Pope Leo XIV has stepped into a more assertive global role, adopting a sharper and more direct tone on international issues during his recent Africa tour. After maintaining a relatively cautious profile in the early months of his papacy, Leo has begun openly criticising war, inequality, and global power imbalances. His remarks have drawn repeated criticism from Donald Trump, particularly over his condemnation of the U.S.-Israeli war involving Iran.
Shift in Tone and Leadership Style: Leo’s recent speeches mark a clear departure from traditional Vatican restraint. Speaking in African देशों such as Cameroon and Algeria, he has issued strong warnings about global injustice, accusing powerful actors of undermining peace and violating international norms. This more confrontational approach reflects a deliberate effort to position the papacy as an active moral voice in global affairs.
Clash with Political Power: The pope’s remarks have brought him into direct conflict with Trump, who has publicly criticised Leo’s views on foreign policy. This exchange underscores a broader tension between moral authority and political leadership, particularly as the pope challenges the conduct of powerful nations in ongoing conflicts.
Moral Authority on the Global Stage: Observers suggest Leo is consciously embracing a more visible and influential role, using his platform to highlight the human cost of war and inequality. His decision to deliver strong messages while visiting regions affected by poverty and conflict adds weight and immediacy to his statements, reinforcing his image as a global moral leader.
Breaking with Vatican Convention: Traditionally, the Vatican has balanced moral advocacy with diplomatic neutrality to preserve its role as a mediator. Leo’s more direct criticism signals a shift in that balance, prioritising clarity and urgency over cautious diplomacy. This approach echoes, but may exceed, the tone of predecessors such as Pope Francis, who also spoke out on global injustices but often with more measured language.
Personal Experience and Perspective: Before becoming pope, Leo formerly Robert Prevost spent decades in Peru, where he witnessed conflict, poverty, and political instability firsthand. These experiences appear to inform his willingness to speak bluntly about violence, corruption, and the failures of global leadership.
Analysis: Pope Leo’s emergence as a more forceful voice reflects a strategic and moral recalibration of the papacy’s role in global politics. By speaking more directly, he aims to assert the Church’s relevance in an increasingly volatile world, particularly at a time when traditional diplomatic mechanisms appear strained.
However, this approach carries risks. Greater outspokenness may enhance moral clarity but could also limit the Vatican’s ability to act as a neutral mediator in conflicts. The public clash with Trump highlights how easily moral interventions can become entangled in political disputes.
Ultimately, Leo’s leadership signals a shift toward a more activist papacy, one that prioritises direct engagement with global crises over cautious neutrality. Whether this strengthens the Church’s influence or complicates its diplomatic role will depend on how effectively he balances moral authority with geopolitical realities.
WASHINGTON — The Senate approved a short-term renewal until April 30 of a controversial surveillance program used by U.S. spy agencies, following a chaotic, post-midnight scramble in the House to keep the authority from expiring.
The measure cleared the Senate by voice vote, without a formal roll call, as Congress raced to meet a Monday deadline. It now heads to President Trump, who had pushed for a clean 18-month extension, for his signature.
GOP leaders in the House rushed lawmakers back into session late Thursday with a series of back-to-back votes that collapsed in dramatic failure, before they quickly pushed ahead the stopgap measure as they race to keep the surveillance program running past Monday’s expiration date.
First they unveiled a new plan that would have extended the program for five years, with revisions. Then they tried to salvage a shorter 18-month renewal that Trump had demanded and Speaker Mike Johnson had previously backed. Some 20 Republicans joined most Democrats in blocking its advance.
Shortly after 2 a.m. they quickly agreed to the 10-day extension, which was agreed to on a voice vote without a formal roll call. It next goes to the Senate, which is gaveling for a rare Friday session, as Congress races to keep the surveillance program running.
“We were very close tonight,” said Johnson after the late-night action.
But Democrats blasted the middle-of-the-night voting as amateur hour. “Are you kidding me? Who the hell is running this place?” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., during a fiery floor debate.
At the center of the standoff that has stretched throughout the week is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI and other agencies to collect and analyze vast amounts of overseas communications without a warrant. In doing so, they can incidentally sweep up communications involving Americans who interact with foreign targets.
U.S. officials say the authority is critical to disrupting terrorist plots, cyber intrusions and foreign espionage.
Surveillance program fight is a debate over privacy and security
Its path to passage has teetered all week in a familiar fight, as lawmakers weigh civil liberties concerns against intelligence officials’ warnings about national security risks.
Opponents of the surveillance tool point to past misuses. FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when searching intelligence related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and racial justice protests in 2020, according to a 2024 court order.
Trump and his allies had lobbied aggressively all week for a clean renewal of the program, without changes.
A group of Republicans traveled to the White House on Tuesday, and on Wednesday CIA Director John Ratcliffe spoke directly with GOP lawmakers. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Thursday there had “been negotiations late into the night with the White House and some of our members.”
“I am asking Republicans to UNIFY, and vote together on the test vote to bring a clean Bill to the floor,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this week. “We need to stick together.”
The result of days of negotiations
Thursday’s proceedings came to a standstill as lawmakers retreated behind closed doors and Johnson reached for an agreement to resolve the standoff.
Shortly before midnight GOP leaders announced a new proposal, a five-year extension, with revisions. The changes were designed to win over skeptics of the surveillance program who have demanded greater oversight to protect Americans’ privacy.
Among the changes are new provisions to ensure that only FBI attorneys can authorize queries on U.S. persons, and to require the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to review such cases, said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., during the debate.
But the final product, a 14-page amendment, did not go far enough for some holdouts in either party.
With Johnson controlling a slim majority, he has little room for dissent. As the Republicans fell short on both efforts before the short extension, a handful of Democrats stepped in to try to help them advance the longer extensions, but most Democrats were opposed.
“We just defeated Johnson’s efforts to sneak through a 5-year FISA authorization tonight,” said Democratic Rep, Ro Khanna of California. “Now, they will have to fight in daylight.”
Cappelletti and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.
Reporting from Sacramento — California cities and counties won’t be allowed to tax soda for the next 12 years after Gov. Jerry Brown signed fast-moving legislation Thursday.
The bill, which was first unveiled Saturday evening, prohibits local governments from imposing new taxes on soda until 2031. It comes after a deal was struck between legislators and business and labor interests who agreed to remove an initiative from the Nov. 6 statewide ballot that would have restricted cities and counties from raising any taxes without a supermajority vote of local citizens.
In a signing statement, Brown said soda taxes “combat the dangerous and ill effects of too much sugar in the diets of children.” But he added that mayors across the state called him to support the deal because they were alarmed by the tax initiative.
Brown also reacted strongly to another part of the initiative, which would have restricted the state’s ability to raise certain fees without a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.
“This would be an abomination,” Brown wrote.
Many lawmakers shared Brown’s mixed emotions toward the soda tax ban.
During debate on the legislation, Assembly Bill 1838, legislators said they reluctantly voted to impose the moratorium because the ballot measure, for which signatures were gathered by a political campaign financed by more than $7 million from the beverage industry, would have been worse for state and local government coffers.
Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) said he was against both the soda tax ban and how the beverage industry used the threat of an initiative to force the Legislature’s hand, but ultimately supported it.
“I think this is a terrible decision that we’re making,” McCarty said during a state Capitol hearing on the bill Thursday morning.
Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) voted against the deal, but said he understood the choice his colleagues were making.
The beverage “industry is aiming basically a nuclear weapon at governing in California and saying if you don’t do what we want, we’re going to pull the trigger and you are not going to be able to fund basic government services,” Wiener said. “This is a pick-your-poison kind of situation, a Sophie’s choice. What the Legislature is doing is perfectly reasonable.”
Minutes after Brown signed the soda tax ban, proponents formally withdrew their initiative from the statewide ballot. The deadline to do so was Thursday.
The initiative wouldn’t have banned local soda or other tax increases. But it would have made them much harder to pass. It would have required all local tax hikes to pass by a two-thirds supermajority vote, making it significantly more difficult for cities and counties to raise revenue for a variety of projects.
Currently, any local sales, hotel-room or other tax increase needs a simple majority of local ballots that are cast — provided that the money goes to a city’s day-to-day operating budget. Roughly half of the local tax measures approved by voters since 2012 — raising hundreds of millions of dollars annually — did not receive supermajority approval, according to the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Public health advocates have been pushing for soda taxes across the United States for years, saying that higher prices would reduce consumption amid growing rates of obesity and diabetes while also generating more revenue for local governments. By contrast, the beverage industry has argued such taxes make it harder for low-income residents to buy groceries and unfairly single out soda as the cause of health problems.
Thirty cities and states attempted to pass soda taxes before Berkeley became the first to succeed in November 2014, charging a penny-per-ounce tax. Since then, three other Bay Area cities — San Francisco, Oakland and Albany — have passed soda taxes. The soda tax ban leaves those measures intact, but prohibits others that would have taken effect this year. Earlier this week, Santa Cruz city officials voted to put a 1.5-cent-per-ounce soda tax on the November ballot, an effort that will be blocked under the new state legislation.
Activists were stunned by the quick action on the soda tax ban. Carter Headrick, director of state and local obesity policy initiatives at the American Heart Assn., said using a ballot initiative to leverage lawmakers to prohibit soda taxes in communities across California was “blackmail.”
“I don’t think the [beverage industry] ought to be forcing legislators to be taking away the rights of people to vote,” Headrick said.
Some lawmakers attacked the deal because they supported the initiative. Sen. Jeff Stone (R-Temecula) said that Thursday’s decision subverted the will of Californians who wanted to keep their taxes low.
“This bill tells 1 million people that signed this petition to make it harder to raise their taxes that their voices don’t matter,” Stone said.
The American Beverage Assn., which represents soda companies and other nonalcoholic drink manufacturers, contributed 85% of the initial $8.3 million raised by backers of the ballot measure.
A spokesman for the association said that the legislation would keep grocery prices lower and that the industry was working to find alternatives to reduce sugar consumption.
“We believe the legislation approved today will allow us to work toward these goals,” association spokesman William M. Dermody Jr. said in a statement.
Labor interests added momentum to the eleventh-hour soda tax ban legislation, saying the initiative would be far more damaging to the state.
“A temporary pause on further local soda taxes gives California the opportunity to work on a statewide approach to the public health crisis of diabetes,” Alma Hernandez, executive director of SEIU California, said in a statement.
6:30 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from a beverage industry spokesman.
3:55 p.m.: This article was updated with Gov. Jerry Brown approving the soda tax ban and details about the withdrawal of a local tax ballot initiative.
This article was originally published at 12:45 p.m.
The Legislature voted in Boston to overturn Gov. Mitt Romney’s veto and approved a bill designed to propel the state to the forefront of embryonic stem cell research.
The bill immediately became law over Romney’s objections, after both chambers exceeded the two-thirds vote needed to override a veto. The vote was 112-42 in the House and 35-2 in the Senate.
The Republican governor vetoed the bill last week because it allowed the cloning of human embryos for use in stem cell experiments — a practice Romney said amounted to creating life in order to destroy it.
The question — as misguided as it is inevitable — of why his accusers hadn’t come forward sooner. (My columnizing colleague, Anita Chabria, incisively addressed that one, discussing the nature of suppressed trauma and the believability hurdle that many victims of sexual assault unduly face.)
Swalwell, 45 and married, had a widely whispered about reputation for showering inappropriate and unwelcome attention on younger women. Rumors — vague, unsubstantiated — were a source of incessant dirt-dishing among political insiders and also circulated extensively online. (Not, however, the more serious allegations of sexual assault.)
The veil was finally pierced last week when the San Francisco Chronicle published a graphic account of a woman alleging sexual encounters with Swalwell while the Democratic lawmaker was her boss. She said he sexually assaulted her twice when she was too intoxicated to consent.
The former congressman has flatly and vigorously denied criminal wrongdoing while acknowledging and apologizing for unspecific “mistakes.”
Those vociferous, flat-out denials had been enough to sway the politicians and union leaders who endorsed Swalwell’s gubernatorial bid, until the weight of evidence made Swalwell’s assertions untenable.
If the allegations are true and Swalwell is, in fact, a liar, lecher and sexual assailant, why wasn’t that widely reported up until now? Was it negligence, or gullibility on the part of the political press corps? The short answer is that a wide gulf exists between rumor and fact and Swalwell lurked in that gray space, living and thriving in the shadows between provability and denial.
It’s not unusual for rumors about financial, sexual or other peccadilloes to attend a campaign. They’re often trafficked by political rivals, which automatically raises suspicion and invites particular skepticism.
Much of the chatter never moves past a relatively small, dishy circle of political gossips because the supposed misdeeds, while titillating, can’t stand up to rigorous scrutiny. Or a legal challenge. That’s the baseline for many news outlets to broadcast or publish a story. Call them what you will — legacy, corporate, mainstream, lamestream — many of the largest, most influential sources of news and information won’t pass along allegations they can’t independently verify and, if necessary, defend in court.
The challenge is verifying all that loose talk.
Politicians don’t wear body cams, or broadcast their lives 24/7. (OK, Beto O’Rourke did livestream from a Texas laundromat during his 2018 Senate bid, holding up a soggy pair of underwear when he addressed the “boxers or briefs” question. But he’s an exception.)
Journalists don’t have subpoena power and can’t force people to tell them what they know. A reporter is only as good as his or her sources, their knowledge, truthfulness and credibility.
Reporting on misdeeds of an intimate nature can be especially difficult and complex. There’s rarely black-and-white documentation, such as a money trail leading to a hotel bedroom. It’s hard to find an eyewitness or reliable third party who can vouch for what took place between people behind closed doors. It takes time and trust to develop sources who can substantiate incidents of sexual misconduct, assault or abuse.
Swalwell apparently did an excellent job deceiving those around him, including some congressional and campaign staffers who’d known him for years and worked closely with the seven-term lawmaker, day in, day out. They were shocked by the statements of his alleged victims; the words “double life” have come up many times.
If Swalwell managed to hoodwink those closest to him, it’s easy to see why journalists had a hard time wrangling the firsthand accounts and other facts they needed to make their findings public.
When it comes to reporting on scandal, there is often the question of timing.
In 2003, The Times was widely criticized for publishing an account of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s misconduct — touching women in a sexual manner without their consent — just days before California’s gubernatorial recall election. Despite the report, which Schwarzenegger did not contest, voters kicked Gray Davis out and replaced him with the Hollywood super-duper star.
In 1992, the Washington Post and Portland Oregonian were widely criticized for their failure to publish accounts of Sen. Bob Packwood’s misconduct — unwanted sexual advances and touching women without their consent — until weeks after he was elected to his fifth term. Packwood resigned in 1995 after the Senate Ethics Commission voted unanimously to expel him.
The allegations against Swalwell were revealed well before the June 2 primary. Not soon enough for those asking how he managed to get away for so long with his predatory behavior. But plenty of time to inform California voters before they weighed in on his candidacy.
Hungary’s newly elected leader, Peter Magyar, stormed to power last weekend after campaigning to, among other things, take a step back from Russia.
Instead, Magyar has promised voters he will steer Hungary back towards the European Union, following the 16-year rule of far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who went to great lengths to deepen ties with Russia.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
Under Orban, Hungary opposed most of the European Union’s stances against Russia and blocked sanctions and obstructed military aid for Ukraine.
Above all, he and his Fidesz party entrenched Hungary’s reliance on Russian oil.
Now, following a massive electoral turnout and a landslide victory, Magyar – once a devotee of Orban and now leader of the centre-right Tisza party – has promised to end Russian oil imports by 2035. But how realistic a goal is that? And can he achieve it?
Peter Magyar celebrates after Prime Minister Viktor Orban conceded defeat in the parliamentary election in Hungary, April 12, 2026 [File: Leonhard Foeger/Reuters]
How much does Hungary depend on Russia for energy?
Hungary has been central to keeping Russian oil and gas flowing into the EU, even as Europe and the US banned some imports and imposed sanctions on anyone paying more than $60 a barrel for Russian oil.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU banned seaborne imports of Russian oil but kept land flows legal. That allowed Hungary to continue importing most of its crude by pipeline via Ukraine.
The EU first announced plans to phase out Russian energy imports in May 2022, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In December 2025, a binding agreement was made for member nations to completely phase out Russian oil and gas imports by late 2027. But, instead of diversifying from Moscow, Hungary increased its dependency.
According to a 2026 report by the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD), Hungary had expanded its reliance on Russian crude from 61 percent in 2021 to 93 percent by 2025.
Much of the crude oil Hungary imports from Russia comes via the Druzhba pipeline. It is one of the key pipelines that ensures the continued flow of Russian crude to both Hungary and Slovakia. At 5,500 km (3,420 miles) long, it begins in Almetyevsk in western Russia and runs into Belarus. It splits at Mozyr, with one branch going to Poland and Germany and the southern branch goes through Ukraine into Slovakia, Hungary and Czechia.
The Druzhba oil pipeline from Russia at the Danube Refinery in Szazhalombatta in Hungary, May 18, 2022 [File: Bernadett Szabo/Reuters]
In January, the section of the pipeline running through Ukraine suffered significant damage. Ukraine blamed a Russian airstrike – Moscow denies that.
Hungary and Slovakia have complained that Ukraine has been deliberately slow to repair the damage. As a result, in March, Orban vetoed a 90 billion euro ($106bn) loan from the EU to Ukraine until the pipeline reopens.
On Tuesday this week, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said oil will flow again through the conduit by the end of April as he expects the new Hungarian leadership to lift its veto on the loan by then.
As for gas, Hungary remains one of the most dependent EU member states on Russian natural gas, accounting for roughly three-quarters of its annual imports, the CSD report shows.
Since the start of Russia’s invasion, Hungary has imported an estimated 15.6 billion euros ($18.4bn) worth of Russian gas. Long-term contracts with Russia’s state-owned Gazprom, the continued reliance on TurkStream – a natural gas pipeline running from Russia to Turkiye – and “the weak use of alternative interconnectors have locked the country into Russia’s reconfigured gas export system”, the CSD report states.
Nuclear energy dependency is yet another issue. Hungary granted Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear energy corporation, the construction contract for the expansion of its Paks atomic plant, 100km (62 miles) southwest of Budapest on the Danube River. Russia, in turn, provided Hungary with a state loan to finance most of the development of new reactors. The European Commission approved the plan in 2017 and construction started in February.
Now, Magyar says he intends to reassess the project’s financing. But the Paks plant provides 40 to 50 percent of all electricity generated in Hungary. The expansion plans will increase that to between 60 and 70 percent, which would cut reliance on imported energy, but keep Hungary tied to Russia.
According to a 2025 joint research paper by the Center for the Study of Democracy and the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, Hungary could potentially diversify its energy supply by importing non-Russian oil via alternative sources such as the Adria pipeline. It transports crude from the Adriatic Sea to refineries in Croatia, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia. Their refiners, which are controlled by Hungarian oil and gas company MOL, are capable of processing non-Russian crude, the research paper said.
Russian oil has been coming in at a discounted rate as a result of Western sanctions, so any diversification will likely be more expensive.
Can Hungary wean itself off its dependence on Russian oil?
It won’t be easy, and Magyar knows it. “The geographical position of neither Russia nor Hungary will change. Our energy exposure will also be here for a while,” he said before last weekend’s election. And in an interview with the Financial Times, Magyar insisted that Russian imports should remain an option. “This does not mean that by ending dependence on someone you no longer continue to buy from them,” he said.
Magyar will seek to strike a balance between respecting current contracts with Moscow to ensure Hungary’s energy security, while establishing political distance, said Pawel Zerka, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“I would expect this government not to be pro-Russia in the sense of going to Moscow and keeping ties with the Russian government, but they don’t have easy options to replace Russian fuel with something else, especially considering the international situation with the Middle East,” Zerka said, referring to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf which has blocked the shipping of 20 percent of the world’s oil and LNG supplies.
Zerka added that the newly elected leader will not have political room to be particularly cordial with Russian President Vladimir Putin, considering the disapproval of Russia by his electoral base. A recent poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations shows that a majority of Tisza’s voters see Russia as an adversary or rival to compete with.
“It will be interesting to see how he combines this with energy needs,” Zerka said.
How does the EU view Hungary’s energy ties to Russia?
The strong energy ties between Russia and Hungary have long caused friction with the EU. Following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the European bloc has worked to cut imports of Russian oil and gas. Budapest has done the opposite.
In January, the EU passed legislation to completely phase out Russian gas and LNG imports by late 2027.
Orban’s government had called for all restrictions on Russian oil to be lifted as a result of the global energy crisis triggered by the war in the Middle East. While Trump has made some concessions on Russian oil already loaded on tankers at sea – causing several heading for China to head to India instead – EU leaders have maintained they will hold firm on sanctions.
In the lead-up to last weekend’s election, Magyar’s manifesto called the dependence on Russian energy a “systemic risk” and he would wean Hungary off its reliance by 2035. But whether he can do that in time to beat the EU’s 2027 deadline is likely to provoke discussion in Brussels.
SACRAMENTO — Before it all came crashing down, Eric Swalwell appeared on the cusp of rising to the top of the Democratic field in the California governor’s race.
Swalwell had just announced a statewide tour and aired his first ad. The former prosecutor and Dublin city councilman launched his campaign on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in November, a comfortable setting for a politician who’d built a national reputation by appearing on cable news shows to attack President Trump.
Influential forces in Sacramento had begun coalescing behind the then-Bay Area congressman, including some consultants and advisors close to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom hasn’t endorsed, but his associates’ involvement lent credibility to Swalwell.
Swalwell’s campaign quickly collapsed with the explosive allegations that he sexually assaulted a former staffer and had acted inappropriately with other women who were just beginning political careers. Swalwell denies the allegations but dropped out of the race for governor and resigned his seat in the House.
The whiplash over Swalwell’s rapid rise and fall has Democratic leaders facing questions about whether they had a blind spot about his alleged behavior.
His onetime allies in Congress are being asked whether they knew about his conduct, which has been described as an open secret on Capitol Hill. Unions who backed Swalwell have fled, and political consultants are returning donations.
Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, speaks to Kaiser Permanente nurses and healthcare workers at the Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center in San Diego on Jan. 26.
(K.C. Alfred / San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images)
California Federation of Labor Unions President Lorena Gonzalez, whose group endorsed Swalwell and three others in the race, said she confronted Swalwell more than a month ago after hearing rumors about womanizing and illicit photos.
“He’s a liar,” Gonzalez said. “He’s just a very skillful politician who did not tell the truth even when asked directly.”
Though he was little known in much of California, Swalwell, 45, was a youthful and fresh face in a field of candidates, many of them veteran politicians, when he entered the contest.
A little more than a week ago, his campaign was on an upward trajectory. His first statewide ad emphasized his hometown roots and concerns faced by Californians, including rising costs at his favorite doughnut shop in his hometown of Dublin. He rolled out new endorsements from state and federal elected officials almost daily.
Former and current advisors close to Newsom were also helping Swalwell’s campaign, multiple sources told The Times. Others associated with the governor are also helping rival candidates.
“He’s a liar. He’s just a very skillful politician who did not tell the truth, even when asked directly.”
— California Labor Federation president Lorena Gonzalez
Other Democrats in the race said the warnings about Swalwell should have been investigated more thoroughly by the powerful California politicians and interest groups that backed him.
Antonio Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, called him a “flash in the pan” — someone who lacked substance.
“People thought just because he was popular on TV that maybe he had been vetted,” Villaraigosa said. “He had not been vetted.”
Gubernatorial candidates Katie Porter and Antonio Villaraigosa share a moment while participating in a candidate forum in Los Angeles on Jan. 10.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Swalwell’s entrance into the race last fall came at a time when elected officials and leaders of powerful interest groups in Sacramento were unimpressed by the field, particularly after big-name Democrats including former Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Alex Padilla and state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta had passed on running.
Steven Maviglio, a Sacramento-based Democratic consultant, said there was pressure to find the “perfect candidate” for the state’s most powerful office.
“Democrats are looking for a fighter against Trump, and he fit the bill,” Maviglio said. “That was enough for most people.”
As with most members of California’s congressional delegation, Swalwell was an unfamiliar figure to many Californians living outside his Alameda County district, even though he had a lighthearted, robust presence on social media.
He’d never held statewide office when he was elected to Congress after a career that included serving on the Dublin City Council and working as a criminal prosecutor for Alameda County.
But he appeared to be close to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who selected him to be an impeachment manager for the case against President Trump in 2021.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) addresses the crowd at the California Democratic Party State Convention in San Francisco on Feb. 21, 2026.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
At a forum in Washington this week, Rep. Pelosi rejected suggestions that Democrats looked past the accusations.
“None whatsoever,” she said, when asked what allegations she’d heard about.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who previously worked alongside Swalwell on the House Judiciary Committee and endorsed him, said on MS NOW that he felt betrayed and “sickened” by the allegations.
“My paramount feeling is that I’m grateful these women came forward,” Schiff said. “I’m grateful that they did so when they did — it prevented our state from making a potentially terrible mistake.”
Sara Azari, an attorney for Swalwell, said in a statement that he denies all of the allegations of sexual misconduct and assault and will pursue “every legal remedy” against those making the claims.
“These accusations are false, fabricated and deeply offensive — a calculated and transparent political hit job designed to destroy the reputation of a man who has spent twenty years in public service,” Azari said.
Attorney Lisa Bloom reaches toward a photo at a news conference where Lonna Drewes, left, is seen with former Rep. Eric Swalwell, at a news briefing in Beverly Hills on Tuesday. Drewes detailed a 2018 encounter in which she claimed Swalwell drugged and sexually assaulted her after offering professional mentorship.
(Myung J Chun/Los Angeles Times)
On Tuesday, Lonna Drewes accused Swalwell of drugging and raping her in 2018 while she worked as a model, an allegation now being investigated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Azari, in an interview on NewsNation, said of Drewes’ allegation: “Two adults consenting, which is our position is, is not against the law.”
California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks declined to answer questions this week about whether the scandal hurts the party’s credibility, saying only that the allegations are “clear for voters: [Swalwell] is not a suitable choice.”
In an interview with The Times, Hicks said the party relies on delegates to vet candidates before endorsement votes at the party convention. While no gubernatorial candidate reached the necessary level of support to earn the endorsement at the February gathering,Swalwell had the largest share with 24%.
Gonzalez, of the labor federation, said she called Swalwell in the first week of March after being contacted by several people about his sexually inappropriate behavior.
She described the awkward conversation — and his immediate denials. None of it was true, he said. If there was anything sordid to find in his past, it would have been dug up by Trump and conservatives who went after him when he was helping to try and impeach the president, he said.
At the union group’s endorsement meeting, members grilled Swalwell about several issues, including his claimed residency in Livermore, his involvement with a nonunion film production, and his ability to manage his own finances.
The issue of inappropriate sexual behavior never came up at the endorsement, Gonzalez said.
“We were in a position, like so many, of trying to figure out who this guy was with all these red flags, but being told by a lot of surrogates that they were his choice — whether it’s people in Congress or folks who knew him from home,” Gonzalez said.
Other institutional players also threw in their support. The California Medical Assn. endorsed Swalwell early in February. The group represents more than 50,000 physicians in the state and spends heavily in elections.
“It definitely was a nod that that’s where the establishment should head,” Maviglio said.
California Medical Assn. spokesperson Erin Mellon said the group met with candidates and backed Swalwell “based on the information available to us” at the time.
Behind the scenes, Swalwell was courting attention. He began hanging out at the Grange, a favorite hotel bar in Sacramento for state lawmakers and lobbyists, trying to make connections, according to a source who ran into him there.
Months earlier, he sent a text to a California political consultant with questions about who should help his campaign. He asked about the well-known firm of Bearstar Strategies, according to the text exchange, which was viewed by The Times.
Swalwell texted, “would you recommend having our IE go to them?” to the consultant, a reference to an “independent expenditure,” which is an outside committee that raises money in support of candidates but is barred from coordinating with their campaigns.
Bearstar Strategies ultimately launched an independent committee to support Swalwell, which in recent weeks raised more than $7 million from political action committees for the California Medical Assn., DaVita and other medical industry groups, as well as Uber.
Antonio Villaraigosa, left, shakes hands with Tom Steyer during a gubernatorial candidate forum in Sacramento on April 14, 2026.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Associated Press)
Bearstar Strategies, whose members have long advised Newsom, also provides media consultants for a committee running attack advertisements against environmentalist Tom Steyer, another candidate in the race. Swalwell would have benefited from the committee’s spending.
Jim DeBoo, a consultant and Newsom’s former chief of staff, is helping on the anti-Steyer committee, according to multiple sources, which has raised $14 million from real estate agents’ and utility industry groups. DeBoo didn’t respond to a request for comment, and a representative for Bearstar declined a request for an interview.
No one has claimed that any of those consultants or individuals knew about Swalwell’s alleged behavior. Bearstar Strategies said in a statement last week that it had suspended all activity on Swalwell’s independent expenditure.
Jamie Court, president of the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog, said institutional groups backed Swalwell because they thought he could win and they wanted to maintain the status quo in Sacramento.
Until recently, President Trump always found a way to fail forward, through a combination of spin, threats, payoffs and bluster.
OK, that’s the simplistic interpretation. The fine print tells a less-glamorous story: a man born on third base who spent decades insisting he’d hit a triple.
Still, it’s hard to argue with success. When Trump entered politics, he redefined the rules of the game. Rivals who tried to outflank him on policy detail, ideological consistency and institutional norms found themselves either vanquished or assimilated by the Borg.
By my lights, only once during Trump’s admittedly chaotic first term did he run into something that his playbook couldn’t at least mitigate or parry: the COVID-19 pandemic. For the final year of his presidency, reality refused to negotiate, and political gravity reasserted itself. It turns out, viruses aren’t susceptible to the Art of The Deal.
But then, miraculously, Trump wriggled through legal jeopardy, bulldozed his way past more conventional Republicans and Democrats, and re-emerged victorious in 2024.
If anything, that comeback reinforced the idea that Trump could survive anything by virtue of his playbook.
By the start of his second term, he’d made impressive headway in co-opting not only individuals but also major institutions within big tech, the media and academia.
Even in foreign affairs, Trump’s sense that any problem could be solved via force, intimidation or money was confirmed when he captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and installed Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, as a sort of puppet leader. Everyone has a price, right?
Unfortunately for Trump, no. Not everyone does.
Lately, the president has encountered a different kind of resistance — adversaries motivated by something bigger and more transcendent than money, power or the avoidance of pain.
In dealing with Iran, for instance, Trump has confronted people operating under a wholly different set of incentives. It’s a regime guided by a mix of ideology, radical religious doctrine and long-term strategic interests that don’t always align with short-term material gain.
(Now perhaps, having punished Trump enough already, Iran will finally come to the negotiating table. But even if that happens, it will have occurred after exacting a steep price — so steep, in fact, that it may already be too late for Trump to plausibly claim a win.)
It turns out, you can’t easily intimidate or pay off a true believer who isn’t afraid to die and believes they have God on their side.
A similar (though obviously not morally equivalent) dynamic is now also on display in the form of Trump’s skirmish with Pope Leo XIV, a man who commands moral authority. He opposes the war in Iran (“Blessed are the peacemakers”) and has demonstrated a stubborn refusal to back down to Trump’s attempts at bullying.
“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” Leo said during a tour of Africa. It’s a remark that the American pope seemed to implicitly be aiming at the American president.
Here’s what Trump doesn’t understand: There are still pockets of the world where concepts like faith and national identity outweigh tangible incentives. Where sacrifice and suffering are an accepted part of the plan.
When facing these sorts of foes, Trump’s usual operating system starts to look less like a cheat code and more like a category error.
But he can’t see this because Trump is always prone to a sort of cynical projection — of assuming everyone views the world in the same base, carnal, corrupt way he sees it.
Whether it was his incredulity that Denmark wouldn’t sell Greenland, rhetoric that seemed to discount the motivations of those who serve and sacrifice in the military, or his affinity for nakedly transactional gulf states, the pattern is familiar: a tendency to view decisions through a cost-benefit lens that not everyone shares.
To be fair, that lens has often served him well. In arenas where power, money and leverage dominate, Trump’s approach is eerily effective.
But after years of taming secular, “rational” opponents, he is fighting a two-front war against people who see their struggles as moral and spiritual.
They aren’t stronger in a conventional sense. But they are, in a very real sense, less susceptible to Trump’s methods.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Donald Trump finds himself facing adversaries who aren’t just immune to his usual Trumpian playbook but are playing a different game altogether.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaks during a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, one of seven congressional committees he testified before Thursday. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
April 16 (UPI) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Thursday testified before seven congressional committees, often clashing with Democrats about decisions he has made about vaccines and department priorities.
The testimony is Kennedy’s first trip to the Capitol this year and the first time that he has appeared before Congress in more than seven months, The Washington Post reported.
In addition to unilaterally remaking the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee and the agency’s recommended childhood vaccine schedule — which were blocked by a federal judge in March — he has changed the Food and Drug Administration‘s recommendations on diet and shepherded medications through federal approval processes while allegedly ignoring data on them.
Kennedy also was asked by members of Congress about the Trump administration’s 12.5% budget request decrease, which amounts to about $16 billion that it sought for its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal, NPR reported.
“Our children are the sickest generation in modern history — decades of failed policy, captured agencies and profit-driven systems have caused it,” Kennedy said during a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee.
“Parents across this country demanded change — and we are delivering it,” he said.
Kennedy said that the measles vaccine “certainly” could have saved the life of a child who died in Texas last year during an outbreak in the state.
More than 1,700 measles cases have been reported through the first 3 1/2 months of 2026, compared to more than 2,200 reported in all of 2025.
He also was asked by Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., about ending an influenza vaccine public awareness campaign while investing money in marketing efforts for his remade food pyramid.
“You suspended this pro-vaccine messaging campaign, but somehow you’re spending taxpayer dollars to drink milk, shirtless in a hot tub with Kid Rock?” Sanchez asked.
Kennedy also was accused of “diminishing science” by Rep. Bradley Scott, D-Ill., with his support for $5.7 billion in cuts to the National Institutes of Health meant for drug development.
“Nobody wants to make the cuts,” Kennedy said in response to several questions about reducing the HHS budget, but said the nation needs “to tighten our belt” because of the national debt, which he blamed on Congress.
First lady Melania Trump speaks during a House Ways and Means Committee roundtable discussion on protecting children in America’s foster care system in the Longworth House Office Building near the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. The bipartisan group of lawmakers are looking to address challenges children in foster care face, including barriers to education and educational advocacy, housing, employment opportunities, financial independence, and technology. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
The testimony from Russell Vought jump-starts the White House’s push to increase defense spending to nearly $1.5 trillion in the next budget year, up from nearly $1 trillion this year, while cutting health research, heating assistance and scores of other domestic programs by about 10% overall. Such cuts do not cover mandatory spending, which includes such programs as Social Security and Medicare.
The debate over Trump’s proposal underscored the sharp divide that will shape some of the most significant policy debates going into a midterm election that will give voters the ultimate say on the direction of the country.
“For the industrial base to double or triple and build more facilities, not just add shifts, it requires multiyear agreements to purchase into the future,” Vought told lawmakers. “That cost has to be booked in this first year.”
The White House is calling for about $1.1 trillion for defense through the regular appropriations process, which typically requires support from both parties for approval. An additional $350 billion would come through a separate bill that Republicans can accomplish on their own, through party-line majority votes.
Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democratic member of the committee, said he believes in a strong national defense. But he said the idea of increasing defense by more than 40% while cutting programs that people need shows that the Republican administration’s priorities are “out of whack.”
The committee chairman, Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), predicted the hearing would be more “amped up” than usual, and that proved to be true, beginning with his opening statement focused on criticizing Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency. Arrington said he did not know of any president in his lifetime who “inherited such a complete and utter mess as President Trump did in January of last year.”
Since then, Arrington said, Trump has secured the border, cut taxes and constrained nondefense spending.
It was the beginning of several back-and-forths at the hearing.
“You know how bad this economy is when we hear Joe Biden being invoked, we hear trans people being invoked. I was waiting for Jimmy Carter to be blamed next,” Boyle said in response to Arrington’s opening remarks.
Boyle said consumer confidence is plummeting under Trump and noted a gas station he passed in Philadelphia recently was selling gas at $4.11 a gallon versus less than $3 a gallon some six weeks ago because of Trump’s “war of choice in Iran.”
Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) called the proposed defense spending increase shocking.
“We’ve never in the history of this country seen spending like this, paid for by slashing healthcare, education and housing,” Balint said. “Mr. Vought, yes or no, is $350 billion for the war in Iran lowering costs for Americans?”
“It is certainly not defunding child care. We fully fund child care in this budget,” Vought said, not directly answering the question.
Balint went on to incorporate Trump’s “America first” mantra in her questioning.
She said that $350 billion could pay for an enhanced health insurance tax credit for 10 years and that her constituents are asking how the country can continue to spend money on wars and not find a solution to helping people afford healthcare.
Vought said the president has made clear he was not going to let Iran have nuclear weapons, missiles and a navy that affect U.S. national security.
“He is doing what is necessary to keep us safe, while at the same time trying to pursue diplomacy so that we can get out of wars and lower those costs over time,” Vought said.
Vought said it was unclear how much the administration would seek to fund the war during the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30. That money would be part of an emergency supplemental spending bill and would be on top of the funds the White House is seeking to boost defense spending next year.
“Would it be more than $50 billion?” asked Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas).
“We’re still working on it,” Vought said. “I don’t have a ballpark for you.”
WASHINGTON — In a rare bipartisan moment, the House passed legislation Thursday that would extend temporary protections for Haitian immigrants, a long-shot effort fighting back against President Trump’s attempts to end the program.
The bill, pushed forward by House Democrats with a group of Republicans over the objections of the GOP leadership, would require a three-year extension of temporary protected status for Haitians by the Trump administration. That would allow hundreds of thousands of qualifying immigrants to remain in the United States without fear of deportation.
The vote was 224-204, drawing applause in the chamber. But it faces uncertainty in the Senate, and the Republican president would almost certainly seek to veto it.
“I know firsthand how important our Haitian neighbors are to our communities, to our civic life, to our culture, to our workforce, to our economy,” said Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, who is co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus and represents one of the largest Haitian communities in the country.
During the debate, she recounted the number of Haitian immigrants working in healthcare, housing construction and other industries. Haitians with temporary legal status “are not the problem, quite the contrary, they are part of the solution,” she said.
Pressley has said deporting Haitians back to the troubled Caribbean country would be a “death sentence,” given the effects of natural disasters and gang violence. “Congress can do the right thing,” she said.
Ten Republicans, many from districts with large numbers of Haitian residents, joined all Democrats and one independent in voting for passage.
Congress tries to act before the Supreme Court does
The effort to help 350,000 Haitians living lawfully in the United States comes as the administration is working to end the temporary legal status for several groups, exposing them to deportation.
In less than two weeks, the Supreme Court is prepared to consider a fast-track case that would end the protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants in a challenge widely seen as threatening the broader program. The administration filed emergency appeals after lower courts stopped the immediate end of the program.
It is part of the administration’s efforts to strip certain immigrant groups of legal status as the White House works to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise of conducting the largest mass deportation operation in history. Some 1.3 million people fleeing countries around the world have been granted temporary protected status in the U.S.
The protections for Haiti, first approved after a devastating 2010 earthquake, have been extended multiple times. The State Department warns Americans not to travel to Haiti “due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest.”
Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an advocacy organization, fought back tears as she described the fear of deportations coursing through the community.
“We are asking, where will you be? On the right side of history?” she said at a news conference outside the Capitol. “Or continuing to cause trauma to people who are asking for nothing other than safety and protection?”
Trump has described migrants from poorer countries in vulgar terms, and he has falsely accused Haitian migrants in Ohio of eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs.
The conservative majority court has allowed the end of temporary legal status for a total of 600,000 people from Venezuela while lawsuits play out, leaving them to face potential deportation.
Lawmakers debate whether to help Haitians or stick with Trump
Rep. Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) whose district includes Long Island’s Haitian community, said she promised constituents she would work to protect their status. She introduced the legislation with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York as soon as she took office last year.
“It’s cruel to expect Haitians to be forced to return to these deadly, dangerous conditions,” she said at a news conference. “Human lives are at risk.”
Lawler said there are differences of opinion on immigration policy, but that Haitian immigrants have become vital to his community and forcing them out would be unjust and unwise.
“They are small business owners, they are nurses, they are caregivers, they participate in our economy and take care of American citizens,” he said. “Congress has a responsibility to act.”
But Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) decried the number of immigrants, including Haitians, who have entered the U.S., and cited Democratic efforts to halt funding for enforcement and deportation efforts.
“Make temporary permanent,” he said, “that’s their plan.”
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) said the program was “backdoor amnesty” for foreigners.
To Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), the temporary status first granted under the Obama administration has become “an open-ended invitation” for immigrants to enter the country, including some illegally, and remain.
“The Trump administration has heeded the cries of the American people,” he said.
Using a discharge petition to force votes
The vote was the latest effort by House Democrats to maneuver past the Republican majority using a discharge petition — once a rare tool, but now used increasingly to form bipartisan coalitions.
The discharge petition process forces the bill to the House floor for consideration, powering past House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and GOP leaders. It was used to help pass legislation that required the Justice Department to release the files of the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.
Republicans hold a slim majority in the House and are typically able to swat back such efforts from Democrats. But Democrats and Republicans have formed bipartisan alliances to reach the majority needed on the discharge petitions.
Pressley’s effort to discharge the bill won support from four Republicans on the initial petition, and several more once it came to the floor vote.
April 16 (UPI) — The House on Thursday passed a bill to extend temporary protected status for people from Haiti who are living in the United States through 2029.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., who is co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus, introduced a discharge petition to advance a bill to extend protection for Haitian nationals.
The legislation was initially introduced by Rep. Laura Gillen, D-N.Y., whose Long Island district — as well as the rest of Long Island and New York City — have large Haitian populations, and is the first bill she introduced after her election to the House.
After the discharge petition succeeded, with bipartisan support, the bill passed the full House with 10 Republicans voting in support of it.
“This is a critical step forward in our fight for immigrant justice and delivering our Haitian neighbors the protections they deserve — and it’s a testament to the strength of our broad, diverse and bipartisan coalition,” Pressley said in a statement after the motion to discharge was agreed to.
“I am grateful to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who supported our discharge petition,” she said.
After the vote, Gillen in a statement encouraged the Senate “to take up this measure and show the compassion and good sense to protect our Haitian community members.”
“Not only would this threaten the lives of our neighbors, it would also have a devastating effect on our economy,” Gillen said, noting that the extension protects “law-abiding and tax-paying Haitians who would face horrific condition if forced back to Haiti.”
The bill, however, faces a battle in the Republican-run Senate and, if it does get passed, the White House has indicated that it will veto the legislation, reports have said.
Although former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had attempted to end TPS for at least half a million Haitians last Fall, a judge in February blocked the Trump administration from carrying it out.
As a result of the ruling, TPS for people from Haiti expired on Feb. 3, its original expiration date, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which Pressley said made the discharge petition to force a vote on the bill so crucial.
The Supreme Court also is due to rule on the Trump administrations efforts to end TPS for Haitians, as well as for people from Syria, who have protected status because of the dangerous situation in that country.
First lady Melania Trump speaks during a House Ways and Means Committee roundtable discussion on protecting children in America’s foster care system in the Longworth House Office Building near the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. The bipartisan group of lawmakers are looking to address challenges children in foster care face, including barriers to education and educational advocacy, housing, employment opportunities, financial independence, and technology. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday faced federal lawmakers for the first time since September as he sought to defend a more than 12% proposed cut to his department’s budget and dodge arrows from angry Democrats along the way.
In his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, kicking off an expected sprint of seven budget hearings he’ll attend across congressional committees and subcommittees over the next week, Kennedy emphasized the administration’s work to reform dietary guidelines and crack down on waste, fraud and abuse.
Republicans on the committee praised Kennedy as a “breath of fresh air” and asked him to promote his department’s recent actions. Democrats, who have been furious over Kennedy’s sweeping overhaul of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, largely had a different agenda.
They needled Kennedy on what they viewed as the Trump administration’s hypocrisy on fraud, demanded to know why he was cutting budgets for various programs and slammed his efforts to pull back vaccine recommendations and messaging, which they said have caused unnecessary deaths.
Kennedy fired back, often raising his voice as he accused the Democrats of misrepresenting his work and past statements.
Here are three standout moments from Thursday’s hearing:
A standoff over measles
One heated exchange early in the hearing came between Kennedy and Rep. Linda Sanchez. The California Democrat decried recent measles outbreaks across the U.S. and asked Kennedy to answer for the fact that under his leadership, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pulled back public health messaging supporting vaccination.
“As a mother, this horrifies me,” Sanchez said. “Did President Trump approve your decision to end CDC’s pro-vaccine public messaging campaign?”
Kennedy repeatedly refused to answer, saying first he wanted to respond to the “misstatements that you’ve made” and later praising the Trump administration’s record on preventing measles, although protections against the disease have eroded in some parts of the country as vaccination rates have dropped.
“That’s not answering my question,” Sanchez said as the two talked over each other.
But Sanchez also got Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist before he entered politics, to acknowledge that a 6-year-old who died of measles last year in West Texas could have potentially been saved with vaccination.
“Do you agree with the majority of doctors that the measles vaccine could have saved that child’s life in Texas?” she asked.
“It’s possible, certainly,” Kennedy said.
RFK Jr. denies talking about Black children being ‘re-parented’
A fight erupted between Kennedy and Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama, when Kennedy vehemently denied making remarks he’d said in 2024.
The comments dated back to when Kennedy was a presidential candidate. On the “High Level Conversations” podcast last July, he said, “Psychiatric drugs — which every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence, and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented to live in a community where there’ll be no cellphones, no screens, you’ll actually have to talk to people.”
“Have you ever re-parented, or parented, I should say, a Black child?” Sewell asked, as her staff held up a poster featuring an abbreviated version of the quote.
“I don’t even know what that phrase means,” Kennedy said. “I’m not going to answer something I didn’t say.”
“You’re making stuff up,” he later claimed.
A recording of the podcast shows he made the comments during a conversation about free rehabilitation facilities he was proposing opening at the time in rural areas around the country.
Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard said Kennedy before joining the administration was referring to spaces where young people facing alienation, mental health challenges and despair could get re-parented, which she said was a psychotherapy term for “developing the emotional regulation, discipline, boundaries, and self-worth that may not have been established in childhood.”
For Kennedy and his former party, civility is the exception
Kennedy spent most of his life as a Democrat, the scion of one of the nation’s most famous political families. Both Republicans and Democrats during the hearing began their remarks by expressing their admiration of Kennedy’s relatives, among them former President John F. Kennedy.
But again and again throughout Thursday’s hearing, the fraying of bonds between Kennedy and his former party was on full display as spiteful comments were passed back and forth.
The Health secretary grew defensive and visibly agitated. He repeatedly criticized Democratic lawmakers for not giving him a word in edgewise.
“They’ve all shut me up,” Kennedy said at one point. “They give a little speech that they can go and market, you know, for fundraising, and they don’t allow me to answer the question.”
On a few rare occasions, the exchanges were civil. One representative, Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, used humor to make that happen.
“I promise to give you easy, comfortable questions if you don’t yell at me and hurt my feelings,” she told Kennedy. He promised he wouldn’t.
The election victory of Hungary’s Tisza party on April 12 marks the end of the 16 year rule of Viktor Orbán, a figure who has long defined Hungary’s contentious relationship with the European Union. His tenure reshaped Hungary’s domestic institutions and repeatedly placed the country at odds with EU norms, laws, and political consensus.
The incoming leadership under Péter Magyar now inherits not only a domestic mandate for change but also the complex task of rebuilding trust with the EU after years of institutional confrontation.
A fractured relationship with Brussels
Under Orbán, Hungary frequently clashed with EU institutions over rule of law, judicial independence, media freedom, and migration policy. One of the most controversial measures was the lowering of the retirement age for judges and prosecutors, which critics argued enabled political reshaping of the judiciary.
Tensions escalated further after 2022, when Hungary’s stance on sanctions against Russia and support for Ukraine created repeated deadlocks within EU decision making processes.
Financial pressure also became a key tool of EU leverage. The European Commission suspended billions of euros in funding to Hungary, citing concerns over corruption and democratic backsliding, deepening the political divide.
Allegations and escalating mistrust
Relations deteriorated further following leaked reports alleging that senior Hungarian officials coordinated with Russian counterparts during sensitive EU discussions. These claims intensified accusations within parts of the EU that Hungary had undermined collective decision making during a period of heightened geopolitical tension.
While Budapest has rejected many of these allegations, they contributed to a climate of mistrust that severely weakened Hungary’s position within the bloc.
A new government with a reform mandate
The Tisza party’s victory signals a clear domestic demand for change, particularly around governance and corruption. The new administration has strong incentives to restore relations with the EU, not least because of the approximately 17 billion euros in suspended funding that could be unlocked if conditions are met.
EU leaders, however, have made it clear that financial normalization will depend on compliance with a wide set of governance and legal reforms. These include anti corruption measures, judicial independence safeguards, and adjustments to policies affecting migration and minority rights.
Structural constraints on reform
Despite political momentum for rapprochement, significant obstacles remain. Hungarian society remains more socially conservative and more sceptical of the EU than many of its Western counterparts. This limits the political space for rapid liberal reforms, particularly in sensitive areas such as LGBTQ+ rights and asylum policy.
Economic pressures further complicate the situation. The new government will inherit fiscal strain linked to years of disputed EU funding and broader geopolitical uncertainty, including the economic effects of the ongoing war involving Iran, which has disrupted global energy markets and increased financial volatility.
Ukraine and the Russia question
One of the most sensitive areas in Hungary’s future EU relationship will be its position on Ukraine. While Péter Magyar has signaled a willingness to improve relations with Ukraine and align more closely with NATO and EU policy, key ambiguities remain.
His stated openness to continuing Russian energy imports for the foreseeable future, combined with proposals for a referendum on Ukrainian EU membership, suggests that strategic continuity with aspects of the previous government may persist.
Given public scepticism toward Ukraine within Hungary, any referendum could significantly complicate EU enlargement plans.
Analysis
The end of Orbán’s long tenure represents a clear political inflection point in EU Hungary relations. It removes a persistent source of institutional confrontation and opens the possibility of renewed cooperation with Brussels.
However, the assumption that relations will automatically normalize is overly optimistic. The structural sources of tension between Hungary and the EU extend beyond one leader. They include divergent political cultures, competing interpretations of sovereignty, and deep disagreements over migration, rule of law, and foreign policy alignment.
The new government’s dependence on EU funds gives Brussels significant leverage, but also creates domestic political risk if reforms are perceived as externally imposed. This creates a delicate balancing act between compliance and legitimacy.
On foreign policy, Hungary’s position on Russia and Ukraine will remain the most consequential test. Even partial continuity with previous policies could reintroduce friction at a time when EU unity is under pressure from multiple geopolitical crises.
Ultimately, Orbán’s departure may mark the end of one chapter, but it does not resolve the underlying tensions that have defined Hungary’s relationship with the European project. The reset, while possible, will be gradual, conditional, and politically contested.
WASHINGTON — President Trump railed against a federal judge’s decision on Thursday that continues to block above-ground construction of a $400-million White House ballroom, allowing only below-ground work on a bunker and other “national security facilities” at the site.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s latest ruling comes in response to an appeals court’s instruction to clarify an earlier decision on the 90,000-square-foot ballroom planned for the site where the East Wing of the White House once stood.
Trump on social media called Leon, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President George W. Bush, a “Trump Hating” judge who “has gone out of his way to undermine National Security, and to make sure that this Great Gift to America gets delayed, or doesn’t get built.”
The administration filed a notice that it will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review Leon’s latest decision, too.
Carol Quillen, president and chief executive of National Trust for Historic Preservation, whose group sued to challenge the project, said in a statement that the group is pleased with the court’s ruling.
Leon said that below-ground work on security measures is exempt from his order suspending above-ground construction. Government lawyers have argued that the project includes critical security features to guard against a range of possible threats, such as drones, ballistic missiles and biohazards.
Leon’s latest ruling comes several days after a three-judge panel from the D.C. appeals court instructed him to reconsider the possible national security implications of stopping construction.
In his previous order, Leon barred above-ground work on the ballroom from proceeding without congressional approval. The judge also ruled on March 31 that any construction work that’s necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House is exempt from the scope of the injunction. Leon said he reviewed material that the government privately submitted to him before concluding that halting construction wouldn’t jeopardize national security.
Leon had suspended his March 31 order for two weeks. He stayed his latest decision for another week, which gives the administration more time to seek Supreme Court review.
Leon said he is ordering a stop only to the above-ground construction of the planned ballroom, apart from any work needed to cover or secure that part of the project. Otherwise, the Trump administration is free to proceed with the construction of any excavations, bunkers, military installations, and medical facilities below the ballroom.
“Defendants argue that the entire ballroom construction project, from tip to tail, falls within the safety-and-security exception and therefore may proceed unabated,” the judge wrote. “That is neither a reasonable nor a correct reading of my Order!”
On Saturday, the appeals court panel said it didn’t have enough information to decide how much of the project can be suspended without jeopardizing the safety of the president, his family or the White House staff.
Leon said he recognizes the safety implications of the case, but stressed that “national security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity.” He also said he has “no desire or intention to be dragooned into the role of construction manager.”
On April 2, two days after Leon’s previous ruling, Trump’s ballroom won final approval from the 12-member National Capital Planning Commission, which is charged with approving construction on federal property in the Washington region.
The preservation group sued in December, a week after the White House finished demolishing the East Wing to make way for a ballroom that Trump said would fit 999 people. Trump says the project is funded by private donations, although public money is paying for the bunker construction and security upgrades.
The proposed 76-metre arch would tower over other iconic landmarks in Washington, DC, and has attracted scrutiny.
Published On 16 Apr 202616 Apr 2026
United States President Donald Trump’s goal of erecting a colossal arch in Washington, DC, has taken another step forward, with a key agency approving his proposed design for the monument.
The US Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were appointed by Trump, gave its go-ahead to the president’s design for a lofty 76-metre-high (250-foot) arch.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
If given final approval, the arch would be built on Memorial Circle, between the Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial. It would tower above other landmarks in the national capital.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle hailed the commission’s approval as a “step in accomplishing President Trump’s promise to the American people from the campaign trail — to Make America Safe and Beautiful Again”.
But the arch has faced criticism, including for potentially obscuring views of the national cemetery, a resting place for war veterans.
Public Citizen Litigation Group is representing some Vietnam War veterans in a lawsuit against the proposed construction, which they argue needs congressional approval.
Even the vice chair of the Commission of Fine Arts, James McCrery II, suggested that Trump’s proposed “Triumphal Arch” ditch the winged statue and eagles on its top. He also opposed the lions at its base, pointing out that African animals are “not a beast natural to the North American continent”.
The enormous arch is another effort by the US president to leave his mark on the physical landscape of Washington, DC.
In January, he told reporters he wants the arch to be the “biggest one of all”. The commission still needs to vote on final approval for the proposal after reviewing updated designs.
Current plans show the arch would be significantly larger than the Lincoln Memorial, which is 99 feet (30 metres) tall, and about twice as tall as the famous Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which the design resembles.
The phrases “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice for All” would be written in gold lettering atop either side of the monument.
About three out of every four people who delivered public comments about the project expressed opposition, many of them citing its enormous size.
But the arch is one of several Trump projects that have received public pushback.
Trump has sought to paint the granite of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building white, and his allies plan to close the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a national theatre complex, for two years of renovations, after adding Trump’s name to the exterior.
One of the most permanent changes so far has been the abrupt demolition of the White House’s East Wing, in order to make room for an enormous ballroom, long one of Trump’s priorities.
But that project is likewise entangled in legal battles, with critics arguing that congressional approval is required.
On Wednesday, Judge Richard Leon clarified that construction on underground structures at the ballroom site could continue, as part of an exemption he previously allowed for national security concerns.
But he maintained his short-term injunction against construction on the ballroom itself, batting down Trump’s position that the whole project should proceed.
“Defendants argue that the entire ballroom construction project, from tip to tail, falls within the safety-and-security exception and therefore may proceed unabated,” Leon wrote in Thursday’s ruling.
“That is neither a reasonable nor a correct reading of my Order!”
The president responded on social media by calling Leon an “out of control Trump hating” judge. Leon was appointed in 2002 under Republican President George W Bush.
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday nominated Erica Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general, to be the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a social media post, Trump described Schwartz as “incredibly talented” and said, “She is a STAR!”
The Atlanta-based CDC, which is charged with protecting Americans from preventable health threats, has been in turmoil since Trump returned to office more than a year ago, with a succession of mostly temporary leaders.
The agency is overseen by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had promised not to change the nation’s vaccination schedule. But shortly after taking office, Kennedy said he was going to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule and went on to attempt a substantial rewrite of vaccine recommendations for kids. Some of those efforts were put on hold recently by a federal judge.
The administration’s first pick to run the CDC was former Florida congressman Dr. David Weldon, but his March 2025 Senate confirmation hearing was canceled an hour before it was to begin. Weldon said at the time that he’d been told not enough senators were willing to vote for him.
The White House then moved on to Susan Monarez, who had been serving as the CDC’s acting director. Monarez was confirmed by the Senate, but she was ousted in less than a month. Trump administration officials said she wasn’t aligned with their agenda so they terminated her.
Several key CDC scientific leaders resigned in protest, saying Monarez’s dismissal dashed their hopes that a CDC director would be able to guard against political meddling in the agency’s scientific research and health recommendations.
Since then, there’s been a revolving door in agency leadership, with the short-term role of acting director being passed from one Washington-based Health and Human Services official to another. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya has been overseeing the CDC the past several weeks.
During a House Appropriations Committee hearing Thursday, Kennedy said the new CDC team was “extraordinary.”
“I think this new team is really going to be able to revolutionize CDC and get it back on track,” he said.
Schwartz holds multiple academic credentials, including both medical and law degrees. Her career has largely been spent in military uniform, including in a leadership position at the U.S. Coast Guard where she oversaw the organization’s system of 41 clinics and 150 sick bays.
She later served as deputy surgeon general, where she helped lead uniformed medical and health professionals posted at the CDC and government health agencies that serve the general public.
Schwartz could not be reached for comment.
Trump also announced the appointment of Sean Slovenski, a former Walmart executive, as CDC deputy director and chief operating officer. Dr. Jennifer Shuford, Texas health commissioner, was named the CDC’s deputy director and chief medical officer. And Dr. Sara Brenner, a former Food and Drug Administration administrator, was designated as a senior counselor for public health to Kennedy.
In a social media post Thursday, Kennedy congratulated Schwartz and the other appointees and said he looks “forward to working together to restore trust, accountability, and scientific integrity” at the CDC.
But Aaron Siri, a lawyer and ally of Kennedy in attacking vaccines and pharmaceutical companies, criticized Schwartz’s selection. In a social media post, Siri lambasted Schwartz’s past promotion of vaccinations and said “she lacks the basic ethics and morals to lead the CDC.”
Schwartz’s nomination comes as Dr. Casey Means, Trump’s pick for another key health-related role, U.S. surgeon general, has had difficulty getting confirmed.
Means’ languishing nomination after appearing for a confirmation hearing in February reflects the skepticism that lawmakers of both parties have expressed toward the direction in which Kennedy has taken his department.
Stobbe writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Ali Swenson contributed to this report.
On Sunday night, tens of thousands of Hungarians packed the banks of the Danube waving flags, crying of joy, popping bottles. Celebrating something that political analysts had spent years telling them was almost impossible: the electoral defeat of Viktor Orbán, the autocrat whose ploys and manipulations made him a uniquely disturbing force in the European Union. After 16 years in power, Hungary’s self-proclaimed architect of “illiberal democracy” conceded defeat within hours of the polls closing.
His rival, Péter Magyar (the equivalent of Pedro Veneco), had won 137 seats in a 199-seat parliament, a two-thirds supermajority that gave him not just a government, but the ability to rewrite the very constitution Orbán had rigged to protect himself. This appears to be the plan.
Venezuelans watching from afar could be forgiven for feeling two things at once: genuine joy, and a familiar, creeping doubt.
Sure, but that’s Hungary.
The doubt is understandable. It’s also, at this particular moment in Venezuelan history, worth interrogating.
To understand whether Hungary provides a useful lesson, we need to venture farther than our diasporic links, like La Danubio, Catherine Fulop and Shirley Varnagy. You first need a category distinction that political scientists call the difference between a closed authoritarian regime and a competitive one. A closed autocracy doesn’t bother with the pretense of real elections. Or when it does, it simply invents the results. Especially after July 2024, Venezuela had become exactly this: we all know what happened. Politically, there was no game to play unless you played by the regime’s rules. The game was a charade.
Orbán’s Hungary was something different, more insidious. Similar to what Chávez did to the institutions in the 2000s, while using hyper-ideological and reactionary rhetoric. The European Parliament had classified it as a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.” Orbán bent every institution he could reach: the judiciary, the media, the electoral rules themselves.
The scene on the Danube on Sunday night was a piece of great news in a political era that doesn’t offer many of them. The scenes in Budapest matter to us. But it shouldn’t be mistaken for a mirror.
He gerrymandered the system to favor the largest single party, confident that party would always be his. But he never quite crossed the line into fabricating vote counts, à la Maduro or Lukashenko. The game was still real, even if the playing field was tilted.
That distinction is now relevant because Venezuela’s political reality has shifted in ways that were unimaginable five months ago. The current regime Delcy Rodríguez leads is not identical to that of 2024 and 2025. Under US pressure, a few hundred political prisoners have been released and an amnesty law was approved in February. albeit with mixed results (more than 500 political prisoners are still behind bars, and amnesty has been formally denied to high-profile politicians and NGO leaders like Javier Tarazona). Overall, we see gestures that try to transmit magnanimity, but are moves meant to look like compliance while chavismo waits for Washington’s attention to wander.
But here’s the thing: even performative openings create real cracks, and the cracks are showing. In February alone, Venezuela has recorded dozens of protests, an exponential increase compared to the same month in 2025. Workers and students have taken to the streets of Caracas four times this year demanding salary increases, openly calling on the Rodríguez siblings to answer for their pleas. Last weekend in Valencia, in a football game between Carabobo and Universidad Central (a game which has enough backdrop to make a book about it), football fans directed chants against the son of Alexander Granko Arteaga (who plays for UCV): “¡Dónde están que no se ven, los enchufados de la UCV,” loud enough so it could be hear transmission (that would translate roughly to “nowhere to be seen, the UCV cronies are nowhere to be seen”). In 2025, that chant would have landed them in jail. That was exactly the outcome in the last domestic football final.
Waiting for the opportunity
Venezuela is still not a democracy. But the differences remain significant: a regime slowly, reluctantly slipping out of its authoritarian fortress, coming to terms with the fact that it will eventually have to face a reckoning at the ballot box. That’s what happened to Orbán. He controlled the courts, the media, the electoral geometry, and still got swept out because of the accumulated weight of economic failure, corruption, and sheer exhaustion that eventually overwhelmed the machinery he had built.
The lesson is not that rigged systems are beatable through optimism. It is that rigged systems have structural limits, and that opposition alliances which survive long enough, and build broad enough coalitions, tend to be standing when those limits are reached. In our case, we’ve seen all possible iterations of what an opposition can be. In 2024, the Maria Corina-led movement became the most formidable electoral force the country has seen in a while. That should have been our Orbán down moment. Nonetheless, the inertia we have seen since the beginning of the year is too good to let it slip away.
Political scientist Yascha Mounk, writing about Magyar’s victory, made an interesting observation that some might believe applies to Venezuelan democratic forces: the Hungarian opposition ousted Orbán on its fourth try, after years of humiliation, internal divisions and strategic errors. Patience, he argues, is its own form of political discipline.
This is Mounk’s post-populist dilemma, live, and a miniature preview of what a potential democratic government in Caracas would have in front of itself.
Again, the Venezuelan opposition doesn’t need that lesson. It already learned it, the hard way, and on a harder playing field. In 2015, it won a supermajority in the Asamblea and watched its powers get neutered one by one. In July 2024, it beat Maduro overwhelmingly and proved its victory with the official tally sheets. Edmundo González Urrutia did not become president because the movement backing him lacked organization, or coalition-building, or the kind of credible leadership that Magyar built from scratch since leaving Orban’s party two years ago. González Urrutia failed to take power because the regime decided that electoral results were optional.
The question was never whether the Venezuelan opposition could win an election. They already did in a way that should clarify the terrain for future opportunities. The actas and the popular support are powerful symbols that should endure. The question is whether they can repeat that performance, seizing the minimal opening they have in front of them whatever the broader circumstances. Then yes, the patience Mounk mentions is relevant.
The post-autocracy trap
Mounk is right to poop the party a little bit with a warning he calls the “post-populist dilemma.” Even with his supermajority, Magyar inherits a State that Orbán hollowed out and refilled with loyalists. He has two options: either fire them and bring about an anti-Fidesz purge; or leave them in place and be sabotaged from within. In his first week in power, Magyar is showing he wants to go for the first option. He has already called for the resignation of several key ministers of the Orban regime.
Venezuela would face this dilemma on steroids. Chavismo has had 27 years to embed itself across nearly everything. Rodríguez herself operates within a questionable agency on security forces (a certain someone remains interior minister and vice president for security). Any future Venezuelan government elected under competitive conditions would inherit an institutional landscape far more captured and complex than anything Magyar faces in Budapest.
This is not a reason for despair, but it does require confronting an uncomfortable asymmetry. When Magyar navigated Hungary’s post-populist transition, he did so with the EU at his back, a bloc that had spent years dangling billions in frozen funds as an incentive for democratic reform, and whose membership gave Hungarian voters a concrete, tangible alternative to Orbán’s model. Venezuela’s external anchor is the Trump administration, which has been explicit about its priorities: oil first, stability second, elections somewhere further down the list. Rubio’s three-phase roadmap (stabilization, economic recovery, reconciliation and transition) is not an explicit democratic transition plan. It is a business plan with democracy on the side.
Preparation, then, means the opposition must be the one holding the democratic line demanding verifiable electoral conditions, refusing to let institutional reform become a performance to please DC, and cementing a coalition broad enough that can translate the popular inertia and mood towards a margin so big it can’t be tweaked. The EU didn’t save Hungary. Hungarians did. The lesson travels.
Magyar won because Hungarians were organized, patient and ready when the moment arrived. Venezuelans have already proven they can do the same.
Magyar isn’t waiting. Within 72 hours of his victory, he demanded that Hungary’s president resign immediately, and sent the same message to the heads of the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the State Audit Office and the media authority calling them “puppets who have been in power for the past 16 years.” On Wednesday morning, in his first radio interview in over a year and a half, he told the State broadcaster its news operation would be shut down and relaunched as a true public service. Some are already calling it a witch hunt. Others call it the bare minimum required to transform the country.
This is Mounk’s post-populist dilemma, live, and a miniature preview of what a potential democratic government in Caracas would have in front of itself. If Magyar, armed with a two-thirds supermajority and the EU at his back, is already navigating accusations of overreach on day three, imagine what a Venezuelan opposition government would face trying to dismantle 27 years of institutional occupation in the police, intelligence agencies, the military, the public media, the judiciary. The task ahead is massive, and solving the dilemma probably requires an orderly phase-out agreed before the next presidential vote.
The scene on the Danube on Sunday night was a piece of great news in a political era that doesn’t offer many of them. The scenes in Budapest matter to us. But it shouldn’t be mistaken for a mirror.
Venezuela is not Hungary. Delcy is not Orbán, she is arguably more pragmatic, but also more constrained. Orbán was a standalone autocrat who built his system around his own political survival. Rodríguez governs by a permanent balancing act: between Washington’s demands, the military high command, the hardline faction and other peripheral actors. The competitive opening, if it comes, will be narrower, more fragile and more dangerous than anything Magyar navigated.
These are reasons to take the Hungarian lesson seriously without taking it literally. Magyar won because Hungarians were organized, patient and ready when the moment arrived. Venezuelans have already proven they can do the same. The question now is simpler, and harder: when the moment comes again, can the popular will (and not just the results) be allowed to stand?
The State Department in the United States has announced it is restricting visas for “individuals from countries in our hemisphere who support our adversaries in undermining America’s interests in our region”.
Thursday’s statement underlined that 26 individuals had already seen their visas stripped as part of the policy.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
The State Department’s stance comes as President Donald Trump seeks to expand US influence across the Western Hemisphere, as part of a platform he calls the “Donroe Doctrine”, a riff on the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine.
Since taking office for a second term, Trump has taken an aggressive stance towards stopping drug trafficking across the Americas, threatening economic penalties and military action for noncompliance.
He has also sought to check China’s growing sway over the region, as an increasing number of Latin American countries tighten their bonds with the Asian superpower.
The State Department explained that the expanded visa restrictions would penalise those who “knowingly direct, authorise, fund, or provide significant support to” US adversaries in the Western Hemisphere.
“Activities include but are not limited to: enabling adversarial powers to acquire or control key assets and strategic resources in our hemisphere; destabilising regional security efforts; undermining American economic interests; and conducting influence operations designed to undermine the sovereignty and stability of nations in our region,” the statement added.
The language was vague, never mentioning China or the campaign against drug-trafficking cartels.
But it continues a trend under the Trump administration to revoke visas from foreign critics and political opponents.
Last year, for instance, the administration sought to revoke visas for pro-Palestine protesters, claiming their presence could have foreign policy consequences for the US.
More recently, the administration has terminated the immigration visas for at least seven individuals with familial ties to the Iranian government or individuals connected to the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Revoking visas
The statement on Thursday did not identify the 26 individuals facing visa restrictions as part of the expanded policy.
But it cited the same authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act that the Trump administration has used to attempt to deport pro-Palestine student protesters last year.
Under the law, the entry of foreign nationals can be restricted when the secretary of state has reason to believe they pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.
While the administration has abandoned deportation efforts against some of the targeted individuals, at least two, Mahmoud Khalil and Badar Khan Suri, continue to face expulsion.
More recently, the administration has terminated the immigration visas for at least seven individuals with familial ties to the Iranian government or individuals connected to the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Already, some figures in Latin America have seen their visas revoked over political disagreements with the US.
In July, Brazilian officials involved in the prosecution of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro saw their US visas withdrawn. They included Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a frequent target of right-wing ire.
Then, in September, the Trump administration stripped Colombian President Gustavo Petro of his visa after he made an appearance at the UN General Assembly that was critical of US policy.
The State Department, at the time, denounced Petro for “reckless and incendiary actions”. He was later invited to visit the White House in February, as part of a detente with Trump.
Visa restrictions have been part of Trump’s larger policy to exert pressure on foreign groups and limit immigration into the US.
Earlier this year, the administration enacted immigrant visa bans on dozens of countries, citing both national security and alleged stresses on social services.
Trump has also sought to take a more militaristic approach towards Latin American governments it deems as adversarial, referring to the whole of the Western Hemisphere as the US’s “neighbourhood”.
In January, the US launched an attack on Venezuela that culminated in the abduction and imprisonment of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, and it has also initiated an ongoing fuel blockade against Cuba.
Some of Trump’s actions in the region have been deadly. The Venezuela attack left dozens of Cubans and Venezuelans killed. And since September, the Trump administration has conducted at least 51 lethal strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea.
The death toll in that campaign has reached at least 177 people. Rights groups have decried the attacks as extrajudicial killings.
But the Trump administration has labelled multiple drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organisations” and has argued they are seeking to destabilise the US through the drug trade.
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, leading a Pentagon prayer meeting, quoted a fictional bible verse taken from a violent monologue in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film “Pulp Fiction,” originally delivered by actor Samuel L. Jackson just before his character shoots a helpless man to death.
The secretary used the prayer to frame the war in Iran as an act of divine justice, the same justification Jackson’s character cites in the film before pulling the trigger.
Hegseth told the audience at a monthly Pentagon worship service held Wednesday that he learned the prayer from the lead mission planner of a team called “Sandy 1,” which recently rescued downed Air Force crew members in Iran.
Hegseth said the verse is frequently spoken by combat search-and-rescue crews, who call the prayer “CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17” from the Bible.
“And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother,” Hegseth recited. “And you will know my call sign is Sandy 1, when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”
The infamous Ezekiel 25:17 speech from “Pulp Fiction” is almost entirely a screenwriter’s creation; only the final refrain is loosely inspired by the actual biblical verse. The majority of the monologue in Tarantino’s film is adapted from the opening of the 1976 Japanese martial arts film “The Bodyguard,” with action star Sonny Chiba.
Hegseth’s minute-long prayer closely followed those scripts, with only the last two lines resembling language from the Bible. In Hegseth’s version, he replaced “and they shall know that I am the Lord,” from the book of Ezekiel with the call sign for a U.S. A-10 Warthog aircraft.
Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said some outlets accused Hegseth of mistaking Jackson’s Golden Globe-winning performance with actual scripture, and called that narrative “fake news.”
“Secretary Hegseth on Wednesday shared a custom prayer, referenced as the CSAR prayer, used by the brave warfighters of Sandy-1 who led the daylight rescue mission of Dude 44 Alpha out of Iran, which was obviously inspired by dialogue in Pulp Fiction,” Parnell wrote on X. “However, both the CSAR prayer and the dialogue in Pulp Fiction were reflections of the verse Ezekiel 25:17, as Secretary Hegseth clearly said in his remarks at the prayer service. Anyone saying the Secretary misquoted Ezekiel 25:17 is peddling fake news and ignorant of reality.”
Hegseth has frequently used his prayer sessions to call for violence in the ongoing Iran war. In last month’s sermon, he asked God to “grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence.”
The services are not mandatory, a senior defense analyst with knowledge of Pentagon operations told The Times, but some who work closely with Hegseth’s office feel an “implied pressure” to attend and “fill seats.”
The effect — some feel — is less attention on the Pentagon’s wartime efforts, and more on supporting political stunts, according to the source, who is not authorized to speak to the media and requested anonymity.
“We have managers and leaders that are missing mission critical work to go listen to ‘Pulp Fiction’ quotes,” the source said. “It delays our ability to make operational, mission related war-fighting decisions.”
The prayer came amid an ongoing clash between the Trump administration and Pope Leo XIV, who has spoken out in recent weeks against the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. Statements from the Vatican were met with a series of reprisals from President Trump, who said he doesn’t “want a pope” who criticizes the president of the United States.
On Thursday, the pope released a statement against military leaders who conflate war with divinity.
“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” he said.
WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration will hold a meeting in the summer to consider easing restrictions on more than a half-dozen peptide injections, a group of unapproved therapies that have become popular among wellness influencers, fitness gurus and celebrities.
The meeting announcement Wednesday follows repeated pledges by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to loosen regulations on peptides, which are often pitched as a quick way to build muscle, heal injuries or appear younger. There’s little research behind those claims and most peptides have not been reviewed for safety by the FDA.
Kennedy has discussed using peptides for his own injuries. And some major supporters of his Make America Healthy Again movement are big proponents of them, including Gary Brecka, a self-described “longevity expert” who sells various peptide formulas through his website.
The FDA said in a federal notice Wednesday that it will ask a panel of outside advisors to review seven peptides at a meeting in July, specifically whether they should be added to a list of substances that can be safely produced by pharmacies. In the meantime, the agency said it would soon remove the chemicals from a restrictive list reserved for unapproved, high-risk drugs. The peptides under discussion include some of the most popular among influencers, such as BPC-157, which is marketed to heal injuries and reduce inflammation.
“The Wild West is about to become wilder,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, a former FDA official who now leads the Center for Science in the Public Interest. In an interview, Lurie said allowing peptides on the market without clinical testing poses a “profound threat” to FDA’s decades-old system for vetting drugs.
“I don’t see why one would take the path of a proper drug approval if there is now this less rigorous, alternative path to market,” he said.
Under President Biden, the FDA added nearly 20 peptides to the federal list of substances that should not be produced by compounding pharmacies — businesses that mix medications that aren’t available from drugmakers.
At the time, the FDA’s panel of pharmacy advisors voted overwhelmingly that the peptides did not meet the criteria for substances that can be safely compounded. And FDA regulators agreed, saying later that the substances “present significant safety risks,” because most have not been extensively tested in humans.
Many of the FDA advisors and internal staff who oversaw those decisions no longer work for the agency. The FDA’s pharmacy panel currently has a number of vacancies, which Kennedy could fill before the July meeting.
Kennedy previewed Wednesday’s move in an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan. Both men have repeatedly spoken about peptides and claimed to have benefited from their use.
RFK Jr. claims personal benefit from peptides
“I’m a big fan of peptides,” Kennedy told Rogan. “I’ve used them myself and with really good effect on a couple of injuries.”
Given Kennedy’s statements, Lurie said it was doubtful the drugs would receive real scrutiny from FDA.
“Everybody knows the outcome that the secretary wants,” Lurie said. “I don’t believe for one moment that what’s going on here is an honest investigation of whether these products should be compounded.”
Scott Brunner of the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding said the coming meeting will be the start of a “protracted process.” Even if the panel votes to make the peptides available, and the FDA agrees, the agency will still have to draft and publish rules on the change, he noted.
Peptides are essentially the building blocks of more complex proteins. Inside the human body, peptides trigger hormones needed for growth, metabolism and healing.
In recent years peptides have become widely known through the blockbuster success of GLP-1 medications, which the FDA has approved for treating obesity and diabetes. Other FDA-approved peptides include insulin for diabetics and hormone-based drugs for several medical conditions.
But many of the peptides promoted online have never been approved, making them technically illegal to market as drugs. Several peptides, such as BPC-157 and TB-500, are banned by international sports authorities as doping substances.
But that has not stopped them from gaining a foothold in the burgeoning marketplace for wellness hacks and alternative remedies.
“I think this is a disaster in the works,” said Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research Translational Institute, who has studied the issue. “These peptides have no data to support their safety and efficacy.”
Meanwhile, some dietary supplement makers have begun mixing peptides into capsules, protein powders and gummies. At a recent FDA meeting, the industry argued for expanding the federal definition of supplements to permit the use of newer ingredients such as peptides in their products.
Safety risks were cited previously
When the FDA added a number of injectable peptides to its list of restricted substances in 2023, it cited safety risks including cancer and liver, kidney and heart problems.
That triggered pushback from wellness entrepreneurs, compounding pharmacies and their allies in Washington.
Last year several members of Congress, including Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, sent letters to Kennedy asking him to lift limits on peptide production.
Some in the compounding industry argue that FDA restrictions have given rise to an illicit market of imported chemicals from China and other countries, which are not subject to U.S. drug standards.
Kennedy has echoed those concerns.
“With the gray market you have no idea if you’re getting a good product,” Kennedy told Rogan. “And a lot of this stuff that we’ve looked at is just very, very substandard.”
Miguel Diaz-Canel marks anniversary of socialist revolutionary declaration under threat of US attacks.
By AFP and The Associated Press
Published On 16 Apr 202616 Apr 2026
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has said that his country does not seek conflict with the United States but is prepared to fight if necessary, as Cuba marks the anniversary of its socialist revolutionary character amid the threat of US attacks.
Diaz-Canel struck a defiant tone on Thursday in remarks before a crowd marking the 65th anniversary of Fidel Castro’s declaration of the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution and the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs by forces aligned with the US the day after.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
“The moment is extremely challenging and calls upon us once again, as on April 16, 1961, to be ready to confront serious threats, including military aggression,” Diaz-Canel said. “We do not want it, but it is our duty to prepare to avoid it and, if it becomes inevitable, to defeat it.”
President Donald Trump has threatened that the US could overthrow the Cuban government, a longtime source of ire for Washington, and has ratcheted up energy restrictions meant to squeeze the island’s economy.
“We may stop by Cuba after we finish with this,” Trump said earlier this week, stating that his attention could turn to Cuba after the end of the US-Israel war on Iran.
A US energy blockade and an end to oil shipments from Venezuela after the US abducted former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January have caused deteriorating conditions on the island. Fuel shortages and energy blackouts have roiled the island for weeks, heaping strain on workers and businesses.
Even before those increased restrictions, Cuba’s economy had suffered from decades of economic embargo from the US, along with economic mismanagement and political repression that prompted many Cubans to leave the country.
A vote at the United Nations in 2025 demanding an end to the US embargo passed with 165 votes in favour and seven against, including the US, Israel, Argentina, and Hungary. The resolution has been passed annually for more than 30 years.
“Cuba is not a failed state. Cuba is a besieged state,” Diaz-Canel said on Thursday. “Cuba is a state facing multidimensional aggression: economic warfare, an intensified blockade and an energy blockade.”
