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Eight months into his second term, President Trump’s long-standing pledge to take on those he perceives as his political enemies has prompted debates over free speech, media censorship and political prosecutions.

Trump has escalated moves to consolidate power in his second administration and target those who have spoken out against him, including the suspension of late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show, Pentagon restrictions on reporters and an apparent public appeal to Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to pursue legal cases against his adversaries.

In a post on social media over the weekend addressed to Bondi, Trump said that “nothing is being done” on investigations into some of his foes.

“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” he said. Referencing his impeachment and criminal indictments, he said, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

Criticizing investigations into Trump’s dealings under Democratic President Biden’s Justice Department, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Sunday that “it is not right for the Trump administration to do the same thing.”

Directive to Bondi

Trump has ratcheted up his discussion of pursuing legal cases against some of his political opponents, part of a vow for retribution that has been a theme of his return to the White House. He publicly pressed Bondi over the weekend to move forward with such investigations.

Trump posted somewhat of an open letter on social media Saturday to his top prosecutor to advance such inquiries, including a mortgage fraud investigation of New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James and a possible case against former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump accuses of threatening him.

The president posted that he had “reviewed over 30 statements and posts” that he characterized as criticizing his administration for a lack of action on investigations.

“We have to act fast — one way or the other,” Trump told reporters later that night at the White House. “They’re guilty, they’re not guilty — we have to act fast. If they’re not guilty, that’s fine. If they are guilty or if they should be charged, they should be charged. And we have to do it now.”

Trump later wrote in a follow-up post that Bondi was “doing a GREAT job.”

Paul, a frequent Trump foil from the right, was asked during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about the propriety of a president directing his attorney general to investigate political opponents. The senator decried “lawfare in all forms.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said it was “unconstitutional and deeply immoral for the president to jail or to silence his political enemies.” He warned that it could set a worrisome precedent for both parties.

“It will come back and boomerang on conservatives and Republicans at some point if this becomes the norm,” Murphy said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump is turning the Justice Department “into an instrument that goes after his enemies, whether they’re guilty or not, and most of them are not guilty at all, and that helps his friends. This is the path to a dictatorship. That’s what dictatorships do.”

The Justice Department did not respond Sunday to a message seeking comment.

Letitia James investigation

Each new president nominates his own U.S. attorneys in jurisdictions across the country. Trump has already worked to install people close to him in some of those jobs, including former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in the District of Columbia and Alina Habba, his former attorney, in New Jersey.

Trump has largely stocked his second administration with loyalists, continuing Saturday with the nomination of a White House aide as top federal prosecutor for the office investigating James, a longtime foe of Trump.

The president announced Lindsey Halligan to be the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia on Saturday, just a day after Erik Siebert resigned from the post and Trump said he wanted him “out.”

Trump said he was bothered that Siebert had been supported by the state’s two Democratic senators.

“There are just two standards of justice now in this country. If you are a friend of the president, a loyalist of the president, you can get away with nearly anything, including beating the hell out of police officers,” Murphy said, mentioning those convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and insurrection at the U.S. Capitol pardoned by Trump as he returned to office. “But if you are an opponent of the president, you may find yourself in jail.”

New restrictions on Pentagon reporters

Trump has styled himself as an opponent of censorship, pledging in his January inaugural address to “bring free speech back to America” and signing an executive order that no federal officer, employee or agent may unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.

Under a 17-page memo distributed Friday, the Pentagon stepped up restrictions on the media, saying it will require credentialed journalists to sign a pledge to refrain from reporting information that has not been authorized for release, including unclassified information. Journalists who don’t abide by the policy risk losing credentials that provide access to the Pentagon.

Asked Sunday whether the Pentagon should play a role in determining what journalists can report, Trump said, “No, I don’t think so.”

“Nothing stops reporters. You know that,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for slain activist Charlie Kirk’s memorial service.

Trump has sued numerous media organizations over negative coverage, with several settling with the president for millions of dollars. A federal judge in Florida tossed out Trump’s $15-billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times on Friday.

Jimmy Kimmel ouster and FCC warning

Perhaps the most headline-grabbing situation involves ABC’s indefinite suspension Wednesday of veteran comic Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show. What Kimmel said about Kirk’s killing had led a group of ABC-affiliated stations to say it would not air the show and provoked some ominous comments from a top federal regulator.

Trump celebrated on his social media site: “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”

Earlier in the day, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, who has launched investigations of outlets that have angered Trump, said Kimmel’s comments were “truly sick” and that his agency has a strong case for holding Kimmel, ABC and network parent Walt Disney Co. accountable for spreading misinformation.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) argued that Kimmel’s ouster wasn’t a chilling of free speech but a corporate decision.

“I really don’t believe ABC would have decided to fire Jimmy Kimmel over a threat,” he said Sunday on CNN. “ABC has been a long-standing critic of President Trump. They did it because they felt like it didn’t meet their brand anymore.”

Not all Republicans have applauded the move. On his podcast Friday, GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a former Trump foe turned staunch ally, called it “unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.”

Trump called Carr “a great American patriot” and said Friday that he disagreed with Cruz.

Kinnard writes for the Associated Press.

The hugely popular star of ABC’s lineup was known as an outspoken critic of the president of the United States. But when one comment sparked an outrage, the network moved swiftly to yank the entertainer off the air.

It was May 2018, and the star was Roseanne Barr.

Hollywood reacted in shock when ABC abruptly pulled the plug on “Roseanne,” the top-rated reboot of the sitcom about the Conner family and their struggles with harsh economic difficulties. Barr’s reunion with her television family was an instant hit, becoming the most successful TV series on the network in years.

The cancellation came just hours after Barr posted a response to a tweet about a WikiLeaks report claiming that the CIA spied on French presidential candidates during the Obama administration. The comedian made a reference to Valerie Jarrett, a former aide of former President Obama, as the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and the “Planet of the Apes” film franchise.

Although Barr, a vocal supporter of Donald Trump in his first presidential term, had long been a fiery presence on social media, the racism of the barb was undeniable. Executives at the Walt Disney Co.-owned broadcaster said that the post crossed a line, rejecting Barr’s apology and pleas for forgiveness.

“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” announced then-ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey. Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger later tweeted about the cancellation, “There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing.”

The incident had echoes of Wednesday’s announcement that ABC was pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely in the wake of sharp backlash over Kimmel’s comments about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The late-night host said during the monologue on his show Monday that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican.

The network’s decision to suspend the show came after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr suggested on a right-wing podcast Wednesday that the FCC could take action against ABC for Kimmel’s comments. Within hours of Carr’s comments, Nexstar Media Group said it would pull the show from its ABC affiliate stations, and Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, followed suit, saying it was pulling Kimmel from the network.

Barr on Thursday jumped into the fray over the pulling of Kimmel’s show, firing off a response to Obama’s post on X, formerly Twitter, saying that the Trump administration was taking “cancel culture” to “a new and dangerous level.”

“Remember when you and your wife called Bob Iger to have me fired?” Barr wrote in a repost of his message.

There were no reports or indications that the Obamas had any involvement with the cancellation of “Roseanne.”

Less than six months later, “The Conners,” a spinoff of “Roseanne,” premiered to high ratings. The series picked up the story of the working class family, who were grieving over the death of matriarch Roseanne Conner, who had overdosed on opioids. The comedy became a staple of ABC’s primetime, concluding its seven-season run in April.

In a 2023 Times interview promoting her stand-up special on Fox Nation, Barr called the cancellation “a witch-burning,” lashing out at the network and her former co-stars.

“I felt like the devil himself was coming against me to try to tear me apart, to punish me for believing in God,” she said. “And they denied me the right to apologize. Oh my God, they just hated me so badly. I had never known that they hated me like that. They hate me because I have talent, because I have an opinion. Even though ‘Roseanne’ became their No. 1 show, they’d rather not have a No. 1 show.”

She added, “It didn’t faze them to murder my character, either. They s— on my contribution to television and the show itself. But I forgive everybody. I started thinking that God took me out of there to save me. And once I started thinking that way, I was, like, a lot better off.”

Remember when the notion of government censorship in the U.S. seemed like the plot of an Orwellian novel, or something that happened in other places, countries where masked militia kidnap people off the street and disappear them? Our 1st Amendment rights as Americans seemed to guarantee that would never happen here. The state could not take away our free speech.

It turns out we don’t need a state-sponsored crackdown to punish those who express sentiments that offend, because the private sector has stepped in to do the job. An office supply store, a news network and an airline carrier are among companies that recently fired staff who made comments about influencer Charlie Kirk’s death that were interpreted as celebratory, insensitive or blaming the conservative activist’s polarizing viewpoints for his targeted killing.

Now Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah says that she was unfairly fired over thoughts she expressed following the assassination of Kirk last week in Utah. She wrote: “The Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being ‘unacceptable’, ‘gross misconduct’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false.”

“They rushed to fire me without even a conversation,” Attiah said. “This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.” She said that in her posts she exercised “restraint even as I condemned hatred and violence.”

Her comments were largely about gun violence and issues of race. Attiah mentioned Kirk directly in just one post, paraphrasing from a comment he made about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and former Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, both of whom are Black. “’Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot’ — Charlie Kirk,” she wrote.

Attiah didn’t celebrate the death of Kirk in her posts or make light of his slaying, but she didn’t mourn him either. In the current political environment, that alone could be enough to make her employer nervous, even compared to all the other truly awful stuff out there.

Sadly, the cruel, inhumane and politicized responses that followed Kirk’s tragic killing shouldn’t surprise anyone. Social media behaved as it always does — as a repository for every good, bad and really bad impulse experience following a tragedy or crisis.

The same quotient of 20% civility, 80% ugliness enveloped X, YouTube, TikTok and the like when three months ago Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in their home in a politically motivated attack. Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also allegedly shot by the same suspect in their home but survived.

The difference back in June? There wasn’t a mass movement to fire, cancel or silence those who minimized the tragic killings or, worse, turned them into a trolling opportunity. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah blamed the killings on the left — “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” he wrote on X — and posted a picture of suspect Vance Boelter with the caption “Nightmare on Waltz Street.” It was a crass reference to Tim Walz, Minnesota’s Democratic governor, who was Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election. Lee (who is now publicly mourning Kirk’s death) was taking his cues from the top.

President Trump’s short condemnation of Hortman’s killing on Truth Social stated that “such horrific violence will not be tolerated.” There was no lengthy eulogy, he did not attend the funeral, and when asked the day after Hortman’s killing if he had called Walz, the president said, “I could be nice and call, but why waste time?”

In response to Kirk’s killing, Trump issued an order to lower American flags to half-staff at the White House, all public buildings, U.S. embassies and military posts. He announced he would posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And during an appearance Friday on “Fox & Friends,” he promised vengeance against the left for Kirk’s killing, though the suspect — let alone his motives — were still unknown at the time.

“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,” Trump said. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’ The radicals on the left are the problem. And they’re vicious, and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy.”

The prospect of retribution from a thin-skinned leader leaves no mystery as to why major media outlets such as the Post, “60 Minutes” and MSNBC appear to be reshaping their newsrooms to be less critical of the current administration. The same now goes for break rooms, shop floors and office cubicles across all sectors of American working life. It’s not the Big Brother scenario envisioned in George Orwell’s cautionary tale about a totalitarian state, “1984,” but it’s a start.

NEW YORK — Matthew Dowd’s firing has opened a floodgate.

The MSNBC political analyst, who lost his job shortly after on-air comments about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was the first of many figures to face consequences Thursday for public statements or actions about the shooting.

Raw feelings about the killing have ignited a campaign to shame — and worse. Several conservative activists sought to identify social media users whose posts about Kirk they viewed as offensive or celebratory. Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer said she would try to ruin the professional aspirations of anyone who celebrated Kirk’s death.

MSNBC said Dowd is no longer with the network after his comments, shortly after the shooting, in which he said that “hateful words” can lead to “hateful actions.” Both MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler and Dowd apologized for the remarks, which Kutler called “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable.”

Dowd said he didn’t intend for his comments to blame Kirk for the attack, as some may have construed them. Still, it brought an abrupt interruption to his work as a television commentator, which the former aide to President George W. Bush has done for nearly two decades.

The moves to curb certain public commentary after Kirk’s death are particularly notable, as his admirers had lauded him as a champion of free speech.

Actions spread across country

A Florida reporter was suspended for a question posed to a congressman. A comic book writer lost her job because of social media posts, as did educators in Mississippi and Tennessee. “CBS Mornings” host Nate Burleson was attacked for a question he asked. An Arizona sports reporter and a Carolina Panthers public relations official lost their jobs.

An anonymously registered website pledged to “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” and asked people to offer tips about people who were “supporting political violence online.”

The site published a running list Thursday of targeted posts, along with the names, locations and employers of people who posted them. While some posts contained incendiary language, others didn’t appear to celebrate the shooting or glorify violence. There were several similar efforts, including one by activist Scott Presler, who asked his followers about teachers purported to have celebrated Kirk’s killing and posted findings on X.

A staff member at the University of Mississippi was fired after sharing “insensitive comments” about Kirk’s death, according to the school’s chancellor, Glenn Boyce. The university did not identify the employee or immediately respond to questions from the Associated Press.

The president of Middle Tennessee State University said he’d fired a staffer who offered “callous and inappropriate comments on social media” about Kirk’s shooting. President Sidney A. McPhee did not identify the staff member but said the person “worked in a position of trust with our students.”

It wasn’t clear if it was the same person, but an X post by Tennessee GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn identified an assistant dean of students at MTSU who posted online that she had “ZERO sympathy” after the shooting. Blackburn said the person should be ashamed and fired.

A warning to teachers in Florida

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education commissioner warned the state’s teachers that making “disgusting” statements about Kirk’s killing could draw sanctions, including the suspension or revocation of teaching licenses. Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas said in a memo to school district superintendents that he’d been made aware of “despicable” comments on social media.

“I will be conducting an investigation of every educator who engages in this vile, sanctionable behavior,” Kamoutsas said in the memo, which he also posted on X on Thursday. “Govern yourselves accordingly.”

The rush to police commentary appeared to have little precedent in other recent examples of political violence, such as the 2022 home-invasion hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; or the shooting deaths in June of Minnesota House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.

DC Comics announced that it was ditching a new “Red Hood” series, a Batman spinoff, after one issue had been published and two more were in the works. The comics’ writer, Gretchen Felker-Martin, had published comments about Kirk’s shooting online that DC called offensive.

“Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct,” the comics publisher said.

Loomer, an informal advisor to President Trump whose pressure campaigns have resulted in several firings in his administration, attacked the entertainment website TMZ for what she called a “disgusting” livestream in which employees could be heard laughing and cheering seconds before Kirk’s death was announced. TMZ said the noise had nothing to do with the Kirk story — the staff members were crowded around a computer watching a car chase — but apologized for the bad timing and how it looked to viewers.

A writer for the Arizona media company PHNX Sports was fired after conservative activists called attention to a series of online posts that attacked Kirk’s positions on guns and Gaza and called him evil.

The NFL’s Carolina Panthers distanced themselves from an employee who posted comments about Kirk and a photo referencing Wu-Tang Clan’s song “Protect Ya Neck.” Kirk was shot in the neck. Football communications coordinator Charlie Rock was fired, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke under condition of anonymity because the team typically doesn’t announce firings.

Rock’s name has been removed from the team’s website. He did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

CBS News anchor under attack

Burleson, a former NFL star turned anchor for CBS News’ morning show, was attacked online for asking former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the air Thursday whether this was a moment for the Republican Party to reflect on political violence. His co-anchor, Gayle King, immediately tried to soften the question by interjecting, “I’d say both parties.”

Another former NFL player, Jay Feely, running for Congress in Arizona, said the question was offensive. “Charlie Kirk was assassinated in front of his family and you ask if Republicans need to tone down their rhetoric?” he said. (Kirk’s family was not present at the shooting.) Some conservative media stars also weighed in, with talk show host Erick Erickson calling for Burleson to be fired and Clay Travis calling him a ”moron.”

A reporter for the Floridapolitics.com news site was suspended for texting a Florida congressman a question about gun control immediately after Kirk’s shooting. Peter Schorsch, Floridapolitics.com publisher, said he was concerned that reporter A.G. Gancarski was trying to provoke a source rather than initiate a serious policy discussion. Utah law allows people to carry guns on college campuses; Kirk was slain on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem.

U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, a Florida Republican, texted back that he had learned of Kirk’s shooting only 23 minutes earlier and was repulsed to get the question when people should be praying for Kirk’s safety. Schorsch said he agreed that the timing was inappropriate, and didn’t want any of his staff members to be put in danger by anyone angry about it.

“I think everybody today should be asking questions about a wide range of policies,” Schorsch said in an interview Thursday. “But when a house is on fire, I don’t think you should ask questions about a person’s insurance policy. You put out the fire first.”

He said Gancarski was a good reporter who made a mistake. He’ll be back on the job after a few days out. Gancarski, reached by phone, declined comment.

The feminist website Jezebel removed a post headlined “We Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk” that was published Monday, two days before Kirk’s death. “The piece was intended as satire and made it absolutely clear that we wished no physical harm. We stand by every word,” Jezebel said in an editor’s note.

“We may republish at a later date, but out of compassion for the victim’s family, we want to make clear that we prioritize an end to violence over anyone wanting to read about Etsy witches,” Jezebel said, in a reference to the online storefront.

Bauder and Swenson write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Sophie Bates, Kate Payne, Steve Reed and Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.

Ten days after a Russian man was mysteriously killed amid a crowd of tens of thousands at the Burning Man festival, Russian media is reporting that the man’s father has asked President Donald Trump to have the FBI investigate.

Vadim Kruglov, 37, had been living in Washington state and, according to friends’ Instagram accounts, was making his first pilgrimage to Burning Man. He was killed sometime between 8 and 9:30 pm on the night of August 30, his body found “in a pool of blood” around the time the giant wooden effigy of a man was lit on fire.

The Pershing County Sheriff’s Department, which has jurisdiction over the Black Rock Desert where the annual event takes place, is leading the homicide investigation but has made no public comments about what might have happened. The agency has issued public appeals for information about “any person who would commit such a heinous crime against another human being.”

The agency has also announced that Kruglov’s family has been formally notified of his death, and that “our sincerest condolences from the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office go out to Vadim Kruglov’s family for their tragic loss.”

The sheriff’s department declined to comment on reports of the father’s appeal, or his criticisms of the pace of the investigation.

The Moscow Times reported Thursday that the pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda published a video from Kruglov’s father Thursday. In it, the father, Igor Kruglov bemoaned that “ten days have passed” and yet the investigation is “being conducted by one local sheriff.”

“Evil must be punished,” the father continues, “therefore, I appeal to you, dear Mr. President, and ask you to order the FBI to immediately begin investigating the murder of my son.”

Kruglov’s friends have been pushing a similar message to their tens of thousands of Instagram followers.

One post claimed that Kruglov died “from a professional knife strike to the neck —a single fatal blow. This happened in a place where more than 80,000 people from all over the world were gathered.” The Pershing County sheriff’s office declined to comment on the manner in which Kruglov was killed or say whether the friend’s post was accurate.

The Instagram post contained several photographs of Kruglov enjoying himself at the festival.

“A young and talented man, who made a big contribution to this world, has been killed,” the friend wrote. “And the person who did this is still walking free.” The post added: “We strongly believe a federal investigation is needed.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration and the conservative movement were stunned Wednesday by the shooting of Charlie Kirk, a disruptive leader in GOP politics who accomplished what was once thought a pipe dream, expanding Republican ranks among America’s youth.

Inside the White House, senior officials that had worked closely alongside Kirk throughout much of their careers reacted with shock. It was a moment of political violence reminiscent of the repeated attempts on Donald Trump’s life during the 2024 presidential campaign, one official told The Times.

“We must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “A great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!”

Kirk, a founder of Turning Point USA, was instrumental in recruiting young Americans on college campuses to GOP voter rolls, making himself an indispensable part of Republican campaigns down ballot across the country. That mission made his shooting on a college campus in Utah all the more poignant to his friends and allies, who reacted with dismay at videos of the shooting circulating online.

His impact, helping to increase support among 18- to 24-year-old voters for Republican candidates by double-digit margins in just four years, has been credited by Republican operatives as driving the party’s victories last year, allowing the GOP to retake the House, Senate and the presidency.

Democrats have recognized his prowess, with California Gov. Gavin Newsom hosting him on his podcast earlier this year in an appeal to young, predominantly male voters lost by the Democrats in recent years.

“The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form,” Newsom said on X in response to the news.

As videos of the shooting circulated online, a number of prominent Republicans, including senior members of the Trump administration, reacted to the news by asking the public to pray for the young activist.

“Say a prayer for Charlie Kirk, a genuinely good guy and a young father,” Vice President JD Vance said in a post on X.

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said federal agents were at the scene of the shooting in Utah. FBI Director Kash Patel added the FBI will be helping with the investigation.

Wilner reported from Washington, Ceballos from Tallahassee, Fla.

“Chipocalypse Now.” When the slogan rolled out Saturday, it sounded like a campaign for Chipotle’s latest rebrand of the humble burrito. The reality was less savory. It was a declaration of war, on an American city, by a sitting president, under the guise of a harmless meme.

Referencing the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now,” President Trump’s Truth Social account posted an AI-generated image of the 79-year-old as the much younger Lt. Col. William Kilgore (Robert Duvall’s character in the film). It was captioned, “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” a parody of a famous quote from Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece. (The original line: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”)

The image, meant to look like a movie poster, was emblazoned with the words “Chipocalypse Now” and showed Trump’s image in front of the Chicago skyline, replete with helicopters, flames and a plume of smoke. As for the “Department of War” reference, Trump signed an executive order Friday to rename the Department of Defense, alleging that its old moniker is “woke.” Your tax dollars at work …

Trump’s post generated all manner of concern and outrage, as it should when the White House threatens a military operation on American soil. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker blasted Trump’s meme via X. “The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal,” he wrote. “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who spoke to reporters while attending Mexican Independence Day celebrations in Chicago over the weekend, called Trump’s post “disgusting.”

It’s no mistake that “Chipocalypse” sounds as innocuous as a bag of Flamin’ Hot Doritos, but subterfuge is the point. The “I’m kidding but not really” tactic has been referred to as memetic warfare, where everything in a manufactured ecosystem like Trump’s appears to be a harmless joke. MAGA has mastered the art, deploying pop culture-inspired memes that feature an AI-generated Trump as Superman, a Jedi or Sydney Sweeney posing seductively for a denim ad. How can such a playful fellow have dictatorial aspirations?!

If you get upset like Sen. Durbin, MAGA insists it’s because you are “humorless and can’t take a joke.” Funnily enough, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom used the same approach to troll Republicans, they weren’t laughing.

Trump wasn’t jokey or fun Sunday when NBC News’ Yamiche Alcindor asked him about the meme on the South Lawn of the White House. He was condescending when he called her “darling” and referred to her question as “fake news.” When Alcindor attempted to respond, Trump snapped back.

“Be quiet, listen! You don’t listen! You never listen,” he said. “That’s why you’re second-rate. We’re not going to war. We’re gonna clean up our cities. We’re gonna clean them up, so they don’t kill five people every weekend. That’s not war, that’s common sense.”

If sense of reason were part of his crime-fighting quotient, his troops would be invading the metro areas with the highest number of murders per capita — New Orleans first, then Memphis, Tenn., and St. Louis. Yet he has left those red-state cities off his list in favor of places run by Democrats.

Trump has talked for weeks about sending ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other enforcement agencies to Chicago. The president claims it’s to combat out-of-control crime rates and to execute mass deportations. He’s already targeted Los Angeles and Washington. D.C., which like Chicago are under Democratic control.

“The president’s threats are beneath the honor of our nation, but the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution, we must defend our democracy from this authoritarianism by protecting each other and protecting Chicago from Donald Trump,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wrote on social media.

Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that it was launching a surge of immigration law enforcement in Chicago. They came up with another slogan: “Operation Midway Blitz.”

If only that was a stupid meme too.

Holocaust Museum LA says the post was misinterpreted as a ‘political statement’ and promises to ‘do better’.

A Holocaust museum in Los Angeles is facing backlash after deleting an Instagram post that suggested the phrase “never again” should apply to all people – not just Jews.

The post, shared with Holocaust Museum LA’s 24,200 Instagram followers, read: “Never again can’t only mean never again for Jews.” The slogan “never again”, long associated with Holocaust remembrance, is also invoked more broadly as a pledge to prevent future genocides.

The Instagram message was initially praised online and interpreted by some as an acknowledgment of Palestinian suffering amid Israel’s war on Gaza, which numerous United Nations experts, scholars and rights groups have described as a genocide.

It was later deleted and replaced with a statement on Saturday saying the post had been misinterpreted.

“We recently posted an item on social media that was part of a pre-planned campaign intended to promote inclusivity and community that was easily open to misinterpretation by some to be a political statement reflecting the ongoing situation in the Middle East. That was not our intent,” it said.

Holocaust Museum LA also promised to “do better” and to “ensure that posts in the future are more thoughtfully designed and thoroughly vetted”.

The museum, which is currently closed for construction until June 2026, quickly faced criticism online after journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News reposted a screenshot of the deleted message, writing: “Speechless. No words for this.”

Yasmine Taeb, a human rights lawyer and progressive strategist, called the museum’s move “absolutely disgusting”, saying that the museum is “cowering under pressure” from pro-Israel voices.

“Countless genocide scholars and human rights organisations have confirmed what Israel is doing in Gaza is textbook definition of genocide,” Taeb told Al Jazeera.

“It’s appalling that a museum established for the purpose of educating the public about genocide and the Holocaust not only refuses to acknowledge the reality of Israel’s actions in Gaza, but [is] removing a social media post that merely stated that ‘never again’ is not intended for just Jews, in order for it to not be interpreted as a response to the genocide in Gaza.”

The original now-deleted post did not mention Gaza, but it faced a barrage of pro-Israel comments expressing disapproval, including some that called on donors to stop funding the institution.

By deleting the post and issuing the subsequent statement, the museum sparked accusations of backtracking on a universal anti-genocide principle.

“We live in a world where the Holocaust Museum has to aploogise and retract for simply appearing to sympathise with Palestinians,” Palestinian American activist and comedian Amer Zahr told Al Jazeera.

“If that does not illustrate the historic dehumanisation that Arab Americans have had to live with, I don’t know what does.”

Assal Rad, a researcher with the Arab Center Washington DC, called the controversy “unbelievable”.

“Palestinians are so dehumanized that they’re excluded from ‘never again,’ apparently their genocide is the exception,” Rad wrote on X.

Political commentator Hasan Piker also slammed the museum’s decision. “A real shame that even a tepid general anti-genocide statement was met with unimaginable resistance from Israel supporters,” he wrote in a social media post.

The Holocaust Museum LA did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Greg Louganis is starting a new chapter in his life.

The U.S. diving legend has auctioned off three of the five Olympic medals he won between 1976-1988, sold his home and is parting with most of his other possessions as part of a journey of self-discovery that is taking him, at least for now, to Panama.

“So, as life moves forward, what are you prepared to leave behind?” Louganis wrote Friday in a Facebook post. “I am 65 years old, and I am asking just that. I am no longer who I used to think I was. Not even close to ‘What’ other people or ‘Who’ other people think I am.”

Louganis shared some details of his plan in that post and expanded on them on two Instagram Live posts, one recorded from Los Angeles in his final night in the United States and the other recorded the following day from Panama City, the first stop in a journey that will eventually take him and his dog Gerald to Boquette.

That’s where they’re going to settle down — “for now,” Louganis said on Instagram.

“I don’t know how permanent, or, you know, I don’t know how long it’s gonna be,” he said. “I’m just embracing the ‘I don’t know,’ and also staying open for discovery. I think that’s what this part of my life is about, being open to discover what’s next and really, really, really do my best at being present in every place I go with every person I meet.”

About a year ago, Louganis said, he was in a bad place mentally, feeling “really, really alone and isolated.”

“It was really, really severe, real bad depression,” Louganis said. “And now I’m realizing, I have things to offer. So what that is and what that looks like, I haven’t figured it out. And I think that that’s what this is kind of about, is recalibration and figuring out what is next. … and just discover who I am too. I mean, that’s a big question.”

U.S. diver Greg Louganis spreads his arms and bends at the waist while in mid-dive during a springboard diving competition.

(Sadayuki Mikami / Associated Press)

Louganis says part of the process has been letting go of many of the items he didn’t realize were weighing him down. Last month, he received more than $430,000 at auction for three of his Olympic medals ($201,314 for his 1988 gold medal in 10-meter platform, $199,301 for his 1984 gold medal in 3-meter sprinboard and $30,250 for his 1976 silver medal in 10-meter platform).

“I needed the money,” Louganis wrote on Facebook. “While many people may have built businesses and sold them for a profit, I had my medals, which I am grateful for. If I had proper management, I might not have been in that position, but what is done is done; live and learn.”

Louganis has not mentioned what, if anything, happened with his other two gold medals, won in 1984 for 3-meter springboard and in 1988 for 10-meter platform.

Also on his posts, Louganis mentions that he sold his home last week. Public records list Louganis as the owner of a residence in Topanga. According to Zillow, a house at that address sold on Aug. 28 for $750,000.

As for most of his other belongings, Louganis wrote, “I decided to donate, sell what can be sold, give gifts, and give where things might be needed or appreciated. … A thought occurred to me, I had many friends, people I was close to, lost everything in the Woolsey Fire, and then the Palisades Fire just this year.

“I know I am choosing to do this, but their resilience is an inspiration for me to start anew, with an open heart and an open door. Opening up to possibilities.”

On Instagram, Louganis described the experience as “freeing.”

“The memories will always be in here,” Louganis said, placing his hand over his heart. “And so the other things are just stuff, you know? We don’t realize how much we hang on to, and what I’m also learning now in this process is how oftentimes we don’t realize they weigh us down. You know, like the shipping, the storage, all of that stuff.

“Actually, I was kind of discussing that with Michael Phelps, because he heard that I auctioned my medals. He said, ‘How was that?’ I said, ‘You know what it was? It was a relief, you know, because then it was like it was a weight off my shoulders.’”

Rudolph W. Giuliani is recovering from a fractured vertebra and other injuries following a car crash in New Hampshire, a spokesperson for the former New York City mayor said Sunday.

Giuliani was being driven in a rented Ford Bronco by his spokesperson Ted Goodman when their vehicle was struck from behind by a Honda HR-V driven by a 19-year-old woman late Saturday evening, New Hampshire State Police said in a statement.

Troopers witnessed the crash, which caused both vehicles to hit the highway median and left them “heavily damaged,” the State Police said. Goodman and the 19-year-old suffered “non-life-threatening injuries” and were taken to hospitals for treatment, the agency added.

The State Police said it was investigating the crash and no charges have been filed.

Giuliani, 81, was taken to a nearby trauma center and was being treated for injuries including “a fractured thoracic vertebrae, multiple lacerations and contusions, as well as injuries to his left arm and lower leg,” according to a statement posted on X by Michael Ragusa, Giuliani’s head of security.

Giuliani “sustained injuries but is in good spirits and recovering tremendously,” Ragusa said, adding: “This was not a targeted attack.”

Before the accident, Giuliani had been “flagged down by a woman who was the victim of a domestic violence incident” and contacted police assistance on her behalf, Ragusa said. After police arrived, Giuliani continued on his way and his vehicle was hit shortly after pulling onto the highway in a crash that was “entirely unrelated” to the domestic violence incident, Ragusa told The Associated Press in an emailed statement.

State police said troopers were investigating a domestic violence report on the southbound Interstate 93 shortly before 10 p.m. and observed the crash, which occurred on the northbound lanes. Troopers and fire personnel quickly crossed to provide help.

New Hampshire State Police declined to comment on whether Giuliani had contacted the agency regarding the account of a domestic violence incident.

Goodman did not respond to requests for comment and Giuliani’s team did not provide additional details about the circumstances surrounding the crash.

“Thank you to all the people that have reached out since learning the news about my Father,” Andrew Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani’s son, wrote in post on X. “Your prayers mean the world.”

The crash follows some rocky years for the onetime Republican presidential candidate, who was dubbed “America’s mayor” in light of his leadership in New York after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Giuliani later became President Trump’s personal attorney for a time and a vocal proponent of Trump’s false allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, won by Democrat Joe Biden. Trump and his backers lost dozens of lawsuits, and numerous recounts, reviews and audits of the election results turned up no signs of significant wrongdoing or error.

Two former Georgia elections workers later won a $148-million defamation judgment against Giuliani for issues related to his 2020 election fabrications.

As they sought to collect the judgment, the former federal prosecutor was found in contempt of court and faced a trial this winter over the ownership of some of his assets. He ultimately struck a deal that let him keep his homes and various belongings, including prized World Series rings, in exchange for unspecified compensation and a promise to stop speaking ill of the ex-election workers.

Brook writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Jennifer Peltz in New York contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government is offering military funeral honors for Ashli Babbitt, the rioter who was killed at 35 by an officer in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Babbitt was a U.S. Air Force veteran from California who was shot dead wearing a Trump campaign flag wrapped around her shoulders while attempting to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby inside the Capitol.

Offering military honors to one of the Capitol rioters is part of President Trump’s attempts to rewrite that chapter after the 2020 election as a patriotic stand, given he still denies he lost that election. Babbitt has gained martyr status among Republicans, and the Trump administration agreed to pay just under $5 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit that her family filed over her shooting.

Matthew Lohmeier, an undersecretary of the Air Force, said on X that the decision was “long overdue,” and shared a post from a conservative legal group that was advocating for Babbitt’s family. The group, Judicial Watch, said the family had requested military honors from former President Biden’s administration and had been denied.

In a statement, a U.S. Air Force spokesperson said that “after reviewing the circumstances” of Babbitt’s death, military funeral honors were offered to the family. Babbitt was a senior airman.

The post shared by Lohmeier included a link to a letter the Air Force under secretary wrote to Babbitt’s family, inviting them to meet him at the Pentagon.

“After reviewing the circumstances of Ashli’s death, and considering the information that has come forward since then, I am persuaded that the previous determination was incorrect,” the Aug. 15 letter read.

Mingus Reedus, son of “The Walking Dead” star Norman Reedus and Danish model Helena Christensen, made a concerning statement to a reporter in the wake of his arrest Saturday on suspicion of assault.

On Sunday, a New York Post reporter confronted the 25-year-old outside of his Manhattan apartment. “You want to watch me kill myself?” the model said when he spotted the journalist. He refused to answer questions after that, the Post reported.

The grim remark came just one day after Mingus Reedus was taken into custody by police who responded to a Saturday morning report of an assault in progress, according to USA Today. The Post reported that a 33-year-old female victim was subsequently taken to NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue with “minor injuries.”

Reedus pleaded not guilty Saturday to charges of of third-degree assault, assault recklessly causing injury, criminal obstruction of breathing, second-degree harassment and aggravated harassment, NBC News said. He was released without posting bail.

It wasn’t Reedus’ first arrest on suspicion of assault. He faced accusations in 2021 of punching a woman at the San Gennaro festival in New York City. At the time, he told the New York Daily News that “it was instinct” after the woman was “swarming” his friend group.

“We didn’t think anything of it, but these five girls followed us for two blocks, throwing food at us and yelling,” he said. “We told them to leave us alone, but they kept following, threatening to hurt my girlfriend and her friend.”

He said one woman was “pulling my hair from the back, another throwing water in my face.” Soon after, police got involved, but Reedus claimed they “refused to listen to the context” and arrested him.

In March 2022, he struck a deal and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge — disorderly conduct. He was sentenced to a conditional discharge that required him to attend five private counseling sessions.

Whether it’s leaning into AI-generated images or President Trump’s signature all-caps style, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s social media accounts have been firing left and right in recent weeks.

The latest target? None other than rock ’n’ roll figure and avid Trump supporter Kid Rock.

In a post on Sunday to X, Newsom’s official account shared an AI-generated image of the rock-rapper, whose legal name is Robert James Ritchie. In it, he wears his finest Uncle Sam garb and points at viewers, issuing a statement: “Kid Rock wants YOU to support Gavin Newsom.”

Text mimicking the social media style that President Trump has become known for accompanied the post: “I ACCEPT! — GCN.”

The 54-year-old artist waited less than an hour to respond, quickly clearing up that he did not, in fact, support the California governor.

“The only support Gavin Newscum will ever get out of me is from …,” he wrote, and ended his statement by referencing a portion of his anatomy.

On Monday, the press office account would respond by stating, “I HATE KID ROCK !!! — GCN.” Some users suspected that it was an allusion to President Trump’s use of an AI Taylor Swift endorsement in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.

In September 2024, Trump wrote “I accept!” over a series of AI-generated images of Swift fans posted to his own social media site Truth Social. The post used a fake image of Swift wearing Uncle Sam’s signature attire.

On Tuesday, Newsom’s account continued the bit. The post on X said, “HAS ANYONE NOTICED THAT SINCE I SAID “I HATE KID ROCK” HE’S NO LONGER ‘HOT?’ — GCN.”

There’s been no response — yet.

Deep in the badlands of defeat, Democrats have soul-searched about what went wrong last November, tinkered with a thousand-plus thinkpieces and desperately cast for a strategy to reboot their stalled-out party.

Amid the noise, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has recently championed an unlikely game plan: Forget the high road, fight fire with fire and embrace the very tactics that virtue-minded Democrats have long decried.

Could the dark art of political gerrymandering be the thing that saves democracy from Trump’s increasingly authoritarian impulses? That’s essentially the pitch Newsom is making to California voters with his audacious new special election campaign.

As Texas Democrats dig in to block a Republican-led redistricting push and Trump muscles to consolidate power wherever he can, Newsom wants to redraw California’s own congressional districts to favor Democrats.

His goal: counter Trump’s drive for more GOP House seats with a power play of his own.

It’s a boundary-pushing gamble that will undoubtedly supercharge Newsom’s political star in the short-term. The long-game glory could be even grander, but only if he pulls it off. A ballot-box flop would be brutal for both Newsom and his party.

The charismatic California governor is termed out of office in 2026 and has made no secret of his 2028 presidential ambitions.

But the distinct scent of his home state will be hard to completely slough off in parts of the country where California is synonymous with loony lefties, business-killing regulation and an out-of-control homelessness crisis. To say nothing of Newsom’s ill-fated dinner at an elite Napa restaurant in violation of COVID-19 protocols — a misstep that energized a failed recall attempt and still haunts the governor’s national reputation.

The redistricting gambit is the kind of big play that could redefine how voters across the country see Newsom.

The strategy could be a boon for Newsom’s 2028 ambitions during a moment when Democrats are hungry for leaders, said Democratic strategist Steven Maviglio. But it’s also a massive roll of the dice for both Newsom and the state he leads.

“It’s great politics for him if this passes,” Maviglio said. “If it fails, he’s dead in the water.”

The path forward — which could determine control of Congress in 2026 — is hardly a straight shot.

The “Election Rigging Response Act,” as Newsom has named his ballot measure, would temporarily scrap the congressional districts enacted by the state’s voter-approved independent redistricting commission.

Under the proposal, Democrats could pick up five seats currently held by Republicans while bolstering vulnerable Democratic incumbent Reps. Adam Gray, Josh Harder, George Whitesides, Derek Tran and Dave Min, which would save the party millions of dollars in costly reelection fights.

But first the Democratic-led state Legislature must vote to place the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot and then it must be approved by voters.

If passed, the initiative would have a “trigger,” meaning the redrawn map would not take effect unless Texas or another GOP-led state moved forward with its own gerrymandering effort.

“I think what Governor Newsom and other Democrats are doing here is exactly the right thing we need to do,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said Thursday.

“We’re not bringing a pencil to a knife fight. We’re going to bring a bazooka to a knife fight, right? This is not your grandfather’s Democratic Party,” Martin said, adding that they shouldn’t be the only ones playing by a set of rules that no longer exist.

For Democrats like Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), who appeared alongside Newsom to kick off the effort, there is “some heartbreak” to temporarily shelving their commitment to independent redistricting. But she and others were clear-eyed about the need to stop a president “willing to rig the election midstream,” she said.

Friedman said she was hearing overwhelmingly positive reactions to the proposal from all kinds of Democratic groups on the ground.

“The response that I get is, ‘Finally, we’re fighting. We have a way to fight back that’s tangible,’” Friedman recounted.

Still, despite the state’s Democratic voter registration advantage, victory for the ballot measure will hardly be assured. California voters have twice rallied for independent redistricting at the ballot box in the last two decades and many may struggle to abandon those beliefs.

A POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll found that voters prefer keeping an independent panel in place to draw district lines by a nearly two-to-one margin, and that independent redistricting is broadly popular in the state.

(Newsom’s press office argued that the poll was poorly worded, since it asked about getting rid of the independent commission altogether and permanently returning line-drawing power to the legislators, rather than just temporarily scrapping their work for several cycles until the independent commission next draws new lines.)

California voters should not expect to see a special election campaign focused on the minutia of reconfiguring the state’s congressional districts, however.

While many opponents will likely attack the change as undercutting the will of California voters, who overwhelmingly supported weeding politics out of the redistricting process, bank on Newsom casting the campaign as a referendum on Trump and his devious effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress.

Newsom employed a similar strategy when he demolished the Republican-led recall campaign against him in 2021, which the governor portrayed as a “life and death” battle against “Trumpism” and far-right anti-vaccine and antiabortion activists. Among California’s Democratic-heavy electorate, that message proved to be extremely effective.

“Wake up, America,” Newsom said Thursday at a Los Angeles rally launching the campaign for the redistricting measure. “Wake up to what Donald Trump is doing. Wake up to his assault. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people.”

Kevin Liao, a Democratic strategist who has worked on national and statewide campaigns, said his D.C. and California-based political group chats had been blowing up in recent days with texts about the moment Newsom was creating for himself.

Much of Liao’s group chat fodder has involved the output of Newsom’s digital team, which has elevated trolling to an art form on its official @GovPressOffice account on the social media site X.

The missives have largely mimicked the president’s own social media patois, with hyperbole, petty insults and a heavy reliance on the “caps lock” key.

“DONALD IS FINISHED — HE IS NO LONGER ‘HOT.’ FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME — GAVIN C. NEWSOM — HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS ‘STEP,’ ” one of the posts read last week, dutifully reposted by the governor himself.

Some messages have also ended with Newsom’s initials (a riff on Trump’s signature “DJT” signoff) and sprinkled in key Trumpian callbacks, like the phrase “Liberation Day,” or a doctored Time Magazine cover with Newsom’s smiling mien. The account has garnered 150,000 new followers since the beginning of the month.

Shortly after Trump took office in January, Newsom walked a fine line between criticizing the president and his policies and being more diplomatic, especially after the California wildfires — in hopes of appealing to any semblance of compassion and presidential responsibility Trump possessed.

Newsom had spent the first months of the new administration trying to reshape the California-vs.-Trump narrative that dominated the president’s first term and move away from his party’s prior “resistance” brand.

Those conciliatory overtures coincided with Newsom’s embrace of a more ecumenical posture, hosting MAGA leaders on his podcast and taking a position on transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports that contradicted the Democratic orthodoxy.

Newsom insisted that he engaged in those conversations to better understand political views that diverged from his own, especially after Trump’s victory in November. However, there was the unmistakable whiff of an ambitious politician trying to broaden his national appeal by inching away from his reputation as a West Coast liberal.

Newsom’s reluctance to readopt the Trump resistance mantle ended after the president sent California National Guard troops into Los Angeles amid immigration sweeps and ensuing protests in June. Those actions revealed Trump’s unchecked vindictiveness and abject lack of morals and honor, Newsom said.

Of late, Newsom has defended the juvenile tone of his press aides’ posts mocking Trump’s own all-caps screeds, and questioned why critics would excoriate his parody and not the president’s own unhinged social media utterances.

“If you’ve got issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as president,” Newsom said last week. “So to the extent it’s gotten some attention, I’m pleased.”

In an attention-deficit economy where standing out is half the battle, the posts sparkle with unapologetic swagger. And they make clear that Newsom is in on the joke.

“To a certain set of folks who operated under the old rules, this could be seen as, ‘Wow, this is really outlandish.’ But I think they are making the calculation that Democrats want folks that are going to play under this new set of rules that Trump has established,” Liao said.

At a moment when the Democratic party is still occupied with post-defeat recriminations and what’s-next vision boarding, Newsom has emerged from the bog with something resembling a plan.

And he’s betting the house on his deep-blue state’s willingness to fight fire with fire.

Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Laura Nelson contributed to this report.

Let’s unpack our need to unpack the whole “woman on TikTok who fell in love with her psychiatrist” saga.

First the facts: Kendra Hilty recently posted 25 videos on TikTok in which she discussed her decision to end four years of 30-minute monthly sessions (most of them on Zoom) with a male psychiatrist who prescribed her medication. At some point during their sessions, Hilty revealed her romantic feelings for him, feelings that she now — supported by comments she says were made by her therapist and a ChatGPT she has named Henry — believes the psychiatrist willingly fostered, leveraged and enjoyed.

Millions of people tuned in, though the fascination appears to have been less about the alleged actions and motivations of the psychiatrist (who has wisely chosen, thus far, to remain silent) and more focused on Hilty’s detailed description of certain encounters and her deep subtext readings of what they might have meant.

Many responded so negatively that Hilty turned off her comments for a while as hundreds made posts across social media eviscerating or satirizing the series. Soon enough, as happens with viral content, legacy media got involved and all the catch-up “unpacking” began.

Unlike Reesa Teesa, whose multi-post tale of marriage to a pathological liar went viral on TikTok last year and led to a TV adaptation, Hilty hasn’t become a universal figure of sympathy and courage. As she recently told People magazine, she has received “nonstop bullying” and threats along with the dozens of DMs thanking her for sharing her story. She has been accused of racism (the psychiatrist is a man of color), narcissism and, well, insanity. (She says she is, however, open to having her story adapted to film or television.)

To say the posts are troubling is an understatement. I was alerted to them by a friend who had previously expressed concern about young people using ChatGPT as a de facto therapist — a trend alarming enough to draw warnings from Open AI Chief Executive Sam Altman and move Illinois, Utah and Nevada to ban the use of AI in mental health therapy. “There’s a woman on TikTok having a full-blown ChatGPT-induced meltdown,” this friend texted me. “This is a real problem.”

Certainly, Hilty appeared to be having real problems, which ChatGPT, with its programmed tendency to validate users’ views and opinions, undoubtedly inflamed. But given the viral reaction to her posts, so are we.

Even as countless studies suggest that social media is, for myriad reasons, detrimental to mental health, its users continue to consume and comment on videos and images of people undergoing mental and emotional crises as if they were DIY episodes of “Fleabag.”

So the question is not “who is this woman obsessing about her relationship with her psychiatrist” but why are so many of us watching her do it? It’s one thing to become transfixed by a fictional character going down a scripted wormhole for the purposes of narrative enlightenment or comedy. It’s another when some poor soul is doing it in front of their phone in real life.

It’s even worse when the “star” of the video is not a willing participant. Social media and the ubiquity of smartphones have allowed citizens to expose instances of genuine, and often institutionalized, racism, sexism, homophobia and consumer exploitation. But for every “Karen” post that reveals bigotry, abuse or unacceptable rudeness, there are three that capture someone clearly having a mental or emotional breakdown (or just a very, very bad day).

With social media largely unregulated, they are all lumped in together and it has become far too easy to use it as the British elite once purportedly used psychiatric hospital Bedlam: to view the emotionally troubled and mentally ill as if they were exhibits in a zoo.

Hilty believes she is helping to identify a real problem and is, obviously, the author of her own exposure, as are many people who post themselves deconstructing a bad relationship, reacting to a crisis or experiencing emotional distress. All social media posts exist to capture attention, and the types that do tend to be repeated. Sharing one’s trauma can elicit sympathy, support, insight and even help. But “sadfishing,” as it is often called, can also make a bad situation worse, from viewers questioning the authenticity and intention of the post to engaging in brutal mockery and bullying.

Those who are caught on camera as they melt down over one thing or another could wind up as unwitting symbols of privilege or stupidity or the kind of terrible service/consumer we’re expected to deal with today. Some are undoubtedly arrogant jerks who have earned a public comeuppance (and if the fear of being filmed keeps even one person from shouting at some poor overworked cashier or barista, that can only be a good thing).

But others are clearly beset by problems that go far deeper than not wanting to wait in line or accept that their flight has been canceled.

It is strange that in a culture where increased awareness of mental health realities and challenges have led to so many positive changes, including to the vernacular, people still feel free to film, post, watch and judge strangers who have lost control without showing any concern for context or consequence.

I would like to say I never watch videos of people having a meltdown or behaving badly, but that would be a big fat lie. They’re everywhere and I enjoy the dopamine thrill of feeling outraged and superior as much as the next person. (Again, I am not talking about videos that capture bigotry, institutional abuse or physical violence.)

I watched Hilty for research but I quickly found myself caught up in her minute dissection and seemingly wild projection. I too found myself judging her, silently but not in a kind way. (“No one talks about being in love with their shrink? Girl, it’s literary and cinematic canon.” “How, in all those years in therapy, have you never heard of transference?” “Why do you keep saying you don’t want this guy fired while arguing that he abused the doctor-patient relationship?”)

As the series wore on, her pain, if not its actual source, became more and more evident and my private commentary solidified into: “For the love of God, put down your phone.”

Since she was not about to, I did. Because me watching her wasn’t helping either of us.

Except to remind me of times when my own mental health felt precarious, when obsession and paranoia seemed like normal reactions and my inner pain drove me to do and say things I very much regret. These are memories that I will continue to hold and own but I am eternally grateful that no one, including myself, captured them on film, much less shared them with the multitudes.

Those who make millions off the mostly unpaid labor of social media users show no signs of protecting their workers with oversight or regulation. But no one goes viral in a vacuum. Decades ago, the popularity of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” answered the question of whether people’s unscripted pain should be offered up as entertainment and now we live in a world where people are willing to do and say the most intimate and anguished things in front of a reality TV crew.

Still, when one of these types of videos pops up or goes viral, there’s no harm in asking “why exactly am I watching this” and “what if it were me?”

WASHINGTON — Diplomacy may be soft power, but in President Trump’s administration, it’s also lately a soft landing.

National security adviser Mike Waltz was nominated as United Nations ambassador after he mistakenly added a journalist to a Signal chat discussing military plans. Trump tapped IRS Commissioner Billy Long to be his ambassador to Iceland after Long contradicted the administration’s messaging in his less than two months in the job.

And Trump last weekend named State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce as deputy representative to the U.N. after she struggled to gel with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s close-knit team.

The new appointments can be viewed as consolation prizes for leaving a high-profile post in the Trump administration following rocky tenures. But they also reflect the degree to which Trump is trying to keep his loyalists close, even if their earlier placements in the administration were ill-fitting. Breaking with the reality TV show that helped make Trump a household name, the Republican president is not telling his top appointees “You’re fired!” but instead offering them another way to stay in his administration.

“It’s not like ‘The Apprentice,’” said John Bolton, another former Trump national security adviser, who has since become a Trump critic.

Trump’s first term featured more firings

During his first White House tenure, Trump was new to politics, made many staffing picks based on others’ recommendations and saw heavy staff turnover. Trump has stocked his second administration with proven boosters, which has meant fewer high-profile departures.

Still, those leaving often are the subject of effusive praise and kept in Trump’s political orbit, potentially preventing them from becoming critics who can criticize him on TV — something that didn’t happen to a long list of former first-term officials.

Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president, and Trump can nominate anyone he likes, though many ultimately require Senate confirmation. Typically, top ambassadorships are rewards for large donors.

“It is a tremendous honor to represent the United States as an ambassador — which is why these positions are highly coveted and reserved for the president’s most loyal supporters,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly. “Mike Waltz, Billy Long and Tammy Bruce are great patriots who believe strongly in the America First agenda, and the President trusts them fully to advance his foreign policy goals.”

From ‘glitch’ to a new job

Waltz’s days appeared numbered after The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed in March that Waltz had added him to a private text chain on an encrypted messaging app that was used to discuss planning for a military operation against Houthi militants in Yemen.

Trump initially expressed support for Waltz, downplaying the incident as “a glitch.” Roughly five weeks later, the president announced Waltz would be leaving — but not for good. He portrayed the job change as a cause for celebration.

“From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first,” Trump posted in announcing Waltz’s move on May 1. “I know he will do the same in his new role.”

Vice President JD Vance also pushed back on insinuations that Waltz had been ousted.

“The media wants to frame this as a firing. Donald Trump has fired a lot of people,” Vance said in an interview with Bret Baier of Fox News Channel. “He doesn’t give them Senate-confirmed appointments afterwards.”

Bolton, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush before becoming Trump’s national security adviser in 2018, called it “a promotion to go in the other direction” — but not the way Waltz went.

“The lesson is, sometimes you do more good for yourself looking nice,” Bolton said of Trump’s reassignments.

Bruce also picked for a U.N. post

Ironically, Bruce learned of Waltz’s ouster from a reporter’s question while she was conducting a press briefing.

A former Fox News Channel contributor, Bruce is friendly with Trump and was a forceful advocate for his foreign policy. Over the course of her roughly six months as spokesperson, she reduced the frequency of State Department briefings with reporters from four or five days a week to two.

But Bruce had also begun to frequently decline to respond to queries on the effectiveness, substantiveness or consistency of the administration’s approaches to the Middle East, Russia’s war in Ukraine and other global hotspots. She told reporters that special envoy Steve Witkoff “is heading to the region now — to the Gaza area” but then had to concede that she’d not been told exactly where in the Middle East he was going.

Trump nonetheless posted Saturday that Bruce did a “fantastic job” at the State Department and would “represent our Country brilliantly at the United Nations.”

Former U.S. deputy U.N. ambassador Robert Wood, who served as deputy State Department spokesman during President George W. Bush’s term and as acting spokesman during President Obama’s term, voiced skepticism that Bruce’s new position was a move up. Wood later became the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Conference on Disarmament through the rest of the Obama’s tenure and all of the first Trump administration.

“Given the disdain in MAGA world for anything U.N., it’s hard to imagine Tammy Bruce’s nomination as U.S. Deputy Representative to the U.N. being seen as a promotion,” referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

During her final State Department briefing on Tuesday, Bruce said Trump’s announcing that he wanted her in a new role “was a surprise,” but called the decision “especially moving as it allows me to continue serving the State Department, to which I’m now quite attached.”

‘Exciting times ahead!’

Then there’s Long, a former Republican Missouri congressman, who was the shortest-tenured IRS commissioner confirmed by the Senate since the position was created in 1862. He contradicted administration messaging on several occasions.

Long said last month that the IRS’ Direct File program would be eliminated. An IRS spokesperson later indicated that it wouldn’t be, noting requirements in the tax and spending law Trump has championed. The Washington Post also reported that Long’s IRS disagreed with the White House about sharing taxpayer data with immigration officials to help locate people in the U.S. illegally.

After learning that Trump wanted him in Reykjavik, Long posted, “Exciting times ahead!”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to say Tuesday why Long was removed as IRS chief and being deployed to Iceland. “The president loves Billy Long, and he thinks he can serve the administration well in this position,” she said.

‘These things usually don’t work out’

The soft landings aren’t always heralded by Trump.

Former television commentator Morgan Ortagus, who was a State Department spokesperson during Trump’s first term, is now a special adviser to the United Nations after serving as deputy envoy to the Middle East under Witkoff.

Trump foresaw that Ortagus might not be a good fit. He posted in January, while announcing her as Witkoff’s deputy, that “Morgan fought me for three years, but hopefully has learned her lesson.”

“These things usually don’t work out, but she has strong Republican support, and I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for them,” Trump added. “Let’s see what happens.”

Ortagus lasted less than six months in the role.

Weissert and Price write for the Associated Press. AP writers Matthew Lee and Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed to this report.

Aug. 11 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said Monday in a Truth Social post that there will be no tariffs on gold.

The post said: “A Statement from Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America: Gold will not be tariffed!”

He did not elaborate further.

Gold futures closed 2.48% lower at $3,404.70 per ounce after the announcement, CNBC reported.

The precious metal hit a record high Friday, after U.S. Customs and Border Protection ruled that 1 kilogram and 100 ounce gold bars from Switzerland would face Trump’s 39% tariff against the country.

These gold bars are used to back contracts on The Commodity Exchange, or COMEX. The exchange is the main futures market for gold, silver and other metals.

The ruling would have applied to any country exporting gold bars to the United States, according to the Swiss Precious Metal Association. So gold bars would have been subject to the prevailing U.S. tariff rate against their country of origin.

The Swiss Precious Metal Association warned Friday that the customs ruling “may negatively impact the international flow of physical gold.”

“The imposition of tariffs on these gold cast products makes it economically unviable to export them to the U. S., thereby eliminating any future trade deficit arising from gold exports,” the press release said.

WASHINGTON — The man who oversees the nation’s military reposted a video about a Christian nationalist church that included various pastors saying women should no longer be allowed to vote and should “submit” to their husbands.

The extraordinary repost on X from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, made Thursday night, illustrates his deep and personal connection to a Christian nationalist pastor with extreme views on the role of religion and women.

In the post, Hegseth commented on an almost seven-minute-long report by CNN examining Doug Wilson, co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC. The report featured various pastors of the denomination advocating the repeal of women’s right to vote from the Constitution and parishioners saying that women should “submit” to their husbands.

“All of Christ for All of Life,” Hegseth wrote in his post that accompanied the video.

Hegseth’s post received more than 12,000 likes and 2,000 shares on X. Some users agreed with the pastors in the video, while others expressed alarm at the Defense secretary promoting Christian nationalist ideas.

Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said Friday that Hegseth is “a proud member of a church” that is affiliated with CREC and he “very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.”

In May, Hegseth invited his personal pastor, Brooks Potteiger, to the Pentagon to lead the first of several Christian prayer services that Hegseth has held inside the government building during working hours. Defense Department employees and service members said they received invitations to the event in their government emails.

“I’d like to see the nation be a Christian nation, and I’d like to see the world be a Christian world,” Wilson said in the CNN report.

Toropin writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press journalists Mike Pesoli in Washington and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

The Walt Disney Co. and Lucasfilm have settled a lawsuit brought by “The Mandalorian” actor Gina Carano, who alleged she had been wrongfully terminated from the show and discriminated against because of her social media posts.

Carano and Disney each separately confirmed the settlement Thursday, with Carano calling it the “best outcome for all parties involved.”

“I hope this brings some healing to the force,” she wrote in a post on X. “I am excited to flip the page and move onto the next chapter. My desires remain in the arts, which is where I hope you will join me.”

She also thanked X owner and billionaire Elon Musk, who funded her lawsuit against Disney, calling it a “Good Samaritan deed” from someone she had never met.

A Lucasfilm spokesperson said in a statement Thursday that the company looked forward to “identifying opportunities to work together” with Carano in the “near future,” now that the lawsuit was concluded. The company did not disclose the conditions of the settlement.

“Ms. Carano was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff,” the spokesperson said. “She worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect.”

The settlement comes a little more than a year after Carano sued Burbank-based Disney, Lucasfilm and Huckleberry Industries after she was dismissed from the Disney+ series. Carano, who portrayed former Rebellion soldier Cara Dune for two seasons, had been criticized for several controversial social media posts.

In one now-deleted post, she implied that being conservative today was comparable with being Jewish during the Holocaust. Critics had also called out posts in which she falsely claimed voter fraud affected the results of the 2020 presidential election, derided pandemic-era mask mandates and made fun of stating people’s pronouns.

Her social media postings ignited a firestorm of controversy, with critics calling for her to be fired from the series, while her supporters urged others to cancel Disney+ instead.

In 2021, a Lucasfilm representative said in a statement that Carano was not currently employed by the “Star Wars” production company, and that there were “no plans for her to be in the future.” The statement also called her posts “abhorrent and unacceptable.”

Carano claimed at the time that she had been promised a role in the now-shelved “Star Wars” spinoff “Rangers of the New Republic.” In her lawsuit, she said she was “targeted, harassed, publicly humiliated, [and] defamed” for making “political statements that did not align with what [Disney] believed was an acceptable viewpoint.”

She had been seeking more than $75,000 in damages and to be reinstated in her role in “The Mandalorian.”

Actress Gina Carano, Lucasfilm and its parent company Walt Disney Co. have settled the federal lawsuit filed in which Carano claimed that, in 2021, she was wrongfully terminated from her role in “The Mandalorian” after she expressed her conservative political views on social media.

The settlement details have not been made public, but Lucasfilm released a statement praising Carano’s on-set professionalism and expressing the hope of “identifying opportunities to work together with Ms. Carano in the near future.”

I am here to beg everyone to remain calm and avoid using the four Cs: cancel culture (is this the end of it?) and corporate capitulation (is this another example of it?)

No and no.

Cancel culture has long been an amorphous and often recklessly applied term, used to describe a litany of events, including but certainly not limited to male predators losing their jobs, students protesting their school’s choice of graduation speakers and outrage over J.K. Rowling’s stance on transgender women.

Recently, however, it has taken a far more concrete shape that looks astonishingly like the White House where President Trump continues to literally cancel all manner of things, including U.S. membership in the World Health Organization, the regulatory power of the Environmental Protection Agency and huge portions of Medicaid. Recently, he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the bureau documented weaker than expected numbers for July and downward revisions for the previous two months.

Corporate capitulation, too, is alive and well, with law firms, universities and media companies falling like dominoes before Trump’s lawsuits and threats of defunding. Last year, Trump sued ABC and its parent company Disney for defamation after anchor George Stephanopoulos wrongly stated on air that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping E. Jean Carroll — Trump had been found civilly liable of sexually assaulting and defaming Carroll. Disney settled for $15 million, paid to Trump’s presidential foundation and museum.

Even more troubling was Paramount Global’s decision to pay a $16-million settlement in what many consider a frivolous lawsuit brought by Trump against “60 Minutes.” After late-night host Stephen Colbert called the move a “big fat bribe” designed to ensure Paramount’s recent acquisition by Skydance, CBS, which is owned by Paramount, announced that “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” was being canceled due to financial considerations.

So while it is tempting to see Disney settling with Carano as a piece of a larger and very worrisome whole, particularly when Elon Musk financed her lawsuit, it was in fact simply the right thing to do.

Carano is a former mixed martial artist turned actor who has been vocal about her support for conservative causes and President Trump. In 2020, she had caught some flack for posting “beep/bop/boop” as her pronouns in her Twitter bio, which some took as her way of mocking trans people. She denied this, changed her bio and expressed support for the trans community.

There were also posts that criticized masking policies and shutdowns during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as one calling for an investigation into voter fraud after the 2020 election.

But it was a repost on Instagram that cost her her job — in February 2021, she reposted a famously horrific image of a half-naked Jewish woman fleeing from a mob with a moronically simplistic message about divisive politics: “Most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

Landing just a month after then-President Trump sent an armed mob to attack the Capitol in the hopes of overturning an election he refused to believe he had lost, the post, which appeared to compare MAGA supporters in 2021 America with Jews in Nazi Germany, sparked #FireGinaCarano.

And that’s exactly what Disney did. Calling her posts “abhorrent and unacceptable,” Lucasfilm excised her character from “The Mandalorian” and canceled an upcoming spinoff in which she was to star. Her talent agency, UTA, dropped her and Hasbro canceled a line of toys based on her “Mandalorian” character.

It was an overreaction that smacked of fear and pandering. I do not agree with the sentiments Carano expressed in her posts, but compared with the blithely toxic abuse regularly used on social media, they are relatively benign, based far more on genuine ignorance — most people are in fact aware of the vicious antisemitism leveraged by the Nazis as well as their institutionalized tactics of fear — than anything else.

Of course, those who attempt to be politically provocative on social media (and reposting a photo of a victimized Jewish woman in such context is the definition of political provocation) cannot then feign shock and dismay when people are provoked, especially at a time when far-right tweets, including the president’s, had led to a violent attack against lawmakers. (Hence the irony of Musk’s support — the platform he renamed X was in large part built on its ability to harness all manner of just and unjust hashtag campaigns.)

But as my colleague Robin Abcarian noted when Carano filed her lawsuit in 2023, the social media mob’s decision that a woman, who was far from a household name, deserved to lose her livelihood, and more important, Lucasfilm’s agreement with that decision, was extreme.

Bad publicity is never good for an entertainment property and whether it was explicit in her contract or not, Carano did represent, to a certain extent, “The Mandalorian,” Lucasfilm and Disney. Unfortunately, the entertainment industry’s increasing reliance on social media has created a world in which actors and other creative types are expected to amass millions of followers on platforms that tend to reward the outspoken and outrageous over the thoughtful. Encouraged to reveal themselves “authentically,” stars can find themselves prodded by fans to comment on current events and excoriated when they refuse or respond in a way that certain followers consider insincere or politically incorrect.

Telling people to stay off social media is not the answer; neither is regulation by hashtag campaign.

While Carano’s case is certainly reflective of many perils that face us at the moment, the fact that she reached a settlement, including an apparent promise of more work, is not a sign of further deterioration.

The fear that our cultural landscape is being attacked by political forces that would strangle the notion of free speech and competing ideologies is real and justified. But in this case, the capitulation came not when Disney and Lucasfilm decided to settle with Carano, but when they fired her in the first place.