ordered the government to get various participants in the decision-making process into the hearing remotely.
Reyes plans to hold another hearing Tuesday and wants to hear from Greg Wischer, deputy chief of staff at the Interior Department. Wischer pushed for the work to be done urgently, according to testimony from Frank Lands, deputy director of operations for the National Park Service.
Fields writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.