politics

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long presented his closeness to the United States – both politically and personally – as evidence of his indispensability to Israel.

Arriving with a camera-ready American accent after spending a large portion of his youth in the country, Netanyahu is said to have used his unique understanding of US politics to charm and cajole numerous presidents into maintaining their unflagging support of Israel and his personal political projects.

For a time it appeared as though US President Donald Trump was the most amenable of all past presidents to Israel and to Netanyahu, particularly after he became the first US leader to agree to participate in a joint war with Israel against Iran.

And yet, with that war stalling, Trump appearing more willing to make deals in the Middle East without Israeli input, and increasing criticism of Israel in the US, there is a sense in Israel that Netanyahu’s Trump card may not be as useful as it once was.

That has come at a bad time for Netanyahu, who faces an election at home in late October and an ongoing trial for corruption, as well as several unresolved conflicts in the region.

Netanyahu’s visit to Washington on Tuesday to meet Trump – his first since the war on Iran began – therefore is an opportunity for a refresh – and a photo opportunity to remind the Israeli public of his ties to the US president.

The optics

Strains in Netanyahu’s relationship with Trump have been growing since the start of the war on Iran, after reporting emerged that it was the Israeli prime minister who convinced the US president of the feasibility of the mission, and the potential for the Iranian state to be overthrown.

Concern has also grown within the US Congress over Netanyahu’s apparent indulgence of Israel’s increasingly violent settler movement – which included the extrajudicial detention of a US senator by settlers – alongside friction over Washington’s decision to consider selling F-35s to Israel’s regional rival Turkiye and agreeing a nuclear cooperation deal with Saudi Arabia.

“The real reason Netanyahu’s got this visit [to Washington] is purely cynical,” Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador and consul general in New York, told Al Jazeera. “He’s claimed that he’s flying all the way to the US to attend the wake of his apparently great friend [deceased Republican Senator] Lindsey Graham.”

“Supposedly there’s an agenda, supposedly they’re going to talk about Iran, F-35s and Saudi Arabia’s potential nuclear deal,” said Pinkas.

“But really this is about two things: hoping to assure allies and critics within Israel that the relationship with Trump holds and, separately, hoping that Trump will again call for his pardon in the corruption trial,” he added, referring to Trump’s unorthodox intervention in Israel on Netanyahu’s behalf in November 2025.

However, while Netanyahu may be hoping that a good meeting with Trump may help him in the polls, he arrives at a time when his stock in the US is potentially at its lowest.

Netanyahu has received widespread criticism from figures on the American right, such as podcast host Tucker Carlson and the former Republican US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Vice President JD Vance has also been critical of “some” Israelis, using an interview with US podcaster Joe Rogan to suggest that figures within the Israeli government were trying to derail the agreement he was brokering with Iran to end the war.

Analysts have suggested that the Trump-Netanyahu meeting will combine public flattery with private cynicism on the US president’s part. Asked about Netanyahu’s public resistance to the F-35 sale to Turkiye on board Air Force One on Monday, Trump told reporters, “Nobody tells me what we should be selling”.

“Netanyahu arrives in Washington at a time when even many around [Trump] are suspicious of him. He has become toxic in the US,” Ahron Bregman, an Israeli security analyst and senior teaching fellow in the Department for War Studies at King’s College London. “He is regarded in the US – rightly or wrongly – as the one who dragged Trump into a war of choice that has turned into a strategic catastrophe. Nobody, not even Trump, will let him pretend to be the cleverest guy in the room. Those days are gone.”

While few expect any overt signs of disharmony from the visit in public, Netanyahu’s ability to present himself as uniquely positioned to manage the country’s relationship with the US – a key factor in the upcoming election – may be limited.

“Netanyahu’s had a tremendous track record with the US, but he’s burned a lot of bridges,” Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster and a former Netanyahu aide in the 1990s, told Al Jazeera, adding that the criticism of Netanyahu was not isolated to figures within the nationalist wing of the Republican Party, but included Israel’s traditional allies within the party’s centre right.

“We’ve seen tension through Trump’s comments on the various F-35 sales, including most recently to Turkiye, as well as US criticism of Netanyahu at the start of the Iran war, so I’m not too sure if Trump’s going to be stumping for Netanyahu for all that much longer,” Barak said. “It could easily be that Trump declares Netanyahu was a great wartime leader, but that it was time for Israel to move on, before meeting with [other Israeli politicians] and endorsing a new prime minister for Israel.”

July 28 (UPI) — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear sent a letter Monday to Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., telling him to address Kentuckians about his absence from Congress or resign.

Beshear is a Democrat and is considering a run for president.

McConnell, 84, has been hospitalized since June 14 for a fall. His office has released photos of McConnell and his wife, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao.

“As Governor of the state you serve, I am calling on you to directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign,” Beshear wrote in a Monday letter shared with the media.

“Per our research, a vacancy in the Senate occurs when a senator dies, resigns, or is expelled by a vote of the Senate itself,” the governor wrote. “If you are unwilling to voluntarily show that you still have the capacity to serve, I will insist Leader [Sen. John] Thune [R-S.D.] fully investigate your condition, report to the American people, and begin the process if warranted.”

CNN first reported details of the letter, which was also sent to Thune.

On July 8, Beshear requested details of McConnell’s condition. McConnell’s office has said that he is recovering and working closely with doctors and medical staff. But McConnell himself hasn’t been shown in video or heard publicly via phone call. Images released of him have been met with public skepticism.

In the latest letter, Beshear said that “important events are happening in our country right now during your absence.”

“President Trump is stuck in a war of his own making and has greatly strengthened the very country he claims is a threat,” he said. “Prices continue to rise, crushing Americans who are working hard but not getting ahead. Americans’ voting rights are being eliminated by the Supreme Court and threatened by congressional action. All while you are absent and refuse to communicate clearly and directly to the people you serve.”

McConnell’s office released a statement Monday about the Senator’s health from the hospital’s Office of the Attending Physician.

“Senator McConnell continues his recovery from a fall at home in June. OAP physicians visit with the Senator every day, discussing all aspects of his rehabilitation care. Since his discharge from hospital care, he has maintained a strenuous course of physical therapy and rehabilitation, including multiple sessions a day designed to rebuild strength and reduce the risk of future falls. His bout with childhood polio continues to be a significant factor in his mobility. He is not yet medically cleared to leave the rehab facility and return to the office.”

McConnell also said in the update that he is sad to miss the annual Fancy Farm picnic in western Kentucky, an event that draws thousands to hear speeches from political candidates from around the state. The picnic is scheduled for Aug. 1.

Beshear noted the update but said it isn’t enough.

“I understand anyone’s desire for privacy, but when you run for office and serve as one of a state’s two U.S. senators, you willingly abdicate much of your personal privacy,” he said in the letter. “That’s the deal, and we all know it when we run.”

McConnell has said he will retire at the end of his term in January. He was hospitalized in February for flu-like symptoms and has fallen in the U.S. Capitol several times.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi is leading a high-level delegation to Turkiye, in his first visit to the neighbouring country since taking office in May.

Accompanied by ministers and senior officials, al-Zaidi’s visit on Tuesday will focus on “strategic cooperation” between the two countries, as well as issues related to security, water and the economy, according to government spokesman Haider al-Aboudi.

Relations between Iraq and Turkiye have fluctuated over the past decade but remained a priority for both sides, particularly for Iraq in relation to oil and water resources.

And the launch of the US-Israel war on Iran in February and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz have elevated Ankara’s importance for Baghdad, prompting it to press Turkish authorities to resume and increase the exporting of oil through the Iraqi-Turkiye pipeline after years of suspension.

New oil agreement

The two countries are seeking to sign an oil pipeline agreement that governs the export of Iraqi oil after the expiration of the previous deal on Monday.

A source from Iraq’s Ministry of Oil told Al Jazeera that a technical delegation arrived in Ankara late last week to finalise a one-year extension of the old oil-exporting agreement until a new deal is concluded.

“The new Turkish terms regarding a new agreement are very difficult to be accepted by Iraq. For this reason, no one other than the Iraqi council of ministers is to take such a decision regarding this issue,” said the official on condition of anonymity.

”Turkiye wants to increase the interest from $1.35 for each barrel to $7, and the export capacity must not be less than 1.5 million bpd [barrels per day], whether Iraq can reach this level or not,” the source added.

Part of al-Zaidi’s plan is to find new energy deals and secure alternate routes to export Iraqi crude via Turkiye and Syria and to the Mediterranean Sea.

Iraq signed energy deals estimated at $200bn with US companies during al-Zaidi’s visit to the United States earlier this month, and the government aims to increase its oil and gas production, as well as to diversify exporting options.

“There is an urgent need to find new export outlets away from the Strait of Hormuz, which no longer meets Iraq’s requirements. We must expedite and shorten the timeframe for negotiations and contracting in order to establish new export routes,” said Iraqi Oil Minister Basim Khudair.

Development Route 

During his visit, al-Zaidi is also expected to pursue the establishment of strong trade, development and economic ties while seeking to draw from Turkiye’s experience across different industries.

A government source told Al Jazeera that the prime minister will highlight the importance of utilising Turkish expertise in the energy, infrastructure and transport sectors to boost Iraq’s development initiatives.

Among the main projects is the so-called Development Route – a vital transport project that connects Iraq’s al-Fao port in the south all the way north to the Iraq-Turkiye-Syria border triangle through a 1,200km (746-mile) rail and a highway network that passes through 10 Iraqi provinces.

Abd al-Jabar Ahmad, a professor of political science, said continued attacks by armed groups “have effectively derailed” the project.

He also cast doubt al-Zaidi visit’s will yield major results in relation to it, pointing to Ankara’s involvement in a transport corridor seeking to link Turkiye to Jordan through Syria and then Saudi Arabia.

“In my view, the Saudi project stripped Iraq’s Development Road Project of much of its economic and investment appeal,” he added.

Water and security   

Water management is also expected to be prioritised during al-Zaidi’s discussions in Turkiye.

Iraq blames Turkiye for building dams that have affected the flow of water from its two main rivers – the Tigris and the Euphrates – which originate in Turkish territory.

“Iraq views it as an issue that impacts the future of millions of Iraqis,” said the government source.

But the most complicated and sensitive issue concerns security – particularly, the presence of Turkish forces on Iraqi soil to fight the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which Turkiye, the US and European Union have designated as a “terrorist” group.

Military estimates suggest that Turkiye has about 50 small and big bases in three Iraqi provinces – Erbil, Duhok and Nineveh – hosting some 5,000 soldiers and weaponry, including artillery and armoured vehicles, as well as heavy and medium arms.

In mid-2025, the PKK announced it had taken its first steps towards disarmament as part of a wider peace deal with Ankara to end 40 years of war against the Turkish state in a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people. Still, Turkiye continues to view the armed group’s presence in different mountainous areas in northern Iraq as a national security threat.

But despite the challenges, there is wide support in Iraq to strengthen relations with Turkiye, driven by the belief that ties with the neighbouring country remain important and serve Iraq’s national interests.

“There is a strong Iraqi desire to deepen relations with Turkiye in many aspects, especially in oil as Turkiye becomes one of the most important countries in the region in terms of transit routes for exporting oil to Europe and the rest of the world,” said Issam al-Faily, a political science professor.

“The problem lies in the nature of the Iraqi political climate, which is affected by the ongoing power struggles. The covert Turkish–Iranian rivalry may be one of the reasons that could prevent al-Zaidi from achieving his aspirations in relations with Turkiye. He should balance these very critical issues, if he wants this visit to be successful,” added al-Faily.

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Canadian politician Bill Oliver has gone viral after he appeared to accidentally read AI-generated editing instructions aloud, not once, but twice, during a speech to lawmakers in early June.

AMMAN, Jordan — When Iranian ballistic missiles repeatedly struck Jordan last week, killing three American service members and wounding dozens of others, it brought the spotlight on a U.S. military presence the government of this desert kingdom has long worked to downplay.

Jordan has been a decades-long military and counterterrorism partner with the United States, opening its territory over the years to U.S. and other Western troops in their engagements throughout the region. But faced with a population that is overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian and suspicious of the U.S. for its all-out support of Israel, the government had kept those relationships at a low profile.

But now, Jordan’s growing role in the United States’ war with Iran — and the intensifying Iranian retaliation that role invites — is spurring uncomfortable conversations for the government.

“Jordanians are trapped in a dilemma: They’re being dragged into a war they didn’t want, but the cause of that war is ironically the ally they bargained with to protect them in the first place,” said Sean Yom, a professor of political science and Jordan expert at Temple University who wrote the book “Jordan: Politics in an Accidental Crucible.”

“So they’re asking what’s the wisdom of having this geopolitical bargain with a patron like the U.S. when one of the sources of our instability is the relationship that’s supposed to guarantee our security.”

Since the ceasefire broke down July 8 and the U.S. began launching near-daily waves of strikes on Iran, Jordan has been targeted on nine occasions, with ballistic missiles and drones hitting U.S. assets and facilities and endangering some 4,000 service members at a number of Jordanian military bases across the country.

One of those salvos, on July 17, hit a housing unit in Muwaffaq Al-Salti, a Jordanian base in the country’s east, killing three U.S. service members and wounding at least four others. Also attacked were King Faisal Airbase, Prince Hassan Airbase and the airport in Aqaba.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed the strikes not only killed and wounded dozens of U.S. military personnel, but also damaged drones, helicopters, F-15 preparation hangars, radar sites, missile defense systems and munitions depots.

More worryingly for Jordan, the IRGC issued statements thanking “honorable people” in Jordan for providing “sincere cooperation and precise information,” which it said enabled it to target and kill “dozens of American terrorist forces.”

“Seize every opportunity to dismantle American institutions and expel the American occupation army from Jordan,” one of the statements said.

As word of the attacks spread, Jordan’s government, normally reticent about foreign military deployments in the country, embarked on damage control.

Officials and members of parliament swiftly condemned Tehran for violating the country’s sovereignty, while the foreign ministry summoned Iran’s charge d’affaires in Amman, the Jordanian capital, and demanded Iran cease attacks on the kingdom. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, meanwhile, rejected Iran’s claim that the U.S. has bases in the country.

“There are no American bases in Jordan. We have American troops that are in Jordan as part of our long-standing military cooperation,” he said at the Aspen Security Forum earlier this month. Safadi was referring to the 2021 defense agreement that allows U.S. forces unfettered access to 12 facilities in Jordan, including five air bases; the agreement was approved via royal decree and bypassed parliament.

“Their presence is governed by a defense agreement that fully respects our sovereignty,” he said.

Yet government statements didn’t do much to allay concerns. Though many Jordanians have little love for Iran, more than 300 politicians, academics, lawyers, retired military officers and tribal leaders signed an open letter last week calling on the government to withdraw from the defense agreement and keep Jordanian installations neutral — a bold move in a country where opposition to government policies (especially in security matters) can be a red line.

“Jordan is not a party to this war. Its people should not have to bear the consequences or pay the price for policies that do not serve the nation’s supreme interests,” the letter said.

“We urge the avoidance of the dangers associated with aligning ourselves under the American umbrella; this requires adopting a policy of genuine neutrality, based on refraining from any military or logistical involvement that serves any party to the conflict.”

Another sign of popular anger came Sunday: When one member of parliament exhorted the body to send condolences to Congress for the killing of the U.S. service members, others shouted him down, saying the legislature wasn’t a funeral parlor to console “criminals” and “child killers,” in reference to the United States’ support for Israel in Gaza.

Jordan grapples with questions similar to those facing its gulf neighbors, all of which rely on the U.S. security umbrella that has exposed their nations to Iranian attack. But those countries’ oil riches afford them leverage to push back on the U.S. presence, while Jordan — a resource-poor nation of some 11 million people — cannot.

The conflict, meanwhile, has only compounded Jordan’s economic woes. Tourism, which official figures say accounts for almost 15% of the country’s GDP and had just begun to recover from the 2023 Gaza war, has cratered since the start of military operations against Iran. One month after the war, gas prices rose by 11%, a body blow for Jordan’s perpetually anemic economy.

All that has made the kingdom ever more reliant on U.S. largesse. Washington gives Amman roughly $1.45 billion annually, including around $800 million that go straight to government coffers for budgetary support. It would be hard pressed to substitute that level of support from Europe or elsewhere, experts say.

At the same time, Jordan has become a vital nerve center for U.S. forces. The U.S. military has since 2019 spent hundreds of millions of dollars on upgrades for Muwaffaq Al-Salti and other facilities, according to U.S. federal contracting documents, laying aircraft aprons, taxiways, munitions depots and other infrastructure.

Satellite imagery of those bases from 2019 onward show significant construction and an increasing presence of U.S. assets, including F-16s, F-18s, drones and helicopters.

Now, with U.S. troops deployed in gulf nations proving vulnerable to Iranian barrages, Pentagon planners have transferred assets to locations farther away from Iran, especially Jordan.

In recent days, despite a pause in operations against Iran, flight tracking sites showed brisk U.S. military traffic, with logistical aircraft — including the massive C-17 Globemaster and KC-35 fueling tankers — making repeated trips between Jordan and U.S. military hubs in Europe.

Estuardo Mazariegos and Jose Ugarte, running against each other for a city council seat representing part of South Los Angeles, are immigrants from Latin America who arrived undocumented as children.

Both 40 years old, they grew up in the area and established themselves as community organizers.

And no matter which of them wins election on Nov. 3, it will be a historic change for Council District 9, which has been represented by a Black council member since 1963, even as its demographics shifted to a Latino majority.

Mazariegos and Ugarte both said they are committed to representing all their constituents equally, including Black residents who have expressed concerns about the change.

Jose Ugarte is the front-runner for City Council District 9 after getting 39% of the vote in the June primary.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Ugarte, who was until recently a deputy chief of staff to the current council member, Curren Price, got about 39% of the vote in the June primary to 26% for Mazariegos, in a six-candidate field.

Ugarte was born in Oaxaca and is Mazateco — an Indigenous group native to the Mexican state. He has spent most of his life in South L.A., where he was embraced by his Black neighbors and schoolmates. He wants to model himself after Price, who he said is known in the community as the most “pro-Latino Black councilman.”

“I want to be a voice for Black residents in my district,” Ugarte said at his campaign headquarters on Avalon Boulevard. “I want to be called the most pro-Black Latino council member that the city really has.”

Last year, Ugarte agreed to pay a $17,500 fine to the city’s Ethics Commission, later increased to $25,000, for repeatedly failing to disclose outside income he made from his lobbying and consulting firm while also working as a council staffer. He said the issue stemmed from “an unintentional clerical reporting error on my part.”

Mazariegos is the L.A. co-director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, a statewide nonprofit that organizes lower-income Black and brown communities for progressive change. Born in Guatemala and brought to the U.S. by his parents, he also was shaped by growing up in racially diverse parts of South L.A. He said he’s reaching out to different sectors of the community, including Black organizations and churches.

Organizing is about “always having open ears to the community,” Mazariegos said while sitting outside Mercado La Paloma, a food hall in the district. “It’s fighting for, honoring the Black legacy and fighting for a Black future, and you do that by building together.”

In his early 20s, Mazariegos pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle. He said he was holding on to the gun for a friend and that the conviction makes him a better candidate because he can relate to people in the district who have had run-ins with law enforcement.

Council District 9 encompasses the Convention Center, USC and neighborhoods along the Harbor Freeway, including Vermont Square, South Park and Florence-Graham. In a district with the highest poverty rate in the city, residents are concerned about issues including illegal dumping, public safety, a dearth of grocery stores and a sense of being neglected by City Hall.

Price, who has represented the district since 2013, is terming out. He has been fighting corruption charges, with a judge deciding in January that there was enough evidence to move to trial on four counts of voting on matters in which Price had a conflict of interest, five counts of embezzlement and three counts of perjury.

Price said he never intended to do anything wrong and questioned the fairness of a prosecution over what he said was essentially a paperwork error.

The growth of the Latino population in a district that is now nearly 80% Latino has created political tensions for decades, said Manuel Pastor, a USC professor and author of “South Central Dreams: Finding Home and Building Community in South L.A.”

Four years ago, those tensions resurfaced after a recording emerged of a conversation among three Latino city council members and a labor leader that featured racist and disparaging remarks about Black people, Oaxacans and others. The revelations tested a fragile alliance of Black and Latino coalitions that organizers have sought to maintain.

More recently, some Black community leaders expressed concern that a proposal to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections would diminish Black political power. The City Council ended up sending the proposal to a committee for more study.

Pastor noted that Price made an effort to focus on Latino residents, who have grown up alongside Black residents and suffered the same disinvestment in their neighborhoods.

This election, Pastor said, will pit the strength of L.A.’s political establishment against the rising power of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Ugarte’s endorsements include Price and the L.A. County Democratic Party, while Mazariegos has been endorsed by Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, City Controller Kenneth Mejia and the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter, among others.

Through May 27, Ugarte had raised $510,000 in campaign contributions and Mazariegos had raised $254,000.

Ugarte has benefited from nearly $1 million in independent expenditures, which differ from campaign contributions, with Airbnb contributing $302,000 to support his candidacy and the California Apartment Assn. Housing Solutions Committee spending $230,000.

Mazariegos has received support from the political arms of United Teachers Los Angeles as well as his employer, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action, which together spent about $118,000.

Jose Ugarte says, “I want to be called the most pro-Black Latino council member that the city really has.”

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

On a recent Sunday morning, Ugarte stopped by services at two predominantly Black churches. At McCoy Memorial Baptist Church in South Park, he accepted a warm hug from longtime Pastor R.A. Williams Jr., who endorsed his candidacy. Ugarte then traveled a few blocks to Experience Christian Ministries, where Pastor Shep Crawford also has endorsed him.

“I met him years ago, boots on the ground, in the streets making changes,” Crawford told the congregation.

That same day, about three miles north at Audio Graph Beer Co., Mazariegos was cheering at a World Cup final watch party that doubled as a fundraiser. He posed for photos with supporters, who wore buttons declaring him “the people’s candidate.” He credited making the runoff election to his years in the community advocating for anti-displacement measures for tenants and lowering the rent cap.

Angie Gonzalez, 22, said Mazariegos earned her support because of his work advocating for tenant rights.

“I like how Estuardo is trying to empower us,” she said.

Odilia Romero, a resident of District 9 and executive director of CIELO, an advocacy group for Indigenous people, said she is not endorsing in the race. But she acknowledged the importance of an Indigenous candidate, four years after the audio leak scandal.

After The Times broke that story, Ugarte said, he secured permits for a march from L.A. Trade Tech to City Hall, where Oaxacans and others rallied.

Ugarte said if he is elected, he’d become the first Indigenous Oaxacan council member. He wants to show anyone critical of immigration — including the Trump administration — that “immigrants are here to build things to make the country better.”

“I want to be a council member that came from another country, that came as an immigrant, that came from an Indigenous state, and that made a name for himself, that [improved] his community,” he said.

Organizing is about “always having open ears to the community,” Estuardo Mazariegos says. “It’s fighting for, honoring the Black legacy and fighting for a Black future, and you do that by building together.”

(Arwen Clemans / Los Angeles Times)

Mazariegos said that while he may not be a political insider, he makes up for it as a “community insider.”

“There’s a lot of mistrust for the status quo right now,” he said. His goal is “making sure that the 9th district has representation that actually fights for it.”

These days, he said, campaigning has turned into an all-day affair, meeting people as he walks with his family around the district.

Mazariegos has in recent months appeared at City Hall to advocate for charter reform, including increasing police accountability, expanding the size of the City Council and advocating for noncitizen voting. None of those measures made the November ballot.

Organizers in the district said that no matter who wins, they intend to hold the new council member accountable.

“We hope that whoever wins this race keeps working-class people and their issues on the forefront,” said Ron Gochez, a longtime district resident and organizer with Union del Barrio, which advocates for immigrants. “We will pressure whoever wins to do the right thing.”

The fate of hundreds of clean energy projects hangs in the balance after court documents revealed that the Trump administration targeted California and other blue states solely for political reasons when it slashed funding for the initiatives last year.

Large companies, startups, utilities, universities and other nonprofits were among those that lost out on $7.6 billion in clean energy funding terminated by the White House in October. They include the University of California, the California Energy Commission, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and California’s nascent hydrogen hub, the Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems, or ARCHES.

At the time, Trump administration officials said the grants were terminated because they “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”

But in court documents filed as part of a lawsuit challenging the cuts, the Department of Energy states the selection of grants was “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”

It also concedes that neither the inclusion of ARCHES, nor any other grants in the October tranche, was “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor.”

California and the 15 other states that lost funding did not vote for Trump in the 2024 election.

Legal experts said such an action is unheard of.

“The government has stipulated that grants were cut off to states that voted against Trump. As far as I know, this blatant politics in cutting off grants is unprecedented. It also is illegal,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School and co-counsel in the lawsuit.

More projects were cut in California than any other state, about 79 out of nearly 300. They were all for clean energy, many to address climate change, and include investments in new battery plants, upgrades for the electrical grid and initiatives to take carbon out of the air. About $1.2 billion was slated for the hydrogen hub.

Money was also to go to West Biofuels in Woodland, CALSTART in Pasadena, Charge Bliss in Aliso Viejo, Rejoule in Signal Hill, Southern California Edison, the Imperial Irrigation District and Aera Federal LLC, among many others.

The lawsuit was brought by a group of faculty members and researchers at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, who were among those to lose research grants. A separate lawsuit was filed by California and a coalition of 13 other states in February.

The acknowledgment of political motivation is “startling — and it is particularly so when the administration has had these larger narratives about how they’re canceling grants that are about waste, fraud and abuse,” said Claudia Polsky, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at UC Berkeley and initiating counsel in the university case. “If they want to favor oil, coal and nuclear, and disfavor clean energy innovation, that’s their prerogative as the executive. But here we have stipulations saying that none of those things were true for these staggeringly consequential DOE grants.”

The lawsuit alleges that the government’s actions violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which prevents arbitrary discrimination, as well as the 1st Amendment in that it is targeting researchers for how their state voted.

“None of it was about a change in priorities,” Polsky said, noting that similar grants in red states were not canceled. “None of it was about fiscal stringency. None of it was about anything except punishing people who didn’t vote for Trump.”

Judge Rita F. Lin could order the federal funding to be reinstated, and indeed has already done so through some temporary preliminary injunctions. But many of the grantees are now in “purgatory” as the case proceeds toward a final ruling, Polsky said.

Many of the projects are complex, multi-year efforts that involve a hodgepodge of agencies, experts and partnerships, such as ARCHES, the state’s billion-dollar hydrogen hub awarded under President Biden. Officials with ARCHES could not immediately be reached for comment.

News of the funding cuts first broke last fall in a post on X from Russell Vought, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled,” Vought wrote. “The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA.”

At a House hearing in June, however, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said decisions were not made based on politics.

The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Secretary Wright looked me in the eye, under oath, insisting the decision to cancel California’s clean energy projects was ‘not political,’” Sen. Alex Padilla said in a statement to The Times on Monday. “The Administration’s own court filings tell a different story. These decisions jeopardize good-paying jobs, undermine American energy innovation, and drive up costs.”

Padilla is among 30 California lawmakers, including Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San José), who separately challenged the funding cuts as unlawful — writing in an October letter to the Energy Department’s independent Office of the Inspector General that the decision targeted blue states “for their perceived lack of support for President Trump.” The office subsequently launched an investigation into the claims.

“Any Trump official who lied and told the nation these clean energy grant cancellations had nothing to do with politics should resign,” Schiff said in a post on X after the latest court filings were revealed. “As the administration has now been forced to concede — these cancellations had everything to do with politics. Of the worst kind.”

A final ruling is expected in early November.

Times staff writer Jaweed Kaleem contributed to this report.

US accused France of “condescending” rhetoric over its human rights stances

United States diplomats walked out of a United Nations Security Council meeting on Russia’s war against Ukraine as France’s delegation took the floor.

The walkout on Monday came two days after an online exchange between US and French officials over Washington voting against renewing the four-year term of UN human rights chief Volker Turk.

France’s UN Mission in Geneva wrote on Saturday that the US was no longer a “beacon of human rights” and stood isolated alongside North Korea, Nicaragua, Mali and Russia.

US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz replied on X that France had voted for a rights chief who “has been lecturing free, sovereign democracies like the United States, the UK, and Israel, while cozying up to the world’s worst oppressors”.

After the walkout, Dan Negrea, an alternate US representative, told the council that his delegation would keep walking out until France renounced its “condescending and disrespectful rhetoric”.

France’s ambassador, Jerome Bonnafont, did not mention the walkout when he spoke, saying France was working to preserve the UN’s independence and its capacity to act.

Turk, who has criticised violations of international law by Israel and the US in Palestine and Iran, was reappointed by a UN General Assembly vote of 144 in favour, 10 against and 13 abstentions.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has cut funding to UN agencies and withdrawn from dozens of UN entities since 2025. It had also threatened to reassess its engagement over Turk’s mandate.

Washington and Paris have also clashed over NATO spending, trade policy and Trump’s threats to occupy Greenland, a territory of NATO member Denmark.

France, along with other European states, has also drawn Trump’s ire for refusing direct participation in the US-Israel war on Iran.

A lower court blocked the mail-in ballot restrictions, ruling Trump lacked authority to change state election rules.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to allow it to move ahead with sweeping restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections, as it continues its push to reshape how federal elections are run.

In an emergency filing on Monday, the Justice Department asked the country’s highest court to pause a lower court ruling that blocked parts of Trump’s March executive order in 23 Democratic-led states and Washington, DC. The pause would remain in effect as the legal challenges play out, per the request.

The executive order directed federal agencies to help create state lists of eligible voters and required the US Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. It also instructed the Justice Department to prioritise investigations into election officials accused of issuing ballots to ineligible voters.

US District Judge Indira Talwani blocked the order in June, ruling that Trump lacked the authority to unilaterally change how states administer federal elections. She noted that under the Constitution, states oversee voter-eligibility requirements.

Over the weekend, the First US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to pause that ruling, prompting the administration to take the issue to the Supreme Court.

In its request to the top court, the administration argued that the order amounted to “general policy guidance” rather than a directive dictating how states should administer elections.

Solicitor General John Sauer wrote: “The injunction is especially indefensible because the agencies are still deliberating over how (if at all) to implement the Order, yet the district court preemptively decided that whatever the agencies may choose to do will necessarily be unlawful.”

He urged the Supreme Court to act quickly as the new policy would have to be in place by August to be effective by the midterm election in November.

Trump has long claimed, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud undermined the 2020 presidential election and has repeatedly questioned the security of mail-in voting, despite studies showing that such fraud is rare.

He has promised to end the widespread use of mail ballots before the midterms, which will determine which party takes control of the US House of Representatives and Senate.

Voting rights advocates say restricting mail-in voting could disproportionately affect Democratic voters, who have historically been more likely than Republicans to cast their ballots by mail.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to lift a judge’s order and clear the way for state-by-state lists of citizens who are eligible to vote by mail.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer filed an emergency appeal and said judges in Boston had wrongly intervened too soon.

In March, Trump ordered the U.S. Postal Service to direct states to compile a list of citizens who are eligible to vote. This list would limit who may receive a mail ballot.

He also ordered the Department of Homeland Security to “compile and transmit state-specific lists of individuals who are citizens and will be 18 years of age or older at the time of an upcoming election,” Sauer said.

Lawyers for California and 22 other Democratic-led states sued, arguing the states, not the federal government, have the constitutional authority to set the rules for voting and elections.

In June, they won before a federal judge in Boston who blocked Trump’s order from going forward, at least in the 23 states which had sued. Her decision was upheld over the weekend by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.

In his appeal, Trump’s solicitor general focused on a procedural question, not the issue of whether the president has the legal authority to impose national rules on state-run elections.

Sauer said the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security had not issued final specific plans to comply with Trump’s directive.

“Courts cannot enjoin implementation of Executive Orders that leave open material issues that still need to be resolved by agencies,” he wrote.

He asked the court to lift or stay the “premature injunctions.”

Time is running short, he said.

“Absent a stay … there will not be sufficient time to obtain appellate relief before the November election,” Sauer said. “That is especially true because implementation efforts for any USPS rule or DHS policy will need to begin well before November … particularly given that absentee and mail-in voting begin (in some States) several weeks prior to Election Day.”

The justices asked for a response from the 23 Democratic states by Aug. 3.

July 27 (UPI) — The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice said Monday that they’re taking “significant action” against school districts in Maryland and Michigan because of policies allowing school personal to protect students’ personal gender identity.

In a press release, the departments said Anne Arundel public schools in Maryland and Ann Arbor public schools in Michigan were “hiding sensitive information about children’s health well-being from their own parents.” They cited parental rights in the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

The Department of Education’s Student Privacy Policy Office received complaints from Maryland parents who said that the school was helping their child “pretend to be male.” The principal declined to give the parents information about their student, and the assistant principal refused to turn over records, the release said. It said the SPPO and the Just Department’s Civil Rights Division will start applicable judicial proceedings and the district may face the loss of federal funding.

In Michigan, the release said, SPPO has found an Ann Arbor district policy requiring school employees to protect a student’s gender identity from their parents “likely violates FERPA.” The departments have given the district until Aug. 10 to “demonstrate why ED and DOJ should not move forward with enforcement.”

“This is not only an affront to basic moral principles, but also to parents’ rights under federal law,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Today, ED and DOJ are putting districts on notice that we will use every tool available to hold them to account for this egregious behavior.”

WASHINGTON — In its latest move to restrict the legal immigration system, the Trump administration announced a sweeping change Monday that could lead to the deportations of thousands of asylum seekers.

The change from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services allows asylum officers to bypass the need to interview certain applicants and instead refer them directly to immigration judges for removal proceedings.

The agency estimates that up to a third, or 444,000 of the more than 1.4 million asylum cases in its backlog, could be affected by the rule.

The administration framed the move as an effort to streamline the process and reduce the backlog of cases. The interim final rule takes effect Tuesday and is subject to a 60-day public comment period.

“For far too long the asylum system has been exploited for purposes of delay and work authorization, not legitimate claims of protection,” USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said in a news release.

“America’s asylum system exists to protect individuals who genuinely fear persecution and this rule will help ensure that resources are directed to the timely adjudication of those claims instead of to those seeking to use the system as a loophole,” Edlow added.

But advocates for immigrants said the change leaves asylum seekers who tried to follow the law vulnerable to deportation.

Migrants can apply for asylum two ways: affirmatively or defensively.

Those who entered the country legally, such as on a visa, and still have lawful status apply with USCIS and have their cases decided by an asylum officer. Those who crossed the border illegally or who are undocumented can apply after being placed into removal proceedings, where they make their case to an immigration judge.

Immigration courts are not an independent system — they are housed under the Department of Justice and judges are federal employees.

That shift is significant because the Trump administration has fired more than 100 immigration judges and replaced them with military lawyers and former prosecutors for the Department of Homeland Security. Many of the fired judges were appointed during the Biden administration or previously worked as lawyers representing immigrants.

In recent months, immigration courts have approved a dwindling percentage of asylum claims as judges face pressure to approve more deportations. After immigration agents began arresting people in courthouses, many immigrants grew wary of showing up for court proceedings, which has aided the increase in removal orders.

USCIS refers thousands of cases to immigration courts each year, federal data shows. During the first half of this fiscal year, the agency transferred 31,454 cases to immigration courts — a number that was already on track to be higher than the 2025 yearly total of 40,932. The highest yearly total was 61,729 cases in 2019, during Trump’s first presidency.

USCIS said the current policy, which requires an asylum officer to first interview an applicant before deciding whether to send the case to an immigration judge, “essentially allows an alien to get a second chance at asylum.”

Todd Schulte, president of the immigrant advocacy organization FWD.us, noted that the rule change comes just after the Trump administration terminated temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and others, many of whom entered the U.S. legally and applied for asylum the “affirmative” way. On X, Schulte called the move “a terrible harbinger.”

July 27 (UPI) — Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado and opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia said they will not participate a dialogue between representatives of the Venezuelan government and members of the National Assembly elected in 2015.

They said, however, they will not stand in the way of any initiative that produces concrete progress toward a democratic transition.

The dialogue mechanism was announced earlier this month by representatives of the government led by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and members of the National Assembly elected in 2015, headed by Dinorah Figuera.

Both sides said the talks will formally begin Saturday and address issues that include institutional recovery, the electoral system, guarantees for political participation and the country’s reconstruction after the June 24 dual earthquakes.

The process has the backing of the United States. The U.S. State Department described the roadmap as an important step toward Venezuela’s political reconciliation and national recovery, while the Spanish newspaper El País reported that Washington has played an active role in promoting the talks and a possible political transition.

In a joint statement addressed to the Venezuelan people and the international community, Machado and González said they did not participate in the design, creation or operation of the dialogue mechanism.

“Those promoting it must inform the country of its objectives, its methodology and its timetable,” they said.

The opposition leaders said they will assess any negotiation based on “concrete and verifiable” results, including restoration of democratic institutions, release of all political prisoners, guarantees for all political actors without exclusion, a timely timetable for presidential elections and full respect for the will of the people.

The statement opens by reaffirming the validity of the mandate that, according to both leaders, emerged from the opposition primary election held Oct. 22, 2023, and the presidential election of July 28, 2024.

“That mandate remains in force,” they said.

Machado and González also said Venezuela is facing a crisis that has accumulated over more than 25 years and was made worse the June 24 earthquakes, which they said left communities devastated and deepened the humanitarian emergency.

Against that backdrop, they alleged that citizen-led aid efforts after the earthquakes were subject to attempts to block and control the aid.

“Venezuelans saw with their own eyes how the aid organized by the people themselves was blocked, diverted and controlled to prevent it from reaching those who needed it most,” the statement said.

The opposition leaders argued that rebuilding the country requires “a new government with moral authority and managerial capacity” to guarantee freedoms, restore the institutions of the Republic and support families affected by the disaster.

Machado and González reiterated their commitment to return to Venezuela to stand alongside the public during the country’s reconstruction.

El Chigüire Bipolar, our award-winning equivalent of The Onion, recently ran a headline that nicely captures the domestic fatigue surrounding the months-old rhetoric of the secretary of state: Marco Rubio anuncia que ya ahora sí, de pana, de panita, pronto viene la transición. That translates roughly to: “Rubio announces that now it’s time for the transition to happen soon, this time for sure, for real, I swear.”

It was four days after a military intervention toppled Maduro that Marco Rubio first spoke of the famous three-phase that US diplomats and officials love to quote. He later laid out his expectations for the process currently unfolding. We summarized his comments from the January 28 Senate hearing:

Rubio was reluctant to provide a precise timeline for the current arrangement between Venezuelan authorities and the US. The Trump administration wants to see rapid progress, he suggested. And in five months, the situation must be different (…) In the long term, the US wants Venezuela to have a democratically elected government (…)  Rubio said he wants María Corina to be part of the transition and to be able to run for election eventually.

Fast forward to July, and the messaging from out from the White House has become increasingly unnerving to many. We’ve published plenty of stuff that describes the Rodríguez regime’s response to the disaster (ultimately sluggish and dwarfed by the efforts of ordinary people and foreign rescuers) and Delcy’s inability to deploy the Venezuelan military in a meaningful way.

One must not overestimate the influence of the Secretary of State. Rubio is part of the Trump administration, and he cannot break with the president’s overarching goals.

The gringos, however, are adamant that the chavista elite has been fully compliant with aid efforts. Chief of Mission John Barrett expressed strong confidence in local authorities soon after the quakes. A picture of him amicably grabbing the arm of Diosdado Cabello before a team of US rescuers drew social media outage. So did another of Cabello sharing a laugh with a US general, garnering headlines about the Americans’ willingness to work closely with an alleged narco-terrorist.

Rubio’s priorities in the Venezuela portfolio

In the Trump government, one can identify three figures or groups that have stood out for their distinct talking points and approaches to the country.

There is Donald Trump himself, who seems exhilarated whenever he mentions Delcy Rodríguez and the oil riches the US is extracting there without transparency or accountability. The US president is still eager to use Venezuela to advance his domestic agenda; he recently invoked a CIA report on potential electronic fraud in Venezuelan voting machines, a move perhaps meant to cast doubt on election integrity in US states using that technology.

Then you have a network of whisperers and operatives around Trump, which includes both administration officials and external figures, that intend to covertly influence the Venezuela portfolio behind the scenes, sometimes attempting to lobby through journalists and social media. From the outside, the likes of Laura Loomer and Harry Sargeant featured in 2025. In the White House, one figure that doesn’t talk much but is definitely part of the “Venezuela core” is political advisor Stephen Miller, as he reluctantly admitted last week. JD Vance, a likely candidate in the next presidential race, represents the isolationist faction of the administration. And there’s Rubio, who many Venezuelans and the Machado-led opposition perceive as their ally.

Rubio remains the only relevant US official who consistently discusses the purported goals of democratization and institutional reconstruction. He is also the leading figure in the Venezuela dossier, and we believe he genuinely wants to put an end to chavista rule once and for all. His record as an anti-chavista (and anti-Castro) hawk is widely known but, as this Substack post points out, he’s had to seek a middle ground between a regime-change strategy and the Ric Grenell-backed normalization agenda revealed in 2025. A week ago, Rubio welcomed the “reconciliation and transition talks” that a Rodríguez-led delegation and a Machado-less opposition group agreed to begin on August 1. He said the US will be “very engaged” in this process, while suggesting it will operate independently. It clearly won’t. The talks are happening because the State Department is sponsoring them. Which, as it happens, is not bad news at all.

Neither Edmundo González nor Dinorah Figuera possessed significant political capital until a major player backed them. Both, too, are likely easy to guide and control.

Still, one must not overestimate the influence of the Secretary of State. Rubio is part of the Trump administration, and he cannot break with the president’s overarching goals.

One of Rubio’s main goals here is to keep the situation stable. If the recent off-the-record skirmishes with María Corina Machado were to escalate into open conflict between the opposition leader and Trump, framing the Venezuela portfolio as a foreign policy success would become far more difficult. As a Secretary of State, Rubio has become accustomed to defending Trump’s rhetoric and actions in a professional and composed tone while reassuring allied figures and governments in private (including some whom the president has publicly humiliated). This same dynamic likely governs his approach to Machado, whom Rubio insists can play a role in the transition even as Trump continues to shun her.

Machado, who has recently challenged Washington, cannot afford to break with her sole reliable, long-time ally in the US government, Rubio, if she wants to avoid a damaging fallout. Rubio, meanwhile, can’t break with Trump either if he hopes to run for president in 2028, given Trump’s grip on the Republican Party and the MAGA voter base. Rubio would probably like to engineer elections in Venezuela in a way that maximizes his political credit. With the Republican presidential primaries scheduled for the first half of 2028, showing off Venezuelan elections as a personal triumph while the GOP selects its nominee would require those elections to take place in late 2027 or early 2028.

Washington’s proxy

Rubio wants to control this process through Dinorah Figuera and a group of former opposition lawmakers from Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, the parties who backed the creation of the Comisión Delegada Figuera presides. To Washington, Figuera represents what Edmundo González was to Machado in the 2024 election: a figure with enough legitimacy who was admitted as a competitor by the chavista-controlled institutions. Just as the opposition leader needed an opposition proxy to stand in for her when she was banned from running, Rubio needs a Venezuelan politician coming from the 2015 National Assembly to claim that negotiations for democracy and reconciliation are Venezuelan-led. Neither González nor Figuera possessed significant political capital until a major player backed them. Both, too, are likely easy to guide and control.

Much like the president-elect, Figuera has shown little political ambition beyond serving as a viable, cooperative figure under these circumstances (much as González did after the Maduro regime disqualified dozens of potential opposition candidates). Figuera has described herself as “an instrument” of the reinstitutionalization and democratization process. She hopes to guarantee the participation of political parties and Machado, whom she acknowledges as the opposition’s leader but notes that she holds “a different vision.”

We expect the Rodríguez-Figuera talks to make progress before the end of 2026.

The upcoming talks will be like nothing we have ever seen, in terms of the US operating as an all-powerful actor wielding immense coercive capacity and veto power. The members of the opposition delegation, whose full roster is not yet public, are expected to serve more as liaisons in constant communication with the Department of State and Trump administration personnel, than as fully-empowered negotiators over the major issues at stake.

Figuera claims this process should lead to a trustworthy CNE and a reformed Supreme Court with new magistrates across its entire structure—not just the chamber overseeing elections. Repressive statutes passed in the Maduro era, used to seize the assets of the regime’s opponents or to punish citizens under the chavista definition of hate speech, are expected to be revoked too. 

With the Delcy regime unable to make progress on multiple fronts and definitely after the government’s lame emergency response, her position before the United States seems weaker as we approach the end of the year. Our latest Political Risk Report quotes Rodríguez government sources suggesting the Trump administration wants to accelerate political developments in Venezuela ahead of the November midterms, so its ventures in Caracas can be framed as a clearer success.

We expect the Rodríguez-Figuera talks to make progress before the end of 2026. Whether that progress will translate into preparations for a new presidential election, as Machado and most Venezuelans would hope, remains to be seen

July 27 (UPI) — Brazil and China agreed Monday to speed up negotiations on a trade agreement between Mercosur and China as both countries seek to strengthen economic ties after new U.S. tariffs hit Brazilian exports.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by telephone for more than an hour just days after the United States confirmed a 25% tariff on Brazilian exports.

Lula said on X that the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to expanding cooperation in strategic and high-technology sectors, including artificial intelligence, satellites, critical minerals processing and fertilizer trade.

In the post, Lula highlighted the “positive results” of bilateral trade and the recent short-term visa waiver, saying the measures “will increase tourist flows and business opportunities.”

He also emphasized the need to expand cooperation in other sectors and advance negotiations on a trade agreement between Mercosur, the South American trade bloc, and China.

“I stressed that our government remains committed to diversifying markets,” Lula wrote.

The two leaders also discussed global conflicts and their impact on people’s lives, as well as global food and energy security, identifying them as key international challenges.

“While discussing the crisis in the Middle East, we agreed that restrictions on freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have harmful effects on the global economy,” Lula said.

According to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency, Xi rejected what he described as external interference in Brazil’s electoral process and expressed China’s willingness to support Lula’s government.

Xi said that under new global circumstances and challenges, China and Brazil, as leading members of the Global South, should uphold historical justice and the progress of civilization while playing a greater role in reforming and improving the global governance system and defending international fairness and justice.

According to Xi, China “highly values Brazil’s international standing and significant influence, supports the country in safeguarding its sovereignty and independence, opposes foreign interference and will contribute to maintaining regional and global peace and stability.”

Lula also said both leaders criticized the inability of the United Nations Security Council to respond effectively to current international crises and reaffirmed Brazil’s and China’s commitment to multilateralism. They agreed to maintain close coordination on international issues through forums, including the United Nations and the BRICS group.

The conversation comes as Lula has intensified his efforts to diversify Brazil’s trade relationships. In an article published Sunday in The Washington Post, he described the new U.S. tariffs on Brazilian goods as a “strategic mistake” and said Brazil would pursue alternative markets to expand investment and economic partnerships.

No word on jailed Tunisian opposition leader Ghannouchi for 11 days, his son tells Al Jazeera.

The son of jailed Tunisian opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi says his family and lawyers have been unable to see or contact the 85-year-old for 11 days since he was hospitalised after collapsing in prison.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on Monday, Moadh Ghannouchi said the last time lawyers saw his father was days before he temporarily lost consciousness on July 17, and that requests to visit him in hospital, including one submitted to the public prosecutor, had been refused, leaving the family with no confirmation of his whereabouts or condition.

“It is like a situation of enforced disappearance,” he said.

Ghannouchi said his father, who has high blood pressure and difficulty breathing, had been left exposed to a severe heatwave in a prison with no air conditioning.

“We hold the authorities fully responsible for his condition,” he said, alleging that his father’s confinement in a stiflingly hot prison was intended to worsen his health.

“It was not enough to imprison him – they want to torment him further,” Moadh told Al Jazeera.

“This is stressful for us and certainly for him as well because he’s used to always having a number of visits every week from lawyers and from family – so it has been 11 days cut off from everything, from every visit, from everyone.”

Ghannouchi said conflicting rumours had spread on social media, with some placing his father at the Rabta public hospital in Tunis, others at a military hospital, and some claiming he had suffered a heart attack. But the family has received no official information, he said, with the authorities refusing to communicate.

In a statement on his official Facebook page on Monday, Ghannouchi’s defence team demanded information on his condition. An Ennahda party spokesperson told Al Jazeera that it did not know which hospital he is in or his state of health.

The former speaker of parliament and most prominent figure detained in President Kais Saied’s crackdown on opponents has been jailed since April 2023 after receiving a life sentence that his supporters say was politically motivated. Saied’s government denies that prosecutions of opponents are politically driven.

Rached Ghannouchi lost consciousness last week as temperatures inside Mornaguia prison climbed, according to Haifa Chebbi, daughter of another imprisoned opposition figure. She said she witnessed the incident and that the temperature reached 52C (126F). His lawyers said on Thursday that his condition was “critical.”

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention previously found that Ghannouchi’s detention was arbitrary and called for his immediate release, a ruling his son said authorities ignored.

On Sunday, the National Salvation Front, a broad opposition coalition, urged the authorities to issue an immediate statement on his health and Amnesty International called for the protection of prisoners during the heatwave.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The unsuccessful 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns of publishing scion Steve Forbes may have faded from memory. But he will always have a special place at Manchester, N.H.-based WMUR, the only commercial TV station in the state that holds the first presidential primary.

The candidate spent nearly $6 million to buy time on the station — including half-hour blocks during which he took phone calls from viewers. The cash deluge led politically minded locals to refer to WMUR’s 68,000-square-foot headquarters adjacent to the city’s historic Amoskeag Mills as “the house that Steve Forbes built.”

The television business went through a major period of disruption in the two decades that followed, with the proliferation of cable channels and later streaming services. But WMUR’s status as the most influential local TV outlet in the country every four years has remained intact. Presidential aspirants descending on the state in the early pivotal contest fill hours of time on its local newscasts and public affairs programs — and spend millions on political ads.

Leading up to the Feb. 11 primary, candidates can regularly be seen in WMUR’s newsroom. Former Vice President Joe Biden and his entourage came through on a recent afternoon. He posed for selfies with staff members and stopped at the sports desk to lament over the playoff fate of his Philadelphia Eagles before being interviewed by WMUR political director Adam Sexton.

“They cover, pound for pound, probably more politics than any station in the country,” said Rick Klein, political director for ABC News. “There really isn’t anything else like it. They get access to candidates that frankly a lot of networks would dream of. The candidates make themselves available to WMUR because they know that people watch.”

The primary campaign also means national exposure for the station’s journalists. On Friday, Sexton, 39, and WMUR anchor Monica Hernandez, 34, joined ABC News anchors George Stephanopoulos and David Muir and correspondent Linsey Davis in questioning the candidates at the network’s Democratic primary debate. It was watched by 7.86 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

Political advertising dollars for TV have grown in recent years even as more money goes into digital media. Research firm Advertising Analytics projects political ad spending on broadcast TV for the 2020 election cycle will hit $3.26 billion, up from $1.73 billion in 2016.

Most spending occurs closer to the general election in November. But WMUR, owned by the privately held New York media conglomerate Hearst, gets an early piece of the pie thanks to the political calendar and geography — big advantages when TV outlets are struggling to retain viewers and profits.

Manchester — a city of 111,000 people — is counted by Nielsen as part of the Boston TV market, but WMUR is the only station that reaches the entire state of New Hampshire. In a typical week, 56.2% of 468,730 television households watch the station at least once, according to Nielsen.

WMUR’s morning newscast from 6 to 7 often gets a 50% share of the TV audience in the six New Hampshire counties that also receive Boston stations, a staggering number in today’s fragmented market.

“They are insulated from some of the other trends in the TV business,” said Bill Hague, executive vice president for Magid, a media consulting firm that has worked with Hearst. “They’ve maximized the value of being a dominant TV station in the market. Coupled with increased political spending, they are on fire.”

WMUR also benefits from New Hampshire’s pride in having the first primary in the nation, which is looking even better in light of chaotic Democratic caucuses held in Iowa on Monday. A New Hampshire state law allows the primary date to be moved in order to keep it ahead of other states in the presidential cycle.

The distinction of having the influential primary has embedded WMUR in the nation’s political culture. Microphone flags with the station’s logo have turned up on fictional White House series such as “Veep” and “The West Wing.”

Candidates spend early and often on the station. WMUR took in nearly $40 million in presidential political ad revenue during the 2016 primary campaign, when both the Republican and Democratic parties were choosing nominees and 18 candidates were in the race.

The total revenue from the 2020 primary will be less, as President Trump does not have a formidable opponent from his party and only Democrats are buying ad time. Most candidates are not using money from political action committees, which spent heavily previously.

Nonetheless, in the weeks leading up to the primary, WMUR’s sales department frequently huddled to find ways to accommodate the intense demand for ad time. The station’s highest-priced ads of the primary season were on Friday’s debate and Sunday’s telecast of the Oscars, on which campaigns paid WMUR $10,000 per 30-second commercial, several times the rate it receives for many of the ABC network programs it runs in prime time.

Most of WMUR’s political ad time is sold on its local newscasts. The station has 4 1/2 hours of news a day, 10 hours on weekends and a long-running daily half-hour magazine show called “Chronicle,” which over 10 years on the air has done feature stories in all 221 towns and 13 cities in New Hampshire.

The station even has a local historian — 83-year-old Fritz Wetherbee — whose segments on the newscasts are assigned as homework for local schoolchildren.

“Local television news is still one of the most desired time periods to be in for any political candidate and any political action committee,” said Gerry McGavick, director of sales for WMUR, who also oversees political advertising for all of Hearst.

McGavick deals mostly with media-buying agencies based in Washington, D.C., but the campaigns also try to establish their own relationships with the station. Bags of Hawaiian macadamia nuts given out by Democratic candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s staffers during a recent visit were still circulating on the sales department’s floor.

While political ad dollars have long flowed into WMUR, Hearst invested in improving the local news after acquiring the station in 2001 for $185 million from Imes Corp., a family-owned outfit that lacked the resources of a large TV station ownership group.

Hearst owns 33 stations with annual revenues of $1.2 billion, making it the 11th-largest station group in the country, according to research firm BIA Advisory Services. Boosted by ad spending for congressional races, the stations had record revenue and profits in 2018, Hearst said. In a strong political year, WMUR ranks among its top 10 performers.

“The previous owners had a lot of shows that were filled with candle-making and stuff like that because they couldn’t afford to buy programming,” said Jeff Bartlett, a veteran TV news executive and general manager of WMUR.

Hearst acquired strong syndicated daytime shows for WMUR such as “Ellen,” which helps drive viewers into its afternoon and evening newscasts. The station beefed up its news coverage to serve highly politically engaged viewers who expect to see the candidates several times before they go to the polls.

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg meets with New Hampshire voters on WMUR’s “Candidate Cafe.”

(Jim Stankiewicz)

The station has deep ties to the community. Many employees have worked there for decades, able to play on a big-time media stage while living in a bucolic state with no income or sales taxes. News director Alisha McDevitt is a 25-year veteran who joined the station when she was still a college senior. She now oversees a news department with more than 60 employees.

While New Hampshire residents can watch news on Boston stations, WMUR is where they will see reports on government meetings, snowstorms, fires, accidents and local charity events. During high school football season, there is a WMUR photographer at every game.

“The viewers see us every day,” said Hernandez, a San Diego native who joined the station in 2018. “We’re out there covering baseball games and ice pond hockey tournaments.”

Presidential campaigns recognize the connection WMUR’s journalists have with the viewers and gravitate to them in order to reach New Hampshire voters, who savor their role in the candidate selection process. Hernandez said she came to WMUR from a much larger station — WFAA in Dallas — because the primary offered an opportunity to cover national politics close up.

WMUR political director Adam Sexton and anchor Monica Hernandez prepare for the Democratic primary debate airing Friday on ABC.

(WMUR)

“We get advantages that other stations and the networks don’t get,” Bartlett said. “Sometimes you’ll be standing in a line with a bunch of other reporters and the candidate comes over to one of our guys and says, ‘Come on over for a sit-down.’ The other guys are not getting a sit-down. So that creates a little bit of tension, but it’s just a fact of life.”

The heated partisan rhetoric that saturates cable news does not show up in WMUR’s political coverage. There is no editorializing, commentary or even polling, which has largely been inaccurate in the state in recent primary campaigns as New Hampshire voters are last-minute deciders.

The station produced 25 hourlong town hall programs (Andrew Yang appeared on the first one back in February 2019), where studio audience members asked questions of the candidates. Fourteen hours of less formal exchanges between the candidates and voters for a series of segments called “Candidate Cafe” were shown on WMUR newscasts and social media platforms.

“We are presenting the facts, and people can draw their own conclusions from them,” McDevitt said. “We are very serious about that.”

WMUR was one of the earliest stations to expand online. The station’s website offers an extended version of its “Conversations With the Candidates” series for viewers who want to go deeper. The website has also become the base for New Hampshire political columnist John DiStaso, formerly of the New Hampshire Union Leader, who has covered the state for 35 years.

Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire, said WMUR understands that it has a symbiotic relationship with the primary — which he refers to as “the franchise.”

“WMUR benefits from the primary enormously, but they do go out of their way to provide a large amount of information,” he said. “Part of their job is to try to make sure that New Hampshire voters maintain their reputation as being well-educated active participants.”

July 27 (UPI) — New British Prime Minister Andy Burnham was scheduled Monday to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a Royal Navy base training Ukrainian forces.

Ahead of the visit, the first of any foreign leader since he got the keys to No. 10 Downing Street on July 20, Burnham told the BBC that he fully supported Ukraine and Britain’s “unwavering — 100%” backing for its ally would continue.

Burnham said the fact Zelensky was his first international visitor “illustrates the strength of the relationship between the two nations,” vowing to emulate the personal commitment to Zelensky shown by his predecessor, Keir Starmer.

“My support for Ukraine is unwavering — it is 100%. And I will do what, in Ukraine, people think is the right thing that they need,” said Burnham.

“Britain stands with Ukraine, shoulder to shoulder, and our support remains unwavering. Russia should be in no doubt of our resolve, and we will not back down until we achieve a long-lasting and just peace for Ukraine,” he added.

He will use the visit to the naval base to announce a deal permitting Ukraine to mass-manufacture Stone Cloak electronic warfare technology, which is fitted to drones to make them invisible to air defense radar.

Downing Street said that after Ukraine begins using Stone Cloak, it will be incorporated into Britain’s next generation of long-range weapons, including from Project Brakestop, which is developing low-cost cruise missiles.

Burnham said Stone Cloak was “the best of homegrown British innovation and proven on the frontline, and it will be vital to protecting our security in both our countries.”

Burnham and Zelensky will also meet with more than 200 Ukrainian service members taking part in Exercise Sea Breeze, a maritime training deployment involving Ukraine and 14 other countries aimed at boosting warfighting capabilities and tactics to deal with mines in the Black Sea.

In a post on X, Zelensky thanked Britain, saying that Ukraine valued that it could “always count on Britain’s principled decisions, leadership, and support.”

Total British support to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 is $33.3 billion, $21.3 billion of it military assistance, figures put out by Downing Street show, with bipartisan consensus across the previous administrations of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.

Starmer’s final act as prime minister was to visit with Zelensky in Kyiv on July 17, his last official day as leader of the Labour Party.

SACRAMENTO — Last week, news broke that an artificial intelligence thingamajig broke free from the constraints of its maker, OpenAI, and committed what could be considered a string of white-collar felonies if it were human.

Because the AI thingamajig is in fact not human, the incident raised a big kerfuffle but is largely being treated as a giant oopsie we can learn from, without needing the pesky intervention of new rules or laws to stop it from happening again.

Such is the state of AI regulation in America right now.

California Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake) would like to change that. Last week, he introduced the bipartisan Frontier Act with Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.). While the bill might not make either safety advocates or big tech companies entirely happy, it offers up the most comprehensive and strongest regulations of this dangerous industry that we’ve yet seen at the federal level.

Roman Yampolskiy, an AI expert and professor at University of Louisville, called the Frontier Act a “positive step because it acknowledges that frontier AI presents risks requiring dedicated oversight.”

Now, the challenge becomes passing it, and passing it in a meaningful, not-watered-down form — no easy task in a dysfunctional Congress driven by money and Donald Trump, and paralyzed by its own sycophancy to both.

If anyone has a shot, though, it’s Obernolte, who is that rarest of birds, a legislator who understands science, and his colleagues.

Obernolte represents Inland Empire areas around San Bernardino, but grew up in Fresno back in the era when the movie “War Games” was just hitting theaters.

Those of a certain age will remember how far-fetched it seemed when Matthew Broderick’s high school genius character accidentally breaks into a military AI system to play chess, but “Joshua,” the computer, takes it too far and tries to blow up the world. Now, of course, that just sounds like a regular Tuesday.

By the time he was in high school himself, Obernolte was giving that Broderick character a run for his money. An apparent computer savant, Obernolte was competing in artificial intelligence contests as a teenager, back when most of us were still playing Pong on Atari. Then he headed off to Caltech and then UCLA for advanced AI degrees. He said AI was his “first calling,” sparked when his father bought him an Apple II computer when he was 8.

He ended up dropping out of UCLA after getting his master’s because his side hustle making video games, including “NFL ’95,” turned out to be more lucrative than being a starving student. He ended up founding his own video game company, FarSight Studios, and building up a personal net worth close to $100 million.

Not bad for a kid from Fresno. In Congress, he has stuck close to the MAGA power base and was one of seven California legislators to vote against certifying the 2020 election results, a vote he took in his first days in office. He has been endorsed by Trump multiple times, and now sits on a bunch of committees and subcommittees of relevance.

For the past few years, he has pushed hard, if unsuccessfully, to create a framework for regulating AI, combining his deep understanding of the technology with his equal understanding of MAGA distaste for intervening in business.

Now, though, we’re in a moment, thanks to more than one big oopsie by technology companies. Just a few months ago, Anthropic and the Pentagon had their own tense encounter after Anthropic questioned how its AI was being used by the military. Huffy Pete Hegseth is still huffing over that one.

The public is increasingly skeptical of allowing the AI industry to govern itself, which is pushing legislators to rethink their hands-off approach, even as AI money pours like Niagara Falls into elections. Even Trump seems more inclined to consider it, signing an executive order recently that largely called for voluntary restraints on AI companies.

The introduction of the Frontier Act “shows how far the Overton window has shifted just in the past few months,” wrote Charlie Bullock, a senior research fellow with the nonpartisan Institute for Law & AI. “Not too long ago, a bipartisan bill this good and serious would have been a pipe dream. But things change quickly.”

Obernolte said the bill has been “a long time in the making,” but he hopes to package it with other legislation and is “cautiously optimistic” he can get something passed and signed by the end of the year.

As written now, the bill would allow the federal government to set minimum safety requirements and set up a framework for licensed, independent auditors to monitor compliance. That third party verification has been a key push by safety experts.

The bill would also give the government emergency powers to pause an AI model if it has a “present or impending catastrophic risk.”

It also borrows from state laws including California’s Proposition 53 that require some (not enough) transparency on the part of AI companies when things do go wrong.

To the consternation of some, the bill still contains curbs on what states can regulate on their own — basically carving out AI regulation as federal turf. This has been a huge sticking point in the fight over AI regulation because AI companies hate state laws and want them squashed. Their argument is that a patchwork of rules across states is too complicated.

“You don’t want to have 50 different state requirements for every single product that gets sold on a market, and that is particularly true of AI,” Obernolte told me.

To some extent that’s reasonable — but the problem so far has been that states such as California and New York have been the only level of government willing to try at regulation. California in particular has created some of the most comprehensive AI regulations to date and has about 30 pending bills on this issue this legislative season. The Frontier Act threads the needle on this by creating lanes where states can still pass their own laws — such as around consumer safety that would protect children or stop pornography.

But preventing catastrophic risk would largely be dependent on the federal oversight, which is great when the federal government is up to the task. Currently, we can’t even keep measles in check. So that’s a bit worrisome.

And Obernolte’s bill isn’t the only one vying for attention. Another Californian, Rep. Ted Lieu, introduced a bipartisan measure of his own with Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas). Dubbed the AI Kill Switch Act, it would give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to shut down problematic models.

Yampolskiy, the Louisville professor, said that bill had promise as well, because it’s important for companies to have a way to “rapidly disable or contain systems that exhibit dangerous or unexpected behavior.”

But, he warns, that’s just one part of the “complete solution” we need. Regulation is going to require more than one law.

For Obernolte’s part, he’s shown a willingness to work on a practical solution, not just a political one. That alone is worthy of notice. The Frontier Act is a genuine attempt to govern a nascent industry that is too powerful and unpredictable to be left to its own devices.

“I’m hoping that this is we’ve landed somewhere that everyone can understand and be happy with,” Obernolte said. “AI is not something that needs to be a partisan issue, and I don’t think it should be.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: How Jimothy the raccoon became the internet’s latest animal obsession
The California angle: Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him
The L.A. Times Special: Mayor’s press team uses disappearing WhatsApp messages, avoiding scrutiny
Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan-administered Kashmir, formally known as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), has spent the summer under an unofficial state of emergency.

Since early June, nearly 40 people have been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces, with sit-ins and road blockades regular features in the region over this period.

Banks remained shut for two weeks. Mobile and internet services remain suspended across most of the territory. Poonch division, which borders India and has been the epicentre of the unrest, was effectively sealed off for weeks, disrupting the supply of flour and other essentials to a region that depends heavily on them.

The Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), the movement behind the protests, was banned by the local government on June 5, days before a planned demonstration.

Its leadership has since been arrested, has gone underground or has continued organising from sit-in camps in Rawalakot, the administrative headquarters of Poonch division.

Its demands, once centred on subsidised flour and cheaper electricity, have expanded to 38 points, chief among them the abolition of 12 assembly seats reserved for Kashmiri refugees.

All of this is unfolding as the region prepares to vote. Elections for the 45-seat Legislative Assembly, originally scheduled for July 27, have been split across three dates.

Mirpur division votes as planned, Muzaffarabad division and the 12 seats reserved for Kashmiri refugees follow on August 2, while Poonch division, where tensions remain highest, goes to the polls on August 10.

JAAC’s leadership is not on the ballot and has urged supporters to boycott the vote.

Of all the movement’s demands, one issue has proved impossible to resolve: the 12 refugee seats. The government says they cannot be touched without a constitutional amendment. JAAC wants them abolished outright.

Between those two positions lies a legal argument stretching back nearly a century, and a more fundamental question: who gets to decide who governs Muzaffarabad?

A dozen seats, one dispute

Of the AJK Legislative Assembly’s 45 elected seats, 33 are filled from constituencies within the territory.

The remaining 12 are reserved for refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir who now live in different parts of Pakistan.

The arrangement traces its roots to electoral arrangements introduced in 1960, reinforced through laws in 1964 and 1970, before being formalised in AJK’s 1974 Interim Constitution and reaffirmed by the constitution’s 13th Amendment in 2018.

Chaudhry Muhammad Ibrahim Zia, a former chief justice of the AJK Supreme Court, said the basis for the seats goes back further still, to the AJK government’s founding declaration of October 24, 1947, which he said reflected “the collective will of the people of the State of Jammu and Kashmir”.

Refugee representation, he told Al Jazeera, has “a firm historical basis” rooted in that document. He rejects any suggestion that the seats are unconstitutional.

“They have both historical grounding and constitutional support,” he said. “These seats cannot be described as unconstitutional.”

Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s electorate has grown from 3.2 million voters in 2021 to more than 3.8 million this year, according to Election Commission figures.

Within that, the 12 refugee constituencies account for roughly 439,000 registered voters, scattered across cities including Lahore, Rawalpindi and Sialkot, rather than concentrated in a single geographical area like AJK’s territorial constituencies.

And that’s a problem, says Kashif Abbasi, a JAAC committee member.

“This election is meant for people who actually live in AJK,” he told Al Jazeera. “These 12 seats sit outside AJK’s jurisdiction. This doesn’t happen anywhere else.”

From flour to the assembly floor

JAAC’s demands were not always centred on the refugee seats. Its original charter was almost entirely economic, focusing on subsidised flour, electricity at cost price, and a share in the benefits from the Mangla and Neelum-Jhelum hydropower projects.

The refugee seats first appeared in the group’s expanded charter, submitted in October 2025.

Even then, JAAC did not initially seek their outright abolition. In written proposals submitted on May 30 this year, the group offered two alternatives.

It proposed retaining symbolic refugee representation until the Kashmir dispute is permanently resolved or replacing the 12 assembly seats with four seats in the AJK Council, the Islamabad-chaired body that exercises legislative authority over AJK’s federal-facing affairs.

The 14-member council, chaired by Pakistan’s prime minister, oversees subjects including electricity, banking and parts of taxation, areas that largely fall outside the AJK assembly’s authority. The territory has no representation in Pakistan’s national parliament.

“Our suggestion was that these seat-holders should instead be given representation on the Kashmir Council, and that their assembly seats be eliminated, with that money used elsewhere in the territory,” Khawaja Mehran, a member of JAAC’s core committee, told Al Jazeera recently.

Both proposals were rejected at an All-Parties Conference in Muzaffarabad on June 3.

Constitutional barrier

In June, the AJK Supreme Court addressed the issue directly.

The court held that the seats are protected under AJK’s constitution and can only be abolished through a formal constitutional amendment. They cannot be removed through executive action or public pressure.

A constitutional amendment, the judges wrote, is “a solemn constitutional act, not a concession to be wrested from a government under duress”.

Zia, the former AJK chief justice, said the opinion changed little about the existing legal position.

“These seats simply cannot be abolished without a proper constitutional process,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that, with the outgoing assembly’s term having ended, no such process is possible until a new legislature is elected.

The government’s account

Abdul Majid Khan, AJK’s former finance minister and himself from a refugee family, rejects the idea that the seat holders form an unaccountable political bloc.

He points instead to the size of the territory’s budget. AJK’s roughly 310 billion rupees (about $1.1bn) budget last year, he said, far exceeds the development funds allocated to the 12 refugee constituencies – nowhere near enough, in his view, to make them the powerful bloc JAAC describes.

“These are people who migrated for a larger cause,” Khan told Al Jazeera, referring to Kashmiris who fled Jammu, across the border, during the violence of 1947 following the partition of the subcontinent and settled across Pakistan in the decades that followed.

Refugee representation, he said, has existed since AJK’s first parliamentary election in 1975, when the territory’s first prime minister was himself from a refugee family.

At the June 3 conference that rejected JAAC’s proposals, AJK Prime Minister Faisal Mumtaz Rathore said any decision on the seats “can only be taken by the elected representatives in the House”, adding that most of JAAC’s other demands had already been met.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told the National Assembly on June 11 that the future of the 12 refugee seats should be decided by voters, not under pressure from street protests.

He urged JAAC to contest the issue in the election rather than demand its resolution beforehand, asking: “How could you exclude them from the electoral process?”

A senior government official in Poonch, whose division has witnessed the worst of the unrest, took an even harder line.

“This is no longer a rights movement,” the official told Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity since he was not allowed to speak to the media, adding that the protesters were not only “challenging the authority of the state”, but also provoking the public through “inflammatory speeches and actions”.

Who holds power?

In mid-July, JAAC leader Umar Nazir Kashmiri told supporters at a sit-in in Rawalakot, Poonch division, that the group had written directly to army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir after concluding that its concerns were not reaching him “through official channels”.

He thanked Munir by name for “understanding the grievances of the people of Kashmir”.

Shaheen was more direct. “We believe real authority currently sits with Rawalpindi,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to Pakistan’s military establishment rather than the civilian government. “That’s why we’re forced to negotiate through that channel, since nobody else actually holds the authority.”

Ershad Mahmud, a Canada-based researcher on Kashmiri displacement and politics, said that “Islamabad’s bureaucracy, military and intelligence establishment have reduced AJK’s elected leadership to a largely symbolic role”.

The current crisis, he told Al Jazeera, has once again shown that the local leadership “lacks the authority to negotiate a political settlement with its own people”.

Unmet promise?

The dispute over the refugee seats is unfolding within a framework that predates Pakistan-administered Kashmir itself.

Under a United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan resolution adopted on January 5, 1949, and endorsed by the UN Security Council, Kashmir’s final status was to be determined “through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite”.

Nearly 80 years later, that has yet to happen on either side of the Line of Control.

Mahmud, who is also the author of Poonch: Identity, Politics and Resistance, argues the refugee seats endure partly because they continue to serve Islamabad’s interests.

“They let Pakistan maintain its position that AJK represents the entire former State of Jammu and Kashmir, not merely the territory it administers,” he told Al Jazeera. “And allows Pakistan-based political parties to influence government formation in Muzaffarabad.”

Islamabad, he said, treats the seats “as an instrument of its Kashmir policy and political influence”.

Hassan Kamal Wattoo, a Lahore-based constitutional lawyer, argues that giving greater autonomy to AJK “strengthens Pakistan’s case on the international stage”.

“There is no tension between real autonomy for AJK and an eventual plebiscite,” he told Al Jazeera.

Anam Zakaria, a historian and author of Between the Great Divide: A Journey into Pakistan-Administered Kashmir, however, argued that there was a deeper contradiction within AJK’s constitutional framework.

On the one hand lies India’s “longstanding and ongoing systemic violence and human rights abuses in [Indian-administered] Kashmir”, she said, arguing that nothing Pakistan has done or does in the part of Kashmir it administers can be compared with what’s happened in Indian-administered Kashmir, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in violence involving armed rebels and security forces since 1989.

At the same time, she pointed out, candidates seeking public office in Pakistan-administered Kashmir must first swear allegiance to AJK’s accession to Pakistan.

That requirement, she told Al Jazeera, also “in itself contradicts the right to self-determination” and sidelines Kashmiris who hold a different vision for the region’s future.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has acknowledged in court documents that it canceled $7.6 billion in grants for hundreds of clean energy projects “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state,” including California and 15 other states that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

The statement, included in a court filing last week in a lawsuit over the canceled funding, contradicts repeated assertions by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other officials that the projects were canceled because they did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or had other problems that made them a poor investment of taxpayer dollars.

The Department of Energy said in the filing Wednesday that “DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants … was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State. DOE will not contend that it looked beyond the prime grantee(s) to consider the political identity or geographic distribution of downstream beneficiaries of the grant funds.”

The agency also said that it “accepts that the differential treatment resulting in the October 2025 termination of Blue State grants and the non-termination of non-Blue State grants was not based on a rational connection between the recipient’s location and/or place of performance and DOE’s past or current agency priorities.”

Democrats and environmental groups seized on the court filing, saying the administration had “weaponized” the federal government to kill good jobs and punish working families because of their political views.

A ‘corrupt abuse of power’

“This administration has now admitted in court what has long been obvious: it terminated nearly 300 cost-cutting energy projects for no reason other than the fact that the states they were in did not vote for the president in the 2024 election,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state said in a joint statement. Both are high-ranking Democrats on the House and Senate appropriations committees, respectively.

“Weaponizing the federal government like this is outright un-American, and it’s hardworking families already struggling with sky-high costs who are suffering the consequences of this corrupt abuse of power,” Kaptur and Murray said.

They called on congressional Republicans to join them in holding the Trump administration “accountable for the President’s failure to look out for all Americans.”

The Energy Department announced in October that 321 funding awards across 223 projects were terminated, saying that after review, they “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or were not economically viable.”

The cuts, part of broader attacks from President Trump on climate programs and clean energy funding, slashed federal support for projects to build battery plants, develop hydrogen technology, upgrade the electric grid and capture carbon dioxide emissions.

Russell Vought, the White House budget director, highlighted the cutbacks in a social media post, saying that money “to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled.”

The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Projects from many states were cut

Projects that were cut were located in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. All 16 targeted states supported Harris, but Wright said the cuts were “business decisions” based on whether the projects were a good use of taxpayer money or not.

The cuts were immediately challenged in court, and more than two dozen Democratic members of Congress, led by California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, wrote a letter to the Energy Department’s acting inspector general requesting a formal investigation. The department’s internal watchdog launched an investigation in December.

Government lawyers had previously confirmed in a court filing late last year that the selection of grants in fact “was influenced by whether a grantee’s address was located in a State that tends to elect … Democratic candidates in state and national elections (so-called ‘Blue States’).”

That filing came in a separate suit filed by clean-energy groups and the city of St. Paul, Minn., over the canceled funding. The most recent admission came in a case called Thakur vs. Trump that’s been ongoing since spring 2025. Federal lawyers acknowledged that they used keywords related to diversity, gender and COVID-19 to screen for projects that ran afoul of the Trump administration’s priorities.

Holly Bender, chief program officer for the Sierra Club, said the latest court filing shows “the Trump administration is brazenly admitting to a vindictive approach to cancelling much-needed energy infrastructure that ignores the job losses, air pollution and increasing bills that people are experiencing everywhere.”

Instead of “building the energy projects we desperately need,” billions of American taxpayer dollars are “going to line the pockets of a small handful of fossil fuel company CEOs,” Bender said, citing nearly $3 billion pledged by the Trump administration to cancel offshore wind projects in favor of fossil fuel projects such as natural gas and coal.

Daly writes for the Associated Press.

ICE officer under review for alleged mental health struggles, violent behavior amid deadly shooting case in Maine.

United States President Donald Trump’s border czar says the vetting of an immigration officer involved in the deadly shooting of a Colombian native in Maine is under internal review after the officer’s relatives revealed to The Associated Press that he had a history of serious mental health struggles and violent behaviour.

Tom Homan said on Sunday that if the allegations against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer are true, “I don’t think he should ever have cleared vetting.”

“There’s several things under review,” Homan said on CNN about the officer, Army veteran David Brouillette. “The training is under review. I know this specific case, as far as the vetting, is under review by the internal affairs section.”

Questions about the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) rush to hire, train and deploy thousands of new ICE officers to carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown have come into stark focus after back-to-back deadly shootings of immigrants in Maine and Houston.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin ordered a pause in vehicle stops after the Maine shooting, but Trump almost immediately reversed course and insisted the stops resume as a necessary tool in his campaign to round up and deport immigrants without current legal status.

DHS did not immediately respond on Sunday to a request for comment about the internal review.

ICE mandates body cameras during vehicle stops

Homan said that “changes have been made” and that acting ICE director David Venturella has issued a new directive that body cameras must be in use if officers make a vehicle stop.

“Right now, on all vehicle stops, there’s at least one body camera on site to record the entire event,” he said.

He said Venturella “sent an instruction out that he wants at least one body camera on those vehicle stops, so we have everything on video”.

It is unclear if the steps the department is taking will be enough to quell the concerns coming from certain Congress lawmakers over DHS training and tactics as it tries to reach Trump’s mass deportation goals.

Lawmakers push for answers

Lawmakers from both parties have raised concerns.

Democrats pressed ICE officials during a closed-door briefing for the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee last week, leaving some with more questions than answers.

Lawmakers were told during the briefing that there have been 56 complaints of excessive force against ICE officers – 32 were cleared, and one was referred for disciplinary action.

No discipline had yet been handed out, the lawmakers said they were told. The rest of the incidents are still under investigation.

Meanwhile, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, has pushed for the use of body cameras and ensured funding for the effort. She had said it was “extremely unfortunate” that the officer involved in the shooting in her home state was not using a camera.