politics

BIDDEFORD, Maine — A federal immigration agent fatally shot a motorist in Maine on Monday, the second time in a week that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have used deadly force.

Sen. Angus King, I-Me., said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told him the agent opened fire in Biddeford after the man tried to use his vehicle as a weapon against agents who were pursuing him for deportation.

“He was in a vehicle — pulled out in the vehicle, and the term the secretary used was “weaponized” the vehicle and was shot by an ICE agent,” King said.

Bystander video taken after the shooting showed agents trying to slow a white sedan that was going in circles in an intersection in Biddeford, a coastal city of about 23,000 people roughly 15 miles southwest of Portland. Images from the scene showed bullet holes in the vehicle’s windshield.

The agents involved in the shooting didn’t have body-worn cameras, King said, relaying information shared by Mullin. The FBI is leading the investigation, he said.

“The question is, what did he do with his vehicle,” King told reporters in Portland before boarding a flight to Washington. “Were officers threatened? Were the threats rising to the level that justified deadly force?

“That’s what this investigation is all about and I certainly intend to stay after it to do everything I can to be sure the investigation is as transparent and thorough as possible.”

In a statement, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., said the shooting “requires a full and impartial investigation of what happened.”

Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, a Democrat, said in social media post: “This morning a shooting occurred in Biddeford. A person was killed. ICE was involved,” Fecteau wrote. “State Police and the Department of Public Safety are now on scene to gather details and would expect the FBI to investigate as well.”

The man shot was a 26-year-old from Colombia, advocates say

The man who was shot was a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the U.S. and had a Social Security number, according to a joint statement from advocacy groups Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente!

After the shooting, the man’s family contacted the Immigrants’ Rights Coalition through a hotline, according to Mufalo Chitam, the organization’s executive director.

“It’s a young family and he was leaving to go to work,” Chitam told The Associated Press.

The family is not ready to identify the man or speak publicly about the shooting, Chitam added.

“We are grieving, we are furious, and we will not allow his death to be treated as routine or inevitable,” Chitam said. “How much more harm must our communities endure before those with the power to act acknowledge that this has gone too far?”

Protesters gather near the scene

ICE and the Maine Department of Public Safety didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Kristen Setera, an FBI spokesperson, said the FBI “responded to assist on-scene immediately following this morning’s shooting incident in Biddeford, Maine,” but she declined to comment further.

Dozens of anti-ICE demonstrators had gathered in Biddeford by Monday afternoon.

Amy Goodman, who is from nearby Wells, arrived with a sign that said “Stop Killing Us” and directed it toward police working at the scene.

“Sadly, it’s something we’re seeing a whole lot more often lately, and I’m mad about it,” said Goodman, who was wearing a shirt that said “ICE is best when crushed.”

Project Relief, an immigrant rights group, wrote in a social media post that one of its community members was killed “during an encounter with ICE in Biddeford” and that it was in contact with the person’s family. The group described the person as “young,” but didn’t provide an age or other identifying details.

“This was a young person whose life was cut short,” the group said, calling for justice and support for the family and community.

Biddeford Saco for Racial Justice planned a noon protest against ICE in Mechanics Park, which sits along the Saco River in downtown Biddeford.

Police blocked access to the shooting scene, which is in a neighborhood of mostly multifamily homes, churches and businesses near downtown. Several protesters stood nearby, with some holding signs condemning ICE’s presence in the community and state.

Gov. Janet Mills issued a statement saying she had been briefed on the fatal shooting “involving Federal law enforcement” and that the State Police are at the scene and working with the state attorney general’s office, chief medical examiner’s office and federal officials to determine what happened.

“I know that situations like these are alarming and frightening,” said Mills, a Democrat.

A recent uptick in Trump’s immigration crackdown

The fatal shooting in Maine was at least the ninth death from an encounter with federal immigration officials since the start of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and the second in a week, following the killing of a Houston man.

The reported shooting comes amid a newly intensified push by the Trump administration to carry out its mass deportations agenda. During the five-day period at the end of June, ICE arrested more than 10,000 people. The figures indicate that while the administration is no longer cracking down on individual cities, the arrests continue and are surging.

Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree, of Maine, said in a video posted on social media that she was driving to Portland to catch a flight to Washington when she learned of the reported shooting. She said she was seeking answers about the circumstances surrounding the shooting, including whether officers were wearing body cameras, adding, “More than anything else, I want to know, ‘Why are you in Maine?’”

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who is running for Senate, said on X that she would not speculate about the circumstances of the shooting but called for ICE to be removed from communities, writing, “It’s time to get ICE off our streets.”

Not Maine’s first brush with ICE

ICE had a significant presence in Maine earlier this year, which resulted in several large demonstrations against the agency.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, named the operation “Catch of the Day,” an apparent play on Maine’s seafood industry, just as it has done for other enforcement surges, like “Patriot” in Massachusetts, “Metro Surge” in Minnesota and “Midway Blitz” in Chicago.

Immigration officials said in late January that they had ceased “enhanced operations” in Maine after making hundreds of arrests. A Homeland Security spokesperson said at the time that some Maine arrests were of people “convicted of horrific crimes including aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and endangering the welfare of a child.” But court records painted a slightly different story: While some had felony convictions, others were detainees with unresolved immigration proceedings or who were arrested but never convicted of a crime.

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns received widespread condemnation last winter after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota. Last week, an ICE officer fatally shot 52-year-old Salgado Araujo, of Houston, after he was pursued by federal agents driving unmarked vehicles while he was taking his construction crew to their latest job site.

Whittle and Willingham write for the Associated Press. Willingham reported from Boston. AP reporter Jack Brook contributed to this report.

CHARLESTON, S.C. — President Trump said Monday he’s recommended that Lindsey Graham’s sister be named as his temporary replacement in the U.S. Senate.

Trump posted on social media that Gov. Henry McMaster should appoint Darline Graham Nordone to fulfill the rest of Graham’s term, which expires in January. Graham died over the weekend at age 71, and McMaster is expected to announce his pick later Monday.

After their parents died at a young age, Graham was left to raise his sister, whom he later adopted. The pair were very close, and Graham’s sister was by his side as he filed reelection paperwork earlier this year.

A special election will be held next month to pick a new Republican nominee in the general election for Graham’s seat. He had been seeking a fifth term this year.

The rare open Senate seat has ignited a scramble among South Carolina’s most ambitious conservatives, who have been eager to climb the political ladder.

Republicans just finished a sprawling and bruising contest to figure out their nominee for succeeding McMaster, who is wrapping up his second term. State Atty. Gen. Alan Wilson won the nomination, overcoming a field that included Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, Rep. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman — all of whom are now eyeing Graham’s seat following his death over the weekend.

How will a special primary work?

According to South Carolina law, a one-week filing period for a special primary election begins on the second Tuesday after the candidate’s death, or July 21.

The special primary election would be held on the second Tuesday after that filing period closes, or Aug. 11. Any necessary runoff would follow two weeks after that, or Aug. 25.

From that point, the new nominee would have just over two months to campaign for the general election on Nov. 3.

All of this is problematic according to federal law, which requires military and overseas ballots to go out 45 days before any federal election. For the general election primary, that would have been June 27. Federal Election Commission officials didn’t immediately return a message seeking clarity about the process.

Who could replace Graham?

Graham died on Saturday night, and a preliminary medical examiner report said he suffered a tear in his aorta, known as an aortic dissection.

In the hours after Graham’s death was announced, South Carolina’s Republican circles were already swirling with rumors about possible replacements. Given the proximity of November’s election, it’s likely that whomever McMaster appoints could be a top contender in the special primary, although it’s possible that McMaster’s choice will only serve as a temporary caretaker.

Evette, who has served nearly eight years alongside McMaster and received his endorsement in the governor’s race, is one possibility. She lost the June 23 runoff to Wilson.

A person with knowledge of Evette’s thinking but not authorized to discuss it publicly said that she was getting encouragement from across the state and feels she would have good chances in the special primary.

It’s unlikely that any House member would be appointed to finish Graham’s current term, since Republicans have such a slim majority in the chamber.

U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, a rumored replacement, said he assured Trump on Sunday that “my goal is to remain in the House to keep his two-vote majority for the American people!!!”

However, that doesn’t mean that House members won’t run for the next full term. A person with knowledge of Mace’s thinking but not authorized to speak about it publicly said she was considering the race. Mace is not running for reelection to the House.

But another Republican from the state, Rep. Russell Fry, could be a possibility. The two-term lawmaker represents the growing area around Myrtle Beach, and he’s been a top Trump ally.

A spokesman for businessman Mark Lynch, whom Graham defeated in the primary, didn’t return a message Sunday.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who lived in South Carolina before joining the Trump administration, has fielded calls about potentially replacing Graham but doesn’t have interest in the role, according to a person who insisted on anonymity to describe private conversations.

How does Graham’s death affect the general election?

No Democrat has won a Senate seat in South Carolina in decades, and Republicans in recent history typically take statewide seats by double digits. When he last ran in 2020, Graham defeated his Democratic opponent, Jaime Harrison, by a 10 percentage point margin.

So while history suggests that Graham was en route to a fifth term, Republicans are carefully surveying the landscape.

Charleston pediatrician Annie Andrews won the Democratic nomination last month and has raised more than $8 million in the race, and she had just under $3 million cash on hand at the end of May, according to federal filings. Graham had taken in $6 million, with just over $4 million on hand.

In a statement Sunday, Andrews called on South Carolinians to join her “in setting partisanship aside and offering gratitude” to Graham for his service.

Harrison, noting that he and Graham “had our share of political disagreements,” wrote on social media that he “always appreciated that even in our fiercest political battles, we could still share a conversation, a laugh, and a mutual respect for South Carolina and the institutions we were both privileged to serve.”

What happens to South Carolina’s Republican clout?

Graham leaves a major void in the Senate, where seniority can determine influence. He served more than two decades in the chamber, positioning himself to lead committees and set the agenda.

Sen. Tim Scott, South Carolina’s junior senator, has been in office only since 2012 — short by the state’s standards. Fritz Hollings served for 38 years, and Strom Thurmond was there for 47.

Scott, who co-chaired Graham’s reelection effort, described his former colleague as “irreplaceable.”

“America lost a statesman, but I lost a friend,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”

Kinnard writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed to this report.

July 13 (UPI) — Mexico announced the United States will begin to restore Mexican sugar’s access to its market, a measure that could significantly increase exports during the 2026-2027 season and boost income for about 170,000 sugarcane producers.

Mexico’s presidency said in a statement released Friday that the measure is the result of talks with U.S. authorities led by President Claudia Sheinbaum since November 2025.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated the country will need to import up to 1,152,000 tons of Mexican sugar during the 2026-2027 marketing year, an amount 512% higher than the estimate for the current marketing year, according to the statement.

The estimate appears in the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on July 10, the Mexican government said.

The presidency said the new conditions could generate a potential increase of up to 4.76 billion pesos, about $272 million, in the price paid by the sugar industry to about 170,000 Mexican sugarcane producers.

The talks that led to the announcement began in November 2025 during a visit by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to Sheinbaum, the statement said.

The Mexican government said the outcome demonstrates that “through dialogue it is possible to build important agreements” benefiting agricultural producers and food consumers in both countries.

Sugar trade between Mexico and the United States has been regulated since late 2014 under the so-called suspension agreements, according to background information published by the Latin American and Caribbean Economic System.

In June 2017, the governments of both countries reached an agreement in principle that reduced the share of refined Mexican sugar to 30% of total imports from the previous 53% limit, while increasing the share of raw sugar, the regional organization reported.

The U.S. sugar industry initially refused to support that agreement. Then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Mexico had accepted nearly all of the requests made by the industry, but U.S. producers still did not support the proposed terms.

U.S. refiners argued that high-quality Mexican raw sugar was reaching consumers directly instead of passing through their plants, according to the Latin American and Caribbean Economic System.

The dispute involved a coalition of U.S. sugarcane and sugar beet producers, as well as ASR Group, maker of Domino Sugar, and Imperial Sugar.

ASR Group and Imperial Sugar said at the time that the 2014 agreement did not provide sufficient supplies for their refining operations and had asked the U.S. government to end the pact, the regional organization reported.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and 11 other Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Monday to block Paramount Skydance’s proposed $111-billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — a last-ditch effort to derail a deal that would transform Hollywood.

Tech scion David Ellison’s proposed merger has been hurtling toward the finish line after securing approvals from the U.S. Justice Department and numerous foreign governments. President Trump, an ally of Ellison’s billionaire father Larry Ellison, favors the deal. He is eager for a big shakeup at CNN, which is currently controlled by Warner Bros.

David Ellison now faces his biggest challenge yet as he attempts to build a new entertainment behemoth.

A Paramount representative did not immediately comment.

The suit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, alleges that the proposed merger would violate the U.S. Clayton Act, a century-old antitrust law to prevent mergers that weaken competition and increase costs for consumers.

“Consolidation here not only leads to higher prices — it also leads to fewer opportunities for important stories to come to life, and fewer ways for audiences to encounter stories, ideas, and perspectives beyond their own experiences,” Bonta said in a statement.

“California and our sister states are fighting for free and fair markets, not rigged markets,” he said.

California and the 11 other states, including New York, New Jersey, Washington and Colorado, allege the merger would devastate the theatrical film business by combining two historic film studio rivals. The Ellison family would control such storied franchises as Harry Potter, Bugs Bunny, Batman, “Top Gun” and “Game of Thrones.”

The proposed purchase also would unite two prominent news organizations — CNN and CBS News.

The states have asked Paramount to delay the closing of its Warner Bros. takeover until the litigation can be resolved.

If Paramount refuses, Bonta said the coalition would seek a temporary restraining order asking a judge to hold up the merger, a move that would cause costly delays and escalate legal expenses for Paramount in their quest to finalize the deal.

Larry Ellison, co-founder of software giant Oracle, is bankrolling his son’s ambitions to acquire a second major entertainment company in less than a year. The Ellison family acquired control of CBS-owner Paramount in August and, at the time, David Ellison touted the move of Paramount’s headquarters from New York’s Times Square to Hollywood.

Now, Paramount is reportedly threatening to leave California in the face of Bonta’s legal action.

If the merger goes through, Paramount would own four streaming services, including Warner’s HBO Max and the dominant U.S. cable TV channel owner with HBO, TBS, HGTV, Animal Planet, Food Network, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.

The U.S. Justice Department last month approved the merger, saying the combination would likely bolster competition — not harm it. The agency’s decision had been expected because of Larry Ellison’s strong support of Trump.

In a show of confidence earlier this year, the Ellisons agreed to increase the payout to Warner investors should the regulatory approval process drag on. Those extra 25-cent-per-share payments begin with the October-December quarter, and would add more than $650 million in deal costs each quarter — giving David Ellison an increased incentive to quickly close the deal.

The proposed merger has sparked fears in Hollywood that it will bring thousands of job losses — similar to past consolidations, including Walt Disney Co.’s 2019 takeover of Fox entertainment properties.

Some theater owners, hard hit by the pandemic and production slowdowns, have expressed concerns the merger would lead to fewer films being made.

The new colossus would significantly dampen competition, Bonta and the other Democrat prosecutors argue. They pointed to the wide-release movie film distribution business, where Warner Bros. and Paramount control about 27% of the market.

After the merger just four companies — Paramount-Warner, Disney, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures — would control 86% of the films that were widely released, Bonta said.

Paramount has said the deal will boost competition — not hamper it. Ellison has promised to continue releasing 30 films a year with a combined Warner Bros.-Paramount studio, roughly the current output of the two studios.

Ellison also vowed to protect the HBO brand.

Another concern is the licensing of basic cable TV channels, including CNN and HGTV, to pay-TV providers such as Charter’s Spectrum, DirecTV and Google’s YouTube TV. Warner Bros. is the second largest cable channel owner and Paramount is the third largest. Together their channels would represent about 27% of the market.

The typical threshold for antitrust concerns is at least 30% marketshare.

More than 5,000 entertainment industry workers, including Jane Fonda, Ben Stiller, Bryan Cranston, Javier Bardem, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mark Ruffalo, signed an open letter calling on Bonta to block the merger.

Some have expressed concerns about marrying CNN and CBS News following months of turmoil at CBS News since David Ellison hired journalist Bari Weiss as CBS News editor in chief. Last month, Weiss orchestrated a dramatic shakeup at the iconic “60 Minutes” news program, with top executives and three well-known correspondents tossed out.

The Ellison family recently shed its movie theater chain, which it picked up as part of the Paramount acquisition, to clear the way for the Warner deal.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta is leading an effort by state attorneys general to block Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

The deal also faces opposition outside the U.S.
. The British culture minister in late June said she was weighing whether to intervene in the deal due to concerns about maintaining a competitive media market. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority also has opened an investigation into Paramount’s proposed merger.

In April, a federal judge in Sacramento granted a request from Bonta and seven other attorneys general for a preliminary injunction, which freezes the merger of Nexstar Media Group, which owns KTLA-TV Channel 5, and Tegna. The deal was designed to create the nation’s largest TV outlet group .

A larger group of state attorneys general also won a New York jury verdict against Live Nation Entertainment and its subsidiary Ticketmaster. Jurors found that Live Nation had illegally monopolized the live concert industry.

Bonta also has an ongoing case against Amazon for price fixing, which the company denies.

Still, legal experts say the states may face an uphill climb to detrail the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger because the arrival of Netflix, Amazon and Apple dramatically shifted the landscape.

The tech giants, which introduced consumer-friendly streaming options, have lessened the influence of traditional companies like Paramount and Warner Bros.

Paramount’s deal would mark the third time Warner has changed hands in the last decade.

AT&T bought the company in 2018 and then sold it to the smaller Discovery four years later. That deal left Warner Bros. burdened by debt, leading to deep cost cuts and setting the stage for the Ellison takeover.

July 13 (UPI) — Outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro has barred President-elect Abelardo De la Espriella from holding his inauguration at a military base, triggering an unprecedented institutional dispute that has clouded the transfer of power and underscored the country’s deep political polarization.

Citing his authority as commander-in-chief of the armed forces until Aug. 7, the leftist president blocked De la Espriella’s plan to take the oath of office before military personnel.

The incoming government had sought to use the ceremony to signal a sharp break with the outgoing administration’s security policies.

“Military and police barracks are under my command until the new president is sworn in and, therefore, until that moment I am the supreme commander of the military forces,” Petro wrote on X.

In the post, Petro reiterated his claim that the incoming government “was not elected by a majority of the people,” adding that Colombia’s next president must take office during a full session of Congress “under the laws of the republic and the Constitution.”

Petro’s decision comes amid an institutional crisis and a fractured transition following the June 21 runoff election. After De la Espriella’s victory, Petro alleged electoral fraud and refused to openly recognize the legitimacy of the president-elect.

In response, De la Espriella unilaterally suspended the administrative transition process, accusing Petro of planning a coup to remain in power. International organizations and electoral authorities have validated the election, but the official transfer of information remains frozen.

De la Espriella campaigned on a “tough-on-crime” platform and promised to restore “honor and dignity” to the armed forces, arguing that they had been mistreated and demoralized by the outgoing leftist government’s policies. His request to take the oath of office at a military installation was intended as a symbolic tribute to the troops.

The confrontation highlights Colombia’s sharp political shift after four years under the first leftist government in the country’s history.

According to local media, De la Espriella’s push to hold the congressional session outside the National Capitol also tests his strength against the legislative branch.

Because his party will not hold an absolute majority in the new Congress, which takes office July 20, Petro’s veto highlights the early institutional challenges and opposition the incoming government is likely to face.

SACRAMENTO — Recent news about literacy, education and general smarts in California and across the country has been somewhat distressing.

Along with claims that Americans are becoming illiterate, here in the Golden State there are worries that even the highest-achieving students aren’t prepared for our universities, and a study shows backsliding in civil rights protections in the vacuum created by federal changes under the Trump administration.

Despite being close to terming out of office, and also otherwise occupied with his ever-emerging presidential run, Gov. Gavin Newsom last week found time to announce a consequential, if controversial, move that has the potential to vastly improve educational outcomes for California kids: switching out an independent, voter-chosen leader for a hired gun.

In legislation signed last week, Newsom basically eviscerated the role of the elected superintendent of public instruction and instead shifted oversight of our K-12 schools to a newly created education commissioner — to be appointed by the governor.

The change, set to happen early next year, has been described as a “power grab” by some, and on its surface could be seen that way. The conservative candidate for state superintendent — Sonja Shaw, who says she is running to stop “political ideologies being shoved down everybody’s throats” — quickly claimed Newsom’s move was all about stopping her.

In reality, power grab or not, it’s the kind of reform we should all support — a long-overdue push to create accountability in a hot-mess system where there are too many people almost-sorta in charge of too many conflicting priorities.

‘A’ for accountability

It’s to Newsom’s credit that he’s setting up his successor to helm a system that at least has a chance at coherence, even if it raises the stakes for the next governor to deliver.

For years — decades, really — streamlining the governing structure of schools “has been proposed by Republicans and Democrats and bipartisan and nonpartisan commissions,” Linda Darling-Hammond told me. She’s a professor emeritus at Stanford University, an advisor to the governor and, by any measure, one of the preeminent education policy experts in the country.

“It’s not at all political. It is really about making the system run well,” she said. “The world is changing, the economy is changing. There’s just a need to be very efficient and effective in making policy and then implementing that policy.”

“Run well” is the key there. California operates the biggest and most diverse school system in the country. We’ve got roughly 10,000 regular schools (depending on how you count), including about 1,200 charter schools, around 1,00 school districts and 58 counties, each with their own slice of local control over those schools, according to the Department of Education.

That’s about 5.7 million students, nearly 300,000 teachers and $150 billion in costs (counting the new funding in the next budget).

To be kind, this system does not always run well. That’s in no small part because oversight and control are fragmented, overlapping and confusing. Currently, the State Board of Education sets policies, but the elected superintendent implements them through the Department of Education. Then control runs downhill to individual school districts, filtering through local school boards and even principals.

The board can’t control how the superintendent does their job, and vice versa. In fact, they don’t always agree, despite (or because of) the shotgun wedding nature of their relationship. At times, it can feel like they are working against each other. Never mind the complexities of local control.

This has been especially true in recent years as Newsom and the Legislature have pushed through big changes, such as the new prekindergarten grade, that have required massive coordination and effort. At the local level, administrators often complain there is little clarity on what is expected of them and, too often, outright conflict.

“The idea of having policy in one place and implementation in the other is really crazy,” Michael Kirst told me. He’s professor emeritus of education at Stanford and the longest-serving president of California’s State Board of Education, serving under both of Jerry Brown’s gubernatorial stints.

Newsom’s proposed system promises “much clearer, cleaner accountability,” Kirst said.

Expertise counts

It also has the benefit of putting an actual education expert in charge of schools. Because the superintendent role is elected, it has too often been coveted by career politicians looking for a landing spot. Its incumbent, Tony Thurmond, had a background in social work before running for various offices, but that kind of experience isn’t always the case. Neither is experience running a major organization with thousands of employees.

While Newsom’s plan leaves many, if not most, of the details to be ironed out later (a frustrating strategy he’s used more than once to keep the ball rolling on policy without having the drag of actual detail), it does promise to put in someone with the kind of high-level educational policy experience that should be required when managing this vast and important endeavor.

Kirst points out that this will be a “powerful position” charged with making sure our schools are indeed run well, and at the end of the day, it gives us one person to blame if they don’t: the governor.

So if schools don’t improve and our kids don’t learn, voters will know exactly who failed.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Trump ousts members of bipartisan election commission ahead of midterms
The California edge: The Work of Helping A.I. Destroy Work
The L.A. Times Special: In bed 23 at Adelanto ICE detention center, a terrified teenager missed his mom

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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Based on the words of President Trump, America is well on the way to becoming a “global superpower in manufacturing” — indeed, as he declared in a Father’s Day social media post, we are already experiencing the “BEST ECONOMY EVER.” (Capitalization’s his.)

Here’s what the government’s own statistics tell us: Manufacturing investment has crashed during his watch, with construction spending in the manufacturing sector down 26.4% from Trump’s inauguration through May, to $174.8 billion. That’s the lowest figure since February 2023, when the economy was in the midst of a post-pandemic recovery.

White House spokesman Kush Desai told me by email that “the last two jobs reports” showed manufacturing job growth. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a seasonally-adjusted decline of 2,000 manufacturing workers in May and a gain of 3,000 in June. But the June 2026 figure was 38,000 jobs, or about 0.3% below the level in June 2025, and 75,000 or about 0.6% below the level in January 2025, when Trump took office.

Desai said that “thanks to President Trump’s proven agenda of tariffs, deregulation, and tax cuts, American manufacturing will continue to rebound.”

There’s little mystery about what has come between Trump’s ambition and the real world. To a large extent it’s Trump’s economic program, particularly his tariff policies and, more recently, his war with Iran. Those have injected a level of uncertainty for corporate managements pondering whether to spend money on expansion that they haven’t had to confront in years.

The tariffs and the war have driven up manufacturers’ costs for raw materials and overseas shipping. The general economic atmosphere doesn’t help. U.S. gross domestic product growth came in at a 2.1% annualized rate in the first quarter of this year, but the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta expects it to have fallen to 1.3% in the second quarter ended June 30.

Meanwhile, the University of Michigan consumer confidence index reached 44.8 in May, its lowest level ever (though it improved to 49.5 in June). Wages have been rising modestly, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but those gains have been eaten up by higher prices, especially for gasoline and food.

To put things another way, the actual figures show the U.S. economy to be sputtering, and the “vibe economy” as measured by consumer confidence is doing even worse.

Now that Trump’s second term is about to reach its 18-month mark, let’s unpack the factors causing the discrepancy between his ambitions and claims, and the reality.

Trump declared economic victory just as his term was starting. On March 20, 2025, he proclaimed a “manufacturing renaissance” in the U.S. That was based on what he said were “trillions of dollars in new investments” he had “already secured in tech-based manufacturing.”

A White House statement said “the list of manufacturing wins is endless.” The provided list was a roster of announcements, not groundbreakings, much less completed ventures.

Business executives quite properly have taken these pledges with mounds of salt. “Announcements are what people say they’re going to do, but dollars spent is what’s actually happening,” Didi Caldwell, chief executive of a firm that helps companies find factory sites, told the Financial Times. “From where we’re standing, we are not seeing signs of a manufacturing renaissance in the U.S.”

Indeed, at least some of these announcements have had the flavor of performative efforts to satisfy Trump’s amour propre and extract government concessions.

For example, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook appeared with Trump at the White House in August to announce a $600-billion U.S. spending plan to take place over four years. That was a $100-billion increase over its previously-announced program.

More to the point, however, it incorporated spending with suppliers that Apple had been working with for years. Mentioned in the news announcement was a commitment to buy cover glass for iPhones from Corning. But Corning has been supplying that glass since the first iPhone appeared in 2007. In any case, the announcement appeared to secure a commitment from Trump to exempt Apple from tariffs imposed on imported chips.

Apple’s announcement Wednesday that it will spend $30 billion to buy chips from Broadcom was similarly ambiguous. The announcement didn’t provide details about the terms of the commitment or the timing of its expenditures. I asked Apple for details and whether the deal was related to a desire to remain in Trump’s favor, but didn’t hear back.

A similar phenomenon occurred during Trump’s first term; Trump had built much of his 2016 presidential campaign on a promise to increase manufacturing jobs in the United States. He blamed shrinkage in the manufacturing sector on trade agreements such as NAFTA and the policies of the Chinese, and took credit when an American manufacturer agreed to create or save jobs in the United States.

As I reported in 2019, many of those arrangements turned out to be exaggerated or bogus, or predated Trump’s claim. Some disappeared as soon as public attention turned elsewhere, or were outweighed by job cuts made elsewhere by the same companies.

Trump’s tariffs appear to have had a direct effect on manufacturing employment in the U.S. Since Trump’s inauguration, the manufacturing sector has shed about 75,000 jobs, or 0.6%. After April 2, 2025, when he announced global “liberation day” tariffs supposedly as a response to years of unfair treatment of American exports, the decline picked up pace, with a shrinkage of 68,000 manufacturing jobs.

The Supreme Court invalidated those tariffs in February, but others are still in place, including tariffs on imported steel and aluminum and on goods from China. Nor has he ceased threatening partners with trade wars. As recently as Tuesday, he said he would cut off all trade with Spain because of that country’s disagreement with him over its defense spending and its criticism of his Iran war.

As it happens, Spain is one of the few countries with which the U.S. has a trade surplus. That means that any cutoff, which trade experts think will be unlikely, would come at a cost to the U.S.

One might have hoped that Trump had learned a lesson from his first-term trade war with China. That conflict provoked a sharp contraction in the manufacturing economy, with the Institute for Supply Management’s purchasing managers index falling to 49.1 by mid-2019. (A reading below 50 signifies contraction.)

The ISM index began to recover toward the end of Trump’s term but fell again during the pandemic. Lately it has been falling again, to 53.3 in June from 54 in May.

The Iran war is another deadweight on domestic manufacturing. That’s partially the consequence of blockages of the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial thoroughfare not only for middle eastern oil, but also for such industrial inputs as fertilizer and aluminum. Cement, concrete, olive oil and spices are also among commodities produced in the region that use the strait as an outlet to reach the outside world.

Uncertainties in the region, tensions between the U.S. and China, and heightened concerns over the safety of shipping overall have driven up shipping costs between the far east and the U.S. The price of shipping a benchmark 40-foot container from China to the West Coast has nearly quadrupled to $6,687 now from about $1,700 just before the Iran war began, according to an index maintained by the cargo firm Freightos — even though shipping prices typically decline during this time of year.

There can be little doubt that the U.S. would benefit from an industrial policy — if it’s coherent. China supplanted America as the world’s leading exporter of manufactured goods in 2010, and the gap has only widened since then. China’s dominance may be hard to reverse, as it’s built on lower labor costs and transport infrastructure that enjoys focused government investment.

Tariffs could be a component of a new industrial policy, but Trump’s tariffs aren’t rationally geared to protecting domestic industries that need protection. They’re expressions of his whims, and as such they’re totally ineffective. If there are government investment policies targeting industries that need assistance, they’re not apparent to economists or industrialists.

Trump can talk as much as he likes about a golden age for U.S. manufacturing, but from his first term through this one, it’s nothing but talk. And talk, of course, is cheap.

A Seoul district court on Monday sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to two years in prison after finding him partially guilty of accepting illegal political funds in the form of free opinion polls from a self-proclaimed power broker.

The Seoul Central District Court convicted the jailed former president on charges of violating the Political Funds Act in a ruling that marked a departure from a separate trial where his wife was acquitted on the same charges.

Special counsel Min Joong-ki’s team earlier indicted Yoon on charges of colluding with his wife, former first lady Kim Keon Hee, and receiving 58 opinion polls worth about 270 million won (US$180,100) in total for free from the power broker, Myung Tae-kyun, between April 2021 and March 2022.

In its ruling, the court recognized that Yoon had received 14 opinion polls from Myung for free over the period, sentencing him to prison and ordering a forfeiture of 13.96 million won.

It recognized the special counsel team’s argument that Yoon had promised to support former Rep. Kim Young-sun’s nomination as a candidate for the conservative People Power Party in the parliamentary by-elections in June 2022 in exchange for the opinion polls.

“The defendant’s actions sowed distrust in politics and undermined the public trust in the development of democracy,” the court said. “A punishment commensurate with the wrongdoing is inevitable.”

The court also sentenced Myung to 18 months in prison on the charges.

The special counsel team had sought a four-year prison sentence for Yoon and a three-year term for Myung.

The ruling diverged from an appellate court’s acquittal of Yoon’s wife on charges of accepting free opinion polls from Myung in a separate trial.

In Kim’s acquittal in April, the Seoul High Court ruled the couple could not be seen as profiting off the opinion polls as Myung had provided them to other people as well. Min’s team has appealed that ruling.

After the ruling, Yoon’s lawyers vowed to appeal, saying the verdict was “difficult to understand” given the former first lady’s acquittal in her trial.

The special counsel team called the latest ruling “very meaningful,” noting the bench appeared to have closely considered the various evidence and arguments presented in its judgment.

It marked the latest conviction for Yoon, who has been standing multiple trials following his failed 2024 martial law bid. In February, Yoon was sentenced to life imprisonment for leading an insurrection through his short-lived imposition of martial law.

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Qatar’s Father Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani has died at the age of 74.

During his 18-year rule, Sheikh Hamad reshaped the energy-rich country’s domestic and global footprint.

When he assumed power in 1995, Qatar’s economy was limited in size and relied mainly on oil, while the vast gas wealth of the North Field site was still in the early stages of development.

In less than two decades, Qatar became the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the owner of one of the largest sovereign wealth funds and one of the countries with the highest per capita incomes.

This transformation was not just an oil or gas boom fuelled by rising energy prices, but an overhaul of the country’s economic model that was underpinned by a strategy of investing natural resource wealth in building productive assets, financial institutions, infrastructure and human capital.

The economic shift did not begin with Sheikh Hamad’s assumption of power. It was preceded by his appointment in 1989 as chairman of the Supreme Council for Planning, the body then responsible for formulating Qatar’s economic and social policies, which allowed him to oversee the preparation of development programmes before he came to power.

Here, we take a look at Sheikh Hamad’s economic legacy that helped transform Qatar from a small Gulf economy to a major and influential player in global energy and investment markets.

How gas changed Qatar’s economy

The development of the North Field, the world’s largest natural gas field, marked the true starting point of Qatar’s economic transformation.

The decision to accelerate investment and expand gas liquefaction projects during the second half of the 1990s changed the country’s position in the energy market and propelled it towards global leadership.

Qatar went from exporting its first LNG shipment in 1996 to becoming the world’s largest exporter of the commodity in fewer than 15 years.

By 2010, production capacity had risen to 77 million tons per year, according to data from QatarEnergy and the International Energy Agency.

The impact of this boom was not limited to increasing revenues; it also cemented Qatar’s position as a strategic partner in global energy security, especially for the economies of Asia and Europe.

Data from Qatar’s Amiri Diwan reflect the scale of the transformation witnessed by the energy sector, as the added value of the hydrocarbons sector rose from 11 billion Qatari riyals (about $3bn) to 403 billion riyals (about $110.4bn) during Sheikh Hamad’s rule.

Unprecedented economic growth

The gas boom was directly reflected in the performance of Qatar’s economy, which became one of the fastest-growing in the world during the first decade of the millennium.

World Bank data cited by Bloomberg showed Qatar’s economy grew more than twentyfold during Sheikh Hamad’s reign, with gross domestic product (GDP) rising from about $8bn in 1995 to about $199 billion in 2013.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the economy also recorded the highest growth rates in the world during that period, with real growth reaching 18 percent in 2006 before rising to 26.2 percent in 2011, as LNG production projects came onstream.

From gas boom to capital export

The economic transformation did not stop at increased production or revenues, but it also extended to the way wealth was managed.

As part of building a system to manage financial surpluses, Qatar in 2001 established the Supreme Council for Economic Affairs and Investment under the chairmanship of Sheikh Hamad.

The council was tasked with diversifying domestic and foreign investments “with the aim of developing Qatar’s financial reserves and diversifying sources of income”, according to the Qatari Amiri Diwan.

Four years later, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) was established to manage the financial surpluses generated from oil and gas exports.

Sheikh Hamad implemented a policy based on allocating part of the energy revenues to long-term investment, with the aim of building sustainable sources of income beyond natural resources.

QIA quickly became one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, acquiring stakes in companies such as Barclays and Volkswagen, as well as the United Kingdom-based Harrods department store in 2010.

Qatar’s investment policies expanded to cover almost every continent – from investments in football clubs, to global economic institutions, to London’s Shard skyscraper, among others.

The authority’s assets are now estimated at more than $500bn, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, making it one of the world’s largest government investors.

Qatari citizens’ rising living standards

The economic growth was reflected in welfare indicators.

According to the World Bank and the IMF, Qatar during Sheikh Hamad’s reign became one of the countries with the highest GDP per capita in the world.

It exceeded $90,000 in terms of purchasing power parity, as it expanded spending on housing, education and health and recorded a steep decline in unemployment rates to very low levels.

Experts believe the rise in income was not solely the result of higher energy prices, but also stemmed from expanded government investment and the creation of jobs linked to energy and infrastructure projects.

Investment in people

In parallel with energy investments, Qatar also moved towards building a knowledge-based economy.

One of the first development decisions after Sheikh Hamad assumed power was the establishment of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development in August 1995 to serve as the main arm for investment in education, scientific research and innovation.

The country later attracted international universities including Georgetown, Texas A&M and Carnegie Mellon, in a move seen as part of a strategy to prepare for the post-oil and gas phase.

The health sector also saw significant expansion through the development of Hamad Medical Corporation and the establishment of new hospitals and specialised centres as part of efforts to improve the quality of public services and keep pace with population growth.

At the same time, the country’s economic openness, coupled with a policy of strengthening its position as a financial and commercial hub in the region, turned the expanding capital of Doha into an increasingly important centre for international economic and investment conferences.

The World Cup and the economy of the future

Gas revenues during Sheikh Hamad’s rule were not limited to financing Qatar’s budget, but were also used for massive infrastructure investments.

That period saw the launch of projects such as Hamad International Airport, Hamad Port, Lusail City and modern road networks, alongside projects that later formed the foundation of the Doha Metro.

These works helped transform Doha from a small Gulf city into a global urban hub, providing the foundation that enabled Qatar to become the first Arab and Middle Eastern country to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022.

After the country won the right to host the major football tournament, its infrastructure and construction sector witnessed a major boom as the government approved huge spending plans exceeding $200bn in infrastructure, including roads, stadiums, railway lines and the construction of a new airport and port.

An ongoing economic legacy

In 2008, the state launched Qatar National Vision 2030, a strategic plan aimed at building a knowledge-based economy with the goal of ensuring continued prosperity for future generations.

This vision, which continues to serve as the governing framework for economic policies, reflects a direction that began under Sheikh Hamad based on transforming natural wealth into a foundation for sustainable development.

And if the development of the gas industry was the starting point for Qatar’s economic transformation, the most prominent legacy of Sheikh Hamad lies in transforming exceptional energy revenues into long-term development tools.

Through the establishment of institutions such as the Supreme Council for Economic Affairs and Investment and QIA, the launch of Qatar National Vision 2030 and investments in education and infrastructure, Qatar moved from an economy dependent on oil exports to a model that combines energy strength with global investment influence.

This blueprint still forms the basis of the state’s economic policies that are being pursued to this day by Sheikh Hamad’s son and successor, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

More than three dozen California legislators are calling for Gov. Gavin Newsom to exempt the state’s film and TV production incentive program from a recently approved cap on corporate tax credits, warning that without action it will be “significantly kneecapped.”

Though the state’s budget has already been approved, the legislators say a solution must be devised before the end of the year so that production companies do not lose the “full value of tax credits they earned in exchange for creating middle-class entertainment industry jobs,” according to a letter dated Friday and addressed to Newsom, State Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas.

“Tax credits earned for creating jobs in motion picture and television production are not the same as tax credits provided for research and development,” the letter states. The legislation “creates short-term budget savings by reneging on commitments made to the entertainment industry and the working families who depend upon it for their livelihoods.”

The letter comes shortly after Newsom signed his final state budget as California’s governor, a $351.7-billion spending plan that includes new limitations on corporate tax credits.

The budget includes a provision that restricts the maximum tax credit companies can claim in a given year to $5 million or 50% of a company’s tax state tax liability, whichever is greater.

Hollywood industry representatives had warned the governor’s office that the new restrictions could affect the state’s production incentive program, which was just bolstered last year to an annual cap of $750 million.

The film and TV industry in Southern California has struggled to rebound from the effects of the pandemic, the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023 and the exodus of production to other states and countries.

Members who voted for the budget bill had believed there was a carve-out for the film and TV tax credit program, said Assemblyman Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles), chair of the Assembly Democratic Caucus.

“I don’t think that anyone understood what this cap was, what it did and that it effectively kneecapped and reverses the progress that we made last year,” Zbur, who co-authored last year’s bill, said in an interview. “We need to have people understand that these changes, which I think people believed were minor, are really significant and will result in significant job loss if we don’t fix them.”

The new changes to the state’s film and TV tax credit program, which included expanded eligibility for additional shows and films, came after intense lobbying from studios and industry workers, who argued that more funding was necessary to lure production back from other states and countries.

Last week, the California Film Commission said the expanded tax credit program was set to deliver $6.6 billion in direct production spending in-state and more than 34,000 cast and crew jobs across the 170 total film and TV shows that received production incentives this year.

WASHINGTON — The sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, the veteran South Carolina Republican lawmaker, is scrambling the state’s U.S. Senate race as Republicans face a fast primary election to replace him on the ballot.

Graham, 71, who died Saturday after what the D.C. medical examiner called an aorta rupture, was seeking a fifth term in the Senate. Even as his political allies publicly mourned his loss, jockeying began over the vacancy, and President Trump signaled an intention to weigh in.

“I have somebody that I think would be great, but I don’t want to say it now because it’s just, you know, it’s too soon with Lindsey,” Trump, who ordered American flags to be lowered to half-staff in Graham’s honor, said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “I don’t want to even talk about anybody, but I do have somebody that I think is really good.”

Graham’s death eats into Republicans’ voting majority in the Senate, as does the absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has been hospitalized for weeks. It adds new uncertainty for the GOP at a time when the party is contending with Trump’s declining popularity among Americans and tensions have been high among Senate Republicans at odds with Trump.

Graham’s death creates the second major shakeup of a Senate race in a week, following Democratic candidate Graham Platner’s dropping out in Maine. Like that state’s Democrats, South Carolina Republicans now face a snap process for choosing a new nominee four months before the November midterms.

But whereas Maine Democrats are expected to decide Platner’s replacement at a convention in two weeks, South Carolina Republican voters will choose Graham’s replacement next month at the ballot box.

Whether the absence of an incumbent could tighten the race or force the GOP to funnel extra money into it remains to be seen. South Carolina is a reliably red state and Graham’s seat was not widely seen as competitive; the race has been rated as solidly Republican by Cook Political Report.

“I expect we’ll have a good November,” said Drew McKissick, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, but, he added: “You never take anything for granted, and that’s the last thing I would do in a situation like this.”

McKissick remembered Graham as dedicated to helping his party across levels and in sometimes little-noticed ways, assisting county organizations and down-ballot candidates.

“His time [was] spent on so many issues that were incredibly important to our party,” McKissick said. “He was a staunch pro-life senator with no equal.”

To replace him on the November ballot, the party must hold a special election, according to state election law. Republicans who want to vie for the seat will be able to file starting July 21, and the primary election will be Aug. 11, with a possible Aug. 25 runoff.

Graham was opposed by Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, who in a statement Sunday called the senator “a man of great faith who proudly served our nation.”

“I hope that South Carolinians will join me in setting partisanship aside and offering gratitude to Senator Lindsey Graham for his service to the great state of South Carolina,” Andrews wrote.

Because it is now an open seat, that changes the race, said Jay Parmley, executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party.

It will require the “rejiggering” of campaign strategy built around opposing Graham, but the Democrats’ big-picture approach of countering Trump and MAGA Republican values will stand regardless of who becomes the new nominee, Parmley said. He predicted the race would be competitive.

“This absolutely is in play,” Parmley said of the seat. “I think it was in play before … but now, I think it’s game on.”

Democrats must retain their seats in three competitive states and flip seats in at least four others. The party has largely focused on Maine, Alaska, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas for possible flips.

South Carolina remains a stretch for Democrats, so Graham’s death likely doesn’t change the party’s calculus, said Democratic strategist Andrew DeStefano.

“The math is still very clear and doable,” DeStefano said. “I would rather be Dems than Republicans right now, even with the Senate math and even playing in some tough states.”

Under South Carolina law, Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, can appoint someone to fill Graham’s vacant seat until January. In a statement, McMaster said Graham was “irreplaceable,” calling him “the fiercest of fighters for South Carolina and America.”

If a member of the South Carolina congressional delegation were to be appointed to the seat, it would erode the party’s slim margin in that chamber — something some House Republicans were reportedly seeking to avoid. At least one, Rep. Joe Wilson, said Sunday he had told Trump would not seek the seat in order to preserve the House majority.

In Kentucky, McConnell is set to retire at the end of this term, and a race is underway to fill his vacant seat in November. If he were to die before the new session of Congress begins in January, it could set off a legal fight over an untested Kentucky state law requiring a special election to fill a Senate vacancy, but would not affect the November race.

On Sunday, McConnell said in a statement he had been hospitalized after a fall. Little information had been released from his office about his condition, causing questions to swirl. “Just tell us what’s going on,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, urged Saturday on X.

In Maine, Democrats last week announced a July 25 convention where 601 county delegates and state party members will select a nominee to replace Platner.

“The circumstances are different between the two states,” said David Farmer, a Maine-based Democratic strategist, “but it’s certainly shaping up to be a strange midterm election with enormous stakes for the country.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, the prominent Republican from South Carolina who served in the Senate for more than two decades, died after suffering an aortic dissection, his office said Sunday.

Graham died unexpectedly Saturday night, his office announced, shortly after he had returned to Washington after a trip to Ukraine.

In a statement, his spokesperson said a preliminary report from the medical examiner for the District of Columbia found that the 71-year-old senator died of aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. With aortic dissection, a tear occurs in the wall of the aorta.

According to the Mayo Clinic, aortic dissection is not very common, and its symptoms may be mistakenly attributed to other health conditions. It usually affects men in their 60s and 70s. If the blood from the dissection travels outside the artery, the condition is often fatal.

A former military lawyer who reached the rank of colonel in the Air Force, Graham ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. Initially a cutting, vocal critic of then-candidate Donald Trump during the election, Graham became one of the president’s staunchest allies after Trump’s election.

“Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known, is dead!” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth, on Sunday. “He was always working, and was a true American Patriot.”

Graham was known as a C student in high school, and was the first member of his family to attend college. His mother died while he attended the University of South Carolina, and his father died of a heart attack during Graham’s first semester of law school.

He served as a judge advocate in the Air Force, eventually becoming the chief prosecutor for the Air Force in Europe.

He was first elected to serve as senator for South Carolina in November 2002.

In a social media post on X, Vice President JD Vance described Graham as one of the most powerful lawmakers, and recalled an incident where he and Graham got into a shouting match over a funding bill for the war in Ukraine.

Later the same day, he wrote in the post, Graham was advocating for rail legislation that Vance supported.

“That was Lindsey Graham,” he wrote. “He fought like hell for the things he believed in, and he was just as willing to go to bat for you when it counted.”

Graham had been scheduled to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday to discuss his trip to Ukraine. Instead, President Trump appeared in his stead, where he said the senator had been “like a member of the family.”

Trump called into several Sunday news programs to discuss Graham’s death, and said he had spoken to Graham on Saturday evening.

Trump told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the South Carolina senator had said he was “tired.”

As rights advocates decry the detention of United States Congressman Ro Khanna by armed Israeli settlers, Israel and its allies are launching political attacks to discredit the progressive legislator.

Israeli officials have already ruled out apologising to Khanna or holding the settlers accountable. Instead, several have gone on the offensive against the congressman.

Khanna said he was travelling to a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday when armed settlers stopped his van for 20 minutes. The settlers were later joined by Israeli soldiers who continued to block the road.

The whole ordeal lasted more than an hour, according to Khanna, and was only resolved after he reached out to the US embassy in Israel.

On Sunday, Michael Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the US, appeared to blame Khanna for the mistreatment he received, saying that the California Democrat had failed to coordinate his trip with the Israeli government.

“He decided to coordinate his trip not with Israel, but with Palestinian activists and with J Street,” Leiter told CBS News, referencing a Jewish nonprofit.

Leiter went on to claim, without evidence, that Khanna may have waited to release his video of Wednesday’s incident to distract from his support for politician Graham Platner.

Platner dropped out of the Senate race in Maine on Friday amid sexual misconduct allegations. Khanna published his video on Saturday.

“Maybe this had more something to do with his support of Graham Platner beforehand and the difficulties he had with that, and trying to shift the focus to something else. Perhaps? I’m asking a question,” Leiter said.

Khanna is not backing down, however. He said he did inform Israel of his travel and has called for the arrest of settlers who held up his van.

Khanna responds

The Israeli military has disputed Khanna’s version of the events, saying that it “dispersed” civilians who were blocking the road. But in an appearance on Sunday with NBC News, Khanna refuted that account.

“The [Israeli military] is lying,” Khanna said.

“What happened was unprecedented. They had violent settlers detain American citizens, including an American government official. You had these settlers brandishing M4s [rifles], kicking the tyres of our van, laughing at us, mocking at us, videotaping us.”

He added that the Israeli military participated in blocking their path and detaining them.

“How dare they mistreat people with an American passport that way?” Khanna said.

Pro-Israel politicians, however, claimed that Khanna provoked his own detention by carrying out a political stunt.

“Sounds like another plea for publicity. Anything to get in front of the camera. Why else would you be there? It isn’t your country,” Republican Congressman Greg Murphy wrote in a social media post.

Critics were quick to point out that Murphy’s first trip as part of a congressional delegation was to Israel.

Khanna also responded to Murphy, urging him to be on “Team America” and join the push for any settlers and soldiers who mistreat US citizens to face consequences.

“I would be calling for that if you had been in our shoes,” Khanna said.

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson was among those who came to Khanna’s defence. He criticised Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, for failing to speak out about the incident.

“An American member of congress is threatened by foreign terrorists carrying American rifles, backed by a foreign military paid for by American taxpayers, and the US ambassador to that country says not a word in defense of his own countryman,” Carlson wrote on the social media platform X.

“It’s too much, too insulting and humiliating to America.”

Still, many pro-Israel figures in the US expressed scepticism about Khanna’s experience. David Friedman, a former US envoy to Israel, accused Khanna of “self-victimization”.

Friedman argued, without evidence, that Khanna had purposely entered a restricted zone to provoke the incident.

“As was entirely predictable, he was asked a few questions and sent on his way. But he got the photo op and all he needed for his pre-conceived false narrative,” Friedman said in a social media post. “Well played Ro.”

Several other pro-Israel advocates echoed that take.

Attacks on US citizens

Israel’s military and settler presence in the occupied West Bank is illegal under international law.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in 2024 that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory, including Gaza, is unlawful.

“Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law,” the top United Nations tribunal said.

Israeli settlers – often under the protection of the Israeli military – regularly attack Palestinian communities in the West Bank, ransacking farms and property and assaulting people who come in their way. That includes Americans.

One year ago, for instance, Israeli settlers beat 20-year-old US citizen Sayfollah Musallet to death.

Three weeks later, another American citizen, a father of five from Chicago named Khamis Ayyad, was also killed in a settler attack.

No suspects have been charged with crimes after the two attacks.

Despite well-documented abuses against US citizens, Israel was added to the US visa waiver programme in 2023, allowing Israelis to travel visa-free to the US.

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US military aid in history, having received more than $21bn in the last two years alone.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Mitch McConnell on Sunday revealed for the first time that a fall led to his hospitalization, breaking the silence about his condition after weeks of speculation about the Kentucky Republican’s health.

McConnell, 84, said in a statement that he has undergone a battery of tests as doctors try to determine what led to his fall. He explained the long silence about his condition by saying that “folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older.”

“Even in the public eye, I feel that same instinct — I can’t help it,” he said.

McConnell said he is now in a rehabilitation center and will not be returning to the Senate “quite yet.” He said he continues to work with his staff on Senate business in the meantime.

The statement included a smiling picture of the senator with his wife, Elaine Chao, a tacit response to speculation online that McConnell had died or was incapacitated.

It comes following his hospitalization on June 14. McConnell’s office for weeks provided little information, saying only that he was “receiving excellent care” and recovering.

As his hospital stay grew longer, speculation about his condition became so intense that Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, took the extraordinary step of asking that McConnell update the public about his health in a “transparent manner.”

A Democratic senator alleges that whistleblowers have detailed several problems stemming from rushed or improper reconstruction of the Kennedy Center, adding a new layer to the travails of the arts complex after President Trump tried to seize control of it and its name.

Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said in a release Saturday that he had received a whistleblower disclosure from the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit whistleblower protection group, alleging that “the Center rushed a series of renovations driven by the President’s aesthetic whims and his desire to star in a series of televised events in December.”

“The Center’s subservience to the President’s desires and its corner-cutting contracting practices have resulted in steel columns that are rusting through fresh paint, a reflecting pool that may have to be torn out and rebuilt, and a brand-new bathroom floor torn out over an offending tile color,” Whitehouse said. “This is waste, and it treats a national memorial to President Kennedy as if it were a private renovation project.”

Whitehouse released a letter he wrote to the Kennedy Center’s executive director, Matt Floca, seeking answers by July 23. He said the whistleblower report included “firsthand accounts of multiple former Center project managers, supported by contemporaneous documents and photographs.” He also included an 83-page appendix full of internal center documents, emails and photos of apparently shoddy construction.

The allegations in the letter include that the center rushed work before it was authorized by Congress because it wanted it to be complete for Trump to accept the so-called FIFA Peace Prize that the soccer federation awarded him.

In doing so, the letter alleges, the center didn’t follow required contracting guidelines and wasted money replacing a bathroom because the president didn’t like the color and inking no-bid contracts. One $8-million contract to replace the concert hall’s floor went to a firm with no experience in concert halls, Whitehouse contended.

The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump seized control of the arts and culture venue named for President Kennedy at the beginning of his second term. Trump ousted the center’s leadership and replaced it with a Board of Trustees that named him chairman and added his name to the building.

Democrats sued to remove it, and a federal judge ruled that Trump’s name must come off the venue, noting that only Congress has authority to rename it. Trump also tried to close the center for two years, only to be ordered by the court to keep it open.

Many artists have boycotted the venue in protest of the president’s actions.

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of President Trump’s closest allies in Congress who traveled the globe to advocate for a more aggressive U.S. foreign policy, has died after a “brief and sudden illness,” his office said. He was 71.

The statement posted on social media late Saturday did not provide any additional details about the South Carolina Republican, a former Air Force lawyer, and said his family “appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period.”

“Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known, is dead!” Trump posted on social media early Sunday. “He was always working, and was a true American Patriot. Lindsey will be greatly missed!!! DETAILS AND ARRANGEMENTS TO FOLLOW. So sad!”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said, “My heart is heavy this morning to learn of the passing of my friend and colleague.”

Thune described Graham as “a strong advocate for the United States and a strong ally to freedom-loving countries across the globe. He believed in the might of America to achieve good in the world and dedicated his life to advancing that cause.”

Graham was one of the most influential figures in Washington on foreign policy, and he advised Trump on matters such as Iran and Russia. The senator had just returned from Ukraine and announced an agreement Friday with the Trump administration to move forward on a package of Russia sanctions. He had been scheduled to appear Sunday morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

As chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Graham had a central role during Trump’s second term as Republicans pushed major legislation on party-line votes while holding a narrow 53-47 majority in the chamber.

Under South Carolina law, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster will appoint a temporary replacement for Graham, who was seeking a fifth term in November.

Graham was close with Trump

Graham, who was elected to the Senate in 2002 after serving in the House, long promoted a policy of robust U.S. military interventionism and strong national defense that in later years would put him at odds with the growing isolationist wing of the Republican Party.

More recently, Graham had become well-known for his close ties with Trump, whom the senator briefly ran against for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016.

Their relationship would begin on a rough note, with Graham calling the New York businessman and TV reality show figure “unfit for office.” Graham also used profanity to describe him after Trump made disparaging comments about Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, Graham’s best friend in the Senate and a Vietnam War veteran. McCain and Graham, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent from Connecticut, were known as the “Three Amigos” and frequently traveled together to push their hawkish foreign policy views around the globe.

During a campaign rally in South Carolina, Trump read out Graham’s personal cellphone number and continued to belittle him throughout the 2016 campaign as Graham made it clear he would not support Trump even though he was the GOP nominee.

But Graham shifted significantly once Trump won the White House. He emerged as one of Trump’s top allies — speaking with him frequently and becoming a regular presence on the golf course alongside the president — even as McCain remained a critic and foe of Trump.

In a 2018 interview with the Associated Press, Graham explained his pivot by saying McCain taught him that the country must move forward after elections and that meant “you have an obligation” to help the president. McCain ran twice for the White House.

“And I’ve tried to be helpful where I could because I think he needs all the help he can get,” Graham said of Trump. “You can be a better critic when people understand that you’re trying to help them be successful.”

Graham appeared to break with Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, saying before the delayed congressional vote to certify Joe Biden’s election victory over Trump, “Count me out. Enough is enough.” But the senator returned to the fold and remained close with the president during his second term.

Foreign policy was a focus

Graham had been in Ukraine to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said that the senator visited his country 10 times during the years since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“Lindsey was a true defender of freedom and the values that make our world safer,” Zelensky said.

Graham’s travels made him a familiar face to dozens of world leaders.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mourned Graham’s death, calling him “a great friend of Israel” and “a cherished friend of mine.”

Netanyahu said Graham understood that the security of Israel and the United States was inseparable and devoted his life to defending America, strengthening the U.S.-Israel alliance and standing up for the free world.

“Israel has lost one of its greatest friends. America has lost a great patriot. I have lost a beloved friend,” Netanyahu said.

Chairman of key committees

As chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Graham oversaw a process called reconciliation, a Senate procedure that allowed Republicans to pass significant policies such as last year’s tax law without the threat of a Democratic filibuster.

He had previously led the Judiciary Committee when Republicans confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in late 2020, and was in line to regain that gavel if the party kept control of the Senate after this year’s midterm elections.

“In 2027, I’ll be Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee once again,” Graham posted on X on June 30. “And I’ll wake up every single day with one goal: confirming as many conservative judges as possible.”

Graham was a key player in the Senate’s efforts to craft a massive immigration overhaul in 2013 as a member of a bipartisan group that wrote a sweeping measure that would have altered virtually every part of U.S. immigration law. It passed the Senate with 68 votes but was never taken up by the House, so it did not become law.

But Graham’s views on immigration, particularly an endorsement of a path to citizenship for people in the U.S. without legal status, put him at odds with some Republican factions.

He sometimes faced primary challenges in his home state of South Carolina, but he won the nomination outright in June.

The senator addressed the president in his victory speech last month, saying, “I’m going to help you change this world and change this country.”

Special election

Graham won 57% of the GOP vote in the primary and was up against Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, and several minor party and independent candidates in November.

After McMaster appoints a replacement, South Carolina law requires a special primary for voters to select a new nominee within weeks of a vacancy. The general election winner will take office January, beginning a full six-year term.

McMaster’s office did not immediately return messages seeking comment on who would take Graham’s seat or when the machinations for the primary would begin. State party officials said early Sunday they would release more information when they could.

The sparse statement by Graham’s office, which did not explain his death, comes during a stretch of concern about a lack of transparency about lawmakers’ health.

Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-N.J.) was absent without explanation for months before returning to Congress and disclosing that he had been diagnosed with depression.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former longtime Republican leader, was hospitalized weeks ago for undisclosed health reasons.

McMaster said in a statement that Graham was “irreplaceable.”

“The fiercest of fighters for South Carolina and America — and a loyal and steadfast friend,” McMaster said. He added: “We shall not see his likes again.”

Graham was not married and did not have children. His closest living relative is sister Darline Graham Nordone, whom he helped raise after both their parents died.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Christopher Megerian in Washington, Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C., Brian P. D. Hannon in Bangkok and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

The US president suggests he is considering a potential candidate to fill the late senator’s seat in South Carolina.

The disadvantage that the Republican majority in the United States Senate has suffered from the death of Lindsey Graham is likely to be short-lived.

Currently, Republicans hold 52 seats in the 100-member chamber, after losing Graham to a “brief and sudden illness” late on Saturday, according to his office.

But South Carolina’s election laws give Republican Governor Henry McMaster the authority to immediately appoint a replacement to fill Graham’s seat.

“In case of a vacancy in the office of United States Senator from death, resignation or otherwise, the Governor may fill the place by appointment,” the law says.

Graham’s term was set to expire in January. He was running for re-election in the November midterm vote.

A primary will be held next month to determine who will take his place as the Republican nominee. The first round of voting is set for August 11, and if no candidate wins a majority of the votes, a run-off would take place on August 25.

McMaster has released a brief statement mourning Graham, without mentioning plans to replace him. The law does not set a timeline for the appointment, but the governor is likely to fill the seat quickly to ensure that President Donald Trump’s agenda is not disrupted in the Senate.

Graham was one of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill.

In his statement, McMaster called the late senator the “fiercest of fighters for South Carolina and America and a loyal and steadfast friend”.

“We grieve with Darline, his family and his devoted staff,” McMaster said, referring to Graham’s sister. “May God hold him gently in the palm of his hand. We shall not see his likes again.”

It is so far unclear who McMaster might select as Graham’s replacement. The governor might appoint a placeholder candidate who would fill the seat without seeking a full term in November’s midterms, to avoid influencing the election process.

He may also opt for someone who would run for the full term, which would give his pick the incumbent status that would boost their profile — and therefore, their chances at the ballot box.

Other governors have faced similar dilemmas. In California, for instance, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom pursued both paths in separate appointments in recent years.

When Kamala Harris vacated her Senate seat to serve as US vice president in 2021, Newsom picked state legislator Alex Padilla to replace her. Padilla won a special election for the seat the following year.

But in 2023, when Senator Dianne Feinstein died, Newsom appointed political operative Laphonza Butler, who did not end up running in the 2024 election.

In Graham’s case, however, the White House might weigh in. Trump has suggested that he is considering backing a candidate to replace the senator.

“I have somebody that I think would be great, but I don’t want to say it now because it’s just too soon with Lindsey,” the US president told NBC News.

“I don’t want to even talk about anybody, but I do have somebody that I think is really good.”

South Carolina, a southern state on the US’s Atlantic coast, has been a Republican stronghold for decades. Trump won the state by nearly 18 percentage points in 2024.

But polls have suggested that Graham was not cruising to re-election. His Democratic opponent, paediatrician Annie Andrews, was closing the gap on him.

A June poll by Impact Research showed the late senator leading by only three percent.

Graham had become a polorising figure even within the Republican base, due to his staunch devotion to Israel and support for the US-Israeli war on Iran.

On Sunday, Andrews praised Graham without mentioning elections or politics.

“I hope that South Carolinians will join me in setting partisanship aside and offering gratitude to Senator Lindsey Graham for his service to the great state of South Carolina,” she said in a statement.

WASHINGTON — After the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, Sen. Lindsey Graham said he had finally had enough of the man who was championed by the mob that stormed the pillar of American democracy: President Trump.

“Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh, my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he’s been a consequential president,” an emotional Graham said once authorities cleared the rioters and allowed senators to reclaim their chamber to certify Joe Biden’s election win. “All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.”

It wasn’t, of course.

Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died unexpectedly Saturday night at 71, realized that his party’s future was inextricably tied to Trump and quickly reverted back to being a staunch defender. The shift made what had once seemed like a final rupture into just another twist in the topsy-turvy relationship between the powerful senator and the president who came to dominate their party.

“Can we move forward without President Trump? The answer is no,” Graham said in May 2021, just four months after the Jan. 6 insurrection. “I’ve determined we can’t grow without him.”

Trump, who called Graham a “true American Patriot” in a social media post Sunday, appeared shocked by the senator’s sudden death.

“I just can’t believe it,” the president said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “He was like a member of the family.”

Graham often advised Trump on foreign affairs, particularly on matters pertaining to Israel, Ukraine and Iran. He was a frequent visitor at the White House.

“At the end of a particularly thrilling and rollicking meeting in the Oval Office, Lindsey Graham turned to the room and said: ‘I’ve never had this much fun in my life,’” Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller wrote on X. He said such gatherings “were filled with camaraderie, kinship and uproarious laughter.”

Trump recalled that during his last conversation with Graham, he told his friend, “We’ll see you soon, come over anytime you want.”

‘Unfit for office’

The senator and Trump first clashed while competing for the 2016 presidential nomination.

Graham described Trump as “unfit for office,” and was angered when Trump denigrated the military service of Graham’s close friend Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Trump, while talking about McCain’s years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said, “I like people that weren’t captured.”

Trump got mad enough at Graham to release the senator’s personal cellphone number. That prompted a viral video in which the senator dramatically destroyed a series of flip phones. He smashed one with a meat cleaver and another with a golf club, then used lighter fluid, a blender and toaster oven to pulverize others before tossing one off the roof.

Graham eventually likened Trump’s winning the nomination to “being shot in the head” and said he refused to vote for Trump that November. But the pair later bonded over golf and what Graham described as a mutual and irreverent sense of humor.

Trump and Graham began so frequently hitting the links together that the senator started seeing it as something of a career builder, leaning heavily into the kind of over-the-top flattery Trump relishes. In 2017, Graham joked that Trump had beaten him “like a drum” on the course, even worse than in the presidential primary.

“Their true friendship could only be seen behind the curtain,” Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said on ABC’s “This Week.” Scott said that relationship was forged as political adversaries but was strengthened by spending 100-plus hours golfing together.

During Trump’s first term, Graham helped advance Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court, lent credibility to the White House’s legislative agenda and even at times became part of the president’s inner circle. He frequently said Trump was maturing in politics and growing on the job.

Graham’s political divergence with McCain, who died in 2018, was never more clear than in 2017, when McCain voted against a Trump-backed plan to overturn the Affordable Care Act, former President Obama’s signature healthcare law. The effort had been co-sponsored by Graham.

A short-lived split, an alliance reignited

In his floor speech after the Capitol attack, Graham said that “he’d never been so humiliated and embarrassed for the country.” But the break with Trump ended quickly.

Weeks later, Trump invited Graham for golf and dinner at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, reigniting their alliance. During Trump’s 2024 campaign, Graham was a frequent Trump surrogate on television, promoting U.S. military strength that he said would advance “America first” policies.

Graham never shed his more traditional Republican foreign policy views, including outspoken support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion — even as Trump frequently wavered in supporting Kyiv, sometimes castigating Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and praising Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The senator was also a leading voice pushing the White House to more fully embrace Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and take a harder line against Iran, and he was a leading advocate of Trump’s ongoing war with Iran. After the U.S. and Israel attacked in February, Graham staunchly defended the action and working to counter many among Trump’s “Make America Great Again” base who supported the president’s longtime assertions that “America first” meant avoiding such military conflicts.

“To those who say Iran is stronger now than before, that is an insult to the American military and it is delusional thinking because the Iranian economy is in shambles,” Graham posted on social media June 19.

Graham’s admiration for Trump went far beyond Iran. When the senator clinched the South Carolina Republican primary last month, he suggested the president was just short of a deity.

“I want to start with a bunch of thank yous. I want to thank the big guy, God. Trump comes later,” Graham laughed. “Mr. President, you’re not far behind God, but we’re gonna start with him.”

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

The leader known as Qatar’s father emir was able to redefine his nation’s position on the political map of the Middle East.

From a tiny state struggling to survive to a country punching above its weight with soft power, wealth and influence felt in the region and beyond, Qatar and its success story were propelled by late Father Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.

Sheikh Hamad, who died on Sunday aged 74, was able to redefine Qatar’s position on the political map of the Middle East, moving it from the margins of the Gulf to regional prominence in the political, diplomatic, national and humanitarian fields, relying on his vision that transcended the country’s modest size and narrow borders.

Those who knew Sheikh Hamad said he was aware, even before assuming power in 1995, of his country’s lack of traditional elements of strength and understood the need to invest in soft power.

From the early days of his reign, he implemented enormous projects in education, health, scientific research and sports in addition to the vital energy sector, transforming his country’s wealth into international diplomatic weight and not merely a source of prosperity for his own people. The former emir also understood the power of media when he created Al Jazeera, one of the most successful news channels in the Arab world, which later transformed into a powerful media network.

Qatari diplomacy led fruitful mediations in complex disputes and conflicts across a vast geographic expanse from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Horn of Africa.

Doha brought together leaders in Lebanon in 2008, concluding a historic agreement that quelled the risk of another civil war. Qatar sponsored negotiations that lasted 30 months between the Sudanese parties over the Darfur crisis, culminating in 2011 in the signing of the Doha Document for Peace.

Qatar continued to sponsor dialogue between Hamas and Fatah, the two sides in the Palestinian divide, and settled disputes in Yemen and Somalia and between Eritrea and Djibouti in a rare diplomatic model.

During the Father Emir’s era, Qatar established the Al Udeid military base, which hosts the largest United States military force in the Middle East. Not far from it, Doha hosted the leadership of Hamas, a stance that prompted some residents to describe Sheikh Hamad as the “emir of the resistance” when he visited southern Lebanon in 2010 to inspect villages that had been rebuilt with Qatari funding after the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war.

He was the first Arab leader to visit the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the Israeli war in 2012, announcing from there the launch of housing and reconstruction projects with a grant worth $400m.

Qatar’s mediation role remained shielded from affecting its political principles, especially the Palestinian cause, considering it had to maintain open communication channels with all parties to the conflicts, including Israel.

The Gulf state supported the “Arab Spring” revolutions, and it adopted policies that explicitly backed the right of the region’s peoples to freedom and dignified lives.

The Qatari project during the father emir’s era was not focused solely on economic modernisation but also built an independent political identity capable of regional and international influence.

Sheikh Hamad left his post in 2013 after his vision for Qatar became a reality, and during the era of his son and successor, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, he witnessed Qatar’s transformation into an energy and mediation power.

The largest single piece of federal housing legislation to come out of Congress in at least a generation is is now law.

It happened in the middle of night early Saturday, without fanfare — or even President Trump’s signature — and it might be a while before many Californians notice its effects.

That’s because the bill, though politically monumental — both chambers approved it overwhelmingly — doesn’t do one big thing. Instead, it does a lot of little things. Individually, none of the bill’s 56 regulatory tweaks, pilot programs and low-cost loans and grants are likely to move the needle on the nation’s housing affordability woes, nor on California’s specifically.

Supporters hope that collectively, they just might.

Even the law’s path to enactment had an under-the-radar quality to it. The White House abruptly canceled a planned signing ceremony late last month, with Trump vowing not to sign the bill until Congress first passed his restrictive national voter ID proposal. That bill has stalled out in the Senate.

Still, Trump did not veto the housing package, so it automatically became law Saturday just after midnight, as per the Constitution.

For all that, supporters say this is still a big deal: a major, bipartisan piece of legislation aimed at boosting housing construction from a hyperpartisan legislative body that doesn’t typically touch the topic.

“We don’t often gather to celebrate federal housing legislation,” Stephen Russell, president of the San Diego Housing Federation, said at a news conference Thursday. “I think the last time Congress passed anything of this magnitude, many of you were not even alive. … It is almost a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

That’s thanks in part to a growing caucus of lawmakers aligned with the “Yes In My Backyard” movement that helped push the bill into law. Many hail from California, a state that has had more experience than most contending with wildly unaffordable housing. But the cause of making housing more affordable, and attributing high housing costs to a lack of sufficient supply, has become a national and bipartisan concern. Case in point: The bill originated as a joint proposal by Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), an ardent conservative, and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), among the most liberal members of the Senate.

While the constituent parts of the bill are relatively narrow and none is specifically focused on California, experts highlight a few provisions that could leave a notable imprint on the state.

Build now (or else)

For high-cost cities that don’t build much housing, as in much of urban California, the federal bill includes a novel carrot and stick.

This portion of the bill would change the Community Development Block Grant, one of the largest sources of federal funding for affordable housing and local economic development. Pricey cities — defined through a variety of data benchmarks like median prices and vacancy rates — with a track record of under-building that continue to see below-average housing construction will have their grant funds cut by 10%. The savings will go to their municipal counterparts that build at a faster clip.

That’s likely to have “real implications for cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco that have traditionally lagged behind” in adding housing supply, said David Garcia, the deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

The city of Los Angeles received $48.4 million in its last award from the block grant program in 2024, according to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data. San Francisco received $18.9 million.

Those numbers aren’t enough to make or break the budget of either city.

“I think this will be a small nudge,” said Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action, in an email. “Which taken across the country could still have a good impact! Little nudges add up.”

More dramatic than the number of dollars involved may be the precedent the policy sets. Even in California, where the state government has aggressively incentivized cities to plan for more housing development and penalized those that don’t, lawmakers have never punished municipalities for failing to actually grow — an outcome that may not always be under a city government’s control.

Such an idea would have been “inconceivable in previous congresses,” Garcia said.

Despite that, the provision hasn’t engendered much public opposition from local government groups yet. In an online summary, Michael Wallace, a lobbyist with the National League of Cities, applauded the overall housing bill as an example of the federal government “choosing partnership with local governments over preemptions.” He singled out other provisions of the bill that provide expanded flexibility for Community Development Block Grant spending, new incentive programs for adding supply, and new supports for local urban planning.

Chassis change

Manufactured housing units are often colloquially referred to as mobile homes, but they don’t tend to move around much. Built on assembly lines and shipped to where they’re needed, these naturally affordable houses — the likes of which lawmakers across California and the United States claim we need in droves — are often placed upon permanent foundations where a fewer than 1 in 10 ever move again.

Even so, the federal building code applied to manufactured housing includes a costly, vestigial reference to its mobile origins: a permanent chassis.

A giant steel frame with removable axles and wheels, the chassis ostensibly exists to make it easier to pick up and move a manufactured house by truck. In practice, it serves as a 10- to 12-inch-thick floor beneath the floor. Because it cannot be removed upon delivery, it just serves as “dead space and wasted money,” said Jess Maxcy, president of the California Manufactured Housing Institute, the industry’s trade group. Aside from adding thousands of dollars in added costs per unit, it also makes it harder for manufactured units to be stacked into double story homes or multifamily apartment buildings.

The federal housing bill removes the permanent chassis requirement, something that manufacturers and some housing policy experts have been pushing for since the mid-1980s.

“That relatively minor change will expand access to one of the most affordable forms of home ownership available,” Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego) said at the Thursday news conference.
Maxcy said he doesn’t expect the end of the chassis requirement to trigger an overnight building boom in the manufactured home industry. But especially in California, where, due to the high price of land, new single-family homes are more likely to be built stacked on small lots, the regulatory change “provides more opportunities and helps us reduce the price.”

Recovering after disaster

In the months after a natural disaster, long after emergency federal dollars have come and gone, Congress has provided communities with long-term rebuilding grants through the Community Development Block Grant—Disaster Recovery program. Over the last three decades, the program has spent more than $100 billion on the long-term work of recovery, like home construction, infrastructure repair and rental and relocation assistance. That money tends to be reserved for low-income people and communities “who are not going to bounce back without the funds,” said Marion McFadden, who used to run the program under the Biden administration and now works at the disaster preparation and recovery consulting company IEM.

Unfortunately for California, the program only kind of exists. Since the mid-1990s, it’s been stood up and funded on an ad hoc basis, one appropriation bill at a time. That presents a challenge for communities planning in the middle of post-disaster planning. It also means the rules that govern the program — when the money goes out, to whom, under what conditions and for what purposes — are redrafted with each political administration. That’s had the effect of slowing things down considerably. No program funding has gone to Los Angeles in the wake of the 2025 fire storms, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Congress has yet to appropriate any.

The new housing bill would officially write the program into law for at least three years.

“It creates the ability for HUD to have money on hand before a disaster and then make a decision within 15 days about whether they’re going to provide funding,” McFadden said.

What the housing bill doesn’t do: provide fresh funding. Disaster-prone communities will need to wait for Congress to take that up later.

A ‘bottleneck’ removed

For the last two decades, public housing authorities in Los Angeles and the Bay Area have been turning to the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration program to help repair and upgrade their aging stock of increasingly dilapidated public housing. The program works by switching up funding sources in a way that gives locals more flexibility to borrow money and attract private investment dollars.

Until the new law took effect this weekend, the federal government was only authorized to permit 455,000 of these conversions. The law raises the cap by an additional 100,000.

“This has been a bottleneck in California for years and that bottleneck just got removed,” said Russell with the San Diego Housing Federation.
Not all affordable housing advocates are cheering the development. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has consistently opposed expansion of the program on the grounds that the change in funding source could weaken existing tenant protections. It’s unclear whether and to what extent that might be true. A study from last year found no evidence that conversions under the program lead to more evictions.

Wall Street out of suburbia

If you’ve heard only one thing about this housing bill, it’s that it bans “large institutional investors” from buying up more single family homes.

Caveats apply in the final version of the law. The bill defines “large” as any of a number of business structures with control over more than 350 single-family homes. It doesn’t apply retrospectively, so current investors with portfolios brimming with houses need not divest. Exemptions exist for new construction, renovations and senior housing. In California specifically, where corporations and other major investors do not play a significant role in the housing market, the effect is likely to be muted.

The measure “takes a hyper-salient issue for lots of people across the country and does a pretty modest intervention to address it,” said Chad Maisel, a fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress and a former housing policy advisor to President Biden.

Even so, the provision has plenty of bipartisan appeal. Earlier this year, Trump called for an even stricter crackdown on so-called corporate landlords. Gov. Gavin Newsom followed suit the same week.

The anti-investor language was considerably watered down from earlier this year, when a related provision threatened to undermine “build-to-rent” projects: well-financed subdevelopments of single-family homes reserved for renters. That prompted a revolt by many developers and YIMBY activists who had otherwise enthusiastically supported the bill, who argued that such communities are one of the fastest growing sources of the U.S. housing stock and provide some of the few opportunities for renters to live in suburban-style, family-sized housing.

After the build-to-rent provision was left on the cutting room floor of Congress, state Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Fremont Democrat who is now running for Congress, introduced a bill that picked it back up again. SB 880 would have banned the bundled sale of multiple single-family homes, striking at the heart of the build-to-rent business model. That bill died in the Assembly Judiciary committee in late June.

Christopher writes for CalMatters.

The architect of modern Qatar, former Emir ⁠Sheikh Hamad bin ⁠Khalifa Al Thani, has died at the age of 74.

Fondly known as Father Emir, ⁠Sheikh Hamad, who ruled Qatar from 1995 to 2013, leaves behind a legacy that includes sweeping economic, social and cultural reforms in Qatar, raising the Gulf country’s profile on the regional and global stage.

During his 18-year rule, Qatar’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew more than 24-fold as the small nation of nearly 2.5 million people became one of the world’s largest exporters of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Sheikh Hamad’s tenure also saw the adoption of Qatar’s permanent constitution and the launch of the Qatar National Vision 2030, a long-term strategy aimed at transforming the country into a knowledge-based economy and achieving sustainable development.

Here is a look at some key moments in the former Qatari emir’s life:

Path to leadership

Born in January 1952 in Doha, Sheikh Hamad was raised and received his early education in the city.

In 1971, he graduated from the British Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, United Kingdom, and joined the Qatar armed forces, where he reached the rank of major-general. He was credited with playing a pivotal role in developing the armed forces in terms of ordnance, according to a statement by the Amiri Diwan.

On May 31, 1977, Sheikh Hamad was appointed the heir apparent and minister of defence. On May 10, 1989, he was appointed the chairman of the Supreme Council for Planning, where he was tasked with developing Qatar’s social and economic policies.

After a successful career in the military and senior government positions, Sheikh Hamad assumed leadership of Qatar on June 27, 1995. He remained the ruler of Qatar until June 25, 2013, when he transferred power to his son, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Economic transformation

Under Sheikh Hamad’s leadership, Qatar saw rapid economic growth driven by the expansion of its energy sector.

He viewed the country’s untapped North Field, which is the largest nonassociated natural gasfield in the world, as the cornerstone of Qatar’s future economic dominance, and invested heavily in the LNG sector. In 1996, the country began exporting LNG, with the first shipment sent to Japan.

According to the Amiri Diwan, in 2006, Qatar became the largest LNG exporter in the world, and in 2010, its LNG production capacity reached 77 million tonnes per annum. Qatar’s LNG exports currently represent 20 percent of the global market, it said.

Besides the energy sector, Sheikh Hamad also formulated comprehensive reconstruction plans which helped Qatar’s development in the education, healthcare, sports, culture and media sectors.

In October 2001, he established the Supreme Council for Economic Affairs and Investment to oversee the economy, energy and investment affairs and diversify local and foreign investments and sources of income.

Press freedom and launch of Al Jazeera

A few months after taking office as the emir of Qatar, in October 1995, Sheikh Hamad abolished the censorship of the local press, seeking to improve the country’s press freedom status.

In 1996, he launched the Al Jazeera Media Network, which resulted in “a new dawn” in the Arab and international media world, according to the Amiri Diwan.

Since its launch, Al Jazeera has become one of the world’s most prominent media outlets covering global news, geopolitics and underreported topics and giving a voice to minority communities through its stories.

In August 1995, Sheikh Hamad founded Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, which helped expand the country’s influence in media, education, and innovation.

Constitution and national vision

Sheikh Hamad played a key role in introducing democratic measures in the country after he assumed power. In March 1999, he introduced municipal elections, in which women were allowed to vote and stand as candidates.

On June 8, 2004, Sheikh Hamad led Qatar to adopt its first permanent constitution.

According to the Amiri Diwan, the permanent constitution sets out the country’s “preamble, the foundations of democratic rule” and lays out the “basic pillar” for society to guarantee the rights and freedoms of Qatar’s citizens.

In 2004, Sheikh Hamad launched “Qatar National Vision 2030” to guide the country’s long-term development and modernisation and help it transform into a knowledge-based economy.

Global profile

Qatar’s political influence today stretches across North Africa, the Middle East and Asia, with the country using its diplomacy to mediate several conflicts.

Sheikh Hamad drove the country’s mediation efforts in conflicts including the Hanish Islands dispute between Eritrea and Yemen in 1995, the Yemen war between 2007 and 2010, the Lebanese political crisis in 2008 and the Darfur peace process between 2010 and 2011, among others.

In October 2012, he became the first Arab leader to visit Gaza, since the imposition of a widespread international boycott of the Palestinian territory, which was spurred after Hamas began its rule in 2006.

Sheikh Hamad arrived with 90 tonnes of aid and pledged $400m to invest in housing and infrastructure, as he embraced the Hamas leadership of Gaza with an official visit, breaking the isolation of the Palestinian movement, much to the dismay of Israel, its allies, as well as the Western-backed Palestinian leaders in the occupied West Bank.

Besides diplomacy, the late former leader also focused on improving Qatar’s international status by projecting the country as a suitable venue for global sports and entertainment events.

In 2022, Qatar hosted the men’s FIFA World Cup, the world’s most-watched football tournament. Sheikh Hamad received rapturous applause from fans when he attended the tournament’s opening match.

As the fight for control of the U.S. Senate grows increasingly competitive, eyes are turning north to Alaska and a contest pitting, among its contestants, Dan Sullivan vs. Dan Sullivan — and, no, it’s not about a candidate living a double life or wrestling demons within himself.

Confused?

That may be the point.

Daniel S. Sullivan is Alaska’s two-term Republican senator. He’s seeking reelection in November.

Daniel J. Sullivan is a retired school teacher and political novice. He calls himself an independent Republican cut from the same polar-fleece lining as the state’s maverick GOP senator, Lisa Murkowski.

Political handicappers give Daniel J. Sullivan little chance of winning the highly competitive race. So is there some other reason he’s running? Is his presence on the ballot intended to draw enough befuddled voters away from the incumbent to elect his Democratic challenger, former Rep. Mary Peltola?

That’s what Republicans think. And you don’t have to be standing on the banks of the Kenai River to smell something fishy.

When Daniel J. Sullivan launched his campaign in May, he did so as plain old “Dan Sullivan,” with a website closely resembling that of the incumbent. The press release announcing his candidacy was written by one “Amber Lee.” There is an Alaska political strategist named Amber Lee who has supported Peltola in the past.

(For such a sparsely populated state, there sure are a lot of doppelgangers in this political saga.)

Election officials say Daniel J. Sullivan asked to appear on the ballot as a Republican, even though he hadn’t previously been affiliated with the party. In fact, over the years he’d contributed money to Democrats, including Peltola. He also asked to be identified on the ballot as “Dan S. Sullivan” before changing his mind, an attorney for the state told Alaska’s Supreme Court, which took up the matter late last month.

“That’s not an innocent mistake, or random mistake,” Chris Murray told the justices. “There’s a lot of other letters in the alphabet that could have been a typo.”

The political consultant Amber Lee declined to comment when reached by the Anchorage Daily News. She did not respond to an email from your friendly political columnist.

For his part, Daniel J. Sullivan denied any malice or mischievous intent.

“This is my choice,” he told the Associated Press. He said he had no contact with Peltola’s campaign — “zero, none, zilch” — and denied anyone from the state Democratic Party or any national Democratic operatives had contacted him to run.

Peltola’s campaign has adamantly denied any involvement. So, too, have the Alaska Democratic Party and the Democrat’s national Senate campaign committee.

After an investigation, Daniel J. Sullivan was removed from the Aug. 18 primary ballot. Carol Beecher, head of Alaska’s Division of Elections, said his candidacy was intended to “confuse or mislead” voters.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) attends meetings at the U.S. Capitol in 2025.

(Francis Chung / Politico via Associated Press)

But the state’s high court overturned that decision, instructing elections officials to figure out a way to keep Daniel J. Sullivan’s name on the ballot “within the confines of existing Alaska ballot design law.”

It’s been nearly 20 years since the state sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate, but this election looks to offer the party its best shot in years, thanks to Peltola.

Jessica Taylor, of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, called her “the ideal recruit,” given Peltola’s fundraising prowess and her ability to outperform other Democrats by avoiding the toxic taint of the national party. (Peltola’s slogan —”Fish, family and freedom” — is about as far removed from the Whole Foods-shopping, Prius-driving Democratic image as it gets.)

Democrats need to win four seats in November to take control of the Senate, from a menu that includes Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas while, at the same time, hanging on to contested Senate seats in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire. The Cook Political Report rates Alaska as one of the few toss-up races in the bunch.

The state has a ranked-choice election system in which the top four vote-getters advance to November. Ivan Moore, who does nonpartisan polling in Alaska, said that system virtually ensures Sullivan and Sullivan will face off against each other in a runoff that includes Peltola. At that point, Moore suggested, the choice to most voters will be clear.

Under the solution devised by state election officials, the senator will be listed as “Sullivan, Dan S.” and as “(Registered Republican) Incumbent.” His challenger will be identified as “Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.” with no party affiliation.

“I imagine there’s some people out there who don’t know what the word ‘incumbent’ means,” Moore said. “But I find it pretty hard to believe that people who are dead set on voting for Dan S. Sullivan, the senator, are going to go in the voting booth and vote for the wrong person when Dan S. has the word ‘incumbent’ next to his name and Dan J. doesn’t have any party affiliation.”

Political hijinks are nothing new. But the level of partisan gamesmanship seems to be growing as the old saying about all being far in love and war is increasingly applied to campaigns and elections.

It was something of a novelty in 2002 when Democrats meddled in the California Republican primary to promote their preferred candidate. Now it’s common practice.

Redistricting, or redrawing the nation’s congressional lines to reflect changes in population, used to occur once a decade following the national census. But spurred by President Trump, the last year has seen an arms race among states, including California, which gerrymandered their political maps to boost a preferred party and, essentially, decide House races before a single ballot is cast.

Politics, another old saying goes, ain’t beanbag.

But it doesn’t have to be this slanted and cynical. There’s no need for fishy-smelling candidates like Daniel J. Sullivan.