Air traffic controllers in Washington and the pilots of President Trump’s helicopter met to discuss communication issues one week before a jet was allowed to take off just as Marine One left the White House, federal investigators said Thursday.
Controllers reported not receiving the standard three-minute warning call ahead of Marine One flights, and both sides agreed to an alternative in those instances — but that plan to relay the radio call through someone else also was unsuccessful on the day of the Aug. 4 incident near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report shows.
Having both the jet and helicopter in the air at the same time seemed to violate safety procedures put in place after last year’s midair collision near the busy airport that killed 67 people, but officials stressed that the president was never in danger. The Pentagon also has a long-standing agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration to provide controllers with a three-minute warning before the president’s helicopter takes off that predates last year’s crash.
The NTSB said recordings from the tower showed that the controllers never heard the calls from Marine One’s pilot that day warning that the helicopter was getting ready to take off, but separate recordings posted by ATC.com show the helicopter did make those calls.
The helicopter pilots tried to relay their three-minute call through the helicopter facility at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, but that also was unsuccessful.
After an airliner collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter on Jan. 29, 2025, the FAA decided all takeoffs and landings at the airport would be halted anytime a helicopter passes by on a conflicting route. The airspace near the White House and Reagan is heavily congested with military and commercial aircraft.
The FAA acknowledged the helicopter and airliner briefly got too close before the two aircraft started to move away from each other. The airplane quickly climbed above the helicopter after Marine One’s pilots saw the plane and paused until it safely left the area.
The NTSB said preliminary estimates show the helicopter and plane were about eight-tenths of a mile apart laterally and about 700 feet apart vertically at their closest. The crew of the Envoy Air flight told investigators they received a traffic warning from their collision avoidance system right after they took off, but they never saw the helicopter.
The official FAA recordings from the tower at Reagan did not include the warnings that Marine One was getting ready to head to Andrews Air Force Base with the president aboard.
A recording posted by ATC.com showed the Marine One pilot telling the tower that the helicopter was “three minutes to life” just like the 2013 agreement between the FAA and the military calls for. But the controller seemed surprised a few minutes later when the helicopter took off.
“Uh, Marine One, you said, uh, you’re proceeding as briefed?” the controller asked before giving the helicopter directions and commenting, “OK, no three minutes, roger, proceed as briefed.”
After the controller warned the helicopter about the plane taking off, the Marine One pilot said he saw the traffic and declared, “We’ll be doing a momentary delay.”
After last year’s midair collision, it became clear that poor communication between air traffic controllers and the military had been a long-standing issue. During a congressional hearing, it came out that a hotline connecting the Pentagon to the tower at Reagan hadn’t been working for more than three years, and the FAA hadn’t even realized it.
The NTSB said that after this incident involving Marine One, FAA technicians determined there wasn’t an adequate line of sight between the radio receiver at the airport and the location where the helicopter takes off at the White House. So those radios were moved from the neighborhood where they had been located to the top of the tower at Reagan. Subsequent tests showed the radios working well after that change.
Days after the top elections official in Shasta County announced that he planned to hire an election denier who served prison time for tampering with voting machines, county leaders there made an extraordinary plea to state and federal authorities: Please come investigate.
A statement released by the county Tuesday afternoon said Clint Curtis, the registrar of voters, had made “frivolous” claims and “unproven statements” about the June primary election, which he administered and certified.
“The County condemns the conduct of the Clerk-Registrar of Voters and invites all relevant state and federal agencies to review the allegations he has made and to proactively investigate his official actions and practices as Shasta County’s elections official,” read the statement released by Stewart Buettell, the county’s deputy chief executive officer.
Curtis — whose name was on the ballot, in a race he lost — has sequestered primary ballots in a room in the elections office in Redding, sealing the doors with locks, duct tape and red-lettered signs that read: “KEEP OUT PER ROV CLINT CURTIS.”
Curtis has told reporters that the ballots did not look, feel or smell right and that he had directed facilities workers to put a lock on the room and destroy the keys so that if anyone tries to gain access, they will need a warrant and bolt cutter.
Curtis said he, too, had asked the FBI to investigate.
The county fired back, saying in its statement that it wanted the FBI — as well as the California secretary of state and the attorney general — to investigate Curtis, whose short tenure as registrar has been fraught with controversy.
“Mr. Curtis was appointed to enhance transparency, strengthen election integrity, and restore trust in the democratic process,” the county wrote. “While some progress has been achieved, including the promotion of meaningful observation within the Elections Office, Mr. Curtis has failed significantly in other core responsibilities, undermining the very principles he was appointed to uphold.”
Curtis could not immediately be reached for comment. The FBI field office in Sacramento said it was unable to comment.
The new observation area at the Shasta County elections office.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Shasta County Sheriff Michael Johnson, in a statement Tuesday, said he was “aware of the controversy involving the ROV and ballots,” including claims on social media that he had been requested “to sequester alleged illegal or illegitimate ballots locked in the ROV’s office [and] addressing threats made to burn down the facility.”
Johnson said Curtis had agreed to provide a statement regarding a person who allegedly threatened the facility and that it was “an active investigation.”
“It is the Sheriff’s understanding that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is investigating the matter; therefore, Sheriff Johnson is urging members of the public to be patient and await the results of that investigation,” Johnson wrote. “At this point, launching a second investigation could complicate a process already in place.”
In an interview on Lindell TV, created by MAGA conspiracy theorist and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, Curtis said that the ballots “are being held at my office, which is kind of problematic because it’s a really old building and we have a lot of Antifa people,” including one who “once commented how easy it would be to burn that building down.”
The showdown in Shasta comes as Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — who in February used armed deputies to confiscate more than half a million ballots from last year’s special election for Proposition 50 to determine if they were fraudulently counted — is defending that seizure before the California Supreme Court this week.
The Supreme Court justices hammered Bianco, a Republican who came in fourth in this spring’s crowded California gubernatorial primary, in back-to-back hearings Monday. They appeared poised to order the ballots returned and to sharply limit the sheriff’s power to snatch election materials in the future.
Curtis had worked with the Riverside County citizens group whose fraud allegations sparked Bianco’s investigation, even traveling 600 miles south to speak on their behalf.
Potential hiring of election denier sets off alarm bells
Last week, Curtis drew national headlines by saying he wanted to hire election denier Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk who was released early from prison this summer amid a pressure campaign from President Trump.
Curtis, himself a longtime election denier, told The Times in an email that he wanted to hire Peters as a consultant to “to assist with supervision of the November election.”
Tina Peters speaks at the Colorado State Capitol in downtown Denver on April 5, 2022.
(David Zalubowski / Associated Press)
“None of our consultants have access to the voting systems, so she would be insulated from false claims,” he wrote.
Peters was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to nine years behind bars for breaching her county’s voting machines as part of a scheme to show that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, a claim that has been repeatedly debunked.
She was found guilty of helping an outside computer expert, an associate of Lindell, gain unauthorized access to Mesa County’s Dominion election equipment in 2021 and make copies of its hard drive before and after a software upgrade.
Shasta County officials told The Times that any prospective employee or consultant would have to go through the same hiring process as anyone else seeking employment with the county.
Talk of hiring Peters drew swift condemnation from California lawmakers, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said it was looking into whether a contract with Peters violated state law.
And on Aug. 19, Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, both Democrats, wrote in a letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber that they had “grave concern” about Curtis’ plan to hire Peters.
“We are concerned that this hiring decision in Shasta County has less to do with Ms. Peters’ qualifications, and more to do with the President’s obsession with interfering in the midterm elections,” they wrote.
The senators said that if the county hires her, Weber should “provide the maximum oversight possible to ensure that Ms. Peters does not improperly access ballots, voting systems, or sensitive information that could impact the rights and privacy of the over 100,000 registered voters in Shasta County.”
Controversy and censure
Curtis, a 68-year-old attorney, was appointed by the Shasta County Board of Supervisors in the spring of 2025 to fill the position vacated by two previous registrars who resigned for health reasons.
Curtis lived in Florida then, had no previous ties to the area and had never run an election. He got the position after advocating for hand-counting ballots and bragging in a public job interview that he had worked with Lindell.
He promptly eliminated nine of the vast, mostly rural county’s 13 ballot drop boxes. He accused his predecessors, without evidence, of stuffing ballots to sabotage conservative Republicans, and repeatedly called on federal authorities to raid the office and seize ballots from previous elections.
The Board of Supervisors censured Curtis on Aug. 11 for his treatment of staff.
A ballot drop box at the Shasta Lake Visitor Center in February.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
He responded by inviting reporters to the elections office in downtown Redding, where he shared security footage that, he said, showed employees breaking into a room in the building. He allowed reporters to take video of the footage.
The county condemned those actions in an Aug. 14 news release, saying he “has repeatedly been advised of appropriate procedures for addressing and investigating personnel matters and advised of the importance of maintaining confidentiality of such matters.”
Earlier this spring, the county released the findings of two personnel investigations into Curtis’ conduct that were spurred by concerns raised by elections employees and their union representatives.
An internal investigation and an external inquiry by Oppenheimer Investigations Group found that Curtis made phone calls related to his own campaign during county work hours and casually threatened to kill, spank, slap or “throat punch” staffers.
He threatened to have one employee dragged out of the office by their hair, according to an internal investigation report by Monica Fugitt, the county’s director of support services, who wrote that he had “demonstrated a clear pattern of unprofessional and abusive conduct toward staff.”
In its statement Tuesday, the county said he “has made and continues to make unsubstantiated accusations of illegal activities against employees without due process or an investigation.”
Buettell, the deputy chief executive, told The Times that the county does not have the power to terminate Curtis’ employment because he was appointed to fill a vacancy in an elected position.
“As soon as they assume that office, it’s as if they were elected,” Buettell said. To be removed from the office, he said, Curtis would have to be recalled by voters.
California and a coalition of other Democratic-led states sued again Wednesday to block the U.S. Postal Service from implementing new nationwide rules for mail ballots, arguing they usurp state authority over elections at President Trump’s behest, expose voter information unnecessarily and threaten chaos in the rapidly approaching November election.
The Postal Service formally issued a 95-page “final rule” on Friday asserting that it was amending its mailing standards for mail ballots in federal elections to comply with Trump’s March executive order.
Trump demanded the rule changes as part of a broader plan to combat what he alleges — without evidence — is widespread voter fraud in the U.S., including by noncitizens voting through the mail. Election experts say there is zero evidence of such problems existing at scale.
“This mail-in voting rule is an unlawful overreach that shows just how far President Trump will go to control elections, but as I’ve said before, this fight is far from over and we are confident that the facts and the law are on our side,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in a statement.
“Donald Trump does not run elections. States do. And his latest attack on democracy is proof of how weak he has become,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom. “California will continue to lead the way in defending democracy — using every tool at our disposal and every minute in our day. This perilous moment in history demands no less from us.”
The new postal rules require states to submit lists of eligible voters — including their names and addresses — to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital barcodes that would allow the Postal Service to identify and reject ballots that don’t match those lists.
The rules do not give the Postal Service authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists. However, the rules do acknowledge that the lists would provide state voter data to federal law enforcement for the first time, and would put those authorities in “a better position to identify any potential issues regarding compliance with federal law that may merit further investigation.”
Trump’s March executive order also required the Department of Homeland Security to use available federal data to compile its own state lists of eligible citizen voters, ostensibly to compare them with the mail voter lists provided by the states to the Postal Service, and identify and pursue any ineligible voters.
Wednesday’s lawsuit follows a Monday decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that found an earlier challenge from the states was premature, in part because it sought court relief to a rule-making process that required nothing of the states and before the Postal Service had moved to implement any changes.
“On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to fully close the door on the President’s attempt to interfere in our election administration. Today, we’re taking legal action to stop this unlawful rule in its tracks and ensure that voters can exercise their constitutional right to vote,” Bonta said.
The White House did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the latest lawsuit.
However, it has defended Trump’s executive order as overdue and badly needed to secure U.S. elections, and hailed the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing the rule-making to proceed as “a major win for the security of American elections.”
“These are commonsense measures that protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans are electing American leaders,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said.
The high court allowed the Postal Service to move forward with its work to comply with Trump’s order, but explicitly noted that it had reached no conclusions as to the legality of the pending rules.
Trump administration officials have said they are pursuing fraudulent voters, and have warned state election officials that they could face legal consequences personally if they don’t do everything in their power to prevent voter fraud, including by noncitizens.
Critics contend Trump’s executive order was devised as an end run around laws and a slew of recent court rulings blocking the Trump administration’s demands for state voter rolls — which states, including California, have refused to provide.
States have argued the administration’s demands are in bad faith, intended to bolster Trump’s baseless claims that U.S. elections are compromised rather than enhance election security.
In issuing its new rules, the Postal Service rejected a slate of concerns from critics who submitted comments on the proposed rules, including that the changes are being proposed far too close to the November election and will cost states and localities a huge amount of money to comply with.
It also rejected concerns that creating a single nationwide voter database — which has never existed before — will provide a massive new target for foreign adversaries and other bad actors interested in disrupting U.S. elections.
The Postal Service concluded that the cost to the states is outweighed by the benefits of the changes. It said it has sufficient staffing to implement the changes, and is ready to safeguard the database it builds using “multi-layered security controls.”
The lawsuit, brought by 24 state attorneys general and the governor of Pennsylvania, asks for immediate court intervention to halt the Postal Service changes from being implemented while the litigation continues.
“Let’s be clear: the U.S. Constitution gives states the power to regulate elections — not the President and not USPS,” Bonta said. “Ballots are an extension of our voices and we’re asking the court to ensure that every person has the right to make theirs heard.”
Independent voting rights groups have also sued to block the Postal Service rules from being implemented.
The Justice Department’s latest salvo in the battle over the future of the Kennedy Center claims President Trump’s “efforts and prestige provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal,” according to a Monday court filing, which also threatens a possible demolition of the historic building.
Without the president’s interventions, says the filing, “the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site.”
The filing by the administration’s lawyers came in response to the efforts of Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) to block the Kennedy Center board from adding the president’s name to the building. The 21-page document argues that the “prestige” afforded by such an addition is both necessary and warranted.
“The Board also underscores, and the undisputed evidence demonstrates, that without the prominent recognition of The Trump Administration, and President Trump’s efforts, the donors will not contribute, and the Center will continue to be in a financial and structural death spiral,” the filing reads. “The Trump Administration, and President Donald J. Trump, should, therefore, be given the respect and dignity of acknowledgement.”
The filing also suggests what could replace the center if the building were to be torn down: “a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River … has been proposed, by some, for many years.”
“Such a replacement will fail to adequately honor President John F. Kennedy, but would be simpler and more economical to build, operate, and maintain,” the administration’s lawyers wrote in the filing.
Such a tear down would face enormous legal pushback, but preservation groups are already on high alert after Trump’s swift demolition of the White House’s East Wing, which was completed before a challenge could be fully mounted.
The Kennedy Center has been mired in controversy since Trump fired its board and had himself appointed chairman in the early months of his second term. Artist and staff defections became common after that, but the question of the center’s survival came into stark relief in early February when Trump declared his intention to shutter the center for two years of renovations.
That decision came after the Kennedy Center board voted in December to add Trump’s name to the building. Both the closure and the renaming were halted in a May ruling by Federal District Court Judge Christopher R. Cooper who is still overseeing the legal back-and-forth over the center’s fate.
Cooper originally gave the administration until mid-June to remove Trump’s name from the building. The administration complied by placing a tarp over the sign, which has remained ever since.
The most recent court filing claiming the center’s survival rests with Trump is in stark contrast to a recent Washington Post investigation that found the center’s revenue plunged after Trump’s name was added to the building.
TORONTO — Canada struck back at the United States on Tuesday with retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion worth of American goods, including steel, dairy products, appliances and farm equipment, as the trade war between the once-friendly neighbors escalated sharply.
The tension threatened one of the world’s largest trading relationships. The new tariffs extended well beyond industrial goods, hitting everyday purchases such as seafood, cheese, clothing, cosmetics and toilet paper, with some facing duties as high as 50%.
“We did not choose this conflict, but when our economic integration is used as a weapon rather than the foundation for a win-win partnership, we need to stand up,” Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in French, calling the situation “an unprecedented challenge imposed on Canada.”
Canada’s retaliation came after the Trump administration imposed 50% tariffs over the weekend on Canadian goods following the collapse of trade negotiations. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney accused Washington of trying to subordinate Canada and said U.S. demands during the failed talks showed that Americans wanted to “destroy our major industries.”
President Trump intensified the confrontation Monday, telling Canadian leaders to “fall in line” or face consequences “far WORSE” than existing tariffs and threatening new 50% tariffs on Canadian vehicles, auto parts and steel.
Trump added another provocation Tuesday, saying the United States was giving “serious consideration” to renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” in a feud with Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Such a change would be reminiscent of the Republican president’s unilateral action last year by executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
The tariffs will take effect Sept. 8 at rates of 15%, 25% and 50%, with Canada matching the corresponding U.S. tariff rate on more than 700 products such as pulp and paper and electronics. The tariffs on many American products would double from 25% to 50%, with the largest share of the new measures affecting steel and aluminum.
Canadian officials said the goal is not to raise revenue but to protect Canadian companies and reduce U.S. imports.
U.S. steel imports, for example, have already fallen 30% since Canada imposed a 25% tariff, and the new 50% rate is expected to cut them further, Canadian officials said.
Goods facing 50% tariffs include some steel and aluminum products, furniture and clothing. Appliances, dairy products including cheese, fish and seafood, and certain steel and aluminum derivatives will face 25% tariffs. Existing Canadian countertariffs on U.S. autos will remain in place.
Canada also announced a support package for workers and businesses affected by the dispute worth $7.5 billion in Canadian dollars ($5.4 billion in U.S. dollars).
Canadian officials acknowledged the counter tariffs will raise costs for some businesses and consumers but said they expect the overall economic effects to be moderate.
They said the government has provided more than $30 billion Canadian dollars (US$21.7 billion) in tariff-related support since the beginning of 2025 — far more than it has collected in retaliatory duties — as it tries to cushion the blow from the trade fight.
Canada and the United States have deeply integrated supply chains across autos, energy, agriculture and manufacturing, making a prolonged trade fight potentially costly for businesses and workers on both sides of the border.
Businesses and consumers are caught in the middle, facing uncertainty about how much prices may increase.
Michael Howard II, owner of a furniture business in Warren, Michigan, outside Detroit, said the tariffs will hamper the “ability for us to put food on the table for our family” and affect “the ability for us to give back to our community.”
Howard and his wife started their business a decade ago. They make and sell everything from dining room tables to bookcases.
“To say that we don’t need Canada is just disingenuous,” he said. “It’s dishonest. And it’s just absolutely not truthful. We need our neighbor, but also they need us.”
Carney said Monday that Canada may need to move away from matching U.S. tariffs dollar for dollar and instead use more targeted retaliation aimed at protecting Canadian workers and businesses.
“An attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States” is “not something we’re going to accept,” Carney said.
Carney was even more blunt in French.
“We learned during the negotiations that the Americans want to destroy our major industries, including autos, steel and aluminum,” Carney said. “That was one of the main reasons we said no. It was a bad deal.”
On Monday, Carney said U.S. negotiators had raised the discoverability of French-language content on streaming platforms, along with French-language labeling rules, as trade irritants. He rejected the idea that those protections were negotiable, saying in French: “For the Americans, questions about the French language, Quebec culture, francophone culture and Canadian culture are irritants. Here in Quebec, here in Canada, they are rights.”
In a social media post early Tuesday, Trump wrote: “I would never interfere with Canadians speaking French! In fact, I have never even thought of doing such a stupid thing. This lie was made up by a weak and ineffective Prime Minister in an attempt to gain political support, which he has totally lost, from the people of Quebec. I love French Canadians!”
Gillies writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Seung Min Kim in Washington and Mike Householder in Warren, Mich., contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Secret Service has confirmed it is aware that Iranian state media has aired a video that appears to threaten the life of Barron Trump, President Trump’s youngest son.
“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of the video and investigates anything that can be perceived as a threat toward our protectees,” Secret Service spokesman Nate Herring said in a statement. “Out of concern for operational security, we do not discuss matters of protective intelligence.”
Since the U.S. assassination of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian media have on multiple occasions circulated content threatening the president and family members. The assassination came at the start of the war in Iran that Trump launched alongside Israel.
CNN previously reported that the Secret Service had knowledge of the Barron Trump threat.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for President Trump to seek new limits on the use of mail ballots, but they are not likely to take effect this year.
Acting by a 6-3 vote, the court’s conservatives granted an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers and set aside a judge’s order that blocked new federal regulations on states and their use of mail ballots.
It’s not clear, however, what happens now, since the midterm elections are less than three months away.
About 30% of the nation’s voters — and 80% of Californians — cast their ballots by mail in 2024. Trump, however, has long maintained the voting by mail leads to fraud, including voting by noncitizens.
The court’s order stressed the new regulations do not put new requirements on the states this year.
Trump’s executive order “is internal directive from the President to his subordinates mandating that certain agencies pursue certain policies. It neither requires nor forbids anything of anyone outside the Executive Branch,” the court said.
The Department of Homeland Security will compile state-by-state lists of citizens who are over 18 and eligible to vote.
“States are not required to use the Lists,” the court said, although they could lead to future prosecutions.
The most disputed provision could have authorized the Postal Service to restrict mail ballots to those who are on the Homeland Security lists, but that is a future proposal, not a rule that will take effect this year.
The unsigned order spoke for the six Republican appointees. The three liberals, all Democratic appointees, dissented into two separate opinions.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Trump’s order was unlawful and should have been struck down. “It needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections,” she said.
“Today’s decision does not address whether the President’s attempts to interfere with States’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Elena Kagan. “Nor does it suggest that the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the President’s directives. Instead, today’s decision merely postpones adjudication of those challenges.”
Trump issued his executive order on March 31 with the aim of “ensuring citizenship verification” in federal elections. California and 22 other Democratic-led states sued a few days later and said Trump sought to use the Postal Service to impose new restrictions on voting by mail. They also argued the Constitution gives states and Congress the power to regulate elections, not the president.
A federal judge in Boston and 1st Circuit Court agreed with the challengers and blocked Trump’s executive order from taking effect for the November elections.
The case on appeal was Trump vs. California because California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta was a leader of the Democratic state attorneys who sued.
WASHINGTON — The United States unveiled plans Monday for new sanctions against Iran that Trump administration officials said are designed to sever Tehran from the global financial system as the nearly six-month conflict between the two countries drags on.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who previewed the announcement last week as “economic D-Day,” described the measures as the opening of an all-out financial assault on the Iranian government and its trade partners — a group that includes China, India, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
“To those who enable Tehran, do not discount the cost of testing Washington’s resolve,” Bessent said at a news conference. “No nation should expect to enjoy the rewards of our system while helping those who seek to destroy it.”
Bessent said it was time for world leaders to “make a decision” between “America and Iran,” adding that President Trump has already been calling foreign leaders to make specific requests ahead of the new sanctions.
But when asked whom the president had been talking to, Bessent said he would not “name names.” He also said the secondary measure would not take effect immediately, arguing that the administration is trying to give “everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behavior.”
“Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?” Bessent said when a reporter pressed him on why the sanctions weren’t immediate. “We believe that it is important to level set and give people a cure period, but they should know that that will move very quickly and that we are serious.”
The pressure campaign will build on a naval blockade and other sanctions the Trump administration has already imposed in its effort to force Tehran into a deal that ends the war on U.S. terms.
Trump’s latest economic push against Iran revives a familiar strategy from presidents of both parties, using financial leverage to pressure Tehran toward more serious negotiations over its nuclear program. Sanctions helped bring Iran to the table before a 2015 nuclear deal brokered by President Obama, but the agreement was widely criticized as weak by Republicans. After Trump withdrew from the agreement in his first term, a new “maximum pressure” campaign failed to secure a new deal.
Trump’s decision to return to a strategy of economic coercion has signaled to Iran that the fighting phase of the war is probably over, for now, with the U.S. administration choosing a path “neither of war nor of peace,” Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, said this week.
Iranian officials, who had been anticipating the move, pushed back on Washington’s strategy even before Bessent began speaking Monday.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Iranian state media over the weekend that the sanctions amounted to a repackaged version of decades-old American pressure tactics that Tehran has already learned to withstand. Esmail Baghaei, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, warned of “grave consequences” for any countries cooperating with what he said was “illegal behavior” by the United States. And Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme Security Council, suggested that the economic pressure could shut down oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, a threat that would ripple through global energy markets.
That defiance underscores the central gamble of Washington’s strategy. Rather than aiming sanctions at Iran alone, Bessent’s plan to potentially squeeze major economies like China and India over their ties to Tehran could pose a diplomatic risk to the U.S.
The fallout could also reach beyond foreign diplomacy as a hit to global markets also risks compounding Trump’s troubles at home ahead of the midterm elections, as Americans grow unhappy with the economy and their support for the conflict in the Middle East plummets. The Iran sanctions also land as the administration wages a separate trade fight with Canada, adding uncertainty to global and domestic markets.
Whether Washington will be able to apply pressure on Iran’s trade partners remains an open question.
China alone shares nearly $10 billion in bilateral trade with Iran, and paid roughly $31.2 billion for unreported Iranian crude oil imports in 2025, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. That makes China the largest buyer of Iranian crude oil by a wide margin, accounting for more than 90% of Iran’s oil exports, according to the commission.
It is unclear whether Trump has spoken to China’s leader, Xi Jinping, about the sanctions. But the two leaders are set to meet in Washington next month, adding to the diplomatic dynamics of the moment.
Other trading partners have already made some moves.
Afra Al Hameli, a spokesperson for the Emirati Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a post on Aug. 18 on X that all trade, commercial exchanges and financial transactions with Iran have been halted until further notice. She added that the Emirates was “firmly committed to safeguarding the integrity of the international financial system.”
Bessent said Monday that he expects other countries will “take similar actions as we continue our engagement.”
In an opinion article written for the Financial Times last week, Bessent has cast the new measures as the “single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary.”
Bessent wrote that countries that “sever Iran’s remaining financial and commercial connectivity” will see their economies reinvigorated, and those who don’t will experience the end of their “lasting prosperity.”
“Any nation that serves as a financial artery of a withering regime should expect to share in its isolation,” he wrote. “To become a sanctuary for terror is to become, in the eyes of the United States, a global pariah.”
Ahead of the announcement Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran was “completely collapsing.”
Meanwhile, Iran’s central bank governor, Abdolnaser Hemmati, said the U.S. had already done all that it can against Iran and that the central bank had been shoring up its foreign currency reserves for months. Last week, he said Iran’s crude exports had “virtually stopped.”
“[The Americans] have done everything, so what else can they do?” he said in an interview with Tasnim News.
Despite his assurances that the central bank was working on preventing a devaluation of the Iranian rial, the currency has struggled to remain above a black market exchange rate of 2 million per dollar — a record low. The Central Bank rate stands at roughly 1.5 million rial to the dollar.
Though experts question the effectiveness of additional economic pressure on Tehran, Bessent’s threat to target Iran’s trading partners — especially the UAE, China and Turkey, who together comprise almost three-quarters of Iran’s foreign imports — will undoubtedly be painful for Iranians.
For example, Iran uses the UAE as a reexport hub and buffer, and receives vehicle spare parts from China, according to the Observatory for Economic Complexity. Iranian economic experts say both the agricultural and pharmaceutical sectors also rely on imports from countries such as Brazil and Turkey.
Ceballos reported from Washington and Bulos from Beirut.
Big-city mayors are giving poll workers panic buttons in case election skeptics question their work. County and state officials are gaming out responses to immigration raids near voting centers.
Lawyers for Democratic states and civic groups are pre-writing legal challenges to ballot seizures. And Democratic aides in Washington are preparing members of Congress to push back in the court of public opinion against any baseless claims of voter fraud in competitive districts.
Across California and the nation, civic organizations, voting rights advocates and Democratic leaders are preparing for a raft of potential actions by the Trump administration to interfere in, subvert or deny November’s midterm vote.
President Trump, an election denier for years, has without evidence described the U.S. election system as badly corrupted by fraud and dangerously vulnerable to both domestic and foreign interference.
He has said he would do “anything necessary” to have “honest elections,” and has tried since returning to office to unilaterally rewrite the rules for voting nationwide and wrest control of elections from the states through executive orders and other administrative measures.
Now, he has declined to rule out additional and unprecedented steps to force his will on the November election, including through emergency declarations and military deployments, and in February suggested Republicans should simply take over voting in blue states.
Election experts say there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in American elections, despite Trump’s allies searching for years.
A worker looks through ballots at a Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on Monday, June 8, 2026 in City of Industry, CA. Counting continues on ballots cast for the state’s primary election held June 2.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Much of the work to resist any Trump interference or power grab is being done quietly to avoid revealing too much of the strategy to the Trump administration or stoking unnecessary fear among voters.
It is designed to match what Trump’s opponents see as his three-part “interference playbook” — to “deceive” voters before the election, “disrupt” the vote itself and “deny” any unfavorable results after, said Justin Vail of Protect Democracy, a prominent litigant against the administration.
“The threats are real,” Vail said, “but the preparation is larger and more coordinated than ever before.”
The scenarios being planned for include the president deploying troops or immigration agents to polling sites to intimidate voters, fomenting unrest as a pretext to declare a national emergency, claiming fraud in the ballot counts of key congressional races or commanding the U.S. Postal Service to intervene in mail ballot delivery.
All told, the efforts amount to an unprecedented exercise to ensure the nation’s elections are safe from its own federal government.
They also reflect a deterioration in trust between states and counties overseeing elections, voting rights and pro-democracy advocates and a federal administration that has denigrated their work and tried to take control of voting away from states.
As public frustration with the economy mounts and Trump’s approval rating sinks, Democrats have become hopeful their party will retake power in Congress. Trump, meanwhile, has suggested that alleged election integrity problems will be the culprit if Republicans lose.
In California, 61% of voters recently identified federal inference in November as a “major concern,” according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times.
“We are taking this threat really seriously,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who helped form a Senate task force to prepare. “Politically, I’m very optimistic about the midterms. But I’m also deeply concerned with the president’s willingness to interfere with them — and the fact that, unlike even in 2020, where there were at least some people around him to try to constrain what he was doing, all those people are gone.”
President Donald Trump is seen on a screen as his supporters cheer during a rally on the National Mall on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Trump supporters gathered in the nation’s capital today to protest the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory over President Trump in the 2020 election.
(Samuel Corum / Getty Images)
Much of the work is legal preparation among Democratic state attorneys general and lawyers with leading civic organizations. Nothing is being ruled out after Trump’s supporters, at his goading, violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, following his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
Other preparation is political, as members of Congress, mayors and other elected officials position themselves to use their bully pulpits and legislative powers to punch back. And grassroots campaigns are also unfolding, as community leaders recruit voters to defend their local elections, including online.
“This is an all-hands-on-deck task,” said Skye Perryman, president of the nonpartisan legal organization Democracy Forward. “We’re anticipating scenarios we haven’t seen before in the United States.”
Trump, who has never accepted his 2020 loss to Biden despite scores of reviews and audits confirming the result, has consistently sought to undermine Americans’ trust in elections, telling the nation in a prime-time speech last month that the voting system was “broken” and claiming that the SAVE America Act, a strict Republican-proposed voter ID and citizenship measure, is necessary to fix it.
The White House said it wouldn’t respond to hypothetical questions about the midterm election, but said anyone who breaks voting laws will be held accountable. Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, blamed “extreme liberal Democrats” for undermining U.S. confidence in elections by blocking the SAVE America Act, which Trump has failed to push through Congress.
Bis claimed voters support such changes, and said “President Trump is absolutely right: We fix this now, or we lose our country.”
Causes for concern
The fears of interference are driven by Trump’s long record of election denial; his recent insistence that the midterms are vulnerable to both domestic fraud and foreign interference; his success installing loyalists and fellow election deniers in powerful positions throughout his government; and his current administration’s many attempts to usurp control over state voting processes, including through executive orders, lawsuits and legislation.
Sen. Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) (C) departs after a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and Republican senators at the U.S. Capitol on June 24, 2026 in Washington, DC. President Trump is visiting Capitol Hill to attend a closed-door luncheon with the Republican Senate Steering Committee to push his SAVE America Act, which would impose strict voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements in federal elections.
(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)
Some analysts saw Trump’s speech last month as laying the groundwork for greater intervention in November, and he raised further alarm this month by entertaining a suggestion from conservative radio host and election conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root that the president has “the right to declare a national security emergency” to unilaterally enforce new voting restrictions.
“Stranger things have happened,” Trump responded.
The White House has previously downplayed the likelihood of immigration agents being deployed to polling locations, but Trump has refused to rule it out. Legal experts say such a move would probably be swiftly blocked by courts, as would any unlawful deployment of military troops to polls.
Some voting experts said Trump’s efforts shouldn’t be blown out of proportion, particularly given federal courts’ dim view of them to date.
David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, noted Trump’s executive orders on elections were blocked, the Justice Department is 0 for 23 in cases demanding state voter rolls, and the primaries have run smoothly with high turnout — showing the president is “having very little effect.”
Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said it is “important that people be aware that there are threats, but to not let those threats be debilitating” or prevent them from voting.
Civic experts are urging regular voters to help debunk misinformation about voting within their communities. Democracy Forward has asked people to take one civic-minded action per day leading up to the election, while Indivisible, a progressive grassroots organization, is training volunteers nationwide to mount public push-back to any interference.
Coordination in Congress
A Senate aide who spoke with The Times on condition of anonymity said members of the Senate task force meet regularly to plan for as many potential forms of interference as possible — and that there is “no bottom” to what they’re considering.
Task force members are studying nuanced local election laws to understand how Congress members should respond to any federal interference in their home states, and working on “coordinated messaging” that all members can use in response to immigration raids or other broad interference, the aide said.
National Guard troops stand in the shade at The Park at LeDroit in Northwest on August 12, 2026 in Washington, DC. U.S. President Donald Trump is claiming credit for Washington’s dramatic crime decline a year after Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops to the nation’s Capitol, but the evidence shows crime was already falling before his federal intervention and the extent to which his policies accelerated that decline remains disputed.
(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
They are also reading “line by line” through recent legal decisions limiting National Guard deployments and other federal actions to identify any “loopholes” the administration might exploit.
They are paying particular attention to districts with competitive congressional races and where past problems have arisen. In California, they’ve studied the recent seizure of ballots by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and the criticism of slow ballot counting statewide, the aide said.
Schiff said the scenario he is “most concerned” about is one in which the president or his allies “seed” unrest in big cities to “give the president a pretext, Reichstag fire-like, to call out the military or invoke the Insurrection Act or call out ICE or Border Patrol.”
The Reichstag fire erupted in the German parliament four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor in 1933, and was used to justify a sweeping crackdown on political opponents and the suspension of civil liberties — ushering in Nazi rule.
Schiff said lawsuits will be a necessary but “very imperfect remedy” in such a scenario, and Democrats will need to develop a more robust response combining “litigation with mobilization” and legislative oversight.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which has election oversight, is helping to create an election observer program for hotly contested races, and has warned his colleagues that he will call a vote on any election-related emergency Trump declares, so that they must co-sign or resist it.
Separately in the House, staffers have been building their own “road map” for how to deal with a laundry list of “terrible things that bad-faith actors who seek to subvert the election could do,” with a principal focus on any ways they might disrupt the Jan. 3 swearing in of new Congress members, said a House aide involved in the preparations there, who spoke with The Times on the condition of anonymity.
The U.S. Capitol, on July 20, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Tom Brenner / Getty Images)
House staffers are also looking at how court imposed limits on Trump’s emergency powers might be “exploited, weaponized [or] ignored” by the administration, including the Justice Department.
A Justice Department spokesperson said the department is “working diligently” to fulfill the demands of Trump’s election-related executive order purporting to “strengthen the integrity of our elections,” which courts have blocked, and has “statutory authority to enforce our nation’s election laws, including through requesting state voter rolls,” which courts have also blocked.
Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the department’s civil rights division and has threatened local elections officials with legal consequences if they don’t comply with her voter roll demands, said her division “has a statutory mandate to enforce our federal voting rights laws, and ensuring the voting public’s confidence in the integrity of our elections is a top priority of this administration.”
State and local preparations
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said attorneys from his office and similar Democratic ones across the country are “hard at work planning, preparing, strategizing, researching, getting ready for all the different ways the Trump administration can break the law.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, right, holds a press conference at the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, May 14, 2026.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
That includes any attempts to seize ballots, deploy federal law enforcement or the military, or command the U.S. Postal Service to interfere with mail ballots, he said. “The right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow. It’s fundamental. We need to protect it.”
Dean Logan, registrar-recorder and county clerk for Los Angeles County, said he has a responsibility to ensure that “election operations remain secure and uninterrupted” no matter the threat, and is taking steps to do so, though he declined to address potential acts by Trump. Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said big cities are also preparing, including to prevent harassment of voters or election workers.
“Cities are where we host vote centers. It’s where the volunteers come from, where people go with their questions,” Richardson said. “We have to pay attention to national rhetoric. We have to be aware of anxiety that might — tensions that may — arise.”
GUATEMALA CITY — The United States has deported nearly 2,300 Mexicans to Guatemala this year and sent at least dozens more to Honduras, according to official data, a shift from the beginning of President Trump’s second term when such transfers were minimal.
Until now, Mexicans deported from the U.S. were sent almost exclusively back to their country by air and land. Only a handful arrived in other countries.
Some civil organizations believe this change reported in recent days is a way to increase pressure on Mexico, whose government has protested the deaths of 17 Mexicans in U.S. immigration custody or during enforcement operations. This also comes as Trump has expanded agreements with allied Latin American countries to conduct joint operations in the region against criminal groups and has increased U.S. security demands on Mexico.
Sent to Central America by plane and Mexico by bus
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo confirmed Wednesday night that, so far this year, 2,284 Mexicans deported from the U.S. have arrived in the country as part of a “transit stopover” before being taken to Mexico as part of an “arrangement” with the Mexican government, and without these individuals being under any refugee or asylum status.
“They are arriving on planes carrying Guatemalan returnees, and what we have done is bring them in transit so that, in coordination with Mexican immigration authorities, we can return them to Mexican territory within 24 hours of their arrival in the country,” he explained at a news conference.
The costs of these operations are covered by the Mexican government or, in some cases, by U.S. funding, he added.
Mexico’s National Migration Institute confirmed to the Associated Press in a brief message that Mexicans have been deported by the Trump administration to Guatemala and Honduras, primarily since April, and are then transported by bus to southern Mexico.
“The reason is that the United States wants to prevent them from crossing back into its territory,” the institute said. It did not provide figures or further details.
Asked about why the Mexicans were sent to Central America and not their home country, and for more details, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, said in an emailed statement that the administration “is utilizing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history, just as President Trump promised.”
“The Mexican government has expressed its opposition to this practice to U.S. authorities and has reiterated that every Mexican citizen has the right to enter the country,” the Mexican foreign ministry said in a statement Thursday. It added that Mexico is coordinating with the countries involved to ensure the safe return of Mexican citizens.
Third-country deportations raise concerns for Mexican migrants
Historically, Mexico has always been willing to receive its deported citizens.
Since Trump’s first term, it has also accepted deportees from third countries, although the details of immigration agreements with Washington have usually been opaque. In 2025, Mexico received about 12,000 deported foreigners, mostly Cubans and Venezuelans, according to figures provided by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. The government has not updated these figures since December although the practice has continued.
Authorities in Honduras also did not respond to requests for comment, but according to official documents from the country accessed by the Associated Press, 82 Mexicans deported from the U.S. arrived in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on two flights on Aug. 13 and Saturday. An additional 35 were scheduled to arrive Thursday.
An additional 165 Mexicans were deported to Honduras between May and mid-July, according to the website Third Country Deportation Watch, run by the nongovernmental organizations Human Rights First and Refugees International, which track U.S. deportation flights to third countries.
The website does not clarify the source of its nationality figures, but both organizations have expressed concern because these transfers could endanger migrants who possibly sought asylum in the U.S. or have few resources in an unknown country.
The deportation tactic “seems to be to put pressure on the Mexican government,” said Savitri Arvey of Human Rights First. “They really don’t want any Mexicans crossing the border.” Some of those deported arrived in Honduras on U.S. military flights, she added.
A recent change in the deportation pattern
At the beginning of his second term, with immigration control as one of his priorities, Trump reached agreements with Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama to act as “bridge” or destination countries for migrants from third countries expelled from U.S. territory. These agreements gradually expanded to more countries, including some African ones, most recently Liberia.
Until recently, only a handful of Mexicans had been expelled from the U.S. to countries other than Mexico.
Arévalo said Wednesday that Guatemala received 15 Mexicans in 2025. As of February 2026, Honduras had officially reported the arrival of six. Costa Rica has received 11 Mexicans since Trump’s return to the White House, and according to local immigration authorities, they remain in the country. Presumably, these individuals may have requested to not be returned to Mexico out of fear.
Immigration lawyers believe that the Trump administration is using deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum seekers to return to Mexico when the government cannot send them there because it would violate court orders from immigration judges that recognize the dangers. Organizations and politicians both inside and outside the U.S. have also questioned the use of force by U.S. immigration authorities.
Pérez, Verza and González write for the Associated Press. Verza reported from Mexico City and González from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Democrats on Thursday narrowed the list of potential host cities for their 2028 presidential convention to Boston, Denver and Philadelphia as their party looks ahead to a wide-open primary to succeed President Trump.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said in a statement the cities put forward “incredibly strong bids,” and he promised the convention would be an “inspiring celebration of our party’s future nominee.”
A final decision is expected to be made later this year by party leaders. Republicans have already chosen Houston for the site of their 2028 convention.
The Democratic convention, scheduled for Aug. 7-10, 2028, traditionally gives the party a chance to formally introduce its nominee to the country, rally the base and kick-start the most intense period of campaigning ahead of the general election.
The party didn’t specify why Atlanta and Chicago, which was the site of the 2024 convention, were eliminated. Officials visited all five cities in April and May, considering logistical and fundraising capacity among other factors.
The three finalists are liberal strongholds surrounded by the type of suburban areas that have become increasingly important to the party in recent elections. They also provide access to fundraising and key demographic and interest groups, like labor unions.
While Colorado and Massachusetts have gone Democratic in recent presidential elections, Pennsylvania has been among the biggest battlegrounds. Trump, a Republican, won Pennsylvania in 2024.
Philadelphia last hosted the convention in 2016, Denver in 2008 and Boston in 2004.
Before the presidential primary gets into gear, Democrats are looking at this year’s midterm elections as an opportunity to flip the narrowly divided Republican-led House and maybe take back control of the Senate.
Democrats face fundraising disadvantages compared with Republicans, along with financial debt, and Martin has confronted criticism over his stewardship of the party.
During a recent DNC meeting in Texas, Martin downplayed the critics and called for the party to unite as it tries to win the midterms and look ahead to 2028 and the end of Trump’s second term.
WASHINGTON — President Trump played White House tour guide on Wednesday, showing off the helipad he is building on the lawn before leaning over to autograph a piece of it and bragging about the ballroom he’s rushing to complete despite legal challenges.
Trump gushed for several uninterrupted minutes about granite being laid and said the chopper landing area would leave visiting foreign leaders “very impressed” — including Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is coming next month.
At times, he sounded almost like a construction manager, singing the praises of granite over asphalt in painstaking detail and noting for reporters he brought out for the show that the stone could withstand 35,000 pounds per square inch of pressure.
“That’s stone that, if you took a hammer and you started hammering right now — all day long — you wouldn’t see a mark on it, literally, that’s the kind of power it is,” Trump said, at times straining to be heard over the thrum of ongoing work behind him.
The president also revealed for the first time that he has replaced the walkway from the White House’s diplomatic entrance along with a portion of the asphalt driveway around the South Lawn with white granite.
“One thing I know how to do is build,” he said, asserting that asphalt is “not appropriate for a great house, or a great place like the White House.” He said that, had he instead merely used “really powerful concrete,” it would have supported ”just a tiny fraction of that in terms of strength.”
Trump relishes being the builder-in-chief
The president is called upon to fill many roles as president, but embraces none with as much zeal as managing various building projects to mold the White House and large swatches of Washington in his own image, seeming happiest recalling his days as a real estate developer.
Trump also likes to show off his handiwork and having the White House press pool on hand at all times gives him a readymade audience. Last year, he made an appearance on the roof of the briefing room to survey a future work site, and earlier this summer, he took reporters for a closer look at the ballroom construction site.
It suggests Trump remains focused on such projects, even as his war in Iran nears the six-month mark, his approval ratings sink with just 2 1/2 months to go before critical midterm elections, and as voters are increasingly worried about a weakening economy.
Trump drove home just how important the construction projects are to him, calling the work “very exciting.”
“This will be here long after we’re gone,” Trump said of the projects. “No matter what happens with the world.”
But whether it will endure after he leaves office remains to be seen. Trump once suggested that his refurbishing of the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool would last a century, only for the paint to fade and its liner to peel away in chunks just days after it was laid.
Trump again says his ballroom will have security value
The president has increasingly insisted that the $400 million ballroom will add security to the White House and include things like anti-drone technology. His administration even unsuccessfully sought $1 billion in congressional funding to make military improvements to the structure.
“This will be the greatest military complex slash ballroom anywhere in the world,” he said.
Trump also scoffed at court orders seeking to block its construction without congressional approval, saying work is continuing regardless and predicting that the Supreme Court will eventually side with him and allow the project to be completed.
The president found time to talk again about one of his favorite subjects of late — grass — and praised at length Scotts-Miracle Gro. The company’s former CEO is a Trump supporter, and it donated $1 million to repair the grass on the White House lawn after it was damaged by Trump’s UFC fight marking his 80th birthday in June and by the helipad construction.
At one point on Wednesday, Trump signed the back of one of the granite stones that was marked “Donald Trump 45-47 president” for the occasion. Its front is shaped like an eagle and will be laid into the helipad’s presidential seal once work is completed.
“I thought this would be a little different kind of a news conference,” the president said. “We were going to sign this privately and just put it in. I said, ‘This is something I think the press should see,’ and I hope you liked it.”
Trump had some of the construction workers sign the granite, too, and joked about leaving it upside-down so that his signature would be visible for future generations.
“Nice job, fellas,” he told the workers. “Does anybody know the word media?”
Trump also confirmed Wednesday that he’d delayed ongoing work on the helipad to ensure the project could be regraded to lay flatter.
He said that the granite used “has a million-year life” and predicted that it “will never break. It will never leak. It will never do anything” — which would mark a departure from the problem-plagued Reflecting Pool project.
“Nature is stronger than what the human can produce,” Trump said of the granite. “It’s really pretty amazing.”
Weissert and Binkley write for the Associated Press. AP writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.
California voters are more inclined to back progressives running for office than mainstream Democrats, a new poll found, though a marked generational divide separates those who favor each camp.
Registered Democratic voters over 65 were overwhelmingly more inclined to support a candidate identified as a mainstream Democrat, whereas more voters under 40 favored those more aligned with the party’s left wing, including democratic socialists.
The results, from a new poll conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times, illustrate the highly visible midterm-season debates unfolding within the Democratic Party over age, ideology and the party’s future.
“There’s particular frustration among the younger voting population,” said IGS poll director Mark DiCamillo. “Their views of mainstream Democrats are not that positive, and that’s a long-term problem, I think, for the Democratic Party.”
The poll asked voters about how they perceived candidates described as a progressive, democratic socialist, mainstream Democrat, Republican and MAGA supporter. Voters were asked whether each label made them more inclined or less inclined to back a given candidate, or if they believed there was not much difference or had no opinion.
Among all California voters, a candidate described as “progressive” drew the broadest support — besting both mainstream Democrats and Republicans, as well as democratic socialists and members of President Trump’s MAGA movement. At 40%, support for progressive candidates registered just two percentage points above support for democratic socialists and within the poll’s margin of error, though fewer people felt negatively toward progressives than democratic socialists.
Among registered Democrats, the survey found 60% said they would be inclined to support a candidate identified as progressive; 58% felt the same when asked about a democratic socialist and 48% about a mainstream party member.
The polling offers a glimpse into how California voters feel about democratic socialism, the brand of liberal politics popularized by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D).
The views among all California voters were split, with 38% saying they would be more inclined to support a candidate labeled as a democratic socialist and 38% saying they would be less inclined. That makes the concept both more polarizing and more popular than the idea of a mainstream Democrat.
“To us, it’s honestly an incredibly good thing to hear that by and large, California voters see democratic socialism as a preferable option,” said Misha Kesselman, who leads membership coordination at the California Democratic Socialists of America.
“Being only two percent behind a progressive Democrat is the perfect place for us to be and for our organization to organize from,” Kesselman added. “I don’t see this as our ceiling; this is a great floor for us to start running from.”
Notably, more voters, 36%, said they were less inclined to support a mainstream Democrat than those who said they’d be more inclined, 29%. Twenty-seven percent showed indifference, however, possibly demonstrating that most voters would be fine supporting them in a general election, said Christian Grose, a political science professor at the University of Southern California.
The results could reflect a shift in labeling as much as in politics, Grose said, noting that most California Democrats now refer to themselves as progressive, a term that was not as popular 20 years ago, regardless of policy differences.
“Progressive Democrat in California has really in some ways become a mainstream Democrat, and then ‘mainstream’ is often associated with Washington,” Grose said, referring to the more moderate party establishment.
As the two parties compete for control of Congress in November’s midterm elections, the rise of democratic socialist ideas within the Democratic party has set off a debate among left-leaning leaders and voters about how best to counter Trump’s cultural dominance, appeal to disillusioned voters and create a winning presidential strategy for 2028.
The split does not fully fall along generational lines, but it often overlaps with the growing push by some younger candidates to oust veteran lawmakers, a debate over experience and seniority versus fresh blood.
Republicans have used the phenomenon as a key line of attack, as Trump and others have labeled Democrats as communists and extremists. In recent weeks, Trump argued that Democrats want to “destroy the traditional American way of life.”
“Sadly, young people have not been taught the truth about socialism and communism. It’s a dangerous road, and this is one of our efforts to make sure people know that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Saturday on Fox News, after launching a website last week dedicated to the idea that socialism and communism have failed.
Meanwhile, many establishment Democrats fear that a far-left candidate would be unable to win a general presidential election and worry a swing in that direction could jeopardize the party’s chances in 2028. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he does not support the Democratic Socialists of America agenda, further underscoring internal divisions.
Democratic socialism generally centers on an anti-capitalist agenda, including higher taxes for the wealthy and universal healthcare. Many progressive candidates support policy ideas backed by socialists but do not identify themselves as such.
A handful of high-profile progressive primary wins against Democrats backed by the establishment has supercharged the conversation in recent weeks, including this month in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, where progressive Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated a moderate opponent.
But progressives have lost elsewhere, including in Wisconsin, where democratic socialist Francesca Hong last week was defeated in the gubernatorial primary by David Crowley, the more moderate Milwaukee County executive.
California was not host to that type of showdown this year, and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, though progressive by national standards, was viewed by many left-leaning voters as a safer or more moderate primary choice. He faces Republican Steve Hilton in November.
In Los Angeles, however, the mayor’s race between incumbent Democrat Karen Bass and democratic socialist Nithya Raman is set to draw national attention. A handful of progressive candidates also advanced in House races, including Randy Villegas, who is challenging Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford); Mai Vang, challenging Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento); and Angela Gonzales-Torres, challenging Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles). Vang identifies as a democratic socialist.
The new polling also showed a generational divide among Republican voters: A higher share of older voters than younger said they would be more inclined to back a MAGA supporter, though all ages favored the Republican category over MAGA.
Seventy percent of GOP voters said a Republican label would make them more inclined to support a candidate, and 46% said the same of a MAGA label. Sixteen percent said they would be less inclined to vote for a candidate with a MAGA label and 29% said it didn’t make much difference.
Among California voters who eschew both the Democratic and Republican parties, either registered as no party preference or with other parties, a progressive candidate drew the most favorable reaction, but they also showed more support for a democratic socialist than a mainstream Democrat.
Those voters were not positively inclined toward right-leaning candidates, with 15% responding favorably to Republicans and 7% to MAGA.
Whether voters’ shifting preferences for the progressive or democratic socialist labels translate into any different policy action from those who are elected is an open question, Grose said.
“The labels are changing things… but it’s not clear yet if it’s changing the actual ideology of voters and elected officials,” Grose said. “What the elected officials do in office who are Democrats, that remains to be seen.”
The Berkeley IGS/Times poll findings are based on an online survey in English and Spanish of 4,207 California registered voters from Aug. 3-9. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of about 2.5 percentage points in either direction in the likely voter sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.
Democrat Xavier Becerra pledged on Tuesday to participate in more than one debate against Steve Hilton, his GOP rival in the California governor’s race.
“We will have debates, and between now and Nov. 3, we will continue to go out there and meet with folks to make sure they have an opportunity to see the candidates,” Becerra told reporters after greeting business owners, community leaders and voters in a walking tour of Little Tokyo. “Voters need to have good information. We’ll make sure they have it, and there will be debates.”
Xavier Becerra, center, who is running for governor of California, talks with Roy Kuroyawagi, owner of Japangeles in Little Tokyo on Tuesday.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Hilton has been needling Becerra for not being as publicly visible on the campaign trail since the two men advanced in the June primary. The British-born conservative strategist and political commentator raises chickens at his Silicon Valley home and has said he named one of them “Xavier.”
“Xavier Becerra wants to be governor while dodging questions from the press and a debate with me,” Hilton posted on the social media platform X earlier this month.”What else do you expect from a lazy, arrogant, entitled ‘empty suit’ 36-year machine politician.”
Becerra held a 55% to 37% lead over Hilton in a UC Berkeley/L.A. Times poll released Thursday. The margin is unsurprising given the edge that Democrats have in voter registration over Republicans in a state that last elected GOP politicians to statewide office in 2006.
“Well, if I were trying to coast, I’d be out on the coast right now instead of here with you all and making a nice visit to Little Tokyo,” he said outside of an Asian-fusion gastropub on an oppressively hot, muggy afternoon. “Listen, this is all about making sure voters have a choice. We’ll get out there and make sure we’re front and center with them … even if it’s a little hot.”
Becerra spoke with reporters after visiting Little Tokyo businesses and chatting with locals and visitors.
When a group of young women pledged to vote for him in the gubernatorial race, Becerra urged them to vote against Proposition 39, a ballot measure that would require Californians to provide government-issued identification when voting and election officials to verify registered voters are U.S. citizens.
“Please vote against that. That would deter people from voting,” Becerra said, making a thumbs-down gesture. “I’m not joking.”
Becerra later told reporters that the proposition, which likely California voters oppose, according to polls, is a direct attack on the state’s elections by President Trump.
“The president has insisted on trying to disrupt elections. When he can’t do it in Washington, D.C., he’s trying to do it in our state directly,” Becerra said. “Prop. 39 is President Trump’s effort to try to interfere in our election. We have to resist it. We have to oppose it. And I hope people know that Prop. 39 is just a prop for Donald Trump. And anyone who believes that we have to see more people vote, we have to see robust elections, should be voting against Prop. 39.”
Becerra also enjoyed a little shopping.
At Japangeles, he purchased a ball cap with “L.A.” superimposed over Japanese characters for “Nihon,” what the Japanese call their own country; at Cafe Dulce, he picked up a fruit tart; and at a 123-year-old Japanese confectionery, he bought sweet mango mochi wrapped in a thin, fluffy pancake.
His visit Tuesday came during the community’s annual Nisei Week festival, which celebrates Japanese American culture and history. Becerra represented the area during his time in Congress. He ran into several people he had known over his long political career, including former Los Angeles City Councilmember Jan Perry, and Brian Kito, the third-generation owner of the Fugetsu-Do Bakery.
Kito showed Becerra a picture of the then-congressman swearing him in as a neighborhood council president more than a decade ago.
“It was a nice reunion,” Kito said. “He’s a true gentleman. … I’m hoping nothing but success for him.”
WASHINGTON — The only remaining U.S. aircraft carrier patrolling the Pacific departed Asia through Singapore last week en route to the Middle East, marking the latest step in a steady drawdown of American military assets across the region.
An armada of naval forces, alongside a constellation of air-defense and missile capabilities, has been removed from a theater the Trump administration said just last year would be the battleground of the coming century.
And now, President Trump’s surprise decision this week to curtail military exercises with South Korea has further fueled anxiety across Asia, where Washington’s closest allies fear violent consequences from a vacuum of American power.
Trump said his decision to withdraw U.S. participation from the annual military drills was de-escalatory, claiming they would needlessly provoke North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, with whom he has recently been in touch.
But he also blamed Seoul for its decision to not take part in his war with Iran.
“I said, ‘Would you like to give us a little hand?’ ” Trump told reporters. “He said, ‘No thanks,’ and I said, ‘Wait a minute — we have 39,000 soldiers over there, guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next-door neighbor, and you’re not going to help us.’ ”
“That’s strange,” Trump added. “We can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us.”
South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, responded to Trump’s last-minute decision to pull back from the drills with a degree of alarm.
“From now on, we must prepare measures with even the worst-case scenario in mind,” Lee said, “on the premise that the Middle East situation may be prolonged.”
It was the latest jolt to South Korea’s confidence in an alliance that has formed a cornerstone of Washington’s defense strategy in Asia since the end of World War II.
The Pentagon has kept its THAAD missile-defense batteries on the Korean peninsula. But in March, it moved some of the system’s radars and forward-positioned interceptors toward the Middle East, as the Iran war strained U.S. missile-defense stocks. Analysts estimate the conflict has consumed more than 40% of the Pentagon’s THAAD interceptor inventory.
The diversion was accompanied by the redeployment of dozens of combat and dry-cargo ships, mine countermeasure vessels, and guided-missile destroyers out of the region, ahead of the departure of the strike group centered on the nuclear-powered USS George Washington, which is now on its way to the Middle East.
Other U.S. allies in the region reacted swiftly to Trump’s pullback from the Korean exercises.
The Australian government said it remained “deeply concerned” with North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, while Japan’s defense minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, warned of historic stakes.
“As Japan faces the most severe and complicated security environment in the post-war era, the cooperation among Japan, the United States and South Korea is critical to the peace and stability of the region,” Koizumi said in a statement.
And Beijing has been quick to capitalize on the vacuum.
China’s Foreign Ministry mocked that the United States “has become addicted to quitting groups and scrapping treaties,” while its military began installing permanent infrastructure in Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone within days of the George Washington’s departure.
“The current international landscape has once again proven that only by ensuring the effective operation of the multilateral system can we prevent the spread of the law of the jungle,” said Mao Ning, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, “and keep the international order from being dominated by the logic that ‘might makes right and force represents justice.’”
Speaking with journalists in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said that his communication with Kim was “making things safer” in the region.
He did not offer details on their conversations.
“Kim Jong Un has always treated me with great respect,” Trump said, confirming that the North Korean leader had replied to his overtures.
WASHINGTON — Federal regulators have given preliminary approval for a cryptocurrency venture tied to President Trump and his family to operate a digital-asset bank, a decision that has drawn immediate condemnation from Senate Democrats who are now pushing legislation to bar such an action.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and nine other Senate Democrats introduced a bill Saturday that would bar the president, the vice president, their immediate family members and other senior government officials from owning or controlling banks.
The measure was proposed a day after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — which is part of the Trump administration — granted conditional approval for World Liberty Trust Co. to become a trust bank. The firm was founded in 2024 by two of Trump’s sons and the sons of Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East.
If the firm gets final approval, it would not act like a conventional bank and take deposits or make loans. Instead, the chartered bank would be able to issue and manage cryptocurrencies and digital assets. But the move would grant new financial powers to the Trump family’s crypto business, which has already shown to be profitable for the president in his first year back in the White House.
Trump’s financial disclosures show the president has earned more than $1.2 billion from crypto-related projects as he has pushed to deregulate the digital-asset industry. He hauled in more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products and is a significant owner of the firm through an entity called DT Marks DEFI LLC, which holds about a 38% stake.
Aside from World Liberty Financial, Trump last year took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his likeness.
Trump’s crypto windfall has lately fueled Democrats’ argument that the president stands to personally gain from the same regulatory apparatus he oversees, and has led to acrimonious negotiations in Capitol Hill over how to regulate the industry.
The White House said Tuesday “there are no conflicts of interest.” But the recent decision by federal regulators in relation to World Liberty Financial is now giving more ammunition to Democrats, who have pushed for more ethical guardrails to crack down on the Trump family’s crypto ventures.
“This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen — and Congress cannot allow it to stand,” Warren said in a statement. “The Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act will close the door on this kind of unprecedented corruption.”
Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) said the decision to allow a Trump-linked crypto firm to charter its own bank is “injecting risk into our financial system and fueling the Trump family’s business endeavors.”
“It is Congress’ responsibility and duty now to rein in this corruption and ensure that bank charters, deposit insurance, and other banking licenses cannot be handed out to entities influenced or controlled by any President’s family,” Alsobrooks said in a statement.
David Wachsman, a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial, disputed the criticism, saying the preliminary approval is “great news for consumer and investor protection advocates and for the American financial services industry.”
“Critics are missing the point: World Liberty Financial is running towards regulation and continuous oversight, not away from it,” Wachsman said in a statement. “World Liberty Trust Company’s national charter will ensure robust and permanent regulatory supervision from the OCC, a federal banking regulator, that will outlast the Trump administration.”
Wachsman said World Liberty will be required to provide weekly reports about its operations that will be subject to independent reviews. He added that federal banking laws such as anti-money-laundering rules and consumer protection statutes will be “directly applicable and enforceable.”
The White House did not comment directly about the administration’s involvement with the World Liberty application to charter a bank. But in a statement, the White House disputed claims that the president’s decisions in office have financially benefited him and his allies.
“All of President Trump’s investment holdings are in held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement. “The President only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”
Kelly added: “There are no conflicts of interest.”
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court was urged Tuesday to block construction of President Trump’s huge new ballroom until Congress weighs in. A decision, perhaps only temporary, is likely by Friday.
Acting on his own, Trump had the East Wing of the White House torn down in October and ordered work to start on a massive new building that would dwarf the old executive mansion and seat 1,000 guests for dinner.
But a federal judge in Washington ruled that Trump had overstepped his authority, and the U.S. Court of Appeals agreed in a 2-1 ruling on Aug. 7.
Those judges would stop the above-ground construction but put their decision on hold until this Friday. This gave the administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation had sued, arguing that the president has no authority to erect new buildings on government property.
Federal law protects “historic buildings, parks, and places, including perhaps the most revered site in our nation: the White House and President’s Park,” the group told the court Tuesday. It is “more than the President’s residence” and “is owned by American people.”
The historic trust said Trump is moving quickly so as to bypass the law.
“Rather than obtain permission from Congress,” Trump and his appointees “have instead decided to try to outrun judicial review,” it said.
Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers have taken to describing the ballroom as a national security project.
Last week, Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer told the justices they should throw out the “extraordinary and unlawful injunction that will halt the ongoing construction of the integrated military complex” because “a totally secure ballroom space … is vitally required by national security.”
He also contended it is too late for judges to intervene.
“Today, the project is 65% complete in its entirety, and moving quickly toward total completion. A concrete-and-steel superstructure stretches five stories deep and 70 feet high, and occupies nearly 50,000 square feet, with construction on and above the second-story level above ground.”
While the plans have changed, the “work has followed a single coherent design,” he wrote. “By now, it has passed the point where major changes to [that] design are feasible.”
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee who ruled on the lawsuits, agreed the White House may proceed with the underground work to create a safe and secure location for the president, his family and White House employees.
The solicitor general said a new and secure ballroom is also crucial for social gatherings and foreign dignitaries.
He said that if Leon’s ruling is “allowed to go into effect, the injunction would wrongfully install a single district judge as sole arbiter of what further construction is strictly necessary to protect the safety of the President, his family, staff members, and visitors to the White House, including foreign dignitaries, and presidents and prime ministers of other countries.”
Sauer also argued the lawsuit should be thrown out on the grounds that National Trust for Historic Preservation and its members have no standing to sue because they have not suffered a particular injury.
The D.C. Circuit judges split on that issue. Judges Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, and Bradley Garcia, a Biden appointee, ruled the plaintiffs had standing to sue. Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, dissented and said the members of the historic trust did not have standing.
WASHINGTON — A federal district judge said Tuesday that paint tests on a 19th-century historic landmark building next to the White House can go ahead, advancing President Trump’s plans to add a new coat of white paint to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, for now.
Trump has suggested the massive building be painted as part of his push to remake and beautify the nation’s capital. Planners said the paint job would cost at least $7.5 million.
The proposal to paint the building has alarmed preservationists, architects, historians and others who argue that granite is not meant to be painted and that paint would trap moisture and degrade the stone.
U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich said plaintiffs in an ongoing case had not shown that minimal tests planned for the historic building would cause irreparable harm if those tests go ahead.
The plaintiffs, which include cultural preservationist groups, had sought a restraining order and a temporary injunction to stop the Trump administration from conducting tests and other preparatory work.
At issue was whether that work would get ahead of a larger question before the court over whether the General Services Administration could delegate its authority for such a project to the Executive Office.
“The plaintiffs’ motion rises and falls on irreparable harm,” Friedrich said from the bench. The test areas would include about 8 square feet of the building’s massive exterior and several panels that can’t be seen by the public, she said.
Friedrich said that while she was allowing that test to move ahead, she would not hesitate to step in and rule if the administration moved beyond the limited testing. She asked the parties to provide a status report by next Tuesday and ordered regular reports following that.
Gregory Werkheiser, a lawyer with Cultural Heritage Partners and one of the plaintiffs, said that while he and others challenging the painting plan were disappointed, “the reasons we brought this case are untouched by today’s decision.”
The larger issue, he said, is whether “the president has taken power illegally from the GSA and put it in his office in terms of this project and the implications of that. If that holds true for historic properties around the country, that could be devastating.”
The Disney-owned network said the agency’s action is an attempt to stifle free speech.
ABC went to court Tuesday in an attempt to halt the Federal Communications Commission’s early review of its TV licenses, claiming the move is an attack on the broadcast outlet’s right to free speech.
The Disney-owned network asked a U.S. District Court to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the FCC’s action. The agency says it is investigating ABC stations over whether the company’s diversity and inclusion policies are in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws.
But the suit alleges that the FCC is retaliating against ABC due to President Trump’s dissatisfaction with the network’s coverage of his administration. Trump has frequently threatened to have TV station licenses pulled when he believes he is treated unfairly on news and talk programs.
In late December, Trump posted on X that “If Network NEWSCASTS, and their Late Night Shows are almost 100% negative to President Donald J. Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party, shouldn’t their very valuable Broadcast Licenses be terminated? I say YES!”
The suit claims the FCC “has not been shy about openly coercing ABC into changing its programming,” citing comments made last fall by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr about late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s remarks about the president.
“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.”
Shortly after Carr made those remarks, two large TV station ownership groups had their ABC affiliates pull Kimmel off the air for a week after conservative blowback over the host’s comments regarding the shooting death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
The licenses for eight ABC-owned TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031. The suit said the current review is “extraordinarily early” and “that timing underscores the Commission’s true purpose: coercing and retaliating against a network that refuses to bow to the Administration’s demands.”
Trump recently called for ABC’s TV licenses to be revoked after the network did not carry his July 16 prime-time Oval Office address on election fraud. Carr said the network’s decision would be taken under consideration in the license review process.
Broadcast outlets have long had the option to determine whether to carry a presidential address. ABC presented Trump’s speech on its news streaming platform, as did NBC.
Carr has also questioned whether “The View” should be classified as a news program, which is exempt from the equal-time rule for political candidates who appear as guests.
ABC has asked the FCC to rule on the status of “The View,” which received an exemption from the rarely enforced equal time provision in 2002.
ABC has maintained that “The View” books politicians based on newsworthiness and not partisanship.
LONDON — British Prime Minister Andy Burnham exchanged messages with an impostor posing as President Trump’s chief of staff, according to reports published Monday.
A spokesperson for Burnham declined to comment, saying it was policy not to discuss “national security matters.”
Politico cited four unnamed officials in first reporting that Burnham thought he was messaging with Susie Wiles before he became suspicious and cut off communications.
Last year, the U.S. government investigated a series of messages that elected officials, business executives and other prominent figures in the U.S. received messages from someone posing as Wiles.
Soon after those incidents, the State Department warned U.S. diplomats of attempts to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio and possibly other officials using artificial intelligence. The warning followed the discovery that an impostor posing as Rubio had attempted to reach out to at least three foreign ministers, a U.S. senator and a governor.
The FBI had also warned of “malicious actors” misusing AI to impersonate senior U.S. government officials.
Burnham, who became prime minister less than a month ago, has tried to forge good ties with the White House. Trump initially warmed to Burnham’s predecessor, Keir Starmer, before souring on him.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday again rebuffed President Trump’s push to throw out a jury’s $5 million finding that he sexually abused the writer E. Jean Carroll at a New York City department store in the mid-1990s and later defamed her.
The Republican president’s lawyers had asked the justices to reconsider their refusal to hear his appeal. The court denied Trump’s petition along with several others.
It’s unusual — although not unheard of — for the court to grant such requests. Trump paid the judgment shortly after the court declined to take up his appeal in June.
Trump and the Justice Department are also asking the high court to toss out a second Carroll verdict totaling $83 million. They argue he’s immune from being sued over comments he made about her in 2019, when he was president. The court has not yet acted on that appeal.
Carroll is a longtime advice columnist and former TV talk show host. She testified at a 2023 trial that Trump turned a friendly 1990s encounter into a violent attack in the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury retailer across the street from Trump Tower in Manhattan. The jury found Trump liable for defaming Carroll when he denied her allegation in 2022.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.
Stephen A. Smith received the equivalent of a failing grade Saturday from the National Assn. of Black Journalists, which blasted his consistent takedowns of Black female politicians.
Predictably, the outspoken sports pundit, who also weighs in with sharp takes on politics and popular culture, is not pleased with the assessment and is planning a fiery response: “Now y’all started something.”
The organization at its annual convention on Saturday presented the ESPN “First Take” host with its annual “Thumbs Down” award, saying he has “established a recurring public pattern of disparaging commentary directed at prominent Black women across politics, sports and media.”
The statement continued, “Such commentary reinforces harmful narratives, undermines the fair and respectful representation of Black women in public discourse and stands in direct conflict with NABJ’s longstanding commitment to accurate, responsible and inclusive portrayals of Black communities.”
The ESPN “First Take” commentator lashed back in an X post: “This is the epitome of Christmas arriving early. The @NABJ wants to call folks out, fine! You had your turn, now mine is coming. And make no mistake…..,I’m coming. Let’s see who REALLY deserves a Thumbs Down award when it comes to the Black Community, after I say my peace! Remember …you asked for it. I’ve shut my mouth for years. Now y’all started something.”
The clash signifies a significant break in the relationship between Smith and the NABJ, which hosted Smith and live broadcasts of his show at its 2024 and 2025 conventions.
The “Thumbs Down” dishonor is the latest backlash against Smith from Black media figures and others.
He accused Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas last September of using “street verbiage” in her frequent criticisms of President Trump. Comedian Kevin Hart quipped during a recent Comedy Central roast that Smith belonged on the “Mt. Rushmore of racism” alongside Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan.
He also has clashed with former MS Now anchor Joy Reid and is engaged in a longstanding feud with NBA star LeBron James.
Although he and Trump have called each other names, he also praised the president, and said last week that Trump-backed Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds might prompt him to change his political affiliation from Democrat to Republican.
Smith has hinted in past months that he is considering a presidential run.
Others who received a “Thumbs Down” from the NABJ included Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission; DuJuan McCoy, Circle City Broadcasting president and chief executive; CBS; and the Washington Post.
