politics

Since last week, the world’s attention has been set again on Venezuela just like six months ago.

Of course, the differences between the events of January 3rd and the terrible disaster of June 24th could not be more stark, even if both evenets have massive implications for the country’s future.

Most coverage coming from international media these days has highlighted two things: first, the terrible devastation seen in worst-hit areas like parts of Caracas and especially in La Guaira State (formerly known as Vargas); and second, that many are complaining about the official response and even calling it “negligent”, like in this report from BBC News correspondent Yogita Limaye.

Interestingly enough, in recent months there has been a reopening to the presence of foreign reporters in the country, a shift from the heavily restricted access during the Maduro years. A larger number of reporters and media crews arrived in the last few days. They have been mostly allowed to do their job (unlike Sky News’ Trump 100 podcast, interrupted by government officials while recording), but they’ve been facing their own set of specific challenges.

Earlier this week, NGO IPYS Venezuela offered a summary of some apparent restrictions from the Communication and Information Ministry to international media workers, like indicating that they could be mobilized to affected areas only through State-authorized buses and establishing a schedule for those trips from the Media Center established at La Carlota Airport in Caracas.

One person quoted in the summary is British freelance journalist Catherine Ellis, who’s covering the disaster for Al-Jazeera and UK weekly magazine The Spectator while also doing some radio interviews for other outlets. She has worked in Venezuela since 2023 and, before that, volunteered for an NGO in Colombia and Spain, helping Venezuelan immigrants. It was Ellis who published on X a picture of the buffet the regime was offering to foreign correspondents while thousands of people were thirsty and hungry.

At the time of writing, several international reporters told Delcy Rodriguez during her recent press conference what they’ve seen firsthand. She minimized those criticisms against the official response and pointed her finger at “media matrixes created in laboratories” (matrices de opinión is a popular term in Venezuela to describe artificial narratives in journalism or social media). 

Caracas Chronicles interviewed Ellis earlier this week to discuss what she recently witnessed.

How has it been for you and other international correspondents to cover the disaster on the ground? Have there been any limitations by government officials and particularly from the Communication and Information Ministry?

The experience so far as a journalist in terms of getting in and communicating with the Ministry has been quite strange in some ways. It needs to be said that it has been much more open than it usually is. Quite often, if I come to Venezuela, I can’t really do any reporting or get a journalist visa; they give very few journalist visas, and it’s particularly hard for freelance journalists when you’re not a fixed employee for a certain media outlet. But this time they let journalists in. They’re letting foreign journalists in without visas. On one hand, it’s been much, much better. This time journalists are actually allowed into the country, and access is not restricted, although we don’t know how long that will go on for. Communications have been terrible and completely lacking to the point of being almost non-existent. 

How was your experience with the bus trip to La Guaira the day after registering at La Carlota airbase in Caracas? 

We took the bus on June 28, the day after we registered in La Carlota. They told us they would take us there, and we left for La Guaira an hour and a half late. No problem, that happens sometimes, but there was no communication about what was happening. The following day was the worst because I arrived early thinking it might leave on time, only to wait for two hours with no explanation at all. Then we knew from other journalists that the trip was cancelled and access had been suspended for 48 hours for journalists. No one on the logistics team provided any explanation. They just said: “we are not in charge of it, we don’t know.” One person told me: “you have to be patient, you have to wait… This is a complex situation, and things don’t move quickly.”

How are you and your colleagues doing your work in the disaster area? 

We were completely given free rein… We were taken to a Misión Vivienda place, but we could go wherever we wanted, so I spoke to people from that place, and some were very critical of the government. I went to other buildings around, which were either for retired people or just normal apartment buildings, and I spoke to lots of people. I was very, very free to speak to people. So much that I missed the bus and the Guardia (Nacional) took another journalist and me to the next site to speak to people. 

Have there been any issues involving the police, the military, intelligence services or local officials?

Some people have been helpful, and some haven’t in terms of the authorities. In La Guaira, generally, no one stopped me from doing anything. Police and military pulled me away from a building because they were excavating to take bodies out, but to be honest, that was more for health and safety reasons, and I did understand. I went to the hotel in Caracas where the Venezuelan deportees were supposed to arrive after they got back, and the hotel collapsed. It was full of SEBIN agents. We weren’t allowed to pass because of “security reasons.” When I started to take photos, I was told off by SEBIN. That was interesting. 

Genuinely, I have to say the police and military have not stopped me speaking to anybody or stopping doing anything. And to be honest, some of them haven’t really been around. I think it’s because, as you wear the pink armband (identifying as foreign press), they know you’re press, that you’ve been approved, but getting to the hotel where the deportees were was impossible.

How has the relationship been with the civilians in the area? How do they react to the presence of the media?

Civilians have been brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Everybody is very, very open to talking. Venezuelans are incredibly warm and open people. I have no problem chatting to people. If I see people who are visibly, incredibly upset, who have family (members trapped) in buildings, it’s not the right time to talk to them.

Sometimes, I’ve approached them very sensitively, and people have shared their stories, described the people they have lost, told about what they’re lacking or what they need. Some people openly criticize the government, but others who have criticized the government then say they don’t want their names used, and others are not thinking about politics. They’re just in shock.

How has the relationship been between international correspondents and Venezuelan journalists?

Venezuelan journalists are incredibly helpful. I think there has been a lot of solidarity between all journalists, between Venezuelan and international journalists and among the international journalists themselves. I’ve been speaking to people from the US, Canada, Argentina, parts of Europe, and they all want to help each other. 

On a critical note, there have been a couple of international journalists who either pushed me out of the way at certain sites because they want to film or come up to me when I’m interviewing people and taking my interviewees. This isn’t a show, people have lost (their) lives. I would encourage the international press to have a heightened level of sensibility and respect for all Venezuelans and all affected by this crisis.

Have you noticed the difference between how you see the situation on the ground, how it is covered outside, and how it is covered inside, how the government is presenting it? 

From what I’ve seen, Delcy and the government are trying to project an image of solidarity with the international community, thanking and praising them for being here and helping Venezuelans in their time of need. But not necessarily announcing tangible and concrete steps of what they’re actually putting in place. Someone put it to me like this: “The government has been very visible, key figures have been very visible in terms of presence on social media and even visiting sites, but there has not been enough concrete information about donation centers, about what’s happening next, about actually managing the actual crisis.”

How have people in La Guaira been coping?

A lot of people are still in shock. It’s very hard to process, but everybody seems to be very grateful to everyone who is helping them, either members of their own community or the international rescue teams. Some people have said, “Other governments are helping us more than our own government.” 

I think the most important thing to emphasize, which is non-political, is that people are saying “Venezuelans are helping Venezuelans, they’re helping each other.” Someone said to me the other day, “We are a family, this is what we do, we help each other, we won’t give up, and you know, keep going.”

I spoke to a guy who came from Valencia. He had three kids back home and said, “I couldn’t bear to think of my own kids lying somewhere like that and no one going to find them,” so he came on his way, he got lists from people, and he came so he can help with the search and rescue. 

There’s definitely a lot of shock. A lot of kids are still scared and adults feel that any movement or anything, not just aftershocks, mean something is going to happen again. People are getting through by supporting each other.

Is the aid arriving properly? Have you seen aid being delivered?

There’s so much aid everywhere. In Caracas, I’ve seen so many trucks coming in. The problem is that I can’t exactly say what’s happening to the aid. Some aid is getting through, but there seem to be a little bit of bottlenecks or bureaucracy; I don’t know the full reasons… It’s getting through to some people but isn’t getting through to other people, and they’re running out of some things. People want proper accommodation also. Definitely, in a lot of places there are now international NGOs setting up food points as well.

– 

Just yesterday, while covering relief efforts taking place at Parque del Este, Ellis was approached by a couple of suspicious looking fellows. This was the exchange:

I was in Parque del Este tonight speaking to volunteers and affected families camping there. I was chatting to one family when two men came over to look what was going on then left. I started helping the family move their stuff to the road (I was carrying the cat!) as they were moving somewhere else. The two men called me over, asked me if I was a journalist, to which I said yes and showed them my wristbands. Asked more questions, who I was, where from, what I was doing. I asked who they were, as they still hadn’t introduced themselves by this point. One (the politer one) said they were intelligence police, asked what I was doing, so I said speaking to the family etc. Asked if I knew them, I said no. Then asking qus like my age, which was weird as one had my passport which has my DOB. Took photos of my passport. Asked where I lived, said I didn’t want to give that info. I asked why they wanted to know all this, they said for security and that people were taking children, so I asked if they thought I was taking kids. They said no. I told me they were asking me because I was a journalist and there was not a real free press. One was fairly polite and said they didn’t want to make me uncomfortable. I said they already had. Eventually they gave me it back. It’s ok to check who someone is, check they have a wristband which you now should have in the park – but I did, and I showed them, so why the need for questionning and taking photos of my passport? And why was the first qu, are you a journalist? Does everyone who enters the park get that level of treatment?

It doesn’t take much for chavismo to step back into its old ways.

Here’s a theory: It’d sure be easier for politicians to get away with flip-flops if there weren’t a bunch of their old tweets lying around like crime-scene DNA.

Check out this exchange from Monday night’s presidential debate.

HILLARY CLINTON: “Donald Trump thinks climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real.”

DONALD TRUMP: “I did not. I did not. I do not say that. I do not say that.”

Except there’s this.

Even though it was four years old, Trump’s old tweet began picking up tens of thousands of retweets as the presidential debate raged on. (Reports that Trump’s team had deleted the tweet mid-debate were inaccurate. Also, while we’re here, the evidence is overwhelming: Climate change is real.)

It’s hard to imagine similar mass-sharing happening with a hard copy of a newspaper article, a years-old clipping suddenly passing through thousands of curious hands again. But thanks to Twitter, one of this election’s great accountability machines, what was old became new(s) again.

The phenomenon is also thanks in part to Trump himself, a prolific social-media user who, throughout this election, could have avoided storms of unfriendly retweets by deleting his old tweets — but he hasn’t, leaving himself a little more vulnerable to the searching eyes of his opponents.

Social media has been a dominant campaign medium in 2016, not just for the candidates but also for professional and amateur fact-checkers who have been doing their work with ferocious speed.

For gumshoes, it’s an arena of political argument aided by keyword searches, hyperlinks and screenshots, the kind of work that can be done on a smartphone while sitting on the couch. Opposition researchers, journalists and nonprofessionals alike have seen their handiwork go viral.

That means, for casual Twitter users, a candidate’s real-time remarks at a rally or a debate might appear in their feeds side-by-side with other users posting footage or transcripts of contradictory past statements.

Trump, who fact-checkers say routinely peddles fake information — like the lie that President Obama was born in Africa — has disproportionately seen his old tweets become targets, emerging again and again as objects of criticism, renewed with as little effort as hitting the retweet button. (Retweets are definitely not always endorsements.)

Twitter in particular has long been known as a place where professionals can lose their jobs or come under international pressure for saying something — well, often something pretty stupid, if not merely controversial. In recent years, online guides have offered recommendations for how regular users can delete old tweets lest they become liabilities.

The pressure is much higher on public figures. When comedian Trevor Noah won the job of hosting “The Daily Show,” he soon drew heat for old politically incorrect Twitter jokes; the same thing happened last week to new “Saturday Night Live” cast member Melissa Villasenor.

Some politicians have also gone on tweet-deleting escapades when a political situation suddenly goes sideways. Several lawmakers who welcomed Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl home from captivity in Afghanistan in 2014 later backtracked when information emerged suggesting Bergdahl may have deserted from his platoon. (Bergdahl goes to trial in 2017.)

Hoping to prevent politicians from editing the historical record, the Sunlight Foundation, a D.C.-based transparency advocacy group, runs a tool called Politwoops that tracks and preserves a record of when politicians delete tweets.

Many of the deleted tweets snared by Politwoops are innocuous typos. But a few reveal statements withdrawn after second thoughts, like U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller’s (R-Fla.) 2012 tweet, “Was Obama born in the United States?”

Yet Trump has not scrubbed his own notorious “birther” tweets, which he only recently publicly disavowed. (Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

For a politician who has routinely made news with his tweets — from retweeting white supremacists to congratulating himself after the Pulse nightclub mass shooting in Orlando, Fla. (“for being right on radical Islamic terrorism”) — Trump’s history of Twitter deletions in Politwoops is mostly for mispellings and bygone media appearances, rather than withdrawing substantive remarks.

Trump, for example, drew criticism in August for tweeting: “Dwayne Wade’s cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!”

Critics accused Trump of using a person’s death to pander to black voters, pointing out he hadn’t even bothered to offer condolences, and the Trump account soon deleted the tweet — so it could put up a new version of the same tweet, this time with NBA star Dwyane Wade’s name spelled correctly.

It’s still there.

Clinton’s Twitter account deletes a few tweets a month, though in each instance it’s not clear why. Clinton is better known for her tweet to Trump, “Delete your account” — a popular Internet joke — which has earned nearly 500,000 retweets.

Now, the question arises of how Trump changes — or doesn’t change — after the election, win or lose.

“In this election, we’re talking more about the tweets that aren’t deleted than the tweets that are, and that’s an interesting reflection on where we are and how we view social media,” said Josh Stewart, a spokesman at the Sunlight Foundation. “It would be interesting to see if the use of social media by politicians changes after this election, or if he’s an outlier.”

Email: matt.pearce@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter: @mattdpearce

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When Barack Obama made history as the first African American president, a dichotomy was born: Would Obama showcase his black heritage too much? Or would he, the son of a white mother, prove not to be “black enough”?

The latest speculation comes from Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, who implied to Politico that he’s more authentically African American than the president.

“He’s an ‘African’ American. He was, you know, raised white. Many of his formative years were spent in Indonesia. So, for him to, you know, claim that, you know, he identifies with the experience of black Americans, I think, is a bit of a stretch.”

Obama has addressed the concept of blackness before.

“The notion that there’s some authentic way of being black, that if you’re going to be black you have to act a certain way and wear a certain kind of clothes, that has to go,” Obama said in 2014.

Conversely, activist Michael Skolnik started #ObamaAndKids this weekend in honor of Black History Month. The hashtag quickly became a top trending conversation on Twitter.

“This would be the last Black History Month celebration at The White House during the presidency of the first African-American in the history of The United States to hold the highest office in the land,” Skolnik wrote in a Medium blog post.

Obama himself has spoken openly about his race in connection with his presidency. Earlier this month, he talked with Los Angeles Times reporter Christi Parsons about his legacy.

“You’ve got a whole generation of kids where the only president they know … is African-American,” Obama said.

On Sunday, the White House released a video of 106-year-old African American Virginia McLauren meeting the president and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House in a Black History Month celebration.

And last week, the president made a Black History Month joke in reference to black culture.

We’re nine months out from election day and at the start of official retrospection on the 44th presidency. But judging by the past eight years, and even the past month alone, Obama’s race will likely continue to be a topic of debate and conversation even after the torch is passed.

July 8 (UPI) — Britain has summoned Iran’s charge d’affairs after a judge last week sentenced two Romanian men to prison for stabbing an Iranian journalist in London in 2024, an attack the court found was carried out on behalf of the iranian state.

“We take threats posed by Iran and those who do its bidding extremely seriously,” a spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said in a statement.

“Iran’s actions attempt to undermine UK sovereignty and security, and are completely unacceptable — it must cease in these activities immediately.”

Ali Nasimfar, charge d’affairs of the Iranian Embassy in London, was summoned by Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer on Tuesday, after a British judge sentenced Nandito Badea, 21, and George Stana, 25, to prison over the March 29, 2024, attack.

According to prosecutors, the two men attacked Pouria Zeraati, a reporter with the Britain-based Persian-language broadcaster Iran International, as he was leaving his Wimbledon home.

One of the men asked Zeraati for money before the other grabbed him. Zeraati suffered multiple stab wounds to his leg before both men fled on foot and entered a blue Mazda car that was waiting nearby and driven by a third accomplice.

Prosecutors accused Badea of having been involved in the attack, while Stana drove the getaway car, which had been bought through Facebook. The third suspect has been identified as David Andrei.

The three suspects were arrested by Romanian police in December 2024. Badea and Stana were extradited to Britain that same month, while Andrei remains in Romania, where he is subject to domestic criminal proceedings.

During the trial, the judge agreed with the prosecution that the crime was a state-sponsored attack, as evidence “overwhelmingly” supported the finding that it was carried out on behalf of Iran.

Stana was sentenced to 12 years in prison, as the judge ruled that the Foreign Power Condition under the National Security Act was met in his case. The judge said the extensive planning and involvement in the plot indicated that he knew — or at the very least ought to have known — of the connection to Iran.

Badea was sentenced to eight years behind bars.

“Protecting national security, upholding media freedom and freedom of expression, remain our top priorities,” Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said.

“This government will take all measures necessary to protect the British people, and those living and working in the UK.”

British officials and allies have accused Iran of a longstanding pattern of targeting critics, journalists and dissidents abroad with assassination plots.

In the United States, authorities have several times thwarted Iran-backed attempts to assassinate and kidnap Masih Alinejad.

In 2024, the United States and Britain issued coordinated sanctions targeting those they accused of being behind threats to assassinate Iranian dissidents abroad.

Clearly, President Bush didn’t mean it.

Winding up a speech, Bush said America will be tough and resolute to defeat terrorists so future generations can live in peace. “And there is no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail,” the president said.

His audience at the Labor Department did not react. Bush, known to make occasional verbal gaffes, continued in a positive vein: “Failure is not a part of our vocabulary. This great nation will lead the world and we will be successful.”

LONDON — Reform UK leader Nigel Farage announced Tuesday that he will quit his seat in Parliament and seek reelection in an effort to clear his name over financial allegations linked to millions of dollars’ worth of donations.

The unexpected resignation is an effort by the anti-immigration politician to preempt a standards investigation that could have seen him ejected as a lawmaker, and to present himself as the victim of a witch hunt by the news media and his political foes.

“I have done nothing wrong. I have not broken the law in any way at all. I have not misused public money,” Farage, a prominent ally of President Trump, said in a statement broadcast by his party. Media outlets were not allowed to attend the broadcast and he did not take questions.

Farage faces a parliamentary standards investigation about undeclared and potentially rule-breaking donations, including a $6.7-million gift he received from a Thailand-based cryptocurrency billionaire. A finding of wrongdoing could lead to Farage being suspended or expelled from Parliament. But he has made the first move by triggering an election for his seaside seat of Clacton in eastern England.

“The people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions,” Farage said. “This will be a people versus the establishment by-election.”

And, he said: “I will fight to win.”

Farage won Clacton comfortably in the 2024 election, taking 46.2% of the vote, and stands a good chance of winning reelection. Reform UK said it was willing to pay for the special election, which may deflect claims it is wasting taxpayers’ money.

Farage’s opponents were unimpressed. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the announcement “a desperate stunt” from a man “up to his neck in sleaze.” Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch claimed Farage was having a “hissy fit” and triggering an “ego by-election.”

Farage may run almost unopposed. The opposition Liberal Democrats called on other parties to not enter the contest in order to starve Farage’s “vanity project” of oxygen. The Labor Party said it would not stand a candidate, as did the Conservatives, who also confirmed they would not run.

The gambit may only postpone Farage’s problems. Even if he wins, the standards inquiry is likely to resume.

Farage tipped by some as a future prime minister

Scrutiny of Farage’s finances has spurred speculation about the future of a politician some considered the favorite to be prime minister after the next national election.

One of the most high-profile and controversial figures in British politics, Farage has had an outsized effect as a champion of leaving the European Union and foe of large-scale immigration. He was key in securing victory for the “leave” side in the 2016 EU membership referendum.

His rise has echoes of Trump’s nationalist, anti-immigration playbook. Farage has capitalized on — critics say stoked — concerns about migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats, which he has called an invasion, and alleges that white people face discrimination from police.

He also rails against “the establishment” and the media, which he claimed are using “foul means” to stop him.

A skilled communicator whose supporters see a beer-drinking plain-speaker, and whose critics see a populist rabble-rouser, Farage has had a checkered political career and was elected to Parliament in 2024 only after seven failed attempts. He also has a history of walking away from parties he led, stepping down from both the UK Independence Party and its successor, the Brexit Party, in the last decade.

Reform UK has only eight of the 650 seats in the House of Commons but consistently leads opinion polls over the governing Labor Party and the main opposition Conservatives.

Farage’s party was the big winner in local and regional elections in May that led to the ouster of Starmer at the hands of his own Labor Party.

But Reform UK has lost three consecutive special elections that it hoped to win, a possible sign its support may be sagging. The most recent loss was to Labor’s Andy Burnham, who is likely to succeed Starmer as prime minister within weeks.

Donors include a crypto billionaire and a fraudster

Parliamentary standards commissioner Daniel Greenberg is investigating the 5-million-pound donation to Farage from Christopher Harborne, a British businessman based in Thailand. Farage says the money was a personal gift that he used to fund security and came before he was elected to the House of Commons.

U.K. rules state that newly elected lawmakers must declare gifts worth more than $400 they received in the previous 12 months, except where the gift “could not be reasonably thought by others” to relate to their political activities.

Farage is also facing questions about claims, reported by the Sunday Times, over his financial relationship with George Cottrell, an aristocratic crypto-gambling entrepreneur, convicted fraudster and on-off aide to the Reform UK leader.

Cottrell was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport in 2016, while traveling with Farage, over allegations he offered to launder money for undercover agents posing as drug traffickers. Indicted on 21 counts relating to money laundering, fraud, blackmail and extortion, he agreed to plead guilty to a single charge of wire fraud, admitting attempting to defraud criminals on the dark web by masquerading as a money launderer. He served eight months in prison.

Cottrell, 32, remains close to Farage, and the Sunday Times said he gave the politician funding for staffing and security before Britain’s 2024 general election, as well as the use of a London townhouse near Buckingham Palace.

Lawless writes for the Associated Press.

Planned Parenthood and two smaller regional abortion providers are resuming billing Medicaid for services other than abortion after being cut off for most of a year.

The defunding, which was mandated in President Trump’s big tax and policy law last year, has been blamed in the closure of multiple clinics as well as a reduction in the number of Planned Parenthood patients being screened for breast cancer or tested for sexually transmitted infections.

The Medicaid billing was allowed to resume last weekend.

The restored funding does not mean the battle over federal abortion policy has ended, and not all services that were cut will return.

Here’s what to know about the situation.

Planned Parenthood closed clinics and saw fewer patients

Many abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood affiliates, have struggled financially since the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed state abortion bans to be enforced. Clinics have closed in states with abortion bans and restrictions as well as those without.

Planned Parenthood says its affiliates have closed nearly 30 of its roughly 600 clinics over the past year, citing the funding change as a key reason.

Over that period, affiliates dispensed about 25% fewer packs of birth control pills and conducted about 20% fewer breast cancer exams than the previous year.

Many patients — especially in places where healthcare can be hard to access — may not have had care at all because of the defunding, the organization said.

Planned Parenthood Action Fund spokesperson Angela Vasquez-Giroux said the cuts have also led to limited abortion access in some places.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin halted abortions for about a month, then dropped its status as an “essential community provider” so it could resume seeking reimbursement. The Arizona affiliate paused offering many of its services to patients covered by Medicaid.

Two smaller providers were also impacted

The defunding provision also affected two other healthcare providers that met the criteria in the law because the were nonprofit family planning organizations that provided abortion and received more than $800,000 yearly in Medicaid reimbursements.

Their experiences were very different.

Maine Family Planning closed three primary care clinics that served about 1,000 patients in the largely rural state.

Evelyn Kieltyka, a senior vice president of program services, said that even with help, their former patients had to wait an average of four to six months to be established with new providers.

Meanwhile, the number of abortions the group provided held steady, she said. Maine is one of several states where state-funded Medicaid covers abortion.

Patients at Health Imperatives in Massachusetts may not have noticed the change, as no services were dropped.

The state government funded Medicaid reimbursements that the federal government stopped — something that Planned Parenthood says happened in some form in 14 states. On top of that, the clinic system received a grant from Melinda Gates’s foundation.

Some services are returning but others may not

Planned Parenthood’s Arizona affiliate has already announced expanded hours and more telehealth options linked to the ability to bill Medicaid again.

Some other services are not likely to be restored.

Kieltyka said Maine Family Planning isn’t planning to bring back its primary care practices again.

“When you close something down and you lose positions,” she said, “it’s very difficult to bring that back and build it back up again.”

And Michelle Quesada, vice president of communications, brand and marketing for the Planned Parenthood affiliate in Florida, said a closed clinic in Lakeland isn’t expected to reopen, partly out of concern that Congress or the Trump administration could cut Medicaid reimbursements for the organization again.

“There’s no telling with this uncertainty,” she said. “It’s like a yo-yo effect.”

Abortion opponents want to stop the Medicaid reimbursements again

The political battle isn’t over.

Abortion opponents are pushing Congress to adopt another defunding policy.

“They’ve defunded Big Abortion before,” Kelsey Pritchard, a spokesperson for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said Monday, “and they should do everything in their power to do it again.”

Planned Parenthood contends that most general election voters don’t want the organization to be defunded. Pritchard said that the Republican base does.

Mulvihill writes for the Associated Press.

Walt Disney Co.’s ABC network has stepped up its defense of “The View” amid its battle with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who has targeted the network’s programming and its hiring policies.

At issue is whether “The View” still qualifies for an exception to FCC rules that require broadcasters to provide equal air time for opponents of various political candidates.

Carr has called the daytime talk show “overtly political.”

Late Monday, ABC filed documents with the FCC to support its request for a declaratory ruling that “The View” is indeed a bona fide news interview program entitled to the equal-time rule exemption that covers newscasts, political debates and documentaries.

The show was granted the exception in 2002.

“Today, the program in the Commission’s sights is The View,” ABC said in this week’s filing. “The principle in the balance is far larger: whether a federal regulator may override a broadcaster’s editorial judgment about whom to interview — a judgment the Constitution commits to broadcasters and their audiences, not to the state.”

Since the FCC opened its inquiry in late May, the agency has received more than 77,000 public comments — most in support of the long-running daytime talk show.

“While ABC insists that ‘The View’ is a ‘bona fide news program’ under the law, ABC should focus on complying with its public interest obligations, rather than misleading the public about them,” an FCC spokesperson said in a statement sent to The Times.

Separately, the FCC also took the unusual step of calling in the licenses of eight Disney-owned television stations for early review. The move — widely interpreted as an effort to chill the Disney network’s speech — came a day after President Trump demanded that ABC fire its late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke about First Lady Melania Trump.

Losing the licenses for its stations, including KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles, would be a significant blow to the Disney-owned network.

Some conservatives, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have suggested the FCC actions are an overreach while others have encouraged the agency to come down hard on Disney.

“The Commission can take this opportunity to address multiple pending complaints against ABC related to its programming,” conservative lawyer Daniel Suhr, head of the Center for American Rights, wrote in his 65-page petition in support of revoking Disney’s licenses.

“The View,” which features Trump critics Whoopi Goldberg, Sunny Hostin, Joy Behar and Ana Navarro, helps make a case that Disney is running a partisan network, Suhr alleged in his documents.

“Democrats are featured on The View at an insanely high ratio compared to Republicans,” Suhr wrote, noting that at least a third of the show’s 348 guests in 2025 were liberals — including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.). Meanwhile, two prominent conservatives, former Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and actor Cheryl Hines, the wife of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., were featured last year.

Since Carr opened the review, the ABC show has avoided conversations with political candidates in competitive races leading up to this year’s pivotal midterm elections.

The show has continued its tradition of hosting politicians, though, including a highly rated interview last month with a Carr ally — Vice President JD Vance.

ABC has asked the FCC for a declaratory ruling on the status of “The View.” The network maintains that “The View” books politicians based on newsworthiness and not partisanship.

The network has run on-air spots urging its viewers to support the program by filing comments with the FCC.

“Big fan of the show. Hope my vote counts,” wrote one viewer, Wilson Vélez, in a comment filed with the FCC on Monday.

Another viewer, Patricia Pomeroy, wrote: “Freedom of speech, Freedom of speech, Freedom of speech.”

ABC’s filing noted that the program has kept the same format and focus on topical news events since its inception.

“What has changed is not the program but the political climate around it,” ABC said in the petition.

Disney’s filing, signed by attorney Paul Clement, commended the “robust response” from the public, saying the outpouring “represents laudable civic engagement of the kind the Commission should welcome given its statutory obligation to make decisions based on the public interest.”

MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an attempt by a conservative activist to obtain guardianship records in an effort to find ineligible voters in the presidential battleground state.

The case has been wending its way through the courts for years and stems from attempts by conservatives to overturn President Biden’s victory in Wisconsin over President Trump in 2020.

Here’s what to know:

A conservative activist brought the case

The case tested the line between protecting personal privacy rights and ensuring that ineligible people can’t vote.

Former travel executive Ron Heuer and a group he leads, the Wisconsin Voter Alliance, brought the lawsuit in 2022 alleging that the number of ineligible voters doesn’t match the count on Wisconsin’s voter registration list. The lawsuit doesn’t specify how many people could be affected.

In Wisconsin, a guardianship order is granted by a court giving a person certain legal rights over another who is determined to be unable to make decisions about their life. A court has the power to remove the right to vote from a person under a guardianship order if the person is determined to be unable to understand “the objective of the election process.”

Heuer asked the state Supreme Court to rule that counties must release records filed when a judge determines that someone isn’t competent to vote so that those names can be compared to the voter registration list.

Heuer’s attorney, Erick Kaardal, argued that privacy concerns could be balanced with the public’s right to access government records by redacting identifying or sensitive information on the forms.

But the attorney for Walworth County said those seeking access to the records wanted to cross-check ineligible voters against the names of those registered. They can’t do that, attorney Sam Hall said during oral arguments, without releasing the person’s name and address.

Hall praised the ruling, saying it “protects the privacy of vulnerable individuals while preserving their dignity.”

Kaardal did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, which advocates for public access to documents but did not take a position on this case, said the court’s decision was “narrowly tailored and should not have a huge impact.”

The council praised the court for clarifying the standard for deciding similar cases in the future, but that “it’s always disappointing when access to public information is curtailed.”

Signs supporting Judge Susan Crawford, and voting and election officials adorn the front yard of a home on South 16th Street on election day April 1, 2025, in Milwaukee.

(Kayla Wolf / Associated Press)

Liberal justices who control Wisconsin Supreme Court reject the case

In the 5-2 ruling on Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority along with conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn ruled that the records are not public as the conservative activist had claimed.

The court took the case after two lower state appeals courts issued divergent rulings. One appeals court, based in Madison, denied access to the records while another appeals court, based in Waukesha, said in 2023 that the records should be made public.

It ordered Walworth County to release them with birth dates and case numbers redacted.

The Supreme Court overturned the appeals court ruling that the records should be made public.

State law is clear that the records being sought are not public and “the Alliance has no right to the records,” Justice Janet Protasiewicz wrote for the majority.

Conservative justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented, saying the court adopted “an overbroad and unworkable definition of what records pertain to a finding of incompetency” to include the forms that indicate a person has been found ineligible to vote.

Those forms are not pertinent to the finding of incompetency and are therefore subject to the open records law, Ziegler and Bradley wrote.

The case was one of several targeting the 2020 election

The case was an attempt by those who questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential race to cast doubt on the integrity of elections in the presidential swing state. Heuer and the WVA filed lawsuits in 13 Wisconsin counties in 2022 seeking guardianship records.

Heuer and the WVA have pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election in a failed attempt to overturn Biden’s win in Wisconsin. Heuer was hired as an investigator in the discredited 2020 election probe led by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. The probe found no evidence of fraud or abuse that would have changed the election results.

The WVA also filed two unsuccessful lawsuits that sought to overturn Biden’s win in Wisconsin.

Trump won Wisconsin in 2024 after losing in 2020

Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and the recounts Trump requested. Trump won Wisconsin in 2024 by about 29,000 votes.

There are no pending lawsuits challenging the results of the 2024 election or calls to investigate the outcome.

Bauer writes for the Associated Press.

Marine Le Pen, the far-right French politician, announced Tuesday she is running for president next year after an appeals court shortened her election ban. Le Pen was convicted of embezzlement and ordered to wear a tracking bracelet and banned from running for office for five years.

WASHINGTON — The Senate’s top two Republicans have spoken individually to Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, according to aides, as the former GOP leader remains in the hospital more than three weeks after being admitted for undisclosed health issues.

Aides to McConnell have declined to release any information about his condition, fueling speculation about his prognosis and whether he will be healthy enough to be at the Capitol when the Senate returns to Washington next week after a two-week recess. McConnell, 84, is retiring at the end of his term next January.

A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said he had spoken with McConnell by phone on Monday and that the two had a “lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security.” As leader, Thune is generally kept up to date on illnesses and absences in his conference as he has to navigate vote counts and his narrow 53-47 majority.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 2 Senate Republican, had a 20-minute conversation with McConnell on Tuesday, according to a spokeswoman. The two discussed Senate races ahead of the midterm elections, the Supreme Court and other topics, the statement said.

“Senator McConnell was fully engaged and is eager to get back to the Senate,” said Barrasso spokeswoman Kate Noyes.

Another McConnell ally, Republican strategist Scott Jennings, posted on X that he had also talked to McConnell for 20 minutes on Tuesday, and that “he’s still recovering in the hospital.” Jennings said they spoke about politics, foreign policy “and even a little bit of Senate history.”

Few details released as McConnell remains in the hospital

McConnell was admitted to the hospital June 14, according to a statement from his office that only said he was “receiving excellent care.”

A statement a week later said he would not be voting that week. And a new statement Thursday said he ”appreciates the outpouring of support he’s receiving while he continues his recovery in the hospital.”

“The Senator continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session,” the statement said.

A spokesman for McConnell released the same statement again Tuesday with no new updates.

McConnell has a history of health troubles

The senator’s unspecified health issues come after several hospitalizations in recent years.

While he was still Republican leader, McConnell was hospitalized with a concussion in March 2023 and missed several weeks of work after falling in a Washington hotel. He froze up twice during news conferences after he returned, staring vacantly ahead before colleagues and staff — including Barrasso, who is a doctor — came to his assistance.

A year later, he fell and sprained his wrist while walking out of a GOP luncheon.

McConnell had polio in his early childhood and he has long acknowledged some difficulty as an adult in walking and climbing stairs. He also tripped and fell in 2019 at his home in Kentucky and underwent surgery for a fractured shoulder.

The Kentucky senator was first elected to the Senate in 1984 and was the Republican leader from 2007 until last year, serving as both majority and minority leader during that period. He has remained active as a rank-and-file senator, showing up for work when the chamber is in session, often using a wheelchair to get around.

Jalonick writes for the Associated Press.

JACKSON, Miss. — The former mayor of Mississippi’s capital city and the former City Council president have pleaded guilty in a bribery scheme one week before they were set to face trial.

Former Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and former Jackson City Council President Aaron Banks pleaded guilty Monday to one count of conspiracy. Their pleas came after Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens pleaded guilty last week and resigned. All three are Democrats.

Two other people — Angelique Lee, the Democratic former vice president of the Jackson City Council, and Sherik Marve Smith, a businessman and relative of Owens — had already pleaded guilty to bribery charges.

A November 2024 indictment accused Owens of taking at least $115,000 from two FBI agents posing as real estate developers and facilitating more than $80,000 in bribe payments to Banks, Lumumba and Lee in exchange for their help greenlighting a development project.

Lumumba, Banks and Owens could be sentenced to up to five years in prison. Their sentencing hearings are set for Oct. 15.

Lumumba, who previously called the charges a political prosecution, lost his reelection bid last year. His lawyers did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ requests for comment.

Banks’ lawyer declined to comment.

Bates writes for the Associated Press.

July 7 (UPI) — A federal panel of appeals court judges ruled Tuesday that the Stop WOKE Act championed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis violates the free speech of professors and is a “breathtaking assertion of power.”

The Florida law restricted how professors can teach, especially when speaking about gender and race, in colleges and universities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled 2-1 to support a 2022 decision that called the law “positively dystopian,” Politico reported.

The court Tuesday went further, saying the act is a “breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the state’s own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry — classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”

“If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it,” the ruling said.

Judge Britt C. Grant wrote the opinion, joined by Judge Charles R. Wilson. Judge Barbara Lagoa, however, wrote a dissent saying the First Amendment “does not compel all viewpoints to be worthy of state-sponsored endorsement.”

The Florida Legislature approved the act, also called the Individual Freedom Act, in 2022. The state has been fighting it in court ever since.

The lawsuits that led to the ruling Tuesday were brought by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a student free-speech group, and the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Florida and Legal Defense Fund.

FIRE senior attorney Greg Greubel said the decision “means that college remains a place where professors and students are allowed to debate controversial topics — even if politicians disagree with them.”

DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday, Politico said. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier praised Lagoa on social media, saying she “may be the best jurist in our country” and should be on the U.S. Supreme Court.

WASHINGTON — The campaign of U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner was buckling in Maine on Tuesday after he was accused of rape, injecting uncertainty into a contest that is central to determining which party wins Senate control in November’s midterms.

The situation set off swift debate about how state Democrats would choose Platner’s replacement if he were to withdraw, and which Maine figures might be best positioned to play off the progressive messaging he used to win over voters.

With Maine viewed by Democrats as a key seat to win in their long-shot bid for a Senate majority, the decision would be high stakes, analysts said. In the meantime, with uncertainty clouding the race, the shake-up could put additional pressure on the party to win Senate races in states seen as more difficult to flip.

Platner has denied the rape allegation, which came in a Politico report Monday from a woman who said Platner forced her to have sex with him when he was intoxicated. Platner said Monday that he would “reflect” on his candidacy but has not withdrawn.

“The calculation that almost everyone on the Democratic side is making is that with Platner in it, it is an unwinnable race,” said John Cluverius, director of survey research for the Center for Public Opinion at UMass Lowell, “and without Platner in it, they have a much better chance.”

An oyster farmer and Marine veteran, Platner had entered the race to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins as an outsider and was seen as riding an anti-establishment wave of support.

His candidacy highlighted the split within his party between progressives and establishment Democrats and represented a matchup between an older incumbent and a younger outsider candidate.

By Tuesday afternoon, Platner’s financial backing was disintegrating and prominent Democrats had withdrawn their support — including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a key endorser of Platner’s, who said Tuesday afternoon that he had told Platner to withdraw.

A spokesperson for Platner’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), who had been one of Platner’s most visible backers, quickly withdrew his endorsement Monday.

“I’ve been very clear that sexual assault or violence against women is a red line. These allegations are very serious and credible,” Khanna, who has been a prominent supporter of victims of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, wrote on X.

The California congressman had been among progressives, including Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who previously stood by Platner. Khanna had rallied for Platner at a pre-primary event in June after a set of allegations about the candidate’s “unsettling” conduct from his exes reported by the New York Times and the revelation that he had sent sexually explicit messages to women outside his marriage.

Platner’s collapse comes after the fall of former California Rep. Eric Swalwell, whose ascendant campaign for governor was ended in April after he was accused of sexual assault.

As in Swalwell’s case, Platner’s support has unraveled quickly, leaving him with little path forward.

The Democrats’ formal Senate campaign arm and the Senate Majority PAC, which is aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both pulled investment from the race, their leaders said in statements. Swing Left, an organization working to flip seats for Democrats, removed Maine from its target Senate races for now.

“We continue to believe this seat is winnable if Platner is not on the ballot,” said Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Lauren French.

Under state law, Platner has until Monday to withdraw in order for the Maine Democratic Party to be able to nominate a replacement. The committee would have until July 27 to do so.

For Collins, facing a new candidate could make for a harder race than going up against Platner, analysts said.

The fifth-term senator has survived reelection repeatedly, including in 2020, when the state went blue in the presidential election, but drawn ire from some moderate and left-leaning voters who want her to push back more forcefully against President Trump.

Without Maine, Democrats would have to pick up an additional race in a state that went for Trump in 2024 in order to flip the four seats required to win a majority.

To get to four, the party needs to win some mix of Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Iowa and must also retain its seats in Michigan, Georgia and New Hampshire.

That scenario could be within reach for Democrats but they face a steep climb, a New York Times/Siena poll released last week found.

“This does put enormous pressure on Democrats across the country with every viable race,” said David Niven, who teaches American politics at the University of Cincinnati. “The margin of error was already slim, and it’s approaching none.”

In Texas, a heated and expensive race has shaped up between Democrat James Talarico, a state representative who is facing Republican Ken Paxton, the state attorney general.

“I would suspect that Democrats are going to be relatively all-in on Texas simply because they can no longer rely on Maine in the way they thought they were going to be able to,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.

The Politico report came after a string of other controversies for Platner, who had successfully batted them away ahead of the state’s June primary.

His quick rise in the campaign excited Democrats looking for younger, non-establishment leaders. His primary opponent, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign in late April, clearing his path.

But questions about the rushed vetting of Platner soon arose.

He faced scrutiny over a tattoo on his chest that was widely recognized as a Nazi symbol, which he then said he had covered up, and a tranche of deleted Reddit posts that he said were “stupid” comments from a time when he had post-traumatic stress disorder.

Ahead of the primary, the report of his extramarital texts and the allegations by exes about volatile behavior revived questions about his candidacy; Platner described them as politically motivated and privately assured Democratic leaders that nothing else was coming.

The situation “reinforce[s] the need for more careful vetting [of] first-time outsider candidates,” said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine.

“Every political professional knows that the most important type of candidate research is not opposition research — it’s research on your own candidate,” Schnur said.

Progressive leaders on Monday sought to validate the success of Platner’s campaign in energizing Maine voters while disavowing Platner. They urged Democratic leaders to stick with a candidate who shares Platner’s working-class image if he withdraws — something Platner may hope to influence, the New York Times reported.

“To the Democratic establishment: this is not your opening,” Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive organization Our Revolution, said in a statement. “Whoever leads this movement forward must be someone who has actually lived the fight Graham Platner ran on.”

Some Democrats were already looking to the party’s gubernatorial primary candidates as possible replacements, including Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former state Sen. Troy Jackson and former state health official Nirav D. Shah.

The July deadlines would leave enough time before November for Democrats to persuade voters of a new candidate, said Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine, but how the party chose to select a replacement would probably be as important as whom it chose.

“Having a 100-person executive committee select it on their own would probably not sit well with Platner’s supporters,” Brewer said. “A caucus they could pull off; if they want to be as open and inclusive as possible, that’s probably their best option.”

McDaniel reported from Washington and Kwok from Los Angeles.

ATLANTA — The U.S. Department of Justice cannot have the names of and contact information for every person who worked during the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

The Justice Department in April obtained a grand jury subpoena seeking the names and personal contact information of county employees and volunteer poll workers. President Trump has long claimed without evidence that widespread voter fraud in Georgia’s most populous county, a Democratic stronghold, cost him victory in the state in 2020.

Fulton County asked a judge to quash the subpoena, arguing it was meant to “target, harass and punish the President’s perceived political opponents” and that it was “grossly over broad and untethered to any reasonable need.”

“Given the low need for the subpoenaed information and the highly burdensome nature of the disclosure of the same, the Subpoena is unreasonable and must be quashed,” U.S. District Judge William Ray wrote in his ruling, calling the scope of the request “staggering.”

Emails seeking comment were sent to both the Justice Department and Fulton County.

Although grand juries often work with federal prosecutors to investigate alleged crimes, “that does not give the DOJ the right to use the Grand Jury to do whatever the DOJ wants,” he wrote.

Even if the records sought by the Justice Department could help find people who worked for the county during the 2020 election who support the theory that the election was unfair, the information couldn’t be used to charge anyone, Ray wrote.

“That is because the statute of limitations for any possible crime arising from the 2020 Election has long expired,” he wrote.

The subpoena came after the FBI in January served a search warrant at the Fulton County election hub and seized hundreds of boxes of ballots and other documents from the 2020 election. A federal judge in May denied the county’s request to force the federal government to return the ballots.

The Justice Department argued in a court filing that the subpoena was the “next step in the normal investigative process” and that it seeks “records identifying persons with relevant knowledge.”

Kamal Ghali, a lawyer for the county, argued that the subpoena “will chill participation by election workers” and that the statute of limitations for any of the alleged misconduct had already lapsed.

Justice Department lawyer William McComb argued the statute of limitations issue is not relevant at the investigative stage. The point of the investigation is to figure out what charges can be brought, he said.

“My point is, as we sit here now, we are not sure what charges can be brought. That’s the whole point of the investigation,” he said.

The request for election workers’ contact information, McComb said, “would simply be a pathway to determine and speak with and interview certain individuals who worked at the polls who may have seen, heard or done something in and of themselves.”

The judge noted that the Justice Department had expressed concern about possible criminal actions in the years that followed the election, including an alleged failure by the county to preserve electronic ballot images. But he pointed out that the subpoena seeks information related to what happened during the 2020 election and its immediate aftermath.

“In these hyper-political times in which we currently live, there are sure to be some who disagree with this decision because they believe the allegations of fraud in the 2020 Election and believe that ‘light’ should be brought to those claims,” Ray wrote.

He added that nothing prevents continued investigation into those allegations by people who believe those claims — such as Congress or even the Justice Department — but the power of the grand jury, “which exists to investigate potential crimes and to bring viable indictments” cannot be used for that purpose. Otherwise, anyone in power could use the grand jury process to subpoena personal information of citizens “with no legitimate law enforcement purpose,” he wrote.

“Thus, everyone, whether you support the President or you do not, or whether you believe the 2020 Election was fair or believe that it was not, should be concerned about the DOJ’s ability to utilize the power of the Grand Jury to appropriate your private information without a legitimate purpose,” Ray wrote.

Brumback writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security bought two of the largest immigrant detention facilities in California for $1.5 billion, according to the private prison company that sold them.

The purchase comes as the department — flush with cash after Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act infused the agency with $170 billion — has moved to scale up its capacity to detain immigrants without relying as heavily on private prison corporations.

In announcement Monday, the Tennessee-based CoreCivic said the sale of the 2,560-bed California City Detention Facility and the 1,994-bed Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego closed on July 2.

The company said it expects net proceeds of about $1.1 billion after income taxes and transaction expenses.

Ryan Gustin, public affairs director for CoreCivic, said such sales are not uncommon and that “the process was marked with rigor and integrity.” He added that the valuations were established through the federal government’s required appraisal process, using independent appraisers, who determined objective fair market value.

The sale doesn’t immediately change anything at the facilities — CoreCivic expects to continue managing them under existing contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the company and a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But the terms of those contracts could be modified given the change in ownership, the filing states. The California City facility contract expires in August 2027 and the Otay Mesa facility contract expires in December 2029, with the option to extend for another five years.

“We are pleased with the sales of these two mission-critical facilities for the Company’s government partner, which demonstrates the value of the Company’s underlying real estate portfolio, while reflecting our role as a long-term, flexible solutions provider to government,” CoreCivic CEO Patrick Swindle said in the announcement.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During a quarterly earnings call in May, George Zoley, CEO of the GEO Group, another major private prison corporation, said that the company had been in discussions with ICE “regarding the potential sale of multiple facilities.”

Critics of the purchases of detention facilities say the Trump administration is simply looking to avoid state and local oversight by bringing them under federal ownership. That issue was raised during the GEO Group earnings call when a participant later asked why the federal government wants to own the facilities instead of contracting with third parties.

If the facilities are federally owned, Zoley replied, there are “more protections from unwarranted litigation that infringes upon the activities of the ICE processing centers.”

Zoley said federal ownership would bolster the legal defense of the facilities and the argument that “states can only have very limited involvement.”

“There’s been litigation regarding overseeing medical services, food services, general cleanliness, etc.,” Zoley continued. “It’s really unprecedented and I believe it’s fundamentally unconstitutional. As some blue states are considering more active involvement in oversight of facilities, I think the logical solution to much of that is federal ownership of the facilities.”

California tried to kick private detention operators out of the state, but the 2020 law was overturned in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Since then, state leaders have established oversight mechanisms through laws that allow for monitoring and investigation of detention centers by the California Department of Justice and local health authorities.

Asked to comment about the sale, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said his congressional oversight visits to facilities operated by CoreCivic have shown that immigrants who pose no public safety threat are being held in “unacceptable conditions.”

“Whether these facilities are operated by a private contractor or owned by the federal government, my expectations remain the same,” he said. “I will continue demanding transparency, accountability, and humane conditions that respect the dignity and rights of every person in immigration detention.”

Eight ICE detention facilities now operate in California, with a combined capacity to hold nearly 9,000 people.

The California City and Otay Mesa facilities have both been the subject of lawsuits by detainees alleging detainee mistreatment. CoreCivic calls such allegations unfounded and says it complies with all regulations concerning the treatment of detainees.

In its announcement on Monday, CoreCivic said the company is in discussions with ICE about potentially selling additional detention facilities, though it said those talks are in various stages and it’s unclear whether the sales will go through.

DAPHNE, Ala. — Former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum has been arrested on drug possession charges in Alabama after police say they pulled him over for erratic driving and found marijuana and meth in his vehicle.

It’s the latest legal trouble for the ex-Tallahassee mayor, who narrowly lost to Republican Ron DeSantis for governor in 2018 and was once considered a rising star of the Democratic Party.

Gillum, 46, was arrested on July 2 in Daphne, about 11 miles east of Mobile on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. He is charged with marijuana possession and unlawful possession of a controlled substance, the Daphne Police Department said. Jail records show he was released on July 3.

Court records for Gillum’s case were not yet available, the Baldwin County Clerk of Court’s office said. Information on a lawyer who could speak on his behalf wasn’t immediately available.

A message seeking comment was left for the local district attorney’s office.

Gillum is a co-host of the politically themed Native Land Pod, which won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding News and Information Podcast in 2025. A message seeking comment was left for the podcast’s production company.

In a news release, the Daphne Police Department said officers stopped Gillum’s vehicle around 10:45 p.m. and initiated a probable cause search after one of them noticed a glass pipe on the center console.

They found several rolled marijuana cigarettes and three packages of a substance that tested positive for methamphetamine, police said.

Gillum, who served as mayor of Florida’s capital from 2014 to 2018, came within less than a percentage point of being elected the state’s first Black governor, losing to DeSantis by fewer than 34,000 votes.

In 2020, Gillum was found in a Miami Beach hotel room with a man who had apparently overdosed on drugs. Police said Gillum himself was too inebriated to talk about what happened.

The man survived and no one was ever charged with a crime for the overdose, but Gillum withdrew from public life for months afterward while seeking treatment for alcohol abuse and depression. Months later, he told a TV interviewer that he had to come to grips with what he had done.

“So much of my recovery has been about trying to get over shame,” Gillum said on the Tamron Hall talk show in September 2020.

In 2022, Gillum was indicted on federal conspiracy and wire fraud charges for allegedly funneling tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations through third parties back to himself for personal use.

A 2023 trial ended in a hung jury on those charges and an acquittal on charges that Gillum lied to undercover FBI agents posing as developers who paid for a 2016 trip he took with his brother to New York, including hotel rooms, meals, a boat tour and a ticket to the hit Broadway show “Hamilton.”

A French appeals court upheld Marine Le Pen’s conviction for misusing European Parliament funds but shortened her ban from seeking public office, keeping alive a narrow path to the 2027 presidential race. The court also ordered her to wear an electronic ankle tag.

LOS ANGELES — A lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges that the Trump administration’s immigration agencies have been sharing confidential information about Iranian asylum seekers with the Iranian government, violating national immigration regulations and endangering countless Iranians, court filings argue.

The lawsuit depicts a coordinated campaign between the U.S. and Iranian governments to identify Iranians in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and pressure them to return to Iran — a marked departure from decades of diplomatic hostility between the two governments and an ongoing war.

Roughly 600 Iranians were put in immigration detention last year, according to public records obtained by the National Iranian American Council. In June, an Iranian woman was among the two dozen migrants the U.S. deported to the Central African Republic — in a marked departure from a decades-long practice by the U.S. of welcoming Iranian dissidents, exiles and others since the 1979 Islamic Revolution forced a large number of Iranians to flee.

The U.S. government is allowed to work with government officials of foreign countries to coordinate deportation logistics. However, federal regulations passed in the late 1990s prohibit the government from sharing information that could reveal that the individual getting deported applied for asylum.

“Congress made these confidentiality protections mandatory precisely because lives depend on them, and no agency and no administration, of either party, may set them aside,” said Ali Rahnama, the interim executive director of Iranian American Legal Defense Fund.

Starting in March 2025, the U.S. State Department arranged monthly meetings with Iranian officials, using the Pakistani embassy as an intermediary, in which U.S. officials shared detailed, sensitive information about detained Iranian immigrants who the U.S. government hoped to deport, lawyers for the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and the Public Citizen Litigation Group wrote in a complaint.

The information included details about asylum applications filed by people who say they were persecuted for converting to Christianity, for their sexuality or for participating in the Women, Life, Freedom protests against the Iranian government in 2022, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

ICE forced Iranian asylum applicants who had been detained in numerous facilities, mostly southern states, to meet with an Iranian government official who had extensive and specific knowledge about their applications, according to the complaint. The information was shared even after the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran started the Iran war in February 2026.

The lawsuit is seeking to halt sharing information about asylum seekers with the Iranian government and appoint an independent monitor to prevent future disclosures.

“Despite the U.S.’s ongoing war with Iran, the administration seems more committed to mass deportation than protecting human lives,” Michael Kirkpatrick, attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group said in a statement.

The complaint names the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin and the Department of State as some of the defendants. The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment on Tuesday morning.

The allegations come amid President Trump’s ambitious and aggressive immigration crackdown that involved over 600,000 deportations and causing roughly 1.9 million immigrants to voluntarily leave in 2025 alone, according to an announcement made by DHS.

Iranian officials acknowledged in September 2025 that as many as 400 Iranians could be returned under an agreement with the Trump’s administration. That month, the first of three deportation flights brought dozens of Iranians back to Iran. The second deportation flight was in December 2025, and the final recorded deportation flight departed at the end of January 2026, roughly a month before the war on Iran started, and just weeks after the Iranian government killed thousands of citizens as part of a brutal crackdown on protests. The New York Times reported at the time that some of those deported in the flights in September, December and January were asylum seekers.

Riddle writes for the Associated Press.

SANTIAGO, Chile, July 7 (UPI) — Chile’s government is facing an unexpected political controversy after the suspension of three BTS concerts scheduled for October prompted coordinated protests by the K-pop group’s fans across the country.

President José Antonio Kast’s administration has been forced to reconsider its decision to bar the concerts from the National Stadium after ARMY, BTS’ global fan community, organized simultaneous demonstrations in 11 Chilean cities.

About 5,000 fans marched Sunday to protest cancellation of the performances at Chile’s main sports venue, where all tickets had already sold out. Authorities cited technical concerns over the impact the concerts could have on the stadium’s playing field.

BTS, one of the world’s most successful K-pop groups, uses a 360-degree stage that weigh about 600 tons. The structure would be installed in the center of the field, directly above the stadium’s irrigation system.

Sports Minister Natalia Duco said the production could damage “the country’s most important sports asset” and declined to authorize the venue for the concerts. About 200,000 people were expected to attend the three shows.

“It is impossible to cancel something that was never confirmed,” Duco said after criticism of the decision began.

The move prompted an immediate backlash from BTS fans. ARMY Chile, which has more than 130,000 followers on Instagram alone, organized through social media to pressure the government and called for demonstrations in the streets and outside La Moneda presidential palace.

Supporters also flooded the social media accounts of the Sports Ministry, Duco and concert promoter DG Medios with messages demanding that the shows be held at the National Stadium. “BTS at the National Stadium” became the movement’s main slogan.

“All our support to our Chilean sisters. We sincerely hope this situation can be resolved in the best possible way and that you will receive good news very soon,” ARMY Peru wrote on social media.

The dispute has also spilled into politics. Opposition lawmakers criticized the government and demanded an explanation for the decision, while other public officials and even soccer clubs have offered their stadiums as alternative venues.

Facing mounting pressure, the government said it is willing to reconsider its decision if the concert promoter can meet the conditions required to protect the playing surface. Meanwhile, thousands of fans continue campaigning on social media as they await a final decision.

ANKARA, Turkey — President Trump said on Tuesday that the U.S. will lift sanctions on Turkey that were issued after Ankara purchased a Russian missile defense system that led to the country being kicked out of the F-35 fighter jet program.

There are still a number of legal hurdles before Turkey could be fully admitted back to the U.S. program, but the removal of the sanctions — issued under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act — would help ease the process for Ankara to regain access to the F-35s, a top goal of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and one that Trump has predicted for some time would occur.

“We’re going to be taking the sanctions off, OK?” Trump said in response to a question during a meeting with Erdogan at the presidential palace in Ankara. He said Cabinet officials were working on the matter. Earlier in the meeting, he said the possibility of selling the F-35s to Turkey is “certainly something we will consider.”

Trump and Erdogan repeatedly underscored their warm relationship as they met soon after the U.S. president arrived in Ankara for the NATO summit. Erdogan greeted the U.S. president with an elaborate welcome ceremony involving cannons, military officials on horseback and jets flying overhead emitting red, white and blue smoke.

“Sometimes you get along with the toughest people, like him,” Trump said, gesturing to Erdogan. The U.S. president repeatedly praised Turkey for its loyalty to the U.S., particularly during the war in Iran.

Trump, who has often upended NATO gatherings with complaints that European allies did not spend enough on defense, had said he would not have attended this year’s summit had it not been for his close ties with Erdogan.

‘Moment of great pride’

Earlier in the day, NATO showcased a series of military projects worth billions of dollars — an investment that the alliance’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte, called “money well spent.”

An energized Rutte was speaking to government ministers and defense industry officials at a forum billed as NATO’s “big reveal,” to the thrum of techno music and a slick video display.

NATO as an organization does not own any weapons — these are the property of the 32 member countries — but it does have a fleet of 14 AWACS early warning radar surveillance planes that are about 50 years old, along with some newer surveillance drones.

A deal to replace the aging planes was announced Tuesday. Swedish manufacturer Saab will be supplying up to 10 new GlobalEye surveillance aircraft for a 10-nation consortium, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced.

“It’s a moment of great pride,” he said, noting that the twin-engine aircraft would be “made within the alliance for all the alliance.”

Some of the projects will be paid for with funds from a system of cheap loans for defense purposes set up by the European Union, comprising up to $170 billion raised on capital markets.

“We need to ensure that we are translating our economic might into military capabilities, putting the cash to work from defense plans to drones, from money to missiles and interceptors,” Rutte said.

Trump has branded NATO a “paper tiger” that would cease to function without American arms and leadership. At the forum on Tuesday, Michael Duffy, a U.S. undersecretary of defense, said “the reality is that we need production increases across the board.”

“We will be looking to increase our exports to those who are looking to buy our equipment, and we’ll also be looking to partner with the expansion of production capacity here in Europe,” he said.

Defense sales announced

Representatives from 15 nations shook hands and patted shoulders on a vast podium under the NATO logo as they announced a multinational effort to buy air-to-air refueling and transport planes from Airbus.

Then Rutte announced a four-country effort to purchase as many as five new Triton surveillance drones to add to NATO’s small fleet.

“It is genuinely made in NATO, and creating jobs on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said.

Rutte told reporters on the eve of the military alliance’s two-day summit in Turkey that “we will announce tens of billions in new contracts that will provide the crucial kit we need to deter and defend.”

However, at Tuesday’s event, no dollar figures were given and the display included some projects long since agreed.

The defense industry splash comes a few weeks after Rutte tried to ease U.S. concerns about military spending at NATO with a new pitch using a chart labeled “The Trump Trillion” — showing $1.2 trillion in spending by European allies and Canada since 2017.

Trump appeared unmoved, saying he was still disappointed at some NATO allies’ refusal to join the Iran war, which he had launched alongside Israel without consulting them.

“We don’t need their money — we don’t need anything,” Trump said. “I just want loyalty.”

Debate over jet sales to Turkey

The summit is being held in Erdogan’s sprawling palace compound in Ankara, and Trump has suggested he would come bearing gifts for the Turkish leader.

Turkey was barred from the F-35 fighter jet program in 2019 after it purchased Russian-made S-400 missile defense systems. When asked about the fate of Turkey’s return to the F-35 system, Trump said as he sat next to Erdogan that “it’s certainly something we will consider.

Speaking Monday on the morning show “Fox & Friends,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the U.S. not to sell F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, saying that Erdogan “calls openly for the annihilation of Israel.”

Turkey and Israel have acrimonious relations. Erdogan frequently accuses Israel of committing genocide in its war in Gaza, triggered by the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.

Netanyahu said selling Turkey F-35s would “upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority and also, I think, by America’s posture in the Middle East.”

Turkey beefed up security and banned protests in Ankara during the summit, but a small group of demonstrators gathered on Tuesday in the capital. They were quickly surrounded by police, and a legal association said 22 students affiliated with the leftist Turkish Workers Party and three lawyers had been detained.

Seeking a stronger Europe for a stronger NATO

The Pentagon wants a reboot and is promoting what it calls “NATO 3.0,” a vision of the alliance in which Europe assumes greater responsibility for its own defense, freeing the U.S. to concentrate on other priorities.

But hiking defense spending means increasing taxes or diverting resources from other priorities. U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey unexpectedly quit last month, saying the British government was not willing to spend at a time of rising threats.

Separately on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a fresh appeal for his country to be allowed to join the alliance, saying its armed forces are highly experienced and resilient would only boost the alliance’s defense capabilities.

He highlighted Ukraine’s adaptability and its ability to strike deep inside Russia, hit oil refineries and other energy targets. He said that Ukraine’s armed forces are “eliminating” on average 30,000 Russian troops every month.

“Frankly we take no pride in this,” Zelensky said, noting that the war with Russia — now in its fifth year — is “a war we did not seek but one we are forced to fight.”

Concern is mounting among some northern and central eastern countries that Russia might be preparing a hybrid attack — a combination of conventional warfare with tactics like cyberattacks — on the continent as Russian President Vladimir Putin struggles to secure victory in Ukraine.

Cook, Fraser, Sewell and Kim write for the Associated Press. AP writers Jill Lawless in London and Andy Wilks in Istanbul contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — While President Bush floats above the fray, White House strategists are laying the groundwork for his reelection effort, targeting key states and working to undermine the Democrats hoping to run against him in 2004.

The hub of activity is the Republican National Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill, stocked with key members of the Bush team and fashioned to serve as the president’s reelection operation in all but name. The idea, say those familiar with the arrangement, is to distance Bush and the White House from overt politicking as long as possible, without ceding ground in a race expected to be hard-fought and probably close.

The war in Iraq and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks “changed Bush’s presidency … and made him a commander in chief,” said Scott Reed, a Republican consultant and former top staffer at GOP headquarters. “That gives Bush a huge advantage over his Democratic opponents, and this White House will work to keep him in that seat as long as possible.”

“By becoming ‘candidate’ Bush, you put yourself on the same level as ‘candidate’ Kerry,” Reed added, referring to Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, one of the nine Democrats competing for the party’s nomination. “Evolving from a candidate to president is a big step, and you never want to go backward.”

Bush’s top political aides declined to be interviewed for this article, and the White House has actively discouraged other Republican operatives from talking about the president’s reelection plans; most of those willing to discuss Bush’s strategy and the planning quietly underway would not do so for attribution.

“There is no campaign,” said Jim Dyke, chief spokesman for the Republican National Committee, where all major decisions flow from the White House and the president’s chief political aide, Karl Rove.

But others suggest that the Bush campaign never let up after the 2000 election, despite efforts to portray the White House as paying little attention to politics. “It’s the campaign that never turns off,” said a Western GOP operative, who participates in one of several weekly strategy calls that originate at party headquarters and tie in dozens of GOP operatives across the country. “They’ve been at it ever since they’ve been inaugurated.”

Tom Rath, a veteran New Hampshire GOP strategist and leading Bush hand in that key state, said he had breakfast with Rove within 10 days of Bush’s swearing-in and has regularly talked strategy with him since.

The reelection effort has picked up even more in recent weeks after Bush told aides to proceed with planning for 2004 — provided they don’t expect his active involvement soon.

But even before that signal came from the top, Rove — a lover of history — and others in the White House began plotting the 2004 strategy, starting with research into past reelection campaigns. Special care was given to study the failed effort of Bush’s father, down to his day-to-day schedule in 1992 and the timing of campaign media statements, according to one Republican. But the working model for this Bush’s reelection bid has been adapted from the last two presidents to win second terms: Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Bill Clinton.

Reagan, who was personally popular in the way Bush is today, stayed out of the political mix until well into his reelection year. Clinton, in turn, amassed a huge financial advantage over his opponent and used that to begin a springtime advertising campaign that pounded the GOP nominee, former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, before Dole had the means to adequately respond.

Bush is expected to enjoy a similar financial edge and emulate Reagan and Clinton by standing aside while aides launch an aggressive assault on whomever the Democrats nominate. That candidate should emerge sometime around March; the White House hope is that he or she too will lack the financial resources to effectively respond until the Democratic National Convention in July — by which time it may be too late.

A consultant who has worked closely alongside Rove described his operating style this way: “In your face. Offense, offense, offense. Attack, attack, attack.

“They want to do whatever they can to put banana peels under every single Democrat running” even before it is clear which of them Bush will face, the GOP strategist said. “Whoever [the Democrats] nominate, they want him weakened by the time he gets through the process.”

Many of those who served with Rove in Bush’s first presidential campaign are expected to reprise their roles, including pollster Matthew Dowd, media advisor Mark McKinnon and finance director Jack Oliver, who now serves as deputy chairman and day-to-day overseer of the Republican National Committee. Ken Mehlman, the White House political director, is likely to serve as campaign manager, and Karen Hughes, Bush’s closest advisor-without-portfolio, will also play a key role, perhaps out of a satellite campaign office in Austin, Texas. Marc Racicot, chairman of the RNC, may assume the same role and title at Bush’s reelection committee.

Along with deciding those personnel matters, White House strategists have conducted a painstaking review of the electoral college map, with an eye toward tailoring Bush’s travels to states that would allow him to shore up his skimpy 2000 electoral college margin. At the top of the list of states Bush lost and now plans to target are Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to party insiders.

As for the campaign’s treasury, in 2000, Bush raised more than $100 million, a record, to capture the GOP nomination in a crowded field. With the ceiling for individual contributions now doubled, to $2,000, and Bush enjoying the advantages of incumbency, he could easily top that amount in 2004. However, it is unclear how much Bush intends to raise; a White House strategist dismissed reports of a $200-million to $250-million budget as wildly speculative, but declined to offer another figure. Regardless, the president is expected to easily raise whatever sum he needs, allowing him to put off fund-raising for at least a few more months, as he would like.

A delay also fits into the White House strategy of keeping Bush out of the political back-and-forth as long as possible by taking trips that are billed as presidential in nature even though they carry political weight too — trips like the ones he has recently taken to Missouri, Ohio and Michigan, states vital to his reelection. (It also means that taxpayers pick up the tab instead of Bush’s reelection committee.) Even when Bush starts campaign travel closer to the end of the year, it will be limited largely to a handful of select states, such as early-voting Iowa and New Hampshire, and will be tailored to appear “presidential” rather than blatantly political in nature, a White House advisor said.

That leaves the RNC to function, for now, as the reelection campaign in absentia, building support in key states, tending to the party’s big donors as well as grass-roots activists and, perhaps most important, harrying the nine Democratic candidates.

To that end, RNC researchers have compiled dossiers on all the party’s hopefuls and distributed them to reporters under such provocative headlines as, “Who is John Edwards? An unaccomplished liberal in moderate clothing and a friend to his fellow personal injury trial lawyers.”

The purpose, explained one party communications strategist, “is to get journalists to run a whole series of stories that build upon each other” until finally a negative image “takes root” — the way former Vice President Al Gore came to be depicted in the 2000 campaign as a serial exaggerator.

Democrats have a similar research and message-dissemination operation at their headquarters just a few blocks away from the Republicans. But even party insiders acknowledge that the Democrats lack the resources and discipline that make GOP efforts so effective.

“Republicans have, since the 1960s, been building and using the RNC to make it an active and aggressive campaign tool with investments in databases, in direct mail, in phone banks, in Internet technology,” said Jenny Backus, a recently departed Democratic Party spokeswoman in Washington. Although Democrats have made significant strides over the last two years, she said, they haven’t caught up.

Also, Democrats lack the powerful echo chamber created by a wealth of sympathetic media outlets that can turn a set of “talking points” sent from GOP headquarters into a story that dominates the political news for days. “You put a message out and if the traditional media don’t cover it, talk radio and the cable [television] people will,” said Don Fierce, who helped run the RNC through the mid-1990s. “There’s much more amplification than there used to be.”

A good illustration is the recent flap over Kerry’s quip calling for “regime change” in the 2004 election. Within 24 hours, a media account of Kerry’s remark had been dispatched as part of the RNC’s regular Thursday e-mail briefing to 350,000 party activists. The party’s congressional leaders condemned Kerry, the story made national headlines and the Massachusetts senator was forced to repeatedly respond to reporters’ questions about his comment.

Then, for good measure, Kerry was assailed by military veterans in each of the next several states he visited; their quotes were corralled by GOP leaders and passed on to reporters in Arizona, South Carolina and California, keeping the story alive and helping shape local news coverage.

“Message repetition is pretty fundamental,” said a California GOP strategist who has worked closely with the White House . “It’s basic stuff that doesn’t always get done right. And this group is very, very good at it.”