MINNEAPOLIS — A man who sprayed vinegar at Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar at a town hall meeting in Minneapolis pleaded guilty to assault Thursday in federal court after reaching a deal with prosecutors.
Anthony Kazmierczak, 55, is awaiting sentencing.
Kazmierczak, dressed in bright orange jail clothing, gave only a fragmentary explanation Thursday of the Jan. 27 assault, which came as the city was already on edge after the fatal shootings of two people by federal agents during a White House crackdown that brought thousands of immigration officers to Minnesota.
After being asked what he remembered of the assault, he told U.S. District Judge Joan N. Ericksen: “It’s fuzzy.”
Kazmierczak, who was in the audience during Omar’s January town hall, leaped up when the representative called for the ouster of then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. He sprayed liquid from a syringe as court documents say he shouted that Noem would not resign and that Omar was “splitting Minnesota apart.”
Security officers tackled Kazmierczak, who told them the liquid was vinegar.
“I didn’t want anybody to think she was in danger,” he said Thursday.
Omar, who was not injured, continued with the town hall after the arrest.
Authorities later determined he’d sprayed her with a mixture of water and apple cider vinegar. He was charged with assaulting a U.S. officer.
Court documents say Kazmierczak, a critic of Omar who has made online posts supportive of President Trump, told a close associate several years ago that “somebody should kill” her.
Omar, a refugee from Somalia, has long been a target of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. After she was elected seven years ago, Trump said she should “go back” to her home country. He has described her as “garbage” and said she should be investigated.
Trump has also accused Omar of staging the attack, telling ABC News, “She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.”
On Thursday, Kazmierczak told Ericksen that he was being treated for Parkinson’s disease, and that he’d been diagnosed with ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and a form of post-traumatic stress.
After his arrest, his then-attorney said that he did not have access to the medications he needed for Parkinson’s and other serious conditions.
Minnesota court records show that Kazmierczak, who was convicted of felony auto theft in 1989, has been arrested multiple times for driving under the influence and has had numerous traffic citations. There are also indications he has had significant financial problems, including two bankruptcy filings.
In social media posts, Kazmierczak had criticized former President Biden and referred to Democrats as “angry and liars.” Trump wants the U.S. to be “stronger and more prosperous,” he wrote.
Threats against members of Congress have increased in recent years, peaking in 2021 following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters before dipping slightly, only to climb again, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Capitol Police.
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican raised the “need to work tirelessly in favor of peace” in talks Thursday with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who came to Rome on a fence-mending visit after President Trump’s criticisms of Pope Leo XIV over the Iran war.
Both the Vatican and the U.S. State Department stressed that Rubio’s meetings with Leo and the Vatican’s top diplomat underscored strong bilateral ties. Those relations, though, have been strained over Trump’s repeated broadsides about Leo’s calls for peace and dialogue to end the U.S.-Israeli war.
Rubio, a practicing Catholic, has often been called on to tone down or explain Trump’s harsh rhetoric. He had an audience first with Leo, which was complicated at the last minute by Trump’s latest criticism of the Chicago-born pope. During a 2½-hour visit, Rubio then met with the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who on the eve of his visit had strongly defended Leo and criticized Trump’s attacks.
“Attacking him like that or criticizing what he does seems a bit strange to me, to say the least,” Parolin said Wednesday.
After the meetings, the U.S. State Department said that Rubio and Parolin discussed “ongoing humanitarian efforts in the Western Hemisphere and efforts to achieve a durable peace in the Middle East. The discussion reflected the enduring partnership between the United States and the Holy See in advancing religious freedom.”
In a separate statement about the audience with Leo, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said that the two discussed the situation in the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere. “The meeting underscored the strong relationship between the United States and the Holy See and their shared commitment to promoting peace and human dignity,” he said.
The Vatican, for its part, said that during Rubio’s meetings with both Leo and Parolin, “the shared commitment to fostering good bilateral relations between the Holy See and the United States of America was reaffirmed.”
It said the two sides exchanged views on the current events “with particular attention to countries marked by war, political tensions, and difficult humanitarian situations, as well as on the need to work tirelessly in favor of peace.”
Rubio also has meetings Friday with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. Those meetings might not be much easier for Washington’s top diplomat, given both have strongly defended Leo against Trump’s attacks and have criticized the Iran war as illegal — drawing the president’s ire.
A mission to smooth ties
The tensions began when Trump lashed out at Leo on social media last month, saying the pope was soft on crime and terrorism for comments about the administration’s immigration policies and deportations as well as the Iran war. Leo then said that God doesn’t listen to the prayers of those who wage war.
Later, Trump posted a social media image appearing to liken himself to Jesus Christ, which was deleted after a backlash. He has refused to apologize to Leo and has sought to explain away the post by saying that he thought the image was a representation of him as a doctor.
Rubio said that Trump’s recent criticisms of Leo were rooted in his opposition to Iran potentially obtaining a nuclear weapon, which he said could be used against millions of Catholics and other Christians.
Leo has never said Iran should obtain nuclear weapons and that the Catholic Church “for years has spoken out against all nuclear weapons, so there is no doubt there.”
“The mission of the church is to preach the Gospel, to preach peace. If someone wants to criticize me for announcing the Gospel, let him do it with the truth,” Leo said late Tuesday, after Trump again accused him of being “OK” with Iran having a nuclear weapon.
By Thursday, tensions seemed to have eased.
Rubio gave Leo a small crystal football paperweight. He acknowledged Leo’s known allegiance to the Chicago White Sox, saying “you’re a baseball guy,” but noted that the football had the seal of the State Department on it.
“What to get someone who has everything?” Rubio joked as he gave Leo the paperweight.
Leo, for his part, gave Rubio a pen apparently made of olive wood — “olive being of course the plant of peace,” Leo said — with his coat of arms on it and a picture book of Vatican artworks.
Trump also has criticized Meloni and other NATO allies for a lack of support for the Iran war, recently announcing plans to withdraw thousands of American troops from Germany in the coming months.
Vatican seen as willing to have dialogue
Giampiero Gramaglia, former head of the ANSA news agency and its onetime Washington correspondent, said that he didn’t expect much to come out of Rubio’s visit for Italian or Vatican relations. He, and other Italian commentators, believe Rubio instead was looking to smooth over relations with the pope for his own political ambitions, as well as the upcoming midterm U.S. congressional elections and 2028 presidential race.
“I doubt Rubio has the role of conciliator for Trump,” he told Italy’s Foreign Press Association. “I have the perception that Rubio’s mission is more about himself” and his political ambitions as a prominent Catholic Republican.
The Rev. Antonio Spadaro, undersecretary in the Vatican’s culture office, said that Rubio’s mission wasn’t to “convert” the pope to Trump’s side. Rather, Washington “has come to acknowledge — implicitly but legibly — that (Leo’s) voice carries weight in the world that cannot simply be dismissed.”
“The situation created by President Trump’s remarks required a high-level, direct intervention, conducted in the proper language of diplomacy: a semantic corrective to a narrative of frontal conflict with the church,” he wrote in an essay this week.
Cuba is also on the agenda
Rubio said that topics other than the Iran war were on the agenda for the Vatican visit, including Cuba. The Holy See is particularly concerned about the Trump administration’s threats of potential military action there following its January ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Trump has said frequently that Cuba could be “next,” and even suggested that once the Iran war is over, naval assets deployed in the Middle East could return to the United States by way of Cuba.
Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants and a longtime Cuba hawk.
“We gave Cuba $6 million of humanitarian aid, but obviously they won’t let us distribute it,” Rubio said. “We distributed it through the church. We’d like to do more.”
Winfield and Lee write for the Associated Press. Lee reported from Washington.
Democrats have a huge opportunity to make a huge difference. But whether they’ll grab it is a huge question.
In 2020, I wrote that voters were “weary, anxious and looking for salve” after President Trump’s first term. I said then that the experienced, reassuring Joe Biden fit the moment. Now I fear that if Democrats nominate a similar presidential candidate in 2028, one who wins yet doesn’t act with alacrity on democracy preservation and helping Americans live better lives, a fed-up electorate will once again turn them out as ineffectual.
Who can or should lead the party at a time like this?
I’m not alone in hoping for a tough and confrontational 2028 nominee, someone who is aggressive, persistent and, when necessary, as ruthless as the forces on the opposite side. This person also must have the energy to undertake the mammoth task of repairing the institutional wreckage of Trumpism. Which suggests Democrats should be checking out younger nominees.
Fortunately, newer generations of leaders are emerging. Those who “get it,” in my view, include Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
Obviously any Democrat will be better than anyone from Trump’s team or orbit, including JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr. or Marco Rubio. The issue facing Democrats is whether moderate or policy wonkish people such as former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro would be the democracy warriors this moment demands. Repairing a crucial interstate bridge with lightning speed is a great thing and, sometimes, so is outreach to Republicans and Fox News. But would they prioritize thinking big and fighting hard for the fundamental changes we need?
Where would centrist former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger, the new Virginia governor, land on this scale? Even after coming around to supporting new House maps that will net four seats for her party? Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who began his podcast by inviting MAGA guests, championed a referendum on five new Democratic seats in his state and led his party to a redistricting triumph. Where would he land? Would he prioritize outreach to Republicans or the battle to assure a “no kings” future for America? The need for structural changes in our outdated institutions is glaringly obvious. Who will run to repair this country? Who can be trusted to follow through? Because the solutions are out there, staring us in the face:
Checks on presidential pardon power. A larger, term-limited Supreme Court bound to an enforceable ethics code. A national law requiring independent redistricting commissions or, better yet, multi-member districts with proportional representation. A voting rights law that sets minimum standards for mail voting, early voting and voter IDs. Anti-corruption laws that prevent profiteering by presidents and their allies. Explicit limits on presidential construction and alterations to federal properties. A stronger “impoundment” act with sharp teeth to make sure future presidents spend taxpayer money constitutionally, as Congress intends, instead of any way they want. D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood to start rebalancing a Congress and electoral college that have shortchanged urban America since the late 19th century.
It’s a long list, and there’s no guarantee that today’s Supreme Court would allow any of it. But realizing some of these goals will take decades; we can’t be discouraged by temporary impediments such as the current lineup of justices. The work on all of it should start ASAP — next year in the next Congress if Democrats are running one or both chambers. And at some point, we’ll have a different high court.
I can already hear the protests: What about affordability? That’s the best part: Trump has done so many things to make life more expensive that simply reversing them would have immediate impact. Stop the Iran war; reopen the Strait of Hormuz; aim to restore the Obama-era agreement that kept Iran’s nuclear ambitions in check; end the Trump tariffs; stop shrinking labor forces in agriculture, healthcare, construction and other industries by ending detentions and deportations of noncriminals; reverse last year’s tax breaks for elites and restore the money for Medicaid and health insurance premium subsidies; and kill off the Versailles-level Trump ballroom that he now wants to fund with taxpayer dollars (initially $400 million, now $1 billion).
Then Democrats could revisit some of their own affordability priorities, including the expanded child tax credit that significantly reduced child poverty, new ways to put housing within reach of more people and national paid family leave. They could also crack down on military spending that is pointless in the modern era and refocus on cheap and effective equipment such as drones like Ukraine is using to strike inside Russia.
As it happens, a stark indicator of the political tides came as I was writing this. Maine Gov. Janet Mills suddenly dropped out of the Democratic Senate primary race against Graham Platner. It was a lightning bolt, given her establishment support after being recruited by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. But in a way it was inevitable.
Mills is 78. If she had gone on to win the primary and defeat GOP Sen. Susan Collins, she would have been sworn in at age 79. Platner is 41, an oyster farmer and military veteran with a compelling, relatable persona. Though he has a controversial past, Mills’ negative ads did nothing to dent his appeal. Polls showed him winning the primary vote against Mills, sometimes by 2 to 1, and with a consistent general-election edge against Collins as well.
Platner told Jon Stewart last week that the party leadership establishment had largely ignored him. His message to them? “You should be curious, because I’m polling 40 points ahead.” By the next morning, Mills was out, and the establishment — Schumer and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, chair of the Senate campaign committee — said they’d work with Platner to flip the seat.
The midterm races are sending Democrats clues. They should take them seriously.
Jill Lawrence is a journalist and the author of “The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock.” Bluesky: @jilldlawrence
The Humboldt County Office of Elections made an unnerving discovery Monday: a stack of 596 sealed ballots from the most recent election left at the bottom of a locked voting drop box.
The uncounted ballots would not have affected the outcome of the November statewide special election for Proposition 50, the county office said in a news release Wednesday. However, officials said they’re working hard to have all the votes legally counted.
The office discovered that the ballots were uncounted because of a staff error. When workers checked the drop box, there was a miscommunication about whether it had been fully emptied, the office said.
“That outcome is unacceptable and runs counter to the core of what this office stands for,” Juan Pablo Cervantes, county clerk-recorder and registrar of voters, said in a statement. “While the mistake occurred after an election worker did not follow proper procedures, the responsibility for what happened ultimately sits with me.”
After the ballots were discovered, elections staff confirmed that the sealed ballots had not been tampered with, and they worked with the California secretary of state to determine next steps. Under California law, the ballots should have been counted before the election was certified on Dec. 5 and destroyed six months later.
The Office of Elections said it had altered its protocols to ensure such a mistake does not take place again, implementing a new “lock out, tag out” procedure to ensure each drop box is empty and secured before election results are finalized.
“I promise you that we are taking this seriously,” Cervantes said. “We will strengthen our processes and continue pushing toward the standard our community expects and deserves.”
The discovery comes as California continues to be under a microscope for allegations of voter fraud.
Within minutes of polls opening for California’s special election in November, President Trump took to Truth Social to claim that the Proposition 50 vote — which redrew several congressional districts to favor Democratic candidates — was rigged.
“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump wrote.
When asked later that day to explain Trump’s claims on how the election was allegedly rigged, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said California has “a universal mail-in voting system, which we know is ripe for fraud.” She also accused the state of counting ballots from undocumented immigrants.
Elections officials and Democratic leaders including Gov. Gavin Newsom decried those claims as baseless. “The bottom line is California elections have been validated by the courts,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in a November statement.
More recently, Republican gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco has drawn scrutiny for using his position as Riverside County sheriff to seize some 650,000 ballots in the county to determine whether they were fraudulently counted. Critics decried the move as another attempt by Republican election deniers to disenfranchise voters.
Humboldt County, which encompasses 4,052 square miles of rural California below the Oregon border, has largely avoided election-related turmoil in recent years. In 2008, however, Humboldt election officials discovered that software they used to tally votes had failed to count 197 ballots from one precinct.
PORTSMOUTH, Va. — The FBI searched the Virginia state Senate leader’s office on Wednesday as part of a corruption investigation, a person familiar with the matter said. Federal agents also were seen at the senator’s nearby cannabis business.
The search at Virginia Sen. L. Louise Lucas’s district office in Portsmouth comes after the Democrat helped lead the state’s recent redistricting effort.
The FBI said only that it was conducting a court-authorized search warrant in Portsmouth. The person who confirmed the FBI’s search was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Besides the search at Lucas’ office, agents in FBI T-shirts also went into the nearby Cannabis Outlet, which she opened in 2021. Several entrances to its cannabis store parking lot were blocked by unmarked vehicles with flashing blue lights.
Lucas — a prominent backer of legalizing marijuana — has said the store sells legal hemp and CBD products. It has drawn scrutiny from local media amid allegations that some products were mislabeled.
Virginia has legalized pot possession, but retail sales of recreational marijuana remain illegal in the state.
A message seeking comment was left Wednesday on a cellphone for Lucas, who has been a state senator for 34 years.
State House Speaker Don Scott said he was deeply concerned by the FBI search.
“Right now, there is far more theatrics and speculation than actual information available to the public,” Scott, a Democrat, said in a statement, adding that more facts were needed “before anyone rushes to political conclusions.”
Gov. Abigail Spanberger declined to comment. Some other Virginia Democrats were quick to note that the search comes as the FBI and Justice Department have opened a spate of politically charged investigations into perceived adversaries of President Trump.
The context “must be acknowledged,” U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott said in a social media post.
Last week, the Justice Department charged former FBI Director James Comey with making a threatening Instagram post against Trump, an accusation that Comey — who for nearly a decade has drawn the president’s ire — has denied. A separate mortgage fraud case, ultimately dismissed by a court, targeted Democratic New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, who had brought a major civil fraud lawsuit against Trump and his business.
The FBI and Justice Department have also provoked concerns among Democrats about ongoing election-related investigations, including the seizure by agents of ballots and other information from Fulton County, Ga.
Lucas has been a vocal leader of Virginia’s redistricting effort, which voters approved last month. A sign urging people to “vote yes” to “stop the MAGA power grab” still hung Wednesday on a fence separating her office’s parking lot from the parking for the cannabis shop.
Amid a national, state-by-state partisan redistricting fight kicked off by Trump’s desire to aid his fellow Republicans, Virginia voters OK’d a Democrat-backed constitutional amendment authorizing new U.S. House districts. The plan could help the party win up to four additional seats.
“We are not going to let anyone tilt the system without a response,” Lucas said after the vote. Trump, meanwhile, denounced the results.
The state Supreme Court let the referendum proceed but has yet to rule whether the effort is legal. The court is considering an appeal of a lower-court judge’s ruling that the amendment is invalid because lawmakers violated procedural requirements.
Voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade, after each census. But Trump last year urged Texas Republicans to redraw House districts to give the GOP an edge in the midterms. California Democrats reciprocated, and redistricting efforts soon cascaded across states.
Lucas, 82, has been a figure in Virginia politics since the 1980s, when she became the first Black woman elected to a City Council seat in her native Portsmouth. She now is the first woman and first African American to serve as the body’s president pro tempore.
Earlier in life, she was the Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s first female shipfitter, according to her biography in the state library. The job entails making, installing and repairing sometimes enormous metal assemblies for vessels.
In recent years, she has been the chief executive of a Portsmouth business that runs residences, day programs and transportation for intellectually disabled adults.
Tucker, Breed and Peltz write for the Associated Press. AP writers Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Ky.; Jake Offenhartz in New York; and Claudia Lauder in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
Karen Bass, Spencer Pratt and Nithya Raman each came into tonight’s mayoral debate with goals for what may be their only time together on stage.
As the incumbent mayor, Bass had to weather blows from her challengers while trying to sell voters on her fitness for another term, despite a disastrous 2025.
As a reality TV star with no political experience, Pratt needed to show that he could offer substance instead of just AI fanboy videos and the name-calling — “Karen Basura” — he has indulged in on social media.
Raman’s task was perhaps the hardest. As a city councilmember whose two previous campaigns were backed by the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, she needed to convince Pratt-curious voters that she’s more conservative than Bass. Yet for others, she needed to appear liberal enough to peel away support from the mayor and come out as a progressive lioness to excite Democrats in a year where GOP candidates like Pratt have to answer for the disaster that is President Trump’s second term.
Only one of the three failed.
At times, Raman was tongue-tied trying to answer simple questions. Moderators kept telling her she was going over her time. Answering a yes/no question about whether noncitizens should be allowed to vote in city elections, the councilmember went on and on, until the moderator cut her off.
While Raman offered some policy plans, she also played a card straight out of Trump’s arsenal. She claimed that Pratt and Bass were teaming up against her — an unlikely scenario that drew laughs from the audience. She got more and more frustrated, to the point that when Bass was allowed time for a rebuttal, she dejectedly proclaimed, “I haven’t been offered that in a lot of this debate.”
Raman, who had endorsed Bass’ reelection before throwing her hat in at the last minute, came off as inexperienced, touchy and unprepared.
The line of the night was Pratt dismissing Raman as a “random councilmember” — which is how the L.A. political world responded to her entry into the race. She was so upset about Pratt’s remark that she continued to whine about it to a KNBC reporter after the debate.
What’s shocking about Raman’s flop is that she should know how important it is to project well to a television audience, given that her husband is a screenwriter. Her tone was flat, when she needed to be passionate.
No one had to remind Pratt of that. He was parrying tough questions on a big stage for the first time, facing an audience who knew him only as the Angry L.A. White Guy he has reveled in playing.
He mostly succeeded.
At his best, Pratt came off as a boisterous bro with enough charm to call himself “humble” without coming off as obnoxious. He dominated the flow of conversation without coming off as commandeering, even interrupting Raman at times to let Bass speak. At one point, he even said “Sorry” when he had taken up too much time and the moderators cut him off.
He was light on specifics, other than saying he was going to do better than the others and that he would prioritize public safety above all. Instead, he was the one person on stage who used anecdotes to sell himself, citing conversations about abused animals, downtown workers too afraid to eat outside and film producers hiring local gang members to keep their shoots safe.
As a TV personality-turned-influencer, Pratt knows that storytelling is far more effective than drowning the audience in statistics, as Bass and Raman did.
But the bad Pratt flared up at times. He earned a reprimand from KNBC anchor and debate co-moderator Colleen Williams when he called the mayor an “incredible liar.” Affecting high-pitched voices to mock Bass and Raman came off as juvenile and possibly sexist. And when it came to last summer’s federal immigration raids that terrorized Southern California, Pratt appeared flummoxed when Bass pointed out that 70% of those arrested didn’t have criminal records — a use of stats that hit.
Bass was also who she had to be — measured, forceful and raring to defend her record, without coming off as defensive. She wasn’t exactly inspirational, but she didn’t have to be. The city’s powerful labor unions have backed her, along with much of the Democratic establishment.
Raman and Pratt are right in deeming Bass the old guard of a beat-up city — but the old guard didn’t get there without knowing how to win.
WASHINGTON — Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is appearing Wednesday before a House committee investigating sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as lawmakers seek answers for Lutnick’s contact with him in the years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.
Lutnick, a member of President Trump’s Cabinet, is the latest powerful political figure to appear before the House Oversight Committee. He has previously given contradictory statements about his relationship with Epstein, but he says he has done nothing wrong and welcomes the closed-door interview with lawmakers.
Still, the transcribed interview presented a test of how much scrutiny lawmakers will apply to powerful men who kept company with Epstein even after it was known that he had solicited prostitution from an underage girl. Trump’s Republican administration has tried unsuccessfully for more than a year to move past the issue.
Lutnick is the highest-ranked official in the Trump administration, besides Trump himself, to be named in the case files on Epstein. Trump has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.
Several Democrats have called for Lutnick to resign, and a few Republicans, including Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, have said he should at least testify before the Oversight panel.
Lutnick has downplayed his ties to Epstein, who was once his neighbor in New York City. Under questioning from Democrats during an unrelated hearing earlier this year, he described their contact as a handful of emails and a pair of meetings in 2011 and 2012.
But that admission came after he had previously claimed on a podcast last year that he had decided to “never be in the room” with Epstein following a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state sex offense charges in Florida, including soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.
“I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with him,” Lutnick told senators in February when he was asked about Epstein during a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
But Lutnick, who was previously the head of brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, actually had an hourlong engagement at Epstein’s home in 2011. His family then visited Epstein’s infamous private island in 2012 for lunch.
The federal release of case files on Epstein also showed that the two had kept in contact through email. Lutnick in 2018 emailed Epstein about a proposed expansion of a museum in their neighborhood that would have blocked the view from their homes. Epstein also gave $50,000 to a 2017 dinner honoring Lutnick, while Lutnick invited Epstein to a 2015 fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. In 2013, they both invested in the same business venture.
The White House has continued to express support for Lutnick, who was one of the biggest boosters of Trump’s sweeping tariffs strategy. He has been close to Trump for years and helped fundraise for his 2020 and 2024 campaigns.
The House Oversight Committee is also scheduled to hear testimony on May 29 from Pam Bondi, who was pushed out from her job as attorney general last month.
Epstein died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Five months ago, President Trump was stinging from one of the first political defeats of his second term as Republican state senators defied him on redistricting in Indiana. Now he has proved he can still punish wayward party members after he endorsed a slate of challengers who defeated almost every one of those lawmakers he wanted to dislodge.
The results will likely bolster Trump’s confidence heading into upcoming Republican primaries where he wants to help oust more incumbents, including U.S Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
Indiana’s primary also ratchets up the pressure on Republican lawmakers in other states to move aggressively to redraw congressional district boundaries before the November elections. Alabama and Tennessee have already begun special sessions that could limit Black voters’ strength in Democratic-leaning districts, and some of Trump’s allies in South Carolina want to follow suit.
State Sen. Linda Rogers, one of the Indiana lawmakers who voted against redistricting and lost her seat Tuesday, said the outcome “will probably discourage others in other states.”
“If someone is going to ask you to take a tough vote, you may think twice about your conscience and what’s best for your community and instead what’s best for you and your career,” she said.
Redistricting efforts began last year, when Trump saw an opportunity to give Republicans an additional edge, but they were supercharged last week when the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a provision of the Voting Rights Act that influenced how political lines are drawn.
Trump’s success in Indiana, aided by more than $8.3 million in campaign cash in races that usually see very little spending, reaffirmed the president’s continued strength within a Republican Party that he has dominated for a decade, despite his inevitable slide toward lame-duck status and his sagging poll numbers.
“Historic night for Indiana as Republicans stood with me and President Trump to nominate some great America First conservatives,” Gov. Mike Braun, R-Ind., posted on social media. “I look forward to winning big in November and serving Hoosiers with this team in the statehouse!”
Trump backed primary challenges against seven Republican state senators who rejected his redistricting plan in December. Five of the president’s candidates won, and another race remained too close to call.
Trump was relatively restrained on social media about the voting. He shared a series of photos celebrating the victories of candidates he endorsed in Indiana and Ohio, which also held primaries Tuesday. But he otherwise passed on boasting or renewing his attacks on Massie or Cassidy.
Massie has been among the members of Congress who frustrated the president by pressing for release of the Jeffrey Epstein case files. Cassidy was among the Republican senators who voted to convict Trump on 2021 impeachment charges after the Jan. 6 riot.
James Blair, one of Trump’s top political advisers, was more direct, posting an image from the movie “Gladiator” depicting Russell Crowe’s ancient Roman character Maximus exulting after a combat victory.
Rogers, the Indiana state senator, faced almost $670,000 in television advertising against her, funded by political action committees associated with Braun and U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind.
She said she did not regret her vote against redistricting.
“It would have been easy for me to hit that ‘yes’ button,” she said. “To hear the number of people who asked me not to, then the number of people who thanked me, would mean I wasn’t representing them.”
Louisiana’s primary, in which Trump has endorsed U.S. Rep. Julie Letlow over Cassidy, is set for May 16. Kentucky, where Trump has endorsed Massie’s challenger, retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, will hold its primary May 19.
Beaumont and Barrow write for the Associated Press.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — An election-year redistricting movement has spread to South Carolina as Republicans attempt to redraw majority-Black congressional districts that have suddenly become susceptible because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upending protections for minority voters.
Urged on by President Trump, South Carolina Republicans are attempting to redraw a district long held by a Black Democratic lawmaker in their quest for a clean sweep of the state’s seven congressional seats.
Lawmakers already are meeting in special sessions in Alabama and Tennessee in a bid to change their U.S. House districts. And Louisiana lawmakers are making plans for new congressional districts after the Supreme Court last week struck down the state’s current map.
The stakes are high for minority voters who stand to lose their preferred representatives and for any Republican lawmakers reluctant to follow Trump’s wishes. In Republican primary elections Tuesday, Trump-endorsed challengers defeated at least five of the seven Indiana state lawmakers targeted by Trump’s allies for refusing to support a congressional redistricting effort last year.
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling said Louisiana relied too heavily on race when creating a second Black-majority House district as it attempted to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The ruling significantly altered a decades-old understanding of the law, giving Republicans grounds to try to eliminate majority-Black districts that have elected Democrats.
The ruling revved up an already intense national redistricting battle ahead of a November midterm election that will determine control of the closely divided House.
Since Trump prodded Texas to redraw its U.S. House districts last year, a total of eight states have adopted new congressional districts. From that, Republicans think they could gain as many as 13 seats while Democrats think they could gain up to 10 seats. But some of the new districts could be competitive in November, meaning the parties may not get all they sought.
South Carolina to test its will for redistricting
Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn has represented South Carolina’s 6th Congressional District since it was redrawn to favor minority voters in 1992. He’s running for an 18th term. But it could get harder for him to win reelection if Republicans redraw his district.
Leaders in the state House and Senate said a redistricting effort needs to start with a two-thirds vote in each chamber. The issue could come up as soon as Wednesday. But if only a few Republicans aren’t on board, it can’t succeed.
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey has warned that redistricting could backfire because of thin political margins, resulting in a second Democrat in the U.S. House. Massey told reporters Tuesday that he had a cordial conversation with Trump about redistricting, each laying out their concerns.
The state’s primaries are June 9 and early voting starts in three weeks.
Alabama looks at setting a new primary
The state House on Wednesday could debate legislation that would allow Alabama to hold a special congressional primary, if the Supreme Court clears the way for the state to change its U.S. House districts.
In light of the court’s ruling on Louisiana’s districts, Alabama officials have asked courts to set aside a judicial order to use a U.S. House map that includes two districts with a substantial number of Black voters. Republicans instead want to use a map passed in 2023 by the Legislature that could help the GOP win at least one of those two seats currently held by Democrats.
Alabama’s primaries are scheduled for May 19. If the Supreme Court grants the state’s request after or too close to the primary, the legislation under consideration would ignore the results of that primary and direct the governor to schedule a new primary under the revised districts.
Democrats denounced the legislation as a Republican power grab that harkens back to the state’s shameful history of denying Black residents equal rights and representation.
Republicans are “working to secure an electoral victory by taking Alabama back to the Jim Crow era, and we won’t go back,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell told a crowd gathered outside the Alabama Statehouse.
Tennessee plan targets Memphis district
Republican Gov. Bill Lee called Tennessee lawmakers into a special session to consider a plan urged by Trump that could break up the state’s lone Democratic-held U.S. House district, centered on the majority-Black city of Memphis. Republicans didn’t say much about the plan Tuesday.
But as the state Senate began work Tuesday, shouts of “shame, shame, shame” could be heard inside the chamber from protesters gathered in the hallways. On the chamber floor, state Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Black Democrat from Memphis, called the redistricting “an act of hate.”
Martin Luther King III sent a letter to Tennessee legislative leaders expressing “grave concern” about the plan to divide Memphis, saying the move could undermine the work for voting rights carried out by his father, Martin Luther King Jr.
The candidate qualifying period in Tennessee ended in March, and the primary election is scheduled for Aug. 6.
Thousands had already voted in Louisiana
After last week’s Supreme Court decision, Republican Gov. Mike Landry postponed the state’s May 16 congressional primary to allow time for lawmakers to approve new U.S. House districts. State Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter, a Republican, said a redistricting committee he leads plans to hold a public hearing Friday.
Louisiana voters had already sent in more than 41,000 absentee ballots by last Thursday, when Landry suspended the House primaries, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. That’s about a third of all the absentee ballots sent out to voters. Around 19,000 were from registered Democrats, 17,000 from registered Republicans and the remainder belonged to neither party.
Democrats and civil rights groups have filed several lawsuits challenging the suspension of Louisiana’s congressional primary.
Collins, Loller, Chandler and Lieb write for the Associated Press. Chandler reported from Montgomery, Ala., Loller from Nashville and Lieb from Jefferson City, Mo. AP writer Jack Brook contributed to this report from New Orleans.
WASHINGTON — Debris from the demolition of the White House East Wing that was dumped at a nearby public golf course has tested positive for lead, chromium and other toxic metals, the National Park Service said.
An interim report by a Virginia engineering firm says the toxic metals, along with PCBs, pesticides, petroleum byproducts and other chemicals were detected at levels above laboratory reporting limits in soil at the East Potomac Golf Links, a historic golf course that President Trump plans to renovate.
The park service began dumping debris from the East Wing onto the golf course in October, and more than 810,000 cubic feet of excavated soil had been transported to the site as of last month, the report by Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. said. The report was requested by the park service.
The nonprofit DC Preservation League has sued the Trump administration, arguing that the dumping was unlawful and possibly hazardous. The group also is challenging the Republican administration’s takeover of the golf course, about two miles southeast of the White House, and others in the city.
The suit is one of several legal battles challenging Trump’s extraordinary efforts to put his mark on public spaces in the nation’s capital, including renaming and shuttering the Kennedy Center and building a 250-foot-tall triumphal arch near the Lincoln Memorial.
At the end of last year, a separate group of preservationists filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the administration from demolishing the East Wing so it could build a ballroom, a project slated to cost $400 million.
A spokesperson for the Interior Department, which oversees the park service, said in an email Tuesday that the soil removed from the White House “was tested multiple times by multiple parties, and this project passed all standards set by law.”
Although the agency does not comment on litigation, “this thorough process was followed to ensure the transfer was safe for the public,’’ the email said.
The Preservation League’s executive director, Rebecca Miller, said Tuesday that experts were still analyzing the engineering report. The group also is concerned about whether the Trump administration is complying with federal laws including the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, she said.
Debris from the East Wing demolition is so prevalent that it causes golfers to detour around piles of it, Miller said. “If you Google you’ll see lots of photos of golfers walking past it,” she said in an interview.
The Trump administration’s plans to renovate the 105-year-old course to make it a professional-level course would permanently alter its historic character and layout, Miller said.
A federal judge told the government on Monday not to cut down more than 10 trees without first providing notice amid the legal dispute.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said during a remote hearing that she wasn’t going to issue a temporary restraining order just yet, but she indicated she would take a harsh view of any major alterations made without prior notice.
Democracy Forward, a national legal organization that is co-representing the Preservation League, said in a press release that “further scrutiny will be required related to potential toxins that were dumped at East Potomac Park by the administration as part of the destruction of the East Wing of the White House.”
Test results released by the government “suggest the Defendants dumped a cocktail of contaminants — and despite indications of the refuse’s contents, they continued dumping it,” the group said.
Kevin Griess, the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks for the park service, said during Monday’s court hearing there was no immediate plan to begin tree removal but added that a safety assessment was underway.
Trump, an avid golfer, also plans on renovating a military golf course just outside Washington that has been used by past presidents going back decades.
In its statement, the Interior Department said it is “committed to continuing the relationships we have built with the local golf communities to ensure these courses are safe, beautiful, open, affordable, enjoyable, accessible, and world-class for people living in and visiting the greatest capital city in the world.”
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans have added $1 billion in White House security upgrades to legislation that would fund immigration enforcement agencies, a proposed boost for President Trump’s ballroom project after a man was charged with trying to assassinate him at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner last week.
The GOP bill released late Monday would designate the money for the U.S. Secret Service for “security adjustments and upgrades” related to the ballroom project, which Trump and Republicans have been pushing since Cole Tomas Allen allegedly stormed the April 25 media dinner at the Washington Hilton with guns and knives. The legislation says the money would support enhancements to the ballroom project, “including above-ground and below-ground security features,” but also specifies that the money may not be used for non-security elements.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle praised Republicans for including the money for the “long overdue” project, saying it would “provide the United States Secret Service with the resources they need to fully and completely harden the White House complex, in addition to the many other critical missions for the USSS.”
The money is part of a larger bill to pay for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, as Democrats have been blocking funds for both agencies since mid-February. Congress passed bipartisan legislation to fund the rest of the Homeland Security Department on April 30 after a record-long shutdown, but Republicans are using a partisan budget maneuver to push through the ICE and Border Patrol dollars on their own. The House has not released its bill yet, but the Senate is expected to start voting on its version of the legislation next week.
It is unclear exactly how the $1 billion would be used, and the amount far exceeds the proposed $400 million for construction of the ballroom. The White House has said in court documents that the East Wing project would be “heavily fortified,” including bomb shelters, military installations and a medical facility underneath the ballroom. Trump has said it should include bulletproof glass and be able to repel drone attacks.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has sued to block construction of the project, but a federal appeals court said last month that it can continue in the meantime.
The White House has said that private money would pay for the construction but public money would be used for security measures. Some Republicans have suggested that public money pay for all of it, arguing the security breach at the dinner shows the president needs a secure place to host events.
“It would be insane” to hold the dinner at a hotel again, said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who introduced a bill to pay for the ballroom’s construction with Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala.
Democrats have said they will oppose any efforts to pay for the ballroom.
“While Americans are struggling to make ends meet as a result of President Trump’s failed policies, Republicans are focused on providing tens of billions of dollars for the President’s vanity ballroom project and cruel mass deportation campaign,” said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the U.S. Secret Service.
Jalonick writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.
The three liberals had known since October the conservative majority was preparing to elevate partisan power over racial fairness.
By retreating from part of the Voting Rights Act, the court’s opinion last week by Justice Samuel A. Alito will allow Republicans across the South to dismantle voting districts that favor Black Democrats.
Justice Elena Kagan, who first came to the court as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, denounced the “demolition” of a historic civil rights law.
In dissent, she quoted Marshall’s warning that if all the voting districts in the South have white majorities, Black citizens will be left with a “right to cast meaningless ballots.”
But Alito and Chief Justice John G. Roberts joined the court 20 years ago believing the government may not make decisions based on race.
When faced with a redistricting case from Texas, Roberts described it as the “sordid business … [of] divvying us up by race.”
With President Trump’s three appointees on the court, the conservatives had a solid majority to change the law on race. Three years ago, they struck down college affirmative action policies.
Watching closely were states such as Alabama and Louisiana.
They had been sued by voting rights advocates, and both had been required to draw a second congressional district with a Black majority.
Their state attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing these race-based districts were unconstitutional.
Roberts said the Voting Rights Act as interpreted by past decisions suggests Alabama must draw a second congressional district that may well elect a Black candidate. The three liberals agreed entirely and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cast a tentative fifth vote.
Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas filed strong dissents, joined by Barrett and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.
Last year, the justices agreed to decide a nearly identical appeal from Louisiana, and this time Roberts joined the conservative majority and assigned the opinion to Alito.
He argued the Voting Rights Act gave “minority voters” an equal right to vote but not a right to “elect a preferred candidate.”
The decision dealt a double blow to Black Democrats because an earlier 5-4 opinion by Roberts freed state lawmakers to draw voting districts for partisan advantage.
That ruling, combined with Wednesday’s decision, will bolster Republicans trying to maintain their narrow hold on Congress.
As if to highlight that point, the court’s six Republican appointees were guests of President Trump at Tuesday’s White House dinner for King Charles.
Just a few days before, Trump had slammed the court in another social media post.
“The Radical Left Democrats don’t need to ‘Pack the Court’. It’s already Packed,” he wrote. “Certain ‘Republican’ Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad.” They had struck down his sweeping tariffs, he said, “they probably will … rule against our Country on Birthright Citizenship.”
That didn’t stop him from inviting them to the White House, nor did the partisan appearances dissuade them from attending.
Alito is enjoying his moment of acclaim as the voice of the conservative legal movement.
In March, the Federalist Society held a day-long conference in Philadelphia to celebrate the “Jurisprudence of Justice Alito.”
He is the subject of two new books. One, by journalist Mollie Hemingway, calls him “the justice who reshaped the Supreme Court and restored the Constitution.”
The other, by author Peter S. Canellos, is “Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement.”
Alito attended Princeton during the Vietnam War and was put off “by very privileged people behaving irresponsibly,” as he later described his classmates.
He then went to the Yale Law School and, like Thomas, left with a lasting disdain for the left-leaning faculty and students.
Alito has a book of his own scheduled to be released in October. It is called “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court and Our Country.”
Last month, rumors and speculation had it that Alito and perhaps Thomas planned to retire this year so Trump and the Senate Republicans could quickly fill their seats.
At age 76, Alito is at the peak of his influence and has no interest in stepping down, and he and Thomas confirmed to news organizations they had no plans to retire this year.
For 20 years, Alito has cast reliably conservative votes at the Supreme Court and regularly argued for moving the law farther to the right.
Most famously, he wrote the court’s 5-4 opinion in the Dobbs case that overturned Roe vs. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion.
Roberts issued a partial dissent, arguing the court should uphold Mississippi’s 16-week limit on abortions and stop there.
Alito has called religion a “disfavored right,” and there too a change is underway.
In the decades before his arrival, the court had handed down steady rulings barring taxpayer funds for religious schools or religious ceremonies or symbols in public schools or city parks.
Then, the court viewed these official “endorsements” of religion as violations of the 1st Amendment’s ban on an “establishment” of religion or the principle of church-state separation.
Those decisions have faded into the background, however.
Instead, Alito, Roberts and the four other conservatives see today’s threat as one of discrimination against religion, not official favoritism for religion.
They ruled church schools and their students may not be denied state aid because of religion. Similarly, Catholic charities and other religious groups may not be excluded from publicly funded programs because they refuse to accept same-sex parents, the justices said.
They upheld a football coach’s right to pray on the field. And they ruled for a wedding cake maker in Colorado and other business owners who refused to serve same-sex couples in violation of a state civil rights law.
Religious liberty has now replaced separation of church and state as the winning formula at the Supreme Court.
The next test on that front may come from Louisiana, which calls for the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classes.
In the past, the court had ruled such religious displays violated the 1st Amendment, but it is not clear that the current majority will agree.
The court’s oral arguments for this term ended last week. Many of them were dominated by questions from liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
A statistical tally by Adam Feldman for Scotusblog found that Jackson, the newest justice, had spoken twice as many words as the most talkative of the conservative justices.
Her arrival shifted the “center of verbal energy” to the liberal side, Feldman wrote. While Jackson “sits in a class of her own,” Sotomayor also presses the argument on the liberal side.
The court now has about eight weeks to hand down the decisions in 35 remaining cases. Usually, May and June can be a trying time because of intense disagreements over the opinions in close cases.
But for the liberal justices, it also may be a time mostly for writing dissents.
WASHINGTON — A federal magistrate judge on Monday pressed a jail official to explain why a man charged with trying to storm the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner and attempting to kill President Trump was placed on restrictive suicide watch after his arrest.
Officials at the city jail in Washington removed Cole Tomas Allen from its designated “suicide status” over the weekend after his attorneys complained that he had been unnecessarily confined in a padded room with constant lighting, repeatedly strip-searched and placed in restraints outside his cell.
But the relaxed conditions didn’t satisfy U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui’s concerns that Allen may have received disparate, punitive treatment in violation of his due process rights. Faruqui noted that the D.C. jail routinely houses convicted killers and others charged with violent crimes without placing them on 24-hour lockdown.
“It could drive a person crazy to be in that situation,” he said.
Faruqui apologized to Allen over his confinement conditions. In response to a news report on that apology, U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro criticized him in a social media post that said Faruqui “believes a defendant armed to the teeth and attempting to assassinate the president is entitled to preferential treatment in his confinement compared to every other defendant.”
Allen’s lawyers said he wasn’t showing any suicidal risk factors after his arrest. But a jail psychiatrist evaluated him and initially concluded that he posed a suicide risk, according to Tony Towns, acting general counsel for the city’s corrections department.
“Every case is different, your honor,” Towns said.
Allen was moved into protective custody after the jail lifted the suicide prevention measures. His attorneys didn’t object to his new confinement status. They had asked the magistrate to cancel Monday’s hearing, but Faruqui forged ahead with it due to his “grave concerns” about Allen’s treatment in jail.
Allen was injured but was not shot during the April 25 attack at the Washington Hilton, which disrupted one of the highest-profile annual events in the nation’s capital.
Allen was armed with guns and knives when he ran through a security checkpoint and pointed his weapon at a Secret Service agent, who fired back five times, authorities said. Pirro has said that Allen fired a shot that struck the agent’s bullet-resistant vest.
Allen later told FBI agents that he didn’t expect to survive the attack, which could help explain why he was deemed to be a possible suicide risk, said Justice Department prosecutor Jocelyn Ballantine.
Allen, 31, of Torrance, is charged with attempted assassination of the president and two additional firearms counts. He faces up to life in prison if convicted of the assassination count alone.
Defense attorney Eugene Ohm said Allen was prohibited from having anything in his cell. He asked for a Bible and a visit from a chaplain but hasn’t received either, according to Ohm.
WASHINGTON — The Secret Service says a suspect who opened fire Monday on the National Mall did so after being confronted by officers.
Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn said officers returned fire. A bystander was struck by the suspect, Quinn said.
Quinn said the motorcade of Vice President JD Vance transited through the area not long before the shooting, but there was no indication it was the target.
The incident happened Monday afternoon around 15th Street and Independence Avenue near the Washington Monument.
The Secret Service encouraged people to avoid the area as emergency crews responded to the shooting not far from the White House, where President Trump was holding a small-business event.
The White House was briefly locked down as authorities investigated the incident. The Secret Service ushered journalists who were outside into the briefing room, and Trump continued his event without interruption.
Vito Maggiolo, spokesman for the D.C. Fire and EMS Department, said emergency units took an adult male to a hospital and were treating what appeared to be a teenage male for minor injuries. He referred other questions to the police department.
The incident drew a large police presence, coming just over a week after a gunman tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner with guns and knives. Cole Tomas Allen has been charged in that incident, in which a Secret Service officer was wounded.
BEIRUT — Confusion reigned on Monday over the fate of a fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran after a wave of fresh strikes on the United Arab Emirates and Oman, along with reports of attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, undermined confidence in the truce.
The drone and missile strikes, the first since a ceasefire halted fighting in early April, come after the Trump administration launched a wide-scale naval operation on Monday to “guide” stranded maritime vessels out of the vital waterway.
But fears over a return to war have driven another surge in oil prices, pushing them above $114 per barrel — levels not seen since the ceasefire nearly a month ago. Hundreds of cargo ships from dozens of countries remain stuck in the Gulf. And strikes in Dubai have raised concerns about further disruptions to international air travel at one of the world’s busiest airports.
Iran’s state-run news agency, IRNA, said the new U.S. operation was part of President Trump’s “delirium,” after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that passage through the strait required prior approval from Tehran.
“We warn that any foreign armed force, especially the invading American army, will be attacked if they attempt to approach and enter the Strait of Hormuz,” said Maj. Gen. Ali Abdollahi, according to a statement reported by the Iranian state-run Mehr News Agency on Monday.
The operation, which Trump over the weekend dubbed “Project Freedom,” is supported by 15,000 U.S. servicemen and 100 aircraft, according to U.S. Central Command. Their aim is to deny Tehran control over the strait, a narrow, 21-mile-wide passageway through which a fifth of global energy supplies flows.
“We have more weapons and ammunition at a much higher grade than we had before,” Trump was quoted as saying in an interview with Fox News.
“We have the best equipment. We have stuff all over the world. We have these bases all over the world. They’re all stocked up with equipment. We can use all of that stuff, and we will, if we need it.”
Iran blocked traffic through the strait soon after the United States and Israel launched their campaign on the country. Last month, days after a ceasefire between Washington and Tehran came into effect, the United States enforced its own naval blockade on Iranian ports in a bid to pressure Iran to make concessions in stalled negotiations.
On Monday, Central Command said in a statement that two American-flagged merchant ships were able to successfully transit the strait, while Central Command head Adm. Brad Cooper said the U.S. military sank six Iranian boats and intercepted missiles and drones targeting civilian vessels.
“We have defeated each and every one of those threats through the clinical application of defensive munitions,” he said.
“Project Freedom is a defensive operation, and we have deployed anti-ballistic missile destroyers,” he added. “Ships in the Gulf waters belong to 87 countries, and we urge ships to cross the strait.”
IRIB, Iran’s state-run broadcaster, quoted a senior Iranian military official who denied Cooper’s claim of sunk Iranian boats. The IRGC said in a statement on the messaging app Telegram that claims of commercial vessels or tankers traversing the strait were “baseless and completely false.”
Though Cooper did not clarify if the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran was now over, a raft of attacks throughout Monday spiked fears that the war would restart, spurring sharp price increases in already-jittery energy markets.
The UAE said a fire broke out and three Indian nationals were injured in the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, a key export hub for the country, after what it described as an Iranian drone attack.
It also accused Iran of targeting a tanker linked to the country’s state oil company Abu Dhabi National Oil Company in the Strait of Hormuz, while the country’s defense ministry also reported four cruise missiles launched from Iran, saying that it intercepted three of them while the fourth fell in the sea.
“These attacks constitute a dangerous escalation and an unacceptable transgression,” said a statement from the UAE’s foreign ministry, adding that it “reserves its full and legitimate right to respond to these attacks.”
Elsewhere, two foreign workers were injured in an attack on a residential building in the Omani coastal province of Bukha, according to a statement from an unnamed security source quoted by the state-run Oman News Agency. Authorities were investigating the incident but did not elaborate on the perpetrator.
The U.K.’s Maritime Trade Operations Center reported on Monday that a commercial vessel was on fire off the coast of the UAE, while a South Korean bulk carrier ship said it suffered an explosion and a fire in its engine room and the cause was being investigated.
Bulos reported from Beirut, Wilner from Washington.
YEREVAN, Armenia — European leaders on Monday said President Trump’s surprise decision to pull thousands of U.S. troops out of Germany is just the latest signal that Europe must take more responsibility for its security.
The Pentagon announced last week it would pull some 5,000 troops out of Germany, but Trump told reporters on Saturday the U.S. plans on “cutting a lot further.”
Trump offered no reason for the move, which blindsided NATO. But his decision came amid an escalating dispute with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said the U.S. has been humiliated by Iran in talks to end the war it launched with Israel on Feb. 28. Trump has also expressed anger over European allies’ reluctance to get involved in the conflict.
European leaders meeting at a summit in Yerevan, Armenia, sought to both downplay the impact of 5,000 fewer troops in Germany while acknowledging that it provides a useful nudge for the continent to step up its role within NATO.
“I do not see those figures as dramatic, but I think they should be handled in a harmonious way inside the framework of NATO,” said Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said “there needs to be a stronger European element in NATO, I have no doubt about that.”
Tensions within NATO have mounted since the second Trump administration came into office last year warning that European allies would have to defend themselves and Ukraine in the future. Talks on ending the war there, now in its fourth year, have bogged down as the U.S. focuses on Iran.
Taken by surprise
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the timing of Trump’s announcement came as a surprise, even though there has been “talk about withdrawal of U.S. troops for a long time from Europe.”
Asked whether she believes Trump is trying to punish Merz, Kallas said: “I don’t see into the head of President Trump, so he has to explain it himself.”
Merz did not attend the European Political Community summit in Yerevan, which included about 30 European leaders, plus Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
At a military exercise in northern Germany, the country’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, said Berlin has not yet received “official confirmation of when and how this is supposed to happen, on what scale.” The reduction of U.S. troops “would not put into question NATO’s deterrence capability,” he added.
European countries and Canada have increased defense spending and military recruitment efforts over the last year in response to Trump’s threats.
NATO seeks clarity
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte also played down the significance of fewer U.S. troops in Germany, while acknowledging U.S. “disappointment” about the level of European support for the Iran war.
France and the U.K. have given U.S. forces limited use of bases on their territories to attack Iran. Spain has outright denied U.S. forces the use of its airspace and bases.
Rutte, who has championed Trump’s leadership at NATO despite the U.S. president’s criticism of a majority of the allies, said: “I would say the Europeans have heard a message.”
European allies and Canada have known since early last year that Trump would pull some troops out of Europe — and some were pulled out of Romania in October — but U.S. officials had pledged to coordinate any moves with NATO allies to avoid creating a security vacuum.
NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said over the weekend that officials at the 32-nation military alliance “are working with the U.S. to understand the details of their decision on force posture in Germany.”
Iran and trade trouble
With the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran looking shakier, Rutte said European nations “have decided to pre-position assets, key assets, close to the theater for the next phase.” He provided no further details.
European leaders have insisted their countries would not help police the Strait of Hormuz, a key energy trade route, until the war is over.
“If the United States is ready to reopen Hormuz, that’s great. That’s what we’ve been asking for since the beginning,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. But he underlined that Europeans are not ready to get involved in any operation “that does not seem clear.”
Carlson and Cook write for the Associated Press. Cook reported from Brussels. AP writer Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
Before authorities charged him with attempting to assassinate President Trump and top administration officials in a brazen attack at the Washington Hilton, Cole Tomas Allen lived what those who knew him described as a quiet, simple existence.
He worked as a tutor and enjoyed video games, manga and riding his blue scooter. Acquaintances said Allen rarely talked about his political views through much of his adult life.
But on social media, he appears to have expressed concerns about the morality of U.S. policy, particularly its role in the wars in Ukraine and Iran.
Now, those who crossed paths with him are struggling to square the accusations against him with the man they knew as an unassuming student, gamer and teacher.
Allen grew up in a middle-class, suburban part of Torrance, one of four siblings who would each go on to study at reputable universities.
His parents were both teachers and “really solid members of their community,” according to Paul Thompson, a Los Angeles County prosecutor who lives next door to the family’s two-story house. Allen’s father knew many people on the block of single-family homes by their first names, Thompson said, and the suspect’s mother once saved Thompson’s dog when it ran into the road.
As a high school junior, Allen led Pacific Lutheran’s volleyball team in a three-set win over Junipero Serra High School. He was homeschooled, but was allowed via a special program to take a class at Pacific Lutheran in Gardena and to play for its respected squad, according to the private school’s principal.
Allen was “a godly person” who never cursed or shared his political views at the time, a former teammate told The Times, but he was also “very competitive.”
That drive extended to academics. After finishing his homeschooling, he was accepted into Caltech, one of the best universities in the nation for aspiring engineers like Allen.
He joined the Caltech Christian Fellowship, taking on a leadership role in which he organized Bible discussions, as well as the fencing team and the Nerf Club. He interned at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge for three months.
In 2016, he was part of a five-person team that won an annual robotics and design competition in which teams built robots to play in soccer matches at Caltech. Allen was a teaching assistant at the Pasadena school, where he graduated with a mechanical engineering degree the following year.
Elizabeth Terlinden met Allen through the Caltech Christian Fellowship, where she was co-president during the 2014-15 school year.
“Quiet guy, kind of nondescript, generally polite, got good grades,” she told The Times, describing her impression of Allen. “Christian definitely, but that’s because I interacted with him primarily in that context.”
Michael D’Asaro, who coached fencing at Caltech around the time Allen was in college, said that he didn’t remember Allen but that generally none of the students attended practice regularly.
“Those kids were more interested in studying than sports, as you can imagine,” he said in a text message. “They would spend days and nights in the lab.”
After Caltech, Allen went on to work as a mechanical engineer for a South Pasadena firm called IJK Controls.
Kevin Baragona said he and Allen worked together “making stabilized gimbals for Hollywood” at IJK for about six months.
Baragona, who left IJK in January 2018 to found the company DeepAI, said in an interview via FaceTime from rural China that Allen seemed “kind of tired, unmotivated, like he didn’t want to really work hard, and maybe depressed.”
Baragona said that Allen was mainly interested in video games, and that Allen even showed him a couple of games he had made or was working on.
Allen was at IJK for less than a year and a half, according to his LinkedIn profile, which states that he worked as a self-employed “Indie Game Developer” from September 2018 to March 2020.
In 2019, he registered a trademark for an esoteric video game called “Bohrdom,” a “hybrid of a bullet hell and a racing game” based on atomic theory, in which electrons and protons compete. “Bohrdom” languished on the Steam gaming platform. Three other projects Allen detailed in his professional bio remained unfinished.
Then, in March 2020, he took a job as a tutor at C2 Education. In December 2024, he was named teacher of the year at the test preparation and tutoring company in a Spanish-tiled Torrance shopping center. People who knew him through his work there described him in interviews as intelligent and professional.
In May 2025, Allen received a master’s degree from Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson, six miles from his parents’ home in Torrance.
Bin Tang, a professor in the university’s computer science department, described Allen as a “very good student. … Soft-spoken, very polite, a good fellow.”
“I am very shocked to see the news,” he told the Associated Press.
Joaquin Miranda knew he recognized the photo circulating online of a man posing in a graduation gown at Cal State Dominguez Hills, but he couldn’t quite place it. So on Monday, the 48-year-old showed the picture to his 13-year-old daughter, who told him it was of Allen, “my tutor guy,” who had tutored her in English at C2.
“She can’t believe it, because he was very nice, very professional and a very cool guy,” Miranda said of his daughter. “So yeah, it’s crazy.”
The Torrance home connected to Cole Tomas Allen.
(Robbin Goddard / Los Angeles Times)
At the heart of the case against Allen is a document federal authorities allege he sent family members.
The writer of the document apologized to his parents, colleagues and others before laying out his “rules of engagement” — guests, hotel security and staff and other people not in elected office or government were “not targets.” The author says he was targeting top Trump administration officials because he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
If the document was indeed written by Allen, Baragona said it would represent a fundamental change from the person he knew when they were making gimbals together at IJK Controls.
“It’s kind of sad, really,” Baragona said of the transformation Allen’s worldview apparently underwent in recent years. “It’s tragic and sad.”
The document was signed “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen,” echoing the usernames the FBI in a court filing said Allen used online.
Federal authorities have not identified the specific accounts, but The Times found multiple similarly named social media profiles likely used by Allen, with close variations of the same distinctive username, @coldForce3000, that Allen used on a chess account created with his confirmed email addresses. The accounts have been taken down, but much of their contents remain accessible on the Internet Archive.
Across more than 5,000 posts extending from 2021 to days before last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner, where the attack attributed to him took place, Allen’s social media history shows that what started as a singular immersion into the online gaming world became consumed in condemnation of Trump, his administration and war. The rhetoric was often harsh — likening the president to a mob boss or calling him a sociopath — but did not espouse violence.
A sketch of Cole Tomas Allen in court.
(Dana Verkouteren / Associated Press)
For years, SoCal Twitter user @CForce3000, under the name “coldForce,” posted almost exclusively about gaming, and “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” in particular, the same fighting game Allen played competitively as an online brawler.
The account changed abruptly the day after Russia’s April 2023 missile attack on Slovyansk, in eastern Ukraine. Eleven people, including a toddler, died in the shelling of a residential building. The feed from @CForce3000 carried images of the bloodshed.
Subsequent Ukraine-related posts followed, along with pleas for donations to buy jeeps, equipment and supplies for combatants in the country. By early 2024, the account had broadened to domestic concerns, including opinions on student activism at Columbia University in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
“Everyone makes mistakes in college,” @CForce3000 wrote in May 2024, criticizing the activists, who risked expulsion. “Burning down your parents’ life accomplishments and your own future to demonstrably degrade the image of your (presumably) recent cause is not really one I’d recommend,” the user posted, “like, my parents woulda *buried* me if i picked this as a ‘hill to die on.’”
For the next year, @CForce3000 shared hundreds of posts from sources as diverse as Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and former Ukrainian diplomat Maria Drutska. The account became a repeater of condemnations by Trump critics calling the president an ally of Russia and decrying his failure to support Ukraine and his involvement with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In November 2024, @CForce3000 announced the account was migrating to BlueSky, saying of X, “I don’t think there’s much reason to be on here anymore.” In early 2025 on BlueSky, coldForce chose an avatar plucked from the anime series “Gintama”: the heroine Kagura in her berserk state, insane with rage.
“Hi! I’m a random Californian guy with posts about American politics, support for Ukraine, and observations of small creatures,” read the new coldForce account bio. “I choose my own battlefields. Not through my blood, but with my heart. I stand on the battlefield to protect what I want.”
The BlueSky user continued to forward requests for donations to equip Ukrainian troops. It decried federal immigration raids and posted about a toddler who nearly died at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Texas. In reposting a feed that called Elon Musk a white supremacist, coldForce mused that the Tesla CEO and X owner was a “genius with effective(?) autism” struggling to understand humanity.
The rhetoric sharpened this spring when Trump began posting threats to bomb Iran, saying that “a whole civilization will die tonight.” On BlueSky, coldForce shared posts from Democratic pundits and leaders, including in Congress, who called for Trump’s impeachment, and those who described the president as “deranged” and “a sociopathic mob boss.”
Cole Allen reportedly purchased a handgun at CAP Tactical Firearms in Lawndale.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
“Trump must be removed from office. He has no capacity to do the job, and he’s destroying the US and the world with incoherent flailing,” read an April 12 message by Minnesota liberal activist Will Stancil that coldForce reposted. “He thinks he can bully and blackmail the whole world and will start WW3 or nuke someone eventually. He absolutely cannot [be] allowed to continue.”
To these, coldForce added:
“If we can call for russians to oppose putin, we can and must oppose trump no less.”
On April 6, federal authorities say Allen used his phone to search “white house correspondents dinner 2026” and booked a room at the Washington Hilton.
Allen allegedly traveled by train across the country from California, arriving in Washington, D.C., on April 23 and checking into his room at the Washington Hilton, where the White House correspondents’ dinner was scheduled two nights later.
At 8:03 p.m. April 25, he snapped a mirror selfie in his hotel room, according to a pretrial detention memo filed by prosecutors Wednesday. He looked into the camera, eyebrows raised with a hint of a smile. Allen wore a black dress shirt and slacks, a red tie tucked into his pants and a small leather bag prosecutors say was filled with ammunition. He also allegedly wore a shoulder holster and knife in his waistband.
At 8:27 p.m., he pulled up a live feed of Trump en route to the event. Minutes later, as the president sat on an open stage during the fete, Allen allegedly ran through a magnetometer and past Secret Service agents toward the ballroom before firing at least one shotgun round in the direction of the stairs leading down to the ballroom, the memo said.
Secret Service agents respond during the White House correspondents’ dinner.
(Tom Brenner / Associated Press)
A Secret Service officer saw him and fired five shots — all of which missed him — and Allen fell to the ground and was arrested before he could reach the event space. The Department of Justice has said it is investigating whether Allen fired the round that hit one of the agents in the chest; the agent avoided major injuries because he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
People who knew Allen before he was accused of attempting to gun down American leaders told The Times that they never would have thought he was capable of such a violent act.
Terlinden, of the Caltech Christian Fellowship, said she and Allen once got into a heated argument over how to spend the group’s charity money. He advocated for sending toys to children abroad through an organization that was explicitly Christian, whereas Terlinden pushed to feed the homeless locally, which she thought was more pragmatic.
“I think he said it’s not about helping people, it’s about showing the love of Christ,” she recalled. “After I talked about efficiency and helping people.”
She left the room and didn’t return.
“Part of the reason I’m bringing that up is to demonstrate that that’s the most scandalous incident I could come up with,” Terlinden said. “We were arguing over whether we should send toys to poor children or feed homeless people — that’s the big tea.”
Reflecting on the allegations, she said she wondered whether Allen was “acting out of perceived moral duty. … In a twisted way, there is a sense of, you know, standing up for people that can’t defend themselves.”
“All the President’s Men” was released 50 years ago this month, an anniversary that’s been greeted with equal parts rue and reverence by the journalists, political junkies and discerning cinephiles who have worshiped the film for five decades.
As a member of all three of those constituencies, I’ve done my share of genuflecting, most recently as chief film critic at the Washington Post, whose city room was as vivid and fully realized in the movie as Robert Redford’s Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein.
Like so many Posties of my generation, I’ll never forget the so-real-it’s-surreal experience of walking into the fifth-floor newsroom for the first time in 2002. By then, standard-issue electric typewriters and six-ply carbon paper had been replaced by far less visually interesting computers. But the office’s pervading atmosphere of hard work and quiet focus felt uncannily similar to its big-screen analog.
For the last two years, I have been researching a book about the making of “All the President’s Men,” whose production involved almost as many contingencies and unresolved questions as Watergate itself. Among the film’s many mysteries, one I’ve found particularly intriguing has to do with Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post and CEO of its parent company during the Watergate investigations. As the movie amply demonstrates, it took guts for Woodward and Bernstein to persevere with their reporting in the face of terrified sources and their own growing paranoia. But, unbeknownst to many observers at the time, Graham was enduring even more withering pressures, with determination that was all the more impressive for being almost entirely invisible.
I’m still in the process of discovering why she remained invisible in “All the President’s Men.” For now, it’s clear that the backstory is more nuanced than mere oversight or, as many are quick to assume, simple sexism.
In fact, William Goldman’s first script of the film featured a sequence with Graham and Woodward, a scene that appeared in every subsequent draft. Based on an actual meeting between the two, it’s a cagey game of cat-and-mouse, with the publisher taking the measure of a nervous, still-inexperienced journalist, looking for reassurance that his reporting will prove out.
Earlier this year, at a January staged reading of “All the President’s Men” at Harmony Gold Theater in Hollywood — a fundraiser for the Stella Adler Academy — it was possible for fans to conjure what might have been. Mark Ruffalo played Woodward and Ethan Hawke played Bernstein in a version of the movie assembled from different Goldman drafts.
A high point of the evening was when Ruffalo and actor Susan Traylor brought the Graham-Woodward scene to tentative, tense and teasingly playful life. After grilling Woodward about his sources and coyly asking him about Deep Throat’s identity, Traylor’s Graham asked him if the truth about Watergate would ever be revealed. “It may never come out,” Ruffalo’s Woodward replied. “Don’t tell me ‘never,’” Graham laments, before bringing the meeting to a close with a gently peremptory “Do better.”
In poring over director Alan J. Pakula and Goldman’s papers, I’ve probably read that scene dozens of times. But when I heard it play out in real time, I was ambushed by the emotions it stirred — a mixture of pride in Graham’s legacy and deep sadness at how that legacy has been so inexplicably ignored in recent years.
I was also sad that Redford, who died in September, wasn’t there. He often expressed regret that Graham wasn’t a featured character in “All the President’s Men.” Keenly aware of how her spine and steadfastness made Woodward and Bernstein’s work possible, he wanted to honor that crucial support. When I interviewed him for the first time in 2005, he insisted that fearless owners were every bit as important in preserving democracy as the reporters he and Hoffman helped glamorize.
Over the next two decades, every time I saw Redford, he bemoaned the “downward slide of this thing,” by which he meant the constellation of institutions “All the President’s Men” celebrates: not just journalism and a robust First Amendment but a Washington where investigators, prosecutors, judges, the Senate and Congress did their jobs regardless of partisan loyalties, and a Hollywood where a studio as mainstream as Warner Bros. would agree to finance a tough-minded film about a contentious and still-raw period in recent history.
Granted, that film was based on a bestselling book and anchored by two huge stars. But today, with political and corporate leaders — including media companies — falling over each other to curry favor with President Trump, “All the President’s Men” feels like an artifact from a vanished age.
Nowhere is this more distressingly true than at the Post itself, where the newsroom immortalized by the movie has been slashed by more than a third, and where Jeff Bezos, who bought the paper in 2013, seems intent on erasing Katharine Graham’s legacy until it vanishes completely. During the first Trump administration, Bezos stood up to threats against the Post and the press at large that would make Nixon blush, or at least pea-green with envy.
Now, Bezos has become a one-man meme of what author Timothy Snyder calls “obedience in advance,” quashing an endorsement of Kamala Harris, ostentatiously grinning his way through Trump’s second inauguration, vastly overpaying for a promotional film about First Lady Melania Trump and staying conspicuously mum (at least publicly) when a Post reporter’s home was raided by the FBI in January.
All of this has come at an enormous moral and material cost, with thousands of readers canceling their subscriptions and an alarming number of the Post’s finest reporters and writers leaving for other publications and platforms. As my former boss Marty Baron told my former colleague Ruth Marcus in the New Yorker in February, Bezos’ turnaround has been “sickening” to witness: “a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”
Of course, that brand was built, in no small part, by “All the President’s Men,” which taught a generation how to walk, talk, dress and act like real reporters. (Hint: A good corduroy jacket and a pen in your mouth can’t hurt.)
In 1976, Pakula was interviewed about his dealings with Graham, whom he admired tremendously and with whom he would become close friends. “I could do a film about the Katharine Graham story,” he enthused. “It’s a superb story.”
Thirty years later, Steven Spielberg would bring Pakula’s idea to fruition with “The Post,” about Graham’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, a dress rehearsal for the even higher stakes of Watergate a year later.
“The Post,” which starred Meryl Streep in a shrewdly judged performance of aristocratic assurance and creeping insecurity, premiered in Washington less than a year into Trump’s first administration. Bezos attended that screening, which many of us saw as tacit acknowledgment that he was taking her lessons in character, comportment and competence to heart.
That was clearly wishful thinking. Graham may have finally assumed her rightful place in the newspaper-movie canon, but we’re still left to ponder her absence from the most iconic journalism movie of the 20th century.
It’s no longer the shoe-leather reporters who need a big-screen tutorial in how to do their jobs. It’s their bosses. A simple place to start would be to memorize the best two-word speech to never appear in a major motion picture: Do better.
Ann Hornaday was a film critic at the Washington Post from 2002 to 2025, when she retired. “All the President’s Men” plays at TCM Classic Film Festival Saturday at 2:45 p.m.
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson has lamented he would like to preside over a “normal Congress,” but the chamber the Republican is leading is anything but.
All-night sessions. Hours of dead zones with no action on the floor. Legislation being written on the fly, behind closed doors. Sudden votes scheduled. Spectacular failures. And, as happened this week, stunning turnarounds in which the House actually passes bills.
“Sometimes it’s an ugly process, sometimes it’s a long process,” Johnson said after House passage of a bipartisan bill to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security, ending the longest agency shutdown in history. “But we got it done.”
Republicans, who face an uphill climb this election year to keep hold of their paper-thin House majority, appear at times as if they are still learning on the job, years after having returned to power in 2022, while they are also about to ask voters in November to rehire them for another term.
This week’s starts and stops — for example, five hours of delay as Johnson huddled behind closed doors to salvage his agenda, then a sudden vote tally near 11 p.m. — would typically have been the kind of situation that shocked the political and procedural senses. Now, it’s just another Wednesday.
Or two weeks ago, when a routine House Rules Committee hearing ended up becoming a midnight forum to debut a just-produced 14-page bill to revise a surveillance bill, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, before it was rushed to the floor for a 2 a.m. vote. It failed.
“House Republicans have shown again that they can’t govern,” said Rep. Ted Lieu of California, part of Democratic leadership.
“They routinely pass bills to the Senate that are way too extreme, then it ends up that we have all these floor session days where we’re just doing nothing,” he said.
House GOP’s slim majority makes leader’s job challenging
Johnson, who took over for the ousted Kevin McCarthy more than two years ago, is presiding over one of the slimmest House majorities in modern times, leaving him no room to spare if he’s trying to pass legislation on party-line votes, without Democrats.
The speaker is juggling not only President Trump’s priorities but also those of the various factions that make up his majority, from the conservative House Freedom Caucus to what remains of the GOP’s more pragmatic conservatives.
And Johnson’s own future is always in question, after Republicans chased other speakers, including McCarthy, John Boehner and Newt Gingrich, to early exits.
Last year Johnson, of Louisiana, led passage of the party’s signature achievement, a big bill of tax breaks and safety net cuts, which Trump signed into law. At the time, he quipped about the difficulty of getting it over the finish line.
“I do so deeply desire to have just a normal Congress,” the speaker said in July.
“But it doesn’t happen anymore,” he said. “Our way is to plow through and get it done.”
What’s ahead as House GOP tries to stay in power
Ahead of the fall elections, Johnson and other Republican lawmakers have discussed an agenda that includes the promise of another GOP-only budget package like the tax cuts bill that they could push through the House and the Senate, without Democratic votes.
Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said Thursday that he expects “the centerpiece” of that package “will be supporting our troops” with more than $100 billion in funding for the war against Iran as well as money to replenish defense munitions and other Pentagon-related needs.
Despite the turbulent week in the House, Arrington said what they’re calling “Budget reconciliation 3.0” should be the “next order of business.”
Yet GOP lawmakers may decide it’s better to skip the hard work of legislating, and the dramatic upheavals that tend to come with it, and hit the campaign trail to win over voters instead.
Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the chairman of the House GOP’s campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, acknowledged that trying to pass legislation with such a tight majority “can be rough. It’s ugly.”
“I’d be fine with letting us go home and campaign,” Hudson said. “But we’ve got a lot of important work still to do.”
Some of Johnson’s most ardent sparring partners, those most conservative Republican lawmakers, turned their blame for the messy process not on Johnson’s leadership but on their own GOP allies across the Capitol in the Senate, who often dismiss the House’s work.
“Yeah, sometimes, it gets a little tense,” said Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. “But we’re still getting stuff done. We’re sending it over to the Senate. So we look forward to them doing their job.”
LONDON — President Trump sang the praises of King Charles III after the monarch’s state visit this week. He even lifted some tariffs on Scotch whisky as a favor to the British monarch.
The king delivered a diplomatic master-class on the trip, mixing praise for his host with subtle criticism. It’s unclear, though, whether it will make a major difference to a trans-Atlantic relationship troubled by divisions over issues including the Iran war.
“In the short term probably yes, in the long term probably no,” said Kristofer Allerfeldt, a University of Exeter professor specializing in American history. But he said Charles had “definitely clawed back some of the prestige of the monarchy” in his homeland with his assured performance.
“He’s done us proud,” Allerfeldt said.
Like all royal visits, the four-day trip to Washington, New York and Virginia by the king and Queen Camilla was a carefully choreographed diplomatic event carried out at the request of the U.K. government. Timed to help mark the United States’ 250th birthday, it was a chance to heal rifts between the U.K. government and the Trump administration.
Trump has criticized Keir Starmer
The president has lambasted Prime Minister Keir Starmer — whom he once praised — over his unwillingness to join U.S. military attacks on Iran, dismissing Britain’s leader as “not Winston Churchill,” the World War II prime minister who coined the phrase “special relationship” for the U.K.-U.S. bond.
It’s part of a wider split between Trump and the United States’ NATO allies, whom he has called “cowards” and “useless” for not joining action against Iran.
None of that has soured Trump’s fondness for the British monarchy, which seems to have been deepened by the president’s unprecedented second state visit to the U.K. in September.
Some U.K. opposition politicians had called for the king’s reciprocal trip to be canceled, lest the president do or say something to embarrass the monarch.
In the end, there was much warmth and few awkward moments — though Trump did not always adhere to the convention that conversations with the monarch should remain private.
At a white-tie state dinner on Tuesday, Trump said “Charles agrees with me, even more than I do” that Iran must never have nuclear weapons.
Trump also said that “if that were up to him,” the king “would have followed the suggestions we made with respect to Ukraine.”
Buckingham Palace appeared relaxed about Trump’s Iran comment, noting that “the king is naturally mindful of his government’s longstanding and well-known position on the prevention of nuclear proliferation.”
The king’s speech chided Trump policies
On Ukraine, however, differences were clear. The U.K. has been one of Kyiv’s strongest supporters in its fight against Russia’s invasion, and in a speech to Congress the king underscored the importance of the need for “unyielding resolve” to support Ukraine.
It was one of several implicit rebukes to the “America first” U.S. administration in the speech, the centerpiece moment of the trip.
With regal understatement and in a cut-glass accent, Charles stressed the essential role of NATO, the importance of checks on executive power, the threat posed by climate change and the strength drawn from “vibrant, diverse and free societies.” He spoke of his pride at having served in the Royal Navy, a force Trump has disparaged.
“It’s difficult to imagine he could have gone much further in what he said and what he didn’t say,” historian Anthony Seldon told The Guardian. “He judged it incredibly well: very brave, very smart, very clever.”
Allerfeldt noted the “extraordinary” reception from both sides of the political aisle to the speech, which drew multiple standing ovations.
“Apart from the section on the natural world and the environment, both Republicans and Democrats stood up and applauded,” he said.
In a less formal speech at the state banquet, the king even drew laughs when he joked about British troops burning down the White House in 1814.
The king alluded to Epstein’s victims
The trip was judged a success despite the shadow of the king’s younger brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who has been stripped of his royal title of Prince Andrew, exiled from public life and put under police investigation over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. He has denied committing any crimes.
Epstein victims had urged the king to meet with them and other sexual abuse survivors. He didn’t, but he did refer obliquely to the issue in his speech to Congress, mentioning the need to “support victims of some of the ills that, so tragically, exist in both our societies today.”
Andrew Lownie, author of a biography of the former Prince Andrew called “Entitled,” praised the speech as “the best defense of the monarchy in years.”
After the royal couple left the U.S., Trump announced he was lifting certain tariffs on Scotch “in honor of the King and Queen of the United Kingdom.”
Buckingham Palace toasted the announcement, saying the king “sends his sincere gratitude for a decision that will make an important difference to the British whisky industry and the livelihoods it supports.”
Trump called the king “a phenomenal representative” for his country, before turning back to a familiar theme: criticizing Starmer.
The president told Sky News that Charles is “a much different person than your prime minister.
“Your prime minister has to learn to deal the way he deals, and he’ll do a lot better,” he said.
WASHINGTON — When Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was questioned by senators during his confirmation hearing about his vision for implementing President Trump’s mass deportation agenda, he said his goal was to keep his department off the front pages of the news.
To some degree, he has. Gone are the social media video clips of now-retired Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino clashing with protesters. Mullin’s predecessor, Kristi Noem, made her first trip as secretary to New York City to make arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In contrast, Mullin went to North Carolina to review hurricane recovery efforts.
The Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to a centerpiece policy that helped bring Trump back to the White House, moving in many ways away from aggressive, public-facing tactics toward a quieter approach to enforcement. Despite that shift, the administration insists it is not backing down from its lofty deportation goals.
“Clearly they’ve stepped back from the, for want of a better word, the Bovinoist tactics of before,” said Mark Krikorian, the president of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions. “But it’s not clear this means they’re actually stepping back from immigration.”
The Trump administration launched a series of immigration enforcement operations last year in mostly Democratic-led cities, which drove up arrests in large-scale sweeps. The crackdown sparked clashes between protesters and enforcement officers and led to the shooting deaths in Minneapolis of two U.S. citizens.
Since then, the president’s hard-line anti-immigration agenda has lost popularity with voters and there have been no new high-profile city-based operations launched, raising questions about the administration’s strategy.
“We’re still enforcing immigration laws. We’re still deporting illegals that shouldn’t be here. We’re still going after the worst of the worst — but we’re doing it in a more quiet way,” Mullin said in an interview April 16 with CNBC.
Immigration arrests have dropped, but deportation goals remain
ICE arrests have fallen in recent months, and the number of people in immigration detention has dropped from a high of roughly 72,000 in January to 58,000 this week, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.
But in a sign of its continued determination, ICE in budget documents says it plans to remove 1 million people this fiscal year and the next compared with roughly 442,000 people last year. The agency also has plenty of money to carry out its mission, with Congress granting the Department of Homeland Security more than $170 billion for Trump’s immigration agenda last year.
The administration aims to have enough space to detain roughly 100,000 people this fiscal year, which would more than double the average daily number held in ICE detention last year. The administration has already expanded its detention capacity with the purchase of 11 warehouses across the country.
“They are working on really building a juggernaut of a system,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a predecessor to ICE, during President Bill Clinton’s Democratic administration and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said there had been no change to Trump’s strategy.
“President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities,” Jackson said.
ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Stripping away legal protections to ramp up deportations
Advocates for immigrants are bracing for the Trump administration to turn its attention more intently to stripping away protections for migrants with temporary legal status to remain in the U.S. while their cases are being adjudicated.
In one example of this, the number of green cards approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services dropped by half over the course of a year under the Trump administration, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute, which supports immigration into the U.S. Humanitarian visas for refugees or people who qualified for asylum saw the biggest declines.
USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said the drop was due to increased vetting of applicants by the administration.
The Trump administration has also pushed to strip Temporary Protected Status from hundreds of thousands of people, with a key case weighing whether it’s overstepped its power to do so being heard at the Supreme Court this week.
Advocates see it as a way to send a chilling message to immigrant communities and make more people vulnerable to deportation. It also enables the department to operate without the public spectacle of workplace raids or home arrests.
ICE has also focused over the past year on creating agreements with jurisdictions around the country that allow local and state law enforcement to carry out an expanding array of immigration enforcement tasks, ranging from checking the immigration status of people in their jails to incorporating immigration checks during routine traffic stops.
These agreements, known as 287g, have grown from 135 in 20 states before Trump took office to more than 1,400 in 41 states and territories now.
Some states, most noticeably Florida and Texas, have mandated various forms of cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE.
Meissner, from MPI, said Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, is likely to prioritize further discussions about how cities and states can cooperate with ICE.
“At the end of the day, some of this may very well succeed in increasing the numbers,” Meissner said.
Calls to enforce work restrictions
Conservatives who want more deportations say the only way to truly crack down on illegal immigration is to make it so difficult for the migrants to work that they’ll leave on their own.
The Trump administration has already taken steps to make life harder for people in the country illegally including limiting who can live in public housing by immigration status, sharing Medicaid information with ICE and requiring people in the country illegally to register with the federal government.
Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Social Security Administration could send out letters alerting employers when an employee’s name doesn’t match their Social Security number. Authorities could repeatedly and consistently carry out audits of I-9 forms, which companies are supposed to fill out and submit to the federal government showing that new hires are legally able to work. And they could require banks to collect citizenship information on customers.
Whatever the strategy going forward, the administration is facing heavy pressure not to back away from its goals.
“The numbers are too low,” said Mike Howell, part of the Mass Deportation Coalition, which launched a playbook for how the administration can actually get to a million deportations a year by using tactics such as worksite enforcement.
“The deportation numbers are just too low,” Howell said, “and they need to be much higher, and they can be much higher.”
Santana writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro and Will Weissert contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — After weeks of delay, the House voted Thursday to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security, but not its immigration enforcement operations, and send the bipartisan package to President Trump to sign, ending the longest agency shutdown in history.
The White House had warned that temporary funding Trump had tapped to pay Transportation Security Administration and other agency personnel would “soon run out,” and that sparked new threats of airport disruptions.
DHS has been without routine funds since Feb. 14, causing hardship for workers, though much of Trump’s immigration agenda that is central to the dispute is being funded separately.
“It is about damn time,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, who proposed the bill more than 70 days ago.
The House swiftly voted by voice, without a formal roll call, to pass the measure.
The House’s narrow Republican majority has repeatedly stalled out under House Speaker Mike Johnson, with his own party tangled in internal disputes on a range of pending issues, including the homeland security funding. While the Senate unanimously approved the bipartisan package a month ago, the bill languished in the House.
Democrats refused to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol without changes to those operations after the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents during protests against an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Republicans would no go along with a plan pushed by Democrats to fund TSA and the other parts of DHS without the money for ICE and Border Patrol.
To break the impasse, Republicans in both the House and Senate decided to tackle the immigration enforcement funding on their own through what is called budget reconciliation, a cumbersome weekslong process ahead.
By beginning that budget process Johnson, R-La., was able to unlock a broader bipartisan bill for TSA agents and the rest of DHS. House Republicans late Wednesday adopted budget resolution on a largely party-line vote, 215-211, that is focused on eventually providing $70 billion for immigration enforcement and deportations for the remainder of Trump’s time in office and ensure Democrats can no longer block funding. Trump’s term ends in January 2029.
One key Republican, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, said isolating the immigration-related money on a separate track is “offensive to the men and women who serve in ICE and Border Patrol, and are serving this country every single day.”
