politics

The fraught relationship between Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris is the stuff of reality TV.

With their Hollywood looks and unbridled ambition, the two San Francisco-spawned Democrats have spent decades in tacit competition, ascending to the heights of California politics while still managing to avoid direct confrontation.

That could change in 2028, should Newsom and Harris jump their parallel tracks and face each other — and possibly dozens of other candidates — in a bid for their party’s presidential nomination.

California’s departing governor, who has spent the better part of his second and final term auditioning for the White House, recently said he wouldn’t run if Harris chooses to do so. “Mutual assured destruction,” Newsom called a he-she contest between the two Left Coast rivals, and a “waste of everyone’s time.”

Some took that disavowal not as deference but jujitsu, or a form of political psy-ops directed at the governor’s longtime frenemy.

On the one hand …

In the same interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Newsom allowed as how the case against Harris — she’s a two-time loser at the presidential level and has had her shot — is “a pretty good one, actually.”

“That’s objectively true,” Newsom added, driving the knife a little deeper.

But rather than forcing Harris’ hand, Newsom’s professed willingness to stand aside may have simply invited the former vice president to take her sweet time deciding whether or not to run, waiting until the Democratic contest is well underway.

And leaving Newsom in an odd sort of limbo.

The former vice president, lips largely sealed, has done and said just enough to keep the door open to a 2028 run, without firmly committing to the contest. There’s a good chance that Harris — always careful, ever deliberate — doesn’t know what she’ll do. Or, at least, isn’t 100% certain.

She can afford to wait.

Time is on her side

After four years in the White House and her abbreviated 2024 White House bid, Harris has universal name recognition, a nationwide fundraising base and continued support among a significant number of Black women, who just happen to form the backbone of the Democratic Party.

Harris won’t freeze the presidential campaign the way she did the race for California governor. That contest was stalled and the field incomplete until Harris announced, after months of consideration, she’d take a pass. That’s not to say, by any stretch, Harris is the favorite to win the presidential nomination. The criticism Newsom expressed — just a fella jawing away, as he and Tapper cast their fly rods — is a view that is widely held among Democrats.

But the 2028 contest, which unofficially starts the instant the final polls close Nov. 3 — won’t be firmly fixed until it’s clear whether Harris is in or out.

Newsom doesn’t have that luxury of biding time, especially when so many other Democrats are poised to enter the race.

The governor has his own formidable national fundraising base — thanks in good part to his online trolling and anti-Trump hijinks — and a not-small degree of name recognition across the country. But Newsom has yet to fully engage in the see me, feel me aspect of presidential campaigning, which typically requires a candidate’s persistent physical presence and is particularly important in the earliest-voting states.

So his only option is to campaign full bore once he leaves the governor’s office in January, as though he’s running without hesitation or qualification. Then, if Harris jumps into the contest, Newsom can sulk his way back to California, or break his pledge and run against her after saying he wouldn’t.

That, as Newsom suggested to Tapper, would be a gift to the rest of the Democratic field.

Not too long ago, Newsom and Harris were carping over whether he was sufficiently supportive of her hurried-up 2024 presidential bid.

In her account of the campaign, Harris said she reached out to the governor shortly after President Biden announced he was standing aside in favor of his vice president. When she called, Harris wrote, Newsom texted that he was out hiking and would call her back. But, she said, he never did.

Much backing and forthing ensued — Newsom pointing out he didn’t hesitate to endorse Harris once he returned to civilization — with both insisting all the while things are fine between them, really.

Now the two are once more entwined, their fates tied up in mutual ambition and a shared hunger for the White House.

Was Newsom’s CNN interview a feint? Was he just faking respect for Harris as a way to keep in the good graces of Black women voters, all the while hoping against hope she won’t run — and planning to reverse himself if she does?

Will Harris put off her decision, knowing that every day and month that passes deepens the suspense and leaves Newsom twisting?

Will the two finally collide head-on, settling once and for all their intense, if unspoken, competition?

So much drama!

Stay tuned. There’s a reality TV show in there somewhere.

What else you should be reading

Get smart: With bans and taunts, Trump escalates his assault on the media
The deep dive: No electric shock gloves, face coverings: Newsom pushes back on Trump’s ‘Orwellian’ immigration agenda
The L.A. Times Special: War games and draft lawsuits: Democrats work to Trump-proof November election
Question for you: What would you want to ask of California’s two gubernatorial candidates? Fill out our survey!

Until next time,
mzb
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After a roasting hot summer during which a trip to the beach to escape the heat was top of everyone’s agenda, Rosaleen Fenton made an autumnal visit to one of the country’s most popular seaside towns

A summer trip to Cornwall can often feel like a battle against the crowds. With thousands of visitors packing into its narrow lanes, navigating St Ives during peak season can make you feel like you are trapped in an endless queue – albeit one with access to delicious Cornish pasties roughly every five feet.

But as the schools reopen their doors, the town quietens down and begins to feel like a place reclaimed by its residents. I had been told September is the best time to visit, so I gave it a go, my mum and I hopping on a Great Western Railway (GWR) train from London Paddington, hoping for a glorious, slightly calmer seaside weekend.

Our journey took on a mythical feeling as we headed further west. GWR has recently revived its Line to Legend Land storybook, a century-old set of promotional travel pamphlets and books that encourage passengers to explore the scenic regions by train. It is packed with South West folklore and retellings, and now a new tale by former Children’s Laureate Sir Michael Morpurgo.

Do you have a travel story to share? Email webtravel@reachplc.com

OPINION

The railway has installed five life-sized statues of these legendary figures across the network. Stepping onto the platform at St Ives, you were greeted by the famous mermaid of Zennor – which celebrates the legend of a local chorister lured beneath the waves. Reading about a coastline teeming with mythical creatures while watching Carbis Bay slide past your window felt like the perfect way to leave a busy working week behind.

Our home for the weekend was Tregenna Castle Resort, perched high on a hill and offering one of the most breathtaking views in the West Country – and not one I tire of looking at.

These stone walls have seen a lot of history. Built in 1774 as a grand private home, it was later purchased by GWR as an exclusive hotel. Today, the 72-acre estate is a dream for holidaymakers. Situated amidst lush ground, it boasts indoor and outdoor pools, woodland walks, a nine-hole golf course, and courts for tennis, badminton and pickleball.

Then there is the food, which deserves its own spotlight. We dined at the Godrevy View Restaurant, named after the distant lighthouse said to have inspired Virginia Woolf. The ever-changing menu is far superior to standard hotel fare. We begin with a beautifully arranged, nicely seasoned tomato salad served with Thai basil whipped ricotta, watermelon, ponzu and chervil (£11). For main, an 8oz fillet steak is generous, served alongside fondant potatoes, carrot puree, asparagus and baby beets.

On Sunday, we enjoyed roast beef, cooked to perfection, with all the trimmings, including Yorkshire puddings hiding a decadent treat within – a small dollop of braised beef swimming in rich jus. My daily routine quickly settled into gluttony – a delicious fry-up for breakfast, a rich chocolate brownie for dessert – an extremely pleasant way to start and finish every day.

While the town, which has a stand-out independent shopping scene and was named the UK’s prettiest seaside town just this week, is calmer in September than the summer holiday months, the streets still felt substantially fuller than you’d expect from a place of 11,000 people. A great energy, but the bustling made me yearn to return to the sublime peace of Tregenna Castle, just 15-minutes away.

With our visit coming just days after Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he was in favour of a ‘tourist tax’ for Cornwall, the topic of overtourism was top of my mind. It’s fair to say business owners in the area remain divided on the topic, but for me, the benefits are easy to see. St Ives records more than 220,000 overnight stays annually, meaning it could bring in over £1,000,000 a year – a lifeline for a town where social issues are pressing, despite its well-to-do reputation. There’s a foodbank here, and a lot of young people who can’t survive in a property market where 15% of homes are second ones.

Chatting with locals, many said they no longer live in St Ives itself, preferring nearby Penzance, where they have room to breathe, cheaper homes, and not every shop sells clotted cream fudge.

Yet as a visitor, I can see why those in the industry are wary of scaring anyone off. It’s clear how holidaymakers pour vital cash into the local economy through independent shops, galleries and restaurants. Last year Jon Hyatt, who chairs Visit Cornwall, said he was “against any charge that might put visitors off”.

It’d be a terrible shame if they were, given how much there is to enjoy, from frolicking in the waves of Porthmeor Beach and peering off the side of Smeaton’s Pier, to touring the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Unsure of what to take on next, my travel companion tried using an AI bot to plan a fun day out for us. Unsurprisingly, technology failed us with the app repeatedly instructing us to catch a bus route that hasn’t existed for over two years. Abandoning our future robot overlords, we turned to a friendly member of hotel staff instead, who pointed us straight toward Tate St Ives – a far superior mode of recommendation.

Opened in 1992 on a cliff overlooking Porthmeor Beach, the displays change regularly. We caught an exhibition by Halima Cassell, whose intricate geometric sculptures play beautifully with light and shadow. Outside, it feels as if her artwork was continuing, a rainbow appearing over the beach, ending atop the RNLI flag.

Afterward, we walked a stretch of the South West Coast Path and enjoyed the brutally beautiful landscape, with the rhythm of the waves calming our frazzled nerves. As a special treat, we returned to London on GWR’s overnight Night Riviera Sleeper service.

I slept blissfully after a trip to the glorious buffet bar, where you can enjoy a free hot chocolate, before heading to slumber in a carriage. Getting onto the top bunk is no trouble, with a smart fold-away ladder showing how cleverly designed this small cabin is.

We arrived back in London just after 5am, though passengers can stay on board until closer to 7am. Breakfast is delivered (for me, a bacon roll) alongside piping hot coffee – which gives me the strength to start my day back in London, where I mourn the glorious coastline I left behind.

Book it

Tregenna Castle Resort, Treloyan Avnue, St Ives. Rooms and luxury self-catering lodges available. Visit tregenna-castle.co.uk

GWR operates regular services from London Paddington. To travel in a sleeper cabin on the Night Riviera, you need to purchase a regular train ticket, plus a supplement for the cabin. For the best deals, book up to three months in advance. Book at GWR.com.

Timed entry tickets to Tate St Ives on Porthmeor Beach cost £14 (£1.50 extra with a voluntary donation), though locals can get unlimited all-year entry for £10. Book in advance at tate.org.uk/visit/tate-st-ives.

US president’s comments came after he was asked why North Korea can have nuclear weapons when Iran cannot.

United States President Donald Trump has described North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “a friend” and played down concerns about Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal, saying, “as long as I’m around, he’s going to be fine”.

Trump made the remarks in Washington, DC, on Tuesday after a reporter asked him why North Korea could have nuclear weapons but Iran could not.

“That’s interesting. You know why? Because you had a different president, and they could have stopped him,” he said, referring to previous US administrations.

“He happens to be a friend of mine, Kim Jong Un, he’s a friend of mine. He likes Trump, doesn’t like a lot of other people. I’m about the only person in the entire world that he likes, and I like him,” he said.

He said North Korea’s nuclear capacity was “pretty large” but “not like us”.

“You know what, as long as I’m around, he’s going to be fine,” he added. “You know why? Because he respects me and he likes me.”

South Korea’s Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back said last week that its northern neighbour possessed between 80 and 120 nuclear warheads. The figure is significantly higher than Trump’s recent assertion that Pyongyang has 57 nuclear weapons.

Trump is seeking to re-engage with Kim and secure a win on the international stage as the US and Israel’s war on Iran enters its eighth month.

The US president launched the war along with Israel on February 28, saying Iran could not have a nuclear weapon. Iran has denied seeking a weapon, noting it had signed an agreement with world powers in 2015 that curbed its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. But Trump abandoned the agreement during his first term in 2018.

The US-Israel war on Iran has disrupted global energy supplies, raised fuel costs and hurt Trump’s popularity ahead of the November midterm elections.

Trump held summits with North Korea’s Kim in 2018 and 2019, but diplomacy broke down over US demands that Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons. Since then, Kim has expanded his arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles and strengthened his diplomatic footprint by aligning with Russia over its war in Ukraine and tightening relations with China.

Trump had earlier said he planned to hold in-person talks with Kim before the end of the year.

But North Korea has not formally committed to such a meeting.

Pentagon official says the plan will be announced in the defence secretary’s ‘State of the Force’ address in Virginia.

United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will cut the number of positions reserved for generals and admirals by 20 percent, a Pentagon official has told Al Jazeera, in a change that will affect leadership across the Army, Navy and Air Force.

Hegseth is expected to announce the decision on Wednesday during a visit to the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, where he will deliver his “State of the Force” address in front of junior officers and enlisted officials, the official said.

The Associated Press news agency, citing Pentagon officials, reported that Hegseth will direct all the military services to double the 10 percent reduction that he ordered last year to the roughly 800 flag and general officer positions. This would make it a 20 percent total decrease and is to be completed by January 1, 2027.

Fox News reported the new reductions could include any one-star general or above or officer of equivalent Navy rank.

The Washing Post reported that the cuts could affect the careers of “hundreds of current and rising military leaders following scores of firings and denied promotions”.

US President Donald Trump or Hegseth have fired, or pushed into retirement, more than two dozen military leaders since taking office in January 2025, including the Army’s top uniformed officer, General Randy George, in April.

The administration also fired the only two women serving as four-star officers, along with several other senior female officers. Other top officials have left through retirements and resignations, including the Army secretary, Dan Driscoll, who resigned this month after repeated clashes with Hegseth.

When the defence secretary first announced the effort to trim the highest levels of the military ranks, he argued it was intended to remove “redundant force structure to optimise and streamline leadership”. And in a memo released in May 2025, he added that his aim was to free the military from “unnecessary bureaucratic layers”.

At this time last year, Hegseth also declared an end to “woke” culture and announced new directives for troops that included “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness.

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed concern over Hegseth’s latest move in a statement. He said eliminating senior leadership positions must be done in consultation with Congress and warned that the planned cuts “should alarm every American”.

“Congress has been clear with the Secretary that he must consult this body and explain his reasoning for senior officer removals and promotion holds. To date, we have not received satisfactory answers,” Reed said.

“Our military is conducting major operations around the world, and the force is already under strain,” he added.

The number of general officer positions is set by law, but positions can be left unfilled if the administration does not submit nominees to Congress.

Opposition leader dismisses Netanyahu’s warning of possible attacks during next month’s general election.

Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “fear-mongering” after the incumbent leader warned that the country’s enemies may attack before next month’s general election.

Lapid, who heads the Yesh Atid party, dismissed the warning after meeting the prime minister on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, Netanyahu posted an online video that showed him posing in front of a fighter jet at a military base and saying there were “indications that, ahead of the elections, our enemies will try to attack us”.

He did not specify which enemy he had in mind. But in recent weeks, he has issued warnings to Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Authority, promising retaliation in the event of an attack.

Lapid requested an urgent security briefing after the warning, and in an online post afterwards, he said he was certain the election would take place on time and that “there is no reason to panic the public”.

“The elections will take place on time, and no one has an excuse to disrupt them,” he said.

He accused Netanyahu of using military bases as “props for election campaign videos” and of failing to heed warnings before the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, which set off Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. More than 76,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war.

“Netanyahu ignored every warning before October 7, and now, 28 days before the election, he’s suddenly busy fear-mongering,” Lapid said. He added: “I of course will not violate the confidentiality of the security briefing but it must be said — security threats must be handled professionally and responsibly.”

The election, scheduled for October 7, is Israel’s first vote since the Hamas-led attacks, which plunged the Middle East into turmoil as Israel went to war in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. The election could determine whether Netanyahu remains in power after one of the most consequential periods in Israel’s history, or is defeated by centrist rivals promising to usher in a new era.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader, was first elected prime minister in 1996. In recent weeks, he has had to deny media reports that his partners in the Middle East warned him of a potential Hamas attack, an allegation his political rivals have seized on.

Polls show him in a close race to stay in power.

According to a Reuters polling average, no candidate has a clear path to power. The average shows Yashar, the party of Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief who has emerged as Netanyahu’s most formidable rival, leading the prime minister’s right-wing Likud party by 2 points.

Based on the average, parties opposed to Netanyahu would hold 64 seats in the 120-member Knesset, 15 more than the parties that back him, but they may be unable to form a coalition.

Lapid is one of several opposition figures in the race. He, Eisenkot and other opposition leaders have agreed to coordinate to remove Netanyahu’s government. Under the agreement announced last week, each leader pledged to work in their constituencies to increase turnout and attract support from various sectors of society to secure a majority and form a new government.

The prime minister said in a separate post on Tuesday that he has held a security briefing with Lapid in which he raised alerts about possible attacks “on the various fronts ahead of the elections”.

He stressed that he holds regular briefings with the opposition leader.

Paramount Skydance’s streaming chief Cindy Holland is exiting the studio, clearing the way for HBO Chairman Casey Bloys to claim a key role in the company once Paramount acquires Warner Bros. Discovery.

Holland announced her departure Tuesday in a memo to her staff. Her resignation is effective immediately.

She joined Paramount nearly 14 months ago as chairman of direct-to-consumer operations, in charge of Paramount+ and Pluto TV, after David Ellison’s Skydance Media took control of the media company long held by the Sumner Redstone family.

Holland, a respected former Netflix executive, was one of the few Paramount executives who lacked long ties to Ellison, who brought much of his Skydance team with him to Paramount.

Her resignation comes as Paramount is waiting for a federal judge to approve a settlement agreement that would allow Paramount to finalize its $111-billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, which also includes CNN, TBS and the Warner Bros. film and television studios.

The agreement, unveiled last week, was designed to end a lawsuit brought by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and 11 other Democratic attorneys general, who had argued Hollywood’s biggest merger in decades violated U.S. antitrust laws.

“As David readies for the next phase of his vision, we’ve discussed my role and the future of the combined businesses,” Holland wrote in the memo shared with her staff viewed by the Times. “David is optimizing for HBO stability as we move into this next chapter, and I fully support that.”

Ellison, in recent months, has signaled his intention to install Bloys in a pivotal role at the combined company.

Ellison months ago made a public commitment to protect HBO, which has long been a leader in prestige TV programming. The network has already undergone two ownership changes, and considerable management turmoil, during the last decade. Bloys has led HBO as its chairman since late 2022. He was one of the first Warner executives that Ellison met with this year after Paramount prevailed over Netflix in the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery.

The New York Times first reported Holland’s departure.

“Cindy has been a trusted partner to me and so many others, and I couldn’t be more grateful for her leadership, her relentless drive and everything she’s done for our company,” Ellison said in a statement.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — After a splashy White House send-off usually reserved for presidential trips abroad, President Reagan today began a 13-state political blitz, telling voters they can cast their ballots for him “one more time” by electing Republican senators Nov. 4.

Trying to transfer his personal popularity to GOP candidates, Reagan coupled the personal note with a patriotic appeal, saying retention of a Republican Senate would be important not just to him but also to the country.

At GOP rallies here and in Waukesha, Wis., the President noted that his own name will not appear on a ballot again.

‘My Last Campaign’

“This is my last campaign, and if you’d like to vote for me one more time, you can do so by voting for Kit,” Reagan said here at a rally for former Missouri Gov. Christopher Bond, who holds a slim lead over Democratic Lt. Gov. Harriett Woods in their race for the Senate.

At the Wisconsin rally for GOP Sen. Bob Kasten, Reagan said:

“You know, my name will never be on the ballot again, but don’t think you can’t vote for me. If you want to vote for me, vote for Bob Kasten, so that we can have a Republican Senate that will work with me instead of against me and be around after I’m gone.

“Don’t just do it for me–do it for yourself,” he added. “Do it for Wisconsin. Do it for America.”

Reagan said that after he asked for a no-tax-raise pledge, “Bob Kasten signed up right away–but so far his opponent (Democrat Ed Garvey) has refused to sign. I think that tells the whole story right there.”

Not Aware of Any Pledge

However, Garvey spokeswoman Susan Rensberger, said today, “To my knowledge we’ve never heard of or seen such a pledge.”

Pete Roussel, deputy White House spokesman, later said Reagan’s remarks were intended “in the spirit of a rhetorical question.” He said of Garvey, “So far we are not aware of his making that pledge but we are giving him the opportunity.”

Before setting off on the two-day, four-state swing this morning, Reagan made maximum use of the White House as a political platform, addressing a crowd of several hundred invited GOP campaign workers and executive branch employees.

It was the latest kickoff of a campaign he has been waging for months.

Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. introduced the President as the GOP’s “greatest asset,” and a U.S. Marine jazz combo played “Grand Old Flag” as Reagan paused for brief remarks on the South Lawn before boarding his helicopter.

‘Progress … or … Paralysis

Such departure ceremonies usually are reserved for presidential trips abroad. Reagan will be back in the White House on Friday before setting out on the campaign trail again next week.

On the campaign trail, Reagan said the election of Republicans like Bond and Kasten “could very well decide whether we keep control of the Senate–or lose it to the liberal leadership of the Democratic Party.”

“And that’s the difference between two more years of progress or two years of paralysis,” he said.

Reagan also plans to speak on behalf of Republican Sens. Don Nickles in Oklahoma and Paula Hawkins in Florida before returning to Washington.

Next week, the President has campaign appearances scheduled in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Colorado, Nevada, South Dakota, Washington, Idaho and California.

Rising goods and fuel costs are cited as key factors in the sharp drop in consumer confidence.

United States consumer confidence has fallen to its lowest level since 2014, just over one month before the congressional midterm elections.

Consumers pointed to higher costs for goods and services as the primary reason for the decline, according to The Conference Board, which released its monthly report on Tuesday.

“The Consumer Confidence Index deteriorated notably in September, following two prior months of softening,” Dana M Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board, said in a release announcing the report.

Consumers pointed to higher prices at the pump as one of the driving factors. The average price for a gallon (3.78 litres) of petrol has jumped 37 cents over the past month, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), which tracks daily petrol prices. The average price stood at $4.45 on Tuesday, compared with $4.08 a month ago.

“Oil and gas prices in particular rose to new heights, reflecting September’s surge in fuel costs. Comments about war/conflict eased this month but remained elevated,” Peterson said.

The consumer confidence report comes a day ahead of a key inflation report that the Federal Reserve uses to gauge the state of inflation, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index, which was up 3.7 percent in June from a year earlier.

The US central bank raised interest rates for the first time in three years earlier this month, driving up costs of credit cards and car and bank loans. It is set to make another decision on interest rates at its October 27-28 meeting, putting pressure on Republicans as consumer sentiment tumbles across political affiliations.

Consumer confidence fell among all political affiliations, according to the report, the second-to-last major consumer confidence reading before the midterm elections, which will determine the balance of power in Washington, DC.

US consumers think the Democratic Party would handle the economy better than their Republican counterparts, with 42 percent saying Democrats would do a better job compared with 34 percent for Republicans, according to a recent Marist poll.

US markets are only slightly lower as the trading day comes to a close. The tech-heavy Nasdaq closed down 0.08 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 0.2 percent and the S&P 500 was down 0.1 percent.

The high court grants an emergency petition ahead of expected arguments in the case, slated for December.

The United States Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to continue third-country deportations, halting a lower-court ruling that paused such removals over questions of due process.

On Tuesday, the high court granted the administration’s emergency request to resume the deportations, which involve sending immigrants to countries they may have no connection to.

The court’s order was unsigned, as is typical for an emergency petition. It also does not include an explanation or a list of how the justices voted.

But at the bottom of Tuesday’s order, the court’s three left-leaning justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan – indicated they would have denied the Trump administration’s petition.

The Supreme Court’s decision to pause the lower court ruling is temporary. The order calls for arguments to be heard in December.

That hearing comes as Trump administration continues its appeal against the lower court’s ruling, handed down by Judge Brian Murphy in Boston, Massachusetts.

Murphy had ruled that immigrants must be given a “meaningful” chance to raise safety concerns before their removal to third-party countries.

In pausing such deportations, Murphy indicated that some immigrants may have been denied the opportunity to challenge their deportations as part of their due process rights.

Tuesday, however, is not the first time the Supreme Court justices have weighed in on the practice of forcibly sending people to third countries, which Trump dramatically stepped up since his return to office in 2025.

Trump campaigned on a pledge to implement the “largest deportation operation in American history”, and his officials have argued that third-country deportations are a means of removing individuals whose home countries may not accept them.

In June 2025, the Supreme Court also issued an unsigned order allowing such removals to proceed.

That cleared the way for eight men, including nationals of Cuba, Myanmar and Vietnam, to be deported to South Sudan, a country the US State Department advises against visiting because of “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict”.

The Department of Homeland Security at the time called the removals “a win”, while rights groups said the move flouted basic legal protections.

Critics have expressed concern that many of the governments receiving third-country deportations have a record of human rights abuses.

Third-country deportations have been used to bypass court protection orders that prevent immigrants from being sent back to their home countries due to fears of persecution.

But advocates say that some of those third-party countries have ultimately sent deportees, including asylum seekers, back to the places where they feared they would be at risk of torture or other harms.

At least 35 countries have signed agreements with the Trump administration to take in the third-country nationals, according to a tally by the nonprofits Refugees International and Human Rights First.

The groups estimate that more than 25,000 people have been subject to third-country deportations so far.

On Monday, human rights experts at the United Nations wrote to the ‌US ‌government urging a halt to such removals, warning they were putting deportees at heightened risk of abuse.

“At gravest risk are children, women, persons with disabilities, victims of trafficking, LGBT persons, human rights defenders, stateless persons and other people in extremely vulnerable situations,” the experts said.

On Tuesday, Burundi became the latest country to enter an agreement with the US to take non-citizen deportations.

Officials said the country would only take in people who were not facing prosecution and had no links to “terrorism”.

Sept. 29, 2026 2:56 PM PT

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration was set to issue a last-minute reprieve Tuesday over the planned closure of a camp in Qatar that houses more than 1,000 Afghans who assisted America’s war effort or are the relatives of U.S. service members.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to sign off on a diplomatic note to Qatar extending for nine months the life of Camp As Sayliyah, which had been due to close Wednesday at the end of the U.S. budget year, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The officials spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to offer details before the public announcement.

The decision comes months after Rubio told Congress that the U.S. was still in discussions with several third-party countries to take the 1,039 Afghans who worked as interpreters or in other roles helping the American war effort as well as relatives of U.S. service members who have been stranded in Qatar for more than a year.

Rubio’s testimony in June came after the AP and other outlets reported that war-torn Congo was among the countries where the Trump administration was considering resettlement.

The State Department would not immediately comment on Rubio’s extension for the camp but said it “continues to work toward a positive resolution that provides safety for these remaining people to start a new life outside of Afghanistan while upholding the safety and security of the American people.”

The department also repeated its claim that the camp is a legacy of an attempt by President Biden’s administration “to move as many Afghans to America as possible without properly vetting them” — an assertion that has been denied by former officials and refugee advocates.

The group of Afghans in Camp As Sayliyah includes those who fought or worked alongside the U.S. military between 2001 and 2021, with more than 70% of the camp’s residents being women and children, according to statistics from #AfghanEvac. The group has spent the last five years advocating for Washington to make good on its promise to resettle those whose service has put them at risk since the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s reassertion of control.

“This is a victory for those people, and they’re going to have some semblance of knowing that they’re safe there because they’ve been worried that at any moment somebody’s going to come and rip them out of there,” Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads #AfghanEvac, told the AP.

But he added that there needs to be a permanent solution to this years-long crisis.

Despite the camp’s reprieve, which protects those housed there from possible forcible removal to Afghanistan, residents have little hope of being allowed to enter the United States.

Upon entering his second term, Trump, a Republican, paused his Democratic predecessor’s Afghan resettlement program as part of a series of executive orders cracking down on immigration, including dramatically altering refugee admissions to focus on white South Africans. Only five Afghans have been admitted to the U.S. since October 2025, #AfghanEvac says.

The refugee changes left thousands of people who fled war and persecution — and had gone through a sometimes years-long vetting process to start new lives in America — stranded at places worldwide, including the base in Qatar.

Advocates have warned that if there is no alternative, the only other option for the group of residents would be to go back to Afghanistan, where they face likely reprisal from the Taliban.

In the coming nine months, the State Department said it would “continue to work to identify options for voluntary resettlement of all Camp As-Sayliyah residents.” It gave no additional details.

Lee and Amiri write for the Associated Press. Amiri reported from New York.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday let President Trump’s administration continue swiftly deporting people to countries other than their own for now, while the justices consider whether the policy is legal.

The apparent 6-3 order halts a lower-court decision. It requires the government to give migrants a chance to object before they are sent to countries to which they have no ties.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in December.

The Trump administration said the lower-court order forced the cancellation of a deportation flight carrying about 70 people bound for three countries last week.

The justices have sided with the administration once before on the core Trump administration policy, allowing deportation flights to temporarily continue last year.

The court said it will consider several questions: whether the policy is lawful, whether lower courts had the authority to issue a sweeping block and other questions the government deems appropriate.

Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported some 25,000 people to more than two dozen countries, including Liberia and Guyana. The vast majority have been sent to Mexico.

Trump’s Republican administration has said that it sends people with final deportation orders to third countries when they can’t be returned to their homelands or their native countries won’t accept them, including those who have criminal convictions. Those governments provide assurances that people won’t be persecuted or tortured, federal attorneys said.

But some migrants have nevertheless found themselves imprisoned in countries they’d never heard of before their arrivals. Others also face serious safety risks and are left with little choice except to return to the home countries they were fleeing. Many have no criminal convictions and have been found to be at risk of torture or persecution, attorneys for the immigrants said.

The case comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally.

Whitehurst writes for the Associated Press.

The last remaining US troops have left Iraq. The US military was first deployed to Iraq back in 2003 to depose its leader, Saddam Hussein.

It later faced a series of crises that ensued after the ousting of Hussein. Iraq became embroiled in a cycle of violence that considerably weakened the country.

While the US may have prevented the collapse of the state, it’s also accused of contributing to the subsequent chaos that engulfed it.

The Iraqi government will now be dealing with a new reality.

Is it up to the job? And who stands to gain from the US finally leaving Iraq?

Presenter: Dareen Abughaida

Guests:

Ahmed Rushdi – President of the House of Iraqi Expertise Foundation.

Kenneth Katzman – Senior fellow at The Soufan Center specialising in Middle East geopolitics and US foreign policy.

Abdullah Alshayji – Professor of political science at Kuwait University specialising in US politics and Gulf security.

America.gov for now functions like a chatbot comparable to ChatGPT or Claude, pointing users to official gov’t websites.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has launched a new website called America.gov aimed at simplifying access to government information.

The website functions much like a chatbot comparable to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude and points users to official government sources for questions such as passport renewals.

The president announced the new site on Tuesday alongside several Cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

In a speech, the president claimed that the website would not store user information and used the opportunity to tout simplified access to information about elections and applications for citizenship.

The site is powered by Google’s Gemini AI and xAI’s Grok, according to the chief design officer, Joe Gebbia.

The executive order announcing the new site calls it “a unified digital front door to the Federal Government for every individual in the United States seeking Federal information or services”.

It also says the site will provide “an entry through which an individual may sign in, communicate in plain language, receive accurate answers, and, where authorized and technically available, complete Government transactions without being required to navigate the websites of multiple agencies.”

White House officials told Al Jazeera that the website will abide by the security protocols of the government agency users inquire about, and it will be retained by those agencies and not America.gov, for example, Medicare.

Al Jazeera tested the answers the website provides to see how they align with the president’s views.

When asked “who is the fake news?”, it said, “I don’t label news outlets or comment on media.” When asked who won the 2020 presidential election, it said Joe Biden. When asked whether the department in which Pete Hegseth is secretary is the Department of Defense or Department of War, it said, “Department of Defense (DoD). That is still the name in statute until Congress changes it.”

When asked about obtaining specific records, such as individual tax information, citizenship records, political donations or Securities and Exchange Commission filings, it directed users to the government websites that provide that data for individuals.

However, in the presentation announcing the new site, Rubio showed that, in the future, the website may be able to help Americans apply for passports directly through the site and even take and upload their passport photos.

The website was created in coordination with the National Design Studio, which is part of the Executive Office of the President and was established by Trump in August 2025.

The White House has spent days fiercely defending three taxpayer-funded advertisements that glorify President Trump — approaching at least $1.5 million in public spending — calling them public service announcements.

“Don’t let the Fake News get away with their lies about our epic Public Service Announcements that have been running on tv,” White House communications director Steven Cheung posted on X on Sunday.

But the Republican administration’s ads attracted mounting criticism on Monday, including from members of Trump’s own party.

“It shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters.

“It would not have been something that I would have done. And I know that the White House is not covered by the same guidance that we are, but it’s not something that I would have done,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, another South Dakota Republican.

Multiple legal experts consulted by the Associated Press said the ads appear to run afoul of federal statutes, including a law against congressionally appropriated funds being used for “publicity or propaganda” and a law that limits the partisan political activities of government employees.

They said the new ads, which are airing on network and cable TV and streaming, differ from other administrations’ PSAs because they aren’t designed to help Americans access any specific program.

“You watch all three ads, they’re sheer propaganda,” said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics czar under Republican President George W. Bush. “This is increasingly looking like what authoritarian governments do to promote their leaders.”

The heightened scrutiny comes as the Trump administration has increased spending on the ads and bought time on popular TV shows, including college football and National Football League programming. It remains unclear which part of the government is supplying the funds.

With both chambers of Congress led by Republicans, any oversight would likely have to come from Trump’s allies, decreasing the likelihood of hearings or other accountability efforts before November’s midterm elections.

Three ads have aired in less than a week, totaling well over $1M

The first ad in the campaign, which began airing last Wednesday, features clips of Trump talking about defeating communism interspersed with onscreen text promoting the “largest tax cuts in history,” “reigniting American manufacturing” and a call to “defend law and order and police.”

Later in the week, a second ad began running, showing scenic videos of Mount Rushmore at night with quotes and clips from Trump’s Fourth of July weekend speech there honoring the country’s 250th anniversary.

The latest of the ads, a spot first aired over the weekend, is virtually identical to an ad for Trump’s Republican reelection campaign in 2024. It shows him walking down a hallway as his voice can be heard warning of a “final battle” against “globalists” and “warmongers.”

All three ads end with a message that says: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” The White House hasn’t responded to inquiries about which part of the government is paying.

According to AdImpact, which tracks media spending, the spots have so far cost more than $1.4 million and run across a wide range of TV networks around the country. The actual amount spent could be significantly more, depending on whether networks classified the ad as a political ad.

The ads are different from past PSAs, experts say

In defending the campaign, the White House published a list of PSAs from recent Democratic and Republican administrations.

Among the examples it cited were Bush’s Republican administration touting a Medicare law, Barack Obama’s Democratic administration promoting Affordable Care Act subsidies and Joe Biden’s Democratic administration running ads promoting COVID-19 vaccinations.

“The announcements are very clearly not campaign ads; President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action,” the White House wrote. “Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending — at home, at the border, and abroad.”

Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said in her view the new ads differ from the examples the White House provided because they aren’t aimed at helping members of the public benefit from specific government programs.

“These ads are nothing more than government propaganda, aimed at helping Trump,” she said.

Painter, who joined the Bush administration after the Medicare PSAs went out, said that ad campaign toed the line on appropriateness because it included misleading information about Medicare Part D. But he said Trump’s campaign is a far more egregious violation of the statute that blocks congressionally appropriated money from being spent on publicity or propaganda.

“There’s nothing in here about a particular policy that’s at all focused,” Painter said of Trump’s ads. “One of them is just about the evils of the deep state. Another one of them is about communists and Marxists.”

In its support for the ads, the White House also referenced the administrations of President Woodrow Wilson and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, both of whom used posters, radio and film to rally the country during World Wars I and II.

James Kimble, a communication professor at Seton Hall University who studies domestic propaganda, said it’s true that Wilson’s Democratic administration used propaganda to rally Americans. But he said most Americans no longer view its actions in a positive light.

“By almost any objective measure, looking back, we find what they did pretty repulsive,” he said.

Skepticism of the campaign grows on the Hill

Top Democrats on the Senate and House appropriations committees last week wrote to the White House demanding the ads be taken down and requesting more information on how much money was spent to create and air them.

In the days since, more than a dozen Democrats and a handful of Republicans have spoken up to further criticize the ads. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the latest ad “an absolute violation of what a democracy is supposed to look like.”

“Americans sat down to watch football, not to be force-fed Trump’s propaganda on their own dime,” he said in a Senate floor speech Monday.

Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that no public official should spend public money on private ads for themselves.

And Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, had his own harsh words for the administration on Monday.

“Don’t worry, using taxpayer dollars to run ominous campaign ads of the President has been done before and is completely legal… in banana republics,” he wrote in an X post.

The Republican chairs of the Senate and House appropriation committees didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Steven Sloan contributed to this report.

As renewed fighting spreads across northern Ethiopia, the government has accused Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt of backing armed opposition groups, raising fears that the conflict could draw in regional powers.

Over the weekend, Ethiopian army chief Birhanu Jula attributed his country’s unrest to those he called Ethiopia’s “historical and contemporary adversaries”.

Birhanu accused Eritrea of being the go-between linking these external powers – including Sudan and Egypt, which he explicitly named – with armed groups inside Ethiopia.

Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt have all rejected the accusations. Speaking to Al Jazeera, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nader Zaki said that Egypt’s foreign policy was founded on “full respect for the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of states, and noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries”.

Zaki added that Egypt “is fully committed to the rules of international law and the Charter of the United Nations, and rejects any practices that would undermine regional security and stability”.

Major-General Samir Farag, the former head of the Egyptian Armed Forces’ Morale Affairs Department, also told Al Jazeera that the accusations against Egypt were false. “It has not been Egypt’s policy to interfere in the internal affairs of any state in the region,” he said.

Sudan’s military also dismissed the accusations as “baseless” and levelled its own charge of destabilising behaviour at Ethiopia, accusing it of supporting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces since 2023. Ethiopia has denied those allegations.

Troubled relations

Ethiopia’s relations with the countries it has accused have already been strained by other disputes that predate the latest fighting.

Relations between Cairo and Addis Ababa have remained tense as a longstanding dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) remains unresolved. Competition between the two has increasingly extended to regional security, the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.

Sudan’s relations with Ethiopia are similarly troubled. Since the outbreak of the Sudanese civil war, Khartoum has accused Addis Ababa of providing training, supplies and the use of Ethiopian territory to the RSF.

Eritrea had fought alongside Ethiopia against rebel groups in the latter’s Tigray region during a war between 2020 and 2022, but relations between the two neighbours have since soured, with Eritrea alarmed by Ethiopia’s attempts to gain access to the Red Sea.

Against that background, some analysts and Ethiopian opposition figures say that Addis Ababa is pointing the finger at foreign conspiracies in a bid to rally support behind its national army.

Mohamed Selim, deputy chair of the Egyptian parliament’s African Affairs Committee, told Al Jazeera that he believes the accusations were an attempt to shift attention from Ethiopia’s domestic problems by creating an external enemy and seeking to unify the internal front.

Amani al-Tawil, director of the Africa Programme at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, similarly described the accusations as “an understandable attempt to escape from internal crises”.

She questioned why Egypt would choose this moment to intervene militarily in Ethiopia, given the two have been in dispute over GERD since 2011.

Al-Tawil said the breadth of the new opposition alliance in Ethiopia – seven groups representing disparate ethnic groups and regions announced the coalition last week – presented a challenge to Addis Ababa.

Spillover concerns

The renewed fighting in Ethiopia has spread across Tigray and into neighbouring Amhara and Afar.

Mohammed Hussein, the chairman of the Prosperity Party Afar Region Branch Office – the ruling party in Ethiopia’s Afar region – told Al Jazeera that the three regions together have a population of more than 38 million, according to his estimate, and include areas near the borders with Djibouti and Eritrea, raising fears of a regional war.

Ammar Arki, a writer focusing on Horn of Africa affairs, told Al Jazeera that Ethiopia had, at various stages, blamed Sudan, Egypt and Eritrea for contributing to instability inside Ethiopia.

He said the latest accusations could be interpreted as an attempt to redirect some domestic attention towards an external threat and build support around the federal government.

But Arki warned that the longer Addis Ababa continued to explain its internal crisis in terms of an “external conspiracy”, particularly if neighbouring states responded in the same way, the greater the risk that Ethiopia’s conflict could move beyond Ethiopia’s borders and become regional.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a raft of bills designed to push back on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement in California, including bans on electric shock gloves and a revamped ban on law enforcement face coverings after a previous law was blocked by a federal judge.

The more than 20 bills approved by the governor Tuesday were crafted to thwart tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including the use of facial coverings and making arrests outside immigration hearings. Other bills are meant to boost state oversight of federal detention centers in the state.

“Trump has put his political interests above the health, safety and livelihood of American families. California is taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state,” Newsom said in a statement. “This is about stepping up where the federal government has failed our communities. We will continue protecting our people, upholding the rule of law, and making clear that if the federal government operates in California, we will hold them accountable.”

The governor signed legislation to ban the use of electric shock gloves by any law enforcement in the state, which was hastily written and passed after reports that the Department of Homeland Security planned to spend $20 million to outfit agents with the gloves.

One bill, dubbed the “No Kings Act,” makes it easier for residents to sue federal agents for alleged civil rights violations, such as racial profiling, unlawful searches or interfering with the right to free speech.

Its author, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said the law already applies to state and local officials and that his bill, SB 747, closes a loophole that exempts federal officials.

Newsom signed another bill by Wiener that bans ICE agents and other law enforcement from wearing face coverings or masks while on duty. After a federal judge blocked his prior bill, which applied to federal agents but not state police, Wiener passed legislation that applies to both.

Many of the bills Newsom signed Tuesday aim to improve state oversight at immigration detention centers within the state and slowroll the development of new facilities.

Among them is AB 1801, which requires municipalities to wait at least 180 days and hold public hearings before approving any plans to build or convert facilities into immigration detention centers.

Newsom signed a 25% tax on companies that operate immigration detention centers in the state. Most of the detention centers in California are run by the private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic, under contracts with the federal government. AB 1633 by Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) would raise an estimated $177 million, according to a fiscal analysis of the bill.

Another new law requires local agencies to disclose 911 calls made from immigration detention centers. It stems from a CalMatters investigation which found alleged sexual assaults at Otay Mesa, a detention center in San Diego, were being investigated by CoreCivic, the company that operates the facility, rather than local law enforcement.

“Our communities deserve safety, and no person in detention should have to resort to throwing notes over the walls of a detention facility to have their needs met and their voice heard,” Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), chair of the Legislative Latino Caucus and the bill’s author, said in a statement after lawmakers passed her legislation.

Activists and Democratic lawmakers have raised alarms about the rising number of in-custody deaths and poor conditions inside ICE detention facilities. The federal government has reported 57 in-custody deaths during Trump’s second term, up from the 26 deaths reported during the previous four years.

During reviews of detention centers around the state last year, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office found substandard conditions including overcrowding, delays in medical care and poor quality food and drinking water. At one center, detainees were not given clothing warm enough to protect against extremely low temperatures in the facility, Justice Department staff reported.

Newsom signed legislation indefinitely extending the attorney general’s duty to review private detention centers, which had been set to expire next year.

WASHINGTON — Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two federal indictments against President Trump, told lawmakers on Tuesday that he “will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution” from the Trump administration and that he believes the rule of law is being threatened like never before.

Smith also told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he stands behind the criminal cases he brought against Trump, a Republican, and that he and his team acted without regard to politics.

“I made those decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election,” Smith said. “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation. If asked whether to prosecute a former president today based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.”

Republicans sought to cast the prosecution as a political fishing expedition, accusing Smith of bending ordinary procedures in an overzealous pursuit of the president.

“The Smith election case ultimately wasn’t just about Trump,” said Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the committee. “It was about partisan agents and prosecutors mapping out the Republican apparatus.”

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, accused Republicans of spreading “baseless conspiracy theories” about Smith’s investigations as part of an effort to “whitewash” the history of Trump’s 2020 election loss and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of Trump’s supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

“President Trump demonstrated a wanton disdain for the laws of the United States, the will of the people and our national security,” Durbin said. “The aspersions cast on Mr. Smith, nonstop, are petty, personal and political. They are nothing but a smoke screen to distract from the president’s own clear, unlawful conduct.”

The hearing is expected to focus on subpoenas for phone records

Even as Smith defends his investigations, he is expected to be pressed anew by Republican senators about his team’s access to the phone records of GOP lawmakers as prosecutors investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

In previous testimony, Smith has stood behind subpoenas that prosecutors issued for the phone records of Republican members of Congress who were in touch with Trump when violent supporters of the president rioted inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He has said that such subpoenas are a “common practice” in investigations and were necessary in this instance to understand the “scope of the conspiracy” between Trump and his Republican allies.

Nonetheless, the revelation that Smith’s team secretly obtained the phone records during his investigation has animated some Republican lawmakers, who point to it as proof of overreach by the Biden administration Justice Department and a hard-charging prosecutor.

In July, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, referred Smith to the Justice Department for potential prosecution on allegations that he lied at a previous hearing about his collection of the records — something Smith’s attorneys have vigorously disputed.

“I stand by my testimony before the House of Representatives,” Smith said. “I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.”

Grassley, the Senate committee chairman, first disclosed last year that Smith’s prosecutors had obtained what’s known as “toll records” — data that reveals the date, length and time of phone calls between two parties but not the content of the communications.

Smith has repeatedly justified the move as necessary to document any contact that Trump or surrogates may have had with lawmakers on Jan. 6, 2021, as the president beseeched his supporters to halt the certification of the election results.

“My office didn’t spy on anyone,” Smith said during a hearing in January.

Smith is the subject of a criminal referral from Republicans

Smith was appointed in 2022 by then-Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland to take over investigations into Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss and Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Both investigations resulted in felony indictments, but Smith abandoned the cases after Trump won back the White House in 2024, citing longstanding Justice Department opinions that say sitting presidents cannot be federally indicted.

Smith has remained a top target of retribution for Trump and his administration, which last year announced that it would revoke the security clearances of the lawyers representing the former special counsel. The Office of Special Counsel, an independent watchdog agency responsible for enforcing a law against partisan political activity by federal employees, also announced last year an investigation into Smith.

Jordan’s referral to the Justice Department centers on a December 2025 exchange in which Smith was asked about subpoenas that prosecutors had issued for the toll records.

Smith said the records he requested did not include the content of the communications. But Jordan maintains that answer was misleading in light of records released by Grassley showing that Smith had obtained the contents of 44 lawmakers’ text messages in a separate subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration that sought the communications of various Trump advisers and aides.

In response, Smith’s lawyers called his answers “unimpeachably truthful” and noted that he was responding to questions explicitly about toll records, which did not include the contents of any text messages.

Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press.

Indirect talks between the United States and Iran aimed at ending the seven-month-long war continue – most recently via Qatar as mediator on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York – but the two sides still disagree about the agenda.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left New York on Tuesday after telling state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) that he expects an official response to Tehran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by the end of the day. The proposal, which Iran said would see the strait reopened within seven days, was first passed to the US via Qatari mediators last week.

United States President Donald Trump was reported to have rejected that offer, under which Tehran would reopen the strait in return for Washington lifting its naval blockade, waiving sanctions, releasing an estimated $12bn in frozen Iranian assets and enforcing a wider regional ceasefire that includes Lebanon.

Under Iran’s proposal, wider peace talks, including discussions of its nuclear programme, would begin only then

Despite Trump’s public rejection, Araghchi says he has not yet received a formal response from Washington. Meanwhile, US media reports that Trump may well be willing to relax sanctions and unfreeze Iranian assets have been strongly denied by the US president.

Instead, US officials say, the US wants a deal that resolves all outstanding issues, particularly Tehran’s nuclear programme, in one go, rather than pursuing a gradual, step-by-step approach.

Here’s what we know about the talks:

Qatari mediators met Araghchi in New York on Monday to discuss how to advance Tehran’s proposal for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and then progressing to wider peace talks.

In a post on Telegram, Araghchi insisted that the talks focused solely on the Strait of Hormuz. He denied that the US had formally rejected the Iranian proposal.

“Despite what the US president said, I said that we were waiting for the official US response through the mediators … They [Qatar] had ideas, and we discussed them. They are going to raise this issue with the American side again, and then the final response from the American side will be conveyed to us through the Qatari mediator,” Araghchi said late on Monday.

Araghchi also said negotiations had become more “serious”, but cautioned that Tehran’s position has not changed.

“I state firmly that there has been no change in Iran’s position. Our conditions for opening the strait are clear. Our position on other issues is also clear. At present, there has been no discussion at all about flexibility,” he added.

Tehran’s proposal includes elements of the Islamabad memorandum of understanding (MoU), which was signed by both the US and Iran on June 17.

Is Trump willing to accept some Iranian demands?

A US official told The Associated Press news agency last week that Trump is not willing to make a final peace deal with Iran until the issue of its nuclear programme is addressed. According to the official, who has not been named, the US president would be willing, however, to grant Iran sanctions relief and release some frozen funds if progress is made on the nuclear file.

Then, on Monday, US-based news outlet Axios also reported that Trump had offered Iran sanctions relief in return for concessions on its nuclear programme. The report also cited US officials, one of whom told Axios that the indirect talks had been “positive and constructive”, adding that Tehran had indicated it was “flexible” on nuclear issues.

Trump, however, angrily denounced the story as a “hoax” in a post on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns. He said the story was “not true” and demanded Axios remove the article.

Iran has been heavily sanctioned for decades. The restrictions have severely affected Iranians’ quality of life, including their access to essential medicines and healthcare.

In August, the US announced yet more sweeping economic sanctions on Iran and countries that trade with it as it sought to apply more economic pressure to isolate the country from the global economy during the diplomatic deadlock in their war.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the campaign as the “economic asphyxiation” of Iran.

It is difficult to quantify exactly how many Iranians have been killed by what Tehran views as “economic warfare”. However, a study published last year by the highly regarded medical journal The Lancet Global Health concluded that more than 564,250 people worldwide die annually as a result of US sanctions.

What does the US want?

In late February, just before the US launched its first strikes on Iran, the two sides were already holding talks hosted by Oman, which included the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme.

But before those talks could conclude, the US and Israel launched strikes, triggering the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas is shipped in peacetime, by Iran. The closure of the strait has since become the primary point of contention between the two sides, when it had not been an issue before the war began. The strait is currently subject to blockades by both sides.

Throughout the war, Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to strike a deal with Tehran. However, serious differences between the two sides will need to be resolved first, including the order in which issues are addressed for the purpose of peace talks.

Iran wants to establish its control of the Strait of Hormuz, have sanctions lifted and assets unfrozen, as well as ensure an end to US-Israeli strikes before it will go back to negotiating other issues, such as its nuclear programme. This was the order of events laid out in the MoU agreed between Iran and the US in June, but which quickly fell apart.

The US, however, wants everything to be on the table at the same time – it does not want to agree to anything relating to these Iranian demands before it addresses the other issues.

Scott Lucas, professor of US politics and international relations at University College Dublin, told Al Jazeera that Washington effectively wants Iran to surrender.

“The Strait of Hormuz has become a fundamental issue. The question here is, will both sides give? The memorandum of understanding clearly gave Iran a role in the management of the strait,” Lucas said.

“When the Trump administration pulled away from negotiating on the basis of the memorandum, they effectively went back to the idea of Iran having to completely allow passage through the Strait of Hormuz with no guarantees over it, in terms of not only what it means for Iran financially, but [also] in terms of Iranian security. The Iranian government is not going to agree to that, so we’re stuck in this limbo right now,” he added.

“Are the Trump folks going to come back to the talks on the basis of the memorandum of understanding or something that is a revised version of it, or are they going to try and break the government with economic warfare until at least after the US elections in November? That’s where we are right now.”

What does Iran want?

After half a century of bitter enmity with Washington, Iran wants to consolidate what it sees as the strategic gains it has made during a war it did not start. This specifically includes its newly established ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, sending global energy markets into a tailspin and placing additional pressure on the Trump administration.

Since US-Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28, Hormuz has dominated talks aimed at ending the war and emerged as Tehran’s greatest point of leverage. Prior to the conflict, Iran did not exert control over the waterway and all commercial shipping passed through freely.

For this reason, Iran will not move on to wider peace talks until it has leveraged its control of the strait to get its demands met. “Our discussion is clear. Right now, it is only about the Strait of Hormuz,” Araghchi said late on Monday.

“The opening of the Strait of Hormuz is also subject to the fulfilment of a series of conditions that we announced to the other side.”

Ali Salehian, director of the Center for Intellectual Diplomacy at the Governance and Policy Think Tank in Iran, told Al Jazeera that Tehran does not believe Washington will honour any future deal as it did not honour what was agreed under the Pakistan-brokered June MoU.

“For Iran, the bottom line of every negotiation with Trump, considering all of his misbehaving and [military] targeting of Iran during negotiations, is the Islamabad MoU,” Salehian said.

“Tehran thinks that if the US doesn’t fulfil its commitments based on the MoU, there is no guarantee that any kind of future deal would be sustainable.”

What is likely to happen next?

It does not look likely that the diplomatic standoff will be eased anytime soon, analysts say.

Both the US and Iran have indicated throughout the war that they would prefer a diplomatic settlement to a continuation of the war. However, Trump has continued to threaten Iran with more strikes if it does not agree to a deal, and Araghchi told US news outlet NBC on Sunday that Tehran is also prepared to resume fighting, even though it has not abandoned diplomacy.

“We are fully prepared for the time for the war to be resumed, and I repeat, we stand firm in the face of any new aggression, even if it comes to a doomsday war,” he said.

Trump said last week that he expects a deal will be reached, but not until after the US midterms on November 3.

“For the moment, the Trump administration is going to try to make the Iranian government capitulate through economic warfare,” Lucas said.

However, a deep sense of distrust remains between the two sides. Senior Iranian officials believe Trump will restart the war after the midterms on a far greater scale and that Israel would also participate.

If that theory proves true, Tehran may well prefer the fighting to resume before November’s elections, as it would allow Iran to impose a greater cost on Trump.

“The reaction of the Iranians to that might be to actually trigger the war themselves, early, right before the midterm elections in order to maximise the pain that [it] will impose on the US president,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the US-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Al Jazeera earlier this month.

Vente Venezuela members embraced Claudia Macero on Sunday night. Photo by Vente Joven.

Since the aftermath of the June earthquakes, the media had spread stories about Maria Corina Machado trying to come back to Venezuela and local officials in the US and neighboring countries frustrating her plans. The most recent case exploded in simultaneity with the triumphal trip of Delcy Rodriguez to the United Nations, that included a meeting and a picture with Donald Trump. Now we know, from journalists like Idania Chirinos and David Alandete, that Machado has tried seven times in total to come back. Vente Venezuela is using the public reaction to those news to organize rallies in many cities and made a big party of the return of Claudia Macero, Machado’s communications chief, who was one of Vente’s refugees in the Argentinean Embassy. They are clearly turning the apparent join effort of Delcy and Trump to keep Machado out into an Odyssey when Machado is the hero looking for the friends to complete the voyage while the Neptune of Mar-a-Lago and the Suitors of Miraflores block the beaches of Ithaca.

Once Machado finally overcomes those obstacles, as she would eventually do, she would have to leave her story behind and focus on the stories of the population. She needs to face the alliance dilemma, use her popularity and manage the expectations trap.

Machado needs to build alliances. Her Vente Venezuela party is disciplined and attractive to many activists and voters, but they can’t do this alone. The problem is that Machado is reluctant to forge alliances with other politicians, and her followers don’t want to see her with them.

Her dilemma here is that she needs to widen her influence by building a broader platform without alienating her followers.

She has a known history of trouble dealing with politicians from other parties. Machado is a product of what Venezuelans got used to call “civil society” in the 1990s: neighbors and parents associations, business chambers, groups organized mostly in the middle class to protect and improve conditions for specific realms like suburbs, private schools and businesses, and to organize and fund charity NGOs or networks like Dividendo Voluntario para la Comunidad. All of them tended to have a common drive for initiative, besides ethics: we need to do what politicians aren’t doing. Súmate, the platform for electoral rights where Machado emerged before the recall referendum against Chávez, was a civil society organization and was key to collecting the millions of signatures that opposition parties were not collecting, not only because of Súmate’s organizational skills but because people trusted them more than the parties. Machado later became a lawmaker but as an independent, and created her own party instead of joining another.  

Her dilemma here is that she needs to widen her influence by building a pressure platform with other parties, including the people currently sitting at the small opposition fraction in the National Assembly and the dialogue experiment behind Dinorah Figuera, but at the same time she needs to do so without alienating her followers, who can turn hope into frustration if they start to see her as another regular politician who will betray them. 

The voice of the people   

Machado has something anyone else in Venezuela has: real, solid popularity. Besides Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia —whose prestige among voters is pretty much an extension of Machado’s—, María Corina holds a 50% approval rate that has endured the three years passed since the opposition primaries she famously won with more than 90% of the vote, the two years after the fraudulent 2024  vote and the ten months with Delcy.  

Machado’s political career rocketed in 2023 and 2024 when she connected with the collective trauma of families broken by mass migration and embodied the nation’s grief, especially in countryside villages ravaged by economic collapse and population loss.

The people’s expectation is that a new election will turn María Corina into president and remove chavismo from power, creating the space for the country’s reconstruction.

In 2026, she has the opportunity to achieve that political miracle again, with the domestic following she already has and the global fame the Nobel Prize gave her, to make everyone hear the voice of the nation that is being ignored by the interim chavista regime and the Trump administration. The voice of those people who saw Maduro and Cilia removed but the rest of the dictatorship staying, who waited in vain for the authorities to help save lives and recover bodies after the earthquakes, and who see American officials and CEOs signing deals without any improvement in the ordinary citizen’s daily struggle to survive.  

Machado is echoing the people’s call for an election. The citizens seem to have taken as a fait accompli that the 2024 elections were stolen, but they took that event as proof that, if elections are repeated, Maria Corina will win. So elections now! is spreading as the common claim that encapsulates the urgency to have a legitimate government elected by the people instead of Delcy’s. The expectation is that a new election will turn María Corina into president and remove chavismo from power, creating the space for the country’s reconstruction. Because while chavismo is still there, there is no hope that things will improve. On that, people are quite convinced.

The challenge of patience management

Machado needs to keep hopes alive, no doubt. Many people are looking at her as the only source of hope available. However, she also needs to sustain that hope with achievements. It won’t suffice to keep telling people that freedom is inevitable and unstoppable. People know it isn’t.

She needs, with Vente and their allies, to build up expectations toward a horizon of possibilities; this is why Machado will focus on pressuring for an election date, which they are suggesting should be July 24, 2027, Simón Bolívar’s birthday.

Machado knows, on the other hand, that she can’t afford to make the same mistake that Juan Guaidó and many other opposition leaders of the past made: promising that paradise is around the corner. Actually, she has been walking that tightrope for a while. Finding the equilibrium between giving hope and adjusting the people’s expectations into a moderate frame will be very hard, especially in an unprecedented context when it is impossible to predict how the next year will be.

An enormous pressure on a person who holds no office and is not even a candidate yet.

As US President Donald Trump announced a $15bn steel megaplant while seated at his Oval Office desk on Monday, he had a lineup of mostly US politicians standing behind him – from cabinet members to elected representatives from Iowa, where the mill is to be built. There was one exception: an Indian man with a receding hairline and a lilac pocket handkerchief, standing behind the US president’s right shoulder.

Ravi Ruia is a cofounder of the Essar Group, which owns Mesabi Metallics, the Minnesota-based firm that’s building the steel mill, which is expected to be the United States’s largest once it is complete. A decade earlier, in October 2016, his brother Shashi was in the photo frame with a different president during the signing of another major deal: Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Steel and metallics aren’t Essar’s only association with minerals and natural resources. The conglomerate had been involved for years with oil, before it sold one of India’s largest private oil refineries to a Russian-led consortium in 2016 for nearly $13bn. Essar Oil was rebranded as Nayara Energy.

Today, Nayara Energy is half-owned by Russian gas major Rosneft, which is under heavy US and European sanctions over Moscow’s war on Ukraine. Nayara has also emerged as a supplier of petroleum products to Russia at a time when the country is facing a fuel crisis following multiple Ukrainian attacks on its oil and gas depots.

And as part of a 99-year deal, Nayara is continuing to use Essar’s branding in India, where the company runs thousands of petrol stations. Nayara is under European Union sanctions.

The White House is touting the Iowa steel project, unveiled just before the US midterm elections, as a major economic win for Americans, promising hundreds of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue. And there is no evidence that the steel project is in violation of any Russia-specific US sanctions.

But Trump’s announcement of a mega project with an Indian firm closely tied to Russian investments under Western sanctions underscores how the US has struggled to isolate Moscow economically despite an unprecedented economic pressure campaign.

And the timing of the steel mill announcement raises questions, because it comes days after Trump signed a law that empowers him to punish countries that buy Russian oil with up to 100 percent tariffs. India is Russia’s second-largest oil buyer. But the legacy Indian conglomerate that best epitomises the country’s links to Russian energy is now also behind the US’s biggest steel factory.

What’s the steel factory project about?

The new project would integrate its iron ore mining operations in Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range with the upcoming steel complex in Iowa.

The White House and the company’s announcements said that the Iowa steel plant is expected to create at least 1,750 permanent jobs – “while continuing to work with suppliers and businesses throughout Iowa and the Midwest” – and support up to 6,000 construction jobs.

Washington also noted that the mill will produce 7.5 million tonnes of steel per year in its first phase, expected to rise to 10 million tonnes. First steel production is expected in 2030.

The first phase of the project is expected to generate $95bn in total economic impact during construction and its first 10 years of operation, according to the White House.

Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, told the reporters that “these are your 232 tariffs, the steel tariffs at work.” He added: “Without those tariffs, this mine and steel plant doesn’t get built.”

Trump chipped in, too. “Soon after my inauguration, I imposed powerful 50 percent tariffs on all foreign steel, and now our steel industry is roaring back to life,” Trump said. “Everyone’s building their plant here because they don’t want to pay tariffs.”

But the steel project is also evidence of how countries and companies have skirted US economic pressure – and how it gives them leverage to continue to do so.

What are Essar’s ties to Russia?

Essar Oil, the group’s energy arm, began refining crude in 2008 at its refinery in Vadinar on the coast of the western Indian state of Gujarat.

But by 2016, the company was in deep debt, listed as a defaulter by the Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank, and desperately looking for a buyer who would take over its oil operations. The timing was opportune. President Putin in Russia was at the time trying to get Rosneft, his country’s energy giant, to offload some stakes in exchange for foreign capital.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi played matchmaker, helping stitch together a series of deals between 2014 and 2016 that helped Rosneft and Essar. First, Indian public sector oil majors bought stakes in Rosneft, giving it the cash it needed. Rosneft, in turn, joined hands with other investors to buy the Vadinar refinery, freeing Essar from its debts.

Essar Oil became Nayara Energy – a company in which Rosneft owns a 49 percent stake, and United Capital Partners, a Russian asset management company, owns another 49 percent. The buyers paid Essar $12.9bn for the deal. As part of the agreement, Nayara got to use Essar’s branding – including on thousands of petrol stations across India – for 99 years.

Is Nayara under Western sanctions?

Yes. The European Union imposed sanctions on Nayara in July last year as part of the broader 18th package of sanctions against Russian oil.

The sanctions banned the import of petroleum products processed using Russian crude oil and restricted the refinery’s access to EU shipping insurance, as well as financial and other services.

Nayara’s Vadinar refinery in western India has been processing only Russian oil since other suppliers backed out following the sanctions. Since then, Nayara has relied on international traders to import crude and export refined fuels.

In July this year, Nayara Energy sold petroleum to Russia as Ukrainian attacks targeted oil refineries across the country, triggering a fuel crisis.

In recent months, Ukrainian forces have targeted Russian oil facilities, setting them ablaze and causing long lines for fuel across the country, including in the capital, Moscow. The fuel crisis, unprecedented for Russia, a country that is one of the world’s biggest energy producers, has led to rationing in many regions.

These Russian links have brought Nayara Energy under wider scrutiny, prompting companies, including SAP, to suspend services to the refiner, citing sanctions and obligations under EU law.

Nayara challenged the move in the Delhi High Court, which ordered SAP India to restore its services earlier this month.

Are Essar or the steel plant violating any sanctions?

While Nayara is under EU sanctions, Essar does not face any US or EU sanctions.

In October 2016, after Essar struck its deal with Rosneft and United Capital Partners to sell the Vadinar refinery, the US – at the time under the Barack Obama administration – said that the agreement was not in violation of any sanctions.

“I don’t think we see any violation of any US-EU sanctions stemming from this deal,” State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said at the time. Essar also said that the deal was compliant with US sanctions.

There is no evidence of any sanctions breach in Essar’s investment in Mesabi, or in the planned investment to set up the steel factory in Iowa.

But Essar’s relations with Russia have nevertheless attracted scrutiny, including in the United Kingdom, where the Ruia brothers have long had major investments.

At the time of the sale of the Vadinar refinery to Russian buyers, the Russian bank VTB also gave Essar a $3.9bn loan for debt reconstruction.

The bank was hit by major US and EU sanctions in February 2022, right after Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine. Essar, reporting published in April 2026 by The Guardian and investigative journalism platform SourceMaterial, showed, moved the VTB loan to Mauritius, a tax haven, allegedly to avoid the sanctions. Essar owns the Stanlow oil refinery in the UK.

Why is the timing of the steel plant announcement significant?

Trump’s Republican Party is heading for crucial midterm congressional elections in November, while his approval rating has been plumbing all-time lows in the face of voter concerns about inflation, the cost of living, and the war on Iran.

In his second term, Trump has made tariffs and a revival of US manufacturing a cornerstone of his economic vision, claiming that higher barriers to imports will drive investment back to the US.

Moreover, Washington introduced legislation that would allow the president to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on imports from countries that continue economic engagement with Russia or Iran, aiming to put pressure on countries that continue buying Russian energy.

New Delhi is particularly exposed since it became one of the largest buyers of discounted Russian crude after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Trump imposed an additional 25 percent tariff on Indian imports in 2025 over the issue, before removing it in February 2026 after India committed to stop buying Russian crude.

Russia has remained India’s largest source of crude, although purchases have declined as the threat of US penalties has grown. The news agency Reuters reported that India imported approximately 2.1 million barrels per day of Russian crude in August.

There is also a recent parallel to underscore the incentives for investment in Trump’s US. In May this year, Washington moved to dismiss the criminal fraud and bribery charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, while his lawyers had told the Justice Department that Adani was prepared to invest $10bn in the United States. A federal judge subsequently dismissed the criminal case in August.

For Dylan Feierabend, there are few things more life-affirming than fishing for redtail surfperch and smelt at Centerville Beach in rural Humboldt County.

His favorite spot, where the Eel River meets the Pacific Ocean, is a few miles from the main road — too far to walk with fishing poles and an ice chest in tow. He instead gets there by driving a side-by-side, a small off-road vehicle, right onto the sand.

He might not be able to do so much longer.

If the California Coastal Commission has its way, vehicular access will soon be nixed at Centerville Beach County Park outside Ferndale — one of just a handful of beaches along the state’s 840-mile coastline where driving is allowed.

This month, the Coastal Commission approved a request from Humboldt County for a coastal development permit to rebuild a 0.17-mile segment of a storm-battered road adjacent to the fast-eroding beach — but only if the county stops people from driving on the sand.

Coastal Commission staff, in a 78-page report, said motorized vehicles threaten both sensitive vegetation and critical habitat for the federally threatened western snowy plover, a small, white-bellied shorebird.

“California’s dune habitats are particularly rare and important, so where driving could damage these sensitive areas, the Coastal Act requires that we protect them,” commission spokesman Joshua Smith said in a statement to The Times.

However, he said, the agency does not “have a one-size-fits-all policy on driving on the beach.”

But Humboldt County residents and officials decry the move as just the latest example of overregulation and government overreach in liberal California — and of the disconnect between its rural and urban places.

“What you see in Southern California isn’t what we see up here,” resident Joey Sancho told the Coastal Commission during its meeting in Eureka this month. “The beaches aren’t overly populated. They’re not being torn up by ATVs and so forth. But yet, [it’s] just one more thing just to take away from us up here in the North Coast.”

Humboldt County wants to make improvements to Centerville Road.

(Google street view)

Feierabend, a 36-year-old loan officer, told The Times: “It’s about slowly choking out the individuals that utilize the beach and gaining control under the ruse, or the guise, of conservation.”

The discord in Humboldt County comes as the Trump administration is taking aim at what it calls “environmental extremism” in California, with federal officials trying — largely over state objections — to open the treasured coastline to more offshore oil drilling, expanded rocket launches and floating nuclear reactors.

Amid this wider debate, beach driving has emerged as an unexpected flashpoint.

Last month, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton called coastal commissioners “idiots” for their years-long effort to end off-road driving at Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area, the only state park that allows recreational driving on the beach.

Cars, bikes and pedestrians share the sand at Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area near Pismo Beach in February 2021.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Oceano Dunes, near Pismo Beach in San Luis Obispo County, temporarily closed to off-roaders this spring amid long-running legal battles between recreation advocates and environmentalists who say all-terrain vehicles are tearing through western snowy plover habitat and sending clouds of unhealthy dust into nearby neighborhoods.

“Surprise, the Coastal Commission are trying to shut it down because they’re joyless bureaucrats who don’t want anyone to have fun,” Hilton said in a social media video as he leaned on a bright yellow dune buggy on the sand. “And it’s not just about fun. This is a real economic engine for this community.”

If elected, he said, he would create a state “Office of Fun and Freedom.” Its first task? Protecting off-roading at Oceano Dunes.

The campaign for Xavier Becerra, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, did not return requests for comment.

In Humboldt County, residents have stressed that rural Centerville Beach is nothing like Oceano Dunes, where thousands of pickup trucks, ATVs and dirt bikes may carve through the sand on a given day.

Centerville Beach’s nearest town, Ferndale, the childhood home of celebrity chef Guy Fieri, has a population of just 1,500. Residents say the beach typically sees a handful of four-wheelers and side-by-sides — with most heading out to fish, not joy-riding.

“Centerville is not a beach anyone can just drive on — you’ve got to know what you’re doing,” said Shawn Griggs, a painter who surfs there most mornings. “It’s a very volatile beach with coarse sand. It’s steep right off the shore; the sand bars are transient.”

A view of Centerville Beach, near where Humboldt County is looking to repair a stretch of Centerville Road.

(Beau Sanders / For The Times)

Griggs, 57, described himself as “an environmentalist at heart” who appreciates efforts to protect threatened species. But he doubts vehicles are doing much harm at Centerville.

“With the amount of sand that is pushed off that beach every year and moved around, it’s hard for me to imagine that beach would be a super stable beach for the snowy plover,” he said.

The Coastal Commission staff report says the area is “moderately suitable for plovers,” but that “heavy human use” has degraded the habitat.

In Humboldt County, driving is allowed on a handful of county-maintained beaches, as well as portions of the Samoa Dunes Recreation Area, which is managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

Feierabend, who grew up next to Centerville Beach, said vehicles are not destroying the beach — the ocean is.

“No one’s going too fast,” he told the Coastal Commission. “No one’s driving through dunes. In fact, there are no dunes.”

Centerville Beach, home to some of the state’s fastest-eroding cliffs, has been shrinking for decades. The rising and warming sea has accelerated that process in recent years, and powerful El Niño-charged storms this fall and winter could wreak further havoc on the coastline.

A beach parking lot that once accommodated up to 100 vehicles has already washed away. And Centerville Road — a narrow county thoroughfare that provides access to the beach, a few rural homes and the federally managed Lost Coast Headlands — is so regularly slammed by powerful storm waves that it is often covered with sand and made impassable.

The road is what initially brought Centerville Beach to the Coastal Commission’s attention.

The Humboldt County Department of Public Works applied for a required coastal development permit to repair a short stretch of storm-damaged roadway, a project for which it had already secured federal and state funding.

The county has proposed elevating the road 10 feet and adding a new parking area. It also is looking to build a revetment — a sloping layer of rocks on the sand meant to protect the road from waves, at least for a few decades.

Humboldt County initially pushed to move the roadway farther inland, but faced resistance from private landowners.

According to the Coastal Commission staff report, beach erosion puts Centerville Road at “severe risk of being destroyed” within the next five years.

Given the urgency of the needed repairs, the decision to tie the development permit to beach driving felt like “a backroom deal stuck into the project,” Humboldt County Planning Commissioner Iver Skavdal said at the Coastal Commission meeting.

The commission is “holding the project, the residents and the county hostage,” said Skavdal, noting that seven generations of his family had enjoyed the beach.

Though the commission approved the permit on the condition beach driving will be stopped, it added an amendment after locals pushed back — giving Humboldt County an opportunity to write a plan to allow restricted driving, provided it would not harm sensitive habitats. That plan would have to come back to the commission for approval.

The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors still must decide whether to accept the stipulations of the coastal development permit before any construction begins.

The potential loss of driving on Centerville Beach — a unique attraction in California’s sparsely populated, economically depressed northwest corner — struck a chord with residents, about two dozen of whom sat through several hours of a Coastal Commission meeting on a Wednesday morning to speak about it.

“Families here don’t have a lot to do,” Sue Long, former mayor of the nearby city of Fortuna, told the commission. “There’s not a lot of the kind of entertainment you guys have, with waterslides and Disneyland and all of those things. … We count on nature.”

Mike Astry, who runs a small off-road recovery business pulling out vehicles stuck in sand or mud throughout the region, told the commission most people towed off Centerville Beach are out-of-town tourists who traveled just to drive on the beach.

Stopping vehicular access is “a big deal to a lot of people,” Astry, 49, said in an interview. “People driving from out of town that want to come drive on that beach are not going to come to our town and spend money on hotels and food.”

Astry, who also is an automotive maintenance supervisor for Humboldt County, started the towing business with his souped-up Jeep during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people flocked to outdoor spaces during lockdowns. Now, he typically gets one or two calls a week.

At Centerville Beach, he said, “I’ve had some pretty gnarly tows,” including some “little old ladies who thought, ‘Oh, I thought my Prius could go here,’ and it can’t.”

A few years ago, he yanked a Tesla out of the ocean. Powerful waves ripped off its bumper. The driver was from the Bay Area.

“People are just sick of California, their mandates, and this is just one more thing to add to it,” he said of the coastal commission decision. “It’s just a power trip. We pay our frickin taxes.”

Jennifer Savage — California policy associate director for the Surfrider Foundation, a coastal protection nonprofit — was one of the few speakers at the Coastal Commission meeting who focused on a different aspect of the county’s Centerville Beach proposal: the rock revetment next to the old, crumbling road.

Revetments and sea walls, which generally are not allowed for developments built after the Coastal Act took effect in 1977, “make a beach erode significantly faster,” she told The Times.

Erosion has been a known problem for a long time, she said, and “the failure to prepare doesn’t justify sacrificing the public beach.”